Monday, December 27, 2004

I/P Task-Based Billing Codes

via I/P Updates: "The Conference Board of Canada has published a 'Task-Based Billing Intellectual Property Code Set' which, although it uses some Canadian terminology, provides task and activity identifiers that are better-suited for intellectual property matters than the 'Uniform Task-Based Management System' used by many large clients.
Task-based billing is a system of using commonly-accepted codes to describe tasks that are performed as professional services. during legal services. For legal services, the system grew out of the need for better analysis and cost control over conventional systems that merely break charges down by date of service. By requiring bills to be categorized by according to a standard set of tasks and activities, rather than by matter and day of month, clients can sometimes get a better handle on where their legal dollars are going."

McGeady Not Looking to Make Friends

via Soccer365: "Celtic teenager Aiden McGeady has declared he is ready to take on Neil Lennon's mantle as the most unpopular player in Scottish football.

Lennon, who quit the Northern Ireland national team following a death threat, has carved himself a reputation as a trophy winner who also usually manages to upset the opposition. The midfielder is coming to the end of his career and might even leave in the summer when his contract expires.

At 18, play-maker McGeady is at the other end of the scale and has been the Hoops' great success story of the season. But the youngster, who was on target in yesterday's 2-0 win at Hearts, has already courted controversy by turning his back on Scotland to play for the Republic of Ireland."

Thursday, December 23, 2004

The Best Links 2004

according to kottke.org: "In lieu of a book or magazine compilation of the best writing of 2004, here are some of the best things I linked to in the past year. The list consists mostly of magazine and newspaper articles with a few other types of media sprinkled in and is more objective than my favorite weblogs of 2004 list."

The Diamond-Orszag Alternative

via TAPPED: "Those of us who think there's a need for a liberal alternative to the Bush Social Security phase-out plan may want to take a look at the CBO's new analysis (PDF) of the proposal that's been put forward by Brookings' Peter Diamond and Peter Orszag. This is basically an effort to fully-fund projected benefits without any major changes to the structure of the program. Perhaps its most noteworthy feature, however, is that it attempts to do this while simultaneously just writing off the trust fund that Social Security has accumulated since the early 1980s, rather than simply insisting that the general fund repay its obligations rather than keep giving tax cuts to the rich. There are some policy reasons to think that's a good idea (and some reasons to think it's a bad idea) but it's pretty terrible to concede so much to the Greenspan/Bush shell game."

Perverse Polarity

via Washington Monthly: "It is a clich to observe that the parties have drawn further apart, the center no longer holds, and partisans on both sides have withdrawn further into mutual loathing and ever more-homogenous and antagonistic groupings. Where the analysis goes wrong is in its assumption, either explicit or implicit, that both parties bear equal responsibility for this state of affairs. While partisanship may now be deeply entrenched among their voters and their elites, the truth is that the growing polarization of American politics results primarily from the growing radicalism of the Republican Party."

Sprucing up open source's GPL foundation

via CNET News.com: "Modernization is coming to the General Public License, a legal framework that supports a large part of the free and open-source software movements and that has received sharp criticism from Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates.

GPL author Richard Stallman said he's working on amendments that could deal better with software patents; clarify how GPL software may be used in some networked environments and on carefully controlled hardware; and lower some barriers that today prevent the mixing of software covered by the GPL and other licenses.

In the 13 years since the current GPL version 2 was released, the license has moved from the fringes to the center of the computing industry. GPL software is now common at Fortune 500 companies and endorsed by most large computing firms. But that prominence has made some eager for an update."

Slashdot on same.

Wednesday, December 22, 2004

DeLay the Traitor

via The Stakeholder: "'I cannot support a failed foreign policy. History teaches us that it is often easier to make war than peace. This administration is just learning that lesson right now. The President began this mission with very vague objectives and lots of unanswered questions. A month later, these questions are still unanswered. There are no clarified rules of engagement. There is no timetable. There is no legitimate definition of victory. There is no contingency plan for mission creep. There is no clear funding program. There is no agenda to bolster our overextended military. There is no explanation defining what vital national interests are at stake. There was no strategic plan for war when the President started this thing, and there still is no plan today.' Floor Statement of Tom Delay on Kosovo, 4/28/99"

Details, Details

via TAPPED: "President Bush will spearhead an election-style public relations campaign early next year to try to convince Americans that Social Security is in urgent need of change but will keep dollar and cent details deliberately vague, analysts and officials say.

With Bush's political capital riding on a successful overhaul of the popular retirement program, the White House and its allies plan to bombard the public with presidential speeches, television and radio ads, newspaper op-ed articles and grass-roots rallies between now and early 2005.

'It's going to be a battle royal, very much like an election campaign but over an issue rather than a candidate,' said Stephen Moore, executive director of Club for Growth, a Republican group that hopes to spend $15 million on a media campaign backing the White House...."

U.S. Cutting Food Aid Aimed at Self-Sufficiency

via nytimes.com: "In one of the first signs of the effects of the ever tightening federal budget, in the past two months the Bush administration has reduced its contributions to global food aid programs aimed at helping millions of people climb out of poverty.

With the budget deficit growing and President Bush promising to reduce spending, the administration has told representatives of several charities that it was unable to honor some earlier promises and would have money to pay for food only in emergency crises like that in Darfur, in western Sudan. The cutbacks, estimated by some charities at up to $100 million, come at a time when the number of hungry in the world is rising for the first time in years and all food programs are being stretched.

As a result, Save the Children, Catholic Relief Services and other charities have suspended or eliminated programs that were intended to help the poor feed themselves through improvements in farming, education and health."

No cuts here.

Also, Leaving the College Students Behind (via Tapped): "Bush's latest salvo in the creation of an ownership society where everyone is on their own will be keenly felt by college students next year, who will see a reduction in eligibility for financial aid and reduced Pell Grants."

Bush's War

via Daily Kos: "So, who is to blame for all the deaths in Iraq? Let's mull this one over a bit, shall we?"

A Response To Time

via MyDD: "Dear Time Editors:

My son, Spc. Casey Sheehan was killed in Iraq on 04/04/04. This has been an extraordinary couple of weeks of 'slaps in the faces' to us families of fallen heroes.

First, the Secretary of Defense--Donald Rumsfeld--admits to the world something that we as military families already know: The United States was not prepared for nor had any plan for the assault on Iraq. Our children were sent to fight an ill-conceived and badly prosecuted war. Our troops were sent with the wrong type of training, bad equipment, inferior protection and thin supply lines. Our children have been killed and we have made the ultimate sacrifice for this fiasco of a war, then we find out this week that Rumsfeld doesn't even have the courtesy or compassion to sign the 'death letters'--as they are so callously called. Besides the upcoming holidays and the fact we miss our children desperately, what else can go wrong this holiday season?"

Tuesday, December 21, 2004

Make 2005 the Year You Start Your Own Firm

via Law.com: "But if you let your fears or inexperience paralyze you, you won't go very far. No matter how long you practice, a situation that you've never before encountered will arise. Get used to it. All you can do is prepare as best you can. "

There Is No Social Security Crisis

via American Prospect Online: "I was -- and the bulk of young people still are -- the victim of a massive fraud, perpetrated by Social Security abolition advocates and unfortunately re-enforced from time to time by liberals seeking an argument against Republican tax cuts. This fraud, which is ongoing and in which a lazy media has been complicit, is crucial to understanding the politics of Social Security."

Monday, December 20, 2004

Come See Our Hideous Slab

via sfgate.com: "Screw it. Let them build the Slab. It's too late, anyway. It will be our own private joke. It will be our memento of a dreary and war-torn time. Tourists will look at it and skip the photo. We will look at it and go, oh yeah, that was from a time when San Francisco and California and the nation as a whole were all mired neck deep in war and gluttony and bitter divisiveness and fiscal abuse, and no one seemed to give a damn and if you did you were considered a traitor.

And the City was broke largely because the state was broke and the state was broke largely because the wildly irresponsible and reckless BushCo imbeciles ran us all into the goddamn fiscal ground and gutted the value of the dollar and put our country a trillion dollars in debt, and they just laughed like drunk hyenas the whole time as they cashed in their oil portfolios and mapped out bombing routes in Iran.

It will be our soulless and generic little landmark. It will stand for decades to come and we will say, sure it's ugly. Sure it's a giant concrete slab. Sure it's graceless and uninspired and brutish and an architectural embarrassment and sure it is, perhaps more than anything else, one massive and rather humiliating missed opportunity.

Hey, that's America in a nutshell, sweetheart. That's the Bush era, right there. You want grace and beauty and dreams all coupled with soaring notions of hope and progress? Move to France, hippie."

Friday, December 17, 2004

Required reading regarding your financial future

via Blog Maverick: "Rather than shaving off all the pork we feed our politicians, and beyond in order to create funding to meet our obligation, the President has decided to relinquish part of the obligation back to us, in hopes that each of us make more than the government could, and pay for more of our own, and our childrens future. To put it another way, keep some of your social security contributions and play the financial markets lottery.

In his challenge, Mr Kinsley correctly describes why it wont work. Let me give you two examples why its even worse than he describes."

Wednesday, December 15, 2004

Google wins in trademark suit with Geico

via CNET News.com: "Google scored a big legal win Wednesday when a federal judge ruled that its use of trademarks in keyword advertising is legal.

Judge Leonie Brinkema of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia granted Google's motion to dismiss a trademark-infringement complaint brought by Geico. The insurance company had charged Google with violating its trademarks by using the word 'Geico' to trigger rival ads in sponsored search results. Geico claimed the practice diluted its trademarks and caused consumer confusion.

The judge said that 'as a matter of law it is not trademark infringement to use trademarks as keywords to trigger advertising,' said Michael Page, a partner at Keker & Van Nest, which represented Google."

More from eWeek.

Davenetics has fun with the Geico keyword.

Tuesday, December 14, 2004

MPAA targets core BitTorrent, eDonkey users

via ZDNet: "The Motion Picture Association of America launched a new legal campaign Tuesday targeting the BitTorrent and eDonkey file-swapping networks, two technologies widely used to trade movies online.

Ratcheting up its previous online antipiracy efforts, the Hollywood group is working with law enforcement agencies in the United States and Europe to target and arrest individuals who play a critical role in the functioning of each type of network.

Criminal actions have already been filed in Europe, including the seizure of seven Net-connected servers, with their operator still wanted by French police, a representative of the French government said."

Where's venture capital headed in 2005? Spam, for starters.

via SiliconBeat: "Here's a noteworthy summary of where venture capitalists predict their money will be going in the coming year, published today by the National Venture Capital Association. There are many VC views represented, but we'll just pick on one: the revolution in advertising.

There's been a lot of hype about this, and some VCs see the revolution continuing next year -- notably that 'brands' will follow us wherever we go. Big company brands should forget advertising in newspapers or on TV, they say; instead, they should bombard people with messages directly on their cellphones and other devices."

Lawsuit: Software should not be copyrighted

via CNET News.com: "Computer software should not be protected by copyright laws designed for music, literature and other creative works, according to a lawsuit filed in a U.S. court in San Francisco.

Intellectual-property consultant Greg Aharonian hopes to convince the court that software makers can protect their products adequately through patents, which provide more comprehensive protection but are difficult to obtain and expire in a shorter period of time.

The case seeks to clarify which laws the $100 billion U.S. software industry should use to protect its products. Currently, software makers like Microsoft use both copyright and patent laws to protect their creations, as well as 'clickwrap' agreements that stipulate terms of use.

An official with a software-industry trade group said that not every software product is protected by patents.

'If you eliminated the ability to sue somebody for copyright infringement, you would eviscerate our ability to go against pirates,' said Emory Simon, counselor for the Business Software Alliance, which estimates that U.S. businesses lost $6.5 billion last year to piracy.

Aharonian argues in his complaint that software copyright laws violate the right to due process enshrined in the U.S. Constitution because they do not provide clear boundaries for appropriate use. That means industry players and courts do not have a clear idea of the rules"

via Techdirt: "His argument is, basically, that a copyright on software is too restrictive, without clearly stating what the rules are for making use of the copyrighted material. . . . While it's an intriguing idea, it seems like a very shaky legal argument, and not one that many judges are going to buy. It may draw some attention to the issue of intellectual property reform -- but will probably strike too many as "too far out there" to take seriously. You can almost hear the disbelief coming from folks at the BSA responding to the lawsuit, astounded that anyone would take this line of reasoning against software copyrights."

via IP Central.info:
"Reading between the lines of his website on the case, his request that a court declare much of copyright law unconstitutional for vagueness is made with tongue firmly in cheek. But a law suit has one big advantage over the endless reports by learned commissions and journalistic moaning that characterize this topic -- people are forced to pay attention to a law suit because they never know what some crazy judges might do, especially out there in California.

Software is not in any immediate danger, though, so one can also see this glass as half full. Software companies, like many others, have been fretting about the law in this area for a time, so the suit may actually give them an opening to think about designing a better system for protecting software that would combine the best features of patent and copyright."

Google hit with trademark suit over 'Scholar'

via CNET News.com: "The American Chemical Society has filed suit against Google, alleging that the search giant violated a trademark held by the group when it launched the Google Scholar search tool.

The suit, filed Dec. 9 in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, claims that Google's use of the word 'scholar' violates a May 2003 trademark held by ACS for the name of its Web-based academic search tool, SciFinder Scholar. In the suit, ACS, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit group, demands that Google cease and desist from using the word 'scholar' in the name of its tool in order to prevent confusion among users.

Both SciFinder Scholar and Google Scholar are designed to let individuals search previously published academic research. The fundamental difference between the two products is that SciFinder Scholar is used to index information stored in the ACS databases, while the Google tool indexes research already made publicly available on the Internet."

Using Genetics to Rev Up Metabolic Machinery

via ScientificAmerican.com: To accomplish its remarkable metabolic and antiobesity tasks, PPAR-delta evidently modifies the composition of skeletal muscle in the mice. Muscle consists of fast-twitch fibers, which rely on sugar for fuel and are used primarily for rapid movements, and slow-twitch fibers, which convert fat into energy and are responsible for sustained activity. The transgenics had double the amount of the fat-burning, slow-twitch muscle compared with normal littermates.

The increase in slow-twitch fibers, usually associated with long-lasting, vigorous exercise, also translated into greater endurance. On the mouse treadmill, the transgenics could run 1,800 meters, twice the distance a mouse normally runs before exhaustion, and for an hour longer than the usual 90 minutes. "We nicknamed them ‘marathon mice' because they behave like conditioned athletes," says Evans, whose study appears in the October PLoS Biology. He suspects that changes have also occurred in the cardiovascular and nervous systems, both of which are intimately linked to the muscles. He has not yet seen any serious side effects from the extra PPAR-delta.

Monday, December 13, 2004

What it Takes to Be a Famous Mark

via I/P Updates: "This October 2004 Report by the INTA Dilution Committee addresses what is required for a mark to be found famous in the context of a claim for trademark dilution."

Is eBay the future of Web politics?

via ZDNet: "A panel of Internet gurus gathered on Friday at the fifth annual Votes, Bits & Bytes conference in Cambridge, Massachussetts, held by the Berkman Centre for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School to discuss the impact of Internet business models on online politics.

The panellists said the most valuable lesson online campaigners may be able to garner from Web-based companies is that building a sense of trust remains at the centre of winning loyalty from customers or political followers."

Wednesday, December 08, 2004

A Liberal War On Terror

via Orcinus: "Peter Beinart's recent piece in The New Republic [Fighting Faith] raises a reasonable problem: Why haven't liberals gotten behind the war on terror, given that most terrorists' political and religious beliefs are diametrically opposed to progressive values?

Good question. And the answer is contained within it, to wit: Liberals have not supported the current war on terror precisely because it does not confront the real nature of the terrorist threat.

Liberals, I believe, would enthusiastically support a 'war on terror' that recognized its broad nature, its root sources in radical fundamentalism, and its asymmetrical shape, and responded appropriately. Unfortunately, the DLC-style leadership we've been getting from atop the Democratic party, cheered on by folks like Beinart, has been too timid to articulate that kind of vision."

see also TNR reader responses to Beinart.

Josh's take at TPM.

How Trademark Owners Can Fight Phishing

via I/P Updates: "According to Anti-Phishing Working Group (APWG) statistics presented in the December 8, 2004 issue of the World Trademark Report, the number of active 'phishing sites' reported for October 2004 was 1,142 with an average growth rate in located phishing sites between July 2004 and October 2004 of 25%. The statistics reveal that the number of brands hijacked by phishing campaigns in October numbered 44. Some 73% of these were banking institutions, 14% net service forms, 7% retailers and 7% miscellaneous. The average site of a phisher is online for only 6 days."

Monday, December 06, 2004

One Stop Shopping

via Timothy K. Armstrong blog: Some Resources on Open Source