Wed, 10 Mar 2004 21:26:41 GMT
Distributed Human Sorting of Internet Objects. I learn a lot from reading Ed Felton. In A Spoonful of Sugar he describes an absolutely brilliant method being used at Carnegie-Mellon to “label all the images on the web”…. [Discourse.net]
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it is my understanding that this is somewhat similar to the way spammers bypass visual control systems they open up a page, fill out the info, and send the visual symbol to someone trying to access a pron site, which then decodes teh visual signal, types it in, gets access to her pron, and the spammer gets access to the visually protected material, usually email addys.
March 10, 2004 No Comments
Wed, 10 Mar 2004 21:05:48 GMT
More, and Worse. Last night, sometime around 9.30, there was a knock at my door. I live in a faculty residence on campus, so I knew that this was going to be a student, but I also knew immediately that something was wrong, because my students never just drop by. Standing on my… [Planned Obsolescence]
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this just makes me very sad about the state of affairs on college campuses. I think that this form of ideology that based on race/gender/etc. is very much being reified in the stressful climate of todays political regime.
March 10, 2004 No Comments
Wed, 10 Mar 2004 15:14:47 GMT
USPTO acts against Eolas patent. A report by Robert McMillan (IDG News Service) says that on 25 February, the US Patent Office took a first step toward revoking Patent Number 5,838,906 issued in 1998 to Eolas Technologies for embedding interactive program elements in webpages (plug-ins).Last… [InternetPolicy.net]
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invalidating patents is appropriate more times than not in cases like this. the patent should be reserved for a true invention where you profit off of its use in the immediate future, it should not be used as a tool to punish people after the fact who figured out the technology themselves and have for some time. so if eolas would have produced and continued to pursue their licensing throughout their patent ownership, i'd be happy with it, but if they didn't then i'd say they abandoned the patent and thus invalidate it.
March 10, 2004 No Comments
Wed, 10 Mar 2004 15:04:42 GMT
Portable Spy Station: Grundig Yacht Boy 400. JOEL JOHNSON — The Grundig Yacht Boy 400PE is ostensibly a portable marine device for tuning in AM/FM and shortwave radio stations (as the 'Yacht… [Gizmodo]
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i've wanted one of these for quite some time.
March 10, 2004 No Comments
Wed, 10 Mar 2004 14:34:01 GMT
Schneier on Security As a Delusion: “Security always involves compromises. As a society we can have as much protection as we want, as long as we're willing to sacrifice the money, time, convenience, and liberties to get it. Unfortunately, most of the government's measures are bad trade-offs: They require significant sacrifices without providing much additional safety in return.” [GrepLaw] [Universal Rule]
March 10, 2004 No Comments
Wed, 10 Mar 2004 14:19:14 GMT
The Libraries That Time (and Budgets) Forgot. Michael Winerip’s On Education: At Poor Schools, Time Stops on the Library’s Shelves is a deeply depressing story, and the sort of journalism we need don’t get nearly as often as we need. It seems that in poor neighborhoods — predominantly black neighborhoods — the schools have been starving the libraries. The books in the school library mostly date from before the schools were integrated. Not only do they lack the biographies students need for Black History Month, but they are innocent of four decades of modern technology, politics and literature. They don’t even have Harry Potter — the books that are credited with sparking a new generation of readers. What better example of our national shame of unequal class-based (which often in effect means race-based) public education? That said, I do have one tiny criticism of the article: do not make fun of Freddy the Pig…. [Discourse.net]
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this is a sad state of affairs. one thing that my h.s. library had going for it was the fact that several people donated books, not crap books, but new books in their field that they thought high school students could use. school libraries need to build communities. the other thing that my elementary school did was have library class, where we would go to the library and they would read, or we would get a book off the shelf and read, etc. this is conducive toward engaging students in learning about libraries.
March 10, 2004 No Comments
Wed, 10 Mar 2004 12:50:53 GMT
Introduction to the Gumstix tiny linux computer. 10 Mar 2004: Rich Gibson reviews the Gumstix tiny linux computer.”The Gumstix computer (also see Gumstix.org) is a tiny 200 or 400 Mhz single board computer based on the Intel XScale processors. with Linux Kernel 2.6.0 in flash ram. They have 64 mb of RAM. You can get your Gumstix as a tiny little board, or a 'full fledged' computer.” [RootPrompt.org -- Nothing but Unix]
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oooo, i wants one, gimme gimme…. dunno what for though….
March 10, 2004 No Comments
rocks surround house, smash garage!
sometimes it is difficult not to assign subjectivity to nature….
March 10, 2004 No Comments