Author Archives: ward
IEEE Spectrum on the DMCA
There is an excellent article on the DMCA in the June issue of IEEE Spectrum. Go read it – it’s an excellent overview of just how ridiculously bad a law the DMCA is.
Posted in Copyright, patents, and trademarks, DRM
Leave a comment
an inconvenient truth
Went to see Al Gore’s An Inconvenient truth last night. Highly recommended. I think the planet is in for major trouble – the bit about the ocean level rising is particularly disturbing… Check out the website, too, particularly the advice … Continue reading
Posted in Environment
Leave a comment
an example of DRM
A few days ago, I mentioned that most (current) HP and IBM laptops come with DRM in the BIOS. If you were wondering how DRM will affect you and why it’s bad, here’s a prime example of DRM and how … Continue reading
Posted in DRM, Free Software/Open Source
Leave a comment
time to fight back
I’ve had it. I’m sick of region encoding on DVDs and video games. I’m sick of crippled (‘copy-protected’) audio CDs. I’m sick of DRM’d music. I’m sick of the fact that I can’t legally use the DVDs I purchased on … Continue reading
Go Pearl Jam!
Pearl Jam have just released their new video under an attribution, non commercial, no derivatives Creative Commons license. You can download it from Google Video. It plays fine with Mplayer. According to this Google blog post, the free download is … Continue reading
Posted in Free Culture
Leave a comment
why broadcom sucks
I’ve upgraded a few key parts of my laptop. I have a somewhat ageing Dell Inspiron 5150, which has some nice features (1400×900 screen resolution, 3GHz P4 CPU) and some not-so-nice ones: it weighs a ton, it gets really hot … Continue reading
Posted in Completely useless, Free Software/Open Source
1 Comment
explorer destroyer
Yep, this blog is now equipped with “Level 1: Gentle Encouragement” of Explorer Destroyer. For all you Firefox users out there (a whopping 87% of visitors!), nothing will be different. IE users will see a nice banner at the top … Continue reading
Posted in Free Software/Open Source
Leave a comment
reflective screens
I’ve wondered for a while why so many laptops come with highly reflective screens. Today I found out why: I saw a guy on the subway actually using the screen of his laptop as a mirror to get his hair … Continue reading
Posted in Personal
Leave a comment
canadian musicians get it
The Canadian Music Creators Coalition gets it. They believe that suing customers is not smart. That DRM is bad because customers don’t like it – because it causes nothing but trouble. And that cultural policy should support artists, not the … Continue reading
LinuxBIOS: Tyan s2881 HOWTO
With a lot of help and several patches from the friendly folks over at the LinuxBIOS mailing list, I finally got LinuxBIOS working on the Tyan GX28 hardware. I’ve put a Tyan s2881 LinuxBIOS build HOWTO on the LinuxBIOS wiki, … Continue reading
Posted in coreboot
Leave a comment
![[FSF Associate Member 859]](/blog/wp-content/photos/fsf_member_859.png){kind=small}
![[Play OGG]](/blog/wp-content/photos/play_ogg_small.png)