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But these problems should be seen as part of a larger challenge facing intellectual property protections. The Napster and DMCA and DeCSS problems are all related to copyright - another form of intellectual property protection, which is challenged by our new information technologies' ease of dissemination.

Some people have called for major revisions to our copyright laws, and others (like Jeff Bezos and the people in the introduction above) have suggested that the patent system should face strict reforms.

These are sometimes extremely good suggestions, but we would do well to keep in mind the following:

• 1. The battles over intellectual property protection have been at least this
• intense before (even if patent applications have not be so prolific before), and the system survived.

  2. We cannot just tinker with these systems, but must treat them with profound respect (even if they are broken) because huge amounts of money and acclaim could end up going to people who don't deserve them, while innovators who do deserve them could get screwed.

  3. If we think of copyright and patent problems as parts of a larger set of intellectual property issues that need consideration, it will actually help avoid confusion -- and we will be more likely to convince others (read: legislators) that these issues deserve attention.

For more background on the patent problem, see James Gleick's superb piece, Patently Absurd (NY Times, 12 Mar 00).

A. Keiper
The Center for the Study of Technology and Society
Washington, D.C.

The legislation and rulemaking for COPPA was quite contentious, and the FTC is probably going to be much more of a stickler for children's privacy than it has been for Net fraud.

michael wrote that "We've already seen that the FTC refuses to investigate even large-scale privacy fraud on the part of Internet companies, so it seems extremely doubtful that they're going to deploy COPPA Vice Squads to go out and enforce compliance. Unless you're a really big company in really flagrant violation of the law, you have nothing to worry about."

But it's not quite that simple. Actually, the FTC has been conducting sweeps for Net fraud, and I expect they will start doing much the same thing for kiddie privacy. However, while fraud-hunting is challenging because you need to chase down elusive "businesses" that change online locations frequently, playing the sheriff for violations of children's privacy is easier: investigating and confirming violations are simpler since the FTC can go after established companies.

Also, FTC sweeps aside, COPPA may open the door for lots of lawsuits, perhaps even class-action suits. (Are your lawyers listening yet?)

COPPA ought to be taken very seriously, and many companies are scrambling to comply. (See, for instance, this C|NET article, Many Web sites will pay high price for children's data , or this Wired article, Time Running Out on Kid E-mail .)

Not complying by tonight is not a big deal. Not complying by early summer is a problem. If you don't have your act together by August, you're in serious trouble.

A. Keiper
The Center for the Study of Technology and Society
Washington, D.C.

"Free registration required; you know the drill..."

Yup, we sure do...
http://partners.nytimes.c om/cnet/CNET_0_4_1697833_00.html

Two interesting passages from the article are included below:

"Stoll rejects the idea that students need to use computers intensively and at an early age to become computer literate. In fact, he says, the computer skills needed by adults in the modern world are relatively few and easily learned. A high school graduate should be able to use a word-processing program, be familiar with spreadsheets and data bases, and be comfortable sending e-mail and browsing the Web. Stoll says these are skills that are easily mastered in a few weeks and hardly require a battery of computers in every classroom from kindergarten through 12th grade."

"Stoll argues that students raised on video games and television need less exposure to image-filled screens, not more, if they are to be engaged in the tough task of meaningful learning. 'The computer promotes the expectation that anything can be made more fun,' he said. 'But many things important in life are, unfortunately, difficult to learn and require a great deal of mental effort. Innovative technology will make it appear to be fun. But try to make school into a fun, entertaining experience and you will gut the very essence of learning.'"

I tend to agree with Stoll on these two points, although I am a computer junkie myself (of course). I have yet to see any computer program that does as well in teaching as a good teacher does. A teacher can interact with the child and address misunderstandings in a way that no compter program currently can.

There are certain aspects of learning that computers may be useful for, such as showing complicated graphs that can't be easily drawn on the board or quizzing students to help them memorize addition tables or French vocabulary. But these tasks require a computer lab and computers available for teachers to "rent" for a given class, not computers for every child.

-- Diana Hsieh

http://www.nytimes.com/a ponline/f/AP-Microsoft-Password.html...still not very in depth..

Remove the quotation mark from the URL, and it should work. At least it did for me

corrected link: http://www.nytimes.com/library/national/040900ramp age-killers.html

Here is the correct link to the NY Times article A Closer Look at Rampage Killings.

Interesting article. "such killings account for only one-tenth of 1 percent of all homicides"

Of course, later in the article it dives into arguments for more gun control laws and more invasive police procedures. Cor! What freedoms and rights some people are willing to give up.

--
Mike Arms

sorry - here's the URL: here

About Stephenson/Brin: We need to get out of this trap of trying to make one of these abstract actors the enemy or saviour. Instead, think of it as people in a society using tools. We can use tools for good or bad, and we can set up rules to control use of tools. We need to set up good laws to protect our privacy while at the same time providing reasonable public safety. The libertarians are just as bad as the liberals when it comes to a real answer to our problems.

Look at the recent New York Times articles about the massacres by mentally ill people at http://part ners.nytimes.com/library/national/041100rampage-ki llers.html . Some wish to protect the privacy of these people by forbidding any information about mental hospital admissions from databases and so inaccessible to those who check backgrounds for those purchasing handguns. Why not set up a system (and one state has) whereby the FBI sends the query to the state keepers of the hospital admissions database, and the response is 'yes' or 'no'. The information is only used when appropriate, and not used for other data mining. The response from too many privacy advocates is, there is a 'right' to privacy that overrides this, or that, we can use technology somehow to overcome the problem. Get real!

For some more informed discussion of Brin's ideas, see Charles J. Sykes, "The End of Privacy," 1999, ISBN: 0312203500.

Ralph Reed no longer works for the Christian Coalition - he now runs Century Strategies, a political lobbying & campaign group. He left the CC shortly before they lost their tax exemption when the IRS determined they were not a non-partisan group (no big surprise to anyone with a functioning frontal lobe).

So many people on Slashdot bitch on and on about corporations running things or having an undue influence in public affairs in the States. There is one candidate who is actively campaigning against the current state of affairs. Check out Ralph Nader & the Green Party at www.votenader.org and www.greens.org.

http:// partners.nytimes.com/library/tech/00/04/biztech/ar ticles/10dyso.html

Not to disrespect the other cultures reading this, but I'm an American, and thus, this post reflects my culture. YMMV for your country.

I've had at last count 4 friends with bipolar manic-depressive illness. One managed to succeed in killing himself: you may have known him. I lived with a mildly (ie, not bad enough to be clinically diagnosed, but definately there) bipolar friend for 2 years, so I've seen exactly what this does to people.

The real problem here in the US is the lack or recognition that mental illness is a real disease. Alot of the pseudo-bullshit "new" mental illness diagnosis that seem to pop up (with the sole purpose (or so it seems) to get compensation under the Americans with Disabilities Act) certainly re-inforce this view in the public's eyes. The shame that often goes with the formal diagnosis of mental illness merely is the last turn in a vicious circle.

In answer to the Pinkerton WAVE thing, the NYTimes has a great article on so-called "ramage killers". Guess what? A majority of them were diagnosed with a clinical mental illness. Were they getting proper treatment? Nope. Were they being supported in a reasonable manner? Nope. Hmmmmm.

A poster awhile back suggested that school children undergo mandatory psych exams, and that they be put on (drug) therapy if they showed any signs of being a "problem". Actually, I think the basic idea is a good one. Early diagnosis of a disease is critical to long-term survial (ask any doctor). The rest of the idea isn't so hot. But I think it would be a good idea if schools had everyone talk to a psychologist once a semester. It'd cut down the biggest barrier to helping those with mental illness - the stigma of asking for help. Kids would be able to get help without being even more of an outcast. And you'd have a great opportunity to bring in the parents, who are going to be the biggest help to the kid.

I don't think anything could have help Marty, as much as I wonder if there was something I missed or could have done. However, I'm now really sensitive to people who show any of these signs, and do what I can for them - which is often hard, as accepting such help is often the last thing someone is willing to do. <sigh>

Lastly, I don't see any particular concentration or statistical blip on bi-polar people being programmers/geeks. Sorry, but this is something that I've seen in virtually all sorts of people. It's a disease. Attempting to pigeon-hole bipolars as geeks (or vice versa) is incorrect. Period.

5 years, 2 months, 8 days - Marty, you idiot.

-Erik

Is that it can be applied to the NY Times as well.
For example, to bypass the login for this article use
http:// partners.nytimes.com/library/tech/yr/mo/cyber/cybe rlaw/07law.html. In other words, change the www to partners.

'Impulse radio' is a lot more than just an "interesting wireless link," it is a technology that will revolutionize our use of the radio spectrum. Rather than transmitting information as modulations in an analogue radio wave's frequency or amplitude (FM or AM), Time Modulated Ultra Wideband transmits information in RF pulses (called monocylces), positioned with an accuracy of trillionths of a second. It operates with just miliwatts of power, yet signals can be received for over a mile.

I first read about TimeDomain several years ago. The technology sounded pretty much ready to go, but they were being stymied by the vast regulatory bueracracy that is the FCC (selling radio spectrum is a cash cow, and if you were the FCC, would you eagerly antiquate a profitable revenue stream?). TimeDomain was also duking it out with an Alphabet Soup Government agency (one of the national laboratories?) over who had patent rights, those issues have recently been resolved.

There have been some comments about bandwidth congestion - ultrawideband technology will virtually eliminate all such concerns. Sending out around a milliwatt of power, spread over several GHz of bandwidth, makes it difficult to tell the difference between signal and background noise.

TimeDomain's homepage - http://www.time-domain.com/
The Ultra Wideband Working Group site - http://www.uwb.org/
NY Times Article (1998) - http://www.n ytimes.com/library/tech/98/12/biztech/articles/21t ime.html
Time Domain's Coverage in national media - http://www.time-domain.com/news/newss ect.html

The NY Times has this article available at http://www.nytimes. com/yr/mo/day/news/financial/03tsc-msft.html
----------------------------

*Microsoft would be required to establish a uniform pricing schedule for the Windows operating system so the company could not use price discrimination to penalize companies that defy its will.

*The company would be prohibited from tying any of its products to Windows by sales contract, though it would still be free to integrate applications or features into the program.

*Microsoft would be forbidden to strike exclusive contracts with other companies, as it did with Internet service providers who were asked to feature Microsoft's Web browser and none other.

*Microsoft would be required to share technical information about its products without discrimination with any company that had a right to it.

*The company would also be required to disclosure the software interfaces that allow programmers to like their programs to Windows.

*Microsoft would no longer be allowed to raise the price of older versions of Windows as soon as a new one is released, a tactic to prompt faster migration to the new version. The company would have to support the old version, and sell it at the same price, for three years.

*Computer manufacturers would be allowed to license the source code to Windows so they could modify it, allowing them to change opening screen users see when they turn the computer on. They could also modify the program to feature a program they prefer, such as a different browser. But Microsoft would disclaim any responsibility for offering technical support for those parts of the program that have been changed, or affected by the changes.

One official said Judge Posner had been receiving e-mail messages and telephone calls from numerous state officials over the last several days, complaining that their interests were being ignored and warning that there could be no settlement without the states' agreement. Judge Posner, in his statement, noted: "I particularly want to emphasize that the collapse of the mediation is not due to any lack of skill, flexibility, energy, determination, or professionalism on the part of the Department of Justice and Microsoft Corporation." Nowhere did he make mention of the states.
_______________

There have been several proposals made and not all of them are OS/Apps/Other. Here's a November 1999 New York Times article with that break up option plus the "Baby Bill" option where several companies would all inherit MSs rights in Windows.

Anomalous: inconsistent with or deviating from what is usual, normal, or expected

I don't quite buy the PTO being a patent factory, though. It seems to me that if they wanted to make the most money, they'd reject as many patents as possible, hoping that the patent applicants would fix their flaws and re-apply.

March 29 -- The bold cosmetologists of law enforcement. The New York Times took note this Sunday of efforts in Nevada and Connecticut to enlist beauty-parlor personnel in the task of identifying possible victims of domestic violence for referral to battered women's shelters and other social service agencies (see our March 16 commentary). Its report adds a remarkable new detail regarding the sorts of indicators that Nevada cosmetologists are being officially encouraged to watch for as signs of household violence (being licensed by the state, they have reason to listen with care to what's expected of them). "Torn-out hair or a bruised eye may signal abuse, but more subtle warning signs may come out in conversation. One Nevada hairdresser, [state official Veronica] Boyd-Frenkel said, told of a client who said: 'My husband doesn't want me to see my friend anymore. He says she is putting bad ideas in my head.'

"'Emotional abuse, intimidation, control, jealousy, overpossessiveness and constant monitoring,' she said, can be as sure signs of domestic violence as physical injuries." Does Ms. Boyd-Frenkel, who holds the title of "domestic violence ombudsman" for the attorney general of Nevada, really deem it "emotional abuse" and potential domestic violence when a husband seeks to warn a wife (or vice versa) away from a friend who's considered a bad influence? Is such spousal behavior really to trigger the notice of the official social-service apparatus, and its new deputies in the hair and nail salons of Nevada? (Jeff Stryker, "Those Who Stand and Coif Might Also Protect", New York Times, March 26).

(except for Al Gore's email)

If the feds can require logging computers on trucks--with no evidence it will contribute to safety--why not use these keyboards to prevent 'hackers' from damaging e-commerce?

See http://www.nytimes .com/library/magazine/home/20000326mag-shoptalk.ht ml (free subscription required) for a discussion of how some truckers think of computer logging.

Or http://partners .nytimes.com/aponline/i/AP-Japan-Compact-Copter.ht ml

The replace-"www"-with-"partners" trick should let you bypass registration for any article.

One would imagine that in a situation where there was even anywhere near enough workers in a given field, there would not be half as many completely knowledgeless people running around with "certifications" and "experience".

Ummmm...I'm afraid there's something we need to tell you about your fellow humans...I mean, just think about *other people* for a minute... Now, slightly more seriously, let's think about who's hiring these clue impaired folks. Management. Probably a guy who skims _Information_Week_. You come in with the right buzzwords and a slightly inflated resume and viola, you've got a new job!

Of course this isn't the way it is everywhere, but let's not think that just because we're talking about the tech industry that we're free from the management and organizational issues that trouble a frighteningly large number of employers.

no registration required.

I haven't seen the Preliminary Injunction that came out late on Friday mentioned on /. yet. This New York Times story (bla bla bla free registration required) from Saturday indicates that Mattel thinks that the ruling extends to mirrors. That's not clear to me just from the story.

Anomalous: inconsistent with or deviating from what is usual, normal, or expected

...and for everyone whining about the nytimes.com login.

http://pa rtners.nytimes.com/library/tech/00/03/biztech/arti cles/17blue.html

...login free.

Why can't Hemos take 30 seconds to fix the URLs before he posts them? sheez...

Taxation on internet transactions is inevitable. We can argue over whether it's a good thing or not; an interesting contribution to the debate is Paul Krugman's oped piece in the NY Times (free registration, blah, blah, blah).

It seems to me, though, that the reason it isn't already taxed is not this garbage about strangling the new economy but the fact that it's the states that want to collect the taxes, and the Constitution specifically prohibits that. The politicians are just pretending to care about the Internet until they can figure out a way to tax it that's not against the constitution.

Today's NYT magazine has an article 'Patently Absurd' by well-known science writer James Gleick
First page illustration has this fake patent 'Procedure for simultaneously walking and chewing gum' :)
hilarious.
-ak
reference: NYT magazine - (registration reqd.)

Today's New York Times Magazine has an interesting piece by James Gleick on Amazon, software patents, the whole shebang...

Actually some people have claimed that there is no real racial divide in terms on net access, but it's rather a reflection of racial disparities in terms of economics. An article at the New York Times (the cgi-enhanced http address doesn't work if I paste it here; do a search for "racial" in the Technology section) mentions a few interesting studies done on the subject. The point, I think, should be made in terms of class rather than race; poorer Americans are much less likely to use the internet, and presumably will be less likely to vote online.

Probably the main reason the New York Times is considered iffy is the unrelenting criticism of China's human rights record by William Safire, who recently said China's leaders were double-crossers and certain political trends are "leading [China] toward a political earthquake".

First of all, while I'll admit investor information is not a perfect source of information, it isn't normally complete marketing crap due to FTC regulations. That said...

FYI, the technique used by CRA is called shotgun sequencing, and it has been debated before, but until recently was thought too resource intensive for use on very large genomes.

My understanding was that that is one of the innovations that CRA has brought to the table. Not just the resource intensiveness, but many thought that assembly wouldn't be possible using that technique.

According to this New York Times Article, CRA has also developed computer software to solve the assembly problem.

Look, the point of all this is that you claim that there is nothing new that CRA is doing except spending money, and that is simply not true. As the saying goes, if it were that easy, everyone would do it.

There is certainly a lot of questions still surrounding CRA's business model, but I think you're being a little hard on them.

CRA may only patent 300 or so of the thousands of genes they have preliminary patents on, but these 300 will have been carefully picked over by CRA and the drug companies so that no one else gets access to anything of serious value. Now, explain to me how this sort of behavior is supposed to encourage calculated risk and entrepreneurism in the biotech community?

For the same reason that we allow drug patents... it's not that easy, and it's very expensive to do analysis and produce drugs. The only way it can happen is to allow a drug company to recoup the investment in discovering, testing and producing the drug. Otherwise, you have a drug company investing 100s of millions to develop a drug, only to see it manufactured overseas by anyone and everyone. That does not foster innovation.

--

John Markoff has a somewhat more detailed article on PREVAIL here.

Although no one may read this, I had to post it because I thought it was humorous.

About the Airbus incident : I guess the U.S. government has kind of admitted it eavesdropped on negotiations. *BUT* (this is the funny part) they overheard Airbus Offering Bribes to Saudi Officals. So good ole' U.S. intelligence said to the saudi government "Oh, by the way, that company competing with that U.S. company is offering your guys bribes." And whoops, Airbus lost the deal.

So, it might be kind of unethical that they (U.S. intel) were eavesdropping, but it does appear that the french are complaining largely due to circumstances resulting from their own pants being down. (U.S. government contractors have to pay huge fines if they get caught offering bribes to foreign governments -- I know because my company got caught once a couple years before I started. I and every other employee have to take special training as part of the sentence.)

The ex-head of the CIA has some comments about it in this nytimes article right here. Mostly that they couldn't tell a U.S. company that they were about to lose, but could inform other governments if someone was cheating. Hee hee.

The computers watch and listen for key words in telephone, fax and Internet communications and route intercepted messages on a topic requested by a country, the descendant of a decades-old electronic eavesdropping network set up by the United States with Australia, Britain, Canada and New Zealand.

Fears that the United States, Britain and other English-speaking countries are using a cold-war eavesdropping network to gain a commercial edge roused passions across Europe today, even after Washington and London roundly denied the notion.

The subject kept the European Parliament in Brussels entranced for hours and drew banner headlines across the continent. [...] The hubbub grew from a report prepared for the European Parliament that found that communications intercepted by a network called Echelon twice helped American companies gain an advantage over Europeans.

The computers watch and listen for key words in telephone, fax and Internet communications and route intercepted messages on a topic requested by a country, the descendant of a decades-old electronic eavesdropping network set up by the United States with Australia, Britain, Canada and New Zealand.

Fears that the United States, Britain and other English-speaking countries are using a cold-war eavesdropping network to gain a commercial edge roused passions across Europe today, even after Washington and London roundly denied the notion.

The subject kept the European Parliament in Brussels entranced for hours and drew banner headlines across the continent. [...] The hubbub grew from a report prepared for the European Parliament that found that communications intercepted by a network called Echelon twice helped American companies gain an advantage over Europeans.

You can defend yourself, fine. Just don't use a gun. Most people are way more likely to kill/injure themselves (or other people, besides the attacker) with a gun when trying to defend themselves. Most people do not know how to use guns, and in a dark alley anything is possible.

See this story for a PERFECT example of why guns are evil. Here we have four TRAINED FUCKING COPS and they shot an unarmed man 41 (THATS FORTY-FUCKING-ONE) times for no reason... they claimed they thought he had a gun.

No guns and he'd still be alive.

This is something that I've noticed increasingly over the last couple of years, and the same thing is happening to TV.

There, quite simply, isn't anything that appears in the newspapers or on TV news broadcasts, that wasn't on the internet the day before yesterday.

I'm sick of seeing a story pop up on in a local newspaper or nightly news segment on the TV, 3-4 days or a week after I read pretty much the same story on CNN on the net.

There may be a fraction more information avaliable, but generally they are a straight rehash of CNN's coverage.

Which leads me to my second problem. There is no independence in news gathering these days. Whether its the fault of all of the media mergers over the last few years or not I don't know, but the problem is that everyone is using the same news wires to generate their stories... so what you end up with 100's of newspapers and TV stations sprout ing the same stuff over and over.

Prior to the net, that was ok, because physical location dictated the target audience. That's no longer the case. From Ballarat, Australia, I can read the New York Times , or CNN just as easy as I can buy the Melbourne Age or the Ballarat Courier. In fact, the only thing these papers can give me that I can't get elsewhere online is local content.

As I see it, there a two choices that can be made to keep a newspaper relevant over the next few years. Either start concentrating on local content and local issues, or play with the big boys and start generating your own news... ie. maybe start looking into the issues raised by cnn, ap and reuters, and provide something extra rather than just regurgitating the story, which is what every newspaper around the world seems to be doing these days....

Oh... and one other thing... so toning everything (stories AND editorial content) down in an attempt to keep your advertisers happy. If a newspaper anywhere was to give an accurate depiction of what is happening with DeCSS, then I'd buy a years subscription from them...

Good article . There's a quote about Kinesis near the end: [T]he Kinesis Contoured Ergonomic Keyboard, separates the keys in two concave banks and places the heavily used Backspace, Delete, Enter and Space keys near the thumb. Dr. Robert Markison, a San Francisco hand surgeon who specializes in R.S.I., has pointed out that such kinds of configurations place unnatural stress on the thumb, making it vulnerable to arthritis and other injuries.

Actually, if you use any browser other than Netscape, you don't have to register. It redirects you to www10.nytimes.com and you don't have to register. If you use junkbuster, it does the same thing. I wonder why they ask for registration in the first place?

Haven't we had this discussion exactly one year ago? That you posted?

Well, there's always Dvorak, though the benefits of that are up in the air. (My inciteful comment on that topic (#47) was soundly defeated. (#190) :)

I'm not certain that it would help, but you could get a big keyboard and feel like the world's tiniest geek.

And there's those cool one-handed keyboards. Again, I don't know if it would help, but you could use two of 'em and multi-task fiercely.

Of course, the all-thumb keyboard. It's essentially ASL, but while wearing a glove. This one is my personal favourite. Probably not as good for coding (there's a convenience, or at least a learned one, to the location of the squiggly brackets, carets, parenthesis, etc.)

Oh, and programs like ViaVoice. Those are more and more highly rated. Again, probably not good for coding, but a hell of a start. Perhaps that combined with another keyboard, like a chording one, might do ya' right.

ht tp://partners.nytimes.com/library/tech/00/02/bizte ch/articles/22transmeta.html

HERE

The article explains that a bunch of old Apple/Mac programmers are more or less incharge of interface for GNOME 2.0 (as far as the file manager and back processes of the file manager) and that HelixCode is incharge of the internal "plumbing." It also said that HelixCode is really looking to put together a office suite.

If instead you go to http://www10.nytimes.com/library/national/science/ 021900sci-dark-matter.html, it will bring up the story, with no login and no cookies whatsoever.

Interesting.

If instead you go to http://www10.nytimes.com/library/national/science/ 021900sci-dark-matter.html, it will bring up the story, with no login and no cookies whatsoever.

Interesting.

...if you use thi s link. It replaces www.nytimes.com with partners.nytimes.com, please do the same when you post stories.

yes, or you may replace the 'www' part of the url with 'partners' to go directly there (as someone pointed out earlier today.) Or click here:

htt p://partners.nytimes.com/library/national/science/ 021900sci-dark-matter.html

No annoying registration...who would've thought it would be that easy?

numb

Crowley just wrote a review for last Sunday's NY Times Book Review. See the Times site.