Slashdot Mirror

The last time I had free rein in something like that, I did just that, and made a clean rewrite to make a few cleanly commented, consistent Python modules that did the work of all the previous scripts, sans bugs.

Sounds good, then someone can come in a few months/years from now and re-write in NBL because it's getting 100x as much data and now takes 3 weeks to process the data, using 500GB of RAM. Or because it's dumping pages of backtrace for a: missing file / an int() that should be a str() / misspelled word. Or just that noone can (under)stand the invisible syntax, so can't work with it.

As someone who's worked a lot with both Perl and Python, I'd say the biggest differences are that Perl has had a lot more inexperienced developers writing code for it and that Perl has basically been unmaintained for like 8 years now. Oh and that Python developers think that their languages is the best, but Perl developers know their language used to be ;).

Identity Theft can lead to bad credit (and years wasted trying to restore your credit) which can mean loss of a house. It can even lead to criminal charges mistakenly being attributed to you. The thieves really are stealing your identity to commit their fraudulent and illegal activities. And even though you still have your identity for your own use, it becomes sullied by the actions of the thieves. (Just in case someone wants to claim that the "copying music online isn't stealing because they still have the music" argument applies to identity theft.)

I found this article - very interesting analysis: http://naturalbornpundits.blogspot.com/2008/01/rise-and-fall-of-olpc.html

sorry, cant remember how to do a hyperlink

http://vincentbasile.blogspot.com/2007/10/smallest-car-ever.html

you better track this product!

Here's my take on this:

http://randomjunkyramblings.blogspot.com/2008/01/product-tracking-tata-nano.html

You have got to admit- its an exciting event!

I'd like to know where Comcast advertises unlimited usage. I've never seen that advertised before, despite all the groaning and moaning to the contrary.

Currently they do not advertise unlimited usage however when 10's of thousands of customers signed up, the company did.

archive.org and check their advertisements from 2000-2003.

Everyone on my block still things they have "unlimited use for a flat monthly fee".

BTW, if you go to my blog, I have it already linked I believe in the February 24th 2007 post (I'd have to check to make sure that's right).

Current contract says you are purchasing a 6/8/10 Meg pipe. There is nothing to indicate what bandwidth you have purchased other than vague AUP/TOS statements with no bandwidth guidelines.

In response to the editor comment: I hooked up my drum controller to my MacBook and used GamePad Companion to feed keystrokes into Ableton Live. I was able to use it as a real drum kit for a bit but I'm not a drummer, so instead I started using pitched tones for each of the pads.... much more interesting!

I posted the results on my blog.

Here's why: The rise and fall of the OLPC

How about they take a lesson from the Israelis, stop looking for the weapon and start looking for the terrorist.

Oh, that's right, because it's not politically correct to profile Muslims (note not Middle Eastern appearance) despite the overwhelmingly high probability that a terrorist is going to be a Muslim.

Here's my $50,000 idea: Have a TSA officer ask each person "are you a Muslim". If they say yes, search them until they decide to reform their religion. If they say no, the TSA Officer should grab a handy copy of the Koran and say "well then, you won't mind if I do THIS".

Autism symptoms don't develop at 2 months, the time when the first vaccine is mandated.

Or, heck, even at birth, now that Hep-B shots before leaving the hospital are all the rage.

With "factual analysis" by morons like you backing them up, it's little wonder crap statistical analyses like "this doesn't cause Autism" is the major focus, when spending the money on finding out what *does* cause it would be real science, but that ain't happenin'.

If you had half a brain cell to rub together, you might also be interested in this article, which has not been refuted by anyone.

Um... If the company doesn't have any infrastructure of their own to break down, how would having staff of their own help increase response times? Remember, Nick's argument comes not from a wishy-washy "gosh, wouldn't utility computing be great" perspective, but from a deep, long-term analysis of the numbers. In the end, just as virtualization has taught us that efficient use of systems brings economy of scale, utility computing is teaching us that leveraging similar economies of scale for entire data centers is vastly more efficient than giving each company (large, medium or small) their own silo to operate.

That being said, the concerns expressed elsewhere about data are real, as are concerns that everyone should have about vendor lock-in. Check out my commentary on this subject.

matt4077: "Passwords are security by obscurity, too."

No, no, no! A password is a *key* and has nothing to do with obscurity. The quote you refer to is using obscurity to mean enhancing an algorithm by "keeping its process a secret." That is not the case here.

See Security through obsecurity is no security and Security through obscurity

I heard comments like this 20 years ago when distributing software sources. "Software is a difficult discipline." "Only a trained elite can do it." etc. In fact they were correct -- but the development of more sophisticated tools reduced some of the difficulty and, more importantly, the widespread access to computers with available source made it much easier to join the "trained elite" and removed many of the gatekeepers who had previously controlled access to that "elite".

This is no different on the hardware side, except that it's even more recent that hardware really became closed.

Slashdot has a higher proportion of software hackers than hardware hackers , but that doesn't mean hardware hacking isn't widespread. I just happened to read a good example for you yesterday. This guy unpacked the kindle (a closed-source piece of hardware you might have heard of) and discovered...not a huge amount yet. But what he did was mostly software so the example might feel more accessible to you. Note that he pulled his hardware apart using stuff lying around his house (an MP3-player dock + phone cable???) and didn't need to resort to anything even slightly "exotic" (e.g. not everyone has a JTAG twiddler at home). He didn't even need an oscilloscope. This fellow is representative of a huge number of people, they're just less mainstream than you're used to.

http://ddanchev.blogspot.com/2008/01/massive-realplayer-exploit-embedded.html

There appears to be more than one domain involved:

http://ddanchev.blogspot.com/2008/01/massive-realplayer-exploit-embedded.html

Also, as it works by exploiting holes in real player I'd assume it won't effect you if you don't have real player?

I'm just glad I replaced it with Real Alternative ages ago.

instead of reading about toys for your PC-Windoze-Apple videoplayers,
try to facilitate democracy in the United Gulags of America and stop
BushCo's Sale of Nuclear Weapons to Pakistan.

Fans of Alton Brown, the host of Iron Chef America, will be pelased to know that he has just signed a three-year contract extension with the Food Network. More Alton!

Skype even runs on the older Nokia 770 with a slight bit of hacking. It's apparently not a hardware limit. :-)

See here for more info:
http://maemogeek.blogspot.com/2007/12/skype-on-n770-using-os2007-he.html

-Matt

Having played through Assassin's Creed, the best thing the game has going for it is its open world. The game is the single most repetitive game I have ever played, partly from how open it is. While its openness is beneficial for exploration (finding and climbing viewpoints is awesome), going from point A to point B should only take X number of minutes, but actually takes 5X because guards are spotting you from a 100 feet away because you're not walking as slow as possible. I really had high hopes for this game and while the first few hours are fun, if you get through them you have basically beaten the game. Here's my full review here.

I've never read Henry Jenkins but I totally agree with him that Metal Gear Solid and Mario 64 are really good sandbox games, even if they aren't the typical open game.

Shame this guy's digital Rubik's cube (but so much more) gizmo isn't in the list: More here I really want one...

The magic 8-ball can in fact predict the future. To do that reverse the polarity of the universe (CPT symmetries apply), entangle the entropies of the required universe with the 8-ball and remember to shake the ball outside the universe to avoid recursion.

Seriously, anyone who's read Experts Speak or paleo-future blog will probably be rather critical of such predictions. But like the Dune book says, prescience does modify the future like a fish through water.

So, being hopeful about the future, but wary about it at the same time is the most productive approach to predictions. Check plus on that for this effort.

I got old (fat) PSP for Christmas so I spent some time modding it out and here's what I've found.

4gb memory sticks can be found for $60 online and are a great investment.

You can use this program to backup your UMD disks and then compress them, put them on the memory stick, and tada.

iR Shell is awesome, it provides a the ability to control IR devices, nice skinnable shell, good file browser, lets you switch out of games (think alt-tab), play MP3s while you're playing a game and mute game music, toggle CPU speed, do adhoc wifi transfers between PSPs, take screenshots and much more, you can find a larger list of features (and the un-official forum) here.

PSP Vault has a very nice downloads section, tons of guides and very active forums.
Psp-homebrew has a great list of homebrew you can sort by firmware version. compatibility
QJ.net is another good resource.

PSP Radio lets you stream internet radio on your PSP.

There are NES, SNES, GB, GBC, GBA, Sega Genesis, Neo-Geo, N64, Atari 2600, C64 and probably others.

Wifisniffer is a great probably that does just what it says.

PSP Weather is another good one.

PSP HTTPD lets you use your psp as a webserver.

Portable VNC lets you control your PC with your PSP and there is software that will let you use your PSP as your gamepad for your PC.

PSP XTI is a TI-92 (Graphing calculator) emulator for the PSP. GPS is soon coming to the PSP (USA only), it will be available as a UMD but no release date or price has been set.

There are many others, just browse the file collections and forums.

If you have a PSP with the factory firmware and wish to downgrade it can be an annoying process, it depends on what version firmware you're running.
This forum post as has the information you need.

Used PSPs can be had for less than $100 in stores near me, including a 1gb pro-duo stick, I think I've squeezed $100 worth of features out of it.
Si Hoc Legere Scis Nimium Eruditionis Habes

Christopher,

Nice post. Something I've been thinking about is what is our irreducible need for liquid fuels and I think that it really comes down to aviation. Because of this, I'm looking in the direction of using the waste heat from Fischer-Tropsch for home heating and producing aviation fuel using renewable energy in the home and resuing the current oil/gas delivery system to collect the fuel for delivery to airports. The scale of energy use is similar between home heating and aviation. I've given an outline using zeolite to capture CO2 as a feedstock but I'd be happy to hear from you or Klaus about the potential for using the GRT method in this application. The outline is here: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/12/jet-fuel.html

I'm interested in ways to produce carbon monoxide to feed the Fischer-Tropsch reaction but I'm not sure that you get away from the need to produce hydrogen. If they gave up on hydrogen, then perhaps they are running into inefficiencies. The temperatures they want for the solar furnace seems high. One can get part of the way to methanol using the Sabatier reaction and skip the formation of carbon monoxide: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabatier_reaction. So, I'd expect that this will be more common since hydrolysis can be pretty efficient.

I think that pulling cabon dioxide directly from the atmosphere makes sense in some applications: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/12/jet-fuel.html

The truth is, to an extent that's how some things tend to be in comics. An interesting article on the phenomena is discussed using the character Power Girl.

http://daveslongbox.blogspot.com/2005/09/boob-war-climax-everybody-loves-power.html

Ever notice how every strong female on Heroes is either killed off, raped or suffers an attempted sexual assault? Except the motor mimic girl, but the show went on hiatus mid beatdown.

Actually he's advocating the complete abolition of the legal and social framework and the US and the complete abolition of the Army

I have to wonder, why would you bother to make up such an outrageous lie, when it's so trivially disproven? Ron Paul advocates reducing the power of the federal government to that which is delegated to it in the constitution, which in case you haven't heard, is the legal framework of the United States.

his continued writing for white supermacist organisations

Like this? or this? or this?

Sorry, but your attempt to paint Ron Paul as a racist has failed. Feel free to play again, though.

-jcr

"What happened was that Intel were on the the board of OLPC (a
non-profit organisation) whilst at the same time trying to undermine
done deals made by OLPC"

http://openskills.blogspot.com/2008/01/intel-does-dirty-to-olpc.html

It's all fun and games to rag on Sony, but as someone who has recently purchased a 360 AND a PS3 within a week of each other, I can tell you that the PSN system isn't as terrible as people make out.

XBL may be integrated much more tightly with the games and 'os' if you will but it damn well costs money and frankly that is annoying from an end user standpoint.
Yes it's cheap and yes the service is pretty good however PSN is free, totally and utterly free.
The burnout demo, thanks to some clever coding has created the Xbox Live experience without the need for live, the multiplayer system works identically on both and is one of the first titles where someone may go 'well hang on, this is identical on PS3, why would I buy the X360 version?'

Xbox live does have it's silly flaws though, thanks to Microsoft's somewhat ridiculous rules.
(I was about to link a forum post of mine on their page but how interesting, I can't sign in to the xbox.com forums)
Suffice to say see the top post: http://msnemailchange.blogspot.com/

tv advertising is very difficult to measure whereas web advertising you can know exactly the results of your campaigns. Moreover, most of the tv advertising are boring and unappealing. I even find more clever advertising on the streets these days

it was FILLED with a rocket fuel (Hydrogen) since the US wouldn't give them Helium.

Dear yeremein, I've mentioned your catch on my blog.

If you go back to the original article, http://trolltracker.blogspot.com/2008/01/4-interesting-new-cases-from-last-2.html, you'll see that this guy also claims to have patented on-line game rankings, and pop-up advertising!

In the meantime, Landon Fuller is doing an admirable, if duplicated, job of single-handledly porting Java 6 to OS X based on the efforts for BSD.

Java 6 was released more than 12 months ago for other platforms. "fake" and real Steve may dismiss Java as irrelevant but the truth is Apple have dropped the ball.

I develop Swing applications and it's frustrating that we can't use new features of Java 6 because we have to support OS X's legacy Java 5 implementation.

The majority market share is still Windows. While Apple lags with Java it's hurting Linux AND OS X. Much as Java-haters on this site would like it to disappear, Swing is still an option for cross OS deployments in the enterprise, offering a rich client alternative to web-browser environments. At times the option of supporting an application for Win32, Linux and OS X with native toolkits is not viable. More likely it's mandate Windows-only or use Java.

Even if you're not currently getting screwed, it's usually not in your best interests to be dependent on a single distributor. FakeSteve summed it up nicely a while back.

It's almost like iTunes is doing to the record companies what they've been doing to the artists and record stores for so long: maintaining vise-grip control of the channel. Only with iTunes, nobody else seemed to want it in the beginning.

They had to do this. Working with MP3 files are so simple that anything with DRM is a hassle to work with. When its alo more work to pay for stuff that gives you problems, the simpe to use and free stuff is way to tempting.

http://stld52.blogspot.com/2008/01/drm.html

This is a problem with the "Blogosphere" in general. The vast majority (not all but certainly most) just echo news from other sources, or worse other blogs. They do not offer any insight, commentary or additional information on top of their source information. It's a crapshoot whether or not they actually write ANYTHING original rather than copy+paste.

The worst is when you have a blog linking to a blog linking to the original info. FFS people...

The net effect is old news gets constantly recycled and real news gets diluted. How many times have you seen a new blog post about something that actually happened months ago? The "9V battery contains AAAA cells" thing stands out as the most recent example for me: here (2 Jan 2008), here (9 Jan 2007), here (3 Jan 2007), here (23 Dec 2006). You have a "story" at LEAST a year old that has been copied verbatim at least four times!

Original here (No date) as far as I can tell, since all of the above blogs link to it.

Plus, all of these blogs have comment sections, which make them twice as redundant because the comments themselves also fail to add anything most of the time. If they do you'll never find them because there are so many other palces that run the same "story."

Fight the watering down of information! NEVER link to a blog unless it provides something EXTRA to the news! ALWAYS take a few minutes to get as close to the original source as possible! If you run a blog yourself, work to ADD to articles you link to - personal thoughts, additional information, insightful discussion on the topic at hand - be UNIQUE. That's how you get a readership... by having something worth reading.
=Smidge=

However, more and more I'm getting the feeling that they're listening/searching in the wrong place. It is admittedly a feeling, but I think very advanced civilizations might be communication via other channels. I'm still very much intrigued by the work of Maxwell and especially Tesla.

Tesla did very interesting things with 'radiant energy' and according to the various stories he was also experimenting with real-time communications via the aether. (sort of a subspace communication?)

Modern EE only learn a simplified version of the original work by Maxwell. If I recall it correctly, it was Heaviside who turned Maxwell's 20 equations with 20 unknowns into a more 'workable version'... but it is not the same thing anymore.

Sadly, I suck at math, so I'm unable to do anything with it beyond the basics. I do however believe that the whole aether-theory chapter has been closed far far to fast. It might even be interesting to hold this thing to the light once more in combination with the whole dark energy problem, but I digress..

IF you rock at math and or EE, please take a look at the original(!) work of Maxwell and Tesla; they're absolute geniuses! Mr. Bearden has written up nice papers about this whole subject. The following links do not really do justice to their accomplishments. Please look further! :)

http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/tesla/esp_tesla_14.htm
http://gravity-control.blogspot.com/2006/04/electrogravitic-communications-means.html
http://www.mountainman.com.au/aether_1.html

its already a comic: http://stld52.blogspot.com/2008/01/drm.html

Papervision is a nice alternative to the MS offering.

http://digitalurban.blogspot.com/search?q=papervision

Watch the youtube video.

Seems like a utterly batshit wackjob to me.

That's actually not universally true. I've sat in a lot of meetings with very senior, very well paid people (and their associated lawyers) and have heard them literally say "we wouldn't be breaking the law, but it wouldn't look good in the press". Many companies value their image and reputation extremely highly and doing something which leads to the company being embarassed, even if it's 100% legal, would be a firing offence.

I agree. There are some companies who do care and have stepped up to meeting their customers needs. Unlike some companies, there are organizations who really care about their reputation.

For example, Qwest, while not the best example (I've heard the stories about them too), for me at least heard about my problems with Concast terminating my families Internet service for using it too much (yeah, crazy huh??). They were planning on installing a DSLAM in our area but not until much later in 2007. I notified them of what Concast was doing in my neighborhood and spoke with the City Council and our Mayor about it.

Well what do you know. They pushed it up several months so we were without Internet access for only a couple of months.

Again, I know I know. I've heard the stories and realize Qwest has issues to deal with also. But this isn't bad and their customer service has been outstanding since we switched to them. Hell, now they are talking about running fiber to the home in my area.

Can't say I have much to complain about other than I'm still waiting for that fiber drop guys ;D

The judge, upon reconsideration, vacated his prior order granting summary judgment.

OOXML is defective by design

The point is that these contradictions are ignored by the mainstream media.

Fact: Before 9/11 Rudy Giuliani was a supporter of and fundraiser for a terrorist organization.

This isn't hypothesis or inference. Giuliani attended numerous IRA fundraising events and these were reported in the New York Times at the time. Giuliani attended the events to be reported. I don't think that Giuliani ever seriously supported the methods of the IRA but he was willing to at least pretend that he did in order to court the NYC Irish vote.

The IRA caused more deaths than Al Qaeda has to date.

Giuliani even gave Gerry Adams, the leader of Sinn Fein, the political wing of the IRA a 'humanitarian' award. A few months later Gerry and his boys bombed a shopping mall. Rudy never condemned the attack on civilians. Not good for his votes you see. Bin Laden is probably asking himself 'hey where is my Crystal Apple'.

Giuliani has set himself up as an expert on terrorism. He has attacked Islamic 'charities' that are in fact funraising fronts for organizations such as Hamas and Al Qaeda. Yet nobody seems to have challenged his efforts to raise funds for NORAID, the IRA's US fundraising arm.

It isn't just a matter of one man's terrorist being another's freedom fighter. It is also a question of what the best way to fight terror actually is. The IRA had several ceasefires before 9/11 but it was when the US funraising line was severed that they were finaly forced to pack it in. When I first came to Boston pretty much every irish themed pub would have a NORAID fundraiser advertised. Every single one of the posters disappeared within days of 9/11.

Giuliani is currently trying to relaunch his campaign on the back of the assasination of Bhutto, another round of bad anti-terrorist proposals, I blogged on the idiocy of his proposal for cyber-warfare against AQ yesterday. There are two ways to fight terrorism, the way the British responded to the IRA in the 1970s and the way the West Germans responded to Baader-Meinhof. The British used the tactics of torture and internment (sound familiar) which only made the situation worse. The IRA gained supporters worldwide, including US appologists like Giuliani himself. the West German approach of using police powers and absolutely refusing to recognize terrorists as political prisoners did work. That is why the British switched to the west German tactics and why the US should do the same against Al Qaeda. But this whole debate is not one that the US establishment media will ever allow.

So why won't the establishment media ask Giuliani why he supported the terrorist organization that attempted to murder my family?

Its because it does not fit their script. According to the script Gore was a liar, Bush was dumb but good company and Giuliani is the fearless crusader against terrorism. No mention of course of the fact that he tried to make his mobbed-up partner DHS secretary and he positioned the emergency control room in the WTC complex so that it was in easy walking distance of city hall for his shag-fests with Judith and the rest of the harem. Those facts don't fit the script. They only get asked by the establishment media at all because Josh Marshall at TPM and the rest of the blogosphere have insisted on it.

Made me think of this futuristic device I read about middle of last (!) year with a computer no larger than a pen: http://tech-nex.blogspot.com/2007/07/glance-intothe-future-computer.html A small laser projector is a step towards the future :-)