Update 14: Classes, Conferences, Book Suggestions, Pictures, MP3 Book

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
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< david.weekly.org > Update #14
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------[ 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 ]