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Tuesday, November 22, 2005 |
Irene McGee's radio show. 
Many of you may remember Irene McGee from the Real World Seattle. Physically sick with Lyme Disease and feeling misunderstood and misrepresented, she left the show (but not before getting smacked by one of her male roommates.) Appropriately, Irene is now a student of media literacy. Along with lecturing on the subject, she's learning the tools of personalized media like blogging and podcasting. Good for her! Irene is also hosting a radio show on KSFS called NoOne's Listening that's also archived online. BB pals V. Vale of RE/Search and Lawrence Lessig were guests on recent shows and Noam Chomsky will be on soon. Last week, I met Irene at a conference and she interviewed me a bit about the history of Boing Boing. (Webzine co-founder Eddie Codel videotaped the conversation and says it will eventually be shown as part of Geek Entertainment TV, his "emerging global media empire.")
Link to NoOne's Listening
Electric fish jam rivals.
When an electric knifefish encounters a rival, both boost their electric field in an effort to jam the other's signal. Previous research has shown that distorting the fish's electric field screwes up its "guidance systems." The scientists who conducted the experiments, Sara Tallarovic of the University of the Incarnate World and Harold Zakon of the University of Texas, recorded knightfish fish doing battle, including the zaps converted into audible sound. The intense videos are available as part of a Science News article about the research. From the article:
 A fish of this species occasionally raises its frequency but never lowers it, Tallarovic says. She suspected signal jamming when she noticed upward frequency shifts as one fish attacked another. "Everybody just told me, 'No, it's got to be an artifact,'" she says.
So, she and Zakon monitored fishes' electric fields in several scenarios, the team reports in an upcoming Animal Behaviour. When researchers put two fish in an unfamiliar tank or used a field-emitting dummy to mimic an intruder in a fish's home tank, both males and females tended to raise their electric-field frequencies as they attacked. The changes' timing and context convinced the researchers that the attacking fish was jamming the other's signals.
Link
[Boing Boing]
10:58:34 PM 
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Soviet public-domain maps.
Paul sez, "Soviets mapped the entire world at various scales between 1940 and 1990.In some areas the Russian maps are still the best available maps. Amazingly, none of the maps are copyright." Link (Thanks, Paul!)
[Boing Boing]
4:17:03 PM
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Australian Minister's Sensible Comments on Airline Security Sparks Outcry.
I'm the first to admit that I don't know anything about Australian politics. I don't know who Amanda Vanstone is, what she stands for, and what other things she's said about any other topic.
But I happen to think she's right about airline security:
In a wide-ranging speech to Adelaide Rotarians, Senator Vanstone dismissed many commonwealth security measures as essentially ineffective. "To be tactful about these things, a lot of what we do is to make people feel better as opposed to actually achieve an outcome," Senator Vanstone said.
. . .
[Schneier on Security]
4:16:34 PM
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The trickle-away effect. Comment: Multinational water companies once beat a path to buy up privatised operators in Argentina. Now they are desperate to get out, writes Oliver Balch. [Guardian Unlimited]
6:29:45 AM
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Google buys Riya, Steamrollers Your Pictures' Anonymity.
 Riya is a Redwood City startup that makes facial recognition software. Rumor from Om Malik says Google is buying them. I believe that this purchase has some of the farthest reaching privacy implications we've yet seen from Google.
Anonymity, in its most literal meaning of "without a name," is the current state of many photographs on the web. The ability to do silly things, and be photographed, and share those photos with friends, is valuable. Also valuable is the ability to not share those photos with employers or parents. One very common way to do that is to put no names on the photos. Another is to protect the photos with a password, but that takes work to set up, and work to maintain.
There's an expectation (right or wrong) that anonymous photos are just that: Even if someone finds them, its unlikely to be anyone who can identify those pictured. That no one will re-attach a name, because it's not worth the effort.
Cue Google, with the world's largest server farm, and a facial recognition technology they think works.
It's often been stated that no one has a right to privacy in public, but we have had a very practical anonymity. That's been fading away for a while, but the trend will accelerate. Look for everyone, not just politicians and Supreme Court nominees, to be asked to answer for their behavior thirty years ago.
Oh, and I have no idea who those women are, but I bet Google has their phone numbers. If you ask real nice, they might give them to you.
[Emergent Chaos]
6:29:37 AM
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Adam Green: "Microsoft and Google are being maneuvered into a massive game of chicken. I'll show everyone my Office data if you'll show your search data." [Scripting News]
6:23:02 AM
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Sony Rootkit DRM Roundup Part III.
The Sony rootkit debacle continues to gain steam, with fresh revelations of incompetence and malice every day, and with fresh news of lawsuits too. Previously, I published two roundups of news on this leading up to Nov 17 (Sony Rootkit Roundup Part I, Sony Rootkit Roundup Part II) and what with all the news, it's time for a third:
- Nov 17: Sony still advising public to install rootkits
- 18 days after the revelation that Sony's CDs contain dangerous rootkits, Sony still has live web-pages advising its customers to go ahead and install their software (This is still the case as of Nov 22!).
- Nov 17: Schneier: Why didn't anti-virus apps defend us against Sony's rootkit?
- Security researcher Bruce Schneier accuses anti-spyware companies of being soft on Sony because it was released by a giant, sleazy company instead of a small, sleazy company.
- Nov 17: Uninstaller for Sony's other malware screws up your PC
- Some of Sony's music CDs carry a second form of malicious software, a spyware program called Suncomm Mediamax. Princeton researchers Ed Felten and Alex Halderman discover that the uninstaller provided by Suncomm leaves your computer open to complete takeover through simply looking at web-pages with malicious code in them.
- Nov 17: Amazon offers refunds for all Sony rootkit CDs
- Amazon sends an email to everyone who bought a rootkit-infected Sony CD from them and offers a full refund -- now that's how it's done. (On November 21, the US Army/Airforce Exchange Service followed suit).
- Nov 18: I HEART Rootkit tees, list of Mediamax CDs, Mediamax installer to be fixed
- Lovely "I HEART Rootkit" tee shirts for sale. A user discovers a long list of CDs infected with Suncomm's MediaMax spyware. Suncomm vows to update its Mediamax uninstaller, which presently leaves your computer wide open to total take-over simply by looking at web-pages with malicious code on them.
- Nov 19: Sony offers MP3s in replacement for rootkit CDs
- Sony is not only offering to replace infected CDs with CDs that are free from the rootkit DRM (no official word from Sony on whether they'll also be free of the Mediamax spyware) -- they're also offering free MP3s of any music that you bought on an infected CD!
- Nov 20: RIAA prez: Lots of companies secretly install rootkits! It's no biggie!
- The CEO of the RIAA kisses off all the customers who got infected by Sony's rootkit: "How many times that software applications created the same problem? Lots." Uh, really? Lots of companies install rootkits on users' PCs without permission? Apparently this guy doesn't know the difference between "companies" and "criminal organizations"
- Nov 20: Latest news on Sony lawsuits
- A website launches to keep track of news about the lawsuits arising from Sony's use of spyware and rootkits on its music CDs.
- Nov 20: Sony insider: DRM is discredited at Son
- A high-placed tipster at Sony tells me that the execs who green-lighted DRM at Sony are in trouble, and that the label-heads in Sony are really pissed about the rootkit fiasco, with at least one vowing to swear off DRM forever.
- Nov 21: Foxtrot cartoon on Sony's rootkit
- The Foxtrot comic strip nails Sony in today's syndicated strip
- Nov 21: Texas sues Sony over rootkits -- YEE-HAW!
- Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott has brought an anti-spyware lawsuit against Sony over its rootkit DRM. He's looking for $100,000 per violation of Texas's anti-spyware laws, plus costs. Ouch. That's gonna be pretty costly.
- Nov 21: EFF brings class-action against Sony!
- My employer, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (a nonprofit civil liberties group) has brought a class action suit against Sony. We're gonna nail them!
- Nov 21: Microsoft: Trusted Computing sucks!
- A senior Microsoft exec says that computer users should never be deprived of control over their PCs; too bad that Microsoft has built so much of its current business on depriving its customers control over their PCs.
- Nov 21: Why not update Sony's rootkit with a warning message?
- Security researcher Ben Edelman suggests that Sony could reach all its infected users by pushing an update to the rootkit that warns them that they're compromised and gives instructions for uninstalling and getting replacement CDs.
- Nov 21: Sony's Mediamax spyware gets a new uninstaller
- The Suncomm Mediamax spyware on Sony's CDs caused embarrassment when it was revealed that using the uninstaller left your computer vulnerable to total compromise by web-pages with malicious code on them. Now Suncomm has issued a new uninstaller, though heavens knows if it's any better.
One more thing: remember back in 2002 when it was revealed that you could cause your computer to ignore audio-CD DRM by scribbling on the visible data-sectors on the physical disc? Turns out that a variant on this can also immunize you against Sony's current crop of malicious software.
[Boing Boing]
6:08:44 AM
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6:04:46 AM
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Microsoft Disavows IE. The MSN site encourages web surfers using Microsoft's Internet Explorer for Mac to switch browsers. Plus: Visit London's Victoria and Albert Museum via podcast. From Leander Kahney's Cult of Mac blog. [Wired News]
6:02:09 AM
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Microsoft: Trusted Computing sucks!.
A very senior Microsoft employee has given a statement to the press disavowing Sony's use of technology that takes control away from users:
"A personal computer is called a personal computer because it's yours," said Andrew Moss, Microsoft's senior director of technical policy. "Anything that runs on that computer, you should have control over." I could not agree more! Unfortunately, Microsoft's whole current business model is built around systems that take control away from users (See, for example, EFF's Seth Schoen's excellent four-part report on Microsoft's new trusted computing/rights management program, which treats the computer's owner as an attacker and works to shut her out of her own system).
I wonder if this is Microsoft's new official policy -- will they include owner override (a proposal to let computer owners override trusted computing) in their trusted computing plans? Link (Thanks, Rik!)
[Boing Boing]
6:01:36 AM
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IFeed Your IPod. Trick out your iPod with iFeedPod, and download RSS feeds galore. Plus: Reevu's rear-view helmet lets you ditch those useless motorcycle mirrors. From the Wired News blog Gear Factor. [Wired News]
6:00:43 AM
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