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TechTV Forever Supports the Electronic Frontier Foundation!

Partially because the EFF has always been the best lobby the technology crowd has, and because they’re out there working on a regular basis to make sure that our digital rights, privacy, and security are protected both from crooks and thieves who would steal them to scam up as well as companies and government agencies that would trade them, spam us, watch us, and monitor our every move, the EFF has been an incredible force in both government and technology circles in making sure that the real issues and needs of technology are properly addressed in government and in business. For example, take a look at their open letter to Sony BMG here in relation to the Sony Rootkit DRM scandal:

[ http://www.eff.org/IP/DRM/Sony-BMG/?f=open-letter-2005-11-14.html ]

Essentially, you broke it, you oughta fix it, and fix it properly, without opening up additional security holes (as they’ve done), deny responsibility (as they’ve done), ignore the issue (as they’ve done), or lie and insult the public (as they’ve also done). Because the EFF has been such an impressive motivator for personal rights and freedoms and technology, TechTV Forever advises anyone interested in becoming a member and support the fine work that the EFF is doing:


Support Bloggers' Rights!

Support Bloggers’ Rights!

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TechNews Bytes

Sony’s Rootkit DRM Timeline and Updates

If you’ve been paying attention to tech news lately, you’ve been hearing a lot about the rootkit that Sony has been using as DRM on some of its BMG CDs for the past several months. It’s been covered on TWIT [ http://www.twit.tv/ ], Security Now! [ http://www.grc.com/securitynow.htm ] and a great deal of other technology news agencies. I put together a synopsis of the issue while it was breaking at my e-zine here:

[ http://www.pleasanttingle.net/story/2005/11/7/105955/991 ]

And the issue has developed since then. BoingBoing, an amazing blog [ http://www.boingboing.net/ ] posted an excellent timeline of events yesterday here:

[ http://www.boingboing.net/2005/11/14/sony_anticustomer_te.html ]

The trouble is that even since then, it’s been determined that Sony’s web uninstaller for the software is actually really dangerous and shouldn’t be used because even it’s so poorly written that it opens up yet another massive security hole in the process of trying to close another. Read about that tidbit over at the Freedom To Tinker blog in these posts:

Sony’s Web-Based Uninstaller Opens a Big Security Hole; Sony to Recall Discs
[ http://www.freedom-to-tinker.com/?p=927 ]

Update: Sony Uninstaller Hole Stays Open
[http://www.freedom-to-tinker.com/?p=928 ]

Sad. Very very sad.

Categories
Programming and Podcasts

Weezy and The Swish // Episode 23

On this week’s Weezy and The Swish, the duo interview Fritz Coleman [ http://www.nbc4.tv/nbc4/1310077/detail.html ], a playright, comedian, and a household name in the LA area. If you think it’s kind of silly that Weezy and Laura spent this podcast essentially interviewing their local weatherman, you’d be way off base. It’s definitely a fun interview. Check it out!

Weezy and The Swish Episode 23 // November 15, 2005 – [ episode notes | download ]

Categories
Programming and Podcasts

No Digital Life TV This Week, But….

Patrick and Robert and the Digital Life TV gang ARE soliciting suggestions for the format of the show, whether you’d like to see any changes made to the format, the content, or the media types and availability of the show. This week Patrick is down in Baja working on race cars for the Baja 1000, but in the meantime they’re taking suggestions! Head on over, read the questions, and email them with your input!

[ http://digitallifetv.com/blogs/digitallifetv/archive/2005/11/15/2172.aspx ]