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Experiments - Pixelfest collaborative artwork

The latest information confirms the ucard specifications quoted in the August 6 DigiTimes article and adds the number of connection pads (20), the operating voltage (legacy 5V, 3.3V, 1.8V), the frequency (60MHz) and the interface (MMC SPI USB, x1, x4, x8, x16). There is also a micro-size card added at 24×18×1.4mm (14mm shorter than the full size 24×32×1.4mm)

Mu-Card Alliance’s new 2-terabyte flash memory ready to go!

noteworthy wrote:
] Of course, a SHA1 hash of two octets is completely reversible
] by brute force, so this doesn't really offer any strong form
] of protection, does it? It seems to be little more than
] obfuscation.

Well, I suppose so. How do they tabulate unique visitors without saving full IP information?

RE: Scraping and ad-stripping Google's results

] This step that we have taken has implications for all
] search engines. These engines crawl the public web
] without asking permission, and cache and reproduce the
] content without asking permission, and then use this
] information as a carrier for ads that generate private
] profit. We are convinced that if citizens scrape Google
] and strip the ads, and make the scraped results available
] as a nonprofit public service, that this is legal. This
] is especially the case if there are public policy
] concerns behind the scraping.
]
] Google Watch has been the most prominent critic of
] Google's outrageous privacy policies for more than two
] years. This is why we started the proxy, and it's why we
] continue the proxy. We invite Google to serve us with a
] cease and desist letter as a first step toward resolving
] this issue. So far, we have yet to hear from Google's
] lawyers. By releasing the source code for our proxy,
] we're trying to escalate the issue.

Google should not save all 4 octets of your IP address. There is no "good" use of that data. Of course, MemeStreams does this too, so yes I'm being hyprocritical, but I didn't just make a fortune in a public offering either. They should store a SHA1 hash of the last 2 octets so they can identify unique visitors without storing identifying data. And the cookie could use some end user control.

Scraping and ad-stripping Google's results

] Login to a website in seconds versus minutes
]
] Create multiple identities ("personas")
]
] Control both the security and type of personal data (your
] "attributes") when logging into a website
]
] You decide a safe location ("Homesite") to store your
] personal data

When I have sat down and thought about how online identity should work I've imagined solutions that sound a lot like this. It will be interesting to see how this develops.

Sxip Networks - personal digital identity

] Reenie's head chip woke her by steadily increasing
] the perceived volume of a song by a British comedy
] troupe. Lots of trippy dreams last night. She
] couldn't remember them all this morning, but she was
] sure they were cool. She rolled out of bed and prepared
] for her "Commute" to the adjoining room. Reenie
] loved her job, well, as much as she could love any job.
] She got to work from home as much as she liked.

If you liked "Ownz0red" by Cory Doctorow, which many of you did, you will definitely like this quick little 10 minute read.

Futurismic: Fiction

] Wikipedia is under criticism by its co-founder Larry
] Sanger who has left the project. He warns of a possible
] future fork due to Wikipedia's Anti-Elitism and he
] presents his view on Wikipedia's (lack of) reliability.

I've been wondering when this was going to start. The "anyone can edit this" mantra has finally found some respected detractors. The question is, how do you decide who is an expert?

Slashdot | Wikipedia Criticised by Its Co-founder

Mark Dery, author of "Escape Velocity," has a blog...

Shovelware: Mark Dery's Blog

] The secret to programming is not intelligence, though of
] course that helps. It is not hard work or experience,
] though they help, too. The secret to programming is
] having smart friends.
]
] Once we had a plausible way to ship, Apple became the
] ideal work environment. Every engineer we knew was
] willing to help us. We got resources that would never
] have been available to us had we been on the payroll.

Totally Amazing. Gold Star!

Skunkworks At Apple -- The Graphing Calculator Story

] There is a story behind every electronic gadget sold on
] the QVC shopping channel. This one leads to a ramshackle
] farmhouse in rural Oregon, which is the home and circuit
] design lab of Jeri Ellsworth, a 30-year-old high school
] dropout and self-taught computer chip designer.

This is kind of a cool story, although I continue to be frustrated by the propagation of Richard Stallman's lie about the definition of the word hacker.

The work hacker, in computerdom, orginally (ie in the 60's) meant a poor programmer, or someone who broke into a computer. It was in the 70's that the word was applied with respect. In the 80's Stallman attempted to separate the word as it is applied with respect from the word as it is applied to people who break into computers. Its hard to apply this split consistently, (for example, which one is Woz?) because what Stallman meant to do was separate boomers and Xers. This has resulted in endless fallacies, such as people who parrot the phrase "hacker in the original meaning," the concept of "white hat and black hat hackers," etc... More infuriating to me is "The Hackers Conference," at which self proclaimed "good hackers" have created a closed and reculsive culture that serves no one but themselves, while so called "bad hackers" have create a wide open culture that is vibrant and reaches out to anyone who has an interest in the subject matter...

Stallman's damage to the word must be repaired.

The New York Times - A Toy With a Story