Friday, February 06, 2004

GarageBand and CC. So Apple released this amazing new part of iLife, GarageBand. With it, you can make great music. (Well, I don't know about you, but I know Willem will make great music with it.) Anyway, one missing piece has been a simple way to know what content you're free to mix and remix within your GarageBand app. MacBand has now solved that problem. They've got a great archive of music by genre -- all marked with Creative Commons licenses. [Lessig Blog] 9:18:43 PM    comment []

Record industry enforcer raids Kazaa offices, by Sam Varghese, Sydney Morning Herald. The premises of Brilliant Digital Entertainment and those of three universities - the University of Queensland, the University of New South Wales and Monash University - were among those raided. Among other premises raided were those of Akamai Technologies AAP, NTT Australia, Telstra Corporation and NTT Australia IP. MIPI said proceedings had begun in the Federal Court after a six-month investigation. MIPI said evidence had been obtained during the raids which would be used in the court proceedings. Court action commenced in Sydney as Kazaa operates from offices in the suburb of Cremorne even though it is registered in the Pacific island of Vanuatu. 2:24:11 PM    comment []

Huh. E-mail service vows to stop spam, spare the good, by Marguerite Reardon, CNET News.com. New York-based ZoEmail on Thursday launched its spam- free e-mail service using technology licensed from AT&T Labs. The company said the technology can completely eliminate unwanted and unsolicited e-mail from users' in- boxes. The technique requires using what are really disposable e-mail addresses and informing your intended communicants what variant to use to reach you. You might tell me, say, your address, or you might post an appropriately obscured and hard-to-harvest variant on your home page. (Notice how rarely we say "home page" anymore?) 11:23:40 AM    comment []

.zip files putting the zap on antivirus products, by Paul Roberts, IDG News. We're definitely seeing a trend, said Alex Shipp, an antivirus technology expert at MessageLabs Ltd. It really took off in 2003. As soon as one virus was successful with technology like this, other virus writers took notice. Virus authors learned long ago to hide their creations in e-mail file attachments, often disguising viruses as Windows screen saver (.scr) files or Windows program information (.pif) files, said Mike Hrabik, chief technology officer at Solutionary Inc., a managed security services company in Omaha. While .zip files were occasionally used to mask virus payloads, the practice wasn't common in virus-writing circles because .zip files, unlike .scr and .pif files, required separate software to be installed on the receiving system before the files can be opened and run, he said. All that changed with the release of Microsoft Corp.'s Windows XP operating system, which included native support for opening .zip files. According to Gerhard Eschelbeck of security vulnerability scanning company Qualys Inc., embedded support for .zip files in modern systems makes them a rich target for worms like Mydoom. In switching to .zip files, virus authors were also picking up on trends in legitimate e-mail traffic to hide their own malicious creations, Shipp said. When corporations started blocking .exe [executable] files to prevent viruses from coming into their environment, people who wanted to send .exes back and forth started zipping them before they sent them. Virus writers noticed that and took advantage of it, he said. 10:23:31 AM    comment []

Julie Leung's Leaving Medical School story. A few days ago, Julie Leung posted an entry to her blog about her decision to leave medical school. The story drew many responses, and she has a thoughtful response to them here. [Learning the Lessons of Nixon] 6:32:08 AM    comment []

Online Voting Canceled for Americans Overseas. Citing security concerns, the Department of Defense canceled plans to allow Americans overseas to cast votes over the Internet in this year's elections. By John Schwartz. [New York Times: Technology] 6:28:28 AM    comment []

Great Taste, Less Privacy. More and more bars and restaurants scan patrons' driver's licenses, ostensibly to verify age. But the licenses contain lots of valuable information, and the temptation to use the data for marketing is hard to resist. By Kim Zetter. [Wired News] 6:27:30 AM    comment []

Wi-Fi Enters the Space Race. If people do land on Mars, NASA wants to make sure they can get a decent wireless connection. By Daniel Terdiman. [Wired News] 6:26:29 AM    comment []

A Portrait of a Neighborhood Is Now Just a Click Away. Under a new program, anyone who wants to tap into a wealth of housing (and other) information about any of New York City's neighborhoods can log on to a simple-to-use Web site, for free. By Dennis Hevesi. [New York Times: Technology] 6:25:22 AM    comment []

Iran's Most Wanted: Filmmakers. With inexpensive digital cameras, underground filmmakers expose Iran's festering social ills. It's dangerous work. One of these haunting films could land its creator in prison for years. By Jason Silverman. [Wired News] 6:24:16 AM    comment []

Doc: Phil Windley asks a tough real-world question. Or a pile of them: I need a little help. Suppose you'd been asked to address the CTO organization of a major (over 125,000 employees) company on digital rights management. What would you tell them? There's the usual, technical talk stuff: What is DRM, why are we talking about it? The current state of DRM from a technical standpoint Issues and challenges for IT organizations Challenges or consequences of public policy issues surrounding DRM How and what should we do as best practice with respect to DRM Challenges and opportunities for information management Is there a policy paper from the EFF on this, I wonder? There should be, from somebody, on the need to reconcile individual liberty, sensible property law and the Nature of the Networked world. Tall order. The short answer, of course, is Sergey's famous Don't be evil. The longer answer is, Don't leave the definition of evil up to your lawyers. [The Doc Searls Weblog] Moreover, don't adopt evil technology even if you are going to use it only for good. I've talked about this in some recent talks that aren't online (maybe should work on that) as well as in Thoughts on the Workshop On Fair Use By Design. 6:20:30 AM    comment []