Recent News From Our General Non-Law Blogroll: Blogs Beginning with A
There are now so many blogs out there that is impossible to keep track of them all nor to do all those justice that should be on one's blogroll. Nevertheless, we have gone through our general non-law blogroll (we just finished going through our law blogroll) to update our links and to comment on what is being posted out there in the general blogosphere. Please note that our linking to a blog does not mean that we necessarily agree with its contents.
BLOGS BEGINNING WITH "A"
Autoblog coveres the auto industry.
Adam Crowe, "Rennaissance Man", digital designer and creative researcher, has his "Personal DNA" from www.personaldna.com posted at his blog (as a "considerate creator") - thank you, Adam - so we tried the personality test ourselves, coming out as a "freewheeling director", which suits us nicely. This is not a genetic DNA but rather a "personality" DNA test and it ours is now posted at the bottom of our right-hand LawPundit blog column (details here), with each colored square marking a certain characteristic. Really, in our case, the analysis is quite accurate, as it is supported by other similar tests we have taken. Quite apart from that, it is a good bit of fun, especially since one can print a customizable T-Shirt afterwards with the resulting color grid on the front and the text on the back. A purely individual T-Shirt as it were. We got one with "red" 3/4 arms.
A Fistful of Euros is a group blog we do not read as often as we should. It has provocative postings which confront hard political and economic realities in Europe and the World. We do not necessarily agree with their conclusions, but one should be familiar with the real-world problems they discuss. Take a look at Alex Harrowell's Qatar: It’s Where the Money Comes From. He mentions the word Eurabia, if you are not already familiar with the concept, and in another blog posting,
Via All About Latvia, which inter alia has a column on Google News about Latvia, we were led to the Moscow Times, where we learned that the Russian-born Harvard Law School educated U.S. lawyer and businessman Leonid Rozhetskin has diappeared in Jurmala, Latvia, near Riga, and foul play is suspected.
Rozhetskin last year had "teamed up with Eric Eisner, son of Michael Eisner, the former CEO of The Walt Disney Company, to found a movie production company".
Rozhetskin had previously been executive vice chairman of Norilsk Nickel from 2001-2005, "the world's largest producer of palladium and nickel, one of the leading platinum producers and one of the largest copper producers. The Company also produces a large number of by-products, including metallic cobalt, rhodium, silver, gold, tellurium, selenium, iridium and ruthenium. Norilsk Nickel Group is engaged in prospecting, exploration, mining, beneficiation and metallurgical processing of minerals, with further production, marketing and sale of non-ferrous and precious metals."
Arianna Huffington's Huffington Post has become a very influential media power on the left. She also has a blog covering politics and has an upcoming book Right Is Wrong: How the Lunatic Fringe Hijacked America, Shredded the Constitution, and Made Us All Less Safe to be released on April 29, 2008. (Recall, we do not necessarily agree, but you need to know what is going on.)
At that same Huffington Post, Paul Loeb cites to Daily Kos, where Socratic writes about those watching Obama's speech on race that "they watched, listened, and agreed with what Barack Obama was saying about race in America...." or read Adam McKay, who concludes "It was a monumental moment in modern American politics." Socratic agrees:
"I decided today that there are a lot of good people in the world. I decided that after all the slogans, after all the bumper stickers, and after all the excruciating hours of listening to Bill O'Reilly divide us, most folks don't hate most other folks. And when someone stands up, and explains the situation clearly, concisely, and directly, they can see that, yeah, we have issues to work through and that, yeah, we need to do something. Today's speech wasn't about right or left, black or white, man or woman. Today Barack Obama gave a speech about basic human dignity, dignity that all of us deserve."
ars technica "the art of technology" is a group blog and one of the best blogs on the Internet, so that you should take a look at it if you do not know it. ars technica writes "Germany's Constitutional Court ruled this week that access to e-mail and phone records should only be granted in serious investigations. It has also struck down indiscriminate license plate scanning and put curbs on police spyware."
For more details about those decisions, see German court tightens up ISP, phone data retention rules by Nate Anderson, who has an interesting, and perhaps accurate view about why legislatures keep passing laws that courts find unconstitutional - could it be political? :
"While the decisions have all favored privacy rights, the court did not altogether eliminate remote computer snooping or data retention. They can continue under certain conditions, but the fact that the court does keep whacking away bits of legislation on these issues leads some German observers to wonder why such boundary-pushing legislation continues to get passed. One might ask the same question about video game violence laws in the US, which have been repeatedly struck down by courts but continue to pass legislatures around the country.
The answer in both cases seems to be that it's politically more expedient to look "tough" on crime, violence, and terrorism and then leave the courts to sort out what's actually constitutional. Such votes rarely have negative political consequences, though can end up costing governments plenty of money when the rules end up in court."
Anderson also has a recent posting on copyright law in Israel, Israel rebukes US: Our copyright laws are fine, thanks writing: "The Israeli government defends its copyright laws against content industry critics in the US who say that they don't go far enough."
As far as Internet copyright is concerned, the Israelis, for example, reject the draconic "takedown" system used in the U.S., arguing that this kind of control has a chilling effect on free speech:
""A 'takedown' system which operates on the basis of a mere allegation of infringement would be an invitation to censorship and abuse of process," it says in the filing. "It is not the role of the ISP or Host to become a policeman of content. Requiring such would effectively bring the Internet to a halt.""
Arts of Innovation has a posting by Colin Stewart titled: Evolutionary design crossbreeds two innovation styles. The concept is as follows:
"The concept is to use a computerized trial-and-error method that mimicks the evolutionary process and eventually produces successful innovations. Because computers are so much faster than in the past, this method has now been used for designing cars, aircraft, USB memory sticks, yachts, optical fibers, ear implants, a cancer-detecting device, and a Wi-Fi antenna."
Our question is: is the result of that kind of a computerized trial-and-error method patentable according to current standards of patentability? How is that an "invention"? And how not?
Permalink : Andis Kaulins : 3/19/2008 05:31:00 PM
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