Just came across this copy of e-mail from Linus that started the whole Linux movement in a Wired article.

Message-ID: 1991Aug25.205708.9541@klaava.helsinki.fi
From: torvalds@klaava.helsinki.fi (Linus Benedict Torvalds)
To: Newsgroups: comp.os.inix
Subject: What would you like to see most in minix?
Summary: small poll for my new operating system

Hello everybody out there using minix-I'm doing a (free) operating system (just a hobby, won't be big and professional like gnu) for 386 (486) AT clones. This has been brewing since april, and is starting to get ready. I'd like any feedback on things people like/dislike in minix, as my OS resembles it somewhat

Any suggestions are welcome, but I won't promise I'll implement them 🙂

Linus

I too was looking at Minix then and thinking that it would be fun to write a Unix clone for PCs.  Hah!

Fade, described in 'Subversive' code could kill off software piracy, is a new anti-piracy system with two notable features:

Virtual Scratches as Watermark

Fragments of 'subversive' code is laced into the CD in a way that makes them look like real scratches on CDs.  Scratch-aware programs access the CD directly to see if the scratches are there.  Since current crop of CD copying software tries to correct scratches as it copies, missing scratches means pirated copy.

Pirated Copies as Demos

When a pirated copy is detected, the program silently starts degrading it's functionalities.  Degradation speed is set slow enough for the unsuspecting pirate to become dependent on the program and, hopefully, force a purchase.  Degradation probably involves overwriting parts of the program on the hard disk.

While I don't think Fade will make a noticeable dent in piracy, I like the idea of using piracy as a marketing tool.

Amazing treasury of stills and video from 75 years of Newsreel.  Low-res versions can be used freely.  Hi-res 300 dpi versions can be licensed.  I think the low-res versions are good enough for most web-uses unless you need to zoom-in on small sections.  BTW, don't go there now because the site just opened and is swamped.

Yesterday, I was looking at Hemera Photo-Objects series and got side-tracked as usual into thinking about value-added multimedia contents.  Photo-Objects is basically an image plus a mask.  There is no reason for the image and the mask to be together.  Likewise for image transforms.  In a sense these are like add-ons for an image and one could potentially search for all available add-ons given an image's URL or URI.  The same can be done with audio.  Given any audio, there are countless ways to transform it.  Also, a song doesn't have to be played in just one way or have just one lyric per language.

Only problem is that there is no infrastructure for value-added content.  There are plenty of tools to create them, but what do you do with them once you have them?  You can't find them reliably using search engines nor are there ways to buy or sell them.

Paolo has all the links to Blog Babes in Italy.  These blogs seem to be tied to some kind of blogging promotion and nude calendar event in Italy, but some of the girls have stayed on blogging.  Livietta, in particular, gave me a good morning vector.  Her pose reminds me of the famous painting by Sandro Botticelli: The Birth of Venus.

Grazie, Paolo!

Since I got Google AdSense, I enjoyed watching a small pile of money build up.  It wasn't much but it was enough to offset my webhosting expenses.  Thanks to the Gag clause recently added to AdSense T&C by Google, I removed AdSense from this blog.  According to AdSense FAQ, this effectively cancels the account.

Dave wrote:

Google ad bar is a huge disclaimer saying "I can't talk about Google."

I agree.

I used to frequent Sonoma coast and Napa when I was single.  Monterey too.  It's not that I liked the scenery.  Being young and hot blooded doesn't leave much room for the scenery.  I usually went there with girls I dated so I can score.  Dating is fun, but waiting is not.  It's silly to travel somewhere and sleep in two rooms.  So a yes was a meaningful yes, oh yeah.  Sometimes I miss being a shallow bastard with a one-track mind.

Tim Oren is back from his Sonoma run and makes some nice suggestions on places to go there.

Tim also comments on my Fixing E-Mail post and my response to his metadata rant.  Tim points to Postini, champ of his portfolio, as an example of new e-mail technologies that will rescue us from spammers.  Cool.  I wonder where they got the name Postini?  Houdini?  'Ini' is a bit too addictini IMHOini.

Here is a bit more on the trusted e-mail network idea:

A Trusted E-mail Network (TEN) is a PKI network of mail servers.

Every message sent is signed by the originating TEN server to identify the sender.  Performance degraded by crypto operation is offset using crypto hardware and meaningful application of mail priority.  Ultimately, slower means more protection against spammers.

Only TEN users can send e-mail from a TEN network.  Anyone can receive a TEN e-mail.

Every TEN user is identified and the user's profile is maintained actively by at least one TEN service provider.  Each complaint against the user affects the user's profile as well as the profile of the organization sponsoring the user and the TEN service provider.  Variouis types of penalties affecting the quality of service are applied to the offending user or organization according to their profiles.  TEN service providers that fail to maintain required level of service are ejected from TEN.

Quality of identity is maintained by payment.  New subscribers start at the ground level.  A side benefit from time-based quality of identity is reduced turnover within the network, that is they can maintain their quality of identity only if they change service within the network.

That's it for now.  I am still thinking about TEN, but I had to spew just now because I need a refreshing drink of peer criticism.  You wouldn't give TEN a Ten, would you?  Heh.  When I briefly dug into sendmail, I was surprised to find it almost ready for TEN.  With a bit of codeworks and a load of capital, TEN could be Visa for e-mails.

Update #1: 12:26PM

TEN differs from S/MIME-based solutions because it doesn't require the sender to have a user cert which must be issued, installed, revoked, and checked, the nightmare that brought down lofty dreams of PKI.  With TEN, all that requires is for the sender to add a SMTP server to his e-mail client because it's the user's TEN server that signs the e-mail, possibly in S/MIME format.

To the receiver, it doesn't really matter who signed the e-mail as long as someone trustworthy did.  Non-repudiation can be provided as a value-added TEN service that requires stronger authentication methods.  Receipient feedback to the originating TEN server can be done in several ways including attaching a message-specific URL to the end or a Click Here to Kickass hyperlink.

A typical TEN user will have two SMTP accounts, a TEN account and a junk-mail account.  Because e-mails sent via TEN account is fee-based, the user will use the junk-mail account for unimportant messages and subscribing to mailing lists.  For important e-mails though, the user will choose to use TEN.

A TEN account should cost around $20 to open so everyone can get a TEN account just in case.  There will be a low monthly maintenance fee with reasonable monthly traffic allowances.  traffic-overflow can be sold per message or by bulk.  Spammers can't abuse the system because bulk e-mail is trickled initially, giving enough time for complaints to flow back to the TEN server, squashing the remainder and slapping the sender around.

 

Despite confusing Tim Oren, I am pro-Terminator and am happy to see Arnold win the election.  It turns out Tim is also a support of Arnold.  Right on, Tim!  Arnold said all the right things in his victory speech and I am looking forward to watch him kick California into shape.  Hurrah!

Recent suckage by Google regarding their AdSense program (see Joi's post for latest set of links to related posts) brings to light an interesting choice in life.  If you had to choose, which would you rather be: Stupid or Evil?

Since Google's #1 rule is "Don't be Evil", I guess they would rather be Stupid than Evil.  Just in case, here is How Google can be Smart and Secretly Evil:

1. Shut up about the secret monitoring technology that can detect mousy leech with 100% accuracy.  What is the point of bragging about something you can't show?  Besides, if secrecy is one of its secret sauce, it follows that cheats can be found when the details are revealed.  Also, you can't even reveal it to your advertisers to convince them that it works, can you?  Be smart and just shut up about it.
    
2. Stop sending accusatory letters to well-connected troublemakers.  Yes, that means bloggers.  In your zeal to tap a potentially explosive market, you paid too much attention to the word market and not enough attention to the word explosive.  Keep poking the bear and you are gonna get Evil-branded like Microsoft.
    
3. Stop listening to lawyers.  They are worse than righteous geeks and angry mothers when it comes to making trouble.  Yes, that means knocking off that stupid addition to the AdSense contract.
    
4. Do apologize like a sniveling idiot.  Apologies don't show up on the balance sheet so spend it like a maniac.
    
5. Do introduce account productivity level (percentage of good click-throughs over total click-throughs) which is multiplied to total amount owed.  So if my level is 50% and my AdSense accumulated $200, I get $100.
    
6. Do introduce probation periods for new accounts.  Accounts on probation period are monitored more closely and may get canceled without pay.
      
7. Do review AdSense accounts regularly and warn unproductive accounts.  If improvements are not made after initial warnings, account is placed on probation.
    
8. Do hire someone who can sell ice-cream to Eskimos to write the cancellation letter instead of having some fool write something that falls just short of calling people thieves and liers.

Update #1:

I retracted Do pay in full item and reordered the list in response to fan mail (;-p).

Warning: This might be one mind expansion you might not want.

Wow.  One of our cactuses sprouted two flowers.  Well, I think they are flowers.  Desert plants tend to keep their flowers sheathed until the conditions are right to breed.  I am not sure if many people share my view, but I think flower is like penis for plants except, unlike mammals that run around to mate, plants just let it hang out.  Hey, that's one horny cactus we got here.

Helping my wife's garden work in my own way.
Whew.  Photography is hard work.

In Metadata, Semiotics, and the Tower of Babel, Tim Oren rants against some of the assumptions behind the metadata bubblet which Joi Ito hinted at in his If I were Microsoft post.  It is kind of ironic that Tim used the Semiotic wand to blast the Shangri-la illusion off the Tower of Metadata Babel because people had many different interpretations of Joi's post.

Symbols are just containers for semantics.  If you put cookies in one, people know them as jar with cookies and identify it by its shape and location.  As soon as you have one jar, you will have many so people invented ways to refer to each jar by name (cookie jar) and distinguish it by sight (it has a picture of cookies carved on it).

Semiotics is all about problems of jar selection.  While size and shape of a jar limit what can be stored inside it, there are enough leeways for people to use the jars for wide variety of purposes.

In Korea, there is a specially shaped jar for urine so one doesn't have to go outside in the middle of the night to take a leak.  It's a beautifully shaped jar.  Now imagine what would happen if an American came upon the jar.  Chances are pretty good that he would see a cookie jar, a jarring example of semiotics.

So Joi was musing about Microsoft monopolizing the emerging jar market to gain an upper hand on Google which cornered the market on baskets.  Tim disagrees because people can put anything in jars regardless of the picture or label on the jar which will cause confusion like the Ecstasy test result mixup.

I am somewhere in between.  I believe two common forms of human nature, conformity and mimicry, allow sufficiently large and reasonably coherent set of metadata to be created, if not by design, then by popularity (see Emergent Markup Languages).