] "The action we are taking is intended to protect the
] privacy rights of our customers," SBC spokesman Larry
] Meyer said.
]
] "It's about the fact that anyone can without any effort
] obtain one of these DMCA subpoenas," said Meyer,
] referring to the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

SBC Sues RIAA to stop subpoenas

] On the eve of what was expected to be a quiet LinuxWorld
] Expo, Novell shook things up with its acquisition of
] Ximian, a privately held Linux desktop player. Terms were
] not disclosed.

Whoa! Novell must be trying to be a real player again...

CRN : Daily Archives : Novell Boosts Linux Push With Ximian Buyout : 11:00 AM EST Mon., Aug. 04, 2003

] They are called smart pills or brain boosters or, to use
] the preferred pharmaceutical term, cognitive enhancers.
]
] But whatever the name given to compounds created to
] prevent or treat memory loss, drug companies and
] supplement producers — eager to meet the demands of a
] rapidly growing market — are scrambling to exploit what
] they view as an enormous medical and economic
] opportunity.

Race Is On for a Pill to Save the Memory

]
]
]
] Open-source advocates yesterday blasted a Linux licensing
] scheme that The SCO Group Inc. is proposing to address
] alleged copyright violations in the Linux operating
] system (see story).

More SCO licensing flak. And SCOX is up to $13.25 ... pump and dump anyone?

Linux advocates doubt validity of SCO licensing scheme - Computerworld

] The Columbia astronauts lived for almost a minute after
] their final communication with mission control, well
] after signs that the craft was in serious trouble,
] investigators at NASA and the Columbia Accident
] Investigation Board said yesterday.

IMHO, the shuttle system has become a case study of how not to do large scale engineering. We need to mothball the shuttle and build a new system ASAP...

Crew of Columbia Survived a Minute After Last Signal

AOL has cut Mozilla loose. Not clear what AOL's motivation is; maybe cuddling up to M$, maybe just plain old cost cutting. Not obvious to me what this means for Mozilla. May be bad news in the short run since AOL was pumping a ton of cash into it...

mozilla.org

] WASHINGTON, June 24 — The Columbia Accident Investigation
] Board today located within inches the spot on the
] shuttle's left wing that was damaged by foam on liftoff
] on Jan. 16 and said the wing came apart at that point 16
] days later in the shuttle's re-entry from space.

Shuttle Board Determines Likely Site of Fatal Damage

] SCO alleges that you need to focus more on getting
] clarification as to where the code that goes in the Linux
] kernel comes from. Do you have any plans to change the
] current Linux development model?
]
] No. I allege that SCO is full of it, and that the Linux
] process is already the most transparent process in the
] whole industry. Let's face it, nobody else even comes
] close to being as good at showing the evolution and
] source of every single line of code out there. The only
] party that has had serious problems clarifying what they
] are talking about is SCO, and now when details start
] emerging like with RCU, it's clearly about IP that they
] had nothing to do with, and don't even own. I'm sure that
] they are confident that they own the collective work of
] Unix, but that's a separate thing entirely legally from
] being the actual copyright owner of any specific section
] of code.

Torvalds Speaks Out on SCO, Linux

] The Medtronic was originally developed as a tool for
] brain surgery: by stimulating or slowing down specific
] regions of the brain, it allowed doctors to monitor the
] effects of surgery in real time. But it also produced,
] they noted, strange and unexpected effects on patients'
] mental functions: one minute they would lose the ability
] to speak, another minute they would speak easily but
] would make odd linguistic errors and so on. A number of
] researchers started to look into the possibilities, but
] one in particular intrigued Snyder: that people
] undergoing transcranial magnetic stimulation, or TMS,
] could suddenly exhibit savant intelligence -- those
] isolated pockets of geniuslike mental ability that most
] often appear in autistic people.

Weird ...

Savant for a Day

] The consumer-marketer dynamic spawns a spectrum of
] antispam proposals. One general approach centers on the
] collective consumer desire to protect in-boxes by
] requiring prior consent, creating do-not-spam databases
] and allowing individuals to take spammers to court.
]
] Another approach emphasizes how marketing e-mail can be
] legitimate if it has options called opt-outs for
] consumers to remove themselves from mailing lists; postal
] or street addresses; and clear labeling. This approach
] also outlaws spamming techniques like using automated
] programs to harvest or generate e-mail addresses. The
] intent is to eliminate the bottom feeders (the generic
] Viagra and buy-a-diploma ads), while preserving the right
] for mainstream companies to market to consumers.

The first option is the Wrong Answer; abusive spam should be handled like any other kind of fraud.

Congress Finds Rare Unity in Spam, to a Point