Aw, crud — Wired’s reporting that in addition to the CBDTPA bill that’s going through the Senate, a representative is planning on introducing a similar bill to the House. Double-plus-ungood.
Osama’s been bloggin’
Here’s a truly bizarre piece of work — Osama bin Laden’s Blog.
Virtual LEGOs!
Oh, man — I could get so lost playing with virtual Legos that I’d forget all about work. That’d be a bad thing.
Sex is funny
So just why is it that so many ‘good Christians’ can’t ever seem to joke around about sex?
She’s not one of my favorites anyway
More reasons copy-protected audio CD’s are a Bad Thing: Celine Dion may be hazardous to your Mac.
Going up…way up
I am so stoked about the possibilities that could come of this. According to an article on Space.com, within 12 years we could have space elevators stretching 62,000 miles above the earth, capable of hauling payloads to the top every three days. Too freakin’ cool.
Ebert on copy protection
The way to launch a new CD is to get it talked about — not to insult potential fans by making it unplayable on their equipment even after they buy it legitimately.
— Roger Ebert, adding his voice to the many taking a stand against copy-protected CDs.
Eugenics wars
I’m trying to figure out what surprises me more — that someone in the UK is writing an article that appears to be seriously promoting eugenics in the near future, or that in the resulting MeFi discussion nobody thought to mention the Eugenics Wars of the early 1990’s, leading to Khan Noonien Singh‘s bid for world power in 1992, and his departure with a band of followers in 1996. Or maybe I’m just a big Star Trek geek.
When Elephants Dance
Michael Fraase’s ‘When Elephants Dance‘ is an excellent summation of the current flap over digital rights and the dangers in the entertainment industries current drive to control everything. This should be required reading for anyone who listens to music, watches movies, or uses a computer.
This CBDPTA bill is scary
Just in case folks haven’t figured out how sweeping the Hollings-Feinstein bill, aka CBDTPA is, well, keep reading.
The CBDTPA says that if I were to write and sell this BASIC program…
10 INPUT A$ 20 PRINT A$…after the regulations take effect, I would be guilty of a federal felony. That’s up to five years in prison and up to a $500,000 fine. Distributing my two-line application without charging for it, either via handing out floppies or by posting it on a website would be at least a civil offense and, depending on the circumstances, a crime as well.
It’s no joke. CBDTPA regulates ‘any hardware or software that reproduces copyrighted works in digital form.’ My program above does that, especially if my BASIC interpreter permits arbitrarily long strings.
— Declan McCullagh, in ‘CBDTPA bans everything from two-line BASIC programs to PCs’
The rest of the article is well worth reading, also. This bill is just plain scary.