Koozie Notes

Lunar Eclipse Photo

I found a beautiful picture of the lunar eclipse on Russell Croman's site. He also has pictures on the construction of his new observatory.

-Chris

Update 1 NOV 2004
Andy found another cool photo of the lunar eclipse.

Stack or Queue?

Jeremy asks his readers, "Is your email inbox a stack or a queue?"

I prefer a stack. I like to see new emails at the top instead of having to scroll down. If I actually kept my inbox cleaned up, it wouldn't be that big of an issue.

I found some great techniques for dealing with email overload in David Allen's book, "Getting Things Done." I purchased the audio version and listened to it while driving on a long car trip. David presents a ton of tricks for making your life easier. A sample of some of David's tips can be found on his site, www.davidco.com.

If Jeremy brings up Vi versus Emacs, put me down for Vim. :-)

-Chris

Tivo's New Patch

(via PVRBlog) Wired carries an interview with Tivo's lawyer, Matthew Zinn.

Sometime in the next few months, your machine will quietly download a patch that makes it respond to a new copy protection scheme from software maker Macrovision. The app puts restrictions on how long your DVR can save certain kinds of shows - so far, just pay-per-view and video-on-demand programs. It's the first time your TiVo won't let you watch whatever you want, whenever you want.

Slashdot covers the story as well.

-Chris

Canon DSLR 20D Review

Randal Schwartz, avid perl hacker and author, writes about his new gadget, a Canon 20D Digital SLR.

After shooting for a year with my Digital Rebel, I was pleased to hear that Canon was replacing its 10D with a unit that was reportedly both better and cheaper. Sorry wallet, time to take another hit. I put my money down for a 20D, proudly picking it up from my local store, where I was one of the first two customers. I then spent the next two weeks finding odd moments to wander around and shoot interesting things in various conditions, and I'm happy to report that I'm very pleased with my choice.

Consider me jealous. I had my heart set on a Nikon D70, but Randal makes some persuasive arguments for buying the Canon 20D.

-Chris

PuTTY: Upgrade to Release 0.56

(via Slashdot) If you use PuTTY, a free ssh client, please take a few minutes to upgrade to 0.56.

PuTTY 0.56, released today, fixes a serious security hole which can allow a server to execute code of its choice on a PuTTY client connecting to it. In SSH2, the attack can be performed before host key verification, meaning that even if you trust the server you think you are connecting to, a different machine could be impersonating it and could launch the attack before you could tell the difference. We recommend everybody upgrade to 0.56 as soon as possible.

-Chris

Lord of the Rings - as Tolkien Intended

Jeff Guin writes that U.S. publisher, Hougton Mifflin, has published JRR Tolkien's "Lord of the Rings" as a single collector's edition.

Tolkien saw his single story arbitrarily divided into three separate titles -- The Fellowship of the Ring (1954), The Two Towers (1955) and The Return of the King (1956). These editions had one color of ink and no extra maps. His displeasure was extreme, but because none of the three sold especially well -- sometimes as few as 1,500 copies annually each over the next decade, Harper notes -- Tolkien's snit made little difference.

Growing up in the 80's, I read all three as paperbacks.  I still have my original set which included a fourth book, "The Hobbit."  My worn copy of Fellowship still sports masking tape on the spine.  It took a good beating from daily rides in my school book bag.
I will definitely place this new, "Lord of the Rings," edition on my Christmas list.

-Chris

Last Wishes

LastWishes.com will e-mail your last messages to friends and family.

Since it was launched last October, the site has drawn more than 10,000 customers who've paid initial fees of at least $39.99 and agreed to annual fees from now till doomsday, all to get in the last word by text, photos and videos for their loved (and maybe not-so-loved) ones.

Why can't I come up with something as clever as this? First I read about 19 yr old who successfully started mobiletracker.net making 55K annually in advertising. Next I'm surprised by LastWishes.com's 10,000 paying customers. Looks like I just need a good idea and a little luck.

-Chris

Sony DVDirect

I haven't messed with converting any of my old VHS tapes to DVD yet, but this new DVDirect device from Sony looks promising.

Sony's new DVDirect™ (pronounced DVD Direct) device can connect directly to a camcorder or VCR for transferring tape-based video footage to DVD for playback on most home DVD players and PC DVD-ROM drives.

I just can't see myself spending hours trying to get old movies loaded onto my computer so I can try to edit and burn them on to DVDs. I'm just going to stick with digital photography for now.

-Chris

Not Enforced Silence

I really enjoyed a quote in Paul McNamara's column, "That Sun-HP Fight."

HP would be better served to heed the famous words of Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis, who, though he pondered free speech long before the Internet, nevertheless got it right: "If there be time to expose through discussion the falsehood and fallacies, to avert the evil by the process of education, the remedy to be applied is more speech, not enforced silence."

I agree with Paul McNamara's position that HP should not have tried to litigate this problem away. They should have tried to beat Schwartz at his own game by publishing convincing arguments to win back their customers.

-Chris

Real Facts: Windows vs. Linux Security

(via NeoWin) Register posted a story titled, "Windows v Linux security: the real facts."

But what's the truth? For every claim there is, somewhere, a counterclaim. But until now there has been no systematic and detailed effort to address Microsoft's major security bullet points in report form. In a new analysis published here, however, Nicholas Petreley* sets out to correct this deficit, considering the claims one at a time in detail, and providing assessments backed by hard data. Petreley concludes that Microsoft's efforts to dispel Linux 'myths' are based largely on faulty reasoning and overly narrow statistical analysis. Even if you think you know this already (as we fear may be the case for numerous Register readers), we think you'll find it useful to be able to say why you know it, what the facts and the numbers really are, and where you can get the document to back up what you're saying.

One can view Nicholas Petreley's report online or as a PDF.

-Chris