The last space shuttle mission will take place pretty soon, and after that mission, the shuttles are all destined to be stored in museums (and not sent to destroy asteroids headed for Earth). Here are a few more programs for continuing to explore space.

• Here's a brief video tribute to the space shuttle program. Disposable space vehicles, FTW? [url]
• Space enthusiasts seem to be looking forward to more deep-space missions now. Settlement missions sound like exciting programs.. for our great-grandkids. [url]
• The European Space Agency is scheduled to have a re-usable autonomous spacecraft in 2013. Robots want to return to Earth, too. [url]
• China has plans for its own space station set for 2020. It'll be a bit smaller than Mir or the ISS, but it's also supposed to be compatible with ISS modules in case other countries ever want to dock with it. [url]
• To discover more links on space exploration, check out what's floating around in StumbleUpon universe. [url]  

By the way, StumbleUpon can also recommend some good Techdirt articles, too.

Forget "three strikes," according to some folks, there are ISPs using only a single claim of copyright infringement to kick people off their network. Reader Dez submits a story of a woman who apparently lost her ISP account after the Entertainment Software Association (ESA) sent a single complaint about copyright infringement on her account -- a claim which she insists is bogus:

And then today I get a call from whoever last bought our account saying that they turned our Internet connection off because they received a notice from the Entertainment Software Association that claimed that we had pirated software.

...which is funny because the only thing I have torrented in the past year is Ubuntu. You know, Linux. Freeware Linux.

Needless to say she's not happy. She apparently called the ESA, and they didn't seem to believe her:

And also, fuck the Entertainment Software Association and your phone guy who didn't want to believe that wardriving is a real thing or that perhaps one of our neighbors was using our wifi while I didn't have our router locked down (while setting up the PS3 on the network), or even when it was (it's really not that hard to hack a router).

Now, obviously, this is just one side of the story, but it does seem troubling that an ISP might be kicking people off with no apparent recourse after a single accusation (not conviction) of copyright infringement. Has this happened to anyone else?

In noting that the Entertainment Software Association (the ESA) had hired the RIAA's VP in charge of its litigation strategy, we wondered if the ESA was going to ramp up lawsuits against customers. After all, over in the UK, there's been news about law firms suing hundreds for file sharing games. But, in the comments, someone pointed to an interview with the boss of EA Sports, Peter Moore, saying that he doesn't think it's a good idea to follow the RIAA's litigious path:

"I'm not a huge fan of trying to punish your consumer... I think there are better solutions than chasing people for money. I'm not sure what they are, other than to build game experiences that make it more difficult for there to be any value in pirating games."

Of course, he also does make some other comments that suggest he very much views it as an "us vs. them" sort of thing, rather than looking for potential win-win solutions:

"We absolutely should crack down on piracy. People put a lot of blood, sweat and tears into their content and deserve to get paid for it. It's absolutely wrong, it is stealing."

That's a bit of a mixed message, but at least it sounds as though EA is not anxious to sue its customers -- and, of course, EA is a major member of ESA, so hopefully it can help keep ESA away from going down this path as well. The next step would be starting to figure out ways to set up better business models that use so-called "piracy" to the company's advantage. Those will come eventually. In the meantime, though, how sad is it when it's newsworthy that an entertainment industry exec says he doesn't think suing customers is a good idea?

You would think that anyone taking an objective look at the RIAA would recognize what a complete disaster the organization has been over the past decade. It's fought off every new innovation in the marketplace (remember, it tried to kill off mp3 players as illegal), alienated a huge number of its biggest customers and failed to do much to actually get the industry in a position to capitalize on new distribution and promotional methods created by the internet. In other words, it's done plenty to hurt the industry while doing almost nothing to help it. You would think that might make folks in similar organizations think twice about hiring execs from the RIAA, but perhaps not.

The Entertainment Software Association -- basically the RIAA for video game companies -- has apparently hired a high level RIAA exec. And not just any high level exec, but the guy who was in charge of the RIAA's disastrous litigation efforts. The ESA hasn't been as widely reviled as the RIAA or MPAA (or even the BSA), but it has had its run-ins with folks in the past. And, of course, it was just about a year ago that the ESA's boss was whining that he wished more countries copied the DMCA. No wonder Davenport Lyons is having a field day suing people for file sharing video games. It appears that the video gaming industry is looking to follow in the footsteps of all the RIAA's mistakes.