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You might be enlightened by this brief written by several economists including a number of Nobel prize winners. Summary: the present value of a copyright extension decades in the future is practically insignificant.

• Nintendo had a patent on their authentication chip. This afforded them significantly more protection than the DMCA clauses that Lexmark is attempting to use.
  
• Nintendo licensed the chip to third parties, thus negating a need for reverse engineering. Lexmark is attempting to erect an artificial barrier against competitors, which a court is unlikely to find very sporting. (That's why you *always* look to be in a market with a set of *natural* barriers. Then no one can claim that you're being anti-competitive.)
  
• The DMCA does not completely rule out reverse engineering. It just reigns it in to a razor thin line. The specific clauses actually work against Lexmark due to the issue that no other method has been made available for interoperability.

(f) Reverse Engineering. -

* (1) Notwithstanding the provisions of subsection (a)(1)(A), a person who has lawfully obtained the right to use a copy of a computer program may circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a particular portion of that program for the sole purpose of identifying and analyzing those elements of the program that are necessary to achieve interoperability of an independently created computer program with other programs, and that have not previously been readily available to the person engaging in the circumvention, to the extent any such acts of identification and analysis do not constitute infringement under this title.
* (2) Notwithstanding the provisions of subsections (a)(2) and (b), a person may develop and employ technological means to circumvent a technological measure, or to circumvent protection afforded by a technological measure, in order to enable the identification and analysis under paragraph (1), or for the purpose of enabling interoperability of an independently created computer program with other programs, if such means are necessary to achieve such interoperability, to the extent that doing so does not constitute infringement under this title.

* (3) The information acquired through the acts permitted under paragraph (1), and the means permitted under paragraph (2), may be made available to others if the person referred to in paragraph (1) or (2), as the case may be, provides such information or means solely for the purpose of enabling interoperability of an independently created computer program with other programs, and to the extent that doing so does not constitute infringement under this title or violate applicable law other than this section.

* (4) For purposes of this subsection, the term ''interoperability'' means the ability of computer programs to exchange information, and of such programs mutually to use the information which has been exchanged.

I have compiled a set of benchmarks for scientific computing applications which are broadly consistent with the posted benchmarks:
http://jsekhon.fas.harvard.edu/macosx/

Far be it for me to contract such an expert but according to The CfA Sea Level Homepage, sea level is rising at a rate of about 2mm/year. It might help your claim if you identify the sources of your "facts."

The Soviets eventually came to the same conclusion, only after blowing the big rubles on Almaz and military Salyuts.

Incidentally, the first successful US launch after Challenger was an SDI experiment that used guidance systems from existing guided missiles. Although it was about as rushed as the Polyus battle station you reference, it didn't require major gymnastics to achieve orbit, and provided Reagan with a negotiation advantage over Gorbachev... although I don't think he fully realized the size of it. For a change, the Russians were in the position of attempting to field a system we could all too easily counter, given that the Delta 180 SDI test articles were mostly off the shelf, and could be cheaply integrated and lofted by the trainload, had the need arisen.

Prof. Church synthesizes long DNA sequences with remarkable fidelity by using parallel synthesis and amplification on a gene chip (ordered array of shorter DNA sequences). Paper.

Remember last year when researchers created polio virus from scratch? Paper. It took 3 years to make the 7500 bp genome -- this new technology would make this kind of project easier.

Wrong. The very definition of addiction mandates that it is a harmful behavior.

Perhaps these could be of help:
http://www.m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary?book=Diction ary&va=addiction&x=0&y=0
http://www.hms.harvard.edu/doa/html/whatisaddictio n.htm

Very little in the most popular free software projects has ever been innovative. Sadly, it's true. And even sadlier, this is even more true for proprietary software. We all know that Microsoft has never contributed a single notable innovation to any computer-related field. That didn't stop them from the world domination, did it?

What people like Larry McVoy seem to be unable to understand is that any innovation in computer science takes years and sometimes decades to be easily available to the end user and it usually happens in the academia with no press releases and conferences.

For example, there is a lot of innovation in the Hurd kernel and that is why it is not ready yet. And I'm sure that when it is ready and stable then Larry McVoy will complain that those ideas are old and obviously he'll be correct.

I'm sorry, Larry, but once again you complain that you don't have innovative mature systems. Do you want innovation? Use Debian GNU/Hurd. Do you want a mature system? Use Debian GNU/Linux. You can't have your cake and eat it too. Sad but true.

Under VARA, moral rights automatically vest in the author of a "work of visual art." For the purposes of VARA, visual art includes paintings, drawings, prints, sculptures, and photographs, existing in a single copy or a limited edition of 200 signed and numbered copies or fewer. In order to be protected, a photograph must have been taken for exhibition purposes only. VARA only protects works of "recognized stature;" posters, maps, globes, motion pictures, electronic publications, and applied art are among the categories of visual works explicitly excluded from VARA protection. The language of the Copyright Act excludes works-for-hire from the definition of "works of visual art," thereby excluding such works from VARA protection. (For a discussion of issues surrounding the moral rights of works made for hire, see Colleen Creamer Fielkow, Clashing Rights under United States Copyright Law: Harmonizing an Employer's Economic Right with the Artist-Employee's Moral Rights in a Work Made For Hire, 7 DePaul-LCA J. Art & Ent. L. 218 (Spring 1997).) Moral rights are not transferrable, and end only with the life of the author. Even if the author has conveyed away a work or her copyright in it, she retains the moral rghts to the work under VARA. Authors may, however, waive their moral rights if do so in writing.

Maybe you should read some of Margo's other papers before jumping to conclusions.

possibly having to press reload a few times to make it work

You can visit http://serifos.eecs.harvard.edu:8000/cgi-bin/exit. pl and pick a node in a preferred region and then use that node as a preferred exit node. Check the TOR manual.

If they are only doing good and honest things, then (you would think) they should be delighted to be able to conclusively prove their innocence. Yet they want to delete the email? [...] Maybe they aren't so innocent, and the email tends to reveal their real intentions and actions.

You'll note that BushCo is also very eager to control their little secrets, and I'd bet they'd be delighted to erase all of their email, too.

You sure about that? Harvard (among others) would be pretty shocked by your assertion.

Young College Graduates Are Struggling. Guess One (Unmentionable) Reason

This spring, thousands of young Americans are graduating from college. They and their tuition-strapped parents regard the degree as a good investment--a ticket to financial independence and a better life. Unfortunately, the labor market no longer seems to share this view.

The real wages of young college graduates (ages 25 to 35) fell in 2004 for the third consecutive year. According to figures complied by the Economic Policy Institute, "Young College Graduates Face Weak Labor Market," Job Watch, May 6, 2005.] Between 2001 and 2004, the real wages of young college graduates dropped from $23.04 per hour to $22.41 per hour.

Employment is finally turning around, but not fast enough to soak up the influx of new college grads. Thus the employment rate of young graduates in 2004 was 85.2 percent, down from 87.4 percent in 2000. It has been 20 years since the fraction of young college graduates with jobs has been as low as it was in 2003 and 2004.

It's trendy to blame the declining economic fortunes of the college-educated on outsourcing or the post-bubble collapse of high-tech. But immigration may be, as usual, the factor that dare not speak its name.

Immigrants represent a rapidly growing share of the college educated workforce--and an even larger fraction of the educated unemployed. (Table 1.)

From 2000 to 2003 (the latest year of available data):

• The college-educated labor force grew by 10.3 percent
• The foreign-born college educated labor force grew 24.6 percent
• The U.S.-born college educated labor force grew 8.2 percent

The growth rate of college-educated immigrants was three-times that of college-educated natives.

This occurred despite the post 911 slowdown in student visa processing. This also occurred despite a doubling of the unemployment rate of college-educated foreigners.

Economists call this a "supply-shock" --a situation where excess labor causes wages to fall.

The role of college-educated foreigners in depressing wages of U.S. natives is brought home by Harvard economist (and Cuban immigrant) George Borjas. In his seminal Quarterly Journal of Economics paper [The Labor Demand Curve Is Downward Sloping: ] Borjas concludes that immigration 1980-2000 reduced wages of the average U.S.-born worker by 3.2 percent in 2000.

The reduction varied dramatically among education levels. Native high-school dropouts suffered an 8.9 percent wage reduction. But even college-educated natives suffered an above-average reduction of 4.9 percent.

The impact was greatest on college graduates with 11-15 years of work experience - i.e., most likely to have

Diamonds are ridiculously strong when used in composites, if you thought plain old glass-fibre and carbon fire were strong, simply replace the glass or carbon with diamond, and you have a strength to weight ratio that is unheard of.

Yes -- this made it suitable as a building material for the space elevators in Arthur C. Clarke's 3001: The Final Odyssey. Of course, in that novel I don't think they manufactured the diamonds ... they found another source. I think this article explains where they found a large natural supply of diamonds.

You call that a diamond?

This is a diamond.

Misinformation on the internet can be very dangerous. Things like the Typing Injury FAQ are probably more harmful than good. RSI tends to be more of a psychosomatic issue. Sites like the Typing Injury FAQ reinforce the false idea that it is physical problem.

I say this both from experiencing it for myself and years of research into "RSI" (while I had the symptoms of). The only thing that ever made sense and was able to cure me was John E. Sarno's book "Mindbody Prescription." Do a Google search for "sarno tms" for more info (though the link above on the Harvard site is the best starting point to understand what he is talking about).

Take random health information on the internet with a grain of salt, especially since it can cause you to exhibit psychosomatic problems if you are prone to it (which more people are than you would think).

I know this is a controversial idea, but please at least read all of the document I linked to and give it a chance.

Misinformation on the internet can be very dangerous. Things like the Typing Injury FAQ are probably more harmful than good. RSI tends to be more of a psychosomatic issue. Sites like the Typing Injury FAQ reinforce the false idea that it is physical problem.

I say this both from experiencing it for myself and years of research into "RSI" (while I had the symptoms of). The only thing that ever made sense and was able to cure me was John E. Sarno's book "Mindbody Prescription." Do a Google search for "sarno tms" for more info (though the link above on the Harvard site is the best starting point to understand what he is talking about).

Take random health information on the internet with a grain of salt, especially since it can cause you to exhibit psychosomatic problems if you are prone to it (which more people are than you would think).

I know this is a controversial idea, but please at least read all of the document I linked to and give it a chance.

X-ray Flux

Solar Terrestrial Activity Report

Realtime ACE Observations

Meh, why use all that crap when i can just use my own bike to travel faster than the speed of light

Also: you may wish to see (from Global Voices online) Ethan Zuckerman's Technical Guide to Anonymous Blogging

If you've studied calculus and number theory drop the lightweight fluff and pick up a book on analytic number theory. You could even read some lecture notes. These don't seem too advanced. By the end of dirichlet.ps you'll have seen the power of calculus to solve difficult problems about prime numbers and integers. (In particular, the proof that any arithmetic progression has infinitely many primes is a thing of wonder.)

GPL violations are a lot more common than most people think.

Just because it doesn't hit the mainstream media doesn't mean that thousands (yes, thousands of OSS projects out there are being actively violated by commercial enterprises). A few years ago I caught Sony doing this and reported about it (picked up by Slashdot here based on my account).

But that was relatively small potatoes to another GPL violation we've had to deal with. The CEO of a mobile company (who shall remain nameless, thousands know who he is) took our code, stripped our names and attribution out, removed the COPYING file (our copy of the GPL license), put his name all over it, and claimed he wrote it. He also waffled and lied over the years about which parts of our project he was and was not using. His stories changed back and forth (and I have all of the emails confirming these wishy-washy statements).

When we started seeing companies giving away binary versions of an application that looked suspisciously like ours (and I mean pixel-for-pixel identical) without any source, attribution or links back to the GPL, we started calling those companies and requesting the source for compliance. Since these companies had no idea who we were, they referred us back to the company they bought it from.. the original one who took our code from us outside of compliance with the GPL.

Then the threats started coming in... from the CEO of the company that originally took our source. My favorite quote from him:

"...if we end up in court, I'll bankrupt these guys..."

We were appointed an amazing attorney by the FSF, and she represented us well. I even went to NYC to meet with this CEO with Wendy to discuss how they could bring themselves into compliance. The CEO insisted that "..the GPL is not a license, its subject to interpretation... it was never reviewed by real attorneys or tested in court", and then proceeded to tell me to fire my attorney, right in front of her, because he said she wasn't giving me correct information about the law. Yeah ok, except she TEACHES law, and this CEO does what again? Oh yeah, steals other people's products for his own profitous gain.

He continued to threaten us for contacting his "partners" (who were also not transferred the GPL when he sold them "his" product [using our code]). Of course his threats fell on deaf ears, since it is our duty to require compliance with our code no matter who uses it.

The case goes on now, 4+ years later, but some interesting facts have come to light and we may have some official corporate backing from someone he believes is a partner of his... this is FAR from over, and he has absolutely no idea what mountain of legal stress is heading his way.

Wendy has moved on to the EFF now, and we have some new legal contacts at the FSF to try persue this further, but they're busy with lots of other cases.

If anyone is interested in hearing more details, feel free to contact me. If you want to support our case against companies like this, please visit our donation page and contribute to help us fund more legal support (or just because your appreciate our work: Don't forget to check out our Plucker eye-candy page).

Cooking apparently goes way, way back. At least a quarter million years and maybe two million. See http://www.researchmatters.harvard.edu/story.php?a rticle_id=463.

Which Europe are you talking about? "Old Europe" countries such as Germany, France, Spain, and Italy have around 10% unemployment, much higher unemployment for young adults, and are lucky to have 1% real GDP growth. These countries also face amazing public pension crises that make the underfunding of the US Social Security seem mild in comparison.

"Old Europe" is particularly beset with problems due to high marginal tax rates and labor regulation.

Meanwhile, ex-Communist Europe is growing like gangbusters (Poland for example).

The US, on the other hand, for an OECD country has a low unemployment rate and a high GDP growth rate.

The US federal deficit is high (6% of GDP), but "Old Europe" countries are now mostly slated to miss the EU deficit rules of no more than 3% of GDP, and judging from the lack of economic growth combined with the need for pensions, I expect this will grow over time.

In 1998, the average per student expenditure for U.S. elementary and high schools was roughly the same as the per student expenditure at Harvard (NOT the tuition, but Harvard's expenditure).

I find that doubtful.

This page shows that in 1991, the publicly funded portion of education expenditure per primary and secondary students in the United States was $4,605.

This page show's that Harvards's library and information resources expenditure alone per student in 1999 was $3,904.

In 1998, with expenses of $1.6 billion and a student population of 18,500, Harvard's expense per student was...almost $88,000. We probably shouldn't count research expenses toward that, so take away the 23% for that and it's still $68,000 per student for instruction and related support.

I doubt that private expenditures were high enough to make up that $60,000+ difference, or that education spending rose enough during the 90s to catch up.

More importantly, "average" hides many things. Average a kid at an expensive private school with a $16,000 yearly expenditure with a kid at a near-bankrupt inner city school with a $2,000 yearly expenditure, and you've got an average of $9,000 per student year.

Again in 1991, public U.S. expenditures per student ranged from $2,600 in Mississippi to $7,900 in Alaska.

The idea that "American public schools are failing" is false because there is no American public school system - each county can be a radically different case.

That's well illustrated in my area, where within the space of a few miles the Baltimore City school system is on the verge of failing, Baltimore County schools are generally adequate (though that varies significantly in different parts of the county), and Howard County schools are doing well. The pass rates on the High School Assessment tests are 33%, 50%, and 74% respectively - more than a factor of 2 between Howard County and Baltimore City.

Why not use Shamir secret sharing to hold onto the private key? You can choose N people to hold pieces of the private key and choose K = N such that [any] K individuals can reconstruct the secret (but not any less than K).

Chris Dede's group at Harvard is doing something like this:
http://muve.gse.harvard.edu/muvees2003/

I saw him present this at AERA this year.

You have to root around to find the science experiment stuff.

"The astronauts have many backgrounds, and these days very few of them ever worked as test pilots"

I was getting the shuttle confused with Apollo, I think.

That doesnt't change the fact that they were aware of the risk going in and chose to accept it.

"and flying on the space shuttle is the most dangerous thing they have ever done in their lives."

Actually that would probably be driving while talking on a cell phone, which is statistically indistinguishable from driving drunk. I have a hard time accepting that somebody who's qualified to decide for themselves that they'd like to, say, go to McMurdo for a year or two, a situation which involves a considerable amount of risk everytime they go outside, isn't qualified to decide to be a shuttle astronaut.

"and I think it's basically impossible to set any concrete criteria of "mission viability"

Well, NASA seems to disagree with you. I suggest you take it up with them.

"It doesn't matter what goes wrong--we can just try again."

And pay for the robot again, which is exactly what the anti-science neocons will bitch about.

"fundamentally flawed because of the support overhead."

Funny you should mention support overhead. 7.4 million dollars per hour. That's some support overhead. Not a one-time expenditure of one billion to fix something that would otherwise continue functioning for another 15 years. Not to mention that in the mission of preserving humanity's existence against the threat of asteroid or comet collision, superatmospheric astronomy is a mission-critical tool.

I support the use of unmanned spaceflight whenever it would meet the exact same set of goals as manned. But if the mission requires flexibility, quick response time, or creative problem solving, then that mission is a bad one to be completely automated. I think machines could be very very useful in space, just not in all place or for all purposes. Man is still the best machine there is.

"In terms of acquiring scientific data, you simply don't need tons of food and oxygen."

Right, which is why Hubble doesn't have any, nor did Voyager, nor any other strictly information gathering tool. But there are some things you need humans for, and there are humans ready, able, and willing to fill these roles, and to balk at a task because it is difficult is not only counter-productive to the point of obstructionism, it's simply un-American.

We choose to do these things not because they are easy, but because they are hard.

if they managed to slow light down to 120km/h i'm damn impressed

Well, people have slowed it down to 0 Km/h (or close to that) - http://www.deas.harvard.edu/haulab/link

I've written about this on multiple occasions. Some links:

Claria/Gator: http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/people/edelman/ads/ga tor/gator-customers.html

eXact Advertising: http://www.benedelman.org/spyware/exact-advertiser s

I'm sick of suffering from being a non-IE user. Too many websites are built for IE, instead of abiding by html standards. Mostly it has to do with web-applications, but when I wanted to see if Harvard thinks I'm a racist ( https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/demo/selecta test.html ) I get pissed off that I can't open the tests with Netscape or FireFox. And the only way the websites are going to change is if demand changes. It's simply economics.

Some linguistics & psycholinguistics (e.g Norm Chompsky and Steve Pinker) argue the human brain is unique in that it is able to quickly master the complex grammar present in all human languages.

In fact there is even a mathematical proof that seems to indicate that human languages should be technically unlearn-able (google: EM Gold language grammar - "Language identification in the limit"). IIRC - the synopsis being that, human languages are at least as sophisticated as context free languages (and can to some degree be modeled by context free languages) and the grammar of context free languages should not be learnable from the sort of linguistic input available to a child.

So...anyhow, I'm not so sure if studying how birds learn a sequence of sounds really gets at the more interesting aspects of human language acquisition. I mean it's probably interesting in terms of how animals, and even people, learn to produce simple sequences of sounds.

But, for human language? Or, at least for the interesting, i.e. uniquely human, parts of it? For that you probably need to either study people, or possibly very similar animals like other primates.

RDF (Resource Description Framework) is a meta-language, like XML. Except it's not even really a language, it's a model. Extra confusing because there are different syntaxes available, one of which is XML.

RSS 2.0 (Really Simple Syndication, I think) is what most people are talking about when they say RSS these days. Based on the original RSS 0.9x format, some people complain it's underspecified.

RSS 1.0 (RDF Site Summary) is a completely different specification, using the same basic concept & elements but all in the RDF model. Its detractors claim that RDF is too damned confusing (I won't argue there) and make the usual comments about ivory-tower intellectuals.

Atom's (not an acronym) the new kid, it hasn't actually been released yet but should be coming very soon - within weeks/months. Difficult to say anything about it until it's finalised, but it's got some nice stuff. I particularly like the Atom API. Clean & RESTful, mmm-mmm good. In my opinion (Atom ~= RSS 1.0) > RSS 2.0, but don't take my word for it as I'm fairly new to all this.

Dr. Denise Fastman has reversed diabetes in mice

She's trying to raise money for human trials, but has run into a few bumps

I imagine there already is a lot, given all the scientific work that goes on in Antarctica. Except at the south pole itself. Why not there? Because it's a prime location for radio astronomy.

There is a nice overview/tutorial on how the process of slowing light works here:

http://qis.ucalgary.ca/quantech/storage.html

Dr. Hau also has a powerpoint presentation on how it works as well:

http://www.deas.harvard.edu/haulab/101204%20standa rd_files/v3_document.htm

1) Wavelengths are too big: 1 micron is now a large number, and optics doesn't work much smaller than this.

This poster is correct. Since I have a Ph.D. in the field and the parent obviously knows something about optics, I might as well respond to the parent's critics.

IR photons are BIG. Forcing light to bend around corners is difficult. A waveguide must have a very high index of refraction if it is to be used to bend light within a reasonable radius. To the extent a Bose-Einstein Condensate helps this problem is encouraging if you don't mind cooling your computer to 2 millikelvin.

The speed of these optical computers always seems to come down to limitations of the silicon processors that work in conjunction with the light.

It's just a Bose-Einstein Condensate. These projects take time. While we are enamored with this BEC project, some poor grad student is working on carbon doping. Higher doping might improve the world of electronics far more than another optical computer claim.

I visited Hau's website and did, though, enjoy her papers. I just don't think the press release accurately portrays the low engineering potential of this work.

BTW, for those interested, here's a direct link to the "Light at Bicycle Speed ... and Slower Yet!" presentation - I was travelling about that speed in my coldest car during a Colorado snowstorm.

Very well said. And as such, the RI/MPAA should keep their steenking fingers out of it, unless they want to do research on how fast their movies and songs get traded on it, in which case they can fund a university to do that for them.

Then again, they probably don't like university studies about their product very much.

...but here it's an expectation? Well, I guess this is what you get for giving these places the "rich man's loophole" by making it a nice large (and possibly price fixed) admission fee that's conditionally waived for the undeserving. Now when some Ohio State (or even better, Wright State) students would return the favor for the Wright Flyer stunt at MIT, that'd be news, not some high-tax state that caters to the same crowd as MIT's nearby neighbors, also home to Caltech's evil neighbors.

• Harvard doesn't list it in the admission requirements.
  
• But, U Penn does require a completed secondary education program in their requirements.
  
• Some like Penn State are a little fuzzy - they require four years of secondary education, but not necessarily a diploma (?).
  
• UCLA again doens't state a diploma specifically, but does require very specific secondary education credits.
  

This was in response to a statement about DRM, which is about sellers placing restrictions on what buyers can do. None of your examples have anything to do with sellers placing restrictions on what buyers can do. They are about laws having to be specially written to restrict what people can do with specific items. My statement stands: normally, when a person buys something, they have the right to do what they want with it. What restrictions do normally exist are not imposed by the seller.

I will answer this one, however, because it shows just how clueless you are:

>What are the restrictions on buying a book?

This is about *using* what we purchase. Sellers cannot place restrictions on using a book. The Supreme Court in 1906 ruled that EULAs placed on a book have no legal force. See Bobbs-Merrill Co. v. Straus. (http://eon.law.harvard.edu/openlaw/DVD/cases/Bobb s-Merrill_v_Straus_2Cir.html) They have since ruled that the same is true of shampoo and most every other thing that people purchase. Once purchased, the seller can place no restrictions on the use of what was purchased.

Jerry

A simple description of visual system development in mammals might be interesting to some.

It may help people that were blinded later in life through an accident or cataracts. However, if someone is blind from birth then their visual cortex never develops and vision would be impossible even with an artificial eye. Many studies have been done. Click here here and here for more info.

papers pertaining Voyager since 2000 -- NASA ADS

That's the great thing with open source. If you have concluded that some product really sucks, you can:

* build a better product yourself
* contribute to the product that you feel sucks so that it stops sucking
* use another product
* or, even, post your opinion as Anonymous Coward on /.

The book "Exit, Voice, and Loyalty" by Albert O. Hirschman eloquently describes this (on an abstract level). I warmly recommend it. More info here: http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog/HIREXX.html

Marten

Proprietary software like GTA 3 is supplied under a license which prohibits making derivative works. That means you are not permitted to make a derivative work by combining the software with other software in memory.

Yes, they have. So? That encroaches on fair-use provisions. Point out a ruling enforcing that part of the license.

Now I hear you, you're going to say that even if the user is violating their license with the supplier of GTA3 the creators of MTA are not breaking any laws, right? Well no, because they are encouraging others to break copyright law. That's contributory copyright infringement.

That is an even more specious argument. Point out some case-law to support that. There is certainly cases saying quite the opposite. See Vault vs. Quaid for instance.
(Although that case specifically is about a program which removed a copy-protection device, now illegal under the DMCA, I cannot see why the court would rule differently for a similar program with a different purpose.)

The US Supreme Court heard oral arguments in the MGM vs Grokster case today. For those living under a rock, at issue is the legal decision that prevented the movie industry from killing the VCR in the mid-80s (the "Sony-Betamax decision"). In retrospect the Supreme Court did them a big favour since most of the movie industry's revenue now comes from video rentals. Unfortunately the movie industry has not learned its lesson.

"Secondary copyright infringement" is when you yourself don't actually infringe copyright, but you somehow facilitate someone else doing it. I assume that this was originally intended as a way to get at the people that run "swap meets" where people exchange copies of software and CDs in violation of copyright law.

In the 1980s the Supreme Court said that the creator of a technology cannot be sued for secondary infringement if their technology is "capable of substantial non-infringing use", in effect creating a "shield" against secondary liability for technology creators. In the case of Grokster, two previous court judgements have said that this doctrine protects decentralised P2P software, in the same way that it shielded the creator of the VCR. The movie industry would like to see this shield weakened enough that Grokster and similar P2P file-sharing networks are no-longer protected by it.

Their opponents (myself included) fear that any weakening of this shield will create exactly the kind of legal uncertainty that can kill innovations before they have even made it out of the venture capitalist's office (and as a veteran of a number of VC's offices, I can attest to the fact that nothing turns them off like the threat of a legal battle).

If you don't mind Real Video, you can watch a great debate between Fred von Lohmann, Senior Staff Attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and Theodore Olson, Former Solicitor General for the Bush Administration (2001-2004) and Representative of the Recording Industry and Motion Pictures Association here.

The argument only took place a few hours ago, but you can read a good summary from someone that appears to know their stuff here. His assessment? It went better for Grokster than he expected, but it is extremely dangerous to draw any conclusions from the oral argument phase of a court case.

Intrinsic is just another way of saying unexplainable: saying the redshift is "intrinsic" means that it is not due to anything. In other words, it has no explanation. That doesn't exactly seem scientific.

On the contrary. You do not have to have an explanation in hand. Dark energy, for example, has a name, but not an explanation (calling it Einstein's cosmological constant doesn't help much either :) Yet it can be used to generate hypotheses and tested, given certain assumptions.

In this case, we have an existing theory, and some disparate observations (e.g. at their measured redshift distances, older galaxies in any cluster seem to group on the near side, which is anti-Copernican) that have raised suspicions.

Having a hypothesis that expansion of space cannot statistically account for the observed redshift is a perfectly valid, and scientific, premise for experimentation.

That said, there are some theorists working on the problem.

Contenders for a mechanism:

• CREIL
• Compton Effect
• Plasma Redshift
• Variable Mass Theory (cf. Mach's Principle)

Some of these have got to be wrong, of course, (and this doesn't rule out other mechanisms) but those will show up on further experiments.

Cheers :)