spriteleigh

TorrentFreak took a close look at the sourcecode for the websites run by the RIAA and its UK equivalent, the BPI, and discovered that they'd made a serious breach of copyright on each. Both sites were using the MIT-licensed JQuery scrips, whose generous MIT license requires only that its users keep its copyright notice intact. The RIAA and BPI (organizations that advocate taking away domains, disconnecting Internet users, and prison sentences for infringement) had both failed to comply with this minimal requirement.

When TorrentFreak asked them for comment, both of said they'd look into it, and swiftly came into compliance with the license.

Two weeks ago we reported that the new Healthcare.gov website had stripped the copyright notice from one of the scripts it used. This blatant act of ‘piracy’ prompted us to take a closer look at the websites of several anti-piracy organizations, and today we present our findings.

As it turns out the U.S. Government is not the only one violating copyright licenses. The websites of music industry groups RIAA and BPI also use infringing code.

On both sites we found open source JQuerys scripts that are released under the MIT license. This license permits any person or organization to use, copy, modify, merge, distribute, or even sell copies of the software. There’s only one condition users have to agree to; that the original copyright notice stays intact.

Ironically, the scripts used on the RIAA and BPI websites have the copyright licenses removed.

RIAA and BPI Use “Pirated” Code on Their Websites [Ernesto/TorrentFreak]

Artist Jeff Bennett (DeviantART member RolandDeschane) takes the works of Thomas Kincade and improves them with elements from the Star Wars universe, in a series called War on Kincade. The pastoral landscapes now have spaceships cruising above, or Storm Troopers patrolling, or various war machines bringing destruction! The reaction so far has been "Shut up and take my money!" but they are not yet available as prints. See the entire series at his DeviantART gallery. -via Geekologie

The latest salvo in the UK government's attack on legal aid is a new fee structure that will earn defense lawyers huge bonuses if they get an early guilty plea out of their clients, who, by definition, can't afford to hire lawyers who are incentivised to keep them out of jail.

It's pitched as a cost-saving measure, but that only holds true if the defendants are presumed to be guilty and the trial is seen as an expensive formality. On the other hand, if you support the idea that people are innocent until proven otherwise, this is a measure that will cause the state the enormous expense of imprisoning the innocent (and letting the guilty go free).

On the other other hand, if you're part of David Cameron's cabinet of millionaires, perhaps being unable to afford a lawyer is proof enough of your guilt. "If you can't afford a lawyer, you simply shouldn't get arrested. Obviously."

"A client pleading guilty to a standard actual bodily harm charge in crown court will earn their lawyer as much as a 20% fee increase," the LCCSA said. "There are some cases in the crown court where a quick guilty plea will earn a lawyer a 75% fee increase.

"Likewise, in magistrates courts a simple guilty plea [for instance, for common assault] will reward lawyers with a 17% pay increase. This flies in the face of the government's advertised 17.5% cuts to save £220m from the legal aid budget."

The association said the revised fees would result in some lawyers losing out as much as 65% in some magistrate court cases and up to 73% in some crown court cases. Steven Bird, a London solicitor and LCCSA member, said: "The only conclusion to draw from these figures is the sad truth that the new fee structure is ideological and has nothing to do with austerity.

"By law, we're already obliged to advise our clients about the benefits of an early guilty plea, by way of credit on their sentence … It doesn't take a legal background – or criminal record – to realise that these incentives for a guilty plea and disincentives for a trial are an affront to justice."

Lawyers to earn higher legal aid fees for early guilty pleas [Owen Bowcott/The Guardian]

(Image: Mr Toad's Wild Ride, Disney)

The Electronic Frontier Foundation has filed a brief in the case of Leon Gelfgatt, arguing that forcing the accused to decrypt a file violates the Fifth Amendment, which makes you secure against self-incrimination.

Our brief argues that the lower court got it right. The Fifth Amendment protects a person from being forced to reveal the "contents of his mind" to the government, allowing law enforcement to learn facts it didn't already know. When it comes to compelled decryption, the Fifth Amendment clearly applies because the government would be learning new facts beyond simply the encryption key. By forcing Gelfgatt to translate the encrypted data it cannot read into a readable format, it would be learning what the unencrypted data was (and whether any data existed). Plus, the government would learn perhaps the most crucial of facts: that Gelfgatt had access to and dominion and control of files on the devices.

It's not the first time we've made this argument in court; we've filed amicus briefs in other cases involving forced decryption, and won big last year in the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals, which agreed with us that the act of decrypting a computer is protected by the Fifth Amendment.

At a time when the recent public disclosures have suggested the government has been undermining cryptography, we hope the court understands the importance of having strong technological safeguards to protect our privacy and find that our constitutional protections prohibit what the government is trying to do here.

Fifth Amendment Prohibits Compelled Decryption, New EFF Brief Argues

Customers have been complaining about some models of Dell's Latitude E6430u laptop, saying they smell of cat pee. Some say the overwhelming odor makes the computer unusable.

A Dell customer, going by the name of “three west,” first reported the malodorous defect to Dell’s support website in June 2013. “the machine is great,” posted the disappointed buyer,  ”but it smells as if it was assembled near a tomcat’s litter box. It is truly awful! It seems to be coming from the keyboard.”

Since then, the computer maker’s forums have been flooded by buyers with similar stories.

Without elaborating, Dell says the problem in the manufacturing process was corrected in October, and laptops made after that should not have the smell. Laptops with the smell of cat urine can be exchanged for new models. Which is only right -after all, the experience of watching cat videos on the internet shouldn't be accompanied by the ambience of a litter box.   

(YouTube link)

With the sequel Thor: The Dark World opening November 8th, it's about time the original Thor got the Honest Trailer treatment. I had the same reaction as Screen Junkies, but I must admit that the eye candy alone made the movie worth my time to watch on home video. The few comedy scenes were the best part of the film. I quickly gave up trying to keep the mythology straight. -via Uproxx

Toronto's fun-lovin', crack-smoking Mayor Rob "Laughable Bumblefuck" Ford is having an exciting Hallowe'en, which Robbo Mills's wife has commemorated with a very special Jack-O-Lantern.

Teh Missus made a pumpkin to celebrate!

Hey guys and ghouls, want to win a free shirt from the NeatoShop, like the Invader Zolo above? Then head over to our Facebook and like and comment on this post to enter.

You have until midnight PST tonight and you must like the post AND comment, so get going quick and remember, if you follow the Neatorama Facebook, you'll hear about these Facebook exclusive contests before anyone else and not all of them will get posted on the main blog here, so you just might miss out. Of course, you're already missing out on lots of great jokes and conversation if you aren't following the page right now, so add us today!

Al Jazeera used the Freedom of Information Act to get the NSA to disclose its talking points for public speaking events. The least surprising of these is the cheap invocation of 9/11 as an excuse for any wrongdoing, phrased thus: "I much prefer to be here today explaining these programs, than explaining another 9/11 event that we were not able to prevent." It's the Giuliani Gambit, and it's as repellent as it is obvious.

Under the subheading “Sound Bites That Resonate,” the document suggests the statement “I much prefer to be here today explaining these programs, than explaining another 9/11 event that we were not able to prevent.”

NSA head Gen. Keith Alexander used a slightly different version of that statement when he testified before Congress on June 18 in defense of the agency’s surveillance programs.

Asked to comment on the document, NSA media representative Vanee M. Vines pointed Al Jazeera to Alexander’s congressional testimony on Tuesday, and said the agency had no further comment. In keeping with the themes listed in the talking points, the NSA head told legislators that “it is much more important for this country that we defend this nation and take the beatings than it is to give up a program that would result in this nation being attacked.”

Revealed: NSA pushed 9/11 as key 'sound bite' to justify surveillance [Jason Leopold/Al Jazeera America]

(via Reddit)

(YouTube link)

The Simpsons continues its series of elaborate opening couch gags that spoof pop culture phenomena. This time, its The Hobbit. Yeah, the video says this is part one of six, but don't believe it -that's a Peter Jackson thing. The family's quest is scheduled to open the episode "4 Regrettings and A Funeral," which will air November 3rd. The highly-publicized episode will reveal which Springfield resident dies, and the funeral causes the Simpsons and other regular characters to re-evaluate their lives.  -via Tastefully Offensive

The German Pirate Party received whistleblower leaks showing that the German authorities were infecting peoples' computers with a virus tailored to allow wiretapping of Skype connections. This -- like previous German use of wiretapping malware -- is probably illegal.

But Germany is more interested in punishing the whistleblower than in cracking down on illegal police wiretapping. After the leak was published, a Pirate Party spokesperson's home was raided and computers confiscated as the police sought to uncover the identity of the leaker.

Illegally tapping Skype conversations may be illegal, but it seems that German authorities are a lot more interested in tracking down who leaked the documents and have raided the homes of various German Pirate Party members, confiscating computer equipment. Of course, if anything, this would seem to confirm that the government was at least experimenting with, if not actively using, such a trojan horse wiretapping program -- and the raids have only served to generate much more attention over that fact.

Consider: an article written by Suzanne Somers, published by The Wall Street Journal, with the title "The Affordable Care Act Is a Socialist Ponzi Scheme". What could possibly go wrong? Here are the posted corrections, so far.

CORRECTIONS AND AMPLIFICATIONS:

An earlier version of this post contained a quotation attributed to Lenin (“Socialized medicine is the keystone to the arch of the socialist state”) that has been widely disputed. And it included a quotation attributed to Churchill (“Control your citizens’ health care and you control your citizens“) that the Journal has been unable to confirm.

Also, the cover of a Maclean’s magazine issue in 2008 showed a picture of a dog on an examining table with the headline “Your Dog Can Get Better Health Care Than You.” An earlier version of this post incorrectly said the photo showed and headline referred to a horse.

UK prime minister David Cameron has threatened to get a court order against the Guardian if it continues to publish the Snowden leaks. He accused the Guardian of having a "lah-di-dah, airy-fairy view" about the dangers of leaks, and said the if the paper didn't voluntarily censor itself out of a sense of "social responsibility" he would seek court injunctions against it.

The majority of the Snowden leaks have revealed crimes -- illegal spying, lying to Congress and Parliament, violation of international law. That these crimes were committed with the knowledge and approval of the highest levels of the US and UK government doesn't make them any less criminal. And what wasn't criminal was absolutely depraved in its indifference to the public good: for example, the UK government's Edgehill programme, which, with the US government's Bullrun program, sabotaged the security of software, hardware and cryptographic standards to the tune of USD250M/year.

There is nothing more cowardly and corrupt than a lawbreaking political leader who threatens the free press when they call him to account. I never liked Cameron, but with this, he's taken the Tories beyond their reputation of being "the nasty party" and turned them into full-blown Stalinists.

Cameron told MPs: "We have a free press, it's very important the press feels it is not pre-censored from what it writes and all the rest of it.

"The approach we have taken is to try to talk to the press and explain how damaging some of these things can be and that is why the Guardian did actually destroy some of the information and disks that they have. But they've now gone on and printed further material which is damaging.

"I don't want to have to use injunctions or D notices or the other tougher measures. I think it's much better to appeal to newspapers' sense of social responsibility. But if they don't demonstrate some social responsibility it would be very difficult for government to stand back and not to act."

David Cameron makes veiled threat to media over NSA and GCHQ leaks [Nicholas Watt/The Guardian]

Common Cause is using a long, scrolling, comics style infographic to explain the latest attempt by Verizon to undermine the principle of Net Neutrality.

Called Big Deal, Big Money, the graphic was co-produced with Symbolia, and illustration credit is given as “S. Caldwell” (for whom I haven’t been able to turn up a first name or website yet).

Just in case there is any confusion (and there probably is, because the telcos and other big business interests have done their best to deliberately confuse you on this issue by using bogus terms like “Internet Freedom” to mask their power grab), I’ll state unequivocally that Net Neutrality is a Good Thing (capital “G”, capital “T”), and if big content and the telecommunications companies succeed in undermining it, much of the internet as you know it, including things like Lines and Colors, will gradually disappear.

No, I’m not being unduly alarmist, and yes, I understand that the technical issues are not straightforward — but the basic principle is.

Net Neutrality means that the companies responsible for transmitting data across the internet must treat all information equally.

What Verizon and other telcos want is to allow big business to pay for their data streams to be given preference over those from sources who can’t pay as much, like yours or mine. The end result is that smaller sites will eventually become much slower and harder to access than big ones, and will gradually become marginalized — so gradually that it will be hard to notice until its too late.

The end goal is that Big Content will essentially be able to co-opt the internet and turn it into another channel of information and entertainment that they control, like television and radio.

(Think I’m exaggerating? Look up the history of radio broadcasting and how bandwidth once available to the public was given away by congress to big business in return for overt bribery, and the public was eventually banned from broadcasting radio in regular broadcast bands. Why would you think they wouldn’t try the same thing with the internet?)

Yes, there are issues in which some kinds of internet data may have to be transmitted differently as a practical technical issue (which is where it gets complicated) but that’s not what this is about. This is about the internet equivalent of driving down a highway and having to pull over to let rich people go ahead of you because they can pay more to use the highway.

But I digress, and I’m rambling on, which is where comics do a better job of explaining…

[Via BoingBoing]

[I really want Save the Adventure to be a success! For just $25, you'll get a year-long (12-book) subscription -- Mark]

Only 10 days left, before it's too late!

Singularity & Co., the Brooklyn-based science fiction bookstore that a year ago launched the digital book club Save the Sci-Fi, is kickstarting a brand-new digital book club, Save the Adventure.

Because they like what I've done with HiLoBooks's Radium Age Science Fiction Series (paperback reissues of forgotten sci-fi novels from 1904–33), the folks at Singularity & Co. have asked me to be Save the Adventure's founding editor.

The goal of Save the Adventure is to rescue out-of-print adventure stories from copyright limbo. Each month (assuming we raise sufficient funding), I'll choose an out-of-print but amazing adventure novel — at which point Singularity & Co. will track down the rights-holder, clear the electronic publishing rights, scan and proof the text, and make the novel available as an e-book.

The campaign deadline is November 9th. Rewards ship in December — a subscription to the Save the Adventure book club will make a perfect holiday gift.

By "adventure," I'm talking about this sort of thing: H. Rider Haggard’s King Solomon’s Mines, Anthony Hope’s The Prisoner of Zenda, John Buchan’s The Thirty-Nine Steps, P.C. Wren’s Beau Geste, James Hilton’s Lost Horizon, Geoffrey Household’s Rogue Male, Helen MacInnes’s Assignment in Brittany, Lionel Davidson’s The Rose of Tibet, and Trevanian’s The Eiger Sanction. PS: I'm not saying these books would be reissued by Save the Adventure; I'm just listing some favorites.

Note that — except for a handful of exceptions — we won't be reissuing works that are in the public domain. The goal is to rescue books that have never before been made available in digital form. And when we do reissue public domain works, our emphasis will be on obscure, forgotten titles. And we'll clean them up — carefully proofing the book's digital version against the original.

I'm thrilled by this prospect. In preparation, at my website HiLobrow this month, I've made a couple of lists-in-progress: (a) the greatest adventure novels of the 19th and 20th Centuries (e.g., Best Thirties Adventure and Best Sixties Adventure); and (b) prime examples of the Adventure genre's 20 enduring memes and themes — including everything from DIY to cozy catastrophe, to secret identities and reluctant badasses, to conspiracy theories and atavistic epics.

I've got a huge stack of out-of-print adventure novels, which I've been collecting for 30 years; many of them I inherited from my grandfather, who in the 1940s and ’50s adored pulp fiction. I want to share this stuff with the world. So please help us raise enough money to start this club. Singularity & Co. has raised just over $5,000.00 of the $12,000.00 required to make this book club happen — for covering costs associated with clearing electronic publishing rights, covering costs for legal and research work, buying adventure novels and scanning them, and so forth.

Singularity & Co. is offering a bunch of rewards to Kickstarter backers, at various levels, including: vintage print adventure novels mailed to you, a vintage adventure cover art poster and t-shirt, a subscription to their Save the Sci Fi book club, and more. But the most important reward of all is, of course: a year-long (12-book) subscription to the Save the Adventure book club.

Adventure fans, please support this cause. Contribute to the Save the Adventure Kickstarter campaign, and spread the word about this project far and wide!

[Here are some adventure novels from Josh's personal collection. The won't necessarily be offered in the club, but the covers are cool. - Mark]

"At first, I thought it was my imagination. Around the time the iPhone 5S and 5C were released, in September, I noticed that my sad old iPhone 4 was becoming a lot more sluggish," writes Catherine Rampell in The New York Times. She noticed her batteries were being drained more quickly than before, too. She called some tech analysts who blamed it on iOS 7.

I have an iPhone 4s. The battery life is terrible. But it was bad before I upgraded to iOS 7. Is it worse now? Maybe -- I have a bunch of battery cases that I am constantly snapping on to my energy-gorging phone, so I'm not really sure.

Rampell goes on to explore the idea that Apple is intentionally obsoleting older iPhones by releasing operating systems designed to slow down earlier models and drain their batteries. But I think the battery life of iPhones, old and new, just suck. I'd prefer a thick phone that runs all day without needing a recharge, than a thin, lightweight phone that you have to put in a thick case to protect anyway.

Why Apple Wants to Bust Your iPhone

YouTube has been an existence-proof of forms of video that were lurking in potentia, unable to come into existence due to limitations of the distribution channel. The two-to-three-minute video has now been firmly established as a genre (with the six-second video hot on its heels), but there's plenty of room at the long end of the scale. Case in point: subculture of YouTubers who post full-length train journeys, hours and hours' worth -- and if that's not long-form enough, how about 134-hour sea crossings?

Given the modern vogue/panic about short-reads being mere "linkblogging" and the practice of spinning out a few hundred words into a "serious, long-form journalism" wheeze that is split across eight or more screens, this may just be the video form for our age (and please let it be a short one!).

I was thrilled to learn, via an excellent Metafilter post, about a small online subculture of resistence to the attention-frittering trend: the existence of scores of YouTube videos documenting entire train journeys, some many hours long, from the perspective of the driver in the cab. The video above is nine hours and 53 minutes long – it's available in spring, autumn and winter versions too – and while I won't claim to have watched it all, I've spent some pleasant work breaks in Brooklyn watching Scandinavian scenery go by. But perhaps you'd prefer Glasgow to Fort William and Mallaig in Scotland? It's every bit as rainswept – and bleakly beautiful, especially in its latter stages – as you'd imagine:

Life too exciting? Enter the calming world of full-length train journey videos [Oliver Burkeman/The Guardian]

(via Making Light)

Mozilla has shipped the 1.0 of its Web Literacy Standard: "a map of the territory for the skills and competencies Mozilla and community think are important to get better at to more effectively read, write & participate on the Web." It's a noble effort, and it's meant to be a baseline for people who want to develop teaching programs, curriculum, and identify Web resources that will aid in promoting Web literacy.

Participating on the web

Sharing and Collaborating Jointly creating and providing access to web resources:
* Sharing a resource using an appropriate tool and format for the audience
* Tracking changes made to co-created web resources
* Choosing a web tool to use for a particular contribution/collaboration
* Co-creating web resources
* Configuring notifications to keep up to date with community spaces and interactions
* Using synchronous and asynchronous tools to communicate with web communities, networks and groups

Community Participation Getting involved in web communities and understanding their practices:
* Encouraging participation in web communities
* Using constructive criticism in a group or community setting
* Configuring settings within tools used by online communities
* Participating in both synchronous and asynchronous discussions
* Expressing opinions appropriately in web discussions
* Defining different terminology used within online communities

Privacy Examining the consequences of sharing data online:
* Identifying rights retained and removed through user agreements
* Taking steps to secure non-encrypted connections
* Explaining ways in which computer criminals are able to gain access to user information
* Managing the digital footprint of an online persona
* Identifying and taking steps to keep important elements of identity private

Announcing the Web Literacy Standard (specification)

(via /.)

Mr. Ned Stark

Mr. Joffrey Baratheon

Little Miss Arya Stark

The Mr. Men series is a collection of children’s books by British cartoonist Roger Hargreaves. He published them starting with Mr. Tickle in 1971 until his death in 1988. Then his son, Adam Hargeaves, picked up and carried on the series. The books have characters whose names reflect their personalities or physical attributes.

The tumblr blog Mr. Men and Little Miss Game of Thrones exhibits a project to draw thirty Game of Thrones characters in the iconic Hargreaves style. You can view the first seven here, including Little Miss Daenerys Targaryen, Mr. Samwell Tarly and Mr. Khal Drogo.

-via Popped Culture

Rashid Rana's "Red Carpet 1" is a 2007 piece that appears to be a beautiful, intricate woven rug, but which actually consists of thousands of graphic images from Pakistan's slaughterhouse.

"Red Carpet 1 when looked at from a distance is a beautiful deep red carpet. Upon closer inspection, it is revealed that the carpet is made up of images taken in a slaughterhouse. The work reflects the duel existence of Pakistan as a purveyor of beauty and violence.

Rashid Rana. Red Carpet 1, 2007.

(YouTube link)

After doing the Michael Jackson tribute last weekend, the Ohio State University marching band put together an entirely different show in a week's time, and it's a bygone! In this show, they show you formations that recreate scenes from Superman, Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, Jurassic Park, and Pirates of the Caribbean. The formations are great, especially the walking, chomping T. rex, but there's beauty in the details, such as the flying owl in the Harry Potter sequence. And they do all this while playing the music wonderfully! Siskel and Ebert would have given it a thumbs up. -via Metafilter

Scroll Down to Riker might just be my new favorite web toy. Essentially the website requires you to do what the site says and scroll down to see Star Trek The Next Generation's William T. Riker say something fantastic to you. If you're a lady who finds the actor Jonathan Frakes to be quite stunning, you might want to keep scrolling over and over until you get a nice "hey girl" style line to brighten your day. I sure wouldn't mind being his Counselor Troi, though personally, I prefer first-season, clean-shaved Riker than the bearded Riker used on this fun site.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation's Danny O'Brien has ten important suggestions for things you can do right now to minimize the extent to which you are surveilled on the Internet. The most important one for me is number ten:

10. Be an ally. If you understand and care enough to have read this far, we need your help. To really challenge the surveillance state, you need to teach others what you've learned, and explain to them why it's important. Install OTR, Tor and other software for worried colleagues, and teach your friends how to use them. Explain to them the impact of the NSA revelations. Ask them to sign up to Stop Watching Us and other campaigns against bulk spying. Run a Tor node, or hold a cryptoparty. They need to stop watching us; and we need to start making it much harder for them to get away with it.

Ten Steps You Can Take Right Now Against Internet Surveillance

(YouTube link)

Freddie Wong meets Key & Peele in an episode of the cop drama Law & Order: Wizard City. When the dialogue gets just as complicated as it can possibly be, it takes a quantum leap into the surreal. Freddie Wong does love his shoot-em-ups.

"Let's just take a moment to figure out who's double-crossing themselves while dressed as each other."

If you can do all that and keep it straight, you're a step ahead of me. Not that it makes any difference in the end, so don't strain your brain too much. But now I have a craving for some blueberry pie. -via Metafilter

What does the fox say? Cookie Monster asked the resident fox on Sesame Street. He's a good sport about it, but Ylvis drew all the wrong conclusions.

In his Confessions, Augustine explained how language develops socially in a human child:

When they called something by name and pointed it out while they spoke, I saw it and realized that the thing they wished to indicate was called by the name they then uttered. And what they meant was made plain by the gestures of their bodies, by a kind of natural language, common to all nations, which expresses itself through changes of countenance, glances of the eye, gestures and intonations which indicate a disposition and attitude--either to seek or to possess, to reject or to avoid. So it was that by frequently hearing words, in different phrases, I gradually identified the objects which the words stood for and, having formed my mouth to repeat these signs, I was thereby able to express my will. Thus I exchanged with those about me the verbal signs by which we express our wishes and advanced deeper into the stormy fellowship of human life, depending all the while upon the authority of my parents and the behest of my elders.

What does the fox say? The solitary fox, who slips into the video, then disappears, does not say. That’s the point. The atomized fox lacks the essential connections to a society that will give it the ability to advance “deeper into the stormy fellowship” of vulpine life.

Alan sez, "Using a simple (if wordy) graphic, Common Cause has teamed up with Symbolia to produce a Creative Commons-licensed description of how Verizon's lawsuits and lobbying threaten net neutrality."

Big Deal Big Money (Thanks, Alan)