Tying the Threads Together Essays 6/5/2000; 7:15:31 AM April 18, 2000: A brief essay tying together many international stories, showing that the ability to simply run to another country if things get hot in your own may not necessarily be as viable as people might think.

CACIB Troubles Country Watch: Britain6/5/2000; 7:15:29 AM April 17, 2000: I hope that Britain's example of how badly things can go wrong when you rule that content providers are responsible for content sends a clear warning to other countries (and courts!) who might consider ruling this way. Slashdot today has an article about the British site that's protesting the Godfrey result and the subsequent wild censoring, the Campaign Against Censorship of the Internet in Britain.

ZDNet: News: Judge to rule against Bidder's Edge General IP Issues6/5/2000; 7:15:27 AM April 17, 2000: "A federal judge said he plans to issue a preliminary injunction against Bidder's Edge Inc. in a suit brought by eBay Inc., a victory for the big online auctioneer in a battle that could have wide implications for Internet commerce."This has been a long time coming and opens the door to more debates then you can shake a stick at.

The digital divide is bunk Digital Divide6/5/2000; 7:15:23 AM April 17, 2000: The article provides a much needed dose of common sense into the debate, but it does overstate its case a bit."By far the most important factors facilitating or inhibiting Internet access are education and age, and not income—nor race/ethnicity or gender, each of which accounts for less than a 5 percent change in rates of access and is statistically insignificant.

Can Napster be Stopped? No! Music & MP36/5/2000; 7:15:15 AM April 17, 2000: Well, to pick nits, yes, Napster itself can be stopped, as it depends on central servers. Maybe you can't stop it but you can make it as hard to use as it is to find FTP servers with warez, which for someone who is not "in the loop" is quite hard. Gnutella, on the other hand, is virtually provably impossible to block.

Real Work Personal Commentary6/5/2000; 7:15:12 AM April 16, 2000: I don't know why exactly, but I was thinking about my grandparents and what they think of my education in computer science.I was thinking of how to explain to them why what I do is hard enough to justify an education and that money they hear so much about. And I started wondering... if you could add up all of the person-hours spent on the processes invoked when you viewed this web page.

French Group Takes Yahoo to Court Over Nazi Site Country Watch: France 6/5/2000; 7:15:09 AM April 16, 2000: Missed this one, dated last Tuesday. Mostly interesting because of the line "LICRA did not say how access to a worldwide Web site could be blocked in France only." A concrete example of international laws in conflict.

Suck: Project Zapster Humor/Amusing 6/5/2000; 7:15:06 AM April 16, 2000: Not a site I visit often, but this is good...

The Wired Word Technology & Sociology6/5/2000; 7:15:00 AM April 14, 2000: (a là array) "The egalitarianism of the Internet is appealing, but it rests on an untenable assumption: not merely that all of us are created equal, but that all of us are equally meritorious and interesting. Thus we have news Web sites in which the opinions of readers are solicited ("What's Your View?") and displayed in a format that gives equal weight to the informed and the ignorant; at last count Washingtonpost.

Opinion Reconsidered Personal Commentary6/5/2000; 7:13:38 AM April 7, 2000: I'm feeling bad today and I'll soon be going home (where my Internet access is really bad) for the weekend, so no more updates. However, I reconsidered my opinion on the recent ruling as code-as-expression, and I'm not as optimistic as I was. I posted this in the Userland DG, but I'll reproduce it here:My logical train of thought asks, "