We haven't had any mouth-foamingly rabid political content recently, so I thought I might as well throw out something. A few links to remind us all that if we let them corporations would greedily feast on our eyeballs, then charge us for it.

• Companies are disclaiming liability for accidentally revealing your personal data. These waivers of liability are usually couched in lengthy End User License Agreements. EULA's themselves are evil, since they give companies all kinds of ridiculous rights to collect your personal information, modify your computer, etc. Frequently you submit to the EULA by opening software; in some cases it's not possible to turn on a new computer without consenting to waive some of your legal rights.
  
• NEC has patented carbon nanotubes. Which would be fine, if you couldn't find carbon nanotubes by sticking any given piece of coal under an electron microscope. Chances are we'll need these things if we're ever going to build an elevator to outer space, room-temperature superconductors, or, most importantly, spiderman-style webshooters. This is like patenting diamonds.
  
• There's a bill under review in the House that would allow companies to own databases -- tantamount to owning facts. This isn't good.
  
• And finally, my own personal, trivial pet peeve: when using a checkcard, stores are making it increasingly difficult to navigate through their touchpad menus to find "pay by credit" instead of "pay by debit". If you have to give them a PIN you're paying by debit, even if you specifically told them you wanted credit at the start of the menu process. The difference: you pay the debit transaction fee; the store pays if you're using credit. And you lose all the credit-card transaction-protection benefits (although admittedly most of these are pretty limited for checkcards anyway).
  

Credit where it's due -- most of these stories have been on slashdot.