Links

Things I run across that I find to be interesting, but might not have the time or inclination to craft a fuller post around it. Generally, short little “go here, look at this, isn’t it neat?” posts.

Let it snow!

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Heh — cool web toy of the moment (if you have a webcam — without a cam you can read about it and see the sample images, but the effect just won’t quite be the same): Webcam Snowstorm.

This experiment simulates a snowfall with 400 snowflakes on screen, each with random size, rotation, speed and blur (using BlurFilter). Each of them is independently affected by wind (as partially controlled by your cursor’s x position). That Flash can run it all fluidly is impressive in itself, but of course there’s more. It’s also monitoring the webcam input, detecting edges, and making the snowflakes settle gently on any horizontal surface they encounter – pretty cool.

If you don’t have a webcam, you can still see the snowfall, and I’ve appended a picture of it in action below. If you do, try playing around with it – one of the neatest things I think is to let some snow pile up on your head or shoulders and then brush it off with your hand… virtual dandruff!

If you’re on a Mac, you may need to tweak the Flash player settings a touch to get it to work. Right-click on the flash movie, choose “Settings…”, switch to the webcam tab (fourth along the bottom), and set it to a different video input (for my iSight, it ended up being “IIDC FireWire Video”).

(via TDavid)

iTunes Signature Maker

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Cool toy if you use iTunes to listen to your music: the iTunes Signature Maker.

People often ask me what music I listen to, and I find it difficult to describe my enormous music collection in just a few sentences. So I created iTunes Signature Maker (iTSM) to answer in sound a question I cannot answer in words. iTSM analyzes your music collection and creates a short audio signature to represent it.

iTSM selects a small number of your “favorite” tracks based on some simple selection criteria, such as the number of times you have played them or the rating you have assigned them. Then it analyzes the audio content of these files, combining a small bit of each of them to create the signature.

Here’s my first one (464 Kb .mp3, 23 seconds).

And with slightly different settings, one more (1.2 Mb .mp3, 64 seconds).

Here’s the analysis that iTSM provides — if you know the songs and listen fast enough, you can hear them all in this order.

(via Kottke)

Read more

Sony’s rootkit

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In one of the (many) stories that have been flying by my radar without being remarked on over the past few weeks, it recently came to light that Sony has been using some incredibly nasty “copy protection” schemes on many of its audio CDs — surreptitiously installing software on Windows-based PCs that cloaks itself, sends customer data back to Sony via the ‘net, leaves a ‘backdoor’ wide open for malicious hackers to take advantage of, and is incredibly difficult to remove (to the point of requiring a re-install of Windows). Sony initially tried to claim that they’d done nothing wrong, and it was only through constant investigation and hammering, first by tech-centric weblogs and then by more mainstream media, before they finally backed down.

Wired News has an excellent rundown of the situation that’s worth reading. This is how the major corporations are treating their customers these days. It’s not a pretty thing.

On Oct. 31, Mark Russinovich broke the story in his blog: Sony BMG Music Entertainment distributed a copy-protection scheme with music CDs that secretly installed a rootkit on computers. This software tool is run without your knowledge or consent — if it’s loaded on your computer with a CD, a hacker can gain and maintain access to your system and you wouldn’t know it.

The Sony code modifies Windows so you can’t tell it’s there, a process called “cloaking” in the hacker world. It acts as spyware, surreptitiously sending information about you to Sony. And it can’t be removed; trying to get rid of it damages Windows.

[…] The outcry was so great that on Nov. 11, Sony announced it was temporarily halting production of that copy-protection scheme. That still wasn’t enough — on Nov. 14 the company announced it was pulling copy-protected CDs from store shelves and offered to replace customers’ infected CDs for free.

[…] When its actions were first discovered, Sony offered a “fix” that didn’t remove the rootkit, just the cloaking.

[…] Sony claimed the rootkit didn’t phone home when it did. On Nov. 4, Thomas Hesse, Sony BMG’s president of global digital business, demonstrated the company’s disdain for its customers when he said, “Most people don’t even know what a rootkit is, so why should they care about it?” in an NPR interview. Even Sony’s apology only admits that its rootkit “includes a feature that may make a user’s computer susceptible to a virus written specifically to target the software.”

[…] Sony’s latest rootkit-removal tool actually leaves a gaping vulnerability. And Sony’s rootkit — designed to stop copyright infringement — itself may have infringed on copyright. As amazing as it might seem, the code seems to include an open-source MP3 encoder in violation of that library’s license agreement.

[…] The rootkit has even been found on computers run by the Department of Defense, to the Department of Homeland Security’s displeasure. While Sony could be prosecuted under U.S. cybercrime law, no one thinks it will be.

[…] Initial estimates are that more than half a million computers worldwide are infected with this Sony rootkit. Those are amazing infection numbers, making this one of the most serious internet epidemics of all time — on a par with worms like Blaster, Slammer, Code Red and Nimda.

Where I’ve Been

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Where I've travelled in the world

USA, Canada, England, Germany (twice), Austria, Hungary, Yugoslavia (which doesn’t exist anymore, so I had to choose Bosnia/Herzegovina), Italy, and Greece.

Where I've travelled in the US

Alaska, Arkansas, California, Washington DC, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Maryland, Mississipi, Montana, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia.

(Some of these are “visited” in the sense of “drove through or rode through in a train”, others were when I was very young and can’t really remember. Still…in once sense or another, I’ve physically been within the borders of the state.)

Create your own visited states map or visited countries map.

Kind of sad that this is all I’ve been to, and yet that’s enough for many people to consider me “well traveled”. There’s still so much of this planet that I need to get to…I’ve barely gotten started!

Panexa (Acidachrome Promanganate)

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Since Prairie got me watching a bit more TV than I have in the past few years, I’ve been regularly entertained by commercials for drugs where 20% of the commercial is soothing platitudes, and the other 80% is warnings about possible complications and disturbing side effects.

There’s a new winner in that particular game, though — Panexa.

No matter what you do or where you go, you’re always going to be yourself. And Panexa knows this. Your lifestyle is one of the biggest factors in choosing how to live. Why trust it to anything less? Panexa is proven to provide more medication to those who take it than any other comparable solution. Panexa is the right choice, the safe choice. The only choice.

Panexa. Ask your doctor for a reason to take it.

Royce sent me a link to this site yesterday with a note saying “Man, I hurt myself laughing at some parts of this.” He’s not kidding.

America’s Next Muppet

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I’m not sure what I got more excited about — the fact that there’s a Muppet-centric weblog that I just discovered, or that the Muppets may be coming back to TV!

People have been buzzing about “America’s Next Muppet” for months now. Disney is still planning to relaunch the Muppets with a prime-time ABC “reality” parody series. […]

A network representative has said that the Muppet project is still in the extremely early stages of development. But ABC has now officially ordered a pilot script and five additional script outlines for “America’s Next Muppet”. This will be shot in the format of a “reality show”, and will use a lot of the same syntax and cinematic grammar that the genre has developed, however like all past Muppet TV shows will be scripted. If ABC is impressed with the pilot episode script and the pilot episode, than the five outlines will start being turned into scripts and episodes. These six episodes are hoped to air in Spring/Summer 2006, and if successful then more episodes could be ordered, and the series continued.

Other fun news from the site: the short-lived “Muppets Tonight” show may be coming to DVD, and Palisades Toys have acquired the rights to create a line of Labrynth collectibles (including multiple Goblin King figurines with various outfits)!

Frappr

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Check out our Frappr!There’s a new Google Maps hack/toy out bouncing across the ‘net now: Frappr, which allows people to put their location in (zip code only, so no stalking possible) and have it displayed as part of a group.

I’ve created a group for Eclecticism readers…feel free to drop by and add yourself to the map. I’d love to get an idea of just how widespread my readers are!