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February 1, 2002
Wired News: Trillian Won't Heed AOL's Message.
But after two years of this kind of conflict, the tumult over Trillian indicates something pretty simple: Although instant messaging is more popular than ever, an all-in-one system is something that many users desire -- even if that system is, as AOL claims, jerry-built.
Online Journalism Review: WSJ's $28 Million Renovation.
Budde readily admits the new version is "more of a departure from the print publication than in the past." In fact, acknowledging the differences in the media was a core reason for sweeping changes in the way content is organized.
The Economist: How about now?
GE's aim is to monitor everything in real time, Mr Reiner explains, calling up a special web page on his PC: a “digital dashboard”. From a distance it looks like a Mondrian canvas in green, yellow and red. A closer look reveals that the colours signal the status of software applications critical to GE's business.
News.Com: Plotting the revival of Ricochet.
Our approach is, "Let's build a public-private partnership." We have to rent space on top of light poles to put our antennas on. Most of those poles are either owned by cities or utilities. So we have to lease the space from them. We're trying to get a better lease rate (than what Metricom was paying).
EE Times: Ultrawideband companies gear up for FCC ruling.
On the brink of this month's expected FCC ruling on ultrawideband technology, a growing number of startups and established players are aiming their development efforts at leveraging UWB for streaming-multimedia applications in wireless home networking.
February 2, 2002
SF Gate: The Big Rip-Off.
The real irony of digital copy-prevention measures is that the industry has invested heavily in these technologies, with monies coming from compact-disc sales. But not only do their measures not have the desired effect (preventing copying), they also produce an inferior product overall...
February 3, 2002
Useit.Com: Avoiding Commodity Status.
However, industrial design is not the main road ahead for computers. Improved software design is much more important. This does require some thinking, and it's not Steve Job's strategy, but I believe that software innovations are the main way to differentiate both high-tech products and websites.
February 4, 2002
NY Times: The Increase in Chip Speed Is Accelerating, Not Slowing.
At the world's premier chip design conference, which begins here today, the spotlight will be on blinding computer speed. That emphasis suggests that the trajectory of desktop PC performance increases of the last two years will not slow in the near future, but actually accelerate.
EE Times: Latest Intel processor could steal the ISSCC show.
Intel technology executives last week briefed analysts on techniques applied in the McKinley processor architecture as well as on such speculative technologies as body biasing and a new nonvolatile memory that could displace flash in cell phones and other space-constrained portables.
SF Chronicle: Verizon's 3G not that great.
Yes, it finally gets wireless data bandwidth and, therefore, functionality beyond the level of a 1980s dial-up modem. But instead of delivering what you'd expect from a 21st century technology, it provides levels of performance and reliability roughly equivalent to a mid-'90s modem -- minus the wires.
InfoWorld: AltaVista software searches corporate PCs.
The software navigates more than 225 different file types by filename and folder to locate users' sought-after information. It also crawls through e-mails, searching by keyword, folder, date or subject header fields such as "cc", "to" and "from"...
February 5, 2002
Business Week: Technology without a Cause.
So the online giant has to figure out new services that would get its current users to spend more time and money online and encourage others to sign up. And AOL needs to tie in the entertainment assets it acquired when it bought Time Warner. Voilà -- AOL's networked home.
Darwin: IM is here. RU prepared?
Scott Kirsner. The Gartner projection was enough to make me curious about the ways that instant messaging is being used today, its benefits and disadvantages, and the usage dynamics that might develop once it is adopted more widely. Like e-mail, it's a way to link geographically dispersed individuals.
News.Com: Google challenges pay-for-play search.
The move pits search purist Google against the purely commercial engine of Overture. Google has long cloistered itself from the growing leagues of paid-listings services by generating search results according to a proprietary formula that does not include commercial criteria.
Computerworld: Patent office gets workforce boost in Bush budget.
The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office would see the number of patent examiners grow by nearly a third under the Bush administration's budget plan, with 950 examiners added to a staff of 3,200 in an effort to speed up a patent process that can take more than two years.
February 6, 2002
NY Times: Auction Sites in Japan Fear Move to Limit Online Sales.
The Japanese National Police Agency is circulating a proposal to require sellers of used goods through Internet auctions to obtain licenses, raising new fears among American online auction companies that they may face more stringent international control.
SJ Mercury: PC unreliability rears its ugly head again.
Dan Gillmor. We also don't want to pay for quality. Clearly, penny-pinching customers would rather spend a few dollars less when they buy and then get furious when they need support that, to put it mildly, frequently fails to meet expectations.
Wired News: Info-Activists Call Off Dogs.
Now the EFF says it will take the industry at its word that it did not want to silence Felten or any other scientists. "But it's not like we're going away," cautioned Cindy Cohn, the foundation's legal director. "It's not like we won't be there if they try to interfere with scientific process anymore..."
News.Com: Google hosts programming code-off.
The geeks'-choice search engine is sponsoring its "First Annual Google Programming Contest," offering $10,000 to the person or team that can come up with the best software program for compressing, organizing, linking or otherwise manipulating a mass of raw search data.
February 7, 2002
Wired News: Linking Patent Goes to Court.
BT Group Plc believes it holds such a patent covering hypertext links and on Monday, BT will go to court to try to cash in on it. Its first target is Prodigy, the oldest online access service, which dates back to 1984 and is now a unit of SBC Communications, the second largest U.S. local telephone company.
Wired News: New York Says No-No to NA.
For several years, Spitzer said in a statement, Network Associates has informed users they are prohibited from publishing product reviews or the results of benchmark tests without the company's permission. These restrictions appear on the software diskettes, as well as the company's website...
News.Com: $1 films spook Hollywood.
Despite claims that their Movie88 site is following all local copyright laws, the owners of this new venture are drawing scrutiny from a skeptical Hollywood. Meanwhile, Web surfers drawn by free or cut-rate movies are flocking to the site, overloading servers and clogging data pipes.
PC World: Fujitsu Clears Up the Small Print.
Fujitsu's research and development center has developed software to display small letters legibly on compact devices such as mobile phones and personal digital assistants, the company announced last week.
February 8, 2002
MSNBC: Tracking spam to the source.
We’ve never heard of most of the companies sending the e-mails, and many of the offers are for products and services we don’t need. Almost all end up in the electronic trash can moments after we read the subject line. Still, we're curious. Who is sending this stuff?
EE Times: U.S. patent debate to pit IP rights vs. competition.
The debate has been fueled, current and former government officials said during the first hearing Wednesday, by growing tensions between intellectual-property rights holders and the antitrust enforcers seeking to promote competition in technology markets.
law.com: Bigger Not Better With Copyrighted Web Photos.
Setting parameters for copyright infringement on the Internet, the court found that reproducing photographs to create thumbnail images is a fair use of the material, but displaying full-sized images violates the copyright owner's exclusive right to publicly display his works.
Bob Frankston: Mini Book PC.
I've long been arguing that the PC is more than just a mainframe on a desktop and is the building block for all sorts of other devices. While still too expensive for most people to throw them around casually it is a hint of what is coming very soon.
InfoWorld: IBM Research shows off modular hardware device.
Code-named MetaPad, the device, which is three-quarters of an inch thick and measures 3 inches by 5 inches, is capable of holding all of a user's applications and data with a bare-bones hardware configuration.
February 9, 2002
Wired News: Regulating the Olympic Rings.
Just as in the Sydney 2000 Olympics, the International Olympic Committee has banned any unauthorized webcasts of Olympic events or other related audio and video products in order to protect television broadcasters' multi-million dollar rights deals.
February 10, 2002
Lighthouse: Trust: it's about good experience over time.
Web sites are software too. Anyone conducting transactions or gathering user information on a commercial Web site should treat the task of trust-building with some of the urgency that Gates has brought to the task. So what makes a user trust a Web site?
Editor & Publisher: MSNBC.com Reluctant On Registration.
"We're still about massing eyeballs," said MSNBC.com Senior Vice President and Editor in Chief Merrill Brown during an interview at MSNBC's studios and online operations here. "We've been reluctant to do anything beyond what would be considered minimally intrusive for our users."
February 11, 2002
SF Gate: All Hail Creative Commons.
In a boon to the arts and the software industry, Creative Commons will make available flexible, customizable intellectual-property licenses that artists, writers, programmers and others can obtain free of charge to legally define what constitutes acceptable uses of their work.
News.Com: Google aims search device at companies.
What makes Google different is that it is selling search hardware and software, all contained in a slim device it calls the Google Search Appliance, which businesses can install behind their own corporate firewalls and program to scan whichever documents they wish.
NY Times: French Decision Prompts Questions About Free Speech and Cyberspace.
Given the potential leverage of a Yahoo- style case on multinational Internet companies, experts say that Judge Gomez has created a powerful tool for the suppression of online speech that a recipient nation finds offensive or dangerous.
Wired News: Judge Dubious About Link Patent.
But a federal judge with a laptop on her desk warned that it may be difficult to prove that a patent filed in 1976, when today's Internet was barely imagined, somehow applies to modern computers. "The language is archaic," said U.S. District Judge Colleen McMahon. "It's like reading Old English."
February 12, 2002
Web Architect: The Crime of Sharing.
John Perry Barlow. I know that this is a fairly obvious observation. That's why I'm stunned that so many kinds of sharing have suddenly, without public debate, become criminal acts. For instance, lending a book to a friend is still all right, but letting him read the same book electronically is now a theft.
News.Com: EU OKs law for higher tax on Net sales.
The law, applying to online sales of software and computer games, as well as to some radio and TV services, helps close a loophole that let Europeans avoid paying value added tax on products and services bought from non-EU Internet sites.
Wired News: Why This Link Patent Case Is Weak.
Even if BT wins, it's hard to see what the payoff would be. Programmers insist it would be a trivial task to code an entirely new way to link Web pages. And legal experts believe that BT will never be awarded any retroactive royalties on hyperlinks.
Lyle Kantrovich: False prophets of Usability.
Unfortunately NetConversions isn't the only company doing things along this line, and even many usability professionals can fall into the trap of promising to solve all of a customer's problems in one fell swoop. Usability (as a field) suffers when "experts" don't meet expectations.
News.Com: Broadband now tops EU's Internet agenda.
By promoting broadband, the European Union's executive is choosing to focus on a product already available to businesses and consumers and putting on the back burner its strategy for 3G mobile phones, whose commercial launch may not come until 2005.
February 13, 2002
SJ Mercury: Entertainment industry's copyright fight puts consumers in cross hairs.
Dan Gillmor. You may think Hollywood is overstepping with such tactics. Unfortunately, the industry and its allies, including those in the software business, are winning every legal battle they fight. They're winning because they wield the infamous 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act...
LA Times: Studios Assail ReplayTV Technology.
Mark Lemley, a UC Berkeley law professor, said, "It's troubling to say, 'This thing that everybody does has been illegal for 20 years. ... We're just getting around to catching you.' "Nobody's suing people who actually infringe copyrights anymore. Everyone is suing people who make devices..."
Editor & Publisher: Newspapers: Don't Blow It Again.
Steve Outing. A common theme heard throughout the conference -- as told by Saffo as well as many other speakers and participants -- was that the newspaper industry has got to "think different" from now on. We haven't done a good enough job of casting aside the old metaphors...
News.Com: Comcast to stop storing Web users' data.
Caching procedures are common among Internet service providers, with data collected on subscriber usage at most ISPs appearing in aggregate. Nevertheless, civil libertarians raised flags over Comcast's decision to store individual Web surfers' data.
Wired News: SafeWeb's Holes Contradict Claims.
SafeWeb's anonymous-surfing technology turns out not to be very safe after all. A pair of researchers has unearthed flaws in the CIA-funded product that contradict the company's claims of "complete privacy" and reveal the supposedly confidential information of customers.
February 14, 2002
Good afternoon and welcome to readers of Dylan Tweney's Business 2.0 column. Thanks, Lawrence (tomalak@tomalak.org).
Wired News: Move Over, BT: He Invented Links.
But Bemer, who describes himself as a "computer software consultant, futurist and raconteur," doesn't intend to trump BT's claims in order to establish his own -– he just wants to point out the perils of the patent system.
The Chronicle of Higher Education: An Order to Destroy a CD-ROM Raises Concerns Among University Librarians.
Copies of the CD-ROM on water supplies were sent to libraries in the fall of 1999 and had been openly available for two years. Until the request for their destruction was sent out, they had also been available for purchase from the USGS's Information Services Office in Denver.
Online Journalism Review: Frustration: A New Demonstration Sport.
The more technologically advanced the Olympics become, the more cutting-edge the equipment, the more precise the scoring (when it doesn't involve figure skating), the more frustrating it is to know that the potential of the Internet remains almost totally untapped.
InfoWorld: FCC leaning toward deregulated broadband.
The commission said it has tentatively reached this broadband definition. The issue of defining broadband services is one of a handful of proceedings the FCC is considering that collectively will shape how broadband technology is regulated.
EE Times: FCC gives cautious nod to ultra-wideband.
The Federal Communications Commission approved limited deployment of ultra-wideband (UWB) technology on Feb. 14 but said it will consider wider deployment over the next year if the current concerns about interference prove unwarranted.
February 15, 2002
News.Com: Wiping the Slate clean.
Q&A with Michael Kinsley. But we and other Web publications of the last half of the '90s had to start from square one in a way that I never imagined in print. We didn't discuss in any magazine I ever worked for whether the page numbers should run forwards or backwards.
MIT Technology Review: The Death of Digital Rights Management?
What’s going on? More than just a side effect of last year’s dot-com implosion, the digital-rights slump is in part a result of technological shortcomings. Content protection software is simply too obtrusive and confining to meet users’ needs, say observers.
New Architect: That's What I Want.
But some items on user wishlists are incompatible with current DRM technologies, and traditional industry infrastructure. Industry execs have been preoccupied. Protecting intellectual property has overshadowed user's needs, and DRM has become an obstacle to customer service.
Wired News: DMCA Protection at U.S. Border.
In the interim, Lik-Sang is shipping its products through another overnight service until Customs lifts its ban, according to the company source. Once that happens, the retailer will return to UPS. This is the latest twist for those who have run afoul of the DMCA.
Salon: Losing the war on patents.
One year later, BountyQuest's supposed patent-busting experiment appears to have itself gone bust. Only about 20 BountyQuest contests have resulted in bounty-winning prior art since the site's inception. New bounty offers, meanwhile, have slowed to a trickle...
February 16, 2002
Glenn Fleishman: Three Gee Whiz.
The New York Times Circuits section did a fantastic job today in dissecting the hype behind 3G deployments, and making it clear to all and sundry that 3G is interesting, maybe useful, but isn't yet up to its own hype, and may only achieve part of its currently stated goals.
February 17, 2002
David Reed: Attack of the middleboxes.
But the biggest cost in my mind is the impact on innovation. As these middleboxes proliferate, deploying new protocols and new applications must take them into account. NAT routers and firewalls were the first middleboxes, and they have already impacted the ability to deploy streaming multimedia and multiuser collaboration software.
Newsweek: Chutzpah 2.0.
Telephone companies aren’t big on risk, but BT Group is breaking the mold. On Monday, the company formerly known as British Telecom goes to court in White Plains, N.Y., for a pretrial hearing on a case that, according to the Internet community, takes sheer nerve to the next level: Chutzpah 2.0.
Useit.Com: Official Winter Olympics Site: Not Even Bronze.
After WIRED published a critique of the Olympics homepage, the site fixed several of its usability problems. Given that the Games were already in full swing, it's not feasible to have expected a full redesign. But, as this case shows, a design tweak is a great way to fix as much as you can.
February 18, 2002
NY Times: Record Labels' Answer to Napster Still Has Artists Feeling Bypassed.
Last December, the major record labels responded with two Internet services of their own where fans pay monthly fees to download songs. Under this arrangement, however, the performers still don't get a dime: for each song downloaded, they stand to get only a fraction of a cent...
BusinessWeek: Napster They're Not.
So why don't pressplay and RealOne Music, two new industry-backed Web music services, understand this? A test drive reveals weak selection and pricing that's not attuned to how people want to buy music.
NY Times: Protecting Intellectual Property.
that competitors have access to it, of course. But many companies say the competitive risk is outweighed by the benefit of making it difficult for someone else to win a patent — a patent that could give the holder the right to demand licensing fees from all other users of the technology or technique.
Boston Globe: MPEG-4 goes against spirit of sharing that built the Net.
To Phil Schiller, Apple Computer's worldwide product marketing honcho, the MPEG-4 royalty plan violates a basic rule of Internet business. People will pay once for a box of software, or once a month for some all-you-can-eat online service.
February 19, 2002
Wired News: High Court Hears Copyright Case.
Though the case isn't limited to the online world, it could determine "if the Internet really transforms the ways in which information gets to people and the things they can do with it once they have it," said Jonathan Zittrain, a Harvard Law School professor representing the plaintiffs.
News.Com: Is Microsoft getting ahead of itself?
Instead, the plan has been the source of continual confusion among potential customers, has encountered a series of problems with its underlying technologies, and has faced internal frustration that sources say even led to its lead executive being reassigned.
EE Times: FCC opens broadband deployment review.
The review, called a notice of proposed rule making, will focus on resolving regulatory issues surrounding broadband telephone-based Internet access services. Those services are currently regulated under common-carrier rules, while cable modem and other services are not.
Wired News: Not All Asian E-Mail Is Spam.
A new great wall is being built, this time across the Internet. Constructed by frustrated systems administrators and intended only to stop spam, the wall could eventually cut off much of the e-mail communications between the East and the West.
EE Times: Microsoft operating system supports GSM on PDAs.
The key difference between the two resides in the user interface, Perryman said. The PocketPC Phone Edition lets users navigate through a bigger screen with touch functions and handwriting recognition. The Stinger allows operation via soft keys on a mobile phone.
February 20, 2002
SJ Mercury: Copyright dictators are winning out.
Dan Gillmor. The U.S. Supreme Court said Tuesday it's going to decide if that's what the nation's founders intended when they wrote the copyright clause of the Constitution. It's the most important case of its kind in years, and the first of many that will determine fundamental rights in the Information Age.
Lighthouse: After the disasters, a more ordinary broadband.
Broadband Internet is dead. Don't worry: if you own a cable modem, it will still work; if you've yearned for DSL, you can go on yearning. What's dead is not the technology of broadband, but the dream of a separate and exciting broadband Internet experience...
Wired News: Europe Offers Patent Proposal.
The European Commission on Wednesday unveiled a new approach to software patents, which a top commission official said would draw criticism from the United States because Europe would have tougher criteria to grant a patent.
Computerworld: Spam taking a toll on business systems.
That surge has moved some companies to take drastic action. For Todd Meagher, co-founder of Credit.com Inc., the potential loss of legitimate business correspondence inherent in blocking spam is an acceptable price to pay to keep his network spam-free.
February 21, 2002
Semantic Studios: Social Network Analysis.
How do knowledge workers learn? How do they decide what to learn next? What motivates them to share? These questions are central to the challenges of knowledge management, and yet most corporate portals and online communities are designed in ignorance of their answers.
MSNBC: Spam worsens, slows AT&T e-mail.
Think spam is just annoying? Ask AT&T WorldNet users. A spam attack actually interrupted delivery of e-mail to thousands of WorldNet customers earlier this week, as the company fought off a deluge of marketing messages destined for customers.
The Guardian: Webarian.
Q&A with Brewster Kahle. A Terabyte for one of the Wayback Machine's computers costs about $4,000 - the Moore's law surprises me every time. The machine itself is made up of ordinary HP desktops stacked on top of each other. We take out the disk it comes with and put in a 160 Gb large disk.
SF Chronicle: Panel sets royalty rate for music on Web radio.
A federal panel yesterday issued a set of Web music royalty rates that will shape the fledgling Internet radio industry for years. The ruling pleased the recording industry, but Webcasters said the new royalties will further strain a young industry already struggling to find revenue.
February 22, 2002
Wired News: Judge: If You Own Music, Prove It.
On Friday, the tide dramatically shifted. Patel, who called both sides "dirty," said that Napster's misguided attempts to build a business using illegally obtained music paled in comparison to what could be massive misuse and heavy-handed tactics by the recording industry.
News.Com: Napster court win puts labels in spotlight.
The order does not affect the legality of Napster's file-swapping service, which has already been shut down as a result of previous legal decisions. Rather, U.S. District Judge Marilyn Hall Patel's decision Friday opens a potential can of worms for the music industry as it seeks to push its own Internet music-distribution plans.
Wired News: Online Tunes: People Are Paying.
Radio MX listeners can't choose specific songs or the order they are played but they can select genres and musicians that are randomly played. It's not Napster but it appeals to people who are tired of the din of traditional radio, yet don't want to take the time to download hundreds of songs.
Business Week: The FCC's Powell on Broadband Rules.
Think about it. If every electrical plug becomes a broadband port, that would be huge. If all those things mature, that's five competitive platforms offering consumers differentiated choice of service. Telephone never achieved anything remotely like that.
February 23, 2002
Fast Company: Virtually There?
What follows, then, is a real-world guide to the promise and perils of electronic collaboration. To answer the most basic questions about virtual work, Fast Company spoke to a broad group of technology suppliers and leading-edge users, from doctors and developers to consultants and engineers.
NY Times: Napster Wins One Round in Music Case.
America's major record companies, which successfully sued to shut down the online music-swapping service Napster, suffered a setback today as the judge in the case allowed Napster to seek evidence that the record companies colluded to monopolize the digital music market.
February 24, 2002
SJ Mercury: Broadband legislation will squash competition.
Dan Gillmor. Top technology executives are trying to get Congress and the regulatory agencies to push for genuine broadband -- high-speed data connections far beyond the pathetic DSL and cable speeds now available. Letting monopoly companies create new monopolies is not the right answer.
February 25, 2002
American Spectator: Control & Creativity.
Lawrence Lessig. This struggle is just a token of a much broader battle, for the model that governs film is slowly being pushed to every other kind of content. The changes we will see affect every front of human creativity. They affect commercial as well as noncommercial, the arts as well as the sciences.
Washington Post: Movies Get Framed.
Jack Valenti. Computer and video-device companies need to sit at the table with the movie industry. Together, in good-faith talks, they must agree on the ingredients for creating strong protection for copyrighted films and then swiftly implement that agreement to make it an Internet reality.
NY Times: The Murky Debate Over an Internet Address Database.
Namely, how much information should be made available to the public about the individuals and businesses that have registered more than 35 million Web addresses (or domain names, as they are known in the trade)? What restrictions, if any, should be placed on who has access to this data?
NY Times: Online Group to Give Advice Regarding Copyrights.
Now, concerned that corporations are using the notices to intimidate sites whose content may be protected by the First Amendment, the Electronic Frontier Foundation and several law schools have created a searchable cease-and-desist database to inform recipients of their rights.
February 26, 2002
O'Reilly Network: Steven Johnson on "Emergence".
Q&A with Steven Johnson. Emergence is what happens when the whole is smarter than the sum of its parts. It's what happens when you have a system of relatively simple-minded component parts -- often there are thousands or millions of them -- and they interact in relatively simple ways.
Wired News: If ICANN Can't, Who Should?
The imbroglio began late Sunday, when the president of the ICANN candidly admitted that the group's experiment in global online democracy had been a loser of an idea. His language was blunt: "Flawed from the beginning ... noble but deeply unrealistic ... fatally flawed."
Business Week: Software That Asks "Who Goes There?"
It's enough to give any business a headache, let alone a health-insurance company. Tech-support staffers at insurer Wellpoint say they receive 14,000 calls every month from employees who have forgotten their computer-access passwords for the company's Intranet site and need a manual reset.
Wired News: Can the World Be Copyrighted?
Two treaties taking effect this spring would expand the reach of controversial American legislation designed to regulate the Internet. The WIPO, an international body of government representatives that globalizes laws, announced new guidelines to crack down on digital piracy.
Financial Times: BT prompts battle for fast internet customers.
The battle for Britain's broadband consumers began in earnest when BT's announcement of sharp wholesale price cuts prompted its cable operator rivals to offer even faster internet access. The separate plans by BT, Telewest and NTL are designed to accelerate UK take-up of high-speed broadband services...
February 27, 2002
NY Times: Congressional Broadband Fight Intensifies.
Two weeks after the House of Representatives approved legislation to limit the influence of money in politics, the House is expected to approve a telecommunications bill that is largely shaped by the huge campaign contributions it has generated.
Wired News: Digital Security Fomenting a Feud.
Senate committee is stepping into the middle of an increasingly vocal spat over the future of technology: how to prevent illicit copying of digital content. On Thursday morning, Senate Commerce chairman Fritz Hollings will convene a hearing on digital copy protection...
Dan Gillmor: Trusting the News.
What this hacker discovered is bad enough. But there are even more alarming scenarios. One of these days, someone is going to change the online news pages of the Wall Street Journal or New York Time or CNN or other major news organization, in a way that does severe damage.
Bob Frankston: Worlds in Collision.
This means that I can just connect everything in my house (and beyond) with commodity connectivity and redefine the behavior simply by changing some software settings and I can buy new features and capabilities and "download" them.
February 28, 2002
SJ Mercury: Intel backs consumers over Hollywood.
Dan Gillmor. Vadasz' testimony is toughly worded, and it notes -- in a not-so-veiled assertion of strength -- that the technology industry is vastly larger than the entertainment business. Intel, taking the lead in the overdue tech rebellion, has considerable clout of its own.
NY Times: Broadband Bill Advances, but Its Survival Is Doubtful.
The House overwhelmingly approved a measure today to unshackle the nation's largest telephone companies from regulations that impede their expansion into the high-speed Internet market. While the broadband legislation, which was approved 273 to 157, has little prospect of surviving in the Senate...
Business Week: A Library as Big as the World.
Kahle's goal to create a huge digital library is shedding light on just how restrictions on the universal access to published works are growing, says Lessig. "He has the technology, he has the money, and he has the business plan," Lessig says. "All he needs is the permission of the lawyers, and he won't get it."
New Architect: Organized Chaos.
Peter Meholz. This is where the principles of emergent systems come in. As centralized schemes grow unwieldy over time, it makes sense to create an alternative information environment where elements are organized according to a few simple rules about how users interact with that information.
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