Slashdot Mirror

geophile writes: "This article in Salon says that China will be building its own 'very own information superhighway.'" The story basically repeats the optimistic-sounding promises of the Chinese government that the new system will be faster, safer, brighter and fight cavities, too, though it does mention in passing that the Chinese "government routinely blocks Web sites of foreign news organizations and groups it opposes." Speaking practically, how easily can the worldwide dataflow be arrested in a country as populous and geographically diffuse as China?

rfsayre writes: "Ever embed video in a Word 2000 file while drinking a venti half-caf low fat frappucino? You will." Think about this: if Microsoft and Starbucks provide their "customers with high-speed Internet access for their wireless laptops, smart phones and other hand-held device," how long would it be until no one is more than 30 feet from an access point? (And does this include Starbucks-serving Barnes and Noble Cafes?)

AngrySpud writes "For those LotR fans out there, Salon.com has posted an MP3 of J.R.R. Tolkien himself reading from The Two Towers. It can be found here."

AngrySpud writes "For those LotR fans out there, Salon.com has posted an MP3 of J.R.R. Tolkien himself reading from The Two Towers. It can be found here."

Marx's Ghost writes: "This is an interesting article about fan sites being threatened by Fandom.com, whose claim of being "by the fan's, for the fan's" doesn't hold up in view of their bullying tactics. Should provoke some people who are concerned with poor definitions of cyber-squatting. What should really constitute cyber-squatting?" Claiming a trademark on a descriptive term like "fandom" and then bullying other fan sites ... what a great business plan.

Stanford University held a workshop last Friday - The Policy Implications of End-to-End - covering some of the policy questions cropping up which threaten the end-to-end paradigm that serves today's Internet so well. It was attended by representatives from the FCC, along with technologists, economists, lawyers and others. Here are my notes from the workshop. I'm going to try to skip describing each individual's background and resume, instead substituting a link to a biography page whenever I can. (Part two of two - part one ran yesterday.)

The final segment of the morning covered caching. The main issue centered around transparent caching, where users ask for certain content but their request is silently fulfilled by a caching proxy server instead, generally without the user having any way to detect this. The standard concept of caching has the user being presented with the same content she would otherwise have gotten from the requested site, but that need not be true - Singapore, China and Australia have all used transparent caches to censor their citizens. This can also be a security violation (are you really talking to the secure server on stupidpettoys.com, or a proxy in between? Most users won't notice the difference.). Ann Brick noted a subsidiary issue - big commercial players have the ability to pay for their sites to be cached, while individuals do not. Similar to the QoS issue, this might be used to discriminate between paying, fast, commercial sites, and sites owned by individuals or even competitors.

David Clark made the insightful observation that dollars spent on caching don't go to general network improvements -- one small piece of the network is improved by caches, but the same money spent improving the whole network could improve it for everyone. Timothy Denton concluded this segment with the characterization of transparent caching as the difference between "form follows function" and "function follows form": the mere presence of caching and the ability to interfere with content delivery in the middle of the network destroys end-to-end and creates opportunities for mischief.

In the afternoon, there were two larger sessions covering broadband and wireless Internet access. In both areas, the companies controlling these access methods have strong motivations to violate end-to-end principles.

Jerry Duvall led the broadband discussion. He presented a rather fascinating economists' view of the situation -- an economists' world being solely concerned with customers, producers and markets. Laws are necessary to enable markets -- contract law, commercial law, fraud law, and so on are needed in order for markets to function. He summoned up the ghost of Adam Smith with a brief review of capitalism: producers always conspire against the public to get more profits from them, only competition keeps them in check. Marketing, lock-in, monopolization, and predatory pricing are always used by producers. He denied that end-to-end represented any sort of a perfect competitive market, however, suggesting that customer wants cause problems -- in some cases, customers actually want bundles from a single provider, and may actually prefer non-end-to-end Internet access. From an economist's point of view, end-to-end is only a means to an end. The end in this case is creating value for the customer. If that involves end-to-end Internet access, fine. If it doesn't, still fine. The value to the customer is paramount, engineering elegance is secondary.

Duvall also suggested that many observers have a naive view of regulation. With regard to the debate over open access to cable systems, he stated that there was no easy way for regulators to "come in and fix it." Regulation implies overcoming the resistance of entrenched players, and in the case of open access to cable systems, AT&T and other cable giants have proven adept at fighting lawsuits in support of their ability to keep their systems closed.

As we've seen previously, there was discussion of the reasons why end-to-end can be violated: sometimes customers want it, but (probably more often) the wants of companies are the driving force. Duvall suggested the external value of end-to-end in fostering competition and democratic values isn't adequately valued in most considerations of the economics of broadband. That is, the cost of violating end-to-end is spread out among many users of the network, but the benefits from that action accrue mainly to individual companies -- in economic parlance, this is called externalizing costs.

Another panelist emphasized the democratic value of open systems, a recurring topic in Lessig's writings. There was a bit more discussion of bundling-as-an-aid-for-novice-users vs. bundling-as-a-way-to-lock-in-customers. Jerome Saltzer reiterated the time-tested solution for monopoly problems: separate the content from the content-carriers. Deborah Lathen, acting perhaps as devil's advocate, asked why the builder of the pipe shouldn't be allowed to monopolize it. Duvall noted that no matter what the FCC might do to regulate cable carriers, that economic theory doesn't hold much chance for relief -- any time there's a monopoly (over the cable pipe), the monopolist is going to be able to extract monopoly rents, one way or another. If regulation affects a certain aspects of the business, the monopolist will find some other way to leverage the monopoly for greater profits. The only sure remedy is eliminating the monopoly.

Further audience discussion raised the idea that the concept of "an ISP" is a odd sort of legacy brought about by the necessity to have an intermediary between the telephone network and the TCP/IP network. In the future, the concept of an ISP may change radically. A question was asked: what benefit does the public get by allowing the cable companies to monopolize access? There were no good answers.

Mark Laubach gave a good overview of the architecture of cable Internet access, referring to the DOCSIS standard, which wasn't designed with open access in mind. Laubach stated that "basic IP dialtone" -- that is, a simple TCP/IP Internet connection without frills or bundled services -- should be a consumer right, which should apply to every broadband service regardless of delivery method: cable, DSL, wireless or satellite services.

Peter Huber summarized the open-access debate as it affected phone companies. The phone companies had a 1Mhz twisted pair of copper strands that they swore up and down couldn't be shared. They were ordered to share it, and now are doing so: local and long-distance competition, shared data/voice over that tiny line, co-location at central offices, etc. Now the cable companies have a 750mhz copper wire that they claim is "impossible" to share. Huber emphasized that whatever the regulations, cable and phone companies should be treated equally. Currently there are disjointed regulations, which (depending on your viewpoint) either unduly hamper phone companies or leave cable companies unfairly unrestricted.

Further discussion brought out the case of Stockholm, Sweden. Stockholm and certain other cities have taken on the job of laying fiber-optic cable as a municipal service, similar to sewer service or water or roads. Since the municipality built the pipe to the home, there is no issue of a company attempting to monopolize the pipe, and any company which wants to offer Internet service over the pipe may do so. As a result, Stockholm residents are getting extremely fast access speeds at prices less than U.S. residents pay for cable Internet access, and customers don't have to worry about the cable monopoly steadily reducing their upstream speeds, or banning servers, or whatever other crackdown U.S. cable providers have thought of most recently. The panel then debated whether (and how) it would make sense to move the U.S. to that sort of municipal model. A panelist threw out the figure that true open access to cable pipes might require a choice of 400 ISPs. An audience member suggested that as things are currently going in the U.S., there might be a choice of five ISPs at most, hand-picked by the cable provider.

David Clark added that whatever solution is proposed, it must be an ongoing process -- since cable Internet access is certainly not going to be the final stage of bandwidth development. Finally the broadband session closed with a pithy statement that, despite claims to the contrary, content is not king -- there is, and always has been, more money in individuals talking to each other than in one-way content distribution. The question that remains is how to convince broadband providers that there is more money to be made in selling large quantities of low-profit services rather than small quantities of more profitable ones.

The day concluded with a session about wireless Internet access. Unsurprisingly, WAP was the first topic to come up: a closed, end-to-end-unfriendly, expensive protocol that is all but deceased in the market, yet still actively promoted by companies that hope to benefit from controlling wireless Internet access.

Karl Auerbach had an insightful comment about why to use plain vanilla TCP/IP instead of a bespoke wireless protocol. Similar to the argument raised by Bruce Schneier and others that using a proven crypto algorithm makes sense because there are a lot of bad protocol writers in the world, Auerbach posited that freely available TCP/IP stacks have had the bugs beaten out of them, but the average proprietary protocol hasn't. The topic shifted to the location information that is now required to be built in to mobile phones. The panel discussed the control issues inherent in different network architectures: location information could be built into the phone, and controlled by the user, or it could be built into the cell towers, and controlled by the phone company (or law enforcement, or advertisers). It looks like the second architecture will be the one that is deployed.

Yochai Benkler brought up the issue of spread spectrum changing the rules for FCC frequency allocation -- more communications may shift to frequencies where the FCC does not require licenses to broadcast. Dewayne Hendricks gave a lengthy and interesting description of how amateur radio is currently being used in a manner similar to the venerable Fidonet to pass packet data over the short-wave frequencies via a store-and-forward system. The interesting part is that Amateur Packet Radio has been around for 15 years or so. Hendricks' concept was that the first truly free network would be one composed of independent wireless spread-spectrum devices creating an ad hoc network which could not be censored or controlled by any entity whatsoever. One audience member quipped that disruptive technologies always appear to incumbents as toys.

Hendricks noted some other wireless WANs, such as one in the San Francisco Bay area using Breezecom wireless cards and antennae. (Coincidentally, Salon did a story on wireless WANs just a few days ago.) Dale Hatfield noted that Hendricks' network could be created today using licensed spectrum, and noted that the greatest danger is incumbent spectrum-holders pushing regulations which protect their investments by making it difficult for the FCC to open up or use sections of the spectrum for these innovative uses.

Towards the end, one member of the audience (and I do apologize for not catching who it was), pulled everything together by noting the convergence between end-to-end as a technological issue, open access as an economic issue, and democracy and public debate as a political issue. The idea of eliminating "gatekeepers" on the internet is important for a great many reasons, whether you look at it as a technological issue of promoting progress and innovation, or as an economic issue of fostering competition and preventing monopolies from abusing their power, or as an issue of promoting free and unrestrained speech on the communications media of the 21st century. This is certainly one of the most important issues facing the country today, but relatively few people know anything -- even a smidgeon -- about it, or at most they've read a few news reports about the AOL/Time Warner merger. I'm glad to see such a diverse and intelligent group working on the issues, and if they don't yet have all the answers, it's only because they want to get it right.

Ant sent us a Salon feature that talks about the (lack of) quality control in computer manufacturing, and then talks about it being "the American way of techno-capitalism". I've not had nearly the problems that people in this article allege, but I can sympathize.

New10k writes "Here is a feature article on guys in Seattle, San Francisco and elsewhere who are bringing the Open Source ethic to the idea of an available to all wireless Internet. Includes a short explanation of telco vs. free methods of providing access." I know folks who do this already, just not with permission (roam around cities with sniffers and find networks that aren't locked down ;)

Logic Bomb writes: "Salon has an article about the famous Berkely eXperimental Computing Club, from whence came GTK, the GIMP, early web browsers, and many other goodies. The article has a nice overview of the club's history, as well as questions about its continued existence. Apparently the rise of collaboration over the Internet has made it much harder to find recruits."

Jordan Hubbard, co-founder of the FreeBSD Project speaks out about OS X, its significance to the geek, and whether it may be the David that brings about Goliath Microsoft's downfall, in this Salon.com article.

Until this week, I've been unconvinced by those who say the U.S. election process needs to be conducted with computers instead of paper, pencil, and punchcards. I've changed my mind. It's time to take a good hard look at our ancient voting system, and bring it up to date. When today's 14-year-olds go to vote in the 2004 elections, will they still take the pencil from the volunteer, slide the punchcard into the molded plastic, and turn the weird knobs? Or will they use the technology they've grown up with?

My change of heart came while listening to an NPR story last night. Election results for one county in Michigan were held up for two hours because some volunteers with ballots were barricaded in the building by a bear. A bear! What century is this?

There are some fair concerns about moving to a more-than-just-dead-trees voting system. We have to consider what the impact will be on voter enfranchisement. A change that makes it possible for the rich to vote by telepathy, for example, while the poor have to drive a hundred miles uphill both ways (to access a non-telepathic voting booth) would not be exactly democratic.

Would it have been fair, in 2000, for the middle class to be able to vote from the comfort of their homes and jobs, while the poor and homeless had to get to a voting booth? I don't know.

But my best guess is that, by 2004, this won't be a question anymore. Plot the percentage of lower-income homes with internet access from 1996 to 2000, and then extrapolate another four years. So if it should be done, how can it be done? There are five key issues to solve: authorization, anonymity, data confidence, UI, and security.

I propose a system in which each voting booth runs a webserver which logs votes (without identification) to two internal media (hard disk and floppy would be good, see below). Once the polls close, each booth's computer can be totalled and sent over the internet to the state's central server.

Meanwhile, any computer that speaks https on the internet would become a voting booth of its own, running slightly different software.

Each state's official results could be in an hour after its polls close. Which beats the ten-day waiting period we have now for our overseas ballots.

Authorization isn't really that hard: When you register to vote, you (by default) get a password delivered by snail-mail a week before the election. Tampering with that mail is a federal offense, of course. On election day you use secure http to sign in from anywhere with your name, address and password. Lose the password? Sorry, you don't get the comfort of home/work; you go to the voting booth with everyone else.

Anonymity is trivial; any logs with identifying information either don't get stored, or get wiped immediately.

Computers crash. Data confidence means the servers write the votes to multiple media: network, hard drive, flash RAM. A dot-matrix printer makes a good emergency backup medium.

This system also needs a dirt-simple GUI for voters connecting from home or work. No butterfly webpages necessary; click a name, and get a confirmation screen that shows you name, party, (importantly) photo, and big "yes" and "no" buttons.

At the voting booth it can be even simpler, using touch-screens.

Security is, of course, always a problem. Secure http effectively eliminates the man-in-the-middle attack, so the main worry are that an attacker will be able to run unauthorized code on a government computer which could (read) correlate my name with my vote or (write) change my vote. I'm going to go out on a limb and say that a completely open-sourced system, from the kernel up, combined with clean-room installations at a secure location, can make these concerns minor by comparison to existing vote-fraud concerns.

(My vote would go to OpenBSD, Apache, and Mozilla, though of course good luck predicting what will be best four years from now.)

Also, net admins overseeing the effort need to have enough access to track and lock out attackers, but obviously they can't have access to change the election results. Lock them in a room for the day with a hundred video cameras tracking everything they do, like the officers on missile-launch duty. Many net admins will find this a relaxed and enjoyable work environment compared to their current jobs.

There are many problems that have to be solved -- please bring up the ones I haven't mentioned here, let's start the debate! My hunch is that they can be solved. And the overriding question must be, will it be an improvement over the current system?

Given that Florida's election is being decided by a 400-vote difference, with 19,000 botched votes thrown out, I'd say the impossibility of clicking on two presidential choices at the same time makes this system a huge win.

The broken user interface on our existing punch-cards system is probably going to give us the wrong President of the United States. How much worse could a digital system really be? I don't claim to have all the answers, but I know what century it is, and the time for Little House on the Prairie nonsense is over. Let's make this happen for 2004.

I'll give my last word to Andre Uratsuka Manoel, a partner at the internet firm Insite, in Brazil. (Props to TBTF for putting Andre and me in touch.)

Brazil has a 100% electronic election. On election day I go my "electoral section," identify myself, sign my name. The "section president" then types in my code and I walk to the booth which is in a corner of the room where no one can see my vote. I then type the number of my candidate, see his/her photo and press "confirm."

The voting machines store the votes in at least three different places: a floppy disk (which is locked), a flash card and the internal hard disk. There are written procedures for any kind of failure I could think of and back-up machines readily available. Those machines can connect to a phone line and send their results to the Election Court of the state.

The results are proclamed extremely fast. On the mayoral run-off elections that happened 2 weeks ago, results were out 2 hours after the election in the city I live in (Sao Paulo, with about 6 million voters) and 6 hours after it in the last city in which there was a run-off. In my home city the results came out a little after the election sites closed and the result was proclamed with the winner having 40 thousand votes more than the second place (0.4% of 1 million votes).

In the first round of elections in Sao Paulo, the third place contestant lost the ticket for the run-off elections by less than 0.1%. The one who lost didn't even think of contesting the results because no one thought there were any kind of frauds.

In the first round, 100 million voters (about the same as the active voters in US) in 5 thousand cities chose their mayors and councelors. All the results were proclaimed 30 hours after the voting closed.

This happens in a country that has a much lower level of literacy, technology-savvy and of money as the U.S. Remember that some mayors were chosen in places hours away from anyplace else (even by plane), i.e. in the middle of the rain forest. Those places don't have electricity.

Of course there were complaints, but not because of the electoral process. Mostly they were due to campaigning on the election day, voter transportation and coercion.

(Updates: Dave Riesz mentioned Riverside County, California, which has an electronic voting system already in place. Their 2000 primary turnout was the highest in 20 years, which may or may not mean anything. That led me to the California Internet Voting Task Force which looks interesting. Don Wegeng pointed me to RISKS thoughts by Douglas Jones. Brian Dunbar points out "Hurrah for Slow Recounts" by the always-interesting Ellen Ullman.

Lee Coursey passes along Elizabeth Ferrill's Discussion of Electronic Voting. James McCann, a programmer at VoteHere.net, says my description is "not terribly far off but very incomplete" -- I'll take that as a compliment -- check out his site and SecurePoll.com too. And finally, a story in Salon that makes my point better than I could: "Confessions of a Florida Poll Worker."

If you have more links or information, emailme.)

Until this week, I've been unconvinced by those who say the U.S. election process needs to be conducted with computers instead of paper, pencil, and punchcards. I've changed my mind. It's time to take a good hard look at our ancient voting system, and bring it up to date. When today's 14-year-olds go to vote in the 2004 elections, will they still take the pencil from the volunteer, slide the punchcard into the molded plastic, and turn the weird knobs? Or will they use the technology they've grown up with?

My change of heart came while listening to an NPR story last night. Election results for one county in Michigan were held up for two hours because some volunteers with ballots were barricaded in the building by a bear. A bear! What century is this?

There are some fair concerns about moving to a more-than-just-dead-trees voting system. We have to consider what the impact will be on voter enfranchisement. A change that makes it possible for the rich to vote by telepathy, for example, while the poor have to drive a hundred miles uphill both ways (to access a non-telepathic voting booth) would not be exactly democratic.

Would it have been fair, in 2000, for the middle class to be able to vote from the comfort of their homes and jobs, while the poor and homeless had to get to a voting booth? I don't know.

But my best guess is that, by 2004, this won't be a question anymore. Plot the percentage of lower-income homes with internet access from 1996 to 2000, and then extrapolate another four years. So if it should be done, how can it be done? There are five key issues to solve: authorization, anonymity, data confidence, UI, and security.

I propose a system in which each voting booth runs a webserver which logs votes (without identification) to two internal media (hard disk and floppy would be good, see below). Once the polls close, each booth's computer can be totalled and sent over the internet to the state's central server.

Meanwhile, any computer that speaks https on the internet would become a voting booth of its own, running slightly different software.

Each state's official results could be in an hour after its polls close. Which beats the ten-day waiting period we have now for our overseas ballots.

Authorization isn't really that hard: When you register to vote, you (by default) get a password delivered by snail-mail a week before the election. Tampering with that mail is a federal offense, of course. On election day you use secure http to sign in from anywhere with your name, address and password. Lose the password? Sorry, you don't get the comfort of home/work; you go to the voting booth with everyone else.

Anonymity is trivial; any logs with identifying information either don't get stored, or get wiped immediately.

Computers crash. Data confidence means the servers write the votes to multiple media: network, hard drive, flash RAM. A dot-matrix printer makes a good emergency backup medium.

This system also needs a dirt-simple GUI for voters connecting from home or work. No butterfly webpages necessary; click a name, and get a confirmation screen that shows you name, party, (importantly) photo, and big "yes" and "no" buttons.

At the voting booth it can be even simpler, using touch-screens.

Security is, of course, always a problem. Secure http effectively eliminates the man-in-the-middle attack, so the main worry are that an attacker will be able to run unauthorized code on a government computer which could (read) correlate my name with my vote or (write) change my vote. I'm going to go out on a limb and say that a completely open-sourced system, from the kernel up, combined with clean-room installations at a secure location, can make these concerns minor by comparison to existing vote-fraud concerns.

(My vote would go to OpenBSD, Apache, and Mozilla, though of course good luck predicting what will be best four years from now.)

Also, net admins overseeing the effort need to have enough access to track and lock out attackers, but obviously they can't have access to change the election results. Lock them in a room for the day with a hundred video cameras tracking everything they do, like the officers on missile-launch duty. Many net admins will find this a relaxed and enjoyable work environment compared to their current jobs.

There are many problems that have to be solved -- please bring up the ones I haven't mentioned here, let's start the debate! My hunch is that they can be solved. And the overriding question must be, will it be an improvement over the current system?

Given that Florida's election is being decided by a 400-vote difference, with 19,000 botched votes thrown out, I'd say the impossibility of clicking on two presidential choices at the same time makes this system a huge win.

The broken user interface on our existing punch-cards system is probably going to give us the wrong President of the United States. How much worse could a digital system really be? I don't claim to have all the answers, but I know what century it is, and the time for Little House on the Prairie nonsense is over. Let's make this happen for 2004.

I'll give my last word to Andre Uratsuka Manoel, a partner at the internet firm Insite, in Brazil. (Props to TBTF for putting Andre and me in touch.)

Brazil has a 100% electronic election. On election day I go my "electoral section," identify myself, sign my name. The "section president" then types in my code and I walk to the booth which is in a corner of the room where no one can see my vote. I then type the number of my candidate, see his/her photo and press "confirm."

The voting machines store the votes in at least three different places: a floppy disk (which is locked), a flash card and the internal hard disk. There are written procedures for any kind of failure I could think of and back-up machines readily available. Those machines can connect to a phone line and send their results to the Election Court of the state.

The results are proclamed extremely fast. On the mayoral run-off elections that happened 2 weeks ago, results were out 2 hours after the election in the city I live in (Sao Paulo, with about 6 million voters) and 6 hours after it in the last city in which there was a run-off. In my home city the results came out a little after the election sites closed and the result was proclamed with the winner having 40 thousand votes more than the second place (0.4% of 1 million votes).

In the first round of elections in Sao Paulo, the third place contestant lost the ticket for the run-off elections by less than 0.1%. The one who lost didn't even think of contesting the results because no one thought there were any kind of frauds.

In the first round, 100 million voters (about the same as the active voters in US) in 5 thousand cities chose their mayors and councelors. All the results were proclaimed 30 hours after the voting closed.

This happens in a country that has a much lower level of literacy, technology-savvy and of money as the U.S. Remember that some mayors were chosen in places hours away from anyplace else (even by plane), i.e. in the middle of the rain forest. Those places don't have electricity.

Of course there were complaints, but not because of the electoral process. Mostly they were due to campaigning on the election day, voter transportation and coercion.

(Updates: Dave Riesz mentioned Riverside County, California, which has an electronic voting system already in place. Their 2000 primary turnout was the highest in 20 years, which may or may not mean anything. That led me to the California Internet Voting Task Force which looks interesting. Don Wegeng pointed me to RISKS thoughts by Douglas Jones. Brian Dunbar points out "Hurrah for Slow Recounts" by the always-interesting Ellen Ullman.

Lee Coursey passes along Elizabeth Ferrill's Discussion of Electronic Voting. James McCann, a programmer at VoteHere.net, says my description is "not terribly far off but very incomplete" -- I'll take that as a compliment -- check out his site and SecurePoll.com too. And finally, a story in Salon that makes my point better than I could: "Confessions of a Florida Poll Worker."

If you have more links or information, emailme.)

A reader sent us the press release that the Secure Digital Music Initiative folks have put regarding the hack SDMI challenge. They are stating that three out of the five were not cracked, contrary to earlier reports, and that of the two that were cracked, one was not a replicable event. Meanwhile, Salon has continued their coverage of the whole shebang.

Markar writes "The Supreme Court has decided to hear a case involving on-line copyright issues. Freelance authors have sued for having their stories/articles stored in online databases and CD ROMs without their permission. The freelancers assert that separate permission is required to do so. Complete story is on Salon." This is a big issue for a lot of media outlets which have huge databases of old articles compiled by freelancers.

Last night, I read this New York Times article (free reg. req.) about Clinton's veto of what would have been a new law to prevent leaks of classified information. But I didn't understand its significance until I read this earlier Salon.com article by Daniel Ellsburg, who had leaked the Pentagon Papers so that U.S. citizens could learn how their government had lied to them about Vietnam. "If Congress were so scrupulous about the First Amendment, it wouldn't have passed this law," says Ellsburg. I'm gratified to see a politician refusing on principle to extend government's powers. Here's the President's statement; and here's the bill (sponsor: Rep. Goss, R-Fla.).

A reader writes "Sega is getting out of hardware altogether. Salon has an interesting bit about the impending doom of Sega and speculation that among the other major players, namely Sony and Nintendo, Microsoft has the most to gain from purchasing the beleaguered Sega."

A reader writes "Sega is getting out of hardware altogether. Salon has an interesting bit about the impending doom of Sega and speculation that among the other major players, namely Sony and Nintendo, Microsoft has the most to gain from purchasing the beleaguered Sega."

Christopher Hunter, who wrote a nice thesis paper about Internet censorship in libraries, has an opinion piece in Salon magazine today. Don't Let McCain Censor the Net, he says, though frankly it's out of mere mortal hands at this point and all remaining legislation for this congressional session will be decided by who can twist whose arm the most in a smoke-filled dark alley. Or something like that.

The indefatigable Andrew Leonard writes: "Now Princeton researchers are getting in on the act. SDMI's watermarks do not seem to be made of very stern stuff. Janelle Brown has a story about a team led by Edward Felten that says it too has triumphed in the hack SDMI challenge." I think they could have made it simpler by having the watermark simply be Vincent Price's voice moaning over every track so "protected," or some juicy backwards masking, and been done with it. The Salon piece is loaded with the links you need;)

The indefatigable Andrew Leonard writes: "Now Princeton researchers are getting in on the act. SDMI's watermarks do not seem to be made of very stern stuff. Janelle Brown has a story about a team led by Edward Felten that says it too has triumphed in the hack SDMI challenge." I think they could have made it simpler by having the watermark simply be Vincent Price's voice moaning over every track so "protected," or some juicy backwards masking, and been done with it. The Salon piece is loaded with the links you need;)

Andrew Leonard writes: "SDMI's Leonardo Chiariglione said Salon's last story was "slander" so Janelle Brown went back to one of our sources and got more details about exactly what is going down. The article also includes a response from Chiariglione."

Andrew Leonard writes: "SDMI's Leonardo Chiariglione said Salon's last story was "slander" so Janelle Brown went back to one of our sources and got more details about exactly what is going down. The article also includes a response from Chiariglione."

nomadic writes: " Salon has a really interesting interview with recent ICANN board member-elect Karl Auerbach regarding his view of what ICANN should and should not become. Basically, he thinks it should be almost totally restructured, and I can't say I disagree with him. And whether you agree with his views or not, I think a lot of people here should appreciate the fact that someone with serious geek credentials made it to the board."

nomadic writes: " Salon has a really interesting interview with recent ICANN board member-elect Karl Auerbach regarding his view of what ICANN should and should not become. Basically, he thinks it should be almost totally restructured, and I can't say I disagree with him. And whether you agree with his views or not, I think a lot of people here should appreciate the fact that someone with serious geek credentials made it to the board."

Andrew Leonard writes "Two off-the-record members of the SDMI coalition have confirmed to Salon's Janelle Brown that all of the SDMI watermarks have been solidly broken." It's too bad this didn't happen in a year - because now it's been cracked before it was even released, and they'll delay even longer.

Andrew Leonard writes "Two off-the-record members of the SDMI coalition have confirmed to Salon's Janelle Brown that all of the SDMI watermarks have been solidly broken." It's too bad this didn't happen in a year - because now it's been cracked before it was even released, and they'll delay even longer.

burris writes "Salon's Damien Cave writes "Forget Napster and Gnutella. Jim McCoy's Mojo Nation is the coolest file trading service on the net." This OpenSource distributed filesystem uses digital cash technology to create a barter economy for idle disk space, bandwidth, and CPU. Now you can get paid for sharing your computer."

burris writes "Salon's Damien Cave writes "Forget Napster and Gnutella. Jim McCoy's Mojo Nation is the coolest file trading service on the net." This OpenSource distributed filesystem uses digital cash technology to create a barter economy for idle disk space, bandwidth, and CPU. Now you can get paid for sharing your computer."

Simson Garfinkel testified before the Senate on privacy issues (specifically, the plethora of effective and ineffective privacy bills now before Congress in its last days of this session) and wrote up his experience in Salon.

Andrew Leonard writes: "Tech companies want hackers to break SDMI watermarks because they know watermarking will never work and are desperate for a different solution. In Salon, Janelle Brown shows how the hack-SDMI boycott is revealing a major rift between the tech and entertainment companies that make up the SDMI coalition." Amusing how the tech companies oppose SDMI because they think it won't work, not because they think it will screw consumers. And several anonymous sources interviewed for the article seem to have gotten it wrong: everyone thinks it will be broken, it's just that most of them think the opportune time for that would be about 2 days after the music companies have irrevocably committed to their new method of making it difficult for people to listen to music rather than 2 days before.

Andrew Leonard writes: "Tech companies want hackers to break SDMI watermarks because they know watermarking will never work and are desperate for a different solution. In Salon, Janelle Brown shows how the hack-SDMI boycott is revealing a major rift between the tech and entertainment companies that make up the SDMI coalition." Amusing how the tech companies oppose SDMI because they think it won't work, not because they think it will screw consumers. And several anonymous sources interviewed for the article seem to have gotten it wrong: everyone thinks it will be broken, it's just that most of them think the opportune time for that would be about 2 days after the music companies have irrevocably committed to their new method of making it difficult for people to listen to music rather than 2 days before.

The latest issue of EFF's newsletter covers the HackSDMI challenge. Probably not surprisingly, they're urging the same thing as Don Marti, who Salon interviewed.Update: 09/19 3:33 PM by michael : The RIAA, EFF, and 2600.com debated SDMI on Pacifica radio today.

VValdo writes: "Salon is running an interesting story about the dangers of throwing old computers into landfills. According to the story, the American Electronics Association is trying to block a European Commission proposal that would make manufacturers responsible for the environmental damage that occurs when lead, mercury, chromium, etc. leaks into 'the life cycle.'" One interesting factoid: "Lead constitutes approximately 25 percent of monitors by weight, and the estimate of 5 to 8 pounds per unit is based on 14- and 15-inch monitors." (Which author Jim Fisher points out is no longer the typical display size for current systems.)

VValdo writes: "Salon is running an interesting story about the dangers of throwing old computers into landfills. According to the story, the American Electronics Association is trying to block a European Commission proposal that would make manufacturers responsible for the environmental damage that occurs when lead, mercury, chromium, etc. leaks into 'the life cycle.'" One interesting factoid: "Lead constitutes approximately 25 percent of monitors by weight, and the estimate of 5 to 8 pounds per unit is based on 14- and 15-inch monitors." (Which author Jim Fisher points out is no longer the typical display size for current systems.)

tklancer writes: "Salon has an interview with David Touretzky (the CMU professor who was kind enough to point out to Judge Kaplan that code is speech during the DeCSS trial). He talks about the court decision and several ongoing free speech battles."

tklancer writes: "Salon has an interview with David Touretzky (the CMU professor who was kind enough to point out to Judge Kaplan that code is speech during the DeCSS trial). He talks about the court decision and several ongoing free speech battles."

photozz writes: "Salon is running this story about Tivo and their plans to track user viewing habits for targeted ads. It also explores their stance on the 'hacking' of the Tivo for more memory." According to their CEO Mike Ramsay, "We do that in a non-personal way, protecting everybody's privacy," but the details of the actual data aggregation aren't addressed here. That the data is gathered should come as no surprise to anyone who notes that Tivo features a "learning" program-suggestion feature, but the mechanism and how closely data is linked to the customer is something I wish they would explain in more detail.

disappear writes "A nice (albeit primarily nontechnical) article about the late, great Rich Stevens is in Salon today. A gentle, sweet look at the author of TCP/IP Illustratedamong other books."

Salon is running a story today about how 2600 Australia plans to deal with DeCSS. Australia has a law closely similar to the DMCA in the works; it's already most of the way through the legislative process. 2600 Australia is trying to avoid being a test case.

citmanual wrote to us with the Schneier interview on Salon. He's promoting his new book Secrets and Lies. I'm just about finished with it, and will be doing a review soon - it's quite good.

Eso writes "Salon.com has this story about the Napster trial. Somewhere between October 2nd and 6th, we might finally see the dramatic conclusion of this legal battle." Well, not really. It's just the next step.

Eso writes "Salon.com has this story about the Napster trial. Somewhere between October 2nd and 6th, we might finally see the dramatic conclusion of this legal battle." Well, not really. It's just the next step.

cmuncey writes: "Salon has an Associated Press article that IBM, HP, Intel, NEC have announced an 'Open Source Testing Lab' for testing Linux for large corporate systems that will open by the end of the year in Portland, OR. The main four sponsors are putting up a couple of million and Red Hat, Turbolinux, Linuxcare, VA Linux, Dell and SGI are also kicking in. The lab itself will be run by a nonprofit corporation that will be neutral in picking the projects to be tested. Sounds a bit better Mindcraft, doesn't it?"

In case you were wondering, the article tell us that "Linux is seen as an alternative to proprietary operating systems like Microsoft's Windows and Apple [sic] OS." Certifications, labs like this, and Official Stamps of Approval mean perhaps more than they ought (corporate decision making being what it is) but that's hard to get around. And it sounds like they'll get to play with cool toys! ;)

cmuncey writes: "Salon has an Associated Press article that IBM, HP, Intel, NEC have announced an 'Open Source Testing Lab' for testing Linux for large corporate systems that will open by the end of the year in Portland, OR. The main four sponsors are putting up a couple of million and Red Hat, Turbolinux, Linuxcare, VA Linux, Dell and SGI are also kicking in. The lab itself will be run by a nonprofit corporation that will be neutral in picking the projects to be tested. Sounds a bit better Mindcraft, doesn't it?"

In case you were wondering, the article tell us that "Linux is seen as an alternative to proprietary operating systems like Microsoft's Windows and Apple [sic] OS." Certifications, labs like this, and Official Stamps of Approval mean perhaps more than they ought (corporate decision making being what it is) but that's hard to get around. And it sounds like they'll get to play with cool toys! ;)

ozric writes "Salon has a front-page story on the XBox. The writer says the thing will "devastate" the market for PC games, and claims that's a *good* thing due to all the problems of developing for the PC as opposed to a dedicated machine. A little pro-microsoft, but good reading nonetheless." Actually it says a lot of things worth thinking about (complexity and size of the existing PC gamer market, relative niches of existing gaming platforms, and even mentions the Indrema Linux console)

Jett writes "Salon.com has an article up about how some evil corporate cartel called "RIAA" almost succeded in stealing recording copyrights from artists forever by secretly slipping an amendment into a 1,740-page omnibus spending bill. It's rather ironic that they whine about Napster "stealing from artists" when they themselves are running around Washington using their political powers to secretly create laws that steal from artists." Well, they did succeed. However, enough of the artists protested, and the RIAA has enough other troubles, that they're going to support changing the law back.

Welcome to the Slashback. This time around you'll find bits about the speed of light, project Monterey, and coverage of the recently departed (alas!) San Jose LWCE. And word from Microsoft about porting Office apps to Linux gets my thumbs up -- your thumb direction may vary. [Updated by timothy with a special bonus story, 22 Aug. 0:30 GMT]

Show of hands if you think Windows is easy to use ... If I'm driving a car with a radio, I usually fiddle with the dials way down around 88-90 FM to listen to NPR, for Car Talk, All Things Considered, and the occasional science show. Now AlKini gives me another reason: "National Public Radio's "High Tech" section covers the Linux World Expo: Linux Moves to Heart of Corporate America (top item ATM).

NPR's Chris Arnold for All Things Considered: www.npr.org/ramfiles/atc/200008 16.atc.07.ram (Real Audio)"

A major issue raised by the High Tech section article is ease of use; maybe I'm crazy, but putting on Mandrake and going nuts with the included programs is pretty darn easy. Putting on 98 and NT I thought was rather a nightmare.

Well, surely all this has shown ... something! OK. Perhaps now everyone can stop submitting the story about the experiment which has been reported as showing a previously unheard of increase in the speed of light. drinkypoo writes: "It turns out that 'Not only does the speed of light remain unsurpassed, but Wang's experiment wasn't even about that.' To be specific, 'the team developed a method of manipulating the wavelengths of a beam of light, thereby altering the way it arrives at its destination. Because short wavelengths become longer and long ones become shorter, the natural fanning outward that marks a light pulse is eliminated; consequently the shape of the pulse at its destination appears the same as at its origin.' It seems that the journalistic frenzy and a NEC press release are to blame. Salon Magazine is carrying the full story here."

Reports have been greatly exaggerated. We reported a few days ago that IBM's Project Monterey had been killed. Not so, says dentar, who writes: "I am attending SCO Forum 2000, and contrary to what was published in Sm@rt-aleck Reseller, IBM is NOT ditching Monterey. It is going to be called AIX-5L. (NOT AIX-RL like the article says). The Sm@rt reseller article is very poorly researched and is pure yellow journalism. In fact, IBM is very ticked about the article."

Where are the software-release-date betting pool sites? fonixmunkee writes: "Found an interesting story on BetaNews regarding Microsoft reportedly working on porting some of their software to linux. Check it out here."

For either P.R. or experimental purposes at least, though, doesn't it seem like Microsoft will offer some Linux software soon? While there's often no accounting for corporate decision making, to ignore the large, vibrant, growing Linux market would be to ... ignore a large, vibrant and growing market. Fine by me; I never much like having my words mangled by Word, and I have never pined for Outlook.

The more numerous the laws ... werdna writes: "Counsel for Napster, Inc. just submitted their initial brief on Appeal, explaining why the preliminary injunction should be reversed. The brief sets other arguments, any one of which could be a basis for reversal.

Whatever may be said of Judge Patel's decision, she set forth her reasoning squarely, which made it possible for Mr. Boies to crisply and concisely join the issue: Whether the test for contributory infringement of an internet service will be that the services has a "mere capacity for substantial non-infringing uses" (the test adopted by the Supreme Court for VCR's), or Judge Patel's new creation of a "present primary purpose " test, in direct contravention of the Supreme Court's decision in the Betamax case. The answer to this question can have broad-sweeping impact on the internet as a whole.

Interestingly, the brief shows that the Ninth Circuit itself originally adopted the "primary purpose" test when it first reviewed the Betamax case, noting that the Supreme Court expressly rejected that argument there. It is sometimes advocacy to a judge to remind them that the District Court they are reviewing just made the same mistake they made years ago."

Welcome to the Slashback. This time around you'll find bits about the speed of light, project Monterey, and coverage of the recently departed (alas!) San Jose LWCE. And word from Microsoft about porting Office apps to Linux gets my thumbs up -- your thumb direction may vary. [Updated by timothy with a special bonus story, 22 Aug. 0:30 GMT]

Show of hands if you think Windows is easy to use ... If I'm driving a car with a radio, I usually fiddle with the dials way down around 88-90 FM to listen to NPR, for Car Talk, All Things Considered, and the occasional science show. Now AlKini gives me another reason: "National Public Radio's "High Tech" section covers the Linux World Expo: Linux Moves to Heart of Corporate America (top item ATM).

NPR's Chris Arnold for All Things Considered: www.npr.org/ramfiles/atc/200008 16.atc.07.ram (Real Audio)"

A major issue raised by the High Tech section article is ease of use; maybe I'm crazy, but putting on Mandrake and going nuts with the included programs is pretty darn easy. Putting on 98 and NT I thought was rather a nightmare.

Well, surely all this has shown ... something! OK. Perhaps now everyone can stop submitting the story about the experiment which has been reported as showing a previously unheard of increase in the speed of light. drinkypoo writes: "It turns out that 'Not only does the speed of light remain unsurpassed, but Wang's experiment wasn't even about that.' To be specific, 'the team developed a method of manipulating the wavelengths of a beam of light, thereby altering the way it arrives at its destination. Because short wavelengths become longer and long ones become shorter, the natural fanning outward that marks a light pulse is eliminated; consequently the shape of the pulse at its destination appears the same as at its origin.' It seems that the journalistic frenzy and a NEC press release are to blame. Salon Magazine is carrying the full story here."

Reports have been greatly exaggerated. We reported a few days ago that IBM's Project Monterey had been killed. Not so, says dentar, who writes: "I am attending SCO Forum 2000, and contrary to what was published in Sm@rt-aleck Reseller, IBM is NOT ditching Monterey. It is going to be called AIX-5L. (NOT AIX-RL like the article says). The Sm@rt reseller article is very poorly researched and is pure yellow journalism. In fact, IBM is very ticked about the article."

Where are the software-release-date betting pool sites? fonixmunkee writes: "Found an interesting story on BetaNews regarding Microsoft reportedly working on porting some of their software to linux. Check it out here."

For either P.R. or experimental purposes at least, though, doesn't it seem like Microsoft will offer some Linux software soon? While there's often no accounting for corporate decision making, to ignore the large, vibrant, growing Linux market would be to ... ignore a large, vibrant and growing market. Fine by me; I never much like having my words mangled by Word, and I have never pined for Outlook.

The more numerous the laws ... werdna writes: "Counsel for Napster, Inc. just submitted their initial brief on Appeal, explaining why the preliminary injunction should be reversed. The brief sets other arguments, any one of which could be a basis for reversal.

Whatever may be said of Judge Patel's decision, she set forth her reasoning squarely, which made it possible for Mr. Boies to crisply and concisely join the issue: Whether the test for contributory infringement of an internet service will be that the services has a "mere capacity for substantial non-infringing uses" (the test adopted by the Supreme Court for VCR's), or Judge Patel's new creation of a "present primary purpose " test, in direct contravention of the Supreme Court's decision in the Betamax case. The answer to this question can have broad-sweeping impact on the internet as a whole.

Interestingly, the brief shows that the Ninth Circuit itself originally adopted the "primary purpose" test when it first reviewed the Betamax case, noting that the Supreme Court expressly rejected that argument there. It is sometimes advocacy to a judge to remind them that the District Court they are reviewing just made the same mistake they made years ago."

kkkalen writes "Have you completed a Masters or PhD thesis in the last eight or so years? If so, it is probably for sale at http://www.contentville.com, a for-profit company which I understand I partially owned by NBC and Time. Mine is there and I never gave them permission to sell it. As far as I know, I am the sole owner of the copyright on my thesis. Even my ex-supervisor had to ask permission (he did) before he could make it available on a web site (for free, by the way)."

"I am shocked that that this company is engaging in what amount to piracy of my work. Actually, it's worse than that since they are offering it for sale. Imagine the lawsuits and jailtime I would get (a la FBI Warning) if I burned a few hundred CDs of the latest movie release and sold them on the Internet.

"I imagine a great deal of Slashdot readers have completed graduate work. I just wonder what they make of this?"

Well, we'll see. Contentville is funded by CBS, NBC, a huge book distributor and a database aggregator - it launched last month. These companies are in Congress right now lobbying for a law to protect databases - that is, to make re-using information from places such as Contentville illegal. Not just copying the information, but even using any of the data or facts from databases would be illegal. A number of database-protection bills are in Congress right now, and if one of them passes (very likely), the poster above won't be able to make use of his own thesis without paying Contentville - since Contentville went to the effort of compiling their database, and the law would protect that effort.

Steven Brill, so-called "media watchdog", is just in the process of settling with thousands of freelance writers whose work he also, uh, appropriated.

It looks to me like a crystal-clear violation of the No Electronic Theft Act, passed a few years ago. Will Steven Brill go to jail for not more than three years? No. He's a "media watchdog", and only "pirates" go to jail. (Aside to Steve: if the NYT or Washington Post start referring to you as a pirate, best flee the country - the FBI will take an interest in the case then.)

Contentville. We get our Content the old-fashioned way - by stealing it.

Lumpish Scholar writes: "Slashdot already reported Looking Glass Studios (creators of Thief, Thief II, and other games) declared bankruptcy. The irony was, their publisher, Eidos Interactive, was pumping all their money into Ion Storm's effort to finish Daikatana. Now, according to this story in Salon, Eidos has bought the rights to Thief III (presumably an asset when Looking Glass was dissolved) and has handed the work over to Ion Storm (under the helm of Warren Spector, not Daikatana's John Romero). Small world, innit?" Wow, that's cool. This should happen more often, I think.