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Again according to BoingBoing, Nintendo has apologized to both suicidegirls.com and the member whose profile had the text in question, and has offered both the site and the member a free system and game.

So I suppose the only thing left to add is... how can I start one of these internet ruckuses, so I can get free stuff?

I have karma to burn as well. And I want to hear the truth. So tell me: What's the truth?

This?
this?
this?
or this?

I could go on for hours, but these will do for now. What is it about Bush that has you pitching a tent?

Not sure if I'm reading your point correctly here, but you seem to be suggesting that whatever security the big companies can come up with will be broken.

Let me assume that is the argument you're making. This is a common argument, and technically it is probably correct, but it misses two big points.

One, the systems will still be effective in controlling the behavior of most users, and protecting most of the profits of the gatekeepers.

Two, the good-enough security of these systems will suppress cultural innovation by making it harder for content and software developers to get their goods onto these platforms without first going through the approval process of a gatekeeper.

A good example of where they're trying to go is what Danger has put together with the hiptop device. You can not develop software for that platform and let users install it on their devices, unless Danger approves. And they don't approve anything if it won't 1) make them money and 2) protect the existing tollbooths set up by them and the carriers. Check out this excerpt of an interview with the Danger CEO:

Danger sells out its users

So far their security has not been cracked, and they are effectively limiting what programs can appear on that platform. You shouldn't think that other companies cannot do the same. The really relevant question is not can the security work. The question that matters is will users accept this kind of locked up solution.

According to this post on BoingBoing, Nintendo's law firm knows nothing about the letter.

Are you not aware, for example, that Bush completely blew Clinton's surplus and his balanced budget, the first time the budget was balanced for thirty years, and your supposedly conservative president just threw it away for a cheap political stunt, that tax cut you're so enamored of?

Or that No Child Left Behind is mind-boggingly underfunded and ineffective?

Or that Bush lies? Like, never tells the truth? Ever? Like, not once?

Do you choose not to believe this information, or have you just not heard about it?

And I'm just touching on a few of the more minor issues with Bush and his administration. Let's not even mention the total fuckup in Iraq, which surely you can't be as ignorant about as you claim. You'll excuse me if I don't believe you when you say you're not voting for Bush. You have no idea why you shouldn't vote for Bush. You're either not interested enough to educate yourself properly on the issues, or you're a dyed-in-the-wool Republican pretending to be independent to convince others that Dubya is truly god, as he himself believes. If you're the former, get a clue and turn off CNN (the Convservative News Network) and Faux News. If you're the latter, then just fuck off.

I read about this yesterday (think I saw it on Boing Boing first), and at the same time, I saw another news story. The second one talks about a scientist at the University of Southern California building a chip that can simulate the biological storage of memory. Anyway, I tried to put that together to predict a possible future usage of these technologies. Am I way off base to say that these two, used in conjunction with each other, could revolutionize our interpersonal communications?

My favourite part -

We developed a security mechanism around that, submitted it to the FCC under the broadcast flag initiative, and the Motion Picture Association and the NFL went ballistic and lobbied incredibly hard. But guess what? It got approved. The FCC supported our technology.

Should the FCC be in the business of regulating new technologies like this one?

Definitely not. It's scary when you feel that you have to go to the FCC for permission to do something. So we're not very comfortable with that. I think the broadcast flag stuff is less onerous than some other things, like the INDUCE Act. That we're much more concerned with because that could lead to prosecution of individuals who induce copyright infringement. That just opens up a whole can of worms. If you upset consumers enough, they'll become pirates, and that law has the potential to do that.

You'll notice that everything on the table in Washington being pushed by the media companies doesn't target regular television. It's targeted at things like ripping DVDs, how long you can keep movies pay-per-view movies, and so on.

Yay! I'm glad that atleast there are _some_ companies out there who feel this way.

Yes, if you upset the consumers enough, we'll all become pirates -- and what do you do when every one out there is a pirate by the **AA's definition?

It's about bloody time that the rest of the media companies out there realize this -- what're they going to do, arrest everyone? Stupidity.

I'm surprised at the resistance that the corporate world is showing in this regard -- they seem to be simply unwilling to adapt to new technologies and new media, and those that do (such as TiVo) actually do well.

I've always liked TiVo, but after the way TiVo handled the recent DRM troubles, I've really begun to respect them a real lot.

Way to go, guys. Goodluck, and may you continue kicking ass ;)

Yee HAW!!!! http://www.boingboing.net/2004/10/07/shopping_cart _modded.html/

Yeah, it's the path of every government: Scare everyone into obedience, offer 'protection', kill anyone who gets in the way, then crash, blame it on anarchy, and start over. Ours is showing the final signs as it's now recklessly throwing out laws, imprisoning anyone in sight, going on killing sprees it can't cover up, etc. Saddam and Hitler didn't get away with it; I doubt the dumbasses in our office can.

On an interesting note, the government is anticipating a 9/11ish terrorist attack to take place just around - oh gee - election time http://www.boingboing.net/2004/10/12/law_enforceme nt_memo.html

The reps sure called that one, didn't they? Bush said something really bad would happen unless he's reelected. I guess the administration is following through on that promise.

Segway polo can be played quite well with the two-wheeled model.

also had issues with his explorer 8000 DVR and ended up getting a TiVo IIRC.

*shrug*

e.

In case you were wondering why we need independent media, take a look at this AP newswire article that "slipped out" today, claiming that Bush has already won the election:
TV station reports that Bush has been elected President

Seeing as how the web is sicophantic and I already read this when linked from BoingBoing, I actually have RTFA.

And I don't like the style- it comes off as scientific (Ohhh! It even has GRAPHS! That must be science!) but really is just a bunch of gross generalizations. This kind of crap is what keeps me away from wired.

Though I do appreciate the mention of MP3.com as a long-tail only failure, there are significant issues with respect to business plan specifics that are completely glossed over yet are central to the success Anderson talks about. If Touching the Void weren't reprinted with a vengence, then the resurge wouldn't even exist.

Also, lets talk about the major underpining of Netflix that allows it to "over throw the tyrrany of space"- the US postal system. If Netflix couldn't send the disks cheap enough, fast enough, or had more broken DVDs than they do, they would be out of business.

In short, this whole article reminds me of a DotCom pitch- full of colorful and modern-styled graphics, long on exposition, but with holes.

Girlfriend?? Who are you and why are you posting on SlashDot??

Also check with Cory Doctorow an author who is big on creative common licenses for his books. It's certainly made his books more popular in the long run it might even be the reason that he got his books published in the end.

http://boingboing.net/

Mayhaps you could do everyone a favor, Taco, and just redirect the slashdot domains to BoingBoing, and save us having to check two different feeds every hour. :P

Three of the top eight stories are from BoingBoing this AM. Geep. I'm all for wider dissemination of information, but come on...

It's not the online version of an established, well-researched traditional encyclopedia. Instead, Wikipedia is a do-it-yourself encyclopedia, without any credentials. [...] One of these skills is to evaluate the authority of any information source. The Wikipedia is not an authoritative source. It even states this in their disclaimer on their Web site." (quoting of Sue Stagnitta)

Actually, the reason it appeared on Slashdot (am guessing) is because it just showed up on Boingboing. You can see the BoingBoing article.

Lately, a lot of Slashdot submissions seem to be those that appear in Boingboing, and then on Slashdot a while later. And since I've Slashdot customized to show Boingboing and Memepool on the right panels, it becomes really redundant.

I wonder why, news is slow I suppose. Or maybe the editors figured that Boingboing gets better and more geeky news than Slashdot ;-) Eitherway, I wish Slashdot would cover more current technical geeky stuff, there is so much out there.

I miss the days when Slash used to have all those stories about a kid in the garage hacking up a little something cool. Oh well.

BoingBoing had it covered a long time ago.

Here're a couple of movies, too, with different locks - movie 1 and movie 2.

BoingBoing recently posted a link to a timeline which describes, on a minute by minute basis, the efforts taken to resolve a critical security bug found within Mozilla. Time to fix between bug report and new Mozilla version? 31 hours.

Here's the link to the story on BB: http://www.boingboing.net/2004/07/15/mozilla_bugsq uashing.html

The actual link to the timeline is located here: http://www.sacarny.com/blog/index.php?p=104

This is admittedly only a single example, but hopefully it's a start toward providing the 'hard evidence' which you're looking for.

That happened, sort of.

http://www.boingboing.net/2004/06/29/president_bus h_accid.html

I warn you though, it's not pretty.

Some other interesting discussion. Small wonder I scarcely let my racing bike out of my sight.

"may I borrow your pen? I need to pick up some transportation."

Meh. Don't you find it a bit odd that a week ago, you heard nothing about zero-gravity flights, but now all of a sudden, there's an MSNBC story about it and hey, here's a whole series on it written by Xeni Jardin, who's so big a shill she not only writes writes thinly-veiled puff pieces for sponsors, she promotes her own infotainment? Someone's P.R. company is most definitely on the ball.

The porn industry did do it first. See Xeni Jardain's series on boingboing.net, particularly http://www.boingboing.net/2004/09/14/_xeni_flies_z ero_g_7.html

Assume we'll get an update after her ride, which then saves me $3000 - until I decide I have to experience it myself...

Obligatory plug - Please check out my online novel

Xeni Jardin of BoingBoing is going to be on one of the flights, you can read more here

Xeni Jardin of BoingBoing is going to be on one of the flights, you can read more here

Xeni Jardin, over at Boingboing.net has a ticket and is blogging the experience.

I've never even heard of half of these "prominent science fiction writers." Guess I've been living under a rock!

Yup. You might want to grab a copy of the Encylopedia of Science Fiction and catch up with the rest of us. My guess is that you're a hard SF / space opera fan, and you haven't heard of the authors listed because they write new wave / cyberpunk SF rather than the stuff you're into.

Cory Doctorow is a new author who has had success giving away his books under the creative commons licence. You might know him better as a blogger.

Pat Murphy has been around for a while. She mostly writes science-fantasy stuff... kind of like a midway between LeGuin and Cherryh, if you've heard of them.

Kim Stanley Robinson writes hugely popular airport newsstand bestsellers. Y'know, those big thumping books with gold leaf on the front. You've probably read his Mars books.

Norman Spinrad is one of my all time favourite writers. He is often compared to Norman Mailer (also a favourite), a comparison I find apt. You'd probably hate him, as he presents a strong criticism of psychology space opera fans in his novel The Iron Dream.

Bruce Sterling is probably best known to Slashdotters as the author of The Hacker Crackdown (full text here) and my sig. He's also a blogger for Wired and the Pope Emperor of the Virdian movement.

Ken Wharton is a relatively new writer, but a long time physicist. He's probably the most convention hard SF type writer of the lot.

This has also been covered briefly on Engadget and more thoroughly on BoingBoing, where links to the original article and the District Attorney's report are provided.

p

I remember seeing this story originally on Boing Boing, and the author, Frozen North, leaves some facts out that his site covers. However, his submission is a bit of flamebait.

Alex Halavais did the same experiment, changing 13 things, and all of those were changed. He did most of them over the course of the same day from the same IP, so they got caught.

Wikipedia is a tool, nothing more. If you believe everything you read on the internet, well, you get it.

Boingboing covered the topic. Perhaps not quite resistant enough yet, but definitely a step in the right direction.

Oh wait, would that be umm.. the parasitic movie and record industries that have been getting rich suing all the 12 year olds and grandmas for the past 2 years? Yes, I believe it would.

May as well put up a bit more :

"I am sorry to report that much of Elena's story is not true. She did not travel around the zone by herself on a motorcycle. Motorcycles are banned in the zone, as is wandering around alone, without an escort from the zone administration. She made one trip there with her husband and a friend. They traveled in a Chornobyl car that picked them up in Kyiv.

She did, however, bring a motorcycle helmet. They organized their trip through a Kyiv travel agency and the administration of the Chornobyl zone (and not her father). They were given the same standard excursion that most Chernobyl tourists receive. When the Web site appeared, Zone Administration personnel were in an uproar over who approved a motorcycle trip in the zone. When it turned out that the motorcycle story was an invention, they were even less pleased about this fantasy Web site.

Because of those problems, Elena and her husband have changed the Web site and the story considerably in the last few days. Earlier versions of the narrative lied more blatantly about Elena taking lone motorcycle trips in the zone. That has been changed to merely suggest that she does so, which is still misleading. "


from: http://www.boingboing.net/2004/05/26/girl_photoblo gs_cher.html

Hmm interesting.

Also, your link has a space in it, try again:
http://www.boingboing.net/2004/05/26/girl_photoblo gs_cher.html

Preview is your friend ;)

The DVR that your cable company gives you might not be all it's cracked up to be... witness this rant from boing boing...

I hate this digital video recorder: Scientific-Atlanta Explorer 8000

As much as I like making my own homebrew alternatives to TiVo, and think competition is a good thing... UI-wise TiVo still has the lead (hopefully they won't blow it)

e.

TiVo has the mindshare and still remains the best of breed PVR out there, both in terms of technology and UI. Geeks might not think UI is important but it really is; jJust examine this account of what goes wrong when the technology is there (sort of) but the UI is not.

~jeff

• Predicting how people will react to one or more significant changes to society, either in the future (most SF) or the past (the subgenre of Alternate History. Start with these 1,600+ stories.) The Handmaid's Tale wasn't predicting a fundie future for the US. It did capture the feel of what happened in Afghanistan after the fundie Taliban took over.
• Predicting interesting uses for new technologies. Networks hadn't been out for that long when Brunner, and even before that Brin (or Benford? one of the 'killer B's') wrote about possibilities for worms and viruses in cyberspace.
• Extrapolating / having fun with an exponential growth or decay of an important resource. What if our population booms or crashes? What if the planet freezes or goes greenhouse? What if a person or computer gets vastly more intelligent than before?
• And the most important part of SF-- Sensawunda. The sense of wonder when you're pulled out of your own time and space and get to gaze (for the length of a book) through the eyes of other humans at a deep future, wide universe, and wide range of societies.
• and as part of Sensawunda-- inspiring the future... all the scientists inspired by Heinlein or LeGuin or Gibson ("Neuromancer didn't predict the future. Neuromancer *created* the future. If you would understand the past twenty years' technological advance and retreat, this book is required reading..."- C. Doctorow.) to go into the sciences or computing...

Enough has been written about The Singularity that any SF writer writing about 50+ years into the future should at least explain why if one isn't in their universe. Doesn't have to be a long explanation: put it in and go on with the story. Good SF writing hasn't been stopped by actual advances in science. Discovering that Venus is 700 degrees, going to the moon, or widespread PCs outdated some earlier SF stories' technology. But those events inspired many more new writers and new stories. The possibility of a singularity in a few decades should have less of an effect than those actual advances.

And if a singularity does happen, there could be a second golden age of SF. You don't just write about universes, you create them. Certainly Alternate History will be filled with that, like "what would happen if Reagan *won* the 1980 election?" versions of earth being run within the trillions of ongoing simulations (and no, the Matrix wasn't original- SF movies are usually far behind the SF literature.)

SF writers who are particularly good at sensawunda in a post singularity (and/or humans dealing with beings larger than ourselves) universe include Greg Benford, the 'can make you empathize with loss in the life of regular deathless people' Greg Egan, the 'pulls off multiple believable economic systems in one novel' Ken Macleod, the recently reviewed Richard Morgan, Ian Banks, and of course Cory Doctorow and the early Slashdot adoptor (and I worry that he's going to hit an Algernon moment soon- how can he keep writing so well?) Charlie Stross.

Many are scientists, but you don't have to be a scientist to be a good SF writer. You do have t

You're going to pay somewhere...
On your phone bill or through your taxes elsewhere.

Just don't carry any eeevil D&D books past security guards with divinity delusions.

Boing Boing has another Disney story today. A Fox News interview went on the attack over the new Disney PC. In a strange conspiratorial twist, he linked Gay Days at the theme parks with the new Disney children's computer. I never would have put those two together myself.

Boing Boing has another Disney story today. A Fox News interview went on the attack over the new Disney PC. In a strange conspiratorial twist, he linked Gay Days at the theme parks with the new Disney children's computer. I never would have put those two together myself.

OK, everyone seems a little confused about this - like, why now when the book was published in 2000?

For those that don't RTFA:

- In 2000, this book came out, and Katie Jones asked Dutton (subsidiary of Penguin) to change the title, as she had the domain name and they were hijacking it; as a result of the book title, KJ was receiving emails both detailing peoples abuse at the hands of paedophiles, as well as abusive emails from paedophiles themselves. See here and here. KJ took loads of stuff (including pictures of herself and family) off the site as a result - and Penguin ignored the request. I can't find the original slashdot article, although I'm sure there must have been one.
- Now, four years later, Jones gets a nasty letter, and this slashdot story is posted. This is caused by KT doing some thing about teaching kids about online safety (whether for money or altruism I don't know) - and them calling it Katie.com. Source.
- It seems the lawyer, one Parry Aftab, has a website.

There's a good summary (almost as good as this one) here, and suprisingly, on CNN.

Two things:

First, this article blindly repeats the lie that for artists to get paid, they (or their publishers) need control over distribution. This isn't true; they just need to get paid. Control is one way to do so but there are others. For example, compulsory licenses pay the artists without giving them control over distribution.

(Cory Doctorow does this better than me, here. ObAttribution: This link was stolen from other Slashdot posts.)

Secondly, the article way overstates the importance of big publishers.

I'm convinced that the future lies with the small publishers, the ones that can't afford to pay a decent advance but will do a good job editing and make sure that their books are good. Those publishers will embrace DRM-less ebooks because they have nothing to lose. And someday, one of those DRM-less ebooks will be a huge best-seller, and that'll open the door for reasonable ebooks.

Until then, I'll just use Plucker to read free html ebooks like My Tokyo Death Cult on my Visor.

Cory Doctorow, EFF-staffer, SF writer and co-editor of Boing-Boing, has written a strong critique of this article and its lack of attention to the market experience.

Cory Doctorow, EFF-staffer, SF writer and co-editor of Boing-Boing, has written a strong critique of this article and its lack of attention to the market experience.

Cory Doctorow has a fantastic commentary on how wrong this article is, concentrating especially on the authors credulous assertion that DRM is an absolute requirement for the ebooks market. Says Cory: "But the author goes further and asserts that without DRM, there will be no market for entertainment product ever again ("If publishers stop wanting DRM, it's the end of popular creative arts. Not as we know them, but period.") despite the fact that the software industry got bigger when it abandoned DRM, and despite the fact that no new medium has ever succeeded by appealing to the virtues of the medium before it [...]" Well worth a read.

Cory Doctorow (who reasonably knows a thing or two about electronic publishing) has a pretty good piece disassembling the Gizmodo article here: Ebook column that gets it all wrong

Before blindly jumping on this guy's bandwagon run over to BoingBoing to read about how this guy started ripping people off on eBay and newsgroups starting in 2002. You may think twice before buying a shirt or contributing to his legal defense.

While I don't think this is an appropriate use of the law, this guy is surely no angel. Terrorist? No way, but he doesn't sound like a real nice fellow.

You might be interested to see this. I don't know how long it can walk at a time, but the blood pressure difference would seem to be insignificant. I've heard there are snakes that will die if you hold them vertically, though.