The Anatomy of a Trivial Patent

Richard Stallman writes " The patent system's defenders can point to the complex description and say, 'How can anything this complex be obvious?' I will use an example to show you how."

PHP 4.0: Dynamic Content for the Web If you came late to the PHP Party, don't worry--there's plenty of reasons to celebrate. PHP is an open source server-side scripting language for creating dynamic web content, in place on some 1.5 million web sites worldwide--and growing. There's a new version of PHP out, version 4.0.

Giant turtle heading for shopping spree rescued by police Just when you think you've seen it all, here comes a 50-pound turtle waddling down the sidewalk.

Ingestible camera gives internal view Small device records journey through the digestive tract. Patients just swallow the capsule. They don’t know it is there. The other thing that is different is that they don’t have to be in a hospital environment,” Paul Swain, of the Royal London Hospital, said.

"Plowing the Dark" by Richard Powers "A novel that conjures up the bygone days of virtual reality and the promise of the unreal world that might have been". Hmmmm, I think I'm going to get this one to read next.

SpaceViews Article: Astronomers Peer Through Milky Way to Glimpse Distant Galaxies For most, the Milky Way is a picturesque band of gas and dust visible over large portions of the night sky. However, to astronomers the Milky Way has been an annoying object that, until now, has obstructed their view of more distant objects.

ET Dust Bunnies The Galactic DUNE mission is a Dust Observatory for Galactic Dust Near Earth. Galactic dust is a significant constituent of the interstellar medium and, thereby, is part of the fundamental matter from which planetary systems form. Its study provides unique insights in the early stages of planet formation. Although the study of galactic dust is in the interest of both the astrophysics and planetary scientific communities, information on this important material is extremely sparse. Following the discovery by Ulysses and the most recent confirmation by Cassini that micron-sized interstellar dust grains pass through the planetary system a mission is proposed to characterize galactic dust at the Earth's distance by in-situ analysis.

Haggis Recipes Haggis "is typically served on Burns Night, January 25, when Scotland celebrates the birth of its greatest poet, Robert Burns, who was born in Ayrshire on that date in 1759. During the celebration, Burns poems are read, and the haggis is addressed by a member of the party, ceremonially, in the form of verses from Burns' poem, 'Address to a Haggis.' A typical meal for Burns Night would include Cock-a-Leekie, Haggis with Tatties-an'-Neeps, Roastit Beef, Tipsy Laird, and Dunlop Cheese."

Welcome to the latest front in the war for the First Amendment When Movie Moguls Wage War to Protect Copyright, the First Amendment Ends Up on the Cutting Room Floor.

More invasions of privacy on the way, this one via your ISPPicture a world where information about your every move on the Web, including the sites that you visit, the keywords that you enter into search engines, and so on, are all shipped off to a third party, with the willing cooperation of your Internet Service Provider (ISP). None of those pesky cookies to disable, no outside Web sites to put on block lists--just a direct flow of data from your ISP to the unseen folks with the dollar signs (or pound, yen, euro, or whatever signs) gleaming brightly in their eyes behind the scenes. You'll of course be told that your information is "anonymous" and that you can trust everyone involved, that you'll derive immense benefits from such tracking, and that you have an (at least theoretical) opt-in or opt-out choice. PRIVACY Forum Archive Document - (priv.09.13)

WinLinux 2000 We've started trying Linux at work for some projects so I wanted to have a Linux at home to experiment with. This sounds like a relatively painless way to get my feet wet at home. No partitioning, reformatting and rebooting. So I ordered it on CD. It can be downloaded from the website, but 200MB+ is a bit much unless you have DSL or a cable modem.

XML and scripting languages XML and scripting languages have had a natural relationship since the early days of XML's inception. One of the original goals of the XML design group was to enable a Perl hacker to write an XML parser in two weeks. Handling and manipulating XML has also been fertile ground for using scripting with XML: XML is designed to be human legible, and thus mainly text based. Scripting languages have historically been extremely adept at manipulating text. Scripting's flexibility and power make it a perfect complement to XML's descriptive abilities.

Ten best bets for XML applications Searching for a trial project for XML? While the XML specs and tools are still being developed, some applications are more suitable than others to start with. Find out which types of applications make sense to develop with XML now.

Converting Comma Delimited data to XML A very interesting article on extracting data from a data base to a .csv file and then to XML and HTML.

SPACE.com Downloads Space games, a Space Shuttle screen saver, skywatch tools, and dozens of other cool downloads from ZDNet and SPACE.com.

Scientists Map Dark Matter, Prove Einstein Right Eighty-four years after Albert Einstein introduced the world to his theory of general relativity, scientists are seeing that he was right all along about measuring what we now call dark matter.

Fielding's DangerFinder® A different kind of travel guide -- potentetially lethal places to visit.

Deep Video Imaging Tired of wearing silly glasses to get a headachy 3-D effect? Don't worry, Deep Video Imaging layers a number of LCD displays to provide depth of field. They aren't cheap ($10,000 or so) but they'll be available soon.

The Bard and the Bench: An Opinion Writer's Guide to Shakespeare A giant cross-reference of quotations from Shakespeare that have been used in legal decisions. Each quotation is referenced back to the play and to the appropriate decision

Prevent Current and Future E-Mail Worms From Mike's Weblog: "With the recent ILOVEYOU outbreak, this site is worth a visit. There is a middle ground to email security for Outlook users between Microsoft's simplistic "just don't open attachments" party line and the foaming-at-the-mouth SlashDot crowd's "don’t use Outlook or Windows, they're tools of the devil" stance. This page will help you work through the things you can do to increase the security of Microsoft Outlook, from settings you can make to patches Microsoft has out that you probably don't know about. Definitely worth a visit if you're concerned."

U.S. Surname Distribution - Hamrick Software They've got data for 1850, 1880, and 1920 from census sampling, and 1990 from phone book records. Enter a surname you're interested in, choose a year, press the button and you'll get a map showing where in the US that name was most prevalent in that year. "Yantis", is even there!.

Molecular Computing | The ultra-fast computer chips of the future will not be manufactured by Intel, but rather—Mother Nature? For the past few years, the speed of the world's computers has been limited by the capacity of the silicon chip, an electric circuit built from certain key materials. Now, researchers are investigating the potential use of simple molecules as the building blocks of complicated circuits and machinery.

What's Your True Color? Psychologists agree that colors have personalities all their own. Blue is calm, red is passionate, and yellow is inviting, just to name a few. What color is your personality? Take this Emode test to find out.

zapspot Do you like Solitaire? Admit it, you do. And what about Tetris? You’ve killed a few moments playing that, haven’t you? Now, how would you like to get a free life-long supply of games, which are as fun, simple and quick as Solitaire and Tetris?

Wordperhect Wordperhect is the first in a series of major new commissions from artists for the ch2 space. As word processing software becomes ever more advanced, with the ability to correct syntax and spelling errors, these familiar programmes begin to impose a standardised corporate language onto our writing - subtly altering its meaning. Working with the programmer Jon Pollard, Takahashi has produced a new and fully functioning online version of these platforms which undermines this dehumanising process. Reclaiming the initiative back from the software, Word Perhect presents an idiosyncratic hand drawn interface leading to a set of functioning but strangely altered tools.

Forest Fire Lookout Association Home Page The Forest Fire Lookout Association (FFLA), founded in 1990, is an organization involved in research of former forest fire lookout sites, ground cabins and early forest fire detection methods. Anecdotes of Lookout operators both past and present are documented. The organization encourages efforts of public groups and others in the restoration of forest fire lookouts.

The Mozart Projec t New this month: reviews of two easy-to-use guides to Mozart's music. They are A Listener's Guide to Mozart's Music and The Mozart Starter. Both are brief and personal, a perfect way to introduce yourself (or a friend) to the music of this composer. Upcoming: reviews of Robert Gutman's long-awaited Mozart: A Cultural Biography, just published, and Ruth Halliwell's The Mozart Family, out last year.

Universe proven flat A high-flying balloon which soared over Antarctica has answered one of cosmology's greatest questions by revealing that the fabric of the Universe is "flat".