Wednesday, July 02, 2003

Spain arrests 14 in piracy swoop 5:12:27 PM    comment []

I'm cleaning out and coming across interesting items on paper from whiles back, including Mom spam: The cyber-scourge of families everywhere. By Phaedra Hise, in Salon (1999). 5:12:24 PM    comment []

You Don't Know Me, but... Social Capital & Social Software, by William Davies, of the iSociety program at The Work Foundation. Abstract: Social capital analysts have debated the implications of the Internet for some years now. But this debate has recently been joined from the opposite side, as software experts and developers are showing an increased desire to understand and improve social networks, both offline and online.This report introduces some of the core ideas of this new unified debate, and outlines possible directions for the future. 5:12:21 PM    comment []

Microsoft patches another Passport hole (AP). Microsoft senior manager Jeff Jones said he believes no Passport accounts were stolen. Mr. Jones declined to say how many people were at risk but said the flaw affected only a small number of users who had created their accounts more than four years ago. As part of its repair efforts late Monday, Microsoft briefly prevented some Passport users from manually changing their passwords. Passport, which offers consumers a convenient method for identifying themselves across different Web sites, also controls access for Windows users to the Hotmail e-mail service and instant-messaging accounts. To the best of our knowledge, no one exploited this, Mr. Jones said. 12:10:51 PM    comment []

BMG tinkers with CD copy controls, by Richard Shim, CNET News.com. Songs on a MediaMax CD-3 can be uploaded only three times, and software built into the disc prevents listeners from copying or sharing the music. 12:10:47 PM    comment []

Here's a wager: Does 'True' Warchalking Really Exist? My contention is that the first (subcultural) story about warchalking above is entirely a media phenomenon -- it is a beautiful idea, but it doesn't make any sense as a directory service to find Wi-Fi. . . . So I am willing to propose a wager, or a bounty. I'll bet one dollar that warchalking is not a meaningful way of locating Wi-Fi hotspots. To win the bounty, can anyone deliver someone that uses warchalking to locate Wi-Fi hotspots? Sensible rules of the wager at the url above. 12:10:44 PM    comment []

N.J. Lawmakers Vote to End Poet Laureate Abolishing the position was the only way to remove Baraka because the governor and Legislature cannot fire the poet laureate. Baraka was criticized after reading his 60-stanza poem "Somebody Blew Up America" at a festival last summer. It included the lines: "Who knew the World Trade Center was gonna get bombed/Who told 4,000 Israeli workers at the Twin Towers to stay home that day?/Why did Sharon stay away?" After Tuesday's vote, Baraka said he would sue the state for violating his First Amendment rights and for slander. Very few of those people have even read that poem, Baraka said. I can't have a differing opinion about a foreign state? 11:10:33 AM    comment []

Ashcroft in Conference: 'Let's Not Let Them Get Johnnie Cochran on the Phone', by Nat Hentoff, in The Voice. Hentoff wonders, in light of Stephen Brill's new book, After: How America Confronted the September 12 Era, whether Ashcroft is fit for office, and whether criminal division chief Michael Chertoff is fit to be a federal appellate judge (he was confirmed for a seat on the Third Circuit Court of Appeals, with only Hillary Clinton (D, NY) voting against), given that they've operated under rules since Sept. 11 according to which all of us, not just aliens in America, can become the disappeared. 9:10:14 AM    comment []

EFF Launches Let The Music Play Campaign. The recording industry, now busily suing college students, has directed its anti-filesharing efforts toward protecting its business model rather than finding ways to compensate artists. Meanwhile, as Electronic Frontier Foundation Senior Staff Attorney Fred von Lohmann likes to point out, more US citizens use file-sharing software than voted for President Bush: " "Congress needs to spend less time listening to record industry lobbyists and more time listening to the more than 60 million Americans who use file-sharing software today." To that end, EFF has launched its Let The Music Play campaign , has issued an alert requesting Congressional hearings on file-sharing technologies, and is placing ads to counter recording industry propaganda. [Smart Mobs] 7:27:40 AM    comment []

Wired: Mixing Romance and Tech. A book on Wired magazine's founders provides an eclectic mix of futurism, greed, drugs and insider observations into the ideas that spawned the media venture. Reviewed by Joanna Glasner. [Wired News] 7:26:32 AM    comment []

An Amazon employee with a weblog. "This is a cheap place. Wait, did I say cheap? I mean frugal." [Scripting News] 7:26:00 AM    comment []

What a Difference 20 Cents Makes. Listen.com says its recent price cut -- from 99 cents to 79 cents per song -- has almost doubled the number of tracks burned by subscribers to its Rhapsody online music service. [Wired News] 7:25:35 AM    comment []

8-Bit Joystick sponsors EFF in Blogathon [bOing bOing] 7:24:41 AM    comment []

Every Sims Picture Tells a Story. Most people equate The Sims game to an addictive electronic doll house, but faithful players are exploiting a 'family album' feature to create rich narratives and social commentaries. By Daniel Terdiman. [Wired News] 7:21:00 AM    comment []

Musicians' petition objecting to RIAA prosecution of individual music lovers using peer-to- peer(P2P) file-sharing networks. 5:09:41 AM    comment []

David Harris has gone back to Science and Literature, following his Harry-Potterish renaming-of-the-blog. 5:09:37 AM    comment []

Michael Geist, Internet Law: What a difference six years makes 1:08:58 AM    comment []