Pudding Time! Archives: tech
Instant Music Acid Music GarageBand One of the things I was hoping for when Apple announced GarageBand in the first place was a comparison...
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Figures that on the day Wired reports gmail invitations aren't worth anything on eBay anymore I'd get the ability to send three. One's claimed. Two...
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Wow: Snownews is what appears to be a fairly useful RSS reader for consoles. It includes an OPML conversion script so you can take a...
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Over the past few days a friend & I have discovered the joys of Fire's support for GnuPG. I don't really have any need for...
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Anyone else remember fvwm95? It was mean to provide Linux with a "just-like-Windows-95" look by creatively hacking fvwm2. I think I remember first encountering it...
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Unison gets a big, fat "where have you been my whole life?" for making syncing directories between a laptop and a server a little...
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I'd like to issue a retraction. Last month, I wrote of Trillian, the instant messaging client: "... the full version of Trillian is a...
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This is another one of those "shoulda been a blogmark," but it cheered me immensely to remember the special madness you find out there...
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Part of the Palm legend lovingly told and retold among PDA enthusiasts is the way inventor Jeff Hawkins carried around a block of wood in...
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Ed's over on his blog coping with a reaction to escaped markup in XML documents which is, evidently, bad. That, in turn, puts me...
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There's a minidv camcorder in the house now. We picked up a fairly inexpensive one on sale at Sears for about what it would...
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Futzing around Daypop netted me the Fontifier. You download a template, use a felt-tip pen to write the alphabet, numbers, and some other characters,...
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I've got a weird habit when I'm reading web pages. I tend to click-select text up and down the page while I'm reading. It's...
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The last few days have been a gray, twilight struggle with some sort of sinus thing that's reduced me from a figure of anti-pain-relief...
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I've suspected for a while now that AOL's spam filters have a screw loose. Communicating with one professor, for instance, has always depended on making...
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Ed's casting about for a decent RSS aggregator for Mac OS 9 and reporting that Amphetadesk isn't bad. Snappy reports GNUS does RSS, but I've...
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After the first few sentences, I thought the ever good-natured Ed had composed a gentle rebuttal to my own post regarding the perils of...
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No comment on Saddam's capture outside of "Good." I was more intrigued by the mail that appeared in my inbox this morning with the headline...
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I'm beginning to think that the worst mistake Sun made in the past few months was naming its "Mad Hatter" product the Java Desktop...
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I think I'm going to form a foundation that offers tech journalists rewards for failing to mention that a given application or protocol is...
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I got an offer from Landware this morning for a free copy of the company's tip calculator for the Palm. I think I solved...
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Why is WEP killing printing over Wi-FI?...
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El Reg is getting spit all over the screen in its eagerness to subject IBM to death by 1,000 snarks for saying "The Time...
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An ActiveX control using Gecko: "The Mozilla control is an ActiveX control that encapsulates the Gecko layout engine, allowing it to be used in any...
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Outlook 2003's default refusal to display images in HTML mail has at least one direct marketing industry type worried about the bottom line. Unfortunate...
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ShadowGoogle handles this sort of thing for OS X, but Google does it a little better under Windows with the new Google Deskbar. It sits...
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Sam's recent anti-Firebird screed drew some attention from Mozilla project devotees. And I'll note that I'm pleasantly surprised at their civility....
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If this season had an official motto, it would have to be "Damnit, Jim, I'm an editor/columnist/student, not a Unix sysadmin." Which gives me a...
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So, we're looking into lightening the administrative load around here by handing off a few of the weblogs to another host (I've already got a...
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Sam Rowe isn't too happy with Mozilla's latest change in direction, and I guess I'm not, either.
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For folks keeping score on the IM front, puddingbowl.org's Jabber server now has an MSN messaging gateway established. If you use MSN, I can be...
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Apple's getting ready to launch iTunes Music Store for Windows next week. Off the hip prediction? MusicMatch's own download service launch forced Apple's hand. Once...
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So IM sucks. On the other hand, it's sort of cool, too. Over the past three or four years, it's been a happy medium between...
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Just got around to finding where my GPS receiver's data cable went after The Great Office Move, so I was able to download our...
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A few days ago, Ed had something useful to say about the state of instant messaging, which is that it's what e-mail could have been...
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Yep, another link to paying work, but I'm doing it this time because it isn't every day you get to mention the bloody machine...
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PuddingTimeNotes is a wiki entry for keeping track of how Puddingtime is put together with MovableType, which plugins get used, and some design considerations. I'm...
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Here's an interview with the man who invented CTRL-ALT-DEL, and once reportedly said "I just coded the Ctrl-Alt-Del sequence. Bill Gates made it famous," according...
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mod_gzip is up and running after a few days of testing. It wanted to kill my MovableType installation, and there was a small amount...
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Things might be bumpy today. I woke up to find the machine that hosts everything wobbling around on its last legs. Looks like the...
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"... There is no SCO code in the Linux kernel. Never!" The latest edition of my Enterprise Unix Roundup column is online, offering about...
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On the event of Bill Joy's departure from Sun, the Register has a brief appreciation of vi, including this comment from Mr. Joy: "People...
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If there's one thing I miss about being in the thick of the whole Linux thing, it's being on the mailing list for communiques...
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Microsoft seems to have learned a new marketing routine: "When in doubt, blame the terrorists.". At this point, I'm more than happy to call Outlook...
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WIRED has a bit about increased scrutiny of consumer electronics at airport inspection stops. Does anyone remember anticipating air travel? The best parts of the...
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If you've been reading much that I've written in the past few years, you might be familiar with my terrible issues with customer service. Here's...
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Via MetaFilter we get the USGS Seamless Data Distribution System Viewer, which allows for crazy levels of detail of just about anywhere they've gotten...
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This weekend was science project weekend around the ranch. Some time early in the week my wireless access point gave up the ghost. It was...
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Dot-Com Lawsuit against Merrill Lynch Tossed, but I really just like this quote: "Seeking to lay the blame for the enormous Internet Bubble solely...
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This week we're playing with Outlook. Norton Antivirus in place? check xkeymacs? check Special "clone it all somewhere safe just in case" procmail rule?...
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Emacs lover? Enduring Win32? Cygwin and Emacs for Win32 can be livable....
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Ding-dong the GIF patent is dead. So, whither PNG?...
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Once upon a time, I came up with an idea to stop criminal assaults like rape and mugging. Simple: we'd create life-like androids packed...
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The WSJ explains how to fake a hard day at the office: "It has never been easier to be a white-collar slacker. While the uninitiated...
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Update: Well, the problem turned out to be Safari hating the "z index" attribute, which the folks who built the "3 column" part of...
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. . . before the rest of us strangle to death on spam. The FTC, SEC, Post Office, and several other countries have decided...
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The Gettysburg Address as Powerpoint presentation. (link via Scott Rosenberg)...
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SCO's sent a letter out to its customers telling them it's suspending its Linux activities because of IBM's alleged infringement of its intellectual property....
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For our "Minor Tuesday Tech Mystery" we have a Mozilla nightly build for Win32 that runs from a folder on my desktop just fine, but...
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Seven or eight years ago, when you installed Red Hat, you got a desktop that looked sort-of-kind-of like the default Windows 95 desktop, right...
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With the iBook back in the shop for some more just-before-warranty-termination work, I turned back to the Windows machine, only to learn that Mozilla,...
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The National Review has had its say about the Grokster ruling (in which file sharing software was let off the hook): "By legalizing Internet file-trading...
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EarthLink is testing challenge-response spam fighting system. Curious to see how that pans out. AOL says it'll be too hard for users to manage....
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Useful Flash-killing stylesheet (for browsers that allow user-selected CSS) (scroll down to "Mozilla ad blocking)...
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NH is getting a pro-wardriving law (and WIRED is there to condescend to people who somehow don' t understand how to turn on WEP)...
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Well, this is sort of interesting. Microsoft is about to release a public beta of "Three Degrees," which looks to be an enhanced, ad hoc...
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Which OS are You? Oh... Sam pointed there's an alternate reading of that headline. Naturally I'm not unhappy to be designated as Debian-like in...
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RSS/RDF is for more than just telling you all the new headlines on a blog. You can use it to point to anything with...
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Yesterday Sam noticed an entry by Jason Kottke about header abuse, namely RSS readers reporting themselves as referers when they access Web sites. This...
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Prodigy parent SBC Communications believes "any Web site that has a menu that remains on the screen while a user clicks through the site"...
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Prodigy parent SBC Communications believes "any Web site that has a menu that remains on the screen while a user clicks through the site"...
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Over on Surfin' Safari, Dave Hyatt asks: "Do news readers like NetNewsWire and Feedreader contain functionality that should be absorbed into browser applications like Safari,...
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Sam has a complaint about the direction of the W3C with a slightly different angle from Mark Pilgrim's recent screed. I'm with him in...
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Privacy Digest caught an item from The Register noting that the DoD's domain registration system is wide open to all sorts of abuse. Considering...
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Mr. Pilgrim is unhappy with the state of XHTML. Until I read a followup from him, the dropped <cite> tag had me pretty worked up,...
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Looks like Palm is dumping Graffiti in favor of "Graffiti 2," which is just Jot. Good. I started using my Palm for my class...
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The MPAA thwarted: "A Norwegian teenager who helped crack a code meant to protect the content of DVDs won full backing from an Oslo court...
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Apropos yesterday's notes about Internet Explorer's speed and apparent hatred of basic handshaking, Michael B. dropped this line after I lamented to him that...
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Ever wonder why Internet Explorer seems so buttery smooth? Ignoring TCP/IP's most cherished mating dance seems to help....
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Mike Lee discovered Crystalix, a service that renders your face in 3D in a block of crystal, so he had one made and documented the...
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Slashdot bears the news that IBM has posted a Software Withdrawal Notice on OS/2. Mourning wails echo through the halls of nerddom....
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From Sean MacLennan's Gopher archive, we have Trey Harris' account of a curious geographic limit to sendmail's range: "I was working in a job...
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Fascinated by all things monkey? Monkeywire is a mailing list worth consideration. Low traffic monkeys monkeys monkeys....
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m sent me a link to another dismal Lindows is going to destroy Microsoft review. I've been out of the "Linux space" for a long...
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Some people optimize computer hardware, and other people optimize coffee grinders. I've begun looking for a new coffee maker, and I'm already sorry I didn't...
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This week's Crossnodes column introduces wikis and weblogs to my audience, including an obligatory nod to Microsoft's stealth-blogging software, Sharepoint. I usually slip these...
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eWeek reports that AOL enterprise instant messaging is out to the tune of $34 to $40 a seat for starters. The big features are...
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802.11 Planet reports that there's a new security scheme for 802.11 based on the upcoming 802.11i spec. The difference between the new standard (WPA)...
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Slashdot reports that Blogger got itself hacked. Michael took the opportunity to slip in some gloating (and why not... he's backing the "Web bbs"...
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Visit Google, enter a phone number in quotes, get a map. (via JOHO the Blog....
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002-5622790-1860064
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I hated Adventure and thought the "dragon" looked like a giant duck, but it's hard not to be tickled by a Flash version that...
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I hated Adventure and thought the "dragon" looked like a giant duck, but it's hard not to be tickled by a Flash version that...
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LaughingMeme notes that the BBC seems put off by Google's news service....
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Red Hat 8's release is already making the ever-vocal fringe unhappy as it courts the desktop crowd....
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Red Hat 8's release is already making the ever-vocal fringe unhappy as it courts the desktop crowd....
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Kibo's got commentary on typefaces and why they all suck....
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The Boston Globe says Intel has drunk the DRM kool-aid with the upcoming addition of "antipiracy" features....
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© 2002, 2003
Michael Hall under a
Creative Commons License. Items not authored by Michael Hall are © their respective authors.