Author Archives: Donncha

Russell Beattie – Thoughts on Open Sourcing Your Code: The OSS Prototype License. Or why can’t I release code and not support it when I get bored of it.
I have to admit I’m guilty of this. My install-sendmail script configures Sendmail and Fetchmail but about once a month I get an email asking for help. I’m ashamed to say I haven’t responded to any mail about that project in several months. Even the glowing mails that thanked me went unanswered. Rest assured, install-sendmail still works fine with the newest releases of Sendmail, although I really should look into the hosts.deny and hosts.allow integration. I guess most of the people who use my script don’t have anything in /etc/hosts.deny..

Note to self: I must not eat any more of those delicious chocolates Martina got me. *sigh*

Subject: Important, read this.

> Dear Receiver,
>
> You have just received an Irish virus.
>
> Since we are not so technologically advanced in Ireland, this is
> a MANUAL virus.
>
> Please delete all the files on your hard disk yourself and send this
> mail to everyone you know.
>
> That’d be grand, thanx
>
> Paddy O’Hacker
>

Via IRC: BBC4: NATO split over Iraq. – Congressman Pete King tells us why he believes the French can only advise on ‘surrender’. (Realaudio stream)
Just heard that Gulf War 2 will start on March 1st? Pure speculation? Yeah, thought so.

The User Friendly Programmer – or 5 reasons why programmers should have tech support experience. Oooer. Interact with users? *shudder*

SQLite: An Embeddable SQL Database Engine – another SQL server for PostgreSQL users to bash! *grin* (I’m joking right, don’t mail me! hehe)

Hepatitis-like virus protects against HIV

winterspeak.com looks at mobile phones and cameras. Here in Europse, sending pictures is nice but it’s expensive. Ok, it’s useful too, I’ve posted pictures from my nokia 7650 here at least 3 times in the last month.
I got my phone bill yesterday and wasn’t prepared for the shock of the price of this new technology. Vodafone promised free access to Vodafone Live! for the month of January and part of February. I, and I presume most people, would guess that means free access to the Internet via their wap browser on the phone. Not so.
I was charged for downloading just over 6MB of data at 20c/kb. You do the math. All accesses to the Vodafone Live! website was free but as soon as I went to Google or downloaded .jar or .sis files from elsewhere the charges mounted up. Time for me to monitor my phone bill online and I must get an infra red port soon.

Stop Smoking Now

In New Zealand the price of cigarettes are forced up by a law that says they must increase with the consumer price index. There have been reports in the newspapers lately claiming that children in poorer families are going without food, as the price of cigarettes becomes more of a burden for families on low incomes.

Here in Ireland cigarettes have come under attack too. The price has been increased and now sits somewhere around 5 Euro for 20 (I think). Smoking will be banned in restaurants and pubs on January 1st next year and it’s looking good for the 75% of the Irish population that are non-smokers. I for one can’t wait to go into a night club and not come away reaking of smoke..

Just noticed a new feature of Galeon. It remembers the zoom setting on any particular visited page! Excellent!