They got sued by either Novel or Caldera, IIRC, and lost. In fact, when Novel recently filed suite against them for what they did with WordPerfect, one of Microsoft's defense was that Novel are precluded because of that earlier suite.
Not exactly "never got into trouble for considering it". Yes, you are correct that that code was never in any released product.
The first just means that they are not trying to defraud you. The second has good reflection on their intentions (i.e. - that they are really trying to hire someone, not get free work done). Both are irrelevant to the question of whether this is in violation of labor laws.
Just to show how far that might take you, where I live, reality shows were forced to pay minimal wages to participants of 24 hours on board shows, such as "big brother" and "survivor". Some claim that those payments are still not in conformance, because the participants are contractually obliged to attend various PR events after they "leave" the show, and should be paid for those as well.
Apparently, I am not the only one who disagrees with your analysis. A discussion on Groklaw where I quoted your message produced a list of cases where, at least apparently, verdicts have been overturned or vacated for much less than the foreman has done in this case.
The foreman convincing people to vote his way based on his personal understanding of how patents work (which was wrong anyway) is not the kind of thing this is talking about.
I beg to differ (though, IANAL). Isn't that the whole point of the pre-screening process (which brings up the question of why this was not a question there, and if it was, how did the foreman answer it. Probably a screw-up by the lawyers).
As far as my (incomplete) understanding of the process, the jury is supposed to get their bearing on the matter at hand from the judge and lawyers. Everything else they bring in regarding how to interpret the case is independent research. Whether the research took place during the trial or before is not the deciding factor.
Obviously, and again, IANAL, but I would love to learn. If you know that I'm wrong, and can cite references, I would read them.
Also, I'm a bit confused about the article you posted. It says that these are the Alabama rules. I.e. - 606 isn't a Federal rule. Is this even the governing law for the Apple vs. Oracle case?
That letter is about copying software. Care to show where "Bill Gates complained in a newsletter circa 1980 about people copying software and ideas without permission"?
Ahahahahahahahaaaha. Let's see. Bill Gates complained in a newsletter circa 1980 about people copying software and ideas without permission.
I have no recollection of the "ideas" part of your statement. Care to cite your references?
Apple sued Microsoft in the mid-80s for making an OS too similar to their own (which led MS plus other makers like Atari and Commodore to deliberately change their OSes appearance).
No. Apple sued Microsoft for developing an operating system based on information they received under NDA. Microsoft did, in fact, stab Apple in the back on that occasion. The only reason Apple lost is because the key innovation wasn't theirs to begin with (i.e. - taken from Xerox).
Yeah. Sure. "Open and willing to share". Not.
Okay, I'll grant you this. GP's statement was going too far. Still, things that back then were considered fair game are today causes for multi-billion dollars suites. IBM did not sue Compaq when they created a clean room re-implementation of their BIOS, despite the huge economical impact it had on IBM's market. Amiga, and later Commodor, never had to ask anyone for permission before creating an OS with windows, icons and menus, and suffered no consequences for it.
Heck, the Amiga even had an "emulator" for the Mac. It would do some Amigaish tricks with the hardware to cause it to be a Mac, and then had a special hardware solely so there'd be a place to put your (presumably legally obtained) Mac BIOS ROMs. In fact, the hacked version did not require that hardware at all, as people who don't care about A-Max's copyrights don't care about Apple's either. The result was a 7.2Mhz Amiga emulating an 8Mhz Mac at 120% speed. Nobody sued anyone, as far as I know.
Contrast the story above with Apple's treatment of Pystar and see whether things have changed or not.
My first request joining my current place of employ was one of those. At first I was weary that people in my room will complain about the noise, but all was well.....
Until I wrote an email.
Programming, I'm mostly thinking. Writing an email, people think I'm furious at someone because of the speed of the typing.
Trademark is not copyright. It is not a right businesses have but a consumer protection and only applies when a moron in a hurry might mistake one product for the other. Is there any chance you might mistake a news for nerds site for a piece of opensource hardware?
While your conclusion is correct, your premise is not. Trademark is not about consumer protection, but about brand name association protection. It is, most definitely, a right a business has.
The idea behind trademark is that, if I own one, I, and I alone, can decide what products this brand does and does not refer to. The mark owner does not have the right to limit the use to, say, only positive references. The reason that Slashdot's use of the brand is non-infringing, at least in this article, is because it actually refers to the OSI.
Intelligence is luck, just like retardation. No-one was born "deserving" their intelligence or stupidity.
So far, so good.
Envy is a rational response to the arbitrary hands nature deals.
There is nothing rational about envy. Rationally, some people have to be smarter than others, just as some people have to get lucky. It is not rational to discriminate against smarter people for being smarter, nor is it rational to try and eliminate luck.
Religion teaches us that envy is bad because, well, then you might actually dare to speak up against the status quo. This is why Western children are taught from a young age that envy is wrong.
I don't know about "wrong". Envy means wasting time and energy over things you cannot, and probably shouldn't, change. You can prevent a certain undeserving (whatever that means) someone from being popular or successful, but you simply cannot prevent undeserving people, in general, from being so.
Spend that energy you meant to burn over jealousy and anger into making yourself better, for whatever definition of "better" that suites you (richer, more educated, better married, whatever), accept that some people will always be better, by your own criteria, than you, and you will lead much happier life than by being envious.
I don't know whether envy is a "bad" thing, but it is certainly counter productive and unhelpful all round.
Let's keep it to patents that a reasonable engineer from the field cannot read. That is the situation with software. It is not, say, with pharmaceuticals. I don't know how it is with biotech.
The moment a "patent editor" starts to pile on the claims and to obfuscate the language, that is the point in which you know that patents made the transition from a tool design to protect an inventor to a tool designed to block out competition.
Teva (lit. "nature"), an Israeli pharmaceutical manufacturer who did most of their fortune from generic drugs, is, today, either the biggest or second biggest manufacturer in the world (though they did so many mergers and acquisitions that their name does not always appear on the package).
They are also the #1 reason that Israel is a permanent member of the US's intellectual property black list, despite the fact that Israel's pharmaceutical patent law actually lives up to the standards set forth by the US. In other words, the US is against generic manufacturers making cheaper drugs, at least if they are not American.
That does not seem correct. The NPT has provisions for mandatory supervision, which Iran is violating. The supervision is intended to make sure that the country is, indeed, not developing nuclear weapons. Those inspectors that were allowed limited access claimed a high probability of weapons development.
I thought people would think so too. Apparently, not everyone does.
A co-worker's brother thought otherwise. He, and a couple of friends, flew to Turkey, stepped into the Iranian embassy and asked to get issued a passport. They gave their current residence (Israel). They then flew to Iran and visited family for several days (not sure how long exactly), and came back quite safely. My co-worker did not think this too weird or dangerous. They were interviewed on at least one radio station here about it, so, obviously, most people do.
Apparently, things are never as clear cut or simple as people tend to make of them.
Raid is also not a full proof protection against disk corruption. The classic RAID model assumes only one disk in an array will fail at a time. With today's disk sizes, this assumption simply cannot be relied on. There are various, newer, RAID configurations that are more resilient than that, but they are rather expensive for casual use (you, obviously, don't).
The chances of one disk having latent errors that only show up during the intense operation of a disk sync are not insignificant. Such a problem took all of the data on a server a month ago for me.
Since you rarely back up EVERYTHING (i.e. - file system, cache directories and all), a sane configuration is to back up everything important AND ALSO to install RAID to decrease the chances that you'd need to rely on said backup.
The GP was not saying that you shouldn't RAID. He was saying that, in addition to installing RAID, you should also back up.
Oracle did submit such proof. Google had it stricken. Oracle got a second chance, with instructions what they need to fix. They submitted a second report, but ignored the instructions. That got stricken too. Despite earlier claim by the Judge to the contrary, Oracle got a third chance. They ignored the instructions, yet again. All relevant parts were stricken. That is why Oracle does not have any evidence of profits.
In my opinion (based, largely, by watching discussions here), the most important law in the Israeli law-book is called "the law of financing of parties". Basically, it prohibits any politician from accepting a large (the limit, I think, is around 10K nis, which are about $3000) from a single person or body.
I know from first hand experience that you can set up a meeting with at least some of Israel's Knesset members, discuss an issue on its merits, and have a fair-game chance of convincing them. I have been involved, with no more capacity than being a random member of the public, with the copyright overhaul effort that took place a few years ago. We (myself and one lawyer from the Israeli chapter of the Internet society) were the sole opposing voices in a room literally choking full of lawyers representing all major players in both software and music industries.
Our voices were heard, and on more than one occasion, accepted. This included some issues that any regular slashdot reader should easily identify as core, such as the fact that the final law, as passed, does not include DMCA like anti-circumvention provisions (which the Federation for Phonorecords tried to introduce), as well as having explicit fair use statements for allowing certain (rather wide) purposes of decompiling binary code.
Correct allocation of duties, wrong order of dependencies.
The Judge figured out this is a hot potato he'd rather not have to rule on. He therefor instructed the jury to assume the APIs are copyrightable and try to reach a verdict on the facts. If the jury finds that what Google did was fair use, the judge is off the hook to decide on the core issue. If, on the other hand, the jury finds for Oracle, then the judge has to make a decision based on law whether APIs are even deserve copyright protection.
Procedurally, this is a very economic decision. If the jury find for Oracle on this point, there is going to be an appeal whether the judge finds for Google or for Oracle. This way, there is a chance that this very grave and far-reaching question will become moot, avoiding a potentially problematic case law.
I have been following the case on groklaw (which, from past experience with SCO, is extremely close to what the actual transcripts turn out to be). Trying to be as objective as possible, I believe the right answer to the questions asked of the jury as asked is to find Google's use not fair use. If the APIs are a separate work, Google made commercial use of about 20% of them (37 out of about 160). Its use was not transitive - they added lots of other APIs, but did not change these (because, lets face it, how could they?). If I forced myself to be objective, I might find against them under these conditions.
Which means either the jury gets it (in my opinion) wrong, which is likely considering all of them only found out what APIs are over the past couple of weeks and Google seemed more convincing overall (Oracle's case on all other matters seemed really unconvincing to me), or the jury finds as I would, which means this is up for the judge to decide.
How would the judge decide? At the beginning of the trial he made a definite statement that SSOs are copyrightable. Toward the end of the trial he was only willing to state that it's a matter of law, and therefor up to him (resulting in the compromise finally reached). Then again, this trial brought forward lots of attempts to define what is, after all, an API, but the best one came, of all people, from the judge himself.
What's worse, if its left for the judge, regardless of outcome, this will get appealed. Google has done a great job of laying the ground, but this will then go in front of other judges, who are not as versed in the techies as this one.
I think we should all be rooting for a jury "not infringing" judgement if there is any hope for rapid resolution.
Incorporate wherever you want, so long as you stand by your word. A company should not be able to be located in one state, have its income generated in a second state, but have its contracts with a local jurisdiction bound to a third.
The state of California should just say "you bind people to my jurisdiction in your click-wrap agreements, then obviously this is where your revenue was generated. Pay up".
Because the # part is intended for the local browser. It is not part of the URL sent to the server, it is intended to tell the browser to go to a certain bookmark (anchor, in HTML jargon) inside the page.
You will notice that if you change just the part after the # and hit "enter", the browser does not refresh the page. That's because it does not think anything changed that is worth notifying the server.
Okay, I take it back. It seems that the reading URL contains the decryption key. That's actually quite nice.
The key seems to be stored in the in-page bookmark (the part after the "#"), so there is even a chance it won't be available through the server's logs. I have not checked whether it is the client or the server that produces the URL for reference. That might mean a trip to the server after all, but given the design of the rest, there is hope it was done properly after all.
It claims that data is encrypted and decrypted in the browser using 256 bit AES, so the server doesn't see any of the information included in the paste.
And where does the key come from? If from the server, then the data is not encrypted at all.
Actually, time zones are set by the pair continent/city. For example, my time zone is Asia/Jerusalem. There is also Europe/Paris etc. It's a little confusing, I know.
Since, last I checked, Toronto was in north America, that is, in fact, your time zone.
The middle east, particularly around Israel, is extremely dense in countries (always a problem when some smart @!#!@3 decides I need to pick a time zone by clicking a city), so I have to somewhat guess here. I'd say one dot is in Cairo, and then three more dots that may or may not all be inside Israel (if they are, Israel and Egypt officially have a piece accord). Either way, this is not something mentioned in TFA, so ask TheSilentNumber what he meant.
Still, Lebanon is not a very typical Arab country. It has a lot of ethnic groups, and at times, showed a very pluralistic approach to internal affairs (then again, the other times were spent in bloody citizen war between those very groups). Until the jury comes back with a decision on what Egypt is becoming, it is the only somewhat (see comment above) functioning Arab democracy.
There are other Muslim democracies, such as Turkey, but they are not Arab. The only other contender for an Arab democracy is the Palestinian authority. Question of whether or not they are a state aside, what really prevents them from taking that title is the fact that the first time a regime change was voted, the new regime slaughtered the supporters of the old one, and the old prime minister refused to step down, effectively splitting the west bank from Gaza. Not exactly what you'd call a proper democratic process.
So the fact that Lebanon is where the examples are taken from is not a good indication for what's going on in the Arab world at large. It just goes to show that treating the "Arab world" as one piece is just a misguided western view. Give me an example from Saudi Arabia or (yes, I know they are not Arab) Iran, and I'll be much more inclined to agree that my superstitions need to be revisited.
Slashdot Mirror
They got sued by either Novel or Caldera, IIRC, and lost. In fact, when Novel recently filed suite against them for what they did with WordPerfect, one of Microsoft's defense was that Novel are precluded because of that earlier suite.
Not exactly "never got into trouble for considering it". Yes, you are correct that that code was never in any released product.
Shachar
Both criteria are irrelevant.
The first just means that they are not trying to defraud you. The second has good reflection on their intentions (i.e. - that they are really trying to hire someone, not get free work done). Both are irrelevant to the question of whether this is in violation of labor laws.
Just to show how far that might take you, where I live, reality shows were forced to pay minimal wages to participants of 24 hours on board shows, such as "big brother" and "survivor". Some claim that those payments are still not in conformance, because the participants are contractually obliged to attend various PR events after they "leave" the show, and should be paid for those as well.
Shachar
Violation of minimum wages laws?
Shachar
Apparently, I am not the only one who disagrees with your analysis. A discussion on Groklaw where I quoted your message produced a list of cases where, at least apparently, verdicts have been overturned or vacated for much less than the foreman has done in this case.
Shachar
I beg to differ (though, IANAL). Isn't that the whole point of the pre-screening process (which brings up the question of why this was not a question there, and if it was, how did the foreman answer it. Probably a screw-up by the lawyers).
As far as my (incomplete) understanding of the process, the jury is supposed to get their bearing on the matter at hand from the judge and lawyers. Everything else they bring in regarding how to interpret the case is independent research. Whether the research took place during the trial or before is not the deciding factor.
Obviously, and again, IANAL, but I would love to learn. If you know that I'm wrong, and can cite references, I would read them.
Also, I'm a bit confused about the article you posted. It says that these are the Alabama rules. I.e. - 606 isn't a Federal rule. Is this even the governing law for the Apple vs. Oracle case?
Shachar
That letter is about copying software. Care to show where "Bill Gates complained in a newsletter circa 1980 about people copying software and ideas without permission"?
Shachar
Ahahahahahahahaaaha. Let's see. Bill Gates complained in a newsletter circa 1980 about people copying software and ideas without permission.
I have no recollection of the "ideas" part of your statement. Care to cite your references?
Apple sued Microsoft in the mid-80s for making an OS too similar to their own (which led MS plus other makers like Atari and Commodore to deliberately change their OSes appearance).
No. Apple sued Microsoft for developing an operating system based on information they received under NDA. Microsoft did, in fact, stab Apple in the back on that occasion. The only reason Apple lost is because the key innovation wasn't theirs to begin with (i.e. - taken from Xerox).
Yeah. Sure. "Open and willing to share". Not.
Okay, I'll grant you this. GP's statement was going too far. Still, things that back then were considered fair game are today causes for multi-billion dollars suites. IBM did not sue Compaq when they created a clean room re-implementation of their BIOS, despite the huge economical impact it had on IBM's market. Amiga, and later Commodor, never had to ask anyone for permission before creating an OS with windows, icons and menus, and suffered no consequences for it.
Heck, the Amiga even had an "emulator" for the Mac. It would do some Amigaish tricks with the hardware to cause it to be a Mac, and then had a special hardware solely so there'd be a place to put your (presumably legally obtained) Mac BIOS ROMs. In fact, the hacked version did not require that hardware at all, as people who don't care about A-Max's copyrights don't care about Apple's either. The result was a 7.2Mhz Amiga emulating an 8Mhz Mac at 120% speed. Nobody sued anyone, as far as I know.
Contrast the story above with Apple's treatment of Pystar and see whether things have changed or not.
Shachar
My first request joining my current place of employ was one of those. At first I was weary that people in my room will complain about the noise, but all was well.....
Until I wrote an email.
Programming, I'm mostly thinking. Writing an email, people think I'm furious at someone because of the speed of the typing.
Shachar
Trademark is not copyright. It is not a right businesses have but a consumer protection and only applies when a moron in a hurry might mistake one product for the other. Is there any chance you might mistake a news for nerds site for a piece of opensource hardware?
While your conclusion is correct, your premise is not. Trademark is not about consumer protection, but about brand name association protection. It is, most definitely, a right a business has.
The idea behind trademark is that, if I own one, I, and I alone, can decide what products this brand does and does not refer to. The mark owner does not have the right to limit the use to, say, only positive references. The reason that Slashdot's use of the brand is non-infringing, at least in this article, is because it actually refers to the OSI.
Shachar
Intelligence is luck, just like retardation. No-one was born "deserving" their intelligence or stupidity.
So far, so good.
Envy is a rational response to the arbitrary hands nature deals.
There is nothing rational about envy. Rationally, some people have to be smarter than others, just as some people have to get lucky. It is not rational to discriminate against smarter people for being smarter, nor is it rational to try and eliminate luck.
Religion teaches us that envy is bad because, well, then you might actually dare to speak up against the status quo. This is why Western children are taught from a young age that envy is wrong.
I don't know about "wrong". Envy means wasting time and energy over things you cannot, and probably shouldn't, change. You can prevent a certain undeserving (whatever that means) someone from being popular or successful, but you simply cannot prevent undeserving people, in general, from being so.
Spend that energy you meant to burn over jealousy and anger into making yourself better, for whatever definition of "better" that suites you (richer, more educated, better married, whatever), accept that some people will always be better, by your own criteria, than you, and you will lead much happier life than by being envious.
I don't know whether envy is a "bad" thing, but it is certainly counter productive and unhelpful all round.
Shachar
Let's keep it to patents that a reasonable engineer from the field cannot read. That is the situation with software. It is not, say, with pharmaceuticals. I don't know how it is with biotech.
The moment a "patent editor" starts to pile on the claims and to obfuscate the language, that is the point in which you know that patents made the transition from a tool design to protect an inventor to a tool designed to block out competition.
Shachar
Teva (lit. "nature"), an Israeli pharmaceutical manufacturer who did most of their fortune from generic drugs, is, today, either the biggest or second biggest manufacturer in the world (though they did so many mergers and acquisitions that their name does not always appear on the package).
They are also the #1 reason that Israel is a permanent member of the US's intellectual property black list, despite the fact that Israel's pharmaceutical patent law actually lives up to the standards set forth by the US. In other words, the US is against generic manufacturers making cheaper drugs, at least if they are not American.
Shachar
That does not seem correct. The NPT has provisions for mandatory supervision, which Iran is violating. The supervision is intended to make sure that the country is, indeed, not developing nuclear weapons. Those inspectors that were allowed limited access claimed a high probability of weapons development.
In other words, Iran is violating the NPT.
Shachar
I thought people would think so too. Apparently, not everyone does.
A co-worker's brother thought otherwise. He, and a couple of friends, flew to Turkey, stepped into the Iranian embassy and asked to get issued a passport. They gave their current residence (Israel). They then flew to Iran and visited family for several days (not sure how long exactly), and came back quite safely. My co-worker did not think this too weird or dangerous. They were interviewed on at least one radio station here about it, so, obviously, most people do.
Apparently, things are never as clear cut or simple as people tend to make of them.
Shachar
Raid is also not a full proof protection against disk corruption. The classic RAID model assumes only one disk in an array will fail at a time. With today's disk sizes, this assumption simply cannot be relied on. There are various, newer, RAID configurations that are more resilient than that, but they are rather expensive for casual use (you, obviously, don't).
The chances of one disk having latent errors that only show up during the intense operation of a disk sync are not insignificant. Such a problem took all of the data on a server a month ago for me.
Since you rarely back up EVERYTHING (i.e. - file system, cache directories and all), a sane configuration is to back up everything important AND ALSO to install RAID to decrease the chances that you'd need to rely on said backup.
The GP was not saying that you shouldn't RAID. He was saying that, in addition to installing RAID, you should also back up.
Shachar
Slight correction.
Oracle did submit such proof. Google had it stricken. Oracle got a second chance, with instructions what they need to fix. They submitted a second report, but ignored the instructions. That got stricken too. Despite earlier claim by the Judge to the contrary, Oracle got a third chance. They ignored the instructions, yet again. All relevant parts were stricken. That is why Oracle does not have any evidence of profits.
Shachar
In my opinion (based, largely, by watching discussions here), the most important law in the Israeli law-book is called "the law of financing of parties". Basically, it prohibits any politician from accepting a large (the limit, I think, is around 10K nis, which are about $3000) from a single person or body.
I know from first hand experience that you can set up a meeting with at least some of Israel's Knesset members, discuss an issue on its merits, and have a fair-game chance of convincing them. I have been involved, with no more capacity than being a random member of the public, with the copyright overhaul effort that took place a few years ago. We (myself and one lawyer from the Israeli chapter of the Internet society) were the sole opposing voices in a room literally choking full of lawyers representing all major players in both software and music industries.
Our voices were heard, and on more than one occasion, accepted. This included some issues that any regular slashdot reader should easily identify as core, such as the fact that the final law, as passed, does not include DMCA like anti-circumvention provisions (which the Federation for Phonorecords tried to introduce), as well as having explicit fair use statements for allowing certain (rather wide) purposes of decompiling binary code.
Shachar
Correct allocation of duties, wrong order of dependencies.
The Judge figured out this is a hot potato he'd rather not have to rule on. He therefor instructed the jury to assume the APIs are copyrightable and try to reach a verdict on the facts. If the jury finds that what Google did was fair use, the judge is off the hook to decide on the core issue. If, on the other hand, the jury finds for Oracle, then the judge has to make a decision based on law whether APIs are even deserve copyright protection.
Procedurally, this is a very economic decision. If the jury find for Oracle on this point, there is going to be an appeal whether the judge finds for Google or for Oracle. This way, there is a chance that this very grave and far-reaching question will become moot, avoiding a potentially problematic case law.
I have been following the case on groklaw (which, from past experience with SCO, is extremely close to what the actual transcripts turn out to be). Trying to be as objective as possible, I believe the right answer to the questions asked of the jury as asked is to find Google's use not fair use. If the APIs are a separate work, Google made commercial use of about 20% of them (37 out of about 160). Its use was not transitive - they added lots of other APIs, but did not change these (because, lets face it, how could they?). If I forced myself to be objective, I might find against them under these conditions.
Which means either the jury gets it (in my opinion) wrong, which is likely considering all of them only found out what APIs are over the past couple of weeks and Google seemed more convincing overall (Oracle's case on all other matters seemed really unconvincing to me), or the jury finds as I would, which means this is up for the judge to decide.
How would the judge decide? At the beginning of the trial he made a definite statement that SSOs are copyrightable. Toward the end of the trial he was only willing to state that it's a matter of law, and therefor up to him (resulting in the compromise finally reached). Then again, this trial brought forward lots of attempts to define what is, after all, an API, but the best one came, of all people, from the judge himself.
What's worse, if its left for the judge, regardless of outcome, this will get appealed. Google has done a great job of laying the ground, but this will then go in front of other judges, who are not as versed in the techies as this one.
I think we should all be rooting for a jury "not infringing" judgement if there is any hope for rapid resolution.
Shachar
No pun intended.
Incorporate wherever you want, so long as you stand by your word. A company should not be able to be located in one state, have its income generated in a second state, but have its contracts with a local jurisdiction bound to a third.
The state of California should just say "you bind people to my jurisdiction in your click-wrap agreements, then obviously this is where your revenue was generated. Pay up".
Shachar
Because the # part is intended for the local browser. It is not part of the URL sent to the server, it is intended to tell the browser to go to a certain bookmark (anchor, in HTML jargon) inside the page.
You will notice that if you change just the part after the # and hit "enter", the browser does not refresh the page. That's because it does not think anything changed that is worth notifying the server.
Shachar
Okay, I take it back. It seems that the reading URL contains the decryption key. That's actually quite nice.
The key seems to be stored in the in-page bookmark (the part after the "#"), so there is even a chance it won't be available through the server's logs. I have not checked whether it is the client or the server that produces the URL for reference. That might mean a trip to the server after all, but given the design of the rest, there is hope it was done properly after all.
Shachar
It claims that data is encrypted and decrypted in the browser using 256 bit AES, so the server doesn't see any of the information included in the paste.
And where does the key come from? If from the server, then the data is not encrypted at all.
Shacahr
Actually, time zones are set by the pair continent/city. For example, my time zone is Asia/Jerusalem. There is also Europe/Paris etc. It's a little confusing, I know.
Since, last I checked, Toronto was in north America, that is, in fact, your time zone.
Shachar
The middle east, particularly around Israel, is extremely dense in countries (always a problem when some smart @!#!@3 decides I need to pick a time zone by clicking a city), so I have to somewhat guess here. I'd say one dot is in Cairo, and then three more dots that may or may not all be inside Israel (if they are, Israel and Egypt officially have a piece accord). Either way, this is not something mentioned in TFA, so ask TheSilentNumber what he meant.
Shachar
Still, Lebanon is not a very typical Arab country. It has a lot of ethnic groups, and at times, showed a very pluralistic approach to internal affairs (then again, the other times were spent in bloody citizen war between those very groups). Until the jury comes back with a decision on what Egypt is becoming, it is the only somewhat (see comment above) functioning Arab democracy.
There are other Muslim democracies, such as Turkey, but they are not Arab. The only other contender for an Arab democracy is the Palestinian authority. Question of whether or not they are a state aside, what really prevents them from taking that title is the fact that the first time a regime change was voted, the new regime slaughtered the supporters of the old one, and the old prime minister refused to step down, effectively splitting the west bank from Gaza. Not exactly what you'd call a proper democratic process.
So the fact that Lebanon is where the examples are taken from is not a good indication for what's going on in the Arab world at large. It just goes to show that treating the "Arab world" as one piece is just a misguided western view. Give me an example from Saudi Arabia or (yes, I know they are not Arab) Iran, and I'll be much more inclined to agree that my superstitions need to be revisited.
Shachar