2004-07-11 damaged

All We Need Is A Microsoft-Hating US Judge And…

[this post has been partially damaged during a server failure on Sunday 11th July 2004, and it has been possible to recover only a part of it]

[further fragments of this post were recovered on 12 October 2018]

First, some info for the non-geeks out there, so you can truly appreciate the irony in what’s to come:

Lindows – manufacturer of a distrubution of Linux which is designed to be easy to migrate to for former Windows users – have been in court with Microsoft in the US for some time, who claim that their name infringes upon their trademarked name, Windows. The courts haven’t been friendly to Microsoft extending their tentacles in this way so far, and so Microsoft have mostly been trying to buy time, stalling proceedings, while they bring the case to courts internationally. The Netherlands, Belgium, and Luxumberg have already caved-in and declared Lindows illegal (interestingly, it’s now being marketed in these countries as Lin—-, pronounced Lindash, which Microsoft also claim they own).

Okay, now you non-geeks are up-to-speed:

Just announced – Lindows are taking …

Windows XP Box

This is scary. This guy’s managed to build a mini-ITX Windows XP box… inside a Windows XP box (by which I mean one of those boxes in which they ship copies of Windows XP). It’s a full working computer (well, it runs Windows, but you know what I mean) inside the box that originally contained the copy of Windows which is installed upon it.

Click here to see pictures and a how-to guide, in case you want to do it yourself.

Nightmare!!!

A (1) nightmare and a (2) just-plain-freaky dream last night. My brain’s playing up:

1. Claire and I, older, are in a train. She has a heart attack; I try to get and then, failing that, provide, help, but fail to and she dies. Then I woke up.

2. Strange semi-futuristic post-apocalyptic world, reminiscent of The Postman or Dark Future (anybody else ever play that?). I, among with many others, are slaves of a desert-dwelling tribe, having been kidnapped by them. We are beaten and mistreated to keep us under control. Don’t remember much more than that.

Liz had a nightmare last night, too. Maybe it’s something in the water?

PHP 5 RC1

Terribly geeky I know, but I find it awfully exciting: PHP 5 Release Candidate 1 was released today. PHP 5 can now be considered feature-complete, and mostly stable. If only the program I’m writing with it could be considered the same…

Paedophile-Luring And Artificial Intelligence Ethics

[this post has been partially damaged during a server failure on Sunday 11th July 2004, and it has been possible to recover only a part of it]

[further fragments of this post were recovered on 12 October 2018]

Fun in the sun.

Kit and I had an idea for something like this a while back, and we were wondering if it constituted entrapment: after all, under UK law, it’s illegal for a human to attempt to trick another human into committing a crime, as it cannot be determined whether that person would have committed the crime of their own volition… but here’s the catch – is it legitimate for a machine, working on behalf of a human, to do the same thing?

That’s what’s likely to be the crucial issue if this scheme to trick ‘net paedophiles into giving information to computerised children [BBC] provides evidence in court (not just leads, as is the case so far) towards convicting people who are ‘grooming’ children on the internet.

Personally, I’d argue that – in this case – the machine is a tool of the human, just like chat room software is a tool of humans. I don’t see the difference between me using chat room software, pretending to be a kid, luring paedophiles, and providing tips to the police, and me writing a program to do the same for me. It’s …

I Want One Of These

Some professor has invented a device that uses on-the-fly destructive sound wave interference to cancel out the whine of computer fans. Wow! Toy! Want! Estimates suggest fans with these could be made available for just $20 more than the price of regular fans.

In other news, does anybody else find it scary that this site selling pregnancy tests has a picture labelled ‘for illustration only’. What else are you going to use it for, other than as an illustration? Are women trying to get away with a ‘freebie’ by urinating on their computer screens or something?

Sliding Doors, My High School Crush, And Wierd Dreams

Last night I had a weird dream which I’ve therefore decided to share with you. As usual, written first-person and present-tense:

I’m 16 and back and high school in some kind of ‘sliding doors’-esque alternate reality in which things went somewhat differently. In this one, I actually ask out Marguerite, a girl at school who I fancied the pants off. We get together, and make a fab couple. After high school, I go to Preston College and she goes to Runshaw (as actually happened), but all’s still well. But then, after college, I decide to come to University at Aberystwyth. She doesn’t want me to leave Preston to go to University, as she wants to study here. As we start to argue about this, I wake up.

Fuckin’ weird, and no mistake.

Haven’t seen Marguerite… pretty much since high school (interestingly, her older sister, Rosemary, studied here in Aberystwyth). However, a quick trawl of the World Wide Web found this (not terribly good) photograph of her at Victoria Falls:

[picture missing]

I shouldn’t mix Guinness, red wine, and real ale before sleeping.

Typically Busy

[this post was lost during a server failure on 11 July 2004; it was partially-recovered on 13 October 2018]

Another couple of weeks of academic nightmare coming up, followed by the Easter Break (during which I’ll be working, ho hum). I’ve got to do my second “poster session” presentation for my dissertation a week on Wednesday; next week I have all my pracs *and* I’m helping out backstage with the Student Skills competition. Oh; and I managed to get myself persuaded to go into the office at the weekend, forgetting that my mum’s visiting. D’oh.

Oh yeh; my mum’s visiting this weekend. She’s bringing Andy (the BF¹) and Puddles (the KCS²) along for Troma Night. Which is nice.

And, in other shiny happy news, I sold my old copy of The Sims: Party Pack for about the same value as it can be bought in shops. Yay, and, indeed, hey.

And, while I’m on the ball – other shiny happy news – I’ve managed to grovel to the bank and secure myself a dramatically increased overdraft, interest free, until September. Which means I can afford to pay for my ADSL subscription. Oh; and the …

Warning: May Contain Cars

[this post was damaged during a server failure on Sunday 11th July 2004, and it has not been possible to recover it]

[this post was partially recovered on 24 November 2017]

I had a thought yesterday afternoon, and I found it funny, so I drew it.

[picture missing]

Okay, so I was bored.

The Volume of a Sexually Dimorphic Nucleus in the Ovine Medial Preoptic Area/Anterior Hypothalamus Varies with Sexual Partner Preference

A study has just been released (click here for the abstract) about the biochemical differences between ‘straight’ and ‘gay’ rams.

Just a thought: what do you have to do to get a research grant for that… “Hi… I’d like you to give me thousands of pounds to chop up the brains of gay sheep.”

And on a more amusing note, somebody’s spliced together chunks of President Bush’s address, last month, to make a hilarious (and terrifyingly, more accurate) speech [QuickTime MOV]. I love it! “Saddam Hussien was trying to acquire… six billion hydrogen-powered doctors!” Wonderful. Take a look!

I really ought to tell you what I’ve been up to this last week, but I can’t be bothered yet.

God [humour]

[this post was damaged during a server failure on Sunday 11th July 2004, and it has not been possible to recover it; a partial recovery was made on 13 October 2018]

[missing picture]

Well; I’m glad he cleared that up for us.

I’m So Fucking Clever

[this post has been partially damaged during a server failure on Sunday 11th July 2004, and it has been possible to recover only a part of it]

[this post was partially recovered on 24 November 2017]

I’ve had a great idea that I might try to implement sometime (or put of the stack of things I might try to implement sometime (or put on the stack of things I might think about moving onto the stack of things I might try to implement sometime)). Allow me to illustrate…

As Kit has noticed (Andy too), SpamBots prowl around LiveJournal‘s servers (I’ve described a possible strategy they could be using as a comment to Kit’s entry). Basically, these are semi-intelligent robots which, starting with people with ‘relevant’ interests, advertise their product on the blogs of them and their Friends… and their Friends’ Friends… etc.

Now, think back a little further to an entry in Alec’s blog, mid-January: some ‘random’ came along and began to flirt with him through the medium of comments in his blog. ‘She’ kept up conversation for some time before disappearing. …

My DJ Name

Daniel Huntley spins tunes as
DJ Dark IllusionGet your dj name @ Quiz Me

Damn, I’m hungover.

Lion Cut?

This amused me at work today.

SiteFinder: Mark Two

[this post was damaged during a server failure on Sunday 11th July 2004, and it has not been possible to recover it]

[further fragments of this post were recovered on 12 October 2018]

If you’ve been reading this blog since September-ish, you’ll remember when I had about a week of ranting about the VeriSign/SiteFinder lark: this was where VeriSign, who (in layman’s terms) are responsible for linking all .com, .net, and .org addresses to their respective servers, in September last year put a ‘catch-all’ clause in. In other words, every possible combination of letters and numbers, followed by a .com, .net, or .org, ‘belonged’ to them. This was a complete abuse of their position of power, and caused a great deal of faults amongst systems throughout the internet. In addition, it could eventually have been used (and evidence suggests that the intention was there) to monopolise the internet’s search engine and advertising services.

Well; they’re at it again, as this article (“SiteFinder vs. Engineers: Our Mistake Is Ignorance”) discusses, so you’re likely to see me ranting at least a little more. If they do decide to do it again, they’ve stated that they will “provide 60 or 90 days warning, in order for the appropriate technological …