Command Line

This is news cast 140.

Security alerts this week are a security flaw turns Gmail into an open relay and Google launches a security group to help with open source software.

In this week’s news, consider how a suit against Psystar might affect the legality of EULAs, the copyright claims in the Blizzard v. Glider case, a procedural gaffe could impact thousands of patent rulings, and correct chip defects after they have been manufactured.

Following up this week, the PRO-IP bill passes the house and the RIAA claims DRM is not dead though most of us remain skeptical.

Download the show directly. Grab the detailed show notes with time offsets and additional links either as PDF or OPML.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

• Fourth filing in malicious lawsuit claim against RIAA
• Skype back in court over GPL
• Skype gives up on appeal

• 1.4GB of personal data recovered from botnet server
• Trojan code in Firefox language pack
• Adobe update closes 8 security holes

• Complainant apologizes for incorrect video codec takedown
  The details reported in the article are clear and concise as is the conclusion. The DMCA is too easily misunderstand and inadvertently abused even in a clearly legal situation such as this one.
• Patent reform bill stalled in Senate
  The bill would have reformed damages and review after a patent is granted. Its slow progress and stalling is probably a result of lobbying pressure, despite bipartisan support.
• Using a skeletal RFID Oyster card in the wild
  This is a fun looking hack and I am tempted to get some acetone and try it with the Metrotrip card used here in DC.
• New, free album from NIN
  It is both free as in beer and free as in CC licensed. I’ve listened to it a few times and its a bit of a departure from previous albums. A physical package will be available in July.
• Thousands of indies form into virtual fifth major label
  This is a negotiating move, to give indies, who produce a huge fraction of overall music for sale, equal footing when dealing with existing and new online services.
• Google accuses Verizon of dodging open access requirements
  Google’s objection is to Verizon’s previous positioning. Two options, one truly open and the other just like today, claiming this is a consumer choice issue though they will no doubt market the options preferentially. Google is threatening suit over it.
• Verizon promises to abide by open access
  Verizon is making lip service to open rules, but they have done so in the past. They believe their so-called two door plan is compatible though it clouds the choice of open devices to the consumer.
• Profiles of young criminal hackers
  Criminal and perhaps more than a bit foolish. The article sets them up as object lessons of what not to do as all have been caught and are serving or have served time for it.
• Researchers use Akamai to find local BitTorrent peers
  Northwestern University researchers share a technique similar to P4P that doesn’t require ISP involvement. Piggy backs on similar information from commercial caching systems, makes consumers more independent. Also, unlike Pando, their demo is a simple plugin to popular client, Azureus.
• MySQL to remain open source
  Community VP claims plans for closing sources were made pre-Sun, when MySQL AB was considering IPO. Explains doing so now makes less sense with Sun emphasizing other open efforts.
• Senator warns ISPs he will push for net neutrality
  Oregon Democrat Wyden is threatening revocation of tax and safe harbor protections. His rhetoric claims the monopolistic behaviors of ISPs are poor return for the past investments by Congress of these protections.
• Comcast considering metered access, new caps
  Following Time Warner’s example except they are considering lower caps and higher penalties. The idea is at odds with fostering online innovation, potentially hobbling data rich applications but at least the company is being up front about the plans they are considering. They have not done so in the past.
• MS successfully wooed NBC by adding a copyright cop to Zune
  All this may have been is a request from NBC, since Microsoft is now denying. Regardless, it is going to do very little help either in actually succeeding with their digital video offerings.
• Public Knowledge on Zune, NBC
  Clarifies that this is not DRM but filtering and as such as consistent with Universal’s stance in the past. This overlooks how ineffective filters really are. And the author notes Microsoft’s denial specifically mentioned devices, not software.
• NSL case settled in favor of Internet Archive
  At stake are both the constitutionality of the NSL, which have already been called into question despite their continued use and the status of the Internet Archive as a library. This small victory may not affect the answer to either of those questions.
• Java typing to get perhaps too strong
  Hard to argue, the JSR in question clearly would erode readability of the language, considerably. Other specious JSRs have been re-tooled or dropped, though, so hope remains.
• A language specification for Python, in Python for low level implementers
  Seems to be motivated by performance and perhaps even some re-tooling to make implementing and supporting the interpreter more manageable. Would be curious to hear or read what the Python community at large thinks. Or would this be mostly transparent?
• New net neutrality bill
  As much as I value neutrality, I am always hesitant about a legislative answer. Especially one that of necessity will end up being vague and hence just as ripe for abuse as lack of protections.
• New label shows the way to success
  A good piece with some positive lessons other labels should be paying close attention to. I especially like the resonance with some of Kelly’s 1K True Fans model.
• 25 year old BSD bug
  Turns out a bug in BSD versions of Samba was not a bug in Samba at all but one in all BSD variants, including OS X.

This is a feature cast.

The hacker word of the week this week is de-rezz.

Listener feedback is an email from Christopher.

The feature is a new Hacking 101 exploring the concept of complexity.

Download the show directly. Grab the detailed show notes with time offsets and additional links either as PDF or OPML.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

This is news cast 139.

In the intro a quick recap of our Free Comic Day and review of the movie, Iron Man.

Security alerts this week are EULAs for malware and the security risks of social network applications.

In this week’s news, Linux file system developer Hans Reiser is convicted of murder, implementing the Java and Ruby VMs in JavaScript, tracking down hidden kill switches in ICs, and the missing link in electronic circuitry.

Following up this week, a favorable ruling in the Howell file sharing case with Patry’s commentary and Radiohead is not going to repeat their download experiment.

Download the show directly. Grab the detailed show notes with time offsets and additional links either as PDF or OPML.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

• Canadian copyright bill likely soon
• Judge approves NJ e-voting review

• Microsoft downplaying DNS vulnerability
• Should white hats remove Kraken after securing machines?

• Holographic storage finally coming to market
  Bell Labs spin off InPhase has been promising this storage solution for some time, may be longer yet until it is available. However, this is not research, but close to market. Pricey but promises potential long term storage better than other optical or magnetic media.
• FTC to hold companies liable for selling to criminals
  This is for offline companies and tracks a trend of erosion of safe harbors for online service providers. The impulse is understandable but may stifle business development due to the added cost, liability.
• Research on effect of VR self image on real self image
  Lab at Stanford looking at the nature of virtual and online interactions. Studies mentioned remind me of active visualization but perhaps much more credible.
• Programmers don’t read
  I agree with the criticism of programming books and the industry responsible. I for one, though, prefer to read as part of my learning process. This is also a long way to go just to recommend a reading list.
• Hospitals concerned at disruption from white space devices
  Not sure how this is noteworthy for any two or more applications using unregulated spectrum. The fact that medial systems are involved increases the costs, but the article notes they had a protected channel legislated, this would be an opportunity to utilize it.
• Parallel programming language, CUDA
  Language developed by Nvidia for its GPUs which are very parallel. Being used on that hardware for non-graphics applications. Seems to be adding positively to the academic discussion and Nvidia seems willing to share, support others in implementing.
• Stanford secures funding for many core research
  This seems to be a competing yet complementary effort to the one at Berkeley. I can’t help but think such generous funding will help in arriving at feasible, approachable solutions.
• Pro-IP Act passes the House judiciary committee
  Not surprising since the author is on the committee. The increased damages have been stripped but the seizure aspects and pulling in of the DoJ for enforcement remain.
• HOWTO protect your laptop’s data when traveling
  Some food for though around why drive encryption may not be as good as common wisdom suggests. Not having sensitive data on portables may be better, relying on secure VPNs to store and fetch from business site may be a better compromise.
• Lifelock proves too good to be true
  Service turns out to be now better than what is already available from credit agencies. CEO’s own data has been compromised, massively, and apparently he is himself being investigated for fraud from a previous gig.
• Two level encryption keys
  The idea is the key incorporates effective policy as well as just crypto parameters. The research is very new so it is unclear how to implement it. The potential benefits are pretty obvious in granting differential access instead of all or none to encrypted data.
• New OLPC president
  New prez, Charles Kane, seems more concerned with improving sales, adoption than philosophical questions of open versus proprietary software. His attitude may realize fears of exiting chief, Bender, of OLPC becoming just another laptop vendor as opposed to a force for social change.
• Author takes Rowling to task over Lexicon case
  Many have criticized Rowling, now including Card, and few, if any, have defended. Given Card’s thoughts, I am more inclined to consider the Lexicon fair use, agreeing with his characterization as “scholarly comment” and that the author isn’t claiming it to be a wholly original work of any kind.

In sending a link to a friend, trying to help answer a question I answered on my podcast last year, I’ve realized anything older than the last 30 episodes is a broken link from the episodes referenced on this site. I am not sure what I am going to do to fix this as we are talking about hundreds of MB of audio, if not several GB. My permanent hosting solution, libsyn, won’t work as I am limited to how much data I can post there a month. I also don’t have the already converted MP3 files, so if these files are completely lost, not available on a backup somewhere from the server where they were originally hosted, we are talking about many, many man hours to re-produce those files from the original GarageBand sources. Maybe if I am able to automate the conversions with a bit of AppleScript, we’re still probably talking a significant investment.

I am checking on what happened to those files, just to confirm, so stay tuned as I figure out what to do.

Several of the other podcasters recorded bits and pieces at Ravencon. I really wished I had recorded my final panel as Stephen Euin Cobb did such a splendid job moderating and my fellow panelists shared some truly wonderful, personal stories about their own experiences over the years producing their respective shows.

Gail Martin recorded a bunch of video for her own vlog. She captured me on the third day of recording. Here are day 1 and day 2. If you haven’t been to a convention, I think she does a superb job of capturing the feel, really getting a cross section of the different guests you can see, meet and hear.

I also did a short interview with Stephen Euin Cobb for his show, as I mentioned on my last podcast. He sent me the permalink to the episode that contains that interview. We discussed the state and progress of activism on IP reform and other topics near and dear to me. Stephen is as good an interviewer as a moderator and I very much enjoyed this interview.

This is a feature cast.

In case you missed it, a reminder to check your feed for the special edition to commemorate the launch of Cory Doctorow’s latest novel, Little Brother. Also, here’s my interview for the Future and You which was recorded this past weekend at RavenCon.

The hacker word of the week this week is dd.

Listener feedback is a voice mail from C.A. Sizemore commenting on the Social Spaces 2 feature.

The feature is a monologue considering the effects of coding on thought.

Download the show directly. Grab the detailed show notes with time offsets and additional links either as PDF or OPML.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

I am pleased to be able to help promote the launch of Cory Doctorow’s latest book, Little Brother. I was privileged to be able to read an early draft of this book and cannot recommend it highly enough to my listeners. So much so that I am taking Cory up on his offer to share an excerpt from my own purchased copy of the audiobook with his permission.

I encourage you to pick up your own copy, in your favorite format, right away. You can find details on the launch at Cory’s site and you can buy the book in audio or dead tree formats. The link to the free electronic text is not up yet, I will post an update as soon as it is.

Download the excerpt with my comments and Cory’s license terms for anyone else who purchases the audio directly.

Kevin Kelly has some substantiation and additional thought to address questions in the wake of his 1000 True Fans essay. The bulk of it is actually a response that Kelly solicited from Robert Rich. He describes Rich thusly:

Rich was an early pioneer in ambient music, and a force in the Bay Area new age music scene in the early 1980s. He’s prolific, issuing about 40 albums in the past 20 years, many in collaboration with other ambient musicians.

I had the great fortune of meeting Benjamin Mako Hill at Penguicon 6.0. We exchanged cards but didn’t get a chance to speak. His Laptop Liberation presentation was good and re-inforced a lot of the philosophy of the project that I had initially learned at the plenary session on OLPC at last year’s Shmoocon. I didn’t get a chance to ask about the departure of Ivan Krstić who was part of that plenary session or about their content chief also resigning.

There was another OLPC event at which Mako showed up, what the program formally called a roundtable but was conducted more like a birds of a feather session. Some of the other attendees asked the questions I had in mind about the departures and restructuring as well as some of the rumors and issues around Windows support on the XO1.

Mako characterized the changes as a consequence of now having thousands of laptops effectively in production. This has forced a shift in focus to maintenance and other production concerns. He feels that this requires more of a focus on product and project management. This echoes some of the sentiments that Negroponte himself has voiced. Mako went further to suggest that the more innovative personalities key to the project’s early development are at odds with this change in focus. He stressed this was not a personal judgement, just an observation of what the organization now needs and how the two skill sets are largely non-overlapping.

Make also commented on the question of supporting Windows. He cited the driver here being possibly custom education software. There is apparently a fair amount of such code out there and it is unrealistic to expect schools to port it to Linux, in fact asking them to do so would be a pretty distinct barrier to getting OLPC’s laptops into many school systems. This also resonates with some of Negroponte’s own thoughts about making Sugar more operating system agnostic. He ceded that the hefty requirements of running Windows were a challenge but could not comment on much else on the technical issues involved as it is outside of his work with the project and his areas of expertise.

He also emphasized a point I first heard Krstić make in response to a similar session put to that plenary session. OLPC is about child ownership and user freedom. As counter intuitive as it may sound this leads to a position where if the laptop owner needs or wants to run a closed operating system it is not the project’s place to prevent that. In fact such lock in would actually be reducing the freedom the owner would be able to express. It may be a bit of a slipper slope, though, as this doesn’t necessarily suggest that OLPC will expend a great deal of its own resources supporting closed software, just that they will not get in the way.

In response to some of the dire predictions made in the wake of the recent departures.

[It] is in transition [continuing from his earlier remarks on the re-organization]. OLPC is actually hiring aggressively.

Mako was repeatedly positive about the project and its supporting foundation. The extent of his concern seemed to be making that transition into production sooner than they were perhaps ready for. He suggested this is likely an unanticipated consequence of the give one, get one program. In addition to some legitimate issues with the laptop itself, the nature of the charitable participants in this program has taken the XO1 into places where the project wasn’t focusing originally like corporate networks and small offices/home offices. They’ve been working to separate out issues unique to those environments as opposed to what is strictly needed by educational systems, for example WPA support and direct printing capabilities.

I have been of the recent opinion that succeed or fail, OLPC has succeeded in challenging technology manufactures to rethink some things. As Mako pointed out in his main presentation, technology is entering the developing world no matter what. The problem is that without a system like the OLPC’s laptop, that technology is mostly closed, like cell phones and portable media devices. Questions of sustainability are unaltered by adding the XO1 however its presence gives these nations a chance to control and program the rest of the cheap technology with which they are being inundated and that has got to be worth the effort alone.