Technics: Web 2.0's downside opens way for spyware and other vulnerabilities via the Internet

Jason King is CEO of LavaSoft, a pioneer company that produces adware and software, labouring to chase down spyware, producing anti-virus services. Sheeraj Shah of Net-Square wrote a famous article "10 Web 2.0 Attack Vectors," putting forth something of an overall vector analysis on Help Net Security website, Oct9,2k6. You can visit them both at this Help Net Security website page.

First, let's have entrepreneur King speak to us for 2:50 minutes on video from YouTube:

LavaSoft and the antispyware industry

Sheeraj Shah explains how Web 2.0 advances have also opened vulnerabilities that hadn't existed before its arrival, not least of all the new vulnerability to spyware:

Web 2.0 is the novel term coined for new generation Web applications. start.com, Google maps, Writely and MySpace.com are a few examples. The shifting technological landscape is the driving force behind these Web 2.0 applications. On the one hand are Web services that are empowering server-side core technology components and on the other hand are AJAX and Rich Internet Application (RIA) clients that are enhancing client-end interfaces in the browser itself.

XML is making a significant impact at both presentation and transport (HTTP/HTTPS) layers. To some extent XML is replacing HTML at the presentation layer while SOAP is becoming the XML-based transport mechanism of choice.

Now, let's garner the points web-thinker Shah presents as headers, the result being a bit abstract for those, like me, who are still novices in these territories:

Web 2.0 security concerns are reshaping the whole industry of security-measures for websites, internet, and home computers.

Technotes, by Technowlb

Shah introduces his vector-theory of new web2.0 vulnerablities:

On the “server-side”, XML based Web services are replacing some of the key functionalities and providing distributed application access through Web services interfaces. These remote capabilities to invoke methods over GET, POST or SOAP from the Web browser itself provide new openings to applications. On other side, RIA frameworks running on XML, XUL, Flash, Applets and JavaScripts are adding new possible sets of vectors. RIA, AJAX and Web services are adding new dimensions to Web application security.

On the “server-side”, XML based Web services are replacing some of the key functionalities and providing distributed application access through Web services interfaces. These remote capabilities to invoke methods over GET, POST or SOAP from the Web browser itself provide new openings to applications.

On other side, RIA frameworks running on XML, XUL, Flash, Applets and JavaScripts are adding new possible sets of vectors. RIA, AJAX and Web services are adding new dimensions to Web application security.

So, here's his analytic list of 10 attack vectors, Shah providing us with a thick explanatory paragraph for each:

1. Cross-scripting in AJAX.
2. XML poisoning.
3. Malicious AJAX code execution.
4. RSS/Atom injection.
5. WSDL scanning and enumeration.
6. Client-side validation in AJAX routines.
7. Web-services routing issues.
8. Parameter manipulation with SOAP.
9. XPATH injection in SOAP message.
10. Rich Internet Applications (RIA) thick client binary manipulation.

Shah concludes:

AJAX, RIA and Web services are three important technological vectors for the WEB 2.0 application space. These technologies are promising and bring new equations to the table, empowering overall effectiveness and efficiency of Web applications. With these new technologies come new security issues, and ignoring them can lead to big disasters for the corporate world. [And what about us "end-user" consumers with our home computers?] In this article, the discussion was restricted to only ten attacks but there are several other attack vectors as well. Increased WEB 2.0 security awareness, secure coding practices and secure deployments offer the best defense against these new attack vectors.

Music: Digital downloads may drop DRM restrictions

The Distorted-Loop website carries a breathless up-to-the-minute
post by Jonny on what may be a price revolution for digitally-downloaded music, especially from iTunes Music Store. Not just that, but the entire Digital Rights Management (what newspeak the DRM expression is!) promises to unscrew and in the process unscrew us, truly a gain for weary consumers.

H+-level negotiations have been taking place in the present financial climate, where a Depression hangs over everything like a thick smog. Will the music industry go down, taking iTunes and confrères with it ...? Steve Jobs is reported to have lost billions in his stock portfolio already, and we may expect that many of the negotiators for the other companies involved have likewise undoubtedly "dropped a bundle."

Steve Jobs--recently lost 2.3 billions
Uploaded by Anaximaximumphotographics

Steve Jobs of Apple, tho he lost a fortune, is negotiating with the DRM kingpins of the digital music industry to ease the financial load on music lovers.
The photo appeared as #15 in the set "The Biggest Losers: 20 global moguls who have gotten creamed in the recent economic collapse"--the set accompanies the article of that title by Hilary Lewis, Nov26,2k8, Business Sheet (none of the photographers are mentioned).

Maybe the downturn has forced new thinking to jell in the fetid money-brains of the digital music industry. Suddenly, with Mr Jobs' leverage, perhaps the music tycoons and their customers may together benefit from this possible move.

The long-standing duel between Apple and three major labels, Universal, Warners and Sony BMG may be coming to an end, with tracks from these majors now showing up within the iTunes Plus music upgrade service.

There’s been strong rumours claiming negotiations between Apple and the labels to offer music at high quality free of restrictive DRM have intensified in recent weeks. Sony BMG is already thought to be uploading tracks to make available through iTunes Plus.

Overnight sundry spies have spotted tracks from the three hold-out majors popping up in the ‘Upgrade My Library’ section of iTunes, where users can upgrade their purchases from DRM’d to DRM-free tracks.

For example, Rakim’s rather special ‘The 18th Letter/The Book of Life’ is currently available to upgrade to iTunes Plus. The major label behind this release is, of course, Universal.

Music Biz, by AudioViz

iTunes Plus was introduced in April 2007 with DRM-free tracks from EMI. The catalogue later grew to include music from many independent labels. While songs cost slightly more, they ship in higher-quality 256k bitrates. You can upgrade existing purchases for 20-pence.

Apple’s move to offer its full catalogue in DRM-free format opens the doors for a level playing field in digital music, with services including Amazon MP3 in the US and 7digital in the UK already offering tracks free of DRM in MP3 format for sale at the same price as an ordinary iTunes track.

Open to question at time of writing is whether Apple will compete on price by lowering iTunes Plus track prices to match existing standard downloads, and whether the company will make a major announcement on its plans later today. (Customarily, watch for an announcement around 1.30pm, well, if an announcement is to be made at all).

** Well, the day’s moving on and no official news yet - we’ve dropped an enquiry to Apple, and their lack of a response suggests at present these moves belong in the official ‘rumour and speculation’ department, it may be helpful if readers have a check to see what songs/artists from the three majors they can dig out using the ‘Upgrade’ feature in iTunes, and note them here. Hang in there.

We owe Distorted-Loop'a Jonny a huge tip of the hat. (The underlines in the quoted text above are added by yours truly.)

Aesthetics: Citizens' architectural renewal of rundown historic Buffalo

Nicolai Ouroussoff writes charmingly, "Saving Buffalo’s Untold Beauty," Nov14,2k8, NYT:

One of the most cynical clichés in architecture is that poverty is good for preservation. The poor don’t bulldoze historic neighborhoods to make way for fancy new high-rises.

That assumption came to mind when I stepped off a plane here recently. Buffalo is home to some of the greatest American architecture of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with major architects like Henry Hobson Richardson, Frederick Law Olmsted, Louis Sullivan and Frank Lloyd Wright building marvels here. Together they shaped one of the grandest early visions of the democratic American city.

Yet Buffalo is more commonly identified with the crumbling infrastructure, abandoned homes and dwindling jobs that have defined the Rust Belt for the past 50 years. And for decades its architecture has seemed strangely frozen in time.

Now the city is reaching a crossroads.

That's how Ouroussoff begins his study tour of the restoration of areas of the northern USA city that had fallen victim to the scourge of the infamous Rust Belt. Several of the recent reversals of bad fortune warm the heart, and suggest a new future for this urban center that has lost its formerly lucrative connection to the once-upon-a-time Eire Canal system. Once a thriving hubway for goods coming in from Lake Ontario and then streaming out again, along with the products of Buffalo's own manufactories, the largely-Black populated city now seems poised on brink of a new age and perhaps even a new prosperity.

Archibald

Technics: Google launching personal-edit searches minus garbage subtopics

Google has outdone itself with the launch of the new Google SearchWiki. The idea is to allow a marginal unorganized set of users who intensely dislike wading thru the now-inevitable garbage that swells search results for a given keyword, allows users now to avoid that recurrent mishap by submitting a truer listing of results -- minus the garbage links. Not that this involves a separate search result in every case of WikiSearch editing by an individual wiki user for the purpose.

Rather, individual edits for a keyword are combined with the edits of others for the same word, and a composite result becomes available to all the marginals who use the Google SearchWiki to obtain hopefully cleaner results for the set. But one wonders whether a new censoriousness could set in.

Technotes, by Technowlb

I wouldn't mind seeing Philosophy the cosmetic line disappear from the wiki's search results for Philosophy; but would the various competing sects of view try to take out results giving links to competitor websites that define, say, the keyword Reformational other than as approved by various sites of the competition?

My rather arcane examples may or may not amuse you, dear reader, but I'm sure you can extrapolate to examples for poignant to your own interests and concerns to help make the point more clear for your own purposes.

Updates:
*Reports conflict over Microsoft buying Yahoo search (MarketWatch Nov30,2k8)
*Is Apple building a search engine? Does Apple plan to take on Google, Yahoo and Microsoft? (MacWorld [UK], Nov14,2k8)

Literature: France's Le Clézio won the Nobel Prize for literature

French novelist Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio won the Nobel Prize for literature a few weeks back. Sarah Lyall, "French Writer Wins Nobel Prize," http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/10/books/10nobel.html, Oct19,2k8, New York Times.

The French writer Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio, whose work reflects a seemingly insatiable restlessness and sense of wonder about other places and other cultures, won the 2008 Nobel Prize in Literature on Thursday. In its citation, the Swedish Academy praised Mr. Le Clézio, 68, as the “author of new departures, poetic adventure and sensual ecstasy, explorer of a humanity beyond and below the reigning civilization.”

The works of Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio reflect a sense of wonder about other cultures. ...

Mr. Le Clézio’s work defies easy characterization, but in more than 40 essays, novels and children’s books, he has written of exile and self-discovery, of cultural dislocation and globalization, of the clash between modern civilization and traditional cultures. Having lived and taught in many parts of the world, he writes as fluently about North African immigrants in France, native Indians in Mexico and islanders in the Indian Ocean as he does about his own past.

I had read his first in my halting French (with many dictionaries at my elbows!), but then had lost track of Le Clézio over the decades. That first novel of his was too much full of self-loathing. I had too much of my own to expend my reading energies with his work. Maybe now with his "mature" novels being celebrated so, I should look again.

Owlb

Summer Fun: Opera: At the Spoleto Festival USA, early June offers the Weil-Brecht 'Rise and Fall of Mahoganny City' and more

Thanks to New York Times, music reviewer and ArtsBeat blogger, James R. Oestereich proses in English, "Strange, Faraway Fantasies of Hell and Paradise" (Jun1,2k7) from Charleston, South Carolina where the Italian Spoleta Festival spins off a week of performances to the delectation of connoisseurs.

Two more disparate works could hardly be imagined. And yet they have odd similarities.

As two of its three operas this year, the Spoleto Festival USA here is offering Kurt Weill’s collaboration with Bertolt Brecht, Aufstieg und Fall der Stadt Mahagonny (Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny); and Christoph Williband Gluck’s Île de Merlin, ou le Monde Renversé (Merlin’s Island, or the World Turned Upside Down). Both send peculiar creatures to faraway places, and both deal, in contrasting ways, with social issues.

(The third opera is Pascal Dusapin’s Faustus, the Last Night, which has its last performance on June 9.)

Summer Fun > Spoleto Opera Festival

In Mahagonny three fugitives establish a fantastical city in some realm far from civilization, but, as it turns out, within hurricane’s distance of Pensacola, Fla. In Merlin two Parisian wastrels wash up on a remote Arcadian island.

Mahagonny, a morality play awash in cynicism and pessimism, depicts a hellish world in which there is no such thing as peace and harmony, a world of greed and grasping ambition, a world in which you must do whatever you want before others do unto you what they want. The courts are “no worse than anywhere else.” It can only end badly.

Live Opera Music, by Audiosvisiotor

Merlin, a Panglossian comic effusion, offers a paradise in which the rich must marry the poor, artists earn more than businessmen or lawyers, and love is lasting and faithful. The courts know no corruption. It is, in short, the opposite of Paris. And all that is before Merlin appears to fine-tune the outcome.

Of musical genres there is no end, and opera is music with quasi-actorial qualities. Opera is a bouquet of arts with music the leading edge. I wish I could be in in Charleston for these, now that I've updated my US passport. But probably my only Opera-fun this summer will be found in reading NYT reviewers.

Sports: Major League Baseball: Toronto Blue Jays win 9 to White Sox 3; full MLB schedule in progress thru the evening

I'm proud to say Toronto's Blue Jays won their game today, and by a wide margin. You can read up on the game at CBS Sportsline.com's MLB page, "Jays' Hill, Rios team up to send ChiSox back to losing ways" (Jun2,2k7). Here's today's schedule, with several games just beginning or opening later across the continent.

Braves 5
Cubs 3

White Sox 3
Blue Jays 9

Diamondbacks 1
Mets 7

Yankees 1
Red Sox 3 Top of the 5th inning
...but Yanks rallied and the revised score is
Yankees 6
Red Sox 5 Top of the 7th inning

Cardinals 3
Astros 8 Game over.

Tigers
Indians
7:05pm

Dodgers
Pirates
7:05pm

Sports, by Sportikos

Padres
Nationals
7:05pm

Marlins
Brewers
7:05pm

Giants
Phillies
7:05pm

Royals
Devil Rays
7:10pm

Reds
Rockies
8:05pm

Twins
Athletics
9:05pm

Orioles
Angels
9:05pm

Rangers
Mariners
10:05pm

Sport: NHL Hockey: Ottawa Senators take on Anaheim Ducks for cross-continent Stanley Cup championships Game 3

The Stanley Cup play-offs for the National Hockey League's season-ending championships of all North America will enter Game 3 (of 7) tonite in Kanata, Ontario, with the Eastern Conference champs, the Senators, facing off against the Western Conf's Ducks.

The Sens are in a tite spot. They've already lost the first 2 games of the Stanley Cup finals series. They need a win, and the promises from coaches and players are thick that win it will be.

Technics: Internet: MySpace refuses to turn over sex-offenders names, cites Fed privacy law vs States attorneys genral

CNN.com email newsletter informs us informs us in "MySpace won't turn over names of sex offenders" (May16,2k7).

Story Highlights
• NEW: MySpace not turning over names of sex offenders
• NEW: MySpace attorney: Privacy act requires subpoenas
• Thousands of offenders might be MySpace members
• MySpace prevents children under 14 from setting up profiles

RALEIGH, North Carolina (AP) -- Citing federal privacy law, MySpace.com said Tuesday it won't comply with a request by attorneys general from eight states to hand over the names of registered sex offenders who use the social networking Web site.

MySpace's chief security officer said the company regularly discloses information to law enforcement officials but the federal Electronic Communications Privacy Act says it can only do so when proper legal processes are followed.

Technotes, by Technowlb

"We're truly disheartened that the AGs chose to send out a letter ... when there was an existing legal process that could have been followed," the security officer, Hemanshu Nigam, said in an interview.

In a letter Monday, attorneys general from North Carolina, Connecticut, Georgia, Idaho, Mississippi, New Hampshire, Ohio and Pennsylvania asked MySpace to provide information about registered sex offenders using the site and where they live.

Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal on Tuesday blasted MySpace for refusing to share the information and said no subpoena is needed for MySpace to tell the attorneys general how many registered sex offenders use the site "or other information relating to possible parole violations."

The whole article is well worth clicking up and reading in its entirety. Sad that MySpace can't find a way to comply.

Natural justice so prioritizes the children who will be victimized, above federal claims to its own h+er jurisdictional status over states in regard to such an offender's privacy r+ts, that the fed law seems to be an impediment in the real world of chat-room chickenhawks who apparently gravitate to MySpace in quest of little girls and boys. But now we find our topic has shifted from a technics focus to juridics and segzetics (yes, coined word).

Technics: Internet: MicroSoft, Yahoo to join in online search services, compete with Google

Bloomberg.com published with updates a report by Jonathan Thaw and Jason Kelly that relates to major changes coming to the battle of titans on the Internet, particularly the search services. Yahoo and Google are the major two, with Google far in the lead but not that far. "Microsoft, Yahoo May Partner to Challenge Google in Web Search" (May5,2k7).

MicroSoft has been unable to break effectively into the field, but wants part of the ad revenues that the search services routinely place on their pages. What is being presented to the public at the moment is called a "partnership," but the relation being explored seems to have in its background MS's intent to buy and swallow ("merge") Yahoo in six months time.

May 5 (Bloomberg) -- Microsoft Corp. and Yahoo! Inc. have held talks about a partnership designed to boost their share of the Web search and advertising market and catch up with Google Inc., people briefed on the discussions said.

The discussions are in the early stages and focus on a partnership rather than a merger, said one of the people, who asked to remain anonymous because the negotiations are private. Shares of Yahoo jumped the most in three years yesterday after the New York Post said Microsoft wants to buy the company.

Yahoo and Microsoft, the world's largest software maker, have struggled to dent Google's dominance in searching the Web and in the booming market for advertising spots next to search results. A combination would triple Microsoft's share of the U.S. search market to 38.4 percent, rivaling Google's 48.3 percent, according to ComScore Inc.

``It gets them enough economies of scale to be a viable force in search,'' said Walter Price, who oversees about $2 billion including Microsoft shares at RCM Capital Management in San Francisco. ``You have to ratchet up your capital expenditure to compete with Google.''

What this will mean for consumers (web users) hopefully will be more and better services, in the first instance, by Google. I could make some recommendations in that regard, as I don't think the ads I obstruded onto other's webpages when I search are sufficiently compensated by the time-consuming awkwardnesses I have to crawl thru when using Google. The Google ads on refWrite are not at all those I would select from their stable, tho usually they are tolerable, at other times downr+t obnoxious. But that's another story.

Technics: Juridics: Internet news-aggregator of content-URLs 'Digg' treated as pirate for code hack HD DVDs

CNet blogger Steven Musil reports "Unhappy Digg users bury site in protest" (May2,2k7).

Digg.com users, very upset at the news aggregate site for deleting articles containing an encryption key that could be used to crack the digital rights management on HD DVDs [H+Density DVDs], have inundated the site with thousands of recommendations to pages that contain the code. The protest was apparently heard by Digg administrators, who later reversed the ban.

On Tuesday night, the "All topics" category contained several pages of the most popular articles recommended by Digg readers populated only by links to sites that contained the code, as well as messages deriding the Motion Picture Association of America, a proponent of digital rights management and antipiracy measures. Many of the articles had upward of 4,000 recommendations from users.

A message purporting to be from Digg co-founder and CEO Jay Adelson posted to the site early Tuesday explained the rationale behind the site's former stance.

"We've been notified by the owners of this intellectual property that they believe the posting of the encryption key infringes their intellectual property rights," the posting reads. "In order to respect these rights and to comply with the law, we have removed postings of the key that have been brought to our attention."

Later, a message headlined with the code and credited to Digg co-founder Kevin Rose called Tuesday "a difficult day for us" and explained that site had reversed its earlier stance and would reluctantly allow articles containing the code to be referenced from the site.

"We had to make a call, and in our desire to avoid a scenario where Digg would be interrupted or shut down, we decided to comply and remove the stories with the code," according to the posting. "...[Digg website users ha]ve made it clear. You'd rather see Digg go down fighting than bow down to a bigger company. We hear you, and effective immediately we won't delete stories or comments containing the code and will deal with whatever the consequences might be. If we lose, then what the hell, at least we died trying."

"Living by the wisdom of the crowd is what made Digg popular, said CEO Jay Adelson in a telephone interview Wednesday, reports Chris Gaylord of Christian Science Monitor in "Digg's online crowd flexes its muscle--Backlash over the site administrators' attempt to squelch postings of a secret encryption code shows power of free-speech-minded Web users" (May4,2k7).

"Digg is supposed to be the opposite of censorship," he said. "Our attorneys were advising us that it is always better to be safe than sorry and continue removing the stories. But the users clearly wanted it … and this was something we didn't want to suppress anymore."

What could have been an unraveling for Digg and other social websites – that peek behind the curtain to discover that the online community is not truly in control – turned into a solidifying event for the idea that the Internet is as much a tool for participating as it is for publishing. For many users, the code wasn't the point. The Digg deluge was about reclaiming the reins.

"This had the possibility of being a very dark moment, and it's turned out to be quite a strong statement about what it means to have socially driven websites," says John Palfrey, executive director of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School. "It was civil disobedience on restriction of free speech – but in an Internet fashion."

Technotes, by Technowlb

Two days later, the story but not the code (!) made its way to a science blog in the field of physics. PhysOrg.com updates the early reports. The blog-entry's content goes so beyond my "Technics" category that probably I should re-designate my headline "Juridics" in the first cat. Come to think of it, the slant to legal actions in tech articles, seems to be something like a trend at the moment. Or, perhaps I should retitle the first slot "Social Networking" which also played a huge role in Digg's removal of the orginal post. Article: "Has Digg Dug a Legal Hole for Itself?" (May4,2k7). From the aritcle itself you can navigate to the site's PhysOrgForum, where you can discuss the whole phenom with many others who are keeping up with this development.

Call it the Internet's version of a bloodless coup. A revolt by users of Digg.com led the administrators of the Web site to reverse a decision to remove stories containing code used to circumvent digital rights management for HD-DVDs [H+Density Digital Video something or other].

But the change of course by Digg.com has not settled anything; instead the latest flare up regarding the now-infamous code highlights both legal and security issues facing HD-DVD technology and the Internet itself.

Digg.com's initial decision to take down the stories was spurred by a cease and desist letter earlier this week from the AACS LA (Advanced Access Content System Licensing Administrator).

The AACS LA licenses the encryption technology meant to protect HD-DVDs from illegal copying.
But the decision [by Digg to restore the offending code] could open it up to legal action by the AACS LA for a possible violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, a series of provisions that prohibit the production or distribution of technology that circumvents DRM.

Copyright 2007 by Ziff Davis Media

By the way, I found the following ad text on the Phys.Org.com website: "How To Copy A DVD Movie Burn & Copy Your Home DVD Movies to Blank CD. Play Copy Anywhere $24."

As CSM's Chris Gaylord has noted, the Digg Episode (or Epiphany, as some Diggers mite regard it) is not an isolated case:

Other successful social sites have hit similar power struggles. In September, the popular college networking site Facebook.com thought they would further connect users by rolling out a "news feed" feature that would update everyone on nearly every change occurring on friends' profiles, right down to who rejected whose party invitation. This perceived invasion of privacy launched boycotts and rumors of a National Don't Log Into Facebook Day. Site administrators changed the feature after only two days.

The HD-DVD key was not the first story Digg administrators yanked. They regularly pull down links to pornography and hate speech, says Mr. Adelson. But with more than 7,000 articles submitted to Digg every day, he acknowledges the process is very reactive. Digg's most relied-on filter is its users – for sniffing out both the good and the bad.

Digg's crowd is a tech-savvy set, so when the movie-code posting sneaked past administrators, the readers dug it. Before anyone at the Digg office noticed that the story had slipped through the cracks, 15,000 users had recommended it – making its sudden disappearance all the more noticeable, Adelson says.

So the Episode takes its place among many, and surely will not be the last of them either.

Music: Gospel: Oldtime music revival in NYC with Bluegrass Gospel's 'Diane McKoy and a Small Few"

Veteran entertainer Diane McKoy combines her love of God with her love of music and forms Bluegrass Gospel band in the Big Apple. She's a veteran entertainer who's combining her love of God and Scripture, with her love of music, by forming a new Bluegrass Gospel band in the Big Apple in her second try in her home city. As far as she knows, hers is again the only one in that northern metropolis where the grass is scarce, green not really blue.

New York, Apr28,2k7 /Christian Newswire/ -- New York City may be famed for Broadway and Wall Street, but Diane McKoy hopes America's largest city becomes known as home to her Bluegrass Gospel band, Diane McKoy and a Small Few.

"New York City may not be the first place that comes to mind when you hear about a Bluegrass Gospel band," says McKoy, the band's leader, "but God put A Small Few in my heart and I live in New York." Although there are many Gospel music groups in the Big Apple, Bluegrass Gospel bands are otherwise nonexistent. There was one other. McKoy started it. It lasted 13 years before it disbanded.

Music, by Audiovisiotor

The newly formed band features McKoy and two musician/singer friends: Steven Antonelli and Daniel Marcus. Together they produce Bluegrass Gospel and Country Gospel, music that mixes the Good Book with strings and harmonizing.

Like many indie musicians Diane McKoy and a Small Few has a My Space page. Presently, the group is playing at various venues throughout New York City. The trio is making fans out of big city dwellers wherever the band plays.

I can think of other cities, further North, that may welcome authentic Bluegrass, especially of the key Gospel variety. Fascinating too is the the fact that Gospel has differentiated into three at least subgenres: traditional, country, and bluegrass. I wonder whether I could find these different varieties online at a digital music store.

Technics: Intenet: Law suit by UK football club tries to stop circulation of video clips on YouTube/Google

Techdirt's Mike Masnick, "Premier League, Jealous Of Viacom, Sues YouTube As Well" (May5,2k7)

Nick writes in to let us know that the Premier League, in the UK (football/soccer, depending on where you are) has decided to sue Google/YouTube for copyright infringement. Nick has his own analysis, but there are a number of interesting (or silly, depending on your perspective) things about the case. First off, it was almost exactly two years ago that we were surprised to hear the Premier League suggest that it needed to sue fans who were streaming its games online (pre-YouTube days). Here were fans who were so interested in following what was going on that they'd watch games online and help promote it to others who had no way of watching the games, and the best the Premier League could do was threaten to sue? That seemed backwards. Last year, the Premier League popped up again, complaining about videos on YouTube. However, while again it seemed like bad marketing to go after fans who are promoting your sport, we figured it was at least a positive that the Premier League wasn't so silly as to blame YouTube for the actions of its users. Apparently, we spoke too soon.

Technotes, by Technowlb

If anything, this is probably a reaction to Viacom's $1 billion lawsuit against Google/YouTube. The Premier League figured it might get a piece of that, or at least hope that Google would be willing to settle. Of course, Google's defense should be the same as it was for Viacom. The Premier League makes one different argument -- which is that it tried to use the anti-piracy tools provided by Google, and they didn't work. It's hard to see how the fact that the tools don't work very well is illegal. There is no magic bullet that can stop unauthorized copies -- so every "anti-piracy" tool won't work entirely. That's hardly something to sue over. The other difference is that the Premier League is looking to have the case declared as a class action suit, so that all copyright holders can get at Google in one shot. If this succeeds, then it seems likely that it will shut down YouTube, destroying one of the most effective promotional vehicles the Premier League has had in years. It's hard to see how that's beneficial for anyone.

More need to be said here, but I'll say it tomorrow. G'nite!

Sports: English Football: Ashton Villa wallops 3-0 Sheffield United in Barclays' Premier League game

Most of the game saw Sheffield struggle to hold the Villans down, as the tide just swept these Ashtonauts forward, while Sheffield gradually fell apart. They kept their faces brave thru-out the disaster in Barclay's English Premier League, in a game which I viewed live across the Pond in Toronto on Saturday afternoon our time. The crowd kept roaring thru-out, so the lads had all the encouragement they could use.

Sports / UK Football, by Sportikos

As the stats show, Ashton Villa is no paragon of football excellency, yet it soars 5 slots above Sheffield United in the standings. On the other hand, the Villa itself has to look 10 strata above itself to discern the august Machester United team at the top of Barclay's Premiership, with Chelsea breathing down their necks.

Technics: Internet: Whose counting your online clicks? and how!

When you go surfing the WordWideWeb and even the larger Internet of which www. is only the most prominent component, there are many technical means to monitor your moves or, lacking that thoroness, to sample a survey group of sizeable proportions that is most likely to be able to project/predict your most likely moves, statistically speaking. Obviously, if your own internet demographic profile is multiply-marginal, your own choices may not register in the prevailing samples.

Or, your Internet Service Provider (ISP, IP) may be selling your click habits to firms that buy them en masse. Otherwise, your obscurity would then be, perhaps mercifully, preserved--unless you are host to some other means ensconced on your own computer in the form of click-counters' cookies that send out signals as to what you are doing each time you make a move, check an ad, whatever. This is not necessarily bad, depending on your own concerns and privacy values.

MSNBC carries a report by Catherine Holshan, "Who's Counting Clicks, and How -- There are lots of ways to measure Web traffic. Here's a glance at some of the more common approaches " (Apr30,2k7).

A host of companies are doing their level best to keep tabs on how many people are visiting a given Web site, and what those users do while they are there. Some use tags installed on a user's Web browser, while others extrapolate surfing habits from a sample audience. A handful use a combination of several methods. Here's a glance at a range of approaches, with a look at what each has to say about one popular online video site, Metacafe.

Technotes, by Technowlb

Here's the varied list of click-counters and analysts, that Ms. Halshan evaluates as to What, How, Strengths, Weaknesses. Dare I advise readers to click-up her article?

Alexa Internet, owned by Amazon (AMZN)
Compete Inc.
comScore
Google Analytics (GOOG)
Hitwise
Omnitecture (OMTR)
Nielsen//NetRatings (NTRT)
Qantcast

generic - internal server logs
used by individual net companies
to track the traffic that click
onto their own sites

Technics: Internet: WorkHack is an online personal to-do list that emphasizes simplicity

Simplicity of access, that's one of WorkHack's beauties. I encountered it on the email newsletter put out by Read/Write Web which features analysis of online writing for online reading. It does so quite excellently in the article, "WorkHack redefines 'simple' task management" (Apr26,2k7) by Josh Cantone.

Simplicity of privacy, but you don't even have to register to access your private page. How this is accomplished will amaze some old habitues of the web, with this Web 2.0 cutie.

Simplicity of preferences, whether you use each or not; there's a mercifully small number of pref options. Just to get stuff off my desktop and free up bits of memory-capacity, I've tried To-Do lists before, both online and off (on my computer desktop). So when Josh Cantone says--

To-do lists should be simple, or so claims WorkHack, a task list web app that takes simple to a whole new level. There are very nearly no features to WorkHack.

Technotes, by Technowlb

There is no sign up, no tagging, no due dates, no multi-user support. Just to-do lists, organized into three priority categories (High, Medium, and Low) and sorted by color or size.

--you'll have to forgive my skepticism. But besides skeptical, I was also intrigued. So, I've been trying WorkHackfor myself, in the mini-size. That way, I can have a desktopful of blogging windows in view, pause to call up WordHack for viewing or for making a quick new entry, then close WH and go back to my work at hand.

I've decided to give it a real try, and so far it is superior to any online To-Do list I've used (like Remember the Milk with 100,000 users and as many bells & whistles ... and most online calendars used for basic to-do matters, as well, like 30 Boxes that I tried to use for to-doing). Changing my previous use-strategies, my experiment with WH involves splitting my refWrite tasks off from everything else, and keeping on my desktop in the main menu-bar an app called Check Off where I store a list of all the other things I want to get done--but include no rW tasks. Sad to say, Check-off will not work for some of you, as this desktop menu-bar app is only for Mac OSX users.

Technics: Internet Software: MicroSoft promises truckload of upgrades and new products, said to produce a 'Big Bang,' but when?

From Mike Vizard's email newsletter on internet tech (IT), What's Hot Now (Apr27,2k7), where the lead note is "Big Bang Theory suggests that MicroSoft is about to explode," I found my way to Joe Wilcox writing on "Microsoft's 'Big Bang' Is When?" (Apr26,2k7) in eWeek's MicroSoft Watch. Wilcox:

Last night's release of Windows Server Longhorn Beta 3 is a monumental event for Microsoft, much bigger than the launch [earlier] of Windows Vista [MS's new operating system]. How big may depend on when Microsoft releases Vista Service Pack 1.

Windows Server is the nucleus of Microsoft's enterprise strategy, around which all other products—-even Windows Client—-revolve. Longhorn's eventual release, which Microsoft claims will be later this year, will likely set off major software upgrades, including Office 2007 and Windows Vista.

And thus challenge MS's wannabe competitors as never before, especially to the extent the new products are hack-proof. Hmmmm.

Laura DiDio, a Yankee Group research fellow, described the expected phenomenon as the "Big Bang." Other analyst firms' projections of Windows Vista upgrades, including Gartner, synch well with the Big Bang theory.

Technics > IT > Microsoft, by Technowlb

Since few of these prodcuts and their brandnames suggest anything directly familiar to me (I'm quite Apple / Macintosh / iMac OSX 3.9 (Panther) oriented in regard to my PC IT preferences), I have to remind myself that MS products still command about 80% of the software market for personal computers, while my own favourites are rah-rah-ed by Mac fans for achieving a mere 6% of PC market penetration--with the radical exceptions of iTunes Music Store and iPod which MS failed to displace from their ballooning dominance. And not just MS has been bested on this terrain: so has Sony fallen by the wayside, as far as I can tell. Now, Amazon has announced it will have a go at the digital-music IT retail market in direct competition with iTunes Music Store. I also noticed somewhere today (try this instead) that the non-digital recorded-music sales are quite stagnant; there's a downside to that as far as the musical experience is concerned.

But back to MicroSoft's banging its own big drum, skipping all too many beats these days.

Gartner expects a first major round of Vista deployments to start [Oct-Dec 2k7], with most businesses waiting until [May-Jun 2k8]. The timing is also right for Windows Server Longhorn's release and potential pull on Windows client upgrades. Many IT organizations are willing to wait for Longhorn Server as to coordinate multiple infrastructure upgrades around the same time, DiDio said.

When isn't When

But there is a wrinkle—-uncertainty which Microsoft has created. Back in November, Bob Muglia, Microsoft's senior vice president for server and tools, told eWeek that Windows Server Longhorn and Windows Vista Service Pack 1 would ship "simultaneously." Such a plan would be quite sensible, as, according to Muglia, "it is one source-code base" for both products. Since then, Microsoft has backed away from this coordinated release commitment.

So much ink has been spilled and keys tapped on the subject of MS's hegemony in the personal computer market that I couldn't add anything really new here. But I can say something from the standpoint of the h+ value I place on a pluralist market, where there are at least a handful of truly competing major corporations. And, where the trend toward open-source and interoperablity is much stronger than now. I'd like to see MicroSoft give way in its near-control of IT software generally, and also see Apple give way in its almost-monopoly in music IT. Of course, by "give way" I don't mean to suggest that either give anything. I'm just fantasizing how I'd like to see the market tumble things out in this cultural zone of life, to everyone's betterment hopefully.

Music: Pop: Rush Of Fools #1 on multiple radio charts, debut single 'Undo'

Unprecedented radio success positions band > 1st new artist to land a debut single at #1 on AC charts since 2004

Nashville, Christian Newswire (Apr25,2k7) -- "Undo," the first radio single from premiere new Midas Records band Rush Of Fools, garnered the #1 position on the Billboard Christian Chart, R&R Christian AC Monitored chart and CRW Comprehensive charts this week. Rush Of Fools is the first new artist to land a debut single at #1 on AC charts since Casting Crowns in 2004. The unprecedented multiple chart success positions the band as history makers in that no other debut artist on a new label has ever achieved such immediate success.

"We're so grateful to be able to help facilitate the ministry of such a dynamic and passionate group as Rush Of Fools," Robert Morrison, head of sales & operations at Midas Records said. "They are being used in so many wonderful ways, this is truly the beginning of something awesome!"

"Undo" is the first single from the group's forthcoming May8,2k7 Midas Records release distributed through EMI CMG. After going for ads at radio on Jan12, 2k7, the debut single rapidly climbed radio charts and immediately garnered the highest score in the history of 20 The Countdown Magazine's listener poll. In addition, Rush Of Fools have received a flood of My Space messages that describe incredible life-changing stories of hope and inspiration from listeners. Multiple requests have started to come in on a regular basis for copies of "Undo," in addition to personal stories told about how lives have been impacted by the lyrics, heart and message of the song.

Music > Pop, by Audiovisiotor

In addition to their recent radio success, Rush Of Fools are currently touring with By The Tree and The Turning on the multi-city World on Fire Tour in support of their debut release.

Rush Of Fools consists of Wes Willis (lead vocals, electric guitar), Kevin Huguley (lead vocals, electric and acoustic guitar), Jacob Chesnut (bass, vocals), Jamie Sharpe (drums, vocals) and JD Frazier (electric guitar, keys, vocals).

I'm going to be interested to follow what some Christian reviewers with broad music and videoclip interests may have to say about this work, so I won't attempt any comment here at the moment. Except something elliptical to the music itself--and that is to note the professional press-release hype from Midas/Christian Newswire, and the strategy of storming the radio pop-chart ramparts, yet with clearly expressed evangelical wordage and concerns. I wonder if Apple's iTunes Music Store is selling this song, since its new contractual arrangement with the mentioned EMI's Christian Music Group. After all, EMI's digital-download sales are presumably now without built-in DRM nonsense?

More Info:

Rush of Fools
My Space RoF page
Lab Media RoF page

Summer Fun: At the beach or the cottage, you may want to read about the city

Comment (print and online) is an amazing general-interest magazine with a reformational broad-cultural concern. The lastest issue carries one of those "Summer Reading" lists, this one by Eric O. Jacobsen, "The space between: summer reading on cities" (Apr27,2k7). To Jacobsen's list of 10 books, I've dared supplementarily to add Jacobsen's own title on his chosen topic. And then, out of sheer favouritism, I've also appended at list's end my own candidate, a volume that was such a wonderful read for me when I first ventured into its pages decades ago. I'm sure subsequent works covering the same ground have since added important new ins+ts; but my nominee, like the first title on Jacobsen's own list, is a classic on the subject it addresses.

1. Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great American Cities

2. Andres Duany, Elizabeth Plater Zyberk, and Jeff Speck, Suburban Nation: The Rise of Sprawl and the Decline of the American Dream

3. James Howard Kunstler, The City in Mind: Notes on the Urban Condition

4. Richard Florida, The Rise of the Creative Class: And How It's Transforming Work, Leisure, Community and Everyday Life

5. Allan B. Jacobs, Great Streets

6. David Solomon, Global City Blues

7. Robert Fishman, Urban Utopias in the Twentieth Century: Ebenezer Howard, Frank Lloyd Wright and Le Corbusier

8. Daniel Kemmis, The Good City and the Good Life: Renewing the American Community

9. Ray Oldenburg, The Great Good Place: Cafes, Coffee Shops, Bookstores, Bars, Hair Salons, and Other Hangouts at the Heart of a Community

Summer Fun > Reading Books, by Owlb

10. Nicholas Wolterstorff, Until Justice and Peace Embrace: The Kuyper Lectures for 1981 Delivered at the Free University in Amsterdam

11. Eric O. Jacobsen, Sidewalks in the Kingdom: New Urbanism and the Christian Faith

12. Lewis Mumford, The City in History: Its Origins, Its Transformations, and Its Prospects

Jacobsen gives us more than my barebones reproduction of his list (with my two supplements, to which I could add a second Wolterstorff title, Art in Action that includes at least a chapter on the aesthetics of any city made for living in, pleasantly...but if I added that, I would move the list into the numerics of 13, instead of dwelling restfully in the numeric symbology of 12, one book title for each of the Apostles).

I must say that Jacobsen's discussion of each title on his list is brief, but not too brief that we get only hype and no ins+t. We do get ins+t about each book, Jacobsen's measure of each. Realizing this genre of writing an intro to several books at a time, in one article, is achieved quite artfully by the author. So much so that a reader (who finds her/his summer will allow sufficient leisure for the project) could decide to make one's way thru the entire list. For this purpose, the list offers the utility of selecting what you want to read first and what second; there's suffcient matter to make your choices according to your own reading-plan.

I suggest you click-up the Comment page (live-linked above) and enjoy a good read as served-up by Jacabosen. If you want to get any or all the books into your own hands as soon as possible, each of the works' titles are live-linked to Amazon's book retailing service. You can purchase direct, of course, or you could read the reviews, then go out and find what's available at Barnes and Noble,

Sports: Soccer: Do goalies cause direction of penalty kickers?

Cognitive Daily one of several ScienceBlogs carries an interesting sports item by Dave Munger, "Can soccer goalkeepers influence penalty kicks?" (Apr24,2k7).

Penalty kicks are nearly universally reviled among soccer fans, yet they remain an important part of the game. The sport is so exhausting that extending it beyond 30 minutes of extra time in a playoff game could be dangerous for the players. Typically in playoff or championship matches, tie games get decided by a penalty kick competition.

But penalty kicks offer such an advantage to the shooter that it often seems like dumb luck when a goalkeeper manages to make a save. The usual strategy is simply to dive randomly to the left or right, and hope you guessed right. Why not just flip a coin to decide who wins the match? Chris at Mixing Memory ["The Science of Goalkeeping" (Apr20,2k7) who/which in turn glosses: Masters, S.W., van der Kamp, J., & Jackson, R.C. (2007). Imperceptibly off-center: Goalkeepers influence penalty-kick direction in soccer. Psychological Science, 18(3), 222-223.] has found a study suggesting that the position of the goalkeeper just before the shot can indeed affect the shooter:

Sports > Soccer, by Sportikos

They found that in almost all instances (96%), the goalkeeper stood just slightly (and I mean just slightly) off center, creating a difference between the distance of the goalie from the two goal posts of about 9.95 centimeters, which amounts to a difference between the areas to the right and left of the goal keeper of about 2.9% of the total area of the goal. The side to which the goalie stood did not, however, influence the side to which the goalie dove as the ball was kicked. So goalies didn't seem to be aware of their position. However, when they looked at whether penalty takers were aware of the position of the goal keeper, they found that 103 out of 174 (I'm not sure what happened to the other 26 kicks) were to the side of the goal keeper with more space. So the position of the goal keeper does appear to affect the direction of the kick on a (statistically) significant percentage of penalty kicks. Penalty takers are, then, aware of the goalie's position.

I underscored the bit about goalies not seeming to be aware of their position sl+tly to one side, but if we follow the Ways of Knowing theory of Herman Dooyeweerd (philosophy) and Douglas Blomberg (educational research), and supplemented by Howard Gardner (cognition and education), we mite say there is a human pre-analytic way of knowing that is kinematic in its orientation to space and movement/s thru it. Dancers and many athletes are gifted in this regard, and spend a career in h+tening it. Gardner says it is a special kind of intelligence, among 6 or 7 others.