Slashdot Mirror

One particularly interesting point: it did not appear that anyone was arguing that the GPL did not apply or was not a valid license. Though what Judge Saris said in the proceedings has no value as precedent in other cases, it sounded as though the GPL would be treated as any other license would be in a software context.

"Fair use does not guarantee pristine fidelity." That's definitely one way to interpret it.

It's also the way the Second Circuit has interpreted it. You're going to need a lot of money to bring cases in other circuits to get the Universal v. Reimerdes precedent ultimately reversed in the Supreme Court, and there's no way to guarantee that the Supremes will see things the way you do.

Any diet, even Atkins, only works as long as you can follow it...

Except that nows there's evidence that low-carb style diets work better than other more conventional diets. A recent Harvard study presented at the last meeting of the North American Association for the Study of Obesity showed that subjects on a controlled low-carb diet lost more weight than conventional dieters--despite eating on average 25,000 more calories over the course of the 12 week study! The AP covered this, and I found an archive of the storyat FoxNews. It really flies in the face of the standard nutritionist's "a calorie is a calorie is a calorie" dogma.

Atkins is extremely heavy on saturated fats, FWIW. It's a good way to lose weight (25 pounds in less than 2 months b4 hernia surgery), but it is not necessarily a good long-term plan. 'Course, the long-term benefits of losing a bunch of weight probably outweigh the problems associated with obesity.

While I'm at it ... red meat is nasty on the gut; it's a leading cause of colon cancer (having lost two family members to colon cancer, it's a concern).

A better, long-term diet (South Beach-esque) is to limit the saturated fats, bulk up on beans and nuts for protein + fibre (or chicken 'n' fish for protein), and, for god's sake, stay away from spuds, rice, and white flour.

One of the best studies ever done (and is still on-going) on the long-term effects of diet is the Nurses' Health Study at Harvard. Read on and do some researchin' ... since Atkins hasn't done any long-term research on his diet.

This problem recently came up on a college and university web development list I belong to. Many of our schools sites are being blocked. Places in China will then mirror them, a problem in itself, but one that causes even more damage when their latest mirror is about 3 years old with completely out of date information.

Anyway, here were some links provided by the list about the issue (some are a little old I know):

Empirical Analysis of Internet Filtering in China
Jonathan Zittrain and Benjamin Edelman, Harvard Law School, November 2002
http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/filtering/china/
"The authors are collecting data on the methods, scope, and depth of selective barriers to Internet access through Chinese networks. Tests from May 2002 through November 2002 indicate at least four distinct and independently operable methods of Internet filtering, with a documentable leap in filtering sophistication beginning in September 2002."

China's Cyberwall Nearly Concrete
Michael Grebb, Wired, November 5, 2002
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,56195,00 .html
"While the Great Wall no longer deters would-be invaders from entering China, experts... said the Chinese government continues to maintain a nearly rock-solid cyberwall. "

Software rams great firewall of China
Paul Festa, CNET News.com, April 16, 2003
http://news.com.com/2100-1028-997101.html
"The news and propaganda wing behind the U.S. government's Voice of America broadcasts has commissioned software that lets Chinese Web surfers sneak around the boundaries set by their government."

Corrected link.

Hmm... That "Do Not Cite Without Permission" thing is kind of sucky...

I agree that the "Hail to the Thief" stuff is a bit stupid. Minimally, people should respect the office - if not the person who holds it.

I find no conclusive evidence that the use of the felons' list favored one party over another, though it is likely that it favored Democrats because of the role the county supervisors played in the use of the list.

Yeah, that's pretty damning against the position I've been expousing. I'm kind of surprised he said this, given the previous few paragraphs... I'll read through the rest of it when I get a chance. Looks like an interesting read - thanks!

I have an acknowledgement of the fact that statistically we'll never have a result we can hang our hat on.

You said that before, and you're right. That's a far more fair and balanced look at the results than most conservatives (or liberals) give.

What I do have a preformed opinion about...

Similarly, I'm equally miffed by people (not you) who confront me with "Bush won the election by any possible measure of the votes" that is done as a statement of fact without acknowledging the statistical issues, the violation of court orders, the illegal counting of absentee ballots, and other stuff - and they don't attempt to resolve the problems with the "election" in question. =)

Funny how we're pretty similar in that regard, huh? =)

I've been pretty rough, too - and I really do appreciate the tone that you've taken in this latest post. That is an interesting paper, and I'll look into it.

All "sorehanders" should check this out:

http://www.rsi.deas.harvard.edu/handout.doc

http://www.rsi.deas.harvard.edu/mb_what_is.html

All "sorehanders" should check this out:

http://www.rsi.deas.harvard.edu/handout.doc

http://www.rsi.deas.harvard.edu/mb_what_is.html

The facts sound roughly similar to Sega v. Accolade, a 1992 9th Circuit Court of Appeals case in which Sega (whom you all know) sued Accolade, who made Sega Genesis-compatible games without obtaining a license to do from from Sega.

Sega sued the crap out of them, alleging among other things trademark infringement. Basically, the Genesis console has a bit of code in the bootloader that checks that the game cartridge has the word "SEGA" in a particular location. That triggers a display that says "PRODUCED BY OR UNDER LICENSE FROM SEGA ENTERPRISES LTD" for a few seconds on the screen.

Sega was trying to be clever. If you manufactured a game cartridge without the "SEGA" code, it wouldn't run. And if you manufactured one with it, then you caused the display to appear. And if that statement was false (because you hadn't actually obtained a license), Sega could sue you for trademark infringement! Hehehehe.

The court told Sega to get a life. Trademarks are a limited monopoly allowing the holder exclusive use of certain aspects of words, pictures, or phrases. They certainly can't be used to tie monopoly purchases to nonprotected things, thereby extending the limited monopoly to them. If you could, then every manufacturer would have monopolies on everything they manufactured, as well as every replacement part, or compatible product, etc. etc. etc. They'd simply manufacture a patented, copyrighted, or trademarked doodad and then make sure that their entire product depended on that item to operate.

This sounds like what Lexmark was trying to do -- they had some sort of computer chip that verified that things were legit, and then they sued anyone who needed to copy that chip in order to make replacement parts. The lesson from Sega v. Accolade is: don't do this.

Here's my Mirror

And some of my other writing about the issue, including my letter to Dean Gross

Here's my Mirror

And some of my other writing about the issue, including my letter to Dean Gross

Everyone should have seen this coming.

However, at least we know that these books are digitized somewhere. Now, all we need is a good samaritan to risk getting drawn and quartered and release them somewhere on the Net...

All citizens of the US have a right to access this information.

By denying us access, the publishers and authors are stealing from us, The People.

Try Here

I stand by my statements:
http://gking.harvard.edu/files/naziV.pdf

"...and a Masterlock combination lock."

Actually, Masterlocks are easily cracked:

http://www.people.fas.harvard.edu/~hillson/master_ lock.html

So, Stratton Sclavos says "The noise you're hearing publicly does not match the real impact of the [Sitefinder] system... ...We have asked for the data five times from anyone who has it--ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers), the IAB--and no one can produce data. All they can produce is these fringe stories."

Back on September 21s, Paul Twomey, president and CEO of Verisign said "As to your call for us to suspend the service, I would respectfully suggest that it would be premature to decide on any course of action until we first have had an opportunity to collect and review the available data." Well, have they seen this? It's a study that says:

Our analysis indicates that approximately 9% of Internet users at the time of the study did not receive Site Finder when they request a nonexistent .COM or .NET domain. More than half of this proportion results from China's apparent decision, effective beginning September 24-25, to block Site Finder, while the remainder reflects other network operators jointly.

The study also says:

We also note that relatively more intense blocking of Site Finder outside the US is precisely as anticipated by two distinct sets of concerns:

• 1. That Site Finder pages are always presented in English (notwithstanding users' language preferences)
• 2. That Site Finder pages are larger than ordinary error messages and therefore slower and more costly to transmit.

That seems pretty clear to me. It says that 91% of the entire internet was affected, in a manner that was more costly than necessary, and not user friendly to the majority of the people that saw it. (i.e. not in their native language.)

In addition, on October 7th, Verisign released a statement that said:

Prior to ICANN's October 3 directive to shut down the service, Site Finder had been used more than 48 million times by Internet users to get where they want to go online.

48 million. So... an independant study that Verisign called for, and Verisign themselves have found that the "real impact" of Sitefinder has been tremendous. And then Stratton Scalvos has the gall to say that "no one can produce data"?!

I actually submitted this when I first saw it (no I'm not bitter... yes i am..) but in my version I bring up two points.
1) Should/Will this man be compensated for his time in the pokey. How do you repay a man 16 months in prison? Granted I would have loved to have seen something on the books (e.g. precedent) to stick some real spammers in jail. Good thing this guy had a great attorney.
2) He had an excellent attorney. For those of you who don't know Jennifer Grannick she is one of the most knowledgable legal eagles out there. I see her every year at Blackhat and she's also known to have helped out on many of the most important pieces of Internet case law to date.

It's funny how many retarded non-jokes certain people make about how (in this case) Chinese speakers can't pronounce the letter 'l', seeing as how that's actually a problem for the Japanese, rather than the Chinese, and also seeing as how there's a whole shitload of sounds in Chinese that are difficult for English speakers to pronounce correctly.

"There is a reason Apple's sticking to mice with one button."
They're promoting RSI?

What does a psychosomatic disorder have to do with Apple's one button?

A second, related long-term change was the transformation of the United States from a net consumer of intellectual property to a net producer. Until approximately the middle of the nineteenth century, more Americans had an interest in "pirating" copyrighted or patented materials produced by foreigners than had an interest in protecting copyrights or patents against "piracy" by foreigners. The shift in the "balance of trade" had a predictable effect on the stance taken by the United States in international affairs. In the early nineteenth century -- as Charles Dickens learned to his dismay -- the American government was deaf to the pleas of foreign authors that American publishers were reprinting their works without permission. n55 In the late twentieth century, by contrast, the United States has become the world's most vigorous and effective champion of strengthened intellectual-property rights. n56 Thus, for example, the American delegation successfully took a very hard line in the negotiation of the TRIPS agreement, demanding that other nations acquiesce in their generous version of patent and copyright laws. n57 And software piracy in China has triggered a much sterner reaction from the United States than has widespread human-rights violations. n58

The Growth of Intellectual Property: A History of the Ownership of Ideas in the United States.

This scheme may not meet the definition of "effective" because it is not a copy-protection scheme on a Mac, Linux, *BSD, etc. - It depends on Windows - IANAL, but it seems to me that in order to be effective, it would have to function (without interference, of course), on all computers that can read the media.

The relevant text reads:

(3) As used in this subsection -

(B) a technological measure ''effectively controls access to a work'' if the measure, in the ordinary course of its operation, requires the application of information, or a process or a treatment, with the authority of the copyright owner, to gain access to the work.

So, the way I (who am not a lawyer) read it, it is effective on Windows/Mac, and not on Linux, etc.

There are very few scientists who will master a completely different technique in the middle of their career, while working on the same area of research.

What about not just changing fields, but inventing entire new ones? Stu Schreiber came in as a synthetic organic chemist and founded the field of chemical biology. I guess it is just a matter of time before he wins the prize.

Also, anyone think it's strange that 2 chemists won the prize for medicine, and 2 doctors won the prize for chemistry? Chemistry != protein studies.

It sounds like the standard answers such as restricted access rights to the server, files and so forth are not an option in your circumstance. One possible solution - depending on your workflow requirements - might be to look at some digital rights management software.

In this forum, digital rights brings up Microsoft, RIAA and so forth - which I'm sure will get me pilloried. However, it sounds like you are in an environment that would be a good candidate for this kind of software.

Frankly, the technology has a way to go and the weakness of many of these companies is the encryption and the protocols for passing keys. For how badly this is implemented in many systems, you only have to look to Dmitry Sklyarov's presentation on the security of eBook readers to have some ready questions on hand to determine whether these solutions are secure enough for you.

With that said, there are vendors using this software on the 'net, Harvard Business Online being one good example. For your needs, these applications are probably secure enough and will accomplish what you want. The question is whether they can be integrated well enough in your workflow.

I like the graphs showing SiteFinder traffic; they're very easy to read and they show the drops quite clearly

Yeah, nothing like those simple, easy to read graphs.

In general, we look for a drop-off in Site Finder page views. So if Site Finder page views were high from a given ISP, then dropped off dramatically and suddenly, we notice this and classify the ISP as blocking Site Finder as of the corresponding date. It doesn't matter whether Alexa's other log data shows the dns-lookup-failure'd domains as msn logs, as dns lookup failures, as something else, or as nothing at all (so long as they don't show them as Site Finder, which they definitely would not) -- we'd still see the distinctive drop-off in Site Finder traffic.

Ben Edelman
Berkman Center for Internet & Society
Harvard Law School

In general, we look for a drop-off in Site Finder page views. So if Site Finder page views were high from a given ISP, then dropped off dramatically and suddenly, we notice this and classify the ISP as blocking Site Finder as of the corresponding date. It doesn't matter whether Alexa's other log data shows the dns-lookup-failure'd domains as msn logs, as dns lookup failures, as something else, or as nothing at all (so long as they don't show them as Site Finder, which they definitely would not) -- we'd still see the distinctive drop-off in Site Finder traffic.

Ben Edelman
Berkman Center for Internet & Society
Harvard Law School

In general, we look for a drop-off in Site Finder page views. So if Site Finder page views were high from a given ISP, then dropped off dramatically and suddenly, we notice this and classify the ISP as blocking Site Finder as of the corresponding date. It doesn't matter whether Alexa's other log data shows the dns-lookup-failure'd domains as msn logs, as dns lookup failures, as something else, or as nothing at all (so long as they don't show them as Site Finder, which they definitely would not) -- we'd still see the distinctive drop-off in Site Finder traffic.

Ben Edelman
Berkman Center for Internet & Society
Harvard Law School

It means that the "you may not circumvent copyright protections" rule does not apply if it affects defenses or fair use.

This isn't how the court in Universal v. Reimerdes interpreted things. Please read the opinion, especially the text around the words "horse and buggy". The judge who wrote this seems to think that pointing a camcorder at the screen is a "fair" way of making fair use.

I suppose I should have linked to the source where I copied that quote from, since it wasn't directly linked from the front page -- here. The issue isn't that it is in beta, or is a research project, but that the project has projected the illusion of being an anonymous and secure way to share controversial, or even possibly illicit, material. There are many people who have put a lot on the line on the basis that freenet meets these standards. As in, they could go to jail simply because of the information they have put out on freenet.

Whoops, there I go again. What I meant to say was that, deep within the star, the field lines are those of a dipole. However, above the stellar surface, the wind pulls the lines into an open configuration. So, the field lines do not terminate at the stellar surface; they pass through the surface and assume a dipole form at small radii.

The point I am making, however, is that the field lines above the surface are ripped open by the wind. This is a counterexample of the assertion "magnetic monopoles are required for open field lines". Look here for a suitable citation (note: I am not one of the authors on this paper).

Then: "Freenet is not just theoretical, it has been downloaded by over 1.2 million users since the project started, and it is used for the distribution of censored information all over the world, including countries such as China and the Middle East." -- Freenet web site

Now: "Freenet is a research project, always has been. If people find that its usable, then great, they can help us research how to make it better." -- Ian, Newsgroup posting

Then: "Freenet is a pretty effective and scalable way to distribute large files and it is immune to "denial of service" attacks, so it is certainly useful beyond its primary goal of permitting anonymous information distribution." -- Ian, GrepLaw Interview

Now: "If you want something easy to use that works today and claims to protect your anonymity, I suggest you try Earth Station 5, its developers tell us that its just *great*!" -- Ian, Newsgroup posting

Then: "Freenet is also actively used in other countries, including the United States, to distribute censored information such as the Church of Scientology "Operating Thetan" documents. Freenet has been download by over 2,000,000 people." -- Ian, GrepLaw Interview

Now: "I have never ever characterized Freenet as being anything other than in development. Either help, stop griping, or find an alternative." -- Ian, Newsgroup posting

Then: "Freenet is not just theoretical, it has been downloaded by over 1.2 million users since the project started, and it is used for the distribution of censored information all over the world, including countries such as China and the Middle East." -- Freenet web site

Now: "Freenet is a research project, always has been. If people find that its usable, then great, they can help us research how to make it better." -- Ian, Newsgroup posting

Then: "Freenet is a pretty effective and scalable way to distribute large files and it is immune to "denial of service" attacks, so it is certainly useful beyond its primary goal of permitting anonymous information distribution." -- Ian, GrepLaw Interview

Now: "If you want something easy to use that works today and claims to protect your anonymity, I suggest you try Earth Station 5, its developers tell us that its just *great*!" -- Ian, Newsgroup posting

Then: "Freenet is also actively used in other countries, including the United States, to distribute censored information such as the Church of Scientology "Operating Thetan" documents. Freenet has been download by over 2,000,000 people." -- Ian, GrepLaw Interview

Now: "I have never ever characterized Freenet as being anything other than in development. Either help, stop griping, or find an alternative." -- Ian, Newsgroup posting

Time to call Grep Law! One wonders if there are actual judges that read sites like these...

If you say that this experiment "confirms" GR, then it also "confirms" many theories that otherwise wildly disagree with GR.

I would concur.

The assumption is often that, since a particular mechanism was proposed along with a particular equation, that if the equation is right, the mechanism has to be.

That simply doesn't have to be the case, any more than deriving an equation describing the falling activity of Slashdot threads would lend 100% credence to my hypothesis that the light from the Slashdot home page casts light evenly on the topics, and thus causes activity, until they pass beyond the Oldnewsii Shell at some distance and get progressively more shielded from the light by other articles. :)

There are plenty of means to get to the same sorts of relationships as GR presents in terms of light bending. Etheric, tired light, and other particle, flux, or field-based theories can arrive at the same observations.

Sometimes it's a primacy (who got there first) or popularity contest. That's perhaps sad in a way, but the devil is really in the anomalies - sometimes brushed away as 'error', other times requiring some other body acting on it (that can lead to discovering Pluto, or a need for dark matter). The anomalies are where alternate explanations might really prove their mettle.

Here's an example:

There are anomalies in the in-track acceleration of the LAGEOS satellites.

Do you try for the General Relativity solution (section 3.7.3)? Or something "wilder" (near the bottom)?

I guess it's easier to say "X confirms GR" than "X confirms list of equations here", but it does imply that much more in physics has been 'set in stone' than actually has been.

if said 'big object' is a 'ball of hydrogen which never got quite big enough to ignite' it would be called a brown dwarf (that is what brown dwarfs are!) and as big as jupiter (same size larger mass, denser etc)
basic facts

and we would have seen it by now!!!

OK

remember geeks, google is your friend!!

see also
http://www1.msfc.nasa.gov/NEWSROOM/news/releases/2 000/00-206.html
and
http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/1995/48/

Just so nobody gets taken by the troll, he's talking about B.F. Skinner, not Steven Pinker. Also, the thing about the Skinner box is bullshit.

Also: word fucking up, Reckless Visionary. Punctuation doesn't belong inside the quote marks unless it's part of the quote.

Just so nobody gets taken by the troll, he's talking about B.F. Skinner, not Steven Pinker. Also, the thing about the Skinner box is bullshit.

Also: word fucking up, Reckless Visionary. Punctuation doesn't belong inside the quote marks unless it's part of the quote.

Antarctica? How's the weather?

Glad you asked!

on second thought, it doesn't look like it's over, unless there have been more recent developments than August 25: OpenLaw.
US 2nd circuit ruled it's illegal, case is being appealed to SCOTUS
CA supreme court ruled it's protected by the 1st amendment

Here in Canada, the proper name for a couch, is a chesterfield. although, I still call it a couch. I don't know many people who use the word sofa. But now that I think about it, the word sofa is used a lot in sales. check out this site for a list of other interesting canadian words.

As a matter of fact, the food pyramid is currently being revised, and it does include exercise.

I think any language zealotry is counter-productive and just counter-innovative, whether it's Java or Lisp.

And yes Virginia, Java can scale just as well or better than C for some tasks, see SEDA for instance. Not such a terrible surprise for those that know Apache still isn't such a great performer any way you look at it.

I found a convenient explanation (if anyone's interested) of trademark law, and you're indeed right.

So-- the criteria to bypass trademark infringement seems to be the separation between descriptive and proper-name style usage. (The link uses "All Bran" as a protected trademark, but "all bran" as a description is not infringing.) It certainly doesn't satisfy the 'generic' provision, because you don't call systems of organization "Dewey Decimal Systems" in the same way you call jeans "Levis."

However! If indeed the name is the only trademarked problem here, why not simply use the same system and call it "The Louie Decimal System"?

But copyright infringement remains illegal. So, if you want file-sharing (of the infringing variety) to be legalized, you need new laws -- but will they actually be better? Check out Derek Slater on the topic.

greplaw shares your skepticism.

I did some googling and found this opinion on the passage you mentioned.

I don't know the answer to the first question, but the answer to your second is a qualified no. Virtually any time anything interesting is discovered in the sky, the International Astronomical Union (IAU) will distribute a notice as part of their Minor Planet Electronic Circulars. Often, this will take place before the orbit of an asteroid is refined; data are then gathered by observatories around the world. That all of the involved institutions and personnel could sit on a major discovery like this is very difficult to imagine.

I'm pretty sure it was _Scientific American Frontiers_ on PBS.. a quick google only found this though:

"Seeing" Sounds: Echolocation by Blind Humans

The more important question to answer is "how many have died or been injured while using a cell phone." The number of cancers will pale in comparision. Well Harvard studied it and came up with a new point of view that there is a risk to benefit to be considered that precludes all of the above.

To myself it it is all about improving the quality of life and the cell phone does not improve my life.