I see on Waxy’s Links this fascinating presentation on Peer 2 Peer file sharing conducted by CacheLogic. They developed an analysis tool and then distributed it to major ISP’s where for 6 months it collected data relating to P2P and other internet use. P2P is by far the biggest use of bandwidth and has not diminished at all as the RIAA would like you to believe. Bit Torrent is by far the most popular P2P utility at the moment, and the study proves exactly what I said in my project in March - if one P2P service declines like Kazaa did, then it just means another is rising in popularity; not that file sharing is being curtailed. The study calls P2P the killer app for broadband. This is an important read.

Sometimes the things that happen in America are funny; the bizarre religious outbursts you see on TV from deep south Republicans always make me giggle; but sometimes it goes beyond a joke and becomes downright frightening. Just take a look at this flyer (via) sent by the Republican National Committee to Arkansas residents. The imagery used shows The Bible and a ‘Banned’ stamp on it. What kind of individual would not revolt against that kind of rhetoric? Do the people of Arkansas like been treated as complete morons? How could anyone support a political party that produces material like this? Seriously, someone explain it to me. I’m lost.

Spaceballs was good. I loved the start of the film, with the ship passing for so long. It was good as a kid, but I doubt it would stand up if I watched it now. Ain’t it cool news is reporting on the possibility of Spaceballs 2. The main problem with this is that the new Star Wars trilogy is so shit it’s beyond the reach of satire. We’ll see. This boards thread discusses it.

IPac (Intellectual Property Action I assume) is a new American organisation “defending the public interest where culture and technology meet.” They lobby senators and others on the damaging affects of copyright. They base their ideas around 3 principles:

Creators of ideas and inventions have the right to be compensated for their work, but not to limit political expression, veto technological innovation, or restrict education and scientific research.

Intellectual property laws should be judged by their potential to foster new creativity, as required by the U.S. Constitution.

Intellectual property laws should be clear and explicit, so anybody can create without fear of lawsuits.

Sounds like the right kind of attitude. We need more of this around the world. It’s good to see organisations like this seem to be springing up more frequently now, hopefully giving the whole suite of issues a much broader platform and getting the point to the general public.

Saw this on milkandcookies. Nice java based remake of a classic game, AI-Pengo - Check it out.

I see on Copyfight a link to a post by Fred von Lohmann of the EFF - he’s a copyright lawyer who works for them. In it he talks about the INDUCE act and its implications:

[Let’s] call [the Induce Act] what it is: a tax on innovation. Technology companies would find themselves under constant pressure from entertainment industry lawyers waving their newly-minted “inducement” law. This means many great products would be hobbled, and many others would never be built. Less flexible, less useful products means fewer sales, lower revenues. That’s a tax on our nation’s technology companies, a damper on earnings, a drag on competitiveness.

And all for nothing - this tax won’t magically solve the file-sharing dilemma, nor will it put a nickel into the pockets of artists.

That’s why the Amercian Conservative Union and National Taxpayer’s Union have both joined the long list of public interest and technology industry groups opposing the Induce Act.

I’m a copyright lawyer. I believe in copyright. But copyright has never given an oligarchy of media companies a veto over new technologies.

The INDUCE act is the devil. If you’re american, immediately go here and add your support to the fight against INDUCE. Copyfight also points to this excellent post on Groklaw, talking about the abusive copyright stances of companies such as SCO and Disney. They take the example of The Raven by Edgar Allen Poe and change it, illustrating the crazyness of the stringent copyright now in effect around the world. Quote:

And if you enjoy it, stop and think of this: If Edgar Allen Poe was alive and thought like SCO, you couldn’t write this without the risk of being sued by the venerable Mr. Poe, because he might say, like SCO, if he shared their concept, that we had “stolen” his plot line. Just think of how much creativity the world would lose if such ideas about copyright were to be adopted. Without a doubt the world would be the poorer for it. Happily, The Raven is in the public domain, which means we can be as creative as we like with Mr. Poe’s original work, with delightful results.

If you own the rights to Mickey Mouse, of course, you might not care about creativity on the part of others. In fact, you might wish to stamp it out whenever it rears its pretty little head, because it is in your corporate interest that there be no competition to your Mouse, so people will go on buying the same old, boring Mickey Mouse watches and lunchboxes and all the derivatives of your long-ago creativity. Actually, Disney’s Mickey Mouse was himself a derivative of someone else’s intellectual property. As you can see from the Big Cartoon Database’s page on “Steamboat Willie”, they say it was “a loose parody of Buster Keaton’s movie Steamboat Bill”, and the lead character later became Mickey Mouse. Creatively building on the work of others is what creative people do.

Introducing The Internet’s Most Accurate English to English dictionary. It got a chuckle out of me.

This internet service will translate any English word, phrase or passage into English, or vice versa. Your original grammar, style, and spelling are left intact!

Via.

I’m really excited about Team America, Matt Stone and Trey Parker’s new film. If you live in the woods you may not know that they are the creators behind South Park, one of the greatest tv shows of the last decade and anything new from them is always worth a closer look. Xeni Jardin of Boing Boing has written a small piece on it for Wired magazine. Check out the trailer for it if you haven’t already. I have high hopes for this one.

Really cool rumours cropping up about the nintendo ds portable game console. Engadget points out (via) the possibility of the DS using wifi and working as a repeater hub so large number of gamers could meet up. It’s all speculation, but it all sounds pretty amazing.

Fantastic link I got via boards. Here it is: http://www.giantrobotdestroysrepublicanparty.com/ What’s more cool is the mp3 song that the site links too. It’s a doctored George Bush speech created by Chris Morris - fantastic stuff.

Squares - Flash Game Say good bye to at least 5 minutes of your life.

Dana is still hoping to get nominated as a presidential candidate. What a loser. Here’s some more on why it’s not going to happen. I wish she’d just go away.

Update 7.45pm: As if to rub it in my face, RTE have subsequently reported that Dana has received the Galway City Council nomination. Damn it.

I’d been clicking about half-heartedly in the mozilla site for a while looking for details on the logo for firefox. It’s so harshly different to what one expects from a ’serious’ application icon design and I’ve thought it was excellent since I first saw it. I eventually ended up at Jon Hicks page; hicksdesign - this page on his site discusses how the firefox image came into being. It’s a fascinating read and what I found very interesting was the fact that he used Fireworks MX for rendering the illustration. I’ve taught Fireworks in the past so I know it quite well but I’ve never used it seriously for rendering artwork. This may cause me to take another look.

Slashdot points to the DVD Special Extended Edition specs for Lord of the Rings: Return of the King. I’m really looking forward to this, though unlike a lot of fans I believe the original theatrical versions are possibly the better cinematic versions. I haven’t been to the cinema since ROTK came out, believing it can’t be bettered. I’m looking forward to this, if only for the much speculated on ‘alternative’ ending with the mouth of Sauron.

I see from a post on Irish Eagle that Galway is Ireland’s fastest growing city according to this article in the Independent. I’m not surprised, I was there in the Summer after a two year absense and the place is thriving. I was there during the Arts Festival so of course it was busy but from what I’ve heard it’s the place to be. It seems to have maintained a lot of its character despite it’s rapid growth, unlike Dublin. Though I guess thats because I don’t live there - absense makes the heart grow fonder etc.

Krypton locks recently got quite embarassed when it was shown online how an ordinary bic pen could be used to pick the lock in 30 seconds. They’ve since agreed to replace the locks. This excellent blog entry (via) on 90% Crud draws comparisons between what happened in this case and what would happen if it was a DRM system that was broken. - Which of course, is protected by the DMCA. Very good read and points out just how harmfull (and patently ridiculous) the DMCA is.

Hotmail is increasing its’ storage rate from 2mb to 250mb. This is great news. I’ve used a hotmail account for 4 years now. I know everyone loves Gmail, but I’ve had far too much trouble with some people not being able to email my gmail account so I’ve stuck with hotmail so far. I saw this originally on boards.ie, which pointed me to this Slashdot post, where they guess that the upgrade is happening in chronological order from oldest accounts first.

Last updated: 30/10/05

1. What does TCAL stand for?
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That’s not a question. There are indeed extensive archives, but they’re not online, because the material is pretty crap and slags people personally, which was funny at the time but not suitable now. So you can just make do and believe in the myths of an awesome globalised organisation thats been running for 8 years now.

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Check out this short film, it’s a parody of the ending of every 80’s movie ever made. Pretty cringe worthy, but then it would be, given the subject matter. ‘No son, you should follow your heart.’ … ‘That’ll give us enough money to save the orphanage!’

Another game I just stumbled upon. The Tobby balloon game. Use your fan to blow Tobby around the course so he doesn’t hit anything. Japanese games are always so brilliant. Tobby is the dude, Tobby for president etc.