machine-envy

Insteresting stuff for January 12th through March 7th:

• Running 32-bit Applications on 64-bit Debian GNU/Linux - nt tree, see apt-file code example below. To find out what libraries are needed use the ldd command - be aware that the file you think starts the application is often a script, and you may have to dig a bit to find the actual binary. The example below is
• Arcane Market Is Next to Face Big Credit Test - New York Times -
• Batteries From Nature -
• Some Datasets Available on the Web » Data Wrangling Blog -
• AV-Comparatives -
• Candidates Push for a N.H. Recount - The Caucus - Politics - New York Times Blog -

Insteresting stuff for January 4th through January 11th:

• financial reality » Blog Archive » Minsky Has His Moment -
• 50 Best WordPress Plugins for Power Blogging : MoneyRumour.com -
• ie7-js - Google Code -
• 100 Excellent Free WordPress Themes | Developer’s Toolbox | Smashing Magazine -
• Davis Freeberg’s Digital Connection » Bad COPP No Netflix - eir digital strategies to fail. While I understand the need for the studios to protect their content, I believe that these measures go too far. It makes little sense to block my ability to copy low res internet movies, when I can always rip the DVD straig

Insteresting stuff for December 31st through January 3rd:

• ZSFA — Rails Is A Ghetto (2007-12-31) -
• SRA / Society for Risk Analysis / April 2006 Press Release -
• American Scientist Online - The Easiest Hard Problem -
• Pay Option ARM’s - California’s Billion Pound Gorilla | Loan Modification & Loan Workout News -
• Index of /logtags/howto - e pre-shared key is (afaik) the weakest part in the security of this setup. I’ll explain how to use X.509 certificates instead of pre-shared keys in a later post. If you’re also doing firewalling or some kind of NAT on one of the IPsec endpoints, make sur
• Tune the Web - jaanix -
• Market Ticker: The Year In Review And a Look Ahead for 2008 -

These are my links for December 21st through December 30th:

• Lawlor-Pollock News & Updates -
• How SUVs Can Save the Climate � Sightline Institute -
• pybeanstalk - Google Code -
• Index of /~ben/funkload -
• Nose Plugins: Home -
• Johnny Chung Lee - Human Computer Interaction Research -
• Writing An Hadoop MapReduce Program In Python - Michael G. Noll -
• Is There Anything Good About Men -
• Beanstalkd - Software - xph.us -

Over Christmas, this story broke, and it made me laugh so hard I couldn’t let it pass without commenting. From the Guardian:

Egypt is planning to pass a law that would exact royalty payments from anyone found making copies of the country’s ancient monuments or museum pieces, including the pyramids.

Although the story is clearly barmy, it’s fun to imagine a bunch of developing world delegates getting together during a comfort break at WIPO and asking themselves the question: why is copyright term roughly the same length of time as the history of the Hollywood film industry?

In an extraordinary move the WTO has ruled with Antigua that it was illegal for the US to block online gambling. What makes this extra bizzare is that the compensation is to be claimed by allowing Antigua to violate American intellectual property.

The reaction of the US is to rewrite the rules: “In May, the United States said it was rewriting its trade rules to remove gambling from the jurisdiction of the W.T.O.” It seems to me a little odd to have a trade organisation where members pick and choose rules, but that never stopped the UK doing so with the EU.

Worth watching

This blog was drowning in spam, so some action was needed.  Lets hope the new versions of akismet and spam karma can manage the best they can offer.  I will leave the comments open on this post, so come on casino and pharmacy owners - give it your best shot!

As seen on the excellent music thing

I’ve no idea why it has taken so long to find it, but have a look at esp package manager. It’s simple and it works. An example configuration file to show you what I mean:

## Metadata

%product Foo
%copyright 2000-2007 by Foowhizzer.
%vendor Foocom
%license COPYING
%readme README
%description Foo server.
%version 2.2.2 1

## Filelist

$prefix=/usr/local

f 755 root sys ${prefix}/bin/foo foo
i 755 root sys fooinit fooinit

## Scripts

%preinstall << EOF
echo “doing pre install, enter your name:”
read name
echo “oh hai, $$name, thx for installing”
EOF

%postinstall << END_OF_POSTINSTALL
echo “doing postinstall”
END_OF_POSTINSTALL

And thats it. Run epm and get a deb, rpm, tgz, pkg or whatever.