c|net News.com has the story about the rise of Tivo hacks and the company’s official policy regarding them. [via Ole Eichhorn]

TiVo may frown on the practice officially, but it has done little to crack down on such tinkering so far. In fact, some industry veterans said they believe the company is reaping significant fringe benefits as it now moves to add enhancements aimed at fending off deep-pocket rivals.

"I think it’s great for TiVo and the industry," said Mark Cuban, who sold Broadcast.com to Yahoo for $5.7 billion and is now president of HDNet, a provider of high-definition TV programming. "You aren’t going to switch from TiVo after you have customized it."

Exactly correct. This article reminded me of two things: First, last Friday, before flying up to Stanford, I quickly grabbed two shows off the Tivo onto my laptop. Watched one at LAX while waiting for my flight, and the other on the flight home. It was perfect— I got to preserve my valuable time during the week, while making dead-time waiting far more enjoyable as well. But this also reminded me, secondly, what a thin line we skate in the Tivo hacking community. I’ve got some cool software that automates most of this and really makes it easy to manage; I also know I’ll be sued out of existence (and perhaps even sadder, lose my Tivos!) if I ever released this software. So for now, the bar is intentionally kept high in the hopes that limiting our group to the more technically-inclined will spare us the wrath of the gods. Sad, but necessary.

Microsoft finally inks a deal with Comcast to put its Tivo-like Microsoft Foundation edition on set-top boxes. [via Slashdot]

Microsoft has spent years trying to break into the cable industry. It invested $5 billion in AT&T in 1999 with the intent of developing advanced interactive-television software for set-top boxes. AT&T would later scale back the project in favor of less expensive technology. Microsoft’s $2.6 billion investment in U.K. cable operator Telewest Communications also failed to live up to expectations.

Wow, this took a long time. I was in meetings in 1996 with Microsoft and NBC to explore interactive tv, and Comcast was mentioned even then as one of the partners. Looks like it finally happened.

Why, pray tell, is ICANN changing the default transfer behavior to accept??

Domain names could become easier to hijack as a change in domain transfer rules takes effect Friday. Under new rules set by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), domain transfer requests will be automatically approved in five days unless they are explicitly denied by the account owner. This is a change from current procedure, in which a domain’s ownership and nameservers remain unchanged if there is no response to a transfer request.

This could mean trouble for domain owners who don’t closely manage their records. Domains with incorrect e-mail addresses and outdated administrative contact information are at particular risk, as the domain’s WHOIS database information will be used to inform domain owners of transfer requests. A non-response becomes the equivalent of answering "yes" to a transfer request, according to the ICANN policy change.

This is moronic. The moral of the story is just to lock your domains, but if everyone goes to lock their domains, thereby invalidating this change in the default behavior, what exactly was the point of this change?? Dear God, please send us back Jon Postel. I’m pretty sure we need him here a lot more desperately than you need him there.

I wasn’t sure what to expect from BloggerCon 3 at Stanford Law School on Saturday, but I was pleasantly surprised by what a cool group of people attended. Unlike other conferences where technology execs purport to be celebrities, BloggerCon was amazingly down-to-earth and mellow and almost surprising in general friendliness. That was especially obvious at one point while I was outside chatting about podcasting with Dave Winer (software legend, creator of XML-RPC, and BloggerCon organizer) and Adam Curry (who I used to watch on MTV in high school). Talked to Cam Barrett about our new MobThought ideas, to Phil Wolff about political campaign software, to Scott Johnson about a little issue I was having with Feedster, and even showed bransonblog.com to Julie Adair from the BBC. It was pretty amusing to read Micki Krimmel’s blog while she sat in front of me (you can also see her photos here). Mike Tippett and I were noting in the cab ride back how impressed we were with the caliber of people there… a very impressive group overall. Perhaps most interesting, though, was my chat with Nick Bradbury (creator of HomeSite, TopStyle, and FeedDemon), who was really cool about encouraging me to build my own aggregator— even encouraging me to copy FeedDemon features and offering to help if I had questions in starting a one-man software company like he’s got. Incredibly nice. This guy’s a legend to all of us using HomeSite years ago, so it was almost disturbing to see firsthand how cool he was to some random rambling lunatic he’s never met before.   […continued]

Doc Searls asks about options for podcasting on Linux, a question that I’ve been thinking about quite a bit in the past couple weeks. It was quite a trick to get ample recording volume with Audacity, which seemed odd considering the Windows side worked beautifully with the same hardware. It may seem like a lot of work to go through when Windows podcasting already works so easily, but Doc raises a very good point… […continued]

This is awesome! I’ve been suggesting for at least three years now that the Tivo folks should be publicizing their top-100 lists and showing the world how much larger their sample size is (in polling terminology) than the normal Nielsen viewer group. So this link (via Matt, via waxy) is a great start, and hopefully they’ll do more in this direction in the near future. As I’ve said all along, these numbers could save a show bordering on the edge of Nielsen numbers, if Tivo could show that it was in the Top 100 season passes, etc. (I wrote an essay about this a few years ago when Gideon’s Crossing was cancelling, sparking surprised protests online from fans who didn’t realize the show was getting cancelled. In fact, it was nominated for an Emmy after it was cancelled.) Interesting to see how many of the shows I watch made it into the Tivo lists too! Great stuff.

As the Internet reaches 35, one of its creators reminisces about the first connection attempts.

"[The message] wasn’t anything like ’What hath God wrought?’ or ’Come here, Watson. I want you,’ or ’a giant leap for mankind.’ We weren’t that smart," he said, referring to the first messages over telegraph, over telephone and from the surface of the moon.

In order to log in to the two-computer network, which was then called ARPANET, programmers at UCLA were to type in "log," and Stanford would reply "in."

The UCLA programmers only got as far as "lo" before the Stanford machine crashed.

I’ve always considered Nov 21st (when the connection worked) to be the real date, making the Internet exactly four years older than I. (BTW, how lame that I missed the anniversary forum yesterday while I was on campus taking midterms! Argh.)

Cool new geek toys available these days… Slate has a story comparing the portable XM radio with the iPod, and includes some details about each. The iPod details are well covered already (see yesterday’s iPod story, for example), but I hadn’t heard much about the new XM radio till now.

XM’s new MyFi player is, in short, the first satellite radio Walkman. It can tune into 130-plus channels of digital radio and even store five hours of programming for you to play back at your leisure. (Cost: $349.99, plus $9.99 per month for an XM subscription.)

Sounds very interesting. Maybe worth a try? I wish they had a chassis of some sort to play this XM radio in my Acura TL and then just take it with me afterward (a way to capture the true digital fidelity, not just a tape adapter like I use with my iPod). Portable-plus-car XM would definitely get me to try the new technology.

I’ve been slacking a bit in this category lately, but the Wired interview with Matthew Zinn reminded me of Engadget’s interview with Tivo CEO Mike Ramsay a couple weeks back. Some good quotes inside, including this one about Tivo’s reaction to its loyal following:

The insider language around this is, Oh my God, we’ve created a monster. It’s apparent we’ve got this compelling consumer proposition. At the end of the day, it has to do with fact that people are discovering they can be in control of television and, more broadly, can be in control of their home entertainment. It’s not until you discover what you can do that you realize how much a slave you were to the old way.

Exactly it, except that the "previously enslaved" also appears in an alternate incarnation: not watching much tv because of the lack of flexibility. My life was just too busy to schedule around tv shows, and it’s really irritating to watch a show all season if you miss episodes every few weeks. It’s also amazing to see how much better some marginal shows can be just by reducing commercial interruptions and allowing you to focus on the storyline in progress. So, four years of Tivo later, I’ve learned to love tv, in an absurdly exaggerated way. No way that could’ve happened before Tivo.

Got a call today from Bank of America, about some online charges on my credit card. Walked through the numbers with the woman, trying to remember where all I’d spent money in the past week or so, and was actually quite happy that they’re going through online charges so thoroughly. I spoke with her for a few seconds about whether this was a new service or something, because I don’t recall getting calls like this in the past, and she said that online fraud has risen dramatically, so they’re being much more careful and calling to verify charges now. Nice! Ironically (and as I told her), just yesterday, I tried to buy some software online, but realized afterward that the domain of the card processor seemed to redirect to cyoto.com with a Visa Secure message, and that domain only has a placeholder page from the registrar. Looks like a class fraud attack, stealing credit card data, so I was contemplating cancelling the card today. She said they’ll keep an eye out, though, and call if they see any more charges. Very nice. Glad to see that there’s some real attention being paid to this kind of stuff. In another sense, though, it’s sad that the promise of the "lights-out online retailer" is being lost now due to the human-required fraud-control processes. A necessary trade-off in a less-than-benevolent world, I guess.

It’s here! Apple latest— the iPod Photo! I’ve now owned the first, second, and third generation iPods, but skipped the fourth gen and the Mini waiting for significant new features. Well, looks like those features are here…

# Sharp, vivid 2-inch Color LCD screen displays more than 65 thousand colors
# Connect iPod Photo to a projector or TV and give slideshows — complete with music
# Enjoy up to 15 hours of continuous music thanks to extended battery life

Nice. Would’ve been even better if it played the movies that digital cameras now record, as Dave suggested, but I suppose that’ll be another generation next year so we can shell out even more money.  

Jason Kottke links to a good Steve Jobs interview, and concludes his post with the following insight:

Apple is basically a luxury computer and software company, akin to Gucci, Bang & Olufsen, and Calphalon in their respective industries. They aim to produce well-designed innovative products, provide a high level of service, and charge a premium for it. Much has been made of Apple’s paltry OS/hardware market share, but when you think about it, when a designer label can capture even 5% of a market that competes heavily on price, that’s an impressive achievement.

Absolutely it. Price-based models may serve the majority, but they’re as dull as Sears and Walmart… nothing to aspire to, and a poor way to build brand loyalty and fanatic customers. In fact, the point about Apple highlights to me, in contrast, many of the problems the Linux desktop has had in trying to compete on price without significant innovation to render it clearly better than Windows.

This is just beautiful. I’ve been outspoken on the broken software patent system for some time, and have spent much of the summer raving about Novell’s Linux software. So I’m especially pleased to see Novell’s new patent policy. […continued]

I’ve been listening to Kim Polese on The Gilmore Gang, talking about her latest venture, SpikeSource. The business model is an extension of the common paid support for free open source software model, in this case delivering a certified and validated "stack" and folding the whole stack (several open-source projects) into one deliverable. The first stack will be for Linux-Apache-MySQL-JBoss, and should be available for public beta in the next few months. I’ve thought quite a bit about this model in the past few years, as it was one of our plans for Enabled Paradigm back in the day, so I was especially curious to see how they’d addressed some of the philosophical issues we discovered along the way. […continued]

Evan Williams, co-founder of Blogger, writes about leaving Google. Within, he also has a great description of the burden of software creators in small companies, especially those around whom a small venture is created. I’ve always likened it to taking care of a sick child (even if only your "brain child"), and I think it’s as hard for non-software-creators to understand this analogy as it is for non-parents (like me) to truly understand the depths of the sick-child side aspect. […continued]

PJ has a great article over at Groklaw about the absolutely infuriating Kodak vs. Sun patent suit, the most brain-dead court decision since the Amazon one-click patent. And I’m intentionally posting this to both my Geekview and "mainstream" (WorldView) categories because this hideous problem will persist until non-technical people everywhere truly understand this. If you don’t care about it now, you eventually will when software companies collapse, the economy tanks, and you’re standing in an unemployment line somewhere. So spread the word, and thanks in advance for your help. […continued]

The rumors were finally confirmed with the announcement:

Netflix Inc. and TiVo Inc. have signed an agreement to let TiVo subscribers access Netflix’s library of movies over broadband Internet connections, the two companies announced Thursday.

As I’ve noted before, a friend and former colleague of mine is a software architect on the Netflix side of this deal, so knowing how brilliant he is, and having heard similar praise about the entire Netflix set-top box team, and having been a Tivo fanatic for three years now, I’m definitely looking forward to seeing what the two companies dream up!

CRN has a nice article, though a bit short on details, comparing three choices in the rare world of C++ web services— Systinet C++ Server, Apache AXIS, and gSOAP. The first paragraph sums up my view on web services nicely:

C++ Web services servers are not only as interoperable as Java- and C#-based services, they are also faster and much more easily integrated with third-party software. Unfortunately, the hype surrounding .Net and Java technologies has turned attention away from C++-based middleware. While coding is easier with Java and .Net, these platforms have large overheads and make architectural intricacies inaccessible to developers.

There are, of course, other C++ app servers below the radar, serving important niches. Our C++ app server at JTEK Interactive (the JML Server) was used in $100K+ client projects for name-brand Hollywood studios back in 2000, though not really marketed publicly. After JTEK was acquired, it became the Scalara, and continued to serve its audience with little fanfare. Obviously C++ web services aren’t for everyone these days, but it’s also a mistake to discount them categorically as the tech world has done. Considering how many millions of C++ developers there are, and how many existing (solid, debugged) apps already work beautifully and efficiently in C++, the best path to scalability is rarely a complete rewrite into a new language.

Suddenly dawned on me tonight that I’d never gotten DVD movies working in Suse. It’s one of the only things that doesn’t work automatically right out of the box, for legal reasons related to the unlicensed DeCSS software on Linux. So, warning: This software may not be legal in your country! Caveat emptor, and all that.

First off, hit this site and grab the latest RPMs built of the daily cvs snapshots. The only files I downloaded were the libdvdcss rpm, the libxine rpm, and the xine-ui rpm. I didn’t bother with the Windows or QuickTime codecs.

Seems trivially easy, except that the video is still choppy without, it turns out, enabling DMA on the dvd drive.

% hdparm -d1 /dev/dvd

So yeah, that’s it, and presto, Eddie Izzard playing in a little xine box in the lower corner of the screen as I work. Brilliant.  

AppleInsider reports on new features in the new iChat:

In addition to supporting video conferencing with up to three people, the most recent builds of iChat 3.0 include support for Jabber’s real-time communications software. The iChat implementation will let organizations host their own Jabber servers, allowing employees to use iChat privately and securely behind a local firewall. A new addition to the iChat setup assistant provides an interface for enabling Jabber support.

This should be a huge boost to the excellent Jabber standard, and may even bolster a Google move to release its own Jabber network, directly challenging the Microsoft, Yahoo, and AOL empires in a way that would leverage all the existing infrastructure around Jabber. So, they jump to being the #1 IM solution out there within a year, much like they did in the paid-search arena in the past couple years. Brilliant.

Ever since first playing Dune II: The Building of a Dynasty back in 1993 or so, I’ve had this crazy idea that I could build a game UI front-end to the groupware server I’ve been dreaming up for 15 years. These days, that meme is becoming more common, and I’ve seen it mentioned in several places recently. Funniest quote, though, is about psDoom, which lets you manage your ’ps ax’ processes via modified Doom game code.

Certain processes are vital to the computer’s operation and should not be killed. For example, after I took the screenshot of myself being attacked by csh, csh was shot by friendly fire from behind, possibly by tcsh or xv, and my session was abruptly terminated.

*Laugh* Brilliant geek humor… As software developers know (though most only metaphorically), little oversights in software design often come back to shoot you.  

It could just be a rumor, but MSNBC is reporting that Tivo and Netflix are set to ink a new deal to deliver movies to Tivo boxes over the Internet.

Later this month, NEWSWEEK has learned, the companies plan to unveil a simple but significant partnership that could shake up the media world. Subscribers who belong to both services will be able to download their Netflix DVDs over the Internet directly into the TiVo boxes in their homes, instead of receiving them in the mail. Spokespeople at the companies refused to comment on what they called rumor. But an insider who was close to the negotiations says the straightforward partnership is all but a done deal, pending only the approval of the TiVo board this week: "You don’t need a lot of creativity to figure out the details," the insider said.

I know for a fact that Netflix was already working on their own set-top box for this exact idea (with incredibly bright people whom I respect immensely), so it’ll be very interesting to see what happens with all of this over the next few weeks.

The Houston Chronicle runs an article about a CallerID-spoofing service closing up shop. It seems obvious that people hate the service for its potential for abuse, like empowering telemarketers to circumvent blocking rules. Yet, here’s the ingenius take from the Chronicle:

The backlash against Star38 is the type of friction that can arise between for-profit software companies and hackers who resent the commercialization of technology they believe should remain free.

"In most countercultures, there is an aspect of selling out," said Caleb Sima, co-founder of Spi Dynamics, an online security company. "People who make money off technology are deemed to have sold out. Anyone who has a unique idea and is making money is going to get badgered."

WTF. Yeah, the only reason to hate a service that lets you fake CallerID data is that you’re charging for it. Riiight. In a related story, people hate drunk drivers because they’re wasting gasoline. And of course, let’s ignore the many commercial offerings that many hackers are happily using. Nice reporting there, Chronicle. There’s a Pulitzer nomination in there somewhere. Eyes on the prize.

With the plethora of Windows virus attacks in the past couple years, it’s hardly surprising to see yet another released now. This one, however, really caught my attention as the cutting edge of malware:

The virus, even if released on the Internet, would not spread, he added, because the Windows software that the program exploits has not yet been released by Microsoft. Some developers are trying out the 64-bit extensions for Windows, but the software is still being tested. The virus will not run on 32-bit versions of Windows, such as Windows 2000 and Windows XP, owned by the vast majority of Microsoft users.

Wow, a virus targeting software not yet released? That’s definitely got to be a first, and regardless of malicious intent, it’s damn impressive to see these kinds of turnaround times.

After months (years?) of hype and hoopla, the much-anticipated Google IPO has finally been completed, with shares "rocketing" up to $100.33 by the end of first-day trading. Oddly enough, this New York Times article seems to cast aspersions on the novelty or ingenuity of the Google plan, even leading off with a dowdy line about it being a "fairly normal IPO."

Fairly normal? Really? […continued]

Interesting piece about a mobile Internet kiosk in a poor Indian village. Also mentioned:

"I want to work and make a name for myself. I want to see the world," she said, adding that she hopes to get a job in the city and then travel more widely.

Sharma said she has not disclosed her plans to her parents lest they stop her from attending computer classes, "But I know what I will do."

Ahh, rebellious adolescence… 21st-century style. I remember the good ol’ days when my secret plans to disobey my parents weren’t published to millions around the world by CNN. So, hey, good thing her parents don’t have Internet access after all.

BusinessWeek has a great interview with Linus Torvalds, which doesn’t say much new stuff but nicely summarizes some general open-source approaches for less-technical business leaders (the usual BusinessWeek audience). In it, there is one great Linus quote that my friend David highlighted:

I think, fundamentally, open source does tend to be more stable software. It’s the right way to do things. I compare it to science vs. witchcraft. In science, the whole system builds on people looking at other people’s results and building on top of them. In witchcraft, somebody had a small secret and guarded it -- but never allowed others to really understand it and build on it.

Traditional software is like witchcraft. In history, witchcraft just died out. The same will happen in software. When problems get serious enough, you can’t have one person or one company guarding their secrets. You have to have everybody share in knowledge.

Wow, I’d never thought of it that way before, but that’s exactly it. He makes the point later on that infrastructure is especially suited for the open-source approach for this reason, and it’s very true. With on-going progress, it’s still entirely possible to have a small ISV build a great app for a specific market (Adobe’s Photoshop, for example), but over time, it will be harder to maintain an advantage over other developers through thousands of proprietary API bugs. Infrastructure is just too important.

I finally got around to reading Paul Graham’s article on Great Hackers, which several people sent me in the past few weeks. Definitely interesting reading. It’s amusingly insightful in some ways, hitting the nail on the head in identifying both good and bad traits that I see all too often in myself. Best observation was that hackers don’t consider themselves good, but wonder why everyone else is incompetent; I’ve had that very discussion with nearly all of my technical friends. I also realize that he’s right about hackers having great focus, and that’s actually one of my exceptions that’s cost me dearly over time. I do have that kind of focus periodically, more than enough for whatever work projects, etc., but I myself see the difference in those rare moments where I have total focus and clarity of vision. Feels like I could coast for years on the work that I get done in those few moments; a few years ago, for example, I completely rewrote a C++ base library over the course of a week and created a platform that still powers major online advertising systems. On a flight home from London several years ago, I wrote an e-commerce system that powered nearly every JTEK and EP software project. That sort of thing. So I get what he’s saying, just wish I was more like that. […continued]

I’ve been running Linux on the server since 1994, and have been a Linux software developer for that entire time, but I’ve been critical of Linux desktop initiatives because they just haven’t had the ease-of-use that Windows users take for granted. This translates lopsidedly into my being configuring detailed kernel options at will, while being unable to print a document. Yeah, it sounds absurd, but in fact, it was a running joke at Search123 that Tricia or Alan or Kevin (or really, anyone else) would have to print everything for me, because genius that I was, I was the only one who never figured out how to.

Today’s Project of the Day, inspired by my mom needing to print a Word doc from my Windows XP laptop, was to finally get Linux printing working. Normally XP printing, the most automatically- and easily-configured print service ever, would have nothing to do with Linux printing, except that my laptop doesn’t have a parallel port, and Frys wasn’t open at midnight for me to go buy a USB-to-parallel adapter. […continued]

It’s funny how some big news slips through the cracks without much mention. Google and Yahoo apparently settled their paid-search patent lawsuit, mostly because Google, with an imminent IPO, couldn’t afford to have this drag on any longer. The settlement, though, really strengthens Yahoo (via their Overture acquisition) in now pursuing the hundreds of other paid-search engines out there, all of whom are basically violating the patent.

Having read key parts of the patent, I’m simply amazed that something so general was ever issued by the PTO. The basic process patented is that of allowing users to manage keyword bids via a web-based interface. You choose a word (ie. "cars") and type in a bid (ie. "0.05"), and click "submit," and— oops! You’ve just violated a patent. WTF? It makes you wish that the inventors of CGI had first patented every possible form that CGI could build. Analogy: Imagine the inventors of the notebook patenting the act of each industry writing in notebooks in the course of their work. "Sure, you used a notebook before for schoolwork, but now you’re writing a letter to a friend in a notebook, and, well, that violates our letter-writing patent." Huh? For those of us who’ve used the web for some time, it seems like such an obvious thing that’s really powered by CGI itself, not by any brilliant capability developed at Overture (formerly GoTo). But until the PTO is reformed, general technological ignorance there makes every patent filed seem like sheer wizardry, and the technology world is left with bizarre restrictions on things that should be left to competition and innovation. I wonder how long it will be before this entire system falls under its own cumbersome weight. (Already, IBM could use its own arsenal, of the thousands of patents filed each year, to build a Cold-War-era nuclear-response approach to addressing patent infringement lawsuits. Would certainly deter others from a moronic SCO-like strategy.)

Those who know me well often laugh at my bizarre approach to computer games. Somehow, I’ve just never been that interested in games, and I don’t really enjoy learning new rules and working through various game levels. Very few games hold my ADD-plagued attention, and those that do often do so for very different reasons than the game developers intended. When Black & White came out in 2001, I played the game for almost 40 hours straight (projected up onto the 8-ft screen with full Bose surround sound!), all the while carefully avoiding the vortex that would’ve taken me to the next level. I had way more fun just wandering around the same level for hours upon hours, teaching my pet gorilla stupid tricks, and bowling boulders through village buildings while the terrified villagers ran in fear, until my gorilla came back to help the villagers rebuild. Awesome. […continued]

It seems sometimes like the biggest obstacle to fair technology jurisprudence is the fact that lawyers and judges don’t actually understand technology. Historical precedent is, in essence, the art of convincing a judge that your analogies to previous cases that went your way are more accurate than opposing counsel’s analogies. And in the technology confusion, people far too often mangle the anologies. As this article notes: "Lawyer Anthony J. Dain has said the ads are ’annoyances you have to deal with in a free society.’"

No one disputes that everyone — even spammers, the scum of the earth — has the right to say (almost) anything they want in our society, beyond the usual "’fire’ in a crowded theater" caveats. However, it’s mind-blowing that anyone could confuse spam for being a First Amendment right. […continued]

For anyone who’s seen what a perfect integration the DirecTivo box is, with perfect satellite picture quality and the genius of Tivo on the PVR side, it’s incredibly disappointing to hear that DirecTV may be dropping TiVo:

Well, the sad truth is that indeed NDS boxes will be released early next year, alongside DirecTiVo boxes. The Tivo-DirecTV relationship ends in 2007, so hopefully they’ll continue to support TiVo boxes after the NDS rollout next year. TiVo’s stock took a hit today, since I think almost half of TiVo’s million users are DirecTV customers running the combo TiVo unit.

It’s hard to convey just how perfect a device this is, and what a fanatic following it has amongst the many hackers who have added features and functionality. And as someone with three DirecTV-Tivo boxes, it probably goes without saying that I’m going to be insanely rabid when they don’t work anymore.

My almost-weekly dinners with David Lang are always educational, and tonight was no exception. Discussing Apache 2.0 tonight (I’m considering a mod_ssp module for Scalara SSP templates), David noted that the new Apache MPMs don’t make much difference in Linux, where forking and threading are almost cost-equivalent. In fact, if you’re using a threading MPM that requires the new mod_cgid approach — an external daemon receives CGI requests and forks a new CGI instance, since the original threaded app can’t fork without cloning all of its threads as well — then you’ve basically added a much higher 3rd-party-request cost to an originally-almost-equivalent fork-vs-thread cost. Very bad idea. […continued]

I’m usually not fanatic about specific gadgets or technologies, despite my overall saturation in all things technological. The one exception, obvious to those reading this blog, is my trusty Fujitsu LifeBook, which I’ve been ranting about for over a year now. After using it as my primary machine at home and at work, almost 18 hours a day, seven days a week, I can’t believe how fanatic I still am about this thing. Pretty unusual for a kid who lost interest in Christmas presents in mere weeks. […continued]

Slashdot highlights the recent problems for Series 1 DirecTiVo owners. Seems to be a repeatable problem after the 3.1.0c1 upgrade, and only common during "rain fades" when the receiver loses signal. Still, hope this can be remedied without the Series2 upgrade path that DTV seems to be pushing.

Dan Collins writes in the forum linked from the Slashdot story:

I spent some time this morning trying to force the problem to occur, and finally was successful. The ONLY scenario that reproduced the problem on one of my Hughes Series 1 was as follows:

• A recording must be executing on at least one tuner
• Signal quality must degrade to the point of causing severe digital artifacts WITHOUT a loss of signal lock
• The poor signal quality must persist for at LEAST 15 seconds
• The signal must then cut out completely on BOTH tuners
• The recording must STILL be going on when signal is restored

Sounds like they’re on the right track in diagnosing the problem, but unless DTV/Tivo get involved, I’m not sure whether to hold out hope for an official bug-fix.

With the new blog underway (though still in a limited demo mode), I’ve been thinking a lot more about RSS aggregators and my own BlogThought project. I’ve been looking for more fun projects these days, and hopefully I’ll be able to resurrect the BlogThought 1.0 beta from late 2002 and finally get it finished. In the meantime, though, I need to organize my daily reading because there are just too many sites to keep up with. […continued]

A quick link to some older news, that Novell will open-source their Connector for MS Exchange. I bought the commercial $79 version and used it quite a bit in the past year, to sync up with the company Exchange server for group calendars and email. The Connector seems to use Exchange’s own WebDAV interface, essentially pretending to be the html version of the remote Exchange interface. It also required the company network administrator to add one WebDAV keyword that isn’t enabled out of the box, as I understand it. For those of us using Linux as our primary desktop OS, and who are frequently beaten over the head by Windows systems that we need to interact with in order to actually do our jobs, this is one more nice step towards enabling "PHB-interaction capabilities" while staying within our preferred OS. And now without the $79 price tag, it’s at least worth a try for corporate Linux users everywhere.

Today’s Project of the Day is a follow-up from yesterday’s, wherein the Sony Vaio Z505-HS laptop installed beautifully and then inexplicably died. I turned in my prized LifeBook N3010-55 last week for repair (the video card seems to be overlaying interlaced blue lines after almost a year of nearly constant use), and was shocked to find that it’d be gone for "six to eight weeks"… Ouch! In the meantime, they graciously provided a loaner laptop, a Fujitsu LifeBook C2310 that, sadly, is just not a worthy replacement for my trusty old friend… a 1.6Ghz machine instead of my 2.66Ghz, 512MB of memory instead of my 1GB, and Centrino WiFi instead of my Broadcom chipset. […continued]

Ok, this is just bizarre… Today’s Project of the Day was something I’ve been planning for a while now, to terraform my 3-lb Sony Vaio Z505-HS with Suse Linux 9.1. I love this laptop, and over the past four years, I’ve taken it just about everywhere— small enough to even get in eight hours of coding on an LHR-to-LAX flight, in Economy no less. So I was really looking forward to getting the even-better Suse 9.1 and even-better Visual Slick Edit 9 on there for anytime-anywhere development. […continued]

I must be pretty bored with my hiatus already, to be digging up old hardware in the hopes of bringing it to life for no real reason other than to see if it’s possible…   But yeah, that’s pretty much all it takes these days to send me off on a random new Project of the Day… Not sure why, but I woke up this morning thinking, "If every version of Linux in the past eight years has been faster than the version before it, shouldn’t that breathe new life into old hardware that seemed slow even back when it was state of the art?" […continued]