Larry and Scott's dueling ID cards
First Larry Ellison offered free Oracle software to set up a national ID-card program. Now Sun's Scott McNealy is jumping on the national ID bandwagon. Of course, he wants it to be Sun-based. As Reuters reports:
"Absolute anonymity breeds absolute irresponsibility," he said. "We need a thumbprint Java card in the hand of everybody in the country."
Dare we wonder when Microsoft will come out with its national identification scheme?
Cringely: Broadband is dead
I'm typing this from home while connected to the Fusion server over a Covad DSL connection. Robert X. Cringely says it's time for me to give up my broadband fantasy: Nobody was making money on DSL even before the recession hit and now is not the time for carriers and ISPs to keep losing money. Plus:
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Companies that used to put a lot of money into high bandwidth content are putting in less and less money, so there is less and less content available. If you thought it was bad before, it will get worse. Sure, the pornography business is probably doing okay on broadband, but that is not enough to support the whole Internet.
10/11/01
The dangers of Photoshop
So you're at your PC in Quetta or Dhaka or someplace and you really, really want to finish up those posters of Osama for the latest down-with-America rally. But there's one blank spot left on the poster. You fire up your Web browser and scan the Web for Osama photos. Perfect, there's one!
Only in your zeal, you fail to notice that the "photo" you've just pasted in shows Osama bin Laden next to Bert. As in Bert 'n' Ernie. As in the Sesame Street Muppets.
And so the throngs go forth bearing the banner. And news photographers start taking pictures. And those pictures go into newspapers and onto Web sites. Only nobody notices Bert for a couple of days. But now, everybody does.
Postscript: The photo that garnered the most attention was on the Web site of a Dutch newspaper. After the news broke yesterday, the paper cropped the photo to take out Bert. You can still see the original on Bert in Bangladesh (yes, of course there's a page dedicate to it all!).
The dangers of copy protection
Dan Bricklin knows something about copy protection. He's one of the creators of VisiCalc, the program that basically started the PC revolution.
And he has problems with the current spate of copy-protection efforts by the entertainment and computing industries, which try to limit the use of a "work" to a single user on a single device.
In an essay, Bricklin notes that for thousands of years, the media used for creative work has constantly changed. From the Dead Sea Scrolls (carefully transcribed through re-arranged bits of decaying paper) to the Rosetta Stone (translated from rock carving to paper to computer disk), the only way to preserve essential works has been to copy them into the medium du jour.
Without not-copy protected "originals", archivists, collectors, and preservers will be unable to maintain them the way they would if they weren't protected. (Many of these preservers ignore fashion as they do their job, because they see their role as preservers not filters.) We won't even be able to read media in obsolete formats, because the specifications of those formats will not be available. To create a "Rosetta Stone" of today's new formats will be asking to go to jail and having your work banned.
10/10/01
Microsoft mining whois for telephone solicitations?
Chuck Taggart reports getting a phone call the other day from somebody identifying herself as a Microsoft saleswoman seeking to acquaint him with "our exciting new services." Before she could continue, Taggart says, he asked how she got his number:Young woman: Uh ... well, if you purchased a Microsoft product and registered it with us--
Me: I have never purchased or registered a single Microsoft product in my life.
Young woman: Uh ... well, we also use the Internet domain name registry and collect numbers from there, and--
Me: AHA!
Note: You can read his complete transcript, but you'll have to scroll down the page a bit for the Oct. 8 report.
Via CamWorld.
How to REALLY throw a LAN party
Randy Abulon took some exception to our recent reference to an online guide to throwing a LAN party:First, it's not even the first guide to hosting a LAN party, and second, for a guide that's supposed to be the "ultimate", it sure isn't complete.
www.lanparty.com has had a guide that's been around a lot longer www.planetlan.com is a listing that spans countries, and has had their guides listed in more languages.
So there! As I admitted to Randy, though, my gaming experience tends to run toward things like Qbert and watching my residents riot in SimCity.
10/08/01
Good fences don't make good 'Net neighbors
New Zealand has made universal Internet access a priority. But it's running into a problem in rural areas. No, not distance from central offices, but electrified sheep fences.
Seems many of those fences aren't installed quite right, and so they give off interference that disrupts even dial-up 'Net access, Newbytes reports.
A government/industry task force says it will try to educate farmers on the correct ways to install electrified fences and to educate 'Net users on modems that perform well in "noisy" conditions. Meanwhile, one ISP suggests:
If you live in a farming area and can here a consistent pip noise on your phone line then somewhere in your neighbourhood an electric fence in being grounded by a blade of grass. Check the electric fences on your property and those of your neighbours.
How Google adapted to 9/11 news
First Monday has an interesting article on how Google changed itself, seemingly by the hour, to direct its users to the latest attack news starting on 9/11. Somewhat surprisingly, Google says its total volume of search requests didn't really change. Not surprisingly, though, the nature of the queries did (from Britney Spears and sex to "World Trade Center" and Nostradamus).
Via Dan Bricklin's Log.
10/08/01
Web services as over-hyped hooey
Web services is the Next Big Thing, right? Yeah, except it suffers from the same problems as every other universal middleware idea: How do you get two people or companies or applications to agree on definitions. That's the argument Clay Shirkey makes in this piece:
Why shoe guys shouldn't do open source
John Fluevog is a funny shoe company. At least, you'd think so from its Web site. Fluevog wants to sell shoes to geeks and so has announced an "open source" shoe-design effort. Except, when you bring up the form to submit your shoe designs, you have to sign the following:
The submitting party understands and agrees that submission of this design to John Fluevog Shoes Ltd. constitutes transfer of all ownership of the design solely to John Fluevog Shoes Ltd., who will retain exclusive rights for use in any form and in all media.
Um, guys, that's not quite how open source works.
Via Boing Boing.
Online air hockey
If you have some time to waste, get to Electro Air Hockey and play against a computer. Perhaps, like me, you'll be hit with the sudden revelation, 20 years after the fact, that Pong was nothing more than an electronic version of air hockey. Relive those halcyon days, only with better graphics and sound.
Via MetaFilter.
RELATED LINKS
Compendium archive: Week of 01/21/02 Week of 01/14/02 Week of 01/07/02 Week of 01/02/02 Week of 12/03/01 Week of 11/26/01 Week of 11/19/01 Week of 11/12/01 Week of 11/05/01 Week of 10/29/01 Week of 10/22/01 Week of 10/15/01 Week of 10/08/01 Week of 10/01/01 Week of 9/24/01 Weeks of 9/10/01 - 9/17/01 Week of 9/3/01 Week of 8/27/01 Week of 8/20/01 Week of 8/13/01 Week of 8/6/01 Note: Compendium's entire staff took the week of 7/30 off. Week of 7/23/01 Week of 7/16/01 Week of 7/9/01 Week of 7/2/01 Week of 6/25/01 Week of 6/18/01 Week of 6/11/01 Week of 6/4/01
Tracking down a stolen Mac; Dead C Scrolls; Googlewhacking; How bad is it in the Valley?; Storage lessons from the Wayback Machine; The pub-seeking handheld; Internet gang wars; Outlook XP breaks MIME.
Why should iMac owners have all the eye candy?; Luxo Redux; So you think your job is bad; Google as a DNS replacement? Not so fast; Nokia exec cites stock plunge in speeding-fine appeal; The tragedy of the .coms; The Google parlor game; Some people *like* Steve the Dell Guy; Ban all Microsoft attachments?
Dot-com to bare all; iMac Dance; Wendy's remembers Dave; Search engine bites the dust; Wendy's Web site ignores Dave's death; Geek comic strip; Youngest security expert ever; Spam poetry; Confessions of a hacker; Breathless Apple; Dave Barry does Windows XP.
Dropping everything to vote; The best Apple rumors, ever; Guess Steve Case isn't getting into Harvard; Make your own O'Reilly cover; Boosting your wireless juice; Telnet lives!
This space intentionally left blank (vacation).
The most useless software ever; Is Microsoft getting ready to squash PC vendors?; Excite@Home: The Watergate of the New Economy?; No more 3Com Park. Is CMGI Field next?; Are you an e-bore?; This site'll have you coming and going; Entertainment Weekly's loss of innocence; Ensign Crusher as Entertainer of the Year; Oh, for the old days.
The Museum of Broken Packets; Just in time for Thanksgiving; Tourist Guy found; Why virtual offices suck; A domain ruling that sucks; Hacking the iPod.
Why you shouldn't ship computers via UPS; When .Net requires Java; High-tech grafitti artists; Spam from beyond the grave; New group tries to oversee the whole Internet; Paging Dick Tracy; Students use PDAs to cheat; Windaz for Aussies, Newfies; Another alternative to Passport; A virtual honeynet
Bill Gates: Father of open source; Verizon exec: Monopoly is good; Weird molecule names; E-mail: too much of a good thing?; A cluster of one; More woes for dot-bombers; Spam as weapon in the war on crime; Just when you think the Web can't get any better; Just when you think the Web can't get any worse; More proof I shouldn't be a wiseass; Using your Web logs to ID hacker attacks; Help save the FAQs; Who do you trust, baby?; Powerpuff Girls powerless against virus; Big IP pipe between US, Europe.
The profit of turning thugs into programmers; Work Name Generator; A programmer's lament; The world's best ATM; Are anti-spammers killing people?; Web services and storage; Get your Aerons here; Perl for the XXI-imum century; Microsoft's blocking of non-IE browsers.
Government info taken off the Web since 9/11; Beware hackers who talk too much; A contest you can enter sitting down; Now don't try this in the office; Bob Patterson must die; Finally, a useful 404 page; Tech calls from hell; Teletubbies XP; More XP fun; Anthrax and e-mail; Larry's ID card; World's longest gum-wrapper chain.
Let's drop PDAs on Afghanistan; Voice control? Try grunt control; Spam gets back to business; A content-management portal; Share your system tray with the world; Would you let the recording industry onto your network?; Al Queda's low-tech high tech; 9/11 archive; Shoe company gets open source after all; Pod people, coming soon to a cube near you.
Larry and Scott's dueling ID cards; Cringely: Broadband is dead; The dangers of Photoshop; The dangers of copy protection; Microsoft mining whois for telephone solicitations?; How to REALLY throw a LAN party; Good fences don't make good 'Net neighbors; How Google adapted to 9/11 news; Web services as over-hyped hooey; Why shoe guys shouldn't do open source; Online air hockey.
AT&T waives 9/11 wireless charges for some; Shifting gears; Craig Burton on the Novell/Microsoft suit; In search of the post-PC interface; Vibrating PDAs and wearable phones; Gary Condit's Web site; No, that isn't a real photo of a WTC tourist; How to throw a LAN party; How sucky is your intranet?
For grizzled 'Net veterans; UK ISP forced to pull deceptive ads; Pretty Good encryption controversy; Are you as smart as Miss America?; Really securing your computer; Still lots of insecure IIS servers; Kids, don't try this at home; Anthrax Kills; Larry's national database; Nimda hysteria?
Attack and post-attack items.
999,999,999 bottles of beer on the wall; Finally, a wind-up cell phone; Enough with the ringing!; The VoIP calculator; 802.11b insecurity; Hank the Angry Drunken Dwarf explains IOS DHCP; Is ENUM the mark of the devil?; AOL gives user permanent demerit; The Ballmer music video; Cleveland news flash: Y2K was last year.
Re-routing around censorship; Us vs. them in scripting; The boss button; Fighting off the hackers for fun; Peer computing as a weapon of war; Unix poetry; The Windows Fatal Exception Decoder; New Fusion widget: Getting rid of spyware; The sound of 200 cell phones going off at once; Taleban Web site hacked; Hey, sysadmin, remember Sircam?
On the importance of flame wars; Bill Gates sees dead people?; A markup language for grunts and groans; Is Microsoft leaking those Ballmer dance videos?; Good Samaritan not so good?; Steve Ballmer works up a sweat; Open-source wireless cracking; When technology goes too far; Another dumb computer arrest?; Is Cisco Communist?
Moron marketers threaten 'Net users; Finding free wireless access; Complete wastes of time; OS holy war flares in North Carolina; Are programmers weird?; Somebody actually buys an X10 camera; We're number, uh, two!; Those after-hours computer discussions; An entire city running on Linux; Distributed spam fighter under development; Could a Warhol virus infect the entire 'Net in 15 minutes?; Tell AOL what to do with its CDs.
Fusion shatters a myth; Bridging .Net and Java?; AT&T Broadband cuts off non-IIS servers to fight Code Red; Bluetoothless; Tennessee town bites into Apple; And you thought TI-99/4A fans were over the edge; Biometrics coming to your local supermarket; Steve Ballmer a-hootin' and a-hollerin'; Speaking of Web images; Just how far PC prices have fallen; Does Starbucks' CEO get his own wireless strategy?
Crackers getting more sophisticated; Sex and Microsoft Office; The wonders of science, part MXXII; Finally, a useful virus; A shocking game controller; Big Ball of Mud school of programming; Two vitally important new resources; Adobe: Ooops; Eudora Welty, dead at 92; Centralizing Unix administration in Perl; Spellchecking the entire Web.
Worm turns on Microsoft Web servers; The day the ISP died; Cell-phone users have no shame; Even Internet consultants can screw up the 'Net; Symphony for Dot Matrix Printers; The ultimate cup of coffee; The solar-powered ISP; Everhost; Internet VCer: Oops; The Lego Palm and the pink fuzzy laptop; The Microsoft-English dictionary; Putting a loved one in the home.
Saving those all important VoIP calls; This site is a bright idea; Could wireless end messy divorces?; How much will that software really cost you?; Ghosts of failed dot-coms; The spy's guide to securing your Cisco routers; Oprah for Internet czarina?; What's Microsoft doing at an open-source conference?; Like a big pizza pi; Cyber-bullies; Better check your phone bill; Have some birthday pi.
How HP wastes energy to save energy; New toy for the bored and lonely; Weird programming languages; When sponsors are speakers; The case of the disturbing backwards monitor; Congress to ICANN: Drop dead; Yet another video game made into a movie; Smile, you're on Candid (Police) Camera; High-speed hotels; Network Solutions blocking name transfers?
One of the fathers of Usenet dead at 45; Are you ready for insta-spam?; Diary of a site collapse; Skirting the issue; Assimiliating the Web; Trolling for help; Software wars; Rating the rater; True tales from the help desk; How about spam embedded in your mail?
Unix diapers; A beautiful waste of time; A P2P taxonomy; This page is too stupid; Homeless dot-commer bogus?; Whee, Linux is fun!; Blue Screens everywhere; Forget viruses: This fungus eats CDs; Microsoft revises Smart Tags a bit; Homeless dot-commers.
Slashdot crashes the NSA; They may be Smart Tags, but they're not Original Tags; What open source and California wines have in common; Jakob Nielsen no tyro; How to make Windows 2000 really, really secure; Where the Internet begins; A useful computer bug; The clothes make the geek; The end of the Internet; Why PDF bites; Novel use of a wireless phone; Hidden info; When Web sites tell too much.
DSL modems are so '90s; Bye-bye Netscape; Get ready to upgrade those mail servers; The anti-.Net; The real reason to buy a Palm; Anatomy of a DDoS attack; Pain is good.
