Slashback: Card, Fortran, Legibility

Slashback tonight brings you more on recent RIAA madness, the readability of scrambled words, word of the return of Nullsoft's WASTE, another decision against the FTC's do-not-call list, and more -- read on for the details. The issue is greyer than you might think. SirFozzie writes "A Denver, Colorado judge has blocked the implementation of the Do-Not-Call List for a 2nd time, hours after the House and Senate passed the bill overwhelmingly, claiming that telemarketer's free speech rights would be infringed if this was to take affect. In the MSNBC story, judge Edward Nottingham ruled that "The Federal Trade Commission has chosen to entangle itself too much in the consumers' decision by manipulating consumer choice and favoring speech by charitable (organizations) over commercial speech." What's next? Constitutional Amendment?"

Follow-up: Can You Raed Tihs? meal worms writes "A Slashdot article appearing last Monday, which reported on the claim that scrambled words are legible as long as first and last letters are in place, was circulated to the University of British Columbia's Linguistics department. An interesting counter-example resulted:

"Anidroccg to crad cniyrrag lcitsiugnis planoissefors at an uemannd, utisreviny in Bsitirh Cibmuloa, and crartnoy to the duoibus cmials of the ueticnd rcraeseh, a slpmie, macinahcel ioisrevnn of ianretnl cretcarahs araepps sneiciffut to csufnoe the eadyrevy oekoolnr."

As demonstrated, a simple inversion of the internal characters results in a text which is relatively hard to decipher."

Addendum to Tough California Anti-Spam Law Signed On September 23, we mentioned California's new spam-ban law; srmalloy writes "The text of the new law, added by S.B. 186, is here."

Now you can WASTE away again in Margaritaville. adamsmith_uk writes "WASTE is open source small P2P network software supporting IM, group chat, file browsing/searching, and file transfer. It was released by Nullsoft and then removed by AOL, its parent company, in matter of hours. WASTE is now up to version 1.1 and back on Sourceforge. Get it while you can!"

Next time, Gadget Grandmother ... next time! FrankBama writes "The RIAA sued a grandmother for sharing over 2,000 songs (including 'I'm A Thug' by Trick Daddy). The EFF got involved and RIAA dropped the suit. This was done as a 'gesture of good faith' but the record industry spokesperson says they still think it's the right account.

260 other defendants still outstanding."

More of Orson Scott Card on Net music sharing. happy_place writes "FYI, you reported the first part earlier, here's the PART 2 of Orson Scott Card's political discussion on the stupidity of the record industry subpeona frenzy."

This part of the agenda is not supposed to be hidden. Stealthgirl writes "Note to everyone on the Hidden Agenda Contest that was mentioned over the weekend: There was a lot of feedback about only undergrads being eligible for the $25,000 prize. The rules have been clarified and full time grad students are welcome as well."

Update: Ah, yes: The Fortran bit. Thomas Beuthe writes "With regards to your slashdot Fortran article of the 16 Sept 2003 entitled 'Is GNU g77 Killing Fortran?,' I just wanted to make you aware of a fully featured alternative to g77 that perhaps everyone should consider using. Please go to Walt Brainerd's site: www.fortran.com (yes, he was the one who got *that* site!) and have a look at the "F" compiler.

I discussed the problem of the lack of a good freeware compiler and its influence on the lack of Fortran education and propagation of the language with him personally when he was here giving a Fortran course. He pointed out the "F" compiler to me. This is a fully compliant compiler which he put together himself.

The source code is actually the NAG compiler, I believe, except that he's hobbled it a bit to allow it to go out for free. This means that he has restricted the syntax a little, but not the functionality. So what you get is a fully funtional compiler which is restricted to what Walt considers to be the 'best' syntax for Fortran! This makes perfect sense for education, but also allows full useage for big projects as well!

Neat eh?"

Comments

Huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

The Federal Trade Commission has chosen to entangle itself too much in the consumers' decision by manipulating consumer choice and favoring speech by charitable (organizations) over commercial speech

By doing what?? You mean, they're entangling themselves too much by enforcing the consumers' decision???

Do not call ammendment

[Zeinfeld]

The idea that free speech gives a punk the right to have an automated telephone dialer call me and try to sell me a fraudulent prize is completely bogus.

The idea that anyone can call me up on my telephone line to annoy me with a sales pitch when I have asked them not to is equally bogus.

I don't care how many lothesome creeps loose their jobs as a result.

How are you going to enforce this?

[NightSpots]

17529.2.(b) Initiate or advertise in an unsolicited commercial e-mail advertisement to a California electronic mail address, or advertise in an unsolicited commercial e-mail advertisement sent to a California electronic mail address.

So when I get spam through my work email, which is a LLC in California, and it was sent through a relay in Korea, how is the Attorney General going to collect?

Oh, you're going to go around suing every company in Asia and Europe? This simply isn't ever going to be enforced.

There was a company in California (Trevor Law Group, search google) that was basically scaring small businesses into settling for $5,00-$10,000 on nonsensical lawsuits, and it took the Bar Association to step forward and stop them, because the Attorney General simply has too many cases on his desk. The number of lawsuits in this state are silly as it is, and I don't see anyone going to enforce this.

Do not call...

[dbc]

"manipulating consumer choice"??????

I don't feel the least bit manipulated. I knew full well what I wanted to happen when I went to that web site and entered my do-not-call information.

Translation

[BuffJoe]

"Anidroccg to crad cniyrrag lcitsiugnis planoissefors at an uemannd, utisreviny in Bsitirh Cibmuloa, and crartnoy to the duoibus cmials of the ueticnd rcraeseh, a slpmie, macinahcel ioisrevnn of ianretnl cretcarahs araepps sneiciffut to csufnoe the eadyrevy oekoolnr."

"According to card carrying linguistics professionals at an unnamed, university in British Columbia, and contrary to the dubious claims of the uncited research, a simple, mechanical inversion of internal characters appears sufficient to confuse the everyday onlooker."

Re:Translation

[Waffle Iron]

That's too readable. Translations posted here are supposed to be compter-generated. Here it is again after English -> German -> English courtesy of Google:

Like opinion of the basic linguistics specialists of the map at a nameless, university looks sufficient in British Colombia and oppositely to the doubtful requirements of the not quoted research, a simple, mechanical conversion of the internal letters to confuse the daily Onlooker.

Judge's tortured interpretation of the First

[Anonymous Coward]

... that telemarketer's free speech rights would be infringed if this was to take affect. ... judge Edward Nottingham ruled that "The Federal Trade Commission has chosen to entangle itself too much in the consumers' decision ..."

BULLSHIT!

The consumer has already made their decision by signing up for the DNC list! The Gummint is just enforcing that decision with some teeth. The Gummint is not preemptively suppressing speech based on content or source, it is telling them to leave us the hell alone when they won't listen to us asking them to do that ourselves.

The self-enforced "opt out" lists are an abysmal failure; what the hell do the direct marketers expect??

F is not Fortran

[BigFootApe]

From the SAL website:
F is a carefully crafted subset of the most recent version of Fortran, the world's most powerful numeric language. F retains the modern features of Fortran--modules and data abstraction, for example--but discards facilities such as EQUIVALENCE, which are difficult to teach, use, or debug.

Backwards compatibility is extremely important for the Fortran crowd (who tend to be a very conservative bunch). Having to rewrite source code is not going to make them happy.

More of Orson Scott Card on Net music sharing

[zenpiglet]

When friends can say, "Have you heard Eva Cassidy's music? Here, I'll send you a couple of songs, you won't believe how good she is," that's called "word of mouth," and what you'll get is more and more people who attend her live performances and buy her CDs.

Wow! File sharing can raise the dead ... how can anyone be against this great technology?

Stuff

[Annatar2]

I fail to see how anyone can claim that calling me at 5:00 pm while I'm eating dinner to sell me life insurance or ask if I REALLY want to change phone companies for the umpteenth time is 'free speech'.

As a wise man once said, 'Your right to swing your arms back and forth, ends where my face begins.'

Just as standing on a suburban corner with a bullhorn at 4:00 am yelling out my political agenda for world domination isn't protected by free speech (as it violates noise ordinances), stopping telemarketers from calling my house is not violating their free speech rights. Their are perfectly allowed to have their views on which phone company the average American should be using, they can even publish, or state them, they just shouldn't be allowed to call me and personally bug me about it.

Nah.. IT's better when you add Japanese to it!

[Genjurosan]

Now it's from English -> German -> English -> Japanese -> English aka ALL YOUR BASE!!!!

Like opinion of the specialist of basic language study in the nameless map, and the everyday onlooker of the research namely internal letter which is not quoted on opposite side it is easy to confuse in the English Colombia, the sufficient university to the condition machine conversion being doubtful at first glance.

HERE YOU GO - Plaintiffs' lawyers' contact info

[MobileDude]

Sean R.-Gallagher, Esq.
Marianne N. Hallinan, Esq.
Hogan & Hartson
1200 17d1 Street, Suite 1500
Denver, CO 80202
Attorneys for Plaintiffs

DENVER OFFICE
One Tabor Center
1200 Seventeenth Street, Suite 1500
Denver, CO 80202
Tel: (303) 899-7300
Fax: (303) 899-7333
Contact: Ty Cobb
Niki Tuttle

Send SEAN an email:
http://www.hhlaw.com/site/directory/contac t.asp?at t_id=2410&att_nm=Sean+R%2E+Gallagher

Say "Hello!" to Marianne:
http://www.hhlaw.com/site/photos/5509.j pg

Or, perhaps, call their Washington, DC home office:
WASHINGTON, D.C. OFFICE
555 Thirteenth Street, NW
Washington, DC 20004
Tel: (202) 637-5600
Fax: (202) 637-5910
Contact: Warren Gorrell

Robert Com-Revere, Esq.
Ronald G. London, Esq.
Davis Wright Tremaine, LLP
1500 K Street, N. W., Suite 450
Washington, D.C. 20005
Attorneys for Plaintiffs

Washington, D.C. Office
Suite 450
1500 K Street NW
Washington, D.C. 20005-1272
Main: (202) 508-6600
Fax: (202) 508-6699
Email: washingtondc@dwt.com

Robbie's personal page with phone, email, and !!! Outlook VCard!
http://www.dwt.com/lawdir/attorneys/CornRe vereRobe rt.cfm

Ronnie's 'neck-o' the woods' with the same
http://www.dwt.com/lawdir/attorneys/LondonRo nald.c fm

I'm sure they'll enjoy citizens using their published information as much as we love telemarkets using ours....

ENJOY!