Category: Computers/Internet

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Suing JibJab over using the tune and some lyrics of “This Land is Your Land” is like filing a class-action suit against grade-schoolers for using “The Birthday Song” to sing “You look like a monkey/And you smell like one too.” The contention that the song has been “damaged” by its use as parody is ridiculous. Have these people not been outdoors since 1999? Do they not know how long internet fads actually last? Sure, for some people the cartoon will be the first thing they think of on hearing the song for a while, but that will go away. The only reason Badger Badger Badger and All Your Base are still primarily associated with their source material is that they were either widely unknown before the humor emerged (AYB), or were original creations (BBB). “This Land is Your Land” is, or at least used to be, aggressively marketed as an assembly-appropriate song in elementary schools, and children’s brains are much more receptive than adults’. I don’t even think of the cartoon now on hearing the song, but of the inside of my elementary-school cafeteria, the time they accidentally let the record play all the verses, and, of all things, tissue-paper flowers. (God only knows why, as they weren’t used at the same assemblies.) TRO needs to grow up and let people have their perfectly legal fun. Though it would be fun to see them get a trial date a year from now and try to prove there was any lasting damage.

Thtphphtppthtphttt.

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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?