...more recent posts
Andrew Odlyzko: Papers on Electronic Publishing and Electronic Commerce. Good stuff. And lots of it. The link is from a very complete rant called "what's wrong with content protection" by John Gilmore. [update: Here's a more permanent link to the Gilmore paper. Worth a read.]
Salon picks the 10 most paranoid books of all time. What? No Illuminatus? This must be some sort of plot...
The largest natural crystals on earth.
O.K., how come I didn't know about this? Google bought Deja? Now you can search .5 terrabytes of usenet postings (back to 1995) and see them all right off the (fast) google servers. Between this, and google.com/linux I think even I will be able to (con)figure the new server. (Did you know there is a google.com/mac and a google.com/unclesam too? Pretty useful.)
[update: Oh, O.K., I didn't know because it was just announced.]
The 9th Circuit court handed down its opinion today on the RIAA vs. Napster case. Sounds like a loss for Napster, although they get to keep operating for the time being. Probably it's hard to say how this will actually play out. The court said that the previous ruling (which would have just shut Napster down completely,) was "overbroad", but they also said that Napster "knowingly encourages and assists its users to infringe the record companies' copyrights." (Ouch.) And that some sort of modified (not just outright shutdown?) injunction is "not only warranted but required." I think we might be back to square one where this ruling will create a new injunction that basically allows Napster to keep running as long as they don't allow any copyrighted material that they are aware of to be traded. The problem, again, is that there is no way for Napster (presently configured) to be aware of all the material flowing through the system. In any case, they're not shutting down today, and the RIAA can claim a theoretical victory. A little something for everyone.