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November 9, 2001

The Other XP You probably hear a lot about Microsoft's XP. But you may also encounter another XP - eXtreme Programing. This is a programming and project development methodology developed by Kent Beck with an emphasis on repid feedback, simplicity, incremental change, and quality control. XP is an object oriented methodology that incorporates a quality control and feedback system. By , , .[Refer]

Periodical Historical Atlas of Europe I just love cool stuff like this - an online repository of historical maps of Europe from AD 1 to AD 1700. The maps are clean, clear and reasonably detailed, and the navigation is simple. What should be next? Why, an animated version, of course. And a world wide version. Hyperlinked to popups with multimedia on important historical events... oh, sorry, I'm getting ahead of myself. Anyhow, the 7th edition of the map has just been released. By Christos Nüssli, EurAtlas.Com, September, 2001.[Refer]

Softman Products v. Adobe This link is to a legal judgement against Adobe asserting, in essence, that when it sells software, the particular instances of the software are sold, not licensed. That means that a person who buys the software can turn around and resell it as he or she pleases. This ruling - if it stands though appeals - will have a significant impact as the model favored by software and other publishers is that they retain control of content that they sell. But, as Judge Pregerson writes, "Adobe seeks to control the resale of a lawfully acquired copy of its software. Adobe?s position in this action would be more akin to a journalist who claimed that ownership of the copyright to an article allowed him or her to control the resale of a particular copy of a newspaper that contained that article." By Dean G. Pregerson, United States District Court, November, 2001.[Refer]

Make a Shorter Link The preceeding link was created using a service called 'Make a Shorter Link.' This is essentially a redirection service, allowing you to created a nice, short link out of a long, convoluted link. I will be exploring this service more in the future: but tell me - did the link work for you? Or more importantly: did it fail? By , , .[Refer]

Dumpster diving on the Web Discussion of the Wayback Machine, a service that copies and archives 'snapshots' of the World Wide Web. The existence of such service - and also Google's caching service - raises the question of the implication of copyright and especially subscription based sites. Will they be simply omitted from the historical record? Or will the archiving services provide a useful way to avoid paying for articles. As the autor comments, "The Internet Archive Wayback Machine may be ready to take us on a mind-blowing sojourn into the digital past, but it may have less success delivering us to a less litigious future. " By Katharine Mieszkowski, Salon, November 2, 2001.[Refer]

Data on Teachers Shared Despite Law See, this is the thing about privacy and security on the internet. The law doesn't matter. Well, it matters, but is no guarantee at all that privacy and security will be maintained. In this article we read that a state agency released the names and addresses of Georgia teachers despite a law prohibiting such an action. Now the release may have been purely accidental, but the lesson is concrete: the fact that it could be done meant that, eventually, it was done. This should be a founding principle in any discussio of the law versus technology. By James Salzer, Atlanta Journal Constitution, November 9, 2001.[Refer]

Fallout From Ruling on Writer Rights Good background article on the fallout from the case of Tahani v. New York Times. The Supreme Court ruled that freelance writers can control whether the work they originally sold for print publication may be reproduced in digital form. The result was that publishers stopped purchasing work from freelance writers. Links and background. By Joyce Kazman Valenza, Philadelphia Enquirer, November 8, 2001.[Refer]

Random House Is Dropping E-Book Imprint, but Not E-Books Looking at a (very) soft market, Random House has become the first publisher to (quietly) drop its online-only line of e-Books. By David D. Kirkpatrick, New York Times, November 9, 2001.[Refer]

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