An email is a copyrighted work, just like a letter written on paper.
Copyright protects "original works of authorship" that are fixed in a tangible form of expression. The fixation need not be directly perceptible so long as it may be communicated with the aid of a machine or device.
U.S. Copyright Office, Copyright Basics (Circular 1)
It adds a whole new set of problems. Adding an electromechanical device like a printer would greatly reduce system reliability and increase maintenance and operation costs. Making things worse, these systems sit in storage for months between elections. What are the environmental controls, if any, in the storage facility? The customer expects to pull these units from storage, power them up, and have them work. The customer is not going to have a dedicated group of technicians to test and repair the printers. People will have to be trained in how to install and remove the paper. How often have you seen a store clerk ask for help from a fellow employee when the paper runs out in their cash register? The devices are price sensitive, so how much can you spend on designing, testing and producing the printer and paper feed assemblies? How many units will fail during the election due to printer problems and paper jams?
That was one of the nice features of DEC operating systems like RSX-11 and VMS. Every time you modified a file, the new version of the file was written to a new file name, instead of overwriting the original. The file version number was part of the file name, so you might have THESIS.TXT;1, THESIS.TXT;2, THESIS.TXT;3, etc. I used to think it was a DEC conspiracy to sell more disk drives, but it did save my butt more than a few times when the current version of a file got corrupted or a change had to be backed out.
If it's a typical organization, the whole point of automating the system was to get rid of all of the people who staffed the operation when it used pen and paper. That means that the institutional knowledge of the old system is probably working at the local WalMart. The old forms and processes no longer exist.
I have several Travan "write only" tape drives. Not only can they not read tapes written by other drives, they have a difficult time reading their own tapes.
I used to have a UNIX system (Multibus 10 MHz 68010) that had an 8" floppy disk drive for backing up files. The file backup software would write a track on the floppy and immediately read the track to verify the integrity of the data. This worked fine until some bits in the track selection logic of the floppy drive failed. After that, the drive would position the head on a semi-random track when it received a head positioning command. The backup software continued to run without any reported errors. The problem was discovered when the hard disk was replaced and I attempted to restore the filesystem. Every floppy disk in the backup set was hopelessly scrambled.
My point was that some equipment is used for a very long time. Not everything gets junked after 5-10 years. What happens in 30-40 years if everything with a chip in it self- destructs? What's worse, many of the systems that are likely to have very old chips are embedded in the most vital parts of the nation's infrastructure.
Many people still use test equipment that was built in the 1950s. Embedded computers can have a very long life, 30+ years is not uncommon. I know some people who are still using an Apple II with a custom I/O board to run a data analysis program. It works fine and the money required to replace it with modern equipment can be better spent on other projects.
Chips can "wear out". There are physical effects that make molecules move when there is an electric current in a conductor. My understanding is that this is a known problem and the traces are made thick enough so that it will be many years before they start to fail.
I used to work at a place that had a 20 kW S-band klystron that fed a high-gain antenna. It would probably wipe out any 802.11 network within line-of-sight of the antenna.
Not to mention there are licensed users in that band that can run much higher power, and have legal priority over Part 15 users.
This device complies with part 15 of the FCC Rules. Operation is subject to the following two conditions:
1. This device may not cause harmful interference, and
2. this device must accept any interference received, including interference that may cause undesired operation.
If a licensed user wipes out every 802.11 network in the neighborhood, too bad. That's the risk you take when you use unlicensed equipment that operates in an ISM band.
Anyone who designs a communications system that is 100% dependent on 802.11 devices is crazy.
I'd like to see this implemented for corporate email as well. Many employees get deluged with so much "legitimate" email that it turns into an enormous time sink. Do you want to tell the entire corporation that Joe Frobnitz is the new deputy assistant vice president for efficiency studies? Cough up some cash!
The problem is that email is already very bandwidth efficient. Let's say that you make a very short (60 seconds at 64 kbps) phone call. That phone call used 480kB (SI) of bandwidth. That's enough for several hundred email messages.
The FBI doesn't have a right to wiretap, but they do have the right to try, assuming they have a warrant. Don't expect them to give up easy access to the content of telephone calls without a fight.
In the past, the government has taken advantage of "choke points" in the communications infrastructure to do traffic analysis and intercepts. They have also used the regulatory apparatus of the FCC to mandate the inclusion or exclusion of features in type accepted equipment.
The FBI's nightmare is a secure peer-to-peer communications system without choke points or other means of control. This would force them to resort to "black bag" jobs to execute wiretaps.
Back before the introduction of consumer video recorders, I met a few film pirates. These were people who had bootleg copies, on film, of many movies and short features. Illegal as hell, and the MPAA wasn't any "kindler and gentler" back then. These "pirates" were the biggest film geeks that ever existed, spending every nickel they had on seeing films and buying film-related books and merchandise.
It also costs them money to handle cash. There is extra security for storing and handling cash, keeping change on hand, making bank deposits, bank service fees, etc. There is a whole industry built around providing support services for the use of cash in retail stores, and that is an additional cost for the retailer.
The primary function of a computer is not security. If that was the goal, I could just pull the plug and beat it with a sledge hammer. See? Perfectly secure!
I bought the computer to do work, some of which involves communicating with other computers. Disabling useful features is not a practical strategy for the long term.
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So did the Intel 432.
Yes.
It adds a whole new set of problems. Adding an electromechanical device like a printer would greatly reduce system reliability and increase maintenance and operation costs. Making things worse, these systems sit in storage for months between elections. What are the environmental controls, if any, in the storage facility? The customer expects to pull these units from storage, power them up, and have them work. The customer is not going to have a dedicated group of technicians to test and repair the printers. People will have to be trained in how to install and remove the paper. How often have you seen a store clerk ask for help from a fellow employee when the paper runs out in their cash register? The devices are price sensitive, so how much can you spend on designing, testing and producing the printer and paper feed assemblies? How many units will fail during the election due to printer problems and paper jams?
That was one of the nice features of DEC operating systems like RSX-11 and VMS. Every time you modified a file, the new version of the file was written to a new file name, instead of overwriting the original. The file version number was part of the file name, so you might have THESIS.TXT;1, THESIS.TXT;2, THESIS.TXT;3, etc. I used to think it was a DEC conspiracy to sell more disk drives, but it did save my butt more than a few times when the current version of a file got corrupted or a change had to be backed out.
If it's a typical organization, the whole point of automating the system was to get rid of all of the people who staffed the operation when it used pen and paper. That means that the institutional knowledge of the old system is probably working at the local WalMart. The old forms and processes no longer exist.
I have several Travan "write only" tape drives. Not only can they not read tapes written by other drives, they have a difficult time reading their own tapes.
I used to have a UNIX system (Multibus 10 MHz 68010) that had an 8" floppy disk drive for backing up files. The file backup software would write a track on the floppy and immediately read the track to verify the integrity of the data. This worked fine until some bits in the track selection logic of the floppy drive failed. After that, the drive would position the head on a semi-random track when it received a head positioning command. The backup software continued to run without any reported errors. The problem was discovered when the hard disk was replaced and I attempted to restore the filesystem. Every floppy disk in the backup set was hopelessly scrambled.
My point was that some equipment is used for a very long time. Not everything gets junked after 5-10 years. What happens in 30-40 years if everything with a chip in it self- destructs? What's worse, many of the systems that are likely to have very old chips are embedded in the most vital parts of the nation's infrastructure.
Many people still use test equipment that was built in the 1950s. Embedded computers can have a very long life, 30+ years is not uncommon. I know some people who are still using an Apple II with a custom I/O board to run a data analysis program. It works fine and the money required to replace it with modern equipment can be better spent on other projects.
Chips can "wear out". There are physical effects that make molecules move when there is an electric current in a conductor. My understanding is that this is a known problem and the traces are made thick enough so that it will be many years before they start to fail.
I used to work at a place that had a 20 kW S-band klystron that fed a high-gain antenna. It would probably wipe out any 802.11 network within line-of-sight of the antenna.
Anyone who designs a communications system that is 100% dependent on 802.11 devices is crazy.
And people wonder why there are labor unions...
Is the ISP getting kickbacks from the telephone company? That is how some "free" ISPs make their money.
I'd like to see this implemented for corporate email as well. Many employees get deluged with so much "legitimate" email that it turns into an enormous time sink. Do you want to tell the entire corporation that Joe Frobnitz is the new deputy assistant vice president for efficiency studies? Cough up some cash!
The problem is that email is already very bandwidth efficient. Let's say that you make a very short (60 seconds at 64 kbps) phone call. That phone call used 480kB (SI) of bandwidth. That's enough for several hundred email messages.
What if there is no "telecommunications carrier"?
In the past, the government has taken advantage of "choke points" in the communications infrastructure to do traffic analysis and intercepts. They have also used the regulatory apparatus of the FCC to mandate the inclusion or exclusion of features in type accepted equipment.
The FBI's nightmare is a secure peer-to-peer communications system without choke points or other means of control. This would force them to resort to "black bag" jobs to execute wiretaps.
Back before the introduction of consumer video recorders, I met a few film pirates. These were people who had bootleg copies, on film, of many movies and short features. Illegal as hell, and the MPAA wasn't any "kindler and gentler" back then. These "pirates" were the biggest film geeks that ever existed, spending every nickel they had on seeing films and buying film-related books and merchandise.
One of the reasons the penny is still around, even though many people would like to see them go, is the zinc lobby.
It also costs them money to handle cash. There is extra security for storing and handling cash, keeping change on hand, making bank deposits, bank service fees, etc. There is a whole industry built around providing support services for the use of cash in retail stores, and that is an additional cost for the retailer.
They can just take a pile of one dollar bills and bleach them.
If you're a "counterfitter", you would be helping build kitchens, not printing money.
I bought the computer to do work, some of which involves communicating with other computers. Disabling useful features is not a practical strategy for the long term.
Sprint used to be GSM. I had a GSM handset from Sprint. They gave me a free exchange for a CDMA handset when they dumped GSM.