K-Squared Ramblings

Googolplex: a virtual reality movie theater

Here’s an interesting idea: Googolplex Theaters creates a virtual reality movie theater so that, effectively, everyone gets their own screen.

Of course, once you simulate a screen in VR, why stop there? You’ve already got 3-D in the display, and between the backlog of 3D movies and a decade or so of computer animation, there are a lot of possibilities.

Mind-Machine Interface

• BBC: Brain chip reads man’s thoughts
• Business Week: The New Science of Mind over Matter

(via CNET Extra)

Gaming search engines with Wordpress

It’s always something. Apparently WordPress.org has been dabbling in black-hat SEO, hosting thousands of keyword-based articles on their high–page-ranked site and placing hidden links to them on their home page. Way to go, guys. This makes the paranoia over remote images almost look reasonable. What’s next, putting ads in the next default template?

The free/open source software world is based primarily on trust. Based on comments I’ve read over the last couple of days, WordPress has lost a lot of it. They’ve even been (mostly) dropped from Google. A sensible precaution while things are sorted out, but it unfortunately means the first top-level listing on a Google search for “wordpress” is wordpress.com, which looks like a cybersquatter. Not exactly an improvement.

In a support thread Matt answered last week, he referred to it as an “experiment.” He’s on vacation right now, but someone has taken it upon themselves to remove the bogus articles from the site.

My thoughts: Read the rest of this entry »

Girl Genius moves to the web

Here’s some surprising news: Phil and Kaja Foglio’s excellent comic book Girl Genius is moving from print to the web: Girl Genius Online. They plan to have new pages up three times a week, and release graphic novels once a year.

I’m of mixed feelings here. On one hand, I like being able to hold the comics in my hand, and this was a series I’ve been collecting as individual issues. Hardcovers and TPBs are often harder to find. On the other hand, the series was only nominally quarterly, often managing only three issues a year (or fewer). If they actually manage 3 a week, that’s the equivalent of six 30-page issues over the course of the next year. And it will be easier to introduce new people to the series. I can just point them to the website instead of lending an issue or telling them to hunt through their local comic stores.

(via the Studio Foglio newsletter)

Fully Random Spam

The blog spammers must be getting desperate. The only other explanation I can think of is courtesy (keeping offensive language out of the posts), and I just can’t ascribe that motive to them.

The latest attack on this site consists of randomly-generated alphanumeric strings. Name? ah87fdfbqpo3q9483fhc. Email? ahsdhufs@q98hf4i4whfcia487f.com. URL? augfagfwi7832hr732rh8732fcfiuh.example.com. (I assume they have a wildcard DNS set up for random subdomains.) Content? Try something like “ads78shafi7 uigiutgw87n srgn743fnufc42.” (I’m typing my own gibberish, just in case the plan is to search for particular strings and see which sites have actually posted.)

The “advantage” of this approach is that there is no content to filter. No references to pills, poker or porn, no common phrases, not even empty generic statements like “I really like you’re site” and “Your an idiot” with links tossed in. It’s just a bunch of meaningless letters and numbers and a link. After all, the link is all the spammer needs, to get that coveted PageRank.

Oh, about that link? Easily identifiable. SURBL-style lists eat them for breakfast, and Spam Karma has been snacking on these all morning. *chomp*

Czech yore gramma!

A nice example of why spelling and grammar checkers (at least as they stand today) are not enough: In trust we Word. The article has more.

(Appropriately, it seems that WordPerfect’s grammar checker is considerably more effective than Word’s.)

Sweet Irony

This is a good one. Apprently in setting up their own anti-Groklaw site, SCO has grabbed PDFs of legal documents from Groklaw and Tuxrocks.com.

In a campaign focused on intellectual property rights, where SCO is the accuser…

Groklaw’s PJ has a good take on it: “I’m sure [Tuxrocks'] Frank would want to join me in thanking SCO for this wonderful endorsement of our websites.”

Unusual Flash Sighting

I noticed this SUV as I got on the freeway after work. We apparently kept pace with each other, because it was there on the off-ramp as well. It was then that I noticed something red on the back:

Yes, a plush Flash doll was jammed into the trailer hitch!

Fiendish Alarm Clock

The MIT Media Lab has come up with Clocky, an alarm clock that rolls away and hides when you hit the snooze button.

(via CNET Extra)

The Dreaded Double Digits

What is it about two-digit version numbers?

Mac OS went up to 9, and now it’s Mac OS X. Everything since then has been numbered “under the hood.” You can find 10.3 in the fine print, but everywhere else it’s Mac OS X Panther.

Windows alternates between vintages and letters (Me, XP, etc.). Even then, they’re only up to 5.2 internally (Longhorn will technically be Windows NT 6.0).

Red Hat Linux got up to 9, then spun off into Fedora Core, starting over at 1.

Mandrake got as far as 10.1, and Conectiva to 10, and the merged system is moving to yearly vintages.

SuSE is about to hit 9.3, but Novell has been busy absorbing all the Linux companies they bought. It wouldn’t surprise me at all to see them release Novell Linux 1 instead of SuSE Linux 10.

Hazard Construction?

Here’s a photoblog flashback. This picture was taken in 1999, so I assume the project has long since been completed:

Something about the combination of “Hazard” and “Cannon Road” seemed…apropos. And somewhat ironic when considered in light of construction.

(I did find one Hazard Construction Company on Google. I assume this is them, since they’re based in the right county.)

Farce Cape

A caption I always wanted to write. From “Crackers Don’t Matter,” one of Farscape’s more comedic episodes.

The Microsoft Prize

One of those “international lottery” scams (very closely related to the Nigerian scam):

CONGRATULATIONS !!! YOUR E-MAIL HAS WON A MICROSOFT PRIZE

My e-mail has won a prize? Not me? Hmm, I can think of lots of Microsoft “prizes” my email has received: Mydoom, Netsky, Bagle…. Of course, it’s declined all of them!

Senior Xing

I’ve only seen these signs in Irvine. I suspect that says something about them:

Perhaps an important warning to drivers, but it’s not a well-designed road sign. There’s too much detail, for starters—detail you’re not going to see clearly zooming by at 35 M.P.H. Compare to the stick figures of the standard school crossing sign, or even to the bunny crossing sign.

More importantly, the cues chosen to identify senior citizens are temporary, in the sense that they’ll look dated not too long from now. Why a hat, for instance? Read the rest of this entry »

Time Travel Spam Returns

Back in 2002, people all over the net started getting email from a “time traveller” looking for a dimensional warp generator. Most people assumed it was a joke, and some decided to play along by setting up fake stores or even arranging a drop-off. The “time travel spammer” was eventually identified as spammer Robert Todino, who, unfortunately, was quite serious in his belief that time travelers were interfering with his life. The fake store, the mock DWG made from old computer parts, the offers to supply his equipment, all unwittingly fueled his belief.

This all came out in mid-2003, and aside from immediate fallout and a brief spate of (probably copycat) AIM appearances late last year, the field seems to have been quiet.

Well, guess what showed up in the spam traps over the weekend!

Hello <address removed>,

I’m looking for a good trans_universal transportation unit. Do you have the Mccoy g series self generating watch or similar newer models available? I also need other items you may or may not have available. Please send a (separate) email to me at: <address removed> if available and let me know your terms on doing business.

Thank you
Paul

They’re baaack!

Other sightings: here [archive.org], here [archive.org], and here. Edit: Somehow it seems appropriate that these sightings are now only accessible via the Wayback Machine. (July 28, 2006)