This week a Michigan Court of Appeals panel upheld two lower courts who ruled that the act of copying a file containing child pornography will make you responsible for a 20 year felony of making pornography, instead of the four year offense of possessing it. This means that any person viewing child pornography would be guilty of the 20 year offense because your computer will copy the files being viewed to your internet cache. While it is hard to feel sympathy towards someone committing child pornography violations, one wonders if the law was not intended for people making multiple copies for distribution, not someone making their own copy of something they downloaded from a Russian website as was the case for the copied material here. Of course the intent is insignificant if the law is not written consistent with that intent. You can read about the decision in the paper here, or view the case here in pdf format.

The paper article says:

In a written opinion signed by justices William B. Murphy, Brian K. Zahra and Janet T. Neff, the appeals court stated: “(W)hen one ‘makes’ a ‘copy’ or ‘reproduction’ of a picture or image showing children engaged in sexual acts, he or she has made child sexually abusive material, which, according to (Michigan law), is a felony punishable by up to 20 years’ imprisonment.”

Microsoft has decided to release the Windows source code to licensees in response to continued criticism in the European Union that they have not fairly permitted third party programmers to implement successfully certain Windows Server communications protocols because of insufficient information.

Brad Smith, Microsoft Senior Vice President and General Counsel said in the press release, “The Windows source code is the ultimate documentation of Windows Server technologies. With this step our goal is to resolve all questions about the sufficiency of our technical documentation.”

After several years of beta status, Google has finally removed the news feature from beta status. It has been working fine for years. Do you think that Newsvine is what pushed them to end the beta status. As we have reported previously, some believed the issue was making news a paying proposition. Whatever the reason, welcome to Google News (not beta — the yellow beta is no longer in the site logo).

If it is not minimalist (see prior article) then I have been really liking things that are not square (and rectangle) on web pages. How best to explain:

• site with a hanging off 90 degree photograph straddling two divisions
• a site I tossed together with modified css I picked up somewhere where I leave the car hanging — the 2006 Pontiac Solstice you can win if you buy a raffle ticket on that site is by the way red, not blue — I may have to redo in the proper color
• this one that uses swooshes and such and not 90 degree tab headings on the sections below
• This one that pushes the top of the building up above the horizontal rule for Sobie Company

I have noticed lately a number of simpler sites and I am starting to think minimalist can have some powerful impact. I came across this site today that I thought was very clean and simple looking. What led me there was a search for a WordPress plugin that would fold the tabbed menu at the top of this page, ownersconnect.com, a site that was also inspired by the very simple zen-min WordPress theme. I was not able to figure out what exactly his “WordPress 2.0 Plugin: WP-PageNavi 2.00” did. I think it might make the collapsing menus in his navigation panel (and I kind of liked those where you can click on one and it expands without taking you to another site), but I was just not sure – and he never says. His demo isn’t just a demo of that item as near as I can figure. Kudo’s to him however for already having all eight of his WordPress plugins recast as WordPress 2.0 compatable.

I have used with some success the fold menu plug-in from Meall Dubh, but that requires you to make a change in your sidebar file in your theme folder. However I was trying to change the top tabs. I finally gave up and hard coded those, and then used the fold menu plugin for the sidebar after all. That in turn required that I make some modifications to the zen-min theme, as I work towards making it my own.

(note: if you decide to use his fold menu he has an error because in the file itself he forgets to tell you that he changed the name of the function. You will get an error if you use this: < ?php wp_list_pages(jp_page_menu_condense().'title_li=

Pages’ ); ?> instead of this: < ?php wp_list_pages(fold_page_menus().'title_li=

Pages’ ); ?> in your sidebar. I did make a comment on his blog to point out the issue and I am sure it will soon be corrected.)

So my point … I am liking minimal things more and more.

Adobe is releasing a new product that will allow you to pass a three dimensional image that can be rotated and scaled in the pdf format. It is expected to be used heavily in the manufacturing market, however it seems to me that it could easily be expanded into the medical and many other fields with great results.

If you have Adobe Reader Version 7, you can view a demo to see what the buzz is about. Right click on an image and choose show toolbar. It is fairly intuitive after that. I have taken a small screenshot of the sample three dimensional turbine.

I have written a tutorial previously discussing the various answers for the box model hack problem with Internet Explorer (a plague on the browser community in my humble opinion). I just finished a vary temporary under construction site for a client here that needed that to render properly the two column solution that they requested. They provided the jpg image and the text and gave me the layout. I like the look and it is consistent with some other things that they have done in the past. Does it break in your browser? If so, please drop me a comment. Thanks.