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So… who do you want to betray today? (and yes, you heard me right - “who do you want to betray today”)

From the latest EFFector mailing (Vol. 21, No. 15 May 1, 2008):

MSN Music sold song downloads encumbered with digital rights management (DRM), allowing the music to be played only on approved devices. If you upgraded your computer or operating system, you needed to “reauthorize” your music files with MSN Music’s DRM server. But last week, Microsoft announced that it would deactivate those servers because of the complexity of maintaining the technology — meaning that customers face losing the ability to play their purchased music if they get a new computer or if the hard drive crashes on the old one. Microsoft’s only suggestion for customers so far is to export all purchases onto a CD and then recopy it back onto new computers.” (emphasis mine)

it continues:

“Microsoft is asking its customers to spend more time, labor, and money to make degraded copies of music that was purchased in good faith,” said EFF Executive Director Shari Steele. “This outcome was easily foreseeable from the moment Microsoft chose to wrap MSN Music files in DRM. Microsoft customers should not have to pay for Microsoft’s bad business decisions.” (emphasis mine)

For the full details: go here.

so keep a lookout!!! ;)

Details coming soon.

Yattaaa!!!!

Will be out in next release.

especially when you are highly strung up, /badly in need of a more therapeutic,/natural computing experience. Who says using the mouse is necessarily bad all the time???? Just use it whenever you find you need to….

And no, the MacBook’s trackpad still sucks.

(WARNING: extreme opinions ahead. This post is more for me (as a self-reflective,/cathartic post) than for you)

First, the name - Debian is named after a girl (and a guy). While I have nothing against girls (or guys), yes, it’s as silly as that, but…. I don’t particularly fancy this personalization of a name of a distro that I’m going to be putting on my own personal system. At least not somebody else’s girlfriend - pls!!! I can accept it if the guy wants to name the distro after himself (after all, it is his own work), but!!!! My personal computer system is very personal to me; it’s my own personal system - I don’t like thinking that it has now become an extension of,/a part of, somebody else’s sappy little love story, so Color-Me-Crazy if you like.

Debian stable is fucking outdated. SWIG 1.3.31 is just 1 week shy from being 1 year old, and it’s only what, just made it to “unstable” only??? FUCK!!!! Especially when as SWIG says - ‘2006/11/20 SWIG-1.3.31 has been released. This fixes a Python regression in the last version.’, ‘2006/11/13 SWIG-1.3.30 has been released. This release adds support for R and directors for C# amongst a round of bug fixes.’ HELL, why aren’t these bug fixes in Debian stable yet????

I have been indoctrinated, ever since the early “CrappyLinux” days to think that ““funky” distro-specific, admin-help tools” - whether GUI, - or even CLI - are just crutches for the real hardcore system admin, and badly suckz anywayz. This could possibly/probably be an unreasonable thing to be thinking/an opinion to be having now (I am thinking/talking about Debian specifically here), but… I guess I have grown to develop a certain distaste, or dislike for somebody else’s shit-/early-Redhat/Mandrake tools . What??? me, memorize another distro-specific stuff when I can just get at the files/system directly myself??? no thanks!!!! “/usr/sbin/update-rc.d”, anybody???? A terminal, /text editor (make that a Vim, pls!) is all I need.

I…. (see also point above, about being opinionated) hate System V. The hell with System V init-style.

FUCK the alternatives fucking system!!!! I know what I want and need - and I’ll bloody use it. Don’t need no bloody “alternatives” system to make up its own default mind (FUCK nano as the motherfucking default editor!!!) for me - I am bloody opinionated, - and I’ll choose my own bloody fucking distro to agree with me.

SO,

at the end of the day, is Debian so bloody difficult, /irritating to use???? Probably not. Only I have my own personal biases. And I am aware of them.

Let’s just say that having been such a heavy (yes, and I’m not your brother) email user for a loong time - and then after that, becoming a loong-time email administrator as well, I do not take well to Nige… crap spam. With that, I was quite kindly amused, when I happened to see that Google had decided to go on some “Gmail recruiting campaign” (well, perhaps not???) with this interesting link (params, warts, utms, and all) on its main login page….

Let’s have a “look-see, look-see”, shall we? ;) After the last “gmail delivery flash thingie video adie thingie”, I suppose you can expect the Google folks to come up with some pretty cool shit. Some commentary follows…..

“Did you know that it takes the average person 5 seconds to identify, and delete a single spam message?” Oh really? Well I guess I’m tough, then. Punk!

Guess this movie was “made for the average guy” ;), so let’s see “what the technical docs” will say for us, shall we? WHOOOPS!!! - nothing there (well, much) for us as well….

But there is still some good stuff in there. At least our longstanding suspicions have been confirmed - Google does make use of the crowd after all (”Community Clicks”). And it does make use of Google’s massive infrastructure (ok, so what’s unexpected???) (”Quick Adaptation”). And it does make use of some interesting heuristics (not more commonly used as they hype - at least not according to my own spam,-spam,-spam,-spam,-bacon-and-eggs mixture) (”Powered by Google”). But the last one!!! (”Authentication, for everyone”) This does at least fly in the face of the normal approach - but I’m glad that they did it that way, - vs “doing it the common-but-dummie-and-silly-way” for everybody else. But this can (and it still does!!!!) catch some folks unawares still - apparently, “all your whitelist are belong to inbox” is not that true…

So check your spam folders still!!!! Some whitelist stuff (”filters by email”) can still get in there…. Don’t say I never warned you!!! In the meantime, here’s a BIG UP to the Gmail spam team….

Email needs to get yet better, though. At least Leopard email is a step (just one) in that right direction….

AND NOW, For The REAL ;) STUFF….

(le) Parkour

Contrary to what some crazy gohst told us the last time (remember, “quitters”, and “stayers”? ;P), the true winners in life may very well be the quitters. Or more exactly, the “correct” quitters. I’ve been thinking about “quitting” the correct stuff (ie., the crappy stuff on the side - that is not really that much worth it compared to what I have on my super plate right now; now this, is the main course) for some time now, ever since realizing that this is the right (right as in “smart” as in “right”) thing to do. And of course, having the circumstances as they are push this truth into my brain as well.

So the question now would be, how do I do this properly?

(oh yeah, and I think it may be time to “quit” Wordpress soon as well. My colleagues got a “Simpson’s moment” (that’s what I would call it) laugh from laughing at my Wordpress setup. Boohoo.)

http://www.aikidoshinjukai.com/eng/dojos/dojo-all.htm.

Question, though: is this organization credible? Certainly looks that way - although this is only from a cursory glance… (from home page - “officially recognised by the Aikido World Headquarters in Japan, with Grading Authority”). Something pretty confusing as well in those credits aforementioned - “Aikido World Headquarters” may do just fine for the laymen, but for those who like to do a bit of searching/”who are more tuned in”, the term “Aikikai foundation” (at least now we know which branch of Aikido they belong to!) would have been more straightforward, and direct….

I just realized it’s been 12 years, my love - and still the memory persists. I won’t let go; (I can’t, I don’t want to).

oh, and btw??? West Life’s version SUCKSS!!! a SICK, INSULTING, SHITTY delivery not befitting the power of the song at all. Shitty bastards…. “Boyband” SH!T!!!!
(Westlife’s version - http://youtube.com/watch?v=epP1oFEJnC4)

Sorry for being at least ten days late. I’m really sorry.