British Woman Patents Self Patents 5/2/2000; 11:42:35 PM Mar 1, 2000: Not 100% Internet related yet, but it will be. Regarding the woman patenting herself... pay attention to how it comes out, don't just view it as an oddity. In fact, if you were British, you should be filling out a patent application for yourself right now. Do it before its blocked. If you can get a patent, you'll be in a good position for the coming genetic problems.

Govt Wants Less Web Anonymity Surveillance and Privacy from Government5/2/2000; 11:41:49 PM Mar 1, 2000: "The U.S. government may need sweeping new powers to investigate and prosecute future denial-of-service attacks, top law enforcement officials said Tuesday." Clever... we all knew it was coming so they waited until it blew over to announce this. We'll see if the network news picks up on this..."But it was one of the younger members of the House -- Texas Democrat Sheila Jackson Lee -- who appeared the most confused.

Weblog Communities Essays5/2/2000; 11:38:49 PM Mar 1, 2000: I've tried to collect my thoughts on the community I see developing around here and systematize some of the relationships so we can understand them. I find Weblog Communities are surprisingly interesting upon closer examination.I think the value of the piece is not so much that brilliant observations are made, but simply that they are stated out in the open, where we can discuss and consider them, rather then in the back of our heads.

Slashdot on iCraveTV Television & Movies5/2/2000; 11:34:39 PM Feb 29, 2000: iCraveTV update: An interesting post at Slashdot emerged, claiming to be from "a media consultant for a major American network." "Anyway, the problem with iCrave was that they didn't make it easy enough to remove their advertising banners. If they had had a button to turn them off then we would have had no case because then they wouldn't have forced anyone to view their added material.

Are Security Fears Running Ahead Of Reality? Privacy from Companies5/2/2000; 11:32:40 PM Feb 29, 2000: Funny, I would think a better title would be "Why Aren't People Worried About Security?" Consider this quote from the end of the article:"Bennett, the Texas Webmaster, said the controversy demonstrates that companies need to do a better job quelling the public's fears about privacy."'I don't think there's anything wrong with targeted banner advertisements,' he said.

iCraveTV Out For The Count Television & Movies 5/2/2000; 11:30:53 PM Feb 29, 2000: "Groups representing the TV, film and sports industries have forced Canada's iCraveTV.com to permanently close its Web site, ending any possibility it will resume showing TV programs without permission, the Canadian Association of Broadcasters said." Goodbye, ICraveTV.

Time Running Out on Kid Email Misc. 5/2/2000; 11:28:02 PM Feb 29, 2000: We hear about a lot of less-then-wonderful things being done "in the name of the children!", but this one's pretty good, actually. E-mail can get a child in over their head pretty quickly; my sister recently got in over her head, and she's 18! Still, while the ideas good, the government really should stop passing laws that they don't already know how to enforce; odds are, if they can't figure out how to enforce it today, they aren't going to figure it out anytime soon.

Observations on Opinions on the Amazon Patent Personal Commentary5/2/2000; 11:27:11 PM Feb 28, 2000: As I cruised the weblogs for the opinions of people regarding the Amazon patent, I thought I noticed a correlation between the person being in the computer field in a more-or-less professional manner, and thinking the Amazon patent is bad. It seemed to me that those who worked in the computer industry were likely to think the patent is wrong (and the more they worked, the stronger the dislike), while those who worked in other industries tended to think there was nothing wrong with it.

The Amazon One-Click Patent Fracas Patents 5/2/2000; 11:19:31 PM I'll just let the original page I had for this on Feb 27, 2000 stand. It says it all and it would just clutter things up to try to include it all here.

Q on Passport Access Privacy from Companies 5/2/2000; 11:17:46 PM 'While Passport Access isn't webcrawling for resumes anymore, they are still grabbing them off of websites and "technical sites" by hand and giving or selling them to clients, which is still a major violation of U.S. Copyright law.' *sigh*