An Inventory of Iraqi Resistance Groups

via A Zawra: "US soldiers guard the wreckage of a military armored vehicle destroyed by the Iraqi resistance. In Iraq, the issues are even more confused now than they were before. This happened after an armed group abducted two French journalists, and threatened to kill them if France did not rescind the law banning religious symbols at schools, including the veil, and another group abducted two Italian women in Baghdad. The issues became even more confused when a third group killed 12 Nepalese workers, claiming that they were serving the US forces.

It is our duty now to clarify the picture with regard to who targets civilians and foreigners, who abducts hostages indiscriminately, and who makes the US occupation and its soldiers his main preoccupation."

Flip-flopping charge unsupported by facts

via sfgate.com: "Yet an examination of Kerry's words in more than 200 speeches and statements, comments during candidate forums and answers to reporters' questions does not support the accusation."

Should Judges use extrinsic evidence in deciding patent diputes?

via Stanford's CIS cyberlaw blog: LST Director Mark Lemley filed an amicus brief for technology companies (Intel Corporation, IBM Corporation, Google Inc., Micron Technology, Inc., and Microsoft Corporation) in Philips v. AWH. They argued “that the public notice function of patents is best served by focusing first on the language of the claims construed in light of the specification and prosecution history of the instant patent and related cases. Courts should resort to extrinsic evidence such as dictionaries only in cases of ambiguity in the intrinsic evidence.”

On the Road in China

via NPR : "China, considered the next world superpower in the making, has surpassed Japan as Asia's economic dynamo. In a seven-part series on Morning Edition, NPR's Rob Gifford sets out on a 3,000-mile, 14-day trek across China, and discovers just how far the world's most populous nation has to go to catch up with its potential."

Google Wins German Trademark Ruling

via DMNews.com: "A German state court dismissed a trademark-infringement case yesterday brought against Google for its search advertising system.

A Hamburg district court rejected a complaint filed by German software company Metaspinner Media over Google selling ads to Metaspinner's competitors tied to searches for 'preispiraten,' the trademarked name of Metaspinner's price-comparison software."

Framing the Dems by George Lakoff

via American Prospect Online: "This is an example of what cognitive linguists call a "frame." It is a mental structure that we use in thinking. All words are defined relative to frames. The relief frame is an instance of a more general rescue scenario in which there is a hero (the reliever), a victim (the afflicted), a crime (the affliction), a villain (the cause of affliction) and a rescue (the relief). The hero is inherently good, the villain is evil and the victim after the rescue owes gratitude to the hero."

Microsoft to take direct shots at Linux rivals

via CNET News.com: "Microsoft is refining its 'Get the Facts' Linux attack, taking specific aim at Red Hat, Novell and IBM rather than the broader movement around the open-source operating system."

Copyright and Culture War by Dan Hunter

via SSRN: "I suggest that copyright and patent reform - where commentators have actually been accused of Marxism - is not where the Marxist revolution is taking place. Instead I locate that revolution elsewhere, most notably in the rise of open source production and dissemination of cultural content."

New P2P software could end illegal music squabbles

via The Register: "Grouper - a temporarily stealth software project - has gone up for download and instantly created a confusing divide between the old world and the new. Unlike most P2P software that shares music and other files with world+dog, Grouper focuses on sharing files between friends. Users can set up mini-P2P networks and open up their photos, music, movies and documents. This approach seems much more similar to old-style content swapping where friends handed each other a mixed CD or recording of the UT versus Texas A&M football game, just with a techie twist."

Novell sees a 'both-source' future

via Cnet. Novell asserts that the future of software development will not be found in the open-source or proprietary models, but in one that combines the best of both worlds--or "both source" as the company calls it.

Linux and Global Domination

via LinuxInsider: Although open-source operating systems have not yet become the standard in corporate and consumer environments, and face plenty of competition, several recent initiatives have shown that it is becoming more prevalent worldwide and has the potential to grow even more. Linux , in particular, is seeing increased popularity all over the map, from Korea to Germany to Brazil.

Here is a glimpse at some of the major open-source initiatives that are changing how computing is done on the planet.

Things Not to Do

Management guru Tom Peters has written something called "60 Tom's TIB," (This I Believe) available for download as a PDF.

Property, Intellectual Property, and Free Riding by Mark Lemley

via SSRN: " But the externalities in intellectual property are positive, not negative, and property theory offers little or no justification for internalizing positive externalities. Indeed, doing so is at odds with the logic and functioning of the market. From this core insight, I proceed to explain why free riding is desirable in intellectual property cases except in limited circumstances where curbing it is necessary to encourage creativity. I explain why economic theory demonstrates that too much protection is just as bad as not enough protection, and therefore why intellectual property law must search for balance, not free riders. Finally, I consider whether we would be better served by another metaphor than the misused notion of intellectual property as a form of tangible property. "

Facing the Copyright Rap

via Wired News: "A federal appeals court ruled Tuesday that rap artists should pay for every musical sample included in their work -- even minor, unrecognizable snippets of music. "
More, more and more.

The Central Waterfront

via Satan's Laundromata>: Dry dock and Warehouse No. 6

How to fight software patents - singly and together

via NewsForge: "Software patents are the software project equivalent of land mines: Each design decision carries a risk of stepping on a patent, which can destroy your project. "

Zellfire

via Political Animal: "Reaction to Zell Miller's temper tantrum last night has not been pretty:"

The Miller Moment

via AndrewSullivan.com: "Then you see Zell Miller, his face rigid with anger, his eyes blazing with years of frustration as his Dixiecrat vision became slowly eclipsed among the Democrats. Remember who this man is: once a proud supporter of racial segregation, a man who lambasted LBJ for selling his soul to the negroes. His speech tonight was in this vein, a classic Dixiecrat speech, jammed with bald lies, straw men, and hateful rhetoric."

Distorting the Record

via New Democrats Online: "But now the Bush-Cheney campaign is trying to rewrite history with a misinformation operation. The effort began in February with an opposition research report released by the Republican National Committee that listed 13 weapons systems affected by Kerry's old Senate votes. The weapons included Patriot air-defense missiles, B-2 bombers, Tomahawk cruise missiles, and Apache helicopters. Never mind the fact that the entire laundry list was teased out of just three votes (one opposing the fiscal 1991 omnibus defense appropriations bill, and the others on a pair of conference committee reports for defense appropriations bills in 1990 and 1995). The Bush-Cheney campaign has extrapolated to conclude that Kerry intentionally voted to weaken our national defense by opposing a dozen specific weapons systems.
The funny thing is that President George H.W. Bush and then-Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney were pushing for even deeper cuts in the early 1990s. Cheney berated Congress for not approving more cuts. 'You've squabbled and sometimes bickered and horse-traded and ended up forcing me to spend more money on weapons that don't fill a vital need in these times of tight budgets and new requirements,' he said then. 'You've directed me to buy more M-1s and F-14s and F-16s -- all great systems, but we have enough of them.' "

The GOP Fun-House Mirror

via New Dem Daily: "In the fun-house mirror of the GOP, the invasion of Iraq was simply an extension of our response to 9/11; the near-collapse of decades-long international institutions and alliances was necessary to preserve our national sovereignty; and all our other problems, domestic and international, either don't matter or can't be blamed on the man who promised a 'responsibility era,' George W. Bush. "

Dennis Hastert, Liar or Fool?

via Slate: "If you buy Hastert's line that he's being misinterpreted, I invite you to listen to the last two-and-a-half minutes of Hastert's Aug. 23 appearance on WNYC-FM's The Brian Lehrer Show. In it, he slanders Soros on the same subject, only more explicitly."

Geico gets green light to sue Google, Overture

via CNET News.com: "The unpublicized Aug. 25 decision by Judge Leonie Brinkema of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia delivered a blow to the two Internet search giants in their efforts to defend ad sales of trademarks as fair use. It could also ultimately threaten their livelihood: Google and Overture make money by selling ads linked to keyword-triggered search results, and many commercially driven searches are tied to trademarked brands such as Geico or Nike."

Timothy Garton Ash on The World Election

via The Guardian: "Welcome to the most important American election in living memory. A world election, in which the world has no vote. Four more years of Bush can confirm millions of Muslims in a self-defeating phobia against the west, Europe in hostility to America, and the US on the path to fiscal ruin. Four more years, and the Beijing Olympics will see ascending China dictating its terms to a divided world. "