Comercialization has destroyed events like these
on
RoboCup 2001 Underway
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· Score: 3, Insightful
I remember a time (I feel so old...) when these types of events were held at MIT and CalTech but that was about it; when they were entered by teams of grad students who were all engrosed in the technolohical advancement of the machines.
Now there are TV shows like 'Robot Wars' on Comedy Central, and some similar program on the Learning Channel, which make a mockery of these sorts of events, allowing, entry of remote controlled devices rather than robots, and commented on by outragously dressed characcatures of human beings that you'd evpect to see on 'WWF Smackdown!'.
It's good to see that some of these competitions have remained pure durring this time of rampent commercialization.
--CTH
Be made a lot of good choices and still they're...
on
Be Buyout Looms Closer
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· Score: 4, Interesting
Up For sale... Well that just goes to show, the computer industry is fickle. Be at the right place at the right time or you're dead. Be had a great piece of hardware, but couldn't sell it. They had a great operating system but couldn't find a platform for it. They had great visions for the information appliance market but they were there too soon.
Only 2% of all businesses in the US succeed to any great degree and here's more evidence of that fact.
The company has smart people, a great product but no one to sell to, and now they're up for sale. It's the american way... in a sad twisted sort of way...
The WIPO document "Technical Protection Measures: The Intersection of Technology, Law, and Commercial Licenses." is available in PDF Format and Word Format Here.
Chris Daylor in TIme, makes a few good points. IF you look at biological virology, and compare it to computer viruses, the similarities are striking.
Viruses can either stealthily infect every computer available to it then after a gestation period, attack and destroy the computer in some way (NetHazard level 1) or as soon as it infects a computer it can simply wipe the drive and be done with it (NetHazard level 5) but this doesn't give it any time to infect other systems. As such a NetHazard 5 virus would (in virology lingo) 'burn itself out' in a short period of time.
We've seen our first highly infectious virus recently, in Code Red, but we havn't seen one so highly infectious that also causes the patient to bleed out and die. In short, we ain't seen nothn' yet.
I'm waiting for a patient virus writer to perfect his software first, before releasing it, because so far, although Microsoft software is a favorite virus target, virus writer seem to employ the same software development model as Microsoft, in that they just let their code loose on the net without debugging or optimizing it. Imagine what email (read: Outlook) viruses could do if the writers stopped to use proper grammer in their messages, or taylored the attachment type to the domain from which the infected computer is sending the message (office docs for.com, web pages for.net, etc...). Better viruses are on the horizon, and I'm amazed we havn't started to see them already.
Apatently Qwest.net users got screwed when it came to service agreements. Make damn sure you know what you're getting into in this area? How is it that MSN is able to provide less services ie: questionable web publishing, unreliable email service in a non-dedicated enviroment and so fourth. Don't these users have a service agreement they can fall back on to at least compel MSN to provide EXACTLY the same service they were recieving from Qwest until the termination of that contract term...? (not being a Qwest customer I don't know)
It's about time this happened. Computer game programming has evolved since it's inception from an amusement of a few engineers, to a legitimate commercial enterprise, to a force in the marketplace and finally to an area of academic research.
In fairness for those who look on this with skepticism, the computer gaming industry integrates a variety of areas of research which together can be applied to computer gaming, buy are legitimate areas of study seperately: Mathmatical modeling, Graphic Arts, a whole variety of areas around AI research from the 70s, and the study of sociology, in attempts to create acccurate simulations of human responses. Aparently, all we really needed was some motivation to study these areas, and the pursuit of entertainment is just such a motivator.
I agree. Anyone who describes himself as a thought leader has got my immediate disdain, but give the buy a break. At least he didn't describe himself as an actual leader - since a leader is defined by his actions rather than his thouhts. Gee, well, I thought I was a leader...
That said, he has a few good points he makes regarding lack of consolidated leadership. Interestingly, OpenSOurce is about distributied activities - namely, distributed development. What we're finding here is that regardless of how well distributed development may work, distributed leadership doesn't work. As much as it pains me to say this, the OSS comunity needs to adopt a more corporate style hirarchical leadership model, sith some accountability built in. It fas fascinatinf to me that Microsoft was the consolidating force inthe OSS comunity for those first few months after Mundie's initial speech in which he bashed the GPL and made the initial announcement of the Microsoft PR initiative known as Shared Source. Imediately after this, there was a consolidated, well reasoned and organized response. Since then though, things have deteriorated substancially.
OSS likes to organize itself into projects - perhaps we need the OSS Political Action Comittee Project, who's mission it is to raise awareness andprovide a unified political direction for member software projects.
Although the article clearly states:Don't worry - the camera is, well, disposable. It is excreted eight to 72 hours after being swallowed. Before then, it has beamed its pictures to an external receiver the patient wears on a waistband. I'm sure some enterprising young snot nosed HMO executive will decide that at his company thay'll recycle the cameras, requiring patients to scavenge through their feces to collect the camera, under penalty of non-couverage of the procedure. I wouldn't put it past them.
Yes, but do they really want or need a handheld NAS device? Somehow I doubt it.
Nice piece of Geek hardware, but...
on
10GB In A Linux PDA
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· Score: 2, Insightful
What's it's target function? They don't seriously expect users to implement this as NAS of course... Is it then intended as an MP3 player... a PVR (player) ?, an email client? This device seems to be sufering from schizophrenia.
Whatever happened to the idea to Keep It Simple, Stupid...? Do one or two things and do them well. That's why PalmOS has seen the success it has, while WinCE still flounders trying to decide if it wants to be A PDA platform or a PC platform.
And what happens on the 20th, when the attack cycle begins? It depends on the number of infected machines and the nature of the chosen target, but the worst case says the Internet simply comes to a standstill and we go back to watching TV and talking on the phone until the 28th day of the month and potentially until every 28th day of the month thereafter.
So we will simply stop using the internet and instead watch TV and talk on the phone huh? gee. Where does that leave IP telephony? Telecom industry analysts have criticized the major players (Nortel Networks, Cisco Systems) in this industry for sinking so much money into IP telephony too soon, and blame this for the telecom equipment market downturn. If Cringely is right, the IP telephony market may never get it's chance to prove itself... but at least we'll still be able to talk on the phone.
The first inclination of/. readers will be to suggest manuals, or more generalized reference works such as are published by O'Reilly & Associates. This is an extremely bad idea. These works not only have a short shelf life, but are also of a nature which is not conducive to use in a library, in that people who refer to them will want to do so continually, and at a moments notice, rather than saying 'Gee. I have this problem with the syntax of this Perl function. Let me go to the library and check out the camel book', users will want to own such works durring the time in their lives when they are actively pursuing the subjects those works would relate to.
Instead, you should concentrate on aquiring for the library's collection, books which cover a broader scope of aspects of computer science and the history of computing. This would include such books as 'Alan Turing: The Enigma'.
Cant you resist taking a shot at what you seem to consider a "liberal rag"? You need to realize that this article was about the NYT simply because they were one of the parties directly involved in the case.
My problem with the 'holes in history' argument is not with the NYT or with any other publication. I have a problem with the ruling in that it's basis seems to be in the notion that it's the role of government to insure the completeness of the records of a private archivist. I would have the same objection if the ruling involved the Washington Post, the Wall Street Jurnal or any other publication. Their archives are meant to reflect only their (licensed) content, not a complete history. That's what the National Archives are for.
There was an article on msnbc.com recently that discussed the history of copyright, from the 1500s to the present. There is particularly nteresting information about Jefferson and Maddison.
It looks like Ginburg was looking to prevent and Orwellian (1984-style) scenerio here:
Why did the Court suggest possible limits on the freelancers' property right? Because the majority was responding to the concern that there would be "holes in history" created by the removal of the freelancers' important work from electronic databases.
This is actually a legitimate point. ALthough we are not operating at this level yet, there will eventually be a time when databases of this sort will replace the microfiche archives of newspapers like the New York Times that libraries pay an arm and a leg for now. If articles which appeared in the newspaper were omitted from the online database, there would indeed be 'holes in history' - presuming that the New York Times is the definitive record of history - which in and of itself is a frightning thought.
Here's an excerpt from the website Pons-Story.com - the history of the video game:
Although not a video game, Willy Higinbotham built in 1958 the very first game based around a computer and a CRT at Brookhaven National Laboratory (Upton, New-York, USA). The game was shown to the public during two years in the labs, used an oscilloscope to generate the picture, and a vaccuum tube analog computer to calculate the trajectory of the ball. The game consisted in a little tennis court shown in front view: a reversed 'T' as a net, and a bouncing point as the ball (you can read a very interesting article about the story of this game). Unfortunately, Willy Higinbotham did not find any interest in his game, and did not patent it. What a pitty, when we see all the money involved in video games ! This was the short story of the first game.
I guess it all depends on how you define arcade game...
--CTH
Awaiting the Arrival of AmigaOS x86
on
An Amiga Round-up
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· Score: 2
While AmigaOS may not be 10 years ahead of it's time as it was in 1985, it's availability for the x86 platform is great news. The addition of another alternative os for this platform is always great news, especially a mature OS like this one. Criticize it all you want but you could do things with 3D animation under AmigaOS in 1mb of RAM (and no internal hard drive) that you'd still be hard pressed to do on your adverace home PC under Windows 2000. As for weather there will be a truly meaningful resurgence of the OS, I would expect not, however I do see a sufficient market share being available to keep the company in busines (and selling the OS on multiple platforms) for quite some time.
It's also good to see their forray into the handheld device market, however I'm honestly not sure what AmigOS's strengths have to offer here that's significantly different than that of PalmOS or Windows CE (except in the case of Windows CE that the programmers at Amiga know how to write extremely clean efficient code that beats Microsoft OS's in such areas as memory efficiency any day).
Here's to the successful migration of the AmigaOS to the PC platform. Good luck guys!
People have recently complained about the number of old movies that are being re-made (like Planet of the Apes...) and TV series that were made into movies in the past couple of years - the travisty that was Beverly Hillbillies.
Finally a movie that deserves a sequel. It should be an interesting chalenge for the producers to do justice to the original while at the same time updating it for the modern era - a daunting chalenge indeed but not impossible. I look forward to both the re-release of the original and the sequal with joy and aprehension.
My first question (even before readingthe article) was 'how do you cause the tubules to ofly affect the target cells?' The answer is quite interesting"To prevent indiscriminate targeting of bacterial and human cells, the rings had to be 'tuned' to prefer bugs. The team produced a range of rings with different membrane affinities and mixed them with bacteria or human red blood cells. Prime candidates - those that were lethal to bugs but harmless to humans - were selectedThe other issue that came to mind was how would bugs grow resistant to non-biological (for lack of a better word) treatments. This issue was adddressed as well:
If the proposed mechanism is right, resistance would be hard for bugs to evolve, he says. Conventional antibiotics usually target one molecule, so through small molecular changes bacteria gradually grow resistant to their action. In contrast, many molecules in a membrane would need to be altered to resist the tubes, says Ganz, "though I'd never underestimate what a bacterium can do."
All in all a fascinating article and a technology which will be interesting to follow as it develops further.
On a serious note, these asemblages were entirely static in nature (no nanobots yet...) but it doesn't really discuss how these injected nanutubes were exponged, and after how long. Presumably they were released as part of the mice fecal matter but how long does it take to exponge the tubules?
How is it that governments throughout the world are now considering measures similar to the DMCA without waiting for chalenges in the US and to see what the effect of public outcry will be here before risking the same thing in their countries?
Is it that these issues aren't getting enough visibility in other countries (or parhaps not getting enough visibility in the US) or is it that corporate proponants of the DMCA foresee that it will be ruled unconstitutional in the US and they want to have similar legislation enacted in other countries before it goes down in flames in the US. This way a portion of the market control aforded by the DMCA can be maintained by international corporations who have operations in countries where DMCA-like legislation was enacted before it was deemed unconstitutional in the US - with the assumption that after it is ruled unconstitutional in the US, getting backing for similar legislation in other countries would be untenable.
This brings us back to the point of presenting a unified front in opposition to such things as the DMCA. There was an editorial on K5 mostly discussing.NET but that souhed on this issue of lack of coordination of the groups opposing various corporate and government initiatives (mostly Microsoft Hailstorm but it applies equally to our response to the DMCA).
I have been sugesting in various places that our reliance on the EFF and other such organixations to fight these battles should be re-evaluated and was planning on writing an editorial on the subject but it looks like I was beaten to the punch.
On the bright side, at least the canadian covernments is soliciting public comment before proceeding with their legislation.
It's great to see physicists with integrity rather the embarasment to the field perpetrated by Drs. Martin Fleischmann and Stanley Pons in March 1989 when they claimed to have devised a process to produce cold fusion.
Aparently LucasFilm isn't making enough money on 30 year old franchize, they have to go and sue a medical equipment maker for using the name 'Light Saber'.
Unbelievable. You'd think Lucasfilm would be honored that the words 'Light Saber' have infultrated so deeply into pop culture that a manufacturer of a completely serious preoduct would choose to refer to their product line using the mane of a ficticious weapon that appeared in several movies 30 years ago (and one more recently, but that interupts the flow of my rant on this subject).
Pathetic. I'm vary disappointed in LucasFilm for pursuing this issue at all. From a purely financial perspective, LucasFilm's Light Sabers are marketed to an entirely different demographic who would most likely be unaware of the existance of the medical instruments of the same name. LikewiseThe medical instrument manufacturer is is no way attempting to steal customers from LucasFilm by using the name, and if they were, I'd be truly frightened. I can see it now
Billy: I just got a Light Saber. It makes these neat noises and lights up, and only takes two AA batteries.
Joey: My daddy bought me a light saber too but mine has to be plugged into the wall bacause it's more powerful. It can cut through bone like butter. Wanna see?
Judge Rosenbaum makes some interesting points in his article, however one that seems to have ben missed is the difference between computers and any older technique for information storage.
No one would object (in a legal sense) if an employer chose to open the file cabinet next to an employees desk and examine the documents within, as these documents would probably be considered property of the employer.
How is that different than examining the documents on the computer the employer has provided for my use durring my employment? Well, in several key areas: first, computers are much more versitile than the file cabinet in that they have the capability to perform thousands of operations that the paper and pencil would not facilitate (like web serfing for the purpose of evaluating reviews of an OSS version of a product competing with that of my company), as wel las many others from communicating with my son, to buying groceries if I so choose. Some of these activities are work related and some are not.
Searching the computer becomes less like riflingthrough the file cabinet and more like searching the company car which I drive to work in every day. While it does belong to the company, it is a common practive for me to use it for non-work relatd personal activities like picking my son up from soccer practice (which is why there's a Power Rangers toy in the back seat).
The point is, when employees are given tools with vast flexibility and power then employees are given a certain level of responsibility to behave appropriately. By extension the employee is also given a level of autonomy to use the device (wether it be a computer or a car) in a manner he sees fit. Judge Rosenbaum suggests that the grant of this authority to the employee comes with a set of additional rights to privacy with respect to the device/tool in question.
If my employer did not trust me I would be provided with a paper and pencil, with which I could perform no other function than my specified job function and no-one would have any problem with the employer viewing the documents I had created with the pencil over the course of the work day.
The proposal here is: With the grant of powerful devices such as computers to employees, comes a grant of authority, autonomy and privacy with regard to the use of such devices.
Slashdot Mirror
I remember a time (I feel so old...) when these types of events were held at MIT and CalTech but that was about it; when they were entered by teams of grad students who were all engrosed in the technolohical advancement of the machines.
Now there are TV shows like 'Robot Wars' on Comedy Central, and some similar program on the Learning Channel, which make a mockery of these sorts of events, allowing, entry of remote controlled devices rather than robots, and commented on by outragously dressed characcatures of human beings that you'd evpect to see on 'WWF Smackdown!'.
It's good to see that some of these competitions have remained pure durring this time of rampent commercialization.
--CTH
Up For sale... Well that just goes to show, the computer industry is fickle. Be at the right place at the right time or you're dead. Be had a great piece of hardware, but couldn't sell it. They had a great operating system but couldn't find a platform for it. They had great visions for the information appliance market but they were there too soon.
Only 2% of all businesses in the US succeed to any great degree and here's more evidence of that fact.
The company has smart people, a great product but no one to sell to, and now they're up for sale. It's the american way... in a sad twisted sort of way...
--CTH
The WIPO document "Technical Protection Measures: The Intersection of Technology, Law, and Commercial Licenses." is available in PDF Format and Word Format Here.
Chris Daylor in TIme, makes a few good points. IF you look at biological virology, and compare it to computer viruses, the similarities are striking.
.com, web pages for .net, etc...). Better viruses are on the horizon, and I'm amazed we havn't started to see them already.
Viruses can either stealthily infect every computer available to it then after a gestation period, attack and destroy the computer in some way (NetHazard level 1) or as soon as it infects a computer it can simply wipe the drive and be done with it (NetHazard level 5) but this doesn't give it any time to infect other systems. As such a NetHazard 5 virus would (in virology lingo) 'burn itself out' in a short period of time.
We've seen our first highly infectious virus recently, in Code Red, but we havn't seen one so highly infectious that also causes the patient to bleed out and die. In short, we ain't seen nothn' yet.
I'm waiting for a patient virus writer to perfect his software first, before releasing it, because so far, although Microsoft software is a favorite virus target, virus writer seem to employ the same software development model as Microsoft, in that they just let their code loose on the net without debugging or optimizing it. Imagine what email (read: Outlook) viruses could do if the writers stopped to use proper grammer in their messages, or taylored the attachment type to the domain from which the infected computer is sending the message (office docs for
--CTH
Apatently Qwest.net users got screwed when it came to service agreements. Make damn sure you know what you're getting into in this area? How is it that MSN is able to provide less services ie: questionable web publishing, unreliable email service in a non-dedicated enviroment and so fourth. Don't these users have a service agreement they can fall back on to at least compel MSN to provide EXACTLY the same service they were recieving from Qwest until the termination of that contract term...? (not being a Qwest customer I don't know)
It's about time this happened. Computer game programming has evolved since it's inception from an amusement of a few engineers, to a legitimate commercial enterprise, to a force in the marketplace and finally to an area of academic research.
In fairness for those who look on this with skepticism, the computer gaming industry integrates a variety of areas of research which together can be applied to computer gaming, buy are legitimate areas of study seperately: Mathmatical modeling, Graphic Arts, a whole variety of areas around AI research from the 70s, and the study of sociology, in attempts to create acccurate simulations of human responses. Aparently, all we really needed was some motivation to study these areas, and the pursuit of entertainment is just such a motivator.
--CTH
That said, he has a few good points he makes regarding lack of consolidated leadership. Interestingly, OpenSOurce is about distributied activities - namely, distributed development. What we're finding here is that regardless of how well distributed development may work, distributed leadership doesn't work. As much as it pains me to say this, the OSS comunity needs to adopt a more corporate style hirarchical leadership model, sith some accountability built in. It fas fascinatinf to me that Microsoft was the consolidating force inthe OSS comunity for those first few months after Mundie's initial speech in which he bashed the GPL and made the initial announcement of the Microsoft PR initiative known as Shared Source. Imediately after this, there was a consolidated, well reasoned and organized response. Since then though, things have deteriorated substancially.
OSS likes to organize itself into projects - perhaps we need the OSS Political Action Comittee Project, who's mission it is to raise awareness andprovide a unified political direction for member software projects.
--CTH
Although the article clearly states:Don't worry - the camera is, well, disposable. It is excreted eight to 72 hours after being swallowed. Before then, it has beamed its pictures to an external receiver the patient wears on a waistband. I'm sure some enterprising young snot nosed HMO executive will decide that at his company thay'll recycle the cameras, requiring patients to scavenge through their feces to collect the camera, under penalty of non-couverage of the procedure. I wouldn't put it past them.
--CTH
Yes, but do they really want or need a handheld NAS device? Somehow I doubt it.
What's it's target function? They don't seriously expect users to implement this as NAS of course... Is it then intended as an MP3 player... a PVR (player) ?, an email client? This device seems to be sufering from schizophrenia.
Whatever happened to the idea to Keep It Simple, Stupid...? Do one or two things and do them well. That's why PalmOS has seen the success it has, while WinCE still flounders trying to decide if it wants to be A PDA platform or a PC platform.
--CTH
--CTH
The first inclination of /. readers will be to suggest manuals, or more generalized reference works such as are published by O'Reilly & Associates. This is an extremely bad idea. These works not only have a short shelf life, but are also of a nature which is not conducive to use in a library, in that people who refer to them will want to do so continually, and at a moments notice, rather than saying 'Gee. I have this problem with the syntax of this Perl function. Let me go to the library and check out the camel book', users will want to own such works durring the time in their lives when they are actively pursuing the subjects those works would relate to.
Instead, you should concentrate on aquiring for the library's collection, books which cover a broader scope of aspects of computer science and the history of computing. This would include such books as 'Alan Turing: The Enigma'.
--CTH
There was an article on msnbc.com recently that discussed the history of copyright, from the 1500s to the present. There is particularly nteresting information about Jefferson and Maddison.
Historical view of Copyright
--CTH
--CTH
--CTH
While AmigaOS may not be 10 years ahead of it's time as it was in 1985, it's availability for the x86 platform is great news. The addition of another alternative os for this platform is always great news, especially a mature OS like this one. Criticize it all you want but you could do things with 3D animation under AmigaOS in 1mb of RAM (and no internal hard drive) that you'd still be hard pressed to do on your adverace home PC under Windows 2000. As for weather there will be a truly meaningful resurgence of the OS, I would expect not, however I do see a sufficient market share being available to keep the company in busines (and selling the OS on multiple platforms) for quite some time.
It's also good to see their forray into the handheld device market, however I'm honestly not sure what AmigOS's strengths have to offer here that's significantly different than that of PalmOS or Windows CE (except in the case of Windows CE that the programmers at Amiga know how to write extremely clean efficient code that beats Microsoft OS's in such areas as memory efficiency any day).
Here's to the successful migration of the AmigaOS to the PC platform. Good luck guys!
--CTH
People have recently complained about the number of old movies that are being re-made (like Planet of the Apes...) and TV series that were made into movies in the past couple of years - the travisty that was Beverly Hillbillies.
Finally a movie that deserves a sequel. It should be an interesting chalenge for the producers to do justice to the original while at the same time updating it for the modern era - a daunting chalenge indeed but not impossible. I look forward to both the re-release of the original and the sequal with joy and aprehension.
--CTH
--CTH
Iguess it's just a matter of time...
On a serious note, these asemblages were entirely static in nature (no nanobots yet...) but it doesn't really discuss how these injected nanutubes were exponged, and after how long. Presumably they were released as part of the mice fecal matter but how long does it take to exponge the tubules?
How is it that governments throughout the world are now considering measures similar to the DMCA without waiting for chalenges in the US and to see what the effect of public outcry will be here before risking the same thing in their countries?
.NET but that souhed on this issue of lack of coordination of the groups opposing various corporate and government initiatives (mostly Microsoft Hailstorm but it applies equally to our response to the DMCA).
Is it that these issues aren't getting enough visibility in other countries (or parhaps not getting enough visibility in the US) or is it that corporate proponants of the DMCA foresee that it will be ruled unconstitutional in the US and they want to have similar legislation enacted in other countries before it goes down in flames in the US. This way a portion of the market control aforded by the DMCA can be maintained by international corporations who have operations in countries where DMCA-like legislation was enacted before it was deemed unconstitutional in the US - with the assumption that after it is ruled unconstitutional in the US, getting backing for similar legislation in other countries would be untenable.
This brings us back to the point of presenting a unified front in opposition to such things as the DMCA. There was an editorial on K5 mostly discussing
I have been sugesting in various places that our reliance on the EFF and other such organixations to fight these battles should be re-evaluated and was planning on writing an editorial on the subject but it looks like I was beaten to the punch.
On the bright side, at least the canadian covernments is soliciting public comment before proceeding with their legislation.
--CTH
yah. Oops. My bad.
It's great to see physicists with integrity rather the embarasment to the field perpetrated by Drs. Martin Fleischmann and Stanley Pons in March 1989 when they claimed to have devised a process to produce cold fusion.
--CTH
Aparently LucasFilm isn't making enough money on 30 year old franchize, they have to go and sue a medical equipment maker for using the name 'Light Saber'.
Unbelievable. You'd think Lucasfilm would be honored that the words 'Light Saber' have infultrated so deeply into pop culture that a manufacturer of a completely serious preoduct would choose to refer to their product line using the mane of a ficticious weapon that appeared in several movies 30 years ago (and one more recently, but that interupts the flow of my rant on this subject).
Pathetic. I'm vary disappointed in LucasFilm for pursuing this issue at all. From a purely financial perspective, LucasFilm's Light Sabers are marketed to an entirely different demographic who would most likely be unaware of the existance of the medical instruments of the same name. LikewiseThe medical instrument manufacturer is is no way attempting to steal customers from LucasFilm by using the name, and if they were, I'd be truly frightened. I can see it now
Billy: I just got a Light Saber. It makes these neat noises and lights up, and only takes two AA batteries.
Joey: My daddy bought me a light saber too but mine has to be plugged into the wall bacause it's more powerful. It can cut through bone like butter. Wanna see?
Truly Frightning.
--CTH
Judge Rosenbaum makes some interesting points in his article, however one that seems to have ben missed is the difference between computers and any older technique for information storage.
No one would object (in a legal sense) if an employer chose to open the file cabinet next to an employees desk and examine the documents within, as these documents would probably be considered property of the employer.
How is that different than examining the documents on the computer the employer has provided for my use durring my employment? Well, in several key areas: first, computers are much more versitile than the file cabinet in that they have the capability to perform thousands of operations that the paper and pencil would not facilitate (like web serfing for the purpose of evaluating reviews of an OSS version of a product competing with that of my company), as wel las many others from communicating with my son, to buying groceries if I so choose. Some of these activities are work related and some are not.
Searching the computer becomes less like riflingthrough the file cabinet and more like searching the company car which I drive to work in every day. While it does belong to the company, it is a common practive for me to use it for non-work relatd personal activities like picking my son up from soccer practice (which is why there's a Power Rangers toy in the back seat).
The point is, when employees are given tools with vast flexibility and power then employees are given a certain level of responsibility to behave appropriately. By extension the employee is also given a level of autonomy to use the device (wether it be a computer or a car) in a manner he sees fit. Judge Rosenbaum suggests that the grant of this authority to the employee comes with a set of additional rights to privacy with respect to the device/tool in question.
If my employer did not trust me I would be provided with a paper and pencil, with which I could perform no other function than my specified job function and no-one would have any problem with the employer viewing the documents I had created with the pencil over the course of the work day.
The proposal here is: With the grant of powerful devices such as computers to employees, comes a grant of authority, autonomy and privacy with regard to the use of such devices.
--CTH