Year: 2002
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NYT: Wi-Fi Interferes With Military Radars
In today’s New York Times, John Markoff writes that the Wi-Fi standard for wireless networking may interfere with certain military radars. If the interference turns out to be serious, this is a major headache. Wi-Fi is one of the best new technologies to come along in a while, and it seems to be headed for…
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Google in the Spotlight
Interesting article by Josh McHugh in the January 2003 issue Wired, on Google’s attempts to keep itself on the right side of various policy issues. It’s much easier to steer clear of the tough issues when you’re small. Now that Google is so popular and powerful, policy challenges abound.
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Sloppy Science
New Scientist reports on how scientists prepare their papers for publication: A cunning statistical study has exposed scientists as sloppy reporters. When they write up their work and cite other people’s papers, most do not bother to read the original. The discovery was made by Mikhail Simkin and Vwani Roychowdhury of the University of California,…
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We're #22!
Seventeen Magazine has released its long-awaited “100 Coolest Colleges” list. Princeton ranks 22nd. Yale ranks second, probably due to the influence of the ultracool LawMeme crowd. You have to wonder, though, about anybody who ranks my alma mater, Caltech, as the fifteenth-coolest school in the country. Caltech has many virtues, but coolness is definitely not…
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Privacy Technology vs. Privacy Laws
Politech reprints an anonymous, somewhat overheated essay arguing for a technology-only approach to privacy, as opposed to one based on laws. It’s easy to dismiss an essay like this just because of its obnoxious tone. But we should be skeptical of its ideas too. Certainly, we ought to use privacy-enhancing technology when it is available,…
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TIA Discussion at Politech
Lots of postings recently over at Politech about DARPA’s Total Information Awareness program. Check it out, if you’re interested.
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AP: Parents Complain Too Much to Professors
AP reports on a supposed trend of parents complaining to professors about their kids’ education, grades, course scheduling, and so on. In eight years of teaching at Princeton, I have never been contacted by a complaining parent. Come to think of it, I have never been contacted at all by a parent during the academic…
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"Fair Use" in the Media
Siva Vaidhyanathan offers data on the prevalence of the term “fair use” in the media. He counted the number of times that “copyright” and “fair use” were used in the same article in any newspaper (worldwide) listed in Lexis/Nexis. Here’s the data, labeled with some possibly relevant events: 118 in 2001 113 in 2000 20…
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Publish in New Jersey, Get Sued in Australia
The highest court in Australia has ruled that Dow Jones can be sued in Australia for libel, even though the article in question was published on a web site in the U.S. The Economist has a good article on the decision and its implications.
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Business Week: Hollywood's Love/Hate Relationship with Technology
Jane Black at Business Week describes how digital technology is changing the movie business. She reports that while one part of the movie industry is fighting tooth and nail against new technology, other parts are eagerly adopting it.