ihoby wog

The AOL Effect

April 14th, 2006

Ah, the endless struggle… I like to call what happens to systems, places, anything that groups participate in – The AOL Effect. I call it that because whenever there is a jewel of participatory coolness created, it is often later crushed by a flood of abusive population when the gates are opened to them.. Like what happened to just about everything (irc, email, usenet, etc.) when AOL users were granted access to the rest of the internet.

I have three theories for how participatory systems can be built to deal with this effect.

Build the system, enjoy it while you can, then run away and build the next version in secrecy.. enjoy until the flood arrives there. Repeat forever.
Build semi-closed systems where a small dictatorship of admins have godlike power. Delete, confine, limit, and exile as necessary.
Somehow build systems that simply make it infinitely more desirable to participate in the system in ways that are not abusive. Systems that make abuse ineffectual and intended use work nicely. Preemptive enticement and positive results to keep the system healthy, instead the traditional (and failed) methods of constructing artificial walls and punishment.

Theory solution 3 I think is the best way to go with social ills in the physical world as well.

Posted in internet | Comments Off on The AOL Effect

Apple Monitors and DRM?

February 19th, 2006

Just what we don’t need.. DRM, especially tied to hardware is always a bad idea. Not only is it needlessly restrictive to the creative process these industries OWE THEIR VERY EXISTENCE TO – but they’re frequently based on flawed or buggy code.

DRM, or Digital Rights Management is also a misleading term. These systems don’t MANAGE the rights at all.. they just restrict fair usage. It should really be called Gratuitously Restricted Electronic Entertainment Detention or GREED for short.

Posted in intellectual property | Comments Off on Apple Monitors and DRM?

to MacFixit – Noisy fan fix

February 15th, 2006

I just found a fix for a horribly noisy power supply fan and I figure I should write this somewhere, since I didn’t find any direct information on it when I was searching for clues.

I’ve been running an 8600 as a server for.. MANY years. So for these many years straight it’s been operating 24 hours a day without rest or even very much attention. A few months ago it started making more noise than usual but it wasn’t too bad, as it was in a closet. This last week, it began making loud, horrible, and finally unstoppable noise that pierced through walls, air, and my sanity. Inspecting the machine led me to believe one or both of the fans needed oil or cleaning or something. I also knew I didn’t have time to pry everything open and mess with the innards for a couple days. I was nearly hitting a deadline on a project until today so I had to just try to ignore it until this evening, when finally I was able to dig around inside it.

So I spun the fan mounted on the door and all it made was a very slight hissing sound.. well, must be the one in the power supply. Partially opening this dangerous little box, I slipped the fan out far enough to clean the blades (which like the rest of the machine was completely filthy with fine dust) and then give it a spin. That was definitely it.

After struggling with the half open power supply for a while, I realized I needed to just fully disconnect it and take the U shaped casing piece all the way off. So now that I could mess with it easier with only two hands, I tried to get into the fan. I saw pretty quick by looking into the space between the mounting and blade-cap that there wasn’t simply a spindle right there that I could oil.

I searched the net for maintenance instructions on that type of fan (a Sensflow) and found nothing. I searched for anything on how to open it, take it apart, oil it, anything.. I found nothing.

I figured the fan was toast anyway, so if I break it trying to fix it.. at least I’d have tried to fix it. There was always the other fan, and since we’ve had a high and low temp of 33 and 20 degrees out here in Seattle – I wasn’t too worried about the machine overheating before I could get a new fan. So I tried pulling it apart. I tried prying it off but it didn’t feel like it would give.. so I kept inspecting the damn thing for another way in..

There was a sticker on the other side, so I pushed at the middle of it.. and it revealed a divot of some kind, maybe a screw. So I peeled back the sticker and found a spindle, overflowing with a red powder.

Hmm..

I searched the net for any instances of powder based lubricants.. red or otherwise. I found nothing… The only thing slightly helpful I found during this whole operation was the Wikipedia listing for Computer Fans. This fan before me most likely had a sleeve type bearing.. and the article said that those kind were prone to eventually drying out… and this thing was most certainly as dry as one could get.

I dropped some oil in and let it work into the rest of the bearing. I gave it a few spins.. it got quieter and quieter – and I was very relieved. I sealed up the sticker and put my computer back together. I hooked it up back into it’s closet home and powered it up.

Whisper quiet… Fixorated.

So if your computer fan starts making horrible squeaking, whining, moaning sounds – try peeling back that sticker and see if it needs some nice fresh oil.

Either that or it’s possessed.. in which case you must then chop off the computer’s faceplate and drive a stake through its motherboard while chanting “In-a-Gadda-Da-Vida” and emptying your thoughts of all things Cool Whip.

Posted in Uncategorized | Comments Off on to MacFixit – Noisy fan fix

on Ubuntu boards about WPA bounty

April 8th, 2005

I think the main point in this issue is that it should just work. We don’t have to mess with Ubuntu to get Ethernet working, the same should be true for Wireless.

When key drivers, WPA, and other wireless add on bits are available but not installed, enabled, or mentioned during install – that’s not helpful for everyone, and it particularly doesn’t make sense when other less crucial software IS installed and enabled by default.

If someone has made WPA work in Ubuntu, that should get folded into the next update/autoupdate/release. If someone else sees problems and finds a fix, same deal.

That’s SUPPOSED to be what open source is for, right? Not for everyone to keep re-inventing the wheel when there is really, truly, no need for it.

Posted in Uncategorized | Comments Off on on Ubuntu boards about WPA bounty

to Cnet about games

March 21st, 2005

Cooper’s article basically is saying game developers (publishers and their shareholders) aren’t listening to lawmakers in washington (well, christian lobbyists really).

He’s TRYing to say that game makers aren’t listening to We The People, but anyone who knows how D.C. works also knows that very rarely do the needs and desires of The People get put first. What this is slanted opinion piece is doing in a News section, I have no idea. He’s taking sides with the moral elitists and doing very little reporting… BAD journalist!

So, in this battle between a small cabal of shareholders seeking infinite profits and a small cabal of neo-christians seeking a Stepford Wives society, you’re never going to have a truce when the subject at hand is what the general public is going to purchase or consume.. regardless of whether it’s something they really want, or the plethora of products that appeal to the ‘must look at the car crash’ instinct.

The real conflicts, issues, and potential dialog of this matter are almost completely outside of everything Cooper just wrote. Obviously Cooper doesn’t get it and surely, he can do better.

Posted in games, regulation | Comments Off on to Cnet about games

About Spotlight

March 7th, 2005

Both Spotlight and anything appearing in Longhorn were ideas stolen from (in order of development):

– Kickstart (1995)
– SpeedApp
– LaunchBar

Kickstart was a rock star. I’d carry it around with me on a floppy disk, for anyone’s Mac that I’d use or be asked to fix. I would copy it on and after a very quick index scan, I could launch any program without knowing where the hell it had been installed. 18k of pioneering genius.

Posted in software | Comments Off on About Spotlight

to htmlfixit about .xxx

February 14th, 2005

Well, ICANN doesn’t listen to public suggestion. More than 6 years ago I submitted a couple of letters to them suggesting among other domain choices, that .xxx be used as a new top level domain. I wrote that the best course of action would be if .xxx were made available and provided free switch overs from their com/net/org based domains to xxx.

Back then, it would have worked. The web was different then, the porn sites operated differently and didn’t build markets by relying on the tricks they do now (spam, domain typo, unrelated domains, etc.). The hubs, portals, and outlets didn’t exist in the same complexity. Less was centralized, indexed and organized. All the .com domains were rapidly being snatched up.

Adult sites would have welcomed both the exposure (to their audience) and freedom (from groups of the offended) that this top level domain can provide. As long as the non-switch price stayed affordable, .xxx tld could even be used for individual objects of content.. for instance, sites that have some adult material mixed with much that is not, simply have that content linked from their .xxx domain – automatic child-safe exclusion. All groups involved would have benefitted from the line in the sand drawn by the tld.

But much time has passed.

Now it seems to me that it’s too late. Especially if they’re going to charge more for it than other domains. With methods changed and price not attractive, there is little incentive now for porn sites (or any sites with some amount of adult oriented contents) to purchase or consider switching to .xxx anymore. I still foresee there being some usage of this better-late-than-never tld but I don’t expect it to match level of success that it would have so many years ago. Too bad, really.

Posted in internet, sex | Comments Off on to htmlfixit about .xxx

to Verisign survey

February 9th, 2005

Because over the many years I’ve been a customer of InterNIC, Network Solutions and Verisign, I’ve been treated to a long and steady series of unpleasant customer experiences.

        ?        First there was the “we are God, we’ll do what we want, when we want” mentality that has persisted in some form to the present day.
        ?        Then there was the “we need to start charging, though we don’t know the first thing about running a real business” stage that was marked with high prices and some of the worst customer support in the world.
        ?        Then there is the current stage of “we’ve got all these gobs of cash from charging people so much in our market monopoly but now we’re being under-cut, so we’d better use all that money to bludgeon everyone with high-priced marketing ploys instead of improving the value of our products and services” that has only slightly improved with the better-late-than-never enhanced web account tools.

The only reason I still use Verisign Secure Certificates is because competing certificates don’t yet have enough browser support and the general public is uninformed about web security.

(in the final bit of irony, a couple years later, Verisign’s own root certificates lost all browser support all over the world – requiring every single web master to modify their server setup to make up for this error in planning)

Posted in internet | Comments Off on to Verisign survey

abortion thread posting

September 2nd, 2004

I completely agree with her. True that my opinion in this matter doesn’t mean as much since I’m a man, but I would also like to add a couple more points:

Concerning photos of abortions, EVERY surgical proceedure looks horrifying. Doesn’t matter whether it’s an abortion, a heart transplant or a root canal. They’re all bloody, messy operations that show parts of us we don’t like to see. Even natural birth looks horrific. Using photos of abortion procedures in this way is a dim-witted scare tactic that only plays off of our reflexive reaction to a disturbing image.

In a similar way, how would you pro-lifers react to giant photos of neglected, starving, abused, malformed children that were forced to be born unwanted as a result of poverty, inscest, rape, assault, pollution, or anything else that would make them come out alive but unwell. Perhaps we could show pictures of the assault and rape as well. We have quite a few children born this way in our country already, pro-life laws will only make the number of those children rise from thousands to millions.

So should the government do what she offered, send all these forced-birth children to live at your house?

Posted in sex | Comments Off on abortion thread posting

FCC Indymedia Report

July 21st, 2004

In my first bit of news to report, I’d like to say that the Federal Communications Commission Localism Public Hearing held last night in Monterey was a success. The three commissioners present were greeted with a nearly unanimous 5 hour wave of disapproval concerning the effects of their deregulation of media consolidation.

Person after person voiced unique, eloquent, and emphatic remarks of why it hasn’t worked, what has been going wrong and what ideas the FCC could use to fix it. I’m very happy to report that even though I didn’t have enough time to prepare anything worthy of the open mic on this topic, I wouldn’t have had to. Other attendees of the public did for the most part, a splendid job of concisely presenting the opinions and facts that the FCC – and everyone really – should hear most..as well as ripping media power abusers (like Clearchannel, Murdock, etc.) a new ass hole. The only other facet I could have spoken on was how these and other rulings spelled the demise of internet radio’s former glory. Everything else was said and said well.

Our level of energy, unanimity and intelligence was inspiring. We know now that at least at this one event, we the people were heard. Loud, clear and in person. Copps, Adelstein and Abernathy have several hours of west coast public and industry discontent to shove in Powell’s orifice of choice.

I’d like to make a more complete report, one with quotes and greater depth. Apparently there will soon be a streaming video webcast of the event, so I should be able to do that. But also, if anyone has their own complete footage of the event – my own is shaky and woefully incomplete – a best-of video would also be great to make and release.

Side Points of interest:

– A couple people from the SF Indymedia were there. Liam who spoke at the mic and the girl who wore little pink piglet ears.

– For some members of the hearing staffers and conventional media, the energy of turnout was apparently frightening. People in suits nervously described us as “Quite a lively crowd” and stayed quiet after the talks began.

– Dozens of useless city police were scattered inside and out, with trucks and barricades. They stood around, bored out of their minds for the entire event.

More information on this and the other six hearings around the U.S. is available at this address:

http://www.fcc.gov/localism/hearing-monterey072104.html

Posted in fcc, hearing, localism, media consolidation, report | Comments Off on FCC Indymedia Report