“Ballmer to Google: You’re a one-hit wonder”
“Pot, meet kettle.” 🙂
Archive of posts filed under the Interests category.
Topics on my particular interests.
Weekend Trip
GoddessJ had a wedding shower to attend, so we packed up and took an overnight trip to the shores of Lake Huron. It was interesting… I saw a large number of power-generating windmills, including a couple that were still being put together (the first time I’d seen them close up — they’re freakin’ huge! I …
“Heavyweight physics prof weighs into climate/energy scrap”
The climate-change debate isn’t finished, but a British scientist has put some hard numbers on the various carbon-neutral energy plans that people have put forward for dealing with it. Interesting reading.
“What I learned from a dumb terminal”
A good tip for any kind of remote troubleshooting — hardware or software.
“Water Ice Found on Mars”
Yes, the Phoenix lander has found water ice! With water-ice proven to exist on Mars, it becomes a lot more likely that life, of some familiar sort, could be there too. It also means that human habitation of Mars could be viable (a lack of water would make a Mars colony prohibitively expensive). No wonder …
Snail Mail — really!
If you’re a true Internet geek, you probably know about RFC 1149, the “Standard for the Transmission of IP Datagrams on Avian Carriers.” Yes, you read that right — it’s a way to transmit information, via Internet protocols, by homing pigeons. It was released on April first, 1990. Well, after eighteen years, it looks like …
Firefox 3 Download Day!
I woke up early this morning, all ready to download the official Firefox 3 onto the five computers that are presently operational here (and help them set a Guinness world record)… only to find that there’s no sign of it. Fortunately, the Firefox FAQ page includes a link to a Twitter page that says the …
First-Party and Third-Party Software
English is a very curious language. When talking about software, for instance, you have first-party programs (programs that are written by the same company that developed the computer or operating system that they’re run on) and third-party programs (programs written by other companies). Where are the second-party programs? For that matter, who would “the second …
Upgrade: Ubuntu Linux 8.04
In the wee hours of last Sunday morning, I decided to take the plunge and upgrade my copy of Ubuntu Linux. I’d been using the previous major release (7.10) since it came out, eight months ago. I’d wanted to wait and upgrade Mini-mEee to 8.04 first, before subjecting my main work system to it, but …
Dell Repair-Guy Visit
My Dell XPS 1210 laptop has been having an occasional problem recently: random pixels have started changing to random colors when it gets warm. I bought a laptop stand with a couple fans in it, to help reduce the heat buildup, and didn’t think anything further of it — until the system started crashing when …