Author Archives: Dan Gillmor

AP: Death row case raises insanity defense paradox. In the latest bizarre turn in a nearly 25-year-old death row case, a federal appeals court ruled that a mentally ill inmate can be put to death even though he would be … Continue reading →

Register: MS patents .Everything. Historically Microsoft has not used patents to protect its business, preferring to tinker with the APIs themselves. Quite explicitly, as Brad Silverberg told Andrew Schulman in 1993: if Microsoft stops “evolving” the APIs they become commoditized. … Continue reading →

Cnet: Office for Macs to get Exchange update. The update will give Mac customers access to corporate calendar and contact information stored on a server running the software giant’s Exchange software. This is long overdue, but for many people it … Continue reading →

Washington Post: In Europe, Microsoft Faces a Harder Sell. An investigating team working for Monti, the competition commissioner for the European Commission, the EU’s executive body, is putting the finishing touches on a formal recommendation in the case. It is … Continue reading →

Doc Searls (Linux Journal): Tale of Two Stories. “Use value” (as opposed to “sale value”) applications are dark matter to everybody outside the teams doing the work. Changes in those applications don’t call for press releases, no matter how profound … Continue reading →

Mercury News: California State Official Backs Net Tax. “I think the Internet ought to be taxed like every other part of the economy,” (Steve) Westly, a former Internet executive, told about 400 leaders at a San Jose Silicon Valley Chamber … Continue reading →

Chris Gulker: “We’re talking here. …I do believe that the global network and easy-to-use Weblog tools, RSS feeds etc. have fundamentally changed authorship. It has been democratized, and pushed down from the small, theoretically-highly-expert, professional cadre that were the norm … Continue reading →

I’ve been listening to Secretary of State Colin Powell’s presentation to the United Nations Security Council this morning. He is making a persuasive case that a) Iraq does have the kinds of weapons it claims not to have; b) is … Continue reading →

San Francisco Chronicle: Jurors say they were duped. Just four days after they had found Rosenthal guilty, the jurors said they felt misled by the judge’s refusal to let them hear that Rosenthal’s motivation for growing marijuana was to supply … Continue reading →

Joi Ito has posted this first draft of an essay offering informed opinions about why Japan is in such trouble today, and what might be done about it. Scary stuff in many ways. Mitch Ratcliffe says Joi’s points are the … Continue reading →