theodp writes "Back in 2005, Accenture Chief Scientist Dr. Kishore Swaminathan teased in a blog entry: 'I have an idea that could revolutionize an important area of information technology - but I cannot tell you because I might compromise Accenture's patent rights.' In January, Swaminathan and co-inventor Charles Nebolsky were granted U.S. patent protection for Rapid knowledge transfer among workers, which covers 'transferring knowledge from expert workers at a client location to apprentice workers' at 'offshore locations such as India, the Philippines, China, etc., where labor is less expensive'. BTW, Accenture wants you experts and the EEOC to know that it's a meritocracy that does not discriminate on the basis of national origin, which would of course break the law."

This sounds oddly familiar. Remember a few months back when it came out that IBM had applied for a patent on offshoring? After that hit the news, IBM ended up dropping the claim. Somehow I doubt Accenture will do the same.

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mytrip writes with news that Google's health record archive is about to be tested with the assistance of a clinic in Cleveland. Thousands of patients (who must approve the transfer of information) will have access to everything from their medical histories to lab results through what Google considers a "logical extension" of their search engine. We discussed the planning of this system last year. "Each health profile, including information about prescriptions, allergies and medical histories, will be protected by a password that's also required to use other Google services such as e-mail and personalized search tools. The health venture also will provide more fodder for privacy watchdogs who believe Google already knows too much about the interests and habits of its users as its computers log their search requests and store their e-mail discussions. Prodded by the criticism, Google last year introduced a new system that purges people's search records after 18 months. In a show of its privacy commitment, Google also successfully rebuffed the U.S. Justice Department's demand to examine millions of its users' search requests in a court battle two years ago."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

During the debate my friend Lance Knobel wrote a post wondering if perhaps Hillary Clinton was conceding the nomination to Barack Obama.

By the end of the debate, I too thought that's what had happened.

Maybe we can see our way to something wonderful, instead of a continued struggle. She gets to be a major figure in the US Senate supporting a Democratic President. Not bad. Maybe she's the new Majority Leader.

Maybe the goal isn't just to win the White House but to get a strong majority in both houses.

A woman Speaker and a woman Majority Leader.

And a black President. What a way to roll out USA 2.0.

PS: I'd like to see Obama pick Senator Jim Webb of Virginia for vice-president.

Ward D points out a story about a recent study that predicts significant economic growth through increased broadband adoption in the U.S. The study is based on a program in Kentucky that has, through the increased use of broadband, "saved an average of more than $200 per person per year" on health-care services, and decreased the average amount of time residents spent driving by 100 hours per month. From Computerworld: "The Connected Nation model ... focuses more on broadband adoption and local needs than huge, government-funded programs. Several Kentucky businesses have benefited from the increased access, according to Connected Nation. Geek Squad, the Best Buy subsidiary, moved its headquarters to Bullitt County, Kentucky, in late 2006 because of the broadband availability."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Sources on the Hill report that, in the wake of last week's dust-up over surveillance reform in the House of Representatives, House Republicans are preparing to circulate a discharge petition, a mechanism that can be used to circumvent House leadership and move a bill directly to the floor to force a vote.

The Senate has already passed White House-supported legislation amending the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to expand the government's power to eavesdrop on conversations with overseas parties without a warrant -- legislation that also includes a controversial provision providing retroactive immunity against civil suits to telecoms that gave the National Security Agency access to customer data without a court order. But House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) has refused to schedule a vote on the House version of the Senate's bill.

Since, under House rules, that legislation is not subject to a discharge petition as currently engrossed, Reps. Vito Fossella (R-NY), Peter King (R-NY), and Pete Hoekstra (R-MI) have introduced their own version. They are currently gathering informal commitments from legislators while waiting out the 30-day time limit before a petition can be formally circulated.

Since discharge petitions are seen as a direct affront to leadership's control of the agenda, legislators are generally extremely reticent about signing them: The last time one was used successfully was in 2002, when it forced a vote on Shays-Meehan, the House version of the McCain-Feingold campaign reform law. Some members even have blanket policies against signing such petitions. And since they require a simple majority to become effective, Republicans would need to win over many of the conservative Blue Dog Democrats who have urged Pelosi to move forward with the Senate's version of the FISA bill. And even those willing to break with Pelosi on this issue may have qualms about slapping her in the face quite so overtly.

Instead of being directly used to force a vote, then, a source in the office of a Republican representative projects that the petition will be used to bring pressure directly to bear on Democratic members, and indirectly on the Democratic leadership. The latest assault in that pressure campaign came today in the form of a 24-style scare ad put out by the House Republican Conference, warning of impending terror attacks unless Democrats act quickly to reauthorize warrantless wiretaps.

Julian Sanchez is an expert at the Techdirt Insight Community. To get insight and analysis from Julian Sanchez and other experts on challenges your company faces, click here.

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ethericalzen writes "The LA Times has published an opinion article about the legal semantics and analogies of file sharing. The article includes arguments from those who believe file sharing is theft and those who strongly disagree. As it points out, the common analogies to theft are often incomplete or inaccurate. The author states, "balancing the interests of content creators against the public's ... is a much more complicated task than erecting a legal barrier to five-fingered discounts." He recognizes that it is not a trivial concept, and that the clamoring from both camps about definitions and moral boundaries will dictate how businesses and users function in the future."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

In the past couple of years, we've seen some politicians trying to blame YouTube for encouraging crimes, under the odd rationale that kids are committing crimes just to show them off on YouTube. In fact, one politician even proposed a law that would make punishment worse for people who put video of the crime on YouTube. However, it would appear that the police have a rather different view: YouTube is a fantastic tool for catching dumb criminals who provide all the evidence needed against them, by posting it to YouTube. In fact, it sounds like some police departments are putting an increased presence on YouTube and other sites, searching for evidence of wrongdoing. This comes after quite a few stories of people incriminating themselves with YouTube videos. However, as the article notes, criminals may have much less incentive in England and Wales to post such incriminating evidence, as filming a crime and posting it to the internet will now be considered an "aggravating factor" in the case.

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Note to self: ping pong balls make nice LED diffusers.

I tried sitting the ball on top of an LED, that did work but the brightness was greatly reduced. Next I tried drilling a small hole, just big enough for the LED. This works very well. There is a noticeable bright spot on the ball but in general the entire ball lights up well.

A reader of the uC Hobby Blog writes:

Try stuffing the ball with crushed paper napkins(the cheaper you can get), they get rid of the “halo” on top of the ball.

Link (Via MAKE)

Ira, the blogger behind the Glassy Eyes blog, is one of my heroes. He writes about online companies that sell prescription eyeglasses. I now buy all my prescription eyeglasses online and save a bundle.

Today, Ira writes that he is sending in a pair of cherised, but badly scratched, eyeglasses for re-lensing. If he reports back with good results, I've got some vintage eyeglass frames I'm going to get re-lensed. (This photo of Ira has mouth eyes!)

I've not been easy on my lenses even when they were so criminally attached to the $350+ price tag... The thing is, I REALLY LOVE these glasses. I love the photochromic lenses. I love the look. Dare I say, they've become my trademark. I needed to get them re-done. I looked around and decided I'd give the folks at 39 Dollar Glasses a whack at replacing the lenses.

They're going in the mail tomorrow (with a significant amount of padding included in the box). I'll report back when they arrive.

This is also ("potentially" -- until I see the results) a great way to fill those vintage frames you just grabbed at the thrift store or off eBay without spending an additional fortune.

Link

The Narrative Fallacy brings news that NASA has awarded a $500,000 grant to develop plans for an array of radio telescopes to be located on the moon. The telescopes would be used to gather data from the earliest stars and galaxies, observations of which are difficult from Earth due to the ionosphere and terrestrial broadcasts. The grant was part of NASA's sponsoring of 19 "Next Generation Astronomy Missions." Quoting: "The Lunar Array for Radio Cosmology (LARC) project ... is planned as a huge array of hundreds of telescope modules designed to pick up very-low-frequency radio emissions. The array will cover an area of up to two square kilometers; the modules would be moved into place on the lunar surface by automated vehicles. The new lunar telescopes would add greatly to the capabilities of a low-frequency radio telescope array now under construction in Western Australia, one of the most radio-quiet areas on Earth."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

bowser100 writes "The EFF has named their 2008 Pioneer Award winners, picking three people very familiar to this community — Mitchell Baker and the Mozilla Foundation, Canadian law professor Michael Geist, and AT&T whistleblower Mark Klein."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The latest report from the Pew Internet and American Life Project is called "A Portrait of Early Adopters: Why People First Went Online --and Why They Stayed":

Our canvassing of longtime internet users shows that the things that first brought them online are still going strong on the internet today. Then, it was bulletin boards; now, it's social networking sites. Then, it was the adventure of exploring the new cyberworld; now, it's upgrading to broadband and wireless connections to explore even more aggressively. Yet there are changes in their activities and motives. In the early days, most internet users consumed material from websites. These days they are just as likely to produce material. One common refrain is that they think more change lies ahead and they are eager to watch and participate...

Tastes and technologies do change. Most of those in our respondent pool said that in their early days on the internet they acted largely as individuals and consumers. That is, they used search engines; got news; played games; conducted research; downloaded software and emailed friends, family and colleagues. Many of these activities consisted of serial connections -- people querying systems, communicating privately with other individuals or with highly-defined communities. It would take a couple of years (and the addition of new tools) before people in this group engaged in creative and community processes. Once they had easier-to-use online tools, faster connections, and more familiarity with the online environment, they say they began to create and share photos, pieces of writing, videos and audio files. They also began rating products and tagging content.

Link

With the possible exception of our allegedly-sexual-predator-filled social networks, it seems safe to say that there's no internet phenomenon that causes quite as much finger-wagging consternation as Wikipedia. Is it credible? Complete? A worthy reference material? Personally, I'm content to leave these questions to the world's concerned librarians.

One thing that's not in question is whether Wikipedia is successful. But why aren't its competitors? Linux News' Mick O'Leary discussed the issue yesterday, specifically examining why Veropedia and Citizendium's efforts to improve upon Wikipedia don't show much promise for attracting a following. O'Leary's diagnosis of the problems with the sites' underlying models is almost beside the point: despite Wikipedia's content being reproducible under a GPL-like license, neither project has decided to use a forked Wikipedia as a starting point. As a result they simply don't have the content to count as a viable alternative.

But, as Bennett Haselton convincingly argued on Slashdot last week, this is a problem that Google's upcoming Knol initiative is unlikely to face. The prospect of ad revenue (and page views supplied by a presumably friendly PageRank) will no doubt prompt a flurry of copy & pasting from Wikipedia. And although Google's Knol announcement is a little vague, their professed light-touch approach to content sounds likely to make Wikipedia-licensed content okay for Knol. Even without an automated forking process, it seems certain that Knol will wind up mirroring large parts of Wikipedia.

But after that initial land-grab will Knol be able to take the ball from Jimmy Wales' leviathan and run with it? It depends what Google is banking on. Veropedia and Citizendium's examples strongly imply that Knol's focus on authorial accountability won't be the deciding factor in its success. A human name and grinning headshot may be more immediately comforting than an inscrutable pseudonym, but they only confer modestly more meaningful vetting opportunities than does Wikipedia's contribution-tracking system. Seriously evaluating an author's background, perspective and credibility will be a time-consuming task no matter what the underlying system is.

But if Knol instead relies on Google's built-in promotional advantages -- aka search result dirty tricks -- it's got a real shot. Wikipedia is proof that a wiki reference tool's value is largely derived from the network effects it enjoys, and currently most of those effects are driven by the site's high placement in search results. What will happen if Google decides to put Knol on an equal footing? Given Wikipedia's liberal licensing scheme and Knol's plan for more aggressively attracting content, the coming wiki showdown may wind up being decided by pure brand power more than anything else.

Tom Lee is an expert at the Techdirt Insight Community. To get insight and analysis from Tom Lee and other experts on challenges your company faces, click here.

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genji256 writes "Adding to his first impressions, Walt Mossberg has published a full review of the soon-to-come Lenovo X300. As a bottom line he 'recommends the X300 for road warriors without hesitation, provided they can live with its two biggest downsides: a relatively paltry file-storage capacity and a hefty price tag.' Gizmodo lists all the comparisons with the MacBook Air that Walt inevitably makes. Final score: it's a tie, though certain points are arguable ('Doesn't use Mac OS X Leopard. Winner: MacBook Air')."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The SIM Card Spy will suck the data out of a SIM card on to a PC. It's $149.

Have you ever wished you can spy on your wife, husband, teens, or colleague phone to see what they are up to? Are they being suspicious when on their cell phone? This SIM card spy software and hardware solution can tap into all files on a cell phone SIM card for viewing, saving or editing. Simply place the SIM card into the USB reader, and with your computer, instantly save for later or view immediately. Backup your mobile phone numbers and SMS messages to your PC, another SIM card or any removable media.

Link

theodp writes "A recent Amazon SEC filing sheds light on the puzzling departure of Microsoft Sr. VP Brian Valentine in Sept. 2006. Valentine is the Gen. George Patton-like figure charged with pushing Vista developers, who dumped the still not-ready-for-prime-time OS into RC1 status as he bolted for a new gig at Amazon. Having repeatedly assured everyone that Valentine was staying with the company post-Vista, Microsoft backpedaled and explained that Valentine decided to leave since the company had shipped a near-final version of Vista. Not so. Although analysts fell for the PR line, it seems Valentine had actually signed an Employment Agreement way back in June calling for him to be on board at Amazon on Sept. 11 if he wanted to pick up a $1.7M signing bonus, $150K base salary, another $500K bonus, and 400K shares of Amazon stock (now worth almost $30M). Who says you have to shell out $999.95 for MS-Project to come up with accurate planned completion dates?"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Random House Audio -- a division of Bertelsmann, one of the largest publishing conglomerates in the world -- has announced that it will now allow its audiobooks to be sold without DRM by all of its online retailers. In the announcement, Random House notes that they've been running a DRM-free audiobook program with eMusic for months, and that none of the pirate editions of their audiobooks online came from those DRM-free editions; rather, they've come from DRM'ed editions that were cracked, and from ripped CDs. I know, I know -- duh. But how freaking cool is it to have a publisher come out and say that in public?

I'm especially pleased about this because I've been doing a couple of little publishing deals with various Random House divisions. The German division publishes translations of my novels in Germany and Austria, while Random House Audio is doing the audiobook version of my forthcoming novel, Little Brother. My agent had negotiated a one-off no-DRM deal with them for that edition, but now it seems like everyone's going to have the same option: authors who don't want DRM won't be forced by Random House to include it.

The big question-mark is hovering over Audible, recently acquired by Amazon. I love the range and selection and pricing of Audible's titles, but I got majorly hosed when I switched to Linux and had to spend a month converting my giant, expensive Audible collection to DRM-free MP3s. When my agent started shopping the audio rights for Little Brother, I was shocked to discover that Audible refused to release any books without DRM -- even if the author didn't want it -- and that they had the exclusive contract to supply audiobooks to the iTunes Store.

Amazon's gone on record saying that they'll kill Audible's DRM if the public makes a big enough stink. With Random House going DRM-free, you gotta wonder if Amazon will do the right thing and follow.

Since our decision has been based in part on our experience with eMusic, I would like to share those results with you. EMusic started selling audiobooks mid-September, and their program has been a success, with strong sales every month since launch. Since they sell content only in the MP3 format (in other words, without DRM), our goal was to find out if allowing them to sell our content would lead to any increase in illegal filesharing. For tracking purposes, we watermarked all of the eMusic files and then hired a piracy watchdog service to monitor and report back to us if any of our titles appeared on the major filesharing networks. We tracked a mix of popular titles, including some that were not available through eMusic. Because piracy is already a fact of life in the digital world, what we were interested in finding out was not whether piracy exists, but rather whether there is any correlation between DRM-free distribution and an increased incidence of piracy.

The results: we have not yet found a single instance of the eMusic watermarked titles being distributed illegally. We did find many copies of audiobook files available for free, but they did not originate from the eMusic test, but rather from copied CDs or from files whose DRM was hacked. It is worth noting that these results are entirely consistent with what the music industry has found in the last six months. After conducting their own tests with Amazon, Walmart.com and others, the major labels have reached the conclusion that MP3 distribution does not in itself lead to increased piracy, they are now moving their entire catalogs to this approach.

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