Rubenerd

This post originally appeared on the Annexe.

ohfuckyeahmemes:

I don’t know if you do staredad, but he is a meme, so I don’t see why you wouldn’t. 

This post originally appeared on the Annexe.

nevver:

Chris Piascik

I DO I DO! Does that count? Don’t answer that.

Melbourne has officially exported its fickle weather patterns to Sydney! After our two scorchers (2011.02.01, 2011.02.05), today was a gusty 24 degrees C (75.2 F) with a wind chill factor that sent me back home to grab a jumper. Literally we went from 42 degrees and no wind at all, to 24 degrees and deeply overcast. Those are the same numbers, just in reverse!

From our street in Earlwood we get a pretty good view of the Sydney CBD, so this afternoon I wandered down and took this picture. As I stood there shivering I just couldn't believe the contrast, from the same vantage point yesterday the sky was blue and I got heatstroke!

In other news, I've been told by my contacts in Singapore that it was 32 degrees today. As it was yesterday, and the 365 days before that! Ah seasons, how I forgot yee.

It's like pictures of people taking pictures of people… but with search engine results!

The backstory

So the gist of this latest high school-esque media circus is Google asserts Microsoft's MSN Search, wait no Windows Live Search, no wait Chanandler Bing search engine has been actively stealing their search results. As I understand it, in a highly publicised sting, Google engineers:

1. developed a honeypot by creating a series of pseudo-random search queries, then linked them to search results that were entirely unrelated.

2. installed the Bing Toolbar on a series of machines with Windows and Internet Explorer installed, and opted into the data gathering clause or whatever it was

3. performed Google searches for those pseudo-random terms in Internet Explorer and clicked the entirely irrelevant results, knowing the Bing Toolbar was checking what they were doing

4. In 9% of cases, those same results later appeared in Bing for those queries

I'm of two minds about this. Or two brain hemispheres about this. No wait, that would imply I'm using the creative and mathematical parts for different things. You know what, let's end this unfortunate metaphor before it starts. Mmm, honeypot.

Thar be copyin’ going on

Public opinion over whether this constitutes stealing has been all over the place, but I'm of the opinion it is.

Bing and Google are indexing the same interwebs so its entirely possible (and one could argue very likely) that the two engines would index and return similar results, particularly for high traffic or valuable sites. The key is whether the engines return these similar results:

1. by using their own independent algorithms

2. by copying results

No matter how Microsoft apologists attempt to spin this ("the users opted into the toolbar and not all the results appeared lol!"), its pretty obvious Bing is performing both. Unique search results from Google are appearing in Bing. Copying is going on. End of story.

You'd think that would be the end of it, but no.

Google bro, you’re being a tad hypocritical

Google has built their empire copying other people's data and wrapping it with ads, unless you specifically opt out with a robots.txt file or rel=nofollow or their web admin tools. Google News aggregates information from hundreds of news sources without compensation, Google Books is scanning thousands of books without regard to copyright law, however broken such laws are. Heck even their latest search user interface was a copy of Bing, which they were deservedly called out on. Whether these efforts have been positive or not is inconsequential: the bottom line is they copy.

Google's Eric Schmidt was on the board of directors at Apple during the development of the iPhone, and shortly after the iconic device's launch, Android was suddenly transformed from an imitation Blackberry into an iPhone clone, and was based on enough of Java to leech of its success without having to pay licensing fees to Sun/Oracle. To their credit at least they haven't charged handset manufacturers for the OS, otherwise they'd be repeating Microsoft's history.

Google is often credited with creating the idea of keyword based advertising, but this was developed at Overture, formerly GoTo. Overture was later purchased by Yahoo, and Google paid a substantial out of court settlement to allow them to continue to operate. It bears consideration when one remembers AdSense is overwhelmingly their primary source of revenue.

Google, Microsoft, a word please!

Ultimately, while all these are examples of copying which in light of their claims against Microsoft are hypocritical, they're not my primary concern.

Despite its cash cow search algorithm being more of a closed secret than the Kernel's secret herbs and spices (sorry, my attempt at a a bad pun), Google has always claimed to be "open" and facilitating universal access to human knowledge. Microsoft is absolutely shameless for claiming some of their search results aren't lifted from Google, but why is Microsoft selectively not allowed universal access? It's one thing for Google to claim Microsoft isn't be honest about where they're getting their data from, its quite another to tell them to cease entirely.

Google has every right to voice their frustration and encourage Microsoft to innovate rather than piggybacking on their own work, but they need to assure us that when they say they're open and universally accessible, that applies to everyone.

Free and open source software advocates are well aware that their software may be used in ways they don't like, but the trade off is worth it for getting applications in the hands of as many people as possible and to allow people to modify and redistribute them. If Google is all for doing no evil and is as open and free as they claim, they need to acknowledge this. I'm confident they can take the moral high ground again.

Finally, Microsoft, you guys need to stop beating about the bush and just admit that you're copying search terms and results from your competitor. You're not fooling anybody. Well okay you're clearly fooling some people, but I don't think IDG really counts.

I'll be sticking with Google for their searches, because if I use Bing I'll just be getting them anyway ;).

This post originally appeared on the Annexe.

Allegedly it wasn't hot enough for us in Sydney! It was another scorcher today, it felt like stepping into a warming oven as I opened the front door. And to make matters worse, our central air conditioning died! As I type this, myself and our two little white fluffy animals that the vets assure as are dogs are camped out in my home office computer room thingy with a portable air conditioner set to stun. Marge, can you set the oven to cold?

What I was most peeved about though was earlier today the temperature hit 42 degrees Celsius (107.6 Fahrenheit), which from a DON'T PANIC perspective would have made a brilliant screenshot, and 107.6 sounds like a trippy radio station. Just saying.

Stop the presses! Next they'll be telling us DRM doesn't work, and that suing your customers doesn't good sentiment make.

From TorrentFreak, via Slashdot.

A prestigious economics think-tank of the Japanese Government has published a study which concludes that online piracy of anime shows actually increases sales of DVDs.

No, really!? But this this goes against the narrative we've been forced fed!

The conclusion stands in sharp contrast with the entertainment industry’s claims that ‘illicit’ downloading is leading to billions of dollars in losses worldwide. It also puts the increased anti-piracy efforts of the anime industry in doubt.

Theoretically speaking

Not to say I've ever pirated any anime, but if I did, I sure as heck have given them a lot of my time, money and business since. This is how promotion works, and in this case its even better because the producers don't even need to spend money on advertising.

From my perspective [theoretically speaking], had I not downloaded anything from fansubbers, I theoretically wouldn't have got into this incredibly rich world of unconventional storytelling and art anywhere near as much as I have. I [theoretically] would not have bought as many VCDs and DVDs and figures and posters and music and magazines and all the other stuff. Even if a select few do nothing but leech, there are plenty of other people to fill in the gap. Theoretically speaking.

Japan is an interesting case study in that the doujin and fanart communities are another testament to the nurturing rather than parasitic nature of people who take creative works, copy them and expand upon them. They don't leech off the success of creative works, they build an ecosystem around them.

Still, as that example has been in the past, media cartels will no doubt be trying their best to silence and/or discredit these findings. Watch out for it.

The ultimate question now becomes, how do we allow media creators to be compensated for their creativity with a sane, rational copyright framework in place that accepts (or at least tolerates) these activities? Unfortunately, as much as all this will continue despite what any lawmaker or DRM paddler says, and as much sense as all this makes, its still illegal.

Adorable Touhou pirate graphic ID 15309430 from Pixiv.

After a couple of months in mothballs, starting today MacTheKnife has been recommissioned for full service! I know, exciting right!?

Wait, don’t answer that

Since iMugi the Mac Pro entered the picture to take care of the heavy lifting and Senjoughara the ThinkPad X40 was used for mobile work, MacTheKnife the 2006 MacBook Pro was relegated to secondary duties. This wasn't helped by the fact his battery was completely shot, and when Ruben's sister stole his power supply after she damaged hers, he couldn't even be turned on!

Yesterday though MacTheKnife got some new stuff, and as we speak he's with Ruben in a coffee shop typing this infuriatingly written third person blog post! He received a brand new battery and 85W MagSave power supply from the Apple Store on George Street in Sydney which means Ruben won't be able to eat for a month, but now he can use his Mac laptop again!

Ugh I just realised that lineup doesn't include my homebrew file server. Oh well, its not well designed like these anyway :P.

Blastie from the pastie. Mmm, pastie

Ruben bought his venerable, first generation MacBook Pro in March 2006, as denoted by a blog post discussing the then-new Intel/PPC Universal Binary situation (Universal Binaries for Mozilla Software). He ran Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger at the time, what a blast from the past!

Speaking of blast passing (wait, what?) Ruben was living in Malaysia at the time so the movie and concert tickets, CD covers and random coffee shop paraphernalia wedged between the lid and the clear perspex cover are like a time capsule into his life in 2006-07! Ruben thinks that while that's cool in a way, ideally MacTheKnife should receive a bit of an upgrade. For one thing, there needs to be a seriously large Ho-Kago Tea Time cover alongside the Blues Brothers and SOS-Dan ones (too much epicness?), and the ticket from when Ruben saw Bebel Gilberto, at the very least!

MacTheKnife has had a thorough screen cleaning, a new key chair for the S keycap installed so it doesn't wiggle in that irritating way, a thorough polishing of his discrete-construction aluminium enclosure, and a compete reinstallation of OS X Snow Leopard from scratch, just to be nice and clean and fresh and new and lovely :).

Ruben also has some BIG plans! Now that MacTheKnife isn't Ruben's primary production machine now and is more of a portable workstation thingy, he doesn't need a massive internal drive any more and can probably swap it out for an SSD. He's also going to try finding a replacement keyboard cover, and removing the SuperDrive completely. He never uses it, and it just makes the unit heavier. Finally, he'd love if he could replace the hulking ugly closed Telstra NextG Sierra Wireless dongle with an internal ExpressCard/34 to make things neater, but he's not holding his breath.

Finally, Ruben thinks this post has gone on long enough, so he will cease!

This post originally appeared on the Annexe, in a post series pointlessly documenting every train I took.

T13 from Museum to Bardwell Park

This post originally appeared on the Annexe.

mollymisery:

just-julissa:

uncertaintimes:

Chandra excels at capturing chaos. An astronomical feature called Cas A, in the constellation Cassiopeia, is a blast of debris expanding at millions of miles an hour; it was fired from a supernova that became visible on Earth only about 300 years ago.

Photos From Chandra and Spitzer

1. Cassiopeia is my favorite constellation
2. This is awesome and beautiful.

Beautiful.

Wow :O