See http://montcarte.umbrela.com/2009/10/21/these-are-the-terrines-of-our-lives/ for all the inspiration you'll need for your next Sunday brunch.
I needed something to keep the blog alive. BTW I found that link at
http://montcarte.umbrela.com/2009/10/21/these-are-the-terrines-of-our-lives/
Yep, it's nice to be able to use full links and more than 140 chars. Now back to your
usual social networking thing...
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
Friday, June 26, 2009
Passwords: to show them or hide them?
In reference to http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2009/06/the_problem_wit_2.html:
People have gotten worked up this week on whether programs should show passwords as they're being typed or not. The following is idle speculation, as to what's going on now...
Typing passwords is so 1970s. Researchers at Microsoft are toiling away as we speak, rescuing the shards of the failed SongSmith project. Given that most machines of the last decade are capable of decent voice recognition, we know they still aren't perfect. But the SongSmith group noticed that when people sing to the computer, they leave an easily identifiable, unique fingerprint, even allowing for variances, including colds. The main purpose of the SongSmith video was to get us used to the idea that it's no more unusual to sing a few bars in a public place as it is to type or talk on a cell phone.
So all together now: 0-2-1-3-4
People have gotten worked up this week on whether programs should show passwords as they're being typed or not. The following is idle speculation, as to what's going on now...
Typing passwords is so 1970s. Researchers at Microsoft are toiling away as we speak, rescuing the shards of the failed SongSmith project. Given that most machines of the last decade are capable of decent voice recognition, we know they still aren't perfect. But the SongSmith group noticed that when people sing to the computer, they leave an easily identifiable, unique fingerprint, even allowing for variances, including colds. The main purpose of the SongSmith video was to get us used to the idea that it's no more unusual to sing a few bars in a public place as it is to type or talk on a cell phone.
So all together now: 0-2-1-3-4
Friday, May 1, 2009
Sunday, April 19, 2009
Why no posts lately
If you haven't noticed, most of my posts here have been on the short side, unlike the lengthy word bombs I drop even less frequently on my work blog. It turns out that twitter is great for this kind of thing, twitpic even more so when there's an image attached. So if you've been missing those things, you'll find plenty of them at twitter/@ericpromislow
Hey Tibor, it's throwing season again.
Hey Tibor, it's throwing season again.
Saturday, February 7, 2009
Copyright: Adding them up
I saw two interesting talks this week, with a very interesting overlap.
Last night my brother and I went to see Richard Stallman speak at
a union hall deep in the bowels of the old semi-industrial part
of Vancouver, a neighborhood that's doing all it can to resist
the inevitable onslaught of gentrification, modulo a weak economy.
Stallman covered the origins of American copyright law, its
intention to further progress, and how it became subverted in
the late 20th century due to certain works of art being owned
by corporate interests that had outlived the humans who were
actually behind the creations. Thanks to Disney, we're now
in the age of the never-expiring copyright. The gist of the
talk was that this attitude has created a situation where copyright
law is now used to restrict consumers' rights, whereas its
intention was to restrict publishers'.
A couple of days earlier I caught Mike Daisey's monologue
"Monopoly!" as part of the Push festival. I've been a fan
since I read his 21 Dog Years account of his stint at Amazon.com,
but this was his first show in my area code. I won't go into
the details -- you need to see him perform -- but at one point
he talked about how the charter a corporation would form
itself with in the industrial age included plans for its
dissolution, after it had accomplished its mission. The notion
of the eternal, ever-morphing corporate entity is a new one.
Daisey suggests that this requires such organizations to
always expand. It could even lead, he says aghast, to
multi-nationals that are above the law of the countries
they operate in.
And of course, as I saw this week, to the eternal copyright.
So what would happen if Mickey Mouse did fall into the public
domain? Would watered-down versions of Disneyland spring up
in former rust-bucket towns like Youngstown, Ohio? Would
kids be willing to put up with an inauthentic version for
their family vacation? All those parents, who bought Disney
videos in the 90s, and then the same DVDs ten years later,
wouldn't they mind getting them for a fraction of the cost?
Yeah, of course the shareholders, many in it for the long
haul, wouldn't approve.
It's going to be another interesting decade as the conflict
between the stakeholders of ossified copyright, and the net,
and its ease of dissemination, further escalates.
Last night my brother and I went to see Richard Stallman speak at
a union hall deep in the bowels of the old semi-industrial part
of Vancouver, a neighborhood that's doing all it can to resist
the inevitable onslaught of gentrification, modulo a weak economy.
Stallman covered the origins of American copyright law, its
intention to further progress, and how it became subverted in
the late 20th century due to certain works of art being owned
by corporate interests that had outlived the humans who were
actually behind the creations. Thanks to Disney, we're now
in the age of the never-expiring copyright. The gist of the
talk was that this attitude has created a situation where copyright
law is now used to restrict consumers' rights, whereas its
intention was to restrict publishers'.
A couple of days earlier I caught Mike Daisey's monologue
"Monopoly!" as part of the Push festival. I've been a fan
since I read his 21 Dog Years account of his stint at Amazon.com,
but this was his first show in my area code. I won't go into
the details -- you need to see him perform -- but at one point
he talked about how the charter a corporation would form
itself with in the industrial age included plans for its
dissolution, after it had accomplished its mission. The notion
of the eternal, ever-morphing corporate entity is a new one.
Daisey suggests that this requires such organizations to
always expand. It could even lead, he says aghast, to
multi-nationals that are above the law of the countries
they operate in.
And of course, as I saw this week, to the eternal copyright.
So what would happen if Mickey Mouse did fall into the public
domain? Would watered-down versions of Disneyland spring up
in former rust-bucket towns like Youngstown, Ohio? Would
kids be willing to put up with an inauthentic version for
their family vacation? All those parents, who bought Disney
videos in the 90s, and then the same DVDs ten years later,
wouldn't they mind getting them for a fraction of the cost?
Yeah, of course the shareholders, many in it for the long
haul, wouldn't approve.
It's going to be another interesting decade as the conflict
between the stakeholders of ossified copyright, and the net,
and its ease of dissemination, further escalates.
Thursday, January 8, 2009
What's wrong with Satellite Radio
Last fall we installed a new deck in the car with a USB hub
(I want to call it a "tape deck", but the installer guy
said "what's a tape?"). Not only do the CD and USB readers
both do MP3, but they also let me easily skip over folders.
And with the $15 8GB stick I bought at a Boxing Day sale
(that price will look laughingly high next year, won't it),
I can put the equivalent of two DVDs worth of songs on it.
How long is that? As an experiment I put the Rolling Stone's
500 top songs on it, and it took up about 2GB. At an average
of 3.5 minutes/song, that's close to 30 hours. So let's say
that stick can hold 120 hours of audio -- and unlike a CD,
when I get bored of something, I can delete it. Which I did
with the RS tunes -- turn on a classic rock station, and
chances are you'll hear one of those songs. I think I can
get plenty of satisfaction without hearing that tune again,
as earthshaking as it was in... 1964.
The net provides a wide source of interesting, freely available
audio. Chances are pretty good I'm not even going to have a
chance to listen to everything I put on that stick, especially
considering I do most of my traveling on my bike. But when
I first heard satellite radio in a rented car in San Diego
in 2004, I thought it was pretty cool. Now the concept strikes
me as obsolete.
Net-enabled car radio.... that's something else.
(I want to call it a "tape deck", but the installer guy
said "what's a tape?"). Not only do the CD and USB readers
both do MP3, but they also let me easily skip over folders.
And with the $15 8GB stick I bought at a Boxing Day sale
(that price will look laughingly high next year, won't it),
I can put the equivalent of two DVDs worth of songs on it.
How long is that? As an experiment I put the Rolling Stone's
500 top songs on it, and it took up about 2GB. At an average
of 3.5 minutes/song, that's close to 30 hours. So let's say
that stick can hold 120 hours of audio -- and unlike a CD,
when I get bored of something, I can delete it. Which I did
with the RS tunes -- turn on a classic rock station, and
chances are you'll hear one of those songs. I think I can
get plenty of satisfaction without hearing that tune again,
as earthshaking as it was in... 1964.
The net provides a wide source of interesting, freely available
audio. Chances are pretty good I'm not even going to have a
chance to listen to everything I put on that stick, especially
considering I do most of my traveling on my bike. But when
I first heard satellite radio in a rented car in San Diego
in 2004, I thought it was pretty cool. Now the concept strikes
me as obsolete.
Net-enabled car radio.... that's something else.
Monday, December 1, 2008
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