not sure what you can possibly say about a site like Dear Elena, except that you should all go read it.

With AACS going on the new HD-DVD and Blu-Ray and the terms of the new AACS agreement, it seems that the object of this is simply to completely and utterly obliterate the idea of fair use. Fair use is a very simple concept, I buy a CD from the local store, it's "fair use" for me to rip that CD to my iPod. Similaraly, I buy a DVD, I might want to rip that to my iPod too. But content creators hate this, the lawsuits persued by the MPAA show a pattern that they believe that their customers are thieves. The content producers seem hell bent on locking down consumers in every way possible. They don't understand that their content will only thrive in a marketplace where the content is allowed to to roam free.
Look at this from what happened with iTunes and the original hack on FairPlay. Originally the FairPlay decrypter did not remove encryption on music you did not own (mostly a technical limitation though) and most importantly, it didn't remove the markers that allowed you to identify a single file with a particular iTMS account. In a subsequent version of iTunes Apple used this information (unprotected AAC, has iTMS purchaser info) to determine what files were decrypted and refuse to play them or copy them to your iPod. This was possibly the dumbest thing that Apple (or more likey the music studios) coudl have done. The next generation of the decrypter, JHymn, stripped this and also allowed you to transcode to MP3. Now, the songs are completely sharable with no possible way of determining who actually purchased the file originally. Way to go.

The moral here is that content protection will fail. I, for one, know that I will *not* be buying any HD-DVD, Blu-Ray, HDMI, or anything AACSy or HDCPish until they either stop treating consumers like thieves or until Jon Johansen (DVD Jon) fixes this.
Go read
Mike Evangalist's post on this, his words are more eloquent than mine could ever be (BTW: am I the only one who thinks that his name sounds like he should be a televangalist?).

Someone on Survivor Sucks asked an interesting question:

Pretend you are the casting director for Survivor 13. They have already narrowed the field down to 182 contestants. Those 182 are the people who have already been on the show. However - lets pretend that they have not yet played the game. Which 18 would you cast based on the persons bio.

My response, as usual, broke the rules but I think it's very innovative and worth sharing.

Colleen Haskell
Jenna Lewis
Elisabeth Filarski
Amber Brkich
Michael Skupin
Keith Famie
Tom Buchanan
Ethan Zohn
Neleh Dennis
Kathy Vavrick-O'Brien
Paschal English
Rob Mariano
Shii Ann Huang
Christy Smith
Butch Lockley
Rob Cesternino
Matthew Von Ertfelda
Rupert Boneham
Lillian Morris
Sandra Diaz-Twine
Burton Roberts
Ami Cusack
Julie Berry
Eliza Orlins
Scout Cloud Lee
Tom Westman
Ian Rosenberger
Ibrehem Rahman
Wanda Shirk
Caryn Groedel
Lydia Morales
Rafe Judkins
Misty Giles
Dan Barry
Ruth-Marie Milliman
Bruce Kanegai

There is my list, Rudy Boesch was cut because he's TDO (Too Damn Old) and Richard Hatch was cut becuase he's currently unavaliable (AKA, in prison).

But, your going to say, there are TOO MANY people! I figure since I get to pick the cast I also get to pick the format. This is my new twist.

The Survivors are arranged into two groups of 18. They are then further divided into two tribes within each group.
The two seperate groups are not avaliable that there is another group also out there. They compete for what would be the requisite 20-21 days up until the merge, each group (of two tribes) voting out 9 people. With nine remaining they will be anticipating a merge, and on schedule the merge comes. However, upon arriving at their next RC/IC instead of it being an individual immunity challenge they find out that they are still competing in a tribal immunity against another tribe of survivors that has been out there at the same time as them. The game could then proceed as it normally would though a larger jury might be in order.

Despite the fact that we have early merges, late merges, tribe swaps, schoolyard pick'ems etc, we have *never* had something that would shake up the dynamic of the game as much as this would.
CBS would love this, for the first half of the season you would air two episodes a week, hence, double the ad money. The final Survivors would of course be out there for much longer, probably closer to 60 days. This would also be a major change from what we expect.
I think this is a workable concept and something that SEG should persue (MB, you listening?)

Imagine walking into the first post-merge reward challenge, your tired, the merge occured later than it usually does at only 9 players instead of the ten or eleven of prior seasons. But, you realize, your halfway there, only 18-or-so days left. Then, as your walking down the beach towards the challenge you glimpse on the opposite shore also walking towards the challenge is another group of people. They are too far away to identify them. One in your tribe counts them and realizes there are also nine people, it's the family reward challenge you think, early in a season but with the late merge, things are already stirred up and it's not unlike MB to stir the pot some more.
The closer you get people try to make out loved ones, and consistantly fail, finally approaching the challenge you realize you don't know anyone in the other group. This exact scene would take place on both tribes, each mistaking the other for family.
Finally, Probst speaks, explaining that for the past 22 days two groups of two tribes have lived apart from each other, each not knowing that the other exists.
I think this would be a fantastic concept for a season of survivor.

If you are stopped by the police are you required to answer questions, provide identification, even give them your name? The answer to all of those questions is no (in some states, the answer to the last question is possibly yes, however if giving your name could be a violation of the 5^th Ammendment then, it's probably still no — in any event, very few states have laws to this effect).
I have been in more than one situation where I was stopped by the police, and many where I was put in a position where I might be. One of the most important things to remember when you are even just stopped by the police is to not break any more laws. If you are stopped by the police and you run or physically resist arrest these are both crimes, even if the original arrest is deemed unlawful.
If you have ever watched an episode of Law & Order you know, police will lie to get you to to achieve their means. If this means telling you that they could easily get a search warrant, but it's "better" if you cooperate this most likely means the exact opposite. If the police had probable cause they would be able to get a search warrant they would *get* one and come bang down your door in force, not politely ask for your permission to enter.
If a police officer stops you on the street, there are two, and only two questions you should ask.

• Am I under arrest?
• Am I free to go?

Be forceful if you need to in getting direct answers to these questions. Under virtually all circumstances if the answer to the first question is no, the answer to the 2nd is yes.
If a police officer comes to your home step outside and close the door behind you. If they ask for a glass of water suggest to them the location of the nearest vending machine (I'm in suburban NJ so there is a small store 2 blocks left and 4 blocks up the hill). If they ask to use the restroom, tell them the location of the neareset restroom. Once you have invited a police officer into your home you provide them with an opportunity to poke around. The laws on this are somewhat vague, however rifling through the garbage in the bathroom after invited into the house would not be a violation of your 4^th Ammendment rights, however opening a medicine cabinet and reading your prescriptions would be… however if that same medicine cabinet is already open, reading those prescription bottles would not be a violation.
How I got onto this track and writing this entry is also rather fascinating. Have you ever gone to a retail store such as BestBuy where, upon leaving they insist that you show them your recipt and verify the contents of your packages? I have, and have been mildly put-off by it on many occasions. For one thing, I dislike having yet another person go through my paid-for items looking at what I bought. I also dislike what is the accusation that I am a thief. And, make no mistake, that is what they are saying by their loss-prevention policies is that they believe that every customer is a thief and as such every customer is compelled to be checked by law.
This, however, is a rather large misnomer.
Once you have paid for these items they are yours and as such you have the right to leave the store without submitting to any such searches of your person or personal belongings (which, since you have paid for them, the items in your bag/cart are now). Exit bag checks are strictly voluntary.
If you are requested by a store employee to check your recipt a simple "no, thank you" is a sufficent response.
The exact legality of it is discussed here:

Are Door Bag Searches Legal?

Yes, as long as the inspection is voluntary. No, if the bag check is involuntary or coerced. This is a rather fine legal distinction that is subject to misunderstanding and abuse. Basically, nothing in the law gives the merchant the right to detain a customer for the purpose of searching a shopping bag unless there is a reasonable suspicion of retail theft.

In fact, as the article goes on to explain, store employees and "security guards" have very little power, they are not officers of the law and have only one single option which is to make a citizens arrest and await the arrival of police to preform a search if the person does not consent to one. Only the police can preform an involuntary search based on probable cause. Store employees must satisfy the following conditions before satisfying a claim of probable cause.

1. You must see the shoplifter approach your merchandise

You must see the shoplifter select your merchandise

2. You must see the shoplifter conceal or carry away or convert your merchandise
3. You must maintain continuous observation the shoplifter
4. You must see the shoplifter fail to pay for the merchandise
5. You must approach the shoplifter outside of the store

This is discussed in more detail here.
I intend to try this out the next time I am confronted at a retail outlet.
Simply, this is not an easy burden to meet, but store merchants rely upon the ignorance of the average shopper just like the police rely on the ignorance of the average person to serve their needs. If you don't know what your rights are then you won't be exercising them any time soon.
I have been asked many times, by many people why, if I am a law-abiding citizen, that I should even be concerned with any of the above, if i'm not breaking any laws then I have nothing to hide, right? This is simply not true. Opressive regiemes such as the one that the USA is currently hosting in office have, can and will continue to exercise their power beyond the boundries of the law to quell resistance.
They did it before and they are doing it again.
The article that got me started on this which I found via Boing Boing.
ACLU Bust Card Memorize this, it explains exactly what to do and what not to do in the event you are detained by the police, knowing that they will lie to you to coerece information from you it is invaluble knowing exactly what you is illegal for you to do.
The Vaults of Erowid another site I came across while writing this entry, very interesting.

You scored as Babylon 5 (Babylon 5). The universe is erupting into war and your government picks the wrong side. How much worse could things get? It doesn't matter, because no matter what you have your friends and you'll do the right thing. In the end that will be all that matters. Now if only the Psi Cops would leave you alone.

I'm going to sit over here and pretend that the HTML from this site didn't suck as bad as it does.

I put together a KML file of Survivor POI's based off Dan Bollinger's maps. The overlays of all 11 maps are included as well as a few points from All-Stars. Download it here.
Includes POIs from all twelve seasons, the most detailed is Africa, there are points for virtually every immunity and reward challenge this is, of course, based off the amount or lack of data contained on each of Dan's maps.
In terms of the imagery provided by google maps:

• Borneo — it's OK
• Outback — Pretty good
• Africa — eh, not so good
• Marquesas — HORRIBLE — almost as bad as the season was
• Thailand — Very good but too much cloud cover
• Amazon — Very good, you can even see the Ariaus Towers
• Pearl Islands — Good, except it's very cloudy and there is a large very blurry patch just below the "survivor" area which includes the location for the new exile island
• Vanuatu — Very good
• Palau — as bad as Marquesas
• Guatemala — it's OK

This is far from done. And any contributions are helpful. That said, contributions of actual KML,KMZ files or XML fragments from Google Earth are great and can be added as a comment or emailed to adam@gotlinux.us.

First, a word about the Adobe Blogs. Adobe has really set the bar for corporate blogging. They have people evangalizing their tech, while simultaniously having a very free, personable posting style that absolutely never feels corporate. Kudos to Adobe for adopting such a great policy surrounding their blogs. But, on to more important matters:

Last night there was a scene where they are viewing survelliance tape. They stop the frame on this grainy, night shot, B/W tape, then zoom in on an area 1/1000 the size of the screen:
"There! That piece of paper. Zoom in on that" - wait for it….

"See if I can enhance that…" - get ready for some magic!

"What is it a barcode?" - looks like nasty pixels to me

"Looks like a PDF 417" - LOL, ROTFL, I am enhaling carpet at this point

Gunar's Adobe Blog
I *love* how they constantly preform the technical equivlent of taking a 320×240 video stream of a pin across a football field and zoom in on the pen head and realize that there is a microscopic code imprinted on the pinhead. It's pretty simple, the data simply isn't there, you can't do it, not possible.
Another annoying thing is their complete lack of understaning of the internet. For example, in the same episode, they are able to instantly find an IP address of someone who visited a website, instantly translate that to an email address, and then instantly translate that to actual subscriber information. Two, of those three are possible, potentially, with the proper subponeas and given enough time, the third (translating an IP address to an email address) is simply impossible. Just as frustrating, is the ip address they used, 360.xxx.xxx.xxx… WOOT? did we add some extra bits to IPv4 while I wasn't looking? This is rather annoying, especially when 192.0.2.0/24 is reserved for exactly this purpose, assuming you want a non-routable IP (specifically, it's reserved for use in documentaton and examples, but this is close enough). Moreover, why not use a REAL ip address, and have it point to some hidden site with cool content (Ghristam's blog anybody?). Come on CBS, it's what Lost would do!

I really like debian. Mostly because the system is stable, no, not in the it never crashes sense, but in the sense that things are well taken care of and the system can run autonomously for a long time with little or no attention. Install a debian system, do what you need with it, and it should be fine for a long time to come. For example, I was trying to upgrade (actually remove — but that required me to upgrade) a certian package from a certian machine (courier-* from my video client). I decided to just bite the bullet and run an apt-get dist-upgrade on the system, it's a slow computer (700mhz) and I knew it would take a long time to do. In fact, after looking over a few things, I realized that this server had *never* been upgraded since it was installed. apt-get had, of course, been used a few times to install or remove packages but never to do a complete upgrade. I checked in /etc/apt/sources.list, well, besides specifying a mirror that has been shutdown for several years, it was using testing. I wanted to move this to stable, since stable is actually OK now and I much prefer stability over newness now. I was 99% sure this had been installed prior to sarge becoming testing, which would mean i could preform a simple testing(sarge) to stable(sarge) upgrade. I poked around a bit before looking at /var/log/installer.log.1

-rw-r--r--  1 root root 1292515 Mar  3  2002 /var/log/installer.log.1

Yep, you see that right. This system was installed back in 2002. Never been upgraded, to the best of my recollection I have never had issues with log file rotation not occuring and causing problems.

Yes, the headline is one from back when Apple bought NeXT for 400m dollars. It was said that, in reality, NeXT had bought Apple for -400m dollars because, since the NeXT acquisition the technologies that NeXT brought to Apple revolutionzied Apple's core buisness and have, in fact, returned Apple to be a global player in the computer market and have, by changing the culture of Apple, allowed Apple to take the leap to dominate the global music download market and the global portable player market. As I write this, my new 5G iPod is in my pocket — why did I buy a new 5G when my 4G was working fine? I can hardly say, video is cool, but not something I expect to use on a daily basis, the new screen is larger, easier to read, brighter and for the moment I will probably be able to sell the old iPod to moderately cover my losses.
There are many questions surrounding Dixar, and by looking at the deal, we can answer a few of them. They have announced that some Pixar employees are going to be moved into strategic positions within Disney. Note the word, some, It does not seem to me that this is an attempt to dissolve and absorb Pixar into Disney. I also do not think that anyone at Disney is going to start excersizing editorial control at Pixar. The Pixney deal is an all-stock deal, Pixar shareholders are getting 2.3 shares of Disney stock for every share of Pixar stock they own. This means that Steve Jobs will become the largest single stockholder in Disney. This is effectively handing control of the company to Steve saying, please take control of the company and fix it. I would not be suprised at all if this deal includes a seat on the board of Disney for Steve, or something larger, though he may be unwilling to neglect Apple by taking a large role within Disney, besides, he has spent the past 20 years making Pixar into a company infused with his drive and vision, he no doubt has many people who are working for him at Pixar who are both loyal to him and to the Pixar ideal, they will not be corrupted by the culture of Disney, indeed their job is to reform the culture of Disney. I will expect a few things to happen within disney, both quickly, and slowly. Firstly, they are going to completely axe the new CGI animation department at Disney. The movies they put out prove they don't have what it takes.
This is going to be a very exciting time for the people at Pixar and simultaniously a very scary time for the people at Disney. By making this purchase Disney has effectively said that their is something about Pixar that we want and not just their movies. There is a certian culture at Pixar that allows them to create such great movies. If Disney is very, very lucky they will be able to translate this corporate structure to the "old Disney" and remake the company in the image of Pixar. If successful, Disney will be able to leverage the corporate culture of Pixar to reimage itself and remove the parts of the company that haven't been able to produce anything useful in decades, while simultaniously Pixar is going to be able to leverage the fact that Disney is everywhere to expand it's empire.
I suppose we have to wait and see to determine the exact extent of where Dixay is going to take us, but that's the fun part.

If all you really want is anonymous usage statistics why not just go get them yourself? See, this is why we don't believe you when you say "anonymous". We hear anonymous and we think: they are going to follow up this request with a request to divulge the identies of users who searched for individual terms. And, while google could simply fight those suponeas why stop it right here, right now. Go Google.