It’s clear from several stories on CNET this week that the security technology variously known as “trusted computing,” “Palladium,” and “NGSCB” will be deployed to some extent in the next iteration of the Windows operating system, now code-named “Vista,” due to be shipped sometime next year. In a nutshell, this technology creates secure areas of […]
I’ve always said that the Recording Industry Association of America and its member companies are perfectly within their rights to sue those they think are infringing on music copyrights through peer-to-peer file-trading of songs. At the same time, it seems obvious that the RIAA should pick the lawsuits prudently, based on solid evidence, so […]
It’s been most of a week, and I still find myself awfully touched by
the “Six Feet Under” finale. I realize that I have grown to love the Fishers’ extended
family, including Brenda and Rico. I will miss them all.
I think “Six Feet Under” did what so many shows, both comedies and dramas, try but […]
I see that El Paso, Texas, has built a “Mike Godwin Drive” without even asking me. I’d have thought they’d be more respectful of a good ol’ Texas boy.
See the evidence of massive trademark infringement here:
Map of
3340 Mike Godwin DrEl Paso, TX 79936-2763
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Every few years I’m drawn back to rereading one or more of the great
scifi novels by Alfred Bester. If you don’t know Bester, you should –
he wrote pyrotechnic, passionate prose that channelled huge narrative
drive.
He credits some of what he calls the “attack” of his narratives to his
work as a comic-book […]
There was a flood of media coverage surrounding the recent release of the sixth Harry Potter novel, so it took me a while to come across this piece, in which J.K. Rowling reveals that she hasn’t finished either Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy or C.S. Lewis’s Narnia books. Hardly anyone had an Inkling […]
Cory Doctorow outlines his objections in the face of recent determinations that the versions of Mac OS compiled for Intel microprocessors use those CPUs’ built-in “trusted computing” features.
There are lots of things that bother me about “trusted computing” initiatives generally. First and foremost is this: the whole microcomputing revolution has been built on the idea […]
There’s been a lot of press coverage about the purported box-office slump afflicting the motion-picture industry, and I have offered my own speculations here about why such a slump might be occurring.
But Edward Jay Epstein’s recent article in Slate points out that, as far as Hollywood’s home-grown films are concerned, there is no slump.
Even though […]
I’m one of the judges in the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s current “blog-a-thon,” in which entrants are challenged to post to their blogs something about their “click moment” … which EFF defines as the “the very first step you to took to stand up for your digital rights — whether it was blogging about an issue […]
There’s a nice column here by Canadian law professor Michael Geist regarding the court order in Canada that required those who’d purchased Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince too early to return the book to the bookstore, along with any notes they’d taken about its contents. Writes Geist:
The order compelled anyone with a copy of […]