While the campus prepares for the visit of the two presidential candidates, students have already gotten started on the fall election. the College Democrats, MSA, and Free Culture are co-sponsoring a campus-wide voter registration initiative, modeled on the popular CUAssassins game that every year afflicts students with amusingly high levels of paranoia. Teams of students will compete to register as many students as possible, with the overall goal being "100% registration of the entire freshman class, and anyone else who isn't registered." The three teams with the most registrants receive "significant cash prizes."

The clubs have partnered with well-known off-campus organizations such Rock the Vote, HeadCount, Mobilize.Org, and the League of Women Voters. Dems Lead Activist Jenna Hovel also told Bwog that members from many other campus political groups, including CQA, BSO, and the Asian-American Alliance, are involved, though the boards have not officially co-sponsored it (yet). Frankly, though, Bwog just wants to see the Assassins-esque "kill stories."

To register your team, e-mail ac.cudems@gmail.com.

Free theater is one of the many perks of a being a Columbia student. Camino Real is an opportunity to see the work of young professionals that should not be missed. The final two performances are today at 2pm and 8pm at the Riverside Theater on Claremont and 120th St.

As Janis Joplin puts it:"Freedom's just another word for nothin' left to lose." And without a doubt there's a bit of "Me and Bobby McGee" in Tennessee William's Camino Real, now being performed at the Riverside Theater Columbia. But instead of wailing out the blues of a broken heart, Williams casts the Camino Real's wayward denizens in a shroud of obscurity. Tony Speciale's direction, however, gives Williams' elliptical script an innovative, new spirit.

The performance capitalizes on the surreal setting of the original script — a ghost town somewhere south of the border, haunted by the bygone dreams and achievements of its residents. Even though the Camino fosters its inhabitants illicit cravings, a desire to escape binds them all. The stage, imaginatively designed by Russell M. Schram, divides between the Siete Mares, a seedy resort, and the Ritz Men Only, a flophouse that seems more appropriate for Amsterdam's Red Light district than the work of a Southern Gothic.

Free Culture at Columbia has come out with some pretty cool stuff in its brief history: the Core on Flash drives, CULator, this gem of a protest video. Now, under the guidance of founder Brendan Ballou, they've transcended the Columbia plane and gone global. Allied with One Laptop Per Child (OLPC), Ballou and co. are set on helping to distribute free mini-computers to children in the developing world. And, you know, possibly influencing the course of human communications and history.

OLPC, which was founded at MIT in 2005, has created small, cheap ($130 each), super-durable laptops (called "XOs"...see photo) that feature internet access, a camera, music and art software, word processing, a phone, and a host of other useful tools designed for the use of kids aged 6 to 12. The computers connect on a local network and have the capacity to link up globally, bringing kids world-over face-to-face through their screens. Columbia's Free Culture chapter, with the help of several grad students and J-Schoolers, contributed one of the more exciting software applications ot the project-- a built-in template for news articles that will allow kids to publish their reports to a blogging system on the network or even print their own homemade newspapers.

Ballou said he envisions a world where young people are describing their own lives in place of, say, BBC reporters. To OLPC, he added, the micro-tech of the laptops is akin to developments in microfinance-- it gives increased agency to the disenfranchised. Ultimately, OLPC hopes to spread the computers across the globe; currently, the education ministers of Ecuador, Uruguay, Argentina, Brazil, Libya, Nigeria, and Rwanda are signed on to finance the project in their countries, with more (possibly even the U.S.) expected to join.

-KER

Free Culture at Columbia--the group that showed you how to hide from CUIT--is now handing out another 250 of its high-price-defying flash drives loaded with public domain versions of all the Lit Hum and CC texts.

You're not going to miss this this one, 2011--thousands of dollars saved and a movement joined (although it's up to you whether or not to risk your teacher's ire for getting different translations). Get them Tuesday at 2:30 PM in Butler 203.

Meanwhile, anyone been studying up for Lit Hum final?

In case you don't regularly frequent the world of tech-geekery, pay a visit: there's some crazy shit going down in freedom-of-informationland. Bwog freelancer Kate Redburn summarizes.

It seems Columbia students aren't the only ones having trouble with copyright law.

Yesterday, there was an internet revolution on Digg.com, the popular website-rating site, over the "digging" of an HD-DVD decryption key (see BBC coverage here). The 32-character key--now the subject of its own facebook group--allows unauthorized access to DVD content, and Digg complied with a request to take down the popular post. They also deleted several accounts which had posted the key. However, the users overrode the site's administrators, continuing to angrily post the key. The site finally capitulated. In a post to the Digg blog, co-founder Kevin Rose wrote:

"But now, after seeing hundreds of stories and reading thousands of comments, you've made it clear. You'd rather see Digg go down fighting than bow down to a bigger company. We hear you, and effective immediately we won't delete stories or comments containing the code and will deal with whatever the consequences might be. If we lose, then what the hell, at least we died trying."

So far, the Digg community has won. The main page is covered with key pages, and articles related to the incident. Will May 1st be known for something else from now on?

1. Free Culture Columbia, the rabble rousing group that brought you online privacy, is now saving you freshmen a lot of money: a little piece of plastic loaded with $300 worth of CC texts in the public domain (that's pretty much everyone but Foucault, who's still under the thumb of publishing companies). On Thursday at 3:00 PM in the Wallach 10 lounge, FCC (haha!) will give away flash drives to the first 100 lucky first-years who show up. If you've taken CC, stop by anyway for free cookies and a speech on technology and the lawin education by Head Librarian James Neal.

2. The helpful and tech-savvy folks over at ESC have come up with a way for you to get your entire entourage (that is, more than four people) into graduation, as long as there are enough kids who feel nice enough to give theirs away. May Pareto optimality result.

3. Spectator's photo/lit magazine, 116, is looking for poetry, creative writing, and photography! E-mail submissions to 116magazine@gmail.com, or drop off prints or negatives for scanning at the Spec office (2875 Broadway, 3^rd floor).

If you haven't had the chance to swing by their table for the cookies, stickers and flyers of information out on College Walk today, Free Culture @ Columbia is currently launching CU-LATOR, its new (and cleverly titled) software through its website.

Basically, CU-LATOR is a program designed to encrypt web activity on your computer so that it stays out of the sight of Columbia administration. Although the FCC software is being launched in response to the RIAA attacks, Free Culture founder (and B&W editor) Brendan Ballou tells us via e-mail that it's not about file sharing. "I don't download music -- in fact, a suprisingly small percentage of our club actually does," Brendan claims. "We're really just paranoids, who don't like the idea that Columbia can see what websites you go to, and that that information can be so easily shared with outside organizations like the RIAA, or the government. It's our belief that whether or not you've got something to hide, we all have the right to privacy."

Another interesting bit of information is that CU-LATOR is actually built off software used by Chinese dissidents and is the first of its kind to be used on a college campus, giving possible leeway to a national model of the program. Unfortunately, the software is not available for non-Apple users although one of the club's summer projects include designing a version for PC.

In the meantime, Apple kids should check it out -- you just might thank yourself for it later.

- MIP