Rush Limbaugh in Serious Condition at Honolulu Hospital – KHON2.com
KHON2 has learned that conservative radio host, Rush Limbaugh was taken from the Kahala Hotel in an ambulance just after 2:40 p.m. Wednesday.

Sources say the 58 year old was suffering chest pains before the ambulance arrived.

EMS confirms a male was taken from the hotel in serious condition.

He is a guest at the Kahala Hotel and Resort.

The Hawaii republican party says Limbaugh was in Kona on the Big Island two days ago.

No other information was available on his condition.

We’ll have more information as it becomes available.

Deepak Chopra, SFGate.com, Nov. 30, 2009

“The perils of skepticism”

If you’ve ever used Google Alert, you know the jolts it can deliver. Whenever anyone in the blogosphere decides to blow a poison dart your way, Google is happy to deliver the news, along with the more positive mentions, of course. Most of my stinging darts come from skeptics. Over the years I’ve found that ill-tempered guardians of scientific truth can’t abide speculative thinking. And as the renowned Richard Dawkins has proved, they are also very annoyed by a nuisance named God.

Statistically, cynical mistrust is correlated with premature sudden death from cardio vascular disease. Since the skeptics who write venomous blogs trust in nothing, I imagine that God will outlive them. In the interests of better health, these people should read scripture, or at least a poem, twice a day. Doctor’s orders.

I’ve debated skeptics, including Richard Dawkins (I spoke with Dawkins for over 90 minutes on camera in Oxford. He extracted 30 seconds from the dialogue and dubbed me the enemy of science.) and am amazed that they mistake self-righteousness for happiness. A sort of bitter satisfaction is what they reap. No skeptic, to my knowledge, ever made a major scientific discovery or advanced the welfare of others. Typically they sit by the side of the road with a sign that reads “You’re Wrong” so that every passerby, whether an Einstein, Gandhi, Newton, or Darwin, can gain the benefit of their illuminated skepticism. For make no mistake, the skeptics of the past were as eager to shoot down new theories as they are to worship the old ones once science has validated them.

It never occurs to skeptics that a sense of wonder is paramount, even for scientists. Especially for scientists. Einstein insisted, in fact, that no great discovery can be made without a sense of awe before the mysteries of the universe. Skeptics know in advance — or think they know — what right thought is. Right thought is materialistic, statistical, data-driven, and always, always, conformist. Wrong thought is imaginative, provisional, often fantastic, and no respecter of fixed beliefs.

So whenever I find myself labeled the emperor of woo-woo, I pull out the poison dart and offer thanks that wrong thinking has gotten us so far. Thirty years ago no right-thinking physician accepted the mind-body connection as a valid, powerful mode of treatment. Today, no right-thinking physician (or very few) would trace physical illness to sickness of the soul, or accept that the body is a creation of consciousness, or tell a patient to change the expression of his genes. But soon these forms of wrong thinking will lose their stigma, despite the best efforts of those professional stigmatizers, the skeptics.

OK, maybe he’s just a self-righteous douche.

Today the case has officially become a three-ring circus. According to a Swedish newspaper, the judge who was assigned to investigate the conflict of interest has now been removed – due to her membership in the same industry organizations.

Which begs the question: is every judge in Sweden a member of these groups? And if not, why do the ones who are keep getting this case?

On a lighter note, the Pirates have come up with a beautifully petty and vindictive way to handle their fine of 30 million kroner fine: micropayments. They’ve asked their supporters to send payments of a single krona each (about 13 cents US) to the law firm representing the the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI). Since each transfer after the first 1000 will cost the law firm 2 krona to process, it’s like fining the plaintiffs in reverse. Evil genius in action.

Meanwhile back in court, the removal of the latest judge has kicked the review over to three other judges, hopefully none of whom have any outside interest in intellectual property issues. Court of Appeals president Fredrik Wersäll expects that decision may come “in a maximum of a few weeks”.

Swedish Association of Copyright (SFU) - This discussion forum that holds seminars, debates and releases the Nordic Intellectual Property Law Review. Other members of this outfit: Henrik Pontén (Swedish Anti-Piracy Bureau), Monique Wadsted (movie industry lawyer) and Peter Danowsky (IFPI).

Swedish Association for the Protection of Industrial Property (SFIR) - The judge sits on the board of this association that works for stronger copyright laws.

.SE (The Internet Infrastructure Foundation) - Tomas Norström works for the foundation that oversees the .se name domain and advises on domain name disputes. His colleague at the foundation? Monique Wadsted. Wadsted says she’s never met Norström although they have worked together.

Ironically, during the trial it was the judge, Tomas Norström, who was responsible for ensuring that the trial was fair and that the lay judges did not have conflicts of interest. In fact, one of the original lay judges in the case had to step down due to his involvement with a music rights group.

“Three lay judges were appointed,” said Judge Norström one week before the trial. “On a question from me to the lay judges on whether they had any involvement in copyright associations or similar, or if they are or have been artists one of them answered Yes.”

That lay judge was removed. Now many are asking why the judge didn’t think the same should apply to him.

Following this news, there have been loud calls for a re-trial. Considering that this judge was responsible for throwing out all technical evidence and focusing only on intent, making the case considerably easier for prosecutors, it is absolutely necessary. And this time, how about a judge without copyright group connections?

Three days later, Mashable backs me up with this:

One of the claims from those defending and supporting The Pirate Bay in the recent trial (but also other similar sites), is that the entertainment industry is suing something that’s not much different from a search engine. Using Google’s Custom Search Engine, someone has created a Google based torrent search engine.

The idea is not by any means new; you could do this before by using certain types of queries (simply adding “filetype:torrent” to your query works), but it’s a nice time to spotlight the fact that yes, you don’t really need sites like Mininova or The Pirate Bay to find torrents; you can simply use Google which crawls thousands of torrent tracker sites, big and small, and get direct links to torrents. Want a screener of current hit, X-Men origins – Wolverine? Use this Google query and you’ve got it.

Is Google, then, the next in line to be sued for copyright infringement, or assisting in making copyright content available? If it weren’t too big to be sued, it probably would be.

So the Swedes didn’t do anything Google isn’t doing. Their real crimes? First: being honest about it. Second: being cocky, and giving the finger to the recording and motion picture industries. Third: being small and weak enough to be a target.

Yes, the entertainment industry is losing money to file sharing. Not as much as they claim, but some unquantifiable amount. To respond to the problem by having people thrown in jail is only to make them even more hateable, and further remove any remaining moral clarity from the question of whether to “steal” from them. And they only make matters worse by using file sharing as an all-encompassing excuse for their own sins – such as the undeniably low quality of their products year after year, price-gouging, ripping off the artists who supply their wares, cartel-style collusion, manipulating the public into repeatedly buying the same product…to name just a few. 

Most people have already rendered their verdict. The entertainment industry has been judged guilty, and now they’re paying the damages.

Peter Sunde: Guilty
Fredrik Neij: Guilty.
Gottfrid Svartholm: Guilty.
Carl Lundström: Guilty.
Each received 1 year in jail and $905,000 each in damages.

All four will appeal the decision.

The court said that the four were aware that copyrighted material was being shared using The Pirate Bay and that they made it easy and assisted the infringements. It categorized the infringements as “severe”. The judge said that the users of The Pirate Bay committed the first offense by sharing files and the four assisted this.

Roger Wallis, who spoke in favor of The Pirate Bay at the trial, noted “This will cause a flood of court cases. Against all the ISPs. Because if these guys assisted in copyright infringements, then the ISPs also did. This will have huge consequences. The entire development of broadband may be stalled.”

Editorial note: you can find the same torrents in many other places, including Google. Presumably employees of Google will now be subject to fines in Sweden for torrents they list. Presumably the Swedes will also hold Google responsible when it lists pages containing libelous content, bomb-making instructions, hate speech, etc. etc.

The bottom line: this was a political prosecution, backed by powerful interests. It will be appealed, and hopefully higher courts will hold themselves to a higher standard – a legal standard perhaps. The Pirates are not perfect, but in this case they are right.

I know what you’re thinking: that wasn’t real, was it? Take a look at this one and see if you believe it yet:

Desktop Fireworks from Saqoosha on Vimeo.

I’ve tried it, and it’s real. All you need is a printer and a web cam.

It’s called Augmented Reality, and if this doesn’t achieve World Domination, I don’t know what will. The commercial applications are endless, and I think we can safely predict that soon you’ll be seeing this everywhere. Any technology that can be used by both the military and the porn industry has a very bright future indeed.

Here’s that implementation by GE from the first video, promoting green energy:

http://ge.ecomagination.com/smartgrid/#/augmented_reality

How about a 3-D interactive greeting card? Well, here’s a start:

FLARToolKit Demo from Ryan Stewart on Vimeo.

Wait until Hallmark gets their hands on this.

The technology is called FLARToolKit, and it appears to have been invented by someone named Saqoosha (that was him in the last video) at Spark Project. It’s apparently just a brilliant use of existing technologies to make something very impressive. Actually from a technical standpoint, it appears remarkably simple:

http://saqoosha.net/en/flartoolkit/start-up-guide/

The commercial license was released on Monday, and I for one hope Saqoosha makes a fortune.

I know you want to try this now, so go here:

http://www.strafwerk.nu/ar/

Oh, and you can even do this without a printer – just draw a square on a piece of paper and go here to prove it:

http://saqoosha.net/lab/FLARToolKit/2/

So, as Stephen Colbert might ask: cool, very cool, or coolest thing ever?

The case was filed over a year ago by various industry groups on behalf of heavyweights including BMG, EMI, Sony, Universal, Columbia Pictures, 20th Century Fox, and Warner Bros. This was serious business: the prosecution was seeking to reclaim more than $100 million in damages and the defendants were facing two years in prison and fines of up to $180,000 each, on top of the damages. 

So how are four men with 22 million raucous supporters faring against some of the biggest media companies and industry groups in the world?

Well, it’s not over yet, but one thing is for sure: these are four cocky bastards. And whether you see them as swashbuckling Swedish freedom fighters or lowlife copyright busters, you’ve got to acknowledge their brass balls.

The Pirates have faced many battles before, with raids on their facilities, and Danish and Italian courts ordering those country’s ISPs to block access to the site. But with 22 million active users, the Swedes aren’t going down without a fight. The area around the court had been turned into a circus, with groups of the site’s supporters broadcasting, Twittering and blogging every second of the proceedings, organizing buses for supporters to picket the courthouse, and even the spectacle of a brass band in the street – probably not a common sight in Stockholm.

A few minutes of this hour-long video will give you a taste of the spectacle (partially in English):

The Pirates went in with a pirate attitude, blogging and giving interviews in which they denied responsibility for the actions of the site’s users, laughing off the charges, and mocking their foes – though in the courtroom they sometimes seemed more like frightened children. Still, on day two of the trial the mockery was justified, when half the charges against them were dropped, due to flaws in the prosecution’s evidence.

The part of the case relating to “assisting copyright infringement” was withdrawn, leaving the site’s founders and investor to face charges relating to “assisting making available” the tools for copyright infringement. Unfortunately for the prosecution, they found they could not actually prove that the torrent files used as evidence were even related to the Pirate Bay – in fact some of the images of torrent files shown to the court clearly stated they had no connection to the Pirate Bay.

Bringing charges against a torrent site without understanding how the technology works? Oops.

An industry lawyer put on a brave face, stating “It’s a largely technical issue that changes nothing in terms of our compensation claims and has no bearing whatsoever on the main case against The Pirate Bay.”

One week later, the prosecution settled on a new approach: skirt around the technical complexities of the site’s activities, and try to prove something more general. They again altered the charges, this time excising most of the technical aspects, and trying to focus on proving the Pirates were complicit in facilitating copyright infringement generally. 

The obvious question: how many times can you alter the charges in a Swedish criminal trial?

On February 26th, with the the charges now presumably fixed, the industry took a slap from defense witness Roger Wallis, a songwriter, record company founder and Research Fellow at Gothenberg University. Wallis testified that the financial losses to piracy claimed by the industry were grossly exaggerated (previously in the trial an industry bigwig had laughably tried to claim that downloaders would otherwise have purchased every single music track they had downloaded). Wallis infuriated the prosecution by stating that the record labels and film companies were attacking a “never before seen transfer of resources from intermediaries like record companies to the creators themselves”.

Never call out a middleman for being a middleman. It is only his invisibility that makes his livelihood possible.

The proceedings were twice suspended when things got overheated. The industry lawyers attacked Wallis’ credentials – in response he offered to whip out his resumé. In the end, the judge asked whether Wallis required payment for testifying as an expert witness. He said no, but that he would accept flowers for his wife. 

Pirate supporters watching worldwide via webcast immediately launched web sites and Facebook groups in support of Wallis, and his home was deluged with flowers. 

At the end of the day’s proceedings, the prosecution sank to another low, dragging out two unrelated criminal cases against the Pirates. One was accused of having participated in a drunken burglary as a youth, another charged with possession of small amounts of drugs found during a Pirate Bay raid in 2006. On the bright side, no one was accused of child molestation.

At one point during the trial, according to one of the defendants, the Pirate Bay site went down for several hours, and surely to the prosecution’s chagrin, he managed to get it up and running again – while sitting in the courtroom.

On Monday, prosecutor Håkan Roswall called on the judge to send each of the defendants to jail for one year each. Roswall estimated that the site rakes in between five and 10 million Swedish Krona per year – to which defendant Gottfrid Svartholm asked: “Where are my 10 million kronor, please? I want them, where are they?”

On Tuesday, the trial closed after two and a half weeks, with judgement scheduled for April 17th. Meanwhile, both sides headed out to the court of public opinion. Industry group IFPI issued laughable press releases warning that if labels weren’t protected from the likes of the Pirate Bay there would be no new music to pirate anyway. Sure.

At a press conference Tuesday, after closing arguments, one of the defendants stated ”it’s quite obvious which side is the good side.” A conviction, he said, would “be a huge mistake for the future of the Internet.”

Asked what was next, he responded: “I think we’re going to go party.” 

To be continued…

Addendum: Updates from the Pirates at http://trial.thepiratebay.org.