Some Xbox Fans Microsoft Didn't Aim For

From Thursday's NY Times: Some Xbox Fans Microsoft Didn't Aim For. Excerpt:

... After a few months on the Xbox Live network, in May, [a 31-year-old Manhattan financial executive] got a bit bored again. This time, however, he opened his Xbox and soldered in a chip that allowed him to change the console's basic computer code and bypass its internal security technology. After installing a new hard drive, he transferred about 3,000 MP3 music files to the system and downloaded illegal copies of 3,500 old-time arcade games. Then he installed the Linux operating system, which allowed him to use the box essentially as a personal computer. ...

It is a battle that involves many of the ethical and legal issues facing the technology and media industries at this digital moment. What rights do consumers have to tinker with products they own? How far should companies go to protect their intellectual property? What happens when the desires of consumers conflict with the business models of companies they patronize? Who gets to decide just what a particular product may be used for? ...

Smart Mobs Meetup Day

This is pretty amazing:

International Smart Mobs Meetup Day

When: Wednesday, July 16 at 8 pm

Where: In up to 561 towns (anywhere that at least 5 people sign up). The exact local venue is up for a vote.

Who: Fans of Howard Rheingold and friends.

You can sign up and keep posted here.

A nation of scared sheep

Salon: Why don't Americans care that Bush may have lied to them about Iraq? The answer lies deep in our reptilian brains.

Since 9/11, Americans have been living in a state of fear and anxiety comparable to the Cold War in the '50s and early '60s, or to the World War II era. The attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon took more than 3,000 lives, making it the deadliest foreign attack on the U.S. since Pearl Harbor. Experts who study deceit in all of its forms and degrees contend that it therefore makes perfect sense that Americans are willing to accept and forgive, though not necessarily believe, Bush's statements, even if those were intentionally or otherwise misleading. Humans are more or less genetically programmed to accept falsehoods that comfort them during periods of extreme stress. Call it the fear factor: Being able to rally around a strong leader -- and the flag -- is reassuring to many Americans.

Hi-tech babble baffles many

BBC News: Hi-tech babble baffles many. Most people are confused and flummoxed by the jargon used to describe new technology, says a survey.

Court win for search engine

From SATN via Slashdot:

The US 9th Circuit Court of Appeals issued an opinion about fair use Monday. The issue was whether a search engine that indexed images from the web and presented them as thumbnails was fair use under copyright law. They decided that it was fair use and allowed under law.

The court's opinion (a PDF) is here. Excerpt:

This case involves the application of copyright law to the vast world of the internet and internet search engines. The plaintiff, Leslie Kelly, is a professional photographer who has copyrighted many of his images of the American West. Some of these images are located on Kellyís web site or other web sites with which Kelly has a license agreement. The defendant, Arriba Soft Corp. [now Ditto.com] operates an internet search engine that displays its results in the form of small pictures rather than the more usual form of text. Arriba obtained its database of pictures by copying images from other web sites. By clicking on one of these small pictures, called ìthumbnails,î the user can then view a large version of that same picture within the context of the Arriba web page.

When Kelly discovered that his photographs were part of
Arribaís search engine database, he brought a claim against
Arriba for copyright infringement. The district court found
that Kelly had established a prima facie case of copyright
infringement based on Arribaís unauthorized reproduction
and display of Kellyís works, but that this reproduction and
display constituted a non-infringing ìfair useî under Section
107 of the Copyright Act. Kelly appeals that decision, and we
affirm in part and reverse in part. The creation and use of the
thumbnails in the search engine is a fair use. However, the
district court should not have decided whether the display of
the larger image is a violation of Kellyís exclusive right to
publicly display his works. Thus, we remand for further proceedings
consistent with this opinion.

CNET had a story on this earlier this week.

Speaking of SATN, blogger and Internet pioneer David Reed -- former chief scientist at Lotus Development Corp., a member of the original committees that created the TCP/IP protocol, and an adjunct professor at MIT's Media Lab -- was just hired by H-P.

Nightclub research tonight

I'm heading to an Oakland nightclub tonight to check out some "appropriation-based" electronic music for research for my book. Any bloggers interested in grabbing a drink there? Here are the details:

Music Performance: The Sound of Illegal Art I
What: Live ìappropriation-basedî electronic music and multimedia, featuring RAJAV and two additional performers to be announced
When: Wednesday, July 9, 8 p.m.
Where: 21 Grand, 449B 23rd Street (between Broadway and Telegraph), Oakland
Admission: Sliding scale donation of $5ñ$10 at the door

Windows XP mystery solved

The generosity of bloggers never fails to astound me, and God knows, I often need your help.

Such was the case again this week. On Saturday I posted an entry noting that I was unable to do a slide show of almost any of my hundreds of digital photos in various folders sprinkled throughout my PC. When I clicked through to the folder, the Picture Tasks pane disappeared, and with it, the option to "View as a slide show."

Ryan Westendorf in Ames, Iowa, took pity on me and asked to be invited into my office virtually. After ten minutes of noodling around through XP's Remote Assistance, he hit on the solution:

For each folder (alas, this can't be done on the top-level Pictures folder), if you right-click the folder, go to Properties, and select the Customize tab, you need to change the folder type from the default (Documents) to Pictures. You'll probably want to check the box to apply that choice to all subfolders as well.

Thanks, Ryan. Enjoyed the company. I'll have to check my sked to see the next time I plan to be in Iowa ...

Now, if I can just figure out why my popup dialogue box (with an option to launch Microsoft Scanner and Camera Wizard) has gone away whenever I connect a compact flash card, I'll make my peace with Windows XP. (Still can't network it with my wireless Macs, but I've given up that battle for now.)

Blogging in the news

Anand writes and points to a couple of weblogs-in-the-news items:

• A couple of months back, Dan G. wrote about one of his students, Simon Song, a thirty-eight-year-old native of the Peopleís Republic of China who is enrolled at the University of Hong Kong and who is interning at the New York Daily News and keeping a weblog of the sights and images of New York. Well, now New Yorker magazine takes a look.

• If you're a fan of Randy Cohen's The Ethicist column in the Sunday NY Times (I read it every week, though I find his humor, and some of his advice, off-putting), check out the recent NPR segment (Real Audio) with guest host Joe Palca, as he and Cohen discuss the dilemma of a man who has stumbled across his lady friend's very personal and anonymous weblog.