Apple declares Jailbroken iPhone a threat to national security

While debating whether Jailbroken iPhones are legal, Apple has declared that a compromised iPhone could crash the cellular network.

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/07/jailbreak/

Vaccine for Colon Cancer

Great news was released a few days ago that a drug in trial right now is showing promise as a vaccine for colon and a few other types of cancer.  Trials are being held right now with a hopeful closure in 2011.

http://chattahbox.com/health/2009/07/27/new-colon-cancer-vaccine-attacks-emerging-tumors/

Linus Torvalds asked about Microsoft's latest code for Linux

Great article / interview with Linus about his comments on Microsoft's latest release of Opensourced code for Linux. In this interview he touches on some great points about feelings towards Microsoft and why people write opensource to begin with.

http://www.linux-mag.com/cache/7439/1.html

Apples new interface: Macbook Wheel

I know its old, but just saw it for the first time ;)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s0Gzq-QEt0s

"Ill buy almost anything if its shiny and made by Apple"

"The babbling baby asked the aardvark for some absinthe"

SpaceX successfully launches satellite into space!

Not exactly sure why I didnt see any press coverage in mainstream media or blogs, however, upon checking their website I noticed that they had successfully launched a satellite into space on July 13th!  As far as I know this is the first private company to launch a satellite and is very exciting news.  Congrats SpaceX!!

http://www.spacex.com/press.php?page=20090715

Very cool pictures of the launch shown here:

http://www.spacex.com/launch_updates.php

Cure for Radiation Sickness - Treatment for cancer?

Some researchers have conducted trials on monkeys demonstrating a drug that can be injected to counter-act radiation sickness.  Interestingly enough this may also lead to a very effective treatment for all types of cancer, by dosing a patient with lethal amounts of radiation to kill a tumor, then immediately administrating this drug.

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3748014,00.html

TDMA - Stop email spoofing

Was getting a bunch of spam emails being forged from valid accounts on my own domain.  This was obviously being whitelisted as they are trusted sender on my email account.   Heres how to block spammers from spoofing emails.

From: http://tmda.sourceforge.net/cgi-bin/moin.cgi/TmdaTipsAndTricks

On Ubuntu 9.04, open the /etc/exim4/exim4.conf.template file as Superuser.  Find the "acl_check_rcpt:" string and add the following rule.

# ACL Section:

acl_check_rcpt:

# Block spoofed addresses

  deny  condition       = ${if eq {$sender_address_domain}{$domain}{yes}{no}}
        hosts           = !+relay_from_hosts
        message         = Spammers not welcome - go away.
        log_message     = Spam from sender $sender_address at $sender_fullhost

Save the file and run the following command: dpkg-reconfigure exim4-config

PreBrewFarts - It was inevitable....

After some interesting "discussions" on the internet about the merits of creating such a program, it was put into code by someone.    PreBrewFarts...

http://forums.precentral.net/palm-pre/192379-prebrewfarts-v0-1-5-no-rooting-required.html

RC Airplane Fireworks - An unexpected pleasing combination!

Definitely will have to try this out myself someday.  RC plane armed with fireworks!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gBn1h0x-37E

Quest for Graphics within Palm Pre - WebOS

I started thinking about how to find a way to allow native linux application to display within WebOS.  Most of the graphic intensive applications on the Pre use a Webkit Netscape Plugin to get a native drawable on the phone (Camera, Media Player, Palm Emulator, etc).

So why not create yet another Webkit plugin to provide a FrameBuffer device on the os.  The challenge will be to determine what native drawable is presented to the plugin (doubt its going to be X11)

Here is some links of interest:

Pre Dev Wiki research:
http://predev.wikidot.com/browser-plugins

Mozilla's documentation on drawing within a plugin:
https://developer.mozilla.org/en/Gecko_Plugin_API_Reference/Drawing_and_Event_Handling#The_NPWindow_Structure

Simply drawing example
http://multimedia.cx/diamondx/

Ubuntu Jaunty latest NVidia driver PPA

Just found out how to get the latest versions of the NVidia graphics driver on Jaunty.

Add the ppa to apt

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/ubuntu-x-swat/x-updates/ubuntu jaunty main
deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/ubuntu-x-swat/x-updates/ubuntu jaunty main

Import the public key

apt-key adv --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com --recv-keys AF1CDFA9

The "Peter Principle"

I was talking with a few colleagues at a professional meeting and the term "Peter Principle" came up.   Its a simple principle that postulates an employee of a company will be promoted to their point of incompetency and there they will remain until let go.

Just thought I'd share this thought of the day :)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Principle

Compiling a custom kernel for Ubuntu

I found out during my 4th of July server upgrade that the Moxa serial driver is broken in the 9.04 distribution 2.6.28 kernel.    After several futile attempts to backport and downstream the newer / older version into the stock kernel, I am now just going to upgrade to the latest kernel version entirely to 2.6.30.1.   If this still doesnt work at least I will be on the latest kernel version so I can begin working with the LKML on fixing it.

Found this resource for compiling a kernel

http://easylinuxcds.com/blog/?p=3244

I found out there is currently a bug with the installation of the .deb process.  Do the following after the preceding instructions.

From Mike Stroyan:

This is not actually a defect in nvidia-common. It is a defect in dkms.
The /etc/kernel/postinst.d/dkms script is sending messages to stdout.
That script is run under /usr/share/debconf/frontend, which expects that stdout will only be used for messages to it.
The actual response to the output does not occur while /etc/kernel/postinst.d/dkms is running.
The error message is deferred until the /etc/kernel/postinst.d/nvidia-common script runs.
That second script tries to send debconf requests to stdout.
That triggers the debconf error message in response to the junk that dkms wrote earlier.

Patching /etc/kernel/postinst.d/dkms to redirect stdout fixes the problem.
Adding "1>&2" to the invocation of /etc/init.d/dkms_autoinstaller keeps stdout clean.

London Stock Exchange ditches Microsoft Trading platform

Microsoft has relied on the London Stock Exchange project as a key piece of their marketing for the "Get The Facts" campaign..

http://www.microsoft.com/uk/getthefacts/lse.mspx

It was recently announced by the London Stock Exchange that this solution is a failure.

http://blogs.computerworld.com/london_stock_exchange_to_abandon_failed_windows_platform