Stuff: So C is a massive antiques nut, and got tickets for the Antiques Roadshow next month in LA. As a result, we’ve been shopping around for interesting stuff for her to bring along.
Here’s what I found at the antiques market last weekend:
Click on the pic to check out my multiplication skills!
Tags: click, month, multiplication, nut, result, roadshow, stuff, weekend
Patents: I’m just back from a fantastic holiday weekend, totally offline, hiking through Catalina Island. I’m a little bit sunburnt, my nose is peeling, but it was great fun. I got a fantastic picture of the sun setting over hundreds of boats bobbing at their moorings in Two Harbors, which I must upload at some stage.
Anyway, it seems that over the weekend, the EU software-patents debate has swung back heavily towards the anti-swpat side. Fingers crossed — the vote is this week.
Also, today, EUpolitix.com has an interview with Charlie McCreevy, quoting him as saying:
‘The theme, or the background music, to both of these particular directives (the CII and Services Directives) you could see as part of, anti-globalisation, anti-Americanism, anti-big business protests – in lots of senses, anti-the opening up of markets’
This is standard practice for the Irish government — they did exactly the same thing with the e-voting issue, painting the ICTE as ‘linked to the anti-globalisation movement’. (I have a feeling they think that any group organised online must be ‘anti-globalisation’, at this stage.)
Of course, with these accusations of being anti-free-market, it’s important to remember that a patent is a government-issued monopoly on an invention (or in the software field, on an idea), in a particular local jurisdiction. If anything, being against software patenting is a pro-free-market position, one shared by prominent US libertarians; and nothing gets more pro-free-market than those guys. ;)
Tags: bit, fun, hiking, holiday, nose, offline, patents, software, stage, sunburnt, weekend
Meta: You might have noticed things being a bit quite around here recently. Unfortunately, it wasn’t for good reasons.
A close family member in Ireland died suddenly on Good Friday. Once we found out, being in Death Valley (of all places) that weekend, we made a mad dash back home for the removal, funeral, and so on. The past two weeks have been not so much fun, all in all.
I’m torn between eulogising here, and keeping it offline. All in all, I think it’d be better to not use this weblog for that; I don’t think it’d be appropriate. But he’ll be greatly missed.
Tags: bit, dash, family, friday, fun, good, home, member, meta, removal, weekend
Conferences: Hey — I’m talking at ToorCon 2004 down in San Diego this weekend! Come along and check it out, if you can.
I’d better hurry up and file my presentation slides pronto ;) The topic is:
Spam Forensics: Reverse-Engineering Spammer Tactics
In this talk, I’ll discuss how the SpamAssassin project has identified reliable signatures indicating that a message is spam, by reverse-engineering spammer tactics from the spam mails themselves. I’ll also discuss several specific features that we have identified, how we found them, and why the spammers add them.
Tags: conferences, forensics, hey, presentation, pronto, reverse, spam, spammer, toorcon, topic, weekend
Life: I’ve learned one thing this weekend — humans are not designed to function in the desert. I went bush-camping in the Anza-Borrego Desert state park with a few mates, and we quite simply baked in the 45C/113F degree heat. Walking 3 miles in that heat was easily equivalent to 15 miles in normal temperatures.
We did manage to catch a good look at one of the endangered bighorn sheep that live there — the poor sheep was clearly trying to get to some water, but those damn humans kept getting in the way!
On the way back, we passed the aftermath of a forest fire near Temecula. Scorched earth.
Security: via IP — a very scary article at Bruce Blair’s Nuclear Column — apparently, the secret unlocking codes on the launch control mechanisms of Minuteman nuclear missiles were deliberately set to ‘00000000′ throughout the height of the cold war, because the Strategic Air Command ‘remained far less concerned about unauthorized launches than about the potential of these safeguards to interfere with the implementation of wartime launch orders.’
Green: A couple of good /. comments on renewable power sources: one from a wind farm designer, and some anti-FUD figures for solar panels.
Music: The full text of
The Timelords’
The Manual (How To Have a Number One the Easy Way)
is online:
THE JUSTIFIED ANCIENTS OF MU MU
REVEAL THEIR ZENARCHISTIC METHOD USED
IN MAKING THE UNTHINKABLE HAPPEN.
KLF 009B
1988 (YOU KNOW WHAT'S GONE)
Tags: anza, desert, heat, launch, life, park, sheep, state, thing, way, weekend
Life: so myself and C took a one-night-only trip up to Idyllwild this weekend, hiking up to that rock formation and camping overnight. Great fun.
The rock is called ‘Suicide Rock’. It’s good to see morbid naming is international, but I should note that the prize for best placenames has to go to Victoria, Australia’s Mount Buggery, though.
(I drove past Mt. Buggery last year, and, disappointingly, it seems they’ve renamed it on the official maps. But the other ‘I can’t believe we’re still crossing this bloody mountain range and haven’t made it to Melbourne yet’ placenames still exist.)
Language: Riverbend blog notes interesting trivia in passing: Winnie the Pooh, in Arabic, is ‘Winnie Dabdoob’.
Open Source: GROKLAW on the WSIS fiasco earlier this summer. Briefly, the WSIS — the World Summit on the Information Society — came out with a position pro-open-source, and quite a few large companies seemed to say ‘eek!’ and promptly lobbied as hard as they could to give that line a vasectomy.
Interestingly, they did the same to the spam-related positions, cutting ‘a number of proposals, including prosecution of spammers’ down to a watery ‘take appropriate action on spam at national and international levels’. Snore. Fantastic work, guys.
Weblogs: When did Boing Boing stop taking comments? (looks) seems to be around about this entry of Sep 10. As far as I can see, this is the last comments page.
Shame — I’m with Jeremy on this one.
Dublin: is this entry, by London’s 3W the real winner of the competition to design the new U2 studio in Dublin’s Sir John Rogerson’s Quay?
Tags: boing, entry, formation, fun, hiking, idyllwild, life, rock, trip, weekend, wsis
Had a very nice long weekend — big BBQ and watching the fireworks on Friday, some bodyboarding and bodysurfing on Sunday. Very relaxing. Now back to work. :(
Ben Hammersley notes ‘the All Time Perfect Daily Mail Story’: Asylum Seekers Eat Queen’s Swans:
A major investigation has been launched by Scotland Yard into claims that the Queen’s swans are being stolen in their hundreds by gangs of asylum-seekers who are cooking and eating them.
The probe comes after a group of men were caught red-handed by police in an east London park. The asylum seekers were barbecuing a duck and officers found two dead swans, ready to be roasted, concealed in bags.
A police spokesman said today: We are appealing for information over the disappearance of swans. There have been incidents of swans being killed, and it appears to be the work of eastern European gangs.
It’s a classic of the genre — combining (a) the queen, (b) cute animals (c) fear of immigrants. That covers all the bases except one. Oh, here it is, bingo! — it’s not entirely true:
Yesterday Scotland Yard stated: ‘There is no police report.’ While there is concern fuelled by a drop in the swan population, the police spokeswoman added: ‘There appears to be a perception that this may be attributable to Eastern Europeans. We stress we have no evidence of this.’
A police spokeswoman … added that, despite some efforts, they could not back up published claims that asylum-seekers had been caught in east London barbecuing a duck with dead swans concealed near by ‘ready to be roasted’. Andy Fisher, head of the wildlife investigation unit, appeared equally baffled. ‘I don’t know where they have got that from - not the Metropolitan Police.’
It’s clearly silly season time again.
Quick Iraq roundup: some photos from Baghdad from Gee, another Iraqi blogger (Gee not in the irish slang sense BTW!); MI6 chief was the BBC’s source for ’sexing-up’ allegations (Observer).
Also, Guantanamo Bay’s military tribunals are hitting the non-US news media again, now that the death penalty has been raised as a possibility. These Observer and Guardian stories note, regarding the two British citizens who’ve been imprisoned for 18 months (one for 12 months in Bagram airbase): ‘If this treatment happened for an hour in a British police station, no evidence gathered would be admissible’.
Next, A left-wing US soldier blogs from Baghdad.
the iraqi’s who are working for the u.s….doing what ever task we throw at them…are not to upset with us…some of them have family members in the states and they hope that someday they will be able to join them…they don’t hate america at all…and they are conscious enough of what is really going on to make their own decisions…they think that we really are trying to help…they are afraid of the ‘militants’ because when ever the ‘militants’ show up and attack us in their neighborhoods we end up destroying everything…many of the guys say that they chase the ‘militants’ out with any weapons they have…they are just trying to get by…they fear that the ‘militants’ are using horrible tactics to enlist more support…they are using our retaliation against us…for every home…or car…or newsstand…or coffee shop we destroy trying to protect ourselves another ‘freedom fighter’ is born…
He talks about Chomsky, links to Michael Moore — so of course, the neo-con warbloggers reckon he doesn’t exist. ;)
Totally down with the new pronunciation of RSS BTW. Waiting for the dust to settle. ho hum.
Finally, Fergus Cassidy, Sunday Tribune tech journo, has a website. Good reading…
Tags: asylum, duck, gee, investigation, police, scotland, spokeswoman, time, weekend, yard
just got back from a super-quick booze-soaked weekend visit to Ben in SF. It was so good to visit a city once again, and get the opportunity to paint the town red, hit the bars, eat in plentiful cheap restaurants, and generally enjoy city life (which I’ve been missing massively since the move from Dublin). But now back in post-suburban Irvine to cope with the hangover.
Also got to meet up with Komal, one of my co-workers up there — which was cool. Unfortunately it was a super-speedy weekend whistle-stop tour though, so having a good social meet-up with all the guys will have to wait until the next visit. ;)
Net: ‘The Canadian scientists who broke the genetic code for SARS … say they couldn’t have done it without the Internet. … The key to that collaboration was ordinary e-mail‘.
It also turns out the ProMED mailing list was the central point at which SARS reports were collated in the early stages, even despite evasion and cover-up by the Chinese state.
So there you go — as usual, SMTP is the killer app — or in this case, a life-saving app! All the more reason to figure out ways to deal with spam and return SMTP to its top spot in the protocol pantheon.
Good thing the FTC Spam Forum went so well, then. Sounds like there was unprecedented agreement between the non-spam folks, clear understanding of the issues by quite a few of the Washington denizens, and maybe even some good footage of the other side digging holes for themselves.
Health: US, Asian Airlines Disagree on SARS. Me, I just wish the airlines would stop being so bloody cheap, and bring in more fresh air rather than recirculating. ;)
Date: Sun, 04 May 2003 12:20:16 -0400
From: STEPHEN JONES (spam-protected)
To: (spam-protected) (spam-protected)
Subject: Internet is a good thing says Steve Jones clone
Internet played a key role in decoding SARS genome, scientists say
OTTAWA (CP) - The Canadian scientists who broke the genetic code for SARS just weeks after the disease appeared say they couldn’t have done it without the Internet.
Scientists from the Michael Smith Genome Sciences Centre of the B.C. Cancer Agency say their achievement relied on rapid communication with scientists around the world. The key to that collaboration was ordinary e-mail, said Steven Jones of the Vancouver-based research agency in a teleconference Thursday sponsored by Science magazine.
“Within a day of us having a press release announcing our participation in the sequencing we had an amazing amount of e-mail from scientists all around the world,” Jones said.
As soon as the sequence was decoded, the B.C. researchers posted it on the Internet.
“People were, within minutes of that, able to download the sequence and analyse it in their own laboratories and their own computers,” Jones said.
“The Internet has had a profound impact on how this data has been shared and how scientists have collaborated.”
A short time later, researchers at the Atlanta Centers for Disease Control published the sequence of a coronavirus taken from another SARS patient.
The genetic coding for the two viruses were virtually identical, boosting confidence that the coronavirus was in fact the causal agent.
Now both sequences are posted on the World Wide Web for the benefit of researchers in many countries racing to find a reliable test for SARS, and a vaccine to prevent it.
Scientists say the speed of the decoding was amazing.
The first reports of the new disease came from China in November, and on March 13 cases were reported in Toronto and Vancouver. The sequences were posted on the net on April 15.
By contrast, it took years to identify the agents behind diseases like AIDS and hepatitis C.
Mel Crajdon of the B.C. Centre for Disease Control said all evidence points to the coronavirus as being the cause of SARS, despite some seemingly contradictory findings.
Earlier this week Frank Plummer, who heads the National Microbiology Laboratory in Winnipeg, said he was puzzled by the number of people who show evidence of the SARS coronavirus but not symptoms of the disease.
Crajdon suggested the apparent anomaly is due to imperfect understanding of how the disease presents itself, as well as lack of reliable tests for the presence of the virus.
“I’m not surprised by the results that have been obtained to date and I think that they will rapidly improve,” he said.
More than 5,400 cases of SARS have been diagnosed worldwide, with at least 394 deaths. In Canada, there have been 23 deaths, all in the Toronto area.
- -
On the Net:
SARS sequences: http://sciencemag.org/features/data/sars
SARS data: http://aaas.org
SARS Comments: http://eurekalert.org
Tags: app, city, code, internet, sars, smtp, spam, thing, visit, weekend
Argh, so much mail to get through; I was away this weekend, then
offline for most of today waiting for a new line to be installed. But I
did get a new candidate for the bizarre spam award: Q: DOES YOUR FOREIGN
ACCENT SIMPLY GET IN THE WAY? Simple answer: nope. next!
Tags: argh, award, candidate, does, line, mail, offline, spam, today, weekend
The weblog of Justin Mason; incoherent ramblings about Apache SpamAssassin, anti-spam, perl, software development, and the web, from an Irish software developer.
The opinions expressed on this web site are my personal opinions, and do not in any way represent those of my employer.
