Well, the rain has finally stopped here, and given way to a beautiful day. Looks like the next few days will be hanging around 70 degress, and should be kickin’. Of course, I’ve got more leaves to rake, but while the weather is nice I certainly don’t mind as much.
Picked up the Panic In Detroit EP today. It rocks accordingly. Here’s a link to a track off it.
Well I just finished backing up my music collection using DAR. It’s been a while since the last time I’ve done this, and it ended up taking a lot longer than I had planned. At least DAR allows differential backups, otherwise I would have wasted my whole day. When all was said and done, I ended up using 20 CD-R’s. I really hope the prices on Recordable DVD drives drop soon, it would be great to back up to DVD’s instead, so I don’t have to screw around with so many discs. As is, restoring my music collection takes around 39 CD-R’s.
Now, I just need to backup some of my less critical files, and I can go watch tonight’s West Wing. Luckily, if I run late my trusty TiVO will record it.
From Yahoo:
Actor Tom Sizemore was sentenced Monday to six months in jail and three years probation for abusing his ex-girlfriend, former Hollywood madam Heidi Fleiss.
The actor first will go through drug rehabilitation. Judge Antonio Barreto Jr. said he would consider reducing the sentence to 90 days if Sizemore can show at a Jan. 30 hearing that his court-ordered counseling for drugs, anger and domestic violence are working.
Prosecutors had requested a 1-year sentence.
Sizemore, who appeared in “Black Hawk Down” and “Saving Private Ryan,” apologized in a letter, saying “personal demons” had taken over his life. “I am very chastened by the trial and my convictions,” he wrote.
The judge said that drug abuse may have been a catalyst in the abuse but that trial testimony revealed a man with deep problems dealing with women. Messages left on Fleiss’ answering machine were so vicious “it’s almost impossible to perceive,” Barreto said.
He also ordered Sizemore to stay away from Fleiss.
Fleiss, contacted by phone Monday, called Sizemore “a zero.” The two were together for about two years.
Ouch! That has gotta hurt when Heidi Fleiss calls you a zero. Too bad he’s such a screw-up, Robbery Homicide Division was a pretty decent show.
From Ars Technica:
On Friday afternoon, Ian Murdock, the founder of the Debian GNU/Linux project and co-founder of Progeny, announced a status update of his company’s Debian work. Murdock made two very important announcements: the porting of Red Hat’s Anaconda installer tool to Debian, and a modification of Debian’s APT package tool which will allow it to use both RedHat and Debian packages. The first announcement is most relevant to Debian users, who have long complained about Debian’s “archaic” installer. Several “easy to install” Debian variants have been created over the years; none of them has been commercially successful. Progeny Linux was one of these variants. Despite its excellent installer, Progeny’s distribution suffered the same fate as many of the other commercial Debian projects. The company itself lived on, without much visibility, until today’s announcement: “We have ported Red Hat’s Anaconda installer to Debian; essentially, we replaced calls to RPM with calls to APT, and replaced Red Hat-specific configuration hooks with calls into the configlets and debconf. We have also written a tool called PickAx that facilitates the creation of Anaconda-based Debian installation CD sets. We are also working with various parties to add/merge RPM support into the mainline APT, to allow Debian- and RPM-based distributions to be managed using a single APT codebase, and possibly even to allow Debian and RPM packages to coexist side by side.”
Murdock goes on to state the ultimate goal of the project: “It is our hope that a distribution-independent Anaconda and a distribution-independent APT (plus, eventually, a distribution-independent configuration framework) will, along with a stronger LSB [Linux Standards Base], help unify further the various Linux distributions.”
Because Red Hat has recently opened its distribution to the community, cooperation between Red Hat and Debian is more likely than ever. A distribution-neutral APT and configuration framework would do much to further such cooperation. Would a merger of the two projects even be possible? Debian has a very loyal following, due to its massive software catalogue (over 13,000 packages) and dedication to Free software. Red Hat, with its strong corporate partners and all-star kernel development team, brings legitimacy to the corporate market. While each distribution has a distinct and dedicated following, many would agree that further cooperation could only benefit everyone involved. Even if the two distributions do not merge, any standard which Progeny develops would certainly benefit the community. Could this possibly be the beginnings of a practical common packaging standard, outside of what is defined in the Linux Standards Base? Red Hat and Debian certainly have enough combined developer mindshare to make such a decision practical.
Could such common ground between the commercial and non-commercial leaders of Linux help consolidate the market? This would allow independent software vendors to target a much greater audience; currently, practical matters force them to target only one or two distributions. Regardless of the specifics, this announcement could have long standing effects on the Linux landscape. Progeny may have provided the catalyst needed to create a distribution of unprecedented quality; it is now up to open source software developers to follow through.
From icv2.com:
During an interview broadcast today on NPR’s Fresh Air, Simpsons creator Matt Groening revealed that the Fox News Network had threatened to sue The Simpsons over a parody of the right-leaning news channel. The highly sensitive news organization, which is headed by Roger Ailes, made headlines this summer with an ill-starred lawsuit against humorist Al Franken’s book, Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them. The Fox suit was thrown out in court and only succeeded in making Franken’s book a bestseller. According to Groening, the Simpsons team refused to cut out the segment, which Groening told Fresh Air he “really liked,” figuring that Rupert Murdoch wouldn’t allow the Fox News cable network to sue the Fox Broadcast Network, which carries The Simpsons. The Fox News Network did back down on its threat, although it has told The Simpsons creators that in the future, cartoon series will not be allowed to include a “news crawl” along the bottom of the screen, which might “confuse the viewers.”
Someone shoud really take the time to explain the definition of parody to the folks at Fox News.
See for yourself, there are two videos over here. Some seriously funny stuff. It’s really amazing some of the stuff that starts floating around the Internet. As Vin has found out, the Internet isn’t very forgiving of past mistakes, and I am quite sure Mr. Diesel would like to have these videos burned. I’m sure these videos won’t help make him the heir apparent to Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Though, it isn’t too suprising he was into breakdancing. If he’s lucky that’s the only thing in his closet.
Well, my server has finally stabilized enough that I’m going to look at changing the look of the my blog. I picked Nucleus for my blog, since it had a fairly decent default look, and a good template design. So, I’m going to start digging around the css the next couple of days, and see if can modify it to more to my liking. Though, since I hate dealing with html and css, we’ll have to see how long my patience lasts.
Y’know, I really love how many trees Ohio has, but raking all those leaves is a real drag. I spent Sunday and Monday raking, and when I look outside today, it’s hardly noticeable. Oh well, at least the weather hasn’t turned miserable yet.
From apple.com
Apple� today announced that Windows users have downloaded more than one million copies of its new iTunes™ for Windows digital jukebox software in just three and a half days since its launch last Thursday, and over one million songs have been purchased and downloaded by iTunes users in the same period.
“iTunes users have purchased over one million songs in the first three and a half days since our launch last Thursday, which compares with one million songs in the first seven days when we introduced the original iTunes for Mac users last April,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “We’re off to a great start, and our competition isn’t even out of the starting gates yet.”
The iTunes Music Store has revolutionized the way people legally buy music online. An astounding 14 million songs have been purchased and downloaded since the original iTunes Music Store launch in April, solidifying the iTunes Music Store’s position as the number one download music service in the world.
The second generation iTunes Music Store offers Windows users the same online music store as Mac� users with the same music catalog, the same “gold standard” personal use rights and the same 99 cents-per-song pricing. The second generation iTunes Music Store launched last week includes online gift certificates for family and friends; Apple’s innovative and patent-pending online “Allowance” feature which allows parents to automatically deposit funds into their kids’ iTunes Music Store account every month; more than 5,000 audiobooks which can be purchased with one click and listened to on any Mac or Windows computer as well as on iPods; Celebrity Playlists; and new exclusive tracks from more than 60 artists. With music from all five major music companies and over 200 independent music labels, the iTunes Music Store catalog is growing every day and will offer more than 400,000 songs by the end of October.
Apple offers the unbeatable combination of the award-winning iTunes digital jukebox software, the pioneering iTunes Music Store and the market-leading iPod™ digital music player, providing music lovers with a seamless experience for buying, managing and listening to their digital music collections anywhere.
Windows iPod users can now use their iPod with the award-winning iTunes digital jukebox software and enjoy the best digital music experience on any platform. iTunes for Windows includes all the same great features that made it the best digital jukebox software for the Mac – a free download with no hidden charges for extra features, MP3 and pristine quality AAC encoding from audio CDs, Smart Playlists, over 250 free Internet radio stations, and the ability to burn custom playlists to CDs and MP3 CDs, burn content to DVDs to back-up an entire music collection and share music between computers via Rendezvous™ over any network, cross-platform.
Apple ignited the personal computer revolution in the 1970s with the Apple II and reinvented the personal computer in the 1980s with the Macintosh. Apple is committed to bringing the best personal computing experience to students, educators, creative professionals and consumers around the world through its innovative hardware, software and Internet offerings.
Boy, Microsoft has to be hating this.
Jeez, installed a new firewall on Wednesday, and I ended up closing all port access to my server. D’oh! Well, I finally had some time last night to fix it. I ended up using Firewall Builder, which I would heartily recommend to anyone that is creating an iptables based firewall. The May and June issues of the Linux Journal has a good tutorial on getting started with it. I don’t believe they’ve added those articles to their website yet, so if anyone needs a copy of them, just drop me a line.
