The blog
Writing & notes
Essays, notes and reflections on technology, law and life.
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Gator isn’t Spyware. No, Really.
Several weeks after Gator Corp filed an action in defamation against PC Pitstop, a prominent anti-spyware software provider, the parties settled out of court. Gator alleged that the defendant misrepresented their advertising plugin software for Internet Explorer as a form of malicious spyware. Instead, Gator claims that its software is “adware”, and PC Pitstop was… Read more →
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The Temptation of iTunes
Apple has met with overwhelming success in their release of the popular iTunes client for x86 architecture, with approximately one million songs (at USD$1 a pop) being downloaded from their online music store in just three days, and marking a new sales record for a music distribution model that was hitherto viewed with scepticism. However,… Read more →
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Trojan Horse Defence Valid
A jury in the Southwark Crown Court, London, has acquitted a teenager of various cyber crimes after his counsel successfully used the ‘Trojan Horse’ defense. The accused, aged 19, was charged with launching a denial of service (‘DoS’) attack from his personal computer against a mainframe computer owned by the Port of Houston in Texas,… Read more →
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The Culture of Mobility
The rapidity of mobile communication technology development has exceeded all expectations, but significant social and legal implications remain unexamined. Five years ago, the first tidings of discontent surfaced in response to the mobile revolution that was about to sweep through Western society – the public/private dichotomy was becoming blurred, and people were afraid of what… Read more →
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A Tale of Two Halves
This week’s raging controversy involves the premature release of source code to a hotly anticipated game into the wild by an unknown cracker. The game, of course, is Half-Life 2, and its developer, Valve. Well, it seems that Valve has sprung a leak, so to speak… See this statement from chairperson Gabe Newell. Apparently, the… Read more →
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DMCA claim filed against graduate student
First up on today’s menu: more DMCA legal shenanigans, with a United States copy-protection software developer filing suit against a graduate student at Princeton University under s1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act 1998. SunnComm Technology alleges that one J Halderman engaged in circumvention of a protection measure when publishing a research paper, which detailed… Read more →
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Visual Diary
What better time to begin an ambitious project than 3 weeks before end of semester exams? It is probably an indication of the extent of my procrastination to note the inverse correlation between amount of free time and quantity of posts. At any rate, astute readers will notice a new addition to the navigation bar… Read more →
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New Laptop Technology
Further to my previous post, there are some interesting new developments in the portable technology field which have caught the attention of many in the online tech community: Hard drive ‘airbags’: IBM has developed a way to cushion laptop hard drives against sudden shock or impact in an attempt to curb one of the most… Read more →
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Portable Computing
I’ve never seen the point of those desktop replacement laptops. They weigh at least several of your least favourite units of mass, are less capable than a similarly-priced desktop PC, and cost far, far more. If a portable computer is needed, it makes little sense to pay twice as much for a computer half as… Read more →
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A Fresh Take on Public Transportation
Owing to some minor disruptions at Melbourne’s equivalent of Grand Central Station, I alighted upon a different train to travel home from university this afternoon. Perhaps it’s just a measure of the banality of my everyday existence to say that I was utterly captivated by the novelty of this experience: new trackside sights, stations of… Read more →