Monday, June 12, 2006

Four from BNA News: COURT OVERTURNS XEROX PATENT RULING A US appeals court has overturned a district-court decision that a Xerox patent on handwriting-recognition technology was invalid. The patent dispute dates back to 1997, when Xerox alleged that Palm's text-entry technology used in the company's handheld devices infringed a Xerox patent for similar technology. CHINA RESTORES ACCESS TO GOOGLE.COM China has lifted its online blockade of Google.com after a two-week crackdown that had prevented direct access to the site and temporarily thwarted popular workarounds.The Paris-based journalism advocacy group Reporters Without Borders said that tests revealed the uncensored version of the search site was accessible again to Internet users in Beijing and Shanghai. The crackdown overlapped with the June 4 anniversary of the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests. CHINA WALKS OUT OF ENCRYPTION MEETING An international dispute over a wireless computing standard took a bitter turn last week with the Chinese delegation walking out of a global meeting to discuss the technology. The delegation's walkout from a two-day meeting in the Czech Republic escalated an already rancorous struggle by China to gain international acceptance for its homegrown encryption technology known as WAPI. [Washington Post] REPORT CLAIMS TAIWAN TOP SOURCE OF SPAM According to CipherTrust, the majority of spam servers are physically located in Taiwan. In research conducted in May, the e-mail security company found that 64 percent of machines sending out junk mail were in that country. Next was the United States with 23 percent and third China, with 3 percent. CipherTrust also determined that unwanted e-mail traffic went up as much as 20 percent worldwide in May. 10:50:06 AM    comment []

Digital Maoism? (Or Mau-Mauism?). Jaron Lanier writes a spectacularly flawed essay on the supposed "hazards of the new collectivism," looking at collaborative projects like Wikipedia from the outside and equaiting them with the dictatorship of the proletariat. He so misses the point that he triiggers a set of responses far more interesting than his piece, though they have their own flaws. I think Howard Rheingold has the best response: Collective action involves freely chosen self-election (which is almost always coincident with self-interest) and distributed coordination; collectivism involves coercion and centralized control; treating the Internet as a commons doesn't mean it is communist (tell that to Bezos, Yang, Filo, Brin or Page, to name just a few billionaires who managed to scrape together private property from the Internet commons). It's interesting to see the usual suspects attempt to grab the river's current and keep it still. [Weblogsky] 12:14:59 AM    comment []

A Ring Tone Meant to Fall on Deaf Ears. For classrooms where cellphone use is forbidden, students have found a ring tone that many adults cannot hear. By PAUL VITELLO. [NYT > Education] 12:13:43 AM    comment []

(One from) Roland's Sunday Smart Trends #114. France launches cyber-budget game The French government has launched an online game that challenges taxpayers to balance the national budget of nearly 300bn euros ($373bn). [Note: according to some comments, this game is not really fun!] Source: BBC News Online, June 8, 2006 [Smart Mobs] 12:13:33 AM    comment []

And that's two, as the Mavs took care of business on their home court, and Mark posts: S-T-A-C-K. Say it loud. Say it proud. We have to play so much better, but when a guy can have such a huge impact.  WOW ! cut down the turnovers. Push the ball. Be more efficient. Keep working on D. 12:06:09 AM    comment []