Xoke.org

Possibly the “ultimate question”.  So many different questions of why.  Well now Google knows the top ones, and using their sophisticated algorithms, now do I.  I will now share with you the top ‘why’ questions (according to google).  They are:

• Why is the sky blue?
• Why do men have nipples?
• Why did the chicken cross the road?
• Why do cats purr?
• Why men cheat?
• Why did Chris Brown with Rihanna?
• Why did Chris Brown beat up Rihanna?
• Why did Chris Brown feat Rihanna?
• Why do dogs eat poop?
• Why did I get married?

Try it yourself.  If you use Google itself, you don’t get the final one though, but use the Firefox Google thing you should see exactly what I got here.  So there we go.  One less thing to worry about!

Oh and the sky is blue because of refraction in the atmosphere of the sun.  This is also why it changes colour during dawn / dusk because of the increased angle (and actually air pressure, so the ‘red sky at night’ thing does have bearing in reality).  The chicken crossed the road to get to the other side, of course and dogs eat poop because it takes the taste away from their food.  That is also the reason they are always licking their balls.  Don’t take my word for it.  Just listen to Dave Lister (at the end of this clip)

I mentioned Tiny Tiny RSS on the last two TiT Radios.  On the first I had only just set it up, and on the second I mentioned how it didn’t seem to be updating correctly.  I took my feeds from Google Reader and imported them into TTRSS and cleared them both down to compare how they worked.  I noted that I had a lot more in Reader then TTRSS.  Now I also said I was looking into why that was.

Well I have been playing around reading through this page, where they give a bunch of ways to update.  Some seem better then others (as they warn) and I still have to try to sort out the ‘best’ way they recommend.  But for now, it’s looking a lot more promising.

First up, I agree with everything I have heard Lawrence Lessig say.  I think Creative Commons is a great idea (remember I release lots of things under CC licenses, including this post and everything on this website that I can).  I am also a realist however, and believe that the big companies / groups (RIAA / MPAA etc) will never go for it.

I think we need to try to reach a compromise with them, to increase the amount of public domain works.  If we turn around and say everything must be Creative Commons, they will block us.  We need to give them a reason to give up some work.  Which would be an improvement.

To that end, I have put some thought into this.  I discussed some of this on a Cranks episode a while back, but wanted to put out a post and start some discussion on it.  I’m not claiming this is perfect.  I’m not saying I’m right on these ideas.  This is just currently what I think would be at least mildly interesting to all parties.  Also I’m interested in your feedback.  Just don’t say ‘its crap’ and leave it at that, please explain what you think needs improvement.  The idea being we want something better then what we have, not something perfect.  Then once we have something better, we can try to improve on that again and so on.

The number of years I list here I just picked a number for, basically.  These can be changed based on the return.  I know that most things that are released get most of their sales in the first few years, so the idea would be that this number of years would be where 99% of the return is.

1. If you release a new work, unless otherwise stated (e.g. releasing it under a CC license), you get an immediate copyright for ten years.
2. If you re-release something, unless it contains 51% or more new content, copyright is not extended.  If it is something new, copyright is extended for another ten years.  It must be in an equivalent form however.
3. Fair use should be clarified for everyone.  If you mash-up a song or use a song (e.g. in a YouTube video) you have to give attribution to the original creator, however if the income you make from that work is under a thousand dollars, it is fair use.  All existing ‘fair use’ stuff stays!
4. If another type of media creates a work based off of your copyrighted work (e.g. a movie is made from your book) then that extends your copyright on the book for ten years as long as the book is still under copyright.

The reasons for these, I mention below.

1. This way things fall out of copyright faster, meaning more work in the public domain that people can use to create new works, just like everyone has done for ever.  I’ll take this song someone made and put new lyrics on, or mash the music up etc.  This is my ‘use it or lose it’ clause.
2. This I dub the ‘Disney’ clause.  This way, as long as Disney makes a new Mickey Mouse movie every decade (not just a rehash, hence the 51%) they get to keep copyright on it.  Yes, this is probably a bad idea as they can have copyright forever on Mickey Mouse, however this way they should be on our side for this.  Otherwise they will continue to press for longer and longer copyright so Mickey Mouse does not fall out of copyright.  They can’t however just release a one minute Mickey cartoon to extend the copyright.  It must be a series of 30 minutes cartoons, or a movie, like they have done in the past.
3. I pick a thousand as I think some people will argue that it’s on YouTube or your website or whatever and you are getting ad revenue in therefore it is commercial.  Picking a small amount of profit should avoid this, as long as it’s a small site and for ‘personal use’.  If you have a huge site, you can’t just put other peoples stuff on there and make money off the ads!
4. This one was after I heard about Forest Gump.  The book didn’t do too well, but when the movie came out the book sold a ton more.  Actually I have no idea if it was in the ‘ten years’ my ideas would make the copyright, but I feel we should allow this to try to increase ‘buy in’ as it were.

I’m sure I’m missing things in here.  Would movie studios wait for ten years after a book is made to try to snap it up for free?  Perhaps, but a rival studio could pick it up beforehand too.

I’m not sure how CDs would work.  What if a band releases a ‘best of’ album.  Should that extend the copyright on the work or not?  I think it should, somehow.  But we can’t just say a re-release extends copyright else you simply release a ‘new’ best of CD every 10 years and have perma-copyright.  Anyone got a better idea?

I also like this ‘use it or lose it’ idea for patents.  There are too many patent trolls around.  If you are not using the patent actively then it should become public domain.

Email me, catch me in IRC, or phone me or whatever to let me know what you think.  Again, just to repeat myself, constructive critisism please.  I know this is not a perfect solution!  But if you have ideas on how to improve these ideas, let me know.  It has to be something that the RIAA / MPAA etc would go for, though and not just a ‘release everything under a CC’ license.  Whilst I think that would be cool, Disney etc would not go for it.

I moved over to WordPress.  Drupal is cool, but I’m not using about 90% of it.  Also upgrading sucks on Drupal.  You have to use a bunch of plugins to get things like a wysiwyg editor, then every time each one updates you have to manually copy the files up and run the update script.  So this should be basically the same as the old site.  I’ve even tried to make sure all the links still work!  So xoke.org/python/1 still takes you to the first HPR episode on Programming 101 that I did.

Some of the older posts will be missing.  I upped the RSS in the old site and grabbed as much as I could (30 posts, excluding this one) and all the tips and similar are here also.  All in all it should be everything people want anyway.

I’m sure I will have missed something, so just let me know.  Apart from that, enjoy!

Just received this from my mother and thought I had better warn people.

Thank goodness – a diagnosis at last for my recurrent flu-like symptoms!

I’m so glad it’s finally been recognized… I’ve been knocked around by this flu so many times over the years, it’s one of those ones that just hits you suddenly and for some reason it’s more infectious on a weekend…  bizarre I know!

I went to a dinner party last night, where I and other guests enjoyed copious amounts of alcohol.  I awoke this morning not feeling well, with what could be described as flu-like symptoms; headache, nausea, chills, sore eyes etc.

From the results of some initial testing, I have unfortunately tested positive for what experts are now calling Wine Flu.  This debilitating condition is very serious and it appears this is not an isolated case.

Reports are flooding in from all around the neighbourhood of others diagnosed with Wine Flu.

To anyone that starts to exhibit the aforementioned tell-tale signs, experts are recommending a cup of tea and a bit of a lie down.

However, should your condition worsen, you should immediately hire a DVD and take some Nurofen [Nurofen seems to be the only drug available that has been proven to help combat this unusual type of flu].  Others are reporting a McDonald’s Happy Meal can also help in some cases, but I’m not so sure about that one.

Wine Flu does not need to be life threatening, and if treated early can be eradicated within a 24-48 hour period.  If not, then further application of the original liquid in similar quantities to the original dose has been shown to do the trick

For the latest Ten Buck Review, Lord Drachenblut asked me to read the “Hackers Manifesto”.  A few people have liked it and were going to grab the segment from the file.  Well to save you the trouble I have the Ogg file here.

Xoke reading Hackers Manifesto

Technically it’s not the Hackers Manifest, it’s the ‘Conscious of the Hacker’ written originally by “The Mentor” years ago.  I wrote about it earlier.

Anyway hope you like it, and I hope I did it justice.

I’m still playing around with Google Voice and have just set it up to connect to Gizmo.  You just add a new phone and select ‘gizmo’ as the type.  Google will call you and you have to enter a number to prove you have the phone and so you can’t use it to prank call people, for example.  I found Google wouldn’t accept the numbers until I said ‘out of band’ under preferences -> advanced within Gizmo like so:

Once I did that Google recognised the number immediately (no need to reboot or even close that window down!)

I recommend putting it back to IN-BAND as I believe Talkshoe requires in-band though.

So in theory using this you can call anyone in the US for free from anywhere in the world.  I am going to continue to try this out.  I did make a test call to MrsXoke and there was a half second delay, but for free phone calls I can live with that!

I received my Google Voice invite a few hours ago and have set one up for me.  So far I'm the only one to call it (I was playing) and have found that the transcription is REALLY bad.  Maybe it is my accent, but so far it hasn't been close.

I said: Errr lets test something.  Testing testing testing, Xoke, something or else, something or other, that'll do.

It transcribed: i don't know if that's something testing testing testing is that something row so we're all of those

I didn't expect it to get 'Xoke', but it had many problems.

 

So maybe it was my accent.  So I asked MiniXoke to try calling it.

MiniXoke said: erm, hi I'm just testing to make sure this isn't because he has an English accent.  Alright bye.

It transcribed: hi i'm just testing the truth and again things accent alright bye

This wasn't too bad actually.  It got about half of it right!

  

I said: And testing again.  Oh I am the very model of a modern major-general, I've information animal and vegatable and mineral.  And lets try that a little slower.  Oh I am the very model of a modern major-general, I've information animal, vegatable and mineral.  And lets see how that works.  Actually whilst I'm still on the line lets see if it does actually mention something there… oh no, alright, never mind.

It transcribed: Transcript not available

 

I said: Testing on speakerphone, lets try to slow the speech down a little and see how the transcription works.

It transcribed: this afternoon because in let's try and slaves beach down a little and see how it sounds good to works

Wow.  Almost completely wrong!

 

I said: And this is through the er web thing.

It transcribed: hernandez the okay <long silent period>

 

So overall… the transcription sucks.  Maybe it's just the accent.  It did do significantly better with MiniXoke's American accent.  But the transcription isn't the whole thing about Google Voice, it is for a single number and voicemail and so on and for that it seems to work as it should.

If you want to call me and give it a try:

 

 

 

Update

Ron K Jeffries called in!  I checked and he didn't mind me posting it here (in fact he wants to know how well it worked).

Ron: Hello this is Ron Je.. K Jeffries from Identica and I saw that you were playing with Google Voice and thought what the hell, I'd try your little widget.  Again it's Ron Jeffries, Good Luck, Bye

Transcription: hello this is ron cook my okay jeffries from identical then i saw that you were playing with google voice and about what the hell i'd try your bill which it again it's ron jeffries good luck bye

This worked a lot better.  Looks like it is the accent that is throwing it off (or a child's voice).  It didn't get a few things right like his name first off all but Ron started to say Ron Jeffries and then added his middle initial.  Still not sure how COOK came up.  Widget to Which it… I can see why that had a problem.  Overall I am now far more impressed as it is about 80% accurate*

I would like more tests though, so if anyone else fancied calling in go for it!  I plan on manually transcribing them up, at least until I get bored of this anyway!

 

Jennifer Leggio just called me.  She is mediaphyter on twitter.

Mediaphyter: Hi it's Jennifer Leggio mediaphyter.  I'm calling to test the Google Voice.  I found your transcription blog post, hysterical so um, of course i had a call i'll try and see what it did to garble what I had to say so I hope you're having a great day and i'll talk to you soon bye

Transcription: hi it's jennifer let you know media fighter i'm calling to test the group of away i found your transcription bloggers it's terrible so of course i had a call i'll try and see what it said to grable what i had to say so i hope you're having a great day and i'll talk to you soon bye

 

I should point out that it does show how confident it is in the transcription and the bits it got wrong it thought were probably not quite right.  It didn't get Leggio right (fair enough, not that common a surname) and Mediaphyter (again, no surprise there).  Odd it didn't recognise 'Google Voice' and why 'grable' and not garble?  Overall though about 90% accurate*

I am going to try to grab a video of it reading to show how that works and will update when I get that working (no sound currently!)

* Statistics calculated by me eyeballing it and pulling a figure out of my arse.

In fact I have been around on the internet for quite some time now. My first modem was a 1200/2400 baud thing that is larger then this laptop! I still have it somewhere (well it's stored at my parents house) and I will have to get pictures sometime.

Anyway, I received this email just now, slightly edited as I mention below:

 

From: Google Promotions [winners@google.co.uk]
Reply To: Google Promotions [mrg_benfield@msn.com]
Subject: GOOGLE GIVE-AWAY WINNING NOTIFICATION!!! GOOGLE GIVE-AWAY WINNING NOTIFICATION!!!

This E-mail is to inform you that your e-mail emerged as a winner of £850,000.00 GBP (Eight Hundred And Fifty Thousand British Pounds) in our online Give-away draws. Over £20,000,000.00 (Twenty Million British pounds) is to be given out for this Draws. No purchases of tickets were required. Participants for the draws were randomly selected from a world wide range of web searchers who use the Google search engine (Googler) and other Google ancillary services. Google is now the biggest search engine worldwide and in an effort to make sure that it remains the most widely used search engine, Google is running an e-mail beta test.
Your email address was linked with our Computer Generated Profile Numbers(CGPN) and attached to the following details: Computer Generated Profile Numbers (CGPN):[REMOVED], Ticket number: [REMOVED], Serial numbers:[REMOVED], Lucky numbers: [REMOVED], was picked among our lucky winners to receive £500, 000.00 British pounds. Winners were selected randomly through a computer ballot system from worldwide users of the Google search engine.
YOUR WINNING DETAILS ARE AS FOLLOW:
Computer Generated Profile Numbers (CGPN):[REMOVED]
Ticket number: [REMOVED]
Lucky numbers: [REMOVED]
Serial numbers: [REMOVED]
To claim your give-away prize, send the following. Your full names................. , sex...............................,Location............................Alternate e-mail address..................Your winning details.................
To your processing agent (Mr Grahams Benfield) who have been assigned to handle your winning file and payment processing.

Your Processing Agent contact:
Mr. Mr Grahams Benfield,
Email: mr.g.benfield@gmail.com

Sincerely,
Mrs Lisa James.

 

For the benefit of anyone who Googled this page, this is fake.

We can see this fairly easily from several things.

1. Seriously, why would google just give away money to you without actually making a huge deal about it. They would have ads everywhere saying 'in September, win a million bucks just by Googling' or whatever. I haven't heard anything about it, so they didn't.
2. The 'from' email address is Google.co.uk. This ties in with the prize being in GBP, but 'from' email addresses are way too easy to fake so we will ignore this.
3. The 'reply to' email address is an MSN account! Google would have an @google.com or @google.co.uk account (see 2 above) and would never use a competitor's email account!
4. The email at the bottom is a gmail account, again a free email account and not a real Google account. This is different from the earlier email address.
5. Grammar. Mr. Mr Grahams Benfield. Mr Mr? Grahams? Many other things are wrong also so this looks like it's not a proper company communication.

There are more reasons I'm sure, I could dig through the headers.  But basically it's a scam, they will try to get all your details (bank details also) from you and then probably even say that taxes have to be paid, so can you send them the money. Don't fall for this.

Yes, my regular readers are unlikely to, but I figured people will Google for this and I'd make it sure.

Just installed Piwik an Open Source Web stats program.  Going to keep Google Analytics for a little bit longer to compare them, but it's all looking good for now :)