All of this discussion about nearly-flawless DRM, GPS-based tax programs, and travel restrictions makes me wonder what happens as technology makes it more possible to locate and cite every transgression and whether that means we need to be changing the underlying laws. Imagine this: you are driving down a country …

The Open Group (also known as X/Open) sued Apple Computer 18 months ago, according to an article on CNET. The suit is over the trademark to Unix, a trademark owned by The Open Group, and whether Apple will have to: 1) pay a license to use the name; and …

An article in the Sydney Morning Herald describes the surprise of a British citizen who received a nasty letter from the MPAA over his domain RatedNC-17.com. The MPAA says they are trying to prevent him from diluting their trademark. The current owner is confused, because RatedR.com has a …

An enjoyable article appears in Wired today about Burt Rutan (of Scaled Composites and well known to any experimental aircraft buff) and his quest for space. Burt is working on Space Ship One as part of the competition for the X-Prize.

An article from Wired reports that the recent worm BugBear.B (distributed via email as an exclusive to Windows users) contains keystroke- logging code specifically designed to find passwords for financial institutions. All versions of Windows 95+ are affected. This is believed to be the first time that a worm …

I was listening to an article this morning from The Wall Street Journal on Audible.com (by the way, a great way to get the front page in the morning) when it dawned on me that I was hearing more evidence against value-priced retail. Circuit City, one of the early …

I haven't seen much about this in the press in the US, but BBC News is carrying a report about a protest in Iran by students against the Muslim clerics that now run the country. Not surprising that students like to protest against whatever is going on. In the late …

The latest twist in the SCO UNIX case is an allegation (reported in an article from eWeek and made by a source "close to SCO") that SCO used Linux code in its "Linux Kernel Personality" feature without complying with the GPL, the license under which the software was developed). The …

Linux Journal has an article this week on pending open source legislation and the groups lobbying against it. Nobody will be surprised at the finger pointing against Microsoft, but it is good to know which organizations are funded by the company (such as the Initiative for Software Choice), which wants …

Wal-Mart is revamping its by-mail DVD rental service, started last year. The service echos many of the features of Netflix, the premier internet-based DVD rental company (now with over 1 million members) including delivery by mail and rentals without a specific return date. Netflix says they aren't worried.

An article from CNet reports that Representative Lamar Smith (R,TX), made a speech June 10th explicitly warning the FCC that future regulations for HDTV should "have an adverse affect on how consumers may legitimately use lawfully acquired entertainment products." This is in marked contrast to Senator Hollings (D,SC …

A good set of pointers this morning in an article from CNET about the IEEE-sponsored VLSI symposium taking place this week in Kyoto, Japan. They talk about Intel's Tri-Gate Transistor work, "finfet" transistors being worked on by IBM and AMD, and a variety of papers in the wireless area …

I was reading an article this morning from CNET, when it dawned on me that the rationale and complaints in most of the article could have been for a half dozen other issues, and didn't need to be discussing the legislature's newly passed bill against Internet gambling. The "Unlawful Internet …

After two days of weather-related delays, a Boeing Delta II rocket lifted the two rovers from the Earth on their way to Mars. An article from SpaceToday.net points to a number of articles about today's launch. As planned, the first rover (Spirit) separated from the launch vehicle's third stage …

Most anti-spam technology is aimed at stopping spam coming in to your inbox. However, large service providers, such as Yahoo! also have to deal with preventing spam from being sent from their systems. An article from CNET today describes such a system being implemented by Yahoo! The system monitors the …

An article from CNET tells of a company from Tennessee that is installing WiFi systems in over 200 truck stops. IdleAire Technologies is a service company that provides a cab service unit that allows truck drivers to have HVAC, power, and internet services without leaving their engines running. Since they …

Until July 1, 2003, companies that sold online-only products (such as digital downloads or subscription services) to European customers paid no VAT (Value Added Tax). According to an article on Wired, that's going to change after the first. To create a level playing field for companies in the EU (who …

An article from Enterprise IT Planet claims that NCSA (former working home of yours truly) has established the largest known Storage Area Network. The huge filesystem, containing over 110TB of data (that's 110,000,000,000,000 bytes+, or the equivalent of ~500 of the largest disks you can buy …

As rumors intensify heading into Apple's WWDC, the IBM 9701 and the next version of Apple's OS X are the chief concerns. This article from eWeek cites the likelihood that the 970 will initially be supported by a version of Jaguar (OS X 10.2) code-named Smeagol. The version …

According to an article from the New York Post (I know, not my usual quality of journalistic source), many of the major artists who have so far refused to sign up for iTunes have done so because they want to be able to sell music in only album-sized chunks. And …