Koozie Notes

SCO & GPL

PJ at GrokLaw reports, "SCO Drops Its Claim That the GPL is Unconstitutional."

I find myself reading GrokLaw daily. What can I say, I just like to keep up with the SCO vs [Insert Company Name Here] litigation.

-Chris

Ultimate Stuff

Yesterday, I finally got around to using the Ultimate Boot CD that I burned about a month ago. I found it pretty easy to get the Western Digital's disk tools up and running on a older computer where I was troubleshooting some performance issues. The hard drive tests turned out 'OK', so I just reformatted and installed a new OS.

Mike blogs about another piece of "Ultimate" software used to check program startups and running tasks/processes. Is the use of "Ultimate" overused?

-Chris

Bringing New Ideas

I enjoyed reading Tom Yager's article titled, "Innovate, or Take a Walk."

If I were interviewing prospective IT staff now, my make-or-break question would be: Give me one patentable idea that youve dreamed up in the past six months. It wouldnt have to make sense or be related to my business. If we could bat that idea back and forth excitedly and finally have to stop because it was getting late, that candidates resume would have a spot at the top of the pile.

Amen.

-Chris

PlayStation 2 Better Than Sex?

I found a link to this funny article on Gizmodo titled, "PlayStation 2 Better Than Sex?".

Bachelor Number Two was told that he could choose one of two prizes: either an expenses-paid date with lovely young Jordan, or a PlayStation 2.

He took the PlayStation. The men in the audience cheered.

Reminds me of my college buddies.

-Chris

CD Ripping

While poking around Darren's site, I stumbled on an interesting link to a company that rips your music CDs to MP3. RipDigital provides a service for individuals who want to convert a large CD music collection to MP3.

-Chris

Why Open Software Matters

I read a nice article titled "Why Open Software Matters." The quote below sums it up well.

So, now you've got ten years worth of essays, articles, assignments, photos, music, and other memorabilia saved as a file that no-one else knows for certain how to open, or is not legally allowed to. I'll say again, this type of restriction is not illegal. No company is required to release how their programs work, and they are most certainly not required to let anybody go around imitating them willy nilly. This use of closed standards results in what is known in the industry as "Vendor Lock-In", and is a well known strategy of large software houses. You must keep buying products from the same company if you want to keep up to date software, and you're up the creek if they decide to no longer support a feature you really need, or they refuse to grant license to other companies to work with the types of files you are using.

-Chris

A-Team

Eric Rescorla opined on who he would cast to play the A-Team if the TV show was made into a film. Below I list my proposed cast members.

Part	Actor
Hannibal Smith	Anthony Hopkins
B.A. Baracus	Michael Clarke Duncan
Face	Brad Pitt
Murdock	Steve Buscemi

-Chris

Big Macs, Fries, and Wi-Fi

I read a story about Wayport, a local Austin company, who earned a contract to provide wireless access points in over 6,000 McDonalds restaurants by the end of the year.

"Twenty-four million people a day visit a McDonald's," Lowden said. The fee will be $2.95 for two hours of access, but the average user only utilizes the hot spot for 20-40 minutes, which means the sales may be hugely profitable, he said.

If I was running McDonalds, I would offer free wi-fi just like they offer their patrons free use of their bathrooms. During the 1970s, I still remember my father having to pay a dime to open a bathroom stall door at the airport. I thought the whole idea of charging to use the bathroom was completely ridiculous. As a customer, I feel the same way about having to pay to use Wi-Fi.

-Chris

Lego Volvo

While browsing Gizmodo, I enjoy taking a peek at these pictures of a full size Volvo made out of Legos.

-Chris

Pop3 and Perl

With the help of Perl and a couple of CPAN modules, I was able to write up a small script that downloads email from a POP3 email account and stuffs the emails, headers, and attachments into dated (YYYYMMDD) directories. This is something I've been wanting to do for sometime and I finally got around to writing most of it Sunday night.

So thanks to Graham Barr for writing Net::POP3, Eryq for writing MIME::Tools (MIME::Parser), and Sullivan Beck for writing Date::Manip. To all who contribute to CPAN and Perl, thank you for making my job easier.

-Chris

Code sample from O'Reilly.