mo.notono.us

Thursday, September 25, 2003

Nigeria Court Overturns Stoning Sentence

ABCNews.com is just one of many news organizations carrying this story: Nigeria Court Overturns Stoning Sentence I like how the court did not have any issue with the fact that sentencing a mother for adultery using a child conceived out of wedlock as the evidence is ridiculously unfair: I doubt a court that doles out sentences like amputations and stoning would ever do a paternity test, and hence the father would always go free...

A Group Is Its Own Worst Enemy

More interesting observations by Shirky, and an extension of research done by W.R. Bion 50 or so years ago: A Group Is Its Own Worst Enemy

Musings on future challenges for the telecom companies

Clay Shirky wrote an interesting piece on Voice over IP (VoIP) and its predicted effect on the telecom industry. Shirky: Customer-owned Networks and ZapMail

Electronic paper reaches video speed: Colour movies might soon be playing on single sheets

This is interesting. I can only assume that elecronic ink/paper will eventually be cheaper to produce than LCD monitors, AND offer better resolution... Electronic paper reaches video speed: Colour movies might soon be playing on single sheets.

Wednesday, September 24, 2003

Google at it again

I love Google. It is my first place to search whenever I need an answer. Now there's Google Search by Location. Now, say next time my wife wants to go out for Indian, we can easily locate a near-by restaurant

Swedish police releases murder suspect, arrests a second suspect

The RIAA is not alone in making slight mistakes when accusing people - Swedish police just arrested a second suspect in the Anna Lindh murder case. They also let the first guy go. If you're jailed for a week charged with murdering your country's foreign minister (tapped by some to be the next PM), and then you're let go - what are your rights to sue for damages? I can just see the job application:
Have you ever been arrested, or detained by police? I was accidentally charged with killing our foreign minister. But they let me go after a week.

RIAA withdraws suit - Grandma not a thief after all

The Boston Globe carried an interesting article about the RIAA withdrawing one of the 261 suits it filed the other week. The piece includes this lovely and oh-so-informative snippet:
Evan Cox, a partner with Covington & Burling in San Francisco who is not involved with the case, said the error most likely happened in one of two ways: Either Comcast matched the wrong customer with the IP address, or the recording industry requested information about the wrong IP address, which is usually more than nine digits. "If any of those [IP address] numbers are wrong or transposed, you're going to get the wrong person," [the EFF's] Cohn said.
Nah, really? Do phone numbers work the same way?

Tuesday, September 16, 2003

Yahoo! News - Swedish Police Arrest Lindh Murder Suspect

Sweden voted no to the Euro, but at least they appear to have found Anna Lindh's killer.

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Yahoo! Mail annoyances

So - apparently Yahoo! mail, through what I can only immagine is some lame attempt to secure the emails sent through its system, changes the text of your e-mail message when it encounters words it doesn't like. Like JavaScript. This becomes _JavaScript. No big deal, right? Except it looks pretty stupid in a coverletter. (Yes, I am looking for a job - here's my resume.)

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itnresetsnig tibidt aubot wrod prepecoitn

Here's an interesting tidbit about people's reading perception: apparently it doesn't matter if letters within a word are scrambled; as long as the first and last letters stay the same, people will still decipher the word without much effort. Some original research was also done using audio files where 50 and 100 ms chunks were reversed, but played in the same order - people had no problem understanding it.

Friday, September 12, 2003

A downloader goes up the river

MSNBC does a funny: A downloader goes up the river

Thursday, September 11, 2003

Swedish FM, Anna Lindh Killed

Another 9/11 and another nation in shock, this time Sweden. For the second time in my brief lifespan, a top Swedish politician has been killed. They never officially solved the Palme killing - it was unofficially blamed on the Kurds. Lindh's killing is suspected to be due to her pro-euro stance.

But it all turns out fine

Ok, little Brianna (see previous 2 items) didn't have to lose her life-savings after all (come to think of it I had nowhere near $2000 in savings at age 12). Brilliant move by the P2P movement: stepping in to save the young maiden from the big bad RIAA:
"We don't condone copyright infringement, but it's time for the RIAA's winged monkeys to fly back to the castle and leave the Munchkins alone."

Wednesday, September 10, 2003

Low hanging fruit

There is one benefit to going after 12 year old girls, they're easy push-overs. And no - I'm not talking Lolita here - I'm talking about the RIAA - see below. Apparently they settled the case for $2000.

Tuesday, September 09, 2003

RIAA going after the big boys

...and little girls too. It's pretty much all over the news, but one of the 261 lawsuits that the RIAA filed against file-sharers is a 12 year old girl. Maybe the RIAA members need some extra pocket-money to pay for the defense against the FTC's renewed charges of price-fixing. OK, so maybe letting any random stranger pick up a copy of a CD you bought isn't exactly kosher, but the RIAA certainly makes it hard to root for them. Though some people do.

Sunday, September 07, 2003

Justice is blind. And deaf. And dumb, really dumb.

The energy-companies that in essence stole $8.9 billion from California (or roughly $250 from each and every Californian) during the energy crisis a few years back have been 'forced' by the mighty FERC to settle for a total of roughly $2 million. Economist Paul Krugman has some thoughts on this, and Lawrence Lessig draws an interesting parallel.