] News agency Agence France Presse has sued Google Inc.,
] alleging the Web search leader includes AFP's photos,
] news headlines and stories on its news site without
] permission.

Thats the sound of a shoe dropping.

CNN.com - News agency suing Google - Mar 19, 2005

] As already reported on quite a few blogs, Jeremy was
] detained and interrogated by US Immigration when he
] arrived in New York last week for a meeting with
] McGraw-Hill to discuss a great business opportunity for
] Jeremy in the area of blogging. It appears that the
] immigration people simply did not believe that Jeremy
] could make a living as a blogger. And they gave him the
] third degree - including an humiliating strip search - as
] a result for some hours. And banned him from entering the
] US.

Protecting our borders does not involve creating an opportunity for people who have chips on their shoulders to harrass random travellers. We need a bill of rights for travellers.

[Politech] Don't say blogger to customs!

] del.icio.us is still giving me food for thought. Here are
] two toys I've made recently: a tag stemming tool that
] helps you tidy up your tagging using the Porter
] algorithm, and a (Flash) screen-recorded demo of
] del.icio.us seamlessly embedded in the BBC Radio 3
] website.

Memed for later reference.

hackdiary: Stemming tags, and one website to the tune of another

] I'm Stratton, the CEO. This is a picture of me on the
] left. Nice tie eh?

IDN spoofing Verisign parody example

] The SwitchProxy tool now has an Anonymous Proxy feature.
] An anonymizer uses a list of proxies that it randomly
] switches between at defined intervals. Many people used
] anonymizers to sheild their IP address and protect
] themselves from hackers, online tracking, havesting and
] other website snooping techniques.

Second interesting thing learned at Interz0ne: EZ anonymous web surfing with a firefox plugin.

SwitchProxy Tool for Mozilla

] If you work your way down the Forbes 400 making an x next
] to the name of each person with an MBA, you'll learn
] something important about business school. You don't even
] hit an MBA till number 22, Phil Knight, the CEO of Nike.
] There are only four MBAs in the top 50. What you notice
] in the Forbes 400 are a lot of people with technical
] backgrounds. Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Larry Ellison,
] Michael Dell, Jeff Bezos, Gordon Moore. The rulers of the
] technology business tend to come from technology, not
] business. So if you want to invest two years in something
] that will help you succeed in business, the evidence
] suggests you'd do better to learn how to hack than get an
] MBA. [3]

Looks like a good article. I haven't read this yet but I intend to find time for it soon.

How to Start a Startup

] In the next stage they plan to use stem cells from
] aborted foetuses to create an animal whose brain cells
] are 100 per cent human.
]
] Last week, the university's ethics committee
] approved the research, under certain conditions. Prof
] Henry Greely, the head of the committee, said: "If the
] mouse shows human-like behaviours, like improved memory
] or problem-solving, it's time to stop."

Well, thats gunna piss some people off... Make sure you read both pages of the article.

Science News : 'Stuart Little' mouse soon to have a human brain

] Have you ever wondered what good it does when they look at
] your driver's license at the airport? Let me assure you,
] as a former bureaucrat partly responsible for the 1996
] decision to create a photo-ID requirement, it no longer
] does any good whatsoever.

Post election season Richard Clarke is sounding like a more reasonable guy. An interesting mix of commentary here on ID requirements. I'm hardly convinced that smart cards and a big computer network are going to make it harder to forge an ID. I agree that government policies which seemed properly limited to real terrorism fighting would go along way toward earning trust, but in 15 years that I've paid attention to this I haven't been particularly impressed.

The New York Times - The Security Adviser: Real ID's, Real Dangers

] Forget squeezing millions from a few megahits at the top
] of the charts. The future of entertainment is in the
] millions of niche markets at the shallow end of the
] bitstream.

Probably required skimming for people interested in things like MemeStreams.

This article underlines why Apple's "99 cents a song" model will go the way of the 8 track. Micropayments only make sense to accountants.

The price of the content that you want will be low, because you won't want the lowest common denominator "pop" information. You'll want the niche stuff with low demand. As price approaches zero the cost of music begins to look a bit like cellphone airtime. It will varry greatly depending on what new tracks you are checking out and how popular they are. Customers in this world will demand some way to make costs predictable, as they do with other metered services. And so the flat rate music service wins.

Wired 12.10: The Long Tail

] I yanked the kickass soundtrack from the North Korean
] Delegation animation. Quite frankly, I'm sticking this in
] iTunes and keeping it on repeat on my iPod as I ride the
] Greyhound to New York City for 8 hours. Meanwhile,
] remixers, start your engines!

Xeni Jardin's North Korean Blog adventure.

Boing Boing: North Korea promotes vacations with wacky Flash movie