I have just written about 400 words on why the new LDAP features in Sudo are really, very, absolutely important and exciting, and the resulting text bored me too much to finish proofing. Instead, I offer only this:

Sudo! With LDAP! Think about how useful that will be!

“Historically, computer users would not regard BMP files as capable of infecting computers. However, there appears to be a bug in the Microsoft code which handles the Windows BMP file format which can allow executable code held inside the BMP file to be executed.”

Link: Sophos on Troj/Agent-A

The licensing for the latest MovableType (the nice software used by this site and umpteen gazillions of other weblogs) has changed: The free license is now much more restrictive. My current setup is still free if I stick with verion 2.6, but to upgrade to version 3 I’ll need to pay $100. Or delete Samwise…

There is a huge flood of whinging going on over this, but the reality is that MT has always been a commercial application, it isn’t open source, and has never claimed to be. Open Source and proprietary software both have their strengths and weaknesses, and usually we can choose which to use.

Apple have done something similar with iTunes: they have recently changed how many computers you can play purchased music on. More significantly, they’ve changed what you can do with products that you have already purchased. The Movable Type change is quite conventional, normal business behaviour, but Apple’s iTunes store license change is a worrying precedent. Which one got the most attention?

Mark Pilgrim has a good opinion on this topic, and how this represents the fundamental relationship between ‘free beer’ and ‘free speech’: Companies using proprietary commercial licenses can take away ‘rights’ in future versions, or even limit software you currently own. Another interesting opinion is at O’Reilly.

Everyone and their dog seem to be recommending a switch to WordPress. I’m probably not changing to it. In theory, I’m going to use MT 2.6 until I actually finish the Hippo prototype, then use either ‘live’ Hippo directly, or the Hippo “static publication” feature that almost-sort-of works. Bear in mind the unfortunate fact that I’ve managed no actual Hippo development for three months, so MT 6.0 will probably arrive first.

I’ve cancelled my Demon account after almost nine years. Demon took too long to provide ADSL, so a couple of years ago I signed up with Zen Internet. Since then I’ve only been using my Demon account for email, and it’s no longer worth paying for a separate account.

Pigwig.demon.co.uk was fun - I felt like a pioneer in the early days, moving from dialing into BBSs to unreliable SLIP connections on my Amiga via Demon, often getting up at 6am to download shareware from FTP sites “before America woke up” and speeds dropped. Years later my Demon webpage got slashdotted, and Demon blocked access to it for a while. Ah, nostalgia.

On the other hand, I’ve discovered that over 90% of our spam is coming in on the old pigwig.demon.co.uk email addresses, and losing that is a definite silver lining.

I tend to save good Dilbert cartoons to my harddisk*, although I’ve not done it so much recently. Which is a pity because following the recent classic Bungee Boss incident at my previous employers, I couldn’t find the cartoon. Grrr.

There really should be an option to subscribe to the full collection, and to publish playlists of favourites. I like the idea of being able to publish a weblog-like career diary using only Dilbert strips… I’ve sufferedexperienced Dilbert archetypes, and I’ve been some too. A Dilbert-diary wouldn’t be much use to me now - as I’m now in the academic world, I seem to have pretty much dropped out of the Dilbert universe. You see Jeff, I wasn’t writing them after all.

(*I do buy all the Dilbert books, so I’m paying Mr Adams. I bought some of the Dilbert food too, once. One day I’ll get the Babylon 5 episode with Scott Adams in it on DVD.)

Reading this article, it struck me that in many ways “The West” must seem to have it’s fair share of strange sexual culture when viewed by people in the Far East, not least the practise of circumcision in the USA.

The practice of removing 70% of the nerves in your son’s penis was originally popular in the USA because it was suppose to limit masturbation, then continued because of suspiciously profitable bad science, and now survives mainly because it’s “normal”. This is exactly the kind of behaviour that the modern, liberal, rational, scientific West thinks it has left behind.

Link: Cutting to the chase

“When we eat it our skin gives off an odour undetectable to humans but repulsive to mosquitoes.”

Link: Eating Marmite Stops Mosquitoes Biting You

The Original Badgers Badger Wallpaper (with the lyrics!) Lord of the Rings Badgers Student Badgers

I’m now convinced that David Blunkett is not misled, ignorant or just stupid - he’s clearly barking mad.

His latestest claim is that his identity card panacea could have prevented the Madrid bombings. Is he suggesting that commuters will have to authenticate themselves with his magic cards in order to get on a train or bus? Given that even the best fingerprint systems have 1/1000 failure rates, that will be interesting: “Sorry I’m late - got arrested for identity fraud again!”

I’m puzzled by the process for getting one of these ID cards - when we go to get an ID card, we’ll obviously need to prove our ID, with one of the supposedly inadequate existing documents. So if I had, let’s say, a fake passport, surely I could get myself a fake Blunkett-card?

Link: Big Blunkett

Japanese robots are, of course, fantastic. Rather intimidating German robot with advanced ‘muscles’. Swiss robot with octopus-like wheeled arms. Stairs are not a problem. American robot fridge can’t make toast (A’s test for robot usefulness) but can bring you a drink.