PlasticBoy

Bruce Schneier has an interesting article about some odd maneuvering going on around the Trusted Computing Group’s best practices document and Windows Vista.

2005 MTV Video Music Awards Winners: The videos for these songs earned moonmen awards at MTV’s Miami ceremony, hosted by “Diddy” on August 28, 2005. 1. Boulevard Of Broken Dreams (Single/Album Version) - Green Day 2. Jesus Walks - Kanye West 3. Since U Been Gone - Kelly Clarkson 4. Karma - Alicia Keys 5. Lose Control (Featuring Ciara & Fat Man Scoop) - Missy Elliott 6. Mr. Brightside - The Killers 7. Sugar, We’re Going Down - Fall Out Boy 8. American Idiot - Green Day 9. Feel Good Inc. - Gorillaz 10. Hollaback Girl - Gwen Stefani

Please watch this breathtaking movie of one full rotation of Earth created from photos taken by NASA’s MESSENGER spacecraft as it left after a fly by. [via jwz]

The album of last week was New Pornographer’s Twin Cinema.

Ones to Watch (August 2005): In this recurring feature, we present you with tracks by some of our favorite rising acts. 1. Gjort Bort Sig - Dungen 2. No Satisfaction - Black Mountain 3. Punches (Album Version) - World Leader Pretend 4. It’s For You - Out Hud 5. Tap Water - Dengue Fever 6. Ta Det Lugnt - Dungen 7. Modern Music - Black Mountain 8. The Masses (Album Version) - World Leader Pretend 9. How Long - Out Hud 10. Sleepwalking Through the Mekong - Dengue Fever

Tim Bray puts his finger on why DRM will fail, and, hey, he works for Sun:

What all the DRM dreamers don’t want to admit is that 95% or more of the population hasn’t yet encountered DRM, and when they do, they aren’t going to like it. They’re going to scream and scream and scream and get mad as hell and not take it any more.

As much as I complain about DRM here this is why I know (or at least hope) it will fail. My advice is to keep screaming.

Kottke outlines one scenario for the WebOS. I was skeptical his locally-running web server idea since it sounds like the worst of both worlds but after reading the whole piece I think it has a lot of potential.

Sun has launched an effort to create an open DRM standard and open sourced one of it’s DRM projects. I must be missing something but I don’t understand how an open source DRM system would protect content. If it’s open source, I can just modify the decoder to write out the unencrypted version of the file. If that’s the case, I’m all for open source DRM since it would functionally mean no DRM at all.

Update: Cory Doctorow has the same question as me about open source DRM and he’s read all the Sun docs and talked to the project leaders.

The Cash Money Millionaires: These guys are the biggest rap force out of New Orleans since Master P’s No Limit crew. 1. The DJ - Mannie Fresh 2. HA - Juvenile 3. What Happened To That Boy (featuring The Clipse) - Baby 4. Bring It Back - Lil Wayne 5. Back That Azz Up - Juvenile 6. Real Big (Explicit) - Mannie Fresh 7. Fly In Any Weather (featuring Jazze Pha) - Baby 8. We Can Smoke - Big Tymers 9. Bloodline - Lil’ Wayne 10. Slow Motion - Juvenile (featuring Soulja Slim) 11. How We Ride - Mannie Fresh 12. Neck Of The Woods - Bird Man 13. Gangsta And Pimps - (featuring Baby) - Lil’ Wayne 14. A Beautiful Life (Explicit) - Big Tymers 15. Cash Money Niggaz - Bird Man 16. Ghetto Children - Juvenile 17. Go DJ - Lil Wayne 18. Gimme Some - Big Tymers

Toby Keith Selects: 1. Bloody Mary Morning - Willie Nelson 2. Uneasy Rider - The Charlie Daniels Band 3. Here You Come Again - Dolly Parton 4. Gentle On My Mind - Glen Campbell 5. Rainy Day Woman - Waylon Jennings 6. King Of The Road - Roger Miller (Country) 7. Longhaired Redneck - David Allan Coe 8. I Love This Bar - Toby Keith 9. Whiskey Girl - Toby Keith 10. As Good As I Once Was - Toby Keith

Wow: a UK ISP called Playlouder has gotten a license from SonyBMG that allows its customers to freely download and share any music from the SonyBMG catalog via P2P networks. This is huge news and we should all beg our ISPs to do the same. Boing Boing has more information and analysis.

Here’s how to request the information that the Transportation Security Administration has collected about you using a Privacy Act request.

It’s bizarre finding this on Science Blog:

An article published in the latest issue of Presidential Studies Quarterly discusses how the Bush administration used a little-known policy tool of attaching presidential signing statements to bills to, in essence, veto them. The statements serve to increase presidential authority while rejecting that of Congress. Presidential signing statements alter specific provisions of legislation without sending bills back for possible veto overrides. This is as effective and substantive as a line-item veto and can nullify a range of statutory provisions even as a president signs the legislation that contained them into law.

I had no idea this was possible.

Ah, a story that combines my two favorite things: digital music and Free Software, how could I resist?

Georges’ Sieve is a very concise piece of advice on technical writing. [via OSAF Blog]