freeform goodness

New for me, out-of-date for you…

• Dell’s FugliPod (a/k/a :the Digital Jukebox) via 2lmc, Sven, and Erik Barzeski. Still wondering how a computer company can take in billions of dollars in annual revenue and only divert about 50 cents worth of it into industrial design. Savages.
• This goes back a while, but Matt Dillon did a short evaluation of the small form-factor VIA-chipset motherboards and cases for use as small, lightweight, quiet, low-power home servers. I’m likely to go in that direction myself (using FreeBSD.) Putting this note here so the link will get indexed…
• A CCIA study takes on the (lack of) wisdom of trusting information infrastructure to a software monoculture (something I’ve been known to drone on about at length.) Saying what you really think can get you stomped, though.

:: Dave Walker 11:11 (EST/EDT) [+] ::

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• It feels a little like piling on, but hell, it’s all over Slashdot and Blogdex so here you are. As I’ve said before, I think the real issue is the monoculture, but explaining that one takes longer than a second and a half and so… ooh shiny, what were you saying again?
• A thoughtful take on the BBC archive announcement.
• A read-only (for now) NTFS filesystem for Darwin. Cool. I don’t have an immediate use for this, but I can think of quite I few situations where it would be a good thing to have.
• I’ve never plugged these guys before, and I should, because they put out good stuff. They’re an electronic MP3 label, and some really talented folks (including Ilkae, Lackluster, and Md) have released stuff there. You can get the whole Monotonik catalog via BitTorrent (which I believe is a first), plus the Internet Archive also mirrors their music. Try the new Fictions and Fires EP by Crashed By Car. Besides, as a good friend of mine likes to say, “Free?!? You just can’t f*** with free!”
• Jenny-J passes along an interesting obituary. Pretty good, but I can’t agree that it’s the best obituary ever. This is the Best. Obituary. Ever.

:: Dave Walker 09:15 (EST/EDT) [+] ::

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And on with the morning news hoover:

• Alan Connor smites word snobs: Blog is a perfectly cromulent word: This is what dictionaries do. (via 2lmc)
• Another look at the risks presented by the current operating system monoculture. (via 2lmc)
• When even the tabloids catch on to your pump & dump scheme, it’s safe to say the gig is up: “At software company SCO Group, insiders sold $1.3 million worth of shares - which raised eyebrows because the company is embroiled in a nasty legal dispute with IBM and others.” (New York Post)
• Um, wow. Does this mean that classic episodes of things like Monty Python, The Prisoner, Red Dwarf, and the like will be available as free, unencumbered downloads? That would be, as we say in Ecorse, the whip. I’m sure there are a myriad of licensing issues, but this could be huge. (via Scripting News)
• Sasha Frere-Jones leads a major offensive from one side of the trench warfare between the two major strains of pop music criticism. (via I Love Music)

:: Dave Walker 10:42 (EST/EDT) [+] ::

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