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dressed in yellow tunics, smiling, singing "Hare Krishna"

And then ending up sued by someone smiling and singing "dulang dulang dulang".

Analysis of the text of the original bitcoin paper (word choice, spelling, punctuation) points to Nick Szabo as the likely main creator of Bitcoin. Szabo had been working for several years before that on an idea called "bit gold", a direct technical predecessor of bitcoin. His website ( http://szabo.best.vwh.net/ ) has papers on many of the same topics that bitcoin is involved with. Japanese names are written last name first, so "Satoshi Nakamoto" and Nick Szabo both share the initials "NS". That's not proof, but it is suggestive.

Hal Finney may have made significant contributions. He developed the "proof of work" method by which bitcoin reaches consensus on the transaction history. Finney is a well known cryptography developer (he works on the PGP software). He started mining bitcoin the day after the software went live, and was the recipient of the very first bitcoin transaction, from "Satoshi" to him. Finney and Szabo are known to have met and communicated before bitcoin was created, and him starting to mine so early and getting the first transaction makes sense if they worked together on the project.

Examining the programming style of the first versions of bitcoin (before other open-source developers got involved) may help point to who created it, but I have not seen any analysis of that.

Will it restore the ground where it was extracted from? Or even better, it would save a step or two to just extract the heat from the coal that's already burning..

I see your Shamir and raise you one Byzantine General.

Since, presumably, you know whether you plagiarised

Such a presumption is rebuttable, I guess, but how would one go about it? How could Ms. Keller have known she was plagiarizing a Canby story into "The Frost King", or how could George Harrison have known he was plagiarizing a Ronald Mack song into "My Sweet Lord"?

It just seems unlikely that you'll be unlucky enough.

If I, say, compose music for a video game, "unlucky" is not a word that the video game's publisher wants to hear. They want sure things, indemnities, and the like, and they want enough due diligence to qualify for an E&O policy when a sure thing isn't achievable. I just wanted to know if there were some sort of spot-checking process I could run as due diligence to see if I screwed up.

Of course, you could just adapt from esxisting free works and evolve from there.

In other words: "The only safe songs to perform are those written and published before 1923." To me, this looks like an utter failure of copyright "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts", as my country's constitution puts it.

If it was as easy as you suggest when you said "music publishers can probably dig up some similar song from a decade ago to prove that the music was copied as opposed to original", then George Harrison could have found a song "She's so Fine" was similar to, bought the rights and then claimed his rights were violated.

In fact, Harrison tried to get his manager to buy Bright Tunes to end this dispute, but according to this page, his manager had a conflict of interest and bought Bright Tunes not on Harrison's but on ABKCO's behalf.

[If you want to make a fan work and none of the copyright owners of works that actually have enough of an audience to make a fandom will go along with it,] Find something in the creative commons. This is something that needs to be bootstrapped certainly but we could produce a rich world that encourages derivitive works.

I want to join a project dedicated to bootstrapping such freely licensed settings. Does this exist, or must I start my own?

Then the music publishers affiliated with the major record labels will likely start making accusations of cryptomnesia, or accidental infringement of copyright in a work published years ago, against indie songwriters and recording artists. See Bright Tunes Music v. Harrisongs Music for an example of how it could go down.

Remind me, which was the indie band/songwriter in that dispute?

I know what you're getting at: Bright Tunes wasn't the clear-cut Big Four vs. indie case that I fear is likely to happen. But even though Bright Tunes was between two established companies, it produced case law that a major music publisher can use against an up and coming indie band.

Then the music publishers affiliated with the major record labels will likely start making accusations of cryptomnesia, or accidental infringement of copyright in a work published years ago, against indie songwriters and recording artists. See Bright Tunes Music v. Harrisongs Music for an example of how it could go down.

Remind me, which was the indie band/songwriter in that dispute?

Ah, but as shares concentrate into the hands of the few and powerful,but sales dwindle

Then the music publishers affiliated with the major record labels will likely start making accusations of cryptomnesia, or accidental infringement of copyright in a work published years ago, against indie songwriters and recording artists. See Bright Tunes Music v. Harrisongs Music for an example of how it could go down.

Since a major problem with the major record labels is shitty contracts

Unless the distributing label imposes contracts on the smaller label, which the smaller label in turn is obligated to impose on its artists.

Your signature is apropos:

I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA music. Music is about music, not tangential business/politics.

But if you start making music, you have to avoid plagiarizing existing works, even by accident. If you make a point of never listening to RIAA music, you at least have the defense that you had never heard the plaintiff's song, but given how much music makes it onto the news (like in the article) and into grocery stores' background music, that's a tall order.

The analogue to someone pirating music is not that person saying: "hey, I like Lady GaGa's new song. Let's also rent a studio, arrange the musicians, record it and mix it".

You'd be surprised. Here are a couple U.S. plagiarism cases for you to Google: Bright Tunes Music v. Harrisongs Music and Three Boys Music v. Michael Bolton . In both of these cases, a singer-songwriter was found liable for copyright infringement despite that he didn't even know he was copying a song that he had heard several years ago on the radio until he got sued.

It's a free world, if someone wants to restrict their work, they should have the right. If you don't like their system, start creating things and put it under some type of free license.

Creating works and putting them under a license for free cultural works stops working once the incumbent publishers of non-free works cry plagiarism. George Harrison got sued for this and lost.

With copyright at least you can clearly see that someone copied your work.

Not necessarily. True, copyright is the only intangible property right among the big three that requires access to the plaintiff's work as part of a claim of infringement. But if I hear a song on the radio, and then a decade later, I write a similar song, then I have infringed the copyright. George Harrison got nailed for "My Sweet Lord".

Out of curiosity I googled it, and came up with this nice summary, however it's still not entirely clear what constitutes a copy.

Imagine the consequences of Mozart suing Beethoven over the first 3 stanzas of Beethoven's First Piano Sonata.

Imagine George Harrison getting sued for a song he wrote because it matched the hook from a song that was already on the oldies station. Don't imagine; it happened.

Or for that matter, if copyright had dissuaded Beethoven from creating his Ninth Symphony.

Some of history's greatest pieces of music would never have been...

I did the math in a past life.

Indeed. Don't forget about the utterly absurd "My Sweet Lord" incident.

but at least they won't take your copyrights away.

Until you're accused of having accidentally copied part of some decades-old song still playing on the oldies station. It happened to George Harrison.

Someone made a point that I think made sense......if we're going to have copyright, we ought to not make it based on the life of the creator.....otherwise it will be motivation to kill artists. Make it 15 years from the time it was created or something.

I know this is modded funny, but seriously say you are write a song that sounds like something else and the judge rules that you might have subconsciously copied it. You have a potential bill for millions that will go away if this artist dies....

Ultimately, since infringement requires intent

Since when? I thought Bright Tunes Music v. Harrisongs Music eliminated any requirement for mens rea in civil copyright infringement cases.

1. Teach the bot the 16 gramatical rules of Esperanto
2. Download the entire group of articles of the Esperanto Wikipedia (123889 articles at this moment).
3. ?????
4. Mi estas Skynet.

Really? Care to share an example of anyone EVER getting into trouble publishing something they created themself?

Here you go. George Harrison.

"Harrison was later sued for copyright infringement over the single "My Sweet Lord" because of its similarity to the 1963 Chiffons single "He's So Fine", owned by Bright Tunes. Harrison denied deliberately stealing the song, but he lost the resulting court case in 1976 as the judge accepted that Harrison had "subconsciously" plagiarised "He's So Fine". When considering liable earnings, "My Sweet Lord"'s contribution to the sales of All Things Must Pass and The Best of George Harrison were taken into account, and the judge decided a figure of $1,599,987 was owed to Bright Tunes. "

And yes, it's too difficult to contact all copyright holders most of the time, and the fees for licensing cover songs are extremely overpriced. The Harry Fox Agency, BMI and ASCAP can all go fuck themselves. Do you have a solution for this messed-up situation? Eliminating the publishers/royalty mafia (who don't pay the artists anything worthwhile, and no, $30 a year for hundreds of radio plays is not worthwhile) would be a good start.

Anyway, I'm just going to continue with the copyright infringement, since I don't think there's anything morally wrong with it. The artists whose copyright I'm infringing are not harmed by this, since the pennies they make on a $20 CD are nothing compared to the few dollars they make on a $30 ticket sale.

We have a transparent caching proxy to speed up HTTP video delivery. caching system. You mentioned that you watch thousands of videos on video sharing sites every day; we cache the most popular videos so that we can feed them to you faster.

Good so long as I can watch Like a boss for the 50th time today with no lag I'm good.

How about sharing homemade pictures

Protocols other than HTTP don't have a well-defined takedown statute. So to save our behinds from being sued by the sculptors' union when you share photos of copyrighted sculptures without permission, we throttle other protocols.

Homemade as in I took it with my own camera, or is a freinds picture, or I made it myself, I said nothing about copyrighted.

movies

Using major label background music and/or characters without permission.

Again I said homemade, as in I made it, I own it, I'm not talking about hollywood here...

music

Subconsciously lifted from a major label song. Just ask George Harrison's widow. (Or what technique would you recommend to determine whether or not a given series of notes is copyrighted to someone else before you publish it?)

Homemade you know what that means right?

free games

Video game consoles don't have free games. In fact, they use cryptographic mechanisms to lock out the use of copylefted software.

When was I talking about consoles? But since you want to, consoles do have demos which are free, but back to what I was talking about, are in fact games that are free not stolen, the idea does exist, now you've heard of it.

software

Which violates patents on algorithms.

Um there's free software around, trials, demos, donations, completely free, again nothing said about stolen.

not to mention playing games

Most games need latency guarantees more than bandwidth guarantees. Limiting bandwidth allows our routers to respond more quickly to your packets.

So what happens when I get sent so many packets that I either can't send and/or recieve them fast enough therefore causing me to lag, what then?

uploading other types of files not via http, how about ftp, ssh

If you are using for purposes other than home entertainment, try upgrading to our business-class service designed for teleworkers.

That is home entertainment, ftp so I can upload files to sites, ssh so I can login to other servers, like say for a website for both, just cause you do find that fun doesn't mean other people don't.

Some of the several games I play the maps can be 50 megs or bigger

Then download them the night before you play.

What the hell? Ok let me further explain, said servers also server the maps at random and can't always be downloaded independently, and if you idle on the server you get kicked/banned, how do you imagine I get them then, also in other said games, the games are at random times and can be any sort of map, what do I do then, these rules they are trying to enforce are completely arbitrary not to mention that their (or yours whatever the case may be) solutions to said problems are completely worthless.

several full games are easily greater than 2 gigs, most being around

How about sharing homemade pictures

Protocols other than HTTP don't have a well-defined takedown statute. So to save our behinds from being sued by the sculptors' union when you share photos of copyrighted sculptures without permission, we throttle other protocols.

movies

Using major label background music and/or characters without permission.

music

Subconsciously lifted from a major label song. Just ask George Harrison's widow. (Or what technique would you recommend to determine whether or not a given series of notes is copyrighted to someone else before you publish it?)

free games

Video game consoles don't have free games. In fact, they use cryptographic mechanisms to lock out the use of copylefted software.

software

Which violates patents on algorithms.

not to mention playing games

Most games need latency guarantees more than bandwidth guarantees. Limiting bandwidth allows our routers to respond more quickly to your packets.

uploading other types of files not via http, how about ftp, ssh

If you are using for purposes other than home entertainment, try upgrading to our business-class service designed for teleworkers.

Some of the several games I play the maps can be 50 megs or bigger

Then download them the night before you play.

several full games are easily greater than 2 gigs, most being around 4 gigs or so

Our service provides more than enough bandwidth to order the retail version and then activate it online once you have received it in the mail. If that's too slow, you can still download the game overnight.

Commit plagiarism and you'd best start looking for a new career.

Say I write a song, but then it turns out that a similar song had been published earlier. George Harrison wrote "My Sweet Lord" and lost a lawsuit because it turned out that he had accidentally copied "He's So Fine" written by Ronald Mack: Bright Tunes Music v. Harrisongs Music . How do I keep myself from plagiarizing on accident?

My back-of-the-napkin estimate says you claim it is only ~300 miles to the far side of the planet.

You seem to be using elapsed distance over elapsed time as a measure of the rover's speed. However, the rovers are often sitting still doing science and taking pictures for a good deal of the time, so that's not a realistic speed.

So, Let's see... [/me finds napkin, turns over]... 148 years at MER top speed of 5 cm/s (as per NASA site) comes to about 234,000 km, or 47,000km if you use the 1cm/s average speed the rover gets when you take obstacle avoidance into effect. Opportunity could drive itself around Mars twice in that time. Of course this assumes travel 24h/day (or 24.6597h/sol). If we only have usable sunlight for a third of that time, then Opportunity can only travel 16,000km.

So how far apart are the rovers? Plugging some latitude and longitude figures into a great circle calculator and compensating for the different Mars parameters... 9700km apart, as the Martian crow-equivalent flies. So, assuming a travel day of 1/3 of a sol at the 0.036 km/h rover self drive speed, and allowing for an increase in distance to avoid obstacles of 50-60% - 15,000km.

Wow! My my pull-a-number-out-of-thin-air wild guess came remarkably close.

"The point is that we have two different kinds of systems capturing the same kind of physics," says string theorist Clifford Johnson

Back in the day it was commonplace to construct analogs of mechanical systems, for instance, using electronic components. If the differential equations describing the two systems are similar, so will their solutions be.

That the topic is string theory is also reminiscent of how soap works. Half of a soap molecule is soluble in water, the other half insoluble - thus bridging between wet and oily substances. Very yin and yang.

If you can reasonably prove that you didn't know anything like it existed, then you're in the clear.

For years, I've been asking people how to do exactly that, and nobody has been able to give me a straight answer as to how to keep myself from becoming the next George Harrison. Do you have any ideas?

Kim Newman gets a lot of mileage out of this joke in a (rather good) short story (warnings: link contains spoilers):

http://blaklion.best.vwh.net/ubermensch.html

An image that particularly stood out for me was this one: http://www.flickr.com/photo_zoom.gne?id=2059045060&size=o Simply... fantastic! I love science fiction but haven't read
much pulp material. This theme of combining the electronic
with the organic... was it that prevelant in the '50s? I haven't
seen a lot of art like this. The only thing that even comes
close in my memory is perhaps some of the old War of the Worlds
related art: http://drzeus.best.vwh.net/wotw/0009.html Cool stuff.

Can you elaborate please?

That seems to be a case of parody fair use. They show words.

And if what you say is so, how does it relate to this:

http://abbeyrd.best.vwh.net/mysweet.htm

[George Harrison stated that the events that occurred during the litigation of a claim that he had plagiarized the melody for his worldwide smash hit, "My Sweet Lord" from a hit single from 1963 called "He's So Fine" would fill a book.]

Trying to figure things out...

all the best,

drew

Copyright law, at least in Canada (I have read the Copyright Act, but IANAL) specifically includes things like making guitar tablature as making a copy. Copyright doesn't depend on the means of reproduction; even if the new work is different but very similar to the original work, and is derived from the original work, it doesn't excuse the copyright obligations of the "copier". If you read a novel, and write it out by hand, you are not allowed to distribute that copy, even if you make spelling mistakes or re-word a few sentences. Heck, you are not even allowed to translate a work into another language. You are not allowed to make a movie out of a copyrighted book nor sing a song with the same tune as another song, even if you change the lyrics. To my knowledge these basic rules are in all copyright laws passed in any countries that signed the Berne Convention.

Don't confuse things too much though, because the derived work may be subject to the "copier's" copyright as well; consider a translation of one book into another language. The author of the book owns the copyright for that book, but not the copyright for the translated book (assuming it was translated without authorization of the author). The copyright for the translation rests with the translator, however, since it is derived from a copyrighted work, the translator can not distribute it without permission from the author. The author does not have permission to dictate when the translation will be distributed; the author can only dictate when it will NOT be distributed, until the copyright of the original work expires. Similarly, the authors of the guitar tablature can prevent others from copying their work, however the artists who wrote the songs in question (or, whoever owns the copyright) can prevent the distribution of tab.

Note: This post is meant to explain copyright law. It is not meant as an endorsement or condemnation of this law.

"It is legal to plagiarize, and big companies do it very often (it's generally known as ghost writing). Copyright infringement is illegal."

1. While not "illegal", plagiarism is classed as a form of copyright infringement, so people and companies can be, and have been successfully sued for it. Here are some links (Google for "plagiarism lawsuit" to see a whole load of others):

http://abbeyrd.best.vwh.net/mysweet.htm
http://arthistory.about.com/b/a/116985.htm
http://www.plagiarismtoday.com/2005/11/18/madonna- loses-plagiarism-lawsuit/
http://www.own-it.org/news/article/?p=15&a=220&t=

2. Ghost writing isn't plagiarism. A ghost writer is paid to write books or articles in somebody else's name, with the "somebody else" usually being a famous or topical person whose writing are judged to be insufficient for publication. A link to some definitions:

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&client=safari&r ls=en-us&defl=en&q=define:ghostwriter&sa=X&oi=glos sary_definition&ct=title

I never thought I was alone in my wholesale rejection of such "contracts," but it's nice to see validation from industry luminaries from time to time.

Schwab

If I could find an affordable Ethernet card, my Amiga 3000 would still be in active use today, mostly as an archive server for all my old stuff. Sadly, the only Ethernet cards I can find are $150 or so, and the TCP/IP stack is (usually) not included.

The way things are now, though, the only way Amiga will have a future is if A) a dedicated investor with very deep pockets and a lot of patience funds a company to look after it; or B) they Open Source the entire OS and support utilities. The latter is likely very easy from a contractual aspect, since the only "borrowed" code was from TRIPOS, and much of that was re-written in C for the OS 2.04 release years ago.

I could go on and on about what made Amiga great, but every time I even mention it, people immediately place me in the slot marked, "crazy." I'd like to see more Amiga philosophy in modern software design, but even I have to admit that light of Amiga may be irretrievably fading. Really, you people have no idea what you missed...

Schwab

for years these wannabe musicians (hip-hop DJ's) have been stealing tracks and music from people who actually make music and then going back and paying them after the fact.i hate to be on the side of the RIAA, but this is one time i am.

Yeah, not to mention wannabe musicians like the Beatles ( http://abbeyrd.best.vwh.net/mysweet.htm ), and The Verve ( http://www.superswell.com/samplelaw/horror.html#ve rve ), and Led Zepplin ( http://www.illegal-art.org/audio/historic.html ), who were all punished for stealing music... Rock musicians are nothing but a bunch of talentless thieves!

I have chosen to look at Reality, something that's been out of fashion since the 2000 US elections. The realities are that science and technology continue to advance and, as a consequence, abundance increases as cost decreases.

In a sense, the computer represents the ultimate achievement in manufacturing, at least as far as bits are concerned: Infinite abundance at zero cost. You can make an infinite number of copies of a digital work for no incremental cost. You are constrained only by the amount of storage you have, and the available energy to run the computer.

I wrote an essay on this subject over ten years ago, vaguely exploring the economic and social ramifications of such manufacturing capability. I've also posted here extensively on the subject. My main thrust was that defective recorded media (DRM) and other forms of copy protection were childish attempts to wish away reality, and that cheap copying was not only not going to go away, but proliferate. I argued that the economy existing in the memories of our computers -- where a given instance of an artifact was inherently valueless -- would one day "leak out" into the physical sphere. I argued that we needed to be prepared for this day, and that the realm of digital media served as an ideal place in which to try out new economic models and risk/reward structures -- structures and conventions that fundamentally acknowledged that digital artifacts were easily and infinitely copyable. I argued that this day was coming, whether we prepared for it or not. I argued that, if we didn't prepare for it, we would be seriously fscked.

Well, guess what? It looks like it's starting to happen.

We are not yet seeing anything close to computer-like ease of duplication, but even this meager advance in physical manufacturing is already causing what could be serious socioeconomic repercussions. Do not think for one moment that manufacturing is somehow going to get "harder" again. Absent a regional plague or war, this issue is only going to accelerate. Manufacturing costs will continue to fall and manufacturing centers will become more prolific as the technology of manufacturing itself becomes smaller and cheaper. Hell, 3D "printers" have fallen below the USD$10,000.00 mark. How long before you can pick them up in BestBuy?

This is not going to go away, and you are not going to stop it or slow it down with silly little notions like copy protection or WTO/WIPO trade agreements. You need to change your thinking. You need to prepare for this. Otherwise... Well, let's just say the social chaos of today's Iraq will look like a parlor game in comparison.

Schwab

I would welcome an opportunity to test something that I considered fair use that some content producer is trying to litigate me out of doing...

Like writing songs in the first place? Do you want to be the next George Harrison?

Tepples is trying to apply one case to all music. As I mentioned per our last conversation precedent doesn't stop a judge from ruling different in similiar circumstances. The majority of music presented to the same judge most likely would pass muster. Tepples fearmongering nonwithstanding (he still hasn't read the footnotes like I asked him to)

My Sweet Lord

I trust, therefore, that your disdain for such a system also means you're not a part of activity that would leave you on the receiving end of a legal suit from the RIAA.

I do not buy RIAA music. I do not download it either (not even legally). I write and play my own. This puts me at high risk of suit due to "unintentional theft."

It ain't all about illegal downloading.

Be a part of the solution to create and encourage the new artists, the new distribution channels, the new promotional channels, and the new studios and "labels" (yes, anything that gets sufficiently large and successful will have multiple layers of hierarchy, organization, and even bureaucracy), all of which will be required to support this new model to varying degrees.

I am. Therefore I am a threat. Therefore I am at risk of suit. It ain't all about illegal downloading. It's about control of creation and distribution. Sooner or later they'll be trying to come for all of us.

Yes, we need to think hard about where the place to draw the line is, but once it's drawn we'd damned well better be prepared to hold it, or they'll bulldoze right over us. Some of our brothers and sister have already been crushed under the treads.

KFG

I have never called them that. In my world it has always been Apple records or just Apple. I seldom refer to Apple computers as Apple computers. I refer to them as Macs or G5s ;)

Actually someone might confuse Apple Corps with Apple computers but I doubt they will confuse them with Apple records.

I don't make a penny off this but the Apple Corps thing rang a bell. House was the bell. It is a good book (as is The Soul of a New Machine) and Apple Corps were the contractors building the house.

They haven't been sued yet.

Yeah, I know... music.... houses.... no connection and no one is going to confuse the two.

Apple Computer.... Apple records.... Apple sells music.... Apple sells Beatles music... Apple doesn't sell Beatles music... my brain hurts!

Anway, I seem to recall somewhere where the agreement stated that Apple (the computer one) would not sell physical media. Can't find any evidence at the moment.

From TFA: Apple Corps was started by The Beatles in 1968 and is still owned by Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, the widow of John Lennon and the estate of George Harrison.

The last I heard they don't need any money.

Back in 1970 Paul sued the others over a money issue. Read the part about Allen Klein.

Today they are worth a lot of money.

So who wants the money from the suit? I would guess it is not one of the original Beatles.

qz

Property is theft.

The evil is when someone takes a liberty or property through force from someone else.

That's only your limited view. The reality is that property is theft.

Your body is composed of particles of star-stuff billions of years old. Do you really believe you can claim "ownership" of that, or anything else, for that matter? Even if your consciousness manages to "improve" the work of millions of related physical and biological processes, the net result is the material of you and everything else was here before you and will be here long after you. The same goes for the products of your labors.

Ownership is a shared delusion, like society and government. If you're looking for evil, try looking at Man's attempt to spread his deranged monkey-mind beyond the ravaged confines of his unfortunate birth-planet.

I played Riven, and it was quite good too, despite the fact that there were many more 'people' in it than MYST. I ate it up, I worked on nothing but the game for four days. it haunted my dreams and my artwork for months afterwards. I drew maps of Riven (see the bottom of the page) and they were an instant hit, driving my website over quota for weeks. the maps were published in a couple different gaming magazines in Europe.

I tried Exile, but the "full motion" bothered me. so, I never got very far. I'm sure it was a great game, but I missed the 'stillness'.

based on what I've read in the parent post, Uru will never interest me.

This may be my lack of knowledge about computer engineering (despite my CS degree ;)), but how would we use any representation other than binary? Do we have transistor logic that can do base three, or any other base? Isn't it all based on logic gates, which are inherently binary?

While there are numerous very good reasons for computers to use binary, it is not impossible to build a computer that use, say, base three or any other low base for that matter. On the transistor level there is no such thing as 1 and 0, only voltages, and while an engineer designing a logic circuit will usually define a few volts to mean 1 and no voltage to mean 0, it is quite possible to define 2 * a few volts to be 2 and go ahead and design a base three circuit - take a look at this for more info on base three computing (google's cache of it since the site appears to be down).

I still believe that there are good reasons that contemporary computers use base two - a lot of things become simpler when you don't have to worry about multiple voltage levels, only wether it's "a few volts" or "about zero volts."

And once you've finished reading up on base three computers, there's always more interesting stuff to read on the net.

My god. It is like going to a Rolls Royce dealer to steal a car and taking the Geo Metro from the Used lot.

Seriously, I'd take RIAA a bit more seriously if they placed value on the song based on market value like the judge did in the My Sweet Lord case.

Security-expert-turned-law-prof Nick Szabo predicted this kind of thing many years ago. He called it a Smart Contract. The idea was to use technology to make contracts self-enforcing. Like many of Nick's ideas, he was and is way ahead of his time. These kinds of things are inevitable.

Security-expert-turned-law-prof Nick Szabo predicted this kind of thing many years ago. He called it a Smart Contract. The idea was to use technology to make contracts self-enforcing. Like many of Nick's ideas, he was and is way ahead of his time. These kinds of things are inevitable.