Ants on the Melon
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Today I was reviewing the projects that were produced as part of Rails Day 2006, and I discovered giveit.to/me. This is a site where you can list any gifts that you would like to receive, and then send your private URL around to those who would like to give you gifts, for a birthday or holiday (or whatever). I’ve done something similar to this over the past few years, and always thought that I should just write a tiny app to handle it, so its good to see that someone finally did it.

There’s even a bookmarklet for adding items to your list, so thats makes it even easier.

Consider this a public service announcement.

The U.S. passport is about to change significantly, and will soon include a RFID chip. RFID chips are used in the same way that “smart tag” passes are used by toll roads, meaning that no physical contact is necessary for your information to be obtained. This doesn’t mean much when its just a toll pass, but it is a little different when the item has all of your personal identification information.

Bruce Schneier, an “internationally renowned security technologist and author” has written an article describing the situation, and lists why you should renew your passport now. Anyone with a passport, or anyone who plans to get a passport, should go read the article right now.

Before you think to yourself that I am being overly paranoid, consider this: you don’t have to be traveling to have your information stolen. It has already been proven that RFID chips can be read at a distance of 69 feet. Yes, that means that someone on a building floor 7 stories above you, or a neighbor down the street, can get everything they need to know in order to clone your passport. Yup, thats right, that has already been done as well.

Another group of security researchers has produced a video describing how terrorists could take advantage of the RFID chips in passports to target people from certain countries. If you weren’t alarmed by this point then you should go watch that 4.5 minute video.

Since your passport is good for 10 years, this is one last opportunity to secure an “old fashioned” passport that won’t allow bad guys to grab your information without you knowing. Of course, there is a website where you can get information to renew your passport. In case you have any questions, there is a FAQ to help you out.

From Google CEO Dr. Eric Schmidt Joins Apple’s Board of Directors:

“Eric is obviously doing a terrific job as CEO of Google, and we look forward to his contributions as a member of Apple’s board of directors,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “Like Apple, Google is very focused on innovation and we think Eric’s insights and experience will be very valuable in helping to guide Apple in the years ahead.

Very interesting…..

Next up, Google Maps Flight Simulator.

Maybe I should just create a “Google Maps Mashups” category and be done with it.

Wow.

That’s pretty amazing growth for a company that just started in February 2005.

Woo! The Debian folks have announced that “etch” will be released in December. I find this very exciting!

Recently I have been helping to admin a couple of Ubuntu Dapper Drake servers, and I have to say, I am pretty impressed with this distribution. From a server perspective its just Debian with up-to-date packages, which is really nice when you need to run the latest versions of Ruby and MySQL (which are quite behind in Debian proper).

I know this will make me sound like a zealot, but I really don’t understand why anyone would choose to run a server with anything other than Debian or one of its derivatives. I’ve had to administer reasonably large numbers of Red Hat and Debian servers, and the Debian servers have been without question the easiest and best maintained distros. I continually hear about Red Hat’s up2date breaking existing installations and generally causing havoc. Never once have I had anything like that happen on a Debian “stable” server, although I can imagine it might happen on the more frequently updated Ubuntu distros.

Its really pretty amazing what the Ubuntu/Kubuntu people have been able to do to the Linux desktop. I prefer KDE, so Kubuntu is my distro of choice and it has really come a long way. Mac OS X is still my primary desktop OS, but at the office I have a Kubuntu box running Synergy and its hard to imagine how a work environment could be any better than the Mac OS X + Kubuntu combination.

This weekend I had brief but interesting discussion with some folks concerning the pros and cons of Net Neutrality. I’m not quite sure how I feel about it at this point, but I do understand the arguments from both sides. On the one hand, I learned growing up “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”, but there is also an opportunity for something better to come out of it.

Net Neutrality is a complicated issue, and we’ve already heard a Ninja explain it, but what if you don’t speak Ninja? Well, fortunately the Daily Show has put together a nice little segment to help explain it as well.

Everyone here should know by now that I love a good Google Maps mashup. In the past I’ve posted about the Seinfeld Mashup, the NYC Subway Mashup, and StreetEasy – a search tool for expensive real estate. Of course, all of these are based around one of my favorite places: New York City.

I am fascinated by NYC, especially the people living there, which is probably why I find Overheard in New York so interesting. How could it get any better? By adding a Google Maps mashup of course: Overplot.

Richard sent a link to the etching of Magritte’s “The Son of Man” on a PowerBook to me today and I love it! I’ve used the Son of Man as my IM icon for years, and most recently in my blog masthead. Incidentally, I never really thought about the apple/Apple connection until I saw this etching.

I’m generally against putting stickers on laptops, or modifying them in any way, but this is just too awesome. I think I am going to try to find a second lid for the PowerBook so that I can do this as well.

Ever since I saw the parallels demo I have been trying to buy a MacBook. The Apple store in San Antonio has been selling out of them as soon as they get them, and I was calling a couple times a day to see find out when they would get some in stock. Today I called and they said they had just gotten some in, but that there were not many left, so I took off for the store to get one.

I got the base model, and upgraded it to 1 GB of RAM because 1) Mac OS X is much nicer with 1 GB, and 2) I figured that trying to do anything in Parallels with 512 MB would pretty much suck.

Before doing anything I had to install all of my favorite Mac applications. One thing I noticed immediately was how much more powerful the wireless is on the MacBook than on my PowerBook. At my apartment I was suddenly seeing 8 access points, where the PowerBook only occasionally picks up 2.

After switching the power management to “Better Battery Life” my battery life shot up to 5 hours and 21 minutes as seen to the left.

After getting all of my music copied over I started playing with Parallels. I’ve only installed an instance of Debian Sarge so far (it was the only ISO I had at home), but I can tell you, this is one awesome app. I can see this one application alone driving up the sales for Intel Macs.

I’m not completely sold on the new keyboard style though. Once so far when I was typing the little square key went down on an angle and snapped back up. Of course, this sometimes happens on the PowerBook keyboard as well. (maybe I type with a lazy gangsta lean?)

Other observations:

• The MagSafe power adapter is very nice and I can see how this will save many laptops from an untimely death.
• The new magnetic lid is much easier to use than the clasp latch on the PowerBooks/iBooks/MacBook Pros.
• The MacBook gets a bit hotter than the iBooks ever did. That’s not unreasonable given the difference in processing power.
• The RAM (and hard drive) slots are accessible through the battery hole on the back. This is much easier to work with than having it under the keyboard as in the iBooks.
• The default installation used over 18 GB. I read this and decided to immediately reinstall to free up some space. After unchecking all the demo software and stuff I didn’t need, I got the installation down to 11 GB, so I regained 7 GB of space.
• The glossy screen isn’t a big deal, once its powered on I barely even notice any difference.

At this point, although I really like the MacBook, I think I still prefer the feel (and screen) of the 15″ PowerBook. Although, I have not heard too many great stories about the MacBook Pro’s yet, so I wouldn’t consider getting one of those until at least the second major revision is released. The MacBook fits nicely on my lap, and I think it will be much nicer to use when I am on an airplane. This picture will give you a good idea with how the 13″ MacBook physically sizes up with the 12″ and 14″ iBooks.

All in all, this is a very nice (and fast) little laptop. I have a feeling the MacBook will be many people’s first Apple computer.