New AIM (AOL Instant Messenger) Terms of Service

Via Slashdot comes news of AOL's updated AIM Terms of Service. I took interest in this bit, it seems to imply (to me, uneducated as I am in the ways of the Internet) that AOL claims the right to intercept and repurpose any communications transmitted over AIM: In addition, by posting Content on an AIM Product, you grant AOL, its parent, affiliates, subsidiaries, assigns, agents and licensees the irrevocable, perpetual, worldwide right to reproduce, display, perform, distribute, adapt and promote this Content in any medium. You waive any right to privacy. You waive any right to inspect or approve uses of the Content or to be compensated for any such uses.

Now, I use Trillian which is a multi-protocol chat client, and includes an encryption bit. I don' t know whether the encryption bit is end-to-end or if it's end-point to AOL to the opposite end-point. However, I'm going to be looking now for a chat/IM application that doesn't require an intermediary to connect two or more clients.

And yes PDF, I know about GAIM, I'll look into that as well

New on the strip: Museum

In Wired News: Museum Stirs Atomic Age Memories, Wired covers the opening of the Atomic Testing Museum in Las Vegas, NV. Over 100 atmospheric tests were conducted by the U.S. (unclear if that's in the continental U.S. or worldwide) out of over 1000 tests overall.

The museum traces a half-century of nuclear weapons testing in a nation that grew to love or hate the bomb. It describes developments that let scientists peer into the first millionth of a second of a nuclear blast before instruments vaporized, and it charts research that continued after earthshaking explosions ended in 1992 at the test site.

The museum is criticized for glossing over the effects of testing on a group called the Downwinders, people who lived in the fallout zone, places like St. George, UT.

Thomas remembers a fine ash falling like snow across St. George. When fallout warnings sounded, her mother would don an old straw hat, pull on rubber dish gloves and tie a dish towel around her own mouth to pluck laundry from the outdoor drying line.

New Order Ringtones via Digital Posters

Via engadget comes news that New Order is using Bluetooth enabled posters to transmit ring tones based on tracks from their new album Waiting for the Sirens Call: New Order Pioneers Digital Posters:

Shoppers in HMV stores in London and Manchester will have the opportunity to check out the band’s upcoming album, Waiting for the Sirens Call in digital interactive posters. The posters, designed by Hypertag, can beam song clips, photos and ringtones directly to fans’ cell phones. The posters, using infrared and Bluetooth technology, send data straight to fans’ phones, eliminating network charges to either fans or the band’s label.