Wednesday, July 24, 2002

Some retirees turn security cam into 'reality TV', by Patrik Jonsson, The Christian Science Monitor. From the comfort of his La-Z-Boy on the ninth floor of the Solomon Towers senior-housing complex, Mr. Stackhouse can use his TV remote to access the dozen cameras keeping mechanical eyeballs on the building's entrances. Installed last year as a security measure, Channel 13, an unusual closed-circuit TV system, has become a "must see" reality show for the residents of this port city's biggest senior-housing project. 8:48:27 PM    comment []

Artist's Fame Is Fleeting, but Dog Poker Is Forever, by Dan Barry (NYT). 5:25:53 PM    comment []

Calif. Court Rules 'Barbie Girl' Can Party On, by Kevin Krolicki (Reuters). [A] federal appeals court in California ruled the 1997 pop hit "Barbie Girl" was a parody protected by the free speech provision of the U.S. Constitution. . . . With Barbie, Mattel created not just a toy but a cultural icon, Judge Alex Kozinski wrote for the three-judge panel. With fame often comes unwanted attention. . . . The parties are advised to chill, Judge Kozinski wrote . . . . 4:42:07 PM    comment []

From t'other blog Posted over at http://XRayNet.editthispage.com/ this morning: some notes about what's going on here Professor of Desperation: Bad pay, zero job security, no benefits, endless commutes. Is this any way to treat PhDs responsible for teaching a generation of college students? By Eric L. Wee, Washington Post. JISC TechWatch Report on Content Management Systems, by Paul Browning, University of Bristol, and Mike Lowndes, Natural History Museum, London, September 2001 (PDF) Howard Rheingold's Smart Mobs. The people who make up smart mobs cooperate in ways never before possible because they carry devices that possess both communication and computing capabilities. Their mobile devices connect them with other information devices in the environment as well as with other people's telephones. Rheingold writes about the struggle for control going on in today's infosphere, and asks whether in the future we will be users or consumers See also John Schwartz' NYT story, Motivating the Masses, Wirelessly and the Edge Interview. R.I.P., Paul Weiss. And these: 1:56:03 PM    comment []

What the Fire Taught Her, by Janice Paskey (CHE), has a happy ending, as things go. When the trailer where she worked burned last spring, Ms. Olson lost 20 years of research on medieval literature, including handwritten notes she'd taken over the course of four years in British libraries, and two nearly complete journal manuscripts. How, she wondered, had it come to this? 1:44:06 PM    comment []

Linux maven Bruce Perens: DMCA outlaw?. [InfoWorld: Top News] Perens said he plans to break the DMCA during a presentation on digital rights management (DRM) Friday afternoon at the O'Reilly Open Source Convention in San Diego. He is scheduled to demonstrate a souped-up DVD player that can circumvent certain DRM technologies created to control the availability of DVD movies by region. 1:37:31 PM    comment []

Copyright in the Balance. Q&A with Lawrence Lessig, in Library Journal. It's just not the case that copyright has ever been understood to mean that if you use a copyrighted work in a way unintended by the copyright owner that's "theft." Much more fundamentally, who are the real thieves out there? [thanks, Tomalak's Realm] 1:35:43 PM    comment []

U.S. says it's trying to engage Iran, by Barry Schweid (AP). 6:29:52 AM    comment []

From the fall: From the Stone Age to the Phone Age: Groundbreaking New Global Study Explores Behavioral Effects of Mobile Phone Use. (Research by Sadie Plant, conducted in nine world cities: Chicago, Tokyo, Beijing, Hong Kong, Bangkok, Peshawar, Dubai, London and Birmingham.) 6:28:11 AM    comment []