So, XinuReturns really does work. Showed me that the Blogathon monitoring group likes me Mebbe more about that now that I know they have a place to congregate.

*drools*

According to this article, the small company that bought most of the leftover stock of DeLoreans, parts, and blueprints is set to begin building the cars from scratch. Their stock of parts is running low after a couple of decades of being the only supplier, working from whatever DeLorean had on hand when they shut down. The shop only has 20 people, so they’re only planning to put out a couple dozen of the new ones per year, but still, if there’s a market, that means they’ll sell.

Apparently, buying and restoring a DeLorean usually only runs about $25,000. Might have to look into that. (I know, I know, the DeLorean was actually a pretty crappy car. I grew up on Back to the Future. Cut me some slack)

Slashdot today had a blurb regarding a German open source developer. He is forced to discontinue development of his project (a wireless network sniffer for MacOS) because recent laws in Germany would make it dangerous for him to continue participating. He is encouraging anyone who can to take copies of the source code while his site is still up, so that development can continue in another country.

This is another of a growing list of examples of politicians (thankfully not American this time) legislating things they apparently know nothing about. Making it illegal to develop or possess penetration software will do exactly nothing to curb the tide of tools appearing and being used by crackers. The law is unenforceable without direct access to everyone’s hard drive; you’re certainly not going to get that access from any criminal element, and hopefully not from any innocents tech-savvy enough to prevent it.

In an extension of, and even better example of, a common gun example, “once cracking tools are outlawed, only outlaws will have cracking tools.” As long as these tools are being written (read: forever), it only makes sense to allow the good guys to examine them and figure out how they work, the better to defend against them. In the same vein, how am I to tell if I even CAN defend against a tool if I don’t have the tool available to test against? How can I tell if my wireless network is as secure as I need, if I am not allowed to try to hack it myself? I personally have several Linux LiveCDs with a penetration-testing focus; those would apparently be illegal to possess in Germany, now. With modern America’s propensity to follow the leader in legal matters, how long till this is implemented here?

I have boxes full of notebooks full of notes from classes I’ve taken. These are about 75% full-page doodles, 15% blank pages, and 10% actual notes. I’ve never gotten rid of them. With any luck, I will be soon.

I have never (before now) gotten rid of anything electronic. Broken? Goes in the broken electronics box. Old, and too common to ever be a collector’s item? Push it to the side. Old and possibly valuable in the future? Same thing, just try harder not to kick it as I walk by.

Applies to music, too. I never get rid of a cd or mp3, no matter how much I dislike it. Same for video games.

Clothes? You should see some of the clothes I have packed away. Luckily, this isn’t nearly as bad as the other aspects.

But hey, I don’t keep dead bugs. That’s good, right?

Reading Wikipedia about Iain M. Banks (the author of The Algebraist, as I mentioned earlier), reveals that he has several other books I need to acquire. He has a 6-book + short stories series that fleshes out a universe similar to the one in The Algebraist. He also writes literary fiction (my wife will be so happy), though he’s credited there without the middle initial.