Links from 2012-02-10

Beatles, Pink Floyd Engineer Alan Parsons Rips Audiophiles - CE Pro Magazine Article from CE Pro

You get what you pay for. But having said that, there are some decent budget surround systems you can buy at Costco or Walmart that really aren’t bad. Everybody has their budget; the hi-fi world will tell you if money is no object you can get better results out of every component - even the surface the amplifier sits on. Pro sound people have different expectations; they are only concerned that a piece of gear works and allows them to do their job. Hi-fi people spend huge amounts of money for tiny improvements, and pro sound guys will say, “I can spend half as much and get the results I need.”

Jan-Piet Mens :: On collecting SSH host keys for SSHFP DNS records

RFC 4255 specifies a standard for using the DNS to securely publish Secure Shell (SSH) key fingerprints. We’ve discussed that here before and there is a gotcha you should be aware of before deploying the records.

Disqus Commenting System Goes Down; Leaves All Blogs Comment-Less

Kommt in die Cloud, haben sie gesagt. Da ist alles so super, haben sie gesagt …

Apple’s mind-bogglingly greedy and evil license agreement | ZDNet

Over the years, I have read hundreds of license agreements, looking for little gotchas and clear descriptions of rights. But I have never, ever seen a legal document like the one Apple has attached to its new iBooks Author program.

Fragen eines Zeitreisenden | Real Life

Ich komme aus einer fernen Vergangenheit: Bei uns starteten Videorekorder magisch zum Sendungsstart, Filme hatten Zweikanalton und Bücher konnte man weiterverleihen. Zeigt mir, welchen Fortschritt ihr gemacht habt.

Cyberpunk 2025 | Real Life

Es werden Zeiten kommen, in denen wir nur noch in Bordellen und Mörderspelunken ein offenes WLAN finden werden. Und wir werden uns von dort per VPN zu Gingrichs Mondkolonie verbinden, die grade ihre Unabhängigkeit erklärt hat und den Cyberrebellen beisteht.

‘Offensive security research community helping bad guys’ | ZDNet

“We are involved in a cat-and-mouse game on [the software] engineering side. Every time we come up with something new and build new defenses, it creates incentive for the bad guy to look beyond that,” Arkin explained, noting that the white-hat security research community helps cyber-criminals by publishing vulnerabilities, exploits and techniques to bypass security mitigations. “My goal isn’t to find and fix every security bug,” Arkin argued. ”I’d like to drive up the cost of writing exploits. But when researchers go public with techniques and tools to defeat mitigations, they lower that cost.” via fefe http://blog.fefe.de/?ts=b1cba1ed

#shitsiskosays - Charlie’s Diary

I know wasting time is not necessarily narratively interesting, (though it can be. How one wastes time says a lot about a person) but Star Trek is at least in lip-service a post-scarcity world, and the Federation is not at war until Season 6. Wasting time and/or fucking around would be a lot of what people did with their lives…. No one exhibits poor or even mediocre time management. All are paladins of self-organization. Wasting time has a unique pleasure (some call it slack) that we as humans are kind of addicted to. We’re starting to do it collectively on our social networks now, to waste time in a connected way. The universe of DS9 is culturally incredibly old-fashioned … . In a world with faith in its higher-ups, as Star Trek purported to be, it is terrifying to see the paladins playing WoW. They should be defending justice even in their sleep–and this too is a very old idea.

Windows 8 on ARM: the Schrödinger’s cat of operating systems | Technology | guardian.co.uk

There’s been plenty of criticism of an article suggesting that Windows 8 will be dead on arrival – but like the mythical cat, the answer to this one is all in the observation

Five Reasons why Windows 8 will be dead on arrival | ZDNet

Microsoft’s Windows 8 and Vista will have several things in common: Both are unwanted operating system updates that will flop in the marketplace.

BBC News - Viewpoint: V for Vendetta and the rise of Anonymous

Alan Moore, writer of V for Vendetta and enigmatic wizard of comicology, describes the relationship between the Guy Fawkes mask and Anonymous, anti-ACTA protests, and the Occupy movement. Beginning with the Moore-ish phrase, „Without wishing to overstate my case, everything in the observable universe definitely has its origins in Northamptonshire, and the adoption of the V for Vendetta mask as a multipurpose icon by the emerging global protest movements is no exception,”

What does it mean to be literate in 2012? | Teacher Network Blog | Guardian Professional

To get pupils motivated to learn about ICT and computers - and they should, because we live in a world where almost every type of employment uses IT in some form or other - then we do need to rethink what and how we teach it at school. We need to think about merging what they need to know with what is also fun to know. We need to make sure they are aware of how complicated it can get without making them write reams of code to do so. At the same time, we need to ensure that they realise that learning a few lines of C++ will not enable you to produce Batman Arkham City overnight! We need to make them want to learn, because motivated pupils always learn better than those who would prefer to be elsewhere.

Why William Gibson Distrusts Aging Futurists’ Nostalgia | Underwire | Wired.com

In in this episode of Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy, hosts John Joseph Adams and David Barr Kirtley get the author talking on what it’s been like writing for Hollywood (and Twitter), his fascination with antique watches, and his formative years as a science fiction writer. Following the Gibson interview, they talk about the cyberpunk subgenre with Seth Dickinson. Listen to the podcast above or read the transcript of the Gibson interview below.

Science off the Sphere: Knitting Needle Experiment - YouTube

International Space Station Expedition 30 astronaut Don Pettit uses knitting needles and water droplets to demonstrate physics in space for ‘Science off the Sphere.’

Home - GitHub

This in an arduino based autopilot system that can pilot airplanes, quad rotors, boats, and ground vehicles. ArduPilotOne is the underlying library employed for all the vehicles. Preconfigured gain files are provided for common vehicles in each category. The main sketch can be easily modified to allow a variety of sensor choices. Based on these sensors, advanced control and navigation modules can be developed that can be shared between vehicles or be unique to a given vehicle. The object-oriented design makes swapping control/ sensor/ navigation modules simple.

ArduCopter - arducopter - Arduino-based autopilot for mulitrotor craft, from quadcopters to traditional helis - Google Project Hosting

ArduCopter is an easy to set up and easy to fly platform for multirotors and helicopters that goes way beyond the basic RC multicopters on the market today. The project is based on the ArduPilot Mega autopilot created by the DIY Drones community.

Please welcome ArduPilotMega 2.0! - DIY Drones

Like APM 1.0, this is the world’s only Universal Autopilot. The same hardware can autonomously control planes, multicopters, regular helicopters, rovers, even boats, with just a one-click firmware change–no programming required! Best-of-breed mission planning and two-way telemetry, and soon with advanced scripting with Python for robot acrobatics and more.

#Zombies: Followers of the Dead - YouTube

Six months after a zombie apocalypse nearly destroyed the world, the remaining survivors talk about twitter… This was unscripted, totally improvised.

Der Chef will immer Input und ist doch nie zufrieden! | WILD DUECK BLOG

Die Peripheriemitarbeiter lösen das Problem auf bewährt untaugliche Weise: Sie setzen ein Meeting an oder einen Call auf (Es gibt Versuche, bei denen ein Affe in der Nähe eines Tigers sitzen muss, nur durch ein grobes Gitter getrennt. Ihm passiert also nichts, aber er zittert ganz stark vor Angst. Wenn man ihm jedoch einen zweiten Affen hinzugesellt, trösten sich die beiden und haben sehr viel weniger Angst. Meetings werden so groß angesetzt, dass keiner Angst hat, so lange es dauert.).

Urheberrecht: Was verdienen Künstler im Digitalzeitalter? - Digital - sueddeutsche.de

„Hört auf über SOPA zu jammern” schimpfte der ehemalige Guns’n’Roses-Bassist, als das Netz sich zum SOPA-Protest zusammenschloss. „Als aktiver Musiker, der gesehen hat, wie seine Industrie auf den Kopf gestellt wurde, und der sieht, wie Piraterie jeden Künstler vom Chart-Stürmer bis zum Indie-Anfänger trifft”, empfinde er das Gejammer über die Anti-Pirateriepläne der USA „als Schlag ins Gesicht”. Er frage sich, warum niemand protestiert habe, als Menschen anfingen, ohne Bezahlung Musik im Netz zu nutzen. „Wo waren Google, Facebook und Wikipedia”, die während des Blackout-SOPA-Days den Protest unterstützten, „als Musiker, Schauspieler und Autoren bestohlen wurden? Entschuldigt, aber wo wart Ihr alle?”, fragte er, erkennbar wütend: „Warum seid Ihr damals nicht aufgestanden? Kostenlose Musik war zu toll, oder?”

Hello My Name Is The Problem of Memory - Charlie’s Diary

I think everyone is kind of freaked out right now. Which is why they set up tents on the street last year. Why some are still there. We’re freaked because we don’t know what’s coming–but we’re reasonably sure it’s going to be shitty. Dystopia is the thing to write about these days. We have more faith in dystopia than utopia. SF used to be all about utopia, Starfleet and replicators and living forever. To be honest, Brave New World seems kind of cute to me these days. At least the oppressive government thought to hand out Soma so trod-upon people wouldn’t be so goddamn miserable! Our governments just say: suck it up, epsilon assholes. Might as well be stamped on our coins.

Satiritron – Microsoft to Fix the Bug in Windows Phone That Makes it Uninteresting to all Smartphone Users

Microsoft announced today a pending update to Windows Phone 7.5, which will address a number of outstanding issues with the smartphone operating system, most notably the well-known bug that renders Windows Phones completely uninteresting to all smartphone users. The SW glitch, experienced by everyone who has ever looked at a Windows Phone, causes the product to be completely, mind-numbingly boring to them. Typically, after experiencing the glitch, smartphone users will put the affected Windows Phone down, then pick up another smartphone, which the user is infinitely more likely to give two shits about. Though various forms of this bug have been noted since the first releases of Windows Mobile, last year’s Windows Phone 7 was released into a vastly different market, where Microsoft could no longer rely on competing smartphones being so hideously painful to use that customers would choose their product …

Sportkulinarik « betatext

“Ich geh jeden Dienstag zum Bohnenturnen“, sagt #kind2, “Das passt gut, weil Alexander geht immer Reislaufen. Und Benjamin geht Fußballgrillen.”

Die Wissensgesellschaft und ihre freien Idioten — IG Kultur

Im post-industriellen Zeitalter tritt Wissen an die Stelle von Arbeit. Wollte man eine kurze, bündige Quintessenz diverser Ideen zum Wesen der so genannten Informations- oder Wissensgesellschaft ziehen, käme wohl dieser Satz heraus. Daniel Bell glaubte zudem, dass in Zukunft Wissenschaftler wichtiger seien als Unternehmer und ihnen den Rang abliefen. Mit der propagierten Aufwertung von Bildung und Wissen konnten sogar Geistes- und Kulturarbeiter hoffen, aus ihrer Tätigkeit in Zukunft mehr Wert und entsprechend sogar Gewinn zu schöpfen. Doch was so sauber klingt, so befreit vom Schmieröl der alten Industriegesellschaft, hat einen doppelten Boden. Was wäre, wenn das ökonomische Prinzip „Wissen” nicht die Handarbeit in den Himmel des Geistes hebt, sondern die Kopfarbeit ans Fabrikband drückt? Es könnte durchaus sein, dass die Produktion von Wissen über kurz oder lang unter dieselben fordistischen Räder gerät, wie zuvor die Produktion von Waren.

Tagged as: delicious, links | Author: Martin Leyrer
[Freitag, 20120210, 04:05 | permanent link | 0 Kommentar(e)