Dell is having a $500 off sale on notebooks so I ordered an Inspiron 6000 with 1.86GHz Pentium M and DDR2 533FSB. I went max on the drive size but barebone on memory because memory is much cheaper elsewhere. Total price tag including tax and shipping came to $1087. Not a bad deal I must say. BTW, the sale ends Sunday.

Update:

I've been browsing around for the ideal 2G (2x1G) DDR2 533MHz 4200 DIMMs for the notebook but haven't yet figured out which brand offers the best price/performance ratio. Corsair is the cheapest, followed by pqi. OCZ DIMMs received good review but there were some concerns about voltage requirements in some versions. Price range for 2G was rather wide too: $160-$320. But then even $320 is cheap when compared to how much Dell was asking for 2G ($1000). Crazy.

There were some conflicting posts about whether the latest Inspiron 6000's memory controller operates at 400MHz or 533MHz. I think the currently shipping Inspiron is running at 533MHz though.

Update:

For some reason, I overlooked the fact that 6000 came with a wide-screen which meant that I am getting 1280x800, not 1280x1024. So I cancelled my order (a saga in itself) and reordered one with 1680×1050. I briefly thought about getting the 128MB version of the GPU, RADIEON X300x16, for Longhorn but after reading Longhorn's long list of hardware requirements for optimal performance, I dropped the thought. I  also dialed back the CPU speed to 1.6GHz to get the same price. With 2G, the speed difference should be insignificant for the kind of work I do. Now I just hope my other order does get cancelled.

Why am I getting a boring configuration? Just like cars, I've lost interest in the latest and the most powerful gadgets a while back because I realized that, given the rate of change in feature and price, it's like coveting disposable lighters. Now I just use computers or drive cars as what they really are: tools and rides.

First we had Mobile Monday. Now we have Tag Tuesday. Why don't we just fast forward to Fart Friday? To join in, all you have to do is share your emissions with people around you on Friday. OK? What I like about Fart Friday is that there are no i18n issues to deal with. BTW, next Sex Saturday meeting has been put on hold due to a back problem but the Shopping Sunday meeting, organized by my wife, is on track.

CardSystems data theft incident shows that security standard compliance must be policed in the same way hackers choose their victims. Visa and MasterCard should have organized roaming security teams and let them loose at the card issuers, processors, and merchants. Each team would be financed with collected penalties so that only the best teams will survive.

After using Thunderbird for more than a year, I switched back to Outlook. Why? It was the little inconveniences like inability to step through emails which I overlooked until now.

Anyhow, I ran though hoops trying to move messages from Thunderbird to Outlook, all of them partially successful but always droping something. In the end, I just bought Aid4Mail. It's ironical that I spent $50 to stop using a free email client.

Between the Cathedral and the Bazaar are the Twisted Alleys.

Incidents like the one Dan Gillmor points to reminds me that I need to put more thought into noise control. Let see…

One idea is cookie sharing combined with cookie persistence. Cookie persistence works by allow people to download and save their cookies so they can restore valuable cookies after cookie wipeout or if they change machines. Cookie sharing is one cookie holder giving part of the rating they earned to another. It's like giving some of your voice to another person whose opinions you agree with or appreciate.

A lot of room for creativity in this area.

Update:

Flip-side of the Cookie sharing is mutual destruction which requires giving up part of your rating to degrade another person's rating. I am still clueless as to whether such small set of rules will lead to a stable world instead of something that will blow up. Still, I enjoy working with combining simple rules to build complex systems, probably because of my physics background.

Another thought I had was that, for systems like Wikipedia, unbiased views are sometimes either not possible or premature. In such cases, I think the right thing to od is to record multiple biased/opposing views to capture the conflict in its raw form instead.

My last chat with Steve Gillmor left me a little sad because, it seemed to me, he was fighting the world, trying to drag it to where he thinks it should go. I find myself all to often in that position so I felt sympathy. What is worse, his profession didn't jive with his ambition.

But it looks like he is, or at least attempting to, escape from that frame of mind. So hurrah for Steve. In my view, Steve's best role is to be the bouncing surface for the technical world because I think his intellect, wisdom, and opinions can make anything interesting.

Whalers are wailing but soon it will be anti-whalers who will be wailing. What a crappy world.