atnewyork.com is reporting that Rep. Boucher (VA-09) in introducing a bill to codify and strengthen fair use. My initial reaction mirrors uncoverer’s:

It is great that fair use, the public domain, and consumers have a friend in Congress. Rick Boucher is a great public servant who deserves our support. It’s a shame that we need a new law to secure what should be protected already by the First Amendment, though. An idea, once expressed, belongs to the public domain, and is only loaned to copyright holders to promote creativity and innovation. Fair use is a natural right. It is part of free speech.

What if It’s All Been a Big Fat Lie? – This NY Times article examines the controversy around the state of our dietary understanding. I wish I could say that it’s surprising how little we actually know, but it’s really not. As advanced as we like to think we are, we really don’t know that much, whether it be physiology, psychology, or metaphysics.

• The Glycemic Index
• AJP – Endocrinology and Metabolism
• Google Directory – Health > Nutrition > Resources

Last night I wrote a little script that will list what DVDs I have out from Netflix (as well as the next 10 in the queue).

The other night, P2P research got brought up in conversation, /. just had a recent discussion on Random Walkers. There’s no doubt that there’s a lot of interesting stuff going on w/ P2P networks (Personally, I’m more interested in the Reputation System and metadata aspects, but the pure network topology stuff is pretty neat as well). Some random links: p2p-hackers, OpenP2P.com, infoAnarchy, Ben Houston’s P2P Idea Page, Free Haven Project Papers, Freenet Papers, boing-wiki P2P Technology, University of Cincinnati Network Visualization Research, www.networkgeography.org

WWW2002 Refereed Papers Track, by Session

How to Read Quickly Without Really Trying – this is a good K5 article w/ some pretty contentious discussion attached. Personally, I’m all for reading more quickly, especially with the amount I go through on the web/email each day (I’m estimating, especially when going through long threads, I’ll average tens, if not hundreds of thousands of words a day). Aside: while I think it could be great for online reading, I imagine it’ll be awhile before good, lightweight Tablet PCs w/ high resolution (200dpi+) screens come out, though.

It seems that Apple is pushing their Switch campaign in the wrong direction. Yah, who would have thunk that Steve Jobs is a total asshole and control freak. *snicker*

Milestones in the Annals of Junkmail

Web pages are a great source of postal

addresses for direct mailers. Judging by some of the

addresses we’ve seen recently, it’s evident that the data is

harvested not by humans, but by computer programs that scan web

pages for names and addresses. Several weeks ago we (the

Kermit

Project at

Columbia University)

announced a new release of our Kermit 95

communication software for Windows — SSH, secure FTP, etc; cousin

of C-Kermit

for Unix (search Freshmeat). Since this was a major release, we

chose a new icon for it: the Columbia

crown. A web page

explained that this is the emblem of Columbia University: the

crown of King George the II of England (1727-1760), who founded

Columbia in 1754. JUST ONE WEEK LATER guess who received a

postcard from Dell.

The other week when I was writing a style guide for student workers entering content (these are the only block level elements they’re using: h3, h4, p, ul, ol, li, dl, dd, dt, hr), and looking at common entities and while reading Peter K. Sheerin’s old A List Apart Article, The Trouble With EM ‘n EN, got to Pete’s Guide. Among the articles, I found his Guide for Print and Web to be the most interesting, and am in agreement for two of his grammar peeves (I don’t have a problem with email, perhaps it’s just from having seen it that way for so many years).

TortoiseCVS is an open source tool front-end for CVS that integrates CVS items with the Windows Explorer. Checked out items appear in your the explorer, are available from the file open dialogs, show their state with colored overlays, with allowed actions showing up in the context menu.

You’d wish there were a way to do explorer integration with FTP/SFTP/SSL, and there is, with KnoWare‘s Internet Neighborhood Pro (which has ftpNetDrive’s drive mapping ability integrated now). It’s a great program, but $40. Still well worth it, relatively speaking. You’d think there be an open source equivalent, but well, this is the Windows world we’re talking about, I suppose.