Artemis Records is waving webcasting royalties for a year...

The MPAA's latest weapon against online piracy comes at the expense of your system's security -- wink wink, nudge nudge, all in the name of protecting the 5% revenue loss claimed by the industry that's currently under investigation for misrepresenting those numbers anyway...

Theoretically, Ranger is scouring the Internet looking for filenames it believes to belong to pirated files -- although its only source of information for the names of those files is a list it gets from the MPAA.

Meanwhile, I wonder what else is the MPAA and Ranger Online might decide to do with all of that private information that its collecting from "peer-to-peer sites" (user's hard drives) without obtaining permission? Hmmm...

More about Ranger Online and what the hell that's all about and how it appears that the Motion Picture Industry is about to be taken on the most expensive snipe hunt in its history later, but I thought you'd want to check out this rather informative article (despite its being an obvious-tool-of-mpaa hype-and-propaganda) from the Washington Post:
'Ranger' Vs. the Movie Pirates .

Ranger takes the titles and, "like a bloodhound," Valenti said, sets out on the Internet, looking for those films on Web sites, in chat rooms, on peer-to-peer sites. It is an automated software, speeding across the Internet. When it finds a movie title, it marks the location, decides whether the movie is being used in a way that infringes on its copyright, then moves on. Jeremy Rasmussen, Ranger Online's chief technology executive and founder, won't disclose exactly how his software manages this, except to say: "The challenge is 'How do you cover a lot of area without having to visit every page?' That's part of the intelligent way we scan."

Ranger Online provides the data to the MPAA and prepares cease-and-desist letters. The MPAA reviews the data and decides which letters to send. Last year, the group sent 54,000 letters; this year, it is on pace to send 80,000 to 100,000. Typically, the letters are sent to the Internet service provider hosting a site or user that the MPAA has deemed to possess ill-gotten films. The ISPs take down the offending site 85 to 90 percent of the time, Valenti said. Ranger then checks back periodically on the offending site to make sure it hasn't begun pirating again.

If the letters don't work, then the MPAA may contact local authorities, asking them to seize computer servers storing the pirated films. MPAA action recently led to a server seizure in the Netherlands.

Ranger sells itself to the MPAA and other clients based on its global scope, speed and thorough analysis. But a recent suit questions Ranger's precision.

Hey there's a Metaverse under construction over at SourceForge.

It's actually a direct result of some of the neat ideas going on over at Freality.

These guys confuse just about every issue surrounding "wardriving" and wireless. The point of "wardriving" isn't to hack the networks you find -- just to use them.

If wardriving were a bad thing, why would people be warchalking to let others know where their networks were.

It's like the twilight zone or something. These guys are living in their own reality -- one of hype and misinformation.
Anyway here's the story by Frank Fiore and Jean Francois:

Unwitting Collaborators, Part 6: Wireless Insecurity.

Here's the whole article:

Introduction

To avoid the hassles of installing LAN lines or to hasten deployment of LANs, or even to allow for more mobility in the workplace, many organizations are installing wireless networks. These networks are being installed by organizations at a rapid rate.

Unfortunately, organizations don't see the threats posed to their network security by wireless networks, or don't understand that a wireless network should be treated as you would any other medium—using it as a transport layer only. Sending information through a wireless network potentially opens your network for the entire world to see. It's akin to sending a postcard through email and could open your network to "drive-by hacking."

***

The "Wardriving" Scenario

The District Clerk of Harris County, Texas was in for an unexpected surprise. Based on a demonstration by a computer security analyst and upon the recommendation of the head of the county's Central Technology Department, District Clerk Charles Bacarisse shut down the wireless computer network in his office. The computer security analyst had met with the department head and used a laptop computer and a $60–75 wireless card to show him how to tap into Bacarisse's system by "wardriving."

The security flaw in the county's wireless network created a dangerous potential for vandalism—or even more serious problems. Using the practice of wardriving, someone with just an 802.11 device and sniffing software such as NetStumbler could gain access to the county's system and use it as a platform to hack other systems, including those of government agencies and businesses, leaving few traces.

Once tapped into the county system, a hacker could conceivably send emails appearing to come from county officials that could not be traced to the true author. Just as worrisome was the potential for someone to crash county computers, reroute printers, alter or delete records, or post illegal material on one of the county's network computer servers.

***

The Security Breach

Wardriving is easy. Just buy a wireless card, slide it into a laptop computer equipped with easily obtainable software, and with little trouble you can scan for and capture the radio signals linking computers on a wireless network. Then you can gain complete, unfiltered access to that network.

Essentially, wardrivers use the wireless signals to enter into a computer network. What many organizations fail to understand is that the wireless signals emanating from their network are not confined to their offices—or even their building. Wireless signals can easily pass through office ceilings, walls, and floors. As many incidents have shown, an unauthorized user could gain access to a wireless network by simply sitting in his car across the street or in an office above or below the organization in the same building.

A perfect example is the large retailer Best Buy. Some Best Buy stores use a sophisticated wireless network that lets their cash registers beam information—including the credit card numbers of customers—to a central computer elsewhere in the store for processing. But it was shown that a wardriver can sit in a Best Buys store parking lot and pick up and view this data. Once alerted to this security breach, Best Buy shut off wireless cash registers at all its stores.

So how do the wardrivers do it? By using simple software products that are easy to obtain over the Internet. Here are some of the tools that wardrivers use to crack wireless networks:

*

NetStumbler is a piece of Windows software that, when coupled with a GPS unit and a wireless card, lets you snoop on the location of 802.11b networks. Think your network is not known to wardrivers? Think again. NetStumbler's web site includes a map showing the locations of U.S. networks people have found using the software.
*

AirSnort is a wireless LAN (WLAN) tool that recovers encryption keys. AirSnort operates by passively monitoring transmissions, computing the encryption key when enough packets have been gathered. Using the Wired Equivalent Privacy (WEP) protocol, 802.11b is crippled with numerous security flaws. AirSnort requires approximately 5–10 million encrypted packets to be gathered. Once enough packets have been gathered, AirSnort can guess the encryption password in under a second.
*

WEPCrack is another Open Source tool for breaking 802.11 WEP secret keys. While AirSnort is popularly known, WEPCrack made the first publicly available tool for a wardriver attack.

Remember, the practice of wardriving is simple: All a hacker needs is a device capable of receiving an 802.11b signal, a device capable of locating itself on a map, and software that will log data from the second when a network is detected by the first. You then move these devices from place to place, letting them do their job. Over time, you build up a database composed of the network name, signal strength, location, and IP/namespace in use. The network is then open to illicit use.

****

Corrective Actions

Wireless technology is inherently insecure. But you can plug many of its security holes. Though not entirely foolproof, when used in unison the following corrective actions act as a "defense in depth" and should close the majority of security flaws in your wireless network.

*

Create a wireless network policy. Think about what your staff is trying to do when using the 802.11b network. Do they need Internet access? Do they need access to services on the local wired LAN? In short, plan your use of your wireless network and be as restrictive as possible without interfering with your users' requirements.
*

Educate users about the possible dangers of using wireless network technology. Hold training sessions periodically to review their understanding of the security risks and the how to use the network properly.
*

Avoid default configurations. Never rely on the basic configuration that's given you for the base station if you're connecting to a wireless LAN. Default installations and configurations are the security professional's worst nightmare. That's an open invitation to a wardriver. Don't use the default service set identifier (SSID)—the identifier that designates a particular network. You can better secure your wireless network by creating a unique SSID. WEP currently exists in 64-bit (40-bit key) and 128-bit (104-bit key) modes. Finally, don't make your WEP key identical to your SSID.
*

Avoid using Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) with wireless networks. Having a static network address will slow down the hacker, although he can still get on your network using a sniffer program.
*

Drop unencrypted packets. Don't let unencrypted data pass through your wireless network. Access points for your wireless network can be configured to drop packets that aren't encrypted using the right WEP key.
*

Use access control lists. Configure your internal network to allow access only to known and trusted NICs. The problem here is your MAC address. The only authentication that identifies your NIC is transmitted unencrypted, and a lot of wireless cards allow the MAC address to be changed. Filtering MAC addresses will stop the casual "snooper" but not the skilled cracker. This makes the use of access control lists somewhat limited, but it's another barrier the intruder will have to get through to reach your network.
*

Place the wireless network behind a firewall in a DMZ. Isolate access points so they're placed on their own segment or virtual LAN (VLAN). Use a stateful IP-filtering firewall separating the restricted wireless LAN and unrestricted "internal" wired LAN.
*

Use VPN technology and strong authentication. If you want a wireless user to be able to use protected services on the internal network, a virtual private network (VPN) can be the best solution to the problem. However, because VPN depends on trusting the IP address of the connecting host alone, a compromised machine on the restricted network would be given access to the unrestricted network as well. Thus, username and password authentication should be required to gain access to the unrestricted LAN. In addition to an IPSec-based VPN, use tools like SSH and PGP to encrypt messaging and/or traffic that contains sensitive information to further prevent compromise.
*

Place wireless access points physically inside buildings, but outside corporate firewalls. Keep the company VPN behind the firewall. If you have meeting rooms or conference rooms that sit along the perimeter of your building, consider using Tempest-rated glass.
*

Turn down the gain. If you set up an access point near an exterior wall, turn down the gain. Gain is what controls the signal strength and how far that signal will travel. This could curb the use of your network by someone sitting in their car on the street or in the park across the street from your building.
*

Implement port security on your LAN switches and hubs: 802.11b access points are relatively inexpensive now. You don't want any employee buying a base station and plugging into your corporate network.
*

Test your network. Use tools like NetStumbler to test your network, to know the potential risks to your wireless network and where they may come from.

Because of the insecurity of wireless technology, administrators and IT security professionals are challenged to build secure foundations for 802.11b wireless technologies without limiting the beneficial functionality it provides. But help is on the way. In Summer 2002 Netsec will release intrusion detection system (IDS) boxes that will help system administrators identify outside users quickly. Each box is about the size of a 3x5 index card box. An organization can place these IDS boxes on the four corners of their building and keep the network secure.

In the meantime, network administrators should always know the five "W's" of their network:

* What was accessed?
* Who accessed it?
* When did they access it?
* Why did they access it?
* Where did they access it from?

****

Don't Be an Unwitting Collaborator

In many senses, adding a wireless capability to your network is like adding a miniature Internet to your network, in the sense that you're creating an opening for potentially hostile elements. A cyberterrorist would only need to drive around an area until a LAN could be found that either had lots of bandwidth or vulnerable systems, and use those resources to launch attacks on local and/or remote networks and systems.

In effect, your wireless network can be a cyberterrorist dreamland. Chris O'Ferrell, chief technology officer of the wireless technology company Netsec, knows this firsthand. He keeps an eye out for vulnerable 802.11 networks, and is amazed at how many he finds. Located in Herndon, Virginia, Netsec's offices are in the heart of "Spook Valley," where the Pentagon, the CIA, and many information-security companies are located. While driving through Washington's Dulles International Airport, O'Ferrell says he can often see baggage-operator networks on his computer.

So much for increased airport security in our nation's capital.

Would you really want a cyberterrorist using the bandwidth in your company to launch attacks against you or others? How easy is it? This easy. Just click here and follow the easy-to-use instructions.

Sleep tight.

Meanwhile, back at the White House, upon the recommendation of his counsel VP Cheney shuts up for awhile, and waits for this whole mess to blow over.

See the NY Daily News story by Thomas M. DeFrank:
Veep zips lip as probers dig
-- Plans to stay mum till old firm cleared

Sources told the Daily News yesterday that with the urging of his lawyers, Cheney has scaled back his crucial public cheerleading role until a Securities and Exchange Commission investigation of Halliburton's accounting practices while Cheney was chairman and CEO has been resolved.

"Contrary to the urgings of some, including the President, he's decided to lower his profile," one official said. "He doesn't want anybody to say later that he was out there trying to jawbone the [SEC] case away."

Cheney isn't exactly disappearing - he has several public events each week and a heavy schedule of campaigning for GOP candidates. But as for media appearances and the Sunday talk show circuit, a second source said he's becoming invisible: "He's not going to be doing anything for a while."

I just got back home from my OSCON 2002 voyage. What an incredible conference!

I'm writing up at least six different O'Reilly Network Weblogs and trying to organize rest of my notes into some kind of a cohesive report of sorts...

UFOs in D.C. See the Washington Post story by Steve Vogel:
F-16s Pursue Unknown Craft Over Region.

A study conducted by Emory University's Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences suggests that we may be "hard-wired" to cooperate with each other -- in the sense that we get a shot of seratonin satisfaction upon working with an accomplice to keep your respective mouths shut during an infamous episode of the "prisoners dilemma."

I never understood what the big dilemma was. It seems easy enough to remember to not squeal on your partner and you both can only do better in the long run.

Louise Knapp covered the story for Wired News:
Study: Brains Want to Cooperate.

I just wrote an O'Reilly Network Weblog about Lawrence Lessig's Keynote from Wednesday:
Lessig Asks OSCON 2002 Audience: "What have you done?".

I just found out about GeekPAC today, a Political Action Committee started by Doc Searls and Jeff Gerhardt.

I realize that an article or two already came out about this some time ago, but it's still news to me and pretty damn exciting!

I've been waiting for something exactly like this to form since the O'Reilly P2P Conference in Washington DC last year, when I was having lunch with a friend of mine and he asked me if I was "working the halls" while I was in DC.

I, of course, had no idea what he was talking about at the time, but it brought up an interesting question: if I was to get some "face time" with a politician that was ready to actually listen to what I had to say, who do I represent exactly? It's a question that I've had written on my white board in my kitchen for the last seven months in bold red letters: Who do I represent?

What about Napster's 70 million users? Who's representing them? What if only ten percent of the Napster users wrote one letter to their congressman? What if? What if? What if?

No more time for "what ifs" people: it's time to get together and fight!

Richard Stallman's keynote today made me think about how not sharing source code (speech) is like not sharing any other kind of knowledge, and another way for "the man" (embellishment my own) to fragment the masses in order to stop them from collaborating so they won't have a chance to pose any real threat to the larger monopolistic power structure (that has more time and money and resources than they do individually).

I don't know why I never thought about it before -- but wow, he's totally right. "They" have managed to do it to us again -- convincing the public (the "average programmer at-large") that it is somehow in their best interests to withhold knowledge from others and not benefit on what others have learned based on the fallacy that doing so will somehow lead to greater weath for them as an individual in the long run. (Although, in reality, of course, it only leads to the greater wealth of the monopolies already in power.)

To further convince us that we are powerless individuals without any political power, when the only reason we don't have any political power is because our knowledge is not being shared is just the icing on the cake! Whether that knowledge is about software or medicine or machinery or whatever - we as individuals can't amass it ourselves - we have to share. If that sharing is made illegal, guess what: we lose. Game Over.

One of our most important rights is our Right to Peaceably Assemble. It sure seems to me that restricting our right to publish certain kinds of information (like that prohibited by the DMCA) is much like not allowing a group to assemble and communicate with each other. It certainly isn't very democratic. It certainly isn't a characteristic of any sort of "free society".

So with all this in mind: It's time to start assembling -- both online and off. There are more of us than there are of them. Why are we letting them push us around? Their arguments don't even make sense, but they're simple enough for non-technical politicians to wrap their around when they're accepting the check that comes with them. We need better, more simple arguments, the voting power to back them up and the political contributions to get their attention in the first place (here's where GeekPAC comes in).

Lawrence Lessig used a quote from Congressman JC Watts, Jr. in his Keynote today: "If you're explaining, you're losing." The situation is complicated, but we have to find a way to explain it succinctly (in 15 minutes or less would be a reasonable first goal perhaps? -- then we can try for 5 minutes -- then (gasp) we can take a shot at something even more concise (that's right kids, can you say "advertising slogan"?).

Speaking of catchy advertising slogans, I thought of a bumper sticker today:
"I'm a Geek and I vote."

Anyhoo, maybe with an organization like GeekPAC we can get started on creating a simple, straight-forward message that both coders, corporations and the average consumer can understand and support quickly.

What a truly inspiring day today (yesterday at this point). I better crash so I'll have energy to finish blogging it in the am.

A really cool weblog added me to its blog roll recently. It made me feel good to be noticed by my allies-at-large:
Copyfight: Intellectual Property Law, Politics and Technology on the Net.

The JPEG Committee doesn't appreciate Forgent Networks recent license royalty demands based on patents it obtained in a fire sale from Compression Labs, and is setting up a Prior Art website to help stop this kind of thing from happening in the future. (You know, when companies contribute a technology to an open standard in good faith and then go back on their word or sell off the patent they've "contributed" to the highest bidder.)

Maybe these contributions need to be more formal? (Um hmm. And maybe I need to just shut up and stop talking crazy before somebody gets hurt...I know, I know...)

The committee has examined these claims briefly, and at present believes that prior art exists in areas in which the patent might claim application to ISO/IEC 10918-1 in its baseline form. The committee have also become aware that other organisations including Philips, and Lucent may also be claiming some elements of intellectual property that might be applied to the original JPEG and JBIG (IS 11544 standards). As a response to this, the JPEG committee will be collecting, through its new web site (to be launched shortly) a substantial repository of prior art and it invites submissions, particularly where the content may be applied to claims of intellectual property. A note will be placed on the web site shortly explaining the process for such submissions.

This effort will take some time to organise, but the JPEG committee hope to have it in place prior to its next meeting in Shanghai in October 2002.

It has always been a strong goal of the JPEG committee that its standards should be implementable in their baseline form without payment of royalty and license fees, and the committee would like to record their disappointment that some organisations appear to be working in conflict with this goal.

So I'm still sorting out the new blog, but it looks like I'll be doing that for a while still.

Packing up tonight and heading down to San Diego for OSCON.

Rael has put together a Blogger Gathering for Thursday night at 7pm. See you there.

Speaking of Mac Mixing Apps, I hear that Final Scratch and Baytex Party are the bomb.

More specifics on Baytex, courtesy of Bart Cheever, CEO of DFILM:

"Any Mac DJ's out there I *strongly* recommend you check out Baytex Party - by far the best MP3 DJ player on the market, IMO. It's got great features like: Easy to use very natural feeling pitch control, Multiple sound outputs (so you can cue and beatmatch one MP3 while the other is playing), Rock solid - never ever crashes, Simple feature to count and enter BPMs (you can sort your entire MP3 library by BPM). I've tried most of the other MP3 DJ players out there and I haven't been this excited by a product since I bought my original 1200's 17 years ago!"

Here's a pair of Wired News articles about DJs using IPODs in their sets: They Walk Alike, They DJ Alike and With IPod, Who Needs a Turntable?.

From the EFF's BPDG blog -- Hollings: Broadcast Flag Now, By FCC Mandate:

EFF was advised that Sen. Ernest Hollings has written a letter to the FCC advocating immediate implementation of a broadcast flag mandate -- even without additional legislation. Hollings apparently claimed that the FCC already has, under existing statutes, the authority necessary to require that all manufacturers comply with BPDG rules.

Here's a CNET editorial that helps explains why the clock is ticking for Independent Webcasters:

But the days of independent radio on the Net could be numbered, say some experts. A recently established royalty fee payable to record companies may price many small content providers out of the market, leaving some with no choice but to shut down.

But the days of independent radio on the Net could be numbered, say some experts. A recently established royalty fee payable to record companies may price many small content providers out of the market, leaving some with no choice but to shut down.

At issue are the royalties Webcasters have to pay for the right to stream songs. Royalties can be broken down into two categories: those paid for the song as it is written by the composer, and those paid for the song as it is interpreted by the recording artist. Terrestrial radio stations are mostly exempt from paying the latter, since they are considered promoters of new music. The Recording Industry Association of America, an organization representing several major record labels, contends that Net radio services are different--since there are ways for listeners to digitally reproduce the music--and should therefore pay the sound recording fees.

In 1998, Congress passed the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, giving record companies the right to collect royalties from Webcasters for the music they play. On June 20 of this year, the U.S. Copyright Office set the rates payable for Webcasters at 70 cents per song heard by 1,000 people. If this decision stands, the first royalties are due in November, and payment of royalties from past years (to 1998) is due in October. Although it is half the rate recommended by a government arbitration panel in February, Webcasters still claim that they will be driven out of business. This is despite the fact that Cary Sherman, president of the RIAA, recently stated that the rate still "does not reflect the fair market value of the music."

Forgent Networks owns JPEG now, and it wants everyone to prepare to pay to use the format now.

"We wanted to ensure the investment community and the general public are clear about the terms of our valuable JPEG data compression technology, one of the many technologies we have in our patent portfolio," stated Richard Snyder, chairman and chief executive officer at Forgent. "We are in ongoing discussions with other manufacturers of digital still cameras, printers, scanners and other products that use JPEG technology for licensing opportunities."

See the articles:
JPEG Patent Becoming A Battleground by Michael Singer, for Internet.com.

and

JPEG Patent Claim Sparks Concern, by Joanna Glasner, for Wired News.

I've written and recorded a new song asking the Librarian of Congress (James H. Billington) and the Register of Copyrights (Marybeth Peters) to reconsider the recent CARP rulings regarding the rates and terms for webcasters (and to also please protect our rights against the detrimental effects of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, since it does not contain adequate fair use provisions).

What does this all mean to the average person? Well, the average person will be greatly affected in the long run in terms of what kind of programming options will be made available in the future.

Less overhead in compulsory licensing fees means that more webcasters can afford to operate, and that means more channels and more selection from a larger, more diverse content base. It seems like this is a very important time in our history to have as many different voices being heard as possible.

All that I'm asking is for James and Marybeth to either reopen the CARP process afresh, or postpone it all together for another few years in order to enable webcasting services to flourish (much in the same way that cable television was allowed to develop in the 1980s).

So so sad when I listen to my radio
So sick and tired of what I'm watching on tv
There's so much more that I could see and learn and know about my future
James and Marybeth, can you help bring this to me?

I just want a chance to try it twice
I just want a chance to roll the dice
I just want a chance to get it right
I just want the right to stay and fight

I just want the right to search and find
I just want the right to my piece of mind
I just want the chance to know what's mine
I just want the chance to know

oh how I hope you're listening
because the clock is ticking

James and Marybeth, can you find a place for me?
James and Marybeth, can you help me to be free?

Newsweek's Steven Levy explains how the CARP rates will probably mean the end of independent webcasting:
Labels to Net Radio: Die Now
You’d think the record companies would love Internet tunes—instead they’re trying to kill them.

The record industry, with the help of Congress and the Copyright Office, may indeed make a shakeout inevitable. But I doubt that Jim Atkinson and his fellow independent Webcasters find the prospect of their extinction terribly desirable. Nor do the 77 million Americans who have at one time tuned in to Web radio and perhaps found something not featured on the lobotomized playlists of broadcast radio. If enough of those outraged listeners stream their objections to legislators, maybe Internet radio can be saved.

Bear with me this weekend as I get everything up and running smoothly in between postings.

I've decided to make my Blog the central location for that which is me, rather than just another one of several off shoots that never seem to connect in the middle: http://www.finetuning.com, http://www.lisarein.com, etc.

Talk soon!

R.U. SIRIUS UNPLUGGED
--One of the earliest adopters of cyberculture, the co-founder of Mondo 2000 has drifted away from tech-chic. Klint Finley asks him about then and now.

S: To change the subject somewhat, where do we stand on the war on drugs right now? Is it more or less important than it was, say, two years ago?

RU: It’s all sort of integrated into the war on terror, and there’s a lot of complex connections there. It’s amazing that it’s all happening in Afghanistan, which is sort of a nexus for the drug underground and also turns out to be the nexus for Al Quaeda and the place where America wants to build an oil pipeline and the place where we have our troops and bombs. And all those things converge. Narcopolitics, as much as class, is at the center of politics in our time. I don’t think any of that has changed. You also see this integration in Columbia where they’re fighting over drugs and they’re also fighting against leftists and they’re fighting for their oil interests -- it’s still rather the same story. On the positive side of course, Europeans almost uniformly are liberalizing drug laws. I don’t know how things are in Canada... I think Vancouver is pretty liberal.

S: Do you think there’s a potential use for psychedelics in psychotherapy?

RU: Yeah, I’ve always thought it was a useful tool. The great thing about having a guide, rather than doing it on your own or in a party, is that it grants permission to take a pretty walloping, great massive dose and go through changes without having to worry about what kind of incursions might occur during the trip. I think if it could be approved for psychotherapy, that would be a tremendous step in the right direction. There’s basically two schools of thought on ending the drug war. One is the libertarian point of view, which is that it should be legalized because it’s a cognitive liberty, a matter of personal choice. And then there’s the attempt to medicalize the situation... harm reduction and so forth. And while I agree with the libertarian view on that, I think medicalization is more likely to be allowed.

See the Wired article by Wil McCarthy:
Strange Blood
--Cataclysmic shortages. Tainted supplies. There is a solution: artificial blood..

To truly end blood shortages and the fears that help produce them, hospitals would need a fluid that's laboratory pure, universally compatible with any human blood or tissue type, and indefinitely storable at room temperature. Most important, it would have to perform the function of oxygen delivery, so far the most elusive function to mimic in efforts to create fake blood. Simply adding oxygen-carrying hemoglobin to a substance like saline won't work - the raw hemoglobin molecule turns out to be both short-lived and toxic to the kidneys and liver unless surrounded by the fatty envelope of the red cell. And numerous other creative workarounds - like encapsulating the molecules in tiny globs of fat or chaining them together into polymers - have failed. Oxygen and CO2 can be dissolved directly into droplets of liquid perfluorocarbon, which holds and releases the two gases about as efficiently as hemoglobin does; when oxygenated, this liquid is even breathable - remember the rat in The Abyss ? This approach too, however, produces side effects, from toxicity to allergies to exhaling an ozone-depleting gas.

Only one oxygen-carrying blood substitute has ever been approved by the FDA. That was Fluosol, a perfluorocarbon additive developed in the US and marketed by Japan's Green Cross corporation from 1989 to 1993, during which time it was infused into some 13,000 patients in the US annually. Unfortunately, Fluosol was a frozen, two-part drug that had to be thawed and mixed immediately prior to use, and in large doses it required patients to breathe pure oxygen (potentially toxic) for the weeks it took their natural blood supply to recover. Meanwhile, doctors had to keep pumping the stuff in every 12 hours or the patient would die, bloodless in a cloud of exhaled fluorocarbons. Fluosol was eventually pulled off the market.

That hasn't stopped others from trying. Today around 10 companies are pushing blood substitutes through the FDA approval process.

From The Shifted Librarian and 24-hour Drive Thru Weblog

Here's the actual email posting from Vladamir Katalov
(http://online.securityfocus.com/archive/1/281973).

I've created another copy of the email on my own website for safe keeping.

Radio stations appeal Internet royalty decision

Radio stations have asked a federal appeals court to rule that they do not have to pay musicians and recording companies when they play music on the Internet because they do not pay royalties for regular, over-the-air broadcasts.

In a motion filed late Monday, a group of radio stations said a federal court in Philadelphia and the U.S. Copyright Office had misinterpreted the law when they said that radio stations had to to pay musicians and recording companies when they "stream" their songs over the Internet.

Here's the LawMeme discussion along with a nice synopsis by Lisa M. Bowman for CNET:
File-traders in the crosshairs.

From CNET article:

Jennison thinks the RIAA will target people in their late 20s or early 30s who are making available massive numbers of files that are current and popular. The RIAA may also look for people who could otherwise afford to buy CDs but instead choose to play the free-swapping game, she speculated.

Others suggest that the industry would pursue, as University of Wisconsin's Vaidhyanathan called them, "hacker types," or people who look like they might spell trouble to mainstream Americans. Already, similar tactics have been put in play by the movie industry, which successfully convinced several judges that the operators of hacker publication 2600 aided copyright infringement by providing links to code that could be used to crack copyright protections on DVDs.

The record industry also could lean on law enforcement to do its dirty work for it, said P.J. McNealy, a research director at Gartner. "One of the problems with file-sharing right now is consumers aren't afraid of police knocking in doors and seizing computers," he said. However, criminal copyright charges, which usually must involve monetary losses or an intent to make money, often are hard to prove in cases involving individuals.

So I know what you're thinking: "Well Lisa, are you going to spend all of your blogging time on shameless self promotion, complaining about the Shrub and whining about the rapid demise of our constitutional freedoms?" (Blah, blah, blah blah-blah blah.)

Well I suppose I could lighten up long enough to watch a nice Shockwave Animation from my friend John Gentry that really helps put it all into perspective:
Rockin' Chair Planet.

I spent the weekend in Tuscon, Arizona -- my first time to the anywhere in the "Southwest." (Not counting Las Vegas -- although one thing that both cities have in common is that I'd last about 10 minutes in the outside heat in July :-)

Anyway, my friend put the car top down on the way back to the airport this morning (4:30 am) -- and I had a chance to see what a totally beautiful place it can be at night! It's pretty in the daytime too, but you can't tell, really, because you're either inside breathing cool air or outside trying to make it to your car, or to a pool or lake or some other kind of water source -- which makes everything OK again untill you get out of the water.

What if you don't have air conditioning or a water source? Wow. I'm pretty sure I'd be dead before long.

I hear you can go outside in the Winter, though.

(Later that morning...)

Of Interest: the Tuscon and LAX airports still don't have wireless networks. Bummer. Get with the program guys.

Sony has announced a CMT-L7HD bookshelf stereo system that automatically copies the CDs you play on to a hard drive for future plays (you can also RIP them faster than playing speed in a handy "silent mode".) You can also program ahead of time to record your favorite radio programs on to the device's hard drive (not your computer's hard drive) -- just like a Tivo for broadcast radio (not webcasts).

Great idea, great product: once it has a digital output jack and wireless connection.

I certainly hope that this device's lack of a digital output bus and Internet connectivity don't count as copy protection mechanisms. Seems like there could be a big market for third parties to develop peripherals for these puppies. (Or perhaps that's what Sony plans to do itself?)

See the NY Times article by David Pogue:
A Stereo That's Small and Digital.

Springsteen Protects His New CD's Online in an Old-Fashioned Way
by Chris Nelson for the NY Times.

See the Redherring Story by Mark Mowrey:
Coming soon to your cable box Providers are bringing wireless connectivity to your set-top

Cable providers are upping the ante in the competition for broadband subscribers. By combining cable TV, broadband service, and wireless connectivity in one set-top box, cable companies could soon offer consumers value that DSL firms won't be able to match.

The Shrub is hoping to have 1 in 24 Americans spying on each others' everyday lives in the name of fighting terrorism.

Why should we all become volunteer spies and hand over what little freedoms we have left by cashing in our friends' and neighbors' rights to privacy? What if there's no TIPS program at all? (But what if there is! -- Aha! Fear! The ultimate controller of the masses rears its ugly head yet again.)

This is most likely just an attempt to fragment the public by making us all paranoid of each other. Don't fall for it friends.

If memory serves me correctly, to date, the Bush Administration hasn't been too great about telling us much of anything.

See the story by Ritt Goldstein for The Sydney Morning Herald:
US planning to recruit one in 24 Americans as citizen spies.

The Bush Administration aims to recruit millions of United States citizens as domestic informants in a program likely to alarm civil liberties groups.

The Terrorism Information and Prevention System, or TIPS, means the US will have a higher percentage of citizen informants than the former East Germany through the infamous Stasi secret police. The program would use a minimum of 4 per cent of Americans to report "suspicious activity".

You might enjoy this very interesting account of the History of Tetris.

The EFF has published a great paper that summarizes the Unintended Consequences of the DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act).

It is available as a PDF file or as a Googled HTML document.

Since they were enacted in 1998, the “anti-circumvention” provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (“DMCA”), codified in section 1201 of the Copyright Act, have not been used as Congress envisioned. Congress meant to stop copyright pirates from defeating anti-piracy protections added to copyrighted works, and to ban “black box” devices intended for that purpose.

In practice, the anti-circumvention provisions have been used to stifle a wide array of legitimate activities, rather than to stop copyright piracy.

Since they were enacted in 1998, the “anti-circumvention” provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (“DMCA”), codified in section 1201 of the Copyright Act, have not been used as Congress envisioned. Congress meant to stop copyright pirates from defeating anti-piracy protections added to copyrighted works, and to ban “black box” devices intended for that purpose.

In practice, the anti-circumvention provisions have been used to stifle a wide array of legitimate activities, rather than to stop copyright piracy. As a result, the DMCA has developed into a serious threat to three important public policy priorities:

Section 1201 Chills Free Expression and Scientific Research.

Experience with section 1201 demonstrates that it is being used to stifle free speech and scientific research. The lawsuit against 2600 magazine, threats against Princeton Professor Edward Felten’s team of researchers, and prosecution of Russian programmer Dmitry Sklyarov have chilled the legitimate activities of journalists, publishers, scientists, students, programmers, and members of the public.

Section 1201 Jeopardizes Fair Use.

By banning all acts of circumvention, and all technologies and tools that can be used for circumvention, section 1201 grants to copyright owners the power to unilaterally eliminate the public’s fair use rights. Already, the music industry has begun deploying “copy-protected CDs” that promise to curtail consumers’ ability to make legitimate, personal copies of music they have purchased.

Section 1201 Impedes Competition and Innovation.

Rather than focusing on pirates, many copyright owners have chosen to use the DMCA to hinder their legitimate competitors. For example, Sony has invoked section 1201 to protect their monopoly on Playstation video game consoles, as well as their “regionalization” system limiting users in one country from playing games legitimately purchased in another.

This document collects a number of reported cases where the anti-circumvention provisions of the DMCA have been invoked not against pirates, but against consumers, scientists, and legitimate competitors. It will be updated from time to time as additional cases come to light.

In the "pinch me, I must be dreaming" department, Glenn Fleishman has written about Warchalking for the NY Times. (Right on Matt!)

A CNN Internet Survey shows that American's are sick of Cheney's double talking bullshit and are generally ready to see the guy fry for his criminal activities -- just like you or I would be punished.

The results from the survey come as no surprise, of course, but let's see if these same Americans can remember not to vote for the guy in 2003. Sheesh! We knew all this stuff about him during the presidential campaign three years ago, and lord knows nobody seemed to care then.

Judicial Watch, the public interest group that investigates and prosecutes government corruption and abuse, said today that the lawsuit it brought on behalf of Halliburton shareholders against Vice President Dick Cheney, the other involved directors of Halliburton, as well as Halliburton and the Arthur Andersen accounting firm, for alleged fraudulent accounting practices, enjoys overwhelming public support.

Well I hope Dick Cheney enjoyed being president for a few hours last week during Bush's colonoscopy, because it might be the last he sees of either presidential office after all of the facts surrounding his stint as Chairman and Chief Executive of Halliburton come to light.

Now Cheney's being accused of defrauding shareholders -- something even rich people don't take too kindly to.

The public is also being reminded of Cheney's strong ties to Arthur Andersen, courtesy of a recent emergence of a promotional video where he personally vouches for Andersen Consulting.

Here are some BBC stories with more details:

Anti-corruption group sues Cheney

Cheney accused of corporate fraud

Accounts probe at Cheney firm

David Reed has posted his usual brilliant and thoughtful analysis of Open Spectrum in a single comprehensive and wonderfully-footnoted document for the FCC. Thanks!

Comments for FCC Spectrum Policy Task Force on Spectrum Policy.

Now let's hope somebody over there is paying attention. (Michael Powell? Are you listening?)

I argue in this note that the foundation of a sound economic and regulatory approach to managing radio communications in the US and worldwide cannot and should not ignore fundamental advances in the understanding of communications technology that have been developed in the last few decades. Those advances are just beginning to reach the point where they can be fruitfully applied in the marketplace, at a time when the need for a huge increase in communications traffic is beginning to surge.

It will be crucial for the continued growth and leadership of the US economy, and for its security as well, to embrace these new technologies, and follow them where they lead, in spite of the potential negative impact that these technologies may have on traditional telecommunications business models. There is a “new frontier” being opened up by the interaction of digital communications technology, internetworking architectures, and distributed, inexpensive general purpose computing devices. This new frontier cannot be addressed by a model that awards the telecommunications operators exclusive rights (such as “spectrum property rights”) that can be used to “capture” the value yet to be produced by innovators in underlying technologies[1] or applications.

My argument is based on a simple but crucially important technical fact: the useful economic value in a communications system architecture does not inhere in some abstract “ether” that can be allocated by dividing it into disjoint frequency bands and coverage areas...

I argue in this note that the foundation of a sound economic and regulatory approach to managing radio communications in the US and worldwide cannot and should not ignore fundamental advances in the understanding of communications technology that have been developed in the last few decades. Those advances are just beginning to reach the point where they can be fruitfully applied in the marketplace, at a time when the need for a huge increase in communications traffic is beginning to surge.

It will be crucial for the continued growth and leadership of the US economy, and for its security as well, to embrace these new technologies, and follow them where they lead, in spite of the potential negative impact that these technologies may have on traditional telecommunications business models. There is a “new frontier” being opened up by the interaction of digital communications technology, internetworking architectures, and distributed, inexpensive general purpose computing devices. This new frontier cannot be addressed by a model that awards the telecommunications operators exclusive rights (such as “spectrum property rights”) that can be used to “capture” the value yet to be produced by innovators in underlying technologies[1] or applications.

My argument is based on a simple but crucially important technical fact: the useful economic value in a communications system architecture does not inhere in some abstract “ether” that can be allocated by dividing it into disjoint frequency bands and coverage areas.[2] Instead it is created largely by the system design choices – the choice of data switching architecture, information coding scheme, modulation scheme, antenna placement, etc.

The most important observation about the impact of systems architecture on economic value is this: there exist networked architectures whose utility increases with the density of independent terminals (terminals are end-points, such as cellular telephones, TV sets, wireless mobile PDAs, consumer electronic devices in the home, etc.) Network architectures provide tremendous gain in communications efficiency on a systems basis – I call this cooperation gain, because it arises out of cooperative strategies among the various terminals and other elements in a networked system. (It should be emphasized that cooperation gain is not available to non-networked systems at all). Cooperation gain is discussed below...

[1] New technologies such as spread spectrum, smart antennas, ultrawideband radio, and software-defined radios create more capacity that cannot be known accurately until there has been broad practical experience and an industrial learning curve that reduces their costs. The FCC has consistently tried to base regulation on accurate forward looking prediction of the economic value of new technologies and new services, but those predictions have been consistently wrong. That isn’t surprising given that the value is established decades later.

[2] The confusion that led pre-20th century physicists to postulate a “luminiferous ether” which carried radio and light waves has persisted in the economic approaches that attempt to manage communications capacity as if it were an “ether”. Just as Einstein pointed out, counterintuitively to most, that there need be no “ether” in formulating Relativity Theory, recent results in multiuser information theory show that counter to the intuition of spectrum economists, there is no “information capacity” in spectrum independent of the system using it.

Posted by Lisa at 10:03 AM

<tangent>Wow. There's a whole generation that is going to be more familar with Homer Simpson than Homer the Bard.</tangent>

See the story by Andrew Orlowski for the London Register:
Fox recommends hacked DVD players for The Simpsons.

Here's the Simpsons UK FAQ excerpt in question:

Q: What does Regional Coding mean? Do I need a Multi-regional player? Homer: "I have no idea whatsoever what regional coding means. But it is essential that you buy a multi-regional player. Do it now. Don't worry, we'll still be waiting here when you get back."

Eye tracking devices will soon be helping us to operate and interact with computers and each other.

See the BBC story by Alfred Hermida:
Replace your mouse with your eye.

Jim Griffin, his royal phoness, has assured me that email subscribers are not required to subscribe to the new Pho features to continue receiving the list.

Email from Jim:

Dear Lisa and others:

I did not write the paragraph in question, but I can tell you that the pholist website is an additional offering, not mandatory for phosters.

There will continue to be a pho list, just as there is now, and if you do nothing you will continue to be subscribed to it. I highly recommend the pholist web site -- JP's building it to supplement and enrich the Pho experience, and like any summer shakedown cruise it's likely to have its moments, like these, but stick with it and give it a chance.

The pho list will continue as is and there is no requirement with which I am familiar that requires any current pho list participant to register with the web site. Over time it may well prove a good interface to which we can migrate, but I can't imagine ridding the list of people who choose otherwise. My servers at onehouse.com will continue to operate this list as always, and John's web site as I understand it seeks to offer a more enriching community experience, which I support wholeheartedly.

Jim

I'm totally bummed. My favorite mailing list now has a terms of agreement and wants me to login and accept a bunch of cookies just to continue participating on the email list. Why does everything simple and useful have to get complicated and intrusive once it gets popular. It just doesn't seem fair. (John Parres, pho list admin, clarified a few points later: "Some of you are going to have fun with the legal page. I bet I can predict who you will be. Nothing is set in stone. The language has yet to be 'pholosophised.' I am not a lawyer. If some of the eagles want to help tighten/clarify things I will be most appreciative for the assistance. Please know that Jim and I have the utmost respect for your privacy and are making best efforts to ensure that this always remains true.")

To learn more about the new Pholist features, check out a text file of E-mail sent out to phosters this morning.

Excerpt from above email that started all of this (that Griffin refers to above.):

No one is required to list any information on the site, however, everyone is required to activate their account as a condition of remaining on the Pho list. Yes, the site utilizes cookies so this function must be enabled in your browser for the site to work for you. Please don't complain, that's just the way it is.

Happy Birthday to the Radar!

(You may now go back to your normally scheduled activities.)

Looks like it's the same old story on Capitol Hill this year: nobody wants the other side to get credit for doing anything before this fall's elections. The answer: do nothing at all.

Sure this might stop a lot of the stupid legislation we've been watching getting thrown around this year from being passed anytime soon, but it's going to stop anything useful from being done either. Bummer.

Read Declan McCullagh's piece for CNET (he left Wired News!) that explains the situation and also provides a nice breakdown of the various dopey tech bills and the one piece of legislation that is most likely to pass -- Homeland Security:
Much ado about nothing.

Wow this is great to see Mozilla covered on CNN. Good luck guys!

(Be sure to view this article in Mozilla so you can turn off the pop-up ads!)

See the story by Alex Kirby for the BBC:
Antarctic ice fringe 'melting faster'.

I found a gold mine of articles by Eric Boehlert for Salon about Clear Channel's Radio Monopoly:
Radio's big bully.

Highlights include: background on how Clear Channel and how it managed to quietly take over radio (the company owns nearly 1,200 radio stations and effectively controls the rock radio market and also owns SFX Entertainment, the nation's dominant concert-venue owner and touring promoter), the corporation's evolution under the aegis of Randy Michaels, the "new payola" (the complex arrangements under which the world's major record companies pay for virtually every rock song broadcast on commercial radio) and links to the Clear Channel Web site so you can locate the affiliates nearest you (there are probably a ton of them right in your town!).

Clear Channel is being accused of promoting an artist it was only supposed to be tracking in an effort to reward trial users of its new PD Perceptual Service.

This story makes it seem like the "little guy" got a break this time around for a change. Weird.

The title is especially ironic -- everyone knows that Clear Channel sells hit singles. The point is that they actually gave away some airplay without charging (allegedly in an attempt to promote another of their other services) -- and now the company is being interrogated for it.

Could it be possible that Clear Channel reps might have happened to mention that Eagle-eye Cherry was one of the few acts that was trying out its new PD Perceptual Service, and that, when it came time for the Music Director to pick a token no-name act to add to the playlist, Eagle-eye Cherry came to mind? Could Eagle-eye Cherry just be a nice guy that everyone likes to promote, perhaps? Or is Eagle-eye Cherry so bad that his getting so much airplay immediately calls the ethics of the entire Clear Channel organization into question?

See the Salon story by Eric Boehlert:
Is Clear Channel selling hit singles?.

Fast Company Contributing Editor Seth Godin has written a Memo to Media Monopolists that might actually help save them from themselves if they can pay attention long enough to follow its thoughtful and simple advice. He's just trying to help you out, man. Check out:
Memo to: Media Monopolists.

Why can't Nike charge $500 for sneakers? Because there are easy substitutes. In almost every industry, consumers have countless choices. And unless a product is truly unique, they can take their money elsewhere.

The media business has always been different. At its heart, the media business is actually about the prospect of being a monopolist -- and about getting paid a lot more than your products cost to make. A few years ago, if a couch potato ( God love 'em ) wanted to watch TV, there were only three channels he could choose from. If a moviegoer wanted to see Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, there was only the William Goldman version, and she had to buy a ticket to see it.

The point is this: The media business was built on scarcity. Scarcity of spectrum. Scarcity of hits. Scarcity caused by copyright and limited shelf space. Consumers hate scarcity. But you and I know that monopolists love scarcity. When consumers have fewer choices, a monopoly thrives.

Scarcity made it easy to get fat and happy. But almost overnight, the scarcity on which you built your media monopolies started to disappear. All of a sudden, there are about a billion channels available on the Web. There's a movie theater in any home with a DVD player. Amazon.com has infinite shelf space, so retail market power is now a myth. It's hard to charge take-it-or-leave-it prices when the consumer can just leave it...

...Here's the problem: You monopolists appear to believe that you have a right to business as usual. You believe that if the rules of the marketplace change, it's not fair. You believe that you somehow deserve the private planes, the great parties, and the obscene profits. You also seem to think that if your monopoly were to go away, so would all of the good ideas.

The truth is, the supply is in terrific shape, thanks. In fact, there's never been more to choose from. The only thing that would go away would be your profits. Ouch...

...Senator Fritz Hollings, warrior on your behalf, feels your pain. He views the technology companies and their customers as not much more than thieves. Apple makes money from the iPod -- on the backs of the artists who aren't getting compensated every time we listen. Steve Jobs must be torn. On one hand, he makes iPods. On the other, he makes Monsters, Inc.

Think about that for a second. Steve Jobs has two jobs, and one of them could bankrupt the other ( if your rhetoric is to be believed ). He's not dumb. He gets it...

...One last thing: I'm not saying that I want the markets to be the way they are. I'm not saying that pirating is right. But I am saying that it exists and that it's going to become more widespread. So here are your basic choices: You can whine, lobby, sue, and then cripple your product so that it can't be copied. Or, maybe, just maybe, you can stop thinking like a monopolist long enough to find new business models, new markets, and new strategic plans.

You're not going out of business tomorrow. The structures that you have built and perfected are going to stick around for a long time. But it's not going to get better, more profitable, or more fun. It's only going to get worse.

Bill Gates has a backup plan, guys. What's yours?

In honor of the Dreamworks rendition of The Time Machine opening this month, Popular Science has taken an updated look at the feasibility (or lack thereof) of Time Travel.

Henry Jenkins takes a deeper look for the MIT Technology Review into the implications of viewers' "contracts" with programmers to watch advertising as part of the deal:
Treating Viewers As Criminals.

...I stumbled across the recent comments of Turner Broadcasting System CEO Jaimie Kellner, who asserted that television viewers who skipped commercials using their digital video recorders were guilty of "stealing" broadcast content. Kellner told an industry trade press reporter that "Your contract with the network when you get the show is you're going to watch the spots." He conceded that there may be a historic loophole allowing us to take short breaks to go to the bathroom but otherwise, we are expected to be at our post, doing our duties, watching every commercial, and presumably, though he never said it, buying every product.

Kellner's intemperate rhetoric is, alas, characteristic of the ways that the media industry increasingly thinks about, talks about, and addresses its consumers in the post-Napster era. Napster may—and I stress, may—have been legitimately labeled piracy, but now all forms of consumerism are being criminalized with ever-decreasing degrees of credibility. Once going to the bathroom or grabbing a snack on a commercial break gets treated as a form of theft, the media conglomerates are going to be hard pressed to get consumer compliance with their expectations, making it impossible to draw legitimate lines about what is and is not appropriate use of media content.

Name-calling is the last resort of once powerful institutions that are finding themselves losing control in the face of rapid media change. Never mind that the same media giants are often the manufactures of the new media technologies we are using to skip their commercials or that some of the advertisements they want us to watch are marketing us features which allow us to skip advertisements. Never mind that we now have many more media options and we need the networks frankly far less than the networks need us.

I don't know about you but I want to renegotiate my contract! There has been a significant increase in the number of commercials per hour since I first started watching network programming. Consequently, my workload has doubled or tripled, while my compensation—the programming—has gone down in quantity, if not in quality. One wonders whether it isn't time for television viewers to form a union, demand that people like Kellner sit down at the negotiating table, and cut a better deal with us, if they continue to expect viewer loyalty. And given research linking extensive television viewing with obesity, perhaps we might have some way of holding the networks accountable for their workplace safety violations as well, before some of us start to spontaneously explode.

Have you downloaded Mozilla yet? Do yourself a favor and give it a try today!

One of the features I love about Mozilla 1.0 is the tabbed windows. You can also create "groups" of bookmarks, so you can open all your working windows easily everytime you relaunch the application.

Here's an example groups file to get you started if you'd like to try this out.

After replacing the site names and urls in the example file, select "Manage Bookmarks" from the "Bookmarks" menu bar up top. Once in the Bookmark window, select "Tools" and then "Import" to have your groups added to the Bookmark menus.

You also might want to engage the "View" - "Show/Hide" "Sidebar" feature, so that you can look at your bookmark groups and open and close the little expanding windows.

This time around, George Michael is making a statement about hypocrisy in government instead of corruption in the music industry. (You know, that stuff everyone laughed at him for whining about years ago that every artist-type person in the industry now finds themselves currently obsessed with...)

See the Times of India story by Rashmee Z. Ahmed: George Michael song satirizes Bush, Blair.

I just discovered an excellent new use for my Tivo - recording CSPAN clips! (No running around to stick in a video tape - hoping I'm not taping over anything else, etc.)