Strangeparty

Yes, I saw the new Harry Potter film (the goblet of fire) and quite frankly I thought it sucked.
The book was quite long, especially compared to the first 3, and the director obviously struggled to fit the contents into the length of a film. Most of the events are there, but they are barely a moment in the film. Some bits were extended in the film (even made up) but did little to increase interest of the event.

Wait for it to reach TV (or at least DVD rental).

I spent almost half the day at work today trying to find my way past a very annoying RedHat specific bug with perl (I realy wish debian was a commercially approved distribution, as I would have never had this problem with it). Eventually I found someone who knew of the problem and helped me fix it in about 30 seconds.
If the solution had come earlier then I would not have wasted so much time today. Although the time spent playing with Lego Mindstorms was hardly wasted. Tomorrow will be even better, as we are having a meeting to play with Lego!

Shogun will be sorting out an rss feed for me, so I will be putting up a feed of his posts, but I would like to draw your attention to his most recent post, as it does look interesting.

I am not bothering to add nice images, I’ll leave that to Shogun
He is commenting on the new Channel4 reality tv series Space Cadets. He believes that the contestants will figure out the show, and that it devalues science. I believe that if you choose gullible enough people you can convince them that they are actually in space even though there is gravity (they are using a low orbit argument). In fact, if they are using space suits, all you need is a large tank and put them in water (though the water on the suit when they get back in might confuse them quite a bit, but I am sure you could figure out a decontamination argument to throw them off).

It certianly devalues science, but may give some interesting insights into psychology, especially suggestive reasoning (tell someone something enough times and they will start believing it). I would be quite keen to see it, though probably only a few short clips if I know channel4.

The money could undoubtedly be spent on something far more interesting though.

Although I am writing this post from my laptop, and hence it is not completely ddead, I am writing from Linux as Windows will not boot.

How did I end up in this predicament?
I wanted to install service pack 2. The machine did not come with it, and as the company rolls out its own set up of windows I could not install Microsofts version. There is a trial program to install the company version of SP2, and I readall the warnings about installing it and did not see anything about it Blue Screening after installing - so I thought I would give it a go.

As you can tell, it did not end up happily.

The question is how long I wait to get it reinstalled. I cannot really do it myself. Apart from not having a Windows CD, I am supposed to run the companies version of Windows (I am not sure how they feel about running my own version of linux either).

I am hoping to get a reply from the group trialing SP2 as they might find some core dumps from my machine useful and even have a solution. At the same time, the new install the company uses for Windows has SP2 in it already, so I am tempted to just get it installed and re-partition the disk for linux after.
I have not really lost anything. I just need to remember to back up my email program, in case the automatic backup is not set up properly (this will be a good chance to test if I am missing anything from my regular backups). Apart from that I just need to grab my kernel config file from linux (yes, I build my own kernel - I have a few things I need to do it for, like making the laptop sleep, and it isn’t all that difficult. Speaking of which, if you run Debian I have a wonderful article that will have you building and running your own kernel in a few hours) Listening to: Goo Goo Dolls - Iris

So while getting my daily dose of slashdot
US Keeps Control of the Internet - Adam Schumacher writes "As a result of a a deal reached late Tuesday, the US and ICANN will maintain control over the Internet’s core systems. A new body will be created to provide international oversight, which will, of course, have no binding authority."

The most interesting part of this article was the comments. Slashdot isn’t known for a large amount of intelligence in comments, and this shows it. Most comments are along the lines os "we built it. We should control it".
The problem with this argument is that they do not own it, most of it in fact is outside the US, and run by other companies in foreign companies. The article refers only to the naming of servers, which can be changed by any country that wants to set up its own naming servers, but will wreak havoc on the internet. It is really in the interest of the US to get the world involved with the running of the internet.
After all, the world wide web was invented in Switzerland by CERN

The attitude of people on slashdot really annoys me. These are the people that think that the average American is stupid and want to believe that they are different from the stereotype. But are they really?
Read the comments for yourself and see how everyone can conform to a stereotype in the right situation…