Posts

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Ewwwwww!

Check out this picture (click on it to enlarge):

Treeman (Small)

It’s a real picture of an Indonesian man named Dede. He cut his knee as a teenager and as a result became infected with a particularly prolific version of the HPV virus – the virus more commonly associated with genital warts. Locally known as “The Tree Man”, Dede has lost many jobs (as well as his wife) due to the disease. Dr Anthony Gaspari of the University of Maryland says that Dede has a rare genetic fault that keeps his immune system from stopping the spread of the growths, and that he could be treated with a synthetic form of vitamin A.

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At least get it right!

Digital Rights Management (DRM) is the collective name of a bunch of schemes that Big Content uses to try to keep people from listening to music or watching movies as they see fit. “Copy protected” CDs use DRM to keep folks from copying the audio tracks to their computers. Almost every online store uses DRM to keep people from downloading songs from, say, the iTunes Music Store, and uploading those files to a P2P network. DVDs have a DRM scheme called CSS that supposedly keeps people from “ripping” movies to computers – although CSS was broken so long ago that it’s trivial to bypass it.

The problem with DRM is that it doesn’t stop piracy and only inconveniences honest buyers. Pirates will always find a way to pirate content, but people that buy a product with DRM – such as a CD that cannot be ripped to a hard drive, and thus copied to an iPod – are screwed. For this reason, I’m vehemently against DRM in any way, shape or form. However, that doesn’t mean that I’m against accurate reporting too!

My case in point: Western Digital’s new My Book Network Storage System. It’s basically a portable hard drive that uses Ethernet to connect to your computer instead of USB or Firewire. Pretty cool so far, right? However, at the end of the “product features” section on the linked page, you’ll see this disclaimer:

Due to unverifiable media license authentication, the most common audio and video file types cannot be shared with different users using WD Anywhere Access. A list of the non shareable file types can be found here.

In the past couple of days, the Internet has blown up with stories (like this one from the BBC) about how the My Book is “crippled” with DRM and how it “won’t let you share MP3 and movie files!!!!!”. A bunch of “the sky is falling” reports have popped up everywhere, and many blogs are filled with comments from readers like “I’ll never buy a Western Digital product again!” and “I’m going to buy a Seagate and send a copy of the receipt to Western Digital to let them know how much business they’ve lost!”. Even better are huffy comments from “IT professionals” that claim to “order 96,000 hard drives a year through my job” and from now on they’ll “never buy a single Western Digital drive again!”

People, people… Relax! And while you’re relaxing, brush up on your reading comprehension skills, too!

This My Book drive comes with access to a service Western Digital offers called “WD Anywhere Access”. The service is somewhat similar to Orb, a free service that lets you access your movie and music files from any computer on the Internet. With Orb, you sign up for an account, then download and install a program on your computer. This program scans your hard drive for various movie and music files. When you’re away from home, all you do then is log in to your Orb account and you can watch the movies or listen to the music on your system. Anywhere Access works much like this, except that you can allow friends and family members to access the files remotely too… except for these types of files, which WD has banned on its network. YOU can access any file on the My Book using Anywhere Access, but you cannot let friends download your MP3s using the service. And locally – that is, on your home network – the device works exactly like any other NAS device.

So all of this anti-DRM hype leveled against Western Digital really is much ado about nothing. So you can’t use their network to share movies and MP3s. Big deal. Maybe WD’s lawyers thought the company could be sued for doing such a thing. Maybe WD doesn’t want to deal with the bandwidth costs of people sharing thousands of 700MB movie files. Whatever the case may be, at home the device works like any other hard drive. It also comes with a service that allows you to access any file on your My Book from any computer with an Internet connection. WD was nice enough to allow you to share certain types of files with others… but not all types.

What’s the big deal? Get over it already!

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“Harold and Kumar” are back!

Here’s the trailer for the new Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay flick. It looks as funny as the first movie – maybe even funnier! A bit of a warning though: this is a “red band” trailer. Unlike most trailers, which are approved for all audiences and have a “green band” at the beginning, this one’s for restricted audiences and has the rare “red band” at the beginning. There’s also a lot of foul language, drug references and partial nudity in the trailer, so don’t watch it at work!

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BREAKING NEWS: San Joaquin leaves ECUSA

It’s finally happened: an entire diocese of the Episcopal Church has voted to secede from the national church! The Episcopal Diocese of San Joaquin, based in Fresno, California voted overwhelmingly to leave the national church on Saturday. Saturday’s vote was 173-22 in favor of secession, far more than the two-thirds majority required for the measure to pass.

Tensions in the Anglican church began back in the 1970s, when the U.S. church approved the ordination of women. This caused something of an exodus from the church, and led to the formation of a patchwork of “affiliated Anglican” churches. However, the national church’s liberal stance in recent years has accelerated the schism – especially after the 2003 consecration of openly-gay Gene Robinson as Bishop of New Hampshire… the first openly-gay bishop in the 500 year history of the Anglican church in particular and 2000 years of the “Church Catholic” in general.

The worldwide Anglican communion – the third largest Christian denomination after Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy – has almost 80 million members. It may come as a surprise to many, but most of these members are in former British colonies in Africa and the Caribbean. And these folks tend to hold deeply conservative religious views. Which puts them at odds with the more liberal churches in the US, Canada and the UK. And unlike the Roman church, which is headed by an all-powerful pope and the College of Cardinals, the Anglican communion works by consensus. With the numbers favoring the conservatives in the “Global South”, the US church is stuck between a rock and a hard place. If the ECUSA pushes too far to the left, they risk being voted out of the communion. However, the ECUSA has painted itself into a “liberal corner” with the ordination of Robinson, so it has no way to back down. In recent years, 32 of the ECUSA’s 7,600 congregations had left the communion, and 23 others have voted to leave, but have not yet done so (typically, most congregations vote twice on the issue: once, and then again a year later). San Joaquin’s actions today not only removes 47 churches in 14 counties from the ECUSA, it also removes an entire diocese from ECUSA control.

Expect a lot of court battles in the near future over San Joaquin’s property. The individual churches will claim that they were built using local money, while the ECUSA will claim that it owns the 47 church buildings. Interestingly, two of the oldest Anglican churches in Virginia voted to secede from the ECUSA last year: Truro Church in Fairfax City and The Falls Church in Falls Church. Both churches date from the 1700s and both predate the founding of the ECUSA. While arcane discussions of colonial-era law don’t apply to San Joaquin, it will be interesting to see how these issues are played out, especially next year, when the dioceses of Pittsburgh and Fort Worth vote on similar secession resolutions.

Read more here.

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Pot… Kettle

The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) is the movie industry’s trade group. If you’ve been following the “internet piracy” stories of the past few years, you’ll know that the MPAA has done lots of things to protect its “intellectual property”, from lobbying members of Congress for tougher copyright laws, to hiring lawyers to shut down file trading websites, to hiring third-parties (like MediaSentry) to collect data about people trading movies online, to creating “snitch programs” that monetarily reward theatre employees for turning in customers that illicitly tape movies with video cameras.

So how delicious is it that the MPAA was served a takedown notice earlier this week… for violating someone else’s copyright! The MPAA has been distributing something called a “University Toolkit”. Said toolkit contains the popular Ubuntu Linux distribution along with some popular open-source tools for monitoring networks. The MPAA made the toolkit available free of charge to universities to help them track down illegal content on their networks.

However, as this article at Ars Technica explains, the MPAA did not make the source code of the material available, as is required by the General Public License (GPL) that Linux (and most of the tools included in the download) are published under. In a nutshell, the GPL allows anyone to assemble an operating system and\or software applications as they see fit… as long as they document all of their changes and make the source code available to anyone that asks. In other words, I could take a version of Ubuntu Linux and change every instance of the name “Ubuntu Linux” in the software to “jimcofer.com Linux”… as long as I provide the source code and documentation of what I’ve done to anyone that asks. Or I could take a copy of Ubuntu Linux and make a bootable CD that turns any computer into an “internet kiosk” (like you see in airports)… again, just as long as I provide the source code and document the changes.

The MPAA is (of course) calling the incident a “simple oversight”, but once again it just shows that Big Content is ready and willing to steamroll anyone else’s copyrights in the name of protecting their own.

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Why We Need “Network Neutrality” (part 1)

“Network neutrality” is concept whereby all data packets (and devices) are treated equally on a computer network. In laymen’s terms, a “network neutral” ISP would not discriminate between basic web surfing, email traffic, streaming video traffic, P2P traffic, VoIP traffic, podcast traffic, instant messaging traffic, and so on. Each and every data packet would be treated exactly the same, regardless of where it comes from or what it contains. If this sounds like the basic definition of “the Internet” to you… well, you’d be right.

As it stands now, most ISPs in the US are running more or less neutral networks. But this might not be the case tomorrow, or the next day. And although a few large US ISPs are currently experimenting with ditching network neutrality as it relates to illicit file trading, these same ISPs have, in the not too distant past, discussed grandiose plans for shattering the Internet as we know it. It’s called “tiered service”.

Basically, ISPs want to charge websites and content providers to allow “guaranteed delivery” of their content. If a content provider can’t (or won’t) pay these “quality of services fees”, then their data will be pushed to “the back of the bus”. While it doesn’t sound like a terribly bad idea at first, the end result of these fees would be a disaster for end users and content providers. Content providers would have to negotiate such fees with any ISP that wished to implement tiered service; although most US Internet users are serviced by a handful of giant ISPs, there are still thousands of small ISPs that content providers would have to negotiate with. Such fees would also cut deeply into the bottom lines of many content providers. So your favorite podcast or streaming audio\video site might simply choose to shut down rather than pay out the nose for something they’ve had for free for years. “Mom and Pop” Internet sites and blogs might cease to exist entirely. Start-up companies developing new and innovative Internet technologies would see their products langish for lack of funds to pay an “ISP tax”. Some companies might choose to leave the U.S. altogether for “network neutral” countries in Europe or Asia. And of course, ISPs could enter into agreements with certain companies that give them kickbacks… so Comcast could have a “preferred online bank” that loads much faster than some other online bank that doesn’t pay the ISP tax or enter into a licensing agreement with Comcast. Imagine a world where Google refuses to enter into such an agreement with an ISP and refuses to pay the ISP tax… now imagine all your Google searches timing out and giving you errors while “Yahoo! Search Brought To You By Comcast” works beautifully. Or imagine if iTunes were to resist jumping on the tiered service bandwagon… suddenly your iTunes purchases take hours to download instead of seconds as they did before, and Comcast’s only solution is for you to sign up for their “ComcasticMusic” site… where tracks cost $2.99 each instead of 99¢ and have more draconian DRM than their Apple counterparts. THAT’S tiered service in a nutshell.

Continue reading “Why We Need “Network Neutrality” (part 1)”

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“Shudder…”

Ya know, I always considered myself to be 100% heterosexual… but then I saw this pic of Amy Winehouse walking around in just a bra and jeans:

Winehouse

…and then I questioned my sexuality. My God, that girl is UGLY! Pink looks absolutely feminine in comparison! Excuse me while I wash my eyes out with bleach!

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“Irish Hospitality”

So – on Tuesday of this week I was hanging out at the Straight Dope forums. I was specifically in the “Cafe Society” forum, and one of the topics was “Restaurant food fads that should be retired”. In that thread, people railed against chipotle seasoning, ranch dressing, flavored ice tea and Cajun food.

In fact, many people in that thread are apparently sick and tired of Cajun food. One poster in that thread was not only fed up with Cajun food, but also posted a link to this restaurant in Dublin. It’s supposed to be a “Cajun restaurant”, but everyone in the thread got a big laugh out of the restaurant’s description of “Cajun” and “Creole” cuisine:

Cajun is believed to have been the food of poor Negro folks, who lived along the waterways and swamps that dot Louisiana. Creole on the other hand, was the more aristocratic cuisine of the up tempo New Orleans city people.

And yes, before you ask, the people that posted that were being serious. Apparently, some people in Ireland think that Cajun cuisine comes from “poor Negro folks”. Nevermind that the stupid bastards called them “Negro folks” – why not just call them “niggers” while you’re at it? – these people run a Louisiana-themed restaurant… and apparently have no fucking clue where the food they serve comes from! Yes, “Cajun food” comes from “poor Negro folks”… just like potatoes come from China and the waltz comes from India.

A lot of folks got a laugh from the site, myself included. Nevertheless, I wanted to let the “poor Irish folks” know just how idiotic they sounded to… well, anyone from the United States… so I sent them a polite comment correcting them not only on their errors about “Cajun food”, but also their misunderstanding about Creole cuisine. A couple of days later, I got this for all my trouble:

Hi Jim,
I have taken your comments on board.
As you can see i have forwarded this on to my manager.
Drostann

—– Original Message —–
From: “Jim Cofer”
To:
Sent: Tuesday, December 04, 2007 7:24 PM
Subject: FROM TANTE ZOES WEBSITE

> Below is the result of your feedback form. It was submitted by
> Jim Cofer (jim@myemailaddress.com) on Tuesday, December 4, 2007 at 19:24:44
> ————————————————————————–
–
>
> Phone Number: 704-555-1212
>
> MESSAGE: Please fix your history section.
>
> Cajun food came from the Acadian French that settled in Louisiana after
fleeing the Brits in Canada. It has nothing to do with “Negroes”.
>
> Creole, on the other hand, is a mixture of African, Caribbean, Spanish and
French. It’s “city” food, but not necessarily “aristocratic”.
>
> Thank you.

A couple of minutes later, I got this in my inbox:

Robbie!!
Check this out!
The things i have to put up with!!

Drostann

—– Original Message —–
From: “Jim Cofer”
To:
Sent: Tuesday, December 04, 2007 7:24 PM
Subject: FROM TANTE ZOES WEBSITE

> Below is the result of your feedback form. It was submitted by
> Jim Cofer (jim@myemailaddress.com) on Tuesday, December 4, 2007 at 19:24:44
> ————————————————————————–
–
>
> Phone Number: 704-555-1212
>
> MESSAGE: Please fix your history section.
>
> Cajun food came from the Acadian French that settled in Louisiana after
fleeing the Brits in Canada. It has nothing to do with “Negroes”.
>
> Creole, on the other hand, is a mixture of African, Caribbean, Spanish and
French. It’s “city” food, but not necessarily “aristocratic”.
>
> Thank you.
>
> ————————————————————————–
–
> —
> No virus found in this incoming message.
> Checked by AVG Free Edition.
> Version: 7.5.503 / Virus Database: 269.16.14/1171 – Release Date:
04/12/2007 19:31

Classy! I send them a helpful email… trying to tell them that they look like idiots to the rest of the world… and what do I get? A cc: with the line “The things i have to put up with!!”

So you know what? To hell with you, you stupid fucking Micks! If you want to look like complete morons to the rest of the world… knock yourselves out! That was the last time I ever help one of you potato farming, whiskey abusing, wife beating, dirt floor having, Pope worshipping bastards ever!

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The Mystery of Waldseemuller

You might not think that maps are very interesting. I’ll grant you that looking at maps probably won’t surpass going to the movies or playing video games as “fun entertainment”. But maps can be interesting. Looked at as a timeline, maps have displayed man’s ever-increasing knowledge of the world around him. From early maps that look a lot like something a grade schooler might draw, maps have become ever more accurate.

While maps have been a showcase of the increase of knowledge, they’ve also displayed important changes in human history. Most maps made in the Middle Ages, for example, have Jerusalem as their center. As the influence of the Church waned and maps became important economic tools, Europe became the center of most maps. And of course, looking at maps with political boundaries can show how empires expand and contract, which countries merge with others or cease to exist entirely, and which new countries form out of the ashes of others.

Maps can also hold secrets. Secrets that stay hidden for centuries. Secrets that people have only noticed just now, and are still trying to understand. Take a look at the following map (click on it to open it in a new window or tab):

Waldseemuller Small

This map is called the “Waldseemuller map”. It is named after its creator, the German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller, who first published the map in 1507. The map initially gained fame as the first map that used the name “America” to refer to the New World. So in a very real sense, the reason you call yourself an “American” is because Martin Waldseemüller decided to put that name on his map. The map is also famous for its layout – with Europe in the center, the Americas to the left and Asia to the right. Almost all maps made since Waldseemüller’s day have used this same layout.

But there’s a lot more going on with this map that you might imagine. Look at the map carefully. At first glance, it might look like any other European map of the world from the time: the continents are shaped incorrectly and lots of places are missing. But look closer. South America is the land mass on the bottom left of the map. It might not look especially accurate, but if you were to rotate the map, such that the grid lines over South America were perfect rectangles, you’d probably be shocked by what you saw – a continent that looks almost exactly as it does on modern maps. In fact, recent study of the map has shown that Waldseemüller’s map accurately portrays the width of most of South America to a minuscule 70 miles compared to today’s maps, which are made by careful surveying and satellite technology. Let me repeat that: 500 years ago, a man in Germany made a map of South America that, compared to the best maps we can make today, is only “off” on most points by 70 miles.

The secret of this map is, of course, how Waldseemüller made such an accurate map. Although the Vikings or John Cabot might be able to lay claim to discovering North America, it’s well established that Christopher Columbus was the first European to set foot on South American soil. And he did that in 1498. So, somehow, in less than 9 years, Europeans were able to develop an astonishingly accurate map of an entire continent.

And the mystery deepens – a lot – when you consider the west coast of South America. According to history, Vasco Nunez de Balboa became the first European to reach the Pacific by land (1513) and Ferdinand Magellan was the first to reach the Pacific by sail (1520). So if these were the first two Europeans to reach the Pacific… how did Waldseemüller make this map in 1507? Was there a mission to map the west coast whose name has been lost to history? Did a secret mission attempt to map the west coast? Did Asian mapmakers share their secrets with Europeans? If so, where? And when? And how come no one wrote anything down about it? And how did all of this information come into the hands of a German in 1507? Germany wasn’t much of a sea-faring nation, and the Spanish and Portuguese would have done everything in their power to keep the map out of the hands of a heretic economic rival.

We honestly don’t know how Waldseemüller made his map. But trust me, there are researchers out there trying to find out how he did.

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The Ravens Almost Pull It Off!

Holy crap! Hooooly crap! Did anyone catch the Patriots\Ravens game on MNF tonight? The Ratbirds brought it to the Pats, and were in the lead with as little as 50 seconds left in the game. New England managed to put one in the end zone to take the lead 27-24 with around 45 seconds left. The Ravens got the ball back, and managed to toss a Hail Mary that was caught at around the 3 yard line. Unfortunately for the Ratbirds, the receiver was tackled immediately as the clock ran out.

My God – that was, in my humble opinion, the best game of the year so far. It was one of those games that you keep on tape so that the next time your wife\girlfriend asks you “why the hell do you watch so much football??” you pop the tape in and watch her start yelling and screaming too!

I sure hope that the Steelers coaches were watching the game (you know they were!). If Troy comes back the Steelers have a good chance at beating the Pats next Sunday!

EDIT: By the way… karma’s a bitch, ain’t it Cleveland? Haha.. Suck it, Brownies!

Kellen Winslow