PlasticBoy

The Pixies website is live with tour dates. It’s amazingly usable for a band website. No Boston date? Only five US dates total? I guess it’s a frenzy building tour.

The best Linux help site, LinuxQuestions.org, has launched a Linux Wiki. I added an entry for something I find myself looking up every time I do a new Linux install, how to swap the Caps Lock and Control keys.

Boston Globe on Linux gaming.

The EFF has proposed a solution to the file-sharing problem: have file sharers pay a monthly fee, say $5, in exchange for the right to share freely. The money would be divvied up among artists according to popularity by a collections body similar to ASCAP. Here’s the EFF’s white paper on the subject. It looks like we’ll have to be patient, though. The EFF suggests giving the music industry “a few more quarters of lackluster sales” to come around to the idea before proposing legislation to Congress for compulsory licensing. So keep file sharing and/or keep boycotting RIAA.

Microsoft is pushing its own email Caller ID system. The idea is to prevent email address forgery, and hence reduce spam, by verifying that an SMTP server that is trying to send email for a domain (like plasticboy.com) has permission from the domain owner to send email for that domain. Currently, anyone can send email claiming to be from any domain. Microsoft’s system is very similar to Sender Policy Framework, which has been submitted to the IETF as an Internet-Draft.

Linux Journal: Making sense of startup.

Jon’s Radio: Program’s that write programs.

Configuring Mail Clients to Send Plain ASCII Text.

A Conversation with Nir Barzilai, longevity researcher.

If you have this genetic characteristic, your chance of getting from age 70 to 100 increases by over threefold. Among the 70-year-old control group we studied, 8 percent have this mutation. Among the 100-year-olds, 25 to 30 percent of them have it. We will have to look at other parts of this gene to see if there are more mutations. There are other genes that also control H.D.L. and the sizes of lipoproteins, and we’re looking for them. The gene that we discovered only explains 18 percent of the longevity. But it is possible that if everyone has the effect of this gene they will get to be 100. We want to explain 100 percent of the reasons for exceptional longevity. So we are looking at other genes. A very few of the oldest people we’ve studied actually do not have large lipoproteins and do not have any mutations that we’ve discovered so far.

We’ve gone grey for Grey Tuesday.

For future reference: CLI for noobies: import, display, mogrify.

Howard Dean rings in on Ralph Nader’s candidacy on Blog for America. I watched Nader on Meet the Press and I agree with him on a couple of thing. Nader is correct that the “liberal intelligentsia”, as he calls them, that oppose his campaign agree with him on many issues and that Americans should be able to vote for the candidate with whom they agree. Unfortunately, he is also correct that voters are hostages of a two-party, winner-take-all Electoral College system. I’m glad Nader supports organizations like the Center for Voting and Democracy that are trying to change the system but until we have something like Instant Runoff Voting, votes for Nader really are votes for Bush. With that, I’m joining Calpundit’s Ignore Nader campaign.

A new study finds that pain or displeasure is the most accurate indicator that a person has crossed the threshold into too vigorous excersise.

“As astonishingly simple as it sounds, perhaps the most appropriate level of exercise intensity for health-oriented exercise is the intensity that does not feel unpleasant,” lead author Dr. Panteleimon Ekkekakis of Iowa State University, Ames, told Reuters Health. Ekkekakis noted that it is natural for people not to want to continue doing things that are consistently unpleasant or uncomfortable.

On Wednesday, the Massachusetts state legislature convenes a constitutional convention to consider an amendment to ban same-sex marriage. Massachusetts residents, contact your representatives now and tell them you support equal rights for all.

Astonishingly enough, a government report finds that Americans are getting fatter because they are eating more.

In the year 2000, women ate the equivalent of one more large chocolate chip cookie every day - 335 more calories - compared to what they ate in 1971. Men ate 168 more calories - slightly more than a 12-ounce Pepsi - each day, according to the study released Thursday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.