Thousands of Library of Congress Photos Now Available on Flickr

Photoshoppers rejoice!
Offering historical photograph collections through Flickr gives the Library of Congress a welcome opportunity to share some of our most popular images with a new visual community.
We invite you to tag and comment on the photos, and we also welcome identifying information—many of these old photos came to us with scanty descriptions!
To view the [...]

Wall-Mart Puts the Muscle on Warner and BMG to Ditch DRM

You all know those stories we hear about the E-v-i-l Wal-Mart muscling the poor manufacturers and distributors to lower prices. Well this time Wally World is using its power for the forces of Good!

A Tipping Point For MP3s
(waaaay down the article we find this little nugget of good news)
… mass merchant Wal-Mart [is] alerting [...]

Heroes of the Writers Strike

So you are a Hollywood writer, and you find yourself on strike.
What will you do?

LA Times has more
hattip: LGF

Zhelatin Worm; Botnet Spread to 10 Million PCs, Now Via Automated Blog Postings

ARS Technica tells us that the Zhelatin gang’s “Storm Worm” has now evolved way beyond spam and infected e-card greetings.
The “Zhelatin gang”—named after the trojan it installed—was responsible for what started out as the “storm worm.” First spotted earlier this year, the spread of the “storm worm” started via e-mails purporting to provide [...]

Finnish court rules CSS protection used in DVDs “ineffective”

Via Oikeuden edessä and slashdot:

Finnish court rules CSS protection used in DVDs “ineffective”
In an unanimous decision released today, Helsinki District Court ruled that Content Scrambling System (CSS) used in DVD movies is “ineffective”. The decision is the first in Europe to interpret new copyright law amendments that ban the circumvention of “effective technological measures”. [...]

09 f9: A Legal Primer … or … What is the AACS-LA’s Legal argument?

The AACS-LA made some news yesterday. Read about some of it here, here, and here, as well as the following from the EFF Deep Links section:
What is the AACS-LA’s argument? In its takedown letters, the AACS-LA claims that hosting the key violates the DMCA’s ban on trafficking in circumvention devices. The DMCA provides that:
No person [...]

Net Neutrality

save the internet

Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License Launched

The latest version of the Creative Commons licenses — Version 3.0 — are now available. Read more here. Via: /. & BoingBoing.

Professor Lawrence “RW” Lessig’s “The Withering of the Net”

Professor Lawrence “RW” Lessig’s “The Withering of the Net”

On June 16, 2006, Professor Lawrence Lessig gave a talk at the Center for American Progress entitled “The Withering of the Net: How DC Pathologies are Undermining the Growth and Wealth of the Net.” This talk was the second in a series of three. The first talk [...]

Web 2.0: Explained in just under 5 minutes

Web 2.0 Explained … in just under 5 minutes.

Hattip: BoingBoing by way of Wonderland

Add Dailymotion Video to Your WordPress.com Blog

There was a petition for WordPress.com to add DailyMotion support, and here it is.
video of a Stirling cycle model engine …

Embedding instructions are here, you can also post to your WordPress.com blog directly from the DailyMotion player by using their “blog this video” feature.
Very Nice

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

Microsoft’s Zune Advertising Is Really Strange

This is a good example of what I like to refer to as “WTF??? Marketing”

This tech boom has legs…will probably last many years.

For several reasons - especially growing demand in developing countries - tech’s run most probably will last many years.

The tech boom now underway is profoundly different from any that has come before. It is broader and probably longer-lasting in its impact on tech companies, and more transformative macroeconomically. There are two reasons. First, everybody wants [...]

And so it Continues: YouTube Adds “Hate Speech” Flag To Its Videos

This is not good…Who defines “Hate Speech? Are we to depend on the “wisdom of the group” to regulate what “is” and “is not” appropriate speech? Browse Digg.com for a few minutes and let me know how you think it will go.

YouTube Adds “Hate Speech” Flag To Its Videos
Posted by Noel Sheppard on [...]

GooTube

This is just too funny to pass up, Gizmodo has named the YouTube / Google deal…

Google buys YouTube: GooTube.
Apparently the rumor that Google was buying YouTube was less of a rumor than someone on the inside letting it slip out to the entire world. But now that Google’s paid $1.65 billion in an all-stock acquisition—which [...]

Fight DRM: Ten things you can do today

“If consumers even know there’s a DRM, what it is, and how it works, we’ve already failed” - Disney Executive.

Defeating DRM is all about awareness.

The direct actions that we have taken are all about this. Today we are asking you to let the people around you know that DRM is bad for our society. [...]

DefectiveByDesign.org Takes Another Bite at the Apple

Taking another bite at the Apple

With 100,000 DRM warning labels now distributed, it’s time to start the action. Join one. Start one.

Join us in New York and London.

On Saturday, September 30th, hazmat suited DefectiveByDesign members will gather at the flagship Apple stores in New York and London, These high profile events will kick-off awareness for [...]

Software Defined Radio (SDR) or ‘Tower of Babel’ technology

Another sign of technological Convergence…

‘Tower of Babel’ technology nears

Software Defined Radio (SDR) can read and understand different kinds of radio waves

The problem of compatibility between wireless devices is being addressed at an international conference this week.

Scientists will be discussing what has been dubbed “Tower of Babel” technology - software that can converge different wireless [...]

“Information Tech” Tops List of Most Stressful Jobs

Top 10 Most Stressful Professions
Work Stresses and Colleague Irritations, Defined

IT experts are more likely to suffer from stress than any other professional, according to the survey.

Four out of five IT consultants feel stressed before they even enter the workplace, in anticipation of another day juggling complaints, pressure from managers and daily targets.

And a quarter of [...]

Microsoft YouTube Clone Coming

Since Google Video never really took off. And since YouTube is burning cash at a rate that is at this point insurmountable, and will be going down the drain shortly without a buyout or other cash infusion. I’m hoping that another alternative will show up soon. I like adding video to my blog. I like [...]

October 3rd Declared “Day Against DRM”

Sign up here

Smaller colleges bypassing TV for Web Video

When Yale football coach Jack Siedlecki goes on a national recruiting trip, he hears the same questions over and over from parents. “They always want to know, ‘Are you on TV? Can I get the games?’” Siedlecki said. With the exception of the game against rival Harvard, the answer is usually, “No.” The big TV [...]

Microsoft To Enable User-Created Xbox 360 Games!

Talking on the eve of its Gamefest event in Seattle, Microsoft has revealed XNA Game Studio Express, a new product which will allow indie developers and students to develop simultaneously on Xbox 360 and PC, and share their games to others in a new Xbox 360 ‘Creators Club’.
read more | digg story

Four countries order 4 million OLPC laptops

Four countries commit to buying 4 million Linux-powered OLPC laptops
A spokesperson for the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) program revealed July 31 that the countries of Nigeria, Brazil, Argentina, and Thailand have each tendered commitments to purchase 1 million Linux laptops through the U.S.-based program.
Nigeria, Brazil, Argentina, and Thailand …
Dear Sir/M,
I am Mr. Pablo [...]

YouTube, Digg, MySpace: How much is a non-paying ‘user’ worth?

YouTube, Digg, MySpace: How much is a non-paying ‘user’ worth?
Kevin Rose questions the propriety of Jason Calacanis putting a price tag on the active contributors at Web 2.0 Social Web properties such as Digg and Netscape (See “Digg vs. Netscape, Kevin vs. Jason, Web 2.0 vs. commercial Internet”)

This cool image is from “Nonprofit & [...]