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Now take a wild guess as to what phrases might appear on Boing-Boing that the city of Boston might want to block?

Goatse? Bong? Dildo? Shit? I dunno, your guess is as good as mine

Also, if you want to try something fun, look up reviews of the ATHF Movie. It got around 2-3 stars from most news papers.

"Most"? Are you sure about that?

If they are blocking BoingBoing over the Mooninite issue,

Umm, I think the "Boston is banning Boing Boing because of the Mooninites" meme is just a joke (or at least I hope it is).

The more logical explanation is that the ISP who runs Boston free wi-fi is using on of the many filtering services known to block Boing Boing.

This would be the Thunderbird 2 that 'just works', would it
( http://www.boingboing.net/2007/04/19/thunderbird_2 _is_out.html )? hahaha.

Interesting idea, but I must say that it is poorly done -- for the sole reason of the person "booby-trapping" the motions. Reading around on the linked sites from TFA, it's quite apparent that this guy has been doing the same shit for years.

IANAL, and I'm near-certain HINAL either. That being said, the example of his "sting operation" (which he seems quite proud of) is a great one. It seems that he believes the spammers came to him with an offer by spamming him. Sure, I'll grant him that spam is annoying. Sure, Joe Spies should rot. Yes, Joe lied in court; However Bennett still initiated the contact with FullServicesOnline seeking to "purchase" spam. In my understanding it's still entrapment, whether or not someone else has used the same system against him.

I can't recall where exactly, but somewhere this d-bag mentioned that "it's not like his claims are all the same". What about this page? And in all honesty, how different can the motions be when they're all coming off as "I am on a crusade against spam!"

So basically, this guy just reminds me of Michael Crook, with a slightly better means. Bennett is an attention-whore, using his (misinterpreted) views of the law to try and "crack down on spammers" ultimately (it seems) to get mentioned in the news. He's a 28-yr-old programming contractor, upset that he hasn't amounted to anything more. Get over it, grow up, stop haranguing the judges and judicial system, and for the love of god stop posting self-publicizing crap to /. Seriously, if I were a judge I would just dismiss this guy's motions straight off myself as well.

Frankly I'm more concerned about The DNC hiring an RIAA shill then some moron deleting e-mails.

On the freedom of religion front, there's also Bush's attempt to withhold AIDS treatment from Africans that have access to abortions, and the faith based initiatives.

The other areas actually look worse. Under Clinton, US radio stations were consolidated into the hands of a few by the Telecommunications Act of 1996. Television and newspapers are following. The trend has accelerated, and now the military (now, government) is even writing some of our news for us, and ISPs are lobbying congress so they can control speech online. The NSA has been building up networks to log all IP connections made over the Internet background.

'Electric' typewriter:

http://www.boingboing.net/2007/04/11/virtual_typew riter_m.html

Open land and cheap power, yeah, that's it. The fact that the Carolinas are awfully close to DC, just a coincidence. And it's not like Google's giant facility in Washington State is going to be a stone's throw away from the NSA facility in Yakima, right?

North and South Carolina don't rank so well in terms of electricity cost per state. If you want cheap tracts of land and cheap electricity, you build a data center in Oklahoma or Kansas (yes, Virginia, there is fiber there), not in Washington or the Carolinas...

Michael Crook sends bogus DMCA takedown notice to BoingBoing (and others). Chilling Effects DMCA FAQ

Apple recently tried to prevent people from using ipods to transfer music. It is now impossible (using iTunes and the Mac GUI) to pull your music back off your ipod once it is there. But the Mac is built on BSD, and the mp3 files are accessible using the UNIX CLI -- they've just moved them to "/Volumes//Ipod_control/./*.mp3".

http://www.boingboing.net/2007/02/14/teacher_faces _jail_t.html

She was in front of a classroom full of children, malwared-IE started popping up porn ads, everybody goes nipple-gate because "she's exposing them to porn!!!".

http://www.boingboing.net/2006/11/17/ballmer_linux _users_.html

"Novell pays us some money for the right to tell customers that anybody who uses SUSE Linux is appropriately covered," Ballmer said. This "is important to us, because [otherwise] we believe every Linux customer basically has an undisclosed balance-sheet liability."

(He's not saying which bits, but certainly Mono isn't exactly excluded, if you know what I mean :-)

I appreciate De Icaza's contributions, but sadly there is no future for Mono or Novell. (Don't blame him, it's not really his fault.)

Microsoft knows what they are doing and Novell's leadership is the typical short-term driven corp types. Charles Ferguson's line about Apple and MS in in his book (High Stakes No Prisoners) comes to mind:

"Watching Sculley go up against Gates was rather like watching a rich playboy who was ordering his yacht to attack a carrier battle group."

Substitute Novell's current leadership for Sculley and you have the current picture. MS saw a chance to split the open source world in two and cripple Novell for a few hundred million measly (to them) dollars.

In the short run, nothing much spectacular is going to happen. In fact Big Co's (like the one I work in) will lean a bit preferentially to Suse (I'm likely to be running Suse at work shortly on my desktop, in fact). But in the long run, a number of things are going to happen:

* Key parts of Linux *will* go GPL v3 (that wasn't so likely before, but is a done deal now)
* Novell will not be able to use those parts without renouncing the MS deal (What do want to bet that Novell doesn't even have the right to do so without giving back all the MS money?)
* GPL/Classpath exception Java is going to look more and more like a safer choice than Mono if you're not under the Suse umbrella (Ballmer will grow only more strident about this stuff over time)

The OS world will be divided into Novell and everyone else and corporate users will turn back away from Novell. This will be bad for OS not good (Novell actually does much useful stuff - I like Beagle in particular), but I don't see how it can work out any other way. Novell screwed up. Now we all pay.

If you want a statically typed runtime for Gnome, I'd start looking carefully at those GTK bindings for Java...

I'll get a blu-ray player when I can easily rip the movies and do what I want with them including making standard def dvd backups, or transcode it for my video iPod.

If you're really interested in ideas about reinventing the genre, look to the inventors themselves: read the mud-dev archives, a now-defunct mailing list populated by the likes of Raph Koster and developers behind DAoC and shadowbane, as well as a few who've been in the online virtual worlds game since the days of 300 baud modems.

There may be archives of the handful of conferences they held as well, which were filled with a bunch of great talks and new ideas.

"Joshua Kinberg, creator of Bikes Against Bush, was arrested in NYC [original link 404d] for vandalism while being interviewed by MSNBC. Kinberg's website describes his project as 'using a Wireless Internet-enabled bicycle outfitted with a custom-designed printing device, the Bikes Against Bush bicycle can print text messages sent from web users directly onto the streets of Manhattan in water-soluble chalk". Both Wired and Popular Science [original link changed] have done stories on Kinberg's work." Update: 08/30 01:30 GMT by J : Mr. Kinberg has been released; he describes his arrest and brief stay behind bars on this MSNBC blog.

Just look at the RFID passports. They are issued for 10 year durations, but their security was broken within 48 hours. Now they need to recall every passport, rethink their entire security scheme and reissue all the passports. Until they do this, every passport holder is at risk.

Do you seriously think that the makers of this car have hired a team of security experts, mathmeticians, and cryptologists to make a keyless entry system secure? If so, you can have your opinion that I jumped the gun. I'm satisfied with my pessimism based on experience from all the other uses of RFID currently (RFID Passports, RFID speedpass, RFID credit cards: all of which have been hacked and abused)

Sorry I rent new DVDs for $1.25 for a two night rental. That beats Netflix and iTunes. The limitation with Netflix is waiting for DVDs to be mailed to you, might take a few days or a week. I can rent DVDs as quick as I can make it down the block to the video store that gives me my half-off discount for being a loyal customer. No waiting needed, except 15 minutes in the checkout line.

I can run a packet scanner on the iTunes data being sent back to Apple, I did it before and found my personal info in it. It is not anonymous, and even if it was it is still Spyware. Spyware found in iTunes is but one article on it. Another spyware article on iTunes another one on CNet

Sorry I don't want Spyware on my system. Apple is unethical for doing that. It has been verified that iTunes phones home.

Up in western Canada, Telus, our major phone and internet provider, blocked internet access to the union site during a strike.

http://www.boingboing.net/2005/07/24/phone_company _blocks.html

Sony musicians including Cheap Trick and the Allman Brothers are suing the record label for screwing them out of their royalties on sales of music on iTunes and other digital music services.
At issue is whether the music sold through these services is a "license" or a "sale." Sony pays less to its artists for sales than for licensing (Sony artists reportedly earn $0.045 for each $0.99 song sold on iTunes). Naturally, Sony claims that the songs sold on iTunes are sales and not licensing deals.

Here's a link to the bogus DMCA takedown notice he sent out. http://www.boingboing.net/images/dmca-boing-boing- nov-1.doc

http://www.boingboing.net/2006/11/02/michael_crook _sends_.html The Image

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p7vssO8jj1E Video of him on Hannity and Colmes (poor sound quality)

I can see why he wanted his photo removed permanently from the 'net: http://www.boingboing.net/2006/11/02/michael_crook _sends_.html

One of the iTMS' biggest strenghts has always been that the customer knows what he's getting - every time. There is no small print attached to certain albums, no extra gotchas

You sure?

-Eric

Granting someone else control over your box may* make it easier for you to use, but it sure as hell isn't your box anymore.
Back on the topic of media specifically, I'm afraid that most people have no idea how much the BigCo's are pushing for control. If people knew, would they care? I doubt most people will even see a problem with broadcast flags and devices that refuse to play content...
People are complacent, and have learned to accept a (imho) fairly high level of suck in exchange for not having to think.

(*But no guarantee ... while I have no 1st hand experience with it, Vista reads like a nightmare compared to any reasonable modern distro)

for the comparatively very small number of artists with legal standing to request this.

It doesn't really matter how many artists if you want to lead by example.

(e.g., why do some tracks I bought play on my Zune and others won't?). I know that a lot of people don't buy that argument, but frankly, it's perfectly legitimate.

This argument would be legitimate, but sorry. Apple haven't minded confusing ITMS customers in the past.

First, when you attempt to burn the album (with the video-files, which are only distinguished from the audio-files by a small, obscure grey icon) to CD, the iTunes error message says only that the files "cannot be burned to an audio CD," which led Kim Cameron, an experienced computer user and IT executive, to conclude that the files were locked -- an error stating that these were video files would have been clearer.

sony said Blu-ray wasn't cracked

*puts fingers in ears*
"i dont hear you hackers lalalalalalalala!"

way to sugar coat a story btw..

also.. this q&a session didnt touch the fact that, at least in my region, sony has halted ALL ps2 sales in their vane attempt to push the 5 dusty ps3's off the shelves.

Well, yeah. After all, "Reviewing" games is an industry. You don't think that EGM says to SCEA "hey guys, can we buy a copy of this game before it hits the market?" Do you? Sure, they probably buy some of the games they review (they'd never get copies to review otherwise), but giving bad reviews for a living is a good way to make the vendors hate you. This is not a very good business strategy.

I would wager most games released are pure crap, but very, very few are ever rated below "average" (which I suppose is technically correct), but why have a 10 point system if you're only ever going to use the upper 5 points? EGM once said that they wanted to be honest about their ratings, so they would strive to give the very best games a 10 even if there were a couple of minor flaws, because they wanted to make use of all 10 points. Well, I've seen plenty of 10.0 ratings, but I've never seen a 0.0 rating.

Standard disclaimer: I don't really play video games any more. All of what I just said applies to the way things were 10 years ago (when I more or less quit), and of course that was when I stopped reading EGM. You can hate the magazine all you want, because it's not perfect and never was, but I provided it only as an example. If you want another:
http://www.boingboing.net/2007/03/01/sony_to_kotak u_youre.html

This happened just this year, which tells me that the more things change, the more they really do stay the same.

Don't forget Dilbert's BSA campaign.

So was this:
http://www.boingboing.net/2007/02/26/ripping_off_t he_cong.html
the catalyst, or was something else?

Oil on the other hand is a great insulator, and works quite well for cooling a computer.

Turns out the redirect doesn't happen if you're using Firefox: http://www.boingboing.net/2007/03/07/turkey_youtub e_block.html

Perhaps this is just an excuse to get the people of Turkey to stop using IE? ...one can only hope

Formalities notwithstanding, please don't refer to Bev Oda as honourable.

http://www.boingboing.net/2007/01/23/canadian_heri tage_mi.html

been there, done that:
http://www.boingboing.net/2007/02/27/biodiesel_fro m_lipos.html

I guess that keyboard goes with this case.

It's a work in progress; they announced the plan just last week. More info from a boingboing blog.

They already send each other cake on their birthdays....

It looks like some users over at BoingBoing have already debunked this one Link. According to them, all the track on the site, including the supposedly "DRM Free" are Windows crippled WMA.

Either they aren't doing this "immediately" or someone screwed up. I can't find a single BNL song that is available in anything other than WMA from Puretracks.

Boing Boing debunks this story. In brief: stay the hell away.

"The Connecticut substitute school teacher who exposed 11 and 12-year-old students to porn in the classroom -- unintentionally, she says, because of malware on an infected PC -- may now go to jail. If her claims are true, she'll be the first American ever jailed for having had the misfortune of being forced to use a buggy school computer, with incompetent or nonexistent tech support from that school's administration despite repeated requests for help." -- Teacher faces jail time over "accidental porn" in classroom.

The scary part is the DRM is built into the foundation of Vista - even as installer programs are only allowed to run with full admin priviledges. Which to me sounds like all of Vista's security is about catering to the major media companies. It would be more jawdropping if Gates addressed this.

AACS took years to develop, and it has been broken in weeks. The developers spent billions, the hackers spent pennies.

For DRM to work, it has to be airtight. There can't be a single mistake. It's like a balloon that pops with the first prick. That means that every single product from every single vendor has to perfectly hide their keys, perfectly implement their code. There can't be a single way to get into the guts of the code to retrieve the cleartext or the keys while it's playing back. All attackers need is a single mistake that they can use to compromise the system.

There is no future in which bits will get harder to copy. Instead of spending billions on technologies that attack paying customers, the studios should be confronting that reality and figuring out how to make a living in a world where copying will get easier and easier. They're like blacksmiths meeting to figure out how to protect the horseshoe racket by sabotaging railroads.

The railroad is coming. The tracks have been laid right through the studio gates. It's time to get out of the horseshoe business.

I wonder what measures are in place to prevent abuse of this by non-owners of the materials. For example say I don't like what you wrote about me - could I tell Google that I own the content, please take it out of your cache. I'm fine with the idea that people should be able to say who does what with their original web content - but there are simple technical ways for them to prevent caching. So really this seems to just open the door to abuse ala the DMCA and Michael Crook.

I mean come on, doesn't everyone know that the internet is run on Windows software and IE is the only REAL web browser! Anyone who uses anything else MUST be a hacker trying to break their site.

http://www.boingboing.net/2007/01/29/disney_hijack ing_ali.html

The linked story points out that Disney is trying to trademark characters from the Grimm Bros. in New Zealand.

the liberals only pay attention to self-promoting issues

Unlike the Conservatives? You mention trust funds (I think you mean income trusts, genius. Trust fund is what enables Mulrooney Jr to spend all his time at pissups)? Do I need to remind you that your precious Cons campaigned on the promise to eliminate those trusts? And then reneged on their promise and weren't going to do it until the opposition hammered them to do so in parliament?

Also, how about Con Heritage Minister Bev Oda and her tax payer funded limo to the Junos? Or how about how Bev Oda is thoroughly owned by the Recording Industry? You know, Hollywood's Member of Parliament?

I think the Libs deserved to get ousted, but anyway you slice it, he Cons are worse.

They did nothing about it (or anything else for that matter) when they were in power.

You're right. Far worse to do nothing than to sell out your nation to corporate interests.

Section 3a: "The Software automatically checks for upgrades, but the Software will not automatically upgrade without your consent, except as provided herein. If you do not consent to an upgrade that we make subject to your consent, the Digital Content may no longer be viewed on your Authorized Device. You must keep the Software on your Authorized Device current in order to continue to use the Service. We may automatically upgrade the Software when we believe such upgrade is appropriate to comply with law, enforce this Agreement, or protect the rights, safety or property of Amazon, our content providers, users, or others."

Section 3c. Removal of Software. If you uninstall or otherwise remove the Software, your ability to view all Digital Content you have downloaded to the Authorized Device will immediately and automatically terminate and we reserve the right to delete all Digital Content from that Authorized Device without notice to you.

Here's the link to a plain-english read on it by the chicago tribune: http://blogs.chicagotribune.com/news_columnists_ez orn/2006/09/scary_movie_dow.html

Here's an explitive laced though pretty good summary: http://www.boingboing.net/2006/09/15/amazon_unbox_ to_cust.html

Here's the EULA: http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.htm l/ref=atv_dp_cs_use/002-8388024-7705601?ie=UTF8&no deId=200026970

From the bottom of my heart, I thank all unbox consumers for abaondoning the decades of time and people's effort to create and guard the principal that I own my media.

Read those EULAs, ppl:

Amazon Unbox to Customers: Eat shit and die