Category: Tech

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While cleaning the apartment this weekend, we found a long-forgotten bag of “Lazy Lizard” Mozilla Coffee. RJ Tarpley’s, the company which sold it (and donated a percentage of profits to the Mozilla Foundation) disappeared last summer. By September, I couldn’t even find a whois record. The domain name has since been picked up by a link farm.

It was decent coffee, and it helped support some good software. And I got a nifty mug while they were still in business. There was maybe half a pound left, but 12-month-old decaf coffee just isn’t fit to drink anymore, so instead of brewing one last pot in salute, we tossed what was left.

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The eternal Mac OS on Intel rumor resurfaced last week, and as always, my reaction was “I’ll believe it when I see it.” Well, I’ve seen it.

After five years of rumors, Apple has not only confirmed Mac OS X can run on Intel processors, but future Macs will run on Intel. No, they won’t be releasing a version of Mac OS that you can install on your PC, they’re “just” replacing the CPUs in future Macs. Apparently Intel has a better road map for future performance. (Hmm, better tell the marketing division, quick. The PowerMac page [archive.org] still touts the PowerPC’s superiority over the Pentium 4.)

It’s a switch on the order of—well, on the order of leaving the Motorola 68K for PowerPC. Back in those days, it was Apple vs. IBM Compatibles, and IBM was a partner in the PowerPC design. These days it’s Apple vs. Wintel, the Windows/Intel combination.

Apple seems to have everything planned out. Secretly running OS X on both PPC and x86 for the past five years, preparing developer tools to produce applications for both architectures, setting up a translation tool to run PPC apps on Intel chips. Microsoft and Adobe are already on board. It’s not a surprise, really—they’ve done it all before. Of course, we all know how well the best laid plans go…

I do have to wonder how this will affect Linux distributions aimed at the PowerPC line. Yellow Dog Linux, for instance, is also advertised as running on IBM’s own PowerPC systems. And depending on the rest of the hardware, standard x86 distros may have to incorporate formerly PPC-only code. Update: It hasn’t shown up on their website yet, but I just got an email from YDL stating that they will remain focused on PowerPC, remain “in good standing with Apple” as a reseller, and “expect [server OS] Y-HPC to gain an even greater userbase with existing Apple Xserve users.”

I also wonder which Intel chip line they plan on using. Everyone seems to be assuming it’s x86-based, and I’d guess it’s 64-bit (why go backwards from the G5?). In theory Apple could go with Itanium, since they don’t need to drag around x86 compatibility, and the extra volume might be enough to bring the price down.

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A recipe for zucchini loaf showed up in one of the spamtraps over the weekend. It was one of the few that used to be real accounts, so I first thought it was someone’s long-lost friend who had a 4-year-old email address, but I scrolled down to the bottom and there was an unsubscribe link. Possibly some recipe mailing list… but one that hasn’t sent any mail for several years? Add in the fact that the message triggered Razor and the unsubscribe link hit the Outblaze SURBL list, and it’s beginning to look more like spam…but why would a spammer just send out a recipe?

Anyway, there’s just something about the phrase, “The Zucchini Loaf recipe is not for me” that I find amusing.

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I received an odd email today which consisted solely of:

Call out Gouranga be happy!!!
Gouranga Gouranga Gouranga ….
That which brings the highest happiness!!

A little Googling, and apparently gouranga is a Hare Krishna term for happiness, also used in the sense of “be happy” and is mysteriously scrawled on bridges in the UK. (Hmm, reminds me of the “Anzel is Love” signs someone plastered all over UCI for a few weeks in the mid-1990s.)

It also seems that the gouranga spam has been around a while.

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Browse HappyI didn’t see that one coming:

BrowseHappy Now Part of WordPress as WaSP Refocuses Mission.

Apparently the Web Standards Project decided they’d be better off remaining neutral. So they’ve handed it off to WordPress, who has been promoting Firefox on their website and in the admin interface for months.

It’s an odd fit, but who knows? Maybe the new management will be insterested in adding some more varied testimonials (they’re almost all Firefox right now).

(via WaSP Buzz)

Update: WordPress has posted their own announcement.

Update 2: MacManX has pointed out that lead WordPress developer Matt Mullenweg is a WaSP member, which helps explain the “Why WordPress?” question.

Update 3: I imagine the WaSP/Microsoft collaboration was probably a factor.

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Subject line (slightly expurgated) from a spam this morning:

Wow MILFS can f*** like mhrotefucesrk!

My first thought was, “like what?” Then I realized it was an anagram. Not unlike the naked sushi spammers, just taken a bit further to the point where it took a few seconds to realize it wasn’t just gibberish. And of course, if you think about it, the statement isn’t entirely logical.

Actually, the rest of the message is rather bizarre. I’m not sure how much I want to actually paste here, though. The footer is safe enough, if odd:

Showing us the beautiful light,
The chalice holds what quenches thirst
Not for me, while I stare at the cold moon

They missed the chance to make the last line an unsubscribe link, and the text is different in the plaintext part, so it’s clearly just random poetry bits.

The website clearly uses a wildcard name, and one of the links is to horrible.bl******.com (with a few extra letters)—not exactly enticing.

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