A levy originally intended to ensure that the richest investors cannot live tax-free is taking back a much larger portion of the Bush tax cuts going to those who make less than $100,000 than to those who earn more than $1 million, according to a new analysis by the Joint Committee on Taxation.

Fix AMT!

Group Offers a Simple Fix for Alternative Minimum Tax - New York Times

Google on Monday urged the Federal Communications Commission to think outside the box in designing the rules for its upcoming auction of radio spectrum.

San Jose Mercury News - Google submits spectrum auction plan to FCC

This is pretty neat. A site where you post just small entries. They mapped it onto Google Earth, so you can see almost realtime all the people posting and where they are posting from...its fun to watch.

Sweet; I've been on twitter for a few weeks but hadn't heard of this. my twitter profile

twittervision

So I’ve gotten (literally) scores of emails about this piece by Mark Helprin promoting perpetual copyright terms. “Write a reply!” is the demand. But why don’t you write the reply instead. Here’s a page on wiki.lessig.org. Please write an argument that puts this argument in its proper place.

Lessig Blog: Helprin on perpetual copyright: write the reply?

There's no way to get rid of the daily annoyance of the shower curtain billowing in and sticking to an exposed body part, but there's now a way to explain the phenomenon, thanks to a researcher at the University of Massachusetts.

This has driven me crazy for years. At least now, I have the answer.

Mystery Of The Shower Curtain Solved

Disney lawyers' heads must be spinning over this one. A movie posted on Stanford University's site called "A Fair(y) Use Tale" mashes up all your Disney favorites to humorously and effectively explain copyright law. The ten minute movie, directed by Eric Faden, came out of Stanford University's Fair Use Project Documentary Film Program. Stanford's Fair Use Project--to which Stanford Law professor, Copyright guru, Creative Commons advocate and Wired writer Lawrence Lessig contributes--was founded last year to "support to a range of projects designed to clarify, and extend, the boundaries of fair use in order to enhance creative freedom." And, well, the movie is damn sure creative, and certainly seems to take the boundaries of fair use about as far as they can go.

Hijacked Disney Characters Explain Copyright

Microsoft, however, must proceed with caution. Implicit in its deal with Novell is the subtlety that Microsoft products may be violating the patents of other technology companies. Says Jim Zemlin, executive director of the Linux Foundation: "Microsoft has to be careful about what it starts because it doesn't know where it will end."

We don't either. But here are three plausible scenarios.

Bleh... this is SCO all over again except that Microsoft is sitting on something like $40B.

Three Scenarios For How Microsoft's Open Source Threat Could End -- Microsoft Takes On Open Source

A Purdue University engineer and National Medal of Technology winner says he's ready and able to start a revolution in clean energy.

Professor Jerry Woodall and students have invented a way to use an aluminum alloy to extract hydrogen from water — a process that he thinks could replace gasoline as well as its pollutants and emissions tied to global warming.

This could be huge if there's a way to recycle the aluminum oxide left over at the end.

Clean energy claim: Aluminum in car tanks - Green Machines - MSNBC.com

The vote on a resolution of no confidence, to be sponsored by Senators Charles E. Schumer of New York and Dianne Feinstein of California, could come as early as next week, Democrats said. Such votes of censure or condemnation are uncommon, although a handful were held in the 19th century, Congressional historians say. In 1886, the Senate adopted such a resolution against President Grover Cleveland’s attorney general, A. H. Garland, because he had refused to provide documents concerning the firing of a federal prosecutor.

The researcher who dug this up gets a cookie!

Senate Democrats Plan a Resolution on Gonzales - New York Times

Europe is not the only focus of efforts to build a rival to GPS, the U.S. constellation of navigation satellites. U.S. control of the world's only fully functional satellite navigation system is fueling efforts by China, Japan and India to develop alternatives to GPS for regional coverage, and in China's case as a stepping stone to a global system, U.S. satellite navigation experts said.

SPACE.com -- More Nations Crave Independent Satellite Navigation Systems