Added a couple of new entries to the Blogrolling list over on the right.

Corante is the parent company of Microcontent News, previously cited here. It’s an interesting collection of tech news-oriented weblogs. And if you really really really can’t get enough of online journalism, I’ve put a link to a large list of what they insist on calling “cyberjournalist’s” pages.

From CNN:

A study published in this week’s edition of Nature says that snail and slugs can be repelled and even killed by a solution of 2 percent caffeine.

The findings “aren’t something that surprises me,” said Campbell. “There’s data in frogs, fruit flies, and mosquitoes” that suggest caffeine may be toxic to these animals. The researchers found that large doses of caffeine slowed snails’ the heart rate and made contractions irregular.

If you think that drinking enough coffee will keep the skeeters at bay, remember: a cup of coffee is only 0.05 percent caffeine. But a commercially available snail repellent might not do badly at Starbucks, too.

From the AP:

 PAW PAW, Mich. (AP) — Pigs can’t fly, after all — at least not in the passenger cabin.

The story’s about Northwest Airlines sudden refusal to treat Vietnamese potbellied pig — named Pork Chop, incidentally — like a small cat or dog. The pig’s part of a ventriloquism act that was destined for the Fox network. Yeah, that figures.

• 
  
  Can’t be worse than some of the actors flying First Class.


• 
  
  Are they afraid Pork Chop might be traumatized by breakfast?


• 
  
  Has someone watched too many episodes of <echo>Piiiiiigs Iiiiiiiiin Spaaaaaaace?</echo>

The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals — which has federal judicial authority over Alaska, Arizona, California, Hawaii, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Oregon and Washington — says the Pledge of Allegiance is unconstitutional. Seems the words “under God,” which were added in 1954, constitute an establishment of religion.

Whatever do the judges do with their coins, every one of which says “In God We Trust”?

The court noted that the U.S. Supreme Court has said students cannot hold religious invocations at graduations and cannot be compelled to recite the pledge. But when the pledge is recited in a classroom, a student who objects is confronted with an “unacceptable choice between participating and protesting,” the appeals court said.

“Although students cannot be forced to participate in recitation of the pledge, the school district is nonetheless conveying a message of state endorsement of a religious belief when it requires public school teachers to recite, and lead the recitation of, the current form of the pledge,” the court said.

It’s worth noting that the 9th Circuit is considered the most liberal of the appellate courts. Anyway, I bet talk radio is having a field day with this, and I can’t wait to see what Ernie the Attorney and LawMeme have to say.

Wanna bet The Supremes weigh in on this? The line to place bets on the outcome starts to the right.

bOing bOing scores another. This one’s a keeper.

Some of you may know that private wireless network nodes have a habit of leaking signal out into public spaces. Some companies, like Starbucks, have built rudimentary businesses out of selling public wireless Net access. Other companies just seem to let their bandwidth leak. Bryant Park, just west of the New York Public Library, apparently has a good strong signal from no one knows where.

The trouble with this is finding the wayward signal, short of walking the streets with a live laptop or a signal meter. Matt Jones has a brilliant and simple idea: create a kind of hobo sign language to tell other computer users about access that they’ve found.

Very interesting item on bOing bOing this evening. Seems that this first wave of broadband users is as interested in — if not more interested in — creating content than consuming it. This might have ramifications for the architecture of the Net itself, which is based on having (comparatively) fewer servers and (comparatively) more clients. If broadband users, with their always-on connections, want to be transmitting as much as they receive, DSL and cable providers will have one big whomping problem any day now.

Broadband *doesn’t* need content!. This amazing recent study (warning: it’s a big PDF) of broadband adoption shows that content is irrelevant to the broadband experience. Broadband uses crave the ability to contribute to the Internet’s distributed conversation and want nothing more than end-to-end connectivity. The online surfing patterns of high-speed users reveal two values that policymakers, industry leaders, and the public should bear in mind:

1. An open Internet is appealing to broadband users. As habitual posters of content, broadband users seem to desire the widest reach for what they share with the online world. As frequent searchers for information using their always-on connection, broadband users seek out the greatest range of sources to satisfy their thirst for information. Walling off portions of the Internet, which some regulatory proposals may permit, is anathema to how broadband users behave.

2. Broadband users value fast upload speeds as well as fast download speeds. They not only show this by their predilection to create content, but also by their extensive file-sharing habits.

It’s like I used to say: The Net isn’t about consuming information; it’s about sharing information.

I always feel kind of naked when I show up at the airport without a paper ticket. I’m grateful that I have one less thing to lose, but I worry that when I walk up to the counter, it’ll be like making the maitre d’ “find” the “missing” reservation, or persuading the auto rental clerk that a confirmed reservation means she actually has to give me a car. More seriously, there are still significant problems in getting one airline’s e-ticket honored by another, if you need to change your flight.

American Airlines said today that they plan to move to all-electronic ticketing by the end of next year, and that starting next week, a paper ticket will cost you $20. The kicker, though, is in the last graf:

As part of this initiative, American will implement 100 percent interline e-ticketing with those carriers that can meet the technical standards and will eliminate such agreements with carriers that cannot. Interline agreements among carriers allow baggage interchanges, passenger transfers and other transactions.

I read that to mean that if an airline doesn’t honor American’s e-tickets by the end of 2003, don’t count on being able to do an interline ticket or baggage transfer. It’ll be interesting to see how American’s competitors respond.

The astronomers who discovered the color of the universe (and then changed their mind, like any good homeowner) have given the color a name: Cosmic Latte. Their colleagues helped pick. Here are their Top 10 choices.

I kind of liked “Big Bang Buff” myself. Sounds maybe a bit too much like a porn star, though.

Sudden thought: has anyone filed a trademark yet on Cosmic Latte?

Check out John Stanley and Ernie the Attorney via The Shifted Librarian for some thoughts about the legal system and the Internet. As Mr. Stanley writes:

A cyber Code of Hammurabi will not suffice. There was no artificial intelligence in Babylon. Another Magna Carta will be required, another Grotius, another Blackstone. Within the body of law that does not yet exist Dred Scott and Marbury v. Madison may seem trivial or quaint.

To interpret the music of the spheres where computers and the law intersect requires an ability to read the score and hit a moving target. It is difficult to separate the wheat from the chaff when the wind is blowing at the speed of light.”

Pardon me, but this is ridiculously overblown, and really kind of a surprisingly juvenile approach to the law to be coming from a bunch of lawyers. Law exists to resolve disputes, rarely to anticipate them. In most cases, first law that resolves a dispute doesn’t come from a legislature, it comes from a court; that’s why/how the law is a living thing.

Furthermore, law that comes from a court, in the vast majority of cases, is based on precedent, which is little more than a fancy word for prior experience. To suggest that we need “another Magna Carta” is to suggest that the Internet is beyond the experience of those who are creating it. This, of course, is nonsense.

To quote myself from the July 1995 NetGuide, “Nothing happens online that doesn’t happen in the real world.” Though the Net adds some fascinating questions to a ton of areas — particularly the notions of “ownership” and “location” — The Net is nothing like uncharted territory. To suggest that it is somehow otherwise is to invite all sorts of unpleasant mischief.

The Net changes everything. The Net changes nothing.

“Ninety percent of everything is crap.”

—Theodore Sturgeon.