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In two consecutive days, The Wall Street Journal presented two different answers. The first is not surprising: Intellectual Ventures, the brainchild of ex-Microsoft executive Nathan Myhrvold. It's now out "to raise as much as $1 billion to help develop and patent inventions, many of them from universities in Asia." I know I will sleep so much more comfortably knowing that IVL will be out plundering Asia so that it can turn around and plunder the rest of the planet.

The second might surprise you: the University of California. The University of California may be especially pernicious because it can sue for patent infringement but has sovereign immunity:… Read more

Does hearing actually go first as you get older? For those who've always feared dead giveaways like hearing aids and bifocals, help is on the way. Perhaps taking a cue from Oakley's MP3-playing Thump, a company called Varibel is developing eyewear that hears.

It won't give provide bionic auditory powers, but it does promise vastly improved hearing through a device built directly into a pair of eyeglasses. Embedded over the length of each spectacle arm are four tiny microphones that transmit sounds from the front and simultaneously block background noise.

The result is "directional sensitivity"… Read more

TV and film writers will officially go on strike starting Monday at 12:01 PST, a spokeswoman for the Writers Guild of America said on Friday.

As the weekend may bring more negotiating between the guild and the group representing film and TV producers, one of the main sticking points is Internet revenue, according to a story published Thursday in The Wall Street Journal.

The writers want a share of ad revenue generated by online broadcasts of TV shows. Producers insist that the Web is more of a promotional tool and hasn't brought in much money.

The dispute comes … Read more

Supercomputers need super, or at least novel, debugging.

To meet that need, Cray has just agreed to license Australian software start-up Guardsoft's "relative" debugging technology for use in its new DARPA-funded supercomputer.

Relative debugging allows programmers to track bugs that creep into software as it is modified, or ported from one system to another, according to Guardsoft. It does this by comparing the execution of a suspect program with a clean version. This differs from traditional debugging in two ways: First, it compares program variables not with the user's expectations but with another program known to … Read more

Prince can't push this mother around.

The pop star wanted YouTube to remove a clip of an infant boy dancing to his 1984 hit song "Let's Go Crazy." When the clip got scrubbed, the baby's mother cried foul and filed suit asking for damages. The woman's lawyers at the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) say the dancing-baby clip is the poster child for fair use.

Corynne McSherry, the EFF attorney representing the baby's mother, Stephanie Lenz, said the music on the clip is barely audible and that Lenz, from rural Pennsylvannia, posted the video … Read more

The shaky relationship between NBC Universal and YouTube has collapsed once again, as an NBC representative confirmed on Monday that the network has decided to stop posting promotional clips on the video-sharing site.

According to the representative, NBC Universal pulled out of the deal on Friday to support the upcoming launch of Hulu.com, the Internet video service founded by NBC and News Corp. that could compete for eyeballs with Google's YouTube. A test version of Hulu, which will stream full-length TV shows, is expected to make its debut within the next two weeks.

The breakup is important because … Read more