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
A 44-year-old Anchorage man had his penis surgically reattached after it was cut off by an angry girlfriend and flushed down a toilet
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.
Seems that the Aryan Brotherhood has taken up making meth labs for themselves across Texas, apparently many of which are in Dallas. The cops have been busting up the skinhead kitchens pretty regularly, so the AB has apparently gone all cop-killer fatwa on the Texas PD. Trouble is, they’re morons. Why? Because they take the time to steal different cars every other day… And then park them in the same motel space every time. Yeah. They check into the same motel, even if one of their own got busted the night before — via Warren Ellis
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
Kevin Kelly has posted a detailed explanation of the process by which you can get your self-published DVD, CD or book listed on Amazon.
1 Get an ISBN (for a book), or a UPC (for a CD or DVD). For one book it costs $125, for one CD, $55, for one DVD, $89
2 Get a barcode based on the ISBN or UPC. Costs $10, or may be included in UPC
3 Sign up with Amazon, $30 per year
4 Duplicate your stuff; include the barcode on the outside
5 Ship two copies to Amazon
6 Send cover scan
7 Track sales
8 Register it (optional)
Canadian publishers, including self-publishers, can get ISBNs for free by going to the Library and Archives Canada. Australian publishers can get a one off ISBN for AU$33 plus registration from the ISBN Agency, blocks of ISBNs are cheaper and barcodes are AU$38 each — via boingboing
William Poole, a George Rogers Clark High School junior, was arrested Tuesday for making terrorist threats. The terrorist threats
turned out to be a short story he wrote for English class about a high school overrun by zombies. Unfortunately for Poole, the local plods are so thick they can’t tell the difference between fact and fiction and the kid is still locked up — via Ben Templesmith
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
For US$39 a month, you can receive bizarre environmental disaster stuffed animals; bunnies with three ears, animals wrapped inside other animals, furry things that talk, packed in leaves or string or paper or whatever’s on Morbid Tendencies’ living room floor — via boingboing
Something dreadful in the mail each month to brighten your life. I encourage you to have them delivered to your office
The Holy Grail of researchers in the field of solar photovoltaic electricity is to generate it at a lower cost than that of grid electricity. The goal now seems to be within reach. A Palo Alto start-up, named Nanosolar claims that it has developed a commercial scale technology that can deliver solar electricity at 5 cents per kilowatt-hour. Ussume this is marketing hype until proven otherwise
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
John Gilmore, the millionare who cofounded the EFF, has been prohibited from travelling because he refused to show an ID while boarding an airplane. He’s been under this self-imposed ban since 2002. When a gate agent asked for his ID. Gilmore asked her why. It is the law, she said. Gilmore asked to see the law. Nobody could produce a copy. To date, nobody has. The regulation that mandates ID at airports is Sensitive Security Information
. The law, as it turns out, is unavailable for inspection. What started out as a weekend trip to Washington became a crawl through the courts in search of an answer to Gilmore’s question: Why?
The retarded monkey boy won the Razzie
worst actor of the year award on Saturday for his performance as president in Fahrenheit 9/11
but his moment in Hollywood’s dubious spotlight was eclipsed by Halle Berry, who actually turned up to receive her embarrassing accolade. Berry was named worst actress of 2004 by the Golden Raspberry Award Foundation for her performance in Catwoman
and she showed up to accept her Razzie
carrying the Oscar she won in 2002 for Monster’s Ball
. She thanked everyone involved in Catwoman
, a film she said took her from the top of her profession to the bottom. I want to thank Warner Brothers for casting me in this piece of shit,
she said as she dragged her agent on stage and warned him next time read the script first
— via Warren Ellis
Two British students, Richard Smith and Luke Bateman, have researched America’s stupidest laws and are spending this summer travelling from state to state, violating them — via boingboing
Starting in the liberal state of California, they hope to evade the attention of local police officers when they ride a bike in a swimming pool and curse on a crazy-golf course.
In the far more conservative — and landlocked — state of Utah, they will risk the penitentiary when they hire a boat and attempt to go whale-hunting.
If they manage to outwit state troopers in Utah, and perhaps federal agents on their trail, they will be able to take a deserved, but nevertheless illegal, rest when they have a nap in a cheese factory in South Dakota
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
A team of South Korean scientists say they have found a way to produce the human body’s own cancer-killing cells through gene therapy, offering new hope to cancer sufferers
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