British Telecom did not "come up with the idea of hyperlinks first." Ted Nelson coined both 'hypertext' and 'hyperlinks' in 1963, and worked extensively at Brown on hyperlink code for documents prior to 1970. After 1973, the Xanadu project (later the Xanadu Operating Corporation, later a division of AutoDesk) worked on hypertext systems far more ambitious than Berners-Lee.
For somewhat longer version of the story, start at http://www.udanax.com/.
Should the BT guys get anywhere, I suspect they find that a few other people will be waiting to pick up the check.
> I just read the patent three times and cannot believe it. It's a real > patent filed for in 1980 long before Tim-Berners-Lee proposed the world > wide web. To put it simply British Telecom came up with the idea of > hyperlinks first, simply not in the context of HTML, but this does not > change the fact that they did. To all those claiming this is a sign that > patent reform is forthcoming are probably right but for the wrong > reasons, in 1980 this was probably an original idea.
>called the right to feely associate, and it's the same right that allows an all-women college >to keep me out because I'm a guy, or for the NAACP to not allow me on their board of >directors, because I am not the right "race".
Both those are private associations which can reasonably claim that the exclusion is part of their group identity. A public business cannot, generally, claim the right to free association. It operates for the public, in the public realm, and must be open to the public. (I'll pass over your Atlanta argument, except note that it took gov't regulation to open the bloody schools).
The bounds of free association are not infinite. The NAACP has white board members, and I doubt they could create an explicit exclusion. The Supreme Court will soon decide on whether the Boy Scouts can exclude gays.
>The Saint Paul Pioneer Press was recently criticized for accepting ads from strip clubs, >and so they changed their policy to not accept them
This seems like a reasonable content-based exclusion; our business is running X,Y, and Z ads, not strip club ads. Strip clubs are recognized as blights on the community, etc., so there's a legitimate interest in not running ads for them. And the which happen within them are not wholesome, so we don't support them. I don't see an issue of irrational prejudice here, though others might, and you might argue it. The point is that there has to be a 'rational purpose' to the exclusion, and most courts see the exclusion of strip clubs as having rational purpose. Jews, blacks, other religions, maybe gays, no.
So, if they were to try excluding Church ads, that would be a different story. Not a court in the nation is going to say there's a rational purpose to it, and they're going to rule against it.
And the bottom line: no, you don't get to deal with only who you want, if you're offering public accomodation. You can't "reserve the right to refuse service to anyone." The law doesn't work that way.
Evidently you'd like it to, but don't confuse what you'd like with reality.
>Private companies are free to censor whom ever >they want to. If you don't like it, go use a >different ISP. That's the basis of free market.
I won't run your ad, because you're a Jew. I won't print your newpaper, because you're black. We won't distribute your flyers, because you're evangelical Christians.
If we did, people might give us a hard time, jam our phone lines, bomb our offices, etc. People don't like Jews, blacks, and evangelical Christians, after all. We don't personally have anything against them, of course, but we have to protect our business.
A free market has to be free to the open exchange of all ideas based on their value. Any censorship is directly opposed to this.
We have laws about public accommidation which insure this. ISPs provide public accommidation. When "private companies" make decisions based on reinforcing prejudice more than on sound business, they're violating the law.
Didn't we just have an article about how "targeted" advertizing had never proven to be cost-effective?
How much does it cost to put in place a system that tells you a McDonald's is just around the corner? Per user?
How much does it raise sales at McDonalds? Targeted email advertizing makes a 3-5% difference, which isn't nearly enough bang for the buck. Traditional mass adveritizing, pure and simple, creates more results per dollar.
Of course, it doesn't give marketing guys wet dreams about their billing rates:P
That's a good point. Imagine if people were to start commercial air, boat, or even car or bus transportation. The lawsuits that would ensue would probably stop anyone from going anywhere!
>1. Our lovely lawsuit-happy society, and the risk of problems on space flights. "Space tourists" >could end up suing if something went wrong, eventually bankrupting the industry and putting a >stop to space exploration. This would just suck.
I don't see the point of any device that doesn't act like the Ricochet -- provide high speed access (28.8-56K) and a real TCP/IP connection. Who wants to be saddled with the limitations of a slow (GSM) cellular network, a semi-proprietary protocol, or platforms that can only be accessed by users of the service?
Whatever their faults, Ricochet provides roaming TCP/IP access, and could be built into a PCMCIA sized device...
That is, if the company can live up to the technology. I've had one since '96 -- couldn't live without it:) -- but I run into people every day who ask me, "do you pay by the minute for that?" Metricom has barely 30K subscribers in the Bay area. Read: marketing doesn't exist for these guys. (I won't even go into their billing department, except to say that billing is pretty random!).
Since they were recently acquired by MCI in a $600 million deal, things may get better -- in fact, you'll find that the things work in parts of Manhattan and LA, not yet officially coverage areas. They plan to be up in an additional 6 cities over the summer, to expand the bandwidth to 128K (actually, the new ones work at 160K!!!), to make them work in fast vehicles (currently they stop hopping cells at about 50-60mph), and, according to MCI's press releases, move quickly into 50 major metropolitan areas.
Pretty impressive, if they can do it, compared to the supposedly 9600 baud I get out of Sprint PCS, half the time...
dateline 1:32am (EDT). According to observers stationed on the George Washington Bridge, a dog-shaped Egytian hieroglyph decended slowly over Fort Lee tonight, neatly locking itself on top of the former state of New Jersey.
"It was the darndest thing I ever saw," said one distant relative of Elian Gonsalez, who identified himself only as "Mark Anthony." "A dog-like figure came down at exit 68, then a cat a 70, a dancing girl with braids at 71, and then whoosh, all of Jersey was covered, in one big farting sound!"
Officials in the Guiliani administration did not return our requests for comment, but insiders in City goverment have informed us that the Major intends to reveal that is a direct descendent of Caesar at a press conference tomorrow, as well as that he called on Kleopatra to help him initiate his new "Clean Up New York -- and the rest of the World!" campaign. "In one fell swoop, he's eliminated the armpit of America -- no more chemical dumps, no more girls with big hair and nasal lisps. And wait 'till you see what he has planned for Connecticut."
In other News, officials at zoos in New York City and Long Island today reported a series of lion disappearances...
If you haven't seen them, you might want to check out Don Hopkin's Pie Menus:
http://catalog.com/hopkins/piemenus/index.html
Assuming a user with limited motor control who can use a stick interface, pie menus allow navigating multiple selections with a minimum of effort. Some time ago, someone did a shareware pie menu for entering text on Newtons -- I could enter text using a pie menu faster than I can type! It'd be a nice tool for PCs.
Unfortunately, different disabilities require different tools -- and we're still in an age where most of the people who design devices for the handicapped have little clue. (Most electric wheelchairs don't have battery gauges, or a way to recharge without the help of a third party... one friend ran out of battery power in an elevator:( ).
>Um...no. Farmers do not expect to lose money. >They accept they might lose money...but if >farming really cost more to put in they to take >out, all the farmers would soon be completely >bankrupt.
Actually, bankruptcy is a fairly accurate definition of the result of about 90% of family farming over the last 50 years. And I can't help but mention that this is mostly a result of the action of large corporations -- as in the case of Kevin Mitnick.
I have to wonder if anyone who is calling Mitnick a criminal have glanced over the details of the Case?
Kevin was held under provisions of anti-terrorist law. The idea -- backed by exorbitant damage claims that the corporations withdrew once it came down to actually backing them up -- was that, simply by sitting down at a computer, Kevin was likely to cause as much or more damage than a terrorist setting off a bomb. The idea was also that, as a back-clad anti-social computer geek, aka "Hacker," he had the general psychological profile of a terrorist.
It seems clear that, yes, Kevin was not exactly psychologically normal and that his obsession with hacking systems was unhealthy and, as well, followed a criminal pattern. But the conclusion that he had the same psychoses and intent as a terrorist, and that he could cause as much harm, seems to me rather ludicrous. It's the effect of people -- like the judge in the case -- who would rather hate and fear technology than have to learn about it, and large corporations that exploiting public fear as a good opportunity for making an example of poor Kevin.
As far as I'm concerned we'd better spend our fears wondering what the corporations are doing. The idea that Kevin can't say what he wants is, simply, preposterous -- what I was taught in high school civics was that you stop someone from enciting an angry crowd to burn down a building. You don't stop someone -- even a convicted arsonist -- from taking about how to burn buildings.
At least, not in a free society. To hear a judge declare that she expects Kevin to earn no more than minimum wage is chilling. The Founding Fathers imagined an America filled with farmers -- and included a property requirement with the vote! -- on the presumption that being a citizen required the ability to support oneself, and that wage slavery restricted the flow of free public opinions.
Did I say free society? In the same week that our Royal President -- who might be named George instead of Bill -- choose to arrest 500 people for peacefully protesting in D.C., and to extract a boy from a private Miami home with the barrel of a M-31 assault rifle, our judiciary sees fit to deny Kevin the ability to gain property or have an opinion.
There are those, no doubt, who see Kevin's case as simply a matter of 'a criminal' who is 'facing the consequences.' There are those who see the plight of America's farms as simply a case of 'economic progress.' This misses simple facts -- that, for instance, most of California's chicken comes from two plants in polluted central Los Angeles, costs more now that before these plants lowered prices to put farmers out of business, and is of questionable quality.
Slashdot Mirror
British Telecom did not "come up with the idea of hyperlinks first." Ted Nelson coined both 'hypertext' and 'hyperlinks' in 1963, and worked extensively at Brown on hyperlink code for documents prior to 1970. After 1973, the Xanadu project (later the Xanadu Operating Corporation, later a division of AutoDesk) worked on hypertext systems far more ambitious than Berners-Lee.
For somewhat longer version of the story, start at http://www.udanax.com/.
Should the BT guys get anywhere, I suspect they find that a few other people will be waiting to pick up the check.
> I just read the patent three times and cannot believe it. It's a real
> patent filed for in 1980 long before Tim-Berners-Lee proposed the world
> wide web. To put it simply British Telecom came up with the idea of
> hyperlinks first, simply not in the context of HTML, but this does not
> change the fact that they did. To all those claiming this is a sign that
> patent reform is forthcoming are probably right but for the wrong
> reasons, in 1980 this was probably an original idea.
>called the right to feely associate, and it's the same right that allows an all-women college
>to keep me out because I'm a guy, or for the NAACP to not allow me on their board of
>directors, because I am not the right "race".
Both those are private associations which can reasonably claim that the exclusion is part of their group identity. A public business cannot, generally, claim the right to free association. It operates for the public, in the public realm, and must be open to the public. (I'll pass over your Atlanta argument, except note that it took gov't regulation to open the bloody schools).
The bounds of free association are not infinite. The NAACP has white board members, and I doubt they could create an explicit exclusion. The Supreme Court will soon decide on whether the Boy Scouts can exclude gays.
>The Saint Paul Pioneer Press was recently criticized for accepting ads from strip clubs,
>and so they changed their policy to not accept them
This seems like a reasonable content-based exclusion; our business is running X,Y, and Z ads, not strip club ads. Strip clubs are recognized as blights on the community, etc., so there's a legitimate interest in not running ads for them. And the which happen within them are not wholesome, so we don't support them.
I don't see an issue of irrational prejudice here, though others might, and you might argue it. The point is that there has to be a 'rational purpose' to the exclusion, and most courts see the exclusion of strip clubs as having rational purpose. Jews, blacks, other religions, maybe gays, no.
So, if they were to try excluding Church ads, that would be a different story. Not a court in the nation is going to say there's a rational purpose to it, and they're going to rule against it.
And the bottom line: no, you don't get to deal with only who you want, if you're offering public accomodation. You can't "reserve the right to refuse service to anyone." The law doesn't work that way.
Evidently you'd like it to, but don't confuse what you'd like with reality.
>Private companies are free to censor whom ever
>they want to. If you don't like it, go use a >different ISP. That's the basis of free market.
I won't run your ad, because you're a Jew.
I won't print your newpaper, because you're black.
We won't distribute your flyers, because you're evangelical Christians.
If we did, people might give us a hard time, jam our phone lines, bomb our offices, etc. People don't like Jews, blacks, and evangelical Christians, after all. We don't personally have anything against them, of course, but we have to protect our business.
A free market has to be free to the open exchange of all ideas based on their value. Any censorship is directly opposed to this.
We have laws about public accommidation which insure this. ISPs provide public accommidation. When "private companies" make decisions based on reinforcing prejudice more than on sound business, they're violating the law.
Didn't we just have an article about how "targeted" advertizing had never proven to be cost-effective?
:P
How much does it cost to put in place a system that tells you a McDonald's is just around the corner? Per user?
How much does it raise sales at McDonalds? Targeted email advertizing makes a 3-5% difference, which isn't nearly enough bang for the buck. Traditional mass adveritizing, pure and simple, creates more results per dollar.
Of course, it doesn't give marketing guys wet dreams about their billing rates
That's a good point. Imagine if people were to start commercial air, boat, or even car or bus transportation. The lawsuits that would ensue would probably stop anyone from going anywhere!
>1. Our lovely lawsuit-happy society, and the risk of problems on space flights. "Space tourists"
>could end up suing if something went wrong, eventually bankrupting the industry and putting a
>stop to space exploration. This would just suck.
I don't see the point of any device that doesn't act like the Ricochet -- provide high speed access (28.8-56K) and a real TCP/IP connection. Who wants to be saddled with the limitations of a slow (GSM) cellular network, a semi-proprietary protocol, or platforms that can only be accessed by users of the service?
:) -- but I run into people every day who ask me, "do you pay by the minute for that?" Metricom has barely 30K subscribers in the Bay area. Read: marketing doesn't exist for these guys. (I won't even go into their billing department, except to say that billing is pretty random!).
Whatever their faults, Ricochet provides roaming TCP/IP access, and could be built into a PCMCIA sized device...
That is, if the company can live up to the technology. I've had one since '96 -- couldn't live without it
Since they were recently acquired by MCI in a $600 million deal, things may get better -- in fact, you'll find that the things work in parts of Manhattan and LA, not yet officially coverage areas. They plan to be up in an additional 6 cities over the summer, to expand the bandwidth to 128K (actually, the new ones work at 160K!!!), to make them work in fast vehicles (currently they stop hopping cells at about 50-60mph), and, according to MCI's press releases, move quickly into 50 major metropolitan areas.
Pretty impressive, if they can do it, compared to the supposedly 9600 baud I get out of Sprint PCS, half the time...
http://www.metricom.com/ for those interested.
dateline 1:32am (EDT). According to observers stationed on the George Washington Bridge, a dog-shaped Egytian hieroglyph decended slowly over Fort Lee tonight, neatly locking itself on top of the former state of New Jersey.
"It was the darndest thing I ever saw," said one distant relative of Elian Gonsalez, who identified himself only as "Mark Anthony." "A dog-like figure came down at exit 68, then a cat a 70, a dancing girl with braids at 71, and then whoosh, all of Jersey was covered, in one big farting sound!"
Officials in the Guiliani administration did not return our requests for comment, but insiders in City goverment have informed us that the Major intends to reveal that is a direct descendent of Caesar at a press conference tomorrow, as well as that he called on Kleopatra to help him initiate his new "Clean Up New York -- and the rest of the World!" campaign. "In one fell swoop, he's eliminated the armpit of America -- no more chemical dumps, no more girls with big hair and nasal lisps. And wait 'till you see what he has planned for Connecticut."
In other News, officials at zoos in New York City and Long Island today reported a series of lion disappearances...
Hi,
:( ).
If you haven't seen them, you might want to check out Don Hopkin's Pie Menus:
http://catalog.com/hopkins/piemenus/index.html
Assuming a user with limited motor control who can use a stick interface, pie menus allow navigating multiple selections with a minimum of effort. Some time ago, someone did a shareware pie menu for entering text on Newtons -- I could enter text using a pie menu faster than I can type! It'd be a nice tool for PCs.
Unfortunately, different disabilities require different tools -- and we're still in an age where most of the people who design devices for the handicapped have little clue. (Most electric wheelchairs don't have battery gauges, or a way to recharge without the help of a third party... one friend ran out of battery power in an elevator
Cheers.
Actually, bankruptcy is a fairly accurate definition of the result of about 90% of family farming over the last 50 years. And I can't help but mention that this is mostly a result of the action of large corporations -- as in the case of Kevin Mitnick.
I have to wonder if anyone who is calling Mitnick a criminal have glanced over the details of the Case?
Kevin was held under provisions of anti-terrorist law. The idea -- backed by exorbitant damage claims that the corporations withdrew once it came down to actually backing them up -- was that, simply by sitting down at a computer, Kevin was likely to cause as much or more damage than a terrorist setting off a bomb. The idea was also that, as a back-clad anti-social computer geek, aka "Hacker," he had the general psychological profile of a terrorist.
It seems clear that, yes, Kevin was not exactly psychologically normal and that his obsession with hacking systems was unhealthy and, as well, followed a criminal pattern. But the conclusion that he had the same psychoses and intent as a terrorist, and that he could cause as much harm, seems to me rather ludicrous. It's the effect of people -- like the judge in the case -- who would rather hate and fear technology than have to learn about it, and large corporations that exploiting public fear as a good opportunity for making an example of poor Kevin.
As far as I'm concerned we'd better spend our fears wondering what the corporations are doing. The idea that Kevin can't say what he wants is, simply, preposterous -- what I was taught in high school civics was that you stop someone from enciting an angry crowd to burn down a building. You don't stop someone -- even a convicted arsonist -- from taking about how to burn buildings.
At least, not in a free society. To hear a judge declare that she expects Kevin to earn no more than minimum wage is chilling. The Founding Fathers imagined an America filled with farmers -- and included a property requirement with the vote! -- on the presumption that being a citizen required the ability to support oneself, and that wage slavery restricted the flow of free public opinions.
Did I say free society? In the same week that our Royal President -- who might be named George instead of Bill -- choose to arrest 500 people for peacefully protesting in D.C., and to extract a boy from a private Miami home with the barrel of a M-31 assault rifle, our judiciary sees fit to deny Kevin the ability to gain property or have an opinion.
There are those, no doubt, who see Kevin's case as simply a matter of 'a criminal' who is 'facing the consequences.' There are those who see the plight of America's farms as simply a case of 'economic progress.' This misses simple facts -- that, for instance, most of California's chicken comes from two plants in polluted central Los Angeles, costs more now that before these plants lowered prices to put farmers out of business, and is of questionable quality.