Elliott C. Back: In Aere Aedificare

Actually, I was using calloc, but that doesn’t matter. I still managed to corrupt the heap, leading to an access-violation exception on the next malloc. Gee, I wish VS tell me there was heap damage at least. Here is the offending c code–let it be a lesson to you:

I was using a constant length string for serialization, so I memcpy 64 characters into the file->name field every time. But, I don’t malloc 64 characters–sometimes, if the filename is smaller, I’d only malloc space for 3 or 4 characters. The memcpy would then write into heap memory it shouldn’t, corrupt the heap, and cause the next malloc call to fail. C is tricky–be careful!

Is it a slow news day today? The Daypop Top 40 puts this Google advertisement at the 21st most popular article in the past day. And, it’s just an ad for Froogle. I quote:

“Want one [insert object here] of your own? Just go to Froogle.”

And that’s the substance of it: unmitigated greed mixed with “word of mouth” viral blog marketing.

If you wonder why the news media doesn’t take blogging seriously, look no further. When blogs turn into marketing tools, who cares to read ‘em? Not me– I wish I had a regex .kill file for blogs talking about this URL.

Scientists say that they’ve found a 4,000 year old Stonehenge in Russia. The structure overlooks two well-travelled rivers, and was composed of wooden poles placed in a large (22.97 feet in diameter) circle. From the center, “sunset can be seen through the gates: One more pole outside the circle points at the sunrise.”

Ahmedov explained that solar and lunar cults were related to a fertility cult and to the mythological link between life and death. The circular shape was thought to hold magical properties because it has no beginning or end and was regarded as a symbol of eternity.

“(A) parallel can be drawn to Stonehenge, which is close to our monument in terms of the erection date and initially also was made of wood,” Ahmedov told Pravda. “However, no blood relationship could have existed between the peoples who erected Stonehenge and the Ryazan observatory. The latter evidently indicates the influence of (an) alien population (the Iranian forest dwellers) from the South-East of the Eurasian steppe.”

Read more at dsc.discovery.com/news/briefs/20041115/stonehenge.html

Matt points out this article, “Google is deaf.” Its point, while more subtle, can be reduced to:

Podcasting, that is radio web shows, is the new craze. And we’re never going to transcribe them. However, Google is, for all intents, a deaf user. A billionaire deaf user with tens of millions of friends, all of whom hang on his every word.

Wordpress already lets you generate an RSS enclosure for your podcast with no additional effort–just include the mp3 in your post. This has led to increased podcasting popularity, because it’s so easy to do one. The next step for podcasting tools will be to generate a “best match” transcript by using voice recognition technology. Pipe the podcast into your voice recognition software, and output a transcript in a “read more” cut directly in the post. It doesn’t matter if you only match 70% of the words, because you’re playing for Google. Getting a few of your keywords out there in the right order is all that is important.

It shouldn’t be hard to technically do, but I don’t have any voice recognition software myself–does anyone know of any open source packages?

Update: cmusphinx.sourceforge.net/html/cmusphinx.php from Carnegie Mellon University has potential. It’s written in java, so it could be easily added as a binary to a webserver, and has modes for reading .wav files. Get an application that can decode mp3->wav->Sphinx, and you’d be all set.

And we’re not talking about the Queen’s Royal Family. A group of 23 students is suing Pink Floyd over unpaid royalties to the song Another Brick In The Wall. The album sold more than 12 million copies. The students’ chorus:

We don’t need no education,
we don’t need no thought control,
no dark sarcasm in the classroom-
teachers leave them kids alone

justifies royalties for the record, radio airtime, and any other licensed use. Read more at www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/articles/14980155?source=Evening%20Standard.

What baffles me, though, is how a 25 year old song can have disputed royalties. It’s like a hand is reaching from the past to pull back Pink Floyd. Isn’t there a statue of limitations for copyright infringement?