The reaction from the Stanford audience: lukewarm. Attending professors noted social engineering & legal issues as preventing proper crime enforcement rather than lack of collaboration. What was not said is that the primary reason for working with universities is to obtain access to their student databases in order to catch hackers. The first order of business from the talk was an audience query: "Is anyone here a protester? We heard protesters might show-up." No protesters came, but it was a lively debate. :: posted by Sarah, 4:15 AM |
Thursday, January 30, 2003
The reaction from the Stanford audience: lukewarm. Attending professors noted social engineering & legal issues as preventing proper crime enforcement rather than lack of collaboration. What was not said is that the primary reason for working with universities is to obtain access to their student databases in order to catch hackers. The first order of business from the talk was an audience query: "Is anyone here a protester? We heard protesters might show-up." No protesters came, but it was a lively debate. :: posted by Sarah, 4:15 AM |
Wednesday, January 29, 2003
"Live from the Blogosphere!" brings together six innovators in blogging: Mark Frauenfelder, Heather Havrilesky, Evan Williams, Susannah Breslin, Doc Searls, and Tony Pierce. The panel will discuss the birth of blogging, the emergent tension between blogs and traditional journalism, innovations in blogging such as video-blogging, audio-blogging, and mobile-blogging, the shifting roles of race and gender in the Blogosphere, the state of the blog economy, and the way blogs may be reshaping contemporary media.:: posted by Donald Melanson, 11:28 PM |
Tuesday, January 28, 2003
ha[ve] never knowingly allowed or promoted copyright infringement as it cannot control or monitor user behavior.
(thanks to Tony Frederick) :: posted by Bryan, 6:15 PM |
As we move to an appliance model of computing, something like a TiVo [digital video recorder] can become the place to store one's digital data--rather than a PC, which from a consumer point of view gets sick with viruses all the time, is in an inconvenient location in the house and is constantly going obsolete. As we go to an appliance model, it's much, much easier to control users' behaviors. I think we may look back and see the PC as an anomaly--how strange to run anything ending in ".exe." You don't normally get to write your own software for your coffeemaker or for your refrigerator or your lamp or your television or your VCR. So as we go to an appliance model that gives people more stability and predictability and longevity, I think we're going to lose the anarchic quality currently associated with PCs and the Internet.
(via Copyfight) :: posted by Bryan, 11:23 AM |
Sunday, January 26, 2003
Representative Joe Baca (D. Calif.), who introduced the original bill, plans to widen the scope of the new bill to include not just retailers, but cyber cafes as well. :: posted by Donald Melanson, 5:21 PM |
Saturday, January 25, 2003
Friday, January 24, 2003
:: posted by Bryan, 11:50 AM |
It just feels good knowing that you can watch great Hollywood movies without having to worry about the profanity, nudity and gory violence (Clear Play)
Thursday, January 23, 2003
(from the OJR) :: posted by Bryan, 10:00 AM |
Tuesday, January 21, 2003
"Under Verizon's reading of the act, a significant amount of potential copyright infringement would be shielded from the subpoena authority of the DMCA," Bates wrote. "That would, in effect, give Internet copyright infringers shelter from the long arm of the DMCA subpoena power, and allow infringement to flourish."
As a result, ISPs could become involuntary allies in IP-owners' quest for copypirates.
This decision comes during a wave of IP owner victories, from the Supreme Court's upholding of copyright term extensions to a ruling allowing Australian and South Pacific islands-based Kazaa to be sued in American courts.
(via Politech) :: posted by Bryan, 9:03 PM |
Lessig suggests a new law, requiring IP holders to pay a small fee to keep their works out of the public domain.
Doc Searls argues that the decision stems in part from a gap between two language systems in the copyright debate: one for access, another about ownership:
Watch the language. While the one side talks about licenses with verbs like copy, distribute, play, share and perform, the other side talks about rights with verbs like own, protect, safeguard, protect, secure, authorize, buy, sell, infringe, pirate, infringe, and steal.
This isn't just a battle of words. It's a battle of understandings. And understandings are framed by conceptual metaphors. We use them all the time without being the least bit aware of it. We talk about time in terms of money (save, waste, spend, gain, lose) and life in terms of travel (arrive, depart, speed up, slow down, get stuck), without realizing that we're speaking about one thing in terms of something quite different. As the cognitive linguists will tell you, this is not a bad thing. In fact, it's very much the way our minds work.
But if we want to change minds, we need to pay attention to exactly these kinds of details.
Some support the Court's decision, arguing that private property is a good that should be allowed to pass down to posterity, and that the public domain is both rich and expanding. :: posted by Bryan, 3:01 PM |
Monday, January 20, 2003
It's a problem for every laptop owner. To find a bag that looks as cool as your computer. Until relatively recently, most notebook bags stuck to the same basic design, suited more to the business room than a coffee shop. In the last few years, messenger bag makers, and others, have come onto the scene with bags that are functional but don't look like a briefcase. One company that got my attention was Chrome Industries, makers of rugged and stylish messenger and DJ bags. They were kind enough to send me a Sputnik3 bag for review.
The bag can be worn either over the shoulder or as a backpack, thanks to some hidden backpack straps. Unlike a messenger bag, the Sputnik is only as wide as an average notebook computer (there's about 2" to spare with my 12" iBook in it). Which is great for most users, but you'll be out of luck if you have to carry anything larger with you. The interior compartment has a padded insert for your laptop, which can be removed to use the bag for more general purposes. There's also two zippered pockets on the outside with plenty of room for cables, Game Boys, PDAs or other toys, plus a cell-phone pocket on the end of the bag. The exterior is made of vinyl which, while I haven't tried to beat up too much, seems to hold up well in day-to-day use.
Perhaps unwisely, I stuck an Apple sticker on the outside. Sure, it looks great, but it also tells everyone what I have inside. But it should also tell you that I liked the Sputnik enough to use it as my everyday notebook bag. And I don't think I can give a much higher recommendation than that.
The Sputnik3 laptop bag retails for $80 at chromebags.com and is available in light or charcoal Silver. :: posted by Donald Melanson, 2:42 PM |
Wednesday, January 15, 2003
The decision is a victory for intellectual property holders, who lobbied hard for the act.
The decision is a defeat for those agitating for copyright reform in the digital age, including Lawrence Lessig, who argued for the Act's revision or repeal, and Tim Eldred, a public domain Web publisher.
(via, in many ways, Lawrence Lessig) :: posted by Bryan, 11:47 AM |
Monday, January 13, 2003
"Given that ... (Kazaa) software has been downloaded more than 143 million times, it would be mere cavil to deny that Sharman engages in a significant amount of contact with California residents," Wilson wrote. Also, he said, "many, if not most, music and video copyrights are owned by California-based companies."
This could well be a "dangerous precedent" for global technology litigation.
(via Dan Gillmor) :: posted by Bryan, 1:37 PM |
Friday, January 10, 2003
/. approves. There's also a Creative Commons interview with the author. :: posted by Bryan, 11:21 AM |
Wednesday, January 08, 2003
Networks are rendered as interactive graphs, which lend themselves to a variety of transformations. By engaging their visual image, a user is able to navigate through large networks, and to explore different ways of arranging the network's components on screen.
(via Search Engine Watch News) :: posted by Bryan, 1:10 PM |
Friday, January 03, 2003
:: posted by Bryan, 11:49 AM |
Thursday, January 02, 2003
(via FOSblog) :: posted by Bryan, 7:17 PM |