John Sokol - Slashdot User

+ - The city is planning to shut down Hacker Dojo-> 0

Submitted by

John Sokol

on Tuesday January 31, 2012 @04:54PM

John Sokol writes "The Hacker Dojo has become the hub of activity for the tech community in Silicon Valley. If you visit, it is a place full of entrepreneurial people working hard on their startups. In the Evenings it full of club meetings (like BAFUG, The Bay Area FreeBSD Users Group, and HTML5 developers) and lectures that are often frequented by successful entrepreneurs and VC.

Well I just learned they may be shut down by the City Tomorrow.

From a chat a few minutes ago -
Matthew: Okay. There's not a lot of time since tomorrow is the popular closure date."
Link to Original Source

+ - The city of Mountain View is planning to shut down-> 1

Submitted by

John Sokol

on Tuesday January 31, 2012 @03:38PM

John Sokol writes "The Hacked Dojo has become the hub of activity for the tech community in Silicon Valley. If you visit, it is a place full of entrepreneurial people working hard on their startups. In the Evenings it full of club meetings (like BAFUG, The Bay Area FreeBSD Users Group, and HTML5 developers) and lectures that are often frequented by successful entrepreneurs and VC.

Well I just learned they may be shut down by the City Tomorrow.

From a chat a few minutes ago -
Matthew: Okay. There's not a lot of time since tomorrow is the popular closure date."
Link to Original Source

+ - We need a new model. -> 0

Submitted by

John Sokol

on Saturday January 28, 2012 @02:10PM

John Sokol writes "We need a new model. Treating intangibles as a service makes far more sense then placing the intangible on something tangible. With a bar code, or now days RF id. Then try to then charge for it as it it were a bar of soap or a bag of pretzels. That worked really well, ahuu for a while, maybe 80 years. Right until people started to gain tools work with the intangibles. So they thought they could fix it with laws, technical hacks, lawyers and finally police.

The Internet's created such apprehension for those in power and control the purveyance of intangibles.
It's up to us to re-invent, re-educate and forge new solutions or there only be further escalations.

I was thinking of compensation right instead of copyright. As much as I love FOSS and P2P, You need to be able pay if you want talented people. We weren't all born rich, or willing to live in abject poverty to hack code. Been there done that, not fun after a while.
Does anyone have any ideas or opinions?"
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+ - Occupy Inside-> 0

Submitted by

John Sokol

on Thursday November 17, 2011 @04:25AM

John Sokol writes "(O) It's great that people are sitting outside in the Freezing cold in New York in November, but we are in the Internet age. Then only to get harassed by the authorities. We can do a lot more digitally on the Internet and with Software then we every could outside in a courtyard.

Yes, we needed that to wake more of us up, but we are in 2011 and have better tools at hand.

I propose that we start a campaign where we can post a symbol for the occupy movement that we show support, something we can put on bumper stickers, web sites, blog posts, our facebook page. Something other then the Anonymous Logo. I am proposing the logo I on the OccupyInside.org site or a somewhat modified version of it. The O surrounding the text is something I like.

Maybe placing an (O) preceding each facebook post, Blog Post and tweet. And share this information with other. Nudge Nudge Pass it on."
Link to Original Source

+ - Google's blogger search is just BROKEN. -> 0

Submitted by

John Sokol

on Monday August 01, 2011 @07:45PM

John Sokol writes "I have a post I did,
http://videotechnology.blogspot.com/2011/07/hdmi-video-capture.html

The title is "HDMI video capture" it has the labels "HDMI", "Video Capture"

If you go to the search box on the blog
http://videotechnology.blogspot.com/

Search for "HDMI video capture" it finds nothing!
Now search for "HDMI capture" and again it's finds nothing!
Now search for "video capture" and that post is not listed.

Come on Google, either this is deliberately filtering out this post, or the search algorithm is seriously broken."
Link to Original Source

+ - Netflix on Nintendo 3DS, 3-D Films comming Soon! -> 0

Submitted by

John Sokol

on Thursday July 14, 2011 @04:58PM

John Sokol writes "I am completely impressed with the Nintendo 3DS Glasses free 3D. It has a 3D camera, and 3D augmented reality games. WiFi. And now 3D Netflix movies are coming. The free application can be downloaded through the Nintendo 3DS eShop. http://www.nintendo.com/3ds/downloads/videos Anyone who thinks 3D is a passing fad is a fool. Just as much as those who were telling me Novel or Microsoft was going to replace TCP/IP."
Link to Original Source

+ - How can I motivate my employer to share code?-> 0

Submitted by

John Sokol

on Saturday January 24, 2009 @02:41AM

John Sokol writes "At work I wrote a Linux device driver that there is a real need for in the community. It took several months of long nights and weekends of coding. Some is derived from other GPL'ed driver code. How can I politely motivate my employer to do what they are legally and morally required to do? As am employee I am legally and contractually bound, so I can't just share the code. Does anyone have some experience with this? Is there some good boiler plate letter with enough legalese. Ideally one that I can just use without having to think too hard? I need to maintain a good relationship for possible later work even though I am being laid off soon."
Link to Original Source

+ - Cox Blocked-> 1

Submitted by

John Sokol

on Saturday January 24, 2009 @12:00AM

John Sokol writes "I downloaded a movie using Bit Torrent off of Isohunt. But this movie was really a trojan of a new flavor. Turns out the wmv video file was set up to have the video codec to call back home for DRM activation over the net. Cox Cable used this to shut down my Internet connection. For a few hours there was no way to get back on. It seemed completely dead. Fortunately there was an easy fix. Eventually you will get a page about DMCA violations with a link to restore the connection. That link is http://anydomain.com/?action=reactivate The second time this happened, I already knew this and was able to reactivate instantly."
Link to Original Source

+ - Getting GPL driver code released from an employer.-> 0

Submitted by

John Sokol

on Wednesday January 14, 2009 @02:26PM

John Sokol writes "For an embedded ARM project at work, I wrote a USB Gadget UDC driver (USB Device controller) for the Philips ISP1582 USB 2.0 device controller chip. This chip is not currently supported in Linux but is used in many PDA's since it's inexpensive. There is a real need for this driver in the community. It took me several months of long nights and weekends of coding. Much of it is derived from the drivers/usb/gadget/pxa27x_udc.c driver and other bits and pieces of GPL code. How can I push my employer to do what they are legally and morally required to do? To release this code open source so it can find it's way in to the Kernel. As am employee I am legal and contractually bound, so I can't just take the code and share it. To make matters worse I am laid off come the end of this month so I am under some time pressure to push for the release of this code. Does anyone have some experience with this? Is there some good boiler plate letter with enough legalese that I can use to put pressure on management here?"
Link to Original Source

+ - E-Voting in Brazil-> 0

Submitted by

John Sokol

on Monday October 06, 2008 @04:34PM

John Sokol writes "I just hear from a good friend and Linux Kernel hacker in Brazil that they just finished their municipal election with 128 million people using Linux to vote. They voted nation wide for something like 5000+ city majors. Voting is obligatory in Brazil They are using an embedded computer that used to run VirtuOS (a variant of MSDOS) now, it has its own linux-based distro that was developed locally, that's about all I was able to find out. These are much smaller nicer and cheaper then the systems they try to deploy here in the US. Here is a web site with a simulated Brazilian voting system Java required. It's very cool, they show you a picture of the candidate you voted for even!!!!"
Link to Original Source

+ - Copyleft movies, can it be done? 0

Submitted by

John Sokol

on Thursday March 20, 2008 @01:43PM

John Sokol writes "hypothetically speaking, let say some big name science fiction authors were willing to allow there older stories to be made into Copyleft films done in a similar production quality as I-Robot, Blade runner, StarWars or StarTrek. Would it be possible to raise enough to produce a big budget film that has a LGPL type license on it? Possibly as a Non-profit where authors are paid there typical fees and actors, are paid typical fees but no investors, just grants and donations? Proceeds would be wrapped back in to produce the next movie. Sort like PBS and NPR. How could money be raised? What are the ramifications? How to bootstrap such a project and get it played in theaters and legally distributed free on the net? It's an interesting concept, but could it really work? Imagine what this would do the the RIAA and the film industry."

+ - Flying Spaghetti Monster takes on Religion-> 0

Submitted by

John Sokol

on Wednesday November 21, 2007 @07:12PM

John Sokol writes "In response to the Kansas School Board decision to teach Intelligent design along side of Evolution, Oregon State physics graduate named Bobby Henderson stepped into the debate by sending a letter to demanded equal time for the 10 million followers of a pseudo-deity called the Flying Spaghetti Monster. From the MSNBC article "There's no more scientific basis for intelligent design than there is for the idea an omniscient creature made of pasta created the universe. If intelligent design supporters could demand equal time in a science class, why not anyone else? The only reasonable solution is to put nothing into sciences classes but the best available science." Wikipedia has a good writeup on it also."
Link to Original Source

+ - Zonbu Zonbox, green computing PC-> 0

Submitted by

John Sokol

on Monday July 16, 2007 @12:44PM

John Sokol writes "On the front page of Silicon Valley's Palo Alto Daily today is Zonbu inc's Zonbox new green PC that run on only 15 watts of power. I can't believe how much press this thing is getting. I read through there web site and never see any mention of Linux. Google quickly reveiled, it's based on a Via C7 processor clocked at 1.2GHz and running Gentoo Limux and based on a monthy subscription. Not nearly as impressive or new as the Palo Alto Daily or their website would make you think.
See articls at Linux devices and engadget"
Link to Original Source

+ - Microsoft TAX

Submitted by John Sokol on Monday January 29, 2007 @08:48PM

John Sokol writes "I went to Best Buy in Sunnyvale yesterday with Linux V4L2 developer Mauro Carvalho Chehab who just flew in from Brazil. We were there to purchase a laptop. Mauro asked the clerk if we could get this Gateway laptop without the Microsoft software (who's price was part of the sales price) and they insisted that we would have to pay a $30 fee to get the laptop without Microsoft XP installed on it! I remember we had Microsoft protest days some years back. What happened? Why are we still paying $100+ per laptop to Microsoft for software we don't want or need?! What's even worse Brazil charges a 50% inport duty so he has to pay import tax of around $50 for the copy of XP that he doesn't want also."

+ - Freedom Tower construction begins at Ground Zero

Submitted by John Sokol on Tuesday December 19, 2006 @10:12PM

John Sokol writes "The Freedom Tower would be 1,776-foot tower and is to be completed in 2011.
The skyscraper's 2.6 million sq. ft. (234,000 sq. m.) of office space will actually top out at 1,500 feet (455 meters). Above that will be a 276-foot (84-meter), lattice-like structure containing windmills generating as much as 20 percent of the building's energy.
It's not clear if the Freedom Tower's extension would be considered a spire and not counted in it's height by CTBUH

The new building is to be 400ft taller than the original World Trade Center towers that was 1,350 feet (410 meters) and 110-stories.
At 1,450.5 feet, (442 m) tall, with antenna 1,758 feet (533 meters) the Sears Tower usurped New York's claim to the world's tallest building in 1974.
The Freedom Tower would be taller then the current world's tallest building, the 1667ft-high Taipei 101 in Taiwan, which recently surpassed the previous holder of the title, the 1,483 feet (450 meters) Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
This would make Freedom Tower the tallest structure in the world — at least until the completion of Burj Dubai in the United Arab Emirates, which is projected to be 2,313ft high and with spire 2,640 feet (800 m).
Canadians claim the 1,815-foot CN Tower in Toronto as the world's tallest freestanding structure.

The Petronas Towers and the Burj Dubai are very Muslim and built with Islamic symbols in every facet of their designs. In some respect, the battle for the worlds tallest building is a competition between the west and the Islamic world.

The most widely acknowledged authority on the tallest buildings is the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat (CTBUH).

Wikipedia, has a nice graphic of this"