Tassos Bassoukos - Soapbox

Second Life has bigger GDP than 13 countries!

abassouk@gmail.com (Tassos Bassoukos) — Tue, 10 Oct 2006 02:46:40 +0300

So, Second Life apparently has an estimated GDP of $150M. Some digging in the CIA World Factobook shows that there are 13 countries or areas with a smaller GDP...

To be really honest, for a population of 800,000, that comes out at about $187 per capita. On the other hand, if you consider that the estimated number of persons working 'full-time' within Second life is about a hundred...

One Laptop Per Child

abassouk@gmail.com (Tassos Bassoukos) — Tue, 25 Jul 2006 03:39:30 +0300

Infoworld reports that the Nigerian government will buy one million OLPC machines. Unfortunately, the first thing that comes to mind is the proliferation of 419 scams that will flood the internet in 2-3 years...

On another note, it seems that there is also some traction in Greece for the OLPC concept, as seen in this call for participation.

Spot The Reference

abassouk@gmail.com (Tassos Bassoukos) — Thu, 30 Mar 2006 11:39:20 +0300

I've hit upon the following gem while doing something completely unrelated, and just have to mention it here too. I'm sure you've heard arguments against blogs that fit the essence of this quote:

The multitude of ●●●● is a great evil. There is no limit to this fever for writing; every one must be an author; some out of vanity, to acquire celebrity and raise up a name, others for the sake of mere gain.

Well, think again - the quote originated in the middle ages (1503 is the best date I got) by Marting Luther, and it targeted books, not blogs. The parallels are interesting, and sure make one think...

Worst time to reinstall

abassouk@gmail.com (Tassos Bassoukos) — Sat, 20 Aug 2005 02:23:44 +0300

My laptop uses Ubuntu for the last six months; it's been keeping track of Breezy Badger, the currently unstable branch, for the last 3 months or so and it usually works great. Having some spare time this weekend and with the breezy branch looking seemingly without problems, I've decided to reinstall my desktop computer with ubuntu, as the original installation (originally Debian Woody, then Sarge, then Sid, made 18 months ago) had accumulated too much cruft, mostly due to my tinkering.

So I've downloaded yesterdays archive, I've formatted the disks, installed Hoary Hedgehog and upgraded it to the latest and greated Breezy...

Only to find out that Breezy has been in turmoil for the last 24 hours due to fact that libcairo is getting upgraded to the last version, but several high-profile applications (Firefox!) and components (gnome-panel!) still depend on the old version, which is no longer available via the update system...

Luckily I found an apropriate version after some searching on the web.

Best Quote Ever

abassouk@gmail.com (Tassos Bassoukos) — Mon, 13 Jun 2005 02:50:17 +0300

Via Technology Review: What did a member of the Brazilian government say as a comment on the issue of proprietary software?

"We're against software piracy. We believe Microsoft's rights should be respected. And the simplest way to respect their rights is for Brazilians everywhere to switch to free software."

(source)

Thank you Poland!

abassouk@gmail.com (Tassos Bassoukos) — Wed, 17 Nov 2004 06:32:58 +0200

From FFII, it seems that we escaped (for now) the bane of the software patents, as Poland has effectively vetoed the EU software patents directive.

I'll leave further analysis to the usual suspects, but I'm certainly hoping that this is a sign of change...

Doesn't play well with others

abassouk@gmail.com (Tassos Bassoukos) — Tue, 26 Oct 2004 11:25:12 +0300

I've just found out that Web Folders on Windows have somewhat peculiar requirements from WebDAV servers.

After investigating a user report on the unability to map the blogs media folder, I have found these interesting facts:

Web Folders needs the whole path, from the server root up (/), to be WebDAV-enabled, even if I just want to map a specific path. This breaks, as blogentis maps the WebDAV folders deeper into the tree, and the path segments leading to these folders produce redirects to HTML pages.
For some reason, while it requests authorization, the HTTP headers of the response have an empty password set.

Standards are good, you have so many to choose from (and apparently get them wrong)...

On Pricey (Computing) History

abassouk@gmail.com (Tassos Bassoukos) — Fri, 6 Aug 2004 10:55:59 +0300

I spent the last several days with my parents, where I discovered some computer magazines from the '88-'93 era. Then I read this, so here are some prices from that era...

(all prices are in Deutshe Mark, with a new '88 Amiga going about 1100 D.M. - inflationary adjustment left as an excercise for the reader.)

1200 bps modem: 990 D.M. ('88)
3 1/2" external floppy drive: 299 D.M. ('89)
42 MB SCSI HDD: ~1300 D.M. ('88)
512 KB RAM (internal, for A500): ~1100 D.M. ('88)

I still don't get it

abassouk@gmail.com (Tassos Bassoukos) — Thu, 8 Jul 2004 02:31:26 +0300

I tried, really tried, but it's final: I don't get it. I'm fervently hoping for this carneval to end, as it is getting tiring, fast.

Would it have been something substantial, anything wich would have any impact on our lives, there would have been no celebration; had the country liberated itself from a conqueror, the celebrations wouldn't be so lavish, if there were any at all.

Still, the situation seems to be milked for all it's worth, mainly to sell tickets for the olympics.

I, Robot: butchered.

abassouk@gmail.com (Tassos Bassoukos) — Fri, 11 Jun 2004 01:19:02 +0300

I've stubled upon the trailer for I, Robot and it looks (to me, at least) like the movie will be a fragfest and an absolute antithesis of everything that Isaac Asimov stood for.

The trailer hints that robots actually do have emotions that are revealed when under stress (Stress? A robot?), while there is in the background a nebulous conspiracy in which we are lead to believe the robots will play a major role - take over the earth or just replace the US government is unclear. It has robots that wink, and robots with cute little red lights in their torsos, about where the heart would be in a human.

See also here, and read also about the planned boycott of the first week of the movie.

I absolutely wish that the above will be proven as lunatic gibberish by the actual movie, but I'm very much convinced that we'll have another Armageddon on our hands...