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Domain: mikegallay.com
Stories and comments across the archive that link to mikegallay.com.
Comments · 184
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MUST READ
i love this site... NERDOPIA
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another cool machine
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Spam & Radio ButtonsI think spammers should pay a penny per k to both me and my ISP
Really not a bad idea, except why would it be illegal if they didn't pay a penny? It is their legal right to contact you and I don't think that should change. What is illegal and should be enforced, is the filled-in radio buttons that companies often leave in nooks and crannies which you must click off to NOT receive spam. That is illegal certainly in Canada, and I believe in the States as well. It is an absolute manipulation to make people opt-out of being targeted before they ever agreed to even BE targeted.
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They're Everywhere!The agriculture industry really should have seen this one coming. With the "eye in the sky" busts that have been made from farmer's growing hidden crops of marijuana, they had to know that massive frauding of their crops could be determined by the same process. Do farmers have a union? If they do, the first discussion at the next meeting should be about the difficulties in hiding from the omnipresent.
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hmmmmmwhat is exciting about this is watching a decentered, non-hierarchical, mostly-cooperative group of talents work through the process of getting along with each other and settling disputes, all without resorting to imposing a single dictatorial will upon the group (so far)
I think the key is - SO FAR. Not that I don't hope it all works out in a cheery, mutually-acceptable fashion, but it doesn't seem headed that way.
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Typosquatting and New.netmost of you probably know that new.net is offering all sorts of new top level domains by having their app accepted by most of the major ISPs and browswers. do you think typosquatting would be a factor there? how would that work since ICANN doesn't sanction or regulate the sale of those names; that is, who is to blame? i realize most typosquatting occurs when someone takes, say, slashdoy.com (hoping your finger grazes the "y" key), but it could have plenty of interpretations. just wondering in general if anyone has heard any feedback to new.net's offerings.
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MicropaymentsMicropayments are a great idea on paper, but much like socialism, they don't really work when put to action. It would be great if you could essentially drop a dime in your CPU and donate to a site like you might give a homeless soul on the street. But for the masses to take part, the painlessness of the process, the ease of use, and the clear demarcation and trail of what you've donated must be fluid and super user-friendly. PayPal and the new Mastercard system are pretty decent, but we're a long way off. And bastard greedy systems like Amazon's Tip-Jar, with its wealth of problems from design to their constant need to push their own name (despite users paying them percentages to use their b-s app!) are a joke. I would be happy to pay for some comics using micropayments, but using Napster as an argument in this case was way off, and the user climate isn't quite there yet.
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Simpsons, Simpsons Everywhere!I'm irritated with the decision not to show the actors recording voices. Screw the illusion of the characters, this is what DVD releases of TV shows are for! The fans crave this stuff!
- If you're looking for footage of Dan, Hank, Harry and crew behind the scenes, there are several good places to go. TLC did a great behind-the-scenes of voice-over actors, and there were plenty of Simpsons' clips. I don't know the name of the hour long piece, but TLC tends to offer all of their shows for sale - check their website. Other than that, E! has a bunch, including an old Behind The Scenes that has some good footage. Or you can dig up an old episode of Conan O with Hank Azaria on. He always begs him to do Apu.
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Re:Parody warning:Nice! This is the greatest news ever, but I can't believe they've actually managed to keep the extra footage a secret this long. Now if Cleese and co. could could just explain the Meaning of Life, I could rest soundly.
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TV & ADS: Peanut Butter & Chocolate?Well it would seem that the two are intertwined, television and advertisements, so logically some force in the universe would be trying to keep them together depsite our attempts to never see another OBEY YOUR THIRST Sprite commercial. If TiVo is to survive what surely will be a heavy blitz from content producers and distributors (ie. network television), they had to do something to make their product more palatable and I think this is a step in the right direction for them. As much as I like HBO, I don't want to have to pay for each channel individually, at least not under the current system.
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NO HEAT TREATMENTSIf anything you want to use cold. These symptoms are very real and very permanent in many cases like mine. I am not just a programmer, but a writer and guitarist, so my troubles are three-fold. Using heat on an injury that involves inflammation is like putting out a fire with matches.
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HmmmmmI appreciate the claim made here, and in fact am excited by the possibility of a "renaissance" that is spoken of. But much like Transmeta, how much of this is true? Are there third parties doing the testing on this yet? If so, where are there results and conclusions?
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Wearing TechnologyI'm not sure if this is true so I'd like some yay or nay if anyone knows. In the film Star Wars, there is a mercenary called Bobafet (I'm sure my spelling is off, but if you know him you know him). Apparently a few guys at MIT (they may or may not have been involved in the wearable initiatives) want to create some sort of skin graft/chip imbedding mechanism so that you can have a type of control center that pops up neatly on a two inch by half inch segment of your forearm. I know this sounds ridiculous but someone I respect emailed me the details so if you've heard of anything like it, do tell.
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Re:Product PlacementWhat, you never saw "FedEx Man meets the Wilson Volleyball" (um, I mean Castaway)?
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Julianne Moore fan over hereOf course the government has to be called in led by a mean old general and the beautiful Julianne Moore who's slumming it playing Allison Reed, the military scientist who reveals that Duchovny and her go way back. She's probably the best actor but she doesn't really do much funny stuff except fall and bang into doors. I found it super strange watching her act this way. I hope she was paid very well for this part. Or at the very least, had tons of fun making it.
To be fair, I am going to see this movie just for Julianne - she rules. Her role in Magnolia was a revelation. But it should be clarified, that she does a ton of comic work, and anyone who is interested should check out her biography on imdb.
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parrot/o'reillywill there be much discussion on the parrot language at the convention - i'm lookin for info, where is the best place to go?
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Oh now come on!If you go to Disney world, it might feel fun at first. But after 2 days straight in the campus, you feel tired. You then want to go back home.
See now, you almost had me for a second, but c'mon, Disneyworld! Everybody knows you couldn't spend too days straight on the "campus". Soul in a body, or soul floating free, that's an extra 75 bucks to stay overnight, and the reincarnation business is hurting worse than Microsoft's competitors (what with our mass-destruction of all the other cool creatures would used to be able to come back as - minotaur, bibeast, unicorn, etc.)
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A flawed view of free cultureJamie's post is well-intentioned but well off the mark. The open-source movement has made many of us long for days of - let's just say it - socialism. It's a beautiful concept on paper. But I doubt most of us really dream of such things. That would infringe on all of our goals whether inherited or achieved - most of us have a conquerer spirit and grassroots systems are just that - the beginning of long adventures to penetrate popular culture. I love discovering new music in the dirty, dank nightclubs and finding a writer who prints his stuff on pad paper bound by paper clips, but both artists still wish for a larger forum. Don't confuse grassroots with just getting started.
Jamie mentions "recommendation systems" and then points out the grassroots dot orgs that have been proponents of them - well mp3.com and a ton of other corporate ventures have used the same technique, so the value of your point is muddled. A free culture is a utopian pipe dream that makes no actual sense. Having systems in place where unknown artists - be they musicians, writers, coders, biochemists - is fantastic, but let's not completely bash the American Dream because as we lose our neighborhood communities and get swallowed up into a global network, it only makes more and more sense that we too, pure artists that we are, would really like to make a big splash someday in our new community.
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Practice As UsualI'm shocked how many people find this practice unusual (well not shocked since this IS Slashdot). NBC doesn't advertise on CBS and it makes good sense. A direct competitor stealing away your customers? A company should have some defenses against this? If the small and medium size DSL companies didn't want AOL on their sites (which I'm sure most don't and slyly don't allow), would anyone care? It's easy to pick on the big guys but to me this stands for FAIR competition not the opposite.
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IPIX in Canadathey are a rotten bunch as far as i can tell. i have a few friends (photographers) who are employed by them here in canada, and they are notorious for several lame or unprofessional business practices. i am not surprised in the least to hear that they are finicky over their borderline patents as they treat their employees like tools.
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IPIX in Canadathey are a rotten bunch as far as i can tell. i have a few friends (photographers) who are employed by them here in canada, and they are notorious for several lame or unprofessional business practices. i am not surprised in the least to hear that they are finicky over their borderline patents as they treat their employees like tools.
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If you like that.....
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Shame on you Denmark!This is a logical step for a small country that has no music exports anyway: by weakening copyright they are making their citizens richer without losing revenue. And what with Denmark being an EU member, nobody will dare call them a rogue state or something.
Isn't this just Denmark asking for a cultural war in the long term? Unless they place some sort of reverse firewall (and even then), how is it any different from Chinese or Russian rogue publishers printing out millions of copies of American authors' work and selling them for pennies with no royalties? It is still stealing culture, and now it's government sanctioned. They should be ashamed; I've been to Denmark and they still listen to music from outside of the country, buy cultural creative products that were made in America and now they want to sanction the stealing of products which their own retail community distributes for profit and as commodity. I don't support this at all.
This is pretty wacky.
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Unsinging bonus
We offer full medical, dental, and unsinging bonuses. That's right. You get full protection from terrible office sing-alongs and the like.
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speaking of pi....
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speaking of pi....
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Mocking other media is the keyAs I am preparing to unveil on my own site in less than one month's time, it is time for the internet content sites to establish advertising or sponsorship in a similar manner as radio, television or print. That is, mixing content and advertising does not work. One most be of total focus, even if just briefly, for an advertiser to feel assured that their product, service or message is cutting straight through to the audience member. Why not more interstitial advertising that loads briefly (3 secs) while new content is freshly disseminated? Break up sections on a site with pointed, totally focused and focus-pulling advertising that is there and gone quickly? Prospective sponsors have responded very well for my upcoming relaunch and I expect it to be very, very successful.
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Mocking other media is the keyAs I am preparing to unveil on my own site in less than one month's time, it is time for the internet content sites to establish advertising or sponsorship in a similar manner as radio, television or print. That is, mixing content and advertising does not work. One most be of total focus, even if just briefly, for an advertiser to feel assured that their product, service or message is cutting straight through to the audience member. Why not more interstitial advertising that loads briefly (3 secs) while new content is freshly disseminated? Break up sections on a site with pointed, totally focused and focus-pulling advertising that is there and gone quickly? Prospective sponsors have responded very well for my upcoming relaunch and I expect it to be very, very successful.
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What?!The idea that Linux could be too widely distributed (by that I mean by too many competitors) is not only ridiculous but appears to be ignorant. If Linux is to continue resembling and possibly leading the open-source generation of programming, it is not just important but INHERENT that many distributions co-exist. Sure, there will be bottom-feeders and top-dogs, but this is a quality not quantity situation where we all just want the bugs worked out. The prediction that we will be down to 2 distros is not just ludicrous, it's damaging, ignorant and wholly implausible.
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Re:Germany Onlinethey shojuld make 'sol' the mexican version
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Germany OnlineI assume it can be assumed that there is a better than average chance that this type of piracy is happening in more than just AOL Germany ranks. Anyone know offhand how many international divisions AOL has or plans to have? I've surprised they didn't try to bully Germany Online (GOL), etc. But then that would infringe on the whole America dominating all things agenda.
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A brief history of CSIWe've been very pleased with its performance, as it is a joint venture of Bruckheimer and Alliance Atlantis (the latter of which I am employed). Much of its success is certainly due to the slot after Survivor, but to see a program succeed that avoids the usual parlour tricks, is 50% Canadian-based and chooses reason over rage is a real treat. Thanks to those who support the show.
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What's so great?I'm surprised Rob Malda is so "excited" about this ad campaign which stems from a company as excited about open source and the current state of affairs as a shark caged in a goldfish bowl.
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Gary!!!Seriously, where is Gary Larson? I think we at the slash followed by the dot should make a concerted collective effort to get him to come out of retirement to at least pen one more gem poking fun at the bleary-eyed, squirrly, odd open sourcers.
Great moments in science: Einstein discovers that time is actually money. (Larson)
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Court Test LoomingI've heard rumor that in Western Canada, there is talk of a suit that revolves around GPL. It involved a company called Mixar(?). Can anyone confirm or deny this?
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AmazingThis really is a pretty spectacular feat. I wonder if they could rig some sort of camera device that could monitor (in real-time) the ascension and orbit of the satellite. Anyone know if that's possible?
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Taco needs a VacationLook commander, we all appreciate what you started here. Cool community. Solid use of Perl for the time. But you really need to proofread:
Its apparently going to be a video release (well, DVD for me) that tries to remain true to the original storyboards, not Lucas Style "I meant to do that- greedo really fired first" sorta lame changes. Oh, and a CG enterprise.
This sounds like it might be interesting but unfortunately I don't speak 4-in-the-afternoon-downtimenospellcheckese. Maybe you and JonKatz should take a cruise or put your brains in a vat for a couple weeks. Something to ease the pressure of constantly having to find stories to repeat and subjects to repeat to repeat to repeat ad nauseum. What was this story? Who or what is how? Where am I? This place needs a janitorial crew pronto.
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Re: Nice quoteI agree with your assessment of the doctor. Memory does not equal intelligence on any scale. This memory issue comes down to one hinge: there are two kinds of people. Those who finish what they start and so on.
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Eh-hem.Pardon my ignorance, but could someone explain to me why I'd want to run Direct3D apps under WINE? I'm not too familiar with WINE and I'd just like a concise explanation - can anyone gimme one or direct me to one? Thanks.
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Uh-huh....Like every administration before it, this one will dabble in tech issues but never really get its feet wet because it doesn't put a high value on the community. People, people! Wars! - that's what gets a Republican administration salivating. Katz's rambling 100000000 word piece only underlines the self-important feeling techies give off, while ignoring the rest of the government's issues, and thus it should be perfectly understandable why a government built to service the hundreds of millions NOT in IT (and the few million of us involved), ranks these issues at about 196th on the list of things to squelch or postpone or mandate. And one other thing JonJon - learn to use the word "affect". Sometimes it is less effective.
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Oh honey, nothin but bills and bricks.It's true, the best solution is the one you presented. Placing sand inside - or taping a brick right on - the postage-paid envelope, then dropping it in a mailbox is the best way to take some revenge (and solace). In some cases the post office will attempt to collect upon delivery, but not always. However, they generally will attempt to return the item as they are mandated (they have to process and deliver anything up to a certain ridiculous level (I think it's in their constitutional documents), so I suppose sending turds would be a good way to go too.
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Good show, Watson!That really was a tremendously solid Q&A. Watson certainly deserves our collective praise in taking so much time, care and energy in answering all questions in detail. One question though: who exactly uses FreeBSD? Just about ever open-sourcer I know prefers Linux.
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Elevator Goin DownJust thinkin deep-sea exploration out loud here. Has any group ever attempted the equivalent of the "space elevator" but for underwater exploration? Perhaps it wouldn't be useful for humans who suffer from pressure ailments, but for certain machines it could prove to be an effective mode of transport.
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Andre's CredI appreciate Andre's banter, even if I'm unsure of the validity here and there, but what struck my fancy was his affiliation.
Andre Hedrick, Linux ATA dude and member of the committee that sets ATA hard drive interface standards...
How did he become a part of that committee? Was he elected or appointed? Did he have to do sexual favours for some of the older members? Seriously though - how does someone attain that (eh-hem) lofty title?
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This is NOT the RenaissanceSometimes unwittingly, "The Renaissance" connects the flowering of that period with the extraordinary outpouring of ideas, stories and culture made possible by the invention of the Net and the Web. Future historians may be writing about the history of this period in much the way Johnson takes on that one.
While I appreciate Johnson's writing, and his notions are told in a lucid, authoritative and often times clever manner, to assume this conclusion from the text and indeed from the time would be off-base. I don't like the music of the 50s or 80s much, but I'm not yet prepared to say that the Internet Generation was sparked from the rubble of a "Dark Ages"-type time. The pre-computer era was one of the most technologically imaginitive in our history and if we truly are too get a glimpse into where we are headed, maybe we should tell the events of the past with greater accuracy.
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IEEEIt was held in conjunction with the 21st IEEE Real-Time Systems Symposium.
I find it amazing that they're already up to #21. Does anyone know how it all got started?
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Re:GIMME A BREAK JON!Agree. The Sixth Day owes me roughly 12 bucks back. As for the comment, Certain staple features of these films are beginning to emerge -- the evil, amoral, ruthless and greedy corporation which has acquired life-altering new technologies (this is becoming more believable by the day), and the hapless human, noble victims trying to sort their way through this unchartered and disturbing new world - firstly, this is not new. Secondly, the films that you point to such as The Matrix or Blade Runner are not based on this situation at all. A good example would have been Veerhoven's "ROBOCOP" which was a very clever sel-parody and an entertaining flick. This is what the Sixth Day should have been but failed to be humble enough to be.
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Re:D&D Update100%. That particular scene was only released for one week - I had the same feeling when I left the theater and everybody I spoke too didn't know the scene I was talking about. That egg scene was one of my favorites and IS available on the DVD.
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Crack.eh-hemYou'd think with Slashdot's slew of ICANN postings regarding the new 7 domains, they would have considered this vantage in this story:
- How could crack.com ever sell for much when really solid, wonderful domains like crack.museum, crack.coop, crack.biz, and crack.asleepatthewheel are still available?
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D&D UpdateUp here in Canada, I'm tied (work-wise, not with rope) to the distributors of the film - Alliance Atlantis - and there is some good news coming. Apparently a really cool director's cut with some 14 extra scenes is going to be released either on DVD or even possibly in some theaters as a late release reel. This would be similar to the Clue scenarios and even more appropriately Jurassic Park. I don't know if anyone remembers seeing the Director's Cut Version of JPark in theaters, but I was really into that flick at the time, and the third time I saw it there must have been 10 extra scenes making it run a half hour longer. The same should be true here. There is no official release on this, but my source is usually pretty reliable for stuff like this. Anyway, the film is pretty solid, and the extra scenes should make it damn cool.