A collection of digital wonders and some other stuff
I want to say happy birthday to my girlfriend Anna-Maria.
She has this worked out… the year is 04, the month is 04, the date is the 22nd (2+2=04) and she turned 22 (2+2=04 again). 04040404 Some crazy sign or much ado about nothing? Either way, Happy Birthday Anna-Maria.
I’m making her a marbled cake (two small ones actually — I guess I should have made her four).
Mordechai Vanunu was released from prison earlier today, but will have to live under some very restraining rules. The leader of the Israeli Opposition Party and founder of Israel’s nuclear weapons program Shimon Peres says the heavy restrictions imposed upon Vanunu are justified.
As I mentioned in an earlier post Mordechai Vanunu betrayed his country, Israel, by telling the world about its atomic weapons program. Vanunu is not allowed to speak with the media, he is not allowed to release any information about Israel’s weapon’s programs including information that has already been leaked. He must give 24 hours notice if he wishes to sleep at a different address and he is not allowed to communicate in Internet chatrooms unless specific permission is given. He is not allowed to speak to “foreigners”, he has no Israeli passport and Israel’s intention is to keep him within their borders preventing him from speaking to anyone about their secrets. Other restrictions will be applied if the government feels he is not cooperating.
After 18 years of prison, nearly 12 of which were in solitary confinement, I hope he’s learned that the government means business. It’s in his own best interest to go along with the rules that have been setup for him, and just try to start living his life. Given the picture of him here, flashing victory signs, I think he has other plans in mind.
Supporters of Vanunu have put up a special website on his behalf. Meanwhile news organizations like The Moscow Times, Jerusalem Post, and many more are running stories about his release and speculating on what he might do next.
When I signed up for my Gmail account, it mentioned that the special invitation would only be on blogger.com for a month. This leads me to believe that it will be at least another month until they open it up to the public. Perhaps June 1st, or maybe they are shooting for an American holiday – like the 4th of July? As far as the dates go though, it’s all speculation on my part. They likely haven’t announced a date yet because they are still doing tests. I have noticed a couple of glitches, but they seem to be intermittent and not that critical.
Oh if you have any questions about Gmail that you’d like answered, feel free to ask in the comments. I’ll do my best to answer them.
Here is something about Gmail you may not have known:
Gmail has the ability to search for your mail based on the following criteria: From, To, Subject, folder, Has the words, Doesn’t have, Has Attachment, and Date (within 1 day to 1 year – you set the term).
I noticed that addresses I emailed are automatically added to my contact book. I’m not sure how I feel about this. On the one hand it makes keeping track of any email addresses a snap, but on the other hand I feel like I just gave Google a copy of all my friends and family’s email addresses. (Sorry). I can only justify it by telling myself that it was inevitable anyway, because eventually someone somewhere was going to email them from a Gmail account, besides all the people I emailed were already on my hotmail contacts so its not like one more list is really going to hurt, these contact lists that users create for services like hotmail and yahoo mail haven’t been abused in the past – that I’m aware of anyway, so let’s just hope Google continues the trend.
I do like the fact that when I go to retype an email address that is in my contacts, Gmail brings up the closest spelling match as I type (the same way autocomplete works in your browser). This system is superior though, in that in brings up not just entries that start with same letters you have already typed, but the entries that start with the same letters you have already typed in the order that you email most frequently. It’s complicated but I’ll let Google’s help page explain:
As you prepare to send a message by typing in an email address, Gmail’s auto-completion feature suggests names from your Contacts list based on the letters you type. Keystrokes can add up, and this will save you a few seconds every time you send a message. Gmail orders your auto-complete list by frequency so that the addresses you send messages to most frequently appear at the top of your list. If you would like to view a list of your most frequently mailed contacts, click ‘Contacts’ at the top of any Gmail page, then click ‘Frequently Mailed.’
Because I’m such an active blogger (aren’t we all?) Google has invited me to be “one of the first” to use their Gmail service. Are other bloggers getting this gmail invite too, or am I special? I haven’t seen posts on my favorite sites that usually keep up to date on this sort of thing. Bloggers please comment.
Here is a screen shot of my first gmail email:
Just for fun I clicked on the Google ads on the right hand side of the page. Either they are fake ads or somebody doesn’t have their act together because I got 404’d on all of them.
Here is a little explaination of how gmail works:
A more flexible filing system
——————————————————–
The old way
You create an elaborate filing system of folders and subfolders, then decide where to file a single message.
The Gmail way
Instead of folders, Gmail uses labels to give you the functionality of folders, but with more flexibility. In Gmail, a single conversation can have several labels, so you’re not forced to choose one particular folder for each message you receive. That way, if a conversation covers more than one topic, you can retrieve it with any of the labels that you’ve applied to it. And, of course, you can always search for it.
You can also “star messages” as a way of categorizing them, probably like putting them on a to do list, that way you can quickly retrieve all starred messaged. “Stars let you give messages a special status to make them easier to find. To star a message, click on the light blue star beside any message or conversation.” It seems like a good idea because so often I’ll open an email and think I need to deal on that, but not right now and then I just end up forgetting about it.
Other new features include keyboard shortcuts, Personal level indicators (>to my address >> to only me), and Snippets (same style as Google search).
I have a feeling I’m really going to like Gmail. You can now reach me at jeffmilner(at)gmail.com. Let the spam begin.
When I visited New York with my dad in 1997, we were amazed at the magnitude of the World Trade Center. The towers were just so much bigger than all of the other gigantic buildings, it was just so amazing to see even one of them, but then to turn around and see two of these unnaturally humongous buildings was unreal.
We had been down in the subway / basement area of one of the towers and wondered why it was filled with scaffolding for support instead of heavily reinforced concrete pillars like you would expect. Well we figured out that they put in the scaffolding as reinforcement after a terrorist bomb went off in the early 90’s — a terrorist attempt to collapse the building.
When we were outside looking up at the buildings I asked my dad what he thought would happen if a terrorist used an airplane to crash into them. It seemed like a pretty obvious thing to wonder, just because they were so high in the air and had been the target of previous attacks. Also I remembered hearing about a John Grisham novel that featured terrorists flying a highjacked commercial airliner into the Capital Building.
My dad had heard that a low-flying airplane had crashed into the Empire State Building many years ago and extrapolated from that story, that if a plane did hit one of the towers, likely a similar thing would happen: the plane would crash and smoke would come out. In the end I said I hoped we would never find out for sure.
As it turns out the Empire State Building was hit in 1945 by a B-25 bomber. Thirteen people died, and many were hurt. Interesting details here.
The reason I tell this story is because I find it hard to believe that nobody in their government, could envision flying airplanes into buildings on such a massive scale. (Somebody did, as the article explains). Heck, all you had to do was look at those buildings and think that’s the easiest target in New York way up in the sky where they don’t belong. Anyway I’m not saying I think they were stupid for being unprepared or for thinking they wouldn’t fall, just that I think it’s stupid to think nobody thought that it might happen, because I for one thought about it.
While researching Larry Lessig’s new book Free Culture, I came across a reference to http://www.archive.org, a site dedicated to archiving everything. This afternoon I downloaded a copy of the now famously ridiculous “Duck and Cover” film from the 50’s. It taught kids that the best thing to do in case of a nuclear attack was to duck and cover. There is a myriad of material there waiting to be analyzed in a historical context, or perfect for remixing into multimedia products.
I’ve been writing an essay (on and off for the last 2 days) on copyright and society and found BoingBoing’s link to the EFF and what they are doing to prevent patent abuse:
In light of growing concerns about illegitimate software and Internet patents, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) today announced a new initiative to combat the chilling effects bad patents have on public and consumer interests.
“Patents traditionally only targeted large commercial companies,” said EFF Staff Attorney Jason Schultz. “Now bad patents are threatening non-profits, small businesses, and even individuals who use software and Internet technology.” These threats target non-commercial personal use, such as building a hobbyist website or streaming a wedding video to your friends.
The new EFF initiative seeks to document these threats and fight back against them. EFF has pledged to file “re-examination” requests with the United States Patent and Trademark Office (PTO), asking the agency to revoke patents that are having negative effects on Internet innovation and free expression.
Dave Barry posted a link to my Stairway to Heaven Backwards page. Cool. He also figures I have a lot of spare time on my hands. I guess that’s true.
I, for one, am not surprised that the RIAA is going back on it’s word to “protect” users that have admitted to copyright infringement. The eligiabilty requirements for entering into the clean slate program with the RIAA were:
1. You delete or destroy all copyrighted sound recordings that you or others illegally downloaded to your computer(s) or devices (including all storage and portable devices) using a P2P Network, and all copies you have of those files in any format (including CD-R).
2. In the future you do not illegally download copyrighted sound recordings using a P2P Network, you do not allow others to illegally download copyrighted sound recordings to your computer(s), you do not make copies of any such downloaded files in any format, and you do not “share” (that is, upload/distribute) such files on P2P Networks.
3. As of the date your Clean Slate Program Affidavit is received, you have not been sued for copyright infringement by an RIAA member company for the activities that are covered by this Clean Slate Program and RIAA has not begun to investigate you by requesting from an Internet Service Provider (“ISP”), by subpoena or otherwise, identifying information about you.
4. Any downloading or file-distribution that you engaged in was done on a noncommercial basis. Individuals who undertook these activities for commercial purposes or for payment are not eligible for this Clean Slate Program.
Then through another 4 steps involving signatures in front of a notary public and mailing away the Clean Slate Program Affidavit, you’ll be all signed up.
However, for you suckers out there that actually deleted your MP3 collections, you will be sad to learn that:
The RIAA has finally seen the light with regard to its “Clean Slate” program, which offered false amnesty, or shamnesty, to people who admitted to file sharing. Citing the success of its “education” campaign, the group has abruptly cancelled the program.
“Clean Slate” promised that in exchange for a confession, you could gain meaningful protection from lawsuits for copyright infringement. In fact, the program left you vulnerable to lawsuits by record companies and music publishers, as well as bands like Metallica that retain independent control of music rights.
Eric Parke, represented by Ira Rothken, brought suit, charging fraudulent business practices — and here, perhaps, we can glean the true reason for the RIAA’s change of heart. Its attorneys announced during a recent court proceeding that the group had discontinued “Clean Slate” — and that therefore the case was moot. The announcement took Mr. Parke, his attorney and the judge by surprise.
When music is outlawed, only outlaws will have music. When will music distributors learn that people like downloading music? It’s not so much the price as it is the convience. We will pay a reasonable price but please give users a chance.
While researching a paper for school I came across a Creative Commons post that lets you know there is a contest that may end up winning you a car.
Cool: David Bowie has just launched a new mash-up contest. There’s a new ad campaign for Audi cars that features two of Bowie’s songs mashed-up. They’ve decided to throw a mash-up contest to capitalize on this, awarding a new car to the best song that uses samples from his new album and any older Bowie song. Voting on entries starts this weekend and the contest ends next month so get your turntables cranking.
Mash-ups are hybrid songs that generally feature one artist’s vocal track (or a cappella) electronically grafted to the instrumental track from a different artist’s performance of a different song. Digital pitch-shifting and time-stretching ensure that both artists are performing in the same key and at the same tempo; the trick is to find two songs with similar harmonic structures, although their styles may be wildly varying. In this case David Bowie is being mashed with his own music, but in some cases the brave listener can find some really far out mashes.