after long silence. So as the cruel master of fate would have it, on the day that the Eldred case officially ended, I was at Disney World. I was tricked into going to Disney World. I thought the conference was “ comments;in Orlando.” But Orlando has apparently morphed into Disney World, and so when yesterday the Court refused a request to rehear the case (totally expected), I learned the news while drinking coffee from a Mickey mug.

With that decision, a self-imposed silence about these things ends too. I accepted this silence after a respectful but strong rebuke by a friend. He objected that it was wrong for me to suggest that “the silent five” were acting without principle. I disagree. I do believe their decision lacked principle, but I also see that it was right to complain about the context within which I was making that charge.

So we filed a petition to rehear the case that made the claim of principle in as careful and balanced a way as possible. Again, such petitions are never granted any more. But if there is a place to express such criticism, respectful of the institution and tradition that these justices serve, it was in this form, without the pressure of publicity.

This stage is now over. I apologize for the silence. More hopeful stuff soon. [Lessig Blog]
9:50:35 AM    

Jake posted the docs on how to turn on a new feature in Manila:  A News Aggregator.  Now, any Manila site can have a news aggregator.  This essentially allows you to turn your weblog into a personal news portal (like Radio), except one that runs on the Web rather than your desktop.  Companies and educational institutions that want to offer personal news portals can now do so inexpensively.  Very cool.  I remember that only a couple of years ago, portal software that did this cost tens of thousands of $$.  A couple years before that, Vignette payed over a $$b for a company that had a very expensive product that did what RSS in combo with UserLand's Manila (or Radio with eVectors RSS Distiller) does today for low $$.  Revolutionary.

One additional point: since the news is aggregated centrally by Manila, it is very bandwidth friendly to the sources.  It is also easily administered by the server admin.

[Source:John Robb's Radio Weblog]
9:46:53 AM