I have been having a small back-and forth with PJ (Groklaw's supreme goddess, long may she reign) over just how bad the Microsoft-Novell deal is.

In case you hadn't heard, Microsoft and Novell entered into a patent covenant agreement in which each vows not to sue the other over the use of certain patents that either party might have rights to.

One interesting thing to note is that the technology Novell is "protecting" with this covenant is Linux (which Novell doesn't own).

To me, this is all about the serious mistake that Novell just made and the backlash they're going to feel. Thousands of open-source devlopers who have contributed enough code to give Novell a Network Operating System capable of competing with Windows just got told that none of that matters, but thanks, and now Novell is safe.

Microsoft is only offering protection to Novell as a distributor of open-source software, which means that they can, if they so choose, begin arraying lawsuits against various and sundry linux distributors. I think that if you look around, you can find in the neighborhood of 400 diffrent distributions, large and small ( linux.org gave me 431, including unmaintained projects).

That's a lot of lawsuits, not that I don't think Microsoft's legal department is up to the task. The largest single commercial software maker in the world has ample lawyers.

So, let's imagine a world in which pretty much every linux distributor is facing a lawsuit, or several lawsuits, over patent claims and s faced with having to stop distributing. That's bad...really bad.

I admit that thinking about that makes me a bit ill, and I'm not at all happy with Novell or Microsoft at the moment.

Thinking about that, though, got me thinking about how the players in this little saga are currently reacting, are likely to react in the near future, and how they will likely react to those reactions.

Microsoft, for its part, is probably rubbing its proverbial hands with glee. They now have leverage to use to try to squash Linux (aside from what Novell puts out).

Novell is feeling good, listening to all the right people tell them that they made a good move and thinking that they now have a serious edge in the world of Linux.

Open Source and Free Software developers are swearing silently between clenched jaws and trying to understand how Novell could have done something so monumentally horrible.

That's current reactions, so now we head to the near future. The FLOSS community has put countless hours of work into a huge volume of software that runs on everything from umstick-sized single-purpose computers to massive compute clusters to standard desktop PCs. As someone who has written software before, I can say with a fair bit of certainty that I'd be less than pleased to hear that the code that *I* helped create could now only be distributed by a single company, and that 99.9% of the people I had hoped would be able to likewise contribute to it would not be allowed to help out the way I had from now on. There are a bunch of pissed-off developers out there right now, and they like to work together.

Novell, while basking in the glow of its recent foolishness, will start to realize slowly that if the FLOSS community can't write code under the terms they decided to write it under, they probably won't continue to do it, at least not most of them, or at least not in the manner they have used up until November 2nd. With no developers to improve, create, extend, and innovate Linux and GNU software, Novell will have to do all of its own work (a point I'm sure the FLOSS community will make abundantly clear). So, soon, Novell will have to realize that unless it's ready to compete on its own, head-to-head, against Microsoft, it's not going to be a rosy future.

Microsoft, noticing that Novell is turning a bit green around the gills, will probably seize upon it's easy-out clause in the license agreement and sue Novell (hey, they must have thought there were patent problems in Linux, or they wouldn't have signed the agreement, right). The achilles heel that Microsoft keeps getting cut by is antitust issues, and while suing a single distributor might not raise immediate alarm bells, doing so against Linux distributors en masse would probably be enough to get the DOJ involved.

Just ideas of what *might* happen, mind you. I'm ever the optimist, and often hat means I'm blindsided by the dirty tricks that get played, but I don't think Novell or Microsoft truly realize the magnitude of what has just happened, or how bad it can be to have a collectively brilliant, determined, and meticulous foe actively engaged in derailing your efforts. The FLOSS community is that and more, and I have the feeling that it will soon be apparent that these two old-line software companies have just bitten off more than they can chew.

hope this cloud has a silver lining.

Okay, PJ, our first disagreement

PJ said (in part):

"...I thought I'd point that out, in case any of you think the future for Linux would be so great if we could just have the "freedom" to allow proprietary codecs and drivers or let vendors close rights off with hardware. Please remember that the Unix folks tried that semi-proprietary route already, thinking it would increase profits and market share, and it failed miserably. For you "pragmatists" who say there's nothing wrong with closed, proprietary software, here's what's wrong with it: people don't want it. If you give them a choice, they'll choose open every time. They wanted Unix until it stopped being open, and then the market declined precipitously. End users like open. Why wouldn't we? It gives us the opportunity to modify the software to do exactly what we want individually, as opposed to what some vendor guesses the largest group of its customers probably wants..."

This comment is a sidenote to a comment in the article PJ is quoting from, and it's important because of the current discussion about GPLv3.

If you're reading this, you're probably either family or somebody who already knows about the debate. On the off-chance that you are unfamiliar with the details, here's a synopsis:

• The FSF (Free Software Foundation) is working on version 3 of it's GPL Public license


• The Linux Kernel maintainers generally prefer the current version (GPLv2)


• The FSF is viewing things as idealists, and do not want patent legislation or other legal trickery to hinder the effectiveness of their license in ensuring the freedom of people who use software


• The kernel maintainers are viewing things as pragmatists, and do not want the new license to hinder their ability to write code that may include software designed to limit the way that it may be used

I'm sure I will be corrected if I have that substantially wrong, but that (to me, at least) seems to be the crux of the issue. The FSF stands for freedom to use software, and the kernel maintainers desire a license that permits more freedom for the developers of the software it covers.

I greatly value PJ's insight, determination, and hard work, and she has made me pay *much* more attention to what software licenses say (I opted not to test drive several pieces of software because of that newfound attention, as a matter of fact). I think, though, that in this case, I'm more in the kernel maintainers' camp.

Obviously, GPLv2 has server the Open Source development community well...that's why they continue to use it. It ensures that people can freely use their code, makes sure that it doesn't get stolen outright, and helps drive development resources towards popular projects.

There is a very real problem in software patents (mainly that they exist), and it does need to be addressed. Likewise, there is a very real problem of anti-circumvention and anti-piracy software that makes criminals out of hackers (via the DMCA and its brethren). The freedom to tinker has a long and glorious history of expression in both the hardware and software worlds. I don't think that the kernel maintainers want to see that freedom go away any more than the FSF does.

So, now we come to the disagreements...PJ says:

"...I thought I'd point that out, in case any of you think the future for Linux would be so great if we could just have the "freedom" to allow proprietary codecs and drivers or let vendors close rights off with hardware..."

I don't see proprietary drivers or codecs as being the thing that fractures Linux. The problem that the UNIX vendors that are being referred to were having stemmed from not having compatible UNIXes and demanding vendor support for all of them. True, it benefits many if hardware vendors open their drivers and APIs, but it's the kind of decision that is driven by the market, and if present signs of uptake in Linux on the desktop (Ubuntu, anyone?) are any indication, many hardware vendors are about to lumber in that direction.

Hardware implementations of rights management (trusted computing, etc) are just plain evil, but unless there's effective education for the masses that actually *reaches* people, no one will think it's important until it's too late. We'll all be running whatever version of Windows we're told to. GPLv3 works fine for Linux users, but unless they're in the majority, it doesn't prevent those hardware restriction systems from creeping into being ubiquitous.

It's too early for GPLv3 to solve that problem...Linux has to be *far* more widespread in use for it to be effective at stopping it.

For you "pragmatists" who say there's nothing wrong with closed, proprietary software, here's what's wrong with it: people don't want it. If you give them a choice, they'll choose open every time. They wanted Unix until it stopped being open, and then the market declined precipitously. End users like open. Why wouldn't we? It gives us the opportunity to modify the software to do exactly what we want individually, as opposed to what some vendor guesses the largest group of its customers probably wants.

I think there's a small bit of irritation clouding the most valuable parsing of the pragmatists view. Making a statement that there's nothing wrong with proprietary software does not mean that the person making that statement believes it's the best way to make software, or even a good idea. That statement (again, to me) means that the person saying it doesn't care whether people are allowed to make proprietary software. The reason that it's okay is pretty much exactly what PJ said after the second comma. People *don't* want it. They *do* like open. It *does* give us opportunity without having to depend on a vendor's whim.

Here is one place that I actually see the far edges of free vs. closed meet, in that by taking the GPL that extra step, you prevent certain uses, improvements, changes, and contributions from being made. It's that perverse side of freedom that permits people to create something that denigrates the framework that enables them in the first place.

That's about all I can stand to write, and I feel all the worse for having to have said it, but it's out there. PJ, I hope you can find it within yourself to forgive me, or (better yet) to convince me that I'm mistaken...lord knows you've done it before.

White and Nerdy

Gotta love Weird Al...

:: system76 :: Linux Laptops, Linux Desktops, Linux Servers ::

Cool...preconfigured Linux (Ubuntu) laptops!

Splice - Front Page

Online music studio? Yep.

Launchy: The Open Source Keystroke Launcher for Windows

I am going to install this on every Windows machine I have access to. Hit [ALT]+[SPACE] and start typing the first few letters of a filename, program, shortcut, web favorite, etc, and see it magically appear in a list and hit enter.

I'm about to delete all of my quick launch icons and desktop shortcuts because I don't need them anymore. Probably the most useful productivity enhancement software I've seen in 10 years, and it's free (although I'll donate a few bucks in appreciation...it's just too cool).

It's only a matter of time before this becomes a bundled app with every OS you might encounter.

Telecom tax imposed in 1898 finally ends | CNET News.com

...speaking of the Federal Excise Tax (read my last entry for reference), it looks like action is finally being taken to end the tax that's been supporting the Spanish-American war for 100 years ;)

Evidently, there's still part of it in place (leaves you wondering why they didn't decide to repeal all of it together, eh?), but it looks like it's finally going to go away. One less thing to complain about on my phone bill.

Why Net Neutrality matters...

The issue that the article above discusses is not often cited in discussions on net neutrality...it's kind of a huge secret of sorts.

Look at your phone bill (cell, land, whatever), and find the line that says "FUSF Fee" or "Federal Service Cost Recovery Fee" or some other trivial deviation from those two, and you will see exactly where the money you are (still) paying to the telcos for *real* broadband access comes from.

Everyone pays this fee...it's optional, and the telcos don't have to charge it (they don't pay it back to the government, it's not a tax, although we could discuss the Federal Excise Tax, as well). Imagine how much money that is over the space of the past 14 years.

So, not only are you getting charged for noexistent 40MBps internet connectivity that should be mostly rollede-out right now, and not only are you already paying for your connection to the internet, and not only are the operators of the websites that you visit paying for *their* connections to the internet, the telcos want to charge us all one more time for the data that moves across these already paid-for connections.

Getting angry yet? I sure hope so...

StarLogo TNG

Two of the things I'm interested in rolled together in one: free stuff, and 3d modeling

13 Great Firefox Extensions for Web Professionals

I plan on checking out IE Tab and HTML Validator very soon...that would cut dev time on my pages a lot.

QDB: Quote #4753

The most simple solution to the problem of rampant stupidity I've heard yet...

Extreme Sand Storm

Wow...

Multi-Touch Interaction Research

Several of these ideas remind me of the big touchscreen that Tom Cruise's character used in Minority Report:

Check it out...I think there's something for almost everyone to find interesting.

Net Neutrality Brain Freze....

Senator Ted Stephens (R-Alaska) explains why it took so long for his internet to get sent the other day (courtesy of 27B Stroke 6 on wired.com)...

This is certainly an enlightening article. I understand a great deal about the level of knowledge that this particular senator has about how the internet works (and how internet e-mail works. and the fact that internet e-mail is not the internet...).

Okay, so let's get to some deconstruction, shall we?

I just the other day got, an internet was sent by my staff at 10 o'clock in the morning on Friday and I just got it yesterday. Why?

Because it got tangled up with all these things going on the internet commercially.

So, an "internet" was sent by Senator Stephens' staff and apparently didn't arrive in the senator's inbox until (a day or two?) later.

Why did it take so long?  DNS problems?  An overburdened mail server with a very full queue?  A 5 megabyte powerpoint attachment in the mail message he was expecting?  Downloading mail over a dial-up connection?

Nope.  It simply got tangled up in the "commercial" internet.

That's not true, of course, but it *is* important.  It is important because either the senator seriously doesn't understand how internet email works (and what can slow it down so that it is not delivered until one or more days after it is sent), or he is making an argument that deliberately misstates the situation, or both.

He mentions that real-world businesses deliver DVDs to you, but it costs money, and that an online delivery would be free.  I don't know about the senator, but I'm pretty sure I have to pay my phone company every month for the privilege of connecting to the internet.  I suppose that he might not have to worry about that (perhaps he gets a discounted rate from his telecom company somehow?), but every other person connected to the internet does.

THAT is the most important point of all.  You pay for internet access.  So do I.  So do the companies that own and operate websites that we visit.  *Everyone* is paying for the data that is transmitted and recieved in every connection.  It's possible (not likely, but possible) that we are being undercharged, but the myth that there is no cost to have video content delivered via an internet connection is fiction.  It costs both the sender and the recipient because they pay for their internet connections.

My guess, and this is nothing more than a guess, is that someone explained (very patiently) to the senator how to tell people that the internet is a big old pipe that is getting clogged up by certain undesirable things...

The regulatory approach is wrong. Your approach is regulatory in the sense that it says "No one can charge anyone for massively invading this world of the internet". No, I'm not finished. I want people to understand my position, I'm not going to take a lot of time. [?]

They want to deliver vast amounts of information over the internet. And again, the internet is not something you just dump something on. It's not a truck.

It's a series of tubes.

And if you don't understand those tubes can be filled and if they are filled, when you put your message in, it gets in line and its going to be delayed by anyone that puts into that tube enormous amounts of material, enormous amounts of material.

"They" apparently want to deliver vast amounts of information over the internet, and the senator believes that doing so not only constitutes some sort of invasion, but that there is no cost for delivering said vast amount of information.

We've already swatted awway the whole "no charge" argument (and haven't even touched on the fact that you and I are already paying extra to help our poor put-upon telecom companies pay for and deploy new infrastructure), so let's discuss what the internet might be reasonably compared to.

The internet is not a series of tubes, it is a network, and a fairly complex network, at that.  The internet is most decidely not a truck.  I'm pretty sure nobody has said that the internet is a truck...or a car, or a bicycle (that would be SCO talking about Linux, but I digress).  The internet is a network of networks (hence the name).  Multiple paths connect from one point to other points.  Information can be routed around slow or malfunctioning points in the network and still reach its destination.

As a practical example of what happens when you send a lot of information across the internet (well, a big chunk of information), pick a friend who doesn't mind, and send him or her a large file via e-mail.  While the e-mail is being sent, try to use your web browser and visit a website or two (I highly reccommend http://www.groklaw.net).  Your web browser will slow down, but it won't stop working completely.  It and your mail program will share the available bandwidth.

The same thing happens on the internet when multiple people are using a connection.  A bigger file doesn't suddenly take up all of some metaphorical pipe, it shares the amount of bandwidth equally with whatever else is being sent or recieved (unless the company in charge of the network can decide how fast particular types of traffic or particular sources or destinations can send and recieve data).

Basically, Senator Stephens is explaining the opposite of the truth, which is just baffling to me.  Allowing a two-tiered (or many-tiered) internet could, indeed, place us in an irritating situation where some content squeezes other traffic down to a trickle.  If you really want to see what slow internet traffic looks like, then opting to abandon Net Neutrality will definitely accomplish that.

Let telecom companies decide what traffic goes at what speed, and they'll be giving 90% of their spanking new 40GB backbone bandwidth to internet TV (commercials = revenue) and the rest to everything else (and even then, slowing down or blocking connections to customers from non-paying internet sites).  I pay for an internet connection, period.  I'm not paying for AT&Tnet, I just want to get online and not be hindered once I'm there.

Now we have a separate Department of Defense internet now, did you know that?

Do you know why?

Because they have to have theirs delivered immediately. They can't afford getting delayed by other people.

Actually, no, that's not why.  The reason the DoD has a seperate network to use is that they can't afford to have the typical problems that plague the public internet affect their operation.  The internet has become a piece of critical infrastructure for the DoD, and security controls using the public internet were just not feasible to implement and maintain.

The reason the DoD has their own dedicated circuits is for better performance, true, but they had that before, the change they made was primarily to insulate their systems from attack, and secondly to improve performance.

The whole concept is that we should not go into this until someone shows that there is something that has been done that really is a viloation of net neutraility that hits you and me.

That is, indeed, a concept.  I prefer the concept where we take proactive steps to ensure that our internet providers can't purposely degrade our service without our consent.

Maybe you have to be a senator in Alaska to understand the alternate point of view and consider it fair, and maybe the honorable Sen. Stephenson has Net Neutrality brain freeze.  Either way, if Net Netrality fails, we could all be left out in the cold.

Blogged with Flock

Inside Nathan Myhrvold's Mysterious New Idea Machine

The uber-patent-troll? This is a very important article for anyone who invents things...especially so, if those inventions are a source of income. There is so much that is disturbing in this article, including the attitude of Mr. Myhrvold regarding ensuring fairness in the patenting process, that it deserves additional comment.

As soon as I get a free hour today, I'll put a few thoughts out there on the subject.

Top 100 Network Security Tools

I've probably used about a third of these, and I can see quite a few more that I will definitely use to ensure the integrity of a network or two. Have to make sure they're as buttoned-up as possible.

Polymathematics: No, I'm Sorry, It Does.

This is an interesting item, if only because it has drug a very large number of self-professed (and denial-laden) non-math geeks out of the woodwork to complain about a simple concept. That concept is that .9 (nine repeating to infinity) = 1

The author starts out with a very elegant proof using algebra, which a lot of people will understand, and then follows it up with what I think is probably the most graspable explanation:

1/3 = .33333...

2/3 = .66666...

.33333... + .66666... = .99999...

Now, if 1/3 + 2/3 adds up to .9, and 1/3 + 2/3 adds up to 1, an infinite geometric series represented as .9 equals one.

I think that the typical naysayer is having difficulty with the concept that the infinite series doesn't end when you get tired of writing 9's, and that the number itself doesn't change just because you write more of them. Whether you write a single "9" or two million of them, the number is the same, .9 is exactly the same number as .99999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999, which is the same number as 1.

It's easy enough to miss thinking of it that way, though, so it quickly becomes obvious why there are a lot of people out there that have problems with the amount of imagination required to really "get" certain mathematical concepts, and why it takes a dedicated, persistent, and imaginative teacher to explain things like this.

This article has been linked to on digg.com, and the conversation thread has grown large enough to seriously slow down my browser when I try to read the page.

I have to admit that I'm pretty discouraged by the number of people absolutely denying that it can be possible (There's a warning at the top of the page that people are reporting that the information in the article is untrue!), but then again, math was always a subject that I liked, especially when I am shown something so obvious that I would intuitively argue with, if not shown a proof.

I'd like to give a heartfelt "Thank you" to Mr. Anonymous who decided to share his experience in the classroom and managed to extend it to the rest of the world.

Fire Ball - Photoshop Tutorials - thedesignworld.com

Gotta find out how to do this in the gimp...

Consortiuminfo.org - ODF, MS and MASS: Now you see the dots (and now you don't)

Some interesting insights into Mass. state politics and the old ODF issue...

15 Seconds : Creating a Web Custom Control

For my own edification...

Get ready for a newer, slower internet...

Well, there you have it. Apparently, the enemy has congress firml in its pocket. It becomes obvious that those representatives who were quoted on the "No" side of the equation misunderstand things as they apply to the consumers of internet access.

Rep. Lamar Smith said:

They say let the government dictate [a vibrant internet]...I urge my colleagues to reject government regulation of the Internet.

That's the spin necessary to justify voting no, and if it were a completely fair statement, I'd be okay with it. However, as someone who both connects to numerous websites and creates content that other people access, I see things in precisely the opposite direction.

I purchase a connection to the internet from SBC/ATT. I am not purchasing a connection to a list of preferred websites, I'm buying an internet connection, period. At the point that some bits of data begin to be provided more quickly than other bits, I have a problem, because my internet connection is being purposely degraded. Small wonder that yesterday, AT&T announced plans to quadruple their backbone speed. They're probably rubbing their hands together with glee at the idea of being able to hoarde 30GBPS of speed for private data (IPTV, anyone?) and leave 10GBPS for less lucrative traffic.

Throw into the mix the fact that I have already paid for a good part of the infrastructure improvements currently in place, and we begin to look skeptically at the whole "no more government regulation" bit. It's fine to have government regulations allowing telecom companies to charge "federal cost recovery" fees, but not to require that the infrastructure paid for by those fees (by you and me) carry all traffic without prejudice or deference? Something smells in that equation.

I know that the first time I note any serious speed difference in sites I normally frequent, I will be complaining and possibly changing service providers (not sure if I'll have a choice).

I'm not surprised at the results of the vote, but I am definitely discouraged, both at the percentages of yes vs. no and at the lack of respect that our representatives are paying to the citizens they are supposed to represent.

Bye-bye Fair-use? It's not just section 115 you have to worry about...

Ahh, lobbyists. One individual commented that the proposed bill in the article above is coming from Howard Berman. There is nothing to indicate that he is about to propose such a bill on his official house.gov web page, but he does make some comments on a similar subject (Section 114, as a matter of fact) on May 11th in the House.

It's your typical "The music industry is in trouble, piracy is killing them, let's make it harder for people to legally copy music." speech, but coming from a congressperson, it's disquieting.

Among other things, he says:

People are consuming more music than ever. Yet the music industry is in crisis. The total value for the music industry at retail declined from $14.5 billion in 1999 to $12.1 billion in 2004. In March 2005 alone, 243 million songs were downloaded from illicit peer-to-peer services (NPD Musicwatch).

Okay, so now he's sufficiently framed peer-to-peer services (illicit ones...that would be *all* of them that didn't charge money or track every transfer, if fair-use is not maintained) as the culprit...

Our Founding Fathers recognized that in order for America to be at the forefront of creativity they must support and incentivize musicians to pursue their art by providing necessary protection to these original works to produce a return on investment in those works.

Really? Is *that* what copyright is all about...controlling the legal right to copy a given work? Now I understand.

...we must remember that copyright owners cannot negotiate a fair market price for their works in the marketplace for digital radio, and cannot withhold access to their works as leverage in the marketplace to negotiate for necessary content protection on digital radio.

Umm, what? They can't? They seem to be able to do it with analog radio, and people have been taping recordings from AM and FM stations for years and years. Is he trying to say that "Copyright Owners" (the RIAA/MPAA and its members, I suppose) have a poor business model, or that changing an analog signal to digital somehow makes things horrible for them?

While I am encouraged by the many options, I am concerned that certain features of the new devices turn radio, or performance services, into distribution services. This increased functionality may cause the unintended consequence of bypassing the typical marketplace distribution channels by allowing the consumer to turn broadcasts into downloads. This utility enables consumers to create an unlicensed music library without paying the artist.

Now here's a tiny blip of truth working its way through to the surface. The interested parties Rep. Berman is speaking for are concerned that any digital distribution services they may offer will be preempted by people downloading everything digitally.

The problem with trying to make this argument with a straight face begins with audio cassette tapes, carries forward to Video Cassettes (Sony Betamax, anyone), and continues with recordable CD and DVD media. I suppose you could take it back father than that, if you count performance art, but I think the currently discussed issue is pre-recorded works.

If audio tape was fine, recordable CD's were fine, videotape was fine, and recordable DVD was fine, why the apparent change of heart? What has fundamentally changed to make a new broadcast medium so objectionable, when its predecessors were not?

The bill also requires that licensees use reasonably available technology to prevent copying of the transmission to prevent against third party ``stream-ripping''--the use of tools created by third parties that captures the stream, and then disaggregates the songs for storage in a manner that substitutes for a sale. However, any content protection system must allow for reasonable recording. Most notably the bill allows for all manual consumer recording to the extent such recording is consistent with fair use under Section 107 of the Copyright Act.

If I remember correctly, a well-spoken woman who is responsible for one of my favorite websites has talked about this before (last two paragraphs).

So, since the copyright holder's rights are subject to certain limitations, and repeated efforts to ignore those limitations have been problematic, change the law, I suppose.

Berman says over and over again that the bill "attempts to strike a balance" between protecting musicians (I'm sure he means copyright holders, since the musicians rarely retain copyright anymore) and supporting new technologies.

That's the wrong thing to balance against. You want the balance to be between the copyright holder and the listener...the person who purchased a copy of the music and the right to listen to it and make sure that they have a backup copy of the media. Nice try, though.

United States Patent: 5860074 - Is this what Adobe's mad at Microsoft About?

So I mentioned in my last post that The XPS documents were mostly 2-dimensional, but included layers. Adobe mentions a number of patents that are licensed royalty-free and non-exclusive for use in PDF viewers and publishing software, and one that *can't* be used in software that "consumes and/or interprets PDF files".

I guess that means that the lone patent there can't be used in a program that translates PDF files into something else. That's the best I can make of it.

I think it means that you can have a royalty-free license for use in developing a program that makes spec-compliant PDF files, but it has to only *make* PDF files, but not import, open, or display them. I'm trying to see if I can get Adobe to make that clear, but I'm pretty much nobody, so don't hold your breath.

So, that would mean that without a paid-for license, Microsoft would have to only develop a converter for Office, or would have to make it so that Office could not open existing PDF files, but only create new ones (or, of course, make an office suite that used PDF as its only file format).

I haven't seen that Word 2007 (beta 2) can open PDF files, which seems consistent with what the license seems to say, so I'm not quite sure what the trouble is. This article seems to say that Microsoft is dropping support for allowing saving to either PDF or XPS by removing the PDF option, although it will still be available as a downloadble patch.

For Vista, their decision is even less clear, since there was an option to save in XPS, but not PDF. Microsoft has decided to allow OEMs to drop some support for saving files in XPS format.

Microsoft even says (per the linked article above) that adding PDF-saving support was on solid legal ground, so the big mystery is still just that, a big mystery.

...a bit more on Microsoft file formats:

So, inquisitive guy that I am, I decided to do a little bit of digging around to see how exactly OpenXML relates to the Windows operating system. I initially looked for stuff about OpenXML and Windows Vista, but came up a bit short.

Searching about for OpenXML and Longhorn, however, bore some fruit. Apparently, there's a less-talked-about, but similar format designed specifically for Longhorn called "Metro" (the question being asked is about OpenXML):

Q. Is this the same thing as Microsoft Windows Metro?


A. No. Office XML Formats use some of the conventions described in the Windows Metro Specification, however, the formats are different in several important ways. Metro is a paginated, fixed document format introduced for Microsoft Windows Longhorn. The Office XML Formats are fully editable file formats for Microsoft Office Word, Microsoft Office Excel, and Microsoft Office PowerPoint. While they share similarities in their use of XML and ZIP compression, they are different in file format design and intended usage.

Hmm...interesting. I'd never heard of "Metro" before, but apparently it is a cousin to OpenXML. The next question/answer pair on that page is:

Q. Do Windows Metro and Office XML Formats have the same archiving features?


A. No. While both formats utilize XML and ZIP, they are designed with different purposes in mind. Metro is a layout-focused document format being introduced by Windows Longhorn to allow customers to effortlessly create, share, print, and archive documents. Office XML Formats are new default file formats that will be used specifically in Microsoft Office Word, Microsoft Office Excel, and Microsoft Office PowerPoint to enable more rapid creation of documents from disparate data sources, facilitating document assembly as well as data-mining scenarios.

They don't mention specifically what types of documents you're supposed to be able to effortlessly create here, but then, this is a page talking about OpenXML, not Metro. Time for some more digging:

Along with its new look, Vista is introducing a new Microsoft document format, XPS (XML Paper Specification). Documents created with XPS can be shared with people who don't have the originating application but do have an XPS viewer; Microsoft showed an XPS document being viewed in Internet Explorer. While not nearly as full featured as Adobe's popular PDF format, XPS is intended primarily to speed up and improve the quality of printing.

So, XPS (formerly known as Metro) seems to be Microsoft's way of removing Adobe's hold on easy-to-share documents...that's an awful lot of trouble to go through to preempt PDF, dontcha think? Well, I suppose coupled with OpenXML, it covers everything. No need to use non-Microsoft file formats for any type of document at that point.

There is a place where you can download samples to look at, and as someone who does a fair bit of programming on Windows machines, I was inclined to take a peek.

Unfortunately, in order to download the documents, you must agree not to give any part of the materials to anyone else, which, I suppose, would include posting snippets of them on a blog, so you'll have to go look at them yourself. There does not, however, seem to be any prohibition against discussing the files, so I'll do that. If you want details, you'll have to look yourself.

Basically, all of the XPS/Metro examples are 2-dimensional (well, some have layers, but that's not exactly 3-D). So, going back to Microsoft's Vista app showcase, we look at Right Hemisphere and what they are bringing to the mix.

If you look here, you'll find some details about "Deep Publish" and "Deep View", which are software plug-ins designed to work with Acrobat and Office to allow you to publish, view, and interact with 3-D content within those applications:

Deep Publish™ At A Glance

Right Hemisphere's Deep Publish lets you easily publish, view, and share 2D and 3D graphics using Microsoft™ PowerPoint™, Word™, Excel™ and Adobe® Acrobat®.

With Deep Publish you can:

• Publish 2D and 3D graphics in Microsoft Office and Adobe Acrobat


• View and interact with 2D and 3D graphics in Microsoft Office, Adobe Acrobat, and/or
  on the Web


• Easily share 2D and 3D graphics

Designed for non-engineering professionals, Deep Publish leverages industry standard desktop applications and eliminates the need for engineering involvement whenever complex 2D and 3D product graphics are needed.

Ala "Stac Technologies' stacker data compression software, Microsoft saw an existing application that did something they wanted to do (and maybe *needed* to do, since they appear to have angered the folks at Adobe), and brought them on-board. It's not clear what the relationship is, right now, or whether Microsoft will be making a technology purchase (most documents created these days are decidedly 2-dimensional), but this appears to be a good way to cover a hole in capability.

You may ask why this would even be necessary, and OpenDocument's ISO-approved "dr3d" namespace might be a good reason why. OpenOffice Draw can already create 3-D objects, which are saved natively in ODF format (Click "View -> Toolbars -> 3D Toolbar", if you can't figure out how to add 3D shapes...I'd never done it before).

So, here we have a situation that may well be only at the beginning of the "heated discussion" stage. Microsoft, proprietary software vendor, and creator of innumerable file formats, has a past history of adding proprietary extensions to existing standards.

To boot, Adobe is apparently not all that happy with something (XPS, maybe?) about the way Microsoft is including PDF support in Microsoft Office 2007. That might cause some trouble for the integration they propose to give Vista users with the help of Right Hemisphere.

Prohibitions in what is allowable licensing-wise in present and future versions of ODF would seem to prevent Microsoft from taking control of the standard and putting up barriers to implementation for other software vendors (I'm checking on that, to be sure), so the only real angle Microsoft can pursue right now is dominance through a new, compelling, ubiquitous file format that people prefer to the alternatives.

As long as ODF exists as a universal standard, however, that march to dominance will be a long, challenging, and possibly fruitless path. If I had to bet on it, I'd say that you can expect quite a bit of spin from Microsoft in the near future about any percieved issues with anything ODF-related.

My money is on ODF in this fight, but you can bet Microsoft will come out swinging.

See Windows Vista...all your base are belong to us...

I was reading Digg, and noticed an article about a showcase of 3rd-party apps for Windows Vista. I was curious, so I took a peek...lots of clips of programs with Tom Skerrit narrating.

Anyway, if you visit the link above (http://www.seewindowsvista.com/ skip the intro, not much point in it), click on "Turning Information into Action", and then scroll down on the list of clips on the right.

The second-to-last clip is titled "Right Hemisphere - Proprietary format? No problem!"

The clip talks about taking data from proprietary formats (they are specifically talking about CAD, in this example), and making them available to "anyone, anywhere, on any platform".

I couldn't help but think that perhaps Microsoft's OpenXML is about much more than MS Office, and that they may be trying to position it as the new de facto (proprietary...ironic, eh) format for document exchange. If there is new graphics capability in Vista that this new uber-CAD-format makes use of, perhaps all of the posturing about OpenXML being the best has more importance in Microsoft's grand design than they have been letting on.

Internet Explorer gained Microsoft a lot in the market by its inclusion in Windows, and making OpenXML an automatically-supported format in Windows (to whatever extent) *could* do a lot to gain them back market share...if there wasn't a robust, capable, complete, and ISO-approved alternative in the form of OpenDocument Format.

Download details: Internet Explorer Developer Toolbar Beta

I always wondered what the Javascript Console/DOM inspector cousin of Firefox was for IE...now I know. Handy tool

GovTrack

Keep track of your senators, etc...

YouTube - Aids HIV Bayer

Bayer pulls AIDS-infected blood products in the US and sells them overseas??? This video is from early April, has anyone heard anything about this since then? I know this is the first I had heard of it.

I'll take it with a grain of salt, *but* Bayer executives overseas have already been in legal trouble over it, so I'd imagine there is truth to this story...

WSJ.com - Should the Net Be Neutral?

This is going to be more than a one-sentence entry, just because I actually have a strong (and informed) opinion on the issue.

Mike McCurry is the spokesperson for the group I will hereafter (in this entry) call "the enemy". He has some ideas about net neutrality, and possibly some knowledge about it's opposite...hard to tell from the article.

Craig Newmark, while very knowledgeable about the subject at hand, gets derailed from making a stronger case by some heartfelt (and not misplaced) emotion.

Here's my take on what *should* have been mentioned in this tete-a-tete

The following comes straight from Mr. McCurry's mouth:

...The current Internet is creaky and will suffer congestion if we don't invest in improvements. The network operators prepared to make those investments need to get a return and one way is to charge a premium for managing huge bandwidth content differently. Face it, most users trying to get video want packets of video data to assemble differently than regular email content...

Personal outrage aside, there is the beginning of the bizarre argument the telcos keep making hidden here.

When the telecom companies start talking about the internet being "creaky" and "needing improvement", what they're saying is "we want more money to put in faster pipes". Astonishingly enough, although they collect money every month from their customers (broadband, dial-up, and dedicated internet-access customers) for the services they offer, *and* for the FUSF (or FCRF, or whatever acronym they choose to use containing "Federal" and "Fee"), which is something they "may" charge us all to offset the cost of...drum roll...putting in place network infrastructure.

They're already charging everyone twice, and not only do they want to add a third revenue source (mafia-like...pay up or we slow down your internet) from websites, they have been adding a fourth source by charging broadband users extra money to open up all of the ports (or un-cap recently capped speeds) on their purchased internet connections. Innovation in billing is something telecom companies are historically excellent at.

The issue of whether users want video on demand or telnet or IRC isn't the point here. The enemy could just as easily do some QOS (quality-of-service) magic on those types of transfers as they could upgrade infrastructure. Actually, they already are, as a number of frustrated Vonage internet phone users have discovered. Bastardry at it's finest.

Yes, Mr. McCurry ticked me off, and it's obvious that he's talking in weasel-words (to me, anyway).

Mr. Newmark said:

So, to preserve the level playing field, we need to prevent the powerful from paying people for special privileges. We're NOT talking about regulation, we're talking about preserving democracy.

Mr. Newmark, I would wager, is a crusader for democracy and member of the EFF and other good stuff like that. His statement puts him very much on the side of the little guy, which is fine, just not as helpful as a more pointed rebuttal would have been.

I think he misses a really good opportunity here to frame the disagreement. I don't think the issue of powerful vs. weak is the pivotal issue in the Net Neutrality debate. I think the pivotal issue is freedom vs. restriction.

The enemy owns much of the infrastructure we use to communicate, and they see a way to make money. They don't care about connection speeds unless it's in relation to how much the profit margin goes up at a certain cost-per-node-per-MBPS. They want to make money and show their shareholders that they're good at doing it so they get *more* shareholders.

I get that. Fine. I like free enterprise and capitalism, and all the opportunity that it allows. What I don't get, or enjoy the idea of one bit, which Mr. McCurry mentions, is why they would want to purposely degrade connectivity:

It looks to me that companies are rushing to provide faster connections for Internet users, not looking how they can slow someone down (which would be a nutty thing to do from a business perspective.) Where is the problem that needs to be solved?

He's completely incorrect on this point. I guess maybe it's not obvious to everyone, but to a customer that just paid X dollars for an internet connection, if Google (who has stated it will not pay any telco or ISP for "higher tier" status) comes up slow, that means their connection to the internet is "slow". That's what the enemy wants, of course...they can use that perception to create fear on the part of websites that serve a lot of data to web-surfers and try and cow them into paying the extortion money. It's a huge bargaining chip that they are hoping will help to hold at bay the razor-thin margins they're afraid of.

The enemy *could* charge it's customers more, which would be pretty straightforward, but that would make it look like they were picking on the little guy, instead of the mighty Google, regardless of the fact that the little guy will end up paying for it anyway.

The apparently difficult-to-find (for Mr. McCurry) "problem that needs to be solved" is that of the telecoms continually trying to charge more money for the exact same service. They could build their own search engines that don't suck, video libraries that don't suck, etc, etc, and not have to worry about all that nasty cross-peer bandwidth usage that has caused irritation.

The whole thing is ridiculous, and I blame Cogent and Level 3 for getting all of this started.

Telegraph | News | The truth about global warming - it's the Sun that's to blame

The good news is: Global warming is probably not all our fault. The bad news is: Nobody thought to install a dimmer switch on the sun.

Repairing Windows XP in Eight Commands - Guide - Short-Media

Geek knowledge...learn you some.

Remote control alarm clock project.

Yeah, maybe it's pointless, but it looks like fun :)

Backdoor flaws found in Diebold e-voting machines

Umm...can you say "not good"? Not one, not two, but *three* security backdoors were found in two of Diebold's voting-machine models' software.

"What they're proposing as a vulnerability is actually a functionality of the system. Instead of recognizing the advantages of the technology, we keep ringing up 'what if' scenarios that serve no purpose other than to confuse and in some instances frighten voters."

I know it's silly to hope that he's joking, but that's just plain stupid. A voting machine is supposed to enable people to record their vote in an election and provide a degree of certainty that the ballots have not been tampered with.

I fail to understand how publicly unknown backdoors to the software controlling these systems...systems that do not maintain an auditable hard-copy paper trail...can be called "functionality of the system". If there is a mechanism (or, say, three of them) by which someone may gain access to the operation of the voting machines other than by normal user or administrative controls, that's a *break* in the functionality of the system.

I suppose you can still request an absentee ballot, if your county insists on using either of these flawed models, but I agree with the author of the article...the machines should be recalled and never used again.

Lactic Acid Is Not Muscles' Foe, It's Fuel - New York Times

Well, who knew...I like it when someone starts with a fresh view and helps us all gain new insight.

My biggest problem with this is that it's going to make one of my favorite movies hard to watch...if you've seen "A few Good Men" a few times, you know that the marine who dies dies of acute lactic acidosis...not sure if that pans out anymore.

YouTube - Some girl playing Super Mario Galaxy

Yeah, I'm a Nintendo fanboy...so what? Between this game and the Avatar, I'll be having fun with the kids playing on a Nintendo Wii next year...

ScienceDaily: How Drug Binds To Neurons To Stop Drunken Symptoms Of Alcohol

Future advertisement: "Coffee is SOOOOO old-school. Just take a drunk-no-more pill and you can safely drive home..."

Dynamic Drive CSS Library- CF Navigation Menu

Very neat CSS work for a stylish menu

Web Developer's Handbook: developing web-sites, exploring imagination | CSS, Color Tools, SEO, Usability etc.

Need to know something web-related? Look here...

Kid's Programming Language : Learning is best when learning is fun!

"Math is Boring"...well, maybe, if you're trying to figure out how far apart mary and steve are after 30 minutes of travelling at some certain speed. Then again, if you're trying to figure out if your star destroyer's lazer is going to hit its target, maybe it's not too bad.

Programming can be fun. Video games are quite often fun...bring the two together and let your kid learn the Kid's Programming Language (KPL). Worst-case scenario, you end up with someone in the family that can fix the computer...best case scenario, your kid becomes the richest person in the world.

Microsoft Enterprise Data Center: Data Services

This guy thinks pro-global-warming scientists are bullying him.

I don't know enough about the science to say whether his argument is valid, but it makes sense at face value. Grain of salt, and all that...

Cool Stuff - Google Video

Pepper component hot enough to trigger suicide in prostate cancer cells

So, the cure for cancer is (in part) tabasco sauce...

Chizumatic - Too many words about The Matrix

Interesting ideas...I'd like to hear the directors' commentary about this guy's take on things...

15 Seconds : ASP.NET Mixed Mode Authentication

A bit more on the same subject I just mentioned...

Mixing Forms and Windows Security in ASP.NET

Took me a while to find even this...it's not exactly a walkthrough, but good info, just the same.

quiet american

Field recordings of many things in vietnam...life on audio tape.

Telecom company troubles...

I don't often editorialize, but I'm going to do so today.

A few months back, I read all about a certain disagreement between a couple of ISP's (Level 3 and Cogent) over internet traffic going from one network to another.

A few weeks ago, we started hearing noises about ISP's charging "content providers" (that's potentially anbody on the internet, by the way, not just Google) for traffic coming from their sites to the ISP's customers.

Today, I read a story about FTTP (Fiber-To-The-Premises). I had already been thinking about the first two items and how they are related, and after this new blip on my radar today, there seems to be a general undercurrent that's identifiable in all three cases.

Before I get to that, though, lets look at each story and what it says to the public.

Story 1 - Cogent VS. Level 3

Cogent: A medium-sized ISP that relies on peering with top-tier ISP's to get bandwidth to people who pay them money. Level-3: A top-tier ISP that owns a lot of fiber, and is struggling to stay financially sound.

The stated issue? Cogent is sending too much data over Level-3's network, and making it unprofitable for them to continue peering.

Story 2 - Verizon/Bellsouth VS. Internet content providers

Verizon/Bellsouth: ISPs who have a large customer base connected to the internet, and making daily use of those connections. Content Providers: Various companies (Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, NBC, AOL, etc, etc, etc...any website on the internet) that have sites on the internet that nodes on the internet can connect to and get information from.

The stated issue? Customers of the ISPs are getting large amounts of information from various content providers, and the ISPs think that the content providers should pay for some of that.

Story 3 - Telcos VS. everyone

Telcos (Verizon, SBC, Qwest, Bellsouth): Companies that provide telephone and/or internet service to locations in the US.

Everyone: Just what it says. Well, everyone that pays taxes.

The stated issue? In the early 1990's, telcos said that they would roll out fiber connections to individual residences and businesses, providing ubiquitous high-speed access in the USA, in exchange for latitude on pricing regulations, restrictions on competition, and dispensations. They haven't done it yet.

Okay, so now what?

The first two are easy enough to connect. ISPs want to charge both their customers and the customers of other ISPs for data that traverses their networks. Classic double-dipping.

The third story is a bit different, in that they are not asking publicly, but they are asking to double-dip, just the same.

I think that perhaps the ISPs and telcos (which are becoming more and more synonymous) are suffering from a mindset held over from the days of Ma Bell. A mindset in which they own everything, control everything, and get income from everything that happens involving their systems or equipment. But more than that, they are in a position that makes the prospect of directly charging their customers a price that pays for the services they need to offer a very unattractive one.

We start with Story three, which comes first (and last) chronologically. Promises made...they'll do great things...everyone loves the idea. Reality sets in...it costs money to do...competition still exists...dispensations are not enough to offset the cost of rolling out the program and operating the network. A plan is formed...delay the roll-out...keep the idea alive and hope that the agreement is forgotten.

Forgetting the agreement, in 1991 terms, is a simple task compared to what it takes today. Use some influence on a few media outlets, have a little talk with a few key congressmen, and spin things into a second round of promises. Today, however, the realities of the network (the one that we have to use in lieu of the one promised) and the internet that it enables make that forgetfulness effectively impossible. SCO knows a lot about the collective memory of the internet, and I think that the telcos are already beginning to learn. That brings us to the logical next step and Story One.

Okay, we can't make people forget, so how do we rectify the situation? Find money to pay for it, obviously. Asking the customers for more money is the last avenue to explore, so what is most opposite the customer...what helps us and not our competition? Ask our competitors to pay us. Level-3, while not one of the baby bells, itself, provided a useful example to the bells as to what happens in that situation.

Customers are affected, and ask questions. Breach of contract, deliberate degradation of services, Terms-of-service, lawsuits...there's little upside to disrupting all or part of a service that your customers pay for and doing so deliberately. That pretty much removes option two, which is good for you and I, since it prevents a balkanization of the internet in the US. That takes us to the next step, and Story Two

We can't make people forget, and we can't charge our competitors, so maybe we can cut down on the amount of traffic we have to handle, or make money from "excessive" traffic. How do we do this? Charge website operators that have large amounts of traffic. Our customers are unaffected monetarily, and we can just say "look, that data crosses our network, so they should have to pay some of the cost". This, of course, is still playing itself out, but I think that they'll find (as in the Level-3/Cogent fiasco) that customers are not made happier by the deliberate degradation of services that they already pay for.

So now...

you're either thinking this is interesting or ridiculous. I hope you think it's interesting. More interesting yet is what happens next. If customers don't clamor loudly about slow websites from those content providers that don't pay, then we have a de-facto tiered internet, rather than the peer-to-peer network that was designed decades ago. I'll leave the ruminations on what that means for us all to others who are already talking about it.

If customers do make noise about it, then we've effectively backed the baby bells into a corner. The only places that they can adjust things are expenditures and income. They can fire people, sell assets, or do the unspeakable...they can raise rates.

Of course, there is one very last option. If none of those things is going to work...they're running lean, raising rates will lose them customers, and selling assets just helps the competition, they can grovel. They can go to congress with their hat in their hand and tell us all the story of how best intentions never materialized into fiber networks. They can explain to congress, Bruce Kushnick, the IRS, and the FTC, what happened, how sorry they are, and how much more they need from us in order to make good on their promise.

I don't know what will happen...I'm not a fortune-teller, but whatever happens, I'm sure that we're in for something interesting.

Spell with flickr

I'm so cool...

Science & Technology at Scientific American.com: Study Strengthens Link between Virus and Weight Gain

Wow. So, apparently, there's a "fat" virus (or maybe more than one)...Obesity might be contagious, then? Truly a change from typical science on the subject of obesity.

MENSA INTELLIGENCE TEST

I managed 24 (out of 33) so far...I guess I'm a genius +5.

Numbers: 6,12,14,15,17,24,28,29, and 31 are eluding me so far. Actually, I'm almost positive I know what #28 is, but it's not accepting my answer...how could a genius such as myself be mistaken?

Oh, for those of you who plan on looking at the source code for the javascript to get the answers, don't bother. It takes what you type, converts to uppercase, generates a hash, and compares it to a stored hash value...no discernible answers in there (although you could brute-force a nonsense answer that matched the hash if you had the time).

Windows XP Graphical passwords

Interesting concept...not entirely sure it's worth the effort, but it's definitely interesting.

New Scientist The lungs of the planet are belching methane - News

Normal plants and pectin are apparently responsible for 10-30 percent of world methane emissions...

New Scientist The lungs of the planet are belching methane - News

Normal plants and pectin

are apparently responsible for 10-30 percent of world methane emissions...

New Scientist SPACE - Features - Take a leap into hyperspace

Very interesting article...some comments made me think about the "Manhattan Project" movie...what happens when you use *really* powerful magnetic fields, exactly? Were we close to hyperspace in the 20th century?

My Settop Box

A Myth LiveCD? The easiest MythTV install evah!

Recharge alkaline batteries

The guy who runs this site has just officially become my hero. There's a lot of cool stuff in there.

Jacob's Ladder on the cheap

Remember the old Frankenstein Movies? Remember those two wires with the big arc of electricity that moved from bottom to top and then started over again? Want one of your own?

***NOTE*** Don't even bother with this if you don't understand how dangerous electricity is. You can kill yourself fairly easily by opening up a monitor and not knowing what you're doing.

The Ethical Hacker Network - Anatomy Of A Hack

Good insight on how your network gets pwn3d

Pranks: a competition | From Hermes to bonsai kittens | Economist.com

StaxRip - Introduction

Maybe a good way to finally get my DVD-RW content into an editable format (easily)?

C Sharp tutorial

I'll have to see if there's anything in here worth mentioning...

Freevo | Freevo Download and Installation

Not Tivo, Freevo...

Linux screensaver for Windows

I'm going to do this someday...just because.

Black Box Voting Forums: 12-13-05: Devastating hack proven - Leon County dumps Diebold

Sure...diebold voting machines are secure.

MythTV w/PVR-150 Setup on Ubuntu Linux Breezy Badger (5.10)

Cool. Now all I need is an $80.00 Best Buy capture card...

This is not a photograph.

True, there's no shadow on the forehead from the hairs at the front of his scalp, but if I just glanced at this, I'd have thought it was a photograph. Amazing stuff.

Fedora Myth(TV)ology :: HOWTO (printer-friendly)

C'mon...build a MythTV video recorder...how hard could it be?

Wikipedia Class Action :: Lawsuit [www.wikipediaclassaction.org]

Nothing like pointless litigation to get your blood going.

For those of you unfamiliar with wiki's, Wikipedia is a wiki (a rapid collaborative documentation website) that is geared towards providing encyclopedia-type information. Anyone can contribute, edit, or create articles about any subject...including those people or organizations that a given article may mention.

Oh, and you can also request that an article be removed or corrected (yes, I do in fact think that those bringing the lawsuit are first-class jackasses. They may not be, I don't know...that's just my current impression).

Damn Interesting - Color Photos From the World War I Era

Title says it all...(note that theree was no color film when these were taken)...intrigued yet?

Are Black Holes And Dark Matter The Same?

Interesting stuff...

Rory Blyth - Neopoleon.com

This guy owes me a new keyboard for his explanation of the debate over 720p vs. 1080i HD images. (Oh, and the "i" in 1080i stands for "interlaced", not "interpolatedishness").

ASP.NET file upload example

Just something for me to peruse

Scaryideas

Pretty much everybody who reads this blog is one of my friends and/or previous coworkers...I doubt I'll need to explain what's so hilarious about it...

NumberSpiral.com -- Home Page

Okay...this is just cool. Maybe it's easy to predict where to find prime numbers after all?

The 11-Year Quest to Create Disappearing Colored Bubbles - Popular Science

This guy is going to be rich.

Saving the Net: How to Keep the Carriers from Flushing the Net Down the Tubes | Linux Journal

Hands down, the most important article I've seen on the net this year. Do you ever use the internet? Read this, or else (yes, all of it)!

Type Manager

Interesting general concept...I wonder if it will gain any momentum.

MORFIK - WEB APPLICATIONS UNPLUGGED

Note to self: see if this is cool or just over-hyped...

Ever dreamed of a subwoofer with flat frequency response down to 1 Hz?

I want one of these. A lot.

MUTE: Simple, Anonymous File Sharing

Title says quite a bit. This is what happens when you think about how ants find food and how the RIAA is a pain in the ass at the same time. Much like a peanut butter cup, they go great together...

Konspire

Sounds interesting...it's the "syndication meets distributed download" idea that I heard about before, except it actually exists. I'm gonna have to check this one out.

Stop the MPAA from breaking your TV

Well, they're at it again. Last time around, people got wind of what was going on and the courts smacked it down.

Do your part...write a letter (all you have to do is fill in your name and use the form letter, if you're lazy) and beat 'em down again.

MOSIX, anyone?

Make a supercomputer out of all that old crap.

Uncyclopedia.org

Yeah, wikipedia is a great place to find out about many things, but this is a lot more interesting...

The Anti-Telemarketer counterscript

So, a telemarketer calls you on the phone and prepares to start in on some spiel...do unto them before they have a chance to do unto you. Looks entertaining to me :)

Get 30% better mileage with acetone added?

Yeah, I was worried about it screwing things up under the hood, too. Read this. I might just give it a try, myself.

So I was looking through pictures of Hawaii and its volcanoes, and I see an evil-looking rock.

To me, it looks like something from the heart of Mordor...Peter Jackson missed this shooting location, unfortunately.

Building a $1,000 Gaming PC

So, you're a cheap-ass beeyatch, but you want a solid rig to play Doom III on? Check this out...

Hmm...just remembered what I said about wanting to upgrade to play that game from Offset...perhaps the time is right...

New Scientist Breaking News - Y-shaped nanotubes are ready-made transistors

Granted, this technology is in its infant stages, but at 100 times smaller than current silicon transistors...Moore's Law still has legs.

Offset - Game Design

Three guys working out of their apartment...absolutely incredible. This is the first game (well, not a game yet) I've seen since Leisure Suit Larry that has made me consider upgrading to decent PC hardware (AMD Duron 1.3 GHz, and an old nVidia geforce 256 is my home rig, at present) so I can play it.

If you like games, and think Unreal and Doom are awesome, you might want to put on a chin strap before watching their demo so your jaw doesn't hit the floor...it's that impressive.

If you *don't* like games, but think that the computerized stuff they do in movies today is cool, you'll still be saying "wow".

Check it out. These are three talented guys.

DRIVEY: a road slightly less travelled

Pretty cool for only being a 325KB download...press [F1] after you start it up for some "tinkering".

The Lagoona Nebula

In all it's glory...pretty cool space pic.

eChalk colour perception: This is the most amazing optical effect in the world

I thought this was a trick at first...It's really amazing how our brains deal with percieving colors. Check it out.

Slashdot | Russia's Biggest Spammer Brutally Murdered: " He died after suffering repeated blows to the head.

A humorous take on the death of Russia's top spammer from Slashdot.org...

From a hidden microphone at the scene of the murder:

'You are receiving *WHAM* this blow to the head *WHAM* because you are part of a *WHAM* specially-selected list of *WHAM* people who agreed to receive *WHAM* blows to the head *WHAM*.

To stop *WHAM* receiving these *WHAM* blows to the head, please *WHAM* email us at no-more-please@optout.blowtothehead. com and *WHAM* we will remove you from our list of *WHAM* blow-to-the-head-club members *WHAM* (heh, we said 'club'!) *WHAM* within 24 to 48 hours.'

News: Fujitsu Debuts Bendable Electronic Paper

Scroll down a bit for pictures...evidently Fujutsu has hired Mike Judge (creator of Beavis and Butthead, if you didn't already know) to draw them Samurai images.

Optimus keyboard

OLED keys...no ink...completely reconfigurable. This is a thing of beauty.

The NSA gives sage advice on how to secure your network in 60 minutes.

Of course, this probably doesn't mean that it will be secure from the NSA itself, but it's still a good start.

DIY Projector - Overview

Want hi-def TV at a bargain price? Can you cut plywood into rectangular shapes and find an overhead projector for sale? This project is for you.

script.aculo.us - web 2.0 javascript demos

All right. This is enough for me to seriously revisit Ruby on Rails. If you're a web programmer, you definitely need to check this out (no, not a web designer...a web programmer...if you don't know what the difference is, don't look).