Stop this genetic pornography Lewis Wolpert: “But what I find incomprehensible, even bizarre, is how it is even possible to consider patenting a gene. It has nothing to do with patenting life as a genetically engineered bacteria for breaking down crude oil has been patented. But a gene is not an invention as laid down… Continue reading

New Survey: Was the name MacOS X a mistake? Apple’s upcoming operating system promises to solve many long-standing problems for every-day Macintosh users, most notably introducing pre-emptive multi-tasking, and procted memory spaces… But what do you think of the name MacOS X? When you see it, how does it sound in your head? Continue reading

Hardware Sucks (or How Google Saved My Ass) Mini-rant: Hardware sucks! As you may know, I had a drive die on November 12th. What you probably don’t know is that my server’s drive kicked the bit bucket a couple of weeks later. It had been my backup drive, but (stupidly) I hadn’t backed up the… Continue reading

Dead drives suck! My PowerBook’s hard drive died late this afternoon. One minute the machine was working fine, and stupid me – I put the thing to sleep to carry it into another room. Now my computer no wakey wakey. Time for a wake. I lost about a month of email, a few hundred pictures… Continue reading

Macromedia Patent Countersuit Stupidity From today’s PRNewswire press release from Macromedia: “Macromedia, Inc. today announced it has filed counterclaims in the U.S. District Court for the District of Delaware against Adobe Systems, Inc. for infringement of several Macromedia patents. This action was taken in direct response to Adobe’s initiation of a lawsuit against Macromedia for… Continue reading

Why the music industry has nothing to celebrate Scott Rosenberg: “And what will be the impact of the court-ordered shutdown of Napster? These projects — small, underground efforts that grew unnoticed in the shadow of Napster the company — will be flooded with energy. Users will flock to them, and talented software hackers will work… Continue reading

Dan Gillmor: Napster Gets Kicked “Napster and its clones — including Gnutella and FreeNet, which will defy attempts at control due to their entirely decentralized nature — have overturned some fundamentals, just as the invention of internal combustion ruined the business model for the horse and buggy. Shut down Napster and a hundred other Napster-like… Continue reading