Category Archives: Blog

Blog

Wind power balloons upward

magenn wind generator Well, not figuratively, anyway.  Everyone knows* that wind is stronger the higher up you go, so why not get higher to make use of those high speeds?  Well, constructing a 600-ft. base isn’t all that easy to do for one.  Enter the Magenn Air Rotos System (MARS), a giant sausage-shaped balloon fitted with rotors to generate power.  It sounds like a wild idea, but other companies are developing similar technology as well.

A small test version is currently underway, with hopes to build small-scale models for industrial use first, then building up to megawatt generators.

(via greentechmedia) (image from Magenn website)

Blog

Rock Port – wind town

Wind turbineCongratulations are in order for Rock Port, Missouri – it just became the first town to have its complete energy supply needs met by wind power. [via Slashdot]

Granted, Missouri is a windy region, and wind power wouldn’t suit every town. Plus Rock Port has a population of just 1,300 … but it’s encouraging to see ordinary people waking up to the economic realities of alternative energy sources. [image by Michael Tyas]

Blog

On the internet, no one knows you’re a p2p packet

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Tangled web of power cablesThe net neutrality debate rolls on, with little easy access to untainted fact for us, the end-users. While the record industry understandably wants peer-to-peer file-sharing brought to an end because it’s chewing the hell out of their previously lucrative business-model, ISPs have a different argument – they say it’s choking the net to beyond capacity.

Of course, they’re not willing to show us their calculations by way of proof, and all the other reports into the matter seem to come with the tang of dishonesty or the smell of FUD and vested interests. Perhaps they’re telling the truth, and traffic-shaping really is a necessity … but I’m fond of documentary evidence, myself. [image by jef safi]

Perhaps improving the infrastructure would be a better long-term plan, if the web really is running at capacity. But we can pretty much rest assured that those plans to deliver broadband over power lines aren’t going to bear any fruit …

Blog

May Day giveaways – welcome to the new artist’s business model

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Cory Doctorow - Little BrotherAnother pair of sturdy nails were hammered into the coffin of old media business models yesterday.

First of all, Cory Doctorow released his new YA novel Little Brother …

“… as a free, Creative Commons BY-NC-SA licensed download (in many formats).

It’s my first young adult novel, a book about hacker kids who use technology to claw the Bill of Rights back from the DHS. Neil Gaiman said of it, “I’d recommend Little Brother over pretty much any book I’ve read this year, and I’d want to get it into the hands of as many smart 13 year olds, male and female, as I can.”

There’s a bunch of cool stuff to accompany the downloads, including a remix gallery and a simple system for donating copies to libraries and schools.”

And on the same day, almost as if they’d conspired together*, Trent Reznor dropped The Slip – an entirely new Nine Inch Nails album – on an unsuspecting world.

Nine Inch Nails - The SlipNo build-up, no fanfare; just every flavour of audio format you could ask for (well, OK – no OGG), and a Creative Commons licence just like Doctorow’s book:

“… we encourage you to remix it, share it with your friends, post it on your blog, play it on your podcast, give it to strangers, etc.”

So that strange noise you may have heard yesterday was the sound of a thousand overpaid record executives wailing in horror; the sound of old business models crumbling under the weight of change.

This is the point where someone asks how it’s possible to make a living for the average artist without Doctorow or Reznor’s niche-superstar status. And I’ll be totally honest – I don’t know yet, though I have some ideas.

But I’ll tell you what I am sure of; I’m going to learn a lot more by watching what Doctorow and Reznor are doing than I’d learn by listening to the old guard complain that they’re not playing fair. I suspect you will, too, whatever you may think of their art.

[ * Doctorow protests innocence on this one; Reznor was unavailable for comment. 😉 ]

Blog

Criminal malware – now with End User License Agreements!

Eula Hotel signMalicious software and obfuscatory legalese – two bad tastes that, I imagine, taste even worse together. [image by j l t]

Thankfully, as I’m not in the business of trying to turn a profit by building botnets, it’s not a flavour combo I’ve encountered myself, but there are reports that such things really do exist. Caught with the same economic problem as legitimate software houses – an infinite good, easily reproduced – malware crews are including EULAs with their program packages.

Of course, a malware author can’t fall back on the courts to enforce the terms of the agreement, and so the threatened actions are a little more, er, direct – basically, if you mess with the code they’ll rat you out to the antivirus companies. But, in the words of Mike Masnick at TechDirt:

“… we already know that almost no one reads normal software EULAs, so I somehow doubt that the online scammers using this software are bothering with the fine print either.”

I can’t say I’m feeling too sad about that.