Wednesday, September 03, 2003

The Andrew Leonard piece in Salon, (blinked below -- and which you should drop everything and read right now, btw), is on Main Lines, Blood Feasts, and Bad Taste: A Lester Bangs Reader, by Lester Bangs, Edited by John Morthland. 12:18:11 PM    comment []

New Potter book titles 'revealed' (Ananova). The titles of the last two Harry Potter books may have been revealed, according to newspaper reports. The Sun says J K Rowling's sixth and seventh Potter books could be Harry Potter And The Mudblood Revolt and Harry Potter And The Quest Of The Centaur. . . . Potter fans have claimed they could be a smokescreen as Rowling titles are cooler than that. 11:18:16 AM    comment []

Zen Garden: A demonstration of what can be accomplished visually through CSS–based design. Select any style sheet from the list to load it into this page. 11:18:11 AM    comment []

BNA's Internet Law News reports: COURT DENIES DMCA CLAIM BETWEEN GARAGE DOOR OPENER RIVALS A federal court has denied in part a motion for summary judgement against a company accused of making compatible garage door openers in violation of the DMCA. The Chamberlain Group sued its competitor in January 2003 with a claim that the opener violated a DMCA ban on trafficking in circumvention devices. The court rejected the claim and noted its appreciation for an amici brief that argued that Chamberlain's interpretation of the DMCA would stifle innovation and increase consumer prices. Case name is Chamberlain Group v. Skylink Technologies. Decision at http://www.ipjustice.org/skylink/082903_ORDER.pdf LAWYERS CHALLENGE RIAA'S FILE-SHARING PROBE Lawyers for a New York woman accused of unlawfully sharing music over the Internet suggested yesterday that the recording industry violated state and federal laws by intercepting the woman's Internet address as its investigators scoured file-sharing networks looking for songs to download. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A16115-2003Sep2.html SCHOOLS, ENTERTAINMENT INDUSTRY FIGHTING CAMPUS P2P ACTIVITY The Joint Committee of the Higher Education and Entertainment Communities - consisting of representatives of colleges and the entertainment industry - says it has made considerable progress toward quelling file-swapping on university campuses. Several initiatives aimed at reducing file trading on college campuses are underway. Education efforts outlining the legal dangers of using file-swapping services such as Kazaa are targeting many students this fall. http://news.com.com/2100-1027_3-5070407.html http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/news/editorial/6672595.htm 11:18:06 AM    comment []

Qantas points scam found, Caitlyn Fitzsimmons, Herald Sun (Melbourne). EX-QANTAS employee Ferri Sutan Malik thought he had the perfect scam, but now he faces prison. For more than two years, he used his knowledge of the airline's computer system to steal almost 11 million frequent-flyer points and redeem them for $450,000 worth of flights. The 31-year-old quality assurance reviewer would search the Qantas booking system for flights from Hong Kong and Taipei - areas with low frequent-flyer membership - and find passengers without a nominated account. 8:16:58 AM    comment []

Andrew: Scott Rosenberg mentions Filchyboy writing a poem through his referral logs - which are, of course, completely wiped out now, days later. I remember a few years back, shortly after Gnutella came out, being entranced by watching the query logs that came through. I started throwing questions into the search history, trying to see if anyone else was just sitting there watching it like me. There were - we had a little conversation, hidden between searchs for Britney Spears Nude and Limp Bizkit Nookie... 7:26:09 AM    comment []

A Punk Rocker, From Sedated to Self-Aware. Lech Kowalski, the foremost chronicler of the punk generation's romantic myths and harsh realities, profiles Dee Dee Ramone in this rueful, reflective documentary. By Dave Kehr. [New York Times: Business] 7:24:56 AM    comment []

Al-Jazeera relaunches English site. The Arabic language news agency relaunches the English version of its Web site after previous incarnations were vandalized by hackers and abandoned by technology providers. [CNET News.com] 7:24:18 AM    comment []

Members of US Domestic Spying Court 2003 /S September 2, 2003. FISC 03 [Cryptome] 7:22:05 AM    comment []

Virginia Tech chooses Apple for cluster. Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University will build an Infiniband cluster using Apple Computer Inc.'s new dual-processor Power Mac computer with the 64-bit G5 processor, Virginia Tech said Tuesday. [InfoWorld: Top News] 7:20:57 AM    comment []

Court: ISP subpoenas a 'grave' matter. In a ruling that buttresses electronic privacy rights, a federal appeals court says lawyers break the law when they try to subpoena e-mails to which they are not entitled. [CNET News.com] 7:20:01 AM    comment []

N.Y.U. President Says Teaching Isn't Such a Novel Idea. In taking up the issue of who teaches undergraduates, Dr. John Sexton has waded into to one of the thorniest in higher education. By Karen W. Arenson. [New York Times: Education] 7:18:17 AM    comment []

"Some sliver of authenticity from the truckloads of stinking garbage". After reading Lester Bangs' collection, you have to wonder: What would the legendary critic, who believed that music mattered, make of today's Britney and P.Diddy ludicrousness? Double billed with: The big Bangs. A former Creem magazine colleague of Lester Bangs remembers -- and members of the Doors, the MC5, Blondie and the Mekons respond to -- the late, great rock critic's bracing vitriol. [Salon Headlines] 7:16:43 AM    comment []

Security Expert Turns Political. Wired News talks with Richard Forno about his latest book, a departure from his usual computer security work. In it, he warns that 'the real danger facing America is what we're allowing ourselves to become.' By Michelle Delio. [Wired News] 7:13:50 AM    comment []

Navy investigates NMCI's Welchia outbreak, by Matthew French, Federal Computer Week. Navy officials want to know how a worm got into the Navy Marine Corps Intranet. Earlier this month, the so-called Welchia worm infected thousands of systems nationwide, including a few prominent government systems such as NMCI, which is designed to connect everyone in the Navy and Marine Corps on a single, secure network. It was the first time NMCI fell victim to a virus since the services started adding users to the system in 2001. . . . It would be Pollyanna-ish to assume that this can't happen again, so we're going to take this as a learning experience, said Capt. Chris Christopher, NMCI staff director. The investigation, being led by the Naval Network Warfare Command, is largely focusing on what happened before Welchia struck. However, once the worm was discovered, the Navy responded adequately to the emergency, a department official said. The particular circumstance of the Welchia attack was that the worm was passed to NMCI hours before the updated antivirus signatures to detect and repel the work became available, the official said. However, the ability of NMCI to push software tools to all workstations on the network enabled us deploy the new signature file as soon as it became available, containing the infection very quickly. 4:15:50 AM    comment []