Slashdot Mirror

our beowulf team (http://home.cwru.edu/beowulf) used pvm for linux, but pvm runs on everything including the kitchen sink. there are new builds of the win9x/nt versions of pvm out on http://www.csm.ornl.gov/pvm/ . it is a good system, i suggest putting all the doc files in one huge binder. not that bad to work with though...

It doesn't say anywhere in the article that the codec is going to be compatible with RealPlayer. Furthermore, the TiVo implementation may have rights management built into it. If you transfer video from the TiVo to your computer, it may not play on your PC even if it is the same codec.

On a lighter note, maybe I can now watch flash movies on my TV. Hyakugojuuichi!

"Check out the A HREF='http://www.cnn.com/2001/TECH/ptech/12/18/com puter.lip.read.idg/index.html">CNN Story, Intel Press Release, and project home page.'"

Dear editor, please check this out first...

I'm sure chrisd wanted to have the l33t first (story)post..why can't we mod down /. staff for posting such things? ;)

Keyboard-based navigation tools -- e.g. a command-line interface -- are ten times faster if

• the user has already learned the interface .

Okay, totally valid point. It _is_ of course non-obvious how to use vi for text editing or bash for file manipulation. Still, most people who use computers for work use them for hours a day - and mostly using the same applications. So, being able to use them is IMO much preferrable to being "simple".

• the user doesn't have to re-learn the commands.

That, of course is an implementation problem - if you take a look at GNU software, there's the Readline library that controls how you enter text (and a few more things :)) in almost any application. So you set your preferences once, and they work in your mail client, on the shell prompt and in your web browser, just the same (of course, with configurable exceptions and all the candy you'd expect from a solution for smart people). Trouble with readline is only that it's GPL licensed, and therefore never found adaptation in any non-free (or non-GPL, for that matter) software...

The Physics of Star Trek, by Lawrence Krauss, a Physics professor at CWRU.

Cheers,
J.J.

I take care of your screen while you're away.

The beams in this article are orthogonal in the sense that channel #1 has it's E-field pointed prependicular to channel #2's E-field so they won't interfere with each other (so they're `orthogonal' in the usual compu-geek sense of the term, too.)

The german team seems to have solved two big engineering problems with sending two channels of information this way. One is to send a mean-polarized signal so that you can compare the two channels against it (kind of a carrier signal for polarization) to see which channel is which.

The other I confess to not understanding. Apparently there are sync problems -- signals carried one polarization may travel faster than the other polarization. I can only guess that this is a problem caused by inhomogenaities in fibre. Whatever its caused by, they've managed to measure it and compensate for it.

As for your other question, they definately can and do use frequency as a way of encoding information. Just like with radio signals, you can use the brightness of the light (amplitude modulation, or AM) or its color (frequency modulation, FM). In practice, FM is less problematic; the amplitude of a signal is easily confused by noise, whereas frequency is much less so.

http://claancy.cwru.edu/wolftest.exe

By the way, I don't think about the "Open Source community" as a distinct entity. There are two movements afoot: the Free Software Movement, whose focus is the political and ethical issues of software freedom, and the Open Source Movement, whose focus is to avoid political issues of freedom, and to talk about the technological benefits of "Open Source". The movements differ greatly because their fundamental philosophies and motivations are different.

However, together we form one community---the same community that started in 1984 when the Free Software Movement started. In 1998, within that community, we had another movement start up with a different focus, but we've always been together in one community. Thus, I hope you'll think of the community as including both the Free Software Movement and the Open Source Movement, and remember that it originally started as the Free Software community. At the very least, please call it the "Free Software and Open Source community", so that Free Software isn't left completely out of the picture.

One of the reasons I have been hesitant to put my software under the GPL is that increasingly, the FSF seems intent on drawing battle lines between the ``true believers'' and the ``unbelievers'' of the Giving Away Software (GAS) movement[*]. In support of this goal, RMS, BMK, and others seem to be attempting to rewrite history in two important ways.

First, they claim that the genesis of the GAS movement was the Free Software movement. As someone who was there, I assure you that this is just silly. I suspect I gave away as much software before there was an FSF as I have given away since. In those days, we didn't worry much about software licenses: recall that it's only been since Apple v. Franklin in 1983 that has even been clear that copyright applies to binary-format software!

The second myth being propagated is that the GAS software we use today is mostly FSF, or originated with FSF software. In particular, the FSF would like you to forget that GNU stands for ``GNU's Not UNIX,'' and that this was as much a protest against the UNIX philosophy as it was against AT&T's proprietary kernels (which were in any case distributed to educational institutions under an essentially GAS license). I know the authors of a few of the GNU utilities, and can assure you that their contributions had as much to do with the existence of a supporting umbrella for their work as any deep philosophical ideas about Software Freedom.

I am unsure what I believe about the idea that ``software should be free.'' But I am sure that those who claim the work of others as their own deserve no respect in an intellectual community. IMHO, RMS and his followers have recently verged dangerously upon the margin of this tactic.

---

* Another unfortunate tactic of the FSF is to take words like ``free'' that are potentially ambiguous but have accepted meanings within the software community, adapt them to their own ends, and then claim that those who ``misuse'' them are in error. The ``Open Source'' movement was in large part an attempt to give a name to the GAS concept inclusive of Free software. Of course, now BMK wants us to distinguish between these two (and give ``Free Software'' the pride of first place, no less), forcing me to change terminology yet again...

bz2-compressed, full-source tree Enjoy,

Ya, at CWRU we have 3 or 4 LAN search engines. It is great. Makes getting those DivX movies a LOT faster (thanks to fiber network). But people still ended up using Napster a lot and the administration got kinda peeved at the huge bandwidth usage. So the restricted Napster access, but only ourbound transfer rates! We still get the blazing downloads, while people downloading from your computer are slowed down.

You can simulate colliding galaxies on your home computer using the Galcrash java applet. There are also several other nice astronomy java applets on this website. It's a cool way to spend the afternoon.

Yay astronomy!

Second, why is the Federal government funding education? That is a local/state issue. Federal funding takes more money from the states (in the form of less ability to tax their own citizens) and throws it into the government waste bin, out of which only some 27 cents on the dollar returns to actually be used in schools!

Jonathan Kozol is an education activist and has been a a teacher in some of the poorest schools in the country. What does he say?

"The reasons for these inequalities aren't hard to find. In this state of Ohio, as in New York and almost every other state within this land, public schools are financed chiefly on the basis of the value of the property and homes in a school district. It is an archaic, and divisive, and undemocratic system that protects the selfish interests of the privileged, and guarantees that we will never have an honest meritocracy in our society, until the day it is transformed."

--
Knowledge is, in every country, the surest basis of public happiness.

Rather than DVD, I think you meant CSS. The idea of full-length digital movies on a 5.25" optical disc is good. The idea of protecting copyright with 40-bit encryption (hah! even the weakest web browser has 56-bit) was dumb. And then there's DMCA (the 1201 part) which basically makes up for the weak encryption with a silly law.


kickin' science like no one else can,
my dick is twice as long as my attention span.

Now, I do happen to be one of those people who jealously guards my main email address, and I don't have to use a spam filter, because I only get about 5% spam. My Yahoo account is for spam.
--

If you think I'm joking take a peek at the following.

geek

new

UMich

And my favorite, check out his Darpa funding: Quinn

I am a Senior at CWRU, where Computer Engineering is, basically, a superset of Computer Science. As a CE, you take every software class a CS person does; but then you take the Engineering core instead of the Arts and Sciences core. The Engineering core is infinitely harder than the A&S core, and that fact leads to some elitism around campus b/w CE's and CS's (i.e. CE's think they are more 31337 than CS's).

One good thing about CE is the fact that you do take a lot of EE classes and the more advanced electromagnetic physics classes. And, while you may think that those have nothing to do with Software Dev., they actually do... a lot. Understanding what a computer does from top to bottom, from every 0 to every 1, for every 5 volt difference, and understanding what voltage is... well, you are a better programmer because of it. Note: I did not say you would be better than a CS programmer, but you personnally would be a better programmer than not having taken those classes. Oh yea, you also take the more advanced maths, which helps a great deal. There is a lot of math involved in programming. Well, not in VB programming; but in any real language while creating a real application. Any analysis or algorithm or testing or verifying is done via mathematics. So, math helps.

Just my $.02,
Jeremy

Although usually it's barber's poles rather than park benches. Has a Fb (false but...) in the AFU FAQ. Other sightings include Caltech, Harvard, and MIT. (many of the pages are quite long, search for "barber").

And by the way... we're listening, but are we transmitting? Is our usual EMF noise enough to clue an alien race in?
--

it is interesting to see that ibm is embracing this project, given that they like to amass server and storage power on large mainframes, single points of failure.

the whole concept of distributed storage, i find, is a more "enlightened" one but it is also one that is harder to implement. i believe that it is theoretically impossible to ensure consistency of data in a distributed storage system.

in such a system, the following criteria have to be satisfied for successful operation:

• migration - data must be moved from one server to another safely, in a transaction-like fashion, with rollback in case a transaction fails.
• replication - data must be copied many times and stored in different places to insure that if a there is a server crash in one place, there is a copy somewhere else
• consistency - a modification of data in one place must be propagated to all the other places.

these conditions are difficult to satisfy, to say the least. also as the system grows in size, these conditions become more difficult to satisfy. so i am interested to see how these problems are addressed in this project..

Egress filtering just doesn't work against DDoS attacks. As such, they are a bad idea.

Here is a problem. I have a connection to the rest of the internet. It is only so wide. Almost everyone I know could use greater bandwidth. What do egress filters do? They limit the bandwitdth to even less than we currently have. So, if I have a T1 to the internet, with egress filters I can now only use half of that bandwidth. This really annoys users. Cutting down their bandwidth for arbitrary reasons doesn't help much.

But, if they are effective, it might be worth it. But they are not. Egress filters work by filtering the data coming from a source down from the full bandwidth availble to some less amount of bandwidth. So, if I have a T1, I can now only use half of it to flood a victim. But chances are I am sharing this T1 with other people and I won't be able to use the full thing anyhow. But the DDoS doesn't care about this. It takes a little bandwith from you, a little bandwidth from your neighbor, and after enough people are added together, you have a rather large stream of data flooding the victim.

DDoS attacks do not work if all the "zombies" are all on the same network. Then they are limited by the one connection that network has to the victim (usually on a totally different area of the internet). So the DDoS comes from many many different places on the internet, from different backbone carriers and different ISP's. This is the only way for a DDoS to be effective.

So limiting one person's bandwidth does not hurt the DDoS, but it does hurt the person whose bandwidth that they paid for you are taking away. Most DDoS attacks use so much bandwidth that cutting it down by a factor of 2 will not stop anything. They usually have orders of magnitude more data than they need because much of it is already filtered by the bandwidth limitations of the "zombies".

The reason DDoS attacks are difficult to prevent is because they were specifically designed into the system. Yahoo was DDoS'ed. How can Yahoo tell the difference between a DDoS attack and all of the sudden millions of users flocking to use Yahoo? When it is users, it is called the Slashdot Effect. When it is zombies, it is called a DDoS. It is the same thing, and anything that prevents one will prevent the other.

Rick Wash

P.S. I have done some work with DDoS clients. See http://biocserver.cwru.edu/~jose/shaft_analysis/no de-analysis.txt

I am President of my University's Linux User Group. A good place to look is on various Linux User's Group's websites. I know my group gives a weekly talk on various topics related to Linux, Unix, etc. and we try to post the slides, etc. of all of our talks on our website. Check out http://cwrulug.cwru.edu/talks/

I also know of one or two other Linux Users Groups that do a similar thing. This is a wealth of information.

Picture this: Start with a 15th century Flemish "Book of Hours", hand illuminated on vellum (goat skin). Scan it at 600dpi 24bit for archival purposes. Reduce your tiffs to 300dpi and you still have 1.06 GB of image data (not very downloadable). Using the DjVu compressor we achieved 205:1 compression so the final product totals 5.44MB. By separating the pages so they only download when called for the initial download is a mere 45.06KB (including all of the HTML and other images on the page) with an average download of subsequent pages only 21.34KB.

DjVu was developed by AT&T Research. It was then purchased by LizardTech last year.

Code commentary is like sex.
If it's good, it's VERY good.

simple. Setup a cron job to run wget get at a specified time. Or listen to a cool station like WRUW that will eventually save a weeks worth of radio on a streaming digital "tape" loop.

http://sammy.cwru.edu/images/msad.jpg

Blowfish, and presumably twofish, are very fast after they generate your sub keys. Basically, they take your key and encrypt it multiple times, and use the results as keys for the actual encryption/decryption scheme. Once you get the sub key overhead out of the way, encyption/decryption is pretty quick. I wrote a paper on blowfish last year for my school's Cryptography course.

garc

Blowfish, and presumably twofish, are very fast after they generate your sub keys. Basically, they take your key and encrypt it multiple times, and use the results as keys for the actual encryption/decryption scheme. Once you get the sub key overhead out of the way, encyption/decryption is pretty quick. I wrote a paper on blowfish last year for my school's Cryptography course.

garc

As events like these at MIT show, and as slashdot quickly approaches a quarter of a million users, it's time for a slashdot reunion. Below is enclosed a list of the first 50 users, the folks who really know what it means to say, "I remember the good ol' days." How many of these users are still active? Reply, and show your true colors. The who replies with the lowest userid gets a prize! CmdrTaco (1) email: malda@slashdot.org
Hemos (2)
drendite (3) email: reishus@utdallas.edu
CowboyNeal (4) email: pater@slashdot.org
samzenpus (5)
jgoldsch (6)
CLorox (7) email: clorspam@marblehead.com
Emmett Plant (8) email: emmett@slashdot.org
keith (9) email: kcalder at andrew.cmu.edu
ximenes (10) email: sak8@po.cwru.edu
velkro (11) email: root@localhost
RAD Kade 1 (12) email: kmradlof@nospam@colby.edu
TechNoir (13) email: technoir@linux.com
Christopher Bibbs (14)
DeadBeef (15) email: spam@osoal.org.nz
Tom Rothamel (16) email: tom-slashdot@onegeek.org
Rolf W. Rasmussen (17) email: rolfwr+slashdot@ii.uib.no
davidu (18) email: davidu@angrywhitemale.com
steffenz (19)
Pug (21) email: pug007@sgi.net
jdesbonnet (22)
bounce@vegas.net (23)
Dorkman (24)
geNeV (25)
psychonut (26) email: lfd@NOSPAMsnip.net
francais (27) email: my1stname@mylastname.org
version conflict (28) email: cat /proc/kcore >> /dev/audio
jk (29) email: hns@scurvy.org
IAN (30)
Vadim Grinshpun (31) email: vg23@nospam.cornell.edu spidey (32)
ccg (34) email: ccg_spam at yahoo.com (just change 'at')
Crow- (35)
BOredAtWork (36) email: dsracic at vt.edu
smartax (37) email: br+slashdot@mindshark.com
David Rolfe (38) email: fromslashdot@shro0m.cx
Beirne (39)
michiel (41)
magg (42) email: mSaPgAgM@mail.com
Zack (44) email: zallison@rice.edu.spam
Ryan Kirkpatrick (45) email: slashdot@rkirkpat.net
Kadmin Kobolos (46)
euroderf (47) email: fred@moremagic.com
Mark Edwards (48)
sariman (49) email: ben@REMOVEsariman.net
jon (50)

(Though sec 1201 (a)(2)(C) might get you if you're distributing it and advertise "this will let you listen to pirated music!")

First, thanks for the link. Second, IANAL. Third, until I read the actual text, I had no idea just how evil the DMCA was. I mean, I knew it was bad, but I had no idea just how much so. It looks as though it was written to specifically overrule Sony Corp. of America v. Universal City Studios, Inc., which affirmed Sony's right to sell VCRs even though the main advertised use at the time was arguably piracy.

Finally, while we could argue all day about what constitutes "effective", the best place to look would be back in the DMCA, where it is formally defined. I agree that any device which can gain access by simply ignoring the technological measure should nullify DMCA protection, but hardware eventually fails, and I think the RIAA (and MPAA) are banking on the expectation that someday, no such hardware will exist.

Also, Sound blaster cards were widely distributed via legal channels before the watermarking is released. I understand that as "for all intents and purposes" because at least 50% of computer users have a standard unrestricted sound card right now and can legally sell them (even if there's an unstated assumption that the card will be used to pirate). At what point do you say that it's not effective? 100,000 people having a legal tool that instantly accesses it? 10,000? 1,000?

PS. I don't think they're intending to use watermarking to prevent access, only track people, but this thread is interesting anyway.
--

It does say this though:

• No person shall circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title.

NS6 PR2 is actually a step backwards from PR1. A lot of things that worked in PR1 were broken with PR2. Sure, all the glitzy toys are fun but, does the damned browser work? NO!!!

I have a very short, very simple wish list for the folks at Netscape:

• Real support for CSS
• Document rendering that resembles the code according to the recognized definitions of HTML

He's obsessed with 4.3BSD, and is trying to recreate pristine sources of it so as to continue to use it well into the next millenium (with as few modifications as possible, of course).
He thinks that 10BaseT is the "evil intruder" in the world of network cabling; 10Base2 is acceptable, but 10Base5 is the One True Cable.
He made his own version of gzip and switched one of the bytes in the header; it's incompatible, but it's Sokolovian.

How do I know this? He used to work at CWRU before he made death threats against the president and VP of IS. Then they threw him in the nuthouse. Apparently he's loose again and on the rampage.

A friendly guide for reporters and editors on the correct use of our name.

Our correct name is Case Western Reserve University.

On second reference, simply use CWRU. It's that simple.

We may also be referred to as Case Western Reserve, or even Case Reserve (especially if you're referring to our sports teams, the Spartans). Our name is a result of the federation of two previously separate institutions -- Case Institute of Technology and Western Reserve University -- more than thirty years ago. So our name is neither Case Western nor Case Western University (that's like "University of North," which is meaningless) nor are we just Case--unless referring only to the Case School of Engineering.


http://www.cwru.edu/pubaff/univcomm/cwruname.htm

If your class is more research-oriented (check my other comment for a more language and programming skills-oriented project), you could go with a project like I did in my senior year. A simulation using basic planetary physics (Newton's Law of Universal Gravitation) of the motion of the planets. Once I constructed this simulation, I tested Kepler's Laws of Planetary Motion against newer methods to see if good ol Kepler was right ;). Of course he passed with flying colors. Check my web page (I'm in the process of adding this) or download the source I used. Or, for those who like to see the results, download this file for the final program (use "Kepler" for the password: extract and run univgrav.exe with the bgi files in the same directory).

Sorry if this was a little obscure: keep checking my web page, this article piqued my interest. I'll put up a page dedicated to my research in my senior year soon (by August 4).

If your class is more research-oriented (check my other comment for a more language and programming skills-oriented project), you could go with a project like I did in my senior year. A simulation using basic planetary physics (Newton's Law of Universal Gravitation) of the motion of the planets. Once I constructed this simulation, I tested Kepler's Laws of Planetary Motion against newer methods to see if good ol Kepler was right ;). Of course he passed with flying colors. Check my web page (I'm in the process of adding this) or download the source I used. Or, for those who like to see the results, download this file for the final program (use "Kepler" for the password: extract and run univgrav.exe with the bgi files in the same directory).

Sorry if this was a little obscure: keep checking my web page, this article piqued my interest. I'll put up a page dedicated to my research in my senior year soon (by August 4).

If your class is more research-oriented (check my other comment for a more language and programming skills-oriented project), you could go with a project like I did in my senior year. A simulation using basic planetary physics (Newton's Law of Universal Gravitation) of the motion of the planets. Once I constructed this simulation, I tested Kepler's Laws of Planetary Motion against newer methods to see if good ol Kepler was right ;). Of course he passed with flying colors. Check my web page (I'm in the process of adding this) or download the source I used. Or, for those who like to see the results, download this file for the final program (use "Kepler" for the password: extract and run univgrav.exe with the bgi files in the same directory).

Sorry if this was a little obscure: keep checking my web page, this article piqued my interest. I'll put up a page dedicated to my research in my senior year soon (by August 4).

One idea that might be interesting (for a week or so) is a compatibility test in groups. I base this on personal experience: it happened to be the most interesting thing my class did in my senior year. Have groups of three-four students each design their concept of an interpretation program for a popular "compatibility test." For those who haven't had it done to their school, the idea is many surveys (all the same of course) are given out en masse to all students. Whoever wants to, returns the surveys, with their name written and multiple-choice answers circled. The distributor of the test checks the answers (by the program) and returns the best matches (based on same answers) for each person who submitted a survey and paid the fee (oh yes, this can be profitable as well, you budding capitalists ;) ). Some great ideas come up, e.g., ways to handle ties in compatibility (I like the way mine handled that best, see below for link to my C++ source), Top Ten lists, and even incompatibility tests.

All in all, a great exercise in array manipulation and pretty fun to play with too. Can be whatever you make of it.
Go to my homepage at www.markpatrickmccartney.com or just download the source.
Some of the concepts I used that might be fun to suggest, for those who hate scanning source (I'll admit it, my programming style is not what it should be...):
- a random data generator, for testing purely random surveys
- ties for compatibility, i.e., what do you do when everybody is 0% compatible with this poor person, or when there are ten matches at 45%, and you're usually displaying only five... ;)
- Top Ten Most Compatible lists: who are the Computer Class Sweeties (and/or dirty rotten cheaters)
- Incompatibility can be fun! ;> (but watch out for those 0% results...make sure the survey is big enough.)

One idea that might be interesting (for a week or so) is a compatibility test in groups. I base this on personal experience: it happened to be the most interesting thing my class did in my senior year. Have groups of three-four students each design their concept of an interpretation program for a popular "compatibility test." For those who haven't had it done to their school, the idea is many surveys (all the same of course) are given out en masse to all students. Whoever wants to, returns the surveys, with their name written and multiple-choice answers circled. The distributor of the test checks the answers (by the program) and returns the best matches (based on same answers) for each person who submitted a survey and paid the fee (oh yes, this can be profitable as well, you budding capitalists ;) ). Some great ideas come up, e.g., ways to handle ties in compatibility (I like the way mine handled that best, see below for link to my C++ source), Top Ten lists, and even incompatibility tests.

All in all, a great exercise in array manipulation and pretty fun to play with too. Can be whatever you make of it.
Go to my homepage at www.markpatrickmccartney.com or just download the source.
Some of the concepts I used that might be fun to suggest, for those who hate scanning source (I'll admit it, my programming style is not what it should be...):
- a random data generator, for testing purely random surveys
- ties for compatibility, i.e., what do you do when everybody is 0% compatible with this poor person, or when there are ten matches at 45%, and you're usually displaying only five... ;)
- Top Ten Most Compatible lists: who are the Computer Class Sweeties (and/or dirty rotten cheaters)
- Incompatibility can be fun! ;> (but watch out for those 0% results...make sure the survey is big enough.)

One idea that might be interesting (for a week or so) is a compatibility test in groups. I base this on personal experience: it happened to be the most interesting thing my class did in my senior year. Have groups of three-four students each design their concept of an interpretation program for a popular "compatibility test." For those who haven't had it done to their school, the idea is many surveys (all the same of course) are given out en masse to all students. Whoever wants to, returns the surveys, with their name written and multiple-choice answers circled. The distributor of the test checks the answers (by the program) and returns the best matches (based on same answers) for each person who submitted a survey and paid the fee (oh yes, this can be profitable as well, you budding capitalists ;) ). Some great ideas come up, e.g., ways to handle ties in compatibility (I like the way mine handled that best, see below for link to my C++ source), Top Ten lists, and even incompatibility tests.

All in all, a great exercise in array manipulation and pretty fun to play with too. Can be whatever you make of it.
Go to my homepage at www.markpatrickmccartney.com or just download the source.
Some of the concepts I used that might be fun to suggest, for those who hate scanning source (I'll admit it, my programming style is not what it should be...):
- a random data generator, for testing purely random surveys
- ties for compatibility, i.e., what do you do when everybody is 0% compatible with this poor person, or when there are ten matches at 45%, and you're usually displaying only five... ;)
- Top Ten Most Compatible lists: who are the Computer Class Sweeties (and/or dirty rotten cheaters)
- Incompatibility can be fun! ;> (but watch out for those 0% results...make sure the survey is big enough.)

disks, tape, cds... they all have a relatively short lifespan. picture storing data in mice, just feed them and keep them warm. ev en if th e parents die the children will have the artificial chromosomes... (that is unless they recombine, in which case all of your documents or whatever are worthless....)

in fact they do generate a lot of heat. we had a cluster of 14 P120's and a single P133 with a Fore ASX 1000 switch generating a sizable heat dent that would actually shut it down (crash) in the summertime. we wound up moving it to a server room which was very well cooled (about 60 degrees F) and things improved there.

i know that the HIVE also had to cool things very forcibly (air in the bottom and drawn out the top of the racks). heat is definitely a big problem.

HTML code that you (or a computer program you command) produce is most certainly copyrightable, just as source code is. The data (content) inside is also copyrightable, but a blanket copyright covers both.

The precedent of copyrighting code was established in a lawsuit between Apple Computer and Franklin Computer in 1983.

Example: If you created a web site using Yahoo's home page as a base, and changed all the words and all the graphics, you would still be liabel for copyright infringement.

How this pertains to this partocular case depends entirely onthe arrangement between you, the advertising agency, and the end client.

Kevin Fox

My own take on it can be extended to the idea of laptops in the schools; it abrogates personal choice. In the college setting, it not only ignores the student's established OS preferences, but their specific computer needs and usage patterns; some people need a powerful desktop system for 3D rendering, some people want a great video card for our -- oops, I mean their -- Quake 3 fix, and some of us just plain can't cope with more distraction in class than that afforded by our Palm IIIs.

For younger kids, the OS question is even more pressing; the computer companies that support these 'educational' efforts want the children of America to grow up equating "computer" with their operating system. In much the same way that Pepsi has bought my campus, hoping to train us all to be Pepsi drinkers, computer companies want to "get 'em young". Even inadvertently, the educational systems will be choosing an operating system to teach to the exclusion of others.

Also, the sheer distraction of a computer is problematic. When only one or two kids in a whole class has a laptop, the teacher can still maintain discipline. When every kid has one, and is encouraged to have it on during class, very few kids are going to pay any attention to the teacher.

This can be avoided by using the kind of computer education model that my (private) high school used; they had a computer lab, and various installations of Mac and PC computers scattered throughout the school. They didn't have any Unix machines (*sigh*) but we were taught to use applications under both MacOS and Win95, as well as some weird Novell interface. We had a "Computers" class, where we learned to touch type, to program shapes in Logowriter, and occasionally some other classes, usually Math, would arrange for us to get new software loaded that was germane to the class, and then teach us to use it.

Giving laptops to immature students and expecting them to not get trashed is incredibly naive. Expecting them to be used only for educational purposes is even more so. Giving laptops to kids will give them an early learning bias for the chosen operating system (and who *doesn't* think it will be Winblows?), will distract them from their classes, and will encourage learning of application skills, not content. Besides, public schools (I attended Oregon public schools for years and years) would do better to raise teacher's salaries, decrease class sizes, increase tracking, and pay for music programs, than to waste money on laptops for every child. Teach the kids to type early; introduce applications slowly as the years go by, using well-networked, well-maintained desktop systems at school, and hire knowledgable teachers to teach computer classes. More exposure to computers can be at the parents' discretion (it all comes back to active parenting, doesn't it?) and/or on the students' own time.

Felicity Shoulders
-------------
"Either I'm gonna kill her, or I'm beginning to like her." - Han Solo

I did a review of the book for the CWRULUG (Case Western Reserve University Linux Users Group).

I did a review of the book for the CWRULUG (Case Western Reserve University Linux Users Group).

I've been waiting to see if the US courts would ever clue onto this. It's a very important idea that code is communication as much as instruction, and almost all computer code is intended for people to read (even if the same programmer six months later).

The courts have now tacitly acknowledged that rather than restricting technology, crypto source export laws were restricting discussion of crypto. This seems obvious looking at the title of the book this case is about - "Computers and the Law". I'm kind of disappointed that the academic community didn't kick up a stink, because Junger was an academic. But in the end the whole exercise seemed like trying to restrict nuke proliferation by banning any discussion involving nuclear physics equations.

tangent - art and creation are a higher purpose

There is a group at my university's physics department working on a design for a cool planet detecting satillite. It is called BOSS. Check it out, cool stuff.

A wealthy eccentric who marches to the beat of a different drum. But you may call me "Noodle Noggin."

There is a group at my university's physics department working on a design for a cool planet detecting satillite. It is called BOSS. Check it out, cool stuff.

A wealthy eccentric who marches to the beat of a different drum. But you may call me "Noodle Noggin."