The blog
Writing & notes
Essays, notes and reflections on technology, law and life.
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Australian spammer fined $92 715
If you received an email marketing Indian herbal pharmaceuticals last year, chances are it came from Mr Lance Atkinson of Pelican Waters, Queensland. This New Zealand man, living in Australia, has agreed to pay fines of $92 715 to the New Zealand Internal Affairs Anti-Spam Compliance Unit. According to media reports, Mr Atkinson admitted participating in… Read more →
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Cisco sued for GPL copyright infringement
The Software Freedom Law Centre (SFLC) has commenced proceedings against Cisco Systems Inc, alleging copyright infringement. The plaintiff argues that Cisco distributed software subject to the General Public License (GPL) without meeting the terms of the popular open source licence. Specifically, FSF alleges that Cisco’s subsidiary Linksys sold networking products containing GPL software without making… Read more →
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Facebook accidentally exposes members’ dates of birth
During a public beta test of its new user interface, social networking website Facebook has accidentally exposed personal information — at this stage limited to the date of birth and age — of all its members. According to Sophos, which created a YouTube video illustrating the flaw, as many as 80 million dates of birth… Read more →
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endonym
EHN-doh-nim noun A name used by a community to refer to itself or its language, as distinct from a name given to them by outsiders. Deutschen is an endonym of the people known in English as German and Mapuche is an endonym of the people known to outsiders as Araucanios. Antonym: exonym. Read more →
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exonym
EK-soh-nim noun 1. A name used by foreigners for a place, as Florence for Firenze. 2. A name used by foreigners to refer to a people or social group that the group itself does not use, as Germans for Deutsche. Synonym: xenonym. Antonym: endonym. Vienna is an exonym of Wien. Read more →
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autocephaly
/ˈɔtəˌsɛfəli/ noun 1. Having its own head; independent of episcopal or patriarchal jurisdiction, as certain Eastern European churches. 2. Subordinate to no superior authority; self-governing. From the Greek kephalos meaning ‘head’ (ie, self-headed). Cf autonomous, from nomos, meaning ‘law’ (ie, self-legislated). The Orthodox Church in America was granted autocephaly by the Patriarch of Moscow in… Read more →
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Are you a:
Sometimes I get curious about who reads this blog. Judging by the number of *.unimelb.edu.au and *.uq.edu.au visitors, I suspect that you’re mostly law students looking for notes. Am I wrong? Read more →
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Twitter Updates
Twitter is another one of those electronic zeitgeist services that seem to be all the rage nowadays. Some people update their statuses with alarming frequency. Others do not. I update mine very occasionally. Read more →
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Cursor * 10
‘Play a flash game with yourself’. You have ten iterations to beat the game. Your play history — in the form of a moving cursor — from each previous run will cumulatively assist with your current run. You need to work together with your past and present avatars to complete the temporal challenges and advance.… Read more →
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Italian mozzarella crime syndicate foiled
According to this report, four Italian police officers have been arrested for allegedly accepting cheese as bribes from motorists they pulled over. The officers, from the Campania region (near Naples), apparently targeted cheese delivery vans, then demanded portions of the region’s prized mozzarella in return for being exempted from a large fine (cash, presumably). According… Read more →