The great jazz instrumentalist and widow of John Coltrane died on Friday. She was best known for her work on three instruments: harp, Wurlitzer organ, and piano. Link to Wikipedia bio, and here is her website. News coverage: One, two (Thanks, Dirk). Here's an interview in The Wire from 2002: Link.

I can't find any good video footage or sound samples online, but this experimental short on Google Video by an Icelandic filmmaker uses one of her most beautiful compositions, "Journey In Satchidananda": Link. "Blue Nile" is my all-time favorite, favorite track of hers, from this album, a very brief sound clip on this NPR feature page: Link. Amazon has some short clips from that same record here: Link.

Reader comments: Dubpulse blogged,

What many a New Age musician fails to do, she did. These are truly cosmic jazz orchestrations, perhaps overshadowed by her husband's work (...) Tonight I'll imagine they're both in some star-jewelled interstellar realm improvising with thousand-eyed, multi-limbed deities of light. John's saxophone riffing on the curvature of space, and Alice twinkling harp melodies with shards of time.

David Alexander Mcdonald writes,

Yet more sad news. One of my most treasured vinyls is the double LP REFLECTIONS ON CREATION AND SPACE, and I'm equally as attached to my CD copy of PTAH, THE EL-DAOUD. It's sublime music, deeply spiritual jazz with a cosmic current to it. It's rather sad that her music hasn't been accorded the sort of reissue and remastering treatment that her husband's work has received.

Dirk says,

Get yourself a copy of World Galaxy for heavenly string arrangements even better than "Blue Nile." :-)

A Pentagon official has called for a corporate boycott of law firms that represent Guantanamo detainees. He thinks that if you've been accused of conspiring to undermine democracy that you should be denied your democratic right to counsel, to prove how great democracy is. It's demo-crazy.

Charles "Cully" Stimson, the deputy assistant secretary of defense for detainee affairs, said in a radio interview last week that companies might want to consider taking their business to firms that do not represent suspected terrorists...

Stimson listed the names of more than a dozen major firms he suggested should be boycotted.

"And I think, quite honestly, when corporate CEOs see that those firms are representing the very terrorists who hit their bottom line back in 2001, those CEOs are going to make those law firms choose between representing terrorists or representing reputable firms," Stimson said...

Stimson also described Guantanamo as "certainly, probably the most transparent and open location in the world" because of visits from more than 2,000 journalists since it opened five years ago. However, journalists are not allowed to talk to detainees on those visits, their photos are censored and their access to the base has at times been shut off entirely.

He discounted international outrage over the detention center as "small little protests around the world" that were "drummed up by Amnesty International" and inflated in importance by liberal news media outlets.

Link (Thanks, Thomas!)

The excellent Security Now podcast just aired an interview with Peter Guttman, the security researcher who wrote the celebrated "A Cost Analysis of Windows Vista Content Protection" (this is the paper whose "executive executive summary" read simply, "The Vista Content Protection specification could very well constitute the longest suicide note in history").

Guttman has really dug into the crazy extremes that Vista -- the next version of Windows -- goes to in order to restrict how you use high-definition video. The operating system has been essentially rendered useless by a set of deliberately introduced malfunctions. For example, the if your computer detects erroneous data in its registers, or voltage fluctuations (both of which are typical of PCs whose parts have been manufactured by dozens of companies), it will restart major subsystems, hanging up while it flushes all your data -- just in case those errors were part of a hack-attack on the system.

Vista is a disaster. Microsoft is so desperate to get the entertainment industry locked into its platform that they'll destroy themselves to get there. This is an operating system that, when idle, will have to check itself every 30 microseconds to make sure nothing is still happening, and no hackers are attacking it. It acts like an unmedicated paranoid. If Vista catches on, hundreds of millions of computers will be burning heptillions of cycles and tons of coal just making sure that no one is putting a voltmeter on the traces on its motherboard.

And those are its good points.

And what it means is that so many aspects of our PCs, which have been fully documented, been public domain, been anyone could develop a display card, for example, that’s no longer the case. If you’re going to have any foot in this next-generation game, you have to sign up and apparently pay hefty license fees just to participate. And if you don’t get certificates, which are subject to spontaneous revocation, if you then subsequently misbehave, or in fact I read one of the AACS organization documents said that you could be revoked if you failed to pay your annual dues.

Link

See also:
Great information-security weekly podcast
Windows Vista: Suicide notes, nerdcore rap MP3

Back in 1969, some pranksters at NASA inserted scanned images of three Playboy centerfolds (on fireproof plastic paper!) into the little checklists the Apollo 12 astronauts took into space.

[Apollo 12 crew member Pete] Conrad got Miss September 1967 Angela Dorian ("Seen any interesting hills and valleys?") and Miss October 1967 Reagan Wilson ("Preferred tether partner"). [Al] Bean got Miss December 1969 Cynthia Myers ("Don't forget — Describe the protuberances") and Miss January 1969 Leslie Bianchini ("Survey — her activity").

Conrad told us in 1994: "I had no idea they were with us. It wasn't until we actually got out on the lunar surface and were well into our first moon walk that I found them." Bean recalled: "It was about two and a half hours into the extravehicular activity. I flipped the page over and there she was. I hopped over to where Pete was and showed him mine, and he showed me his."

Link to Playboy.com blog entry, and there's more background here at NASA.gov: Link. (via newsonthemarch)

Video Link (12 minutes). The metadata reads, "Microsoft sent this tape to retailers to explain the benefits of Windows 386. Boring until the 7 minute mark when the production is taken over by crack-smoking monkeys." (Thanks, FishNChimps)

A 40-year-old substitute teacher faces up to 40 years in prison after being convicted of exposing children to pornography on a computer at the Connecticut middle school where she taught.

I suppose it's remotely possible the charges are valid. But the story doesn't add up. It seems far more plausible from the accounts I'm reading that this woman, who had no prior criminal record and a clean teaching history, was using an insecure edition of Internet Explorer and was hit with an adware infestation she didn't know how to deal with.

Some reports indicate the teachers at this school were prohibited by policy from turning off school computers, which would answer the "why didn't she just shut down the PC?" questions. Amero testified that she told four other teachers and the school's assistant principal about the popup problem, and nobody responded with help. The school's internet filter license had expired, and the detective in the investigation was quoted in one local paper's account as saying "there was no search made for adware, which can generate pop-up advertisements". So if that's true, and the arguments of the defense are valid -- wow, 40 years in jail for using a lame browser? Insane. That's more time than some convicted murderers get.

And beyond the question of what constitutes justice for Ms. Amero, how might this ruling affect other teachers using computers with children? Will some teachers limit their use of technology in the classroom, fearing greater liability risks if porn they didn't ask for shows up on an unsecured, school-owned PC?

Snip:

Julie Amero, 40, of Windham, was convicted Friday on four counts of risk of injury to a minor in connection to pornography the students saw on her computer screen. Prosecutors said sexually graphic computer images she accessed were seen by several of her Kelly Middle School students in October 2004.

During the trial, Amero said any inappropriate images on her computer screen were from adware, which can generate pop-up ads and not from sites specifically keyed. Prosecutor David Smith contended Amero physically clicked onto the graphic Web sites, which included meetlovers.com and femalesexual.com.

Link to AP item. Amero is scheduled to be sentenced on March 2.

More coverage: Norwich Bulletin, Link; Slashdot, Link; broadbandreports.com, Link; sunbeltblog, Link. (thanks, Walter Hooper)

Ben Edelman's blog has a good entry on how adware infestations work -- in particular, the kind that generate sexually explicit content: Link.

Previously on BoingBoing:

Internet Explorer was unsafe for 284 days in 2006

Reader comment: Jonathan says,

I'm not sure if you noticed this: the Norwich Bulletin article had a VERY troubling quote on it -- the prosecution used an expert witness that said a highlighted link was proof that the accused had clicked on the URLs.

That is simply not true. The expert witness is either lying or a fucking idiot. Visited links are highlighted if a browser had ever loaded a URL-- I've yet to find a browser that highlights visited links on a "source | destination" basis -- every one i've ever encountered highlights links on "destination" alone.

I made a quick demo over here to illustrate my point: Link.

Technocrat says,

I'm the Technology Coordinator for a school district in Illinois, and would like to point out that if the school's internet filters are expired, they no longer are in compliance with the Child Internet Protection Act. This makes them ineligible for federal funding for telecommunications/computer monies (including 20-90% discounts on specific network/servers/internet connections under the E-Rate program, not to mention being held liable as an organization for anything exposed to minors.) Since we're currently in the e-Rate window for 2007-2008, an admission that they don't have proper internet filters very well could make them ineligible for e-Rate, which translates to a very sizable amount for any school. If they apply for e-Rate anyway (and part of the process is guaranteeing that you comply with CIPA), they can be kicked out of the program!

In any case, the school is required to have filters by law and in order to be eligible for e-Rate, so if they let the filters expire, they're going to have quite the mess on their hands.

Brett Osborne says,

I'm a certified information security professional. From the Norwich Bulletin article, I also see obvious problems with both "experts" for defense and the detective.

Of course I haven't seen the transcript. But there appears to be significant factual problems.

I've found the defense lawyer's information on FindLaw.com.

During the time frame of the alleged offence, one only needs to go to any antivirus company list, bugtrack, microsoft technet security, or any of about 25 other sites that I use to show the state of windows (patches, SP, etc.) and malware in the wild. This is simple (very) forensic reconstruction.

I doubt that Amero should have been charged let alone convicted. The fact that there was no up to date anti-virus/anti-spyware alone tells me that it was not a question of if it was an infection/intrusion.

And the apparent fact that the licences were allowed to expire would be significant enough to remove any culpability from Amero. If anyone were to be culpable, I would believe that the school administration should be at fault (this is a moral and ethical judgement, not a legal one). Isn't it the protection of the children their responsibility?

Lorne Ipsum blogs,

[Friday, January 12th 2007 was] the 100th anniversary of the birth of a giant of space exploration -- Sergey Korolyov (sometimes also transliterated as Sergei Korolev).

For much of the 20th century, Korolyov was the prime driving factor behind the Soviet space program. He led the efforts to launch Sputnik, put Yuri Gagarin into orbit, and hold up the USSR's end of the race to the moon. Yet during Korolyov's life, even his existence was a Soviet state secret -- he was only ever publicly referred to as the "Chief Designer." After his death, he finally received some recognition for his accomplishments, yet many parts of Korolyov's life and work were more rumor than fact until after the collapse of the USSR.

Link to geekcounterpoint blog post and podcast. See also this BBC News article: Link, and Agence-France Presse item here: Link. Image: Sergei Korolyov at the Kapustin Yar firing range in 1953.

See also a piece by BB pal Gareth Branwyn about Sergei Korolev for Discovery's (long dead) "Dead Inventors" column: Link

Image (via Wikipedia): "Some of the claimed 'famous trademarks' in Stoller's Rentamark.com site when it was online." Anonymous internet chronicler says,

Remember Leo Stoller? He's the "intellectual property entrepreneur" who threatened to sue anyone who allegedly infringed his "famous trademarks," especially the word "stealth."

He hasn't had the best time of it since the last BoingBoing article, so here's a recap of his illustrious career:

Charged and fined in illegal fund solicitations for 9/11 victims (charities he listed said they never got any money).

Lost a trademark case where he claimed software maker Centra 2000™ infringed his "Sentra" trademark. Stoller filed corporate bankruptcy in an attempt to avoid paying after losing.

Got a smackdown from Columbia Pictures after threatening to sue them over the title of their film Stealth.

Sued Hall-of-Famer George Brett for selling a Stealth™ brand baseball bat. The judge found for Brett's company and cancelled Stoller's trademark registration in that category.

In 2006, the US Patent and Trademark Office's Trademark Trial and Appeal Board sanctioned Stoller for filing 1,100 extension requests in 5 months for trademarks he was opposing. He can't file any more for two years. The real legal beatdown came at the hands of Pure Fishing, Inc., maker of Spiderwire® Stealth™ and other Stealth™ brand fishing gear. Stoller went after them and they fought back. Hard.

Link to video (it's a scene from "The Killers," 1964). I'm still looking for the other YouTube clip where Werner Herzog punches out George Bush. (Thanks, Jason Wishnow)