User Payments: Predictions for 2001 Revisited I don't know... what would you think if it cost you money everytime you read OLDaily? What would you think if it cost you one cent and the amount was automatically added to your ISP bill at the end of the month? I'm not planning any such thing, but this could be the scenario if Jakob Nielsen's predictions about micropayments come to fruition. By Jakob Nielsen, Aleretbox, December 23, 2001.[Refer]

2001 Was a Tough Read for E-Books By all accounts, 2001 wasn't a very good year for eBooks. But that's where the agreement ends. This article surveys a variety of opinions from writers and publishers on the topic and it is evident that there is still a large gap between opinions on how - or even whether - eBooks should be implemented. By M.J. Rose, Wired News, Dcember 25, 2001.[Refer]

Trying to Keep Young Internet Users From a Life of Piracy Follow-up on the recent raids on university campuses. The staid New York Times - not to mention staid professors - ought to know better than to perpetuate this sort of hype. Arguments like this - "If you're willing to bootleg music, you're willing to bootleg anything" - are clearly fallacious, as is the link between people trading music online and large software pirates, as is the estimate that a third of all business software in use today is pirated. There is little attempt to balance the article, but one quote is telling: "Some experts say they wish the corporations pushing for ethical behavior among customers would show more of it themselves." Rather than interview such nameless experts, however, the Times settles for a few nothing quote from students. Again: this isn't battle between right and wrong, it's a battle to determine what counts as right and wrong. The defenders of copyright don't get the final word here. By John Schwartz, New York Times, December 25, 2001.[Refer]

Ogg Streaming The BBC is testing Ogg Vorbis audio streams. If you're like me, you've never heard of Ogg Vorbis before. You may hear more about it, though: Ogg Vorbis is a open, free audio codec (a codec is a system for coding audio signals for transfer over the iternet). The page contains links to the Ogg Vorbis home page with information and audio player downloads available (some of your regular players should also work). If you want to play with the BBC test, hurry: you only have until January to give it a try. By , BBC Internet Services, December, 2001.[Refer]

By Their Clothes Ye Shall Know Them Heh... seems true to me: people tend to remember what their professors wore more than they remember what their professors said. Thankfully, what their professors wore spoke volumes... By Jay Parini, Chronicle of Higher Education, December 21, 2001.[Refer]

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