I apologize for the cross posting. Hope everyone had a good time @ PN7. Unfortunetly, I could not attend due to a broken left clavicle. The Oxycodone gave me the same effect though. ;-)

In case you've been living under a rock this summer, the fight against the MPAA, RIAA, and monopolistic telecom providers is still raging. We achieved a small victory at the end of last spring's session to have the issue deferred and put into 'summer study session'. We are now _in_ 'summer study session' and hearings are beginning to commence.

What's at risk? Well, do you use MythTv or Tivo? Do you burn DVDs or VCDs of television content? Have a NAT box on your cable or DSL line? Use VPN from home? Or God forbid, do you have a splitter on your cable line in your home? Doing, possessing, or even TALKING about any of these activities could render you a felon in the state of Tennessee if this bill passes. Even better than jail time, you could be sued into bankruptcy without even being convicted. Civil penalties can be assessed at up to $50,000 per DAY per DEVICE in your possession (no need to have used it in the act). That's right kids. If you have 2 splitters on your line for one year and they go after you, the _minimum_ penalty you will receive is $876,000. That doesn't include fines or attorneys fees.

What can you do? Spend a few hours of your life sitting on your ass in a hearing room. Seriously. Just showing up was perhaps THE KEY reason why this bill was not passed last spring. There are two hearings this week. Day 1 is basically the 'Bad Guys'. Day 2 is the 'Good Guys'. Tuesday's agenda is as follows:
Tuesday, October 28, 1:00 p.m.

Stacy Briggs, Executive Director
Tennessee Cable Television Association

Brian Allen, Director of Corporate Security
Time Warner Cable

Todd Flournoy, Counsel and Director of State Legislative Affairs
Motion Picture Association of America

Jeff Yarbrough
Tennessee-based Charter Cable Operator

Jim Spears, Vice-President of Government Relations
BellSouth

Ross Loder
Tennessee Municipal League

Wednesday's agenda is:
Wednesday, October 29 at 9:00 a.m.

Jonathan Band
American Library Association, Association of Research Libraries and the American Law Library Association

Scott Lyon or Scott Kozicki
Tennesseans for Digital Freedom Association (sic) Tennessee Digital Freedom Network)

Arnold Grothues, Vice President of Industry & Government Affairs
Radio Shack Corporation

Both of these hearings should be held in the 12/14 Legislative Plaza hearing rooms, HOWEVER, if they are still under construction, they may be moved. Ask anyone at the Plaza and they should be able to redirect you. For specifics, you can contact Sen. Trail's office for exact instructions: 615.741.1066. Ask about the "Joint Committee on Communications Security" hearing. Yea. We thought it was about cable theft too.

If you wish to be actively involved, please call me or email as soon as possible. 615.429.4502.

Cheers,
Scott

State DMCA Part 2 - Electric Boogaloo

"There is a lot of phenomenal intellectual property that has not found its way into the marketplace yet."

As Silicon Valley Reboots, the Geeks Take Charge

What would happen if the 'source code' of our democratic systems was opened up to the people they are meant to serve? An open source model for participatory, bottom-up and emergent policy will force us to confront the issues of our time.

A new essay from Douglas Rushkoff. Download the full text in PDF.

Open Source Democracy

] Mie's cellphone can tag each photo she takes with the
] latitude/longitude coordinates. Last night she tried
] sending a geotagged jpeg for the first time, so this
] morning I started researching how to get the coordinates
] out of the jpeg. It turns out that the data is stored in
] EXIF headers.

Eventually you'll leave notes around in the real world, which your friends will be able to access at that location when they are there. Coming soon, actually... This is all very easy to do today, its just a matter of access and cost.

AkuAku SF: gps tagged jpegs

The Rumsfeld "slog" memo, courtesy of The Smoking Gun.

Are we winning or losing the Global War on Terror?

Is DoD changing fast enough to deal with the new 21st century security environment?

Can a big institution change fast enough?

... an alternative might be to try to fashion a new institution ... What else should we be considering?

And so the master plan continues to unfold ...

The Rumsfeld Memo

Mr. Steele-Perkins captures this collision of time -- the past rushing full force into the future -- from a careful outsider's view of Japanese society.

This is short and interesting. I wonder what personal non-motorized water craft consisted of in Japan before the British brought canoes from America.

Fuji: Images of Contemporary Japan

] After years of silence, a teenager is accusing the
] founder of a popular sci-fi convention of long-term
] sexual abuse.
]
] The new accusation against DragonCon founder Ed Kramer,
] 41, comes on the eve of his trial on child molestation
] charges involving two other boys.

Yuck...

Third teen levels molestation charges at Ed Kramer

] Q. What is Engrish?
]
]
] A. Engrish can be simply defined as the humorous English
] mistakes that appear in Japanese advertising and product
] design.

Be sure to check the clothing section ...

Engrish.com

] Satellites, pagers, cell phones and electrical grids
] could be affected Friday afternoon by a powerful stream
] of energized gas and particles from the sun.
]
] The coronal mass ejection, or CME, is expected to reach
] Earth about 3 p.m. EDT and its effects could last 12 to
] 18 hours, according to space weather forecasters.

Phreaknic not responsible for electronics problems in Nashville this weekend

"

A digital picture of a spectacular and apparently explosive event in the sky fooled a pair of seasoned NASA scientists, has other researchers around the globe mystified, and made a minor celebrity of a teenage photographer.

Jonathan Burnett, 15, was photographing his friends skateboarding in Pencoed, Wales when one of them noticed a colorful fireball in the sky. Burnett snapped a picture, then sent it to NASA scientists and asked if they knew what it was.

Robert Nemiroff and Jerry Bonnell, who run NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day (APOD), posted the photograph on Oct. 1 and wrote that "a sofa-sized rock came hurtling into the nearby atmosphere of planet Earth and disintegrated." They called the picture "one of the more spectacular meteor images yet recorded."
Images

The Picture: Jonathan Burnett's photograph, which has scientists baffled.

A photo taken from about 10 miles away, by Julian Heywood, confirmed that Burnett's photo was legitimate and helped scientists decide the event had something to do with a jet contrail

Problem is, it turns out, there was no meteor."

Photo of Fiery Object Mystifies Scientists