Status-Q

[Original Link] For anyone who wants to know more about Lessig’s background and his upcoming Supreme Court case. A very nice bit of writing by Steven Levy.
“For Microsoft, the proceedings were just business, as Tony Soprano says.”

[Original Link] I was looking at some old steam-powered boats recently and noticed how many of them incorporated a little hot-water urn to allow passengers to make nice hot cups of tea.

Perhaps, in contrast, these very neat air-powered cars could also make nice cold fizzy drinks?

[Original Link] “3G is too little too soon, with none of the attributes of a real generational shift. It is still voice-centric at a time when data usage is gaining fast, a conversion that 3G can nowhere near fully accommodate.”

[Original Link] Lawrence Lessig is pretty good now at coming up with sound-bites himself, but Steve Mallet is running a fun competition: “Can you summarise his main message in three seconds or less?”

Some of the responses:

“Freedom is more valuable than the right to profit”

“Plagiarism is necessary. Progress implies it”

“IP. To boldly restrict where no man has gone before.”

More info on the authors of these, and other examples, can be found here.

[Original Link] I have a nice row of almost unused function keys on my Apple keyboard. I wanted to map them to do some of my regular tasks, so that F1, for example, would open Palm Desktop and prompt me to search for an address.
Keyboard Maestro allowed me to do this easily and has lots of other cute features which you can use if wanted and disable if not.

This is also a very nicely tailored use of shareware. The free version does enough for many people without nagging, but you can pay $20 if you want that little bit more. Recommended.

Today the BBC announced that they are providing RSS feeds that can be used with all the popular news aggregators including our own Radio UserLand. [from Scripting News] Well done, Auntie!