...more recent posts
There's something nice about being able to hold your business meetings in a bar. "Can't talk now, I'm late for a meeting!"
Random bad bar jokes:
A termite walks into a bar and asks "where's the bar tender?"
A horse walks into a bar and the bartender asks "Why the long face?"
A man walks into a bar and says "ouch."
The floor is going in at 49 Clinton.
Absolutely perfect weather in NYC.
images.google.com is fun.
Paul Ford has an essay on what happened in Genoa (and what is happening all over the world) called I must not think bad thoughts. Word.
Some far out discussion on the FoRK mailing list about post humanity, and the possiblity that this world is just an elaborate simulation. This went back and forth a few times between people, and then someone offered the predictable "what, are you guys on drugs?" response to all the wild speculation. This lame joke (put down?) was met immediately with the obvious Matrix comeback of:
> Did you guys forget to take your meds again?Which is O.K., as far as comebacks to lame comments go, but then someone else chimed in with this one:
I forget. Red or blue?
> Did you guys forget to take your meds again?Now that's a good comeback! It's like a whole sci-fi story in one sentence.
Very possibly. And then as a result, we were placed in this simulation to "spin back up" to full posthumanity as our medications get slowly reintroduced!
Clueless LA Times article with some funny quotes: "The problem is that [the internet] was devised by a bunch of hippie anarchists who didn't have a strong profit motive...."
Worm:
[from `tapeworm' in John Brunner's novel "The Shockwave Rider", via XEROX PARC] A program that propagates itself over a network, reproducing itself as it goes. Compare virus. Nowadays the term has negative connotations, as it is assumed that only crackers write worms. Perhaps the best-known example was Robert T. Morris's Great Worm of 1988, a `benign' one that got out of control and hogged hundreds of Suns and VAXen across the U.S. See also cracker, RTM, Trojan horse, ice.Recently we've seen some big examples. The Code-Red Worm (CRv2) exploits a hole in Microsoft's IIS server software. This is software that turns a computer into a webserver (in other words, this won't infect your home computer.) IIS is installed on roughly 20% of web servers (although there are various reasons why that number may be misleadingly low.) This page has an interesting technical look at the rapid spread of the worm:
On July 19, 2001 more than 359,000 computers were infected with the Code-Red (CRv2) worm in less than 14 hours. At the peak of the infection frenzy, more than 2,000 new hosts were infected each minute. 43% of all infected hosts were in the United States, while 11% originated in Korea followed by 5% in China and 4% in Taiwan. The .NET Top Level Domain (TLD) accounted for 19% of all compromised machines, followed by .COM with 14% and .EDU with 2%. We also observed 136 (0.04%) .MIL and 213 (0.05%) .GOV hosts infected by the worm. A QuickTime animation of the geographic expansion of the worm is available.If you've got a fast connection don't miss the QuickTime animation. Nice/scary.
But it's not just web servers that have to be careful. The SirCam worm is making even more of a nuisance of itself in the Windows world (although not Windows NT or Windows 2000.) I've yet to get a single copy of it (anyone might get it, but it will only infect Windows machines,) but evidently it is very widespread, and not exactly going away. Ev thinks we may need to "create a disinfectant virus and release it the same way" in order to stop it.
From the symantec page linked above:
- Payload:
- Large scale e-mailing: The worm appends a random document from the infected PC to itself and sends this new file via email
- Deletes files: 1 in 20 chance of deleting all files and directories on C:. Only occurs on systems where the date is October 16 and which are using D/M/Y as the date format. Always occurs if attached file contains "FS2" not followed by "sc".
- Degrades performance: 1 in 50 chance of filling all remaining space on the C: drive by adding text to the file c:\recycled\sircam.sys
- Releases confidential info: It will export a random document from the hard drive by appending it to the body of the worm
The interesting thing about these worms (as Ev seems to suggest above) is that they are becoming sophisticated enough that it is very difficult to wipe them out. Maybe even they are coming alive. Here's Robert Cringely on the subject (try to ignore all the lame inline advertising for MessageLabs products if you click through.)
It will be beautifully organic, this hacking organism that can only be stopped by being utterly destroyed. And because it can live on any insecure system anywhere on the Net, and replicate from there, the chances of taking it down are very low indeed.... It will be a living electronic hack, an organism that lives on the Web.Is this the start? Are these things really becoming "Borg code, the creation of e-life"? I guess the process of deciding will run parallel to (or be the flip side of) the process of deciding exactly what this word "life" means. We've never really had to think too hard about it before.
Now I've done it. Once again I've met someone who I think would be a good match with what we are doing here. I gave him the URL, but now of course I'm worried that it's hard to grasp at first. I guess that's a nice way of saying there's a lot of chaff with the wheat. And we don't seem too intent on seperating these things out. I tend to call that "context" and I like to think it helps people connect with the person behind the words. Still, I can't really expect someone to wade through everything just to find the good stuff. Usually I don't care too much about this (I like the fact that we don't have any about this site sort of explanatory text) but then this can be a problem in the rare case that you want someone to connect and maybe stick around.
For instance, I think this thread is a good glimpse into what Bill is doing, but a quick look at his page probably wouldn't turn it up. Drat Fink has popularity far beyond our shores and clearly stands on his own in the world of blogdom. There's good links there right off the bat, but how long would you have to look before you found this Frank poem tucked away on the comments page? That's sounding pretty concise in the wake of all the G8 michegas. I've pointed to the Wheel's mini manifesto before as a good example of a from-the-heart type of journalism which we may or may not be involved with. I'm definitely not sure how to define it, but I know it works because I've learned so much about wine and food from him that I almost know something now.
Nola often completely freaks me out with stuff like this. Sometimes you get more than you bargain for. Sometimes the words really stick with you. Sometimes they even change you. Strong stuff. Same goes for Mr. Wilson in his arboretum. I know he never planned on writing anything specifically personal, but maybe the medium encourages a little of that. Clearly it works when he does it.
And then there's the feedback aspect. Even an unwanted guest can start a good thread (doesn't take much, does it?) And look out if the conversation turns to trees.
But pictures (hold tight: > 700k) can really say a lot too. We're still ramping up to speed in that area, but Steve is leading the way. He's got tons more goodies, but bandwidth is a little constraining at this point. Soon there will be more.
O.K. I've done a post like this once before, and even though I'm doing it again I'm not sure it's a good idea. It's just that sometimes you need a place to start. If you're a regular, feel free to suggest different entry points below. And if you're new here, welcome to our little part of the forest called Internet. Have a look around.
Whoa, hey buddy, watch where you're swinging those antlers. I don't think my landlord allows animals in the building, so maybe you could wear a hat or something when you drop by. Thanks.
As a publishing medium, weblogs are ultimately democratic, often as timely as traditional news sources, and have a potential distribution much greater than print media. One problem with these personal information sources is the inability to find an audience. Blogdex is a system built to harness the power of personal news, amalgamating and organizing personal news content into one navigable source, moving democratic media to the masses.I don't get it yet, but hopefully this will be interesting.
mySQL (the database we use here) has a new logo:
Probably you'll notice the amazing performance boost this gives the software. Apparently dolphins are very good at finding data.
Another what's a weblog article.
My friend and sometimes music mentor Dave R. is recommending The Original Harmony Ridge Creekdippers. Don't know much about them except they have a banjo player who uses a wah-wah peddle. Oddly, this is about enough information to make me interested. Playing at The Bottom Line on 8/7 if anyone wants to come along.
Here's a link.
Greatergood.com (which runs the popular hunger site) is shutting down. Wheel will have to find a new homepage.
New 49 Clinton photos start here.
Fun party at Joel's place in Park Slope last night. Seems like I'm making it out to Brooklyn all the time now. Regular frontiersman I am.
Saw a few old friends from college, including the amazing Liz, mother of The White Shadow, world famous over-sized Buick of many legendary road trips. Those were the days. Really fun to remember some of that. Seems like a very long time ago.
Most everyone was my age (within a few years) and I had to laugh at the tendency of those in their early 30s to go on about how old they feel. I've noticed that friends in their 40s (and 50s and 70s) don't do this. I guess you only make a big deal out of it when it's not true yet.
Anyway, made it back safely but couldn't manage the run to the beach this morning with MB and crew. Oh well. When you're as old as I am you've got to keep your skin out of the sun...
Are you enjoying your summer? Better get to it.
Saw this bizarre show (documentary?) on PBS last night about some women in upstate New York who talk to animals. Hokey, but I couldn't stop watching. It seems I'll believe most anything. Very funny show. All the animals are apparently deadpan humorists. I enjoyed the llamas especially. They were in charge. The woman doing the filming asked one llama if the llamas talk to people differently than the other animals do, and the llama said (through the woman translator of course) "yes, we talk on a higher plane than the other animals... we vibrate faster."
update: Whenever I don't do enough searching to find all the information I get scared that Alex is going to pop some words into google and show what a slacker I am for not getting the link in the first place. So, after a little poking around, here it is. The film is called Animal Attraction, and it's part of a series of independent films about New York called Reel New York. Unless you're in the area I don't think you would see this one. Reruns Sunday night at 12:30 on WNET (PBS channel 13 in NYC.)
"We have found and closed the thing you watch us with."
Bless the soul who created this page: configuring mail clients to send plain ascii text. If you don't know what this means, you're probably doing it wrong. And I know you want to impress your geek friends while you make the world a better place. So use plaintext (not HTML) for email. This page gives you the easy step by step instructions for how to change the preferences in your favorite email program.
Go do it!
Possibly we're not the stupidest country in the world, but we are trying hard.
Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2001 12:31:02 +0100 (BST)This is reprinted from this newsforge story. Allan Cox (weblog) is the number two man in the linux world. If linux were a company, Linus would be chairman of the board and Alan Cox would be CEO, COO, and President all rolled into one. This is one seriously important guy. And now he's scared to come to the U.S. Great.
From: Alan Cox
To: alschair@usenix.org
Cc: editor@lwn.net, editors@newsforge.com, gnu@eff.org
I hereby tender my resignation to the Usenix ALS committee.
With the arrest of Dimitry Sklyarov it has become apparent that it is not safe for non US software engineers to visit the United States. While he was undoubtedly chosen for political reasons as a Russian is a good example for the US public the risk extends arbitarily further.
Usenix by its choice of a US location is encouraging other programmers, many from eastern european states hated by the US government to take the same risks. That is something I cannot morally be part of. Who will be the next conference speaker slammed into a US jail for years for committing no crime? Are usenix prepared to take the chance it will be their speakers ?
Until the DMCA mess is resolved I would urge all non US citizens to boycott conferences in the USA and all US conference bodies to hold their conferences elsehere.
I appreciate that this problem is not of Usenix making, but it must be addressed
Alan Cox
When will the matrix be ready? I'd like to reserve my upload time.
If you don't have enough RAM you are crazy. Prices are so cheap right now. And it really makes a big difference in how well (and how fast) your machine runs. I just bought 512 megs of RAM for one of the office machines for $95! You can't afford not to buy at that price. Nice.
For Mac memory I recommend macgurus. They take care of their customers (plus you've got to like any company that advertises themselves as being on a jihad.)
Another example of the madness. Adobe has had Dmitry Sklyarov arrested! Expect more of this. Intellectualy property owners cannot secure their digital information, so the only recourse they have is to fight back with this sort of draconian police state mentality. Hey, reminds me of another no-way-to-win war that they keep fighting. Maybe we can get 50% of the population behind bars. Hell, let's just lock everybody up and be done with it.
There's been a lot happening in the intellectual property wars lately. I haven't been able to write anything informative. But I am digesting, so something will come out eventually.
One thing I can't pass over is that the music recording industry has quiety started distributing "CDs" with "copy protection" mechanisms built in. I put those words in quotes because these are not CDs (they do not conform to the Red Book standard that defines audio CDs) and it's questionable whether what they are doing is really copy protection. I can think of a few better descriptions, but none of them are too polite.
Here's the slashdot story.
Seems like the copy protection consists of inserting small errors all throughout the CD. An audio CD player (a good one at least) has all sorts of error correction circuitry built into it so that when an error is encountered the player looks at the data on both sides of the error and interpolates what it thinks should be in place of the error. So the error filled (I mean "copy protected") CD will play correctly (well, not theoretically correctly because all the information is not there, but apparently you can't hear the difference, so practically correctly.) But a CD drive in your computer is just making exact copies of the data. If you try to rip one of these CDs into MP3 (or Ogg Vorbis, or Windows Media Format, or whatever) the computer will dutifully copy all the errors as well which will now destroy the sound of the music (because your MP3 - or whatever - player isn't doing this same sort of error correction.)
The solution is just a software release away. Someone just has to write a software ripper that does this sort of error correction. And, in fact, cdparanoia is a software decoder that does just that. It was written for the obvious reason of enabling people to rip audio tracks from scratched CDs. The comments on /. are saying it will work for these new disks, and that seems to make sense. The catch, of course, is that cdparanoia is a free software product and only runs on linux. And this is the whole battle in a nutshell.
Digital information is copyable by definition. The only way to control the ability of people to make copies is to control the entire consumer electronics industry. And this is what is being attempted, although I fear not many believe such a campaign is underway. If we all used Microsoft (or Apple) operating systems, and can only buy CPRM hard drives, and all our monitors, TV's, stereo speakers, headphones, etc... have built in protection mechanisms - then they could make an attempt to control this stuff. Linux would have to be illegal (and it could be made so by arguing that linux is a "circumvention device" under the DMCA.) All old stereo and computer equipment would have to be made illegal. All new equipment would have to have these electronic protections built in.
But that's impossible you say. People won't stand for it. But they made plants illegal, and that's even more ridiculous. These things happen. Word to the wise: don't throw out your old computers. You may need them to fight the good fight some day.
Steve Jobs announces new Macs tomorrow at the annual MacWorld New York conference. [update: coverage of the keynote is below] The faithful, as usual, have whipped themselves into a frothy speculative frenzy trying to predict exactly what the new offerings will be, but this year there seems to be almost no leaked information to go by. New iMacs, for sure, but all the flat panel rumors that had been floating around for weeks (including the outlandish wireless detachable tablet screen iMac) have dried up. Could they really deliver a mere speed bump and new color choices? (Again?) That machine is getting very tired.
New Powermacs, again for sure, but how interesting can these be? New cases seem like a good bet, but nothing else is really on deck to surprise. Almost everyone seems to agree on 733, 866, 933 mhz for the desktop machines with the possibility of 1 ghz to be announced but not shipping for a few months. Dual processors somewhere in there, but probably not across the entire line (and probably not at the highest clock speed.)
The powerbook G4 (TiBook) won't be updated until September. The rumor from the Merril Lynch analyst about 14 inch display iBooks has to be wrong (who'd buy a TiBook if the iBook had a 14 inch screen?) But that leaves you wondering what could the source at Alpha Top have been talking about? Almost makes you want to start speculating about that tablet thing again, but I just don't see it. Probably the source was just wrong.
We'll see tomorrow. But I've got a bad feeling about this one. Steve better pull something out of his, uhhh... hat.
What happened to lemonyellow?
acute.org has some nice photos of the greenpoint gas tank implosions. Brooklynkid has some pictures of the tanks before hand, including one showing where the explosives were attached. Rumor has it that Steve has some film of this same event.
Here's two great resources I've found lately (well, they're great if you maintain macs and/or epson printers.) First is the amazing epson inkjet printer resource. If that's not more info than you could ever want then you are a serious geek and should probably take a vacation. And the macgurus tech support page is a great place to find answers to mac hardware issues. Their ftp software archive is breathtaking.
A brief history of @.
My sister Elisabeth and her husband Tom and my amazing niece Mary arrive today. Looking forward to a nice meal tonight.
Brunch here at noon on Sunday if anyone wants to come by.
Feelin' lucky today.
The BBC has a story about a new, and much more accurate atomic clock design.
Clocks have come a long way in the past one thousand years. In 1088, the Chinese developed a water clock accurate to about 100 seconds a day.So how accurate is it? Supposedly it is accurate to within one second over the lifetime of the universe. Cool short explanation if you click through.
In the 17th Century, pendulum clocks were accurate to about 10 seconds a day. By the 1930s, the most accurate clocks kept time to within a second over a three-day interval.
But it was with the introduction of atomic clocks, based on precisely measured microwaves emitted by specific atoms, that the precision of timekeeping became astronomical.
Atomic clock technology enabled scientists in 1967 to define the second as the period equal to 9,192,631,770 cycles of the radiation that corresponds to the transition between two energy levels of the ground state of the caesium-133 atom.
By 1995, the best atomic clocks were accurate to a second every 15 million years - and now they have become even better with the new NISTL timepiece.
Complete frustration. I just spent several hours weeding through my incredibly poor code to find a simple bug in the subscription function. I got it finally, but what a freakin' mess. I haven't looked under the hood in so long I'd forgotten. Hope I don't have to go back in there again. I almost threw my computer out the window. Going to go walk around for a bit.
New 49 Clinton pictures start here.
Well, I finally had the dream. I've been dreaming a lot lately (or remembering them in the morning at least) and it's seemed like it was coming, but somehow always just out of reach. Some people call it lucid dreaming. Anyway, I had a few almost experiences lately where I would be in the dream and something would happen which would make me think "hey, this is just like in a dream" at which point I would try to figure out if I was awake or not. What had been happening to me at this point is that I would either decide a) I really am awake (wrong answer Jim) or b) I'd just sort of forget what I was thinking and wander back into the dream.
Anyway, the other night it finally happened. I was talking to someone about some numbers and every time we would decide on something the numbers would change. Finally I thought "this is weird, the numbers won't stay put - it's just like a dream." And I think because I'd been talking a lot with MB about this event, and about how it might come about, I immediately realized, "I am in a dream right now." Nice. Except then I wasn't able to stay in there. I've read all these accounts of people getting to this point and then being able to take control of their dream narrative. Like you can just start flying around, or whatever strikes your fancy. All while being aware that you are in fact dreaming. I've always been a little suspicious of these accounts, but I'm sure it's possible for someone. Just not me. At this point anyway.
In my dream, after I realized I was in a dream, my surroundings just started to fade out. Everything became grey, blurry, and low resolution. I remembered reading something about trying to spin your dream body around in order to stay in the dream (like the sufi kind of spinning) and I even tried this, but it didn't work. In another moment I was awake. Still, I'm happy to report I got that far.
Do you ever wake up inside a dream and get to stay there? How do you do it?
I can't believe Kermit the frog is shilling for AIG. It's just not right.
My phone is not receiving calls. I think they are all going right into my voicemail, but honestly I haven't listened to all the messages. Sorry if I've missed you. Write me email until I get this straightened out.
Holy cow. David McCusker mentioned me, although I think he only saw the links page and not this one. I guess some internal navigational links would be good for that link page. Anyway, I couldn't agree more with him about being in awe of Matthew Rossi's writing, as well as his fonts being basically unreadable in Netscape 4.7. On the Mac I just turn off javascript and this makes CSS not work, so the fonts just default to my (much larger) setting. Works O.K. plus it defeats almost all pop up adds.
Very glad something here was of some interest to someone.
The searching zeitgeist
Google now has a cool page of statistics about what people are searching for. (via /.)
Bust? What bust? Douglas Rushkoff explains the history of the web, and why it's doing better than ever, despite what some would have you believe.
Nothing very original, but that's never his point. He's more of a summing it up for people on the outside kind of writer. And I think he gets the general feel correct. The internet stock crash was a good thing for the web, because the web is not about making money off of people, it's about communicating with them.
Note to self: you don't really want to stand directly downwind of the fireworks.
Looking for more guinea pigs, err I mean people who want a weblog type thing. Need a place for your blog? (with full comment system, automatic archives, picture uploading, etc....?) Drop me a line: jim at datamantic.com.
While talking yesterday about my recent flurry of dreams I realized that while I occasionally (like yesterday morning) have dreams where I am in a fight with an animal, that animal is always a shark. For as long as I can remember. Maybe 20 dreams over the last few years (that is a complete guess) and never once with an animal other than a shark. Weird. And I hadn't ever noticed this. I can't even think of any other animals that have ever appeared in my dreams. Maybe bugs.
Why can't I send google the pages that have changed on my site? The point is they wouldn't have to hit my site so much with their robots. Plus, the updates would be live. Who wouldn't push their content to google one time rather than take all the hits? (where each hit to a page that hasn't been updated is wasted bandwidth.) Win-win as they say.
I'm not suggesting google change their ranking criteria. Just because you send them pages doesn't mean you'll return higher in searches. Maybe you'd sign up to send them pages, and then if they are already indexing you, they would send you some sort of password to authenticate that your pages are from you. If you're not being indexed they just note your interest, and then send you the key when (or if) they ever start to index you.
Actually, couldn't this be a revenue model for google? Have the service, but only let people send updates once every n hours (or days.) But, it you pay a little, you can send them more frequently. Or if you pay more, in real time. So their model could be free for what they do now, but with the addition of a temporal aspect, so people could search (at least among sites pushing their updates) for things using a very recent time criteria (for instance, you could search for news stories in the last 6 hours about thunderstorms in New York City, or any other sort of recent news event.)
Or am I missing something?
Thinking a lot about email recently. I want to adapt this system to handle all my email (sending, receiving, and most importantly archiving.) Long way to go. I'd love to hear what bugs people about their present email setups (or what you like too, I guess.)
Looks like inside.com is going to (try to) start charging $3.95 a month for most of it's content. Right. That should work.
I guess I knew about this before, but I never really took a good look at Ward Cunningham's WikkiWikkiWeb until recently. Wow. It's a collaborative writing space. You might start with this definition page, and make your way from there. Or maybe start here. Or maybe here. Or, really, any of these. Just keep clicking. Very nice. Even if you don't care about the topic ("an informal history of programming ideas" ) just getting a sense of how the whole thing is structured is pretty cool. So I'm impressed, but I have to say that just letting anyone modify anything on the site seems positively crazy.
Here's a Hack the Planet discussion thread that is worth looking at, at least for the great David McCusker ouija board metaphore:
Yeah, now we're all playing Internet Ouija Board, with lots of folks who want to spell out different things while pretending they are merely passive observers.Plus, this really nice response to Dave Winer's dream of the web as a "fantastic writing environment"
Yes, and that's a good dream. In fact, it's the best one I know about currently, unless I extend the concept of writing to include something more, until the final result is a fantastic dreaming environment.Fantastic dreaming environment? I'll take one of those please. Does it run on OSX?
Short, not too technical Cringely column on setting up a long range (10 kilometer) wireless 802.11b connection
Paul Ford is my hero. He's released the code that runs ftrain, and has posted a page explaining the mighty machine he has built.
Anyone who wants to work on this code with me should drop a line. What's here is an enormously slimmed down micro-version of the original 9 billion lines of shit-code I wrote, and now that it's fast, I want to expand the features, create a core suite of small (PHP?) functions would would be able to auto-execute on each page to allow people to add content to the pages on an ad-hoc basis, and have about 30-40 different little tools to build to make a real, proper Web site publishing framework - tools that for some reason no one else seems to be bothering with...But I know you're all weak, all talk, and that losing your e-commerce stocks took your fire away and you won't actually be joining me in uncovering the possibilities of new narrative connections via the global Interweb because the Web isn't cool anymore. Assholes.... I refuse to forsake the Web I love.
That's it. All documents linked together, all in harmony, all with full knowledge of their place in the hierarchy, but so many possibilities for each to transcend its place.