The Register: A Visit from the FBI

I stumbled on to this great article in The Register today through Dave Faber's IP List. In the article, author Scott Granneman talks about a recent visit he had with an FBI agent. In this case the agent gave a presentation to a class Scott teaches. The article is well worth the read, but I found the following paragraph particularly interesting:

Dave had some surprises up his sleeve as well. You'll remember that I said he was using a ThinkPad (running Windows!). I asked him about that, and he told us that many of the computer security folks back at FBI HQ use Macs running OS X, since those machines can do just about anything: run software for Mac, Unix, or Windows, using either a GUI or the command line. And they're secure out of the box. In the field, however, they don't have as much money to spend, so they have to stretch their dollars by buying WinTel-based hardware.

This is exactly why I switched to OS X earlier this year. It was a win all around because I got an OS with a native Perl interpreter (that came installed), I was able to keep my shell, run MySql, and compile just about anything I wanted. Although, I could do much of this in the Windows world, it was just so much easier on the Mac.

The last big selling point for me was the out of the box security. I like the Mac philosophy where the computer comes very secure, and you have to open up pieces of it. So, you have to turn on the web server and file sharing. You have to enable ssh access. This makes me feel much better about using my computer at local WiFi hotspots, and in situations where I need to connect to the net unflitered by a firewall.

The article says in the next paragraph:

Dave also had a great quotation for us: "If you're a bad guy and you want to frustrate law enforcement, use a Mac." Basically, police and government agencies know what to do with seized Windows machines. They can recover whatever information they want, with tools that they've used countless times. The same holds true, but to a lesser degree, for Unix-based machines. But Macs evidently stymie most law enforcement personnel. They just don't know how to recover data on them. So what do they do? By and large, law enforcement personnel in American end up sending impounded Macs needing data recovery to the acknowledged North American Mac experts: the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. Evidently the Mounties have built up a knowledge and technique for Mac forensics that is second to none.

Of course the Mac does have a lot of security features. I make routine use of the encrypted home directory feature, and encrypted disk images for removable storage. I use passwords to get into the box, and to decrypt all of the other stuff. It's great, and I can see how this could stymie law enforcement.

The good side of this is that it will also stymie someone who steals my laptop. This person will have an equally hard time getting any sensitive data off the machine, and that gives me a good feeling.

Corporate Comedy by Corporate Comedian Don McMillan

Last night I went to the Improv with Jenna and her Parents to see Don McMillan perform his incredibly funny show. Don does comedy for geeks, that is both funny and technically accurate. Don, himself, was an engineer at several hi-tech companies in the bay area, and it shows in his comedy.

He talks about the difference between engineers, civilians, sales, and marketing people. He talks about the differences between engineers and their wives. All of it was very funny, and I left with my sides and my face hurting from a couple of hours of hard laughing.

According to his site:

Don McMillan is "Technically Funny". Before he became a nationally known stand-up comedian, Don spent 10 years as an engineer at IBM, AT&T, and  VLSI Technology. He knows what corporate life is all about. His show is funny, smart, clean, AND he is theONLY comedian working in PowerPoint.

During his show, Don, did a bit about the use of animation in PowerPoint. He did this slide with about 40 animations on it, and it was absolutely great. I was in tears.

If Don is in your area, make sure to go out and see him. Also he has a CD available on his website.

Main Page - Wikitravel

I stumbled on Wikitravel this morning. Here is what they say about themselves:

Wikitravel is a project to create a free, complete, up-to-date and reliable world-wide travel guide. So far we have 1053 destination guides and other articles written and edited by Wikitravellers from around the globe.

This is a great idea, and I hope they have the same success that wikipedia has had.

[via Lawrence Lessig]

MoveOn.org: CBS: Don't Censor Ads

BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Hubble probes planet around star

According to this BBC NEWS article the Hubble Space Telescope has detected oxygen and carbon for the first time in the atmosphere of a planet outside our Solar System.

[via die puny humans]

You May Have Invented It, but You Don't Own It

Here is a great article on startup skills:

What critical legal agreement between you and your employer can most profoundly impact the future of your startup? The "Invention Assignment Agreement".

This is an important agreement that your employer may have asked you to sign. It requires you to assign all ownership rights of inventions conceived, developed, or commercialized to your employer. Even if you didn’t sign one, any patent to any technology you invent automatically belongs to your employer. Similarly, the copyright to any work you create while employed that conceivably relates to your employe's primary business may also belong to them.

In many states, an invention assignment agreement applies even to inventions created on your own time. California does not allow this, unless the invention applies to work or research performed in relation to work done at the employer.

This is a very timely article for me as I've decided to leave my current company to move on to new challenges. One of the things I'm always amazed by in this process is the invention assignment clause that any new company wants you to sign. It's important to pay attention to these things, especially if you live outside of California.

Yahoo! News - Flower-Power Could Help Clear Land mines

According to Yahoo! News a Danish company has genetically modified a flower to change color when it is grown over a land mine.

The genetically modified weed has been coded to change color when its roots come in contact with nitrogen-dioxide (NO2) evaporating from explosives buried in soil.

[via /.]

Wi-Fi Networking News: New License Fee May Face Operators

Wi-Fi Networking News is reporting that Nomadix has received a patent for the authentication method most commonly used in WiFi hotspots. This method, which redirects a potential client to a web-based authorization page, is used by several vendors and some open source project.

The Nomadix Press Release says:

Nomadix, Inc. (www.nomadix.com), the leading supplier of Public-access solutions, today announced it has been issued a patent by the U.S. Patent Office for its proprietary systems and methods for online Home Page Redirection on wired and wireless (Wi-FiTM) networks.  Nomadix’ Patent No. 6,636,894 B1, “Systems and Methods for Redirecting User Having Transparent Computer Access to a Network Using a Gateway Device Having Redirection Capability,” describes the system and methods that enable a portable computer user logging into a Public-access network, or a Wi-Fi HotSpot, to be automatically redirected to the venue owner or service provider’s home page. This redirection takes place regardless of the host computer’s settings and without altering the user’s browser settings.

The patent itself can be found online. Here is the abstract:

Systems and methods for dynamically creating new users having transparent computer access to a destination network, wherein the users otherwise have access to a home network through home network settings resident on the users' computers, and wherein the users can access the destination network without altering the home network settings. The system includes a gateway device for receiving a request from a user for access to the destination network, a user profile database comprising stored access information and in communication with the gateway device, and an Authentication, Authorization and Accounting (AAA) server in communication with the gateway device and user profile database. The AAA server determines if user is entitled to access the destination network based upon the access information stored within the user profile database, and wherein the AAA server redirects the user to a login page where the access information does not indicate the user's right to access the destination network. The systems and methods of the present invention can also redirect users having transparent computer access to a destination network, wherein the users otherwise have access to a home network through home network settings resident on the users' computers, and wherein the users can access the destination network without altering the home network settings.

Rob Flickenger has also commented on the NoCatAuth mailing list:

While they might like to make it sound like they've patented the captive portal, they've really only patented their wacky arp implementation. They look for any machine being ARP'd for that doesn't receive a reply, and issue an ARP reply using the gateway's MAC address. Combined with some DNS strangeness, this lets the gateway bring up a splash page even when the client requests a private intranet page, or even if they are using static IP address settings rather than DHCP.

Wi-Fi Networking News continues the discussion with this article where Jim Thompson, formally CTO of Wayport, had this to say:

Given my 20 minutes of reading, NoCat (and the others) likely infringe on this patent. Note that you infringe if you “make, use, or sell” the invention.

I know there are a lot of WiFi vendors out there doing gateway authentication. As I said, most of the WISP companies are using some version of this technology. This should be an interesting debate to watch.

My Way News

According to this article on myway part of the partriot act was struck down on Friday:

LOS ANGELES (AP) - A federal judge has declared unconstitutional a portion of the USA Patriot Act that bars giving expert advice or assistance to groups designated foreign terrorist organizations.
The ruling marks the first court decision to declare a part of the post-Sept. 11 anti-terrorism statute unconstitutional, said David Cole, a Georgetown University law professor who argued the case on behalf of the Humanitarian Law Project.
In a ruling handed down late Friday and made available Monday, U.S. District Judge Audrey Collins said the ban on providing 'expert advice or assistance' is impermissibly vague, in violation of the First and Fifth Amendments.

A Mickey Mouse Cell Phone Service Might Not Be Goofy Idea

According to this article on Investors.com Disney is looking into reselling wireless services. I wonder if cell phone reception in DisneyWorld would get better?

[via BoingBoing ]

Wired News: Pay Service Turns CDs Into MP3s

An interesting story from Wired News about a company that will rip your CDs to MP3 for you.

For about a dollar a disc, the company converts entire CD collections to MP3 files, all nicely organized by artist and album.

The company, RipDigital will send you a couple of mailing labels and some CD spindles. You pack up your CD collection and mail it to them. In a few days they will mail your CD collection back, along with all of your digital copies on DVD or external hard drive.

BBC NEWS | UK | Microsoft creator to be knighted

According to the BBC Microsoft creator to be knighted:

The king of computer software Bill Gates is to receive an honorary knighthood from the Queen for his contribution to enterprise in the UK.

New Band: BXF

I came across BXF's site the other day. They have three songs available for download. I really liked Sunday and Time.

This is a great example of how a band can use MP3 to help generate a fan base. If you like their stuff, go buy their album, or see them live.

Jeremy Zawodny's blog: My Yahoo! RSS Beta Launched

Jeremy Zawodny has announced that My Yahoo now supports RSS feeds. Go over to his site to read about it. This is something that I have always wanted yahoo to do, even before I knew about RSS. It's great!

10 Emerging Technologies That Will Change Your World

Here is a great article from technologyreview.com talking about emerging technologies. They've picked the top ten, and have taking the time to really explain them.

10 Emerging Technologies That Will Change Your World
Universal Translation
Synthetic Biology
Nanowires
Bayesian Machine Learning
T-Rays
Distributed Storage
RNA Interference
Power Grid Control
Microfluidic Optical Fibers
Personal Genomics

Wi-Fi Networking News: Mesh Group Approved by IEEE

In a nice followup from their message yesterday, Wi-Fi Networking News has this to say about the new IEEE Mesh Group.

IEEE approves formation of mesh task group for 802.11 protocols: The IEEE has approved the formation of a Task Group for fulfilling the promise of the wireless distribution system (WDS) that's been part of 802.11 since the beginning, Robert Moskowitz of TruSecure's ICSA Labs wrote in to tell us. The mesh task group will work inside of the 802.11 Working Group to take the extremely vague specification for the WDS and provide a protocol for auto-configuring paths between APs over self-configuring multi-hop topologies in a WDS to support both broadcast/multicast and unicast traffic in an ESS Mesh, according to the group formation proposal that was approved.

I mentioned this yesterday, here.

Yahoo! News - Report Finds "Staggering" Home Wi-Fi Growth

According to Yahoo! News there was a tremendous amount of growth in home WiFi in 2003.

Wi-Fi in the home experienced "staggering" growth in 2003, according to a market study released Wednesday by In-Stat/MDR.

The research firm said that unit shipments of homebound network adapters and access points increased 214% last year. That translates into sales of 22.7 million units, according to the company.

[via The Scobleizer]

BarlowFriendz: Coda

John Barlow writes that a poignant piece about a friend who has been missing for several days and is now believed to have committed suicide.

There's a vision I can't get out of my mind. I imagine him bobbing in that lethal water, watching the ferry churn away. The lights of lower Manhattan glittering behind him, as functionally distant as stars in space. For several minutes, he was as certainly dead as he is now and yet fully, lucidly alive. He was in a bardo, as the Tibetans call the stations of death, and yet he was in a bardo that lies within the physical world. I am letting myself believe that those minutes were a transport of release, an utter peace. A glory at last.

Wired News: Vaporware: Nuke 'Em if Ya Got 'Em

Wired News has picked the winners for it's annual Vaporware competition.

Now in its seventh year, Wired News' Vaporware Awards celebrates all those eagerly anticipated gizmos in 2003 that were put off, put away or quietly put down.

And, of course, those that existed merely as a figment of someone's imagination.

Slashdot | Star Trek: Enterprise in Danger of Being Cancelled

/. says that it looks like Enterprise may be cancelled at the end of the current season.

Mesh Standard on the Starting Block

According to this article on internetnews.com

At the interim meeting of the IEEE 802.11 Working Group this week in Vancouver, British Columbia, a study group was formed to begin looking into eventually creating an industry-recognized standard for wireless mesh networking.

This first step is still potentially a long way from the creation of an 802.11 Task Group, which would eventually be assigned to deal with the proposals for the technology behind a standard, not to mention trying to bring consensus between many disparate vendors and individuals in the group.

You know your technology is getting somewhere when someone wants to make a standard out of it. [via Wi-Fi Networking News]

Wired News: Camera Phones Help Buyers Beware

According to this article on Wired News there are several companies out there who have software which will let you take a picture of a bar code with your camera phone, then it will show you if you can get a better deal on the net.

I'll have to try this one out, because it sounds really cool. I'll post an update after I've taken it for a spin.

How I'm Using RSS...

I've been using NetNewsWire as my RSS reader for about a year now. In that time my subscription list went from one feed to the current total of 80. I can't speak for others, but I'm using RSS as a replacement for broadcast email lists, a replacement for my daily web visits, as an adjunct to keeping my computer software up to date, and as part of my Big Sync.

Broadcast email lists, have always been a favorite of mine. I'm on several lists from Politech to IP, and each one gives me a great amount of information. While those two lists are still email-only I'm finding that some of the lists I've been reading are making the transition to a Blog with RSS. This is great, because it keeps this stuff out of my inbox, and lets me read it much quicker.

Using RSS as a replacement for daily web visits, is a real productivity boon for me. In the past I couldn't sit down at an Internet connected machine without browsing some of my favorite www sites. I like to see updates when they happen, and that was the best way to do it. Today, of course, I just subscribe to the RSS feed. When the site is updated I'll find out about it in the next few hours. I don't have to go look for myself.

I've also been using RSS feeds as a companion to the work I do to keep my computers up to date. Many of my favorite developers are now offering RSS feeds on their www pages. So, when they release a new product, or a new version of a product, I will know about it. I don't have to remember to hit the www site to find out about the update.

I sent a question out to the RSS list a few days ago. I was asking about how people deal with their feeds, because I had noticed that there were quite a few people who have subscribed to 200+ feeds. Basically, I was wondering if people treat RSS like email or if they treat it like usenet.

From the responses I got it seems that most people treat RSS like usenet. They skim the headlines and then click through to anything that sounds interesting. RSS is particularly good for this reading model because it gives you several levels of information. The headline, the body of the post, and the URL. This is how I'm using RSS in my daily information sync.

When I see a new post in my reader, I look at the headline. If the headline is interesting I read the body of the post (which may or may not be the entire post) if I find it interesting, then I click on the URL. This loads the web page in a tab in my browser, and then I go on reading through the other headlines.

Once I have gotten through all of the new items in my news reader, I go to my www browser and start reading through all of the open tabs. If I can't remember why I opened the tab, I close it. If the article is interesting I might follow the links, and if the article proves dull then I close the tab and move on.

One other things I do is always follow an article's trail from one blog to another. Often, while I'm doing this, I pick up a couple of new RSS feeds along the way.

After I've gotten down to just a few tabs of really good information I usually start recording stuff on my own blog, generally taking bits and pieces of the information I've found from the morning sync. Sometimes there is a lot of stuff to talk about, and other times there is very little.

I really like this workflow though. It feels very natural, and very fast. It's a good way to wade through the mountains of information that come in every day. It makes me more efficient with my time, and more productive with my resources.

This experience is why I think RSS is going to be a big technology in the next few years. This is a new way to communicate on the web. It's a cross between email and web browsing. It fits a niche very comfortably. It's getting easier to use, and it's starting to really catch on outside of the geek community, in fact my entire family Dad, Mom, and Jenna all read this site through it's RSS feed.

The End Game - By William Miller - Military Training Technology

Is the story told in Ender's Game closer than we think? In this article William Miller describes how the military is using the concept of a Massive Multiplayer Online Game is bringing more realism to simulation. [via /.]

BSD For Linux Users :: Intro

BSD For Linux Users :: Intro is a great place to get started if you are interested in learning more about BSD. With the recent EOL of Redhat Linux, maybe it's time to start thinking about BSD. [via /.]

Recent World Earthquake Activity - RSS info

I found this link to a set of USGS RSS Feeds for recent earthquakes via Brent Simmons' weblog

ongoing: Open Source Person

Tim Bray was in the valley the other day doing some job interviews and attending a Geek Dinner. I was at the dinner but with 20 people and him on the other side of the table, I didn't really get a chance to chat with him much. Anyway, in this article he has some interesting things to say about job market in the valley:

One place I visited gave me the full treatment: five interviews with different people scheduled precisely over a few hours. And I appreciated it; thanks, guys. The first was with the Recruiting Specialist, and I said “I suppose in this job you are exquisitely sensitive to the ebb and flow of the tech economy. What are you seeing?” She said “It’s way busier. I have a big list of open requisitions and most people who come in here are also interviewing with others, not like a few months back.” And if that isn’t good news, I don’t know what is.

I have to say that I have seen the same thing. My WiFi startup is looking for quite a few positions (including test engineers with perl experience -- email me). I know others are looking for people as well. I tend to measure the economy in the valley by the number of cold calls and emails I get for interviews. I don't count the spam and the mailing lists, but the actual emails where someone has looked at my resume and then felt motivated to get in touch.

In the slowest part of this downturn I was hearing from 1 or 2 recruiters a month. Right now I'm getting calls and emails almost daily. That's a pretty good indication that companies are starting to hire again. Of course, I have a fairly unique combination of skills which, given the recent boom in WiFi, may also contribute to it.

Tim ends his article with this anecdote:

So I’m sitting there talking to this real smart guy who’s got a strategic job way up in a Silly Valley titan and maybe we can do a deal, we’re winding up and I said “Anything else by way of questions about me?” and he said “Nah, I got you pretty well triangulated, you’re an Open Source Person.”

Redhat 7 and 8 EOL RIP, Redhat 9 ASAP

/. says that Redhat has decided to EOL 7.x and 8.x. 9 is coming up in April. For those who want to stay with redhat the options are Red Hat Enterprise Linux and the Fedora project.

Family 360 Homepage

Family 360 is a site that takes the 360 performance review from the board room to the living room. Now you can go through a performance review at home too!

It's not a bad idea, it's always better to know what's going on with the family, and how you are doing at home. It just seems to me that something like this is too formal.

LeaderWorks’ FAMILY 360 process is a targeted assessment, development and coaching process that can enhance personal, family and business success. Conducted with the executive's family, it is an effective tool designed to help the individual learn about how well he/she is doing in terms of being an effective parent, spouse, etc. It can help the executive build, uplift and encourage good family relationships by identifying what he/she does well and what areas need improvement.

Apple iPod Mini (Green) - MP3 players - CNET Reviews

CNET has posted this first look at Apple's iPod Mini:

Outlook: Inevitably, mini hard drive-based players will be a big story in 2004, thanks to the availability of one-inch drives. But the iPod is still the king of the larger devices, and unless Rio or someone else attacks it on a price level, we see the iPod Mini following in its footsteps.

Wired News: Currency Detector Easy to Defeat

Last week, there was a big uproar about the fact that Adobe has included anti-counterfeit measures in the latest version of Photoshop. This morning Wired News has a story about the various ways people have gotten around the technology.

Almost as soon as word of Photoshop's new anti-counterfeiting provisions started to circulate, users began finding ways around the system.

Digital artist Kiera Wooley circumvented the restrictions simply by cutting and pasting a bank-note image from another graphics utility into Photoshop.

Advertising agency creative director Ann Shelbourne found she could save a bank-note image in an earlier version of Photoshop and open it without trouble in Photoshop CS.

Other Photoshop CS users said they had successfully imported bank-note images by invoking Photoshop from another Adobe product or by scanning an image in pieces and reassembling it in Photoshop.

I really think that this kind of tech is pointless. I have never seen a case where anti-anything technology actually stopped that thing from happening. We all remember what has happened with copy-protected CDs, people used felt-tipped markers to defeat them. E-Books, a Russian company made a product that broke through Adobe's encryption.

Really, I just don't get it. I think you have to trust people to make the right decisions. Educate them about what is and is not acceptable, and then let them do their own thing. This kind of arms race is unproductive and will lead to bad code.

The Shifted Librarian: Snopes Gets RSS Feed

The Shifted Librarian tells us this morning that Snopes.com now has an RSS feed.

Wi-Fi Networking News: Nigerian Newspaper Explains Wi-Fi

Via Wi-Fi Networking News there is a link to this article in the Nigerian Newspaper Vanguard:

Unlike in other countries around the world, especially in Europe, Asia and America, where it is being used in homes and offices, Wi-fi technology has not yet caught on in Nigeria. This is something Cyber Cafes owners all over Nigeria should consider. A wireless network in a cyber cafe will give its owner a lot freedom in interior arrangement, where positioning of PCs will not be restricted by the locations of network points.

I have to admit that I don't normally think of African countries when I think of new technologies. However, some of these countries could be the largest beneficiaries of new networking technologies like WiFi. In a country that doesn't currently have a lot of wire-based infrastructure, WiFi could bring computer networks and the Internet to millions of people with very little upfront cost.

My Way Finance: kodak to stop selling traditional cameras in U.S.

This story in My Way Finance comes to us via Gizmodo

NEW YORK, Jan 13 (Reuters) - Eastman Kodak Co. (EK) on Tuesday said it will stop selling traditional film cameras in the United States, Canada and Western Europe, another move by the troubled photography company to cut lines with declining appeal in favor of fast-growing digital products.

I guess everyone knew it would happen someday, and Kodak isn't really a huge player in the film camera market (separate from the film market), but still I think this is significant.

I wonder when one of the big camera manufactures (Canon, Nikon, etc...) will make the same announcement?

Jeremy Zawodny's blog: The Value of a Sanity Check

Jeremy Zawodny relates a story where he was trying to help someone optimize their MySql installation. It turned out that while the person thought he had 5GB of memory he actually had .5GB of memory.

It was at this point that I was completely out of ideas. The data made no sense, so he was clearly not telling me something. Not because he was hiding information, but he simply wasn't seeing it and I was mostly relying on his descriptions..

So I got a login on the machine... and found the problem in about 45 seconds.

The machine had 512MB (or 0.5GB) of RAM, not 5GB. It swapping because, really, that's what he had told it to do.

I started by verifying the basic assumptions. I looked at what processes were running, how much disk space was on the box, how much physical RAM it had, and... that was it. I was done.

This is really similar to what I spend much of my day doing. An many of you know, I'm a software engineer who specializes in automating tests. In the course of my job I've written a complete automation framework for the products under development at my company. I support about 50 people programming under the framework every day, and run into issues like this all the time.

I've found that one of my gifts it to be able to look at someone else's code and figure out the problem very quickly, but generally I try to talk the person through the problem in the hope that they will find it for themselves and learn where they tend to make mistakes.

All of our stuff is written in Perl and I serve as the companies' expert. That means that when I have a problem with my code most of the folks here can't really help me with syntax due to a lack of experience with the language.

This has really helped me, because it forces me to describe the problem I'm seeing in non-perl ways. All of the people I work with are incredibly smart and very good programmers (usually C, C++, Java) so I have to describe my problem in computer science terms instead of language-specific terms.

Working through this translation layer has really forced me to 100% understand the concepts I'm talking about, and usually as I'm explaining the problem I realize what went wrong. As a result of this experience, the number of times I've gotten into really tough problems, and the number of times I've needed to drag someone else in has decreased.

Teal Sunglasses: a new wrinkle on spam and privacy...

Over on Teal Sunglasses comes a particularly creepy story about SPAM and hotel internet connections:

A friend of Laurie's is at a conference on the east coast, staying at a hotel. he's wired up to the hotel internet connection.

He just got e-mail sent to his e-mail account -- it was from an escort service, and it was to tell him that one of their escorts was working his hotel that evening.

While there can be many explanations for how the spammer got this email address it does serve as a good reminder to always use secure email no matter where you are.

New TiVo features from CES...

Last week, Gizmodo reported that TiVo was introducing a bunch of new features to their players at CES. One of those features is called, TiVoToGo. It's a service that let's you watch the shows recorded on your TiVo from your PC. In fact it sounds like you will actually be able to download the shows from your TiVo to your PC.

From their Press Release:

Accessing “TiVoToGo” requires a TiVo Content Security Key and TiVo-enabled versions of the Sonic Solution (NASDAQ: SNIC) MyDVD® and CinePlayer(TM) applications.

Sonic Solutions, the leader in DVD creation software, has teamed with TiVo to develop TiVo-enabled versions of Sonic’s MyDVD and CinePlayer applications. Once this software is installed on the PC, the new TiVo-enabled MyDVD and CinePlayer software from Sonic will make it easy to find the “Now Playing” programs on any networked TiVo DVR in the home.

Once selected, the secure and encrypted TiVo recorded programs are moved to the PC, where the TiVo Content Security Key is used to unlock the files for playback or burning, preventing files from being shared online, outside of the user’s home network.

The TiVo Content Security Key and the TiVo-enabled versions of Sonic Solution’s MyDVD and CinePlayer applications will be sold as a bundle at www.tivo.com.

The "TiVo to Go" service upgrade, TiVo Content Security Key and the Sonic software will all be available in Fall 2004.

Sounds great, doesn't it? Well, Cory Doctorow doesn't think so:

TiVo has rolled out "TiVo to Go," a service that allows you to move video from your TiVo to your PC's hard-drive, and then to burn the file to a DVD. Unfortunately, the system uses a proprietary DRM system that tethers the video to your machine and your home, meaning that you can't move the video to your hard-drive as an MPG file that you can edit at will, send to a friend, include in a school report, grab stills out of to make a highlight reel, etc.

I almost always agree with Cory on this issue, and I agree with him now. I don't, however, agree with the implication that TiVo is doing something wrong. They've made a business decision that they hope won't prompt the movie industry to sue the bejesus out of them.

This doesn't make them the "Bad Guys", and it doesn't make them against free content or anything else. Basically this move makes them a business that is trying to expand it's customer base.

Later on, Cory says:

I'll tell you two things that are obvious to my entrepreneurial instincts:

1. There is no market demand for TiVo's DRM -- or anyone else's. No TiVo customer got out of bed this morning and said, "Damn, I wish there was a way I could do less with my videos."

2. If TiVo isn't giving customers the features they want, someone else (like a commercial packager of mythtv, for example) will.

Not delivering the products your customers demand is not good business. It never has been.

I totally agree here, and TiVo will have the opportunity to find out if the market will support their decision. My guess is that this will flop. I think it's going to be hard to use, and it will frustrate customers.

My point is that DRM is not evil, it's not as if TiVo just announce that Satan will be appointed as CEO. They've made a business decision, they've actually opened up their platform compared to how it used to be. So, I don't see why this is a problem for people.

If you are concerned about the ability to copy your shows from your DVR then use MythTV, or if you don't have the time and expertise for that solution buy a ReplayTV and use DV Archive.

Personally, I use the ReplayTV and DV Archive solution. It let's me download my shows to my mac, I can make DVDs and do anything else I want to do with them.

Sci-Fi Hi-Fi: 100 Megatons in Your Pocket

If there was a moral to this story on Sci-Fi Hi-Fi, I guess it would have to be, "Don't leave your iPod on the plane".

It wasn’t until I had a chance to actually examine my iPod’s case that I began to understand the BA staff’s curious behaviour. The iPod was still perfectly functional, but the metal back no longer fit snugly onto the white plastic front on the left side, as if someone had attempted to pry the enclosure open with a knife. At first I wondered if some electronically curious airport employee had decided to dissect the thing, but then it hit me: in the wake of terrorist threats that delayed a Washinton-bound BA flight for five days, some flight attendant must have caused an incident by mistaking my iPod for a bomb! I guess I’m probably just lucky that the poor thing didn’t meet its end in a controlled explosion!

I think Boromir summed the situation up perfectly inFellowship of the Ring: “It is a strange fate that we should suffer so much fear and doubt over so small a thing.” I guess that’s life in the post 9/11 era…

LaCie - Bigger Disk - largest hard drive capacity available

LaCie has come out with a new TERABYTE external hard drive. It supports Firewire 400, Firewire 800, USB 1.1 and 2.0.

When I was at Indiana University managing the systems for the Digital Library Project (resume), we were very proud of our 1 Terabyte Mass Storage system. It took up a whole room and had a robotic tape machine. This thing sits on your desktop.

I think this is the first time I have ever felt old when looking at a computer...

Boing Boing: Why can't Homeland Security tell the difference between Al Quaeda and my six-year-old daughter?

Over at Boing Boing Mark Frauenfelder wonders why his 6-year-old daughter needs to be submitted to mandatory secondary screening.

My daughter was scared and shaken up by the ordeal and told us that she "hated it." At least the security people were polite to her. But they were like polite robots, unable to laugh at the fact that someone had mistakenly pegged a little girl as a potential terrorist. No, they insisted that she had to take off her shoes and get patted down and have a wand passed over her body and have her Hello Kitty suitcase opened and examined with a fine toothed comb.

When we got to the gate, I looked at one of the monitors, and I saw Sarina's name on the list, along with one other person's name. The list was titled "CAPPS."

There are so many of these stories out there. Why can't the department of homeland security get this stuff right?

Credit Card Scam

I saw this warning about a new credit card scam on Dave Farber's IP list (1, 2, and 3), and then verified it on Snopes.com.

From Snopes.Com:

My husband was called on Wednesday from "VISA" and I was called in Thursday from "MasterCard". It worked like this: Person calling says, "This is Carl Patterson (any name) and I'm calling from the Security and Fraud department at VISA. My Badge number is 12460. Your card has been flagged for an unusual purchase pattern, and I'm calling to verify. This would be on your VISA card issued by 5/3 bank. Did you purchase an Anti-Telemarketing Device for $497.99 from a marketing company based in Arizona?"

When you say "No". The caller continues with, "Then we will be issuing a credit to your account. This is a company we have been watching and the charges range from $297 to $497, just under the $500 purchase pattern that flags most cards. Before your next statement, the credit will be sent to (gives you your address), is that correct?"

You say, "Yes". The caller continues . . . "I will be starting a fraud investigation. If you have any questions, you should call the 800 number listed on your card 1-800-VISA and ask for Security. you will need to refer to this Control #". Then gives you a 6 digit number. "Do you need me to read it again?" Caller then says he "needs to verify you are in possession of your card. Turn the card over. There are 7 numbers; first 4 are 1234 (whatever) the next 3 are the security numbers that verify you are in possession of the card. These are the numbers you use to make internet purchases to prove you have the card. Read me the 3 numbers." Then he says "That is correct. I just needed to verify that the card has not been lost or stolen, and that you still have your card. Do you have any other questions? Don't hesitate to call back if you do."

You actually say very little, and they never ask for or tell you the card number. But after we were called on Wednesday, we called back within 20 minutes to ask a question. Are we glad we did! The REAL VISA security dept. told us it was a scam and in the last 15 minutes a new purchase of $497.99 WAS put on our card.

According to Snopes this is a type of scam that has been happening for awhile. It's important to remember that Visa, MasterCard will never call you directly. Instead the bank issuing the card would call you, and even then they would not need to call you for information they already have.

Your best bet if you receive a call like this is to ask for the agent's name, id number, and a ticket number for the case. Then hang up the phone without giving any information or agreeing to anything. Call the phone number on the back of your card (not the one the person on the phone gave you) and ask for the security department. Then give the ticket number and start with that person.

Remember that you can never trust anyone who calls you in these cases. The only way you know you are talking to a credit card company and not a scammer is if you make the call yourself.

Wired News: Predicting the Next Big One

Wired News has this article that says scientists are getting closer to being able to predict earthquakes in a region. The article points to recent success in predicting quakes including the 6.5 quake in central California last month.

From the article:

Seismologists may soon have the ability to predict earthquakes several months in advance, say a team of researchers at the University of California at Los Angeles.

The group announced Tuesday that it had used a newly developed technique to closely forecast major earthquakes in California and Japan last year, including the magnitude 6.5 tremor that struck Paso Robles, California, in December, and the magnitude 8.3 quake near Hokkaido, Japan, in September.

While I can see how this level of prediction will prove to be very useful and may save lives, I'm curious how the information will be used.

I've only been in California for about 5 years, now, but if I have learned anything from my time here it's that earthquake retrofit projects take a long time to complete. Generally projects started on the first day of these nine month predictions would not be complete by the time a quake hits, so the warnings aren't early enough to help us there.

People can't leave their homes for nine months waiting on an earthquake, so how does this really help? It will make people aware that a quake is coming and they can get their kits in order. People can prepare themselves for the upcoming quake, but not escape from it.

Cory Doctorow nominated for a nebula award

Cory Doctorow has been nominated for his short story OwnzOred. Congratulations Cory!

Jeremy Zawodny's blog: I'm a Slob

Jeremy has found the key to happiness, Merry Maids. I've got to call those people. Like Jeremy, Jenna and I decided to give ourselves the gift of a clean dust-free condo for the new year. Now, I just have to remember to make the appointment.

Acid trip 1

Have you ever wondered what LSD is like? Here is a series of drawings made by an artist while he was under the influence:

These 9 drawings were done by an artist under the influence of LSD -- part of a test conducted by the US government during it's dalliance with psychotomimetic drugs in the late 1950's. The artist was given a dose of LSD 25 and free access to an activity box full of crayons and pencils. His subject is the medico that jabbed him.

This link came via Kuro5hin

Las Vegas, "What Happens Here, Stays Here" -- Well Not Really

I'm sure that you have all seen those Las Vegas television ads which feature someone in Sin City doing something they normally wouldn't do. At the end of the commercial the following slogan is read, "What Happens Here, Stays Here". These commercials are sponsored by the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority (LVCVA 'cause I'm not typing it again). If you don't remember, or haven't seen the ads, here is an excerpt from the LVCVA press release for them:

Inspired by real stories from Las Vegas visitors, each "Vegas Stories" ad brings to life a scintillating adult story -- some reveal more than others -- but what makes the ads so provocative and mysterious is what the characters don't say or what isn't shown during the 30-second and 60-second spots. The viewer is left to imagine what transpired but the participants know that "what happens here, stays here," which also serves as the tagline for the television spots.

...

In one spot a sexy, glamorous woman enters a limousine and proceeds to flirt with the limo driver. She tells him how much she loves the smell of new cars and leather. She then raises the privacy wall only to re-emerge later as a sophisticated businesswoman with an English accent. In another spot set outside a Las Vegas wedding chapel, a middle-age woman has spontaneously married a much younger man who speaks no English. Obviously in town for business, the woman literally leaves her new husband at the chapel to rush off to a convention. Only Vegas!

At this point I know you are saying, Allen you don't even like TV and especially hate the ads. Well, you're right, but I do think these are some of the better ads on TV. I especially liked the one about the Shriners, but it got yanked from the air:

There might have been too much truth in one ad showing a group of men at breakfast the morning after a wild night of partying. They agree they can't go home with just the set of false teeth from a missing friend. The Shriners, however, took offense at the ads and asked LVCVA to stop them.

Well, according to this story in Wired News:

The FBI demanded Las Vegas hotels turn over their guest lists leading up to New Year's Eve to check against a U.S. master list of suspected terrorists, a law enforcement official said on Sunday.

The demand for "patron information" went to all major hotels in the Nevada casino and entertainment city, said the official who declined to be named

...

A representative of the American Civil Liberties Union said the demand for guest records, without any individual suspicion, infringed on the privacy of as many as 300,000 people "whose leisure activities are no one's business but their own."

The action also showed the FBI's expanded, post-Sept. 11 power to obtain personal records without judicial review or suspicion about an individual "may well be used to monitor ordinary Americans," said Timothy Edgar, the ACLU's legislative counsel.

So apparently what happens there, only stays there until someone asks about it in a broad and general way. It's times like these when I'm reminded of that old blessing / curse, "May you live in interesting times", or "Amazing Times", according to Dave.

Of course, there might be a reason that the FBI needs this information, but without judicial review how do we know? Are we supposed to just trust the Government? I know that last statement makes me sound like a conspiracy nut, but hey these are the same people who went nuts and put Japanese Americans in internment camps in World War II, the same people who prosecuted Americans for attending meetings of the Communist party. These are the same people, who in the last few years, have been systematically breaking down our civil liberties.

So, the next time you go to Las Vegas, remember that what happens there, doesn't really stay there at all.

Web Design References

The Web Design References which I found this morning via The Daily Report, is pretty cool. It's got close to 30,000 links to information on building web sites.

The site is maintained at the University of Minnesota Duluth, and is great for anyone who is learning to build www pages. Also they have an RSS feed to keep track of updates.

inessential.com: 'The challenges of synching'

Brent Simmons has has posted a rather lengthy article about the practicality of syncing NetNewsWire between multiple machines. I've got to believe that this is one of his most requested feature, and I know that I asked about it the other day on Dave Winer's the RSS list, where Brent posted a reply. And as I re-read that initial query I see that Brent is directly addressing many of the things I asked about. However, I think I need to make a distinction between what would be great to see someday and what I would like to see in Brent's application.

This new article goes into a lot of detail about the difficulty in doing sync, and some of the problems that a developer might face in implementing this feature. The main thing I get from this article is that syncing is non-trivial. In fact in places it can be down right hard. I think, however, that Brent is thinking too big. He is talking about open standards for RSS readers to sync with other RSS readers on other platforms. He's talking about merging data and read/unread counts. All very complex stuff.

In my opinion, though, the thing he is missing is that I like many other customers of his really just want to sync NetNewsWire with NetNewsWire on my laptop. I don't need to sync it to my windows machine at work, or my linux machine or to any other program. Just between two platforms running Brent's fine RSS reader.

Furthermore, I think he should take a two step approach at this solution. Employ the 80/20 rule and make a bunch of customers happy really fast. This solution, which seems fairly simple to me, is to allow a person to configure where NetNewsWire stores it's state files. Then I could put it on my iDisk, or on NFS, or even check it into a CVS repository and make it available on my laptop. That would do everything I would like. There are even some hints out there on how to make this work with symlinks and aliases, but the process is tedious at best.

I don't want to just rail against Brent's post, though. I want to also talk about some of the things he mentions. I agree with Brent that eventually we need a way to do cross-platform RSS sync. It would be super-cool, and very useful for lot's of people. So, I hope that Brent will see these suggestions and that they are helpful.

Merging
In the case of merging I think Bent could solve this problem very easily by adding an attribute to a group in NetNewsWire, which would make a group local or synced. This way if people have a set of feeds that can only be read at work they can put them in a local group and NetNewsWire doesn't have to worry about merging that data.

For everything else, he could keep some simple time-stamps in the config for when a feed was added / changed / deleted and the most recent action would win in the sync. I think that would take care of many of the corner cases he mentions.

Synching read/unread states of news items
I didn't realize that people don't always put permalinks in their RSS feeds. I put them in mine, and I think that most of the feeds I read do as well, but if they can't be counted on then I understand why this is a harder problem to get around. Perhaps he could use a post title or a hash of the entry for a unique reference to an entry.

Uploading and downloading
My first reaction here is to use iDisk, at least to start with. I know that cut's out some customers, but it would be a great place to start. I think adding FTP / SCP / SFTP should be pretty easy with a shell script calling the client binaries on the mac. Another possible solution would be to use rendezvous to do this. I'm guessing that most people are in the same boat as me. They want to sync from one machine on their home network to another, and a rendezvous solution would work great here.

Knowing when to upload and download
Brent says this is one of the easiest parts. I agree with him. Either do it on launch, or on a user-defined schedule. Please include a button to do it manually.

Different newsreaders, different operating systems
This is a tough problem. It requires several developers agreeing on a standard. I think this would make a great goal for the future, but is outside the scope of what many people want, and I don't have much constructive to add here at the moment. Although I would be one of the first people in line to volunteer some interoperability testing when the time comes.

Fortune.com - Investing - Trash to Treasure

I saw reference to story on Fortune.com via Dave Farber's list, this evening and was amazed. If the article is accurate, it's saying that J.P. Morgan has applied for a business practice patent for buying out underwater stock options from a companies employees. The article mentions how the company just did this with a bunch of Microsoft employees, and how they are looking into making a business out of this.

I'm not an expert in the financial world, but there has to be some kind of prior art for this. I just can't believe that this is really a novel idea worthy of a patent.

It's just another example of why I believe our patent system in the US is badly in need of an overhaul.