It's gonna be ok

Mistake Shows Need for Clear Communication in Piracy Discussions

Let's say that I download the last episode of the recent season of Lost via BitTorrent. It's not yet available on DVD and I get broadcast TV in my home. Is this theft? Some in the entertainment world say yes. Here's an example:

In a demonstration for BusinessWeek earlier this year, Attributor executives showed how many times scenes from "The Sopranos" had appeared on 20 leading video sites since they first aired on TV. In all, 1,500 scenes from 52 episodes had been viewed 32 million times. For Time Warner's (TWX) HBO, those viewings might have brought in more than $1 million, said Attributor Chief Executive Officer Jim Brock. [Emphasis added.]

The quote talks about and HBO series which people do pay to see (by subscribing to HBO) but I've read similar statements regarding broadcast TV shows too. But here's the catch:

It turns out that Brock was estimating revenue from advertising that did, or could have, run next to the "Sopranos" clips. I'm glad I asked, because there's a big difference between an overlooked opportunity and outright theft.

Here is exactly where we need to separate the hype from the reality. Is the company losing money because of theft or because of their lack of understanding and missing of an opportunity?

Read the full article at Tools of Change for Publishing.

Obama’s FISA opportunity

Here's Keith Olbermann's special comment from last night:

Warning to copyright enforcers: Three strikes and you're out

I think we should permanently cut off the internet access of any company that sends out three erroneous copyright notices. Three strikes and you're out, mate.

Having been disconnected, your customers can only find out about your product offerings by ringing you up and asking, or by requesting a printed brochure. Perhaps you could give all your salespeople fax machines so they can fax urgent information up and down the supply chain. And there's always the phone – just make sure you've got a bunch of phone books in the office, because you'll never Google another phone number.

Call it a modest proposal in the Swiftian sense if you must, but I'm deadly serious.

Read Cory Doctorow's full article on guardian.co.uk.

White House Briefing on Vampires

First Quantum of Solace trailer

The Prisoner Puzzle

Long considered lost footage, I've had this interview from 1977 for many years. Warner Troyer interviews Patrick McGoohan about the making and meaning of the TV series "The Prisoner" in front of a live studio audience.

Journey's End trailer

If you haven't seen The Stolen Earth yet, do not watch this trailer. You've been warned.

What to do when Twitter's down

No, I'm not going to bitch about how "twitter's always down". If it's up, I tweet. If it's not, I don't. I've learned to get over it. However, if you've just got to post that tweet while twitter's down and you've got Web access, head over to twitabit. Give it your twitter login info, write your post, and send it off. Your tweet will be queued and sent along when twitter's up again.

I've noticed that it can take some time for posts to be forwarded along so if your tweet is time sensitive you're basically back to SOL. Also, it seems like that when you queue several tweets, they'll be sent to twitter in reverse order. (i.e. Write tweets 1,2,3 and they'll be posted to twitter in 3,2,1 order.) I've not confirmed this so correct me if I'm wrong.

Journey's End

Just two episodes to go in Doctor Who series 4!

Boot Vista faster with multiple cores

If you've got a multi-core computer (2, 4, 8, whatever) and you're running Vista, here's a great way to decrease your boot time by instructing Vista to actually use more than one core during the boot process.

1. Click on the orb, type msconfig, and press enter
   
   
2. Click Continue a UAC window appears. (If you're not logged in as an admin you'll probably need to give your admin password too.)
   
3. Select the Boot tab and then click the Advanced options... button.
   
   
4. Check the Number of processors: option and use the drop-down list to select the number you wish to use.
   
   
5. Click OK.
   
6. Back on the Boot tab check the Make all boot settings permanent option. (If you don't do this step, you'll be forced to undo it once you reboot. So, ok, if you're not sur about this process, skip this step, confirm it works, then redo all this including this step.)
   
   
7. If you did step six answer the "are you sure" question by clicking the Yes button.
   
   
8. Reboot your computer.

I saw about a 30% boot time reduction by changing from one to two cores for boot.

U.S. copyright renewal records available for download

Wondering if that book published between 1923 and 1963 is currently in the public domain? Well, now you can find out.

For U.S. books published between 1923 and 1963, the rights holder needed to submit a form to the U.S. Copyright Office renewing the copyright 28 years after publication. In most cases, books that were never renewed are now in the public domain. Estimates of how many books were renewed vary, but everyone agrees that most books weren't renewed. If true, that means that the majority of U.S. books published between 1923 and 1963 are freely usable.

How do you find out whether a book was renewed? You have to check the U.S. Copyright Office records. Records from 1978 onward are online (see http://www.copyright.gov/records) but not downloadable in bulk. The Copyright Office hasn't digitized their earlier records, but Carnegie Mellon scanned them as part of their Universal Library Project, and the tireless folks at Project Gutenberg and the Distributed Proofreaders painstakingly corrected the OCR.

Thanks to the efforts of Google software engineer Jarkko Hietaniemi, we've gathered the records from both sources, massaged them a bit for easier parsing, and combined them into a single XML file available for download here.

Read the full story on Inside Google Book Search.

Don't take pictures of busses in the UK...

...or you might be labeled a paedophile.

A bus-spotter says it is no longer safe to practise his hobby of 40 years after being branded a terrorist and a paedophile.

Rob McCaffery, 50, is proud of his 30,000 photos of trams and coaches but after being interrogated twice in 12 months he fears the time may have come to hang up his camera.

The credit controller, from Gloucester, says he now suffers "appalling" abuse from the authorities and public who doubt his motives.

The bus-spotter, officially known as an omnibologist, said: "Since the 9/11 attacks there has been a crackdown.

"The past two years have absolutely been the worst. I have had the most appalling abuse from the public, drivers and police over-exercising their authority.

Mr McCaffery, who is married, added: "We just want to enjoy our hobby without harassment.

"I can deal with the fact someone might think I'm a terrorist, but when they start saying you're a paedophile it really hurts."

Read the full story on Yahoo! UK & Ireland News.

OpenCongress.org

I've got to admit that I don't track my representative and senators as much as I should. This is about to change. I just found OpenCongress.org and so far I'm impressed. Create an account and it will find your rep and senators for you. From there you can add more, track legislation, get related news stories, leave comments and even vote yea/nay on individual bills. Oh, and you can subscribe to all of it via RSS! So, now whenever Rep Fortenberry, or Senators Hagel or Nelson do something, I'll know about it.

You can also create blog widgets to track legislation. Here's one on the recent FISA bill.

Feel free to add me as a friend. My username is msauers.

Cookie on Colbert