Bagels and Half-TWiTs

From the Blogger's Desk:

Sitting here in front of my Linux machine, editing this Blog with Gedit. To my left a cup of coffee from my Expresso machine and a big fat Bagel with philly cream cheese.

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Half-TWiT notes:
I usually start the week off with an earfull of Leo Laporte's TWiT (This Week in Tech) podcast, which he records on Sunday (late) and I catch Monday morning.

This week was the start of his fourth year of Twitting, and for the occasion he invited the old gang from TechTV. He had John C. Dvorak (http://www.dvorak.org/blog/), Kevin Rose (digg.com) and Patrick Norton (http://revision3.com/tekzilla/).

None of the women from the old TechTV days made it, which included Sumi Das, TechLive's Michaela Pereira (2001-2004) now on KTLA channel 5 Morning Edition, and Erica Hill who is now a News Anchor for CNN.

A few of the other women of TechTV are now part of Revision3 or TWiT.TV other podcasts, just to keep you posted.

Leo, John, Kevin and Patrick were at their usual Cranky-Geekness, and all vented on the Windows bid to acquire Yahoo!.

Big news since even my latest magazine of Linux User & Developer had a lead article of Microsoft & Yahoo: A Window of Opportunity for Open Source?

What is your Take on the Bid/Take-over attempt by Microsoft???

Here's Mary Jo Foley's "Take" on the story, in her Blog at ZDnet.

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John C. Dvorak Link: http://www.dvorak.org/blog/
Erica Hill Link: http://www.cnn.com/CNN/anchors_reporters/hill.erica.html
TWiT (This Week In Tech) Link: http://twit.tv/twit
Kevin Rose Link: http://kevinrose.com/
(bump up Kevin's numbers...)
Patrick Norton Tekzilla: http://revision3.com/tekzilla/
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Wingman Out.
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Open Source Software: What's it All About?

Some time ago, an Indian, Siddhi in India, posted a video on a website.

Yesterday, Thursday 04/24/2008 , I watched as he explained in 20 minutes, How a Newbie could create a Wiki, with a free program called Django. A very good computer assisted lesson on working with a program from someone I never heard of before. That, in a nutshell, is a part of what Open Source is all about: Sharing information.

When my interest in Linux began almost a decade ago, there were a little over a 150 Linux Distributions in the wild. Yesterday, a Linux Magzine, Linux User and Developer, told me there were over 550 Linux Distros. That too, in a nutshell, is part of what Open Source is all about: Choice.

And What can be said about Distros can also be said about software, the programs the computer runs. There are multiple programs in just about every category and the great majority of them are free, as in Open Source. Even Java, a program from Sun Microsystems that someone called their Crown Jewels, is being released as Open Source. Sun is also the company that gave us Linux Users, Open Office, the Word Processor, Spreadsheet, Presentation bundle that is a worthy replacement for Microsoft Office. Oh, and it's Free.

Need a Database? there's MySQL, Postgresql, Sqlite2 and many others, again Choice.

Programming Languages? Every Software Development Language is available in some form in Linux, there's even an Open Source version of Microsoft's C## and Dot.Net called Mono, created by the same guy that gave us Gnome, my favorite Desktop environment.

More to come...

A Funny Thing Happened on ...

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Staples Center

The Denver Nuggets Team Bus Caught Fire.


And 2-Hours Plus Later, in the Third Quarter, so did the Lakers.

Particularly Pau Gasol who single-handedly torched them with a playoff career high of 36 points, 16 rebounds and 8 assists.

Call it a Very Good Start for the Lakers...

The OC Resgister had this to say about the incident.
http://www.ocregister.com/articles/pau-gasol-lakers-2022398-kobe-bryant

Going To The Cleaners

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Going To The Cleaners
or
Hangers from China
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Story report from The Post and Courier at Charleston.net
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Many of the country's 30,000 or so dry cleaners are paying twice as much for hangers than they did at the beginning of the year, and they are ticking up prices to cover the mounting expenses.

In January, East Bay Cleaners was paying about 6 cents per wire hanger, or $15.50 for a box of 250. This week it shelled out almost 14 cents apiece, according to owner Kenny Yu. For a business that goes through 800 to 1,000 hangers a day, that's an extra $1,900 to $2,400 a month.

Where are the bulk of dry cleaner hangers coming from?

You guessed it: China.

A good line from Faye Dunaway as Joan Crawford in Mommie Dearest (1981) could go here.

A Big Pizza PIE!

Boston (eCanadaNow) - 43-year old Chris Clark has hit it big, selling the domain name Pizza.com for $2.6 million. He purchased the domain for just $20.

14-years ago, Clark purchased Pizza.com for just $20, and has had it renewed yearly ever since.

It's Good To Be #1

(picture from ESPN.com, webpage)

Yeah it is.

Just ask Google or iTunes or even the 4 teams playing in the Final Four.

None of that computer dyslexia they have for the BCS (which should mean: Bad Computer System) not Bowl Championship Series.

This is the Real Deal!

Among the teams in the hunt is our own SoCal local team from UCLA, maybe you've heard of them, they've been there before. Won like maybe 12 Championships over the years, and looking to return to the Glory they still call: "The Wooden Years".

I would be remiss if I didn't mention the "other" 3: Kansas, North Carolina and Memphis (who plays against UCLA on Saturday at: 3:00 pm).

Because of the magnamitity of CBS, the telecast will be PODCAST over the internet too. It seems the early rounds of March Madness (also podcast) was a Big Hit on cubicles that didn't have a tv handy. Estimates say the "Boss Button", a button that switches from the "games" to an innocuous business-like spreadsheet, was clicked: More than 2.4 million times in the first two rounds.

The Final Four Podcast will be available on CBSSports.com, ESPN.com, SI.com and even Facebook.com.

What did Michael Douglas say in "Wallstreet" ?

Oh yeah: "Greed Is Good."

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The Chidren's Crusade Part 2

Filed under: Hard to Believe
(picture from same source cited below)
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Third Graders "Plot" to hurt teacher in Georgia.

Link to AP report:
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http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5g84E-NqKavdkNfL6nv-ixkYQFiSgD8VPBR8G2
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What the heck is going on???

What is hard to figure out is the planning they went through to gather the "tools" (picture above), and each student assigned a specific "job" (like lookout).

At first Look, one would say "video games", but that could only be part (if any) of the story here.

This is almost like the "Lord of The Flies", which I can safely guess they never saw or read.
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Wingman.

The Chidren's Crusade???

According to an RSS Feed from the BBC today, 25% of the children in the UK between the ages of 8-11 has a profile on a social network.

This is a Bad Trend, here's the link to the story: http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/rss/-/2/hi/technology/7325019.stm

I'm in my 60's and I've been in computers since the early 1980's and only recently have I grudgingly joined the ranks of Social Networks Facebook, MySpace and Yes even Twitter (the global tiny-IM messenger and ultra mini-blog).

The recent warning from security experts, say the fancy gadgets that members put on their "space", mainly with javascript, is highly vulnerable to out side attacks. An the popularity of the sites makes it prime real estate for hackers.

My Credo is: Things are Never as safe as we think and hope they are.

That's my Dime.
Wingman