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!