Virtual Thought

Robert Anton Wilson passed away today. Good writeup over at Boing Boing.

I can’t quite believe that he’s gone. I can’t quite read the last blog entry without getting too much of a sense of time passing by.

Fnord!

Here we go:

1. Leopard comes out early to scoop Vista (my guess is this’ll be the infamous “And one more thing…”)
2. No iPhone (or iPod phone, or iChat Mobile, or Apple phone, or what-have-you) yet… probably won’t even mention schedule (my early guess is Q2)
3. The iTV (Apple media set-top box) available in Apple store immediately
4. New minor rev of video iPod with 100 GB drive (by way of Gizmodo)

That’s what’ll be released. Here’s the pie-in-the-sky stuff that I would LOVE to see but probably won’t:

1. The Apple phone is available, is GSM/CDMA
2. Major rev of video iPod going full- and touchscreen with 100 GB drive

I can claim no sources inside Apple or anything… just the zeitgeist and the echo chamber of the Web.

I’m agreeing with Joel again about simplicity.

Less is more. (In fact, sometimes you want only half)

Do you hate preferences? I do. (Yeah, yeah, yeah… I love that book)

Seems there’s a design trend lately towards minimalism, a trend towards items that do one thing and do it well,... and we’re seeing it again, and again, and again.

I want in. ( =

I was talking to Ryan and he asked me what RSS reader I used. “Nothing,” I replied, “I just visit the websites themselves.”

“What?” he exclaimed, flabbergasted. “You visit websites?” Jesus, I thought, when did visiting websites become old school?

So I’ve been taking Ryan’s suggestion and using Google Reader. It’s a pretty nice piece of work and has definitely decreased the amount of time I spend catching up. As I remember to add sites that I frequent (Boing Boing, 37signals, the various friends’ blogs I read) I’m reminded of just how much information I try and take in every day in an effort to raise my cluefulness.

In that vein, one thing that caught me by surprise today was a post on BoingBoing about phishers sending out pink-slips. Apparently when someone sends out targeted spam with the intent of defrauding someone (installing malware like keystroke loggers or the like) this is called spear phishing.

That is awesome.

There’s this interesting article on CNET that discusses how Microsoft is suing the FairUse4WM developer over stolen source code because, in the Microsoft rep’s words:

“Our own intellectual property was stolen from us and used to create this tool,” said Bonnie MacNaughton, a senior attorney in Microsoft’s legal and corporate affairs division. “They obviously had a leg up on any of the other hackers that might be creating circumvention tools from scratch.”

So, is someone from Microsoft saying that, obviously, only someone with access to the source code could crack FairPlay?

Boy, is that wrong.

Here’s the big fallacy with DRM: if you give someone protected content (songs) and the thing that has to un-protect it to play it (Windows Media Player) then you have given that someone the keys to the kingdom and it is impossible to protect that content. This happens over and over and over… CSS encrypted DVDs and DVD players, locked up game content on XBox titles and the XBox itself, iTunes songs and the iTunes player.

I think what’s really going on is MS(Microsoft) trying to get some legal momentum on this fight, maybe get this hacker-type person Viodentia to pay many, many dollars in a drawn-out legal contest when, truly, MS isn’t going after the hacker for stealing source code—they’re going after the hacker because he/she circumvented the copy protection which is a lesser offense than stealing source code.

Sound and fury. I just hope the judge in the case is smarter than that and doesn’t let MS get away with it.

Holy shit. That is some intense stuff. Of course, due to some copywrong violations on the part of the submitters (pesky laws!) I won’t link directly to the video I watched… but it’s pretty easy to find nonetheless. (more…)

The more I hear about the Wii the more excited I get. If the firmware is updateable that not only means patches, but that also means the possibility of reverse engineering it, reflashing it, etc.. I’m about to wii myself.

The Scissor Sisters fuckin’ rock. I’m pretty happy with how my music library has expanded recently. Too bad about the ITMS DRM... It is very inconvenient that I can’t get the MP3 stereo component I want for my living room because Apple and the RIAA wanted to lock up their songs. Argh.