Tuesday, November 25, 2003

Mary Hodder: "One librarian is simply stating regularly when there are no warrants, so that when there is no statement of anything, people will know there is a warrant that has been served." 

Tonight's dinner, King Tsin, Berkeley, 7PM. 

News.Com: "Eugene Kleiner, a pioneer of venture capital in Silicon Valley and co-founder of Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, has died at the age of 80." 

I was interviewed for Austrian radio about Google.  

BTW, talking with a colleague at Harvard a few days ago, he said he had heard a rumor that I had had a massive heart attack. It's not true. I had surgery in the summer of 2002 to correct a condition that was life-threatening, but I didn't have a heart attack. My heart is in relatively good shape, all things considered. I'm sure this was just innocent gossip, at least I hope so. Also, I finally was able to convince IBM to take my money, and I bought the new laptop, a T40, at a good discount. I'll let you know how it goes. 

John Palfrey: "Copyright is not meant to be used as a weapon to stifle free speech." 

Wired: Congress Expands FBI Spying Power. 

Yesterday's talk at Stanford went very well. Larry Lessig was in the front row, there was a good mix of Stanford students, faculty, and Scripting News people. I talked for about twenty minutes, and then we had a discussion. They asked tough questions, one of which I declined to answer, but on reflection, I could have. I had said that lack-of-reciprocation is common in the weblog world, but rarely talked about. Person A delivers flow to Person B, but B doesn't point to A. I was asked for an example, but declined. I didn't want to take any specific person to task on this, my point would have been lost. But I could have talked about a class of websites that receive lots of pointers and rarely point back -- newspaper sites. Anyway, thanks to Larry and Lauren Gelman for inviting me to speak, and to Stuart Rosenberg for arranging. I had a great time. I think the door is open now for some new collaboration between our respective schools, and that would be great. And after a couple of years of emailing back and forth with Larry Lessig, and reading his weblog, and coming to have great respect for him, it was good to exchange ideas face-to-face. 

I've spent a bunch of time with Scoble in the last couple of days. We went computer shopping on Sunday, and then he came to Stanford Law School yesterday. He has a story to tell about computer retailing and why Best Buy couldn't take the money out of my pocket and give me a shiny new laptop. He was listening, in a way that the salesperson at BB wasn't. And he knows what I want, an Ikea like experience. Make sure I find what I came for. That's hard to do, but that's what it takes.