As seen in the men’s locker room at my local gym:
Please refrain from bringing oatmeal into the shower.
John Haller has modified Firefox 1.0 to run off of a USB key drive.
Portable Firefox is a fully functional package of Firefox optimized for use on a USB key drive. It has some specially-selected optimizations to make it perform faster and extend the life of your USB key as well as a specialized launcher that will allow most of your favorite extensions to work as you switch computers. It will also work from a CDRW drive (in packet mode), ZIP drives, external hard drives, some MP3 players, flash RAM cards and more.
Wow! Just found this on the Internet Archive. They have a seven part series of videos of Michael Badnarik’s class on the US Constitution available for free download. Fantastic…
From Space.com:
The meteors will appear to emanate from out of the so-called “Sickle” of Leo, but prospective viewers should not concentrate on that area of the sky around Leo, but rather keep their eyes moving around to different parts of the sky.
Because Leo does not start coming fully into view until the after midnight hours, that would be the best time to concentrate on looking for the Leonid meteors.
The hours after midnight are generally best for watching for “shooting stars” anyway, because before midnight we are riding on the back side of the Earth in its orbit around the Sun, whereas after midnight we are on the front or advancing side. After midnight the only meteoroids escaping collision are those ahead of the Earth and moving in the same direction with velocities exceeding 18.5 miles per second. All others we will either overtake or meet head-on. But before midnight, when we are on the backside, the only meteoroids we encounter are those with velocities high enough to overtake the Earth.
Therefore, on the average, morning meteors appear brighter and faster than those we see in the evening.
And because the Leonids are moving along in their orbit around the Sun in a direction opposite to that of Earth, they slam into our atmosphere nearly head-on, resulting in the fastest meteor velocities possible: 45 miles per second (72 kilometers per second). Such speeds tend to produce bright meteors, which leave long-lasting streaks or trains in their wake.
The first snow of 2004 is falling outside. Damn, I want to move to Anguilla…
From the maker of WinAMP and Gnutella — the Jesusonic.
Using the Jesusonic, you can combine any number of effects in whatever order you choose. Effects can interact with eachother (for example, a volume detection effect can trigger a tremolo effect), or (especially in the case of the Jesusonic CrusFX 1000) with the user (you can assign triggers to effects like loop samplers, for example). A wide assortment of built-in effects are included, and you will be able to share effects with other people, through the User Resources page here on Jesusonic.com.
Japanese robotocist Masahiro Mori made an interesting observation that has come to be known as the “uncanny valley”:
Stated simply, the idea is that if one were to plot emotional response against similarity to human appearance and movement, the curve is not a sure, steady upward trend. Instead, there is a peak shortly before one reaches a completely human ‘look’ . . . but then a deep chasm plunges below neutrality into a strongly negative response before rebounding to a second peak where resemblance to humanity is complete.
In other words, there’s a point just before 100% realism where human models/robots/puppets appear freakishly frightening – the living dead, so to speak. Many of us have experienced the valley when viewing figures in wax museums. There’s just something, well, wrong with the figure. I’ve had this same feeling when viewing CG figures, especially when they are animated. The eyes just don’t look right. Even when the eyes dart and shift in a supposedly natural manner, there’s still something just “off” that gives goosebumps. As production companies strive towards fully realistic CG movies, this will be the biggest barrier to acceptance by the general public.
“The Polar Express” is premiering this week, and as you may know it is a fully CG movie that uses motion capture to record the movements of various actors (Tom Hanks in five different roles), and animates these recorded performances via CG models. The reviews generally state that the movements of the CG figures are amazingly lifelike, but the character’s eyes appear dead, zombie-like, and creepy. Paul Clinton’s review on CNN said:
This season’s biggest holiday extravaganza, “The Polar Express,” should be subtitled “The Night of the Living Dead.” The characters are that frightening.
The technical issue is that the motion capture cameras cannot currently record the movement of the actor’s eyes, as there is no way to attach sensors to the eye (each actor is covered with hundreds of sensors that the infrared motion capture system can detect). I wonder how difficult it would be to implement retinal tracking, perhaps via goggles.
I was just thinking the same thing the other day – Firefox makes it very clear if you’re viewing a secure site.
From BoingBoing:
Deirdre McNamer (how appropriate) wrote a story in The New Yorker magazine in October 2002 about a 28-year-old pinko-gray-skinned, blue-eyed, red-blond-haired criminal called Christian Michael Longo who used the alias ‘John Thomas Christopher.’ His alias was placed on the DNFL used by the Transportation Security Administration. He was arrested in January 2002 but his alias was not removed from the DNFL. On March 23, 2002, 70-year-old brown-skinned, dark-eyed, gray-haired grandmother Johnnie Thomas was informed that she was on the master terrorist list and would have special security measures applied every time she flew. Indeed, the poor lady found that she was repeatedly delayed by a scurry of activity when she presented her tickets at an airline counter, extra X-rays of her checked baggage, supplementary examination of her hand-baggage and extra wanding at the entrance gates. On one occasion she was told that she had graduated to the exalted status labeled, ‘Not allowed to fly.’ She discovered that there was no method available for having ‘her’ name removed from the DNFL; indeed, one person from her local FBI office dismissively told her to hire a lawyer (although ironically, he refused to identify himself). An employee of the TSA informed her that ‘four other law-abiding John Thomases had called to complain.’
From Ed Foster’s “Gripe Log“:
Now that Steve Ballmer and company have given you all the facts you need to compare Windows and Linux, allow me to add just one little tidbit.
A few days ago, Ballmer published an “executive letter” at http://www.microsoft.com/mscorp/execmail/ in which he invited IT professionals to look at all the propaganda … oops, I mean facts Microsoft has assembled comparing open source and Windows platforms. And while he didn’t point to it specifically, one couldn’t help but notice the white paper at the very top of Microsoft’s “Get the Facts” page (http://www.microsoft.com/getthefacts). “Comparing Microsoft .NET to IBM Websphere/J2EE” is a study commissioned by Microsoft and conducted by The Middleware Company analyzing productivity, performance, reliability and manageability of the two platforms.
Now, there are some interesting facts in that study and there are also some things that could be questioned, but I’m not going to go into detail on its findings or methodology. You can read it for yourself if you’re interested and make your own judgments. Of course, since Microsoft commissioned the study, it will come as no surprise to you that Windows wins. When you pay for the testing, you get to write the test plan.
What interests me most about this particular white paper is that it contains some benchmark results comparing performance of Windows server 2003 and the .Net development framework versus IBM Websphere running on Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Which brings me to that one little fact I wanted to add. The license agreement for Windows Server 2003 states:
“Benchmark Testing. The 32-bit version of the Software contains the Microsoft .NET Framework. Disclosure of the results of any benchmark test of the .NET Framework component of the Software to any third party without Microsoft’s prior written approval is prohibited.”
In other words, Microsoft says competitors need their permission to publish results of a study like the one Microsoft commissioned. If IBM, Red Hat, or some other open source advocate wanted to counter Microsoft’s claims with a study of their own, Microsoft’s license would deny them the right to publish their own set of benchmark results.
Since Microsoft’s censorship clause is probably not legally enforceable, it would theoretically be possible for a competitor to do its own study and dare Microsoft to do something about it. In practice, though, a competitor would probably have a great deal of difficulty getting any of the major independent labs to conduct the test without Microsoft’s approval. And, assuming that the test plan was one designed to show open source in a far more favorable light than Microsoft’s did, it’s highly unlikely Microsoft’s approval would be forthcoming.
Steve Ballmer says customers want factual information to help them answer questions about how open source and Windows platforms compare, and that’s certainly true. Microsoft can and should publish any information it thinks will sway customers to their side. What it shouldn’t do is to try to deny anyone else the right to do the same thing. Sometimes it seems like Microsoft has a monopoly of just about everything, but it shouldn’t have one on the facts.
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