|
 Thursday, February 12, 2004
Free wireless at Pittsburgh International Airport. Pittsburgh International Airport has recently provided free wireless LAN in its food court and is expanding the service to all of it's gates. "We are the only airport in the country, and one of two in the world, to offer this as a free service to the traveling public," says the airport's IT manager Mr Tony Gialloreto.The article also looks such intiatives in the hotel industry and the benefits of providing a free wireless service.
Free-For-All Access To Wireless LANs [Smart Mobs]
Man, I was just there but I never took out my laptop ecause you have to pay at airports. I'll check next time. 5:18:50 PM 
|
|
How Reuters Spun Trippi. Techdirt offers this astonishing report on how Reuters spun Joe Trippi's etcon speech
(Thanks, Ross!) The notes from the blogging attendees say Trippi called the campaign a "dot com miracle", and yet Reuters claims Trippi said the internet "hobbled" the campaign. These differing accounts of the same exact speech don't match at all - and it certainly looks like Reuters is the one doing the spinning here, taking a few quotes here and there out of context to make their point. With the bloggers' notes, you can see the context of what's being spoken about, and the Reuters report gives none of that. I'm not one who believes that bloggers are a "threat" to journalism, but the contrast here shows a perfect (if a bit scary) example of just how easy it is for the press to spin things to make their point. [Smart Mobs]
Onereason new technologies can allow truth, or some semblance of it, to get out. 50 people writing about their view of a discussion are much mreo likely to be closer to a true repesentation of what was spoken than a single writer with their own agenda. 5:17:33 PM
|
|
Politicians Don't Mind Copyright Infringement When It Works For Them. While House and Senate elected officials have made big deals out of the importance of intellectual property, it hasn't been on the radar screen of the Bush/Cheney administration... or has it? NBC got angry that the campaign released an online commercial for the President using footage from an interview done on NBC. The campaign insists they've done nothing wrong. Does that mean they're supporters of "fair use"? Chances are they've never actually thought about the issue, and this is yet another case of politicians who would push for more stringent intellectual property laws, while making sure to ignore them themselves when convenient.
[Techdirt]
What is even more outrageous is that apparently changes were made in the audio of the copyrighted telecast to make Bush sounds better. But since it involves politics, and the government can really hose NBC if it wants to, I do not see anything changing. 5:01:00 PM
|
|
|
:BQ"Quick Summation Of Why Software Patents Don't Make Sense. Wired is running an interview with Pamela Jones, who has been doing an amazing job analyzing every SCO misstep over at GrokLaw. If you follow the case at all, you're likely to be familiar with the site. The interview, though, focuses on what she's going to do with the site once the SCO mess goes away. It's clear that she's not going to stop, but is gearing up to take on other intellectual property messes (which will continue to come, fast and furious). The reason I'm posting this, though, is a great quote from her concerning the problem of patenting software: "With time I expect that as tech savvy-ness increases in the judiciary, and it will, someone will notice that software is just math, creativity and math, and patenting 1 + 1 = 2 will eventually set us up to where only the owners of that and similar patents can write software. Meanwhile the rest of the world will move ahead in development, while the United States is stuck in the mud because no one can write 1 + 1 = 2 without crossing somebody's palm with silver." [Techdirt]
Software patents, as we know the, may very well change because they seldom fuel the innovation that underlies the reasons for patents. They often simply serve as a source of income for a shell company. 4:59:02 PM
|
|
|
|
|
