For No Useful Purpose

It may seem strange to some people, but my feelings regarding spending two days watching packets flow by in and twiddling odd bits of strange blinkenlights-laden devices at several points are mostly along the lines that it's an almost criminal waste of my time (and other people's) that defies all rational explanation.

Still, I endure it - however, the reasons for doing so are getting more elusive by the day.

Oh, and my personal e-mail is still somewhat backlogged. East Asia residents please take note of my apologies, I'll get back to you soon.

Some news to get my mind off things:

  • The Developer Preview is out (I just got my e-mail, but won't do more than take a quick peek until I have more free time).
  • Nokia is apparently not going to make the available for online orders from Portugal (I sure hope it's a mistake, or merely a temporary list).
  • I somehow missed the fact that the WRT54G3G-EU was launched yesterday in Portugal (shame on me for not reading our press releases...)
  • The Skype deal is looking less sane by the day.
  • Mossberg on DRM. No new arguments, but a pretty loud voice and a lot of common sense.
  • I also missed the free VMware Player. Now that's a clever move - and there seem to be plenty of pre-built demo VMs to toy with, including the Browser Appliance to allow the incorrigibly paranoid to surf the web at ease... (I recommend reading Philip's blog for more).