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Apparently Toledo TV has been undeleted. (Mirror in case it goes again.)

How in God's name is an association of TV station titles to markets in which they can be received copyrightable?

Melancholy Elephants, a short story about copyright in the future and how the protagonist convinces a senator not to extend copyright indefinitely, arguing that it would drastically affect the arts in ways he didn't think about. A good read.

Indeed. These guys should have listened to Cory Doctorow when he was talking at Microsoft. Unfortunately, it seems they didn't get it either.

So, what did I get from this article... There's a new tool available that can strip new Windows Media DRM! Thanks, Microsoft!

It took a bit of searching but I found the program and mirrored it if anybody's interesting. Please be sparing on my bandwidth. :^)

I like Cory Doctorow's take on the DRM issue, as explained in his talk at Microsoft. Eye-opening to anyone who isn't into cryptography, it explains just how easy it is to break DRM.

Absolutely, and if I hadn't already posted here with the grandparent, I would mod you up informative.

Clearly I was wrong about them having complete authority. As someone who has been through the process from the other side (US customs), though, I really don't like customs that much, especially when it takes them three hours to get you back across the border to your origin country. And it's not like they were processing me or anything, that was done within twenty or so minutes, no, I was just sitting in the immigration office for the rest of the time.

I guess it just seems absurd to me that I'd meet with such suspicion on a trip to the States when I had already taken the same trip under the same circumstances twice before with no problems. Details here if you care to read.

Canadian customs do seem a lot easier to deal with.

"Senator, if I try to hoard the fruits of my husband's genius, I may cripple my race. Don't you see what perpetual copyright implies? It is perpetual racial memory! That bill will give the human race an elephant's memory. Have you ever seen a cheerful elephant?"

a) I do use the xml+xhtml MIME type. View Uberm00 in a browser that supports it (i.e. not IE, Firefox definitely) and check the Content-type sent. If your browser tells my server it supports it, it sends that type.

b) XHTML is fine to use in non-XML content-types. That's why it's XHTML and not XML. There are certain circumstances with oddness (script tags always need an ending tag, for example), but all validate if done correctly. You'll note that the W3C Validator doesn't really care about the Content-type sent from the server, it all validates the same.

c) XHTML is fine to use in the middle of HTML, generally. Using a
  won't hurt anything, and using a self-closing script tag (as mentioned by a sibling post) isn't good XHTML practice in the first place.

One of the most interesting comments I've read on Slashdot in quite a while. Thanks for posting that.

I found an interesting short story a while ago about how copyright will eventually strangle creativity: it's called Melancholy Elephants, and it's an interesting read if you haven't seen it before.

FYI, in case you haven't heard about it, there is a quick Javascript fix that allows full-alpha PNGs to work in IE 5.5 and up, not break Mozilla and others, and not affect W3C validation. It's called Sleight. (And while I don't take any credit for the original, you might try using my version of Sleight to allow for Opera users mimicking IE, though remember you still need x.gif.)

Read the talk given to Microsoft Research by Cory Doctorow, specifically, the section on why DRM doesn't work. To summarize, any provider who uses DRM is, essentially, giving you the encrypted content, the code to how the decryption works, and the actual key used to decrypt the content. And believe me, no matter how much they goop up the logic board with epoxy, DVD Jon will still be able to get that key, and when all three are combined, you've got your DeCSS, or PlayFair, or whatever DRM-stripping technology you want.

The first thing I did when I got a cell phone a year ago was try connecting it to my home server (Apache running on a 233MMX box running then Win2K Advanced Server, now Gentoo Linux) to figure out how it worked. I learned WML and the inner workings of WAP (which led me to figure out some interesting ways around cell phone "DRM").

Basically, what I'm saying is that I'm a tinkerer, and the more options a device gives me, the better. A simple web browser would have gone a long way and probably would have doubled my use of the DS (considering that then, I could effectively use it as a digital planner and portable, around-the-house internet device), and I figure a few Slashdotters are thinking the same thing.