The reference manual for the D Programming Language (a successor to C and C++ with various high-level ideas) contains a very fascinating clause on the first page of the language description:
Note: all D users agree that by downloading and using D, or reading the D specs, they will explicitly identify any claims to intellectual property rights with a copyright or patent notice in any posted or emailed feedback sent to Digital Mars.
I have the impression that such a clause — which automatically becomes binding for a user merely by reading the documentation and demands something that the user may not even be able to deliver — is a bit absurd. I would be interested in the opinion of the blawgers on this.
Ruling: Emails must not be filtered - an important decision with potentially far-reaching consequences. For strengthening the right to email confidentiality, as well as the filtering issue, will certainly lead to conflicts in companies. Most importantly, it establishes the applicability of postal and telecommunications secrecy to email - a point that has often been problematic until now.
Of course, it remains to be seen what counts as a plausible reason for filtering in court - probably somewhat more than just virus protection. Still, a step in the right direction.
Candidate for the award of the most absurd WordPress plugin: a Code39 barcode generator. Well, maybe then people who print out websites can actually do something with it.
Development of the Aqua variant of OpenOffice for Macintosh discontinued - a shame. Ok, NeoOffice/J is a usable alternative but still, a fully native OpenOffice version would have been something.
No matter what is announced tomorrow - my non-word is reform. How every brain fart of a minister was titled as reform is simply unspeakably stupid.
The science bending magazine has put out a piece about weblogs - and a couple of bloggers provided input for it. The result was of course a total disaster - what else would you expect from a SAT.1 magazine? The reaction from Spreeblick to the nonsense is very amusing. And I can well understand the outrage from Schockwellenreiter.
Why Jörg didn't just do the whole thing for a fee in the first place, at least to get some positive result out of the nonsense, isn't entirely clear to me. Did he really expect that SAT.1 could produce anything meaningful on the topic of grassroots journalism? Factual falsification and manipulative editing are standard practice at such magazines - it's all about sensationalist garbage, it has nothing to do with real reporting or journalism.
And Planetopia itself? Well, unlike the tabloid press (whose escapades sometimes overflow with unintentional humor), the whole thing is so poorly done and the segments held so superficially that it doesn't even work as trashy entertainment...