September 2007
Google May Blur Canadian Faces and License Plates →
Bonds Baseball to Be Branded →
SNIP: The ball Barry Bonds hit for his record-breaking 756th home run will be branded with an asterisk and sent to the Baseball Hall of Fame. Fashion designer Marc Ecko, who bought the ball in an online auction, set up a Web site for fans to vote on the ball’s fate, and Wednesday announced the decision to brand it won out over the other options — sending it to Cooperstown unblemished...
Demonoid Torrent Tracker Shut Down by CRIA →
Napstyles of the Rich & Famous →
SNIP: My pal, Penney, once told me that when she was a kid, and her family went on vacation, they would “drop the spoon” every afternoon. I knew this was a cousin of the disco nap, but I never knew it was a purported invention of Salvador Dalí,
Hungover? Don't down lots of coffee with... →
Amazon MP3 Launches DRM-Free Music Store →
Microsoft May Invest in Facebook At $10 Billion... →
On “safe” language
What is it about the rhetoric of “safe” language that is so ever-present? I found myself sitting in a room today with a number of graduate students, you know, those who are supposedly the most exacting, most thoughtful, and most articulate in all of society. The hilarity of the segregation in the room: “international” (read: black, asian, and indian) students on one side, middle-aged white women...
Tech Worker Falls Into Vat Of Acid, Father Finds... →
Pownce vs Digg: Who Will Kevin Rose Back? →
The University of Western Ontario is a...
Universities are supposed to be the paragon of progress, and in many respects all of the underlying social, political, economic, and theoretical progress is made possible by technology and electronic communication services. The “invisible college” used to mean the network of scholars that corresponded through mail and informal (non-institutional) connections, but increasingly the...
The Gradual Public Awareness of the Might of... →
» New version of Gmail being tested | Googling... →
SNIP: Gmail was launched on April 1, 2004, and has revolutionized the way many of us use email. The interface has remained largely untouched since it launched, but get ready, it’s soon to undergo a change in what they describe as a “New Version”. Only a select few people have access to use the new interface — mainly employees and trusted people outside the company called “Trusted Testers“.
Wikipedia 2.0, Now With Trust? →
“Hearings in the iPod case are not likely to occur until 2008, yet these filings...”
– Michael Geist - Fearing Legalized P2P Downloading, CRIA Declares War on Private Copying Levy
Fearing Legalized P2P Downloading, CRIA Declares... →
Oh, this is rich. I have been saying it for a long time, and turns out, I WAS RIGHT! Evidently the levy on recordable media that big media has pushed so hard for (in Canada) is now possibly extending the scope of the private copying extension such that “illegal” file sharing is not liable for infringement. Basically, since you have already purchased the music via the levy, you can...
Lessig on the Texas suit against Virgin and... →
Pirate Bay suing major media companies for... →
SNIP: ThePirateBay has been digging through the enormous chunk of leaked email from MediaDefender, the sleazy enforcers used by the entertainment industry to fight P2P, and they’ve discovered evidence of illegal sabotage. So they’re suing all the big movie and record comapnies in Sweden: * Twentieth Century Fox, Sweden AB * Emi Music Sweden AB * Universal Music Group Sweden AB *...
OpenOffice coming to the Mac natively →
Piracy Costs Industry $5 Trillion, May Have Killed... →
HAHA!! SNIP: According to reports by the Canadian Mounties (Motto: Like Police, Only On Horses), the piracy industry cost Canada $30 billion in Canadian currency (USD $45,454). This figure had been bandied about by lobbyists and even the US Ambassador to Canada, ensuring sensationalist headlines much like the one above. The problem, however, is that it isn’t true. Blogger Michael Geist asked the...
Hava-maker Monsoon slapped with first (ever) GPL... →
Car Free Day & How to Host a Parking Meter Party →
SNIP: Leave the car in the driveway today and come down to Dundas Square for the Sierra Club of Canada’s Car Free party in the heart of our city’s concrete jungle. Between 10am and 2pm, Yonge St. from Dundas to Shuter will be a pedestrian zone, where you can learn about car heaven, have your fortune read and fix your bike while sipping fair trade coffee. For those of you who want to...
Slacker Rounds Up The Troops →
SNIP: Internet radio provider, Slacker, is about to drop the hammer so steer clear, everyone. Not only have they inked deals with the four major record labels, they’ve also picked up indie labels: IODA, The Orchard, Beggars Group and Matador Records, IRIS, Ubiquity Records and Sanctuary Group PLC.
OpenOffice Aqua still a year away →
MediaDefender and the Streisand Effect →
SNIP: Foldarn writes “It looks like MediaDefender, in an effort to quell the explosion of negative publicity over its leaked email archive, has instead done the opposite (also known as the Streisand Effect) and spread it even more widely. Ars Technica is reporting that MediaDefender has sent scary-lawyer letters to two popular BitTorrent sites, MegaNova and IsoHunt, demanding that they...
Dearest Little Asstunnels: The MediaDefender... →
WatchVideo #65.1 - Final Fantasy - Pour Light is spent - blogotheque, Final, Fantasy, Owen, saura - Dailymotion Share Your Videos
TrueGrain Overview →
Amazing OS X application for creating great black and white digital photos.
SNIP: With TrueGrain, you can: Accurately recapture the aesthetics of particular film stocks—including “lost” films—while retaining an all-digital workflow Creatively employ credible film aesthetics Add high resolution film grain information to digital images to elegantly minimize the pixilation effects of upsampling...
Google opens discussion for global privacy...
Recently Google has announced that it will begin a public discussion regarding global privacy legislation. The announcement can be read on the Google Public Policy blog. Due to increasing worries about the impact of globalization on data flows of private information, it is suggested that, “In light of this, Google is calling for a discussion about international privacy standards which work to...
Lester and Koehler on privacy, a short response
Lester and Koehler (1) describe the policy concerns and approaches regarding privacy by highlighting the different approaches adopted by Europeans and those of the U.S.A.. According to Lester and Koehler, the Europeans have adopted an omnibus approach to privacy that is deeply concerned with commercial transactions regarding privacy, the Americans, on the other hand, have more “incremental and...
Siva Vaidhyanathan on the Googlization of...
For anyone interested in copyright and the implications of the Google Book Search project this series of interviews (audio recordings) is a must listen.
First Monday podcasts DIRECT LINK to MP3 DIRECT LINK to lecture by Vaidhyanathan
Siva Vaidhyanathan is pithy and interesting, and is highly critical of Google’s mass digitization process known as Google Book Search. He presents many...
A Critic at Large: Candid Camera: Reporting &... →
SNIP: Even if you don’t follow photography, your mind’s eye will still be full of Leica photographs. The famous head shot of Che Guevara, reproduced on millions of rebellious T-shirts and student walls: that was taken on a Leica with a portrait lens—a short telephoto of 90 mm.—by Alberto Díaz Gutiérrez, better known as Korda, in 1960. How about the pearl-gray smile-cum-kiss reflected in the...
“If the good Lord had wanted us to take photographs with a 6 by 6, he would have...”
– A Critic at Large: Candid Camera: Reporting & Essays: The New Yorker
Leaked MediaDefender E-mails →
SNIP: Peer-to-peer (P2P) poisoning company MediaDefender suffered an embarrassing leak this weekend, when almost 700MB of internal company e-mail was distributed on the Internet via BitTorrent. The e-mails reveal many aspects of MediaDefender’s elaborate P2P disruption strategies, illuminate previously undisclosed details about the MiiVi scandal, and bring to light details regarding...
Airport guard falsely accuses NetStumbler creator... →
How Evidence-Based Are the Recommendations in... →
SNIP: “Evidence-based” is the fuzzy, feel-good term doctors and others use to describe what it is they think they are doing, but in reality, rarely do. Some researchers, insurers and medical publishers turn to “evidence-based” medicine as the final quality arbiter for the usefulness of a procedure or treatment. “Is it evidence-based? What do the evidence-based guidelines say?” Well, it would be a...
You Didn't Get the Message Because We Didn't Have... →
The original group size message limit for the Facecrack platform was 1,000 users. That’s a pretty respectable size. A few weeks ago Facecrack changed the rules without telling any group admins in a public manner. The rule change was that groups admins could only send mass messages if the membership was under 500 users. Anything above 500, and groups would be required to fork over $50,000 a...
IBM Challenges Microsoft with Free Office Suite →
State of the iTouch Jailbreak: Slow, forward... →