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I have to imagine this took a fair amount of programming. Next up: turning the building into one big game of space invaders!

Technology Students Mess with Dormitory Lights

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I think it’s important now and then to remind ourselves how important some things are, especially things we might take for granted. I’ve become alarmed at the rate at which our rights to privacy are being eroded. So I’d just like to highlight two very interesting pieces on privacy.

The first is this article on Wired titled “The Eternal Value of Privacy” by Bruce Schneier (famous security technologist and author). I recommend reading the article, but here’s a crucial excerpt:

The most common retort against privacy advocates — by those in favor of ID checks, cameras, databases, data mining and other wholesale surveillance measures — is this line: “If you aren’t doing anything wrong, what do you have to hide?”

Some clever answers: “If I’m not doing anything wrong, then you have no cause to watch me.” “Because the government gets to define what’s wrong, and they keep changing the definition.” “Because you might do something wrong with my information.”

My problem with quips like these — as right as they are — is that they accept the premise that privacy is about hiding a wrong. It’s not. Privacy is an inherent human right, and a requirement for maintaining the human condition with dignity and respect.

The second thing I recommend is this amazingly interesting presentation by Mr. James Duane, a professor at Regent Law School and a former defense attorney. He explains in humorous detail why you should never agree to be interviewed by the police.

This ties right in with what else Bruce Schnier said in his article, namely that “Privacy protects us from abuses by those in power, even if we’re doing nothing wrong at the time of surveillance.” Call me paranoid now, but watch this video and I bet you’ll change your mind.

Again, I scour the blogs and podcasts so you don’t have to.

To the dismay of millions, Netflix service went down hard this week and they were unable to ship any DVDs for a few days. They sent out emails apologizing for the problem and even issued 15% credits to all affected users. Will this cause people to consider switching to Blockbuster Online? I doubt it. Even though we were annoyed by the lack of DVDs arriving in our mail, the thought of actually going down to the Blockbuster and then having to physically return the video days later just seems so old fashioned nowadays. We’re sticking with Netflix.

No good stuff and no full screen mode for NBC Olympics website. NBC and Microsoft could have created a pretty sweet experience for watching the Olympics online. But they ended up crippling the site and shooting themselves in the foot. First, you can’t watch any of the videos in full screen mode. NBCOlympics.com uses Microsoft’s Silverlight technology, which the Redmond company is hoping will become a real alternative to the ubiquitous Adobe Flash. So the Olympics site was a coming-out party of sorts for the new streaming video technology. But then for reasons that probably only make sense to TV executives, they neutered the video player and removed the ability to view in full screen (which Silverlight can normally handle easily). Then the decision was made (by the same boneheads probably) to only show day-old or uninteresting content on the website so as not to “cannibalize” their TV programming. They’ve since admitted that was a stupid move. In reviewing their own data, they realized that rather than cannibalizing, watching the Olympics on TV or online only encourages more viewing on the other. TV and the web are complimentary and both help make people more interested in the Olympics as a whole. It’s good to them finally recognize this, but don’t expect them to make any changes to their programming or full-screen mode for this Olympics.

As airline flights go up and up in price, at least here’s one bit of good news. Some airlines are looking into the possibility of providing WiFi internet connectivity on planes. In addition to wifi, they’re also considering adding live TV. Overall, this is pretty great. Flying has become an absolutely horrible experience for most people. So it’s good to see the airlines taking steps to make flying just a little nicer. Soon getting stuck on the tarmac for six hours without food or water won’t seem so bad because at least you’ll be able to watch the Daily Show and browse I Can Has Cheezburger. And by the way, the compusock concept (see image) is both hilarious and kind of confusing.

The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) has a long history of suing fans who they accused of illegally sharing MP3s. But it seems they don’t always bother to get their facts straight before suing, and sometimes they attack with very little evidence at all. That was the case with Tanya Andersen. Here’s the back story, but in a nutshell she was sued by the RIAA and the judge found no evidence of any wrong doing. The RIAA was ordered to pay for Tanya’s legal fees. The judge awarded Tanya the fees in part to “deter prosecution tactics such as the RIAA’s”. After two years, “no one even remotely connected to the defendant has been alleged to be the actual infringer,” he wrote. That was in 2007. Well of course the RIAA wasn’t too happy about that and has done everything to avoid paying up. Well the big news this week is that after many attempts to negotiate a much lower amount, the RIAA has finally ponied up the $107.951.03 it owed Tanya..

The big international news has been the war between Russia and the old Soviet republic of Georgia. What hasn’t been spotlighted much in the mainstream media is the cyber-attack that Russia has launched against Georgia. At one point, all Georgian Web sites were blocked. Russian hackers worked to overload Georgian web sites and at the same time Russian backbone providers interfered with international web traffic to Georgian servers. Amazingly, it seems that not only was Russia blocking Georgian sites, it was altering or setting up dummy versions of Georgian government and news sites to make it seem like all was well in Georgia. Security researcher Jart Armin warned users not to trust any official-looking Georgian web sites that did not mention the Russian hostilities since these were most likely intercepted and altered by Russia. This is all pretty scary stuff. The next big war is going to be fought as much online as on land. China and Russia have legions of hackers working for them. Because of our strict law enforcement, we don’t have the distributed base of hackers in our country. But hopefully our government and military are taking steps to shore up our defenses. Even better, I hope somewhere, some Americans are working on good cyberwar offense (with blessing from our government of course).

And as we get closer to November, the political attack ads are only going to get more frequent and more blatant. I’m no fan of McCain, but his latest ads are ridiculous (those blaming Barack for high oil prices and claiming Barack will raise taxes). I’ve discussed the oil issue over and over already, but I decided to look into the tax issue this week. Here’s the breakdown of the two candidates’ plans according to CNN. Basically, McCain’s tax plan gives the biggest tax breaks to the wealthiest individuals and gives very small tax breaks to poorer families. Barack’s plan actually increases taxes for the wealthiest 1% and dramatically reduces taxes for less-well off families. Click the graphic for a more clear comparison between the two plans. McCain’s plan provides the largest cut on average but does so by giving a disproportionate amount of the benefit to the wealthiest individuals. So while the attack ads are technically correct (McCain’s plan provides a larger tax break on average), wouldn’t you rather the tax break go to those who need it most? Also, don’t forget that Barack’s lower average tax break means less need to further increase our national debt.

Lastly, a dog owner in MD was arrested after she ignored repeated requests to stop having her dogs poop on a neighbors lawn. This is an issue near and dear to my heart. In our little row of townhouses, we have many neighbors with dogs. Most of them are great and do a superb job picking up after their animals. But at least one or two of our neighbors let their dogs out unsupervised and fail to pick up after their pets when they defecate on our lawn. Seriously people, if you have a dog in the city, it’s your responsibility to pick up after them. Not doing so is disgusting and rude. Now, do I think these people should be arrested? Mmm, probably depends on the size of the dog…

Ok so maybe this is a little old, but I just discovered the Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog (see video below). First of all, it’s not only hilarious but extremely well done. It’s a three-part, comedic, superhero musical starring everyone’s favorite Neil Patrick Harris and assorted other less-well known TV stars (including Nathan Fillion from Firefly).

The amazing thing is that this wasn’t done for television. It was made specifically for the web by Joss Whedon (creator of Buffy and Firefly). So unlike SNL’s “Digital Shorts” which are made as much for the Saturday night’s show as for the web, this was made to be aired on Hulu.com for free. Joss seems to totally have bought into the new internet business plan: build up a loyal following by giving away your content for free, then make money by providing fans with added value (merchandising, higher-quality downloads, DVD sales, exclusives, etc). As TechDirt would say, the content is advertising for the things that really provide revenue.

I don’t know if this represents the beginning of a new effort by actors and writers to expand aggressively into online video, or if this was just a one-time project dreamed up and implemented during the writers’ strike. I hope it’s the former. What better way for an actor to build their “brand” while also having much more creative license with their work. Plus, if you’re trying to go viral, online video, not TV, is where it all starts.

Either way, I love it:

To get more control over the size of the video or to get the embed code yourself, head over to the Dr. Horrible page on Hulu.

I realize not everyone listens to as many podcasts or scours the blogs as fervently as I do, so I figured I’d highlight some of the recent news items I thought interesting:

US Customs & Border Control can steal your gadgets without needing a good reason. This is really scary; not only can they confiscate, but they can keep it as long as they want, look at everything on the device and even share your data with other private companies. And they don’t need reasonable cause to do any of it.

Comcast gets hand smacked by the FCC, wallet not affected. The FCC ruled that Comcast violated federal policy when they degraded users’ bittorrent traffic. The commission, however, chose not to impose any fine or other penalty. Basically, they just said, “Hey, cut it out”. I’m sure Comcast is quaking in their boots.

Amazon Web Services experiences massive outage. The loss of Amazon’s various web services, like it’s S3 storage service, EC2 cloud computing platform, and various other cloud computing services, sends shockwaves through the SaaS world. Maybe building your whole business on the back of Amazon’s services without any uptime guarantee isn’t so smart after all.

Delicious finally gets a facelift and an easier URL. The webpage is pretty slick now and you can use http://delicious.com instead of their old url, http://del.icio.us (I could never remember where the dots went). If you’re not already using Delicious for bookmarks and web clippings, now you have no reason not to start (you can find my Delicious profile here).

System administrator in SF goes “rogue” and refuses to relinquish control. Sorting out all the facts about the Terry Childs vs City of San Francisco case has been tricky. Some say he was holding the system hostage, others hail him as a hero who refused to let management mess up the perfectly tuned and well-running system.

Security researchers discover major internet vulnerability. The problem involves the internet’s DNS servers which are the backbone of the ‘net. DNS servers translate URLs (like “jedfonner.com”) into IP addresses that computers understand. The vulnerability allows hackers to cause a corruption on a DNS server, so that an end user would be rerouted to an arbitrary site. For example, a user could type in Google.com but end up at a location of the attacker’s choosing. DNS server operators are rushing to patch their boxes to close this vulnerability. Click here to see if you are vulnerable.

As the Republicans push for more oil drilling, the NRDC took out a full page ad in the Washington Post (pdf) to further explain the danger and futility of additional undersea drilling. Opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and America’s coastlines to oil drilling will have no real effect on gas prices. It will only boost profits for the oil giants and put our coasts and national forests in danger. If you feel as strongly about this as I do, please help by acting now.

And of course, this bizarre news piece from Santorini, where Nicole and I just vacationed: Santorini “butcher” beheads his girlfriend, steals a police car, runs over some doctors, and then gets gunned down. Oh yea, and he tried to behead a cop and killed his girlfriend’s dog too. But I swear, normally Santorini is a lovely place to visit.

Any other big news items worthy of mention? Please link to them in the comments.