Bluegrass

I saw this linked on boingboing:

Google M-labs

Wow, I'm posting lots this month... Another quick one. Google has in testing a Measurement Lab which provides tools to help determine if your Internet traffic is being throttled. This is becoming an issue for Canada as the ISP's want permission to create a tiered Internet. For example, Google, Skype or YouTube would have to pay the ISP's to ensure their traffic moves quickly.

This has the potential to be much much worse than cell phones. Currently cell phone deals in Canada are among the worst in the world. This has slowed uptake and the development of new technologies and this is what the ISP's want to do with the Internet.

Cool looking game

The game World of Goo has been getting very good reviews. It's a physics game where you build bridges and towers out of balls of goo and hope it doesn't topple before you reach the top. What excites me about it is that it a) runs on linux and b) has no DRM. I haven't bought a video game since the Myst sequel Riven and given the DRM on modern games I'm not interested in investing money into something with a built in time bomb. Plus, most games don't run on Linux. However, I've downloaded the World of Goo demo and I really like it. I'm not sure when I'll buy it but it's on the list.

Because...

...they are pretty.

Great Stuff

Just a quick note, if you are discarding old computer stuff, a fantastic organization in Vancouver is Free Geek. They will take the useful bits of your stuff and make working computers, provide classes for using free software (i.e. Ubuntu) and ethically recycle the rest. My last few computers that died ended up there. You can also support the organization and buy a cheap computer there. They also have printers, routers, mice, keyboards, parts etc for sale.

Zombie Blogs

To educate myself in the biofuels industry I've been reading a custom RSS feed that I created using google which searches blogs for the word biofuel. I've come across a lot of blogs that I've termed zombieblogs. These are are usually get rich quick scheme blogs, or to advertise the writer for employment or investment. I'm not going to link to any of them because that would increase their legitimacy. Once I found a for sale page describing a blog about biofuels where the author bragged about the high ranking and how to generate revenue by selling ads and how little maintenance the blogs require. These blogs are a real pain when trying to find real information because they don't have any original content. They cut and paste press release articles and other news items from more legitimate sources in an attempt to gain hits and ranking. So as I search for blogs about biofuel, I come across the same articles over and over again.

A way to identify these Zombie blogs is that they have long articles written and a simple google search of the text reveals the original source. A variation of the long zombie blogs is the short-form zombie blogs. These blogs don't cut and paste entire articles, but just list the first few sentences before providing a link. Both of these types of blogs are very annoying as I attempt to find good content online.

Stallman at UBC

Last night I went to hear Richard Stallman talk at UBC. He is the creator of the GNU set of programs and he started the Free Software Foundation. I'm familiar with Linux and while I knew that Linux is actually GNU/Linux I learned exactly what this distinction means. It is not so much about credit but about rights and freedoms so I'm going to try and explain it.

First off, the english language uses the word free to explain several different ideas. Two ways of being free are 1) free as in gratis as in it doesn't cost you anything and 2) free as in libre as in your freedom to do things. While both GNU and Linux are gratis, GNU is the portion focussed directly on libre. I'm a fan of libre, I want to be able to have the freedom to change things. I don't want to have hidden layers in my computer that me, or someone like me but with real computer skills, couldn't access (like the NSA backdoor into windows).

So what's the difference between GNU and Linux and how do they pair up to make GNU/Linux? From the FSF FAQ:

An operating system, as we use the term, means a collection of programs that are sufficient to use the computer to do a wide variety of jobs. [The GNU portion]...

The kernel [the Linux kernel] is one of the programs in an operating system—the program that allocates the machine's resources to the other programs that are running. The kernel also takes care of starting and stopping other programs.

The Linux kernel has some hidden portions - hardware manufacturers who don't want to release their code. These are the Binary Blobs. There is also contention in the free (as in libre) software community that Linus Torvalds (who wrote and heads Linux) has a more pragmatic approach to software that results in the loss of certain libre's.

Also, open source means that you have the freedom to look at the code (unlike proprietary code like Windows) but it doesn't mean you have other freedoms - like the freedom to modify or share.

On the whole, the evening was interesting but I don't know how much it will change my typing out the word Linux. GNU/Linux. Gratis and Libre: writing out GNU/Linux acknowledges the difference but man couldn't Stallman have come up with better names.

For the record, straight from the horses mouth it's pronounced Guh-New.

Using the Internet...

...to pick up dates. A very nerdy discussion. Hmm, maybe I need to change my blog image. Or changes robots.txt to allow in search engines.

Quote:

My friend Ira
His name isn't really Ira, though he is Jewish. I'm not sure that I've even met more than one Ira under the age of 50. Anyway, I'm not using his real name because it might cause one of us embarrassment and/or death. His home page, not to put too fine a point on it, sucked. He had a handful of technical papers and a picture of himself. "Ira" wouldn't like to hear me say this, but he is no Christie Brinkley when it comes to the appearance department. Traffic on his page reflected its quality. To a first approximation, he was getting 0% of my traffic. Yet some weeks Ira would get three email messages from women practically throwing themselves at him.

"My roommate and I are looking at your page and we think you'd be the perfect guy for us. If you're down here in Georgia, stop by." It was like a Penthouse Forum letter from 1978 and yet not untypical for Ira's email harvest of babes.

So I went over Ira's page with a fine-toothed comb. Aside from the fact that his page sucks and mine doesn't, the only real difference I could find is that where I have "I am a graduate student" he has "Ira B. Greenwald, MD, PhD". He says he thinks he'd get more email if he removed the PhD part...

Nice rat photos

Saw this on cute overload this morning and I thought I would link to the set.

Whistler Weekend

Yeah! Skiing at Whistler this weekend, stayed at the Fairmont, watched tv. The skiing was awesome and Symphony bowl was fantastic and full of powder. It was tough to leave this morning with another 20cm but my poor feet are totally trashed in my now packed out boots.


While watching tv (so many reality tv shows) I caught an episode of America's Best Dance Crew. It was a Britney Spears episode and I found a youtube video of one of the groups. Man can that girl move! (update: link down, search youtube for Beat Freaks, Womanizer).