After he discovered a false biography on Wikipedia that claims he was responsible for the death of JFK and his brother Bobby, John Seigenthaler wrote an op-ed piece in USA Today refuting those claims and rebuking Wiki admins and the ISPs that host them. Now, in light of Seigenthaler's outrage, the once open access Wikipedia now requires registration to submit new articles to the English language version of the site.

Seigenthaler spent a tonne of time and resources to track down the writer of the wikipedia article. He also considered filing a John Doe suit and kicked up a gigantic shitstorm with his Op-Ed.

Wikipedia is far from perfect, but instead of wasting what I assume to be days and weeks of his time, why didn't he just correct the entry?

Wikipedia: The Rules Have Changed | MetaFilter

As ISPs move away from principles of network neutrality toward differential pricing based on applications and content (check out the comments of a Bell South executive and rumours of Rogers blocking BitTorrent and podcasts), the role of government becomes ever more important. Politicians searching for a vision to capture the imagination of Canadians during this election campaign should reject the prioritization of greater network surveillance embodied in MITA and instead set out a vision of greater network access.

Hear hear. Make the internet what it has the potential to be.

WiFi Visions

EFF has participated in each of the two prior rulemakings (in 2000 and 2003), each time asking the Copyright Office to create exemptions for perfectly lawful consumer uses for digital media that are encumbered by DRM restrictions. For example, we asked that DVD owners be allowed to skip those "unskippable" ads at the beginning of DVDs. We asked that people who bought copy-protected CDs be allowed to get them to play on their computer. We asked that consumers be allowed to bypass region coding to play a DVD purchased in another part of the world. The Copyright Office rejected all of these proposals.

They're attempting to put this same measure through with Bill C-60 in Canada (not the entire DMCA, just the bit about making circumvention illegal.) It makes me angry to know I don't really own my media at all. This is why I don't buy from ITMS anymore.

DMCA Triennial Rulemaking: Failing Consumers Completely

Doctors say the woman's new face will be a "hybrid" between her donor's face and her own face before the attack. In the five hour long operation, the donor's tissues, muscles, arteries and veins were attached to the patient's lower face. It is more favourable to use skin from another person's face instead of skin from another part of the patient's body, as the texture and colour of the skin are more likely to match.

Incredible.

First face transplant performed on French woman

Is the apocalypse nigh? I sure think so. The last one happened at the height of Atari's power, they were invincible, pumping out hit after hit. Pac-Man, ET, Asteroids, movie tie-ins, overflowing arcades and a rabid fan base. They were in the spotlight of the mainstream press, songs making the top 10, and money coming out of their ears. What could go wrong?

To start with, a flood of games that, for lack of a better term, sucked. There were gems, but they tended to get drowned out in a sea of mediocrity. Magazines were afraid to give big titles a bad review, and scores creeped up in the name of advertising dollars. Comic books were awash in ad pages for the latest Parker Brothers 2600 cartridge, and the magazines covering the industry were thick and glossy.

To me this is really just a side effect of the amount of money going into it. Once you get these gigantic budget projects going, of course the majority will be crap. It's easier to cash in on a safe bet than to innovate, but hope is not lost. We've seen the Katamari Damacy games, Guitar Hero, Resident Evil 4 (the best retooling of a stagnating series I've ever seen). There's plenty of innovation going on, and if the majors get too bad, there's really always the independents like Troika.

The industry is in for a gaming crash

People don’t engage with each other in order to exchange viruses; people exchange viruses as an excuse to engage with each other.

Douglas Rushkoff on Memes

Watch all of this video. It's astounding.

Living Cornstarch

A malicious user can use the ultra-popular search website – or one that operates like it – to find vulnerabilities in corporate websites more quickly than had previously been possible, hacking expert Johnny Long has said.

More and more I'm seeing centralized media lag behind, especially when it comes to tech news. This particular article has been around for over 2 years now.

Google also a hacker ally - IT Security News - SC Magazine UK

MashupTown, a site that hosts and distributes mashups (two or more songs ingeniously mixed together to make a third) has taken down all of its files after complaints from the RIAA to its hosting partner.

Mashups are a really dumb target for the RIAA. There's just no universe in which someone who downloads a mashup of Prince's 1999 and the Benny Goodman orchestra performing "In the Mood" thinks, Well, now I've heard that, I have no need to buy the CDs those songs originated on.

Disregarding my own feelings about it entirely, this just seems like a silly thing to go after. Why not go after the dyed-in-the-wool "pirates" who are their biggest losses. Well, they already are, I suppose, but this seems an odd digression.

Boing Boing: RIAA targets mashups

However, the bill also authorizes law enforcement agencies to obtain subscriber information from service providers – name, address, phone number, e-mail address, IP address – without a judicial warrant.

This is an extremely disturbing bill. Aside from the information already mentioned, there are some interesting definitions used for service providers. It looks as though any citizen running a wireless router, open access or otherwise, could have their equipment seized on suspicion as well. If they can argue that a citizen is a service provider, they can also demand the means to removing any private encryption said citizen is employing on their private correspondance. I'm working on a form letter for my MP and McLellan.

Questions abound over 'lawful access' bill.