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Tuesday, March 15, 2005 |
Larry Lessig, vowing fidelity to Open Access, pledges, "never again," saying, At this point, I know of one law journal that may, soon, be able to publish my work. I hope there will be more. But until there are, there will be no more law review articles by Lawrence Lessig - a relief to many, no doubt; a loss to none, to be sure.
11:21:44 PM 
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R.I.P.
- William Lester, Innovator in the Plastics Industry, Dies at 97. William M. Lester, who revolutionized the plastics industry 70 years ago with his design for an automatic molding machine, died on Saturday at his home in Delray Beach, Fla. He was 97. By JENNIFER BAYOT.
- Redmond A. Simonsen, 62, Maker of Strategic Board Games, Dies. Redmond A. Simonsen, an early maker of strategic board games that scaled some of history's great battles down to table size and helped propel the amateur war games craze of the 1970's, died last Wednesday in Garland, Tex. He was 62 and lived in Richardson, Tex. By MARGALIT FOX.
[NYT > Business]
11:15:10 PM
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Three from Benton Headlines:
- ADMINISTRATION REJECTS RULING ON PR VIDEOS Joshua B. Bolten, director of the Office of Management and Budget, and Steven G. Bradbury, principal deputy assistant attorney general at the Justice Department, said in memos last week that the Bush Administration disagrees with the Government Accountability Office and finds it legal for federal agencies to feed TV stations prepackaged news stories that do not disclose the government's role in producing them. The legal counsel's office "does not agree with GAO that the covert propaganda prohibition applies simply because an agency's role in producing and disseminating information is undisclosed or 'covert,' regardless of whether the content of the message is 'propaganda,' " Bradbury wrote. "Our view is that the prohibition does not apply where there is no advocacy of a particular viewpoint, and therefore it does not apply to the legitimate provision of information concerning the programs administered by an agency." Supporters say prepackaged news stories are a common public relations tool with roots in previous administrations, that their exterior packaging typically identifies the government as the source, and that it is up to news organizations, not the government, to reveal to viewers where the material they broadcast came from. Critics have derided such video news releases as taxpayer-financed attempts by the administration to promote its policies in the guise of independent news reports. [SOURCE: Washington Post, AUTHOR: Christopher Lee] (requires registration) Also see --
* Not Necessarily the News:
http://www.alternet.org/mediaculture/21493/
* The White House Fakes It:
http://www.alternet.org/mediaculture/21485/
- LET THE REAL PUBLIC TELEVISION STEP FORWARD [Commentary] Americans know that a national public broadcasting system is an essential feature of our great media landscape. And that fact certainly explains the impassioned polemic we've been witnessing of late. To some extent, this national discourse should be welcome. Questions about the system^?s content, funding and future need to be considered and should interest all Americans. Unfortunately, the old saw about there being no such thing as bad publicity doesn't apply here. Much of the current debate about public television is oversimplified, ill-informed, or simply incorrect. It^?s time to give some of the misleading headlines a rewrite; those headlines include: 1) Public television equals the PBS network; 2) PBS sets the agenda for public television; 3) Public television is dependent on vast sums of government funding; 4) Federal subsidies give public television an unfair advantage; 5) Corporations no longer support public television; and 6) Public television has been made obsolete by cable channels. [SOURCE: , AUTHOR: Dr. William F. Baker, Thirteen/WNET and WLIW21 New York]
- MARCH ISSUE OF THE POLITICAL STANDARD The March 2005 edition of The Political Standard newsletter is now available online. Stories include: 1) TV News Largely Ignores Local Political Campaigns 2) Broadcast Versus Cable? It's the Public Interest that Matters. 3) McCain Looks to Reform License Renewal Process 4) New 'Citizen's Guide' Examines How Media Can Serve the Public Interest (hey, that sounds familiar) ...and more. [SOURCE: Alliance for Better Campaigns]
(edited to embed some but not all urls)
4:34:37 PM
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SXSW Report: Ben Walker on 'Net Censorship in China.
 Yesterday at SXSW: a presentation on blogging and censorship, with Hossain Derakhshan, prominent Iranian-Canadian blogger, and Benjamin Walker, radio host and Berkman Center for Internet and Society fellow, who just got back from China last week. Hot on the heels of this March 4 New York Times article on censorship of blogs in China, he refuted what he defined as several misconceptions of the western media on how the Internet is being used there.
[5 misconceptions discussion deleted, but it's worth a look]
According to bloggers Walker interviewed, the Chinese blogosphere is evolving, with bloggers carefully testing the openness of the system. There are different levels of censorship--new tools might help users move towards freer use of blogs for more sensitive topics. For example, on Google China, blogs are starting to rank higher than official web sites on searches about "city reconstruction," a phrase that signifies development in the countryside. It's a significant shift in information resources, that points at the potential for bloggers to reveal more of the truth about life in China to each other.
All very interesting to me -- I've been reserved in my trust in the "blogosphere" to foment social revolution in places like China, where it seems like it was too easy to stop up the pipe -- a view definitely influenced by what I've read in papers like the Times. Walker's POV is that we need to look a lot deeper than what mainstream press is reporting about blogs, the Internet and China.
(Posted by Emily Gertz in Global Culture – Art, Music, Fashion, and Travel at 04:11 PM) [unmediated]
7:30:40 AM
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4000 CD sales funds one year of East Village music club.
via DigitalMediaWire and the the New York Times comes word of a new model for musical and economic sustainability. The Stone, a new live music venue in New York City being launched by composer John Zorn, that will provide 100% of ticket sales to artists, and support itself through the sale of exclusive CDs online. The Stone, which will open at Avenue C and Second Street in the East Village in April, plans to pay its rent and insurance through limited-edition CDs released and sold online by Zorn's Tzadik record label -- the first of which will likely feature Zorn, Mike Patton and Bill Laswell. "We can sell 4,000 copies at $20 and run the place on $80,000 a year," Zorn told The Times. "This is about a community coming together. The downtown scene is so diverse that it eludes classification, but it functions as a community, with people helping each other." [unmediated]
7:21:30 AM
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Tracking Bot Networks.
This is a fascinating piece of research on bot networks: networks of compromised computers that can be remotely controlled by an attacker. The paper details how bots and bot networks work, who uses them, how they are used, and how to track them.
From the conclusion:
In this paper we have attempted to demonstrate how honeynets can help us understand how botnets work, the threat they pose, and how attackers control them. Our research shows that some attackers are highly skilled and organized, potentially belonging to well organized crime structures. Leveraging the power of several thousand bots, it is viable to take down almost any website or network instantly. Even in unskilled hands, it should be obvious that botnets are a loaded and powerful weapon. Since botnets pose such a powerful threat, we need a variety of mechanisms to counter it.
Decentralized providers like Akamai can offer some redundancy here, but very large botnets can also pose a severe threat even against this redundancy. Taking down of Akamai would impact very large organizations and companies, a presumably high value target for certain organizations or individuals. We are currently not aware of any botnet usage to harm military or government institutions, but time will tell if this persists.
In the future, we hope to develop more advanced honeypots that help us to gather information about threats such as botnets. Examples include Client honeypots that actively participate in networks (e.g. by crawling the web, idling in IRC channels, or using P2P-networks) or modify honeypots so that they capture malware and send it to anti-virus vendors for further analysis. As threats continue to adapt and change, so must the security community.
[Schneier on Security]
7:16:33 AM
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