30 June 2002

Silence is Intellectual Property Independent.co.uk -- John Cage's 4'33", a lengthy silent track on one of his avant-garde albums, constitutes an original work for copyright purposes. This means that other composers who include silent tracks have made a derivative work from Cage's silence. Cage's representatives have served producer Mike Batt with a legal nastygram asserting that he infringed on Cage's copyright with his 60-second silent track on the latest Planets album.

WOD: facetious facetious x: 125

Register to Read KILKENNY, Ireland -- While most people in Ireland won't pay to read news, an equally interesting fact is that most Irish papers check your cookies before letting you read the news. While I understand many of the reasons why new media publishers require registration, the cookie process interferes with automatic harvesters (like blog xml feeds) from reading news sources. x:125

Benefits of Long-Haul WiFi WINDLEY.com -- Rob Flickenger explains the benefits of long-haul Wi-Fi and captive portals in PC World magazine. The article explains benefits of sharing and extending bandwidth via Wi-Fi and simple technologies.

Computer Human Values BoxesAndArrows.com -- Nathan Shedroff writes about computer-human values. When producers of the first personal computers initially launched them into the market over 20 years ago, they could think of no better use for them than storing recipes and balancing one's checkbook. They couldn't predict how deep computers (and related devices) would seep into our lives. x:125

NPR Link Policy Retreats NPR.org -- NPR realized that having people ask for permission "was not really in step with reality." The blogger community pointed out the travesty of the NPR ask-to-link policy. x: 143

Minority Report Has Ad-ded Value. What are all those commercials doing in Steven Spielberg's latest, Minority Report? It's all about the wave of the future. By Michael Stroud. [Wired News]