Mkava's Ramblings

Had to post this after seeing it on Slashdot on this article: Open Source Music Fingerprinter Gets Patent Nastygram.

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Found this in this article, thought it was not only awesome (I’m not an Al Franken fan) but did drive home the worries of this sort of occurence (own the content and the pipes… Hulu is owned by NBC Universal at time of posting) and the loss of Net Neutrality (which is…. awesome, right, and undeniable right in my mind).

What really amuses me is I didn’t vote Franken in when I voted in Minnesota last. Feel like a dolt for not knowing all his views last time. :/

Video after the break.

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Appeals Court Rules On Internet Obscenity Standards

This frightens me beyond means.

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This is an ad that I saw on Pandora Radio. Such.. a horrible… ad.

Also, Avatar… could have used some more back story to explain a lot. Would have not only moved the ethics of the movie forward more (Is it ethical for the humans to mine out this planet for Unobtainium? Would a trade agreement be ethical, if possible, for the Unobtainium?) but would have explained why the humans wanted the element in the first place. Like how Unobtainium was to deal with the energy crisis back on Earth. Without the Unobtainium, the humans had no chance of space travel on anything more than inside than own galaxy. Rather pivotal point of the story. >.>

And how the mountains floated in the first place, and how it messed up the electronics.. due to huge deposits of Unobtainium and its unique magnetic interactions. The stuff floats for fscks sake. >.>

Plus, there was no joke about how Unobtainium is an engineering joke about something that is generally not in existence but would be great to have. The joke kind of doesn’t work… when it exists.

Still a great movie, but… never having this ad and tons more back story would have been great though.

Almost everybody who has used Windows since XP came out has come across this lovely will reminder when they update Windows. As most people know, I love using Linux. Set it up, get things how you like it, and you’re set. Oh, it wants to update. Ok, sure, you can do that Linux. No problem! Only time you need to restart for an update is mainly those realllllly big ones such as a kernel update. And it’s not forced upon, unlike it is in Windows.

I keep all my machines up to date and generally wait for some downtime, time I’m not wanting to use the rig, to actually update the machine. This works just fine for most of my machines, except for the one at work. I keep that sucker set to asking me when it can download updates and when it can install them. Mainly because I don’t really want it to decide to automatically do something at 3am, when I am not there, and restart on me. XP likely won’t do it to me, but Vista always feels it has the need to do so. Why does Windows insist on restarting every time? I understand that Windows and Linux are certainly not the same thing, but if one can simply get along without a restart, why can’ the other?

And yet another thing, I will never understand how people can run home servers using Windows and expect to have flawless conditions. Linux can have its issues but for the most part, it marches along forever. Ugh, not a fan of Windows when it comes to rig uptime.

Now to wait until the last half hour of work to restart my work rig so it’s ready to go when I  get back tomorrow morning. Bleh. >.>