Category: Computers/Internet

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To be honest, I haven’t used any instant messaging system much since college. But every once in a while I fire up Gaim just to see if anyone I know is on AIM or ICQ. I have a Yahoo account, but I’m not sure anyone I know actually uses Yahoo Messenger, and I’ve been avoiding MSN mainly on principle.

Sadly, it seems the IM wars have returned.

This time it’s Yahoo that’s blocked other clients from connecting to their networks. The most high-profile victim has been Trillian, another client which talks to multiple IM networks, but of course Gaim was hit as well. What’s interesting, this time, is that Yahoo claims it’s doing this to cut down on spam.

Now let’s think about this: In order to send and receive instant messages on Yahoo’s network, you need a Yahoo account, correct? So no matter what software a spammer uses to connect, he still needs to log in, which means Yahoo can control them inside the network. This is where current IM systems are fundamentally different from email: instead of many independently-controlled systems talking to each other, each IM service is one system with many accounts, more like a website with required registration. Place limits on what clients can do, and (barring bugs in your server) no matter what client someone uses, he can’t get around your spam/virus/hack controls.
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Long story short: while Eudora is still my favorite Windows-based email program, its HTML rendering is so bad that I had to read today’s Microsoft Technet newsletter on my Linux box. (And before anyone comments that I can set Eudora to use IE’s rendering engine, I don’t want the security mess of letting Internet Explorer handle my email.)

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I saw an interesting article on Slate the other day: The Undead Zone: Why realistic graphics make humans look creepy.

The basic thrust of the article is that when something looks slightly human – say a cartoon, or a C3PO-like robot – we fill in the gaps. But when something looks almost, but not quite human, we start to focus on the things that look wrong instead. This was observed by roboticist Masahiro Mori, who called it the uncanny valley. The term refers to the appearance of a graph plotting emotional response (y) against how closely something resembles normal humans (x). Up to a point – say 90% – the more humanlike something is, the better people respond to it, until it reaches that almost-but-not-quite-there point where instead of responding positively, people start responding with revulsion and active dislike. Eventually, as things get closer to “real,” the curve swings back up again until the reaction is the same as to a normal person.

So what does this mean for video games? At least for some people — including the article’s author — state-of-the-art graphics are in that valley. We can get a very good representation of a lifeless but moving human being. Getting those last few details, pushing up the far side of the valley, is going to be very hard.

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Yahoo has finally released its specification for its DomainKeys email authentication scheme. Included is the following patent license (emphasis added):

Yahoo! will grant a royalty-free, worldwide, non-exclusive license under any Yahoo! patent claims that are essential to implement or use any Implementations so that licensees can make, use, sell, offer for sale, import, or yodel Implementations; provided that the licensee agrees not to assert against Yahoo!, or any other Yahoo! licensees of Implementations, any patent claims of licensee that are essential to implement or use any Implementations.

Yodel?

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I was about to post this over at my LiveJournal, when I discovered my journal was offline due to a massive server outage. Nice timing, as you’ll see:

Well, the phone’s acting up again. Oddly enough, DSL is working most of the time, even though we can’t get a dial tone. An SBC tech is scheduled to come out tomorrow afternoon, but the guy I spoke with had some suggestions for self-troubleshooting (since if it turns out to be a problem with our equipment, we get charged.

So now that we’ve moved the full-height bookshelf out of the way of the phone jack, I’m about to disconnect the last phone line and see what I can find out. Whee.

On the other hand, now that the shelf is out of the way, I can try rearranging cables to see if it gives us the full DSL speed. We’re supposed to get about 600K, but only ever get half of that, and I suspect it’s the ancient 20-foot phone cable. If I move the modem closer to the jack and use a short phone cord and a long network cable, it might speed things up.

Mood: Resigned.

Update 9:32 PM

Well, that was a colossal waste of time and effort. After disconnecting everything, rearranging the DSL/network structure while I waited, then hooking phones back up one at a time, it seemed everything was working. Same old DSL speed, but at least we had a dial tone on each phone. So I canceled the call forwarding, and called SBC to cancel the dispatch. Then it occurred to me I’d better try to make an incoming call. Half a ring, and suddenly there’s static (and nothing else) on both lines.

So it’s disconnect everything again, wait 5+ minutes again, and this time… nothing. Static, and only static. At least the DSL came back up. That would have really ticked me off. And another call into SBC to reinstate the tech dispatch. Fun, fun, fun! (Grumble.)

Anyway, we’re back to square one. I can only hope anyone who needs to call us before tomorrow afternoon tries one of our cell phones instead.

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It looks like it wasn’t quite the perfect time I thought to order a PowerBook. I received confirmation today from TerraSoft that the delay is due to the changes in the PowerBook line (which were half the reason I chose now to order it). It seems they’re still waiting for a shipment from Apple!

Presumably they had some in stock when they updated their store, in which case this is probably a good thing: it means not only are the new PowerBooks selling faster than expected, but they’re selling well through a Linux shop!

That said, if I have to wait too long I may just cancel this order and drive down to the Apple store. Of course, then I’d have to deal with repartitioning and trying to set up dual booting myself, and not only is it more complicated than dual-booting a PC*, there’s a lot less information available.

Ah, well.

* In particular, I don’t know of any utilities like Partition Magic or Parted that will allow you to resize an active Mac OS filesystem, so I would have to wipe the disk and reinstall Mac OS along with installing Linux.

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