Once again I've been struck by an irresistible compulsion to buy an Apple computer. I already possess an older iBook G3 laptop and a G4 desktop, but they're aging fast. What I really *must have* is a lightweight 12" PowerBook with a G5 CPU.

Of course, no such thing exists yet. All PowerBooks and iBooks are G4 at max 1.67 GHz. Meanwhile, the desktops are sporting dual-G5's at 2.5 GHz. What's holding up the mobile version?

If you've followed the Apple scene, you know the reason. IBM's PowerPC 970FX, also known as G5, is simply too heat-dissipating and power-hungry to be suitable for laptop use. The smallest form factor currently achieved is the flat-panel iMac.

So what can you do? The G4 PowerBooks and iBooks are there, but they're not 64-bit. It seems as if the mobile G5 is just around the corner, but that has been predicted since last summer. So...

... I will wait anyway. I want my 64 bits on my Xcode.

Well, haven't written much lately, which is largely due to World of Warcraft. Tero, a friend of mine from work, sold me a copy of the game. Ever since I've hade no problems of allocating my spare time.

Just reached level 20 with my main character, a night elf druid on Aszune. I also have a level 14 tauren hunter on Shattered Hand. Right now I'm working on a level 11 human warlock (on Aszune too) to make it my main. I really prefer warlocks for some reason, even if druids arent't bad at all either.

I'm actually on my winter vacation for this week, so I'm having a lot of time to play right now. Although I'm also hit with some weird flu with fever for many days now (real world, can't use magical healing).

I was expecting more of this movie. Most of the jokes were already in the trailer. The combination of Dustin Hoffman, Barbra Streisand, Robert De Niro and Ben Stiller should be enough charisma for any film, but the script just didn't cut it.

Basic problem: the movie tries to be serious between the jokes, but there's no message. It could be a parody of those 'never mind what others think, just be yourself' American movies, but it's not really that either. Some of the jokes tried to hit that 'Something About Mary' level, but they're just not evil enough.

So it just seemed kind of standard hollywooderized comedy drama, some good laughs here and there but mediocre all in all.

Kulttuuriministeri Tanja Karpela näyttää ottaneen elämäntehtäväkseen siivota Internetin. En lähde arvuuttelemaan ministerin motiiveja, mutta ainakin väärästä ministeriöstä taitaa olla kyse. Eikö kulttuuriministerin pitäisi keskittyä kehittämään kulttuuria?

Ilmeisesti liikenneministeri Leena Luhtaselle ei ole vieläkään kerrottu, että hänen johtamansa ministeriöön kuuluu myös se viestintä-osa. Muuten luulisi ministerien kykenevän sopimaan edes alkeellisesta työnjaosta?

Jos Tanja Karpelan ehdottama sensuuriesitys kiinnostaa (hyvässä tai pahassa), kannattaa lukea EFFI Ry:n lehdistötiedotteet aiheesta:
- EFFI: Ei digitaalisia kirjarovioita kouluihin ja kirjastoihin
- EFFI: Karpela ei ymmärrä mitä on sensuroimassa

Tiivistelmänä voisi sanoa, että nykyiset Internet-sensuuriohjelmat toimivat aivan miten sattuu. Ne päästävät läpi pornoa ja muuta aikuisten materiaalia, mutta blokkaavat esimerkiksi tieteellisiä artikkeleita ja muuta täysin asiallista sisältöä.

Esim. Kiinassahan tällainen sensuuri kyllä toimii ihan hyvin. Eli ei kai siinä mitään, way to go Tanja!

JATKOA:

Suomalainen Internet-sensuuriohjelmistojen toimittaja HitBack ja EFFI ovat viime päivinä käyneet kiintoisaa julkista vuoropuhelua.

- HitBackin lehdistötiedote 10.2.2005
- EFFIn kirje HitBackille 15.2.2005

Hersyvää!

One more t-shirt website: 80stees.com for those 80's classics.

Check the Linux kernel swear count for a nice graph of various swear words appearing in the source code of Linux. The frequencies of the words are shown from kernel 1.1.13 throughout to 2.6.10, which is the latest at the time of writing.

If would seem that frustration is generally increasing over time :-)

I've been a Debian user ever since Red Hat dropped their 7.3 release support. I've been using unstable (sid) with no problems, until lately. The fault seems to lie in udev.

I don't know how, but a few days ago one of my Debian servers lost its /dev directory completely. Linux could no longer boot with an empty /dev, so I had to fix it with a boot disk. And I don't like doing that, since my 8-port Belkin switchbox hasn't arrived yet.

Seems like this had something to do with upgrading or removing the udev package from the system. I recommend caution when doing anything with udev..

Even more problems now with installing new kernel images. I don't understand why, but when I install 2.6.8 or 2.6.10, I get zero-length initrd images like this:

-rw-r--r--  1 root root

0 Feb  9 19:20 /boot/initrd.img-2.6.10-1-686

Well, gotta dig into it now and see why it happens..

*****

Problem solved. The empty initrd images were being created by mkinitrd, which uses a special device called /dev/fd/3 for outputting the cramfs image. As it turns out, I had copied the /dev/fd directory off a bootdisk, causing /dev/fd/3 to become a regular file. In fact, /dev/fd should be a symlink to /proc/self/fd.

Wrong way:

crw-r--r--  1 root root    3, 0 Feb  9 20:43 /dev/fd/0

crw-r--r--  1 root root    3, 0 Feb  9 20:43 /dev/fd/1
crw-r--r--  1 root root    3, 0 Feb  9 20:43 /dev/fd/2
-rw-r--r--  1 root root 4493312 Feb 10 00:27 /dev/fd/3
crw-------  1 root root   29, 0 Feb  9 20:43 /dev/fd/4
crw-------  1 root root    4, 0 Feb  9 20:43 /dev/fd/5

Right way:

lrwxrwxrwx  1 root root 13 Feb 10 00:47 /dev/fd -> /proc/self/fd

So that's that. Just one of the joys of using Linux. (Of course, under Windows, in a case like this you would have no choice but to reinstall everything, but that's another story.)