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Boing Boing Blog
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| 1. |
Film critics boycott giving awards to MPAA over "anti-piracy" measure. Adam sez, "The LA Film Critics Association is so peeved over the MPAA's decision not to mail out DVDs and tapes of movies for award consideration that it's not giving out awards. Period. The LAFCA has said that if the MPAA reverses its decision, they'll do the same."
Link
(Thanks, Adam!) |
| 2. |
Are virtual items real enough to insure?. High-larious story of a conversation between Julian Dibbell, an online gaming-wonk and PayPal, asking why virtual goods sold in meatspace but transferred in gamespace don't fall under PayPal's guarantee:
"OK, I just want to be absolutely clear about this now. So say I ship somebody tickets to a football game -- is that covered?"
"Yes, because you’ve shipped them tickets. That’s a tangible good."
"OK, then what if I ship them tickets to a virtual item?"
"What?"
"Say I write down a password that gives the buyer access to a virtual item -- say I write that on a piece of paper or put it on a computer disk and ship that to the buyer and then give you guys the tracking number for that shipment. Would that be covered?"
Link
(Thanks, mileena!) |
| 3. |
Vertu: a phone for rich people who spend foolishly. Vertu is the latest ridiculo-phone -- a handset (whoops, I mean, an "instrument") made of precious metals that costs as much as a downpayment on a house and will be obsolete in six months to a year.
Link
(Thanks, Kev!) |
| 4. |
Human Genome story. John Sundman, a man who had three children with rare, horrible diseases, discovered that the human genome was being mapped for profit, with the intention of rendering the results into a proprietary storehouse to be sold to the highest bidder. That's why he's taken a compelling interest in the human genome project, a successful effort to map the genome and turn the data over to the public domain. Today in Salon is the first part of the story.
Link |
| 5. |
ETCON pre-reg open. Pre-reg is open for the O'Reilly Emerging Tech conference. I've been on the committee for this con, and we're just closing up the program grid, and it looks killer -- easily worth the money (and you save $455 by regging now)
Link |
| 6. |
Pill packaging. Check out this amazing gallery of birth-control-pill packaging.
Link
(via Kottke) |
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CNET News.com - Front Door
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| 7. |
Danger snags first European partner |
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Yahoo! News - Technology
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| 8. |
Europe's Online Ad Market Poised for 2003 Comeback (Reuters). Reuters - Western Europe's bruised Internet sector
is poised for a return to double-digit growth in online
advertising this year, a level not seen since the tech bubble
burst three years ago, a new study on Wednesday said. |
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Slashdot
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| 9. |
Home Brew Hard Drive Silencer/Cooler |
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Hack the Planet
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| 10. |
Meanwhile the EFF's blogging experiment about the broadcast flag has failed IMO; it hasn't been updated in 9 months. |
| 11. |
Reuters: Digital TV Ain't Gonna Be Free. I think this article is actually optimistic; if the broadcast flag passes, you just won't be able to record HDTV at all, because products that meet the robustness requirements would be so crippled they'd be unprofitable. |
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InfoWorld: Top News
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| 12. |
Microsoft, Postal Service offer electronic postmarking. A new software plug-in from the United States Post Service (USPS) and Microsoft Corp. to be announced Tuesday is designed to provide the same kind of security for digital documents as a sealed envelope and postmark provide for paper mail. |
| 13. |
Critics blast EU antipiracy proposal. BRUSSELS - In an effort to stamp out digital counterfeiting and piracy of products like music and movies, European lawmakers are criminalizing many legitimate businesses, according to companies such as Nokia and Microsoft. |
| 14. |
Microsoft sets Office 2003 loose. Microsoft's top executives gathered in New York on Tuesday to formally introduce more than a dozen Office 2003 products, marking what Chairman and Chief Software Architect Bill Gates called the most products launched on a single day in Microsoft's history. |
| 15. |
Centrino notebooks lagging with US retail customers. Intel Corp. has put millions of dollars behind its campaign to support its Centrino notebook technology, but the message isn't reaching the U.S. retail market, and may miss the pivotal fourth-quarter holiday shopping season, analysts said Tuesday. |
| 16. |
Microsoft's integration could up customers' costs. Office 2003's advances will come at what could be a steep cost: Jupiter Research analyst Joe Wilcox estimates that businesses using Office will see their Microsoft Corp. licensing costs rise 10 to 40 percent if they want to take full advantage of the software's new features. |
| 17. |
First Microsoft smart phone hits U.S. stores. AT&T Wireless Inc. on Tuesday began selling Motorola Inc.'s MPx200, the first smart phone based on Microsoft Corp. software to be sold in the U.S.
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Tuesday, October 21, 2003
