Friday, April 30, 2004

MIT makes Jack Valenti look like an idiot MIT's The Tech interviews the MPAA's outgoing spokesmonster Jack Valenti, with hilarious results. It's not often that a slickster as teflon coated as Jack gets made to look an utter fool (though I'd welcome a round onstage with him in front of a university audience) so bravo and bravo again to The Tech's Keith J. Winstein, who ran circles around Valenti. TT: Indeed, but are you doing that when you rent a movie from Blockbuster and you watch it at home? ... I run Linux on my computer. There’s no product I can buy that’s licensed to watch [DVDs]. If I go to Blockbuster and rent a movie and watch it, am I a bad person? Is that bad? JV: No, you’re not a bad person. But you don’t have any right. TT: But I rented the movie. Why should it be illegal? JV: Well then, you have to get a machine that’s licensed to show it. TT: Here’s one of these machines; it’s just not licensed. [Winstein shows Valenti his six-line “qrpff” DVD descrambler.] TT: If you type that in, it’ll let you watch movies. JV: You designed this? TT: Yes. JV: Un-fucking-believable. Link (via Joi) (thanks, Cory!) 10:23:36 PM    comment []

(Trying this again . . . .) Journalist puts skills to work in cyberspace: HIRED TO COVER ONLINE CHARACTERS.By Dean Takahashi, San Jose Mercury News. Wagner James Au thinks of himself as an editor and publisher of a small newspaper in a company town. But the odd thing is that he writes about a community that exists only in cyberspace. Au calls himself an "embedded journalist" in an online world dubbed "Second Life," where thousands of subscribers gather to build virtual homes, design their own 3-D characters, and socialize with friends they've never met in real life. . . . "Second Life" and other online communities have become such lifelike parallel worlds that they have journalists to cover them. Linden Lab hired Au to write a Weblog http://secondlife.blogs.com/nwn/ that chronicles the weirdness and drama of "Second Life." He interviews people by instant messages and witnesses their lives by logging into the world and watching on his computer screen. In his first life, (i.e., reality), Au is a 36-year-old freelance journalist who lives in Oakland, writing stories for Salon.com and Wired. But in "Second Life," he's the character Hamlet Linden. He fashioned this "avatar," a 3-D animated persona, to look like himself -- with long hair, a goatee and mustache. The avatar wears a white suit in tribute to author Tom Wolfe. When Hamlet Linden feels like making his own news, he plays a character that resembles muckraking journalist Hunter S. Thompson, armed with a bottle of whiskey and a gun. I've found amazing variety in the world, says Au. It's like a creative agora from ancient Greece. Virtual journalism is gathering steam as players feel a need to keep up with their fast-moving virtual lifestyles. Another virtual world, ``There,'' has a newspaper called the Caldera Sun-Times, written by New Orleans resident Christopher Snizik, who runs a home maintenance business in real life. The ``Sims Online'' has a newspaper called the Alphaville Herald. Ahem. 12:37:49 PM    comment []

Gasp, and double gasp! >From BNA News: STUDENT NETWORK OFFERS HIGH-SPEED SHARING A new file-trading network has sprung up on Internet2, the university network that offers researchers and students a way to communicate at blazing speeds while avoiding the ordinary Internet's data traffic jams. Some observers are concerned that students are using Internet2 to trade music and movie files. CNET News.com RFID TAGS DEBUT AT WALMART Following months of preparation, Wal-Mart starts its implementation of RFID tags today. Tagged pallets and cases of merchandise from eight consumer product manufacturers were delivered to the company earlier today. Wall Street Journal 12:37:44 PM    comment []

Quantum cryptography. Nature reports that on the 21st of April, Austrian scientists used quantum cryptography to transfer a US$3,500 donation to their laboratory.The article explains."Quantum cryptography uses the odd properties of quantum particles to create secure keys for encoding and decoding messages.The very act of observing these particles changes their nature, making it easy to detect any eavesdroppers.Anton Zeilinger, a quantum physicist at the University of Vienna, and his team carried out their bank transaction by applying a particularly secure technique that uses a pair of entangled photons to create the key.The properties of these photons depend on each other, even when they are separated by long distances. After entangling the pair, one is sent to the recipient. Upon arrival, both photons are measured by their respective owners. This act of measurement determines the state of the photons, and thus the state of the key.Before measurement, neither photon carries any useful information that could be stolen by a snoop. "This makes data transmission more secure," says Zeilinger." Business goes quantum [Smart Mobs] 6:57:12 AM    comment []

Battelle on Google's S-1 John Battelle's analysis of Google's S-1 filing -- and particularily, the charming-but-stilted founders' letter -- is fascinating and insightful: The letter states, among other things, that 1. We don't need to do this for the money; 2. We have no plans to run our business to satisfy Wall Street's need for smooth earnings predictability; 3. We plan to give no earnings guidance, not at least as it's understood on Wall St.; 4. Don't ask us to do so, we'll simply decline the request; 5. We'll do odd things that you won' t understand; 6. We will make big bets on things that may not work out; 7. We run the company as a triumvirate, so there will not be clear leadership from one person like most other companies; 8. We bridge the media and tech industries (interesting), which are in flux, so we've chosen a two-class stock structure similar to the NYT, WashPost, and NYT that helps us avoid being taken over by those forces; 9. We plan using an auction model, as it feels fairer and we understand auctions from AdWords; 10. Don't invest in us if this scares you at all, or the price feels too high; 11. Don't even think about asking us to cut expenses with regard to our employees; 12. We believe in the idea of Don't Be Evil; 13. It's evil to pay for placement or inclusion (a swipe at Yahoo); 14. We hope to bridge the digital divide through Gmail type free services and a foundation with at least 1% of profits and equity to help make the world a better place; 17. Betting on Google is a bet on Sergey and Larry (this was said multiple times, making me wonder if there wasn't some odd future blame being assigned here by the VCs or bankers); 18. This letter is our way of answering the questions we can't answer in the coming months due to the IPO quiet period. (thanks, Cory!) 6:52:59 AM    comment []

Will RSS Readers Clog the Web?. Sure, news aggregators are handy tools, making Web surfing a breeze. But the programs are greedy little buggers that swamp websites with unwanted traffic. Something has to change, and soon. By Ryan Singel. [Wired News] 6:47:36 AM    comment []

More Reasons to Love Google. Google pulls off an incredible feat. No, not the attempt to raise $2.7 billion through an IPO. They write an engrossing filing -- yes, engrossing -- that you wouldn't mind reading at the beach. In it, the company comes close to giving Wall Street the finger. By Joanna Glasner. [Wired News] 6:47:07 AM    comment []

An Egalitarian Auction? Bankers Are Not Amused. For months, investment banks vied to win the job of underwriting Google's much-anticipated initial public offering. But as details emerged yesterday about the unusual auction process that Google's founders have chosen, questions have arisen about whether the scramble for a piece of the action was worth the trouble. By Andrew Ross Sorkin and Landon Thomas Jr.. [New York Times: Business] 6:46:39 AM    comment []

Why a Village Well Is a Weapon in the War on Terror. The Pentagon is financing public works projects throughout the Horn of Africa aimed at changing the locals' view of the U.S. By Marc Lacey. [New York Times: International] 6:46:30 AM    comment []