Google VOIP?
Almost exactly a year ago I made fun of the UK newspaper The Times for suggesting Google was gearing up enter the Voice Over IP space. Now it’s starting to look like they were right…
iPods for the Senate
The “balanced intellectual-property policy” advocacy group IPac has a new campaign to educate senators about media in the Internet Age by sending them iPods:
Last week, the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation held a hearing on the “Broadcast Flag” and “Audio Flag,” a set of proposals by the MPAA and RIAA that would stifle innovation by giving content holders a virtual veto over new technologies and existing user rights.
But Senator Stevens, the 82-year old committee chairman from Alaska, surprised the audience by announcing that his daughter had bought him an iPod, and suddenly Stevens had a much greater understanding of the many ways innovative technology can create choice for consumers. Content industry representatives at the hearing found themselves answering much tougher questions than they typically receive.
I’d thought this same thing when I first read about Senator Stevens, but figured it’d be illegal for Senators to accept the iPods as gifts. IPac’s FAQ says they’re donating these to the Senator’s campaign offices (for use in campaign-related activities) and so they get around the rules — whether the Senators will accept them given the current scrutiny over lobbying scandals is another question.
(Thanks to Amy for the link!)
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Congressional staffers try to whitewash Wikipedia
The Wikipedia community is trying to respond to whitewashing of politically-sensitive articles that appear to be coming from congressional staffers themselves (with the staff of Marty Meehan (D, MA) being one of the biggest culprits).
I’m always amazed that Wikipedia works as well as it does — hopefully the bad press Meehan and other congress-critters get over this flap will outweigh any good press specific staffers may have hoped to achieve.
Detailed coverage at Lowell Sun, C|net and Slashdot.
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PDFs that fink
Here’s a tricky little privacy hole: Adobe PDF Reader 6.0 and later will automatically (and silently) execute Javascript that’s been embedded in a PDF file, and LWN reports that a company called Remote Approach uses this “feature” to tag a PDF so it’ll phone home to their servers whenever it’s opened. Their customers can then go to a special webpage to track when the PDF was opened and at what IP address.
I’m sure you can think of your own scenarios where this would be a Bad Thing™, but the case that brought it to my attention was from a supposedly-anonymous reviewer of an academic paper who discovered Remote’s website in his firewall logs.
The simple moral of the story is that content formats should not be able to run arbitrary code, but the more general point is one of setting limits and expectations. End-users need to be able to limit what’s run on their own computers, and when the actual limits are broader than what a naive user might expect (such as when their supposedly-static PDF document can actually access the network) it’s extra important for the system to alert the user what’s happening and get permission first.
To their credit, Adobe seems to have heeded the moral: the current version of Acrobat Reader (at least on the Mac) gives a pop-up warning saying the PDF is trying to access a remote URL, and allows you to save your security settings on a site-by-site basis. I don’t know when they added this alert or whether it was in response to problems like those I mentioned, but regardless it’s nice to see the feature.
(Thanks to Dirk for the link.)
Exploding drawer trap
I just posted another DIY-trap page, this one an exploding-cap trap for a drawer. This is what I’d call a third-level trap: it takes a bit of dexterity and knowledge to disarm, but anyone with a little experience shouldn’t have any trouble getting past it. I never sent this one off to Jay; it just sits on my shelf to surprise visitors who haven’t learned to be careful when opening boxes around my place.
You can browse through previous traps at my Traps Gallery (I’ve only posted a couple so far, but more will be coming).
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Google Talk joins the federation
I’m a bit late on this, but I’m psyched to see that last week Google flipped the switch to allow all their Google Talk instant messenger accounts to talk to any other Jabber client out there. I’ve not verified it yet, but I think that included people with .Mac accounts using iChat, and BigBlueBall has a nice tutorial on how to use the federation to hook up your GTalk account directly to AIM, Yahoo!, MSN and ICQ using Jabber transport services.
This is the final step I’ve been waiting for before ditching my AIM account and going entirely to Jabber!
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A gargoyle on the roof…
…sounds crazy, no?
File this one under “Only in San Francisco.” One of the attractions at a friend’s birthday party this past weekend was watching them have their chimney swept by a gargoyle.
In hindsight, I guess being a chimney-sweeping grotesque architectural decoration is an odd odd job to have, but somehow Shadow (a costuming major from USCS who always swept out his Dad’s chimney every year) made it seem like a perfectly normal thing to do. Heck, maybe it is…
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Multishot pellet-gun trap
For over fifteen years my friend Jay and I have exchange trapped presents at Christmas. When I say trapped I mean it in the classic Circle of Death game style — if you open the present carelessly a buzzer will sound or explosive cap will trigger.
I usually focus on making it difficult to find and disarm a simple explosive-cap trap, but this year I wanted to change things up a bit and focus on the effect itself. In particular, I wanted to make a box trap that would shoot darts out in all directions, machine-gun style. It had to be completely mechanical (what can I say, I like the style better), and had to be stable enough to ship through the mail without going off or getting jammed. After many attempts I landed on this rather elegant sprung-hammer design (click for video and construction notes).
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GPLv3 and the DMCA
The Free Software Foundation has posted a draft version of the new General Public License v3.0, and are soliciting comments. One thing that caught my eye is language intended to make it more difficult for people using GPLed code in DRM systems:
3. Digital Restrictions Management
As a free software license, this License intrinsically disfavors technical attempts to restrict users’ freedom to copy, modify, and share copyrighted works. Each of its provisions shall be interpreted in light of this specific declaration of the licensor’s intent. Regardless of any other provision of this license, no permission is given to distribute covered works that illegally invade users’ privacy, nor for modes of distribution that deny users that run covered works the full exercise of the legal rights granted by this License.
No covered work constitutes part of an effective technological protection measure: that is to say, distribution of a covered work as part of a system to generate or access certain data constitutes general permission at least for development, distribution and use, under this License, of other software capable of accessing the same data.
I gather the second paragraph is intended to grant specific permission to reverse-engineer and make derivative works under the DMCA. It’s an interesting tactic, but I’m not sure how often the licensor of the software (and thus the person granting general permission) would also own the copyright on the data being produced. If I make a DRM-enabled video-player and you break my crypto on the new Disney movie it’s playing, isn’t it Disney who’ll come after you under the DMCA? What difference does it make if you have my permission?
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Keyboard not found, press any key to continue…
I just installed TurboTax Deluxe 2005 for the Mac (Intuit annoys me, but TaxCut discontinued their Mac version). Their installation program includes the following End-User Licence Agreement dialog-box::
Notice anything missing in this agreement that asks me to confirm that I’ve read and printed a copy? Like, say, a way to actually print the stupid thing? No print button, no menu items functioning, not even a way to resize the tiny window. About 20% of the way down (just below the part saying I agree to notify them promptly if my email address changes) is a note saying:
(f) Printing. You may print this document by clicking on the print button or by going to the TurboTax web site at www.turbotax.com to access and print a copy of it.
Of course, there’s no print button and no indication of where on their website this elusive copy of the EULA can be found (I eventually found the link in the fine print at the very bottom of their page).
And I’m trusting these guys with my taxes?
Keyboard not found, press any key to continue… Read More »