Podcasting and Licensing of Music
on
Podcasting Hacks
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· Score: 1, Insightful
The problem with podcasting is music licensing: if you put music on a recording and distribute it, you're liable for ASCAP, BMI, and SESAC royalties. And this is reasonable. The composers wrote the songs, joined the association, and deserve to be paid for their work.
Who has the infrastructure to account and pay for this sort of stuff? Professional broadcasters, mostly.
This assumes the music was written by an association composer. Perhaps you have some unsigned band that has granted you permission to use their material. You're clean.
Beyond music, there's spoken word. Performances have value, but many of the podcasts I've heard were more akin to written blogs than produced audio programming.
What Apple could do here, if they're so inclined, is to swing a podcast deal with their labels. Music purchased from the iTunes store would be licensed for personal use as it is now and non-commercial podcasting. If iTunes could be retooled to record voice-overs -- and it sounds if that may be coming -- you could build a podcast within iTunes and distribute it via Apple's music store. The podcasts would be playable through iTunes.
Apple's motivation in this is twofold: it would encourage podcasters to use Apple's platform and purchase their library through the Apple Store, and the podcast songs would be clickable. Listeners could buy whatever they like as they hear it.
It's a proprietary solution, but would finesse the licensing issue and make music podcasting more accessable.
In order to deal with spammers, we have to analyze their vulnerabilites. Understanding their weaknesses is easy once you answer this question: What do spammers fear the most?
That's easy. Look at spam messages. You'll see forged return addresses, redirections through open relays, spoofed Received lines, etc.
What does this mean? Spammers are most afraid of being tracked and identified.
And they have a good reason to be afraid. When spammers are identified, they get their ISP accounts terminated, and may get stuck paying hundreds of dollars of cleanup fees. They're harrassed, sued, threatened, they quickly earn a terrible reputation. They'll go to extremes to remain anonymous.
The key is to make it difficult or impossible for spammers to forge headers and obfuscate their emails' points of origin. How do we do this? Require cryptographic authentication of all mail going through any MTA. No exceptions, ever. Every time a mail goes through an MTA, it must be signed by that MTA. Any message without a signature or with an invalid signature gets dropped. By requiring crypto signatures, responsible MTAs can be easily tracked, and spamming MTAs can be blocked.
Key creation, distribution and endorsement can be through a central authority, though I prefer a PGP-style web of trust because central authorities can abuse their power. Naturally, any MTA caught distributing spam should immediately get their keys revoked, and the revocation should be distributed to MTAs as widely as possible, causing all emails from that MTA to be blocked in a matter of minutes. If an MTA wants its emails to reach its destinations, it will crack down hard on spammers.
The difficult part is convincing ISPs to require authentication and drop unsigned messages. However, if a large ISP such as AOL or Comcast can be convinced to do this, MTAs will have a strong incentive to start signing messages, and authentication will start to catch on.
The perineum is the area of skin rich in nerve endings that is located below the anus (the opening for bowel movements). For men, the perineum extends to the vaginal opening; for women it extends to the base of the testicles.
Because the perineum is so rich in nerve endings it often feels pleasing to have it touched or stroked. If one is comfortable with being touched on the perineum, its stimulation can be incorporated into a couple's lovemaking to further enhance sexual arousal.
To make stimulation smoother and more comfortable, it is often helpful to lubricate your fingers before stroking the perineum during lovemaking.
As long as the stimulation remains outside the body on the perineum, any type of lubricant (petroleum-base or water-base) will do.
However, because this kind of stimulation is often associated with insertion of the finger into the vagina or anus, or both, a water-base lubricant is recommended and preferred.
The anus is rich in nerve endings & participates with your genitals in the contractions of sexual arousal & orgasm. Anal stimulation greatly enhances & intensifies masturbation, oral sex, or intercourse. A good rule of thumb, when experimenting with anal play, is relax, use plenty of lube (the anus & rectum do not produce any lubrication of their own), and enjoy.
Because the perineum is so rich in nerve endings it often feels pleasing to have it touched or stroked. If one is comfortable with being touched on the perineum, its stimulation can be incorporated into a couple's lovemaking to further enhance sexual arousal.
The vagina is rich in vulvatic sensor spots & cooperates with your clitoral system in the up and down movements of sexual arousal & orgasm. Vaginal stimulation greatly enhances & multiplies masturbation, perienium stimulation, and orgies. A good rule of thumb, when experimenting with vaginal stimulation, is to relax, and use one quart of 10W30 (the vagina produces no lubrication of its own during normal stimulation), and enjoy.
However, because this kind of stimulation is often associated with insertion of the finger into the vagina or anus, or both, a water-base lubricant is recommended and preferred.
Did you know that the crime of identity theft ist virtually unknown in Europe (at least in Germany, where I live)?
And there are some obvious reasons for this:
- Nobody in Europe has mail boxes without a lock. European mailbox are usually flat, upright, rectangular boxes with a slit on the top of the front where the mailman drops the letters and they fall down a slide so you cannot get them out without using either very long pliers or, of course, the key to unlock the door at the back.
- No bank would give you a checking account or a credit without checking your ID card and making a photo copy of it and noting the number. (Remember that in most European countries (except e.g. the UK) every citizen is required to have a national ID card which you show whenever somebody has to be sure of your ID. (These cards have all kinds of witty security features to make them really hard to counterfeit.)
- All laws and courts agree that a reasonbable proof that somebody did make a business transaction is a signature on a piece of paper, or at least some computer record showing that the customer has entered a secret PIN. 'Secret' meaning, that nobody else should be able to know it. (PINs are printed out by the banks' computer systems and put in a sealed envelope without any employees being able to look at them.)
- Especially, if you told a court that a business transaction was valid because you checked the caller's identity on phone by asking for his SSN (or some lcoal equivalent of this), his date of birth or his mother's maiden name, the judge would probably only laugh at you.
While staying for half a year in California, I was quite astonished about the lax way of checking identities common in th US.
(For example, I got liability insurance for the used car I bought by just phoning the company. The guy asked for my Visa card number, then said 'Fine. Your car insurance is valid starting now, i.e. 4:13 pm.' That was great and convenient, but after all, I still prefer the European way, where they'll first ask 'So, how do we know, that this was your credit card number, and not taken from some receipt you picked out of a trash can?'. As the very least they would want proof of your address so that they can send you a court summons in case you tried a fraud.)
Good read, if you can get through it.
on
Coalescent
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· Score: -1, Offtopic
I'm currently on page 400 of my proof copy and thought I might try writing a Slashdot review. Fortunately, somebody beat me to it! Instead I'll present the following points:
1) If you did not (like|understand|pretend to get|claim to have read) Cryptonomicon, this is not the book for you. I can't imagine Mr. Stephenson was looking to expand his fan base with this book. This book is easily an intellectual achievement and as such, is written to satisfy an audience of 1: Neal Stephenson.
2) Generally, Stephenson's books are best after multiple readings. If you don't like reading books over again, you should steer clear of this author altogether. Quicksilver is no exception. There is a lot going on and, if the other books serve as guides, you will get more out of them a second time around.
3) After reading parts of this book you are going to want to track down articles on (wikipedia|everything2) to refresh your memory about late 17th century European history. Even so, this book is not "late 17th century European history." This is a book about 17th century hackers and, if you believe the premise, how much and how little things have changed. Either way, this book merits a Companion guide.
4) The sixth paragraph above is a pretty big spoiler. Don't read it.
5) I don't think Christina Schulman, the reviewer, (and despite the Epiphyte reference) made it through the book. The Quicksilver metaphor is important in the first book. The second and third books in the Quicksilver volume go on to other metaphors.
6) don't expect it to resemble Stephenson's prior books in anything but ambition and length. Ummm, I disagree. The parallel story line method is Stephenson's trademark, whether you are reading The Big U, the Diamond Age, or most noticeably Cryptonomicon. This book is more of what Stephenson does best, but in a very different setting.
7) Despite having a proof copy, I'm getting the hardcover of this sucker. Stephenson is worth it.
8) The Real Character puzzle from the website was only a glimpse of what was to come in the book. Given the time and effort (and application of programming skills/OCR) I don't expect to be disappointed.
Bottom line, if you're new to Stephenson, you'll want to try Cryptonomicon first. Quicksilver can be a page-turner but it is by no means a quick read. I usually fly through books but have taken over a month on this one. This book represents an incredible amount of effort and cements Stephenson's position top among the most versatile, intelligent, (Linux friendly) authors today.
I have an unlimited(?) number of valid email addresses. The 'opt-out'
provision would require me to generate as many of them as I could and
then deliver them to the spammers -- and then, if the spammers could
think of ones I missed, then it would be OK for them to spam me at
those addresses. Need I point out that this is a flawed proposal?
I've thought of generating a bunch of legal addresses and putting
them on a CD-ROM, to show to my congresswoman with the message 'Here are
60 million of my legal e-mail addresses. This disk is full.
How many more should I make?'
I'm glad that this bill is unlikely to pass, though it makes up something
like 70% of my mail. We need opt-in legislation, and we need it with teeth.
Large and increasing fines, individual grounds to sue, and possibly even
the death penalty after some number of convictions; maybe 10?
That's one of the best articles I've seen on this event.
I run one of the Grand Challenge teams,
Team Overbot [overbot.com].
We have a vehicle (a modified six wheel drive Polaris Ranger), a shop in Redwood City, funding,
equipment, and people. We're well along; the vehicle has most of its actuators and some of the sensors working, and about a third of the software is running. We're one of the five DARPA-accepted teams.
Many of us are Stanford alumni or students, but this is not a Stanford project.
We need three more good programmers in Silicon Valley. "No pay, some risk, a fraction of the prize." If you're interested, we want to see 1000 lines of C++ you're proud of. You'll need to put in at least 250 hours between now and March. Click here to join. [overbot.com]
Our basic technical approach is to build a rugged, reliable vehicle with conservative control strategies. Others may be faster, but we expect they'll get into trouble at high speed. Our top speed is 40MPH. The real problem with the Grand Challenge is not going fast on the easy parts; it's getting through the hard parts.
The 6WD chassis we're using is one of the most bump-tolerant platforms around. It can go over railroad ties at top speed without problems and
without going airborne. The center of gravity is low. The front and mid axles have independent suspension; the rear axle is a swing arm. This simplifies low-level vehicle control. All wheels can be driven, although at higher speeds, we will switch from 6WD to 4WD.
We have five computers on board. Three are small PC/104 machines, and two are Pentium 4 machines.
All run QNX (the OS for when it has to work.) All are industrial-strength ruggedized units. The actuators are all servomotors driven by industrial microcontrollers. All this hardware is off-the-shelf industrial control gear.
Sensors include LIDAR, doppler RADAR, sonars, cameras, INS, GPS, etc. Some of them are used in unusual ways. That's all I'll say about that.
The pathfinding strategy is indeed borrowed from video game technology. It's more structured than Brooks-type behavior based robotics, and it's less structured than Latoumbe-type planning. There are three layers of control; the top one we call the "back seat driver", because it has only advisory authority over the "driver".
We have road map and topo data onboard, but it's used more as a hint than as rigid guidance. We take the waypoints DARPA gives us (on a CD, at 0430 hrs the
morning of the race) and load it in. There's no offline preplanning. Wouldn't help in the real world.
If nobody wins this year, which is quite likely, we'll be back next year with a faster vehicle.
First, the linux installer must be as easy as windows. Looking at the beginnings of the new Debian Installer, that is a definite possibility. They have the autodetection and the automation down. With a spiffy interface and maybe Synaptic in the installer that's about as easy as it gets.
Second the linux desktop has to surpass Windows XP in usability. They have the time to get this done. Longhorn is a long way off. Personally it would be nice to see some INNOVATIVE navigation ideas thrown around in the mainstream such as unified hotkey standards, radial pie menu in the window manager, and/or mouse gestures for launching commonly used applications (gesture down to open web browser, up for email) and common commands (down+left for copy, up+left for paste, for example). Maybe even mousewheel based window navigation instead of alt+tab.
Granted these things can be done now but not without some footwork. These need to be integrated into a "desktop" linux distribution like Lindows, Lycoris, or XandrOS. Somebody just needs to put them together.
Frequent tasks should require less keystrokes or mouse movement to accomplish. It isn't enough for it to be intuitive on where you should start to look for the document that tells you which clock does what. Less applications. Faster access and faster results.
I know this will cost me some karma, but I have a ton to spare.
A few months ago I tried setting up Linux From Scratch. I discovered that to make it not completely suck, I had to patch various things. It occurred to me that Slackware has already done exactly these things (plus more I wouldn't think of) for me.
The other day I upgraded BIND to the new version which I downloaded from ISC, so I could work around Verisign's DNS hijacking. I ran into a snag: it wanted to save a PID file in/var/run, but I want to run named as a non-root user, meaning/var/run wouldn't be writable. The only configure option is --localstatedir which defaults to/var, meaning it would create a subdir called "run" under wherever I chose to put it, which is pretty stupid IMHO. Slackware uses/var/run/named/named.pid so you can change the ownership of/var/run/named to match the user you run named as.
So I popped in the source CD to see how they do it, since I couldn't find a config option for that. Guess what? There's a diff file, and a shell script that patches the source (along with other build options). The changes are toward the end of./bin/named/include/named/globals.h.
Yes, that's right, when I got the source off the CD, I got the original unmodified source tarball, a diff file, and a shell script with build options - not some mysteriously customized source tarball that the distro thinks is somehow better than the original, but the original tarball plus Slackware's modifications - meaning, I can easily make the same modifications to a new version of the source.
Is Slackware perfect? Well, no, maybe not - but that's OK, because if something's not to my liking, Slackware doesn't get in my way if I want to do it myself. I can just build a new version of BIND from source, uninstall the old one, install the new one, and not worry about other packages maybe depending on BIND somehow, or anything else weird.
So, let me join the other Slackware fans here with a hearty "THANKS, PATRICK!"
No longer will we be able to have a built in LCD terminal for GPS. We will now be stuck speaking to someone, somewhere, asking for directions, help, et cetera.
I wonder if they thought of what happens to all cars retrofitted with LCD GPS systems? Are they now illegal?
"Ironically, Microsoft's efforts to deny interoperability of Windows with legitimate non-Microsoft applications have created an environment in which Microsoft's program interoperate efficiently only with Internet viruses," said Geer.
Gotta love it.
Actually I find that american culture tries too hard to keep thier children "innocent". They do this by "protecting" them from the harmless truth. And what purpose does it serve? Maybe pornography will keep some of those hormones back at home, and out of school. There is more good then bad in porn.
1. The actresses make money to support them. 2. Look at other countries and how they deal with porn, and how many rapes they have. I dont think that a sex open society is going to have as many rapes as one that isnt. 3. Its good clean fun. Admit it, we all know you like porn, dont deny. and if you do deny(and your a man) then likelyhood is that your a liar.
Besides shouldnt we be more busy protecting our kids from voilence than from porn. Whats worse, having sex, or killing people. I would like to have any person prove to me why pornography is morally wrong, and no "they will become a sexual deviant" bullshit.
After reading the article, I noted that Windows Media Player is the #1 application accessing the internet. All I can ask is, why?
Why does a media player need to connect to a server so frequently? What information is it sending out? What good does Windows Media Player provide the end user, that it is taking up 34.43% of the web connections?
As someone who works in this industry, I thought I'd share some of the future of telecomm for those who aren't 'in the know'. All communication lines going to any endpoint (home, business, sensors, etc) are quickly moving to an IP based data network. Unfortunately, there are two problems that governments and current telephone companies face: 1) Roughly 50% of their voice revenue stream comes from per minute connection charges, other carrier access charges, & regulation charges (govn't). These will evaporate when subscribers move to data driven VoIP (ie: you pay a flat fee for DSL or cable modem bandwidth now, and it can run all your voice calls to anywhere in the world). Eventually the PSTN connection part will no longer be necessary, so Vonage will disappear as we know it today, but it has finally woken up the telcos to what the future will bring. 2) Pretty much the other half of their revenue stream comes from the 'premium' voice feature services (call waiting, text messaging, etc), all of which are quickly moving from the class 5 switch into the phones themselves (aka: free).
What do you do when your primary revenue stream evaporates? Fight it in the courts or with govn't officials. Remember, govn'ts have been taking a nice chunk of that revenue for themselves as well.
We will have to move to a bandwidth & quality of service (QoS) based payment style. A minimum bandwidth is given for a flat rate (which will include -all- voice), and extra bandwidth will be provided on demand at an agreed QoS. The higher the bandwidth & QoS, the higher the fee.
Things to watch out for: VoIP everywhere, SIP phones/services, VoWLAN, current voice carriers moving their infrastructure to their IP networks, and govn't regulations dictating that comm lines (called data services & unregulated) become regulated for QoS.
The companies that move to this model last will not survive. They aren't going to like this.:-)
I listened to some of the FCC discussion on CSPAN, and with all the mindless "let VOIP be free" perspectives being spouted here, let me raise a few of the more valid concerns I heard with letting VOIP go completely unregulated (and forecasting a dramatic drop in POTS usage as broadband spreads and people use it for phone):
1. Emergency use: VOIP will not have the level of reliability of POTS, especially during natural disasters and other emergencies. In theory an IP network can be made just as reliable, but the simple issue of powering the phones is a big issue... the phone system generally has been significantly more reliable than the power system. With a VOIP phone, you're dead if you lose power. Traditional phones keep going.
This may seem like a small issue, but an example cited during the hearing was a major weather-related power outage in California, where the utility determined after the fact that customers were less annoyed by the fact that the power was off than the fact that the phone system at the power company was not equipped to give them good repair status information. People count on the phone system, and it needs to be there, especially for 911 emergency use.
2. Funding and effectiveness of 911 The 911 system is funded by POTS and cellular surcharges. Even a 25% drop in POTS usage due to VOIP would be disasterous from a funding perspective. And remember that when you call 911 from a landline (and in more and more areas, cellular), they know where you are. VOIP is extremely far away from having any sort of location capability.
3. Funding of Universal Access Everyone in the country has access to phone service, no matter how rural / remote they are. This has been a tremendously important program, but would have funding problems similar to 911 if a big chunk of POTS goes away.
Anyway, my point is that despite how "retro" POTS is technically, it has significant merits that VOIP currently does not provide. I'm not suggesting that any of the problems described above are unsolveable for VOIP, but I think it's awfully unlikely that "market forces" will magically provide the answers. There needs to be some regulation in order that the good in POTS is preserved going forward.
OK, I'm bored, since my office is dead due to the little wind storm going on, so I'll take a long walk of this short intellectual pier for fun...
Let me start by saying: (1) Yes, I am a lawyer; (2) yes I think these lawsuits are silly; (3) I don't believe the parents have a very good chance of winning.
Whenever this issue comes up, there is the inevitable deluge of virulent "where were the parents!" and "why weren't you teaching your kids values" type posts/comments/rants. Despite the mind numbing banality of most of these, people seem to continue to harp on about it over and over.
What I find particularly interesting is the attempt to ascribe these types of lawsuits to "liberals" and "the left", and the rabid conservative mantra that liberals have "destroyed personal responsibility." (Like fiscal responsibility? largest deficit in history)
I am wary of these "where were the parents" type simplifications. It seems to me that these are all based on a mythical image of the American Family that is taken straight from 1950's television, and has little (or no) bearing on today's society. Where were the parents? Working two jobs that require 60+ hours a week so they can continue to enjoy the "middle class" life in some suburban development near a semi-decent school. By the time Mom & Dad have come home at 6:00 or 7:00 pm and made dinner, they are probably way too strung out from a 14 hour day to be providing much useful moral guidance.
Don't get me wrong, I support working Mom's and Dads. My family is a two-job deal, but we are lucky in that, because I have a high-priced legal education, we can afford full time child care for our tots. Most parents in the U.S. can't do that.
Meanwhile the kids are sitting around at home from 3pm when schools let out, thanks to shorter school days brought about by reduced budgets. There aren't too many organized, safe after school programs anymore (especially for kids who aren't athletic, or aren't into sports, which I'd be a large number of/.'ers can relate to).
Sure, 99% of the people smart enough to read this site were smart enough to separate fact from fancy at a pretty young age. But ask yourself: didn't you do anything stupid at the age of 14 (or 24) that you now look back on and go "whoa...I was an idiot..." The thing maturity brings is an ability to think through the potential consequences of your actions. That's what "learning from experience" is all about. Now, none of us (hopefully) ever decided to shoot at trucks on the highway. But I'll bet a few people here tossed things off an overpass...or put things on the train tracks...or stole a stop sign (guilty)...or any of a hundred things that could have caused serious injury. The kids involved in the GTA case are probably particularly sub-par in the brains department, but they didn't set out to hurt people, they just didn't consider that if you shoot at the side of a truck (a supposedly destructive but not dangerous act) it might have dire consequences if you MISS. (After all, how many of us miss all that often using the sniper rifle in GTA?) So, bad decision on their part.
People are incensed that TakeTwo and Sony are sued. It is descried as evidence of the out of control courts. However, what conservatives never seem to point out is that almost all of these suits are dismissed early on (and if you dig into the ones that aren't, like the infamous McDonald's coffee case, you find the facts aren't as cut-and-dried as you think). In other words, the courts aren't out of control; they are doing exactly what they are designed to do: adjudicate the rights of parties who feel they have been wronged.
One last (semi-random) point. Someone raised a first amendment issue below. That isn't really relevant here. Whether TakeTwo has a right to publish GTAIII is different from whether they can be held responsible for consequences that naturally flow from their decision to do so. (I'm not saying that shooting at trucks is a natural consequence). People's def
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Who has the infrastructure to account and pay for this sort of stuff? Professional broadcasters, mostly.
This assumes the music was written by an association composer. Perhaps you have some unsigned band that has granted you permission to use their material. You're clean.
Beyond music, there's spoken word. Performances have value, but many of the podcasts I've heard were more akin to written blogs than produced audio programming.
What Apple could do here, if they're so inclined, is to swing a podcast deal with their labels. Music purchased from the iTunes store would be licensed for personal use as it is now and non-commercial podcasting. If iTunes could be retooled to record voice-overs -- and it sounds if that may be coming -- you could build a podcast within iTunes and distribute it via Apple's music store. The podcasts would be playable through iTunes.
Apple's motivation in this is twofold: it would encourage podcasters to use Apple's platform and purchase their library through the Apple Store, and the podcast songs would be clickable. Listeners could buy whatever they like as they hear it.
It's a proprietary solution, but would finesse the licensing issue and make music podcasting more accessable.
In order to deal with spammers, we have to analyze their vulnerabilites. Understanding their weaknesses is easy once you answer this question: What do spammers fear the most?
That's easy. Look at spam messages. You'll see forged return addresses, redirections through open relays, spoofed Received lines, etc.
What does this mean? Spammers are most afraid of being tracked and identified.
And they have a good reason to be afraid. When spammers are identified, they get their ISP accounts terminated, and may get stuck paying hundreds of dollars of cleanup fees. They're harrassed, sued, threatened, they quickly earn a terrible reputation. They'll go to extremes to remain anonymous.
The key is to make it difficult or impossible for spammers to forge headers and obfuscate their emails' points of origin. How do we do this? Require cryptographic authentication of all mail going through any MTA. No exceptions, ever. Every time a mail goes through an MTA, it must be signed by that MTA. Any message without a signature or with an invalid signature gets dropped. By requiring crypto signatures, responsible MTAs can be easily tracked, and spamming MTAs can be blocked.
Key creation, distribution and endorsement can be through a central authority, though I prefer a PGP-style web of trust because central authorities can abuse their power. Naturally, any MTA caught distributing spam should immediately get their keys revoked, and the revocation should be distributed to MTAs as widely as possible, causing all emails from that MTA to be blocked in a matter of minutes. If an MTA wants its emails to reach its destinations, it will crack down hard on spammers.
The difficult part is convincing ISPs to require authentication and drop unsigned messages. However, if a large ISP such as AOL or Comcast can be convinced to do this, MTAs will have a strong incentive to start signing messages, and authentication will start to catch on.
g_______________________________________________g
o_/_____\_____________\____________/____\_______o
a|_______|_____________\__________|______|______a
t|_______`._____________|_________|_______:_____t
s`________|_____________|________\|_______|_____s
e_\_______|_/_______/__\\\___--___\\_______:____e
x__\______\/____--~~__________~--__|_\_____|____x
*___\______\_-~____________________~-_\____|____*
g____\______\_________.--------.______\|___|____g
o______\_____\______//_________(_(__>_\___|_____o
a_______\___.__C____)_________(_(____>_|__/_____a
t_______/\_|___C_____)/______\_(_____>_|_/______t
s______/_/\|___C_____)_______|__(___>_/__\______s
e_____|___(____C_____)\______/__//__/_/_____\___e
x_____|____\__|_____\\_________//_(__/_______|__x
*____|_\____\____)___`----___--'_____________|__*
g____|__\______________\_______/____________/_|_g
o___|______________/____|_____|__\____________|_o
a___|_____________|____/_______\__\___________|_a
t___|__________/_/____|_________|__\___________|t
s___|_________/_/______\__/\___/____|__________|s
e__|_________/_/________|____|_______|_________|e
x__|__________|_________|____|_______|_________|x
*_g_o_a_t_s_e_x_*_g_o_a_t_s_e_x_*_g_o_a_t_s_e_x_*
The perineum is the area of skin rich in nerve endings that is located below the anus (the opening for bowel movements). For men, the perineum extends to the vaginal opening; for women it extends to the base of the testicles.
Because the perineum is so rich in nerve endings it often feels pleasing to have it touched or stroked. If one is comfortable with being touched on the perineum, its stimulation can be incorporated into a couple's lovemaking to further enhance sexual arousal.
To make stimulation smoother and more comfortable, it is often helpful to lubricate your fingers before stroking the perineum during lovemaking.
As long as the stimulation remains outside the body on the perineum, any type of lubricant (petroleum-base or water-base) will do.
However, because this kind of stimulation is often associated with insertion of the finger into the vagina or anus, or both, a water-base lubricant is recommended and preferred.
The anus is rich in nerve endings & participates with your genitals in the contractions of sexual arousal & orgasm. Anal stimulation greatly enhances & intensifies masturbation, oral sex, or intercourse. A good rule of thumb, when experimenting with anal play, is relax, use plenty of lube (the anus & rectum do not produce any lubrication of their own), and enjoy.
Because the perineum is so rich in nerve endings it often feels pleasing to have it touched or stroked. If one is comfortable with being touched on the perineum, its stimulation can be incorporated into a couple's lovemaking to further enhance sexual arousal.
The vagina is rich in vulvatic sensor spots & cooperates with your clitoral system in the up and down movements of sexual arousal & orgasm. Vaginal stimulation greatly enhances & multiplies masturbation, perienium stimulation, and orgies. A good rule of thumb, when experimenting with vaginal stimulation, is to relax, and use one quart of 10W30 (the vagina produces no lubrication of its own during normal stimulation), and enjoy.
However, because this kind of stimulation is often associated with insertion of the finger into the vagina or anus, or both, a water-base lubricant is recommended and preferred.
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Quicktime has always been buggy for my PC, but that's why I switched to my Mac. iTunes on the PC, however, is just gravy. Have you tried it out?
I just wanted to say that the iTunes Music Store has reinvented how I view music.
Now when I want a piece of music, I have it, instantly. And with my iPod, I can listen to it wherever I go, with no worries!
Bravo Apple, for the Invention of the Year!
Did you know that the crime of identity theft ist virtually unknown in Europe (at least in Germany, where I live)?
And there are some obvious reasons for this:
- Nobody in Europe has mail boxes without a lock. European mailbox are usually flat, upright, rectangular boxes with a slit on the top of the front where the mailman drops the letters and they fall down a slide so you cannot get them out without using either very long pliers or, of course, the key to unlock the door at the back.
- No bank would give you a checking account or a credit without checking your ID card and making a photo copy of it and noting the number. (Remember that in most European countries (except e.g. the UK) every citizen is required to have a national ID card which you show whenever somebody has to be sure of your ID. (These cards have all kinds of witty security features to make them really hard to counterfeit.)
- All laws and courts agree that a reasonbable proof that somebody did make a business transaction is a signature on a piece of paper, or at least some computer record showing that the customer has entered a secret PIN. 'Secret' meaning, that nobody else should be able to know it. (PINs are printed out by the banks' computer systems and put in a sealed envelope without any employees being able to look at them.)
- Especially, if you told a court that a business transaction was valid because you checked the caller's identity on phone by asking for his SSN (or some lcoal equivalent of this), his date of birth or his mother's maiden name, the judge would probably only laugh at you.
While staying for half a year in California, I was quite astonished about the lax way of checking identities common in th US.
(For example, I got liability insurance for the used car I bought by just phoning the company. The guy asked for my Visa card number, then said 'Fine. Your car insurance is valid starting now, i.e. 4:13 pm.' That was great and convenient, but after all, I still prefer the European way, where they'll first ask 'So, how do we know, that this was your credit card number, and not taken from some receipt you picked out of a trash can?'. As the very least they would want proof of your address so that they can send you a court summons in case you tried a fraud.)
I'm currently on page 400 of my proof copy and thought I might try writing a Slashdot review. Fortunately, somebody beat me to it! Instead I'll present the following points:
1) If you did not (like|understand|pretend to get|claim to have read) Cryptonomicon, this is not the book for you. I can't imagine Mr. Stephenson was looking to expand his fan base with this book. This book is easily an intellectual achievement and as such, is written to satisfy an audience of 1: Neal Stephenson.
2) Generally, Stephenson's books are best after multiple readings. If you don't like reading books over again, you should steer clear of this author altogether. Quicksilver is no exception. There is a lot going on and, if the other books serve as guides, you will get more out of them a second time around.
3) After reading parts of this book you are going to want to track down articles on (wikipedia|everything2) to refresh your memory about late 17th century European history. Even so, this book is not "late 17th century European history." This is a book about 17th century hackers and, if you believe the premise, how much and how little things have changed. Either way, this book merits a Companion guide.
4) The sixth paragraph above is a pretty big spoiler. Don't read it.
5) I don't think Christina Schulman, the reviewer, (and despite the Epiphyte reference) made it through the book. The Quicksilver metaphor is important in the first book. The second and third books in the Quicksilver volume go on to other metaphors.
6) don't expect it to resemble Stephenson's prior books in anything but ambition and length. Ummm, I disagree. The parallel story line method is Stephenson's trademark, whether you are reading The Big U, the Diamond Age, or most noticeably Cryptonomicon. This book is more of what Stephenson does best, but in a very different setting.
7) Despite having a proof copy, I'm getting the hardcover of this sucker. Stephenson is worth it.
8) The Real Character puzzle from the website was only a glimpse of what was to come in the book. Given the time and effort (and application of programming skills/OCR) I don't expect to be disappointed.
Bottom line, if you're new to Stephenson, you'll want to try Cryptonomicon first. Quicksilver can be a page-turner but it is by no means a quick read. I usually fly through books but have taken over a month on this one. This book represents an incredible amount of effort and cements Stephenson's position top among the most versatile, intelligent, (Linux friendly) authors today.
I've thought of generating a bunch of legal addresses and putting them on a CD-ROM, to show to my congresswoman with the message 'Here are 60 million of my legal e-mail addresses. This disk is full. How many more should I make?'
I'm glad that this bill is unlikely to pass, though it makes up something like 70% of my mail. We need opt-in legislation, and we need it with teeth. Large and increasing fines, individual grounds to sue, and possibly even the death penalty after some number of convictions; maybe 10?
I run one of the Grand Challenge teams, Team Overbot [overbot.com]. We have a vehicle (a modified six wheel drive Polaris Ranger), a shop in Redwood City, funding, equipment, and people. We're well along; the vehicle has most of its actuators and some of the sensors working, and about a third of the software is running. We're one of the five DARPA-accepted teams.
Many of us are Stanford alumni or students, but this is not a Stanford project.
Our basic technical approach is to build a rugged, reliable vehicle with conservative control strategies. Others may be faster, but we expect they'll get into trouble at high speed. Our top speed is 40MPH. The real problem with the Grand Challenge is not going fast on the easy parts; it's getting through the hard parts.
The 6WD chassis we're using is one of the most bump-tolerant platforms around. It can go over railroad ties at top speed without problems and without going airborne. The center of gravity is low. The front and mid axles have independent suspension; the rear axle is a swing arm. This simplifies low-level vehicle control. All wheels can be driven, although at higher speeds, we will switch from 6WD to 4WD.
We have five computers on board. Three are small PC/104 machines, and two are Pentium 4 machines. All run QNX (the OS for when it has to work.) All are industrial-strength ruggedized units. The actuators are all servomotors driven by industrial microcontrollers. All this hardware is off-the-shelf industrial control gear.
Sensors include LIDAR, doppler RADAR, sonars, cameras, INS, GPS, etc. Some of them are used in unusual ways. That's all I'll say about that.
The pathfinding strategy is indeed borrowed from video game technology. It's more structured than Brooks-type behavior based robotics, and it's less structured than Latoumbe-type planning. There are three layers of control; the top one we call the "back seat driver", because it has only advisory authority over the "driver".
We have road map and topo data onboard, but it's used more as a hint than as rigid guidance. We take the waypoints DARPA gives us (on a CD, at 0430 hrs the morning of the race) and load it in. There's no offline preplanning. Wouldn't help in the real world.
If nobody wins this year, which is quite likely, we'll be back next year with a faster vehicle.
Post questions and I'll answer them here.
John Nagle
Team Overbot
Standardized hotkeys across applications provide a standard human interface for all users.
I should be able to move to another computer and use the same OS in the same way. I shouldn't have to guess at hotkeys.
First, the linux installer must be as easy as windows. Looking at the beginnings of the new Debian Installer, that is a definite possibility. They have the autodetection and the automation down. With a spiffy interface and maybe Synaptic in the installer that's about as easy as it gets.
Second the linux desktop has to surpass Windows XP in usability. They have the time to get this done. Longhorn is a long way off. Personally it would be nice to see some INNOVATIVE navigation ideas thrown around in the mainstream such as unified hotkey standards, radial pie menu in the window manager, and/or mouse gestures for launching commonly used applications (gesture down to open web browser, up for email) and common commands (down+left for copy, up+left for paste, for example). Maybe even mousewheel based window navigation instead of alt+tab.
Granted these things can be done now but not without some footwork. These need to be integrated into a "desktop" linux distribution like Lindows, Lycoris, or XandrOS. Somebody just needs to put them together.
Frequent tasks should require less keystrokes or mouse movement to accomplish. It isn't enough for it to be intuitive on where you should start to look for the document that tells you which clock does what. Less applications. Faster access and faster results.
I know this will cost me some karma, but I have a ton to spare.
/var/run, but I want to run named as a non-root user, meaning /var/run wouldn't be writable. The only configure option is --localstatedir which defaults to /var, meaning it would create a subdir called "run" under wherever I chose to put it, which is pretty stupid IMHO. Slackware uses /var/run/named/named.pid so you can change the ownership of /var/run/named to match the user you run named as.
./bin/named/include/named/globals.h.
A few months ago I tried setting up Linux From Scratch. I discovered that to make it not completely suck, I had to patch various things. It occurred to me that Slackware has already done exactly these things (plus more I wouldn't think of) for me.
The other day I upgraded BIND to the new version which I downloaded from ISC, so I could work around Verisign's DNS hijacking. I ran into a snag: it wanted to save a PID file in
So I popped in the source CD to see how they do it, since I couldn't find a config option for that. Guess what? There's a diff file, and a shell script that patches the source (along with other build options). The changes are toward the end of
Yes, that's right, when I got the source off the CD, I got the original unmodified source tarball, a diff file, and a shell script with build options - not some mysteriously customized source tarball that the distro thinks is somehow better than the original, but the original tarball plus Slackware's modifications - meaning, I can easily make the same modifications to a new version of the source.
Is Slackware perfect? Well, no, maybe not - but that's OK, because if something's not to my liking, Slackware doesn't get in my way if I want to do it myself. I can just build a new version of BIND from source, uninstall the old one, install the new one, and not worry about other packages maybe depending on BIND somehow, or anything else weird.
So, let me join the other Slackware fans here with a hearty "THANKS, PATRICK!"
This, in my eyes, will affect the future of GPS.
No longer will we be able to have a built in LCD terminal for GPS. We will now be stuck speaking to someone, somewhere, asking for directions, help, et cetera.
I wonder if they thought of what happens to all cars retrofitted with LCD GPS systems? Are they now illegal?
"Ironically, Microsoft's efforts to deny interoperability of Windows with legitimate non-Microsoft applications have created an environment in which Microsoft's program interoperate efficiently only with Internet viruses," said Geer.
Gotta love it.
Why shouldn't I be allowed to have my wife, sitting passenger side, connect to MapQuest to help me with driving directions?
Actually I find that american culture tries too hard to keep thier children "innocent". They do this by "protecting" them from the harmless truth. And what purpose does it serve? Maybe pornography will keep some of those hormones back at home, and out of school. There is more good then bad in porn.
1. The actresses make money to support them.
2. Look at other countries and how they deal with porn, and how many rapes they have. I dont think that a sex open society is going to have as many rapes as one that isnt.
3. Its good clean fun. Admit it, we all know you like porn, dont deny. and if you do deny(and your a man) then likelyhood is that your a liar.
Besides shouldnt we be more busy protecting our kids from voilence than from porn. Whats worse, having sex, or killing people. I would like to have any person prove to me why pornography is morally wrong, and no "they will become a sexual deviant" bullshit.
After reading the article, I noted that Windows Media Player is the #1 application accessing the internet. All I can ask is, why?
Why does a media player need to connect to a server so frequently? What information is it sending out? What good does Windows Media Player provide the end user, that it is taking up 34.43% of the web connections?
As someone who works in this industry, I thought I'd share some of the future of telecomm for those who aren't 'in the know'. All communication lines going to any endpoint (home, business, sensors, etc) are quickly moving to an IP based data network. Unfortunately, there are two problems that governments and current telephone companies face:
:-)
1) Roughly 50% of their voice revenue stream comes from per minute connection charges, other carrier access charges, & regulation charges (govn't). These will evaporate when subscribers move to data driven VoIP (ie: you pay a flat fee for DSL or cable modem bandwidth now, and it can run all your voice calls to anywhere in the world). Eventually the PSTN connection part will no longer be necessary, so Vonage will disappear as we know it today, but it has finally woken up the telcos to what the future will bring.
2) Pretty much the other half of their revenue stream comes from the 'premium' voice feature services (call waiting, text messaging, etc), all of which are quickly moving from the class 5 switch into the phones themselves (aka: free).
What do you do when your primary revenue stream evaporates? Fight it in the courts or with govn't officials. Remember, govn'ts have been taking a nice chunk of that revenue for themselves as well.
We will have to move to a bandwidth & quality of service (QoS) based payment style. A minimum bandwidth is given for a flat rate (which will include -all- voice), and extra bandwidth will be provided on demand at an agreed QoS. The higher the bandwidth & QoS, the higher the fee.
Things to watch out for: VoIP everywhere, SIP phones/services, VoWLAN, current voice carriers moving their infrastructure to their IP networks, and govn't regulations dictating that comm lines (called data services & unregulated) become regulated for QoS.
The companies that move to this model last will not survive. They aren't going to like this.
I listened to some of the FCC discussion on CSPAN, and with all the mindless "let VOIP be free" perspectives being spouted here, let me raise a few of the more valid concerns I heard with letting VOIP go completely unregulated (and forecasting a dramatic drop in POTS usage as broadband spreads and people use it for phone):
1. Emergency use:
VOIP will not have the level of reliability of POTS, especially during natural disasters and other emergencies. In theory an IP network can be made just as reliable, but the simple issue of powering the phones is a big issue... the phone system generally has been significantly more reliable than the power system. With a VOIP phone, you're dead if you lose power. Traditional phones keep going.
This may seem like a small issue, but an example cited during the hearing was a major weather-related power outage in California, where the utility determined after the fact that customers were less annoyed by the fact that the power was off than the fact that the phone system at the power company was not equipped to give them good repair status information. People count on the phone system, and it needs to be there, especially for 911 emergency use.
2. Funding and effectiveness of 911
The 911 system is funded by POTS and cellular surcharges. Even a 25% drop in POTS usage due to VOIP would be disasterous from a funding perspective. And remember that when you call 911 from a landline (and in more and more areas, cellular), they know where you are. VOIP is extremely far away from having any sort of location capability.
3. Funding of Universal Access
Everyone in the country has access to phone service, no matter how rural / remote they are. This has been a tremendously important program, but would have funding problems similar to 911 if a big chunk of POTS goes away.
Anyway, my point is that despite how "retro" POTS is technically, it has significant merits that VOIP currently does not provide. I'm not suggesting that any of the problems described above are unsolveable for VOIP, but I think it's awfully unlikely that "market forces" will magically provide the answers. There needs to be some regulation in order that the good in POTS is preserved going forward.
If you can operate your Etch-a-Sketch quickly enough to display 80Hz video on it, then you really need to cut down on the caffeine...
OK, I'm bored, since my office is dead due to the little wind storm going on, so I'll take a long walk of this short intellectual pier for fun...
/.'ers can relate to).
Let me start by saying: (1) Yes, I am a lawyer; (2) yes I think these lawsuits are silly; (3) I don't believe the parents have a very good chance of winning.
Whenever this issue comes up, there is the inevitable deluge of virulent "where were the parents!" and "why weren't you teaching your kids values" type posts/comments/rants. Despite the mind numbing banality of most of these, people seem to continue to harp on about it over and over.
What I find particularly interesting is the attempt to ascribe these types of lawsuits to "liberals" and "the left", and the rabid conservative mantra that liberals have "destroyed personal responsibility." (Like fiscal responsibility? largest deficit in history)
I am wary of these "where were the parents" type simplifications. It seems to me that these are all based on a mythical image of the American Family that is taken straight from 1950's television, and has little (or no) bearing on today's society. Where were the parents? Working two jobs that require 60+ hours a week so they can continue to enjoy the "middle class" life in some suburban development near a semi-decent school. By the time Mom & Dad have come home at 6:00 or 7:00 pm and made dinner, they are probably way too strung out from a 14 hour day to be providing much useful moral guidance.
Don't get me wrong, I support working Mom's and Dads. My family is a two-job deal, but we are lucky in that, because I have a high-priced legal education, we can afford full time child care for our tots. Most parents in the U.S. can't do that.
Meanwhile the kids are sitting around at home from 3pm when schools let out, thanks to shorter school days brought about by reduced budgets. There aren't too many organized, safe after school programs anymore (especially for kids who aren't athletic, or aren't into sports, which I'd be a large number of
Sure, 99% of the people smart enough to read this site were smart enough to separate fact from fancy at a pretty young age. But ask yourself: didn't you do anything stupid at the age of 14 (or 24) that you now look back on and go "whoa...I was an idiot..." The thing maturity brings is an ability to think through the potential consequences of your actions. That's what "learning from experience" is all about. Now, none of us (hopefully) ever decided to shoot at trucks on the highway. But I'll bet a few people here tossed things off an overpass...or put things on the train tracks...or stole a stop sign (guilty)...or any of a hundred things that could have caused serious injury. The kids involved in the GTA case are probably particularly sub-par in the brains department, but they didn't set out to hurt people, they just didn't consider that if you shoot at the side of a truck (a supposedly destructive but not dangerous act) it might have dire consequences if you MISS. (After all, how many of us miss all that often using the sniper rifle in GTA?) So, bad decision on their part.
People are incensed that TakeTwo and Sony are sued. It is descried as evidence of the out of control courts. However, what conservatives never seem to point out is that almost all of these suits are dismissed early on (and if you dig into the ones that aren't, like the infamous McDonald's coffee case, you find the facts aren't as cut-and-dried as you think). In other words, the courts aren't out of control; they are doing exactly what they are designed to do: adjudicate the rights of parties who feel they have been wronged.
One last (semi-random) point. Someone raised a first amendment issue below. That isn't really relevant here. Whether TakeTwo has a right to publish GTAIII is different from whether they can be held responsible for consequences that naturally flow from their decision to do so. (I'm not saying that shooting at trucks is a natural consequence). People's def