I updated WordPress to 2.3.1 today. In the process, a plugin I use stopped working. So I fixed it. If you would like to us it, you may download it from here:
You will need 7-zip to decompress the file.
I was browsing Amazon earlier, looking for books to recommend to a friend who may be interested in getting into Linux. I thought other people might find this handy, too, so here they are. It is a very short list. There are literally dozens of other books on specific subjects that I would also recommend (the O’Reilly Apache book, a few Perl books, and so on), but this is a start. These are more or less in order of increasing complexity.
Free Press and Public Knowledge filed a complaint with the FCC about Comcast’s squeezing of BitTorrent and other apps the cable company deemed to be too much of a strain on its network.
Comcast, you may recall, was playing a little game whereby it delayed outbound traffic by impersonating users and sending reset commands.
[…]
The groups want Comcast to pay $195,000 per affected user.
(from Comcast throttling deserves punishment, groups say, ZDNet)
I agree with these groups in principle, but $195,000 seems a little steep. Refunding the cost of my high-speed Internet service during the affected period seems a fairer punishment.
I think I may have found a worthwhile replacement for my venerable Palm Tungsten T5.
Update: Here is some more information on the Nokia n810.
A fun look at the cruise ship of tomorrow!
Check out Scott Moschella’s Silent Protest at Plastic Bugs. This guy is braver than I am, but I applaud him and people like him.
He’s also the guy who hacked GIMP to make it usable by human beings: Gimpshop. The Windows version is pretty out of date, unfortunately. It’s a pity the GIMP developers have such a “not invented here” attitude toward Gimpshop. If they’d incorporate Scott’s improvements (and make no mistake: they are huge improvements), they’d see the GIMP community double in three months. I pretty much guarantee it.
A soap opera is playing out on the mailing lists of several security newsgroups this morning, complete with people hiding behind pseudonyms, people “outing” one another and rumors of death threats against the major players. At stake? A possible worm for Apple’s Mac OS X operating system.
(from CNET News.com, News of a Mac OS X worm incites death threats and intrigue)
Okay, I have had enough. HTML mail is the primary vector for trojans and viruses, and the vast majority of it is spam even if it doesn’t carry a virus payload (and what little isn’t spam is nonsense from clueless users who probably shouldn’t be allowed to use a computer to begin with).
This crap is overflowing my inbox and it’s the cause of untold numbers of zombie computers spreading spam like the plague. So I want to reject it at the gateway so that it never reaches me or my users.
I’m not sure how to do that yet, but it has to be possible.
Enough is enough: I am going to kill HTML mail.
At long last, the final draft of the GNU GPLv3 (General Public License, version 3) is out. While companies and attorneys are taking their time in reacting to this latest version, two of the GPLv3’s three primary authors have shared their opinions on the almost-completed work.
In a public letter, “Why Upgrade to GPL Version 3,” Richard M. Stallman, the GPL’s chief author and founder, opens by explaining why open-source developers should upgrade their programs to the new Version 3 GPL. In the past, prominent Linux developers objected to the new license. More recently, a Microsoft-sponsored study claimed that open-source programmers actually don’t want GPLv3-style patent protection.
In response to such concerns, Stallman stated that “Software patents are a vicious and absurd system that puts all software developers in danger of being sued by companies they have never heard of, as well as by all the megacorporations in the field. Large programs typically combine thousands of ideas, so it is no surprise if they implement ideas covered by hundreds of patents. Megacorporations collect thousands of patents, and use those patents to bully smaller developers. Patents already obstruct free software development.”
While the ultimate answer for making “software development safe is to abolish software patents,” that’s beyond what the GPLv3 can do, according to Stallman. Instead, he said, “the explicit patent license of GPLv3 makes sure companies that use the GPL to give users the four freedoms cannot turn around and use their patents to tell some users ‘That doesn’t include you.’ It also stops them from colluding with other patent holders to do this.”
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Blackmoor Vituperative