You called it a tired old dance, boring, the same old. And yet, you watch with disgust, as it slowly loosens us, takes away the day's kind of time, establishes the field. For us, it's not a painting, it's the key to a door. Anyplace we turn it, any place we build that circle of rocks, the gate will open, and inside, what was once grass takes on a whole new meaning. Even one or two of us with a single stone, going from memory, can cause the light to flicker. You can tell, the influence, when dropped, coins will spin without end...

Tonight, I busted open a food I haven't had for awhile, something which, even ignoring the good teas and cheese, redeems British cooking -- Lemon Curd. My mom gave me some quite some time ago, and after checking the expiration date (still have plenty of time), I spread it on some sourdough bread... yummmmm.. Whowever you are out there, if you haven't tried lemon curd before, head out to your supermarket, and look in the jelly section for it.. it's one of my favourite things, foodwise.

While I've known about this for months, here is an article that includes some tidbits about Solaris 10.. Two things of interest: 1) Zones 2) More fine-grained privileges Zones are probably not too different from Usermode Linux, a pretty decent way to run virtual copies of Linux under a main one. Actually, as I write this, my webserver is actually an instance of this. Concievably, years later, I might switch to a real server, but for now, it's a decent analogy of how zones might work. Basically, I have root, and have my own filesystem, my own /proc, and all that other stuff. The only way I can tell that it's not a real system is that my filesystem devices have funny names. As for the fine-grained privileges, I remember, years ago playing with some of the stuff on Solaris, in a previous job. I remember there was a pretty neat, but horribly slow, tool to tweak the actual privileges, and it actually was useful. Unfortunately, I don't think sun provided a non-GUI way to do it. There are two concerns with the fine-grained privileges, if they are used to set the system up in a way that root can't do everything: a) Bozo bosses - currently, it's impossible on unix for the boss to do things that the root user can't. This is a good thing -- it makes the sysadmin's job a lot harder if they can't actually administer the box, troubleshooting problems, and all that. The most irritating example of what this might do is require the sysadmin to physically visit the boss (or whoever) to perform some mundane task that on a well-designed system they'd have privileges to do b) Less flexibility - If your root-equivilent people can't read some files, how are they going to back them up? Is the tape drive (or other backup device) going to need DRM? When everything is no longer just a stream of bytes, people lose.. Maybe it's good for military/government types though.. I think Sun has pretty much lost the battle for anything but the biggest businesses in the business world, sadly.

Looks like Dell is supporting recycling. Go Dell!

Some thoughts from British politician Robin Cook...

If you're tired of politics, and want something funny, this might hit the spot.. It might be very mildly offensive.

An article on spammers who make big bucks off of the collective torment of millions. The solution? Find where they live, and start, using megaphones connected to record players, reading all their spam at them, 24 hours a day. Follow them wherever they go, and do what it takes to make them miserable. And yes, go further. Vigilanteism is what's necessary when the laws are malfunctioning. Have fun. Yes, if I meet a spammer, or find that I'm living near them, I'm going to spread the word to all the geeks I know, and bad things will happen to them. Micropayments are the wrong solution. Sure, you can move your business around, mister ubercapitalist, but we'll stomp on YOU. On that front, other kinds of scammers/spammers are getting their just deserts.

Looks like Kasparov won the third round, so he and Fritz are tied, with the next game deciding the outcome. I found the website for this game. Cool!

I find this to be hilarious. In Serbia, they need 50% of the people to have voted in an election to choose their president, and they failed to get that. Of course, in the U.S., we also probably have low voter turnout, but it's not as visible to the public because nothing happens when turnout is low, except the loonies on the right tend to get elected more, as fundies tend to be much more politically active than the average American.

Here's a new science BLOG to read regularly. Apparently, Google thought they were linking to me, for some odd reason (that's how I found them), but I saw no signs of that on their site. I guess I'll link to them instead. :)

I notice how this site has the normal model faire and stuff. It might be more amusing, although rather morose, to have pictures instead of the people right as the service is to be useful. Heh. Seriously though, it's not a very unique idea to have emails that only go out on one's death. I have some things set up on my systems that would do similar things should I not check in for sufficiently long.. although I've never thought to sell it as a service. I wonder if their business will take off.

Incidentally, here's the dirt on diamonds. De Beers keeps them artifically expensive. Schmucks.

I had a very enjoyable conversation tonight with a friend. Kind of a nice way to end the evening.

I have three ideas that are baking in my brain like an oven. They'll be ready soon.

I think I need some sleep