Trademarking Emoticons

In a move that seems surprising to me, the Rospatent Federal Patent Agency, Russia's patent authority, ruled that a businessman did not trademark ;-), an emoticon that denotes a smiling wink, by itself but as a part of a name, denying the businessman a chance to earn a fortune in licensing fees.

Buy Me Now!!!

In related stories, Google pulled out of the deal with Yahoo because in their opinion it would have been too hard to appease the Justice Department's antitrust division regarding the advertising deal. On the flip side, Jerry Wang has asked Microsoft to come back to the table.

Are you kidding me?

Mark Lange's editorial in the Christian Science Monitor I think is suspect. He basically calls for regulation of the derivatives market as a solution to the current financial "crisis". Let's consider the facts - most derivatives of the type he considers are held by large financial instutions and work really well. The ones that we need to look at are asset securitizations which are done by everone from a retail store with accounts receivable to banks with huge mortgage portfolios. The people in charge of buying and selling them for huge financial instutions shouldn't be protected by the government. Imagine having to file additional security disclosures with the SEC prior to a company like Sears selling its credit card receivables to Bank of America. Do companies like Sears and BoA really need government protection from making "computer-generated casino wagers" that have been well-vetted and understood by the fianancial community the past 30 someodd years?

Stellar Patents

Mobile Satellite Ventures has received 25 patents for communications systems for rovers exploring the Moon or Mars. Currently pending is one for an extraterrestrial communications systems covering satellites orbiting other planets, a base station of the planet, and repeaters.

Supreme Court Takes Up Profanity Case

Let's talk about those words you can't say on television. The Supreme Court is going to hear the case about fleeting explatives on appeal from the 2nd Circuit. The Supreme Court did turn down without explanation C-SPAN's request to release a recording of oral arguments.

FCC cancels vote on telecom overhaul

Kevin Martin cancelled the vote on telecom overhaul bill.

ATT's Pareto Principle

According to AT&T, 5% of their subscribers take up 50% of the capacity of their internet usage. So starting in November, they're going to test 20 gig download limits in Reno, NV, for DSL services and increasing to 150 gigs at the 10 mbs level, or approximately 75 DVD quality movie downloads per month.

Google's Growth and Ad Deal

There's two good stories out there this week about Google. First, there's substantial questions about Google's storage of search queries. As the Yahoo article says:

Why does Google log the details of search queries for so long? What does it do with the information? Does it combine data from the search engine with information it collects through other avenues — such as its recently released Web browser, Chrome?

The other story is that Yahoo and Google have redefined their internet advertising partnership agreement to help settle antitrust concerns at the Justice Department. According to the Wall Street Journal, Yahoo would be limited to just 25% of the search advertising revenues, the agreement would sunset in two years, and Google's customers will have the option to opt-out of the deal.

Get Your New Web Browser Here!

Chrome was supposed to be released today by Google. But I don't see anything yet.

Opt-Out's Don't Work - Proof

NebuAd, Inc., provides monitoring of websurfing so that an ISP can provide targeted advertising to its clients. Six of the smaller ISPs reported the following results:

• Bresnan Communications - 18 people opted out of the trial out of 6000 participants
• Cable One - 14000 customers, no specific notice, no opt outs
• CenturyTel - 82 opt outs, 20000 affected subscribers
• Embarq Corp. - 15 out outs with 26000 participants
• Knology - unknown
• WideOpenWest - 330000 customers and 3,355 out-outs, though many from the same customer

All these companies did suspend the trial and testing because of privacy and related issues.

I think these numbers are quite telling on how effective the out-out strategy really is. With those number of opt-outs, I question how many people were really informed of the intrusion into their privacy they faced.

Political Bedfellows not Trademark Friendly

Living Liberally, LLC, is suing Blue State Coffee Inc. over the latter's use of the Drinking Liberally trademark. The lawsuit, filed in the Southern District of New York, alleges that the trademark's use is deliberately similar to Living Liberally's Drink Liberally campagin, and in bad faith. It's seeking cancellation of the trademark as well.

Comcast's New Limits

According to Comcast, starting October 1, 2008, users will only be allowed to use 250 gigs of internet traffic per month. Normal users average 2 to 3 gigs per month. I'm wondering how this affects commercial and business users.

Records Must Remain Records

It's quite normal that in security arbitration settlements that the parties agree to expunge records. Recently, in Karsner v. Lothian the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia questioned those practices. Although in this particular case the question presented was whether a state securities commissioner had a right to intervene to halt the confirmation of the arbitration award ordering expungement (which the Court of Appeals said she had), the language and the rest of the case suggests that the Court of Appeals was sympathetic with the state securities commissioner's arguments that such an expungement order may affect the integrity of her records.

FCC Ruling on Comcast / Internet Neutrality

The FCC voted 3-2 that Comcast's policy of blocking some internet traffic for users who use file sharing software was a violation of network neutrality. Comcast sounds like they are going to appeal the ruling.

Cell Phone Termination Fees

A California Superior Court judge ruled that early termination fees for cell phone users is an illegal practice under state law. The preliminary judgement orders Nextel to pay customers some $18.2 million in reimbursement, and enjoins the collection efforts of $54.7 million. This ruling is going to affect everything from the current rates to hardware costs. Many companies use hardware discounts as an incentive to lock in long term contracts.

Subpoenas

Judge John Bates ruled that senior Presidential advisors must oblige Congressional subpoenas, going against a couple of decades of arguments re executive privledge.

Speeding Traps with GPS

What is the latest in high tech fighting of law enforcement? Using GPS technology to question radar guns is coming to the forefront in California. GPS systems can now track the velocity of a vehicle with a significant degree of accuracy and using those GPS records could be evidence against the police radar guns.

See the Ars Technica story here.

SAG Fight

The upcoming SAG strike basically centers around made-for-internet content and the rights of its union members to participate in residuals. I feel sorry for some of the actors; after all, how can you live in just a small mansion?

Table Top Fusion

Purdue found misconduct by physicist Rusi Taleyarkhan in his behaivor since 2002 when he first claimed he produced nuclear fusion. For example, he published a paper in 2006 in Physical Review Letters that claimed his 2002 was independently verified, but failed to disclose that the "independently verified" work was extensively done by him.

The Most Important Case Ever!!!!

A jury decided that Barbie and Bratz dolls are sisters and that the Bratz dolls were created at Mattel, Inc., and not MGA Entertainment. Still outstanding is whether Mattel owns the copyrights to the original Bratz design drawings, and whether the dolls infringe on the copyrights.

FCC and Indecendy

The 3rd Circuit held that the FCC overreached its bounds by fining CBS $550,000 for a "fleeting, isolated or unintended" image when Justin Timberlake accidently exposed Janet Jackson's breast.

Phone Moratorium

China has ordered a new phone moratorium, "suggesting" to companys that they should be focusing their efforts on the Olympics. At the current rate, phone companies are adding 9 million new accounts per month.

ICANN Approves New Domain Names System

ICANN approved the first sweeping changes in the 25 year old URL addressing system. But the new domains won't come cheap, with about $100,000 in costs per domain. The new process is simple. An applicant proposes the new domain, and if nobody raises an objection on grounds as racisms, trademark conflicts and similarity to another suffix, the name should be approved quickly. Also, countries will be able to have non-English characters in domain names as well.

Nigerian Scam Busted!

Edna Fiedler pleaded guilty to attempting to defraud US citizens with the Nigerian scheck scam. She made $609,000 from people who fell for it. Is there anybody who still believes these scams out there?

South Carlonia now has their own copyright

In a South Carolina Supreme Court opinion, the court ruled that a municipality has a copyright in their own forms and such copyright does not impact the state's freedom of information act. Maybe somebody forgot 28 USC 1338 which states: "The district courts shall have original jurisdiction of any civil action arising under any Act of Congress relating to patents, plant variety protection, copyrights and trademarks. Such jurisdiction shall be exclusive of the courts of the states in patent, plant variety protection and copyright cases."

Dangerous Web Domains

McAfee, Inc., found that certain domains were a little more dangerous than others. For example, 19.2% of the .hk domains were dangerous, 11.8% of .cn domains and 11.75% of .info. Compare this with the most popular domain family, .com, with a little more than 5% of the sites being considered dangerous. The safest were the .gov, .jp and .au domains, each with less than .3% of sites being dangerous.

The report can be found here.

You just won the lottery!

Yahoo filed a lawsuit on May 16 against spammers who allegedly tricked consumers into thinking they won a contest sponsored by Yahoo. The major counts are under the Lanham Act, anti-spam laws as well as other state law claims. You mean that million dollar prize for which I sent Yahoo's lottery coordinator all my financial information isn't real?

Supreme Court and Govenors

The US Supreme Court decided two cases involving governors yesterday:

• Gov. George Ryan of Illinois: the Court rejected, without an opinion, his appeal of racketerring and fraud convictions.
• Gov. Bob Riley of Alabama: the Court agreed with the govenor that he could fill a county commission vacancy notwithstanding the Voting Rights Act of 1965

No More Set Top Boxes?

Sony Electronics reached an agreement with the National Cable and Telecommunications Association (representing about 82% of all cable subscribers) to develop two way cable services such as pay-per-view movies without the use of the cable boxes.

I made the paper!!!

I made Joe Kollin's column in the Sun-Sentinel!

Why We're Happy

A new study from Psychological Science suggests that conservatives are happier than liberals because conservatives are, on average, more rational. It's amazing that it took a grant from the National Science Foundation just to prove that when I've been saying that conservatives are happier and more rational for years!

E-Bay v. Craigslist

The legal dispute between the companies is whether Kijiji, eBay's classified ads site, engages in a competative activity with Craigslist, which eBay owns 24% of as a result of a purchase of stock from a former Craigslist executive. Because of the launch of Kijiji in 2007, Jim Buckmaster said, "We are no longer comfortable having eBay as a shareholder, and wish to explore options for our repurchase." After that, according to the complaint filed by eBay, Craigslist founder Craig Newmark and Buckmaster "engaged in a series of clandestine transactions designed to ensure that eBay would not be able to elect a director, and to either impose new transfer restrictions on eBay or dilute its interests, and to dilute the interest of the employee holders of company stock options."

The complaint is here.

Iron Man

Terrific movie! A must-see! One thing to look out for is Samuel Jackson's cameo appearence as Nick Fury. Did anybody catch it? I may have turned away when it came on.

Copywriting Malware?

Symantec is reporting that there is a new virus floating around. What makes it unique is that there is a EULA (end user license agreement) with it that threatens "punishment" if a user violates the terms, such as looking at the source code or resell the product. Quite funny!

Government Not Responsible for What It Says

In an option by the 2nd Circuit, the court found that then EPA chief and former NJ govenor Christine Todd Whitman not liable for giving incorrect reassurances after the 9/11 terror attacks by saying that the air near the former World Trade Centers was breathable. The court said, "But legal remedies are not always available for every instance of arguably deficient governmental performance." So, let me get this straight, we can't sue our government for screwing up anymore?

http://www.ca2.uscourts.gov:8080/isysnative/RDpcT3BpbnNcT1BOXDA2LTExNjYtY3Zfb3BuLnBkZg==/06-1166-cv_opn.pdf#xml=http://www.ca2.uscourts.gov:8080/isysquery/irl4e81/1/hilite

Subpoena Subschena

The New Jersey Supreme Court has ruled that the state constitution gives greater protection to unreasonable searches and seizures than the US Constitution and ISPs therefore do not have to disclose any information to anyone without a valid subpoena. This case is contrary to the Federal trends that found no right to privacy in internet information.

http://www.judiciary.state.nj.us/opinions/supreme/A-105-06%20State%20v%20Shirley%20Reid.pdf

Forbidden Kingdom

I went to The Forbidden Kingdom last night. I have to highly recommend it, especially if you are an afficiandado of martial arts films in that there are many references to other martial art films. For example, the character Swallow is based on Chen Pei Pei's character Golden Swallow in Da Zui Xia (a/k/a Come Drink With Me) and Swallow even says at the end "Come Drink With Me". The Monkey King is a reference to various Chinese legends, but I think Jet Li plays it as a homage to Shen Da. Jackie Chan's character, Lu Yan is not only a famous Taoist scholar, but also plays the character as an earlier reference to his breakout film Jui Kuen.

FCC on Net Neutrality

Net Neutrality is the idea that no traffic should be discriminated against on the internet. Yet companies, like Comcast, do divert some file sharing and uploading traffic, at least to off-peak hours, in the hope that it won't overload their systems, apparantly in violation of Net Neutrality ideas. I certainly hope the FCC realizes the only way the internet will work is with the free market Net Neutrality and not have Big Brother telling what files can do what at what times.

EA / Take-Two Watch

EA extended the deadline for proxies yet again. It looks like only 8% of shareholders have tendered their stock to EA, and the stock is now trading above the tender price.

This market

I don't understand this market at all. I do have to agree with Mike Holland's comments this morning on CNBC that this market is a lot like it was 15 to 20 years ago that when a company announced layoffs, the stock went up proportionate to the number of people fired whereas today companies go up depending on how much debt they write off.

Global Warming, Yet Again

Again Al Gore has another competitor: science. Scientists at MIT this week unveiled another model of hurricane formation that demonstrated how global warming has absolutely no link on hurricane formation. Part of it is from research in 2007 that showed fewer hurricanes that global warming models predicted.

Super Ruling

Superman now belongs, once again, in part, to the heirs of Jerome Seigel, one of the original creators of Superman. A California federal judge ruled that the heirs' copyright termination notice sent in 1999 was valid and that DC Comics/Time Warner had to account for profits from Superman post-1999. Provided this survives the requisite appeal, this could put in jeapordy the next two Superman films - the Bryan Singer sequel to Superman Returns as well as the Justice League of America franchise - and all the animated series and comic books. Jerome Schuster's estate can launch a similar lawsuit in 2013. The two estates previously once a similar case for the Superboy character, but have failed to prove that Superboy happens to be the same Clark Kent in the TV show Smallville (the case is currently still in dispute). The Superman copyright expires in 2033, unless Congress extends the life of a copyright once again.

Movie Review: 21

21 is a good movie that is loosely based on the book Bringing Down the House by Ben Mezrich. Kevin Spacey does a normally good interpretation of his character, a mathematics professor at MIT who happens to also be one of the top blackjack players in the world, who despite retirement leads a team of card counting students to Vegas. Lawrence Fishburne does an outstanding job as the hotel security agent that brings down the team. Unfortunately for me the team wasn't believable, nor any of the other students featured in the film, but it is worth seeing just to compare with the specials that come on either the History or Discovery Channels (or some channel like that) every so often.

I was thinking . . .

I had some medical news this week, and it got me thinking.

Doctors:The number of physicians in the U.S. is 700,000.Accidental deaths caused by Physicians per year are 120,000.Accidental deaths per physician is 0.171.

Statistics courtesy of U.S. Dept of Health Human Services.

Now think about this:

Guns:The number of gun owners in the U.S. is 80,000,000. Yes, that’s 80 million.The number of accidental gun deaths per year, all age groups, is 1,500.The number of accidental deaths per gun owner is .000188.

Statistics courtesy of FBI.

So, statistically, doctors are approximately 9,000 times more dangerous than gun owners.Remember, “Guns don’t kill people, doctors do.”FACT: NOT EVERYONE HAS A GUN, BUT ALMOST EVERYONE HAS AT LEAST ONE DOCTOR.Please alert your friends to this alarming threat. We must ban doctors before this gets completely out of hand!!!!!

One more thing on Cung Le

I do have to take exception to several commentators last night saying that they thought Cung Le's kicking style was "unorthodox". Excuse me? That's classic Tae Kwon Do right there, hardly unorthodox. To all the critics who say Tae Kwon Do is too sporty and can't win in mixed martial arts, I say nay nay. Just take a look at Cung Le's decisive win over one of the legends in mixed martial arts history.

Panthers

Yuck! Yuck! I was at the game last night. The Panthers simply didn't play with any heart. So many times during power plays the Panthers had opportunities to shots on goal, but nothing. They just sat their with the puck. Let's hope that their late season run this year will continue next year.

Cung Le Wins!

I just wanted to congradulate Cung Le on his impressive victory over Ken Shamrock last night to win the EliteXC middleweight division belt and was the first person to win by interround stoppage due to doctor's orders under modern MMA rules. Le snapped Shamrock's arm in two during the third round with a roundhouse kick.

I do have to take issue with a MMAWeekly.com who gave the first round to Shamrock. I think Shamrock took the most damage and Le exhibited better control and dominance over the round.

One other thing about Le. I am a huge fan of his, but last night showed a major weekness in that he didn't demonstrate any knockout power against Shamrock. Every major kick and punch landed, but other than a couple of cuts and bruises, Shamrock was taking the damage pretty well.

Braviax / Win Reanimator / Cru629

There's a nasty virus that just passed through to America, and there's a lot of bad website information out there on how to remove it.

First, you know you got it when you get it. It installs a little application which puts a red circle with a white X in it in your sytem tray and periodically pops up a balloon telling you that your computer is infected and it's going to download a solution and would you please click here. Well, it downloads something, but not anything that could be called a solution. It downloads more spyware, trojans, malware, crapware, etc.

If you try to fix it, none of the major antivirus antispyware software will fix it really. You're going to have to do it manually.

A lot of websites advised taking out some of the programs, but none of them seem to work correctly. After about a week of tinkering, I came up with a method that worked for me.

• Disconnect your computer from the internet. That way it can't reinstall itself.
• Reboot your computer in safe mode with command prompt. That's when you keep pressing F8 at the start up screen until you get back to the old DOS like screen.
• Go to the Windows directory on your C drive. Delete braviax.* and cru629.*
• Next, go to the \systems32 subdirectory and do the same.
• Next, go to the \dllcache and \drivers directories and delete the beep.sys file. Unfortunately, you won't hear a beep anymore on startup unless you save it from another computer and reinstall it on this one.
• Last, go into regedit and do a search for the braviax and cru629 programs. Just delete the named registery edits for the two programs.

Congradulations! You should now be clear of the virus.

My Take on the Democrats So Far

If you know me, you'd be surpised that I haven't commented that much on the election so far, particularly the two Ajaxes doing battle on the fields of Homer, with musical accompanyment by Offenbach. Anyway, here's my take so far:

Barak Obama: Great orator and very inspirational. But to what end? My concern first and foremost is his policies and lack of experience ("I'll concede any point to any dictator."). Let's not forget his two major scandels in that he got caught waffling on health care reform (he one breath he said he was for socialized medicine, in the next against it), and now with the race debate it's getting interesting. Not only does his pastor at the church he never attends (but exposes his children to) because he's off playing paintball (let's hope his military policy doesn't include supplying paintball guns to everyone) preach a Marxist version of black liberation theology, many of his campaign supporters and inner circle members espouse similar beliefs.

Hillary Clinton: Oh where can I begin? Let's start with the latest with her gaffe how she misremembered getting shot at on the Tarmac in Bosnia, insulting the armed forces because they would never allow a First Lady to land in those conditions, although some Presidents would not only allow but cause to happen the Secretary of Commerce to do that if the Secretary of Commerce has blackmail information on the President. Where are her tax documents that showed how much Bill really made on his book? How about her schedule that shows she was more influential in pardongate than she let on, with several campain contributions coming her way immediately thereafter? The list goes on and on.

Anyway, it's still early and possibly there might be some scandle to break about McCain, although he was quite vetted by everyone in 2000 and through the primaries.

Take Two on Electronic Arts

The other big take-over battle to watch is Electronic Arts $2 billion hostile takeover of Take Two - the company that publishes Grand Theft Auto. Take Two just adopted a poison pill that dilutes the stock if a new shareholder gets 20% or if an old one gets another 2%. Ahhh, this reminds me so much of the 80s. If either side needs a good lawyer, well, I think I can definately help you two.

Kudos to Wasserman Schultz

Despite many criticisms of her refusal to help support democratic candidates to unseat the Cuban-American delegation out of Dade County, she's steadfastly has stood on the sidelines.

Sun-Sentinel

I have to take issue with Joe Kollin's article about struggles at many condominiums after Wilma. Despite Kollin's nihilistic view of condo life, not all condos were that bad. Many of the problems could be traced back to bad or mishandling of the claims by their lawyers. Why doesn't Kollin take a look at a couple of the major communities, hit worse than the ones depicted in his article, that bounced back rather rapidly who did things right? Without role models for these other associations, people are going to wander in the dark.

Beach Boys Back?

The lawsuit over the trademark Beach Boys has finally been settled. Not much more info is available at this time.

First Amendment Victory

The 8th Circuit upheld the decision that Minnesota cannot pass a law that prevented children from buying or renting a violent video game. The Court wasn't happy with their decision, but they followed precedent and the Constitution which is what they are there for.

Supreme Defeat for Microsoft

The Supreme Court turned down Microsoft's appeal from the Fourth Circuit saying that Novell's antitrust lawsuit against Microsoft could proceed, alleging that Microsoft unfairly targed WordPerfect and QuattroPro the same way Mircosoft targeted Netscape's Navigator and Sun's Java.

Dish Network v. TiVo, Part Deux

After losing their case in the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, Dish Network asked for a rehearing because the court erroneously relied on inaccurate testimony from a witness. There's about $94 million in damages up for grabs here and could be the lifeblood for TiVo to keep them in business.

Web Narrows the Media?

A new study from the Project for Excellence in Journalism's State of the News Media found that instead of democratizing news, the internet has caused most news websites to repackage other news stories, much like this blog does. On the flip side, online news media has resurrected the idea of an afternoon newspaper, publishing articles regarding nearly contemporaneous events ahead of the evening news programs and the next day's newspapers.

Microsoft Licenses Adobe

You can now use Adobe Flash and Reader programs on cell phones that run Windows Mobile. Microsoft expects that 22 million phones will be made that run the Windows Mobile OS and some 500000000 devices with Flash preinstalled, at a 150% year over year growth rate. It's nice that the Adobe software will be free and Microsoft is picking up the bill. Personally, I think it's a way to get around the antitrust litigation because Microsoft also has Silverlight which is a competitor to Flash, but this is a nice olive branch.

Outing Sexual Harrassment

In California, the 3rd DCA found that if one outed a person's sexual orientation, such could be construed as sexual harrassment and grounds for termination. Bell v. Adelberg Associates Medical Group

Sorry about that

I was sick and got tied up in work. Should be publishing more entries now.

Micrhoo

Microsoft bid $31 a share for a very vulnerable Yahoo! last night in order to combat Google's dominance in cyberspace. That would be a very interesting marriage.

TiVo Wins the Patent!

The Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit agreed with a lower court that the DishTV DVR violated TiVo's patent and supported the $89.6 million award to TiVo.

Now Why Is That?

From the why would a legislature ever do that section, did you know that Japan lacks any legislation preventing computer viruses? You would think that the legislature there would have moved forward to criminalize malicious software programs.

Downloaders Can Stay Private

The European Court of Justice ruled that record labels and film studios cannot demand that comapnies hand over the names and addresses of suspected download infringers, but said that countries could individually require it, but "cannot however affect the requirements of (protecting) personal data."

Investment Banks Safe

The Supreme Court also didn't take the Enron case because you can't prove that Wall Street banks colluded with Enron to inflate its stock price artificially.

What is Personal Information?

Peter Scharr, Germany's data protection commissioner, has suggested that IP should be regarded as personal data. Search engines have disagreed. We'll see if the EU takes any action on this.

Who Owns Your Used Tissues?

The Supreme Court let stand a ruling that Washington University owns various lab samples of patients and not the patients themselves. When Dr. William J. Catalona left the University, thousands of patients requested that the tissue samples be forwarded to Dr. Catalona and the University refused. The 8th Circuit said the University owned all the tissue samples and the Supreme Court upheld that.

"It's Not Us"

The Supreme Court let stand a lower court ruling that said that the FCC was wrong in holding that the regulation of listing of taxes and other items were not in the purview of the states ability to regulate. The reason why states want this is that many states don't allow the listing of fees and other charges, and nobody wants to see how much they are paying in taxes.

Chirs Matthews was right

Yes, you are reading the title correctly. Two weeks ago he said that Hillary Clinton is only in her position because her husband "messed around." Given that right before Bill Clinton lied to the American populace about his extramarital affairs Hillary's popularity was at an all time low, and only subsequent to the scandel and his impeachment trial did her popularity start to rise again, he's right on the money in my opinion.

New Cause for the Antartic Melting

According to a study to be published in Nature Geoscience, scientists have posited a theory that an underground volcanoe that erupted around 207 B.C., and it is still active today causing the heat from the volcanoe from melting the ice sheet.

Identity Theft

If you want to steal somebody's identity, go to Sears. If you go to managemyhome.com, you can get a lot of information about a person if you know their name, address and phone number. But do you really want to steal somebody's identity that shops at Sears?

Stock Fraud

Finally, a stock fraud case we can be happy about. After that past forty years of bad Supreme Court cases on stock fraud, we finaly have the Charter Communications case. Justice Kennedy took a strict constructionalist approach to 10(b) of the 34 Act and held that you can't sue anyone but the company for a deceptive act. Thank you Supreme Court! Thank you!

Welcome Tony Sparano!

On behalf of many other Dolphin fans, I would like to welcome our latest savior to Miami.

UK to Join International Space Station

The UK plans to join the ISS by launching the Habitat Extension Modules in 2011 that would provide additional room and equipment and attach to the Node 3 segment which will be added in 2010. It's still subject to the UK government's approval which is giving it less than an enthusiastic response.

Two Tech Deals

Oracle just came to terms with BEA Systems to purchase them for approx. $7.85 billion, and Sun Microsystems agreed to purchase MySQL for approximately $1 billion.

What's Next?

Many critics of strict constructionalism allege that the warnings of the slippery sloap is just fear mongering. Now when the US held that government can't regulate condom sales to married people and created this zone of privacy, constructionalists warned of what's going to get put into that zone. Now, the ACLU filed a brief in the Larry Craig public bathroom sex case saying that people have an expectation of privacy in a public restroom. I don't know many people who expect any sort of privacy in a public restroom.

In this weeks stupid legal news story

The Austrian Supreme Court refused to recognize a chimp as a person. Next, we'll find out that certain types of venison aren't fish.

Hillary: The Movie

I can't believe that a court has held that Hillary: The Movie is subject to campaign finance laws and that trailers are essentially capaign ads. But An Inconvient Truth wasn't?

New ID Rules

The top story of the day is the new ID Regulations from the Department of Homeland Security. Everyone's going to need to get new drivers licenses soon.

Snore

The Alaska Farm Bureau doesn't own the "Alaska Grown" label. The Division of Agriculture owns it. Just thought everyone would like to know.

Oops, the Did It Again

Once, domain name highjacking was cool. Then it wasn't. Now, Network Solutions is the bully on the block. They are grabbing the top search words on its website that people don't immediately register, and then sell it for $35 a year.

Although people are critizing Network Solutions, I don't find anything deplorable about domain name front running. Caveat Emptor. If you don't want to let them have keywords, don't register and use somebody else cheaper.

Another Net Neutrality (Sort Of)

iTunes will be scrapping their pricing policies in Europe by making prices uniform in the EU. Previously, they charged 9 cents more per song in Great Britain because of higher royalty rates.

Do Not Call

The Do-Not-Call Registry should be renewed, thanks to a new bill that just passed in the Senate.

Embarrasment

The other day I mentioned in an earlier post in my blog about how Johnson lied to the American people to get us into the Vietnam War. Now, another government boo-boo is brought to light. Evidently, telephone companies have cut off FBI wiretaps because of unpaid phone bills.

Name Tasing

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (a/k/a ICANN) issued a report that recommends for further study the possibile ways to stop domain name tasting, a practice where somebody registers a lot of names and returns some to all of them in a few days after some test marketing with the names.

Personally, I don't see what the big deal is. Tying up domain names is no more than real estate speculation and the reasons why you would want to prevent it already have laws against it (e.g., trademark violations). Furthermore, it's going to take forever for ICANN to act on this report, if ever.

Data Discrimination

I use Comcast as my ISP. Evidently, the FCC is investigating them as to whether they discriminate against certain types of data, namely file sharing. I can personally attest that ever so often my internet shuts down for 24 to 48 hours.

The investigation is more important because its the first real world case of the FCC possibly enforcing the concept of "net neutrality", or that carriers must treat all internet traffic equally.

FST to Microsoft

Microsoft put in a bid for Fast Search & Transfer ASA yesterday at $2.97 per share. It is traded on the Oslo stock exchange.

The President Lied!

I just can't believe it. It's official. The President lied to get us into a war.

Wait, what am I saying? Oh, yes, it was Lyndon Johnson who lied about the Gulf of Tonkin incident that led us down the path to escalation in Vietnam. A report issued by the National Security Agency detailed how little evidence existed that support whether the Gulf of Tonkin incident really occured.

Maybe the Republicans need to turn this around and start using this as ammunition.

Bye Bye Copy Protection

Sony looks like they are dropping their copy protection on the mp3s they sell.

Just Missed the Christmas Season

The New MP3 Taser

Our new bond girl is Gemma Arterton.

Avengers Movie?

OK, it looks official. Robert Downey Jr. seems to be in both the Hulk and is definately in Iron Man. Sam Jackson seems to be in both. And a couple of other characters. And now word is John Favreau said he's all for directing an Avengers movie.

UK Trademark Verdict

Lacoste just lost a major trademark battle against Drs. Moore and Rumney to register a crocodile as a trademark for their practice. I'm sure to be confused by dentists and clothes.

New FICO Credit Scores

Here's a terrific article on the new math behind FICO credit scores.

Spam Stocks

You know those great spam emails you get saying how this stock or that stock is going to move? Evidently, the king is dead. The US Attorney's office just indicted Alan Ralsky, a man believed to be behind many those spam emails, in Michigan on stock fraud charges. I noticed my spam has been cut down. How about yours?

All You Can Reasonably Eat

All You Can Eat doesn't mean All You Can Eat, but there's a reasonableness standard out there. You can see this article out of Lousiana.

Led Zeppelin in US?

Word is that they are planning to play the Bonnaroo festival in Tennessee which is held June 12-15. According to the Daily Mirror, if things go well they may go on tour again. Ian Astbury, frontman for The Cult, has already said he's opening for them for couple of live dates.

Congrats!

to Barack Obama and Mike Huckabee for their wins in Iowa. It's interesting how most Democrats pledged their support to Obama in the second round of voting in order to block Clinton from winning.

Battery Rules

Christopher Null has a terrific article on what batteries you can and cannot bring on a plane: http://tech.yahoo.com/blogs/null/62899. If you are traveling with a laptop or cell phone in the near future, you should check out what you can bring in which suitcase.

CD Ripping

http://www.engadget.com/2007/12/30/riaa-not-suing-over-cd-ripping-still-kinda-being-jerks-about-it/

Might we finally have a test case on the extent of the fair use doctrine?

Bonkers

The last answer to Paul and Ron's You Can't Win is driving me bonkers. Can anybody help? The question is "There are eleven of these in Miami?" and the hint is "Independence Day". The answer that seems to be closest is "There are eleven Spanish words in Will Smith's song Miami." Any help from anybody out there?

UPDATE: The second hint is "The Fresh Prince". Today's proposed, but wrong, answer was "there are 11 rhymes in Miami".

The Alleged Decline of the English Language

There was a recent episode of Califonication that I watched on my DVR (terrific series but my DVR missed three episodes) where David Duchovney's character laments about the decline in communication skills of people when the girl he was dating says "LOL" instead of communicating in normal English. Yesterday, somebody suggested that I text them a message and that got me to thinking.

I don't want to sound like a technological Luddite trying to put up a linguistic barricade to the literary Sodom & Gomorrah commonly known as the internet and how emails, IM, and texting are destroying our ability as a species to communicate because I am totally cognizant of the evolution of language. But I am sounding like a technological Luddite. Isn't it nice when somebody actually takes the time out to write out a message in a card, no matter how short, and actually uses complete sentences? Or even an email? To me, that says something to the effect of "You're special enough for me to spend my time and actually tax my brain and use a complete sentence." How about for 2008 let's give the gift of the extra 30 seconds it takes to type out "That's funny!" instead of "LOL"?

Global Warming Myths

A couple of recent articles have further suggested that global warming's effects maybe overstated:

http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/weather/hurricane/sfl-flbstorms0102sbjan02,0,5542169.story?coll=sofla_tab01_layout

"Though it might seem he is trying to upstage the hurricane center, his real intent, Frank said, is to dispute that global warming has led to more active Atlantic tropical storm seasons, as several meteorological studies have asserted."

http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi-bin/abstract/117857349/ABSTRACT

"We examine tropospheric temperature trends of 67 runs from 22 Climate of the 20th Century model simulations and try to reconcile them with the best available updated observations (in the tropics during the satellite era). Model results and observed temperature trends are in disagreement in most of the tropical troposphere, being separated by more than twice the uncertainty of the model mean. In layers near 5 km, the modelled trend is 100 to 300% higher than observed, and, above 8 km, modelled and observed trends have opposite signs."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080103/ap_on_sc/arctic_warming;_ylt=AkwTlfDM9xzuzqPTT8hlhGms0NUE

"There's a natural cause that may account for much of the Arctic warming, which has melted sea ice, ice sheets and glaciers, according to a study published Thursday in the journal Nature. New research points a finger at a natural and cyclical increase in the amount of energy in the atmosphere that moves from south to north around the Arctic Circle."

The Weird Case of the Day

A model who says she has worked hard to maintain a wholesome image as a married graduate student in elementary education has filed a $5 million lawsuit in Manhatttan's state Supreme Court complaining that Szul.com, a jewelry company, video advertisement in which she writhes and moans looks pornographic. Maybe when she was asked to wear blue lacy lingerie should have been her first clue. The woman is asking for $2.5 million in compensatory damages and $2.5 million in punitive damages.

Mixed Feelings

OK, the 11th Circuit came out with Cox Enterprises v. News-Journal. I have mixed feelings about this one because it's hard to take a bad case up on appeal. The lower court clearly got it wrong. Their valuation method hasn't been acceptable since Weinberger v. UOP. Discounted cash flow is clearly preferable in finance. With respect to the other part as to whether to give a "penalty" because of bad mangaement, the Cede v. Technicolor cases in Delaware pretty much answered the question. But unfortunately, the 11th Circuit was confronted with the question as to whether the lower court abused its discretion, and not whether the lower court got it wrong.

Privacy Rights

Well, despite California's right to privacy from everyone except the paparazzi, Privacy International, a not for profit international human rights group that focuses on, guess what, wait for it, privacy rights, has ranked the United States near last in their latest survey of government intrusion. According to them, you have less privacy in the United States and Great Britain than you do in Greece, Romania and Canada (only to be outdone by Russia, China and Malaysia). Their rankings can be found here.

Do We Need Another Search Engine?

Come on, now. Wikia Search, a project from the same people who brought you Wikipedia, is bringing the search engine market to the Wiki stage by allowing people to tweak the search algorithms and to help fight spammers who artifically try to inflate their rankings in search engine results. Google is retaliating by releasing knol, an online encyclopedia that will differ from Wikipedia by identifying who wrote the article, but also allow the author to share in some of the advertising revenue.

MC Hammer Redux!

MC Hammer is coming back as a dot com entrepreneur riding the wave of success of shows like Dancing with the Stars and So You Think You Can Dance by introducing DanceJam.Com, a website, like Youtube, where users can post videos of themselves dancing. Maybe we'll get to see some of that Dutch Jump Dancing Championships that we only got to see a glimpse of on So You Think You Can Dance? Maybe? Even if we're really good this year?

Happy New Year!!!

Happy New Year Everyone!