iTunes 7.2 is out. iTunes Plus (DRM free downloads) is available. So I’ve made a purchase: Placebo: Covers.

Wow, it’s easy isn’t it? So nice to be able to enjoy the integrated iTunes experience without worrying about infesting my computer with DRM crippled media.

As Kirk McElhearn points out the files do contain identifying information that can be traced (trivially) back to you. That’s fine by me.

I’ve just released a Perl interface to reCAPTCHA. You should be able to find it here:

http://search.cpan.org/dist/Captcha-reCAPTCHA

At the time of writing the US mirror of search.cpan.org doesn’t seem to have updated for a few days so if you need it in a hurry you can also get it here:

http://cpan.hexten.net/modules/by-authors/id/A/AN/ANDYA/

I’d like to make it possible for local people to set up blog space on the Nenthead community site. They’d post local news stories and interesting ones would be promoted to a unified news front page. Kind of like Advogato but for non-geeks.

Is anyone doing this kind of community focused citizen journalism? I see Wikinews but that’s more top down than what I have in mind.

Blimey, the complaints must have been annoying if they had to resort to drugs.

Magic:

By Christian Heilmann via Tobie Langel.

And then this:

“The point of the study was actually to eliminate the FUD about Linux’s alleged legal problems by attaching a quantifiable measure versus the speculation,” he said. “And the number we found, to anyone familiar with this issue, is so average as to be boring; almost any piece of software potentially infringes at least that many patents.”

Who said that? Dan Ravicher of OSRM - also known as the guy who wrote the report Balmer is quoting.

Via The Inquirer

Update: This dates from November 2004 (eWeek). As far as I know Ballmer’s still quoting the same report.

James Turner is pissed off about Microsoft’s patent sabre rattling - as we all should be.

At the end, there’s only one thing left to say. For shame Microsoft, for shame. You’ve twisted competition into a thuggish debacle that ranks right up there with the worst of the great robber barons. How ironic that Bill Gates is trying to reinvent himself as the great philanthropist. Andrew Carnegie took much the same route late in his life, as if it could wash away his sins. We can only hope that in a few years, Steve Ballmer will look as much a fool as Daryl McBride does today.

More here.

This is fun: an assassination threat and - presumably - extortion attempt. It appears to have been sent from the web server of a reputable company using PHP mail header injection.

Date: Mon, 7 May 2007 23:49:26 -0700
To: andy@hexten.net
Subject:

Hello,

I wish to let you know that i have been paid by a client
to assasinate you at convenience,and i have signed a
contract of $650,000 yesterday for this.I have never met
you before,but they gave me the full description of your
identity and contact,together with your photograph which
my boys have used to trace you.

The reason why they want you Dead is not disclosed to me
as i was not allowed to know,but you are now not better
that the dead ok.

My BOYS are now contantly watching you,they are
following you- home,office,everywhere.....,you go and
they are waiting for my instruction to terminate you.And
they will strike at convenience.

THIS IS MY MESSAGE-

LISTEN VERY WELL !!!!,the Police cannot do much to help
you out in this right now because you are being
watched,any such attempt is very risky cause you will
push us to terminate your life without option. Your
calls are not safe also.In fact you are traced.

I have no business with you but at least i have cleared
the way as a pro- ,but you may have one chance to live
again if you can contact me not latter that 24 hours
after this mssage.

GOODLUCK!!!

That’s so wrong:

Which Programming Language are You?

I’ve just released Wiki Widgets 0.2. You can find the download link on this page.

The main new things in this release are:

• GraphViz Widget (alpha, not ready for production use)
• Allow arbitrarily named arguments via the xargs attribute

Thanks to Juan Zubeldia for pointing out the need to pass arguments with non-alphanumeric names to Google Gadgets.