Category: observations

A weird imagination is most useful to gain full advantage of all the features.


From the amd(8) man page

LizardTech, Inc. Downloads

View MrSID images on your personal computer Save view as TIFF with TFW for import into other applications

While browsing the topography I mentioned a couple of entries ago, I discovered the EPS files they supply are not too useful, but they also offered a SID format file. Turns out there’s a free viewer, runs on all the popular architectures, and it’s pretty interesting. You get full color images to pan, zoom, and otherwise inspect, and the viewer exports to many of the popular file formats.

Here’s a sample image.

Might be worth looking into what other maps they have. Like I need more reasons to stare at a map . . . .

According filext.com, there are two filetypes that use .SID as their identifying extension:

.SID Commodore64 Music File [Player] MIME type: audio/prs.sid
LizardTech MrSID Photo [Free plug-in viewer]


Do we fly the flag at half staff to commemorate the event or at full staff as a show of spirit and pride?

The Seattle Times: Business & Technology: Corporate saboteurs find hacking powerful weapon

Millions of Europeans were buying counterfeit Canal Plus smart cards on the black market and inserting them into their set-top boxes, giving them free access to premium channels that carry soccer games and adult movies. In Italy, there were as many as three freeloaders for every legitimate customer.

[ . . . ] Behind the hack, Canal Plus says it was shocked to find NDS Group, a rival smart-card developer largely owned by Rupert Murdoch’s global entertainment conglomerate, News Corp.

The logical extension of this suit would be for the copyright holders of all the stolen programming to crush News Corp and Murdoch. But I doubt it will happen.

The U.S. Government has asserted that it is illegal for citizens to participate in the Inauguration if those persons express viewpoints critical of the President or advocate policies different from the Administration’s.

It’s possible this is just counter-bluster (the use of the word “asserts” suggests that we’re playing constitutional chicken here), but it’s disappointing to see the need for such language.

This document is a useful HOWTO on conducting protests in DC, but I have to wonder why it’s necessary to write one at all.

Red Hat: Next Redmond?

Red Hat’s dominance is worrisome to some industry players, who say the Raleigh, N.C., company needs effective competition to prevent it from becoming a Microsoft Corp. among Linux vendors and to ensure the operating system continues to develop in an open way.

And who wouldn’t want to have MSFT’s influence over their market? Can you fault RedHat for that?

But the openness of the source itself and the fact there are competing distributions — RedHat vs SuSE is not like Macintosh vs Windows, after all — doesn’t really convince me that RedHat is a monopoly. I hope never to run RedHat again: the pain of dealing with RPM is still fresh in my mind. If I couldn’t get what I needed from FreeBSD’s Linux emulation, I’d go with Debian or SuSE.

Looks like water usage here in my grove of sunflowers and tomatoes is closer to 100 gallons/day (pretty nearly exactly 100). So I’ll note it for a few more days and then all the City and ask them to make the necessary adjustments to my bill.

The filesystem where this ‘blog is stored came close to filling, perhaps even did fill for a moment, while I was adding an entry. As a result, the index.html page was zeroed out. Hmm . . . .

After freeing up some space, I asked MT to rebuild all files and that seems to have fixed it. Love those database-backed publishing systems . . . .

Apple’s Newton Just Won’t Drop

the Newton’s limited processing power (160-MHz processor)

is anyone else shaking their head at the thought of 160 MHz being considered “limited”?

I’ve had every one of these from the OMP to the 2000 (which I stlll have). Apple really missed out o this. I’ll admit it had its flaws but some were overblown (the handwriting recognition was quite good on the later models). The Palm, of which I have had and disposed of 3 different models, is nothing more than a battery-backed roll of paper for notes, no intelligence whatever, other than in the mind of designer who made it shirt-pocket-sized and the marketeers who priced it within the geek gadget limit.

from Frank

In the parking deck of Swedish Hospital, there is a set of disused gas pumps, for what reason I don’t know, but inside the chainlink compound with them is a very actively used bike rack more than half full of bikes.

The times they have a-changed . . . .