Hell froze over

Hell seems to have frozen over. ATI has released Linux Drivers for ALL of it's cards. I knew this was going to happen after being acquired by AMD. See http://ati.amd.com/support/driver.html.

The US has common sense again!

The United States seems to have common sense again!! The Librarian of Congress has ruled that certain things should not be protected by the DMCA. This includes:

1. Audiovisual works included in the educational library of a college or university’s film or media studies department, when circumvention is accomplished for the purpose of making compilations of portions of those works for educational use in the classroom by media studies or film professors. 2. Computer programs and video games distributed in formats that have become obsolete and that require the original media or hardware as a condition of access, when circumvention is accomplished for the purpose of preservation or archival reproduction of published digital works by a library or archive. A format shall be considered obsolete if the machine or system necessary to render perceptible a work stored in that format is no longer manufactured or is no longer reasonably available in the commercial marketplace. 3. Computer programs protected by dongles that prevent access due to malfunction or damage and which are obsolete. A dongle shall be considered obsolete if it is no longer manufactured or if a replacement or repair is no longer reasonably available in the commercial marketplace. 4. Literary works distributed in ebook format when all existing ebook editions of the work (including digital text editions made available by authorized entities) contain access controls that prevent the enabling either of the book’s read-aloud function or of screen readers that render the text into a specialized format. 5. Computer programs in the form of firmware that enable wireless telephone handsets to connect to a wireless telephone communication network, when circumvention is accomplished for the sole purpose of lawfully connecting to a wireless telephone communication network. 6. Sound recordings, and audiovisual works associated with those sound recordings, distributed in compact disc format and protected by technological protection measures that control access to lawfully purchased works and create or exploit security flaws or vulnerabilities that compromise the security of personal computers, when circumvention is accomplished solely for the purpose of good faith testing, investigating, or correcting such security flaws or vulnerabilities.

This list makes a lot of sense, and I hope it doesn't get struck down with help from RIAA, MPAA, and friends.

Thank you, Dr. James H. Billington, Librarian of Congress!!!!!

Apache2Triad

I stumbled across Apache2Triad during my search for a good WAMPPP stack. IT TOTALLY OWNS!!!!!!!!!!!!!! It is probably the only (easy) way to implement mod_python under windows. Apache2Triad includes:

Servers:

• Apache
• MySQL
• PostgreSQL
• XMail
• SlimFTPd

Interpreters:

• PHP
• Perl
• Python

Graphic User Interfaces:

• Apache2TriadCP
• phpMyAdmin
• phpPgAdmin
• phpSQLiteAdmin
• AWStats
• UebiMiau
• PHPXmail
• PHPsFTPd

Wikipedia Links provided for your convenience.

Insanity, Anyone?

Seen on Slashdot:

An anonymous reader writes

"There's a federal case in the Northern District of California where copyright for open source is being challenged. The free software project JMRI discovered that a commercial company was using some of their files in a product, in violation of the license. They added a copyright claim to an ongoing legal action about cybersquatting, software patent abuse, etc. The patent case was covered on Slashdot back in June but the copyright part is new. The other side came back with an argument that copyright law didn't apply, simply because they software was 'being given away for free.'"

This is insane. for those who want to read JMRI's license, see The Artistic License.

Ms. Dewey

This is ... interesting, to say the least. Ms Dewey is an anthropomorphised Search Engine designed to help you search using Windows Live Search. Check it out as msdewey.com.

SpudServer

The spud server is a real web server made out of potatoes. Check them out http://d116.com/spud/index.html.