CD Copy Protection

This entry was posted in Intellectual Property Music on by

My first reaction when I read the subtitle of this San Jose Mercury News article (R)?

MAJOR LABELS TO COPY-PROTECT ALL CDS SOLD IN THE U.S.

Well, I won’t be buying any of those CDs.
Then I read the article.
It looks like the schema being proposed will allow what I consider to be plenty of copies for typical fair use requirements. We do, in the Modulator family, make mix CDs and backup copies for the car and other places with high risk of theft. As long as I can make 3-4 copies I really don’t care whether I can make 7, 8 or more copies of a CD or for that matter whether I can put a song on an IPOD (yea, I know lots of you like IPODs).
Oh, and has anyone run across any betting lines on how long before the most onerous of the copy protection schemes will be breached? If one really wants to some of the approaches appear to be rather trivial to get around.

Be Careful What You Give Them

This entry was posted in Information on by

I suspect that not many have ever doubted that Microsoft would do whatever it took, give up whatever was necessary or cooperate with any government to make a buck yuan.
Google, though, has tried to make us believe that they are different. Take a look at the Google Corporate Philosophy. Here are a few items:

  • You can make money without doing evil.
  • The need for information crosses all borders.

Unless you want to make money in China and then the definition of evil may be a bit fluid:

In an interview with Playboy, Brin was asked what Google would do if faced with a choice between compromising search results and being unavailable to Chinese users. He responded: “There are difficult questions, difficult challenges. Sometimes the ‘Don’t be evil’ policy leads to many discussions about what exactly is evil.”

What you think is safe today may be well be in a government file tomorrow. What you believe is accurate today may well be revised tomorrow at the direction of your friendly government revisionist. Be careful out there!
Via Heretical Ideas.
Update: For a different take see Scobeleizer.

Update: Corrected currency spelling error.

Census Data on Google Maps

This entry was posted in Google Information on by

Have you ever wondered why someone would spend the time to create something with no apparent reward? Well, this new site, gCensus.com, which overlays US Census data on Google Maps was fall out from a college class:

Specifically, the course focused on scientific data collected in such fields as fluid dynamics, physics, and weather. The class was small, about a dozen people, and this allowed the class to be somewhat informal in nature. We read two or three published research papers per week and discussed the papers in round table discussions during class meetings.
One of the assigments we were given was open-ended. The assigment was to “do something interesting with a large data set”. I looked around at possible datasets and came across the census data. At approximately ten gigabytes, I thought it qualified as a large data. At the same time, spring 2005, Google had just released its map technology. I thought the two were a perfect match and gCensus is the result.

Philip at Google Blogoscoped hints that the author may be at risk of Google closing him down. Is anyone aware of Google shutting down any other sites using overlays on Google Maps?
Modulator previously noted chicagocrime.org which overlays Google Maps with Chicago crime statistics.
Via The Presurfer.

Compassionate Use

This entry was posted in Drug Laws on by

Barry Campbell has opened up Compassionate Use:

Tracking the effort to create legal, medical and social justice for sick folks and their caregivers in the United States.

Link up, check in regularly and petition your congress critters, state legislators, county and city politicians to support medical marijuana use now and to work toward ending state terrorism and the war on drugs.
Via The Oubliette.