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IANAL--but I have been caught by people who have been admitted to the SCOTUS bar, and not the merely honorary one.

This case probably will need to be kicked along until it hits the SCOTUS, but a good, strong case could be made that decryption would be self-incrimination and thus a violation of the 5th Amendment protections under the Act of Production Doctrine--check into United States v. Hubbell, 530 U.S. 27 (2000), where it was ruled that Mr Hubbell's response to the subpoena and producing the papers counted as testimony. The implications for it with encryption are explored here by somebody who probably is a lawyer given it was published originally in a law journal.

This only directly applies to evidence obtained via keys given in return for immunity, but in keeping somebody locked up without trial indefinitely for refusing to produce the key or combination, due process rights are most definitely violated no matter what. (It would be different if a third party was being asked for the key, but it isn't.)

From a blog by a colleague of mine on the subject: "Questions that p-values can answer" != "Interesting questions about the world'.

I didn't see any contact information for bug reports. For example, if I go to the plate at http://dsl.richmond.edu/histor... and hover my mouse over Boston, it reports a speed of about -3500 MPH. I doubt that people could fly at minus thirty five hundred miles per hour in 1930.

Yes it can be searched.

The search standards at border crossings are very loose. It's been that way since 1789. The Constitution is high on defense of the nation, and tariffs were the first taxes. Obviously you cannot defend the borders or impose tariffs without being able to search at border crossings.

The Congress shall have power:

To lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises, to pay the debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States; but all duties, imposts and excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;

"Exhibit A in the Supreme Courtâ(TM)s case for border searches is a statute Congress enacted in 1789, which granted customs officials âoefull power and authorityâ to search âoeany ship or vessel, in which they shall have reason to suspect any goods, wares or merchandise subject to duty shall be concealed"

from: http://lawreview.richmond.edu/run-for-the-border/

This statute actually PREDATES the adoption of the Bill of Rights as amendments to the Constitution by two months.

Technically, no they aren't treating every individual as a criminal, or even as a person of interest. What they are doing is saying that with all of this data we can find the "bad" people more easily.

The problem with this is that "bad" is a very subjective term, and changes based on politics, money, and power-- which are all arguably the same thing.

The following is an interesting paper on the perfect enforcement of law. http://jolt.richmond.edu/v14i4/article13.pdf - quite ironically written by someone with the last name of "Mulligan."

The paper is written in an engaging, journalistic style (I was a mainstream tech writer before becoming a lawyer), but may still be a challenging read. Nonetheless, I recommend it to any Slashdotter interested in a deeper perspective on how intellectual-property controversies work.

Freely downloadable from the Richmond Journal of Law & Technology at: http://jolt.richmond.edu/v16i1/article1.pdf

Oh, please, please bring Dr. Bunsen Honeydew and Beaker on Sesame Street.

Also, having Bryan Cranston and Aaron Paul on as guest stars would be "the bomb."

Of course, there are other encryption schemes that seem to work just fine (e.g. Elliptic curve cryptography) with quantum computing, and there's not much evidence that algorithms other than RSA are broken.

Actually, all discrete-logarithm based schemes can be broken in polynomial time by quantum computing, hence also elliptic curve cryptography.The details have to be re-worked out for each such scheme, but that's true also of any classical attack. See for instance http://www.mathcs.richmond.edu/~jad/summerwork/ellipticcurvequantum.pdf

Roberto

The University of Richmond has recently created an interactive database with maps of voting in previous elections. You can look as far back as 1884 and you can break down the maps by state, county, ethnicity, margin of victory, etc. The website is http://americanpast.richmond.edu/voting/ if you want to check it out. They are still working to expand it and add information such as immigration patterns and voting stats for women. It takes a huge amount of memory so it can be a little slow to load. It's a great resource though!

There's a key distinction you're missing. When you get a piece of proprietary software, you generally engage in a financial transaction. You exchange money for the opportunity to utilize that piece of software. Under the terms of the Uniform Commercial Code, this establishes a contract. Check out the box of software you are buying. On the outside, it will say that a EULA is included within which must be agreed to prior to utilizing the software. That license is incorporated into your contract where you are exchanging money. The enforceability of a contract you can't inspect in its entirety beforehand remains a debatable legal question depending on your jurisdiction. Hence some suppliers of software insure you can inspect the EULA beforehand, if you ask to do so.

Downloaded, free-of-charge software is in a slightly different circumstance, where the consideration the supplier receives is solely in terms of the license you're bound to when using it. It has been argued that this makes the EULA more valid as the initial contract is established at the time that the EULA is presented. If you don't agree to the terms of the license for the software first, you have no contract, and no right to copy, modify, make derivative works of, or redistribute the software. But mere use or dis assembly of the software prior to agreement of the EULA? An interesting question.

There have been numerous court cases both upholding and dismissing EULAs ("shrink wrap licenses") in specific circumstances. For instance ProCD Inc. v. Zeidenberg is often pointed to by opponents of EULAs. This has been an issue of significant suits for well over a decade, coming up somewhat recently in the Bnetd case.

The groupthink of Slashdot will tell you that you can do whatever you want. But philosophical zealotry does not caselaw (nor morality) make. I'd trouble myself more about the parenthetical.

Slashdot is not exactly a representative forum on this subject, and across the population as a whole, I suspect the answers are not what you think they are.

Funny how debates like "Intelligent Design" get equal time for the ratings, but copyright law is presented as a completely one sided concept in the media. I'm sure that has nothing to do with the media's vested interest in copyright law. Greater than 20% of college students surveyed consider paying for downloads on iTunes to be stealing. Now maybe if you guys can convince the public that buying disks is also stealing, then you can completely ruin any opportunity you had to sell your wares.

Nope, the case was Apple Computer, Inc. v. Microsoft Corp., 35 F.3d 1435 (9th Cir. 1994), summary here

Apple lost all claims except the trash can icon and file folder icons from HP's NewWave Windows application were infringing on their IP. The judges basically ruled that since Apple did not copyright the GUI and that because Apple and Microsoft had entered into an license agreement that included Microsoft Windows 1.0 it was a contractual matter, and dismissed those parts of the suit.

Hence Apple did not win. Although they did win the suit Xerox files against them for doing the same thing, granted that was because the statute of limitations ran out on Xerox. And who knows how that would have worked out as Apple did hire a couple of the PARC's designers to work on the MAC and IIRC paid Xerox some money (granted that may have been after the fact).

In 1997 Microsoft paid Apple $150 million that settled, among other things, once and for all the claims of infringement between the two companies. But that was more of a side note of the deal.

The similar case of Moore v. Regents of University of California has decided on this question. A man was ill with hairy cell leukemia and his spleen was removed in the course of treatment. The hospital did research on his spleen and he sued, claiming that he had a property interest in the removed spleen. The court disagreed with him and ruled that there was no such property interest once the part was removed.

s/b http://law.richmond.edu/jolt/v2i1/sergienko.html

See
Greg S. Sergienko, Self Incrimination and Cryptographic Keys, 2 RICH. J.L. & TECH. 1 (1996)
http://www.richmond.edu/jolt/v2i1/sergienko.html

Be that as it may, maybe you don't remember the 2600 DeCSS decision. As far as the Supreme Court is concerned linking can be infringement. There was a prior C&D about 'embedding' comics from the United Features Syndicate (iirc, this was the Dilbert case) that asserted that using an img tag to embed a published image from another site into your own could be infringing. This was never litigated, the site in question 'caved', but if the case was tried today, in light of the DMCA and the DeCSS precedent I'm sure that it would be found infringing, but you'd have to litigate it to know for sure. Comtemporary page referencing the situation: http://law.richmond.edu/jolt/v4i2/cavazos.html#Par t%20III%20A

If SA or the specific forum member had the balls (and deep pockets) to litigate this, I'm pretty sure they'd lose.

Further, for SA to enjoy the safe-harbour protection of the DMCA (i.e., "we aren't responsible for what our members post"), they'd have to comply with these sorts of C&Ds "in good faith". By choosing not to they would be opening themselves to contributory/vicarious infringement. This would be very bad for them in light of the rampant piracy that used to be (or possibly still is) available in the forum for the minor cost of a $5 or $10 membership.

Copyright is pro-publisher. Publishers are more often than not the plaintiff in infringement cases, so IMHO copyright law is essentially biased to the plaintiff.

I .... ah whats the use, like I'm gonna suddenly convince you to forsake the Republican party when I can barely get behind the Dems anymore...

Probably not, but you might not understand my political views. As a result of these views, I'm doing my best as an active member of the party organization to change some things about the party.

Bush is a jackass - personal opinion based on countless actions

Agreed, but he's our jackass, unfortunately. I did *not* vote for him in the primaries, and probably wouldn't have if someone better and from our organization had ran against him in the last round. If we had approval voting in the general, I also would have approved Badnarik.

Kerry is SLIGHTLY less of a jackass - although, calling him a war criminal is purely uncalled for. I believe it was decorate war HERO, who went on to (GASP!) protest the war.

I disagree. As much of a jackass. War criminal? Yes. The reason I say this is if he personally witnessed, took part in, or became aware soon after the commission of the atrocities he spoke of, and did nothing during the time, then he was a de facto accomplice at the time of commission. I was in the Army. I know right from wrong, and knew what orders to question. He had a responsibility to notify someone immediately. He never claimed to have done anything about it at the time. He could have tried writing his Senator...

Oregon politics ARE a little fucked - have you been anywhere else? We ain't got the market cornered!

No, but we offer one of the best products in the business!

But back on topic, I'd just LOVE to see them try to get me to accept one of these in my truck! Mudflaps - gone, Cat-converter - gone, large-quantities-of-sheet-metal - gone, oh but lemme put that gps thingamajimmer on here! Lets see how it handles the next swamp I drive through!

Sounds like my 1970 Mustang (351W). Except I have all my sheet metal and don't need the mudflaps. If it gets a GPS, it'll be for theft prevention, not for being taxed.

Just so no one panics, this isn't a daily driver, its a low-road-mileage toy.

Same with my Mustang. My daily driver gets 30+ MPG and has all the latest and greatest efficiency-robbing emissions controls.

(Note to casual readers: Yes, certain emission controls that don't improve the efficiency of fuel combustion tend to hurt efficiency overall [EGR for reduction of NOx emissions]. I don't want to pollute the planet, I just want the car to go uphill without losing speed or drinking excess fuel.)

If these guys had a decent budget, they could sue the hell out of Apple. I'm hoping someone does, because Apple only bullies little tiny websites. They stay clear of anybodhy their own size.

It is definitely NOT a strategic direction of OpenOffice.org.

So it is not a strategic direction of OOO to use the interface standards of the market, right? Please allow me to quote from "User Interface Design for Programmers" (APress, 2001):

I've seen companies where management prides themselves on doing things deliberately differently from Microsoft. "Just because Microsoft does it, doesn't mean it's right," they brag, and then proceed to create a gratuitously different user interface from the one that people are used to. Before you start chanting the mantra that "just because Microsoft does it, doesn't mean it's right," please consider two things:

1. Even if it's not right, if Microsoft is doing it in a popular program like Word, Excel, Windows, or Internet Explorer, then millions of people are going to think that it's right, or at least, fairly standard, and they are going to assume that your program works the same way. Even if you think (as the Netscape 6.0 engineers clearly do) that Alt+Left is not a good shortcut key for "Back", there are literally millions of people out there who will try to use Alt+Left to go back, and if you refuse to do it on some general religious principle that Bill Gates is the evil smurf arch-nemesis Gargamel, then you are just gratuitously ruining your program so that you can feel smug and self-satisfied, and your users will not thank you for it.

2. And don't be so sure it's not right. Microsoft spends more money on usability testing than you do, they keep detailed statistics based on millions of tech support phone calls, and there's a darn good chance that they did it that way because more people can figure out how to use it that way.

I'm guessing you're thinking Billg is the Evil Smurf, right?

OOo does not want to be hampered by the poor decisions that Microsoft has made in interface design over the years. We want to consider each change on it's merits not because 'we say so' corp does it that way.

I thought so. That's not the point. The point is most of your potential customers think that is the way an office suite should behave. By intentionally doing things differently, you're telling them, "You're too stupid to use our program, so either learn how or stick with what you got." That's exactly what they'll do.

OpenOffice.org is not trailing MS Word, it aim [sic] to be better.

Beta was better than VHS, but guess who won, the one with the better product or the one who got the most people to use it?

If OOo ever did implement MS Word's interface exactly I can imagine the advertising now. Open Source is just following the leader. We would play into their hands.

Better, instead, to be a niche program, used by less than one percent of the office-suite-using public, because the learning curve is too high.

[The] MS theme ~ will never be installed by default, possibly not even in the official tarball for legal reasons.

Legal reasons like Apple v. Microsoft? That whole part about how look and feel can't be copyrighted because it is made of non-copyrightable elements, like menus and buttons? That one?

If you wish this then please get involved and help ~.

I must respectfully decline. I would rather not devote my time to a project in which the average user was so obviously considered

Secondly, Bush earned the required number of points every year in the Guard, thus fulfilling his requirement to the Guard.

Okay, so clearly the liars trying to trash John Kerry are getting nearly three times the press in the past six months as the press has spent looking into legitimate issues with Bush's record in the past 12 years.

Like using obviously forged documents from Kinko's? Oh wait - no, that's Dan Rather that thinks memos typed up in MS Word and faxed from a Kinko's in Abeliene are authentic.

By the way - Name ONE charge that the Swift Boat Vets have retracted. Now contrast that to how many times John Kerry has changed HIS story on the matter. Big difference, isn't there?

As far as lying, I can name several John Kerry lies off the top of my head, like spending Christmas in Cambodia, being in Vietnam when MLK was killed (hint: Kerry arrived in Vietnam MONTHS after the MLK assasination).

it is important to know what that person was doing when it was their time to serve

And you should know, that by his own admission in front of the US Senate, under Oath, that John Kerry spent his time in Vietnam committing atrocities and War Crimes.

Would you vote for Lynndie England for President? Kerry admits to doing much, much worse.

you've never let reality bother you, have you?

John kerry came back, and joined a group of veterans called the "Winter Soldiers" and testifies to congress as a representative of that group. To wit, his openning statement was:
---
I am not here as John Kerry. I am here as one member of the group of 1,000 which is a small representation of a very much larger group of veterans in this country, and were it possible for all of them to sit at this table they would be here and have the same kind of testimony....
---

He came back from Vietnam, and spoke Truth to Power. He spoke against an unpopular war. He pulled back the curtain on the atrocities that were occuring every day in 'Nam.

He did the right thing.

How you pervert this brave, heroic, selfless act into some treasonous account is beyond me.

We are asked this year to decide between a decorated war hero; who came back and spoke against the war he fought in, and a coward whose father got him a cushy spot in a champagne squadron, who couldnt even bother to show up between lines of coke.

i know exactly who i would want in the foxhole next to me, and it sure as hell isnt a coked up fratboy.

The testimony of John Kerry is here.

While the famous version of Les Bergers d'Arcadie shows a version that is reversed from this monument, other versions were created. One version came several years before the famous one. This page shows both.

But most interestingly (and cryptically) is this image. I don't know the origin of this engraving, but it is almost exactly the same as as the monument. Down to the swirling clouds, which actually aren't present in the famous version! The only obvious difference is the present of an additional urn on top of the sarcophagus in the monument. I have little doubt that either this engraving was created from the monument, or the monument was created from this engraving.

Can anyone offer anymore insight into this engraving?

The whole thing (also available in Greek)

Copyright Preemption

While IANAL, I don't suspect you are either. Copyright is not something that applies to ideas - it applies to expressions of ideas. I'll quote the Apple vs Microsoft case note by Joseph Meyers:

Typically, copyright protection is awarded to literary work, and Congress has included the code that makes up a computer program in this category.[7] Additionally, some non-literal expression is protected. For example, not only are the actual words in an author's copyrighted novel protected, but the structure and plot may be protected as well.[8] The debate[9] in the area of computer science is whether, by analogy, this means that the result, output, organization or display (the "look and feel") of a computer program might be protected as well, even if the source code is different.[10] This is to be distinguished from the idea underlying the program, which is not subject to copyright protection.[11]

For those who studied something productive in school rather than enjoying the four-year binge of drugs and navel gazing that is a liberal arts degree:

The Merovingian line of royalty is believed by some of the more conspiracy-minded to have been a direct bloodline descended from Jesus. (Another theory maintains that they were descended from extraterrestrials, but that's neither here nor there for purposes of this discussion.)

Persephone, the daughter of gods Zeus and Demeter, was kidnapped by Hades (god of the underworld), and through a chain of events better explained elsewhere, she ended up spending part of each year on earth and part of each year in the Underworld.

Now on to the question...

What with Neo (the prophesized "one" who redeems the human race) discovering that he is only one redeemer in a series, and with his lady Trinity having died and been brought back to the land of the living, does anyone else suspect that the next movie will bring a revelation:

...that every "One" ends up presented with the same choice, and makes the same decision that Neo did; and that after making that decision they end up hanging around in the Matrix with the woman that they chose to bring back from death, slightly bitter, disillusioned, and knowing too much...

Or have I just spent too much time hanging out with conspiracy theorists?

Sorry to be a physics geek here, but there's no such thing as "centrifugal" force, unless you're talking about the force caused by a centrifuge dropped from a height.

There IS "centripetal" force, that refers to the force on an object travelling in a circle, which pushes outward from the axis of said circle on an object while it's travelling about the radius.

centripetal force is a force acting toward the centre. in the stone on a string example, it is the force (tension in the string) pulling the stone toward the holder of the string, making it move in a circle. nothing is "travelling about the radius", and nothing is pushing outward from the axis. strings don't push!

centrifugal force is something you get in rotating frames of reference. one doesn't normally use such frames in physics because they are unecessarily complicated. but that is just a matter of calculational convenience; centrifugal forces are real enough in a rotating frame (it is called a fictitious force because it depends on the choice of frame, rather than being intrinsic. see this page). take a fast curve in a car and that fictitious force feels real enough, even if it isn't the simplest way to describe the situation mathematically.

This article comes to the conclusion:

{72} Cryptography may provide a technical fix for Supreme Court decisions allowing the invasion of one's private papers. However, the effectiveness of that fix will depend on whether the Court holds that use immunity from the compulsory production of a cryptographic key extends to the incriminating documents decrypted with the key. Logic suggests that the Court should so hold.

LEGAL - DMCA

There have been a few comments here that seem to seriously misconstrue what the DMCA is capable of, so let's review that then take a look at reverse-engineering case history.

"Ella the Cat" fished for ideas on what the Microsoft team might have done to keep unauthorized software off their box, then worried about DMCA implications. "Chakat" suggested that circumventing MS's only-signed-discs-may-apply code could be a DMCA violation.

I won't quote it all, but here's chapter 12 of the US Code. 1201(b) is what Dmitry's been charged under. It only prohibits devices that circumvent methods that "effectively protects a right of a copyright owner."

In this case, Microsoft can claim copyright on the BIOS in the Xbox. Suppose that we remove the MS-BIOS and replace it with one that'll boot anything (L-BIOS). We've circumvented a measure that prevented running unauthorized games, but that authorization or lack of has no legal weight behind it. Microsoft must enforce it themselves by creating strong measures.

We have to be careful that L-BIOS doesn't allow booting copies of games or we will run afoul of the DMCA.

LEGAL - Reverse Engineering

The Emulation FAQ AppendixB Appendix C provides a good background. Also see CASE SUMMARIES OF COMPUTER COPYRIGHT CASES and Overreaching Provisions in Software License Agreements by Michael Liberman.

The two cases that I think are most apropos are Sega v. Accolade and Sony v. Connectix. Accolade tried to create Genesis-compatible games. Connectix tried to emulate the Playstation. Both cases were about copyrights on games that were disassembled in order to figure out how the game machine worked. The odd thing to me is that disassembling the code and creating a work that used the ideas contained therin was no problem. What Sony & Sega attacked on was making a copy of the ROM into a computer's memory to do the disassembling. The courts found (post-DMCA in the Sony case) that the copying was fair use to gain access to the ideas. Copyright only applies to the expression of those ideas in the object code of the ROM.

Disassembling MS-BIOS to figure out how to talk to the memory, USB and hard disk controllers and create L-BIOS is perfectly legal. It's important to avoid copying MS-BIOS code directly and a clean room would be a good idea (the disassemblers send specs to the L-BIOS authors who never see the actual code), but it seems that Connectix did not employ clean room techniques and got away with it.

TECHNICAL

The Xbox System Software Overview says in part:

The ROM [...] will provide the following [...] services: FAT32 file system, UDFS file system, Copy-protection support, Certificate/signature validation

Supported media are CD, DVD, CD-RW, or DVD-R. There is no CD-R support.

Power Up- When the user turns on the console, the system software is decompressed out of read-only memory (ROM) into random access memory (RAM). Once in RAM, the system software initializes the hardware[....]

Media Detection- Upon power up [...] If it determines that the media [in the DVD drive] is a game, it loads the game into RAM, checks the signature of the game to verify that it is an authentic copy, then starts playing the game.

-

So it appears that MS-BIOS will only boot signed (presumably using strong encryption) DVDs. There are, of course, two answers to this:

1) Replace the MS-BIOS with a more pleasant L-BIOS that'll boot anything and perhaps boot off the hard drive instead of the DVD. Loading "real" games sounds pretty hairy and I'd rather not figure out how to do that, so you won't be able to play them anymore. I'm envisioning replacing the Flash ROM (I have access to a nice Nikon binocular microscope and a Metcal soldering iron for working on surface mount parts), but there are a couple of alternatives: a) piggy-back on a 2nd ROM containing L-BIOS except for chip-select which is hooked to a switch or b) use the JTAG port to reprogram the part in-circuit (only possible with some mfg.'s parts).

2) Figure out how to sign our own discs. This is a good excuse for me to get a DVD recorder. I'm concerned that this method is fewer steps away from a "mod chip" that plays duplicated games.

-

Well, that's what I've found out. I'm interested because it sounds like it'll be sort of hard. If we need to hook up a logic analyzer & watch MS's code do its thing I can handle that. I think getting Linux up & running, talking to keyboards & mice over USB & doing TCP/IP over the ethernet port shouldn't be too bad. Getting basic graphics (VGA emulation) up shouldn't be bad, but I make no promises that we'll be able to use the nVidia 3d. I'm thinking a server is a lot more likely than a nuevo-Indrema/TuxBox.

Worst case scenario is that the chipset itself has encryption hardware built-in and it must be unlocked by the CPU before it will enable access to RAM or peripherals. I doubt they had enough time to do something that clever.

By the way, you can reach me at morganw@yahoo.com (posting preferences not workin' for me)

We went into the Gulf to protect Saudi Arabia and Kuwait (an Ally and Europe's partial supply of oil) and to prevent a known militant government from imposing its government on MORE civilized nations.

Which sounds great, until you realize that we were (and are) supporting a Saudi dictatorship only because they will keep the oil flowing. Face it, if it weren't for the oil, we wouldn't have been there.

And the only reason we stopped short of Baghdad was because Bush decided he didn't want to take the bad press of going in.

Kosovo: Forensics teams from Spain and the FBI found less than 2500 bodies, and it's impossible to know how many of those were a consequence of "the Serbs' brutal, but hardly genocidal, two-year counterinsurgency campaign against the KLA". (Colony Kosovo, Christian Parenti) There are more murders than that in the US in a year. And what was the inevitable consequence of our involement? The brutality is switched from one of serbs attacking albanians to one of albanians attacking serbs.

As to Vietnam, so killing innocent civillians and villigers is a "middle ground" approach? Under that definition, I suppose they should be thankful we didn't nuke them once or thrice.

How about Latin America? read here for a description of our noble involment in Nicaragua. Think were's so hot about promoting democracy? Why are we giving attack helicopters and other arms to the Columbian dictatorship? Ostensibly, to fight drugs - but seriously, who thinks they aren't going to use them against the guerillas?

Finally, it's worthwhile to discuss China. Although we haven't been involved in any direct military action in China, we stand by while they slaughter civilians and wage war on Tibet. Why? Because we can't afford to stop trading. We also grant "most favored nation" status, despite their awful human rights record, and entirely non-democratic government.

Face it, our political involment in the world over the last 30 years has been noble; Rather, it has consistantly been to force our own economic advantage, everything else be damned.

[snip] The crux of Martin's message today is that the revolution CASE began that allowed computers to partly program themselves-- rather than depend entirely upon slow, expensive, error-prone humans-- will accelerate logarithmically in the near future.

Martin is nobody's fool. [snip]

...except maybe a mathematician's. It's been a while since I had the section on algorithmic complexity in my college programming classes, but isn't logarithmic growth the kind that goes something like this?

[snip overelaborate ascii sketch of a logarithmic curve, omitted because /.'s lameness filter thought that all the  's were just junk characters. they weren't dammit! well. if you don't know what a logarithmic curve looks like, try here:

• samples of various curve functions, plus other crap
• java applet for making various curve functions dynamically

If that's right, and I think that it is, then he's talking about diminishing returns, in which we get less progress in the future, rather than more. Linear growth would give constant improvement, exponentional would be, well, exponential. Logarithmic growth would, and please correct me if I'm wrong, give effectively diminished growth over time. Right?

Martin may or may not be some sort of great thinker, but the author of this article seems to be a colossal idiot, getting important details wrong, leaving out failed predictions (of which I'm sure Martin has had many in the past, and there seem to be some clear stinkers in this writeup as well), and ridiculously assuming that his business credentials ("oooh, he was a travelling IBM salesman" ...big deal) somehow make him some sort of Cassandra. They do not. These credentials say nothing about Martin's ability to predict the future, but they do indicate that this author is a gullible fool.

You are deforming the reality of the issue...
I would recomend all to see this link

Apple vs Microsoft"

It's a study based on the court case. Too many juridical verbosity but still understandable

In resume:
Microsoft licensed Apple's interface to make Windows 1.0

Later it made Windows 2 and Apple considered it an infrigement.

Due to several issues, the court decided in favor of Microsoft. One of the main was the nebulous content of the agreement that allowed M$ to use the general design of the interface. The court decided that the agreement concerned only individual elements

And that's the reason of the "recycle bin" saga.

OG.

The URL in the main story was incorrect.
Click here for the corrected URL: http://www.richmond.edu/jolt/v7i1/note2.html I have noted this problem before. Possible slashcode bug?

The correct URL for this story is here

For those who missed it, here's the real link: http://www.richmond.edu/jolt/v7i1/no te2 .html

http://www.richmond.edu/jolt/v7i1/n ote 2.html is what you're looking for.

1) This is not 'one of the few cases'! As far as straight (civil) libel goes, existing 'cyberlaw' goes back to the 80's, with mailing lists and BBSs and has definitely been upheld internationally. "international" is important, because you can be sued in jurisdiction where the 'damage' occurs or where the 'victim' resides. Here are some cases/sources:

• Here's a Richmond Law Review (Va.) article suggesting unified approaches to cyber-defamation.
• Here's a Harvard Law Review article on cyberlaw.
• Here's a Georgia State review article of Alabama cyber defamation law (for details and contrast with Utah)
• Blakeley v. Continental Airlines is a 1999 case involving a private company-only BBS
• Rindos v. Hardwick was a famous case where an American was successfully sued in Australian courts for defamation on a e-mail list. [Summary] [Judgement]
• A CyberLibel FAQ -- primarily non-US 'British tradition' (Australia, Canada) useful as a basis for further understanding.
• Here's a 1994 Australian review of Defamation laws in cyberspace.
• Here's a course reading list (with links to cases and other resources embedded in the course outline) for a comparison of in the US and Australia with references to other law (Roman, English, Dutch, etc.) It hits some very relevant points in vey few words.
• Here's a review of British cyber-defamation law (incl. BBS and e-mail)
• Similar US Criminal Libel cases against students have been reported widely in the media for years (names are not cited, because they are minors): [Colorado, 1997 (ACLU) and verdict, 1998]
• Nervous? maybe you should be Here's a (English language, published in Denmark) peer-reviewed law journal article on 'Defamation Havens' ('peer-review' is when articles are reviewed by experts before publication)

2) Do a websearch for "criminal libel" and you'll find that its primary use worldwide, historically and currently is against journalists . One of the 'Inciting Abuses' that contributed to the American Revolution was a (then British) court verdict that a newspaper was guilty of defaming the reputation of the Governer-General of New York by (accurately) revealing his corruption.

• Criminal Libel use.abuse is often cited in the annual US State Department Human Rights reports on each country. [Gabon, 1999]
• In Ireland, journalistic websites get away with a great deal that print journalism can't.

3) To address another of Katz's points, here are mini-case studies in dysfunctional human behaviour on the net

Katz was on my 'exclude list' for a few months, not because I dislike his writing, but because his loose use of facts and analogies leads to a sloppy, infuriating discussion. A profesional writer should investigate his facts and limit his speculation to what those facts support; If he doesn't, the readers will certainly go hogwild. This is the first Katz article I've read in a while. I am not pleased.

Watch the vocabulary guys: 'techno' or 'electronica' (stupid name?) is generally made with computers, but it is not "Computer Music" so to speak. Go check out some Iannis Xenakis, now that's old-school computer music. Techno is a pop art form, it's not intended to be 'artsy' (well, maybe sometimes... ). the propellerheads use real bass and real drums as well as computers and drum machines,etc. live. tell you what: i'll post an mp3 of my latest computer music composition on my web site later this afternoon... euphoria.richmond.edu

IANAL but the guy who wrote this is, and it bascially details the federal law has precidence over state law, hence this law will probably be made null.

Anyway read the following EULA problems, so I guess it goes to court and expires.

Among related legal cites, there's a case Lasercomb America v. Reynolds involving allowable licensing conditions in which licensing terms were overturned by the court. Though the scope -- licensing, not copyright -- is different, the conclusion is of interest. Essentially, patent-like protections from deploying technology are not attainable without resorting to patent protection itself.

Quoting from http://www.richmond.edu/~jolt/v1i1/l iberman.html:

{96} Overreaching occurs where a license agreement places
impermissible restrictions on the licensee's activities relating
to the licensed software. Under such circumstances, the license
agreement may be invalidated in whole or in part. Common issues where
overreaching takes place are prohibitions on reverse-engineering
coupled with copying of the program, and non-compete clauses which
are anticompetitive.

{97} Often overreaching occurs where the licensor is trying to
contractually obtain patent-like protection for licensed software
without meeting the rigorous requirements of patent law. It
also occurs where the software sought to be protected contains
functional elements unprotected under copyright law, and where
reverse-engineering is the only method available for the licensee to
understand how the licensed software works to achieve compatibility
with other components of its computer system.

One wonders if the same logic might be applied to copyright law itself.

What part of "Gestalt" don't you understand?

I know that the abuse will take place.

I just don't know what to do about it.

If you protest, you are taged as a Communist which is ironic since the US has already adopted Communism. Carl Marx had an idea of what it would take for a country to be Commuist, and we seem to have followed his rules fairly well.

You don't even have to be protesting and the mentality of a police state will send me to the hospital.

Ratting 4 - Just blowing off steam.