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Thursday, September 28 2000

MONEY-MAKING MACHINE

Columnist Erik Lacitis talks about two Net citizens who each followed the instructions in a particular multi-level-marketing/spam chain letter, hoping to MAKE MONEY FAST; the results: one lost over a hundred bucks (predictable), one made five dollars (surprising).

Comedy Central Radio

Comedy Central (working with NetRadio) is going to set up a 24-hour All-Comedy Internet Radio Station. (They're also going to sell Southpark tapes online.)

Who owns your media...

The Columbia Journalism Review has a list of major corporations who own major media outlets: newspapers, TV networks, TV stations, etc. Why should you care?

1. the more media that is corporate-owned, the less anti-corporate news and opinion we'll see through the media
   
2. a decision by one executive in a major company can determine the focus of an entire set of properties' coverage (or non-coverage) of important issues, or can shut out other legitimate corporate or non-corporate voices
   
3. most important, the companies that make the content also hope to control the means of delivering the content; this is good business on their part, but limits choice and potential for we citizens of the world
   

SFO housing situation REALLY bad

I've been reading Craig's List, a San Francisco Bay Area website, for housing information for the past month (even though I'm not going to start seriously looking till I get to California). There tend to be some weird messages on the site. An excerpt from one of the weirdest so far:

"The room you will be getting is downstairs next to the garage, it gets very little light, the garage is infested with spiders, and there is never any toilet paper in the house. Your food will never be safe either. One of the
roommates is addicted to Cocoa Puffs. There is also a flea-ridden dog and a cat who is very loud and is always throwing herself at your feet in desperate feline heat. She will scratch at your door a lot and meow raggedly. There is
also an elderly Ukranian women living next door who frequently sticks her head out the window whenever you go in and out the house and insults you vehemently. We don't know why. The bath tub has been stopped up for 2 weeks. The room you will staying in is filled to the ceiling with someone else's furniture."

Wednesday, September 27 2000

TV series based on Philip Jose Farmer's Riverworld series

The director of The Crow and Dark City is developing a TV series based on Philip Jose Farmer's Riverworld series. If I didn't find commercials so annoying, this might tempt me to start watching TV again...

Monday, September 25 2000

Well what on earth does that mean?

I don't know - Mr Wentworth just told me to come in here and say that there was trouble at the mill, that's all - I didn't expect a kind of Spanish Inquisition.

Friday, September 22 2000

Apache and PHP vs. The Spambot

I've written an Apache/PHP article at ahref.com, on fighting Spambots with Apache and PHP.

I'd originally thought to include a section on feeding spambots fake email addresses, but decided not to for a couple of reasons. (1) if you generate a real email address among your fake email addresses, you'll be causing someone innocent problems. (2) the spammer probably won't have to deal with bounces from their compromised mailing list; whoever they're "stealing" service from will, and if they use someone else's email address to spam from, that person will get screwed.

I've got to fix ahref.com's look for IE5/Windows, though; it's annoying...

Thursday, September 21 2000

Software on your computer that's spying on ya...

The list of Spyware Infested Software lists software which is known to send information back to the software publisher from users' computers without consent by the users. (This is different than cookies - these are actual programs.)

Earthquake maps for the San Francisco Bay Area

The Association of Bay Area Governments has earthquake hazard maps for cities throughout the San Francisco Bay Area, showing which neighborhoods in which cities will experience the most damage under different earthquake scenarios. Not something you'll find at any real estate sites...

World Health Organization: US is #37

Chronicle of Higher Education opinion piece (paid subscription required) pointing out that the United States is ranked #37 in the world out of 191 in terms of overall health system performance in a recent World Health Organization report; #24 for "DALE" - disability-adjusted life expectancy, "the expectation of life lived in equivalent full health." We're behind Canada in both rankings.

The author's suggestion: stop concentrating so much on individual patients' health, and start concentrating on health policy/how people live:

"As we try to improve our health-care system, we must use all the tools at our disposal to keep Americans healthy. Those tools include medical care, of course, but also universal health insurance, highway safety, suicide prevention, gun control, education, bicycle helmets, and programs to help people stop engaging in unhealthy behaviors, like smoking and unsafe sex. The quest for national health is not a medical monopoly; it is an interdisciplinary endeavor."

Wednesday, September 20 2000

Mind-reading computer interface

Really, really cool. Brain Actuated Technologies produces Cyberlink Interface, a hardware/software system that "reads your mind" to let you perform mouse, keyboard, and clicking commands on a computer. You have to train with it first, though (you don't think "left" - you learn to think in such a way to make the mouse move left). Costs about $2000. Compatible with several Windows programs.

The MIT Technology Review had an article about this type of technology several months ago, but I don't have a link handy...

Monday, September 18 2000

Web-browser-controlled Robot

Pretty cool: the iRobot-LE is a robot that can be controlled from a web browser. It streams audio and video of its surroundings to your browser, while you control it with a joystick or your keyboard and mouse. Apparently can't do much besides move and climb stairs (yet), but it basically gives you telepresence through the web...

Cell Phone Security Flaw

One effect of the U.S.'s ban on exporting strong encryption: by building a fake "base station," someone can convince your (GSM) cell phone that you're in another country, one where strong encryption is not allowed; your cell phone switches from strong encryption to weak encryption; your already-intercepted-conversation becomes easier to decrypt and eavesdrop on.

Friday, September 15 2000

Celebrities, Bad Haircuts

One of the wireless affinity groups Upoc Inc. offers: celebrity watch - members of the group (New York City-based) who spot celebrities fire off an instant message from their cell phones, to alert everyone else in the group. Afiinity group #2: Mullet Watch - people who fire off an instant message whenever they see someone with a mullet.

Wednesday, September 13 2000

History of TV, Present of Internet, Future of Society

Very good article on a bunch of stuff: Philo T. Farnsworth, inventor of television; the tension between anti-corporate web workers and the capitalist (corporatist?) masters who give them their paychecks; and culture jammers through the ages. Chock full of good links, and quite well-written.

ahref.com calendar updated...

Latest issue of the ahref-news newsletter just went out. No new articles; just a link to the updated calendar section. The calendar's not where I want it to be, yet; I'm hoping to get in as much per-event information as they've got at this internet.com-owned site, but with better navigation.

Tuesday, September 12 2000

Ebonics Redux

An old R(esident) F(ellow) of mine from Stanford, Linguistics Professor John Rickford, discusses "Ebonics" in a Stanford Magazine article. Key points:

• linguists in general, and major linguistics societies, recognize that Vernacular English/Black English/Spoken Soul/Ebonics exists as a language variety, and has a consistent grammar and pronunciation worth study
  
• recognizing this (as the Oakland, CA school board did in 1996 (year?), resulting in widespread criticism) and using it as a launching point for teaching black children "standard" English is "linguistically and pedagogically sound."
  

Thursday, September 7 2000

Hugo Award winner...

Vernor Vinge's A Deepness in the Sky has won this year's Hugo Award for best novel. It's a really good book.

Opening paragraph:

"The manhunt extended across more than one hundred lightyears and eight centuries. It had always been a secret search, unacknowledged even among some of the participants. In the early years, it had simply been encrypted queries hidden in radio broadcasts. Decades and centuries passed. There were clues, interviews with The Man's fellow-travelers, pointers in a half-dozen contradictory directions: The Man was alone now and heading still farther away; The Man had died before the search ever began; The Man had a war fleet and was coming back upon them."

Millenium/2000/2001/Whatever

Deleting old email, I found a (what-I-think-is-humorous) response I gave to someone complainining about people who say 2000 marks the beginning of a new millenium:

You know what else pisses me off? People who think noon is after noon. I mean, really - every time someone says or writes "12:00pm" I just cringe. pm - that's "post meridiem", people. post = after. meridiem = noon. "after noon." Just doesn't work with "12:00." And don't get me started on people
who say things like "later tonight - about 1am."


For some reason, these people seem to think that words mean just what we want them to mean. That word definitions are malleable things, that they change from time to time, and vary from mind to mind and from conversation to conversation.




tongue in cheekly,

ep



P.S. Happy New Millenium. May all your customers be satisfied, your employees enjoy their work, and society recognize the good your business does for the world.

--On Fri, Dec 31, 1999 17:05 +0000 *email address omitted* wrote:



Can some one explain to me why anyone would think that the end of 1999

marked the end of 2,000 years?

Wednesday, September 6 2000

Open Source Convention article

Again, on ahref.com: I've written another article, covering some keynotes and such at the O'Reilly Open Source Software Conference 2000.

"Carnaval in Philly"

At G21.net, Harrison Chastang talks about the black presence at the Republican convention in Philadelphia. Among other things, the agreements and differences between (liberal) Reverend Al Sharpton and (conservative) radio talk show host Armstrong Williams at their joint press conference.

Supercomputer for sale on EBay

The Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center is selling a decommissioned supercomputer, Mario, on EBay. Minimum bid (already surpassed) was $35,000. It can perform 16 billion instructions per second, has 4 gigs of RAM (+4 gigs solid-state storage), and 130 gigs of drive space.

Cell phone radiation - list

There's now a fairly easy-to-read list of various cell phones sold inside the United States, along with the amount of radiation they give off, as described by their specific absorption rates (SAR) - "...the quantity of radiofrequency (RF) energy that is absorbed by the body."

My Motorola Timeport has one of the 10 highest SARs in the list. Hmmmmm...

Tuesday, September 5 2000

Online medical diagnosis info - for a fee

Six prominent medical schools have started a service, UPCMD, that includes (among other things) 15,000 pages of info on symptoms and tests for a wide range of diseases.

Useful info, but - there's a $199 annual subscription fee. Which reduces the chances that anyone but their target audience - doctors - is going to look at it. (Then again, the service providers can't be faulted for trying to actually make money off the Net...)

Monday, September 4 2000

Free credit info; opting out of credit card offers

Prepping for my upcoming California apartment hunt, I found the webpages at Trans Union's and Equifax's (new name for TRW) websites with info on ordering your credit report. Maryland, Colorado, Georgia, Massachusetts, New Jersey, and Vermont residents can get credit reports for free; hooray for pro-consumer state laws.

Both pages also list a number to call to opt-out of "pre-approved offers of credit or insurance" - which seems to mean that calling and leaving a bunch of info will stop the major consumer reporting agencies (Equifax, Trans Union, etc.) from selling your info to credit card companies looking for new customers.

Sunday, September 3 2000

Whisteblowin' reporters win case vs. Fox TV station

The good guys win: a Florida jury found that reporters who refused to run a false news report about bovine growth hormone for a Tampa, FL station were illegally fired for it. Apparently, Monsanto (BGH manufacturer) leaned on the TV station to bury the story the reporters wanted to run, which talked about BGH's "potential links to breast cancer and other human and animal health effects."

Friday, September 1 2000

dot.commies/March Madness

I'm moving to the San Francisco Bay Area pretty damn soon. Probably San Francisco or Berkeley. But I've been seeing a lot of articles like this one, about the death of the San Francisco art scene at the hands of tech companies and their well-heeled employees. I don't want to be part of a "kick out the artists" movement, but then, I don't want to live with a bunch of other techies in a Silicon Valley suburb, either...

NSA UFO info

The National Security Agency (NSA) has a whole bunch of reports on alleged UFO sightings, investigations into extra-terrestrials, etc.

About this site

This is the personal web site for Edward (Ed) Piou. Consisting mainly of a blog (operational since 1999) and various photos.

Some online projects I'm working on

Politics

Charity, Non-profits...

A while ago, I decided to put my money where my mind is on a (roughly) monthly basis and give to:

Photos

Public events documented through pictures...