Wednesday, June 29, 2005

Judge Gives Reporters One Week to Testify or Face Jail. A judge said he would send Judith Miller and Matthew Cooper to jail if they did not agree to testify about their sources. By ADAM LIPTAK. [NYT > Washington] 9:27:30 PM    comment []

DVD Jon hacks Google Video Viewer. The Norwegian hacker who cracked the encryption mechanism used by DVDs has turned his attention to Google's new Video Viewer. Video Viewer, released Monday, is a modified version of the open source VLC (VideoLAN Client) software that can only play videos hosted on Google's servers. In a Web log posting, published Tuesday, Jon Lech Johansen released a patch that circumvents this restriction. When it was launched in January, Google Video returned excerpts of close-captioning transcripts of television programs, still images from broadcasts and other programming information. It didn't return actual video clips that users could play back. Google began allowing users to upload video to its Web site last April, and with the release of the Video Player it has developed a way to let users view videos on the site. The Mountain View, Calif. search engine company would not say whether or not it approved of Johansen's modifications to its open source software, but it is not encouraging anyone to download the patch, according to Nathan Tyler, a Google spokesman. "We strongly advise users not to download this modification," he said. "It could result in security vulnerabilities in their computer and may disrupt their computer's ability to access Google video." "We've designed our player to work well for our service," Tyler said in an e-mail message. "Once the player has been modified we can't guarantee whether it will work well with our service." Johansen, also known as "DVD Jon," is a celebrity in the Linux community because his DVD dencryption software let Linux users run DVDs on their PCs. The software also cracked the CSS (Content Scrambling System) copy protection mechanism used by DVDs, and in 2002 Johansen was charged with violating Norwegian law. Johansen was ultimately acquitted of the charges a year later after a Norwegian court found no evidence that Johansen, who was 15 at the time he wrote the software, had used his code to produce or watch illegal copies of DVDs. The Video Viewer patch can be found here: http://nanocrew.net/?p=114 [InfoWorld: Top News] 9:27:22 PM    comment []

Around the World in 15 Songs. A globe-trotting submission to the Summer Soundtrack Contest. [Salon.com] 9:21:43 PM    comment []

More indymedia server seizures. Indymedia UK reports that servers hosted by Italian group Autistici have been hacked by police. At the same time, servers belonging to Indymedia UK Bristol were seized by police. According to that BBC report, police explained with this analogy: The raid and arrest were carried out by the British Transport Police. A spokesman said: "This is not unusual. When we get wind of graffiti, for example, we often do house searches." This story echoes another one, where British Indymedia machines were nabbed by US forces in fall 2004. (via nettime) [unmediated] 9:21:34 PM    comment []

Traveling a Bumpy Road to Recover Stolen Art. Edward Dolnick recounts the theft of Edvard Munch's "The Scream" and other art heists. By JANET MASLIN. [NYT > Books] 7:00:41 PM    comment []

US Quarterly to explore celebrity in depth: Describing it as a "discerning and literary companion" to their flagship entertainment-news magazine, Us Weekly editor-in-chief Janice Min announced on Tuesday the creation of Us Quarterly, a scholarly, four-times-yearly journal dedicated to sizzling-hot celebrity gossip. (The Onion) 7:00:36 PM    comment []

Women Writing Novels Emerge as Stars in Iran. Over the past decade, Iran's best-selling fiction lists have become dominated by women, an unprecedented development abetted by recent upheavals in Iranian society. By NAZILA FATHI. [NYT > Books] 8:50:59 AM    comment []

DIFFICULTIES RESOLVED: WHAT THE HACK CONFERENCE RECEIVES PERMIT. In a followup to a story we reported earlier, we've received word that organizers of this summer's What the Hack conference have successfully completed negotiations with the municipality of Boxtel and received a permit for the event. [2600: The Hacker Quarterly] 8:41:06 AM    comment []

Quick thought on web service mashups. Web developers are taking a cue from the Grey Album and mashups have become increasingly in vogue. The one that triggered this post was AudioFlickrscrobbler which finds photos related to the music you're listening to; but web service mashups seem to be everywhere these days. Jon Udell asks "How do you design a remixable Web application?" An answer he missed was to make it produce and consume data on the Semantic Web. The Semantic Web is all about remixing and linking and sorting data. All you do is import the data you want into a triple database like Redland or Jena, then run a SPARQL query to find all the linked data you're looking for. Also, I love microformats and I think they are a great bridge, but they can be limited. Compare XFN with FOAF: in XFN how do I say on my family's ne'er updated blog that Harold is my brother and my mother's son? That said, I think that for the Semantic Web to take off microformats will have to take off first. Once people start getting plugins that allow them to add embedded microformat data into their apps (like a script to add hCalendar data to iCal) people will demand that the web interact with their personal data stores. From there, it's just a matter of time. [unmediated] 8:40:34 AM    comment []

The Court Has Ruled So Enter the Geeks. The Supreme Court's decision in the Grokster case means trouble for file-sharing services and has established a new standard for culture-geek innovation: don't ask, don't sell. By JON PARELES. [NYT > Technology] 8:35:53 AM    comment []

This just in. The NY Times' John Markoff is reporting there's a lot of user-generated content on the Internet. Quote: From photo- and calendar-sharing services to "citizen journalist" sites and annotated satellite images, the Internet is morphing yet again. A remarkable array of software systems makes it simple to share anything instantly, and sometimes enhance it along the way. I need to start keeping up with this stuff. [rexblog: Rex Hammock's Weblog] 8:34:55 AM    comment []

The Jailing of Judith Miller. The Supreme Court has just flinched from its responsibility to stop the unjust jailing of two journalists. By WILLIAM SAFIRE. [NYT > Opinion] 8:34:23 AM    comment []

Cell phones vs. Credit Cards: The Battle Begins. Olga Kharif for Business Week's TechBeat wonders if credit card companies and banks could soon be in for a nasty surprise. For the past several years, European wireless service providers have allowed subscribers to charge vending machine purchases onto the users' mobile phone bills. Now, U.S. service providers are starting to follow suit. For instance, users of mobile short-text messaging service SMS.ac can now add charitable contributions to their wireless bills. Subscribers simply need to send a short-text message to a 5-digit short code to donate 25 cents a day for 31 days. That donation will appear on their monthly wireless bill. Here's my thinking: If wireless service providers continue to roll out such billing services, they could, eventually, grab a chunk of revenues away from credit card companies and banks... [Smart Mobs] 8:24:37 AM    comment []