February 28, 2004
Creative Commons Contest Concluded
The winners of the Creative Commons Moving Image Contest have been announced, and the first place film blew me away. You need to see it right this second, it's intelligent and stylish. However, the third place entry featured a character that caught my eye, and so in the spirit of the contest I've taken him and made a 3 panel cartoon. Because the movie was licensed under the Creative Commons, it's perfectly legal for me to do even though the creator has no idea I'm doing it. This comic is released under the BY-NC-SA license and is based on a fictional figure created by Alex Tarkowski and Jakub Tarkowski.
February 25, 2004
Upoc to start charging
It pretty much had to happen, but Upoc will be charging 2˘ for every SMS you receive from them starting next week. I couldn't find anything about it on their site but I got an SMS from them that said so.
Upoc was a pretty cool service that I don't think has reached its tipping point; basically it was a way to set up mailing lists for cell phones. You could send and receive text messages to groups of people to provide time-sensitive information. Sort of like a smart mob in a can. I wrote wrote more on Upoc earlier, including how I used it to flash mob online games.
You know, on second thought it wasn't inevitable. Upoc generated a lot of SMS traffic, which mobile phone providers charge for. If the mobile phone providers were smart, they would subsidize Upoc for getting more people using SMS. If the mobile phone providers were smart.
Since they aren't I went in and turned off all my message receipt options, although I couldn't figure out how to delete my account. I suggest you do the same to avoid racking up unwanted bills.
[Update: According to a comment on this entry, it's only AT&T Wireless customers who are affected. I wonder how the Cingular buyout will affect this....]
February 24, 2004
Needlestack
The Dallas Observer carries a story about Michael Bills, who was working for the TSA. He was fired after a year working there because they just found out that he had a marijuana arrest and was a child molester.
So what's the big deal? Well the way they found out about his pot past (after a year of work) was by reading about it on his application, which he truthfully listed the arrest on. I'm not quite sure how they found out that he was a sex offender but they failed to notice that the child molester was Michael Douglas Bills, not the Michael Shane Bills who worked for the TSA.
So a federal agency was dumb, it wouldn't be the first time. Again, what's the big deal? Well the TSA is trying to get into data mining with the CAPPS II program. It hopes to catch terrorists by looking at various bits of information from the commercial sector as well as government records.
The problem with these data mining programs is that they don't work. From Bruce Schnier's How We Are Fighting the War on Terrorism / IDs and the illusion of security:
But any such system will create a third, and very dangerous, category: evildoers who don't fit the profile. Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh, Washington-area sniper John Allen Muhammed and many of the Sept. 11 terrorists had no previous links to terrorism. The Unabomber taught mathematics at UC Berkeley. The Palestinians have demonstrated that they can recruit suicide bombers with no previous record of anti-Israeli activities. Even the Sept. 11 hijackers went out of their way to establish a normal-looking profile; frequent-flier numbers, a history of first-class travel and so on. Evildoers can also engage in identity theft, and steal the identity -- and profile -- of an honest person. Profiling can result in less security by giving certain people an easy way to skirt security.
There's another, even more dangerous, failure mode for these systems: honest people who fit the evildoer profile. Because evildoers are so rare, almost everyone who fits the profile will turn out to be a false alarm. This not only wastes investigative resources that might be better spent elsewhere, but it causes grave harm to those innocents who fit the profile. Whether it's something as simple as "driving while black" or "flying while Arab," or something more complicated such as taking scuba lessons or protesting the Bush administration, profiling harms society because it causes us all to live in fear...not from the evildoers, but from the police.
There simply isn't enough data to build a good terrorist model. Let's take two recent American terrorists: John Allen Muhammad and Timothy McVeigh. What did their records have in common before they acted? The only common data point between the two is that they both served in the military. If we had a system that could spot these two men, it would also falsely identify every single male who served in the US Military.
That of course assumes that the data is properly mined and analyzed. But let's go back to the initial story, where we find out that the TSA sucks at analyzing data. Where does that leave us?
Some might say finding an evil-doer among regular people is akin to finding a needle in a haystack. I say that since there's no way to tell the bad from the good it's closer to finding a specific needle in a needlestack. Is that really worth giving up our privacy for an illusion of security?
February 22, 2004
Napster and DRM
I have a question that I'm having trouble finding the answer to. According to the Mercury News, Napster has lost $15 million in its first 2 months and its executives are jumping ship. This does not bode well for the service. So what happens to its customers if/when it closes up shop?
All the music that Napster 2.0 is selling use Digital Rights Management, which restricts the usage of the files. If Napster goes under, will people still be able to use the music they paid for, or will the DRM stop them?
February 19, 2004
Grey Tuesday
Downhill Battle seems to be on a roll, they have a new project called Grey Tuesday where they ask sites to post the mp3s from the Grey Album to their websites on February 24th. 90% Crud and SongBuddy plan to participate. [Update: Plans change. If you want to see why plans changed in this case, continue reading.]
[Update 2: Despite doing nothing illegal and publicly stating that I had no intention to mirror the Grey Album, Capitol Records has sent me two Cease and Desist notifications. I've submitted them to Chilling Effects and if you get one you can submit yours too. This will document how freaked out Capitol Records is about the Grey Album.]
Hi:
I am an attorney for Capitol Records. We see that SongBuddy intends to participate in "Grey Tuesday" (described at www.greytuesday.org
We are surprised that you have decided to take this approach given that your site seems to profess respect for copyright issues. For example, your "Terms of Service" state "SongBuddy LLC respects copyright owners rights," and your FAQ states:
Adding pirated (copyright infringing, really) music is against our Terms of Service and if we find out that you added pirated music, not only will we remove the song from the site but we will forcibly remove you from the site too.
At SongBuddy we respect the law. We work within the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) to take down infringements that we are aware of. And since we make all our data available in machine readable formats, it'll be pretty easy for a copyright owner to find out if you've added their music.
Also, since it's fairly simple to find out where a song is being hosted, chances are that the web site that was hosting the songs will get taken down off the Internet. Then that super secret pirated music stash you found goes away forever, and under the DMCA you could wind up being fined thousands of dollars for putting the link on our site.
The bottom line is that piracy hurts artists and the whole goal of SongBuddy is to help artists. Some artists make their music available for you to listen to online, but some don't. If you add music that artists don't want on SongBuddy, you're hurting the artist, the person who was hosting the music, yourself, and us. SongBuddy doesn't enjoy dealing with piracy so do us a favor and don't make us.
In fact, one "Tip" featured on the SongBuddy website reads:
Posting pirated mp3s on your own web server is a good way to get sued, plus we wind up having to deal with it. Whatever you think about the RIAA, take pity on us and don't do it.
Again, we are surprised that SongBuddy would agree to participate in the "Grey Tuesday" event and offer unauthorized sound recordings to the public. Accordingly, we request that you reconsider your decision. Of course, we are compelled to reserve all rights and remedies with respect to this matter.
We would appreciate hearing from you by return email, or -- if you'd like --
we can discuss.
Very truly yours,
David Helfer
EMI Music North America
This e-mail including any attachments is confidential and may be legally privileged. If you have received it in error please advise the sender immediately by return email and then delete it from your system. The unauthorized use, distribution, copying or alteration of this email is strictly forbidden.
This email is from a unit or subsidiary of EMI Music, North America
So am I going to capitulate? Hell yes! It's one thing to do something right, it's another thing to do something right when you are told by one of the lawyers who would sue you that he will sue you. I have neither the time nor the money to fight for what's right.
Plus, he is right that it's hypocritical for me to post copyright infringing songs and then go all over the site warning people not to post copyright infringing songs.
I guess I'll just have to hope that SongBuddy and the web become a way to promote independent artists so much so that the music cartel is forced into enlightenment. Sorry if I'm letting anyone down.
Why hasn't Yahoo! gotten on the social software bandwagon?
It seems like Yahoo! has everything that Orkut and the rest are trying to get and more. Their profiles are system-wide, they have a dating site, a job-finding site and a community builder and a buttload of users. They also have the start of a friends list in their instant messenger's buddy list and address book.
They also have a lot of stuff that the other sites don't, like email, the aforementioned instant messaging, GeoCities, and a lot more. All of these tools are mature, except for the member profiles, which don't seem to integrate with any of their tools.
So what could a Yahoo! do with all that? The first is to integrate friend lists in with the existing tools. Show people's friends' on their profiles, allow them to add friends from the address book and instant messenger lists. The important thing to notice there is that the address book and IM shouldn't be directly linked to the friend lists. There's bound to be people on both lists that you don't care for.
Then they could start rolling the services back into the user profiles. List the Yahoo! Groups that a person is a member of. List a link to their HotJobs résumé on the site. Link them to their personal ad. Let them search their friends network. Let them talk to their friends network.
So to reiterate the title of this post, why hasn't Yahoo! gotten on the social software bandwagon?
The first possible reason is what Warren Ellis said about Orkut: It requests your business profile at the same time as it's asking you where you like to be fingered.
Some people might be uncomfortable with linking their personal ad and their résumé.
I think the bigger reason is a business reason. Look at how each of these Yahoo! sites makes money. On the personal ads, they charge you to contact people you're interested in. On HotJobs, they charge you to list jobs. They charge you to put in place that link between you and someone else.
Would people pay for that link when they can see that they have a mutual friend? Wouldn't a person just email their friend and say "that person is cute, can you send me their email address?" Suddenly Yahoo! could be shutting down that revenue stream and replacing it with what? Sure Friendster has $13 Million in VC, but their business plan is still pretty nebulous.
I guess if Yahoo! is going to become a social software platform, the first thing they would need to figure out is what's in it for them?
February 18, 2004
Upcoming.org to iCal
[Update: I've added code to detect end times (Upcoming style, not Book of Revelations style) that appear in extended feeds.]
I'm a big fan of what Andy Baio is doing over at Upcoming.org, one of my inspirations for SongBuddy. It's a collaborative calendar that lets you see all your friends' event alongside yours. The only downside is that it doesn't didn't do is work with iCal. I've done my part in fixing that by coding up an Upcoming.org to ICS converter. It's a Perl script that will download the RSS file from Upcoming and turn it into a (semi) valid ICS file for use in Apple's iCal, Mozilla's Calendar or PHP iCalendar.
So download it, play with it, fix it and spread it around. You'll need some Unix skills to get this going, but hopefully someone will come along and turn this into a CGI web service. BTW, the only but I know of is that event end times aren't in the RSS feed, ergo they aren't displayed properly in the ICS file. Instead, I have events end at 11:59:59 PM. BTW, if you want to take a look at my Upcoming ICS, which is generated from my Upcoming account.
February 17, 2004
TidyText
Last Updated: April 20, 2004
TidyText is my new plugin for Moveable Type, which I've been working on while slacking on SongBuddy. It adds two new text formatting options for entries that will run them through HTML Tidy to make the XHTML valid before building the entry. Most of us want to support web standards, for me it's a pain to remember to change & to & when linking to URLs. What TidyText does is fixes that broken XHTML and turns it into something valid.
Download TidyText
You can download it or read the documentation, which I've included in this post. If you want to see it in action, compare the source of the linked documentation with the source that I copied and pasted for the documentation in this post.
This has been tested on a couple systems but I can't vouch for it working on yours. You will need to install HTML Tidy before this will work, and it isn't the fastest plugin due to the use of the filesystem. On the other hand, you can start making valid pages again!
Changes are noted below, thanks to L. M. Orchard for his contributions.
>NAME
TidyText - Plugin for Moveable Type
>DESCRIPTION
A text-formatting plugin that uses HTML Tidy to make valid XHTML and HTML for blog entries in Moveable Type.
>REQUIREMENTS
Moveable Type 2.6 or higher
HTML Tidy ( available at http://tidy.sourceforge.net/ )
>INSTALLATION
Get and install HTML Tidy from http://tidy.sourceforge.net/ if you haven't already.
If you don't know which version to get try Linux/x86 first.
Open tidytext.pl in a text editor and set $TIDY to the location of Tidy,
$TIDYARGS to the arguments to give Tidy ( documented at http://tidy.sourceforge.net/docs/quickref.html ) and $TIDYTMP to the temp directory to use.
Put tidytext.pl in the plugins directory for your Moveable Type installation and make sure that the permissions make it readable by the web server
>USAGE
When you create or edit a blog entry you will have two new options under Text Formatting:
- >HTML Tidy (and Convert Line Breaks)
- This will turn your blog entry into valid XHTML or HTML,
enclose paragraphs in <p> and </p> tags and convert line breaks to <br /> tags.
This is similar to the Moveable Type Text Formatting "Convert Line Breaks." - >HTML Tidy
- This will turn your blog entry into valid XHTML or HTML.
This is similar to the Moveable Type Text Formatting "None."
Or you can use TidyText in your template as a global filter or a container tag:
>CHANGES
- >Version 0.4
- Now works as a global filter: <$MTEntryBody tidy="1"$> ( Credit: L.M.
Orchard http://www.decafbad.com/ ) - Also works as a container tag: <MTTidy><$MTEntryBody$></MTTidy> ( Credit: L.M.
Orchard http://www.decafbad.com/ ) - Checks to see if Tidy exists before filtering your output.
- >Version 0.3
- Initial release,
of course.
Why would an initial release start at 0.1 or even 1.0,
perish the thought!
>BUGS
Uses temp files for processing,
which is slow,
but avoids deadlock issues that IPC::Open2 can have.
Hasn't been extensively tested,
use at your own risk.
Convert Line Breaks uses Moveable Type to add <p> and <br /> tags.
Because this is applied to the outside of multi-line container tags (i.e.
<blockquote> or <ins>) Tidy sees the nesting error and closes the container tag at the first </p>.
The solution is to turn off Convert Line Breaks and put <p> and </p> around your paragraphs for entries that use this tag.
>COPYRIGHT
This program is copyright 2004 George Hotelling (http://george.hotelling.net) and licensed under the GPL.
Coolest of Ypsi
Nothing! There's nothing at stake and no threat, beyond the shame of defeat.More information is available at the Seat.
The other kind of car pr0n
A council member in Flint is trying to ban people from watching porn in their vehicles, according to this Flint Journal article.
Councilwoman Carolyn R. Sims said she has gotten complaints about people watching pornographic videos inside cars - including one case in which the movie lovers left the back hatch of their sport utility vehicle open.I have to question the use of the term "movie lovers" — after all aren't the real movie lovers the ones being watched?
State police said they haven't received any complaints. Burton Police Chief Bruce Whitman, however, said he's not sure if there are laws on the books to cover the situation.I've heard an anecdotal story about someone in Detroit with porn playing on 4 in-car monitors while in gridlock and the police got him. That isn't to say that there's a law on the books, but rather that existing laws can probably take care of the problem. For example, the article concludes saying
Michigan is among 37 states that have laws against driving and watching TV at the same time.The last thing we need are more laws on the books.
February 16, 2004
The LinkText Project
I'm announcing my first Wiki project, the LinkText Project. The short description of what it is would be "A style manual in development for hypertext." What I want to help create is a guide for which words and punctuation should be used to link and what shouldn't.
Sure it's pedantic, but I think that it's an important part of getting HyperText accepted in schools and other formal settings. HyperText is the way millions of bloggers communicate, why should we be second class citizens when it comes to language. If you feel that rules would unnecessarily limit you, then start looking at the spelling and grammar on the sites you visit and you'll realize not everyone feels the need to play by the rules. Personally I find comfort in artistic structure, if forces creativity.
So get in there, check out what little content there is and add to it. If you don't know what a Wiki is, be sure to visit the Wiki Wiki Web page on the site.
A vulnerability in IE? The devil you say!
Well that didn't take long. Some of the source code to Windows NT 4.0 and Windows 2000 was leaked on or about Thursday and over the weekend someone coded up an exploit for some of the leaked code. I bet the security through obscurity camp are jumping for joy. "See," my strawman says, "if the source had remained closed this exploit would have never been a problem!"
Not so fast. Whether the source code is released or not, people can find security flaws in software. There's also no requirement that evil-doers publish information about exploits, which means that the blackhats may have had this exploit for years. The flaw has been there from the start, it's only now that it's been found by someone who would publish it instead of (or in addition to) exploiting it for personal gain.
That's right, someone could have been out there using this exploit all along, although it's unlikely due to the nature of this specific flaw. But now that it's been published, IE 5 users can protect themselves, which means that the source code leak has led to more security instead of less security. As esr says, "Many eyes make all bugs shallow."
February 14, 2004
The Grey Album, Copyrights and the Law
I'm writing this listening to The Grey Album, a remix of Jay Z's Black Album with the Beatles' White Album. Normally I don't go out of my way to find Jay Z remixes but this one is illegal and that makes it irresistible. I suspect that a lot of people are in the same boat as me, and this album would have never been heard of (let alone heard) if EMI wasn't trying to censor it.
What surprises me about the discussion on Slashdot is the number of comments that basically say "So what, this is illegal and Danger Mouse shouldn't have done it in the first place." What they don't realize is that copyright law is built on places where it was broken in the past.
When cable TV first came out they were including broadcast stations on their cable lines without any permission whatsoever. They pirated the public broadcasts and the government forced the broadcasters to license their broadcasts to the cable companies. Because they "stole" copyrighted material we now have a common sense solution and the broadcast companies make more money. (I can't find a good citation to back me up aside from Cory Doctorow's speech)
Going back even further, take a look at music on the radio. They pirated music because there wasn't any other solution at the time. The government at the time realized that it wasn't in the interest of furthering arts and sciences to limit how music was spread. The solution was to have a flat license fee doled out by an organization known as ASCAP that distributes payment based on how many plays a song gets.
So when you say that sampling or P2P sharing is illegal, you may be correct (depending on the circumstances). But the more important question is whether it's best for them to be illegal in furthering arts and sciences.
(Completely off topic: no more linkdumps, they've been moved to the sidebar, or you can see them at del.icio.us)
February 13, 2004
Linkdump: 2004-02-13
- 13 Reasons To Use Firefox Over IE
- Buy 867-5309 Jenny's New York Phone Number
Bidding is over $1k right now - No sex, please - we're American
Europe figures out that USians would have rotten.com on TV before playboy.com - A Family Proposal
Read the Basic Plan and the About Me pages for sure - Table-free forms
- U.S. Military May Run Out Of Money
Nice to see Bush supporting our troops - Index of /w2k_greps
759k of lines including the word "bugbug" in Win2k - [rdfweb-dev] foaf'ing the Texas State Legislature
- changelog: livejournal
Preparing for Livejournal FOAF
February 12, 2004
Linkdump: 2004-02-12
- Aphrodisiac pizza
Nothing like snorting pizza off of a stripper's ass - ann arbor is overrated: Graphic Content
- Multi vibrator demonstration
Pretty SFW - NYT interviews BitTorrent's creator Bram Cohen
Using BitTorrent for illegal trading, he added, is "patently stupid because it's not anonymous" - LegalTorrents
Your source for legal BitTorrent files - MobileWhack - Python on Nokia w/ SCREENSHOTS
- mozCC
Creative Commons plugin for Mozilla - FINGERTIPS
An intelligent guide to free and legal music on the web - Daily Show cut of Bush "Meet The Press" interview
23.8MB Quicktime - Pornzilla 2.0
Pornzilla has returned after a two-year hiatus! - Glancing
- Did you ever wonder what it would be like to see a water balloon pop in space?
February 11, 2004
Linkdump: 2004-02-11
- Neotonic ClearSilver
Clearsilver is a fast, powerful, and language-neutral HTML template system. - Crashing the Party: Map Server Hacking
- Subaru rally driver swears too much
Told off by his mom - HTTP Authentication using Jabber Tickets
A Jabber competitor to MS Passport - Sharing the Groove - Audio Bit Torrent Downloads
- Devil in the detail of Sicily's mysterious village fires
- Scary-cool: Decompression bombs
- Cory Doctorow
A Public Talk on the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Copyright (video) - no message please, system wouldn't allow blanks
When usability messes up your free iPod - BillMaher: Georgey The Greek
Apparently some people are skeptical of our President. Shocking. - nerdtech: FUCK GRAND RAPIDS.
Monks' performance disrupted by protesting Catholics - Snopes: Did Dr. Atkins die of a heart attack?
Short answer: dunno. - Bush report: Sending jobs overseas helps U.S.
In other news, ignorance is now strength - The amazing Linux Duracell CPU load monitor
- eyebrow_thief: eyebrows i have claimed
The perfect response to LJ's glut of picture rating communities - Linux club helps firms hide from Microsoft
The first rule of Incubator Club is don't talk about Incubator Club. - hobo porn (nsfw)
- Wired News: Privacy Is in the House
Wired must have a new headline writer - APOD: January 9, 1999 - Lunokhod: Moon Robot
February 10, 2004
Yaaar! The music pirates' manifesto.
I wanted to spend some more time on "Yaaar! The music pirates' manifesto, which I posted in my last linkdump. This article is an impressively crafted summary of what is going on with copyrights now.
It covers the state of DRM and how it turns computers against their owners. It talks about Freenet and how making copyright enforcement easy makes censorship just as easy. (An aside, I keep meaning to include links to interesting things on Freenet here but I need to get a more stable node going.)
My only point of contention is with their technical argument that iTunes are permanently linked to computers. In actuality they are linked to accounts and the accounts can authorize up to 3 computers and deauthorize old computers at any time. Still, If I were going to use one article to sum up my problems with the current IP laws, it would most likely be this one. (via magnetbox)
Linkdump: 2004-02-10
- Nutrigrain (feel great)
4.1MB .mov, I wouldn't fast forward through this ad if TiVo caught it - Eco-friendly body disposal
Someone watched that liquid-nitrogen-rose experiment too many times - Pages
Tiny CMS - Alpine's iPod car stereo system
No pictures, price or link - Star Wars Ep. 4-6 on DVD in September
Greedo shoots first... - Rands In Repose: N.A.D.D.
Mental note: stop sounding like a know-it-all - ColorMatch Remix
Color math web app - Transformers Instruction Archive
The instructions on how to transform every Transformer. A day doesn't go by where I don't need this - MythTV: Replay or Tivo hardware with Myth?
How about it? Should be easy enough to make a fixed platform Linux distro - The "Original Laughing Cat"
A minimalist hampster dance - Compare And Contrast Blogs And Reuters On Joe Trippi's Speech
Interesting, but I suspect more incompetance than malice - Waxy.org: Daily Log: Subscribe to Salon, Make $7
- Yaaar! The music pirates' manifesto.
- Dlugosz.net Wiki - Integrating Gallery Into Movable Type
Another thing for the todo list - macosxhints - A how-to guide to transcode DVD to Divx
- ID3v2 Tag Reader PHP Class
- VeriSign Reconsiders Search Service
Dumb, de dumb dumb - Web Standards Awards
An award that rewards visual and technical design - SongBuddy Beta :: The White Stripes
From whitestripes.net, which appears legit - Running Apple's Backup Without a .Mac Account
The Challenge Come up with a way to use the full functionality of Backup, without having a .Mac account. Preferably without hacking Backup itself. I can say that I succeeded. - RadioRipper
"Empowering users with their online rights" - CMF FlashMovie content type
February 09, 2004
Linkdump: 2004-02-09
- Public records audit: Some records requests met with suspicion and threats
"He could have been a terrorist," Howard said. "We have to ensure the safety of children." Howard couldn't explain how a terrorist might use his cell phone bill to harm children. - my radiohead adventure
The English rock band Radiohead uses a sample from my very first computer piece, mild und leise, on one of the tracks on their CD, Kid A. - Web Developer Toolbar for Mozilla / Firefox
Hella sexy, when can I get one for Safari? - Froogle
Saved me $12 on the PowerBook Station - American Airlines Pilot Plugs Christianity
Just the time and place that I want to hear suggestions on the afterlife - FBI asks computer shops to help fight cybercrime
Operation TIPS back in the hizouse. - Chihuahua "No More Heroin for You" Ashtray
I wish I smoked so I could quit the H - Ads and Copyright | Creative Commons
Why wouldn't you release your ad as freely sharable? - Rotten.com deadpool
I can't think of another site more qualified to run this. - Two Dollar Bills
This story sounds familiar. - mt-daapd
This project is an attempt to make an iTunes server for Linux, OSX, and other POSIX Unix machines. - EFF: Judge to Rule on Consequences for Diebold's Misuse of Copyright Law
- Nato happy to ignore explosion in Afghan opium output, says Russia
Afghanistan is now producing nine times the quantity of drugs it did under the Taliban - Asterisk
The Open Source Linux PBX - The Media Disappeared Howard Dean
Interesting, but I don't think overhyping == disappearing - The Empty Bowl - The Definitive Source For All Your Cereal Needs
Here you'll find reviews, feature articles, and general discussions about the greatest breakfast product on the face of the earth: cereal! - UnderReported.com :: Surprising stories from the media and primary sources
RSS feed at http://www.underreported.com/backend.php (thanks elr) - Quiz: George W. Bush or Emperor Palpatine
- iBook or G4 PowerBook Station
I saw one at my friend Duane's last night and now need one for myself.
David, Susana and Linkdumps
No one else seems to be noticing, so I want to make sure that everyone reading this visits two new weblogs. The first is Wax Elastic by my friend and cow orker David Weinstock. Lots of links and clever writing, I'm looking forward to watching this grow.
The second is SuperSusy by David's wife Susana, who is currently doing her clinical rotations for med school in Ecuador for 4 weeks. She's blogging her experiences and I would definitely put this on a must-read list.
Finally, I wanted to get your thoughts on my recent Linkdumps. I'm using a script to dump my del.icio.us links in daily posts. Do you prefer this method or do you want a sidebar? Comments are open.
What's The Download
What's The Download is a new site dealing with copyrights and digital music. It's causing quite a stir thanks to their TV spot during the Grammy's last night. It argues the flip-side of Downhill Battle, for industry rights etc. But what they don't say on their site, is that they are run by the RIAA Recording Acadamy, which is causing some concerns.
I think the scariest thing about this site is the claim that they're scanning the computers of people who access the site. Are they looking for P2P applications? Be sure not to visit unless you have turned off any filesharing programs, because you never know what will happen when you give them your IP.
Democratic Caucus
Like 46,000 other people in Michigan, I voted in the Democratic Caucus online. Or did I? According to Wired News, the Internet voting system used was similar to the one ditched by the Pentagon for being insecure. So how do we audit the Internet vote? Let's say hypothetically that there was found to be some sort of collusion between the Michigan Democratic Party and a candidate. How would they prove that there wasn't any modification of votes online? How do you do a recount?
On the other hand, it was pretty damn easy to vote. I just used the username and password that they snailmailed to me and selected my candidate. The site was responsive on Saturday, which I assume was their heaviest traffic period. The only confusion that I heard was people who didn't realize that they had to pre-register to vote online. Anything that makes it easier to participate in democracy can't be all bad, IMHO.
Linkdump: 2004-02-08
- Amazon.com: Early Adopters
- die puny humans:
No You Can't Have A Pony - Bare breast not nearly as offensive as cynical American jingoism
Why do breasts hate America? - Centralia PA
Underground mine fires burning since 1961 have closed the town - Home Shopping Accident
5.5 MB MPEG - Ninja Midget
2 MB MPEG
February 07, 2004
Linkdump: 2004-02-07
- Jeffrey Veen: Publishing Links With Perl
It's what I'm using on 90% Crud - MacBand.com
mp3s from GarageBand toting musicians - The Ministry of Truth discusses WMDs
1.9 MB mp3 - Avert Your Eyes!
High-definition porn has arrived. That's bad news for HDTV. - In These Times | State of the Asylum
"Only a nut would run for president. As far as that goes, only disturbed people ran for president of my class in high school."
February 06, 2004
Linkdump: 2004-02-06
- Leaves Rustle > Tools > Datetime
- Panic - Unison - Reinventing the Mac OS X Usenet newsreader!
- Man Says Wife Died In 9/11 Tragedy, But She Didn't
- DREAMHOST ADDS FREE JABBER-BASED INSTANT MESSAGING TO ALL WEB HOSTING PLANS
- The Awful Forums
Pictures of a life with OCD, thoughtfully presented for the caring people at the SA forums - Cheap Ass Gamer
Deals on video games, a must read RSS feed - I know chmod
Diebold to get smackdown
Because they tried to stop publication of information vital to democracy, Diebold may get the smackdown.
If you're not familiar with the case, Diebold made incredibly insecure touchscreen voting machines. Not only that, but because there were no paper receipts, there is no way to verify a vote. When it was made public that they were aware of these shortcomings, instead of trying to fix them they tried to silence the critics with DMCA. Hopefully this case will stop the corporate culture of "fire first, ask questions later" of DMCA lawsuits. For more information on the problems with touchscreen voting, visit BlackBoxVoting.org.
Jabber
Thanks to Gabe I now have a Jabber account that matches my email address... george at hotelling.net. For those not in the know, Jabber is an open instant messaging network, instead of the existing closed systems. What that means is that anyone can run a Jabber server and different Jabber servers can talk to each other.
Think of it as the difference between pre-Internet email and post-Internet email on AOL. Before, people on AOL could only email people on AOL but now they can email anyone on the Internet. It's sort of absurd to think that people put up with AOL-only email, so why do people put up with AOL only IM?
[Update: The reason I'm using Jabber is the same reason I vote.]
February 04, 2004
Weekly World News editor fakes his own death
It is being reported that Eddie Clontz, editor for the Weekly World News died in January. Obviously he faked his death and is now living in seclusion with Elvis, Bat Boy and possibly Aliens. This will no doubt be proven when Satan is seen in the clouds above his "grave." I mean, if this were true, it would be a sad day for all... so thank goodness it's another media hoax.
The Creativity Machine
There's an amazing article about a neural network on STLtoday.com. By introducing noise into neural networks, Imagination Engines, Inc has been able to get their neural networks to invent new things. For example, the networks (called the Creativity Machine) have designed substances harder than diamonds and the Oral-B CrossAction toothbrush. From the article:
"His first patent was for a Device for the Autonomous Generation of Useful Information," the official name of the Creativity Machine, Miller said. "His second patent was for the Self-Training Neural Network Object. Patent Number Two was invented by Patent Number One. Think about that. Patent Number Two was invented by Patent Number One!"This is pretty cool stuff, I can't wait to see what problems this tackles next.
Orkut Sucks
What's with the "Sexy" markers? Looks like sexist bullshit. I can't believe my friends can send a complaint to everyone in Antisocial. Orkut people know nothing about security! What's with the "Sexy" markers? Looks like elitist bullshit. Don't they know that Usenet tried that feature 4 years ago and it was an abysmal failure. Have we learned nothing about social networking?I didn't actually write this, it was created with a Perl script. Generate your own with the Orkut complaint generator.