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RIAA (2), Friday Diversion (2), Sergey Brin (1), Neverball (1), Lindows (1)
Hack Notification Law Tested
Acxiom hack could force first interpretations of California law: They got hacked, and now apparently they have to tell everyone. "The law requires any person or company doing business with Californians and owning or licensing computer data to tell customers when unencrypted combinations of personal and sensitive information have been ...
Published: August 15, 2003  Geek Popularity Factor: 1000
New Spam Law in Texas
Texas law to block misleading spam takes effect Sept. 1 "Unsolicited advertising must carry the note 'ADV:' in its subject line, and messages with sexual material must say 'ADV: Adult Advertisement.' Backers of the law hope those notes will help Internet service providers and spam-filtering software remove spam before it ...
Published: August 25, 2003  Geek Popularity Factor: 998
Godwin's Law
Godwin's Law: There's so much about the Internet that I don't know yet. Godwin's Law (also Godwin's Rule of Nazi Analogies) is, in Internet culture, an adage originated in 1990 by Mike Godwin that states: As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler ...
Published: April 2, 2006  Geek Popularity Factor: 984
The Law of Demeter
Law of Demeter: I just finished reading "The Pragmatic Programmer" by Dave Thomas. I didn't think the book was all that good (see below), but it did talk about a really great principle that I've seen articlulated numerous times before. The Law of Demeter (LoD) is a simple style rule ...
Published: August 17, 2005  Geek Popularity Factor: 981
Screenshot Law
Ask the Law Geek: Is publishing screenshots Fair Use?: Here's an interesting discussion about something we do pretty frequently around here. Is taking a screenshot of a public web site (like Google or Flickr) and posting it to your weblog or in a presentation considered copyright violation, or does it ...
Published: August 11, 2006  Geek Popularity Factor: 966
Fitt's Law
AskTog: A Quiz Designed to Give You Fitts: A phenomenal article from Bruce Tognazzini explaining Fitt's Law and how it applies in GUI design: "The Apple menu bar is a lot faster than menu bars in windows. Why? Because, since the menu bar lies on a screen edge, it has ...
Published: August 13, 2003  Geek Popularity Factor: 911
Anti-Voyeur Law
House backs crackdown on video voyeurs: This will put dozens of porn sites out of business. Calling video voyeurism the new frontier of stalking, the House on Tuesday approved legislation to make it a crime to secretly photograph or videotape people, often for lascivious purposes.
Published: September 22, 2004  Geek Popularity Factor: 909
Random Plot Generator
Random Law and Order Plot Generator: Being a huge Law and Order fan, I can tell you this is pretty accurate. Via Boing Boing.
Published: March 9, 2004  Geek Popularity Factor: 897
SCO: GPL Is Invalid
SCO to argue General Public Licence invalid: They're apparently going to try and invalidate the entire concept of open-source. "The GPL licence allows software and work derived from it to be copied by anyone at no charge. But according to today's WSJ, quoting lawyer Mark Heise, the GPL is pre-empted ...
Published: August 16, 2003  Geek Popularity Factor: 885
UK Says No To Spam
UK Bans Spam Messages Effective December 11th, spammers could be fined £5,000 ($8,200) for spending spam messages but there are a few caveats to the new law. "Under the new law, companies will have to get permission from an individual before they can send them an e-mail or text ...
Published: September 20, 2003  Geek Popularity Factor: 827
How Microsoft Got the "Windows Defender" Name
New name flap for Microsoft -- but this time its legal right is clear: Microsoft recently announced they would rename their Anti-Spyware product to "Windows Defender." However, a developer in Australia was already using that name for his software. His software wasn't active (he has stopped developing it a year ...
Published: November 9, 2005  Geek Popularity Factor: 825
Profiles of Lawsuit Targets
Who's targeted by music swapping suits? Interesting look at three targets of the RIAA lawsuits one claims ignorance to the activity, another admits his guilt, and the third claims ignorance to the law. "The targets of the first lawsuits against music fans who share songs on the Internet include ...
Published: September 9, 2003  Geek Popularity Factor: 824
Daughter-In-Law of the Friday Diversion
( Or, if you prefer, Bride Of the Son Of the Friday Diversion) If you had hung out with Deane and I in 99, you would have either played Tribes, heard mention of Tribes, wondered that Tribes was and why we kept talking about spinfusors , or wished, for the love ...
Published: September 10, 2004  Geek Popularity Factor: 821
Recovering Shredded Documents
Picking Up the Pieces: Even your shredded documents aren't safe anymore. Several companies are competing for a job to reconstruct documents that the Soviet secret police shredded in the late 80s. "ChurchStreet, whose clients are mainly law agencies and private law firms, charges roughly $2,000 to reconstruct a cubic foot ...
Published: July 17, 2003  Geek Popularity Factor: 814
California Sues and Wins
California wins its first anti-spam judgment: Very good news. "California won its first anti-spam judgment Friday when a court fined a marketing firm $2 million for sending out millions of unsolicited e-mails telling people how to spam, the state's attorney general said. Attorney General Bill Lockyer brought the case against ...
Published: October 25, 2003  Geek Popularity Factor: 807
A Thought on Radar Detectors
I got to thinking about radar detectors the other day. I've owned a couple, but as a rule, they sucked. I remember once that I was on my way across town, and it went off 14 times in the five minute trip. The next day, on the interstate, I drove ...
Published: February 27, 2005  Geek Popularity Factor: 803
.pro Loophole
Co. Finds Loophole on '.pro' Web Names: I'm not completely clear on how the ".pro" TLD was supposed to work. This article talks about how, if you were a lawyer, you could get a "mycompany.law.pro" name, provided you had the correct proof that were indeed a law firm. Well, good ...
Published: April 13, 2005  Geek Popularity Factor: 802
The Basics of Fair Use
Copyright:What Makes a Use "Fair"?: Here's a well-written explaination of what makes usage of a copyrighted work legal under the "fair use" provision. What makes a use "fair"? There is no simple formula. Some uses are favored in the law. They include criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including making multiple ...
Published: November 26, 2003  Geek Popularity Factor: 788
New Zealand rugby referee is under attack on Wikipedia
Fans bounty on referee: New Zealand rugby fans are furious with the referee they believe contributed to their surprise loss to France. They ve begun mass-vandalizing the referee s Wikipedia page and using it to post apparent threats and bounties. The entry says Barnes suffers from a vision-related disease which results in ...
Published: October 8, 2007  Geek Popularity Factor: 785
Do Anonymous Domain Registration Outfits Actually Work?
About anonymity . . .: Think you're safe if you register your domain name "anonymously"? Apparently not: Despite paying Domains by Proxy an additional fee to register foetry.com anonymously, they responded to a letter from a personal injury lawyer, and canceled my registration without notifying me of a complaint. Let ...
Published: July 18, 2005  Geek Popularity Factor: 785
Validation of Deane's Two Undeniable Laws of File Sharing
A new approach to file-swapping: The article indicates that Big Media is finally coming around to conform to Deane s Two Undeniable Laws of File Sharing. I came up with these laws in 1999, when Napster was huge. They are: Undeniable Law #1: Legally speaking, trading of copyrighted files is illegal. ...
Published: June 24, 2005  Geek Popularity Factor: 775
Check 21
FRB: Check Clearing for the 21st Century Act Home: It seems the days of the paper check are rapidly coming to an end. A new law that goes into effect in late October allows banks to send electronic images of checks to other banks. Physically transporting the check is no ...
Published: September 28, 2004  Geek Popularity Factor: 769
PDF for Lawyers
PDF for Lawyers: Talk about a niche blog. PDF for Lawyers: How to use PDFs in the practice of law Tips & Techniques" What's the most specific blog you've ever seen?
Published: October 9, 2003  Geek Popularity Factor: 763
Art Imitates Life?
I'm watching "Law and Order SVU" right now, and the case of the murder and rape of a 9-year-old girl is resting on whether or not a company complied with an spam unsubscribe request. The spammer is a child pornographer. Go figure.
Published: August 19, 2003  Geek Popularity Factor: 738
Databases in Iraq
Computer-sleuthing aids troops in Iraq: The truth behind Saddam's capture: one night he popped up in an Access query. Military intelligence analysts have adopted databases and software used by civilian law enforcers to catalog names, pictures and suspects' fingerprints and to search such for links among guerrilla suspects... The next ...
Published: December 23, 2003  Geek Popularity Factor: 723
UserLand Tinkers with RSS Legalities
Scripting News "On Tuesday, July 15, UserLand Software transferred its copyright in the RSS 2.0 spec to Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School. This addresses one of the major concerns about RSS 2.0, that it was published by one of the competitors in the RSS application ...
Published: July 18, 2003  Geek Popularity Factor: 722
Getting Misty Over Old Machines
You ever get sentimental over an old computer? One that you just can't throw away? Back in 1998, I worked part-time at Best Buy so Annie and I could pay cash for our wedding the next summer. That Christmas season was the year a complete PC system (computer, monitor, printer) ...
Published: August 19, 2004  Geek Popularity Factor: 712
CNet Cracking Down on Linking
CNET’s legal team is going after news linkers: I link to a lot of CNet's articles. Here's to hoping I'm not next. An editor of one of the sites that I closely work for has informed me that CNET.com has issued a cease and desist notice citing that linking to ...
Published: December 12, 2003  Geek Popularity Factor: 709
Standard Site URLs
A Standard for Site Organization: This is just a first-rate idea. This was actually written six years ago, and many sites still haven't pulled it off. A selection of well-chosen and well-named root-level directories, implemented across as many sites as possible, would go a long way toward easing the complexities ...
Published: February 7, 2004  Geek Popularity Factor: 709
MikeRoweSoft.com
Website row pits B.C. teen against Microsoft: Based on this, I predict that any database developer named Ora Kill will likely meet the same fate. Microsoft Corp. of Seattle, currently valued at $300 billion US, wants Mike Rowe to give up www.mikerowesoft.com as his Internet domain name. The company claims ...
Published: January 18, 2004  Geek Popularity Factor: 708
Computer Phobia: Logizomechanophobia
Computer Phobia: Who knew it had an actual name? My mother-in-law will be thrilled. Known by a number of names Logizomechanophobia and Fear of Computers being the most common, the problem often significantly impacts the quality of life. It can cause panic attacks and keep people apart from loved ones ...
Published: December 3, 2003  Geek Popularity Factor: 706
Computer Buyers Will Fund Computer Recycling
California Takes on PC Waste: The first computer tax, though it makes sense the users of the offending products pay for the infrastructure to deal with them. "The law charges retailers and manufacturers a small fee, ranging from $6 to $10 depending on the product, to fund a statewide ...
Published: September 26, 2003  Geek Popularity Factor: 706
Italian Security Crackdown
This seems a little oppressive... An antiterror law makes Internet cafe managers check their clients' IDs and track the websites they visit. ...Maurizio Savoni says he's closing his Internet cafe because he doesn't want to be a "cop" anymore. [...] ...Savoni had to obtain a new public communications business license, ...
Published: October 11, 2005  Geek Popularity Factor: 706
Breathe Like Fish
I want one: Alan Izhar-Bodner, an Israeli inventor, has developed a way for divers to breathe underwater without cumbersome oxygen tanks. His apparatus makes use of the air that is dissolved in water, just like fish do. The system uses the "Henry Law" which states that the amount of gas ...
Published: June 6, 2005  Geek Popularity Factor: 703
Intellectual Property Donation
Public Domain Donor: An absolutely fascinating concept. There s a sticker for the back of your driver s license. Why let all of your ideas die with you? Current Copyright law prevents anyone from building upon your creativity for 70 years after your death. Live on in collaboration with others. Make an ...
Published: February 27, 2008  Geek Popularity Factor: 702
RIAA Smacked in Court
U.S. court nixes Net music subpoenas: The court nullified all of the RIAA's subpeonas and told them to find another way of identifying downloaders rather than force the ISPs to give them up. The Recording Industry Association of America, a trade group, has sought to force Verizon Communications and other ...
Published: December 19, 2003  Geek Popularity Factor: 701
AOL Spam Espionage
AOL says worker sold screen names: It'll be fascinating to see how this plays out. An America Online (TWX) software engineer was charged Wednesday with stealing 92 million AOL screen names and selling them to a spammer, federal prosecutors in New York said. [...] Both [the AOL worker and the ...
Published: June 24, 2004  Geek Popularity Factor: 700
Slashdot Commentors on SuprNova
Following up on Torrent Shutdowns: Slashdot has posted a bit on SuprNova being shutdown. What I found interesting were the comments: they are generally very anti-SuprNova, very pro-copyright. An example: Furthermore, this is exactly what should be happening: the government attacks those who break the law, rather than those who ...
Published: December 21, 2004  Geek Popularity Factor: 697
EDRs Are Coming
2008 Not '1984': My kid will be 14 in 2008 coming up on driving age. I really, really want one of these for his car. As for mine, however, all I have is indignation at the invasion of my privacy. Big brother will be watching you for sure ...
Published: August 11, 2004  Geek Popularity Factor: 696
MySpace and Amber Alerts
MySpace to send AMBER alerts on U.S. profiles: This is a good idea. I've always through that Amber Alerts to everyone's cell phone would be handy too. Popular online social network MySpace said Tuesday it will begin sending online alerts to users in certain U.S. regions to help find missing ...
Published: January 23, 2007  Geek Popularity Factor: 696
Canadian Songwriters Want Money from ISPs
Canada songwriters eye royalties from ISPs: There's some tenuous logic going on here. Canada's songwriters sought to require that Internet service providers pay for their users' music downloading habits in a case that could generate millions of dollars in music royalties. In the case Canada's Supreme Court heard Wednesday, the ...
Published: December 4, 2003  Geek Popularity Factor: 693
The Michael Jackson Prosecution Site
Jackson Web Site Unites, Divides Legal Profession: Michael Jackson set up a Web site to counter child molestation charges. Now the prosecutor's office has done the same. There's an interesting debate on the effectiveness and appropriateness of this. Some legal experts said that posting documents detailing the criminal charges against ...
Published: December 25, 2003  Geek Popularity Factor: 692
Mark Cuban on YouTube
Only a 'moron' would buy YouTube, says Mark Cuban: This is kind of a wet blanket. Billionaire investor and dot.com veteran Mark Cuban had harsh words for YouTube, the online site that lets people share video clips, saying only a "moron" would purchase the wildly popular start-up. Cuban, co-founder of ...
Published: September 29, 2006  Geek Popularity Factor: 691
Boing Boing's Linking Policy
Boing Boing has a linking policy: This sure beats that one for the Olympics last year. Boing Boing doesn't believe in linking policies. They're dangerous, have no basis in law, and they break the norms that make the Web possible. They're a wicked, stupid idea. That said, if you believe ...
Published: April 6, 2005  Geek Popularity Factor: 689
All Your Content Are Belong To Us
Boing Boing: MSN Spaces = soylent green: Boing Boing points out something pretty flippin' important about MSN Spaces: Microsoft owns anything you post there. If you post a picture, Microsoft can technically sell that picture to anyone for whatever reason, receive money for it, and never pay you Dime One. ...
Published: December 2, 2004  Geek Popularity Factor: 686
Video Games from the Headlines
War Games: Ripping stuff from the headlines works great for Law and Order, why not video games? Early next year, Kuma Reality Games plans to launch a service that will allow players to re-enact contemporary news events. Kuma's first product centered on the war in Iraq will brief ...
Published: November 13, 2003  Geek Popularity Factor: 684
The Car Whisperer
Car Whisperer: The Car Whisperer is a proof of concept tool to eavesdrop on conversations in other cars when the speaker is using a Bluetooth handset. The carwhisperer project intends to sensibilise manufacturers of carkits and other Bluetooth appliances without display and keyboard for the possible security threat evolving from ...
Published: August 16, 2005  Geek Popularity Factor: 684
Martha Hacks Ankle Monitor
Martha Stewart calls lockdown 'hideous': Martha Stewart was in an interview with Vanity Fair when she made this remark. By merely saying this, I bet she violated some intellectual property law somewhere. Asked about the electronic monitoring device she must wear on her ankle -- she has complained repeatedly that ...
Published: July 5, 2005  Geek Popularity Factor: 684
P2P and Child Porn
P2P Taken to Task for Child Porn: "Senators turned a critical eye to file-trading networks Tuesday in a hearing the explored the use of peer-to-peer services for the exchange of illegal pornography. While no new legislation was introduced, the hearing, convened by the Senate Judiciary Committee, focused on increasing criminal ...
Published: September 10, 2003  Geek Popularity Factor: 683
Living in the Blog-osphere
Living in the Blog-osphere (BAD LINK: this link has gone bad as of July 2003): Another good, general article on blogging from NewsWeek. Covers all the basics, and has an interesting story... "The blog format lends itself to a new kind of reporting: on-the-spot recording of events, instantly beamed to ...
Published: September 3, 2002  Geek Popularity Factor: 683
Tim on Web 2.0 and Trademarks
Web 2.0 Service Mark Controversy (Tim responding this time): Tim O'Reilly responds to the "Web 2.0" trademark controversy which has apparently been pretty hateful over the last week. O'Reilly also values its trademarks -- as do other companies and individuals aligned with the values of openness and sharing. (I'll note ...
Published: May 31, 2006  Geek Popularity Factor: 680
The LEGO Church
My sister-in-law sent an e-mail to us today with photos & stats about a scale model church building made entirely out of LEGO's (even populated with 622 LEGO people.) I did a quick Google search & found a lot more photos of that project. If you've ever messed around with ...
Published: December 6, 2005  Geek Popularity Factor: 675
ThinkSecret Guy Gets a Lawyer
Teen sued by Apple gains legal help: This is good news, because I think everyone deserves good representation and I love a legal soap opera. A lawyer specializing in freedom of speech and the Internet said Wednesday he will defend free of charge a 19-year-old publisher of a Web site ...
Published: January 20, 2005  Geek Popularity Factor: 675
I'm Not a Cop, I Swear
EULA for a web service excluding law enforcement officials?: Here's an interesting post on one of Spolsky's forums: I built a google maps website that maps out all the skateboard parks in North America. [...] My fear is that if I offer this service, cops will use the website to ...
Published: March 2, 2006  Geek Popularity Factor: 674
The Truth about Camera Phones
Cell phone cameras: capturing the moment in blotchy detail: This story says what I recently learned to be true: the pictures on the ads for camera phones are complete lies. The photos are grainy, blotchy and blurry, but for millions of people now toting cell phones with built-in digital cameras, ...
Published: January 19, 2004  Geek Popularity Factor: 674
The Phillies Spammer
Trial begins for Phillies fan accused of e-mail hacking: Being a crazy sports fan is okay. Spoofing the email address of area sportwriters and spamming thousands of people in the metro area, apparently, is not. But yesterday, Carlson sat alone in a federal courtroom in Philadelphia, the accused boo-bird who ...
Published: January 4, 2005  Geek Popularity Factor: 673
Web Sites and Terrorist Groups
Web Sites Listed as 'Terror' Groups: This seems a little fishy to me. Is the enemy the Web site, or the organization behind it? If you give money to a "Web site," you're really giving money to the organization that runs the site, right? "The United States has added Web ...
Published: October 13, 2003  Geek Popularity Factor: 671
Kids.us Domain
Play, Learn, and Surf...with Kids.us!: Good for them. Just wait for the wave of IE plug-ins that will lock the browser down to this domain only. "Finally, there's an Internet domain that parents and children can trust for educational and appropriate online fun: kids.us! All content on affiliated sites is ...
Published: August 30, 2003  Geek Popularity Factor: 669
No More Stacks of Back Issues
The Law of Unintended Consequences: Here's an obvious situation that may not have occured to a lot of people. Struggling to find the space in a small corporate library for the ever-expanding collection of serials, I was delighted to buy a site license and have full-text-searchable issues available at the ...
Published: September 16, 2004  Geek Popularity Factor: 669
The Google Garage
The house that helped build Google: Fascinating story about the woman who owned the actual garage where Google was started. After earning her MBA in 1998, Wojcicki bought 232 Santa Margarita Ave. for about $600,000. She rented the garage to two Stanford students for $1,700 a month to help with ...
Published: July 5, 2007  Geek Popularity Factor: 667
Man Uses Real Sword to Solve Conflict Over Fake Sword
China online gamer gets life for cyber-sabre stabbing: I, for one, welcome our newly armed -and-dangerous video gamers. Please do not stab me when I trip over your surge protector and accidentally obliterate your universe. Qiu Chengwei, 41, stabbed competitor Zhu Caoyuan in the chest after he was told Zhu ...
Published: September 19, 2005  Geek Popularity Factor: 666
Who's a Rat?
Who's A Rat - Largest Online Database of Informants and Agents: I'm fascinated at the legal implications of a site like this. Who's A Rat is a database driven website designed to assist attorneys and criminal defendants with few resources. The purpose of this website is for individuals and attorneys ...
Published: September 2, 2004  Geek Popularity Factor: 663
Spyware Removal Testing
Review: Testing anti-spyware programs: CNN tests spyware removers. No clear winner he did the best by running two different progams at the same time. [...] I tested Webroot Software Inc.'s Spy Sweeper, LavaSoft's Ad-Aware, Tenebril Inc.'s SpyCatcher, Spybot Search & Destroy and Computer Associates Inc.'s eTrust PestPatrol. To ensure ...
Published: November 1, 2004  Geek Popularity Factor: 663
Godzilla vs. The Friday Diversion
Unfortunately, IP law reared it's ugly head and killed last week's diversion. Hopefully, then the Super Monkey Ball folks don't hear about Neverball. Tilt the floor to roll a ball through an obstacle course before time runs out. Neverball is part puzzle game, part action game, and entirely a test ...
Published: October 8, 2004  Geek Popularity Factor: 661
Email Follies, Part II
Ketchup stain sparks e-mail flurry: A secretary at a London law firm accidentally spilled ketchup on the pants of a senior associate of the firm. He sent her an email asking for £4 to have his pants cleaned. She responded with wonderful sarcasm and CC'd some people, who forwarded it ...
Published: June 17, 2005  Geek Popularity Factor: 661
Michael Robertson Interview
Stepping up to a giant: A very interesting interview with Michael Robertson, CEO of Lindows. I didn't know that he was the force behind MP3.com. It's interesting that he chose to do Lindows rather than just retire of the sale of that company. "...it goes back to the fact there ...
Published: August 5, 2003  Geek Popularity Factor: 661
Behold the Micro-pub
The Dawn of the MicroPubs: Actually, I thought this was an article about small bars, but it turned out to be good nonetheless. It's about the rise of "micro publications" sites, usually blogs, that are narrow to one particular topic. "Micro-pubs have a narrow and extreme focus on one ...
Published: November 11, 2003  Geek Popularity Factor: 656
New Loss Leader For Wal-Mart?
From the "You Get What You Pay For" department, C-Net is reporting that Wal-Mart may be selling HP Pavillion ze2308wm laptops this Christmas season for the low-low price of $398. Wal-mart pulled a similar stunt last year, but since then I haven't heard any rave reviews about the quality of ...
Published: November 1, 2005  Geek Popularity Factor: 652
Agile Development: A Tale of Two Cooks
Agile Development is an emerging theory of software development management that rebels against over-management of the development process. Agile Development says that our goal is to meet the customer needs, and we should welcome changing requirements because this means the end product will better do what the customer wants it ...
Published: September 19, 2002  Geek Popularity Factor: 652
Expensive Hardware Lobbing
It's the newest extreme sport: Expensive Hardware Lobbing. The object: Get your multi-million dollar space probe to explore another planet without crapping out before it can do the job. The players: Earth's space-faring nations, and all other planets in the solar system. The rules: There are only four major ones. ...
Published: May 9, 2005  Geek Popularity Factor: 649
Freebie Friday
It's raining free apps! Picasa is a pretty terrific photo management software. Google just bought the company, and they're giving Picasa away for free. My father-in-law just got a digital camera for his birthday, so I set him up with Picasa. Now he just plugs in the camera, and up ...
Published: July 23, 2004  Geek Popularity Factor: 646
Selling Purchased Software
Last Stand for First Sale: Here's a fascinating discussion about whether or not someone can rightfully sell a legal copy of a piece of software they purchased. A woman tried to sell a copy of Dress Shop 5 Pro on eBay, and was contacted by the manufacturer and advised that ...
Published: August 26, 2005  Geek Popularity Factor: 645
New Storage Devices
IO Data is set to ship the first removable hard drive based on the IVDR (Information Versatile Disk for Removable) specification. The system is comprised of a hard disk drive sealed in a case which fits into an adapter housing with a USB 2 interface (with USB 1 backwards compatibility.) ...
Published: April 13, 2004  Geek Popularity Factor: 643
$100,000 Spent for Virtual Land
Man buys virtual space station for $100,000: Another crazy purchase in an MMORPG. Jon Jacobs, a director of independent films, plans to call the space resort, in the science-fiction themed game Project Entropia, "Club Neverdie." Like other land areas in the game that has been visited by 300,000 players, the ...
Published: November 10, 2005  Geek Popularity Factor: 634
What You Need to Know About DEFCONs
This morning, Joe and I were perusing through the Random Facts about Vin Diesel (don't click it if you can't afford to lose 15 minutes of your life). We saw a fact that went something like this: When the grocery store runs out of Vin Diesel's favorite ice cream, the ...
Published: July 20, 2005  Geek Popularity Factor: 634
Cell Phones in Africa
Cell phones reshaping Africa: Interesting article on the effect of cell phones in Africa. [...] there are South Africans and Kenyans slinging cell phones round the necks of elephants to track them through bush and jungle. And there's Beatrice Enyonam, a cosmetics vendor in Togo, keeping in touch with her ...
Published: October 17, 2005  Geek Popularity Factor: 633
Crypto Laws Slackened
Cold War encryption laws stand, but not as firmly: It looks like the government is backing away from its silly and unenforcable rules on data encryption. Encryption had always been limited to 56-bit, and anything over that is treated as a "munition" and could not be exported. Obviously, there's zero ...
Published: October 16, 2003  Geek Popularity Factor: 633
The Tech of Sky Captain
SKY CAPTAIN AND THE WORLD OF TOMORROW / **** (PG): Some interesting information in Ebert's gushing review of this movie (it hits theaters today). Apparently there were no physical sets. Much will be written about the technique, about how the first-time director, Kerry Conran, labored for years to bring forth ...
Published: September 17, 2004  Geek Popularity Factor: 624
Content Management: Think Before You Implement
On Managing Content and Content Management Systems (CMS): This guy makes a great point here: "I have yet to see one [CMS] that is anywhere worth the amount of money and time needed to get it into place and often times, for many reasons, a CMS can actually make a ...
Published: July 2, 2003  Geek Popularity Factor: 622
Navigating Voluminous Blogs
As you get more and more entries in a blog, how to you ensure people can find what they're looking for? Blogs are very front page-centric unless you're watching the front page everyday, browsing the site is terribly inefficient. The category pages are all but worthless on Gadgetopia because ...
Published: September 19, 2003  Geek Popularity Factor: 618
Site Owners Not Liable for Third-Party Postings
Court says blogs can't be sued for postings: This is some good news...or bad, I guess, depending on if you've been defamed or not. Bloggers and website owners cannot be sued for posting libelous or defamatory comments written by third parties, the California Supreme Court has ruled. The court said ...
Published: November 22, 2006  Geek Popularity Factor: 617
Add 30 Seconds
Here is a great example of usability: my microwave. We got a new microwave a few months ago, and it came with a feature I thought was pointless, but has turned out to be about the only way we use the thing now. It's a button, innocently marked: "Add 30 ...
Published: September 21, 2006  Geek Popularity Factor: 617
The Hidden Inefficiency of the Prius
Don t Buy That New Prius! Test-Drive a Used Car Instead: Wired Magazine argues that buying a used car is vastly more energy efficient than buying a new Prius. Making a Prius consumes 113 million BTUs, according to sustainability engineer Pablo Paster. A single gallon of gas contains about 113,000 Btus, ...
Published: May 20, 2008  Geek Popularity Factor: 601
The Virtual Land Market in Project Entropia
Gamer buys $26,500 virtual land: At first, I thought this was the stupidest thing I've ever heard of. A 22-year-old gamer has spent $26,500 on an island that exists only in a computer role-playing game. [...] The land exists within the game Project Entropia, an RPG which allows thousands of ...
Published: December 17, 2004  Geek Popularity Factor: 591
Revenge of the Sith
I finally went and saw Revenge of the Sith yesterday. Some thoughts (no real spoilers): With the exception of a few scenes, the movie was well-acted. Hayden Christensen did a great job as Anakin/Vader watching his descent into madness was compelling. And Ian McDiarmid was excellent as [insert current ...
Published: May 31, 2005  Geek Popularity Factor: 591
Great Britain's Great Big Brother
I thought this was interesting; Britain has plans to use a network of cameras to automatically track movements of vehicles on most of its major roads. The plan is to position cameras along streets and highways that will be tied to computers that can read license plate numbers from passing ...
Published: January 16, 2006  Geek Popularity Factor: 591
The Inslaw Affair
I stumbled into this story about a week ago and have been fascinated by it ever since. It's the story of how the United States government essentially stole some very powerful software twenty years ago they liked it, they installed it, they used it, then they just stopped paying ...
Published: November 22, 2004  Geek Popularity Factor: 544
Shelfari: When Usability and Ethics Collide
At what point does a usability flaw become unethical? If a usability flaw continues to cause people to do something undesirable to them but very desirable to you and you know this and don t change your interface at what point do you become a massive tool? I m left ...
Published: November 6, 2007  Geek Popularity Factor: 489
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