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Slashback: :CueCat, Exercise, Wormage
When pranksters float your trial balloons for you. ninenet writes "A follow-up on the story posted earlier on Slashdot ... The RIAA has now officially stated that the claims of an elaborate P2P worm are 'a complete hoax.' A story on eWeek quotes an RIAA spokesman as saying, "Someone forwarded the message to us and that was the first we heard or read about it.""
<Location>,<location>,<location > A few days ago, we mentioned the interesting geographic lookup / markup system of GeoURL. Joshua Schachter, the fellow who runs GeoURL (and editor of memepool, to boot), writes with "some responses of mine to comments posted:
Q: "Why not use the WHOIS database for address information?"A: GeoURL is geographic content markup. Nobody cares where your server is - where are YOU? That said, I'm waiting for someone to hook their GPS into their web page and keep GeoURL updated.
This way different URLs can have different coordinates, as well.
Q: "Blah blah blah blah privacy."
A: If you want privacy, don't put your location on your web page.
Q: "You're evil and you're going to steal this information and go private, just like CDDB did."
A: The content is marked up on the pages and not entered into my database. Anyone could easily write a similar service (and I hope they do.)
I plan to create a page containing lessons learned and useful code snippets for other people who would like to implement similar stuff."
Most importantly, I hope this helps the development of distributed speed-trap logging and mapping!
Making this up would be too easy. An anonymous reader writes "Egomaniacal former Dot.Bomb 'entrepreneur' J. Jovan Philyaw has escaped the asylum and is back with even bigger delusions of grandeur. When last we saw him, J.J. was trying to shove the misbegotten :CueCat/:CRQ combination on unsuspecting users. Now, he's apparently writing a couple of books, selling his 'power crystals' that adorned the offices of Digital:Convergence, and changing his name: his sites refer to him now as J. Hutton Pulitzer. Apparently the utter and complete failure of Digital:Convergence (loss of at least $185M) hasn't dented his ego one bit. In his bio, he actually compares himself to Thomas Edison. A hilarious must-read for those who followed the :CueCat debacle (and for those of us who worked there)."
I hope all these things can be adapted for recumbents. Jamie Briant writes: "Saw your update to the slashdot story on games for exercise bikes. I'm a developer for exertris.com that makes a bike with LCD screen built in, which we sell primarily to gyms, but you can buy in the UK at Harrods. We write and tune the games specifically to motivate you to exercise."
I write in my journal
So... besides the tried and true DanceDanceRevolution (and all its spinoffs - the korean versions seems the hardest so far), there are many others nowadays. (and have been)
For those who complains that there is insufficient stuff for your hands to do because "nobody dances like that", there is also ParaParaParadise or somesuch that focuses on the hands. If you follow *exactly* what the person do onscreen, it actually gets pretty fancy.
Moreover, in Japan I have seen some boxing games where you would put on a pair of gloves and hit targets as they come up; at least one of them is themed after "Fist of the Northern Star." Also gives you quite a cardiovascular workout after a while.
Then we have the horse-riding ones... While looking silly, those gets tiring!
Another "all the rage" game is a drumming one. The Playstation version is not so tiring, but in the arcade with big drums and relatively heavy sticks, they can get interesting mighty quick (since for fast tracks you have to accelerate a fairly massy stick to the drum at high frequency).
In ESPN-zone in downtown Chicago, there is also a rock-climbing thingy. Nobody can afford one on their own, but that's probably the most physically engaging "game" I have ever played.
so... no reason to stick just to the bikes, y'all.
My life in the land of the rising sun.
If he could push the idea of the CueCat as far as it got, blow $185 mil and not lose any sleep over it... maybe he's thinking of becoming a lawyer for the RIAA!
:)
"Kids, as of this moment, Lionel Hutz no longer exists. Say hello to Miguel Sanchez!"
Seriously, though. I've got a few of those CueCats. A father of a friend runs a soup kitchen, and I helped hack together a barcoded ID card system to keep track of who visited and how often. Cuecats were perfect because they were free and really easy to write software for!
Still in service, as far as I know.
=Smidge=
So, the RIAA is finding out about stuff p2p? I hope their lawyers sue them.
Heaven forbid, I check out a band I haven't heard before I buy their CD.
riding round the world on an old motorcycle
For all you paranoid types out there, this GEOUrl thing is remarkably easy to defeat
1. don't participate - it ain't mandatory, so you have no reason to bitch.
2. lie - hell, it could even help. make it look like you live someplace glamorous rather than in the basement of your parent's house in Poughkeepsie.
I fail to see a problem here.
To celebrate the occasion of my 1000th post, I will post no more forever on Slashdot. Goodbye.
I've got a few of those CueCats
:)
A few? I went into a Radio Shack recently and asked if they still had any cue cats left. I was working on a project idea. They came back with a box of about twenty of them with a requirement that if I want them, I have to take a box of about 30 special TV cables (another DC flop) with them or else it's no deal.
So I loaded up the back seat with the stuff. Now after spaying a few for use on my home PCs, I still got the rest of them in my basement.
hehe.... maybe I ought to hold on to them till they become popular on eBay
According to Mr. Philyaw's (Pulitzer? Maybe Einstein next?) bio he has 100 patents in his name. Not according to the USPTO. According to them he has 3 or 4.
What a loser.
Actually it was pretty useful--free barcode reader. I cataloged my entire library with it. I scanned each book and used some software I downloaded that looked up each book's barcode on Amazon, Library of Congress, (or other sites) and added it to a database.
(Not sure how just how much abuse this'll generate, but let's see...)
So we all hate Bill Gates. Apparently for being ruthlessly successful at exploiting the (fairly) free, capitalist system we all hold dear. We're constantly shocked at the audacity of Microsoft, and Bill is the epitome of the evil that company represents.
This is a guy who (with his wife) is in the process of donating $24 Billion to good causes. Not frat house good causes, not pussyfooting PC good causes. He has set up a well-run foundation (you know, managment and accountability) to see that money put to use combatting aids in India, that sort of thing.
$24 Billion is more than most developed countries in the world will put into that sort of work in our lifetimes.
But we do enjoy banging on that "He tried to squash Netscape!", because that's a) more important and b) surely nothing to do with how we like to run things?
The wrong place to point it out, maybe, but it's fun to sit back and reflect on the irony sometimes.
"The outlandish claims are part of a "security advisory" supposedly written by a group called Gobbles Security. However, the message bears little resemblance to the group's other advisories and also seems to make fun of Gobbles' habit of posting vulnerability information and exploits without notifying affected vendors in advance."
Eh, I don't know what they're reading, but just about every previous Gobbles advisory looks like that. The trademark Theo bashing, poor grammar, and other things. Most likely false, but most likely them.
If I wasn't so lazy, I'd have a sig.
i specifically went to radio shack begging them to give me one after the 2600 article came out on how to disable the tracking "feature" by cutting one little contact on an ic. then, after all that work, i realized that the cuecat was a piece of hot garbage.
This comment has nothing to do with the current Slashback articles, but it fits in this forum.. I didn't have a chance to submit it before school this morning.. I don't know if it was worthy enough to make it into Slashback anyway..
I wrote to the I-Tee case manufacturer the other day after reading this article on Slashdot..
A few of the article's commentors mentioned that they hadn't received a response from them after emailing them themselves for prices, distribution, etc.. I guess I got lucky..
Here's there response:
Dear Mr. J. Johansen (I'm not Mr. DeCSS),
Thank you for your e-mail.
At present we don't have distributor in USA.
If you want to be our distributor in USA, we offer our
best competitive price based on F.O.B. Yantian China
as following:
1. i-Tee W/250W ATX P'SU P4 with USB @USD50.00
Delivery: 2 weeks after receiving your L/C
Warranty: one year from shipment.
The above price is based on 20'container / 430pcs.
Looking forward to hearing from you soon.
Best regards,
Kenny Tsai
Anyone have $25,150+ lying around?
Sing While You May!!
It was pretty absorbing and one could get quite a workout without realizing it. Playing against the AI was tough, since it never got fatigued.
The games demoed on the Exertris are all 2d and (strangely) oriented left-to-right. Strange, since according to their web site Bill Gates was showcasing them at CES. Obviously he hadn't turned up at his local gym to do some research.
Well, I know this isn't much help but the History Channel had a nice biography on him. He was a real asshole. If you wanted to work for him you had to sign away all your rights to any patents you develop to him. How do you think he "invented" all that stuff? Hundreds of inventors came to work for him and he ended up patenting THEIR work. Sounds like what the RIAA does today for music artists. He also had a stranglehold on the early motion picture and music industries single handedly. He dictated what could and could not be recorded depending on his personal taste. Oh yea, let's not forget he was almost completely deaf at the time he was doing this. ;-) We see Edison through rose colored glasses as some great inventor the same way kids will see Bill Gates as a great innovator 100 years from now. "Wow, that's the guy who created the computer operating system and made everything friendly right?"
This works by sending short bursts of location information over the radio at pre-defined frequencies, including your callsign. These are broadcast and picked up by repeater stations (and anyone can be a repeater.) Eventually, they're picked up and stuck in a database.
You can then query this database to find out where you are - or where your friends are.
It don't get geekier.
Oh, and guess what? The school made several stops to various Radio Shacks a few years ago and currently has nine CueCats that they plan to use on the library terminals. Nine. They read Code 128 for free, what more could you want?
This could be a discussion about, oh, bio-engineered hamsters or the moons of Neptune, and you'd still get the pathetic Microsoft non-sequitur.
Why? Because someone with mod points will probably think it's funny.
BTW, welcome to Slashdot. Or something.
This thread is totally on the money on Edison. There's an ironic twist to the Edison story that bears interestingly in this discussion.
It seems that Edison owned several patents on the technology behind filmmaking, and exacted brutal licensing on virtually every aspect of the industry. The pressure was so unreasonable that the burgeoning movie industry of the early 20th century was forced out of what was then the center of filmmaking - the east coast. They needed a place to shoot their pirate criminal outlaw movies that was far away from Edison and his patent police. Also important was that they be close to the Mexican border so that they could take their copyright criminal tools out of the country should Edison's goons show up.
The result? Hollywood, CA. A litle fact I like to remember when they hurl hypocrisy about IP criminals.
it would help many ill-informed people if you would please state your source for this information.
One of the easiest ways to verify his status as a jerk is to read pretty much any biography of Tesla.
Tesla invented a ton of technologies that we use everyday, like AC electricity and flourescent lighting. Because he wasn't the greatest businessperson, many of them were stolen by people like Edison (who he worked for briefly).
Most people think of Edison as a great inventor. I think of him as a thief who was so bent on discrediting Tesla's AC electricity in favour of his own DC that he used it to electrocute a bunch of animals to death on film.
"...always new atoms but always doing the same dance, remembering what the dance was yesterday." -Richard Feynman
Hundreds of inventors came to work for him and he ended up patenting THEIR work.
This is pretty much boilerplate for most tech companies. If you work for a company based entirely on innovation, then they need your ideas. You get a good stable salary, and support for development in return for your creativity.
Edison did not have a monopoly on ideas though, which is the main difference between him and the RIAA. They could work for other people, or for themselves, or with private backing.
The rest of your comment, I have no issue with - I totally agree that Edison was a git, and better at marketing than inventing.
Completely off topic, but I really wish that was so. When I did History GCSE it was ALL about the flipping industrial revolution and the poor old farmers. International politics barely got a lookin, let alone wars with the French. It's far more politically correct to study the economics of the weaving industry, or medieval farming methods.
If something interesting happened at some point in British history, you can be guaranteed it will not appear in a reasonably advanced history course.
Edison invented the electric chair as part of his marketting campaign for DC - the chair used AC.
He went around electrocuting elephants as well I think. Well, it just goes to show, in case of FUD vs market economics, the market usually wins.
When you sod off the high school science and get to the university level one you start seeing how much of the stuff that is attributed to Edison is actually Tesla's.
Otherwise:
1. Cylinders instead of disks on the phonograph - dead on the money. Look at the old pictures from the first advertisements for the new gadget in the history books. See disks there? Nope. Not if Edisons name is mentioned anywhere close.
2. AC vs DC. Dead on the money as well. Dunno about him not understanding it but there is more then enough info about Westighouse out there and Tesla as well to confirm this.
3. Layers - dead on the money as well.
4. Also, as far as I know he was the first to invent the cubicle sweatshop for engineering. There are more then enough historical references that show how work in his labs was organised. He was the first person to hire engineers and designers in quantities instead of going for quality with a small design team the way people like Brunel, Eifel, etc did.
Baker's Law: Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it
http://www.sigsegv.cx/
I protested, and thought about the question over Christmas dinner. Afterwords, I gave him my answer. "If you want to talk about 'connecting the world' Bill Gates isn't your man. You should be talking about Jon Postal, who authored most of the specifications for the internet." The response... "Bill Gates is the one who brought it to the masses." (The Christmas gathering ended shortly thereafter -- a bit earlier than usual.)
Thinking about it a bit more, a better answer might have been Tim Berners Lee for WWW or, to counter "...the one who brought it to the masses...," I could have responded with Marc Andresen, main author of Mosaic and Netscape, which is what really fueled the internet explosion.
So, It seems that the history of the future has already been rewritten, and Bill Gates invented it all.
McFly777
- - -
"What do people mean when they say the computer went down on them?" -Marilyn Pittman
Apparently there is a movie in production about Tesla which will hopefully educate those who aren't keen on learning their history. Click on the links to read more about Edison and Tesla.