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So once all media is constrained by GPS coordinates, the US gov't could selectively deny unfavored nations access to GPS data, rendering all their DVDs, CDs and eBooks useless?

Sound unlikely? It's interesting that the US is pressuring Europe to shelve its own GPS system.

Domination through media denial: "You want your mTV? Meet our demands."

This seems a bit much even for Wired. The creatures in these games are following a predefined set of rules, certainly they are a complex set of rules, but the way they "learn" is entirely predetermined (that is, what they learn depends on what they are exposed to, but the formula for converting exposure into knowledge is set by the game designers). I think the fact that the graphics are rendered so realistically makes it easier to make the leap to thinking they are really acting "intelligent."

Who knows what really sets human intelligence apart, is it ability to make rules or nondeterministic memory or whatever, but it seems evident (to me, in my ever-so-humble opinion) that these creatures don't have it.

- adam

'People react to it [using WiFi] the way they did to the first time they used the Internet, or heard 'Smells like Teen Spirit,'" said Cliff Skolnick, an engineer...'

here

These are odd examples of previous successes for an advocacy piece.

YMMV, but for me:

first time used the Internet - confused as hell,
first time heard 'Teen Spirit' - I felt ill.

I believe AOL did get a trademark for "You've got Mail", when using the distinctive "AOL Guy" voice.

AOL(tw) has registered the mark YOU'VE GOT MAIL(tm) for AOL service, AOL service, toys, movies (e.g. with Hanks and Ryan), and t-shirts, and not just with Elwood Edwards' voice. However, AOL lost its (tm) on "you have mail" because it was too generic.

Next they'll go after little "Evil Inside" logos that constitute fair use in free speech (as satire, political protest) as laid down by Falwell v. Flint and the First Amendment. Heck, one can make a completely valid argument that the same would apply to "Linux Inside. How can someone own a trademark on the expression of one object being within another?

"Yoga Inside" has no chance of diluting the Intel brand; however, Intel's behaviour does. Nobody's going to run around and say that they're computer is a "Yoga Inside". Your rant is spurrious.

I'm deeply suspicious of changes to trademark law. Got to love the recent changes that have been made to copyright law.

<sarcasm>Thanks, Disney!</sarcasm>. If this trademark stuff gets as out-of-whack, maybe we'll be using XPortholes instead of XWindows a few years down the road.

http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,20040, 00.html

TOKYO -- An old Apple laptop that sold poorly when it was released in Japan a few years ago has subsequently achieved cult status, with fans paying up to $25,000 to upgrade and decorate their aging machines.

Interesting story about BOB. You every wonder where you got that paperclip in Word? BOB. Ever wonder who the project lead for BOB was? Bill Gates' wife was responsible for the paper clip. Really, it's true.

Melinda French Gates was a project lead on MS Bob (you have to remember MicroSoft Bob -- it was that cartoony software that slowed your machine to a crawl and insulted you while balancing your checkbook or reading email). When Bob was revealed to be the complete and utter turkey that it was always destined to be, guess what got some of the "usability and human interface" stuff? Office. Guess who happened to also be, ah, "seeing" The Boss? Melinda. Why wasn't Bob just canned, like any other project that wastes millions and failed completely? You have to wonder if Bill G wasn't getting pillow-talked into something. In fact, MS Bob was the first consumer product Bill Gates released personally. People do the strangest things for love.

Anyway, a lot of what Bob had to offer didn't get canned (as it should have). It got repuposed and wound up in other MS products. Take a look at the screenshot on this page. See that dog in the lower corner? That was Bob's dog Rex. (I wish they had a picture of the dragon named "Java"; I wonder if McNealy every knew about that?) Looks like that paper clip, eh? Bob's ghost is in other stuff, too. MS Agent had a re-incarnation.

Well this is all way OT. But I think the Bob fiasco sheds some light on what goes on at MS. There's really no reason to wonder about the pape clip. I'm sure Melinda will insist on touchy-feely stuff being included in every MS product. I love it when someone thinks for me...

-B

Or a bong.

The Old Mac That Went to Pot

Is it possible that geeks who are shot down by this bill could make a mass exodus to other countries?

Would other countries, like Canada for instance, be upset that a torrent of America's most brilliant citizens were suddenly at their borders, looking for work? Could it possibly be a blessing to them? Maybe Canada and other developed nations should start offering harbor for American citizens of the intellectual contingents!

If the American Government no longer wants highly intelligent people contributing to society, I suggest that we oblige. Why continue producing work (code) that makes America a better place when we can take our brains elsewhere?

If the CBDTPA gets passed into law, there is no sense in fighting it. Let's follow the lead set by Alan Cox and take our brains and mountainous volumes of talent somewhere else.

One thing that governments must work to do is please the citizens so the citizens either remain for the collective good of society, or continue to support the government.

It appears to me that our government does not want the contributions of brilliant citizens but rather the monies of megacorporations. I'm sure that America would get along quite nicely if all the innovators in the technology field were to leave. :)

Personally, I don't see any reason to continue feeding into this pointless system where laws are passed to the highest bidder. Why would I do work and development that the government and their corporations can use to their advantage and against me? Anyone else of this mindset?

Canada bound?

Posted by Michael Fraase, 3/23/02 at 9:54:46 PM.

When elephants dance, its best to get out of the way. Thats exactly whats happening now as the entertainment industrythe recording, publishing, and motion picture industries, mainlyattempts a worldwide intellectual property power grab with two distinct targets. Think of it: a coup and a lock on all published content in the same year, amazing isnt it?

Target number 1 is the average customer: anyone who purchases software, an audio CD, an electronic book, or a movie on DVD. The entertainment industry sees customers as pirates, plain and simple. In their collective minds eye, we all have a wooden leg, eye patch, and a filthy talking parrot on our shoulder. While the Constitution grants customers certain rights with regard to copyrighted material, the entertainment industry very much wants to separate us from those rights.

Target number 2 in the sights of the entertainment industry are technology behemoths like Microsoft, Intel, IBM, and Apple. These companies, in the perverse worldview of the entertainment industry, make the toolscomputers mostlythat allow customers to practice their piracy.

Let me point out that I am a copyright owner, as is everyone else who has ever created a work in tangible form. Thats all authors, for short. Authors are almost never members of the entertainment industry club. The entertainment industry hates authors almost as much as they hate customers. Sometimes, especially when authors get uppity, the entertainment industry hates authors much more than customers. Until recently, authors have always been seen to be at least a marginal threat while customers were seen as merely necessary annoyances.

To complicate matters by at least an order of magnitude, the consumer electronics manufacturersthe companies that make stereos, VCRs, and DVD playershave aligned with the entertainment industry. At least some of them, and at least to some extent.

Unfortunately for usboth authors and customerswere likely to get squished as these elephants dance. The intent of the entertainment industry, believe it or not, is to outlaw personal computers. As security and cryptography expert Bruce Schneier explains it to Mike Godwin: If you think about it, the entertainment industry does not want people to have computers; theyre too powerful, too flexible, and too extensible. They want people to have Internet Entertainment Platforms: televisions, VCRs, game consoles, etc.

Copy-protected CDs

The recording industry is selling shiny plastic discs that contain music that cant be copied to or even played on some customers equipment. Philips, the owner of the CD format says these discs cannot be called CDs because they do not meet the standard of what a CD is. Sony, one of those weird hybrid companies that, as a member in good standing of both the technology and entertainment industries, finds itself on both sides of this issue says it cant guarantee the audio quality of these discs. The technology used to protect these discs sometimes prevents the discs from playing on computer CD-ROM drives, DVD players, and other devices specifically designed to play standard audio CDs.

Sales of recorded music are down 10% in the United States over the last year. The recording industry blames this downturn not on the economic recession, not on the crappy music that theyve released in the past few years, but on Internet piracy.

And its only going to get worse. Hilary B. Rosen, president of the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) told Congress on 28 February 2001 that the practice of copy-protecting audio CDs would expand in the United States. If technology can be used to pirate copyrighted content, Rosen wrote in her response to a Congressional query, shouldnt technology likewise be used to protect copyrighted content? Surely, no one can expect copyright owners to ignore what is happening in the marketplace and fail to protect their creative works because some people engage in copying just for their personal use. Her pal, Michael Eisner, head of Disney, said he was tired of being finessed by the technology industry, whatever that means.

Unfortunately for Eisner, Rosen, Disney, and the RIAA, personal useand more importantly the rights associated with that use of copyrighted materialis exactly why copying of copyrighted material is not just allowed, but mandated by the Constitution. That some individuals illegally sell copied CDs or distribute copies of the music on the Internet is immaterial. In fact, fairly casual observation indicates that if customers are treated like criminals they will indeed begin to behave like criminals.

It has become common practice for music-loving computer owners to legally transfer audio CDs they purchase to .mp3 format files on their computers. The copy protection technology employed by the recording industry prevents such transfers by adding distortions to the music of the recordings. The industry insists that these distortions are inaudible when the disc is played on a standard CD player but result in pops when the music is transferred to a computer. In any case, its usually impossible to tell whether or not a disc includes the copy protection technology; in general, the copy-protected discs are not labeled.

Ironically, or probably not, .mp3 player manufacturers could easily defeat the copy protection technology, but they fear doing so would risk prosecution under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) which prohibits the bypassing of copy protection systems. In 1999, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that .mp3 players did not violate copyright law because customers have the right to space shift music they have purchased.

Moral rights

Interestingly, the act of using the copy protection technology is much more prevalent in Europe. Most European countries, unlike the United States, recognize an artists moral rights in the work they create.

Moral rights are a package of intellectual property rights granted to the original creator of a work, and include:

• The right of integrity;
• The right of attribution;
• The right of disclosure;
• The right to withdraw or retract; and
• The right to reply to criticism.

These moral rights are separate from the economic copyright that these days generally transfers from an author to a publisher and they can survive the author. The idea originated with the French, who believe that any creative work, by definition, includes the personality and character of the author. Where copyright is a property right that can be transferred, moral rights are part of the authors personality and character and non-transferable.

The first two moral rightsthe right of integrity and the right of attributionare especially important because they are codified as international law in the Berne Convention. The United States claims its intellectual property law complies with the Berne Convention, but this is just two instances where it doesnt.

The most important of these rights is the first, the right of integrity. Basically it prohibits an authors work from being distorted in any way that would harm the authors reputation and dates to the 1957 French law of droit au respect de l'oeuvre. Its a safe bet that a cross-reference over which the author had no control would be seen as a distortion of the work.

Seemingly, in Europe at least, an artist could make an argument against the production of a copy-protected version of her work on the sole basis of moral rights. Especially in the case of an audio CD to which distortion is intentionally added by the publisher.

In the United States, Representative Rick Boucher (D-Virginia) appears to be taking the point position in questioning the behavior of the entertainment industry. He believes that instead of using copyright to obtain fair compensation for the works theyve licensed, the copyright owner industryincluding the recording industryis attempting to exercise complete dominance and total control of the copyrighted work.

And just how much money does an artist receive in the form of royalties? Use Moses Avalons royalty calculator to figure it out.

A DMCA rewrite?

Representative Rick Boucher (D-Virginia) plans to introduce legislation that would regulateand maybe outright bancopy-protected compact discs. Boucher reportedly has concerns about customers buying copy-protected discs without knowing it and the compatibility problems inherent with the copy protection mechanism. In an interview with Wired News, Boucher said, The big problem initially is that consumers have no information that is complete and reliable about the disabilities which attend copy-protected CDs. These CDs will not play in DVD players, not play on personal computers (and) not even play on all CD players.

Boucher isnt talking about what kind of legislation he might introduce to accomplish his goal of protecting audio CD customers, and the possibilities are intriguing. At the simplest level, legislation may require copy-protected CDs to carry a warning label. At a more interesting level, Boucher may try to rewrite the DMCA. In fact, Boucher announced that he would introduce such legislation last July and reiterated his commitment to that approach in early March of this year.

Internet radio

Under the U.S. Copyright Offices interpretation of the DMCA, Internet radio may be a thing of the past. KFJC, KPIG, and RadioParadise may all be goners. Why is this tragic? Because any of these stations are orders of magnitude better than the sorry excuse for radio available on the traditional dial.

Internet radio is routing around an obsolete and unaccountable industrys safely padded environs and making a difference. Corporate radio sounds exactly the same from coast to coast because it is exactly the same. Sit and watch that website for a few minutes; if it doesnt nauseate you, itll damn sure hypnotize you.

Adding to the arsenal of tools deployed by big media is the Copyright Arbitration and Royalty Panel (CARP). CARP met secretly for the past several months and issued the CARP Report in late February. The keystone of this report is steep licensing fees for webcast music. Lets be clear: compulsory licensing is a good idea, consistent with the intent of copyright law. Usury licensing fees for small webcasters is not.

KPIG responded almost immediately with a plea to save the Pig from the digital slaughterhouse:

Independent webcasters such as KPIG are facing a grave threat to our existence. It may be an evil conspiracy on the part of the big record companies and corporate webcasters, ormore likelyits just a dumb mistake. In either case, KPIG could soon be liable for huge music usage fees ($5,000 - $10,000 per month) that would make it impossible for us to stay online. For background on the issue, see The Death of Web Radio? below and the SaveInternetRadio.org website.

Doc Searls, in his article Bizarre vs. Bazaar, eloquently sums up the combination of DMCA and CARP as the destruction of the Net as a commons and its replacement with a plumbing system for the distribution of content (a word hardly used in a shipping context before Big Media got all drooly over The Promise of The Net).

A brief history of copyright

Copyright, until this recent entertainment industry power-grab, has always been a delicatemaybe even precariousbalance between the rights of the author to benefit from his or her work for a short period of time and the rights of the rest of us to innovate and benefit from those works when they fall into the public domain.

The Constitution granted Congress the power to promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries. Originally, the Copyright Act of 1790 established the limited times of copyright protection of 14 years with an option for the author to renew the copyright for an additional 14 years if he or she were still alive. That copyright term was good enough for the first 100 years of intellectual property in the United States. During the next 100 years, Congress extended the copyright term 11 times.

Certain uses of a protected work that would ordinarily be seen as infringing are specifically allowed for education, criticism, etc. These uses are allowed under the fair use provision. The core concept of fair use is that, in general, any use that does not exploit the commercial value of the original is permissible.

The fair use statute recognizes four criteria by which a use can be determined to be fair or unfair:

1. The purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;
2. The nature of the copyrighted work;
3. The amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted wok as a whole; and
4. The effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.

William S. Strong, in The Copyright Book: A Practical Guide , provides an interpretation for working writers:

As a general rule a critic or reporter should not quote at any one point more than two or three paragraphs of a book or journal article, a stanza of a poem, or a solitary chart or graph from a technical treatise.

The Net allows ordinary citizens to exercise their fair use rights in ways never imagined by the entertainment industry. Subsequently, the reaction is to pressure innovation by extending the copyright term for any given work. In October, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear a case that will likely determine the legitimacy of the most recent copyright term extension, the Copyright Term Extension Act of 1998. This law extends the copyright term to the life of the author plus 70 years. In the case of works made for hire in which a corporation owns the copyright, the copyright term is now 95 years.

While one side of the entertainment industry was pushing, an activity that eventually became the Copyright Term Extension Act of 1998, the other side was pulling. That activity eventually resulted in the DMCA. Designed specifically to control the uses that can be made of published works, the DMCA makes it illegal to circumvent copyright-protection technology. The result: the entertainment industry controls not only what you see and hear but the methods and devices with which you see and hear it. Even if the copy-protection is circumvented to enable the fair use of a published work, it is prohibited and deemed to be a criminal act.

Digital TV

According to Mike Godwin, digital television is the tipping point in the war between the entertainment and technology industries. Never mind that every time the entertainment industry shoots itself in the foot, the technology industry comes to its rescue. Remember in the 1970s when the movie industry was in a deep funk and that vampire Jack Valenti said that VCRs would kill it for good? As it turns out, the VCR revived the film industry. The film industry was failing not because of customer VCR usage but because they were putting out epically craptacular films. Just like the recording industry todaywhen in doubt blame those dang customers.

Anyway, Godwin says digital television is the flashpoint because its quality (technical, not artistic) is way too good and unlike DVDs, its unencrypted and has to stay unencrypted to be useful. Oh, and the pesky FCC regulations say that broadcast television signals must be sent unencrypted.

The purveyors of digital television think they have the answer: digital watermarks. They think thats the answer for the online distribution of music, and any other digital content as well. Unfortunately for them, in order for a watermark to be used to restrict copying of digital content, consumer devices used to play the content will have to have technology included thats capable of receiving those watermarks. That would require the cooperation of the technology industry, and that cooperation has not been forthcoming.

Godwin cites the theory of Edward Felten, a computer scientist at Princeton, holding that any sort of tagging system that is undetectable by the user will likely be easy to remove.

Digital rights management

Perhaps the weirdest part of all of this is that the technology industry is just as enamored of protecting intellectual property. Theyre just going about it in a minimally different way. Digital rights management (DRM) is the battle cry of the techheads. And where they differ from their entertainment industry brethren is the question of government mandates. The technology industry wants to lock up published content just as badly as the entertainment industry; they just dont want the government (or anyone else) telling them that they have to. Remember that the entertainment and technology industries both lobbied heavily in favor of the DMCA.

And then there are the schizoids, the companieslike AOL Time Warner and Sonythat are so large that they find themselves on both sides of the fence depending which way the wind blows.

SSSCA > CBDTPA

The Security Systems Standards and Certification Act (SSSCA), kept on a leash but regularly trotted out by Senator Fritz Hollings (D-South Carolina), chair of the Senate Commerce Committee, can best be thought of as a sort of appendix to the DCMA. It is clearly designed to further extend legal protections for digital content owned or licensed by enormous media conglomerates.

According to the draft language of the bill, it would be illegal to create or distribute any interactive digital device that does not include and utilize certified security technologies approved by the Commerce Department. Even though MIT professor and RSA Data Security co-founder Ron Rivest has referred to the proposed legislation as the Digital Rectal Thermometer Security Act its really just mandatory corporate welfare for media conglomerates subsidized by the actual creators and consumers of intellectual property.

Felony penalties for distributing copyrighted material without the certified security technologies fully enabled or using a computer that circumvents those technologies are up to five years in prison and fines up to US$500,000.

Even worse, the proposed legislation calls for manufacturers of digital devices and the media conglomerates to collaboratively develop a copy protection system. If, after two years, they cant come up with a mechanism both industries can live with, the federal government will specify a standard. Hollings bill fails to include the actual creators or users of content in any of the machinations.

Should we be surprised that four of Hollings top campaign donors are media conglomerates?

Predictably, the politicians split along party lines over the SSSCA. Or, more accurately, the split is along the lines of entertainment industry campaign contributions. Democrats, who received US$24.2 million in contributions from the entertainment industry tend to support the idea of legislating the protection of copyrighted material in digital form. Republicans, who received a relatively paltry US$13.3 million in entertainment industry contributions usually oppose the SSSCA, claiming it is too interventionist.

In mid-March 2002, the other shoe dropped. Senator Hollings, better known as the Senator from Disney, transformed the SSSCA into the Consumer Broadband and Digital Television Promotion Act (CBDTPA) and ceased his tip-toeing around. The CBDTPA is real legislation, and enjoys the support of five other co-authors: Ted Stevens (R-Alaska), Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii), John Breaux (D-Louisiana), Bill Nelson (D-Florida) and Dianne Feinstein (D-California). Just think, one more author and they could have been the seven dwarves. The CBDTPA would require all digital deviceseverything from fax machines to MP3 players and computers (as well as the software that runs on them)to be equipped with embedded copy protection schemes, approved by the federal government.

Whats most disturbing about this is relatively paltry sum it took to buy this legislation. During the 2002 election cycle, only two of the dirty half-dozen were in the top 20 recipients of soft money from the entertainment industry. So far in the 2002 election cycle, Hollings has received only US$19,000 and Stevens has taken only US$39,621. To get the real story, we have to look back several election cycles:

Senator

2002

2000

1998

1996

Total

Fritz Hollings (D-South Carolina)

$19,000

$32,750

$215,284

$43,300

$310,334

Ted Stevens (R-Alaska)

$39,621

$69,900

$109,521

Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii)

$49,852

$49,852

John Breaux (D-Louisiana)

$120,920

$120,920

Bill Nelson (D-Florida)

$47,550

N/A

N/A

$47,550

Dianne Feinstein (D-California)

$211,638

$211,638

$849,815

Theres no question why Fritz Hollings carried the water for this puppy, is there? But check those senatorial links in the table carefully because they tell the even bigger story of who the top contributing industries were for each politician. In every case, the entertainment industry scored big in the top 20 contributors for every Senator. And remember the 2002 campaign cycle isnt over yet. Not hardly.

So, how much does it cost to get your bill through the Senate? Looks to me like itll come in right around US$1 million.

Enter DigitalConsumer.org

The technology industry was quick to respond to the CBDTPA threat by launching DigitalConsumer.org and its attendant Consumer Technology Bill of Rights. Launched by two of the co-founders of Excite, DigitalConsumer.org is basically trying to protect the fair use rights of customers in digital media. The groups principles, outlined in the Bill of Rights are deceptively simple:

1. Users have the right to time-shift content that they have legally acquired.
2. Users have the right to space-shift content that they have legally acquired.
3. Users have the right to make backup copies of their content.
4. Users have the right to use legally acquired content on the platform of their choice.
5. Users have the right to translate legally acquired content into comparable formats.
6. Users have the right to use technology in order to achieve the rights previously mentioned.

The depth and breadth of support this lobbying group will receive remains to be seen. Some of the precepts are in direct conflict with the interests of some of the largest technology industry members. Microsoft, for example, almost certainly wants to be the digital rights management company of record and is none too keen on, say, items 2, 3, 4, and 5.

A solution

The solution is actually quite simple and requires only three steps:

1. Revert the term of copyright to 14 years, immediately and retroactive to all existing works.
2. Recognize moral rights in the works authors create, like every other civilized country on the planet. Make it immediate and retroactive to all existing works.
3. Prohibit any corporation from owning a copyright. Corporations create nothing; theyre consensual hallucinations and exist at our pleasure. I dont know about you, but Im not much pleased any more.

The basis of the problem is found in a single court ruling: Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad. In this 1886 dispute, the U.S. Supreme Court found that a private corporation was a natural person under the Constitution and enjoyed the same protections as a citizen under the Bill of Rights. Corporations from that point forward were granted all of the rights and freedoms of a private citizen, yet none of the responsibilities. We made a mistake; hey, shit happens. Its not too late to fix it.

A little quote from the wired.com site:

"A Democratic legislator"

His arduous fight for democracy really impresses me.

A little quote from the wired.com site:

"A Democratic legislator"

His arduous fight for democracy really impresses me.

The laser-based system hopes to eventually bounce the signals off mirrors on satelites, sending keys anywhere in the world. (For a price... good for diplomats and military I suppose.)

The fiber systems are still in need of a repeater-like device before they can get more significant distances.

Now Im not saying the tech isn't possible, or that you will not see devices like this in the future, along with the moral and social implecations of such technology blah blah blah.

Rather that it sounds close enough to that scam to insure that one should run to the hills as fast as you can. Just as you would if they were trying to sell you broadband over powerlines or tiled LCD screens.

"Well so far the Sony heads have said they need the next PS to be 1000X the power of todays and since it will be impossible to wait for hardware to catch up they need distributed computing to help, yet they cant provide details, probably because they dont know ...?"

Yeah - they do know how, read:
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/9.05/gs3.html

Just wondering since Philips did complain that this sort of copy protection that fails to work on some systems violates Red Book. Thus, can these discs carry the Compact Disc logo?

One answer : when you post a joke on Usenet. Hardly a crime, is it ?
But it could happen in the wonderful country of yours that you can be convicted and sent to jail charged with "terrorism" and "threatening to use nuclear weapons".
Unbelievable ? Not when you dared to joke about Church of Scientology.
Learn about Keith Henson, whose life has been destroyed because of one newsgroup posting :
Wired article
Is that good enough reason to, indeed, be paranoid ?

So all those kids can write crap like Windows Media Player, with self-executing scripts in SKINS. Vomit.

Where are the telescreens?
FBI and CIA spyware in the forms of Magic Lantern, Carnivore and Echelon just for starters. Your computer may not be forced to be on all the time, but it sure is two-way and it sure is possible for it to be used to spy on you and probably is via carnivore every time you send or receive email.

The secret police everywhere? The most obvious example of the increased powers of the secret police is the mendaciously named "USA PATRIOT Act" which has been criticized from the right, the left and just about every other leaning as well.

The cameras that monitor my every move?
Tampa, Boston, Orlando, Washington DC are all places with cameras in public areas like sports arenas, streets and airports watching and recording everyone that passes in their field of view. Then there are the traffic cameras that have been installed all across the nation from DC to Hawaii. Plus, don't forget, big business's contribution to Big Brother's campaign - the survelliance camera which you can count on recording your every move inside (and out) of almost any corporate owned retail establishment. That one doesn't even need a link they are so ubiquitous.

So, you see see, even your vain attempt to set up a strawman does not do the problem justice. We are a nation of cowards who long ago sacrificied our liberties for a few ineffective promises of security - if anything the terrorist attack on 9/11 is proof of that. So what do we let our government do? Even more of the same ineffective, yet terribly stiffling, practices that hurt the common man and do so very little to prevent further attacks. Previously each sacrifice was just one small change, hardly anything to be concerned about, but since 9/11 in the degree of the slope has taken a huge curve downward.

P.S. If you think the class of politicians and lawyers are even close to being equal citizens of the state with the average Joe, you are the raving lunatic. Either that, or a member of the privilged elite yourself with a blind eye towards the real state of the nation. If you can't believe that, just take a look at the benefits of being a member of the ruling class in Washington - no mandatory social security - they have their own plan with better returns and more guarantees - they are exempt from the federal fair labor practices laws - they have (good!)health insurance for life as well as a huge pension for life, even after serving only one term. It's a nice gig if you can get it.

Where are the telescreens?
FBI and CIA spyware in the forms of Magic Lantern, Carnivore and Echelon just for starters. Your computer may not be forced to be on all the time, but it sure is two-way and it sure is possible for it to be used to spy on you and probably is via carnivore every time you send or receive email.

The secret police everywhere? The most obvious example of the increased powers of the secret police is the mendaciously named "USA PATRIOT Act" which has been criticized from the right, the left and just about every other leaning as well.

The cameras that monitor my every move?
Tampa, Boston, Orlando, Washington DC are all places with cameras in public areas like sports arenas, streets and airports watching and recording everyone that passes in their field of view. Then there are the traffic cameras that have been installed all across the nation from DC to Hawaii. Plus, don't forget, big business's contribution to Big Brother's campaign - the survelliance camera which you can count on recording your every move inside (and out) of almost any corporate owned retail establishment. That one doesn't even need a link they are so ubiquitous.

So, you see see, even your vain attempt to set up a strawman does not do the problem justice. We are a nation of cowards who long ago sacrificied our liberties for a few ineffective promises of security - if anything the terrorist attack on 9/11 is proof of that. So what do we let our government do? Even more of the same ineffective, yet terribly stiffling, practices that hurt the common man and do so very little to prevent further attacks. Previously each sacrifice was just one small change, hardly anything to be concerned about, but since 9/11 in the degree of the slope has taken a huge curve downward.

P.S. If you think the class of politicians and lawyers are even close to being equal citizens of the state with the average Joe, you are the raving lunatic. Either that, or a member of the privilged elite yourself with a blind eye towards the real state of the nation. If you can't believe that, just take a look at the benefits of being a member of the ruling class in Washington - no mandatory social security - they have their own plan with better returns and more guarantees - they are exempt from the federal fair labor practices laws - they have (good!)health insurance for life as well as a huge pension for life, even after serving only one term. It's a nice gig if you can get it.

Where are the telescreens?
FBI and CIA spyware in the forms of Magic Lantern, Carnivore and Echelon just for starters. Your computer may not be forced to be on all the time, but it sure is two-way and it sure is possible for it to be used to spy on you and probably is via carnivore every time you send or receive email.

The secret police everywhere? The most obvious example of the increased powers of the secret police is the mendaciously named "USA PATRIOT Act" which has been criticized from the right, the left and just about every other leaning as well.

The cameras that monitor my every move?
Tampa, Boston, Orlando, Washington DC are all places with cameras in public areas like sports arenas, streets and airports watching and recording everyone that passes in their field of view. Then there are the traffic cameras that have been installed all across the nation from DC to Hawaii. Plus, don't forget, big business's contribution to Big Brother's campaign - the survelliance camera which you can count on recording your every move inside (and out) of almost any corporate owned retail establishment. That one doesn't even need a link they are so ubiquitous.

So, you see see, even your vain attempt to set up a strawman does not do the problem justice. We are a nation of cowards who long ago sacrificied our liberties for a few ineffective promises of security - if anything the terrorist attack on 9/11 is proof of that. So what do we let our government do? Even more of the same ineffective, yet terribly stiffling, practices that hurt the common man and do so very little to prevent further attacks. Previously each sacrifice was just one small change, hardly anything to be concerned about, but since 9/11 in the degree of the slope has taken a huge curve downward.

P.S. If you think the class of politicians and lawyers are even close to being equal citizens of the state with the average Joe, you are the raving lunatic. Either that, or a member of the privilged elite yourself with a blind eye towards the real state of the nation. If you can't believe that, just take a look at the benefits of being a member of the ruling class in Washington - no mandatory social security - they have their own plan with better returns and more guarantees - they are exempt from the federal fair labor practices laws - they have (good!)health insurance for life as well as a huge pension for life, even after serving only one term. It's a nice gig if you can get it.

The people on this panel seem to have ignored the most pressing issue looming up, and that is the monetization of the MMORPG object tokens.

Up till now MMORPGs have been too low on the radar to register for fundies who like to ban this sort of thing, politicians who want a piece of the action, and the mob, sorry, Vegas, who want all of the action.

When you have outfits like Entropia blatantly charging people for their addictions, this is when matters come to a head.

It's already been suggested that's why companies like Mythic are so eager to ban online auctions of their "objects", because this turns them into at least retailers, and probably casino operators.

Now because of the weird alliance between the mob, sorry established casino operators, and the unusual number of puritanically minded prohibitionists in the US, online gambling is effectively banned, or regulated out of the country.

It's existed for a while, but operators generally have to set up servers in dubious countries and share rack space with porn merchants.

If MMORPGs go on developing their virtual economy, then they will soon be subject to at least taxation, probably regulation, and possibly prohibition.

The people on this panel seem to have ignored the most pressing issue looming up, and that is the monetization of the MMORPG object tokens.

Up till now MMORPGs have been too low on the radar to register for fundies who like to ban this sort of thing, politicians who want a piece of the action, and the mob, sorry, Vegas, who want all of the action.

When you have outfits like Entropia blatantly charging people for their addictions, this is when matters come to a head.

It's already been suggested that's why companies like Mythic are so eager to ban online auctions of their "objects", because this turns them into at least retailers, and probably casino operators.

Now because of the weird alliance between the mob, sorry established casino operators, and the unusual number of puritanically minded prohibitionists in the US, online gambling is effectively banned, or regulated out of the country.

It's existed for a while, but operators generally have to set up servers in dubious countries and share rack space with porn merchants.

If MMORPGs go on developing their virtual economy, then they will soon be subject to at least taxation, probably regulation, and possibly prohibition.

Hmmm, this reminds me of the two stories Wired did on Ipod-related piracy.

Hmmm, this reminds me of the two stories Wired did on Ipod-related piracy.

A brilliant philosophy professor of mine once described the formulation of fantastic theories unsupported by enough empirical evidence as "creating castles in the sky". Black holes, we may one day find, are far more tangible, real, and even observable than a puff of clouds that resembles a drawbridge. When confronted with phenomena that cannot be explained, a select few physicists and astronomers are apparently compelled to come up with the most unlikely explanations, seemingly borrowed from bad sci-fi movies. Witness the dark matter debacle, in which the many interesting (read: ridiculous) theories concerning other universes and dimensions suddenly caved to the harsh fact that dark matter really *is* nothing more than matter that we can't observe for a myriad of reasons, and not matter sitting in some kind of other space-time continuum. Occum's razor, baby--Occum's razor.

For some reason I thought Apple might have been #1 :)

Outsourcing does seem to be the future. See this article at Wired about the XBox manufacturing process. Makes me want to go buy some FLEX right now!

randy

Outsourcing does seem to be the future. See this article at Wired about the XBox manufacturing process. Makes me want to go buy some FLEX right now!

randy

The Podkletnov effect suggests it may be possible to effectively reduce the mass of the ship, thereby reducing the overall energy needed for acceleration. Gravity has NOTHING to do with mass...

(Podkletnov speaking) So we placed a ball-shaped magnet above the disc, attached to a balance. The balance behaved strangely. We substituted a nonmagnetic material, silicon, and still the balance was very strange. We found that any object above the disc lost some of its weight...

Wired had a good article about this guy a couple of years back.

Wired had a good article about this guy a couple of years back.

Better watch out, or Slashdot may get harrassed like google did by the Scientologists!

Ref: Wired News Story

As has already been cited, these FoxNews postings (see also Ken Layne's Music Fans Must Rebel Against Greedy Record Industry ) represent the beginnings of a test by the Republican Party to make Napster a "wedge issue." While the natural constituency for the CBDTPA/SSSCA would suggest that the Republicans ought to back this, the fact that the Democrats have made the entertainment industry a major source of funds has skewed things in a way that the Republicans are going to try to exploit. See, for example, how things shake out in this article by Declan McCullagh and Robert Zarate from Wired: Content Spat Split on Party Lines

It will be interesting to see if the Democrats fall into this trap.

Taken from the wired story: A bill introduced this week by Sen. Fritz Hollings (D-South Carolina)...

Please remember this name during election time if you live in SC.

Not only compilers, but effectively any software that has the capability to copy bits.

They will all have to include federally mandated routines to ensure that no copyrighted works can be copied.

I honestly don't know how this will be enforceable, or doable for that matter.
There is a good article at wired about the problem here

He's been a media doll for years. He's no damn cyborg, and even if he is, Steve Mann got him beat as the first.

Steve Mann is the man, or part-man I should say. Hope he recovers from his airline experience.

"Put forward in fiction, these ideas can be quite interesting, but to see these ideas put forward by someone who's supposed to be a serious theorist...."

if you read the story about google bombing last week you will realise that your criticism is more effective if you use links rather than plaintext.
Slashdot, Hows about an easier form. There has got to be a easier/better way to do it than typing in raw tags. the form even ignores me if i put in nicely formed line breaks like <br /> or use both opening and closing paragraph tags
any way here are the links

Here is an article about their interference at ground zero.
http://cisar.org/010919a.htm

They also have been posing as mental health professionals:
http://www.sptimes.com/2002/02/08/Worldandnation/S cientology_reaches_o.shtml

or from their OWN MOUTHS here
http://www.scientology.org/message/Scientology-vol unteer-ministers.htm

And a link to the coverage of this on Kuro5hin.org
Sceintology
http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2002/3/21/8503/377 59
Dainetics deliberate typos for google users who cant spell

Remember this watershed event for Slashdot about Scientology Remember these:
Slashdot and Scientology http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/17677.html
http://slashdot.org/yro/01/05/17/0238223.shtml
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,42486,00 .html

R
Wired Article by Warwick is Here. It looks like his 1998 plans are coming to fruition.

"I was born human. But this was an accident of fate - a condition merely of time and place. I believe it's something we have the power to change. I will tell you why."

IANAB (biologist), but I think the problem is that nobody understands exactly how the brain works.. Yes we know that there's these neurons sending electrical signals to each other, but I don't think there is any theory on how this ultimately gives rise to the cognitive processes in the brain. Not that I'm saying that supercomputers would be useless in brain research, this article mentions some IBM guy planning to simulate how the "electric storms" during an epileptic seisure propagate or something like that.

Well IBM is thinking in the same way. Their blue gene supercomputer will consist of 1 million processors. The plan apparently is to cram 32 simple cpu:s into one chip, 36 chips on a board, 4 boards in a tower, and totally a few hundred towers. Someone else posted the link already, but I found an article describing it so interresting I'll post it again, here you go.

Here
It's pretty large, but explains everything.

Here , sorry, too much protein stuff going on :)

Basicaly, we all know that it was hard for PS2 developers to make games for it initialy.
The reason was the Emotion engine in PS2, that it explicitly multithreaded, i.e. you have to make your program use all threads (unlike PPRO for example, where CPU does it for you).

It's really a whole new way to program.

Now it seems that Sony convinced some developers to lean it there's nothing stopping them from making more threads (there are 16 in Emotion if I am not mistaken).

Oh, and it has nothing to do with distiributed computing over the Internet. The application architecture is similar, but that's it. And yeah, no batches here :)

As for IBM involvement, here is the article in Wired Magasine about their cell computer

Oh, and ahother one about PS2 and PS3, that one is quite old, but explains where Sony is going.

Basicaly, we all know that it was hard for PS2 developers to make games for it initialy.
The reason was the Emotion engine in PS2, that it explicitly multithreaded, i.e. you have to make your program use all threads (unlike PPRO for example, where CPU does it for you).

It's really a whole new way to program.

Now it seems that Sony convinced some developers to lean it there's nothing stopping them from making more threads (there are 16 in Emotion if I am not mistaken).

Oh, and it has nothing to do with distiributed computing over the Internet. The application architecture is similar, but that's it. And yeah, no batches here :)

As for IBM involvement, here is the article in Wired Magasine about their cell computer

Oh, and ahother one about PS2 and PS3, that one is quite old, but explains where Sony is going.

You don't know of enough tech sites to claim that "almost every tech site" banded together on something. No one does.