Linux announced fifteen years ago

15 years ago yesterday (I'm really posting this a day late), Linux was announced on comp.os.minix on USENET! Google groups has the original thread.

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Yesterday upon the stair
I met a man who wasn't there
He wasn't there again today
I think he's with the CIA

Why must the world have so many idiots?

Apple has settled with Creative for $100 million dollars over the hirarchcal menu interface (Genre -> Artist -> Album -> Song). This came after Creative claimed a patent (issued to them in 2001) was violated by Apple. There are two problems with this decision.

1. iPods have been around for awhile. Creative has had plenty of time to file for this, but just filed this year.
2. The patent is obvious. It's a system that's been in use for a long time, just applied to a portable digital music player. The fact it is "intuitive" (probably a word used in the patent) means it is OBVIOUS.

Also, the settlement my lower if Creative secures licensing deals with other DMP manufacturers.

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Yesterday upon the stair
I met a man who wasn't there
He wasn't there again today
I think he's with the CIA

I am an INTP personality, apparently.

Whatever.

Harry Potter Personality Quiz by Pirate Monkeys Inc.
Oh, so VOLDEMORT!? hjfsdajfasdhfhadfjhadkp
++ATH
NO CARRIER

And another quiz (more based on the books) says I am

Which HP Kid Are You?

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Yesterday upon the stair
I met a man who wasn't there
He wasn't there again today
I think he's with the CIA

That long?

On slashdot (see links) there is an article saying that under a new National Highway Traffic Safety Asministration resolution, car manufactuers will have to tell people that the car they are buying has a black box (which in this case records data related to how the person drives, such as speed). It also limits what black boxes can record. This sounds good, and is, but dows not have to be complied with until model year 2011. This is is really much too long. After all, how long does it really take for car dealershipws to start telling people which cars have black boxes? Probably a few months, maybe six months, at most a year (it would seem, but I can't know for a fact, so anyone in the industry tell me IN A COMMENT). Changing the programming in black boxes shouldn't take too long either (for the manufacturer), especially as it is almost entirely removing code and changing/adding a few lines of code. So the deadline for compliance could be model year 2007-2009 (somewhere in there)

Also, something interesting said was

while totally irrelevant, it lead to an interesting thought... the data in the recorder is a unique pattern generated by the drivers purposeful actions- eg the data was explicitly designed by the driver and therefore is automatically copyrighted on their behalf..

Someone else said in reply

i don't think that argument would fly, but if it's a unique expression of the owner would it not also be self-incrimination?

(Damn, blockquotes are a pain in the @$$)

This could be helpful, but the cops can get away with most anything, so it doesn't matter.

Unnecessary post #1

It's late. I have to go to school tomorrow. This post is to fill my self-imposed minimum number of posts per random time unit.

...

A while ago, I asked for help installing XGL on my laptop. Then I forgot about doing so. Today, while looking for the instructions that I found using the term "XGL on ubuntu thinkpad R50e" on google, I found it. As the first result.