What's next, ASCII?

Read the article Who owns XML?, maybe it furthers the understanding that the whole system is flawed.

All the World's a ... Noise?

The article called "You Know What? Just Shut Up" over at Wired hits it on the spot. Point in case, some of my neighbors use their car-alarms to wake up the whole neighborhood at 3 AM, maybe it's not their fault, maybe it is.
While agreeing with the article, I have to admit, I wrote an AppleScript that makes my Mac call (as in shouting) me if mail from certain people arrives. Gives me freedom to roam the apartment, you know.
;-)

The Curse of the Power-Supply

Yours truly treated himself to a new switch for the office. If you should be into making music or using things like hubs, switches, or something in that line of electronica, then you might already know what this rant is about.
Power-supplies that plug directly into the socket, just wide enough to block the neighboring sockets and render them unusable. The manufacturers of these things seem to believe that their appliance will be the only one in need for electrical power. Makes sense, people using things like switches will never use other devices that might need power as well. Who would use a switch to connect, I don't know, let's say computers for example?

Writing: First Review on Amazon.com

I got my first review on Amazon for the Unix/Linux Survival Guide.

Opinion: TV-Shows on Video iPod

The excellent Register has an opinion piece called Apple and Disney's two-inch disappointment. Granted there is a lot of truth in there, but (a big BUT) I'd be actually glad to pay for this content (being able to watch it the day after it aired) and not wait for an eternity, until some TV exec decides to show it in the part of the world I am at the moment. Regarding high-profile series like Lost or 4400, it is really hard not to stumble over spoilers that ruin all the excitement before I even had a chance to watch.
The article addresses this topic as well, but in the view of the world any TV exec seems to have, I'm not the customer, the ones that pay for the adverts are.
Just my 2 cents of wisdom ;-)

Internet Stamps?

My first reaction after reading the article Internet Stamps at ongoing was, this could actually work. On second thought, though, I really don't think so. (I want recognition for not using I don't think so, Tim. Did it anyway, damn!)
My point is, changes to websites would cost stamps as well. How will the cost (the needed stamps) be measured? Per link? Good, that would avoid link-farms – and punish people for linking into the Internet; who needs links anyway? Per website-change? What about link-farms?
Either I don't see it (only two cups of coffee so far) or the idea needs some more work.
IMHO, of course.

Listing Network-Connections

There are many ways to list the open connections on a *NIX-based system, the first option that comes to mind is usually netstat. The article CLI Magic: Trojan Scan at linux.com talks about two important things to keep in mind:

1. There is always more than one way on *NIX


2. There are tools on every *NIX box, waiting to be chained together to achieve results

I did not investigate the program the article is talking about, I will later, though. What tickled my fancy was the fact that I almost forgot that lsof can be used as well.
In a nutshell: lsof -Pni gives you a listing of the currently opened connections.

OS X: Getting used to Speech too much?

I found myself trying to instruct my Linux box via voice-commands this morning (before the first coffee). Am I getting too used to my Mac? Speech works like a charm. As long as my Sun does not start to do some serious work, that is. The frequency of the fans seem to cancel the reception of the microphone in my trusty PowerBook; same goes for loud traffic noises.
OTOH: If I'd start to talk to my Mac in the coffee-shop, who knows what people would think or do, anyway.

Writing: YES!

It's not my first, but it is always exciting when an author gets to actually hold the result of countless hours in his hands.

You cannot Escape?

Sorry, long time no post ;-) (Excuse: books to read / books to write / Reason / DVDs to watch / take your pick)
Anyway, I rediscovered Speech on my Mac. Why rediscovered? Because I simply forgot about that feature and Apple emphasizes it not enough in their marketing material, IMHO.
To cut a long story short, I was punishing some more incompetent ad-servers in my hosts file and, all of a sudden, couldn't escape out of the insert-mode of vi.
<conspiracy theory>Should some of the bad guys know about my little secret? Duh! I already wrote about it.</conspiracy theory>
Then it struck me: Speech uses the ESC key to control if and when my Mac should actually listen to me! But I don't use the key, since I want the machine to listen continuously. You already guessed it, the key is blocked anyway.
The conclusion: you should really check out this feature, but don't forget to remap the ESC key if you are using vi.