Archive Page 2
RIAA Violates Internet Standards
Two weeks ago, the RIAA sent out another batch of 407 pre-litigation letters to students of 18 universities asking them to pay at least $3,000 for illegal file sharing.
The text of the pre-litigation letters has instructions on not spoiling evidence:
Now that you are aware that a lawsuit may be filed against you, there is an obligation for you to preserve evidence that relates to the claims against you. In this case, that means, at a minimum, the entire library of recordings that you have made available for distribution as well as any recordings you have downloaded, need to be maintained as evidence. Further, you should not attempt to delete the peer-to-peer programs from your system – though you must stop them from operating. For information on how to do this, you may visit www.musicunited.org.
The problem is that you go to the musicunited.org site and have to figure out where to go for the information. I dug around until I found that the information they were probably referring to was the Take It Off link which has their own instructions on how to turn off file-sharing in KaZaA. It also has:
Go to the University of Chicago’s Network Security group’s web page to see how to disable file sharing in other programs.
Unfortunately, that link on the Music United page is dead; University of Chicago’s comprehensive listing of instructions on how to disable file-sharing has moved to another page. I found it by doing a search for “disable file-sharing” on the University of Chicago site, something the RIAA shouldn’t expect everyone to do. The RIAA also advises ISPs/Universities to refer their users to the Music United site in their DMCA Complaints about copyright infringement.
With multiple websites devoted to certain topics, I was looking for something like the croissanga plug-in that would automatically link to posts from other locations in one place. Tumblr has that capability, however, doesn’t have comments nor the flexibility of a self-hosted site.
I found a great Wordpress plug-in called FeedWordPress that allows you to import other RSS feed items as posts into Wordpress. It even has the option to turn comments off so that comments can accumulate in their original location. However, I found that my theme was displaying “Comments Off” for that setting so I modified the index.php so that it would be more descriptive to visitors (43 is the category ID for my posts imported via FeedWordPress):
I also appended the blog title to the post titles (in feedwordpress.php): And imported excerpts instead of the full content with a link to read the original (in feedwordpress.php): There’s probably a more elegant way to do this especially hooking it into the plug-in for the first edit.
<?php if (!in_category('43')) {
comments_popup_link('No Comments Yet»', '1 Comment', '% Comments »');
}
else { ?>
<a target="_blank" href="<?php the_permalink() ?>#comments">Comments Located Elsewhere»
<?php } ?>
$this->post['post_title'] = $this->item['title'].’ @ ‘.$this->feed->channel['title'];
$this->post['post_content'] = strip_tags($excerpt).’<br><a target=”_blank” href=”‘.$this->item['link'].’”
>[Read original →]</a>’;
I tried to start up Final Cut Express on my Macbook and was greeted with an error message:
Configuration Error: This software requires certain hardware or software which is missing.
* Quartz Extreme Support
Macbook, why you gotta lie like that?
It was probably because of a recent software update. I had this error before and convinced Final Cut Express that I really did have Quartz Extreme Support; System Preferences was reporting that I did not have Quartz Extreme support even though the Intel GMA 950 that comes with the Macbook supports it.
Last time, I think I replaced instances of “AGP” to “PCI” in FCE’s info.plist, but this time there was nothing of the sort to replace.
I ended up deleting the line in FCE’s info.plist that checks for Quartz Extreme:
<key>AELMinimumQuartzExtremeCapable</key>
<string></string>
This worked, however, when I tried to put the line back to reproduce the error, I couldn’t. Maybe my Macbook has learned to stop lying about it.
Or maybe changing the permissions on the AppleIntelGMA950.kext file would’ve fixed it. I’m hoping it won’t come up again.
Invasion of Facebook Wall Spam
I got a message on my Facebook wall today. It read (links replaced):
what up Jen?get the entrie billboard top100 for your cell from [RINGTONE SITE]
i think that Bre is the owner and cool as hell
Slightly confused, I did some digging around and it looks like it was wall spam. Lovely. Another example from what appears to be the same strain:
Hey [YOUR NAME],arnt you related to [RANDOM NAME]?
well tell [him|her] thanks for referring me to [RINGTONE SITE] they really did have that tone i wanted [SONG NAME]
And:
hi [YOUR NAME],just figured i’d drop you a note and say hi
also if you want some kickass ringtones check out [RINGTONE SITE]
The site links vary and people have replied on the person’s wall saying things like, “thanks for the ringtone”, “don’t know that person”, “not related to her”. I wonder if this is happening thanks to Facebook Beacon and if there are any other negative effects.
I guess that means that Facebook has gotten so popular that it can’t even prevent wall spam. Facebook has been all about keeping spam away; I had previously got my account temporarily disabled from sending varied personal messages to too many non-friends about my high school reunion (I was on the reunion committee).
I still refuse to install the fluffy FunWall and SuperWall application; the basic Wall is fine as it is (maybe not anymore), but unfortunately, Facebook won’t even let me move the Wall to the extended profile.
UPDATE 01.21.2008: I reported the spam to Facebook and they wrote me back: “These users had entered their login information on a fake page that looked like our standard login page. The situation has been controlled…”
MacBook Air: Form vs. Function
I attended MacWorld and held the MacBook Air in my hands and I have to admit that it is one fine piece of engineering. I initially thought that there was a lot more material under the laptop hidden by the curved edges a la their previous version of the iPod Nano, but it really is remarkably small. Just like a folder. Their marketing campaign with the manila department envelope is just brilliant!
However, I don’t think it’s practical. It doesn’t have built-in Ethernet, has only one USB port (Apple used to be all about the Firewire), and a headphone jack. I can think of multiple situations when I would need more than one USB port.
A full backup on Firewire takes a long time and isn’t even worth a try over the network (which will hog the existing on USB port). If you’re backing up your data, you wouldn’t be able to do something like load photos from a media card reader without a USB hub (data throughput crawling). And with the integrated battery (replaceable at any Apple store for $120), it’s going to be more difficult to troubleshoot power issues.
The MacBook Air is fine as a second computer, but not as a primary one. In my mind, it’s like buying electronics from places like Bang & Olufsen; it’s more about the form, than about the function at a higher cost premium. But perhaps that’s why I’m not their target customer; I’d rather buy a cordless phone from Costco than from them.
I’m curious to see what the second generation will bring though. I’m hoping they’ll bring Firewire back.
It had been awhile since I played with handwriting recognition. I remember the Newton and when I had to learn the special alphabet for the Palm III, my first PDA. I tried out my colleague’s Lenovo X61 tablet PC and was very impressed; I purposely wrote messy words, yet it still recognized my handwriting perfectly.
Handwriting recognition has come a long way and has become more intuitive. Maybe, I would’ve enjoyed taking notes in college a little more. At the very least, I certainly wouldn’t have all my note papers from college sitting in boxes taking up space in my storage closet.
Before:
After:
Caught In The Battle
Originally written on May 24, 2007.
Internet2 (aka I2), a high speed research network with over 200 universities, can also be used for transferring non-research related data like music or movie files.
In April 2005, when I heard that the RIAA was going after people on Internet2, I remember asking my colleague, “How the hell did they get into I2?” It’s still fishy how they were able to discover illegal file-sharing on these networks since they technically weren’t allowed into this private network and didn’t join the I2 consortium until September 2005.
I went to a virtual seminar Stuck in the Middle with You: A Survival Guide for Campuses Caught in the File-Sharing Wars provided by the National Association of College and University Attorneys in collaboration with Educause. I found the seminar very informative which was done over a conference phone and a laptop with Webex. The Webex set up was pretty neat and allowed people to submit questions verbally and also written questions through the laptop which were both answered verbally.
Why I Prefer Crack Over Apples
I was trying to decide on a new smartphone, especially since the phone I thought I saved was on its last legs. I spent a lot of time researching smartphones and ended up with the top two contenders - BlackBerry vs. iPhone.
In the end, I decided on the BlackBerry and have been happy with it for almost two months now. The iPhone is a nice multimedia device, but I really wanted the BlackBerry for productivity. Plus based on my testing on data entry, I could not get used to the screen keyboard and hoping that the software would correct the inevitable typos (why can’t you switch the keyboard into landscape mode in Notes or the Address Book like you can in Safari?); I still like the tactile BlackBerry buttons.
The Internet Abroad
I’m currently in Hong Kong staying with my cousin. When she visited the United States earlier this year, she mentioned that although she had broadband in her flat in Hong Kong, she hadn’t set up wireless yet. So one of the things I did in the first 24 hours of arriving in Hong Kong was head to the Mongkok Computer Centre (8 Nelson St., Kowloon, Hong Kong), the computer shop mecca, looking for a wireless router.
I whipped out my Cantonese for some price shopping with the seemingly endless shops spanning three floors. A good number of the shops didn’t carry Netgear, but most carried Linksys and my least favorite D-Link as well as some apparently local brands. I ended up with a Netgear Wireless Router (WGR614) from Jumbo Computer paying 3% more with my credit card because it wasn’t worth the $1 USD for the extra trip to the ATM for more Hong Kong Dollars. It was 258 HKD (about $33 USD), surprisingly still cheaper than Amazon.com which hasn’t been true based on my price shopping of Micro SD cards and DSLR camera lenses.
Although I have been able to troubleshoot computers in foreign languages (namely Windows) based on familiarity with the English versions, I was relieved to see that the box was in English (error messages and technical terms seem to translate differently). This was consistent with the usage of English in the easy setup process which was simple thanks to the setup wizard.
That was a few days ago.
As I sat down to get some work done tonight, I had a hunch that there would be a issue, but headed over to pandora.com anyway for some background music. I was greeted with this apologetic message:
At least I can get Alice @ 97.3 via iTunes Radio. I’m surprised no one who cares knows about that yet.
Work-Life Balance with Roomba
At the Grace Hopper Conference I attended last month, I went to the “Entrepreneurship: The Fundamentals (and Fun) of Idea Generation” breakout session with Denise Brosseau, President & Co-Founder, Invent Your Future Enterprises, a long-time business coach and serial entrepreneur. We went through a few of her exercises aimed to get us thinking about “mov[ing] from the seed of an idea to a real, revenue-generating business”.
One of the exercises was to take the computer and improve it in a pie in the sky kind of way; we decided on a Robot (we only had about 10 minutes). My subgroup took two categories and brainstormed:
Trend: How can we ride an existing trend to sell more of the product?
Futurize: How will the product look 100 years from now
The two popular trends we identified were eco-friendliness (”green”) and work-life balance. Focusing on the work-life balance angle, a robot built into the home that would cook and clean and do other house chores seemed like a possible idea. In my mind, the Roomba could be considered an early version.
So after careful consideration off and on for the last few years, I finally took the plunge and bought one from Costco ($279.99). As the fifth generation version, it even has a voice demonstration system with cute beeps:
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