The vice president's vital signs go online

Those of you who are still concerned about the condition of Vice President Dick Cheney's health since that chest pain episode eight days ago can take a chill pill. Seriously. Because now, a parody site allows all of us -- everyone from Washington insiders to world leaders -- the illusion of the ability to check in on President Bush's No. 2 and his leading indicator of big-time healthiness -- his proof of life, if you will.

Just point your browser at CheneyHeartWatch, the self-described "website with a finger on the pulse of the Presidency," sit back in your chair and allow the soothing green scroll of the site's ersatz EKG heart monitor squiggle reassure you of the safety of our great country's second-in-command ... or, if you like, the legacy of our line of succession.

Beneath the gentle Flash throbbing, a map shows the U.S.'s mid-Atlantic region as observed from high above the planet by a quartet of satellites. Or, maybe it doesn't -- at least according to the site's disclaimer page. "This site is meant as a political and social commentary on the public's insatiable desire to know everything about anyone at anytime," it reads. "In addition, the media's intense focus on the personal lives of both our politicians and celebrities also fueled the idea for this satire."

One wonders what other celebrities' medical information might Heimlich a chuckle or two out of Web surfers. A George W. Bush CAT scan? Perhaps a Bill Clinton lie detector? Visions are too easily rendered -- so we won't even try. (Although a look at the sections of Bush's brain that handle language -- during, say, a press conference or speech to Congress -- might prove interesting to medical officials, linguistic scholars and other nosy-parker busybodies.) -- George Kelly [4:45 p.m. PST, March 15, 2001]

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The global duck race has begun

If you happen to come across a numbered, yellow plastic duck, don't fret about stealing the lost toy of a 2-year-old. Pick it up. Then go to the "ifoundaduck" Web site for directions on how to pass it on.

That's right, duck racing -- once reserved for rivers in Canada -- has gone virtual. British novelist Christian Cook released 500 plastic ducks on Saturday. He set them down on London streets and is hoping that they'll all make it around the world.

The chances are slim. "Unfortunately it's a big bad world out there and tiny plastic ducks are pretty near the bottom of the food chain," Cook writes on the site. But even if only a few ducks make it, Cook believes that the race will be a success.

And why, exactly, did Cook launch "the world's first global online/offline duck race" in the first place?

"We considered stuffed sheep but foresaw traffic problems in Oxford Street," he says. Actually, as one might expect, the race is nothing more than a Web whim. "It's one of those ideas that you get and think 'wouldn't it be funny if ...' and then never do," he says. "It's one of those pub thoughts." -- Damien Cave [10:15 a.m. PST, March 15, 2001]

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Lowering the stakes at BountyQuest's patent challenge

Open-source publisher Tim O'Reilly thought he had a foolproof plan for furthering the cause of patent reform: Offer a reward of $10,000 to anyone who can prove that one-click e-commerce predated Jeff Bezos' 1997 application; send the examples or "prior art" to Barnes & Noble -- which is fighting a legal battle with Amazon over the patent -- then clamor for radical change when the courts invalidate what is widely considered the most egregious example of Internet patent mania.

But alas, the patent revolt seems to have hit a snag. Recork the champagne and postpone that patent invalidation party. Amazon, Barnes & Noble and the courts are all ignoring the collection of the reward-winning prior art that BountyQuest revealed on Wednesday.

"It's been frustrating," says O'Reilly, who started his campaign against Amazon's patent last March. "There's a code of silence among lawyers. I tried to engage in conversation with Amazon and Barnes & Noble's lawyers and of course they didn't want to talk to me."

Phase 1 went off without a hitch. O'Reilly's $10,000 reward, offered on BountyQuest.com, a start-up that aims to create a marketplace for prior art, drew 30 submissions. Some were frivolous, such as the 1993 Doonesbury cartoon discussing an electronic shopping experience where your Visa card "is already programmed in." Others, like Thompson Electronics' patent for one-button shopping with a television remote, came from the heart of engineering culture.

But after Barnes & Noble snubbed the BountyQuest campaign, and the patent case started looking far too complicated and prolonged to be decided so easily, O'Reilly decided not to give the award at all. But then, on Wednesday, during a phone call with reporters, O'Reilly changed his mind and announced a winner -- the Thompson submission.

The vacillation arose from O'Reilly's fear that the prior art just wouldn't make a difference. Who could know whether any single example of prior art would be enough to invalidate the Amazon patent? "The deeper you get into this, the more you realize that without a lawyer it's hard to have any assertion of certainty," he says.

Welcome to the judicial system, where nothing moves on Internet time, says Eben Moglen, a law professor at Columbia and counsel to the Free Software Foundation. "The problem is that when you provide the [prior art] information, you have not actually won anything yet," he says. "That may or may not come later."

BountyQuest should have expected such a snag, says Mark Lemley, an intellectual property expert and law professor at UC-Berkeley. "How do you decide, short of going to court, whether or not the prior art really invalidates the patent?" he asks. "This is the sort of thing lawyers get paid big money to figure out."

O'Reilly admits that more might need to be done, and that his initial plan may have been naive. Still, he remains confident that BountyQuest, in which he's an investor, will help further the cause of reform.

"This may play a role in the court case or it may not," he says. "Who knows? But I'm a firm believer that the approach we're taking with BountyQuest raises the stakes for frivolous patents. If it's easier to knock out extraneous or ridiculous claims because of BountyQuest, people will be less eager to make them." -- Damien Cave [3:45 p.m. PST, March 14, 2001]

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EMusic gets a taste of its own medicine

We felt a certain, vindictive glee today when we heard that the estate of Frank Zappa is suing EMusic for copyright infringement. After all, this is the same company that has been promoting itself with bombastic force in recent months, in an attempt to shame archnemesis Napster.

Take, for example, the recent EMusic lawsuit against Napster. EMusic had already sent warning letters to the file-sharing service in November, demanding that EMusic files be removed from the service. On March 7, the company officially filed a lawsuit, complaining that Napster was still letting its users download EMusic tunes. When Napster argued that it would have to block EMusic users from the service in order to "protect" EMusic songs, EMusic said that wasn't good enough either, and demanded that EMusic users be let back onto Napster.

Seem illogical? Well, of course. But it was mostly a P.R. stunt: EMusic was merely trying to play good cop with Napster fans. "EMusic bears no malice towards Napster's users," oozed EMusic CEO Gene Hoffman at the time. Then, on Monday, EMusic sent out a fawning press release inviting "former Napster users and other digital music fans" to come visit its Web site and join EMusic's own subscription music service -- which is not only "viable" but "legal."

We could have sympathy for EMusic. After all, the company has been trying to sell MP3s online for years, but due to its inability to gather really big-name artists (its catalog tops out with They Might Be Giants and Bad Religion), EMusic's stock is limping along at 21 cents and users have been wooed away by the richer (and cheaper) offerings over at Napster. But EMusic's thinly veiled jealous jabs at Napster just seem, well, sad; and the company's self-righteousness is becoming tiring.

So the news today that Zappa's wife was suing EMusic for copyright infringement -- claiming that the site sold Zappa's tunes without paying for the publishing rights -- was deeply ironic. Wasn't this company suing Napster on the very same grounds? Perhaps this is something that EMusic should have considered when it sued Napster: Press releases galore can't hide the fact that this is just another case of the pot calling the kettle black. -- Janelle Brown [1:55 p.m. PST, March 13, 2001]

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Saving the Net, by any means necessary

It seems that your humble Salon Technology staffers weren't the only Net junkies to see the deep irony in Michael Tchong's "Save the Net" campaign. In the days since the launch of his marketing call to arms -- which exhorts Netizens to boycott offline stores and use e-commerce sites on April 3 in order to "send a signal to Wall Street that Netizens will not abandon their favorite medium" -- a number of thoughtful parodies have popped up.

SatireWire, for example, has posted the Sally Struthers-style "Save the Dot-Coms" satire. In an open letter, "Sally" begs readers to "look into the eyes of a needy dot-com and say, 'Yes, I will help,'" for a mere 79 cents a day, you can even become an official company sponsor (SatireWire suggests selecting a company off of dotcomfailures.com) and begin developing a "special relationship" with your dot-com.

But even more to the point is the "Save the Net" parody over at Ravenous Plankton. The editors there write: "Fueled by blind greed and venture capital, our Internet is slipping into crass commercialism. If this trend continues, you might soon lose access to your favorite online diary, personal site, online art project or chat group. Imagine the Internet without real people!"

On April 3, the Ravenous Plankton editors want you to avoid online stores and corporate Web sites. Instead, they suggest that you "visit your favorite non-commercial website(s) and e-mail the webmaster/mistress, letting them know that you're interested in what they have to say."

Perhaps Michael Tchong might take pause at this notion; after all, the world can probably live without e-commerce, but a world that doesn't encourage art and creativity would be a much emptier place. Which Net is really worth saving? -- Janelle Brown [1:25 p.m. PST, March 12, 2001]

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Come together, right now, get a job

What's the first thing you do when you're laid off? Hit the bars with your fellow pink-slipped colleagues to grouse about your misfortune, of course. But the workers in Nortel's eXtremeVoice group in Ottawa who got the ax Jan. 11 had a better idea. They banded together.

A week after the ax fell, 89 of the 120 people in the group had their resumes up on a professional-looking Web site they'd created with donated Web design and photography work, called Hire Top Talent. The site is like a group talent pool to reach potential employers. They blasted e-mail about it to every human resources director and hiring manager they knew among them, swapped job leads and threw "pink slip party"-style gatherings to meet recruiters.

Pooling their resources seems to be working. Kirsten Watson, formerly a senior manager at Nortel in channel marketing, says: "I had calls from six different companies, interviewed with four of them and had offers from two. But I think that the technical people are getting three times that."

Richard Fournier, the senior manager of global support for the group, had no trouble finding a job: "About a week after, I had about four offers sitting in front of me, and I started working two weeks after that."

The site is now showcasing the resumes of laid-off workers from other parts of Nortel, and even other tech companies, like CrossKeys Systems and Sedona Networks.

White-collar workers uniting for their collective good? Amid all the doom and gloom of late, it's just the kind of story from the layoff trenches that we could use right now. -- Katharine Mieszkowski [3:35 p.m. PST, March 9, 2001]

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