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The term "personal computer" first appears . . . in Byte magazine. [1056.372]

http://www.islandnet.com/~kpolsson/comphist/comp1976.htm

I challenge you to find an ad prior to 1982 with the phrase "personal computer".

Here

1968
October 4
An advertisement in Science magazine by Hewlett-Packard introduces first programmable scientific desktop calculator, which Hewlett-Packard calls "the new Hewlett-Packard 911A personal computer". (This is claimed as coining the term "personal computer".) [213.5] [1559]

Of course he knew - IBM went to him.

1980

March

At the West Coast Computer Faire, Microsoft announces its first hardware product, the Z-80 SoftCard for the Apple II. This card...gives the Apple II CP/M capability, contributing greatly to Apple Computer's success. The card includes CP/M and Microsoft's Disk BASIC, all for US$349. Tim Patterson of Seattle Computer Products had built several prototypes before Microsoft's Don Burdis took over the project.

April

Seattle Computer Products decides to make their own disk operating system (DOS), due to delays by Digital Research in releasing a CP/M-86 operating system.

August 21

IBM meets with Microsoft again, to talk in general terms about their planned personal computers. IBM asks if Microsoft will develop some programming language interpreters/compilers for it. Bill Gates agrees to supply BASIC and other software development tools. IBM also asks for CP/M, but Gates says Digital Research would have to supply that.

August 28

IBM representatives meet at Microsoft again. Bill Gates signs a consulting agreement for US$15,000 to develop the software specifications for IBM's personal computer. Jack Sams asks about alternatives to CP/M-86. Gates says he might find one.

September

Seattle Computer Products completes and begins shipping 86-QDOS 0.10 (Quick and Dirty Operating System). Even though it had been created in only two man-months, the DOS worked surprisingly well.

September 22

Paul Allen of Microsoft contacts Rod Black of Seattle Computer Products, asking to sub-license 86-DOS to a potential customer

September 30

Bill Gates, Bob O'Rear, and Steve Ballmer meet with IBM in Boca Raton, Florida, to deliver a report to IBM. They propose that Microsoft be put in charge of the entire software development process for IBM's new microcomputer, including providing the main operating system to run on the computer. Bill Gates insists on maintaining rights to the DOS, receiving royalty payments rather than a lump sum.

October

Microsoft's Paul Allen contacts Seattle Computer Products' Tim Patterson, asking for the rights to sell SCP's DOS to an unnamed client (IBM). Microsoft pays less than US$100,000 for the right

November 6

Microsoft and IBM sign a formal contract for Microsoft to develop certain software products for IBM's new microcomputer. Microsoft will receive US$200,000 to adapt the operating system to the IBM PC, and US$500,000 for DOS, BASIC, and compilers. Microsoft is to have an initial version of the operating system and BASIC working by mid-January...

Chronology of Personal Computer Software

and I doubt he knew that clever reverse engineering of the ROM BIOS that Compaq would do would cause the Attack of The PC Clones to occur and the money bags to fall from the sky

Gates didn't need to know any of this.

CP/M had been a success with only bare hardware compatibility among 3000 models.

The IBM PC meant instant credibility for the 8086 and MS-DOS platform - the driving force behind the reverse-engineering of the BIOS.

Microsoft had the programming languages and development tools needed. It had a toehold in applications for the MS-DOS - an embryonic spreadsheet in Multiplan.

That's -73.15 celcius, or -99.67 Fahrenheit. 294.3 Kelvin would be a very comfortable temperature for superconductivity, I wonder if I'll see it in my lifetime?

Coldest Temperature (North America): -81.4 oF/-63 oC, Snag, Yukon, Canada, February 3, 1947

Lets look at usciiiiii Universal Natural Speech & Logic solution, responding and operational in any personal voiceprint, any language and by natural logic syntexting of syntax - so that machines can sing and think - and not only fail to read or listen to us. To get rid of the keyboard and mouse, and have an Echo-Logic Machine, find out from the inventor's website @ http://www.islandnet.com/~surfins/TestSpace/usciii iii_.html ASCII can not deliver Automatic Natural Language Comprehension in any natural language, so all must be upgraded to my proposed Operating FONTS for EchoLogical Machines - if you are waiting for the personal wizened secretary you can automate to run your business and its nomadic manufacturing plants, robots or systems.

And, after Googling for a good half-hour and finding NOTHING, I can't help but think that YOUR statistics are about as valid as nex's, although it is fairly difficult to link to nothing for proof.

Not very good at googling are we? Here's a couple sources for ps2 numbers that back the 500/510k numbers besides Wikipedia. Also from NPD directly a story that cites $168m PS2 sales for the first weekend, which is in line with the numbers in the IGN story which say $149m PS2 sales first day. Here's a quick hit that mentions around a million in first weekend sales in Japan, which matches up with the 980k Japan weekend number, which already has a cited source article on Wikipedia you can check out.

A source for 360 sales numbers, for good measure, both Japan (2) and US. Although the US numbers after restating by NPD were a slightly lower 326k, rather than the 332k I mentioned that were in the initial report. Thanks for playing.

By the way, this post took me longer to fomat and type than to google up these links, I'm sure I could find more than just these few if I used a good half-hour for just googling. I'd ask my fifth grade teacher, but after 20-some-odd years, I wonder if he's still even alive?

Machiaphobia - fear of war http://www.islandnet.com/~egbird/dict/m.htm

Recall Telemachus, son of Odysseus. Tele- distance. Machus (mach-) to slay or kill. Telemachus thus means "One who slays from afar". Also recall Titanomachia - War of the Giants in the Greek Theogony.

One more thing to add about Galveston: The 1900 Galveston Hurricane is the nation's deadliest natural disaster with over 8,000 dead in Galveston alone, not including surrounding areas which some predict could have raised the total to 12,000. Some would like to compare this to the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, but it still can't compare to the 1900 Galveston hurricane.

The tragedy killed more Americans than any other natural disaster, indeed, more than the legendary Johnstown Flood, the San Francisco Earthquake, the 1938 New England Hurricane and the Great Chicago Fire combined.

http://www.islandnet.com/~see/weather/events/1900h urr.htm

Humans must be in space before the Pigs In Space take it over.

In the past, particulate matter from volcanoes blocked the sunlight and caused major global climate change (The Years With No Summer) which lasted for several years. It seems reasonable that combustion byproducts of fossil fuels could act in a similar manner and contribute to cooling.

Does anyone have comparable numbers for major volcanic eruptions? I'm specifically thinking about the eruptions near the year without a summer (1816).

Against the advice of his assistant, Major Dwight D. Eisenhower, Macarthur had taken personal command of the operation. President Hoover had ordered Macarthur to clear Pennsylvania Avenue only, but Macarthur immediately began to clear all of downtown Washington, herding the Marchers out and torching their huts and tents. Tear gas was used liberally and many bricks were thrown, but no shots were fired during the entire operation. By 8:00 p.m. the downtown area had been cleared and the bridge across the Anacostia River, leading to the Hooverville where most of the Marchers lived, was blocked by several tanks.

Just in case you missed it . . It's particularly appropriate, because the episode is about . . ballast . . *snort*

In 1963 - 1968? If I had to guess, I would say that a most if not ALL of the tech nerds at NASA were Americans.

"All", you say? After 48 seconds of googling, I found that at a minimum, 32 of the aerospace engineers were Canadian. From this site:

Many of the engineers who lost their jobs with the Arrow's cancellation went to other aerospace firms, and 32 joined the U.S. space agency NASA, where they helped put American astronauts on the Moon.

What else did your superior U.S. education teach you? :-P

BTW, I thought it was common knowledge that the best rocket scientists in the U.S. during the space race were Germans brought over after WWII.

Not completely germane, but I wanted to share. There was a webpage I used to read almost 10 years ago called Messages From the Future. It was at the time one of my favorite web sites. It was written by a guy who went by Rhb who was posting messages he claimed to be receiving from persons in the future of 2005. One of thing the future Rhb had written about was that Bill Gates would launch a pirate network based on drone planes that would fly over major cities (I don't mean pirate in the warez sense. Rather in the pirate radio station sense-outside of the law and government control). In the MFTF, this was done by Gates in response to increasing government censorship over the internet. Still, this is nearly exactly what Rhb from the future said said would come to pass in 2005 or so.

The url which no longer works was
Link
I just now found at least a partial archive but havn't checked it out much yet to find related material
Link

He made other prediction for example that Jackie Chan would be a headlining actor rather than just a stunt man or B movie actor. That was notable for me because that was the first time I had ever heard of Jackie Chan and he was indeed at that time, strictly a stunt man or B movie actor. Every person ever mentioend in the messages from the future by name, I did as much as I could to track them down and for several years, follow them. I corrosponded with Rhb and he never broke character. The page never declared itself to be a hoax or work of fiction.

The same way as Pigs In Space...

But... That was in 1981! As usual, IBM slept right through the personal computer revolution, but then caught up quite well. Seeing the sentence

...never did achieve the status of such competitors as International Business Machines Corp. and Apple Computer Inc.

There actually was something like a personal computer from IBM before the PC, a thingy called IBM 5120 with two 8" diskette drives and either BASIC or APL as programming language.

Seems APL was popular them, even though you needed a special keyboard.

You could also be wrong.

According to Barry Popik, a word-sleuth and consultant to the Oxford English Dictionary, that is a common urban legend. He has found evidence that Chicago was called The Windy City in newspapers, including the Chicago Tribune, in the early 1880's.

As far as I know, the UltraSPARC made its debut in 1995, while the first 64-bit Alpha from DEC was announced in 1992. 64-bit MIPS and PA-RISC chips were probably sometime between those two dates. See here.

Does anyone know if it shoots a thin mist or fog to project the image on?

Obviously, you want to convert the air to form a mirror of some sort to form a superior mirage effect. So, the simplest solution would be to implement some cooling system to create the cool air layer, and use the heat of the projector to create the warm air layer. Once you have this boundary layer, you should have an air mirror and maybe a holographic image.

You're about the computer actually called the PC but they were selling PC's long before that. 1969 to be exact. IBM, Intel, Bell Labs, Xerox, and yes even Microsoft all were ahead of Apple when it came to technology. Jobs and Wozniak were just bright enough to put it all together in a viable way. To say that it wouldn't have happened without them is just plain stupid.

• "While the first 32-bit processor came out in 1995, the average PC used 1 MB of memory, so 4 GB was both unaffordable and generally not needed."

This could, of course, be a code word for antisemitism. The problem there is not that it is hate directed at a religion, but at a group of people. Big difference. I think I even speak for most religious people when I say that there are more fundamentalist religious websites that scare me, offend me and can have far more dangerous consequences than any "anti-religious" stuff.

• 1972
• March 2
  • + The Pioneer 10 spacecraft is launched, powered by Intel 4004 computing power. [900]

According to The Chronology of Personal Computers (1969-1971):

The first production run of the 4004 was in December 1970. Admittably the production run had to be tossed due to mask errors, but 2nd and 3rd production runs in Jan and Feb of 71 were more sucessful (the 2nd run still had errors). Sample calculator designs were shipped to Busicom in March 71 - comprising 4 4001s, 2 4002s, 2 4003s and 1 4001.

The only relevance of November 71 that I can find, was that the MCS-4 microcomputer based on the 400x series was released. But thats not the microprocessor itself.

One thing that stands out, is that Intel have had production problems and bugs since day 1 :)

Looking further through that same site, shows the People's Computer Company releasing their first magazine in October 1972. They were one of the first groups promoting personal computing, so that may well be the first 'personal computing' publication (The phrase 'personal computer' apparently first appears in print in the May 1976 issue of Byte (it says here)).

Looking further through that same site, shows the People's Computer Company releasing their first magazine in October 1972. They were one of the first groups promoting personal computing, so that may well be the first 'personal computing' publication (The phrase 'personal computer' apparently first appears in print in the May 1976 issue of Byte (it says here)).

Doctor Dobb's Journal (Doctor Dobbs' Journal of Computer Callisthenics and
Orthodontics at the time) and Byte were both around at least from the mid-70's. DDJ's website says 1976 for them. This site says Sepember 1975 for Byte.

He wasn't arrested for the speech...It is the software that he is being persecuted, err, prosecuted, for.

Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/

This makes perfect sense as the origin of the legend of Atlantis and corresponds to some work that has been conducted by The Institute of Metahistory placing Atlantis near both Cornwall and Brittany.

In all likelihood, there was, at the end of the last iceage, a northward migration out of the, then, grasslands of North Africa -- a mirgration that took two routes:

1. Along the eastern coast of the Mediterranean.
2. Across the Straights of Gibralter.

Individuals with Rh- allele apparently left from the Holocene migration out of north Africa along the western coast of Europe (possibly aka the 'Vanir' of Norse mythology):

1. Highland Morrocans 40%
2. Highland Basques 32%
3. Scotland and Ireland 25%
4. Norwegian islands 17%
5. Laps 7%

Previously considered somewhat outlandish, these theories concerning early civilization in France, Rh-negative populations, pre-Celtic Norse-Scots and Holocene Atlantic coastal migrations are now receiving independent confirmation from DNA analysis of some of the populations in question.

Gene studies are now bearing out theories of this relationship among pre-Indoeuropean peoples along the Atlantic coast of Europe and north Africa:

From the Daily Telegraph

Basques are brothers of the Celts
By Roger Highfield, Science Editor

Celts, Basques and Picts - Medieval Life & The Hundred Years War WELSH and Irishmen are genetic blood-brothers of the Basque people, according to a study published today.

The findings provide the first direct evidence of a close relationship between the people thought of as Celts and the Basques. The Basques are thought to be the closest descendants of the Palaeolithic people who established the first settlements in Britain more than 10,000 years ago.

The evidence of a link is in a study by James Wilson and Prof David Goldstein of University College London, with colleagues at Oxford University and the University of California, Davis. The study is published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The team looked for similarities between the Y chromosomes - only carried by men - of 88 "Celtic fringe" individuals from Anglesey, North Wales, 146 from Ireland with Irish Gaelic surnames, and 50 Basques, revealing "remarkable" similarities.

The Celts carry the early Y chromosome, said the study, which provides the first clear evidence of a close relationship in the paternal heritage of Basque and Celtic speaking populations. "They were statistically indistinguishable," said Prof Goldstein.

Apple is the dark side. :)

Many large corporations use their size and wealth to bully the small guys (individuals and small companies) with the threat of large legal expenses.

Why do you think that Skala and Jansson caved in to Mattel? I did not cave in to Mattel, but I can understand why they did.

If enough people stand up to bullies, they may stop being bullies.

I think what keeps useage (and social isolation) down is the lack of community with a point...

Although it's geared towards kids in school, NASA has a great site on Sunspots here.

There is also an interesting article on the recent coronal mass ejection here.

Also read about the cold summer of 1816 here. It is theorized that the earth was extra cool because of sunspot activity.

Fun stuff... brings out the amateur scientist in me.

-Todd

I think it depends a whole lot on what is possibly-objectionable about the software. Something like GnuPG is threatening to any repressive agency by its very nature. Something like cndecode.c threatens only one specific organization, and only if they choose to make something of it. Something like my short story Chains (ok, not software, but what is software anyway?) could be seen as really subversive and objectionable, or completely innocuous, depending on your frame of mind when you read it. Unfortunately, it's not always easy to predict what might be considered objectionable. One of the others on this topic pointed out that any free software is to some degree subversive.

One thing to think about is that if you skulk around "underground" with something, then you're implicitly admitting that there's something wrong with it. That's one reason why cndecode.c has my name on it, even though it didn't need to - a big part of the purpose of the code is to make the statement that such code is or ought to be perfectly acceptable. (Yes, I can talk about human subjects in C!)

If you're willing to be identified as the author of a work, then you have different concerns to worry about - can you get in trouble for writing it, can you be forced to give it up (as I was with cndecode.c). I'm writing another bit of subversive code right now, and intend to be very careful to make sure that it's explicitly GPLed, and copyright assigned to the FSF, before I let anyone else have a copy.

Making it explicitly public domain would be another option, and is what I'd do if I really thought the code was likely to cause trouble; assigning it to the FSF seems appropriate for my current project, which is only a little bit subversive, because then anyone who thinks they might maybe complain about it, will have to think about going up against the FSF as well as their other worries.

The key with either approach is that I don't own the copyright and can't be forced to give it up. With public domain the copyright is destroyed, with assigning to the FSF the copyright is owned by someone who can't be trodden on without making a huge stinky mess.

- Matthew Skala

I think it depends a whole lot on what is possibly-objectionable about the software. Something like GnuPG is threatening to any repressive agency by its very nature. Something like cndecode.c threatens only one specific organization, and only if they choose to make something of it. Something like my short story Chains (ok, not software, but what is software anyway?) could be seen as really subversive and objectionable, or completely innocuous, depending on your frame of mind when you read it. Unfortunately, it's not always easy to predict what might be considered objectionable. One of the others on this topic pointed out that any free software is to some degree subversive.

One thing to think about is that if you skulk around "underground" with something, then you're implicitly admitting that there's something wrong with it. That's one reason why cndecode.c has my name on it, even though it didn't need to - a big part of the purpose of the code is to make the statement that such code is or ought to be perfectly acceptable. (Yes, I can talk about human subjects in C!)

If you're willing to be identified as the author of a work, then you have different concerns to worry about - can you get in trouble for writing it, can you be forced to give it up (as I was with cndecode.c). I'm writing another bit of subversive code right now, and intend to be very careful to make sure that it's explicitly GPLed, and copyright assigned to the FSF, before I let anyone else have a copy.

Making it explicitly public domain would be another option, and is what I'd do if I really thought the code was likely to cause trouble; assigning it to the FSF seems appropriate for my current project, which is only a little bit subversive, because then anyone who thinks they might maybe complain about it, will have to think about going up against the FSF as well as their other worries.

The key with either approach is that I don't own the copyright and can't be forced to give it up. With public domain the copyright is destroyed, with assigning to the FSF the copyright is owned by someone who can't be trodden on without making a huge stinky mess.

- Matthew Skala

To understand where innovation in computer systems has occured, one might be inclined to look at this timeline of the history of microcomputers.

One may easily draw their own conclusions, but to me it seems that ms has easily been just as much of a follower as the open source movement is often described as. (which I believe is incorrect in many ways)

This law says that if a company tries to coopt GPL software by buying exclusive rights from the authors, the GPL can be destroyed unless there was a WRITTEN INSTRUMENT SIGNED BY THE OWNER of the rights to the software transferring non-exclusive ownership to someone like the FSF.

If it weren't for this law, and a programmer's failure to follow the suggestion of the FSF, the hack of Cyber Patrol could have been an opportunity to test the perpetual freeness open source software.

The Cyber Patrol Case:

Some people reverse engineered Cyber Patrol and found out the access code for disabling the program. Reverse engineering is a violation of US copyright law, so Mattel (owner of C.P.) sued.

The two people who worked together on the hack, Matt and Eddy, settled the lawsuit with Mattel, and granted to Mattel all rights to the software and the accompanying essay.

After that, someone noticed (and told slashdot) that the source code of the hack contained the following line in a header file: "CPHack v0.1.0 by Eddy L O Jansson / Released under the GPL". After the GPL line was discovered, people wondered: Maybe the programmers couldn't sign over all of the rights to Mattel, because they had granted non-exclusive licenses to everyone who already downloaded the source code. That is, if it is released under the GPL, nobody should be able to take it out of the public domain. This proposition is something the Open Source movement has been waiting to test in the courts once and for all.

Unfortunately, there are a few things that made this a very bad test case for the GPL. In fact, there is no chance that this will be a test case. 17 U.S.C. 205e, of the United States copyright law states that the transfer of exclusive rights to someone includes the elimination of all nonexclusive rights (such as GPL rights) that may have been given to other people, UNLESS there is "a written instrument signed by the owner of the rights licensed" proving there was a transfer of nonexclusive rights. Matt and Eddy never signed over non-exclusive copyrights to the FSF in a "written instrument," so the opensource-ness of the code could be destroyed by Mattel. That is, the programmers' transfer of all rights to Mattel included the elimination of the nonexclusive rights that the public had already been granted by the line in the source code. As Professor Moglen stated in a Wired article: "This is one of the reasons why the Free Software Foundation strongly urges authors of free software to assign their rights to FSF. It does them no harm and it provides us with precisely the signed instrument."

The other reason this would have been a bad test case was Eddy's own explanation of his intention that he posted to slashdot:

I had finished the software and thought'd I'd write something in the header expressing my intentions as to it's use, distribution and so forth, and so I entered simply 'Released under the GPL'. Now, I made a mental note about speaking to Matthew, that maybe we should release the whole thing under the GPL. For one thing, part of the code was simply my translation of his c-code, so I had to ask him about it, right? Guess what? I forgot. It really didn't hit me until it made conversation on Slashdot, and now I'm not sure what, if anything, I can do about it. All I ever wanted was for people to use the (admittedly crappy) software in any way they saw fit, never having to wonder (or ask) if it was okay by me. As far as I'm concerned, the string weren't [sic] meant to be in the distribution, and Mattel got my rights to it.

I did not put any GPL notices on the portions of the package that I wrote, I did not intend my work to be GPL, and I did not lie to the plaintiffs about what rights I owned or could assign to them.

Thus it seems the GPL assigment was accidental and incomplete. If the GPL assignment had been intended, though, there might have been an interesting loophole in the copyright law that allows for a solid release into the public domain, even without the signed instrument. According to a quote by Moglen in that Wired article, "New works made pursuant to the license at the time before Mattel [acquired rights to cphack] present Mattel with other difficulties." That is, if you altered and released a modified version under the GPL before you knew that Mattel had the rights to the program, you might have subverted Mattel's attempt to fully suppress the program, because you would have been a co-owner of rights to the new program, and you would have held onto what Matt and Eddy tried to extinguish.

The moral of the story: always obtain a written signed instrument that assigns non-exclusive rights to somebody other than the author, so the software remains open source forever.

This is from one of the authors of CPHack.

You can check on the other authors page here. He (the other author) says he emailed him (this guy here) to check that this is really him (the co-author)

That last sentance wasn't real great grammer, was it?

Don't believe me? Look at Matt's own site, http://www.islandnet.com/~mskala/:

I did not put any GPL notices on the portions of the package that I wrote, I did not intend my work to be GPL, and I did not lie to the plaintiffs about what rights I owned or could assign to them.

Can we mark this entire news item as irrelevant? Can somebody in Slashdot-land research this issue a little better before perpetuating the theory that this code is GPL'ed? This will NOT be a test of the GPL. Period. Everybody needs to remove their head from the cranial-rectal position and RESEARCH WHAT THEY ARE TALKING ABOUT before posting.

The Wired reporter is wrong, as is anybody else who's claiming that the code is GPL'ed. Even if you wanted to claim that the one piece of code that contains the words "Released under the GPL" is GPL'ed, it is doubtful that the courts would agree that the license applies: none of the terms stated in the GNU GPL have been met (no displayed copyright notice, no disclaimer of warranty, no copy of the LICENSE text file).

IT'S NOT GPL'ED!!

According to the author's homepage, cphack IS NOT GPL'ed. Therefore, it is copyrighted material. No test case at all!

This whole GPL thing is a tempest in a teapot. See what one of the authors has to say.

I did not put any GPL notices on the portions of the package that I wrote, and I did not lie to the plaintiffs about what rights I owned or could assign to them. They have signed a document saying, essentially, that they knew what they were getting from me and were satisfied with it. The settlement document is pretty explicit in saying that they accepted responsibility for knowing all the consequences before agreeing to it. I don't know what the comment about the GPL in Unit1.pas may mean from a legal perspective. It is much less definite than the usual GNU GPL notice. I didn't write that file and never claimed to. I only assigned the rights that were mine to assign. I don't know what Eddy Jansson may have promised to the plaintiffs about the licensing of his portions of the code, or whether he has in fact settled with them at all.

So, what did he have the right to sign over?

Someone would really have to go through a lot of work to masquarade as Matthew for a year before he writes cphack, unnoticed, in order for him to pretend to be him on Slashdot.

The settlement isn't secret, it's in the Boston court record and may well end up on my or someone else's Web site eventually, and I haven't been hounded nor indeed had any communication at all from Mattel's corporate lawyers, except through my own lawyer and the service of the initial Boston lawsuit documents.

- Matthew Skala

A lawsuit was filed against me in British Columbia Supreme Court. There were not, to my knowledge, any criminal charges here or anywhere. It would certainly have been some kind of test case; it would test lots of things including reverse engineering.

There are civil liberties organizations in Canada, but they don't have the funds to do a huge amount in my defense. EFC was certainly willing to set up a fund and take donations. That's a dicey business. We certainly wouldn't be looking at the kind of money an organization like the ACLU could bring to bear... and if the ACLU was willing to "represent me in the USA", they never told me so. Their comments to the press seemed to indicate they were more interested in the email subpeona thing than in the issues directly relevant to me. EFF was very supportive. Because of the jurisdiction issues it's not clear that my formally getting a lawyer in the USA would be a good idea.

Issues arising from this work may still end up in court, because of the licensing and subpeona issues. But I personally hope to be bowing out of direct involvement with that. The copyright is Microsystems's now, not mine, so they can try to enforce it.

- Matthew Skala, completely unauthenticated.

I have no Slashdot account, cope.

Yes, late Friday I made an agreement with the plaintiffs settling the cases in Boston and Vancouver out of court. I was planning to wait until I heard the results of today's hearing before making any announcement, but it sounds like that is now. I don't know Eddy's current status; last I heard from him he had not officially settled but was close to doing so.

I settled because I have made my point and don't need the headaches. I don't think it's appropriate to characterise this as Microsystems et al "winning". The document is out there, I know the mirror sites aren't going to take it down without a fight (even with my copyright assignment), and judging by the level of conspiracy theory here on Slashdot, the companies' public relations nightmares have only just begun.

Whatever public face they may put on their press releases, I don't think the plaintiffs are very happy right now. Whether they end up happy or having the last laugh will really depend upon how you, the public, reacts to this situation, and that's out of my hands.

There are serious jurisdiction issues for the Boston lawsuit, but the Vancouver lawsuit against me was certainly for real, and many of the relevant legal questions have not yet been decided in Canada. So I'd be faced with being a test case, and all the "fun" that involves. My right to do what I did may appear cut-and-dried to Slashdotters, but we'd have to educate the judge about that, and face all the litigation tricks that a well-funded multinational corporation can come up with. Litigation always involves a risk no matter how good one's case may appear at the outset. I'm a mathematician, not a gambler. I've got better ways to spend my time, thank you all so very much.

Yes, it would be more satisfying to walk away with a court decision saying, "Matthew, you didn't do anything bad, you're a good boy", but enough other people have told me that that it's not worth the hassle to try to get it from a court as well. I reached the point of diminishing returns. If you think that makes me a coward or a sell-out, feel free to prove yourself a better hacker than me by doing yourself whatever you think I ought to have done.

I'm sorry for the people who may find their situations worsened by my having made the copyright assignment. I still think that the overall effect of my actions has been positive. You might well want to explore the fact that the original documents gave permission to redistribute.

- Matthew Skala

On Saturday, Wired News featured an interview with Bruce Sterling in mp3 format. In it he talks about Dead Media and other subjects.

According to the Dead Media mailing list's Working Note 32.4:

"DATA STORAGE: FROM DIGITS TO DUST

"Surprise == computerized data can decay before you know it

By Marcia Stepanek in New York

"Up to 20% of the information carefully collected on Jet Propulsion Laboratory computers during NASA's 1976 Viking mission to Mars has been lost. Some POW and MIA records and casualty counts from the Vietnam War, stored on Defense Dept. computers, can no longer be read. And at Pennsylvania State University, all but 14 of some 3,000 computer files containing student records and school history are no longer accessible because of missing or outmoded software.

(...)

"For consumers, the biggest worry is CD-ROMs. Unlike paper records, CD-ROMs often don't show decay until it's too late. Experts are just beginning to realize that stray magnetic fields, oxidation, humidity, and material decay can quickly erase the information stored on them.

"Says Robert Stein, founder of New York-based Voyager Co., which makes commercial CD-ROM books and games: 'CDs have a tendency to degrade much faster than anybody, at least in the companies that make them, is willing to predict.' Stein doesn't expect the CD-ROMs Voyager sells to last more than 5 or 10 years, and neither, he says, should customers."

Right HERE(refresh for a different one each time.) Those who haven't had the New Year hit already can pass them out at work for a good chuckle...


mcrandello@my-deja.com
rschaar{at}pegasus.cc.ucf.edu if it's important.