David Morrison, via email: "I've been reading your site for a few years now, and couldn't think of anyone else to ask this question to. Are there any feeds or releases of the Democratic Convention speeches in just audio format. I'm traveling out of country, can't sit and watch on a computer, and don't have the bandwith to download video. Been searching for a few days, and can't seem to find anything. Seems amazing that this 'high tech' campaign doesn't have this easily availible."

Pre-Photokina 2008: Nikon has today launched the AF-S DX NIKKOR 18-105mm F/3.5-5.6G ED VR zoom lens. This lens incorporates features such as Nikon's Extra Low Dispersion (ED) glass, Silent Wave Motor technology (SWM) and Enhanced Vibration Reduction (VR II) and will be supplied as the kit lens with the Nikon D90.

Pre-Photokina: After a steady trickle of leaks and rumors Nikon has announced the successor to its popular D80 middleweight digital SLR in the shape of the D90. The D90 looks very similar, but underneath it's a completely new camera that's inherited advanced features from further up the line and user-friendly features from the D40/D60 range. Oh, and it's the world's first digital SLR with a movie mode. Oher features of note include a new 12.3 MP CMOS sensor, the D3/D300/D700's fab high resolution 3.0-inch screen and continuous shooting at up to 4.5 frames per second. We've had a D90 for a few days now, just enough time to produce a detailed hands-on preview.

With UK law firm Davenport Lyons ramping up its efforts to send out thousands of "pre-settlement" letters accusing folks of file sharing using flimsy evidence, it appears one lawyer wants to help those falsely accused for free. The Davenport Lyons system works in a pretty straightforward method: it makes use of evidence from Logistep, a company whose evidence is so flimsy it's been banned in other countries in Europe as illegal, and lawyers who have used its evidence have been banned from filing new cases. However, since the "pre-settlement" letters let you avoid a lawsuit for a small fee (less than it would cost to defend yourself in a lawsuit), many just pay up.

However, TorrentFreak has found a lawyer in the UK who also believes that this is unfair, and who is offering his firm's services for free to help those who have been falsely accused by Davenport Lyons. The offer is pretty specifically aimed at those who are falsely accused. He (reasonably so) doesn't seem interested in helping those who actually did infringe on copyrights, and he can only devote so much time and effort to such cases, so he may not be able to take all cases that come his way. However, for those who are falsely accused, who were afraid that it would cost more to fight than to settle, at least there's one potential option to fight back.

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At DEFCON, Tony Kapela and Alex Pilosov demonstrated a drastic weakness in the Internet's infrastructure that had long been rumored, but wasn't believed practical. They showed how to hijack BGP (the border gateway protocol) in order to eavesdrop on Net traffic in a way that wouldn't be simple to detect. Quoting: "'It's at least as big an issue as the DNS issue, if not bigger,' said Peiter 'Mudge' Zatko, noted computer security expert and former member of the L0pht hacking group, who testified to Congress in 1998 that he could bring down the internet in 30 minutes using a similar BGP attack, and disclosed privately to government agents how BGP could also be exploited to eavesdrop. 'I went around screaming my head about this about ten or twelve years ago... We described this to intelligence agencies and to the National Security Council, in detail.' The man-in-the-middle attack exploits BGP to fool routers into re-directing data to an eavesdropper's network." Here's the PDF of Kapela and Pilosov's presentation.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Over at the Technology Liberation Front, my co-blogger Adam Thierer discusses the trade-offs between platform competition and standardization, a subject Mike has written about in the past. Adam explores the mobile phone and console markets, and points out that the proliferation of incompatible devices has created real costs for developers who want to build on top of those various platforms. He makes some good observations, but I think he's missing the importance of reverse-engineering in resolving the dilemma he identifies. If a platform is proprietary, then we really do face a trade-off between standardization and competition. But open, flexible standards allow both: many firms can offer competing products, but they all work together because they're all designed for a common platform. Moreover, if the standard is well designed, the competing products can offer a wide variety of different features, and the standard can grow and evolve over time as vendors propose and adopt new extensions. That's the story of the web, for example, which features both competition and interoperability. The standard has evolved organically, as various vendors proposed and adopted new standards and often adopted those of their competitors.

The question, of course, is how to reach this "sweet spot" of an open, flexible, and universal platform. Sometimes (as with the web) we just get lucky, and the designer of the initial standard has the foresight to make it open and extensible. But when that doesn't happen, and it often doesn't, the next best hope is reverse engineering: a company (e.g. IBM) develops a proprietary platform which achieves popularity and is then reverse-engineered by competitors, transforming it into a de facto open standard. The modern PC platform isn't really controlled by anybody, although Microsoft and Intel have more influence than most other vendors. And because nobody controls it, it's both fiercely competitive and highly interoperable.

Because reverse engineering is so important in transforming closed standards into open ones, we should be especially worried about laws that stand in the way of that process. I've written before that the Digital Millennium Copyright Act is one such roadblock. For example, one would expect companies to be working hard to reverse-engineer Apple's iTunes-iPod ecosystem in order to sell iPod clones. We might expect the emergence of a de facto open standard around Apple's platform, with a variety of iPod clones and drop-in iTunes replacements. Unfortunately, in part because the DMCA limits the reverse-engineering of FairPlay, Apple's DRM technology, few vendors have attempted this. Hence, the DMCA is helping to perpetuate the competition-versus-standardization dilemma Adam laments.

Timothy Lee is an expert at the Techdirt Insight Community. To get insight and analysis from Timothy Lee and other experts on challenges your company faces, click here.

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Walpurgiss tips a BBC News story about a man in Oxford who paid $140 for a computer on eBay, and was shocked to find on it bank records of several million customers of the Royal Bank of Scotland, its subsidiary Natwest, and one other bank. "Mr. Chapman said anyone with a basic knowledge of computer software would have been able to find the data fairly simply. 'The information was in back-up CDs and in ISO files so it would have been possibly quite easy to find...,' he said."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

When old school journalists complain about the supposed "threats" from companies like Craigslist and Google or things like blogging, one of the common refrains is: "but who will pay for investigative reporting." The idea is that these other services can replace the basic news facts, but it's tough to see how true investigative reporting will get funded. Yet, as with all markets in a state of flux, we've seen that if there's a real demand, new business models will come along to handle it -- and that seems to be exactly what is happening in the investigative reporting realm. The NY Times points out a few different experiments in other forms of funding investigative reporting, with the bulk of the story talking about getting interested parties to pay up front for an investigation. In other words, if there is a concerned group of folks worried about, say, dangerous chemicals leaking into the drinking water, it could put that story up, and if enough people contribute to the investigation, a reporter can get paid and do the investigation.

While there are some concerns that this would lead to biased journalism, there's nothing saying that the journalist's results have to support the initial worry. In fact, I would imagine that in cases where folks are worried about things like chemicals in the drinking water, they'd be much more relieved to find out that it's really nothing. Either way, this model fits exactly with the business models we've discussed in the past: getting people to pay for the creation of content. The creation of new content is a scarce good, and there may be some group of people for whom its worth paying for. In this case, the example fits the business model we describe for content after it's created as well, since the organization doing these investigative reports will then offer them to newspapers for free (so long as they don't want an exclusive right -- which would not be free). That's exactly how it should be: it costs money for the initial creation, but then the content is freed, where it adds much more value (and attracts more people to fund later stories). Who knows if this particular effort will work (execution is everything, after all), but the model is sound, and shows that despite gloomy whining from old school reporters, the new business models will show up.

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Dale Dougherty says:

On September 20th at the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago, the editors of Make will present a "show-and-tell" program called American Maker. The goal of American Maker is to showcase grassroots innovation from Chicago-area makers. We're looking for makers who are are working on cool projects and whose work has the potential to benefit others. We believe that makers are a leading force in grassroots innovation -- where individuals see a need to create something new.

American Maker is a friendly competition and the winner will be awarded a $500 cash prize plus publication in a future issue of Make.

If you'd like to participate and show what you make at this event, you can register here.

You are also welcome to come on September 20th and join us in the audience. American Maker is part of Lab Fest, which kicks off Science Chicago at the Museum of Science and Industry. American Maker will run from 10am to 4pm on September 20th. Admission to the museum is free on that day.

American Maker

Kai says: "I thought you would like this video Current just produced on the creation of a number of projects at Black Rock this year"

Every year thousands of people descend onto Black Rock to build a city in the desert from scratch. And for many of the artists and engineers, the period of set-up before the gates actually open has become the most important part of this yearly event. We talk to the founder of Burning Man, Larry Harvey, as well as the masterminds behind the art installations Temple, Elevation, Babylon, Mutopia, and of course, the team behind the building of The Man, as they share their views and show us the art that embodies this year's theme: The American Dream.

Burning Man Art Build 08

Matt Langdon says: "At the end of February you liveblogged Phil Zimbardo's TED speech that had a lot to do with the banality of evil, but I'm glad you noticed that he finished with his solution -- heroism. I'm working with him on getting those hero ideas to spread and we were wondering if you would be able to help get word out on a survey we're conducting online."

You may know him from the Stanford Prison experiment. Maybe you used his “Psychology and Life” text book in college or saw his “Discovery Psychology” TV series on PBS. Or perhaps you’ve read his recent book, “The Lucifer Effect”. Now Phil Zimbardo needs you.

Dr. Philip Zimbardo, with a team of researchers, is beginning a new study concerning helpful behavior. The goal is to discover how individuals perceive the behavior of helpfulness.

The first step is to conduct a survey with as many participants as possible. That’s where you come in. The survey takes about 30 minutes and can be found at www.socialpsychresearch.org.

Phil Zimbardo's study of how individuals perceive the behavior of helpfulness

An anonymous reader sends us to CNet for news that Apple clone maker Pystar plans to countersue Apple. We discussed Apple's suit last month. "Mac clone maker Psystar plans to file its answer to Apple's copyright infringement lawsuit Tuesday as well as a countersuit of its own, alleging that Apple engages in anticompetitive business practices. Miami-based Psystar... will sue Apple under two federal laws designed to discourage monopolies and cartels, the Sherman Antitrust Act and the Clayton Antitrust Act, saying Apple's tying of the Mac OS to Apple-labeled hardware is 'an anticompetitive restraint of trade,' according to [an] attorney... Psystar is requesting that the court find Apple's EULA void, and is asking for unspecified damages."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

YouTube link. GUTEN TAAAAG! Starring Tom Konkle of daveandtom, directed by Marcus McCollum. (Thanks, John Walsh!!!)

J.K. Rowling has been an aggressive user of intellectual property laws against anyone who she feels has done her wrong, and the latest target, as sent in by a bunch of readers, is an Indian film by the name of Hari Puttar: A Comedy of Terrors, about a young Indian boy who gets left home alone. If anything, you almost have to wonder if the makers of the film purposely picked a bunch of recognizable themes. There is the name, which potentially plays on both Harry Potter and Shakespeare's Comedy of Errors (which, of course, is public domain). Then there's the story line, which seems similar to the Home Alone movies. So this film isn't copying Rowling's work, but the name certainly sounds like it could be.

The movie makers insist their Hari Puttar has nothing to do with Harry Potter. The storylines are entirely different. Hari is a popular Indian name and Puttar means "son" in Punjabi. Plus, when pronounced correctly, it doesn't even sound like Harry Potter. That doesn't mean that it wasn't done on purpose, of course. So, yes, I can understand where Rowling is coming from, but that still doesn't necessarily make this a smart move. Leaving the movie as is doesn't take any money away from Rowling. If anything, all this effort is doing is providing a lot more free publicity for the Hari Puttar movie -- which may be exactly what the movie makers wanted.

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A couple of days ago we discussed a CNet article on the tech voting record of Joe Biden, Barack Obama's running mate. Philip Zimmermann, who was mentioned in that piece, sends the following note to set the record straight. "In his 23 August opinion piece in CNet, Declan McCullagh wrote on Joe Biden's suitability as the Democratic VP nominee, Declan quotes me, creating the impression I criticized Biden for some legislation that Biden introduced in 1991. Declan's quote from me is out of context because it does not make it clear that I never mentioned Biden in my original quote at all when I wrote about Senate Bill 266. Second, Declan's quote is drawn from remarks I wrote in 1999. Declan seems to be trying to draft me in his opposition to Biden, and, by extension, makes it seem as if I am against the Democratic ticket. I take issue with this." Read below for the rest of Phil's comments.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Image above: bloggers, artists, and pro-Tibet activists James Powderly, Tom Grant, Mike Liss, Jeremy Wells and John Watterberg at LAX. They and others were held in jail in China for having participated in pro-Tibetan sovereignty demonstrations during the Olympics. More here. (via natdefreitas)

Below, a clip from Leaving Fear Behind (in Tibetan: ‘Jigdrel’), a documentary film shot by Tibetans from inside Tibet, about bringing Tibetan voices to the Beijing Olympic Games.

With the global spotlight on China as it rises to host the XXIX Olympics, Tibetans wish to tell the world of their plight and their heartfelt grievances against Chinese rule. The footage was smuggled out of Tibet under extraordinary circumstances. The filmmakers were detained soon after sending their tapes out, and remain in detention today.

Previously on Boing Boing blog:
* UPDATE: US citizens detained in Beijing over Tibet protests are released, returning home.
* Beijing and Tibet: GRL's James Powderly, Brian of "Alive in Baghdad, 4 other US citizens receive 10-day jail sentence
* Beijing update: New detentions, 6 US protesters missing, Tibetan protesters in Tibet reportedly shot dead.
* Beijing: "Alive in Baghdad" videoblogger among US citizens detained in pro-Tibet protests
* Beijing: Five US activists detained after lighting up "Free Tibet" LED Throwies banner near Olympics site
* GRL's James Powderly detained in Beijing for planning pro-Tibet "L.A.S.E.R. Stencil" art protest

Related episodes of Boing Boing tv:
* BBtv (Beijing): interview with pro-Tibet videobloggers in hiding.
* BBtv WORLD (Tibet): Inside Lhasa
* Vlog (Xeni): Tibet report - monks forced to participate in staged videos.
* Vlog (Xeni): Tibet's uprising and the internet

Top: The Riviera lobby in 1957, Bottom: The same view in 2007

Peter Moruzzi sent me a copy of his gorgeous new book, called Havana Before Castro. It's loaded with photos of the beautiful mid-century architecture of Havana's resorts, casinos, and restaurants. On his website for the book, Moruzzi has added some “then and now” images to his Havana site.

Chris Nichols says: "It’s really the most freakish time machine place I’ve ever seen. I mean...the art! the chairs! The silverware! It’s all still there. So weird and wonderful."

Havana before Castro