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Blackmail DRM - Stolen Thoughts

2012 Feb 13, 4:00

Most existing DRM attempts to only allow the user to access the DRM'ed content with particular applications or with particular credentials so that if the file is shared it won't be useful to others. A better solution is to encode any of the user's horrible secrets into unique versions of the DRM'ed content so that the user won't want to share it. Entangle the users and the content provider's secrets together in one document and accordingly their interests. I call this Blackmail DRM. For an implementation it is important to point out that the user's horrible secret doesn't need to be verified as accurate, but merely verified as believable.

Apparently I need to get these blog posts written faster because only recently I read about Social DRM which is a light weight version of my idea but with a misleading name. Instead of horrible secrets, they say they'll use personal information like the user's name in the DRM'ed content. More of my thoughts stolen and before I even had a chance to think of it first!

PermalinkCommentsdrm blackmail blackmail-drm technical humor social-drm

CMAP #9: Ebooks

2010 May 10, 8:43Charles Stross on the intersection of ebooks and the publishing industry. Includes the answer to the misinformed question "why are you charging so much for access to the file your authors emailed you?" Also includes this quote on Cory Doctorow "... Cory is a Special Snowflake with EFF superpowers and New York Times Bestseller mojo which make him immune to the normal laws of man and nature."PermalinkCommentscharles-stross cory-doctorow ebook drm amazon publishing kindle apple book

We Love xkcd, Real Live Version of Animated Version of xkcd Loves the Discovery Channel

2010 Feb 21, 2:54Internet folk sing about their love of various nerdy things ala xkcd comic of similar namePermalinkCommentscory-doctorow wil-wheaton video xkcd humor music song internet meme

Android eBook Reader And Makers

2009 Dec 13, 1:27

I was reading Makers, Cory Doctorow's latest novel, as it was serialized on Tor's website but with no ability to save my place within a page I set out to find a book reading app for my G1 Android phone. I stopped looking once I found Aldiko. Its got bookmarks within chapters, configurable fonts, you can look-up words in a dictionary, and has an easy method to download public domain and creative common books. I was able to take advantage of Aldiko's in-app book download system to get Makers onto my phone so I didn't have to bother with any conversion programs etc, and I didn't have to worry about spacing or layout, the book had the correct cover art, and chapter delimiters. I'm very happy with this app and finished reading Makers on it.

Makers is set in the near future and features teams of inventors, networked 3d printers, IP contention, body modifications, and Disney -- just the sort of thing you'd expect from a Cory Doctorow novel. The tale seems to be an allegory for the Internet including displacing existing businesses and the conflict between the existing big entertainment IP owners and the plethora of fans and minor content producers. The story is engaging and the characters filled out and believable. I recommend Makers and as always its Creative Commons so go take a look right now.

PermalinkCommentstor aldiko cory doctorow g1 makers ebook android book

YouTube - AtYourLibraryOrg's Channel - Cory Doctorow Interview

2009 Aug 24, 9:56AtYourLibraryOrg interviews Cory Doctorow on library and librarian related Cory Doctorow topics, then breaks up his answers into short videos. Easy to watch and interesting.
PermalinkCommentsvideo cory-doctorow library information drm literature business economics

Tor.com / Science fiction and fantasy / Blog posts / Cory Doctorow’s <em>Makers</em> Index

2009 Jul 15, 7:00"Tor.com is proud to be serializing Makers, Cory Doctorow’s upcoming novel, which goes on sale from Tor Books in November."PermalinkCommentscory-doctorow scifi tor makers book literature cc free

Cory Doctorow's Futuristic Tales of the Here and Now reaches 30,000 downloads | Robot Comics

2009 Jun 25, 11:45"Cory Doctorow's Futuristic Tales of the Here and Now is the Creative Commons comics adaptation of six short stories by Boing Boing editor and science-fiction writer Cory Doctorow... The result are eight Creative Commons mobile comics specifically designed for iPhone, iPod touch and Android devices."PermalinkCommentscory-doctorow comic android iphone mobile download book free

Cory Doctorow's craphound.com - Blog Archive - Little Brother option sold to Don Murphy (Natural Born Killers, From Hell, etc)

2009 Jun 19, 3:34"Don Murphy, producer of such films as Natural Born Killers and From Hell, has bought a film option on Little Brother." You should read Little Brother. Its available via Creative Commons so you can, right now, go read the first chapterPermalinkCommentslittle-brother cory-doctorow don-murphy movie film literature book

This Is Me - Archive: A Greater Force (March 6, 2009)

2009 Mar 6, 5:02Reminds me of the guy from the Jose Chung episode of the X-Files that would repeatedly yell 'Roswell!' whenever he felt he was the subject of government oppression. The more time passes I only end up remembering the awesome episodes of the X-Files.PermalinkCommentscomic cory-doctorow sheep humor censorship

Word Wrapping IE's Plain Text

2008 Oct 28, 11:23

If you view a plain text document in Internet Explorer 8, for instance the plain text version of Cory Doctorow's book Little Brother and press F12 to bring up the developer toolbar, you can see that IE simply takes the plain text, sticks it inside a

 tag, and renders it.  This means that word wrapping isn't supplied and the only line breaks that appear are those in the document.  However, since the text document is converted to HTML it means I can implement word wrap myself using a bookmarklet:
javascript:function ww() { var preTag = document.getElementsByTagName('pre')[0]; preTag.style.fontFamily="arial"; preTag.style.wordWrap='break-word'; }; ww();
After adding a favorite and setting the favorite's URL to the previous, I can view plain text documents, and select my Word Wrap favorite to apply word wrap and non-fixed width font.
PermalinkCommentsbrowser technical ie wordwrap

Xbox Achievements for Everyday Life

2008 Sep 16, 7:54

I just upgraded to the Zune 3.0 software which includes games and purchasing music on the Zune via WiFi and once again I'm thrilled that the new firmware is available for old Zunes like mine. Rooting around looking at the new features I noticed Zune Badges for the first time. They're like Xbox Achievements, for example I have a Pixies Silver Artist Power Listener award for listening to the Pixies over 1000 times. I know its ridiculous but I like it, and now I want achievements for everything.

Achievements everywhere would require more developments in self-tracking. Self-trackers, folks who keep statistics on exactly when and what they eat, when and how much they exercise, anything one may track about one's self, were the topic of a Kevin Kelly Quantified Self blog post (also check out Cory Doctorow's SF short story The Things that Make Me Weak and Strange Get Engineered Away featuring a colony of self-trackers). For someone like me with a medium length attention span the data collection needs to be completely automatic or I will lose interest and stop collecting within a week. For instance, Nike iPod shoes that keep track of how many steps the wearer takes. I'll also need software to analyze, display, and share this data on a website like Mycrocosm. I don't want to have to spend extreme amounts of time to create something as wonderful as the Feltron Report (check out his statistic on how many daily measurements he takes for the report). Once we have the data we can give out achievements for everything!

Achievements for Everyday Life
Carnivore
Eat at least ten different kinds of animals.
Make Friends
Meet at least 10% of the residents in your home town.
Globetrotter
Visit a city in every country.
You're Old
Survive at least 80 years of life.

Of course none of the above is practical yet, but how about Delicious achievements based on the public Delicious feeds? That should be doable...

PermalinkCommentsself-tracking data achievements

petacentres - a set on Flickr

2008 Sep 9, 8:31Cory Doctorow's Flickr set of photos from various data centers (like CERN's LHC data center).PermalinkCommentsphotos flickr data storage history internet cory-doctorow cern internet-archive lhc

Big data: Welcome to the petacentre : Nature News

2008 Sep 9, 8:29Article on the data centers that backup the Internet Archive and handle CERN's LHC's data. "CERN embodies borderlessness. The Swiss-French border is a drainage ditch running to one side of the cafeteria; it was shifted a few metres to allow that excellent establishment to trade the finicky French health codes for the more laissez-fair Swiss jurisdiction. And in the data sphere it is utterly global."PermalinkCommentslhc history internet cory-doctorow nature physics network hardware library science cern internet-archive

Cory Doctorow Pwned - USC Course Podcast

2008 Apr 8, 4:36Podcast of Cory Doctorow's course at USC.PermalinkCommentscory-doctorow security privacy copyright mp3 podcast

Cory Doctorow's craphound.com - Podcast

2008 Mar 28, 1:37Cory Doctorow regularly reads from his books and irregularly includes random other stuff. Currently reading the novella he co-wrote with Ben Rosenbaum, 'True Names'.PermalinkCommentscory-doctorow creativecommons boingboing book fiction podcast scifi

Cory Doctorow's craphound.com - Blog Archive - Hello Cory - the audio

2008 Mar 15, 11:47A recording of a reading of fan fiction involving a caped and goggled Cory Doctorow.PermalinkCommentscory-doctorow humor audio hello-cory fiction

NLC tries Creative Commons (Nebraska Library Commission Blog)

2008 Feb 21, 10:01Nebraska Library Commission beings including electronic and printed versions of Creative Commons books in their library.PermalinkCommentslibrary creative-commons copyright catalog cory-doctorow via:boingboing

Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom

2008 Jan 5, 11:34Cory Doctorow's book Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom available free via Creative Commons. More traiditional singularity style scifi. I liked this much better than Someone Comes to Town.PermalinkCommentscory-doctorow scifi disney literature project-gutenberg book books singularity

Browse By Author: D - Project Gutenberg

2008 Jan 5, 10:41Project Gutenberg's listing for Cory Doctorow containing all of his CC books in readable HTML formats.PermalinkCommentscory-doctorow gutenberg scifi writing free literature book books

A Place So Foreign and Eight More - HTML

2008 Jan 2, 5:49Cory Doctorow's short stories from 'A Place So Foreign and Eight More' that are licensed under Creative Commons in HTML.PermalinkCommentscory-doctorow books literature html download free
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