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August 1, 2002
News.Com: Pressplay to offer unlimited downloads.
Under one section of the new plan, subscribers will be able to download or stream an unlimited number of songs to their computer for a single annual fee of $179.40, the equivalent of today's $14.95 monthly fee, according to a customer service representative.
LA Times: Online Music Catalogs Lacking.
Despite a series of improvements that make legitimate online music services more attractive, the major record labels still can't give music fans something they've been getting from pirate services for more than three years: a comprehensive catalog of songs.
August 2, 2002
The Chronicle of Higher Education: 'Politics of Control' Leads a Law Student to Challenge Digital-Copyright Act.
There are a few specific examples that make it all fit together. Certainly, this filtering is an example of control, someone getting between you and where you want to go. You want to read about breast cancer, N2H2 says that that's pornography, and so they won't let you.
Business 2.0: Nokia's Hit Factory.
Neuvo is the humble, if eccentric, technologist who heads research and development at Nokia, arguably the best product-driven R&D organization in the world. Nokia's R&D apparatus is unlike anything in multinational corporate history.
August 3, 2002
InfoWorld: Fair use or foul play?
I have found myself frequently raising this example in correspondence with readers about abuses of traditional fair use, free speech, and first-sale rights under the DMCA. With Congress considering even nastier laws that would hardwire copyright-holder protections into all types of digital devices, readers see many complex and troubling issues on the horizon.
August 4, 2002
Useit.Com: Making the Physical Environment Interactive.
Soon, many more physical objects may become interactive, and they're likely to contain much more broadly defined and subtle user interfaces than the primitive toe squeezing that Interactive Barney pioneered.
NY Times: Tablet PC Makers Embrace a Dying Art: Handwriting.
But the new crop of tablet PC's represent much more than machines mimicking pen and paper. Computer makers say that technology is forcing handwriting to evolve in terms of how and when it is used. The tablet PC's may not only reflect those changes but also hasten them.
August 5, 2002
NY Times: A Decision on Digital Television.
The F.C.C. also plans to address the explanation that major Hollywood studios give for why they have declined to release their most valuable movies and television shows in digital broadcast format: the lack of technology to prevent viewers from recording and copying the material onto the Internet.
PC World: Digital Copyright Law Under Attack--Again.
Since previous legal challenges to the DMCA have failed, there are two options left to deal with the law, he said. First, efforts could be made to repeal the law, but "that's not likely to happen," he said. "The only other way is to try to erode it away" with cases such as the Elcomsoft case.
NY Times: New Software (and Bosses) at AOL.
But many of the rest are America Online veterans, itching to return the service to its old glory, one they saw as focused on the user. And so the center of the new release, called version 8.0, will have a renewed focus on chat rooms and the other forms of interaction and self-expression that AOL calls its community.
August 6, 2002
Bob Frankston: The Economist, the Internet, Telecom and the Dow.
The July 20th cover story on the Telecom Crash draws no distinction between the business of providing commodity Internet connectivity with the business of providing telecommunications-based services. Of course The Economist is not alone in this fundamental error but "Crash" story is a useful foil for addressing this misunderstanding.
August 7, 2002
Webmonkey: Web Standards for Hard Times.
Paul Boutin. Instead of trying to support multiple versions of the same pages, it's much more cost-effective to piggyback on the millions of dollars Microsoft, Netscape, Opera, and others have spent building standards-compliant browsers and just stick to using standards-compliant code on your site.
Computerworld: Preserving Web History.
Regulatory compliance is just one reason to maintain access to historical Web site information, corporate archivists say. Information in Web archives can also provide critical evidence to protect a company in legal matters, or allow the marketing department to look back at previous online marketing efforts...
August 8, 2002
SJ Mercury: End user licenses keep getting more intrusive.
Dan Gillmor. Impenetrable EULAs are nothing new in the tech business. But they're getting more intrusive and less fair every day. The latest anti-innovation is the vendor's claim of a unilateral right to change the function of the product you've already purchased.
InfoWorld: Bell Labs shows off new password, sign-on tools.
The two tools, called Factotum and Secure Store, are designed to allow users to type in one password to authenticate them to the full range of services, Web sites and applications which they use, said Eric Grosse, director of the network computing research department at Bell Labs...
August 9, 2002
First Monday: Rip, Mix, Burn.
For the winners, victories are small and incremental, and subject to the next technological assault. For the losers, there is always the possibility of another legal strategy, a different judge and court, and a new technical and legal issue. The politics of the law is always subject to dispute. The copyright battle may never end.
August 10, 2002
InfoWorld: The death of e-mail.
Every few weeks InfoWorld Editor in Chief Michael Vizard broadcasts an e-mail suggesting one story or another on spam. Every few weeks I try and make myself as invisible as possible until the thread dies down. Why? I don't care about spam. Spam will go away -- with the death of e-mail.
August 11, 2002
SJ Mercury: We must engage in copyright debate.
Dan Gillmor. Average people are not part of the conversation, not in any way that matters. To the cartel and its chattel in the halls of political power, we are nothing but ``consumers'' -- our sole function is to eat what the movie, music and publishing industries put in front of us, and then send money.
August 12, 2002
digitalMASS: A fresh breath of Oxygen.
Far from an exercise in self-gratification, Brooks's automated office is part of a major MIT research project called Oxygen, a project aimed at finally creating the kind of interaction between computers and people that we see every summer in Hollywood blockbusters, but never in real life.
NY Times: Scholarly Reviews Through the Web.
But over the last few years, about a dozen companies have developed Web-based peer-review programs that aim to reduce turnaround time, postage bills and workload by automating and tracking the process.
Computerworld: Genuity customers seek backups.
With analysts predicting that corporate network services provider Genuity Inc. could file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection as soon as today, the company's customers are joining the growing list of IT services users who are scrambling to find alternatives.
August 13, 2002
Salon: The media titans still don't get it.
Scott Rosenberg. This is a difficult fact for our media culture to digest. The media cover technology on a predictable cycle -- a rhythm of hype and scorn that you can follow like clockwork each time a new wave of innovation sweeps the high-tech landscape.
News.Com: Judge may press pause on ReplayTV case.
U.S. District Court Judge Florence-Marie Cooper indicated that she is not inclined to allow the EFF to join Sonicblue in a response to suit that had been filed in June by the online civil liberties group. The EFF had sought to join Sonicblue in defense of a suit filed by several major TV networks and movie studios.
August 14, 2002
News.Com: The myth of cybersecurity.
Ray Ozzie. But "weak encryption" is no longer a reasonable excuse for insecure systems. It's clear by now that real security comes not just from strong crypto, but from recognizing and embracing human strengths, frailties and common behaviors in building, managing and using complex systems.
SF Gate: Not a Moment Too Soon.
In essence, ChoiceMail's software turns your e-mail box into the equivalent of your front door. If strangers want to enter, they have to knock and identify themselves first. Anyone who won't do that is automatically turned away without you being bothered.
August 15, 2002
Darwin Magazine: Who Should Own What?
Q&A with Lawrence Lessig. The reality now is that every new innovation has got to not only fund a development cycle and fund a marketing cycle, it's got to fund a legal cycle during which you go into court and demonstrate that your new technology should be allowed in the innovative system.
Technology Review: Push-Button Innovation.
Michael Schrage. Innovation isn’t what companies do; it’s what customers adopt. In fact, the telecom sector remains a fabulous market for innovative uses of bandwidth. But innovation shouldn’t mean getting people to use more bandwidth; it should be about getting people to change their bandwidth behaviors.
August 16, 2002
The Atlantic Online: Homeland Insecurity.
Charles C. Mann. Schneier's side won the battle as the nineties came to a close. But by that time he had realized that he was fighting the wrong war. Crypto was not enough to guarantee privacy and security. Failures occurred all the time—which was what Schneier's terrible idea demonstrated.
CryptoGram: Palladium and the TCPA.
There's been more written about Microsoft's Palladium security initiative than about anything else in computer security in a very long time. My URL list of comments, analysis, and opinions goes on for quite a while. Which is interesting, because we really don't know anything about the details of what it is or how it works.
NY Times: Speech Recognition Follies.
But dictation software will never reach 100 percent, and therefore we'll always need a keyboard or stylus to correct typos (or "wordos"). Not because the software isn't good enough -- but because in the English language, too many words sound alike.
News.Com: Judge hits rewind on ReplayTV case.
U.S. District Court Judge Florence-Marie Cooper granted permission to combine a copyright lawsuit filed by the Electronic Frontier Foundation on behalf of the device owners and one filed by consumer electronics manufacturer Sonicblue, maker of ReplayTV.
August 17, 2002
MIT Technology Review: Firewall Follies.
Simson Garfinkel. They don’t make business systems significantly more secure. And by focusing attention on defending the perimeter, rather than on defending information assets within an organization, firewalls foster lax internal security practices that magnify the damage that insiders can inflict.
August 18, 2002
Useit.Com: Let Users Control Font Size.
Another example of harmful Web technology comes with the increasing use of style sheets, which let web designers specify the exact size of text down to the pixel. Unfortunately, many designers are using this ability, leading to reduced readability of an increasing number of websites.
New Architect: Making Mistakes Well.
Online or offline, it's impossible to be perfect. But while offline customers can appeal to an actual human being for help, frustrated online customers usually just give up. That's why Web sites must learn to make mistakes well.
August 19, 2002
Boxes & Arrows: Small Pieces, Big Thoughts.
But as a departure from Cluetrain, the book is less focused on the practicalities of business, and is more a treatise on how the Internet and all massively shared internetworked environments (for the book, conflated to the common term “the Web”) are changing us as social beings.
Context Magazine: The 19th-Century Internet.
Yet today the telegraph is forgotten. What happened to it? And what does its fate say about what lies ahead for the Internet? If you find it hard to believe that the Internet is merely a modern twist on a 19th-century system, consider the many striking parallels.
August 20, 2002
News.Com: DOJ to swappers: Law's not on your side.
John Malcolm, a deputy assistant attorney general, said Americans should realize that swapping illicit copies of music and movies is a criminal offense that can result in lengthy prison terms.
BBC News: Privacy fears over EU snooping plans.
If passed, the law would force anyone providing communication services to keep records for at least a year of what customers have been doing. The records would be available to police forces across the European Union investigating almost any crime.
InfoWorld: ICANN taps ISOC to run .org.
ICANN weighed in with its choice on who should run the .org domain name registry Monday, tapping the Internet Society in Reston, Virginia. "On balance, [ISOC's] proposal stood out from the rest," ICANN President Stuart Lynn said in a statement.
August 21, 2002
Wired News: New Salvo in Piracy, Privacy War.
The music industry's trade association is asking a federal district court to force an Internet service provider to turn over private information for a subscriber, heating up the legal war between technology and entertainment companies.
News.Com: Wi-Fi and free lunches.
John Patrick. Not that everyone needs to be connected all the time, tethered to the Internet. But if people want or need to be connected to the Internet, they should be able to plug in. The Internet has transferred power from institutions to people. Isn't it time to enable this power to become pervasive?
August 22, 2002
NY Times: Palmtops in the Operating Room.
For now, the cardiac unit in Miami has one of the most extensive hand-held systems in the medical industry. A small but growing number of hospitals are using palmtops for writing prescriptions, consulting reference manuals and, in a few cases, keeping records...
SJ Mercury: Sprint PCS Vision offers 3G frills but not thrills.
Sprint PCS Vision, a new high-speed data service for wireless phones, is both affordable and conceptually elegant. Yet I'm betting PCS Vision will flop with consumers, at least in its initial form, because the features it offers just aren't compelling enough.
August 23, 2002
Wired News: Judge Tosses BT Hyperlink Case.
McMahon had expressed doubts over the case's validity as the suit progressed, but on Thursday she decisively dismissed BT's claims in a summary judgment that is both technically astute and leaves no question about the judge's opinion on the worth of BT's case.
EE Times: First-mile wireless critical to optical rebound.
Kalkhoven lobbied specifically for extending optical technologies to cellular basestations, emerging wireless mesh networks and devices like digital camcorders. "We will never get high-speed broadband connections to people by digging holes in the ground," he said.
August 24, 2002
New Architect: Wireless, Defenseless.
To work, the public mobile Internet has to be open, letting people join and drop out at will. This means that public wireless communication will be vulnerable to sniffing, so there's no longer any excuse for failing to use end-to-end encryption for email, Web, and login protocols.
August 25, 2002
SJ Mercury: Activists take on Hollywood cartel.
Dan Gillmor. Now, people on another kind of network -- the Internet -- have found a way to challenge Coble. And Grubb, like others worried about industry's moves to control information flow, is learning quickly to take advantage of this new way of doing things.
August 26, 2002
SF Chronicle: Casting a wider net.
The recording industry is sending signals that it wants to cast anti-piracy nets wider to snare individuals, a tactic that legal experts say would be unprecedented in the history of copyright law. And the industry may be getting help from the U.S. Department of Justice.
The Chronicle of Higher Education: Students Complain About Devices for Reading E-Books, Study Finds.
Although the researchers started with the assumption that e-books would be just as easy to use as textbooks, they soon found that students had various complaints about the performance of the e-book devices. But students who used e-books did just as well on quizzes as those who used printed texts.
August 27, 2002
News.Com: Why telecoms back the pirate cause.
Q&A with Sarah Deutsch, VP and associate general counsel at Verizon. The whole legislative attack came as a complete surprise to Verizon, because we had thought we had a long-term deal with the copyright community after spending three years negotiating the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. That was supposed to be the end of the war.
Boxes and Arrows: The indie life: Talking with Louis Rosenfeld.
Just about everyone who deals with information systems, even managing files on their own computer, knows a thing or two about information architecture. Perhaps an important way to broadly promote ourselves is to associate the frustrations of personal information management with solutions that emanate from this new field of information architecture.
August 28, 2002
Editor & Publisher: See the News Of the Future At Starbucks.
Steve Outing. The vision of news-industry futurist Roger Fidler is finally coming into focus. Fidler, who spent much of his career at Knight Ridder and now directs the Institute for CyberInformation at Kent State University, first began writing about the use of portable digital tablets as news-reading devices back in 1981.
Advertising Age: Secrecy Shrouds TabletPC Publisher Talks.
Microsoft declined to make an executive available to discuss its plans for content on the TabletPC and through a spokesman said that no partnerships have been announced. But the company has held talks with Forbes, Dow Jones & Co.'s Wall Street Journal and Conde Nast's New Yorker...
August 29, 2002
Semantic Studios: Ambient Findability.
I want to be able to find anything, anywhere, anytime. What's surprising is how close we are to making this impossibly strange dream a reality. Ambient interfaces, sensors and small tech are about to intertwingle the physical and virtual worlds in shocking ways that will make history of the Diamond Age.
News.Com: Apple: Burn DVDs--and we'll burn you.
At issue in the legal threat is Apple's well-received iDVD application, which permits users to burn DVDs only on internal drives manufactured by Apple. In unmodified form, it does not permit writing to external drives manufactured by third parties.
August 30, 2002
Computerworld: Conversation Trumps Convergence.
The latest rage is the smart phone that combines PDA functions with wireless telephony and data. Unfortunately, for years to come, this will be a failed experiment. Most of your users will be far better off carrying a well-designed PDA, a cell phone and, if needed, a wireless data device.
News.Com: Out with AOL, in with Jabber.
And should the IETF approve a Jabber working group, it would start out with an installed base that no other IETF instant messaging activity can match. Jabber now claims that "as many as 100,000 of its servers are running across the Internet, with millions of people using the application.
August 31, 2002
NY Times: Health Insurers Still Struggling With a Service on the Internet.
A venture by seven big health insurers to take control of electronic services that link them with patients and doctors has run into financial trouble, industry officials said, and most of the companies have written down all or most of their investment in the effort.
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