Salon interview with the Arizona Democratic Primary ...
Digital Divide
6/5/2000; 7:10:22 AM March 20, 2000: An interview in Salon with the company that did the Arizona Democratic Primary online voting.

"Many people who are not voting now are poor people. They're people who are working two jobs, they're working mothers, they're in the military, they're in situations where it can be really difficult to get to a polling place. There's a big voting divide today; we think online voting will help close it." I agree.

Mattel Censorship Censorship6/5/2000; 7:10:19 AM March 20, 2000: Mattel, makers of CyberPatrol, a censorware product, are now censoring anybody who has the cracks on their site (not much surprise), and anybody who merely points to the cracks (more surprising).

Aside: Coporate America really needs to lose the idea that a site linking to something is the same as the site actually having and distributing that something.

Sites hosting the crack, hosting critical essays, or sites pointing to critical essays are being banned under every catagory CyberPatrol has, such as Violence/Profanity, Partial Nudity, Sexual Acts, Gross Depictions, Intolerance, Satanic/Cult, Drugs/Drug Culture, Militant/Extremist, Sex Education, Gambling, and Alcohol and Tobacco.

Computers, the Internet & the Abdication of Consciousnes Personal Commentary6/5/2000; 7:10:15 AM March 20, 2000: View from an Iowa Homestead: Computers, the Internet & the Abdication of Consciousness: 'I'm grateful for my liberal arts education, with a heavy emphasis on philosophy. Is it the case that people with strictly technical educations, say straight computer science undergrad work or engineering, cannot step back like philosophy allows one to do? I can't imagine living such a life, but perhaps people don't know what they're missing. Or don't care. Perhaps, like the retirees feeding nickels to the slot machines in Vegas, they are trying to reach the abdication of consciousness Talbott refers to.'

Netscape readies new browser, wins development support Misc.6/5/2000; 7:10:11 AM March 20, 2000: News Flash, 1996: "The browser was is over, and Netscape has won. Why does Microsoft bother with their 'Internet Explorer'?"

News Flash, 2000:Netscape readies new browser, wins development support: "Some analysts don't see Netscape making a dent in Microsoft's lead. 'The browser war is over, and Explorer has won,' said Seamus McAteer, an analyst at Jupiter Communications."

Ask Slashdot: Does A Software License Cover Patches? Misc.6/5/2000; 7:10:08 AM March 19, 2000: Ask Slashdot: Does A Software License Cover Patches?: I bring up this article because I believe some of the arguments apply to the question of whether or not Third Voice and other such things are modifying a page, as what Third Voice does is essentially patch a page.(Note that not all of them apply, as programs aren't exactly the same things as communications in general, but some still apply.)

With redesign, Deja.com drifts from its humble Usenet roots Internet/Weblog Culture6/5/2000; 7:09:35 AM March 19, 2000: "Should this continue, it's entirely possible that this gloriously diverse global party -- the greatest continuous shouting match in the history of computer communications -- will simply fade into irrelevance."

All good things come to an end, sooner or later.

Perhaps weblogs will fulfill people's need to engage in shouting matches. (On the other hand, those don't tend to work too well in the weblog world... Spontaneous Community Destruction tends to occur.)

Patently Bezos Patents6/5/2000; 7:09:18 AM March 16, 2000: "When Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos laid out his proposals for reforming the patent system last week, patent experts reacted with the same lack of enthusiasm the bookseller's competitors showed when it won a patent on its customer-referral program. After all, Bezos' plan, like some of his company's e-commerce patents, did not sound all that novel to people familiar with the subject.""'This is really nothing new,' says Randy Lipsitz, partner at Kramer, Levin, Naftalis and Frankel. 'He's not the first person to have spoken out against the patent system.'"And thus goes the entire Salon article. I have two questions:

1. If the idea isn't new, why does that make it bad?
2. Where in Bezos' essay does he claim that his proposals are new? (The word "new" shows up twice, neither of them describing the proposal.)

What a waste of an article. I tend to expect better from Salon then an article falling into the "The Only Good Idea Is A New Idea" fallacy.

The Platform for Privacy Preferences Proposal Privacy from Companies5/5/2000; 10:37:57 AM The Platform for Privacy Preferences is a proposal from the W3C, the group that sets web standards, for a way of handling privacy issues on the web (and presumably other Internet connections that may arise). The idea is that you specify what kind of privacy you want, and when you use your browser to visit some server (like Amazon.com), the server asks your browser what kind of privacy you want, and either respects your wishes or kicks you off the site as they aren't interested in talking to anyone who doesn't bare their soul to them.An intriguing idea, but one that is far from implementation. It's a great idea, though. Power to the people!

Judge Explains MP3.com Ruling Music & MP35/5/2000; 10:22:59 AM "[Judge] Rakoff disagreed with MP3.com's argument that its music service is the "functional equivalent" of storing CDs that had already been purchased. "'In actuality defendant is replaying for the subscribers converted versions of the recordings it copied, without authorization, from plaintiffs' copyrighted CDs,' Rakoff wrote. "The San Diego company had argued that it acted lawfully under the fair-use provisions of copyright laws that allows copying to take place under certain circumstances. However, Rakoff said MP3.com could not meet the standards required to win a fair-use defense."

Link Ban 'Threatens Free Speech' Free Speech5/5/2000; 9:59:14 AM Experts speaking in defense of hacker magazine 2600 say a ruling that prevents sites from linking to a controversial DVD-descrambling utility imperils traditional free speech. A federal judge should not order 2600.com to yank hyperlinks to the DeCSS program from its website because it "would constitute a gross prior restraint of speech," 2600 magazine says in court documents filed Wednesday in U.S. District Court in New York. Good luck to 2600.