Sysloggin' one day at a time.
A very poignant article by Mark Bernstein with blogging becoming increasingly popular.
Link: 10 Tips on Writing the Living Web
The brief list
1. Write for a reason
2. Write often
3. Write tight
4. Make good friends
5. Find good enemies
6. Let the story unfold
7. Stand up, speak out
8. Be sexy
9. Use your archives
10. Relax!
For years, I’ve been teasing people I know — particularly my girlfriend — about their occasional inability to make a (simple) decision. Well, this may go a long way towards explaining why those seemingly simple decisions aren’t simple at all to some people. At the same time and more or less to myself, because I never really thought about how to articulate it, I’ve suspected that the “too much choice” issue was a big part of the problems in western (I’ll add capitalist) societies.
Quoted from The tyranny of too much choice:
An article in Scientific American, titled The Tyranny of Choice has sparked a considerable debate on the web about the problems faced by western societies as a result of too much choice. In fact the idea is a very old one, I came cross it years ago but it is not mentioned very often by your every day Happiness literature which tends to talk more about internal changes that people can make to the way they think rather than factors from their external environment.
You can sum up the material prior to this article as follows:
Click the link above to read the rest of the article at the original author’s site.
I was flying from Denver to Oakland, CA last June. In the post-takeoff announcement, we were told by the flight attendant:
“For security reasons, passengers must use the lavatories in their section of the aircraft. First class has two lavatories at the front of the cabin; coach has two lavatories in the rear of the plane. Thank you for your cooperation.”
For security reasons!? The lavatory? Like the “bombs” dropped in first class are somehow more secure than those in coach class. We have executive poop now? Chief Pooping Officer? Vice Poopident? Ahem, sorry. The fumes… got to me.
Where’s Bruce Schneier when you need him. Sheesh.
My results. It’s odd, my g/f and I were just having a discussion earlier today and she referred to some group of people as hippies; what she didn’t know was, I rather identified with that group.
20 questions.
Wackiness: 34/100
Rationality: 50/100
Constructiveness: 60/100
Leadership: 50/100
You are a SECF–Sober Emotional Constructive Follower. This makes you a Hippie.
You are passionate about your causes and steadfast in your commitments. Once you’ve made up your mind, no one can convince you otherwise. Your politics are left-leaning, and your lifestyle choices decidedly temperate and chaste.
You do tremendous work when focused, but usually you operate somewhat distracted. You blow hot and cold, and while you normally endeavor on the side of goodness and truth, you have a massive mean streak which is not to be taken lightly. You don’t get mad, you get even.
Please don’t get even with this web site.
In Article 2b4asr$b7r@syzygy.socs.uts.edu.au, mjcherka@socs.uts.EDU.AU
(Mark J Cherkas) wrote:
-
- I am new to this group so bear with this beginners question:
- Why is the answer 42 ?
- Has Douglas Adams ever explained this ?
-
-The answer to this is very simple. It was a joke. It had to be a number, an ordinary, smallish number, and I chose that one. Binary representations, base thirteen, Tibetan monks are all complete nonsense. I sat at my desk, stared into the garden and thought ’42 will do’ I typed it out. End of story.
Best,
Douglas Adams London, UK | dna@dadams.demon.co.uk (dormant) Currently in Santa Fe, NM | adamsd@nic.cerf.net (current)
(Mirrored here in case the original goes away. Apologies to the authors.)
Link: static.thepiratebay.org…
Edited slightly to remove the binary characters around ”DreamWorks” and ”Shrek 2”.
Date: Sat, 21 Aug 2004 18:21:43 -0100 (GMT)
From: anakata
To: KMWLAW@flash.net
Subject: Re: Unauthorized Use of DreamWorks SKG PropertiesOn Mon, 23 Aug 2004 KMWLAW@flash.net wrote:
> Dennis L. Wilson, Esq.
> KEATS McFARLAND & WILSON, LLP
> 9720 Wilshire Blvd., Penthouse Suite
> Beverly Hills, CA 90212
> Tel: (310) 248-3830
> Fax: (310) 860-0363
>
>
> August 23, 2004
>
>
> VIA ELECTRONIC MAIL
> AND U.S. MAIL
>
> ThePirateBay.org
> Box 1206
> Stockholm 11479
> SWEDEN
>
> tracker-40-aa-5f-03-412675c8@prq.to
>
> Re: Unauthorized Use of DreamWorks SKG Properties
> http://www.thepiratebay.org
>
> To Whom It May Concern:
>
> This letter is being written to you on behalf of our
> client, DreamWorks SKG (hereinafter DreamWorks).
> DreamWorks is the exclusive owner of all copyright,
> trademark and other intellectual property rights in
> and to the Shrek 2 motion picture. No one is
> authorized to copy, reproduce, distribute, or
> otherwise use the Shrek 2 motion picture without
> the express written permission of DreamWorks.
(. . .)
> As you may be aware, Internet Service Providers can
> be held liable if they do not respond to claims of
> infringement pursuant to the requirements of the
> Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). In
> accordance with the DMCA, we request your assistance
> in the removal of infringements of the Shrek 2
> motion picture from this web site and any other sites
> for which you act as an Internet Service Provider.
> We further declare under penalty of perjury that we
> are authorized to act on behalf of DreamWorks and
> that the information in this letter is accurate.
> Please contact me immediately to discuss this matter
> further.As you may or may not be aware, Sweden is not a state in the United States
of America. Sweden is a country in northern Europe.
Unless you figured it out by now, US law does not apply here.
For your information, no Swedish law is being violated.Please be assured that any further contact with us, regardless of medium,
will result in
a) a suit being filed for harassment
b) a formal complaint lodged with the bar of your legal counsel, for
sending frivolous legal threats.It is the opinion of us and our lawyers that you are fucking morons, and
that you should please go sodomize yourself with retractable batons.Please also note that your e-mail and letter will be published in full on
Go fuck yourself.
Polite as usual,
anakata
This is completely friggin’ bizarre and sad . . . and probably what’ll happen to me for posting this.
Man lay dead in bed for two years
Condo fees and bills were still being paid
Body finally found in mummified state
Link: www.codesandciphers.org…
Link: www.codesandciphers.org…
Despite what the history books say, the ENIAC was not the first digital computer in the world; the COLOSSUS was, but since it was developed secretly during World War II, the British (those that knew about it) have had to suck it up whenever we Yanks touted our (false) superiority. Until the 1970s, when details of the machine’s existence were made public. Of course, none of the textbooks used to teach American students has been changed to reflect reality, at least when I was going to school.
Unfortunately, all the hard-copy schematics of the machine were destroyed in 1960, except for a few drawings, kept illegally by engineers, which were divulged during the rebuild project in the 1990s. The rebuild was started based on eight! photographs of the machine and a handful of grey-matter recollections. In 1995, the NSA in the US was forced by a Freedom of Information Act request to declassify 5,000 documents pertaining to the Colossus. Several of these documents were helpful in rebuilding the machine; one in particular, written by Albert Small, thoroughly described how Colossus worked and enabled a significant amount of progress in replicating many of the mechanisms of the machine. Colossus is estimated to be about 90% rebuilt now and there’s work begun to rebuild the Colossus Mk II and the Tunny machine.
If you’ve read Neal Stephenson’s Cryptonomicon and enjoyed it, you have to read about this. I’m personally fascinated with the early days of cryptanalysis and how it helped to birth the digital computer age. It’s absolutely amazing what was engineered and built before the advent of the transistor (which is to say, before I was born). I’m sure some will be loathe to read it, but this is one example of something non-violent that Hitler caused to happen, by his clever use of large-scale machine-based encryption, which undoubtedly precipitated the computerized world we now live in — or maybe that’s just my naïveté showing.
World War II Codes and Ciphers info:
Link: www.codesandciphers.org…
Link: digitalmedia.oreilly.com…
A good article on the subject, but…
I’ve tried doing panoramic shots; I’ve tried really hard. With a camera with an off-center tripod mount; with one that’s in-line with the lens; and without a tripod at all.
The problem is parallax, and I have yet to see any decent how-to for panoramic shots that even mentions the word, nevermind instructing one how to avoid or minimize it. Panoramas are great for landscapes and such but what if your subject has long horizontal lines (for example, stairs) in the foreground and you can’t physically move to compensate? Or, what if you have, instead of horizontal lines, regularly repeating vertical lines (for example, lightposts) — heaven forbid you have both at once. The lightposts themselves aren’t the problem, but they tend to move against the background as the position of the camera changes in each shot. I spent over an hour in the Memorial Church courtyard at Stanford on each of two mornings trying different techniques to capture the place but was foiled by one or both of these problems (depending on the technique).
Maybe it’s just the “perfect” sample photos you see with articles about these things and that they purport to make the process simple and easy. Fine, and they’re accurate to an extent. But next time, let’s have a little paragraph on how to avoid choosing a less-than-good subject, okay? Extra credit if you include a sentence using the word parallax to describe part of what you’re avoiding.
Oh yeah, I’m there… :)
MSRP $1499 (10D was $1999; street price was $1499)
Startup time reduced from 2.3 seconds to 0.2 seconds. W00t!
…and that’s just the beginning of the improvements.
Details in the press release (and lots of them!):
Link: www.imaging-resource.com…
Sample pictures (details unknown):
Link: www.canon.co.jp/Imaging/eos20d/eos20d_sample-e.html…
Scare quotes, oh my!
Link: www.suck.com…
Scare quotes are the quotation marks found around phrases like “gangsta rap,” “shame spiral,” or “security zone”: coinages that may be lingo, that may be jargon, that may even be slang but are more likely excuses where a little distance is in order. The subject of the story may say it’s “the truth,” but we say it’s spinach and — ya know what? — to hell with it. Scare quotes throw a net around the ideas and assertions media culture hasn’t absorbed yet, stuff journalism’s jobholders may even be a little afraid of.
National Punctuation Day is Aug 22
Link: www.prweb.com…
Today on Plastic
(me: and you can download the adobe or microsoft e-book from amazon for US$12.25!)
Link: book on amazon.com…
Link: www.plastic.com…
You know who you are. You’re reading the SubQ and you have to take deep breaths because some submitter doesn’t know the difference between “its” and “it’s.” Or you shudder as someone thinks the plural of banana is “banana’s.” Or you find yourself unintentionally bemused by someone’s misuse of “scare quotes.”
The good news is that you are not alone, if sales of the surprise best-seller Eats, Shoots and Leaves: A Zero-Tolerance Approach To Punctuation by Lynne Truss is any indication. The unlikely smash has topped best-seller lists in the U.S. and Britain, and is among Amazon’s top worldwide sellers.
How did this happen? How did an fussy editor airing her pet peeves about punctuation become an international sensation? Truss herself isn’t sure, and views the whole thing as a “complete fluke.” She hardly expected its success, but takes comfort in knowing there are other sticklers out there. “I wrote Eats, Shoots & Leaves because I’d become very animated about illiteracy,” Truss explained. “I had no idea so many people shared my concern. It’s very heartening. Because I’m not myself a parent, I underestimated the extent to which ordinary, decent folk are worried about the kind of education their children are receiving.”
The book is probably not for everyone, as people who aren’t writers, editors or at least mildly word-obsessed may find it a bore. Others may be taken aback by her obsession, which included a regrettable episode of shredding a childhood pen pal for a perceived lack of literacy. She admits that sticklers like her can be “an annoying bunch of people.” But the book has received a boost from the expected friendly journalists, as well as those gearing up to salute National Punctuation Day on Aug. 22. If nothing else, it yields such bits of trivia as learning that 15th-century printer Aldus Manutius the Elder invented both the italic typeface and the semicolon. And she tries to make the process fun, offering up a punctuation game on her Web site, as well as the guilty pleasure of a punctuation hall of shame (where you can even submit your own photos chronicling abuse of the English language).
For all her humor, Truss sees slumping writing standards as a serious problem. She winces at discovering during televised quizzes “that most British people truly do not know their apostrophe from their elbow” and since learning that the United States “is not immune to similar levels of public illiteracy.” She notes the unfortunate timing of it all, as ignorance of the written word comes while written communication has become “the ascendant medium” because of the Internet, which “happens to be the most immediate, universal and democratic written medium that has ever existed.”
Blatantly ripped without permission from anyone but it is entirely intact…
Last time I checked we’re on the “IN-TER-NET”. You know that place that is practially a blackhole of all things immature.
If you were to map the internet like a galaxy, Slashdot would be tucked over in the corner next to the obscene jokes and well stuff involving well hung midgets and horny lonely housewives.
Microsoft could release a patch that just by installing would cure world hunger and shrink maligant tumors and the headline on Slashdot would be “Microsoft distrupts food distribution and healthcare systems worldwide!”
So, in short, if your looking for unbiased punctunal and definitative coverage of the every evolving internet, this is not the place.
If however, your looking for the diatribes of cynical, world weary geeks, who know the whole world is basically built on match sticks and is gleefully waiting for the day the whole place comes tumbling down, you’ve found it.
–
Yes Francis, the world has gone crazy.
Link: linuxgazette.net…
The first really good explanation of symbolic links and hard links I’ve seen. One of the most basic Unixisms — if you don’t understand this, you can’t call yourself even a Jr-Jr Unix admin. :)
Link: www.theatlantic.com…
(excerpt – note in particular the last paragraph here)
The jihadis’ Kabul office employed a zealous manager—Ayman al-Zawahiri’s brother Muhammad, who maintained the computer’s files in a meticulous network of folders and subfolders that neatly laid out the group’s organizational structure and strategic concerns. (Muhammad’s system fell apart after he was arrested in 2000 in Dubai and extradited to Egypt.) The files not only provided critical active intelligence about the group’s plans and methods at the time (including the first leads about the shoe bomber Richard Reid, who had yet to attempt his attack) but also, in a fragmentary way, revealed a road map of al-Qaeda’s progress toward 9/11. Considered as a whole, the trove of material on the computer represents what is surely the fullest sociological profile of al-Qaeda ever to be made public.
Perhaps one of the most important insights to emerge from the computer is that 9/11 sprang not so much from al-Qaeda’s strengths as from its weaknesses. The computer did not reveal any links to Iraq or any other deep-pocketed government; amid the group’s penury the members fell to bitter infighting. The blow against the United States was meant to put an end to the internal rivalries, which are manifest in vitriolic memos between Kabul and cells abroad. Al-Qaeda’s leaders worried about a military response from the United States, but in such a response they spied opportunity: they had fought the Soviet Union in Afghanistan, and they fondly remembered that war as a galvanizing experience, an event that roused the indifferent of the Arab world to fight and win against a technologically superior Western infidel. The jihadis expected the United States, like the Soviet Union, to be a clumsy opponent. Afghanistan would again become a slowly filling graveyard for the imperial ambitions of a superpower.
Like the early Russian anarchists who wrote some of the most persuasive tracts on the uses of terror, al-Qaeda understood that its attacks would not lead to a quick collapse of the great powers. Rather, its aim was to tempt the powers to strike back in a way that would create sympathy for the terrorists. Al-Qaeda has so far gained little from the ground war in Afghanistan; the conflict in Iraq, closer to the center of the Arab world, is potentially more fruitful. As Arab resentment against the United States spreads, al-Qaeda may look less like a tightly knit terror group and more like a mass movement. And as the group develops synergy in working with other groups branded by the United States as enemies (in Iraq, the Israeli-occupied territories, Kashmir, the Mindanao Peninsula, and Chechnya, to name a few places), one wonders if the United States is indeed playing the role written for it on the computer.
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