] Reporters Without Borders today protested against the
] detention of six French journalists on arrival a week ago
] at Los Angeles international airport to cover a video
] games trade show and their forcible repatriation after
] being held at the airport for more than 24 hours.
]
] "These journalists were treated like criminals -
] subjected to several body searches, handcuffed, locked up
] and fingerprinted," Reporters Without Borders
] secretary-general Robert Ménard complained in a letter to
] the US ambassador to Paris, Howard Leach.

Reporters sans frontières - Six French journalists detained on arrival at Los Angeles, sent back to France

] David S. Miller also said:
]
] Don't expect specs or opensource drivers for any of
] these pieces of hardware until these vendors figure out a
] way to hide the frequency programming interface.
]
] Ie. these cards can be programmed to transmit at any
] frequency, and various government agencies don't like it
] when f.e. users can transmit on military frequencies and
] stuff like that.
]
] The only halfway plausible idea I've seen is to not
] document the frequency programming registers, and users
] get a "region" key file that has opaque register values
] to program into the appropriate registers. The file is
] per-region (one for US, Germany, etc.)and the wireless
] kernel driver reads in this file to do the frequency
] programming.
]
] So don't blame the vendors on this one, several of
] them would love to publish drivers public for their
] cards, but simply cannot with upsetting federal
] regulators.

The 802.11g card in my Powerbook is one of these chipsets. Its the only reason I have not done a Linux install on it yet. I need the wireless to use the net.

/me thinks about forcing Abaddon at gunpoint to code him a driver..

I'm sure I don't have to go into too much detail why this is interesting.. In short, it may be possible to code software using these cards that could be used by several systems to roughly triangulate the position of a specific cell phone, police car(s), etc.. Among other things..

Kernel Traffic #216 For 20 May | Some WLAN Chip Specs Secret To Protect Military Communications

so as you may or may not know the author of this article is the author and distributor of a few open source projects, one most notable project is the Airjack project...this is a tool (a driver actually) for raw 802.11 frame injection and the sort, its what i used to break things for my blackhat lecture...

i no longer actively maintain this project, but i still distribute it, and ill give help on it...and if someone has a really good question i really help and sometimes expand functionality...

anyways, i get email all the time about it, most of it them are asking for support on some level, most are actually polite, respectful, ie, dont piss me off...

every now and then i get a gem, one that is in leet speak, from the most vial script kiddie that has ever picked up a keyboard...id like to share some of the anger and frustration with you, the anonymous internet goer, in the hopes that i can somehow cathartically dispell these feelings...

----

ok first thing you need to know is this...if you are asking a stranger for free software that they spent time to write and make useful, then you are asking them for a favor...believe me there are many projects i work on and very very very few i make public...so if you have any troubles with it, go about things as you would when asking a stranger for a favor...

i cant begin to tell you how often i get people upset because i didnt help them adiquitely in their eyes, or because i wont add a feature, or because it is hard to install, ive even been accused of embedding malicious viruses in my OPEN SOURCE code (something very untrue, its open source for god's sake)...

some ground rules before you ever email a free software project maintainer...

1) know what the program/tool is, that includes what its supposed to do, the general type of program it is (driver, user space application, command line, x app, etc), what os it runs on, what os it doesnt run on...and again, what its supposed to do...you'd think that would be a prerequisite for even wanting a thing, but nope, later you'll see its not...

2) if you have trouble installing the program, this is not my problem...i clearly already have this installed and sence i owe you nothing, i have no obligation to help you install it...that said i made it public because i wanted to share, so i am more than happy to help you install it...

3) i dont write documentation because i like writing documentation...so if i have any, documentation, i have it there to help you, not me, i already know how it works...so read the documentation and dont ask me to paste it to you in email...the documentation is faster and bothers me less...

4) if you find a bug, its not my problem, i might fix it, i might not, your bug is your problem, not mine, if it works for me then im happy...thats not to say that i wont fix the bug, what that means is i have no obligation to fix the bug...believe me 99 times out of 100 im mo... [ Read More (2.3k in body) ]

They're only frequently asked questions because no-one reads the FAQ

Extremely cool to look at and play with.

I could have sworn I had recommended this before. Yes, the Touchgraph Google Browser is extrememly cool. I have been playing with Touchgraph..

TouchGraph GoogleBrowser V1.01

All posts are now limited to 3000 characters before getting a "Read More" link. At some point, this will also allow use of a break tag.

] A new all-you-can-eat music download service that claims
] to take advantage of a loophole in Spanish copyright law
] will launch on Tuesday and piggyback on a popular
] file-swapping network for distribution.
] Learn more about file swapping
]
] The new Madrid-based company, called Puretunes, is the
] second Spanish Web service to try offering access to a
] vast and otherwise unavailable catalog of music online
] without directly securing the record labels' permission.

] By the standards of most paid music sites, Puretunes is
] a good deal indeed, at least for the music buyer. The
] company offers customers unlimited downloads that can be
] done over specified periods of time. Eight hours of
] unlimited downloading will cost $3.99, 48 hours will cost
] $9.99, and a month will cost $24.99, for example. Longer
] periods of time are also available.

¡Guárdese! ¡Los malvados vendrán con sus tratados y lawers!

Spanish site offers music-file fiesta | CNET News.com

] Fortean Times is a monthly magazine of news, reviews and
] research on strange phenomena and experiences,
] curiosities, prodigies and portents.

I just noticed that Fortean Times has a website..

Fortean Times

A fairly accurate timeline, er, from some points of view, of the progression that the internet has taken over time.

Enjoy!

Hiliarious!

The Lemon: History Of The Internet

] This model predicted the CD sales of RIAA members to
] within thirty million dollars (less than one-quarter of
] one percent) given the performance of the economy in
] 2002, as a function of nineteen other similarly-sized
] corporate sales, and the performance of the RIAA three
] previous years.

In other words, piracy is not impacting sales. (Note: This is extremely unlikely to be a conspiracy theory. The people that run these companies do NOT get this.)

Analysis of RIAA revenue figures versus overall economy

] Curtis said a new video titled Terrible Mr. G is the
] latest "meme" rapidly gaining in popularity. Likely shot
] without the knowledge of the subject, the video documents
] the frustration of playing a combat computer game like
] Counter-Strike.
]
] The soundtrack -- a series of groans, foul language and
] invective -- also has been dubbed to techno.
]
] "There's this guy swearing like a sailor," Curtis said.
] "It's pretty darn funny."

Update on the "Terrible Mr. G" meme. I mentioned earlier (http://www.memestreams.net/users/rattle/blogid2944884) that a meme on flynn23's blog (http://www.memestreams.net/users/flynn23/blogid2549710) was getting a lot of hits from Google. This Wired article appears to be what is stired up all the interest.

At the time off this posting, it had been hit at least 1400 times due to its placement on Google.

Thanks to William Reynolds for pointing this out.

Wired News: Blog Bucks Aid Laughingstock Kid