I am increasingly interested in network science and the possible legal implications of power laws, symmetry-breaking and other network phenomena. One area where the application of scale-free topologies can be experimented and measured is online through the complex mesh of blogs. There have now been several studies on the replication Read more
Money Magazine has declared that the 2nd best job in the United States is that of univeristy professor. Reasonably well paid, flexible hours, casual wear and low stress levels make this an appealing carreer choice. Ok, where did I leave my passport? UPDATE: The full list is: 1. Software Engineer2. Read more
… but were afraid to ask. I’ve just discovered Rootkit.com, as site offering information and, controversially, source code to build your own rootkit. For those who do not know, a rootkit is software that is installed in a computer without the knowledge of the user, running hidden processes that vary Read more
It’s been a slow news day in the IT and IP field, so I will perform a community service announcement. Now that Easter is over, beware the Easter Bunny!
While the British music industry claims they have lost £1.1 billion in the last three years, media market resaerchers Jupiter media calculate that the figure is at most £290m. The problem is that the numbers do not add up. For example, the British music industry keeps claiming that there is Read more
(via Furdlog) Two articles in the LA Times (here and here) help to further the case that piracy does not always translate into lost sales, it may very well end up in opening new markets and new customers. The first case, and perhaps the most documented, is that of Microsoft. Read more
The sad case of the ‘Star Wars kid‘ in Canada has been settled out of court. A teenager in Quebec made a video where he emulated the double lightsabre famously wielded by Darth Maul. The video was released on the internet by three other students, labeled as the “Star Wars Read more
I must admit that I just came across the Open Invention Network (OIN). This is a company created last year by IBM, Novell, Philips, Red Hat, and Sony. Its purpose is to act as a patent pool which will accumulate a number of software patents that will be cross-licensed to Read more
This is a story that has all the makings of a geek legend. A stupid bureaucrat in the city of Tuttle, Oklahoma, noticed that the website belonging to the city that he administers was missing. What was in its place? An Apache Server page. The bureaucrat freaked. Imagine what he Read more
A comment in IPKat has a link to the ruling for Baigent v Random House [2006] EWHC 719 (Ch). I’ve browsed through it (a good way of spending a Friday night). It is not particularly surprising, the ruling specifies that The Da Vinci Code did not constitute substantial copying of Read more