Slashdot Mirror

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For the users who go through and customize their filters meticulously, P3P is a good thing. It allows them to tailor privacy preferences once and leave the machine to implement them. For the users who can't even find the edit -> preferences -> advanced -> what-the-hell-are-all-these-options? -> turn off the cookies! however, who will probably accept the default settings provided by unscrupulous merchants, I'd say P3P is a bad thing. P3P would make it easier for these users to fill out a form once and unthinkingly transfer massive amounts of data on every transaction.

To be fair, P3P's authors envision a "market for defaults," where you might get your base privacy filters from EPIC rather than from the DMA, but I'd guess it will still be the DMA's preferences that are on by default in the P3P implementation that launches with a new install of IE/Netscape. Maybe Mozilla will choose more wisely :-)

-- Fight copyright predators and the DMCA: visit Openlaw! --

• Well, I did read the entire section I linked to.And I'm certainly glad that some else followed my links. Having said that, there is ample precedent for quoting the entire work: see a recent case involving Kelly v Arriba. Or check out my previous post or for a humorous example check out this Harvard law professors commentary
  Not to mention a close reading might note that the section I quoted
  
  ...the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies [emphasis mine -Rich] [...] for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting,[...]is not an infringement of copyright."
  
  specifically allows the **entire** work.
  
  
• "No directly associated commentary" ??? What were those 800+ posts about then? Natalie Portman and hot grits? No, slashdot is a discussion forum where people such as you and I discuss each others posts,hopefully in relation to the Story heading. For example if I were to cut and paste US Code Section 107 Limitations on exclusive rights: Fair use and just post that without relevent comentary I would argue that I would be definitely commenting on the story, it is a relevent part of discussing copyright law. In much the same way merely posting Microsoft's Kerberos Document allows informed commentary and as such should be considered fair use. I believe that in the context of a story and discussion about Microsoft's "enhancements" to Kerberos it is squarely within the rights of fair use to quote the entire spec. Now if the story heading was about the latest super cool 200 gig mp3 player and someone posted the spec without commentary then yes it would be a violation of copyright.
  
  
• While I won't claim to know the reasoning behind every posters posting of Microsoft's spec I'm sure it could be just as easily claimed that they were facilitating the discussion and commentary about the so-called Kerberos Enhancements.
  
  Slashdot derives revenue from the posted work by selling advertising space in conjunction with the display of Microsoft's copyrighted work, the presence of which they endorse by refusing to remove it.
  
  I hardly believe that programers come to slashdot to gain technical knowledge and specs, especially when slashdot's own heading states News for Nerds Stuff that matters . I'm no linguist but that sugests to me that this site is a *news* site, not a programmers technical resource site,( which we both know, since we seem to be in the minority of posters who have actually bothered reading the US Code, would also be covered as a resource for teaching, another fair use exception.)
  
  Incidentally, slashdot gains readership (and thereby income) from from the lively discussions following from their headlines and Jon Katz commentaries/flamefests, hence the claims of fair use for news reporting/commentary.
  
  In regards to your comments about licensing issues I think that slashdot (and you and I) do not need to concern themselves with pointless bickering over GPL versus click thru versus etc, especially since fair use allows quoting of licensed/non licensed material regardless of GPL vs. Microsoft's click thru license.
  
  Regards,
  Rich
  p.s.
  
  In regards to the Arriba case I first pointed out:
  
  The court found the first factor to weigh in favor of fair use. It found the nature of Arriba's use to be "significantly transformative" in that it sought to catalog and improve access to images on the Internet. This purpose was significantly different than the plaintiff's purpose in using the photographs (i.e., to illustrate his own photography). That the defendant's use of the images was commercial was mitigated because their use was "more incidental and less exploitative [in] nature than more traditional types of 'commercial use.'"
  
  I would argue in the same vein that Slashdot's use of Microsoft's Kerberos Document is significantly different from Microsoft's use of the document, transforming it from merely a specification into a news story for commentary. The so called comericial use here in slashdot could also be considered incidental and less exploitive than say a competitor using the document. As a news organaztion slashdot's use of the document is completely different than Microsoft's. Unless of course CmdrTaco and Co. are planning a Slashdot/Kerberos implementation.
  
  pps.
  *a note: I'll finish with the obligatory retort :)

• Well, I did read the entire section I linked to.And I'm certainly glad that some else followed my links. Having said that, there is ample precedent for quoting the entire work: see a recent case involving Kelly v Arriba. Or check out my previous post or for a humorous example check out this Harvard law professors commentary
  Not to mention a close reading might note that the section I quoted
  
  ...the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies [emphasis mine -Rich] [...] for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting,[...]is not an infringement of copyright."
  
  specifically allows the **entire** work.
  
  
• "No directly associated commentary" ??? What were those 800+ posts about then? Natalie Portman and hot grits? No, slashdot is a discussion forum where people such as you and I discuss each others posts,hopefully in relation to the Story heading. For example if I were to cut and paste US Code Section 107 Limitations on exclusive rights: Fair use and just post that without relevent comentary I would argue that I would be definitely commenting on the story, it is a relevent part of discussing copyright law. In much the same way merely posting Microsoft's Kerberos Document allows informed commentary and as such should be considered fair use. I believe that in the context of a story and discussion about Microsoft's "enhancements" to Kerberos it is squarely within the rights of fair use to quote the entire spec. Now if the story heading was about the latest super cool 200 gig mp3 player and someone posted the spec without commentary then yes it would be a violation of copyright.
  
  
• While I won't claim to know the reasoning behind every posters posting of Microsoft's spec I'm sure it could be just as easily claimed that they were facilitating the discussion and commentary about the so-called Kerberos Enhancements.
  
  Slashdot derives revenue from the posted work by selling advertising space in conjunction with the display of Microsoft's copyrighted work, the presence of which they endorse by refusing to remove it.
  
  I hardly believe that programers come to slashdot to gain technical knowledge and specs, especially when slashdot's own heading states News for Nerds Stuff that matters . I'm no linguist but that sugests to me that this site is a *news* site, not a programmers technical resource site,( which we both know, since we seem to be in the minority of posters who have actually bothered reading the US Code, would also be covered as a resource for teaching, another fair use exception.)
  
  Incidentally, slashdot gains readership (and thereby income) from from the lively discussions following from their headlines and Jon Katz commentaries/flamefests, hence the claims of fair use for news reporting/commentary.
  
  In regards to your comments about licensing issues I think that slashdot (and you and I) do not need to concern themselves with pointless bickering over GPL versus click thru versus etc, especially since fair use allows quoting of licensed/non licensed material regardless of GPL vs. Microsoft's click thru license.
  
  Regards,
  Rich
  p.s.
  
  In regards to the Arriba case I first pointed out:
  
  The court found the first factor to weigh in favor of fair use. It found the nature of Arriba's use to be "significantly transformative" in that it sought to catalog and improve access to images on the Internet. This purpose was significantly different than the plaintiff's purpose in using the photographs (i.e., to illustrate his own photography). That the defendant's use of the images was commercial was mitigated because their use was "more incidental and less exploitative [in] nature than more traditional types of 'commercial use.'"
  
  I would argue in the same vein that Slashdot's use of Microsoft's Kerberos Document is significantly different from Microsoft's use of the document, transforming it from merely a specification into a news story for commentary. The so called comericial use here in slashdot could also be considered incidental and less exploitive than say a competitor using the document. As a news organaztion slashdot's use of the document is completely different than Microsoft's. Unless of course CmdrTaco and Co. are planning a Slashdot/Kerberos implementation.
  
  pps.
  *a note: I'll finish with the obligatory retort :)

Actually quoting an entire document can fall within the fair use doctrines. For example if I had quoted your entire comment. But don't just trust me, trust a harvard law professor:
See the amusing link of Harvard law professor William W. Fisher, III where he copies a suck.com article, presumably for a class. He also mentions a recent case which states:

The Fair Use Doctrine allows certain use of copyrighted material under special circumstances. Four factors weigh for or against fair use: (1) purpose and character of the use, (2) the nature of the copyrighted work, (3) the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole, and (4) the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work. (Click here to see the complete "fair use" doctrine)
I would argue that it is hard to comment or report upon something without actually viewing what it is that is to be commented on. So even those posters who merely posted the entire document could be said to be furthering disscussion on the document. Especially since Slashdot is a disscussion forum where posts are not to be read in an individual way but rather as an ongoing corespondence between posters.

Quoting selectively from the fair use section of the us code 17 section 107
the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright. Plainly Microsoft doesn't have a leg to stand on. But we all knew that didn't we?
-Rich

Actually quoting an entire document can fall within the fair use doctrines. For example if I had quoted your entire comment. But don't just trust me, trust a harvard law professor:
See the amusing link of Harvard law professor William W. Fisher, III where he copies a suck.com article, presumably for a class. He also mentions a recent case which states:

The Fair Use Doctrine allows certain use of copyrighted material under special circumstances. Four factors weigh for or against fair use: (1) purpose and character of the use, (2) the nature of the copyrighted work, (3) the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole, and (4) the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work. (Click here to see the complete "fair use" doctrine)
I would argue that it is hard to comment or report upon something without actually viewing what it is that is to be commented on. So even those posters who merely posted the entire document could be said to be furthering disscussion on the document. Especially since Slashdot is a disscussion forum where posts are not to be read in an individual way but rather as an ongoing corespondence between posters.

Quoting selectively from the fair use section of the us code 17 section 107
the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright. Plainly Microsoft doesn't have a leg to stand on. But we all knew that didn't we?
-Rich

Now, has anyone seen a copy of the government brief online yet?

Background materials, documents, and transcripts collected on the Openlaw Microsoft Case page.

Now, has anyone seen a copy of the government brief online yet?

Background materials, documents, and transcripts collected on the Openlaw Microsoft Case page.

-- visit Openlaw to help fight copyright overreaching --

Here's a description from Micro Star v. Formgen Inc.:

*fn4 A low-tech example might aid understanding. Imagine a product called the Pink Screener, which consists of a big piece of pink cellophane stretched over a frame. When put in front of a television, it makes everything on the screen look pinker. Someone who manages to record the programs with this pink cast (maybe by filming the screen) would have created an infringing derivative work. But the audiovisual display observed by a person watching television through the Pink Screener is not a derivative work because it does not incorporate the modified image in any permanent or concrete form. The Game Genie might be described as a fancy Pink Screener for video games, changing a value of the game as perceived by the current player, but never incorporating the new audiovisual display into a permanent or concrete form.

(I had these cites handy because I've been waiting to see the same misguided challenge raised against ThirdVoice or my poky annotation engine for offering web page annotation.)

Here's a description from Micro Star v. Formgen Inc.:

*fn4 A low-tech example might aid understanding. Imagine a product called the Pink Screener, which consists of a big piece of pink cellophane stretched over a frame. When put in front of a television, it makes everything on the screen look pinker. Someone who manages to record the programs with this pink cast (maybe by filming the screen) would have created an infringing derivative work. But the audiovisual display observed by a person watching television through the Pink Screener is not a derivative work because it does not incorporate the modified image in any permanent or concrete form. The Game Genie might be described as a fancy Pink Screener for video games, changing a value of the game as perceived by the current player, but never incorporating the new audiovisual display into a permanent or concrete form.

(I had these cites handy because I've been waiting to see the same misguided challenge raised against ThirdVoice or my poky annotation engine for offering web page annotation.)

Here's a description from Micro Star v. Formgen Inc.:

*fn4 A low-tech example might aid understanding. Imagine a product called the Pink Screener, which consists of a big piece of pink cellophane stretched over a frame. When put in front of a television, it makes everything on the screen look pinker. Someone who manages to record the programs with this pink cast (maybe by filming the screen) would have created an infringing derivative work. But the audiovisual display observed by a person watching television through the Pink Screener is not a derivative work because it does not incorporate the modified image in any permanent or concrete form. The Game Genie might be described as a fancy Pink Screener for video games, changing a value of the game as perceived by the current player, but never incorporating the new audiovisual display into a permanent or concrete form.

(I had these cites handy because I've been waiting to see the same misguided challenge raised against ThirdVoice or my poky annotation engine for offering web page annotation.)

Specifically, how bad are Netscape's problems with CSS, JavaScript, iframes, and the myriad other gripes developers hold for it?
Here's a basic answer.

Unless Congress extends their lives. As Congress recently did for copyrights.

The objection to posting the entire spec is likely legitimate, but the objection to excerpts and Winxip instructions should be fought. The DMCA forbids us from reading an ostensibly published work if we don't comply with copyright-holder imposed "access control devices." It directly prevents us from speaking about those works.

We should be fighting Microsoft's absurd attempt to claim trade secret status in a publicly available document. Like the DMCA, it completely contradicts the nature of "publication."

-- visit Openlaw for more --

I checked the copyright office's web site for the list of things that couldn't be copyrighted. Included on that list was "mere variations of typographic ornamentation, lettering, or coloring." That's a pretty good description of what HTML does.

No it is NOT a good description of what HTML does. Consider a link: there's more to this than meets the eye!.
The website refered to in an URL is an original contribution to the expressed idea within the the citation, as above linked article shows. The refered page is an outline for the Amicus Brief that Openlaw is writing in the NY DeCSS case to counter the MPAA's attempt to enjoin 2600's Mirror List. Our arguement is based on the fact that html is expressive and protected by the First Amendment.

Furthermore, don't confuse the map with the territory, so to speak. A command to tell a browser how to make text red is different from red text. Source code is speech because it expresses a method for making a computer produce a desired output. HTML meets this definition.

If you're really interested in this stuff, check out the paper "Where are the baryons?" by Cen and Ostriker -- sorry I can't give you a better reference, but hunt on astro-ph or the Harvard abstract service and you'll find it.

Other than that, I used to be a Perl zealot for CGI. That was until I discover PHP... Damn that stuff is good!

The bus came by and I got on
That's when it all began
There was cowboy Neal
At the wheel
Of a bus to never-ever land

The brief argues both that DeCSS itself is expressive speech and that links (to it or other sites) are communicative and should not be subject to the prior restraint of an injunction. It frequently emphasizes that even though non-traditional, 2600 is news media and is entitled to the same constitutional protections as the New York Times.

It strongly disputes plaintiffs' claim of "irreparable injury" -- necessary to maintain a preliminary injunction -- on the grounds that the studios have been crying wolf for months over "piracy" but have yet to demonstrate that DeCSS is used to copy DVDs. Further, it argues that DeCSS must be allowed to facilitate fair use of DVD movies and that DeCSS is exempt from the DMCA as part of a reverse engineering effort.

The brief is supported by a set of declarations from Harold Abelson, Andrew Appel, Chris DiBona, Bruce Fries, John Gilmore, Robin Gross, Lewis Kurlantzick, Eben Moglen, Matt Pavlovich, Bruce Schneier, Barbara Simons, Frank Stevenson, Dave Touretsky, David Wagner, and John Young.

For more on the case, see Openlaw/DVD/. Openlaw participants will be drafting an amicus brief.

The brief argues both that DeCSS itself is expressive speech and that links (to it or other sites) are communicative and should not be subject to the prior restraint of an injunction. It frequently emphasizes that even though non-traditional, 2600 is news media and is entitled to the same constitutional protections as the New York Times.

It strongly disputes plaintiffs' claim of "irreparable injury" -- necessary to maintain a preliminary injunction -- on the grounds that the studios have been crying wolf for months over "piracy" but have yet to demonstrate that DeCSS is used to copy DVDs. Further, it argues that DeCSS must be allowed to facilitate fair use of DVD movies and that DeCSS is exempt from the DMCA as part of a reverse engineering effort.

The brief is supported by a set of declarations from Harold Abelson, Andrew Appel, Chris DiBona, Bruce Fries, John Gilmore, Robin Gross, Lewis Kurlantzick, Eben Moglen, Matt Pavlovich, Bruce Schneier, Barbara Simons, Frank Stevenson, Dave Touretsky, David Wagner, and John Young.

For more on the case, see Openlaw/DVD/. Openlaw participants will be drafting an amicus brief.

The brief argues both that DeCSS itself is expressive speech and that links (to it or other sites) are communicative and should not be subject to the prior restraint of an injunction. It frequently emphasizes that even though non-traditional, 2600 is news media and is entitled to the same constitutional protections as the New York Times.

It strongly disputes plaintiffs' claim of "irreparable injury" -- necessary to maintain a preliminary injunction -- on the grounds that the studios have been crying wolf for months over "piracy" but have yet to demonstrate that DeCSS is used to copy DVDs. Further, it argues that DeCSS must be allowed to facilitate fair use of DVD movies and that DeCSS is exempt from the DMCA as part of a reverse engineering effort.

The brief is supported by a set of declarations from Harold Abelson, Andrew Appel, Chris DiBona, Bruce Fries, John Gilmore, Robin Gross, Lewis Kurlantzick, Eben Moglen, Matt Pavlovich, Bruce Schneier, Barbara Simons, Frank Stevenson, Dave Touretsky, David Wagner, and John Young.

For more on the case, see Openlaw/DVD/. Openlaw participants will be drafting an amicus brief.

When I first read this article I was thinking along similar lines. How will this change all the calculations that rely on G? I think it's time to do some recrunching of numbers. The area I think would be most interested is astronomy with the orbits of all the Potentially Hazardous Asteroids. My favorit PHA is AN10 which will pass .0026AU from earth or in other words closer than the moon. You have to wait till 2027 for that to happen. Other close pass bys will happen before then. May 7th is when EH26 will visit at only 0.0406AU.

When I first read this article I was thinking along similar lines. How will this change all the calculations that rely on G? I think it's time to do some recrunching of numbers. The area I think would be most interested is astronomy with the orbits of all the Potentially Hazardous Asteroids. My favorit PHA is AN10 which will pass .0026AU from earth or in other words closer than the moon. You have to wait till 2027 for that to happen. Other close pass bys will happen before then. May 7th is when EH26 will visit at only 0.0406AU.

It's right over here.

One could take much more radical positions. For example, Lawrence Lessig proposes that copyright law be changed to make copyrights on software expire much sooner, perhaps in five years. Now that's a radical position. In some quarters, it would be viewed as a blatant taking of private property by state action. Stallman is nowhere near that radical; he just wants to give away stuff he, and people who agree with him, create.

What scares people about Stallman is that he's effective. He's a good programmer, and people use his free software. He's figured out a way to make his world of free software slowly expand, by carefully engineering the General Public License. With the rise of Linux, multibillion dollar companies find their market share threatened by products that sell for nothing and can be worked on by anybody. Stallman has found a way to change the world for the better, and some people don't like that because it threatens their profits. Tough. Closed-source vendors can compete with free software, but their stuff has to be better and cheap. They hate that.

After you've read the article and its soundbites, go read Lessig's own writing at: http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/lessig.html

Good stuff.

We try to combine the work of lawyers and techies looking at the problems from different angles.

There's no submissions queue yet, but we're working to figure out how to extend the model to other depredations of the public good (of which we're lately seeing too many in the IP arena).

Come join us! http://eon.law.harvard.edu/openlaw/

We try to combine the work of lawyers and techies looking at the problems from different angles.

There's no submissions queue yet, but we're working to figure out how to extend the model to other depredations of the public good (of which we're lately seeing too many in the IP arena).

Come join us! http://eon.law.harvard.edu/openlaw/

We try to combine the work of lawyers and techies looking at the problems from different angles.

There's no submissions queue yet, but we're working to figure out how to extend the model to other depredations of the public good (of which we're lately seeing too many in the IP arena).

Come join us! http://eon.law.harvard.edu/openlaw/

We try to combine the work of lawyers and techies looking at the problems from different angles.

There's no submissions queue yet, but we're working to figure out how to extend the model to other depredations of the public good (of which we're lately seeing too many in the IP arena).

Come join us! http://eon.law.harvard.edu/openlaw/

I meant to use this one, though that other one fits as well. This one is more slashdot-ish oriented.

http://eon.law.harvard.edu/openlaw/

Harvard might be dumb sometimes, but you gotta begrudge 'em some respect for refusing to cave in so far.

agreed on both counts.

i just got done sending a supportive email to Frank Steen, the head of computer services, and Harry Lewis, the dean of the college.

please do not spam or mailbomb these people. they are busy administrators who should be commended for behaving nobly (especially Lewis, who has a history of making heavy-handed, arbitrary decisions that have not always pleased the student body).

-steve

p.s. i do not know for sure that these two are responsible for the decision, but it's my best guess that they are.

Harvard might be dumb sometimes, but you gotta begrudge 'em some respect for refusing to cave in so far.

agreed on both counts.

i just got done sending a supportive email to Frank Steen, the head of computer services, and Harry Lewis, the dean of the college.

please do not spam or mailbomb these people. they are busy administrators who should be commended for behaving nobly (especially Lewis, who has a history of making heavy-handed, arbitrary decisions that have not always pleased the student body).

-steve

p.s. i do not know for sure that these two are responsible for the decision, but it's my best guess that they are.

I really hope they don't kill Palm's great battery life when they start using 400 MHz processors. Then they would be sacrificing one of their major selling points -- for what? To become more like the MP3-playing PocketPC?

I really think that Palm currently has a good product that they should be building on rather than scrapping. Unless their new architecture is exceptionally wonderful, they risk losing market share, because they will be launching a new product that competes against their own firmly entrenched installed base.

Such is The Innovator's Dilemma -- long-term success may sometimes require pissing off one's current customers.

Optical SETI isn't a new idea though. Townes and Schwartz's first proposed optical SETI in 1961, a year after the invention of the laser. After many years of lobbying be a few brave scientists, optical SETI experiments are now running (or being built) at a handful of institutions.

I'll explain a bit about optical SETI below, but let me also point you to a few good resources. The SETI group at Harvard (of which I am a member) maintains www.oseti.org which has a couple articles on optical SETI: a technical paper that gives the full arguments for optical SETI, and another technical paper which details our current running experiment and our future all-sky survey.

Here's why optical SETI is a good idea (much of which lythari cites): A high-intensity pulsed laser, teamed with a moderate sized transmitting telescope, forms an efficient interstellar beacon. To a distant observer in the direction of its slender beam, such a laser transmitter, built with ``Earth 2000'' technology only, would appear (during its brief pulse) a thousand times brighter than our sun in broadband visible light; even at ranges of 1000 light years a single nanosecond laser pulse would deliver roughly a thousand photons to a 10-meter receiving telescope.

There are several reasons why optical SETI is at least as good an idea as radio SETI. First, transmitted beams from optical telescopes are far more slender than their radio counterparts owing to the high gain of optical telescopes (150 dB for the Keck Telescope versus 70 dB for Arecibo). Dispersion, which spectrally broadens radio pulses, is completely negligible at optical frequencies. The capability of radio transmitters has reached a stable maturity, while the power of optical lasers has shown an annual Moore's law doubling extending over the past 30 years. And finally, the computational power and sophistication characteristic of the sensitive microwave searches today is unnecessary for optical SETI. Detection can be quite simple -- a pair of fast, broadband photon counting detectors in coincidence.

We have built a photometer to search for such unresolved pulses, and are using it in a piggyback targeted search of some 3000 nearby solar-type stars. The photometer receives about 1/3 of the light focused by the 1.5-meter optical reflector, otherwise unused by the primary experiment (a stellar radial-velocity survey). A beamsplitter followed by a pair of fast hybrid avalanche detectors is triggered in coincidence to record the time and intensity profile of large pulses.

We're also working on an all-sky search for pulsed optical SETI beacons at Agassiz station in Harvard, Massachusetts. We envision a 2 meter f/1 parabolic "light bucket" (1 arcminute resolution) focused onto a multipixel camera consisting of eight 64-pixel photomultiplier tubes (with pixels measuring 4 arcminutes on a side) in two matched focal planes. It will observe a two degree by half degree patch of the sky in transit mode, thereby covering the Northern sky in 150 clear nights. Fast custom IC electronics will monitor corresponding pixels for coincident optical pulses of nanosecond timescale, triggering storage of a detailed digitized waveform of the light flash.

Optical SETI isn't a new idea though. Townes and Schwartz's first proposed optical SETI in 1961, a year after the invention of the laser. After many years of lobbying be a few brave scientists, optical SETI experiments are now running (or being built) at a handful of institutions.

I'll explain a bit about optical SETI below, but let me also point you to a few good resources. The SETI group at Harvard (of which I am a member) maintains www.oseti.org which has a couple articles on optical SETI: a technical paper that gives the full arguments for optical SETI, and another technical paper which details our current running experiment and our future all-sky survey.

Here's why optical SETI is a good idea (much of which lythari cites): A high-intensity pulsed laser, teamed with a moderate sized transmitting telescope, forms an efficient interstellar beacon. To a distant observer in the direction of its slender beam, such a laser transmitter, built with ``Earth 2000'' technology only, would appear (during its brief pulse) a thousand times brighter than our sun in broadband visible light; even at ranges of 1000 light years a single nanosecond laser pulse would deliver roughly a thousand photons to a 10-meter receiving telescope.

There are several reasons why optical SETI is at least as good an idea as radio SETI. First, transmitted beams from optical telescopes are far more slender than their radio counterparts owing to the high gain of optical telescopes (150 dB for the Keck Telescope versus 70 dB for Arecibo). Dispersion, which spectrally broadens radio pulses, is completely negligible at optical frequencies. The capability of radio transmitters has reached a stable maturity, while the power of optical lasers has shown an annual Moore's law doubling extending over the past 30 years. And finally, the computational power and sophistication characteristic of the sensitive microwave searches today is unnecessary for optical SETI. Detection can be quite simple -- a pair of fast, broadband photon counting detectors in coincidence.

We have built a photometer to search for such unresolved pulses, and are using it in a piggyback targeted search of some 3000 nearby solar-type stars. The photometer receives about 1/3 of the light focused by the 1.5-meter optical reflector, otherwise unused by the primary experiment (a stellar radial-velocity survey). A beamsplitter followed by a pair of fast hybrid avalanche detectors is triggered in coincidence to record the time and intensity profile of large pulses.

We're also working on an all-sky search for pulsed optical SETI beacons at Agassiz station in Harvard, Massachusetts. We envision a 2 meter f/1 parabolic "light bucket" (1 arcminute resolution) focused onto a multipixel camera consisting of eight 64-pixel photomultiplier tubes (with pixels measuring 4 arcminutes on a side) in two matched focal planes. It will observe a two degree by half degree patch of the sky in transit mode, thereby covering the Northern sky in 150 clear nights. Fast custom IC electronics will monitor corresponding pixels for coincident optical pulses of nanosecond timescale, triggering storage of a detailed digitized waveform of the light flash.

Eldritch Press is one of those sites that voluntarily scans books and publishes them free online. If the LOC won't, we will.

Indeed, the LOC American Memory Project has a fine collection of baseball cards. They were donated by Carl Sandburg, the Chicago poet. (See some in the online edition of Ring Lardner's baseball stories.) But LOC can't put all of Sandburg's POEMS online, because the LOC allowed Congress to lock up their copyrights for another 20 years. So Eldritch Press is suing to overturn the copyright term extension. See http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/eldredvreno/ and help out!

This Librarian is the official Congress chose to decide what fair use educators could make of digital products when we embark on online distance education. One can only hope that he reads our online comments and decides this issue fairly.

LOC is also digitizing books in the Making of America Project. My only objection to that is that the books are presented in poor page images, not in digitized text. Thus they cannot be read by a blind reader, nor can computers search for words. Yet the LOC is going to spend more money to record voice digitally for the blind in a separate project.

Today, the LOC every day is presented with much more new digital products such as TV programs than it collects printed books. As far as I know, the LOC has no means of archiving them (much less the entire Internet) and no plans to do so. Consequently, and because the LOC is compliant with Congress, the tool of big business and established publishers, these 'pay-per-view' products will likely evaporate from our culture.

The Librarian is right to say the LOC has a role in providing content over the Internet to schools. If not the LOC, then who? Take one example: students in the U.S. commonly are required to read 'The Scarlet Letter.' What would students find on the Internet if it were not for the Bartleby Project, Eldritch Press, or Project Gutenberg? They would find links to a site put up by a Disney branch that created a film version starring Demi Moore, that included enough nudity that few high school students could see it. But after the film became a commercial failure, the site disappeared from Internet memory. Even if it were still on the web, the film version is far from the book--the plot was completely changed to pander to today's politically correct viewers.

The LOC can play a great role in achieving the grand goal of a global public library that is free to all over the web and that contains the important parts of our culture. But it can't do that unless our national laws permit it, and it can't even begin to do so when media giant corporations assert control over every aspect of our digital culture. So let's change the world ourselves! Fight the copyright term extension, the DMCA, and other such repression! Scan books yourself and help them survive.

One final point: for some reason I couldn't add this comment to /. with Netscape on Linux as long as the ibook.com ad was at the top of the page (so I'm using w3m). I'm sure there is no connection, right!

To go to a good colledge (really good one) will cost you around $30,000 a year.

If only! I see that the cost now to attend Harvard is $35000 + travel expenses. MIT weighs in at about the same. Stanford is $1k cheaper (Bargain!), and you pay a meager $30,000+ for a year at CalTech.

No wonder going off to college feels like an Expedition - they cos t about the same! Makes me thankful for the "paltry" $10K/yr I paid a decade ago (compare at $20,000 for Stanford).

Of course, $20,000 to $35,000 in 10 years is only 6% per year, or twice the rate of inflation. If the stock market keeps growing at 15% like it has for the last decade, the $125,000/year our kids will feel like $5500 today. That's only a little bit more than my freshman tuition was. Go, bull, go! ;-)

Copyright law in the U.S. does need an overhaul, but we should not throw the baby out with the bathwater.

Much of what RMS argues could be achieved by returning law to what prevailed before 1976, thus revoking DMCA, NET, and the popular concept of "property rights" to creative expressions.

These eBook gadgets (what I called "antibooks" at http://www.eldritchpress.org/battle.html) are indeed bad for everybody, because they deny fair use, the right of first sale, lending by libraries, resale by bookstores, reading by blind readers, and they invade our privacy.

But they should not be confused with the 11,000 FREE electronic books now available on the Internet, that are not so locked up. And many unencrypted books are being sold on the Internet now, although not by the media giants.

Copyright does not imply locking up books, and selling books on the Internet does not imply encrypting them and denying readers' rights. Copyright should imply open publication with fair use by the reader, for a limited time, then it enters the public domain.

Now, what should we do? First, we can join a battle in the courts to change copyright law: see http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/eldredvreno. Second, we can boycott these encrypted "antibooks," just as we did DIVX.

But, most importantly, we need to assemble a POLITICAL coalition of citizens around the "intellectual property" issues of digital media (music, books, video, etc.) including the human genome (now just a database), and issues of globalization and domination of our popular culture by rent-seeking media giants based in the rich countries. We may need to change campaign contribution laws first, as one example.

However, we cannot rely on strictly technological responses any longer, and we cannot rely on a free market to solve problems either--the market has been captured by media monopolists with government backing, and copyright infringement has been criminalized. The public has been taught to call us "pirates" for not being compliant consumers. We need an education campaign comparable to that of Hollywood's. Only if the universities (not the "run-as-a-business" type) and the great institutions of our society charged with preserving science and the humanitites join in this education campaign can freedom truly prevail.

The prohibition contained in subparagraph (A) [anti-circumvention] shall not apply to persons who are users of a copyrighted work which is in a particular class of works, if such persons are, or are likely to be in the succeeding 3-year period, adversely affected by virtue of such prohibition in their ability to make noninfringing uses of that particular class of works under this title...

Your omission of the rest of the sentence makes this quote seem much stronger than it is. The "..." goes on to say: "as determined under subparagraph(C). "

The Librarian of Congress, under whom the Copyright Office operates, was given rulemaking powers in (C) to grant exeptions to (A). The legislative history of the DMCA shows that it was very important to Congress to preserve a way to allow fair access to allow fair use. The LOC rulemaking takes affect in Oct. and it will be absolutely critical to the subsequent interpretation of the law. I must disagree with prof. Lessig that the DMCA necessarily bans all cracking, even ones that lead to fair use. He points out that such an interpretation would run afoul of the First Amendment, but there is another interpretation that is much less far-reaching and is compatible with the law.

This interpretation is based on the fact that the law only bans circumvention of _access_ control measures. A limited defintion of "access" can distinguish "access control" from "use control". Accordingly, some of the members of the Openlaw DVD forum have submitted a reply comment urging the LOC to adopt such a limited definition.

This idea was first advanced by the original comment of the five leading Library Associations. We hope that the Copyright Office will treat these organizations with the enormous respect and credibility that they obviously deserve.

The prohibition contained in subparagraph (A) [anti-circumvention] shall not apply to persons who are users of a copyrighted work which is in a particular class of works, if such persons are, or are likely to be in the succeeding 3-year period, adversely affected by virtue of such prohibition in their ability to make noninfringing uses of that particular class of works under this title...

Your omission of the rest of the sentence makes this quote seem much stronger than it is. The "..." goes on to say: "as determined under subparagraph(C). "

The Librarian of Congress, under whom the Copyright Office operates, was given rulemaking powers in (C) to grant exeptions to (A). The legislative history of the DMCA shows that it was very important to Congress to preserve a way to allow fair access to allow fair use. The LOC rulemaking takes affect in Oct. and it will be absolutely critical to the subsequent interpretation of the law. I must disagree with prof. Lessig that the DMCA necessarily bans all cracking, even ones that lead to fair use. He points out that such an interpretation would run afoul of the First Amendment, but there is another interpretation that is much less far-reaching and is compatible with the law.

This interpretation is based on the fact that the law only bans circumvention of _access_ control measures. A limited defintion of "access" can distinguish "access control" from "use control". Accordingly, some of the members of the Openlaw DVD forum have submitted a reply comment urging the LOC to adopt such a limited definition.

This idea was first advanced by the original comment of the five leading Library Associations. We hope that the Copyright Office will treat these organizations with the enormous respect and credibility that they obviously deserve.

It seems to me for a gas giant to orbit a sun in 3 days, they would have to be really close, right?

Yes.

My gut reaction is that an orbit that close would be unstable. Has anyone studied the dynamics of a situation like this?

Yes. See, for example:
"Orbital Evolution and Migration of Giant Planets: Modeling Extrasolar Planets", Trilling, D.E., Benz, W., Guillot, T., Lunine, J.I., Hubbard, W.B., Burrows, A., 1998, Astrophysical Journal, 500, 428.

[TMB]

An explanation of our rejection of respondents' unprecedented attempt to impose copyright liability upon the distributors of copying equipment requires a quite detailed recitation of the findings of the District Court. (skipping some VCR/TV specific content, resuming where the reason for rejection is given) even the two respondents in this case, who do assert objections to time-shifting in this litigation, were unable to prove that the practice has impaired the commercial value of their copyrights or has created any likelihood of future harm. Given these findings, there is no basis in the Copyright Act upon which respondents can hold petitioners liable for distributing VTR's to the general public. The Court of Appeals' holding that respondents are entitled to enjoin the distribution of VTR's, to collect royalties on the sale of such equipment, or to obtain other relief, if affirmed, would enlarge the scope of respondents' statutory monopolies to encompass control over an article of commerce that is not the subject of copyright protection.

...the noncommercial character of the use, and the private character of the activity conducted entirely within the home. (Slight skip of TV only related content) "Even when an entire copyrighted work was recorded, the District Court regarded the copying as fair use "because there is no accompanying reduction in the market for 'plaintiff's original work.'"

One more, the most important of all:

Article I, Sec. 8 of the Constitution provides that: "The Congress shall have Power ... to Promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries."

The monopoly privileges that Congress may authorize are neither unlimited nor primarily designed to provide a special private benefit. Rather, the limited grant is a means by which an important public purpose may be achieved. It is intended to motivate the creative activity of authors and inventors by the provision of a special reward, and to allow the public access to the products of their genius after the limited period of exclusive control has expired. "The copyright law, like the patent statute, makes reward to the owner a secondary consideration.

Actually, they're getting around to it

The US political system groups people by location, assuming that people who share geography share political interests as well. That was fine when farming was the main occupation. It is less fine when the Internet homogenizes a country so that geeks form an even distributed 49% (or so) of the population.

Some of the European systems (Italy, I think, and Israel*) do a better job of providing minority representation. Trouble is, Italy and Israel also have some hellacious parliamentary deadlocks and chaotic swings. I'm not sure if this is related to the voting system.

Lani Guinier, a Harvard professor who was barred from a government post for supposedly advocating racial quotas, has some ideas on making the process a bit fairer. That is, ensuring that a 49% minority wins *some* of the battles rather than losing them all.

*Yes, I know where Israel is. But culturally, it draws a lot from Europe.

Internet Explorer works and is compliant with all but the latest W3C standards

Forgot to mention this in my first reply :)

Here's what happens in the real world when browsers collide in W3C standards testing:

Click here for test results

As you can see, last September's version of Mozilla completely trounces MSIE 5 (and Opera, and Navigator 4.7, not that that's hard).

Apologies in advance to the page owner if they get Slashdotted :-)

The official napster servers are many, more than 10 and less than 1000... (someone wanna narrow it down?), and are not linked yet... so one central Napster server doesn't describe the structure well.

You're right that napster has many different server and that these servers (unfortunately) aren't yet threaded. However, those are not the "central napster server" I was talking about. What I was talking about comes before that. When you start a Napster connection, your client first connects to one of the two central servers, 208.184.216.222 and 208.184.216.222. These servers contain lists of all of the other servers that you are referring to. Your client is then told by the central server which of the other servers it should connect to (the one with the least number of people currently on it) so that users are evenly distributed, and no one tries to connect to a server that's full. However, if your client can't connect to one of the central servers, it won't be able to connect to anything. This is why schools that block Napster access (luckily, mine has made a statement saying that they won't be one of them) just have to block these two servers.

The bus came by and I got on
That's when it all began
There was cowboy Neal
At the wheel
Of a bus to never-ever land

How silly: there is no 14th month, and the year 15 has passed over 1984 years ago. BTW, the asteroid that was number 3142 on the list of confirmed discoveries has been named "kilopi" later http://cfa-www.harvard.e du/iau/lists/NumberedMPs03001.html

Here's an interesting project for someone with a little bit of time:
Make a website listing, detailing, and comparing all the current open source licenses that are being used. Set-up a nice clean web-site which is devoted to the different open source licenses that people have written up, perhaps with some sort of arguments for and against each one? Try to make it relatively impartial. Perhaps even try to get some of the OpenLaw people to contribute some time to analyze them in relation to various legal structures around the planet.

Heck, here's even a starter just off the top of my head and Yahoo:

• Apple Public Source License
• Artistic License
• GNU General Public License (GPL)
• GNU Library General Public License (GLPL)
• Netscape Public License (NPL)

I looked around a bit, but can't seem to find any site that really does this already cleanly and clearly. Any takers?

Check out my site to read about how Harvard University's General Counsel's office has forced me to remove DeCSS from my archive, and has buckled to their fear of the MPAA despite the fact that no legal precedent yet supports this point and that the preliminary injunction does not apply to me, nor has such an injunction been issued in this jurisdiction.