Measure Twice, Cut Once

Thursday, December 19, 2002

Nearly all men can withstand adversity; if you want to test a man's character, give him power." -- Abraham Lincoln

AOL Can Ride Herd on Microsoft, Yahoo?: If I was AOL, would I enforce the newly minted patent I received for instant messaging? You're darned tootin' I would! Why wouldn't you license the technology? From a very selfish, personal standpoint, I would like IM to continue to be a free application, but it is difficult for me to argue that someone's proprietary technology product should not be available to them as a revenue-generating application under current patent law. Now, let's see what AOL does ...

Another Reason Why the Cubs are the Cubs: Yes, they haven't won a World Series in almost a century. And, now, they think that they own the physical viewing rights to their product. This is a very difficult position for the Cubs to take as, unlike AOL above, I don't believe they have any government-sanctioned rights in a view from afar. The Cubs are asking nearby bars (and their patrons) to pay for the right to see the Cubs play from seats not in the stadium. This treads down a slippery slope -- should business owners on Fifth Avenue in New York City not be allowed to charge people money to watch parades down Fifth Avenue from their offices, roofs or balconies? Should restaurants along Nicollet Mall in Minneapolis be unable to charge a cover charge to allow patrons to have window seats for the holiday Holidazzle parades? I am not aware of any that do, but I don't think they can be stopped from doing so if they choose (whether patrons would actually pay when they can sit on the sidewalk outside for free is another matter).

DNA to the Rescue Again!: When I lived in New York City, there were several high profile criminal cases that seemed to remain on the covers of the tabloids for months. There was the Lisa Steinberg murder, the Bernhard Goetz subway vigilante case, and then there was the Central Park Jogger Rape which, like the Bernhard Goetz case involved complicated race issues. Five young men, ages 14 - 16 at the time, were convicted despite no physical evidence linking them to the crime (i.e., no DNA match). The crime even spawned a new slang term -- "wilding" -- which was not actually a term used by the accused or, apparently, anyone at the time, but was made up by an overzealous New York tabloid writer who misheard the accused young men speak. As it turns out, these young men were not the rapist(s) of the Jogger -- the real rapist came forward much later and was definitively linked by DNA evidence to the rape crime. The young men's convictions were vacated. Just another in the many exonerations by DNA evidence popping up these days.

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