Several unedited ponderings that were supposed to be "posted" and not "published" today were indeed published prematurely. I grumpily add this incident to the list of reasons that I'll be switching to Moveable Type soon....

Here's CNET's take on it:
Government examining HP vote.

And what else might get ushered into the Amendment in the process??

Here's CNN's piece on the crime victims amendment issue:
Bush backs constitutional amendment for crime victims.

Or should I say "The First Wireless Communication Infrastructure?" Looks like we could learn a thing or two about messaging from our bacterial friends (and presumably our viral friends).

See the BBC News article:
Bacteria 'message' to each other.

It is known that bacteria exchange messages by releasing substances into the fluid in which they are growing, but new research suggests they can send signals through the air.

It is the first time airborne communication has been identified, say the team who carried out the study.

The messages sent by bacteria are a wake-up call to other roaming bugs to head towards the bacterial colonies called biofilms.

It made me proud to write for the IEEE's Internet Computing Magazine when I read this arstechnica piece:
IEEE just says NO to the DMCA.

Here's the New Scientist article that explains more of the details:
Controversial copyright clause abandoned.

The excerpt below is from the New Scientist article:

The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), which publishes 30 per cent of all computer science journals worldwide, is to stop requiring authors to comply with a controversial US digital copyright law.

The IEEE produced a new set of conditions for publication at the beginning of 2002. These required that authors' work must not contravene the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA).

Many academics believe the DMCA discourages scientists from publishing valuable research through fear of legal action. The DMCA prohibits "any technology, product, service, device, component or part" that circumvents digital copy protection systems. This includes the software encryption designed to stop people making copies of music or video files, for example. Scientists say the Act means that just producing research on a copy protection system could land them in legal trouble.

Here's a little update on the webcasting compulsory licensing fee situation going on over at the U.S. Copyright Office.

The latest word is that the U.S. Copyright Office is calling for a "public roundtable discussion" on May 10th (more on this later...):
Check out John Borland's story for ZD Net:
Feds want to thrash out Webcasting.