Uber Nerd. Military Editor of the Berkeley Barb. Master of the Tom Swift Terminal. “Toastmaster” of the Homebrew Computing Club. Creator of the Sol-20 and the Osbourne 1. Honcho of Community Memory. Purveyor of the Pedal Powered Internet in Laos. Read his bio. Or this one. Or this one. Or this article. Or this one. Read his blog here.
Archive for July, 2007
The Register reports that Tim Paterson has lost his defamation case against journalist and author Sir Harold Evans and his publisher Little Brown. from the article:
In a chapter devoted to Kildall in Evans’ They Made America: From the Steam Engine to the Search Engine: Two Centuries of Innovators, Evans related how Paterson “[took] ‘a ride on’ Kildall’s operating system, appropriated the ‘look and feel’ of [Kildall's] CP/M operating system, and copied much of his operating system interface from CP/M.”…
Microsoft turned to Tim Paterson, whose garage operation Seattle Computer Products was selling a CP/M clone called 86-DOS. This had been developed under the code name QDOS (for “quick and dirty operating system”), and SCP sold it alongside an add-in CPU card. Microsoft turned this into the hugely successful DOS franchise….
Taking a dim view of lawsuits designed to curb the First Amendment rights of journalists, Judge Thomas Zilly found that Paterson’s lawsuit failed on several important counts. In US law, Zilly pointed out, “truth is an absolute defense to a claim of defamation”.
Judge Zilly said Paterson falsely claimed Evans credited Kildall as the “inventor” of DOS, weakening his case. At the same time, the Judge found, Evans had faithfully recorded Paterson’s denial of Kildall’s view that QDOS “ripped off” CP/M.
The story of Microsoft bought QDOS (twice!) Paterson’s employer (Paterson didn’t own SCP, although he was rewarded later) and turned it into MS-DOS is well known, and well documented. I hope Paterson paid out the ass for this suit.
OhMiBod is a vibrator that connects to your iPod. They also have a version for the Razr. The return of the Klingon Battle Dildo. Hilarious. Check out the video.Doesn’t work your Shuffle. At $69 you could get a drawer full of easy to clean silicon ones, and use them with your iPod.
From the Realist Archive Project, The Case of the Cock-Sure Groupies, a report on Cynthia Plastercaster from 1968. For those who don’t know, The Realist was the satirical magazine that ran from 1958 to 1974 (more proof the 60’s ended in 74). It was kind of the Mad Magazine for the counterculture (it’s founder and editor Paul Krassner actually once wrote for Mad). The Realist gave us such gems as the Disneyland Memorial Orgy (by the legendary Wally Wood), and The Parts That Were Left Out Of the Kennedy Book, which featured LBJ fucking JFK’s corpse (more info on the origin of this piece here).
The Realist Archive Project is going to scan and put the entire run of the Realist online a few issues a month. They have an RSS feed to keep you abrest of when new issues are posted.
160 hours:
Managers are forcibly ousted from their high paying corporate posts and forced to work at the bottom rung of the ladder for minimum wage. Unless they fail the drug screening, then they’re summarily discharged. As an added precaution to protect co-workers they’ll be checked for weapons several times a day. Their opposites are moved to their former positions (no drug screening for management). After a month, they’re both given performance reviews and either kept on in their current capacities or terminated. As the series progresses we check in on the former management as they try to work their way back to the top – or unemployment line and job hunt. and we follow the progress of the former burger flippers in the corporate clouds or unemployment line. Job counseling will be available, and we’ll rat out anyone who lies on their resume. Participants will chosen at random from the companies that are screaming the loudest about needing H1B visas or fight against raises to the minimum wage. Pilot epsiode will deal with Sun Microsytems and McDonalds.
Having the website down for a day kick started me into some necessary blog maintenance. I updated Wordpress. While I was at it I fixed the sidebars and random header again and made some other changes to improve load times (still tinkering with improving load times). I’m still tinkering with the layout, will probably do that all week. I’ve added a Caffinate button. And since I fixed the wishlist in the sidebar, I loaded up on wishlist posts (and the contact page has been updated so you can actually send me stuff now). I do have a birthday coming up, ya know 
One of the reasons I love Wordpress is that you really don’t have to know HTML or PHP or Perl or Ruby to add features. You just spend the same amount of time you’d need to code a feature finding a widget or plugin to do what you want. Either way you end up spending the same amount of time debugging, but you don’t have to learn all the commands and syntax voodoo.
Actually, there are affordable Kifaru products – the Pullouts.
At $10-$11 for the medium or large in mesh, they’re competitive with the Eagle Creek Pack-it. But they’re made in America. Work with any pack or bag for organization, the mesh is nice because it lets you see the contents. As always, if you support this site with a gift, you get your name added to the front page.
UPDATED: This pouch is not availibel from this source any more. You have to get it here, same price but shipping is $8!!!
Yeah I know, technically it’s PALS compliant (pouch attachment ladder system). This is the classic Claymore sized bag marked down to $17 – shipping extra, of course (it’s $30-$60 elsewhere). It’s useful on it’s own, as a organizer in a pack (like the Bergen or my MOLLE II) or attached to a another bag. I’d love one in black. And if you get me, I ad your name to the benefactor list right up there on the front page (actually it appears on almost all the pages ).
(UPDATED)
(I went and bought this with money from the coffee donations. Thanks to everyone who kicked in!)
This is a late model British Bergen pack at an insanely good price – $ 13! It’d make a great interim pack till I can score a Kifaru. Holds more then the main component of the MOLLE II system, wiht an internal frame. Too bad it doesn’t have the two side pouches, but I can live without them. Help provide FFej with the means tocarry his gear from one Wi-Fi access point to another, and get your name elegently listed on the front page!
