Thanks for the nice comments! I work for DynDNS and we take great pride in our reliability.

- Chris Gonyea
DynDNS Support

I work for DynDNS. Our basic Dynamic DNS service has always been free when using one of our hostnames (such as example.dyndns.org). DynDNS has never stopped offering our free Dynamic DNS service and will not stop offering it.

I recommend reading our CEO's welcome letter for information on our plans for EveryDNS. http://dyn.com/dd-welcome-everydns

Yep you described exactly the issue.

I do not have the book on me at this second, so I cannot check who has the copyright, but I am guessing it was her. She long ago died (about 3 years after the book was published). If I recall right, it was published around 1968, so it unfortunately never had a chance of a renewal not happening automatically if I am reading the copyright laws correctly. In fact, it appears it would be 95 years from the publication date before it can go into the public domain.

That is 2063...which means I will be 81 before it goes into the public domain! How asine is that? What sense does it make for a book that probably never had anything close to a second printing, probably sold only a few hundred copies, and was out of print by the time I was born to not be in the public domain until I am 81?

My only reasonable hope is if I could track down my great-great-grandmother's will and hope that it was my great-grandmother (who died in 1996) that was the hier. Because my great-grandmother would have given everything to her 2 children, my grandfather and great-aunt, both of who are still alive.

But given my luck, I doubt it would be that "simple."

My great-great grandmother wrote a book in the late 1960s just before she died. It is long ago out of print, but we luckily have a copy thanks to someone who had a used copy for sale on Amazon.com and our luck of happening to look for it right when it was for sale.

I would love to make a PDF copy and put it up on my genealogy site as a free download, however from my reading of copyright laws it appears it is still under copyright. No one knows who is the owner of the copyright is at this point, we have no idea if the publisher is still around, and I doubt it sold more than a few hundred copies back when it was released in the first place. No way it would make any money at this point even if it came back into print. In short, the best place for this book is the public domain.

A perfect example of what a smartly written copyright law could do. This book should have long ago been in the public domain and even if it was copyrighted thanks to a renewal, there should be clear information on who the owner is.

http://www.musicweek.com/story.asp?sectioncode=1&storycode=1038901&c=1

However, an iTunes spokesman says the fee is fiction. “There is no production fee charged by Apple,” he says. "We're releasing the open specs for iTunes LP soon, allowing both major and indie labels to create their own.”

I am really surprised browser makers aren't doing automatic updates for plugins like Flash. That is really the only way to keep them up-to-date.

Actually no, they pour some chemical into the engine of any car traded in on this program. This chemical ruins the engine and makes it impossible to use. They then crush the car for scrap.

There will not be one used car from this program on the road after it is traded in.

I did not see the LaCie iamaKey USB flash drive in the review, but I noticed on a Lifehacker post yesterday and thought it would be a perfect USB drive:

http://www.lacie.com/us/products/product.htm?pid=11225

I constantly have problems with flash drives breaking off my keychain. This would solve that issue and looks very durable. Probably will buy it today.

I have managed to wash and dry my flash drive numerous times and it still works. I make sure I have a backup of any important data on there of course, but I have been pretty impressed with how durable these flash drives have gotten.

Surprisingly it is quite readable even on the iPhone's small screen. You just swipe your finger across the screen to flip back/forth through the pages. There is options to change the font size, so really the only complaint you can have is how much/little text fits on the screen before you have to flip a page.

There are some free books on the Kindle Store (mostly classics like Treasure Island and some religious texts like the Bible), so there is no cost to try out the Kindle iPhone app.

Really cool how you buy via your web browser. Next time you open the Kindle app, it just automatically syncs what you have just purchased to the iPhone. Since it is just text, it takes just seconds to sync. Should not be painful to use even in poor signal locations and on EDGE. Plus you can download any purchase you make for free again in the future.

I don't know if if I would buy all of my books this way (I lately have been using the local library), but in a pinch (say on a trip) when I want a book to read and don't want to or can't stop by a bookstore or library, this could work very well.

Weird you should say that. Firefox 3.1 Beta 2 is the fastest Firefox browser yet. The Places feature saves me tons of time by not having to manually go through hundreds of bookmarks. I have far fewer memory leaks then past versions. I can customize Firefox to be as simple or as complex as I wish.

While Mozilla maybe adding features, it sure isn't looking like bloat to me.

IE7 is a steaming pile of crap, but it is better then IE6's steaming pile of crap and vomit.

We had a -20 F day a few weeks back one morning in Southern NH. A few hours north of here was even worse, -40 F I heard.

Usually in the winter, Southern NH is in the 10F-30F range. We may have a day or two that drops below 0 or a day or two when it can get into the 50s, but those are fairly rare.

We had couple weeks in a row this year of single digits to near 0 day time temps. It was really unusual for us in the southern part of the state.

Of course, a few years ago, I remember a week of 60 degree temps in the middle of January. Now THAT was unusual.

Sometimes NH weather is absolutely nuts.

I have to admit, Windows 7 actually looks really good. I may even get a home PC loaded up with it again, just to have it on hand.

Still will be mainly a Mac user. But I will be finally comfortable recommending Windows 7 to those who need to run Windows.

I would love to go just an antenna and get rid of my cable bill. But, without sports, I cannot do it. Unfortunately NESN (Boston Red Sox & Bruins) is cable-only. Same with Comcast Sports New England (Boston Celtics).

I refuse to go without sports. So that forces me to pay for cable. Just no choice on that unfortunately.

I would much prefer a la carte, but that doesn't seem like it will happen anytime soon despite the FCC Commissioner being a big fan.

Too bad I just can't pay for say a 15 channel package of the channels I want to watch.

IE does have auto patch downloads via Windows Update. They just aren't installed until 3AM or when their computer is shutdown.

Contrast this to Firefox which downloads them when you launch your browser and installs them when it close your browser.