Geekery

Whatever I’m geeking out about at the time.

Even Microsoft wants G5s

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UPDATE: Please take the time to read my followup post, Fifteen Minutes of Fame, for my thoughts on what happened after I posted this picture, why it happened — and most importantly, why I don’t blame Microsoft for their actions. Thanks!

It looks like somebody over in Microsoft land is getting some new toys…

Microsoft's shipment of G5s come in

I took this shot on the way into work on the loading dock (MSCopy, the print shop I work in, is in the same building as MS’s shipping and receiving). Three palettes of Dual 2.0Ghz G5’s on their way in to somewhere deep in the bowels of Redmond. Hopefully they’re all in good condition when they arrive — the boxes are slick enough that a few of them took a bit of a tumble (you can see them back in the truck)!

Panther preview in NYT

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Apple Panther paw

There’s a glowing review of Apple’s new version of OS X (10.3, or ‘Panther’) in the New York Times today by David Pogue. A few things in the article jumped out at me.

First off, I love the logo they came up with to illustrate the story.

Then, in the first paragraph: “Hackers and academics have uncovered one Windows security hole after another, turning Microsoft into a frantic little Dutch boy at the dike without enough fingers.”

About the new ‘sidebar’ in the Finder, Pogue says that, “In effect, the Sidebar lets you fold up your desktop so that any two icons appear side-by-side, no matter how far apart they actually are in your folder hierarchy.” All of a sudden, I really want to rename the Finder ‘tesseract’.

And lastly, one of the last paragraphs comparing Apple’s OS philosophy to Microsoft’s sums it all up wonderfully.

Finally, surely there’s value in using an operating system that, well, isn’t Windows. Mac OS X isn’t just free of viruses; it’s also free from copy protection, “activation” (a Windows XP feature that transmits information about your PC back to Microsoft), and pop-up messages that nag you to sign up for some Microsoft database or clean up your icons. When you use Mac OS X, you feel like it’s yours; when you use Windows, you feel as though you’re using someone else’s toys, and Mrs. Microsoft keeps peeking in on you.

Electronic civil disobedience

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A group of students at Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania has launched an “electronic civil disobedience” campaign against voting machine maker Diebold Election Systems.

The students are protesting efforts by Diebold to prevent them and other website owners from linking to some 15,000 internal company memos that reveal the company was aware of security flaws in its e-voting software for years but sold the faulty systems to states anyway. The memos were leaked to voting activists and journalists by a hacker who broke into an insecure Diebold FTP server in March.

Diebold has been sending out cease-and-desist letters to force websites and ISPs to take down the memos, which the company says were stolen from its server in violation of copyright law. It has been using the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, or DMCA, to force ISPs to take down sites hosting the memos or sites containing links to the memos.

These memos really need to stay available — the systems that Diebold is pushing are not secure, and are ripe for exploitation and hacking. This is not what we need in our voting process, and Diebold’s repeated attempts to stifle their own shoddy practices needs to be made known.

More information on the memos and the campaign can also be found at Why War?

Deer gee-füür ist der BØRK BØRK BØRK!

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Apple.NT screenshot

Apparently, over on MacRumors.com, the first person to take notice of the G4 iBook was someone who lives in the Netherlands. They sent in this screenshot of the Netherlands Apple Store showing the new machines.

I, however, should not be allowed to see such things right after getting up in the morning.

All I can picture in my head now is the Swedish Chef onstage, introducing the new machines.

Deer gee-füür ist der BØRK BØRK BØRK! Heer chickiee! Chickeeeeee!

G4 iBooks!?!

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Wow. Apparently without any kind of fanfare whatsoever, Apple just updated their iBook line across the board — to use the G4 chip!

The world’s best-loved consumer portable gets an impressive makeover with a superfast PowerPC G4 processor, a new architecture, a slot-loading optical drive and enhanced wireless networking capabilities. Plus Mac OS X v10.3 Panther, the world’s most advanced operating system. Starting at just \$1099.

Ack!

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After a full week’s work, I did manage to get my webserver up and running again, complete with upgrades, so djwudi.com, hanscomfamily.com, and geekmuffin.com are all active again, and starting to regain content.

I am still having one issue, unfortunately. I’ve tried to install both Image::Magick and NetPBM (two image-processing libraries), but for some reason MovableType isn’t seeing either. This means that when uploading images to the MT install on my server, MT doesn’t give the options to resize the images, automatically create thumbnails, etc. Everything else is working beautifully, this is the only aspect that’s still giving me issues. Grr.

The other downside is that I’m now facing RSS overload, as I haven’t paid any attention to NetNewsWire for the past few days. I’m currently looking at 691 unread posts to go through. Yikes!

Now on LiveJournal – me!

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I only found this out a short time ago, but it appears that the online journaling site LiveJournal has limited support for picking up RSS feeds. As it turns out, someone added Eclecticism to their list of available feeds — so if there are any LiveJournal users who stop by here at any time, you can add me to your ‘friends’ list by adding [woody_eclectic].

I just wish there were a way for me to figure out who all had me added. According to the information page, there are three LiveJournal users who have me in their friends list. I know who two are…but who’s the mysterious third?

Maybe I’ve got a secret admirer.

Ooooooh.