Thursday, February 7, 2002

Bride of UCITAstein

Another UCITA amendment whose beauty is only skin-deep is one that purports to invalidate license terms that restrict public comment or criticism.

posted at 11:56:08 PM — permalink

9th Circuit: Thumbnails Are Big Enough For Fair Use

One lawyer is quoted as saying, It's basically going to do away with linking or framing without permission.

I was going to rant a bit - then I thought maybe I should read the article first. (Egad! Did I just use a smiley?)

Anyway, the slashdot article references an article (can you believe that url?) from law.com, which contains this bit of information...

...the court found that displaying the full-sized images through linking and framing was not transformative and harmed the market for the original photographs.

That actually sounds reasonable to me. The images are not yours; they're on somone elses server; it's not fair to pass them off as your own by linking and framing.

Of course I haven't read the actual decision, so it's quite possible that I have no idea what I'm talking about. (Egad! There's that smiley again...)

Glenn Fleishman has a different view.

posted at 11:46:35 PM — permalink

Dave Winer
As a way of saying thanks to Radio 8 early adopters, we've increased the per-user allocation on the community server from 10MB to 20MB. That should give everyone some breathing room. And thanks from everyone at UserLand to the incredible Radio 8 community. What an inspiration!

Cool!

posted at 6:07:31 PM — permalink

New York Says No-No to NA

For several years, Spitzer said in a statement, Network Associates has informed users they are prohibited from publishing product reviews or the results of benchmark tests without the company's permission. These restrictions appear on the software diskettes, as well as the company's website...

posted at 5:40:38 PM — permalink

Who are the 'super threats'?

...the embarrassing truth is that Al-Qaeda's main sponsors are elsewhere: more specifically within the borders of long-time US ally Saudi Arabia and also Pakistan.

posted at 4:58:37 PM — permalink

Patch Office X for Network Vulnerability

Office X checks to make sure that every copy running on the network is using a unique product identifier (PIDs); if an Office application detects a duplicate, it shuts down. As discovered by Marty Schoch, the problem is that the checking code doesn't correctly handle a malformed PID announcement, causing the first Office application launched to crash, with the possible loss of data.

posted at 4:56:18 PM — permalink

Objecting to Index Funds

Some say investing large sums in an S&P 500 index fund could be disastrous. But, as Jason Zweig wrote in a CNN/Money column, indexing lets you say seven magic words: I don't know, and I don't care.

posted at 4:43:19 PM — permalink

Get a Mac

The first problem is data migration [ ... ] Microsoft typically won't help you export its file formats to other companies' products. But it won't even help you export to its own — that is, if those other products are running on a non-Windows platform.

The other hassle, also not solvable under the current circumstances, is Apple's lame warranty. [ ... ] I asked Apple about this and got the usual double-talk you get from companies that can't explain why they offer significantly poorer service and/or products than another company in the same business.

Get a Mac? Even assuming I don't have the trouble I have with Windows computers, it's not the ultimate answer in this situation.

posted at 4:22:38 PM — permalink

Pssst. Wanna See My Blog?

Chris Taylor
Impromptu online journals are popping up all over the Web. If I can figure out how to build one, you can too.
Doc Searls
Hey, blogger! See the piece in Time Magazine? It's in Personal Time/Your Technology. The author/blogger is Chris Taylor.

Later (5/3/02) - If you want to read the article at Time, you can Purchase individual article for $2.50. Nah...

posted at 3:43:48 PM — permalink

Rise of the Stupid Network

David Isenberg
Why the Intelligent Network was once a good idea, but isn't anymore. One telephone company nerd's odd perspective on the changing value proposition
Doc Searls
David Isenberg is one of my favorite thinkers. His essay Rise of the Stupid Network is a treatise on the true nature of common infrastructure, and why real intelligence about it is rather uncommon in the telco businesses that are largely responsible for maintaining it.

posted at 3:43:48 PM — permalink

Robert Occhialini

Now everyone has easy access to all the meaningless drivel I wrote back then in addition to the drivel I'm turning out now. I'm sure that's just what the Internet needs.

So what's wrong with drivel?

posted at 12:13:46 AM — permalink