I know I'm jumping ship. But since we run a bit behind the times, my IT department ship jumping is Win to Linux.
We'll watch this new trend closely, and perhaps several years from now, we'll jump back after all you early adopters of the unstable versions of MS operating systems have finished working out the bugs.
I would be forced to divulge, under oath, that I did not consider spammers human, and that I could not therefore render a verdict of "guilty
President Clinton showed the world that perjury doesn't count if it's in a good cause. I can't believe that absolving a spam lord's shooter is any less a good cause than hiding a presidential BJ.
1. Entities will use the tags to invade privacy for profit or power.
2. The anti-tags will be ruled illegal.
3. If illegality of the anti-tags is successfully challenged, new legislation will be passed banning them. Undoubtedly this legislation will be farther reaching than intended and will interfere with more freedoms.
There's also a point where people just have to realize that if the government can find criminals faster, it will end up being a better world. If it ends up catching more drug dealers, or bank robbers, or whatever, then that's a good thing.
I disagree. Your argument says 'anything the government can do to catch the bad guys is a good thing'.
Given that logic, all phone calls should be recorded for later use, since it is demonstrably true that such will help convict bad guys. Having internal passports to track everyone's movements will help catch bad guys. That's what they do in repressive states. (Here, we just use driver's licenses for the same thing.)
We can go further. Having one third of the population as secret informers to the GRU (the east german KGB) really shut down the bad guys in old East Germany. According to your argument, that's a good thing.
The real killer in your argument is the "whatever" as in "drug dealers, or bank robbers, or whatever." They are the real enemies of the state.
Laws are passed for large financial interests. Bank robbing is illegal from way back, because it endangered the assets of everybody who used banks. Drugs used to be illegal because they impair the long term productivity of factory workers.
MS is using their political leverage to purchase laws (software patents) against competition. All the free software folks are trying to become criminals by (now illegally) competing with MS and IBM's patents. It's happening gradually, but anyone can see it if they look.
The RIAA has made it illegal (DMCA) to exersize your right to make copies of legally purchased media. In canada, there's already a $1 tax on all CD's, with a portion going to the RIAA.
Now we get back to helping the government tracking the bad guys. If you take a good hard look at laws, you'll see that it's impossible to comply with them all. It's not possible to drive without infractions somewhere along the route.
Cops know this. When a suspicious person in a car is spotted, they're followed until they make an illegal lane change, or whatever. Then they're pulled over in a 'routine traffic stop' and their car is searched.
Ever notice how many news stories say "the suspects were pulled over for a routine traffic stop and the officer noticed something suspicious"? The truth is: the officer noticed something suspicious and then pulled them over for a minor infraction.
RFID tags will enable more survellance. When suspicious activity is noted, a routine traffic stop ensues.
Notice how the government is very tolerant of the RIAA's actions of late? The cops have noticed that anyone with a computer is a legitamate suspect. This will mean that there will be probable cause to nab anyone with a computer, then search their files for evidence of what you're really looking for. All they have to find is one illegal mp3 and you have no defense. (and if you don't have any mp3's, one can be provided)
Your logic applauds the RIAA's blanket soupena power, because it makes it easier to find the 'bank robbers, drug dealers or whatever's.
You just have to realize that our entire society is a living example of 'reductio ad absurdium'
, it's for keeping people from reading the tags after you buy something, not to let you shoplift!
Yes, but how do you tell the anti-tags not to work in stores?
So if I go and buy two FRS radios and have them jam each other, do I have to sue myself?
You don't sue anybody, you've broken a federal law. If you turn yourself in, the FCC may want to chat.
It would be another tag that generates interference only when read so people can't read the tags.
You're saying it only jams radio signals when it's important. Hardly a defense
It's not to prevent others from using the technology for their own uses, or to jam receivers everywhere.
It is to jam receivers elsewhere. Or are you saying it's not interfering with anybody else's receiver, just your own?
It's a privacy issue!
Also, what would you say to wrapping RFID tags in aluminum foil? Is that legal? It serves the same purpose. (Disclaimer, don't use this idea to shoplift) Your disclaimer speaks volumes against your entire argument. Shoplifters love privacy. So do terrorists. Ergo, if you want privacy, you must be a shoplifting terrorist.
However, jamming RFID tags means transmitting a jamming signal in response to a tag reader to make the responses from other tags in your personal space unreadable. This can't really be compared to jamming radar guns at all, since police and security system owners have a legal right to check the speed your car is moving or see if someone is breaking in, but nobody (except storeowners, this will be illegal when used to shoplift) has the legal right to read an RFID tag--there's nothing to stop them, but there's no law that says you can't return gibberish.
I'd say a pretty good case could be made that the return signal is part of the original radio communication. I'd also say that you're going to start seeing shrink wrap license type things where you're only licensing, not owning, the RFID tag, just to prevent the sole possible defense, which you just brought up. Your argument still fails the DMCA, however, because the antiRFID tags are a circumvention device that can be used for theft of music by the simple expedient of walking out of the store with jammed tags on the CD cases. It's no more a stretch than any crime involving a restaraunt is under federal jurisdiction because ketchup on the tables is an interstate good -- true.
...who benefits from RFID?
Many people! Not just the stores that get lower prices, but the people to whom those lower prices are (hopefully) passed on, and then can get useful information out of it. Take, for example, the classic RFID scenario: the fridge that keeps your shopping list up-to-date and warns you of ancient food, and the microwave that reads cooking instructions off of food. This is obviously helping the consumer.
You forgot to mention the livestock tracking that's already in use around the world. Yep, surgically implanted RFID tags in cattle... Yes, the consumer appears to be the big winner, though somehow prices never seem to drop when the time comes. Meanwhile, lots of nefarious things are happening. Given a list of the RFID tags your underwear have, and presumably don't lend to anyone else, silent trackers around could track your movements anywhere. There are those who would be interested in knowing your movements. If you go anywhere naughty, or meet with undesirables, it becomes a matter of record. Records which seem to come back and haunt you. Yes, it's a privacy issue, but there are damn few governments on the planet interested in your privacy than in perpetuating their own reign.
No, it's not legal. You're intentionally circumventing anti-theft technology. The DMCA says you're a felon if you use it.
You'll be intentionally jamming radio transmissions. The FCC won't like that either. Don't try to say "it's unlicensed spectrum", you're still intentionally blocking legal radio communications traffic. Police radar is also unlicensed spectrum, you can have your own unlicensed transmitter, just by purchasing a radar gun. Many internal security systems use radar for detection of intruders. If you get caught with a jammer for police radar, you are screwed.
RFID jamming will be prosecuted the same way.
If you really wonder about the legality, just ask yourself, who benefits from RFID? Who benefits from blocking RFID? Which one owns more law-writers? (Excuse me, vote-sellers. The laws themselves have been written by lobbyists for a very long time now.)
I have encountered GPL'd code in proprietary software...immediately removed it, did my damndest to get the coder...fired...delayed because he was in the middle of becoming a she...
--------------
Sir, you were late with the justice; The universe has already punished this poor soul more harshly than you could ever hope to.
Look up "gender reassignment surgery", and tell me that it isn't punishment enough for this crime against the GPL.
I never thought about it quite that way before.
on
Open Source at TiVo
·
· Score: 1
Thank you. It's blindingly obvious in hindsight. I appreciate the time you took to explain that.
Excellent heat conductivity
on
The Diamond Age
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
The big point behind putting chips on diamonds is that diamonds are the best known conductors of heat. That means that the chip can be severely cranked up without melting.
The idea is to sell gemstones until they can start making semiconductor blanks. The diamonds will be comparatively cheap, since the vast majority of the cost to produce the diamonds is fixed.
As to DeBeers, I'm sure they'll come up with some marketing angle. Personally, after taking a university honors course in gemology, I learned that the way to tell the difference twixt 'real' and 'fake' gemstones was the 'real' ones were full of crap. The very most expensive of the 'reals' merely approached the purity of the 'fakes'.
Of course, it isn't true love unless you've spent thousands on the rock. The composition of the rock itself doesn't matter (except for the all-important crap to show it's 'real'), it's how much debt you're willing to incurr to show your love.
Will the airport security start taking away your magnets, and wires?
Do you seriously think you could sneak one of those on a plane? did you see the pictures? It would be confiscated on sight, while you were arrested. If you tried to hide it in your luggage, it would look to the x-ray tech like you were trying to disguise a bomb as a gun.
Yes, airport security will take away your magnets, wires, batteries and pointy slugs. And you too.
ok, my bad. It should be $100 or an assumed payout of $100,000 at 1%. Yes there was an arithmetic error, the general information is still accurate, including the 40% payout target, or at least was when I was forced to take a Risk Management class for my accounting major.
It's called self-insurance and re-insurance. Re-insurance is when insurance companies have complicated contracts amongst each other to re-insure in case of unexpectedly large liabilities. It's pretty common because sometimes it's entire neighborhoods that burn, floods can be huge or other problems.
And sometimes it just happens that a very large number of your drivers simultaneously lose control and drive into school playgrounds at recess simultaneously. It's not very likely, so insurance is a bit cheap for it.
The rule of thumb is a 40% payout for every dollar taken in. Your risk exposure is assesed in terms of: it is X% likely that you are going to wreck your car, burn your house, have CD's stolen from your car, or whatever causing $Y in damage claims to be paid.
Let's say it's 1% likely that someone in your age + gender + car model group is going to total your car, resulting in an average claim of $10,000 paid. Your insurance company will say that, on the average, you, and all other customers like you, are going to cost them 1% x $10,000 or $1,000 this year. Assuming a 40% payout target, your premiums will add up to $1000/.4 or $2500 per year.
In this case, you're actually paying $2500 for what is really worth $1000 worth of coverage. Most people consider this a good deal, because you are actually using your insurance every time you drive. You are able to drive knowing that if some motorcyclist drops his bike on gravel in front of you (or you don't see him turning left in front of you) that you won't spend the remainder of your life supporting his wife and children. You also know that if somebody knocks you and your bike into next week, that your million dollars of medical bills will be covered, and if you don't survive, that guy's insurance company (or yours, if he doesn't have any insurance) is going to pay for all of it. This safety net sounds so good that in most places it's legally mandated.
If you're an insurance company, re-insurance works the same way. Your company (A) takes out a policy with other insurance companies (B,C,D, and E) that says "I am very unlikely to be required to pay claims in excess of X million dollars, but if I am, B, C, D and E will pay all my claims over X million dollars in return for this premium paid annually"
The trick is that B has similar policies with A, C, D and E. Likewise for C, D and E. and none of the companies really pay much in the way of re-insurance premiums, because you're all just trading checks for the premium payments until a rash of tornadoes hit (like tornadoes have been doing since air was invented). Then, of course, you call your congress people that you also took out re-insurance policies with, and remind them that Federal Aid is required to deal with the horrible losses, because if you have to pay out these huge claims, you might not have any left over for the next campaign donation.
One can only imagine what T. John Dick would do managing an insurance company. It would be a nice fantasy, but any insurance company stupid enough to leave Mr. Dick in charge would probably go bankrupt in a hurry.
I'd hardly call rocket engines added to a working design of a plane a "junkyard wars" approach.
More like two reliable systems mated together. Sure, the union isn't inherently reliable, due to unforseen interactions, but the individual components of each certainly are. They may be behind, but it's no reason to scoff at them.
This reminds me of the F-22 test pilot on the discover channel talking about how the new kids who grew up with video games are unbelivably good at flying planes.
Apparently flying a modern jet requires tracking lots of things at once and the gamer kids are pretty good at it.
I also recall many pilots saying that the number one cause of crashes was pilots believing sensory input over guages, and how easy it was to fool your inner ear. I'd say this would be an advantage to vid game based learners, because gauges are all you have to rely on in a PC game. Further, I don't recall ever seeing a guage in a simulator program of any type that gave inaccurate info, ever.
This isn't a case of general broadcast, it's point to point.
They also claim that, since it's different frequencies, that they "won't bake the residents." Though I'm not sure about it, I'd think anybody who actually is in the middle of such a project and says such a thing probably know's what they're talking about. (Though obviously spectacular exceptions exist.)
In any case, if they start baking residents, passersby or wildlife, I assume lawsuits will fly. I also assume that somebody has consulted tech-aware lawyers already regarding this issue.
Everybody who uses Internet Explorer is sending encrypted packets back to Microsoft. MS is generating the packets without consent, but it would seem that both MS and Joe User are liable.
So the collary might be "encrypted communications used in the normal course of software use are allowed." Which would open up lots of loopholes.
Either that, or companies will have to get licensed to use encryption.
John Fraser, if you read this, I would sure as heck not call this thing the i-box! Let everybody else call it that, but not you.
Apple will jump hard on you for that. It's going to be very difficult to convince a judge that you're not trying to fit this in with the i-mac and the i-book. In fact, I'd say it will be impossible.
The only way to win this lawsuit is to have deeper legal pockets than Apple. Don't try.
Name it something else like: TINAA. It stands for This Is Not An Apple. It sounds good to me, though I haven't researched the IP issues. A quick Google only turned up Finish and apparently one proper name.
Slashdot Mirror
I know I'm jumping ship. But since we run a bit behind the times, my IT department ship jumping is Win to Linux.
We'll watch this new trend closely, and perhaps several years from now, we'll jump back after all you early adopters of the unstable versions of MS operating systems have finished working out the bugs.
Thanks for your bravery.
Happily, with POPfile, I can say with absolute confidence that 98.86% of my e-mail is spam.
So yes, I really can imagine what it would be like at 99%.
President Clinton showed the world that perjury doesn't count if it's in a good cause. I can't believe that absolving a spam lord's shooter is any less a good cause than hiding a presidential BJ.
Stay on that jury!
Damn. Mod points twice in the last week. Now I don't have any for the best comment I've seen in a while.
I'd recommend +1 insightful or +1 informative.
the parent comment is both, and is clearly on topic.
1. Entities will use the tags to invade privacy for profit or power.
2. The anti-tags will be ruled illegal.
3. If illegality of the anti-tags is successfully challenged, new legislation will be passed banning them. Undoubtedly this legislation will be farther reaching than intended and will interfere with more freedoms.
I disagree. Your argument says 'anything the government can do to catch the bad guys is a good thing'.
Given that logic, all phone calls should be recorded for later use, since it is demonstrably true that such will help convict bad guys. Having internal passports to track everyone's movements will help catch bad guys. That's what they do in repressive states. (Here, we just use driver's licenses for the same thing.)
We can go further. Having one third of the population as secret informers to the GRU (the east german KGB) really shut down the bad guys in old East Germany. According to your argument, that's a good thing.
The real killer in your argument is the "whatever" as in "drug dealers, or bank robbers, or whatever." They are the real enemies of the state.
Laws are passed for large financial interests. Bank robbing is illegal from way back, because it endangered the assets of everybody who used banks. Drugs used to be illegal because they impair the long term productivity of factory workers.
MS is using their political leverage to purchase laws (software patents) against competition. All the free software folks are trying to become criminals by (now illegally) competing with MS and IBM's patents. It's happening gradually, but anyone can see it if they look.
The RIAA has made it illegal (DMCA) to exersize your right to make copies of legally purchased media. In canada, there's already a $1 tax on all CD's, with a portion going to the RIAA.
Now we get back to helping the government tracking the bad guys. If you take a good hard look at laws, you'll see that it's impossible to comply with them all. It's not possible to drive without infractions somewhere along the route.
Cops know this. When a suspicious person in a car is spotted, they're followed until they make an illegal lane change, or whatever. Then they're pulled over in a 'routine traffic stop' and their car is searched.
Ever notice how many news stories say "the suspects were pulled over for a routine traffic stop and the officer noticed something suspicious"? The truth is: the officer noticed something suspicious and then pulled them over for a minor infraction.
RFID tags will enable more survellance. When suspicious activity is noted, a routine traffic stop ensues.
Notice how the government is very tolerant of the RIAA's actions of late? The cops have noticed that anyone with a computer is a legitamate suspect. This will mean that there will be probable cause to nab anyone with a computer, then search their files for evidence of what you're really looking for. All they have to find is one illegal mp3 and you have no defense. (and if you don't have any mp3's, one can be provided)
Your logic applauds the RIAA's blanket soupena power, because it makes it easier to find the 'bank robbers, drug dealers or whatever's.
You just have to realize that our entire society is a living example of 'reductio ad absurdium'
Good luck,
******
I did
Yes, but how do you tell the anti-tags not to work in stores?
You don't sue anybody, you've broken a federal law. If you turn yourself in, the FCC may want to chat.
You're saying it only jams radio signals when it's important. Hardly a defense
It is to jam receivers elsewhere. Or are you saying it's not interfering with anybody else's receiver, just your own?
Also, what would you say to wrapping RFID tags in aluminum foil? Is that legal? It serves the same purpose. (Disclaimer, don't use this idea to shoplift)
Your disclaimer speaks volumes against your entire argument. Shoplifters love privacy. So do terrorists. Ergo, if you want privacy, you must be a shoplifting terrorist.
I'd say a pretty good case could be made that the return signal is part of the original radio communication. I'd also say that you're going to start seeing shrink wrap license type things where you're only licensing, not owning, the RFID tag, just to prevent the sole possible defense, which you just brought up. Your argument still fails the DMCA, however, because the antiRFID tags are a circumvention device that can be used for theft of music by the simple expedient of walking out of the store with jammed tags on the CD cases. It's no more a stretch than any crime involving a restaraunt is under federal jurisdiction because ketchup on the tables is an interstate good -- true.
You forgot to mention the livestock tracking that's already in use around the world. Yep, surgically implanted RFID tags in cattle... Yes, the consumer appears to be the big winner, though somehow prices never seem to drop when the time comes. Meanwhile, lots of nefarious things are happening. Given a list of the RFID tags your underwear have, and presumably don't lend to anyone else, silent trackers around could track your movements anywhere. There are those who would be interested in knowing your movements. If you go anywhere naughty, or meet with undesirables, it becomes a matter of record. Records which seem to come back and haunt you. Yes, it's a privacy issue, but there are damn few governments on the planet interested in your privacy than in perpetuating their own reign.
No, it's not legal. You're intentionally circumventing anti-theft technology. The DMCA says you're a felon if you use it.
You'll be intentionally jamming radio transmissions. The FCC won't like that either. Don't try to say "it's unlicensed spectrum", you're still intentionally blocking legal radio communications traffic. Police radar is also unlicensed spectrum, you can have your own unlicensed transmitter, just by purchasing a radar gun. Many internal security systems use radar for detection of intruders. If you get caught with a jammer for police radar, you are screwed.
RFID jamming will be prosecuted the same way.
If you really wonder about the legality, just ask yourself, who benefits from RFID? Who benefits from blocking RFID? Which one owns more law-writers? (Excuse me, vote-sellers. The laws themselves have been written by lobbyists for a very long time now.)
If I'd still had yesterday's points, I'd have given you +1 funny.
--------------
Sir, you were late with the justice; The universe has already punished this poor soul more harshly than you could ever hope to.
Look up "gender reassignment surgery", and tell me that it isn't punishment enough for this crime against the GPL.
Thank you. It's blindingly obvious in hindsight. I appreciate the time you took to explain that.
The big point behind putting chips on diamonds is that diamonds are the best known conductors of heat. That means that the chip can be severely cranked up without melting.
The idea is to sell gemstones until they can start making semiconductor blanks. The diamonds will be comparatively cheap, since the vast majority of the cost to produce the diamonds is fixed.
As to DeBeers, I'm sure they'll come up with some marketing angle. Personally, after taking a university honors course in gemology, I learned that the way to tell the difference twixt 'real' and 'fake' gemstones was the 'real' ones were full of crap. The very most expensive of the 'reals' merely approached the purity of the 'fakes'.
Of course, it isn't true love unless you've spent thousands on the rock. The composition of the rock itself doesn't matter (except for the all-important crap to show it's 'real'), it's how much debt you're willing to incurr to show your love.
Most places in the U.S. have mail carriers that will pick up mail from a mailbox on the road, same place they drop it off.
If you see a mailbox with a red flag up, that's the signal to the mail carrier that there's mail awaiting pickup.
I'd take a look at the trend in this linear SCOX Chart for better information.
Do you seriously think you could sneak one of those on a plane? did you see the pictures? It would be confiscated on sight, while you were arrested. If you tried to hide it in your luggage, it would look to the x-ray tech like you were trying to disguise a bomb as a gun.
Yes, airport security will take away your magnets, wires, batteries and pointy slugs. And you too.
ok, my bad. It should be $100 or an assumed payout of $100,000 at 1%. Yes there was an arithmetic error, the general information is still accurate, including the 40% payout target, or at least was when I was forced to take a Risk Management class for my accounting major.
Obviously, I'm now in another field.
It's called self-insurance and re-insurance. Re-insurance is when insurance companies have complicated contracts amongst each other to re-insure in case of unexpectedly large liabilities. It's pretty common because sometimes it's entire neighborhoods that burn, floods can be huge or other problems.
And sometimes it just happens that a very large number of your drivers simultaneously lose control and drive into school playgrounds at recess simultaneously. It's not very likely, so insurance is a bit cheap for it.
The rule of thumb is a 40% payout for every dollar taken in. Your risk exposure is assesed in terms of: it is X% likely that you are going to wreck your car, burn your house, have CD's stolen from your car, or whatever causing $Y in damage claims to be paid.
Let's say it's 1% likely that someone in your age + gender + car model group is going to total your car, resulting in an average claim of $10,000 paid. Your insurance company will say that, on the average, you, and all other customers like you, are going to cost them 1% x $10,000 or $1,000 this year. Assuming a 40% payout target, your premiums will add up to $1000/.4 or $2500 per year.
In this case, you're actually paying $2500 for what is really worth $1000 worth of coverage. Most people consider this a good deal, because you are actually using your insurance every time you drive. You are able to drive knowing that if some motorcyclist drops his bike on gravel in front of you (or you don't see him turning left in front of you) that you won't spend the remainder of your life supporting his wife and children. You also know that if somebody knocks you and your bike into next week, that your million dollars of medical bills will be covered, and if you don't survive, that guy's insurance company (or yours, if he doesn't have any insurance) is going to pay for all of it. This safety net sounds so good that in most places it's legally mandated.
If you're an insurance company, re-insurance works the same way. Your company (A) takes out a policy with other insurance companies (B,C,D, and E) that says "I am very unlikely to be required to pay claims in excess of X million dollars, but if I am, B, C, D and E will pay all my claims over X million dollars in return for this premium paid annually"
The trick is that B has similar policies with A, C, D and E. Likewise for C, D and E. and none of the companies really pay much in the way of re-insurance premiums, because you're all just trading checks for the premium payments until a rash of tornadoes hit (like tornadoes have been doing since air was invented). Then, of course, you call your congress people that you also took out re-insurance policies with, and remind them that Federal Aid is required to deal with the horrible losses, because if you have to pay out these huge claims, you might not have any left over for the next campaign donation.
One can only imagine what T. John Dick would do managing an insurance company. It would be a nice fantasy, but any insurance company stupid enough to leave Mr. Dick in charge would probably go bankrupt in a hurry.
Also like open source, it takes the cohabitation of skill, knowlege, resources, leadership and sheer balls and luck to get anything off the ground.
Come up short on any of the above, and your project goes nowhere. (Well, it might blow up spectacularly!)
I'd hardly call rocket engines added to a working design of a plane a "junkyard wars" approach.
More like two reliable systems mated together. Sure, the union isn't inherently reliable, due to unforseen interactions, but the individual components of each certainly are. They may be behind, but it's no reason to scoff at them.
This reminds me of the F-22 test pilot on the discover channel talking about how the new kids who grew up with video games are unbelivably good at flying planes.
Apparently flying a modern jet requires tracking lots of things at once and the gamer kids are pretty good at it.
I also recall many pilots saying that the number one cause of crashes was pilots believing sensory input over guages, and how easy it was to fool your inner ear. I'd say this would be an advantage to vid game based learners, because gauges are all you have to rely on in a PC game. Further, I don't recall ever seeing a guage in a simulator program of any type that gave inaccurate info, ever.
IANAL: I am not a lawyer
YMMV: Your mileage may vary
I'd add hyperlinks, but british telecom has patented them.
I've seen plenty of green sky, but what do you mean by "the rain goes vertical"?
Is it the heavy wet dreadful silence right before hell breaks loose? I do seem to remember that. (I spent many summers in Nebraska)
Just curious.
login with slashdot/slashdot
Then post.
This isn't a case of general broadcast, it's point to point.
They also claim that, since it's different frequencies, that they "won't bake the residents." Though I'm not sure about it, I'd think anybody who actually is in the middle of such a project and says such a thing probably know's what they're talking about. (Though obviously spectacular exceptions exist.)
In any case, if they start baking residents, passersby or wildlife, I assume lawsuits will fly. I also assume that somebody has consulted tech-aware lawyers already regarding this issue.
Everybody who uses Internet Explorer is sending encrypted packets back to Microsoft. MS is generating the packets without consent, but it would seem that both MS and Joe User are liable.
So the collary might be "encrypted communications used in the normal course of software use are allowed." Which would open up lots of loopholes.
Either that, or companies will have to get licensed to use encryption.
Wouldn't that apply to online shopping? SSL credit card numbers on an encrypted page?
John Fraser, if you read this, I would sure as heck not call this thing the i-box! Let everybody else call it that, but not you.
Apple will jump hard on you for that. It's going to be very difficult to convince a judge that you're not trying to fit this in with the i-mac and the i-book. In fact, I'd say it will be impossible.
The only way to win this lawsuit is to have deeper legal pockets than Apple. Don't try.
Name it something else like: TINAA. It stands for This Is Not An Apple. It sounds good to me, though I haven't researched the IP issues. A quick Google only turned up Finish and apparently one proper name.
Good luck!