Rowland Institute Library Blog

Not that you’d actually want to do this, but spam takes a more sinister
direction as it is possible for someone to spoof that spam or a virus
came from your e-mail address…(Source: Internet Legal Research Weekly)

A list of 46 highly thought of freeware utilities.  (Source: Inter Alia)

An article describes how long you can expect CDs to last and how they vary in quality.  (Source: The Shifted Librarian)

I must have misunderstood something in this story….  The headline in the Post says: “Patriot Act Suppresses News Of Challenge to Patriot Act.”  The ACLU filed a lawsuit against the act, “but the case was kept under seal to avoid violating secrecy rules contained in the USA Patriot Act, the ACLU said.” Sounds
like  the provision that you can’t tell patrons when their library
records have been subpoenad under the law.  (Source; Boing Boing)

Update (4/30/04); LLRX has an article
about libraries may risk getting sued for revealing records in response
to PATRIOT Act subpoenas. Evidently AOL revealed a customer’s records
and they are now being sued. “ It turns out that AOL apparently did not closely examine
the search warrant, which was invalid.” (Source: beSpacific)

A Boston Globe article examines the persistence of print and the
surprising moderate growth in the number of published books, in spite
of e-book readers, cd-roms, print-on-demand and other phenomena. 

Mirroring much public skepticism on patents for one-click shopping and
internet credit card processing, the Electronic Frontier Foundation
remarks: “The harm these patents cause the public is profound,” and
thus they launch a campaign to contest the validity of such patents and
unearth prior art where it may be found. (Sources: Boing Boing,
Slashdot)

An article by Elaine Scarry documents how local governments have passed
resolutions protesting provisions of the USA PATRIOT Act, defending
people’s rights “where they live;”  how the legislation encourages
secrecy and challenges the notion of an open, democratic government;
and even how the use of “USA” and “PATRIOT” in this context confounds
the meanings of these words.  Excerpted in the May 2004 Harper’s
magazine, it was originally published in the Feb/Mar issue of Boston
Review.  

Cheap RAM not persistent (Source MacMerc)

Do you suppose they are situationists??(Source; Chris Stokes)

A BBC News column argues for file sharing news to get around
censorship.  Peter Suber pointed to this and mentioned, however,
that it would make getting usage data, among other things,
difficult.  Interesting concept, at any rate. (Sources: Edupage,
Open Access News)