A França nunca foi exatamente tímida em promover sua cultura. Portanto, poucos ficaram surpresos quando o país mostrou se particularmente interessado em uma nova biblioteca digital que pretendia divulgar a história, a literatura, as artes e as ciências da Europa. Mas quando o novo site, chamado Europeana, entrou no ar, mais da metade dos seus 2 milhões de itens vêm de apenas um dos 27 países que compõem a União Européia: a França.

Net eavesdropping firm NebuAd and its partner ISPs violated hacking and wiretapping laws when they tested advertising technology that spied on ISP customers web searches and surfing, according to a lawsuit filed in federal court Monday. The lawsuit seeks damages on behalf of thousands of subscribers to the five ISPs that are known to have worked with NebuAd. If successful, the suit could be the final blow to the company, which abandoned its eavesdropping plans ...

A federal judge in Los Angeles is considering whether to prohibit evidence of a Missouri teen's suicide from being introduced in the trial of a woman charged with creating a MySpace account that was allegedly used to harass the teen. U.S. District Judge George H. Wu said on Monday that he believed the suicide of 13-year-old Megan Meier was irrelevant to charges that 49-year-old Lori Drew of O'Fallon, Missouri, violated MySpace's terms of service in ...

The government's legal rationales for warrantless spying on Americans must be given to a federal judge to examine in his chambers in order to decide whether parts of the documents should be released under government sunshine requests, a federal judge ruled last Friday. The ruling(.pdf) by Washington D.C. Circuit Court judge Henry Kennedy, Jr. marks a partial win for the Electronic Privacy Information Center and the ACLU which sued for the documents' release under the ...

A former federal prosecutor has decided to take on his ex-employer in defending a woman against charges that she violated federal laws in allegedly creating a MySpace account used to bully a teenage girl who committed suicide. Orin Kerr, professor of law at George Washington University Law School, was a criminal trial attorney in the Computer Crime and Intellectual Property Section at the Department of Justice as well as a special assistant U.S. attorney for ...

There is some interesting online coverage of the IEEE VisWeek [vis.computer.org], inclusive of the Information Visualization Conference (Infovis'08), Visual Analytics Science and Technology Conference (VAST'08) and "Visualization Conference" (Vis'08). These conferences, currently held in Columbus, Ohio, are considered as the top venues for presenting (mainly academic) research in the field of information visualization. In particular, Robert Kosara has set up a "live micro-blog" [eagereyes.org], describing the most important events as they unfold. Furthermore, Martin Wattenberg, ...

Per raccontare quanto accaduto basta riportare i testi delle newsletter della Dante Alighieri. Tutto inizia l’8 settembre scorso: PAROLE STRANIERE INOPPORTUNE: GLI ITALIANI UNITI CONTRO IL WEEKEND…! Lo rivela il sondaggio proposto dal sito Internet della Società Dante Alighieri, www.ladante.it . A un passo dalla vetta della classifica si trovano OK e Welfare Chi l’avrebbe mai detto. Gli italiani [...]

Via Kottke, a terrific resource for NFL fans wondering which games will be available on their local TV stations. ★

Yoko Ono and the sons of John Lennon have lost a bid to prevent the usage of Lennon's song "Imagine" in the Ben Stein-starring film Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, which examines discrimination against teachers who include the theory of intelligent design in their curriculum. Judge Sidney Stein found that the use of the track fell under fair-use guidelines, and that the producers wouldn't have to re-edit the film to snip the song out. [Reuters]