Monday, July 30, 2001

We have always said, "dont worry/shout/complain/bitch about stuff you dont like happening, go out and DO SOMETHING about it" Well, some very clever people have done just that. Instead of using Microsoft Passport, use this. It looks good, works good, and the first million users are free. You are not going to be forced to use Microsoft products in the future. Use them if you want to, but dont complain that there are no alternatives, especially when there are cool ones available!

Sunday, July 29, 2001

I just saw an amazing thing; at the US mint, they use a huge mechanical transcripting lathe to copy and reduce the original artwork for a coin to a master die, "to date, no one has found a better, more accurate way to transcribe the orginal artwork to the master die with such a high degree of accuracy" Hmmmmm....you know the rest!
Someone Clever Said... Timeline.. * Printing press and phonograph invented * Copyright is invented, a controversial law from the beginning. * Publishers rise to control physical distribution, pay authors--though not always fairly. There is no alternative.. people need books / records, authors need some cash. This system works relatively well for awhile. Consumers bootleg copyrighted materials by exchanging physical media. Losses are minimal and individuals aren't worth prosecuting. * Copyright law changes at the whim of publishers, effectively eliminating the creation of public domain works by extending the length of copyright indefinitely. Artists and authors increasingly produce "works for hire," which are then owned by the publisher they work for. * Popularization of the Internet and new data compression algorithms render traditional means of disseminating information nearly obsolete overnight. Some artists and authors realize that they don't need publishers anymore. Publishers ignore the Internet, seeing little threat. * Consumers realize that they can obtain copyrighted works on the Internet instead of paying for getting them on traditional media. Publishers for the most part look the other way. * DMCA quietly slips through Congress, in the guise of protecting US businesses and complying with international copyright treaties. * Napster shows the world the power of P2P information exchange with each user contributing a small part of the whole. Publishers get worried, can't sue every user, fumble for recourse. Napster falls and DMCA is challenged in numerous cases, but wins out in the end because money is power and those behind DMCA have lots of it. Consumers watch the Napster case curiously, stop using it after it's clear the end is near. * Publishers finally realize that the future of distribution is online and design crude digital copy control technologies which are protected under the DMCA. Each successful attempt to defeat these measures is crushed legally but is given little attention by the media. * Consumers aren't as comfortable with the new intangible online media and would prefer to keep buying books and CD's. Sales stagnate. Consumers don't realize the implications of future technologies that they have not yet experienced and remain quiet. Prediction * Publishers attempt to phase in online media sales. Some consumers bite, but are quickly frustrated by the inability to read an e-book or listen to music on multiple computers they own. HDTV arrives with its own copy protections. VCR's recording functions stop working. Copy protected audio disks don't work in consumers older players or in car players. Works are distributed in both old and new formats while consumers are encouraged to buy new (and better) hardware that supports the new formats. [This process would likely take at least 10-20 years given the installed base of CD players, saturation of the home computer market, and lack of inexpensive, eye-friendly electronic books] * Just when the publishers think they have won the war over content, a movement similar to Open Source is established that sweeps the world and begins a modern cultural renaissance. Publishers disappear. The public domain expands rapidly. Artists and authors are fairly reimbursed by using alternative business models and handling distribution themselves. (eg. give away music, sell concert tickets) The world is a better place. Wishful thinking? People said the same thing about Open Source 5 years ago and IT hasn't even fully taken off yet.

Saturday, July 28, 2001

It was hotter than usual today, the holidays are in full swing...no emails, no fuss...cold beers...Thai pubs...Pimms...Iced water. Met up with a certain TB / PM and another chap with pink hair whose name I forget, for a delivery of a beautiful painting and a sit around in a first class saloon. Alas, the session was too short, as they always are... Got js.KakWorm.G the other day; it infected my old_email.mbx. The filesystem of Eudora is flawed; if one email carries a worm, the WHOLE FILE gets infected, so all of your messages have to be nuked just because of one file. It would be much better if each email was a separate file sitting in a folder, then only the infected message would need to be thrown away. I've never seen so many worms in email; its a bore after the first one. The spirit of pessimism is destroyed by sunlight.

Friday, July 27, 2001

We are doing a set of mouse pads to help finance our own T1 and dedicated server for irdial.com where we will be moving everything. The actions you need to take are: "just do it". where "do it" = tell your friends | buy one if you can If Brother Stair can raise millions of dollars to stay on the air 24/7...you know the rest!

Thursday, July 26, 2001

A dolphin that generates an RSA key.
  #!/usr/bin/perl -s                                                           
                                                                               
                                                      @x=qw/e n d/;if(         
                               $kg){$e=13;$_="setrand(@{[int((rand)*90)]})     
                           ;K=vector(2,g,nextprime(random(10^$s)));e=$e;n=K[1]*
                               K[2];d=e^-1%((K[1]-1)*(K[2]-1));";s/\s//sg;for( 
                                `echo "$_ e\nn\nd\n"|gp -q`){print$x[$j++]     
                              ,"=",`echo "10i16o$_ p"|dc`}exit}$t=             
                             unpack'H*',join'',<>;$l=length$n;$y               
                          =$e?$l-2:$l;$i="16dio";while  (){$M=                 
                      ($e&&1+int(rand 8)).(substr     $t,$p                    
                   ,$y or last);$i.="\U$M $k        $n\E|                      
                pc";$p+=$y}for(reverse                                         
           `echo "$i"|dc`){chop                                                
   ;$d&&s/^(.)//||($_=                                                         
     sprintf"%0${l}s"                                                          
      ,$_); $f                                                                 
      .=$_}#                                                                   
      print                                                                    
      pack                                                                     
     'H*'                                                                      
   ,$f                                                                         

Wednesday, July 25, 2001

Anyone with a spare gig and a half on a webserver please email me about hosting the A212 collection.
Just got sent WScript.Kak.Worm. "The worm utilizes a known Microsoft Outlook Express security hole so that a viral file is created on the system without having to run any attachment. Simply reading the received email message will cause the virus to be placed on the system." Claus, you have to, for sure, go to The London Eye. Its simply awesome. Then stroll down to the Tate Modern. Do a Pepsi Max Drop at the Trocadero. Drink some beer. Eat some Cornish Pasties.
WASHINGTON--A researcher in the Federal Bureau of Investigation's cyber-protection unit unleashed a fast-spreading Internet virus that e-mailed private FBI documents to outsiders. Although the Sircam virus didn't spread to other computers at the FBI's National Infrastructure Protection Center, it did send at least eight documents to a number of outsiders. One, about the investigation into an unrelated virus, was marked "official use only."
US rejects germ warfare plan The United States says it will not back a proposed international plan for enforcing a ban on using germs as a weapon of war. FUCK OFF YOU SLAAAAAAGS!
SirCam is giving me hours of enjoyment; I'm seeing some super strange subject lines: satscape_v1, Vicente Rodriguez - Volver Volver, PROJECT IN RAJASTHAN, IH Probationer Oath, Focus Report Linux, THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE, New videotec HK 2000 Euro Pricelist, Delta Status Report Draft May24_2001, LIVING WILL Ken... Copy of Copy of VES Rate REVISED?! Dude... a copy of a copy of a revised document? Oh no... the best SirCammer so far: Network Security Breaches.
A white mouse is coming.
SirCam'd again this morning, this time, posing as a ZIP file.

Tuesday, July 24, 2001

We got SirCam'd in the DMZ between updates, so the VS didnt dig on it; saw the pif tag, blowtorched it into the hole, called for reinforcements, now we got three in quarantine. First to go, last to know
Have any of you been SirCam'd yet? We have had two so far
X-Envelope-From: Geche1@aol.com 
From: Geche1@aol.com 
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 07:07:25 EDT 
Subject: why? 
To: irdial@irdialsys.win-uk.net 
X-Mailer: AOL 6.0 for Windows UK sub 10503 
X-Envelope-To: irdial@irdialsys.win-uk.net

it's probably due to a foot square piece of tinfoil with an elongated lemon at each corner.
thought so

Monday, July 23, 2001

Hegemony...you are the fairest...cr...
Eintsien advocated socialism aparently. I was cc'd into a fwd of this essay, which arrived early in the morning. This is what I replied to all: At 07:02 PM 7/22/01 -0700, Shawn Aron Vandor wrote: you caught me early in the morning, so i had a little time... *** society, are suffering from this process of deterioration. Unknowingly prisoners of their own egotism, they feel insecure, lonely, and deprived of the naive, simple, and unsophisticated enjoyment of life. Man can find meaning in life, short and perilous as it is, only through devoting himself to society. *** Absolutism + atheism + reductionism = suffering. Now *there* is an equation for you. When people without any understanding of human nature, in a fit of pity, try to solve the worlds problems using broken tools, disaster is the result. just ask anyone that lived under the USSR. *** The economic anarchy of capitalist society as it exists today is, in my opinion, the real source of the evil. *** Mandlebrot & every modern scientist would disagree; self organizing systems are inherently stable, even though at the moment, the economy is in an oscillating state, it is stable in that state, and needs only to be adjusted so that it shifts into a non oscillating stable state. There is no such thing as "economic anarchy". *** I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils, namely through the establishment of a socialist economy, *** Einstein was wrong about faster than light travel, amongst other things, and he is wrong about this. There is, for sure, more than one way to eliminate these terrible evils; socialism is, and this has now been _demonstrated_, NOT the only way, or ANY way to eliminate them. I don't have any problem with atheists, or socialists or anyone else. What I DO have a problem with is the behavior and assumptions of strongly convicted people, that only they have the answers, and if we only were to obey them, then all of our problems will be solved. Its not sufficient for them that they simply write down their ideas and promote them, or even live them to lead by example. They must *coerce* other people, replace and destroy the ideas and beliefs of others for their systems to be fulfilled. Blowing up statues, eliminating economic rights, enslavement, elimination of privacy; these are their tools and goals, and they strive for this with total, blind conviction. Scientists are the most irresponsible of all humans today; they believe that the whole world is a laboratory within which they can carry out any experiment they like with no regard for the consequences. Genetic Biologists are the worst offenders today, Nuclear scientists where the worst of the last generation. Einstein is their grandfather, and this essay proves it.

Sunday, July 22, 2001

Ak-chelly, that Webmonkey homepage has just been 100% re-designed, and its identical in Mozilla and IE5, and is almost total CSS...wow...the Moire pattern in the upper left corner just r00lz ur ass....the tag is dead; now all we need is a decent editor (the next dreamweaver iteration) that allows you to control/create CSS like you control the old ass tag generation.
We call it CSS.

Saturday, July 21, 2001

I had an email from someone (unrelated to Irdial-List) saying that HTML email is "obnoxious". This "complaint" came after the THIRD email that was sent to this person, (two similar emails failing to solicit a complaint) who is a "UNIX sysadmin". hmmmm lets see what Mr. Webster says... One entry found for obnoxious. Main Entry: ob�nox�ious Pronunciation: �b-'n�k-sh&s, &b- Function: adjective Etymology: Latin obnoxius, from ob in the way of, exposed to + noxa harm -- more at NOXIOUS Date: 1597 1 archaic : exposed to something unpleasant or harmful -- used with to 2 archaic : deserving of censure 3 : odiously or disgustingly objectionable : highly offensive - ob�nox�ious�ly adverb - ob�nox�ious�ness noun Nothing there that can be in ANY WAY related to recieving HTML EMAIL, unless you are using archaic english. Disgustingly objectinonable? Highly offensive? Not applicable here for rational people. Perhaps it can be called "Annoying"? hmmmm lets see: 1 : to disturb or irritate especially by repeated acts [my italics] 2 : to harass especially by quick brief attacks intransitive senses : to cause annoyance - an�noy�er noun synonyms ANNOY, VEX, IRK, BOTHER mean to upset a person's composure. ANNOY implies a wearing on the nerves by persistent petty unpleasantness IF I KNEW THAT YOU DIDNT LIKE HTML EMAIL. It would be better, more mannered, useful, sensible, human, to simply say, AFTER THE FIRST EMAIL, and NOT THE THIRD, "please do not send me HTML email, since I cannot see it." How hard can that be? There is nothing like good manners and good humor. It makes the world infinitely more pleasant. For example, someone who subscribes to Irdial-List said: if you are going to continue sending lists in html, i will unsubscribe. plaintext ONLY please. or did you recently subscribe to AOL? 8) now that is a well mannered, balanced complaint. It is gentle, humorous, (AOL, oh dear!), makes its point forcefully but keeps human civilized relations intact. Over reacting, illiterate use of language and ill manners solves nothing, exposes ones weaknesses and alienates your potential comrades. Aparently, AOL in version 6 is HTML only for its email. Why is this being done? HTML email looks good and works good for the millions and millions of "ordinary people" who are populating the internet in increasing numbers. Everyone has to make a choice, and some have already sided, by excluding all AOL6 users from forums because of this HTML issue. This is one way of doing it, but you will NEVER gather new believers in any substantial numbers by taking the incredibly irrational stance of saying that HTML email is "Obnoxious". You will never reach them with the important messages, like "get off of AOL". Linux will not reach its full revolutionary potential if it does not embrace even the most simple things like HTML email. No "ordinary person" will put up with being constrained to plaintext email. Asking people to accept only plaint text email is like asking everyone on earth to live without telehones just because the majority of people on earth do not have telephones. That is absurd. No one will go for it. Of course there are people who WANT to be separate from everyone. These isolationists are actually the enemies of change and the improvement of the software and hardware markets. Thankfully there are some farsighted people who are thinking ahead, with a wide vision, and are taking the steps necessary to make powerful systems that are palatable and usable to everyone, no matter what your skill level is. Gnome have just done a usability study in conjunction with SunMicrosystems to evaluate the Gnome desktop. Moves like this are essential if "the better result" is going to happen. The alternative that we will end up with if people cant start behaving is two paralell and separate types of internet, one populated by AOL / .net people, and a small number of aggressive, bitter, isolated, shrinking, bickering hobbyists who, thanks to thier inhuman, mannerless and tunnel vision constrained attitudes will consign any hope of a breaking of the stranglehold on software (including music) and hardware to the garbage. If you dont think that this can happen, just ask anyone that used to use dial up BBSes in the 1990s. They have all dissapeard, the culture that went along with them has also dissapeared, replaced by the internet. The internet as we know it will also be replaced. You can bet on it. Wether its replaced with something we want or something that a small clutch of business men want is, literally, up to what we do today, and how we deal with each other. As for Irdial-Discs, after sending out HTML email to Irdial-List containing BLOGDIAL, we SOLD SOME T-SHIRTS when people clicked on the pictures. Text links to t-shirts dont sell t-shirts. Do you want Irdial-Discs to die or survive? If the difference between us selling t-shirts and surviving and not selling t-shirts and folding means making a choice between using HTML and text only email, then the choice is clear, and I think you will all agree with me; HTML email is the way to go, especially since people seem unable to respond to a written call to action to do something. "Prove Me Wrong" as Beniot says!

Friday, July 20, 2001

This week, we got our first check from Cafe Press! Thanks to everyone who bought a t-shirt, just in case you didnt know, this is what they look like (for the moment)...
The Conet Project Open Content Baby Doll. Nuff Said BLOGDIAL We are the best! Buy...Buy now...and....Be Happy
ATC vermin, under strict hear no evil see no evil speak no evil instructions LIE AND LIE AGAIN year after year. But does it matter anymore?
"That's what I mean when I say, 'Boom!'"

Tuesday, July 17, 2001

Have you all seen this?: Fast Track Its the company that has created the improved, scaleable Gnutella like network protocol that has fuelled the services that are now bigger than Napster was on Kaza, Morpheus and Grokster. Based outside the USA, and with an unnasailable infrastructure, this is something really exiting, especially as they have had 1 million downloads in one week.

Monday, July 16, 2001

Irdial-Discs "top ten" as reported on the BBC website And now, the BBC is transmitting an MI5 signal, in the form of a clip from The Lincolnshire Poacher!
In Russia, apparently, it's illegal to sell software without the ability to make "at least one backup copy of the data it works with." Crack Adobe Ebook 2 Webpage

Sunday, July 15, 2001

BoOTsY Description: Official Bootsy Collins website, the albums, gallery, and music. Category: Arts > Music > ... > Bands and Artists > Parliament-Funkadelic > Collins, Bootsy www.bootsycollins.com/ - 4k - Cached - Similar pages

Friday, July 13, 2001

template update... for the sake of relevance Sake is a depressant...
New article on P2PQ at Zeropaid Radiohead: there is nothing wrong with being depressed. Jaco Pastorius suffered from depression, as have many geniuses. What we hate is BAD MUSIC / SUCK-SHIT / NAVEL GAZING / LamErS. We want innovation, exitement, awe inspiration, FUN, adrenalin, hysteria, beauty, Art, revelation, transformation, uplifting, sonic devastation and real emotion expressed with any combination of the latter. One night, in 1994, at Disobey in Islington, one of the acts was billed as ??????? ?????. When this act started, there was no one on stage. There was simply, the most brutal, explosive, scary, wild, mind bending, far out, extreme, jaw dropping, inexplicable, stupifying and insane sounds that I have ever heard. After this "set" was finished, a voice came over the PA: if you would like to find out who was behind that set and how it was done, go to the back of the room where you can find the details. On sale at the back of the room was a set of limited edition sealed envelopes, made from maps, that had black envelopes in them that in turn contained square pieces of sandpaper with perfect holes in the centers for a record spindle. On the front of the inner envelope was the name of the responsible person. The person behind this set was:
Richard James ??????? ?????
Richard James is one of the most mind blowing and exiting artists ever to make records. I became a 100% believer on that night, and anyone who was not totally converted / convinced on that same night could not have been in the same room. What a man. What a maniac. What a genius!

Thursday, July 12, 2001

If you want to read something funny, read about how top Perl geeks charge $20,000 for one weekend of perl training PER PERSON! Thats what we call a $BIGNUMBER Im all for humor, but when you are trying to get your head into a space, and understand something tricky (like regexps), joke cracking, unless its carefully used, can be a useless distraction. The humor starts from the first page; spare the jokes until later in the book, I want to learn Perl!

Wednesday, July 11, 2001

Im currently reading / doing "Learning Perl 2nd Edidion" Its very good; though I dont like the way Shwartz & Co. use nonsense words as variables in examples sometimes. After knowing only BASIC, Perl is not too much of a big leap. Perl, when its properly written, reads like english; it has grammar. Of course TIMTOWTDI, and you can write Perl that is totally illedgible. They have contests to see who can write the most obscured Perl routines...If any of you are using a cool editor, let me know; I use Jedit most of the time, because it visually alerts you when you mess up your syntax. Anyone taken a look at the .Net specifcation? They will never get away with it.....or maybe not. And as for the blogger two buttons problem, just press "post & publish" by default...works for me. info anarchy has done a piece on P2PQ M/Y

Sunday, July 08, 2001

Everybody of course have heard of xircle which is as easy as it gets (now with an OSX version!). I have found some great people on IRC...its serverd me well, despite EFFnet being extremely hostile in places. Radiohead? I have to agree with Davros, Radiohead are NOT my cup of ANYTHING. Just like Tortoise. They both suck so bad its almost like youre dreaming of a crap band, only to find that you are not asleep, and yes, "oh shit", these guys really exist.

Saturday, July 07, 2001

I wish that it was easy to port software to every platform; havig been involved in a complex software project, I can testify to the dificulty of porting an application to multiple OSes. In an ideal world, I would have one person doing the development for the windoze version of P2PQ another for Linux and one for MacOSX, but it would have been extremely expensive, when we are putting all of our efforts into creating a working project. We hope to be able to create a native MacOSX client and a native Linux Client, but if thats not possible, then it will have to be Java for all non windoze OSes, which would suck a little, since java is generally slow. I cant understand why Mac people never use IRC; you can find EVERYTHING YOU WANT on IRC, its a piece of piss to use, and blows Hotline out of the water... As for those kids who posted links to MP3s, well, any court that upholds something like that is simply making the law an ass. They clearly cannot distinguish between a device and a piece of text. A device is a physical object, like a hard drive or monitor, a piece of text, wether its hypertext or plaintext, is (or should be) protected as a universal right when it comes to publishing. If a link points to a copyrighted file or text, it does not connect to it in any way like taking the actual text and reproducing it this is the critical distinction that the courts cannot make. It might take the death of all the judges and thier replacement by computer literate people for these legal precedents to be struck down. I cant wait for some Ambulance Chaser to realize that Google and all of the other serach engines are doing the exact same thing that Napster was doing. Now THAT would be a cause celeb! (SP)

Thursday, July 05, 2001

Music City used to run many open nap servers, where millions of tracks could be found. Then they switched over to Morpheus, which i have not yet tried. I would be VERY surprised if anyone pays to use Napster. Why should you pay someone money to list the tracks you have on your HD? After all, thats what Napster does, it lists tracks. If someone takes on the role of the major player on Open Nap we may see a return of high population / quality Napster use. They will have to find a country where the legislature understands the difference between hosting a list of the location of information and hosting the information itself. This is a crucial difference that computer illiterates simply do not get, and its what brought Napster crashing down. If they can get people to pay for access, it will be a big breakthrough for the subscription model. That has got to be one of the shortest lived revolutions ever. There are still plenty of open nap servers online; it doesnt appear that they are linked: Napigator keeps a dynamic list of whats running.