A creative new advertising campaign from journalist advocacy organization Reporters Without Borders (RSF), aimed at various regimes hostile to press freedom, including China. Click for larger size to see the detail that makes this such a compelling design. (thanks, Oxblood!)

Over at the Wired defense technology blog "Danger Room," Noah Shachtman writes:

The Air Force wants a suite of hacker tools, to give it "access" to -- and "full control" of -- any kind of computer there is. And once the info warriors are in, the Air Force wants them to keep tabs on their "adversaries' information infrastructure completely undetected."

The government is growing increasingly interested in waging war online. The Air Force recently put together a "Cyberspace Command," with a charter to rule networks the way its fighter jets rule the skies. The Department of Homeland Security, Darpa, and other agencies are teaming up for a five-year, $30 billion "national cybersecurity iniative." That includes an electronic test range, where federally-funded hackers can test out the latest electronic attacks. "You used to need an army to wage a war," a recent Air Force commercial notes. "Now, all you need is an Internet connection."

On Monday, the Air Force Research Laboratory introduced a two-year, $11 million effort to put together hardware and software tools for "Dominant Cyber Offensive Engagement." "Of interest are any and all techniques to enable user and/or root level access," a request for proposals notes, "to both fixed (PC) or mobile computing platforms...

Link to full post.

If you haven't followed the "MP3 blogging" scene, it's grown quite big over the past few years, to the point that most folks (including the record labels) have effectively turned a blind eye to the copyright questions it raises (for once, this is a good thing). In many cases, record labels even treat some of the best music bloggers similar to the way they've always treated radio DJs -- sending them promo CDs and trying to get "air time." Most music bloggers don't ask for permission before blogging songs (some have policies saying they'll take down a song if any musician complains). However, over on an NPR blog, one of the bloggers has been putting together "mixes" of music on the blog, and being quite careful to ask for permission before any song is included. As BoingBoing points out, when the blogger, Carrie Brownstein, asked the Grateful Dead's label if she could use a Grateful Dead song, the response was a rather pompous demand that the band would require a piece done on the band on the radio show All Things Considered as well as a feature about the Grateful Dead on the NPR website. Just for using a song in a way that many would say was fair use (not to mention that it would be from a band that actively encouraged fans to tape and share its music broadly). If anything, it sounds like the record label overreaching in seeing an opportunity to get more press for a band that hardly needs any more. But, on the whole, it shows the sort of attitude that's becoming all too pervasive these days when people need to ask "permission" to help promote a song or a band.

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Stony Stevenson writes "IBM has announced an initiative to offer smaller versions of its high-performance computers to enterprise customers. The first new machine is a QS22 BladeCenter server powered by a Cell processor. Developed to power gaming systems, the Cell chip has also garnered interest from the supercomputing community owing to its ability to handle large amounts of floating point calculations. IBM hopes that the chips, which currently power climate modelling and other traditional supercomputing tasks, will also appeal to customers ranging from financial analysis firms to animation studios."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The cover story on the Boston Phoenix this week is a wicked, long feature on steampunk!

The 19th century ushered in the era of the amateur: a wild-eyed tinkerer in a lab had the capacity to stumble upon a discovery that just might alter society, a common theme paralleled in Victorian and Gothic fiction and, now, in Steampunk. “I find the optimism of Steampunk rather refreshing,” says Rich Nagy, a/k/a Datamancer, a popular Steampunk artisan originally based in New Jersey but now living in California who was represented at the Maker Contraptor’s Lounge. “Steampunk has a way of making technology, which is becoming more transparent and taken for granted every day, seem novel and fun again,” adds Nagy. That much is clear in his finely wrought pieces, like the “Computational Engine” computer casemod and his sophisticated “Steampunk Victorian Laptop,” a Hewlett-Packard ZT1000 laptop with a clockwork-under-glass display that, when it’s closed, looks like an ornate antique music box. It turns on with a clock-winding key. In effect, Steampunk is poised to bring the proletariat craftsman his 21st-century renaissance.

Though Steampunk’s artisanal outputs have stolen much of the mainstream limelight so far, there is a whole other creative side to the scene that has received little attention in comparison. Countless bands have formed, filing their music under the Steampunk genre or citing Victorian fantasy as a muse. One of them, Vernian Process, is the solo project of San Francisco–based Joshua Pfieffer. A true testament to the notion of the ambitious dabbler, Pfieffer has no musical training, and writes songs with the aid of basic audio-production software. “The atmosphere is actually more important to me than writing good hooks, or melodic structure,” he says of his music, which he makes free to download. “I feel that what I do represents the genre as I would like it to sound.”

Link (Thanks, Jake!)

John sez, "This is from Spokane County's official transportation blog. The county employee who runs the blog was taking pictures of a weigh station that is going to be moved. Ten minutes later he was contacted by the state patrol on his phone."

I was out taking pictures this morning of sites of transportation projects to be completed over the next twenty years. One of those projects is to move of the weigh station near Stateline further east along I-90. I stopped at the pretty much deserted weigh station and took a couple pictures, then drove off. About 10 minutes later I received a call on my cell phone from Washington State Patrol asking why I had been taking pictures of the weigh station!

Link (Thanks, John!)

See also:
BB reader: "Two FBI agents just showed up at my door for taking photos in the Port of Los Angeles"
Taking pictures on LA's Red Line violates the "9/11 Law"

Universal Music Group loves the idea of suing music fans for the full freight when it comes to copyright infringement, celebrating their ability to extract $150,000 per act of infringement with punitive damages on top -- but now that Universal's been slapped with one of these copyright suits (for sampling Hendrix without permission, something I think they should be able to do, FWIW), they've decided that these damages are "unconstitutionally excessive."

The case in question involves now-deceased rapper The Notorious B.I.G., whose album Ready to Die incorporated an unlicensed sample of "Singing in the Morning" from the Ohio Players after a Hendrix sample was denied clearance. The sample made its way onto the final album and even onto reissued albums. Bridgeport Music and Westbound Records, which control the rights to the song, sued. A district court ruled in their favor; Bridgeport took the $150,000 maximum in statutory damages, while Westbound sought compensatory and punitive damages. Westbound scored big, earning $366,939 from the jury along with punitive damages of a whopping $3.5 million.

In appealing the ruling, Universal argued that the punitive damages award was "grossly excessive and should be vacated or at least reduced." The reason? It's excessive. The brief quotes a Supreme Court ruling that said, "In practice, few awards exceeding a single-digit ratio between punitive and compensatory damages, to a significant degree, will satisfy due process." Universal pointed out that the award in question was "approximately 10 to 1, far above the line of unconstitutional impropriety."

Link

A new study points out the rather unsurprising fact that the number of "hyperconnected" individuals is growing. The definition of hyperconnected is anyone with seven or more connected devices and nine or more applications on those devices (though, it's not entirely clear how they define an "application" since it seems to include certain websites. Apparently 16% of people surveyed fell into that camp. Another 36% are in the "increasingly connected" group that counts those who connect via at least four devices and uses six or more applications. To be honest, this seems like an odd way of defining connectivity. If I had a really good "all-in-one" device meaning that I wouldn't need that many other devices but could use that one in more circumstances, why should that make me seem less connected? Of course, then there are the unconnected. A different study has found that approximately 18% of homes in the US have no internet access whatsoever.

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Scott Beale says: "Spirit Magazine, the inflight magazine for Southwest Airlines, recently published an article on Nickelodeon which includes a wonderful illustration of some popular cartoon and comics characters as senior citizens." Link

And fucking Twitter is fucking down.

Fuck!

Here's a great dance mix version of the Bill O'Reilly freak-out video that made the rounds this week. Language is salty. (via For Your Entertainment)

StonyandCher writes "More and more ISPs are blocking or throttling traffic to the peer-to-peer file-sharing service, even if you are downloading copyright free content. Have you been targeted? How can you get around the restrictions? This PC World report shows you a number of tips and tools can help you determine whether you're facing a BitTorrent blockade and, if so, help you get around it."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

You just knew that the whole Yahoo/Microsoft deal wasn't really over and done with, right? Rumors started spreading yesterday that billionaire investor and professional "shake things up" guy Carl Icahn was going to put forth his own slate for the Yahoo board (after buying up a bunch of shares in the company) which would allow him to create a board that would sell the company off to Microsoft. Those kinds of rumors don't just magically come out of nowhere, so it should come as no surprise that it looks like, indeed, Icahn will be putting forth his own list of potential board members. As plenty of people have noted, this ought to be fun to watch. Dealing with Steve Ballmer is one thing, but taking on Icahn isn't something that many do successfully. Of course, the real question is what does Icahn do with Yahoo should he gain control over the board. Many are assuming that he'll sell it off to Microsoft, which assumes that Microsoft is willing to come back to the table. Either way, it seems like what we witnessed over the last few months was merely Act One. Act Two may be a lot more exciting.

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holy_calamity writes "The directed sound weapon made by US company ATC is being exported to the Chinese police, despite the public law banning sales of weapons to China. Turns out that such 'non-lethal' technologies are not covered by this law — an omission that may become more widely known if they are used to quell high-profile protests during the Olympics."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Here's Lo-Fi Saint Louis' profile of BLAB! publisher Monte Beauchamp.

If you don’t know Blab, you should. It’s a collection of artists published lovingly in a magazine only once a year and each issue is kicked off with a gallery opening of work from the book. This past issue was launched at the Philip Slein Gallery right here in our own little city of St. Louis. Beauchamp has published several other books as well. You can get them all from Fantagraphic Books.

Link

Every year around this time, the Business Software Alliance (BSA) comes out with a report, put together for the BSA by IDC, about software "piracy" statistics. Every year, since 2004 I call them out on how misleading many of the stats are (or, more specifically, I jokingly refer to the BSA as Bogus Stats as Always). At times, even IDC, who puts the report together for the BSA, has admitted that the BSA has tended to misrepresent the results -- and yet IDC keeps putting together the report every year. The good news, honestly, is that over the past few years, we've seen a changing trend in the coverage of the reports on these numbers, in that more people are calling the BSA out for using the numbers in a misleading way. The BSA, to its credit, has at least tried to be more conscious of how it presents and explains its numbers... sometimes.

Perhaps because of this, in advance of the release of the latest report today, the BSA reached out to me (and I'm sure plenty of others as well) to talk about the report and address any concerns. I spent half an hour on the phone this afternoon with Neil MacBride, the BSA's VP of Anti-Piracy and General Counsel. With him was Marcel Warmerdam an associate VP from IDC. I really appreciate the two spending the time to discuss the latest study with me -- as (this should come as no surprise) we didn't agree on very much.

The report itself seems pretty similar to what's come out in previous years. IDC does a rather credible job in determining the rate of unauthorized use throughout the world. The report this year highlights the fact that the rate of unauthorized use appears to be falling in many countries while rising in a few rapidly developing ones (Brazil, Russia, India and China). This is no surprise, as it's pretty much what anyone watching this market knows happens. I have no problem with the reporting on the rate of unauthorized usage.

Where things get problematic, however, is when the report starts to look at the impact of such things. The report itself shifts back and forth between "retail value of the software" and "losses" as if they are one and the same. By now, it should be quite clear that they are not the same. My second problem is that the report also ties these faux "losses" to a separate IDC report claiming that a drop in unauthorized usage of software would increase jobs, increase revenue in the IT sector and increase taxes. That's inaccurate for a variety of reasons, specifically in that it double-counts the impact of certain things and also only counts the "ripple effects" in one direction.

I raised these questions to both Neil and Marcel, and the summary of the call as Marcel noted at the end is that we'll have to agree to disagree. We didn't discuss the ripple effects issue, because that's actually from a different study than the one released today (though, the one today does reference that report to back up its claims -- which is why I brought it up). However, Neil and Marcel defended the "losses" claim by pointing out that plenty of companies out there (they kept pointing to large companies) would go out and buy the software if they had no other option. Indeed. And, I would probably go out and buy lunch at Pizza Hut if I had no other options, but we don't count it as a "loss" for Pizza Hut when I go eat at McDonalds instead. The fact is that there are other options -- even if some of them break the license agreements. My point is that this is a business model issue that the industry needs to deal with by giving businesses positive reasons to pay, rather than threatening to whack them with a legal stick.

However, what became clear in talking to Neil was that the BSA really does seem to believe that the majority of these unlicensed uses really would be paid for -- which seems like a highly questionable claim. We also very much disagreed over calling unauthorized use of software "theft" (he says it is, and tossed out the old favorite about how it's no different than taking a CD or a pack of chewing gum out of a store). He specifically said "software is a tangible good." The problem is that this is simply not true. I'm sure plenty of software companies and the BSA itself would like it to be a tangible good -- but it is not, and no amount of pretending makes it so.

In the end, Neil suggested that maybe this is a "generational" thing (I guess I'm the young whippersnapper), which I don't think is accurate either. I think it's really more of a business model thing. The companies that make up the BSA have relied on a particular business model for many, many years. That business model depends on government-granted monopolies that allow them to create artificial scarcity. They like that business model and don't want it to go away. However, the market is shifting, and it's shifting due to companies recognizing the fundamental characteristics of software being infinite, which allows them to implement other business models that don't rely on artificial scarcity. We're seeing it all the time, even among some companies who are members of the BSA. IBM, for example, has learned that its real money-maker is in services, and free software helps build that market. Red Hat has shown a similar business model on a smaller scale. And Google, which is a software company (even if people don't realize it), has shown an entirely different model to make its software extremely profitable in a way that "piracy" is of no concern.

The more the BSA talks up fundamentally flawed "losses" the more difficult it makes it for many of its members to recognize that the market is changing, and they need to change their business models with it. The less these companies focused on made up "losses" and the more they focused on creating business models where there are good reasons for companies to pay money, the more they'd realize that unauthorized use isn't the problem at all. With the BSA reports on losses, though, too many of these companies are taught to think that the problem is elsewhere (those darn pirates), rather than in how they view the market themselves. And, that, fundamentally, is dangerous for the BSA's own members. So, I very much appreciate both Neil and Marcel for reaching out and taking the time to talk with me, and responding to my criticisms -- and I hope to continue the conversation with them. But, they did little to change my feelings about the BSA report and its misleading nature.

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