News

My Broadcast Flag talk as streaming video

On Wednesday, I gave a talk at the London campus of Florida State University on the American Broadcast Flag and the coming European Broadcast Flag. A friend of Alfie's brought down a couple of camcorders and filmed the whole thing and now it's up as a pair of streaming Quicktimes.

(Thanks, Alfie!)

Part 1, Part 2

Speaking in London next Wednesday

I'm giving a talk at London's Ecademy next Wednesday night. I'll be talking about America's Broadcast Flag, an unsavory piece of work that would have given Hollywood's would-be device czars a veto over the design of PCs and digital TVs. We had a crushing victory over the forces of darkness, but the evil Flag isn't dead yet -- and what's worse, it's going to come to Europe soon, in the guise of the DVB CPCM system for restricting television at home.

When: Wednesday, 1 June - 6:00pm to 10:00pm
Where: Marriott Hotel Marble Arch, 134 George Street, London,
Agenda:
6.00 - 7.30 Ecademist Networking (in the bar)
7.30 - 7.45 Ecademy Announcements
7.45 - 8.30 Talks
8.30 - 10.00 Ecademist Networking (in the bar)

A tour through my t-shirt drawer

The Preshrunk blog is a wonderful site where Jason Cosper posts entertaining reviews of t-shirts that you can buy on the Internet, as well as a variety of t-shirt related news and projects (e.g. turning a treasured old tee into a pair of underpants).

One of Jason's gimmicks is interviews with his friends and various bloggers about what kinds of t-shirts they own. He convinced me to give him an exhaustive tour through my t-shirt drawer and has just
posted the outcome, with URLs and photos.

Top Drawer [not black, not white]

* A chocolate-brown Blogger/Google shirt from SXSW two years ago
[URL]
* Navy blue shirt from monochrom.at: OH MY GOD THEY USE A HISTORY THAT REPEATS ITSELF
[URL]
* Navy blue shirt from downhillbattle.org: PEER-TO-PEER KILLS PAY-FOR-PLAY
[URL | Photo]
* Kermit green shirt from FxxxPxxx: [THIS IS GOOD]
* Khaki Fantastic Four tee from Spitalfields Market
* Olive green Wonder Woman tee from Spitalfields Market
* Red tee from engrish.com: I HATE MYSELF AND I WANT TO DIE, with a rainbow. I usually can't bring myself to wear this.
[URL | Photo]
* Red Walt Disney World tee A PIRATE'S LIFE FOR ME with Goofy's hat being blown off by a pirate's cannonball. I can't BELIEVE they offer these for sale!
[Photo]
* Light brown Blogger/Google shirt also from SXSW two years ago
[URL]
* Chocolate brown shirt from spamshirt.com, with orange writing: FWD: VEDOXHERABAL VIAGRASUPP
[URL]
* Orange tee from monochrom.at, featuring a man in a tophat saying: UFO-Beobachtungen muB man skeptisch gegenüberstehen Nur dann er-kennt... ...man bösre Fälschungen"
[URL | Photo]
* Khaki B * A * S * H tee
[URL]
* Grey downhillbattle.org tee: HOME TAPING HIS KILLING THE MUSIC INDUSTRY AND IT'S FUN
[URL | Photo]

Lecture in London next Tuesday

I'm giving a lecture next Tuesday at Florida State University's London program. I'll be talking about the Broadcast Flag and the coming European Broadcast Flag and what we can do to make sure that the former stays dead and the latter never comes to life. Seating is limited, so you need to email to get your spot:

When: Tuesday, May 24, 2005, 3PM

Where: Lecture Theatre, Florida State University, London Center, 99 Great Russell St., Bloomsbury, London, UK

RSVP: keith@art.fsu.edu

You Deserve Your RiVo

Popular Science, May 2005

PopSci column on radio’s Broadcast Flag

My column in the May issue of Popular Science magazine is online: this month, I talk about how the RIAA is trying to create a Broadcast Flag for digital radio:

Today you can buy similar devices for radio—sometimes called RiVos—including Griffin's Radio Shark and Neuros's MP3 Computer, that connect to your computer and record programs to your hard drive. The next generation of these gadgets will go those one better, recording all of the radio stations in a frequency band simultaneously, then picking out individual songs and arranging them into playlists. Goodbye channels, chatter, idiot DJs and throwaway music. Who needs live radio when you've got a RiVo?

The problem is that tomorrow RiVo may be illegal. A new generation of radio called Digital Audio Broadcast (DAB, a.k.a. digital radio) is coming, and the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) is dedicated to making sure no RiVo-like device for digital radio ever reaches the marketplace. DAB is just beginning to show up in the U.S., but it will eventually replace analog FM and AM broadcasts. What worries the RIAA is that a DAB signal sounds better than analog, and it can carry information such as names of tracks and artists and be easily recorded to a hard drive. RiVo functionality could be in every DAB tuner.

My Wired News op-ed about the BBC

Wired News has just published an op-ed I wrote about the BBC's amazing new open services and products, through which it embraces audience participation:

America's entertainment industry is committing slow, spectacular suicide, while one of Europe's biggest broadcasters -- the BBC -- is rushing headlong to the future, embracing innovation rather than fighting it.

Unlike Hollywood, the BBC is eager and willing to work with a burgeoning group of content providers whose interests are aligned with its own: its audience.

The Beeb Shall Inherit the Earth

Wired News, May 18, 2005

Eastern Standard Tribe is Locus Award finalist

Hee-YAW! My second novel Eastern Standard Tribe, is a finalist for this year's Locus Award for Best Science Fiction Novel. Last year, my first novel, Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom, won the Locus Award for Best First Novel.

Locus Magazine is the leading trade mag for science fiction, and the Locus Poll -- from which the Locus Award nominees and winners are drawn -- is the field's popular award with the widest participation (wider even than the Hugos).

The Locus Award winners will be announced this July 4th weekend, at Calgary's Westercon. Here's the whole list of this year's nominees (shockingly good company to be in, by the way):

Best Science Fiction Novel

The Algebraist, Iain M. Banks (Orbit)
Eastern Standard Tribe, Cory Doctorow (Tor)
Forty Signs of Rain, Kim Stanley Robinson (HarperCollins UK; Bantam)
The Baroque Cycle: The Confusion; The System of the World, Neal Stephenson (Morrow)
Iron Sunrise, Charles Stross (Ace)

Podcast on Broadcast Flag victory

I recorded a little personal reminisce about the Braodcast Flag for MAKE's Podcast: what is the Flag, how did we get it, what did it mean, and why did it die, and will it stay dead?

MP3 Link

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