Dealing with Nautilus Spatial Paradigm Yet another article from OSNews on How to Deal with the Spatial Paradigm which is used in the new GNOME file manager by default.

Word Mac Issues BLOG Entries Betalogue has some good looks at Office Mac 2004 and some of the issues he's found in there, and in Word in general. Interesting read and good ranting.

Tech Urban Myths Debunked Busting the Biggest PC Myths over at PCWorld.

Some don't seem 100% correct in their evaluation of the myths though... I've used the power switch to shut down windows and after a while it was quite pooched, for example.

LOTR in Hackerish Boing boing points to a version of LOTR called F3ll0wsh1p of teh R1ng . Need I say more?

Mac OS 10.4 "Tiger" Quicky Summary Update Looks like the apple os/x page has been updated, as has the main site.

Ok, just finished "watching" the Apple WWDC keynote on IRC with about 1100 other people, and the previously noted webpage at macrumors. The summary for features in OS 10.4 went something like this.

• Live, full system searching via the search box (searches inside pdfs, metadata, etc etc). Sounds like WinFS, but is actually here. Sorry Redmond.
• Full RSS integration into safari. Wasn't that something that Microsoft was looking at as well? Sorry Redmond.
• A visual scripting language. Visual Basic + Apple script?
• "Dashboard" - apps that sit on the desktop, a la karamba and gDesklets.
• Modified System Prefs/Control Panel. Yawn.
• IChat can now have 10 people in audio chat and 3 people in video chat.
• New video/audio codec which allows realtime application of filters with the SDK available to devs. Like GStreamer?

I'm sure there were other things as well (maya pro available RSN for example), but you can hit the macrumors page for the full list. Some images of some of the various things are available from here as well. Check out the safari rss one as well as the sysprefs series for some of the searching stuff.

My thoughts are that there are some neat things (searching, RSS) but the rest is a bit of a yawn. However, Apple is known for putting out evolutionary updates, not revolutionary ones, and this will be the 5^th new release in as many years of their OS since Windows XP was put out as well. If you're upgrading that often you really can't have every release being as huge a change as OS9 to OS/X was.

This is all shipping in Q1 of 2005, so until then this stuff is as "real" to me as the wonderful features in Longhorn that the evangelists have been yakking about for the last year. Until it's in my hand I won't believe it. Of course, I fully belive I'll have Tiger before I have longhorn.

Anyone else have any thoughts?

WWDC Banners and Upcoming Keynote Some images posted from this years apple WWDC show are over here. They say "introducing longhorn", "this should keep redmond busy" and "Redmond, we have a problem". These are the first images online (removed elsewhere) of the new OS 10.4 "Tiger" I've seen. Tiger will be introduced at this years WWDC, which while there is no live video feed, but apparently macrumors will have "almost live" info. The site seems to be down now though :)

Scoble, or at least some of his commenters, are annoyed.

Update: The site is back up in a low bandwith version, updates every three minutes and has pointers to IRC channels with live updates.

Another Gnome 2.6 Review Gnomedesktop points to another nice (though a bit market-speak-like) review of GNOME 2.6. Probably good material to send PHBs and family members over to when trying to win them over.

GNOME Theme Sites I didn't even know this existed, but the sister site for kde-look, the KDE theme site is online at GNOME-Look.org. Also, art.gnome.org has finally) risen from the ashes and is back online and serving themes and backgrounds once again.

ZSH Info in the Forums A cool thread on the gentoo forums for ZSH users (lovers?). I personally am a bash user, but that's mostly because it's the default. ZSH seems to have some pretty nifty features built right in. Might be time to check it out.

Star Wars Meets Office Space Boing boing points to a Star Wars meets Office Space movie, 30meg wmv. It is absolutely hilarious. I've mirrored it locally here but be gentle please :)

Independent Game'age FORGETFOO.COM points out a link to a a nifty looking independently released game called Kreed. Based on the screenshots I think it might be nifty (assuming those shadows are dynamic of course :)

Amusing Drawings A coworker pointed me to toothpaste for dinner - daily drew drawings. They are very amusing, and more true to life than one might imagine.

Learning MT Site Learning MovableType - note to self: read.

More Great Animations Dana found a couple more great animations on the site that the MC Hawking post was on. Star Wars Gangsta Rap and Madness Apotheosis are both just fantastic.

MC Hawking CD Available! Jeremy notes that the full and real MC Hawking CD is available! Very cool. Just as cool is the flash ad for it.

Halloween X1 - ESR Dishes Out Linux Propaganda In a nice response to the latest bout of "Linux is horrible, all hail Microsoft" coming from Redmond, ESR has put together Halloween X1 (/. story) with some nice rebuttles to the current MS FUD campaign. He comes up with some good points as always.

To put the Microsofties really on the spot, it's most effective to phrase your counters as questions, especially when you can use them to whack Microsoft with a combination of issues like TCO and security. Like this:

• How many Linux machines have been zombied by Netsky, Sasser, MyDoom, or similar worms? Do your Windows TCO estimates include administrator time spent cleaning up after these infestations?
• Can you explain why Windows IIS websites are cracked or defaced more often than Apache ones, despite the fact that IIS runs less than a third the number of sites Apache does?
• Is Microsoft willing to add a hold-harmless clause to Shared Source licenses that protects shared-source licensees against being sued by Microsoft for alleged IP violations related to the software? If not, then please explain again how Shared Source is just the same as open source?

I'm sure some microsofty or MS sympathizer can answer these of course. Scoble? You there? :)

That said, these questions aren't really as relevant as what I think the genius of Open Source Software is, which is, wait for it, CHOICE. If you want to use windows, use it, if you want to use linux, use it, but having only one player in the field is just bad for everyone, and when that one player is known for deceit and mercilessly squeezing out it's competition through underhanded tactics, you know it's even worse. If the government wants to use OpenOffice instead of word they should be able to do so without having to fight through paid off congressmen, FUD campaigns, and Microsoft funded Reports just because MS doesn't want anyone else to get the business.

FVWM Tour Now this is cool I found this link in the Gentoo Desktops for June '04 thread. Taviso put together a very nice virtual tour of his tricked out FVWM desktop, with some features that rival the bloated GNOME and KDE desktops.

I've mirrored the file locally, grab tour.mpeg.gz from here and you can run it with mplayer tour.mpeg.gz

Makes me want to give FVWM another shot, been about 6 years since I've run it.

Drag and Drop Image Gallery folderblog looks pretty neat, a possible replacement for Apache::Gallery without having to have all the mod_perl stuff.

folderblog is a ~15kb PHP script that automatically displays the images placed in a given subdirectory. It can be used as either as a blog or as a gallery � and just about anything in between.

IBM Reinventing Email (repost?) This came on my radar last year. It's a page from the IBM research site with ideas for their next gen email features. Me and a friend were talking about this today and I figured I'd post it when I finally found the page. The ideas range from really nifty and new (thread arcs) to "why the hell didn't I think of that (inbox division with date separators).

It'd be nice to see some of these features (or even just the obvious and non-patented ones) implemented in some of the newer email clients (ie: Evolution).

Update: Yea, that'd be IBM, not IMB.. thanks Keth :)

Response on the MS API Wars Robert McLaws responds to Joels excellent write up on the MS API War with his article Seven Reasons Why the API War is Not Lost After All. I haven't had a chance to read it completely yet, but some of it makes sense... some seems a bit rose-colored-glasses than realistic, just as Joel took the all-is-lost attitude in his article. Good read anyway. Of course, don't forget that someone hosted on longhornblogs.com may be just a bit biased :)

Cheap Storage Server for Cheap Anyone got a spare $1,600 for me? I'd like to Build a Fault-Tollerant Terabyte Storage Server for Under $1.98. Not that I need the extra power bill, heat in the office, or fan noise of course :)

Funnily enough, the image of the hard drives looks similar to the ufies box full of drives.

Retractable Email Big String is an email service which claims that it lets you recall, erase, and time out email. I'm interested in how they claim to do this (or how they plan to reach into my /home/alan/Mail/inbox spool file and delete chunks of data. Sadly the "Free trial" requires a credit card number. Anyone have any experience with this, or know someone with this service?

Ah, they link to a server that stops serving the images/files after you decide. Stupid and lame, figured so.

On IE and the API War(s) Mezzoblue points to a good article on How Microsoft Lost the API War. A nice look at IE, browsers, development tools, microsoft dominance, and all sorts of other good stuff. Long but good.

GIMP 2.0 Usability Study Preview Calum pointed to a sneak peak at a GIMP 2.0 Usability Test. Interesting stuff. I have to admit that as I've been using photoshop more and more lately it seems that The Gimp is falling more and more behind in various respects... however, a lot of the fuctionality is still there. However, it's still not the most easily gotten used to program in the world in it's odd "look ma, no main window" paradigm. Also the incarnations on other platforms (windows, os/x) are pretty horrible performance wise, which leads to people discounting the GIMP as crap when it's not really it's fault (ie: the stupid click to focus problems under os/x).

In other GIMP news, "Film-GIMP", a version of the gimp designed for 16 bit images, film and other such like is now (well, probably really old news) known as CinePaint. Hope they can update this to use the new 2.0 release UI.

NickleBack Songs Re-hashed? Interesting... Fark pointed to this site which compares songs from Nickleback (a Canadian band, for those of you who've never heard of them) to see how close of a sound they have. You listen and decide.

Personally I still like both songs, so there :P

Zealot Types Dana was nice enough to send off to me this loko at The Open Source Zealot. A quite funny examination of the different types of those "open sores" wierdos who are trying to convince people that there's something other than Windows in existance, which is impossible of course, because windows (and longhorn, which'll be out any day now) is the be-all and end-all of Operating Systems.

The Moralist (aka The Anti-Microsoft Bigot)
Unlike The Guru, The Moralist doesn't necessarily need to have any (supposedly) advanced technical skills. (which actually makes them more dangerous.) These fuckers acquire their zealotry through good ol' fashion fundamentalist ignorance. most of it is such spew infested bullshit, it's amazing that anything these people say is being listened to on any level.

Hey! He's talking about me!

Mac MusicBrainz Apps Couple of apps for the mac which use the MusicBrainz for tagging their apps.

• iEatBrainz
• MP3Freaker

Thanks for the pointer from Etan.

RAID Defined A good page with an explanation of different Raid levels.

Chill Out! The Kitten Video This is a bit (ok, very) odd.... it's a music video done in flash for Chill Out - Song by Youth Of Britain. Oh, and it's got a kitten. I blame Boone for it though.

Good President Hunting Trailer For you left wing US democratic nuts out there here's a trailer for Hunting the President, a look at the media going after Clinton.

Politics... The Daily Show on The Memo Eten has posted a mirrored divx clip of the segment on the Daily Show where Jon Stewart examines the Ashcroft interview with the US congress. Quite hilarious. Look for the "smiling while angry" part near the end.

Apple's PDA That Almost Was I think that Dana has been talking about how much he'd love to see an Apple PDA. According to an OSNews article, Apple Developed, But Did Not Ship Apple PDA. Interesting stuff....

Build Your Own PVR Build Your Own PVR - this is my next project. Thanks slashdot.

Gentoo Users Commentary I'm not sure if it's bashing or praising users of the Gentoo distro, but 21st Century Digital Boy pointed to http://funroll-loops.org/, which seems to consist of quotes from gentoo users and a nice comparison between them and the type of person who equips their 1985 civic with a 3 foot tall spoiler.

CEOs Disagree with Microsoft on TCO

This article says pretty much the opposite of what all the Microsoft advertising and rhetoric says, Linux lowers TCO.

We talked to independent analysts, developers, and IT company executives. They all pretty much agree on one answer to the question: Yes, generally there are fair to good TCO savings with Linux -- sometimes huge savings. But variables in every organization's mix will determine exactly what that monthly, quarterly, or yearly savings will be.

Surprising to anyone? Someone should tell these guys that maybe their "independant third party" tests were biased.

Granted, IT Manager's Journal is part of OSDN, a pro-linux organization, but two can play the bias game I guess. Course, I also trust OSDN a bit more.

Love that Free Speech! I wasn't sure if it was better to post this under the "funny" category, the "sad/pathetic" category, or the "Funny and sad cause it's true" category. Iambe passed this on to me, the sotry of how When King George travels, liberties suffer, a nice opinion piece by John Nicols in The Capital Times.

King George Bush's bus trip across western Wisconsin closed schools and roads, prevented residents from moving freely in their own communities, and prevented citizens from exercising their free speech rights.

Makes you think, eh? Or at least, I hope it does.

Improving GNOME File Management Arvidn has some good ideas on how to improve file management in GNOME. Ideas include good defaults for Pictures, Music, etc, less need for the user to know "stuff" (ie: the user just wants to listen to their music, not care about what programs they are using etc), and making some of the file management options (load/save dialog) a bit smarter. Lots of comments there and connected with the original osnews story.

Dot Emacs Tips If you're looking to customize your EMACS .emacs file there are some good stuff in the emacs wiki.

Gallery Users Time to Upgrade Gallery users will want to upgrade to the latest version ASAP. Apparently there's a new exploit that's out or almost out that I was alerted to, and people outta get their systems up to date.

Fahrenheit 9/11 Trailer Online Someone out there pointed out that a Fahrenheit 9/11 Trailer is available. Can't wait until this comes to a theatre near me!

Textbook Photoshop Contest on Fark This fark photoshop contest is like many others, but it's damn funny. It's a contest to photoshop a college textbook for a course you'd take if it was offered. Some real gems in there, including this and this. Enjoy!

Alternate Air America Stream Anyone who has tried to listen to Air America Radios realplayer streams knows how much they suck. Guy at work here passed on this alternate live stream which sucks far less. Looks like it uses Windows Media Player, but works fine on a mac at least.