Matt Croydon::Postneo

Day: December 1, 2003

  • Roy Disney Resigns

    Wow. Roy Disney resigned today. That is big. (Blogging in traffic)

    Later:

    From the looks of things, Roy was very upset with a lot of things that Eisner has been doing, and some general issues with the poor performance of the comany in several key areas (Animation, ABC, theme parks).

    He could probably usurp Disney from Eisner if he came up with the right replacement.  As a sidenote, he installed Eisner as CEO in a sort of coup almost 20 years ago.

    Who would be the perfect Disney CEO?  Steve Jobs of course.  He already heads Apple and Pixar, two of the more creative companies out there.  Disney owns a part of Pixar.  It makes perfect sense.  Of course if I were Steve Jobs, I wouldn’t touch that position with a 39.5 foot pole, but still, how cool would that be?

    Back to reality…

  • Xine: 1.0 is Approaching

    Via Newsforge, linmagau has a preview of Xine 1.0 and interviews some of the authors.  Here is a quick taste of what it can do:

    It plays back CDs, DVDs, and VCDs. It also decodes multimedia files like AVI, MOV, WMV, and MP3 from local disk drives, and displays multimedia streamed over the Internet. It interprets many of the most common multimedia formats available – and some of the most uncommon formats, too.

    The current release candidate can handle subtitles and handle a ton of file formats and streaming codecs.

  • WebDAV

    WebDAV is one of those things that I’ve been meaning to set up and use for awhile but I have never actually done it.  It’s so cool though.  Someday…

  • MEIPS Linux

    Via PCLinuxOnline, MEIPS is a Debian-based distro that allows you to both boot from a LiveCD and install to your hard drive.  Of course Knoppix is the king of LiveCDs, but the last time that I installed it to a local hard drive, it still behaved like it was running on a CD, just from my hard drive.  Of course there are ways around it, but it’s a little awkward.

    It looks like MEIPS does a good job of allowing you to play around with Linux, and then easily install it to your hard drive if you so choose.  From what I’ve seen of the installer, it looks pretty intuitive and pretty straightforward.  Because it runs from a full-on KDE session, you don’t have to deal with those useful but unsightly text menus.

    I have not had a chance to give this a try, but it looks promising.  It is based on Debian unstable and of course you can use all of the apt goodness once you have a working installation.

    Check out the MEIPS site for included features, screenshots, mirrors and more.

  • CAKE: Key Addressed Crypto Encapsulation

    Cake:

    CAKE is a networking protocol in which all messages are addressed to a public key, and are signed by the source public key. Public key identifiers are treated like IP addresses. They represent the destination or source of any particular message.

    Cool idea.

  • Leica Digilux 2: Uglier Than the Original, But Oh So Fine

    DPReview:

    Leica today announced the Digilux 2, a five megapixel compact digital camera with a 3.2x optical zoom lens. Leica are promoting this camera as the “analog” digital camera, in essence this is driven by the camera’s design and control layout which is almost identical to a standard manual film camera (such as aperture ring, shutter speed dial etc.) The lens is also pretty special, a 28 – 90 mm equiv. with a maximum aperture of F2.0 at wide angle and F2.4 at telephoto. The Digilux 2 has a magnesium body, a trans-reflective 2.5″ LCD monitor, Electronic viewfinder, stores images on SD card and is powered by a 1400 mAh Lithium-Ion battery.

    Check out the article at DPReview for more info and pics of this ugly beast.  Of course it’s ugly in that retro-non-ergonomic-but-I-want-one-anyway sense.  The basic design is similar to the Digilux 1 with the exception of a monster 28-90mm lens.  The previous lens was nice.  This lens is a monster!  It’s a shame that the lens does not zoom more, but you’ve got that quality not quantity thing going on here.

    Just like its older brother, the Digilux 2 has one of the bigger LCD screens out there, and it also retains the ability to manually control shutter speed, aperture, and focus if you like.  Couple that with a 5 megapixel sensor on a platform most likely done by Panasonic, and you’ve got a great albeit ugly camera.

  • The Perfect Debian Server Setup

    Newsforge points to the perfect Debian setup for ISPs and servers.  If you are used to a whizzy Red Hat/Mandrake/SUSE/etc installer, the text-based Debian installer can be a little scary.  It can be a little confusing too, but it reminds me of installing Slackware on a shiny new Pentium 60 when I was younger.

    The article is an excellent run-through of the Debian install process, with a focus on a functional server without a million things installed by default.  Of course everyone thinks of Red Hat as the de-facto server distro, but a Debian server if installed and administered properly can be a lean mean serving machine.  Debian can also be kept up to date with security and bug fixes insanely easily.  Major bonus there.

    The beautiful thing about Debian is that you start with a pretty barebones system, and as soon as you need something, apt-get install it and you’re good to go.  You don’t have to deal with all of that unwanted cruft.

    Serve on, baby!

  • Weekend Almost Over

    The weekend is almost over.  I’ve been a bad boy and have not been keeping up with the couple hundred or so feeds that I monitor.

    I did a bit of moblogging this weekend though.