Yes, that is what a proper scientific report should do. No, that is not the report an independent scientific review board should give - or at least, not those which report to the HHS. Instead, the board has a slightly different role. I really liked how it was phrased elsewhere many years ago, so I'll plagiarize freely: The role of such a board is to determine all three levels of feasibility of the scientific procedure under review.
The first type of feasibility is the technical, or "Do we have the technology/knowledge/etc to follow this path?" And in your scientific report, it stops there. But there is more...
The second type of feasibility is economic, or "Do we have enough money and time and other resources to follow this path?" It's actually fairly important. As an example, about my only major objection to a 'beanpole' falls here - my back-of-the-envelope figures say we'd have to spend the US GDP for about 20 years to build one, which is not a trivial sum. But of course, it may be economically trivial, which brings us to the last feasibility check:
The report should inform on political feasibility. In other words, will the folk that have to live and deal with this path agree to it or resist it. Nuclear plants are safer than coal plants and less economically disruptive than both coal and hydroelectric plants even considering the waste issue. Yet the political resistance is so severe that not only have no new plants been built since 1993 (actually, no new plants have been begun since 1987), but it's likely that we'll see the currently intended "new plants by 2010" initiative fail as well.
A body which is reporting to the the decision makers serves its purpose best if it prepares answers to all the questions. Answering just the first feasibility is insufficient.
Of course, this makes the tendency to stack boards with certain biases (typical of all government appointed boards) even more distasteful, but that's a separate issue.
May I suggest you go out to the car and make certain you're referencing the same book? I just went to my reference shelf (I'm a librarian) and checked. Chapter 3 of that book is NOT Copyright. Indeed, the book touches on copyright twice. The first time is a small section in chapter 1 which briefly covers what copyright is and notes that the rules for copyright and patent are completely different, that for all but a small grey area what can be patented cannot be registered for copyright (and vice versa), and briefly mentions what falls into that grey area. The second time copyright is mentioned is in chapter 8, where the author discusses copyrighting the patent design and registration paperwork.
Right. So, how much are you paying for your cellphone? More importantly, how many other folks are paying similar prices for cellphones everywhere?
This won't be an immediate-profit action. It'll take at least a couple of years for the general public to catch on. And there will be nightmare consequences as well. But at $50-$100/month to have computer connectivity anywhere I go, it'd be a winner fairly soon. It'll break free when the public as a whole discovers nifty uses - such as email alerts (of weather, stock changes, and traffic patterns), which will be utterly terrifying when the user's driving a car.
The primary flaw of the CBDTPA - and much of the RIAA/MPAA intent - is that it starts with the assumption that everything (all aspects of any created thing) should be restricted unless specifically restricted. This underlying tenet is part and parcel of the DMCA, and of the "ability to track those who pirate the material" you mention. That mindset is what has to be battled, because as long as it exists it will continue to lead to more and more restrictions.
Re-read the pre-DMCA US copyright law and the applicable article of the US constitution. Note that these basically begin with the reverse tenet - that everything (all aspects of any creation) are freely available EXCEPT as restricted.
The owners of the creation - not the creators in most of these cases, but the owneres - are perfectly justified in trying to reduce theft of their property. But when any such action becomes such that the default exceeds their restrictive permissions, then they are at fault. To use a tangible analogy, a store is perfectly allowed to mount cameras and put 'tattletags' in their property and use private police to prevent shoplifting. BUT... the tattletags must be removed when sold, and the private police cannot arbitrarily check my car as I leave the parking lot (different from leaving the store), and the cameras can't be set to look upon me in my home. How many of you can prove that you purchased all the furniture - or all the books, or even all the electronics - in your house if a policeman were to arrive and demand such proof (or face charges of theft)? And yet, that's the essence of current thought on protection of intellectual property.
I think, really and truly, that there are enough laws on the books already to protect against property. The solution is no longer getting a law to mandate protection. The solution lies in effective techniques - social, technological, and operational practices - that minimize the theft. I find myself wondering just how much theft there really is - I have seen many exclamations of theft, but even at the height of the Napster excitement nobody was brought to civil or criminal court except the carrier of the product - who could not prove (or disprove) that the clients who'd submitted the disks were doing so without having paid for the property.
We don't need new and more restrictive laws. We might (maybe) need better enforcement of the ones we have. THAT is what I'd ask you to pass on to your legislator.
First, the Freedom of Information act applies solely to US Federal government, not state government. Now, most if not all states have some sort of "open public records" law, but the specifics vary from state to state. That said, there are some commonalities that bring us to...
Second, nobody can just walk into any State agency (or Federal for that matter) and demand to see copies of the email. In most cases what must be requested is material regarding a subject, which includes email. Some of that material is potentially going to be denied - a specific example is where (in the state of Georgia) the email is part of a discussion between two law enforcement agents regarding an ongoing investigation. Your state's laws will vary in what is denied and whether you are to be told it's been denied.
Finally, most states already have policies (mandated by law) in place regarding document retention and destruction.
Actually there are more problems. Three stand out in my mind.
1) Weight. The article discusses putting 400 pounds of equipment on this thing. A 200 pound soldier plus 400 pounds of equipment plus - oh, let's say 200 pounds of exoskeleton (complete) for 800 pounds. All standing on "size 20" shoes (at a guess). The article notes that the future of warfare is urban, and misses a really big point - a LOT of soldiers will crash through the stairs and floors when they run and jump and fight. This also rather negates the claim of Stephen Jacobson in the article that legs can reach 85 percent of the world - I see a lot of swamps and deserts being inaccessible for these things due to the high weight on small footprint.
2) The second major weakness is the four hour duration. For infantry, that's almost a blink of an eye. Four hours of operation means refueling/recharging six times a day. Which leads to the third and in some ways most glaring weakness...
3) Logistics - both supplies and maintenance. I have to get the fuel to the infantry every four hours. If I need ten gallons per soldier then a platoon of 30 is 300 gallons - and I need to do this 6 times a day for 1800 gallons per platoon per soldier. If I need 20 minutes to refuel that platoon then I need 2 hours a day just for that. Let's see -- you can't sleep in these, so there's a savings, but I have to wonder how long it takes to 'mount up'? You need to do your maintenance check every day - and the mechanics need to service the 'down' systems. If you've got one mechanic per 10 vehicles you need an easy dozen for a company - which is almost three times what you need for tank or mechanized infantry companies. You need spare parts - a larger quantity of a smaller selection, it's probably a wash.
I'm meandering, and I apologize. The exo's are cool and neat, but they are a LONG way from being the 'standard infantry uniform'.
Actually, phone books are copyrighted. You can't legally copy lists of names and phone numbers from the phone book to make your own phone book for sale.
No. See Feist Publications, Inc. v. Rural Telephone Service Company, Inc. 916 F.2d 718 (CA 10 1990). In simple, it says that the white pages - the lists of names and phone numbers - can't be copyrighted.
So what you're saying is that it is more humane to lock people away from 'normal' people, congregating them amongst a brutish populace administered by people who must for their own protection assume the worst of those they supervise, for an arbitrary amount of time determined by how much money they had and how well-spoken their attorney was and perhaps how politically distasteful their crime was.
No, I'm sorry. What you're saying is that we should realize that the perpetrator of the crime is a victim who must be treated and trained and assisted, who must be understood when they backslide and recommit the crime because of course the treatment is still in process, that we should not use punishment because it is damaging to the psyche - and of course the victims of the crime (other than the criminal victim) will have to recover as best they can without the cathartic closure of punishment but will have to gain strength from the knowledge that their pain was the first step to the recovery of another human being.
As opposed to a swift, certain, relevant punishment which provides the catharsis and the preventive measure, which can then be followed with treatments for both committer and victim of the crime.
What kind of giddy moral superiority do you get from assuming I like to see people hurt?
So... tell me why a library's effort to make the same kind of decision about how to make use of limited computing resources in the same situation is viewed as unacceptable?"
Because functionally the computing resources are not limited.
The library has a limited amount of space available into which it can squeeze the books. Even with a great budget, this is an insurmountable cap. While the library will have only a few computers, with an internet connection the information contained in/through each computer is functionally unlimited.
Restrictions to the use of the internet in the computer should therefore be more appropriately compared to the maximum capacity of the library itself - if only 20 people can get in (small library) then sooner or later you need to get people out so others can get in.
In most states any records detailing the history of the public are extremely private - by specific (as opposed to blanket) statite. For example, in the state of Colorado the only way someone who is not an employee of the library may have access to records is through some form of court order. The laws of most states are similar - and since the article refers to the library user privacy issue as a defense that was attempted, it must apply there as well. As another poster mentioned, there's nothing private about whether (or how many times) a book has circulated or how many people have been in the library in the past month - just anything that lets someone else know your reading/information interests and habits.
That said, I find myself wondering just how 'clean' the 'scrubbed' records are. Certainly the script probably removed the names and IDs of the students. But did they also scrub the information of which computer was used at what time (which might be compared to class schedules and rosters and seat assignments) or any other means of identification through secondary correlation?
Of course this might not matter. No mention is made in the article of what the father was trying to find. Did he want the detail of what sites could be reached - to evaluate how effective the filter was? Did he want to know how much time the computers were used in preparation for discussion at school board meetings over budget allocations? Did he want to know and punish any students who might be interested in membership in the ACLU? All we know is that he requested the history logs, and that the judge ruled that these minus the individual user identification were legal for him to receive.
No flame, but a point. I lived there because the job I had required me to live there. The job required me to be able to respond on site within 30 minutes. This meant that I could live in the big town of 2,000 or I could live in an even smaller town. Or I could quit the job, of course.
Yes, people could move to a large city. Of course, I've yet to see how farms, mines, and ranches can be run in downtown San Francisco, but I'm just not that imaginative.
Simple, really. A few years ago I lived in Limon, Colorado. Population about 2,000, and an hour and a half to anything resembling civilization. UPS, FedEx, and the like would deliver there, but pickups cost extra. The nearest office was in Denver - that hour and a half I just mentioned. The USPS is required to maintain a presence, regular pickup, and regular delivery service to towns like Limon, which meant I paid no more for that service than somebody in Seattle.
Now, that's probably one of the sources of inefficiency, that need to have deliver and pickup service even where it's an income loser. But given the choice between the government and, say Microsoft or IBM, well, at least I have a chance of getting through the government's layers of paperwork and obfuscation.
CDLU said, "...but does it really get to the legal issues[?]"
And the answer is yes. Look at the questions again, and do so with a copy of the DMCA in hand. See, there are little loopholes in the DMCA which are being opened by this article. Let me point you to one - not all, but one.
See section 1302 of the DMCA. It's the section which lists what CANNOT be covered by the DMCA. Item 5 is of particular note. Paraphrased, it says that the DMCA can't be used to protect something which is merely an extension of something else which is public property. Such as (I imagine) a proprietary extension of a widely established open source service - say, Kerberos?
Each of the points in the letter have similar critical points. As another poster noted, what this letter is doing is challenging the claim of copyright or trade secret (interesting how Microsoft is claiming both here) which gives them the right to conduct the exercise in the first place.
The inferences and conclusions I made from the referenced material is wrong. See, the governor of North Carolina did indeed start the Working Against Violence Everywhere (WAVE) program. The press release announcing it is here, and was made February 10 of this year. The actual description of the program is very close to where I already listed, and can be found at this site. Which means, of course, that it's my credibility, not Jon's, which leaves something to be desired.
Sorry for the misleading information and the impugning of Jon's professionalism.
It took me a while to track this down, and it leads me to suspect that our Mr Katz didn't do very good research either.
1) The name of the organization isn't W.A.V.E, it's S.A.V.E - Students Against Violence Everywhere. Its home page can be found here.
2) The program is not about a month old. This site lists the coordinator of the program from October of 1994. That makes it about 65 months old instead. Actually, according to the organization's history SAVE was begun in 1989.
3) What has happened is that the program - Pinkerton's toll free phone number - was included as part of the recommendations from the Task Force on Youth Violence and School Safety, which in April of 1999 was tasked with further reducing school violence. You can read a press release from August 11, 1999 here.
4) The official connection is here, the page of the School Programs of the Crime Prevention Unit of the NC Governor's Crime Commission. (I assume it's supposed to be the crime prevention commission, but we all have an opinion about government these days.)
5) Part of the information is loosely correct. There is a toll-free phone number. The reporting, however, is to notify law enforcement of school violence either in progress or anticipated soon. It is not a place to report students who might be potential "dangerous students" someday - the geeks, the depressed, the lonely, or whatever.
6) The program is run very much like the DARE program. This is intentional as the source material indicates. I am not discussing whether this is good or bad.
As with any such program there is a potential for abuse, and I'm not in a location to evaluate it. But the degree of error in Mr. Katz's report leaves him with a significant loss of credibility - which is too bad because I actually find most of his columns interesting. Now I'll have to verify his facts before I trust his opinions.
Obscenity is defined by local community standards.
No, obscenity is defined by statute - state law. Local communities may further define it, but are subject to being overridden by higher courts when reviewed against both statute and the constitution of state and nation.
The internet has no local standards.
(sarcasm)It doesn't? Strange, I could have sworn that there were standards which are local to the internet. I guess anyone can spam without hindrance or counter - and denial of service attacks are acceptable practice as well.(/sarcasm) Seriously, as is being discussed in other articles the internet is (at least) one community, and those communities have standards. It's just that in many cases definition of obscenity isn't an issue - any more than the degradation of the French language simply doesn't matter to most of the world.
Filtering is clearly not ideal, and the standards it uses are likely stricter than those of any particular community. But until effective alternative forms of control are available, local communities will be willing to give up on access to some (perhaps a great deal of) useful information, in order to block access to obscene material.
Sarcasm again to make the point - I know it's not what you mean, but...
The situation is clearly not ideal, and the limits it creates are clearly stricter than those of any particular community. But until effective alternative forms of control are available, local communities will be willing to give up on having some (perhaps none at all) non-white members in their community, in order to block this gang activity.
Ugly, isn't it? See, you're essentially saying, "Some of us are willing to ignore the Constitution of the US to have a limited and possibly false sense of security." And I happen to believe that particular sentiment is wrong.
I'll ask again. Where is the parental responsibility in this? If the parent is concerned about what the child might see, why isn't he or she supervised? You don't let the child wander down the streets freely (I hope). You check to see what they're watching on television (again, I hope). You review what books and magazines the child has checked out from the library. Why is the internet different?
As a librarian I think I need to respond here. If you use a library you'll be able to read your slashdot for certain. All else is a guess. As a general rule, what you won't be allowed to do is upload. Seems we have this trouble in our libraries of being used as testbeds for the local script kiddies, and most libraries can't afford a technician to fix them. Instead you've a librarian with (hopefully) an interest in computers trying to protect the investment.
I see a lot of mention on here saying 'just use AOL' or use a cybercafe. Unfortunately it won't be that easy. See, once you get into the great plains and Rocky Mountains you have a problem. Low population density means that many of the 'big' suppliers who provide nationwide access don't bother to put a local access point in that area. Which means that to connect to AOL (for example) means you'll be paying about US$0.10 per minute at nominal 56K connect speeds. This won't matter if you stop in towns with populations of 6,000 or more, but if you're in smaller towns you do run the risk.
On the plus side, most hotels and motels serving business travelers have standard sockets, so the physical connection becomes much simpler.
I am flabbergasted by the number of parents who will drop their children off at their public library for 2, 3, or more hours with no supervision, who then scream about those same children gaining access to "bad" internet sites. I am not a babysitter. I refuse to be forced to accept a status of loco parentis. If you do not want your child visiting strange and unusual sites on the internet, don't let them browse the internet unsupervised. Don't drop them off at the front door saying you'll come back in a few hours.
Don't tell me this doesn't happen - our staff just spent an hour with a little girl (who'd been here for 2 hours already) waiting with child services for Mom to come back. And I've got a small group of 8-10 year old boys who are after school regulars for about 3 hours waiting for mom and/or dad to finish work. We're treated as free babysitting, though we've explicitly refused that obligation in our policy.
*sigh* I realize I've begun to rant here. But I am extraordinarily annoyed by two tendencies which manifest themselves in this issue. The first is the refusal to accept personal obligation. The second is the insistance that all must wear a particular straitjacket of moral and political standards.
They paid for it. The survey company was conducted by Mason-Dixon Polling & Research, Inc. So superficially it appears that this should be an unbiased survey, and indeed the respondents were probably chosen in appropriate fashion. The trick is in the questions themselves. All are somewhat tricky. Rather than trust that all of you will click the links, I'm going to copy a few here. Italics are my editing:
Do you agree or disagree with Increased government regulation and litigation of the Technology industry will lead to consumers paying higher prices. First question, sets the tone of the survey.
Do you think increased government regulation, including the regulation of software design, will have a negative or positive effect on the high tech industry and companies, like Microsoft, to innovate and bring new products to consumers? Second sentence, and the associative principles have now set in that technology == microsoft. Further, this is about innovation and consumer interest.
third question finally asks whether the respondents are following the Microsoft trial. All I'll note here is that there are only three choices - very closely, somewhat closely and not at all - and that "not at all" is 44% for the population as a whole. I wonder what would have happened if they'd added the fourth choice between somewhat and none to get a balanced Leikert scale?
As you may know, the case impacts consumers. Some people say that Microsoft has repeatedly benefited consumers with its products. Others say Microsoft's business practices have hurt consumers. Which side do you agree with more? The earlier questions have biased the respondents to support Microsoft. Please remember how many of these people are following the case "somewhat closely" or better.
And my favorite, a sequence of questions which all use this format: The Department of Justice is deciding what, if any, regulations to pursue against Microsoft. If you knew that the Department of Justice was proposing a regulation that would end up increasing the cost of software to consumers, would you support or oppose the regulation? Would you strongly (support/oppose) it or (support/oppose) it somewhat? Notice the amazing jump from the DoJ considering any regulations to the assumption that any such will raise the cost. And, of course, the sudden switch to 4 choice Leikert scales.
The sad thing is, this is a typical survey. The results obtained are almost certainly true. the bias is in the question design. Somewhat like requiring a server test between NT, Linux and FreeBSD which requires all the workstations be Win9x.
I'm presuming that a judge as prejudiced as this judge is against the defendants (and their arguments) will likely rule against the defendants...most likely repeating most of the nonsense he has offered in this preliminary decision.
In the article is a link to the transcript of the hearing. I read it, and by the time I finished it I was annoyed with the defendants as well. Or more appropriately, with the attorneys for the defense as well. Consider -
Despite broad hints in several places that this was to be brief, the defense attorneys went on and on with their case.
Peter Katz, one of the attorneys of the case, repetitively forgot which of his team was doing what part of the case. Of course, submitting paperwork for the court at the last minute which was incomplete and in the improper form (the pro hac vice applications for his fellow attorneys) didn't help anything. This is balanced by the reply papers not being in the defense attorney's hand in time for the hearing (faxes begun at 11:30, due at 12:30, with 91 pages it just didn't happen in time).
Allon Levy, another defense attorney, had his rhetoric slapped by misstating facts. Certainly they were minor facts, but claiming 4 months when only 3 had passed when time was supposed to be a relevant point of the defense certainly didn't help.
All three attorneys had this bad habit of paraphrasing what had already been said - and this was especially painful when the court had already responded to those points.
Finally, it felt like the defense kept wanting to have the trial - indeed to get a dismissal of the case - at what was supposed to be a hearing for injunction. Not whether the parties were rightly involved, but whether it was right or wrong for an injunction to be fought. In other words, it appeared the attorneys had poorly prepared to fight the wrong fight.
This is not to say they didn't make good points. And the court clarified it's reasoning on some issues, which will be of benefit when the trial occurs - assuming the attorneys pay attention to those points. However, it appears to me that a critical element for next time is to focus on brevity. That said, IANAL and there may be very good reasons for the apparent bobbles and irritation of the court.
Before Linux, Macintosh. For both, however, DRM. And given the RIAA actions against the mp3 sites, I find this the most interesting. It appears to put two giants in head to head competition - with the winner being us.
Actually, more frightening is the thought of wearable computers and gamers. Consider the pleasure of driving through rush-hour traffic knowing that at least some of the people on the road are involved in a Quake deathmatch.
I see several things in this which are frightening to me. First, the results are overbroad in most of their categories. For example, boys of average and above average intelligence is at least 75% of the boys in the school. And every teenager I've ever asked considers himself (and herself) to be misunderstood and an outsider, only understood by at best a small circle of close friends who are also outcasts of society. Yes, this includes cheerleaders and jocks. Second, some of the items seem extremely offbase. IIRC at least some of the individuals recently involved in shootings had fairly stable families and good school results.
Here's a different idea. Please differentiate for me the difference between a student shooting up a school and a worker shooting up a place of employment. Essentially there is no difference.
What amazes me is how people seem to be missing something obvious about these kids and adults. We keep identifying them as having low self-esteem, and that's actually wrong. What they have is an inflated concept of what they are owed - a very high self esteem, in other words. Consider if you will how frequently the phrase "they owed me" appears in early statements. The individual shoots the girl because she didn't go out with him. He shoots the teacher who wouldn't give him an A - or the boss who didn't give him that promotion. He shoots the people who laughed at him. He shoots, in other words, those individuals who didn't agree with his sense of how the world should be.
We keep looking for the disgruntled, forgetting that everyone is disgruntled at some point. Instead we should be watching for the people with borderline personality disorder - the individuals who've a view of what should be which isn't in keeping with what is. When a large enough divergence occurs and it's combined with antisocial (current term for what used to be called sociopathic) tendencies, you get the shooter.
Two points I've found interesting about bubbleboy. First, it doesn't affect all Windows - NT is immune. Second, the method seems to be taking advantage of the fact that a preview pane has to open code somewhat. This implies that variations may create vulnerabilities in other readers with this feature - Eudora coming to mind for one.
Slashdot Mirror
This gives "identity theft" a whole new meaning.
Yes and no.
Yes, that is what a proper scientific report should do. No, that is not the report an independent scientific review board should give - or at least, not those which report to the HHS. Instead, the board has a slightly different role. I really liked how it was phrased elsewhere many years ago, so I'll plagiarize freely: The role of such a board is to determine all three levels of feasibility of the scientific procedure under review.
The first type of feasibility is the technical, or "Do we have the technology/knowledge/etc to follow this path?" And in your scientific report, it stops there. But there is more...
The second type of feasibility is economic, or "Do we have enough money and time and other resources to follow this path?" It's actually fairly important. As an example, about my only major objection to a 'beanpole' falls here - my back-of-the-envelope figures say we'd have to spend the US GDP for about 20 years to build one, which is not a trivial sum. But of course, it may be economically trivial, which brings us to the last feasibility check:
The report should inform on political feasibility. In other words, will the folk that have to live and deal with this path agree to it or resist it. Nuclear plants are safer than coal plants and less economically disruptive than both coal and hydroelectric plants even considering the waste issue. Yet the political resistance is so severe that not only have no new plants been built since 1993 (actually, no new plants have been begun since 1987), but it's likely that we'll see the currently intended "new plants by 2010" initiative fail as well.
A body which is reporting to the the decision makers serves its purpose best if it prepares answers to all the questions. Answering just the first feasibility is insufficient.
Of course, this makes the tendency to stack boards with certain biases (typical of all government appointed boards) even more distasteful, but that's a separate issue.
May I suggest you go out to the car and make certain you're referencing the same book? I just went to my reference shelf (I'm a librarian) and checked. Chapter 3 of that book is NOT Copyright. Indeed, the book touches on copyright twice. The first time is a small section in chapter 1 which briefly covers what copyright is and notes that the rules for copyright and patent are completely different, that for all but a small grey area what can be patented cannot be registered for copyright (and vice versa), and briefly mentions what falls into that grey area. The second time copyright is mentioned is in chapter 8, where the author discusses copyrighting the patent design and registration paperwork.
Right. So, how much are you paying for your cellphone? More importantly, how many other folks are paying similar prices for cellphones everywhere?
This won't be an immediate-profit action. It'll take at least a couple of years for the general public to catch on. And there will be nightmare consequences as well. But at $50-$100/month to have computer connectivity anywhere I go, it'd be a winner fairly soon. It'll break free when the public as a whole discovers nifty uses - such as email alerts (of weather, stock changes, and traffic patterns), which will be utterly terrifying when the user's driving a car.
The primary flaw of the CBDTPA - and much of the RIAA/MPAA intent - is that it starts with the assumption that everything (all aspects of any created thing) should be restricted unless specifically restricted. This underlying tenet is part and parcel of the DMCA, and of the "ability to track those who pirate the material" you mention. That mindset is what has to be battled, because as long as it exists it will continue to lead to more and more restrictions.
Re-read the pre-DMCA US copyright law and the applicable article of the US constitution. Note that these basically begin with the reverse tenet - that everything (all aspects of any creation) are freely available EXCEPT as restricted.
The owners of the creation - not the creators in most of these cases, but the owneres - are perfectly justified in trying to reduce theft of their property. But when any such action becomes such that the default exceeds their restrictive permissions, then they are at fault. To use a tangible analogy, a store is perfectly allowed to mount cameras and put 'tattletags' in their property and use private police to prevent shoplifting. BUT... the tattletags must be removed when sold, and the private police cannot arbitrarily check my car as I leave the parking lot (different from leaving the store), and the cameras can't be set to look upon me in my home. How many of you can prove that you purchased all the furniture - or all the books, or even all the electronics - in your house if a policeman were to arrive and demand such proof (or face charges of theft)? And yet, that's the essence of current thought on protection of intellectual property.
I think, really and truly, that there are enough laws on the books already to protect against property. The solution is no longer getting a law to mandate protection. The solution lies in effective techniques - social, technological, and operational practices - that minimize the theft. I find myself wondering just how much theft there really is - I have seen many exclamations of theft, but even at the height of the Napster excitement nobody was brought to civil or criminal court except the carrier of the product - who could not prove (or disprove) that the clients who'd submitted the disks were doing so without having paid for the property.
We don't need new and more restrictive laws. We might (maybe) need better enforcement of the ones we have. THAT is what I'd ask you to pass on to your legislator.
Actually, no.
First, the Freedom of Information act applies solely to US Federal government, not state government. Now, most if not all states have some sort of "open public records" law, but the specifics vary from state to state. That said, there are some commonalities that bring us to...
Second, nobody can just walk into any State agency (or Federal for that matter) and demand to see copies of the email. In most cases what must be requested is material regarding a subject, which includes email. Some of that material is potentially going to be denied - a specific example is where (in the state of Georgia) the email is part of a discussion between two law enforcement agents regarding an ongoing investigation. Your state's laws will vary in what is denied and whether you are to be told it's been denied.
Finally, most states already have policies (mandated by law) in place regarding document retention and destruction.
Actually there are more problems. Three stand out in my mind.
1) Weight. The article discusses putting 400 pounds of equipment on this thing. A 200 pound soldier plus 400 pounds of equipment plus - oh, let's say 200 pounds of exoskeleton (complete) for 800 pounds. All standing on "size 20" shoes (at a guess). The article notes that the future of warfare is urban, and misses a really big point - a LOT of soldiers will crash through the stairs and floors when they run and jump and fight. This also rather negates the claim of Stephen Jacobson in the article that legs can reach 85 percent of the world - I see a lot of swamps and deserts being inaccessible for these things due to the high weight on small footprint.
2) The second major weakness is the four hour duration. For infantry, that's almost a blink of an eye. Four hours of operation means refueling/recharging six times a day. Which leads to the third and in some ways most glaring weakness...
3) Logistics - both supplies and maintenance. I have to get the fuel to the infantry every four hours. If I need ten gallons per soldier then a platoon of 30 is 300 gallons - and I need to do this 6 times a day for 1800 gallons per platoon per soldier. If I need 20 minutes to refuel that platoon then I need 2 hours a day just for that. Let's see -- you can't sleep in these, so there's a savings, but I have to wonder how long it takes to 'mount up'? You need to do your maintenance check every day - and the mechanics need to service the 'down' systems. If you've got one mechanic per 10 vehicles you need an easy dozen for a company - which is almost three times what you need for tank or mechanized infantry companies. You need spare parts - a larger quantity of a smaller selection, it's probably a wash.
I'm meandering, and I apologize. The exo's are cool and neat, but they are a LONG way from being the 'standard infantry uniform'.
No. See Feist Publications, Inc. v. Rural Telephone Service Company, Inc. 916 F.2d 718 (CA 10 1990). In simple, it says that the white pages - the lists of names and phone numbers - can't be copyrighted.
So what you're saying is that it is more humane to lock people away from 'normal' people, congregating them amongst a brutish populace administered by people who must for their own protection assume the worst of those they supervise, for an arbitrary amount of time determined by how much money they had and how well-spoken their attorney was and perhaps how politically distasteful their crime was.
No, I'm sorry. What you're saying is that we should realize that the perpetrator of the crime is a victim who must be treated and trained and assisted, who must be understood when they backslide and recommit the crime because of course the treatment is still in process, that we should not use punishment because it is damaging to the psyche - and of course the victims of the crime (other than the criminal victim) will have to recover as best they can without the cathartic closure of punishment but will have to gain strength from the knowledge that their pain was the first step to the recovery of another human being.
As opposed to a swift, certain, relevant punishment which provides the catharsis and the preventive measure, which can then be followed with treatments for both committer and victim of the crime.
What kind of giddy moral superiority do you get from assuming I like to see people hurt?
So... tell me why a library's effort to make the same kind of decision about how to make use of limited computing resources in the same situation is viewed as unacceptable?"
Because functionally the computing resources are not limited.
The library has a limited amount of space available into which it can squeeze the books. Even with a great budget, this is an insurmountable cap. While the library will have only a few computers, with an internet connection the information contained in/through each computer is functionally unlimited.
Restrictions to the use of the internet in the computer should therefore be more appropriately compared to the maximum capacity of the library itself - if only 20 people can get in (small library) then sooner or later you need to get people out so others can get in.
In most states any records detailing the history of the public are extremely private - by specific (as opposed to blanket) statite. For example, in the state of Colorado the only way someone who is not an employee of the library may have access to records is through some form of court order. The laws of most states are similar - and since the article refers to the library user privacy issue as a defense that was attempted, it must apply there as well. As another poster mentioned, there's nothing private about whether (or how many times) a book has circulated or how many people have been in the library in the past month - just anything that lets someone else know your reading/information interests and habits.
That said, I find myself wondering just how 'clean' the 'scrubbed' records are. Certainly the script probably removed the names and IDs of the students. But did they also scrub the information of which computer was used at what time (which might be compared to class schedules and rosters and seat assignments) or any other means of identification through secondary correlation?
Of course this might not matter. No mention is made in the article of what the father was trying to find. Did he want the detail of what sites could be reached - to evaluate how effective the filter was? Did he want to know how much time the computers were used in preparation for discussion at school board meetings over budget allocations? Did he want to know and punish any students who might be interested in membership in the ACLU? All we know is that he requested the history logs, and that the judge ruled that these minus the individual user identification were legal for him to receive.
No flame, but a point. I lived there because the job I had required me to live there. The job required me to be able to respond on site within 30 minutes. This meant that I could live in the big town of 2,000 or I could live in an even smaller town. Or I could quit the job, of course.
Yes, people could move to a large city. Of course, I've yet to see how farms, mines, and ranches can be run in downtown San Francisco, but I'm just not that imaginative.
Simple, really. A few years ago I lived in Limon, Colorado. Population about 2,000, and an hour and a half to anything resembling civilization. UPS, FedEx, and the like would deliver there, but pickups cost extra. The nearest office was in Denver - that hour and a half I just mentioned. The USPS is required to maintain a presence, regular pickup, and regular delivery service to towns like Limon, which meant I paid no more for that service than somebody in Seattle.
Now, that's probably one of the sources of inefficiency, that need to have deliver and pickup service even where it's an income loser. But given the choice between the government and, say Microsoft or IBM, well, at least I have a chance of getting through the government's layers of paperwork and obfuscation.
CDLU said, "...but does it really get to the legal issues[?]"
And the answer is yes. Look at the questions again, and do so with a copy of the DMCA in hand. See, there are little loopholes in the DMCA which are being opened by this article. Let me point you to one - not all, but one.
See section 1302 of the DMCA. It's the section which lists what CANNOT be covered by the DMCA. Item 5 is of particular note. Paraphrased, it says that the DMCA can't be used to protect something which is merely an extension of something else which is public property. Such as (I imagine) a proprietary extension of a widely established open source service - say, Kerberos?
Each of the points in the letter have similar critical points. As another poster noted, what this letter is doing is challenging the claim of copyright or trade secret (interesting how Microsoft is claiming both here) which gives them the right to conduct the exercise in the first place.
The inferences and conclusions I made from the referenced material is wrong. See, the governor of North Carolina did indeed start the Working Against Violence Everywhere (WAVE) program. The press release announcing it is here, and was made February 10 of this year. The actual description of the program is very close to where I already listed, and can be found at this site. Which means, of course, that it's my credibility, not Jon's, which leaves something to be desired.
Sorry for the misleading information and the impugning of Jon's professionalism.
It took me a while to track this down, and it leads me to suspect that our Mr Katz didn't do very good research either.
1) The name of the organization isn't W.A.V.E, it's S.A.V.E - Students Against Violence Everywhere. Its home page can be found here.
2) The program is not about a month old. This site lists the coordinator of the program from October of 1994. That makes it about 65 months old instead. Actually, according to the organization's history SAVE was begun in 1989.
3) What has happened is that the program - Pinkerton's toll free phone number - was included as part of the recommendations from the Task Force on Youth Violence and School Safety, which in April of 1999 was tasked with further reducing school violence. You can read a press release from August 11, 1999 here.
4) The official connection is here, the page of the School Programs of the Crime Prevention Unit of the NC Governor's Crime Commission. (I assume it's supposed to be the crime prevention commission, but we all have an opinion about government these days.)
5) Part of the information is loosely correct. There is a toll-free phone number. The reporting, however, is to notify law enforcement of school violence either in progress or anticipated soon. It is not a place to report students who might be potential "dangerous students" someday - the geeks, the depressed, the lonely, or whatever.
6) The program is run very much like the DARE program. This is intentional as the source material indicates. I am not discussing whether this is good or bad.
As with any such program there is a potential for abuse, and I'm not in a location to evaluate it. But the degree of error in Mr. Katz's report leaves him with a significant loss of credibility - which is too bad because I actually find most of his columns interesting. Now I'll have to verify his facts before I trust his opinions.
No, obscenity is defined by statute - state law. Local communities may further define it, but are subject to being overridden by higher courts when reviewed against both statute and the constitution of state and nation.
The internet has no local standards.
(sarcasm)It doesn't? Strange, I could have sworn that there were standards which are local to the internet. I guess anyone can spam without hindrance or counter - and denial of service attacks are acceptable practice as well.(/sarcasm) Seriously, as is being discussed in other articles the internet is (at least) one community, and those communities have standards. It's just that in many cases definition of obscenity isn't an issue - any more than the degradation of the French language simply doesn't matter to most of the world.
Filtering is clearly not ideal, and the standards it uses are likely stricter than those of any particular community. But until effective alternative forms of control are available, local communities will be willing to give up on access to some (perhaps a great deal of) useful information, in order to block access to obscene material.
Sarcasm again to make the point - I know it's not what you mean, but...
The situation is clearly not ideal, and the limits it creates are clearly stricter than those of any particular community. But until effective alternative forms of control are available, local communities will be willing to give up on having some (perhaps none at all) non-white members in their community, in order to block this gang activity.
Ugly, isn't it? See, you're essentially saying, "Some of us are willing to ignore the Constitution of the US to have a limited and possibly false sense of security." And I happen to believe that particular sentiment is wrong.
I'll ask again. Where is the parental responsibility in this? If the parent is concerned about what the child might see, why isn't he or she supervised? You don't let the child wander down the streets freely (I hope). You check to see what they're watching on television (again, I hope). You review what books and magazines the child has checked out from the library. Why is the internet different?
As a librarian I think I need to respond here. If you use a library you'll be able to read your slashdot for certain. All else is a guess. As a general rule, what you won't be allowed to do is upload. Seems we have this trouble in our libraries of being used as testbeds for the local script kiddies, and most libraries can't afford a technician to fix them. Instead you've a librarian with (hopefully) an interest in computers trying to protect the investment.
I see a lot of mention on here saying 'just use AOL' or use a cybercafe. Unfortunately it won't be that easy. See, once you get into the great plains and Rocky Mountains you have a problem. Low population density means that many of the 'big' suppliers who provide nationwide access don't bother to put a local access point in that area. Which means that to connect to AOL (for example) means you'll be paying about US$0.10 per minute at nominal 56K connect speeds. This won't matter if you stop in towns with populations of 6,000 or more, but if you're in smaller towns you do run the risk.
On the plus side, most hotels and motels serving business travelers have standard sockets, so the physical connection becomes much simpler.
Where is the parent?
I am flabbergasted by the number of parents who will drop their children off at their public library for 2, 3, or more hours with no supervision, who then scream about those same children gaining access to "bad" internet sites. I am not a babysitter. I refuse to be forced to accept a status of loco parentis. If you do not want your child visiting strange and unusual sites on the internet, don't let them browse the internet unsupervised. Don't drop them off at the front door saying you'll come back in a few hours.
Don't tell me this doesn't happen - our staff just spent an hour with a little girl (who'd been here for 2 hours already) waiting with child services for Mom to come back. And I've got a small group of 8-10 year old boys who are after school regulars for about 3 hours waiting for mom and/or dad to finish work. We're treated as free babysitting, though we've explicitly refused that obligation in our policy.
*sigh* I realize I've begun to rant here. But I am extraordinarily annoyed by two tendencies which manifest themselves in this issue. The first is the refusal to accept personal obligation. The second is the insistance that all must wear a particular straitjacket of moral and political standards.
- Do you agree or disagree with Increased government regulation and litigation of the Technology industry will lead to consumers paying higher prices. First question, sets the tone of the survey.
- Do you think increased government regulation, including the regulation of software design, will have a negative or positive effect on the high tech industry and companies, like Microsoft, to innovate and bring new products to consumers? Second sentence, and the associative principles have now set in that technology == microsoft. Further, this is about innovation and consumer interest.
- third question finally asks whether the respondents are following the Microsoft trial. All I'll note here is that there are only three choices - very closely, somewhat closely and not at all - and that "not at all" is 44% for the population as a whole. I wonder what would have happened if they'd added the fourth choice between somewhat and none to get a balanced Leikert scale?
- As you may know, the case impacts consumers. Some people say that Microsoft has repeatedly benefited consumers with its products. Others say Microsoft's business practices have hurt consumers. Which side do you agree with more? The earlier questions have biased the respondents to support Microsoft. Please remember how many of these people are following the case "somewhat closely" or better.
- And my favorite, a sequence of questions which all use this format: The Department of Justice is deciding what, if any, regulations to pursue against Microsoft. If you knew that the Department of Justice was proposing a regulation that would end up increasing the cost of software to consumers, would you support or oppose the regulation? Would you strongly (support/oppose) it or (support/oppose) it somewhat? Notice the amazing jump from the DoJ considering any regulations to the assumption that any such will raise the cost. And, of course, the sudden switch to 4 choice Leikert scales.
The sad thing is, this is a typical survey. The results obtained are almost certainly true. the bias is in the question design. Somewhat like requiring a server test between NT, Linux and FreeBSD which requires all the workstations be Win9x.In the article is a link to the transcript of the hearing. I read it, and by the time I finished it I was annoyed with the defendants as well. Or more appropriately, with the attorneys for the defense as well. Consider -
This is not to say they didn't make good points. And the court clarified it's reasoning on some issues, which will be of benefit when the trial occurs - assuming the attorneys pay attention to those points. However, it appears to me that a critical element for next time is to focus on brevity. That said, IANAL and there may be very good reasons for the apparent bobbles and irritation of the court.
Before Linux, Macintosh. For both, however, DRM. And given the RIAA actions against the mp3 sites, I find this the most interesting. It appears to put two giants in head to head competition - with the winner being us.
Actually, more frightening is the thought of wearable computers and gamers. Consider the pleasure of driving through rush-hour traffic knowing that at least some of the people on the road are involved in a Quake deathmatch.
Here's a different idea. Please differentiate for me the difference between a student shooting up a school and a worker shooting up a place of employment. Essentially there is no difference.
What amazes me is how people seem to be missing something obvious about these kids and adults. We keep identifying them as having low self-esteem, and that's actually wrong. What they have is an inflated concept of what they are owed - a very high self esteem, in other words. Consider if you will how frequently the phrase "they owed me" appears in early statements. The individual shoots the girl because she didn't go out with him. He shoots the teacher who wouldn't give him an A - or the boss who didn't give him that promotion. He shoots the people who laughed at him. He shoots, in other words, those individuals who didn't agree with his sense of how the world should be.
We keep looking for the disgruntled, forgetting that everyone is disgruntled at some point. Instead we should be watching for the people with borderline personality disorder - the individuals who've a view of what should be which isn't in keeping with what is. When a large enough divergence occurs and it's combined with antisocial (current term for what used to be called sociopathic) tendencies, you get the shooter.
Just my 2 cents, of course.
Two points I've found interesting about bubbleboy. First, it doesn't affect all Windows - NT is immune. Second, the method seems to be taking advantage of the fact that a preview pane has to open code somewhat. This implies that variations may create vulnerabilities in other readers with this feature - Eudora coming to mind for one.