[Quote:]

Like many of us, Andrew Greig put a WiFi access point in his house so he could share his broadband Internet connection. But like hardly any of us, Andrew uses his WiFi network for Internet, television, and telephone. He cancelled his telephone line and cable TV service. Then his neighbors dropped-by, saw what Andrew had done, and they cancelled their telephone and cable TV services, too, many of them without having a wired broadband connection of their own. They get their service from Andrew, who added an inline amplifier and put a better antenna in his attic. Now most of Andrew’s neighborhood is watching digital TV with full PVR capability, making unmetered VoIP telephone calls, and downloading data at prodigious rates thanks to shared bandwidth. Is this the future of home communications and entertainment? It could be, five years from now, if Andrew Greig has anything to say about it.

The advantage Andrew Greig has over most of the rest of us is that he works for Starnix, an international Open Source software and services consultancy in Toronto, Canada. Starnix, which deals with huge corporate clients, has the brain power to get running what I described above. And it goes much further than that simple introduction.

[Quote:]

You’ve outfitted your iPod, now outfit yourself! Take one of our gorgeous new iProp beanies for a spin!

We here at GeekCulture continue to define the perfect propeller beanie. Fashionably cool and incredibly hip, our caps aren’t like those goofy joke ones you’ll feel like a nerd wearing. These are the Rolls Royces of Propeller Caps, …quality beanies for seriously fashion-conscious geeks!

[Quote:]

The strange case of an invisible gorilla has scooped the 2004 Ig Nobel Prize for Psychology, with dropped food and country music being honoured in other categories. The prizes, for achievements that “make you laugh, then think”, were handed out on Thursday at Harvard University, Massachusetts.

The work that earned the psychology prize was written up in a paper entitled “Gorillas in our midst: sustained inattentional blindness for dynamic events” (Perception, vol 28, p 1059), by Daniel Simons of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Christopher Chabris of Harvard.

They asked volunteers to count the number of times a group of people in a video threw a basketball to each other, and then asked what else the volunteers had seen. Oddly a large fraction had not noticed a woman in a gorilla suit walk through the scene, and those asked to make a more demanding count were even less likely to see the gorilla.

Some of the audience also missed the gorilla when the video was replayed, but no one missed it when it walked on stage while Simons and Chabris were giving their acceptance speech.

The Ig Nobel prize in Public Health went to Jillian Clarke, now a student at Howard University in Washington, for testing the validity of the idea that dropped food is safe to eat if it has spent no more than five seconds on the floor.

In tests with floor tiles deliberately contaminated with E. coli, she found that gummy bears and fudge-striped cookies picked up the bacteria in less than five seconds. However, tests on real floors at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign where she worked failed because they had no detectable bacterial contamination – suggesting the cleaning staff might deserve their own award.

[Quote:]

In a landmark case, a California district court has determined that Diebold, Inc., a manufacturer of electronic voting machines, knowingly misrepresented that online commentators, including IndyMedia and two Swarthmore college students, had infringed the company’s copyrights. This makes the company the first to be held liable for violating section 512(f) of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), which makes it unlawful to use DMCA takedown threats when the copyright holder knows that infringement has not actually occured.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and the Center for Internet and Society Cyberlaw Clinic at Stanford Law School sued on behalf of nonprofit Internet Service Provider (ISP) Online Policy Group (OPG) and the two students to prevent Diebold’s abusive copyright claims from silencing public debate about voting.

Diebold sent dozens of cease-and-desist letters to ISPs hosting leaked internal documents revealing flaws in Diebold’s e-voting machines. The company claimed copyright violations and used the DMCA to demand that the documents be taken down. One ISP, OPG, refused to remove them in the name of free speech, and thus became the first ISP to test whether it would be held liable for the actions of its users in such a situation.

“This decision is a victory for free speech and for transparency in discussions of electronic voting technology,” said Wendy Seltzer, an EFF staff attorney who worked on the case. “Judge Fogel recognized the fair use of copyrighted materials in critical discussion and gave speakers a remedy when their speech is chilled by improper claims of copyright infringement.”

[Quote:]

In the reexamination proceeding initiated earlier this year by the Public Patent Foundation (“PUBPAT”), the United States Patent and Trademark Office has rejected all of the claims of Microsoft’s patent on the FAT file system, which Microsoft describes as “the ubiquitous format used for interchange of media between computers, and, since the advent of inexpensive, removable flash memory, also between digital devices.”

 

Relying predominantly on evidence provided by PUBPAT when the reexamination was requested, the Patent Office made multiple rejections of the Redmond, WA based software giant’s patent.  Microsoft has the opportunity to respond to the Patent Office’s rejection, but third party requests for reexamination, like the one filed by PUBPAT, are successful in having the subject patent either narrowed or completely revoked roughly 70% of the time.

 

“The Patent Office has simply confirmed what we already knew for some time now, Microsoft’s FAT patent is bogus,” said Dan Ravicher, PUBPAT’s Executive Director.  “I hope those companies that chose to take a license from Microsoft for the patent negotiated refund clauses so that they can get their money back.”

[Quote:]

Seems Sony is going through something of a change of heart recently: following its decision to support MP3 in its audio players comes news that, in Japan at least, Sony Music Entertainment is ditching copy-control CDs from November. They claim the reason is “an increase in awareness by music consumers�?, which we assume is supposed to mean that they’ve succeeded in educating everyone that copying CDs is a bad thing. Dare we suggest that the truth is simply that they’re starting to see the light?

[Quote:]

I like the idea of a corporate death penalty. To expand a bit upon the idea, I think the following would be more fair than the current situation.

1) Taking current bankruptcy proceedings a bit further, once a “CDP” is declared, the corporation must immediately sell all existing assets at market value or as close to market value as possible to complete a fast sale. Supposing “Renron’s” corporate HQ building is worth 20 million dollars, a 15 million dollar bid for that building by anyone should be considered reasonable, accepted, and that money should go into a “corporate funeral fund.” Same with all of the rest of the company’s assets.

2) The corporation must dissolve and may never operate in business again, no matter who’s supposedly in charge. Regardless of who purchases the assets, no one who was an executive at the failed company may be allowed to work for any company who acquires any part of the failed corporation. If Lenny Kay was CEO at Renron, and Renron’s assets are bought up by Ding-Dong Corporation, Lenny Kay cannot go to work for Ding-Dong Corporation in any capacity.

3) Individual, non-corporate investors in the failed company _must_ be compensated first. This means that Joe Average who bought 500 shares of Renron must be given his fair share of the “funeral fund” long before BigBank or AngelVenture get any of their loan money back. Same goes for all of the retirement funds who, on behalf of Joe Averages, invested in Renron. If BigBank or AngelVenture loses out, boo hoo. Maybe next time around, they’ll be a bit more responsible with the blank checkbooks loaning a few billion here and a few billion there.

4) With a corporation given a “CDP,” the executives should have to pay back into the process. CEO got a 10 million dollar bonus last year? Fine him 10 million dollars and put it into the “funeral fund.” Any inappropriate spoils should be returned to the death fund of the company, to be recompensed to its shareholders, individuals first.

With some tweaks like these, corporations might become responsible again.

(note; I never post anonymously on /. This comment is *not* mine)

[Quote:]

“As a result of the American military,” President Bush declared last week, “the Taliban is no longer in existence.”

It’s unclear whether Mr. Bush misspoke, or whether he really is that clueless. But his claim was in keeping with his re-election strategy, demonstrated once again in last night’s debate: a president who has done immense damage to America’s position in the world hopes to brazen it out by claiming that failure is success.

Three years ago, the United States was both feared and respected: feared because of its military supremacy, respected because of its traditional commitment to democracy and the rule of law.

Since then, Iraq has demonstrated the limits of American military power, and has tied up much of that power in a grinding guerrilla war. This has emboldened regimes that pose a real threat. Three years ago, would North Korea have felt so free to trumpet its conversion of fuel rods into bombs?

But even more important is the loss of respect. After the official rationales for the Iraq war proved false, and after America failed to make good on its promise to foster democracy in either Afghanistan or Iraq – and, not least, after Abu Ghraib – the world no longer believes that we are the good guys.

Let’s talk for a minute about Afghanistan, which administration officials tout as a success story. They rely on the public’s ignorance: voters, they believe, don’t know that even though the United States promised to provide Afghanistan with both security and aid during its transition to democracy, it broke those promises. It has allowed the country to slide back into warlordism – and allowed the Taliban to make a comeback.

These days, Mr. Bush and other administration officials often talk about the 10.5 million Afghans who have registered to vote in this month’s election, citing the figure as proof that democracy is making strides after all. They count on the public not to know, and on reporters not to mention, that the number of people registered considerably exceeds all estimates of the eligible population. What they call evidence of democracy on the march is actually evidence of large-scale electoral fraud.

[Quote:]

The first uncensored letter from a British man being held at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba shows he has been abused, his lawyers have claimed.

Moazzam Begg, 36, from Birmingham, has been detained at the US military base without trial for two-and-a-half years.

His letter, seen by the BBC’s Today programme, said he had been tortured, threatened with death and kept in solitary confinement since early 2003.

The US has previously denied claims of bad treatment at the camp.

[Quote:]

Radiostation Kink FM is vanaf vrijdag 1 oktober wereldwijd te beluisteren via iTunes. De alternatieve zender is het eerste landelijke Nederlandse radiostation dat via het muziekprogramma haar programma’s aanbiedt.

“We geloven heilig in alternatieve, digitale verspreidingsvormen van muziek en radioprogramma’s. In 2004 maakt men niet alleen maar gebruik van de radio om naar muziek te luisteren. Muziekfans wachten niet meer af of een bepaald station misschien hun favoriete muziek zal draaien, maar ze zoeken zelf op internet,” aldus Jan Hoogesteijn, directeur van Kink FM.

[Quote:]

Three post-debate polls suggested voters were impressed by Kerry, with most of those surveyed saying he did better than Bush. Such instant polls reflect the views of debate watchers and not the public at large. Initial reactions to a debate can change after a few days have passed.

I have yet to see a single second of footage (I probably will when the Daily Show torrent shows up on my computer). Judging from the sound bites in this article, it was just scripted – not a real debate. Any one who has seen it care to comment?

[Quote:]

George was the first guy I called when my septic system backed up a few days ago. I knew when I called him that he didn’t know much about septic systems–or any kind of home repair for that matter–but I like him because he’s folksy and personable and reminds me a lot of myself.

George came over, looked at my septic tank for awhile, and then told me that my chicken coop was a bigger problem because the door wouldn’t stay shut. He said he’d fix it in the morning if I gave him twenty bucks for the supplies he needed. I gave him the money and he hitched back onto town.

I was awakened yesterday by a huge damned crashing sound. I was sure that it was that band of Al Qaeda terrorists Our Leader is always warning us about, but it was just George. He had leveled my chicken coop.

He stopped me before I could complain and told me that the coop was a safety hazard and that he’d saved my life by destroying it. Then, he told me that if I gave him a hundred dollars he’d come back out the today to fix it.

This morning, I was again awakened by a terrible crash, only this time it was accompanied by my John Deere tractor coming right through the trailer wall. It was George again. He said that the tractor had spun out in the sewer mud from the septic tank while he was driving nails into my new chicken coop by driving the tractor over it.

I told him that I didn’t think that was the proper way to construct a building, but he replied, “I’ve been working hard on this for three days. You can see that I’ve accomplished a lot. Give me another $500 dollars for supplies and I’ll fix your trailer in the morning.”

I gave him the money. The way I see it is that we’re in this thing to deep to change course now.