Chain letters, hoax, virus alerts and charities. Before you press that forward button, check purportal.com. Please.
Archives mensuelles : janvier 2003
Cleaning my bookmarks
Ok, as I’m pretty settled into Chimera as my browser of choice, I’m weeding through many sedimentary layers of bookmarks, creating a couple multi-tab bookmark groups in the process. This is a great time saver to read my comics in the morning in particular, but also to get the weather on a couple sites at a time, get my favorites news sites all loaded at once. While I’m at it ‘ll take the occasion to share a few URLs.
Radio-Canada’s new page with a clean layout. Made to be accessible to disabled people. I love it.
Surrealist compliment generator in français. That’s what it is…
RedFlagDeals. I thought it was one of my China related links but no, it’s a site about internet deals for people living in that other North-American country.
The Axis Applet shows you common connections between countries. It’s quite ironic that the Afghanistan/Iraq/North Korea axis gives « These countries have not yet registered their Axis » (ok, but with Iran instead of Afghanistan it gives « axis of oil-producing border-disputers »). There is a whole bunch of little artsy code demos on that site. Wait.. did I just sneak « art » and « code » in the same sentence again?
Heavens above has all kind of information about. well.. heavens above, that you can customize for your location. Can’t see much of the sky here but I might have better luck in Morin-Heights.
Ever had a coworker who was stuck with a file he could not open? MacLink and GraphicConverter usually made my computer more versatile than most Windows-based machines in that respect, but if you don’t have those tools at least look up the file extension to know what kind of file it could be.
montreal city is a weblog without a RSS feed. But it’s a nice resource to keep up on local news. In that respect, YUL Blog is also a nice directory. I’ll get listed there once I get a real host.
alright, that’s enough for one post. Good w-e everyone. Apparently, despite what the website says, a couple more trail were groomed this week. Or maybe we’ll try something a bit more challenging.
Make a « page Seek » bookmark
Some of you guys know I have a pager. I pay for basic numeric service but I have always been able to use the internet paging service that’s supposed to be only for alphanumeric pager. Of course, it won’t work with letter, just numbers and dashes.
So by crafting a URL like this http://207.245.224.97/PAGESCRIPT?pin=MYPagerNumber&message=YourNumericMessage
You can bypass the web form. But more importantly, you can bypass the connection issues MSN Messenger has been giving me lately and even reach me for the few minutes in a day when I’m not in front of a computer.
I also use this occasionally in a script triggered by a mail rule to be warned of a message by a special someone.
wOuch!
Another cold inspired story: a Russian man had to be rescued after his penis stuck to a frozen bus shelter while he was urinating.
Classic… well at least he could cry for help, unlike when your tongue gets stuck somewhere.
wHao!
A Chinese man has broken his own record by standing naked in sub-zero Siberian winter conditions for 4 hours in temps that reached -29°C.
Awesome!! Did he actually stay standing still and upright? Impressive. I hope it wasn’t windy. Were there bets on how many digits he’d loose in the adventure? Or maybe he had none left to loose, since he apparently held the previous record of 3h46, set in 2000…
How much do you know about copyright?
Benedict.com has a bunch of useful articles about copyright, including film, music, and software. Undoubtedly useful to those interested in copyrighting works, but also highly entertaining to the rest of us (hey, I’m quoting verbatim).
[via MetaFilter]
U of O Electronic Commerce Law Workshop
As the title says, in the form of a webcast. Courtesy of Michael Geist and friends.
The course calendar looks interesting, nothing new, but still a nice refresher. I’ll be tuning in.
Mobile phone booth
I remember that at the back of old 2600 magazines, they used to have pictures of phone booths from across the world. Maybe they still do I, I haven’t seen one of those in a while.
Well this idea definitely is worth noting: using humans with cell phones as phone boxes with legs. Imaginative solution for a common problem.
[Via Smart mobs]
update: My favorite LDC connectivity specialist informs me that Bangladesh saw people adopting a similar situation where individuals would start a business reselling cell phone time. The idea snowballed.
Vlan dans les dents
Réponse du député péruvien Villanueva Nuñez à Microsoft
Oulah, un échange soutenu qui vaut bien la peine d’être au moins survollé.
[via Remolino]
Morning news ramblings
Sometimes around 6 or 7 AM a mail rule my computer makes a special sound. It’s the Cla morning (well, noon) news updates. Somewhere (ok, I know exactly where) someone had a small thought for an old sleeping friend. It does help me start my day better than Corn Flakes. Thanks Cla!
So today we have old news (which incidentally I had missed back then so it’s ok): Kazaa gets the green light
And we have new news: first a NYT article on DRM . good read. scary read. sad read. I never considered DRM bad per se, but like anything, abusing something is never good.
Then an article on Intellectual property: an interview with the EFF’s Fred Von Lohmann. He’s the EFF’s attorney and this is another valuable read, revolving around the idea that « It makes you wonder whether the fight is actually about piracy, or if it’s instead about asserting control over new technologies. «
He also states the tragically obvious: « If the precedents being made today were on the books 20 years ago, we would never have seen the photocopier, the VCR, or the CD recorder . »
Oh, and I’ll try reading in Safari today. I used to read long texts in OmniWeb but Safari seems to have fairly good anti aliasing too.
On the multiple uses of a subponea
Once upon a time, there was a Really Bad Attitude mailing list. It was supposed to be a private place to say bad things without consequences. Thanks to MS Lawyers, it is no more (don’t worry, the subponea game works both ways).
In hindsight, complying with the company’s Document Retention Policy (which at Netscape was basically, « shred anything within 90 days unless you can’t get your job done without it ») might have been a good idea. But in any event, I sure am glad that I keep my work mail and personal mail in separate folders. I’m going to increase that separation soon, and keep them on separate machines entirely. And I encourage you to do the same.
Amen. I really should do the same.
The problem is that I love to have a digital memory. Contrary to human memory, I find it actually takes more effort not to keep a trace of something I did on a computer. Double edged sword apparently.
[via Fizzz]
Keynote time
Time to watch the keynote. My mantra: don’t expect anything…
This copyright class is brought to you by the RIAA
Should you pirate music? Of course not. But what is piracy? It’s a term with a very strong and broad meaning that can apply to crimes in the high seas or to anyone with a mini-disc recorder at a rock show.
To help you untangle that complicated, delicate, subtle and beautiful area of copyright law, there is Music United « music united for strong internet copyrights ». I especially recommend their legal section. Blunt and categoric. Read and have a good scare.
Brought to you by AEC One Stop Group, Alliance of Artists and Recording Companies, Association for Independent Music, American Federation of Musicians, American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, Christian Music Trade Association, Church Music Publishers Association, Country Music Association, Gospel Music Association, Hip Hop Summit Action Network, Jazz Alliance International, Music Managers Forum-USA, National Association of Recording Merchandisers, National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences, National Music Publishers’ Association, Nashville Songwriters Association International, Recording Industry Association of America, Recording Industries Music Performance Trust Funds, SESAC, SoundExchange, Tennessee Songwriters Association International, The Songwriters Guild of America
Code and laws and stuff
« Code Laws » of Cyberspace: a survey of technologies substantially involved in regulating the Internet, i.e. the « code laws » of cyberspace.
[Via Lessig’s blog]
Jon Johansen acquitted
The Norvegian episode of the great DeCSS witch hunt ended, for now, on an acquital on all counts. Of course, everyone already kowns.
I hope this is sound law (considering I know nothing about Norwegian law and the state of implementation of the European DMCA there) and I wonder what repercussions this will have. After all, this was not a particularly good test case: there was no smoking gun, stacks of pirated DVDs or other pirate paraphenalia on evidence. Just a coder who wanted to read DVDs without using an licensed decoder.
This said, I can’t help but wonder if the deflation of the dotcom bubble had the effect of cooling off the heads of the judiciary in those related matters.
Now that the hype is somewhat less blinding, that the image of any tech endeavor as a speeding unstoppable express freight train in front of which everything must yield is gone for good, maybe well see more sensible decisions.
[via everyone and their pet shrimp]