Domain: archive.org
Stories and comments across the archive that link to archive.org.
Comments · 7,005
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Re:IronyFrankly, I stopped reading at that point. This guy seems to be a bit too old and a bit too old school to understand the subject he's trying to cover.
Rob Enderle isn't just any guy. He is the troll if there ever was one. From his Wikipedia page:
Enderle has surpassed most analysts in stirring up industry-wide controversy.
Enderle has been critical of Apple Computer and Linux, as well as Unix and the open source/free software movements in general. In particular, he believes that Linux is a "free-software scam," and he has compared some Linux advocates to terrorists, predicting that "one of them -- or perhaps a group of them -- will go too far at some point and do significant damage to the open-source movement, the ongoing litigation with SCO or their employers." It is for these reasons that Enderle has been called "a Microsoft shill"[2] and even "raving lunatic"[3] by critics.
His free software scam piece is a good example of his twisted ways. Another one is his article about Why SCO Should Win.
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Re:Hardcore geek humor
Sure, but have you heard the song?
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The timeless question: Who benefits?
Carl Malamud wrote an insightful letter which addresses this issue. Part of that letter reads:
C-SPAN is a publicly-supported charity. Your only shareholders are the American public. Your donors received considerable tax relief in making donations to you. You and your staff were well paid for your excellent work. Congressional hearings are of strikingly important public value, and aggressive moves to prevent any fair use of the material is double-dipping on your part. For C-SPAN and for the American public record, the right thing to do is to release all of that material back into the public domain where it belongs.
C-SPAN could regularly upload broadcast-quality raw footage to The Internet Archive (archive.org). Archive.org could transcode the material into a variety of formats (including Ogg Vorbis+Theora which they're now doing for videos) and we can all enjoy the works we're paying for through tax relief and cable TV subscription. Certainly C-SPAN is taking a step in the right direction, but if this footage should be in the public domain, a "liberal" copyright license (as C-SPAN puts it) isn't good enough.
So long as we, the American public, are covering C-SPAN's bills (more than that, actually, as Malamud points out in his letter), we should democratically decide what to do with C-SPAN's programming—all of it, not just the Congressional hearings and floor footage. Perhaps this could take the form of C-SPAN (or their parent corporation) working for hire, thus giving us the power of copyright in all of those works. We could then decide to forgo that power, place all of their work into the public domain, and relieve ourselves of ever having to read another embarrassing legalistic threat when anyone uses C-SPAN footage for any purpose (including commercial use). But certainly what C-SPAN is proposing simply doesn't go far enough down the path they're headed on.
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Better Pictures
If you use the WayBackMachine there is a picture which might be what this device will likely look like:
http://web.archive.org/web/20040622161920/http://w ww.flipstart.com/ -
High-Quality Video Link
High quality versions of Jeff Hawkin's talk at UC Berkeley are available here.
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Re:What if ISP's are forced to retain data?
Someone's already done it.
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This research was done in 2000In fact, this research is so old that Dr. Lijun Wang's FAQ page describing the experiment is no longer on the Internet. It has to be located through the Internet Archive: http://web.archive.org/web/20041012175312/www.nec
i .nj.nec.com/homepages/lwan/faq.htm
Here's what he said:Q. How to interpret those earlier press coverage?
A. It has been mistakenly reported that we have observed a light pulse's group velocity exceeding c by a factor of 300. This is erroneous. In the experiment, the light pulse emerges on the far side of the atomic cell sooner than if it had traveled through the same thickness in vacuum by a time difference that is 310 folds of the vacuum transit time.
In our experiment, a smooth light pulse of about 3-microsecond duration propagates through a specially prepared cesium atomic chamber of 6-cm length. It takes 0.2 nanosecond for a light pulse to traverse a 6-cm length in vacuum. In our experiment, we measured that the light pulse traversing through the specially-prepared atomic cell emerges 62 nanosecond sooner than if it propagate through the same thickness in vacuum. In other words, the net effect can be viewed as that the time it takes a light pulse to traverse through the specially prepared atomic medium is a negative one. This negative delay, or a pulse advance, is 310 times the "vacuum transit time" (time it takes light to traverse the 6-cm length in vacuum).
Q. Is Einstein's Relativity violated?
A. Our experiment is not at odds with Einstein's special relativity. The experiment can be well explained using existing physics theories that are consistent with Relativity. In fact, the experiment was designed based on calculations using existing physics theories.
However, our experiment does show that the generally held misconception "nothing can move faster than the speed of light" is wrong. The statement only applies to objects with a rest mass. Light can be viewed as waves and has no mass. Therefore, it is not limited by its speed inside a vacuum.
Information coded using a light pulse cannot be transmitted faster than c using this effect. Hence, it is still true to say that "Information carried by a light pulse cannot be transmitted faster than c." The detailed reasons are very complex and are still under debate. However, using this effect, one might be able to increase information transfer speed up to c. In present day technology, information is transmitted at speed far slower than c in most cases such as through the Internet and inside a computer.
The page also contains an "intuitive" explanation of the phenonmenon. A careful reading and some high school level physics make it simple to understand in a logical sense, but it remains completely incomprehensible intuitively (at least to me). -
Just a note on the "investment"
I know the parent didn't make reference to this, but a lot of people think it, so:
In August 1997, Microsoft purchased $150 million in non-voting Apple stock.
As of the prior quarter, Apple had $1.2 billion in cash on hand .
The money didn't "bail Apple out", as some people think. It was a symbolic gesture. The symbolism of the "badly needed" "investment" (which really wasn't needed from a financial standpoint) renewed peoples' faith in Apple, renewed the faith that Microsoft and Office would still be on the Mac platform, etc.
So while you could argue that the gesture was needed (and I'd tend to agree), the money itself wasn't.
And Microsoft made out like bandits on that investment. -
/usr/binI remember reading, a loooooooong time ago, that frequently accessed binaries and binaries needed at boot time were stored in
/bin. Other binaries were in /usr/bin. Dennis Ritchie's Unix Notes from 1972 (http://cm.bell-labs.com/cm/cs/who/dmr/notes.html) somewhat supports this memory by stating, "there is a directory '/usr' which contains all user's directories, and which is stored on a relatively large, but slow moving head disk, while the othe files are on the fast but small fixed-head disk."
Folks interested in the history of C and Unix will find many interesting documents at Dennis's web page (http://plan9.bell-labs.com/who/dmr/index.html).
Also interesting are a number of old articles:- "The Evolution of the Unix Time-sharing System*", AT&T Bell Laboratories Technical Journal 63 No. 6 Part 2, October 1984, pp. 1577-93., http://web.archive.org/web/19991013115731/cm.bell
- labs.com/cm/cs/who/dmr/hist.html by Dennis M. Ritchie - "UNIX Implementation", The Bell System Technical Journal, 1978, http://www.hughes-fl.com/books/pdf/UNIX_Implement
a tion.pdf by K. Thompson - "The UNIX time-sharing system", Communications of the ACM archive
Volume 17 , Issue 7, http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~nieh/teaching/e6118_s0 0/papers/ritchie_unix74.pdf by D. M. Ritchie and K. Thompson
But I couldn't find anything on the meaning of /etc ;-) - "The Evolution of the Unix Time-sharing System*", AT&T Bell Laboratories Technical Journal 63 No. 6 Part 2, October 1984, pp. 1577-93., http://web.archive.org/web/19991013115731/cm.bell
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Some DRM free well known music. Live Music Archive
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Re:Open DRM?
If you want a copy, here's a lossless one. You'll have to compress it to MP3 to get it to play on your zUne or iPod.
It's a bluegrass version done by a midwest jazz-rock jam band. IMO it's ten thousand percent better than the original. Oh yeah, and the band members are friends of mine.
-mcgrew -
Re:Is there someone at Archive.org we can ask why?
The Internet Archive's Web Archiving Blog has a post, "Confusion at The Register and Slashdot about the Wayback Machine", which addresses some of the concerns in this article and thread.
[Just a pointer; my posts here are me speaking as myself, and not for the Archive.]
- Gordon -
Re:Is there someone at Archive.org we can ask why?
The Internet Archive's Web Archiving Blog has a post, "Confusion at The Register and Slashdot about the Wayback Machine", which addresses some of the concerns in this article and thread.
[Just a pointer; my posts here are me speaking as myself, and not for the Archive.]
- Gordon -
Re:Creative Commons == GPL (Sometimes) Old news
This is not new, they've had the summaries and web badges for GPL since 2004 http://web.archive.org/web/20040416235826/http://
c reativecommons.org/license/cc-lgpl?lang=en -
Re:I already did that
If anyone can make Windows 3.1 *with* DOS support fit onto a 1.44 MB floppy, I'd like to see it.
what like the version here? -
Re:Will they actually do it?
There are a finite number of keys on each disc. The way keys are "revoked" is by simply not using that key on any new disc pressings. A disc made (prior to) today, on which the key block contains a compromised key, have been well and truly cracked.
It is actually more sophisticated than that, relying on each individual unit having a certain set of 512 keys out of a billion or so, and then providing only enabling a subset of possible keys on each disc in the MKB. The trick is once they know the specific unit they want to disable, they enable a set of keys in the MKB on the disc such that all the "good" players have at least one key in the MKB but the "bad" player does not.
See this about NNL in AACS
That's how it could work in theory. In practice its going to be hard to identify any compromised hardware players such that they can be revoked and chances are they have not been distributing keys with unique combos per player yet (if they ever do). -
Re:Actually... it doesn't delete your home directoI had heard about this program erasing the home directory before the slashdot story, on a torrent site. Plus the software author admits it by default on his own website.
There exists two illegal cd-keys that can be used to register the program without paying for it. When Display Eater detects these keys, it would delete your home directory. However, this is not the case in reality. The whole purpose was to create a scare campaign. You can download, the file linked from the main page, which is now down(the link is still intact here), and check it for yourself. It has been this way since 2/7/07. Please note he doesn't say what was happening before 2/7, which is a strong hint on him trying to hide the fact that prior versions did indeed erase the home directory. In addition, it's not difficult to use the Wayback Machine to get a hold of an older version of his software. -
long-time Slashdot quirk...editor's fault?http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/04/23/15132
2 4Title: "Learn The Language Of Math"
Text: "...from first principles. Metamath does not claim to teach you mathematics, just as..."
From Metamath (around that time): "The choice of title for this story, "Learn The Language Of Math," was unfortunate and was the Slashdot editor's, not mine."
Some things never change...*tags story "confictingtitleandsummary"*.
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Re:Must just be in England...
The part where "illegal" refers to a human being, not an act or an object.
The act of coming here contrary to our laws is what's illegal. Don't play the PC card on me - "illegal" is what they've always been called. The PC terms of "immigrant" (without the word "illegal" in front) and "migrant workers" are the terms people are using now to obfuscate the issue.
That's what PC is, that's what PC does, it tries to change people's impressions of how things really are. Here is a 1907 report on immigration, I'll link the section on immigration legislation, so you can see that, no, "illegal immigrants" is not what they've always been called (nor illegal alien). That deliciously crafted bit of doule-speak is a recent invention.
And "migrant workers" says nothing about the legality of the migration, it's a term for people who go where the work is. The fact that you paint that as a rewording of "illegalimmigrant" says alot about your preconceptions.
So, who's trying to change people's impressions of how things really are? The one saying "illegal immigrants is what they've always been called", or the one supplying proof that this isn't the case?
Hint: It's not the guy with the historical documents supporting his assertions. -
Re:Prior art in Kleenex patent dispute??
Here's an article on the dispute, linked to by the previously mentioned Wikipedia article: RP vs TP
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obSealab
Ah yes, Mesonychoteuthis hamiltoni. With a razor sharp beak, that can tear steel as easily as I tear a croissant...
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The original
Here is the original iPhone. Infogear was purchased by Cisco in 2000, hence they inherited the iPhone name. I used to do tech support for these iPhones back in the day so I did feel some nostalgia when the name was revealed for Apple's new product. Infogear iPhone
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Old news - 10 years ago for VB5
Almost 10 years ago there was pretty much what you want for VB5. I still have original announce email and even necessary binaries to try it for DOS, SCO, Linux, AIX etc. I can post binaries with readme and sample code if someone is interested. Let me know.
http://groups.google.com/group/comp.os.linux.devel opment.system/msg/3a0293334be4ec01
http://web.archive.org/web/20010203155600/softwork sltd.com/vbvm.html
http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://softworksltd.c om/ -
Old news - 10 years ago for VB5
Almost 10 years ago there was pretty much what you want for VB5. I still have original announce email and even necessary binaries to try it for DOS, SCO, Linux, AIX etc. I can post binaries with readme and sample code if someone is interested. Let me know.
http://groups.google.com/group/comp.os.linux.devel opment.system/msg/3a0293334be4ec01
http://web.archive.org/web/20010203155600/softwork sltd.com/vbvm.html
http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://softworksltd.c om/ -
Well
Should have stuck with Network Solutions, then! I always say, if it ain't broke, don't fix it.
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The quick and dirty version (was Re:We could...)
Also, if you want the quick and dirty version, a couple radio dramas from the 50s did adaptations of "Universe," the story in question. You can find one here.
http://www.archive.org/download/OTRR_Dimension_X_S ingles/Dimension_X_1950-11-26__31_Universe.mp3 -
Re:dumb move
I live a lot closer to Bhutan than most people here on
/. , and I call typical bullshit leftist (it is the guardian after all) scaremongering on this article.
The violence, corruption and crime that's rising in Bhutan is quite natural. Any society that is completely free of crime, poverty and corruption is too totalitarian and oppressive for me to live in.
Bhutan has been a country with an extremely poor record of ethnic/religious tolerance and freedom. The "Druk" aristocracy in Bhutan were a bunch of bigoted assholes that would have given the Ku-Klux-Klan and Taliban a run for their money. Hindus in Bhutan who (mainly descended from Nepalese immigrants) were pretty much treated like untermenschen by the Druks. The Tek Nath Rizal government passed "sumptuary laws" against the Hindu minority (special "dress codes" based on ethnic/religious denomination, think anti-Semitic yellow badge of Nazi Germany for a comparison).Some 103,000 Hindus were ethnically cleansed by the Buddhist Fundamentalists in Bhutan and sent back to India and Nepal (and you thought Americans had draconian immigration laws). Bhutan is widely known as one of the most racist and xenophobic countries in South Asia.Dunno abt you, but this is not a country that I would want to live in, even if it meant no crime/corruption/whatever.
All this oppression stems from their inbred isolationist culture, which creates suspicion of all "foreign elements". It may seem like an "idyllic paradise" to the clueless observer, but so would Apartheid South Africa to a Boer.
The introduction of television,internet etc. will teach them about the world outside in some form, expose them to novel ideas and the complexities of other cultures. This will, in the long run, help create a more egalitarian society, though arguably a more violent one (join the club). The rise in crime etc. is merely people learning about new things and new possibilities from TV and expressing themselves accordingly. No surprise that with the modernization of Bhutan came the government introducing reforms that would help alleviate the problem.
References:
http://www.voanews.com/uspolicy/archive/2006-10/20 06-10-19-voa1.cfm?CFID=96985519&CFTOKEN=24717708
http://www.unhcr.org/cgi-bin/texis/vtx/publ/opendo c.htm?tbl=PUBL&id=4444d3c93e
http://web.archive.org/web/20030408101642/http://w ww.crin.org/docs/resources/treaties/crc.27/Bhutan. doc -
bounties
Seems like an as-yet unsolved problem.
There have been proposals to have a centralized mozilla bounty system at mozilla.org, but they've been dismissed as WONTFIX in anticipation of human conflict becoming distracting to those with authority over the code base.
Some, like Mark Shuttleworth, once held hope for more support for bounties from Mozilla, such as a bugzilla feature to associate bounties with bugs. That hope seems to have disappeared.
Mozilla-related Wiki attempts have also disappeared, and the other websites out there seem to lack critical mass.
However, Mozilla has started a limited bounty program for security bugs, with help from long-time bounty advocate Mark Shuttlesworth.
As far as the mechanics of moving money around, http://fundable.org/ might be an option.
other sites
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http://bountycounty.org/
http://www.opensourcexperts.com/bountylist.html?bo untytype=1&cat=33
http://croczilla.com/zap/bounties/ -
bounties
Seems like an as-yet unsolved problem.
There have been proposals to have a centralized mozilla bounty system at mozilla.org, but they've been dismissed as WONTFIX in anticipation of human conflict becoming distracting to those with authority over the code base.
Some, like Mark Shuttleworth, once held hope for more support for bounties from Mozilla, such as a bugzilla feature to associate bounties with bugs. That hope seems to have disappeared.
Mozilla-related Wiki attempts have also disappeared, and the other websites out there seem to lack critical mass.
However, Mozilla has started a limited bounty program for security bugs, with help from long-time bounty advocate Mark Shuttlesworth.
As far as the mechanics of moving money around, http://fundable.org/ might be an option.
other sites
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http://bountycounty.org/
http://www.opensourcexperts.com/bountylist.html?bo untytype=1&cat=33
http://croczilla.com/zap/bounties/ -
Re:documents on iowaconsumercase.org gone
I see that google caches of some of it are still available. I couldn't find anything at archive.org though on the WBM.
A quick glance at Groklaw shows more links to the Iowa site then copies of the docs. What a shame the public record gets so quickly covered up once the money starts changing hands. -
Re:Where's fine-grained security control?
As the anonymous post under you have already said, windows does have roughly 30 different priviledges it can have for processes, just like VMS. As you may already know, Windows NT was based on VMS and done by basically Digital's VMS crew (Cutler and co.), so much of the security model is very similar. Check out this article written by no other than mr. Russinovich about the relationship between NT and VMS.
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Completely gone
From the Wayback Machine:
0 pages found for http://captaincopyright.ca/ -
Re:Now we get to see...
It's all done with trees of keys. "The other obvious alternative, having a unique key for each device, would mean that the media key block would be far too large. There will be one billion DVD players built over the life of the system, and if each one needed a separate encryption, there would be no room for the movie. The secret is for each device to have a set of keys rather than a single key. Many of those keys are shared with other devices, but no two devices have exactly the same set of keys."
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Re:More info on 0.0 SpaceI really wish I had a map of the game a year ago - there were 5-6 groups in the areas BoB is currently expanding into down south. Ask, and you may receive.
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Evaluating vision papers is tough
Reading vision papers is very frustrating. At one time I had a shelf full of collections of papers on vision. You can read all these "my algorithm worked really great on these test cases" papers, and still have no idea if it's any good. You can read the article on the vision algorithm used by the Stanford team to win the DARPA Grand Challenge, and it won't be obvious that it's a useful approach. But it is.
This is, unfortunately, another Roland the Plogger article on Slashdot. So this probably isn't a major breakthrough. It doesn't sound like one.
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Re:Why announce now?
>> Surely it is better to wait and see what they come up with next.
If you want to see what Microsoft will come up with next, say around 2010, history tells us you can go here:
http://web.archive.org/web/20050731002116/www.appl e.com/macosx/ -
Re:Your results...do not impressThe amount of commentary heard from Carl Sagan took a sharp decline in 1996, when he died.
Hm. I guess I should pay closer attention to obituaries for popular astrophysicists.
You're still free to show us the data, assuming the Men In Black haven't taken it away from you.
Well, all I did was use Google and Amazon. Anybody with a few days and a desire to seek can do that. When you were in school you didn't ask other kids to do your homework. Why start now?
If you are really interested, then I would start with Richard Dolan and then take a look at the Cassiopean Transcripts.
-FL -
Re:Completely Moot
In case you wonder what SDMI was (this was me), and how it relates to Mr. Chiariglione today, hopefully this will save you a little time.
The End of SDMI
The reason why the article says SDMI is "ending" is because SDMI was a "solution" to the MP3 problem of the late '90's. When Eric Scheirer wrote the article for MP3.com, he had this to say:
"The solution is to get the technology companies into bed with the record industry. But the consumer-electronics industry knows a hard lesson that the RIAA has yet to learn: regardless of the business model, it has to start with value to the consumer. What it all adds up to is this: the floodgates are opening. Portable devices will be huge for Christmas this year [Article published Oct 15 1999]; they will all play MP3, and none of them will be SDMI-compliant in any way that matters."
So if SDMI (Mr. Chiariglione 's baby) was truly failing in October of 1999, and MP3 was going to be the wave of the future, the core problem was DRM.
But Mr. Chiariglione had a rebuttal for that article (also on mp3.com), just like he has a rebuttal for Jobs today.
SDMI Checks In
Moreover, in contrast to your report on October 15, SDMI is not merely some theoretical possibility. I am sure you have seen the same announcements I have-advertisements and other public statements that announce the intention of some leading manufacturing companies to produce portable devices complying with the SDMI specification.
Mr. Chiariglione is convinced that SDMI will be a success.
Finally, read the Wikipedia article on SDMI for the rest of the story:
Scheirer's comments proved to be correct; the SDMI has been inactive since May 18, 2001. -
Re:Completely Moot
In case you wonder what SDMI was (this was me), and how it relates to Mr. Chiariglione today, hopefully this will save you a little time.
The End of SDMI
The reason why the article says SDMI is "ending" is because SDMI was a "solution" to the MP3 problem of the late '90's. When Eric Scheirer wrote the article for MP3.com, he had this to say:
"The solution is to get the technology companies into bed with the record industry. But the consumer-electronics industry knows a hard lesson that the RIAA has yet to learn: regardless of the business model, it has to start with value to the consumer. What it all adds up to is this: the floodgates are opening. Portable devices will be huge for Christmas this year [Article published Oct 15 1999]; they will all play MP3, and none of them will be SDMI-compliant in any way that matters."
So if SDMI (Mr. Chiariglione 's baby) was truly failing in October of 1999, and MP3 was going to be the wave of the future, the core problem was DRM.
But Mr. Chiariglione had a rebuttal for that article (also on mp3.com), just like he has a rebuttal for Jobs today.
SDMI Checks In
Moreover, in contrast to your report on October 15, SDMI is not merely some theoretical possibility. I am sure you have seen the same announcements I have-advertisements and other public statements that announce the intention of some leading manufacturing companies to produce portable devices complying with the SDMI specification.
Mr. Chiariglione is convinced that SDMI will be a success.
Finally, read the Wikipedia article on SDMI for the rest of the story:
Scheirer's comments proved to be correct; the SDMI has been inactive since May 18, 2001. -
Re:yeah, it's kind of freudian
Are you sure about that? (see the <title> and footer)
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Re:Doesn't this exist already? Sure does.
See http://www.archive.org/details/movies
Some of that stuff is pretty decent. -
Old News - Stale Data
The RIAA statement has been around since 2003, so I don't think anything new is underway, even though it did get picked up by some "reporters" this month as if it were news. This is what it looked like in December 2003, according to the Web Archive: http://web.archive.org/web/20031202021246/http://
w ww.riaa.com/news/marketingdata/cost.asp -- I could not see any difference. Also, note that then and now, the data only goes up to 1996 -- a bit stale even by 2003 standards. -
Way Back Machine
They were wrong, and their parent publications were generally too stupid (or embarrassed) to archive their words on the Internet, so I don't have links for you...
Oh God.. Don't remind me. I was trying this weekend to write a college paper on the history of the internet. I eventually gave up and picked another topic because the myraid of things I remember that were interesting and not just technical simply aren't recorded or have been removed. Some of the things I remember myself (got my first email account and was big into MUDS in the last 80s) simply can't be found anymore and I needed solid references not just what I remembered. Sad really.I don't know if they have any of it but have you thought of checking out the Way Back Machine, Internet Archives? Another place to look is Find Articles.
Falcon -
artists and the creative commons
Artists will largely accept this turn of events, because in their view, they've already spent more than enough years starving.
Actually more and more artists, muscians in this case, are turning to the Creative Commons and are uploading their music to services like this one as well as Internet Archives, GoingWare, and Magnatunes amoung others.
Falcon -
Re:Groklaw coverage
Try this: http://web.archive.org/web/20041205152641/www.app
l e.com/ilife/video/ilife04_320.htmlEmbarrassing stuff.
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Re:Looks like he took his website downIt seems that page hasn't been updates since Aug 2005 according to the way back machine. I was goint to ask if it was the same guy, but looks like he really spammed that website all over the internet. Including this
I've just set up my account with WebsiteSource a few days ago, and their support through the process of moving all our sites to their network was amazing. I'm very pleased so far with everything. Not only are the prices great, but you actually get way more than you pay for with them. I recommend them to anyone looking for a new hosting company. I've used five in the past (and I work for the 6th largest one in the world), and I'd recommend this over any and all of them. Mike Jandreau www.mikejandreau.com
He's willing to trash his workplace to get another link to his website. What a total loooooser. I really hope they can him. -
Good Old Blackboard
See an insecurity in their systems? They'll sue you to shut you up about it.
http://web.archive.org/web/20050404014123/se2600.o rg/acidus/campuswide/index.html -
Bayh-Dole is bad for Academia and US citizens
Before Bayh-Dole, there was a system where everything was patented with the patent assigned to the government and it sat on a shelf, as no one benefited by marketing the patent to potential customers. The *right* thing to do from a public point of view would have been that all inventions funded in whole or in part by US taxpayer dollars should have been put into the public domain as they had already been paid for. Instead, patent lawyers and universities got a free hand-out and the US public gets asked to pay twice (or more) for the same stuff. Conflict-of-interest and corruption plain and simple. Now universities keep professors from talking about their research until patents are filed and academic research is further skewed by pressure short term commercialization possibilities. The problem of money in academia has to do more with the pyramid scheme nature of PhD eduction (see below).
For more on how Bayh-Dole has ruined academia, see the article "The Kept University" for example:
http://www.newamerica.net/publications/articles/20 00/the_kept_university
http://www.colorado.edu/Sociology/gimenez/papers/k eptu.html
"One of the most basic tenets of science is that we share information in an open way," says Steven Rosenberg, of the National Cancer Institute, who is among the country's leading cancer researchers. "As biotech and pharmaceutical companies have become more involved in funding research, there's been a shift toward confidentiality that is severely inhibiting the interchange of information." A few years ago Rosenberg confronted this problem firsthand when he tried to obtain information on safe-dosage levels for a reagent he sought to use in a clinical trial involving an experimental cancer treatment. The company asked Rosenberg to sign a confidentiality agreement, and when he refused, they withheld the information. Rosenberg has become so alarmed about secrecy that he now urges all scientists and research institutions to reject confidentiality restrictions on principle. Few have heeded his call. A 1997 survey of 2,167 university scientists, which appeared in the Journal of the American Medical Association, revealed that nearly one in five had delayed publication for more than six months to protect proprietary information -- and this was the number that admitted to delay. "The ethics of business and the ethics of science do not mix well," Rosenberg says. "This is the real dark side of science."
For more on the deeper issue of the collapse of the PhD pyramid scheme, as the exponential growth of academia has ended, see Dr. David Goodstein's testimony to Congress (he is the Vice Provost of CalTech):
http://web.archive.org/web/20060509161315/http://w ww.house.gov/science/goodstein_04-01.htm
"In the course of a career, a professor in a research university turns out, on the average, about 15 Ph.D.'s. Many of these would like, themselves, to become in turn professors in research universities and turn out 15 more Ph.D.'s. After all, these were the gems that were selected at each stage of the mining and sorting operation. Becoming a professor seems to many of them the natural culmination of their successful educations. That is obviously one of the principal engines of the exponential growth that lasted for a hundred years in America. Those students are bitterly disappointed when they find out the jobs they want aren't there, and their disappointment seeps down through the ranks, turning younger students away from science. There are some who have blamed these problems on a shortage of Federal funds for research. Many have argued that we should double our national investment in science, and that may well be true. But I do not thin -
Trademark since 2001 Feb 24
The domain appears to have been extent prior to 25 Feb 2004.
http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://gmail.de
However, the first two archived pages are error messages so it's not clear if this was being used for an email service. If this was a registered trade mark then it wouldn't matter as the Nice Classification for marks is Telecoms (which surely encompasses websites) - I'm not sure how it works with unregistered marks though.
http://oami.europa.eu/CTMOnline from OHIM (the European TM registry) shows the earliest registration of "gmail" to be by Google Inc. 14/Apr/2004.
As I understand it though, at least in Europe, you have to protect a mark (to maintain it as an designation of origin of goods or service) otherwise you lose your rights to it.
In summary ... a bit more info please. -
Wayback Search
I don't see that any of these "alternative" search engines offer fixes to Google's current shortcomings (or at least the ones I run into). Personally, I can't wait til there's the Wayback Machine's archives are searchable by text rather than just domain. Hell, I'd even be appreciative if you could search for parts of domains. I can't overstate how often I'm driven crazy by remembering something from a site I saw long ago and not being able to refresh my memory because the site either went down or fell out of Google's listings.