John Gilmore, co-founder and board
member of civil liberties advocacy group
the Electronic
Frontier Foundation, offers a well thought out editorial
rant on the impact of the efforts by a
corporate consortium, lead by Intel and IBM, to embed
content control mechanisms into the next
generation of consumer
and computer electronics.
The watchdog group
Privacy International is now accepting
nominations for its annual U.S. Big Brother
Awards of government agencies, companies,
or initiatives that have done the most to
threaten personal privacy in the last year.
The awards will be given out in a ceremony
to be held on March 7th at the 11th annual
Computers, Freedom, and Privacy conference
Web design guru
Jakob Nielsen reviews the Bush administration's
new
www.whitehouse.gov in an interview with
Wired News.
Not getting your daily ration of pandas?
Now you can watch giant pandas live over
the web via the Smithsonian National Zoo's
new
PandaCam.
Inside
reports on the MPAA's attempt to force
the next generation of televisions to include
technology that will allow Hollywood to
control what, where, and when you can
watch something on your TV.
The National Gallery of Canada has
posted images of 110 works from its
collection on the Internet, in an
attempt to determine whether they were
part of the plunder gathered by
invading Germans during the Nazi era.
Sites like the Albuquerque Journal
are now trying to charge
people who link to pages on their site. Wired News reports on this new approach to revenue generation.
Australian IT reports that the new
Southern Cross Internet link has gone
live, providing a connection between
Australia and North America that has 120
times the capacity of the old link.
The Internet Corporation for Assigned
Names and Numbers (ICANN -- the central
authority for Internet domains) has announced
the proposed new Top-Level Domains (TLDs
-- e.g. '.com', '.net', '.org')
that are being considered for addition.
Paul McCartney, Elton John, Barry Manilow and Phil Collins were among the
stars taking part in a campaign last week to support National Red Squirrel
week in England. More than 200 stars contributed to the Scribble A Squirrel
campaign to help save red squirrels in England from extinction.
The sketches are available for auction during the next two weeks at auction
site QXL.com. (No, really.)