] India, a major source of inexpensive AIDS drugs, passed a
] new patent law yesterday that groups providing drugs to
] the world's poorest patients fear will choke off their
] supply of new treatments.

Lessig has alleged before that the problem here isn't the drug companies but rather the US Congress: the drug companies are happy to charge Indians $20/year for drugs that cost $20k/year in the US -- but congress won't stand for such price discrimination.

India Alters Law on Drug Patents

Karl Auerbach's First Law of the Internet

Karl Auerbach's First Law of the Internet

]
] Is it unreasonable to conceive of a day, perhaps a day
] not all that far distant, when only certified equipment
] can be legally plugged into the Internet?

Karl Auerbach writing on CircleID. A counterpoint to the piece Decius bogged.

Protecting the Internet: Certified Attachments and Reverse Firewalls?

]
] Since that time, the situation has changed. Today the
] BIOS is no longer burned in ROM; it is stored in
] nonvolatile writable memory that users can rewrite. Today
] the BIOS sits square on the edge of the line. It comes
] prewritten in our computers, and normally we never
] install another. So far, that is just barely enough to
] excuse treating it as hardware. But once in a while the
] manufacturer suggests installing another BIOS, which is
] available only as an executable. This, clearly, is
] installing a non-free program--it is just as bad as
] installing Microsoft Windows, or Adobe Photoshop, or
] Sun's Java Platform. As the unethical practice of
] installing another BIOS executable becomes common, the
] version delivered inside the computer starts to raise an
] ethical problem issue as well.

FSF is starting to make a stink about BIOS now.

FSF - Campaign for Free BIOS

]
] FSF President and founder, Richard Stallman, presents
] this year's award to Theo de Raadt.

From one crank to another...

FSF - Theo de Raadt presented with the 2004 Free Software Award

] TOKYO, Feb. 10 - In a surprising admission, North Korea's
] hard-line Communist government declared publicly today
] for the first time that it has nuclear weapons.

North Korea Says It Has Nuclear Weapons and Rejects Talks

]
] "Spam is a completely solvable problem. And it does not
] take finding every Richter, Jaynes, Bridger, etc to do it
] (although it certainly is part of the solution).
]
] In fact it does not take email identity technologies
] either (although these are certainly needed and part of
] the solution).
]
] The solution is getting messaging providers to take
] responsibility for their lame email systems that they set
] up without much thought and continue to not care much
] about when they become overrun by spammers. This is just
] security and every admin/network operator has to deal
] with it. We just have a lot of providers not bothering to
] care.

How to Stop Spam

] Just hours before being sworn in for a second term, Vice
] President Dick Cheney publicly raised the possibility on
] Thursday that Israel "might well decide to act first" to
] prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons.

Whoa...

Cheney Says Israel Might 'Act First' on Iran

] Spain's Conference of Catholic Bishops appeared close to
] a confrontation with the Vatican over birth control on
] Wednesday, but averted a dispute later in the day by
] backing away from the spokesman whose public comments on
] condoms had ignited the speculation.

I find the Catholic church less objectionable than fundies
(christian or otherwise) ... but this is one point that they
really need reform.

Bishops' Aide in Spain Sets Off Talk of Dissent Over Birth Control

]
] Texas became the latest state or federal entity to take a
] swipe at spammers Thursday when it sued a University of
] Texas student and a California resident over what spam
] watchdog SpamHaus calls the world's fourth largest
] illegal e-mail operation.

Big Spam Bust, Texas Style