The Zero Room

Yes it's genuine, and utterly incomprehensible. Must lose something in the translation.

(via BoingBoing)

A while ago we got this query via the contact form on the site, and as it's a question so often asked, I think it's worth putting the answer somewhere Google can see it.

I have loaded Ubuntu 8.04 and all is well except when I download other programs eg Banshee I have no idea how to install it or any other app. This is generally a very easy task in windows.

Those of you who have used GNU/Linux for a while are now doubtless spraying the screen with bikkie crumbs as you shout "It's EASIER than in Windows!!!", but there are good reasons why a new Ubuntu user wouldn't know that.

It's just been brought to my attention that the Coffs Coast Community College is offering courses this semester in OpenOffice.org and the GIMP, led by one David Bryant, a familiar face to ClubLinux regulars. Well done David! I would advise anybody interested to enrol ASAP.

Only discovered recently, Hopwood's Disease was named after one of the earliest known vectors of infection. Despite the fact that it can cripple entire communities, it is still not recognised by some authorities as a serious public health problem.

Symptoms of Hopwood's disease include:

A tough, scaly growth that spreads very quickly.

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Allison inherited it from her late grandmother nearly a decade ago. It's never looked particularly healthy, but neither has it died. And once a year, in the middle of the night, it does this:

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Went for another dawn swim, just before 6:00am. My new glasses came with the most ridiculous steampunk case, looking rather like a canister intended to be sent around an office building via pneumatic tube a hundred years ago. Found that my swimming goggles fit into this perfectly.

Weather beautiful, water freezing and murky. Took three or four attempts before I could submerge without hyperventilating, and when I did I couldn't see beyond my own goosebumps.

As Paul mentioned at our last meeting, the ABC has followed the BBC in crippling their programs with Digital Restrictions Management. The ABC, which has until recently been pretty good at digital distribution, is now selling us copies of programs we already paid for in a form which restricts how we can use these recordings.

Purchasing and viewing these videos requires the "integrated ABC Shop Media Player and its Downloads Manager", which only works on Windows and Internet Explorer. The videos cannot be played on any other software or device. The software is proprietary, so you have no way of knowing what it is actually doing, but among the features the manufacturer boasts of are:

• "Peer assisted content delivery technology". That is, P2P file-sharing technology like BitTorrent, only in this case the sharing is not under your control, and you can't opt out. The ABC Shop's customers are paying to receive this data, but they are not necessarily receiving the data from the ABC Shop; more likely from other ABC Shop customers. You are paying the ABC Shop for a service, even though you are just as much the provider of that service as they are.
• "PDF and Windows Media file control features." You don't have control over the files you pay for, the ABC Shop does. You may have paid for it, but they still own it.
• "A rich reporting and analytics tool that shows downloads as well as advanced metrics such as who has viewed which content, when, and for how long." Big Brother is watching you watching your videos.
  

DefectiveByDesign.org has the full story, and advice on what you can do about it.

Just to show I wasn't kidding at our last meeting when I said VirtualBox runs just about any operating system from within just about any operating system, here's a short video demonstration of VirtualBox running OpenSolaris and Windows on a Mac from the MacWorld video blog.

I've been using Firefox 3 for the past few weeks, and today it's officially released. I've found most of the new features to be unobtrusive and generally useful, so I'd recommend it to anyone. The folks at Spread Firefox are calling today "Download Day", and are attempting to set a Guiness World Record for the most software downloaded in 24 hours. You've got till 5:00pm UTC (2:00 am tomorrow morning our time), so get downloading!

If you are planning a non-trivial website, this twenty-five minute presentation by Paul Albert, Digital Services Librarian at Weill Cornell Medical Library which compares Drupal, a free Web Content Management System and Application Framework, to FatWire, a proprietary Web CMS, should be required viewing.