Fourteen years sounds like a long time to support a software product. Yet I find it interesting to point out that, in the U.S., any "inventions" that debuted with the release of Windows XP will still have 6 years of patent protection, and the code itself will have another 75 years of copyright protection. This is for a product that's already been unavailable commercially for a while and will be completely dead in two more years.

Overly long IP lifetimes hurt security, technological progress, innovation, and culture.

There were several Maskelynes. I believe the one mentioned in the summary was a stage magician not a musician.

The problem is when the debt collector is not after you but after someone else who lied and gave out your cell phone number. Debt collectors robocall, don't believe you when you tell them they have the wrong number, fill your voice mail inbox (denial of service attack), and cost you money (in the form of minutes and text messages). These are some of the reasons I gave up on cell phones.

"People can't multitask very well, and when people say they can, they're deluding themselves," said neuroscientist Earl Miller. And, he said, "The brain is very good at deluding itself."

My brain is so good at deluding itself that it can delude itself while I do three other things at the same time.

This idea is similar to applying a force to the sun and dragging the entire solar system. The author of that piece incorporated the idea into his novel C.U.S.P.

True, but publishers have been giving authors less and less editorial support as the continue to cut costs. The theory is that the slush pile is so deep that, if they dig enough, they can find a manuscript that doesn't need significant editing. Or they wait until a new author has some proven success before investing in editorial assistance to take him or her to the next level.

Possibly true. Most contracts I've seen say that the writer is ultimately responsible. Even so, in fiction (which is what Barry Eisler writes), there really aren't that many suits. Independent authors can incorporate to shield their personal finances from their professional writing liabilities.

For fiction, this is extremely rare and of limited impact. If you're a big seller, then you might get some co-op promotion (placement in end caps and feature tables in the bookstores). Publishers will sometimes circulate advance reading copies to generate reviews. Most new and mid-list authors have to do a ton of self promotion, mostly at their own expense.

It seems everything you've claimed about the publishing industry could also be said about the music labels. What's the difference you're trying to highlight?

Photopia by Adam Cadre.

AT&T DSL can't deliver better than 768 kb/s to my house (nor can they deliver anything to most of my neighbors). If I could sustain that 24×7 for 30 days, (and if I've done the arithmetic correctly) it would amount to roughly 200 GB. Thus 150 GB monthly cap for me has no real effect. But if I had a real plan, I'd be pretty peeved.

Supposedly AT&T U*verse can deliver more modern rates in my neighborhood, but, despite sending me about 10 advertisements a week and occasionally sending a sales droid to my door, they refuse to sell it to me. Really. I've tried to sign up twice.

I switched to Comcast for 2.5× the price of DSL. They manage to deliver decent bandwidth whenever the service is actually up. Streaming an entire Netflix movie without significant stalls is still a pie-in-the-sky dream.

Competition? Yes, please. I live in Silicon Valley. Please send me some competition. Cell phone coverage would be nice as well.

This debate has raged for a while.

Typing and typesetting are different things. I believe you should type two spaces into source material to avoid throwing away valuable information. Your formatting software should adjust the amount of space depending on your reading preference.

Actually, IMAX 3D uses circular polarization.

Perhaps it depends on the theatre. I saw Avatar in 3D in a traditional IMAX theatre (not IMAX digital), and they were definitely using linear polarization--the glasses were compatible with my own linearly-polarized 3D glasses. I have seen other 3D movies in that same IMAX theatre that used LCD shutter glasses, so it wouldn't surprise me if they also show some 3D movies using circular polarization.

All of the 3D movies I've seen in commercial theatres with digital projection have used circular polarization.

And that link was the follow-up article. Matt Pietrek's first column on this topic was in MSJ in 1996.

I'm pretty sure that "recording device" is not the same thing as "timeshifter". A timeshifter allows you to view a stream of data at a point in time other than what it is also simultaneously chronicling.

It's true that what a DVR does is different than what you could do with a VCR, but what you can do with a VCR is properly called time shifting. In fact, that term became popular during the Betamax case. It was determined that "time shifting" was a legal use of VCRs, and since VCRs had legal uses, they couldn't be banned as copyright infringement devices.

Of course it's the store that's shady. What's insightful about that? Neither the summary nor the article put the blame on Microsoft.