30 Jul 2009
Why not prohibit smoking?

Amen!

Cigarettes kill; 400,000 people die prematurely every year from smoking. When we analyze the harm from drugs, there is no doubt that cigarettes are the worst.

(link) [CNN.com]

09:13 /Politics | 1 comment | permanent link

29 Jul 2009
The problem with conservative echo chambers

Hearing is impaired if you only listen to yourself.

Back in the day when magazines used to come in the mail, I subscribed to only three: Reader's Digest, the Utne Reader, and Reason, on the theory that between the three of them I'd get something resembling a balanced view of what was really going on. It worked pretty well, too. I've got a lot more choice today, of course, but really do try to make sure I read varying points of view, even ones I disagree with rather stridently.

Separate spaces such as A Conservative Cafe in Indiana lead us further from a united America.

(link) [Christian Science Monitor]

20:22 /Politics | 0 comments | permanent link

Company Awarded Patent for Podcasting

Ridiculous.

VoloMedia announced today that it has been awarded what it called the 'patent for podcasting.' According to the press announcement, patent number 7,568,213, titled "Method for Providing Episodic Media," covers: "...the fundamental mechanisms of podcasting, including providing consumer subscription to a show, automatically downloading media to a computer, prioritizing downloads, providing users with status indication, deleting episodes, and synchronizing episodes to a portable media device."

(link) [Slashdot]

20:02 /Copywrongs | 0 comments | permanent link

19 Jul 2009
Court ruling forces release of FSA databases

I'm sure the NAIS database would be entirely confidential...

WASHINGTON, D.C. - Producers may have reason to be concerned about confidentiality after a court ruling recently forced the Farm Service Agency to release its databases to a national publishing company.

(link) [Ag News/updates from www.theprairiestar.com]

08:15 /Agriculture | 0 comments | permanent link

We Were Smarter About Copyright Law 100 Years Ago

We were smarter about a lot of things in 1909 ...

James Boyle has a blog post comparing the recording industry's arguments in 1909 to those of 2009, with some lovely Google book links to the originals. Favorite quote: "Many and numerous classes of public benefactors continue ceaselessly to pour forth their flood of useful ideas, adding to the common stock of knowledge. No one regards it as immoral or unethical to use these ideas and their authors do not suffer themselves to be paraded by sordid interests before legislative committees uttering bombastic speeches about their rights and representing themselves as the objects of 'theft' and 'piracy.'" Industry flaks were more impressive 100 years ago. In that debate the recording industry was the upstart, battling the entrenched power of the publishers of musical scores. Also check out the cameo appearance by John Philip Sousa, comparing sound recordings to slavery. Ironically, among the subjects mentioned as clearly not the subject of property rights were business methods and seed varieties." Boyle concludes: "...one looks back at these transcripts and compares them to today's hearings — with vacuous rantings from celebrities and the bloviation of bad economics and worse legal theory from one industry representative after another — it is hard not to feel a sense of nostalgia. In 1900, it appears, we were better at understanding that copyright was a law that regulated technology, a law with constitutional restraints, that property rights were not absolute and that the public would not automatically be served by extending rights out to infinity."

(link) [Slashdot]

07:43 /Copywrongs | 0 comments | permanent link

18 Jul 2009
Sheep in the News - Local Edition

Mild Thing dropped her lambs yesterday evening about 7pm... a ram and a ewe, both healthy and doing fine. Her sister (Wild Thing) is due any day as well, as is J, our youngest Scottish Blackface ewe. All three were bred to a fine looking Horned Dorset buck when they went visiting earlier this year.

We'll try to get some pictures uploaded once all lambs are on the ground.

13:43 /Home | 0 comments | permanent link

Crops, ponds destroyed in quest for food safety

I would note this as "unbelievable", but being familiar with the existing nightmare of food regulation, I can't in all honesty say that: it's entirely believable, and it's just going to get worse.

Invisible to a public that sees only the headlines of the latest food-safety scare - spinach, peppers and now cookie dough - ponds are being poisoned and bulldozed. Vegetation harboring pollinators and filtering storm runoff is being cleared. Fences and poison baits line wildlife corridors. Birds, frogs, mice and deer - and anything that shelters them - are caught in a raging battle in the Salinas Valley against E. coli O157:H7, a lethal, food-borne bacteria.

(link) [San Francisco Chronicle]

via Overlawyered

07:53 /Agriculture | 0 comments | permanent link

17 Jul 2009
Clever attack exploits fully-patched Linux kernel

This isn't a bug in the Linux kernel - it's a bug in GCC, specifically in the optimization routines. Turn that optimization off, recompile, no bug.

A recently published attack exploiting newer versions of the Linux kernel is getting plenty of notice because it works even when security enhancements are running and the bug is virtually impossible to detect in source code reviews.

(link) [The Register]

21:11 /Technology | 0 comments | permanent link

Amazon Pulls Purchased E-Book Copies of 1984 and Animal Farm

Amazon must have been acquired by the Ministry of Truth ...

In a story just dripping with irony, Amazon Kindle owners awoke this morning to discover that 1984 and Animal Farm had mysteriously disappeared from their e-book readers. These were books that they had bought and paid for, and thought they owned. Apparently the publisher changed its mind about offering an electronic edition, and apparently Amazon, whose business lives and dies by publisher happiness, caved. It electronically deleted all books by George Orwell from people's Kindles and credited their accounts for the price. Amazon customer service may or may not have responded to queries by stating, "We've always been at war with Eastasia."

(link) [Slashdot]

21:09 /Copywrongs | 0 comments | permanent link

16 Jul 2009
Sheep In The News

Rare sheep could be key to better diagnostic tests in developing world, says Stanford study

The newest revolution in microbiology testing walks on four legs and says "baa". It's the hair sheep, a less-hirsute version of the familiar woolly barnyard resident. A new study from the Stanford University School of Medicine, which is to be published July 3 in PLoS ONE, finds that not only are these ruminants low-maintenance and parasite-resistant, they're also perfect blood donors for the microbiology tests necessary to diagnose infectious disease in the developing world.

(link) [EurekAlert!]

Scottish sheep shrink as climate change favours the weak

Climate change is causing a breed of wild sheep in Scotland to shrink, according to research.

(link) [BBC News | News Front Page | World Edition]

21:25 /Agriculture | 0 comments | permanent link

Childless man freed after child support arrest

If you think that debtors prison only exists in Dickens's novels, think again.Frank Hatley spent the past year in jail for being a deadbeat dad. But there's one problem -- Hatley doesn't have any children. And the "deadbeat" label doesn't fit the 50-year-old either, his supporters say.

(link) [CNN.com]

06:55 /Politics | 0 comments | permanent link

13 Jul 2009
Judge Invalidates Software Patent, Citing Bilski

Given this decision, and with the Supremes set to review Bilski, patent law is going to really interesting this year, indeed.

US District Court Judge Andrew Gilford (Central District of California) granted a summary judgment motion in DealerTrack v. Huber et al., finding DealerTrack's patent (US 7,181,427) — for an automated credit application processing system — invalid due to the recent In re Bilski court decision that requires a patent to either involve 'transformation' or 'a specific machine.' According to Judge Gilford's ruling, DealerTrack 'appears to concede that the claims of the '427 Patent do not meet the "transformation" prong of the Bilski test.' He then applied the 'specific machine' test and noted that, post-Bilski the Board of Patent Appeals and Interferences has ruled several times that 'claims reciting the use of general purpose processors or computers do not satisfy the [Bilski] test.' Judge Gilford analyzes the claims of the '427 patent, notes that they state that the 'machine' involved could be a 'dumb terminal' and a 'personal computer,' and then concludes: 'None of the claims of the '427 Patent require the use of a "particular machine," and the patent is thus invalid under Bilski.' DealerTrack apparently plans to appeal the ruling. Interesting times ahead.

(link) [Slashdot]

06:34 /Copywrongs | 0 comments | permanent link

Hurt yourself? Try f**king swearing

There are times when I'm completely pain-free ...

A team from Blighty's Keele University has confirmed what all of us who've ever hit our thumbs with a hammer have known for years - that swearing can relieve pain.

(link) [The Register]

06:20 /Humor | 0 comments | permanent link

02 Jul 2009
Disco tune saves man's life

If the first thing I heard after a near death experience was my wife belting out a disco tune, I'd think I'd die for sure ...(all kidding aside, this is a useful tidbit).

Debra Bader was taking a walk in the woods with her 53-year-old husband one morning when suddenly he collapsed. At first she thought the situation was hopeless.

(link) [CNN.com]

12:06 /Humor | 0 comments | permanent link

Software firm goes after Google for internet invisibility cloak

I wonder what else we're not finding in Google?

A software company has sued Google not only for trade mark infringement in Google's AdWords advertising system but for making its website invisible to the Google search engine.

(link) [The Register]

06:34 /Technology | 0 comments | permanent link