and unread by the masses.

Such is life.

Yahoo! News

By Amran Abocar

TORONTO (Reuters) - Stonehenge is a massive fertility symbol, according to Canadian researchers who believe they have finally cracked the mystery of the ancient monument in southern England.

In the arrangement of the stones, the researchers say they have spotted the original design: female genitalia.

The theory is laid out in a paper entitled "Stonehenge: a view from medicine" in the July issue of Britain's Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine. [more..]

Perhaps you recall this colossal dam(m) project that the Chinese goverment has been working on for over a decade. Many have predicted problems ranging from environmental damage to catastrophic failure. Will be interesting to see what _does_ happen...

Here's a super small Linux box for all you minimalists. The Mini-Box M-100 from Mini-Box.Com is billed as the [w]orld's smallest mini-ITX computer and comes with a 16MB compact flash embedded Linux distro. Optionally, its available with a 2.5" hard drive for booting W**/W** CE, so its likely most anything can be run on it. Also, the integrated LCD screen and 14 key keypad let you (sorta) run it as a headless standalone. Kind of cool, eh?

Seems PGP - and hopefully by extension GnuPG - is actually a tough nut to crack. This PCWorld.com article (which also contains a brief interview with Phil Zimmerman) relays the difficulties Italian officials are having trying to extract encrypted PDA data aquired from a pair of expired terrorist-types. They've since forwarded the PDAs to the CIA for analysis and it will be interesting to hear if the feds can crack them - thats if we hear anything at all.

"Stiff opposition derails open-source measure" (The Oregonian)

I've been thinking about some of the opposition's statements such as "theres no statute prohibiting the state from using open source software, so why do we need this bill?" and I've concluded that perhaps what open source needs is some advertising. An army of suits pressing the flesh with all those procurement officers would be nice, but how would you address issues of favoritism, or overcome the CYA mentality intrinsic in bureaucracies? Perhaps bureaucrats aren't the right target at all: what if a Citizens for Open and Affordable Software PAC were formed to lobby Oregon's government agencies? Look at the success Bill Sizemore had with Oregon Taxpayers United? This state is full of penny pinchers - maybe shining the light on how Oregon is getting bilked by M$ would create a similar groundswell of angry taxpayers demanding change.

Dave Jones just updated his list of changes in the 2.4 Linux kernel. http://www.codemonkey.org.uk/post-halloween-2.5.txt
Check it out and see what you'll have to do to migrate.

I personally am happy to see that the new logical volume manager will support 2.4's on-disk format, since I've just converted all my boxes to LVM.

123 deaths and over 3,000 cases across ~30 countries: SARS
"China, Vietnam report new deaths; WHO says disease reaches peak in Guangdong"

eTaiwanNews.com/SARS toll climbs as governments struggle to cope

from the article:
"The new deaths brought the global death toll from the virus to 123 with more than 3,000 people infected in around 30 countries, according to an AFP count based on reports from national health offices.
...
Thirteen more possible cases of SARS were reported Friday in Canada, the country hardest hit by SARS outside Asia, as the nation's toll climbed to 266, including 10 deaths." [more..]

State News - StatesmanJournal.com [more..]

Washington reports SARS cases [more..]

I've recently embarked on the process of learning Awk as an alternative to Python and Perl. Like Perl and Python, Awk is also an interpreted language, however its far lighter and its presence on virtually every *NIX box means its highly portable. While Awk lacks the power of Perl or Python, when combined with other stock Unix tools like sed, grep, cat, etc., a high degree of functionality can be achieved. Check out
DMOZ.org's Awk links for various tutorials and examples.

EPIA-M Linux - Intro is a good introduction to Linux. It was sponsored by VIA Technologies as an advertisement for their EPIA M-Series motherboards, but it has some basic, generic info about Linux on x86 that I didn't know.

Check it out.

I found another low-priced wonder system, note that this can take dual xeons, I wonder how fast a cpu pair the chipset can handle....?

here it is:

"* Dell 610 XEON 550 9GB 256MB 40x
Workstation

Features:

* If you're looking for a FAST workstation look no further. The Dell Precision 610 has a powerful Intel XEON CPU, a 10,000RPM LVD SCSI hard drive & 256MB of Memory. Check out the specs:
* Intel XEON PIII 550MHz Processor 512k cache(OPEN SECONDARY CPU SOCKET FOR DUAL PROCESSOR CAPABILITIES FOR AWESOME POWER!)
* 9.1GB 10,000RPM LVD SCSI Hard drive
* 1.44 Floppy Drive
* 40X CD-ROM Drive
* 256MB SDRAM Memory - Expandable to 2048MB maximum (4 DIMM slots)"

Computer Surplus Outlet - Your Liquidator of Today's and Yesterday's Computer Products $299 [more..]

"IBM unveiled an open standards based Linux/Java PDA reference design at LinuxWorld in New York this week. Based on the IBM PowerPC 405LP embedded processor, the reference design, dubbed the "embedded Linux application platform" (e-LAP), is intended to jump-start PDA manufacturers, who can use the design as is, or can modify it to meet their own PDA, electronic book, or "personal media device" requirements."

LinuxDevices.com - the embedded Linux portal: News > View > Full text

365 Days Project

wow !! a new mp3 of strange music every day of 2003 as collected by one of The Bran Flakes.

and a nice big, decent-looking tower case... [more..]

OpenP2P.com: LazyWeb and RSS: Given Enough Eyeballs, Are Features Shallow Too? [Jan. 07, 2003]

Look what the bloggers have come up with now. New ideas were already coming at a pace we can't cope with, and now we have an automation tool to churn them out faster and more automatically. Anyway, syndicate LazyWeb, and embrace change.

OpenP2P.com: In-Room Chat as a Social Tool [Dec. 26, 2002] is an interesting article by Clay Shirky about an experiment using a chat room as a side communication channel during a two day meeting/conference. He liked it a lot.

I've seen the ubiquitous presence of WiFi laptops transform meetings at TiVo in the last year. If someone is taking notes, they might put them onto the web and update them every few minutes as the meeting progresses. If someone whose opinion is needed isn't in the room, they might be brought in using AIM, either "Please come to the xx conference room, we're talking about yy" or simply replying from their desks.

The WiFi laptop has been around for a couple of years, but it's just starting to affect how we work.

Anyway, check Clay's article out.

We all know and love The Linux Documentation Project (tldp.org) for its HOWTOs on everything Linux, but I just discovered The Linux Documentation Project: Guides, a set of free books on Linux-related topics. A very cool resource!

"Tiki is a complex (in features) but easy to use CMS system based on a Wiki, this release of Tiki includes the Wiki and Image galleries. The next version will add a CMS system (Articles, submissions and topics) and blogs. Future versions will add new features (polls, forums, quizzes, e-learning, etc)."

Tiki the CMS [more..]

The 2002 Perl Advent Calendar is pretty darned amusing. You get a new Perl tip (the ones I looked at were little-known CPAN modules) every day from Dec. 1 through Dec. 25th. Also check out previous years' calendars.

SpamArchive.org went live yesterday. Spamarchive.org is a big repository of spam for use by spam filter builders/testers (such as myself).

From a web page design standpoint, I like the animated quote in the upper right corner.

Clementine Lunar Image Browser 1.5

Below is an image of the moon derived from data accumulated by the Clementine satellite. This interface allows you to view an image of the moon, centered on whatever point you indicate by clicking on the image below. In addition you may select from a variety of resolutions and image sizes. You may also retrieve a copy of the actual data returned by the satellite from which the multi-resolution images are derived by using the form in the bottom section of this page.

Clementine Lunar Image Browser 1.5 [more..]

Several developers have recommended Eclipse to me. Eclipse is an IDE, written in Java, and supporting development in several languages.

It's notoriously hard to make a usable IDE, so I'm intrigued.

"So let's talk about coding theory. There are perhaps some of you here tonight who are not experts in coding theory, but rather have been dragged here kicking and screaming. So I thought it would be a good idea if I gave you a sort of instant, five minute graduate course in coding theory.
Coding theorists are concerned with two things. Firstly and most importantly they are concerned with the private lives of two people called Alice and Bob." ....

The Alice and Bob After Dinner Speech [more..]

I'm at EFN tonight listening to Ralph Zeller talk about mutt.

Mutt is apparently the best of the tty-based mail clients (which include pine and elm), and Ralph's going through the feature list.

I'm mostly posting this because I've always wanted to post to the web from my laptop at a presentation.

"PHProjekt is a modular application for the coordination of group activities and to share informations and document via intranet and internet.
Components of PHProjekt: Group calendar, project management, time card system, file management, contact manager, mail client and 9 other modules ...(see feature list).
PHProjekt is available for over 25 languages and 5 databases.
"of course - open source" - PHProjekt is free software.
Current version: 3.3 (9.08.2002)"

PHProjekt :: PHProjekt - groupware

--> I thought postNuke was da bomb, but this looks a little more serious; and includes a mail client by default, AND gantt charts for calendars of projects!! Sounds great for the small enterprise. What is your favorite CMS? Why? What features are most important?

Blog! Make sure you have cookies enabled, otherwise this thing doesn't work!

Other Blogs packages to check out:
B2

happy blogging!

so... this looks interesting... but what can you do with it?

"The Scout Portal Toolkit (SPT) allows groups or organizations that have a collection of knowledge or resources they want to share via the World Wide Web to put that collection online without making a big investment in technical resources or expertise."

Scout Portal Toolkit


--> compare this with PostNuke, a fabulous php project which is the premiere free competition in the Content Management System (CMS) world