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I’ve been traveling in France and Spain for the last week and a half or so. Before this trip, I had not been to a far-away land for about 16 years! We’ve spent all of our time in major cities and it’s been great to get a little bit of a feel for how other people in the world do things. We’ve got lots of great pictures and a more or less complete travel log will be posted at some point soon. Traveling is a lot of fun, but it’ll be really nice to be back home where I can mostly communicate with just about everyone I meet! We’ll be back in a few days.

A ‘broadcast flag’ mandated by the FCC in 2003 would have required consumer electronics makers to abide by specific digital flags encoded into digital television broadcasts. The flags could restrict whether or not the broadcast could be recorded or in what ways a recording could be used. It would allow content broadcasters to tell you how you can use your television recordings. The whole situation is pretty crazy but a ray of light has appeared as a Court of Appeals has ruled that the mandate is beyond the scope of the FCC’s authority. The original mandate required that any devices sold after July 1, 2005 adhere to the flags so this ruling came just in time.