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From another blog I post at:

“Free” Private Education - MIT OpenCourseWare

In 1999, MIT began an initiative to “virtualize” all of their graduate and undergraduate programs, for public consumption, por gratis (an idea similar to Wikipedia).

As of September 2003 the Institute has published 500 courses online - and an even larger cornucopia will be marching along the way throughout the next 5 years (2008 is the goal for total implementation).

With courses ranging from biology to nuclear engineering to the Sloan School of Management, the OCW program will assist the Curious George within all of us – and hopefully one group in particular: two million home schooled students.

The whole OCW system is actually a great justification for not going to highschool at all. In addition to John Gatto’s thoughts on The System™, if a 17 year-old has access to the web, they could easily finish dozens of college-level courses without much guidance or direction at all.

In fact, despite what some holy rollers in Tennessee might ban, the Darwin and Design reading list is great. The selection is diverse in both age, some dating 200+ years old, and with topic matter, Alice in Wonderland isn’t the first book that comes to mind when discussing Creation.

Anyways, if you’re a parent, teacher or student, be sure to visit the OCW and become a bonified beaver.

Creature Thought Extinct Found in Cuba:

HAVANA - A living example of an insectivore native to Cuba — but believed for years to extinct — has been found in the island’s eastern mountains, a Cuban news agency reported.

The discovery of the male insect-eating mammal known as an almiqui (pronounced ahl-mee-KEE) raises hopes “that it will not wind up in the catalog of the irretrievable animals disappearing from the face of the Earth,” Prensa Latina said in reporting the discovery.

The creature looks like a brownish woolly badger with a long, pink-tipped snout and can measure up to about 19 inches, according to Prensa Latina’s Monday dispatch.

Raise your right hand if you think Ra has a sense of humor. Now with that out of the way, who wouldn’t want to have one of those fellas as a pet? He’d definitely fix the fire ant problem on my lawn and then some.

Via FultonChain.

I’m dead sexy, yea baby.

P2P group seeks peace, but talks tough:

A newly launched peer-to-peer trade association has offered to sit down and negotiate with music industry lawyers, while it simultaneously denounced its adversaries as obsolete and “tyrannosaurical.”

Despite the creative newly minted adjective, the story is [tragically] about the trade group, P2P United, which is actually trying to make a deal with the devil. To wit:

P2P United wouldn’t give details on how what kind of deal it would seek with the RIAA and other copyright holders, except to say that it was looking for some sort of compulsory license or indirect payment system. One idea that’s been floated, is for Congress to levy a tax on high-speed Internet connections, with the proceeds split between the RIAA and peer-to-peer companies.

Boo. I discussed this idea a couple weeks ago and still have yet to be swayed.

Note to all my readers: you are currently renting the photons emitting from your monitor, on lease from me perpetually. If you in any way, shape or form profit off these photons, I will persecute you to the ends of the Earth and then some. Dirty dirty thieves.

Global Package Tracker - They’re Out There Somewhere:

At SkyHigh, we don’t like to think of your missing luggage as being “lost.” Rather, that it has embarked on an exciting journey all its own. But rest assured, we’re fairly confident your bags do still exist in some form and could be back at home with you relatively soon. With that in mind, let’s see where your valued personal belongings are today!
[...]
Your luggage has been has been located in exotic Al Mukalla, Yemen. Check back tomorrow to see where those pesky bags of yours have run off to next.

Baggage Disclaimer
Be glad your bags get to visit such neat places. Apparently, Alaska Airlines is really into keeping your bags with you wherever you go. How completely lame is that?

Great minds think alike. When I grow up, I want to be luggage.

A few Airport Overnight Tips:

DON’T TOUCH ANYTHING WITH YOUR BARE SKIN
Thousands and thousands and thousands of people pass through an airport on any given day. And chances are, a lot of them have something weird going on medically. Enough said.

FAST-FOOD WRAPPERS: THE TRAVELER’S MULTI-PURPOSE PAL
If travelers knew all the great uses for fast-food packaging, they wouldn’t be so quick to lick the goop off of it and throw it in the trash. But their ignorance is your gain! Stuff a fast-food sack with 2-3 dozen hamburger wrappers and voila: a fragrant pillow! Cardboard french fry holders make decent drinking glasses, as do regular soft drink cups in a pinch. On chilly nights, adhere the edges of several wrappers and sacks together with semi-congealed mayonnaise to fashion a lightweight quilt. The list goes on…

ACT TOUGH
Airport security can’t be everywhere at all times. And Lord knows who you’ll be sharing a darkened terminal with at 3 a.m. So even if you aren’t an experienced street fighter, pretend. Try driving your fist into your hand as you walk around. Grunt audibly. And be sure to throw out a high-arcing leg kick once in a while. A little faux-bravado will often deter a would-be aggressor, or at least make him laugh a little and want to be your friend.

DON’T TALK TO FREAKS
Man, are there some nut jobs out there! And given the chance, they’ll talk a hole through your brain. Word to the wise: If you see a guy skipping toward you with rainbow stockings and a handful of spoons, act unconscious.

Remember, you can never be too careful — don’t feed the bears.

Props to MarketingWonk for the great find and kudos to SkyHigh Airlines for taking the road less traveled. Along with Little Caesars Pizza (mid ’90s campaign), Jack In The Box and Reebok’s Terry Tate you guys are in a league of your own with innovative and comical marketing programs.

Excellence through compromise

Uncrackable beams of light:

MagiQ is in the final stages of testing a system for quantum cryptography, which it plans to release commercially within the next few months. Encryption engineers have long waxed lyrical about quantum cryptography, but this is among the very first commercial implementations. The advantage of quantum cryptography schemes is that the code they generate are simply not—even in theory—breakable.

The scheme devised by MagiQ, called Navajo, does not use quantum effects to transmit the secret data. Instead, it is the keys used to encrypt the data that rely on quantum theory. If these keys are changed frequently (up to 1,000 times a second in Navajo’s case), the risk that an eavesdropper without the key would be able to decrypt the data can be proved mathematically to be zero. Of course, given the key, the task would become a trivial one.

Navajo transmits the changing key sequence over a secure fibre-optic link as a stream of polarised photons (indivisible particles of light). Because the polarisation reflects the amount of electro-magnetic radiation allowed to radiate at an angle to a light beam’s direction, it can be considered to be a measure of the angular dependence of the light.

Should an eavesdropper tap into the secure fibre-optic line, he would disrupt this stream of polarised photons by the very act of observing them—and the tampering could be instantly detected. By changing the key frequently, Navajo could turn an off-the-shelf encryption scheme such as AES (Advanced Encryption System) into something that was essentially uncrackable.

I saw this at ArsTechnica a few days ago and today Catallarchy weighed in as well.

Now before putting in my two cents, I’d like to point out another innovative idea that uses a type of “Uncertainty Principle” as well, this time, from VIA Technologies:

The PadLock Data Encryption Engine RNG uses random electrical noise on the chip as its source of randomness (’entropy’), to securely produce random number values. Logic within the processor core collects entropy from this physical process, pre-processes the data, and queues up to 32 bytes for immediate access by the processor. By collecting the data from physical sources in this way, the RNG produces output that is unpredictable and not influenced by outside sources.

Featuring a direct application level interface through an extended x86 instruction that reads the entropy source, the PadLock Data Encryption Engine RNG includes several operating modes, offering performance from 750K bits per second to as high as 6 million bits per second. Partitioning enables multiple applications to safely share the random number generator.

Regardless as to which method you use, both of these products add yet another layer of security for the consumer, a plus in my book. The main prohibitive barrier is cost in both cases (although a VIA C3 chip is much cheaper than the Navaho system).

If you’re looking for free encryption software that is currently available, be sure to get GnuPG or PGP — keep prying eyes away from your email and your data. For Instant Messaging, try Ultramagnetic or the SecureIM protocol (the latter is used in Trillian Pro).

Note: none of the techniques listed on this post are full-proof. When you send data, you are risking its interception and dissemination. Use at your own risk, though I should state that the risk appears to diminish [greatly] with the proper implementation of these new techniques.

QUESTIONS FOR LINUS TORVALDS:

O.K. So what are your views on sharing music files?

I don’t actually think about it much; I listen to the radio if I listen to music. What I do find interesting is how the file-sharing thing ends up changing how people think about computers and copyright law. Some of it is a bit scary: just the fact that your question equated sharing with something bad is a pretty scary statement in itself. What also bothers me is the apparent dishonesty of especially the R.I.A.A., claiming that file-sharing is destroying their business and that they are losing billions of dollars on it. There’s been a number of studies done, and it looks like the major reason for the dip in CD sales ends up being lack of interest in the music produced. And let’s face it — how many boy bands can you try to sell before your revenues start dipping?

We’ve been getting hit with a lot of viruses and worms lately. What’s your idea for ending the attacks?

When you have people who hook up these machines that weren’t designed for the Internet, and they don’t even want to know about all the intricacies of network security, what can you expect? We get what we have now: a system that can be brought down by a teenager with too much time on his hands. Should we blame the teenager? Sure, we can point the finger at him and say, ”Bad boy!” and slap him for it. Will that actually fix anything? No. The next geeky kid frustrated about not getting a date on Saturday night will come along and do the same thing without really understanding the consequences. So either we should make it a law that all geeks have dates — I’d have supported such a law when I was a teenager — or the blame is really on the companies who sell and install the systems that are quite that fragile.

Yea Mike, I know it’s from Slashdot.

Oh, and did you know that Tux (the mascot for Linux) was designed by an Aggie, Larry Ewing?

That’s my 3rd claim to fame.

Porn Pages Reach 260 Million:

An 1,800 percent growth rate over five years is typically considered an online success story, but in this case, the statistic pertains to Web porn. N2H2 found that the number of pornography related Internet pages grew from 14 million in 1998 to roughly 260 million in 2003.

This data comes on the heels of news that Microsoft Corp. is closing down chat rooms in 28 countries, in efforts to stem the presence of sexual predators of children, and Internet Filter Review found that the average age a child is first exposed to pornography online is 11 years old. Nearly all (90 percent) of kids aged 8-16 have viewed porn online, mostly while doing homework.

N2H2 identified an additional 28 million porn pages during the month of July alone, and the content filtering company expects the trend to continue, particularly since the industry is so profitable. In fact, Internet Filter Review finds that Internet pornography accounts for $2.5 billion of the $57 billion worldwide market.

While Google only indexes about 3 billion pages, purportedly there are about 10 billion pages in existence. That said, even with Google’s number, less than 10% of the web is outright fapping erotica. I think Erasmus and Diderot would be proud.

Via MarketingWonk.

Porn stars found to be very hard working, detail oriented

Is it High Noon for the western?:

The western movie is 100, but it is in truly appalling health. Hollywood released no cowboy films in 2002, so will audiences flock to the spate of big-budget westerns due out soon?
[...]
But exactly 100 years on, has Hollywood abandoned the very genre that kick-started the movie industry as we know it?

“The westerns have become space movies,” says Martin Kelly, who fell in love with cowboy movies in the 1940s and has a collection of more than 3,500 in his own film archive.

He says contemporary directors have taken the basic skeleton of the good old western and clad it in a sci-fi skin to appeal to younger audiences who clamour for spectacular special effects.

“I blame Blazing Saddles [Mel Brooks' 1974 comedy]! It spoofed westerns so badly, that almost no one could watch westerns seriously again.”

Despite having been born, raised and schooled in Texas, I really haven’t had much of an interest in Western films — though I am quite the city slicker (real vaqueros don’t care about Linux…).

Of course, I’m of the same mentality that dueling should be brought back in place of all out war (with Kalashnikov’s of course).

Draw pilgrim!

Movie stars get hung up on KGB’s anti-hangover drug:

A drug created by the former KGB to keep its agents sober so that they could drink opponents under the table before stealing their secrets is being sold on the internet to Hollywood stars as a defence against hangovers.

The drug, known as RU-21, is made in Russia and sold as a natural remedy on the internet. Hollywood actors are said to be fond of the fix, called after the American legal drinking age, which enables them to make the most of LA’s party circuit without red eyes or pounding headaches detracting from their delivering the goods on the film set next morning.

Its makers claim that it stops the body making an enzyme which turns alcohol into acetaldehyde, a toxic chemical which can damage tissues.

The pill lets you get drunk, but indefinitely delays the hangover and damage to the body’s organs.

A little less convenient, the makers say that you have to take two pills before or during every two drinks - a suspicious activity in trendy watering holes.

The KGB invented the drug just after the second world war.

The secrets of the pill were declassified in 1999, and it was developed into a market commodity by scientists at the Russian Academy of Sciences as part of an extended study of alcohol’s effects on the body. Its makers and Californian marketeers say it is selling to the tune of $10,000 (£6,000) a week.

“Russians can out-drink anybody in the world anyway,” said Emil Chiaberi, head of Spirit Sciences, which sells the pill in the US.

“I don’t know why they needed a pill.”

I have several friends, whom are from various parts of that former federation (sounds like something from Star Trek), and they can totally out drink everyone I know… and I went to A&M. That’s my claim to fame too.

Upon viewing the “official” history of UNIX I’ve decided that what Darl & Co. should have done, is simply write an open-letter to the community, thanking them for being stewards of their code for the past few years:

March 6, 2003
To: Linus, Richard, Eric, Alan
CC: IBM, SGI, Red Hat
Subject: Thanks big time guys

I know I haven’t met you all personally (and I do plan on doing so in the near future), but I thought I should go ahead and start the management meetings.

First off, thanks a lot for all the hard work you guys have put into maintaining our UNIX code, we couldn’t have done it without you.

Second, although it’s a little early to tell, but I think you should go ahead and invest whatever extra “rainy day” capital into our company – I have a gut feeling that it’ll skyrocket in the next month or so.

As far as business operation go, feel free to continue what you have been doing, as if nothing has changed. For the interim I think it is in our collective best interest for you to continue developing SCO/Linux — we’ll work out the fork tree submission system in the next few weeks, I have some great ideas that I think could really make SCO a household name.

The only intangible that the Board here hasn’t really ironed out is compensation packages. We were looking at the numbers and we aren’t quite sure how to repay you for the past 10 years. What will probably end up happening is any documented capital expenditures will be considered “sunken” costs on your end. I know that might sound like a raw deal, but if you look at it my way, everyone is better off.

Feel free to send me any of your questions or concerns, I look forward to our newfound business relationship and just know we are going to have some strong chemistry.

- Darl

P.S. And if you can come in on Saturday, that would be great.

Did you see the memo about putting cover sheets on the TPS reports before they go out?

Evilution exposed! All FAKE!!!:

The Theory of Darwinian Anti-Theism has just COLLAPSED!
Paleontologists have found a piece of COAL containing
a perfectly preserved HUMAN BEING. By the theory
of EVILUTION, coal is much OLDER than mankind.
Even the most blinded Darwin-worshippers must now
ADMIT THEIR FAULT AND RETURN TO THE LOVING ARMS
OF JESUS CHRIST, but of course they won’t.

See the exhibit G (G as in “Game Over!”)

No no, he’s got it all wrong. I worship the Finches from Galapagos and started a casino on a Pacific Island as part of a witness protection program (I was evading PBS).

Save me Jebus!

Porque é que os weblogs não são uma moda:

Es el tema de mi intervención en el Encontro de Weblogs: mi argumento central es que los weblogs constituyen una herramienta extraordinariamente poderosa para la formación de comunidades virtuales basadas en el conocimiento compartido.

En Viena escuché por primera vez la expresión “desvirtualizar” asociada al momento en el que se conocen personalmente quienes se han tratado hasta entonces sólo online.

Hoy he desvirtualizado a Elizabete, a Manuel y a António.

Okay, most of that makes sense except the actual word: “desvirtualizar.”

I want to think it means “not virtual” or maybe “extra virtual” like “extra sensory perception.” Or maybe, it is “virtual relationships” that exist solely online and develop differently than those of meatspace? I can relate to those.

Comprendé amigos?
Entienden?

Oh, and if you’re trying to learn Spanish, be sure to visit Dr. Orihuela’s weblog, he’s redesigned it with a slick new interface, dos punto cero. Es fantàstica.

First post!^H^H^Hjoke!:

I, for one, welcome our new 64-bit overlords.

This is really only funny to me. As I read this right after the Athlon 64 was officially announced (seperate threads entirely) and thought “great timing.”

Too bad half the moderators at Slashdot have their panties in a wad. And too bad I stopped posting there in highschool. Oh, the things that I would give up to be a super l33t poster there. Women and my computer collection.

Just kidding about the computer collection part.

KaZaA sues RIAA for copyright infringement:

Sharman Networks is suing the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) for distributing replicas of its P2P file sharing software.

Sharman says the RIAA has distributed versions of KaZaA Lite with warning messages to potential infringers, which it deems “monopolistic and conspiratorial” behavior. In July a Judge nixed an attempt by Sharman Networks to stop the distribution of RIAA-flavored KaZaA software using Antitrust legislation. That failed, but this time it’s trying again.

This latest twist highlights some of the RIAA’s stranger behavior. The copyright-cartel has been playing fast and loose with other people’s copyrights: while claiming that it is upholding the law, it has proved only too happy to break it. And while claiming to uphold the integrity of the music it distributes, it has pioneered the art of poisoning works of art with clicks and hisses.

But the RIAA hasn’t escaped Antitrust scrutiny just yet: last month it was sued by the Webcaster Alliance. An unguarded comment by an RIAA attorney expressed the lobby’s groups satisfaction at seeing 25,000 smaller webcasters perish, if AOL could stream 200 channels.

Careless talk. ®

Is this a case of pot calling the kettle black? Not really. If the RIAA is going to try to use the State to bolster it’s claims, it should also expect retaliation of the same order (fighting fire with fire…).

Though this irony reminds me of Sharman using the DMCA to squelch “rogue” listings on Google.

ISO this:

Historically, the ISO has levied fees from people who wanted to buy a copy of the standard but made their implementation free to everyone.

Bucking the trend of making all standards royalty free, the ISO is now considering levying fees for implementing these three critical standards covering codes for languages, countries, and currencies. While the last one will have less of an impact, the first two could impede the development of a world wide web, as they sit at the core of any internationalization effort on the internet. Not only do they affect the web but they also have a potential impact on every single facet of the internet.

For example, RFC 1591, which explains how domain names are organized points to one of the documents, ISO-3166. If the net was to act without that fee-levying, the whole domain name system would have to be redesigned to avoid using domain names ending with country codes like .uk or .fr. Every country would then have to accept a new set of standards and then implement them. The cost of such an undertaking alone would probably completely take any value out of the internet for decades to come.

Basically, the three standards in question are so embedded in the fabric of the internet that, without them, the internet could die. As such, one could argue that such standards give the ISO a virtual monopoly over the Internet and that’s cause for concern.

Although he focuses on ISO web standards, I actually think that Tristan Louis makes a compelling argument against the entire notion of “intellectual property” as patents, trademarks and copyrights inhibit the lack of potential growth through normal market processes. It is true that IP laws may and oftentimes do protect and monetarily “reward” inventors, but at the cost of growth, competition and a consistent policy towards free-markets (I’m assuming that those promoting IP do in fact believe that “free-markets” are beneficial to everyone).

At any rate, Mr. Louis’ insights regarding the latest actions by the ISO are quite prescient, with any luck the W3C will come out victorious.

And as Worf would say: Assimilate this!

The holy grail of machine talk:

(CNN) — The concept of machines talking to machines without any human interaction has long been a holy grail for the technology and commercial world.

It is called Web services — but it has nothing to do with the Internet directly — instead it is the name given to the universal language that computers around the globe may one day use to describe each object in our physical world.

This “meta-language” will allow computers to tell the difference between pens and pencils, strip lights and light bulbs, as well make intelligent, informed decisions and act on them.

If you’ve been following all the reports that I’ve been publishing on this topic, you’ll see that there isn’t anything too super profound discussed in the article. It does do a good job summarizing the ideas behind computer speak y0 — and I never heard of OASIS before.

It’s clear how this bandage works:

A transparent adhesive bandage, or plaster, which protects a wound while allowing air and moisture to circulate so that it heals faster, tops the list of innovations made by one of the newest research institutes here.

Made of a special polymer membrane, the protective strip also allows doctors to see how the wound is healing, so that they know exactly when it can be removed.

Developed by researchers at the Institute of Bioengineering and Nanotechnology, the material is also heat-sensitive — sticking to the warm skin of the body, but peeling off easily when touched by cold water.

Note: my comrade at ProBlogs (it’s not dead… yet), Roland Piquepaille found this gem earlier a few days ago.

Currently, I’m still in a giddy mood from all the love I received at the local Senior Citizen Center (all this time I thought once you turned 65 you were sent to an institution and melted into glue or used as a cadaver — boy was I wrong, these people not only eat, breath and sleep, but they can play chess and something called bingo. And in retrospect I think I was a little to hasty in my conclusion that Joe the Geriatric should be exterminated Logan Run style.), so I don’t have anything productive to say.

Roland also points out that you probably won’t see these plastic adhesive thingies for another 2 years or so, and guess what that reminded me of?

(from “The Simpsons,” when Moe is opening up a family restaurant)
Moe: “I got this [deep-fryer] on loan from the Army. It can deep-fry an entire buffalo in 40 seconds.”
Homer: “40 seconds? But I want it now!”

That show works on so many levels. Just like duct tape.

Which OS are You?

A few of my responses:

- Favorite input device? Sausage of power
- You show up at your megacorp Holiday party, but dateless. Bring married friends down to your level by inciting arguments between them and their spouses
- If you were a villain who would you be? Mojo Jojo
- Which phrase appears the most times on your elementary school report cards? “Spends too much time organizing revolts”
- Your spouse complains about a large painting on your living room wall which is hanging crooked. State that the deviance from level is well within desired parameters.
- You’re driving on the freeway during rush hour, and traffic is at a crawl. You’re in the far-left lane, but you need to get to the far-right lane to get your exit. Come to a complete stop, turn on your hazards, get out and place emergency flares in a diagonal line across all four lanes

Via Howard.

Remember, in Soviet Russia operating system boots you.

AMD finally released the Athlon 64 for the consumption by the masses (remember the Opteron/Sledgehammer was released back in April), and as always, AcesHardware has one of the most thorough reviews (they paid me $1 billion to tell you that).

I really don’t have any special way of honoring this occassion as all of my Intel CPUs have been burned during past ritu… oh look, there is a dog with a fluffy tail.

Here fluff, here fluff!

Subject: C5) Why don’t we try to destroy tropical cyclones by nuking them:

During each hurricane season, there always appear suggestions that one should simply use nuclear weapons to try and destroy the storms. Apart from the fact that this might not even alter the storm, this approach neglects the problem that the released radioactive fallout would fairly quickly move with the tradewinds to affect land areas and cause devastating environmental problems. Needless to say, this is not a good idea.

Score one for Ralph Wiggum.

I don’t know about you, but I’m anti-Hurricane. Every time he comes up for election I vote against him or any of his relatives. The infidel deserves to die, along with his compatriots. Who will band with me to destroy this menace to freedom? Because if we don’t strike first, he will kill us all, take our horses and send all of our kids to Day Care.

Damn those hurricanes of mass destruction.

When will his reign of terror end?