Thu Apr 20 2000 07:16: Here is an innovation which, if you are looking for something useful to do, you may use: There are about ten "x Weekly News" or "x-URL" newsletters which give the status of various free software projects. The innovation consists of a site which gives a brief summary of them as they come out and perhaps provides the most interesting link from each.

It should be obvious to regular NYCB readers that a great many of my so-called "innovations" come about just because I like modifying nouns with themselves (in this case, "Weekly News Weekly News"). What can I say? At least I don't buy up other people's ideas and call it innovation.

Thu Apr 20 2000 07:32: For some reason, my story about Linus Torvalds going back to work on Minix is very big in French-speaking countries like Canada and, well, France. I don't know why, but there are about five French-speaking sites that have linked to it. The French for "operating system" appears to be "systéme d'exploitation". This was the sort of thing I never learned in high school French class.

Hm... one of the sites specifically states that it's a hoax ("canular"). Maybe some French dude is circulating email reports to the effect that it is real. Maybe Minix, like Jerry Lewis, is just bigger in France, so people there are more likely to think my story is funny.

Thu Apr 20 2000 07:37: Lemme link to that site I was talking about so you can see for yourself.

Thu Apr 20 2000 08:04: And so I says to the guy, I says, "Oh, you wanted a character pointer! I thought you wanted a string!"

Thu Apr 20 2000 08:36: Okay, FINALLY the parser has been put into the weird magical yacc framework and it does the right things to the symbol table and the string table and everything. So I'm done. And the project isn't due til midnight!

Thu Apr 20 2000 11:23: In case you haven't already seen it, let me also point you to the fabulous Matzillah Segfault story, which is better than my Minix story to the extent that I feel guilty about linking to my story and not linking to it.

Thu Apr 20 2000 12:30: This has been annoying me for a while, and I think it's a bug. When I type "lynx newshub.com/tech/", lynx responds as though I had typed "lynx news://newshub.com/tech/". Seems like it should look for the :// before rashly assuming it's a netnews resource. "lynx mailtohub.com" and "lynx gopherhub.com" work as you would expect, so I think it's a bug. Maybe I should try to fix it instead of just complaining about it on my webpage.

Thu Apr 20 2000 12:55: It definitely appears to be a feature. There's a function that specifically does it (LYUtils.c's LYAddSchemeForURL). I was wrong about other URLs beginning with schemes working correctly; the URLs I tried before don't really exist so lynx crapped out before prefixing a scheme onto them. I'm not happy about this. How am I supposed to be lazy when lynx stands in my way?

Thu Apr 20 2000 13:09: I you like The Hunger Site and you like generalizations, you'll like the generalization of The Hunger Site, FreeDonation.com.

Thu Apr 20 2000 17:07: I thought Peter only had The Name of the Rose in Italian, but just today I found a paperback translation to English! Woohoo! Now I can {drink, read it}!

Thu Apr 20 2000 20:01: The Linus-goes-back-to-Minix meme infected enough people that Linux Weekly News felt the need, the need for speed! I mean the need to publish a pointer to my story so that its satiric content would be obvious.

Thu Apr 20 2000 20:18: Going home to Bakersfield tomorrow. As those of you who follow Susanna's journal know, Susanna is also going home (in fact, she's probably home already). Between the two of us, there will be no food in my mother's house when we leave. Not that there will be any when we get there.