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I don't know, man. The way they handled the EV1 was less than impressive to me. It'll be a LONG time before GM is back in my good graces.

Here is a picture of a murder being committed - Jack Ruby shooting Lee Harvey Oswald.

Was Oswald harmed by the photographer?

Was Oswald harmed by you looking at the photograph?

Was Oswald harmed by the publishers who profited from the sales of millions of books containing this photo.

No. Oswald was harmed by Jack Ruby (and for that matter, anyone Ruby might have been working for). A photograph of a crime is not a crime.

The specific example was an Australian ad agency using a photo from flickr under a CC license, without getting proper model release. The CC FAQ explains that a model release is also needed. Even without the explanation, the Australian ad agency certainly ought to know about any rules about model release that may apply in Australia.

Unfortunately, someone very early in the discussion on Flick (after kid discovered her photo was used in Australia) mentioned that another model had got US$ 100.000 in compensation. Such numbers can destroy the ability to think, so the parents decided to sue Creative Commons for having written the license. You can read CC's take on it.

I just searched netsolatemydomainsearch.{everything they offered} and then checked it on godaddy. The dot com version was taken, but the other TLDs were left alone.

e.g. netsol screenshot of me searching for a few sites:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/griffjon/2178156179/

GoDaddy saying the dot com version is taken:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/griffjon/2178156285/in/photostream/

Even more disgusting, the whois record has a freaking advert in it from netsol:

Registrant:
This Domain is available at NetworkSolutions.com
13681 Sunrise Valley Drive, Suite 300
HERNDON, VA 20171
US

Domain Name: NETSOLATEMYDOMAINSEARCH.COM

This Domain is Available - Register it Now!
600,000 domain names are registered daily! Don't delay; there's no guarantee
that a domain name you see today will still be here tomorrow!
Register it Now at www.NetworkSolutions.com.

Administrative Contact, Technical Contact:
Network Solutions, LLC domainsupport@networksolutions.com
13681 Sunrise Valley Drive, Suite 300
HERNDON, VA 20171
US
1-888-642-9675 fax: 571-434-4620

Record expires on 08-Jan-2009.
Record created on 08-Jan-2008.
Database last updated on 8-Jan-2008 15:33:32 EST.

I just searched netsolatemydomainsearch.{everything they offered} and then checked it on godaddy. The dot com version was taken, but the other TLDs were left alone.

e.g. netsol screenshot of me searching for a few sites:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/griffjon/2178156179/

GoDaddy saying the dot com version is taken:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/griffjon/2178156285/in/photostream/

Even more disgusting, the whois record has a freaking advert in it from netsol:

Registrant:
This Domain is available at NetworkSolutions.com
13681 Sunrise Valley Drive, Suite 300
HERNDON, VA 20171
US

Domain Name: NETSOLATEMYDOMAINSEARCH.COM

This Domain is Available - Register it Now!
600,000 domain names are registered daily! Don't delay; there's no guarantee
that a domain name you see today will still be here tomorrow!
Register it Now at www.NetworkSolutions.com.

Administrative Contact, Technical Contact:
Network Solutions, LLC domainsupport@networksolutions.com
13681 Sunrise Valley Drive, Suite 300
HERNDON, VA 20171
US
1-888-642-9675 fax: 571-434-4620

Record expires on 08-Jan-2009.
Record created on 08-Jan-2008.
Database last updated on 8-Jan-2008 15:33:32 EST.

How about if keyboard manufactures started putting Ctrl in the correct place, left of A. (Photo is from the OLPC XO-1 keyboard, a keyboard layout I really like), left of A.

I know that you can remap the keyboard on most operating systems, but why does Caps Lock deserve such a prominent place when it is hardly used?

Or is slashdot look like it just got blended?: Screenshot of slashdot from my browser

I hate to reply to myself, but I am not sure that everyone knows what a "pinhole lens" is for CCTV cameras, as I didn't know when I was buying this stuff.

A CCTV pinhole lens is a lens that has a very small front opening usually 2-3mm, and a narrow lens part that can easily be embedded into the back side of a wall and then be almost invisible on the other side.

An example is here, compared to a normal CCTV type lens. That lens is $20 from B&H, and the camera is $120 from NewEgg, so this stuff isn't very expensive. A "high quality" CCTV lens is $50-$100, so even the good stuff isn't that expensive.

Hey, I was at RailsConf in London when DHH said at the keynote - "And to the people who demand I disclose vulnerabilities in Rails - FUCK YOU!!!!" (switches to a "fuck you" slide and gives the audience the finger). Appearently he often has it in his presentations.

Also what has struck me is that when you read Ruby blogs most of the time is spent badmouthing Java and other languages, and talking about how smart and superior Ruby programmers are.

All I can think of right now can be summed up in this one pic. http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2105/2118990289_c8872b17ed.jpg

The world is a lot bigger than you know.

I've got some screen shots of the bug up on my flickr if anyone wants to see the bug for themselves: http://www.flickr.com/photos/achivetta/tags/iphonedatebug/

Happy new years!

I really enjoy movies, and my version of "sitting out" the hi-def war was simply to ensure I could play both formats. I also game quite a bit, so $120 invested in the 1080i capable XBox 360 HiDef player drive and the built-in 1080p Blueray capability of the PS3 were perfect to bring high resolution playback into the house. We have a 204-inch 1080p projection system with optimally sited seating, so we see all the detail there is.

I'm really glad we didn't wait; hidef content on a big screen really looks a lot better - you're going from about 700 horizontally to 1920, and 480 vertically to 1080... of *course* it looks better. Aside from the disk formats, another source of hi-def is satellite, which has a surprising number of channels available in hi-def (1080i at the moment.) I particularly enjoy hi-def flyover videos of europe, science shows on Discovery, and so on. Even the news is better in HD, any video they shoot to support a story carries six times the detail of standard video, it's like someone finally cleaned the camera lens.

The line in TFS that says that standard DVD players can convert standard DVDs to "near high definition" is a complete line of nonsense. With 1/6th the information in each full frame, all you get are interpolated pixels for smooth areas, and guessed pixels for areas with edges, and the latter only if you have a *very* sophisticated upscaler. Nothing substitutes for real data; if you want to compare what you get, take a 1920x1080 image, scale it down to 853x480, then upscale the small version - using the best method you can find - back to 1920x1080, then compare with the original. *That* is what you get with a DVD upscaling system. 1/6th the original detail - and there is no way around it.

However, your DVD collection is just as good it ever was. Getting into HD in no way compromises your investment in DVDs. We watch DVDs all the time here, and still enjoy them. It's just that we get new movies in either HD format, that's all. Sometimes — Blade Runner, for instance — it is worth it to replace the DVD with a hi-def version, but to be honest, most movies don't deserve that kind of treatment.

More likely a billboard-sized BSOD.

So, no BSOD? http://www.flickr.com/photos/lhl/1418448/

Claims 1-48 were dropped in the continuation application and claims 49-68 were just rejected.

For pure unadulterated camp, you can't beat the display on the 700 block of 34th Street in Baltimore's neighborhood of Hampden. Each traditional row house is decorated to the owner's own taste and vision, and while they aren't particularly technical, they certainly do make a splash. They've been lighting up that block for so long that realtors feel it's mandatory to warn prospective home buyers that they'll have to light up, too. There's a pretty good sampling here.

"...it would have been impossible to miss if that was anywhere near them."

They didn't miss.

Your argument seems to presume they didn't start lying to cover their asses. You also need to look at picture s s s s of a police helicopters. Note the clear windows in the floor.

I love the shot of the four cameras together. Looks like a panopticon Doc Oc :-)
http://www.flickr.com/photos/neoliminal/544945881/in/set-72157600350750369/

One work day, I took a picture of every camera (except for 3 where I was thrown out of a store) that could take a picture of me. Here are my results: http://www.flickr.com/photos/neoliminal/sets/72157600350750369/

Enjoy looking at them looking at me.

Completely offtopic, but never a bad time to push a worthy tool: there's an excellent command-line, Perl-based tool to upload images to Flickr. Not necessarily your cup of tea if you want/need to organise or sort images before uploading, but if you've got a lot of photos to put online all at one, tagged and titled, this might be the tool for you! Anti-Perl people (the thought!) can look up other script-based command line tools on Flickr's API page (of all places).

STD_DISCLAIMER(no_relation, happy_customer);

They released Flickr Uploadr under GPL (2 only)

http://flickr.com/tools/uploadr/

The interesting thing here, it is using xulrunner from Mozilla && there no Linux binary!!!

In case your interested, this is what it looks like:-

http://www.flickr.com/photos/12615696@N04/

You see that thing on the right of the screenshot? That's an "Ads by Google" box. When I view a page and that guy is there, it isn't free anymore.

Oops, someone may be in trouble... the image on that page is CC licensed for "non-commercial" only.

Just for you, an aurora.

(Sorry left out the link)

Improv Everywhere's site is down; here is the blog entry from laughingsquid.com: http://laughingsquid.com/best-buy-cease-desist-letter/ And the letter itself on flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photo_zoom.gne?id=2103448719&size=l

...and while the astronomers fiddle with gear you and I can only dream of having access to, take your camera and a tripod outside, and with no more than a portrait lens, you can take shots like these.

Click on the thumbnails for descriptions of the subject matter and the equipment and settings used.

The night sky is beautiful at every scale.

I'm sure Best Buy isn't just after them for having blue shirts. This is more likely a form of "payback" for the embarrassment that Improv Everywhere caused Best Buy in 2006 when 80 people showed up at a NYC Best Buy dressed in blue polo shirts and khakis. (Flickr and YouTube coverage.)

Did anyone else immediately think of Wile E Coyote in his flying suit or this (minus the rocket)?

I have a ginormous amount of books, so I have two problems - one is creating an appropriate space for them, which I have solved, and the other is cataloging.

For organization, I'm simply using PostgreSQL on the house server, which is hugely fast, completely flexible, and allows me to access everything from the web - so I can just drag a laptop in there, or work on any machine in or out of the house. A few lines of Python and bingo, library system. I may clean it up a little and release it, it could be prettier.

I tried Delicious Library (which I do use for my DVD and CD collections) and a couple of other solutions, but for large libraries, they were all too slow.

I'd like to see projects like this trickle into the anemic science materials at the highschool level and make learning science fun.

So don't worry, there will be more than a trickle, and all the anemic science materials at the highschool level will be made robust with a full infusion of scientific knowledge. What could be more educational and fun than a visit to a museum?

In what other line of work does principal construction begin before the customer has defined what it is they are ordering?

One place is in art. Especially collaborative art, like plays and movies. For serial TV shows, it is impossible to define it up front. And for improvisational theater, by definition you don't define it.

See the great book Artful Making if you'd like to learn more about that kind of work, and why modern knowledge work is much more like that than the industrial approach you're following.

Changing to a structured approach to working is costly, but the benifits are bountiful [...]

This is plausible in very specific problem domains where people a) know what they want, and b) what they want won't change. But it is fundamentally impossible in domains that are poorly understood or continuously shifting. It is also impossible if your product development process uses user feedback for planning. All three of these characteristics apply to a lot of web startups.

Take Flickr as an example. In under two years, they went from a side project to a $20m sale. (If they had held out until now, they could have been a $100m sale.) Their initial ideas were ok, but not great. But they released early and often, pushing to production every few hours. And then they listened to their users intently, continuously improving Flickr's fit to their audience's need. That relationship is only possible with an agile approach.

And before people jump on me about anecdotes versus data, I'll point at a VC's look back on companies he funded. Two thirds of his winners significantly reinvented their businesses between funding and success. That's not to say you have to use an agile approach for that. But agile methods are much cheaper in changing circumstances than structured ones, so you'll have to have much deeper pockets to survive.

And just to be clear, I'm not talking about the chaos of code n' fix here. I'm talking about highly disciplined agile methods, where you include practices like test-driven development, acceptance testing, pair programming, collocated teams, in-room product management, aggressive refactoring, short iterations (like a week), and frequent releases (daily to monthly, no more).

I didn't vote for the Conservatives. They still won in my riding anyway

Bugs in the computer: Sun Microsystems, Inc. knows why Brazil is known to its native inhabitants as the kingdom of the ants.

Ants in yer... Pants? NOT! (Toshiba notebook/laptop); Ants Invade Apple iBook.

Ants In My Nokia (A Yahoo! account is required) 5210 Mobile Phone.

Ants in Omniview switchboxes: An e-mail story of ants invading a network switchbox.

Argentine ants invade a network hub.

A photograph showing ants nesting in a guy's phone box, affecting his DSL connection and phone system.

I just received my brand new Lenovo T61 preloaded with Vista home basic. What a disaster... but not because of Vista, but instead because of all the pre-loaded junk. The taskbar had 7 icons in the notification area in addition to the ones from the OS, plus a useless battery power gauge that took up another big chunk of real estate (this side-by-side with the already existing Vista power gage, so I'm getting duplicate data). I actually took a screenshot since I couldn't believe it. I did a quick registry check and counted 30 executables set to auto-start on login. On every log on I got nagging pop-ups about turning on some lenovo software. Launching IE brought up two tabs, one set to always load the lenovo page. It was a slow, annoying mess...

I flattened the machine and installed a fresh copy of Vista Ultimate. With the all the cruft gone, things are now flying on the machine, and I'm quite happy with the OS. The difference is astounding.

All these negative comments I kept hearing about Vista make sense now, but it's clear that at least some of the disenchanment is misdirected. Don't OEM's actually use the machines they send out?

It makes perfect sense though; why fill my head with Trade secrets and methods just to have me open up shop across the street.

The problem with your attitude here is, you're thinking about what's good for the company, not what's good for you. While you won't be able to take any trade secrets if they've had that covered properly (NDA, worst case), why not insist that you retain that ability?

In other words, yes, it would suck for that company if you just open up shop across the street. But if you're anything like most of us, it's a lot harder and riskier to start your own business than to work for a boss -- particularly if you're working in a business that tends towards companies big enough to have a boss in the first place.

So, it's a way to make your employer at least try to keep you happy, if they know you can always do that. But they don't even have to try that hard, because it is so hard to "just open up shop".

Competition is the core of good Capitalism but nothing says you have to help your enemies.

And that is the core of what's wrong with your employer, if that's their attitude.

You are an employer, not an enemy.

From what I remember of my own contracts, the worst was the NDA. That is, I can't disclose their trade secrets, ever, whether I leave or not. But the only thing I remember about not competing was that I can't compete with them while working for them -- if I leave, I can do whatever I want.

But rather than enforcing a lot of paperwork -- each contract I signed was less than two pages -- they instead make me want to stay. Because if I don't leave, any kind of noncompete extending past the term of employment is completely irrelevant.

Aren't they the same?

Yes, that is what I meant.

I live a similar lifestyle, though not quite as extreme, as even "fixer uppers" around here are still quite expensive and require mortgages.

You may want to consider moving. Out here in Montana, and I suspect in many other places in the Midwest as well, some bargains can still be had. I purchased a sound, 4,200 sq ft building with new electrical service, a new roof, and a new heating system on two large lots for $25,000; by the time we're done with the interior, we still won't have cracked the 50k mark by doing all the work ourselves. Taxes are $1500 a year. Living in 4,200 sq feet, all customized to your specific interests, is like living in your own amusement park. You can see some of what we're doing here on flickr. Don't let carpentry, plumbing or electrical tasks intimidate you - study the methods, peruse the books on the codes, and you're good to go. Time well spent. Plus, the cool things you can do for almost nothing, you could never afford to have carpenters, plumbers and electricians do.

Bah. I'm working towards quickening the Idiocracy of the future. I only wish I could live long enough to see the day US currency has a picture of a WWE wrestler with a mullet and has colorful phrases like "that's what I'm talkin' bout" and "haulin' ass, gettin' PAID!". http://farm1.static.flickr.com/157/363916236_e250c458b3.jpg for reference.

"we know Velociraptor was a vegetarian, as can be clearly deduced from its long rows of razor-sharp teeth, perfectly designed for tearing leaves from trees or rooting for truffles and other buried delicacies, and could therefore be domesticated at very low risk."

Sadly, the Creationists really believe this.

Even better still, her first name begins with 'M'. Her name is M.WindowS. Still, the Blue Screen of Death looks much better on her though.

Thanks for the link. I this one's the winner:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/mrneutron/73032653/in/pool-firstgoatse/

Someone can add to the first goatse archive

http://www.flickr.com/photos/mrneutron/73032460/in/pool-firstgoatse/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/blixt/149797641/in/pool-firstgoatse/

Someone can add to the first goatse archive

http://www.flickr.com/photos/mrneutron/73032460/in/pool-firstgoatse/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/blixt/149797641/in/pool-firstgoatse/

Well, I just bought the DVD, and difference between it and the file I had downloaded, which was a pretty decent rip, was very noticable. Animation does scale well if it's simple. Futurama uses a lot of CGI, and even their hand drawn scenes can be quite detailed. I think that putting 4x the number of pixels into this movie would make a big difference.

If you can't tell the difference between an HD channel and a downloaded divx file, you probably need to get one of those magnifying glasses from Brazil, because on a decent sized tv, those two are night and day.

Even more proof that Google is evil!!

Does this picture remind anyone of The Fountain?

Good photo group here:

http://flickr.com/groups/paleo-future/pool/

and from Taiwan:

http://flickr.com/photos/cantikfotos/sets/72157594230283909/
and
http://flickr.com/photos/cantikfotos/sets/72157594190669543/