Another Reason Why Metallica Sucks

What happens when a band comes out against their fans who pirated their music? They're hated to the core of their sold-out souls. What happens when that band contemplates an internet distribution model after years of sucking? They get creamed by music fans for being hypocrites. Who's the band? Metallica. Read more on Wired.

Feeding on Yahoo!

Here's a prediction that will be completely laughable in the near future. Concerning the battle to be the internet giant -- a battle being waged between Yahoo, Google and Microsoft. Yahoo is getting the crapped punched out of it, so it's apparently going to sidle up the online loser, AOL, but outsource its advertising operations to Google. Of course, this is only going to bilk AOL and Yahoo to fill Google's ever increasing do-no-evil coffers -- I guess it isn't evil drain the competition when they down, just Darwinian. Microsoft apparently still thinks it can get a hold of Yahoo's carcass, so they're apparently working on a deal with another deadbeat, News Corp's MySpace, in hopes of joining MySpace, MSN and Yahoo. This of course would extend Microsoft's reach into Yahoo and MySpace, and hopefully bring their users into the Microsoft fold.

Naturally, this is all probably very far from the truth.

My prediction: Google will do evil, and Microsoft will become the internet business we all cheer for -- even though we'll never use their services as much as we'll use Google's. This will happen when Balmer leaves the helm. The guy is just too way over the top for anyone to cheer for him ...

... hmm ... what was I saying again?

workFRIENDLY

Want to surf the net surreptitiously at work without the boss knowing? Easy! Go to workFRIENDLY and enter the destination URL. Your browser window will be reconfigured to look like the standard MSWord application, and the site will be skinned to look like a Word document. Of course, that takes away the richness of the site, but hey, if your boss is breathing down your neck on the frequency of your browsing, this is one way of dodging the bullet.

South Park for Free

South Park fans, rejoice. MTV Networks now has every South Park episode available online, uncensored, and for free. This is how media should be available to the masses. And you know what? People will still fork out money for the DVDs.

Public Stupidity in Whitewater

So what exactly is wrong with anonymous free speech? If you're a public figure, especially in a position of power, anonymous critique is construed as an open, if faceless, assault. And with great power, usually comes great irresponsibility. Rather than welcome criticism as an opportunity for improvement -- a perspective that any public servant should take when facing heat from their constituents -- most counterattack. That is the case currently being played out in the backwater town of Whitewater, Wisconsin, where John Adams, an anonymous blogger is raining on the stupidity of public officials there. In response, the police chief, James Coan, is using city employees to play detective to unmask John Adams.

Can we say misuse of public resources, folks?

Apparently not, say Coan and his cohorts in government. The the police, the blogger "seems like an anti-government radical." Yes, criticizing the people who work for you is considered radical by some. WTF?

Wikileaks

Cowardice asks the question, "Is it safe?" Expediency asks the question, "Is it politic?" Vanity asks the question, "Is it popular?" But, conscience asks the question, "Is it right?" And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but one must take it because one's conscience tells one that it is right.
-- Martin Luther King, Jr.

And with that quote, Wikileaks loads. The site is hosted by PRQ of Sweden, a company owned by two founders of the Pirate Bay, and as it turns out, PRQ is just as hostile to legal assault, as Pirate Bay is. Wikileaks, in case you haven't heard, is a very public whistleblowing site. It publishes the secrets no one else will touch, and the have no regard for the consequences of their actions. It's anarchy, internet style.

Here's how the site describes itself:

Wikileaks is developing an uncensorable Wikipedia for untraceable mass document leaking and analysis. Our primary interest is in exposing oppressive regimes in Asia, the former Soviet bloc, Sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East, but we also expect to be of assistance to people of all regions who wish to reveal unethical behavior in their governments and corporations. We aim for maximum political impact. Our interface is identical to Wikipedia and usable by all types of people. We have received over 1.2 million documents so far from dissident communities and anonymous sources.

[More.]

Head on over and take a gander at the truth. Then participate, and set the world free.

Project Kittyhawk

IBM Research published a paper last month, on the possibility of leveraging their Blue Gene/P platform, to create a global-scale computer, codenamed Project Kittyhawk. From the abstract:

This paper describes Project Kittyhawk, an undertaking at IBM Research to explore the construction of a next-generation platform capable of hosting many simultaneous web-scale workloads. We hypothesize that for a large class of web-scale workloads the Blue Gene/P platform is an order of magnitude more efficient to purchase and operate than the commodity clusters in use today. Driven by scientific computing demands the Blue Gene designers pursued an aggressive system-on-a-chip methodology that led to a scalable platform composed of air-cooled racks. Each rack contains more than a thousand independent computers with highspeed interconnects inside and between racks.

We postulate that the same demands of efficiency and density apply to web-scale platforms. This project aims to develop the system software to enable Blue Gene/P as a generic platform capable of being used by heterogeneous workloads. We describe our firmware and operating system work to provide Blue Gene/P with generic system software, one of the results of which is the ability to run thousands of heterogeneous Linux instances connected by TCP/IP networks over the high-speed internal interconnects.

This platform, which IBM proposes to run generic software, such as Linux, Apache, MySQL, Perl/Python and Ruby on Rails, in a massive cluster, would in effect, be capable of running the entire internet, as an application. Imagine that -- the entire internet on one box. Cool!

Free Speech's Dead End

Censorship of the internet is a growing problem worldwide, and is growing in favour in developed nations, where those charged with fighting terrorism, repeatedly bleat for the suppression of the internet -- for the filtering and monitoring of sites their citizens visit. For now, internet censorship may be far from our minds, but when does it move from the fighting terrorism to the prohibiting of free speech? Censorship around the world is orchestrated by a few -- those in power, usually authoritarian regimes -- who decide that citizens would be harmed if they were exposed to information about religion, sexuality, culture and worse, politics. The concern for these regimes is only for the preservation of their status quo. A servile populace can only remain obedient if they are ignorant and live in fear.

The promise of the internet as a vehicle of social change is a frightening prospect for repressive regimes -- and those within our country, who fear change. The world shrinks with communication. It did so with the advent of radio and television, and it continues to do so with the internet. Today with the click of a button, virtually anywhere in the world can be visited. The power of linking ordinary citizens without the mediation or scrutiny of their government, is powerful. We move from a world with borders to one where activists can find supporters in the most unlikely of places. In a world teetering on the brink, risks can be removed by citizens who don't have a self-interest in power, but in collaboration for the greater good. The more we learn of each other, the more we come to the realization that we're not so different. The more we realize that those who preach hatred; who deal in the currency of fear; are void of any moral footing, and the louder the voices of reason will be.

How petrified are the repressive regimes? In the liberated Afghanistan, Sayed Pervez Kambaksh, a 23-year-old journalism student, was arrested, tried and sentenced to death by his country's religious judges for downloading a report from a Farsi website -- a report which challenged the oppression of women by islamic fundamentalists as a distorted interpretation of the koran. Kambaksh distributed the report to fellow students and professors in an effort to provoke a debate. Instead, a complaint was filed, he was arrested, tried in secrecy, without a defence, and condemned to death. Without the internet, Kambaksh would not be in this predicament, or have the moral outrage to want to make change. Without the internet, Kambaksh may not have a chance of an acquittal.

You can do something about this by adding your voice in remonstrance. Canada has huge commitments for infrastructure rebuilding in Afghanistan. We have influence. Contact Maxime Bernier, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, and tell him to stop this.

• Foreign Affairs office number: 613-995-1874
• Bernier at the House of Commons: 613-992-8053 (Fax: 613-995-0687)
• Bernier's email address: BerniM@parl.gc.ca

You can also contact the Afghanistan embassy in Canada at:

240 Argyle Ave.
Ottawa, Ontario K2P 1B9
Phone: (613) 563-4223 / 65 Fax: (613) 563-4962
email: contact@afghanemb-canada.net.

A message can also be sent to the Afghan government via this online petition. Where the internet isn't censored and monitored yet, we can still use it to make a difference. Make a difference so that in the future, you won't find yourself in Kambaksh's shoes.

The Friendly Face of the TSA

The Transportation Security Administration (TSA), part of the US Homeland Security department, has launched a blog, and want to hear from you, and how you feel about their latest efforts to take the terrorism out of your next flying experience -- and preferably, give it to you while you're still in the airport being screened. Not sure what the TSA is trying to accomplish with the blog. Are they trying to explain themselves to the flying public? Piss them off even more? Show a softer side? Whatever the case, from the comments that are rolling in, people have things to say about the TSA.

If you have a moment, head over and have your say. They're not really tracking IP addresses, and no, commenting will not have to submit to new forms of security probes as a result of visiting their blog. That's just you being paranoid.

The Internet is a Weapons System

The Pentagon sees the internet as an enemy "weapons system" that needs to planned for and dealt with. So it said in its Information Operation Roadmap, published in 2003. The internet represents everything that a colonial America should be worried about. Decentralized, anonymous, with the ability to network disparate and like-minded groups, quickly and cheaply. The internet disseminates information and propaganda outside the control of a central authority. With its views, the Pentagon shares the perspective of the Chinese government, which likewise sees the internet as a threat to its ability to control the masses. Unlike the Chinese however, Americans control their government, and can still do something about this. Read more at Global Research.

Computing on Clouds

Well, apparently Google invented cloud computing. Or that's what you'll get out of this BusinessWeek article, that profiles the 27-year-old Christophe Bisciglia, chief-cloud-guy, at Google. Have a read, as it gives a good sense of where Google is heading, and why they will take over the world if they're successful. Worse case scenario: Terminator or the Matrix. It will make us wish for the days when Microsoft dominated the computing market. Watch out future, here we come!

80 Million Tiny Images

It's a visual dictionary of all the nouns in the English language, arranged by semantic meaning, and linked to 79,302,017 images culled from image search engines. Randomly click on the tiny images to see a popup of the hidden word and thumbnails representing the word. Totally cool ... in a "I not sure why they did this" kinda way. See the related research paper on the work for the techno-babble.

Harry Potter & The Well of Scammers

Nigerian scambaiting at its best -- here the baiter got the Nigerian scammers to copy, by hand, the entire contents of a Harry Potter novel. It doesn't get any better!

HugeURL

For the "bigger is better" crowd, here's HugeURL. You've probably heard of TinyURL -- a site offering to translate huge an unweildy URLs to something more manageable. For example, TinyURL translates http://www.dabydeen.com/ to http://tinyurl.com/2rg3fz. HugeURL however, creates a really big URL in response. Why? Cause bigger is better?

Shiver me timbers!

Don't you just love it when a plan comes together? Or when it falls apart really bad, and publicly for a scorned organization? In their battle against media pirates, movie studios and record companies have placed great store in MediaDefender -- a company that has been employing some nasty tactics to fight bittorrent traffic on the internet. MediaDefender however, just got a nasty surprise. It was outted on the internet by the very same protocol it sold itself as trouncing. It appears that a whole lot of internal MediaDefender emails have been made available via bittorrent. The leaked emails apparently came from an employee that forwarded most of his emails to his gmail account, which got hacked by a group called MediaDefender-Defender. The emails reveal some disturbing practices by MediaDefender -- including entrapment activities that posted torrent files to lure surfers. Bittorrent users are now having a good laugh.

Second Earth

What happens when you mashup Linden Labs' Second Life with Google Earth? No one knows for sure, because that hasn't happened yet -- but, the speculation is already happening. Users of Second Life explore reality using the 2D simulated world that Linden Labs built online. Already, Second Life is serving as a platform for business and academic experimentation. But what if Second Life wasn't just a made-up world, but instead, simulated geo-spatially, the Earth? MIT's Technology Review explores that possibility in their latest issue. Watch out folks, the future Metaverse is on its way, whether you like it or not.

Internet Jihad

Islamic terrorists don't hail from just the Middle East. They're now originating from our own western democracies. Young men, inspired by a strict interpretation is Islam and fanciful promises of never ending virgins for martyrs, are entering a fantasy world, where the killing of innocents is the objective. As important as terrorist cells and training camps in Africa and the borders of Pakistan are, they pale in comparison to the importance of the internet for terrorists. The internet represents the ultimate borderless landscape. With near-anonymiity, freedom of expression and unparalleled access to a world audience, the new breed of cyber terrorist exhibit the same fearlessness and bravado as those who remove their social filters when anonymously commenting on the internet. For these individuals, far removed from a war zone or a scene of murder, cyber-terrorism probably feels a bit like a game. It's anything but a game however. Cyber terrorists serve the most important function in the arsenal of terrorism: propaganda and the dissemination of training information. It hardly matters whether Osama bin Laden is still alive. Terrorism doesn't need a central figure anymore. The internet has provided a network bin Laden could never have built on his own. A network he probably doesn't even understand -- if he's still alive -- but a network that certainly understand. It's disappointing then, that cyber-terrorism isn't being addressed in Bush's "global war on terrorism." Where's the US propaganda machine? In their response to terrorism, America continues to be reactionary -- not realizing that as much as the war needs to be fought with bombs, it must also be fought with ideas and information.

'Attempted' Copyright Infringement

The latest on intellectual property protection south of the border, comes courtesy of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and the Bush Administration. They are seeking to ensure that their friends of the old guard can continue to milk profits from content, regardless of fair use rights. Copyright infringement is already against the law, but Gonzales is now proposing that attempting to commit piracy should also be a crime, punishable by America law.

Considering that close to 80% of internet traffic is from file sharing activities -- and just making a wild guess to say that at least half of those people are partaking in copyright infringement, exposes a whole lot of people to potential jail time. Is it just me, or is there a huge disconnect with reality on the part of the Bush Administration and their business supporters? Believe it or not, a whole lot of people aren't looking for jail time, but neither are looking for draconian measures on how they can consume content they've purchased.

Just in case you think that not living in the US offers you any type of protection against, think again. There was a recent case of an Australian being extradited to the US to stand trial for software piracy. With compliant national governments around the world, working to appease America, no one is safe -- except maybe, the Iranians and North Koreans.

Useful Void: The Art of Forgetting in the Age of Ubiquitous Computing

Viktor Mayer-Schönberger has penned an interesting paper that goes against our natural tendency to preserve our past. In Useful Void: The Art of Forgetting in the Age of Ubiquitous Computing [PDF], Mayer-Schönberger argues that in the digital age, a comprehensive trail of our actions, words and beliefs is being preserved for posterity, and aided with distributive and recovery capabilities of the internet, could inadvertently pose a danger to society. In effect, our technology-aided ability to recall everything is creating panopticon world that threatens to stifle the public discourse that fuels the engines of our democracies. Technology evolved fulfilling our retention desires, with default to retain, rather than delete. Mayer-Schönberger wishes to reset the default; to enable our technology to forget.

Already, there has been growing concerns with the retention and use of private, historical information. Just about all of our public, and increasingly private transactions are being captured, stored and combined with other data to create information that in return is used to paint a target on us. There is no anonymity in surfing the internet, purchasing with credit cards or using public spaces. In a world afraid of terrorists lurking around every corner, surveillance capabilities of public and private institutions will continue to increase. Advertising dollars continue to shift from old media to the new as a result of the latter promise to target individuals more accurately based on their demographic profile and personal desires. Google apparently has all user queries saved since the beginning of Google Inc. We are all potential terrorists and consumers in this increasingly monitored world that relies on our past behaviours.

In response to privacy concerns, there has been efforts to protect personal information via legislation and constitutional reinterpretation (Canada and US, anyway) … both of which Mayer-Schönberger addresses and discounts for being ineffective. Mayer-Schönberger also tackles the do-nothing approach, and one suggested by Lawrence Lessig, which would employ rules within technology to influence and constrain our behaviour. The do-nothing approach is dismissed as being irresponsible, but Lessig's suggestion is fine-tuned to tackle the resetting of the default state of remembering. Mayer-Schönberger suggests that our technology should have a built in default to forget, and this requirement should be mandated by legislation. Webcams and surveillance cameras would have short defaults to forget what they've stored. Internet Cookies would expire in days or weeks, not decades. Search engines would have to delete what you've searched for over time, including losing caches to sites no longer in existence. Digital photographs would need to be deleted based on your personal preferences. It all sounds good, but stepping back to look at what problem Mayer-Schönberger is trying to solve, leaves me unconvinced.

Mayer-Schönberger wanting to reset the default to enable forgetting is in response to the potential misuse of information detailing past behaviour. With our every action being recorded, we may temper future dialogue for fear of being taken out of context and misrepresented. Behind the potential misuse of private information however is narrow perspective of the past. The past has already happened, and doesn't necessarily dictate future behaviour. It does, however, hold invaluable information and insights that can be leveraged for future value -- privately and publicly -- that we have yet to fully grasp. True, private information should only be used via expressed consent, but it should be remembered for what it is: the past, and not necessarily a harbinger of the future. Mayer-Schönberger uses the example of Amazon's suggestion feature, where Amazon suggests what you may want to read based on past purchase decisions. So, if you purchased a children's book in the past as a gift, suddenly, Amazon thinks you also like to read kids literature. This is exactly why the past should be forgotten, but it also why, while the past may be interesting from a historical perspective, it isn't necessarily predictive of the future, nor should it be given such relevancy.

Of course, therein lies the catch. We give the past much relevancy in the present. We dissect every sentence ever said by public figures in the hopes of catching them in inconsistencies. We enjoy finding the duplicity of others. We don't allow for change, yet expect others to give us a fair shake, independent of our past blunders. It's not the past we need to be afraid of, it's us -- and there is no technology or legislation that is about to solve that little problem. Mayer-Schönberger's suggestion however -- not a bad attempt at of a band-aid for human nature.

Google Voice Search Local

Out of Google's Labs comes another search solution -- voice search.

To try this service, just dial 1-800-GOOG-411 (1-800-466-4411) from any phone. Using this service, you can:

• search for a local business by name or category.
  You can say "Giovanni's Pizzeria" or just "pizza".
• get connected to the business, free of charge.
• get the details by SMS if you’re using a mobile phone.
  Just say "text message".

How cool is that?!

Google TiSP

Google TiSP (BETA) is Google’s foray into the Net Neutrality debate. Sign up, and Google will ship you a free TiSP system package for your own in-home installation that will bring you free WiFi broadband access. The installation is pretty simple -- and involves you dropping a fibre-optic cable into your toilet to connect it to one of the many TiSP Access Nodes.

Not a bad April Fool’s joke.

Updated: This one is good too ... Gmail paper! Get all your emails printed, for free!

Site-tastic!

A good site should never be wasted ...

• Worth1000 Picture of the Day
• Astronomy Picture of the Day
• UniqueDaily.com
• TEDTalks
• GreenBiz.com

Surfing Anonymously

ComputerWorld is running a fairly good summary on how to use the internet anonymously. Even the noobs know that there is no such thing as anonymity on the internet. Every site you visit is capable -- and most are -- collecting and tracking some of your surfing habits. This site you're on for instance, captures where you're coming from, what site you came from, and which link you click on when you leave -- along with a few other technical bits of information, such as OS, screen resolution, etc. (Why? Cause I find it of interest to know where people come from.)

It's not me you have to be afraid of however. For quite some time, some folks, up to know good, have been collecting bits of information from you, in the hopes of finding information they could covert to cash -- the criminal elements of the internet. If you live in a country where there is no freedom, your surfing habits could land you in a great deal of trouble. Increasingly, this is becoming the case here in North America, where governments want to know if you've been taking too keen an interest for instance, in Islam and bomb making.

If you're therefore motivated to keep your surfing habits to yourself, the article makes for a good read. If you're not so sure, surf over to BrowserSpy and see just what you're exposing when you click on an innocent looking link.

Viacom Sues Google

The first salvo has been fired. Viacom has sued Google over YouTube's turning a blind eye to users uploading copyrighted content belonging to Viacom. Viacom's properties include MTV, VH1 and Comedy Central -- yes, so much for those Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert clips. In a statement, Viacom claims that YouTube was "destroying enormous value" in allowing Viacom's content to be available freely on the site. And there you have it -- the problem with this lawsuit -- that YouTube is destroying value belonging to the content owners. YouTube has about 70 million users and even more viewers. Their reach is enormous. You want to become a hit, get your video on YouTube and you stand a good chance. I seriously doubt that Stewart and Colbert would have built such a fanbase, if it wasn't for online sharing of their video clips. Even Microsoft is admitting that piracy does have its merits -- it gets to people who may not otherwise consume your creation, and once you reach them, if your content is valued, you will convert them to customers. Even if they don't buy, your brand is strengthened. So what's with Viacom?

Viacom is looking for $1B from Google, and for them to filter all Viacom content from YouTube. What short term thinking.

20 Must-Have Firefox Extensions

If you use the Firefox browser, you know what a great browser it is already, and some of the advantages it brings over the competition from Redmond. If you use the browser, you may already be aware and using, some of the nifty, cool and useful extensions that are freely available. There are many lists out there with the "best of" extensions, but couldn't we always use another? Here's ComputerWorld's take on the 20 must-have extensions. You may already be using a few.