2008 Nov 5, 3:55A graphing library which includes variaous graph visualization algorithms. GNU licensed. "igraph is a free software package for creating and manipulating undirected and directed graphs. It includes
implementations for classic graph theory problems like minimum spanning trees and network flow, and also implements algorithms for some recent network analysis methods, like community structure
search."
reference free development programming visualization graph math library opensource c++ igraph graphviz via:mattb 2008 Nov 5, 12:13Sure, we're laughing now but what if...
voting politics humor onion video president voting-machine 2008 Nov 5, 9:43Proposed new arbitrary TLDs are super expensive. As it turns out large companies have to buy their name on every new TLD to avoid potential fraud.
dns tld domain economics security iana ietf 2008 Oct 30, 12:13On hearing news of Live ID supporting OpenID this is pretty much exactly what I was thinking: "With every big portal acting as a provider but not a consumer of identity credentials, users are still
going to wind up creating accounts for more than one service (says this user of Flickr and Google Calendars). When it comes to third-party sites, they may not need to remember a new username and
password, but they will have to remember to which of the providers they chose to provide the credentials for their account. Anyone who slips up may wind up with three or more identities on a single
website, with different data associated with each."
openid identity microsoft google 2008 Oct 29, 3:45Apparently the government routinely suppresses patents when they fear the invention may harm national security. 5002 total patents suppressed at the end of FY07 according to PTO. "...U.S. Patent and
Trademark Office's record of the number of patent applications kept from public scrutiny under the Invention Secrecy Act of 1951, which allows the government to lock up a patent application on
national security grounds, even if the inventor has no connection to the government."
patent wired article government security 2008 Oct 29, 3:09Video showing some more interesting touch screen ideas from Microsoft Research. A touch sensitive sphere that can accomodate multiple users and a table which projects one image onto itself and
another image onto objects beyond itself: "But hold another piece of a translucent glass in the air above the table, and it catches a second ghostly image. This trick is in the tabletop glass, which
electronically flickers between translucent and transparent 60 times per second, faster than the eye can notice."
research microsoft video touchscreen table 2008 Oct 29, 9:40Cool game concept: "The Unfinished Swan is a first-person painting game set in an entirely white world. Players can splatter paint to help them find their way through an unusual garden."
via:swannman game design videogame art 3d xna 2008 Oct 29, 9:33Grandma's watercolor class has some of their work online.
watercolor family grandma 2008 Oct 27, 1:39Rubber-hose cryptanalysis is first defined by Marcus J. Ranum on Oct 15 1990: "..unless you resort to the rubber-hose technique of cryptanalysis. (in which a rubber hose is applied forcefully and
frequently to the soles of the feet until the key to the cryptosystem is discovered, a process that can take a surprisingly short time and is quite computationally inexpensive)"
humor cryptography rubber-hose security 2008 Oct 25, 6:51
Windows allows for application protocols in which, through the registry, you specify a URL scheme and a command line to
have that URL passed to your application. Its an easy way to hook a webbrowser up to your application. Anyone can read the doc above and then walk through the registry and pick out the application
protocols but just from that info you can't tell what the application expects these URLs to look like. I did a bit of research on some of the application protocols I've seen which is listed below.
Good places to look for information on URI schemes: Wikipedia URI scheme, and ESW Wiki
UriSchemes.
Some Application Protocols and associated documentation.
|
Scheme
|
Name
|
Notes
|
|
search-ms
|
Windows Search Protocol
|
The search-ms application protocol is a convention for querying the Windows Search index. The protocol enables applications, like Microsoft Windows Explorer, to query the index with
parameter-value arguments, including property arguments, previously saved searches, Advanced Query Syntax, Natural Query Syntax, and language code identifiers (LCIDs) for both the Indexer and
the query itself. See the MSDN docs for search-ms for more info.
Example: search-ms:query=food
|
|
Explorer.AssocProtocol.search-ms
|
|
OneNote
|
OneNote Protocol
|
From the OneNote help: /hyperlink "pagetarget" - Starts OneNote and opens the page specified by the pagetarget parameter. To obtain the hyperlink for any page in a OneNote
notebook, right-click its page tab and then click Copy Hyperlink to this Page.
Example: onenote:///\\GUMMO\Users\davris\Documents\OneNote%20Notebooks\OneNote%202007%20Guide\Getting%20Started%20with%20OneNote.one#section-id={692F45F5-A42A-415B-8C0D-39A10E88A30F}&end
|
|
callto
|
Callto Protocol
|
ESW Wiki Info on callto
Skype callto info
NetMeeting callto info
Example: callto://+12125551234
|
|
itpc
|
iTunes Podcast
|
Tells iTunes to subscribe to an indicated podcast. iTunes documentation.
C:\Program Files\iTunes\iTunes.exe /url "%1"
Example: itpc:http://www.npr.org/rss/podcast.php?id=35
|
|
iTunes.AssocProtocol.itpc
|
|
pcast
|
|
iTunes.AssocProtocol.pcast
|
|
Magnet
|
Magnet URI
|
Magnet URL scheme described by Wikipedia. Magnet URLs identify a resource by a hash of that resource so that when used in P2P
scenarios no central authority is necessary to create URIs for a resource.
|
|
mailto
|
Mail Protocol
|
RFC 2368 - Mailto URL Scheme.
Mailto Syntax
Opens mail programs with new message with some parameters filled in, such as the to, from, subject, and body.
Example: mailto:?to=david.risney@gmail.com&subject=test&body=Test of mailto
syntax
|
|
WindowsMail.Url.Mailto
|
|
MMS
|
mms Protocol
|
MSDN describes associated protocols.
Wikipedia describes MMS.
"C:\Program Files\Windows Media Player\wmplayer.exe" "%L"
Also appears to be related to MMS cellphone messages: MMS IETF Draft.
|
|
WMP11.AssocProtocol.MMS
|
|
secondlife
|
[SecondLife]
|
Opens SecondLife to the specified location, user, etc.
SecondLife Wiki description of the URL scheme.
"C:\Program Files\SecondLife\SecondLife.exe" -set SystemLanguage en-us -url "%1"
Example: secondlife://ahern/128/128/128
|
|
skype
|
Skype Protocol
|
Open Skype to call a user or phone number.
Skype's documentation
Wikipedia summary of skype URL scheme
"C:\Program Files\Skype\Phone\Skype.exe" "/uri:%l"
Example: skype:+14035551111?call
|
|
skype-plugin
|
Skype Plugin Protocol Handler
|
Something to do with adding plugins to skype? Maybe.
"C:\Program Files\Skype\Plugin Manager\skypePM.exe" "/uri:%1"
|
|
svn
|
SVN Protocol
|
Opens TortoiseSVN to browse the repository URL specified in the URL.
C:\Program Files\TortoiseSVN\bin\TortoiseProc.exe /command:repobrowser /path:"%1"
|
|
svn+ssh
|
|
tsvn
|
|
webcal
|
Webcal Protocol
|
Wikipedia describes webcal URL scheme.
Webcal URL scheme description.
A URL that starts with webcal:// points to an Internet location that contains a calendar in iCalendar format.
"C:\Program Files\Windows Calendar\wincal.exe" /webcal "%1"
Example: webcal://www.lightstalkers.org/LS.ics
|
|
WindowsCalendar.UrlWebcal.1
|
|
zune
|
Zune Protocol
|
Provides access to some Zune operations such as podcast subscription (via Zune Insider).
"c:\Program Files\Zune\Zune.exe" -link:"%1"
Example: zune://subscribe/?name=http://feeds.feedburner.com/wallstrip.
|
|
feed
|
Outlook Add RSS Feed
|
Identify a resource that is a feed such as Atom or RSS. Implemented by Outlook to add the indicated feed to Outlook.
Feed URI scheme pre-draft document
"C:\PROGRA~2\MICROS~1\Office12\OUTLOOK.EXE" /share "%1"
|
|
im
|
IM Protocol
|
RFC 3860 IM URI scheme description
Like mailto but for instant messaging clients.
Registered by Office Communicator but I was unable to get it to work as described in RFC 3860.
"C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Office Communicator\Communicator.exe" "%1"
|
|
tel
|
Tel Protocol
|
RFC 5341 - tel URI scheme IANA assignment
RFC 3966 - tel URI scheme description
Call phone numbers via the tel URI scheme. Implemented by Office Communicator.
"C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Office Communicator\Communicator.exe" "%1"
|
(Updated 2008-10-27: Added feed, im, and tel from Office Communicator)
technical application protocol shell url windows 2008 Oct 23, 2:18I had no idea lingual prescriptivists vs descriptivists were split in a partisan manner: '... The Secretary [of the Department of Education] released a report that includes dire warnings of impending
doom...The cause of this immanent catastrophe is, of course, those pesky linguists, the libertarian destroyers of good usage who claim that, well, anything goes. According to the report, "the
language problem has now reached the crisis level and we are now experiencing a severe epidemic of bad grammar that will affect the very fiber of our nation." The Secretary added, "an alarming number
of children are suffering from the bad advice given by those socialist, left-wing, atheistic linguists and we just gotta do something about it."'
humor language politics grammar 2008 Oct 23, 11:27Informative and humorous video on the topic of printer tracking dots. "Most color laser printers and color copiers are designed to print invisible tracking codes across every single printed page of
their output. These codes reveal which machine produced a document and, in some cases, when the document was printed or copied."
humor video security privacy eff printer 2008 Oct 23, 10:34Geoffrey K. Pullum of Language Log defines 'nerdview': "It is a simple problem that afflicts us all: people with any kind of technical knowledge of a domain tend to get hopelessly (and unwittingly)
stuck in a frame of reference that relates to their view of the issue, and their trade's technical parlance, not that of the ordinary humans with whom they so signally fail to engage... The
phenomenon - we could call it nerdview - is widespread." Woo, go year-month-day, go!
nerdview language date programming nerd writing 2008 Oct 15, 2:53Stylish blog that looks like it has interesting cultural and business related articles and links (not just weird/humorous).
blog web advertising monthly design culture business 2008 Oct 15, 10:50Clever idea. Photo of a girl holding photos of herself holding photos of herself etc with age decreasing in one year increments per photo.
photo recursive via:mattb 2008 Oct 15, 10:47The artist Harriet Russell encodes the destination postal address of her letters with anagrams, crosswords, and other puzzles: "Despite fears of a Royal Mail backlash, Russell found the system more
than willing to play her game. The crossword edition was returned completed with the comment "Solved by the Glasgow Mail Centre". Only 10 of the 130 letters posted lost their way through the system,
some held particularly testing anagrams, others were without a postal code."
humor puzzle crossword art mail postal-system harriet-russell book 2008 Oct 14, 11:45A bit of interesting history on Apollo 7 on the 40year anniversary of its launch: "More surprising yet, this was the first US spaceflight in which there was major friction between the crew and
Mission Control."
history space nasa apollo apollo7 article 2008 Oct 14, 11:14Similar in concept to the Pirate Bay suggestion of encrypting all TCP/IP connections if both server and client support it: "Obfuscated TCP is a transport layer protocol that adds opportunistic
encryption. It's designed to hamper and detect large-scale wiretapping and corruption of TCP traffic on the Internet."
internet tcp encryption security google privacy opensource cryptography network ssl 2008 Oct 13, 2:40Watch out for too good to be true washing services (or free network traffic anonymization): "The laundry would then send out "color coded" special discount tickets, to the effect of "get two loads
for the price of one," etc. The color coding was matched to specific streets and thus when someone brought in their laundry, it was easy to determine the general location from which a city map was
coded. While the laundry was indeed being washed, pressed and dry cleaned, it had one additional cycle -- every garment, sheet, glove, pair of pants, was first sent through an analyzer, located in
the basement, that checked for bomb-making residue." From the comment section of Schneier on Security on this topic: "Yet another example of how inexpensive, reliable home washers and dryers help
terrorists. When will we learn?"
security history laundromat ira terrorism bomb
The weekend before last Sarah and I went down to Gas Works Park in Seattle. Gas Works Park is a former Seattle Gas Light Company gasification plant now turned into a
park with the machinery kept intact and found right on the shore of Lake Union. There's a large hill right next to the plant with an embedded art installation from which you get an excellent view
of the park and the lake. Anyway a very cool place. Afer, we ate at Julia's of Wallingford where I stereotypically had the Santa Cruz
omelet. Good food, nice place, nice neighborhood.
This past weekend was Halloween weekend. On Halloween at Microsoft parents bring their kids around the office buildings and collect candy from those who
have candy in their office. See Matt's photo of one such hallway at Microsoft. The next day Sarah and I went to two birthday parties the second of which required costume. I went as House (from the
television show House) by putting on a suit jacket and carrying a cane. Sarah wore scrubs to lend cred. to my lazy costume. Oh yeah and on Sunday Sarah bought a new car.
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