Our third annual Golden Turkey Awards; An impressive photo-archiving tool

* Backspin: Our third annual Golden Turkey Awards * Gearhead: An impressive photo-archiving tooly * The past 7 days on Gibbsblog

Backspin: Our third annual Golden Turkey Awards

2005 has been a great year for Golden Gobblers, which is to say, those individuals, companies or entities that don’t, won’t or can’t come to grips with reality, maturity, ethical behavior or social responsibility because of their blindness, self-imposed ignorance, thinly veiled political agenda, rapaciousness and greed, or blatant desire to return us to the Dark Ages.

To read this week’s Backspin in full, please go to: http://www.networkworld.com/columnists/2005/112105backspin.html?nl

Gearhead: An impressive photo-archiving tool

Last week we were discussing how we were trying to set up an online photo gallery and how we wound up writing some code to generate the XML data file that was required by the Flash-based gallery system we took a liking to for the project. 

To read this week’s Gearhead in full, please go to: http://www.networkworld.com/columnists/2005/112105gearhead.html?nl

The past 7 days on Gibbsblog:

The Golden Turkey awards

Every year, you, my faithful readers, get to vote on the Golden Turkey, “individuals, companies or entities that don’t, won’t or can’t come to grips with reality, maturity, ethical behavior or social responsibility because of their blindness, self-imposed ignorance, thinly veiled political agenda, rapaciousness and greed, or blatant desire to return us to the Dark Ages.” This year, you have eight nominees. Read all about them, then vote and discuss here.

http://www.networkworld.com/community/?q=node/3650

How to make money with a Web site

I know that many of you have Web sites and want to know how to make the big time (financially speaking). The answer is simple : You need to be a middle school student, create a site that criticizes your school, and attend Maple Place School in Oceanside, New Jersey where they apparently have never studied the constitution.

http://www.networkworld.com/community/?q=node/3645

Sony BMG may have violated copyright!

In a curious twist of the Sony BMG DRM rootkit fiasco it now appears that the Sony BMG DRM system violates the license of LAME, an open source mp3-encoder!

http://www.networkworld.com/community/?q=node/3627

What does Google know about you?

Apparently quite a bit. An item in the Search Engine Facts newsletter published by Axandra in late May detailed what services gathered what data. I’ve boiled down the item’s findings to …

http://www.networkworld.com/community/?q=node/3617

Interview with Sam Curry, CA re: Sony BMG DRM 

Following my Network World Backspin column “Is Sony’s CD DRM malware?” (also see “More on Sony’s rootkit”) I got the chance to have a telephone conference with Sam Curry, vice president of eTrust Security Management for Computer Associates.

CA researchers analyzed the Sony DRM software and concluded that: “The media player that Sony ships with the CD is spying on the user, sending the IP address and listening habits back to Sony and potentially to Sony partners, without notice, consent, or choice.” In other words, the Sony BMG DRM system is spyware!

It turns out that there’s even more wrong with Sony’s DRM than stealth installation and reporting on the user. We had such an interesting conversation that I asked whether we could recap by e-mail and expand on a few of the themes for Gibbsblog. Here’s our e-mail exchange …

http://www.networkworld.com/community/?q=node/3596

DRM will never work 

Sony’s misguided digitial rights management (DRM) solution — discussed at length in Backspin (see last week’s column “Is Sony’s CD DRM malware?”  and this week’s “More on Sony’s rootkit”) is definitely not acceptable to consumers — at least to those who took part in a recent on-line poll by the antivirus firm Sophos.

http://www.networkworld.com/community/?q=node/3591