For those visiting from the Providence Journal, Hi!  I grew up in Hartford, and have relatives in Providence.  New England rocks.  I thought I'd include a link to more Bands That Allow Taping.  A good number of these bands have material on Etree or Furthur.  Check it out and get yourself (and the artists!) out from under RIAA's thumb.

Ahhh, America.  Spreading democracy throughout the world

Is Saudi Arabia On The Brink Of Collapse?. Plastic::Politics::Protest: The Observer, running a series of articles on Saudi Arabia, reveals that the country has been gripped by massive anti-government demostrations, which the Saudi authorities have been very careful to keep out of the world's spotlight, while the many We [Plastic: Most Recent]

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DIY BMW Computer Chair [Slashdot]

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Sun and Apple not working on StarOffice for Mac. Companies refute reports [InfoWorld: Top News]

Microsoft releases Windows 2000 fixes. The software maker releases the third major service pack to premier customers, but most will have to wait until Thursday. [CNET News.com]

Service Pack 3 includes all previously released security fixes, "plus security fixes learned from the security push," said Jim Cullinan, Windows lead product manager.

The article also mentions that service pack #1 for XP will be arriving soon.

Let's see how they do.

This blog is now available at http://www.0xdeadbeef.org.  Yay!

What's 0xdeadbeef?

I didn't think much of Bruce Perens calling off his planned violation of the DMCA because of concerns by his employer, Hewlett Packard.  After all, the DMCA is bad law, and HP was just trying to protect themselves from a bad law which is increasingly being exercised.  Now however, HP's motives become clearer.

On July 19th, a researcher from SnoSoft posted an exploit to BugTraq.  Granted, I would assume from the tone of the message, that good responsible disclosure policies had not been followed with this notice.  Regardless, HP's response would seem a bit heavy handed.

It wouldn't look good for HP to be prosecuting a DMCA complaint, while at the same time letting one of its employees openly protest its legality.

Yes, HP is truly a good "open source citizen"

I'd hope to see futher comment by Bruce Perens on this in the near future, but I'm not optimistic.

As a comment on that last post....I hate Internet Explorer.  That last post took me 1.5 hours to complete thanks to 4 crashes by IE which wiped out the post each time.  Ahhhhh, technology.

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A very interesting post by Michael Calore on the Medeski, Martin & Wood mailing list today regarding Sun Ra's influence on the 'spacing out' of MMW.

The theory:

so, here's my theory... the period of 1997-8 saw the band listening to
the sun ra CDs "Angels and Demons at Play/Nubians of Plutonia", and
"Fate in a Pleasant Mood". also, quite possibly "Art Forms of
Dimensions Tomorrow/Cosmic Tones for Mental Therapy", the
percussion-heavy proto-psyche masterpiece (in my opinion).

The evidence:

evidence? in april of 1998, "the golden lady" and "ankhnaton" started
showing up in sets. "golden lady" is from nubians, and "ankhnaton" is
from "fate in a pleasant mood". also, "whatever happened to gus?" from
combustication has a VERY similar feel to the sun ra tune "angels and
demons at play" from the album of the same name. chris even talks
about the tune's conception in the bass player magazine interview,
saying that they went out to dinner, ate a big meal, then went into
the studio and laid town a track with a "heavy sun ra feel". play the
two songs back to back and you'll see what i mean. "start/stop" has
also always reminded me of a sun ra stomper. granted, the arkestra has
horns, flutes, and an entirely different rythym section, but the vibe
is still there and that's what counts the most.

Furthur evidence in a post by Russ Gershon:

Medeski was an admirer of Sun Ra at least as early as 87 or so, when
we met, although I don't think had listened comprehensively at that
point.  The thing he liked best about Ra (and shares with him) is the
ability to play any kind of keyboard and figure out what sounds good
about it.  This stands in contrast to many jazz keyboard players, who
keep wanting their instrument to sound like something else (usually a
piano, rhodes or organ).  Medeski and Ra revel in the particular
identity and weirdness of whatever they are playing; they keep poking
and prodding any cheezy keyboard until they find its sweetest (or
nastiest) spot.

One of my favorite aspects of John Medeski is the fact that he can make amazing music on just about anything, from a Hammond, to a toy piano, to a melodica.

I haven't explored Sun Ra in many years, but this thread has added them to my list once again.

And while I'm here, I need to give props to Russ Gershon for all the great music his label, Accurate Records, has unleashed upon the world.  In addition to the first widespread exposure for my current favorite, Jacob Fred Jazz Odyssey, he's published albums from Jazz Mandolin Project, Spanish Fly, Plunge and his own ensemble, Either/Orchestra.  They even published the first Morphine album, and MMW's 1992 debut, Notes from the Underground.  Thanks Russ!

Finished the Bruce Schneier article in Atlantic Monthly.   Having read Bruce Schneier's writings for quite a while, I'd say its a very informative distilling of his views for the non-technical person.  All in all a very good read.  The focus of the article is on the 'people' problems of security.  You can have the highest technical security measures in place, but it does you no good if there aren't human eyes and minds watching the system.  This article, along with Secrets and Lies provide a great introduction to the problems of security, as well as the fallacy of the measures being put in place by the government and private industry.