PlasticBoy

The album of the week is Leonard Cohen’s Dear Heather.

Woohoo!

This month’s issue of Wired comes with a CD of Creative Commons-licensed music from the liks of the Beastie Boys, David Byrne, My Morning Jacket, Spoon, The Rapture, and Cornelius. I listened to some of it on the way to work today and it’s pretty good. So, anybody have a torrent? UPDATE: Here’s your torrent.

Someone is sending out fake security alerts pretending to be the Red Hat security team. They tell you to download and update that actually tries to compromise your system. Does this mean hack attempts on Linux systems are going to increase?

The album of last week was Elliott Smith’s From a Basement on the Hill.

Nice, I’m reaping the benefits of the Netflix-Blockbuster price war. Next month, Netflix’s price goes down to $17.99.

Wow, a new study has some absolutely astonishing statistics: 72% of Bush supporters continue to believe that Iraq had actual WMD (47%) or a major program for developing them (25%) and 75% continue to believe that Iraq was providing substantial support to al Qaeda. I’d put a big banner at the top of this page that said “Iraq had no WMD. Iraq did not support al Qaeda.” if I thought that any Bush supporters ever visited this page. [via rc3]

An Australian company is marketing a Linux-based ‘internet-safe’ PC designed to be invulnerable to viruses and spyware. The OS and software run off of read-only media so it can never be permanently infected. Sounds like a pretty good idea but at 595 AUD (~440 USD) it seems a little pricey for a machine that doesn’t need a hard drive or much processor power. Product page here.

Spread Firefox is taking out a full-page ad for Firefox in the New York Times. Make a donation to the effort and get your name printed in the ad.

Dungeon Majesty is a cable-access show where 4 girls play D&D and act out some scenes in front of a green screen with super-cheesy special effects and pen-and-paper animations. It’s like a cross between Xena, MST3K, and The Gamers. There’s a very entertaining trailer online but no episodes yet. [via Boing Boing]

Linspire is creating daily geographic Linux (or at least Linspire) adoption maps.

Scoble wants to know why Microsoft software sucks. While it’s great to see somebody at Microsoft finally asking this question, you’ll forgive me if I’m a little skeptical of seeing any improvement. That said, here’s why I avoid Microsoft products:

1. They’re not open source. Other people have explained why this is a bad thing much better than I can so I’ll leave you to do your own research if you think that your mind can be changed on this issue.
2. MS continues to design and implement proprietary file formats and protocols rather than open ones. This makes it far harder to interoperate with MS products and share your data with users of other operating systems.
3. MS has embraced Digital Rights Management technology. Microsoft is intentionally crippling their software and then asking us why we think it sucks.
4. Ok, enough about philosophy, here’s my only gripe about Microsoft software quality: it breaks, and when I fix it I don’t know how I did it. The problem solving process with MS software usually goes something like this: reinstall the drivers, reinstall the software, do a lot of rebooting and replugging of hardware. Eventually, it starts working, at least until it breaks again. In Linux, things don’t just stop working and I’ve never fixed anything without knowing what I did. This is because the system is open, Microsoft is a closed book and there’s no possibilty of ever gaining a deeper knowledge of it.

There’s my two cents, if you have gripes with MS you can put them in Scoble’s comments or post them on your own blog.

The MPAA and friends are appealing Grokster to the Supreme Court.

Dozens of entertainment-industry companies asked the court to reverse an appeals court decision that has prevented them from shutting down networks like Grokster and Morpheus that they say encourage millions of consumers to copy music and movies for free rather than buying them. The entertainment industry managed to shut down the first file-trading network, Napster (news - web sites). But Grokster and other networks that have sprung up in its wake claim their decentralized design prevents them from controlling user behavior.

The Induce Act is dead, at least for this session of Congress. Score one for the forces of good!

The album of the week is William Shatner’s Has Been, with arrangements by Ben Folds. It’s a Shatner album you’ll actually enjoy listening to! The best track is the cover of Pulp’s Common People, be sure to listen to the original.