I just received notice from our cable Internet provider that they’ve boosted our office connection speed, from 5Mbps to 7Mbps. This is the second such notice that we’ve gotten since we moved in here; a few years ago they bumped it up from 3Mbps. There will probably be a slight rate increase soon, to go [...]
Archive of entries posted on July 2007
CNET reviews Ubuntu 7.04
The CNET review was prompted by Dell’s inclusion of Ubuntu on some of it’s systems. It isn’t entirely complimentary — it complains about missing wireless and webcam drivers, and that the timekeeping wasn’t accurate, but I haven’t seen any of those problems myself. It also complains that the system isn’t always able to recover from [...]
Grid Wars
I’ve recently discovered a great arcade-like shooting game, Grid Wars 2. It’s apparently a clone of something called Geometry Wars for the X-Box 360; I don’t have an X-Box, but Grid Wars is available for Windows, Mac OSX, and — wonder of wonders — Linux (if those links are broken, do a search, there are [...]
“Mobile phones ‘dumbing down brain power’”
This article warns: “In a society flooded with mobile phones, Blackberry devices and computers of various shapes and sizes, a quarter of all Britons do not know their own landline number while as little as a third can recall more than three birthdays of their immediate family.” Oh no! The world is coming to an [...]
Toilet Humor
A Chinese city called Chongqing is going for a world record with the newly-opened four-story toilet facility. “We are spreading toilet culture. People can listen to gentle music and watch TV,” said Lu Xiaoqing, an official with the Yangrenjie, or “Foreigners Street,” tourist area where the bathroom is. “After they use the bathroom they will [...]
“Free as in beer”?
My Linux-using friend tosses around phrases like “free as in beer” or “free as in speech” a lot. He’s tried to explain what they mean several times, but I seem to have some kind of mental block about them because I could never figure out what he was talking about… talk is cheap, and beer [...]
Happy paraskavedekatriaphobia!
Okay, it’s not the proper use of the term (which means “the fear of Friday the 13th”), but it was such an interesting word that I had to find a way to put it in a blog title.
“Sony BMG sues SunnComm over DRM”
Do you remember the major stink a while back over the DRM-crippled Sony CDs? Apparently Sony has decided to try to get some of their money back from the company that sold them the spyware packages. Frankly, I think they deserve each other.
The Popularity of Windows Vista
I’m apparently not the only one that feels like he’s being railroaded into using Vista, and is looking for alternatives.
Blog Comment Spam Deluge
I’m not sure what attracted the spammers’ attention, but a couple of my older blog posts have suddenly become spam magnets. They’ve gotten a steady stream of spam comments over the last couple days, obviously automated posts that are primarily full of nonsense sentences (“These experiences in those pay medical placidyl premises.”), and that also [...]