Leuschke demonstrates how distributing a two line BASIC program constitutes a felony under the proposed CDBTPA. Sounds like the start of a great code contest: What's the shortest program you can get 5 years in federal prison for? Surely we can do better than 22 bytes?
Bleak future looms if you don't take a stand: Dan Gillmor on trends in big media control over information and entertainment through the DMCA and proposed bills.
This is a quiz about your future. It's about how you view some basic elements of the emerging Digital Age.
1. Do you care if a few giant companies control virtually all entertainment and information?
2. Do you care if they decide what kinds of technological innovations will reach the marketplace?
3. Would you be concerned if they used their power to compile detailed dossiers on everything you read, listen to, view and buy?
4. Would you find it acceptable if they could decide whether what you write and say could be seen and heard by others?
Those are no longer theoretical questions. They are the direction in which America is hurtling.
[via Boing Boing]
Lord of the Riots Rocks Seattle Campus
The cleanup in chess clubs and computer labs are just beginning after a wave of riots broke out this morning at the University of Washington following the defeat of The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring by A Beautiful Mind in the Academy Awards. The Lord of the Rings won four Oscars mainly for technical achievement while A Beautiful Mind won the "big" awards of Best Director, Picture, Screenplay, and Supporting Actress.
Photos from SeaWiFS mounted on Orbview-2 show an area of black water moving into Florida Bay, about 50 miles north of the Keys, over the last few days. Scientists at Florida Marine Research Institute and Mote Marine Laboratory are trying to figure out what's causing the change.
See also:
- Blackwater Event Current Status Information
- Most recent SeaWiFS images from Florida Bay
- Dead zone puzzles scientists (Bradenton Herald)
Scientists are baffled by a mysterious "dead zone" in the Gulf of Mexico off southern Florida, an area normally rife with fish but described by fishermen now as fouled by murky waters and barren of marine life.
And like any good mystery, investigators haven't ruled out any culprit in their search for the cause of the zone, which spans from Marathon Key to Naples.
Samples researchers took Tuesday were in water they said was unusually dark.
"Goodness gracious," said Erich Bartels, a biologist with Mote, "seven feet of water and you can't see the bottom."
That was in water that is usually postcard turquoise with clear water in the shallow parts. This was mostly blackish green and pea green at smaller depths.
Fish spotter pilots were the first to discover the black water in January. Though fishermen didn't find dead fish in its wake, they report an abysmal season for those waters and unusual behavior in the few fish they did find.
While the images from the private company Orbimage's SeaWiFS and a NASA satellite show that the water might be coming from the Shark River, not all the pictures are consistent with that possibility, Muller-Karger said.
[via The Daily Grail]
