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Why did they fund MkLinux in 95 or 96?

Anyway this seems to be a trademark case, and those are somewhat scary, as Trademarks are required to be defended, or else they can be lost.

Now, to the case in hand. Apple aren't accusing these people of direct infringement (i.e. copying their copyrighted material), they are accusing them of contributory infringement. They are saying that the theme editor allows others to infringe. This is essentially the same thing Napster is charged with. Here is an article hosted by the EFF that discusses contributory infringement. It focuses on the case of peer-to-peer applications, but is well worth a look.

I don't know much about Apple's themeing system but it seems that they are saying that using the theme editor involves copying proprietary Apple copyrighted code and/or images. That may well be true, and if so then Apple appear to have a case. But either way this is not an action that is justifiable but pointing to trademark law and waving hands. They are going after someone based on the idea that their code is closed and they want to make sure you have to pay to use it. That is quite at odds with their stance wrt Darwin where they clearly want to use "Open Source" as an advantage to them (either directly with code contributions or at least by taking advantage of the buzz word).

I knew I'd screw up the link. Here's the right one:

http://seti.harvard.edu/grad/d_thes.html

1. Beacons

Some search projects are set up to look for deliberately transmitted beacons, i.e. signals designed to be received by faraway alien SETI systems. The signals can be constructed to be different enough from the noise that even a modestly powered transmitter can be seen across interstellar distances. One such designed signal is a pure sinusoid. There are good reasons to believe that nature cannot make a very pure sinusoidal signal, while it is easy to do with a radio transmitter. One nice thing about looking for beacons is that you can assume that the aliens have done the right things to make the signal easy to receive, and they may very well be sending it with "primitive" technology like radio instead of their own advanced "Q-rays".

2. Leakage radiation

Some SETI projects are more geared to eavesdropping on the aliens' local communication. This is a much harder prospect since the local stuff is not beamed in our direction or designed for us to understand. Personally, I think that intelligent alien civilizations will send their own traffic efficiently and not waste power. The upshot of this is that efficiently encoded information looks just like noise and we would not be able to distinguish these signals from the natural background. I'm not a big fan of leakage radiatiion searches, but others disagree with me.

The more technically minded out there might be able to get a little more insight from the reading the first chapter or so of my dissertation: http://seti.harvard.edu/grad/d-thes.html.

Darren

Two relatively recent Supreme Court decisions which upheld parody and satire as forms of free speech:

Hustler Magazine, Inc. vs. Rev. Jerry Falwell, over a satirical account of Falwell's first sexual experience (with his mother).
2 Live Crew vs. Acuff-Rose Music, over a parody of the Roy Orbison song, "Pretty Woman."

Recently, however, our university's trial subscription to the online edition of the prestigious journal Nature and its associated monthlies expired. Our university decided to join with Harvard, Cornell, Princeton, and the University of California in boycotting what was deemed an untenably pricey subscription fee by the Nature publishing group ($30,000 CDN) for a service with significant restrictions in the timeliness of content. Our librarian's letter outlines our school's position on this issue. Nature's own site licensing policies are available here.

I think my conclusion after several years of study on these sorts of issues is that the best tools of "small folks" might be education and cooperation. Because many potential defendants have no clue as to the real status of trademark or other intellectual propertly laws, they are destined to fail without legal counsel. On the other hand, if they had at least some legitimate estimation of the legal status of their situation, they would be able to more aptly judge whether they should hold or fold. Thus far in this thread I have seen a lot of evidence of misunderstanding of trademark law. Secondly, I would like to see some grassroots efforts to defend those who have good cases against trademark/IP/rights holders. If there were even a modest organization willing to offer pro bono or low cost legal services to those who've been subject to harassment, the "reverse chilling effect" on corporations would be substantial. No doubt, many lawyers who author cease and desist letters know precisely that their claims wouldn't hold the morning dew on a blade of grass. Unfortunately, the odds that anyone will say so or be empowered to legal fight such claims, are so minimal as to not be worthy of concern.

As for changing the law, I think that would probably be the least effective way to bring about real change. True, trademark holders are somewhate incentivized by the law to protect their marks, but I think this is a necessary part of the law, given the power which is given to those who have trademark rights. Instead of trying to re-balance things by tinkering with the scale, we should consider the weights on each side of the scale and ask whether there are ways to bring them into equilibrium.

Stay tuned for exciting news on these fronts from the good folks at the Berkman Center (tm) at the Harvard Law School (tm). Hehe.

DVD may be a wonderful format for storage of multimedia works, but if it is burdened with CSS locks, it is far less useful for playback -- another artist cannot use excerpts from the work in his own creation or juxtapose them for comment or criticism, even when those are clearly fair uses. He is technologically (and possibly legally, if those fighting to uphold the DMCA are successful) barred from sampling, creating montages, or adapting earlier works. Further, the locks burden audiences for the work, who may be unable to watch them on a given machine, in a chosen sequence, or to view DVDs imported from another region. In fact, you yourself may experience these difficulties if you wish to prepare several DVD movies for classroom comparison. (If you do, please let us know.)

I hope you will encourage the artists, whose work these controls are supposedly protecting, to reject locks that prevent their audiences from making use of the works they create.

More information on the DVD case, Universal v. Reimerdes, is available at Openlaw DVD.

Thanks!

unfortunately "limited" can mean anything including infinity - 1 day, and the way Eldred vs. Reno is going, judges are buying it.

Check out the Harvard Medical School Surgical Planning Lab for instance. They're working on (among other things) a system that allows doctors to perform surgery while the patient is inside an MRI machine, so that the surgeons can literally see what's under their knife before they make the next incision. (Right now it's done on a CRT, eventually they want some sort of HUD overlay.) Very, very cool stuff. If unenclosed holographic projection ever happens, they'll be first in line to use it.

DeCSS is no more a tool for circumvention than any other software that decodes CSS encoded data. Either every DVD player circumvents, or none do.

It's a shame that, though I didn't read a refutation of my claim, that the position was not taken in trial... but much of OpenLaw's musings on authority did appear in the form of one paragraph in the appeal brief:

The Studios argue that a purchaser of a DVD containing their movies does not receive legal "authority" to decrypt the work. Studios at 63 n. 43. Instead, they claim that "authorization by the Studios [upon purchase of a DVD] has been limited to accessing DVD content via authorized equipment." Id. But where and how has this authority "limited"? Nowhere during or after the purchase transaction are consumers informed, much less contractually bound, to view the work only on "authorized equipment." To the contrary, DVDs are sold with no contractual restrictions whatsoever (paragraph 2, section c, Appellate Reply Brief)

Read my full argument at: OpenLaw

The new thing about AMANDA is that it's direction-sensitive. That means instead of "oops - there's been one of the ghost particles" AMANDA will find out about "oops - one of the ghost particles came from ...". No other experiment has been able to get this information so far.

Think of the difference between a conventional neutrino detector and AMANDA as that between a Geiger Counter and the Chandra Gamma-Ray Observatory. It's an entire new field of science you can do if you're imaging the sky instead of just counting particles.

Umm....maybe. After this "direct detection" was announced, another group, with BETTER detection capability, failed to find the claimed signal.

The original group then admitted that the supposedly directly detected planet was not so bright

Why all the controversy?

the signal was 20000 times fainter than the noise

Repeat:

the signal was 20000 times fainter than the noise

More than you ever wanted to know about this star

----
cliamer: IAAPA

Chandra has two instruments, ACIS (Advanced Camera for Imaging and Spectroscopy) and HRC (High Resolution Camera). Almost all results going to the general public are made with ACIS. ACIS allows simultanoeus imaging AND spectroscopy. HRC was intended for really high resolution spectroscopy OR imaging.

ACIS is working nominally, and the Chandra team deserves all the credit for this. However, you do not hear that much about HRC. Why is that?

This is well documented: Have a look at the Chandra User Manual . See section 7.8.2.

Quote: The anti-coincidence shield of the HRC-S is not working because of a timing error in the electronics. The error is not correctable. As a result the event rate is very high and exceeds the total telemetry rate limit. So, they can not tell particles from X-rays.

The same in plain english: We are detecting more background than our data transfer can handle. The instrument is f*ked due to a silly electronics design error. We are very sorry, but that is all we can do about it.

Here's a photograph of the same area taken with an optical telescope (the DSS Sky Survey). Although the poster meant to say too hot for a visual observation (the X-ray emitting material is invisible to the human eye), there are also significant errors on the Harvard CHANDRA page. The main, central elliptical galaxy in Hickson 62 is not NGC 4761, but NGC 4778. NGC 4761 is a fainter nearby spiral (labelled "c"). Also, comparing the CHANDRA image, it would appear that it has accidentally been mirrored right-to-left. NGC 4761 should be the pink blob at about the 2 o'clock position about halfway out in the greenish X-ray cloud.

At magnitude 12.5, the brightest galaxy in this group (NGC 4778) should be visible in a 6-inch telescope under good conditions. An 8- or 10-inch telescope should be capable of showing the brightest 3 galaxies in the group.

But you don't wait for it, you just get an email with URL or a CD in the mail....

I love satellite astronomy.

I am the "Eldred" in "Eldred v. Reno." I ought to correct a few misstatements here. Mr Hart says:

Sadly to say, the US Supreme Court just ruled against the case I was supposed to be in [Eldred vs Reno]. . .but at least it was mostly on technical grounds. . .which leaves me possibly to still bring another totally separate case. . .but the lawyers would never let me get a single word into my own case [Hart vs Reno] so I made them take my name off of that case, which then became Eldred vs Reno].

1. It was the U.S. District of Columbia Circuit Court of Appeals, not the U.S. Supreme Court. See the 2-1 decision under http://eon.law.harvard.edu/openlaw/eldredvreno. We are going to appeal the case, eventually to the Supreme Court, and we need your support.
2. Mr Hart was never "supposed to be in" the case. He refused to become a plaintiff when he was asked. He is welcome to get his own attorneys to file another challenge. In fact, a group at Stanford might be looking to get somebody else to file a challenge in another district, but it won't be Eldred or Hart for that one. Let me know if you are interested.
3. "[T]he lawyers would never let me get a single word into" the challenge to the CTEA--meaning the pro bono attorneys discovered that Mr. Hart, although not an attorney himself, wished to tell the lawyers what to do. Mr. Hart, you will soon learn when dealing with him, has his own mind. It so happens that his project is not the only one that is concerned about the public domain, and the attorneys found another plaintiff to replace him.
4. "I made them take my name off of that case"--meaning he refused to go forward with the case unless he personally controlled everything. He has yet to explain what he would have argued differently.

JimCYL says:

1. Mr. Hart is partially correct when he mentions that copyrights run for 95 years as of the 1998 Copyright Term Extension Act. In addition to the other two elements Jim mentions, the 95-year term applies to works first published after 1922, renewed, and under copyright in 1998. (This "retrospective" or "retroactive" extension of term is primarily the basis for the dissent in the appeals court decision. It applies to Project Gutenberg as much as the rest of us, because it more or less sets up a dam for the flow of works into the public domain at January 1, 1923. Project Gutenberg for the most part has refrained from reprinting any works first published after 1922. Eldritch Press and some others do copyright research to find out works that were not renewed and so entered the public domain. For further information, see http://digital.library.upenn.edu/books/okbooks.htm l as well as the new book, "The Public Domain," by Stephen Fishman, at http://www.nolo.com
2. "Eldred Press"--it has become "Eldritch Press."
3. "The author of a work (or his heirs) can "recapture" his copyright after 35 years by notifying the copyright office of his intent to do so." Unfortunately, the Copyright Term Extension Act did not follow previous copyright acts, and failed to allow this recapturing when it extended term. As Mr. Hart properly notes, renewal is no longer necessary. Consequently, publishers now have many rights that neither previous laws nor the Constitution ever gave them.

DG asks: "If you could pick any 10 currently copyrighted works, and have them placed in the public domain (specifically for inclusion in Project Gutenberg) what would they be?"

It should be noted that not all works in Project Gutenberg are in the public domain. For example, Michael S. Hart retains copyright for some. (BTW, the attempt at copyright notice at the bottom of the head is not proper: (C) is not valid, only a "C" inside a circle, or "Copr." or "Copyright" written out. But, anyway, notice is no longer necessary for copyright, only for collecting attorney fees and damages in cases of infringement, and even then the work must be registered (not necessary for most works online, which are under copyright the instant the expression is fixed).

But if you want to put in your request for books to be scanned, you can do so at the On-Line Books Page at http://digital.library.upenn.edu/books/in-progress .html#requests

Mr. Hart also says: Actually, more and more of our Etexts are available in more formats, it's just that very often those who reformat them want the be the ONLY places to get those formats, and thus don't share back with us. It's a little sad that way, but we have tried to honor the requests from other Etext sites that want to be the ONLY source for our Etexts in various formats. . .though we disagree with that philosophy. Some day, when I am older and crankier, perhaps I will just raid their sites against their wills for conversions that are non-copyrightable: though these days people even claim copyrights on the most trivial conversions. Someday that older and crankier me may even take them [some are major universities] to court for "misuse of copyright."

Mr. Hart claims to do his own copyright research, but he is not apparently cognizant of current U.S. copyright law. The underlying text of a work in the public domain is in the public domain, no matter if a site such as Eldritch Press claims copyright on the introduction, notes, added punctuation, editorial corrections, layout, and so on--none of which are creative enough for a copyright infringement claim to be asserted against Project Gutenberg. See, for example, "The Public Domain" for more information about what is under copyright and what is in the public domain.

I ought to say that I don't see Project Gutenberg and Eldritch Press as competitors, the way Mr. Hart appears to to. In fact, I have attempted to donate some of my works to Project Gutenberg, only to have Mr. Hart find some excuse to refuse them. So I instead pay for my own web server and publish my own work. I stand behind them and make my own corrections. The format problem that questioners raise to Mr. Hart is fairly irrelevant today, since it is fairly easy to filter texts from ASCII to HTML or back, or to other formats, as long as the tags apply to the structure and not the layout. (Project Gutenberg texts could use some more standardization on what constitutes italic and so on, I agree.)

We "bookpeople" who publish books on the net could use a little help--see the On-Line Books Page at the link above for more information on what you can do, besides becoming a Project Gutenberg volunteer.

We also see ourselves in alliance with all those who treasure freedom--the same freedom to code a program or to read a book--and so we join with those who oppose the DMCA or the NET act or any other attempts to censor the net or make it safe for e-commerce by excluding those such as Project Gutenberg or others of us "bookpeople." Thanks for your support!

Now America, like most of the western world has developed a _system of Democracy_ to ensure tha each person gets a say in the running of the nation.

And American democracy is not perfect. Nothing special about America there, none of the other democracies are perfect either. In Greece, someone just got imprisoned for distributing leaflets saying that minority languages exist. In Britain, the government is probably going to pass a law postponing forthcoming elections (for important reasons of course) and nobody will bat an eyelid; also many laws are being blocked which the majority of the population would like, by a few hundred unelected peers who sit in the House of Lords. All democracies are flawed.

In American democracy, one big deviation from democracy is that money can buy a lot of political power. The music cartel has been buying power for years, and weighting the system in their favour.

I humbly suggest to you that it is not morally justifiable to advovate theft when there is reasonable democratic recourse available to you.

The right most people who are posting think exists -- the right for any citizen to use IP created in a university in the U.S. via a government-sponsored project -- does not exist. The Baye-Dole Act gives non-profits the right to exclusively license this IP to anyone they wish.

Make sure you equip your next satellite with a Termination Tether. It won't work in geosynchronous orbit, but you'll be moving your bird out of the slot with the last of its fuel anyway.

http://www.people.fas.harvard.edu/~pyang/base/ally ourbase.swf

The plaintiffs in Eldred v. Reno thank all those who participated in the debate about the constitutionality of copyright extension. We especially wish to thank our many supporters and those who gave the case direct aid (we haven't needed money, just brains). The Berkman Center for Law and Internet at Harvard Law School, Lawrence Lessig (now at Stanford), Charles Nesson, Jonathan Zittrain, and the law firm of Jones, Day, did an outstanding job of representing us pro bono against Bono.

We have not decided about an appeal. We will be discussing that this weekend, and we look forward to your ideas. You may direct them, on either side, in the OpenLaw forum, at http://eon.law.harvard.edu/openlaw/eldredvreno/.

Although we lost this particular case this time, the battle of strong "intellectual property rights" advocates against the freedom of the rest of us goes on. Cases such as the DeCSS cases and others demand our participation in deciding issues about how law and technology can get along. The issues have extended from copyrighting books now to copyrighting the human genome. Patents on AIDS drugs may meant life or death for many people in Africa who could never afford a computer.

It is important that we not get discouraged, but that we continue the good fight--we are right, we will eventually prevail, and your children will appreciate what you can do right now in this long struggle for freedom online. Thanks for taking part in this debate and discussion.

20-50 Hz, eh? So all those kids cruising in boomers must have really strong bones...

Here's one that's already ready already:
Squirrel Fishing.

Fist Prost

"We're talking about a planet of helpdesks."

There are actually a lot of benefits to a dual-processor setup. I did a research project on the Linux scheduler for interactive users:

http://www.people.fas.harvard.edu/~rross/cs265/pap er.html

Afterward I put together a dual-celeron system and the improvement in the overall responsiveness and feel of the system was quite dramatic.

- Russ

First, there's an interesting, relevant and relatively easy-to-read article by Jack Szostak and co-workers titled "Synthesizing Life" in the January 18, 2001 issue of Nature (vol 409, page 387). In this article they talk about the challenge of creating vesicles and effecting their replication, creating a molecular information-storage device capable of self-replication and coupling the vesicles to the information-storage/replication device in order to get a living/evolving system. Many of the questions raised in earlier comments are addressed. Most relevant to making life, or pieces of life, in space might be the issue of very low local concentrations? Article here [non-free login required (mrrr!)]. Alternatively, you could likely get a reprint from the authors directly by contacting them

Second, one of the more interesting things I remember Freeman Dyson saying was that he thought we should be looking for extraterrestrial life *outside* of gravity wells. That is, he thought it was more likely that things far-along enough to communicate with us would prolly not be sitting at the bottom of a well.

It appears copyright has been continuously extended on everything produced since 1917 (not sure that's the right year, the copyright office website has it somewhere).

The correct year (in the US at least) is 1923. To me, a copyright date provides only one bit of information: before 1923 or on-or-after 1923. Read my short essay on the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act, the root source of DisneyCo's power.

I would gladly donate to an organization doing copyright law reform.

You could start at the Eldred v. Reno page. Also consider joining the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

AFAIK Ceres has never been seen clearly enough to determine whether it is a spheroidal shape or not. In fact it transitted a star a while ago and the results indicated that it was surprisingly irregular. But I wouldn't exactly cry if Ceres counted as a planet anyway.

I'm not aware of any spheroidal asteroid that is smaller than Ceres either. If you have proof to the contrary, I would like to see it.

As for all your other points about pluto- so what. Every single body in the solar system appears to be completely different to every other.

All but one picture is the Aibo ERS-111 (e.g. version 1.1), not the Aibo 210 (aka Aibo-II). Also, several of the stats were wrong.

So this is neither a good comparison, nor was it really all that funny. Perhaps the mistitled story put me in the wrong mood?

Anyway, if you want to see a real cat fighting an Aibo go here.

FAI requirements

Protocol is protected by digital signatures. No requirement for non-disclosure of the protocol. In fact they prefer that you use the published IGC File transfer format

Paul

FAI requirements

Protocol is protected by digital signatures. No requirement for non-disclosure of the protocol. In fact they prefer that you use the published IGC File transfer format

Paul

"In other words, interstellar laser communication is altogether practicable." -Paul Horowitz

We have now been observing for more than 2 years of "production runs", during which we have made some 17,000 observations of nearly 5,000 separate target stars. [more...]

What strikes me as the true difficulty in this entire light-show theory, is that if we did encounter a laser-esque communiqué from our little green friends, how would we
a) pick it out amongst all the stellar noise,
b) decypher the meaning/purpose/intent/tone of said message, and..
c) respond in a timely fashion (as to not lose our window of opportunity for contact) with a response-beam that relayed a message decypherable by our ET counterparts.
I support SETI, and I always will, as I refuse to believe the scary possibility that humans are the biggest and best thing out there, but it seems like such a vast undertaking, not unlike the audio SETI project, that it will never be of any active or true use.

Simply because laser radiation is detected, doesn't necessarily mean that an intelligent entity sent it. This article from the Goddard Space Flight Center describes natural laser radiation from the atmosphere of Mars (basically a sun-pumped CO2 laser). Similar findings have been observed in comets.

- Demosthenes

the first time we entered his classroom we were met loud Bob Dylan-songs.

The bitterly ironic thing about this is that Bob Dylan is a vocal proponent of further extending the term of copyright. It deeply saddened me to learn this -- I'd always sort of lumped Bob into the category of cool folk singers like Woody Guthrie (who released all of his songs into the public domain).

Don't give these people your money. Go listen to some free music instead.

"Kleenex" is very much a registered and protected trademark, despite the yabberings of the uninformed.

It is important to keep in mind that trademarks are inherently adjectival and must remain distinctive to retain their protected status. While many formerly distinctive marks have made a transition into common, generic nouns ("Kleenex" for "tissue") or even verbs (e.g., "to (make a) Xerox"), this metamorphosis, when complete, sacrifices the trademark to the public domain.

Juries can't be biased? Hrmmmm.

How about

racially motivated nullification?

Or the time and effort spent on jury consulting? It's done for a reason -- because jurors DO bring biases, and some of them are fairly predictable based on things like social class, race, gender and so forth. The evidence ranges from presentation details (dress the defendant in a suit -- which SHOULDN'T matter to an unbiased jury deciding solely on points of fact and law) to peremptory challenges based on probable biases and so forth.

Jurors are people. People are biased. You can't escape that.

The US Supreme Court has ruled that parody is exempt from copyright infringement. See Eldred v. Reno

I cannot but be pleased with this innovation; it enables the creation on the Web of a perfect logical notation to resemble my "Begriffsschrift", or "concept-script". This shall allow for the statement of propositions such that their grammatical form models their logical form, and as such is a development of the highest importance.

I find the idea of very dark galaxies appealing. For instance you have the binary quasar 2345+007, which can be a gravitational lens. If it is a gravitational lens, the lensing object is very dark, and it is also very massive. There has been some reports that a lensing galaxy has been seen, but no generally accepted conclusion has been drawn as to the nature of this quasar. So, this is exciting stuff!

Thus: If they contribute software that they are claiming is worth $10,000, they will have the transaction:
Sale of Software Credit $10,000
Donation Expense Debit $10,000

Which means that while they got a deduction of $10,000, it is irrelevant, as they had to correspondingly have an income of $10,000.

Those are the critical additions to the financial records; the costs already having been borne and deducted.

If they decided to value the software at $1M, then what happens is:
Sale of Software Credit $1M
Donation Expense Debit $1M

Where the impact on taxation is again, nothing, because the $1M donation deduction is balanced by the $1M sale.

In accounting, the debits and credits have to balance. They can play all sorts of games, pushing the incomes and expenses hither and thither, and they still have to have them balance, which means that if they declare the value of the donation to be "too high," some sort of income in that "too high" amount has to come in somewhere.

Note that we could change the numbers again, valuing the donation at $1:
Sale of Software Credit $1
Donation Expense Debit $1
and the impact for tax purposes, due to the balancing out of sale-versus-deduction, is again $0.

In effect, the value they choose should be irrelevant from a tax perspective.

The good reason to inflate the value is to get the potlatch ego boost of being able to claim to have given away gifts of Immense Value.

Unless the IRS provides a way to "double-count" donations, in which case the bigger the number the better...

Plus, you forget the fact that courts have ruled that the police have no duty to protect the people.


Refrag

here will be understood now. From the letter;

An optional set of ATA commands has been proposed by IBM that could support the CPRM method from the 4C entity or other methods. After implementing these commands, a hard disk (HDD) supplier wishing to install CPRM keying information and support that particular key management method would need a license from 4C entity

This observant post at open law might give you a better idea of who 4C entity is.

If you use this standard, the page will work in pretty much any browser, including IE. Now, if you make pages like this [1] or this [2], then it's your own damned fault if it completely breaks in a different browser.

1. My University's main page. Blecch.
2. Somewhere I worked briefly. Actually this page works quite well in the Big Two on Windows, but I can't even imagine what it'd look like in a PDA. In Lynx it looks like this: [LINK] [LINK] [LINK] [LINK] ...

Yes, I am a Raxis.

By many definitions, Pluto does not qualify as one of the solar system's major planets. I think there's much more interesting stuff to be found in the asteroid belt, but perhaps that's just me. Maybe Pluto's distance from earth has something to do with its romance.

Read more about this in an article at the International Comet Quarterly.

By many definitions, Pluto does not qualify as one of the solar system's major planets. I think there's much more interesting stuff to be found in the asteroid belt, but perhaps that's just me. Maybe Pluto's distance from earth has something to do with its romance.

Read more about this in an article at the International Comet Quarterly.

I don't know about ZKS's solution, but I guess it's a mixture of MIX-net ideas and Crowds.

If you haven't time to read the stuff behind the links above, the idea behind MIX-nets is that an encrypted datagram is source-routed through the network. Each hop is encrypted with the key of the next router. The final destination is only visible to the last router of the chain, whereas the source is only visible to the first router. Crowds, on the other hand, is based on you being a part of a 'crowd' of hosts that is sending, say, HTTP requests. The destination only sees that the request originated from the crowd.

They all say the exact same thing ...

What other reports have an extensive discussion of The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) and the legal risks involved in anticensorware investigations?

Hey, at least enjoy the section header quotes :-)

Note a basic finding is that one has no idea about the actual content of the categories. It's common for "Sex" to have everything from feminism to gay rights.

SmartFilter - I've Got A Little List is at
http://sethf.com/anticensorware/smartfilter/gotali st.php

Kinda reminds me of my first astronomy class. I hadn't even made it to my freshman year of high school and I had 4 credits of Astronomy from the local community college.

Many people have given good advice above. I'll mainly just second their comments. The order I'd proceed in is.

First item, a good beginners star atlas.

Second item, warm clothing.

Third item, many nights in the country just learning the stars and constelations.

After that go and get a good pair of binoculars or a good telescope.

Last, but not least. As your doughter is so young, you will need to be there as a source of infromation. You'll need to learn alot to help guide her in the early years.

Now for some Links. The first two have good beginners information. Some of the links below may be dead. I just quick cut and pasted them from the astronomy section of my Interesting Places page.

• Astronomy Mag. (www.astronomy.com/home.asp).
• Sky & Telescope Mag. (www.skypub.com).
• Minnesota Astronomical Society (MAS) (www.mnastro.org).
• The Telescope Shoppe (www.telescopeshop.com), 3402 Federal Dr., Eagan, MN, 651-688-7335. Yes this is a local Twin Cities telescope shop. They have a map on their site showing where they are. They are tucked in the lower level along the side of the strip mall they are in. The store is small and easy to miss. If your at the corner of Yankee Doodle RD and Federal Dr., park in the lot to the south east. They are a short stones throw from the intersection.
• Telescope making links
• • Many good links on making AltAz mounts (zebu.uoregon.edu/~mbartels/altaz/altaz.html).
  • ATM's resource List (www.freenet.tlh.fl.us/~blombard).
• Astronomy-Mall.com (www.astronomy-mall.com/Astronomy-Mall).
• Stellafane (www.stellafane.com).
• Terrestrial Planet Finder (tpf.jpl.nasa.gov).
• Many Images of the moon (www.seds.org/nineplanets/nineplanets/pxmoon.html) .
• Solar Views (www.solarviews.com).
• Planetary Image Atlas (www-pdsimage.JPL.NASA.GOV/PDS/public/Atlas).
• Hubble Space Telescope Archive (oposite.stsci.edu/pubinfo/pictures.html).
• Hummble Site (hubble.stsci.edu).
• StarStuff (www.starstuff.org).
• SpaceRef (www.spaceref.com), Your space refference.
• Astronomy Picture of the Day Archive (antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/archivepix.html).
• SkyView (skyview.gsfc.nasa.gov) virtual observatory.
• 2MASS (www.ipac.caltech.edu/2mass/) and (pegasus.astro.umass.edu/GradProg/2mass.html) Two Micron All Sky Survey.
• Large Angle and Spectrometric Coronagraph Experiment (LASCO) (http://lasco-www.nrl.navy.mil/lasco.html).
• AAVSO Network to Search for Optical Counterparts of Gamma-Ray Bursts (www.aavso.org/grb.stm).
• High Altitude Observatory (www.hao.ucar.edu).
• Asteroid Comet Impact Hazards (impact.arc.nasa.gov).
• • Unusual Minor Planets (cfa-www.harvard.edu/iau/lists/Unusual.html).
  • Potentially Hazardous Asteroids (cfa-www.harvard.edu/iau/lists/PHACloseApp.html).& nbsp; Of particular interest to me are LB16 and AN10 which will pass at a distance closer than the moon's orbit. LB16 currently only has one opposition charted so it's predicted orbit will likely change as new data comes in. It's expected to swing by in 2004. In 2027 AN10 will visit earth. It's orbit is calculated with three oppositions meaning it't much more likely to really showup ontime and in place. With further data LB16 could either get closer or farther away. When AN10's orbit was first predicted (only one opposition at the time) it's error envelope included earth. With further data it was found to just pass within the moon's orbit and miss the earth.
  • Forthcoming Close Approaches To The Earth (cfa-www.harvard.edu/iau/lists/CloseApp.html).&nbs p; This is the document to look at when you want to know who will visit next and how far away. It has all close approaches to 0.2 AU away from earth or within 20% of the distance of between the sun and earth. On Sep 19th, 2000 we will have a visiter at 0.0477 AU and on Oct 31st anotehr one will pass at 0.07386 AU. LB16 and AN10 are expected to pass at around 0.25% of the distance between the sun and earth.
• Mars Global Surveyor (mars.jpl.nasa.gov/mgs/index.html).
• Mars Orbiter Laser Altimeter (MOLA) (ltpwww.gsfc.nasa.gov/tharsis/mola.html). There are full data on the shape of Mars including 1 degree and .5 degree elevation data sets.
• Planetary photojournal by JPL (photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov).
• NASA's Origins Program (origins.jpl.nasa.gov).

Kinda reminds me of my first astronomy class. I hadn't even made it to my freshman year of high school and I had 4 credits of Astronomy from the local community college.

Many people have given good advice above. I'll mainly just second their comments. The order I'd proceed in is.

First item, a good beginners star atlas.

Second item, warm clothing.

Third item, many nights in the country just learning the stars and constelations.

After that go and get a good pair of binoculars or a good telescope.

Last, but not least. As your doughter is so young, you will need to be there as a source of infromation. You'll need to learn alot to help guide her in the early years.

Now for some Links. The first two have good beginners information. Some of the links below may be dead. I just quick cut and pasted them from the astronomy section of my Interesting Places page.

• Astronomy Mag. (www.astronomy.com/home.asp).
• Sky & Telescope Mag. (www.skypub.com).
• Minnesota Astronomical Society (MAS) (www.mnastro.org).
• The Telescope Shoppe (www.telescopeshop.com), 3402 Federal Dr., Eagan, MN, 651-688-7335. Yes this is a local Twin Cities telescope shop. They have a map on their site showing where they are. They are tucked in the lower level along the side of the strip mall they are in. The store is small and easy to miss. If your at the corner of Yankee Doodle RD and Federal Dr., park in the lot to the south east. They are a short stones throw from the intersection.
• Telescope making links
• • Many good links on making AltAz mounts (zebu.uoregon.edu/~mbartels/altaz/altaz.html).
  • ATM's resource List (www.freenet.tlh.fl.us/~blombard).
• Astronomy-Mall.com (www.astronomy-mall.com/Astronomy-Mall).
• Stellafane (www.stellafane.com).
• Terrestrial Planet Finder (tpf.jpl.nasa.gov).
• Many Images of the moon (www.seds.org/nineplanets/nineplanets/pxmoon.html) .
• Solar Views (www.solarviews.com).
• Planetary Image Atlas (www-pdsimage.JPL.NASA.GOV/PDS/public/Atlas).
• Hubble Space Telescope Archive (oposite.stsci.edu/pubinfo/pictures.html).
• Hummble Site (hubble.stsci.edu).
• StarStuff (www.starstuff.org).
• SpaceRef (www.spaceref.com), Your space refference.
• Astronomy Picture of the Day Archive (antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/archivepix.html).
• SkyView (skyview.gsfc.nasa.gov) virtual observatory.
• 2MASS (www.ipac.caltech.edu/2mass/) and (pegasus.astro.umass.edu/GradProg/2mass.html) Two Micron All Sky Survey.
• Large Angle and Spectrometric Coronagraph Experiment (LASCO) (http://lasco-www.nrl.navy.mil/lasco.html).
• AAVSO Network to Search for Optical Counterparts of Gamma-Ray Bursts (www.aavso.org/grb.stm).
• High Altitude Observatory (www.hao.ucar.edu).
• Asteroid Comet Impact Hazards (impact.arc.nasa.gov).
• • Unusual Minor Planets (cfa-www.harvard.edu/iau/lists/Unusual.html).
  • Potentially Hazardous Asteroids (cfa-www.harvard.edu/iau/lists/PHACloseApp.html).& nbsp; Of particular interest to me are LB16 and AN10 which will pass at a distance closer than the moon's orbit. LB16 currently only has one opposition charted so it's predicted orbit will likely change as new data comes in. It's expected to swing by in 2004. In 2027 AN10 will visit earth. It's orbit is calculated with three oppositions meaning it't much more likely to really showup ontime and in place. With further data LB16 could either get closer or farther away. When AN10's orbit was first predicted (only one opposition at the time) it's error envelope included earth. With further data it was found to just pass within the moon's orbit and miss the earth.
  • Forthcoming Close Approaches To The Earth (cfa-www.harvard.edu/iau/lists/CloseApp.html).&nbs p; This is the document to look at when you want to know who will visit next and how far away. It has all close approaches to 0.2 AU away from earth or within 20% of the distance of between the sun and earth. On Sep 19th, 2000 we will have a visiter at 0.0477 AU and on Oct 31st anotehr one will pass at 0.07386 AU. LB16 and AN10 are expected to pass at around 0.25% of the distance between the sun and earth.
• Mars Global Surveyor (mars.jpl.nasa.gov/mgs/index.html).
• Mars Orbiter Laser Altimeter (MOLA) (ltpwww.gsfc.nasa.gov/tharsis/mola.html). There are full data on the shape of Mars including 1 degree and .5 degree elevation data sets.
• Planetary photojournal by JPL (photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov).
• NASA's Origins Program (origins.jpl.nasa.gov).

Kinda reminds me of my first astronomy class. I hadn't even made it to my freshman year of high school and I had 4 credits of Astronomy from the local community college.

Many people have given good advice above. I'll mainly just second their comments. The order I'd proceed in is.

First item, a good beginners star atlas.

Second item, warm clothing.

Third item, many nights in the country just learning the stars and constelations.

After that go and get a good pair of binoculars or a good telescope.

Last, but not least. As your doughter is so young, you will need to be there as a source of infromation. You'll need to learn alot to help guide her in the early years.

Now for some Links. The first two have good beginners information. Some of the links below may be dead. I just quick cut and pasted them from the astronomy section of my Interesting Places page.

• Astronomy Mag. (www.astronomy.com/home.asp).
• Sky & Telescope Mag. (www.skypub.com).
• Minnesota Astronomical Society (MAS) (www.mnastro.org).
• The Telescope Shoppe (www.telescopeshop.com), 3402 Federal Dr., Eagan, MN, 651-688-7335. Yes this is a local Twin Cities telescope shop. They have a map on their site showing where they are. They are tucked in the lower level along the side of the strip mall they are in. The store is small and easy to miss. If your at the corner of Yankee Doodle RD and Federal Dr., park in the lot to the south east. They are a short stones throw from the intersection.
• Telescope making links
• • Many good links on making AltAz mounts (zebu.uoregon.edu/~mbartels/altaz/altaz.html).
  • ATM's resource List (www.freenet.tlh.fl.us/~blombard).
• Astronomy-Mall.com (www.astronomy-mall.com/Astronomy-Mall).
• Stellafane (www.stellafane.com).
• Terrestrial Planet Finder (tpf.jpl.nasa.gov).
• Many Images of the moon (www.seds.org/nineplanets/nineplanets/pxmoon.html) .
• Solar Views (www.solarviews.com).
• Planetary Image Atlas (www-pdsimage.JPL.NASA.GOV/PDS/public/Atlas).
• Hubble Space Telescope Archive (oposite.stsci.edu/pubinfo/pictures.html).
• Hummble Site (hubble.stsci.edu).
• StarStuff (www.starstuff.org).
• SpaceRef (www.spaceref.com), Your space refference.
• Astronomy Picture of the Day Archive (antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/archivepix.html).
• SkyView (skyview.gsfc.nasa.gov) virtual observatory.
• 2MASS (www.ipac.caltech.edu/2mass/) and (pegasus.astro.umass.edu/GradProg/2mass.html) Two Micron All Sky Survey.
• Large Angle and Spectrometric Coronagraph Experiment (LASCO) (http://lasco-www.nrl.navy.mil/lasco.html).
• AAVSO Network to Search for Optical Counterparts of Gamma-Ray Bursts (www.aavso.org/grb.stm).
• High Altitude Observatory (www.hao.ucar.edu).
• Asteroid Comet Impact Hazards (impact.arc.nasa.gov).
• • Unusual Minor Planets (cfa-www.harvard.edu/iau/lists/Unusual.html).
  • Potentially Hazardous Asteroids (cfa-www.harvard.edu/iau/lists/PHACloseApp.html).& nbsp; Of particular interest to me are LB16 and AN10 which will pass at a distance closer than the moon's orbit. LB16 currently only has one opposition charted so it's predicted orbit will likely change as new data comes in. It's expected to swing by in 2004. In 2027 AN10 will visit earth. It's orbit is calculated with three oppositions meaning it't much more likely to really showup ontime and in place. With further data LB16 could either get closer or farther away. When AN10's orbit was first predicted (only one opposition at the time) it's error envelope included earth. With further data it was found to just pass within the moon's orbit and miss the earth.
  • Forthcoming Close Approaches To The Earth (cfa-www.harvard.edu/iau/lists/CloseApp.html).&nbs p; This is the document to look at when you want to know who will visit next and how far away. It has all close approaches to 0.2 AU away from earth or within 20% of the distance of between the sun and earth. On Sep 19th, 2000 we will have a visiter at 0.0477 AU and on Oct 31st anotehr one will pass at 0.07386 AU. LB16 and AN10 are expected to pass at around 0.25% of the distance between the sun and earth.
• Mars Global Surveyor (mars.jpl.nasa.gov/mgs/index.html).
• Mars Orbiter Laser Altimeter (MOLA) (ltpwww.gsfc.nasa.gov/tharsis/mola.html). There are full data on the shape of Mars including 1 degree and .5 degree elevation data sets.
• Planetary photojournal by JPL (photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov).
• NASA's Origins Program (origins.jpl.nasa.gov).

Haven't they discovered three or four other "planets" in the past couple years?

Scores of them.

Is this another one that will be forgotten or are they considering this one an actual planet?

Who will forget them, the wilfully ignorant?

Who are "they"?

If an astronomer discovers something today, do you believe that "they" suddenly hold a conference call to change all the textbooks? It's a little more complicated than that.
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