dsandler.org

Here’s the Rice Fall 2005 academic calendar as an iCalendar file: 2005-Fall.ics. The script is live; it scrapes the HTML every time you request it, so don’t (often). [Actually, I should put a cache in there, before RiceInfo starts blocking dsandler.org.]

The URL can be munged to work with other terms; for example, 2006-Spring.ics. I haven’t tested it beyond the next two semesters, though, so I make no sweeping guarantees about the script’s robustness.

(This hack ended up taking a lot longer than I thought it would, because of the sloppy input data. To the Rice Registrar: if you’re interested in providing iCal files for Rice students, get in touch.)

You know a technology is a big deal when the Supreme Court writes about it. The first two pages of the MGM v Grokster decision read like “What is Peer-to-Peer?” as written by Justice Souter:

(continued…) (654 words)

The Supreme Court ruled unanimously against Grokster, finding the company’s actions to be illegal. (Reported by SCOTUSblog.) We’ll know the Court’s reasoning once the opinion is released; I’ll post a link here as soon as it is available.

“We hold that one who distributes a device with the object of promoting its use to infringe copyright, as shown by the clear expression or other affirmative steps taken to foster infringement, is liable for the resulting acts of infringement by third parties,” Justice David H. Souter wrote for the court.

what The Supremes said is that “One who distributes a device with the object of promoting its use to infringe copyright … is liable for the resulting acts of infringement by third parties using the device, regardless of the device’s lawful uses.” The promotion is the key part of that statement.

[Full text of opinions will eventually show up at the SCOTUS 2004 term opinions page. Here’s an Atom feed of updates to that page.]

So, wait. Microsoft’s big RSS announcement tomorrow is that they’re adding ordered lists? I must be missing something.

Microsoft confirmed that it is backing an effort to add support for ordered lists but would not go into detail ahead of Friday’s announcement.

Winer also hinted that RSS may be assuming a more central role at Microsoft, noting that there is a team devoted to the syndication standard.

Oh, now I get it. The announcement is about lists, but the big news is that Microsoft cares at all, and in a big way.

Is RSS the new HTML? Are we about to witness the beginning of the “RSS Wars?” (And not the silly, low-stakes syndication format wars, RDF vs RSS 1.0 vs RSS 2.0 vs Atom. I’m talking about all-the-marbles stuff like we saw in 1999.)

So I was out to dinner with a small group last night, and we just kept bringing the funny. Half a dozen times I thought to myself, “This is a hilarious journal comic waiting to happen! Must remember.”

Today: nothing. Stupid brain.

I hate configuration files, don’t you? Wouldn’t it be simpler if the user’s preferences were just hard-coded into the script?

#!/usr/bin/python

import sys, re

PASSWORD = 'bar'

if len(sys.argv) > 1:
    PASSWORD = sys.argv[1]
    
    script = open(__file__, 'r').readlines()
    for i in xrange(len(script)):
        l = script[i]
        if re.match(r'^PASSWORD =', l):
            script[i] = 'PASSWORD = %s\n' % `PASSWORD`
            break
    
    open(__file__, 'w').write(''.join(script))

print "PASSWORD = %s" % `PASSWORD`

=

Fig. 1. AP: Giant Popsicle Melts, Floods New York Park

Perhaps the best Onion ever: The Onion, June 22, 2056.

A great talk by Guido van Rossum (also part 2) about the genesis of Python. Enjoyable for the history as well as the delicate Dutch accent. [Direct mp3 links: part 1, part 2]

Hey, high school seniors! Are you starting college in the fall? Looking for a major? Here’s a tip! [Brought to you by the Society of Science & Engineering Majors.]

Kevin Hale: The Importance of RSS (to Google, mostly). [from Slashdot]

And so RSS feeds provide Google all the goodness of blogs without all the semantic garbage that might come with a system open to users that are not the content provider. RSS feeds provide Google clean data, good data and thanks to wide-spread adoption by companies and the major blog software entities, lots of it.

[…]

In addition to improving their search results, I think another reason Google is embracing RSS is because they don’t want to have to compete with it.

Kevin also offers us all a nice sound-bite of the zen of syndication:

For those of us that have adopted RSS feeds, gone are the days of wasting time making the rounds through over 100 bookmarks just to see who might have said something new. Gone are the days of waiting for the few obsessive compulsive bloggers who actually did that to post their findings so the rest of us could stay informed. Subscription makes it easy. Subscription makes it efficient.

From Slashdot, an eWeek article describing how spyware-infested files are showing up on BitTorrent. The Slashdot article is, for once, a more signalicious source of information on the topic, since the eWeek writup is full of half-researched nonsense like the following:

Because BitTorrent strips digital files into tiny shreds and reassembles them locally once a user completes a download, it has emerged as the perfect place to bundle adware programs among the bits, without the end user ever knowing.

Just to clarify: this is not how the spyware vector works. The spyware/adware companies are infecting individual movie files and illegal software packages, and then seeding those through BitTorrent. Your BitTorrent client is perfectly happy to let you download the Trojan at your leisure; BT doesn’t care what’s inside a file, it just cares about getting it to you quickly and accurately. The BT protocol is not susceptible to “sneaking bits in” alongside legitimate chunks of your download, because to do so would invalidate the known cryptographic hash (taken from the benign version of the file), tipping your BT client off that the data can’t be trusted.

These Virgin Airlines instructional cards for Jedi (seriously, they’re printing these on air sickness bags) remind me of the Third Echelon Spy Manual (as drafted by the P-A guys).

I’d just like to point out that, for the seventh year running, the official Rice Undergraduate Orientation Week (O-Week) website uses my original text. (examples: Page 1: now, then; Page 2: now, then)

So there you go, my two great contributions to Rice: this and the Lab Report.