16 August 2002

The Intersection of Groove and Office Ray Ozzie -- Where does Office intersect Groove? Ray Ozzie won't say.

Karlin Launches Technoculture Karlin Lillington -- Technoculture is blogging now, with thoughts complementary to the print pieces. Karlin Lillington writes, "In print, a writer is hedged in by time and space -- deadlines and column inches. Also, print tends to be a more formal and structured format. Weblogs are realtime, flexible, unconfined. Here, I can throw out fast bits of commentary on subjects as they are in the news, rather than several days after, link to what I find interesting on the web, and generate some reader discussion.

Chase the Labels Back into Their Holes Dave Winer -- "The facts are out. You keep all the money for yourselves. The artists get nothing. You care not one whit about the art, on either side of the equation. That's the insult. That has to be dealt with. How dare you threaten to throw users in jail. You should be in jail if there were any justice." This is a consistent theme at Scripting News. Declan McCullagh has a more reasoned approach, as he writes about debunking DCMA myths. McCullagh writes, "The DMCA is both an egregious law and a brazen power grab by Hollywood, the music industry and software companies. It is probably unconstitutional. It creates unnecessary federal crimes, cedes too much authority to copyright holders, and should be unceremoniously tossed out by the courts." But on the issue of going to jail because you wrote a paper, "if published research does not include working code--which is a vital part of research--the odds of a successful lawsuit rapidly approach zero."

Free WiFi at Conferences LOCKERGNOME.com -- If you happen to attend GNOMEDEX, you can borrow a free WiFi card for your laptop. Shouldn't we be doing this at Irish technology events too?

Flaws of Online Video ONLINE LEARNING MAG.com -- There are three major flaws of online video - talking heads, lack of interactivity and lack of control. Then there's Playback Media whose website talks about overcoming those defects and Xi Blue who can teach you how to produce effective educational videos.

Internet Society Opposes Anti-Copying Laws ISOC.org -- "The Internet Society strongly opposes attempts to impose governmental technology mandates that are designed to protect only the economic interests of certain owners of intellectual property over the economic interests of much larger portions of society. The current debate in many countries of the world regarding digital rights management (DRM) has illustrated the inevitable conclusion of technology mandates in law: a world where all digital media technology is either forbidden or compulsory. The effect of these mandates is to grant veto power over new technologies to special interest groups who have continually opposed innovation." The ISOC posturing comes on the heels of Richard Stallman, the controversial President of the Free Software Foundation, who called on the July 2002 OSCON audience to stop conceding that copying or sharing is an infringement of copyright.