I'm guessing (without reading the paper), that the point of using dots is that the dots are not infinitely small, but rather have a small measureable size, and so the nearer dots are drawn larger, but that all dots are small enough that they don't tend to "hide" each other in the Z direction, but rather "pile up" a bit to make the piled up places darker.
No. Having had a quick glance at the paper (available through the link to the renderer provided elsewhere), the techique centres around generating a number of points per voxel that varies according to the shading you want at that location in the image. Hence, the density of dots in any given region will vary in proportion to the "darkness" of the underlying data set in that region. The tricky part is working out the number/distribution of points that will produce a viewable image with all desired features highlighted, given that most images will be viewed at a resolution that would cause the object rendered to appear as a black smudge, even at a maximum point density of 1 point per voxel.
Your calcuation ignores the fact, as alluded to by others, that solid rock is quite dense and, well, solid, requiring the particle to dump a lot of energy to get through it, whereas human being is quite soft and squishy, not requiring anywhere near as much energy. Nice try though:).
Standard disclaimer: you should really see a lawyer regarding your own particular circumstances. This isn't legal advice, just some general information you might be interested in.
A workman's lien, as others have pointed out, is a proprietary right over an objet that you surrender to a workman for him/her to work on it. In a certain sense, the workman becomes the "owner" of the property you surrender (or, to put it another way, your title and interest in the property is burdened or encumbered by the lien) and the workman has the right to prevent you from taking back the property until you're paid the price of his or her work. It doesn't really apply in contracts for sale or construction of goods.
In that case, different rules apply. In a contract for the sale of goods, title usually passes the moment the contract of sale is finalized, i.e. when vendor and purchaser agree that the sale should go ahead. If the purchaser goes bankrupt, then all creditors have rights against those goods as the purchaser's property, and the vendor simply has the status of an unsecured creditor through his unsecured right to payment
The traditional way to get around this is the insertion of a clause into the contract to override the default position and stipulate that title only passes once payment has been made, and that up until that point the purchaser has "only" an unrestricted licence to use and convert the goods as s/he wishes. If the purchaser goes bankrupt, the vendor then has a property right in those goods (provided they're still capable of recovery) over and above the rights of other creditors. In the case of contracts for the production and sale of intellectual property, the default position would be governed by the provisions regarding ownership according to the circumstances when it is related. IIRC, US copyright law provides that copyright always vests with the author unless there is an express contractual term to the contrary. I am unaware of the position for patents, designs, or other forms of IP in the US.
Bottom line, you should try to have a term included in your contract stipulating that assignment or exclusive licence in the copyright or other IP right will only transfer once you've received payment. That's likely to be difficult, as your employer is likely to be making regulard part payments (through your pay cheque) for your work, and doubtless is expecting to see something for it. Note that you may have trouble doing this retrospectively, especially if the person or compnay who's paying you is in trouble. That's called a voidable preference, and bankruptcy/insolvency law takes a dim view of such attempts of creditors to secure parts of a prospective bankrupt's assets for themselves when it becomes clear that the ship's going down.
Really? I was aware that the criminal law of WA, as well as that of Queensland (my home state) and Tasmania, was codified, but that the rest of the common law has been either left intact or modified, not extinguished or supplanted, by statute.
I just had a quick flick through the judgment as kindly linked to in Eggplant's post. The case was decided on common law grounds, the registrar considering the two torts of interference with business or trade interests (which isn't yet recognized in Australia) and interference with contractual relations. Defamation was knocked out by reference to a provision in the WA Criminal Code that bars accurate statements from being defamatory.
So the case was decided on the common law after all. That's a relief, if WA was entirely code-based, I should have known about it. Western Australia may have been nearly colonized by the French, but that doesn't mean it has to adopt their heathen legal system:-P.
Australia is a 'common law' country. A judgement in an Australian jurisdiction such as Western Australia would only ever been seen as 'persuasive precedence' in any jurisdiction besides WA.
I would put a rider on that. Unlike the United States, the common law in Australia is unified: every state has the same common law. Every state in the US, on the other hand, has its own version of the common law as developed by that state's courts. This difference is a result of the expanded jurisdiction of the High Court of Australia as compared to the US Supreme Court. The High Court is a general court of appeal, having appellate jurisdiction over just about anything in addition to its original and appellate jurisdiction over constitutional and federal matters. The US Supreme Court only has jurisdiction over federal and constitutional matters, and only decides state cases as they conflict with some constitutional provision or principle. The creation of such an integrated judicature administering a single common law results in the courts of each state having a lot more respect for the judgments of courts in other states. However, this case wouldn't appear to establish any new rule or principle, so it can't be relied on as precedent for anything.
Western Australia is one of 2 states in Australia who have a codified legal system. This means that the common law is generally superseded by specific coded laws.
Really? I was aware that the criminal law of WA, as well as that of Queensland (my home state) and Tasmania, was codified, but that the rest of the common law has been either left intact or modified, not extinguished or supplanted, by statute.
Finally, although I haven't seen the judgment, I would also add that in Australia costs usually follow the event (i.e. whoever loses generally has to pay the other side's costs as well as their own legal bills), so it's likely the plaintiffs would have had costs awarded against them.
I had a chem lecturer who did just this very demonstration as a fun way of introducing emission spectra (pickles contain high quantities of sodium, making the pickle act like a sodium lamp). As the demo wore one the glow from the pickle decreased, presumably because some chemical change in the pickle wrought by having large quantites of current pumped through it tied up the sodium. To compensate, the lecturer cranked up the voltage on the power supply he was using, which worked fine until his hand slipped and he accidentally ramped the voltage all the way up to the supply's highest setting (240V IIRC).
Needless to say, this was well in excess of the pickle's tolerances, and it exploded, showering fat orange sparks everywhere (nearly catching an unlucky student volunteer involved in the demo) and sending an almighty stink throughout the lecture theatre. So bear in mind that a pickle has exactly the same limitations as any other electrical component when doing this experiment.
Ah, first-year chem, those were the days. Exploding pickles, naked guys wandering into lectures...ahem, exucse me, I digress...
You might want to check the links (including court papers currently filed) provided by the GrepLaw story on this topic. The suit is being brought under Title 17, Section 512(j) of the US Code, which explicitly gives the right to a plaintiff with standing to seek an injunction against an ISP or backbone provider to block a particular infringing site. I'm not sure whether the offending provision was inserted as part of the DMCA, but I suspect it was. I'm sure you can come to your own conclusions about the kinds of burdens that this provision could place upon backbone providers given the number of infringing sites out there.
I think I can partially answer this one. The important fact to note is that the European Patent Convention (the document constituting the EPO) isn't part of the body of treaty law comprising the EU. This creates some interesting problems, especially when the EU passes patent directives that could require member states to try and alter their obligations under the EPC (while all EU members are parties to the EPC, not all EPC parties are member states of the EU).
The basic upshot of this is that there is no single European patent that can be overseen and enforced by a transnational judicial system (i.e. the European Court of Justice). Instead, the grant of a patent from the EPO is recognized and enforced by the domestic courts of each party to the EPC. Effectively, you get a "bundle" of national patents in countries with quite similar patents law (as the EPC requires).
So, a general answer to your question would be: while there are many similarities in the way the EPC countries treat patents, there will be differences according to the system of law employed domestically by each country. So while the UK would have a similar approach to the US, the civil law countries on the European continent will have minor, but not insignificant, differences. Since I'm no expert on civil law, I can't give you any more information than that.
...the balance of power is held by the fashionably left-leaning Democrats, who would probably oppose a Bermanesque law here.
I have doubts about that. The Dems supported the Copyright Act Amendments (Digital Agenda) Act 2000 (i.e. the Australian DMCA) and, like the Labor Party, tend to support the entertainment industry. Given their courting of the corporate dollar before last year's election (publicity of which they tried to avoid by holding fundraiser events at undisclosed locations), they're just a little too close to the vested interests in this issue for my tastes.
It's entirely possible that any sort of Bermanesque bill will pass without any significant opposition, which, given that the media tends to only report issues about which there is political conflict, means that there would probably not be much coverage at all.
The legal question is whether or not a simple disclaimer is adequate, and when the user must see it for it to be effective.
I'd better start with my own disclaimer: I'm not a lawyer (though I will be one in a couple of years), this is a very simple answer, and these general rules are subject both to statutory modification and to the specific facts of a particular situation, so this isn't legal advice and YMMV.
At common law, the answer to the first question is yes, knowledge and acceptance of a risk is sufficient to lower the standard of care for negligence. Of course, you would have to demonstrate that the user had, in fact, seen the disclaimer, so some prominent display at installation or a click-through arrangement would still be a good idea. As for when, the simple answer is: before the software does anything bad. The (slightly) longer answer is that the user should have a reasonable opporunity to avoid the risk before anything bad happens.
You forgot one: the type of relief being sought. Let's assume that a criminal action is brought for the production of material. Usually, the production of material must occur within jurisdiction for it to be an offence. However, there is nothing to prevent a nation enacting laws that have extra-territorial jurisdiction, and in some cases, this is quite legitimate. IIRC, the UK has laws against conspiracy to murder a British subject that have universal jurisdiction, i.e. it is illegal to conspire to kill a British subject anywhere in the world. This is completely in line with a sovereign nation's right to protect its own interests and that of its citizens. The only fundamental limit on such laws is that of enforcement: HM government can't send its law enforcement officials into another country to arrest a suspect without that country's permission. Therefore, if all you are doing is seeking to lay criminal charges, then jurisdiction isn't a problem provided the accused is within your territory and the necessary domestic legislative framework is in place.
If what you are doing is seeking to take down material outside your territory, then things get more complex. According to your own laws, remote takedowns may be totally acceptable, in which case you can safely get away with it provided you're in your own territory. However, it may constitute unauthorized access by the laws of the country in which the material resides. This creates an interesting reciprocal lack of jurisdiction: the people maintaining the material locally can't pursue you in their domestic courts because you're outside their jurisdiction, but OTOH if those domestic maintainers decide to roll back your changes, there's nothing you can do because they're outside your jurisdiction.
Common law countries such as the UK, US, Canada, Australia and NZ get around this by issuing court orders that bind the person who owns the content (they act in personam) rather than orders that authorize officials to affect the content or thing in question (orders that act in rem). In other words, the person who has control of the material is charged with taking it down themselves, so whether the material is within the jurisdiction of the court making the order or not is irrelevant. If the subject of the order refuses to comply, they're found in contempt and thrown into prison until they agree to comply (they may also have contempt charges levied against them on top of any other charges they may have to deal with).
Bottom line: it's an unholy mess, and one of the reasons why countries are seeking harmonization of laws through such instruments as the Council of Europe's cyber-crime treaty. Whether this turns out to be a Good Thing or a Bad Thing remains to be seen. There is certainly a potential bleeding of draconian laws into the domestic legal systems of otherwise enlightened countries, but a lack of such an international framework will make a mockery of privacy laws and other good legislation if, e.g., irresponsible or tabloid media organizations can get around them by simply relocating content overseas.
like you can't have the lights fail and still film the show!
Has anybody else ever noticed how the network of red flashing lights on Star Trek is the most reliable system on the entire ship? It's not as if they're neede for plot or anything, and the other lights flicker and fail often enough. I think I've only ever seen them fail once (VOY: Year of Hell, and that's because the rest of the ship was basically destroyed). You'd think the Starfleet engineers would spend more effort making other systems more reliable...
The conjunction used between the second-last and last sub-paras is read back as applying to all other alternatives. So it is A or B or C in this case.
Re:Extrodinary claims require extrodinary proof...
on
The Magic Box Hoax
·
· Score: 2
True, but Harrison's clocks could be verified through simple black-box testing. If the clock kept time over the course of a sea voyage (as determined through astronomical observations, using the clock's time to determine position already known through other means, or just looking at another clock) then it was genuine. If it didn't, it wasn't. Such black-box testing wouldn't have been sufficient in this case, though.
You may also be interested in a kuro5hin article reproducing the Hansard record of a speech by Thomas Babbington Macaulay, member of the House of Commons, advocating against a bill to extend the period that copyright endures after an author's death. He makes a lot of the points we're trying to get our legislators to understand, in 1841. Every word of the speech is just pure class. I hope I'll be able to reach the standard of argument and reasoning exmplified by this speech and this letter one day, although I'm afraid it might not be possible:(.
Tying it all together later would require nothing more than a simple court warrant and an Internet connection.
Of course in these enlightened times you may not even need a warrant. And while government may not be interested in the average individual right now, it's nice (from government's perspective) to have the capability for when any given individual does something to become interesting...
You sit at the computer and type in a search box: "Where are my eyeglasses?" The computer spits back: "Under the couch."
Which is too bad if the reason you wanted your glasses in the first place was to read the screen. What we really need is a Star Trek-style voice interface to go with this stuff. Of course, then the deaf are going to have trouble looking for their hearing aids...
As the DCA page linked to points out, the inquiry will be given specific terms of reference to address. Your submission should therefore address what points you think are relevant to those terms of reference. It seems the most relevant to you would be:
* The potential for wireless broadband technologies to provide a 'last mile' broadband solution, particularly in rural and regional areas, and to encourage the development and use of broadband content applications; and
* The effect of the telecommunications regulatory regime, including spectrum regulation, on the development and use of wireless broadband technologies, in particular the Radiocommunications Act (1992) the Telecommunications Act (1997), and Parts XIB and XIC of the Trade Practices Act.
Since there will probably be expert groups and witnesses covering the technological aspects covered in the terms of reference, I suggest you stick to those two (plus any other policy-related terms I haven't mentioned). The economics of bandwidth distribution and the importance of not concentrating supply in a few major players are also important points.
Not having done this before myself, I would suggest you try and find any info about drafting submissions, appearing as a witness, procedure, etc, on the Parliamentary website. You may also wish to talk to a lawyer about any legal issues that you may wish to address (plus, a good lawyer is excellent at drafting arguments in the best way possible). Try and get in touch with various advocacy groups which may be interested and have done this sort of thing before in a related area, like EFA.
Good luck, it's in everybody's interests that wireless broadband be as widely available as possible, IMO, so I wish you all the best.
Today's the day I can submit "Microsoft might be an evil monopoly" and I'll finally see my nick on the front page!!! Booyah!
Uh, you do know that writing articles that state the bleeding obvious, then piggy-back wild, unsupported assertions off the back of it, all without contributing anything new or insightful and headlining it all "$buzzword might be $evil_thing [in post-$major_event world]" actually falls within JonKatz's duties? I don't think he's gonna just give that up too easily, given that the stuff he writes has failed to shift him yet.
People pay for GPL'd software every time they buy a distro of Linux, the burden in that case would probably fall on RedHat or SuSE or Mandrake, rather than the original authors, but the arguement can be made. And if there's an arguement to make, leave it to some shifty ambulance chaser to make it...
The argument could be raised, but thankfully the GPL contains an "as is" warning effectively from the author. The law of negligence says that if you warn people about the risks they are undertaking before they commit to something, the standard of care you owe is lowered. If I warn a person to whom I give my work about the potential dangers of that work, responsibility would be transferred from my shoulders to theirs. In addition, if I go so far as to give them the means to guard against any flaws in my work (by providing source in the case of software), then I probably have an effective defence in the form of contributory negligence if it blows up in their face. Finally, any case in negligence would be weakened by the enornmous social (and arguably economic) benefit that flows from me giving away software. I doubt that even a lawyer who's clever to the power evil could get around all those factors.
Products liability law usually says that such warnings don't apply, or if they do, they have to be prominently displayed on packaging, etc (which would tend to put consumers off buying it: can you imagine MS labelling its boxes in large letters "Warning! This software may delete all your work and ruin your life!"), but again, you have to be in the position where you're selling software, rather than just giving it away, in order to attract liability under those laws.
As you say, if MS was really smart, they would go along with any new legislation, but insist on strict liability provisions that would cover all software. They could afford the increased legal exposure, but the average individual author of GPL'd work couldn't.
Fine, now Microsoft is liable for NT vulns, but you can't basically throw MS licensing rules out the window and leave BSD and GPL in tact.
You can get MS and leave the GPL (essentially) intact. The difference between them is that you pay for MS stuff, whereas you generally don't pay for GPL software. Of course, if you pay for GPL software, you should probably have a right of action against the supplier (but not necessarily the original author, if s/he gives it away).
The technical legal difference between the two is that an MS EULA is a contract (legally binding agreement for mutual consideration), whereas the GPL is only a licence (permission to do something the grantee couldn't previously do without anything in return) I understand the contract/licence nature of the GPL is still a matter of some debate, but if a law were passed saying "no clauses excluding liability in contracts for the sale of software", then we could probably catch the EULAs and leave the GPL and other open source licences intact where the GPL'd or OSL'd software was provided gratis. At any rate, I think it should be possible somehow to distinguish the two on a "you pay for one, you don't pay for the other" basis.
Why not hold Network Admins responsible for problems on their networks? I am a network admin, and if some kid got in and stole a database from one of my employers, compromising customers, I would expect to take the full heat for it. In the back of my mind I'd be saying "F*** Microsoft and their buggy-ass code", but I would know it was my fault for allowing it to happen.
It depends on who made the decision to go with the buggy software. If it was your decision, then yes, the responsibility falls on your shoulders. If, however, the decision came from management on the rationale that "nobody got sued for going with MS" or some other non-tech-related reason, and that decision was made against your own advice, then you shouldn't cop the heat for that
Of course, given your lowly position in your organization relative to the goon that actually made the decision, office politics will pretty well guarantee that you'll take the heat anyway:).
Re:terrorism == loss of human life != hacking
on
Byte Wars
·
· Score: 2
It doesn't have anything to do with hacking computers. The terms "online terrorism" and "cyberterrorism" are meaningless and maybe even insulting to victims of real terrorism.
Not necessarily. One of the goals of terrorism (IMO) is to disrupt the ordinary function of society. Society works because people have a certain amount of faith in the institutions, both of government and of the private sector, that make it work. People trust the authorities to manage law enforcement because of the checks in balances that give them faith in that system, they put their money in banks in the belief it will stay there, they use money because they believe its value is appropriately assessed according to relevant economic criteria, etc.
Those are just a few examples, but many of them rely on computers as part of their fundamental infrastructure. Take away faith in that infrastructure (by demonstrating its weaknesses, cracking being the most effective way of doing this) and you take away faith in the institutions they support. Society will cease to function, the economy will tank, and anarchy and chaos will ensue (any civilization is only three meals away from revolution).
That seems like a pretty foreseeable terrorist goal to me, what about you?
It has to be. It's impossible to specify what can be patented because the purpose of patents is to protect as-yet unknown classes of inventions and processes. You can't specify what you don't know about.
...but a description of something that already exists? Is that "made by man"? A lot closer to "made by evolution" (and/or God, depending on your perspective).
The current answer is "yes", since genes don't exist. You take a chromosome (or maybe plasmid if you're working with bacteria/archaea) and do some magic on it to cut it up and produce a new chemical compound. In that sense, it's just like any other industrial chemical process. The process used for each gene is apparently novel enough to ensure patentability (the test for novelty in the US is really low, along the lines of "if trained monkeys couldn't think it up, then it's novel"; the EU is better in this regard, but then again the EU is better in most respects with regard to IP, especially in relation to biotech and IT).
What if I wanted to represent the same gene using different notation, using a different investigative process to get that representation?
Talking about representing genes isn't really relevant, since patents don't prevent you talking about patented subject matter; one of the objectives of patent law is the disclosure of new inventions through the requirement of publication (and this is one thing the evil people in the article are trying to get around). As for using a different process to get the gene: that's a big argument. It's a bit like saying that you could produce say, a phonograph that corresponded in every way to a patented phonograph, but avoid the patent by saying you used a different production process. It doesn't really work that way.
I guess that's what it comes down to, and whether or not you agree on whether the patent system's protection for pharmaceutical companies encourages or discourages basic research.
That's probably the important thing to remember: IP rights arise out of policy considerations rather than out of inherent moral rights (except perhaps for the right of workers, as against corporations, to be rewarded for their labour). The IP regime have to be tuned to ensure that progress in the fields they regulate occurs with the greatest rapidity possible; that's the principal benchmark of their effectiveness.
Slashdot Mirror
No. Having had a quick glance at the paper (available through the link to the renderer provided elsewhere), the techique centres around generating a number of points per voxel that varies according to the shading you want at that location in the image. Hence, the density of dots in any given region will vary in proportion to the "darkness" of the underlying data set in that region. The tricky part is working out the number/distribution of points that will produce a viewable image with all desired features highlighted, given that most images will be viewed at a resolution that would cause the object rendered to appear as a black smudge, even at a maximum point density of 1 point per voxel.
Your calcuation ignores the fact, as alluded to by others, that solid rock is quite dense and, well, solid, requiring the particle to dump a lot of energy to get through it, whereas human being is quite soft and squishy, not requiring anywhere near as much energy. Nice try though :).
Standard disclaimer: you should really see a lawyer regarding your own particular circumstances. This isn't legal advice, just some general information you might be interested in.
A workman's lien, as others have pointed out, is a proprietary right over an objet that you surrender to a workman for him/her to work on it. In a certain sense, the workman becomes the "owner" of the property you surrender (or, to put it another way, your title and interest in the property is burdened or encumbered by the lien) and the workman has the right to prevent you from taking back the property until you're paid the price of his or her work. It doesn't really apply in contracts for sale or construction of goods.
In that case, different rules apply. In a contract for the sale of goods, title usually passes the moment the contract of sale is finalized, i.e. when vendor and purchaser agree that the sale should go ahead. If the purchaser goes bankrupt, then all creditors have rights against those goods as the purchaser's property, and the vendor simply has the status of an unsecured creditor through his unsecured right to payment
The traditional way to get around this is the insertion of a clause into the contract to override the default position and stipulate that title only passes once payment has been made, and that up until that point the purchaser has "only" an unrestricted licence to use and convert the goods as s/he wishes. If the purchaser goes bankrupt, the vendor then has a property right in those goods (provided they're still capable of recovery) over and above the rights of other creditors. In the case of contracts for the production and sale of intellectual property, the default position would be governed by the provisions regarding ownership according to the circumstances when it is related. IIRC, US copyright law provides that copyright always vests with the author unless there is an express contractual term to the contrary. I am unaware of the position for patents, designs, or other forms of IP in the US.
Bottom line, you should try to have a term included in your contract stipulating that assignment or exclusive licence in the copyright or other IP right will only transfer once you've received payment. That's likely to be difficult, as your employer is likely to be making regulard part payments (through your pay cheque) for your work, and doubtless is expecting to see something for it. Note that you may have trouble doing this retrospectively, especially if the person or compnay who's paying you is in trouble. That's called a voidable preference, and bankruptcy/insolvency law takes a dim view of such attempts of creditors to secure parts of a prospective bankrupt's assets for themselves when it becomes clear that the ship's going down.
From what I've heard, slightly earlier versions of IE on Windows had semi-cruddy PNG support.
All right, hands up everybody who uses old (and therefore, with security holes big enough to peg a rock through) versions of IE.
What, no one? How surprising, considering how tolerant and understanding /.ers are on these issues. :)
I just had a quick flick through the judgment as kindly linked to in Eggplant's post. The case was decided on common law grounds, the registrar considering the two torts of interference with business or trade interests (which isn't yet recognized in Australia) and interference with contractual relations. Defamation was knocked out by reference to a provision in the WA Criminal Code that bars accurate statements from being defamatory.
So the case was decided on the common law after all. That's a relief, if WA was entirely code-based, I should have known about it. Western Australia may have been nearly colonized by the French, but that doesn't mean it has to adopt their heathen legal system :-P.
IAAALS (I Am An Australian Law Student)...
Ditto
Australia is a 'common law' country. A judgement in an Australian jurisdiction such as Western Australia would only ever been seen as 'persuasive precedence' in any jurisdiction besides WA.
I would put a rider on that. Unlike the United States, the common law in Australia is unified: every state has the same common law. Every state in the US, on the other hand, has its own version of the common law as developed by that state's courts. This difference is a result of the expanded jurisdiction of the High Court of Australia as compared to the US Supreme Court. The High Court is a general court of appeal, having appellate jurisdiction over just about anything in addition to its original and appellate jurisdiction over constitutional and federal matters. The US Supreme Court only has jurisdiction over federal and constitutional matters, and only decides state cases as they conflict with some constitutional provision or principle. The creation of such an integrated judicature administering a single common law results in the courts of each state having a lot more respect for the judgments of courts in other states. However, this case wouldn't appear to establish any new rule or principle, so it can't be relied on as precedent for anything.
Western Australia is one of 2 states in Australia who have a codified legal system. This means that the common law is generally superseded by specific coded laws.
Really? I was aware that the criminal law of WA, as well as that of Queensland (my home state) and Tasmania, was codified, but that the rest of the common law has been either left intact or modified, not extinguished or supplanted, by statute.
Finally, although I haven't seen the judgment, I would also add that in Australia costs usually follow the event (i.e. whoever loses generally has to pay the other side's costs as well as their own legal bills), so it's likely the plaintiffs would have had costs awarded against them.
I had a chem lecturer who did just this very demonstration as a fun way of introducing emission spectra (pickles contain high quantities of sodium, making the pickle act like a sodium lamp). As the demo wore one the glow from the pickle decreased, presumably because some chemical change in the pickle wrought by having large quantites of current pumped through it tied up the sodium. To compensate, the lecturer cranked up the voltage on the power supply he was using, which worked fine until his hand slipped and he accidentally ramped the voltage all the way up to the supply's highest setting (240V IIRC).
Needless to say, this was well in excess of the pickle's tolerances, and it exploded, showering fat orange sparks everywhere (nearly catching an unlucky student volunteer involved in the demo) and sending an almighty stink throughout the lecture theatre. So bear in mind that a pickle has exactly the same limitations as any other electrical component when doing this experiment.
Ah, first-year chem, those were the days. Exploding pickles, naked guys wandering into lectures...ahem, exucse me, I digress...
From Qualcomm's page linked to by the poster:
In a webinar hosted by Big Talk/Wireless Week
Webinar!? Since when did this monstrosity enter the English language? Who was responsible?
You might want to check the links (including court papers currently filed) provided by the GrepLaw story on this topic. The suit is being brought under Title 17, Section 512(j) of the US Code, which explicitly gives the right to a plaintiff with standing to seek an injunction against an ISP or backbone provider to block a particular infringing site. I'm not sure whether the offending provision was inserted as part of the DMCA, but I suspect it was. I'm sure you can come to your own conclusions about the kinds of burdens that this provision could place upon backbone providers given the number of infringing sites out there.
I think I can partially answer this one. The important fact to note is that the European Patent Convention (the document constituting the EPO) isn't part of the body of treaty law comprising the EU. This creates some interesting problems, especially when the EU passes patent directives that could require member states to try and alter their obligations under the EPC (while all EU members are parties to the EPC, not all EPC parties are member states of the EU).
The basic upshot of this is that there is no single European patent that can be overseen and enforced by a transnational judicial system (i.e. the European Court of Justice). Instead, the grant of a patent from the EPO is recognized and enforced by the domestic courts of each party to the EPC. Effectively, you get a "bundle" of national patents in countries with quite similar patents law (as the EPC requires).
So, a general answer to your question would be: while there are many similarities in the way the EPC countries treat patents, there will be differences according to the system of law employed domestically by each country. So while the UK would have a similar approach to the US, the civil law countries on the European continent will have minor, but not insignificant, differences. Since I'm no expert on civil law, I can't give you any more information than that.
I have doubts about that. The Dems supported the Copyright Act Amendments (Digital Agenda) Act 2000 (i.e. the Australian DMCA) and, like the Labor Party, tend to support the entertainment industry. Given their courting of the corporate dollar before last year's election (publicity of which they tried to avoid by holding fundraiser events at undisclosed locations), they're just a little too close to the vested interests in this issue for my tastes.
It's entirely possible that any sort of Bermanesque bill will pass without any significant opposition, which, given that the media tends to only report issues about which there is political conflict, means that there would probably not be much coverage at all.
The legal question is whether or not a simple disclaimer is adequate, and when the user must see it for it to be effective.
I'd better start with my own disclaimer: I'm not a lawyer (though I will be one in a couple of years), this is a very simple answer, and these general rules are subject both to statutory modification and to the specific facts of a particular situation, so this isn't legal advice and YMMV.
At common law, the answer to the first question is yes, knowledge and acceptance of a risk is sufficient to lower the standard of care for negligence. Of course, you would have to demonstrate that the user had, in fact, seen the disclaimer, so some prominent display at installation or a click-through arrangement would still be a good idea. As for when, the simple answer is: before the software does anything bad. The (slightly) longer answer is that the user should have a reasonable opporunity to avoid the risk before anything bad happens.
There are three factors at work here:
You forgot one: the type of relief being sought. Let's assume that a criminal action is brought for the production of material. Usually, the production of material must occur within jurisdiction for it to be an offence. However, there is nothing to prevent a nation enacting laws that have extra-territorial jurisdiction, and in some cases, this is quite legitimate. IIRC, the UK has laws against conspiracy to murder a British subject that have universal jurisdiction, i.e. it is illegal to conspire to kill a British subject anywhere in the world. This is completely in line with a sovereign nation's right to protect its own interests and that of its citizens. The only fundamental limit on such laws is that of enforcement: HM government can't send its law enforcement officials into another country to arrest a suspect without that country's permission. Therefore, if all you are doing is seeking to lay criminal charges, then jurisdiction isn't a problem provided the accused is within your territory and the necessary domestic legislative framework is in place.
If what you are doing is seeking to take down material outside your territory, then things get more complex. According to your own laws, remote takedowns may be totally acceptable, in which case you can safely get away with it provided you're in your own territory. However, it may constitute unauthorized access by the laws of the country in which the material resides. This creates an interesting reciprocal lack of jurisdiction: the people maintaining the material locally can't pursue you in their domestic courts because you're outside their jurisdiction, but OTOH if those domestic maintainers decide to roll back your changes, there's nothing you can do because they're outside your jurisdiction.
Common law countries such as the UK, US, Canada, Australia and NZ get around this by issuing court orders that bind the person who owns the content (they act in personam) rather than orders that authorize officials to affect the content or thing in question (orders that act in rem). In other words, the person who has control of the material is charged with taking it down themselves, so whether the material is within the jurisdiction of the court making the order or not is irrelevant. If the subject of the order refuses to comply, they're found in contempt and thrown into prison until they agree to comply (they may also have contempt charges levied against them on top of any other charges they may have to deal with).
Bottom line: it's an unholy mess, and one of the reasons why countries are seeking harmonization of laws through such instruments as the Council of Europe's cyber-crime treaty. Whether this turns out to be a Good Thing or a Bad Thing remains to be seen. There is certainly a potential bleeding of draconian laws into the domestic legal systems of otherwise enlightened countries, but a lack of such an international framework will make a mockery of privacy laws and other good legislation if, e.g., irresponsible or tabloid media organizations can get around them by simply relocating content overseas.
like you can't have the lights fail and still film the show!
Has anybody else ever noticed how the network of red flashing lights on Star Trek is the most reliable system on the entire ship? It's not as if they're neede for plot or anything, and the other lights flicker and fail often enough. I think I've only ever seen them fail once (VOY: Year of Hell, and that's because the rest of the ship was basically destroyed). You'd think the Starfleet engineers would spend more effort making other systems more reliable...
The conjunction used between the second-last and last sub-paras is read back as applying to all other alternatives. So it is A or B or C in this case.
True, but Harrison's clocks could be verified through simple black-box testing. If the clock kept time over the course of a sea voyage (as determined through astronomical observations, using the clock's time to determine position already known through other means, or just looking at another clock) then it was genuine. If it didn't, it wasn't. Such black-box testing wouldn't have been sufficient in this case, though.
You may also be interested in a kuro5hin article reproducing the Hansard record of a speech by Thomas Babbington Macaulay, member of the House of Commons, advocating against a bill to extend the period that copyright endures after an author's death. He makes a lot of the points we're trying to get our legislators to understand, in 1841. Every word of the speech is just pure class. I hope I'll be able to reach the standard of argument and reasoning exmplified by this speech and this letter one day, although I'm afraid it might not be possible :(.
Tying it all together later would require nothing more than a simple court warrant and an Internet connection.
Of course in these enlightened times you may not even need a warrant. And while government may not be interested in the average individual right now, it's nice (from government's perspective) to have the capability for when any given individual does something to become interesting...
You sit at the computer and type in a search box: "Where are my eyeglasses?" The computer spits back: "Under the couch."
Which is too bad if the reason you wanted your glasses in the first place was to read the screen. What we really need is a Star Trek-style voice interface to go with this stuff. Of course, then the deaf are going to have trouble looking for their hearing aids...
As the DCA page linked to points out, the inquiry will be given specific terms of reference to address. Your submission should therefore address what points you think are relevant to those terms of reference. It seems the most relevant to you would be:
* The potential for wireless broadband technologies to provide a 'last mile' broadband solution, particularly in rural and regional areas, and to encourage the development and use of broadband content applications; and
* The effect of the telecommunications regulatory regime, including spectrum regulation, on the development and use of wireless broadband technologies, in particular the Radiocommunications Act (1992) the Telecommunications Act (1997), and Parts XIB and XIC of the Trade Practices Act.Since there will probably be expert groups and witnesses covering the technological aspects covered in the terms of reference, I suggest you stick to those two (plus any other policy-related terms I haven't mentioned). The economics of bandwidth distribution and the importance of not concentrating supply in a few major players are also important points.
Not having done this before myself, I would suggest you try and find any info about drafting submissions, appearing as a witness, procedure, etc, on the Parliamentary website. You may also wish to talk to a lawyer about any legal issues that you may wish to address (plus, a good lawyer is excellent at drafting arguments in the best way possible). Try and get in touch with various advocacy groups which may be interested and have done this sort of thing before in a related area, like EFA.
Good luck, it's in everybody's interests that wireless broadband be as widely available as possible, IMO, so I wish you all the best.
Today's the day I can submit "Microsoft might be an evil monopoly" and I'll finally see my nick on the front page!!! Booyah!
Uh, you do know that writing articles that state the bleeding obvious, then piggy-back wild, unsupported assertions off the back of it, all without contributing anything new or insightful and headlining it all "$buzzword might be $evil_thing [in post-$major_event world]" actually falls within JonKatz's duties? I don't think he's gonna just give that up too easily, given that the stuff he writes has failed to shift him yet.
The argument could be raised, but thankfully the GPL contains an "as is" warning effectively from the author. The law of negligence says that if you warn people about the risks they are undertaking before they commit to something, the standard of care you owe is lowered. If I warn a person to whom I give my work about the potential dangers of that work, responsibility would be transferred from my shoulders to theirs. In addition, if I go so far as to give them the means to guard against any flaws in my work (by providing source in the case of software), then I probably have an effective defence in the form of contributory negligence if it blows up in their face. Finally, any case in negligence would be weakened by the enornmous social (and arguably economic) benefit that flows from me giving away software. I doubt that even a lawyer who's clever to the power evil could get around all those factors.
Products liability law usually says that such warnings don't apply, or if they do, they have to be prominently displayed on packaging, etc (which would tend to put consumers off buying it: can you imagine MS labelling its boxes in large letters "Warning! This software may delete all your work and ruin your life!"), but again, you have to be in the position where you're selling software, rather than just giving it away, in order to attract liability under those laws.
As you say, if MS was really smart, they would go along with any new legislation, but insist on strict liability provisions that would cover all software. They could afford the increased legal exposure, but the average individual author of GPL'd work couldn't.
Fine, now Microsoft is liable for NT vulns, but you can't basically throw MS licensing rules out the window and leave BSD and GPL in tact.
You can get MS and leave the GPL (essentially) intact. The difference between them is that you pay for MS stuff, whereas you generally don't pay for GPL software. Of course, if you pay for GPL software, you should probably have a right of action against the supplier (but not necessarily the original author, if s/he gives it away).
The technical legal difference between the two is that an MS EULA is a contract (legally binding agreement for mutual consideration), whereas the GPL is only a licence (permission to do something the grantee couldn't previously do without anything in return) I understand the contract/licence nature of the GPL is still a matter of some debate, but if a law were passed saying "no clauses excluding liability in contracts for the sale of software", then we could probably catch the EULAs and leave the GPL and other open source licences intact where the GPL'd or OSL'd software was provided gratis. At any rate, I think it should be possible somehow to distinguish the two on a "you pay for one, you don't pay for the other" basis.
It depends on who made the decision to go with the buggy software. If it was your decision, then yes, the responsibility falls on your shoulders. If, however, the decision came from management on the rationale that "nobody got sued for going with MS" or some other non-tech-related reason, and that decision was made against your own advice, then you shouldn't cop the heat for that
Of course, given your lowly position in your organization relative to the goon that actually made the decision, office politics will pretty well guarantee that you'll take the heat anyway :).
It doesn't have anything to do with hacking computers. The terms "online terrorism" and "cyberterrorism" are meaningless and maybe even insulting to victims of real terrorism.
Not necessarily. One of the goals of terrorism (IMO) is to disrupt the ordinary function of society. Society works because people have a certain amount of faith in the institutions, both of government and of the private sector, that make it work. People trust the authorities to manage law enforcement because of the checks in balances that give them faith in that system, they put their money in banks in the belief it will stay there, they use money because they believe its value is appropriately assessed according to relevant economic criteria, etc.
Those are just a few examples, but many of them rely on computers as part of their fundamental infrastructure. Take away faith in that infrastructure (by demonstrating its weaknesses, cracking being the most effective way of doing this) and you take away faith in the institutions they support. Society will cease to function, the economy will tank, and anarchy and chaos will ensue (any civilization is only three meals away from revolution).
That seems like a pretty foreseeable terrorist goal to me, what about you?
Hmm, that's pretty broad.
It has to be. It's impossible to specify what can be patented because the purpose of patents is to protect as-yet unknown classes of inventions and processes. You can't specify what you don't know about.
The current answer is "yes", since genes don't exist. You take a chromosome (or maybe plasmid if you're working with bacteria/archaea) and do some magic on it to cut it up and produce a new chemical compound. In that sense, it's just like any other industrial chemical process. The process used for each gene is apparently novel enough to ensure patentability (the test for novelty in the US is really low, along the lines of "if trained monkeys couldn't think it up, then it's novel"; the EU is better in this regard, but then again the EU is better in most respects with regard to IP, especially in relation to biotech and IT).
What if I wanted to represent the same gene using different notation, using a different investigative process to get that representation?
Talking about representing genes isn't really relevant, since patents don't prevent you talking about patented subject matter; one of the objectives of patent law is the disclosure of new inventions through the requirement of publication (and this is one thing the evil people in the article are trying to get around). As for using a different process to get the gene: that's a big argument. It's a bit like saying that you could produce say, a phonograph that corresponded in every way to a patented phonograph, but avoid the patent by saying you used a different production process. It doesn't really work that way.
I guess that's what it comes down to, and whether or not you agree on whether the patent system's protection for pharmaceutical companies encourages or discourages basic research.
That's probably the important thing to remember: IP rights arise out of policy considerations rather than out of inherent moral rights (except perhaps for the right of workers, as against corporations, to be rewarded for their labour). The IP regime have to be tuned to ensure that progress in the fields they regulate occurs with the greatest rapidity possible; that's the principal benchmark of their effectiveness.