Things I am interested in…

These are my links for August 21st:

• Sully Dog home page –
• Screen Space: A blog & podcast about users, texts, and technology –
• Hack&Dev | Bringing Linux to the Embedded World –
• FrontPage – Handhelds.org MoinMoin Wiki –
• TamsPalm – the Palm OS Blog –
• PlmPowerups –
• SCOTTEVEST/SeV® iPod Clothing and Travel Clothing Solutionsâ?¢ –
• Green Laser Pointer from Wicked Lasers. –
• Pink Tentacle –
• Webmonkey: the Web Developers Resource –
• Exclusive: A robot with a biological brain | Emerging Technology Trends | ZDNet.com –
• Cetus GPS – N 55° 23´ E 10° 26´ –
• Main Page – Wikihowto: a howto site anyone can edit –
• Just Mobile – Accessories for PDA, Smartphones and Handheld Devices –
• Freedom Input Ltd – Home –
• MP3 Player Cases PDA Cases Smartphone â?? iPod Cases PDA Cables Accessories â?? Protective Case Manufacturer â?? Proporta.com –
• All About Symbian – News, Reviews, and Software for Symbian, Series 60 (S60) and UIQ phones –
• Resetting your device (Soft, System/Warm, Hard, In-Cradle, Power Down, Battery Disconnect, Zero Out) –
• Louie Mantia –
• Free Photoshop Tutorials | PhotoshopStar –
• World of development economics Warcraft – How the World Works – Salon.com –
• Macenstein –
• The Permission Problem: Financial Page: The New Yorker –
• Drop.io attobrute – My drop!
• Switzerland Network Testing Tool | Electronic Frontier Foundation –
• PriceMe – Online Shopping & Price Comparison –
• Reviews from Epinions –
• Home Page – Television Tropes & Idioms –
• The Roxx Climbing Centre –
• Drop.io: Simple Private Sharing –
• Quietpc.co.nz for a Quiet PC – Silence the noise! –
• Build a Silent PC – Home –
• silentpcreview.com | Everything about Silent / Quiet Computers –
• Google Calendar: How to Sync Any Desktop Calendar with Google Calendar –
• Booksthatmakeyoudumb –
• GCALSYNC – synchronize your phone with Google Calendar –
• SuperGenPass: A Free Bookmarklet Password Generator. –
• The New England Skeptical Society –
• Free Gamer – open source games –
• Travian Toolbox : Homepage –
• NerdyShirts :: Funny T-Shirts, Retro Shirts and Nostalgic Tees –
• Internet T-Shirts, Fashion, And Accessories –
• The Mothership! The Apple Lisa and Early Macintosh Archive! –
• FreeIndie.Com –
• freezepop –
• Tesla Motors –
• AutoblogGreen –
• Evo – Supercar and performance car reviews –
• allmusic –
• PopMatters –
• Text To Picture (TXT2PIC) – Write Text On Any Picture Or Choose Image Template –
• The Official Xpadder Homepage –
• Solve Puzzles for Science | Foldit –

Just the other day a friend of mine made a comment in an email about how his computer was not running all that well under Windows Vista, to which I replied:

“Windows Vista is the spawn of the devil!”

He responded by asking me what I had “against” Vista.  He had only had a few minor problems with it (italics mine), such as several items of software not working, including video drivers I would imagine.  He is a keen audiophile, and mentioned that for him the most annoying thing was the time when iTunes would not function.

Here is my reply to his question (which I believe he had already answered in part):

I don’t like Vista because it is built on the premise that everyone who uses it is a potential thief (whether they are or not). There are parts of Vista that the person who has bought the computer hardware, and has also bought the computer software (including Vista), has no control over – Microsoft does.

In the future you, and everyone else using Vista, may find yourself locked out of your own computer because Microsoft find something you are doing objectionable (most likely because you haven’t paid them enough to do it, on a repeating basis).  Or another scenario is that the overzealous and oversensitive “protection” system ( e.g., “tilt bits”) produces a false positive and shuts you down even though you are doing something totally legitimate.

For an interesting (and controversial) analysis of this see the article referred to in my April blog post – http://turbott.net/blog/2007/04/22/the-longest-corporate-suicide-note-in-history/ .

Copy protection doesn’t work – it merely makes things harder and more cumbersome for the average honest user.  Pirates have been able to hack past every single copy protection system yet devised, including that for BluRay, HDDVD, and the protection on the iPhone.  The average time that passes between a piece of (DRM protected) music appearing on iTunes, and the same piece of music appearing stripped of copy protection on some peer to peer site is around five minutes.  Once an item has been hacked, anyone with access to the internet and a search engine is able to find a copy (hassle free, that will run on any computer system with ease – except Vista) by entering “{item x} torrent” into the search engine…

I will never deliberately purchase Windows Vista until such time as I have no choice.  This will only be when the majority of games I am interested in playing will not run on anything else.  Even then, I will probably keep a seperate games’ machine, tainted with Vista.  The rest of my network will continue using operating systems that I have legitimately purchased, and therefore can expect to retain control over, instead of Microsoft or any other third party…

Here endeth the rant!

What is the semantic web I hear you ask?

 Well here are two articles that can help you, from the creator of the world wide web, Tim Berners-Lee:

• Scientific American article
• a slightly more technical article regarding how it could acutally work

Here’s hoping that this all happens sooner rather than later…

(will take over the world)

 Not really going to happen any time soon.

 However, to see an intersting video of a modular robot that can convert from a snake to a hoop to a spider and back again, go here.