Wednesday, December 01, 2004

why do we blog. "Why do we blog": A list of reasons from 36 bloggers, compiled by Frank Paynter. I contributed the cartoon above to the list. Why do people blog? Hell, why do people paint? Write books? Make movies? Why do people... [gapingvoid] 10:07:19 PM    comment []

Arms Inspectors Said to Seek Access to Iran Sites. Inspectors are requesting access to two secret military sites where intelligence suggests that Tehran's Ministry of Defense may be working on atomic weapons. By By WILLIAM J. BROAD, DAVID E. SANGER and ELAINE SCIOLINO. [NYT > International] 10:06:52 PM    comment []

BitTorrent servers under attack. The servers at one hub of the file-sharing network have been hit by a distributed denial of service attack, the Web site operators say. [CNET News.com] 10:06:46 PM    comment []

Douglas Barnes: Deworming the Internet. [Hack the Planet] 10:06:26 PM    comment []

Pair Who Made Schedule 24 Years Are Replaced. The Sports Scheduling Group has been selected to complete the 2005 Major League Baseball schedule. By By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS. [NYT > Sports] 4:45:13 PM    comment []

Internet Archive Loses Copyright Fight. tiltowait writes "As reported on LISNews.com, the Internet Archive has lost a copyright lawsuit which challenged the Congressional lengthening of copyright terms and conditions. The ruling has implications for abandonware and other copyright-eligible materials that have no active owner. Brewster Kahle plans to appeal the decision." The decision is available. As we noted in an earlier story, the Eldred case challenged the length of copyright expansion, this one challenged the breadth, and so far, this one is going about as well as the Eldred case did. Stanford has an overview of the case. [unmediated] 4:45:12 PM    comment []

Wichita State may slap new F on cheaters. A sort of academic scarlet letter - the XF grade - may soon adorn the transcripts of Wichita State University students caught plagiarizing or cheating. The WSU Student Government Association began pushing for the grade last year. The proposal has gained steam with additional support from the university's Faculty Senate. [The Journal] See also the scene at the University of Maryland. 4:45:05 PM    comment []

An Impressive Car Theft. The armored Mercedes belonging to the CEO of DaimlerChrysler has been stolen: The black company car, which is worth about 800,000 euros ($1 million), disappeared on the night of Oct. 26, police spokesman Klaus-Peter Arand said in a telephone interview. The limousine, which sports a 12-cylinder engine and is equipped with a broadcasting device to help retrieve the car, hasn't yet been found, the police said. There are two types of thieves, whether they be car thieves or otherwise. First, there are the thieves that want a car, any car. And second, there are the thieves that want one particular car. Against the first type, any security measure that makes your car harder to steal than the car next to it is good enough. Against the second type, even a sophisticated GPS tracking system might not be enough. [Schneier on Security] 4:40:41 PM    comment []

Mary Jo: "Microsoft's MSN division is expected to take the wraps off its MSN Spaces blogging service this week." [Scripting News] 4:40:25 PM    comment []

Philly reaches accord on city Wi-Fi. Penn. governor signs closely watched legislation after Philadelphia and Verizon reach compromise on citywide project. [CNET News.com] 4:33:39 PM    comment []

The Open Video Project. The purpose of the Open Video Project is to collect and make available a repository of digitized video content for the digital video, multimedia retrieval, digital library, and other research communities. (A week ago we posted a link to the project description. This is a link to the actual Open Video project. -kc.) [unmediated] 7:31:29 AM    comment []

Iran Says It Will Suspend but Not End Its Uranium Program. Iran's chief nuclear negotiator said that Iran would suspend its uranium enrichment activities for only a few months while negotiations with Europe continued. By By NAZILA FATHI. [NYT > International] 7:31:08 AM    comment []

AACS. There's finally some public information about AACS, the successor to the CSS DRM system that's used in DVDs. It looks more or less the same as CSS but with AES as the underlying cipher. Gentlemen, start your debuggers. [unmediated] 7:29:47 AM    comment []

A Forrester Report on Blogging. Here is a excerpt: "Forrester envisions a day when new employees on their first day will be handed a sheet of paper with their phone number, email address — and a URL for their blog. The company would give all of its employees a personal internal blog where they could provide project updates, trip reports, and market intelligence — anything that they think others should know about the work that they are doing. This information could then be tied into the company's VoIP phone system — for internal calls, the caller's photo, title, bio, and a link to his blog would appear on the computer screen. The blog content would give context and background for the call, making it unnecessary to send extra emails or to have extensive discussions about a project." Buy the report here: Forrester Research Blogging Bubble Or Big Deal [Qumana Blog] 7:25:25 AM    comment []