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Why Comments?

Russ Albery has described why he doesn’t support comments on his blog [1].

I respect his opinion and I’m not going to try and convince him to do otherwise. But I think it’s worth describing why I want comments on my blog and feel that they are worth having for many (possibly most) other blogs.

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New Portslave release after 5 Years

I’ve just uploaded Portslave version 2010.03.30 to Debian, it replaces version 2005.04.03.1. I considered waiting a few days to make the anniversary but I wanted to get the bugs fixed.

I had a bug report suggesting that Portslave should be removed from Debian because of being 5 years without a major release. It has been […]

Server Costs vs Virtual Server Costs

The Claim

I have seen it claimed that renting a virtual server can be cheaper than paying for electricity on a server you own. So I’m going to analyse this with electricity costs from Melbourne, Australia and the costs of running virtual servers in the US and Europe as these are the options available to […]

Autism vs Asperger Syndrome

Diagnostic Changes for Autism Spectrum Disorders

Currently Asperger Syndrome (AS) is one of a group of conditions that are grouped into the category Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD).

The American Psychiatric Association plans to merge “Asperger’s Disorder” into “Autism Spectrum Disorder” [1] in version 5 of their Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM). Apparently a primary reason […]

How to Choose a Free Software Mission

Jane McGoningal gave an interesting TED talk about how Online Gaming can Make a Better World [1]. One of her points is that there is no unemployment in games such as World of Warcraft, there is always a “world saving” mission available to you which is just within reach of your skill level – and […]

Hacker Spaces

When in California last year I visited the NoiseBridge [1] Hackerspace. I was very impressed with what I saw, good equipment and very friendly people. The general concept of a “HackerSpace” is that it is an environment to support random creative projects. The first picture is a sign near the door which is clearly visible […]

Bose vs Bauhn/Aldi Noise Canceling Headphones

Overview

The German supermarket chain Aldi has been running in Australia for 8 years now [1]. Their standard practice for a long time has been to offer regular special deals on a few items of consumer electronics every week, my chocolate fridge is one thing I bought from Aldi [2].

Today Aldi have started […]

Links March 2010

Blaise Aguera y Arcas gave an exciting demonstration of new augmented reality mapping software from Microsoft that combines video (including live video) with static mapping data and pictures [1]. This is a significant advance over current mapping systems such as Google Earth – but it’s not released yet either. It will be interesting to see […]

Citing Wikipedia

A meme that has been going around is that you can’t cite Wikipedia.

You can’t Cite Wikipedia Academically

Now it’s well known and generally agreed that you can’t cite Wikipedia for a scientific paper or other serious academic work. This makes sense firstly because Wikipedia changes, both in the short term (including vandalism) and in […]

Xen and Debian/Squeeze

Ben Hutchings announced that the Debian kernel team are now building Xen flavoured kernels for Debian/Unstable [1]. Thanks to Max Attems and the rest of the kernel team for this and all their other great work! Thanks Ben for announcing it. The same release included OpenVZ, updated DRM, and the kernel mode part of Nouveau […]