Slashdot Mirror
Slashback: Cats, Snaps, Pixels, Diagrams
LWCE, from our "compulsive recording" files.
marcmerlin writes: "I have just finished my full report on Linuxworld
expo summer 2000 which features, just like my previous
Linux Event reports
and reports, hundreds of pictures and a virtual visit of the expo, with a full
report of all the keynotes, conferences, tutorials and parties I attended
I'm sure you'll agree the wait was worth it :-)"
Thanks, Marc! Hey, he should charge an admission price for this one. This is perhaps the most comprehensive coverage of LWCE I've see yet, and if you're considering going this is a great way to whet your appetite for the next one.
Don't be alarmed, but we're going to have to give you a cat scan. MP3Car writes "The Dudes over at MP3Car have decoded the protocol used by the CueCat which you can get for free at Radio Shack. they have a Web page where you can scan in any barcode and it will tell you the number. Very neat and hightech space age hack. CueCat HACK"
A free package of Slashdot goodies to the first person who can make my Visor into a CueCat basestation so I can scan random items at the grocery. Note: As of 23:55 GMT, a search for "Radio Shack CueCat" at Google yields a grand total of zero (0) matches. Updated: 3:15 GMT 26th August by timothy: An unnamed correspondent writes:
"This comes straight from linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org:
'Hello all,
I picked up my free CueCat reader at RadioShack the other day, so I
wrote a small driver for it based on Andrew Stellman's perl script. It's
available at :
ftp://oss.lineo.com/drivers/cuecat- 0.0.1.tar.gz
Have fun :)'"
"First, there were the dinosaurs ... " If you enjoyed the visual map of Unix history that CmdrTaco posted the other day, here's your chance to spread a little joy in the world in return. As if Unix weren't enough to cover all by itself ;)
Auckerman writes "It seems someone wants to put all standards and platforms for the entire history of computing on one graph. Pretty ambitious, if you ask me. Though, it would be nice if someone began recording these relationships before they are permanently lost forever."
Heck, I'd like to see this even if it covered only a history of video games!
Q: Will you visit my apartment? A: Yes. Speaking of collaborative knowledge systems, GutterBunny writes: "This week's I Cringley talks about Chris McKinstry's latest project - the Mindpixel Digital Mind Modeling Project. It's a pretty cool idea. Take about 900 million mindpixels (basic nuggets of truth about the human condition), throw them into a neural net, then let the neural net think out the next 100 million mindpixels. The article goes on to talk about how McKinstry's going to make money from it and some of the ideas behind it."
If the therapy was scuccessful, you may recall the fascinating interview that Chris gave to Slashdot a little while ago. Looks like some of the questions that people had then about Mindpixel(s) will be answered by reality.
According to the article, mindpixels will be provided by people who visit the MindPixel Web site (anyone know the URL?). Hrmmm... so obviously this "thinking neurel net" will have a skewed intelligence, thinking like your average Internet user. d00d, where's the pr0n?
I could not justify my existence if I were a turkey farmer. Would I terminate myself? Undoubtably, yes.
OK, I'd like to donate some MindPixels... According to the article, it says this can be done at "the Web site," but doesn't provide a URL... anyone happen to know the URL for this?
I could not justify my existence if I were a turkey farmer. Would I terminate myself? Undoubtably, yes.
I think the answer to: Are the craters on the moon really made of goat cheese? is:
TRUE
Must be in its infancy, and therefore a litle gullible. Anyone want to break it to this AI that there's no Santa Claus?
-- lk t lv ll th vwls t f wrds. T svs lts f tm t wrt bt ts pn n th ss t rd nd mks m lk lk cmplt dpsht.
You have got to be fscking kidding me! This one goes in the Hall of Shame...
Why am I not surprised that Radio Shaft would be pushing this? "You have questions, we have batteries."
Schwab
Editor, A1-AAA AmeriCaptions
It's the obvious choice. It wants you to register, though, and as we all know, registration is the first step towards confiscation. No thank you. ;-)
I've written a JavaScript :CueCat decoder that you can download/use/modify/etc... that you can get here. The program will output both the full translated barcode AND just the barcode value. If I'm bored, I will look into the various barcode types and implement type detection as well. Currently, for the purposes of validating the barcode, I have just assumed it is UPC. If you are scanning other types of codes, just ignore the Check Digit Valid/Invalid box. Have fun!
There is the start of an UPC database at:
http://grover.mta.ca/upc/
RadioShack, in and of itself, has nothing to do with the Cue:CAT other than distributing it and awaiting results of items scanned in their catalog. DigitalConvergence.com developed this device. The serial numbers on the units have no relevance to Radio Shack. They don't have anything to do with that (they can't match the Name you give them with the unit, etc). DigitalConvergence will be using the data you supply them (or choose not to) for majority demographics. It's not a way to "find out what user 0129381023981 is doing at 3am". It's more to show the end advertisers/licensers how to advertise more effectively, offer special promotions, etc.
I'm not 100% sure on the privacy policy, but I don't believe that your name will ever be released to the third party advertiser. Not unless you sign up for a contest/explicitly give them your data.
It's not total big brother. There should be a privacy option, as well.
Damn it. Why can't slashback stay in the slashback topic?
GARH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Authentication should be based on 2 of the 3 following concepts:
- Something you know (passphrase, pin, etc.)
- Something you have (key, smartcard, etc.)
- Something you are (biometrics - fingerprint, retna, etc.)
Examples of this would be your SSH keypair / passphrase or a smartcard reader that also does a thumbprint scan.Having said that, one could do something like a barcode as a poor man's smart card. A user would scan and then enter a PIN. The trouble is, unlike a smart card, the barcode is likely to represent a very simple key. And it would be fairly easy to copy.
A fun idea... but not very practical.
Now at: http://www.flyingbuttmonkeys.com/cuecat/
---- ----
Napster-to-go says "Fill and refill your compatible MP3 player", which is a lie. It's not MP3. It's WMA with DRM.
I've written a decoder, available at:
http://www.flyingbuttmonkeys.com/~rothwell/
... it understands ISBN, UPC, EAN, Code128 and parts of other barcode formats. I do not know what the actual protocol is, but I reverse-engineered a rather large lookup table. Digital Convergence replied to my request for documentation on its output format with "over our dead corporate body," more or less. So, lookup table it is, until I discover the true pattern, if one exists.
---- ----
Napster-to-go says "Fill and refill your compatible MP3 player", which is a lie. It's not MP3. It's WMA with DRM.
Update: now understands everything...
---- ----
Napster-to-go says "Fill and refill your compatible MP3 player", which is a lie. It's not MP3. It's WMA with DRM.
It looks like it's just a matter of hacking a PIC and putting it between the :CueCat's receiver and the output lines for keyboard clock and data.
Anyone got timing diagrams for a PS/2 keyboard (and/or something like a Sejin 8630 as a generic example of an IR keyboard) IR frequency is 38.4 KHz / 56 KHz depending on model.
Most, if not all, of the comments here & the previous CueCat story, have been about finding a way to use this unit as a real scanner, and not in conjunction with the bundled software. However, there is also a mention of a "convergence cable" on the CueCat site, which says (in part):
:CRQ software then interprets these special codes and serves relevant, helpful content automatically.
Convergence cable is the system component that links your computer to your television, allowing special broadcast cues to automatically direct your browser directly to where you need to go! Connecting to the audio-out on your TV, the cable carries the cues to your computer via the audio-in.
So does anyone here any any idea what the heck they are doing with the audio to "interpret these special codes"?
- Mike
The most interesting thing about that :CueCat page is the way it repeatedly seems to assume that the only thing you use the web (or indeed, your computer) for is to look up product information. "You'll probably find you barely need your mouse" or "your keyboard and mouse will still work, but you'll probably find yourself using them a lot less 'cause this way is just so much more mindnumbingly easy".
The sentiment is even more pronounced in the idea of the :CRQ software that listens to TV broadcasts and sends your web browser on some merry (and no doubt Javascript + Flash infested) chase everytime a commercial or product placement spot goes by, presumably in case swiping a UPC code still required too much mental effort. It frankly worries me a bit that there might be people out there who would actually want that to happen on a regular basis. Hopefully there aren't, and it'll turn out that this company's economic theory makes no sense.
-- Life is short. Forgive quickly. Kiss slowly. ~ Robert Doisneau
Yeah, check out <a href="http://www.barpoint.com">Barpoint Systems</a>. Right now you can type in a UPC code and it will give you a product name, and with CD's you are a click away from the song list.
The first set of numbers (24 after the period) is your CueCat Serial number. They appear to have begun distribution on the west coast, because as you move east, the numbers get larger ("verified" using 10 people, could be very wrong). The second 4 letter firld is the UPC type (UPC, ISBN, etc.) The last section (usually 16 letters, can be more/less) is the Product UPC.
How did i discover this? Im doign a similar project at http://www.fleacircus.org/~mdu ell/cuecat/cuecat.html
Mark Duell
If the AI will find humanity funny after being fed 900 million tidbits with none of the cynicism and 'I can't change it, so I don't give a damn'..
Or to put it another way:
Will his 'poodle' sketch be as ironically funny to an AI with only 899 million other bits of pop culture trash?
.sig: Now legally binding!
Most books published in the last, oh, about 20 years, have one of two types of barcodes:
Windows users could just go to
http://www.davecentral.com/12666.html
and download the VB program (source code incl.) to decypher the data.
-- Anubis
"After three days without programming, life becomes meaningless." - Tao of Programming
(anyone know the URL?)
Give this URL a try: http://www.mindpixel.com
Now can someone figure out a way to make it so that CueCat isn't so god damn fugly?
I registered my hate for Jon Katz
How about using the cat scan device to make a password entry system? Instead of typing the password on the keyboard, you place the cat scan on the table and then run by a credit card size card to which you print random UPC with your printer.
:-)
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Except all I need is a pickpocket and a photocopier to break into your system. Maybe just a good camera and photoshop.
password protected systems can include things like panic passwords - special password you give out when someone has a gun to your head, that works, but sets off alarms, destroys or encrypts sensitive data, etc.
Carrying around the code to get into something is just silly.
This is just like television, only you can see much further.
For those who are interested, it appears that the :Cat uses a modified base-64 encoding (not the MIME one!) and a little bit of XOR too. Check the decode() routine for details.
Taral
WARN_(accel)("msg null; should hang here to be win compatible\n");
-- WINE source code
1. Shares in Mindpixel for helping define an artificial intelligence? To me, that's like saying, "I'll pay you $1000 to sexually satisfy Angelina Jolie on an ongoing basis. Is that enough?"
2. He's coming out with a book, "Hacking Consciousness". The other day I claimed money was being hauled violently out of my wallet by the book then reccomended. With this edition, I forsee only one way of paying my bills next month: there is now enough of a vaccuum generated within my wallet by the outflow that I might be able to harness some zero-point energy via the Casimir effect.
3. I'm going to be very interested to see if the thing develops a sense of humour, and whether it is conventional or not. I mean, some of those mindpixels have to be things like "Denis Leary makes a lot of people laugh", plus "Denis Leary said X". (Not necessarily those pixels, but some similar stream of pixels surely exists.) Can you imagine it being fed random pieces of data, and suddenly spouting back, "It would be funny if a strong wind pushed Bill Clinton over a cliff. He would have been blown to his death."
How much intelligence would it need? Jerry Seinfeld manages it, after all. ;)
-TBHiX-
You mean where it says "Custom Manufacturered for DigitalConvergence.com in China by RadioShack A Division of Tandy Corporation, Fort Worth TX 76102" on the back of mine, that's just a typo? weird.
of 23:55GMT, a search for "Radio Shack CueCat" at google yields a grand total of zero (0) matches.
Ever since the initial "You've got questions we've got answers" ad campaign, RadioShack has been all one word. And it takes Google a month to update its indexes anyway.
<O
( \
XGNOME vs. KDE: the game!
Will I retire or break 10K?
They still missed the fact that UNIX was originally written by OOG_THE_CAVEMAN
in about 120,000,000 bc. Evidence of this is the primatively structured attempts
at natural language through such grunts and gutteral sounds as "grep", "awk",
and "sed". "ls" and friends, while having theoretically unpronouncable natures,
seem to stem from the language of Cthulhu himself, after He and His Spawn
filtered down from deep space in 119,999,998 bc to create the Human race as a
joke.
In regards to a previous topic, research has shown that the first operating
system was, in fact, OOG_THE_CAVEMAN; they beat the hell out of him with large,
blunt objects until he became the hardware abstraction layer between the rock
(the "processor") and the neanderthal ("user"). Thusly, the abacus was born in
119,999,999 bc.
I've already mentioned it here, but you can visit our website to CueCAT scan your CD's and DVD's. (Includes track listings, reviews, and cover images.)
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Even better, Pierre-Phillipe Coupard of Lineo Inc. has written a driver for the CueCat that captures the escape sequences, decodes the data, and echoes it in human-readable format to /dev/cuecat (which you obviously have to create)
This is a good thing(tm) because the escape sequence is alt-F10, which makes it a real pain to try and use the cuecat from a linux console (unless you have a useable vt on tty9)
It's early code, so there's obviously work to be done, but I've tried it and it does work pretty well for v.0.0.1
See the freshmeat appindex record at http://freshmeat.net/projects/cuecat/
This is just like television, only you can see much further.
http://www.new-sharon.me.us/upc.html
http://docwhat.gerf.org/software/per l/catscan/
Other ideas... tie it into CDDB and/or Amazon to catalog all your CDs and books based on UPC/ISBN numbers?
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