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Google Reader Tracks Everything

Most people may not know, but Google Reader tracks every single entry you have ever read and there is no way to clear that list even if you remove all your subscriptions. Check out this link:

http://www.google.com/reader/shared/user/-/state/com.google/read

For me, this page shows some very old entries from the subscriptions I removed a very long time ago and there is now way to wipe it out! For this reason I wouldn't use Google Reader. (FYI, I use Cheetah News, which is a far better reader anyway, at least for me.)

Lifestreaming

As some people already know, I recently launched my own lifestream (or Stream for short). In effect, my weblog will be updated even less often. My new stream is powered by the gLifestream platform.

gLifestream is a free lifestream platform and social activity reader. It is licensed under the GNU General Public License, version 3.

gLifestream joins several external and/or internal streams into a single one. External streams may be represented by RSS/Atom channels or popular services such as Twitter or FriendFeed. The user decides which of them are publicly visible and which are not. Public streams are visible for anybody. The rest of streams are visible only for logged in users.

Read more about GLS at glifestream.gnu.org.ua.

[image] GDB 7.0 released

GDB 7.0, the GNU Debugger, is now available for download. There are many interesting improvements and bugfixes, but I find two new features worth a special mention. Those are "reverse debugging" and "Python scripting" support.

The first one allows to run programs backwards, written in any language supported by GDB. Of course this isn't a trivial task, since rewinding a program requires a lot of extra work on tracing variables, registers and other stuff and not every target environment can support that. GDB provides several new commands for reverse execution. Most are just counterparts of the original commands, but prefixed with the "reverse" keyword, e.g. reverse-continue, reverse-step, reverse-next, etc.

The latter feature allows for Python scripting with GDB by providing the gdb module in the Python code. This heavily extends GDB possibilities, from a simple pretty-printers, through custom GDB commands, to any Python code you can possibly imagine using GDB API. Someone even recently scripted a "gdb over irc" :-).

Last week I accidentally heard a song from Amy Macdonald's "This is the Life" and the next day I decided to buy the album blindly. And I am happy about that. I found a nice music and voice. Tracklisting:

 1. Mr. Rock and Roll
 2. This Is the Life
 3. Poison Prince
 4. Youth of Today
 5. Run
 6. Let's Start a Band
 7. Barrowland Ballroom
 8. L.A.
 9. A Wish for Something More
10. Footballer's Wife
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Star Wars Asciimation

Check out this excellent website: www.asciimation.co.nz or just telnet towel.blinkenlights.nl to watch A New Hope online :-)

               __            /~~\              __
              /__\          |<><>|            /__\
             |<><>|         /_/\_\           |<><>|
             (_/\_)         /\___/\          (_/\_)
            /      \       // [ ]|\\        /      \
            ||/(===o      //| [_]| \\       ||/(===o
            | /  \ |      \\|    | //       | /  \||
            \/][][\/       \#====|#/        \/][][\/
             |\  /|        /|\  /I\          |\  /|
             |_||_|       / | || I \         |_||_|
             [ ][ ]      /  | || |  \        [ ][ ]
             | || |     /   | || |   \       | || |
             | || |    /    | || |    \      | || |

The Javascript Trap by Richard M. Stallman

In the free software community, the idea that non-free programs mistreat their users is familiar. Some of us refuse entirely to install proprietary software, and many others consider non-freedom a strike against the program. Many users are aware that this issue applies to the plug-ins that browsers offer to install, since they can be free or non-free.

But browsers run other non-free programs which they don't ask you about or even tell you about—programs that web pages contain or link to. These programs are most often written in Javascript, though other languages are also used.

Continue reading the article...

Make your own book with Blurb

Blurb.com is a company which provides a print on demand publishing service for the general public. It allows you to make and sell your own books online. The selling model is very similar to CafePress.com. This isn't a new service -- even Time Magazine named Blurb one of 2006's "50 Coolest Web Sites", but I somehow didn't notice it earlier.

[image] GNU Anubis 4.1.1 is out!

Here is the official annoucement, and following is the list of user-visible changes in this release:

  • Automatic correction of MAIL and RCPT SMTP commands.
  • Fix loop-detection code.
  • New configuration keywords sasl-realm, sasl-hostname and sasl-service.
  • Minor improvements and bugfixes.
  • New Danish, Indonesian, Italian, and Swedish message translations.

Guns N' Roses released today their sixth studio album, entitled Chinese Democracy. I bought it and like it very much after listening to it several times already. And I really don't care whether this is "true" GNR or not (featuring only Axl Rose from the original line-up) as long as the music is good. Especially good as on this album. Tracklisting:

 1. Chinese Democracy
 2. Shackler's Revenge
 3. Better
 4. Street of Dreams
 5. If the World
 6. There Was a Time
 7. Catcher in the Rye
 8. Scraped
 9. Riad n' the Bedouins
10. Sorry
11. I.R.S.
12. Madagascar
13. This I Love
14. Prostitute
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Richard Wright: 1943 - 2008

Sad news today. Richard Wright, a musician and a founder member of Pink Floyd, has died at the age of 65 after battling cancer.

[photo]

Richard Wright smiling into my camera -- this is a photo I personally took two years ago in Gdańsk.

Freedom Fry - "Happy birthday to GNU"

The GNU operating system is turning 25 this year!

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"Happy Birthday to GNU" is a short film featuring the English humorist, actor and novelist Stephen Fry.

I was especially surprised with the GNU contributors list at the end of this film. Both Sergey and I are listed there :D

Doyle Bramhall II - Little Queen of Spades Guitar Solo - Gdynia, Poland (2008)

Eric Clapton - Layla - Gdynia, Poland (2008)

Eric Clapton - Cocaine - Gdynia, Poland (2008)
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Bought Guns N' Roses' Use Your Illusion I and Use Your Illusion II DVDs. Tracklisting:

Disc One:                         Disc Two:
 1. Nightrain                      1. You Could Be Mine
 2. Mr. Brownstone                 2. Drum Solo & Guitar Solo
 3. Live and Let Die               3. Theme from "The Godfather"
 4. It's So Easy                   4. Sweet Child o' Mine
 5. Bad Obsession                  5. So Fine
 6. Attitude                       6. Rocket Queen
 7. Pretty Tied Up                 7. Move to the City
 8. Welcome to the Jungle          8. Knockin' on Heaven's Door
 9. Don't Cry                      9. Estranged
10. Double Talkin' Jive           10. Paradise City
11. Civil War
12. Wild Horses
13. Patience
14. November Rain

FOAF.Vix, first publicly introduced in August 2006, has been heavily improved in the last 4 months. FOAF.Vix is a robust visualizer and relation explorer for FOAF (Friend of a Friend) files. Its highlighted features are the following:

  • Standalone or customizable embedded web widget.
  • Additional JSON output support.
  • Localization (ca,de,el,en,eo,es,fr,ja,la,nb,pl,uk).
  • Autodiscovery support.
  • Microformats friendly (outputs hCard, hCalendar, adr, geo).
  • Extracts FOAF data from XHTML RDFa 1.0.
  • Nice-looking.
  • Simple and fast (uses 48h local caching).

In addition, the project's homepage has a new look:

[image]

http://foaf-visualizer.gnu.org.ua/