Posts from — September 2003

teoma now has this blog, as an expert link on blogs, and we all know that its bloody unlikely that i'm an expert on such things now don't we, well sort of, but anyway, i find it interesting that it is this site and not others.

Compass.

A new Labour (but definitely not New Labour) ginger group has been launched, by the name of Compass. It looks interesting and some good people are involved.

[Crooked Timber]

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now this sounds somewhat progressive, maybe we need it in the U.S.

why yes, today is talk like a pirate day, how did you know?

I know they'll tell about the night I died. Slim Dusty – Australian country music icon – passes on. You know him – “There's nothing so lonesome, morbid or drear, than to stand in the bar of the pub with no beer.” [MetaFilter]

everyone knows it's windy. Was Isabel more hype than substance? Yes, there are millions without power right now and some states on the Eastern seaboard are experiencing flooding, but the way this storm was presented for the last week (Axis of Isabel postings notwithstanding),… [A Small Victory]

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of course it was more hype than substance, but then it was category 5 for a while, and that was substantial. I think the winds in my area peaked at 45, and the rain was no more than 2 inches.

V-Day Online Organizer. I'm trying to find my replacement for V-Day. If you know of anyone in New York that'd be interested, let… [zephoria]

Online coverage of WSIS PrepCom-3. Here are some tools to help you follow the work of the WSIS PrepCom-3 meeting, which is going on now in Geneva. First, the “governance” email list, hosted by Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility. Many members of the list are… [InternetPolicy.net]

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i wonder how large the community of watchers is compared the group of participants? i bet it isn't that much of a difference….

since people keep hitting my blog looking for info on the g5 supercomputer, here is the link to the research computing site with the info you are looking for.

it appears some people some people are trying to bypass the encryption on some files and it requires a beowolf cluster, now, it seems to me that this is particularly problematic because it does not really matter what they find, it could have all been constructed to be found by someone else. In short there is no way of ensuring the authenticity of this request at all even if it was personal acquaintence. It surely looks like it is a huge problem. However, the point should be clear to all that read it, there are huge questions around voter fraud with these systems and there is reason to believe that if it is a possibility then someone might perpetrate it, and that should be known, so…. well, i don't suggest anyone do anything other than their own will because i could go either way on this type of request. I do think we need external vote auditors and paper trails though.

The Simputer keeps stumbling. We'd be impressed if anyone remembered this, but the very first non-test post on Gizmodo was about the Simputer, a handheld computer designed to be used by the world's rural poor. At the time we reported that the Indian non-profit group which designed the Simputer had been having some trouble finding licensees to actually build them. Now, over a year later, Rediff follows up to see how things are going and finds that there are still some problems getting Simputers, which turned out to cost as much as a desktop PC, into the hands of people who need them. One licensee, Encore, has sold fewer than a couple of thousand, while the other licensee, PicoPeta, has yet to even put their version of the Simputer on sale. Read [Via Slashdot]… [Gizmodo]