in a neet-0 indication that Mac OS X has started to come into its own, alpha-geek barometer O'Reilly & Associates has announced a Mac OS X conference for later this year (Sept 30-Oct 3).

O'Reilly's been paying a lot of attention to Mac OS X, and their Mac DevCenter (now with a shiny new URL!) is one of the best resources for Mac OS X developers, admins, and power users.

i was halfway through writing a post on Sen Joe Biden's amendments to the US Code governing "phonorecords, copies of computer programs or computer program documentation or packaging, and copies of motion pictures or other audio visual works, and trafficking in counterfeit computer program documentation or packaging" when i noticed that the good people at the Reg had done the work for me:

Current law under Title 18, Section 2318 criminalizes the counterfeiting of packaging materials and logos, but the Biden amendment, we're told, merely adds such items as holograms to the list. And if that were the case, we'd have little to criticize here, in spite of the suspicious facts that Senator Fritz 'Hollywood' Hollings (Democrat, South Carolina) is a co-sponsor of the bill, and Microsoft Corporation heartily approves of it.

But of course with connections like those, it really couldn't be a straight-up piece of fair legislation, now could it?

Sen Biden's no stranger to using other people's words, so you have to wonder if the amendment's use of the term "verify" was suggested by a concerned contributorconstituent (like, oh, i don't know, Microsoft's attorneys at Sullivan & Cromwell)? (via the Reg)