Federal Court Links

A great batch of Federal Court Links [from Bag and Baggage].

Wendy and White Canvases

Seems like every day people (such as Verisign and some at the FCC) forget the importance of a stupid network. As always, Wendy Seltzer is eloquent on the subject:


Painters buy white canvases for a reason. The Internet has succeeded as a platform for innovation because its architecture does not preempt its uses; instead, the stupid network offers a neutral background for line drawing, oil painting, and collage. Sure a grid on the blank canvas would help those making mechanical drawings at the right scale, but it's just noise to the rest, who now need to paint an extra layer to cover it up. Complexity built into the network (such as a search engine that responds to every nonexistent domain name query) may enable a few uses, but it slows or breaks many more, and impedes the development of alternatives.

Balloon Hats

Apropos of nothing, this person is making balloon hats around the world [from Boing Boing].

Google 2002 Zeitgeist

Google 2002 Zeitgeist: full of great insights about 2002, how people use Google and many other things.

Obscurity > Piracy

Great article from Tim O'Reilly with many insights starting with Obscurity is a far greater threat to authors and creative artists than piracy.
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Two How Tos

Two two part articles on web logging: George Siemens, The Art of Blogging, Part 1 and Part 2, and, Exploded Library, It's a Blogs World and Blogs and News Aggregators without the Aggravation (and Only a Little Serendipity).
[from Ernie The Attorney].

Lucid Description of DRM Problem

As usual, Ed Felton provides a great explanation of a difficult computer science concept: Why unbreakable codes don't make unbreakable DRM.


This is why "trusted computing" is such a holy grail, and why something like "trusted viewing/listening" would be even better from many companies perspective.