Awesome. PVRs are finally getting to where they need to be!

Slashdot | Panasonic Combined DVD-R & PVR Device

Better yet, watch Bringing Up Baby with Katherine Hepburn and Cary Grant. 116 of Top 250 @ imdb.

Just watched this again last night. You'll love it.

Bringing Up Baby (1938)

But Smith's spokesperson, Katherine Lister, says the congressman was motivated by a desire to foster innovation. "In no way, shape or form does Microsoft ever drive our technology policy," she said.

...

I remember a time when Microsoft didn't play the political game. Those days are gone for good. All it took was a little anti-trust muscle to get the palm greasing going. Makes you wonder who the real victim ultimately is. Granted, they probably would have started playing on their own terms at sometime in the future, but I digress...

Between Microsoft and Intel, it looks like Washington state has been officially bought and sold. Thank you Rep. Adam Smith for proving to me that there is no difference between a Democrat and a Republican. You support this for *WHAT* reason?

I need to find a country that sucks less than the United States. Any suggestions?

[ The more paranoid might be asking themselves if the anti-trust effort might just have been geared toward this result. Or, at least, something similar like "Play nice with the gov like a normal corp or else...". Same result.

Regarding other countries, I'm on that boat. I have a feeling things will continue to get worse. "Thought control" of your average American has become so incredibly sophisticated that I despair of there ever being change created via political means.

Regardless, if you have not registered to vote then you should. . . --Rek ]

Letter: Free Software Hurts U.S.

I am not the only one digitizing music. Without breaking any law, I could just as easily have gone on the Web to download the songs I had bought in the same digital format, thanks to the prior work of many other music lovers. So far music listeners around the world have digitized more than 850,000 albums and 10 million songs of all musical genres. Fans have already converted almost all music ever recorded.

Kevin Kelly has written an op-ed piece about the Eldred v. Ashcroft case in the New York Times. Can you guess which side of the debate he favors?

[ Interesting, but he missed all of the DJ oriented vinyl that has been released over the past 10 years. Admittedly it's a small slice, but almost assuredly the bulk of it is not digitized. Most of these tracks (even popular ones) have runs of less than 50,000 total. The average is probably closer to 2,000. There is a completely new body of underground music that is mostly untapped and unheard by the masses. --Rek ]

Making My Own Music

Jeff Kagan: "Lucent is already a memory as the company is a shadow of its former self, and it may not be quite done shrinking yet."

Lucent to Cut 10,000 Jobs as Its Losses Keep Mounting

Who should your computer take its orders from? Most people think their computers should obey them, not obey someone else. With a plan they call "trusted computing," large media corporations (including the movie companies and record companies), together with computer companies such as Microsoft and Intel, are planning to make your computer obey them instead of you. Proprietary programs have included malicious features before, but this plan would make it universal.

...

Programs that use treacherous computing will continually download new authorization rules through the Internet, and impose those rules automatically on your work. If Microsoft, or the U.S. government, does not like what you said in a document you wrote, they could post new instructions telling all computers to refuse to let anyone read that document. Each computer would obey when it downloads the new instructions. Your writing would be subject to 1984-style retroactive erasure. You might be unable to read it yourself.

...

I'm trying to think of the small things we can do to get the word out about TCPA. Taking an ad out in the Nashville scene and writing to all of the TCPA board members are the first two things that come to mind.

If you didn't already know, this so called "trusted computing" initiative is a very bad thing. If we start to allow it into our computers, we start to lose the war.

[BEGIN RANT]

The digital world has been here for a while now. How do you like it so far? I started exploring it in 1981 with a Texas Instruments TI-99/4a. Things have changed a lot over the last two decades since.

I read the book '1984' in 8th grade as required reading. This was the same time that the Gulf War was being played 24/7 on the Channel One provided televisions in my high school. Two minute hate, anyone?

Being a tech head, the most striking feature of '1984' was the memory hole. History could be created, edited, revised, and destroyed at will by the state. The parallels between what Orwell envisioned and my BBS were too striking for me to ignore. The ephemeral nature of electromagnetic charges as opposed to the physical construct of ink and paper. I took solace in the fact that I could back things up and make perfect copies instantly.

If the TCPA folks get their way, all that goes out the door. Your computer becomes a closed system meant for one purpose: Consumption. Want to develop an application? Pay your fare.

TCPA stands for Trusted Computing Platform Alliance. The Steering Committee consists of Compaq, HP, IBM, Intel, and Microsoft. There are over 170 member companies.

Their website is www.trustedcomputing.org. I suggest learning as much as you can about their initiative. The PC is only their first stop, they are after all consumer electronics. Learn the enemy, become the enemy, think like the enemy, befriend the enemy. This is the only way to subvert the enemy.

Oh, and by the way, AMD and nVidia are playing ball too. Sleep tight.

Richard Stallman writes about TCPA, aka Treacherous Computing

Forget your political memes, your techie memes, and all the rest. That's right, now you can use your time wisely on the Internet! How?

Adventure!

Not just any Adventure. I'm talking about the original Atari 2600 console game. *The* classic console game!

Adventure for the Atari 2600 in Macromedia Flash

Abe Lincoln:

"Allow the President to invade a neighboring nation whenever he shall deem it necessary to repel an invasion, and you allow him to do so whenever he may choose to say he deems it necessary for such purpose - - and you allow him to make war at pleasure. Study to see if you can fix any limit to his power in this respect, after you have given him so much as you propose. If, to-day, he should choose to say he thinks it necessary to invade Canada, to prevent the British from invading us, how could you stop him? You may say to him, 'I see no probability of the British invading us' but he will say to you 'be silent; I see it, if you don't.'

The provision of the Constitution giving the war-making power to Congress, was dictated, as I understand it, by the following reasons. Kings had always been involving and impoverishing their people in wars, pretending generally, if not always, that the good of the people was the object. This, our Convention understood to be the most oppressive of all Kingly oppressions; and they resolved to so frame the Constitution that no one man should hold the power of bringing this oppression upon us. But your view destroys the whole matter, and places our President where kings have always stood."

What I'm linking here is Barlow's thoughts on the matter. He quotes Lincoln.

BarlowFriendz 8.8: Pox Americana

Microsoft's efforts so far to obstruct Xbox mod chips have been relatively trivial, and simple for the modders to circumvent. The most recent redesign, for example, was dealt with inside a week. But on his recent Australian adventure Microsoft president Steve Ballmer dispensed one of the clearest policy statements on Xbox so far - Microsoft intends Xbox to be a closed system and to stay that way, and will use both technical and legal avenues to protect it.

...

...Ballmer said that Microsoft might have to reconsider selling Xbox in Australia, or seek changes in the law.

...

It's been suggested to us several times recently that there is a growing need for a Free Hardware Foundation - this is beginning to have a certain logic, we think.

...

Agreed. I am really tired of Steve Ballmer. Dude, you *LOST* the server market, get over it. You are going to lose your core OS business. Trying to stop unlicensed software didn't work for the NES and they *THRIVED* from it!!! Subsidized hardware sales was a technique mastered by Sony way before you had a clue...

Stick to applications, that's what you do best.

Ballmer baulks at Oz Xbox chippers charter

Prelude to future attacks?

Largest DDoS attack against the root nameservers to date