Matt Croydon::Postneo

Marklar: Every Mac conspiracy theory enthusiast’s new favorite word.  From eWeek:

As Apple Computer Inc. draws up its game plan for the CPUs that will power its future generations of Mac hardware, the company is holding an ace in the hole: a feature-complete version of Mac OS X running atop the x86 architecture.

According to sources, the Cupertino, Calif., Mac maker has been working steadily on maintaining current, PC-compatible builds of its Unix-based OS. The project (code-named Marklar, a reference to the race of aliens on the “South Park” cartoons) has been ongoing inside Apple since the early days of its transition to the Unix-based Mac OS X in the late ’90s.

There’s a discussion at Slashdot.  The best post is from Metafilter, though it will only be funny if you’re familiar with South Park:

Codename Marklar: Marklar is maintaining a feature-complete marklar of Marklar running on Marklar as a fall-back marklar in case the Marklar is no longer viable. Maintained since the early days of Marklar, Marklar gains greater relevance in the context of Marklar’s inability to deliver higher-frequency Marklars, but is seen as less likely given Marklar’s forthcoming 64-bit Marklar-based Marklar. (via Marklar)

Deathrow OpenVMS Cluster: Public (non-commercial) access to two clusters of OpenVMS servers.

Wireless in Ocean City, NJ:

So, where was the bandwidth coming from? No idea. Who was paying for it? Same answer. Is it stealing to use it? Debatable. West Avenue in Ocean City is lined with two story homes which people rent to others. Someone downstairs, next door, or across the street has either a cable modem or DSL and a Linksys Wireless Access Point. They likely did not intend for their bandwidth to be “borrowed” but on the other hand they didn’t turn on their WEP encryption to block others from using it. If I had known who the “provder” of the connection was I would have been happy to pay for using it. In a way it is like finding a $10 bill on the street. If we knew who it belonged to most of us would be happy to return it.

[H]: Abit has an awesome new video card with a cooling fan that intakes from outside of the case.  Quite an intelligent hack.

Sherlock 3: Confusing the definition of web services for everyone.

ICFP 2002 Programming Contest Challenge Task: Simulate robots picking up packages and defending themselves against other robots.  It’s a pretty cool task.

Freshmeat Gems of the Day (FMGOTD):

PHP Weather: A great way to add current weather conditions to your web site, weblog, homepage, or launch page.  I played with this quite some time ago, and it looks like many features have been added.

AWOL: “AWOL is an in-out board, similar to something you’d see on the wall of a lobby, or desk of a switchboard operator, to keep track of who’s in the building, when they’ll be back, etc.” There is also a review of AWOL at Montana Linux.

Civil: A still young but constantly improving civil war strategy game.  I’ll have to check it out later.  Previously it was only available via CVS.  Congradulations to the Civil team.

Good Morning!

CNet: Apple is open-sourcing Rendezvous, as well as encouraging open source development of it and for it.

“If you don’t have it proliferate, it’s the sound of one hand clapping,” said Brian Croll, senior director of worldwide product marketing for Apple’s software unit.