Slashdot Mirror

omitted mention of Linux. That way, users who are not tech-savvy can't be sure that Linux is safe.

Sounds to me like they were completely fair. Of course that's not a journalistic conspiracy involving Microsoft and the NYT. Could not happen, categorically impossible. I never gave it a second thought. Our journalistic 5th Estate is as honest as our courts and our politicians.

Parrot (the Perl 6 VM) is a classic case of Second System Syndrome.

1. Develop VM before knowing what Perl 6 language will look like or what it requirements will be.
2. Claim VM will support all interpreted languages known to man, yet the only language that runs on it is a crippled version of Basic. The other (non Perl) languages will require custom C code defeating the point of having a VM in the first place.
3. Piss away $200K in grant money and have nothing to show for it 3 years later. Gee, why isn't anyone contributing anymore?
4. Threads? We'll worry about it later.
5. Objects? Too tricky for now.
6. Function calling convention - we'll get it right one of these years.

Guys, time to put the horse in front of the cart and get back to the business of writing Perl 6 or Topaz or whatever it is called these days instead of trying to rule the world with Parrot.

So I slipped it in a comment, now the editors wake up.

Oh well, that's life.

Crunchies they call us. Linux loving Crunchies. They do not have the wisdom of the fortune program behind them....

"Do not meddle in the affairs of (Linux) wizards, for you are crunchy and good with ketchup."

I don't think that claims that the Canopy Group is not behind this one will not hold up now.

Now my fellow "crunchies", (the insulting name M$ friendly Forbes gives us), for the million dollar question, where does this money trail lead? I'll bet it doesn't stop at the Canopy.

First of all, the New Scientist article doesn't mention anything about TCP sliding windows or congestion control.

The whole "driving a car while looking 10 meters ahead" analogy ignores a lot of the work TCP does to keep things moving fast. The "trasnmists, waits, then sends the next" packet paragraph is almost deliberately misleading.

It tosses about a "6000 times faster" statistic without explaining 6000 times faster than what. Is my dad's 28.8 modem going to suddenly be getting throughput of 172Mbps? Of course not, but what difference is it going to make to him? I think maybe none at all, and FastTCP is only for very large network hauls, but the article has claims about me downloading a movie in 5 seconds.

My DSL line is 768kbps; I get downloads of large files through it of around 85kBps, which is a data throughput rate of 680kbps. That means that all the layers of the OSI burrito, including resends, checksums, and routining information, add up to about 12% overhead. Not the best, but not that bad, either. How much improvement is FastTCP going to get me?

The numbers for their practical test of Fast TCP connected two computers that got 925Mbps, and the "ordinary" TCP got just 266Mbps. Even that's pretty unbelievable to me; I find it hard to believe that TCP was running at about 25% efficiency.

Extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence. Like I said before, without further technical details, this doesn't actually sound all that different than the claims of Pixelon, which also had an eye towards video on demand.

Maybe they've got something; someone linked to the actual caltech article, which I haven't had a chance to read in detail (and wasn't linked to at the time I started my post). Caltech certainly is a cool place, so there is probably something interesting going on. But the New Scientist article is a fluff piece, pure and simple, and if calliing shennanigans on it makes me a troll, so be it.

It wasn't neccessarily a spin-off. Handspring was formed by the guy that created Palm. He (and some other Palm employess) left to start their own company after 3com acquired Palm because "they missed the thrill of being part of a new venture, and for the autonomy that running their own company gives them".

03.02.26.we | Non-Novel Patents

In addition to the alarm about the unruly expansion of copyright, an outcry over an offensive software or method patent is surfacing nearly every week now. But the storm is not yet upon us, these are merely the first chunky hail stones: it can, and probably will, get much worse.

Patents are supposed to be novel, useful, and non-obvious. However, these are rather subjective criteria that require the discretion of knowledge, experience, and good judgment. Such attributes belong to those skilled in an art, not to bureaucratic institutions. (Witness how those administrative functions formerly administered by John Postel, a skillful and respected Internet elder, are now bungled by ICANN, the bureaucracy now responsible.) However, we have no great patent arbiter, only a governmental process and this has led to a focus on, and misunderstanding of, prior art by computer professionals.

The question of novelty and non-obviousness is proxied by a mechanistic process of push and pull between a patent applicant and patent examiner. An examiner, on his own judgment, can not easily dismiss the application of a proprietary interest worth, potentially, millions of dollars. He can only ask, "how is your claim different than this prior art." Once this dance is done, a court is not likely to disregard the patent's novelty as documented in its file wrapper (the exchange between the applicant and examiner) and the resulting claims.

In the narrowest construction, this process of emulating good judgment with respect to novelty and non-obviousness works: the resulting patent claims are more narrow than the initial application with respect to some existing works. But in the sense of promoting innovation and the "useful arts and sciences" of computer software and networking, it is a huge failure.

As I've mentioned before, "Good technology, often created through simple processes, lends itself to applications unforeseen by its designers." As Lessig, in The Future of Ideas, amply demonstrates this principle is what makes the Internet and Web such an innovative force when as expressed as layered end-to-end architecture. To adopt his metaphor, our common roads permit arbitrary journeys; our private cars permit us to traverse our chosen paths. Much like the Internet and Web, there are no patents or controls on the roads that determine where you must go. (There are rules such as which side of the street to drive on, much like networking protocols, but these don't affect your destination.) It would be a shame to loose this flexibility, and this is just what the patent system encourages: claims that combine our common infrastructure and abilities in "novel" ways.

It's as if roads and driving themselves are recognized as an important infrastructure and ability, but someone could patent using a car on a road to drive to my house. Is using a car on a road to drive to my house really that novel? The Patent and Trademark Office can not make this judgment well, it will only look for prior art of someone previously, explicitly, specifying this exact method in the past. Perhaps they will find the method of driving to my house that I've provided on the Web. The applicant might then amend their application such that they have a claim for a car, on the road, driven to my house using a stick shift, and a new claim for the same using automatic transmission. The claims have been narrowed and there is no previous exact d

As a DirecTV customer, I'm very happy to see this happening. Any media service owned by News Corp. is one not owned by Microsoft.

Uhhh.. I hate to burst your bubble, but we aren't out of the woods yet. You see, the first time around when Murdoch made a bid for DirecTV, he brought Microsoft with him to the table. You can find a little more info on this here.
Microsoft really wants to get its software into all these set-top boxes, you see.

But what happened behind the scenes is more interesting. Microsoft was all poised to take over the software for DirecTV boxes in a deal with BSkyB, and they were pissed when Murdoch left the bargaining table, which meant they couldn't get exclusive rights to power the boxes. (This would have been bad for companies like Tivo, btw.) You can bet now that Murdoch is taking over Microsoft will be coming back to attempt it once again, if they haven't already...

Intel: "We have a new product which will make a number of our core products less useful and less valuable to our customers. Just to be sure nobody else siezes on this untapped potential, we've patented the new product."

More power to 'em.

This is like Microsoft patenting a security hole in IIS to prevent Apache from implementing it, too.

June 1999: CMGI buys AltaVista from Compaq for $2.3 billion in stocks.

"On Tuesday [the day after the sale], CMGI closed at $110.31, up $12.63, or 12.92 percent, with 13,921,400 shares traded.
'It's a great deal for them [CMGI],' says Ullas Naik, analyst with FAC Equities. 'AltaVista is an underappreciated and underused asset. CMGI can leverage that and cross-pollinate it with their existing companies and then they'll probably be able to spin it off as an IPO in six to nine months at a significant premium to what they paid.'"

December 1999, AltaVista files for IPO. (DEC had made plans to have AltaVista go public in 1996, but recanted the following year.)

April 2000: IPO delayed.

"CMGI was enjoying a midday bounce of nearly 6 percent to $55.13 [half of what it was not one year before, mind you]."

January 2001: IPO withdrawn.

"[During 2000, chief executive David] Wetherell's CMGI shares fell from a value of $2.1 billion at the beginning of the year to $100 million at year's end, a 95 percent decline."

I wouldn't worry about Google. It's made grown men cry. All over their worthless stocks.

A few other people would agree that OpenBSD is the most secure OS. Although I'm a Debian user, kudos to the OpenBSD team on their work.

Does their implementation of the open kerberos standard now work with Linux machines?

Who the hell do they think they're fooling?!!

>You're way off base. Rental videos *still* cost in the area of $150.

Show me where I said they got cheaper for rental companies... ;-)

The movie companies simply reworked their agreements, but the macrovision was there originally so people wouldn't copy the rental videos -- when the only price is the rental price (as it was back in the day) then you've got to protect your stuff. Either that or get a clue and start selling at a price people will pay. Sure, it was clear rental companies would pay $150 for a copy, as they'd been doing it for a while, but considering the pathetic number of videos selling for $150 to joe sixpack, video prices for them were lowered to a point the market would bear, which is exactly the solution for RIAA members today.

>It didn't kill off any existing, PAYING users, or even "advertise" the fact that pirates were getting cut off.

It really seems like you're assuming people who watch DirecTV don't read newspapers (I hope I'm wrong).

Here's an article which has links to (now defunct) Associated Press (ie: Every decent newspaper in North America) and MSNBC articles. Sounds to me like it was a bit of an unintentional advertisement of the fact that the DirecTV system was easy to pirate...

>It inconvenienced the pirates in a big way - That was the point, wasn't it? Sure, it may not have been effective long-term, but it certainly put out a lot of moochers, right? And quite a few of those people probably went and screamed at their sources, who had to fork over a good bit of cash for new H-cards (since the old ones were now looped) and figure out work-arounds.

Uhhuh, so, let's say the dealer says "Fuck you" to users that bitch and moan about broken cards. What's the user to do? Phone the police? Put in a report to the BBB? Why not just make the cops job easier and just put the cuffs on before you go in.

Dealers make money when DirecTV ECMs. The bigger the ECM, the more the fix is worth. The more rare the fix, the higher the value of the fix. Add those together and you get one hell of an artificial rise in hacking prices. And if one doesn't want to fork your cash over to DirecTV for those porns that one watches in private, then what's your choice?

And because the higher price is artificially inflated, the extra cost (which can be as high as 10x original price) is pure profit.

>I fail to see where you're going with this. You seem to claim that copy-protection hurts nobody but the regular consumers, which is a claim I'd normally agree with. However, the examples you're citing certainly don't lend much weight to your point.

Here's where I'm going: Dealers make money when their pirating users get ECMed. In the case of Black Sunday, more money than I could make in a year.

If there were no ECMs, and we assume most pirating end-users are too stupid to load the hacks onto their cards, then the dealers sell their stuff once, and that's it. How are they going to make their money? There's no reason for the users to pay the dealer anything if their stuff is working 100%

Anyways, HU cards have a self-destruct bit in them that turns off the ASIC permanently (impossible to repair -- it's a physical fuse, and you can't "skip" over a bad ASIC). Why don't they destroy hacked cards, esepcially considering most the of HUs have been swapped out? Unlike Black Sunday, this isn't difficult. It's just a simple command.

I'd say it's because they learned just a very little from Black Sunday. But not enough, unfortuantely.

To put it simple, increasing your copyright control simply pushes the piracy from the hands of people at the bottom of the chain up to the top of the chain. And the higher it gets, the harder it is to control. And I doubt that's anything like what companies that implement copyright control mechanisms had in mind.

from the article ..."Yeah, it's weird," says a manager from a big U.S. media company sent here to oversee his company's nascent outsourcing operation. "It's like we're training our own replacements."

Yep. Thanks to Harris Miller who made his mark by globalizing
agriculture (importing more guest workers) and is
now applying his nefarious techniques to high tech. No wonder his favorite book is The Prince by Machiavelli.

Hyper-globalization has failed. It was a radical social experiment that has not brought higher growth rates but has brought higher income dis-equilibrium. The super rich get super richer, the rich get richer, the middle class get more clogged roads, and the poor get poorer.

It's time to restore our borders and tax this outsourcing crap.

This man is the expert in deceoption.

Eldred v. Ashcroft
... 10 had a favourable piece on Lessig and the lawsuit. ... October 13, 2002 - Amy
Harmon of New York Times: uphill battle over copyright. more news ...
eldred.cc/ - 7k - Cached -

The Limits of Copyright
... it an offense to write code to interfere with this use-controlling code, regardless
of whether the use would be considered fair under the copyright law. ...
www.thestandard.com/article/display/ 0,1151,16071,00.html - 34k - Dec. 12, 2002 - Cached -

Copyright law and roasted pig.
Communications Copyright law and roasted pig Lawrence Lessig on Eldred v. Ascroft
By Lawrence Lessig October 22, 2002. In 1930, 10,027 books were published. ...
www.redherring.com/insider/2002/10/ roast-pig-copyright-102202.html - 29k - Cached -

O'Reilly Network: Free Culture: Lawrence Lessig Keynote from ...
... A flash version of Lessig's presentation, including audio and other source files. ... their
works) instead of exercising all of the restrictions of copyright law. ...
www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/policy/2002/08/15/lessi g.html - 27k - Dec. 12, 2002 - Cached -

High court weighs copyright law - Tech News - CNET.com
... Lessig and his allies are hoping not merely to overturn this law, however, but
to build momentum for an all-out legal assault on many recent copyright ...
news.com.com/2100-1023-961467.html - 28k - Cached -

Lawrence Lessig
... Declan McCullagh of CNET News.com mentions Professor Lessig in Left gets nod from
right on copyright law, on a speech given by Appeals Court Judge Richard ...
cyberlaw.stanford.edu/lessig/ - 23k - Dec. 12, 2002 - Cached -

Home--Berkman Center for Internet and Society
... Also see: Digitial Copyright Law on Trial [CNet]; Google Excluding Controversial
Sites [CNet]; ... the Hard Questions: On October 9 Lawrence Lessig appeared before ...
Description: The Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School is a research program founded...
Category: Computers>Internet>Policy
cyber.law.harvard.edu/ - 13k - Cached -

Techdirt:Copyright Law And Roasted Pig - Lessig Pushes His ...
Copyright Law And Roasted Pig - Lessig Pushes His Campaign Forward.
Ramblings Contributed by Mike on Tuesday, October 22nd, 2002 ...
www.techdirt.com/articles/20021022/1311202.shtml - 5k - Cached -

I oppose Amazon.com's 1-Click Patent
As one of the founding programmers at Amazon.com, I was very dismayed to learn
of the company's legal attempts to enforce its 1-Click (TM) patent. ...
www.op.net/~pbd/amazon-1click.html - 4k - Cached - Similar pages

Amazon, Barnes&Noble settle patent suit - Tech News - CNET.com
... The story behind Amazon's 1-Click patent Mark Grant, author, Law
and the Internet Play clip. Amazon.com said Wednesday that it ...
news.com.com/2100-1017-854105.html - 27k - Cached - Similar pages

Apple - Media & Analyst Information - Press Releases
Apple Licenses Amazon.com 1-Click Patent and Trademark. New Apple Online
Store with 1-Click Shopping Premieres Today CUPERTINO, California ...
www.apple.com/pr/library/2000/sep/18amazon.html - 11k - Dec. 12, 2002 - Cached - Similar pages

Salon Technology | Amazon to world: We control how many times you ...
... The 1-Click patent suits suggest that the company is forsaking this understanding
for a more conventional, bare-knuckles corporate strategy. ...
www.salon.com/tech/log/1999/12/21/bezos/ - 23k - Dec. 12, 2002 - Cached - Similar pages

www.oreilly.com -- Ask Tim! -- Software Patents Issue
... At the same time, I completely agree with RMS that the Amazon 1-Click Patent
is one more example of an intellectual property milieu gone mad. ...
Description: The founder of O'Reilly & Associates (the top computer manual publisher) criticizes Amazon's attempt...
Category: Society>Issues>IntellectualProperty>Paten ts
www.oreilly.com/ask_tim/amazon_patent.html - 20k - Cached - Similar pages

Amazon's 1-Click Patent Survives Bounty Hunt
Amazon's 1-Click Patent Survives Bounty Hunt By Elizabeth Wasserman Issue Date: Mar
15 2001 No one wins the prize for invalidating the e-retailer's patent for ...
www.thestandard.com/article/display/ 0,1151,22862,00.html - 32k - Dec. 12, 2002 - Cached - Similar pages

1 Click Results!
1-Click Patent: No Exact Match But Runners Up Will Split $10,000 Cash Prize. ... Read
Runners Up Profiles>>. History of the 1-Click Patent Conflict. ...
www.bountyquest.com/infocenter/1click.htm - 15k - Dec. 12, 2002 - Cached - Similar pages

allNetDevices: - OpenTV Claims 1-Click Patent
... OpenTV Claims 1-Click Patent. Latest News. ...
www.allnetdevices.com/industry/news/ 2000/10/06/opentv_claims.html - 35k - Dec. 12, 2002 - Cached - Similar pages

Amazon Loses Round in 1-Click Patent Case
Amazon Loses Round in 1-Click Patent Case ...
www.ecommercetimes.com/perl/story/7528.html - 10k - Dec. 12, 2002 - Cached - Similar pages

If it's not published, then it's not copyrighted.

That's consistent with the intent of copyright law, so I understand why you'd think so. But you're wrong! Read entry #2, it directly contradicts you. Stop living in the 70s- today everything is copyrighted as soon as pen hits paper. (entry 4 on the same page)

Publication has nothing to do with it. There was a successful copyright-infringment lawsuit brought against burglars who invaded someone's property and privacy to steal notes. (I don't have a link, but its true. It seems strange that someone would press minor charges in place of blatant criminal conviction, but we can imagine some reasons)

You can't judge a book by its cover, and you can't interpret a law by its name. Don't point to the word "Copyright" in the name of the DMCA and assume it only tries to enforce the original meaning of copyright. After all, if the government had only wanted to enforce an existing law, instead of increasing it's scope, then why did it need to pass a new law?

Reading the DMCA, we see that it forbids "circumvention of mechanisms used to protect copyrighted content". It doesn't matter whether the mechanism is currently being used for something copyrighted or not- you still can't break their protection. Creation, possession or distribution of circumvention devices is illegal too. This means that by wrapping a work in a protection mechanism, even a trivially weak one, publishers can effectively write their own copyright laws- ones without revenue-damaging drawbacks like fair use, extraction of facts, and eventual expiration.

Hopefully, because it goes so much further than it reasonably should, the DMCA will be overturned. Then your common-sense ideas may start to have some validity again.

If Microsoft makes a serious effort to make Windows easy to use, they could theoretically win the TCO fight, or at least beat the penguins.

The alternative is that Microsoft will try to raise the TCO for open source, by buying laws that criminalize open-source development, by turning the personal computer into a locked box that dispenses pay-per-view content to consumers, and by threatening "intellectual property" lawsuits against companies and individual developers.

Of course, that's just a paranoid theory. I mean, if things like that were happening in real life, people would do more than just whine about it on Slashdot, right?

I hope that AOL's woes don't tear down Time/Warner which has many great media properties that will be scattered to the winds if AOL needs to gin up some cash. Over the weekend, I heard analyst say that if AOL had not purchased Time/Warner, the Time/Warner stock would be around $40 and AOL would be around $4. Right now, AOL is at $11.89. I wonder if former Time/Warner stock holders feel like idiots for approving the merger.

We in Brazil are proud to have one of the world's oldest, largest electronic voting systems.

Internet and caffeine addicts unite - you have nothing to lose but your foam. Microsoft (MSFT) and coffee monolith Starbucks (SBUX) have agreed to jointly offer high-speed Internet connections in Starbucks stores throughout North America, the companies announced Wednesday.

Internet access will be made available over MobileStar Network's wireless broadband network, using Microsoft software and its MSN portal Web site and service, Starbucks, Microsoft and MobileStar said in a joint statement. The companies did not disclose any of the agreement's financial terms.

The in-store wireless service is expected to launch during the second quarter and will integrate Microsoft's .Net Internet appliance strategy, the companies said. The companies did not disclose what fee customers would be charged, if any, to access the wireless network so as to, for example, check e-mail over a skinny latte.

The partnership with Microsoft and MobileStar is part of an overall strategy by Starbucks to upgrade its operations, the companies said. Plans are in the works for a Starbucks customer card, which are intended to speed up orders, and eventually, the ability to preorder drinks over mobile phones, the companies said.

The question we should be asking is what are the next set of disruptive pieces of code we should be writing (while we still have the chance)?

Absolutely the *best* programming book I have ever found!

Here is a link to it. It has details on C/C++, complete RFCs, amazing example code, and a huge index!

The biggest problem is that there is only one copy. I tried to make my own copy, but quickly ran out of toner. When I asked one of the authors if there were any plans to make a second copy, he laughed and said, "Maybe on Mars!". I think he is losing his mind from all the corporations trying to stake a claim in his creative works. He really wants to be available to everyone.

P.S. Here is a great article on the history behind this imaginative book.

Learn to use your 104-button mouse. A.K.A. the keyboard.

How do these restricted reading technologies make the material available to everyone when copyright expires?

CompuServe tried to do this with .GIF. We all know what happened with that.

As did Geoworks with WAP. In the graph of GWRX's stock performance, can you find the point at which the suit was filed?

hint: It's right before the stock skyrocketed from the teens to its all-time high north of $50.

But I won't buy the watch-sized cell phone. Unless the phone is somehow implanted, anything smaller than an existing phone isn't going to be convenient for people to talk into or dial out of.

You might well be right, but people are investigating ways to get around this. There's a prototype phone where you stick your finger in your ear to listen to vibrations, and talk into its wrist mic (no, really! :-).

from: Building a Better Bio-Supercomputer, this one year old newspiece might provide some info on what the system will be:

<clip> Competitor Compaq is taking a different path. In January, the company announced plans to develop a 100-teraflop bio-supercomputer dubbed Red Storm in partnership with Celera Genomics, the Rockville, Md., company that mapped the human genome, and Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, N.M. Although Blue Gene will be 10 times faster than Red Storm, a Celera executive stresses that the company's machine could eventually match IBM's speed. Unlike Blue Gene, though, Red Storm is being designed for a broader array of life-science experiments and may be used to conduct nuclear research. The supercomputer, set to begin operating in 2004, will cost an estimated $125 million to $150 million to build. </clip>

This seems to be somewhat in-line with the cost approximate stated in the press release $90 million. Or am I completely in my effort to undestand what this press release is about?

Wasn't Red Storm a project put forth by Compaq to build a 100 teraflop system?

I haven't seen a company that promised so much and delivered so little since Pixelon.

Here's a story about a similar scam from the dot com era. This guy raised $20M, and spent $16M of that on a party in Las Vegas with entertainment provided by the Dixie Chicks and The Who.

Ah... actually quite an inspiring story. They guy was a genius. Unfortunately, like many genuises, he was also insane.
http://www.thestandard.com/article/display/0,1151, 16309,00.html

I don't know if you're aware of this, but you quoted
the license terms for Adobe ebooks quite precisely:

No printing is permitted on this book.
This book cannot be given to someone else.
This book cannot be read aloud.

These are actual terms in the license for the ebook version
of 'Alice in Wonderland'. This is even more strange because
the original text is by now in the public domain.
You can get a free, legal copy at Project Gutenberg.
It has even been suggested that the text of the ebook version was
actually taken from the Gutenberg archives.

Here's an article that a quick search retrieved.

Fact 1: Virtually every word is trademarked, be it Alpha to Omega or Aardvark to Zulu, most many times over. MOST share the same words or initials with MANY others in a different business and/or country. For example, the World Trade Organization (WTO) shares its initials with six trademarks - in the U.S. alone (please check). Conflict is IMPOSSIBLE to avoid.

Fact 2: The authorities steal words that belong to everybody and give them to Big Business - because domain names were not designed to be trademarks. Ask Paul Mockapetris, creator of Domain Name System. He was asked, what do you wish you had invented? His reply, "A directory system for the Internet that wouldn't be controlled by the politicians, lawyers and bureaucrats."

Fact 3: The UN World Intellectual Property Organization and the US Department of Commerce are hiding the simple solution to trademark and domain name problem. Please see at WIPO.org.uk - nothing to do with the United Nations WIPO.org.

From here.

"Last year, however, Google did follow competitors in offering sponsored links - a form of advertising based on search terms - on the top and left of search results. Today such advertising accounts for two-thirds of Google's revenues, with the remainder coming from powering searches on other Web sites, including that of Yahoo. Observers have wondered whether Google's business model can survive, especially given the downturn in Internet advertising. Schmidt insists that the company has been profitable for the last two quarters, although he declines to disclose numbers."

From here.

"Google's advertising programs enable advertisers to closely match text-based ads with users' search queries. The result is a highly targeted service that consistently produces an average click-through rate four to five times higher than the industry average for traditional banner advertising. Google provides advertisers with a full complement of monitoring services to ensure the best results. Online advertisers, such as Acura, Expedia, Eddie Bauer, Ernst & Young and REI, consistently rank Google as their top online advertising choice."

From here.

"So, where's the business model? To this end, Google has started to diversify its revenue stream. It boasts 100 co-brand partners, such as The Washington Post and Netscape, that have selected Google as an embedded Internet search engine on their site. Most of these co-brand partners pay the company from $8 to $10 per thousand queries and from $600 to $2,000 per month in licensing fees. Google also has a program offering free search capabilities to smaller Web sites, with the caveat that it might begin inserting advertisements on search-query pages at a future date -- but no banner ads.

The company has also instituted a pay-for-play scheme called Adwords that allows an advertiser to purchase a word and place a small text ad on the page whenever that word is mentioned in a query. But Google is making the most money from customized intrasite search functions, built for a dozen select clients, such as router giant Cisco Systems and Linux provider Red Hat."

I leave it as an exercise to the reader to find more.

I will tie both your posts together.

J> Case in point: I have a page which describes my rotten experiences with the Ford Motor Company and a 1992 Explorer, at http://www.conmicro.cx/explorer.html. I didn't go out and register fordsucks.com, even though I could have in 1994 when I had the problem. Guess what? People have no trouble finding the page anyway.

Do you not think a lot more people would find it at fordsucks.com?

Do you not think, using it like the title to a book, fordsucks.com expresses more about what you think of them?

Surely you can see, fordsucks.com is better for this?

J> You still fail to show how a corporation with a trademarked name is preventing you from expressing your opinion.

The authorities know how to stop 'consumer confusion', 'trademark conflict' and 'passing off'. They could let ALL trademarks be used on the Internet without these problems.

These are OPEN (repeat OPEN) TLD - the US DOC and ICANN could have many 'restricted' TLD for trademarks, so are allowing this conflict to muffle you.

They are also allowing this conflict so that (as all words are trademarked) they can take domains from the legal owner e.g. JT.com and crew.com.

G> Virtually ALL words are trademarked, most many times over. MOST share the same words or initials with MANY others in a different business and/or country. True or False?

J> True but irrelevant. So what if you can't use their name in the address? They can't do a thing about the content of your page.

On your thinking, the title of a book could not specify its contents.

G> By giving priority to trademarks for ALL words, the authorities totally disrespect your rights to use them. True or False?

J> False. You can use trademarks all you want to in the content of your page. All that's required is that you acknowledge their ownership. You can't use them in the address of your page, but you still fail to explain why this is relevant.

You are saying a book title cannot explain its contents. Perhaps I will explain better on this:

J> This still doesn't establish any connection between Paul's statement that the DNS is for naming resources and your contention that ICANN and big business are out to muffle free speech. It is that connection that I believe is nonexistent, and asserting that connection without backing it up is the flaw in the argument against ICANN and WIPO.

The connection was between Paul saying domains are naming resources and you saying they were just addresses. So domains, as they can be used as such (e.g. fordsucks.com) they are in fact speech.

J> That's why their victory will be hollow: because even if they do win the war, they will utterly fail in stifling criticism.

But it is okay with you if they will muffle it by taking control of the DNS?

All words are trademarks. The DNS was not meant as trademark system was it?

Paul Mockapetris was asked, what do you wish you had invented?

He replied, "A directory system for the Internet that wouldn't be controlled by the politicians, lawyers and bureaucrats."

Do you not agree with him? - I know that I do.

The DNS is not for trademarks to own - is it?

Paul Mockapetris, creator of the Domain Name System was asked, what do you wish you had invented?

He replied, "A directory system for the Internet that wouldn't be controlled by the politicians, lawyers and bureaucrats."

The Internet is going to the dogs.

Fact: UDRP is not only imperfect and inconsistent - it a fatally flawed system.

Fact: You are being deceived - the authorities know the answer to trademark problems on the Internet.

The United States Department of Commerce and the United Nations World Intellectual Property Organization are hiding it.

The US Patent and Trademark Office virtually admitted this, "The questions you raised with respect to trademark conflicts, as well as the proposed solutions, have their basis in good common-sense. As such, they have been debated and discussed quite exhaustively within the USPTO, the Administration, and internationally."

Honest attorneys, including the honourable G. Gervaise Davis III (UN WIPO panellist judge), have ratified the solution.

Virtually every word is trademarked, be it Alpha to Omega or Aardvark to Zulu, most many times over. MOST share the same words or initials with MANY others in a different business and/or country. For example, the World Trade Organization (WTO) shares its initials with six trademarks - in the U.S. alone (please check). Conflict is IMPOSSIBLE to avoid.

This is most important - as Sunrise and UDRP abridges what words people can use in an open (repeat - OPEN) gTLD. They also give priority of one business over another.

Please keep re-reading last paragraph until you completely understand - they violate the First Amendment and go against Unfair Competition Law.

That is quite apart and separate from the fact that they know the solution.

Which is this:

User enters apple.com - is redirected to apple.computer.us.reg

User enters apple.newTLD - is redirected to apple.record.uk.reg

In the address bar - can you tell the difference between, apple.computer.us.reg and apple.record.uk.reg?

So, no 'consumer confusion', 'trademark conflict' and 'passing off' there then.

A new restricted TLD, of .REG, for trademarks would act as certificate of authentication and directory, when entered directly.

Lawyers read feeble excuses link on my site before replying - I have heard them all.

Nobody wants the solution - because by not having it they gain. Primarily - Lawyers get loads of money from the conflicts and Big Business by muffling criticism and ensuring they monopolize their trademark words on the Internet.

My beliefs and findings, above and on my site, have proven corruption beyond all reasonable doubt - nobody can refute the logical conclusions made.

Please visit WIPO.org.uk - nothing to do with United Nations WIPO.org.

All of the commercial vendors of election software are using closed source, running on top of closed source OS. This allows wholesale rigging at either end.

Just insert a script into next version of Windows: If Date is 11/4/04....

Here's Industry Standard's coverage of a panel on Internet Voting sponsored by the Freedom Forum during the last Democratic National Convention. My Q&A with election.com CEO Joe Mohen is at the end, tho they missed the closed source issue.

What is Coltan
Coltan killing elephants, gorillas and people
The Coltan Rush
Minerals Fueling War
Guns, money and cell phones
.

People need to stay vigilant about privacy and balance it with convienance. Right now few people would cry over the loss of personalization, but that might change in 80 years. There's still a lot of work needed to build a solid privacy framework using a standard protocol. This way we it will be easier for third party trust companies and consumer groups to perform audits.

Of course companies that don't use it will still abuse their position and take advantage of user data.

Totally unrelated, and I imply no correlation and similarity in facts, however I came across this old story which is always an interesting read: http://www.thestandard.com/article/0,1902,16368,00 .html?body_page=11. Again it's totally unrelated to the ventures of these data compression people, but just is an interesting read for Slashdot folks.

I guess the first part is common knowledge. As for the diaries, here's a link. Looks like I omitted the word "net" or "web". I guess that makes it somewhat less insane.

Look here. The entire episode was more of a case of bad UI design than wicked digital rights management.

• 'In a recent interview from jail, the 39-year-old Stanley claimed to have written the code from scratch during the several months he lived in the back seat of his car after fleeing authorities. "I knew I was on the frontier of a totally new area and I got real, real, real excited," he told The Standard. "I knew I had found the way home." '

about another company with bogus video technology ...

Reminds me of Pixelon, they made the same claims, and look what happend to those guys.

Almost as good as sticking tape on a 42" Plasma screen then making out to your investor it's some wonderful new technology for sowing lowcost LCD's together. They were found out and now they're fucked, how MIT tutors got involved in this company I do not know.

They're right up there with Adobe, the MPAA, and the RIAA.

-S

Silly guys. Don't they realize that on the internet, the headline is only as tantalizing as what the referring link says, so this kind of thing doesn't increase readership?

I cant wait for AOL to sue Micros~1 for saying "You've got mail".

They already tried. They lost.

This is not exactly news anymore. The Industry Standard had an article about the topic on June 11: Guns, Money and Cell Phones