Who would have known that Mark Cuban and I have multiple things in common?
No, we both don’t own basketball teams. (I’d buy an NFL team first!)
Mark Cuban was in the news last week for donating $100,000 to the EFF to fight the INDUCE Act. It appears to be working, as INDUCE is dead for the rest of this year.
Oh, and we’re on some mailing list together.
The EFF is suing the FCC over the Broadcast Flag.
The brief argues that the FCC has no authority to regulate digital TV sets and other digital devices unless specifically instructed to do so by Congress. While the FCC does have jurisdiction over TV transmissions, transmissions are not at issue here. The broadcast flag limits the way digital material can be used after the broadcast has already been received. “Bowing to a group of copyright holders led by the MPAA, the FCC promulgated a rule drafted by those corporate interests that will dictate design aspects of a vast array of consumer electronics – televisions, DVD recorders, TiVos, digital VCRs, iPods, and cell phones – for years to come,” the brief reads.
ALA legislative counsel Miriam M. Nisbet said, “Two years ago Congress passed a law allowing for use of copyrighted works for distance education. Yet now the FCC through the broadcast flag would prevent schools from using an entire category of those works — high definition television programs — in distance education.”
Filing the brief along with EFF, PK, and the ALA were the Association of Research Libraries, American Association of Law Libraries, Medical Library Association, Special Libraries Association, Consumer Federation of America, and Consumers Union.
This is a great thing to see. and I’ll continue to publish other links that cover it, such as Boing Boing. Building a HDTV HTPC is a priority for me, along with getting the basement done. With pcHDTV’s out of stock on Linux HDTV cards, it will be interesting to see if I can get this done in time. I firmly believe the Broadcast Flag is an evil, evil thing. I want to record the shows I want to, when I want, without the government interfering.
Actions like this make me proud to be a Pioneer level member of the EFF.
I saw on Daily Kos, a liberal weblog, this morning, that Clear Channel has put up 11 billboards across the Twin Cities saying “Don’t Vote“.
According to a Clear Channel spokesman, the billboards are a teaser ad for an ad campaign that will be unveiled on Oct. 11th. The billboards are in predominantly minority neighborhoods. Clear Channel claims that at first they said no to the campaign until they saw the whole thing, which will be in good taste.
No matter what the ad campaign, even if it’s for their radio stations (of which they have almost 50% market share here in the Twin Cities), this is in poor taste, even if it’s nothing to do with this years election.
At some point, I need to get my old blog imported here, so I can link back to the stories I did on why Clear Channel is evil, and why radio here in the Twin Cities sucks (Thanks Clear Channel and ABC Capital Cities Radio!).
And don’t forget, Clear Channel executives have a nice history of giving to the Republican party…
It’s going to be a long day today. I’ve already received a hard time about the Packers loss yesterday… I even subjected myself to KFAN this morning on the way in to hear them laugh long and hard at the Pack.
I’m not a big fan of Fox’s first team broadcasting group of Joe Buck, Troy Aikman, and Cris Collinsworth, but I thought they were absolutely right when they were saying that the Packers’ offense is still searching for an identity. After running the ball and stuffing it down the Panthers throat in Week 1, they haven’t stuck with their gameplan week after week.
I was surprised this morning to see Pederson on the injury list on ESPN. I had thought, as did the announcers, that Nall had entered the game because he had the stronger arm for the hail mary at the end of the game. Here’s to hoping that Favre is back next week.
I recently received a Linksys Wireless-B Music System. The device is pretty cool, and designed fairly well.
Using a wired or wireless connection, you can stream MP3 (no Ogg!) from your PC, internet radio and Rhapsody if you have a subscription.
Fairly good design, including ethernet, optical audio out or RCA out. Detachable speakers so you can even just hook it up to your stereo. But where the block is for all these outs, there’s still a fairly large hole – like where batteries should be.
So it’s a wireless music system – as long as AC power is plugged in. They couldn’t have found room for two C batteries? Of course, checking the wireless settings and streaming from a PC would probably drain them pretty quick, but still.
The speakers don’t even sound too bad.
So close, but yet so far in design.
I heard on the way home last night on National Public Radio, that the 2nd Circuit Court has struck down key portions of Section 505 of the Patriot Act.
Specifically, Section 505 allows the Justice Department to send a NSL, National Security Letter, to businesses, demanding information related to terrorism, without a court order. U.S. District Court Judge Victor Marreo found this disturbing without judicial oversight. The Justice Department was required to submit a list of all businesses that they had done this to – and did, which was 5 pages long, with every line blacked out.
Judge Victor Marreo also struck down the portion that requires individuals and business not to disclose that the DOJ or FBI has requested the letter – so even if you receive one, you coudn’t tell a lawyer.
The challenge was brought by the ACLU, representing a “John Doe” ISP – who by law the ACLU can’t mention by name.
I got to see Lenny Kravitz up close and personal tonight at a work event. Lenny rocked the house. Amazing show. Can’t say enough about it, it was quite loud, and very entertaining. Played my favorite song, Again.
B-52s and Lenny Kravitz, both up close in less than 6 days. Good week!
A week and half ago, I purchased Fable and NHL2k5 for my X-box. I’ve probably played 10-12 games of hockey, and having a blast doing it – even if on Pro I’m still winning too many, even if by only 1 goal.
I haven’t played Fable as near as much as I’ve wanted due to two things:
Was traveling
It’s a M rated game – as I found out after I started playing it. And Alex likes watching me play way too much for him to see me playing a role playing game as I hack away at the bad guys.
So I had received a gift card last week, and after trying out Farcry at Kent’s a week or two ago, decided to pick it up, as I enjoy a good FPS. After the fun I had playing Call of Duty single-player a year after everyone else, I decided this could be a good fit. So I bought it today. Come back to the office, and get more presents: Rome: Total War, a new real time strategy getting good reviews, and Star Wars: Battlefront (Warning: flash site) for the PC.
Considering I’ll be wiring the basement this weekend, in Orlando the following weekend, in Chicago after that, then at Lambeau the weekend after for the Cowboys game, when will I find the time? I still have Fable to play, my NFL2k5 football and hockey seasons, and two beta’s, including WoW to test. I’ve barely caught up on my TiVO from the last week or two, and here we go again… Good thing I haven’t bought X-Men from Raven yet! And I haven’t even thought about practicing for the BFG lan competition.
When it rains, it pours.
Man, after using Firefox for months, and especially after Firefox PR1, it’s harder and harder to use IE.
Especially after installing extensions to make Firefox better. I can’t recommend the Adblock extension enough. While it’s a bit of a bear at first getting the ad blacklist created, it’s gorgeous to use on sites you surf a lot. (Basically you’ll see a little “Adblock” button on ads, click that and it blocks the ad on a per site basis. It also has the ability to do recursive directories or wildcards to block lots of stuff).
Between the extensions, built-in pop up blocking, and tabbed browsing, the best browser gets even better. I’ve also installed the Gmail checker, and Web Developer extensions.
I turned the Packer game on a few minutes late yesterday. I was thinking that DirecTV would blackout the Packer game as it was the game of the week on Fox, and Fox was still showing the Vikings-Bears game that was running late. So I change the TiVo to the Packer game (after watching the Chiefs lose) and lo, and behold, the Packer game is on Sunday Ticket (much less ranting to be had than last year).
3 minutes into the game, and I’ve already missed a Manning TD. Thinking to myself, hmm, they must have had a kick return for a TD… as I watch Favre air it out to Javon Walker for a TD strike. Back from commercials, I see Manning has already thrown one as Favre matches him, and again it happens – Manning TD, Favre matches him, 14-14 first quarter.
And they were just getting warmed up. 22 straight passes by Manning before Edge even touched the ball. Packers blitzing, blitzing, blizting… defensive doesn’t adjust once in the first half as they continue to play a base 4-3 as they blitz and Manning continues to pick them apart. 1st half ends, Colts have 35 points, all Manning TDs.
Second half starts, what’s this? Packers are in a dime! They adjusted their defensive scheme! Driver continues to drop balls with a few catches, Walker remains hot, Ferguson is non-factor on offense with his injury, but has an great kick return. Packers are trying to slow down the tempo a bit, offense and defense seem to be working. Holding Manning and Co. to 3 points so far.
And then Javon Walker is stripped at mid-field. Colts DB has been lit up by Favre all day, and he makes the play of the game on a beautiful, text-book rip-it-out-of-your-arms strip. Manning walks them down the field, some confusion to get to 2 minutes, Packers burning time outs. TD Edge. Game over.
At one point, early in the game, I had looked at Kelly and said I didn’t think the Packers would be able to keep up. I was pleasantly surprised in the second half to watch them methodically work their game to get back in it. Alas, it was all for naught, but it was an entertaining football game as losses go. I would rather watch that than the self-implosion I saw versus the Bears.