Karlo.Org - Weblog

It's theft. Your contract with the network... is you're going to watch the [ads].... Any time you skip a commercial... you're actually stealing the programming. " -- TBS Chairman Jamie Kellner

According to the Chairman of Turner Broadcasting, using a Tivo or other PVR to skip commercials (or a VCR, I suppose), amounts to stealing from the networks. Apparently, when watching TV you're supposed to sit still and not take your eyes off the television from the opening credits until the next time slot begins.

It's obvious sometimes why network executives have a hard time understanding the impact of new technologies -- often, they don't even have a grip on the behavior of their customers to start with. Hardly anyone sits there and attentively watches the commercials, unless there's nothing else to do. That includes staring at the carpet, going to the bathroom, thinking about going to bathroom, and (gasp!) flipping to other channels for a moment to see if perhaps there isn't something better on.

I could tell you this fight for the networks was a losing battle the day after I introduced a Tivo into my family's house -- my sister had already started making the "bah-doop" sound as she zipped through the commercial breaks. (I did point out that the Tivo even makes the sound for you.) Trust me, even if it was stealing, you're not going to get her to give up commercial skipping out of sympathy for your network. For some of us, the concept that skipping commercials is "outlaw" is even appealling... I didn't know I could be "anti-establishment" while watching Blind Date, but it seems I was wrong. Bah-doop!

Posted by at 3:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Tonight, it's hamburgers. After spending 2 hours yesterday making a vegetarian Indian dinner, we need some protein tonight...and no, none of those protein shakes on my kitchen counter will do.

Oh, a word of advice -- meals that require 7 different spices don't necessarily taste better than simple salted and peppered burgers. I will, however, search for new recipes that will require a trip down the "weird food aisle" (as Tom would put it) at the supermarket.

Posted by at 2:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

Just finished adding integration with Google's API for web developers, thanks to some nifty code from Rael. Similar to the referrer list and RSS/XML syndicated "guest blog", I'm using a timed background script to update that data, since it doesn't change very fast.

I still can't get Rael's Amazon API code to work... as usual, it requires perl modules that I don't have, and can't get to install properly yet.

Posted by at 7:48 AM | Permalink

Apple sure knows how to make it hard to ignore their laptops... they just announced a new PowerBook G4, with adds a higher resolution 1280x854 screen, Radeon 7500 video processor, and 800 MHz G4 processor... all within the thin, 5.4 lb titanium casing. There really isn't anything comparable in the Windows laptop market, as usual. It really makes me think about whether I could do all of my office applications on a Mac under OS X, or perhaps by putting Linux on this machine... but I'm not sure I'm willing to deal with the hassles of moving to a non-Windows platform. If only money were no object...

Posted by at 7:46 AM | Permalink

In the odd but vaguely intriguing category of computer hardware design is the Greencoputer PowerElf (right) which is a Linux-based network appliance/computer. It's maybe twice as high as my SV24, but it definitely wins points for its sleek design. I still kind of prefer Cobalt's Qube design, though.

Posted by at 2:34 PM | Permalink

You can find the funniest things in your site log... including this link to an Arabic Translation of this site. Just for kicks, I also link to the dollarshort.org translation.

In case you don't have Arabic language support, here's an image of yesterday's post in Arabic.

Posted by at 7:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I've been testing out the Mozilla web browser release candidate 1 lately. It's a really nice alternative to Internet Explorer, although IE has really reached the point where it's nearly transparent as an application -- you don't realize you're using it, which I think is generally a compliment for a browser. Still, Mozilla offers integrated mail and news support that's in my view better than Outlook Express, plus it's available on any platform (since you can build it yourself from source if it's absolutely necessary.) All in all, a very nice alternative to Internet Explorer. I'll have to try it side-by-side KDE's Konqueror browser to see how it compares to that mostly Linux-only package.

Posted by at 7:49 AM | Permalink

The Boston Globe has a good article on the impact of CD burning on the music industry. It seems that direct CD-to-CD copying is probably having a greater effect on record sales than MP3 trading, especially as these practices become more widestream and spread beyond those with broadband access. Contains a lot of whining from the record industry about how they can't charge $20 any more for a CD. Tough... they've been able to do sinister things like reverse discounting (increasing the price as albums get older) and overcharging everyone (to neither the musicians nor the fan's benefit) for years, simply because of their control over the distribution medium. Now that technology isn't on their side any more, they're desperate for help from the legislature, etc.

We don't need laws taxing CD burners or media -- why should people who are not going to use these devices for music copying, like me, pay for the problems of the music industry. If you feel the same way and want to protect your rights, check out DigitalConsumer.Org

The article closes with quotes from Elvis Costello (a great artist, I've got tons of his MP3s, natch), who is anti-copying, but notes that "...at least in terms of the big record companies, 'They've loaded the game so the house has been winning for a long time. Now it's time maybe for the house not to win for a while. Maybe they have to take some losses.'"

Posted by at 5:35 PM | Permalink

Charmed Technology, a startup founded by MIT Media Lab alumni, has released a CharmIT Pro, a new open-design testbed for wearable computing, based in part on a Transmeta low-power processor and Linux. Although folks have been home-brewing wearables for years (I remember early models in the mid-90's when I worked in the media lab as an undergraduate) this is one of the first commercially available wearables.

Although it's chunky, the size is actually the result of a major advantage - this system is built largely out of fairly standard parts, and it's easy for experimenters to hack, modify and adapt to new uses. Along with the fact that all information about the hardware is public (down to all the wiring), this means that it will likely foster an entire community of software and hardware developers who now can join their effort around a single basic platform. Very compelling.

Posted by at 7:17 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

So there was an earthquake here in New York... and as usual for East Coast earthquake, nobody noticed. It's like someone threw a party, but didn't invite anyone at all. It's not like California, where earthquakes aren't news unless buildings fall over. Here, we need the news report to confirm that what we felt the night before wasn't just the garbage truck going by outside. We don't even think of word "earthquake" until we see the news the next day... and then we think "oh yeah, that thing I felt last night... or was that indigestion?"

Posted by at 10:58 PM | Permalink

I've added a little hack onto the list of links beneath each post on this site: the "Google!" link will take you to a Google search of vaguely related items (depending on how well I composed the query for that entry.) Even if I didn't compose a specific query, it will attempt one based on the title of the post (as is the case with this one.)

It's not an original concept, but since it's neat and my particular implementation might be useful to other PHP/MT users, here's the relevant code:

| <a href="http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=<? if("<MTEntryExcerpt
encode_php="qq">") {
echo urlencode("<MTEntryExcerpt encode_php="qq">") ;
} else {
echo urlencode("<MTEntryTitle encode_php="qq">");
}; ?>">Google!</a>

Posted by at 3:30 PM | Permalink

Faced with a study by the Boston Globe that found 91% of seniors at Harvard graduated with some kind of honor, and half of undergraduate grades were A or A-, Harvard is trying to figure out how to restore B as the average grade.

One proposal: make a B+ closer to A-, so professors are more likely to give Bs. Uh, guys, are we not understanding the point of this discussion?

We always joked about grade inflation at "that other school" when I was in MIT, but we never imagined anything like this...

Posted by at 12:16 PM | Permalink

Usually, unsolicited emails telling me to go to a web site are best ignored, but I was lucky to check out digicam views based on a polite email from the author (who I guess came here looking for The Pixel Foundry, my old site.) Although I'm still not totally happy with the picture quality of my Canon S100 (purchased a year and a half ago), especially in an unfair comparison to my prosumer Nikon N90S 35mm film camera, it's evident that digital photography is well on the way to supplanting film for everyday snaps.

Posted by at 9:04 AM | Permalink

image I've never really seen Microsoft as a "skaterat" kind of company, but apparently they've decided to adopt the term "Freestyle" for their new media station version of XP. Tom's Hardware condenses the concept well: "Freestyle - this is just a media focused customization of a Windows XP PC with the added twist of moving the control from WIMP to a remote control. It's a set of technologies that will allow you to use remote control and move your PC with a remote control, which is another way of saying of using your PC as a media server for your consumer electronics needs. Streaming video, and audio; digital picture frames on a network. High-tech stuff.

The remote control of Freestyle helps to take your mind off the fact that you are using a $1,000 PC to do the job of a $100 CD player, but that's not the point. The point is to get consumers to view the PC in a new light, and not just as a tool or geeky game box. "

Amazing. Microsoft's only say 6 years behind the average college student on this one in figuring out that you can use use your computer as a substitute (albeit poor) for the standard TV and stereo, thanks to some speakers and a remote control. The mind reels.

Microsoft Preview Image of the Freestyle Interface

Posted by at 9:03 AM | Permalink

Hot dang... finally got Moveable Type 2.0 installed and working, just days after setting up the new server. I guess waiting for the new machine was the right choice -- setting up MT on Mandrake 8.2 was a ton easier than on the older versions of this distribution.

Now all I have to do is actually make a new template, one that's compatible with MoveableType. I think it will be better to rework the generic one into a new style, rather than trying to mangle my old template into this system. We'll have to see....

Posted by at 10:01 PM | Permalink

For the moment, it's hard to tell, but I've moved Karlo.Org from our trusty Pentium 2 / 300 web server to a new Celeron 850 machine, custom built as a small form factor server! Right now I'm only using it for web serving, but once everything seems okay, I'll switch over mail service as well and decommision the old machine ("jeeves") and everything will depend on this one ("cube").

To get an idea of how small the new server is physically, it's sitting on top of a standard stereo receiver in the photo at left. The front face is only a little larger than a CD case.

Posted by at 9:54 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Good Press Google.com deserves applause for deciding to publicize requests for censorship on it search site based on the DMCA. It's turned out that several of the highest profile requests have been from the Church of Scientology against Xenu.net, an investigative (and vocally anti-COS) site that publishes extensive Church of Scientology documents and history plus analysis and investigation of the Church of Scientology. Of course, because of the Google disclosure of the DMCA requests, that site has now gotten attention far beyond what it ever would have earned from its search listings on Google. And with thousands of sites linking (like I just did) to Xenu.net in articles, it's now going to be only one click away from many of the top Google results for Church of Scientology, anyway. I think I like Google more every day.

Note that although Google removed links directly to allegedly copyrighted documents, they retained their links to Xenu.net. With all these articles, it's going to getting closer to topping out the COS's own home page in the Google results.

Posted by at 1:38 PM | Permalink

Rejected Senator Holling's digital copyright bill, which would ban technologies not specifically approved as "copyright-friendly", has been massively rejected by both the high tech industry as well as thousands of consumers. One group that seems to have arisen from this debacle is DigitalConsumer.Org, a "grassroots" lobbying organization dedicated to promoting the rights of end users. This is a good thing.

Posted by at 8:38 AM | Permalink

Bleah It's amazing how quickly your sense of taste changes... a month ago I was drinking coffee pretty regularly in the morning (one a day at most) but I stopped after I started working out, because I was getting breakfast before going to work. I picked up a coffee this morning because I happened to be coming in from the other side of my office building, and it just, well, doesn't taste very good to me. I don't think it's the coffee, either.

Posted by at 8:36 AM | Permalink

Toro! The New York Times has a great piece for sushi lovers on how to grow a giant tuna. Apparently, they are now "farming" giant tuna by catching regular sized specimens, penning them and then feeding them fresh sardines until they weigh several hundred pounds - a size that commands top prices and is relatively rare in the wild. Sounds like a watery version of foie gras to me.

Posted by at 10:38 AM | Permalink

Whoops Microsoft and Unisys had a web site critical of Linux up earlier this week -- until folks noticed they were using FreeBSD to run the server, not a Microsoft Operating System. So they quickly changed it to Microsoft's IIS platform yesterday -- and now it's down. Last time I checked, I got a 404 (Page Not Found) error at the home page, but you don't have to believe me: Cnet's also saying the site has kicked the bucket.

Yet another reason when I upgrade my web server (hopefully this weekend) I'm going to upgrade to Mandake Linux 8.2. I've been running Mandrake 7 on this server for ages, and I can't remember it ever crashing on me.

Posted by at 10:04 AM | Permalink

If You Can't Beat Them... Kudo's to my friend Stef for finishing the New Zealand Triathlon. He didn't win, but he managed to finish in a notable position, regardless. Check out his results by going to Ironman Live and scrolling all the way to the bottom of the chart. He finished just a few minutes before the maximum time cut-off. I wonder if anyone was cut off for taking too long, after 16 hours of effort... that would suck.

Posted by at 1:42 PM | Permalink

Evite Me In a week where Yahoo, a traditional "good guy", decided to abuse its entire user base by resetting their spam options to "yes" unilaterally (including your account, if you haven't checked,) Evite continues to be a pleasure to use. Despite the enormous potential of their email service for spam and unecessary advertising, they continue to be a highly effective, low-promotion service that delivers what they promise, for free, with a web site that's responsive and nearly bug-free. I really hope that the targeted advertising within the site itself is generating enough revenue that they can continue to run the high road, but if they do find it necessary to start charging small fees for organizing events, I suspect many people will pay -- I know I find it a time saver I'd be willing to cough up a few bucks for. (Hey, it's less than the cost of one beer at the event.)

Give them a visit and create a "synchronous & local" meeting for your friends -- you'll be glad you did. It does require that your friends have email addresses, but it's practically a reason to get people online in and of itself.

Posted by at 12:16 PM | Permalink

The End of (SMTP) Innocence David Reed writes about how Spammers and the ISPs trying to block them are making SMTP mail usage impossible. I've hit the same problem using VoiceStream's GPRS service for my handheld: they block Port 25, which is used by my Pocket PC for sending email. So I can't send email over their Internet service unless I use a special web page -- and here I was thinking we developed "email clients" for a reason (otherwise everyone would be using Hotmail, not Outlook.) I can't imagine anyone using their service for spamming, considering it runs at about half the speed of a modem. Administrator mentality run amok -- they'll make everyone miserable rather than find a better way to block a small minority of offenders.

Posted by at 10:02 AM | Permalink