UCI Housing Network and Cable TV Issues

For years, I had the BBC News ticker running on my laptop. This got me real news, not the crap that goes under "news" in the US...
Unfortunately, the BBC hadn't updated the ticker for years, and it didn't work all that well on XP.
I finally found the time to look around for a replacement. It turns out that the BBC offers a new ticker, as part of their BBC News Desktop Alert system. That works quite well.
I also found a Linux implementation of the BBC ticker. That solves my other main complaint about the news ticker, the lack of a Linux version.

Update: The BBC has discontinued the desktop ticker. With the focus on smartphones nowadays, there probably was no demand for it anymore.

A rather off-topic post, but I have waited for this so long... Ever since I got a Gmail account, I petitioned for IMAP support.

This post announces IMAP support for Gmail.
Here is more.
My account settings don't show it yet, but I expect it soon.
Update: It is now enabled. Works wonderfully in Thunderbird. Thanks, guys.

The other thing they did was pushing up the storage space. It is now over 4GB.

In the last couple of days, there has been a lot of news about a certain hexadecimal number, starting with 09-F9.
See, for example, this story on CNet, this one on Slashdot, or this story on the BBC website.
The story nicely shows the power of the Internet. Once a secret is on the Net, it can not be suppressed. As Lauren Weinstein notices, "you can't effectively censor the Internet."

Wired collected some creative responses to the crackdown attempt.
Another one is this artwork using Google Earth.
I also like this letter, since it shows the absurdity of the whole thing: the number is quoted in a legal letter...

Last week, I took a good look at the 2nd Gen iPod Shuffle at the local Apple store. That thing is so small, it is unbelievable.
So, I decided to buy it. 79 bucks is still affordable. I didn't order it through the Apple store, though, since I wanted the one-line engraving. So, off to the Apple website...
I got it today, and it indeed is probably the coolest MP3 player around. Small is beautiful
This makes it my third iPod, after the 1st and 2nd generation Nano. I have put Rockbox on the 1st gen Nano recently (the 2nd gen Nano has a different processor, so Rockbox doesn't run on it at this point) and I am playing with that.

A little diversion from the usual Resnet/Cable TV stuff...

I just got one of the new iPod nanos, the 8GB model. Pretty cool player.
I wish I could say the same about iTunes 7 for Windows. But unfortunately, iTunes 7 is a complete piece of crap.
It doesn't find the iPod when I unplug it and plug it back in. Only with a repair or the iTunes installation does it recognize it again. It has a "nice" feature to download album artwork from Apple. But for some reason, the artwork didn't show up on the iPod (and yes, the "show artwork on iPod" checkmark is checked.)

But thankfully, the Open Source community to the rescue. I have used gtkpod on my Linux box for some time. The latest CVS snapshot works fine with the new nano, and, unlike the POS iTunes 7, transfers the album artwork correctly to the iPod.

Update: there is an upgrade of iTunes 7, and it is supposed to be better. I haven't tried it yet, though.