I still maintain my Palm Tungsten E and one of my favorite activities is reading books by backlight (so as not to wake up my wife) in bed at night. In the last few months I’ve been reading classics like Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels and George Orwell’s 1984.

Today a friend emailed me about his concerns about the “Fairness Doctrine” affecting American radio and I was about to recommend that he download 1984 and was about to provide the link that I had once used to get the Plucker version that would work in my Tungsten’s reader… but not only wasn’t 1984 there, NONE of Orwell’s titles were available. See screencap below:

George Orwell no longer available at Project Gutenberg

As of 28 January 2009, Australia’s Project Gutenberg still had George Orwell files: http://gutenberg.net.au/plusfifty-n-z.html#orwell

I have copied the files and the links will be here as long as I’m allowed.

• Down and Out in Paris and London (1933)
• Burmese Days (1934)
• A Clergyman’s Daughter (1935)
• Keep the Aspidistra Flying (1936)
• Shooting an Elephant (1936)
• The Road to Wigan Pier (1937)
• Homage to Catalonia (1938)
• Coming up for Air (1939)
• Animal Farm (1945)
• Politics and the English Language (1946)
• Nineteen eighty-four (1949)
• Fifty Orwell Essays

I hope that I will be able to update this post with news that Project Gutenberg’s new omission was a technical glitch and not throwing Orwell down the memory hole [linked to Wikipedia].

More Fairness Doctrine sources:

• The Fairness Doctrine at Work
• Liberals, too, should reject the Fairness Doctrine
• Fairness Doctrine Fouls Out
• Limbaugh Is Right on the Fairness Doctrine - Wall Street Journal
• Fairness Doctrine Watch

Disabled FoxyTunes add-on and now opening a new MSIE tab is quick.

To fix this, open MSIE, then go to TOOLS >> MANAGE ADD-ONS.

Select FOXY TUNES and disable it. Voila, 4+ seconds of your life returned to you each time you open a tab.

Here’s how I set my open tab internet options:

And my browsing settings:

I still prefer FireFox by a couple of orders of magnitude but YouTube is still flaky for me.

PC Magazine dropping print for online

PC Magazine, which has documented the explosive growth of the personal computer since 1982, announced on Wednesday that it was dropping its print edition next year and going online only.

PC Magazine publisher Ziff Davis Media, which recently exited Chapter 11 bankruptcy, said in a statement that the final edition of the iconic magazine would be the January 2009 issue.

Ziff Davis said PC Magazine, which has suffered a steep drop in advertising as scores of competing publications cropped up on the Internet, will go “all-digital” at PCMag.com.

“Moving our flagship property to an all-digital format is the final step in an evolutionary process that has been playing out over the last seven years,” Ziff Davis Media chief executive Jason Young said.

“Since 2000, online has been the focal point where technology buyers get their information and technology marketers are directing their dollars to drive demand and build their brands.

“We have been carefully preparing for this step and are fortunate to have a digital business that has the scale, profit, and opportunity to carry the brand powerfully into the future,” he said.

PaidContent.org, which covers digital media, said seven employees will be laid off as a result of the closure of the print edition of the magazine. The Ziff Davis Media statement made no mention of any job reductions.

PC Magazine is the latest US publication to drop its print edition and move to a Web-only format.

US News & World Report, long the number three newsmagazine in the United States behind Time and Newsweek, announced earlier this month that it was abandoning print for the Web and the 100-year-old newspaper the Christian Science Monitor announced plans recently to do the same.

Never sign anything that you don’t read. Never agree to an end user license when you don’t know what it says. Watching the google monsters gobble up the internet makes you long for the days when the tech world grew to Bill Gates dreams.

Bill got rich, often with buggy bloated code. But he was a real innovator and the technology he and his guys brought to the world changed the world.

The octopus at Google is based on a whole different philosophy. They are the kings of “Reintermediation”. Their only accomplishment is to get in between searchers and content, between writers and readers. Nothing new is created. Nothing new is contributed. Their only skill is capturing a part of the transaction and information costs for themselves. But this week they outdid themselves. They released a new slick browser. They suggest that it is faster and more efficient than Firefox or Explorer. (we have our doubts, which we’ll discuss on another post) but here’s the catch.

THEY OWN EVERY THING YOU EVER WRITE OR POST OR CREATE USING THEIR BROWSER AND THEY CAN SELL IT TO ANYONE THEY WANT TO AND THEY NEVER OWE YOU A DIME.

amazing. unbelievable.

oh please bring back the old king bill.

Here’s more from Gizmodo:

So, are you enjoying the snappy, clean performance of Google Chrome since downloading yesterday? If so, you might want to take a closer peek at the end user license agreement you didn’t pay any attention to when downloading and installing it. Because according to what you agreed to, Google owns everything you publish and create while using Chrome. Ah-whaaa? Update: It was a copy & paste mistake, apparently, and the offending language is being removed as we speak. Thanks, Googe!

Here are the juicy bits in question:

11. Content license from you

11.1 You retain copyright and any other rights you already hold in Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services. By submitting, posting or displaying the content you give Google a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive license to reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute any Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services. This license is for the sole purpose of enabling Google to display, distribute and promote the Services and may be revoked for certain Services as defined in the Additional Terms of those Services.

11.2 You agree that this license includes a right for Google to make such Content available to other companies, organizations or individuals with whom Google has relationships for the provision of syndicated services, and to use such Content in connection with the provision of those services.

11.3 You understand that Google, in performing the required technical steps to provide the Services to our users, may (a) transmit or distribute your Content over various public networks and in various media; and (b) make such changes to your Content as are necessary to conform and adapt that Content to the technical requirements of connecting networks, devices, services or media. You agree that this license shall permit Google to take these actions.

11.4 You confirm and warrant to Google that you have all the rights, power and authority necessary to grant the above license.

Well, I guess I shouldn’t have used Chrome to put some posts up yesterday, because I certainly do not have the rights, power or authority to hand over my work from Gawker to the Googe. Oops! You’ll have to pry the rights to my posts from Nick Denton’s cold, dead hands, Google.

In any case, it’s a pretty unnecessary and unreasonable thing to put in the EULA for a browser, of all pieces of software, which makes it pretty questionable. Why in the hell would Google want ownership of every single blog post or email written in its browser? It’s so unreasonable that it borders on the insane. I can’t really imagine Google actually invoking this and suddenly publishing heavily edited entries from your LiveJournal for profit, but I think a lot of people would feel much better about hopping on board with Chrome if this little piece of sketchy legalese was axed.

What say you, Google overlords?

Here’s a great story from Appliance.Net talking about one of the coolest uses of precious metals around. Getting the smell out of you gym clothes.

UnlockBlackberryBold.com is already offering unlock codes for your Blackberry Bold. They’ve gone a step further than their competitors with an easy-to-follow video.

If your BlackBerry is “locked” to a specific network they will help you “unlock” it.

All you need to do is purchase the service and send your 15 digit IMEI number and they will send you the code & instructions to instantly unlock your phone.

Cool. We like.

Spammers are sociopaths. I’ve often said so. Friends and colleagues sometimes consider my views a little over the top, but here’s my shibboleth… would you want your daughter to marry a spammer?

I don’t know about you, but I think spammers are below used car salesmen on the food chain. I think the people who hire spammers are below used car salesmen, too. I think that someone should publish lists of the companies that hire spammers and include the names and addresses of their employees, not unlike Megan’s Law websites requiring registered sex offenders.

Companies could brag, “Spammers and people who have ever hired spammers will never work for us.”

Come to think about it, I think it insults the food chain to include spammers among them.

eWeek reports:

Convicted penny stock e-mail hustler Eddie Davidson kills his wife and young daughter before taking his own life just days after escaping from a federal minimum security prison.

Convicted spam king Eddie Davidson has committed suicide after killing his wife and 3-year-old daughter, according to media reports. Just five days ago, Davidson, the infamous online hustler of penny stocks, escaped from federal prison in Florence, Colo.

According to a story by the Denver Post, Davidson, 35, was found dead in the driveway of a home near Bennett, Colo., an apparent gunshot suicide victim. In a 2006 silver Toyota Sequoia located in the driveway, authorities found the bodies of Davison’s wife and toddler, also gunshot victims. An unidentified teenager survived the killing spree, as did an infant in the backseat of the SUV.

Davidson escaped from the minimum security prison at Florence on July 20. Davidson was just two months into a 21-month federal sentence for his role in sending millions of e-mails promoting questionable penny stocks. The Rocky Mountain News reported that Davidson forced his wife to help him escape from the minimum security facility.

The newspaper also reported that the teenager who was wounded was Davidson’s daughter, who escaped the murder scene and was lucid enough to tell authorities what had happened.

“What a nightmare, and such a coward. Davidson imposed the death penalty on family members for his own crime,” U.S. Attorney Troy Eid told the newspaper.

Davidson was sentenced on April 28. In addition to his nearly two-year prison sentence, Davidson was ordered to pay $714,139 in restitution to the IRS. As part of the restitution, Davidson had agreed to forfeit property he purchased, including gold coins, with the ill-gotten proceeds of his offense.

According to government documents, Davidson conducted his spamming operation from July 2002 through April 2007. The primary nature of Davidson’s business consisted of providing promotional services for companies by sending large volumes of unsolicited commercial e-mail.

Davidson’s original spamming activities were provided on behalf of companies to promote watches, perfume and other items. Beginning in the middle of 2005, Davidson sent spam on behalf of an unidentified Texas company to promote the sale of the company’s stock. The company generated its income through selling stock on behalf of small companies on the public market.

Davidson, aided by several subcontractors, sent hundreds of thousands of unsolicited e-mail messages to potential purchasers throughout the United States and the world touting the excellent investment opportunities the stock offered.

The e-mail messages contained false header information, which concealed the actual sender from the recipient of the e-mail. Davidson operated his spamming activities from his personal residence in Bennett, where he had a large network of computers and servers that facilitated his business.

Internet security researchers on Thursday warned that hackers discovered a “critical” flaw that allows “cache poisoning” attacks that tinker with data stored in computer memory caches that relay Internet traffic to destinations.

Seeking to keep details of the vulnerability hidden at least a month to give people time to protect computers from attacks, computer industry engineers that labored in secret to solve the problem, releasing a software “patch” two weeks ago.

“We are in a lot of trouble,” said IOActive security specialist Dan Kaminsky, who stumbled upon the Domain Name System (DNS) vulnerability about six months ago and reached out to industry giants to collaborate on a solution.

“This attack is very good. This attack is being weaponized out in the field. Everyone needs to patch, please. This is a big deal.”

DNS is used by every computer that links to the Internet and works similar to a telephone system routing calls to proper numbers, in this case the online numerical addresses of websites.

And sometimes the news is good…

NEW YORK (Reuters) - A Brooklyn man was sentenced to 30 months in prison on Tuesday for sending spam e-mails to more than 1.2 million subscribers of America Online in a scheme that foiled the Internet company’s spam-filtering system.

Adam Vitale, 27, was sentenced in federal court in Manhattan after pleading guilty more than a year ago to breaking anti-spam laws. He was also ordered to pay $180,000 to AOL in restitution.

Vitale was caught making a deal with a government informant to send junk e-mails — known as spam — that advertised a computer security program in return for 50 percent of the product’s profits, prosecutors said.

“Spamming is serious criminal conduct; this is not a teenager engaging in child’s play,” U.S. District Judge Denny Chin told Vitale as he sentenced him. Vitale earlier apologized and said he had learned a lesson.

Prosecutors said Vitale had 22 prior convictions and had also helped run an online prostitution ring on the Web site www.craigslist.com, but he has not been criminally charged.

In the spam e-mail case, Vitale and another man, Todd Moeller, defeated AOL’s filter system by using several different computer servers to relay the e-mails and changed the e-mail header information to ensure the spam e-mails could not be traced back to them.

Moeller, of New Jersey, was sentenced last November to 27 months for his role in the scheme.

Court papers said that in less than a week in August 2005, Vitale and Moeller sent e-mails on behalf of the informant to more than 1,277,000 addresses of subscribers at AOL, the online division of Time Warner Inc.

Cory over at BoingBoing talks about another spammer bent on ruining Craigslist by bypassing the phone verification system. Cory refers to an article on Blackhatworld.

My feeling is that the only way to turn the tide is to aggressively turn the tables on spammers and make it very physically unpleasant for them.

$500 for the hassle is hardly compensation. It takes days just to get old software installed and a laptop configured, let alone trying to restore backups.

BestBuy should be on the hook for damages and penalties related to identity theft linked to the lost laptop. Hard to add that up to $54M, though.

Raelyn Campbell seems to be VERY highly connected and if her contacts — maybe many with unlisted phone numbers — have been compromised, there is more to this story than is covered in the article.

Lost laptop? Sue for millions!

Is your laptop worth $54 million? Raelyn Campbell of Washington, D.C., is suing Richfield-based Best Buy for that amount after it lost her laptop computer while it was in for repairs.

Campbell, who could not be reached Tuesday, filed a negligence lawsuit suit against the company in Washington Superior Court on Nov. 16, seeking fair compensation for replacement of the $1,100 computer and extended warranty, plus expenses related to identity theft protection.

Best Buy spokeswoman Nissa French said in an e-mail that Campbell “was offered and collected $1,110.35″ as well as “a $500 gift card for her inconvenience.”

According to Campbell’s blog at bestbuybadbuyboycott.blogspot.com, Geek Squad employees spent three months telling her different stories about where her laptop might be before finally acknowledging that it had been lost.