bbot's blog

Of this comic in this thread. Page four, because I'm slow.

This paper presents the first theoretical quantitative systems level study of a complete suite of reaction pathways for scanning-probe based ultrahigh-vacuum diamond mechanosynthesis (DMS). Our description of this toolset, the first to exhibit 100% process closure, explicitly specifies all reaction steps and reaction pathologies, also for the first time.

By Robert Freitas and Ralph Merkle, naturally. See this video if you're wondering why diamond mechanosynthesis is so important.

Stolen from the Overcoming Bias blog, damn my luck.

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Date: Mon, 28 Apr 2008 14:39:29 -0400
To: bbot@bbot.org
From: abuse <abuse@axxs.net>
Subject: Fwd: Notice ID: 120-397190 DMCA Notice Unauthorized Use of The
  Teaching Company Limited Partnership Property
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Hello
can you please take care of this email
We appreciate your understanding to this matter. If you have any 
further questions, please let me know.

Best regards,
Juany
Spam/Abuse Coordinator
OLM, LLC
http://www.olm.net
e: abuse@axxs.net
v: 1-800-741-6813


>From: teachingcompany-no-reply@copyright-compliance.com
>Subject: Notice ID: 120-397190 DMCA Notice Unauthorized Use of The Teaching
>  Company Limited Partnership Property
>To: abuse@axxs.net
>Sender: teachingcompany-no-reply@copyright-compliance.com
>Reply-To: teachingcompany-no-reply@copyright-compliance.com
>Date: Mon, 28 Apr 2008 10:27:58 -0700
>
>-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
>Hash: SHA1
>
>Re:  Unauthorized Use of The Teaching Company Limited Partnership Property
>Notice ID:120-397190
>Notice  Date:28 Apr 2008 16:55:13 GMT
>
>Dear Sir or Madam:
>
>The Teaching Company Limited Partnership. (The Teaching Company) 
>is  the owner of copyrights and other proprietary rights in numerous 
>copyrighted audio-video works, including but not limited to The 
>Teaching Company Title listed below (see 'File Name:').
>
>It has come to our attention that Olm LLC is the service provider 
>for the IP address listed below, from which unauthorized copying and 
>distribution (downloading, uploading, file serving, file "swapping" 
>or other similar activities) of The Teaching Company's property is 
>taking place.  We believe that the Internet access of the user 
>engaging in this infringement is provided by Olm LLC or a downstream 
>service provider who purchases this connectivity from Olm LLC.
>
>This unauthorized copying and distribution constitutes copyright 
>infringement under Section 106 of the U.S. Copyright Act.  Depending 
>upon the type of service Olm LLC is providing to this IP address, it 
>may have legal and/or equitable liability if it does not 
>expeditiously remove or disable access to the property(s) listed 
>below, or if it fails to implement a policy that provides for 
>termination of subscribers who are repeat infringers (see, 17 U.S.C. 
>section: 512).
>
>Despite the above, The Teaching Company believes that the entire 
>Internet community benefits when these matters are resolved 
>cooperatively.  We urge you to take immediate action to stop this 
>infringing activity and immediately inform us of the results of your actions.
>
>Please send us a prompt response indicating the actions you have 
>taken to resolve this matter, making sure to reference the Notice ID 
>number above in your response. 
>mailto:teachingcompany@copyright-compliance.com?subject=RE%3A%20Notice%20ID%3A%20120%2D397190%20DMCA%20Notice%20Unauthorized%20Use%20of%20The%20Teaching%20Company%20Limited%20Partnership%20Property
>
>If you do not wish to reply by email, please use our Web Interface 
>by clicking on the following 
>link:http://webreply.baytsp.com/webreply/webreply.jsp?customerid=120&commhash=df91badc1f22d5a3a07c862ec0adb7bf
>
>Note: If your email program has inserted line breaks into either the 
>email or web links above, you can copy and paste the entire link in 
>to you email program, or favorite web browser, respectively.
>
>The undersigned has a good faith belief that use of the property(s) 
>in the manner described herein is not authorized by The Teaching 
>Company, its agents or the law.  The information contained in this 
>notification is accurate.  Under penalty of perjury, the undersigned 
>is authorized to act on behalf of The Teaching Company with respect 
>to this matter.
>
>Please be advised that this letter is not and is not intended to be 
>a complete statement of the facts or law as they may pertain to this 
>matter or of The Teaching Company's positions, rights or remedies, 
>legal or equitable, all of which are specifically reserved.
>
>If you would like to purchase a legal download of this copyrighted 
>material please go to http://www.teach12.com.
>
>Regards,
>
>Mark M. Ishikawa
>CEO, BayTSP, Inc.
>PO Box 1314 - Los Gatos, CA 95031
>Phone:: 408-341-2300  fax::  408-341-2399
>teachingcompany@copyright-compliance.com
>v: 408-341-2300 f:  408-341-2399
>
>*pgp public key is available on the key server at ldap://keyserver.pgp.com
>Note:  The information transmitted in this Notice is intended only 
>for the person or entity to which it is addressed and may contain 
>confidential and/or privileged material.  Any review, reproduction, 
>retransmission, dissemination or other use of, or taking of any 
>action in reliance upon, this information by persons or entities 
>other than the intended recipient is prohibited.  If you received 
>this in error, please contact the sender and delete the material 
>from all computers.
>
>Evidentiary Information:
>Notice ID:  397190
>Asset:  Teaching Company
>Protocol:  BitTorrent
>IP Address:  69.94.127.78
>DNS:
>File Name:  TTC - What Are the Chances - Probability Made Clear
>File Size:  3355913891
>Timestamp:  26 Apr 2008 16:33:57 GMT
>Last Seen Date:  26 Apr 2008 16:33:57 GMT
>URL:  http://tpb.tracker.thepiratebay.org/announce
>Username (if available):
>
>- ---Start ACNS XML
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>
><Infringement xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" 
>xsi:noNamespaceSchemaLocation="http://mpto.unistudios.com/xml/Infringement_schema.xsd">
>   <Case>
>     <ID>397190</ID>
>     <Status>Open</Status>
>   </Case>
>   <Complainant>
>     <Entity>BayTSP on behalf of The Teaching Company</Entity>
>     <Contact>Mark M. Ishikawa, CEO, BayTSP, inc.</Contact>
>     <Address>P.O. Box 1314, Los Gatos, California 95031 United 
> States of America</Address>
>     <Phone>(408) 341-2300,(408) 341-2399</Phone>
>     <Email>teachingcompany@copyright-compliance.com</Email>
>   </Complainant>
>   <Service_Provider>
>     <Entity>Olm LLC</Entity>
>     <Address></Address>
>     <Email>abuse@axxs.net</Email>
>   </Service_Provider>
>   <Source>
>     <TimeStamp>2008-04-26T16:33:57.000Z</TimeStamp>
>     <IP_Address>69.94.127.78</IP_Address>
>     <Port></Port>
>     <DNS_Name></DNS_Name>
>     <Type>BitTorrent</Type>
>     <UserName></UserName>
>     <Number_Files>1</Number_Files>
>     <Deja_Vu>No</Deja_Vu>
>   </Source>
>   <Content>
>     <Item>
>       <Title>Teaching Company</Title>
>       <FileName>TTC - What Are the Chances - Probability Made 
> Clear</FileName>
>       <FileSize>3355913891</FileSize>
>       <URL>http://tpb.tracker.thepiratebay.org/announce</URL>
>     </Item>
>   </Content>
></Infringement>
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First off, I attempted to verify the PGP signature, which was hampered by the inconvenient fact that The Teaching Company LLC doesn't have a public key on file with the PGP keyserver. Lame!

I would have been perfectly within my rights to just blow this off, since 1.) I couldn't verify the signature, which means I couldn't verify identity, which means that I had no particular reason to believe that this was legitimate; and 2.) 69.94.127.78 is my tor relay node, (unitinunet F975 9016 86C9 FA67 6052 4046 A00F 1C88 8DD4 C0F7. Ask for it by name!) which mean I'm protected by the DMCA's safe harbor provisions.

But I didn't do that, because I'm not a dick.

Plus, bittorrent over Tor is incredibly lame. The bandwidth is donated by volunteers, and using it to pirate music is kind of like using bottled water to water a Las Vegas lawn. That's a terrible simile, but trust me, it's not cool.

So I blocked everything except for ports 80 and 443. HTTP and HTTPS only, folks. If you want to exchange bomb plans with the rest of your terrorist cell, you're going to have to use rapidshare, like everyone else.

http://www.snopes.com/politics/obama/antichrist.asp

According to the Book of Revelations the anti-christ is: The anti-christ will be a man, in his 40s, of MUSLIM descent, who will deceive the nations with persuassive language, and have a MASSIVE Christ-like appeal.... the prophecy says that people will flock to him and he will promise false hope and world peace, and when he is in power, will destory everything. Is it OBAMA??

Answer: No, you idiot.

I finally got this external usb drive box I got from newegg working. It had been sitting on top of my computer, ignored, for a week or two, because I am inveterately lazy; but I finally got it to approximate a working state. I knew the drive worked, because I plugged it into magnesium (the windows computer, and the only computer with SATA ports) and formatted it, but when plugged into the box it did its paperweight impression.

It turns out that the widget for mashing the drive into the interface ports mashed with insufficent authority, so I just pulled the interface board and mashed manually. It isn't elegant, and it sure as hell isn't portible, but it just works, and that's good enough.

I also got tired of the "video coming soon!" note on the water simulation page, so I dug out the old blender files. I figured posting the original file would be lame, (and expensive, it's a 130 meg avi) so I resolved to render it again. Which I'm doing! As we speak. Check back in a few days, or not, I guess.

I submitted something to Nedroid's caption contest. Gaze upon its beauty!



Text lifted from Bal Sagoth's "The Splendour Of A Thousand Swords Gleaming Beneath The Blazon Of The Hyperborean Empire (Pt. III)".

I just restarted my computer for the first time in 149 days.

A moment of silence for my dear departed uptime.

So I just got the "3D Lenticular Print" version of Theodore Gray's celebrated periodic table poster, and I must say, I am disappointed. The Periodic Table Table site itself is excellent, and I have yet hear bad things about the element sample business he runs on the side, but this poster is an expensive gimmick. The sample photos don't really "appear to stand out from the surface of the paper", (at least to mine mortal eyes) and the poster itself came in a rather large box, with piles and piles of bubble wrap.

It's a poster! You can't just put it in a big envelope? I wouldn't have much to complain about if all this was cheap, but the poster itself was $25 and shipping was another $10! Not worth the money. Not recommended.

http://flickr.com/photos/25587586@N03/2410049114/in/set-72157604508371285/

The only picture of me at the protest, and it had to be while I was reading the paper?

So the previous blog entry looks pretty simple, right?

Wrong!

You see, I pasted the chat transcript directly into vi, which nanoblogger uses to edit blog entires. Nanoblogger uses direct html formatting, so the greater than/lesser than names were interpreted as tags, and thus didn't render. Lame!

HTML being a proper markup language, however, implements a kinda sorta escape code sequence, where you can use "&lt;" and "&gt;" (lesser-than and greater-than, get it?) to render < and > without your html interpreter (read: web browser) invisibly erasing them.

But the problem was, I had about twelve instances of < and > to replace. Text navigation in vi, while not impossibly difficult, is still awkward; and in any event, doing all that crap by hand was ideologically impure. Whatever was I to do?

Search and replace, of course!

Vi, being a Real Man's text editor, uses sed-style regex expressions for search and replace, and as I was about to discover, sed-style wildcards. The command string I first tried using was "%s/<bbot>/&lt;bbot&gt;/g" (%s/ to search every line, /g to replace every instance. The regex is of form /search string/thing to replace search string with/)

That command, of course, resulted in "<bbot>lt;bbot<bbot>gt;" instead of "<bbot>", since motherfucking sed uses & in the replacement string to mean what the search string matched. This lets you do all sorts of enormously clever things, but is a giant pain in the fucking ass when you're messing with HTML enity codes.

Now, normally, you would use shell style quoting to tell sed to ignore &, but vi isn't the shell! It ignores quotes! I, of course, only figured this out after running through every permutation I could think of, before just using the \ escape character.

Builds character, right?

07:34 -!- Irssi: Starting query in freenode with bjwebb
07:34 <bjwebb> hi
07:34 <bbot> Hey?
07:36 <bjwebb> erm, are you a real person?
07:39 <bbot> Indeed I am.
07:39 <bjwebb> lol, im making an irc bot, and it was supposed to join as bbot
07:40 <bbot> Too bad, sucker. This is my nick!
07:40 <bjwebb> lol, okay
07:40 <bjwebb> im not managing to get it to work anyway

I freebed the atom feed, disabled some plugins, and sorted all the back entries into categories. You may now proceed with business.

I'm going to be disabling the atom RSS fed, so if you're using that feed, then changed to the RSS 2.0 feed. I'll be posting a followup post immediately after this one, so if that doesn't show up in your reader, then you were using the atom feed, and now need to resubscribe. Sorry.

It occurs to me that it would be wonderfully perverse to automate Matthias Wandel's marble-based binary adder. All it would take is a microcontroller and some sort of widget to place marbles in the input slider. A traveling gantry would be interestingly complex, but the marble feed might be overcomplex.

You could even add a marble pump to close the loop.

On the same topic, of cool mechanical things, my uncle forwarded a clip of one of db fletcher's expanding tables. This would also be neat to re-make, but, you know, expensive. Oh well.

So copper.unitinu.net is now running a Tor relay. Since there's nothing else running on that box, Tor is happily soaking up ten megabits a second. How did I do it, you ask?

Easy!

First I downloaded the tor and libevent sources.

[root@copper ~]#wget http://www.monkey.org/~provos/libevent-1.3e.tar.gz
output removed
[root@copper ~]#wget http://www.torproject.org/dist/tor-0.1.2.19.tar.gz
output removed


Then I unpacked the archives, ran the makefiles, etc. But tor errored out during configuration!

checking whether we need extra options to link libevent... configure: error: Found linkable libevent in (system), but it doesn't run, even with -R. Maybe specify another using --with-libevent-dir?
[root@copper tor-0.1.2.19]#


Since libevent installed correctly, I guessed that tor couldn't find the libraries. Googling the error message googlewhacked on another fellow with the same problem, which he solved by setting LD_LIBRARY_PATH to /usr/local/lib. So I, you know, did that.

[root@copper tor-0.1.2.19]# export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/usr/local/lib
output removed
[root@copper tor-0.1.2.19]# ./configure && make
output removed, but it worked! too bad make doesn't give a completion message.


That was easy! Kinda.

MystMystMystMyst: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pointless_topology
bbot: I've yet to see any practical applications of topology.
bbot: In short, I think it pointless.
bbot: There, that's your topical joke.
MystMystMystMyst: I found a copy of Fire Upon The Deep.
MystMystMystMyst: It looked very space-opera-esque.
bbot: Indeed it is.
MystMystMystMyst: As long as there's lots of hard science and bloodshed.
MystMystMystMyst: There isn't romance, is there?
bbot: I could tell you, but it might cast a light on some developments which may cause you to come to some conclusions before they are warranted. With that said, yes! There is gobs and gobs of romance. Nearly half the book is taken up with candlelit dinners and professions of love!
MystMystMystMyst: Oh fuck.

So I've been reading a feminist comic books blog. (As in, a feminist blog about comic books.) It's interesting! Especially this post.

In fact, I have only one serious issue – one! – with this whole book.

And that issue is that for fuck’s sake, nipples don’t work that way.

They’re huge! They’re everywhere! Not a single issue of this comic gets by without prominent nipples poking through sometimes heavy fabrics on all three of the main characters.

Fresh from reviewing bad science fiction as I am, it strikes me that hard science fiction authors (Or really, anybody who has even a basic knowledge of physics) have a lot in common with female comic book readers. They both get worked up over things that other people either don't notice or don't care about, they both tend to write long rants on their favorite topic, and they both tend to snap and go on murderous rampages through the fools who surround them at all times. Or, uh, not.

http://www.nationaldefensemagazine.org/issues/2008/March/SecurityBeat.htm#Science

Among the group's approximately 24 members is Larry Niven, the bestselling and award-winning author of such books as "Ringworld" and "Lucifer's Hammer," which he co-wrote with SIGMA member Jerry Pournelle.

Niven said a good way to help hospitals stem financial losses is to spread rumors in Spanish within the Latino community that emergency rooms are killing patients in order to harvest their organs for transplants.

"The problem [of hospitals going broke] is hugely exaggerated by illegal aliens who aren't going to pay for anything anyway," Niven said.

"Do you know how politically incorrect you are?" Pournelle asked. .

"I know it may not be possible to use this solution, but it does work," Niven replied.

I can't wait to see Niven's other revolutionary ideas, such as prohibiting Internet Smut, ending the Raghead Menace Once And For All with nuclear weapons, banning that gosh darn hippie music, and telling those damn kids to get offa his lawn.