check out the "A New Kind of Science Poster".

Yeah. IT"S THE WHOLE BOOK IN FRICKING MICROPRINT! Overlaid on a CA. It is claimed that with a good magnifying glass, it's actually readable, though probably not the ideal format...

Sick.

Merchandise: Posters

I was a bit turned off from this book, primarily because i didn't think i'd be smart enough to fisnish it with any real gain, within a reasonable time frame. It seemed that this was the kind of book that you really would need to take into a room, and lock the door, for at least an hour a day, to grasp fully.

Also, it was big, and expensive. Not so any longer... if you can handle reading a 1000 page tome on the intarnet, at least. Here it is.

Stephen Wolfram: A New Kind of Science | Online

] Music Industry Piracy Investigations this morning raided
] the offices of P2P companies Sharman Networks and
] Brilliant Digital Entertainment, along with the homes of
] key executives and several ISPs.

!!!

UPDATE: MIPI raids Sharman Networks, Brilliant Digital Entertainment: ZDNet Australia: News: Business

]
] Since Darl McBride compares SCO to the RIAA, perhaps he
] should take note of something that just happened in the
] current appeal of the Morpheus and Grokster case. One of
] the three judges told the RIAA attorney to stop using
] "abusive language", such as calling file-trading
] "piracy".

Wow!

Judge Tells RIAA Attorney: 'Stop Using Abusive Language, Like Calling File Sharing 'Piracy''

Asked about which party would be better at a number of issues facing the nation, the public said, among other things :
] Controlling government spending:
]
] Democrats 31
] Republicans 33
]
] Dealing with taxes:
]
] Democrats 35%
] Republicans 37
]
] Dealing with foreign policy:
]
] Democrats 29%
] Republicans 43
]
] Promoting strong moral values:
]
] Democrats 23%
] Republicans 45

[ now, my politics are pretty obvious, but even putting that aside, how in gods name can anyone say that the republicans are better at controlling government spending? You may believe that the spending was justified, or even beneficial in the long term (though I don't agree), but you simply cannot say that republicans have been about fiscal restrait... it's simply not true. Also, there's a mild contradiction in this data in which people say that dems would be better at reducing the deficit while at the same time being worse at controlling gov't spending...
As for foreign policy... leaving out any questions of the *justification* of the Iraq war, the handling of it was pretty shoddy. It strikes me as incredible that so many people think the republicans have done well on foreign policy. Aside from telling the rest of the world to fuck off while we prove what massive cojones we have, what FP successes have we had? I guess people like arrogance.
I'll leave the "moral values" part as an exercise, except to say that espousing a set of morals or ideals (particularly religous ones) is not the same as actually living by them.

On the plus side, more prople thought dems would succeed with things like the deficit, environment, health care, energy policy and education. If this race turns out to be about the economy and health care more than the war in Iraq (as the Dem. Primaries seem to indicate) the dems may have a chance, even with Kerry. -k]

Daily Kos || How the parties fare on the issues

] This article presents a new security system, termed port
] knocking, in which trusted users manipulate firewall
] rules by transmitting information across closed ports.

[ i'm nothing like a security professional, but i seem to recall that there are a few people on this site who are ;) Thoughts? Is this a useful extra layer of security or does the complexity it adds to your firewall negate that?
it seems pretty damn smart to me, insofar as one more level of effort required to crack something is one level more than some people will be able to put forth. but then, again, i don't make a living either securing or cracking networks or systems, so... -k]

Port Knocking

] "The Government must play a greater role in punishing
] those who conceal their identities online, particularly
] when they do so in furtherance of a serious federal
] criminal offense or in violation of a federally protected
] intellectual property right," (Lamar) Smith said at a hearing on
] the topic today.

Congress wants to make it a federal crime to lie on your domain name registration. If you do not make your real address, telephone number, and email available to everyone on earth you can be sentenced to federal prison time (in this version you'd have a sentence for another crime extended). This came up in last years legislative session as well. The thing that makes my blood boil about this is that the spin is totally wrong. The copyright people are lying through their teeth, this journalist can't see through it, and the CDT/ACLU don't understand EITHER so they are providing the wrong counterpoints, almost assuring that this will pass!

This article lets slide absolute lies like:

] Smith and Berman drafted the bill after receiving complaints
] from the entertainment and software industries that much of
] their material is made available for free on Web sites whose
] owners are impossible to track down because their domain
] name registrations often contain made-up names.

No web site owner is "impossible" to track down!

DNS whois information is made available for reference. It is intended to assist communication between administrators who run networks, for security or network management related reasons. It was not designed for lawyers or police. It was also not designed with the modern spam and stalker infested internet in mind, and therefore often people fill it out with false information, especially if they aren't a business entity.

If you want to track down someone on the internet for a legal reason, you do not use the DNS whois system. That is not what the DNS whois system is for. You do a nslookup on the domain name and get the IP address. Then you use the ARIN whois system, (a completely different and totally unrelated database that used to run on the same software) which tells you what ISP an IP address has been issued to. ARIN whois is usually correct. If it is not correct you can complain to ARIN and they can check their records. Their records are always correct unless the IP addresses have been stolen (and if you're dealing with stolen IP addresses you're way past the point where DNS whois is going to help you, federal crime or not). Either way you'll get an ISP. You then go to a court and get a subpoena, and send that subpoena to the ISP, and the ISP produces contact information for the customer. This always works.

Let me be absolutely clear about this. Requiring people to keep accurate dns whois records has absolutely nothing at all to do with being able to track down domain holders on the internet. You can always do that today. Forcing people to keep accurate dns whois records is about being able to track down domain holders on the internet without court authorization. We should not allow that.

What really pisses me off here is that no one on "our side of the fence" in this debate is making that point. We're going to loose this one if the discussion isn't forced back into the realm of reality. If this is about people committing crimes on internet sites that can't be tracked down by any means, we'll be passing laws based on a complete fantasy.

Kids, this is exactly how bad law happens.

Congress Eyes Idiotic Whois Crackdown

] Nextel Wireless Broadband%u2122 is a new service brought
] to you by Nextel. Using innovative technology based on
] FLASH-OFDM, the service offers secure, IP-based broadband
] access over a wireless connection.

Just starting trials, but sounds neat. Big downside, of course, they're not likely to ever support your non-windows OS of choice.

Nextel Wireless Broadband - Overview

] The National Academy of Recording Arts & Sciences, which
] puts on the Grammy Awards, said yesterday that Jackson
] and Timberlake will appear on the show, despite their
] Super Bowl stunt, which provided Federal Communications
] Commission Chairman Michael Powell with the rocket fuel
] he needed to power his Pro-Consolidation but Anti-Smut
] Machine.

CBS Says Grammys Won't Become the Anatomy Awards (washingtonpost.com)

] People who know they're being watched, and that their
] innocent actions can result in police scrutiny, are
] people who become scared to step out of line. They know
] that they can be put on a "bad list" at any time. People
] living in this kind of society are not free, despite any
] illusionary security they receive.

[ hear hear, bruce. hear hear. -k]

How We Are Fighting the War on Terrorism / IDs and the illusion of security