Look what I did!

Why? Cause I can.

It's utterly impossible for a /. discussion to stay even remotely on topic. I'm just reading the comments on the article about the SCO/Microsoft link and the third discussion thread is about a quotation (apparently from Dune, although I wouldn't swear to it).

Stephen

Following RobertB-DC's series of ghost articles, here's another. The video was pulled (per a Fox request) by the time I tried to download it.

Posted by CmdrTaco in The Mysterious Future!
from the stuff-to-see dept.

Jordan writes "Screenhead has posted a new, apparently leaked trailer (15MB QuickTime) for the upcoming Fantastic Four movie starring Ioan Gruffudd, Michael Chiklis, Jessica Alba, Chris Evans, and Julian McMahon as Dr. Doom."

First, I have GMail invites if anyone wants one and hasn't already got one - not like they're in short supply anymore.

Second, I have to say that AudioScrobbler is actually pretty darn cool. It's interesting to see the tracking of what I've been listening to, and how it's starting to match me up with people.

I still don't take the recommendations too seriously yet, since even 800 or so songs isn't enough to really figure out my listening patterns - after all, I currently have 2300 songs on my computer. I'll wait a couple more weeks before starting to really look at what's being recommended.

BTW, if anyone cares, here's my profile.

In one of the Keynote speeches in the opening of the UK Oracle Users Group annual conference a few interesting things were pointed out.

• The stated aim of ther European Union, as of the Lisbon accord, is to have a bigger and more powerful economy than the US by 2010.
• Over the last 4 years the US economy has shrunk by pretty much every economic measure (jobs/employment, GNP, investment &c).
• In that same period the overall European economy has grown.

In other news the results for GlobalVote 2004 are in and it's pretty much a landslide for Kerry. 77.1% vs just 9.0% for Bush, here's hoping those figures will be repeated in the USA. Unfortunately some US citizens seem to think that Europeans shouldn't be allowed to express an opinion.

According to today's USA Today George Bush Jnr (aka dubbya) doesn't like to be refered to as Junior. I'll remember that if I ever see him, although "Mr ex-president jnr" is a bit of a mouthful.

Wil Wheaton's take on the election. I like the way he makes the point about how the Repubicans are attempting to keep voters (specifically Democratic voters) from voting.

Something that has suprised me some what in reading blogs and articles, and talking to people, is the number of US citizens who seem to be seriously considering emigrating if Bush wins. I know you always get people, in any election, who say they will move to another area/country if a certain person wins, but this time they sound different, they sound serious. Reasons for leaving range from the purely practical (under Bush their life would be untenable or even illegal) through to the idealistic (under Bush America is no longer the nation it should be and no longer abides by the principles it was founded on). The more I hear from Bush the closer I feel the US is getting to The Republic of Gilead.

Bang those cymbals, monkeys

I've got a really annoying problem with a script. It basically has to read a bunch of variables from a file and use rsh to connect to a remote box to run a command (the machine name to connect to is one of the variables). It uses a while loop. If I just echo the variables back to the screen it cycles through each set of variables fine but as soon as i use the rsh it quits after the first itteration (regardless of the command run via rsh or those that come after it (that are confirmed to run)).

I've looked at it, our Solaris guru has looked at it and neither of us can see where it's going wrong!

What's this with people in the LOAF story listing their qualifications? If anyone wants to check out mine then they can look at my resumé. Not that there's much to see, I never went further than BSc.

If anyone wants to offer me a job then they can get in contact. I think my current salary works out around US$100k.

Has anyone noticed Slashdot being incredibly slow today? Things that normally take a few seconds are taking a minute or more and I've had 503 errors a few times.

Has /. been /.ed?

Life is strange...

I recently had a strange nostalgia for some of the old BBS doors I used to play. I did some looking around to see what I could download for the heck of it. Eventually, I found the old Dungeons and Dragons multiplayer door game, which was like a proto-MUD I suppose. I downloaded it, tried briefly to get it working, which I couldn't yet because I don't know how to load ANSI.SYS into Win2K or command prompts or such, and gave up. Somehow, I decided to play around with some MUD software, remembering the fun of creating a world, and just as I was about to get it running, decided it likely wasn't worth it just creating by myself.

So I decided to do something I never really did before. Play on a MUD.

When I say "never really did before", I don't mean I never touched one. I spent a few hours checking them out back in college. I even played around on a MUSH that some college friends got up and running. But never that much. I think I logged on to MUDs and the like only during the space of a single month, never again to do so.

Until last week. The urge didn't go away, so I did some web searching to see what was out there.

And ended up at Achaea. The web site really grabbed me, the whole mythology that has been developed, the emphasis on role-playing (no true in-game OOC communication channels or locations), and the fact that it looks like just about everything in the game is player run. So I decided to try it.

And I think I'm hooked. Already. And it's really odd, since I've never done this sort of thing before for any real length of time.

I'm already worried how I can moderate my time spent on there. I've already been up too late a few nights. I hope I don't end up like some other MUDders, screwing up my real life due to playing a game too much. But I'm not stopping, it's so much fun...

Magazines/Periodicals I bought today:

• Dr Dobbs Journal
• Linux user and Developer
• British Journal of Photography
• Amateur Photographer
• SG (Surf/Ski/Snowboard/Skate magazine aimed at girls/young women, my neice is a surfer/skater)
• Carve (Surfing magazine)
• The Economist: Intelligent life Trends for Smarter living
• Heat (UK gossip/celeb magazine)
• The Chronicles (UK Vampire/Gothic fiction magazine)
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer Magazine
• SFX
• DreamWatch

They're passing the things out like crazy now! I got 6 on Monday, and used them up over the next couple days. I logged in this morning to find I have 6 more. I gave out two, but I'm running short of people to invite!

So, if there's anyone out there reading this who doesn't have one yet and wants one, let me know and you'll get one as long as I have invites left.

I think this marks the first day of OpenBeos becoming more than a 'clone' of BeOS, and secures its position as a viable OS choice for the future.

Congratulations to everyone, because this will have some positive wide-ranging effects on computing for all! Long live Haiku!