Drug Policy Alliance Action Center, has made us aware of the new Rave act (thx Jenn)!!! And more info can be found at National Review Online (thx D) and Electronic Music Defense and Education Fund.

Also watch here for my soon to come legal analsys of the Rave Act, the Justice Enhancement and Domestic Security Act of 2003, and McClure v. Ashcroft!!!

Light Particles Are Duplicated More Than A Mile Away Along Fiber (reg. req.), Employing a facet of quantum mechanics that Albert Einstein called "spooky action at a distance," scientists have taken particles of light, destroyed them and then resurrected copies more than a mile away. Transporter here we come!!!

Suppliers Dim Xbox Sales Picture Sales of Microsoft's Xbox video game console are likely to scrape the low end of current company forecasts, based on recent reports involving key component suppliers. i've been predicting they were in trouble for a while. Looks like the numbers say its true, wonder if there will be an XBox in 2 years!!!

Hollywood Says No To Filtering DVD Player "There is a posting over at ZDNet about how Hollywood continues to trample on the American consumer's free use rights. They want to prevent the sale of a special DVD player which can be used to edit out offensive material from a DVD in realtime. While I don't agree with censorship in general, I do believe its everyone's right to do what they wish with their own media."

Proposed New Spam Law"Several weeks ago, Larry Lessig proposed anti-spam legislation he'd like to see Congress pass -- legislation which he was willing to bet his job on. A congressional aide appears to be drafting legislation based on Larry's suggestions and is asking the Politech list for suggestions."

Telemarketers Sue to Stop Do-Not-Call List, Telemarketers went to court on Wednesday in an attempt to stop the U.S. government from setting up a proposed "do not call" list that would help consumers block unwanted sales calls. It seems that they forgot comercial speech, can be limited by congress. Moreover it seems that since individuals place themselves on the don't call lists, that telemarketers' comercial speech should recieve no protection because it is the individuals act not a state action that tells them not to call. i my self a huge advocat of free speech however i get and this is a real figure about 90% telemarketing calls at home. Something has to be done!!!

SmartDust Sensorwebs 'Real Soon Now' "EE Times has a piece on progress with the four-year-old DARPA-conceived Smart Dust self-organizing sensor networks. Based on Berkeley's TinyOS and TinyDB open-source projects, the article reports several companies are demonstrating both military and civilian applications. Ars Technica adds background and commentary on issues not discussed in the EET article." Welcome to the future!!!

P2P Content Delivery For Open Source, "The Open Content Network is a collaborative effort to help deliver open source, public domain, and Creative Commons-licensed content using peer-to-peer technology. The network is essentially a huge 'virtual web server' that links together thousands of computers for the purpose of helping out over-burdened/slashdotted web sites. Any existing mirror or web site can easily join the OCN by tweaking the HTML on their site." Lessigs minions are building weapons!!!

Griffin Technology iTrip, no not that kind. For all the kiddies out there with thoes cool little ipods i want so much, say bye,bye wires, this time with style!!!

Casperelectronics, got the goods on speak and spell and speak and math! cool sounds. reminds me of the atari 2600 generator. thanks paul!!!

still sick!!!

saw anna paquin on way out of park city. wow!!!

back now but very sick. have been in bed for 3 days, phone off. hope to be up and around soon.

Missed 28 days 1 and a 1/2 times. Waited 3 hours. Bummer. See it latter. Off to in america us premier. Seriously best movie i have seen in years! Cried like a baby now understand the samantha morton buzz. Look for the two kids in the film to do great things! Off to la at 1055. Asr on thursday.

Got into southwestern entertainment llm program. Will likely start in summer.

Selma`s movie the bomb. Laughed cried loved it! Now for danny boyle.

Dustin hoffman on street. Solders girl trans-sexual love story. Brilliant. The share of things adapted play by lebute. I liked it but g and john no love. Stoked the gator story. Wicked brilliant! Just saw fonda and now gona see him in selma direct debute.

Worked on Charlie's again. Did two nights. Saw a car flip over! It was a pretty cool stunt. Hal worked on the set too. Now i am hopefully off to see Eric in Salt Lake. Gona do some boarding and see some films at Sundance with G and HT! I hope anyway. Next week Asr Long Beach is on. Gona be a fun next few weeks.

iGo, the coolest computer desk like thingy i have ever seen. This is reason alone to have an iMac!!!

I, Cringely, compu pundent Crigly on Aplle and M$. Good Article but this quote is the reason i posted it. A wonderful bit about the M$ case i had never heard before. Funny now it seems so obvious... "Apple feels it needs Microsoft, Microsoft demands a pound of flesh, and Apple gives in.? Most recently this happened with web browsers as Microsoft periodically threatened to drop Internet Explorer for the Mac.? And they probably should have dropped it, too, since the Macintosh product was the fatal flaw in their "IE is just a part of Windows" legal strategy of a couple years ago.? I took great pleasure at that time in asking Steve Ballmer what part of Windows was Internet Explorer for Macintosh?" Love that!!!

Bar Monkey!, simply put, is a vending machine that serves mixed drinks. Just go see the damn thing!!!

DMCA Defendant To Stop Making Chip, A federal judge has agreed to Static Control Components' offer to temporarily cease manufacturing a toner cartridge chip that drew a lawsuit under a controversial copyright law. Maybe my memory is failing me but wasn't a giant exemption in the DMCA designed to protect interoprability!!!

What Lawyers Can Learn From Comic Books, Lessig reivews Mr. Mehra's (a University of Chicago-educated lawyer) latest article in Rutgers Law Review which looks at the question of copyright from the perspective of business. "For it seems clear, as Mr. Mehra demonstrates, that this copycat market fuels for original manga art demand that otherwise would not exist. The "use" of this copyrighted content therefore benefits the original author." I have always thought the same of music. I have many friends who are professional DJ's and music producers, almost all when they hear a sample they like go hunt down the original to own!!!

What's Everyone Crying About, i just read all the current stories from all the big Mac web site. You know the ones. Anyway there is something i just can't get my head around. People are complaining Apple upgaded there hardware and software. Wait i evan have trouble typing that. APPLE UPGRADED!!! People who are Mac consumers, lovers, advocates, evangalists, are up in arms! What is really going on?

No one complains when M$ upgrades, not like they ever do...or when Dell brings out a new machine. So why Apple. Last i check people were stoked with the release of PS2. But what about my PS1! Damn i thought it was the latest greatest. : (

Anyway, seems strange to me. People should enjoy inovation. If you don't want to by the next product don't. End of story. Why should they keep stuff in the labs thats ready to go?

Another thing is puzzeling to me as well. Maybe this is not quite as timely but here goes anyway....These same people are crying over the cost of .Mac, MacOSX updates, potential upgrade costs of iLife products. When did anyone every give you the idea that you were always entitled to free software? Why is it yours? Did it cost nothing for Apple to develop and as a result you are some how entitled. BTW it cost shit loads to develop.

As for me i'll take the new tech as soon as its ready and most i'll take before that.

As for the lot of ya i refer to above, fuck off ya punters!!!

Mac World Updates

Big big show, using mpeg4 to stream!

Switcher (Ellen gets big ups), 68% of visitors to switchers site are on windows.

51 stores opened in 21 months. 85 million people live within 15 miles of one. Grove LA is most popular, making very good money. Stores on target, 50% sold to windows switchers.

ical, isynch = getting better and important.

.mac got 250,000 subscribers.

ipod out for only 14 months, sold 600,000 units, or 1 every minute, in japan it has a 42% market share, #1 in us as well. Burton also making ipod compatable jacket with controler on arm.

macosx gets 5 million active users, picking on quark for not updating. pro tools will be updated this month!

final cut pro is #1. final cut express, a light version of pro, looks and works the same minus a few features. reads imovie and final cut pro files. software real time effects, no render time. cost $299.

NO LONGER CAN BOOT 9, classic only!

all iapps will be integrated, iphoto2 released, can get stuff from itunes, can archive to cd and dvd, one button enhance (fixes, white ballence, contrast, etc...) and touch up brush.

imovie3, now does chapters recognized by idvd, precise audio editing, added george lucas sound effects library, still photo effects (pick start point, finish point and duration). when making dvd takes chapter point and automatically builds scene selection list on dvd.

idvd3 new themes, integration to other iapps. steve likes the cure, but likes moby more. $3 a disk.

suite now called iLife available Jan 25, all three already free itunes+imovie+iphoto or whole with idvd for $49

Safari BROWSER!!! i-Bench Safari killed everything!!! 3xs faster than ie on html, 2xs on javascript, load 40% faster. google integration. one bounce! new snapback feature very cool. open source render khtml, and have added back all improvements. available in beta today.

keynote, presentation app, built for steve. keynote was used to build every apple keynote in 2002. all built against quartz. supports every file type known to man! has themes, very idvd like. compatability, imports and exports POWERPOINT, PDF, and quicktime. ITS also got an open XML file format! cost $99. free to all at keynote.

oh my god here comes the titanium! oops not titanium any more, aircraft grade alluminum. 17 inch power book, widescreen, took it right off the imac only changed back light, it is actually thinner than the current titanium!!! keyboard GLOWS but only when ambient light drops!!! firewire 800 can use adapter to go 400+ firewire 400 + gigabit ethernet + DVI + USB both sides + line in + headpphones + s-video + bluetooth + airport extreeme 54mb 802.11g card built in (two antennas built in and moved to screen, and equal to ibook reception) cost $3299. bridging built into base station, usb printing on base station, 50 users supported, cost $199.

one more thing! 12 inch powerbook! smaller than ibook! G4 + slot load combo drive + bluetooth, same battery life as ibook, cost $1,799. build to order with a superdrive for $1999. sorkin likes big screen for two scripts at once, bt big screen for more than one app at a time, but loves illuminated keyboard for gigs.

ending with one of the funniest ads in computing history!!! and what a wonderful world by the ramones!!!

quote of the day "why not a cube?"

Norway Teen Cleared in DVD Case, The court said Jon Johansen, had not broken the law when he helped unlock a code and distribute a computer program enabling unauthorized copying of DVD movies (DeCSS).

It should be noted that the story above along with almost all others ignores the fact that DeCSS is not required to copy DVD movies. An exact copy can be made without the use of DeCSS. DeCSS only real use was to make DVD content viewable on non-licenced DVD players, a major concern of the Linux community. At the time of its creation there were no DVD players licenced for use under Linux. The reason for this was most likely the small market for creating player coupled with the high cost of licencing the DVD decryption algorithms.

Edge, looking for answers or at least opinions on our greatest questions. Everyone from Ray Kurtzweil and Alan Alda, to Jaron Lanier and Marvin Minski. Oh and my personal favorite Douglas Rushkoff!!!

Organic Data Memory Using The DNA Approach, over the hollidays, my friend Paul and i discussed the value and problems associated with the use of PDAs. This lead to a discussion of how one might build such inside the body, well looks like the hard drive is on the way!!!

Laser-Scanning U.S. Landmarks, The National Park Service is creating detailed 3-D maps of national monuments such as the Statue of Liberty and Mount Rushmore using high-resolution laser scanners. Their goal is to create highly-accurate blueprints that can be used to reconstruct the monuments if they are damaged by a terrorist attack or other means. Funny i remember just a few months ago people freeking out over tourists photographing or video taping such monuments thinking they must have been terrorists, in tourists clothing!!!

A Viable System for Micropayments, Nielson makes the case that subscriptions fence you in because you either pay nothing and get nothing or pay a large fee. Wonder why no one ever just tallied the micro payments up and billed you later after a period of time like say, uh, the phone company. Amazing!!!

Xbox Private Key Distributed Computing Project, The Neo Project has added "The Xbox Public Key Challenge" to it's distributed computing client. The aim is to compute the 2048 bit private key that Microsoft uses to sign Xbox media. If it is a success, modchips wouldn't be necessary. Not sure what the DMCA would say about this but i wish luck to all who take on the beast that is M$!!!

Star Wars Origami, Why combine Star Wars and paperfolding? Why not?!!!

Supreme Court Backs Off DVD Case, The U.S. Supreme Court has bowed out of a long-running dispute over a DVD descrambling utility, dealing a preliminary defeat to Hollywood studios and electronics makers. Justice Sandra Day O'Connor placed a ruling by the California Supreme Court on hold last week, but rescinded her emergency stay on Friday. Looks like there may be a fair shake (no pun, well yeah, it was intended) after all!!!

STARSHIP EXETER, just go see it! It really should not be explained except to say trekies will love this!!!

Supreme Court Enters DVD-Copying Case , The U.S. Supreme Court has granted Hollywood studios and electronics makers a temporary victory by stepping into a long-running dispute over software that can be used to copy DVDs.