Dave Farber recently forwarded a Brett Glass email to his Interesting People mailing list about the influence technology companies have over tech journalists. Quoted inside are comments by Wendy Grossman that are also quite interesting. By the way, I was quite glad to find that there’s now a well organized archive for IP now.

Wired News has a wrapup of the Jam Echelon Day festivities. This event reminds me of the random messages people used to spew on IRC for the “NSA greppers.” Except, of course, that was a joke and this was a publicity stunt.

Well Congresspeople aren’t as dumb as they’re often supposed to be. Despite Microsoft’s sleazy efforts to cut funding for the antitrust department at the DOJ, Congress gave them more money anyway.

Hey, you know that guy who wrote the controversial biography of George W. Bush, Jr.? He’s a crazed freak who tried to pay someone to blow up his boss in 1987.

The Washington Post ran a corporate welfare overview today. Nice to see what Congress is spending our money on (besides increased funding for antitrust work at the DOJ). One nice example of how government works is the decision made by Republicans to provide 4.4 billion dollars to defense contractors for “research” while at the same time turning down Clinton’s request for a military pay increase.

The rc3.org three step guide to intellectual property:

  1. Get a patent.
  2. If possible, extort licensing fees from other people with the same idea.
  3. Sue somebody.

Returning to the tech topics that I love so well, sendmail.net (a great new resource) has a rundown of FreeBSDCon. I wish I’d been there to hear Brian Behlendorf talk about Apache 2.0.

Another iMac knockoff, this time from Fujitsu.

Microsoft cancelled its “MVP” program, telling a bunch of volunteer evangelists/support personnel that they’re no longer needed. Needless to say, the MVPs are pissed (check out the comments after the story). That’s what they get for donating their time to Microsoft in the first place (why you’d donate your time to a company with profit margins like Microsoft’s is beyond me).