Sony “Hacker” Raises Legal Defense Money In 18 Hours

The Escapist has a cool piece on PS3 hacker Geohot, who asked for and quickly received money from the internet in his defense against Sony:

Geohot, aka George Hotz, firmly believes that he has done nothing wrong. When he and the hacker group known as fail0verflow posted the PS3 rootkey online, allowing saavy consumers to install any operating system on the game console, he was not breaking any laws because he paid for Sony’s hardware and doesn’t have to follow their EULA. On his website Geohot claims that Sony is trying to use his case as a warning and has a team of five lawyers ready to rake him in court to send a message to other hackers. He also points out that other hackers have lost court battle not because they were wrong but because they lacked the money to mount a defense. When pressed with legal fees beyond his means, but a large amount of internet celebrity, Hotz’s only recourse was to ask the masses to donate to his cause. Geohot may have underestimated the number of people who support his fight against Sony, as he received enough money for the first phase of defense in about 18 hours.

When your enemies (AKA your CONSUMERS) are able to easily raise money from an anonymous public to fight you, in a case where they’re trying to make your product more useful, you’re doing it wrong.

Why Dwight from ‘The Office’ Is Wrong About the Body’s Immune System

Salon has a cool new column debunking health myths in pop culture. The first target? Dwight Schrute:

What’s wrong with this picture?

The first problem with Dwight’s take on the hygiene hypothesis is that he is confusing immunity against infection with protection against allergies. The second is that by the time you’re old enough to eat phlegm-drenched toast for breakfast, it’s too late to confer ironclad immunity against infection or allergy, because you need to develop it in early childhood. (Perhaps, in his toilet-side collection of medical journals, Dwight confused the hygiene hypothesis with a recent study showing that infants and toddlers in daycare who get sick a lot tend not to get sick as often once they hit kindergarten and beyond. Details, Dwight. Details!).

The biggest problem, though, with this pop culture view of the hygiene hypothesis is that in two decades of research since Strachan first made his comments, things are turning out to be far more complicated than anyone imagined. In short, research is showing that exposure to some bugs and allergens at an early age can protect us from allergies, while others do the opposite, triggering your body’s immune system to go haywire and exacerbate allergic symptoms. Why one trigger would protect while the other irritates our bodies probably has everything to do with how our immune system reacts and is regulated, though many details are still beyond our scientific grasp.

Detroit to Close Half Of Its Public Schools

A sad reminder that sometimes there are bigger funding needs than Robocop statues:

State education officials have ordered Robert Bobb to immediately implement a financial restructuring plan that balances the district’s books by closing half of its schools, swelling high school class sizes to 60 students and consolidating operations.

Arrested Development

Kay S. Hymowitz, on how 20-something men are kinda sucky at being men (via Maria Popova):

Not so long ago, the average American man in his 20s had achieved most of the milestones of adulthood: a high-school diploma, financial independence, marriage and children. Today, most men in their 20s hang out in a novel sort of limbo, a hybrid state of semi-hormonal adolescence and responsible self-reliance. This “pre-adulthood” has much to recommend it, especially for the college-educated. But it’s time to state what has become obvious to legions of frustrated young women: It doesn’t bring out the best in men.

/Filmcast Encouragement

I really appreciate it, guys.

What Went Wrong with Borders

Edward McClelland has a nice retrospective on how Borders lost its soul:

Borders ended up caught between the variety of the Internet and the intimacy of the independents. Its outlets could never stock as many books as Amazon. Nor could they duplicate the native flavor of the corner bookstores, with their local author readings and folk music nights.

A Random Dude in Massachusetts

There’s a lot that’s encouraging and amusing about the fact that Detroit was able to raise enough money to erect a Robocop statue in 6 days. But my favorite bit in this NYTimes story is how this whole thing began:

The unusual fund-raising effort sprang from a question posed to Detroit’s mayor on Twitter last week by “a random dude in Massachusetts,” who proposed that the city celebrate “RoboCop” the same way Philadelphia does “Rocky,” according to the project’s Web site. The first-term mayor, Dave Bing, replied: “There are not any plans to erect a statue to RoboCop. Thank you for the suggestion.”

Hey! I’M a random dude in Massachusetts too! I can only hope that one of my off-handed tweets ends up one day capturing the nation’s imagination.

What It’s Like To Let Down Humanity

Legendary Jeopardy! contestant Ken Jennings writes on what it’s like to lose to a machine (via Linda Holmes):

Indeed, playing against Watson turned out to be a lot like any other Jeopardy! game, though out of the corner of my eye I could see that the middle player had a plasma screen for a face. Watson has lots in common with a top-ranked human Jeopardy! player: It’s very smart, very fast, speaks in an uneven monotone, and has never known the touch of a woman. But unlike us, Watson cannot be intimidated.