Open source brains

Analysis Let's start with this sweeping statement: You can consider the money and time spent hyping internet-enabled education a failure.

Vista and Office-weary

Microsoft's satisfaction rating among the American public slipped in the first three months of 2007 - during which it launched Windows Vista and Office 2007.

Despite the lack of a real problem, the push for laws banning internet hunting -- where people shoot animals using a gun connected to a webcam -- remains strong. One such bill has been introduced in Illinois, where it's passed the house unanimously and is awaiting passage in the state senate. Coincidentally, an Iraqi artist has launched a new interactive installation in a Chicago gallery, in which he's locked himself in a studio for six weeks and letting people take shots at him (via Boing Boing) with a paintball gun connected to a webcam. It's intended to be a provocative, political piece, but there's another question: would it run afoul of the state's proposed anti-internet hunting law? The bill states: "A person shall not operate, provide, sell, use, or offer to operate, provide, sell, or use any computer software or service that allows a person not physically present at the hunt site to remotely control a weapon that could be used to take wildlife by remote operation, including, but not limited to, weapons or devices set up to fire through the use of the Internet or through a remote control device." Does a paintball gun constitute "a weapon that could be used to take wildlife", and is the artist setting up a whole bunch of viewers for misdemeanor crimes by inviting them to take shots at him? That seems unlikely, but the coincidental timing of the installation raises one interesting potential unintended consequence of internet hunting bans.

Blog: A new study finds the music devices can interfere with pacemakers.

As if there were any doubt, Google CEO Eric Schmidt has confirmed that his company has no interest in buying a media company, like Dow Jones. This, of course, should be really obvious to anyone that understands Google's business, yet the company managed to turn up in a list of possible suitors for Dow Jones following News Corp.'s bid for the company. At the time, it was obvious that it wasn't an idea to be taken seriously, but rather an indication of Google's prominence that it always comes up in such discussions. Instead of buying content creators, Schmidt said that Google is more interested in partnering with them, which is something that Richard Parsons at Time Warner might want to think about before making any more wild west analogies. However, while Google won't be buying any media companies, it's safe to assume that the DoubleClick purchase won't be its last, as it continues to aggressively expand its product offerings.

Macroeconic concerns weighed on the tech sector this week, but individual companies managed to give investors some cheer.