Thursday, August 19, 2004

US Court of Appeals determines that distributors of peer-to-peer file-sharing software are not liable for copyright infringements by users. 

Wired: "Peer-to-peer file-sharing services Morpheus and Grokster are legal, a federal appeals court ruled Thursday." 

An episode of the Computer Chronicles from 1988. "PC users were ecstatic over the introduction of 32 bit processors and CPUs running at the blazing speed of 33 megahertz." 

I just got a heads-up that UserLand is beta-testing Atom 0.3 support for the Radio/Manila aggregator. This is a huge deal, because there are quite a few RNC feeds that are from Blogger sites, and they only have Atom feeds. The authors don't understand why we can't process them on conventionbloggers.com. Now, hopefully, we can.  

Pictures from Shenandoah National Park (and Harrisonburg). 

Next stop on my cross-country travels -- three days in St Augustine. I checked, the storm didn't upset St John's County, it's normal hot summer weather there. Three days on the beach will be good for my soul. Also plan to look up some of my uncle's friends, and see if Rogers is around. Then after that, it's probably Pensacola, then New Orleans, and then, well, I'm not sure.  

BBC: Google shares rocket on first day. 

On its first day of public trading, Google is up $15.33 or 18 percent.  

I put in a buy order for 100 shares. Tomorrow I'll be a Google shareholder. That's a disclaimer. 

Today: Shenandoah National Park. 

References: Hiking trails, Skyline Drive map.  

I signed up for the Google auction as soon as possible, probably within the first hour that the server was open for business. I got all the emails, and there were a lot of them, announcing a revised prospectus, revised pricing, a hold from the SEC, a release, etc. But I never got an email saying here's where you go to bid. So I never did. Maybe other people missed that email too, or maybe I didn't do something I needed to do to get registered. I saw other people writing about how their brokers wouldn't work with them. I totally missed the part where I had to get a broker (I already have one). Anyway, when the stock opens for trading today, I'll probably buy a few shares, esp since the auction didn't make the price go through the roof. If other people missed out on the bidding as I did, $85 may be a low price. 

A slight change in plan re BloggerCon registration. To be sure there's room for Stanford students and faculty we're going to start the wait list at 250 instead of 300. As I write this, there are 242 people registered, so we're very close to sold out, but that's probably mostly technical, since some of the first 250 are sure not to show. And the turnout has been spectacular, there will be lots of expertise at the conference, we should be able to answer some good questions, share a lot of knowledge, and otherwise have a great time.  

A great Scoble rant about a Dan Gillmor review of SP2.  

In rural Virginia, the Bible that comes with the room isn't in a drawer in the night stand, it's on the desk, next to the lamp, and it has a catchy title. 

Russell Beattie says what many of us are thinking about MP3 blogs.  

BBC: "Google's IPO share price is set at $85, the bottom of its projected range, as the internet search engine goes public."