Just when you thought that the Microsoft Corporation did not have a sense of humour, you read this, and it brings a smile to your face. Check out the Thought Thieves competition, where you can win £2,000 worth of film and video equipment vouchers (Vouchers? What’s up with Bill Gates? Read more
This is a very worrying development for Creative Commons. CISAC, the International Confederation of Societies of Authors and Composers (which brings together 207 authors’ societies from 109 countries); has published an article heavily criticising Creative Commons. They are quoting Emma Pike’s article against CC, and pretty much using the same Read more
(thanks to Lilian Edwards for the link). The BBC is now opening its RSS content for syndication. Web designers can now syndicate BBC content on their own websites with much less restrictions than before. If you wanted to add one of the many BBC feeds to your blog or website, Read more
Browsing randomly on Google Scholar (as one does) I found an excellent article about social roles in electronic communities. It describes several types of personalities that can be found in online fora: Celebrities – Prolific posters who spend a good deal of time contributing to the community. Celebrities define what Read more
I have attended another meeting of the Patenting Lives project, some interesting discussion took place (will be writing about some of it later on). During the meeting we discussed the Patenting Lives Conference. Here is the call for papers: The Conference of the Patenting Lives Project will be held in Read more
This article in the Washington Post tells us about the plans to reform the U.S. patent system, because it is now felt that the system is suffering from too many patents awarded, and too few are not being awarded. There are those who want Europe to go the way of Read more
In an article in Nature (Marris E, “Free genome databases finally defeat Celera”, Nature 435, 6 available only under subscription), it is reported that Celera is finally giving up some of its proprietary database practices, and will make available all of its genetic data through the U.S. National Center for Read more
Data still seems to indicate that P2P networks are gathering more and more people. For example, Slyck.com has been monitoring P2P network since 2003 and the chart shows a steady increase in numbers (the data does not include torrent statistics): At least the music industry has stopped claiming that P2P Read more
Star Wars fandom has always been sophisticated. Does anybody remember Troops? Then there are other great ones, such as Jedi Hunter (Crikey!) and many, many others. Now there is a new and sophisticated kid on the block, Star Wars Revelations, a fan movie produced with $20,000 telling the story of Read more