Also known as Il-Kantilena ...

In a previous article on Arab heritage in Malta, I touched upon how the Maltese language (Ilsan Malti) is definitely derived from Arabic, and more specifically, from the North African dialect of Arabic.

A visitor to the site raised a nice challenge which was very interesting to me: He started on the off note and having his comment titled "Maltest are not arab", and by saying:

Three data points:

Commit #50,000: Jan, 4, 2007.

Commit #100,000: Feb 9, 2008.

Commit #150,000: Oct 30, 2008.

Took 13 months and one week for the second 50,000 commits, but only 8 months and 3 weeks for the third 50,000.

So, the rate of code contributions is accelerating.

First, it was the move of executive offices from Dayton to New York City's World Trade Center.

Now, it is the Worldwide Customer Services' turn. Peachtree City, Georgia, long time warehouse for spare parts, will now house 916 more jobs in customer services as well.

Of course, Dayton and Ohio officials are concerned about this.

Like I have said before, digital media and file formats will be a serious challenge in the future.

Dr. Jerome P. McDonough of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champagne (UIUC) warns of a digital dark age because of digital media not being as resilient as physical media. He teaches graduate studies on Library and Information Science.

A very good article indeed.

Last year, I wrote about Chrysler being owned by a private group, and whether private ownership is a way for corporate growth and innovation.

Given that Chrysler will be cutting 25% of salaried workers, it seems that when times are tough, even private owners will be impatient and not only public companies facing shareholders.

Ontario Linux Fest 2008 is this coming Saturday, October 25th.

A lot more tracks than last year, which I have yet to blog! Here is the detailed schedule.

Drupal has three spots:

Here are some thoughts on the 2008 federal elections in Canada:

Finally, the largest Canadian CDMA mobile phone providers are realizing that GSM is the world standard and that they have to provide it in order to compete with Rogers, the sole provider of GSM in the country.

Can this be due to the iPhone effect? As well as Google's Android?

Via CBC.

A new scam is becoming more prevalent. It centers on hijacking innocent people's email, and sending fake messages asking for money transfer.

A Wellington P.E.I. woman is the latest such victim, following 98 other people in Canada, according to the RCMP.

Someone cracked her email account, and sent an email on her behalf alleging that she is in England, lost her wallet, and can't pay the hotel bill. The email asks the recipients to send money.

Overall, the 98 caused people to lose close to $3 million.

So, for those who follow code commits, you may have seen this already. For others, here are some fresh commits from Dries ...

First, we have this:

Patch #310212 by justinrandell, catch, et all: killed  in _user hook, as well as two small kittens.

It should have said "killed $op in _user hook". Poor kittens ...

Then we have this:

Patch #310212 by justinrandell: killed  in _node hook, as well as twelve sable tooth tigers.