Google Chrome

And while world+dog (and the blogosphere) is abuzz with how slick Google Chrome is and how safe / fast it is…

It pays to read Slashdot and The Register.

17 RSS feeds, and only 2 articles mentioning the breach of privacy.

Essentially, there is a clause in the Google Chrome EULA (end-user license agreement) that you sign over all your content creation and modification rights over to them.

Section 11.1:

11.1 You retain copyright and any other rights that you already hold in Content that you submit, post or display on or through the Services. By submitting, posting or displaying the content, you give Google a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free and non-exclusive licence to reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute any Content that you submit, post or display on or through the Services. This licence is for the sole purpose of enabling Google to display, distribute and promote the Services and may be revoked for certain Services as defined in the Additional Terms of those Services.

Can someone scream “copyright infringement” now?

Further information: The Register

Update: Ars Technica reports that Google has come back to the web with a revised EULA that removes that clause, or at least revises it.

A deluge of space

I have

A 1.6TB server
with
1.06TB of mirrored space (RAID5 and RAID1)
57G of RAID0
500GB of standalone storage

And zero idea of what to do with that space. As of now I’ve only used 400gb. Which leaves 1.2TB. Ideas?

Guide to port knocking

I’ve posted a guide to port-knocking on the Articles subsection, located here.

Do let me know if there are any mistakes :D

Craigslist – the witty and the sad

Is this because of an attitude problem? Or being too picky?

Either way, something screams “wrong” if you describe yourself to be “outrageously beautiful” (hyperbole, methinks) and yet unable to find non-douchebags.

Freaking hilarious.

Link

On a side note, you find these funny things in the weirdest places. I got this off my Planet Debian RSS feed.

[Edit: Original post was down, so here's a reproduction, and an investment banker's reply]
Original Post

‘What am I doing wrong?

Okay, I’m tired of beating around the bush. I’m a beautiful (spectacularly beautiful) 25 year old girl. I’m articulate and classy. I’m not from New York. I’m looking to get married to a guy who makes at least half a million a year. I know how that sounds, but keep in mind that a million a year is middle class in New York City, so I don’t think I’m overreaching at all.

Are there any guys who make 500K or more on this board ? Any wives ? Could you send me some tips ? I dated a business man who made an average of around 200 – 250K. But that’s where I seem to hit a roadblock. $250,000 won’t get me to Central Park West. I know a woman in my yoga class who was married to an investment banker, and lives in Tribeca. She’s not as pretty as I am, nor is she a great genius. So what is she doing right ? How do I get to her level ?

Here are my questions specifically:

- Where do you single rich men hang out ? Give me specifics – bars, restaurants, gyms

- What are you looking for in a mate? Be honest guys, you won’t hurt my feelings

- Is there an age range I should be targeting ?

- Why are some of the women living lavish lifestyles on the Upper East Side so plain? I’ve seen really ‘Plain Jane’ boring types, who have nothing to offer incredibly wealthy guys. Then I’ve seen drop dead gorgeous girls in singles bars in the East Village. What’s the story there ?

- Lawyers, investment bankers, doctors. How much do those guys really make ? And where do the hedge fund guys hang out ?

- How do you rich guys decide on marriage vs. just a girlfriend ? I am looking for MARRIAGE ONLY.

Please hold your insults – I’m putting myself out there in an honest way. Most beautiful women are superficial – at least I’m being up front about it. I wouldn’t be searching for these kind of guys if I wasn’t able to match them – in looks, culture, sophistication, and keeping a nice hearth and home’.

An Investment Banker’s Response:

Dear Pers-431649184:

‘I read your posting with great interest and have thought meaningfully about your dilemma. I offer the following analysis of your predicament.

Firstly, I’m not wasting your time. I qualify as a guy who fits your bill – that is, I make more than $500K per year. That said, here’s how I see it:

Your offer, from the prospective of a guy like me, is a plain and simple crappy business deal. Here’s why. Cutting through all the B.S., what you suggest is a simple trade: you bring your looks to the party and I bring my money. Fine, simple. But here’s the rub, your looks will fade and my money will likely continue into perpetuity – in fact, it is very likely that my income will increase, but it is an absolute certainty that you won’t be getting any more beautiful!

So, in economic terms, you are a depreciating asset. Not only are you a depreciating asset, however, your depreciation accelerates! Let me explain – you’re 25 now and will likely remain pretty hot for the next 5 years, but less so each year. Then the fade begins in earnest. By 35 – stick a fork in you!

So, in Wall Street terms, we’d call you a trading position – not a buy and hold…hence the rub…marriage. It doesn’t make good business sense to ‘buy you’ (which is what you’re asking) – so I’d rather lease. In case you think I’m being cruel, I would say the following: if my money were to go away, so would you – so when your beauty fades I need an out too. It’s as simple as that. So the deal that makes sense for me is dating, not marriage.

Separately, I was taught early in my career about efficient markets. So, I wonder why a girl as ‘articulate, classy and spectacularly beautiful’ as you has been unable to find your sugar daddy. I find it hard to believe that, if you are as gorgeous as you say you are, your $500K man hasn’t found you – if only for a tryout.

By the way, you could always find a way to make your own money – and then we wouldn’t need to have this difficult conversation.

With all that said, I must say you’re going about it the right way. Classic ‘pump and dump’. I hope this is helpful, and if you want to enter into some sort of lease, please let me know’.

Reader Comment:

1. If she piles on the weight, it’s likely to be ‘plump and dump!’

2. ‘The Investment Banker’s response is correct if you see the gold digger as providing only companionship, looks and sophistication.
However, some Investment Bankers may wish to have offspring carrying their genes into the next generation. This is a long-term contract, and you have to ‘buy and hold’ rather than ‘lease’. Therefore this 25 year-old beauty should change her sales pitch to: ‘I’ll give you nice children AND I’ll let you do whatever else you want on the side as long as you’re discreet’.

3. ‘I hate to say it but, in the current environment, this Master of the Universe should ship her in asap. Then at least he’ll have a nice shoulder to cry on when he gets canned. We’re ALL depreciating assets these days. At least this young lady has some gumption as well as those spectacular good looks and style to fall back on’.

4. Response to investment banker:

‘Ah! But I am an depreciating asset all right (for that matter, you are too – but your cash flow stream more than overcompensates for the toxicity of the future tummy expansion, and contraction of the hair). But the depreciating asset is a convertible one with two embedded options:

The first option is for conversion to a wife, preferably before the day that the hair / tummy factor becomes less than positive and cashflow benefits become more important. If you do not take up that wife-conversion option, then the expanding gut and thinning hair will require a constantly and exponentially increasing stream of invested earnings to attract young chicks.

The second option is that you have a put option on a baby (which is preferably contingent on the first option being exercised), safe in the knowledge that good genes will be passed on. You have to admit, the main reason why you investment bankers are so attractive is because you can make money. However, we have established information that those money-making genes do not travel very well. My good looks will probably be passed on though.

So, for an upfront investment in this depreciating asset will, in the long run, make your overall yield curve positive.

(Source – The Daily Salty)

Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon 7.10 release


Singnet

Slow

Ubuntu 7.04 Feisty

Ubuntu 7.04, codenamed “Feisty”, has been released. There doesn’t seem to be much changes, but I’ve downloaded the ISOs and am going to install them over the weekend. Let’s see if they give a performance increase on the Dell XPS.

Sudo Insults

From http://www.bani.com.br/index.php/2007/01/17/sudo-insults/

An interesting sudo feature is the ability to insult you when you type a wrong password. It has really funny phrases, see some of them:

  • I’ve seen penguins that can type better than that.
  • Maybe if you used more than just two fingers

On Ubuntu, this feature comes disabled by default. To enable it, edit /etc/sudoers file with visudo and put insults in the end of line “Defaults”. That line will look like this:

Defaults !lecture,tty_tickets,!fqdn,insults

That’s it! Just run the sudo command and type a wrong password.

This sounds really funny. Although I can predict that there will be a sudden spike in the wrong passwords. Haha.

MIT OpenCourseWare

I’ve just discovered the power of MIT OpenCourseWare. The notes there are comprehensive enough to study for my YDSP attachment. There are more details given there than on Wikipedia. I’d be severely remiss if I did not recommend this excellent source of materials for self-study. They have a wide range of topics covered, though you should keep in mind that it’s very subjective towards the courses that MIT has.

URL: http://ocw.mit.edu

Bookmark it, people. :-D

Ubuntu + Beryl = Computing Hell

My Dell has just survived a trip from Hell – installing Beryl. How doth mine computer screweth? Let me count thy ways.

Installing Beryl the first time was a snap, just added the repositories, installed the beta nVidia drivers (yes, yes, I know I was looking for trouble) then installed Beryl and Emerald. But Beryl refused to start. I figured that it was the X.org configuration. Easy, just a minor change to the X.org configuration file, right?

Wrong! I decided to start from scratch. So uninstalled everything and reinstalled it again. This time it refused to install. So I added and removed a lot of repositories (thankfully backing up my apt-get sources file). Then it worked.

Post-installation, the windows looked cool, but the window borders were nowhere to be seen.

So I decided to remove Beryl. Easy…just uninstall the programs and reinstate the old drivers.

Too bad, the programs uninstalled fine, but the drivers refused to revert back. apt-get recognized the beta driver to be a newer version and refused to let me revert back to the official nvidia-glx.

As such, I had to change back the open source ‘nv’ driver, then install the nvidia-glx driver. But it needed the nvidia-kernel package, which wasn’t present in the repositories. So I had to manually download it. :(

All in all, reinstatement of my computer took 3 hours. Not the best way to spend my time.