the blog quebecois

From the Washington Post:

The chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee said Tuesday he favors developing new technology to remotely destroy the computers of people who illegally download music from the Internet.

The senator acknowledged Congress would have to enact an exemption for copyright owners from liability for damaging computers. He endorsed technology that would twice warn a computer user about illegal online behavior, "then destroy their computer."

Orrin, Orrin, Orrin.

You moron, moron, moron.

First off, there isn't any way that I'm aware of to "remotely destroy" someone's computer. You can wipe out data, sure, or corrupt the bootsector, or overwrite EPROMs, but all that can be repaired or restored, if at great bother and expense.

But let's imagine for a moment that you did have the technology to make this possible. Leaving aside entirely the flood of lawsuits that would ensue, you'll soon enough find out that a sword cuts in both directions.

Within seconds of unveiling your little doomsday device, you had best permanently disconnect yourself from the Internet, and the same applies to your terrorist buddies at the RIAA.

Or the hackers will do it for you. You'll be renting server space just to queue up the DNS attacks.

There are patriots who are shaping the terrain as we speak.

Orrin, Orrin, Orrin.

There's something wrong with using old mayonnaise jars?

When Holly Marshall wanted to sell a pair of dangling earrings, a popular style these days, she listed them on eBay once, and got no takers. She tried a second time, and still no interest.

Was it the price? The fuzzy picture? Maybe the description: a beautiful pair of chandaleer earrings.

Such is the eBay underworld of misspellers, where the clueless — and sometimes just careless — sell labtop computers, throwing knifes, Art Deko vases, camras, comferters and saphires.

An amusing look at bargain-hunting on eBay in the NYT via Boing Boing.

To_verifiication_of_your email address click on the-link :

http://go.msn.com/HML/6/2.asp?target=%68%74tP:%2f%2fmdsass
40f.com*1027%2E%44a.R%55/?1w02gu1bxyINSRBrGdpHHO57AMR
Jb0lx36q6b

and_enter on the little winddow _your _Citi.bank D e b b i t
Card number and _pin_ that _you use on_the Atm_Machine.

There must be some kind of mistake here. I don't have a Citibank "Debbit" card and I'm inclined to not deal with a bank that sends out illiterate correspondence.

Also, the above link resolves to somewhere in Russia.

I think you have to have a serious look at your Internet strategy, Citibank.

The German broadcaster ZDF ran an online poll on who should be elected US president. Something tells me they weren't expecting this:

ZDF actually took down a previous poll that was going much the same way, claiming that someone was "manipulating" it. I can't see that anyone would spend a lot of energy trying to hack the site.

I only voted once, so I don't know if they were using cookies or IP numbers to discourage multiple votes, but it hardly matters: Kerry voters would have had the same opportunity to pack the ballot.

Internet polls are kind of useless at best; but I think you could make the argument that, at the least, Bush voters are much more enthusiastic about their candidate than Kerry's are theirs.

So I go back today to see how things are going -- and wonder of wonders, ZDF has taken down the poll again.

Ray D. of the Medienkritik blog has more here.

Update: The link to the poll has been removed from ZDF's main page, but the poll is still active here. Choose who ye will and then click on the "Abstimmen" link at the bottom of the page to cast yon votage.

oh, give me the autumn, give me the trees,
gather up everything I ever wanted
and give it to me, please

-- all about eve

Techfocus News & Commentary:

It looks like the MPAA is about to drop the hammer on Bittorrent and eDonkey by cutting users off at the pass.

According to an Associated Press report, the MPAA will begin filing suit against server operators - the folks that bring you Bittorrent "trackers" and eDonkey services.

This does not bode well for sites such as Suprnova, regardless of legality. Napster managed to essentially escape the wrath of the RIAA legally, but was crushed by the legal bills that accompanied their defense. There's nothing to indicate that this situation will be any different.

RIAA? MPAA? Allow me to introduce TinyP2P:

# tinyp2p.py 1.0 (documentation at http://freedom-to-tinker.com/tinyp2p.html)

import sys, os, SimpleXMLRPCServer, xmlrpclib, re, hmac # (C) 2004, E.W. Felten
ar,pw,res = (sys.argv,lambda u:hmac.new(sys.argv[1],u).hexdigest(),re.search)
pxy,xs = (xmlrpclib.ServerProxy,SimpleXMLRPCServer.SimpleXMLRPCServer)
def ls(p=""):return filter(lambda n:(p=="")or res(p,n),os.listdir(os.getcwd()))
if ar[2]!="client": # license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0
myU,prs,srv = ("http://"+ar[3]+":"+ar[4], ar[5:],lambda x:x.serve_forever())
def pr(x=[]): return ([(y in prs) or prs.append(y) for y in x] or 1) and prs
def c(n): return ((lambda f: (f.read(), f.close()))(file(n)))[0]
f=lambda p,n,a:(p==pw(myU))and(((n==0)and pr(a))or((n==1)and [ls(a)])or c(a))
def aug(u): return ((u==myU) and pr()) or pr(pxy(u).f(pw(u),0,pr([myU])))
pr() and [aug(s) for s in aug(pr()[0])]
(lambda sv:sv.register_function(f,"f") or srv(sv))(xs((ar[3],int(ar[4]))))
for url in pxy(ar[3]).f(pw(ar[3]),0,[]):
for fn in filter(lambda n:not n in ls(), (pxy(url).f(pw(url),1,ar[4]))[0]):
(lambda fi:fi.write(pxy(url).f(pw(url),2,fn)) or fi.close())(file(fn,"wc"))

TinyP2P is a functional peer-to-peer file sharing application, written in fifteen lines of code, in the Python programming language. I wrote TinyP2P to illustrate the difficulty of regulating peer-to-peer applications. Peer-to-peer apps can be very simple, and any moderately skilled programmer can write one, so attempts to ban their creation would be fruitless.

It'd be a terrible thing if this code fell into the wrong hands, so I shall publish it here, where there's little danger anyone will see it.

Via boingboing

IOL (South Africa):

Amman - A budding romance between a Jordanian man and woman turned into an ugly public divorce when the couple found out that they were in fact man and wife, state media reported on Sunday.

Separated for several months, boredom and chance briefly re-united Bakr Melhem and his wife Sanaa in an Internet chat room, the official Petra news agency said.

Bakr, who passed himself off as Adnan, fell head over heels for Sanaa, who signed off as Jamila (beautiful) and described herself as a cultured, unmarried woman - a devout Muslim whose hobby was reading, Petra said.

Cyber love blossomed between the pair for three months and soon they were making wedding plans. To pledge their troth in person, they agreed to meet in the flesh near a bus depot in the town of Zarqa, northeast of Amman.

The shock of finding out their true identities was too much for the pair.Upon seeing Sanaa-alias-Jamila, Bakr-alias-Adnan turned white and screamed at the top of his lungs: "You are divorced, divorced, divorced" - the traditional manner of officially ending a marriage in Islam.

"You are a liar," Sanaa retorted before fainting, the agency said.

Via The Inquirer

This is a Google beta development that features more catalogs than you can shake a stick at. If you don't have a stick, there's probably a catalog of sticks somewhere in there.

contactmusic.com:

HARRISON FORD hates the internet, because it means anyone can spread malicious gossip about him. The actor, who plays a computer-security specialist in his latest film FIREWALL, sees a need to censor his words to avoid being misrepresented online. He says, "The worst thing about the internet is that anything and everything is up for grabs. How can that be, when I limit my public conversations to about once every couple of years? "Any kind of rubbish goes on the internet and it can have a f**king life of its own."

Oh my gosh. I immediately went to the Internets to find out what kind of nasty things people were saying about Harrison. Not much, beyond the standard industry bumpf. I did, however, find the Harrison Ford Paper Doll page and I gotta agree with his concern: If the wardrobe is at all accurate, he dresses like a blind Hawaiian pimp.

This has been making the rounds, but I don't see what the big deal is. It seems that if you do a Google search for "Confidential - Do Not Distribute," a number of hits turn up. G'wan, give it a try. And look at what format most of them seem to be in.

Those files will never be seen by my eyes, at least. I hate PDF documents with a passion, and never open one up unless I have to. If I've got a lot of windows open, the Acrobat reader almost always crashes my browser.

Canada.com:

OTTAWA - Conservative MP James Moore denied Wednesday that he looked at a picture of a "scantily clad" woman on his laptop computer while at his seat in the House of Commons.

"I don't know where this attack is coming from," the B.C. MP said in apparent surprise. "It is utterly baseless, utterly nonsensical. I love this place, I love serving my constituents and I'm offended that this has even been alleged, Mr. Speaker."

NDP MP Irene Mathyssen rose in the Commons after question period Wednesday to make the accusation and to ask for an apology.

"I feel very strongly that this is not only disrespectful of women, but it's disrespectful of this House. It reflects an attitude of objectifying women and we know that when women and other human beings are objectified and dehumanized, they become the objects of violence and abuse," she said.

I hear ya, Sarge. Why, just look at this appalling thread I found today while not searching for pictures of the estimable Jessica Alba. Were the grunting, sweating male pigs that swarm the Internet (and your hot and bothered imagination, I'll bet) interested in Ms. Alba's thoughts on the dramatic arts? On world affairs? On her deepest hopes and fears?

No, they were not. It was as if she wasn't really there.

(It turns out that Moore was showing a fellow MP pictures of his former girlfriend, who was wearing a bikini; and his dog, who, presumably, wasn't.)

Picture of a Chicago street captured on Google Earth. Some think it shows a young man with a gun, but I'm not so sure.

It certainly looks like he's pointing something, and the reaction of the child on the sidewalk -- who looks startled, and in the midst of breaking into a run -- leans to that interpretation. But trying to determine what, if anything, is in the boy's hand is a bit trickier.

For one thing, it appears to be bright white in color. It could be nickel-plated, and catching the light at an odd angle, but there's no metallic glint that I can see.

Furthermore, if it is a gun, what is he aiming at? If you go into Google Earth (it's been a while since I last used it, but I don't think there's anything to install. I certainly haven't on this relatively-new computer) at this link and pan and zoom around.

The little girl (?) on the sidewalk doesn't appear to be a target; as best as I can see, the "gunboy" is pointing at something parallel to it. There are some people on a staircase about 50 or 60 feet ahead; but they, too, are out of the line of fire (and it's not exactly optimum pistol-shooting range).

But follow the path of the Google camera as it travels south on the street. The first photo shows the boy behind the vehicle. The second shows the "shooting" pose. In the third, he looks like he is talking to the child, and his "gun" hand is nowhere to be seen.

So, in conclusion: No harm; no foul. Of course, if you've spotted something I've missed, I'm certain the Chicago Police would be delighted to hear from you. (Please don't mention my name.)

Before I Die is an Internet project in which people send in Polaroids of themselves with their final ambitions scrawled in felt pen on the white lower margin. The woman above wrote:

Before I die I want to be carried out of my home feet first

Not to be anal and all nitpickey about this, but isn't that what you sort of plan for after you die?

Mike On Ads will guess your sex, weight and age, or give you a free stuffed animal!

OK, I was kidding about the weight and age. Also, the free stuffed animal is probably off the table, too.

But he's serious about the sex thing. What he does is query (following your permission) your browser's recent history and compares sites viewed against Quantcast's extensive demographics profiling.

Then a bit of arithmetical magic:

So what I did is I modified the SocialHistory JS so that it polled the browser to find out which of the Quantcast top 10k sites were visited. I then apply the ratio of male to female users for each site and with some basic math determine a guestimate of your gender. The math is really quite simple, I just take: 1 / (1 + r_1 * r_2 * … * r_n)

where p_i is the ratio of men-to-women for the specific site. For example, if you had been to two sites that had a 2-1 ratio of men to women, the probability of you being female would be:
1 / (1 + 2 * 2) = 1/5 = 20%%

Site Male-Female Ratio google.com 0.98 flickr.com 1.15 digg.com 1.56 azlyrics.com 0.79 drudgereport.com 2.08 gizmodo.com 2.08 ultimate-guitar.com 1.25 breitbart.com 1.94 google.ca 1.33 lifehacker.com 1.63 metafilter.com 1.27 musiciansfriend.com 1.86 boingboing.net 1.5 colostate.edu 0.92 reddit.com 1.33 fark.com 1.82 bugmenot.com 2.03 nationalreview.com 1.74 mentalfloss.com 0.75

leading to the conclusion:

Likelihood of you being FEMALE is 0% Likelihood of you being MALE is 100%

No stuffed animal for me. (And being 100% MALE, why would I want one anyway?)

Via The Presurfer

Big Government:

November 30th, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) could potentially engage in one of the largest federal power grabs we have ever seen.

After two years of this Presidential Administration and this Congress, that is saying an awful lot about an awful lot.

And what’s worse, the FCC would be doing it without Congress weighing in. At the FCC’s November meeting -- note the coincidental date of choice, AFTER the impending election -- three unelected bureaucrats (of five) could simply vote themselves rulers of 1/6th of our entire economy - the information and technology sector.

Meaning the Internet that you currently enjoy -- that has been a marvel of economic and information innovation and success -- will be subject to vast new governmental regulations. You didn’t elect these people -- but they are on the verge of electing themselves Internet overlords.

I have a feeling that they're going to go for it. The Obamabots are going to be staring at political oblivion, and calculating that this is one of their last chances at tilting the field to their advantage.

Global:

In a speech to students at Carleton University, [Chief Justice Beverley] McLachlin said the media in general are essential to building public trust in the administration of justice.

But she says newspapers, radio and television are "old technology" at a time when anyone with a keyboard can create a blog and call themselves a journalist.

She wondered whether fairness and accuracy might be lost in the world of Facebook, tweets and instant messaging, which she says are part of a profound, cultural shift in how people communicate.

"Some bloggers will be professionals and academics providing thoughtful commentary and knowledge," she said. "Others will fall short of basic journalistic standards. Will accuracy and fairness be casualties of the social media era?

"What will be the consequences for public understanding of the administration of justice and confidence in the judiciary? How can a medium such as Twitter inform the public accurately or adequately in 140 characters or less of the real gist of a complex constitutional decision?"

Beverley McLachlin is an idiot.Beverley McLachlin is a doofus.Beverley McLachlin is 3 clowns.Beverley McLachlin is a moronn.Beverley McLach

So there ya go, Bev. Four and 17.85% complete thoughts (well, the pentultimate one has a bit of a spelling error) in only 140 characters. Seems pretty accurate to me. YMMV.

Of this phenomenon called Twitter, that is. I scorned and reviled the medium.

That was before I discovered the intriguing tweets -- nay, Zen-like koans -- of CNN's Wolf Blitzer. The man's a poet and doesn't even know it.