Self-negating prophecy Glossary 3/8/2001; 4:24:22 PM Everybody's heard of a self-fulfilling prophecy... "Mr. National Anchorperson, I predict there will be a shortage of milk in the stores today, so I recommend that everybody immediately run to their local grocery store and buy all the milk they can possibly need." So of course there's a nationwide rush on milk. Of course, self-fulfilling prophecies are not amazing when they come true; some, like the example above, would be amazing if they didn't come true.

Expert: Web gadgets threaten your privacy Privacy from Companies 3/8/2001; 4:11:44 PM Kind of on the theme from yesterday: 'Popular electronic gadgets with links to the Internet pose a mounting threat to consumer privacy, Richard Smith, a leading computer privacy expert, said in an interview on Wednesday. 'Such everyday "spy" devices include fitness monitors that track heart rates and pump out exercise-related advertising, digital music players that track listening habits, low-cost wristwatch and wireless surveillance cameras, as well as location-tracking mobile phones and other monitoring devices.

Computer Programming for Everybody Technology & Sociology 3/8/2001; 1:03:54 AM 'In the seventies, Xerox PARC asked: "Can we have a computer on every desk?" We now know this is possible, but those computers haven't necessarily empowered their users. Today's computers are often inflexible: the average computer user can typically only change a limited set of options configurable via a "wizard" (a lofty word for a canned dialog), and is dependent on expert programmers for everything else.

Survey of Intellectual Property Issues for Distance Learning Misc. 3/7/2001; 6:38:11 PM A nice article on how IP issues are affecting educators.  I think a lot of what's mentioned applies to education in general, not just distance education. Of course, this is to be expected. While in some sense "distance education" might be moving more slowly then some predicted, a lot of "conventional classes" are taking on many aspects of distance learning.

The open PC is dead - start praying, says HD guru General IP Issues3/7/2001; 5:41:57 PM 'Hale Landis maintains the ata-atapi.com website, and has been working for open standards for twenty five years. He has been a participant in the ANSI X3/NCITS Technical Committees that developed the ATA and ATA/ATAPI standards since 1990, and works as a consultant and provider of test software. 'His chilling, deeply pessimistic view is that the good times are over.

Tag - You're Hit Administrative 3/7/2001; 5:31:28 PM 'An estimated one-third of all shopping cart applications at Internet retailing sites have software holes that make them vulnerable to the price switching scam, said Peggy Weigle, chief executive of Sanctum, a security software company in Santa Clara, Calif.... 'Here's how it works: After choosing a product and receiving pricing information, a hacker can use a standard browser's "edit page" feature to show the hidden HTML code on the page.

Napster Judge Issues Injunction Music & MP3 3/6/2001; 2:22:12 PM 'Napster has a three-day window to remove copyrighted music from its file-sharing system every time it is notified that a copyrighted song appears on its network, if it accepts the terms of an injunction issued by a federal court judge late Monday night. 'According to District Judge Marilyn Patel's injunction, Napster now has five days to outline its plans to begin policing its network.

Napster Fallout: Privacy Loses? Privacy from Companies 3/6/2001; 2:10:49 PM 'If Napster is ultimately ruled to be liable for copyright infringement, the frontlines of the intellectual property battle could shift to ISPs and end users. Experts say that could be bad news for online privacy.... 'The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) already exempts ISPs from any obligation to monitor their networks for copyright violations, and absolves them of liability for transient files.

Random House Sues for Rights General IP Issues 3/6/2001; 2:03:47 PM 'Did authors sign away rights to electronic books before e-books were even invented? Random House believes so, which is why it's suing e-book publisher RosettaBooks over ownership of digital rights for eight previously published works.' Interesting discussion, but I would anticipate Random House will win. While one cannot sign a contract without being aware of what the contract says, since the authors signed away "

The Internet's public enema No. 1 Free Speech 3/5/2001; 10:47:57 PM 'Rotten.com's sole purpose is to "present the viewer with a truly unpleasant experience," and its proprietor is doing a dandy job of that.... It's horrible. And yet, the Net is fascinated. About 200,000 visitors come to Rotten.com every day. We are voyeurs at heart, drawn to the macabre and horrific like rubberneckers at a car crash, and even though we can't bear to look we are compelled to click on that headline: "