Greetings readers! Many apologies for not blogging for a week! I’ve been working on my graduate school applications to the School of Information Management and Systems at UC Berkeley and the Department of Communication at Stanford. Wish me luck!
I’m back now and I have a huge backlog of cool stuff! Thanks for checking back!
Peter Wiggin has just published his first O’Reilly Weblog: You’ll shoot your iBook out!.
I too, have just bought an iBook (an old one, not even a new hi falootin’ one) and I just love it.
Carl S. Kaplan has written a nice piece for the New York Times polling six prominent law experts about cyberlaw in the year 2001: The Year in Internet Law.
Now’s the time to plan ahead for your hangover remedies!
It just doesn’t make sense to not put such good advice to use!
Oh drat! They don’t really work. (Thanks Cory and Fark.)
Here’s a Wired News interview with Barry Steinhardt, associate director of the ACLU and former president of the Electronic Frontier Foundation:
ACLU Exec Voices Concerns, by Ben Polen.
Is the entertainment industry seriously going to start suing its customers over the same minor acts of piracy it has traditionally condoned for years (making mix tapes for your friends)? Only time will tell.
For the time being, the entertainment industry will continue to use the threat of prosecuting consumers as part of their pitch to sell Congress on the need for hardware with built-in security mechanisms. (Enter the dreaded SSSCA – Security Systems Standards and Certification Act…)
See the NY Times article by Amy Harmon:
Online Piracy Fight: Next Up, Consumers
Here’s a useful article about how to make your weblog more accessible:
Weblog Accessibility, by Andy J. Williams Affleck.
Bio-Rad won’t license its patent for an instant HIV test because it already controls the market on the lousy tests that take two weeks.
I wonder what other technology that could benefit society isn’t being made available to us because some company has decided it can make more money on it later (presumably after more people have been infected with whatever it is a cure for, causing the demand to be higher and the profit margins to be larger).
Open plea to Bio-Rad executives: if you’ve already cornered the market, why not start phasing in the faster, more accurate tests to all of your existing customers? You can charge more for the tests and the demand for them will go way up because people won’t have to deal with the hassle of coming back to get the results. You can still make a fortune, and you’ll get to be the good guys for a change. — Time to make money and help the world…
See:
Patent owners stall fast HIV test:
Long wait for results cuts effectiveness in fighting disease,
by Geeta Anand for the Wall St. Journal.
“…simple, fast HIV tests, which are commonly used in
dozens of other countries, aren
I just bought a new book (well the book’s not new, but my copy will be 🙂 :
The Media Equation:
How People Treat Computers, Television, and New Media Like Real People and Places,
by Byron Reeves and Clifford Nass.
After I bought the book, I nosed around the Cambridge University Press website a bit and realize they have a lot of great titles.
Top Ten Crooked Cop Do’s and Don’ts:
#1 — Be careful not to use copyrighted materials when tampering with your video evidence!
Swedish TV-channels SVT and TV4 are jointly pressing charges against the police for violating copyright restrictions as a result of falsifying evidence by using and manipulating sequences taken from both channels.
This article from the InterActivist Info Exchange has the full story and direct links to all of the video footage in question:
Swedish Cops Fake Video Evidence in Gothenburg Prosecutions & Face Copyright Infringement Claims .
hydrarchist writes: “According to yelah.net, Swedish Police have been accused of copyright infringement by two national television stations. The allegations arose subsequent to a documentary screened last week on the alteration of evidence in a trial against a demonstrator who was shot and seriously injured during the European Union Summit in Gothenburg this summer. The 19 year old youth, Hannes Westerburg, was prosecuted for rioting offenses and convicted last month.
The incident was captured by a number of video cameramen on the scene. Both prosecution and defense received the materials on tape. As the video footage documenting the shooting of Hannes Westerberg did not adequately support the police’s version of events, they manipulated the evidence, creating a montage which made it appear that a sole rioter was in fact part of a mob. They also replaced the sound track with audio recorded elsewhere to once again give the impression that Westerberg was part of a large and threatening crowd. State justification for the shooting rests upon the claim that it was necessary in order to protect an injured policeman from further attack, a claim squarely refuted by the evidence.This manipulation was chronicled in a documentary on Swedish television last week, which included interviews with the Belgian videographer who shot the most comprehensive footage of the incident (in English). He confirms that the audio track has been altered. The TV program is available in its entirety on the web, with the interview appearing towards the end of the second segment.
http://www.svt.se/granskning/video/2001/1106/gbg2.ram.