From the category archives:

Law & Government

Electoral Prediction: 353 Obama – 185 McCain

November 4, 2008

I’ll go out on a limb here and throw out my prediction for tonight’s election. As Noted in the post’s title, I think Senator Obama will hit 353, while Senator McCain will gain 185 electoral votes. The odds of my numbers being exactly right probably aren’t prefect, but I think I’ll be close. We’ll see.
I [...]

0 comments Read the full article →

This Ain’t Right: Fight the Orphan Works Act

July 23, 2008

Jeffrey Zeldman pointed out the dangerous Orphan Works Acts making their way through Congress. This act has far-reaching implications for everyone, but the impact is even larger for those who work or publish on the ‘Net. Ultimately Congress is attempting to reduce your rights as a creator (whether you write, draw, design Web sites or [...]

5 comments Read the full article →

Austin Twitter Blood Drive

July 2, 2008

Photo courtesy of makelessnoise
An amazing group of people getting together to give a little of themselves. It’s a simple as that.
A lot may be made of the social media aspects of this event (organized and advertised via Twitter, by people who may know each other online far before they met in person), the important [...]

3 comments Read the full article →

Sold Out Digital Downloads

June 28, 2008

I was looking forward to purchasing the full version of the Spore Creature Creator, so after following the appropriate links, I ended up on the purchase page hosted on GameTree. After pressing the green Buy button, my cart remained empty – no matter which browser, no matter how I reached the page. Better than that [...]

2 comments Read the full article →

Politics and Open Source

February 9, 2008

Whurley has created a poll to gather feedback on the question of who would be an ideal candidate for those of us who rely upon and value source software. As he says, “Assume for a moment that a knowledge of open source is prerequisite (or integral) in solving issues like patent reform. Who would you [...]

0 comments Read the full article →

Your Billion Dollar President

December 23, 2007

It’s estimated that the 2008 presidential election process will exceed $1,000,000,000 when all is tallied up. NPR has a new set of specials “crunching the numbers with you over the next few months on public radio and on this website.” The specials, and the daily morning shows, which will start in early ‘08 are [...]

0 comments Read the full article →

IE to Eliminate the Click to Activate Requirement for Flash & ActiveX

November 8, 2007

About six months back, Microsoft was forced to hobble the usability of Internet Explorer as a tactic in their legal battles with Eolas. This lead to much consternation within the Web development community and too much time and money spent implementing a JavaScript workaround that ensured that user’s aren’t forced to click every bit of [...]

0 comments Read the full article →

The DMCA and You

March 22, 2006

As noted on Copyfight, the Cato Institute has released Circumventing Competition: The Perverse Consequences of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which takes the law to task for being anti-competitive and derides “Congressional interference in the market for digital rights management technologies.” As noted in the report:
Why won’t iTunes play on Rio MP3 players? Why are [...]

0 comments Read the full article →

Hi-Res History

March 8, 2006

The National Archives provides an amazing resource in their new site the Charters of Freedom. High-resolution images of key U.S. historical documents have been made available to the world, including the Declaration of Independence, the Bill of Rights and the Constitution of the United States. Beautiful. Simply beautiful.

0 comments Read the full article →

Intellectual Property and the Public Sphere

December 1, 2005

I haven’t had a chance to read Intellectual Property and the Public Sphere from the “UK’s leading progressive think tank”, but I hope to over the weekend. It should be interesting to read the take of a non-US based group as so much of my perspective is shaded by matters here in the States.
This looks [...]

0 comments Read the full article →

← Previous Entries