To quickly answer my own question, no. But sometimes I really wonder about the sanity of current copyright legislation. I enjoy PostSecret, there is something in the anonymous confession of sins that appeals to the lapsed Catholic side of my personality. I have often wondered about the legal issues surrounding Read more
This is a very interesting article on Wired about networks. Two American social scientists found old notes relating to a long-running heart disease study started in 1948 in the Massachusetts town of Farmingham. What was invaluable about this particular study was that it contained notes about who was friends with Read more
As with any good xkcd, this one has a serious point behind it. Spambots and other autonomous agents are becoming increasingly sophisticated. There may be a time soon when captchas and Turing tests may be a requirement for any sort of online interaction.
In Costa Rica the phrase “full extras” is a popular Anglicism that is used to describe a car that comes with all added extra features, and has evolved as anexpression that refers to any product loaded with perks and extras. “Full extras” was the first thought that crossed my mind Read more
I have been spending perhaps too much time recently engaged in what one could call the war between old media and the Internet. As an avid cybernaut and proud card-carrying member of the social media revolution, I am often puzzled by the level of vitriol directed against the blogosphere, Twitter, Read more
There are days when I wake up in an excellent mood, but a piece of writing manages to sour it somehow. I do not know where to begin with this call for patent reform from “a major British inventor”. Mr Trevor Baylis, inventor of the wind-up radio (no, I’m not Read more
Registration is now closed, but here is the programme for this year’s Gikii. I’m really looking forward to it: 17 September 09:15-09:30 Opening 09:30-10:45 First morning session (3): Doomsday Christopher Lever, Fortun@e 500: A Consideration of the Contract Law Consequences of Cache Poisoning Clive Feather, Resilience of the PGP “web Read more
There were many reasons to believe that the UK would not be seeing any three-strikes legislation against file-sharing. First, the European Union had declared that it was a bad idea. Second, HADOPI had been declared unconstitutional in France. But most importantly, the Digital Britain report had considered that the proposal Read more
The new issue of SCRIPTed is now live. In this issue: Editorial News from the SCRIPTed Offices Shawn H. E. Harmon, pp.194-196 | HTML | DOC | PDF | National and Global Dimensions of Public Rights in Copyright Graham Greenleaf and David Vaile, pp.197-200 | HTML | DOC | PDF Read more
(Thanks to Lilian for inspiring the title). August 5 2009 could very well come to be known as the Day of the Zombie. Earlier in the day, the press reported that Twitter had been knocked offline by a large distributed denial of service attack (DDoS). Besides the obvious comments about Read more