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Then you haven't read Operating Systems and Concepts by Silberschatz et al.

My point was that you don't need the government to take control of the cable network to have something like that happen. Well, ok, you needed the government to pass the DMCA but now that it's there private companies can do whatever they want. Being sued by a company is also probably worse than dealing with the government as the company may be more intent on causing financial ruin. Yes, it seems many DMCA abuses eventually end, but the chilling effect is huge.

Oh, and as for CSS and protecting property, there's also the region coding, and I can't see that as protecting property. Plus it effectively tries to stop fair use and even all use of DVDs on certain operating systems.

Vulnerabilities in security products, especially those making outrageous claims, need to be exposed.

excerpt from NAI ePolicy Orchestrator Format String Vulnerability

"When deploying new security products within the enterprise, organizations should understand the risks that new security solutions may introduce."

-weld

Vulnerabilities in security products, especially those making outrageous claims, need to be exposed.

excerpt from NAI ePolicy Orchestrator Format String Vulnerability

"When deploying new security products within the enterprise, organizations should understand the risks that new security solutions may introduce."

-weld

Hey, weren't African Amercians promised 40 acres and a mule at emancipation? And let's not even TALK about what the gov promised Native Americans. Yeah, yeah. They have casinos. blah blah. They still got a raw deal IMB.

Still, there is economic incentive for the feds to accomplish this. But 2007? I think I might as well ask the next black guy I meet where his mule is (as long as he's smaller than me and doesn't know kung-foo).

Hey, weren't African Amercians promised 40 acres and a mule at emancipation? And let's not even TALK about what the gov promised Native Americans. Yeah, yeah. They have casinos. blah blah. they still got a raw deal IMB.

Still, there is economic incentive for the feds to accomplish this. But 2007? I think I might as well ask the next black guy I meet where his mule is (as long as he's smaller than me and doesn't know kung-foo).

Bottom line, we can do it because we have the power and the might. We don't need to play well with others, others need to play well with us.

Amen, brother! You just hit the nail on the head. Might Makes Right. No one really needs any stupid "Rule of Law": it's the excuse of pussies. What America says, goes, because America has the strength to make it so.

I quote:

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our Constitution and unacknowledged by our laws, giving his assent to their acts of pretended legislation:

For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us;

For protecting them, by a mock trial, from punishment for any murders which they should commit on the inhabitants of these states;

For cutting off our trade with all parts of the world;

For imposing taxes on us without our consent;

For depriving us, in many cases, of the benefits of trial by jury;

For transporting us beyond seas, to be tried for pretended offenses;

For abolishing the free system of English laws in a neighboring province, establishing therein an arbitrary government, and enlarging its boundaries, so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these colonies;

For taking away our charters, abolishing our most valuable laws, and altering fundamentally the forms of our governments;

For suspending our own legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated government here, by declaring us out of his protection and waging war against us.

Hancock et al, The Declaration of Independence

Doesn't it sort of sound odd to you? It should.

You need a law to make war illegal?
Last time I checked you needed a justification to make it legal.
And most countries in the world seem to agree with this.

Yet another glossy response that doesn't address the underlying problem. Being able to navigate 3D spaces for your files is neat. Maybe we'll finally get those cool file management interfaces that those kids in Hackers got. I want a Gibson too, damn it!

But it's really useless since it won't actually help users to find their files. It takes the problems posed by the desktop metaphor and compounds them. Now my report is lurking somewhere behind me beneath a virtual photo album of my vacation photos or trapped behind a virtual CD rack representing my WMA collection. 3D views of documents add on a spatial property to the data, so I'm left wondering if all documents adjacent to my notebook are related to the contents of my notebook. Now users have to think about boundaries. Anyone whose built a collection of books over the years knows that the moore different types of books you have, the harder it is to create general categories for organizing those books since content often crosses categories.

I think David Gelernter's Lifestreams will do a much better job of making document retrieval and overall information management both efficient and easy. In Lifesteams the accumulation of data, any data, forms a time-ordered stream that can be manipulated and transversed using metafilters, which are basically filters that operate on the main stream. For example, with e-mail, there is a single e-mail stream. I can create a metaphor to pull addresses from the stream, thus created an on-the-fly addressbook that is always current. I can create another metastream to pull all emails after a certain date, thus creating a virtual inbox.

When it comes to papers and reports, I don't have to think about the original filename or location of a document I wrote years ago that I want to include in a document I am writing today. I merely create a metastream to pull the data I want from all documents based on certain content. This always documents to be stored virtually across many different categories at the same time. As of right now, I'm stuck with folders and generic descriptions that become irrelevent as I stored more complex writings.

Lifestreams Homepage
Lifestreams Discussion at ACM
Wired Magazine article on Lifestreams and Gelernter

In my home town when I was little the house up the street got hit my a meteorite. Ten years eariler another house on the same street (but almost a mile away) was hit by a similarly sized meteorite. There are pictures of the second one online, and you can go see them at the Yale Peabody museum.

I wouldn't be surprised if insurance agencies specifically added meteorite clauses to their policies around there after that.

A google search for "wethersfield meteorite" turns up lots of interesting articles about them.

And if France had done something during the Sitzkrieg instead of sitting around and waiting to be attacked then they wouldn't have needed our intervention in the first place. Don't blame the United States for the fall of France -- blame the French. If they actually had decent leadership and a little balls they could have marched to Berlin and stopped WW2 before it had barely started when the Germans had all of their forces in Poland. Hell go back further then that -- if they had balls they wouldn't have backstabbed Czechoslovakia with the Munich Agreement.

I'll grant you the fact that they were conquered is going to make them want nuclear weapons. But withdrawing from NATO had nothing to do with depending on the US for defense. That's just another example of unilateralism on the part of the French. We may take the heat for it these days -- but they invented it in the first place.

Incidentally, France is the only large country that has never been at war with the US. It sure isn't going to start now.

We've never actually been at war with the Russians I'd point out. And if France qualifies as a "Large Country" (what's your basis for that? Population? Security council vote?) then I'd also point out that we've never been at war with Australia, Poland, Brazil, or Argentina. And those are just the countries that I would qualify as being "large" that I can think of off the top of my head.

Nice slam directed at the US though. Makes us seem like a warlike state to anyone who can't be bothered to crack open a history book.

• Grace Hopper : Girl Genius of Vassar
• Lt. Hopper of the U.S. Navy
• Grace Hopper and the Mystery of the Hollerith Code
• Grace Hopper Tames the MARK I
• Grace Hopper Defeats the NAZIs
• Grace Hopper vs the Pernicious Moth
• Grace Hopper Unravells Sputnik
• Grace Hopper vs the Commie Russians
• Grace Hopper Unleashes the Scourage of COBOL
• Grace Hopper Arm-Wrestles Hyman Rickover
• Cmdr. Grace Hopper : Recalled to Duty (special double issue)
• Cmdr. Grace Hopper Defeats the Commie Russians
• Grace Hopper CyberGrrrrrl

• And remember, (+1, Funnay) does nothing for karma!

What are YOU talking about, youngster?

We [eBay] try to make rules to make it difficult for people to commit fraud and easy for you [law enforcement agencies] to investigate. One is our Privacy policy. I know from investigating eBay fraud cases that eBay has probably the most generous policy of any internet company when it comes to sharing information.

We do not require a subpoena except for very limited circumstances. We require a subpoena when we need the financial information from the site, credit card info or sometimes IP information.

How about pedal-powered aircraft as the ultimate human-powered tech-toy?

One problem is the low power budget for human-powered systems. The average fit adult can only crank out about 75 W. (No specs on the power output of the average computer user). Even a athletic cyclist only puts out about 200W.

A cyclist should be able to power a laptop, but running much more than that would be difficult.

In the case of marriage, true marriage, the real problem isn't gay rights - that's what's stated but that isn't it at all. The real problem can only be seen by those who have the foresight and moral outrage to realize what's next.

Ah, the slippery slope argument. Very common, very stupid, and very wrong. Unless you can show some evidence for your paranoid delusions.

When you continue to breakdown the fundamental building blocks of family, you risk the destruction of this country. Today it's gay marriage - which makes no sense to me since a man/man or woman/woman can never hope to bear children on their own - something that the majority of us will do.

You imply that the purpose of marriage is to raise children. This is a common argument but one that (surprise!) ignores the facts. The facts are that marriage licenses are routinely granted to heterosexual couples that are beyond childbearing age, medically infertile or simply don't want children, and are routinely denied to homosexual couples that are raising children through adoption or artificial insemination. Marriage rights in the United States have nothing to do with children.

Marriage is a commitment for society as well as to your partner. It is a civil act and forms the basis for society at it's core.

It's a condition that grants very real benefits, but only to certain couples. It's an inherently unjust situation. You imply that married couples repay society for the benefits they get, but I doubt you'll be able to provide any actual evidence of your claim.

You liberals think nothing of mocking the traditional view, but it's a view that was formed over thousands of years. Without preamble, you would have the true meaning of it destroyed or at least severely weakened.

You severely overestimate the value of the views that people have had over the past several thousand years. They held slaves; they persecuted people who believed differently than them; they oppressed minorities and women; hell some of them feared the left-handed! Frankly, the people of the past were morons and if it were feasible to send troops back in time to beat the shit out of them we'd probably all be better off! (Ok, so that last bit is something of an exaggeration :).

Don't quote the Founding Fathers. If they saw what you were trying to do they'd be disgusted. People forget that although this country was founded on reigious tolerance it was understood that meant CHRISTIAN forms of religion. In the early days of this nation they used to burn people at the stake for anything less. The Founders never intended for this sort of thing.

Actually, the founding fathers would disagree with you. The United States has never been a christian nation and it's high time people stopped lying about that.

But the worst is what's to come next out of the travesty that is gay marriage. EXAMPLE: In Holland, you recently had a woman marry HERSELF. Could this have happened with a strict definition of marriage?

I'm sure you have a cite for this claim, which you will provide in your reply.

How about a man who wants to marry his sheep?

If you honestly believe that this follows from gay marriage you are probably too stupid to understand my reply, but I'll play along: people can't marry animals because animals (and children, for that is the other idiot claim that bigots use in the slippery slope argument) cannot give informed consent.

Like my own? There are some things that are more important than SELF INTEREST. Where my tolerance becomes outrage is when the actions of others begin to affect me, my family, my nation.

You'll now explain precisely how two homosexuals getting married affects you.

Don't pretend that gay marriage is somehow innocent of that crime.

Your u

Once upon a time the people demanding freedom were the christians wanting to support christian morals. They wrote a constitution based upon their freedom.

No. The framers of the Constitution were largely deists, and the United States was never a christian nation. The Treaty of Tripoli conclusively proves this. It's a common misconception (to be generous) to claim that the United States was founded on christianity, but it isn't true.

It worked fine until recently, when being free and being christian were different ideas.

These have always been different ideas. Christianity is all about obedience, not freedom. Try reading the bible.

This one guy also played through Contra and Super C, both under 20 minutes. Heres the link to his site here .

English Bill Of Rights, 1689

Note that Freedom of Expression was only guaranteed to members of parliament, although there was a general right to petition.

Certainly at the time the US bill of rights was written, there was no British bill of rights

The US one was written before 1689, then?

For pedants, yes, I know that was before the act of Union.

Force Majeure literally means "greater force". These clauses excuse a party from liability if some unforseen event beyond the control of that party prevents it from performing its obligations under the contract. Typically, force majeure clauses cover natural disasters or other "Acts of God", war, or the failure of third parties--such as suppliers and subcontractors--to perform their obligations to the contracting party. It is important to remember that force majeure clauses are intended to excuse a party only if the failure to perform could not be avoided by the exercise of due care by that party.

What the hell kind of crack are you smoking? There are lots of zoom lenses used on lots of "real" film cameras.

So.

Instead of offering rigid and useless prescriptions, a better approach could be to encourage people who are interested in using a camera in a thoughtful or artistic manner do a little basic research on the issue, maybe learn a little about the subject area and then choose something that fits his (or her) needs. It's a toolbox - you just pick the right tool for the job.

Australia does not have a bill of rights

Well actually, we do, technically. Queen Anne's Bill of Rights of 1689 is still on the books, inherited from English Law. Some quotes:

That excessive bail ought not to be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted;

The Australian Constitution is available on the web (Naturally), and a casual read will show that it's been heavily inspired by the US one of over 100 years earlier. We like to think ours is better, but YMMV.

David Gelernter built a system called Lifestreams that basically claimed that time-ordered series plus some simple search and organization operators was everything you needed. It always seemed like a pretty good idea to me.

That said, if you do have metadata available, you can do a lot with it.

You make the typical gun advocate claim that all gun crimes are committed by "criminals", by which you mean habitual criminals.

Personally (I'm not speaking for all "right to keep and bear arms" advocates) I try not to--I even note something to that effect elsewhere in this thread. That said, I think we can agree that the majority of them are--PARTICULARLY in cities such as DC, Chicago, and New York where ownership is heavily restricted.

The common thread in these was that self-loading rifles made it too easy for such people to kill a lot of people at once. We restricted their ownership to the few people who actually need them for professional reasons. Voila, no more spree killings since.

While I'm very happy that nothing has happened since Port Arthur, I'm not sure that this is a result of the weapons ban you mention. I'm sorry to say that something similar will likely happen in the future. Maybe not with an AK-47--a pistol, a shotgun, maybe not even a gun. On June 8th, 2001, a japanese man killed 8 children, and injured 15 other people with a knife. What that says to me is that people who are going to commit these kinds of acts are going to do so no matter what. Removing firearms from the equation (Japan has extremely strong gun control) merely makes them less efficient.

I believe that punishing the law abiding for the acts of a very, very few is morally reprehensible. I believe conflating "safety" with gun control is akin to claiming that invading Iraq makes America safe from terrorists attacks.

I wish the world was different--I really do. It would be nice to live in a world without violence, without people who would murder for $10, or an expensive piece of clothing. Without brutal dictators who would murder their own people. But we don't live in that world.

Until we do, I retain the right to protect myself and my family, by any and all available means. Anyone who attempts to restrict me from doing so is a fool at best, an outright enemy at worst.

Come on, seriously, audiophiles don't deal with this. They spend their money on quality speakers such as Martin Logan's and Super Audio CDs.

One popular way for MDs to break into the industry is to go to related fields where medical knowledge is being used in the context of IT, such as Medical Informatics. For example, at the Yale Center for Medical Informatics the majority of faculty and scientists hold MDs or are MD/Ph.Ds. You don't need to obtain a degree per se; as long as you can show that you know what-you-are-doing(tm). Do a post-doc at an informatics department. Talking to the IT people at your hospital can help. Start playing more with computer hardware and programming languages. Implement and deploy IT solutions that assist in your medical care. Your colleagues having trouble with their nifty new handhelds? Take a look at them over the weekend. Not happy with your new-fangled patient tracking system? Talk to the developer and analyze the database.

There are tons and tons of existing resources available both in print and online that you can use to learn the stuff you need. An MD is already a terminal degree; unless you are looking for academic/faculty computer science positions, it is not entirely necessary to have to go to school for IT at this time.

As far as the market is concerned, there is always interest in people who possess both a human-oriented and computer-oriented skillset; especially for places that are full of one-kind-but-not-the-other. (Like in a setting where everyone is a physician but they don't know IT, or a group of IT people who want someone who understands the biomed field).

I can hardly wait to see and hear Eve again! :)

And I'm sure that, in the face of pressing national interest, this treaty will prove just as sturdy as the Kellogg-Briand Pact.

It is very interesting how the subject of this war is taught in the three countries. Canadians seem to think 'they' defeated the US, in the US it's referred to as a draw but notable for Britain's recognition of its nationhood, and in Great Britain if it's mentioned at all it's a brief footnote on the far more important Napoleonic wars.

"Since our crawler seeks to collect the digital artifacts of our culture for the benefit of future researchers and generations..."

That is, unless the digital artifacts in question are, like Operation Clambake opposed to rich and powerful sects. In which case, they are blocked by the Wayback machine after the Archive caves in to DMCA notices.

Some countries, e.g. Germany, still have laws prohibiting the use of the term champagne (same thing applies to "cognac", cf. Article 275 of the Treaty of Versailles).

Nowadays, that's hardly more than a weird relict though - think about it: it's not really Kleenex unless its made by Kimberly-Clark. If it's generic it's a just facial tissue product. Same thing...

As an historical matter, positivism arose in opposition to classical natural law theory, according to which there are necessary moral constraints on the content of law. The word 'positivism' was probably first used to draw attention to the idea that law is "positive" or "posited," as opposed to being "natural" in the sense of being derived from natural law or morality.

I think this is exactly what I have said. Those "moral constraints" referred to are called "natural rights". That law is "posited" basically means that powerful people tell less powerful people what to do. We'll leave it to posterity to decide whose "political education" is lacking in this case.

BTW, did you happen to *read* any of that page you quoted about legal positivism? It mostly just discredits the idea.

The judge upholds that ticket. No judge has yet spoken on this matter. Regardless, he would be derelict to ignore either the rights of the defendant or the lack of a victim, as you have. Besides, you still haven't given any indication that you have a *clue* what judges do, other than "uphold ticket(s)". Here's an explanation, also from the source *you* quoted:

Austin's view [positivism] is difficult to reconcile with constitutional law in the United States. Courts regard the procedural and substantive provisions of the constitution as constraints on legal validity. The Supreme Court has held, for example, that "an unconstitutional act is not a law; it confers no rights; it imposes no duties; it is, in legal contemplation, as inoperative as though it had never been passed." (Norton v. Shelby County, 118 U.S. 425 (1886)). Moreover, these constraints purport to be legal constraints: the Supremacy Clause of Article VI of the Constitution states that "[t]his Constitution ... shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby."

So, since the Supreme Court says that an unconstitutional law isn't really a law, and the Constitution says that rights are retained by the people, do you think *maybe* that judges should, oh I don't fucking know, take that under consideration? Or are you still holding onto the idea that rights are defined by the legislature and laws are merely "upheld" by judges? (If so, might I suggest that you move *back* to the motherland.)

I see now that the construction used in my last post was unclear. I never meant to say that legal positivism was the scientific method. I said that *logical* positivism was basically the scientific method. What I meant to get across was that both the scientific method and legal positivism were derived from *logical* positivism, as both took their preference of observation over contemplation from it. Here is a relation of positivism to the scientific method:

[Positivism] is a position that holds that the goal of knowledge is simply to describe the phenomena that we experience. The purpose of science is simply to stick to what we can observe and measure. ... The positivist believed in empiricism -- the idea that observation and measurement was the core of the scientific endeavor.

Compare that with this description of legal positivism from here:

'The existence of law is one thing; its merit and demerit another. Whether it be or be not is one enquiry; whether it be or be not conformable to an assumed standard, is a different enquiry.' (1832, p. 157) The positivist thesis does not say that law's merits are unintelligible, unimportant, or peripheral to

1. How would you enforce CO2 emissions limits on things like individual automobiles (which emit about 30% of the anthropogenic CO2 produced in the US) and home heating/air conditioning, etc?
2. How would you trust the government to come up with the optimal CO2 emissions limits and how would the government achieve the flexibility to revise these limits as new information became available?

1. How would you enforce CO2 emissions limits on things like individual automobiles (which emit about 30% of the anthropogenic CO2 produced in the US) and home heating/air conditioning, etc?
2. How would you trust the government to come up with the optimal CO2 emissions limits and how would the government achieve the flexibility to revise these limits as new information became available?

Here are your links regarding the post of historical retort:

Treaty of Brest-Litovsk

Treaty of Versailles

Napoleon poisoned

Battle for Saipan-Japanese were no pushovers

Presidential Election of 1876

British burn Washington D.C. in 1814"

George Washington hammers the Brits

Also, please note that British propaganda against Napoleon was at least as strident as the American propaganda against Saddam Hussein.

Here are your links regarding the post of historical retort:

Treaty of Brest-Litovsk

Treaty of Versailles

Napoleon poisoned

Battle for Saipan-Japanese were no pushovers

Presidential Election of 1876

British burn Washington D.C. in 1814"

George Washington hammers the Brits

Also, please note that British propaganda against Napoleon was at least as strident as the American propaganda against Saddam Hussein.

Now, I found these original sources with a few minutes Googling. If this is a representative sample, it looks to me like both politicians and ordinary people saw the potential abolition of slavery as a motivating factor for secession.

Now, I found these original sources with a few minutes Googling. If this is a representative sample, it looks to me like both politicians and ordinary people saw the potential abolition of slavery as a motivating factor for secession.

Sorry, the US government has never operated in a completely open fashion. See this secrecy resolution adopted by the First Continental Congress.

There are numerous precedents for things such as the Patriot Act. They have usually been ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court, but they have always stuck around until they reached the point of being struck down. For example the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798 were blatantly unconstitutional and designed to give the government the power to crack down on their opponents. Of course it wasn't taken out until 1840, not exactly a quick response.

Then of course we had the Espionage Act and Sedition Acts during WW1. Similar things in WW2, the relocation of Japanese-Americans... all sorts of precedents have been set in this regard.

Reflections of Unconstitutional Precedence

TImeline of American Hegemony

The goverment does not care if the laws that they pass or the actions that they take are unconstitutional. That is the one thing history has taught us again and again. It doesn't matter at all unless the Supreme Court is going to rule against them. These sorts of unconstitutional practices will be allowed almost without fail. Perhaps years later public opinion will shift and people will add another chapter to the history books on unconsitutional precedents.

Hopefully the SCOTUS gets the balls to do something about it. Although I highly doubt that our current court will become involved. We already know how they rule on major issues that affect our country. The precedent is to allow the govt to do whatever the hell they want, worry about the Constitution later. Especially when the ideologies of the different branches of govt meet.

One last interesting tidbit: this story has also been picked up at LawMeme here which makes sense since it's on Reuters, as you can see from the Google News page over here.

Here's a copy of the original lawsuit which was filed by the world's most incompetant lawer, Mark Felstein who was hired by a bunch of Boca Raton chickenboner spammer scumbags, under the auspices of this "emarketersamerica" front. A summary of the charges is here. You can also read the defendant's item-by-item reply to the original complaint. It's quite funny, actually, and reminds me of IBM's response to SCO's bullshit where they basically state that every allegation is false to fact, other than the obvious, such as "IBM sells computers".

Except in this case, the spammer plaintifs were so incompetant that they couldn't even formulate a single complaint that had any basis in law. They also tried to file a temporary restraining order against spamhaus, which the Florida judge basically laughed at. The suit was really just a big case of harassment, and a ploy to somehow reveal the identity of the anonymous party[1] behind SPEWS -- which is not Steve Linford or Spamhaus, as a lot of these slashdot stories seem to imply. Spamhaus was just one of about 13 various mirrors that distributed the SPEWS DNS blocklist.

You can find more details here.

[1]<cough>Terry H. Gilsenan aka "Posopis Menaga" (pidgin for "postmaster")

"As the government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion,-as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion or tranquility of Musselmen,-and as the said States never have entered into any war or act of hostility against any Mehomitan nation, it is declared by the parties that no pretext arising from religious opinions shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries."

Now be it known, That I John Adams, President of the United States of America, having seen and considered the said Treaty do, by and with the advice consent of the Senate, accept, ratify, and confirm the same, and every clause and article thereof. And to the End that the said Treaty may be observed and performed with good Faith on the part of the United States, I have ordered the premises to be made public; And I do hereby enjoin and require all persons bearing office civil or military within the United States, and all others citizens or inhabitants thereof, faithfully to observe and fulfil the said Treaty and every clause and article thereof.

As the government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion,-as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion or tranquility of Musselmen,-and as the said States never have entered into any war or act of hostility against any Mehomitan nation, it is declared by the parties that no pretext arising from religious opinions shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries.

Interesting, but not surpricing. Humans have been building machines for several thousand years and gotten very good at it. We have dabbled in AI for less than a century, and hasn't really gotten anywhere yet. The AI has so far always been the stumbling block as far as robots and autonoms go.

The principle behind how things move are well known - the wheel and the lever is inventions which origins are lost in the mist of time. Lifelike movements are nothing new either - in 1769 Baron Wolfgang von Kempelen produced a chess-playing Turkish gentleman. The life-sized automaton sat at a large cabinet with a long pipe in one hand, consistently beating its living opponents at chess with the other (the automation was controlled by a midget hidden under the chessboard - so you could call the midget the robots 'AI'). The same Baron invented a 'speaking machine', so he clearly had some mechanical insights and skills.

It is made quite clear over at LawMeme...Here is a quote from that article:

"Well, Roland nastygrammed the Project, claiming copyright in the sound samples embedded in the MT-32's ROM. In response, the only adult member of the Project team fired back a letter pointing out that Roland had never registered that copyright. And since the MT-32 had been distributed before 1989 (when the pre-Sonny round of copyright "reform" went into effect), 17 U.S.C. section 405 meant that Roland had lost its copyright, according to the Project team.

Use it or lose it, right?

No! No! No! This meme must be killed NOW! The Project's home page seems to indicate that they've already backed down from this stance and won't contest in court the enforceability of the copyright. As well they shouldn't, because they would lose. Painfully so."

Actually, upon reflection, I don't think they will. My analysis can be found on LawMeme, here.

People still don't get it. Last week a Michigan State Law Professor published an article claiming that videogames (especially violent ones) shouldn't be protected by the First Amendment. LawMeme takes apart the argument here.

People still don't get it. Last week a Michigan State Law Professor published an article claiming that videogames (especially violent ones) shouldn't be protected by the First Amendment. LawMeme takes apart the argument here.