This is a test posting made from an iPAQ running on my wireless network.

Well, well. How times change. Sun Microsystems is rolling out a new range of low-end servers running, er, Linux.

Elegant piece of ego-puncturing reportage by Michael Kinsley on the ‘Davos’ summit which, for some mysterious reason, this year took place in New York. This is what journalists are for — to point out the nakedness of wannabe emperors.

BT claims to have invented (and patented) the hyperlink long before the Web existed. Now the debt-laden behemoth is going to law in the US to test its claim in the US courts. Given the fact that Ted Nelson invented hyperetext and Doug Engelbart demonstrated a hyperlinking system in action in the Fall of 1968, the claim seems fatuous. So why is BT pursuing it?

law.com: Bigger Not Better With Copyrighted Web Photos. Setting parameters for copyright infringement on the Internet, the court found that reproducing photographs to create thumbnail images is a fair use of the material, but displaying full-sized images violates the copyright owner’s exclusive right to publicly display his works. [Tomalak’s Realm]

Useful references on business patents. the Internet Law Journal, a useful Washington Post piece and the Salon piece about Jay Walker’s patent mania.

Interesting and disturbing piece in today’s New York Times about the implications of a world in which machines can always locate one another — and determine what they are being used for at any moment.

This is a posting fromt he Smithsonian. Explanation. I was lecturing about threats to the Net to an audience in the Smithsonian Institution in Washington and I wanted to illustrate one of the magical aspects of the Net — the way it allows anyone to become a global publisher. So I used Radio as an illustration — typed the above string (complete with typo), then hit ‘post and publish’ button and then held my breath. (Well, you know what live demos are like.) But it worked like a dream. Within seconds the posting was up on the Net. The audience — mostly non-techies — had never seen anything like it. Wish Dave Winer could have seen it.

First posting (by email) from a freezing Washington. Walking from my hotel to a restaurant the other side of Dupont Circle made me feel like an extra from Shackleton. This morning is crisp and freezing. Just read the Washington Post over breakfast. Full of stories about Bush’s budget proposals (‘wrapped in the American flag’ is how the Post describes it) and the Powers report into the Enron scam. Funny to see the high priests of capitalism scrambling to reassure everyone that the system is okay, really.

Splendid! Nottingham City Council has started ‘fining’ its staff for incorrect use of the apostrophe. A marvellous idea. If only they would do the same thing in schools… [Status-Q: Quentin Stafford-Fraser’s notepad]

In the meantime, teachers can sign up for the Apostrophe Protection Society!