Reply-To: david@weekly.org From: update@david.weekly.org Subject: Classes, Conferences, Book Suggestions, Pictures, MP3 Book To: update@david.weekly.org m a r c h 2 9, 2 0 0 0 ------------------------------- < david.weekly.org > Update #14 ------------------------------- ------[ greetings ] Hello everyone from bright and sunny Palo Alto! =) I'm beginning my last quarter here at Stanford in a beautiful spate of deliciously sunny weather. Ah, Palo Alto, haven of eternal sunshine... ------[ classes ] This quarter I'm taking classes in Computer Ethics (definitely looking to be an interesting one), Computer Archictectures (not buildings, hardware), Logic, and my Senior Project (you can find out more at http://david.weekly.org/code/diamondsilk.php3 ). ------[ conferences ] This Saturday I'm going to be moderating two panels at a conference here at Stanford (www.FutureOfContent.com) on the future of music. That should certainly be interesting and educational! I've never moderated a public panel before. On Tuesday, I'm flying down to L.A. to participate in a public panel on Napster and the new economy that is emerging with regards to communities. ------[ book suggestions ] Last week, I asked a number of my friends for their suggestions on what books I should read in the coming year. I got so many useful replies that I've actually set up a section to my website to organize them all, and to let people voice what books they think I should read as well as give their opinions about books on the list: http://david.weekly.org/books/ ------[ mp3 book ] On the subject of books...I've been slacking on the writing of my MP3 Book and really dragging my publisher around, so it was mutually decided to formally suspend the project for now. It was just too hard to consistently put time into it as well as schoolwork and consulting. In the interim, I'll be publishing the parts of my book that I do write on the web, and have already published the table of contents, the first chapter, and an appendix. This is where the cool part comes in: you can help write the book! I'd love any help you want to throw at it, everything from giving suggestions like "you might want to cover X topic" to "you spelled ATRAC-3 wrong" to "this fact is incorrect" would be wildly useful. If you want to go so far as to write a paragraph or even a chapter, I'd love to include it and to give you proper attribution. Ideally, this book would be as much a product of its viewers as my own creation. For more info, see: http://david.weekly.org/mp3book/ ------[ pictures ] I've changed the pictures section and added some scripts to make it easy for me to add new pictures and easy for you to browse them in a more flexible and interesting way: http://david.weekly.org/pix/ ------[ mail servers ] Of late I've been frustrated by various difficulties I've been having with mail servers that have made it more problematic to check my email, filter it, and access it conveniently from anywhere on the planet than I would like. So I wrote a bit of a rant about what I felt the next generation mail server would include: http://david.weekly.org/writings/mail.php3 ------[ cyber patrol hack ] Several cryptographers did an interesting analysis of Cyber Patrol 4, and subsequently wrote an article detailing how this was done in addition to some source code and a program that would print out the adminstrator password outright when run on a computer with Cyber Patrol. Mattel (the owners of Cyber Patrol) sued them, and subsequently reached an arrangement where they agreed to stop distributing the software. The courts issued a temporary restraining order against all sites that were distributing the source code or the binary to this application, sending out the court orders via email (apparently for the first time EVER!). Yours Truly was served one such document. However, I've only been mirroring the essay itself, which was NOT placed under the temporary restraining order. If you would like to read the essay on how Cyber Patrol 4 was cracked, see http://david.weekly.org/code/cp4break.html and see Matt Skala's (one of the authors) homepage for more info on what happened to him w/r/t the settlement: http://www.islandnet.com/~mskala/ ------[ cphack: the legal twist! ] Of course the interesting twist here is that Matt assigned his copyrights to Mattel, BUT only after he had released all of the material in the public domain! So, there arises the interesting legal question of whether or not Mattel actually has a valid copyright on the document. Something like this (a document entering and then forcibly leaving the public space) has never been tried in court, AFAIK...there's actually a very interesting discussion on this very topic on Slashdot: http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/03/29/0912240&mode=thread ------[ site tweaks ] You may notice that a few things are different about the site as of today: the front page now has a pull-down question box that should help most people who are visiting find the information that they want quickly and efficiently. If you have any suggestions as to what sort of questions should be there or what order they should be in, please do email me. I've also tweaked the sidebar a bit, as you may have noticed. =) Most notably, there's a "page source" link at the bottom that will display the PHP3 source code to the page that you're currently on. (And yes, I let you view the source to the source viewer PHP3 script in a manic fit of open-sourcing my site!) ------[ end ] Th-th-that's all for now, folks! If you have any questions or comments on this newsletter or my site, send me an email. ------[ mail sent to 563 dearly beloved subscribers ]