Smashing Magazine has a post today featuring one of my favorite web developer centric conics The Brads. Congratulations to Brad Colbow on the exposure at Smashing. Oh yea, and they do a great job of clarifying the whole XHTML2 / HTML5 noise of the last few weeks.

Original post

Cory Doctorow recently gave a talk at the O’Reilly Tools conference on a topic near and dear to my heart – Digital Rights Management. This talk is directly mainly at the world of eBooks and how we can avoid the mistakes made with digital music (many of which are finally being corrected).

Lots of good pearls of wisdom in Cory’s talk.

In honor of the release of Firefox 3.0, Andy at Waxy today published The Code Rush, the Mozilla Documentary from 2000.

… a video that documented its very beginning in 1998 — the first open-source release of Netscape’s browser and the foundation of the Mozilla project.

Independent filmmakers followed the Mozilla team from March 1998 to April 1999, as they worked to open Netscape Communicator’s source code to the world, in a last-ditch effort to save the company. The result is an amazing snapshot of computer history, capturing the people that worked on it, the first internal beta test, the moment Jamie Zawinski uploaded the first builds publicly, the launch party, the all-hands meeting announcing the AOL acquisition, and so much more. It aired on PBS nationally in March 2000, the same month as the beginning of the dot-com collapse.

You can view it directly here or download the torrent here(H.264 MP4, 455MB).

Thanks for doing this Andy – the film was a big of blast from the past and it was cool to see JWZ in his environment. Amazing because the browser wars really don’t seem all that long ago to me – back when each release truly was a big deal because they seemed to introduce some game changing technology (i.e. frames, graphics, css, etc) that today all seem so mute. Looking back on it, what possibly seemed like a lost cause (the open souring of the Mozilla code base) has evolved into an incredibly important part of the modern web.

Care of Bruce Schneier’s excellent security blog – comes Filming in DC’s Union Station.

This video is priceless. A Washington DC news crew goes down to Union Station to interview someone from Amtrak about people who have been stopped from taking pictures even though there’s no policy against it. As the Amtrack spokesperson is explaining that there is no policy against photography, a guard comes up and tries to stop them from filming, saying it is against the rules.

The irony – it burns!

The Register has picked up on a recent Microsoft security bulletin which urges Windows users to “restrict use of Safari as a web browser until an appropriate update is available from Microsoft and/or Apple”. This controversy comes after Apple has officially refused to promise to do anything about the carpet bombing vulnerability in the Safari browser. Essentially, Apple does not see unsolicited downloads of hundreds or even thousands of executable files to users’ desktops as being a security problem.”

Full Article

From Ars Technica

Handfuls of Windows Vista Media Center users found themselves blocked from making recordings of their favorite TV shows this week when a broadcast flag triggered the software’s built-in copy protection measures. The flag affected users trying to record prime-time NBC shows on Monday evening, using both over-the-air broadcasts and cable. Although the problem is being “looked into” by both NBC and Microsoft, the incident serves as another reminder that DRM gives content providers full control, even if by accident.

Full article

From Why does everything suck? – a piece entitled: Adobe Introduces P2P Flash Player, Kills CDNs based on the recent Adobe announcement about the new Flash public beta.

From Hank’s article:

Today Adobe announced the public beta of a new Flash Player that is going to change the way we all use the Internet. More importantly, the new player changes the economics of the Internet. Interestingly the two really key features are not getting much play in the news yet as people have focused on the new graphics capabilities. But graphics is not what is really interesting here. The first key Flash Player feature is a peer-to-peer (p2p) technology from a company they acquired called Amicima in 2006. The second key feature is that Flash can now save files directly to your local hard disk. Full Article

EFF Applauds House Passage of Surveillance Bill with No Telecom Immunity

…at least there’s a bit of sunshine in the news today (aside from all the Run on the Banks headlines across the nations newspapers this morning)

Amen brother

There are few things that make me really angry. Almost nothing. There are however a lot of things that cause me disappointment, irritation and an urge to send people furious emails. When doing my daily, very short, browsing on the Internet for nice new websites I tend to get all these feelings at once. I am tired of websites not tested with the most common browsers. Do they expect normal innocent people to switch web browser just so that they can visit a website without messing up the design. If they do maybe it’s time for some reconsideration on that matter, cause most people wont. Few websites offer so much interesting content that a visitor is willing to spend time learning a new program. It’s sad but also the reality, which a web designer as every other person must correct themselves to.

Full article

From Scott Burkun:

The software industry might be the world’s greatest breeding ground for new systems of management. From Agile, to Extreme Programming , to Test Driven Development (TDD), the acronyms and frameworks keep piling up. Why? Some say it’s immaturity: that software is still a young industry and all the change is the path to some true fundamentals. Others say it’s because software people like making things up and can’t help themselves. Well I say this: if we’re going to have dozens of models we may as well have some that are honest, however cynical, to what’s really going on much of the time. See the list

Litigation is always a risky endeavor. One can never be entirely sure how a judge will interpret case law and rule, and should the case proceed to trial, juries are even harder to read. Filing over a thousand lawsuits, therefore, is even riskier. Should a handful of rulings go the wrong way, it could jeopardize the numerous other cases currently in the system.

This is a dilemma faced by the RIAA in its war against suspected file sharers. The hundreds of cases filed have all proceeded along the same lines, with which most of us are all too familiar. The music industry’s exit strategy from cases it deems undesirable to pursue—due to mistaken identity, poor likelihood of winning, or other factors—has been just as consistent. The record labels file for a dismissal without prejudice and everybody goes their own ways, footing their own legal bills, and no one is officially cleared of wrong-doing. Recent events may be casting a shadow over the wisdom of the RIAA’s strategy.

Tallie Stubbs was sued by the RIAA last year after the trade group’s investigators traced a Kazaa shared folder back to her with the help of an ISP. After what it described as “further investigation,” the record labels apparently concluded that they had either misidentified her or didn’t have sufficient evidence to proceed with the case, and decided to move for dismissal without prejudice. But Stubbs wanted something more than a mere dismissal: complete exoneration. She filed a counterclaim seeking a declaratory judgment that she had not infringed on the record labels’ copyrights. Earlier this month, Judge Vicki Miles-LaGrange split the difference.

Read full article

Since the earliest days of software copy protection dating back to the late 1970s on some of the first games for the Apple ][, you’ve either learned to accept the DRM outright or, work around it. It’s one of those things that has been around the digital world for so long, that many of us just take it for granted, waiting for the day when the big movie and music studios finally see the lunacy in trying to sell a product online that is less useful than its CD counterpart (like that day will every happen) – but in the meantime, we live in a world chock full of DRM.

This is something that many programmers and techies inherently understand but these days, the business of online music and movies has entered the conscious of your parents and behind. So how do you explain to your Dad why his recently purchased Patsy Cline albums won’t easily transfer from his computer to his phone, iPod, Zune and home stereo? Wired has taken a stab at trying to explain this in a new piece entitled How to Explain DRM to Your Dad via a series of examples.

I long for the day when my grandson asks me inquisitively: “Grandpa, what’s this DRM thing?” when he stumbles across the term on some old google cache.

Along these lines, Dave Winer put up a great new Morning Coffee Notes podcast talking about this very thing.

After the thought provoking memo that Steve Jobs dropped on the industry yesterday with his Thoughts on Music post, it’s been quite interesting to watch the various reactions from both foreign countries and the music industry alike. Two very diverse positions on the issue were obviously from music fans and the industry, specifically the RIAA.

Bit-Tech published an interesting entry summarizing the response from the RIAA entitled: RIAA to Apple: use more DRM. It has been utterly fascinating to watch the music industry cling to its dying business model as the Internet and digital music literally changes the rules to the game right in front of them. No irony is lost in the fact that it was none of there that Steve Jobs who dragged them, kicking and screaming into the world of selling their wares online via the iTunes Music Store all those years ago – yet despite seeing the success that accompanied that move, they are still sticking to their old ways and just not getting the change that is happening all around them.

One key point in Steve’s article yesterday showed how even today, the vast majority of all music is still purchased via good old fashion CDs – which contain absolutely no built in DRM so it’s not as though the industry isn’t already in the business of selling music sans DRM. John Gruber of Daring Fireball also chimed in with a piece entitled: Reading Between the Lines of Steve Jobs’s ‘Thoughts on Music’ which is a must read for anyone following this topic.

Steve’s memo was pretty much out of the blue and came as a surprise to many but his logic is sound and it will be most interesting to look back just 5 years from now and see how Steve’s perception of the market ended up panning out. More and more new artists are figuring out that the traditional ‘record deal’ is, in far too many cases, a form of indentured servitude and in the modern net-enabled myspace culture, that arrangement makes little sense. It’s absolutely fantastic to watch people like MC Lars, (and others like him) touting nothing more than an Apple laptop and an insanely creative mind blazing the new path of a modern artist, so in the word of Lars: Download This Song!

This just in, the man himself has chimed in on the topic.

For you, on this election day, the just released Hacking Democracy which aired on HBO earlier this week.

This is a must see film for anyone who really cares about the process in which our government officials are elected. This affects Democrats and Republicans alike.

There is also a detailed page on HBOs site as well.

For someone living in the modern world, this kind of thing almost seems impossible but take it from Linda Branagan (FreeBSD Expert) who’s recent experience in a Texas cafe wearing a shirt with the BSD Daemon on it reminds us how backwards part of this country still are.

Last week I walked into a local “home style cookin’ restaurant/watering hole” in Texas to pick up a take-out order. So, while I was busy gazing at the farm implements hanging on the walls, I was approached by two “natives.” These guys might just be the original Texas rednecks. “Pardon us, ma’am. Mind if we ask you a question?” Well, people keep telling me that Texans are real friendly, so I nodded. “Are you a Satanist?” “Uh, no, I can’t say that I am.” “Gee, ma’am. Are you sure about that?” they asked. They continued: “See, ma’am, we don’t exactly appreciate it when people show off pictures of the devil. Especially when he’s lookin’ so friendly.” These idiots sounded terrifyingly serious. Native: “Ma’am, I think you’re lying. And we’d appreciate it if you’d leave the premises now.”

The story goes on and only gets better. The next time I’m in Texas, remind me to look up this cafe and wear a Slayer shirt in there.

Scary to see this come to light, but hardly unbelievable. Good on Eugene for coming forward, that took some huge brass one.

Video of computer programmer Clinton Eugene Curtis testifies under oath before the U.S. House Judiciary Members in Ohio. Video & Transcript

On the follow-up to my previous post from Senator Stevens, I proudly return you once again to John Stewart discussing Net Neutrality with an additional twist of humor, featuring none other than John Hodgman (from Apple’s recent Get A Mac commercials).

Some days it’s just easier to laugh than to get depressed by the fact that the folks in charge of our beloved Internet have absolutely no clue about how or why it works the way it does. By now, the infamous Ted Stevens recent speech on the Internet as a series of tubes has appeared everywhere but the main one we’ve all be waiting for has finally appeared.

Leave it to Jon Stewart to completely nail it when it comes to dissecting the utter ignorance of our esteemed senator from Alaska. I feel bad for the folks in Alaska but then again, this genius is in charge of something so utter critical to all of us. Enjoy!

A graphic map depicting the epic struggle of Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) against the Empire of Microsoft. This page is inspired by, and is a continuation of, the original Software Wars map, created by Li-Cheng Tai. I’ve always thought it was pretty cool. The original Software Wars began in 1998 when Netscape first announced it was going to open source the browser code. It was updated a couple times a year after that for a while. Unfortunately, it hasn’t been updated since August of 2003.

While enjoyable in its own right, the real humor points back to the fact that there are various versions of the map dating back to March 1998 when the technology landscape was a considerably different place. How soon things change and we forget just how far it has all come. For example, back in the 1998 map under the category of Apple / Mac OS it simply says ‘Being Assimilated’ — which today could more accurately read: ‘Being Copied, Again’.

From Musing from Mars comes a story of modern cross browser compatibility (which is still the bane of the modern web developers existence) call All The Lovely Browsers.

The story tells of the changing face of the web from the perspective of a browser usage and if you do anything at all in the realm of web development, you really should be familiar with these findings.

Folks with backgrounds in networking and TCP/IP have known this for a very long time but when you talk to Johnny Sixpack, you might be surprised just how private and invisible Johnny thinks his activities are while online.

GeoTool is a great mash-up site combining traditional whois, reverse DNS lookups and GoogleMaps to show you (or anyone) just where you are coming from. They’ve done a decent job of meshing these tools together and this a great way to show someone just how deep their footprints are online (for starters) but the real kicker for this is the available FireFox Extension

Network people also know there are definitely ways to mask your tracks if you know how but for your everyday casual surfing, you are about as invisible as a cute girl at a tech conference.

Sen. Ron Wyden on Thursday proposed legislation aimed at preventing high-speed Internet service providers from charging content companies extra so consumers have faster access to their Web sites or receive special treatment.

The Oregon Democrat said he was pushing the legislation to ensure smaller start-ups trying to do business on the Internet would not be outgunned by bigger companies.

This news warms my heart and restores my faith in humanity — or at least it makes me thankful that the technology is now in place so that everyday people have a voice and a place online to get their message heard.

After many months after the Sony DRM debacle, where it seemed like each day exposed some new fact about Sony’s actions as a result of the software they had purposely set loose on their customers PCs. Fortunately, members of the Government and the United States Military also like music and their computers were compromised along with everybody else when they bought a Sony CD and that’s when the shit really hit the fan.

Long story short, despite Sony’s best efforts to wash this under the rug, the issue refused to go away (huge kudos to high profile sites like Boing Boing for their excellent writing and near constant coverage on the topic — and their persistence paid off. Today Sony made a pretty amazing announcement:

Sony BMG demotes CEO for deploying DRM

Sony BMG music has demoted its CEO, Andrew Lack. One of the reasons he got the sack was that he oversaw the release of eight million music CDs that were deliberately infected with malicious software that covertly installed itself on music lovers’ PCs, spied on them, and destabilized their systems, and left them vulnerable to opportunistic infections from other malicious programs.

The swap, announced Friday and effective immediately, follows months of criticism of Lack’s tenure as CEO, including investor discontent over spiraling fees paid to artists and a scandal over copy protection software in Sony CDs.

I believe it was also CEO Andrew Lack (it may instead have been their PR guy) – who got on national television proclaiming (paraphrasing):

“….most people don’t even know what a Root Kit is so why even worry about it?….”

Riiiiiiggght….. so just because most of your customers may not understand the technical details about how your product just completely compromised the security of their computer), they should just not worry about it? Great logic there Andrew! No wonder you are (/were/) the CEO! This brings back memories of the whole Enron scandal, but in the end, it’s a huge positive thing as it draws some much needed awareness to the evils of DRM systems. The is at least some hope that the people making the laws governing such things, are finally starting to get clued in bit about the real world ramifications of their work in Congress & the Senate.

Previous installments of the Sony DRM Debacle Roundup: Part I, Part II, Part III, Part IV, Part V, Part VI

The world (at least some of it) is slowing waking up the fact that the honeymoon is over for Google and as a fast maturing company, they are quickly becoming involved with a slew of controversies surrounding their decisions on a few key matters around the world.

Today, Google rolled out what might be one of their most controversial endeavors yet with the re-introduction of the Google Video Store. Instead of doing what they’ve done in the past, doing what makes sense for their users, Google opted this time to let an industry that is barley half its size (in market capitalization – that would be Hollywood and the rest of the entertainment industry) set a very dangerous precedent when it comes to who gets to set the rules over what you and I can do with digital video products that we buy online.

Cory Doctorow has written a very impressive piece entitled Google Video DRM: Why is Hollywood more important than users? where he goes into the deep ramifications of what this all means to the future of digital entertainment. Google, it seems like we hardly knew ya before you went from digital darling in a powerful position to really make some positive changes in the online world to just another entity willing to do whatever Hollywood tells you is the right thing to do, regardless how bad it is for the very people you were created to serve. Alas, like all things DRM, it only ends up hurting the honest people while everyone else will simply route around it.

From the post

I can’t read books. I can’t even focus on a magazine article without stopping every few paragraphs to email my team at Rollyo about tweaks we should be making to our new Firefox tool (or whatever happens to be to project of the moment). I can’t listen to other people for more than a few seconds. Eye contact is unthinkable (too much else to see).

I wanted to investigate whether I might have A.D.D., but I could only get as far as the first D before I lost interest.