Attention State Employees
Are you a state employee (e.g. a professor at a state university)? Do you think copyright laws that regulate non-commercial…
Small is Beautiful
I’ve been working on a book called Small is Beautiful: The Unix Philosophy, to be serialized in Tekka. It’s been…
Activity Log
About a week ago I started keeping an activity log on the Web. It details what I’ve done and plan…
War Tax
I had a dream that the president announced a war tax. It was a small tax, he said, about enough…
Happy Birthday, Weblog!
This weblog was one year old yesterday. (On this month in 2002…)…
Between Iraq and a Hard Place
Britain’s Channel 4: Between Iraq and a Hard Place (RealPlayer). A great (and funny) 50-minute show from on the history…
Tolkien’s Lawyers Harass Small Publisher
Mike Perry emailed me this fascinating story (350K PDF) of Tolkien’s lawyers harassing him for publishing a reference book on…
Happy Birthday to Mac
On this day in 1984 (story), the first Mac went on sale. [iacas] Today, we celebrate the nineteenth glorious anniversary…
Fascinating User Interface Research
Ka-Ping Yee: Peephole Displays. This most innovative UI ideas per minute I’ve ever seen: Lists you can select from using…
calling all First Amendment lawyers!
SBC is shaking down websites which have navigation in a separate frame. This is an open-and-shut case! Web sites are…
the secret life of Professor Lessig
One nice thing about Google Groups is that you can use it to search for recent posts by people who…
inside the secret government
This American Life: Secret Government (RealAudio stream). Wow. Wow. Wow. It’s a spine-tingling episode of This American Life, a wonderfully-engaging…
new thinking, new laws
Congress gets a teaste of its own medicine, Lessig settles for less, and I buy books I can get for free.
802.11b Theremin (two geeky pursuits that geek well together)
Seth Schoen has built an theremin in shell using an 802.11b card as a sensor. How cool! In other news,…
I WANT TO BELIEVE
Larry Lessig: the silent 5. ‘Is there a principle here? Is there a way to read these opinions as consistent…
Day of Mourning
Supreme Court fails Eldred, the Web turns black for “limited Times”. Seth always knows just what to quote:Rabbi Joshua: oi…
Tips for Book Authors
I’ve written some tips for book authors I have. I hope you’ll find them useful, and I hope I’ll remember…
Great Commercial
VW: Bubble. I never watch TV commercials anymore, so I’m sorry to intrude with one, but this VW commercial is…
Declaration of ICANN Independence
IN CONGRESS, July 4, 1776, the Declaration of Independence was signed. It presented a theory of fair government: that all…
the 13th is supposed to be tomorrow!
A relative came over. We wanted to play a networked game of Jedi Knight II with him. This is our…
good thing they’re finite
<wmf> I think all anarchists must be opposed to these “state machines”, whatever they are…
Last Chance to Comment
ICANN is soliciting comments on two important whois issues. (The whois database explains who owns and runs each domain name.)…
DO THIS NOW
Stop what you’re doing. Read this now. (Or run out and buy it.) You’ll thank me later….
“I helped hijack an airplane”
Arianna Huffington: The Detroit Project. “The idea for this project came to me while watching — for the umpteenth time…
TiVo and Macs and Networks, oh my!
Chuq: minor woo-hoos from Macworld. “TiVo’s upcoming premium service package will use Rendezvous technology to automatically discover Macs within the…
Apple Goodies
Source code to Safari’s HTML renderer: WebCore (announcement and list of changes). Hopefully 3rd-party apps (NNWL, WebDesktop) will use this….
Get your $20 from the music companies!
Did you buy a CD, casette, or vinly album from a retailer between 1995 and 2000? If you did, then…
growth spurt
I’m having a growth spurt. It’s weird to feel yourself growing. You look around, and everythings a little lower than…
How Misleading Can You Get?
The RIAA has a website, musicunited.org, which among other obviously misleading statements has a page on the law that strongly…
Classic PowerPoint Presentations
Today’s Chicago Tribune Magazine had a feature story on PowerPoint, which included PowerPoint renditions of two classic works: Robert Frost’s…
Is the Treo ideal?
I wrote up my requirements for the ideal PDA and got a bunch of suggestions. The best so far seems…
install in cron.yearly
#!/bin/sh echo `cat year` + 1 | bc > year; make happy # Happy year-counter increment!…
Aaron Swartz (me@aaronsw.com)