Dear President Bush:

This is to inform you of my decision to retire from my position as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States effective upon the nomination and confirmation of my successor. It has been a great privilege, indeed, to have served as a member of the Court for 24 Terms. I will leave it with enormous respect for the integrity of the Court and its role under our Constitutional structure.

Sincerely,
Sandra Day O'Connor

Here we go... Let the selection process begin. Bureaucrats, start your engines!

Sandra Day O'Connor Announces Retirement - July 1, 2005

He's somewhat pleased that the court's decision to send the case back to the Ninth Circuit court in effect upheld an earlier Sony decision involving the Betamax VCR, which declined to hold manufacturers liable for illegal acts by their users. But Lessig contends the Supreme Court's decision will chill innovation by introducing a new level of uncertainty about whether a technology creator had an intent to allow copyright infringement.

I don't have such a dire view of this as Lessig. Sure, Sony did market the Betamax in a way that would have snagged the hook set in the Grokster case, but that case did not exist at the time. I don't think that's cause for concern.

If you have a p2p tool, don't market it for infringing uses. That's pretty straightforward and easy to do. The bar has been set, and its an easy one to get over.

However, his larger point is still valid. Litigation chills innovation. That point would still be valid regardless of the outcome of this case. As long as courts exist to handle civil matters between companies, they are going to be used in ways we don't like to protect someone's business model.

Lessig on Grokster

"Open source would be succeeding faster if the GPL didn't make lots of people nervous about adopting it." From the article: "I don't think the GPL is the principal reason for Linux's success. Rather, I believe it's because in 1991 Linus was the first person to find the right social architecture for distributed software development."

In fact, it's political considerations that kept me quiet for a while. For a long time, I judged that any harm the GPL might be doing was outweighed by the good. For some time after I stopped believing that, I didn't see quite enough reason to fight with the GPL zealots. I'm speaking up now because a couple of curves have intersected. It has become more apparent how much of an economic advantage open source development has, and my judgment of the utility of the GPL has fallen.

ESR argues that the social model surrounding Open Source Software has proven powerful enough to enforce good practices even without some of the stronger elements of the GPL.

I tend to agree with him, but I don't expect any paradigm shift in licensing strategies. Five more years, we may be using much more liberal licensing, but I don't think its going to happen fast. People are going to be very conservative about this. The "walk the walk if you are going to talk the talk" style of logic ESR uses here can be bent both ways.

Do we need the GPL to keep companies honest when it comes to giving back to open source projects?

Slashdot | We Don't Need the GPL Anymore

Days beforehand, I had made an internal report of unethical and apparently illegal behavior by the company: Use of open proxies for web harvesting to avoid blockage by web site operators. HMS apparently decided that working with me to address their use of open proxies was not an option.

Health Market Science is a large corporation with, compared to me, effectively infinite resources. My legal bills have topped $40K already over just two months. If HMS succeeds in tarring me with their false accusations, what's to stop your employer or client from doing the same to you, should your relationship sour?

Slashdot | Perl's Chip Salzenberg Sued, Home Raided

The cow that was found last week to have mad cow disease spent its whole life in Texas, making it the first domestic case of the disease, the United States Department of Agriculture said yesterday.

"I, for one, will continue to eat red meat, and intend to do so later tonight with complete confidence," [Gov] Perry said. He later issued a revised statement that dropped the reference to his dinner plans but added that Texas beef was "as safe today as it was yesterday."

Hear that everybody, its just as safe today as it was yesterday. No cause for concern. Move along.

Case of Mad Cow in Texas Is First to Originate in U.S. - New York Times

THE American general who commanded allied air forces during the Iraq war appears to have admitted in a briefing to American and British officers that coalition aircraft waged a secret air war against Iraq from the middle of 2002, nine months before the invasion began.

Addressing a briefing on lessons learnt from the Iraq war Lieutenant-General Michael Moseley said that in 2002 and early 2003 allied aircraft flew 21,736 sorties, dropping more than 600 bombs on 391 “carefully selected targets” before the war officially started.

General admits to secret air war - Sunday Times - Times Online

Were Tony Montana alive today, you know he would have used this as his DHCP server. Ideal for managing the IP addresses of up to 253 street soldiers, this box moves at cocaine-fueled speeds. As they say in Miami's underground tech support circles, "You @#$% with this router, you @#$%ing with the best!"

I would not fuck with that gateway if I were you..

Gangsta Gadgets - Scarface Special Edition Router

I have bestowed this award upon you for your ability to craft targeted and strategic posts to piss off the largest amount of people possible. I also award you for your own sexual insecurities that allow you to imply that homosexuals are not "actual human beings." Kudos to you! Oh, and please do not neglect to visit the url below to receive this prestigious award. Thank you for your time...and attention.

And because of your unique disregard for human life and everything that pertains, we will stray from the normal policy of not feeding the trolls. Eat up.

Let it be noted that Vile has generated more complaints then any other user in MemeStreams history.

World's Greatest Poster Award - given to Vile

The answer a web search engine delivers is what it believes is the correct answer for the majority of users – often referred to as "the tyranny of the majority". For example, when you search for 'apple', the first result on most search engines is Apple Computer. But you may have been searching for information about the fruit or Apple Records.

Decius Wrote:
We don't have the resources that Yahoo has, but we've been at this a hell of a lot longer and I'll bet we get it a hell of a lot better. So, if you've got a million dollars burning a hole in your pocket and chip on your shoulder about Yahoo, I'll bet I can turn it into 10 million while beating the pants off of them in the process. Until such time as someone like that arrives this project will remain a weekend hobby with slow code and design updates.

Industrial Memetics, leading the way since 2001.

Yahoo! Search blog: Search, with a little help from your friends

Chinese state-controlled oil and gas company CNOOC Ltd. is waging a high-stakes public relations campaign to focus its bid for U.S. energy producer Unocal Corp. on shareholder value, and away from politics.

Even before making public its $18.5 billion for Unocal last week, competing with a $16.6 billion deal with Chevron Corp., members of Congress sent President Bush a letter warning him of the threats posed by China's "pursuit of world energy resources."

"This is a commercial deal, a commercial bid from one New York Stock Exchange listed company to another New York Stock Exchange listed company designed to improve shareholder value for both," said Mark Palmer, a managing director at Public Strategies Inc. of Austin, Texas, one of two public relations firms hired by CNOOC.

Paul Krugman thinks we should be worried about this.

Two things that have been said often apply here. First, Chinese foreign policy consists of one word: oil. Second, its likely that any conflicts with China would be fought out on an economic battlefield.

So what does everything think? Should we be concerned about this?

CNOOC: Unocal Bid Not About Politics - Yahoo! News