Archive for the 'Technology' Category

I really think it’s silly that people leave the startup sound set to the familiar Microsoft sound when they know they will be using their laptops in libraries. People really don’t think ahead and they often don’t care much that they’re bothering others. Take a look at the ultimate revenge.

It amazes me what things are possible when the software is open and people are free to innovate and implement whatever they want. This is Linux running a special OpenGL driven window manager called compiz. Apple pioneered this idea, malady but these folks have taken it to the next level. Keep in mind that although Novell created and released this it is open for anyone else to use, troche modify, and redistribute. It belongs to everyone. Enjoy!

Sometimes it feels good to give advice. Sometimes I just like answering questions. If that sounds like you then you’ll love the two websites I’m talking about today. The first is an automated approach, the second is human-driven.

Remember the game 20 Questions? Some brilliant people have created an automated version of the popular guessing game. It learns from the people that play so it gets better and better all the time. Each time it is stumped it learns a new item because it asks you what you were thinking. It seems amazing sometimes when it comes up with what you are thinking out of seemingly nowhere. Take the following exchange I had for example. The item I was thinking of was a spider web. Note that the questions are presented in reverse order as each new question goes above the previous ones, so start reading at the bottom.

Q17. I am guessing that it is a spider web?
16. Can you buy it? No.
15. Does it move? No.
14. Does it come in many varieties? Yes.
13. Is it a body part? No.
12. Have you seen one in real life? Yes.
11. Does it serve a purpose? Yes.
10. Is it fluffy? No.
9. Can it change size? Yes.
8. Is it man made? No.
7. Can you order it at a restaurant? No.
6. Does it eat cheese? No.
5. Can you control it? No.
4. Is it a metal? No.
3. Is it colorful? No.
2. Is it used for entertainment? No.
1. It is classified as Other.

The second question and answer site, dearinter.net, is almost useful, but not really. It’s kind of like a game, but you could ask serious questions. The premise is that you are able to ask the Internet a question and get responses back. I asked it a question, and you can answer it, because, in case you didn’t realize it yet, you are part of the Internet. If you are in the mood for rapid-fire opinion offering you can use the answer-o-matic and it will present all of the questions to you that the site has and let you answer them for as long as you like. I recommend you log in so that your answers are saved in your profile and you won’t get asked the same question twice. It’s also a good idea in case you want to ask the Internet a question yourself!

I suggest you try one or both of these sites. The one asks you questions and the other lets you ask questions. Post your results in the comments, I’d love to see what you come up with.

U.S. District Judge Richard Matsch says sanitizing movies to delete content that may offend some people is an “illegitimate business.” According to a CBC article, Matsch ordered CleanFlicks and three other similar companies, to immediately stop producing, creating, and renting out edited films. I had heard before that they got around the issue by legally framing it in such a way that individuals were really buying movies and then requesting CleanFlicks remove the content on their behalf. Apparently this method of circumventing current copyright laws doesn’t hold water anymore.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) should really step in here. It would be a great way to get politicians and religious groups on their side for once. Copyright holders have been granted far too much power recently. One of the goals of the EFF is to rollback the legislation that has made copyright in the United States a losing proposition for both consumers and the culture in general. These directors, including Steven Spielberg, Robert Redford, and Martin Scorsese, are arguing the same thing. According to a DGA press release about the ruling, Michael Apted, the president of the Directors Guild of America, had the following to say:

As creators of films, we oppose giving anyone the ability to alter in any way they choose, for any purpose, and for profit, the content of a film that we have made, often after many years of work. Directors put their skill, craft and often years of hard work into the creation of a film. These films carry our name and reflect on our reputations. No matter how many disclaimers are put on the film, it still carries the director’s name. So we have great passion about protecting our work, which is our signature and brand identification, against unauthorized editing.

Is this fair use? According to Judge Matsch it is not. I can’t see any reason why this is not covered by fair use. The discs are bought by the company, so the directors and everybody else involved in the film industry get their money and people who are willing to pay for this service get to watch movies they would never see otherwise. No one is hurt. Everybody wins. But that’s not good enough for the directors. They want everyone to watch the movie their way. Next thing you know they will make it so you can’t watch the movie unless you have 5.1 stereo surround sound, since that’s the way they intended the film to be viewed. What about locking out black and white TVs, or TVs that aren’t big enough? Does this sound absurd to you?

Think back to the days when all rented and purchased movies were on VHS tapes. Imagine there had been advertisements for other movies placed before the actual movie you wanted to watch, which was often the case on rented tapes. Now imagine that the fast-forward button didn’t work while playing that portion of the tape. Sounds pretty absurd doesn’t it? Well, DVDs have been doing this for years.

The directors hail this as a boon for them and their creative talent. They claim that this editing is unauthorized and that the films will now be viewed the way the director intended. Well, what about those movies that are released later labeled as the director’s cut? Does this mean *gasp* that the original version of the film was not the director’s original vision? You mean sometimes the movie we watch has been edited in ways the director did not intend? This is often done after focus groups watch the movies and respond unfavorably to certain aspects of the film. So this means that the movie studios can edit the films in ways that don’t represent the director’s vision. So producers and executives can alter the films for commercial gain, but individuals can’t pay a third party to edit a movie to their specifications?

I think people should have the right to fair use. I think this use falls into that category. This use is especially “fair” because the movie industry gets more sales from this activity than they otherwise would. I know a number of people who own copies of “scrubbed” movies that they would never own uncut version of.

Where does all this leave CleanFlicks then? I don’t know. This ruling was only made on July 7th 2006 and no mention of it has yet been made on the CleanFlicks website. They are still taking new signups, so maybe this somehow doesn’t affect all of their business model. I just hope that they make it through this.

At least I wish I were blind after having seen this beautiful design job advertising some free computer training being offered to residents in my apartment complex. Computer without a mouse? A backwards @ symbol? A long hole where the space bar ought to be?

I guess you get what you pay for.

I’m sitting in the computer lab at Palomar College. I just witnessed something so ridiculous that I could hardly believe my eyes. Everyone already knows that 95.7% of computer lab usage is checking MySpace. Although that’s ridiculous, that’s not news. While I was reading digg doing my homework I was interrupted, as is so often the case, by the rapid mouse clicking associated with playing a stupid flash game. Rapid keyboard activity can indicate work (or blogging), but mouse clicks can only be one thing. Usually when this happens to me the person doing the clicking is in a position that doesn’t allow me to see what they are doing. This time was different.

The girl behind me was clicking furiously for about 15 seconds followed by hushed rejoicing in her rapid-fire mousing abilities. It was so annoying that I had to see what all the noise was about. When I turned around to look I was astonished. She wasn’t playing a game. She was on MySpace! For those of us with the AdBlock firefox extension installed: MySpace is covered with little flash ads that you can’t see. These ads promise things like free ringtones as rewards for winning virtual tug of war contests. You “win” by clicking a red button on the screen fast enough that the rope puller starts overtakes his opponent. I say “win” because your reward for participating in this game is a popup ad. That’s right, a popup. People are playing games where you click forever just to get to an advertisement. But it doesn’t end there.

It soon became apparent that this girl knew what she was doing. She was having so much fun that she would click until her reward came. She would then immediately click the close box on the popup, reload the page, and play the next “game.” Apparently there are multiple “click here a thousand times and get a popup” games. The gameplay is identical, but the animations are different.

This takes me back to my original question. I always assumed that no one ever fell for the old “get a free NAME_OF_PRODUCT by (swatting_the_fly | shooting_the_prairie_dog | mashing_the_mouse_button)” routine. By the looks of things, those games are so fun that people will endure the ads just to keep playing them.

What has the internet come to?

Let’s face it. I live a pretty sedentary lifestyle and I eat as if I were a linebacker. I was the kind of guy who lost weight on his mission because that was the most exercise I’d ever gotten in my life. I like food. I don’t like exercise. My hobbies include reading, playing video games, and programming. Geocaching is good, but that’s not even close to enough exercise to do me much good. Since getting married I’ve taken to eating two servings worth of everything Krissy and I cook. When I went to see the doctor for a physical his exact words were: “You don’t smoke. You don’t drink alcohol or coffee. You don’t lead a risky lifestyle. Nope… weight will be your nemesis.

My cholesterol is too high and I need to lose weight. Krissy and I attended a class this evening aimed at educating unhealthy people about healthy eating habits specifically geared toward lowering high cholesterol levels. We were given a charge to document all of our food intake in a week and to then compare that to our goals and see where we might improve. They gave us a sheet of paper upon which to track our eating habits. There was no way I was going to let things go on paper where the information would languish in uselessness. When we returned home I immediately set out looking for Free Software to track my food intake and my progress over the next few months.

The first thing I found was Gnutrition. This software looked promising at first. It includes information from the FDA on over five thousand different foods and allows one to track progress and plan meals. Unfortunately the most recent release of the software was in 2001 and I couldn’t even get it to compile. I found a few other applications for nutritional information, but none of them allowed tracking of eating habits, which was what I really wanted.

When I first thought about using my geek talents to get healthy I thought that there ought to be a website that would allow me to keep track of these things no matter where I was so I could hop online and update it. I thought that something like a “Google Diet” sounded like a good idea. I guess I wasn’t the only one that thought that might be a good idea. In searching for Free Software I found a free website called FitDay. FitDay is a free online nutrition and exercise tracking system. It allows setting goals and seeing how much fat, calories, and nutrients are being ingested.

As far as exercise goes, I am a complete novice. I have no clue where to start, what to do, or how long to do it for. For people like me RunFatBoy.net was created. The site’s not quite done yet, but it looks like it’s just what I need to get started and to get my stomach to stop spilling out over my pants.

Getting in shape and healthy may not be fun, but it can be just as geeky as you want it to be. And if you’re me then that’s very geeky indeed.

Free for Windows XP users, that is. Skype is software that allows voice to be carried over the internet between two or more participants in a phone-like setting. In other words, it lets you talk to people as if you were talking to them on the phone, but lets you do it for free over the internet to anywhere in the world for free. Skype is released for Windows, Macintosh, and Linux and all three can talk to one another. The video features, however are still in beta and are only available for Windows XP.

Krissy’s brother and his family recently moved to Georgia, so we decided we would try to keep in touch using the new video capabilities in Skype. The audio quality is excellent, but with the limitations in bandwidth imposed by our asynchronous broadband we can only really communicate with the bandwidth of a palty sixty Kilobytes per second. The video quality is less than stellar, and we have experienced dropouts that required us to manually reconnect. The dropouts were probably not Skype related, however.

I am looking forward to using the Linux version when it comes out to talk to them from our place, but I really doubt if we can maintain a three-way video connection with only thirty Kilobytes per second transfer rates. I don’t even know if Skype’s software supports more than two parties using video at once.

While it’s less than perfect and nowhere near as good as being in the same room with your family, it’s still better than talking without video at all, especially for the younger ones that can’t yet really talk a lot. At least they get to see their family and learn who they are even if it’s just the grown-ups talking.

To the spammer who spoofed my email address as the from address in countless spam emails that he sent, I would just like to say, “Thank You!” I now have the pleasure of receiving hundreds of returned mail messages in my inbox daily. I also get to hear from some mail systems that your message was “Considered UNSOLICITED BULK EMAIL” and that “Delivery of the email was stopped!” I have learned that my new name will be Jaime Jones, and that I apparently have some sort of presentations that outline a deal that only has 24 hours left in which to respond.

I also learned that Henry Hill only accepts messages from senders he approves. This is sad to see. I wonder how many other spammers have this guy’s address. He decided to implement this simply because there was too much spam coming in his inbox. Now my good email address (but not really my good name) is on those spam messages.

I gather that this was retaliation for my participation in Blue Security’s Blue Frog undertaking to fight spam. Blue Frog was designed to automatically send requests to companies whose products were being promoted in spam asking that they stop. Many spammers complied and stopped spamming members of Blue Frog. Then one spammer got mad and decided to fight back. He knocked out a large portion of the internet in the process. He also started sending spam to suspected Blue Frog users in droves. As a final attack upon some of us there was an attack on our good names by making it look like we were sending spam ourselves. Blue Security was forced to shut down but they opened up their source code as a final hope of one day overcoming this scourge.

Work is underway in planning an open source distributed network built upon the foundation Blue Security laid. But until that time arrives I apologize to anyone who may receive an offer they never asked for with my email address attached.

Pirates everywhere ought to enjoy this.