AT&T NSA Spying Evidence
Wired has acquired and decided to publish the evidence that is currently under Seal in the EFF vs AT&T lawsuit.
To see why they did it, please go here :
http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,70947-0.html
To see the evidence itself, please go here :
http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,70944-0.html
Etc : May 5 – 12
It’s been about a week since I’ve updated my blog, so here are a bunch of things I’ve been thinking about this week, that didn’t quite make a blog entry of their own :
The RIAA/MPAA broadcast flags are once again making their rounds through congress. If you think that these flags will actually stop piracy and not just stifle innovation, you may want to read up on them or if you would like to take action, write you senators here.
The NSA is apparently going fishing, through your phone records, that is, with voluntary cooperation from some phone companies, You can read all about it here :
Washington Post
ABC News
CNN
There is also the story of a Ohio priest convicted of a 1980, Holy Saturday, murder of a Sister. Just generally sad all round. You can read about it here :
And finally, something a little less severe, I meant to put a link to the Stephen Colbert Roast of President Bush at the 2006 White House Correspondents Dinner at Google Video but didn’t get around to it either, until now.
Feliz Weekend!
Help take a stand against the RIAA madness
The EFF is putting together a petition to take to Congress that will hopefully help stem the RIAA lawsuit rampage. If you are interested in taking a look at the Petition and/or signing it, please go to :
https://www.eff.org/share/petition/
If you are concerned about having your name shown on the internet, just check the “Do not display on website” box and your name will not be shown online but still available in the actual printed copy to be delivered to congress.
BTW, if you are interested, the latest person to be sued by RIAA was a dead Grandmother:
Fight for your right to …
The quick and easy way to write your congressional representatives.
1. Pick an issue.
2. Click.
3. FIll in your info and edit the letter as you see fit.
4. Click to submit the letter to your Senators/Representative.
And you can do it here :
EFF: Take Action
More Wright is wrong
Southwest brings Maryland One to Love field.
The Wright Amendment
Just a quick political rant. I’m not sure if you are aware but there is a Federal law called the Wright amendment(see Shelby act as well) that prevents Love Field in Dallas from having flights to any states that do not touch TX. In theory this helps the economy, in reality it makes us pay artificially inflated rates for airlines since competition is stifled (read as: AA is afraid of competing directly
with Southwest and other low-cost carriers).
For more info :
http://www.setlovefree.com/
http://www.fightwright.org/
For the opposing view :
http://www.keepdfwstrong.com/
My favorite quote concerning DFW airport’s “impartial” review of opening Love field up is :
“What we got was a 15 page PowerPoint presentation with no concrete examples or explanation of the modeling scenario that was used that rambled on about how Southwest would devastate the International Flights (ahem…. SWA is a domestic airline). Each scenario seemed to lead to a 31-square mile smoking crater between Irving and Hurst. It focuses on worst-case scenarios and regrettably does not have a “best case” scenario. When reading it, note one important thing: The word
AIRFARE does not appear in the report. Not even once. Since it was a report to study the economic effects of repealing the Wright Amendment, not mentioning airfare is truly a smoking gun result. It either means that SH&E is incompetent or DFW micromanaged that report from day one.”
The good news is that TX Rep Sam Johnson announced yesterday that he and TX Rep. Hensarling are going to work towards repealing this. If they are your reps then write and thank them and if they’re not poke your Rep with a stick, while you are at it you may want to poke the TX Senators with a stick to get them on the bandwagon as well. If your Rep is Rep. Joe Barton, find a bigger stick as Barton said he will “vigorously fight any effort to repeal that measure.”
As always you can reach your congressional peeps at :
www.house.gov
www.senate.gov
Of course, since it is a Federal law, anyone in any state can get their Reps and Senators looking at this as well.
If you can’t fix your problems … blame television
Seems that Tom Delay is attempting to get his own show “Law & Order : Wag the Dog” :
Take a look at this CNN article.
Broadcast flag struck down
Egads …
Just took this quiz, (un)fortunately seems to hit pretty close to the mark.
| I am: 54% Republican. |
|
Living in a DRM land …
Well my computer hard disk died and among other things that I didn’t have backups for was my mp3 music collection. Luckily my music was on my iPod so I thought cool … I won’t have to re-feed my CDs to my computer. After installing XP and iTunes I learned the truth, there is no Apple sanctioned way to get the music back off of the Ipod. So if you re-associate it with your new iTunes install it will basically take over the iPod and load the new library … erasing the “foreign” library in the process.
Luckily by harnessing the power of my search engine I was soon able to find a neat utility called iPod Agent that helped me copy my music library back onto my harddrive (among other neat things it does). Although it was slow to pull off the several Gigs of MP3s via USB it was able to do so without me having to intervene, unlike I would have if I had to manually feed it CDs to re-create the library.
So this leads me to wonder about the not so distant future where the “DRM bit” would have been set on the usb connection and I would have been out of luck, cursing the record labels, and the hardware manufacturers for the better part of a weekend.
Well, here’s to hoping that my pessimism is just that …
Waving the Flag
As I’m sure you are aware the FCC is mandating that all new TV receivers process a Broadcast flag starting on July 1, 2005 (just 3 days before Independence day).
Why should you care?
The broadcast flag, as a side-effect, limits what you can or can’t record, or if interpreted “nicely” will let you record a low-quality version of the TV program but only on a flag compliant piece of hardware/software.
So this is affecting only cable and satellite right?
Actually, no, this is affecting what you receive over the airwaves via your rabbit ears. Satellite and cable use their own proprietary mechanisms for transmission which may or may not incorporate a broadcast flag-like “feature”.
Why did we need this?
The government wants the transition to digital tv broadcasts to happen sooner rather than later but until 85% of the country is able to receive digital broadcasts it can’t happen. And once the transition happens, the government will be able to auction off the newly available spectrum and make $$$. In order to help our government, several motion picture studios “selflessly” offered to provide “exclusive” digital tv content to woo us to go out and buy new TVs but, they would only do this if their transmissions were not able to be copied and thus, the broadcast flag was born.
Well, if the FCC is mandating it, they must have a mandate from an act of congress because they cannot unilaterally do such a thing, right?
You would think that but you would be wrong. Although the FCC does not technically have the power to force this on electronic manufacturers without a congressional mandate, it seems to think it does… which is what makes this whole deal kinda shaky.
Who proposed the broadcast flag? A standards body?
No, it was Fox and was subsequently ratified by the ATSC as an “optional” part of the ATSC digital TV standard.
Does the MPAA support this?
Yes.
Does the EFF support this?
No.
Does HDNET the only 100% digital broadcaster support this?
No.
But it is in court right now and the judges don’t seem to like it, case closed right?
Not quite. Although the judges believe the FCC overstepped its bound, the court is also not sure that the case was brought up by the right people, i.e. the library groups and EFF do not neccessarily represent the people potentially affected by the broadcast flag. So although the FCC is wrong it may be allowed to continue on its merry way.
Where can I find more information on this :
MPAA FAQ with EFF Commentary
G4 TECH TV Broadcast Flag FAQ
Broadcast Flag in the News (and currently in Court)
IPPA stripped of bad mojo
According to this article, the Senate seems to have heard the people.
Unless I’m reading things incorrectly its now :
- *more* illegal to film movies in theatres
- *more* ok to skip through parts of films
- *more* difficult for promoters to take advantage of professional boxers
Now Reading
Planned books:
None
Current books:
-
The Shadow Rising (The Wheel of Time, Book 4) by Robert Jordan
-
A Storm of Swords (A Song of Ice and Fire, Book 3) by George R.R. Martin
-
1776 by David McCullough
Recent books:
- Lamb by Christopher Moore
- The Demonata #6: Demon Apocalypse (Demonata) by Darren Shan
- A Clash of Kings (A Song of Ice and Fire, Book 2) by George R.R. Martin
- The Demonata #5: Blood Beast (Demonata) by Darren Shan
- Demonata #4, The: Bec: Book 4 in the Demonata series (Demonata) by Darren Shan
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