Riding along with the Internet Bookmobile. Angered by a law that extends copyright terms for 20 years, a crusader named Brewster Kahle wants to use the Internet to make books available to everyone. [Salon.com]
11:39:47 PM  #   your two cents []

Ex-Lucasfilm worker faces 'Star Wars' theft charges

A former employee of Lucasfilm who has denied leaking a copy of "Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones" to an Internet reviewer has been charged with 13 felony counts in connection with the theft of an estimated $450,000 worth of materials related to the blockbuster film.

The theft of sound effects, storyboard images, the film score and hundreds of digital images and video files occurred between September 2000 and April 2002, when Shea O'Brien Foley was employed as a production assistant at the Lucas Valley filmmaking company.

Foley is accused of having shown the film to Harry Knowles who wrote a review of the film for ain't-it-cool-news.com. Foley is claiming he is an "avid fan" and took the items for his souvenir collection. [Marin Independent-Journal]

10:38:10 PM  #   your two cents []

North Yorks to get wireless broadband network. £12m goes a long way [The Register]
10:23:42 PM  #   your two cents []

BT is broadband slacker - survey. [The Register] Sheesh, does this sound familiar? At least Ireland is not alone in feeling broadband-bereft and ignored by its incumbent telco:

Nine out of ten of communications professionals believe BT is still not doing enough to deliver broadband in the UK.

The survey by of 422 members of the Communications Management Association (CMA) found that BT should be forced to speed up the roll-out of ADSL.

Eight out of ten people said the Government should intervene to make universal access to broadband services a reality. A similar number of people also believe that there should be a greater use of fibre to deliver "Broadband Britain".

10:04:32 PM  #   your two cents []

Vint Cerf Talks About Internet Changes [Slashdot]
10:03:46 PM  #   your two cents []

Ant colonies and grassroots Wi-Fi: W. David Stephenson talks about the emergent behavior of grassroots Wi-Fi networks as they expand in size and utility.

[80211b News]
10:01:48 PM  #   your two cents []

Lindows: As Windows as we want to be. The upstart operating system company asks a judge to dismiss once and for all Microsoft's trademark claims and its attempts to get the site shut down. [CNET News.com]
9:56:33 PM  #   your two cents []

The LawMeme guys are blogging the US Supreme Court (how technocool is that), where they are attending the oral hearings in the ultra-important copyright case, Eldred v Ashcroft. Stanford professor Lawrence Lessig (here's his blog) is arguing the Eldred side. The case will decide whether to overturn the Sono Bono copyright extension act passed in 1998, which extended copyright by another 20 years. On the Ashcroft side are the big film studios and publishing houses. Eric Eldred is an internet archivist and publisher. If the act is overturned, many classics like The Great Gatsby would go off copyright, as well as Mickey Mouse (meaning Disney would lose exclusive marketing rights). But curiously, the film studios might also gain from axing the act, as this article notes, because it would free up so much literary source material for development into films.

I didn't know Lessig had been the clerk for Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia! The LawMeme blog notes that Scalia was one of the justices who did not ask Lessig any questions today.

8:27:26 PM  #   your two cents []

I'm sure there are many world travellers out there who have gone through this before, but I've never been anywhere that I've had to get protective vaccinations for. I go to South Africa's east coast in about 2 weeks and for that reason, ended up yesterday in the tropical medicine clinic getting a polio-booster sugarcube (the nice bit -- brought back a long-faded toddler memory!), a hepatitis A injection, and an expensive packet of Malarone tablets for malaria. The hep A really wiped me out for the day (so keep that in mind when reading Friday's Irish Times column, which I had to write while floating around in a muzzy haze). On Friday, I get a few more -- typhoid and other scary things. Each jab makes you utterly aware of the stark contrast between areas which are still in the developing world, where these diseases still rage, and most of the West, where they vanished within or before my lifetime. Ireland, BTW, got the polio vaccine a few years after the US, and I have met a couple of people my age who were stricken with it -- very sobering to realise this was once a common scourge of childhood.

I am going to Durban  to be on a panel at the International Bar Association conference (I know, it's a bit bizarre, but I'll be sitting with a group of lawyers, discussing the challenges of moving corporate legal processes online). Then I'll have some time to travel up the coast and to some game reserves (which is what all the injections, etc, are for). I'm really excited -- I have never been to Africa. If anyone has suggestions on great things to see and do, or places to eat or stay in Durban or the region, please let me know.

11:13:45 AM  #   your two cents []

Toilet Wars from The New York Times [via Boing Boing]: Japanese Masters Get Closer to the Toilet Nirvana

Japan's toilet wars started in February, when Matsushita engineers here unveiled a toilet seat equipped with electrodes that send a mild electric charge through the user's buttocks, yielding a digital measurement of body-fat ratio.

Unimpressed, engineers from a rival company, Inax, counterattacked in April with a toilet that glows in the dark and whirs up its lid after an infrared sensor detects a human being. When in use, the toilet plays any of six soundtracks, including chirping birds, rushing water, tinkling wind chimes, or the strumming of a traditional Japanese harp.

10:01:08 AM  #   your two cents []

Ernest Hemingway. "Never confuse movement with action." [Quotes of the Day] Note: I added this Hemingway quote to the blog before the item above on Japanese toilets but now realise it fits perfectly as commentary after it... [grin]
9:58:42 AM  #   your two cents []

Group warns of hacked Sendmail programs. <<Some copies of the popular mail-server program are implanted with a back door that could allow access to Internet attackers, security experts warn.>> [CNET News.com]
9:57:08 AM  #   your two cents []

Click to Download Scores by New American Composers [New York Times: Technology]: "New Music Jukebox offers a 24-hour "virtual" listening room with streaming and downloadable sound files, as well as extensive composer biographies, works lists, publishers, performance data and other information, all cross-referenced."
9:56:27 AM  #   your two cents []

A 10th planet? Astronomers Discover Icy World Far Past Pluto [Scientific American]
9:54:13 AM  #   your two cents []

Roland Piquepaille found an article with 10 tech predictions from analysts Gartner:

1. Adding bandwidth will become more cost-effective than buying new computers
2. Most major new systems will be inter-enterprise or cross-enterprise systems
3. Despite the complexities, inter-enterprise systems will provide a macroeconomic boost to companies
4. Companies will lay off millions of employees
5. The consolidation of vendors will continue in many segments of the IT market
6. Moore's Law will hold true through this decade
7. Banks will become the primary providers of "presence services" by 2007
8. Business activity monitoring will hit the mainstream within five years
9. Business units, not IT, will make most application decisions
10. The pendulum swings back to decentralized IT operations by 2004

12:08:56 AM  #   your two cents []