Red Paper. This sounded so good that I had to check it out, and like so many things I run across, on and off the Net, I almost became enthusiastic about it. It's hyped by Wired magazine as "an experimental market for information, allowing anyone to publish and sell their writing, be it recipes for muffins or hard-to-get court documents." Well, fine. I'll bite. It looks good. It has about 600 users, and you pay very small amounts (typically 2 to 50 cents) to read the content that they provide. And authors receive most of the money paid. This looks upfront like a good deal. But then I read the "fine print" (user's agreement). All rights to work submitted belong to the site (although it is a non-exclusive right). In other words, if they sell your story to a film company and it gets made into a movie, you get zilch. More likely, they'll use it as an RSS feed. Still, it's a good way for an unknown writer to get some exposure, maybe. But read the agreement carefully before signing up. I'd do this myself if they didn't insist that all rights to your work belonged to them. I may do it anyway, with work that I know to be of little value, odd pieces of news and stuff like that.
Go here to check your file-sharing user name to see if you're being subpoenaed by the RIAA. I'm not. But if you are, you can get a copy of the subpoena online.
Bill aims to curb Net censorship. Now all we gotta do is keep our own feds and corporations from monitoring and censoring us: DirecTV dragnet snares innocent techies."In recent months the satellite TV giant has filed nearly 9,000 federal lawsuits against people who've purchased signal piracy devices. But some of those devices have legitimate uses, and innocent computer geeks are getting caught in the crackdown..." [The Register]
An antigravity device? Who cares, as long as it flies. Good article explaining the phenomenon. How come I never heard of this before? Learn how to build one here.
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