…I’m just following a meme.

$ history | awk {'print $2'} | sort | uniq -c | sort -k1 -rn | head
  69 svn
  56 cd
  52 ls
  49 make
  26 perl
  19 vi
  15 tack
  15 cpan
  11 sudo
  11 prove

And actually, I’d have to merge the histories from eight different Terminal.app windows to get a full picture…

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.

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?

From the wikipedia-l archive:

List:       wikipedia-l
Subject:    [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia rocks!
From:       "Larry Sanger"
Date:       2001-01-22 0:02:42

Welcome, o ye five initial members of wikipedia-l, to wikipedia-l!

Actually, the point of this post is to put something in the archives.

On the assumption that all wikipedia articles have the letter "e" in
them, there are now 184 Wikipedia articles.  I added a "best of" page
you might be interested in:

http://www.wikipedia.com/wiki.cgi?BrilliantProse

Wikipedia does rock.  By the count on the "brilliant prose" page, there
are 14 not-bad articles so far, and that's great.

Larry

For some reason I had the idea Wikipedia was older than that; I suppose it just seems like a lot more than six years’ work. Thanks to the Wayback Machine we can see what it looked like in March 2001:

Welcome to Wikipedia! We’re writing a complete encyclopedia from scratch, collaboratively. We started work in January 2001. We’ve got over 3,000 pages already. We want to make over 100,000. So, let’s get to work! Write a little (or a lot) about what you know! Read our welcome message here: Welcome, newcomers!

I wonder how many people read We’re writing a complete encyclopedia from scratch and thought that maybe they were being a little optimistic. I’m pretty sure I would have.

OK, apropos of Things I Hate About the Internet here’s something a really do hate:

I hate it when someone working email support is really helpful but you don’t want to thank them because you know that by doing so you’ll raise another ticket in their support system. It must happen all the time - more so if they’re good at their job. How perverse is a system that makes “thank you” into an irritation?

I hate it when people are away and set up an autoresponder that doesn’t understand mailing lists. It’s just so rude to have your moronic robot punctuating our conversation with “I’m sorry but I’m away right now somewhere staggeringly exotic having a far better time than you are” every time someone speaks.

So I was quite embarrassed to find this mailing list post:

(This is an automatically generated message)

After five happy years I've left Tagish so I can spend more time
programming. If you are trying to reach me on Tagish business
please mail

  sarahc AT tagish DOT co DOT uk

If you're actually trying to reach me please mail me at

  andy AT hexten DOT net

If you have received this message without having emailed me that's
probably because your address has been forged and used to spam me.

Please don't be offended. This mail box gets around 2,500 spams a
day and most of them are from forged addresses so you're not being
picked on.

--
Andy Armstrong, Hexten

Oops. I’m really sorry. My error was extra egregious because I obviously knew about backscatter; I knew that my autoresponder was going to end up spamming itself:

If you have received this message without having emailed me that’s
probably because your address has been forged and used to spam me.

To find out just how shitty autoresponders (including mine) are go here.

If this turns out to be true:

But word ’round the campfire is that EMI, along with his Steveness, is going to announce at 8 AM EST that most of their catalog is going to be offered DRM-free on iTunes. There may be no Beatles, but who needs them when you have DRM-free music? On iTunes.

I’ll go and buy at least $50 worth of EMI DRM free music on iTunes as soon as it’s available.

Piers Cawley speaks in praise of toolmakers over here:

I don’t know my way around a machine shop, except in the vaguest and most theoretical way. The tools I’ve grown up knowing to use are programming languages, editors, fine manuals and the mental tools a grounding in mathematics brings.

He draws a parallel his dad manufacturing tools to keep his vintage Fraser Nash on the road and himself programming the bits of code he needs to supplement what’s already available.

He makes a good point but he could go further. Increasingly cars have at their core proprietary chunks of electronics that are completely inaccessible both to hobbyist tinkerers and non-franchised garages. Our local garage man is a wizard with Land Rovers and tractors but modern cars defeat him - not because he’s stupid but because all the interesting functionality is inside an inscrutible black box.

I feel the same frustration contemplating the engine room of a modern car that I do when I’m let down by a bit of closed source software. I can tell from the nature of the problem that I could probably fix it myself if only I could get in there. But I’m locked out - so instead I have to speak to the people I bought it from. That generally tends up being costly, frustrating or both - but the real kicker is that I’ve been denied the opportunity to use the skills I know I have to help myself. Against my will I’ve been transformed into a passive consumer.

That’s not the only reason free software is important but it’s a huge factor for me. I grew up with Meccano and Lego; I’m used to making my own toys and fixing or modifying them when they break. Long live the tinkerer and the toolmaker.

The Small Business Blog has a curiously paranoid list of 20 things they hate about the Internet. Unfortunately I can’t link to it because they don’t seem to have permalinks for individual items…

Here’s their list:

20 Things I Hate About the Internet

1. I really hate the fact that individuals can say whatever they want, regardless of whether it is true, there is no recourse for libel or slander because in many cases the posts are not in the same country as the person slandered.

Just how paranoid do you have to be for this to be your number one hate about the Internet? Let’s find out…

2. I hate that the truth is becoming collective, or from those the most persistent. The popularity of wiki’s and in particular wikipedia means that history is becoming fluid.

History has always been fluid, subjective. Princes in the Tower anyone? Oooh, look, here’s Wikipedia trying to deliver a balanced overview of the various prevailing theories about whodunnit. I’m pretty sure that’s a more appropriately skeptical treatment of the subject than I remember from school text books.

3. I hate that it is almost impossible to discern an online writer’s credibility.

You mean unless you engage your critical faculties? You know, read some other stuff they’ve written, make a judgement? Online you can quickly find just about everything someone’s written and feed the whole lot into your bullshit filter.

4. I hate that crime is allowed to flourish online.

As opposed to the real world where crime has been completely eliminated?

5. I hate that the EU forces US companies to collect VAT on European sales. US companies don’t benefit from the tax, yet they are forced to staff individuals to handle collection and submission of VAT taxes to European Governments.

Sucks. Has precisely what to do with the Internet? The same rules would apply to conventional mail order. Isn’t the fact that the Internet opens this market to you at all a good thing?

6. I hate that U.S. legislatures passed a law that it is illegal for US citizens to remain anonymous on line yet pedophiles hide behind anonymity.

Is that true? I can’t find any reference to a U.S. law that makes online anonymity illegal. Obviously people doing bad things will attempt to conceal their identity; that’s hardly a bad thing about the Internet.

7. I hate that email is so impersonal and so easily misunderstood.

Check. Sometimes you just have to talk to people.

8. I hate that personal information on nearly any person is simply only a click away.

Not strictly a single click. In practice you need an eleven year old hacker from the movies who can crack the strongest known crypto with ten minutes of frantic typing. Or are you just talking about whatever you choose to reveal about yourself? Isn’t that, you know, your responsibility?

9. I hate that children see Internet pornography without even trying.

Well as you later point out they are much more adept at using the ‘net. Still, jealously is an ugly thing - I think you should let it go. If you practice really hard you’ll be able to find pr0n without trying too.

10. I hate that law abiding citizens are at a distinct disadvantage on the Internet.

No, sorry. You’ve completely lost me now.

11. I hate if you work at an Internet business your day does not end at 5:00.

I like the fact that I work pretty much whenever I want to - unlike friends who work in conventional businesses. Still, YMMV.

12. I hate to be at Google’s mercy for search engine ranking.

I’m glad Google goes to such lengths to stop you gaming your search engine rank.

13. I hate that search engines are constantly changing their algorythms.

I’m glad Google goes to such lengths to stop you gaming your search engine rank.

14. I hate that children know more about the Internet than their parents.

Yeah, it’s terrible to see kids embracing a new technology with their hungry little minds. They’ll probably live longer than us too. Bastards.

15. I hate that the Internet archives can store. Comments that may or may not be true for what could be an eternity.

And even if your grammar gets better they remember the time when you used to randomly. Start new sentences for no apparent reason.

16. I hate that the Internet is litered with junk sites and abandoned out of date content.

As a specific example a recent survey has shown that if all the redundant top 20 lists were properly recycled we’d free up enough numbers to count to nearly 1,000,000.

17. I hate that Internet obsession allienates the older generation.

I must ask my 75 year old parents about that the next time I can drag them away from emailing bridge scores to each other.

18. I hate that Google so much power.

Grrr! Still smarting over that crappy pagerank eh?

19. I hate that the playing field for small businesses on the Internet is no longer level.

Yes, it’s really irksome that crap companies can’t stand shoulder to shoulder with great ones any more.

20. I hate that clickfraud is a part of life if marketing on the Internet.

Undoubtedly clickfraud is one of the major threats to society as we know it. I couldn’t agree more on this one.