Sunday, January 16, 2005

It's 60 Degrees Out Right Now. I love the Bay Area.... [Andrew Bayer is Dreaming of China] 'course, it's been over 60 here in STL this month, too. Maybe Andrew should move again? 9:05:03 PM    comment []

ISP suffers apparent domain hijacking. Panix.com says it is working to recover its domain name and e-mail services after suffering an apparent hijacking. [CNET News.com] Inasmuchas Panix has been an early target of later-much-emulated attacks (most notably the 1996 dDOS) this is worrisome. 9:04:31 PM    comment []

NWN IN '04: JUST LIKE THE MOVIES. A year or so after its addition, Second Life's video capture function is still relatively under-utilized, but enough residents have dabbled in SL-based machinima to create a fairly substantial library. Some of the standout vids, unsurprisingly, include two marriage montages, and a satirical take on the in-world dating scene... - MONTAGE MATRIMONIAL! - MONTAGE MATRIMONIAL, PART II! - MACHINIMA RETURNS TO SECOND LIFE (WITH A VENGEANCE!) [New World Notes] 9:45:04 AM    comment []

How to Retire Rich. In his zeal to privatize Social Security, President Bush is obscuring better approaches to a comfortable retirement for all Americans. [NYT > Opinion] 9:44:07 AM    comment []

Cooking. Steve Post cooks and lives to tell the story151a story that measures the short distance separating food preparation from self-immolation when Steve is involved. The music is delicious. [WNYC New York Public Radio] 9:44:02 AM    comment []

How We Learn. If toddlers can figure things out so easily, why can't schoolchildren? By ALISON GOPNIK. [NYT > Education] 9:43:29 AM    comment []

CBS Tries DRM to Block Criticism of Rathergate Report. Last week the panel investigating CBS's botched reporting about President Bush's military service released its report. The report was offered on the net in PDF format by CBS and its law firm. CBS was rightly commended for its openness in facing up to its past misbehavior and publicizing the report. Many bloggers, in commenting on the report and events that led to it, included quotes from the report. Yesterday, Ernest Miller noticed that he could no longer copy and paste material from the report PDF into other documents. Seth Finkelstein confirmed that the version of the report on the CBS and law firm websites had been modified. The contents were the same but an Adobe DRM (Digital Restrictions Management) technology had been enabled, to prevent copying and pasting from the report. Apparently CBS (or its lawyers) wanted to make it harder for people to quote from the report. This is yet another use of DRM that has nothing to do with copyright infringement. Nobody who wanted to copy the report as a whole would do so by copying and pasting -- the report is enormous and the whole thing is available for free online anyway. The only plausible use of copy-and-paste is to quote from the report in order to comment, which is almost certainly fair use. (CBS might reasonably have wanted to prevent modifications to the report file itself. They could have done this, within Adobe's DRM system, without taking away the ability to copy-and-paste material from the file. But they chose instead to ban both modification and copy-and-paste.) This sort of thing should not be a public policy problem; but the DMCA makes it one. If the law were neutral about DRM, we could just let the technology take its course. Unfortunately, U.S. law favors the publishers of DRMed material over would-be users of that material. For example, circumventing the DRM on the CBS report, in order to engage in fair-use commentary, may well violate the DMCA. (The DMCA has no fair-use exception, and courts have ruled that a DMCA violation can occur even if there is no copyright infringement.) (Continud at Freedom to Tinker) [unmediated] 9:43:21 AM    comment []

101 Redefined. Colleges rethink the large lecture course. The goal: a new freshman experience, at a lower cost. By By RICHARD PANEK. [NYT > Education] 9:42:38 AM    comment []

BTD SUNDAY COMICS [Begging To Differ] 9:40:53 AM    comment []

Nobel winner refuses Iranian court: Ebadi ordered to give 'some explanations' to hard-line body (AP) Nobel peace laureate Shirin Ebadi told Iran's hard-line Revolutionary Court on Saturday she won't obey a vague summons on her to appear for questioning, even if it means she will be jailed -- an open challenge to a powerful body that has tried and convicted many pro-reform intellectuals. Ebadi, the first Iranian and Muslim woman to win the Nobel peace prize in 2003, vowed in a wide-ranging exclusive interview with The Associated Press to resist hard-line threats against her life and will never bow to intimidation. "I do continue to receive anonymous death threats in various forms such as threatening letters and calls," Ebadi, 57, said. "I've come to believe people who send threatening messages are linked to certain people who provoke them." "This is intimidation. My record shows that I won't give in to intimidation." The feared Revolutionary Court, which deals with security crimes, has ordered Ebadi to appear before a branch of the court for "some explanations" or face arrest. The court did not say on what matter it wants her to appear. . . . During a tour in Africa Saturday, Iran's pro-reform President Mohammad Khatami said he would guarantee her safety and freedom to continue her activities. But powerful hard-liners rarely listen to Khatami. . . . The organization she co-founded with several other lawyers, the Center for Protecting Human Rights, does not recognize the court, which Ebadi claims is not mentioned in Iran's constitution "Such a court is perhaps justified during a revolution but revolutionary courts lose their legal justification after a revolution," she said. "That such a court summons a lawyer and human rights activist 26 years after a revolution is irrelevant." 1:35:15 AM    comment []