U.S. Quake Warning Systems Lag. Alert systems in Japan, Mexico, Taiwan and Turkey give earthquake warnings that allow trains to stop, gas and electric utilities to protect their systems and people to get away from windows. Why does the U.S. have so little in place? [Wired News: Top Stories]

On Conflicts of Interest and TechCrunch. On a recent Gillmor Gang, at around minute 21:30, Jason Calacanis innocently says something like “I heard you could buy a review at TechCrunch”. A discussion begins about conflicts of interest, at one point Jason says “just the appearance of impropriety is impropriety.” Or, in other words, when it… Continue reading On Conflicts of Interest and TechCrunch

quick, effective diagrams with Gliffy.  Gliffy is a great new tool for creating diagrams. It recently opened up it's doors to a public beta. I've been using it for a while. It's awesome to be able to create a quick network diagram, and then publish it to get a easily accessible jpeg image. I've never… Continue reading quick, effective diagrams with Gliffy

Jeff Waugh: Sunday Grab Bag!.  Seamless RDP: Cendio has released SeamlessRDP, a set of changes for rdesktop to provide rootless RDP functionality. I can see this being extremely useful in small business environments, where staff would be perfectly happy using Linux desktops if only they had access to one or two line-of-business applications. Rock on,… Continue reading Jeff Waugh: Sunday Grab Bag!

Just Give Me a Simple Phone. Many consumers are not impressed by the endless tricks and functions manufacturers keep adding to cell phones. They just want a sturdy phone that's easy to use. [Wired News: Top Stories]

Vista should've been codenamed White Elephant. I just leafed through Chris Pirillo's Vista Beta 2 feedback and had to chuckle. I don't know what OS X 'Tiger' or 'Panther' looked like 8 months before release, maybe they were in a similar kind of mess, but I doubt Apple had to contend with dialog boxes from… Continue reading Vista should've been codenamed White Elephant

Jorge Castro: Dapper on a DL385.  In the interest of bringing some redundancy to our Ubuntu Sun Ray Desktops, we purchased an hp Proliant 385. The current production server is still on Breezy, and since we're in the summer semester, it gives us the opportunity to play with Dapper on the new server, so we… Continue reading Jorge Castro: Dapper on a DL385

ZFS on FUSE/Linux. You've probably heard by now that Apple is planning to port ZFS to MacOS. And that Matt Dillon is porting ZFS to DragonFly BSD. Today I'm pleased to report that ZFS is being ported to FUSE/Linux. Very cool. This is another step toward the ultimate goal: ubiquity. Consumer devices need data integrity… Continue reading ZFS on FUSE/Linux

The Decision: 'I Didn't Know' Did Not Sway Houston Jury. The jurors said they simply could not believe that Kenneth L. Lay and Jeffrey K. Skilling were telling the truth when they claimed they didn't realize that something was rotten at Enron. By VIKAS BAJAJ and KYLE WHITMIRE. [NYT > Home Page]

Tip of the Trade: Trinity Rescue Kit. In the pack of Linux CDs, the Trinity Rescue Kit stands out for being lightweight, fast-booting, and cross-platform. It can read and write NTFS filesystems, reset Windows passwords, and more. [Datamation Product News]