DawnI've recently been toying with the idea of applying for a job in the Qatar Campus of CMU. It might be an interesting life experience, to live in the middle east for awhile, especially without changing employers and keeping open the ease of moving back later. Still a toy idea.
I've also found that SUN's amd64 JVM is, unfortunately, not very good -- I have some code that, on the same machine, bombs on the amd64 JVM but works fine on the x86 JVM. Frustrating. Now, onto a grab bag of topics..
This looks like an interesting way to travel the world. I'm not sure how it compares to Hostels -- in both cases a high degree of trust is required, but a paranoid life sucks utterly.
Some reading on Wikipedia and controversy..
One dose of stupidity Two doses of stupidity Three doses of stupidity
Ayn Rand didn't like Libertarians.
Saddam could have voted in Iraq's elections if he had been around.
Cat Stevens is to record a song to benefit the victims of the tsunami. He hasn't recorded anything since his conversion to Islam, but considers this to be a cause worth getting involved in after all this time.
Some form of Solaris is to be released here. That'll be interesting -- the license isn't that great though.
Some people apparently keep their home directory in subversion. It's an interesting idea, with some appeal. I may do that someday..
The trials are going on for the abuse at Abu Gharib. Javal Davis has plead guilty to some abuses, in a plea bargain that limits his sentence to 18 months. Some of the other abusers have also plead guilty, and achieved similarly light punishments. No surprise there, unfortunately.
The Mac Mini looks very cool. It's a very very small mac for not too much money. I wish I had one. I presently have no working desktop at home, and this'd be a great replacement for my DVD player.
There's work on a new version of the GPL. This is being done by the FSF's new counsel, Eben Moglen
I like how we live in a country where we need to hear that, for now, attacking other countries is not on the agenda. "I don't feel like attacking anyone today". Wonderful! Perhaps they're not in the mood to do other atrocities either.
The NIH is implementing its earlier proposal to mandate open access to research done with its funding. Cool! Along with that comes some controversial requirements that its employees not make money doing consulting or own stock in some companies that it deals with. Personally, I see this as a good thing, although Nicole sees things very differently.
The cloner of Dolly the sheep is to start cloning humans in the UK. Interesting.
That's all, for now.
Dusk