In England, a man who tried to sell stolen pages from the upcoming Harry Potter book (Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, ISBN:043935806X), was convicted and sentenced to 180 hours of community service and court costs, according to this article on BBC News.

An article from Pioneer Press describes steps being taken by some parks in the Minneapolis area to stop geocaching in the area. Geocaching is a "sport" where player use their GPS systems to guide them to small caches of clues or other items. However, it is under fire for causing …

I personally don't agree with the number published annually by the Business Software Alliance, but it is interesting to note that the Washington Post is reporting that this year's numbers are actually down (in terms of percentage of pirated software in use). They mention that the "cost" of software piracy …

A page on Librenix has a number of cute haiku poems. These include:Overclock your boxit is very fast ... at firstwarranty now void

Eric Eldred's website (of Eldred vs. Ashcroft fame) now contains a petition requesting that the copyright law be amended to require a token payment 50 years after the original issue date which in order to renew the protection to its current length. Otherwise, if the owners don't renew, the property …

Note: this is not a joke. There actually was a draft declaration of a "state of hostility" against Iowa by a state Senator in Nebraska. Senator Pam Brown has withdrawn the amendment and has claimed in this article that it was merely a joke, but Iowa Daily Nonpareil columnist wrote …

According to this post on Waxy.org, the Canadian kid who has become known as "the Star Wars kid" and his parents are considering legal action against the folks who put the video up on the net in the first place. In light of this, some of the folks who …

An article from CNET tells of a move to reduce or ban the use of the L-1 visa, which many technology firms have used to transfer in "temporary" workers from related firms outside of the US. This differs somewhat from the H-1B visa for highly skilled workers that requires much …

This article in Wired this morning reports that although the number of channels the average American receives in their homes has jumped substantially in the last decade, the variety of owners has not increased nearly as much and that most of the ownership is still centered in a relatively small …

An article on CNET reports that the New York Times will begin charging for its news alerts service. Existing customers (500,000 of them) have two weeks to either drop out of the service or start paying $19.95 per year. As a bonus, these users will have 90-day access …

An interesting article from Wired brings up the question of whether the "freelance economy" will ever be realized. It takes information from a number of the aggregation sites, including elance and guru.com (which just announced that it will be closing its virtual doors on June 30.

An article from BBC News reports that soccer star Beckham is going to be on UK TV pleading with fans to settle down and be nice so that they don't get England kicked out of the Euro 2004 tournament.

Thanks to an article in Wired this morning, I now know about the gesture keyboards available from FingerWorks. Expect to see a review in the near future as I feel compelled to try it out. Invented by a professor from the University of Delaware, the keyboards (and keypads) allow for …

The New York Times is reporting that the standard cylinder that is used as the basis for the Kilogram is losing weight at a noticeable rate. Unlike some of the other forms of measure, the Kilo' hasn't yet gotten a better definition, yet, but that may be changing as scientists …

I just finished listening to The Crisis of Islam (ISBN: 0679642811) by Bernard Lewis and I found it to be a fascinating "read". Much of the book goes through the history of Islam and touches on a number of important differences between Islam and Christianity as well as Islam and …

Thanks to SARS, FIFA has moved this year's Women's World Cup from China to the US, a story on BBC News says. A news release on the association's site thanks China for its understanding.

An interesting story from the Associated Press and appearing on Globe Technology provides a description of a successful program by the Oakland Public Library to obtain more books through donations by using Amazon's gift registry. The program has been reasonably successful so far (they claim 200 of 400 books …

A reasonably fair article in Wired looks at the upcoming FCC rule changes that have been proposed and will be under consideration at the meeting of the Commission on June 2. They do a reasonable job of laying out what is at stake and bringing in some lessons from the …

According to a report on Wired, there is continued growth on the cellular ringtone front, leading to estimates of over $400M in sales for 2005. Further, the music industry is expecting to reap between $50M and $70M from ring tones this year. One piece that I find slightly ironic about …

The Vatican has chimed in on the new EU Constitution and the appropriateness of Turkey becoming an EU member, and isn't keen on the idea. An article on BBC News reports that the Vatican's foreign secretary has raised doubts about the appropriateness of breaking from the shared European heritage and …