Here's an extremely well written article on copyright in general and on the book, movie, and music industries in particular. The article was written by Orson Scott Card, award-winning author of Ender's Game and books for Rhino Times of Greensboro, NC. It is an excellent description of the issues surrounding …

An article from the Atlanta Journal Constitution contains a variety of quotes from musicians as diverse as the Grateful Dead's Bob Weir, David Draiman of Disturbed, and rapper Chuck D of Public Enemy indicating that the efforts being made "on their behalf" by the RIAA are not being appreciated by …

An article from the New York Times is reporting that a recent study by AT&T shows that almost 80% of the 285 high-quality pirated copies of movies that have been found on the internet actually came from Hollywood insiders, and not the "little guy," as the MPAA and their …

According to a survey published by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, reported by BBC News, girls in the developed countries surveyed (UK, US, New Zealand, Sweden, and Australia) are more likely to go on to college than their male counterparts. More interesting is that girls are universally certain …

Popular Science has an article about the worst jobs in science. If you have the time, take a look. Sadly, I can say that I had friends in Lexington who had the number 3 bad job.

Apparently one of the things that you give up, besides meals, when you fly JetBlue is your privacy. According to an article from Wired, JetBlue has stepped up to the plate to take Delta's place after that carrier bowed out of the CAPPS II testing earlier this year. CAPPS II …

In the first test that I've seen involving fluid dynamics simulations, xlr8yourmac has published a benchmark done by a knowledgeable user who has used the top of the line Fortran compilers and compared single-processor G4, G5, Itanium, Xeon, and Cray X1 processors. The G5 starts out a little weak (beating …

In a move that shows the success of Verisign's campaign to rid the world of ICANN's individual representation, the largest domain name company has taken over all nonexistent domains worldwide. Yesterday, if you had typed www.somerandomname.net, you would have gotten an error message from your browser. Today, you …

To a crowd of happy Apple enthusiasts in Paris, Steve Jobs announced revisions to the PowerBook line of G4 portable Macintosh computers. In addition, Apple has released a wireless keyboard and mouse using Bluetooth technology. The key changes in the PowerBook line are centered around the popular 15" model, which …

Microsoft is hardly a beloved name in the computer industry, but when software patents are in question, everybody rallies to the support of the defendant. The latest example of this is a blog entry from Ray Ozzie (formerly of Lotus and currently of Groove Networks). Microsoft in August fell prey …

The Economist has a fine article on the growing discord between Microsoft and (especially foreign) governments over the future of software. At issue is not only the cost, but issues of control, proprietary software vs. standards, and reliability. At the crux of the story is the defection of Munich, Germany …

An article from LinuxWorld this week raises the question of whether SCO knows the origin of the code that they claim was misappropriated into the Linux code base. Based on quotes from SCO officials (both in print and at conferences), the author postulates that one of the reasons that SCO …

A man who has been an official witness at over 200 deaths carried out by the State of Texas has stopped signing up to witness the acts, but that doesn't mean he's against capital punishment. The article (oddly enough from the Scotsman) goes over some of the inmates he has …

In an article from the Scotsman, Dr. Susan Black opines that the growth in television shows like CSI and Silent Witness are jeopardizing justice by making jury expectations unrealistic. Not only does she contend that the popularity of the "sexed up" forensic techniques will establish expectations in juries that are …

A site has been established by the attorneys general of the states involved in the anti-trust legislation against Microsoft to provide information about the settlements and to gather information about possible infringement.

For those pondering putting OS X in a "real work environment," Chad Dickerson (InfoWorld's) CTO has written an articlein which he claims that Apple's "It just works!" argument is true.

Great page about Apple's current G5 Dual shipping problems (reportedly caused by Virginia Tech and some other educational institutions getting bumped to the "head of the class").

An article in the Washington Post this morning describes the benefits inuring to presidential candidate Howard Dean for not having a voting record on the national scene. At issue right now are the key Democratic complaints about President Bush and the fact that nearly all of the other Democratic candidates …

Days after the announcement of the RIAA's Clean Slate program for "amnesty," the RIAA is under fire for creating a misleading program which (at least from cursory examination by lawyers) doesn't provide protection from lawsuits. According to an article on CNet, one California resident has filed suit against the organization …

In a speech yesterday (reported by the Washington Post), President Bush asked the public to "untie the hands of our law enforcement officials." In his speech, Bush has called for extensions to the USA Patriot Act to give the government additional powers which he claims would bring anti- terrorism enforcement …