The blog
Writing & notes
Essays, notes and reflections on technology, law and life.
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Copyright Information
[This is a previous version of the licence and acceptable usage policy contained in the current website terms of use, and remains published only for archival purposes. Original publication date: 1 January 2004.] This document forms part of the Agreement between you (User) and Jaani Riordan (Website Operator) by which you may access jaani.net (Website).… Read more →
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Holiday News
The flood of news will slow to a trickle for the next three weeks as I take some time off in sunny Byron Bay, Australia to surf, read, and play computer games. I will continue to update the visual diary with some (hopefully) rather more interesting holiday snaps, and the new site design should also… Read more →
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About the author
I am a barrister specialising in intellectual property and technology law at the London Bar. In my spare time, I write about internet and technology policy, take photos, and play backgammon. Before being called to the London Bar, I completed a doctorate in law at Magdalen College, Oxford as a Clarendon Scholar and James Fairfax… Read more →
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History and Philosophy of Law
These notes were authored for the subject HPL2 in November 2003. 01_Liberalism.pdf 02_Scientific_objectivity.pdf 03_Marxism.pdf 04_Critical_legal_studies.pdf 05_Critical_race_theory.pdf 06_Feminism.pdf 07_Postmodernism.pdf 08_Institutions.pdf Read more →
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One Billion Pixels, But Are They Any Good?
Max Lyons has created some terrific panoramic images, each comprised of a matrix containing several hundred digital photographs. The individual shots are assembled, processed, and rerendered using software to correctly align and recolour each image to give the illusion of a single photo. The end result is a photograph with just over 1.09 billion pixels… Read more →
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Not-So-Silent Night
An Austrian trade union has called for restrictions upon the duration for which department stores may play Christmas carols as background music. As a long-time busker (violin), I know only too well that the best money always comes from Christmas carols, so I can see why department stores are keen to permeate every corner of… Read more →
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Quae Vide: iNews
There is an interesting Xbox plexiglass modification here, which turns an unassuming black plastic cuboid into a horrid display of light and sound. Taiwanese manufacturer of optical drives, Lite-On, is estimated to ship 1 million drives next quarter. Given that their technology ranks among the cheapest, quietest, and most reliable equipment I’ve come across, I… Read more →
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“Psst, Wanna Buy Some Moon Rock?”
A piece of moon rock is available for sale at a Dutch auction site, with bids starting at USD $50 000. At the time of writing, no-one seems game to put down the money for a 5kg chunk of rock geologically and chemically identical to a $1 piece of Arizonian desert boulder. Then again, diamond… Read more →
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Lucky the ISS is with AAMI
According to a report here and a statement made by a Russian Space Forces official, the International Space Station may have suffered a minor collision with a piece of space debris. Astronauts awoke to the gut-wrenching sound of metal scraping against metal, which lasted for a period of about one second. However, subsequent examination with… Read more →
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Mapping the Internet
Opte.org has recently completed an interesting project to map the TCP address layer of the internet. Some 4 294 967 296 (232 for the non-savants) addresses exist, and the project has used some clever reduction techniques (and approximations) to reduce the relevant nodes by 8 orders of magnitude, allowing them to render the image in… Read more →