Who is the war criminal when a military robot starts killing civilians?

First autonomous flying "drones", then driverless cars, and now it seems autonomous killer robots are being planned. If it's possible, and military planners seem to think it may be, just think of the problems.

In real life Asimov's "three laws of robotics" which prevent harm to humans do not exist. Such a law, which would work reliably, is not even possible. So if machines are built which are intended to kill people without any human control, they will inevitably kill "innocent civilians".

I know that war is messy and great evil happens in current wars with current weapons. But at least that evil is the direct result of a human action, and humans can be held to account - at least in principle.

photo: Get t y images

This is not possible with autonomous killing machines. Who would be guilty? The programming team? The software designers? The builders? The person who fitted the weapons or loaded the ammunition? The commander who ordered the deployment? The politician who authorised the purchase or the deployment in the field? Or maybe the voters who said nothing, and allowed these weapons to be deployed in their name?

This is why such weapons must not be allowed.

The UN is discussing the Inhumane Weapons Convention in a session which opens on 13th April. The Campaign to Stop Killer Robots is lobbying to have autonomous killing machines pre-emptively added to the list.

During this election campaign, when our politicians are at least pretending to listen to us, is a good time to challenge them about this issue.

Human Rights Watch has a detailed report on the dangers.

And the Guardian has a rather shorter article.

We must stop this!

Just when you think it can't get much worse

It's not like everything is rosy, here in the Coalition-powered UK. But somehow I've not been able to summon the energy to write about it.

Then something happens that seems too incredible, too wrong-headed, too cynically dishonest to let pass. And sometimes - like buses - more than one comes along at the same time. Like now, in fact!

First two fanatics decide to kill a soldier on the streets of Britain. Islam, apparently, demanded it. Or not - more mainstream Islamic voices quickly disowned and condemned the action. So far so bad.

Then "the voices" started. If only we knew who everyone was emailing, phoning and texting, we could have stopped the murder. The police, said the voices, need more powers. Bring back the snoopers' charter, or Interception "modernisation" Programme, or (better make it sound harmless) Communications Data Bill! It seems that not every communication on the Internet is being monitored by the authorities. And it seems this is a bad thing.

The Tories tried to expand the already huge amount of surveillance back in 2008 and 2009, but after a backlash, the Lib Dems forced them to ditch the plan. Now, the plans are back. And the whole project is still as unnecessary as it ever was. The main problem in tracking down terror plots and terrorists on the internet seem to be too information to sift through. And adding more will hardly make the job easier. We'll just have more stories like "they should have known" and "the authorities were told" and "they ignored the evidence". And, as a side effect, privacy will be more and more eroded.

The dishonesty of pretending that the two misguided muslims could have been stopped if only the department of pre-crime had access to every communication in the UK is staggering. It's just not very surprising any more.

But just when you thought you'd seen it all, another sorry story leaks out, seeping from the heart of government...

Bloke colours vs Girlie Colours

We've "known" for ages that Girls can name colours that we men are quite certain are actually animals, plants, or basically almost anything but colours. But is it true?

The Doghouse Diary recently posted a cartoon to show how this works.

But XKCD have gone one further, with a survey that investigates this phenomenon.

And is it real?

For full details, you'll need to check their blog - but in a word (or two (or three)) Yes... and No....

So there we have it. Women know slightly more colours - and they can apparently spell better as well.

A new kind of spam?

I was wondering about the newfound popularity (slight though it was) of my blog from Japanese-language bloggers. By "popularity" I mean that there had been about one kind and apparently relevant comment on a number of my posts.

Then I noticed that their blogs all seemed to relate to eye clinics.

It could be a coincidence, I suppose - but somehow I'm not so sure. Spammers are getting cleverer... or at least more devious.

The thing is, if blogger uses "nofollow" links in comments, to prevent spammy links from contributing to better placements in search engines, I'm not sure what the point of the spam is. Perhaps it's more old-school than that. Maybe they are hoping actual humans will follow the links, Flattering, if they think my blog will help with that. I doubt it, though.

More free lunches

There was a Drupal Camp in Belfast this weekend. No tents involved, fortunately - that last time I tried that, the air mattress deflated during the night, and I woke up lying on the ground. This was a more comfortable affair - a bunch of people talking about Drupal, doing presentations and demos, and having free lunch - two free lunches, in fact.

It was good timing really - I have been playing with Drupal a bit recently to get a website set up. It's not finished yet, so you can't see it. But I now know a few more useful tricks. It'll be ready soon. Maybe.

In short, thanks to the sponsors of the event, I am now better fed and a little better informed. The cake was a lie, but we did have special Drupal gingerbread men, and I won a frisbee. Better than winning a book, because then I'd have had to do a talk at the next event. And I got to sleep in my own bed, and didn't wake up on the ground, with only a thin tent between me and some particularly ominous clouds.

But in spite of the risk of clouds I'm still planning on going back to Greenbelt next year. Some people never learn.

And you thought it belonged to you: Why DRM is such a bad idea

Last night I noticed a very funny thing. Amazon had "un-booked" some books they had sold. Their customers woke up to find that their copies of George Orwell's 1984 and Animal Farm had been taken back, and the cost refunded. Ironic as anything, but how could it possibly happen?

They had not bought a physical copy - they had paid for a licence to read an electronic copy on Amazon's eBook machine - a "Kindle". And that electronic copy was weighed down by DRM - Digital Rights Management (or Digitally Restricted Media) - so that the people who control it are not the buyers, but the sellers. So when Amazon felt they needed to revoke people's eBooks, they could.

You buy it - but they own it!

It turns out that Amazon, surprised by their customers' outrage or embarrassed by the irony of retrospectively un-selling 1984 -- who knows -- have said they won't do it again.

But they can - and that's the problem with DRM. You don't own what you have bought. "They" can stop you lending it to people. They can prevent you from electronically quoting snippets. They can invisibly edit or change what you have bought - or add new advertising. Or they can take it away altogether. And, often, if the publisher goes bust or even decides to stop selling it, what you bought just stops working. Forever. And it's illegal to try to get it back (in America, it's a felony).

And that is why DRM matters, and why the laws that pander to it matter even more.

And the more media becomes digital and is delivered electronically, the worse this will get.

Maybe not today; maybe not tomorrow; but soon - and for the rest of your media.

Links: NY Times, NY Times Blog, Slashdot discussion.

My msn keeps stoping

That's what they keep telling me. If you use MSN at all you may have seen messages like this (usually exactly like this):

<girl's name> says:
Hey Paul .....
This is <other girl's name>. My msn keeps stoping (sic) but would like to chat.
I am always online here <completely different name>.blogspot.com

They probably want me to visit their site with a buggy version of Internet Explorer so they can sell me viagra or automatically install some hacking malware on my computer to steal my credit card numbers and passwords, or make my PC part of their network of MSN-spamming zombies.

Who replies to these things, or visits their websites?

What are MSN doing about the problem?

And when will we see draconian and effective laws (and effective policing) to stop or punish this behaviour. It's not just a technical problem - and it's time the law caught up.

ICANN loses marbles

ICANN, the body set up by the US government to oversee the Internet, has gone mad. They've spotted another chance to "Make Money Fast!"as the phrase goes, and are jumping in with both feet.

We're used to top level domain names like ".com" and ".net", and the two-letter country ones like ".uk" and ".ca" for the UK and Canada, or ".cn" and ".ru" for China and Russia. These are based on an international standard list of country codes.

Now they have decided to allow anyone to pick their own top level name. Well, anyone with a "six figure sum" to spare. The result will be confusion, and perhaps a little chaos. You won't know whether hello.html is a file on your own machine, or a new-style website belonging to... anyone.

They are also rushing to develop plans to allow internationalised (as in non-latin alphabet) names. So if a spammer can't get bank.com, they can register a domain name with a russian S (which looks like a C... but isn't one) instead of a "normal C". It will look the same to casual victims, but will belong to the hackers instead.

Maybe they'll come up with a way to stop that. Maybe it won't depend on corrupt or lazy domain name resellers for its success. Or maybe hackers will all repent. We'll find out next year, when the details arrive.

Hmmmm.

At least they are restricting spammers' ability to register all their millions of variations on "get.viagra-now.com" for free. Perhaps if they concentrated on issues like that, instead of new ways to squeeze money from the rest of the world, we'd be better off.

Got to go. I need to think of a way to make 6 figures out of my new top level domain ".is-a-moron". Can I charge people what I like to register names with me?

Sleepwalking further into a surveillance society

As if Gordon Brown hasn't enough disasters on his hands, the government are working on another one, the Times reports: Big Brother wants complete records of everyone you phone, all your emails, everyone you talk to on the internet - in fact details of every time you go on the Internet - and it wants them in a big, central database that it (for want of a better word) controls.

Unfortunately, given the government's record with data, it's questionable how long they'll be able to go without losing it in the post (like records of UK children and parents' banking details), or handing it out to visitors to their websites (like with the automated visa application site).

This is supposed to be about implementing a (rather intrusive) EU directive about the information that is gathered about us, and how long it's kept - but the government seem to be taking the opportunity to do some extra snooping and forcing the Internet and Phone companies to hand their records over to a new and completely unnecessary database, or "target for hackers".

When the proposals emerge, it'll be worth seeing if there are any real limits on who can get the data, and how good an excuse they need. Given previous plans to allow district councils and the food standards agency to raid your phone records on demand, I'm not holding my breath.

Assistant Information Commissioner Jonathan Bamford, called it a step too far. "We are not aware of any justification for the State to hold every UK citizen's phone and internet records", he added. "We have warned before that we are sleepwalking into a surveillance society. Holding large collections of data is always risky - the more data that is collected and stored, the bigger the problem when the data is lost, traded or stolen."

Exactly!

Let your MP know what you think through write to them (it's very cool - go see!)

Record companies on the dole

The UK Government has just proposed [BBC] creating a special benefit for the increasingly desperate recording and film industries - and it's going to be funded by increasing what you pay for the Internet!

Here's how it works. All UK Internet Service Providers will have to police their networks (read, snoop on your internet traffic) for signs that someone, somewhere may be downloading music. If they find music files, they'll have to check who "owns" them. That's who owns the publishing rights, not who wrote it, or even who bought it. And if they think you're naughtily downloading some music that someone else owns (even if you've bought it yourself, and just want to listen to it on the move), they have to warn you, and then cut off your internet access.

This won't come free - so the cost will be passed on to you, the customer.

If it's not you copying the files -- say it's your kids, your neighbours accidentally or otherwise using your wireless network, or someone visiting your home -- then you may still be disconnected. And if your job depends on internet access, then you're stuffed!

Even if we're just talking about access to information, the consequences are disproportionate to the so-called crime. It's like banning someone from listening to the radio because they taped a song that was playing!

On the other hand, if there is someone you don't like, you could download a couple of Britney Spears' latest masterpieces through their wireless connection, and get them cut off. Or Cliff "50 year's royalties are not enough" Richards' music, and add public humiliation to the mix.

A few points leap to mind:

• The threat is hugely exaggerated - if these music executives think that everyone who copies a tune to see what it sounds like was going to buy it anyway, they are sadly deluded.
  
  
• If they think that exposing more people to their music is always bad for sales, they are misled. Before MP3s, student copying of cassettes (reduced quality versions of the originals, just like MP3s) was rampant, and music somehow refused to die, the sky did not fall down, and records were still sold.
  
  
• If they pretend that the most important threat is people downloading the odd tune informally, rather than industrial-scale piracy, they are lying.
  
  
• If they think that you and I should pay to keep their "intellectual property" safe, they are being just a little greedy and selfish. Shocking thought, I know!
  
  
• In fact, they probably think it's bad enough that they have to pay to get these new unfair laws passed, and are trying to work out how to get you to cover their lobbying expenses!
  
  
• If they are so worried about the interests of the poor starving artists, why are they still deducting huge amounts for breakages - of CDs, I mean to say (!!!!) before paying any of them their royalties?
  
  
• And maybe it's not piracy that's the problem. Could sales possibly be falling because of poor quality music, reduced catalogues, or increased competition from other media or even the Internet itself?

This initiative should be resisted, firmly.

It is disproportionate.

It demands too much snooping.

The wrong people are paying for it.

And it's unnecessary.

Just say no - and mention it to your MP, especially if you're in the part of the country where New Labour are brave enough to face the voters.

All your database are belong to, err.... no idea really!

Banking details of all families with kids in the UK, and details of their kids, have gone missing. Lost in the post, apparently. This is exactly why the government cannot be trusted with the enormous interlinked collection of data on its citizens that their ID Card scheme would require.

Mistakes happen in any system, especially if security is not considered at the outset. The bigger the collection of data, the more of a prize it makes for wrongdoers, and the more likely it is that someone, somewhere, will make just such an error. A national ID card scheme, bound as it is to grow and grow, as new and more cunning uses are invented for the data, and more and more people need to access it, is a disaster waiting to happen.

And best of all, it's completely unnecessary. Nobody has explained exactly how it solves any of the excuses being offered for its sorry existence - can't stop illegal immigration unless the police get the powers to make us show our papers on demand, can't prevent employment of illegal immigrants by unscrupulous employers who pay slave wages, can't stop terrorism (Seriously, how could it? The London tube bombers all had valid ID, for goodness sake).

At least it will make a few IT suppliers (who definitely won't have ties to government, right?) very rich indeed.

On a lighter note, it seems the missing CDs have turned up on ebay:

"Cash on collection ONLY please from Portsmouth PO8, since we wouldn't want these to get lost in the post!"

Just let us have what we are paying you for, Beeb!

The BBC is planning to launch new on-demand services which will allow us to download programmes via the Internet. I mentioned earlier that Ofcom wanted restrictions to make the services less useful, so that other companies can sell us the same sort of thing thing all over again.

The BBC Trust accepted many of these restrictions, but they are running a consultation to see if the public will buy this. We shouldn't! Click here to tell them what you think. You don't need to answer all of the questions.

Here is my 2p worth (sorry for the length)...

BBC Consultation: On-demand Services

Question 1
Do you agree with the BBC Trust's proposal to approve the new BBC on-demand services, subject to the modifications outlined in the Trust's report of its provisional conclusions?

The services should be approved, but I have reservations about some of the modifications, particularly where they reduce the value and usefulness of the services to licence-payers.

Question 2
In a market in which most broadcasters are expected to be offering on-demand services, would you agree that it is a priority for the BBC to be investing in this area?

Yes

Question 3
The BBC Trust has proposed setting a limit of 30 days as the amount of time that programmes can be stored on a computer before being viewed. As this is an emerging market, there is currently no clear standard on the length of the storage window. On balance, the Trust thinks 30 days is the right length of time. How long do you think consumers should be able to store BBC programmes on their computers before viewing them?

Ideally there should be no limit, and viewers should be able to store the programs indefinitely, before watching them. If that is not possible, 30 days is probably a reasonable time for most people, as it allows people to go on holiday and still be able to watch the programs on their return.

I note that Northern Ireland schools have a 2 month holiday in the summer, and that if families take full advantage of this time, a period of 30 days would not be sufficient to allow them to view the recorded programmes.

Question 4
The BBC Trust concluded that public value would be created by allowing series stacking. This would allow viewers to catch-up with all episodes of a series for the duration of its run. The Trust recognised that although it would provide increased opportunities to view BBC programmes, it could also deter people from buying DVDs or using commercial video-on-demand services. Do you consider series stacking to be a useful feature? What kind of series would you expect to be included? Should there be any limitation on the number of episodes of a series made available for catch-up or the length of time for which they can be viewed?

Series stacking (surely there is a better term for this) is a useful feature. I see no reason why it should not be available for all types of series. It should be permitted for an entire series.

Question 5
How important is it that the proposed seven-day catch-up service over the internet is available to consumers who are not using Microsoft software?

It is vital that BBC services do not require licence payers to purchase software from Microsoft, or indeed any other company. An increasing number of viewers do not purchase or use MS Windows - and they should not be excluded from viewing the content which they fund through the licence fee.

In particular, portable devices (which are not necessarily windows-based) should be usable for downloaded BBC audio and video content.

Question 6
Should the BBC be allowed to offer book readings from its radio services as audio downloads over the internet?

Of course! This is likely to be of particular interest to the blind and partially sighted - my grandparents would have loved such a service!

This content should be playable on any portable mp3 player.

Question 7
The BBC Trust concluded there was fine balance between public value and market impact in deciding whether to allow the BBC to offer audio downloads of classical music. While such downloads could help introduce new listeners to classical music, they could also deter purchases of commercial recordings. What is your view on whether - and to what extent - the BBC should be allowed to offer radio broadcasts of classical music as audio downloads over the internet?

I see no reason why lovers of classical music (and potential future fans) should be discriminated against in the way proposed by Ofcom and the BBC Trust.

While there could be some market impact if one particular interpretation of a classical piece is freely available, other orchestras and artists remain free to produce their own interpretations for sale. After all, music which is out of copyright is already widely available on CD at prices in the region of one or two pounds - and yet more recordings of these same pieces continue to be produced.

The impact is further reduced because the MP3 format (or any other plausible compressed, downloadable format) is of appreciably lower quality than a CD or DVD audio recording. Classical music fans (because of the dynamic range and other characteristics of the music) are likely to be especially aware of the difference.

For these reasons I believe that the Trust and Ofcom have overestimated any economic impact of making a relatively low-quality, compressed formats available for download.

Besides, it seems wrong for market impact to automatically trump the rights of licence-payers to listen to the music they have paid for – particularly when the music is out of copyright, and thus in the public domain.

Finally, denying us access to the largest part of our musical heritage and history must hugely impoverish popular culture.

Question 8
How important is it to you that the BBC provides some means for parents to control which of its programmes are accessible on-demand to children? Is such a facility necessary or is it more a matter for parents to exercise controls over how children use the internet?

Vastly worse content than that provided by the BBC is already freely available on the Internet. It is the responsibility of parents and guardians to decide how the children in their care access this content. There is no need for special rules for BBC content.

Question 9
What are your views on whether the BBC should offer content from non-BBC providers on the on-demand service on its website?

I have no objection to non-BBC content being available, subject to standards of quality, taste and decency.

Question 10
What are your views on whether and how the BBC should make available on-demand content on services run by other providers - such as multi-channel services or internet-based audio and video downloading services?

So long as the content is also available free-of-charge via the BBC's internet site to licence-payers, I see no problem with this.

Question 11
Do the revisions proposed to BBC Service Licences to allow the new services to go ahead seem appropriate?

There seem to be too many restrictions on how licence-payers use the content they are funding.

Question 12
Are there any other issues you would like the BBC Trust to consider in relation to the proposed services?

I think value to licence payers is given too little weight, in comparison to the interests of potential commercial competitors. No organisation has a God-given right to make money from licence-payers for every conceivable service. Organisations should be free to compete on quality or through originality - but it would be wrong for the BBC to abdicate its responsibility to those who fund it.

BBC too generous to viewers!

Ofcom wants to prevent viewers from being able to download a whole TV or radio series at once from the BBC, and is insisting that book readings and classical music should only be made available in restricted proprietary formats.

It's not clear who Ofcom (the telecoms and media regulator) is working for - but it doesn't seem to be you or me, if this story in the Register is any guide.

The BBC plans to make more of the programmes we're paying for available to us via the internet, with services like catch-up TV via the net, simultaneous broadcast over the internet and air, and unrestricted downloads of selected programmes.

Ofcom has produced a Market Impact Assessment, which objects to this on the grounds that someone else might want to charge you for similar services, and recommends that the service be made less convenient to consumers.

If you think that paying once for programmes (through the licence fee) is enough, there is some good news. The BBC Trust responded by saying that Ofcom's report is interesting and all, but they are also going to consider the potential value to the public of the new services, and that their decision will be based on "an informed judgement of all the evidence, in the best interests of licence fee payers".

At least someone has our interests at heart. Shame it's not the regulator.

Velvet sock and cloven hoof?

"We're not the Nasty Party any more", say the Tories, but today they announced a new immigration policy. They want to "significantly reduce" immigration, and bring in annual quotas. They say that public services will be swamped by the new workers who are moving here to take up many hard-to-fill posts. Except that the birthrate here is falling. The proportion of workers paying into pensions versus retired people claiming pensions is getting dangerously low. And if services are inadequate (and they are) then keeping out foreigners is solving the wrong problem! Maybe we should, you know, improve the services so they can meet our needs?

But it's not just Cameron's Tories -- Labour is even worse! Tony Blair has all of this short-sighted "be nasty to foreigners" badness, with added ID card insanity. They are still pretending that fingerprinting innocent citizens, building a new all-seeing, big brother, national database with files on everyone, and compulsory "voluntary ID cards" for all will somehow help eliminate crime, immigration, terrorism, and rain [1] on bank holidays!

[1] OK - maybe the rainy bank holidays are supposed to be fixed by global warming caused by an ineffective environmental policy.
But the rest is true.

Domain Listing Center Scam

I just received some spam from people calling themselves the "DOMAlN LlSTING CENTER". It described itself as a "final notice" and asked for $75 for what they called "ANNUAL WEBSlTE SEARCH ENGlNE SUBMISSlON".

They are evil spammers, using very dodgy business techniques. Have nothing to do with the folk at:

Domain Listing Center Inc.
8171 Yonge St. Suite# 149
Thornhill, ON L3T 2C6
Canada

What did they do wrong?

1. They spammed me - unsolicited bulk email is one of the curses of today's Internet.
   
2. They used an email address which is only used as the administrative contact for a domain we own, and which has been used for no other purpose. There is no legitimate way they could have got this email address.
3. They tried to trick me (and all their other victims) into thinking this was an actual bill - not just an ad. Be wary of unexpected bills!
   
4. They forged the sending address.
5. They provided a nonexistent "unsubscribe" hotmail address. At least they won't have harvested many email addresses if anyone was daft enough to mail that address.
6. They have failed to commit hugely painful ritual suicide!
   

Bah! Spammers! Hanging's too good for them!

Don't EVER buy ANYTHING from spammers - however much you might want the product. It's the one moron in a million who bites that makes the whole spamming racket so profitable.

Just say no.

Joke alert?

I was shocked when I saw the following article on wikipedia:


Are they taking themselves too seriously? Is it just an American thing? Irony bypass? Too many lawyers?

Maybe it's a deliberately ironic jab at the modern need to provide labels and warnings with everything? We can only hope!

Categorical error

I added categories to this blogger blog a while ago (because they weren't there, and because I thought that some people might not want to read about computing - shocking, I know!). Then I thought I needed an easier way to edit the categories than fiddling with the blog's template, so I wrote a wee script to do all the fiddling.

Unfortunately it didn't seem to work - or so I thought - so I left it for a while. When I came to look at it again, lo and behold, it had been working all along. The template was indeed being updated with the new categories. I'd just forgotten that updating a template on its own was no good - The old pages would still be sitting there, serenely unaffected by any new but unused template. I needed to republish the blog as well. I felt a bit silly.

But it's working now - so I don't feel all that silly :-)

I think I feel a bout of creeping featuritis coming on. Wouldn't it be nice if it could also...

Categorical denial

They said there were no categories on Blogger... (and they were right). So I had a wee think about it, and now there are! Sort of, anyway!

I thought about writing special index pages of my own, neatly categorised. I wasn't sure where I'd host them though. Then I had a better idea - why not add categories to the main page by messing with the template? I could use css styles (like "display:none") to hide the "irrelevant" articles from the categories that are not required, and JavaScript to change the styles around when the blog mode changes.

So I messed a bit with the template, and now you can pick the category of blog you wished I'd write, and ignore all the rubbish I write on other subjects. I've even used cookies to remember from one visit to the next what you want to see, and what you'd rather ignore.

Assigning a category to a new article is still manual, but I'm thinking about that too...

For now, if you want to know how it works, RTFS (read the source, Luke).

Who said there are no free lunches?

There's an interesting event on in Belfast next week! Two major international figures, Richard Stallman (see Wikipedia article) and Bruce Perens (see his site) are coming to the FOSS Means Business conference on Thursday 16th March, in Spires Conference Centre.

In the software and business worlds, this is big!

The conference is on why business and government can and should use Free / Open Source software to meet their needs and save money, where it might be appropriate, and how they might successfully and profitably do that. It's not a sales event - these speakers are not trying to sell you their products. It's more of an explanation of what this free stuff is, how it has already been widely deployed, and how it can help bring wider success in the real, commercial world.

And it's not just anybody talking about it - two of the main figures in the Open Source community are travelling to Belfast, and their complimentary perspectives on Free and Open Source will make for compelling listening for anyone with a business interest - or an interest in the software itself - or even an interest in the ethical and technical challenges that the Open Source movement presents!

If that's not enough, there are speakers from Google, Oracle, the Free Software Foundation Europe, and the Open Source Academy too, to add their perspectives on how it has worked for them, what they plan to do with Free and Open Source, and some of the range of resources available to help.

But what's that about free lunches? Perhaps it's symbolic of the whole free software movement ("Free, as in Speech!", they sometimes say, and also "Free, as in Beer!"). But for registered attendees, there will be a Free Lunch! And due to the unique way this whole Open Source and Free Software community works, registration is free too!

Get on over there - http://foss-means-business.org

Free, as in Lunch!

Thursday 16th March, Belfast. Be there!

Not-so-merry Christmas from Sony BMG

Your PC might just start to behave very strangely this Christmas, thanks to Sony BMG, one of the major (and, it seems, least ethical) record labels. They have released a large number of CDs which install hacker tools on your PC, in an attempt to stop their customers from copying the music. Unfortunately, preventing copying is not all these Sony "CD"s (sometimes labelled Epic or Colombia) do.

When you put an infected Sony CD into your Windows PC, it will sneakily install a range of hacking tools - even if you read the "licence", recoil in horror, and click "Cancel"!

The software will slow down your PC, periodically contact Sony to tell them about your listening habits, and use a "rootkit" to hide itself. And that's only the start. They can use the software later to come along and take over your machine. And if they can, other hackers may be able to as well. What's more, once you have installed this malware, viruses can use it to hide too. There is already one worm doing just that.

Sony BMG claim to have released a fix. To get it, you need to fill in a couple of forms on the web, and agree to receive spam from unspecified companies. Then they will mail you where to find it. Then you get to download it. Unfortunately this fix does not remove the problem - in fact it leaves software that Sony can use to download yet more evil onto your longsuffering PC, whenever they want!

Artists affected include Natasha Bedingfield, Neil Diamond, Billie Holiday, Frank Sinatra, and many more - there are over 50 infected titles in Canada alone, according to Sony BMG. Since they own a number of CD label brands, the CD may not even say Sony on the cover - some Epic and Columbia CDs are affected too.

Be warned!

Sony BMG are supposed to be organising a recall of the spyware CDs, but for some of you it may already be too late.

What can you do? I'll add a few links later (you can Google for Sony rootkit). For now, be careful what you buy people for Christmas. And be careful what you listen to on your PC. And for goodness sake, disable autorun.

Check the Electronic Frontier Foundation's page here for more information.