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A judge in Australia has ordered the songwriters behind Men at Work 's 1980s hit "Down Under" to give up 5 percent of the song royalties after a court battle over copyright claiming the flute solo in the track sampled parts of "Kookaburra Sits in the Old Gum Tree," a song written by an Australian music teacher for the Girl Guides in 1934.

ScienceBlogs, a site aggregating dozens of science blogs, on Thursday killed Food Frontiers, a new blog developed and written by Pepsi following a fierce backlash by the site's bloggers and others in the scientific community.

Article looks at three separate studies of the educational benefit of home computers for lower income children. The studies indicate that the educational value of universal broadband access may be minimal, or worse, harmful.

Aside from the obvious copyright and legal issues, I feel like this is just plain bad politics. It would be far better for Reid to post his own opinions to discount Angle's and wouldn't make him look like a thief...and would be more ethical as well.

Actually, I find this article really interesting! This type of hard-core politics is either going to make or break Reid, who's numbers are already suffering. He's either really desperate or not afraid to pull out his guns.

Amazing how much personal information one makes available by the simple act of browsing. 

Here is some information about open access and the Public Knowledge Project. This piece generated a lot of comments, which are also worth reading.

The debate about open access continues with a hearing that was held in Washington on Thursday.

Good overview of issues in green publishing.

I was reading about the small window that opened the other day in the "Great Firewall of China" and then read this article. It bothers me that so many people seem to be ready to send printing presses to a junkyard and rely entirely on electronic distribution of information. First, there is still a HUGE demographic who does not have regular access to the internet. Secondly, what would happen if all of our information could be controlled with a filtering program? And finally, printed material still gets into places that a computer cannot. I read an opinion piece in the NYT before Christmas that discussed how an Afghanistan woman learned to read with the help of her young daughter and the newspaper pieces that wrapped her fish. Are we turning information into something elitist? Is there a parallel between a push to make everything electronic - so only people with Kindles and laptops can get information, and a time not-so-long-ago when literacy was a class distinction? DO WE REALLY WANT TO CREATE A NEW CLASS DISTINCTION BY RESTRICTING INFORMATION TO ONLY THOSE WHO CAN AFFORD ACCESS TO IT?

Fascinating points!!! The printed word has been responsible for the American colonists ability to read the words of the great Thomas Paine and Patrick Henry, Thomas Jefferson and Ben Franklin and perhaps be inspired to foment the continued revolt that brought us America. It brought the thoughts of the imprisoned Nelson Mandela and Adolf Hitler to the world. For good, and less so, the printed word has been a catalyst for change that has moved the world and impacted people around the globe. While there are many who have access to the Internet and PC, there are far greater numbers around the world who have no such access, for them even a phone is a luxury. Many represent the populations of the third world, but high numbers are the disadvantaged right here at home or in other developed nations around the globe. When oppressive regimes and less then optimal economic or geographic conditions prevent technology from bringing information via wire or air wave, the printing press will continue to spread the message. Education, found in the pages of textbooks, passed down from generation to generation or moved around the world, bring knowledge and potential to those who have no access to the Internet. Until, in some distant future when the earth is truly the global nation envisioned by some futurists today, the printing press will hold its place as a global facilitator of knowledge and information.

OUCH! OUCH! and TRIPLE OUCH! If you need another reason to boycott Amazon.com....

Amazon claims dog ate homework and glitch caused hundreds of lesbian and gay books to lose their sales rank.