Dearest readers,

We are happy to announce the launch of sewersofbabel.com. Regular posting will resume immediately. We have some nice new features available on the .com version, including contributor's blogs aggregated onto the main page, categories for each individual blog, and a linkpost for quick-hit links more terse than our normal format. Be sure to update your rss feeds and such. If any of you have websites, profiles, etc. to get the word out - well, every bit helps; and for those already linking to us, update dem hrefs. Thank you for your continued interests.

Sincerely,
The United Bloggers Alliance of Sewers and the Intergalactic Meme-Welders Union

Lessig Presentation on Google Print

I just noticed on Lessig's blog[1] that he has been figuring out how to make available his presentations to those of us who are unfortunate enough to miss the live performance. This is a Good Thing[TM]. I remember his Free Culture presentation that Leonard Lin worked up from his audio and slides in 2002 and I'm glad to see that the wait is over for more. The Free Culture presentation is a great example of how accessible Lessig makes even sometimes complicated ideas. His style is witty, informative, and compelling. He hates to be called this, but really - he is so entertaining it is hard not to think of him as a Copyright Rockstar.

Anyway, he has decided to make all the rest of his presentations available to a wider audience but is having a bit of trouble getting the process streamlined. The file for this presentation on Google Print is a 85MB torrent, which is quite large for a simple video file, but I have faith he will figure out a better way soon enough. If you get it soon, it should download very fast as the torrent is quite active (I was surprised to see that it just completed, total time about fifteen minutes).

Hm. Just trying it now, I seem to be having a strange difficulty playing the mp4 file. When I tried it in winamp, I could hear the sound but could not see the video. When I tried it in divx player, I could see the video but had error messages on the sound. The file wouldn't play at all in TheCoreMediaPlayer. Check for updates if you are interested, I'll work on it a bit and see what I can figure out. (I mess with my system a lot so you may very well have more luck than me. )


[1] If you are not familiar with Lawrence Lessig, he is a prominent figure in the fight for more reasonable copyright law.

Attn: Windows users.

There is a recently released vulnerability in Windows that has been called the worst ever. The reason is that it does not require the user to open an executable; malicious code can be installed on the computer simply by viewing an image in a browser or explorer.

Microsoft has not yet released an official patch. There is an unofficial patch available, but I am not going to give an opinion, as I do not have the technical knowhow to analyze the code.

There is a workaround provided by Microsoft that will help protect you until Microsoft releases an official patch. I would suggest that you do this, as it does not limit the functionality to an average user and it clears up most of the worry (apparently if one opens an infected file in the Fax Viewer or Paint, one can still be infected so be careful about that.)

1. Go to Start Menu
2. Select "Run"
3. type "regsvr32 /u shimgvw.dll" (without quotes)
4. This disables the starting of the Windows Picture and Fax Viewer when links to images are opened.

For additional information:

Summary from TheReg.
Security and technical history of the vulnerability unfolding.
FAQ
Article that suggests this affects all versions (not just XP and 2003, like the Reg suggests).

Update: After reading much, much, much too much on the topic (being responsible for family's computers is sometimes a bit of a headache ;-), I feel confident in recommending the unofficial patch to keep yourself as safe as possible until the official patch comes out. It can be found here, and a lengthy discussion about the topic here (much of which should be taken with a grain of salt, for example, one does not have to unregister the dll at each reboot, that wouldn't make any sense considering that MS suggests rebooting after unregistering!)