Currently:
2002-07-25»
Zero-day pr0n!»
Bram Cohen
, the man behind CodeCon and other fine goods and services, has a problem. He's been
working on an excellent P2P utility for the last six months or so, called BitTorrent.
The idea behind BT is brilliant - it's a helper application for browsers that
lets you download large files (like movies) from multiple locations at the
same time. One site is the original location - the others are all the other
BitTorrent users who are downloading the file at the same time. In return, you
share the bits of the file you've already grabbed to other downloaders. It's
like instant, distributed mirroring. It takes the load off the original server
and increases the speed of everyone's file grab . The throttled
bandwidth taken by others uploading is not noticeable (after all, you're
already filling much of your pipe with your download anyway), and unlike most
P2P apps, it all goes away as soon as you've finished downloading anyway.
Anyway, Bram's in the final stages of stress testing his code - but he's
got a problem. BitTorrent currently shrugs off every load test he's thrown at
it, but even in the middle of a slashdotting, he's only ever seen twenty or so
people doing a simultaneous download of his test files. In the words of
Bram:
I'm now in the very bizarre position of having to beg for people to
download porn. The page of the current load test (a 700+ meg file) is
http://bitconjurer.org/BitTorrent/porn.html.
Windows, Unix tars and a Debian package of BitTorrent are available from Bram's site.I've
suggested that he get hold of the ISOs to the full Debian 3.0 install CDs -
the equivalent of pr0n among the Free Software sexless beings of pure
energy.
2002-07-24»
StopEsso on the move»
ExxonMobil tried to have the French
version of the Stop Esso protest site shut down. The
French court threw out all of Exxon's claims (including a bid to have "Esso"
removed from the pages' meta tags), except for one - that Stop Esso can't use
their parody of the Esso logo.
So the French language Stop Esso site has moved ISPs - to one in Houston, Texas.
Right next to ExxonMobil's Baytown refinery. Parody is a protected speech
under US law.
2002-07-21»
No popups the Mozilla way»
I wrote in the Sunday Times a couple of weeks ago about how relatively free
of spam and popup windows my online life has been since I started using Mozilla and SpamAssassin. Quite a few people wrote in to
ask for instructions on getting hold of these programs for Windows. I don't
have a place to stick Sunday Times feedback (I really should get around to
archiving the old articles), so I'll dump the instructions here.
I haven't used it myself, but there's now a commercial version of
SpamAssassin for Outlook. You can get a trial version from the Deersoft's SpamAssassin Pro
homepage.
Mozilla has always been available for Windows machines. You can download it from the
Mozilla site. To turn off popups, you need to dig into the advanced
preferences a little. Here's what my preference panel looks like:
Hope that helps!
Playing around with Tinderbox»
I downloaded the 14 day trial of Tinderbox, Eastgate's
fascinating new hypertext organiser. It's a sort of
outliner-cum-mindmapper-cum-hypertext-cum-blogging app. On first glance, I
really liked it. I especially liked the fact that the file format is in a
clear and simple XML. I have an outliner on my Palm - Progect - which has a huge
chunk of my life in it. It's GPLed, and there's a great Perl library that can parse
its database contents. So I installed the Perl program, and converted my
outlines to Tinderbox's XML format to play around with. Six months worth of
notes seems a good thing to test out their organiser, and if it makes sense to
commit to using Tinderbox, I can probably write a decent Palm->Tinderbox
syncing app. That'd be great!
The trial version of Tinderbox isn't having any of it. It tells me that I
can only create a few notes in this limited version, and politely declines to
do much more.
Fair enough, I guess.
Sigh.
So far, since borrowing this iBook, I have, or have seriously consider spending the following wodges of
cash:
- $ 80 - bust iBook power supply
- $129 - Jaguar
- $100 per annum - .Mac subscription
- $ 95 - Tinderbox
- $ 80 - QuicKeys
- $ 20 - Keyboard Maestro
- $700 - Apple Developer Connection subscription
Some of these don't really count - I didn't ponder the ADC membership for
very long, and QuicKeys is just a more expensive version of Keyboard Maestro.
I really didn't consider any of them for very long, to be honest,
because I can't afford any additional expenses right now.
But all of this is mounting up - to a lot of virtual money, and a very
unsettling sensation.
Every time I get to something interesting in the Mac world, I bump into a
barrier of dollar signs, where upon I have to spend more money to access the
secret levels. It feels strange to have the possibilities of what I can do on
my own PC suddenly limited by how much I can afford.
No, that's not right: it feels odd to be unable even to ascertain
the limits of what I can do, by dint of what I can afford.
Of course I understand that this is the way the world is. I'm not
complaining about people asking for money. I'm guessing that Tinderbox is
worth $95 - perhaps not to me, not right now, but certainly to many others,
and definitely to the people who wrote it.
But you know what? I feel poor. And I never felt poor with Linux.
On the contrary, I felt drowned in riches.
2002-07-20»
The Milkman Cometh»
Andrew Mackay (who
appears as Prof in TV's "Time
Gentlemen Please", but is better known off screen as my mate), has written a
one man show about being a milkman. Which he was, once. It's called "A Measure
of a Milkman". You've missed the previews in London, but you can still book
the Edinburgh Fringe run online. It will be very good.
To publicise the London run, Andy sent out a limited edition sound file of
some milk being delivered (using the traditional British electric milk
float). I, of course, believe that all information should be free, so here
is a copy of it. Please do not use it to
construct your own one-man shows about milkmen. Thanks.
Here are some
poems about milkfloats.
2002-07-19»
Barcelona = nil»
I hate it when it takes me six months to catch up on the news. Barcelona have disbanded! My friends
will tell you that I despise all music (a useful affectation in any
conversation). But I genuinely loved I Have The Password
To Your Shell Account, and not just for the lyrics.
Oh alright. Mostly the lyrics.
petit disclaimer:
My employer has enough opinions of its own, without having to have mine too.
