Comerica joins the crowd of companies who fail to take online security seriously. I would never have believed this unless I witnessed it myself, but my friend Paul showed me this yesterday. Unbelievable. From Paul English: Hackers take notice: if you want to get access to any comerica credit card...
LawLawLaw got a nice writeup in an artice in Law.com by Anthony Paonita about RSS feeds. "A more irreverent look at 'Law, Technology, and Their Intersection' can be found at LawLawLaw (lawlawlaw.com). Clock Tower Law Group founder Erik Heels compiles news on such tech law developments as the battle over...
Dilbert (to Boss): We still have too many software faults. We'll miss our ship date. Boss (to Dilbert): Move the list of faults to the "future development" column and ship it. Boss (thinking): 90% of this job is figuring out what to call stuff. (2004-05-04) (http://www.dilbert.com/comics/dilbert/archive/dilbert-20040504.html)...
GooFresh is my (latest) favorite Google tool. GooFresh allows you to search for the "fresh stuff" by date by automatically creating Julian date strings. (2003-09-12) (http://www.researchbuzz.org/archives/001405.shtml)...
You have probably heard about RSS Readers (also called RSS Aggregators) in the context of weblogs (or blogs). Yes, RSS Readers are a great way to read various blogs to which you subscribe. But what you might not know is that a lot of non-blog sites are publishing content ("feeds")...
I have deleted all of my social networking accounts due to privacy and spam concerns. Your mileage may vary, but as much as I enjoy online networking, there is no substitute for meeting face to face. And there is no denying the fact that the majority of the email I...
Red Hat Desktop is targeted at Microsoft customers currently running Windows 98, NT, and 2000 who are looking at the end of support for their platforms. (2004-05-04) (http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1583814,00.asp) (2004-05-04) (http://www.redhat.com/software/rhel/desktop/)...
TheOpenCD is a collection of high quality Free and Open Source Software. The programs run in Windows and cover the most common tasks in four categories: 1) Office & Design (OpenOffice.org, AbiWord, PDFCreator, GIMP), 2) Internet & Communications (Mozilla, Miranda IM, FileZilla, TightVNC, WinHTTrack, PuTTY), 3) Multimedia & Games (Audacity,...
In the span of a week, Sun called Red Hat "proprietary," and Microsoft said Linux is "not open source." I am certain that the Linux camp -- and Red Hat in particular -- appreciates all of the free publicity. Regardless of how silly it is to call Red Hat proprietary...
As Apple continues to demonstrate that people are willing to pay for digital music, others jump into the game, most notably Sony. Microsoft's DRM technology will enable publishers to "rent" digital music by providing DRM files that "expire" after a certain amount of time. Whether users embrace Microsoft's Janus DRM...
One side calls it piracy. The other side calls it fair use. As one commentator points out, the DMCA does little to prevent large-scale for-profit copyright infringement (e.g. producing bit-for-bit copies of DVDs and selling the copies) and does lots to create the presumption that every use -- including what...
I've been tweaking my style sheet to fix code displayed with the <code> and <pre> tags. But I sometimes use <code> inline as well as blockquoted, and I wanted only the blockquoted version to be highlighted. Here's the snippet of code from my style sheet: code { font-size:110%; } pre...
% echo begin % echo setup mysql database % cd /var/db/mysql % mysql --user=root --password mysql> SHOW DATABASES; mysql> USE my_mt_database; mysql> GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON *.* TO foo@bar.com -> IDENTIFIED BY 'my_password' WITH GRANT OPTION; mysql> GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON *.* TO foo@"%" -> IDENTIFIED BY 'my_password' WITH GRANT...
Get your WiFi just in time for baseball season. Once you've installed a wireless LAN, you'll wonder how you ever survived without it.
Link: The Senate agreed Thursday to extend a ban on taxes on Internet access for another four years, approving a compromise between those who had wanted to make the restrictions permanent and opponents who said they would deny needed revenue to state and local governments....
My kids (10, almost 8, almost 6) now have thier own weblog (Movable Type with MySQL). All of my kids learned how to use computers before they learned how to read. The younger two learned how to read music before learning to read words. They are all bilingual (English and...
BNA's Internet Law News by Professor Michael Geist mentions this USA Today story about how the Missouri Office of State Courts is using pizza delivery lists to locate people who owe fines and other debts. The article notes: "Chris Hoofnagle, of the Electronic Privacy Information Center in Washington, D.C.,...
Tips and tricks I wish I had known when I started using Movable Type.
Link: An avid fan of Pat Benatar has successfully defended a domain name action brought by the management company of the 80s rocker. The panel found that the fan's interest in the [patbenatar.com] name was non-commercial, and that nothing he said was disparaging of Benatar....
Here's another reason why I like Red Hat Linux. Their definition of recursion from the RHEL3 admin guide: recursion See recursion...
Here's a great post from Joel Spolsky on perfectionism: "If I was as much of a perfectionist as some here would have me be, I would never get out the door in the morning, I'd be so busy scrubbing the floors of my apartment until they sparkle and shaving every...
Boing Boing: "Techno File" is a new big-media-blog authored by TIME Magazine writer Eric Roston, described as "a daily commentary on the technology that will carry us through tomorrow -- and the stuff that keeps us stuck in yesterday."...
Ernie has a great post explaining why dissenting court opinions -- and dissenting weblogs -- are valuable: "[T]he dissent doesn't have to tell the whole boring story of the case like the majority opinion does, but it does have to work harder to convince you, which is why it is...
Promote the Progress [J. Matthew Buchanan] refers to this article on design patents: "The article is written toward the use of design patents for computer icons, but also provides a general overview of this form of protection. Used effectively, design patents can be an important part of an IP portfolio."...
Today's Boston Sunday Globe tells the tragic tale of a musician who lost his job due to file sharing and was forced to take a dead-end office job for a do-nothing corporation. It seems that the musician's last CD sold zero -- that's right, zero -- copies because "everyone downloaded...
Installing Red Hat Enterprise Linux WS 3 and Windows 2000 Professional on a Dell Latitude C600 laptop.
Link: PartsExpress.com proudly touts itself as the Net's No. 1 source for audio, video and speaker components -- but on-line shoppers who rely on an optional feature in the Google search engine to block porn sites would never know it. By an accident of spelling, the domain name of the...
This story is a good summary of thehistory of the WASTE project: "WASTE provides a way for you to create secure ad hoc p2p mesh networks with little technical setup and iron clad communications via link level Blowfish encryption and authentication via RSA public key cryptography. It allows secure instant...
This post by Dan Bricklin entitled "Thinking about how to make a living as an entrepreneur software developer" should be essential reading for anyone (like me) who helps entrepreneurs develop business and legal models to protect -- and make money from -- their software. Bricklin discusses the several options that...
Link: Adobe is planning a Linux version of its Acrobat software, for creating, editing, editing and managing PDFs. See also: http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1759,1572051,00.asp...
Link: Twenty years of 'Weirdness,' and he doesn't seem to be slowing down. Pop parodist 'Weird Al' Yankovic has been creating note-perfect spoofs of the best that the music world has to offer. Here's a rundown of his work....
Link: Reciva's reference platform contains a Wi-Fi radio that ties into the home WLAN and broadband connection to pull in Internet radio content without the need for a PC. The unit supports streamed Ogg Vorbis, MP3, Real Audio and Windows Media Audio formats. The sound is beefed up through...
Link: Patent infringement issues surrounding the JPEG image standard resurfaced on Thursday after a small software vendor filed lawsuits against 31 companies ranging from Adobe Systems Inc. and Apple Computer Inc. to IBM and Hewlett-Packard Co....
Link: If you log onto www.skyhighairlines.com, you can plan a trip from Rattlesnake, Fla., to Presque Isle, Maine, for $3,636.40. The journey would take 27 hours and 56 minutes and require changing planes in Juan Tomas, N.M., and Curry, Texas. Making connections could be tricky, so SkyHigh advises passengers to...
Here's an interesting patent (number 6,698,540): Link: James Decker of Jimmyd'z Powered Snowboard Company L.L.C., has just received patent approval for his engine powered snowboard, The Snow CarverTM....
Link: The UN's World Intellectual Property Organisation backed the Grammy-award winning singer in his complaints against eminemmobile.com. It found the domain name had been registered by company Visitair Ltd in a bid to cash in on the famous name - a practice known as cyber-squatting....
Link: A Philippine-based company unveiled software Thursday that would allow Windows-based programs to run on computers using the rival Linux operating system....
Here's a blast from the past from Dell's support pages on how to use Scour.net, the Napster-like file sharing site that (like Napster) was shut down in 2001: "Scour.net is a website that was developed by some college students who created a proprietary technology for finding music, images and video...
An interesting press release from 123 Copy DVD states: "123 Copy DVD is the first product of its kind that allows the user to back-up any movie while remaining compliant with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which was signed into law on October 28, 1998. The bill was originally supported...
Link: It's time to stop the insanity and insist on a better quality of life. Stop drinking tap water. Stop drinking well water. Refuse to touch water from desalination plants. And remember that mountain spring water is a disaster waiting to happen. Do you know how many people and animals...
Today's Dilbert reminded me of The 'Three Full Moons' Clause....
Link: The Second Circuit Court of appeals today issued a ruling that republication on the Internet of quotes from an illegally acquired seminar manual can still be fair use, despite the fact that they were acquired in bad faith. The Court held that while good/bad faith does factor into the...
Adam Sandler wrote a nice song about lots of Jews, i.e. people who are Jewish or one of the Jews.
J. Matthew Buchanan writes: "Is it just me, or does it seem as if China is undertaking a concerted effort to generate some positive press on intellectual property issues?" It's not just you. See also China says it's world's biggest victim of CD piracy (which made me laugh)....
Link: A security researcher has developed a new attack for a well-known flaw in the TCP protocol that allows an attacker to effectively shut down targeted routers and terminate existing TCP sessions at will. The scenario has many security experts worried, given the ubiquity of TCP and the fact that...
Link: Rumor has it that the recording industry is considering yet another tactic in their war on peer-to-peer filesharing: lawsuits against people whose computers act as supernodes....
Congratulations to Stephen M. Nipper, whose blog has been up and running for 100 days. He's asking for feedback from his readers. I read and enjoy the site. My suggestions are 1) add you full name to the home page, 2) write about what you love and the [fortune |...
Link: Mattel Inc.'s Barbie is entitled to copyright protection for her wide eyes, pert nose and bow-shaped lips, a U.S. appeals court said in a ruling that gives the world's largest toy maker more power to block copycats of its bestselling doll. Mattel sued Radio City Entertainment, which runs Radio...
Link: The Neiman Marcus Group, Inc. has filed a domain name dispute to shut down the web sites NeimanCarcass.com, NeimanCarcass.org, and NeimanCarcass.net, which are critical of the company's sale of fur products....
Link: Taking their anti-piracy crusade to the front lines, the music and film industries are set to launch a new technology that will enable copyright holders to better police ISPs or high-volume networks like those on university campuses.... Automated Copyright Notice System (ACNS) ... makes it easy for system administrators...
OK, this is one of the funniest copyright notices that I've seen in a long time. From BuzzMachine by Jeff Jarvis: COPYRIGHT NOTICE: "It's mine, I tell you, mine! All mine! You can't have it because it's mine! You can read it (please); you can quote it (thanks); but I...
Link: The settlement comes roughly nine months after the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Gary Kremen, who first registered the Sex.com name in 1994, had property rights to the stolen domain and that Network Solutions, then owned by VeriSign, was liable for transferring ownership without proper authorization....
My computer keeps hanging, so I've decided to buy more RAM. I was amazed to see how difficult most computer vendors made it to find the right kind of RAM. And then I found a helpful buying guide online: You don't have to know the technical ins-and-outs of the RAM...
Link: The RIAA launched the 'Clean Slate' scheme last September. It offered to indemnify anyone who admitted to sharing music against future lawsuits it might instigate, provided they offered up written testimony that they would no longer share music without the permission of the copyright holder....
Link: We all remember last December's grim news: MP3.com closed its doors, warning thousands of musicians that 'all your content will be deleted from our servers.' However, as the Wall Street Journal reports today, most of the original MP3.com archive was never deleted! Two companies, GarageBand and Trusonic, claiming to...
Link: In light of growing concerns about illegitimate software and Internet patents, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) today announced a new initiative to combat the chilling effects bad patents have on public and consumer interests.... "More and more, people are using software and Internet technology to express themselves," said EFF...
It seems that I've been promoted to "Copyfighter". Thanks, Donna! (Donna Wentworth is a Web Writer/Activist for the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and an affiliate of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School.) P.S. I shall try to use this title for good -- not for...
Link: Virginia-based Media General Communications - claiming that it owns the trademark to "Storm Team" - is demanding that Lafayette television station KATC Channel 3 either stop using the label to identify its weather crew or pay for the privilege....
Link: Coming to beta for Mac OS X on May 1st: a new RSS reader called "Pulp Fiction."...
Link: That was a refrain of most of the bloggers at Bloggercon II, a conference sponsored on Saturday by Harvard Law School's Berkman Center for Internet and Society. But a hot topic was whether blogging would ever become a major source of income for large numbers of people....
From Slashdot: One may now listen and search for Apple iTunes music via this front end or any webserver running the perl script called iTMS-4-ALL... How long do you think it will take for Apple to send a DMCA request?...
One practitioner's struggles with practicing -- while fighting to change -- the law in the dark ages of the Internet.
Link: The rise of Weblogging has been a cold shower for the complacent mass communication industries. Although the Weblogging pioneers are due much praise, their own rhetoric deserves examination, and they could also raise their sights higher. Nico Macdonald reports, and concludes with a radical proposal for the future of...
Here's a good pointer from Patently Obvious about a law review article on claim drafting: George Wheeler has published an article ... that should be read by anyone and everyone doing prosecution work. Unlike most law review articles, the prose is easy to read and the advice is practical. What...
Link: Linspire, formerly known as Lindows, is giving away its desktop Linux operating system for the first time as a way to publicize its name change. According to CEO Michael Robertson, the offer is valid "for the next few days." Users ... can download the software for free by entering...
Here's a press release masquerading as a news story, written by the UK branch of the BSA. The BSA has been noticeably quiet lately. Perhaps the BSA has been staying out of the spotlight becuase the RIAA (music) and the MPAA (movies) have been in the spotlight by suing/insulting their...
Spam on Usenet. Spam in my inbox. Spam on IM (or SPIM). Spam comments on blogs. Spam in referrer logs. And now this. I found levitra-dot-blogspot-dot-com in my referrer logs. Lovely. Spammers with blogs....
The Only Way to Beat Microsoft is by Ignoring Microsoft.
Link: If Microsoft asserts more intellectual property claims under a royalty bearing license, if these claims affect free software, and if Microsoft chooses to uphold its rights and wins, then free software developers would have little option but to stop work under existing open licenses. That's a lot of ifs,...
Link: Carol Kolb, the editor of The Onion, the satirical publication that bills itself as "America's Finest News Source," jokes that the Evening News might not have been too far off-base with its defense.... "People every single day think The Onion stories are real," says Kolb....
