Carnivore 3.0 - The Wrath of Olympus Surveillance and Privacy from Government9/18/2000; 8:02:45 PM 'Given the 1996 bombing at the Atlanta games and the 1972 hostage crisis in Munich, I really, really wouldn't want to be responsible for public safety at an Olympic games anywhere. So it isn't surprising that the security plans for Salt Lake in 2002 are very robust -- perhaps too robust for some people, including me.

Judge slams Palm Pilot and Web use in Las Vegas murder case Technology & Sociology9/18/2000; 7:54:04 PM Lately, it's been the legal system whacking on the internet. In this story, the internet gets a little retaliation in.(Please don't correct the gross generalities in that statement and just pretend to enjoy the irony, OK?)'A US judge has slammed jurors who revealed murder trial information on the Net and used a Palm Pilot to track press reports on the case.

Germany Quashes Net Tax Plan Country Watch: Germany9/18/2000; 7:35:48 PM 'Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder on Monday ruled out a tax on Internet use that critics said would stifle the development of the Web in Germany, Europe's biggest economy. 'In a speech to business leaders, Schroeder quashed a new Finance Ministry rule floated last month to tax businesses every time employees use company computers for private Internet surfing.'Which would have implied either lax enforcement, or a wide-scale motitoring of employee activity detailed enough to account for how much time isn't spent on company business.

LinkBack feature Testing... LinkBack9/17/2000; 6:56:38 PM Look at the right tool-bar. I'm uploading the results of the run of LinkBack for iRights and placed it in a message, and then include that message in the bar.If you think you might be interested in doing that for your Manila site, let me know and perhaps we can work something out.In my spare time, I'm cleaning up the system and making it smoother to add features.

Mobile Phones Redefine Cities Technology & Sociology9/17/2000; 6:46:05 PM Missed this from Sept. 6...'[Anthony Townsend, an associate research scientist at New York University's Taub Urban Research Center] said much of the behavior and structure of the city at an aggregate level is based upon individual behavior. '"So the introduction of this cute little device (mobile phones) would slip under the radar of urbanists, even though it fundamentally changes the way individuals interact -- which consequently alters the behavior of the entire system,"

JumpTV Aims To Be Next iCraveTV - Without Lawsuits Television & Movies9/17/2000; 6:42:04 PM 'Another Canadian company is planning to go where controversial Webcaster iCraveTV.com has gone before. But Montreal- based JumpTV.com figures it can retransmit off-the-air television signals via the Internet without being crushed by copyright lawsuits from the movie and broadcasting industries. 'Nearly 10 months after iCraveTV first announced plans to pipe television broadcasting through its Web site the way cable companies retransmit programming via their private networks, JumpTV is gearing up for a similar business, taking advantage of Internet- friendly broadcasting regulations in Canada.

LinkBack Online LinkBack9/16/2000; 1:20:24 PM Murphy willing, LinkBack is back online and should stay there for the forseeable future.It's running within Radio Userland now, so I can run it at home without violating any Frontier licensing. (Cool!)The system has been reset and will take some time to flush out the 'old' links.

Olympic Coverage Personal Notes9/16/2000; 12:04:44 PM On a topic utterly unrelated to iRights...If you enjoy watching the Olympics and live in the US you likely detest what passes for Olympic coverage around here, which is usually about 50% sports, and 50% "While we own your eyes, we'd like you to [watch the premiere of this new show, watch this unutterably annoying and sappy "human interest" story, forget that anybody but the US is competing].

Film evidence challenges BT's claim to hypertext patent Patents9/16/2000; 11:56:06 AM 'BT's tight-fisted grasp on the patent for hyperlinks could be about to slacken following an intriguing posting on Nerd site, Slashdot.'Apparently, on December 9, 1968, Douglas C Engelbart and 17 researchers at the Augmentation Research Center, Stanford Research Institute, in Menlo Park, California presented a 90-minute live public demo in which hypertext was wheeled out for all to see.

All The World's A Bootleg General IP Issues9/15/2000; 4:28:29 PM '... Several of the Nirvana songs on Napster were live recordings of extremely poor sound quality, the vocals barely audible through audience noise. I assumed that these were bootlegged recordings, which by definition are hard to come by. I labeled the files "bootleg-rare." And I added them to the CD as lagniappe. 'Napster allows each member of the "Napster community"