random($foo)

Saturday, March 22, 2003

$3/22/2003 09:16:15 PM

More on Clear Channel:

While Clear Channel promoted these as patriotic rallies, the attendees obviously felt otherwise. In addition to waving their provided flags, they also held signs condemning their fellow Americans - liberals, Hollywood, the Dixie Chicks. They were not so much patriotic rallies as pro-war rallies, and not so much pro-war rallies as rallies against anyone who opposes the Bush administration's policies.
$3/22/2003 06:01:32 PM

19,000 and counting: Gorske bites off another milestone in Big Mac quest

$3/22/2003 05:47:04 PM

Sun breaks another SPEC benchmark [via wes]

$3/22/2003 04:44:32 PM

Clay Shirky on Customer-owned Networks: ZapMail and the Telecommunications Industry, Dan Kaminsky rings in: ZapMail Redux: A Response

$3/22/2003 04:42:39 PM

Sharp SL-series Zaurus Technical Whitepaper: SL-5500 vs SL-5600 Differences.

$3/22/2003 04:34:37 PM

Motorola's first Linux Smartphone, the A760 (based on MontaVista Linux). ETA to US: never

$3/22/2003 03:00:48 PM

Root Blog is an interesting blog aggregator that I noticed in my logs. It does what I assume to be automatic extraction of posts in one column, and recent updates in another. Good stuff.

About the "Third Wave" experiment - a writeup of about the first person account of an experiment that a High School teacher inadvertently carried out. Shades of Milgram.

We were studying Nazi Germany and in the middle of a lecture I was interrupted by the question. How could the German populace claim ignorance of the slaughter of the Jewish people. How could the townspeople, railroad conductors, teachers, doctors, claim they knew nothing about concentration camps and human carnage. How can people who were neighbors and maybe even friends of the Jewish citizen say they weren't there when it happened. it was a good question. I didn't know the answer.

In as such as there were several months still to go in the school year and I was already at World War II, I decided to take a week and explore the question.

[Hmm (the rest of the site seems interesting... [not necessarily in a good way]), is it real?] I'm tending to give it credence. It's certainly completely plausible on the psychological/sociological level (just flip on the news, if you don't believe that)... Still, it would be nice to track down some of the students I suppose...

Related: The Stanford Prison Experiment

$3/22/2003 02:36:16 PM

Decoding Visual Language Elements in News Content, Kate Brigham, MFA Thesis

$3/22/2003 02:07:49 AM

Man, dubya looks like a dumbass even in WSJ woodcuts. Guess looks match intent: Bush Dreams of Changing Not Just Regime but Region

$3/22/2003 02:02:41 AM

So, this company called Portelligent takes aparts devices and creates detailed (80pg) reports, which include full components lists/BOM, measurements, etc. Reports are about $2K a pop. I wonder if could make sense for an open-hardware type project for a communicator device?

$3/22/2003 12:01:44 AM

BusinessWeek Online: The Squeeze on Wireless

Friday, March 21, 2003

$3/21/2003 08:19:31 PM

More spirited Danger discussion. Wes has some good links, especially to this EE Times article: Danger's Hiptop: 'Arm'ed and dangerous

The estimated cost of goods sold for the Hiptop is well below $150, suggesting a small net profit given a $200 post-rebate hardware price via T-Mobile. But it remains to be seen whether a device like the Sidekick-aimed at a youth market but service-priced for adults-hits its target.

I paid $273 (after tax, never got my $50 rebate) for mine. And I still can't even install my own applications on the device. Weee. Here's a quote from last June:

"We're not so arrogant to say that we know what all of the killer applications are going to be in the future, so we want to start with a platform that is sustainable."

--Andy Rubin, CEO, Danger

$3/21/2003 08:13:07 PM

Looks like the international community isn't the only thing melting down: The XFree86 Fork() Saga Continues

$3/21/2003 04:38:33 PM

Let the humor begin:

Hussein was baffled by the accusation that he possessed WMD. "I can understand your accusation that we violated international law by breaking the terms of surrender, even though that accusation is false. But accusing us of violating natural law by possessing weapons that violate conservation of mass? That just makes you look like an idiot."

Or for more sobering satire, try The Onion: Bush: 'Our Long National Nightmare Of Peace And Prosperity Is Finally Over' (January 18, 2001), Military Promises 'Huge Numbers' For Gulf War II: The Vengeance (March 13, 2002)

[the NYTimes has an Op-Ed referencing the first article today.]

$3/21/2003 12:47:37 PM

Shocking and Awful

via /.

Presumably, someone somewhere at one point used "shock and awe" when they wanted to say Blitzkrieg...

Baghdad burning

Baghdad burning

Baghdad burning

Baghdad burning

Baghdad burning

Baghdad burning

$3/21/2003 02:13:41 AM

The RAD Video Tools are great. I used this to batch rip the audio streams of Wes' quicktime files because QuickTime Pro refused to export the audio from the MP4/AAC audio track (it just exports the headers, it seems).

$3/21/2003 12:25:07 AM

Interesting comments/followup on the Raed business.

$3/21/2003 12:17:02 AM

For hiptop junkies:

frotz has some hiptop development stuff. bananchunks has some screen shots.

$3/21/2003 12:06:39 AM

Tales from the Two Towers: Victoria U Report - description of render farm, etc. Related: AWN: The Two Towers: Face to Face With Gollum

Thursday, March 20, 2003

$3/20/2003 11:14:37 PM

Right on schedule

from [tvbarn2] (Tue Mar 4 20:54:22 2003) (via jk)

A senior producer who shall remain nameless, at a major cable television news operation based in the southeastern United States which shall remain nameless, told me today with a wry confidence I found quite amusing that the "the war is scheduled for the evening of March 19th."
$3/20/2003 10:43:28 PM

Jimmy Breslin, Newsday.com writes about some Familiar, Haunting Words. (via rc3.org). At this point, I like to think we're not quite there yet, but it seems we are heading down that road.

I asked a co-worker the other day, if it felt like this during the Vietnam war era. I was hoping that perhaps I was just missing the historical perspective and over-reacting. The gist of the response was that it was too early to really tell, although I have personal misgivings about it all... Back then they didn't have the Patriot Act. I suppose history will tell.

$3/20/2003 10:19:44 PM

I still get some interesting referers from the free_culture thing. Here's one: Art and the Internet: What effect has the Internet had on Artists?

$3/20/2003 10:13:58 PM

First person protest accounts up north:

$3/20/2003 09:47:12 PM

Hardcopy - freeware Windows printscreen enhancement.

$3/20/2003 09:42:07 PM

Clear Channel sponsors pro-war rallies - flipping around channels and actually heard the stuff on the airwaves. Hoo-fuckin-ray.

In 1987 the FCC repealed the Fairness Doctrine, which required broadcasters to cover controversial issues in their community and to do so by offering balancing views. With that obligation gone, Morris said, "radio can behave more like newspapers, with opinion pages and editorials."
$3/20/2003 01:47:18 PM

I didn't realize it until right now, but as of this afternoon, our entire team is working on 'war' related web-stuff.

$3/20/2003 11:39:57 AM

Indy News/Commentary:

Wednesday, March 19, 2003

$3/19/2003 11:08:32 PM

Tired of lame-o cellular networks? Yeah, me too. Can't wait for the wi-fi phones. [mesh networks, here we come!]

$3/19/2003 02:39:34 PM

Today, I Weep for my Country... - Mar 19, 2003, Sen Robert Byrd (D-WV)

Instead of reasoning with those with whom we disagree, we demand obedience or threaten recrimination. Instead of isolating Saddam Hussein, we seem to have isolated ourselves. We proclaim a new doctrine of preemption which is understood by few and feared by many. We say that the United States has the right to turn its firepower on any corner of the globe which might be suspect in the war on terrorism. We assert that right without the sanction of any international body. As a result, the world has become a much more dangerous place.

Another viewpoint: Sorry, Mr. Franklin, “We’re All Democrats Now” - Jan 29, 2003, US Rep Ron Paul (R-TX)

You won't see any of this on CNN, although you'll find some speculation on how much it'll cost in the Money section. Can we super-size that? Might be a better value.

$3/19/2003 12:21:12 PM

Interesting that a search for Rachel Corrie turns up nothing from any of the major US news outlets. Here's a news flash, we don't need you. [warning, some images are semi-graphic]

In other news, IOF Assassinate 2 Palestinians, Extend Closure Indefinitely, BBC rouses anger by 'burying' documentary on Israel, oh and courtesy of the Ministry of Truth FOXNews, et al: Bush prepares to give the go-ahead for war.

Tuesday, March 18, 2003

$3/18/2003 11:57:57 PM

Interlude

Despite all I've seen and continue to experience, I still cling to the notion people have volition—that more often than not, no matter how illogical, or stupid, or painful, or hurtful, that people do the things they do because they want to, not because they have to. From all empirical and phenomenological evidence, this is complete and utterly untrue, yet I cling. I'm sure that means something.

$3/18/2003 11:41:34 PM

Car Stuff

The check-engine light on my car went off a few days ago. I had a problem before with some rough idling, and it looks like it's a common problem, probably requiring either new plug wires, or coil pack (this can be epoxied for cheap - will look into it next month when the GTI VR6 Library is back online). My intention was to check it out with an OBD II tool. Turns out a friend has an OBD II to serial cable, which is great, although it's a male connector, which, err, sucks. Looks like I'm not going to get around buying some hardware. The question is whether to go home-made (~$15), cheap (enclosure) (~$90), or whole hog (~$280)

$3/18/2003 10:55:12 PM

Free reports:

$3/18/2003 10:43:41 PM

Mmmm-bop

After Saddam, The Music - surprisingly interesting story about arabic pop music.

$3/18/2003 10:41:35 PM

Iraq Body Count:

The B-2 bomber carries sixteen 2'000 lb. JDAM bombs. If all goes 100% as planned (the bomb does not fall outside of its specified margin of error of 13 meters, and the GPS guidance system is not foiled by a $50 radio jammer kit, easily purchased), then here is what one such bomb does :

The B-2s will be used upon targets within Baghdad.

$3/18/2003 10:38:19 PM

Technical trends bode well for KM: on KM and blogging, file with Steven Johnson's Google's Memory Upgrade

$3/18/2003 10:23:40 PM

Mike's Message:

As Bill Maher said last week, how bad do you have to suck to lose a popularity contest with Saddam Hussein?

It's not all snark, but there are some great zingers, as well as some genuinely thoughtful points. Worth a read.

Finally, we love France. Yes, they have pulled some royal screw-ups. Yes, some of them can be pretty damn annoying. But have you forgotten we wouldn't even have this country known as America if it weren't for the French? That it was their help in the Revolutionary War that won it for us? That our greatest thinkers and founding fathers -- Thomas Jefferson, Ben Franklin, etc. -- spent many years in Paris where they refined the concepts that lead to our Declaration of Independence and our Constitution? That it was France who gave us our Statue of Liberty, a Frenchman who built the Chevrolet, and a pair of French brothers who invented the movies? And now they are doing what only a good friend can do -- tell you the truth about yourself, straight, no b.s. Quit pissing on the French and thank them for getting it right for once. You know, you really should have traveled more (like once) before you took over. Your ignorance of the world has not only made you look stupid, it has painted you into a corner you can't get out of.

More pro-france: Maciej compares French vs American school lunches at Idlewords, Dinekes' Anthropology Blog: The Case for the French

$3/18/2003 10:22:01 PM

RowBoat has an post rating mechanism, which seems like a good idea, but well, in practice doesn't work that well. The first problem is that you have to read the link before you can really rate the post, but when you follow the link you either leave the page, or make a new tab, and then have to go back and find where it was linked from to rate. The second is the rating isn't actioning via remote scripting or anything, it reloads the entire page. The latter is easily solvable, but the former isn't quite so. My first thoughts were to use a bookmarklet or sidebar, but you'd need some dedicated readers to install those. Surrounding frames are out of the question because... er, they suck, and ... well, that's about it for options that I can think of offhand. Next page (I've been spending the past while now clearing out my browser/blogging queue - this is why I shouldn't blog).

$3/18/2003 10:07:27 PM

About the search box: IE users get an unstyled search box/button because it doesn't support CSS2 attribute value selectors. Sorry kids, that's how the cookie browser crumbles.

$3/18/2003 09:59:57 PM

BASH your head in

BASH has no do while looping, so you have to do something fugly to write a one-liner that will run a command until it finishes successfully (run it first, then loop):

mirrormusic; until [ $? -eq 0 ]; do mirrormusic; done;

This is required when I'm rsyncing because my POS Linksys cable modem intermittently causes SSH to die with a 'Corrupted MAC on input.' error.

$3/18/2003 09:53:23 PM

SARS news: Killer virus identified, member of the Paramyxoviridae family. [via boingboing]

$3/18/2003 09:27:38 PM

Ok, glad I'm not alone (my 2 cents) on this Hiptop SDK thing. Unfortunately I don't don't think Danger's going to get the chance for someone to release an OSS hiptop; they're gonna get smushed before then. See me ringing bells back in January on the developer forums. And just think, when last year, it seemed like Danger got it. Danger! You DON'T GET IT! Danger!

$3/18/2003 09:15:27 PM

Getting custom stickers printed?

$3/18/2003 09:07:05 PM

First thought as I see the pictures on McDonald's wi-fi: frickin' awesome. Second thought: I wonder if he's using a secure tunnel. I haven't gotten to thinking about what the grease is doing to his arteries yet.

$3/18/2003 08:47:09 PM

Reason enough to sign up for as a Danger developer: the SDK examples includes a program called 'terminal', a telnet and ssh client.

$3/18/2003 08:43:07 PM

crim thinks developer dollars are a good idea:

I know many other professional development products (think filemaker, web objects, etc.) don't have publically accessible support forums maintained by their own staff. You need to have a registered version of the product to get that support. This is sort-of the same idea, but they're giving us a lot more.

Now, what's interesting is that when you compare, say the two products he mentions, which have small/limited support, there are some common elements, when compared to their more succesful and open competitors (say, MySQL and PHP respectively):

  1. The open communities are much more robust
  2. These communities sustain larger growth
  3. Gain superior mindshare
  4. and community support/contributions
  5. As a result the respective products are of higher quality

Is Danger a dead-end? Time will tell, I suppose.

$3/18/2003 08:06:01 PM

It's been awfully windy the past few days. Speaking of wind, last week I was doing some research after reading the Wired article on Hydrogen power, toying with the idea of wind farming.

Facts:

Investing:

Misc / DIY

$3/18/2003 07:52:33 PM

Danger has finally got their SDK sorta released. The website is buggy as all get-out (took about 6 times to signup, as WebObjects barfs if you have an address line longer than 32 characters [wow, this input stuff sure is rocket science!]). Also, you start out at Level 0 access, which, well gives you access to some docs. A danger rep posts on the forums for the reasoning.

First thoughts? If Danger is going to limit distribution of apps to 5 OTA / USB, they're are going to be pounded into submission compared to palm and wince devices that can beam each other (wow, IR ports that actually work) or net downloads. First Program? Create a loader app to allow programs to be downloaded from the Net. And if the DangerOS really is insecure, well, if you can't write a proper sandbox, you're probably not in the right business.

[update] I'm now Level 1. The site is impossible to navigate due to pages lacking navigation and all the pages breaking the back button. Also, there's a 'Developer Dollars' system whereby "tokens that can be traded for advice, shared code, ideas or booty." This seems like a bad idea.

Monday, March 17, 2003

$3/17/2003 11:37:25 PM

The EE geeks are out in full force on the Building Your Own Glowing Cyber-Balls /. thread. Some pretty cool conversation.

$3/17/2003 10:57:56 PM

So, here's a little tale. I'm trying to use Aaron Boodman's labels.js w/ my newly reinstated search box. But oddly enough, while it seems to mostly work, for some reason, the label isn't being hidden. This seems odd since I'm not getting any errors with the insertRule/addRule.

So, what's going on? Jesse pointed out something pretty obvious, but that had totally escaped my attention, which is that Aaron's code is hard-coded to append rules to the last stylesheet (document.styleSheets[document.styleSheets.length-1]), which in my case, happens to be an alternate stylesheet. The ideal way to fix this is to add a new stylesheet, however there's no standard way to do it.

What Jesse does for his bookmarklets that deal w/ styles is to use JS to create link/style nodes. Which is fine, except I'm lazy and I don't want to bother with writing the branching code, so I did the easiest thing and wrote a for loop to add the style to all of the stylesheets.

for(i=0; i<document.styleSheets.length; i++) {
  var s = document.styleSheets[i];
  addStyleRule(s, "label", "position:absolute; visibility:hidden;");
}

[in Moz at least, you can query the styleSheet.disabled property to see which sheets are active, but, well, if you're looping anyway...]

$3/17/2003 09:37:52 PM

I finally got around to setting up ASPseek. I wasn't able to get the PHP extension to running, but hey, it works, you can sort of search for stuff. I'm still still waiting for a search engine (err, Google?) that understands permalinks.

Feel free to give it a whirl, you might find something interesting. For example, I just did a random search and found an old OpenGL presentation I did back in Spring 1998. Surprisingly, the OpenGL demo still runs. Hmm... for some reason the acknowledgements are missing, but here's a page on my former roommate's GL Setup code I used.

$3/17/2003 08:00:11 PM

The last of these type of posts for a while I think. At this point, it's just beating a dead horse. It'll be interesting to see the eventual geo-political fallout from the Bush Doctrine (correction, not pre-emptive, but preventive strike). A co-worker made a good point today, that it would take decades to repair international relations. Somehow, in a few decades, I doubt it'll much matter. At this rate, by we'll have long lost both our social relevance and technological dominance. It's a shame that we're also giving up our civil rights and founding principles in the same shot.

Of course, when the shooting starts, it'll be a whole different ball-game. We'll see, I suppose. I'll just leave off this topic with something Rafe just wrote, which sums up my feelings and happens (if it is possible?) to be simultaneously succinct and eloquent.

I've given both sides of the debate very serious consideration, and unlike most neocons and warmongers, I've actually read The Threatening Storm. What I found today when I heard a reporter on the radio talking about how people in Baghdad were lining up at pharmacies to get all the medicine they can and filling up their cars with gas for all the good it will do is that my reaction against this war is a lot more visceral than I would have imagined. I grew up on the Gulf coast, and I can remember what it was like when we heard there was a hurricane coming. We did what we could and hoped against hope that the coming destruction would miss us, and it always did. What must it be like to be in a city in Iraq right now? You know the destruction is coming, and you know that the only thing that will save you now is luck.

I sit here in America, and I ponder the fact that we're the people who are about to inflict that on another country. Not because they've attacked us, and not because they're preparing to attack us, but because they might possibly attack us. I won't argue with anyone who says that Saddam Hussein is a brutal, oppressive dictator who deserves whatever fate befalls him, but there are literally millions of people who are about to stop being Saddam Hussein's victims and start being our victims. The United States is about to be the disaster that befalls them. And when I look at President Bush, Donald Rumsfeld, and their ghoulish set of war-loving minions, I don't think they appreciate the gravity of that.

$3/17/2003 07:30:25 PM

Proud to Be an Amerikan

So speaking of scary stuff, I have another 'traumatic experience' while watching the news at SXSW moment to relate (note, I didn't spend all of SXSW in front of the boob tube, both this and the CNN Crossfire thing were caught flipping the news channels for about 15 minutes before the Bruce Sterling party [and before I found and vegged on the really bad original Buffy movie on HBO before taking off]).

CNN had a live performance from some country singer with a 'controversial' new song, where he sang all kinds of mawkish jingoistic whatnot to slow-motion 9/11 footage. It gets you right there, if you know what I mean. After mentioning it to a friend, I looked it up, and via some slight google-fu, found the guy in some writeups, David Worley.

Here's an RM for you're aural pleasure. Oh, and the lyrics, you'll love this (if you're using IE, give Jesse's paren_tips bookmarklet a try):

'Have You Forgotten?' lyrics
Verse

I hear people saying we don't need this war
I say there's some things worth fighting for
What about our freedom and this piece of ground
We didn't get to keep 'em by backing down
They say we don't realize the mess we're getting in
Before you start your preaching let me ask you this my friend

Chorus

Have you forgotten how it felt that day?
To see your homeland under fire
And her people blown away
Have you forgotten when those towers fell?
We had neighbors still inside going thru a living hell
And you say we shouldn't worry 'bout bin Laden
Have you forgotten?

Verse

They took all the footage off my T.V.
Said it's too disturbing for you and me
It'll just breed anger that's what the experts say
If it was up to me I'd show it everyday
Some say this country's just out looking for a fight
After 9/11 man I'd have to say that's right

Repeat chorus
Bridge

I've been there with the soldiers
Who've gone away to war
And you can bet that they remember
Just what they're fighting for

Chorus 3

Have you forgotten all the people killed?
Some went down like heros in that Pennsylvania field
Have you forgotten about our Pentagon?
All the loved ones that we lost and those left to carry on
Don't you tell me not to worry about bin Laden
Have you forgotten?

Tag

Have you forgotten?
Have you forgotten?

Wow, can you say it with me? Wow. I think it speaks for itself.

$3/17/2003 06:59:20 PM

if wishes were fishes

Honestly, tell me you didn't think the exact same thing when you read the headline

$3/17/2003 01:31:54 PM

Aaron put up a new article on How to Do Live Streaming, piping esdrec to lame to ssh. A nice howto that also mentions how esd can be finicky (as I've used it more, I seem to be encountering it more. I use a df to make sure it's actually initialized and outputting correctly - also, even the latest patches don't play nice with the iMic, hence no cool binaural SXSW recordings).

Related: last year's oscon recording post, oscon 2002 recordings, record shell script

$3/17/2003 09:09:26 AM

On Medblogs

Got an incoming link (good SARS followup going on) this morning from someone mentioning medlogs. Obviously I haven't been keeping up.

$3/17/2003 12:26:08 AM

The Danger Zone: An Unofficial Development Site for the Danger Hiptop

Sunday, March 16, 2003

$3/16/2003 11:56:53 PM

holy crap

via boingboing: first person account of SARS (freaky super-pneumonia).

Related: Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), Google News: SARS

$3/16/2003 07:20:21 PM

Whenever I get a friend sending me articles like this, Gold Standard = Fiat in Disguise, I find myself wishing that I had learned more about macro-economics. Of course, talking to my brother and other business degree grads, it seems that fiat systems aren't discussed much in class either.

Unfortunately, Google isn't much help either, as the search results more often than not turns up just short of (or beyond) loony, ultra-libertarian, chicken-little screeds. Of course, it's enough to get one deeply worried, especially when taking a good look at the cold, hard numbers (more fun all over).

Here are a few links that I've gathered that seem fairly balanced on the topic:

$3/16/2003 06:30:30 PM

On the trailing edge

Giving Source Tags & Codes a good re-listen, and am digging it much more than the first time. Same thing happened w/ the Interpol album. I'd pick up a copy of Source Tags right now, but Interscope is an RIAA member (Yes, this does actually affect my purchasing decisions [of course, my end of the year EFF contributions as well]).

Luckily I've acquired a few tracks to keep me otherwise occupied this past week. A former coworker plays drums for an Austin band called Halley. They played at La Zona Rosa after this year's 20x2, and were pretty rockin' live. They're album is great (where to buy it), with this great post-rocky type feel. Here's a track from that's been in rotation:

Also, I picked up a copy of Scott Andrew's American Thing EP (MP3's at his site). I'm ferverntly awaiting some more script rock (although hopefully, with a sing-along chorus).

$3/16/2003 02:46:51 PM