That’s right, MAME version 0.126 of MAME32 (MameUI 32-bit/64-bit), the Windows command line version (32-bit/64-bit) of MAME and SDLMAME for OS X (Universal) were all released late last night.

Of course they’re all available for free download in my MAME section, so grab them while they’re nice and warm.

It’s been a long while since I updated my Unusual Trivia page, so today I added four new entries for your reading enjoyment:

1. In Michigan, it is illegal to chain an alligator to a fire hydrant.
2. It is against the law to whale hunt in Oklahoma.
3. Jim Morrison (of the 60’s rock group The Doors) was the first rock star to be arrested on stage.
4. Sir Thomas Crapper, attributed to inventing the flush toilet, was a nephew of Queen Elizabeth.

Of course you can view lots of other funny trivia and useless knowledge by visiting my Planet Sean unusual trivia page.

If you know any fun and unusual trivia not already listed on my site, let me know. I’m always looking for fun nuggets of sliced fried gold.

Last month, a handful of privacy groups urged Google to add a link to its privacy policy on its home page, in accordance with California law.

Google said it interpreted the law differently.

Google resisted doing so in part because every bit counts when determining how quickly its home page loads, given that load speed and user satisfaction are strongly related.

The company probably also wanted to avoid giving outsiders the idea that they can force design changes by complaining.

In a blog post, Marissa Mayer, VP of search products and user experience, said that Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin would agree to the change only if the number of the words on the home page (28) remained unchanged. So the word “Google” was dropped because it was implied.

“Today we’re making a homepage change by adding a link to our privacy overview and policies,” said Mayer. “Google values our users’ privacy first and foremost. Trust is the basis of everything we do, so we want you to be familiar and comfortable with the integrity and care we give your personal data. We added this link both to our homepage and to our results page to make it easier for you to find information about our privacy principles.”

So as we can all see, Google replaced the unnecessary “©2008 Google” copyright notice at the bottom of its home page with a privacy link.

Though the copyright symbol and date remain, the bottom text now reads “©2008 – Privacy.”

Well done, Google.

It’s been a year since the GPLv3 was introduced to the open source world — so how’s it doing? That’s the subject of two surveys currently being conducted to track open source license usage and conversion.

The first survey, conducted by Black Duck Software, shows the GPLv3 coming it at No. 7 out of the top 20 open source licenses used amongst projects polled.

Not surprisingly, the GPLv2 filled the top slot by a gigantic margin — 57.81% — while the GPLv3 had a 1.82% share.

That’s still not too bad for a license that was only introduced a year ago; the same survey puts the Apache License at 2.77% and the Mozilla Public License at 1.29%.

The second survey, courtesy of Palamida, also features some detailed quotes from various software outfits about GPLv3 adoption.

Some fairly famous names are in that list — SugarCRM’s Community Edition and Samba, for instance, have adopted Version 3, although there are still plenty of big names sticking with what they have.

I’m not terribly surprised by this, since I didn’t figure the GPLv3 was going to be an automatic upgrade for most people.

One thing that would be useful to know, although admittedly not the easiest thing to harvest, is activity statistics about the projects in question — maybe by using the activity stats from Sourceforge if the project’s hosted there.

This would give us some idea of the degree of usage or participation for each project. It’s one thing to say “2,800 open source projects use the GPLv3,” but what percentage of those 2,800 projects are, say, part of the top 100 or even 500 projects at Sourceforge?

Finally, a quick and admittedly unscientific glance at the lists of projects in both surveys shows a healthy mix of project types — a little of everything under the sun, from what I can tell.

It’ll be interesting to see where things stand in another year — or even by the end of this one.

Roughly 59% of Internet users use the latest, more secure Web browsers, according to an examination of what version Web browser, down to the patch level, people are using.

That means about 576 million Web surfers leave themselves vulnerable to attack. You might just (not) be surprised by who doesn’t patch.

The study, published today, was conducted by the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Google, and IBM Internet Security Systems.

The researchers found that no matter how quickly browser and plug-in vendors create patches to fill security holes, it could be months before a large segment of the Internet population will apply those patches.

While I wasn’t surprised to see 83.3% of Firefox users having applied the most recent patches, the same can’t be said for Opera users, because only 56.1% of those users keep their browser up to date.

One would think that both Firefox and Opera users would be more technically savvy than the average user, thereby more prone to patch. Unlike Internet Explorer users, where less than half, at 47.6%, bother to apply the most recent software updates.

The study examined search and Web application log data from Google to ascertain what version of browsers, including patch levels, are used.

For Internet Explorer, the researchers culled data from Danish security firm Secunia’s Personal Software Inspector.

Setting up services for your mobile phone often requires you to perform some configurations via the Web.

This is true for a number of Google services, and apparently people didn’t think it was easy enough.

Google listened to all the feedback and launched a new mobile site today to help make it easier to set your phone up with Google services.

Man, did Google dumb its mobile Web site down. It is so easy to get started, there’s no reason you won’t have your Google services configured in no time.

Going to http://mobile.google.com brings up a landing page. On that page is a list of the major phone manufacturers, along with pictures that resemble those manufacturers’ devices.

Select the choice that most closely resembles your phone, and it whisks you to a page customized for your type of device.

This next page lists all the services that your phone (or platform) supports.

For example, here is the page for BlackBerrys. It has a tool so you can send a link via SMS to your phone that leads directly to Google’s mobile services.

Simply enter your phone number and the link will appear in a few moments. You can also just type m.google.com directly into your phone’s browser.

Additionally, there’s a help center and explanations for everything. Not that it was difficult before, but now it is really easy.

So if you’re a Google user and haven’t set up Google services on your phone because you thought it would be a pain, take heart. What are you waiting for? Get started!