Category: commentaries

The Supreme Court’s decision in MGM v. Grokster is interesting not only in its own right, but also as an occasion to think deeply about the recording and movie industries’ strategies. Why exactly do they want to face adversaries who are ever more difficult to hold liable? There may actually be a sensible answer.

As rumored, Java 1.5.0 (code named Tiger) was released as a separate download for Mac OS X 10.4 (also code named Tiger) on April 29th. So if you’re running Tiger (the OS) and are geeky enough to read this blog, you probably want the new Java. The linux labs have all been using Java 5…

As long as I’m here I figured I’d let anyone who’s interested know about a great book I’m reading right now. It’s incredibly dense & reads more as a philosophy of science book you sip rather than a novel you chug, but it’s an incredible journey through interrelationships between all formal systems, from number theory…

Just ran across this on the AMS’ website – NUMB3RS is a prime-time TV show in which one of the main characters is a mathematician. The character, played by David Krumholtz, uses his mathematical skills to help his FBI agent brother, played by Rob Morrow, solve crimes. The CBS show will premiere Sunday January 23…

Haimanti “Hemo” (Nag) Weld, a class of 2001 Computer Science alumna, sent me an email with some advice for students, based on her experience moving into the work world. In her words, these are “some things I know today that I would have liked to have known before.”

I haven’t posted a commentary in so long, I’m going to do a bonus one in which I give myself two opportunities to be wrong in one commentary. Last week the recording industry, movie industry, and an assortment of songwriters and publishers asked the Supreme Court of the US to review the Grokster case. I’ll…

Media attention is focusing on the 9th Circuit’s opinion in the Grokster case, saying that P2P software providers can breathe another sigh of relief. But this isn’t reallly where the action is. The real action is some extremely fast-track behind the scenes work being done to revise S. 2560, the Inducing Infringements of Copyright Act…

Back in April, I was one of the speakers at the inaugural symposium for Gustavus’s president, Jim Peterson. My remarks on Information Technology and the Cultural Peep Show briefly explained the signficance of the trend towards what is often called “pay per view” — though I don’t like that name, since payment isn’t what concerns…

“Liberal arts” n pl (14c) . . . 2: the studies (as language, philosophy, history, literature, abstract science) in a college or university intended to provide chiefly general knowledge and to develop the general intellectual capacities (as reason and judgment) as opposed to professional or vocational skills. – Webster’s Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary At the…

When the Supreme Court issued its decision on 2004-06-29 in the case of Ashcroft v. ACLU (regarding the Child Online Protection Act, or COPA), I whipped off a quick, rather florid op-ed to the Minneapolis Star Tribune. They don’t seem to have run it, so in case anyone finds it interesting, I’ll post it here.…