Friday, March 07, 2003

Joel: I just got back from inspecting the new Fog Creek Office, a sunny loft in the shmatta district, with the architect. It's going to make a really nice office when we're finished building it out, with private offices, a living room area, kitchenette, and, budget permitting, a pool table and plasma TV. Here's what I told the architect: private windowed offices are non-negotiable we need three times as many power outlets as anyone would think. I'm sick of power strips. I have ten things plugged in right at my desk. I specified 4 outlets every foot, is that absurd? I want to be able to pull my own lan, telephone, fiber, and cable TV wires. Even if they're exposed. 6:01:54 PM    comment []

Microsoft speaks, site goes dark. Neowin.net was knocked offline for nearly 24 hours in an uncommonly harsh application of a widely used Internet copyright enforcement tool. [CNET News.com] 5:58:56 PM    comment []

MIT Technology Review: Untapped Networks. Q&A with Duncan Watts, Columbia University sociologist. Theories of networks have been around for a long time, so the science itself really isn't new. What is new is the synthesis of ideas from a variety of disciplines: math, computer science, sociology, biology. [Tomalak's Realm] 5:55:34 PM    comment []

Broadcast flag news: Congress questions FCC copyright plan, by Declan McCullagh, CNET News.com. Not all of this is favorable to the interests of fair use -- indeed loads of what Declan reports is hostile to consumer interests and appears to me to be bold pandering to Hollywood's desires. 11:11:01 AM    comment []

China censorship slows net, by Australian IT correspondents in Beijing. China is trying to reap the internet's benefits while also controlling what its people read and hear. Authorities have invested both in spreading internet access and in installing technology to scan websites and email for content deemed subversive or obscene. Beijing has essentially built an online barrier around China, requiring traffic in and out to pass through just eight gateways — a step that heightens official control. Banned topics include human rights and the outlawed Falun Gong spiritual group. Problems emerged in October after the installation of "packet-sniffer" software that briefly holds chunks of data for screening. . . . Ordinary users say their biggest problems occur when reaching foreign websites and particularly on weekdays, when many people log on simultaneously from work. They say access sometimes is so slow that they can't reach Google, Hotmail and other popular foreign sites — many based in the United States. At home sometimes it's too slow to use, and at work, it's even slower, said Sara Li, a former magazine editor in Beijing. 10:11:05 AM    comment []

School hacker won't be expelled, by John Holland, Modesto Bee. High school trustees voted 3-1 Tuesday night not to expel a student accused of breaking into the Turlock School Districts computer network. The student, Turlock High School senior Robert Lee, will be allowed to stay through graduation in June as long as he does not use district computers and meets other conditions. Lee, 17, had claimed that he broke into the system only to show his computer teacher and the network administrator that it was vulnerable to hacking, investigators said. 10:11:01 AM    comment []

Court Strikes Down Online Porn Law, by David B. Caruso (AP). A federal appeals court has ruled that a law meant to safeguard children against Internet pornography is riddled with problems that make it "constitutionally infirm." A three-judge panel of the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Thursday that the Child Online Protection Act restricted free speech by barring Web page operators from posting information inappropriate for minors unless they limited the site to adults. The ruling upheld an injunction blocking the government from enforcing the law. The court said that in practice, the law made it too difficult for adults to view material protected by the First Amendment, including many non-pornographic sites. 10:10:56 AM    comment []

The title made me say, ''no, no,'' but then I saw the author and said, "yes, yes." The Geography of Thought: How Asians and Westerners Think Differently...and Why, by Richard Nisbett. Nisbett's a first-rate psychologist, whose empirical work on how people infer and make decisions is some of the best. This ought to be quite a book. 10:10:51 AM    comment []

Make no mistake. Dr. Weinberger and I decided to sum up a whole bunch of stuff in one big site: World of Ends: What the Internet Is and How to stop Mistaking It for Something Else. If you know anybody who's into being all dumb about the Net, this is the place to send them. Of course, it's good for people being smart too. They just don't need it as much. Dr. W. explains more here. [The Doc Searls Weblog] 7:58:24 AM    comment []

Operation Candyman news: Judge Discards F.B.I. Evidence in Internet Case of Child Smut, by Benjamin Weiser, New York Times: Technology. The judge, Denny Chin of Federal District Court, ruled that the F.B.I. agents who had prepared a crucial affidavit had acted with reckless disregard for the truth. The ruling, dated Wednesday, was released yesterday, the same day that a federal judge in St. Louis, Catherine D. Perry, ordered evidence suppressed in a related case. Judge Perry, too, cited false statements in the affidavit. That's right, as has been reported here previously, the FBI lied, and big time, in getting warrants in the child porn investigation. 7:30:56 AM    comment []

Cities Deliver Broadband for Less. Following a recent FCC decision that could limit competition among broadband providers, publicly owned high-speed access networks may prove a more popular alternative to private ISPs. By Joanna Glasner. [Wired News] 7:17:50 AM    comment []

Swimming With MIT's Virtual Fish. This summer at MIT, a virtual aquarium full of fish that respond to passersby will help ocean engineering students learn more about the way aquatic animals move -- and give people strolling the famous Infinite Corridor more to stare at than bricks. By Mark Baard. [Wired News] 7:17:00 AM    comment []

Sony keen to buy PalmSource By Tony Smith, The Register (UK). Not to mention Apple. Based on an interview with Sony's chairman and CEO, Nobuyuki Idei, at AlwaysOn. 7:06:54 AM    comment []

Picking Apart Pick-A-Prof: Does the popular online service help students find good professors, or just easy A's? By Andrea L. Foster, CHE. But the only things the students in his required American-history class care about are the grades he gives, his personality, and the class workload. At least, that's the picture painted on Pick-A-Prof, a Web service based here that compiles students' ratings of professors. I thought Maizlish was a nice guy. Kinda boring at times, but HELLO -- it's history! is one student's analysis of the professor in a posting on the Web site. He knows his stuff, so if you go in there trying to b.s. your way through the test, it won't work. The student gives the professor four stars out of a possible five. A bar graph on the site shows Mr. Maizlish giving most students in the class B's and C's. Arlington is among 51 public universities whose students can use Pick-A-Prof to post comments about, and get the inside dope on, their professors (http://www.pickaprof.com). . . . Mr. Chilek, the Pick-A-Prof co-founder, disputes the idea that the service diminishes higher education. It's an enhancement to education, he says. Pick-A-Prof helps students find the courses and pick the professors they learn best from. Of the grade distributions, he says, Any piece of information you can give a student can be valuable. But he denies that students primarily use the site to shop for professors who give high grades. Still, he acknowledges the site's shortcomings. For instance, this reporter posed as a student, logged in to the site, and could have posted a review of a professor. A faculty member, or anyone else, could do the same thing, Mr. Chilek admits. 2:09:15 AM    comment []