idallassleeping less and reading more

A ‘broadcast flag’ mandated by the FCC in 2003 would have required consumer electronics makers to abide by specific digital flags encoded into digital television broadcasts. The flags could restrict whether or not the broadcast could be recorded or in what ways a recording could be used. It would allow content broadcasters to tell you how you can use your television recordings. The whole situation is pretty crazy but a ray of light has appeared as a Court of Appeals has ruled that the mandate is beyond the scope of the FCC’s authority. The original mandate required that any devices sold after July 1, 2005 adhere to the flags so this ruling came just in time.

More than 1,000 toads have puffed up and exploded in a Hamburg pond in recent weeks. They have basically no idea why it’s happening. I suspect something along the lines of a mischievous young wizard in training, but I’m no scientist. This bit of weird news was passed to me by Tom.

ARSTechnica comments on a case where a woman was contacted by a collection agency and ordered to pay $4500 or risk being sued for much more money. Her personal information was collected from Comcast, who provided the information of their own free will. They were not required to do so by any court order and they did not notify the woman or any of the other customers whose privacy rights they violated. The RIAA has previously filed lawsuits against a few hundred people and they have apparently now decided that the lawsuit method is too costly and have resorted to simply billing people directly via a collection agency. It saddens me that all of this is allowed to go on. The woman is suing Comcast over it so we’ll see what comes out of that.

Proponents of the arctic drilling plan claim it would only affect 2,000 acres of the 1,500,000 total acres in the coastal plain, but the part they don’t mention is those 2,000 acres are spread out all across the whole park. Check out the map and info on the NRDC Action Fund website. They are activists so their information is probably biased as well, but I know I certainly trust the activists more than I trust our current administration.

Found via ARSTechnica, movie of an octopus ‘walking’ on two of its legs and using the others as camouflage. Creepy and kooky!

Allofmp3.com has been selling unrestricted music downloads in a variety of formats for about 4 to 10 cents per song for a few years now. It’s a Russia-based business which claims to have legal rights to sell the music in this way to Russian citizens for personal use. Of course, they don’t do anything to verify that their customers are Russian and the site is available in English and fully usable by any English-speaker. It looks like the Russian authorities may drop the proverbial hatchet on the service and force them to pay copyright fees for the music they have sold. It will be interesting to see how this plays out!

If you feel like you are falling farther and farther behind your children in your understanding of technology and the Internet, you probably are! The first step in understanding the kids of today is learning to communicate with them. This guide should help you get started by revealing some of the common slang used in reference to computers and the Internet. It explains the meanings of coded words like !337$p34k and pwn3d and provides a clear description of key ways to decode other words and make up your own new ones.

My first real computer was a Commodore Amiga 500 way back in 1988 or so. At that time I had no idea about the underlying technical awesomeness that was the Amiga, but I did know that all of my friends’ PCs and Macs looked pretty stupid compared to my Amiga. I remember wondering why anyone would buy anything but an Amiga. My family never bought another Amiga after that first one (though that one did last something like 7 years!) and pretty much no one else did either and the Amiga platform has been basically dead ever since. There have always been rumors that it might return one day and now it seems to have actually happened. The whole history of the platform is pretty amazing even if you don’t read through the whole article. I’m not quite ready to be an early adopter, but it sure is tempting. Anyway, read on.

The bankruptcy and closure of what may be the last pro-level manufacturer of analog audio tape in the world may be the beginning of the end for analog audio. The plant employed about 250 employees and in its heyday employed around 1,800 workers. Musicians and producers all over the world are scrambling to stockpile the last reels of unused analog tape available. I’ve never used analog tape much myself, but this may be the end of an era and that’s always accompanied by a bit of sadness. The ramifications of this go beyond music, too. Here’s more from NPR.

Gary Webb, a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist who reported on the connection between the CIA and the crack trade in Los Angeles, shot himself a couple weeks back. Those articles he wrote back in 1996 struck some nerves and several notable newspapers worked hard to discredit him and his reporting. They succeeded and his career was destroyed. Since then the bulk of his findings were have been admitted to by the CIA itself, but the LA Times completely failed to mention that in his obituary. Instead they took the opportunity to discredit him further. Sad sad sad.