Posted on May 17th, 2009 by late_rabbit
This BBC story explores the history of packet-switching:
. . . The problem with human speech is that most of it is made up of silence - be that the pauses between words, time taken to breathe or gaps when one person waits for another to speak.
Using most of a telephone network to transmit silence is not a very efficient use of that resource. Far better would be to find a way to fill the blank spots with the moments from others calls when those folk were speaking. . . . .
Link to full story.
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Filed under: FOSS, cultural
Posted on May 17th, 2009 by late_rabbit
My work box is a Lenovo Thinkpad T42p I bought from Emperor Linux in 2006 — maybe earlier than that. I don’t remember. There’s a receipt somewhere. It ran on Ubuntu Linux (Breezy Badger? Dapper Drake?) which I’ve dutifully upgraded. Its running on 9.04 (Jaunty Jackalope) now.
When the Thinkpad arrived, it had a special “empkernel” which made all the hardware run. When I upgraded, the empkernel was left behind. Ubuntu mostly kept the hardware running fine though.
Some exceptions . . . . This month, when I upgraded to Jaunty, the Atheros wireless card stopped talking to the OS. Horrors! I need that card. On the other hand, I had a new excuse to play with the bash shell. I dug out an old ethernet cable to get back on the net and began googling for solutions. Not much luck at first. . . .
Then I found Ubuntu Geek. Problems over. The wireless card problem?
Fixed here: http://www.ubuntugeek.com/new-madwifi-now-supports-ar2425-in-madwifi-trunk-branch.html
But wait! My wpa encryption support still isn’t fixed! No. Ubuntu Geek had that covered too . . .
http://www.ubuntugeek.com/enable-wpa-wireless-access-point-in-ubuntu.html
So. If you’re sort of a newbie like me to Ubuntu and spend waaayyy too much time googling around and not finding stuff, and you like using the command line, then my suggestion is to start with Ubuntu Geek next time.
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Filed under: FOSS, cultural, poverty law
Posted on April 18th, 2009 by late_rabbit
Maggie Koerth-Baker* reports for Boing-Boing:
Why It’s Hard to Find Good Gator Wrestling Help These Days?
In 2000, members of the Seminole tribe near Hollywood, Florida put an ad in the local paper. They were looking for a new alligator wrestler. Mano-y-gator conflict is nothing new to the Seminole. Hand-caught gators were a traditional food source. But it was only in the 21st century that the tribe had hard luck finding people willing to jump in there (i.e., the swamp) and go for it (i.e., pin several-hundred-pound, sharp-toothed creatures to the ground with only their soft and presumably tasty bodies). This wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. Wrestling alligators for the benefit of white tourists used to be one of the few Seminole-friendly job markets in Florida. Improved access to higher education–and the fact that, today, Seminole are more likely to actually own the tourist trap, rather than just work there–meant fewer tribe members willing to risk life and limb for a poorly paying job. And thus, the newspaper ad.
*Maggie Koerth-Baker is a guest blogger on Boing Boing. A freelance science and health journalist, Maggie lives in Minneapolis, brain dumps on Twitter, and writes quite often for mental floss magazine.
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Filed under: FOSS, cultural
Posted on April 18th, 2009 by late_rabbit
Hugh D’Andrade reports for Electronic Frontier Foundation:
Last month, the US Sentencing Commission considered new sentencing guidelines that would classify the use of proxy servers as “sophisticated means” when used in the commission of a crime, thus requiring extra prison time. EFF spoke out against these guidelines, sending Staff Technologist Seth Schoen to appear before the Commission to argue (PDF) that the use of anonymizing technologies is a widespread practice that requires no special knowledge or skills.
Happily, it appears the Commission has decided, at least for now, not to classify the use of proxies as a sign of sophistication.
As Schoen told the Commission, “While proxies may be an advanced technology, using a proxy is often no more difficult than using Microsoft Word. Many kinds of people use proxies for all sorts of legitimate purposes, so only a court can reliably assess which uses are truly employed as a ’sophisticated means’ of committing a crime and which are for privacy, free speech or some other innocent purpose.”
EFF is not declaring victory on this issue just yet. We look forward to hearing the reasoning behind the Comission’s ruling, and to seeing what revisions to the amendment they plan to propose. Today’s ruling is undoubtedly a step forward, and we applaud the Commission for their decision.
This is just one area where we’re watching closely to ensure that common Internet practices are not regarded as criminal by the government. EFF’s work is ongoing in a case in which Boston College Campus Police cited a student’s computer skills as evidence of wrongdoing.
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Filed under: FOSS, federal law
