may the force be with you

FRANKFURT, Germany - German and U.S. scientists have launched a project to reconstruct the Neanderthal genome, the Max-Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology said Wednesday.

The project, which involves isolating genetic fragments from fossils of the prehistoric beings who originally inhabited Europe, is being carried out at the Leipzig-based institute.

"The project is very new and is just at its beginning," said Sandra Jacob, a spokeswoman for the institute.

U.S. geneticist Edward Rubin, from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in Berkeley, Calif., is also participating in the project.

In an interview with the German weekly Die Zeit, Rubin said the research would amount to more than just a spectacular display of science.

"Firstly, we will learn a lot about the Neanderthals. Secondly, we will learn a lot about the uniqueness of human beings. And thirdly, it's simply cool," Rubin said.

Neanderthals were replaced by modern humans in Europe only between 40,000 and 30,000 years ago.


source:http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050706/ap_on_sc/neanderthal_genome

When DVD-Video's encryption had been broken about 6 years back, the next generation of the Audio CD, DVD-Audio had been delayed for several months. It was originally to use the CSS2 encryption scheme, but the breaking of CSS meant the music industry no longer wanted anything to do with CSS in the new upcoming DVD-Audio format at the time. As a result, DVD-Audio took on Content Protection for Pre-recorded Media (CPPM), a much more advanced copy-protection system, which includes Key Blocks and watermarking and allows revocation (for compromised devices).

It was not long ago that DVD-Audio playback software came to the PC. For example Creative's SoundBlaster Audigy 2 comes with a DVD-Audio as well as WinDVD's DVD-Audio add-on. So, rather than try to compromise the DVD-Audio's encryption itself, someone has succeeded in making a patch that uses WinDVD to perform the decryption and playback, but instead pipes the decrypted audio output to the hard drive instead of the sound card. The patch which includes several tools requires WinDVD 5, 6 or 7 to work.

Several tools to work with DVD-Audio (read: ripping)
They require WinDVD 5, 6 or 7 installed, as they don't do the decryption themselves, and instead patch WinDVD to output the decrypted stream to disk instead of the sound card.
The tools are:

* DVD-A ripper: Intended to decrypt CPPM protected AOB and VOB files on DVD-Audio discs.
* PPCM ripper: Intended to capture Packed PCM (MLP) stream (stereo or multichannel) to .WAV files.
* DVD-A Explorer: Intended to peep&grab on DVD-Audio tracks (PCM and Packed PCM).

This tool is available at Rarewares here.

While InterVideo is likely to update its software to block the use of this patch, it appears that DVD-Audio’s CPPM has been compromised at least in DVD-Audio discs up until this time or until the keys used in the current versions of WinDVD that this tool works on are revoked in upcoming DVD-Audio disc releases. However, this would also mean that WinDVD users would be forced to update their software to play future DVD-Audio discs.

source: http://www.cdfreaks.com/news/12061

小型ヒューマノイドロボット「HOAP-3」新発売

富士通オートメーション株式会社(注1)は、株式会社富士通研究所(注2)と共同で、コミュニケーション機能や画像認識機能など外界との連携機能を強化した小型ヒューマノイドロボット「HOAP-3(ホープスリー)」を開発しました。本日から受注・販売を開始します。

「HOAP-3」は、7月13日から17日に、インテックス大阪(大阪市住之江区)で開催されるROBOTREX®2005に出展します。

画像: 新製品「HOAP-3」

「HOAP(注3)シリーズ」は、2001年「HOAP-1」の発売以来、国内の大学の機械工学、制御工学専攻のロボット研究者、海外のロボット研究者が研究開発に利用しているヒューマノイドロボットです。2003年には、人間の動作に必要となる運動性能を強化した「HOAP-2」を発売しました。

今回発売を開始する「HOAP-3」は、身長60センチメートル、体重8.8キログラムと、2003年に販売開始した「HOAP-2」の扱い易さ、運動性能を継承しながら、コミュニケーション機能や画像認識機能など外部との連携機能を強化した研究開発用ロボットです。カメラ、マイク、スピーカー、表情用LED、音声認識機能、音声合成機能、画像認識機能を追加したことで、人との対話などロボットを用いたコミュニケーションの研究や、視覚と動作を連携させたロボットの研究開発などに使用できます。

さらに、首、腕のアクチュエータ、距離センサー、握力センサーを追加し、動作表現力も強化しています。これらすべての機能は、パソコンによる有線・無線の制御が可能です。今回、無線制御を実現するために、高機能CPUと高速無線LANを採用しました。

音声認識、音声合成、画像認識、無線制御などの機能を標準搭載したことで、ロボット研究者にとどまらず、コミュニケーション分野の研究者、あるいは、博物館における展示としての利用など、より幅広い目的で使用できます。

従来の「HOAPシリーズ」と同様に、ハードウェアとソフトウェアの内部インターフェース情報を公開しますので、ユーザが自由にプログラムすることが可能です。また、開発した制御プログラムの事前確認が可能なシミュレーションソフトを標準添付しており、効率的なプログラム開発を行うことが可能です。
本製品の特長

1. 音声認識・音声合成機能を標準搭載。
2. 無線にてすべての機能が制御可能。
3. 28関節で複雑な動作が可能。
4. 各種センサー類を標準装備。
5. 動作検証用シミュレーターを標準添付。

主な仕様
主な仕様 身長 60センチメートル
体重 8.8キログラム
画像・音声インターフェース カメラ(2個)
マイク(1個)
スピーカー(1個)
関節自由度 28 DOF(Degree Of Freedom)
センサー ジャイロセンサー(3軸)
加速度センサー(3軸)
足底センサー(足4個)
握力センサー(手1個)
距離センサー(1個)
動作指令パソコン OS: RTLinux®
無線ユニット CPU: インテル®Pentium®M プロセッサ 1.1GHz
無線LAN: 802.11g
接続インターフェース
および体内ネットワーク USB 1.0 (12Mbps)
制御周期: 1ms
電源 DC24V 10A(240W)
販売価格

オープン価格
出荷時期

2005年7月
販売目標

今後3年間で100体
注釈

(注1) 富士通オートメーション株式会社:

社長 網代泰一、本社 栃木県さくら市
(注2) 株式会社富士通研究所:

社長 村野和雄、本社 神奈川県川崎市
(注3) HOAPシリーズ:

HOAPは、Humanoid Open Architecture Platformの略

商標について

* 記載されている製品名などの固有名詞は、各社の商標または登録商標です。

関連リンク

* 富士通オートメーション株式会社: http://www.automation.fujitsu.com/
* 製品紹介ホームページ: http://www.automation.fujitsu.com/group/fja/services/hoap3/
* 株式会社富士通研究所: http://www.labs.fujitsu.com/jp/

お客様お問い合わせ先

富士通オートメーション株式会社
川崎営業所 営業統括部営業部 HOAP担当
電話: 044-754-3805 (直通)
E-mail: fja-hoap@cs.jp.fujitsu.com

報道関係お問い合わせ先

富士通オートメーション株式会社
川崎営業所 営業統括部営業部 HOAP担当
電話: 044-754-3805 (直通)
E-mail: fja-hoap@cs.jp.fujitsu.com


source: http://www.automation.fujitsu.com/group/fja/release/2005/0705/

Slashdot | Opera Embedding BitTorrent Client: "Wednesday July 06, @12:26PM
'The next version of Opera, 8.02, will have an embedded BitTorrent client. Opera has released today a Technical Preview of this new version on its FTP directory, though they have made no official announcement as of yet.'"

By Eric Auchard and Reed Stevenson Tue Jul 5, 4:33 PM ET

SAN FRANCISCO/SEATTLE (Reuters) - The founder of Go Computer, a pioneer of pen-based computing that was once seen as a possible alternative to Microsoft Corp.'s operating systems, filed antitrust lawsuits against Microsoft last week.

In parallel complaints filed last Wednesday in U.S. federal and California state courts, Jerry Kaplan, the founder of Go Computer Inc., seeks to piggyback on a wave of successful antitrust actions that Microsoft has settled in recent years.

Microsoft settled a landmark antitrust case with the U.S. government in 2002 that was followed by agreements with several U.S. states, the
European Union and industry rivals.

The Go case was filed one day before a settlement deal was struck between Microsoft and IBM in which Microsoft agreed to pay $775 million and provide some additional credits to IBM.

Go Computer, which was founded by Kaplan in 1987, created operating software that relied on a special pen and handwriting recognition system to control computers instead of the keyboards used by Microsoft's DOS and Windows software. Go was a forerunner to development of Palm handheld computers.

"Microsoft saw Go's PC operating system as a serious threat to its operating system monopoly and took swift covert action to 'kill' it just as it did the Netscape/Sun Java threat to its monopoly," according to Go's private action in federal court.

The U.S. antitrust case centered on Microsoft's efforts to crush rival software from Web browser pioneer Netscape Communications Corp. and allies such as Sun Microsystems Inc. (Nasdaq:SUNW - news). Sun pioneered Java, a programming system that allows software to run on a wide range of computers.

In the late 1980s, Go's operating system PenPoint, was designed to make computers easier to use. In some respects, the idea lives on in Microsoft-based tablet computers that allow users to input data via keyboard or handwriting on a screen.

Microsoft spokeswoman Stacy Drake said in a statement the assertions in the Go case were without merit.

"These claims date back nearly 20 years," Drake said. "They were baseless then, and they are baseless now."

The suit alleges Microsoft pressured Intel Corp. (Nasdaq:INTC - news) to curtail its financial backing of Go and used "incentives and threats" to force Compaq, now part of Hewlett Packard Co. (NYSE:HPQ - news), Fujitsu Ltd. (6702.T), Toshiba Corp. (6502.T) and other PC makers not to use Go software.

Drake responded that Go and Kaplan did not invent handwriting recognition.

"Handwriting recognition had severe limitations in the late 1980's and early 1990's and no company that attempted pen computing was successful then," she said.

Go was sold to AT&T Corp. in 1994, which closed the company in July of the same year. In November of 1994, Microsoft shut down its competing pen-computing effort, called PenWindows, which the suit alleges had largely existed to destroy Go.

The assets subsequently became part of AT&T spinoff Lucent Technologies Inc. (NYSE:LU - news). Lucent sold Go Computer Inc. and its claims to Kaplan three months ago in April 2005, the suit said. The Go complaint argues the statute of limitations for events stretching back as much as 17 years ago has been delayed by Microsoft's illegal behavior, allowing the case to proceed.

Some of the claims made by Kaplan were detailed in a popular business memoir he published in 1995 detailing the rise and fall of his company entitled "Startup: A Silicon Valley Adventure." The suits also rely heavily on evidence that was subsequently unearthed in antitrust cases against Microsoft.

The suits were filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California and in Superior Court for the State of California. Kellogg, Huber, Hansen, Todd, Evans & Figel Pllc, which has represented both plaintiffs and defendants in antitrust cases, is the plaintiff's counsel.


source: http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=581&e=2&u=/nm/20050705/tc_nm/tech_microsoft_antitrust_dc

Secure optical data storage could soon literally be at your fingertips thanks to work being carried out in Japan. Yoshio Hayasaki and his colleagues have discovered that data can be written into a human fingernail by irradiating it with femtosecond laser pulses. Capacities are said to be up to 5 mega bits and the stored data lasts for 6 months - the length of time it takes a fingernail to be completely replaced."


source:http://hardware.slashdot.org/hardware/05/07/06/141257.shtml?tid=198&tid=191

news link: http://optics.org/articles/news/11/7/4

Slashdot | Star Wars Props Up For Auction: "Wednesday July 06, @09:42AM
'Auctioneers Profiles in History are set to auction off a number of Star Wars props from the original trilogy movies. Fromthe collection of Star Wars producer Gary Kurtz, the pieces on offer include Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader's lightsabers as well as various costumes and masks.' While I can't imagine wanting to wear Luke's X-Wing flight suit, I think that light saber is pretty sweet. Although I bet it goes for the price of a new car."

"In most story-based games where you get to talk to characters, interaction is limited to selecting conversation options from a menu. Facade calls itself a one-act interactive drama, and is an attempt to create realistic 3D AI characters acting in a real-time interactive story, where you can talk to them via a natural language text interface. The player is cast as a visiting longtime friend of Grace and Trip, a couple in their early thirties, and ends up in a verbal crossfire resulting from their failing marriage. More info in the press release, an older conveniently mirrored NYT article and an Idle Thumbs review. It's available in the form of a rather chunky 800MB torrent."

source:http://games.slashdot.org/games/05/07/06/0412214.shtml?tid=126&tid=10

European parliament has . struck down the proposal for a directive that would have brought US-style software patents into EU." Here's another story on the decision.


source: http://yro.slashdot.org/yro/05/07/06/1156214.shtml?tid=155&tid=17

Though wireless mooching is preventable, it often goes undetected.

By ALEX LEARY, Times Staff Writer
Published July 4, 2005

ST. PETERSBURG - Richard Dinon saw the laptop's muted glow through the rear window of the SUV parked outside his home. He walked closer and noticed a man inside.

Then the man noticed Dinon and snapped his computer shut.

Maybe it's census work, the 28-year-old veterinarian told his girlfriend. An hour later, Dinon left to drive her home. The Chevy Blazer was still there, the man furtively hunched over his computer.

Dinon returned at 11 p.m. and the men repeated their strange dance.

Fifteen minutes later, Dinon called police.

Police say Benjamin Smith III, 41, used his Acer brand laptop to hack into Dinon's wireless Internet network. The April 20 arrest is considered the first of its kind in Tampa Bay and among only a few so far nationwide.

"It's so new statistics are not kept," said Special Agent Bob Breeden, head of the Florida Department of Law Enforcement's computer crime division.

But experts believe there are scores of incidents occurring undetected, sometimes to frightening effect. People have used the cloak of wireless to traffic in child pornography, steal credit card information and send death threats, according to authorities.

For as worrisome as it seems, wireless mooching is easily preventable by turning on encryption or requiring passwords. The problem, security experts say, is many people do not take the time or are unsure how to secure their wireless access from intruders. Dinon knew what to do. "But I never did it because my neighbors are older."

A drive through downtown St. Petersburg shows how porous networks can be. In less than five minutes, a Times reporter with a laptop found 14 wireless access points, six of which were wide open. "I'll guarantee there are tons of people out there who have their wireless network being exploited but have no idea," Breeden said. "And as we see more people utilizing wireless, we'll see more people being victimized."

Prolific Wi-Fi growth

Wireless fidelity, or "Wi-Fi," has enjoyed prolific growth since catching on in 2000. More than 10-million U.S. homes are equipped with routers that transmit high-speed Internet to computers using radio signals. The signals can extend 200 feet or more, giving people like Dinon the ability to use the Web in the back yard of his Crescent Heights home but also reaching the house next door, or the street.

Today someone with a laptop and inexpensive wireless card can surf the Web via Wi-Fi at Starbucks or eat a bagel and send instant messages at Panera Bread. Libraries, hotels, airports and colleges campuses are dotted with Wi-Fi "hotspots." Even entire cities are unplugging.

"The information age is over. The information is out there," said Jim Guerin, technology director for the city of Dunedin, which will soon be the first city in Florida to go completely Wi-Fi. "Now it's the connectivity age. It opens up a whole new area for ethics, legal boundaries and responsibilities. It's a whole new frontier."

There's a dark side to the convenience, though.

The technology has made life easier for high-tech criminals because it provides near anonymity. Each online connection generates an Internet Protocol Address, a unique set of numbers that can be traced back to a house or business.

That's still the case with Wi-Fi but if a criminal taps into a network, his actions would lead to the owner of that network. By the time authorities show up to investigate, the hacker would be gone.

"Anything they do traces back to your house and chances are we're going to knock on your door," Breeden said.

Breeden recalled a case a few years ago in which e-mail containing death threats was sent to a school principal in Tallahassee. The e-mail was traced back to a home, and when investigators arrived, they found a dumbfounded family. The culprit: a neighborhood boy who had set up the family's Wi-Fi network and then tapped into it.

In another Florida case, a man in an apartment complex used a neighbor's Wi-Fi to access bank information and pay for pornography sites.

But he slipped up. The man had sex products sent to his address. "The morning we did a search warrant, we found an antenna hanging out his window so he could get a better signal from his neighbor's network," Breeden said.

Last year, a Michigan man was convicted of using an unsecured Wi-Fi network at a Lowe's home improvement store to steal credit card numbers. The 20-year-old and a friend stumbled across the network while cruising around in a car in search of wireless Internet connections - a practice known as "Wardriving."

(The name has roots in the movie WarGames, in which Matthew Broderick's character uses a computer to call hundreds of phone numbers in search of computer dialups, hence "war dialing.")

A more recent threat to emerge is the "evil twin" attack. A person with a wireless-equipped laptop can show up at, say, a coffee shop or airport and overpower the local Wi-Fi hotspot. The person then eavesdrops on unsuspecting computer users who connect to the bogus network.

At a technology conference in London this spring, hackers set up evil twins that infected other computers with viruses, some that gather information on the user, the Wall Street Journal reported.

Not all encryption is rock solid, either. One of the most common methods called WEP, or Wired Equivalent Privacy, is better than nothing but still can be cracked using a program available on the Web.

"Anybody with an Internet connection and an hour online can learn how to break that," said Guerin, the Dunedin network administrator. Two years ago when the city of Dunedin first considered Wi-Fi, Guerin squashed the idea because of WEP's inadequacy.

Dunedin's network, however, will be protected by the AES encryption standard, used by the Department of Defense. Passwords will be required, and each computer will have to be authenticated by the network. There also will be firewalls. "I'm confident to say our subscribers are at zero risk for that kind of fraud," Guerin said.

Leaving the door open

Not everyone has sinister intentions. Many Wardrivers do it for sport, simply mapping the connections out there. Others see it as part public service, part business opportunity. When they find an unsecured network, they approach a homeowner and for a fee, offer to close the virtual door.

Some Wi-Fi users intentionally leave their networks open or give neighbors passwords to share an Internet connection. There is a line of thought that tapping into the network of a unsuspecting host is harmless provided the use is brief and does not sap the connection, such as downloading large music files. "There is probably some minority of people who hop on and are up to no good. But I don't know there is any sign it's significant," said Mike Godwin of Public Knowledge, a public interest group in Washington, D.C., focused on technology.

"We have to be careful," Godwin said. "There's a lot of stuff that just because it's new triggers social panic. Normally the best thing to do is sit back and relax and let things take their course ... before acting on regulation."

Randy Cohen, who writes "The Ethicist" column in the New York Times Magazine , was swayed by Godwin's thinking. When asked by a Berkeley, Calif., reader if it was okay to hop on a neighbor's Wi-Fi connection, Cohen wrote:

"The person who opened up access to you is unlikely even to know, let alone mind, that you've used it. If he does object, there's easy recourse: nearly all wireless setups offer password protection."

But, Cohen went on to ask, "Do you cheat the service provider?" Internet companies say yes.

"It's no different if I went out and bought a Microsoft program and started sharing it with everyone in my apartment. It's theft," said Kena Lewis, spokeswoman for Bright House Networks in Orlando. "Just because a crime may be undetectable doesn't make it right."

"I'll probably never know'

In a way Dinon was fortunate the man outside his home stuck around since it remains a challenge to catch people in the act. Smith, who police said admitted to using Dinon's Wi-Fi, has been charged with unauthorized access to a computer network, a third-degree felony. A pretrial hearing is set for July 11.

It remains unclear what Smith was using the Wi-Fi for, to surf, play online video games, send e-mail to his grandmother, or something more nefarious. Prosecutors declined to comment, and Smith could not be reached.

"I'm mainly worried about what the guy may have uploaded or downloaded, like kiddie porn," Dinon said. "But I'll probably never know."

--Times staff writer Matthew Waite contributed to this report. Alex Leary can be reached at 727 893-8472 or leary@sptimes.com

MINIMIZING THE RISKS

Here are a few tips to minimize potential threats to a Wi-Fi network:

Enable WEP (Wired Equivalent Privacy). Even though WEP uses weak encryption and is breakable, it still provides an effective first measure of defense by encrypting the traffic between your wireless card and access point. Use 64-bit WEP to gain some security benefit without slowing down your network unnecessarily. You can also use WPA, a similar security protocol that's tougher to crack. Make sure both your access point and card support it.

Change your SSID (service set identifier) to something nondescriptive. You do not want to give out your name, address, or any other useful information to potential hackers. Also, don't use the default SSID.

Change the default password on your access points. The defaults of most network equipment are well known.

Enable MAC based filtering. Using this feature, only your unique wireless cards can communicate with your access point.

Turn off your access points when you are not using them. Why risk being scanned or being broken into if you are not using your wireless network?

Position your access points toward the center of your house or building. This will minimize the signal leak outside of its intended range. If you are using external antennas, selecting the right type of antenna can be helpful in minimizing signal leak.

Don't send sensitive files over Wi-Fi networks. Most Web sites that perform sensitive transactions like shopping with a credit card or checking bank account information use Secure Socket Layer (SSL) technology.

Sources: Force Field Wireless, www.forcefieldwireless.com TampaBay.com columnist Jeremy Bowers.
[Last modified July 6, 2005, 12:18:59]



source:http://www.sptimes.com/2005/07/04/State/Wi_Fi_cloaks_a_new_br.shtml

Slashdot | Open Design for ~$800 Swarm Robots: "Tuesday July 05, @10:37PM
'There are lots of multi-robot designs out there. Most are either research platforms well over $2K (often $10K or more), or are hobbyist bots under $400 with tiny brains and few sensors. But George Mason University's new FlockBots wiki is interesting. They're trying to pack as much functionality as possible into a roughly $800, 7' mobile swarmbot, and publish the design and software as a free and open spec. So far their design includes a wireless 200MHz Gumstix linux computer, a camera, range and bump sensors, wheel encoders, a can gripper, and lots more. It's a great-looking design and I think the cost could drop to $500 with vendors doing consolidation.'"

A few months ago I aquired the Motorola v265 to replace my old junker cellphone. It’s one of the cheaper Verizon phones but had a fairly decent feature list. Another deciding factor was that it has a mostly-black hull rather than the typical silver. Although it has a camera built-in, the quality of the pictures is terrible. I’d relate the image quality to a cheap 1990’s Logitech webcam. But since I have a digital camera and rarely take pictures with my phone, it was mostly a non-issue. The nicest feature of the phone is the excellent audio quality, both speech and music. Motorola produced the phone with the capability to play custom MP3’s of your choice. Unfortunately, Verizon cripples their phones so that you have to use their fee-based service (profit!) in order to add new ringtones, or to transfer the pictures you take with the camera. The Verizon logo conceals the date display on the main screen and covers over the top portion of the background, among various other corporate sillyness. Selling a device that is intentionally crippled is just plain ridiculous. Of course, the only natural thing to do in a situation like this is to hack it.

I’m not going to post links to the required software as there is no official download sites that I know of, but this article should be enough to get you started with modifying your phone. You should be able to find what you need by searching Google, P2P networks like Kazaa or eMule, or read the forums on cellphonehacks.com for links to repositories for some of this stuff. I assembled the correct tools and information by using a combination of the above. I also suggest you search Cellphonehacks if you run into trouble along the way, or need information on hacking any other type of phone — most phones can be modified to give you all of the manufacturer’s intended features. Just be careful and be prepared to get a new phone if you screw it up.

Tools you need:

1. A data cable, which, not surprisingly, Verizon does not supply (I purchased mine on Ebay)
2. Motorola’s Mobile Phone Tools software (it came with my data cable)
3. P2kman software (uploads/downloads sections of hex code from your phone’s firmware)
4. PST phone programming software (I used version 7.1.1)
5. A hex editor (any free one will do - I used one called HHD)

First, plug your phone in and install and run Mobile Phone Tools. You should be able to see your phonebook. Now, choose Menu -> Setup -> General Setup, then the “communication” tab. Click the “Change modem…” button. Next -> Other device, Next -> COMx (Motorola USB Modem). Uncheck the TAPI option. Next -> Do not automatically detect, Next. Choose Motorola CDMA, then choose the Motorola V710m (make sure you get the “m” one). Yes, I know thats not the v265, but this is the one that works. Click Ok, and get back to the image of the phone (which has changed to look like a v710). Close Mobile Phone Tools.

Open P2kman. I had to load PST before opening P2K in order for it to work, while others didn’t. YMMV. When P2k say’s it’s connected, we’re going to download some hex seems. In the Seem section, From xxxx to xxxx, type in 041a and 041a. Click download seem. Wait a few seconds. When the seem downloads, open your favorite Hex Editor. Open the new seem file, and you should see this:

000000: c7 db 41 be fe ff fd ff 87 fd 7d 71 03 17 02 61
000010: 00 e0 e7 01 10 30 a0 5c 33 18 0f 58 0e da 04 c2
000020: 01 00 1c 40 00 00 00 30 af 7d e0 df 03 0b 0c 3f
000030: c2 75 48 03 29 1a 7a 18 e0 03 00 7c 8a 0f b6 86
000040: 5e 58 29 fa 37 be 04 d0 7f a4 9f 11 5e 34 19 f0
000050: 60 fd f3 f5 0d 00 00 f8 c0 99 41 c2 41 de f1 0d
000060: 8b 37 87 91 fa c4 8f ff e1 09 e2 f1 7d ba c5 cd
000070: bf 03 58 00 a0 05 26 26 26 26

We are going to change one value. On the 000060: line, you see e2 f1 7d ba c5 cd… Change the e2 to e3. Now, save it, and go back to P2k. In the bottom part, fill in the numbers:

Seem 041a rec 1

Click Upload seem. Once it has completed, restart your phone. If it worked, you should now be able to use the Media Center in Mobile Phone Tools to transfer images and sound files back and forth to the phone. You may have to use PST to reset your phone (rather than pressing the power button or removing the battery) before it boots back up. Have fun! To get rid of the Verizon banners and various other hacks, check out the v265 threads on cellphonehacks.com.

source:http://www.originofstorms.org/?p=88

Slashdot | Maps on Path to Mass Innovation: "Tuesday July 05, @07:49PM
'When Google and Yahoo released their map API's last week they unleashed a horde of hungry developers eager to integrate their data with the user-friendly maps. Brilliant hacks like Chicago Crime and Craigslist Real Estate are in the midst of switching over to the new API, while sites like MetroFreeFi use the new API to make it easier to find free wi-fi locations in US cities (San Francisco, for example). Imaginative developers, like Alan Taylor (Transparency concept), are digging deep into experimentation to dream up new uses for the maps. It's great to see the innovation when hacks turn to apps.' I want to see Los Angeles maps of the action in James Ellroy's novels, and a national map of the worst, funniest tourist traps across the U.S."

by John Littler
06/30/2005

Art and hand-waving are two things that a lot of people consider to go very well together. Art and computer programming, less so. Donald Knuth put them together when he named his wonderful multivolume set on algorithms The Art of Computer Programming, but Knuth chose a craft-oriented definition of art (PDF) in order to do so.
Is Programming Art?

What the heck is art anyway, at least as most people understand it? What do people mean when they say "art"? A straw poll showed a fair degree of consensus--art is craft plus a special degree of inspiration. This pretty much explains immediately why only art students and art critics at a certain sort of paper favor conceptual art. Conceptual art, of course, often lacks a craft component as people usually understand the term.

My goal here is to discover whether programming is art and whether there's anything useful to discover by regarding it as an art. Can the concept get us out of tight corners or resolve issues? Can it help to produce killer apps?

My goal is also to find out what some accomplished programmers think. To do this, I sent out the following email:

I'm putting together an article for O'Reilly on the subject "art in programming" which was prompted by Donald Knuth's three volume set in which "art" is pretty much defined as craft ... which is pretty much not the modern definition of the word for a lot of people.

Anyway, I'm going to ask a few developers about the concept and am after short statements relating to whether it can be or is art, whether it is helpful to think that it is, and whether, in certain circumstances, thinking about it in that way (non-linearly) can be conducive to problem-solving and possible genius solutions!

OK, this does invite a skewed response, but my defense is that the people I contacted are all quite capable of recognizing a red herring when they see one. You'll see.

Opinions on Art and Programming

Someone I didn't attempt to contact but whose words live on is Albert Einstein. Here are a couple of relevant quotes:

[W]e do science when we reconstruct in the language of logic what we have seen and experienced. We do art when we communicate through forms whose connections are not accessible to the conscious mind yet we intuitively recognise them as something meaningful.

Also:

After a certain level of technological skill is achieved, science and art tend to coalesce in aesthetic plasticity and form. The greater scientists are artists as well.[1]

This is a lofty place to start. Here's Fred Brooks with a more direct look at the subject:

The programmer, like the poet, works only slightly removed from pure thought-stuff. He builds his castles in the air, from air, creating by exertion of the imagination. Few media of creation are so flexible, so easy to polish and rework, so readily capable of realizing grand conceptual structures.[2]

He doesn't say it's art, but it sure sounds a lot like it.

In that vein, Andy Hunt from the Pragmatic Programmers says:

It is absolutely an art. No question about it. Check out this quote from the Marines:

An even greater part of the conduct of war falls under the realm of art, which is the employment of creative or intuitive skills. Art includes the creative, situational application of scientific knowledge through judgment and experience, and so the art of war subsumes the science of war. The art of war requires the intuitive ability to grasp the essence of a unique military situation and the creative ability to devise a practical solution.

Sounds like a similar situation to software development to me.

There are other similarities between programming and artists, see my essay at Art In Programming (PDF).

I could go on for hours about the topic...

Guido van Rossum, the creator of Python, has stronger alliances to Knuth's definition:

I'm with Knuth's definition (or use) of the word art.

To me, it relates strongly to creativity, which is very important for my line of work.

If there was no art in it, it wouldn't be any fun, and then I wouldn't still be doing it after 30 years.

Bjarne Stroustrup, the creator of C++, is also more like Knuth in refining his definition of art:

When done right, art and craft blends seamlessly. That's the view of several schools of design, though of course not the view of people into "art as provocation".

Define "craft"; define "art". The crafts and arts that I appreciate blend seamlessly into each other so that there is no dilemma.

So far, these views are very top-down. What happens when you change the viewpoint? Paul Graham, programmer and author of Hackers and Painters, responded that he'd written quite a bit on the subject and to feel free to grab something. This was my choice:

I've found that the best sources of ideas are not the other fields that have the word "computer" in their names, but the other fields inhabited by makers. Painting has been a much richer source of ideas than the theory of computation.

For example, I was taught in college that one ought to figure out a program completely on paper before even going near a computer. I found that I did not program this way. I found that I liked to program sitting in front of a computer, not a piece of paper. Worse still, instead of patiently writing out a complete program and assuring myself it was correct, I tended to just spew out code that was hopelessly broken, and gradually beat it into shape. Debugging, I was taught, was a kind of final pass where you caught typos and oversights. The way I worked, it seemed like programming consisted of debugging.

For a long time I felt bad about this, just as I once felt bad that I didn't hold my pencil the way they taught me to in elementary school. If I had only looked over at the other makers, the painters or the architects, I would have realized that there was a name for what I was doing: sketching. As far as I can tell, the way they taught me to program in college was all wrong. You should figure out programs as you're writing them, just as writers and painters and architects do.[3]

Paul goes on to talk about the implications for software design and the joys of dynamic typing, which allows you to stay looser later.

Now, we're right down to the code. This is what Richard Stallman, founder of the GNU Project and the Free Software Foundation, has to say (throwing in a geek joke for good measure):

I would describe programming as a craft, which is a kind of art, but not a fine art. Craft means making useful objects with perhaps decorative touches. Fine art means making things purely for their beauty.

Programming in general is not fine art, but some entries in the obfuscated C contest may qualify. I saw one that could be read as a story in English or as a C program. For the English reading one had to ignore punctuation--for instance, the name Charlotte might appear as char *lotte.

(Once I was eating in Legal Sea Food and ordered arctic char. When it arrived, I looked for a signature, saw none, and complained to my friends, "This is an unsigned char. I wanted a signed char!" I would have complained to the waiter if I had thought he'd get the joke.)

Erik de Castro Lopo, coauthor of C for Linux Programming in 21 Days and also developer of the much used Linux audio library libsndfile, had another take:

What I consider "art" often comes from a place that even the artist can't fully explain. It breaks the boundaries of convention and juxtaposes otherwise conflicting elements. It has an element of surprise. Art is so often open to the interpretation of the viewer.

Programming OTOH is tightly restrained by what our programming languages actually allow us to do. Our programs are also constrained by what we want them to do; when they do something else we usually consider it a bug. When programmers work with other programmers we are bound strongly by convention; coding standards, documentation standards and so on.

Programming is definitely a craft requiring high levels of skill, but IMO it is not art.

Martin Banks's Angry Old Man column titled "Artist or Artisan?" seems to make a similar point, in the following quote:

And yes, that is hardly the world inhabited by anyone worthy of the title of "artist", where creativity and making new 'rules' by breaking the old ones is a stock-in-trade approach. So it would appear that the artist in applications development has to die on the altar of process orthodoxy, or turn into the artisan implementer of the orthodox. [4]

He goes on to say that in the cut-and-paste world of code components and process orthodoxy, he still has hope. He has also used the word artist as a description of the present.
Constraints and Art

The existence of so many restraints in the actual practice of code writing makes it tempting to dismiss programming as art, but when you think about it, people who create recognized art have constraints too. Writers, painters, and so on all have their code--writers must be comprehensible in some sort of way in their chosen language. Musicians have tools of expression in scales, harmonies, and timbres. Painters might seem to be free of this, but cultural rules exist, as they do for the other categories. An artist can break rules in an inspired way and receive the highest praise for it--but sometimes only after they've been dead for a long time.

Program syntax and logic might seem to be more restrictive than these rules, which is why it is more inspiring to think as Fred Brooks did--in the heart of the machine.

Perhaps it's more useful to look at the process. If there are ways in which the concept of art could be useful, then maybe we'll find them there.

If we broadly take the process as consisting of idea, design, and implementation, it's clear that even if we don't accept that implementation is art, there is plenty of scope in the first two stages, and there's certainly scope in the combination. Thinking about it a little more also highlights the reductio ad absurdum of looking at any art in this way, where sculpture becomes the mere act of chiseling stone or painting is the application of paint to a surface.

Looking at the process immediately focuses on the different situations of the lone hacker or small team as opposed to large corporate teams, who in some cases send specification documents to people they don't even know in other countries. The latter groups hope that they've specified things in such detail that they need to know nothing about the code writers other than the fact that they can deliver.

The process for the lone hacker or small team might be almost unrecognizable as a process to an outsider--a process like that described by Paul Graham, where writing the code itself alters and shapes an idea and its design. The design stage is implicit and ongoing. If there is art in idea and design, then this is kneaded through the dough of the project like a special magic ingredient--the seamless combination that Bjarne Stroustrup mentioned. In less mystical terms, the process from beginning to end has strong degrees of integrity.

The situation with larger project groups is more difficult. More people means more time constraints on communication, just because the sums are bigger. There is an immediate tendency for the existence of more rules and a concomitant tendency for thinking inside the box. You can't actually order people to be creative and brilliant. You can only make the environment where it's more likely and hope for the best. Xerox PARC and Bell Labs are two good examples of that.

The real question is how to be inspired for the small team, and additionally, how not to stop inspiration for the larger team. This is a question of personal development. Creative thinking requires knowledge outside of the usual and ordinary, and the freedom and imagination to roam.
Why It Matters

What's the prize? What's the point? At the micro level, it's an idea (which might not be a Wow idea) with a brilliant execution. At the macro level, it's a Wow idea (getting away from analogues, getting away from clones--something entirely new) brilliantly executed.

I realize now that I should have also asked my responders, if they were sympathetic to the idea of programming as art, to nominate some examples. I'll do that myself. Maybe you'd like to nominate some more? I think of the early computer game Elite, made by a team of two, which extended the whole idea of games both graphically and in game play. There are the first spreadsheets VisiCalc and Lotus 1-2-3 for the elegance of the first concept even if you didn't want to use one. Even though I don't use it anymore, the C language is artistic for the elegance of its basic building blocks, which can be assembled to do almost anything.

Anyway, go make some art. Why not?!
References

[1] from Alice Calaprice, The New Quotable Einstein, Princeton.

[2] Frederick P. Brooks, Jr., The Mythical Man Month: Essays on Software Engineering, Addison-Wesley, Reading, MA, anniversary edition 1995.

[3] http://www.paulgraham.com/hp.html is an essay that's part of Hackers and Painters, published by O'Reilly.

[4] p. 50, Application Development Advisor, May/June 2005.

John Littler is chief gopher for Mstation.org

source:http://www.onlamp.com/pub/a/onlamp/2005/06/30/artofprog.html