Wired 11.11

The November issue of Wired Magazine was chock full of good stuff, as I just got around to discovering. Some highly subjective highlights:

• A Fair User's Manual: Brendan I. Koerner unpacks the fair use doctrine.


• The Only Thing I've Copied Is My Lawyer!: Mark Robinson and Adam Rogers supply a C&D response for any occasion (this thing's suitable for framing).


• Dan Gillmor on Mitch Kapor and Chandler: Reinventing Your Inbox. Bittersweetly, Mitch posts today that he's putting his weblog on hold in order to focus more on OSAF and Chandler, and offers this insight on what details will be revealed publicly and when: "After all, transparency is not Reality TV."


• Larry Lessig (now a regular Wired columnist), The New Road to the White House – How grassroots blogs are transforming presidential politics: "A managed community works about as well as a managed economy. So the challenge is to find a way to build community without the community feeling built."


• Bruce Sterling, on findings from the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (Cosmic Reality Check): "Are there political implications to the idea that most of the universe is untouchable, endlessly expanding, scarcely knowable? Will we finally get over our obsession with static utopias, sudden armageddons, limits, and closure? Is there philosophical comfort to be found in a silent, never-ending steady bang?"


• And from Gary Rivlin's cover story, a profile of Linus Torvalds (Leader of the Free World), "He jokingly refers to himself as 'Linux's hood ornament,' and he's anything but an autocrat. His power is based on nothing more than the collective respect of his cohorts."