Monthly Archives: June, 2002

Y2Pay

I like the banner on Ximian’s site:

[untitled]

A good friend of mine told me a nice story. The poet W.H.Auden once asked him, “Don’t you think Tolkien is a wonderful writer?” To which my friend replied that no, he didn’t really think so. “I respect you for saying that”, said Auden, “but I’ll never trust your opinion again.”

TCPA and Palladium

[Original Link] Ross Anderson has written a very good FAQ about the Intel/Microsoft plans for control/protection of digital content. I’m worried about this stuff, but I was worried about .NET and Passport/Hailstorm. Still, that was just Microsoft, and however big they were, you could choose to ignore them; enough people did, fortunately.

If the motherboard manufacturers adopt TCPA/Palladium, on the other hand, it may be rather harder. It has potentially worrying implications for Linux, Mac and other platforms. If somebody sends you a Word document in future, you might not only need a Microsoft software package to read it, you might also need an Intel motherboard. It’s a good thing there’s all this anti-monopoly legislation around, isn’t it?

(About a year ago, Microsoft even wanted me to change my name!)

Mark Pilgrim

[Original Link] The scourge of web design is the “javascript:” link. Agreed. Javascript, if used at all, should augment normal web activity, not replace it.

The name’s Bond. Osama Bond.

[Original Link] John Naughton’s column about the changing role of MI5.

Two interesting pieces of WiFi news today

From the New York Times: Etherlinx, a company based (of course) in a Silicon Valley garage, is developing a modified 802.11 for connecting the ‘last mile’ to homes. Or, in their case, up to the last 20 miles. Their box goes on the wall of the house and has two radio cards: one talking to their base stations and one doing WiFi into the home.

And from MacCentral:
IBM is rolling out large amounts of 802.11 on corporate campuses and is investigating the idea of national networks. It’ll be interesting if they ever get further than talking about it.

Blogger to RSS

[Original Link] Aaron Swartz came up with a way of allowing Blogger sites to produce an RSS feed. Julian Bond has made a version of the service available on his site.

The collaboration of all these helpful people means that is much easier for me to read my friend Laura’s weblog. What a wonderful world!

Mark Pilgrim – How to deal with telemarketers effectively

[Original Link] “Months go by and I don’t receive any telemarketing calls, but I just got off the phone with the nice people at Precision Telemarketing, who got my name and unlisted phone number from Time Warner Cable (against my explicit directions upon signup, and their explicit promises) in order to try to sell me a subscription for TV Guide. I used the JunkBusters anti-telemarketing script to tell them to put me on their “do not call” list. In accordance with the Telephone Consumer Protection Act of 1991, Precision Telemarketing will not be calling me again on behalf of TV Guide or any other company for the next 10 years.”

[dive into mark]

XML Schemas are too complex and still have limitations

[Original Link] Agreed.

MacStumbler

[Original Link] Excellent! This is a basic version of NetStumbler for Mac OS X. (This is a bit of software which allows you to see some techie bits of information about 802.11 networks active in your vicinity.)

Cows from Kenya.

[Original Link] I was born in Kenya. I’m proud of it.

TiVo Town or Sonicblue City?

[Original Link] Wired News on the battle of the DVRs.

© Copyright Quentin Stafford-Fraser