In CNET News.com today: Liquid Audio to evaporate. The company’s board of directors votes unanimously to dissolve the company and distribute its cash reserves to shareholders. Pretty pathetic. Liquid was one of the very first innovators to attempt to make a legal online music system in the Napster age. The fact that they’ve gone out […]
Author: mradwin
Udi Manber: The First 10 Years on the Web
Udi Manber gave the first talk of this year’s Jon Postel Distinguished Lecture Series today at UCLA. It seems fitting that I should have a link to Udi’s book on Amazon.com at the beginning of my review of his talk; he started working for Amazon just about a month ago. While a handful of professors […]
Dmitry’s DMCA case begins
An important test for the DMCA begins this week. Acording to Wired News, Opening arguments begin Tuesday in the copyright infringement case against the Russian coding firm, a trial expected to test the limits of federal copyright law. Programmer Dmitri Sklyarov will be on hand to testify for both the prosecution and the defense. I’m […]
Joe Andrieu: Carpe Diem or Caveat Emptor?
I’m off to UCLA to hear a lecture for my CS239 class. Here’s the abstract: For the prepared and alert entrepreneur, “Opportunity knocks far more than once.” Indeed, as the subtitle implies, the challenge is to erecognize the right opportunity and then stay focused on it. Many factors can lure one into taking the wrong […]
My friend Scott is lazy
My friend Scott Kirkland said I should feature him in my blog. He’s too lazy to write his own blog. He works for Apple. Call him up and ask him all about Mac OS X (but be sure to pronounce it “Oh Ess Ex” and not “Oh Ess Ten”). OS X OS X.II har har […]
My friend Gabriel has a blog
I set my friend Gabriel up with a blog today. Naturally, he’s using the same toolset I’ve got: MovableType hosted on NetSpace. Setting him up took me about 15 minutes, including a workaround for NetSpace’s broken copy of Digest::MD5. Gabriel was my college roommate and is the co-founder of DoTheGood, which provides philanthropy management solutions […]
What a long day!
I’m exhausted. I just got back home from a very long day in Sunnyvale. LAX to SJC to LAX. 16 hours of travel, caffeine, meetings, a bunch of phone calls, a ton of email, and some more meetings. I don’t think I wrote a single line of code today. A few quickies before I light […]
International Abolition of Slavery Day
Today (December 2nd) is International Abolition of Slavery Day. According to the iAbolish Freedom Action Network, This year marks the seventy-fifth anniversary of the international community’s decision to abolish slavery everywhere, through the adoption of the Slavery Convention in 1927. Though the legal argument against slavery has been won, slavery persists and even thrives in […]
Information wants to be free?
I spend a lot of time thinking about IP. No, I’m not talking about Internet Protocol; I’m talking about the other IP. Intellectual Property. Some day before I get too old, I’m going to put my career as a software guy on hold and go to law school to study this stuff more seriously. I […]
Pastrami on Rye
After a pretty awful day of working in the garden, we went to Pico Kosher Deli for dinner and I ate a big pastrami sandwich. It was incredible. I’m still in a bad mood, but my stomach is full. I spent many years being an almost-vegetarian (I never gave up eating fish) but about a […]