Slashdot Mirror

Any ability to record, qualifies as a disqualifying 'feature'.
Manufacturing Document http://www.ntia.doc.gov/otiahome/dtv/DTVmanufactur ers.pdf

I for one welcome our new coupon-bearing DRM overlords.

As a possibly useful analogy, something you can download from a web site is subject to export restrictions (http://www.bis.doc.gov/licensing/exportingbasics. htm) whether it is actually downloaded or not. The analogy then is that making copies available over the internet is subject to copyright restrictions, whether copies are made or not.

http://www.ntia.doc.gov/otiahome/dtv/dtvcouponfaq. html
How do I obtain and redeem converter box coupons?

Between January 1, 2008 and March 31, 2009, eligible households can request up to two coupons, each valued at $40. All coupons will be sent to requesting households via the United States Postal Service. Recipients must redeem the coupons within 3 months of issuance, but may not combine their two coupons toward the purchase of a single converter box and may not use them for other products.

Can you provide more details about the converter box coupon program?

The specific rules addressing the coupon program will be made public in early 2007. As you can imagine, there are many program implementation details to consider.

In 2006, NTIA issued a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) that sought the public's suggestions on various details of the program's operations, including issues related to these questions. NTIA will provide more detailed program information for the digital-to-analog converter box assistance program on our website, www.ntia.doc.gov.

And as I should note, We hams use distance of the wave to indicate frequency. 2 Meters is 144-148MHz, and .7 Meters is 420-450 MHz . The reason I specify a distinct band is that our rights only extend in those bands (and not, say 143.8 MHz or 452.1 MHz).

To grasp what rights we ham operators have, look at this PDF CHART to understand the spectrum here in the US.

How exactly could a merger of Sirius and XM Radio keep others out of the market? It's not like they can prevent competitors from launching satellites, or buying bandwidth on someone else's satellite. Consumers will always be free to purchase a new receiver if need be.

Probably wasting my time here, since you give me the impression that you just like to bitch at anyone who criticises the status quo, or america, or whatever... But I could be wrong, so I'm going to reply anyway.

The DMCA: I'm afraid I no longer have my bookmarks of instances where the DMCA has negatively affected research, so I typed "negative impact of DMCA on research" into google, and came up with a few examples. Breaking these examples down into research categories, it looks like cryptography, computer science and especially computer security are negatively affected. The search " "negative impact on research" dmca " generates somewhat better results, including this pretty good one: http://www.ntia.doc.gov/ntiahome/occ/dmca/dmca_acm .htm. I could go on, but I think it would be more meaningful for you to do some research yourself.

These are the areas where the DMCA has a direct impact on research, but it has a pretty strong ripple effect. Several months ago I was trying to automate incormporating some binary data measured using some SEM or something like that. I thought "maybe there's a library on the web I can use to read these files". I found such a library, but the site was removed with an apology that it had be taken down thanks to a DMCA complaint. We had to spend few days copying the data by hand. So there's an example of how the DMCA made my research more difficult, and I study Photonics.

What annoys me here is this: I was able to answer your question with just 15 seconds of effort. Why didn't you use google to search for the effect of the DMCA on research before posting this rather ignorant response? One gets the impression your goal is to be polemic, not to pursue the truth.

"It seems like you've just taken the standard set of Slashdot complaints about everything and translated it into this article on education/science without really thinking it through."

How unfortunate that it seems that way, since it's certainly not what I did. Perhaps these complaints crop up on Slashdot often. I certainly use Slashdot as a forum to complain about them. But the observations I made are first hand, not taken from Slashdot, as you should have noticed. I also think I communicated them in a way that was well thought through, but it's just a slashdot post, not a paper or book. Frankly I think only a brief and unbiased comparison of our posts would conclude that in fact yours is the poorly thought out post.

Bias is a difficult problem in science, but I was specifically talking about the well known attempts of the current administration to bias resarch results. Such deliberate and systematic efforts to bias science (motivated by policy and sometimes religious goals) are quite easy to get rid of, as opposed to difficult bias stemming from funding problems, and the peer review inertia effect.

I'm going to elaborate on that last point a little, because it seems that many slashdot readers don't understand scientific bias very well. Bias is very difficult to eliminate altogether, since a little apriori knowledge about the results one expects to get in an experiment can be either helpful or necessary. Bias is also introduced by the peer review process, since there is a natural predjudice towards current scientific canon. A result that strongly contradicts current scientific consensus needs to be more well grounded, more reproducible, and more thorough than one that fits well into current scientific thinking, for what I hope are obvious reasons. If they aren't obvious, I'll have to work a little bit on explaining them. A certain amount of bias is also introduced by funding, since one (be it a company, state or individual) funds only subjects one is interested in. So funding biases research in that it biases the direction of research. These types of bias probably can't be completely avoided, as they are an unfortunate

TFA was short on details. This article http://www.krdotv.com/story.cfm?nav=news&storyID=1 613 says disruptions were affecting devices in the 390 MHz spectrum range.

According to the US Department of Commerce, http://www.ntia.doc.gov/osmhome/allochrt.pdf, the 335.4 to 399.9 MHz band is licensed exclusively to the government.

Sorry for the lack of HTML skills.

Well, your original assertion that "it is illegal for Americans to write strong encryption software (it is considered a munition)" was proven flat wrong. As for the exports, see here.

So they're getting UHF TV channels 52-69 and the VHF channels too? Looking at
any frequency allocation plan, really, US or European all I see is a lot of
spectrum going to "government" and military applications. Look at the US allocation plan
and look at the activity code "government exclusive" / "government/non-government
shared". Same thing when you look at the German allocation plan. Here they try to hide the amount of spectrum assigned to the government by just differentiating between military and civil application ("Nutzung mil/ziv") for example by labelling "BOS" applications ("public safety" or rather "public order") applications as civil (ziv). Btw, you have to know that "BOS" means "Behoerden der Oeffentlichen Sicherheit", "Public Safety Agencies", they don't tell you that.

"doesn't mean the hacked server wasn't using Windows, but there's also a good chance it was running Linux", xswl0931

It's not a server but hundreds of workstations. What OS do you think they are running on the desktop.

"Hundreds of computers must be replaced to cleanse the agency of malicious code, including rootkits and spyware."

"had identified several successful attempts to attack unattended BIS workstations during the overnight hours."

"The official also confirmed that BIS has limited Internet access to stand-alone workstations that are not connected to the bureau's internal network."

http://www.bis.doc.gov/ was running Microsoft-IIS on Windows 2000 when last queried at 7-Oct-2006 02:01:33 GMT

was Re:What OS? Looks like Linux

If you go into a public park on a nice summer day, set up a concert quality sound system (read: very loud, but not that good...) and proceed to shout, "Fuck!" into the microphone so everyone in the park is assaulted by your curse-wording antics, I'm pretty sure you'll be asked to leave (and maybe fined or even arrested.)

Further, you should be asked to leave at the very least. You would be destroying everyone else's enjoyment of a public resource for your own personal interest.

Now, if on the other hand, you want to use your system to play live jazz music or somesuch, you probably still can't just go ahead and do it; someone else might want to play classical piano or something, the dissonance would certainly also be detrimental to others' enjoyment of the park. So you'd go and get a permit. A permit that's not a blanket permission to do whatever you want, but grants you some of the permissions you request in an attempt to satisfy as many people's interest in the space as possible.

Radio spectrum is just like that public park. It's a finite (really finite)* resource that a lot of people want to use. And that is the FCC's job: to allocate that resource in the way that best serves the public.

And anyway, it's not like you can't say your precious cussword over any part of the spectrum, you can use it as much as you want over your cell-phone, C-band television feed, "satellite radio," and a few other bands, much like you could do the same in a clearing way out in the woods, far from most of civilization. But yes, swearing loudly in a small public space should be regulated, and if the FCC doesn't have the constitutional authority to do so, then we should have a constitutional convention and create an authority which can.

They are definitely wrong; 20 MHz really isn't any good for the type of bandwidth they want, unless they took a huge swath of spectrum.

I noticed however that aside from what I knew was down around 20MHz (namely the 15m amateur band), there is a chunk of specturm that's just allocated to "Fixed" and "Mobile" operation (20.010 to 21.0 MHz), so it's not wholly unbelievable. That's the same allocation as the frequencies they're actually asking for, which is a 20 MHz block up at 2155 MHz.

Anyone with an interest in IT these days owes it to themselves to take a look at the Freqency Allocation Chart. Most people I've showed it to (I have a large printout on my wall) are generally surprised at the huge swaths of bandwidth taken up by commercial broadcasting allocations that are barely utilized today. By far the most obvious hog on the chart is the AM radio spectrum, but the VHF and UHF TV bands are pretty bad, too, for what most people get from them.

Of course, I'm probably deluding myself to even imagine that whatever purpose the FCC is going to put them towards, if/when they're reallocated, will do any more public good then sitting there un/under-utilized, like they are right now.

On the other hand, a single mega corp like GM... probably represents a market of roughly equal magnitude to all the 30- person businesses in the country.

This comment struck me as a big exaggeration. I believe small companies are a larger share of GDP than you think. Doing a quick google search didn't find me the perfect stats to back this up, but I found this comment from former Under Secretary of Commerce for International Trade Grant D. Aldonas:

Our 25 million-plus small companies form the backbone of our economy. They create three of every four new jobs, generate more than half of the nation's gross domestic product, and account for nearly 97 percent of all U.S. exporters.

See this page for export regulations and instructions:

http://www.bis.doc.gov/Encryption/Default.htm

Note that the rules change based on how the crypto will be used.. commercial, open source, beta test, etc. My understanding is if you post the source code and tell them where it is, there aren't any other restrictions (it mentions that if the source is publically available (i.e. www) you don't have to worry about restricting downloads to the banned countries). Of course, see the page to confirm these details, consult your lawyer, etc etc.

Even Microsoft does better than that. Microsoft has agreed to TrustE dispute resolution and cooperation with European data protection authorities. Google agrees to neither.

Even Microsoft does better than that. Microsoft has agreed to TrustE dispute resolution and cooperation with European data protection authorities. Google agrees to neither.

Only a part of the spectrum mentioned in the article (from 30-300 GHz) is 'unlicensed', and it is all 'allocated' to some use. A very informative chart can be found at: http://www.ntia.doc.gov/osmhome/allochrt.pdf The bottom row shows the allocation of frequency space from 30-300 GHz. Dense to say the least.

But the law isn't Israel-specific. It prohibits US persons or entities from complying with "unsanctioned foreign boycotts". It also prohibits any US person or entity from discriminating "against any corporation or other organization which is a United States person on the basis of the race, religion, sex, or national origin of any owner, officer, director, or employee of such corporation or organization".

So for Google's China unit to exclude the US branches of Falun Gong (a religious organization) or US branches of Taiwanese political groups (national origin discrimination) from their index seems to be a violation of US export regulations under 15 CFR 160.1.

Working through a foreign subsidiary doesn't get around these rules. That loophole has been plugged very thoroughly.

This could be a real problem for Google.

This is an ultrawideband through-wall imaging system, and is an old technology that has been around for many years. Two of the many manufacturers are Time Domain [Flash!] and Camero.

Note that, while military radio emissions are regulated in the U.S. by the NTIA, U.S. civilian use of ultrawideband through-wall imaging systems is controlled by the FCC (by regulations established in April 2002 [pdf!]). 47 U.S.C. 15.510(5)(e) [pdf!] states that

Through-wall imaging systems operating under the provisions of this section shall bear thefollowing or similar statement in a conspicuous location on the device:

"Operation of this device is restricted to law enforcement, emergency rescue and firefighter personnel. Operation by any other party is a violation of 47 U.S.C. 301 and could subject the operator to serious legal penalties."

So does a Buick Roadmaster...oh wait, CAFE standards killed those ( http://www.ita.doc.gov/td/auto/cafe.html ). Minivans are classed as light trucks meaning that the fuel requirements and safety standards are relaxed by quite a lot...just like they are for SUV's. Oh my what a startling coincidence!

the government controls 99% of the spectrum, useable and experimental, and this is the first time they have ever given back a single kilocycle of allocation. in the past, it has always been nonprofit, public safety, and commercial use that has been tagged for reallocations.

congratulations for finally stepping up to the plate, and many more for uncle selfish.

Actually that isn't true... check the chart at http://www.ntia.doc.gov/osmhome/allochrt.pdf

The vast majority of the spectrum is non-government exclusive or shared government/non-government. Only the sections with RED under them are government-exclusive allocations.

Now if only they would get rid of the almost 1Ghz allocated to fixed-point communications, like satellite communications, and maritime and aeronautical navigation. I wish they would force them to use their spectrum more wisely instead of forcing something that everyone uses to be crammed into a tiny space. (Satellite should be using UWB - they have to have dishes anyway - they can afford to receive a signal that is just above the background signal strength)

http://www.ntia.doc.gov/osmhome/allochrt.pdf

The frequencies discussed in the article, 1710-1755 MHz and 2110-2155 MHz, can be found on the right side of the fifth bar.

How would you try convincing folks who are allocated their spectrum to give some of there's up? Or am I completely misunderstanding what you mean?

2005 will be forever seen as the year in which the US government managed to keep unilateral control of the internet, despite widespread opposition by the rest of the world.

Well now I'm interested, pray tell why?

At that meeting, consciously and for the first time, ICANN used a US government-provided reason to turn over Kazakhstan's internet ownership to a government owned and run association without requiring consent from the existing owners. The previous owners, KazNIC, had been created from the country's Internet community.

All right, the article is getting away from me here. I supposed the reader will need to get through "jumping the shark" on this one to figure out what this "government-provided reason" is. I do know that now it wasn't a US government power-grab or direct involvement because ICANN made the decision and used some sort of "reason" to make a decision according to this author.

What you come to discover is that this insidious intrusion by the US Government comes down to the fact that the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) made four declarations prior to the UN meetings on Internet governance. Contrary to what the author contends these weren't a "warning shot" for the international community. Instead they were statements of reassurance to the international community. Specifically, other government concerns regarding their country top level domains. Do not think for a second a UN body wouldn't have granted these governments control over their top level domains. Here is what the NTIA said...

http://www.ntia.doc.gov/ntiahome/domainname/USDNSp rinciples_06302005.htm
The United States Government intends to preserve the security and stability of the Internet's Domain Name and Addressing System (DNS). Given the Internet's importance to the world's economy, it is essential that the underlying DNS of the Internet remain stable and secure. As such, the United States is committed to taking no action that would have the potential to adversely impact the effective and efficient operation of the DNS and will therefore maintain its historic role in authorizing changes or modifications to the authoritative root zone file.

Governments have legitimate interest in the management of their country code top level domains (ccTLD). The United States recognizes that governments have legitimate public policy and sovereignty concerns with respect to the management of their ccTLD. As such, the United States is committed to working with the international community to address these concerns, bearing in mind the fundamental need to ensure stability and security of the Internet's DNS.

ICANN is the appropriate technical manager of the Internet DNS. The United States continues to support the ongoing work of ICANN as the technical manager of the DNS and related technical operations and recognizes the progress it has made to date. The United States will continue to provide oversight so that ICANN maintains its focus and meets its core technical mission.

Dialogue related to Internet governance should continue in relevant multiple fora. Given the breadth of topics potentially encompassed under the rubric of Internet governance there is no one venue to appropriately address the subject in its entirety. While the United States recognizes that the current Internet system is working, we encourage an ongoing dialogue with all stakeholders around the world in the various fora as a way to facilitate discussion and to advance our shared interest in the ongoing robustness and dynamism of the Internet. In these fora, the United States will continue to support market-based approaches and private sector leadership in Intern

Here's the Goods page.

I don't think it makes sense to look at the trade balance for a category when trying to determine which category is the "most important". Otherwise, you'd conclude that we "lost money" on most of our trade. But there are a lot of industries that made a lot of money on exports in those categories. Should we "give up" on the categories we're "losing" in?

First off lets go myth busting your arguments.

1. IP the biggest export.

http://www.ita.doc.gov/td/industry/otea/usfth/aggr egate/H04t02.html

Fact, IP was the Number 4 export for the united states in 2004.

and at about 7.5% of our total exports, it wasn't aa huge a player as you made it out to be.

2. It's one of the reasons why we're one of the richest nations on the planet

BS, we're rich because a. america had vast untapped resources and still widely under utilized natural resource bases b. america stole virtually every piece of technology they could to 'build' their industrial base and c. no major wars rased any of our industrial complexs.

3. it's a major factor in the quality of life we enjoy.

Actually the ammount of profit made off 'ideas' has almost no correlation to qquality of life what so ever. there are a lot of important factors, but frankly ip centric societies (the UK) have managed to prosper with tight IP laws, and 'historically lax' IP nations as the US have also prospered... IP laws come in so late in the equasion that they can't really change a whole lot about an economy...

4. It's no coincidence that countries which don't pay much bother to the Berne Convention and other similar international agreements are by and large shitty places to live.

others called BS on this already, for 103 years the US refused to sign said convention. the entire decade 'of greed' occured before said convention was signed in the US.

Here's the Dept. of Commerce website that describes the classification and licensing of exported goods: http://www.bis.doc.gov/Licensing/ExportingBasics.h tm

Cryptoanalytic items are more strictly controlled then encryption items because the regs are immature. Few people actually make and export them, and most cryptanalytic stuff is designed for snooping on people and not protecting computer security. The regs are designed with snooping equipment in mind. I don't think Lopht Crack is the droid BIS is looking for, and I figure Symantec could probably get a license to export it if they tried. Furthermore, I figure that if you had an open source cryptanalytic program you could probably distribute it online with the same sort of TSU notification you have to do when you ship open source cryptography software. However, IANAL, so don't take my word for that...

You can see for yourself here:
http://www.ntia.doc.gov/osmhome/allochrt.pdf

"Exactly. That's why restrictions on cryptography exports were lifted in the 90s, because the stupid assumption that nobody but Americans could develop strong cryptography was proven false. All the restrictions did was hinder U.S. companies in international markets."

Not everything and not to every country.
http://www.bis.doc.gov/encryption/ChecklistInstr.h tm

The point is not that it's a waste because someone else could reproduce it; the point is that you don't want to give them a "leg" up in doing so. Keep in mind most of the export controls relate to millitary; hence the reason some encryption is classified as ITAR.

(not really disagree-ing with you, though)

I'm a PDA phone user, so links are hard, but here goes:

Anti-competitive

Orbit Act I think

Pirates + Govt Mandates

I have 9 years of history with Inmarsat and Iridium.

A quick Google of internet usage reveals this report from the Department of Commerce that says that only 18.6% of U.S. households had internet access by 1997 and only 4.4% of households had broadband access by the year 2000.

Sounds like your subdivision is quite the bleeding edge.

1. Why in many of these articles is there no consideration for the facts that:

- The US, and the massive US military-industrial complex many despise, was essentially solely responsible for creating the internet (note: I am talking about the *internet*, not the world wide web, which itself would not have existed were it not for the internet)?

- Aside from the politics and issues surrounding .xxx, that the US has proven itself to be a capable caretaker of the internet and the root servers (several of which are outside of the US, albeit under ultimate control of the US)?

2. Why is there no consideration that other governments jockeying for position and control over DNS and the root servers could and probably will actually provide a greater chance for problems, mismanagement, miscommunication, and so on?

3. Why is there this concept floated in every one of these articles that makes it seem as if nations will have no choice but to create their "own" internets, disconnected from the "primary" internet, simply because of DNS? I'd say the stupidity and arrogance of disconnecting from the internet and making your own, whether out of principle or some perceived need to have a new top level domain, trumps any stupidity and arrogance of the internet's original creator and caretaker retaining control...

For a brief and concise summary of the issues, let's remind ourselves with this:

U.S. Principles on the Internet's Domain Name and Addressing System

The United States Government intends to preserve the security and stability of the Internet's Domain Name and Addressing System (DNS). Given the Internet's importance to the world's economy, it is essential that the underlying DNS of the Internet remain stable and secure. As such, the United States is committed to taking no action that would have the potential to adversely impact the effective and efficient operation of the DNS and will therefore maintain its historic role in authorizing changes or modifications to the authoritative root zone file.

Governments have legitimate interest in the management of their country code top level domains (ccTLD). The United States recognizes that governments have legitimate public policy and sovereignty concerns with respect to the management of their ccTLD. As such, the United States is committed to working with the international community to address these concerns, bearing in mind the fundamental need to ensure stability and security of the Internet's DNS.

ICANN is the appropriate technical manager of the Internet DNS. The United States continues to support the ongoing work of ICANN as the technical manager of the DNS and related technical operations and recognizes the progress it has made to date. The United States will continue to provide oversight so that ICANN maintains its focus and meets its core technical mission.

Dialogue related to Internet governance should continue in relevant multiple fora. Given the breadth of topics potentially encompassed under the rubric of Internet governance there is no one venue to appropriately address the subject in its entirety. While the United States recognizes that the current Internet system is working, we encourage an ongoing dialogue with all stakeholders around the world in the various fora as a way to facilitate discussion and to advance our shared interest in the ongoing robustness and dynamism of the Internet. In these fora, the United States will continue to support market-based approaches and private sector leadership in Internet development broadly.

The article summary says:

The old analog television spectrum will be auctioned off to the highest bidder.

This is simply not the case. If you read the FCC's FAQ on the subject of digital television (which is what this is about, incidentally -- the FCC is mandating digital, but not high-def, which is only part of digital), you will see this:

Under the FCC spectrum plan, we have provided most existing broadcasters with access to a 6 MHz channel for digital broadcasting within a core digital TV spectrum, i.e., TV channels 2 to 51.

This means that the new digital channels are being assigned to 6 MHz channels within the existing analog TV spectrum. In other words, they are just shuffling things around within the same spectrum. Analog TV is 6 MHz for one channel, and so is digital. (Digital can have subchannels, but that is part of the protocol, not something the FCC worries about after they've assigned the 6 MHz bandwidth to a TV station.)

So, are they actually taking away any of the analog spectrum? Yes, they are taking part of it away -- a very small part. They are taking away channels 52-69. The FCC's FAQ says this:

during the transition some broadcasters would be provided DTV channels outside of this core spectrum (channels 52 to 69). These broadcasters would have to move their DTV operations to a channel in the core spectrum when one became available.

Translation: they are going to try to eventually move every channel which is in the 52-69 range down into the 2-51 range. They are leaving 2-51 available for television, and they are trying to reclaim 52-69.

So, is this a good thing? Well, how many TV stations do you know of that are in the 52-69 range right now? There are very few. It's a part of the spectrum that isn't used for TV much right now as it is anyway. So in a way, the FCC is basically taking this opportunity to clean out this little-used part of the spectrum.

If you want to go into a little more detail, check out this Adobe PDF spectrum chart. Look at the 300MHz-3GHz line, and look at the "TV BROADCASTING" section after the one that denotes channels 21-36. You'll see that it goes from 614Mhz to 698MHz, and since all TV channels are 6 MHz bandwidth, that means 84/6 = 14 channels. This means it goes with channels 37-50 (the next 14 channels after 21-36). And then look after that on the chart. You'll see that 698MHz through 806MHz is allocated for "BROADCAST" but also for "FIXED" and "MOBILE" purposes. So apparently it's not 100% dedicated to television right now. So the FCC is right to say that range (channels 50 and higher) is not part of the "core" spectrum.

Anyway, even if you don't agree that we should give up the part of 52-69 that is allocated to television (because apparently not all of it is), it's still important to note that the FCC is not auctioning off ALL of the analog TV spectrum. Actually, there are 68 channels total, and it would seem they are only auctioning off 18 of them, and part of those 18 channels aren't even allocated to TV in certain areas right now, so it's less than 18 channels. So, at worst, they are auctioning off 18/68 = 26.5% of the analog TV spectrum, and they are leaving exactly 50 broadcast television channels available.

Actually, if you check the numbers, despite revenue being lower as a portion of GDP, absolute revenue was HIGHER by the time reagan left office.

GDP Data
Revenue as a portion of GDP
GDP per capita

Taking the simple method of multiplying the revenue as a % by the gdp per capita, the revenue per capita went from $4306.54 to $4980.34 in chained 2000 dollars.

Actually, if you check the numbers, despite revenue being lower as a portion of GDP, absolute revenue was HIGHER by the time reagan left office.

GDP Data
Revenue as a portion of GDP
GDP per capita

Taking the simple method of multiplying the revenue as a % by the gdp per capita, the revenue per capita went from $4306.54 to $4980.34 in chained 2000 dollars.

Supposedly this statement:

The United States continues to support the ongoing work of ICANN as the technical manager of the DNS and related technical operations and recognizes the progress it has made to date. The United States will continue to provide oversight so that ICANN maintains its focus and meets its core technical mission.

Software being exported from the US that contains *higher-bit* encryption/decryption technology needs to be classified -- http://www.bis.doc.gov/Licensing/ExportingBasics.h tm describes how to go about doing that.

The regulations on export of crypto changed significantly in the last few years. There is now generally no problem exporting AES256 or even Blowfish448 from the US.

There are also regulations about how much content is of US origin, if there is less than 10% the regulations can be relaxed. Off shoring doesn't help if the parent company is still a US entity.

These days the bigger problem with stronger crypto like AES256 is import into some countries rather than export from the US.

The threat is clear....

Fast, large prime generation.

'Unreadable', encrypted e-data.

Why do you think we're still stuck with Intel CPUs that run under 4Ghz?

In the USA....

Fast computers are weapons.

Encryption is a weapon.

USA Crypto Export Homepage

http://www.ntia.doc.gov/osmhome/allochrt.pdf

^
Is a better link, yes, ugly pdf format, but it's a lot more clear and you can actually read it

Here ya go.

http://www.ntia.doc.gov/osmhome/allochrt.pdf

Here's a table showing the frequency allocations in the United States. Other countries have very similar allocations.

http://www.ntia.doc.gov/osmhome/allochrt.html

The risks of a for-profit enterprise are accepted by the investors, not the employees. The investors get the profit, so it's appropriate that they also get the risk.

Depends on how you define profit.

As a percentage of total revenue, employees get by far the biggest piece of the pie.

For example, from the Bureau of Economic Analysis, total personal income per year is about $9 trillion. Of that, 4.5% goes to pay dividends and 82% goes for employee salaries and suppliments to wages and salaries.

So when we say "profit", we only mean a certain kind of income. But in reality, employees as a group make far more money than investors as a group.

The analog dials go up into the 60s, but you're lucky if you can pick up more than five or six stations most places, and most people have cable or satellite anyway. Most of it's going to waste. Open the bandwidth to the public and let TV networks set up video on demand instead. I mean look at this thing: it's unspeakably crowded. Public channels are tiny slivers, yet they're the hottest use of spectrum around. Surely this could be simplified and opened dramatically.

Of course, when the government can just sell public spectrum at a tidy profit for its own needs, what do you expect.

Radio is pretty crowded though, I wouldn't mess with it. Really though, if there were advertising-supported free digital/satellite radio we wouldn't need that either! But of course, AM/FM radios are tiny, simple, cheap things these days, and there are a ton of them. Until digital receivers are more common in cars it's foolish to think of replacing them.

The anti-boycot law was enacted to prevent companies from refusing to trade with Israeli government or citizens based on religious or political reasons. I am not framiliar with the specifics of it, but I don't doubt that a good lawyer could twist it to apply to Cisco refusing to deal with the Chinese government for what ammounts to reasons of their nationality.

Personally I support shareholders taking action like this, I'm just playing devil's advocate to keep the ideas flowing.

Try this Google search. It will lead you to pages like this. It's a good start. It seems to be a little biased in its presentation, but it's the "official" story.
It's not as useful, but this is funnier.

Patriotic dick waving?

What part of the US Govt. "Likes the say things are running right now and don't want to dorq crap up", do you not understand?

As somebody else posted:

I suggest you read the first paragraph

As such, the United States is committed to taking no action that would have the potential to adversely impact the effective and efficient operation of the DNS and will therefore maintain its historic role in authorizing changes or modifications to the authoritative root zone file.

The magic phrases are "taking no action" and "maintain historic role". Meaning exactly what I said earlier: they like the way things are now.