Bill Ward - All - Computers

Picn*x14

On August 14, 2005 we had the annual Linux Picnic, Picn*x14, at the Sunnyvale Baylands Park.

Click the big picture to go to the set page on Flickr, or click on an individual photo. Or, you can view a slideshow of the photos.

Pictureindex Plugin

~~All the photos on my site~~ The photo galleries on my site that aren't links to Flickr are displayed using the pictureindex plugin. On a list of articles only the first image thumbnail is shown, but when you click on the permalink page you see all the thumbnails. Click on a thumbnail to see the larger image, and from there you can go forward and back through all the images. Yet the entire gallery is still one entry from the point of view of comments, trackbacks, etc.

You can download this plugin and use it on your Blosxom site too. It is licensed under the GNU Public License (GPL).

Error Plugin

The "Captcha Plugin" entry requires the error plugin in order to work, but I forgot to publish it when I published Captcha! So here it is. It is used by the Captcha plugin (an acronym for "Completely Automated Public Turing test to Tell Computers and Humans Apart") to report when the user enters the wrong string, etc.

All this plugin does is adapt CGI::Carp to work in a Captcha environment. You create a flavour file called "error.html" and that file will be displayed with any error message whenever a "die" occurs in any Blosxom plugin. Since the "captcha" plugin uses die to report errors, you will get an "Internal Server Error" unless you have the error plugin installed.

In order for it to work it must be loaded before the plugin that dies, so I suggest naming it "00error" in your plugins directory.

You can download this plugin and use it on your Blosxom site too. It is licensed under the GNU Public License (GPL).

Victory in Broadcast Flag Case!

As I reported a while ago, the FCC wants to limit our ability to install digital TV tuners in our computers, and thus to build our own digital video recorders. The proposal would have made it illegal to make or sell tuner cards that would decode digital signals where a "broadcast flag" was set. This was supposed to protect the intellectual property rights of Hollywood but at the cost of making it impossible for us to watch such shows on anything but a commercially produced decoder box or TV.

So now with this ruling, it will take an act of Congress for the FCC to get its way. The deadline of July 1 for buying broadcast-flag-free HDTV tuner cards is now gone!

You can read more about the victory on the EFF Web site or read the court opinion (PDF file).

Come see me speak at the BayLISA Meeting on April 21

I will be giving a presentation on Regular Expressions at BayLISA in Cupertino on April 21. Come out and see it! Here are the details:

Whether running a simple grep command or writing a big Perl program, a thorough understanding of regular expressions is an essential skill for any system administrator. The talk will describe the history, syntax, and best practices for regular expressions; how a well-written regular expression can dramatically improve the speed of pattern matching; and give tips for using regular expressions in Perl programs.

7:30 pm - 9:30 pm
Apple Town Hall auditorium (Garage 1 in Building 4)
4 Infinite Loop
Cupertino, CA 95014
Driving Directions - Yahoo! Map

BayLISA meets on the 3rd Thursday of every month at this location. Visit BayLISA.org for more information.

Buy your HDTV card now before it's too late!

Join the Television Digital Liberation Front!

According to the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) it will soon be illegal to "sell or distribute in interstate commerce a Covered Demodulator Product that does not comply with the Demodulator Compliance Requirements and Demodulator Robustness Requirements." This takes effect on July 1, 2005.

This means that if you have been thinking of using MythTV to create your own digital video recorder (in other words, a homebrew TiVo), and you want it to be able to handle HDTV signals, you have six months to buy the hardware.

Surprisingly, this technology is even crappier than the CSS encryption on DVD's. It's just a flag that indicates whether or not digital rights need to be enforced on the media. And since they've stated that legacy hardware needs to still work, regardless of the flag, all you have to do is use old hardware and it's fine. But unlike the CSS encryption, all hardware capable of accessing the signal is required by FCC ruling to enforce it. So you won't be able to get around this with a simple piece of software like you can with CSS.

Linux Holiday Dinner

Last Wednesday night, December 15, 2004, was our first ever (hopefully annual) Linux Holiday Dinner which I organized. It was held by Silicon Valley Linux Users' Group (where I was recently elected Vice President) and Peninsula Linux Users' Group (of which I am the founder and President).

We held the the party at my favorite Chinese restaurant, Chef Wang's. If you are in the area I strongly recommend you check it out. My wife and I have dinner there frequently with our friend Jeff Komori - the food there is absolutely delicious! They are located at 5100 El Camino Real, Los Altos, CA 94022; telephone (650) 965-2689.

Here are the pictures from the dinner:

Vintage Computer Festival 7.0 Pictures

This past weekend I attended the Vintage Computer Festival 7.0, held at the Computer History Museum here in Mountain View, CA. I was there as part of the Fresno Commodore User Group, the last remaining Commodore User Group in California. We had a bunch of Commodore equipment, past and present, on display (inlcuding the new C64 DTV Joystick). Here are my pictures from the event:

QVC to sell new Commodore 64-in-a-Joystick in time for Christmas

This past weekend I attended the Vintage Computer Festival 7.0 here in Mountain View, CA. I was there as part of the Fresno Commodore User Group (FCUG, the only remaining CUG in California) booth, selling some of our old Commodore stuff and trying to attract members for a new Bay Area chapter. (Email me if you're interested in joining!)

One of the things we had on display was the new C64 DTV, a joystick that has a built-in Commodore 64 processor and 30 classic video games inside. It is based on a custom ASIC designed by Jeri Ellsworth, the designer of the C-One reconfigurable computer. Both the DTV and C-One were on display as Jeri was answering questions and demonstrating them to festival-goers. Other members of the DTV team included Jason Compton, Adrian Gonzalez, Robin Harbron, Per Olofsson, and Mark Seelye.

Yes, the Commodore Business Machines company went out of business years ago, but the rights to the name and the 8-bit computers were sold to other companies. The current owner, Tulip Computers of the Netherlands, is behind the C64 DTV, in collaboration with Ironstone Partners (who own the rights to C64 gaming) and Mammoth Games (the manufacturer). The DTV is listed on Tulip's CommodoreWorld Web site!

The games included are Championship Wrestling, Cyberdyne Warrior, Cybernoid, Cybernoid II, Eliminator, Excelon, Firelord, Gateway to Apshai, Impossible Mission, Impossible Mission II, Jumpman Jr., Paradroid, Pitstop, Pitstop II, Ranarama, Silicon Warrior, Speedball, Summer Games, Supercycle, Sword of Fargoal, Tower Toppler, Uridium, Winter Games, World Karate Championship A, World Karate Championship B, Zynaps, (games split out from others) bull-riding, flying disc, sumo-wrestling, and surfing.

The great news is that the DTV will be made available to the masses via the QVC home shopping channel later this month. It will retail for about $25 according to Jeri. You can see an ad for it at the QVC Web site (requires Windows Media Player or compatible).

The C64 DTV will go on sale the day after Thanksgiving (Friday, November 26) and be featured through Sunday, November 28. It will be "Today's Special Value" on Friday, November 26. Tune in to QVC or visit QVC.com to order. QVC has the exclusive rights to sell the DTV through the end of the year; after that it may be available through other channels as well.

Captcha Plugin

As noted in "Comments Now Enabled", my site has comments enabled, but the user is required to enter a "CAPTCHA" (an acronym for "Completely Automated Public Turing test to Tell Computers and Humans Apart.") string. You can download this plugin and use it on your Blosxom site too. It is licensed under the GNU Public License (GPL).