Gotta Love the EFF

The Mad Penguin has put up part two of his MGM v. Grokster series of articles in the form of an interview with EFF Director Shari Steele. Much of the interview has to do with the Electronic Frontier Foundation's background and mission rather than the Grokster lawsuit (it was done a few months ago) and is a healthy read about a refreshing civil rights organization. It doesn't sound important, but can you imagine what our future in technology would be like if companies and programmers were worried about getting sued? Would the iPod be created? Would mathematicians still be putting cryptography codes online? One case they took was actually a guy who was told to get an arms license to put such code online because of export control laws. It was his code! What business is it of the government? And some of you may remember a time when audio and video cassette tapes were under fire for recording radio songs and TV shows, respectively. Just some food for thought.

I'll start out the nerd news with an example of innovation. Take a look at this:



It's called the Pepper Pad and it's supposed to be a middle ground between the PDA and the laptop since the former is too small and the latter is too expensive. You could get a desktop computer for the price of it, but that's not to say that it isn't really nifty and probably useful (especially for college kids). There's also the development of a program to render the effects of ink on paper, which would be a good use of physics. Another neat thing is VoIP, which has spread to 23% of small and mid sized businesses over normal telephony. Of course if you have security on the brain you can take a closer look at network hacking with this detailed article. I guess price outweighs their security concerns. A new Canadian study claims that spam can be good if it promotes healthy habits, but I can't believe that it takes that kind of coercion to get people to eat right and exercise. It only took me a while because I was a fat kid, not a fat adult. Lastly, I thought I'd mention another reason why I'm proud to be a Longhorn: the Grid MP project.

There's no change in movie news since this morning, but there are a couple of things you can occupy yourself with instead. At the UT ACM forums someone posted about this river Flash game that I still can't figure out (if you can read Chinese, go straight to it). Maybe you can outsmart me and then comment to gloat about it. The other thing is a new Strongbad e-mail about modeling and his lovable, husky head.

Now for the Monday Music Mambo:

01. Two of BDI's mottos are "Share the love and spread the insanity" and "We don't suffer from insanity, we enjoy every moment of it." Based on those thoughts, what song or songs would you recommend to be BDI's anthem?
I'd have to say "Can't Stop" by the Red Hot Chili Peppers because it's so light and fun to listen to. It's all about love and insanity if you really listen to it.

02. The natives in the halls of the BDI asylum are restless. What song(s) would you pipe through the building to calm our crazy crew down?
"Trouble" by Coldplay. Most of Coldplay's stuff is pretty soothing, and that one is especially moving to listen to. I can't imagine how one band has so much talent.

03. What artist or band belongs in the "Crazy Hall of Fame" for being fun loving crazy but not totally demented and twisted. On the opposite side of the coin, what artist or band belongs in the "Crazy Hall of Shame" for being totally twisted, dangerously demented and just plain ewwww!
I know I've already used them, but I have to say the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Remember when they used to play naked with tube socks on their genitals? No doubt that their music was good despite how crazy they were. For the latter, I've have to say Courtney Love. She's so crazy and scary at the same time.

04. What music (song or lyrics) does the following word bring to mind? Crazy
This one will probably come up a lot, but I have to say "Crazy" by Aerosmith. It's one of those songs I clearly remember from childhood and I adore it.