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Erwin_D writes
"Under the guise of banning spam, China has ruled that running your own e-mail server has been banned, unless you have a license. To qualify for such a license, an 'e-mail service provider' must abide by some chilling rules: all e-mail must be stored for two months, and e-mail with discussing vaguely defined subject as network security or information security may not be transmitted. While the rules contains all the good measures we would all like to see to combat spam, such as prohibiting open relays and outlawing zombie network, the law is also geared toward controlling free speech. From the article: 'I believe that the intent to have an antispam regulation was a good one ... Unfortunately, it seems like during the policy formulation process, it got hijacked and went to one extreme.'"
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Gregory K. writes
"April is National Poetry Month (and, it turns out, Math Awareness Month), and on my blog, I decided to get people writing poetry based on the Fibonacci sequence. The poems are six lines, 20 syllables long with the syllable pattern 1/1/2/3/5/8, though they can go longer, obviously. I've been calling 'em Fibs, and people have been writing them on pop culture, politics, math, and more."
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An anonymous reader writes
"There is a nice article about the history of the telephone at AmericanHeritage.com. Most of us know that Alexander Bell beat Elisha Gray to the patent office by mere hours to claim credit for the invention of the telephone, but did you know that two other inventors can also claim the invention, including Thomas Edison? Similar disputes about independent invention and patent ownership can be found regarding the television, the airplane, and the automobile. Maybe it really is true: the economic benefit of encouraging patents is like that of encouraging window breaking."