Google, which has become the best of the Web search engines, has linked up with the Open Directory Project to create an extremely useful site called Google Web Directory.
Recommended.
Patents and the NASDAQ Rout
What’s the connection? There is one, actually.
When President Clinton and Prime Minister Blair called for unbrided access to genetic data (Chicago Tribune) being collected — and patented — by private companies in competition with public genome efforts, biotech companies swooned. It was a great demonstration of two things: how the market has gotten overvalued, and how much the patent system can be warped to benefit a few at the expense of the many.
At PC Forum, meanwhile, a healthy discussion (Scripting News) was taking place about the abuse of software patents. This topic is beginning to get to critical mass, thank goodness.
SEE ALSO:Doc Searls weighs in on patents Byte Magazine says Net patents are changing the rules. Biotech companies fight back. (Reuters) Brett Glass: Software Patents: Good After All? Jack Bryar says U.S. patent lawyers have federal regulators’ help.
Virginia Enacts UCITA: Big Fights to Come
Virginia Gov. James Gilmore signed into law the most anti-consumer legislation in years. It’s called UCITA, which stands for the Uniform Computer InformationTransactions Act, and it will drastically tilt the relationship between buyers and sellers of software and Internet services, which was already tilted in sellers’ favor, further in that direction.
Naturally, America Online’s Steve Case was at Gilmore’s side, praising a law that will give AOL and other companies all kinds of rights in transactions while giving consumers the shaft. It’s a sign of the times, folks.