Neat, isn’t it. Details here.
Oh and here’s how to install a minimalist version of Linux on a flash drive.
Daily Archives: April 21, 2006
Digg.com: in a hole?
Digg.com has had a lot of adulatory coverage in the last few months, with people hailing it as the New Slashdot. Only it was supposed to be better because Slashdot has a group of editors who wield arbitrary power — in that they decide what gets featured and what doesn’t. Digg.com, in contrast, supposedly operated on a totally impartial principle — the position of an individual posting was determined solely by the votes (diggs) of readers.
So far, so interesting. But then an observant chap at ForeverGeek noticed some funny business which suggested that Digg’s editors were apparently moving postings up the list. He posted news of this discovery on his Blog, only to discover shortly afterwards that the blog was now barred from Digg.com.
Curiouser and curiouser. Here’s his account of the whole murky business.
As usual, power corrupts.
Even right-wingers hate the DMCA
The ultra-conservative Washington think-tank, the Cato Institute, has come out with an astonishingly perceptive critique of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Here’s an excerpt from the summary:
The result has been a legal regime that reduces options and competition in how consumers enjoy media and entertainment. Today, the copyright industry is exerting increasing control over playback devices, cable media offerings, and even Internet streaming. Some firms have used the DMCA to thwart competition by preventing research and reverse engineering. Others have brought the weight of criminal sanctions to bear against critics, competitors, and researchers.
The DMCA is anti-competitive. It gives copyright holders—and the technology companies that distribute their content—the legal power to create closed technology platforms and exclude competitors from interoperating with them. Worst of all, DRM technologies are clumsy and ineffective; they inconvenience legitimate users but do little to stop pirates…
Wow! Full report here. (pdf)
Thanks to Owen Barder for the link.
Lights of passage
St Edward’s Passage, Cambridge, photographed by Brian at the weekend.
Rent a mug
Here’s a story from today’s Irish Times which restores one’s faith in human nature. Or human nature as viewed by H.L. Mencken anyway…
Prospective tenants arrived at an apartment in the Sweepstakes in Ballsbridge [a high-status residential area on the south side of Dublin] on Tuesday, Wednesday and yesterday with keys to the two-bedroomed apartment they had been given by a man who claimed to be the landlord. They discovered that the keys did not fit.
The tenants had responded to an advert on popular accommodation website Daft.ie offering the apartment for a rent of €1,150 a month. A man calling himself Alan Grogan invited them to view the fully furnished apartment on Good Friday.
A large number of people attended the open viewing. Those who were interested were told to contact Mr Grogan on his mobile phone.
He offered each prospective tenant the apartment and arranged to meet each of them at a different location. He asked for a cash deposit of €1,150 plus a month’s rent in advance. He provided each tenant with a set of keys, a lease agreement, which he signed, and a receipt for the money paid out.
It is understood that some 15 couples arrived over three days to move into the accommodation.
Er, daft, isn’t it?
Quote of the day
From a Technology Review interview with David Allen, author of Getting Things Done…
Technology Review: Computers and the Internet let us do more things, but can they really help us get more things done? How does technology fit into a good time-management system?
David Allen: First of all, you don’t manage time. Time is time, and it can’t be managed. What you manage are commitments. The calendar will let you manage, at a maximum, three or four percent of what you have to do. What you really need is a way to keep track of your commitments. Then you start to get a sense of the huge volume of commitments you’ve made, and you are able to review those commitments.
Which reminds me… I bought a copy of Getting Things Done a while back, but I’ve been too busy to get around to reading it yet.