The most widely quoted story of daypop right now (by a fair margin): The United States of America has gone mad. For those who prefer images to words, check this Word War 2.5 flash game
Without commenting of why a professional association feels they have a mandate to get involved, here’s an opportunity for you Montrealers.
Thanks to Pssst and Pseudo.
Microsoft declares their first dividend ever. Could this be related to a certain tax plan?
Thanks to Fizzz for the heads up.
Doc Searls quotes a discouraging email by a confrère who states that the Eldred decision is in the interest of IP rights owners.
The author also stresses the need to own everything IP related. I don’t agree.
You definitely need to assess everything own-able in your business. You need to know where you stand, you need to evaluate the value of your intellectual assets.
Does this mean milking it for all it’s worth? It’s a possibility. Some may argue that it is duty to the shareholders.
Does this mean realizing that not all IP should be locked down as much as legally possible? I think so.The view that owning IP is the same as holding rights in a piece of real estate is flawed.
Does this mean rejoicing over a decision that will create a very unhealthy intellectual property environment? I can’t help to notice how much people build upon other people’s ideas. You can lock IP down, licence IP, free IP, toss IP in a drawer and forget about it, but in any case there should be a time limit to one’s custody of our global intellectual assets. Why can’t we realize that what we do now is not the be-all end-all of creation?
People came before us, people will come after us. Let’s create a rich legacy instead of a dead end of obfuscated content and perpetual ownership of a walking and talking mouse. Let’s work with policies aimed at moving forward instead of digging trenches and burrowing in our current position.
So really, if it might be in one’s immediate commercial interest to applause the conclusions of Eldred (haven’t read the decision yet), let’s at least realize that this decision is not all positive for anyone.
Greplaw has a post asking if the DVD CSS can really be considered copy protection, since making an exact copy of a DVD is totally possible without knowing the encryption method. The copy will then have to be read in a normal DVD player like the original.
The original question is here and there is an answer by Edward Felten who does address the strategic advantages to rely on a trade secret protected method to control distribution of players.
I must assume that some people must have thought of the ambiguous nature of CSS before since the DMCA uses the words « technological measure that effectively controls access to a work » rather that make any reference to the copying process.
The WIPO copyright treaty originally used » circumvention of effective technological measures that are used by authors in connection with the exercise of their rights under this Treaty or the Berne Convention and that restrict acts, in respect of their works, which are not authorized by the authors concerned or permitted by law«
Through this wording, laws worded like the DMCA grant protection and status to any trade secret, which in traditional IP laws are not subject to any particular protection. It’s that broad delegation, that blank check to a method yet to be determined, that bothers me a lot in with the DVD issue.
I hate mod points on /.: I feel like I have a duty to give back and read the comments. Fortunately, sometimes there are little gems:
Poster 1: We’ve never truly seen Google behaving in an aggressive, competitive way
Poster 2: It’s ironic that creating a superior product at a low price (free, in this case) is no longer considered « competitive behaviour ». These days, you aren’t considered « competitive » unless you are engaging in anti-competitive behaviour (customer lock-in, standards pollution, collusion, etc).
Mini-putt in Shockwave glory.
Long day. Headache. Could there be less fresh air in the ventilation system when it’s -16 outside?
A simple javascript thing. Cute, different, simple.
[via Fizzz]
Suggestion de la Grande Rousse, cette ressource .
Au second chapitre, anglicismes. Au troisième, traduction juridique. C’est lent, mais riche.
There are a bunch of systems around the web to see who’s linking to who, what weblogs you might like to read, who’s reading what, who’s the most prolific linker, etc. Some rely on spiders, some rely on trackback pings or search engines or a combo of those methods.
Today I had the pleasure to see that a distinguished visitor had commented on a post by Brightblue. My first reaction was just like if I was getting unexpected company: « ohmygod, this place is a mess I should clean up really fast and make a good dinner and and… ». Except then I didn’t have any warning… Oh well!
This is an experiment above all and I’ll have a v 1.0 up soon enough.
I also noticed some of my post were noticed elsewhere. It’s quite unexpected really. The intended audience for this site was less than a dozen people! I just wanted to dip a toe into the water, but it seems I enjoy being splashed.
I like the linking, the foaming caused by juicy tidbits, the ease of circulation of information. I really appreciate that people will often link to the exact source of an item, instead of just doing it Ananova style « BBC reported that » or whatnot. And by following the trackbacks, you can actually learn more about an issue. I also like the opinion pieces.
I like that my humble place got visited by someone I have a lot of admiration for. I’ll never wash my logfiles again.
Oh yeah. And I’m putting Christopher Locke on my reading list. I had already read parts of the Cluetrain manifesto (and it’s credited somewhere in my thesis) and I fully expect Gonzo Marketing and The Bombast transcripts to be a worthy read. It will be quite a change from my recent readings on the Qing dynasty.
(yes yes, I want to see AllConsuming pick those up, I admit).
Mark is angry. How angry?
I migrated to semantic markup that has been around for 10 fucking years and they go and drop it. Not deprecate it slowly over time, mind you, but just fucking drop it. Which means that, after keeping up with all the latest standards, painstakingly marking up all my content, and validating every last page on my site, I’m still stuck in a dead end.
[…]
Standards are bullshit. XHTML is a crock. The W3C is irrelevant.I’m migrating to HTML 4.
Refreshingly sincere isn’t it? I can understand him: it seems the XHTML he lovingly crafted will be made obsolete. (or will it? I don’t know, I have issues with the basics of CSS that need to be resolved… Look at this site… so I’m not going to get into discussions on XHTML)
Standards evolve and conflict. Generally, I can understand the need to do tabula rasa once in a while. I cringe when it happens with laws though, because a well known evil is often easier to deal with than that weird new thing, no matter how much good will went into drafting it.Yet, for things as mark-up languages, maybe standardization bodies should be allowed to fumble and change their mind.
I’m saying that because it seems like a relatively new field and an absolutely rapidly evolving one too and I imagine it is harder to envision all the consequences of a single decision. I’d be curious to learn about the rationale of the changes Mark talks about though.
So Mark followed the book to the letter, pure code, and got burned. At least he proved it could be done. That’s an impressive feat in itself.
Will Mark be as passionate about HTML 4 as he was with the much richer (philosophically speaking) XHTML? And more importantly, what’s with the need to use the latest, highest numbered, standard? Early adoption is great, but his code is still valid as it is isn’t it? Is it about lost bragging rights? Frustration of misdirected efforts?
[via Fizzz]
MS settles for 1.1 billion in a California class action. This is not the federal anti trust case but a private class action. The settlement amounts to 30% of all the sales revenues of Microsoft in that state between 1995 and 2001. Similar lawsuits are pending in 16 states.
Trial was set for Feb. 24. Maybe getting not another judge to utter the word monopoly was worth 1.1 billion? In all fairness, that amount only exists as long as all involved customers and business take advantage of the rebate vouchers and the actual cost of the settlement, if accepted by the judge, will be lower.
And while we talking of settlements, don’t forget the RIAA one. (Oh, /. already posted his earlier today… too bad, I wrote it, I’M posting it).
I’ve been surfing the web for a couple minutes now, I absolutely forgot what it is I was looking for in the first place. The non-chronological history of Chimera makes it hard to retrace my steps. All I know is that I just ended up reading a couple sites about Kobe beef and Wagyu cows. I think I need sleep
Besides the History panel, another thing I miss in Chimera are subscriptions to web sites that alert you when the page changes. I prefer RSS feeds, but when worse comes to worse, they can be useful, especially for job posting sites. One last rant on Chimera: the Cookie alert dialog does not give me any details on the content and expiration date of the cookielike Mozilla does. If you drop down a sheet, why not put something useful on it?