Frank has coverage of the Digital Media Conference at the Berkman Center with plenty of links to follow which could create an endless vortex of reading that threatens to extend way past lunch time.
Plenty of delicate issues revolving around DRM and governement intervention. And I have a paper to write on future avenues of music distribution. I need a catchy title. Anyone has a good translation for « Let the music play« ?
[update: Nice post by Matt who was there]
Monsanto, famous for the biotech backlashes it helped spur, from Agent Orange to BT corn, is at it again.
According to this Wired story:
[…] Monsanto officials say labels like « No rBST » or « rBST-free » are misleading, unfair and deceptive. The company has recently sued one dairy for its labels. «
Should commercial speech include freedom of creating labels for any purpose? I’d be curious to hear any counter argument.
Commercial freedom of speech is a topic I don’t know anything about, but the most border line case I heard about is Kasky v. Nike that was recently settled. Outside from clearly deceptive speech (or libel, or hate speech, outside the US), can’t one freely represent the characteristics of his products? Maybe we should ask the makers of « new and improved flavour » dog food? Or what about Kosher labels?
More details on the lawsuit , Oakhurst Dairy , Monsanto’s press release, and the FDA’s opinion on labels: the main issue for them seems to be that « no hormones » would be misleading since a) there are cow hormones in any milk b) rbST is a synthesized version of bovine somatotropin and there is no difference in the hormones detectable in the milk, except, presumably, proportions.
It seems that rbST-free, instead of hormone-free would be Ok according to the FDA. Anyone with a link to the actual documents for this case?
The Canadian chapter of the Association littéraire et artistique internationale is holding regular conference/dinner events in Montréal on various intellectual property topics.
The next one will certainly be interesting: Open source software : avoiding the pitfalls, reaping the rewards.
Here we go again. After the Globe and Mail, Tech Central station is letting the scoop out to the Slashdot crowd.
Regarding the issue of exporting the litigation spree to Canada, beyond the issue of private copying creating more non infringing practices, another point to keep in mind is the absence in Canadian copyright law of disproportionately high statutory penalties, coupled with a widespread aversion in the judiciary for the American school of civil damage awarding.
Meanwhile, I must say did my part protesting the current state of affairs by shamelessly using and abusing my rights to private copying this week-end. Which made me realize that using dual firewire buses is preferable to daisy chaining CD-writers, 52x is not enough, neither are dual processors, and that currently available backup technologies (short of DLTs and a mortgage) are totally ill equipped to deal with current hard drive sizes.
Update: Joho the Blog also discovered this. I’m amazed that this was not widely known, considering the outrages, notably on Slashdot, when the levy was adopted and subsequently raised.
Much fanfare has been made around Skype, KaZaA’s VoIP offering.
Here is a post on Voxilla, Rebels Without Case, that captures my state of mind very well.
[via Hack the Planet]
Martine fait un rapprochement entre les pubs larmoyantes anti-pirates au ciné, qui font l’éloges des artisans du 7e art, et le fait que la principale source de films contrefaits est bien ces artisans eux-mêmes.
« One recalls with some amusement former Quebec premier Jacques Parizeau’s wish in keeping Vidéotron from the clutches of one-time suitor Ted Rogers of Toronto because of the need for Quebec to preserve « the character and identity of culture in the marketplace. »
A recent manifestation of that goal is Ma Maison Rona , a popular TVA home renovation show that takes the name of the big Quebec hardware chain — harking back to a primitive era when the highest-rated shows on the small screen bore names like Hallmark and Kraft. How soon will Rogers respond with My Home Depot House and the Indigo Literary Hour? «
The URDP opinion guide from the Berkman center
Maybe of interest to some readers who might have more time on their hands since their favorite respondent was arrested.
Bienvenue sur YULWiFiWiki, un paquet de lettre qui représente tout simplement un petit site utilisant la technologie (le concept) Wiki pour présenter des informations concernant la disponibilité de connexions internet par WiFi à Montréal.
[via I never knew]
This makes me feel much better about my typing skills:
occdrnig to rscheearch at an Elingsh uinervtisy, it deosn’t mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, olny taht the frist and lsat ltteres are at the rghit pcleas. The rset can be a toatl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit a porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae we do not raed ervey lteter by ilstef, but the wrod as a wlohe.
The comment Joi adds about not being able to correct titles because of the way permalinks are set up is also very true for me. I’ve had to set up permanent redirects on some posts that had accented letters in the titles when I changed the character encoding of my pages: apparently MT re-encoded the titles differently, which left me with duplicate individual archive pages..
Yahoo news item seen through NetNewsWire with the HTMLDiff feature turned on.
Reuters – A respected and moderate Canadian leading Canadian Muslim cleric was said on Saturday he had been detained and interrogated in Florida by U.S. immigration officials for 16 hours without any charges being filed, when they tried to visit Florida and the Toronto Star newspaper reported on Saturday.
experience had put him off ever going to the United States again.
I really like to see how stories are modified, it’s usually way more telling on big media feeds than on weblogs.
I’m still amazed at people and how they react to simple blog entry like this one . Why the comment about stuffing Mr Seek in a jar ? The picture is not from him … so please read what is posted before making such comments. That said, we seem to have the same problem with popular serach words such as Phénomia and Star Academie which attract random comments from lost fans.
Why is that ? Do people just forget to read or is it just to simple to post a comment ? Should there be a barrier (like a free registration) that ensure that a minimum of tough goes into posting each comment ? I know some people will argue that digital publication is the greatest thing since sliced bread for freedom of speech, and therefore we should not restrict posting an entry, but what is the use of speech if no ones reads you ?
Having an easy way to publish your comment is great if you have a way to distinguish what is relevant and what is not. But if you do not, you will eventually get lost in a sea of irrelevant comments. Any reader of site like /. have noticed this problem. Slashdot adress this problem with moderators who rank all the entries, but this information is not processed by global search engines.
Although there are still a lot of good and insightfull comments to be found on blogs, I worry that we may soon be unable to search trough the sheer volume of stupidty or irrelevant comments that gets published. What we would need is an intelligent comment search engine. Google should develop that as a extension to their services. Hell, I’m certain some people would even pay for such a service if it effectively cuts down search time.
Why not draft a RFC that would provide a technical way for seach engines to appreciate the relevance of each posting ? This would require some work from the administrators of each blog and contributive web site, but the community would benefit greatly from this. Since I’m not the technical expert here, I will leave this issues to others.
Well these where my random thoughs on this sunday morning. Hope this entry attract relevant comments !
Aujourd’hui était une journée sans aggrégateur de nouvelle.
Je me sens un peu déconnecté, comme si je n’avais pas regardé dehors de la journée… Mais j’ai quand même fait une jolie trouvaille.
Mon coloc a trois couteaux qui dormaient au fond d’un tiroir. De bien jolis outils, mais je préférais utiliser les nouveaux Wiltshire Staysharp qui avaient leur pratique fourreau vissé au mur, et que je considérais comme suffisamment efficaces. Tout de même, pour ne pas voir ces beaux outils au fond d’un tiroir, je leur ai acheté une barre aimantée histoire de pouvoir les garder eux aussi au mur et sans trop d’égratignures.
Puis je les ai aiguisés bien comme il faut (une petite lubie chez moi). La bonne idée: jamais tranché de tomates aussi minces… Le gars de Ginsu peut aller se rhabiller. J’ai fini par me faire une monstrueuse salade tellement je m’amusais avec ma trouvaille: confortables, bien balancés, finement affutés…
En fait, j’aurais du y regarder de plus près. Je me serais gaté plus tôt… Série Chef en inox.
While I’m on the topic of VoIP, a municipality in Michigan is selling VoIP to it’s residents.
The move appears to be targetted at the friendly local monopoly, Verizon. Another broadband provider exists in the area, but the city’s offer combines broadband and Vonage’s service.
Community or municipal access providers are not a first, but are there (recent) precedents of a municipal telco?
I don’t see much implications besides convenience for the consumer, and maybe cost savings, since the same service can be accessed using another broadband provider. Although it’s nice to see a small city try to address a problem, this might go against what I just said regarding convergence…
AT&T plans a Bring Your Own Access VoIP service for consumers, Vonage style.
The article mentions that such a service could offer « services like ‘pick your own area code,’ ‘phone number for life,’ and the ability to reach the service from anywhere over the Internet. »
I hope the trend of BYOA services will increase and that connectivity will be considered a basic utility-like service. From what I can see, bundling service with access, or restricting them based on corporate affiliation, is tempting for entities in the position to do such things.Some people call it convergence. Au contraire, I think convergence comes from abstracting services and information from a given support, be it a material support or a specific delivery medium.