![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
silveradeptYes, it be Talk Like a Pirate Day, landlubbers. So we'll talk about distributing illegal copies of media at some point in the entry. Also, it was ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
tinchen's brithday, either today or yesterday, so be sure to wish her a happy birthday.
Super Mario Brothers Wedding Cake. Despite what it looks like, the cake is edible. My jaw drops at such a lovely artistic sight. (Wowed by the design? Check out some of the other cakes this company has done)
USB-rechargable batteries. Now this is an interesting idea. I wonder how well they work. These seem like the perfect batteries to have with you for peripherals and computer-related materials. The question is, of course, whether they have good life and are inexpensive, relatively.
The world's first penis transplant receiver has had it removed. Apparently, there were mental problems that could not be overcome. Science proceeds apace, but this might be one of those times where we truly aren't quite ready for it. I wonder whether it's a matter of the trauma etching a memory onto the body and mind that says "This is gone now" and not being able to resolve that there is something there again. Were that true, though, artificial replacements should have a similar effect, but they don't seem to. Maybe it's because they're obviously unnatural, so the body still knows that there's not a regular limb there, but something they can use in its place instead?
Hearing voices may not be a universally bad or insane thing, at least for researchers at the University of Manchester. They're trying to figure out whether hearing someone when there's nobody there is just a normal part of our lives, perhaps as a reaction to stress or significant events in life.
Predicitons made on another attack sequence by Al-Qaeda. I'm not sure whether this is a threat or blowing smoke. We'll see, one way or another, I suspect.
Are the poll machines ready for Nov. 2006? If glitches, gaffes, and bugs dominate, there's going to be very little confidence. If you add on top of that maliciousness and vote-changing done by election officials or other hackers, then there's not only no confidence, but no point in voting, as the numbers will say whatever they have been programmed to say. It would give the illusion of legitimacy to any number of things.
Empathy with people, actions, and things, might turn out to be due to the firing of mirror neurons in the brain. Apparently, there's a spectrum of empathic response, depending on whether those mirror neurons fire or not.
Cereal On-the-Go container design. Perfect for taking your Chocolat Frosted Sugar Bombs into work with you when you're running late. Or when you just need sugary pick me up in the middle of the day.
A bad day for an Australian man - charged with having sex with a corpse, he also confesses to drunk driving and arson. Something must have pushed him over the edge.
And the last mark... showing that it's been a ways since the 50s, but that there's still a lot of work to be done. At least these days, when we hear of homosexuals, the reaction isn't like Greensboro, North Carolina, 1957: the "gay scare". Where the judge was biased, the jury was likely biased, the black mark has stuck, and nearly everything about it was wrong by today's standards. I just wonder whether we still have gay scares, even in this day and age.
Also, because I suspect someone will notice, on piracy: the DeCSS algorithm was developed as a way of playing protected DVDs on a computer without using proprietary software. I believe it was for a Linux environment, for which such official things had not been released, nor were likely to. Thus, while the reverse-engineering of the protocol was illegal, likely, under a license that one supposedly implicitly agreed to by buying the media format, it was also a technical achievement. Perhaps much like the Linux kernel itself. DeCSS also made it possible for movie ripping and other such wonderfully piratical acts. Ah, well. In this case, sometimes you have to take the good with the bad.
tinchen's brithday, either today or yesterday, so be sure to wish her a happy birthday.Super Mario Brothers Wedding Cake. Despite what it looks like, the cake is edible. My jaw drops at such a lovely artistic sight. (Wowed by the design? Check out some of the other cakes this company has done)
USB-rechargable batteries. Now this is an interesting idea. I wonder how well they work. These seem like the perfect batteries to have with you for peripherals and computer-related materials. The question is, of course, whether they have good life and are inexpensive, relatively.
The world's first penis transplant receiver has had it removed. Apparently, there were mental problems that could not be overcome. Science proceeds apace, but this might be one of those times where we truly aren't quite ready for it. I wonder whether it's a matter of the trauma etching a memory onto the body and mind that says "This is gone now" and not being able to resolve that there is something there again. Were that true, though, artificial replacements should have a similar effect, but they don't seem to. Maybe it's because they're obviously unnatural, so the body still knows that there's not a regular limb there, but something they can use in its place instead?
Hearing voices may not be a universally bad or insane thing, at least for researchers at the University of Manchester. They're trying to figure out whether hearing someone when there's nobody there is just a normal part of our lives, perhaps as a reaction to stress or significant events in life.
Predicitons made on another attack sequence by Al-Qaeda. I'm not sure whether this is a threat or blowing smoke. We'll see, one way or another, I suspect.
Are the poll machines ready for Nov. 2006? If glitches, gaffes, and bugs dominate, there's going to be very little confidence. If you add on top of that maliciousness and vote-changing done by election officials or other hackers, then there's not only no confidence, but no point in voting, as the numbers will say whatever they have been programmed to say. It would give the illusion of legitimacy to any number of things.
Empathy with people, actions, and things, might turn out to be due to the firing of mirror neurons in the brain. Apparently, there's a spectrum of empathic response, depending on whether those mirror neurons fire or not.
Cereal On-the-Go container design. Perfect for taking your Chocolat Frosted Sugar Bombs into work with you when you're running late. Or when you just need sugary pick me up in the middle of the day.
A bad day for an Australian man - charged with having sex with a corpse, he also confesses to drunk driving and arson. Something must have pushed him over the edge.
And the last mark... showing that it's been a ways since the 50s, but that there's still a lot of work to be done. At least these days, when we hear of homosexuals, the reaction isn't like Greensboro, North Carolina, 1957: the "gay scare". Where the judge was biased, the jury was likely biased, the black mark has stuck, and nearly everything about it was wrong by today's standards. I just wonder whether we still have gay scares, even in this day and age.
Also, because I suspect someone will notice, on piracy: the DeCSS algorithm was developed as a way of playing protected DVDs on a computer without using proprietary software. I believe it was for a Linux environment, for which such official things had not been released, nor were likely to. Thus, while the reverse-engineering of the protocol was illegal, likely, under a license that one supposedly implicitly agreed to by buying the media format, it was also a technical achievement. Perhaps much like the Linux kernel itself. DeCSS also made it possible for movie ripping and other such wonderfully piratical acts. Ah, well. In this case, sometimes you have to take the good with the bad.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2006-09-20 09:23 am (UTC)Regarding DeCSS, at the time the CCA (the name of the "encryption" algorithm) was cracked, it wasn't technically against the law as the hacker who broke it (and it was for the linux environment) was in Finland (IIRC). He's now known as DVD Jon and the MPAA has tried to sue him up and down, but it boils down to that law had not at that time been adopted in Finland.
The interesting thing about DeCSS is that it was all over the web instantly, and the hacker magazine 2600 published the code. So the MPAA sued 2600 for helping people to hack, even though they had nothing to do with the creation of the code. They removed the code from their web site, but the law suit went on. IIRC, 2600 won, and it was the first legal challenge to the DMCA.
Re: charging batteries via USB. I saw an article, it might have been a slashdot link, I don't recall. Guy has a PC that has five or six PCI slots. He installed a 5-port USB adapter in each slot, then rigged the power out wires from the ports into a hot plate. They had a photo of him cooking spaghetti on it.
Frightening. A hot plate would be so much safer.
Re: attack sequence by AQ. Count on the Ruling Party and Powers That Be to be spreading a lot of paranoid FUD before the November election in hopes of scaring enough people to keep 'em in office. Let's pray that doesn't happen.
no subject
Date: 2006-09-20 12:07 pm (UTC)As for the encryption, there wasn't a law on the books that I knew of, but I wonder whether DVD Jon could be sues for breaking a license agreement of some sort that says "You will not reverse-engineer this DVD, BLARGH!" or something like it.
That's a little scary, that you can drive a hot plate from a significant enough quantity of USB. I think it's scarier that someone actually did.
Yeah, I'm expecting lots of FUD from here on out - that's why I can't tell whether it's smoke or fire. We'll probably find out soon enough.
no subject
Date: 2006-09-20 04:19 pm (UTC)With the encryption, again, there was a law mismatch which included a license mismatch. To try to prevent it from happening again, a copy of the DMCA has been included in US trade packages, so now a lot of countries around the world have some version of DMCA. A lousy law, and now EVERYONE gets to suffer!
The ridiculous thing about the hotplate is (a) the load on the power supply and system cooling; (b) you've just spent how much money and time building this when you could have just bought a hot plate for $15 or so; and (c) you've just eliminated all expansion capability for your computer. +Points for high geek factor (I could do it, so I did it!), minus several million for common sense. ;)
no subject
Date: 2006-09-20 04:37 pm (UTC)I agree that it's a lousy law and that it's being used to bludgeon everyone into accepting the ridiculous restrictions that the paranoid cartels are putting on us. Whomever decided that DRM was the way to go should spend an eternity in the stocks for such a boneheaded decision.
The hotplate was probably made solely for the geek factor. Or perhaps as a demonstration of sorts. I don't think it was ever intended to have practical application.
no subject
Date: 2006-09-20 08:34 pm (UTC)But wouln't that just be uncomfortable to have a persistent hard-on?
no subject
Date: 2006-09-20 09:01 pm (UTC)The other part that might be uncomfortable would be whether a permanent erection would be continuously and constantly felt or not. Because always feeling that could get very problematic very quickly.
no subject
Date: 2006-09-20 09:15 pm (UTC)