Pauls musings and tidbits

Slashdot | First Photos of MIT $100 Laptop

An anonymous reader noted that MITs $100 laptop was unveiled at the Seven Countries Task Force Meeting. It runs a special version of the Fedora linux and it comes with native wireless lan support. You can see the photo album,

A little more background:

http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/003707.html

Some more recent info:

http://laptop.org/

The first working prototype of the $100 Laptop is unveiled at the Seven
Countries Task Force Meeting, 23 May 2006.

Pictures:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/pete/sets/72057594143224765/

Ticketmaster Auction Will Let Highest Bidder Set Concert Prices

But consumers — many of whom have complained for years about climbing ticket prices and Ticketmaster service charges — may be less eager for the next phase of Ticketmaster’s Internet evolution.

Late this year the company plans to begin auctioning the best seats to concerts through ticketmaster.com.

With no official price ceiling on such tickets, Ticketmaster will be able to compete with brokers and scalpers for the highest price a market will bear.

“The tickets are worth what they’re worth,” said John Pleasants, Ticketmaster’s president and chief executive. “If somebody wants to charge $50 for a ticket, but it’s actually worth $1,000 on eBay, the ticket’s worth $1,000. I think more and more, our clients — the promoters, the clients in the buildings and the bands themselves — are saying to themselves, `Maybe that money should be coming to me instead of Bob the Broker.’ ”

Editor: And TicketMaster wonders why so many people hate their guts. All those trumped up fees and now they will get scalper money directly. If it gets popular, something tells me that I’ll be seeing even less concerts in the future.

Wired News: Why We Published the AT&T Docs

A file detailing aspects of AT&T’s alleged participation in the National Security Agency’s warrantless domestic wiretap operation is sitting in a San Francisco courthouse. But the public cannot see it because, at AT&T’s insistence, it remains under seal in court records.

The judge in the case has so far denied requests from the Electronic Frontier Foundation, or EFF, and several news organizations to unseal the documents and make them public.

AT&T claims information in the file is proprietary and that it would suffer severe harm if it were released.

Based on what we’ve seen, Wired News disagrees. In addition, we believe the public’s right to know the full facts in this case outweighs AT&T’s claims to secrecy.

As a result, we are publishing the complete text of a set of documents from the EFF’s primary witness in the case, former AT&T employee and whistle-blower Mark Klein — information obtained by investigative reporter Ryan Singel through an anonymous source close to the litigation. The documents, available on Wired News as of Monday, consist of 30 pages, with an affidavit attributed to Klein, eight pages of AT&T documents marked “proprietary,” and several pages of news clippings and other public information related to government-surveillance issues.

The AT&T documents appear to be excerpted from material that was later filed in the lawsuit under seal. But we can’t be entirely sure, because the protective order prevents us from comparing the two sets of documents.

This week, we are joining in efforts to bring this evidence to light in its entirety.

USATODAY.com - NSA has massive database of Americans’ phone calls

The National Security Agency has been secretly collecting the phone call records of tens of millions of Americans, using data provided by AT&T, Verizon and BellSouth, people with direct knowledge of the arrangement told USA TODAY.

The NSA program reaches into homes and businesses across the nation by amassing information about the calls of ordinary Americans — most of whom aren’t suspected of any crime. This program does not involve the NSA listening to or recording conversations. But the spy agency is using the data to analyze calling patterns in an effort to detect terrorist activity, sources said in separate interviews.

“It’s the largest database ever assembled in the world,” said one person, who, like the others who agreed to talk about the NSA’s activities, declined to be identified by name or affiliation. The agency’s goal is “to create a database of every call ever made” within the nation’s borders, this person added. (ed. Emphasis added)

For the customers of these companies, it means that the government has detailed records of calls they made — across town or across the country — to family members, co-workers, business contacts and others.

The three telecommunications companies are working under contract with the NSA, which launched the program in 2001 shortly after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the sources said. The program is aimed at identifying and tracking suspected terrorists, they said.

ABC.com: Full Episode Streaming

ABC is showing full episodes of a select list of shows online. They have commercials but hey they are free. 

Crooks and Liars

Stephen Colbert spoke tonight at the dinner and
lampooned pretty much everything he could think of and Helen Thomas. I
used the second half of his performance because it included the
Generals, Scalia, the Faux press briefing and as E&P reported:“As he walked from the podium the president and
First Lady gave Colbert quick nods, unsmiling, and left. E&P’s Joe
Strupp, in the crowd, observed that quite a few felt the material was,
perhaps, uncomfortably biting.”

Video-WMP (low res) Video QT (it’s a big file)

Editor: You can also find the C-SPAN rebroadcast (at least for now) of the whole thing at:

rtsp://video.c-span.org/60days/wh042906_dinner.rm