Category: observations

Apple said to be eyeing Intel chip — The Washington Times

One thing that might help Apple make the switch is the growing popularity of its Mac OS X operating system, which is based on Unix. Unix, in turn, can run very nicely on Intel processors, so converting OS X to run on Intel microprocessors might not be that difficult.

Of course, Darwin, the core of OS X, already runs on x86 hardware. So this is closer to reality than this article suggests.

Also, recall that BeOS ran on PPC hardware first (their own, then Apple’s) and then was ported across to x86. The official story behind the lack of support for the PowerPC G3/G4s in BeOS was that Apple wasn’t giving Be access to hardware information. My theory was that Intel, in doing a lot of the work on the port to their hardware, had a hand in that. Apple’s loss, I think. Perhaps we’re seeing the continuation of the NeXTisation of Apple. NeXT started as PPC hardare vendor, then became a software only shop. Could Steve be eyeing the same move again?
Thanks to John for the tip.

blogging ecosystem

I just found another ‘bot run from this website, an attempt to catalog the blogging ecosystem.

I wonder if we’re taking ourselves too seriously here? It’s getting a little too self-referential . . . .

Hobart and William Smith Colleges :: Judy Collins Baccalaureate Address 2002

My mother, on the other hand, warned me about Irish Alzheimer’s. That’s where you forget everything but the grudges.

Yes, I suffer from this.

Google Search: paulbeard@mac.com fink
Google Search: pkdb1@home.com fink

It seems strange to read how many positive things I had to say about the Fink project when I contrast it with my current opinion.

I’m still working on repairing my broken installation. Compiles take a long time on a 350 MHz machine, so progress is slow. I suppose I could save time and download the .deb files.

It would, of course, save a lot of time if anyone on the fink team knew how the package management software actually worked. And maybe someone does and they just weren’t checking mail this weekend. My fault for expecting anything on a weekend.

I would have been quite happy if someone — anyone — had said they didn’t know but they knew who might, or asked for information that was in some way relevant. But trotting out the same old gripes about where perl libraries get installed (answer: where perl can find them) is useless and annoying. Incidentally, I removed Storable.pm from the fink installation — retaining it in perl’s @INC path — and nothing broke. Fancy that.

Discovering that the manual page contradicts reality makes me wonder if anyone actually does a baseline install/regression test of new releases as they come out. I know the answer to that already.

At some point, my anger will subside but for now it seems to be simmering nicely.

I have this error message:

Failed: Internal error: node for xfree86-base already exists

After a lot of wrangling and research, it looks like my fink installation is wedged in such a way as to prevent me doing further updates: I have packages installed for which newer versions exist but they are never updated when I update from CVS.

And no one on the fink team can identify the problem or suggest solutions: “do it again” seems the most common refrain, followed closely “it works for me, it’s your problem.”

I have lobbied for fink to become the default packaging system for OS X going forward, but perhaps it’s not as fully-baked as I thought it was.

This is the only page Google can find on this topic: I feel so special.
Continue reading “where fink doesn’t work”

the discussion of the EvilBot, repurposed as a tool to measure what’s on people minds, has gotten interesting.

I guess this is what I expected to find at BlogDex or some of the other aggregator/scraper sites.

Much as I’m leery of poll-driven news, this seems to be a different thing: collecting and sorting the thoughts of people who have already signed on as commentators is different from asking people at a bus stop. Not that it’s better, but your raw material comes from people who care enough to write about these topics.

KING5.com | Top Stories

It happened in the Wedgewood neighborhood around 4 p.m. Thursday at the Temple Beth Am parking lot on the 8000 block of 28th Avenue. The girl was playing in the nearby ball field and paused on her bike on a parking lot strip.

I can see that parking lot from where I sit. And as it turns out, this is the second attempt in as many days by this creep. I’ll keep my eyes out tomorrow for the vehicle and individual. In my current frame of mind, it would be to his benefit for the police to find him before I do.

The Seattle Times: Northwest Life: Utilikilts: What are you looking at?

I ask, “So, do you wear underpants with them?” This question will haunt me later.

“Nooo! You gotta let the boys go free,” the clerk says[ . . . . ]

Seeing a lot of these about as the days get warmer. Shorts are fine for me, and I’m not even going to think about cycling in them.

I know Josh was interested in trying on out . . .

UPDATE: Josh already owns one. Hmm, making one’s partner lose her train of thought seems almost worth it, as long as you can then lead the train your way . . . .

War Blogging: Announcing the “Index of Evil”

WARBLOGGING.COM operates a Web spider called EvilBot which downloads a list of currently changed weblogs from Weblogs.com on an hourly basis. EvilBot then downloads every blog that’s changed since it last downloaded the list and looks for words like “Ashcroft”, “Hussein”, “Saddam” or “Osama”. If it finds one of these words the appropriate Index is raised by one.

I noticed that something called EvilBot had come a-calling: since well-mannered robot owners put contact information in the HTTP_USERAGENT field, I was able to follow up and see what this was all about.

As of this writing, the Index of Evil was at 828 with the individual indices as follows: Ashcroft: 185, Hussein: 25, bin Laden: 372, Mullah Omar: 20.

I suppose you could have spiders doing lots of stuff like this: looking for names or buzzwords, whathaveyou.

Janis Ian Articles

The music industry is no different from any other huge corporation, be it Mobil Oil or the Catholic church. When faced with a new technology or a new product that will revolutionize their business, their response is predictable:

a. Destroy it. And if they cannot,
b. Control it. And if they cannot,
c. Control the consumer who wishes to use it, and the legislators and laws that are supposed to protect that consumer.

Please read this article and make sure your elected representatives understand their constituents views.

I sent email to Janis Ian, thanking her for presenting this from the artist’s point of view. I also asked if there was much opposition to the RIAA’s and the music industry’s stance on digital media. She was gracious enough to reply and yes, there is a lot of opposition, but it’s largely anonymous. The artists have lost control of their own voices when they can’t speak on this issue. Perhaps instead of lobbying congress, we need to also encourage musicians to weigh in on this. If, as the article above suggests, Napster activity at its peak represented $500,000 a day of revenue for the industry, what could a more complete solution yield? Imagine more — all — artists, complete catalogs, out of print stuff, historical recordings, all available in a portable format.

Where this idea represents money for stuff that’s taking up shelf space (metaphorically and literally), as well as the chance to enrich the music-loving public’s experience, the people who can make this happen want to find some way of making sure no one gets something for nothing.

The bottom line is the artists lose some potential audience, the music-lovers lose the opportunity to hear music they may not have access to, and the industry loses money, more than Napster may have cost them.

Myabe we’ll just see more and more small labels where the artists have control over their works and how they’re distributed.

Once again, I’m led back to this article I mentioned a few weeks back.