Monthly Archives: September 2004

Link-O-Rama 04/09/30

Every now and then, I’m just going to post some interesting links I’ve stumbled upon, but that I don’t have time to really comment upon. So today’s picks are:

  • UnitedEmailSystems – FREE 3GB Email and MORE! : Just in case the 1 Gb accounts from SpyMac and Gmail are no longer enough for you, this service claims to have not only 3 Gb available free for users, but IMAP and POP3 accounts (so you can use a regular email client like Thunderbird, Eudora or Outlook instead of webmail).
  • FlexWiki: Microsoft’s Third Open Software Project: The world is just a little stranger today. Microsoft has released its third Open Source project. (Readers of tech news will recall that Microsoft’s aggressive stance against Open Source and Linux has in the past made such headlines as “Microsoft: Linux is a cancer” and “Microsoft declares Open Source to be un-American”. Oh well, if you can’t beat ‘em….) The fact that this seems to be a good-quality wiki means that more Microsofties can leap aboard the wiki bandwagon without fear.
  • Wired: Campus Life Comes to Second Life: A glimpse into the future of online learning, where we are represented in a virtual world by avatars. I don’t know… I’d find it quite distracting to be endowed with wings and six arms whilst a creature spawned from Cthulhu was taking notes next to me….
  • Philip K. Dick – How To Build A Universe That Doesn’t Fall Apart Two Days Later: A facinating essay from 1978 by the great science fiction author about the nature of reality, and how it relates to science fiction. In this day of virtual everything, it’s more pertinent than ever.
  • The Godfather horse head pillow: This will be lost on those people who have not seen The Godfather films. Why don’t I find this as creepy as the boyfriend arm pillow?
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Stop the Peacenicks at the Border

The Register has one of the more interesting takes on the recent Cat Stevens as terrorist debacle: Cat Stevens midair terror incident spurs tougher measures. Anyone familiar with the story of Cat Stevens will recall that after a number of love ballads and peace songs in the 1970′s (“Morning Has Broken”, “It’s a Wild World”, “Peace Train”, etc.), he converted to Islam and devoted his life to spreading peace and denouncing war and terrorist activities. That he would not only be put on a no-fly list, but that the plane would be ordered to an emergency landing, being greeted by federal agents and snipers, is proof that the system doesn’t work.

Only a few months before 9/11, I flew to San Diego through Toronto on a business trip. Normally, I take off my Leatherman Wave (a formidable tool which I wear everywhere) before boarding flights, but this time I forgot. I passed through all the airport security and customs without even a second glance. Now, they’re stopping well-known peace advocates, ethnic minorities, and even elderly ladies that dare bring nail clippers on board. How times have changed.

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New BBC Hitchhiker’s Guide goodies

Over at the BBC Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy site, you can now (after too many long years) listen to the first new HHGTTG episodes (direct link: RealPlayer or WMP). This takes up from where the original series left off, at the end of the Restaurant at the End of the Universe. Note that the late and much lamented Douglas Adams himself appears in the series: he recorded his voice playing his favourite part before he died suddenly of a heart attack in 2001.

Also at the site, you can play the re-tooled HHGTTG interactive computer game, originally written by Adams and published by Infocom back in the 1980′s (the source of many long nights and seemingly endless laughter for me in my teens).

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CNet: Microsoft: To secure IE, upgrade to XP

Microsoft: To secure IE, upgrade to XP | CNET News.com

This makes me rather angry. Security is not something that you should have to pay for, especially if you’ve already laid down your hard-earned cash for a product. Understood, it’s not feasible for most businesses to support 10-year-old software like Windows 95, but the 200 million people still using Windows 98, ME and 2000 should not be left open to viruses, trojans and other forms of malware just because they haven’t doled out the money for an upgrade that just wouldn’t be worthwhile to them. Surely a business like Microsoft can issue patches to older versions of Internet Explorer: they certainly have the experience and the manpower to do it. This is just another “forced upgrade” with a large price tag attached.

If you’re one of these 200 million people not running Windows XP, get Firefox.

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