All posts by Jack

Geek Stuff, General

Column from PC Magazine: Pathetic European Attack on Google and the Net

Column from PC Magazine: Pathetic European Attack on Google and the Net

In a headline-grabbing comment last week, Pinto Balsemão, head of the European Publishers Council, said that the Internet cannot continue to be free, as it has been for the last decade. He wasn’t suggesting that publishers make all their sites pay-per-view, but that search engines could not and should not be able to search for content freely.

There is some concern that Google, and other search engines, can run rampant through a publishers library and start providing copyrighted works to the public, for free or a fee.

If this is a real concern, I can think of several ways to stop this.

  • Get off the internet.
  • Block the bots. I know what bots are visiting my web pages. I could set filters to stop them from accessing pages. Then they wouldn’t be collected, stored, mined, and indexed on the main site.
  • Get W3C to add a tag that tells bots that this page should not be indexed. Maybe even set the tag to allow some bots and forbid others, so internal search engines can provide a catalog for the Intranet. (Note: Intranet vs. internet)
  • Whitelist allowed users. Only allow valid, authorized IP adresses to access the web sites. In a closed community, this is a lot more manageable than a site that wants to be available to anyone, anywhere, anytime.

There are so many controls that a user can provide to limit access to files and pages on the internet. Folks seem to have forgotten them, or never understood how the system worked; just following the lead of what was done before, by a bunch of hackers who didn’t really want to restrict access to information, copyrighted or not.

Of course, it will require a lot more work to manage everything. An expenditure of time, money, and effort to limit access to a system that is a free-for-all in its natural state. But, it can be done.

Can I patent these ideas?

Politics

Capitol Hill Blue: Bush on the Constitution: ‘It’s just a goddamned piece of paper’

Capitol Hill Blue: Bush on the Constitution: ‘It’s just a goddamned piece of paper’

An interesting commentary, if true. I ran a quick Google on some key words and phrases, like: Bush, constitution, “piece of paper”, and I couldn’t find anyone else reporting this. I would think this would be a major story for any main stream media org.

Of course the major give-away is Bush’s statement that the Constiution is a ‘piece of paper’. I’m not sure that he even knows that.

Geek Stuff

An Important Equation

Elevation = sin-1(sin(lat)*sin(dec)+cos(lat)*cos(dec)*cos(15*hour))

where:
lat = latitude on earth
dec = declination of sun
hour = delta hour from noon (i.e. noon =0)

What’s that spell?

Elevation of the sun above the horizon!!!

So at 10 AM on June 21st at my house, the sun would be:
sin-1(sin(39)*sin(23.5)+cos(39)*cos(23.5)*cos(15*2))
= sin-1(.629*.399+.777*.917*.866) = sin-1(.868) = 60.2 degrees above the horizon
Wow!

General, Preparing for the worst

December 6th, 2005

An interesting, almost historical, day. The day no mail came.

I think that 12/6 was the first day in over 20 years, that Elaine or I have not recieved at least one piece of mail (counting days that we should expect mail delivery. This does preclude Sundays, Holidays and days when there is so much snow on the ground we couldn’t even walk to the mailbox, much less expect a USPS driver to reach it by road. )

What makes it interesting is that yesterday we got a lot of mail and it was in two bundles. And in one of the bundles were several pieces of mail that I was expecting on Tuesday. The other bundle had mail I was expecting yesterday.

So, if I can hypothesize, the USPS driver had bundled up our Tuesday mail, tossed it in the car and then missed it during their round; or, they got sick and didn’t finish their round, went home with the mail in the back of the car, stayed sick on Wednesday, and didn’t show up for work until yesterday.

Who knows what lurks in the minds of USPS drivers?

Tuesday was chilly, but clear most of the day. The snow didn’t start until evening, after the expected mail round. Not that it really snowed. A few flakes, no more than a couple of inches, with drifting. Wednesday was the day that didn’t get above 10 degrees Farenheit. It stayed bright and clear though, and we got mail that day.

General, Politics

American Values

I am contemplating the current set of American Values. From what I have seen of current history, they would appear to be:

    Strike First and Strike Hard.
    Lie, Lie, Lie.
    Cruel and Unusual Punishment is OK.
    Kick a man when he is down.
    Win at any cost.
    The Ends justify the Means .*
    Compromise is for sissies.
    No need to support your neighbors in need.
    Spurn your friends who disagree with you.
    Don’t prepare for the future. Be a Grasshopper, not an ant.
    We will Protect you, at any cost, whether you like it or not.
    If you’re not with me, not only are you against me, you are for my enemies!
    Everyone is my enemy.
    The Individual is supreme (except when that individual interferes with corporate or governmental priorities.)

These are not the American Values I grew up with, not the Values I learned in my youth. Did I grow up in some warped, white-bread America where fair-play, level playing-fields, and the Bill of Rights were the guiding lights of American Values? Where self-reliance and self-determination were bulwarks of personal responsibility, but not the sole supports? Where compromise to reach common goals made society work and easy to get along with?

*I always have a problem with “The Ends justify the Means” value statement. Just what or when is the Ends? Is it when Mankind is extinct? Is it when Earth gets swallowed up by the Sun? Is it the Heat Death of the Universe? Is it “The Rapture”? Just when is the End?

There are other recurring American Values that still seem to survive, like:

    Feed at the Public Trough
    Share the wealth with your supporters.
    We’re #1! We’re #1! We’re#1!

Actually, those values seem to be universal and not just American. Americans just do it better!