Yikes, the United States Copyright Office requested comments on whether requiring users to utilize Microsoft Internet Explorer to pre-register commercial copyrighted material would pose any problems. Well duh — of course it would because it would mandate that individuals and companies boot up a security hazard.

This is what the request for comments said:

The Copyright Office is supplementing its Notice of Proposed Rulemaking on preregistration of copyright claims, issued July 22, 2005. That notice proposed procedures to preregister any unpublished work being prepared for commercial distribution that is in a class of works determined by the Register of Copyrights to have had a history of pre-release infringement. Today’s notice seeks information as to whether persons filing the electronic-only preregistration form prescribed by the Copyright Office will experience difficulties if it is necessary to use Microsoft’s Internet Explorer web browser in order to preregister a work.

Fortunately Tim Berners-Lee, Director of the World Wide Web Consortium, is once again advocating for open source – vendor neutral standards, especially from the United States Government. He filed a comment that is posted at W3C and was filed with the Copyright Office before the August 22nd deadline.

Perhaps the ultimate irony is that the United States Computer Emergency Readiness Team (CERT), part of the United States Department of Homeland Security, established in 2003 to protect the nation’s Internet infrastructure, has itself recommended against the use of Internet Explorer as recently as June of 2004. Indeed just this month, CERT published yet another security alert regarding Microsoft Internet Explorer security holes.

Come-on Copyright Office, get a clue!

According to an article at News.com the National Science Foundation plans to spend 7.5 million in grant funds to further develop the concept of e-voting. In a day when I can walk up to any ATM in the world and withdraw a few bucks, it seems stupid that I have to leave work early to go to a polling place in my neighborhood. It is time for elections to be open for a few days and allow you the convenience of electonic voting. In fact, given the typical ATM setup with a security camera, etc., they will probably catch much more voter fraud.

According to a press release today, Google plans to ramp up to raise more capital. It says:
MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. – August 18, 2005 – Google Inc. (Nasdaq:
GOOG) announced today that it has filed a registration statement with
the Securities and Exchange Commission for a proposed public offering
by the company of 14,159,265 shares of Class A common stock.

For those who missed the initial offering and currently regret it, perhaps it will free up some more shares. What it will not do is drop the price so long as Google continues to perform so profitably.

Google announced an ambitious project to scan entire libraries and make the work available on-line. They have apparently pulled back a bit from the project in light of some comments from the publishing industry. According to a googleblog article posted a few days ago, they are now allowing publishers to exclude works from the scanning (and indexing) process. You can read more about it at SouthofBoston.com.

I am developing a new site for a client, and set him the task of finding his own web hosting. I gave him a list of requirements which included perl / cgi access, and therefore a Unix / Linux server operating system. He shopped around and decided GoDaddy.com had a package that would suit his needs. I agreed with the specs and he went ahead.

Several weeks have passed and last night I logged in to the server via FTP to start uploading files, and was a little surprised to see no cgi-bin. A bit of hunting around revealed that I was in the unfamiliar environment of a Windows NT server, meaning that a cgi-bin would be redundant as would the use of perl / cgi scripts for forms and a shopping cart.

Oops! Someone made a mistake that I would have to live with.

I pondered that the real problem here was not whether a Linux or Windows server would be ‘better’, but that under a Windows server environment I would need a crash course in ASP. That would slow my progress on the site significantly.

As I pouted to myself I asked my client to approach GoDaddy and see if the hosting could be moved from a Windows server to a Linux server without incurring a financial penalty. I expected no joy and prepared to research ASP, however the following happened:

• GoDaddy Tech Support sent an automated acknowledgement to my client;
• Tech Support then responded in detail on the same day;
• The advice was to log-in at their site and make the necessary changes at a “My Account” screen;
• A simple radio button and submit button enables a change in server operating systems (“ASP to CGI Hosting”) that is free, and takes 24 hours to update / complete.

I am still amazed at how flexible this approach is! I thought for sure that a host would have a list of hurdles and hoops such as payment of a change fee, cancellation of account / establishment of a new account, or some other bureaucratic approach to penalising you for being a nuisance. But the GoDaddy service proposition is a stand-out, and I think sets the standard for other hosts (and ISPs, come to think of it) in terms of putting customers first.

I’m impressed!

This image appears on a Chicago Website showing people accused of soliciting for prostitution. It should be noted that these are merely the accused and they are innocent until proven guilty. This information will be removed 30 days after posting from that site:
MENDOZA, JOSE
M/24
7XX W 19TH PL
CHICAGO
3000 W 47TH ST
2005/08/05
720 ILCS 5.0/11-15-A-1

It is interesting that they only appear to go after the normal guys. Where are the white-collar businessmen?

In-flight broad band service is in our future. However, the US Government wishes to have the ability to eavesdrop on the transmissions — if they have obtained a search warrant — almost immediately. Some have suggested that such requests should be delayed. The protection would seem to be in requiring a search warrant. Delay should, it seems to me, have little to do with it. If there is sufficient probable cause to “wiretap” the wireless communication, what does time have to do with it?