Spent a little time in the French Quarter last night — Cafe Du Monde, Preservation Hall, Maison Bourbon, and lots of drunk Florida State and Virginia Tech students. People will do anything for mardi gras beads…

Jason Kottke pondered an awesome concept yesterday:

Let’s say there’s a huge mirror pointed in our direction located about 300 light years from Earth. If we had a sufficiently powerful telescope, we could aim it at this mirror, see the Earth as it appeared in 1399 A.D. (600 years having passed from the time that light left Earth, travelled the 300 light years to the mirror, and then the 300 light years back), and subsequently watch the Renaissance unfold.

While most of the world is shunning this New Year’s, New Orleans is doing what it always does — enjoying itself.

Yet another attempt at encroaching on the First Amendment, and from the same movie studios that stand behind the First Amendment to justify a lot of the films that they produce. What will be interesting to me is how the courts rule on my right to make a backup copy of a DVD; it would seem to me that the precedent is strongly in favor of being able to do so.

eToys seems to seeing the light, although they are pointedly not dropping the lawsuit against etoy.com, instead “moving away” from it.