Steve Jobs' open letter about DRM and music yesterday definitely got a lot of tongues wagging, but there's one group that might want to re-read what he wrote. Bit Player (you gotta scroll down to the bottom of the post) reports that our old friends at the RIAA issued a response today lauding Apple's offer to license FairPlay as a "welcome breakthrough" that would be a "real victory for fans, artists and labels." There's only one problem: Jobs didn't offer to license FairPlay at all. In fact, he makes it pretty clear that he thinks that switching to an open model for DRM wouldn't work ("Apple has concluded that if it licenses FairPlay to others, it can no longer guarantee to protect the music it licenses from the big four music companies.") and that the best option is to eliminate DRM altogether. We already knew that the majors are totally in denial about this stuff, but to pretend that his letter (however motivated) was anything other than a broadside against DRM is silly.

RIAA misreads Jobs' open letter on DRM, thinks he's offering to license FairPlay - Engadget

In what is being called the most severe attack on the web since the barrage of 2002, the same 13 "root servers" were targeted within the past 24 hours in a presumed attempt to disrupt global network traffic.

...

Now, who else in the world thinks they can single handedly dismantle the internet?

Yes, who indeed.

Hackers attempt to break the internet, fail miserably - Engadget

The goal, justice officials said, is to make the practice of DNA sampling as routine as fingerprinting for anyone detained by federal agents, including illegal immigrants. Until now, federal authorities have taken DNA samples only from convicted felons.

...

“Obviously, the bigger the DNA database, the better,” said Lynn Parrish, the spokeswoman for the Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network, based in Washington. “If this had been implemented years ago, it could have prevented many crimes. Rapists are generalists. They don’t just rape, they also murder.”

Boy do I not like the sound of this. Detained by TSA on your way back from France? "Put your DNA in this database. Trust us, it will only be used for good. We would never dream of misusing the data about your entire genetic makeup.

It's just like a fingerprint!"

Jesus. Welcome to the U.S. of Fear, Paranoia and Surveillance.

U.S. Set to Begin a Vast Expansion of DNA Sampling - New York Times

Another take... nice.

al-mooninites on Flickr - Photo Sharing!

Several illuminated electronic devices planted at bridges and other spots in Boston threw a scare into the city Wednesday in what turned out to be a publicity campaign for a late-night cable cartoon. Most if not all of the devices depict a character giving the finger.

The Moonenites as terrorists?

hm.

This whole scheme seems like a silly ad campaign, but ultimately it only shows how on edge the police and DHS are these days. perhaps a little too much so, if only by a tiny margin. Still, no major civil liberties are apparently being infringed, so I'm basically on the side of "better safe than sorry" on this one. Though I hope the kid doesn't go to jail or anything for essentially doing his job. Doesn't seem like it ought to be his fault that his employer and their client made a poor choice.

Sure, sue the marketing firm and Turner and get the half mil or so of restitution, but charging the kid as a criminal is kind of insane, really.

All that being said, my main beef is with the use of the term "hoax" here. It's a completely -- and probably willfully -- incorrect way to describe this situation. A hoax involves purposeful deception; in this case the implication is that the devices were intended to be seen as bombs, or, minimally, as some kind of real threat. Obviously no one intended for these to be seen that way... it's so far from the truth that it's offensive. Call it what it is: a somewhat ill-advised marketing campaign which was misinterpreted -- though not so unreasonably -- by the public and the authorities.

Boston Devices a Cartoon Publicity Ploy | ajc.com

Acidus wrote:
1- I was on the high school swim team for 3 years
...
5- I have 2 Hillary Duff songs on an iPod playlist. I sing them when I drive.

I like this idea. I'm a pretty open book, so this is tough, but here goes...

1. As a child I believed I wanted to be an architect when I grew up. Alas, "drawing" is not among the skills I have found easy to acquire.

2. I once suffered from altitude sickness while at a restaurant perched on the peak of a mountain, while eating an obscure Austrian pastry. This happened on the same day that I was briefly stranded, separated from my parents, knowing the German words only for "milk", "chocolate", "please", "thank you" and "French fries", on that very Austrian mountain, but that's a story that many here will already know.

3. One of my most prized possessions is a small origami swan that belonged to my mother.

4. At the risk of having my geek credentials revoked, i will admit that my relationship with computer programming, etc., began quite late. I didn't write a line of code until my senior year of high school, when I took AP Computer Science. At that time, I embarrassed myself by thinking that "UNIX" was a programming language, and having an almost non-existent relationship with the internet. And being a Mac user before it was cool.

5. I am quite fond of public speaking and leading large meetings, and derive great pleasure from distilling the most relevant bits of information from otherwise broad and far-ranging conversations.

RE: 5 Things You don't know about Me

THE smallpox virus first became entangled with the human species somewhere between three thousand and twelve thousand years ago -- possibly in Egypt at the time of the Pharaohs. Somewhere on earth at roughly that time, the virus jumped out of an unknown animal into its first human victim, and began to spread. Viruses are parasites that multiply inside the cells of their hosts, and they are the smallest life forms. Smallpox developed a deep affinity for human beings. It is thought to have killed more people than any other infectious disease, including the Black Death of the Middle Ages. It was declared eradicated from the human species in 1979, after a twelve-year effort by a team of doctors and health workers from the World Health Organization. Smallpox now exists only in laboratories.

I've been meaning to meme this for week and a half, but am just now getting around to it.

What I've linked to is Preston's article, which summarizes the full length (though short) book on the topic.

I say without hesitation that this is one of the most terrifying books I've ever read, and among the most engaging too. Those of you who read The Hot Zone (same Richard Preston) and thought it didn't get much more frightening than that, well, I'm almost sorry to bring this up.

From the true stories of the eradication efforts in the 60's and 70's to the high-security halls of Vector and USAMRIID, a fairly convincing portrait is painted of what seems likely to be the single most dangerous human pathogen we know.

In particular, anyone who lives in Atlanta, where the CDC is one of only 2 legitimate repositories for the virus, will find some very interesting material. For example, having read this book, I'm essentially certain that I lived just a couple of blocks from the BSL4 lab where active experimentation with large doses of active, "hot" smallpox was taking place. I probably drove past the building on my way to Aikido that week, and practiced in the Emory rec center, which is directly behind the main CDC campus. I always knew, of course, that the CDC worked with a lot of nasty stuff, but it's different to read about it in detail and realize that the author isn't talking about some anonymous site in the middle of nowhere, but a building in your neighborhood, one that you see on a weekly or daily basis.

I'll summarize by saying that the book was lent to me by a coworker on a Wednesday, the evening of which I left for a business trip to DC. By the time i hit the ground in Atlanta Thursday night -- 4 hours of reading on the plane and a few more in the hotel room -- i'd finished the book.

If you're even passively interested in this stuff, I suspect you'll want to read this book.

The Demon In the Freezer

``We've had two resignations so far with more pending,'' said Jeff Kingston, a professor of political science at Temple University in Tokyo. ``Given that Abe's already losing his popularity, Yanagisawa's comment doesn't help. It was stupid.''

Abe's approval rating fell six percentage points from last month to 40 percent, the Mainichi newspaper said today. The Nikkei newspaper's poll showed his support at 48 percent, down 3 percent from December. Neither paper provided a margin of error. Abe's approval rating, according to the Mainichi, was 67 percent after he took office in September.

Abe's having a rough time of it, somewhat predictably, though not for the reasons I expected.

As for Yanagisawa, yeah, it was a retarded thing to say, but at the same time, i believe Japan is facing a pretty serious demographic crisis in the coming years, largely based on the fact that they're not really having kids anymore. He chose the stupidest possible way to phrase it, but the idea is probably right, unless the nation would rather enter population decline.

Bloomberg.com: Japan

Let me get this right...

They remade The Money Pit.

But with Ice Cube.

Is that right?

Apple - Trailers - Are We Done Yet? - Small

Just a little late night humor...

Diddy's expression is just perfect here...

pdiddy-jessica-biel-stare.jpg (JPEG Image, 400x450 pixels)