The Law Librarian Blog alerts us to two new Human Rights Reports: 1. A report of the Committee on the Rights of the Child, and2. A report by the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.

Over the summer, a number of classrooms were outfitted with “Smart Boards.” Please, please, please DO NOT write on them with regular white board markers! Doing so will render them inoperable.

Anyone who bought music through Yahoo's Launch service have the option of receiving either a refund, or non-DRM'd copies of any music they bought while the service was running.

Yahoo got it right, although this could cost them, financially. As Techdirt editor Mike Masnick said today, "that's what the company gets for agreeing to a DRM'd solution in the first place, rather than trusting its instincts and telling the labels to ditch the DRM years ago." Masnick is right; this is a pretty obvious example of why DRM shouldn't be attached to purchased music in the first place.

Google has finally released to the public their Knol reference tool to the public after a 7 month development process. Intended to be a sort of internet encyclopedia, Knol will be filled with articles written by experts in every possible type of field.

I wrote a week or so ago about Viacom's request for information on YouTube users, what they watched, and when. The biggest question in my mind, and in many others', was how to keep our privacy safe from Viacom.

I have seen several articles out today regarding the slowing of adoption of broadband in the U.S. I find the theory that sales are "stalling" to be a bit suspect.

I, through the grace of some miracle, have high-end DSL (6-8 down, 3-5 up) in my semi-rural location. A friend who lives in the heart of the Big City near me can only get the lowest end DSL in her neighborhood, despite the fact that there is a substation less than a mile from her home. She would love to have higher speed, but the infrastructure isn't there for it. My mother has complained for years about dialup; she lives in a semi-rural area as well and can't stay online long enough to check mail most of the time. Yesterday, I took her to the local AT&T store and got her set up with 3G broadband wireless for her laptop. She is thrilled and I've gotten a couple dozen emails from her in the last 24 hours.

Ernie makes some very good points in this post. If you do go the feed reader route, my advice is to choose your feeds wisely, otherwise you might feel overwhelmed.

Per an article in my local St. Louis paper today, Charter Communications, our local cable provider, has scrapped plans to monitor web usage of some of its high-speed internet users. Purportedly, Charter was going to monitor the web activities of users in four pilot areas in order to gather marketing data they could then use to target advertising to those users.

I have to freely admit that in general, I am a fan of AT&T. I know, that just breaks Todd's heart, but we have AT&T here for our local phone service, our wireless service, and our broadband service. We don't have any choices, really, so this is what we deal with, and in general, I am happy with the way things are. When it comes to their wireless cell phone business with us, I am more than thrilled at their customer service, coverage area, quick solutions to our issues, and ability to make on-the-fly changes to our account as needed.

I was just toodling around on Engadget and ran across a shortie about AT&T increasing smartphone and 3G by 20%. Since I don't use either service, I almost passed the article by. But it said AT&T and I have AT&T at home and have looked at the Laptop Connect plans they have, although I'm just too cheap right now to spend the money on it.