Don Marti
Fri 20 Nov 2009 11:36:29 AM PST
MLP: web-only laptops, blogspam
Ssh. Don't say the L word. "Your litl OS was built with the web in mind." Engadget found an FCC document, and a company job posting mentions client-side Linux, but to the media it's a "Web-Based Netbook." From the user's point of view, this box is less "generative" than an old-school PC. The Software Freedom here is the manufacturer's. (Disintermediation is a myth. Open source drives reintermediation.)
Meanwhile, Google pre-announces Chromium OS ((LWN discussion). (I think people are underrating the usefulness of web-only boxes in the medium term. I have already been to two small businesses using Google Checkout in a browser as Point of Sale systems. Get drivers for bar code scanners, thermal printers, and scales, and you could do POS as a web app.)
Municipal fiber failures? "any large network has a business plan that calls for losing money in the early years. The network has many expenses before it starts selling services. Even once it has started hooking up customers, it may take years to hook up all the customers that immediately want service."
If you spend enough time doing filesystem development, you grow a virtual beard.
Lots of thought-provoking ideas on making web sites resistant to trolls and spam: Building Web Reputation Systems: The Blog.
According to a comment on Jeremy Zawodny's blog, the white paper "A Practical Guide to Migrating From Oracle to MySQL" has disappeared from the MySQL site. (Yes, I know, I know, we're all going to start using Monty's new thing, so it doesn't matter anyway, right?)
Simon Willison: Why I like Redis. Nick Moffitt: Your favorite ORM sucks
Hacking the Western Digital TV media player: "play HD media straight from an external USB drive to the television" or add new firmware to make it play stuff from the network.
Semi-targeted comment spam: Buy Blog Comments.
jsvi: a vi clone in pure JavaScript.
Bill Gurley writes about Google moving a market from “you pay me” to “I pay you.” (Doesn't hurt that the Droid is actually a good phone.)
That's it: Not that I was in the market, but I'm never buying a car with an automatic transmission. Not being able to use the clutch sounds scary.
Ha! I'm glad you liked that entry. I keep running into free software hackers who look at me funny like I've told them that they should just give up and get a mac or something.
Incidentally, that Magus fellow (who was, to be fair, voluminous in his assistance) has left #django and all the bans he instituted have been lifted. It's not necessarily a more civilized place, but I feel like it's easier to participate now.