May 2000

Wednesday, 31 May 2000

Light Exceeds Its Own Speed Limit, or Does It?: “Two new experiments have demonstrated how wrong that comfortable wisdom is. Einstein’s theory survives, physicists say, but the results of the experiments are so mind-bending and weird that the easily unnerved are advised–in all seriousness–not to read beyond this point.”

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Tuesday, 30 May 2000

TheStandard.com: DSL’s Disastrous Rollout: “To the grand tradition of lousy phone service is added the new wrinkle of horrible Internet access via digital subscriber lines.”

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Friday, 26 May 2000

Slashdot: At Last And At Length: Lars Speaks - the other side of the Metallica/Napster fight. Worth reading.

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Chickens attack toddlers in California

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The Ethics of Free Software: Sections 1-4 are interesting, then he starts babbling about gun control and starts grandstanding. It gets interesting (but not necessarily logical) again around section 8.

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NY Times: A Galaxy Far, Far Away Is Becoming Fully Digital - “Despite Mr. Lucas’s endorsement, both Sony and Panavision emphasize that the digital system is still a work in progress. ‘The fact that someone like George Lucas has made such a strong commitment to this technology gives it credibility it would otherwise have to earn,’ said John Galt, Panavision’s senior vice president for advanced digital imaging. ‘But I’m still of the opinion that we have to prove that it works.’” - [insert Ayn Rand humor here]

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What Do People Want Online?: “if we’re constructing sites for goal-oriented consumers, we’d better make sure that we can help facilitate their seeking. Rather than focus on entertainment, flashy doodads, and useless splash screens, the most effective sites are those that help people get the information they want when they need it. Straightforward data, information that invites comparison, and straight talk are going to win the day.”

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House acts to ease Net taxes: “The tax would be reduced to 2% this year and eliminated on Oct. 1, 2002. It was originally enacted to help bankroll the Spanish-American War and has survived many previous attempts to repeal it.”

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Thursday, 25 May 2000

Raskin - The Humane Interface: “If 20 or 30 of the right people, those with influence over design of forthcoming appliances from firms such as Palm, Ericsson, Apple, Sony & Panasonic, or web shops like Sapient, or portals like Yahoo, Sprint, OracleMobile.com and others, read this book, learn its lessons and adopt its teachings and implement its advice, then the 21st century will be a far better place to be”

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Saks sues for $720,673 owed on Saudi heir’s credit card: “The lawsuit says crown prince Abdullah Bin Faisal has an outstanding balance of $720,673 on his account for purchases made at Saks’ Bal Harbor store from 1997 to 1999.”

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Don’t Forget to Breathe: “Forget Tom Cruise. Forget the first ‘Mission: Impossible’ (if you haven’t already). Forget the television show of the ’60s with its doodley, infectious musical theme and Peter Graves’s gravitas. Forget Thandie Newton and the cross-racial love interest. Forget . . . Well, forget everything: your mortgage, the things you regret, the times you weren’t up to it, the things you never got caught for, the betrayals, deceits and banal heroisms of everyday life. Forget them all. Remember: John Woo.”

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Wednesday, 24 May 2000

Fool.com: What Makes a Good CEO?: “John Chambers of Cisco is an exception. He is not an engineer and his background is in marketing. He has done an excellent job, which begs the question, ‘What makes a good CEO?’”

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Microsoft Judge Sees Merit in 3-Way Split: “The effect of a bisection will in effect create two separate monopolies”

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Boo.com Goes Bust: “Ultimately, Boo is a typical example of a lesson that many VCs are pushing these days: Management makes or break a company.”

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Tuesday, 23 May 2000

Regulators ask for laws to oversee online privacy: “People should not be forced to sacrifice their privacy rights to the new technologies”

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Monday, 22 May 2000

Law Firms See a Bill Come Due: “the nation’s biggest law firms are learning a tough lesson about a downside of the new economy. For everybody else, the moral of the story may be more familiar: Be wary of accepting investment advice from your lawyer.”

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Robert Kuttner: The Limits to Globalism - “The kind of globalization we are getting under the auspices of multinational business is producing both cultural homogeneity and a loss of local control. If the architects of globalism can’t do better than this, they will face further popular backlash.”

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Arthur Treacher’s trades fish for chips: “We want to be the leading Internet accelerator providing the highest quality broadband expertise to our clientele and exploiting the convergence of traditional and digital entertainment, and in turn, benefiting broadband end users”

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NY Times: Agent’s Role in Music Site Changes War Over Rights - “The involvement of Ovitz in Scour.com would seem to be at cross purposes with his role in Artists Management. But his backing of Scour.com also marks a significant shift in the roiling battle over copyright protection in the digital age.”

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Sunday, 21 May 2000

2000 May 20 - Sungrazer: “Positioned in space to continuously observe the Sun, SOHO has detected 7 sungrazing comets. Based on their orbits, they are believed to belong to a family of comets created by successive break ups from a single large parent comet which passed very near the sun in the twelfth century. The bright comet of 1965, Ikeya-Seki, was also a member of the Sungrazer family, coming within about 400,000 miles of the Sun’s surface. Passing so close to the Sun, Sungrazers are subjected to destructive tidal forces along with intense solar heat. This comet, known as SOHO 6, did not survive.”

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Leading: “The optimal line length for reading depends on two factors, a physiological factor, and a typographic one. The eyes can easily scan a width of about 6 inches at about a foot and a half distance, without the head moving. If the width is greater than this the head starts to move while scanning the line and this slows down reading. The eye must also return to the beginning of the next line, and with long lines of text this becomes more difficult, and we may start to skip a line, or read the same line again. To prevent this it is absolutely essential that long lines of text be given an increased leading. This factor is one of the main reasons [1] why reading on the computer screen is about 30% slower than reading the printed page.”

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United States Patent 5,878,155: “A method is presented for facilitating sales transactions by electronic media. A bar code or a design is tattooed on an individual. Before thesales transaction can be consummated, the tattoo is scanned with a scanner.”

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Saturday, 20 May 2000

Farewell Impressionism?: “The unmistakable beginnings of an expensive farewell to Impressionism could be observed along with the final consecration of the mockery of tradition that Picasso initiated after having proved himself one of its most dazzling proponents early in the century.”

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E-SIGN Accord Eludes Democrats, Republicans: “Senate Banking Committee Ranking Democrat Paul Sarbanes, (D-Maryland), said that the legislation currently ‘falls short,’ however, noting that there are ‘many Americans who do not participate in the electronic world.’ He noted that several Democratic staffers had to ask for a paper version of the GOP report after they failed to correctly download it from their e-mail address queues.”

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ClickZ: First, Do No Harm - “if you have paying customers who are regulars to your site, it’s a critical retention strategy to provide information and services they want, rather than shoehorning them into your own agenda.”

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Friday, 19 May 2000

Kerberos Loophole May Close Around Microsoft’s Neck: “To gain full compliance, Microsoft would have to change part of its Kerberos code or open it fully to outsiders, ensuring that competing versions of Kerberos have the same access to Windows. The current legal question eventually might be rendered moot as a result.”

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Bruce Schneier: Trusted Client Software - “Against all of these systems – disappearing e-mail, rights management for music and videos, fair game playing – there are two types of attackers: the average user and the skilled attacker. Against the average user anything works; there’s no need for complex security software. Against the skilled attacker nothing works.”

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Creating More Women Coders: “research indicates the number of women earning computer science degrees continues to decline, even though women are earning college degrees in increasing numbers in science and engineering”

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DEN, Boo: R.I.P.: “This week, the Industry Standard offers a revelatory survey on broadband adoption, which includes the eye-opening finding (from Jupiter Communications) that only 5 percent of U.S. users have broadband access now, and 73 percent have no plans to get it, ever. You can look at broadband and see a business opportunity if you’re in the business of selling high-speed Net access yourself; but if you’re trying to reach large numbers of consumers or viewers, as DEN and Boo were, you’d better keep your focus on the ‘narrow’ band until those numbers change – a lot.” - this one is a must-read for web geeks

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Goats with spider gene produce webs: “Both the U.S. and Canadian military have expressed interest in using it for making anti-ballistic defense systems”

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Thursday, 18 May 2000

European Online Retailer Boo.com Collapses: “We are screwed”

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Feds: No warrants for Net wiretaps: “After telecommunications providers were unable to reach agreement with FBI officials on how to implement the monitoring capabilities, the FCC adopted rules that in several areas went beyond the CALEA language - including a requirement that cellular phones be traceable and that information on any digits dialed after a call is connected, which could include such things as account or credit-card numbers or call-forwarding instructions, must be provided.”

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U.S. Considered A-Bomb on Moon: “Viewing the nuclear flash from Earth might have intimidated the Soviet Union and boosted Americans’ confidence after the launch of Sputnik”

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Students make childproof gun: presumably this means that parents will now have to ask their kids to get the gun into operating condition

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BBC News Hackers get backdoor access - “In the wake of the havoc caused by the Love Bug virus, leading industrial nations are debating how best to tackle the rising tide of computer crime at a G8 conference in Paris. But their efforts could be undone by a law being adopted by US states which allows software makers to put backdoors into programs so they can be remotely disabled.”

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Wednesday, 17 May 2000

BBC News: It pays to be nice - “Such research could help us explain why altruism exists in a Darwinian world of apparently ‘selfish genes’.”

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The Onion: Kid Rock Starves To Death: MP3 Piracy Blamed - “Just imagine if the oil-change industry allowed the public to have direct access to oil and oil filters, enabling themto change their car’s oil themselves without going through Jiffy Lube or Kwik Lube. People would stop going to oil-change shops, and the entire industry would collapse. We can’t let that happen to us.”

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Fitts’s UI Law Applied to the Web: “The basic idea in Fitts’s Law is that any time a person uses a mouse to move the mouse pointer, certain characteristicsof objects on the screen make them easy or hard to click on.”

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The unknown hackers: “It’s amazing how much we were still tied to the past. The physical machines had been hauled away, but elements of the operating systems are still being implemented in the same way. It’s like they’re doing incantations. They’re repeating what they’ve been taught, and they don’t know what it means.”

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Teenagers Will Trade Private Online Information for Gifts: “teenagers, more often than parents or younger children, were willing to tell marketers what they do on the weekends, whether they have cheated in school, whether their parents speed when they drive, where their families shop, and other private information about their families’ activities.”

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Wireless Web on a cell phone? It’s the greatest thing I never use …: “If your idea of useful news and information is one noun and one verb, you’re in the right place.”

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Bill Joy: “Knowledge has become a very powerful thing. If it is improperly or accidentally used, it becomes a great danger. … We have the possibility of putting almost unlimitable power in the hands of psychopaths or terrorists.”

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Reps Set to Pass IP Charges Bill: “The Internet Access Charge Prohibition Act of 2000 originally was drafted by Representative Fred Upton (R-Michigan) to permanently ban all federal Internet access charges. But it was revised last week to exclude online telephone services – a decision Republican officials say was made to appease members of the telecommunications industry who view online telephony as competition.”

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Tuesday, 16 May 2000

Mobile phones kill… worms: “The latest study took the humble earthworm as its victim, blasting a group of the timid creatures with microwave radiation similar to that emitted by mobiles. After a night of this treatment, the worms apparently underwent the kind of biological changes that can lead to cell dysfunction.”

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Business Week: The Immediacy of Data - “Americans – more than Europeans or Japanese – have resisted the idea that souped-up cell phones and pocket computers could become primary vehicles for Internet access.”

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The End of the Hit Parade: “if you’re still just counting hits to gauge the success of your company’s site, ticktock, baby–it’s probably time for a redesign. Chances are good that your site isn’t really delivering what your customers want and isn’t giving your company a return on its web investment.”

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BMI: Let the Net Music Play: “The licenses give Internet companies the right to perform publicly all of BMI’s 4.5 million copyrighted works from its 250,000 songwriters, composers, and music publishers.” - but is this performance of musical compositions or performance of recordings?

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Interview w/ Andy Grove: “I have been making a very good living as a prophet debunking consumer broadband for five years, and I don’t see any reason to change.”

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What Am I Thinking?: “While dozens of teams around the world are working on such brain-computer interfaces (BCI’s), Rochester computer science graduate student Jessica Bayliss is the first to show that detection of the brain’s weak electrical signals is possible in a busy environment filled with activity.”

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Invasion of the Killer Internet Movies: “Dennis Young, copresident of Reelplay.com, a site that features marketing kits and film trailers for buyers and sellers, expects Internet rights to be a big issue at this year’s Cannes Film Festival. ‘It’s the hottest topic right now. Everything in this business is exhibition windows,’ he says.”

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Monday, 15 May 2000

Media Ownership: “CJR’s Web guide to what the major media companies own”

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Sunday, 14 May 2000

Despite market downturn, VC funding keeps turning up: “To a man, all of the VCs said that their firms have not changed their investment strategies because of the wild fluctuations in the public markets. They were happy to report, however, that they are seeing a decline in valuations because of the decline of the Nasdaq.”

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NY Times: Vatican Discloses ‘Third Secret’ of Fatima - “The two, Francisco and Jacinta Marto, are the first children ever beatified by the Roman Catholic Church who were not martyrs.”

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Archived Memepool Post: May 14, 2000

Can’t get enough of WWF style “Professional” Wrestling? Maybe it’s time for you to step on to the mat. All Pro Wrestling Boot Camp can help you get started. “You too can live your dream.” (Posted to Media)

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Saturday, 13 May 2000

Villagers Opt to Keep Cowshit Lane: “I live there and I have no objection to the name”

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Ford: SUVs Pose Hazards: “But William Clay Ford Jr. and Jac Nasser, the company’s president and CEO, said the company would continue to build and market SUVs to meet customer demand.”

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NY Times: Rising Internet Use Quietly Transforms Way Japanese Live - “The NEC Corporation, a confirmed member of Japan Inc., is soliciting applications internally for jobs in its expanding Internet-related businesses via e-mail, encouraging employees to seek new opportunities without necessarily asking permission of their bosses. In the past, that would have been insubordination of the first order and a sure-fire way of wrecking one’s career. Although loath to own up to subverting the traditional ways, NEC concedes that requirements that new employees and old managers seeking promotions take a test proving a specified degree of English language skills are largely a result of the Internet.”

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Fishwrap: Microsoft is stuck in the ’80s: “It’s catchy and tangential to the case, kind of like Microsoft’s ‘Innovation, not litigation’ mantra. Plus, it lacks tact, in keeping with the company’s demeanor throughout the trial. Microsoft could create a three-pronged ad campaign, centered on fire management, Elian Gonzalez, and the telephone tax that continues to help us fight the Spanish-American War.”

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U.S. Looks Again at Microsoft: “The government is seeking to try a whole new lawsuit involving products, competitors and interests that were not involved in any way in the case that was tried”

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Friday, 12 May 2000

Jon Katz on corporate sponsored ‘universal access’ - “companies like Ford see that access to computing can enhance morale and loyalty, facilitate corporate communications, transcend geographic boundaries, and even benefit family life, since many global employees and their kids would not be able to afford computers otherwise.”

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Thursday, 11 May 2000

Feed: Yield. Merge. Exit. Freak Out. - “In June of 1998, with the publication of the final amendment to the Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices (most often referred to as the MUTCD) the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) created two new demographic cohorts: those who crossed streets in the twentieth century, when yellow signs warded off reckless drivers, and the twenty-first century youngsters who cross beneath the adamant warnings of fluorescent yellow-green signs. The yellow pedestrian road sign is one of those things, like youth or beauty, that you don’t appreciate until it’s gone. I say this even though I think fluorescent yellow green is a much cooler sign color. Those kids are lucky.” - (the Federal Highway Administration used to a front for the Central Intelligence Agency?)

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White House criticizes tech wage gap: “Women make up only 29% of the five basic information technology job categories studied in the report, although they are 47% of the work force at large, the report said. Further, women are scarcest in the high-tech jobs that pay the most, the report found.”

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NY Times: India Population Hits One Billion - “The government staged the 1 billionth baby milestone as part of a public campaign pressing Indians to have smaller families and rein in the country’s spiraling population growth.”

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Microsoft Asks Slashdot To Remove Readers’ Posts: Microsoft, Slashdot, Digital Millenium Copyright Act. Everybody is wrong. Oi.

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The Register: Ain’t nobody here but us chickens, oh, and the transmitters - “What the hell for? You may well ask. Apparently, her goal is reduce heat stress and regulate the birds’ diet for maximum growth. Although there is no explanation as to how she intends to do this, we don’t doubt for one second that putting a transmitter in the front of a chicken will achieve just that. In fact to test this out, we put a small transistor radio down Linda’s top this morning. By the afternoon she reported her heat stress had fallen and she’d had a tasty, healthy Japanese meal just round the corner. Amazing.”

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Archived Memepool Post: May 11, 2000

Train Up A Child offers poseable action figures with traditional Christian themes. Granted, they’re not the first action figures to inspire religious fervor. However, they do do appear to be the first to offer a choice ethnically sensitive skin tones, and a discount on angels with any purchase. (Posted to Toys)

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Wednesday, 10 May 2000

Fallacies and failures: ways of thinking that doom startups: “lots of marketing research for e-businesses is based on similar personal anecdotes. These anecdotes typically come from the most digitally savvy and interested consumers, such as the people who usually start these dotcoms. Unfortunately these people don’t look at all like the general population.”

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The FTC and You: “This last is important because Vice President Gore wants to extend the act to medical data and other data collected online. Simply cutting a check to the Bush people is not a complete response to this idea.”

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Auction Houses Add insult to injury: “Whatever their calculations, they overlooked one point. These are spoils from a deeply resented colonial past. To dangle them under the noses of the authorities, in Hong Kong now fully part of China, was almost a provocation. The Chinese authorities reacted with moderation.”

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Tim O’Reilly: Lessons from the Layoffs at LinuxCare - “I draw an entirely different lesson: that the ‘service’ opportunity for open source software requires thinking in a much bigger box. (You don’t actually have to go outside the box. You just have to give yourself some elbow room.)”

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Tuesday, 9 May 2000

SPACE ALIEN BACKS BUSH FOR PRESIDENT!: “This decision comes as a tremendous blow to Vice President Al Gore, who naturally assumed he would inherit the alien’s support from his predecessor, Bill Clinton”

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Judge dismisses Sun’s Java-related copyright claim against Microsoft: “The language and structure of the Technology Distribution and License Agreement suggest that the compatibility obligations are separate covenants and not conditions of, or restrictions on, the license grants”

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explorezone.com: Possible hypernova could affect Earth - “What causes all this strange behavior in Eta Carinae is very simple: It’s enormous, more than 100 times the mass of our sun.”

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Monday, 8 May 2000

Paying for Internet Time: “They’re driven by two of the worst human characteristics: fear and greed”

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Palm exec maps handheld course: “Handheld computing has not, and we will argue does not and will not follow the PC computing model in many way. It needs to be fundamentally different to reach those tens of millions of individuals who need to be reached.”

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Joel on Software User Interface Design for Programmers 8: “The effect of this sharp drop-off is that whenever you ‘lower the bar’ by even a small amount, making your program, say, 10% easier to use, you dramatically increase the number of people who can use it, say, by 50%.”

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Ohio Takes Motto to Appeals Court: “Attorney General Betty Montgomery maintained that the motto - ‘With God, all things are possible’ - does not endorse a particular religion.”

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High school runs background checks on students’ prom dates: “Seniors with non-student dates were required to fill out a form listing their date’s name, driver’s license number, date of birth, grade in school or employer, employer’s address and phone number and the last school they attended.”

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They’re Crammed in Like Cattle: “In fact, according to recommendations from the University of California Cooperative Extension, a calf should be allotted a minimum of 35 square feet, possibly 30, in structures known as ‘superhutches.’ The guidelines did not address how much space a calf needs to program in Perl script while drinking diet soda and eating cheese puffs.” - This is dumb. Spending 20% more on real estate for knowledge workers (especially engineers) doubles their productivity. Office space is far less expensive than salary and more than pays for itself.

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Online Health Sites Unveil Standards: “The principles laid out by the Health Internet Ethics group have been endorsed by 20 leading online health companies, including PlanetRx.com, Healtheon/WebMD, Medscape Inc. and DrKoop.com. Internet service provider America Online Inc. of Dulles also agreed to apply the guidelines to its online health-related sites.”

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ClickZ: CRM: Creating Relationships on the Fly - “all of the above represent components of an ideal world, not necessarily a real one”

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Microsoft Quietly Yanks OS Backup CDs: “How is having a ‘recovery CD’ going to help me when I’m asked to insert my Windows 2000 CD to copy those files?”

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Sunday, 7 May 2000

Selfish Gene Theory Of Evolution Called Fatally Flawed: “The gene-centered view, Dr. Bar-Yam points out, can be applied directly only to populations in which sexual reproduction causes complete allelic mixing.”

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NY Times: How Killer B-to-B’s Slid to the Endangered List - “However, Scott Phillips, an analyst with CIBC World Markets, said he expected Ariba to get a share of exchange revenues regardless – if not from a per-transaction fee then from a share of flat fees that exchange participants will likely pay in the future. Such recurring revenue, Mr. Phillips said, gives the company ‘a compelling business model.’ He has a 12-month price target of $150 on Ariba.”

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ClickZ : The Schizophrenic Web - “Even sellers of content have often bought it from someone else. Find out who is the ultimate source of the content and look at their credentials. Your users will think the content is coming from you so it’s important that it is of the same quality and accuracy as all your other communications.”

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MP3.com, BMI in music licensing deal “The licensing agreement with Broadcast Music (BMI) lets MP3.com play BMI’s 4.5 million compositions on its Web site.”

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Saturday, 6 May 2000

Anti-depressants get into water system: “Serotonin, for example, has been used to induce spawning in molluscs. Many anti-depressants which are ending up in rivers are designed to interfere with serotonin production in humans and may affect spawning.”

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ChildCare Action Project Media Analysis Report on American Psycho: “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Alfred Hitchcock’s original Psycho and every other slasher/killer show ever made all rolled into one. Each of the six CAP Investigation Areas revealed enough unacceptable programming to earn a zero score.”

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ClickZ: Your Merchant Account and ‘Puffy Director Pants’ Taxes - “The big caveat to our system, and really many online transaction systems, is that its smoothness is predicated on the merchant account provider’s server being up and running.

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No wonder Atlanta is such a hotbed: inappropriate use of technology - “detailed directions from the Atlanta airport to my office, with locations of all starbucks’ noted”

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Department of hell on wheels: Yet another way that California shows its love for you.

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Friday, 5 May 2000

The Economist: Heavy Reading - “Sceptics predict that these streams of money will soon dry up, once the Internet bubble bursts. Many dot.com ads will certainly go away, but surely not the interest in technology news. A correction might even be a good thing: readers are starting to complain about information overload and too many advertisements. That is mainly why Business 2.0 and Red Herring will go fortnightly–and so a bit thinner–some time this autumn.”

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Interview with Jeff Bezos: “The U.S. books business was profitable. We would try not to enter into a business area where we didn’t think it was possible.”

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DigiGlut.com: “Ironically, E-Merchants’ efforts to make their websites stand out are largely responsible for the glut of information on the Web that serves no one and harms us all.”

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Lewinsky Testimony for Tripp Case Limited: “A Maryland judge ruled today that the state could go ahead with its prosecution of Linda R. Tripp on charges she broke the law when she secretly tape-recorded conversations with Monica S. Lewinsky, the former White House intern who was having a relationship with President Clinton. But the judge also dealt a severe setback to the prosecution’s case by suppressing testimony of Ms. Lewinsky and another witness that may be crucial in obtaining a conviction.”

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What the patient doesn’t say: “A qualitative study […] confirms previous studies showing that doctors fail to elicit all the patient’s reasons for consulting the doctor but also shows that patients’ unvoiced agendas are more complex and more closely related to problem clinical outcomes than previously thought.”

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Thursday, 4 May 2000

Washington Supreme Court Rules Shrink Wrap Licensing Binding Without Explicit Consent: “The court disagreed, claiming that Mortenson had reason to know that the software was licensed and would be subject to license terms as aresult of its prior dealings, and the undisputed evidence showed that shrink-wrap license agreements are commonly used by the software industry. The court also found that the consequential damages limitation contained in the license terms was enforceable because it was not ‘shocking’ or hidden in a maze of fine print, and within the expectations of a sophisticated business such as Mortenson.”

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Petition for Certiorari: “The effect of the decision of the court of appeals is to require essentially captive subscribers to forfeit truly personal information to whatever purpose a telecommunications provider thinks may provide a commercial benefit. This is an exploitative business practice clothed in the garb of the commercial speech doctrine.”

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osOpinion: MS Breakup not nearly enough. - “[try communism]”

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Big-deal E-Tailer Boo is Thru: “The six month-old fashion and sportwear site is up for sale and could be shut down if if there is no taker…” - This is hardly a surprise - the customer experience was abysmal. Boo.com focussed on flashy graphics rather than makign it easy to purchase things. Q: Why should I have to change browser settings and download plugins in order to give you money? A: I shouldn’t. I don’t. Thank you, drive through.

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Investigation of auto marketplace scares off some players: “We’re waiting for the car companies to get through this FTC issue”

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Wednesday, 3 May 2000

A reader noted that Alexander Abian passed away last year - “Iowa State University math professor Alexander Abian didn’t receive extensive media attention for developing the ‘set theory.’ He wasn’t interviewed by newspapers and television shows across the world for his teaching methods. He wasn’t sought out for being the distinguished academic that he was. Instead, he became famous for his theory that blowing up the moon would solve the Earth’s problems.”

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Eyetrack for Online News: “One of its principal findings is that news Web site users tend to look first at and look most intently at text, glossing over photos and images in search of meaningful textual information. This is 180 degrees away from the print Eyetrack study, which found that newspaper readers typically get drawn first to photos on a page, before letting their gaze go off in search of text.”

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ClickZ : The Secret to E-Business Success - “So loyalty is important, and people don’t like their privacy violated. So why are so many e-marketers not taking this information to heart?”

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Macworld: Apple Heads for Interface Oblivion - “Skins – user-customizable interface overlays – are the latest rage. ‘Non-standard!’ is the new rallying cry. And all this portends dark days to come – perky, shiny, translucent days, yes, but dark as night.”

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Archived Memepool Post: May 3, 2000

Bored at work? Draganfly has the remote control flying machines you need to keep yourself entertained by buzzing coworkers - start off with the basic flying saucer and graduate to tiny multi-rotor helicopters. Competitor Plantraco doesn’t have the high end helicopter, but it does have a more versatile flying saucer as well as wacky “in action” and “as seen on tv” promotional video clips and a strange alien midget mascot named Hugo. (Posted to Gadgets)

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Tuesday, 2 May 2000

Rumor: Alexander Abian died?

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The effect of temperature on CCD’s: “dark current noise is exponentially related to temperature - it DOUBLES for every 6 or 8 degrees C”

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Security Expectations for Internet Service Providers: “It is not the intent of this document to define a set of requirements that would be appropriate for all ISPs, but rather to raise awareness among ISPs of the community’s expectations, and to provide the community with a framework for discussion of security expectations with current and prospective service providers.”

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Monday, 1 May 2000

Statement by the President Regarding the United States’ Decision to Stop Degrading Global Positioning System Accuracy: “worldwide transportation safety, scientific, and commercial interests could best be served by discontinuation of SA.”

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Archived Memepool Post: May 1, 2000

Microsoft keeps asking “Where do you want to go today?”, but we didn’t think they meant Groom Dry Lake Air Force Base. Yes, you can now use the Microsoft sponsored TerraServer to explore satellite photos of everybody’s favorite alleged alien research facility: Area 51. (Posted to Conspiracy)

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Archived Memepool Post: May 1, 2000

As best as we can guess, Bam-b is a site dedicated to rendered alien propagation. We’re not sure. We have no idea. But it’s cool. We think. (Posted to Sex)

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