December 28, 2004
December 25, 2004
Google Holiday Logos
An archive of the Google Holiday logos and a note from the Google logo guy, Dennis Hwang.
Merry Christmas!
December 20, 2004
December 16, 2004
NYT Firefox Ad Today!
I contributed to the ad. It's probably the only time my name will appear in print with Jonathan Schwartz, Brian Behlendorf, Cory Doctorow, and other high profile techies. It is amazing to me that a volunteer community like the Mozilla foundation can produce a product that's better than the output of a multi-billion dollar company. I know that the bar wasn't set very high, but Firefox is great and props to the Mozilla and Firefox teams!
December 15, 2004
P2P in 15 lines of code
Via Boing Boing, TinyP2P.
TinyP2P is a functional peer-to-peer file sharing application, written in fifteen lines of code, in the Python programming language. I wrote TinyP2P to illustrate the difficulty of regulating peer-to-peer applications. Peer-to-peer apps can be very simple, and any moderately skilled programmer can write one, so attempts to ban their creation would be fruitless....My goal in creating this program is not to facilitate copyright infringement. I do not condone copyright infringement. Nothing about the program's design is optimized for the sharing of infringing files. The program is useful mainly as a proof of concept. A more practical program would be faster, more secure, and more resilient against failure. But that would require a few more lines of code!
A bit of geeky irony in this code is that the Python indention isn't obvious.
Hack the Sprint Treo 650 for the Verizon network
Reason #61950 to love the Internet, stickin it to da man. Some guy that goes by "mines" gets the Sprint Treo 650 to work on the Verizon network through a complicated cable hack and other inspired ideas.
(Via hack a day)
Update on the Firefox ad in the NYT
Expecting that Firefox ad today? According to this c|net article, it maybe later in the year.
Mozilla, which on Sunday marked its 10 millionth Firefox 1.0 download, has opted for a cheaper rate at the Times by giving the paper discretion to run the ad on any day in a two- to three-week window.
December 11, 2004
Software's Top Twenty
The nice thing about the article is that it's not just a list of 40 software greats, it has a biography for each one.
One other note, if SYS-CON is going to (rightly) include Bill Joy, Tim O'Reilly, and Ann Winblad, then you've got to include Steve Jobs and/or Steve Wozniak.
(learned of this story from Slashdot)
BitTorrent press
The AP reports on the popularity of BitTorrent. While the article implies that BitTorrent is causing Hollywood problems, this is a bit deceptive. Because, as the article also indicates, that it's not possible to spoof a BitTorrent download. So illegal downloads are even easier to track than Kazaa, et. al. So don't think you'll escape the ire of the RIAA and MPAA.
December 09, 2004
Bluetooth fix/hack for the Motorola V710
Finally!!! Check it out here.
(see this previous post for the history behind this hack)
December 06, 2004
IBM to buy Apple?
No freakin' way, not in a million years. Must be a slow news day.
(via Slashdot)
December 05, 2004
Clown with purse and puppet
This is one thing I really like about living in a relatively small South Carolina town...the local color. This lady wasn't participating in the Christmas parade; she dressed-up to attend the parade. Hard to see, but her puppet friend is waving to people in the parade.
December 04, 2004
December 03, 2004
What's that <? called?
I needed to add a <?xml-stylesheet to my XML DOM document, and I didn't know what to call this <?. It is a processing instruction. I used the Java API document.createProcessingInstruction("xml-stylesheet", "type='text/xsl' href='sheet.xsl' ");