January 31, 2007
Fake iPod Nano ::
tech — tagged fake, flickr, iPod, photos and tech
12:47 pm
Fake iPod Nano
Originally uploaded by Small Dog Electronics.
Did you know these existed? I didn’t.
Noted by Small Dog Electronics.
September 15, 2006
Google + TOR = fun new searches! ::
tech — tagged anonymous, google, tech, TOR, totally stumped and weird
10:19 am
Google when using TOR
Originally uploaded by gjs.
Yes, fun new searches that don’t make any sense, unless you understand German, Italian or French. There are work-arounds, of course, but the whole world of Web anonymization does take some getting used to. Here’s my favorite passage from the Wiki FAQ:
If you really want to see Google in English you can click the link [on the search results page] that provides that. But we consider this a feature with Tor, not a bug—the Internet is not flat, and it in fact does look different depending on where you are. This feature reminds people of this fact.
So there.
February 7, 2006
Gmail/Gtalk come together in my email ::
personal, tech — No Tags
10:27 pm
Gmail chat feature
Originally uploaded by gjs.
I guess it was only a matter of time before we saw an explicit connection between Gmail and Gtalk, though I would have figured it would have come in the form of being able to check (and maybe even send?) email by interacting with some chat bot. Anyway, there it is. If you click the picture, you can catch a glimpse of the type of communication Jessamyn and I engage in over chat (yes, we use chat even when we’re in the same room). It’s a pretty funny conversation, if only to us right at this moment.
January 30, 2006
What, exactly, is going on in Washington anyway? ::
weird, politics, tech — No Tags
9:52 pm
By way of MetaFilter (Jessamyn’s comment) comes this excellent Wikipedia RFC on whether IP addresses from the United States Congress should be banned for violating a whole host of site policies. Apparently, the whole conflict arose out of one Representative changing Wikipedia’s version of his biography to one officially sanction by his office. As is the general rule at Wikipedia, such a change is not acceptable, so the Wikipedia staff changed the biography back. A reversion war ensued. Details are a little fuzzy after that (for me anyway) but it sounds like the activity spread to other members of Congress shortly afterward. And according to the RFC,
The editors from these IP ranges are rude and abrasive, immature, and show no understanding of Wikipedia policy. The editors also frequently try to whitewash the actions of certain politicians. They treat Wikipedia articles about politicians as though they own the articles, replacing community articles with their own sanctioned biographies and engaging in revert wars when other users dispute this sudden change. They also violate Wikipedia:Verifiability, by deleting verified reports, while adding flattering things about members of Congress that are unverified.
More MetaFilter discussion on this second thread.
January 26, 2006
Shared iTunes ::
personal, tech — No Tags
10:22 am
Shared iTunes
Originally uploaded by gjs.
One interesting thing that’s happened since I started VLS two and a half years ago is that the number of Mac (and, by association, iTunes) users on campus has grown substantially. As a result of that growth, when I bring my computer on campus, I see a growing list of people sharing their music libraries. That’s kind of cool.
But I bring this up because I was trying to figure out (a) whether anyone is listening to my music, and (b) what they’re listening to. The preferences pane in iTunes will give me the number of users connected, but that doesn’t answer question (b). So, before today I was running a simple command: lsof | grep mp3, which told me which mp3 files were open (and yes, if you encode in AAC format, you can do a search for m4p, etc.). In my search for more information, I did a quick search for “iTunes who’s connected” on Google, and found a command that will provide even more information. It looked nice at first, but upon giving it a try it spit back information that was of little help.
Preliminary results show that Talking Heads (I forgot I even had them on my hard drive!) and The Wrens are pretty popular today.
January 19, 2006
Google and the Justice Department ::
weird, tech, legal — No Tags
5:18 pm
There’s also some interesting reports of the Justice Department’s subpeonaing Google’s search records in its effort to study online porn. The FT article is pretty spare and I haven’t had a chance to read the Government’s supporting motion (PDF), so I’m not clear on what, if anything, the search records are going to provide the government. Google’s general counsel is doing a good job of protecting its client, though:
“Google is not a party to this lawsuit and their demand for information overreaches,” Nicole Wong, Google’s associate general counsel, said in a statement. “We had lengthy discussions with them to try to resolve this, but were not able to and we intend to resist their motion vigorously.”
The Mercury News also has this report, found by way of How Appealing.
July 14, 2005
Dashboard widgets broken in OS X 10.4.2 ::
tech — tagged dashboard, os x, tech, totally stumped and widgets
10:18 am
Hey, has anyone out there upgraded to OS X 10.4.2 and found their dashboard widgets are broken after the upgrade? Symptoms are: when I go into the Dashboard, the screen is empty, and when I try to drag a widget to the dashboard the widget disappears immediately. Clicking on the “manage widgets” button gets no response.
Send email to gregATpageswithin.com with your suggestions. Thanks.
Update: based on the comments in this discussion thread, I moved all the widgets in the /Library/Widgets/ directory to my ~/Library/Widgets/ directory. This solved the problem—now all the widgets appear to be working properly. However, the solution is not ideal, since my account is now the only one with access to the default widgets included with Tiger. If I come up with a more comprehensive solution to the problem, I will certainly post it here.
June 28, 2005
Breyer saves Grokster? ::
supreme court, tech, legal — No Tags
2:56 pm
Yesterday I mentioned that the Court didn’t give the content producers in Grokster what they really wanted, which was an overturning of Sony/Betamax. But as I suggested in that previous post, the unanimous opinion addressed Sony only to make clear that the Ninth Circuit misinterpreted the rule it established.
Reading that section of the unanimous opinion in conjuction with Justice Breyer’s concurrence paints a slightly different picture. Section II of his opinion, Justice Breyer, joined Justices O’Connor and Stevens, make clear “Sony’s rule, as I interpret it, has provided entrepreneurs with needed assurance that they will be shielded from copyright liability as they bring valuable new technologies to market.” He then goes on to make clear why that standard was integral to the advancement of technology since it was decided in 1984.
Justice Breyer’s concurrence reminds me why I like his thinking so much. More thank any other Justice, he understands that our propsperity (by which I mean not just the opportunity to get rich) has depended on the freedom of technological development. And he was true to form in this opinion.
More Grokster ::
supreme court, tech, legal — No Tags
2:39 pm
I thought it might be worthwhile to collect some of the more interesting discussions of the Grokster decisions and post them here. First, from Legal Fiction comes a theory about what the content producers really wanted to see from that case:
The issue in Grokster was defining the proper test for secondary liability for copyright infringement. ...But given the technology of P2P file-sharing, it’s almost impossible to devise a test of secondary liability that reaches Grokster, but doesn’t simultaneously reach software and hardware producers. For instance, let’s say that the Court established secondary liability for the sale of any product known to be used for copyright infringement. Under this test, liability would extend not only to Grokster, but to Microsoft for its Windows software, to Apple for its iPod, and to Dell and the PC industry.
Fair enough. Since the big powers of the tech industry are the ones with all the money, they’re the ones the content producers are going to want to target in civil litigation. But still, I think this opinion creates enough potential fear in small software developers that it will most likely result in certain chilling effect on future software development, if only temprorarily. After all, a small company that has no money must abide by a court’s injuction just as much as an established corporation with loads of cash. From my point of view, this is particularly worrisome, since the best technological innovations have almost invariably come from the small, independent entities who lack capital, a decision that actually discourages such action—or at least establishes a requirement that will cause them to really think about the type of software they’re developing. I think the Court had all of that in mind when it established such a fact-intensive test to determine whether a company is engaged in secondary liability for copyright infringement.
But LF goes on to note:
My fear with Grokster is that it gives the record companies just enough to drag Microsoft into court and get discovery, even if it’s not enough to establish its liability. Souter’s test is a fact-intensive one. Accordingly, even if Microsoft would never be found liable, I suspect that well-paid record industry attorneys could get the case to the discovery stage – in large part because the standard turns so heavily on the facts and subjective intent – which of course, as any record industry attorney would tell you, requires reading tons and tons of internal Microsoft emails.
I don’t share that fear. As far as I’m concerned, one group of thuggish bullies (the MPAA and its attorneys) deserve another (Microsoft).
I have at least one more post on this issue in me today, I think, so stay tuned.
June 27, 2005
Grokster Fallout ::
supreme court, tech, legal — No Tags
11:58 am
PDF of the Grokster opinion, hosted on this site.
OK, so I haven’t scrutinized the opinion yet, but it looks like the Supreme Court’s Grokster decision is bad news for filesharing. But one point of optimism is in order: the Court declined to overrule Sony/Betamax. In the opinion’s main reference to that case, the Court only noted that the Ninth Circuit’s interpretation of the theory of secondary liability. Justice Souter notes only that the Ninth Circuit was mistaken in its interpretation, because it
[converted] the case from one about liability resting on imputed intent to one about liability on any theory. Because Sony did not displace other theories of secondary liability, and because we find below that it was error to grant summary judgment to the companies on MGM’s inducement claim, we do not revisit Sony further, as MGM requests, to add a more quantified description of the point of balance between protection and commerce when liability rests solely on distribution with knowledge that unlawful use will occur. It is enough to note that the Ninth Circuit’s judgment rested on an erroneous understanding of Sony and to leave further consideration of the Sony rule for a day when that may be required.
Phew!
I’m sure in the coming days there were be heavy discussion in the tech law community on the Grokster case. And for those of us who are concerned with overly-expansive copyright law, I think we’ll be discussing what, exactly, this opinion didn’t say.
May 24, 2005
Lessig Gets Introspective ::
tech, legal — No Tags
5:38 pm
This post will most likely betray how far behind I am in following what’s been happening on the Web. But Lawrence Lessig has an interesting analysis of a talk he gave in Norway recently. What’s so interesting, you might ask? The talk was was a flop. Besides not connecting with his audience, I think he summed up the substantive problem he was having quite well:
But the danger of the culture of [Creative Rights] economies is the inability to see the limits to their own approach. Like the extremist from an [Exclusive Rights] economy, and an extremist from the [Free of Exclusive Rights] economy, the extremist from the [Creative Rights] economy sees what they’ve done as good, and assume more of a good thing is better.
It’s really an interesting discussion. Also, worth reading even if you’re not interested in tech law, because I think he does a good job of dealing with failure. To paraphrase my fortune cookie from lunch the other day: failure gives you the opportunity to start again with knowledge of what doesn’t work.
