Two Slashes

I’ve been sent this link (or to other places that ultimately end up there) by at least five different people today, so I figure it’s worth the time it takes for me to publicly discuss rant about. (In case you don’t want to click the link above, the basic story is that some woman has decided that she can worm her way out of accepting license agreements by convincing bribing her cat to accept on her behalf.)

Aside from the usual complaints about whether allowing a feline to even enter into a binding contract is admissible in a court, I have a few concerns of my own about whether the idea is sheer brilliance or just another demonstration of stupidity.  (I’m leaning towards the latter, personally.)

Success!! He presses the button of his own free will. Admittedly, he was coerced and rewarded, but really, nobody forced my cat to step on the button and become party to a software license agreement. At the very least, we know he was not under duress.

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This same strategy could be used with small dogs, children (preferably the neighbors’), or even a carefully crafted button presser that moves up and down as the wind sways a tree outside your window. Mother nature is responsible for the license agreement! I swear!

My first complaint revolves around whether the concept is nothing more than a glorified, furry Rube Goldberg machine.  When you think about it, the entire point of this elaborate setup is to accept a license agreement, though the woman who came up with the idea seems to think that she’s clever by allowing her cat to be the one to actually push the button.  I could accomplish the same thing with dominoes, quarters, or even a bowling ball, but are the dominoes going to own up to what they’ve done if and when they’re called into the courtroom?  Is the cat? In either case, the object hitting “Accept” is just an instrument, and probably would be bypassed straight for the next intelligent life form on the ladder (namely, the cat’s owner).

I’m also curious as to what the cat’s reaction might be if it could understand that it was “accepting” a legally-binding(?) document on behalf of its owner.  Something tells me it wouldn’t be hugs and kisses.  A hairball probably isn’t out of the question, though.

On the other hand, perhaps this is a statement that EULAs are way too long for their own good, which is why the majority of people don’t even bother to read them anymore.  Perhaps a few lawyers should quit making sure they get paid by the word and write up something the common man can read.  But while the length of a license agreement might explain that woman’s desire to avoid any legal ramifications (through hidden meanings, loopholes, or otherwise), she could do so just as easily by using the product in an appropriate manner.  Nobody’s going to care if you’re using Acrobat Reader (to use the example from the article) to read PDFs.  You might have bigger fish to fry if you were planning on reverse-engineering the application, though.

The good guys over at Slashdot picked up on the story too (come to think of it, that might be one of the places I ended up reading about the cat from), and the comments are mostly in agreement that the woman who wrote the original article up needs to have some common sense beaten into her.  (Of course, they also came up with their own license agreements, but that’s beside the point.)

If, after all of this, you’re still looking for something worth staring at, you can go pick up one of these.  I hope Woot doesn’t start selling them, though, because I have no desire to see one in my next Bag of Crap.

And for what it’s worth, I’m not a lawyer, though I might sound like one.  I wish I could easily make tons of cash simply by needlessly inflating sentences when I’m getting paid per word, but, alas, computer scientists don’t often get opportunities like that.

One of the challenges posed by the Comment Block was overcoming some of the writer’s block I encounter when I sit down and try to come up with a decent topic to write about.  I must have figured something out, because I’ve managed to make one post for each day so far this month (even if they were a little late in actually being posted ).  I’ve come up with and tried a few ideas to varying personal opinions of success, too, and they might just be enough to keep me posting more regularly.

One of the sites I always check is ReadWriteWeb, a mashup of news and information about goings-on online and reviews of new services to check out.  One such service they mentioned last month was Plinky, a social network centered around giving you writing prompts and letting you read the submissions of other members.  Intending to at least steal some prompt ideas, I signed up for an account.

That’s as far as I’ve gotten, really.  I check back regularly to see if there are any prompts that pique my interest, but so far I haven’t seen anything I care for.

From what I’ve seen, the prompts range from just a little too personal for my liking to causing me to question why I’m even visiting the site.  For example, the prompt for Valentine’s Day asked what magazines you read regularly.  If you’re that interested that you want to know that I subscribe to Popular Science (a subscription I don’t regret, considering I’ve been reading it for over a decade) and PC World (a choice I regret more with each issue), you can go peek into my mailbox.  Other prompts are just as bad, including one asking you what the top three songs you would sing at a karaoke bar would be and why, as well as another asking you where you would fly to if you had access to your friends elevator.  Excuse me, but I thought questions like these were best left on MySpace.

Of course, the content provided by the site is nothing compared to the users driving it.  Some of them take the site, the prompts, and their writing seriously, while others seem to think that a site encouraging you to write means that you should mention your desire to stalk.  I’ve run into a few friends who have accounts at Plinky as well, but, considering I don’t intend to add the site to my social tour, I haven’t been accepting any friend requests.

Let me know if you’ve given the site a spin and what your thoughts about it were.  I’m interested to see if I’m in the majority.

Wouldn’t you look at that.  Plinky was good for something after all.  I don’t think it’s the topic they intended, though.

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Microsoft may be known for Windows and Office and their fun little grip on the computing world, but they certainly aren’t known for a lot of their smaller technologies, and especially not for their voice recognition.  Some people still remember the incident during one of their demos prior to Windows Vista’s launch showing off just how much work went into the product in the first place (hint:  not much, at least at that point) and decided to make a subtle jab with the title of the post.

Someone must have taken the proverbial Q-tip to the Redmond campus, though, or at least picked up a pair of hearing aids.  It seems that Microsoft’s at it again with a new tech demo just in time for the Mobile World Congress, this time designed for Windows Mobile phones (like my Treo Pro).  Called Microsoft Recite, it’s not so much speech-to-text as it is an intelligent voice recorder.

My previous PDA, the Palm Tungsten|T2, also had a voice recording feature, though I rarely put it to use.  If you can keep the recordings straight and organized (something I never bothered to do), then the idea has potential for you.  But, at least in my experience, having to listen to every recording you have on you just to find the one little tidbit of information you need means it’s often more efficient in the long run to just have a handwritten/typed notepad open and draw or key the relevant information in rather than vocalize it.

Recite is designed to change that, though, because it offers a vocalized “search” feature.  After recording whatever notes you have onto your phone, you can tap Search and speak what you’re looking for; if you’re lucky, the relevant audio clip you recorded earlier will begin to play.  At least, that’s the theory.

Even in demo form, the software works reasonably well.  From a functionality standpoint, it works well enough to consider making it a daily-use tool, but I encountered a few accuracy issues that might make me think twice about relying on it as my only method of note-taking.  And while the interface could benefit from being touch-enabled for devices with a touchscreen (like mine; it took me a few seconds to figure out that I couldn’t tap the delete icon to remove notes), the interface is (and I can’t believe I’m saying this about a Microsoft product) somewhat intuitive.  It responded quickly (or at least well enough for my tastes), and there’s not a bunch of clutter floating around the screen making it look like the second coming of Microsoft Office.  Not that there’s much to the application in the first place, though.  (Click the screenshot – or here – for an animated GIF of every screen you’ll be staring at.)

I can see this as possibly being useful for reporters, as they can quickly pull up tidbits of interviews without having to cycle through gobs of unrelated and unnecessary recordings, provided they remember at least something their subject was saying.  Students too might find some benefit, but I personally wouldn’t have too much use in an educational capacity.  (My excuse?  It’s the major.  Everything’s already digitized. )

It’s a small app, and if you have a Windows Mobile phone with a little free space, it’s at least worth a shot if you work best with audio and carry around a cassette recorder in your shirt pocket.  Otherwise, stick with my personal favorite, Evernote.

I was going to write about something else, but this is more time-relevant.  Therefore, that other post will get put on a back burner (and probably end up not seeing the light of day).

Today marks a monumental day in the history of the Internet.

The first thing on everyone’s mind (or mine, at least) is the trial of masterminds Anakata and Brokep (also known as Gottfrid Svartholm Warg and Peter Sunde, respectively), which starts tomorrow.  If you don’t know, they’re the two people most responsible for the day-to-day operations of The Pirate Bay, the Internet’s favorite public tracker and torrent search site.

According to TorrentFreak, a large press conference was held today in hopes of answering questions before the trial got underway.  Overall, the reported questions and answers were boring, but this response from Sunde caught my attention:

I do not believe The Pirate Bay will be a major player in five years. But I think BitTorrent technology will improve. File sharing will always exist. I think people will tire of the debate.

This statement has some interesting connotations, especially coming from one of the administrators of a site that just won’t stay down.  Sure, the existence (or lack thereof) of TPB is something that needs to be checked and double-checked on a daily basis, but there’s a certain truth that bigger and better things should be expected.  (You can look at the evolution of other sites like Suprnova, Mininova, and IsoHunt if you don’t believe me or if you find the topic interesting enough to continue pursuing.)

As a computer science major, I’m also intrigued by the suggestion that BitTorrent will be around.  It’s a novel technology at heart (err…pun unintentional?), but if you look at the road that we (as a civilization) followed to get to this point, a better wheel is bound to come along at some point, if only to satisfy the human desire for the distribution of information.  It’s just a matter of when.

Trials aside, on the other side of copyright law is a blackout movement in protest of New Zealand’s newly-adopted and overzealous copyright law.  If the vague definitions of an ISP (which just about anyone with a website falls under) don’t get you, surely you’ll find yourself accused by a neighbor anyway (and left without an Internet connection, to boot).  In my opinion, that’s even worse than the current police state of bandwidth caps and filtering we have going on here in the United States.

While I won’t be participating directly (you try changing your profile picture on a few dozen sites all at once only to change them back next week; it was bad enough trying to eliminate my birthday), feel free to black out any avatars you have and show some support (if you think it will do any good).

I suppose an alternative course would be to change your avatar to the Pirate Bay logo as an indicator of your support for the trial.  Of course, that’s still a lot of profile images to cycle out.

You might not want to click some of the links in this post if you’re at work.  While they’re not NSFW per-se, one or two might get you an odd look or two if your speakers are cranked up and/or you can read your screen from across the room.

For some people, today holds great meaning.  Perhaps today marks their first date, their first kiss, their first…well, there’s a bunch of firsts when it comes to romance.  Or, it’s just a day designed to be used as an excuse to show affection towards others.  (Not that a specific day should be necessary for that, as there are 364 other days that need to be filled in in the meantime, but that’s a rant for another day.)

For most of the Internet (the parts I frequent, at least), today seems to be a day laced with venom of the most dreadful variety.  Justin, for example, did some quick research and decided that the best use of a DeLorean would be to get some revenge for the single people in the world.  Maddie (from 20SB) managed to get in four snipes at the holiday and everything that it stands for, all in the past week.  And I just used a fitting Matchbox Twenty song title (one I have memorized to the word, no less) as the title of my post (live version here in case you’re interested in hearing it, and there’s a creepy guy mouthing the album version from Mad Season here).

I understand all of the flak and disgust.  In fact, I side with it (hence the post title?), and I agree that Valentine’s Day is a lame excuse for a celebrated holiday.  (Of course, coming from the person who all but eliminated their birthday from the Internet just to see what people would do, I probably lack the credibility required to make this claim.)  To me, there’s no reason the special meaning given to today couldn’t be given to any other day of the year without having to make it an international fiasco.  I blame commercialism and that fact that people need an excuse for everything they do.

But, despite all of the outcry about today, perhaps there comes a time when it’s better to shove a gym sock in your mouth and let it pass.  Think about it.  I’ve never heard of Jewish people calling for an end to Christmas or anyone complaining about St. Patrick’s Day, the world’s excuse for getting drunk and wearing green.  Is there any reason someone can’t have their fun (provided it doesn’t harass you, of course)?  (I would suggest the gym sock to everyone celebrating Valentine’s Day too, but they’ve already got their mouths full, so it would be a waste of time and breath.)

Go.  Enjoy your Valentine’s Day, your Singles Awareness Day, your February 14th.  It doesn’t bother me.  Don’t expect me to pay too much attention to you, though; I’m too busy leading a toy peacock around to look your way.

The title for this post as of the beginning of this week was Happy S.A.D. (notice the contradicting emotions?) until I realized what song was playing while I actually wrote it up.

If you were born on New Year’s Day in 1970, congratulations and happy birthday.  Today (and this post) are probably making you feel old.  Sorry.

Today marks the day the Unix epoch time (the number of seconds since January 1, 1970, 12:00:00 AM UTC) reads 1,234,567,890. This event will occur at 11:31:30 PM UTC (which is when this post is scheduled to appear ).

Why might this matter?  The Unix epoch is used more than you think, including time management on that cushy MacBook you’re probably reading this post on.  That, and it makes for a more interesting clock than your standard 12/24-hour watch.  (This includes binary clocks.  Swatch Internet Time might still have it beat, though, simply for being obscure and having an at sign as a designator.)

In case you were interested, here are some other cool facts:

• A 32-bit computer will run into an issue (aptly dubbed the Year 2038 bug) when the epoch value becomes too big to store with 32-bits on January 19, 2038 at 3:14:08 AM UTC.  (Personally, I think it’s a shame that it’s only seven seconds from ending at 3.1415…but that’s just me.)
• Assuming your 32-bit computer makes it past the Year 2038 bug (not that hard to imagine from a software standpoint), the epoch time will reach 3,141,592,654 (approximately the first ten digits of pi) on July 21, 2069 at 12:37:34 AM UTC.  There will be pie to celebrate. (Since this value is larger than can be stored with 32-bits (2,147,483,647 is the maximum), a broken 32-bit computer will read June 14, 1933, 6:09:18 PM UTC.)
• Similarly, the time will read as the first ten digits of the mathematical constant e (2,718,281,828) on February 20, 2056 at 2:17:08 PM.  (Again, since this time flies right past the Year 2038 bug, a broken 32-bit system will interpret the time as January 15, 1920, 7:48:52 AM UTC.)
• Unix time reached a count of 1,000,000,000 (one billion) seconds since the epoch on September 9, 2001 at 1:46:00 AM UTC.
• According to the specification for Unix time, certain values can be ambiguous or point to times that never existed because of the lazy way each day is expected to be 86,400 seconds.  This miracle is brought to you by leap seconds and lazy developers (both known as order and chaos, respectively).
• This bullet exists for the sole reason of increasing the number of words.  Either that, or it’s just a ploy for me to poke fun at why I’m making a list in the first place.

Oh, and in case you didn’t notice, today is Friday, February 13, which makes for a truly “epoch” win. Except in those areas on east of UTC, where they’re already celebrating Valentine’s Day.  Geek love conquers all?

I was in a remarkably entertaining conversation with Nick last night when an idea I’ve been sitting on managed to rear its head once more.  As you might have noticed, I occasionally come up with project ideas and put some varying amount of effort into it before I end up dropping it.  (The software projects I host here might be reasonable examples of that.  They’ve been stagnant for how long?)

Last night, I was slightly more optimistic that my idea could be pulled off, but I’m becoming increasingly convinced that there’s not much viability behind starting yet another “overheard” site (with a few friends as fellow moderators, of course) unless I come up with an awesome gimmick that would make the idea interesting and more original.  Consider this post an RFC.

Plenty of people already (ab)use Twitter (myself included) for the same thing (when they’re not submitting quotes to one of those sites, anyway), and while longer comments and quotes can’t be relayed as easily, people still manage to get the job done.  There are Facebook groups (a terrible idea, by the way) dedicated to sharing the stupidity among fellow group members, too.  (I should know – I joined one at one point.)

If I were to go through with this anyway, I’m also stuck on the format and implementation.  While getting another Tumblr account (I reserved my name a while ago, but haven’t put it to use yet) would be one idea, something feels amiss about having to share user credentials with everyone involved with the site (as opposed to a per-user system).  I would probably put in another WordPress installation to start and work my way from there as it’s also the most expandable solution I can think of.

One of these days, I’ll probably put together a post with a few of the more hilarious and/or outrageous comments I have lining the edges of my class notebooks and chat logs, which were what triggered me to consider starting a new site in the first place.  In the meantime, you’ll just have to hope that the poor girl I overheard saying this can figure out what’s going on in time for Valentine’s Day.  Speaking of which…

Imagine that.  Once again, I’m brainstorming straight into a blog post.  It’s not like this hasn’t been done before…  I almost think this post is worthy of starting another tag:  “memory dump.”

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I’ve been blogging in some form or another for longer than I can remember.  (I don’t mean to use a cliché here, but I really can’t pin a more specific timeframe down.)  I’ve had a few previous projects I’ve scrapped before they were even made public, and then there was the previous (public) blog hosted by a friend of mine for about a year.

Out of boredom and a sudden burst of curiosity, I’ve started probing for any remaining backups from that previous blog over the past few weeks.  I don’t think there are any left in existence, though I’ve managed to find and piece together a few small tidbits of posts from here and there.

What’s amusing is noticing, even from the mere snippets I’ve been able to collect, just how a few years can have a huge impact both in voice and topics.  A lot of the older posts (the ones I have managed to recover, at least) are nothing more than tiny little blurbs about the holidays or a few words attached to a post made.  Compared to my lengthy spiel about the holiday season from hell, I wonder where and how I ended up transforming from a quiet type into a “professional ranter”™.

One of the things I noticed is that I was a lot more consistent with my posting, though my posts usually tended to be no more than a sentence or two, and some were posted straight from Digg.  Now, it’s hard to think of me posting anything that short (I aim for upwards of 400 words per post – especially during the Comment Block – and usually end up doubling that number by the time they’re published), but at the same time I’m more irregular in when I complete them.

In an effort to encourage me to both become a little more active and personal in my posting (and as something I should have plugged much more prominently and sooner), I joined 20SB, a group of twenty-something blogging enthusiasts with a lot to say and a great community (including several authors from blogs I already follow).  While I’m not intending to go from statue to sponge, hopefully it will loosen my tongue a little bit once the Comment Block is over.  We’ll see what happens with that, and I encourage you to join as well if you fit the age bracket.

If you think this post sounds a bit funny, you’re right.  It’s been sitting in a draft folder for  at least two weeks, and I put together only minor edits before I clicked Publish.  I have too much stuff going on tonight to put much more effort into this post, though I intend on revising (and/or rewriting ) it when I get the chance.

No offense to anyone who might suffer from the condition, but this is one of those times that being deaf might actually be a benefit.  You know, right alongside being able to ignore any sudden rounds of Rick Astley emanating from your computer.

It seems that the tech world is all about second chances and highly disruptive career changes these days, what with all these multimillionaires suddenly uprooting themselves from their business ventures to work on completely unrelated ideas.  Bill Gates retired from daily life at Microsoft, for example, in order to become a full-time philanthropist for his self-named charitable foundation.  Steve Wozniak has done it all, from working at Apple to teaching to dancing with the stars (which is perhaps the only reason to watch the show) to playing Segway polo (pardon me while I laugh).  And now, it seems, there’s room for yet another gearhead to put his name to work on a completely different venture.

As you might have heard, Jim Allchin (of note for his work at Microsoft leading development teams until his departure after Windows Vista and for looking like an elf as pictured) seems to have another burning passion:  music.  He’s apparently spent some time in a recording studio working on a solo album.  (Wait, isn’t there supposed to be a group before the solo albums start rolling out?)

While I haven’t been able to locate any full-length songs as the album isn’t available yet, Allchin has samples of his work on his website (and a few other places besides).  Based on what I’ve heard, though, I’m going to be investing in a pair of earmuffs about the time this CD comes out.

While Jimbo seems to have some skill with a guitar, I’m not sure his microphone should be connected to anything while he’s singing.  He could also use a little help from someone with some songwriting experience, as the samples demonstrate that he has all the lyrical creativity of a first grader, and the ability to make just as much sense.  Take the first few lines from “I’m About To Fall” (at least, as I hear them) as my example:

Told you I wanted to be free,
All I needed – was just me.

Your eyes – they’re so dreamy,
You’ve got me leaning over the waterfall…

Some of the other songs could have used a little assistance in their development, too.  The leading track, “Enigma Machine,” reminds me of the soundtrack to some of the early Need for Speed games, which makes it seem more than a little out of place among a bunch of ballads.  And there’s no reason for the underwater singing effects in “Killer Shuffle,” either.

Allchin provides a short blurb about each song, too (though he might want to use a proofreader next time), and they’re just as corny as the lyrics.  (Perhaps they’re another sign of what the other two minutes and thirty seconds of each song are hiding?)

Pardon me, Jim, but I’m not quite sure the music business was the right place for a new beginning.  You may be good on a guitar, but it might have been better for you either to get a band going (with someone who can sing and write) or find a band in need of a guitarist.  Alternatively, you might be able to pull a Santana and find a few people who are willing to collaborate with you on a song or two.  (But please, whatever you do, do not even think of sending a sample to one of my favorite bands.)

And I know Gizmodo got there first, but there’s no way this album was made without a little help from everyone’s favorite new Microsoft Research project.  Hey, there’s nothing like showing a little support for your friends stuck in the trenches at the company you deserted, right?

In reality, I’ll probably be looking for a copy of the album once it’s released, if only to do a follow-up to this post.  I don’t know if I’ll survive listening to it, but in case I don’t…ah, I don’t think there’s anything to give.

Edit: Apparently this post managed to get posted at EXACTLY the stroke of midnight.  Does that still count?

As my contact page indicates, I’m more than a little bit of an IRC addict, and have been since my first introduction to it over eight years ago.  I even own one server and assist in the day-to-day operations of several others.

If you have no idea what IRC (which stands for Internet Relay Chat) is, let me quickly explain it to you.  Forget AIM, MSN, Yahoo!, Facebook, Skype, Google Talk, Jabber, and ICQ; IRC was developed before any of these were even a reality.

IRC operates on a client/server design, wherein people use clients (much like your AIM client) to connect to a server (which has other clients connected to it, or servers even if there’s enough traffic to facilitate the use of one).  The clients themselves are extremely basic, providing for the most part only basic text chat.  (There are unofficial extensions that allow you to transfer files, among other things, but not all people make use of these, and they’re not fully standardized.)  If you need a description to paint a mental picture, though, think of a server with several “tentacles” sharing data from one tentacle through the others.

The people who connect to these networks use “channels” to talk with other people in the channel (much in the same way you have a walkie-talkie with channels; these function the same way).  Private conversation is held in a similar manner through “queries.”

Unfortunately, IRC is seen more as a communications medium of the geek “elite,” and failing that, its simple nature also means that it’s been overused in the past few years as a way to control botnets, infected computers set up to attack others, send spam, and do their master’s bidding, which paints an even worse picture overall.  In fact, it’s just the opposite.

I use IRC as a hub for communicating with fans of TechCentric, and in an experiment, I started a small channel (irc.lostcarrier.net, channel #twitter) for people who were following me on Twitter.  And by small, I mean small; compared to just about any other medium, I’ve had only a handful of people drop in to say, “Hi.”  I have no idea whether it’s because people have never heard of IRC, but I hope that will change.  Someday.

There may not be a lot of meat to this post, but I have an idea for you.  Go out, find yourself an IRC server somewhere (whether it’s mine or not is of no concern to me), poke around for a bit, and then leave a comment about your experience.  You might be surprised at some of the people you meet.