IPunny

Q: What do you get when babies file share?

A: A pee-er to pee-er network.

(Groan.)

Babes In Blogland

Congratulations to Heather Armstrong and Clay Shirky on the arrivals of their little girls Leta and Marina. (And I thought boys were the new black.) To quote Kenneth Branagh, "The world must be peopled!"

Mad World

So here I sit, unwinding the hours of maternity leave, calling my son little nonsense names (the Tidy Bowl Man; Pookie LaRue), singing him little nonsense songs (On Top of Spaghetti; he'll forgive me for all this some day, maybe), and intermittently registering the gravest disgust and sorrow over the existence of things like this (sorry; don't want to be that search result) and poor, sweet little babies who roll down conveyer belts wearing newspapers (in The OC, no less).

I find it hard to tell you

I find it hard to take

When people run in circles it's a very very

Mad world

P2ShiningP

Tyler and I listened to the Grokster oral argument this afternoon, and we both think Fred von Lohmann and Michael Page comported themselves exceptionally well before the Court. The argument and related P2P points will be the subject of my upcoming issue of IP Memes, which I'll post here as soon as it circulates (some time in the next couple of weeks).

Hope the gang down the 405 freeway at ETCON is having a blast; sure sounds that way!

VOCSS (Verdicts Of Carl Saganesque Size)

VerdictSearch Releases Top 100 List for 2003, Headed by $12 Billion Award against Exxon Mobil:

VerdictSearch(R)...today released its third annual ranking of the 100 largest awards by juries in 2003. An $11.9 billion award to the State of Alabama in its case against Exxon Mobil for breach of contract heads this year's VerdictSearch Top 100....Exxon Mobil was sued by Alabama, which alleged that the company had significantly underpaid royalties due under an existing contract. The year's second-largest award of $934 million in compensatory and punitive damages came as the result of a lawsuit filed by medical device manufacturer Beckman Coulter against supplier Flextronics, International Ltd. and its U.S. subsidiary Flextronics USA, Inc., formerly known as Dovatron. The third-largest award of $521 million was made to Eolas Technologies after a jury found that Microsoft had misappropriated Web technology developed at the University of California.

Perspective: that Exxon Mobil verdict could also be expressed as roughly one dollar per year since the beginning of time.

[Update] More from Dan Gillmor re the no. 3 slot.