If you’re like me and always forget the syntax of .htaccess files, this simple, step-by-step tutorial on .htaccess and .htpasswd is very handy.

BBC: Screensavers crack medical puzzle.
Distributed computing works!

Age: Global web servers crippled by electronic attack.
(I’m tempted to wonder if it has anything to do with Al Qaeda)

Guy Fawkes isn’t for another two weeks, but the fireworks stores are everywhere (around Hackney, anyway). Kids have been setting them off for weeks already, it sounds like there’s a war zone just down the block. I can’t imagine what the night itself is going to be like. I’m actually excited, Guy Fawkes is so exotic thing for me. Luckily I had time to get used to countries where you can buy your own fireworks in Amsterdam.
People are striking again in England. There’s been two or three tube strikes since I’ve been here, and there are more on the way, apparently in support of the fire fighter‘s strike.
I know the 80s are back in, but surely going back to strikes that throw the country into chaos is going too far.

“I helped blow up a Bali nightclub — by driving my SUV to work every day!”

Age on Telstra and Microsoft and the increasing number of government organisations looking at switching to Linux.
“Although chief executive Steve Ballmer says Microsoft will talk to customers about its “value proposition”, deep price discounting is not on the agenda. Despite analysts who recommend open-source or free software to enterprises over Microsoft on the server and increasingly on the desktop, Ballmer predictably says Microsoft’s products cost less than free software in the long run.
That hasn’t stopped Telstra – Microsoft’s first enterprise licensing customer in the world – the Federal Government and several banks considering the switch to free software alternatives. In July, Centrelink, the world’s 12th-biggest processing organisation, started a lab to develop free software Linux. A month later the Federal Department of Veterans Affairs, as part of a $90 million three-year contract with IBM Global Services Australia, moved its file and print services to an IBM zSeries mainframe running Linux.”

If you use bash (probably the most common shell these days) and you’ve never tried history expansion, read this and give it a go. Excellent stuff.

PHP Tutorial – a nice introduction to PHP for beginners.

Age: PM flags tougher gun laws
“But Mr Howard could meet resistance from Victorian Premier Steve Bracks, who last night ruled out a ban on possessing handguns following the Monash University shootings.”
Don’t tell me I have to think Howard is more sensible than Steve Bracks (who never lived up his ‘new labour leader’ potential, quite a feat after years of Kennetisation).

Who controls your computer? Richard Stallman, in The Age, of all places.