Still catching up from yesterday. Today’s post(s) may also be delayed as I’ve been in back-to-back meetings all day today at the day job.
- Why are we supposed to celebrate World Intellectual Property Day?
Glyn Moody has the details from WIPO on what today is supposed to mean. He goes on to question why exactly intellectual monopolies need a special day to mark their increasing intrusion into our daily lives. He highlights one creative response, a manifesto for a World Sharing Day which he couches in some hope for the upcoming generations to be far more interested in a default of open sharing rather than seeking permission. - SETI’s dedicated array going dark
Whatever you make of the odds of intelligence life elsewhere in the universe, SETI has helped pioneer some very interesting computer applications, such as distributed platforms for research computing and no doubt many advances in data analysis and pattern recognition. John Timmer has the unfortunate details of the incomplete Allen array, the only facility dedicated primarily to the SETI project. Operations aren’t ending but the outleak is bleak if funding isn’t pulled in within the next year or so. - Hacker Typer produces code from keybashing
I may never write another actual line of code again, thanks to this project pointed out by Cory at BoingBoing. As he notes, this joke site may as well be what actually powers fictional hackers on the silver screen. Sadly the site is currently overloaded but it looks promising, allowing not only the color and appearance to be dialed in but even the speed at which the “code” is typed. - Joi Ito named head of MIT Media Lab , The New York Times via Groklaw NewsPicks
- Netflix claims to have more subscribers than Comcast, Slashdot
- Google announces WebM community cross licensing, Slashdot
- Dropbox issues a DMCA takedown notice against itself to stop an open source project, BoingBoing