According to a recent article at Information Week:

Internet users skeptical of junk E-mails promising easy money, miracle cures, and dream dates are right to be wary: The government says two-thirds of the spam messages clogging online mailboxes probably are false in some way.

Brad Templeton says it's the25th Anniversary of Spam:

That first spam was sent by a salesman for DEC - Digital Equipment Corporation. Today, you may not know DEC, since it was bought by Compaq and is now a unit of HP, but in those days it was the leading minicomputer maker, and its computers provided the platform for the development of Unix, C and much of the internet, to cite just a few minor events.

By 1978 the Arpanet (as the internet was then known) had already provided network E-mail to a large number of folks at universities, government institutions and universities for over 6 years. E-mail was the biggest source of traffic on the Arpanet. A few years prior, Dave Farber had created "MsgGroup," the first network mailing list. (Though Plato and other timesharing systems had laid the foundations for online community and conferencing some years before that.)

The DEC salesman, Gary Thuerk, identified only as "THUERK at DEC-MARLBORO" (There were no dots or dot-coms in those days, and the at-sign was often spelled out) decided to send a notice to everybody on the ARPANET on the west coast. It trumpeted an open house to show off new models of the Dec-20 computer, a foray into larger, almost mainframe-sized systems.

This was a spam, though the term would not be used to refer to it for another 15 years. The spammer didn't do a very good job. He simply typed addresses into his mail program, or possibly included them from a file. The mail program would only take 320 addresses. The rest got simply shoved into the top of the body of the message.

...via Dan Gilmor

According to CNET news, a judge has found that file-swapping tools are legal.

In an almost complete reversal of previous victories for the record labels and movie studios, federal court Judge Stephen Wilson ruled that Streamcast--parent of the Morpheus software--and Grokster were not liable for copyright infringements that took place using their software. The ruling does not directly affect Kazaa, software distributed by Sharman Networks, which has also been targeted by the entertainment industry.

"Defendants distribute and support software, the users of which can and do choose to employ it for both lawful and unlawful ends," Wilson wrote in his opinion, released Friday. "Grokster and StreamCast are not significantly different from companies that sell home video recorders or copy machines, both of which can be and are used to infringe copyrights."

...via Dan Gillmor

For the unenlightened, a new way to express your displeasure.

Ah, the freshly mowed infield. The crack of the bat. The thump of a Nokia on the noggin.

...

Silicon Valley's first commandment now means that cell phones are so inexpensive that some fans don't think twice (or at all) about launching them onto the baseball diamond as a signal of discontent.

The latest phone chucking came at Wrigley Field, where drunken Cubs fans have grown tired of tossing home run balls back onto the field. In the eighth inning Thursday, some imbecile winged a cell phone instead and hit San Diego Padre Sean Burroughs in the foot.

...via Gizmodo

Six Apart (Ben & Mena Trott) announce TypePad:

Building on the established features of Movable Type, TypePad provides weblog publishing with versatile archiving, integrated comments, and customizable designs from a library of attractive and standards-compliant templates.

TypePad expands weblog publishing to include integration of text, photos and other media content. The combination of simplicity and comprehensive features will make TypePad the first tool that will empower users, beginners and experts alike, to reach the full potential of the weblog medium.

Fast Company has an article about Nokia and innovation:

These photographs won't ever grace the cover of National Geographic . But they do illustrate Nokia's sharpest insight: Creativity doesn't begin and end on an R&D lab bench. The first user-changeable handset cover? Engineer Aulis Perttula invented it -- after he had watched some of his colleagues customize their phones with car paint. Predictive text? Stephen Williams, a junior applications designer, suggested it after he had seen disabled people make good use of it on their PCs. The list of innovative firsts at Nokia that came from unlikely places goes on. That's why Nokia, a 137-year-old Scandinavian titan with annual sales of $30.8 billion across 130 countries, has been out in front for most of the mobile-phone industry's short history. Nokia sells five phones every second. Its global market share, 38%, is greater than that of its nearest three rivals combined, and it boasts a 50% share of Western Europe.

Was it experience made da Vinci or a bundle of academic degrees?

goodexperience.com reports that da Vinci himself says:

...the subjects I am dealing with are to be dealt with by experience rather than by words, and experience is the muse of all who write well. And so, as my muse, I will cite her in every case.

Says goodexperience.com:

500 years ago, da Vinci understood the power of experience. Academic pedigree is fine, but a direct grasp of experience is essential. Analyzing and learning from direct experience is innately more powerful than hiding behind obscure academic methods. da Vinci "got it." Maybe he was the first.

Bob Atkins has a detailed article on digital cameras and lenses and whether a good lens matters or not:

Based on MY particular film and digital workflow:

• Even on a 6MP DSLR like the EOS 10D, better lenses give better results
• Digital scans of high resolution film (Kodachrome 25) at 4000dpi on a FS4000US scanner yields higher resolution images than those shot directly with an EOS 10D. Not surprising, but confirmed by experiment.
• While 10D resolution is somewhat lower than ISO 100 film, it's very little affected by ISO setting so it's quite possible that high ISO digital resolution may be better than scanned high ISO film.
• From a practical viewpoint, 10D images printed on an inkjet from digital files are probably equal film up to maybe 11x14. They are certainly good enough to be very hard to distinguish from film.
• As an aside, if you want the ultimate in sharpness do it the right way. Get a large format camera and shoot film!

Gizmodo has pictures of the Banryu guard-robot. It's designed to prowl your house and keep an eye out for intruders.

But I have to say that 1) you better have a big house and 2) my dogs would kill it dead in less than five minutes....

The Los Angeles Times has an interestingarticle on how the remote control has changed not only how we view television, but process information as well:

Ever notice, for example, that network series rarely have theme songs like in the old days? Thank the remote. Notice that there are no commercials between the end of one network show and the beginning of the next one? Thank the remote. Notice (if you're old enough) that the commercials themselves are more sophisticated and less annoying than the ones the TV blared in the '70s? Thank the remote. Notice those endless headlines crawling across the bottom of your screen? Thank the remote. Notice (ladies) that you can tell a lot about a guy's control issues by watching an evening of TV with him? Thank the remote.

Phil Windley has put his slides up from a presentation onProgramming the Internet that looks at decentralized computing, content pipelines, semantic mapping and other emerging technologies for loosely coupled resources.

Some additional information on content pipelines can be found at Clemens Vasters' weblog.

According to Mitch Kapor's weblog, Chandler 0.1 is now available :

The first release of Chandler, release 0.1 is now available! While we're still very early in the design and implementation process, we intend for this 0.1 release to make us a more fully open project. We have made the release available for download, opened up our bug tracking database, and opened our source code repository. We have also spent quite a bit of time in the past few weeks focusing on improving our code and documentation.

Eyeteeth has an interview with Sida Vaidhyanathan, an assistant professor of Culture and Communications who wrote The Anarchist in the Library and Copyright and Copywrongs:

This sort of creative circle--the drum circle or the blues-singing circle--is simply the most vivid image we have of these sort of creative communities. These creative communities are all over the place. Anyplace artists gather, any place musicians just jam for the fun of it… I think that this is a powerful form and a powerful habit. It's also an important part of being human. It's the essence of being cultural.

We're not missing those communities; we're just not investing in them and celebrating them like we should. Because the form of cultural production that this country and therefore the world has decided to celebrate, protect and promote is the industrial form. It's the form that says: it's gonna start with a piece of paper by a scriptwriter, it's going to go through a series of meetings, it's going to be produced step by step with the contribution of hundreds or thousands of people with hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars and then be distributed to millions of people, perhaps billions of people, in a form that the institution that produced it dictates.

The form of cultural production that this country and therefore the world has decided to celebrate, protect and promote is the industrial form.
Now, all of that in some ways makes our life better. These mass-produced movies are things that human beings value, share, talk about. They become parts of our cultural commerce. They become parts of our cultural life. We quote Star Wars all the time in daily life. We quote Casablanca. And I don't think we want to imagine a world in which there's no incentive to produce Star Wars or Casablanca--although we might imagine a world without Jar-Jar Binks--and we might imagine a world in which someone could write a sequel to Casablanca and not be laughed at (although perhaps that's hard to imagine). Nonetheless, it's this notion of working from the common cultural phenomena that we share to build new and special things. That's what we have to focus on. That's why we need a low barrier of entry to creative processes. That's why we need free and cheap access to cultural materials. Free and cheap access can come a number of ways: through electronic networks, through networks of friends sharing material, through public libraries, through universities, through schools, through churches. These are all institutions built for sharing. One of the things I'm concerned about is this ideology of the industrial production and dissemination of cultural products is infecting some of those institutions as well.

...via BoingBoing

Cory Doctorow and Charlie Stross are writing a story online using Movable Type.
blog entries and comments to write, comment, and provide context and information for the story.

...via BoingBoing

EFF has an information piece on efforts to pass a series of 'super-DMCA' laws in a numer of states throughout the US:

The super-DMCA bills would regulate the possession, development and use of "communication devices" and "unlawful access devices." A "communication device" is virtually any electronic device you might connect to any communication service. The definition of "unlawful communication device" is somewhat narrower, sweeping in any device that is "primarily designed, developed, …possessed, used or offered… for the purpose of defeating or circumventing" a technological protection measure used to protect a communication services.

The proposed bills generally prohibit four categories of activity:

1. Possession, development, distribution or use of any "communication device" in connection with a communication service without the express authorization of the service provider.
2. Concealing the origin or destination of any communication from the communication service provider.
3. Possession, development, distribution or use of any "unlawful access device."
4. Preparation or publication of any "plans or instructions" for making any device having reason to know that such a device will be used to violate the other prohibitions.

These proposals dramatically expand the power of entertainment companies, ISPs, cable companies and others to control what you can and can't connect to the services that you pay for. If enacted, they will slow innovation, impair competition and seriously undermine a consumer's right to choose what technologies they use in their homes.

David Carraher has an article on weblogs in education:

Two current shortcomings of education could could be addressed through weblogging technologies. The former is highly problematic throughout K-12; it is not a major problem in graduate school. The latter remains a problem at all levels.

CNET reviews a batch of ultraportable laptops.

Top picks are the Dell Latititude C400 and the Toshiba Portege 3505 Tablet PC

BBC News reports on Ideal Home Show inventions including an Internet-enabled chopping board:

It contains a microprocessor-controlled system capable of browsing the web. It can download recipes and display them on a screen within the board itself providing inspiration for even the most uncreative cook.

And don't forget the internet toilet roll browser:

A unit installed in front of a toilet on the cubicle wall provides up-to-the-minute information on products, stocks and shares and lottery results.

Here are the instructions.

Dan Gillmor reports in his weblog:

It wasn't newspapers or television or radio that originally spread the word about the outbreak of a serious respiratory illness, now known as SARS, in southeast China. It was SMS -- text messages on mobile phones.

An article at Extreme Tech on CRT Innovations says there are still a few reasons to choose CRTs over flat-panel LCD monitors:

The tried-and-true CRT-based PC monitor remains the best display choice for many applications, such as professional graphics design or animation, where color accuracy, luminance uniformity, color purity, black levels, and contrast ratios are critically important. Fast-action gaming and high-motion video are still best viewed on CRTs, because most panels suffer from motion blur or pixelation problems due to slower-than-required liquid crystal response times. Panels can't touch CRTs in the area of viewing angles and resolution scaling (when scaling up or down from their native, fixed-pixel resolution, panels still look pretty ugly in most cases).

Plus, for the moment, CRTs are cheaper.