C|Net has posted some kind of list of top 10 geek girls. WTF is Paris Hilton doing on there? Did they really have a hard time finding a cool geek woman that they had to to fill it with Lisa Simpson? Is mentioning geek and chick in the same article really so hot that they just threw something together to generate some hits? Gah.. it’s not even entertaining..
It finally arrived, my 12.1 inch, 4 pound, Lenovo v100. Its a small little thing (although not nearly as small as my old Fujitsu) with a nice bit of power.
I easily installed Kubuntu (Dapper) and everything works out of the box (this includes X.org, sound, bluetooth, wireless, function buttons, and suspend/resume). There is also a 5-in-1 media card reader which is recognized and supposedly supported as of 2.6.17, but I have not tested it yet. I did have an issue upgrading to the latest kernel which renders my wireless card useless. This is a known problem, but I haven’t gotten around to fixing it, instead I just reverted back to my last known working kernel (2.6.15).
Have I named it yet? Of course! Say こんにちは (kon’nichiwa) to Takochi (photo 1, photo 2, screenshot). This is the first time I have given a female name to any of my computers. It comes from the name of the subject in a cyberpunk graphic I found a lot time ago and did some photoshop work on (the original site I found it on is long gone, and I have failed to find out who the original author is).
There really isn’t much else to write, Kubuntu Linux works out of the box with 0 tweaking. For those of you who want hardware specs, here are the basics:
Hurrah!
seele :: Oct.24.2006 :: Geek, General, Open Source :: 7 Comments »
D.C. and Pittsburgh reunited once again during the Hackers on Planet Earth 6 conference. Myself, J, Elwing, Lyssa, Doc, Vlad, Genetik, and Nuke met up at the Hotel Pennsylvania very late Thursday (or early Friday). The D.C. crowd was delayed a few hours by a bomb threat in Union Station, but arrived without a hitch.
Mysteriously, several panels were cancelled, including two on which Kevin Mitnick was supposed to participate in (he had food poisoning?) and Steven Rambam who incidentley was arrested by the Feds. Otherwise there were some interesting panels, some technical and some social, and it was a generally good time.
A few of us also headed to Broadway to see Avenue Q — a play featuring puppets in a rated R fashion. It was probably one of the best plays I have seen, although I wouldn’t suggest taking your kids.
It is always interesting to go to these kinds of conferences as a design outsider. I had an interesting conversation with my two security enthusiast (and professional) friends about the difficulty of helping normal users understand security and privacy technologies enough to use them. Almost all of the literature out there is focused on helping people understand the technology, not necessarily the application and practice for every normal users. The only movement I have seen in this area is the Symposium on Usable Privacy from Carnegie Mellon, but it may be that I am still ignorant to this field of interest.
This was J’s first time in New York City, so we did the tourist thing. We found a nice bus tour which drove us all around the city with options to stop and get off (weather permitting, that day is was not). There was enough to see to be entertaining, but enough left to have something to visit next time we go to NYC.
seele :: Jul.25.2006 :: Geek, General, Technology, Usability :: No Comments »
Steven Rambam, Owner and CEO of Pallorium, Inc., and speaker at HOPE 6 was arrested by the FBI before he could give his presentation yesterday. There are no details on why he was arrested (though there are plenty of rumours).
More on the Washington Post.
Soon I will be catching the train and be on my way to New York for HOPE Number Six. If anyone is going to be there, drop me a mail — maybe I’ll see you in the lab!