You’d think people would have given up on the Y2K thing by now, but they haven’t.

I was reading this Wired article about Microsoft’s copy protection system for audio files that’s built into newer versions of Windows and I’m a bit confused. Basically, it refuses to play audio files correctly through any sound card that doesn’t use special, approved drivers (which prevent unauthorized copying, one assumes). What I’m confused about is whether this system only works with Windows Media-specific files, or whether it imposes its copy protection system on any audio file.

Is Dick Cheney taking over the country?

I got a new computer at work today. There’s nothing more fun than reinstalling all of the applications you use every day and getting them working again. I actually was responsible enough to make a list of everything I use before they took my old computer away, and it’s still taking a lot of time to get everything straightened out.

ResearchBuzz has the scoop on the Deja.com archive. Tara talked to Sergey Brin at Google, and he told her that the full archive should be up in 90 days. She also has a mini-review of Google’s Usenet search interface.

According to a Wired news article, people are pissed off because the Deja.com Usenet archive will be offline until Google can get it up and running. Give me a break. The Usenet archive was going the way of the dinosaur, and Google is heroic for actually buying it and keeping it around. Maybe they deserve a bit of grace.

The Napster ruling has arrived. The appeals court has ordered the district court (that originally required Napster to be shut down) to come up with a new, less broad preliminary injunction.

I don’t know how I missed the news that Google purchased Deja.com’s Usenet archive, but I did. This is fantastic news. Watching Deja.com go from focusing on Usenet to basically hiding it was disheartening. Hopefully Google will be able to turn all of their goodwill into a profitable business. I’d pay $5 a month to use Google.

FreeBSD keeps its documentation in DocBook format. That’s really cool. I imagine that most open source projects will start maintaining their documentation in portable formats rather than HTML, or man, or whatever.

Over on the Well, there’s an interactive interview with Steve Levy, the author of Hackers, and more recently Crypto.