Stewart, Colbert back on without writers for now
Yep, call me a day late and a dollar short, but after all this time, Stewart and Colbert were back on last night, although still sans writers. While I understand it’s a tough situation for all, having this many people out of work (not just Jon, Steven and the writers, but everyone from makeup to camera to sound, etc) is crazy. Think about your job if you were ‘off’ for two months and had no way to resolve it yourself? Anyway, here’s to the shows (and people’s lives) getting back on track soon. As for the ‘talent’, they were back in the guises we love, with Stewart showing his solidarity with the writers by claiming that, “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart’ is a show we do with our very creative team of field producers and correspondents and studio people and, of course, our writers,” he said Monday night, then added with pointed irony, “From now on, until the end of the strike, we’ll be doing ‘A Daily Show with Jon Stewart.’ But not ‘THE Daily Show.’” Meanwhile Colbert kept it in character with a tirade I can see in my head, “I got a problem here,” snapped Colbert in his most indignant tone. “There are no words on my (Tele)prompter.” Refusing to concede that writers are required to provide his “commentaries,” Colbert declared, “My understanding is, this little magic box (the Teleprompter) reads my thoughts and lays them up on the screen for me to read to the audience.” His director advised him the words would have had to be furnished by staff writers. “The writers!” Colbert scoffed. “The guys on the fourth floor with the opium bongs, playing Guitar Hero all day! I find that a bit of a stretch.” “I don’t like unions,” railed Colbert, whose on-air persona is a right-wing blowhard, “and I don’t need writers. Which brings me to tonight’s Word” — a favorite feature of the show. But Colbert was quickly mortified: There was no word. That would have required a writer.” Ah, so nice for them to be back, maybe tonight I’ll actually have the TV on again; bring on the election coverage Jon!
Glassbooth – how do you line up with the candidates?
You owe it yourself, or me, to visit Glassbooth and fill out their survey. It’s all about politics, specifically how your thoughts line up with the current batch of candidates. Of course mine pull up to Dennis Kucinich, followed by Mike Gravel and John Edwards. Hills is fourth, with Obama a disappointing sixth. Once you have your results you can cross reference every candidate with every issue and get information about how they stand, what they’ve said and how they’ve voted on everything. Really a great site that has educated me far more than I expected. I’m a big Kucinich fan (heck, Willie supports him!) but I’ve never read so much about Gravel, he’s pretty damn impressive too. With all the candidates jockeying for position on the seemingly 100s of debates, it’s nice to have a resource to get some facts. There’s no third party candidates thought, but hey, it’s far more than what most American’s will know about the stances of the candidates on the issues. Everyone should register to vote, then become educated about things; if you don’t you can’t complain.
Music that stands the test of time
Carrie Brownstein (former Sleater-Kinney guitarist) now has a great blog on NPR called Monitor Mix. A recent post talked about her learning what bands were important to her father over the years, and it leads to a question I’ve always wondered, what music that is important to us be as important for our kids when they grow up? In other words, what will make the jump. I posted a comment, and the submission form wouldn’t let me post it! I’ll try again later, but for now I’ve put it here. What bands are important to you, or were growing up, that you can see making the jump to the next generation? (more…)
Allow Varnish to reuse its shared object
BACKGROUND: The following is a proposal I submitted to the Varnish developers in order to make it simpler to integrate Varnish (an HTTP accelerator for web sites) into production environments. fak3r uses Varnish in front of its webserver, Lighttpd, so it’s likely that the page you’re now reading was served to you not by the webserver, but via Varnish.
Currently Varnish requires a C compiler to be present on the machine it’s running on, since it needs to compile the VCL config file into a shared object each time it starts. During shutdown, Varnish removes this shared object since it will be rebuilt during the next start. This routine repeats regardless of if anything has changed in the VCL config file, and serves as a road bump to getting Varnish into certain production environments since traditionally development applications (such as the C compiler) are not allowed in such instances. For now I am putting aside the arguments as to why it’s is acceptable to have development applications in production instances, since that argument’s outcome will vary in different situations, and I am aiming for a solution that will cover all instances.
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PayPal: Open Source Essential to Success
PayPal has used Open Source and Linux exclusively. In an op-ed piece, Matthew Mengerink from PayPal gives his four reasons why Open Souce is Essential to Success. “PayPal transacts more than US$1,500 every second of every day, with millions of people around the world relying on the robustness of its system. It comes as a surprise to many people that PayPal runs such a large financial services company on an open source platform, but that’s precisely how we’re able to deal with the two competing demands our business Over 800,000 High Quality Domains Available For Your Business. Click Here. model places on us: security and innovation. The economic, operational, development and security advantages of open source and Linux put us in the perfect position to both grow and innovate in a safe and secure manner. Here are four reasons why we love our open source system — and four tips for you if you’re thinking of making the switch.“
Buying a Linux laptop in 2007
It’s time for a new laptop, as I’ve detailed, I’ve ripped apart, inserted coins and duct-taped the old iBook back together again enough times, and it’s no longer viable. It’ll work fine on a flat surface, but if you try to use it as a laptop the minor flexing must loosen the video chip, because you quickly find your video locked, with a hard reboot the only fix. The wildcards are me as a buyer, since I’m hardly ordinary with my expectation that any laptop or desktop I’m going to buy is only going to run Linux, and the recent announcements by HP, IBM/Lenovo and Dell about their Linux support (some even pre-installed), I knew I’d finally have choices to consider. In the end I came up with a pretty current system, that Debian or Ubuntu will be 100% compatible with, and will be proud to call home. The detailed specs:
Intel Core 2 Duo T5470, 1.6GHz, 800Mhz FSB, 2M L2 Cache
15.4 inch Wide Screen XGA LCD display
1GB, DDR2, 667MHz 2 DIMM
128MB NVIDIA GeForce 8400M GS
120G 5400RPM SATA Hard Drive
Integrated 10/100 Network Cardand Modem
8X DVD+/-RW with double-layer DVD+R write capability
Integrated High Definition Audio 2.0
Intel 3945 WLAN (802.11a/g) Mini Card
Integrated 2.0 mega pixel webcam
Integrated Bluetooth
85 WHr 9-cell Lithium Ion Primary Battery
This is more system that I originally spec’d out, but the price was right, so I’m very happy. Before I reveal which brand I picked, I’ll tell the interesting story of how I ended up with the ‘top I did, and how things compare for laptop Linux options these days, it’s an interesting ride.
NOTE: feel free to Digg this article if you like it.
Software support must evolve with Open Source
As a IT contractor I’m enjoying giving my opinion when asked, and sometimes even when I’m not asked; I have the confidence to be open and honest with everyone and want them to know that. Because of this I’ve been getting to do things I otherwise would not have since they would not have known I was interested or experienced in such things. One of the things I was hired for was to setup Apache on Linux to work with their web instances. It’s been fun, and while I’ve used Apache for over 10 years, there’s always new things to learn. Recently they asked for my opinion on ’support’ options for Apache. Keeping in mind, they already have support for the hardware and support for the Linux distribution, they still think they need another support channel for Apache. To me this a big waste of money and have somewhat made my case to them. While I understand their position that this support is a way to cover themselves if Apache ‘breaks’, the fact that this software is Open Source has to change the way they have traditionally considered support.
TJX breach total: over 45.7 million card numbers stolen
I reported on this earlier, but only now are we learning the scope of the breach. “At least 45.7 million credit and debit card numbers were stolen by hackers who broke into the computer systems at the TJX Cos. in Framingham and the United Kingdom and siphoned off data over a period of several years, making it the biggest breach of personal data ever reported, according to security specialists. TJX, the Framingham discounter that operates the T.J. Maxx and Marshalls clothing chains, also reported in a regulatory filing yesterday that another 455,000 customers who returned merchandise without receipts had their personal data stolen, including drivers’ license numbers. ‘‘It’s the biggest card heist ever,’’ said 
Avivah Litan, vice president of Gartner Inc. ‘‘This was obviously done over a long period of time, in many locations. It’s done considerable damage.’’” There’s been news that the cards have been used for months now, and now Consumerist covers the ongoing *how did this happen* question. “TJMaxx computer system intruders who stole 45.7 million credit cards. The worm operated undetected for at least 18 months, capturing credit card numbers, then changing timelogs and moving data around to erase its tracks. Initial speculation suggested that the thieves had access to the retailer’s encryption key. Now it may be that the program captured data before it was encrypted. If the latter, the ramifications are immense, as it means every single retailer’s credit card processing system is at risk.“
Separating the man from the soy
An amazing proclamation from a column by James Rutz (pictured), chairman of Megashift Ministries and founder-chairman of Open Church Ministries, titled, “Soy is making kids ‘gay’“. Yep, apparently it’s just that simple folks, Mr Rutz blazes on without nary a mention of sources or anything resembling science, but I’m sure those things will just fall into place. Here’s the gist of his commentary, but feel free to read it yourself from the link above.
There’s a slow poison out there that’s severely damaging our children and threatening to tear apart our culture […] The dangerous food I’m speaking of is soy. Soybean products are feminizing, and they’re all over the place. You can hardly escape them anymore. [...] Soy is feminizing, and commonly leads to a decrease in the size of the penis, sexual confusion and homosexuality. That’s why most of the medical (not socio-spiritual) blame for today’s rise in homosexuality must fall upon the rise in soy formula and other soy products. (Most babies are bottle-fed during some part of their infancy, and one-fourth of them are getting soy milk!) Homosexuals often argue that their homosexuality is inborn because “I can’t remember a time when I wasn’t homosexual.” No, homosexuality is always deviant. But now many of them can truthfully say that they can’t remember a time when excess estrogen wasn’t influencing them.
As you can see, irrefutable (errr…irresponsible?) proof! Of course there’s no mention about how lesbians come to be, but my sneaking suspicion says that it’s Dijon Mustard. What other use can there be for it? As for anyone ordering out for Chinese tonight, they can rest easy because…
P.S.: Soy sauce is fine. Unlike soy milk, it’s perfectly safe because it’s fermented, which changes its molecular structure. Miso, natto and tempeh are also OK, but avoid tofu.
Ah, so soy sauce won’t give you the gay, so it’s not all bad news! I stumbled across this nugget thanks to Right Wing Watch, but have since expanded to take in some of the better titles being given this newly stated information which includes, It’s the Soy, I Tell Ya to Soy milk will give you teh ghey or my personal favorite Gay soy conspiracy revealed! My title was the top I came up with out of six, so I feel I did my best. Meanwhile back in reality the best scientific debunking comes from a commentary from the editors of Scientific American on the topic. Hmmm, I’ll never look at my vegetarian friends the same again! {sarcasm}
Hi, I'm fak3r and I've been online for over 15 years, blogging for 10. I work with open source software, various hardware and whatever else that I can hack on. I enjoy learning by doing, painting infrequently and listening to more music than the law allows. Feel free to follow me and comment on my thoughts and ideas; we're all in it together kid.
