Dear Hockey Gods,

If I ignore the bad things, it’s like they never happened, okay?

What?  You won’t play along?  Well screw you too.

Dear Paul Gaustad,

Okay, Lindy said you’ll be out for “weeks.”  We’re measuring this in Lindy Ruff weeks, right?  You’re missing two games, just like Patty K, right?  Right?? RIGHT?!?!?!?@!@?!@!?!~?@!?@#!?@#$

Ahem.  I’m back.  In the meantime, can I get anything for you?  Painkillers?  Booze? Ps2 games?  Steak? Elaborate desserts? Porn? Die Hard 1-4?  A new worthy cause to champion? Anything?  Anything? (Okay, not quite anything. But damn close.)

I hate the Wachovia Center’s end boards so much.

Dear Lindy Ruff,

Wasn’t yesterday’s game super awesome?  I’m attributing 25% to Tim Connolly remaining in good working order, 25% to Ryan Miller being Crunchytastic, 15% to Drew Stafford playing to his full head-banging potential, 5-15% to someone (you? dads? each other?) lighting a fire under their collective asses & other intangibles, and the remainder to you receiving my mental telegraphs to move up Goose to center the third line and put Kennedy back on the wing.  I love being right!!!!!  I just wish we didn’t have to wait a whole TWO GAMES before we can try that experiment again.

Dear Sabres,

Cookies for everyone!!!  I <3 you guys.  Let’s try doing all that good stuff again, okay?  (Yes, I know it’s just the Furrycanes, but you are not allowed to give me that ‘duh’ look until you can go a month without phoning in a game or taking a second period nap.)

Dear Tim Kennedy,

I love love love love your fearless MO, but you’re giving me panic attacks.  Be careful out there, little one.  You are not indestructible.  (Consult the other Timmy-Irishname for further elaboration.)

Dear Patrick Kaleta,

That was naughty, but you got Ovechkined on Wednesday so you can have a cookie.  (One.)  Please spend your time off studying the difference between legal and illegal checking (Goose can be your tutor!) and practicing being really obnoxious (Royzie can be your tutor!)

Dear Nathan Paetsch,

Hey, they’re letting you out!!  Maybe if you’re very, very good, some nice team will adopt you and you won’t have to live in the attic pressbox anymore.

Dear Sabres,

You’re grounded.  More on this later.

Dear Craig Rivet,

You’re fired.  At least until one of your teammates makes me want to fire him more.

Dear Blackhawks,

You guys are being awesome as usual and Huet is making the Sharks look like guppies and I CANNOT BELIEVE YOU GUYS SCORED THREE SHORTHANDED GOALS IN A ROW and Patrick Sharp wants to remind me why I love him but it is impossible for me to enjoy this game to the degree I should because the Sabres are assholes who forgot how to score goals.  I know this is unfair to you, and I’m sorry.

SEVEN????? You guys are so much fun.  But the Sabres still suck.

according to read write web, the US is looking at putting in place a law that will force ISPs to disconnect people who have violated copyright. In essence, i have no issue with this (except that its difficult to uphold) as it will protect copyright to some extent for those that want to keep on using that business model.  There is a risk of this being used for other purposes though as what forms a real infringement versus an excuse to gather information or curtail free speech. for example, if i put up a picture of mickey mouse which i am selling illegally (or monetizing through advertising) than disney has teh right to shut me down. However, if i am commenting that i think mickey mouse is an object of imperilaism, can disney shut me down for using their trademark?

the proposed bill goes one step further, if you download illegal material, you can be switched off the net. this makes the definition of “illegal” even trickeir, and begs to ask if we have a pretty strong body of law around libel and copyright, do we really need to have a very draconian and citizen unfriendly set of laws for the digital world?

the good news is that the US seem to be pretty much on its own. the EU has just passed a law that protects users rights on-line – so back to teh drawing board big brother.

read write web story

EU new telecoms law

Know your rights.

What is ACTA?
It stands for Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement.
Read more about ACTA on Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and decide if you should care about it.

Why You Should Care About It
ACTA has several features that raise significant potential concerns for consumers’ privacy and civil liberties, for innovation and the free flow of information on the Internet, legitimate commerce, and for developing countries’ ability to choose policy options that best suit their domestic priorities and level of economic development.

Petition to President Obama, regarding transparency of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement
http://www.keionline.org/acta-petition

Cultural Anthropology Projects 1 and 2

Graduation Portfolio

Study for CDL license

Study for Cultural Anthropology test

Clean clean clean clean clean! only to clean some more in a couple days

Look up stuff about The Hobbit

Write Sociology questions

Answer questions for Marketing

Work on Art sketchbook

Work on Art packet

Clean Poseidon’s Tank

Buy Filters

Mail Crap

EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF!!!

They serve and fight for their country, and this is how we repay them?

Then again, maybe a bacon quesadilla cheeseburger would sound good to one of Minnesota’s 4,000 homeless vets.

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In a rare bit of good news, Jeff Huber says it’s bullshit that Obama has decided to send more troops to Afghanistan.

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From the outer lobes of the reptilian minds from Inner Wingnutterdonia:

Hannity runs fake footage in support of Bachmann’s bullshit crowd claims

Fox News stabs Sarah Palin in the back (Murdoch’s evil empire not that evil? — which is not to say they’re not stupid)

Glenn Beck loses court fight with glennbeckrapedandmurderedayounggirlin1990.com

Glennbeckrapedandmurderedayounggirlin1990.com’s owner gave Beck the URL after winning the court case, but the content’s all still at 1990truth.org

Oddly, rickperryrapedandmurderedamanin2004.com is still available (I would have expected Kay Bailey Hutchinson’s ratfuckers to have bought this one up and redirected it to The New Yorker by now)

Steve King apparently never tires of being Steve fucking King, lying douchebag

If this is the suck up coverage of Sarah Palin’s book tour . . . .

Erik Prince: evil, truly evil, or really truly evil?

Jerking off because it’s all they know how to do

Keeping our nation safe from Arab Greek terrorists Orthodox priests

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$140 billion for the geniuses who dismantled our manufacturing sector.

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Microsoft moves more jobs offshore.

Meanwhile, I just installed the Mac OS 10.6.2 upgrade this morning and am very glad I did.

The mini is running much better now.

Now, if only Firefox would put out another upgrade to deal with the growing incomplete page loads issue.

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I love both The Raw Story and the Electronic Freedom Foundation, which is why it’s so annoying that both went after Obama’s DOJ for a decision made by a Mukasey-appointed U.S. Attorney.

Privacy watchdog Electronic Frontier Foundation has released an extensive report on a “bogus” attempt by a US attorney in Indiana to get Indymedia.us, an independent left-leaning news site, to hand over all the data it had about all the users who visited the site on a particular day.

Neither TRS or EFF identifies which Indiana U.S. Attorney was responsible, but after a little digging I learned that it was Bush holdover Timothy M. Morrison.

Bush USAs refused to resign when Obama became President in record numbers, but I have yet to see a mainstream news article about it, or any numbers on what percentage of USAs are Bush bitter enders like Mary Beth “Tommy Chong’s Bongs” Buchanan, the hack’s hack who terrorizes Pittsburgh with her fundamentalist Dixie GOPulism.

More irritating, even Hot Air’s Ed Morrissey picked up on the Bush angle immediately. He noted that this DOJ action was initiated by Morrison before Holder was confirmed, and also notes that it’s not to the Right’s advantage for Morrison style rules to be used to let the DOJ regulate news aggregation sites.

But mostly I want to see an article explaining exactly who is running the DOJ’s “field offices,” and why any Bush appointees are still in place.

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Six protesters arrested at Joe fucking Lieberman’s Capitol Hill office.

Sadly, none of them were armed or intent on violence.

More on Joe fucking Lieberman.

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eTc.:

James Carroll on how the Catholic Church is sabotaging its broader moral mission

AMA takes common sense stand on medical marijuana

Nothing Shakespearean about British high court’s deliberations over who exactly is a Jew?

Half a million dollars to prescribe a garbage drug to your patients?

Garrison Keillor on healthcare

Harold Meyerson on healthcare

Stanley Works acquires Black & Decker (need tools? buy ‘em now before the price skyrockets) (or, as Mick would say, “you lose”)

Honduras

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For Don and all my other “traditional” music loving readers.

There’s a lot of crappy Bill Withers stuff out there. This isn’t one of those videos.

This is the fourth day of the 46th week of 2009, and today is the centennial of Robert Ryan’s birth. Not the worst birthday coincidence imaginable for Veterans Day.

I was going to have contest to see who could be first to name this Ryan flick, but the picture caption gives it away.

Life needs more picture captions.

A few day ago I was perusing one of about a dozen sites I… peruse… when I
found another story about the corporations planning to strip you of your current
rights.  Yes ‘”the” Corporations, like Hollywood and the Movie Industry, and the
Record Labels.  In a world where alot of wingnuts fear “the government”, usually
without good reason, there is an issue where we should all be concerned, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Counterfeiting_Trade_Agreement (aka
ACTA).  What is ACTA you might be wondering? Well let’s look at wikipedia’s
first paragraph “a proposed plurilateral trade agreement which is
claimed by its proponents to be in response “to the increase in global trade of
counterfeit goods and pirated copyright protected works.”^[1]
The scope of ACTA is broad, including counterfeit physical goods,
as well as “internet distribution and information technology”.^[2]” 
What’s that?  It’s a secret internet treaty being negotiated in secret.  If you
read through it, which you can’t because it’s negotiated in secret you’d see
the push for a global set of copyright rules that would have ISP’s respond to DMCA-style takedown notices under a 3 strikes rule.  In
essence your ISP would be required to terminate your internet connection after
receiving 3 complaints against your IP address.  Someone have a beef with you,
they complain 3 times and poof your gone, disconnected from the internet.  Not
just you, but everyone in your household because they’re all at the same IP
address.

Safe Harbor?  Forget about it. Due process?  Gone. And ISPs would lose their
safe harbor status, so they’d be responsible for everything posted from users. 
Now think about it, a company would complain against you, demand your  user
information and your ISP would hand it over, why wouldn’t they?  What’s the
reason to hold out for you and disrupt  their business?  So YouTube,
Photobucket, Flickr, MySpace, Google/BING/Yahoo… anything with user generated
content… gone. That just leaves “The Corporations” and their product.  You
should be worried, you should be concerned.  With most people now using the
Internet for fun, communication, sharing, and work it could all come to a
grinding halt.  What goods a wifi connection when you can only watch what the
corporations want you to see? You hate ads? You like free software of any kind?
Be prepared for seismic changes if this goes through. Alot of people fear a one
world government, maybe they’re right, maybe they’re wrong, what they should
fear is a One World Corporation with the powers of a government. How much is
your freedom of expression worth? You may find out soon and you might not be
able to afford it.

Want to find out more? http://www.eff.org/issues/acta

Gestern Donnerstag hat der zuständige Ausschuss des US-Repräsentantenhauses dafür gestimmt, dass eine einige Reformen für den Patriot-Act zur Abstimmung im Repräsentantenhaus vorgelegt werden sollen.

Die US-amerikanische Bürgerrechtsorganisation Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) begrüßt diesen Schritt. Sie sieht in den Reformen einen wichtigen Schritt zur Stärkung der Freiheits- und Bürgerrechte. Die EFF bedankt sich bei den zahlreichen Aktivisten, die sich auf ihren “Action Alert” hin für dieses Reformvorhaben eingesetzt haben. Die EFF zeigt sich zwar enttäuscht, das die Reform “nicht ganz das, was man erhofft habe” seien, da sie auf “stillen Druck der Obama-Administration” hin geschwächt worden wäre. Trotzdem wertet die Bürgerrechtsorganisation die Reform als wesentliche Verbesserung gegenüber älteren Entwürfen.

Der Senat und der Geheimdienstausschuss werden im Bezug auf den Patriot Act demnächst ihre eigenen Entwürfe vorlegen. Erst dann wird sich zeigen, ob die Reformen letztendlich Realität werden.

An excellent example of regulatory capture came up just recently. If you’re not aware, there are ongoing negotiations in Korea over an international copyright treaty known as ACTA (The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement). ACTA is allegedly an international treaty about preventing counterfeit products, and the Obama administration has defended the treaty’s terms as State Secrets. This treaty will be binding on member states that sign it, serving as a kind of meta-legislation. Thus, while United States consumers and likely Congressmen as well, may not know anything about this treaty, they will be bound to its terms.

Here is the shameful part. While American consumers are claimed to have no right to comment or even view the proposed terms, Techdirt claims that U.S. negotiators “have met with entertainment industry representatives multiple times, and there are indications that those representatives have contributed language and ideas to the treaty.” The language of the treaty itself, which has been recently leaked, appears to confirm these suspicions. EFF notes that the treaty allows for ISP’s to take safe harbor from copyright infringement ONLY IF they enact vicious “three strikes” policies that would kick people off of the internet if they violated copyright.

This is troubling for a number of reasons. First, the ACTA treaty represents an intention to bypass the American voter and the American legislature itself in order to force a legal obligation upon citizens. That the current administration is blocking debate on this treaty by claiming it is a state secret is shameful. The hallmark of American lawmaking has always been the freedom to openly debate the merits of the law. The First Amendment itself protects Americans from government restriction of speech. Branding the treaty as a state secret, the administration has hobbled debate on an important issue of American freedoms and enforced a vacuum of knowledge.

The second troubling aspect of ACTA is that it imposes an inexplicably harsh punishment for violation of copyright laws. As we know, the internet is ever-evolving, and always taking a greater role in the lives of people across the word. The internet functions as bank, as telephone, as stationery, as soap-box, and retailer of the world. Thus, its role as a necessity of modern life is unquestionable. Also, copyright violations are usually decided by civil, not criminal lawsuits. Currently, the outright ban of internet access is debated even in criminal cases, which require a much stronger burden of proof. Such bans, even when they are approved, are reserved for the most heinous of criminals, such as child molesters.

Under the ACTA treaty, the Electronic Frontier foundation notes that “ISPs would be required to automatically terminate a customer upon a rightsholders’ repeat allegation of copyright infringement at a particular IP address.” If we recall, the courts are split as to whether internet access should even be banned for heinous criminals. Even when courts conclude that internet access should be banned for an individual, they require that the person be convicted of a crime with evidence that establishes guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. By contrast, ACTA endorses banning internet access when you are merely alleged to infringe a copyright. No proof, whatsoever, is required.

Time to call your congressman.

The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement negotiations continue in a few hours as Seoul, Korea plays host to the latest round of talks.  The governments have posted the meeting agenda, which unsurprisingly focuses on the issue of Internet enforcement [UPDATE 11/4: Post on discussions for day two of ACTA talks, including the criminal enforcement provisions].  The United States has drafted the chapter under enormous secrecy, with selected groups granted access under strict non-disclosure agreements and other countries (including Canada) given physical, watermarked copies designed to guard against leaks.http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/4510/125/

WTF?  Wake up, there is no transparency and we are about to be held to a standard that almost prohibits free speech.  As an author, we do our best to provide proper credits for anything we cite as a source.  We would hope that spammers and authentic writers do the same for us, and usually they do for fear of being held accountable in a lawsuit.  Click on the disclosure tab at the top to see how we have tried to cover our a$$.

“On the international front, it provides firm confirmation that the treaty is not a counterfeiting trade, but a copyright treaty.”  

“A U.S.-drafted chapter on Internet use would require ISPs to police user-generated content, to cut off Internet access for copyright violators,  and to remove content that is accused of copyright violation without any proof of actual violation. The chapter also completely prohibits DRM workarounds, even for archiving or retrieving one’s own work.” writes http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/copyright_treaty_leaked_trouble_for_isps_and_in.php

In the U.S. you are innocent until proven guilty, but this may usurp everything you have ever learned about properly citing your sources and in the process limit your free speech.  Say nothing of fines and threats of imprisonment.

The leaks suggest that countries who sign up to the U.S promoted plan would have to force ISPs to proactively police copyright on user-generated content, cut off those accused (or face liability), and put “graduated response” clauses in customer contracts. An example of a graduated response is France’s “three strikes and you’re out” law. There, you get two warnings if caught sharing music or movies, then you’re banned for up to two years. http://gizmodo.com/5396757/secret-copyright-treaty-details-leak-isps-worldwide-to-become-copyright-cops 

Two years without the Internet?  Tsk, tsk- as if someone who broke copyright law couldn’t walk into an Internet cafe in Paris, Korea, Russia or the middle of butt fcuk Egypt to log on.  Good luck with that enforcement.  $hit, America can’t keep the illegal immigrants out and we are expected to believe in the Internet police?  We still believe in Santa, because if you don’t believe- you don’t receive.

Just how much control does President Obama seek?  Prohibiting free speech further erodes every citizen’s right and enhances government control over yet another aspect of our life. 

Best if all- ““The internet chapter of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, a secret copyright treaty whose text Obama’s administration refused to disclose due to ‘national security’ concerns, has leaked. It’s bad.” You can read the original leaked document or the summary. If passed, the internet will never be the same. Thank goodness it’s hidden from public scrutiny for National Security. via http://yro.slashdot.org/story/09/11/04/144240/Secret-Copyright-Treaty-Leaks-Its-Bad-Very-Bad

If and when this thing gets signed, duly note that we have properly credited the excerpted quotes.  Just in case the ping and link from the photo doesn’t work, it is from http://www.toothpastefordinner.com/archives/2006/Jun/ .  We’ll even take it a bit farther in the interest of disclosure- they sell T-shirts with slogans at  http://www.sharingmachine.com/ and would you look at their disclosure-”You may display TFD/MTTS/ND comics on your website, blog, Myspace, Livejournal, etc. as long as you link back to www.toothpastefordinner.com / www.marriedtothesea.com / www.nataliedee.com. The box marked “Cut/paste this HTML code” next to every comic does this for you. “  We believe we are in full compliance of the laws of the U.S.A. and graciously meet the requests of the site owners.

We’re so broke over the U.S. economic stimulus package there isn’t anything left to sue us over.  Maybe a 5 year old monitor and a keyboard with Swine Flu germs.  We can’t even afford the cool t-shirts from www.toothpastefordinner.com!

The Federal Trade Commission today (10.5.09) announced that it has approved final revisions to the guidance it gives to advertisers on how to keep their endorsement and testimonial ads in line with the FTC Act. http://www.ftc.gov/opa/2009/10/endortest.shtm 

Blogs are a blessing and a curse in the world of advocacy. With so many different voices floating around, it’s easy to get caught up in a piece of support that may not be appropriately accurate. writes Who links to me at http://wholinkstome.com/blog/ftc-regulations-on-bloggers/

Blog while you can. BTW, every www.gov site you visit – your own ISP is logged as a permanent record.  This, while the White House can barely keep track of it’s in person visitor logs.

30 minutes every week on data security, privacy, and the law…..(plus or minus ten)

On this week’s program:

* Placing an online bet for the World Series? Employees of online betting sites might be selling customer data online.

* Google Book Search: What data is Google storing about readers of online books?

* Our take on this week’s news.

–> Stream This Week’s Show with our Built-In Flash Player:

–> Scroll down to see links and show notes for this week’s show

–> Stream, subscribe or download Episode 76 – Listen or subscribe to the feed to automatically get the latest episode sent to you to your Google, Yahoo, iTunes, or other popular sites.

–>Tune into the show directly on iTunes, you can also subscribe to the program on iTunes.

–> A simple way to listen to the show from with stricter firewalls: Listen from Odeo. This site works better if you are behind a more restrictive enterprise firewall.

Please visit our sponsors, and be sure to let them know you heard about them on The Data Security Podcast:

• Vipre Anti-Virus, the complete Antimalware solution by Sunbelt Software. If you TRY the enterprise version, you get the home version for FREE! Go to: http://www.testdrivevipre.com .

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Show Notes for Episode 76 of the Data Security Podcast

* Conversation:  Samantha talks with Rebecca Jeschke  of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF). There are lots of privacy objections to the Google book search settlement… EFF is leading the way on the privacy objections. Read about it here. And here’s the legal document filed by EFF… the settlement hearing has been indefinitely postponed.

* Tales From The Dark Web:  Are online casinos leaking information about their customers? Hard to say, as we saw the original web posting about this is only available in the Google Cache. Here is a story from TightPoker.com about the original posting. That story lists the original site at AustralianGambling.au, but the URL should be AustralianGambling.com.au .

* From Our Take on The News:  Lobbyists beware: judge rules metadata is public record. This story also talks about the Google metadata leak.

* From Our Take on The News: A MUST READ – Samantha writes at the ReasonableReporter.com about social engineering and how the technique is used in real life, and in the new movie Law Abiding Citizen:

* Wrap: Ira talked about the launch of Digital Forensics Magazine.

The White House switch to open source: Tim O’Reilly’s thoughts

Over the weekend, the White House new media team announced (via AP) that whitehouse.gov now runs on the open source content management system Drupal. Tim O’Reilly puts this news into context:

A huge roundup on cyberculture follows:

More about e-readers

Marco Arment posted a thoughtful reply to my off-the-cuff post about e-readers and I wanted to respond to a couple of things.

Most people won’t instantly jump to buy ebook readers after seeing them in TV commercials or liveblogged keynotes. They need to be experienced in person. (The ability to do this easily will give Barnes & Noble a huge advantage over Amazon.) And they’ll spread via good, old-fashioned, in-person referrals from friends and coworkers.

EFF launches Hall of Shame for copyright abusers

Hugh from the Electronic Frontier Foundation sez, “Today, EFF is launching our new ‘Takedown Hall of Shame’ project, which collects the worst and most shameful examples of bogus DMCA takedowns. We’ve got everything from the recent Ralph Lauren takedown to Michael Savage’s attempts to silence critics to a video NPR tried to remove just last week!”

European Internet sinking fast under 3-strikes proposals

Things look bad for the European Internet: “3 strikes” (the entertainment industry’s proposal for a law that requires ISPs to disconnect whole households if one member is accused — without evidence or trial — of three copyright infringements) is gaining currency. Efforts to make 3-strikes illegal are being thwarted by the European bureaucracy in the EC.

Amazon to Bring e-Books to PC Users, Thanks to Competition

Amazon is really gearing up for battle against Barnes and Noble’s Nook eReader and the other eReaders are threatening to stole Amazon’s success in the e-book market.  Aside from lowering the price of its Kindle International version to $259, Amazon just announced that it will soon be releasing the – “Kindle for PC” application.Kindle for PC app adds up to the two other official ways of storing, downloading and reading e-book purchases you made from the Amazon Kindle store. The other two are the iPhone Kindle app and of course the Kindle reader itself.

Nook is Coming: Barnes & Noble’s Kindle Killer

We recently covered Barnes & Noble’s e-reader which aims to take some wind out of Amazon Kindle’s sails.

Today is the official launch date, and some additional details about the device have surfaced. The Nook, as it’s called, will have a 6-inch monochrome E-Ink panel as the main display, a multitouch color LCD panel right below it, and a price tag of $259 – exactly the same as Amazon’s Kindle.

Can a Nook Kill a Kindle?

Aside from being a self-confessed iPhone addict, another gadget that fascinates me is e-book reader. Well, I should be. After all, I am a librarian by education although I admit I’m not really fond of book reading. I’ve seen, touch and used the Amazon Kindle and was in fact pretty excited about the Kindle International version. In fact, I’ve been thinking whether I should order one but suddenly that has changed. Thanks to the just announced Barnes and Noble e-Book Reader – the Nook.Now, why would I suddenly abandon my desire to own the Kindle because of the Nook? For the simple reason that the Nook outdates the Amazon Kindle.

Prepare to board

Average Internet User Now Spends 68 Hours Per Month Online

The Nielsen Company issued a report today on the top U.S. web brands and Internet usage in the U.S. As expected, Google is the #1 web brand based on unique audience.

Stats confirm social media drives traffic to news websites

Jumping on the social media bandwagon might not be such a bad move as statistics revealed by Huffington Post CEO, Eric Hippeau, show that Facebook referrals to the aggregation website were up 48% since its launch, and has accounted for 3.5 million visits.

UCLA STUDY: Search the Internet, Activate Your Brain

Internet geeks would love to believe that their online behaviors actually stimulate the brain for the better. It turns out this notion may be a reality, at least according to a FOXNews story that recently surfaced.

Trade in the Cyberstates 2009
Source: Tech America Foundation

After realizing modest gains in 2008, U.S. high-tech exports declined steeply in the first two quarters of 2009, according to the TechAmerica Foundation’s Trade in the Cyberstates 2009: A State-by-State Overview of High-Tech International Trade report, which details national and state trends in the international trade of high-tech goods. The report covers all 50 states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico and includes for the first time a supplemental quarterly breakdown covering the first two quarters of the current year.

EU – Europes growing army of bloggers and social networkers can generate new services and growth

EU – Europe’s growing army of bloggers and social networkers can generate new services and growth: “(Europa)
A study says that European interactive websites like video sharing sites and blogs are growing, generating revenue for both owners and contributors. Compared with the US, which hosts the most commonly used websites for content created by users (blogs, texts, videos, music, games and virtual objects), Europe has more contributors. For example, almost 4 in 5 Italian internet users read blogs compared to 60% in the US, 41% of Spanish users write blogs but only 26% in the US, almost 60% of Czech internet users upload photos and 48% of Polish internet users subscribe to RSS feeds, all ahead of the US (see annex). To help the emergence of European Flickrs and youtubes that turn this large European creativity into growth and jobs, the Commission’s report highlights the need for new and updated EU rules building a Single Market for content that can be made and shared online by anyone.

CNN.com revamps website

CNN.com has revamped its international website today with a greater focus on video and photography and less text clutter. The redesign comes as many news organisations, including the BBC, attempt to keep their homepages up-to-date with changing technologies, the advanced capabilities of the Internet and a general shift in the way people consume news today.

from:  ThankyouAndyWarhol.com

US Department of Defense adopts “open source guidelines”

John Scott’s been working with the US Department of Defense to develop a set of guidelines for using free/open source software in the US military: As a Marine friend says “Agility is the Capability” – open source software and methods is the enabler of this. The DoD CIO office (or ASD-NII) just has posted new open source software guidance for the whole Department of Defense! Only took about 18 months to get through, so worth it. Hopefully this puts the FUD to bed.

BBC News: Europe backs down on piracy plans

BBC NEWS | Technology | Europe backs down on piracy plans: “Europe backs down on piracy plans”

Page last updated at 11:10 GMT, Friday, 23 October 2009 12:10 UK

The European Parliament has given the green light for member states to cut persistent file-sharers off from the net.

It has dropped an amendment to its Telcoms Package which would have made it hard for countries to cut off pirates without court authority.

2 decades of news circulation

Most creative 350 photos

Shocking print circulation declines from E&P

Q&A: Mother Jones on crowdsourcing journalism

CIA may have misled Congress repeatedly

Beware virtual NY Times, Pentagon Afghan coup

Prosecutors attack Innocence Project students

8 reasons Fox is not a news organization

Season of false starts for news organizations

Clean energy is an easy choice from Grist

Obama promises $3B for ’smart grid’

USA Today: We’re still #1

What problems does Google Wave solve?

Nader deserves more respect than he gets

Bong water is an illegal drug in Minnesota

Wisconsin to enact new e-waste bill

EFF to Chamber of Commerce: get over Yes Men

Hyperlocal: Printcasting bridges digital divide

15 things you can do right now by Michael Moore

(der beitrag ist auch auf papierwahl.at zu lesen)

Am Mittwoch Abend wurden erstmals erste Teile einer Open Source Wahlsoftware veröffentlicht. Die Open Source Digital Voting Foundation (OSDV), denen auch Leute der EFF, Rock the Vote und anderen Organisationen angehören, gab dies in einer Podiumsdiskussion bekannt.
Das System soll eine Wählerregistrierungskomponente, Firmware und ein Wahlmanagement System zum Erstellen der Stimmzettel, Administrieren der Wahlen und Zählen der Stimmen, enthalten.

Die Software befindet sich derzeitig noch im Entwicklungsstadium:

The code currently available for download and review represents only a small part of the total code and includes parts of an online voter registration portal and tracking system, election management software and a vote tabulator. Prototype code for producing ballots has been completed and will be posted soon. Code for auditing is still being designed.

The voting firmware and tabulator program are built on a minimized Linux platform (a stripped down version of Sharp) and the election management components are built with Ruby on Rails.

Laut den OSDV Mitgründern Gregory Miller und John Sebes gibt es einen 8-Jahres-Fahrplan bis die Software in einem flächendeckend einsetzbaren Zustand sein soll.

Doch auch wenn es zukünftig quelloffene Wahlsoftware gibt, dürfte diese nicht bei politischen Wahlen eingesetzt werden – orientiert man sich an dem Urteil des Bundesverfassungsgerichts Anfang des Jahres. Darin heisst es unter anderem:

dass die wesentlichen Schritte der Wahlhandlung und der Ergebnisermittlung vom Bürger zuverlässig und ohne besondere Sachkenntnis überprüft werden können.

Dieses gewichtige Kriterium wird auch nicht durch den Umstand erfüllt, dass es sich bei der eingesetzten Wahlsoftware um Open Source Software handelt.

[via Wired Threat Level]

Am Mittwoch Abend wurden erstmals erste Teile einer Open-Source-Wahlsoftware veröffentlicht. Die Open Source Digital Voting Foundation (OSDV), denen auch Leute der EFF, Rock the Vote und anderen Organisationen angehören, gab dies in einer Podiumsdiskussion bekannt.
Das System soll eine Wählerregistrierungskomponente, Firmware und ein Wahlmanagement System zum Erstellen der Stimmzettel, Administrieren der Wahlen und Zählen der Stimmen enthalten.

Die Software befindet sich derzeitig noch im Entwicklungsstadium:

The code currently available for download and review represents only a small part of the total code and includes parts of an online voter registration portal and tracking system, election management software and a vote tabulator. Prototype code for producing ballots has been completed and will be posted soon. Code for auditing is still being designed.

The voting firmware and tabulator program are built on a minimized Linux platform (a stripped down version of Sharp) and the election management components are built with Ruby on Rails.

Laut den OSDV-Mitgründern Gregory Miller und John Sebes gibt es einen 8-Jahres-Fahrplan bis die Software in einem flächendeckend einsetzbaren Zustand sein soll.

Doch auch wenn es zukünftig quelloffene Wahlsoftware gibt, dürfte diese nicht bei politischen Wahlen eingesetzt werden – orientiert man sich an dem Urteil des Deutschen Bundesverfassungsgerichts Anfang des Jahres. Darin heißt es unter anderem:

[.. ]dass die wesentlichen Schritte der Wahlhandlung und der Ergebnisermittlung vom Bürger zuverlässig und ohne besondere Sachkenntnis überprüft werden können.

Dieses gewichtige Kriterium wird auch nicht durch den Umstand erfüllt, dass es sich bei der eingesetzten Wahlsoftware um Open-Source-Software handelt.

[via Wired Threat Level]

it DOES help with math

So I was sitting in the library minding my own business (read: sleeping while snoring really loud) and decided to do my math homework due in the next hour. Truth be told, not only does WolframAlpha (an awesome search engine sort of thing) know the answer to life, the universe, and everything , it also can do math… who knew? Not me I say. I’m pretty clueless at this stuff, almost like the time some girl asked me out five minutes ago and I totally forgot. She’s sitting right next to me.

Thanks to Wolfram|Alpha

“]”]

enter witty remark here

Then it will be time to test one of the most bizarre and revolutionary theories in science. I’m not talking about extra dimensions of space-time, dark matter or even black holes that eat the Earth. No, I’m talking about the notion that the troubled collider is being sabotaged by its own future. A pair of otherwise distinguished physicists have suggested that the hypothesized Higgs boson, which physicists hope to produce with the collider, might be so abhorrent to nature that its creation would ripple backward through time and stop the collider before it could make one, like a time traveler who goes back in time to kill his grandfather.

You heard it, the LHC wants to kill it’s grandfather. I call murderer! On the plus side though, you won’t exist anymore so that nagging-flesh-of-meat-of-a-girlfriend would finally shut up and pay that damn ticket herself. Yeah, I crashed into that car last night, but SHE  gave me the keys to start it. Well, I stole them, but that still doesn’t make a difference!

Thanks to AnandTech via NYtimes

source: RSC

Two bulletins…

First, from New Scientist:

An electromagnetic “black hole” that sucks in surrounding light has been built for the first time.  The device, which works at microwave frequencies, may soon be extended to trap visible light, leading to an entirely new way of harvesting solar energy to generate electricity.

A theoretical design for a table-top black hole to trap light was proposed in a paper published earlier this year by Evgenii Narimanov and Alexander Kildishev of Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana. Their idea was to mimic the properties of a cosmological black hole, whose intense gravity bends the surrounding space-time, causing any nearby matter or radiation to follow the warped space-time and spiral inwards.

Narimanov and Kildishev reasoned that it should be possible to build a device that makes light curve inwards towards its centre in a similar way…  Now Tie Jun Cui and Qiang Cheng at the Southeast University in Nanjing, China, have turned Narimanov and Kildishev’s theory into practice, and built a “black hole” for microwave frequencies…

More (including a cool video) at New Scientist.

Then, from Network World:

A 12 million digit prime number, the largest such number ever discovered, has landed a voluntary math research group a $100,000 prize from the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF).

The number, known as a Mersenne prime, is the 45th known Mersenne prime, written shorthand as 2 to the power of 43,112,609, minus 1 . A Mersenne number is a positive integer that is one less than a power of two, the group stated.

The computing project called the Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search (GIMPS) made the discovery on a computer at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) Mathematics Department.  Computing manager Edson Smith installed and maintained the GIMPS software at UCLA, and thousands of other volunteers also participated in the computation…

More at Network World.

(Readers may recall that (R)D reported last March on GIMP and the effort to find the next Mersenne Prime– at which point the estimation was that it might stretch to a mere 10 million digits.  Clearly, GIMP’s over-achievement affirms its worthiness of the EFF award.)

As we channel Mr. Wizard, we might run a celebratory riff for Charles Edward Anderson “Chuck” Berry, born on this date in 1926–  Hail, Hail, Rock and Roll!

Chuck Berry

Although many of them are very annoying, popular song ringtones have become a staple in the cell phone industry, amounting to a multibillion-dollar business globally. Even though fees are already collected for ringtone downloads, ASCAP wants to charge cell phone carriers additional fees each time a user’s phone rings. However, thanks to this week’ decision from the New York U.S. District Court, cellphone carriers are not required to pay additional performance royalties each time a ringtone is played or downloaded.

To recap, back in June ASCAP sued Verizon and AT&T, arguing that each time a cell phone rings in a public place, the phone user violates copyright law, and therefore wanted phone carriers to pay performance royalties for ringtones. ASCAP’s argument stemmed from the fact that some cell phone carriers have paid performance royalties in the past and that some continue to do so today. In an amicus brief, the EFF disagreed and argued that requiring performance royalty payments for ringtones would be like charging a driver for listening to a song on the radio with the windows down.

This past week, the federal court agreed with Verizon and AT&T and issued two important rulings. First, a cell phone ringtone played or heard in public does not constitute a public performance of a copyrighted work. The judge declared, “when a ringtone plays on a cellular telephone, even when that occurs in public, the user is exempt from copyright liability, and [the cellular carrier] is not liable either secondarily or directly.” The judge’s decision relied upon section 110(4) of the U.S. Copyright Act that provides an exemption for performances made “without any purpose of direct or indirect commercial advantage.” Pertaining to ringtones, the songs played on phones function more as call alerts rather than performances as they are defined under copyright law.

The court also ruled that a ringtone download does not constitute a public performance of a copyrighted work. This ruling echoes previous sentiments regarding song downloads and is important for cell phone carriers and other digital music distributors alike. Cell phone carriers already pay royalties each time a ringtone is downloaded by a user, and charging additional performance royalties for downloads would be “double-dipping” on the part of ASCAP.

The federal court’s ruling strengthens the principle that digital downloads of a musical work do not constitute a performance as defined under copyright law, and ASCAP’s loss may hurt its chances at lobbying efforts to have Congress expand copyright law’s definitions for public performance of copyrighted works. You may recall earlier this year ASCAP began a campaign to require performance royalties be collected in addition to mechanicals for streaming audio and downloads on iTunes and other digital distribution services even when songs are enjoyed in a private setting.

Source

The Ruling

UN: Millions will starve as rich nations cut food aid

Senate apology to native people a good first step by Sarah Van Gelder

Court denies government attempt to delay records, again from EFF

Geography of job loss

Henry Paulson’s revealing phone records from The Daily Beast

Tim Geithner’s phone records no better from The Daily Beast

US ammunition blamed for Iraqi cancer hike

Obama quietly sends 13,000 more troops to Afghanistan from The Guardian

How deep is DC corruption? by David Sirota

Sonic Warfare: Serious book by dubstep music producer kode9

30 companies control 1/3 of all Internet traffic from Benton

McCain’s anti-PTFP funding amendment defeated

How Netflix gets you movies so fast from Chicago Tribune

Netflix everywhere, sorry cable from Wired

Haven’t watched a DVD in 6 months, thanks Netflix from Ars Technica

More layoffs rumored at Current TV

Daily Kos founder sold on ad skins from Media Post

Willie Nelson’s new wireless broadband on tour from Wired

Idiots, updated. The EFF is helping with people who’ve been threatened by Texas Instruments over the publication of the TI calculator key. (Not me because I’m not in the US).

Honestly though, TI have either shot themselves in the foot and are now aiming for the other foot, or this is some sort of perverse “any news is good news” PR campaign.

Original posting, with some numbers in it.

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