RIAA Lawsuits: Boy Bites Dog

New York teen sues record industry

A New York teen, dubbed a pirate by the Record Industry, is counter suing them for defamation, violating anti-trust laws, conspiring to defraud the courts and making extortionate threats.

Robert Santangelo, who was 11 when he is supposed to have downloaded music, has come out fighting. He denies sharing music using [...]

Vista DRM Already Cracked?

Alex Ionescu claims to have successfully bypassed the much discussed DRM protection in Windows Vista, called ‘Protected Media Path’ (PMP), which is designed to seriously degrade the playback quality of any video and audio running on systems with hardware components not explicitly approved by Microsoft. The bypass of the DRM protection was in turn performed [...]

Microsoft Cripples Vista Upgrade

The Inquirer calls this policy “Preinstall to Reinstall”. Microsoft calls it “Closing a Loophole”. Ars Technica says that it’s indicative of Microsoft’s ‘per device’ obsession.
PoliTech calls it one more reason to consider moving to Open Source alltogether.

Vista “upgrade” drops compliance checking, requires old OS to install

Microsoft’s quest to closely control the way Windows Vista [...]

Dark energy may be vacuum

Dark energy may be vacuum

Researchers at the University of Copenhagen’s Dark Cosmology Centre at the Niels Bohr Institute have brought us one step closer to understanding what the universe is made of. As part of the international collaboration ESSENCE they have observed distant supernovae (exploding stars), some of which emitted the light we now see [...]

Masterful Web 2.0 Social Engineering

How to Sign Up for GoogleTV Beta

UPDATE: GoogleTV Beta
Fun Stuff

Canada Responsible for 50% of Movie Piracy

50% movie piracy from Canada: Hollywood
As much as 50 per cent of the world’s pirated movies come from Canada, prompting the film industry to threaten to delay the release of new titles in this country.
According to an investigation by Twentieth Century Fox, most of the illegal recording, or “camcording,” is taking place in Montreal movie [...]

Wii hacked to play backups

Already! Here is a link to the Inquirer article…
If this isn’t a fake I will keep posting updates here, instead of a bunch of separate posts. (Not a fake Wiinja ModChip is now available).
UPDATE:
WiinJa ModChip website
USA Preorder here
Details:
Wiinja Drivechip Mod
$55.00
Features:
Non Swap / Direct Boot
Boots Own Region WII Backups Directly
Boots Own Region WII Backups [...]

In My Language

From Amanda Baggs, the author of the video posting on YouTube…
The first part is in my “native language,” and then the second part provides a translation, or at least an explanation. This is not a look-at-the-autie gawking freakshow as much as it is a statement about what gets considered thought, intelligence, personhood, language, and communication, [...]

One quarter of all computers are internet zombies

What does this mean to you? That one in four of you are reading this on a computer that you think you own and control, but that is really an infected zombie (and Typhoid Mary) controlled by a black hat “Bot-Herder”.

Vint Cerf: one quarter of all computers part of a botnet

Cerf told his listeners that [...]

AACS Confirms HD-DVD and Blu-Ray Cracked

AACS hack blamed on bad player implementation

A month after the first signs appeared online that AACS—the content protection scheme shared by HD DVD and Blu-ray—had been circumvented, the AACS Licensing Authority has verified the hack. According to a statement from the AACS LA, AACS has not been seriously compromised. Instead, the statement said, the attack [...]

Google has finally defused the “Google Bomb”

Google has been making some changes lately.

Google Kills Bush’s Miserable Failure Search & Other Google Bombs.
After just over two years, Google has finally defused the “Google Bomb” that has returned US President George W. Bush at the top of its results in a search on miserable failure. The move wasn’t a post-State Of The [...]

A Ballet of Molecular Machines

Via the Biosingularity Blog …

Video of RNAi in action

This superb video from Youtube explains the RNA interference mechanism that recently won the Nobel prize for its discovery. The original video is from the journal Nature.
RNA interference is a complex set of Cellular processes that converts a foreign piece of double-stranded RNA into a potent gene [...]

Blu-Ray DRM Cracked

Blu-Ray DRM Cracked
The plaintext exploit used to partially crack HD-DVD a couple of weeks ago was brought to bear on Blu-Ray by the same gents this weekend—and it worked a treat.
“We need to kick DRM in the butt!” declares the sigfile of Doom9 forum poster Janvitos, launching his inspection of the format.
Doom9 forum [...]

Microsoft Confirms DRM Driver Crippling in VISTA

I got some feedback from some DRM doubters at the beginning of the year when I talked about The Perils of Windows Vista and Built-in DRM. I wish that I was wrong, but no such luck. From the horses mouth comes confirmation of every horrible charge leveled at Vista by Gutmann

Windows Vista Content Protection - [...]

Music companies consider ditching DRM

Interesting article in on the International Herald Tribune website…

Record labels rethink digital rights management at Midem

Now that even digital music revenue growth is faltering amid rampant file-sharing by consumers, the major record labels are closer than ever to releasing music on the Internet with no copying restrictions — a step they once vowed never to [...]

Video: Digital Waterfalls

This is really a cool display.

Hattip: BoingBoing

RIAA declares war on Rap mixes

The RIAA and the Atlanta Police don’t seem to understand the difference between promotional mixtapes which are sanctioned by the artists and actual counterfeit CDs.
You know that the RIAA, MPAA, et al. have gone much too far and have been granted much too much political clout when you see government sanctioned violence committed against a [...]

Build your own self-tuning portable RF jammer

Not that you would … because the FCC frowns on that sort of thing … but it’s nice to know that you could.

Wave Bubble: A design for a self-tuning portable RF jammer

This website details the design and construction Wave Bubble: a self-tuning, wide-bandwidth portable RF jammer. The device is lightweight and small for easy camoflauging: [...]

“Think Big” How would you fix Xbox live?

1up has some interesting news regarding XBox Live…

How Would You Fix XBL?
Microsoft soliciting ideas, feedback for future updates.

You don’t often hear corporations asking their consumers for suggestions, but Microsoft’s done it once before with Xbox Live and they’re doing it again. Andre Vrignaud of the Xbox Live Platform Strategy team is asking Xbox users to [...]

How to destroy your enemies with Web 2.0: A five step plan

A funny social hacking plan using Web 2.0 … courtesy of Vallywag
How to destroy your enemies with Web 2.0: A five-step plan

With the social tools at your disposal, you can propose to your girlfriend with a $25 ad spot or call your local pizza place to say hi. Sure, you can be friendly. But wouldn’t [...]

UNIQLO MIXPLAY

Click here to make your own UNIQLO MIXPLAY dance mix!

Turn your blog into a book, part II

Gina Trapani has posted Pat II of her Geek to Live instructional series:

Geek to Live: Turn your blog into a book, part II

Part I of How to turn your blog into a book covered the basics for blogging your book idea, getting an agent, and drafting your book proposal. Now you’ve got 300 pages due [...]

A Short Course in Brain Surgery

Read more here at On The Fence Films

2006 Art of Science Gallery

The Princeton University Art of Science Competition is a celebration of the aesthetics of research and the ways in which science and engineering inform art and vise versa.

In the spring of 2006 we again asked the Princeton University community to submit images—and, for the first time, videos and sounds—produced in the course of research or [...]

Our Techno-Utopian Future: Fallacies and Predictions

David Veksler waxes philosophic (as is his custom) on the subject of:

Our Techno-Utopian Future: Fallacies and Predictions

What’s the ultimate destiny of our civilization? Are we destined to become “living batteries” a la the Matrix, refugees in a post-apocalyptic radioactive desert landscape, or peons of a totalitarian surveillance state? Or, can be look forward to a [...]

Turn your blog into a book

Part one of a multipart article at Lifehacker…

Geek to Live: Turn your blog into a book, part I

There’s a world of difference between being a blogger and a book author, but more writers are wearing both hats these days. It’s not surprising that pro writers are becoming bloggers, but “amateur” bloggers getting book deals are [...]

Is Web 2.0 Communism’s Crowning Glory?

Here is an excerpt from a interesting Op-Ed piece on Bit-Tech:
The People’s Republic of Web 2.0

Karl Marx is famous for thinking up a system where everyone had a voice, where everyone was equal, and then went on to associate it with a political system. I suppose you can’t blame old Karl for the [...]

High Def DVD Alphabet Soup (Dual Formats) Announced

This took a little longer than expected, but in less than a year, here we are … High Definition DVD alphabet soup for optical hardware, with an added bonus of dual format High Def optical media!

Warner, LG embrace dual-format DVD technology

An electronics company and a movie studio independently rolled out plans on [...]

Hitachi breaks 1TB hard drive barrier

Just as I fill up another 500gb hard disk with music and video … I get some good news!

Hitachi breaks 1TB hard drive barrier with 7K1000

Well, we knew it was likely to happen in 2006 or 2007: Hitachi has fulfilled their promise and broken the 1TB drive barrier with the introduction of Hitachi’s new Deskstar [...]

The Perils of Windows Vista and Built-in DRM

Why Use Windows Vista?

From January 30th, all new PCs will come pre-installed with Windows Vista. There are several good reasons not to use it.

If that article’s a bit long and technical for you, read on…

Vista is all about ‘premium content’. This is music or video that’s copyrighted by one of the major music or movie [...]