For a while now I've been wanting to put together a system-on-disk, a USB stick I can use on the road which gives me a comfortable linux desktop with all the apps I might need.

It turns out that the Ubuntu Desktop LiveCDs already have a nifty persistent mode, where it will save any filesystem changes to a seperate partition with the label 'casper-rw'. That's great, and a lot of the work out of the way towards getting the project done.

There are a few guides out there for getting this going on a USB key, most notably on the PenDriveLinux website. Following this guide is pretty straightforward, and can get you up and running in no time.

Unless of course, you run certain Phoenix-based BIOS firmwares on your computer. My work Dell (the primary use for this project) runs such a BIOS, and misreports the device IDs for bootable USB keys. The good fellows who put together Syslinux have a patch in place, so if you use the latest Syslinux (newer than that which is available in Ubuntu 10.04) this is supposed to fix it.

Sadly this wasn't the case, and after a long time I ended up switching from FAT16+Syslinux to EXT2+Extlinux, which worked straight off the bat.

Now to forge ahead with the encryption side of things.

Whilst I'm reeading through the summary of closing arguments from iiNet, I can't help but laugh at the way layers get to ridicule their opposition in such flowery phrases. Some of my favourites:

Perhaps the overexcitement with which the applicants sometimes manifested the argument is to be understood in this way. If one looks at the issues raised purely from the perspective of movie studios, and on the assumption that the most important thing on iiNet’s agenda should be to deal with their complaints about copyright infringement, it is perhaps understandable. It is when one looks at it from the perspective of the iiNet business as a whole that it becomes narcissistic to say the least.

And a footnote in the second chapter, when discussing other ISPs (including Unwired) that haven't been pursued for similar behaviour:
Seven Network (Operations) Limited is of course the 34th applicant in the present proceeding. To say that it runs with the hares and hunts with the hounds would be charitable at the very least.

More, still only on the second chapter too :)

2-98. In many respects, the applicants’ harsh commentary on the effect of Mr Malone’s
evidence, including his credit and character, has the same quality of exaggeration as
other aspects of the applicants’ case.

I'm also very interested in seeing the following statement regarding the incorrect lodgement of notices to iiNet (and in fact, all ISPs):
2-45. iiNet’s evidence shows examples of iiNet’s compliance with requests from copyright
owners under the safe harbour regime, including taking action in relation to takedown
notices in respect of categories other than category A activities. It also shows
the problems that iiNet faces in dealing with up to 350 non-compliant emails a day
from content owners, including some of the applicants in this proceeding, in
circumstances where around 96% of emails received by iiNet are required to be
filtered as spam.

I am aware that most notices sent to ISPs cite the DMCA Act of 1998, which does not exist here in Australia - and I'm fairly certain that ISPs are right to ignore these messages. If possible I will be reading the cited statements to see if this is what they're referring to.

For those playing from home, the closing statements for iiNet can be found here:

Chapters 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 (with attachment).
Schedules: 1, 2, 3, 4

Recently inspired by the XKCD comic 'Packages', a friend and I started on a journey to see what other kind of daily suprise we could generate with some quick perl and a budget of a dollar per day!

As fans of bad english, and the affectionate "Let's Engrish" school featured in Doug Coupland's jPod - we decided the only solution was to automatically comission $1 short stories from online job assignment services. A budget of $1 would ensure that only the lowest quality of work from people who hopefully wouldn't spend too long on the piece.

To establish whether or not the quality of work would meet our exacting requirements - we decided to do a trial manually on the popular oDesk website. Which is where the fun begins.

In total, we had thirty odd applicants. Most of these were native english speakers living in North America with a degree. And they were all bidding for my $1 job. I was truly dissapointed. It seemed that only affluent white americans wanted to take my dollar, and that they would turn out stories of the highest quality. Yeah, right.

After a number of days in confusion, I hit paydirt. Not one or two, but a whole five people whose name I can't even pronounce from god-knows-where applied for my position, along with a CV that reeked of Engrish paydirt. Ironically, these applicants had much higher English aptitude scores than that of the other applicants, yet clearly cannot conjugate their verbs.

After a bit of a spending spree, I had hired three writers to write my short stories - hoping they would be able to cater to my exacting requirements:

Write an original short story on any topic of your choosing. The following conditions apply:

• Story must be in English only, however english does not have to be your native language.
• 500 - 2000 word count minimum

Will only accept bids of US$1

Three days of anticipation later, I received my first short story "Goodbye little boy". Firing up my trusty word processor I readied myself for a good laugh at what I was hoping to be a light hearted story written in terrible English. Imagine my suprise when I read a depressing story about a boy with cancer - which despite the terrible english, didn't make me feel any better.

Reading through this story however, something was bugging me - between the engrish was a number of phrases that indicated western ideologies that didn't really fit in with the author's background at all. With renewed curiosity, I began googling key phrases and discovered that he had plagiarised the story! Imagine my shock when I learnt that someone on the internet had chosen to simply re-type a story instead of writing their own, on my dollar (literally!).

I took the opportunity to notify the author of his error, reminded him of the conditions of the job and gave him an opportunity to submit an alternate story he had written himself. About eight minutes later, I received my new story. Would you believe - HE DID IT AGAIN!

To put this long story to rest, I am still waiting on works from my other writers - and the two plagiarised works have cost me a sum of US 15c. Whilst you can find good engrish cheaply on the internet, getting original content isn't so easy!