Quad-City Times Newspaper Online reports that a local man who wished to remain anonymous found that the recently uncovered bicycle lock vulnerablities apply just as strongly to the gun safe that he uses to keep his kids away from firearms.
Yeow.
Category Archives: Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt
2004 Republican National Convention in NYC
Try reading this chilling report of one reporters experience during the RNC: 2004 Republican National Convention in NYC.
Maybe we should start spelling Amerika with a K.
Yahoo! News – Blast, Mushroom Cloud Reported in N. Korea
The news is reporting that a large blast and mushroom cloud has been sighted over North Korea. Apparently the explosion was large enough to have been noticed by satellites. Speculation is that the Koreans may have been engaged in some kind of nuclear testing or that the explosion may have been accidental.
Scary stuff.
XM Radio and Time Trax
During one of my many explorations of the net, I found mention of a program called TimeTrax, a program which converts songs broadcast over XM Satellite Radio into mp3 files that you can play on your computer. This is especially nifty since XM radio doesn’t have DJ’s or the like, and you end up with nice, clean MP3 files.
Not surprisingly, the RIAA is a bit upset about this. Quoting:
A spokesman for the Recording Industry Association of America said his organization had not reviewed the software, but said that in principle it was disturbed by the idea. “We remain concerned about any devices or software that permit listeners to transform a broadcast into a music library,” RIAA spokesman Jonathan Lamy said.
Not surprising, but just what do they expect to be able to do about?
The program matches digital information including the artist name and then takes the analog music and encodes them into a properly named and tagged mp3 file. This is another instance of time shifting: a type of fair use established in the case Sony Corporation v. Universal Studio Productions, 1984. This Supreme Court decision (5-4) held that non-commercial home use recording is fair use. If I want to record every episode of a show, I can do so, for my own personal home use.
It’s also completely unclear that this program represents any kind of DMCA violation, since you are required to purchase service from XM radio. No copy protection is being circumvented: you are merely re-encoding the analog stream produced by the XM PCR radio.
The most damning thing against XM PCR is the XM Radio service agreement, which includes the following:
b) Use Limitations.
You may not reproduce, rebroadcast, or otherwise transmit the programming, create unauthorized recordings of the programming, charge admission specifically for the purpose of listening to the programming, or distribute play lists of the Service. Notwithstanding the provisions of Section 9, we or any of our programming partners may prosecute violations of the foregoing against you and other responsible parties in any court of competent jurisdiction, under the rules and regulations of the FCC, and other applicable laws. Subscription to the Service does not grant you the right to use any of our or our partners’ trademarks.
In other words, they can claim that you aren’t allowed to timeshift. But can they really have any legal standing upon which to base this restriction? HBO thinks they can enforce similar restrictions. It’s vaguely possible that XM could sue their customers for their unauthorized home recordings which are in violation of their service agreements, but I (and I am not speaking as a lawyer, so my opinion is worth zilch) fail to see how the RIAA can involve themselves in essentially a licensing dispute. If my understanding of the law is correct (again, caveat reader), they can’t even deny XM radio access to their material, as such licensing and its cost are set by statute, not by negotiation.
It will be interesting to see how this plays out.
Making Sh*t Up
My brother and I had a conversation recently about police merely making up laws to roust you about. Apparently some cops think they can make using your computer in public a crime. For God’s sake, don’t they have anything better to do with their time?
Useless Security Measures
SFGate.com reports that Senator Ted Kennedy was delayed in boarding because his name appeared on a terror watchlist as an alias.
Oh, dear, God.
Apparently it took three separate calls by Sen. Kennedy’s staff to be removed from the list. In a hearing yesterday, Kennedy asked:
“If they have that kind of difficulty with a member of Congress, how in the world are average Americans, who are getting caught up in this thing, how are they going to be treated fairly and not have their rights abused?”
How indeed.
Sen. Kennedy tried to buy tickets three times in March, and was told that he could not purchase a ticket because his name was “on a list”. When he tried to determine why, he was told that they could not tell him that.
It’s almost enough to make me support John Gilmore’s crusade against useless airport security measures. Almost. He’s got a lot of interesting views, but I’m glad I haven’t had to fly with him.
Viruses Get Smaller
In the decade to come, it’s clear that the Internet will face two related challenges:
- Increasing volume of spam, and
- Increasing sophistication of viruses.
These two are related because spam is being increasingly used to spread viruses, and viruses are increasingly used to subvert security measures on computers and to turn them into spam relays.
The Register reports that a hacker has produced the first PocketPC virus. Oh joy. Along with the recent discovery of cell phone viruses, we can expect an entire new generation of annoyances and irritations, if not thefts and vandalism.
I don’t mean to sound like a Luddite, but I do have some fear for the future. Our increasing reliance on the relatively weak infrastructure we’ve developed is dangerous. Depending on who you talk to, somewhere between thirty and eighty percent of the bandwidth on the web is tied up in processing spam. Many of these messages carry virus payloads. And it’s likely to get worse before it gets better.
Low Cost Cruise Missile Designer Seeks Job
Bruce Simpson, designer and builder of a low cost, homebrew cruise missile, has posted a rather interesting plea to sell his services. He claims that after the New Zealand government shut down work on cruise missiles, his family has been placed under significant economic stress, and he is how willing to design low cost cruise missiles for anyone who is willing to pay his modest requests (but as he assures us, not for terrorists).
I first read Simpsons webpages several years ago, and marvelled at his good work on pulse jets including his jet powered gokart. He’s a very skilled designer, and his pages have lots of good information about pulsejets, metal spinning, and all sorts of other good stuff. I’m left with a vaguely unhappy feeling about this mercenary turn of mind. I wasn’t very happy when I heard word of the NZ government shutting down the project, as it seemed a heavy handed way to deal with him, but I’m less certain after reading his diatribe. A man as talented as he is could find work in any of a number of industries, and it seems odd that he would focus on trying to become a weapons supplier in preference to other occupations of a more socially redeeming nature.
His page goes on to explain that he is basically doing this to show how feasible it is, and to call attention to the danger that developments like this represent. The arguments sound suspiciously like those of so-called hackers who break into systems to illustrate their weakness. It’s far from clear to me how why breaking, entering and vandalizing computer systems should be considered a benefit to society. In the same way, building a weapons system that can deliver 10kg of explosives doesn’t make anyone safer.
The Department of Homeland Security says…
If you use Internet Explorer, the terrorists have already won!
The Department of Homeland Security’s U.S. Computer Emergency Readiness Team touched off a storm this week when it recommended for security reasons using browsers other than Microsoft Corp.’s Internet Explorer.
Apparently this has touched off a run on Mozilla/Firefox, which are being downloaded at greatly increased rates.
Ken Brown is a Big Fat Idiot…
Holy crap. It isn’t often that I get a chance to read something as high in drivel as Ken Brown’s rebuttal to Andy Tanenbaum’s critique of Brown’s Samizdat, an as yet unreleased critique of the Linux operating system, Linus himself, and open source software in general. If you haven’t read Andy’s comments on Brown, by all means go and do so, otherwise the rest of this rant might not mean as much to you. I’ll wait till you are done.
Pretty amazing, huh? But Brown’s rebuttal is even more amazing. I thought I’d take a few minutes and pick apart a few points for the gratification of myself and what two or three readers this weblog might have. Continue reading
Andy Tanenbaum on ‘Who Wrote Linux’
It’s fascinating the degree to which Microsoft/SCO backed front companies are trying to create FUD around the use and authorship of the Linux operating system. In a Slashdot article today, they link to an article by Andy Tanenabaum about Ken Brown’s claims that Linux Torvards is not the author of Linux. Brown’s argument seems to center around the notion that it’s impossible for an individual to write an entire operating system by themselves.
This would seem to be a curious idea to come away with after talking to Andy Tanenbaum, since that’s precisely what Andy himself did. Continue reading
Advertising Saturation
Today’s Quote of the Day comes from Steve Ballmer of Microsoft.
According to
this report, Microsoft spends 12% of its budget on online advertising. Said Ballmer:
I want to make sure (a user) can’t get through … an online experience without hitting a Microsoft ad.
Welcome to the vision of the future proposed by Microsoft: an Internet whose sole purpose is for their billboard space.