Compendium

Entries

Friday, March 29, 2002

The IBM songbook

Thrill to the words of Ever Onward I.B.M.:

Ever onward! ever onward!
that's the spirit that has brought us fame.
we're big but bigger we will be,
we can't fail for all can see,
that to serve humanity has been our aim.
our products now are known
in every zone.
our reputation sparkles like a gem.
we've fought our way through
and new fields we're sure to conquer, too,
for the ever onward IBM!

Plenty more at the IBM Songbook site, including a WAV file of the above.

Via Use the Source.

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Abe Lincoln: 'Net entrepreneur

A few days ago, Disney honcho Michael Eisner said if Abe Lincoln were alive today, he'd support the sort of strict copyright laws Eisner wants, you know, the ones that would require computer makers to redesign their products to keep you from making any copies of anything, ever, without paying somebody a fee first.

One of the problems with quoting dead people in favor of causes they could never have imagined is that your opponents can do the same thing. For example, Cory Doctorow quotes from a Lincoln speech:

Shall we expect some Transatlantic giant to step across the ocean and crush us at a blow? Never! All the armies of Europe, Africa and Asia combined could not by force make a track on the Blue Ridge nor take a drink from the Ohio River, not in a trial of a thousand years. If destruction be our lot, then we ourselves must be its author, and its finisher. It cannot come from abroad. As a nation of free men, we must live forever -- or die by suicide.

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Thursday, March 28, 2002

E-mail puts end to carrier-pigeon service

The BBC reports on a plan by the Indian government to replace its Police Pigeon Service with boring electronic mail. Carrier pigeons have linked government outposts since 1946, and have been used as recently as 1999 to maintain communications when cyclones wiped out normal radio networks.

Via Boing Boing.

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Kids today are so clever

Hey! ASL? is a site that lets IM'in' fools save valuable seconds by posting biographies, so they no longer have to make them up when somebody IMs them and asks "Age? Sex? Location?" (or in clever time-saving IM mode: "A/S/L?").

Via /usr/bin/girl.

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Wednesday, March 27, 2002

Whiny Joe Nacchio

Dan Gillmor is posting frequent updates from PC Forum. In this one, he reports on how Qwest honcho Joe Nacchio seemed to spend much of the day complaining:

You have to have a system that's capital friendly, he says of broadband Internet access to the home. In other words, he wants a monopoly if possible.

The cash flow from this monopoly is keeping Qwest alive, notes a questioner. "Why are you whining?"

Nacchio's response is beyond arrogant. He launches a non-sequitur insult.

Nacchio started as an upstart. Now he's one of the robber barons.

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Who am I?

Digital Identity is a Weblog devoted to digital-identity and related issues, such as universal authentication. You know, Passport, the Liberty Alliance and stuff like that.

Via Doc Searls

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Tuesday, March 26, 2002

Nick Burns must die

It's time for IT staffers, especially the ones who man the Help Desk, to start treating lusers^H^H^Husers with kindness and respect, at least according to this Kuro5hin article:

All too often in IT support the attitude to users is negative, they forget passwords, lock accounts, lose files, install stuff they shouldn't etc. But the fact is that users are the reason we have a job in IT, without them there is nothing to support.

Let's look at that again.

The user is the reason YOU have a job!

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On the importance of copyediting

The worst manuals of 2002 highlights employee and technical documentation that seem to require workers to commit crimes while on the job and which read like (to quote "Beetlejuice") Japanese stereo instructions.

Via MetaFilter.

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Monday, March 25, 2002

Add Apple to list of companies that break Acrobat security

Remember that Russian programmer who got arrested last year because his company makes a product that can unlock Adobe's allegedly secure PDF files?

Turns out Mac OS X lets anybody do the same thing. This article has details. Apple and Adobe are supposedly working on a fix. In the meantime, though, the whole thing raises still more questions about the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which was used to justify the arrest of the programmer.

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Bet Carly F. wishes she could have done this

A company called Inforte will hold its annual stockholders meeting entirely online. The company estimates it will only cost about $2,000 for the virtual session, compared to roughly $20,000 for a real F2F meeting. LeFile has an interview with a company official about the meeting.

Now as for what Inforte actually does, well, I think its mission statement speaks for itself (or doesn't):

Inforte is a strategic technology consultancy with a client advocacy approach, rigorous methodology and a proven track record of enhancing clients' competitive advantage. We help organizations integrate strategies, processes and systems across the value chain - ensuring they are consistently demand driven and customer focused.

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Friday, March 22, 2002

First spam, now whispers

Webmaster World reports on how some companies are now targeting online forums in their never-ending attempts to suck you into their clutches. There's even a name for them: whisperers. And they can be more subtle than spammers (which, come to think of it, wouldn't be all that hard):

A typical whisper campaign would involve two employees (or one with two online names). One posts an innocuous query, such as "I need software to do X. Any recommendations?" To which the shill replies with the name of his company's product. The original poster comes back a few days to say how wonderful the thing worked, etc., etc. So be on the lookout.

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Google says it will add back part of anti-church site

Dan Gillmor reports that Google now says it will reload a link to Xenu.net's home page after it stripped the entire site out of its database when the Church of Scientology claimed it violated the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. He adds:

That's a small bit of progress, anyway. But Google has not come out of this day looking very good.

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Yes, I'm using new software to write this

I had been using Radio Userland to write Compendium. The other day, though, something went wrong; the app's config file got corrupted and I couldn't post new entries (sort of like that Harlan Ellison story: "I have no Weblog and I must post"). I'd been playing around with Greymatter for another project, found it incredibly easy to install and use, so I figured I'd give it a try. Like Radio, it lets you add insta-comments to postings (you can also click on the Coolness links to tell the world how cool or stupid a particular item is).

Unlike Radio, which runs on your desktop, Greymatter's your basic server-side Perl script. Also unlike Radio, it no longer seems to be undergoing much updating, which is sad in a way, but for now, it works (and yes, it is sad the lengths to which I am going to avoid HTML tags). Let me know what you think.

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Thursday, March 21, 2002

Google drops site from its database

Welcome to the real world. Google's busy humming along, becoming the world's best search engine. Then as a lark, some people start Googlebombing, i.e., getting lots of sites to link to a particular site to drive up its rankings. Then the Church of Scientology gets involved. Then Scientology critics retaliate. Now Google's blocked Operation Clambake, a prominent anti-Scientology site, from its database. Seems Google is worried it might get sued under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act because Operation Clambake posts material the Scientologists claim is copyrighted.

Read more in this Kuro5hin thread.

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Finally, an honest spammer

You know what really drives me up the wall while perusing spam? No, it's not the blatantly false promise they can enlarge various parts of my body. Or the fact that it just never ends. It's the bit that always says "we are only sending this to you because you requested this information."

Finally, here's a spammer with the guts to be brutally honest. From a message in my inbox:
"We have purchased an email list which gives us the right to advertise to you our products. We do not currently have a remove list for this mailing since we bought your name. Come buy our products off our web site and please, do not email me wanting to be removed from this mailing because I wont, I have your bought your email address. "

It then continues with a warning: "This is a once a week mailing so you won't forget what we offer because I know that you will really love our things when you see what we have to offer! Also please do
not try to hack into our web sites because we can hack back and we will destroy your computer with a super ping, you have been warned!"

Ooh, a super ping! Oh my!

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Wednesday, March 20, 2002

Talking spam

Not happy enough with just reading your spam? Now you can listen to it, as well, thanks to Spam Radio. Click on any message and hear a computer-generated voice read it with soothing electronic music in the background. You've really got to admire the phenomenal waste of time and resources that went into this project! In answer to the question "Why?" the site's authors write:

Everybody hates spam. Mass-marketing junk email is the bane of the Internet. But it thinks very highly of itself. It invades your inbox every day with a sense of confidence. There is always a new sales pitch -- a new way that you can improve your life, if only you will take a few minutes to read. Anything this important shouldn't be ignored. Anything this important deserves it's own radio show.

Via Memepool.

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Improving Google?

Webmaster World takes a look at an IBM research effort, called CLEVER, to improve on Google's search technology.

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Tuesday, March 19, 2002

Her name was Carly ...

Use the Source imagined if Barry Manilow sang the song of the HP/Compaq merger (to the tune of "Copacabana"):

Her name was Carly, she was a VP
With Lucent and AT&T and a degree from MIT
She went to HP and wowed the board room
And while she tried to be a star, sometimes went a bit too far
And then September 4, Compaq became the score
They were failing and needed

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Finally, tap dancing on your Palm

Tamagotchi move over. Tap is a Palm app that lets you teach a little character how to dance. Once you get your figure movin' and groovin', you can exchange him or her with other Tap users, either via infrared beaming or over the Web. Note: The dancer will express frustration at first, but no word on what happens if you don't feed him.

Via Weblog Wannabe.

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The hidden life of Pong

Last week, it was text-based Pong. This week, see what happens when you go to bed without turning off your computer. Seems Pong likes to play hard and nasty (requires Flash).

Via MetaFilter.

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Linux viruses

One of Linux's supposed strengths over Windows is the fact that there aren't all that many Linux viruses. The Linux Virus Writing And Detection HOWTO might change that. In the grand open-source tradition, the guide has been released to the public for discussion.

An astonishing number of people think that viruse s require secret black magic. Here you will find simple code that patches other executables. But since regular users can't overwrite system files (we are talking about serious operating systems here) that is not even half the journey. To make any impact you need root permissions. Either by tricking the super user to run your virus, or combining it with a root-exploit. And since all popular distributions come with checksum mechanisms, a single command can detect any modification. Unless you implement kernel-level stealth functionality…/font>

Via Kuro5hin.

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