If certain state officials have their way, cities in Texas will no longer be able to offer free WiFi to their citizens. This could set a dangerous precedent if passed, as broadband providers could start lobbying officials in the other 49 states to ban free WiFi as well. Pennsylvania has already fallen victim to such a law but it excluded Philedelphia due to the city’s existing efforts
. One of the members of the FCC is far from impressed at the move
Perth-based ISP iiNet plans to expand its ADSL network to reach 90% of Sydney customers over the next 9 months as it spends $9.6 million to increase its presence on the east coast
Companies eager to tighten up their information security perimeters should focus not on technology but on teaching their employees how to say no
, ex-hacker done good Kevin Mitnick told a full house at Toshiba’s MobileXchange conference in Melbourne
The US military is funding development of an energy-pulse weapon, designed to deliver a jolt of excruciating pain from up to 2 kilometres away. Intended for use against rioters, it is meant to leave victims physically unharmed. The device fires a laser pulse that generates a burst of expanding plasma when it hits something solid, like a person, producing pain and temporary paralysis. Right now, researchers are attempting to optimise pulse parameters to evoke peak nociceptor activation
or, to put it in plain English, cause the maximum pain possible. The potential for abuse of such a device have not gone unremarked
A pair of New York inventors believe they can thwart music pirates by secretly burying an anti-piracy warning in a track, which is disinterred if the copyright has been abused. Let’s see how long that lasts before it’s thwarted
Around 200 Victorian households are acting as the guinea pigs for Telstra’s broadband-based home voice over IP service, which is due to be commercially available by mid-year
I’ve been meaning to have another look at Linux for a while, but I’ve been too scared to install anything after a run in with Debian and an Ultra Sparc 5 that scarred me for life. Now that LiveCDs are in vogue, it seemed like good time to try out Linux again… but this time at work.
After a long look through the The LiveCD List and DistroWatch, I decided to go with a lightweight Slackware variant called SLAX.
My first hurdle was burning a LiveCD. Having never used a CD burner before I was expecting some difficulty, but it was actually pretty simple. I just downloaded the SLAX 4.2 iso, opened Roxio Easy CD creator (on Windows), found the file, and clicked OK a few times.
Next I tried to boot my work computer from the LiveCD, but the sysadmins had locked the box down tightly, and it just booted Windows again. The SLAX website suggested making a bootloader floppy using RawWrite to copy an image of Smart Boot Manager onto a blank diskette. I did so, and rebooted using both the LiveCD and the bootloader floppy. Success! Take that, sysadmins!
SLAX booted relatively quickly, and after logging in I typed gui at the command line to launch KDE. The window manager came up looking beautiful, so I guess it must have autodetected my video card. I checked the resolution and refresh rate and they were the same as I usually use under Windows. Nice.
I wanted to see whether I could access my hard drive or not, so I ran Midnight Commander next. Everything was in order, and SLAX had properly automounted my Windows hard drives (as read only, which I understand is an ntfs thing). I tinkered with KDE for a bit then saved my config onto a fresh floppy using the configsave command at the terminal.
Internet access was next on my list, so fired up Konqueror only to discover that I didn’t have any. Bummer. I felt certain the SLAX website would have some good suggestions on this topic, but without internet I would have to log out and boot back into windows to get them. Oh well.
Back in Windows and Firefox, I found the info I needed and took note of my network settings. I also printed out half of the SLAX website as I didn’t feel like spending half the evening rebooting. Once I got back into SLAX I read my printouts carefully, then typed three lines at the terminal and had internet. Sweet.
As some tunes would go nicely with my surfing, I opened the media player to listen to mp3s from the hard drive, but sadly I couldn’t get any sound. A quick look around the SLAX website revealed how to fix this; typing alsaconf in the terminal detected my sound card and got the music playing.
All in all I’m very impressed with SLAX. It’s pretty easy to set up for a *nix, and its so small you can actually run it from RAM for lighting speed! (You can do this by typing slax copy2ram at the boot prompt.)
My next tasks are to get Perl, php, and an Oracle client going (TOra if licencing permits, something hacked up with ADODB otherwise). The SLAX site tells you how to roll your own custom iso, so if it all works out I should soon have everything I need to use Linux at work on a single CD.
Efforts to stamp out online piracy could give Hollywood a veto over new technology and stifle innovation, peer-to-peer software companies and their supporters told the US Supreme Court. Copyright holders have long sought to quash innovations from the printing press to the videocassette recorder to the CD burner that they have found threatening
People who rely on older versions of Quicken to download their financial data from banks and brokerages must upgrade to Quicken 2005 or lose this time-saving feature. In letters and e-mail messages sent to its customers in late January, Intuit said it was ending online services and tech support for Quicken 2001 and 2002 as of 19 April, effectively crippling the program
Telstra has begun upgrading its ADSL equipment to deliver internet services at speeds up to 16 times faster than are currently available. And, in an attempt to kill off competition from wireless ISPs, Telstra have switched on blanket WiFi coverage across the Sydney and Melbourne CBDs
An Iranian weblogger has been jailed for 14 years on charges of spying and aiding foreign counter-revolutionaries. Arash Sigarchi, who also edits a newspaper in northern Iran, was arrested last month after using his blog to criticise the arrest of other online journalists — via Politechbot
Tony Tang and Eric Pattison from the University of Calgary introduce a new method of transferring files and possibly shooting your eye out. Using RFID and a toy dart gun — DartMail lets people physically shoot electronic information at others
Europe is about to become an internet fixture with the launch of its own extension — the .eu domain — and businesses are girding for the battle to bear the precious two letters
More than 10 million households across Australia will soon be able to send text messages from their home telephones. It does, of course, mean that you’re up for a new phone if you want to access the service
Firefox 1.0.1 has been officially released by the Mozilla Foundation, with some important security fixes. An announcement and release notes are available
Stock markets have jumped at the news that famed US digital video recorder maker TiVO may be the subject of an takeover bid by Apple
AOL is expected to launch an Internet phone service in the United States next month, leapfrogging rivals in a fast-growing market as it seeks to evolve from an also-ran provider of dial-up Internet access to a broadband services powerhouse
iPod Stuffs:
New iPod mini and iPod Photo range. Checkout that battery life! Nice. I’m glad the colours in the mini are more vibrant, however … (see colour point in next paragraph).
This wallet for iPods is one of those things I would buy if it came in any decent colours, like, black, purple, turquoise/cereluan blue or rasberry red.
Tim Burton Fonts. I think you’ll find the first font very Smashing Pumpkins-esque also.
The Matt Groening Apple Guide. I don’t know about y’all, but I love Life in Hell (the comic strip by Groening). I think it was Juice magazine in Australia that I was buying as a 14 – 17ish teen, not only to read about your rock stars, but to read the Life in Hell comic strip. Being 14 -17ish I also found it necessary to cut out and stick appropriate ones on my folder. Seeing Matt and Apple join forces certainly makes you feel fuzzy inside.
TAFE:
I’m doing a statement of attainment or something like that at TAFE in fine arts. It’s one day a week and all I do is draw. There are of course (pardon the pun) pros ‘n’ cons.
PRO: less time at work
CON: 20% less pay
PRO: I’m not doing any coding, boring client work or duking it out with bad co-workers
CON: 30% more work
PRO: I’m drawing all day
CON: I lug arround heavy shit to the top of un-airconditioned rooms
PRO: I’m eligible for student discounts on yoga classes
CON: I’m not eligible for student discounts on travel
Marchex just paid $164 million to buy Name Development, an obscure company that displays pay-per-click keyword ads on 100,000 domains. It’s not a stock swap either, as $155 million of that was in cash. The seller reportedly built the portfolio by scarfing up expiring domains (including hardware-update.com, previously owned by Microsoft and linked from within the Windows 2000 OS) and replacing the content with pay-per-click ads
Apple today unveiled the second generation of its iPod mini digital music players. A new 4GB model is priced at AU$299, while its 6GB bigger brother will retail at AU$359. Both models are available worldwide immediately in a choice of silver, pink, blue and green
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