DoubleClick held at arm's length by partners
Privacy from Companies
5/2/2000; 11:43:45 PM "AltaVista and Kozmo.com have distanced themselves from Internet advertising network DoubleClick partly out of concerns about its handling of privacy issues, according to reports." Wow, that's unusually gutsy for companies like that...

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.

"Your honor, that genetic evidence introduced that placed me at the scene of the murder was illegally analyzed in violation of patent #6,274,283, 'Jeremy Bowers'." OK, it wouldn't fly in a criminal trial, but there are other situations it probably would, like if your insurance company tries to deny you after analyzing your genes? Might be worth the price of the patent application to possibly have something to beat over the heads of an insurance company someday... ("Fine, you won't cover me? I'm suing for patent violation relief.")

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. She said that parents should be held legally responsible for what their teen-age children do 'on those Internet channels.'" I've never heard a better argument for not having children... you may find yourself responsible for their felonious actions, and spend time in prison. (If you haven't had teenaged children in a while, and haven't been one yourself, please rest assured that it is impossible to completely police a teenager. They are as clever as any other human who doesn't want to be caught, and, with the aid of a computer, can hide things right under your nose without all that much effort, no matter how good a parent you are.)Holding parents accountable for their children's actions is becoming increasingly out-of-date. Unfortunately, we hold parents accountable for good and sufficient reasons, and those reasons aren't disappearing, it's just that teenagers are becoming capable of committing larger and larger crimes that the parents can be completely unaware of. For instance, collecting illegal MP3s can give a fine or a jail term, and it's going to be very easy in 10 years to completely hide them from your parents (after mass storage devices are so big that the odd gigabytes eaten here or there arouses no suspicion). Can we hold parents accountable for this?

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. Therefore, you may find this Katzian (There are practical reasons for this discussion too... but more about that tommorow.)

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."If he's for real, that's exactly what I was objecting to as well. Adding the advertising on top of it was what this was about, not the re-broadcasting per se. Communication modification.Also, note the cluelessness exhibited by the responders (in true Slashdot fashion): "Does this mean NBC be suing [sic] SONY soon because it's not easy to remove that 'SONY' logo on my TV and remote? The SONY logo isn't inside the TV frame, but then, neither were iCrave's banners..." It's amazing how many people seriously believe that "bound together on a single web site" and "in one person's field of vision" are semantically identical relationships... I suppose this person believes his TV remote to be an integral part of the TV signal. (Another failed argument-by-metaphor... I've really gotta write that one up for this site.)

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. 'But there needs to be more information. A person should know what's happening to information about them and what's going on with the software in their computers.'"Where's the part about "and be able to prevent the information transfer if they feel uncomfortable about it"?If you prevent the transfer, you may not be granted a license, but I think explicit permission should always be asked... and if it's not in the license agreement (which it never is, because they actually want you to read that and if they put a requirement of giving your information there, you might get spooked), I don't personally feel terribly obligated to give good information.

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.Unfortunately, my sample is too small to say anything, and I am uncomfortable pointing out examples, as that might be percieved as an attack ('Your opinion on the Amazon patent is wrong because you are ignorant of the software industry' is a rather unpolite tack to take.). So, take that for what it's worth I supposed.There will be counterexamples, of course, that's the nature of statistics. I'm wondering if there's a trend. I hope some larger weblogs pick up the survey and help people participate without seeing this analysis first.

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.