Wednesday, July 09, 2003

Doom On The Streets. San Francisco and Auckland, New Zealand-based GeoVector claims to be taking the game of Doom to the streets, starting in Tokyo. We have people on the streets now, shooting each other with real bullets. And we have people sitting at desktops pretending to be shooting each other with virtual bullets. What's going to happen when the boundaries between those two worlds become less distinct? (Thanks, Fabio!) [Smart Mobs] 8:48:12 PM    comment []

Not an entirely new question, but still of interest: Google cache raises copyright concerns. Google's caching feature allows for quick snapshots of others' web pages. But does it infringe on copyrights and trademarks? [CNET News.com] (Indeed, it's one of the things I mentioned in my presentation last month at ALA in Toronto.) 8:40:08 PM    comment []

This is a test . . . ]

ISP helps members sell Net to neighbors, by John Borland, ZDNet. Speakeasy, an independent broadband service provider, is turning its customers into mini-ISPs by giving them the tools to sell wireless Net access to their neighbors. Under the NetShare program, the Seattle-based Internet service provider is allowing people to resell access to their broadband connection to neighbors for anywhere from $20 to $100 a month. Speakeasy handles the billing, provides the downstream customers with their own e- mail boxes and other ISP basics, and takes half the amount charged on their bills. It's a great way to use Wi-Fi at the grassroots level to extend the reach of broadband, said Joe Laszlo, an analyst with Jupiter Research. Speakeasy gets more customers for their service, without having to pay anyone else for costly DSL (digital subscriber lines). 10:33:27 AM    comment []

Two years ago, on t'other blog: They were connecting people, too. It's hard to keep track of all the invasive new technologies being implemented for our own good. Temple U. Lowers the Ax on Its Distance-Education Venture Big Brother turned out to be primarily a Web-based show. The producers and all never really got that insight, I guess. I can see people dropping in on the Web feeds on the off chance that something might be happening, but paying for the privilege is a whole nother thing. Some Prefer Online 'A.I.' Tie-In to the Movie. There's also the new Electronic Arts game, Majestic. About one-third of all U.S. workers with an Internet connection are under constant virtual surveillance. The Internet is back. That's right: alive and well. Not slumping or waning, slowing up or winding down. It may be a little shell-shocked, but that's only because it's just won a war. The People's Net. 10:33:24 AM    comment []

Support Corrections to the PATRIOT Act (ACLU) The government can now use a special intelligence court to collect information about the books you read, your purchases and your personal finances. The PATRIOT Act allows the government to search your home and not even tell you. The PATRIOT Act and changes to government investigative guidelines put the CIA back in the business of spying on Americans. Send a Free FAX in 2 Clicks! at the page. 10:33:20 AM    comment []

Some Bands Spurn Apple's iTunes Online Music Store (Reuters). Our artists would rather not contribute to the demise of the album format, said Mark Reiter, with Q Prime Management Co., which manages the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Metallica and several other artists. 9:32:41 AM    comment []

2,4,6,8, Now It's Time To Ovulate. Plastic::SciTech::Health: What actually takes place during a woman's menstrual cycle? Turns out everything we thought we knew about ovulation might be wrong... [Plastic: Most Recent] 7:10:42 AM    comment []

Major Publishers File Copyright Infringement Suit Against Collegiate Copies: HarperCollins Publishers, Pearson Education, Princeton University Press, SAGE Publications, and John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Sue Indiana Coursepack Producer (press release). 5:32:04 AM    comment []

Small firms profiting from piracy battle, by Anick Jesdanun (AP). Next time you try to download the latest pop tunes over the Internet, don't be surprised if you get a message chewing you out as a thief. Chances are, the digital reprimand would be the work of Randy Saaf or Marc Morgenstern, whose small companies belong to a budding cottage industry devoted to thwarting file-sharing and other Internet piracy. Sowers of decoy files and digital detectives, these agents of entertainment and software companies tend to work stealthily, at their clients' behest. Morgenstern, president of Overpeer, said his year-old, 15- employee company in New York fools would-be pirates some 300 million times a month by flooding file-sharing networks with decoys, mostly masquerading as popular songs. . . . Saaf, president of MediaDefender, said his Los Angeles company also tries to tie up queues by posing as real users who want to download large files through slow modems. . . . Their practices aren't without controversy, particularly after Rep. Howard L. Berman, D-Van Nuys, sought legislation to give entertainment companies license to interfere with file trading. Senate Judiciary Chairman Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, added fuel recently by suggesting that computers used for illegal downloads might be destroyed remotely. Overpeer and MediaDefender deny doing anything that resembles hacking, and Fred von Lohmann of the Electronic Frontier Foundation believes that is the case. ``This is their business, and if they went over the line, it would be betting the whole farm for them,'' he said. There is, nonetheless, ``a whole subculture of clock-and-dagger guys'' -- individuals believed to be researching even more aggressive techniques, including spreading damaging viruses over file-sharing networks, von Lohmann said. (See also, Labor day ahead, on X-Ray Net, which blinked a New York Times story on folks who lay ''cuckoo's eggs''--bad, unusable, or grossly mislabeled MP3 files--into the Napster, Gnutella, and Scour networks to thwart users, as well as The Cuckoo Egg Project, back in August of 2000.) 4:31:53 AM    comment []