Live from a Music Video Beach Party

Sure, it might be the beginning of winter, but that didn't stop us from having our fun veejay style in this week's show. We talk about DVD encryption, robotic snakes, and more.

Comments

Is it live or is it Hemos?

[zztzed]

Only her hairdresser knows for sure...

Length of Shows

[legoboy]

I'm a big fan of including the length of the show in the article, so that I have a clue how long I'm going to be listening for. This one, for example, was 21:18 or so.

Commentary on the past articles is right on the spot, though I've got to admit I missed the "Mattress King" reference.

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Re:Length of Shows

[jfunk]

Commentary on the past articles is right on the spot, though I've got to admit I missed the "Mattress King" reference.

That was a segment on John Stewart. It was pretty funny. You had to see it, though.

I still like the archivist who spends his free time archiving porn and lives with his mother. I had to laugh at that, especially the puppet porn they showed clips of.

I also enjoyed watching Tori Amos not talking very much, then pouring a glass of water on the floor for no apparent reason.

Re:The video?

[Gurlia]

Ever notice how SLOW /.ers are to respond to news posts on Saturday mornings? Hmm ... =)

Nah, they're just so amused by the 20+ min show that they're listening to it over and over again, so by the time they start posting again, ...

(Standard disclaimer: my sense of humor doesn't match yours. Moderators keep that in mind. :-D )

Geeks in SPAAAAAAACE...

[pb]

I wish I were reading a transcript. It wouldn't waste as much time, eh? :)

CmdrTaco, Hemos, CowboyNeal, and Nate...
Talking about stuff posted on slashdot? What nerds! :)
Oh well, at least they're warez dudes at heart, eh? Burn your DVD's onto CD-R's, d00d...

Remote control robotic snakes? That's out there too... So they're cheap, but no one will want them, eh? Good improv fake snake charming music and sound effects there...

"The Internet as an Ecosystem"... Ooo, animated internet traffic stuff. Of *course* it has "organic" properties. You're looking at a lot of humans doing stuff. Surprise.

The stupid Amazon patent. Umm... go to technocrat.net, d00d. I'm waiting for no-click shopping. Make them press "Enter". :)

I guess this would be pretty cool if we were all listening to it earlier, eh? It *is* nice to hear the posters yammering about this, for the novelty of it, I guess, but... well, that's about it.

Hmm. I got cut off somewhere around wireless modem/ghosting. And that was actually sounding interesting. Oh well. A waste of 15 minutes, but all in all better than television. (What, I was missing Pokemon? Ahhh!)
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pb Reply or e-mail rather than vaguely moderate.

Re:Mars Polar Lander

[Mikesch]

Roblimo responded to this kind of question in another thread. /. is choosing not to post anything yet because we don't really know anything other than the fact that we have failed to make contact with the lander.

They are waiting until they have more information before they post an article. This seems like a good idea to me, since a thread about it now would invariably involve flamewars and everyone bashing everyone else, when in actuality nobody knows anything about what happened yet and nobody has enough information to speculate as to what happened.

Icon for Patents

[dattaway]

When the question was asked for what might the icon be for "Your rights online" for evil patents, I was thinking about those old western pictures of the stereostypical short and fat snakeoil salesmen hawking his dubious warez from a soapbox to the unsuspecting public.

Know what image I'm talking about? Good for an icon? Unfortunately, old clip art depicting these sellers of modern science escaped several search pages of google and lycos turned up dry. Oh well...

Re: Icon for Patents

[adraken]

I was thinking of one of those red drinking birds that dip their beaks in water and are not-quite-perpetual motion machines. either that or a large stone wheel with a patent number inscribed in it.

Re: Icon for Patents

[David Gould]

a large stone wheel with a patent number inscribed in it

That's probably the best idea in terms of the symbolism, since the wheel is the canonical simple, universally-known invention, as in the phrase "re-invent the wheel", though I don't know how well it could be rendered in a small icon-sized image.

Another idea might be someone representing the US Patent and Trademark Office wearing a dunce cap, or just a dunce cap labelled with the letters "USPTO".

I guess there are really two somewhat separate issues that we tend to have with patents in general: one is the patenting of truly simple, obvious techniques that really don't deserve to be called "technology" so as to extort licensing fees from everyone else, e.g., the "one-click shopping" patent that they discussed. The other is people being tyrannical or otherwise butt-headed about licensing for patents on things that really were innovative but are now in such widespread use that the restrictions are harmful, e.g., the LZW algorithm for GIFs (which Slashdot still seems to be using -- even though they skipped "Burn All GIFs Day", the patent icon when they add it should really not be a GIF) and Fraunhoffer's (sp?) MP3 algorithm.

The "patenting the wheel" icon would ideally symbolize the first issue, but not so much the second. My "USPTO dunce cap" idea would be symbolic more of the problems with the whole IP system, and specifically the incompetence of the USPTO to handle the issues properly. That's sort of a third issue, but it relates to both of the ones above.

Someone (Taco, if I've figured out the voices correctly) asked which patent is dumber: one-click shopping or human DNA, and Hemos (?) said it was DNA. I'm not sure I agree: the idea of DNA patents is worse morally (i.e., the second issue), but at least genetic engineering is truly high-tech stuff, so it makes some sense to talk about its products as scientific accomplishments. One-click shopping is such a simple idea that I find it offensive to even call it "technology", let alone think it worthy of a patent (i.e., the first issue), so it's the "dumber" one.

David Gould

Re: Icon for Patents

[adraken]

hmmm, second idea: square wheel :P

Re:MP3 vs. Real Audio...

[PurpleBob]

I downloaded the MP3 and then listened to it, so the only pauses I heard were when I did something processor-intensive.
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Daily Show Appearance.

[Wah]

Hey Rob and Hemos!!

You guys need to get your PR people to get you a shot on the Daily Show as two young geek entreprenurs, or whatever. You can doo it!

Good show.

"Beep!"

[Wah]

The stupid Amazon patent. Umm... go to technocrat.net, d00d. I'm waiting for no-click shopping. Make them press "Enter". :)

if you read the patent, it also covers buying something "by making a sound".

I liked the show. It's one of the better small time radio shows out there. I say go for the full 30 minutes, or 32 mb to be specific!! C'mon think aboout it, my rio has 32mb of memory, get the pic?

Re:Geeks in space licence?

[TheSync]

Send email to me if you are interested in playing Geeks in Space on public access cable or non-profit radio station. We'll look at it on a case-by-case basis.

Yeah!

[David Gould]

I just noticed the new patent icon, on the Bleem Sues Sony story. Cool! It seems to cover both the stupidity and the malice angles: not only is it absurd to consider silverware a technological breakthrough, but the "Patent Pending" label seems to connote dire consequences for infringement on this "nutrition delivery system".

David Gould