Slashdot Mirror

Don't forget he wrote it on an old typewriter and was well known for NOT being a computer nerd.

It took the power of eBay to get William Gibson online. "I went happily along for years, smugly avoiding anything that involved a modem. Email address? Sorry. Don't have one... Then I found eBay. And I wanted to go back."

(I firehosed this story too with some extra information about how the Copyright Lobby primed the Australian Media to run a ridiculous piracy=terrorism story, complete with a claim by Australian Reporter Mike Munroe that pirates could "burn a DVD in 3.5 seconds":)

Australia's Fairfax group published an article by Journalists Eamonn Duff and Rachel Browne claiming that people who download films from illegal file-sharing websites are financing terrorism. The article only quoted media industry sources and was basically a warmed-up press release. That evening Channel Seven "Sunday Night" current affairs program claimed how how movie piracy is being used to fund terrorist groups including Hezbollah and Jemaah Islamiah, responsible for the Bali bombings in 2002 which killed hundreds including 94 Australians. Reporter Mike Munro claimed pirates "could burn a DVD in 3.5 seconds."

While technically-savy voters can sort fact from fiction, technically-illiterate politicians are easily swayed. What's the best way to combat this sort of misinformation? Is it possible to educate our politicians that there are two sides to every story? Or are they hopelessly in the lobbyists pockets.

Remember the big flap with Second Life banks when Ginko Financial failed? They had a real bank run in Second Life, with avatars crowding branches demanding their money.

Linden Labs then banned all "banks" in Second Life unless operated by a regulated real-world financial institution. A few real banks established a presence in Second Life, but most (maybe all) have given it up by now.

The problem with banks in a virtual world is that what banks really do is sell loans. It's hard to collect from an avatar. So a loan business is tough to make work. A deposit and transfer business is quite workable, but it's expensive to run well. Among other things, it has all the fraud-prevention problems and costs of, say, PayPal.

Over the years, Microsoft has proven to be particulary inept at getting any traction with their search business. In January 2008, Microsoft made an unsolicited bid to purchase Yahoo. Their efforts were frustrated when Google came to Yahoo's rescue. To get their revenge Microsoft mobilized their army of lobbyists in a Plot to Kill Google. Microsoft persuaded other companies and trade groups to lend support to their FUD campaign against their arch enemy. You will recall that the powerful American Corn Growers Association was among them - this same organization who's members get billions in subsidies to produce environmentally unfriendly ethanol from corn.

An article in the New York Times details Google's public-relations offensive to counteract the Microsoft generated FUD.

The Times articles states about Google: "regulators are intensely scrutinizing its every move, as they once did with ... Microsoft. (My bold)

Why is it - "as they once did with Microsoft"? Microsoft never changed the behaviour that lead to civil actions filed against Microsoft in May of 1998 by the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) and 20 U.S. states.

They have made a big mistake. The DOJ is after the wrong company! With a new administartion in place, their first priority should be to get Microsoft under control. The EU has really shown the world the the US DOJ has been asleep on its watch. If the DOJ woke up and stepped up to its long neglected responsibilities, it would be the USA raking in the billions in fines it will take to get Microsoft to behave itself, instead of the EU. Why in the world are they going after Google at this time?

Google has been a shining example of how a good corporate citizen should behave, and Microsoft should be encouraged to emulate Google's example. Google doesn't lock people into its software or services. Any time you want you can use another search engine or pick up your Google docs and walk away. If there are some justifiable concerns about Google, I suggest that the DOJ first take care of elephant in the room - Microsoft - before turning to Google. It is just so disheartening to see the good guys getting DOJ's attention while the bad guy slips away. Microsoft, you hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from Google's eye.

PS: I couldn't have written this short essay without Google there by my side the whole time as a friend to help me with the research.

They are more than welcome to search any of my devices for child porn and malware, with a proper warrant. I will show them that I have an open AP, with no logging, so it's entirely possible and likely that I did not do the crime. The burden of proof is still on the accuser here in the US, even if they invoke "child porn".

No the only thing apple should be ashamed of is poor battery design and over clocking the processor to make idiots happy

Overclocked processor? Maybe you should learn not to post false information.

Also, even if Apple designed the batteries, they didn't build them themselves. Poor manufacturing and QC of individual components isn't Apple's fault. Just as exploding Sony batteries isn't Dell's.

They depend upon the suggestions of Land Grant research institutions and the conclusions of the USDA and FDA when deciding which practices to implement on their farms to try and stay profitable while maintaining the health of their cows. Farmers were told that feeding rendered meat to cattle in small quantities was safe, and saved them money.

That's not a valid excuse. No one in their right mind would ever think that feeding pigs to pigs, sheep to sheep or cattle to cattle was a good idea. These research institutions probably conducted their research at the behest of the meat industry, lokking for a place to offload excessive offal, and factory farms jumped on it. Common sense was flat out ignored in the quest for profits.

Antibiotics are used against bacteria. the Flu is a Virus. Consequently, you are full of shit.

That was my error. I apologise if I mislead anyone. I misrepresented the effects of the anti-biotics dose on pigs. As you correctly say, anti-biotics cannot effect viruses.

But they did cause the Swine Flu virus to emerge via their application. Here's an article which discusses the conditions in factory pig farms which lead to the flu epidemic in North American pig farms. The relevant passages

The immobility, poisonous air and terror of confinement badly damage the pigs' immune systems. They become susceptible to infection, and in such dense quarters microbes or parasites or fungi, once established in one pig, will rush spritelike through the whole population. Accordingly, factory pigs are infused with a huge range of antibiotics and vaccines, and are doused with insecticides. Without these compounds -- oxytetracycline, draxxin, ceftiofur, tiamulin -- diseases would likely kill them.

These conditions lead to an enviornment in pig farms which was ripe for a pandemic. This article discusses how the conditions lead to the spread of the virulent pig flu which would evolve into Swine Flu. The relevant quote here is

"Industrial farms are super-incubators for viruses," said Bob Martin, former executive director of the Pew Commission on Industrial Animal Farm Production, and a long-time critic of the so-called "contained animal feeding operations."

The dosing of pigs with anti-biotics was one of the key elements which lead to the Swine Flu outbreak. It did not make the Swine Flu resistant to anti-biotics, but it did create the strain in the first place. Once again, I apologise for the unintentional misinformation.

Often a few pennies make the difference between losing money on every cow and making money on every cow.

Yes, but right now the pressures are on the cost to produce beef. They are what is being driven down, at the cost of our health and safety. Admittedly the consumer is a fault for not paying more for quality meat. But when organisations like the FDA label meat from pigs that have eaten pigs, pigs have been sick and kept alive only by powerful medication, pigs and cattle have died on the way to the slaugherhouse as being "quality" meat, what are consumers to do? Meat is treated as a commodity, and producers are in a race to the bottom, at our expense.

Good point! Pandora isn't at fault, I blame the cutthroat music industry. Luckily we have Mr Self Destruct to help us out!

Let's not kid ourselves ...

Sure, other goverments "[route] all digital traffic in the country through a single choke point, using the capabilities of deep packet inspection" and so do we.

So you say that a board member of the Swedish Association for the Protection of Industrial Property judging a copyright case is an accepted part of the social justice anywhere?

No, but I was rebutting this:

A judge should not be involved in lawmaking, ever. Period.

The Swedish Association for the Protection of Industrial Property does not appear to be a lawmaking body of any shape or form. More of a a forum/lobby group. The judges membership would seem to infer bias to me and invalidate him as the judge of the case. It is however up to the legal system of THAT NATION to make those decisions. Not us.

So you say that a board member of the Swedish Association for the Protection of Industrial Property judging a copyright case is an accepted part of the social justice anywhere?

While you might be right on that one word, there are some other things too.

The Letterman video that the story links to is terrible, to put it kindly. No meaningful specifications given:

• How much does it cost?
• Where can it be purchased?
• When can it be purchased?
• How long to charge the batteries?
• How long do the batteries last?
• How fast does it go?
• What is the warranty?
• Where is it serviced?

Are just a few of the pertinent questions that weren't even brought up in that lousy clip. Instead they showed us a bunch of people drinking (some of them seemed a bit tipsy on camera) and talking in vague generalizations. That ad video was so bad, I can't help but wonder if it was done by IBM employees.

Eh... probably why subby linked to a review also...

At $50,000 the Model S is more likely to be used as a fleet car then something you use at home.

Huh? Tell me the Model S does't resemble other consumer vehicles in that price range.

While technically correct, operationally it makes zero difference. This is why the Director of the National Cybersecurity Center resigned mid March.

NSA effectively controls DHS cyber efforts through detailees, technology insertions, and the proposed move of NPPD and the NCSC to a Fort Meade NSA facility. NSA currently dominates most national cyber efforts. While acknoledging the critical importance of NSA to our intelligence efforts, I believe this is a bad strategy on multiple grounds. The intelligence culture is very different thana network operations or security culture. In addition, the threats to our democratic process are significant if all top level government network security and monitoring are handled by any one organization...

This is really old news because they are simply implementing everything that was proposed months ago. Someone should really edit the summary to include this resignation from months ago because this was precisely what he was warning about. It is very significant.

It's quite clear what Apple approved was selling individual C64 games or apps individually that used an emulator underneath. Not a full fledged emulator that would let you program your own games, or play whatever C64 software you have.

Which is why smart developers create "Easter Eggs" in their iPhone apps.

Snarking Validation anyone?

Amateurs can take photos from small telescopes... slightly more professional methods are not inaccessible either.

This may not be of immediate help, but there was a hacked firmware for certain Canon P&S cameras that allowed you to save the raw image.
Here's the first article I found about it:
http://howto.wired.com/wiki/Supercharge_Your_Camera_with_Open-Source_CHDK_Firmware#How_To_Use_It

Note: I have not used this and cannot vouch for it.

Good luck!

1 inch thick at the $500ish price point, though, is a pretty favorable thickness/cost proposition

Even then it's not that great -- I've had PDAs that were half the cost and thickness of that! Or what about the Sharp Actius MM10? It was half an inch thick six years ago! Yeah, it cost $1500 back then, but surely you could build the same thing today for $500.

Barack Obama has decided that copyright issues are a matter of national security, and has appointed a number of former RIAA lawyers to various positions in his administration. I think it's pretty clear whose side Obama is on, and it does not bode well for the future of the Internet.

Obama: Change you can believe in. It won't happen, but you sure can believe in it.

Ah but wouldn't the cellphone companies love to see that change.

http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2009/04/congressman-to/ I don't think they're hurting for money. Download caps and the price per GB we pay far exceed their costs.

The difference is that those cards (if you're talking about collector cards, correct me otherwise) have value in their uniqueness. e.g. this Ronaldinho card with the low identifier 34 is one of only 50 similar cards printed. People buy several stacks of football cards, hoping one of them will contain a really rare card. I'm not going to buy several copies of the same CD just to get the really rare autographed picture!

Sure, there are lots of ways to monetize on artists other than selling their CDs. Concerts, t-shirts, posters, etc. are all good ways. But CDs themselves are not.

As a wired article recently stated: if the marginal cost of something is zero, the price will eventually be zero.

Forget bundling with CDs. Unless you want to sell "collector" CDs that have been signed (which I'm sure there's an albeit limited market for), selling plain CDs are not going to remain a profitable business.

bah!! Don't put the email address up there, post a link to the instructions for how to set up a proxy There's also good material in this Wired article that auric_dude linked below and got that link from about how to get the proxies to who needs them.

Noah Shachtman over at wired http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2009/06/web-attacks-expand-in-irans-cyber-battle/#more-13774 seems to have an idea of what is happening and worth a read.

Available for a while now, see here.

It's not that great. The tilt control feels lose, and the levels feel very small.

Kinda neat, but just not "there".

Agree in principle that the Recording Industry (Saleable Copyright model) is not working, but the "pay for creative work up-front" seems to have major drawbacks - principly that you have no idea if a creative person is any good until they've delivered the goods, creating chicken and egg.

I think you're missing a trick though: live performances.

I've read up on the subject as a former MP3.com artist myself, from talking to upcoming bands like Silverman and from the widespread public writings of established artists. All say that recording artists rarely make any money from sales though their record company; in fact they normally end up heavily in debt (the famous record label "tab").

Let me say that again: most artists do not profit from music sales. Only the record labels (and industry quangos like the RIAA) profit from music sales. Instead, most current artists make their money from live gigs, merchandise, appearance fees, etc - the good old fashioned "goods/services for cash" model.

As soon as you appreciate this, you realise you can ditch the record label altogether, "open source" your music (allow to be freely distributed on a non-profit basis, with distribution channels allowed to charge a small fee to cover their costs if they wish) and make money from gigs, etc, instead as your popularity grows.

This is not a new idea: numerous bug names in music are advocating the idea. Here's a quote from an excellent 2007 Wired feature by former label boss David Byrne:

"What is called the music business today, however, is not the business of producing music. At some point it became the business of selling CDs in plastic cases, and that business will soon be over. But that's not bad news for music, and it's certainly not bad news for musicians. Indeed, with all the ways to reach an audience, there have never been more opportunities for artists."

"The fact that Radiohead debuted its latest album online and Madonna defected from Warner Bros. to Live Nation, a concert promoter, is held to signal the end of the music business as we know it. Actually, these are just two examples of how musicians are increasingly able to work outside of the traditional label relationship. There is no one single way of doing business these days. There are, in fact, six viable models by my count. That variety is good for artists; it gives them more ways to get paid and make a living. And it's good for audiences, too, who will have more - and more interesting - music to listen to. Let's step back and get some perspective."

Wise words. Full article (well worth a read):

    http://www.wired.com/entertainment/music/magazine/16-01/ff_byrne

If that's not enough for you, plenty of similar reading at:

    http://entertainment.howstuffworks.com/record-label.htm/printable
    http://www.sourban.net/The-Future-Of-Music-How-Real-Artists-Will-Save-Music-From-The-Music-Industry
    http://www.magnatune.com/info/musicians
    http://www.wired.com/entertainment/music/magazine/16-01/ff_yorke
    http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=music+artists+make+money+live+performances+record+label

Cheers, Ben

Agree in principle that the Recording Industry (Saleable Copyright model) is not working, but the "pay for creative work up-front" seems to have major drawbacks - principly that you have no idea if a creative person is any good until they've delivered the goods, creating chicken and egg.

I think you're missing a trick though: live performances.

I've read up on the subject as a former MP3.com artist myself, from talking to upcoming bands like Silverman and from the widespread public writings of established artists. All say that recording artists rarely make any money from sales though their record company; in fact they normally end up heavily in debt (the famous record label "tab").

Let me say that again: most artists do not profit from music sales. Only the record labels (and industry quangos like the RIAA) profit from music sales. Instead, most current artists make their money from live gigs, merchandise, appearance fees, etc - the good old fashioned "goods/services for cash" model.

As soon as you appreciate this, you realise you can ditch the record label altogether, "open source" your music (allow to be freely distributed on a non-profit basis, with distribution channels allowed to charge a small fee to cover their costs if they wish) and make money from gigs, etc, instead as your popularity grows.

This is not a new idea: numerous bug names in music are advocating the idea. Here's a quote from an excellent 2007 Wired feature by former label boss David Byrne:

"What is called the music business today, however, is not the business of producing music. At some point it became the business of selling CDs in plastic cases, and that business will soon be over. But that's not bad news for music, and it's certainly not bad news for musicians. Indeed, with all the ways to reach an audience, there have never been more opportunities for artists."

"The fact that Radiohead debuted its latest album online and Madonna defected from Warner Bros. to Live Nation, a concert promoter, is held to signal the end of the music business as we know it. Actually, these are just two examples of how musicians are increasingly able to work outside of the traditional label relationship. There is no one single way of doing business these days. There are, in fact, six viable models by my count. That variety is good for artists; it gives them more ways to get paid and make a living. And it's good for audiences, too, who will have more - and more interesting - music to listen to. Let's step back and get some perspective."

Wise words. Full article (well worth a read):

    http://www.wired.com/entertainment/music/magazine/16-01/ff_byrne

If that's not enough for you, plenty of similar reading at:

    http://entertainment.howstuffworks.com/record-label.htm/printable
    http://www.sourban.net/The-Future-Of-Music-How-Real-Artists-Will-Save-Music-From-The-Music-Industry
    http://www.magnatune.com/info/musicians
    http://www.wired.com/entertainment/music/magazine/16-01/ff_yorke
    http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=music+artists+make+money+live+performances+record+label

Cheers, Ben

"Moore's law should apply" - well, it does to the post-processing of the images, but the big constraints are in the scanning technology, where fitting more logic gates onto the same amount of silicon just isn't going to help.

http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2001/03/42583 - explains what the cheap and expensive aspects of the setup are...

A low power wireless mesh as seen in Tibet http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2006/08/71608 could be constructed to run alongside a HAM network if enough kit, time and people are on hand.

I've never heard of it, and if it did happen there'd have been a huge outcry from the jealous wankers[1] around here.

Hey, look! Even more dumbassery from Hognoxious, this time it's, "if I haven't heard of it, it didn't happen!"

Potter 'Twin' Causes Controversy

Interesting article on "Wired" on the subject : http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/06/boy-survives-being-struck-by-a-meteorite/
with a photo of a car hit and these numbers :

"A broad 1991 study of meteorite strikes on structures and near humans found that they are relatively common. The authors tabulated 69 strikes on human infrastructure since 1790, including 57 in the 20th century. They also counted 25 near misses of human beings."

Will this case be classified as a near miss or direct hit ?

Only, it really sucks when they publish you and your wife's SSNs before they figure out that they have the wrong guy. Sure, they apologized after the fact but that is a small consolation, IMO. http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2008/01/anonymous-hac-1/

Check this out: "Robot Cannon Kills 9, Wounds 14" http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2007/10/robot-cannon-ki/
Systems like these aren't very intelligent, but that's the problem.

Robot killing machines are already here. The DMZ in Korea has automatic fire weapons. The person who "Pushed The Button", is whoever walked into the zone of fire.

Already happened: "Robot Cannon Kills 9, Wounds 14" http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2007/10/robot-cannon-ki/

http://www.wired.com/politics/law/magazine/17-04/ff_diamonds

Any system that can be abused so easily is broken and should be fixed.

Any system that involves humans can be easily abused. Any system that is designed by the humans and does not involve the extensive and long review can be exploited as well. And as someone who works in IT security, you sure know that typically the exploits are not within the main codepath, but rather one of the unexpected corner cases that noone thought of due to the complexity of the system or the human mistake. And that the system that fails outside its specs is not necessarily a bug.

So I would assert that because some asocial idiots decided to prove something does not mean the world should be rewritten from scratch (the power of legacy code is all those bugs that are already found).

But rather that the newly christened Pirate should find those responsible and hang them on the mast like by their balls, like real pirates would do! Now he has the right :)

As I've said before, I'm in IT security. And I've seen time and again that there are systems that contain very sensitive data with shoddy, if any, security in place. When pointed out, the responsible people usually point me at legal instead of IT.

For this, I'll confront you with a bit cruel, but simple question.

You've a choice to select one and only one of the to groups, the other one will have to suffer pain and misery:

a) yourself and your family
b) N individuals you never knew and never will

assuming there exists some value of N for which you consider those two groups of equal importance, what is the value of N for you ?

Try asking it next time to the responsible people after your "security question" and see if they point you to legal for the answer on it as well.

Actually, I think we're seeing a bit of a comeback. Hackerspaces are mushrooming around the world. (I like to believe the talk at the 24th Chaos Computer Congress in December 2007, Building a Hacker Space, helped provide impetus to this movement.) I also believe DIY culture is on the rise again, as spearheaded by Make.

So I'd say it's not so much that hacking is dying off rather than being handed over to the new generation, which has its own interests.

cartoons are NOT "child pornography"

Err... sorry, in the U.S.A (where I am assuming that you are posting from) cartoons ARE "child pornography."

Threat Level Privacy, Crime and Security Online U.S. Manga Obscenity Conviction Roils Comics World

Yup. But of course nobody actually RTFA.

Only one Senator on either side opposed the Patriot Act, the piece of legislation which semi-authorized the "executive trespasses." Pres. Obama has gone on record since his election for supporting warrantless wiretaps.

In short, OrangeTide isn't the only one who think that there would be only "superficial differences."

MS Took a destroyer out of commission

That's a funny story from 1997: Sunk by Windows NT, Wikipedia.

A short video brought to you from those caring folks at Wired http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2008/10/video-podcast-6/

Tiktaalik says suck it. Or did you mean hominid fossils? OK, here, here, and here.

Sadly, all the lawyers that used to work for the RIAA have new jobs in the justice department. http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/04/obama-taps-fift/
The good news is, the RIAA is suffering now. The bad news is, many people may be suffering later.

Reminder: San Fran http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2006/04/70619 Libya http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/04/13/libya_falls_off_net/

you cant even put together a couple of sentences and send out an email?

Funny, I can remember a time when it would have been considered rude to do any serious personal stuff over email, which was considered too informal. If you're the original holder of that 4-digit account, you should be old enough to remember that time too.

Sure, you don't have to be a punk like he was... but the existence and use of these sites certainly encourages people to do just that.

I think you're too hard on the medium. To me, Facebook actually discourages this kind of serious and intimate communication. The hard character limits on many communications, and soft UI nudging on others (like the small input box for direct messages), make Facebook great for frequent casual interaction, but worse than email for Big Important Stuff. So both have their place, and it's up to the person to pick the right one. Facebook didn't deactivate your buddy's email account.

quite a few articles there though otherwise:
http://www.wired.com/search?query=obama+riaa+lawyers&siteAlias=all&x=0&y=0

Wired sez: http://www.wired.com/gamelife/2009/06/tetris-warcraft

Wired had an interesting article about the typesetting (or lack of) in ebooks today. That's one area where there's a lot of room for improvement, and would definitely provide incentives for getting the ebook through official channels, even to the point of dealing with a closed format with some light DRM.

In my experience with downloading PDFs of books I own to read in an ebook reader on my laptop, typesetting had been practically non-existent and I'm lucky to get proper paragraph and chapter breaks.