RonVitale

AT&T Documents: NSA Spying on Americans

It's not often that I'm impressed. This morning Wired released documents to the public concerning AT&T's working with the NSA to spy on Internet traffic. Wired put together and article that lists not only all the details, but they also put up, in PDF format, the entire document.

Former AT&T technician Mark Kelin opens up by saying: "I wrote the following document in 2004 when it became clear to me that AT&T, at the behest of the National Security Agency, had illegally installed secret computer gear designed to spy on internet traffic. At the time I thought this was an outgrowth of the notorious 'Total Information Awareness' program which was attacked by defenders of civil liberties. But now it’s been revealed by the New York Times that the spying program is vastly bigger and was directly authorized by president Bush, as he himself has now admitted, in flagrant violation of specific statutes and Constitutional protections for civil liberties. I am presenting this information to facilitate the dismantling of this dangerous Orwellian project."

This is big news. Not only are the allegations damning to what the American government is doing to its people, but Wired has decided to move forward and release the documents to the public. If you want to know why Wired released the documents, be sure to read their explanation.

I'm getting a bit tired of the American government claiming that it's in the "best interest" of its citizens that spying and wiretaping take place to help "fight terrorism." Granted, I don't have all the facts, but after reading the AT&T documents that Wired has put forth, I want to know more. I want our privacy to stop being breeched and for the American government to be held accountable. There's a difference between fighting terrorism and protecting our country. Dare I say that United States government has crossed the line? I'm extremely happy that these documents have been released and I want to see them spread like wild fire.

I usually talk about writing and playing Magic, but I'm an American citizen and I'm concerned. Take a moment to read the documents and question. There's a lot of spooky stuff going on behind the scenes and I want it to stop. Have a good day.

Vagueness

I walked into my local comic shop today during lunch and saw that on their 27” widescreen plasma hanging on their wall that they were playing a show that looked familiar. I recognized the British guy on the screen and I realized that the owners of the store were showing the latest episode of Doctor Who Confidential. Russel T. Davies was talking about the “Rise of the Cybermen” episode that just aired on the BBC last weekend. Amazing how modern technology (BitTorrent) allows for people to download TV content from thousands of miles away and then play it back here in the States. Years ago, back in the ‘80s, I remember how difficult it was to see a Doctor Who episode that had not aired here yet. Typically, a hardcore fan would make contact with someone over in the UK, have them send him a VHS tape that was recorded in the PAL format and then the fan would pay to have the tape converted over to the NTSC format so that it would play here in the States. I still remember being about 14 years old, sitting on a hardwood floor, watching a crappy copy of a Colin Baker Doctor Who episode. But we all loved it just the same! Now a fan just fires up BitTorrent and downloads the episode directly to a computer and outputs the video to a TV. I’m glad to hear that Warner Brothers is going to try and experiment and release 200 films via BitTorrent technology late this summer. Sure, it’s not in the format that fans want (who wants to pay $20 for a download that you can only play on your PC and that has DRM attached to it?), but it’s a small step in the right direction. I recently read that over 60 million people have downloaded movies in the last several years. That’s a lot of people!

I’ve talked about the wave of the future before and it’s coming. Anyone can see it. Whether companies are smart and embrace the technology or try to ignore it will be the interesting thing.

In other news, I recently heard an interview of Tracy Hickman on the “I Should Be Writing” podcast If you’re a writer and would like to hear more about how Tracy Hickman came to be a famous writer of 58 books and what his thoughts are of the writing process, definitely take the time to listen to the 45 minute podcast. I believe the interview was one of the better ones that Mur has created for the show. There’s some extremely useful information there (“don’t quit your day job!”). Ha. I had to laugh at hearing that one. Very funny stuff.

As for writing and such: I have some interesting things in the works. I don’t know if I can pull off what an editor has requested, but it would be rather cool if I could. I’m being a bit vague on purpose. As for The Magic Sock, I’m waiting to hear some more information and see if I can move things forward. No rush on this. I’d rather take some time to relax and see what comes out of the situation. Again, I’m being vague on purpose. I just want to get some ideas out on paper and see where they go. I’m not ready to talk more in depth about what’s going on behind the scenes.

Have a good day!

Wacky Pic and Working

What the heck is this?  It's one of the first pictures that my son took.  I let him hold our digital camera and I made a face and he snapped the picture.  I thought I'd share it so that readers of my blog would have something to laugh about.  Yep, it's goofy!

What have I been up to today?  Well, it rained really, really hard this morning and at about 5:30 a.m. lightning and thunder woke us up.  Unfortunately, my son was scared from the thunder and he woke up crying.  I convinced him to go back to bed and--boom!--another bolt of lightning hit close and the resounding boom scared all of us.  He started crying again so I went into his room, picked him up, and brought him to our bed.  He went back to sleep for a little bit and then I went off to get ready for work. 

I went early this morning to go vote (in my state there were the primary elections.  The winners of this vote will be in the major election in November).  The bad news is that I went to the wrong vote poll this morning (since we moved, the location as to where we vote changed).  The good news is that I took my son to vote with me tonight and it's very close to our house.  Nice!  Let's just say that I'm really hoping some good change in our elected officials comes in November.

After work today, I was able to get an article out in the mail to a magazine and I also sent another article to an editor who I've worked with in the past.  I've logged in my articles and, at present count, I have the following out in the mail: 6 fiction stories and 4 articles.  I also have two queries out in the mail for some freelance writing work.  That's not that bad.  I'm hoping that some good news comes from all of this hard work.  Tonight I'm going to give myself off and relax.  I'm beat.

I also have some interesting happenings occurring with The Magic Sock.  I'm hoping to have some news to announce soon.  We shall see.  Have a good one!

Skype

Some very interesting news: Until the end of the year, Skype is allowing you to make free calls to landline or mobile phones within the US or Canada. Not only is this great news for people who want to make free long distance calls, but I’d like to try and experiment with using Skype for the Magic Sock. I’ve wanted to do a “live” show with a co-host for some time now and having the ability to use Skype and call a normal phone might work out well. Of course, I need to perform some experiments to see if the recording of the conversation works well so I don’t want to get too optimistic about this, but it is interesting information.

I am continuing to plan the next episode of the show, but I am still having problems with MTGSalvation in their running episode 14 of the show. There was a mix-up and now I’m not sure if the episode will run next Friday. Most likely, I’m going to pull support of their site because it’s not worth the effort. I do find it surprising though that they’re dropping the ball on this. But I guess I understand: From their point of view, they have enough content that they receive for free and they want to have input on the content itself. Again, I do understand, but I’m not going to worry about it.

I want to keep focusing on my freelance writing as well as trying to have other articles published in which I make money. Where does the Magic Sock fit in? I’m not sure. I have some ideas on ending the show or changing to a new show, but at this stage in the game I’m just keeping ideas open. It’s all too soon to tell at the moment. For the amount of time that I’m spending on The Magic Sock, I could have written a piece where I’m getting published and earned some money. I have to take that into consideration. The Magic Sock has been a one-man show for some time and I have ideas about other alliances—I just don’t know if any of that is going to pay off or work out. From having produced/created 14 shows, I now know what to expect. Honestly, my favorite shows have been the audio only. At the moment, the video compression rates for a show 10-15 minutes is still too high. Users aren’t big fans of downloading such large video files. And my hope that people would use iTunes has not become a reality. The most popular download of an episode is the large 640 x 480 .avi file. Not many people are downloading the iTunes 320 x 240 .m4v version. What’s most frustrating is that a standard doesn’t exist. Even on popular video podcasts, there are usually 2-3 different versions of the same show. Wouldn’t it be nice for a standard to come out so that you can easily download the show, put it in a universal player, subscribe there, and just have the same type of format for all shows? I mean a mp3 is a mp3. All the podcasts that I listen to are in mp3 format. But I’ve seen video podcasts as m4v, avi, wmv, and mov—it’s all over the map. I’m even seeing more shows be produced in Flash format.

The problem, at the moment, is that the first adopters are putting lots of content out there and viewers don’t have the time to sort it all out. With The Magic Sock, you have the problem of: Seeing the video is great, but the file sizes are just too damn large. And the production time for a video show is usually 3 times as long as a mp3 (audio only) format. When I put together a mp3, I can add music, sound clips, and put together a nice quality show. But with the video, it’s not that simple. It’s much more complicated and the technological barrier keeps people from seeing the show. I’m still amazed at how many people don’t know what Divx is. Now I’m talking about people who are geeky and who play Magic. I was a bit surprised to learn that Divx was something new for them and they just wanted to go with a normal Windows Media Player file. At the moment, no decisions have been made. I’d still like to do the show but I have visions on where I want the show to go and I don’t have the expertise to do it. Again, I’m working on that aspect, but it’s either not going to work out or it’s going to take time. Have a good one!