Pretty interesting: Apple and Stanford teaming up to put lectures, symposeums, etc online for audio consumption.

On the one hand this is great because it open sources knowledge. Good move by Standforf. Hopefully other universities follow suit, and someone sets up an independent service to aggregate and rate the content so that people can skim the cream for distance learning. Dunno how Apple's DRM would affect these kinds of second-generation uses, but hopefully people will hack around it where needed.

More colleges and educational institutions should get on this bandwaggon. I could see some really interesting educational work being done here. By the time I have adolescent kids it could be a whole new ballgame. Pretty exciting.

On the other hand, the marketing edge is pretty consumer-elitist. "Your classes are iPod ready!" Though I suppose anyone who's going to Stanford probably has a computer and probably an iPod too.

Bumped, because someone did something awesome:

Well, like I say, the kids are allright. CNN story. Link via Zack.

Now for some unhappy news. Google KowTows to the Great Firewall of China, taking steps to censor its search results (and presumably all it's other services) for it's Chinese-language version. Leading american corporations continue to prop up a repressive regime in the name of profit.

In light of the fact that China's Communist Party maintains control through a stranglehold on information as much as through brute force (they're a very 21st-Century autocracy), this is also worth noting: the White House is witholding any documentaion of its response to Hurricane Katrina, and will not make time for any staff to testify before Congress. Yeah, because, you know, what your King President did in response to a cataclysmic natural disaster is, like, none of your business. He has the divine right executive priviledge.

Oh well, it's not the end of the world. I was reading last night about young reform-minded people in Iran, how far up shit creek they are. These are people who are my age and younger, being followed around by paramilitary police, getting dragged out of their houses at night and tortured in secret prisons, all just for wanting to be journalists and maybe question the the unquestionability of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei. Poor bastards.

Though on the other hand: T-Franks says WMD attack == Military Government, which would probably suck ass. That link goes to the wingnuttarific NewsMax, so be forewarned.

As I noted below, a security researcher in Florida did a proof of concept hack on a Diebold voting box. Diebold's response:

Diebold has publicly denounced the Leon County tests as being invalid. In fact, the vendor contended that Leon County Elections Supervisor Ion Sancho's decision to sponsor the hacking attempts were potential violations of licensing agreements and intellectual property rights. In a letter to Sancho on June 8, Diebold said Sancho had committed a "very foolish and irresponsible act."

This is fucking rediculous. The integrity of a democracy cannot be the "intellectual property" of a private corporation.

The WaPo Reports:

Four times over the past year Sancho told computer specialists to break in to his voting system. And on all four occasions they did, changing results with what the specialists described as relatively unsophisticated hacking techniques. To Sancho, the results showed the vulnerability of voting equipment manufactured by Ohio-based Diebold Election Systems, which is used by Leon County and many other jurisdictions around the country.

This is the work of a state employee who's tasked with maintaining ballot security. He's showing that vote-hacking is emminantly possible. Maybe if enough of these sorts of stories get out, election officials will fix their systems before this fall's balloting. However, I still think the threat of a widespread "hack the vote" activist effort would spur them to get their rears in gear.