parasites

Rep. Lofgren: Copyright bill is the 'end of the Internet'

Rep. Zoe Lofgren, the California Democrat whose district includes the heart of Silicon Valley, is preparing to lead congressional opposition to the new Stop Online Piracy Act.

The antipiracy legislation, introduced yesterday in the House of Representatives to the applause of lobbyists for Hollywood and other large content holders, is designed to make allegedly copyright-infringing Web sites, sometimes called "rogue" Web sites, virtually disappear from the Internet.

"I'm still reviewing the legislation, but from what I've already read, this would mean the end of the Internet as we know it," Lofgren told CNET.

Lofgren, … Read more

Copyright bill revives Internet 'death penalty'

Hollywood's lobbyists have launched a bold new anti-piracy offensive in Washington that will face strong opposition from Internet companies and users who worry it goes too far and jeopardizes free speech rights.

A dozen members of the U.S. House of Representatives today announced they've jointly introduced a new bill intended to make allegedly copyright-infringing Web sites, sometimes called "rogue" Web sites, virtually disappear from the Internet.

The bill, called the Stop Online Piracy Act (PDF)--although because the sponsors dubbed the Web-blocking portions the "E-PARASITE Act," it's likely to become known by … Read more

Whither open source in the land of leeches?

IBM's Savio Rodrigues sees a lot of benefits from proprietary technology companies like Cisco "leeching" off open-source communities to boost profits and drive top-line revenue growth. I'm inclined to agree, at least with his assessment of IBM's involvement in open source.

IBM, however, may be the exception to the rule. Savio is quick to stress that IBM, at least in the case of the Apache HTTP Server, was not merely a parasite, but also contributed significant resources to sustaining and improving the Apache code. IBM, in this way, has been a model open-source citizen.

Other … Read more

Human energy harvesting--a very silly idea

"Power to the people" was a popular rallying cry among anti-establishment activists in the 1960s.

"Power from the people" appears to be the latter-day equivalent.

The theory behind the slogan is that humans move around a lot, and the only result of all this motion is that the humans end up in a different place.

According to some, this isn't good enough.

The MIT News reports that two MIT graduate students in architecture have proposed to extract energy from the motion of humans through… Read more

Male butterflies swiftly out-evolve killer bacteria

For those who envision evolution creeping along only on glacial time scales, let this be a lesson.

Researchers at the University of California at Berkeley and elsewhere have documented the super-swift recovery of tropical Hypolimnas bolina butterflies, also called blue moon or great eggfly butterflies, from the onslaught of a bacteria that killed only males. The bacteria had reduced the male population to about 1 percent of the overall species, but within 10 generations over less than a year in 2006, the males had recovered to 39 percent of the population, according to the researchers.

"To my knowledge, this … Read more