Thursday, December 08, 2005

the beginning of the end of DRM --EFF Deeplinks [unmediated] 10:39:53 PM    comment []

The Neopets Addiction. Twenty million kids can't get enough -- and neither can advertisers. How a website for the after-school set became a product-placement paradise. By David Kushner of Wired magazine. [Wired News] 10:39:23 PM    comment []

A Leaner Tulane Plans to Reopen Its Doors Next Month. Tulane University is coping with the effects of Katrina by laying off more than 200 faculty members and eliminating programs. By MICHAEL JANOFSKY. [NYT > Education] 10:39:15 PM    comment []

0Day on Ebay. "Brand new Microsoft Excel Vulnerability:" The lot: One 0-day Microsoft Excel Vulnerability Up for sale is one (1) brand new vulnerability in the Microsoft Excel application. The vulnerability was discovered on December 6th 2005, all the details were submitted to Microsoft, and the reply was received indicating that they may start working on it. It can be assumed that no patch addressing this vulnerability will be available within the next few months. So, since I was unable to find any use for this by-product of Microsoft developers, it is now available for you at the low starting price of $0.01 (a fair value estimation for any Microsoft product). If that makes any sense, read the auction while you can. Its not Gobbles, but it's pretty funny. [Emergent Chaos] Current bid is $60. It specifies that you may not use the vulnerability for any malicious purpose. Updated (fewer than five hours later) to say it's all over: This listing (7203336538) has been removed by eBay or is no longer available. Please make sure that you've entered the item number correctly. If the item was removed by eBay, please consider this transaction canceled. If anybody contacts you to complete the sale, please ignore the request. Completing the sale outside of eBay may be unsafe and will not be covered by eBay purchase protection programs. 5:48:05 PM    comment []

Wrap Up a Holiday Hack. 'Tis the season for mixing and mashing. Don't settle for store-bought toys when you can use them as raw material for your own one-of-a-kind designs. By Rachel Metz. [Wired News] 5:48:02 PM    comment []

Monocultures and Operating Systems. Dan Geer on monocultures and operating systems. [Schneier on Security] 5:47:54 PM    comment []

Alarm clock wakes you with a noise hovering chopper. This alarm clock launches a small, noisy helicopter to hover over your bed when it goes off: One thing that sometimes wakes you up at night and prevents you from sleeping is the mosquito or blowfly when flying around your room. You can't and don't want to fall asleep again until you've caught it. These produces adrenalin and requires movements. The alarm clock blowfly works like a "blowfly" that at the desire time it escapes from a cage in your room. It starts moving and producing sound around you - to turn it off you should catch it and put it back in the cage. Link (via Gizmodo) [Boing Boing] 5:47:46 PM    comment []

50% of HDTV Owners Don't Use HD [unmediated] 5:47:09 PM    comment []

How cancer spreads. How does cancer spread? By sending envoys ahead to prepare new sites for tumors, according to new research (via Reuters/MSNBC). Patricia Steeg, of the National Cancer Institute in Bethesda, Maryland, is quoted with an interpretation of the research, saying that "tumor cells can mobilize normal bone marrow cells, causing them to migrate to particular regions and change the local environment so as to attract and support a developing metastasis." The article goes on to say that "cells at the site of the metastasis multiply and produce a protein called fibronectin, which acts like a glue to attract and trap the bone marrow cells to create a landing pad or nest for the cancer cells." The authors refer to the new site as a "pre-metastatic niche." According to David Lyden, of Cornell University in New York, one of the authors of the research, it "opens up the door to new concepts of how metastasis is taking place. If we can understand all these multiple processes we can develop new drugs that block each step. That way we have a much better future than just trying to treat the tumor cell, which is almost like a last step in this process." [WorldChanging: Another World Is Here] 5:47:04 PM    comment []

Five from BNA News: CT RULES UNAUTHORIZED USE OF PASSWORD NOT DMCA CIRCUMVENTION BNA's Electronic Commerce & Law Reports that the U.S. District Ct for DC has ruled that the unauthorized use of a username/password combination to gain access to a personal Web site is not "circumvention" prohibited by the Digital Millenium Copyright Act. Case name is Egilman v. Keller & Heckman LLP. Article at http://pubs.bna.com/ip/bna/eip.nsf/eh/a0b2a3z8t8 For a free trial to the source of this story, visit http://www.bna.com/prodcuts/ip/eplr.htm MICROSOFT WILL CHALLENGE S. KOREAN ANTITRUST RULING Microsoft says it will fight in court an order by South Korea's antitrust regulators that it pay a $32 million fine and offer alternate versions of its Windows operating system to temper its market dominance. The Korea Fair Trade Commission ordered Microsoft to offer two versions of Windows in South Korea within 180 days. Meanwhile, the Bush administration protested South Korea's decision, saying the remedy went beyond what was necessary or appropriate to protect consumers. GAO FINDS THAT 2.3M DOMAINS REGISTERED WITH FALSE DATA A new GAO report states that an estimated 2.31 million Internet domain names have been registered with "patently false" data. The report suggests that a large number of Internet sites may have been created by persons seeking to hide their identities, possibly to avoid detection by law enforcement. [Australian IT] 1 IN 4 OF NET USERS TARGETED IN PHISHING SCAMS MONTHLY A study released by America Online and the National Cyber Security Alliance says about one in four Internet users are hit with e-mail phishing scams every month. The study found nearly three-quarters of those surveyed use their computers for sensitive transactions such as banking, stock trading, or reviewing medical information. SATELLITE RADIO RECEIVER RAISES IRE OF RECORDING INDUSTRY The recording industry is expressing concern about new satellite-radio receivers that mimic iPods in their ability to store and organize hundreds of songs. The satellite companies say there's nothing wrong with the additional functions they are offering customers. They point to a 1992 federal law that permits consumers to make personal recordings from the radio and argue that the storage capability is a legal time-shifting device, similar to a digital-video recorder such as TiVo. 10:30:14 AM    comment []

Imagine all the people. Howard Cosell, Jerry Lee Lewis, David Crosby, Kate Millett, Timothy Leary, Geraldo Rivera and others recall their encounters with John Lennon, who died 25 years ago today. [Salon - salon] 7:01:07 AM    comment []

Report Says States Aim Low in Science Classes. The report says nearly half the states are doing a poor job of setting high academic standards for science in public schools. By MICHAEL JANOFSKY. [NYT > Education] 7:01:04 AM    comment []

Campus Gender Ratio: Honor Roll Girls. Continuing our discussion of my post Still Plenty of Big Men on Campus on Michael Gurian's Washington Post article "Disappearing Act" about the changing gender ratio on college campuses . . . [Girl in the Locker Room!] This is a great, ongoing conversation, both featuring Robin's thoughts and many comments of interest since the article was published. (Really, it goes back to Robin's comments on the NYT's similar story, last month.) In this post, she quotes Katha Pollit, who notes (among other things): girls NEED college more than boys, there are still good jobs for men that don't require a BA   7:00:00 AM    comment []

Other Rex: Kottke: do you keep a secret site? The Gawker kids launched another: Consumerist. 43 songs about the blogosphere. 6:59:48 AM    comment []

DJ Riko's Christmas mix album. DJ Riko, the mashup genius behind Whistler's Delight, has released a 70-minute MP3 mix-CD of his favorite Xmas oddities, including rarities, non-English songs, and lots of upbeat holiday tuneage: I'm happy to announce that Merry Mixmas 2005 is now available for download. It's my fourth annual mix of Christmas music, and has been given the official thumbs-up by Santa himself. The mix includes songs that are very old and very new, sung in English, Spanish, Japanese and other languages, and played on banjos, guitars, strings, horns and other instruments... 1. Intro 2. Singers Unlimited - Caroling Caroling 3. DJ Riko featuring Marcie - My Chimney 4. Luscious Jackson - Let it Show 5. The Free Design - Now Sound of Christmas 6. Lou Monte - Dominick the Donkey 7. Louis Armstrong - Cool Yule 8. Mr Hanky - Santa Claus is on His Way 9. The Ventures - Silver Bells 10. George W. Bush - Twas the Night Before Christmas (Jima edit) 11. Kids of Widney High - Christmas is the Time 12. Ringo Starr - Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer 13. Madness - Insanity Over Christmas 14. Augie Rios - Donde Esta Santa Claus 15. Disney - Santa's Rap 16. Pizzicato Five - Snowflakes 17. Chet Baker - Winter Wonderland 18. Neil Diamond - Santa Claus is Coming to Town 19. Big Ben Banjo Band - Christmas Medley 2 20. Alvin and the Chipmunks - Chimpunk Song (Slow Version) 21. Bright Eyes - Little Drummer Boy 22. Tenchi Muyo vs. The Singing Dogs - Jingle Bells 23. Wayne Newton - Jingle Bell Hustle 24. Buchanan & Goodman - Santa and the Satellite 25. Esquivel! - Frosty the Snowman 26. Huey Piano Smith and the Clowns - All I Want for Christmas 27. Smokey Robinson and the Miracles - Santa Claus is Coming to Town 28. Santa Claus - A Visit From Santa Claus 29. Little Bobby Rey - Corrido de Auld Lang Syne 30. Santa Outro Torrent Link, MP3 Link (Thanks, DJ Riko!) [Boing Boing] Also from Cory: Steve collected all the weird crap you can have your sequenced genome turned into, including: * Portraits of your DNA * A tie * A tuning fork * Music * Jewellery * Mirrors * Champagne Flutes Link (Thanks, Steve!) 6:58:56 AM    comment []

A victory for Mumia. A court rules that Mumia Abu-Jamal can appeal his murder conviction on three separate grounds. [Salon - salon] 6:58:47 AM    comment []

Lords bans torture evidence use. 10.45am: Evidence that may have been obtained by torture cannot be used against terror suspects in UK courts, Lords rules. [Guardian Unlimited] 6:57:56 AM    comment []

Ag's Global Footprint. Urbanization has decimated farmland in developed countries like the United States, but that's not the case everywhere. As populations in some developing countries swell, farmers are cultivating more and more land in a desperate bid to keep pace with the ever-intensifying needs of humans. As a result, agricultural activity now dominates more than a third of the Earth's landscape and has emerged as one of the central forces of global environmental change, according to scientists at the Center for Sustainability and the Global Environment (SAGE) at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Some of that land-use creep has negative environmental consequences such as deforestation, water pollution, and soil erosion. To better understand ag's global footprint, SAGE researchers are tracking the changing patterns of agricultural land use around the world, including a look at related factors such as global crop yields and fertilizer use. They've distilled that information into computer-generated maps, which are being presented this week at the fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union. The exercise is beginning to cast light on some emerging trends. Countries such as Argentina and Brazil, for instance, have increasingly cleared forests to grow soybean, a legume that has never been a traditional crop of Latin America. Scientists say the surge in soybean production there has a lot to do with the booming demand for soy at the other end of the world -- in China. Meanwhile, longtime soybean farmers in the U.S. -- the world's top soybean producer -- are growing increasingly insecure about their place in the global market. But scientists risk missing important regional and local trends by taking only a global approach to land use change. To help bridge that gap, SAGE researchers say they are working towards a new "Earth Collaboratory," an Internet-based data bank that would simultaneously draw on the knowledge of global scientists, local environmentalists and everyday citizens. [WorldChanging: Another World Is Here] 6:57:37 AM    comment []