February 07, 2005
Dynasty?
Superbowl - "Dynasty", that was the headline at the DrudgeReport at 10:30pm right after the Patriots won their third superbowl (24-21) in four years. It's a bit on the immodest side, I admit. I enjoyed the game. Michelle and I took the girls down the street to see it at a friends' house. Our girls played with other kids while the adults sat around the game. We left at half time when the score was tied 7-7 since the girls needed their sleep for school today. I watched the second half at home with dad. I enjoyed the half time show - a demonstration that you can have great big name entertainment without bordering on soft porn. I did find it a bit anticlimactic to finish the game by running the clock out. I was pleasantly surprised by all the pre-game show time dedicated to our overseas military troops. It was a bit out of the ordinary to see George Bush, Sr. and Bill Clinton at the event promoting the efforts towards tsunami relief.
Illnesses - It turned out we were wrong. Michael did not catch what Timothy and Daniel had. Unfortunately on Sunday, dad did. Luckily the temperature have been in the 50's the past several days so he's had ample opportunity to breath fresh, moist air - the exact opposite of the typical air you find in a modern house in the middle of winter. Stale, dry air seems to be the consequence of modern insulation standards combined with forced hot air heating systems. We've been opening the windows to try to capture it while we can. Dad and I seized on the warm temperatures to break up the ice that had formed on the back deck. He also did some sledding with me and the kids on Saturday. Since the weather also made for great packing snow, the kids made two snowmen in the front yard. With continuing warm weather predicted, I doubt they'll last long. Water has been streaming out the gutters all weekend.
Kazaa - If you've downloaded files from Kazaa, some of the most explosive revelations came out today. Kazaa logs more information about your transfers than you would think. The kind of information that could be turned over in legal procedings. In slashdot's coverage they mention:
"Reporting will make Kazaa look like spyware, as soon as it becomes evident we record downloads and playbacks, users will flee to competitive networks"
[and then]
"One can argue that we have knowledge of copyrighted material being downloaded in our network and have to install filters. If we are reporting [gold] files, then technically we could do the same for every file."
[and]
"RIAA [could] collect the IP addresses for everyone who has searched for or downloaded that file."
Despite the Kazaa developer's concerns over these issues, Kazaa went ahead with the logging."
Working in the IP business, I stayed away from peer to peer services like the plague. My company would be bankrupt in a year if our customers treated our content like a freely swapped MP3 music file. It's interesting to consider how free and anonymous most users think these services are. There are very legitimate uses of peer to peer software architectures. Unfortunately illegal media downloads tend to ruin that reality.