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rml posted some use cases for Project Utopia.  If they can solve these issues smoothly (which I’m pretty sure they’ll pull off), Linux will take a big jump in terms of general plug’n’play usability.

Unfortunately, the use cases miss out on one of my favorite new features - multi-session X.  You can easily start two X servers on two different virtual consoles right now, but the new gdm stuff will support suspending and resuming X sessions, as well as nested X servers.  This will help Linux catch up to the cool multi-user login features of Windows XP. 

It’s tricky to get this working well in Linux right now - there’s a bunch of magic that goes on behind the scenes to make sure the console user gets the proper permissions.  This stuff needs to get upgraded to handle this multi-session magic.

I’ve got a solution where I’ve added all of my potential console users to a “console” group and assigned root.console to each of the devices that console users might need (ie: /dev/nvidiactl, /dev/dsp).  This works for now, but I’d like to see this handled via ACLs or some other fancy way.

After installing Mozilla Thunderbird yesterday, all I can say is “wow!”  Not only is the look ultra-slick and refreshing, but it’s so fast that it really does deserve to be alongside an amazing browser like Firefox.  They’ve done such a great job that people nearby just start using it without even saying anything.

Before Thunderbird I wasn’t willing to push the Mozilla mail client on anyone.  I was using it before and, while it was fast, it looked like a relic of the Netscape 4.0 days.  As well, you needed to match it with the Mozilla browser.  Also fast, but not an end-user polished package.

Thanks to mscott and the rest of the Thunderbird team, however, it has been transformed into a modern, polished mail client.  It even fits seamlessly into XP, something I find that Office 2003 doesn’t do well.

The build I’m using at work is their latest “weekly build”.  So far it’s been smooth sailing.  Alongside Firefox (with its Google bar, ad-blocking and tabbed browsing), I’ve got a couple of amazing productivity tools that Outlook could never beat.

Looks like the Candian Federal Court has decided in favour of the anonymous John and Jane Does in the recent file swapper case.  The Judge has determined that the following criteria must be satistified for a disinterested bystander to be compelled to aid in discovery as a third party.  In the case of the recording industry versus KaZaa users, this means that the ISPs would be releasing the confidential customer data that would map a user’s IP to his home address.

1. the applicant must establish a prima facie case against the unknown alleged wrongdoer;
2. the person from whom discovery is sought must be in some way involved in the matter under dispute; he must be more than an innocent bystander;
3. the person from whom discovery is sought must be the only practical source of information available to the applicants;
4. the person from whom discovery is sought must be reasonably compensated for his expenses arising out of compliance with the discovery order in addition to his legal costs;
5. the public interests in favour of disclosure must outweigh the legitimate privacy concerns.

The judge ruled that the affidavit filed by MediaSentry was largely hearsay.  This might be a result of faulty lawyering by the recording industry however - they may be able to succeed with more detailed records.  The judge touches on this:

At the very least, Mr. Millin should have identified the employees who conducted the work….

As well, it turns out that MediaSentry didn’t even listen to the files downloaded by the sharers.  The court wisely ruled that it can’t trust this information without more detail of how it was determined.

It looks like the recording industry will have to prove knowledge on the part of the sharers that they are, indeed, sharing the files willingly and show that they are “advertising” the fact that they are sharing the works.  Passive sharing of files seems to be safer than actively transmitting files.  These arguments together eliminate the first criteria.

Criteria 2 is easily proven to exist, 3 is found not to exist and 4 is determined to be an expensive operation.

Criteria 5 is a balance between justice and privacy.  It makes sense that privacy can be overruled to a certain extent to allow civil and criminal matters to proceed. 

The recording industry lost this round, but they may win the next with more rigorous documentation.  The case may also hinge on whether the sharers are actively engaging in distribution of copyrighted works or not.  We’ll see next time how this works out.

Just bought the necessary wood for the cabinet today.  It was a pain to load up on the truck - the wind was ferocious!

Here’s a tip for anyone looking to build a MAME cabinet: get the big, straight cuts done when you buy the wood (if possible).  It cost me CDN$0.50 a cut - worth it to reduce the number of long cuts that I’ll have to make myself.

Total cost so far is CDN$120.

Just bought a circular saw today in preparation for building the MAME cabinet.  The guys at Rona/Revy are nice enough to explain the basics of cutting and the pieces I’ll need. 

My plan of attack so far is:

1. Cut all of the required pieces of wood (from the plans I’m using)
2. Draw out the control panel layout from my sketches
3. Purchase required control panel electronics
4. Assemble control panel and test with regular PC
5. Paint, add T-channel edging to all other wood pieces
6. Assemble the rest of the cabinet pieces
7. Attach control panel to cabinet
8. Figure out computer and TV bits to make it a real, working cabinet

So far, I’m still waiting for myself to finish step 1.  This is the hard part - making sure I still have ten fingers to play games with afterwards.  I’m going to have to record my receipts somewhere so I can accurately total how much this cabinet cost.