An automated Prior Art generator for patentable ideas. Design #3398816675 It's a freezer that connects to the web! It displays pornography and uses the Amazon API. Now THAT is something the world needs.

After a couple of years of wanting this document, I finally felt up to writing "The Metaphor Rant". The Metaphor Rant is a cogent argument that metaphors should rarely be used in a debate context, and should never be used in a domain that people do not clearly understand. I frequently find myself wanting to be able to link to this essay in online debate contexts, it's just that up until now, it didn't exist.

From a Slashdot article. You may remember the author Prof. Ed Felton from Felton v. RIAA.

Note to self: Read the pingback spec. Form opinion. [Scripting News] I cry the cry of the academic: "Let no good thing go unsullied with theory!" The problem with [ping,track,link]back is that you end up sacrificing one of the very attributes of the weblog community that make it so desirable, namely, the lack of bi-directional links. The unidirectional nature of linking is both a liability and an asset, and it's a good idea to understand the dual nature of that before you go wrecking it because you only see the liability part.

Jon Udell mixes Kurzweil's technological predictions and the current demands of the MPAA.  If by 2020 we can port our brain to hardware (or at least augment it), it's likely the MPAA will yell and screem about eyeballs and ears providing an "analog hole" that lets anyone who "sees" a movie or "listens" to a song record the experience (and potentially share it).  All jests aside, this is part of the reason I find hobbling of computers so offensive.

A somewhat technical discussion on why hardware-based content protection is doomed to failure for at least several iterations, based on discussing Intel's "LaGrange" technology. This is the first I've heard of this so I don't know how this fits into the "master plan", whether they believe this is the first and final iteration or what, and how this ties to Palladium. The interesting part about this article is that it's strictly technical and discusses why this just isn't going to work for a while.

So what other religious phrases can we adapt to Murphyism?... Don't be the last on your block to get a Murphy Saves bumpersticker. Ask your friends, Have you accepted Murphy as your personal savior?. I haven't read enough of the Book of Murphy yet to know whether Murphy died for my bugs, or because of them. Actually, I think some Eastern religion fits in much better here. "We all have a little bit of Murphy inside us.

At every job I've started since the computer age began, I have been required to sign a document that basically threatens the new employee with expulsion if the phone, computer or office is used for any type of personal business. I have always signed. But now surveillance software has arrived, and I think back on that document with dread and anger. [osOpinion] I think this is close to the right approach to take if this becomes an issue in your workplace.

One week and a handful of days ago, I was knocked offline by the cable company, because they put my connection on a four-way splitter in the cable companies box. I am finally back online. It took them one week after I called to get someone out here. It took that someone five minutes to fix. Added to the fact that I correctly diagnosed the problem (adding someone else to the splitter) based on my TV signal behavior, this has been quite exasperating.

Wired.  The RIAA wants information on the identity of a Verizon user that it claims has thousands of MP3s avaiable via KaZaA.  Verizon, is resisting.  The RIAA would presumably use this information to force Verizon to deny service to the individual as well as sue them for civil penalties.  It would also allow them, if the NET Act is involked, to send this person to jail as a felon.  Obviously, the RIAA wants to use this case as a demonstration to the rest of us that they are in control.