Tuesday, July 15, 2003

MSFT provides tools to defeat its own DRM. (thanks, Cory -- who thanks Lucas!) 9:27:34 PM    comment []

A Congressional hunt for IP criminals, by Declan McCullagh, CNET News.com. A key legislator in the U.S. House of Representatives said Tuesday that he would release the first "Intellectual Property Crime Index" next week. Rep. Lamar Smith, R-Texas, the chairman of the House subcommittee that oversees copyright law, said the index would accomplish what he said the U.S. Department of Justice statistics currently don't do well: track intellectual property crimes and analyze trends over time. 9:23:09 PM    comment []

Wanted: NCSD Head, by Dennis Fisher, eWeek. The government is looking for one good person: someone with years of operational security experience with a solid track record of leading a talented group of people performing vital, sensitive tasks for a public-sector salary in complete anonymity. The candidate must be willing to work long hours, be comfortable with getting no credit for his or her successes and take a public thrashing for the smallest failures. And do it all on a limited budget while trying to get personnel from a half-dozen agencies to work together and cooperate. Interested parties should contact the Department of Homeland Security's Information Analysis and Infrastructure Protection directorate. Immediately. Nearly six months after the DHS formally began operations, officials are still searching for someone to head the department's cyber-security operations. A nationwide search has turned up few real candidates, and the prospects for the process coming to an end any time soon are slim. 10:17:32 AM    comment []

Going on now, on The Well's publically accessible Inkwell.vue, A conversation with Wes "Scoop" Nisker. His new book, Big Bang, The Buddha, and the Baby Boom: The Spiritual Experiments of My Generation, places our human condition in the context of cosmic and biological evolution. It also answers the question, Why did this Jewish boy begin studying Buddhist meditation, a practice that involves sitting on a floor rather than on a nice soft couch? Scoop founded and co-edits the international Buddhist journal "Inquiring Mind" and has studied Buddhism for decades. Besides teaching Buddhist meditation classes and leading retreats, he performs humorous commentary at live venues, and on radio and CD. Scoop comments on contemporary affairs, mediated reality, personal drama, and intimacy with biological self. He is also the author of the books The Essential Crazy Wisdom and Buddha's Nature: A Practical Guide to Discovering Your Place in the Cosmos. 7:24:24 AM    comment []

Excellent Article on Software-Defined Radio. Ben Hammersley has written an excellent article for The Guardian about what software-defined radio is and why it's important. (Via boingboing) [Smart Mobs] See also this X-Ray Net report on "Are the Tools the Rules? The Future of the Digital Commons," by Dewayne Hendricks, from CFP 2002. 7:17:11 AM    comment []

Pattern of Corruption. The case of the bogus uranium purchases was part of a broad pattern of politicized, corrupted intelligence. By Paul Krugman. 16 Words, and Counting. The Niger uranium hoax is only part of the picture. The bigger the picture gets, the more it looks like a pattern of dishonesty. By Nicholas D. Kristof. [New York Times: Opinion] 7:06:14 AM    comment []

Edison Schools' Founder to Take It Private. Christopher Whittle, who founded Edison Schools in 1992, has proposed taking the company private in a deal valued at about $174 million. By Diana B. Henriques. [New York Times: Education] Loads of lessons in the Edison Project. I wonder whether anyone is taking them to heart. 7:02:17 AM    comment []

Well, luckily, I don't watch that pregame show. King Kaufman's Sports Daily: New ESPN hire Rush Limbaugh will bring the same level of insight to football that he brings to politics. In other words, the real fans get screwed again. [T]he hardcore fans are going to tune in, or show up, or buy the merchandise, no matter what. So they focus on people who have to be drawn in. The effect is that in the sports business, the best customers are routinely subjected to shoddy treatment. They are never catered to. . . . I don't doubt that I'm going to say things that people who consider themselves hardcore, and know more than anybody else about it, are going to consider me an idiot, Limbaugh said Monday. I have to earn the relevancy, and that's something I fully intend to do. I wouldn't count on it. Even though I've never heard Limbaugh utter a sentence I've agreed with, I think he's a genius of radio. He's a wonderful entertainer, a virtuoso of the medium rivaled only, to these ears, by Vin Scully and Howard Stern. But serious political thinkers on either side of the aisle don't put much stock in what he has to say. He's important for the huge audience he speaks to, but he's basically a clown. He'll play the same role in football. He's a better demographic fit than the overly intellectual and vaguely effete Miller was, but he's really nothing more than a shiny object designed to attract people who don't really care much about the sport. I think football's a lot like life, Limbaugh said Monday. I think I know life pretty well. I would argue that, like much of what he says, both of these statements are demonstrably false. Football is nothing like life. It's organized and neat and rational. Everyone is either with you or against you and the boundaries are straight lines that are clearly marked. That is indeed how Limbaugh views life, and he's wrong. [Salon Headlines] 6:50:30 AM    comment []

Roll-Your-Own Net TV Takes Off. You don't have to be one of Hollywood's chosen few to be a TV star. The Internet is becoming a platform for individual and community television programming, and many commercial stations are making content available on the Web. By Manny Frishberg. [Wired News] 6:39:40 AM    comment []

One more hearty, Salon Blogs welcome to Synaesthesia : The unification of sensory experience Steve McMillan Karis (who needs to visit again) Gavin Morris (who has only just begun) Dana Hubbard (who has more work to do) Gary M. Ward who will be back soon, surely) 6:38:27 AM    comment []