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Ever heard of the concept "one click and you're guilty?" Users of this feature who unknowingly perform a search that returns results containting offensive/illegal content may find themselves being prosecuted by local, state or Federal authorities...

Proof of concept: Google caught in anti-Semitism flap. Replace "anti-semitism" with "child pornography" and you'll understand what I'm getting at...

I'm pretty sure this has to do with Microsoft's long history dealing with Japanese customers (since the late '70s), MS's large revenues from Japan (over 10%), and (maybe) the relatively low piracy rates in Japan compared to other non-English speaking countries.

With the help of Kay Nishi, Microsoft established its first international sales office in Japan in late 1978. This was before DOS when MS was primarily a language company and early Japanese PCs needed languages.

Even if we disregard MS's "head start" in Japan, Japan probably has been the largest non-English speaking market. Despite Japan's relatively low population, Japan has a highly developed economy, relatively low piracy rates, and a long history with computers (NEC). At the end of 2002 (one year after Windows XP), MS got 20% of its revenue from the Asia-Pacific region, but half of it was from Japan alone.

I'm sure MS is working damn hard on the Portuguese versions of their software.

Just for those that don't know what I'm trying to get at, the FBI should be handling more important issues. Like this one : http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,51648,00 .html

Instead of going with a permanent implant, why not just get a stylish gold ring or watch or other thing with an RFID chip? I never take off my watch so it would give me almost the same functionality. Or maybe a false fingernail or something that is semipermament. This allows me to opt out without having to cut myself open.

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My main gripe is the transfer times CDs and DVDs require you to manipulate plastic to get to your information so if you want to copy your entire DVD library to the new HD-Ultraviolent-Blu-Ray media disc, you have to pick up each disk and place it into a DVD drive. However, with a RAID system, you just cp a directory over the network. If you have one of those automated backup system with moving arms, I guess it's similar but that's a bit extreme for home use. I have a lot of VHS tapes, CDs, and physical photos sitting at home because I'm too lazy to manually copy them to an easy to access digital system. If they were already on my home data server and I wanted to send them to a physically offsite backup, I could just ftp them overnight assuming I have the bandwith. The latter method makes it easier to have backups and backups to protect important data. I'm more concerned with data loss due to fire or a localized physical problem. If I could easily replicate data between my PDA, my home server, and a few offsite backups, I don't need my physical media to be able to last for years since I can just replace the components as tech gets better or parts start to fail.

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I think another important issue is the amount of waste generated by throw-away CDs and DVDs. How long do you want the average mix-CD made by Joe Teenager to last? He probably won't be using that thing longer than a year. Biodegradable media may serve the purpose for 90% of optical storage, and more permanent metal/plastic discs could be used for archiving pictures, documents, and the like. Answering the data-life question is important for determining how long biodegradable media should last. Plus, the life of the disc doesn't determine the life of the data. If you have something really important, you can probably spare the time once every 20-25 years to copy it to a new medium before the old one becomes unusable. I'm sure most of us wish that those AOL CDs would biodegrade before they ever made it to our mailboxes and front doors.

Wouldn't it be better to switch to a RAID style hard drive system? As long as the data can be transferred quickly (no CD swapping) I don't need the hardware to last for decades if I can move the data over to another system without a problem before it fails. The whole point of digital data is so that it can be replicated and transfered rather than for the hardware to last forever. In the future, we could just have multiple personal petabyte data archives in various places that store all of our personal information where the physical system isn't such a big deal because bandwith makes it easy to move the data to my PDA or to my bank's digital data vault.

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Is'nt this a bit old news since this site allready had this news post the 23. But i surely hope that the PearPC developers sue CherryOS since it's breaking Apple's EULA (well Apple could sue them) another thing is the fact that CherryOS most likely has stolen most of its code from PearPC acording to this article from Wired.

Here. Its a shame it wasn't linked in the main text of the article :-(

There is a link to donate money for these kids to go to college.
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/13.04/donate.ht ml
Want to make a difference. Click the link give the amount you spent on that iPod, Xbox, PS2, or any even GTA. If evey one that posted a message gave $200 there would be 20,000 dollars already in the account.
Even if you can not pony up the $200 how about 20?
If you think "somebody" should help these guys be somebody.

Why does Sony seem to have a higher level of complaints than all the other LCD makers? Was it a rushed process resulting in dropped quality or do they have the same quality as others and the media is just picking up on their problems?
BTW, requisite PA comic on the topic
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Take Your Porn on the Road

2) High Energy Density Small and light, the new battery offers a high level of storage efficiency. The prototype battery is only 3.8mm thick, 62mm high and 35mm deep and has a capacity of 600mAh.
Given the recharge times that is an amazing amount of energy for PDAs, cameras and the like. However, if you're going to scale up that system for cars, you are going to have a hellishly dangerous amount of current flowing in order to get a charge in a minute (or time similar to a gas station) so they better figure out some good safety systems if they want to go to market with this for pure electic cars rather than the hybrids they're planning for in 2006. However, they might not need the one minute charge if they use the charge at home system the some electric car designs. You could charge to full in an hour or get enough of a charge at the supermarket or other store to make short hops without a problem.

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These aren't processors. They're more like modems. They convert the optical signal into electrons and let a normal electronic CMOS CPU proccess the data. The article is about the fact that this modulator can be done on the same chip as the processor and is ten times as fast as the next best thing.

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I think you meant to say electricty is light. This is somewhat right but not exactly. Light /is/ made up of electromagnetic fields and the electric force between charges /is/ transmitted by photons, but they are two seperate ideas. Modern quantum physics has electricity sent via virtual photons while normal light is sent by real photons. Real photons involve both an electric field and a magnetic field perpendicular to each other and perpendicular to the direction of the wave propogation. The reason fiber optics transmissions are "faster" is because we can send multiple signals on different wavelengths over the same line without them interfering with each other two much. We can't do this with normal electric signals because high frequency electric signals start acting strangly since metal wires can no longer be though as resistors but now have to be modeled as inductors too.

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The article isn't about pure photonic processors that working completely on light. These would be used in fiber optic routers where switching between light and electric signals is a waste. Data is already transmitted via light but the modulators used are seperate from the computing logic parts. In this new system, the computing system is still using classic transistors but the optical parts are integrated onto the IC. This is still a far step from pure photonic computers where the "transistors" or logic gates are done purely via light.

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when he was part of the Challenger investigation team. Hopefully, this means that the chance of another accident is improbable given NASA's desire to phase out the Shuttle and replace it with something more 21st century. Hopefully the winds won't change and the Shuttle will be replaced with something better before the next accident. NASA should really start pushing for more private groups to do this rather than just handing out paltry prizes. Or maybe the Chinese will end up giving NASA the drive it needs to get a working space program. China's economy isn't on the rocks like the USSR during the space race so they would actually be able to compete with us.

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I cancelled my TiVo and cable TV after several years of use. I now use NetFlix for commercial free content, including all of the obscure stuff that Blockbuster will never carry.
I then use the internet for news, including all of the obscure stuff I'm interested in that CNN/Fox/et al will never cover.
The world has officially moved from Push to Pull and with Firefox and ad-blocking software I have a commercial free existence. I just wish we could get rid of roadside billboards :)
See Wired's article on Push=>Pull
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.10/tail.html /

If he had just stopped after he gained a couple million and spam wasn't as big of a deal, he could have retired and lived in peace for the rest of his life. Yet he got greedy and kept trying to make more money even as people kept getting more fed up with spam. Excessive greed has takes down even the best of criminals.

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The article concentrates on hackers liking the features that Apple adds to the modern Mac, but how many of the programmers and power users jumping ship from Wintel (or WAMD) machines are doing this because of BSD? The main reason I got my Mac Mini was because it is smaller than the Linux server I use right now so it's easier to deal with. I might eventually use it as a Mac client machine rather than as a server once I figure out how to set up my media system, but right now it's just another *nix box to me. Apple really did the right thing by loading OSX with a ton of developer tools and allowing the community to do much of their work for them.

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All of the previous courts that have ruled on this case have sided with P2P. Probably because the P2P side has been making the argument that P2P is just the next version of VCRs, audio tapes, etc. Also the Constitution says that the purpose of copyright laws is to "promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts" and the P2P side has artists saying that the tech is good for them because it helps them get their stuff out. The RIAA's argument is pretty much "we're losing money" rather than "the arts are being destroyed" so they have a harder argument to pull off. There is also the strong evidence showing that many people who use P2P do buy the music later on. While this is still technically illegal, it ends up promoting the arts so this is probably a Good Thing in the eyes of the Founders.

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Urinating and defacating all over the keyboard sounds like the methods of some of the developers in my place of work, and it works for them!

I just read Stephenson's Diamond Age and it had the concept of fully interactive media. Instead of just overlaying a face over a static movie, 'ractives didn't seperate actors and viewers. The idea was that the 'viewer' would buy a ractive and would pay a different amount depending on the type of ractive. They would also be able to have other viewers join them or they could pay professional actors to fill in the spot. The system was flexible enough to adapt to whatever the people did (and probably had a rating system to get rid of trolls) so it combined the basics of a script with something like a MMORPG. As AI come closer to the Turing test, this might also take off as you buy 3d/VRML/etc client and join RPGs that concentrate more on the role-playing rather than casting fireballs. However, I don't think this kind of thing will really take off until it becomes open enough that anyone can write their own ractives instead of just joining a centralized server an follow someone else's script.

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http://www.mirrordot.org/stories/7a619ff68b3628144 0ce8c14d21197d5/index.html IMO, the Wi-Fi model they have there looks more interesting than the wired one. Hopefully, they'll get picoTux to work on that and be able to make the antenna less clunky.

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Dictionary attacks and other brute force attacks still don't work too well on passphrases so those who use them can protect their drug money for a little while longer. It should also be noted that the DNA attack won't work unless the Secret Service has your private key file. The actual encryption can't be broken easily so they have to attack the weak encryption on the digital private key that's stored on your computer. If the key is stored in a manner that they can't get to it, then your data will still be safe. E.g. the key is stored on an IC in the computer that self destructs if it is tampered with like IBM's ultra-paranoid laptops. The IC would detect a brute force attack and destroy the key.

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Or maybe they game them movie theater tickets

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If the MLA would come up with a formal specification of the English language that was a recursively enumerable language it wouldn't be so fucking hard to parse the language. They could at least formalize things like order-of-operations regarding clauses and enumerated lists and give a better set of punctuation to work with. They should choose whether they want the language to be pure communications medium with a formal syntax or if they want it to be a completely flexible means of artistic expression full of nuances and hints that can only be understood by a sentient being who has studied the language in-depth for many years.


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I think that using the body's nervous system offers more variables. I understand that the eyes are very fast, but they can only do one thing at a time. Probably a system that combines excellent nervous system translation and eye movement captation will be incredible. I'm all for giving everyone their favorite input system. Some people prefer to play the violin, others the tuba. There is no reason for computer interfaces to be standardized, and we shouldn't be scared of interfaces that have a very long and slow learning curve. Usually, when something is hard to learn, you can do more complex things with it when you know how it works, compared to something easy that becomes troublesome because complex actions require too many simple actions.

Just like benchmarking computers, there should be people benchmarking interfaces.

Brain link!

If people read that linked slashdot story, they would see that self-replicating robots are not much closer than when von Neumann wrote about them. The LEGO Mindstorm evolution is pretty cool just because Mindstorms is being used as a platform for this and since the evolution system is doesn't require an outside computer.

However, the small population used (2 bots) and the seemingly weak fitness function make me think that this project won't go anywhere fast (pardon the pun) and is just a genetic dead end. Evolution is dependent on the Law of Very Large Numbers for anything significant to happen.

If you really want to see something cool along the lines of evolving moving robots, I suggest the GOLEM Project. The robots don't manufacture themselves, but the system is a lot closer to biological evolution than most.

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Even though he wasn't nominated for a Culture novel, I agree with the parent that his writing kicks ass. I suggest his essay, A Few Notes on the Culture, as quick intro about it. IMO, the best book is Excession but all of his Culture novels are amazing. They detail life in a post-scarcity ("money is a sign of poverty") civilization which is utopian by many standards. When many sci-fi books show AI as being human level sophonts (Star Wars, Asimov, etc) Banks has his AIs operating orders of magnitude above humans yet he still makes humans feel like an important part of the universe. Of all the science fiction I've read, the universe created by Banks is by far the coolest.

I haven't read the novel in question, but if his Culture books are any indication of this novel's quality, it will be just as amazing and worthy of the Hugo.

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When I used to study piano, my teacher would often recomend playing out a scale on a hard wooden surface. This strengthens the fingers significantly; however, I wonder if doing that for a long while might have adverse effects.

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I was hoping that the BGs were inside shots of the CRTs or detailed views of LCD panels rather than illusions of the room which only work from one angle. However, I am reminded of the transparent skirts.

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This is a good time as any to mention Vinge's Singularity. The main topic is AI, but he also talks about IA or Intelligence Amplification. The DM in the article is a type of IA for communications systems between people. It would merge the useful parts of online communications such as active logging without the problematic impersonal problems that are sometimes caused. This gets extended further when people are connected 24/7 and they have the ability to treat the real world and the wired world much more similarly

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from http://www.wired.com
Take Your Porn on the Road ...
Configure PSP Video 9 to work with Cherian's other program, Videora, and you can automate video transfers from BitTorrent to your PC to your PSP -- overnight.

No need to buy UMDs. Just sync your PSP with your computer and off you go, porn in hand.

Because this, of course, is a wet dream for porn fans. Once you get your porn on the PSP, delete it from your hard drive, and you can enjoy your porn in private while keeping the family computer freed up for other things. Like games. ....
Geek wags have already dubbed the device "PornStation Portable" and warned each other to be cautious when in public. ;)

As with many console launches, I think a big problem here is the games. This happened with the DS too since their selection was limited (Mario DS and Metroid are the only two good ones from what I've heard) even though they have their GBA games to fall back on. Since the DS is less expensive, can also do movies, MP3s and ebooks using Movie Player Advance, people don't seem to want to spend the $100 extra for it. Both companies want to create a new industry around downloading content over WiFi and other non videogame things so they seem to be holding out on their initial releases. It might be better to wait six months and see which side has better stuff.

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maybe if the US gov't hadn't completely bailed out of the anti-trust case, microsoft- a company that makes operating systems, office productivity tools, databases and development platforms- wouldn't be the only obvious choice to oppose google (who has been less than receptive to this particular customer's wishes, as documented on slashdot many times before...

basically there's enough blame to go around I guess.

Since the majority of viruses, spyware, and other crap are due to user inaction, this isn't really a fair metric about the overall security. However, it is good to compare against the Windows survival time which is measured in minutes. This does show that Apple has its default security setup as "paranoid with multiple tin foil hats) compared to Windows XP's default setup. A more interesting test would compare how hard it is to get spyware onto a user's computer via the default webbrowser since that seems to be the primary vector these days. However, this is problematic since it's heavily dependent on user stupidity.

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Man, this was on Wired three or four days ago. Get with the program Slashdot. I just guess I couple call this a dupe with all the news I read on a daily basis.

To distribute a music video by the indie rock band The Decemberists. It was intentionally broadcast using bittorrent. Wired article. We deliberately posted it on bittorrent knowing that the band couldn't afford the bandwidth to host a high quality version of the video and we would hardly get air time on MTV2 anyway. I thought at best their hardcore fans on the message board would download it, maybe a few hunrded. We should clear 6000 downloads tonight. So there are examples of artists using bittorrent legally and legitimately.

There is already legal precedent that P2P file sharing technology in itself is indeed legal. The Federal Appeals court that ruled was talking about networks like Morpheus and Grokster, but I would think the precedent set also applies to Bittorrent.

Here's a quote from a news story back in August:

"History has shown that time and market forces often provide equilibrium in balancing interests, whether the new technology be a player piano, a copier, a tape recorder, a video recorder, a personal computer, a karaoke machine, or an MP3 player," Thomas wrote. "Thus, it is prudent for courts to exercise caution before restructuring liability theories for the purpose of addressing specific market abuses, despite their apparent present magnitude."

That's true no matter what: if it has copy protection, it won't have the Compact Disc logo on it, because it isn't a true CD, merely a shiny disc that pretends.

I directed a video recently for a band called The Decemberists who aren't on a major label. They have, however, drummed up a lot of mainstream press notice and attention and good sales for a true indie label band. Once the video was done, however, I got my obligatory MTV2 airings at weird times of the night. So how were we going to share it? There'd be a cruddy low res version which is barely what the band could afford to host. So we distributed via bittorrent directly. We literally gave their fans as high quality file as we could. In one week using only bittorrent and not including the low res Quicktime, we've had over 5000 downloads. This is in the same week that Universal Music Group (one of the titans) has declared that music videos will no longer be streamed for free. Wired ran an article with all the details here: Wired article on how to get around MTV And now? The band is at number 7 on the iTunes music store and 19 at amazon. That is with the marketing budget of a small indepdendent label. Rewards come to those artists who embrace and understand how to use this tech. BTW i kept trying to submit this story but to no avail.

Jeffy Tweety of Wilco (mentioned in TFA), a popular indie band, is a staunch advocate of P2P music distribution and making music possible via the internet. When their label Reprise rejected thier album "Yankee Foxtrot Hotel", they purchased their master copies and streamed it online for free.

In other news, Jeff Tweedy and Stanford Law School professor Lawrence Lessig will discuss their opinions regarding file sharing, free culture, and the arts. Lessig wrote the 2004 book Free Culture: How Big Media Uses Technology and the Law to Lock Down Culture and Control Creativity. Steven Johnson, author of Interface Culture: How New Technology Transforms the Way We Create and Communicate, will moderate the discussion. All LIVE from the NYPL in conjunction with Wired magazine.

Thursday, April 7 at 7 p.m.
Celeste Bartos Forum


P.S. Wilco rocks. Hard.



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I found this article on Mr Hatch quite amusing too for anyone interested... Orrin Hatch, Software Pirate?

Hatch himself, is actually an amateur musician (http://www.hatchmusic.com/). I am guessing we will not be seeing his latest album available through Napster.

MP3s will last longer than games. A good rundown of the different times: http://psp.ign.com/articles/572/572563p1.html

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Because their law still prevents private copies. And since you can't crack the DRM without making a private copy using PyMusique, you end up violating the law. As soon as you make a copy of the downloaded file that doesn't have DRM, you've violated this law.

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Because certain corporations who will remain nameless pay them not to. The courts have shot down certain laws that are intrusive under the Substantive Due Proccess requirement because the government couldn't show that the laws helped people rather than hurt them. It's much harder for them to do this when the rights being violated are more subtle (fixed term copyrights vs unlimited extensions) so it's easier for the corporations to control copyright.

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"the circumvention of a TPM applied to copyright material will only be illegal if it is carried out with the objective of infringing copyright. Legitimate access, as authorized by the Copyright Act, will not be altered."

That sounds like it will allow the creation and sale of mod chips as long as they are used legally. Though, it doesn't allow private copying which means that cracking iTunes for personal use is still not legal.

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I submitted this story a couple of times yesterday, but it sadly wasn't accepted. Maybe it was too long or had too many links? In any case, here's a copy, which has a little additional info:

MSNBC, Space.com, and Wired report that NASA, in collaboration with the non-profit Spaceward Foundation, has announced its first two Centennial Challenges. The Centennial Challenges, inspired by the Ansari X Prize and DARPA Grand Challenge, are prize contests seeking to stimulate private industry development of technologies relevant to space exploration. One contest is the Tether Challenge, for building the sort of super-strong tether needed to make a space elevator feasible. The other is the Beam Power Challenge, for creating a wirelessly-powered ribbon-climbing robot capable of lifting as large a payload as possible within a limited timeframe. The initial set of challenges in 2005 will award $50K to the winners of each contest. A second set of challenges in 2006 will award first, second, and third place prizes worth $100K, $40K, and $10K. It's hoped that these contests will further space elevator technology and help eliminate the 'giggle factor' surrounding them. Additional contests will be announced in the coming weeks, although Congress currently restricts NASA from awarding prizes of more than $250K; the agency is lobbying to try to get this limit raised to $40 million for future prizes.

It's been known for a while that Apple is full of atheistic-Satan-worshiping-anarchy-loving-communis ts for a while now
Register Article:
The real operating system hiding under the newest version of the Macintosh operating system (MacOS X) is called... Darwin! That's right, new Macs are based on Darwinism! While they currently don't advertise this fact to consumers, it is well known among the computer elite, who are mostly Atheists and Pagans. Furthermore, the Darwin OS is released under an "Open Source" license, which is just another name for Communism. They try to hide all of this under a facade of shiny, "lickable" buttons, but the truth has finally come out: Apple Computers promote Godless Darwinism and Communism.

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