Slashdot Mirror

Wasn't there a recent court decision that stated that an entity that submits a DMCA takedown notice must make a reasonable effort to determine whether the allegedly infringing work is non-infringing under the fair-use doctrine? This hasn't been through an appeals process yet, so the ruling may not stand, but it could have interesting effects on the CoS situation.

As NASA has defined it, only US space-going individuals may claim the title "astronaut." Further, they cannot be civilians, at least according to an article in the latest Wired.

Aside from surviving the trip, Garriott has one more wish--to earn the title of astronaut. As a gamer, he cares deeply about the difference between character classes--whether a ninja, merchant, or citizen spaceman. But the moniker he has dreamed of all his life is not coming easily. NASA has strict rules about how it titles its explorers, and Garriott cannot qualify, no matter what he does, because he's a private citizen. Instead of an astronaut, they'll call him a space flight participant.

http://www.wired.com/techbiz/people/magazine/16-09/ff_starcity?currentPage=6

So what if human missions decline? The space station is primarily political in purpose, and science will advance at a far higher rate per dollar invested if NASA rebalanced its budget to more robotic missions. See for example: http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.12/machine.html

>> You want to talk links? Okay. Your first one in the above post is an article about how a nutty talk show host is wrongly accusing some other nut of calling for a third nut's death. Okay... this is relevent to asshat activists how?

Its relevant because it shows an attempt to falsely attribute actions made by agent provocateurs to legitimate protesters.

>> Your third link, I agree is over-the-top. The word "terrorism" is so misused... this is a perfect example. Closing a road is not terrorism. It's ass-hattery and it's obnoxious, and these idiots are certainly guilty of conspiracy -

I fail to see how handing out maps and providing referrals for daycare constitutes conspiracy.

>> The fact is that you cannot argue based on facts so you have to make me into some sort of monster.

Just because you are mentally ill doesn't make you a monster. In fact the scientific position of mental illness directly contradicts the emotional, religious, definition of evil.

>> I'm not sick, do not have a history of mental illness, and am not the one putting up links on Slashdot to ridiculous conspiracy sites.

Please. You don't have a history of mental illness? You've demonstrated mental illness repeatedly in this thread. Consider the following:

Cognitive Disorders:

1. The belief in the absurd, illogical, and self-contradictory concept of public property: a clear exhibition of schizophrenia.
2. The belief that you have stated facts, when you have yet to state a single fact in this thread: a clear exhibition of psychosis.
3. The belief that I have not stated facts, when I have done nothing but present obvious documented facts: another exhibition of psychosis.
4. The belief that anarchists could engage in the destruction or inhibition of property. To reiterate, an anarchist is someone who believes in freedom (the absence of government), and since acts of aggression are acts of government, it is completely incoherent to believe that an "anarchist" could engage is such activities. If a person is engaged in such activities, they could not be an anarchist..Another exhibition of schizophrenia.
5. The belief that Alex Jones is a "nut" when it is empirically verifiable that he is the sanest radio host in the world. Another exhibition of psychosis.

Personality disorders:

1. The repeated resurfacing of the "clogging the roads". This of course, is the neurotic projection/extension of "the state as an extension of self" (e.g. my congressman, my roads, my courts, etc.). This emotional compulsion is the result of rage stemming from sexual impotence as has been well documented in The Mass Psychology of Fascism and numerous other works. It can be cured through either cognitive dissonance or the conscious surfacing of your deep homosexual desires for your father's penis through psychoanalysis.
2. A repeated attempt to portray your ad hominem attacks as factual statements: an exhibition of an anti-social personality.

I can also deduce a great deal more based on what you have demonstrated so far...

>> Give me one example of that website being "censored" inside the United States.

Just one? How about one hundred:

http://www.brasschecktv.com/page/92.html
http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/05/air-force-col-w.html
http://www.sethf.com/anticensorware/general/google-censorship.php
http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/october2006/051006googlecensors.htm
http://www.google.com/search?q=digg+bury+brigade
http://www.infowars.com/articles/ps/internet_myspace_admits_censor_pris

One Scientist's Junk Is a Creationist's Treasure

I know not being able to RTFA is a requirement for Slashdot editors, but the first paragraph of that article says the quote was from 1997, not 2007. They didn't shut Apple down after that, instead they paid NeXT $300m to take over the brand.

Apple bought NeXT for $400 million. You're off by about $100,000,000.00 bucks. Perhaps you too should read a few articles.

don't kid yourself that the Apple of today has anything to do with the Apple of 1997.

Thank goodness. Gil Amelio nearly destroyed the company single handedly.... it's almost like you're complaining that 'Coke classic' has nothing to do with 'new Coke.'

Oh and Sony is evil and should be removed from the planet for repeatedly trying to screw its customers.

Citation Provided:
1) Suing awesome companies into existence:http://liksang.com/
2) Rootkit fiasco: http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2005/11/69467
3) Member of the RIAA

For the people who see these Sony hate posts and wonder where they come from. And I'm sure there's plenty more I left out (Please do add them). This is why I'll never buy or recommend a Sony product (and family and friends do consult me all the time for electronic purchases).

Not "probably". It's scarier when a domestic law enforcement agency (like MI5 or FBI) collect this kind of info than when a foreign intelligence service does it (CIA, MI6). The bad new is: when these law enforcement agencies refer to "terrorists", "spies", or "criminals" they're talking about never-convicted, merely-suspected-by-some-white-guy terrorists, etc. Every phone call and unencrypted email message could be read by someone as trustworthy as your last ex-girlfriend. The only thing that is actually preserving our freedoms of speech and movement is that correlating these quantities of data is still a challenge. Not for long.

Check out:
http://security.blogs.techtarget.com/2007/08/29/fbis-dcs-3000-wiretap-system-exposed-to-the-light-of-day/
http://www.wired.com/politics/security/news/2007/08/wiretap
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/08/30/terror/main1949643.shtml

If by talking about, you mean saying that it was the worst commercial in the history of television and that even Linux folks produce better ads---much better ads---did I mention better ads? Then yes.

No matter how you look at it, Windows is just not funny. Funny looking, perhaps---the whole Teletubbies UI and all---but not funny.... Of course, I guess it's a match made in heaven. Seinfeld isn't funny, either.... It can't be any more perfect than that....

Lame.

4. Nerdy chicks dig Priuses.

Oh no, they only say they do, their animal hindbrains still gets hot and excited at the sound of a totally non-politically correct, fuel-sucking, expensive Maserati.

VW is coming out with a diesel hybrid rabbit. Won't be at volume until 2010, however.

No crap. I don't know what people are thinking about losing money on a Prius.

Right now, Priuses (Prii?) are actually gaining value:

http://blog.wired.com/cars/2008/07/supply-and-dema.html

When I bought my car, I went through all sorts of scenarios, did the math, and realized that I would be breaking even by buying my Prius, assuming that I have the car for 10 years, and the other choice is a new car, comparable to a Corolla.

That was assuming gas was about 3.50 a gallon, wasn't increasing in price, and wasn't factoring in resale value.

For me, it came down to this: did I want to give that extra money to the gas companies, or to a company designing an innovative new car?

People are right that you may break even, but if it's between one new car or the other, I doubt you would lose money.

A used car is a totally different issue, with its own set of considerations, and I'm not sure it's a fair comparison for all sorts of reasons.

http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/02/nations-spies-w.html

Choose your walking animation carefully.

Car manufacturers regularly license patents from each other. The patent on the double-clutch design shouldn't be a problem. Also VW is developing hybrid technology: http://blog.wired.com/cars/2008/03/revealed-volksw.html

They took along *anything* and *everything* that might be related to possible riots. When they raided a home that wasn't actually the correct home, they still detained people for over and hour while they obtained the correct warrant. When I read that I posted that I was concerned that when I arrived at home that I too would find cops on my doorstep because after all, that was the point of all of this horseshit.

When you finally hear from the other side you learn that the "buckets of urine" was actually gray water used to flush the toilet (my father developed a tank system in the 1980s that used shower/tub water to flush the toilet which saved us so much money that the water company came out 3 or 4 different times to replace the meter because they thought it was defective).

I have been ashamed to be an American for a long ass time but between the Ramsey County Sheriff's response to this event, the confiscation of camera equipment in the name of Homeland Security for the RNC, and using Blackwater mercenaries in New Orleans in preparation for Gustav I am not quite sure I am actually living in the United States of America anymore.

I am disgusted to be a Minnesota and United States resident. This is fucking shameful and horrifying. There is absolutely no excuse for this type of free speech violation. This is a stupid political rally, not a fucking war on our soil. Personally I'd love to join the protests but I seriously fear for my freedom and my life. I am not against the RNC but I am definitely against the manner in which protesting is being handled.

FUCK YOU AMERICA.

For live footage of raids and other First Amendment violations, check out The UpTake on Qik.com.

According to a recent NPR story, both candidates intend to keep politics out of science....

But only one side intend to keep science out of science...

(Credit to Soulskill for the alley-oop)

Not to mention, how naive do you have to be to pay any attention to what they say when asked "do you want to politicize science". That like publishing a news article about the yes or no answer given when asked "do you want to raise taxes for poor people", or "do you want to make it easier for homicidal maniacs to get guns".

According to a recent NPR story, both candidates intend to keep politics out of science....

But only one side intend to keep science out of science...

(Credit to Soulskill for the alley-oop)

Too bad an infrastructure like that would never get off the ground as all the advertisers scream bloody murder, and the Washington cronies that are beholden to them will cave in yet again. Kind of like how they've tried time and again to work around PVRs skipping their commercials.

Which is why,even though he has no chance of winning now,I'm voting 3rd party with Barr. We here in AR have managed to vote some Green Party candidates in thanks to being disgusted at the "good ole boy" Dems and Repubs that seem to be in a race to see who can screw you over quicker,and maybe if enough of us show our disgust by voting 3rd party we can not only chance the level of crappiness in the Dems and Repubs,but we might even get some decent 3rd parties,which lets face it,is something we desperately need.

And as for the person that voted my parent post offtopic,wow. I know there are some who will forgive Obama for ANYTHING,but if you are going to mod down at least show a brain and mod down correctly. Considering the fact that the post I was replying to was saying "we can fix it by voting" the post was most certainly NOT offtopic,so if you had wanted to try to mod me away you should have chosen troll. Not that it will matter anyway,since my karma has been at excellent for ages due to the fact that folks like having someone who honestly speaks their thoughts instead of spewing groupthink.

So downmod away,it won't change the fact Obama LIED. He said "I am against spying" LIE, he said "I'm for change" LIE. Hell,he picked a guy as is running mate who called him "The first bright and clean" black man to run for president. Can you get more racist? Hell he couldn't have picked a bigger insider if he dug up Strom Thurmond and ran him! So stick your head in the sand and pretend Obama is different than McSame,but the simple fact is his Hope and Change BS is "He hopes that you don't see the only change he wants is a Democrat in the White House". And I give thanks and credit to the poster on the "Obama picks Biden" thread(Sorry I don't know your handle!) who came up with the Hope and Change line. Sadly,just like him,I believed in Obama and also put my money where my mouth was only to get screwed with FISA and Biden. But as always this is my 02c,YMMV

"The parole board grants release dates to a relative few. Schwarzenegger vetoes most releases approved by the parole board, as did his predecessor, Gov. Gray Davis. Since taking office, Schwarzenegger has allowed 191 lifers to leave prison -- about 1% of more than 16,000 who had parole hearings."

This is a picture of Reiser being given that news

http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/images/2008/08/29/reiser_1.jpg

that URL should be
http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/files/confession.pdf

and oh, it is sad:

    While the kids are sleeping, Hans is digging a grave for Nina. He comes home "and I was exhausted ... [the kids] would mercilessly jump on my belly and demand that I play with them."

http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/file/confession.pdf

Unpleasant, to say the least.

Yeah, but Quayle want creationism taught in schools like Palin does?

As opposed to the school where you attended were they apparently didn't teach grammar or spelling.

Yeah, but Quayle want creationism taught in schools like Palin does?

We should be delighted that least one of the candidates knows something about sorting algorithms.

Interesting CAPTCHA this time: hellfire

The Republican ticket is now complete, with John McCain picking Sarah Palin, the Republican Governor of Alaska as his running mate. And sure, she is hot (safe for work) but it would appear she is also a proponent of teaching creationism alongside Evolution in public schools. I don't mean to start a flame war here (ok maybe just a little) but seriously, how can anyone take a candidate seriously when they shamelessly pander to the stupid lobby?

Since the supposed crime had already been investigated here, and no charges were brought, the correct response to the extradition request would have been a polite "Please fuck off"

You know, before everyone decides this guy is innocent and the US is being the big bad bully as usual, you may want to do a google on this guy's name and read some of the things I just did. There seems to be more than one "take" on this situation (warning: some of you Brits may not like this "interpretation").

In particular (from the above link):

According to his lawyers, the United States offered McKinnon a deal of six months to a year in U.S. federal custody, followed by repatriation by the U.K., where he'd be eligible for parole after six months. McKinnon turned it down, then went running to the U.K. courts whining that the big bad Americans were trying to extort him into pleading guilty. You think? That's what a plea bargain is, slick.

And six to 12 months is quite a bargain indeed. It's minimum security camp time: We're talking ping-pong tables and a sunny running track. Now he's looking at the same kind of sentence U.S. hackers get -- measured in years, not months, and based on the financial losses a jury finds him responsible for.

Ok, since he himself has admitted to the crimes, and we offered him a plea bargain that would have had him serve less jail time than an American would do for the same crimes, how are we the big bad bullies in this?

I suspect you'll find this kind of response anywhere in the world: law enforcement catches a law-breaker, law-breaker doesn't cooperate and accuses law enforcement of all sorts of mean and nasty things, law enforcement becomes annoyed with the unrepetent law breaker and "throws the [law] book" at him.

Or for those of you with children, does this scenario sound familiar: child is caught by parent #1 doing bad thing, child goes crying to parent #2 claiming innocence and that parent #1 is being harsh/unfair/mean. If the marriage is dysfunctional, the child succeeds in playing one parent against the other and his original sin is forgotten in the parental fight that follows. If the marriage is a healthy one (or the child has done this before), the parents unite, and the child is punished not just for the original sin, but for later trying to manipulate his parents (by lying) to avoid punishment. So again I ask, how did the US end up being the Darth Vader of this story?

we're still an incredibly free and wealth country, and the vast majority of people are annoyed but still content.

Although I do agree some of what you said, I strongly disagree with the part which I quoted.

It appears that you are confusing individual freedoms with civil liberties .

Individual freedom is the ability to get in your car at 3 a.m. and drive 3 blocks to the convenience store to buy an unhealthy snack, to pick what you want to eat for dinner at the grocery store, to choose which movie you want to see with a friend, to stay in bed all day, etc. Yes, as a society we generally do have a great deal of individual freedom.

Civil liberties by contrast, are much different. Civil liberties are things such as your right to not have your property seized or searched without a court order, your right to vote, your right to petition the government, your right to peacefully assemble to protest the government, etc. ...and the all important Habeas corpus, your right to petition the government for unlawful imprisonment, which by the way, we did not have until just recently when it was restored by a Federal appeals court.

It is of civil liberties which we are speaking when we say that a society is free. When it comes to civil liberties in the United States, we are far from "free" to do as the Constitution allows.

Some examples:

The Protect America Act, The Real ID Act, The Patriot Act, the Domestic Security Enhancement Act of 2003, The Military Commissions Act, Free Speech Zones, Unconstitutional Wiretapping, etc. provide overwhelming evidence that we are in fact very far from being a free society.

"a free people [claim] their rights as derived from the laws of nature, and not as the gift of their chief magistrate." -- Thomas Jefferson

"What a curious phenomenon it is that you can get men to die for the liberty of the world who will not make the little sacrifice that is needed to free themselves from their own individual bondage." -- Bruce Barton (1886-1967)

"The basic test of freedom is perhaps less in what we are free to do than in what we are free not to do." -- Eric Hoffer (1902-1983)

CLICK IT!
"There has never been a more urgent need to preserve fundamental privacy protections and our system of checks and balances than the need we face today, as illegal government spying, provisions of the Patriot Act and government-sponsored torture programs transcend the bounds of law and our most treasured values in the name of national security." -- ACLU

MORE QUOTES:

"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed -- and hence clamorous to be led to safety -- by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary." - Political commentator Henry Louis Mencken (1880-1956)

"Once a government is committed to the principle of silencing the voice of opposit

http://blog.wired.com/gadgets/2008/08/bell-labs-kills.html There is the article

"It is great to see the Court confirm that the DMCA protects services like YouTube that follow the law and respect copyrights," YouTube Chief Counsel Zahavah Levine said in a statement. "YouTube has gone above and beyond the law to protect content owners while empowering people to communicate and share their experiences online."

And this quote from Viacom:

"Even if the Veoh decision were to be considered by other courts, that case does nothing to change the fact that YouTube is a business built on infringement that has failed to take reasonable measures to respect the rights of creators and content owners. Google and YouTube have engaged in massive copyright infringement â" conduct that is not protected by any law, including the DMCA."

Probably not far from what one would expect either to say but I'm afraid this isn't going to do much for YouTube.

Wikileaks already explained in wired that they plan to abandon the wiki model, and also let journalists pay to get news before everyone else.

I really felt let down, so I went to their live chat to ask about it; they said that the subscription model was a way to keep good relations with journalists, and that abandoning the wiki model was because the first version of the articles (made by wikileaks staff) were always "of a superior quality". (since the chat was anonymous, it is hard to make this attribution; but they can always deny it later if it isn't true I guess). Instead the users would be able to leave comments about the articles. Also,recall that the really important decisions, like what material gets published, where always handled by wikileaks staff.

- I kinda understand the head start given to journalists, except it's not very 21rst century to draw a line between "real" journalists and others. Anyways, charging money for that subscription is not going to make any suspicion go away.
- Abandoning the wiki model is really losing the core good idea of this website. Remember, they are an anonymous bunch of people; I just don't feel I can trust them with choosing what should be or not be published, let alone say they don't want a single comma changed in their article because they like their own version better.

I think at this point, they must change their name; any link to a "wiki" process is fake advertising ( and they admit that most of their initial visibility was due to people knowing wikipedia). They will end up giving open source politics a bad name at the first scandal.

And its a shame, because it was really the most fascinating thing I ever saw on the internet; and I have high hopes for a real open information website like this some day.

Doesn't look too bad, see: http://blog.wired.com/defense/2008/08/israeli-super-s.html at the 1 minute mark.

Aren't we nerds here? Surely the progressive tech-crowd in America would have accepted the metric standard?

Let's not forget the previous occation when nerds forgot that metric units are standard.

.haeger

Based on what they told me at the time and everything I've learned since then:

(Phil) Zimmermann never even uploaded PGP files for public access.

(Kelly) Goen studiously limited his uploads to U.S. systems, as permitted
by law and routinely done with identically-regulated AT&T and RSA software.

They certainly didn't care about exporting PGP. Hell, most of the
rest of the world already purchases public-key products from numerous
vendors except U.S. companies.

They did want to pre-empt S. 266 before it became law - just as millions of
people do all the time regarding all sorts of pending legislation. And the
offending mandate was later deleted from S. 266, anyway.

Zimmermann and Goen wanted to protect this nation's citizens. S.
266 wasn't threatening other nation's citizens; it was threatening
Americans!"

Wired also posted an overview of PGP and S.266 on the 10th anniversary of the shebang in 2001. It's worth noting that Biden introduced the legislation, but also was one of the Senators responsible for removing the anti-crypto section.

Biden's still a thorough douche toward tech, specifically peer-to-peer networking and free speech on the Internet.

Perhaps people (read: corporations) who have an entire army of lawyers at their disposal?

History says no.

"The virus did make it onto more than one laptop -- suggesting that it spread via some sort of intranet on the space station or via a thumb drive"

"The International Space Station has no direct internet access, but astronauts can send and receive mail though a KU band data link also used for data and video transfer, according to Humphries"

'That means the space station laptops are not connected to the net, according to Humphries'

"Everything is scanned before it goes up, so it's an indirect connection," Humphries said.

What exactly is scanned, what form does the scanning take, how technically does scanning make it an indirect connection. If it's an indirect connection then why the need for scanning ..

"The Ku-band system is the primary return link for International Space Station (ISS) video and payload data transmitted in digital format to the ground ..

.. Like the S-band system, the Ku-band system does not inspect the data passing through it.

--

I'm terribly sorry chaps, but speculation from slashdot readers don't count .. :)

"The laptops have no net connection .."

So, how do they send/receive email ..

"The laptops infected with the virus were used to run nutritional programs and let the astronauts periodically send e-mail back to Earth"

So, they do have a net connection ..

"The laptops carried by astronauts reportedly do not have any anti-virus software on them to prevent infection"

So how did they detect the 'infection' by the Gammima.AG worm ..

"The ISS has no direct net connection"

How do the laptops send/recieve email .. speculation by a slashdot reader don't count ..

--

"We are having a hard time understanding the how and why, but everything is working", Commander Bill Sheperd Feb 2001

Only one major corporation refused to go along with Bush's little wiretapping plan, Qwest. The CEO of Qwest, at that time, just happens to be in jail now (theoretically for a backdating scandal). During his trial and in his counter suit he claimed not only that he was being punished for not cooperating with the Patriot Act, but that the wire tapping system was being implemented by NSA 7 months before 9/11.

Most people dismissed his claims assuming he was grasping at straws, trying to stay out of jail. But employees at several other telcos have confirmed his story.

Only one major corporation refused to go along with Bush's little wiretapping plan, Qwest. The CEO of Qwest, at that time, just happens to be in jail now (theoretically for a backdating scandal). During his trial and in his counter suit he claimed not only that he was being punished for not cooperating with the Patriot Act, but that the wire tapping system was being implemented by NSA 7 months before 9/11.

Most people dismissed his claims assuming he was grasping at straws, trying to stay out of jail. But employees at several other telcos have confirmed his story.

McCullagh himself once claimed that "If it's true that Al Gore created the Internet, then I created the 'Al Gore created the Internet' story

That's actually a denial -- if (a) Al Gore created the internet (which he didn't), then (and assumedly only then) (b) did McCullagh create the meme (which he apparently is claiming he didn't).

Not defending the guy by any means -- just saying.

Apple throws lawsuits around left and right. They attack fans for blogging about their products. I remember reading in Wired about a twelve-year old girl who offered a product suggestion to improve her iPod. Apple sent a threatening legal letter in response, demanding that she not offer suggestions.

If Microsoft is evil for bundling software, then Apple is far more evil in the same regard.

Steve Jobs said from day 1 he hated DRM, yet Apple products have pushed DRM far more than any company I've seen on the planet.

They take bundling and DRM to another level with cross-product lock-in.

Forcing the installation of Safari in the background without asking is exceptionally evil. Had Microsoft done that, the Slashdot crowd would have had an aneurysm.

"...don't just suggest evil lurking were none does."

Did you just really suggest there is no evil in Cupertino?

http://www.wired.com/techbiz/it/magazine/16-04/bz_apple

It can't go up stairs yet, but from this video it obviously has no problem going down stairs.

Here is the actual real video of him walking.

For some reason, Declan thrives on trashing Dem candidates and gaining publicity for it.

Declan was responsible for the media misinterpretation of Al Gore's statement that he "took the initiative in creating the Internet."

McCullagh himself once claimed that "If it's true that Al Gore created the Internet, then I created the 'Al Gore created the Internet' story

On the other hand, if you have the extra space, it invites the usual waste in the form of archive directories for closed-out years, development junk, etc. Spinning round and round, doing nothing.

Yep. That's exactly it. $200 today buys a 1 TB drive. $200 a few years ago bought a 1 GB drive. As the price has fallen the value of the HDD has risen relative to its cost. Those archive directories and development junk aren't being deleted because they have value. Sure, it's enough value to justify keeping them around when a 1 GB drive costs $200, but they are worth keeping around with a 1 TB drive costs that much.

They aren't "doing nothing" - they just aren't doing enough that it's worth keeping it until the price drops enough.

All of this is making the 1 TB drive considerably more valuable than the 1 GB drive, despite their original purchase price parity. This is long-tail economics at work. As the individual bits become worth less and less, the value in of the bits in total continues to rise, resulting in a completely new set of capabilities.

My DVR is an excellent example of this - it's a thorough change in the way that I watch television. Suddenly, it's a family event that we can all share, because when I want to comment, I can just hit pause, and share my thought. Nothing's lost, if needed we can just hit rewind a bit, and suddenly, instead of being annoyed at my daughter for wanting to comment on a point during a televised debate, I'm excited and interested! No more SHUSHSTing at my family, it's now a much more shared experience.

The price of nonlinear access media has dropped so incredibly that marginal-value bits (like video) are suddenly cheap enough to make it all possible.

Apparently nobody caught the Wired article on this a couple of months ago?

The Petabyte Age

The thing that's different with Facebook / MySpace spam is that often, they're definitely stealing someone's password to post stuff as them. That is (or should be) squarely in the realm of "breaking into a computer system".

Whether violations of a site's terms of service should be considered actionable under the terms of the Federal Computer Fraud and Abuse Acts is now being litigated in the Justice Department's suit against Lori Drew. Many civil libertarians like myself oppose this suit because it looks like overreaching on the part of the Justice Department. If the Drew prosecution is successful, it puts the power of Federal law behind the private terms of service between an online provider and its members.

Stealing passwords might be more plausibly criminalized, but how would you handle someone like Drew who set up bogus MySpace accounts to harass as young girl? What if she used those accounts to send spam instead?

Sorry, but I think the Federal government has its nose in too much of our lives already, and I'm not willing to say that whatever onerous terms of service some website operator comes up with deserves the protection of Federal statutes.

Dito, though I haven't found my way the big U yet. The big trilogy took me a whopping two and a half years to complete with me putting off reading parts two and three for long periods of time. I basically read part three in increasingly longer bursts spread over nearly half a year until finally racing through the last four hundred pages in two days. Basically it is a lot of information to digest and you need a pretty good overview of all the events to enjoy the wacky plot twists and elaborate digressions. All things together, it would take me some courage (and plenty of time) to pick it up again but I am glad I read the three books cover to cover in the end.

BTW. for the real fans, there's a great 56 page article from 1996 on Wired by Neal Stephenson about a trip around the world he did in the mid nineties to explore the wonderful world of the fiber optic cable laying industry. Great read and sort of a study for the Cryptonomicon. I guess for Stephenson this counts as a short story though any other author would have no problem to publish it as a short novel.

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/4.12/ffglass.html

Here we see Hollywood studios regularly rob, cheat and steal from the people that work for them:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood_accounting
http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2001/aug/31/artsfeatures

Here companies like News Limited trick the public into surrendering their copyright, giving them massive royalty-free photo libraries, all for the "chance of winning an iPod".
http://blogs.smh.com.au/photographers/archives/2008/07/read_the_fine_print.html

Orson Scott Card wrote this good piece on the hipocracy of the RIAA:
http://www.ornery.org/essays/warwatch/2003-09-07-1.html
http://www.ornery.org/essays/warwatch/2003-09-14-1.html

And for years, we the public have had our rights progressively eroded. Well-monied rights holders throw money at congress who turn around and keep extending their copyright. This reached an artform in the "Sonny Bono Copyright Extension Act", otherwise known as the "Mickey Mouse Copyright Act". Yet Disney has quite happily argued against this when it suits them.
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,17327,00.html

Well, eat this Disney: http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-mickey22-2008aug22,0,3228580,full.story

And then there was that DRM debacle... What's worst is countries like Australia spinelessly accepted the DRM laws as their own (and US patents being enforcable in Australia) all for a political photo opportunity with George W. Bush. In this way, these execessive new laws are spreading all over the world. And here we have Universities teaching one side of the Great Copyright Rights Grab. Why aren't they educating their students about both sides, instead of brainfeeding them RIAA propaganda?

Bottom line is: Congress doesn't work for you. It works for these guys. I don't see Congress ever saying no to MPAA slush funds, and treating IP the way the Constitution intended it too. So to hell with Congress and the MPAAFIA: Stupid Laws are made to be broken. I say torrent freely and torrent often. It's our very own digital tea party.

For those who don't get Wired but are interested, in the latest issue of Wired is an article about Stephenson. The online version is here. The story of how Anathem came to be is included in the article.