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Month: October 2002

the ever-tricky ‘getting semen from a gorilla’ problem

Published October 31, 2002

(ish!): The management of Sydney’s Taronga Zoo has mooted “manual stimulation” of Kibabu the gorilla, in order to grab some monkey semen for artificial insemination.

“I believe it’s done in Europe”, they say (maybe they’re harking back to the days of Weimar Berlin). Zookeepers, being the ones who’d get their hands dirty (so to speak), are — understandably — not too keen.

It now looks like something called “electro-ejaculation” will be used instead… sounds painful. (Link from forteana.)

Date: Thu, 31 Oct 2002 07:04:12 +1000
From: Peter Darben (spam-protected)
Subject: Gorilla Wankers

—– (from The Age (Melbourne) 31.10.02)

http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2002/10/30/1035683478852.html

Gorilla tactics rejected

October 31 2002 By Phillip Cornford

Kibabu the gorilla’s inability to produce offspring has become an embarrassing industrial issue for Taronga Zoo in Sydney.

The zoo management’s proposal for an artificial insemination program using manual stimulation of the sedated gorilla was vetoed by zookeepers.

“It was too bloody dangerous,” a zookeeper said last night. “What if he woke up?”

Red-faced Taronga officials last night confirmed the masturbation program was proposed last May, but said there had been no further attempt to employ it. “I believe it’s done in Europe,” a spokesman said. “There’s been a lot of discussion on how to get semen from Kibabu for artificial insemination.”

Instead, Kibabu – whose harem numbers five females – will probably be stimulated by an electrical device, a process called electro-ejaculation. Kibabu’s failure emerged yesterday as about 350 zoo staff planned to stop work at 2pm tomorrow to discuss workplace agreement issues, including wages, working hours, stress and job-related risks.

—–

peter

Googlisms

Published October 30, 2002

My googlism: apparently I’m a tool to autoretrieve news from popular, or am I scheduled to be tried on those charges in december? yikes.

Cod fishing ban needed in Europe

Published October 29, 2002

the EU’s scientific advisors have stated that cod stocks in Europe are at their lowest ever levels, and will collapse without action. grim! More at New Scientist.

Blog Is Good

Published October 25, 2002

blog is a Good Word — official. From Bayesian analysis of my mail spool, blog shows up 1525 times in non-spam mail, and never in spam.

Telia.com blocked by AOL for two weeks

Published October 25, 2002

Things are getting crazy in the fight against spam: it seems AOL blocked access (for two weeks) to its mailserver from Telia.com, one of Sweden’s biggest ISPs (if not the biggest), due to spam.

Attached is an unauthorized translation of an article in the Swedish IDG paper Computer Sweden (web edition, Oct 24), provided by Claes Tullbrink.

Until a (previous) article was published, noting this ban, AOL had not succeeded in contacting Telia to talk about it. Amazing stuff.

Date: Thu, 24 Oct 2002 14:51:19 +0200
From: Claes Tullbrink (spam-protected)
Subject: Telia.com not blocked by AOL any longer

Computer Sweden (in Swedish, password may be required after today):

http://computersweden.idg.se/ArticlePages/200210/24/20021024131806_CS539/20021024131806_CS539.dbp.asp

Oct 24, pm.

For more then two weeks mail from Telia.com was blocked by AOL.

Jocelyn Cole, AOL UK, confirmed the block, which was due to big amounts of spam sent from Telia domains to AOL. The block is now removed, and AOL is cooperating with Telia to find a long term solution to decrease the amount of spam sent from Telia, to protect AOL customers.

Press officer Jan Sjöberg, Telia, says it was the article that solved the issue: a Telia contact person name was mentioned in the article, and it seems
that AOL had read the articles [and *so* and in no other way knew who they could contact? CT]

Jan Sjöberg is still not sure how the block was related to spam: due to spam, reports of spam or a customer’s open mail relay. Telia will investigate. [proxies was not mentioned. I don’t know if “reports of spam” relates to refusing to accept plain mail reports sent to (spam-protected)

Claes

Damn those foibles

Published October 25, 2002

Over on Boing Boing, Danny O’Brien notes

People who know me well enough, or google well enough, to uncover out my weirder behaviours will know that I can’t drive. It’s not some high-falutin’ statement about the environment. I’m just not very good at remembering which pedal does what.

Well, it’s good to hear there’s one more out there; me neither. It’s become a bit of a worry recently, since I may be moving to LA, which is notoriously one of the most ped-unfriendly places in the world (Antarctica excepted).

But why, you ask? I don’t know — but I think it’s a combo of these factors:

  • owning a car in Ireland is phenomenally expensive: due to bizarre traits of the insurance biz over here, it costs about $100-$140 a week to drive a car. That’s quite a luxury. For that price, you might as well just take cabs everywhere and let someone else do the hard work.

  • I live more-or-less in Dublin city centre, so walking and cycling does the trick nicely.

  • Dublin’s got good public transport for when the weather’s bad (see also cabs above).

  • er, laziness.

I guess it may be something I’ll have to sort out, at some stage, maybe. Eventually. (Damn that laziness!)

(Untitled)

Published October 24, 2002

Bernie Goldbach is currently blogging live from the floor of OPEN_HOUSE_001, Media Lab Europe’s inaugural conference.

I’m impressed — by the technology, that is ;) . He’s blogging via email from a Nokia 9210i Communicator, to a Radio weblog, then via XML-RPC to the Kirbycom New Media Cuts Movable Type blog. cool!

Anyway, that’s enough of that — gotta get back to work!

IEDR spams all .ie Postmaster addresses

Published October 24, 2002

Nice one! The IE Domain Registry (IEDR) has just sent out a ‘free newsletter‘ to all postmaster addresses in the entire .ie top-level domain. Yes, every one.

And did they follow the best practices for legit mailing list operators, like

  • (a) never mailing without a previous sign-up, or even

  • (b) setting up the list to use verified opt-in (“reply to confirm that you want to receive further mail”), instead of opt-out (“reply if you do not want to receive further mail”)?

Of course not:

YOU WILL BE RECEIVING this free bi-monthly ezine because you are one of our 31,000+ .ie domain name holders, an Irish journalist, with an Irish government body or have a legitimate interest in matters relating to the Domain Name System (DNS) in all Ireland, concerning .ie domain names. This publication is delivered by email and will serve as an official channel of the IEDR to deliver notices and announcements.

If you do not wish to receive Inside.ie, you can unsubscribe by clicking on the link below.

Not my emphasis, BTW. But don’t worry — their mail host was already listed in the DNS blacklists as a Confirmed Spam Source by the time I received it, so I don’t think we’ll be actually receiving many more of them ;)

For more information on the hi-larious antics of our national registrar, take a look at IEWatch.

Date: Thu, 24 Oct 2002 06:08:10 -0400
From: “Sophie Pozzey” (spam-protected)
To: (spam-protected)
Subject: The IEDR’s Inside.ie e-mail newsletter – Welcome

Dear Sir/Madam,

The IE Domain Registry Ltd. (IEDR – www.iedr.ie) is an independent not-for-profit organisation that manages the .ie country code Top Level Domain (ccTLD) namespace in the public interest of the Irish and global Internet communities. In line with the Best Practice Principles of IANA, ICANN, and CENTR, the IEDR is committed to the concept of administering .ie throughout all Ireland in an open and transparent manner.

INSIDE.IE, THE IEDR’S FREE BI-MONTHLY E-MAIL NEWSLETTER, assists us in attaining and maintaining this standard and in ensuring that recipients will be kept abreast of .ie and DNS related issues, nationally and internationally.

YOU WILL BE RECEIVING this free bi-monthly ezine because you are one of our 31,000+ .ie domain name holders, an Irish journalist, with an Irish government body or have a legitimate interest in matters relating to the Domain Name System (DNS) in all Ireland, concerning .ie domain names. This publication is delivered by email and will serve as an official channel of the IEDR to deliver notices and announcements.

If you do not wish to receive Inside.ie, you can unsubscribe by clicking on the link below.

Yours sincerely Sophie Pozzey

Co-ordinator, Inside.ie Head of Public Affairs & Communications IE Domain Registry Ltd Tel: 01 2300 797
Email: (spam-protected)
Web: http://www.iedr.ie

-|To be removed from this list, use this link: (spam-protected) To receive future messages in HTML format, use this link: (spam-protected)

Cat Herding

Published October 23, 2002

Danny at Oblomovka bought a Roomba, and finds it extra useful for scaring cats.

Still, we did our final moving cash splurge today, and bought a Roomba. And, what do you know, it’s actually pretty good: both at cleaning and removing the bejesus out of nearby cats. It backed Dyson into the corner of our living room within minutes – she kept tottering backwards for about ten yards, like she was facing the Feline Terminator.

In a similar vein: I can vouch that, if Lego Mindstorms is good for anything, it’s scaring cats with its Otherworldly Silicon Intelligence. I think most cats eventually figure out that if there’s a string or stick linking a menacing object and a human, odds are that the human is controlling the object somehow. As a result, a robot really freaks them out.

But with Lego Mindstorms, they do get their revenge eventually, by eating the smaller bricks next time you build a ‘bot.

So like, a third of the rootservers went down and we didn’t even notice. (fwd)

Published October 23, 2002

wow, seven to nine of the thirteen DNS root servers were flood-attacked on Monday, and nobody noticed. That’s cool.

… experts said the attack, which started about 4:45 p.m. EDT Monday, transmitted data to each targeted root server 30 to 40 times normal amounts. One said that just one additional failure would have disrupted e-mails and Web browsing across parts of the Internet.

Date: Tue, 22 Oct 2002 19:59:06 -0400
From: (spam-protected)
To: (spam-protected)
Subject: So like, a third of the rootservers went down and we didn’t even notice.

Yea, I certainly didn’t notice. Its cool and scary really — Cool that the whole net didn’t cease to be (even for an hour) and bad that 9 rootservers died period.

Scary mofo shit.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/news/archive/2002/10/22/national1907EDT0772.DTL

Powerful attack cripples majority of key Internet computers

TED BRIDIS, Associated Press Writer

Tuesday, October 22, 2002

(10-22) 16:07 PDT WASHINGTON (AP) —

An unusually powerful electronic attack briefly crippled nine of the 13 computer servers that manage global Internet traffic this week, officials disclosed Tuesday. But most Internet users didn’t notice because the attack only lasted one hour.

The FBI and White House were investigating. One official described the attack Monday as the most sophisticated and large-scale assault against these crucial computers in the history of the Internet. The origin of the attack was not known.

Seven of the 13 servers failed to respond to legitimate network traffic and two others failed intermittently during the attack, officials confirmed.

The FBI’s National Infrastructure Protection Center was “aware of the denial of service attack and is addressing this matter,” spokesman Steven Berry said.

Service was restored after experts enacted defensive measures and the attack suddenly stopped.

The 13 computers are spread geographically across the globe as precaution against physical disasters and operated by U.S. government agencies, universities, corporations and private organizations.

“As best we can tell, no user noticed and the attack was dealt with and life goes on,” said Louis Touton, vice president for the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, the Internet’s key governing body.

Brian O’Shaughnessy, a spokesman for VeriSign Inc., which operates two of the 13 computers in northern Virginia, said “these sorts of attacks will happen.”

“We were prepared, we responded quickly,” O’Shaughnessy said. “We proactively cooperated with our fellow root server operators and the appropriate authorities.”

Computer experts who manage some of the affected computers, speaking on condition of anonymity, said they were cooperating with the White House through its Office of Homeland Security and the President’s Critical Infrastructure Protection Board.

Richard Clarke, President Bush’s top cyber-security adviser and head of the protection board, has warned for months that an attack against the Internet’s 13 so- called root server computers could be dramatically disruptive.

These experts said the attack, which started about 4:45 p.m. EDT Monday, transmitted data to each targeted root server 30 to 40 times normal amounts. One said that just one additional failure would have disrupted e-mails and Web browsing across parts of the Internet.

Monday’s attack wasn’t more disruptive because many Internet providers and large corporations and organizations routinely store, or “cache,” popular Web directory information for better performance.

“The Internet was designed to be able to take outages, but when you take the root servers out, you don’t know how long you can work without them,” said Alan Paller, director of research at the SANS Institute, a security organization based in Bethesda, Md.

Although the Internet theoretically can operate with only a single root server, its performance would slow if more than four root servers failed for any appreciable length of time.

In August 2000, four of the 13 root servers failed for a brief period because of a technical glitch.

A more serious problem involving root servers occurred in July 1997 after experts transferred a garbled directory list to seven root servers and failed to correct the problem for four hours. Traffic on much of the Internet ground to a halt.

— Best regards, 

bitbitch                          (spam-protected)

Why giraffes stink

Published October 21, 2002

Giraffes smell so bad for the same reason tourists do: to repel parasites.

(Explanation: in Laos, we heard a funny story about a tourist on the bus who noticed that no locals wanted to sit beside him. He got talking to a local kid and asked why this was, and the kid let him in on the secret: the locals reckon tourists stink of insect repellent. And they’re right) (Link)

Date: Mon, 21 Oct 2002 11:04:22 +0100
From: “Tim Chapman” (spam-protected)
To: forteana (spam-protected)
Subject: Why giraffes stink

Ananova: Scientists explain why giraffes smell so bad

Researchers say they have evidence that giraffes smell bad to repel parasites.

Scientists at California’s Humboldt State University have found their skin contains a cocktail of antibiotics and repellents.

The team arrived at its conclusion by analysing hair from the neck and back of a zoo giraffe.

They identified several smelly chemicals that work to stunt the growth of fungi and bacteria on skin.

These included indole and 3-methylindole; the same chemical compounds that make faeces smell.

Another compound present – para-cresol – is present in creosote and serves to repel bloodsucking ticks.

Biologist William Wood says rangers and zookeepers have long “noted that giraffes have this overpowering aroma.”

South African vernacular for an old male giraffe is “stink bull.” He suggests the aroma probably plays an important sexual function. He told Nature an overpowering smell would give potential partners a clear signal that an individual is free of fleas.

Story filed: 10:54 Monday 21st October 2002

I AM PRINCESS LEIA ORGANA

Published October 17, 2002

I quite like David Chess’ log — it boasts this quite good 419 piss-take:

FROM:PRNCSS. L ORGANA
DEAR friend.
I AM PRINCESS LEIA ORGANA ONLY SURVIVOR
OF THE ROYALFAMILY OF ALDERAN (ALDRN).
I AM MOVED TO WRITE YOU THIS LETTER,
THIS WAS IN CONFIDENCE CONSIDERING MY
PRESENT CIRCUMSTANCE AND SITUATION.
I WAS FALSLEY IMPRISONED UPON THE
IMPERIAL BATTLESTATION (“DEATH STAR”)
WHEN MY PLANET WAS HIDEOUSLY DESTROYED
AND ENDED BY THE BVERY BAD SITH LORD
VADER.

Thanks to Cam for the linky goodness.

more local UNIX history

Published October 14, 2002

History of www.maths.tcd.ie. Thanks to Dave Malone for sending me the URL, while chatting about the timeline — and about how Peter Flynn beat all of us to the coveted “first in Ireland” spot.

But then, being an SGML guru, and marking up a huge quantity of ancient gaelic texts, I don’t think anyone could possibly hold it against him ;) Check this out from the Annals Of The Four Masters:

Every plain in Ireland abounded with flowers and shamrocks in the time of Fiacha. These flowers, moreover, were found full of wine, so that the wine was squeezed into bright vessels. Wherefore, the cognomen, Fiacha Fin Scothach, continued to be applied to him.

Iraq

Published October 14, 2002

things are getting scary. Two stories of note:

Guardian: US plans military rule and occupation of Iraq.

The US has plans to establish an American-led military administration in Iraq, similar to the postwar occupation of Germany and Japan, which could last for several years after the fall of Saddam Hussein, it emerged yesterday.

The occupation of the country would need an estimated 75,000 troops, at an annual cost of up to $16bn, and would almost certainly include British and other allied soldiers. It would be run by a senior American officer, perhaps General Tommy Franks, who would lead the assault on Iraq, and whose role would be modelled on that of General Douglas MacArthur in postwar Japan. ….

The Iraqi project, outlined by Mr Bush’s senior adviser on the Middle East, Zalmay Khalilzad, would involve running the entire country until a democratic Iraqi government was deemed ready.

New Yorker:

The vision laid out in the Bush document is a vision of what used to be called, when we believed it to be the Soviet ambition, world domination. It’s a vision of a world in which it is American policy to prevent the emergence of any rival power, whatever it stands for — a world policed and controlled by American military might.

This goes much further than the notion of America as the policeman of the world. It’s the notion of America as both the policeman and the legislator of the world, and it’s where the Bush vision goes seriously, even chillingly, wrong. A police force had better be embedded in and guided by a structure of law and consent. There’s a name for the kind of regime in which the cops rule, answering only to themselves. It’s called a police state.

Worth quoting this snippet too:

For example, as a way of enhancing “national security,” it promises to press “other countries” to adopt “lower marginal tax rates” and “pro-growth legal and regulatory policies” — your doctor’s names for tax cuts for the rich and environmental laxity. And it exalts economic relationships as more fundamental than political and social ones (a mental habit that orthodox conservative ideologues share with their orthodox Marxist counterparts), as in this passage praising free trade as a “moral principle”: “If you can make something that others value, you should be able to sell it to them. If others make something that you value, you should be able to buy it. This is real freedom, the freedom for a person — or a nation — to make a living.” (As distinct, presumably, from the secondary, not quite real freedoms of thought, conscience, and expression.)

those goddamn Irish, and some meta-spam commentary

Published October 14, 2002

Mimi Smartypants graces us with some fake Irish prejudice (to go with the Belgian one). “They are drunk all the time and they eat lots of potatoes, at least if you go by the jokes, which is the only way to form one’s fake prejudices.”

Actually, no, that’s about right. Only in Ireland can you find the bonus carbohydrate meal: a meal just isn’t a meal unless it contains potatoes, so anything that comes with rice (let’s say) will usually have a serving of spuds on top. Nowadays you might have to go off the beaten track a little to get this, but it’s still there, if you look. I’m a fake Irishman, clearly, since I don’t really like spuds all that much — but a few of my mates could talk for hours about some especially tasty potatoes they’ve eaten recently. It’s quite bizarre.

She also refers to an existing “fake Belgian prejudice”. Well, in my experience, anti-Belgian prejudice generally runs quickly into the difficult issue of Audrey Hepburn, and ends right there. She’s just non-bigotable.

Also from Mimi, linked by defective yeti: some fantastic meta-spam commentary.

[Here’s] a very weird subject line for spam: Watch Me Film Myself Masturbating. Whoa. That’s pretty removed from the subject/object consciousness. Can’t I just watch you masturbating? I have to watch “the making of” you masturbating?

If I could fit that onto one line, it’d go right into the SpamAssassin Bugzilla quips file, where we save the most stupid spam hooks — but I can’t, and it might come off wrong on its own.

Er, so to speak.

when a broadcast packet really was a broadcast

Published October 14, 2002

some history: my broadcast, by Jordan Hubbard (ucbvax!jkh), 2 Apr 1987. It seems the default configuration for Suns back then was that “everyone” really meant everyone — resulting in some fun when Jordan ran rwall (remote write to all) to the broadcast netgroup. Some good snippets in retrospect:

Since rwall is an RPC service, and RPC doesn’t seem to give a damn who you are as long as you’re root (which is trivial to be, on a work- station), I have to wonder what other RPC services are open holes. We’ve managed to do some interesting, unauthorized, things with the YP service here at Berkeley, I wonder what the implications of this are. …

(An) alternative (to getting rid of rwall) would be to tighten up all the IMP gateways to forward packets only from trusted hosts. I don’t like that at all, from a standpoint of reduced convenience and productivity.

Fast-forward to 15 years later: RPC services are almost all firewalled off due to insecurity, and packet filters on gateways — ie. firewalls — are standard kit. The internet has changed a lot since then.

Lemon juice ‘could stop AIDS’

Published October 14, 2002

As BoingBoing has noted already, a Melbourne scientist has proposed that lemon juice could fight HIV effectively, with bonus spermicidal action too:

According to Mr Short, lemons could be used as a contraceptive by soaking a piece of cotton wool in the juice and inserting it into the vagina before sex. “We can show in the lab that lemon juice is very effective in immobilising human sperm and also very effective in killing HIV,” he said.

but:

Julian Meldrum, international editor of Aidsmap, told BBC News Online that the principle behind the theory seemed like good science. … However, he said: “There is not yet enough evidence that this will be safe and effective in practice. … We also need to examine whether it is safe to put what is quite a strong acid into contact with mucus membranes which are quite delicate.”

Ouch. Mr. Short said that some female researchers in his lab have noted that the application of lemon juice didn’t hurt. Yeah right — maybe it didn’t quite hurt per se, but I bet it stung like hell!

Top history tidbit:

The practice of using lemon juice to prevent pregnancy was commonly used in medieval times, including by the legendary lothario Casanova, but has been forgotten by modern medicine.

When tidying goes bad

Published October 10, 2002

Rod pointed out that my RSS feed was borked. oops, WebMake and HTML::Parser had “tidied” it. Who knew that RDF was case-sensitive? Not I.

Ah well… now fixed.

MAPS gets the TCR treatment, a public corpus, and a wedding

Published October 10, 2002

Found on Paul Graham’s site: “according to a recent study, the MAPS RBL, probably the best known blacklist, catches only 24% of spam, with 34% false positives. It would take a conscious effort to write a content-based filter with performance that bad.”

The “recent study” is by David Nelson at Giga Information Group, sometime last year.

For the sake of it, I’ve checked out how the MAPS figures stack up using TCR, Ion Androutsopoulos‘ metric for measuring spam filter performance. TCR is a very nice single-figure metric, which takes into account the “inconvenience factor” of misfiled mails, based on a “lambda” setting indicating what action is taken when a mail is classified. For MAPS, I’m assuming a lambda of 9, the guideline figure for systems which bounce mail back to the sender, instead of 1 for simple tagging, or 999 for outright deletion with no notification.

So: using a lambda of 9, MAPS gets a TCR of 0.0912, a Spam Recall of 24%, and a Spam Precision of 17%. It’s worth noting that the baseline figure for TCR is 1.0, which represents no filtering whatsoever: ie. all the spam comes right into your mailbox.

In other words, using MAPS is more inconvenient all-round than not filtering your mail at all, if these figures are to be believed ;)

More spam: I’ve just assembled a totally-public corpus of spam and non-spam mail, to allow spamfilter developers to compare and contrast results using the same data. Let’s hope it proves useful.

Not spam: finally, I’m off to Chester for a wedding tomorrow morning; my good mates Kitty and Gerry are tying the knot, in Chester Zoo, no less. Let’s hope this horrible cold I’ve had all week dies down before Saturday…

and now I am the Master

Published October 9, 2002

holy shit, Advogato reckons I’m at Master level! Well, that’s nice, but I’m not entirely convinced yet. Not that I’m complaining ;)

Er, um, fundamentally

Published October 9, 2002

The Guardian: Word of the week: “basically”:

“Perhaps you are one of those strong individuals who manages to resist the use of meaningless adverbs, but others will have recognised, guiltily, one of their own favourite words appearing as a verbal tic in a widely broadcast statement this week. On Friday, “shoe bomber” Richard Reid, accused of attempting to blow up a flight from Paris to Miami, introduced a slice of South London syntax into the Boston court where he is being tried. Questioned by the judge about his intentions, he declared: “Basically, I got on to the plane with a bomb. Basically, I tried to ignite it. Basically, yeah, I intended to damage the plane.” …

Gold rush follows Nazi grail

Published October 7, 2002

A gold urn made for a Nazi party leader has been discovered in a Bavarian lake, prompting a scramble by treasure hunters determined to get their hands on the Third Reich’s long-lost riches. However, getting at any gold that might be down there, may not be so easy:

Toplitz is a byword for everything dangerous in Alpine lakes. After 30ft there is no light, and below 100ft, the water is almost freezing. At 348ft, the bottom comes into view. There is no life at the bottom of the lake because there is not enough oxygen to sustain it.

348ft, fact fans, is 116 metres. Yikes, that’s some serious diving…

The Walled Garden of EdenFaster

Published October 7, 2002

Bringing the net to Eden (Guardian). “In the village of Kirkby Stephen, in the Eden Valley, on the border between Cumbria and the Yorkshire Dales, getting on to the internet is a major effort. With phone lines shared between remote farmhouses, and mobile phones a cruel fantasy, an internet connection here can drop as low as 12Kbps (…) But all of this is about to change. EdenFaster, a local community organisation, is about to supply broadband internet connections to the entire valley, bringing 10,000 people, 500 businesses and 50 schools online with an internet connection 20 times faster than ADSL for half the price. They’re doing it on their own because of a perceived lack of demand by telecoms companies. They’re doing it wirelessly, and they’re one of the leaders in the new revolution in ways to deliver the internet in the UK.”

Hilarious Patent Antics, pt.xvii

Published October 2, 2002

some startup called ActiveBuddy has patented instant-messaging bots — in an application filed August 2000. Hilarity ensues…

ActiveBuddy founder Tim Kay: “We invented interactive agents. (jm: bwahaha) Anybody using his or her own tools (to make bots) is obviously using our technology without paying us to license the server, for example. We are a startup company and we have to protect out future. That’s basically why we secured this patent” (in 2000).

Chris McClelland of WiredBots: “The Net::AIM module (which allows bot developers to connect to the AOL Instant Messenger TOC protocol through Perl) was around since 1998”.

Aryeh Goldsmith (author of Net::AIM): “the Net::AIM module is distributed with a bot”.

Jupiter analyst Michael Gartenberg: (the patent is) a “big win for the ActiveBuddy folks,” especially if it holds up to scrutiny.

My emphasis. ;) Sounds like ActiveBuddy have just spent a lot of money patenting something with a whole CPANload of prior art, and are on their way down the dot.plughole.

Date: Tue, 01 Oct 2002 23:25:52 -0700
From: “Mr. FoRK” (spam-protected)
To: (spam-protected)
Subject: Re: ActiveBuddy

Oh… and they patented it too, because “We invented interactive agents.”

=== http://www.internetnews.com/bus-news/article.php/1446781

August 15, 2002 ActiveBuddy’s Patent Win Riles IM Bot Developers By Ryan Naraine

New York-based ActiveBuddy has won a crucial patent covering instant messaging bot-making technology, but hobbyists and amateur developers aren’t buying the company’s claim that it invented the technology.

ActiveBuddy was granted Patent No. 6,430,602 which covers the method and system for interactively responding to instant messaging requests and the company said it would move swiftly to enforce the patent, a move that is sure to create a brouhaha in the bot developer space.

ActiveBuddy founder Tim Kay, who is listed as an inventor in the patent claim, told internetnews.com the clinching of the patent validates the company’s business model of creating interactive agents (bots) that respond to IM queries.

“We invented interactive agents. Anybody using his or her own tools (to make bots) is obviously using our technology without paying us to license the server, for example. We are a startup company and we have to protect out future. That’s basically why we secured this patent,” Kay said.

“Any company such as ours that is venture-funded has to protect itself. It’s standard procedure to file for patents when you invent something. This simply allows us to build a business,” Kay added.

He did not say whether ActiveBuddy had specific plans to issue cease and desist orders to Web sites that share code and bot-making techniques but, already, there are rumblings among developers that ActiveBuddy’s patent win is ludicrous.

David deVitry, who founded the RunABot site laughed off the patent win and believes it is unenforceable because of the availability of prior art. “They (ActiveBuddy) don’t have anything that’s really unique. They’re just the first to commercialize it and make money from IM bots,” he said.

deVitry’s RunABot site sells tools for bots that run on instant messaging, e-mails and the Web, but he is unfazed by ActiveBuddy’s patent win. “I’m confident that ActiveBuddy’s patent is unenforceable. “I can name a handful of IM bots that were running long before ActiveBuddy was even a company,” he argued.

WiredBots CEO Chris McClelland was also among the developer crowd wary of ActiveBuddy’s patent win. “Patents block innovation and hurt consumers. When big companies use their financial might to patent software, they undermine the very nature of software, its openness,” McClelland argued.

At WiredBots, McClelland distributes free code and tips on making and running IM bots and, like deVitry, he argued that bots have been running on instant messaging networks long before ActiveBuddy put in a patent claim in August 2000.

“I know for a fact that protocols that allow unofficial clients to connect to the AIM service have been around long before 2000. In fact, the Net::AIM module [which allows potential bot developers to connect to the TOC protocol through Perl] was around since 1998,” McClelland said, disputing ActiveBuddy’s claims that it invented the technology.

ActiveBuddy disputed McClelland’s claims. “I am fairly confident, there were no interactive agents on IM at that point when the application was filed (August 22, 2000). I’m certainly not aware of any,” said Kay, who doubles as ActiveBuddy’s chief technology officer.

However, back in August 1999, programmer Aryeh Goldsmith wrote the Net::AIM module, which is timestamped at CPAN.

“I’ve had bots running a little before that date (1999) and since that time. I’m sure there are plenty of others who have built bots and have been running them as well,” Goldsmith said in an e-mail exchange.

“It’s important to note that the Net::AIM module was also distributed with a bot. It may have been a very simplistic one — having only the function of waiting for messages and replying with a random quote — but it was a bot none-the-less. Intelligent bots simply do a little more “processing” between the receiving and replying phase,” Goldsmith added.

“I’m not familiar with that,” Kay said in response to claims that interactive bots were in existence even before ActiveBuddy launched, with venture funding from Reuters and Wit Soundview.

“Clearly, we use our patented technology in our products. If you want to do things that our products allow you to do, your best choice is to use our products,” Kay said, referring to the recent launch of the Lite BuddyScript Server, which can be used by hobbyists to develop and run IM bots.

“The buddyscript suite of tools is the best that’s available. We’re confident they are the best choice (for users) who are building interactive agents. The subject of enforcing the patent shouldn’t even come up. Anyone wanting to build a very good interactive agent will find that our tools are the very best,” Kay added.

Kay said ActiveBuddy was not worried about competing firms offering bot-making tools. “Our primary level of comfort comes from the fact that we have the best choice for developers and others. When given the choice, we’re confident people will choose ours,” he said.

Jupiter analyst Michael Gartenberg isn’t surprised by the brouhaha surrounding the patent win. “This is just the latest example of a company that has picked up a key patent on critical technology and is going to use it to exploit the market. It’s not surprising that the smaller developers are crying foul,” he said.

Gartenberg, who covers emerging platforms from the research firm, described the news as a “big win for the ActiveBuddy folks,” especially if it holds up to scrutiny.

“This underscores the notion of how powerful the ownership of key patents are in the technology landscape. We saw it in the Amazon.com “one-click” case and the recent controversy over the JPEG patent. This is just the latest example of it,” Gartenberg added.

—– Original Message —– From: “Mr. FoRK” (spam-protected)
To: (spam-protected)
Cc: “Rohit Khare” (spam-protected)
Sent: Tuesday, October 01, 2002 11:07 PM
Subject: ActiveBuddy


> Kind of interesting application of ‘agent’ technology.
> A mix of telnet and Eliza?
> (wonder if KnowNow needs this as a partner…)
>
> ==
> http://www.activebuddy.com/products/index.shtml
> ActiveBuddy, Inc. has developed patented technology for building and
> deploying interactive agents. ActiveBuddy’s BuddyScript technology powers
> business solutions that leverage the functionality, convenience and appeal
> of instant messaging to provide an efficient and immediate means of
> communication with customers and constituents.
>
> ActiveBuddy technology is proven in the marketplace by the smash success of
> SmarterChild, ActiveBuddy’s showcase interactive agent launched in June 2001
> and visited by over 8 million consumers in its first year of life.
>
> Interactive agents allow your customers and constituents to receive
> information and services in a natural, conversational interface.
>
>
> Software Products
> BuddyScriptT Server – an end-to-end software solution for deploying
> interactive agents. BuddyScript Server provides every component required to
> operate an interactive agent, including connectivity with the messaging
> network, message routing, data access, message formatting, user and session
> management, and detailed tracking. BuddyScript Server is offered in four
> configurations to meet your capacity needs. Its scaleable architecture
> supports virtually unlimited usage. More…
>
> ===
> Here is a sample conversation on (MSN Messenger with ‘SmarterChild’):
>
> Mike says:
> how are you?
>
> SmarterChild says:
> Great thx! You?
>
> Mike says:
> Fine. What is the weather like in seattle?
>
> SmarterChild says:
> Current weather conditions for Seattle, WA:
>
> Currently: 57 F
> Condition: Few Clouds
> Real Feel: 57 F
> Dewpoint: 44
> Humidity: 62 %
> Visibility: 10 mi
> Wind: N/0 mph
>
> Next time, just type “weather seattle, wa.”
>
> To get the forecast for Seattle, WA, just type “forecast.”
>

Finnegan — Cry For Freedom

Published October 1, 2002

The Rockall Times reports that Mel Gibson is to shoot Finnegan’s Wake in Hittite:

Highly talented Hollywood all-rounder Mel Gibson is to direct a film version of James Joyce’s Finnegan’s Wake made entirely in the ancient Anatolian language Hittite, we can reveal.

Respected linguist Gibson — whose flawless Scottish accent in 1995 epic Braveheart wowed audiences worldwide — has further stated that the film will carry no subtitles. Hopefully I’ll be able to transcend language barriers with visual storytelling, he told a press conference. People think I’m crazy, and maybe I am, Gibson added. But maybe I’m a genius.

Hollywood agrees. Take any project, stick Mel’s name on it and you’ve got a surefire blockbuster, the film’s producer told The Rockall Times. In any case, we’ve rewritten the script to include a suitable anti-English imperialist slant and a couple of big battle scenes. That’ll pack ’em in. …

Gibson hopes that the success of Finnegan — Cry for Freedom will enable him to bankroll some of his other pet projects, including a Inuit remake of Bridget Jones’ Diary and his eagerly-anticipated Macbeth, set in 1970s Belfast and spoken entirely in Etruscan with Sanskrit subtitles.

Dinosaurs Eggs and the Origins of Good and Evil

Published October 1, 2002

the FoRK list comes through with some truly classic high wierdness:

If one wants to purge the sources of malice of say a black magician, then purge his dinosaurs and his dinosaur eggs. Unfortunately most of our religions are based on dinosaur protection of eggs and thus mind control, regardless of the front they put out to the public.

Date: Mon, 30 Sep 2002 22:11:10 -0700
From: “Mr. FoRK” (spam-protected)
To: (spam-protected)
Subject: Dinosaurs Eggs and the Origins of Good and Evil

One of the most bizarre pages I’ve seen on the Web. At first I thought it might be some sort of back-story to a RPG, but, nope, it looks like somebody believes this.

===

http://www.viking-z.org/r20i.htm

M09. Dinosaurs Eggs and the Origins of Good and Evil.

DINOSAURS. Reptoid ETs are reported to be 12 foot high crocodiles walking on their hind legs. This is a description of a dinosaur. It now appears in Remote Viewing that the Reptoid ETs, dinosaurs and dragons are all linked together and that they all originated on Earth. The Erideans who are Reptoid derivatives have a home planet (in the Eridanus system) like all other ETs. The Reptoids have no reported home planet. They also come over as entities with little brain who control their bodies directly by spirit. This is a description of a ghost or disincarnate entity regardless of how people see them. Thus it could be that the Reptoids, Erideans, Nordics, Anunnaki, but not the Greys, all have origins on Earth and have a strong link to Earth even if they choose to live elsewhere. The Greys do not appear to have a renal or urinary system and this points to them not originating on Earth. The definitive work on dragons is “The Flight of Dragons” by Peter Dickinson. If dragons did exist in the flesh, they did not survive the long bow. Targets do not come much bigger.

Truth is stranger than fiction. Thus the writer’s current scenario is that there were a race of dinosaurs which developed psychic intelligence to guard their eggs and young, and who probably preferred to live underground. They survived the wipe out of the dinosaurs 50 million years ago with difficulty. They evolved into the Erideans and transferred to a more hospitable planet (for them) possibly with the help of another race of ETs who wanted slaves but otherwise had no interest in Earth or mind control.

Thus it appears that the current Reptoids are the Spirits or ghosts of the dinosaurs. They must have been powerful to survive 50 million years and also to appear to some people. They have appeared to the writer in remote viewing. They are living on as vampire entities. Such immortal minds are contagious and can easily jump race and species barriers. If they can be encouraged to reincarnate, then the power sources of the black magicians and mind controllers will disappear. Encouraging them to reincarnate will help so called immortal minds to disappear as immortal minds have great difficulty surviving reincarnation. Purging people’s dinosaurs should remove all perverse psychic abilities not under their control. They are a source of Satanic Guardian Angels and demons. They control us by owning our psi. Thus if we regain ownership of psi, we must relinquish their control and that of all other mind controllers. Encourage people to regain ownership of their psi.

THE ORIGINS OF LOVE, HATE AND PURE MALICE. The following scenario appears to hold water and can account for the origins of our Universal Subconscious.

Dinosaurs laid their eggs and buried them either underground or in piles of rotting vegetation (a good source of beetles and grubs for young hatchelings). They did not sit on their eggs to keep them warm, which made them very vulnerable to drastic climate and temperature change. In order to keep away predators some at least developed psychic mind control. To do this they had to capture ownership of the psi of potential predators. This is an act of hatred and outward looking. While a few dinosaurs did develop the ability to bear living young, most did not. The dinosaurs got in first and so their mind control tends to override all other latter minds. They have become the source of all Satans, devils and demons.

Birds on the other hand developed the ability to sit on their eggs and keep them warm. A hen bird normally lays a series of eggs (say one per day) and only starts sitting when the clutch is completely laid. Thus all eggs tend to hatch together as they all have an equal period of warmth. This is primarily an act of love but inward looking. Bearing live young is not suitable to a bird of the air. A pregnant pigeon would not fly very far. Antarctic penguins tuck a single egg between their legs to keep it warm, even if they are standing on ice.

Mammals developed live bearing of their young which is also primarily an act of love and inward looking. This is especially true as a mammalian female can not desert her young in the womb in case of emergency as can a bird sitting on a nest.

Dinosaurs developed hate and mind control of others to protect their young, while birds and mammals developed love. Birds and mammals certainly do hate all enemies of their young, but this is secondary.

If one wants to purge the sources of malice of say a black magician, then purge his dinosaurs and his dinosaur eggs. Unfortunately most of our religions are based on dinosaur protection of eggs and thus mind control, regardless of the front they put out to the public. Religion tends to concentrate on “How to Brainwash your Neighbour”. Conscious thought has built many mighty empires, theologies and slave control systems out of using “How to care for and protect one’s young” as a foundation.

Thus the foulest form of abuse possible is to call something “A load of dinosaur’s eggs”. Purging the dinosaurs and dinosaur’s eggs of any entity tends to purge all malice back to its roots.

It looks as if mighty immortal minds have built up from small beginnings, aided and abetted by various occultists and other. As they will insist on vampiring the living for energy to avoid reincarnation and disturbing the serenity of the writer, he encourages them to reincarnate.

ITEMS FOR INSPECTION. For mind control to take place, then someone must take control or ownership of the target’s psi and pleasure centres. Check for the following.

Nest of dinosaur’s eggs, holy dinosaurs, etc.

Eggs, controllers or owners in peoples psi, pleasure centres, pain killing hormones, abilities, etc.

Mind machines.

The original engraving or engram.

GOD and SATAN appear to be job titles and not entities in their own right. T hey appear to be dinosaur engravings or engrams. No doubt dinosaurs were the first job holders.

TIMETRACKS are worth investigating as our complete history from the start of time.

My, our, Man’s timetracks, etc.

The time tracks of the Universe, Universal Subconscious, Galactic Subconscious, etc.

EXTINCT RACES of ETs can cause problems when they live on in vampire mode. Their virtues may known to channelers but they can also have vices. Whenever one hears of races which have evolved on to higher planes, suspect that the higher plane is a vampire one. One may never know what they looked like or other basic characteristics, which makes linking back a trifle difficult. Every extinct race, etc.

BLOOD ANCESTORS are also worth investigating as minds can be passed down via genetic linkages. Some of these can be over 2,000 years old. Every blood ancestor, ancestral mind, genetic mind, etc.