Wow. Microsoft is basically saying "use us over MPEG-4, we're cheaper".

In the Norway's prosection of DeCSS developer Jon Johansen, the court found him innocent on all counts.

Artima.com has published a four-part interview with Scott Meyers, author of Effective C++, More Effective C++, and Effective STL. In Multiple Inheritance and Interfaces, Scott describes how his view of multiple inheritance has changed with time, the C++ community's take on Java's interface, and a schism of focus between the C++ and other prominent development communities. In Designing Contracts and Interfaces, Scott discusses interface contracts, private data, and designing minimal and complete interfaces. In Meaningful Programming, Scott discusses the importance of saying what you mean and understanding what you say, the three fundamental relationships between classes, and the difference between virtual and non-virtual functions. In Const, RTTI, and Efficiency, Scott describes the utility of const, the appropriate time to use RTTI, a good attitude about efficiency, and Scott Meyers' current quest for general programming principles.

Stories on filesharing in the salaried press usually mention a drop in recorded music sales during 2001. The size of the drop, though, varies wildly -- I have seen numbers as low as 2% and as high as 10% -- but most mentions are high rather than low. Record Sales, MP3 Downloads, and the Annihilation Hypothesis by Stan Liebowitz explains the variation.

A friendnet is a network topology where every TCP/IP connection is backed up by a meatspace connection.

I've started a blog to capture developments related to DMCA, copyright, patents/open source, etc. I call it public.net because it's about the Net as a public resource. Input, etc: rkoman@attbi.com.

Today, I got a press release from FatWallet's lawyers, announcing that Wal-Mart has dropped the demand for a name, and that FatWallet was asking for damages for Wal-Mart's knowingly false invocation of DMCA.

If you accept Jack Valenti's arguments, you believe that no creative work will ever be produced in this country unless copyright protection is a couple of generations long. But not even Jack would argue that a bunch of post-turkey sale information constitutes "creative expression."

Lawrence Lessig was named one of Scientific American's Top 50 Visionaries for arguing "against interpretations of copyright that could stifle innovation and discourse online."

"You can almost do this as an exercise. Look at some program and see if there's some duplication. Then, without really thinking about what it is you're trying to achieve, just pigheadedly try to remove that duplication. Time and time again, I've found that by simply removing duplication I accidentally stumble onto a really nice elegant pattern. It's quite remarkable how often that is the case. I often find that a nice design can come from just being really anal about getting rid of duplicated code," says Martin Fowler in this Artima.com interview.