Good point. And it shows how good ideas can go bad. The 900 MHz and 2.4GHz bands were originally allocated for "Industrial, Scientific, and Medical" (ISM) use -- for things like diathermy machines, plastic bag welders, etc. The unlicensed Part 15 devices were allowed into this "useless" spectrum with the express understanding that there was no protection from interference for anybody.
When they allowed spread-spectrum devices to use these bands, no one at the FCC ever envisioned people would be building metro-area-networks, or miles-long links, with them. (Whether they should have is another debate).
But then companies like Richochet started making major investments in Part 15 infrastructre, and in addition to ruining operation for other users of this shared spectrum, started trying to get FCC rule changes to protect them from interference from other devices! (I may be mistaken, but I believe that Metricom/Ricochet was a loud voice in that lobbying effort.)
The Part 15 metro-area-LAN stuff is cool, but this is an interesting example of trying to change the rules of the game at half-time. What new and potentially useful service will be thwarted because of rules designed to protect existing unlicensed users (not to mention the interference a city full of Richochet stations would create)? On the other hand, what will the reaction be if a new service comes along and its interference knocks a city's worth of Richochet users off the 'net?
It's an interesting conundrum, but the bottom line is that anyone using Part 15 devices for anything more than LAN purposes is building on a foundation of sand.
Sure, you deserve respect for your technical skills. But the unfortunate truth is that other factors are also important in the business world.
Some important attributes simply require experience and maturity to develop, no matter how brilliant or skilled you may be. Like it or not, "soft" criteria such as good judgment and people skills are important elements of business success. And the respect you get at work will be based on all of you -- not just the technical bits.
I'll admit that I'm an old fart (43) but I spent a long time being the youngest of my work peers. And, looking back, most of my progression has come not because my technical skills got better but because my soft skills did.
I have exmh running on my home system virtually all the time, and use mh remotely (via ssh) to keep up with things when I'm away. As long as I do a "rescan folder" first thing when I sit down at the exmh console, having mh and exmh sitting on the same maildir seems to work fine. It's a pretty handy setup. Now, if I could just find a simple web interface to my maildir...
One thing that concerns me about the GPL is that it's a very difficult thing to explain to non-technical people, including lawyers. Given that we haven't been too successful in getting judges to understand software IP issues, I'm worried that an attempt to get a judicial interpretation of the GPL will result in a misinterpretation.
I hope that a new GPL version, in its attempt to close loopholes, doesn't become even more difficult to parse, and thus more likely to result in a bad decision.
This an extension of existing deals that handle royalties for other media. There's a concept of "compulsory licensing" under the copyright act -- this is what prevents record companies from denying stations the right to play records. However, the license isn't free and private entities manage the royalty payments for such licenses. In a couple of cases, the managing entity is actually appointed by the copyright office, while in others it's a matter of who the industry players get behind to manage royalty collection on their behalf.
That's where ASCAP and BMI, who license virtually all public performances of recordings, get their clout (and, I'm surprised they're not going after the on-line franchise -- presumably RIAA is trying to do an end run). There's another agency that has the licensing rights for virtually every piece of sheet music published (you have to go there to get permission to record a song, as opposed to playing a recording), and yet another that handles the right to include music in movies and TV. Finally, there's something called the Copyright Clearance Center that attempts to collect fees from businesses and others for photocopies made from books and journals.
You didn't say why DMCA doesn't apply to Cue:Cat, though I agree with you.
My reasoning is that the Cue:Cat merely transmits the UPC code that's created by someone else, and therefore doesn't represent a "work of authorship" as required by the Copyright Act. Further, the UPC code is not a work of authorship, either, as it is a purely functional work that is covered under the "idea/expression merger" concept.* Since there can be only one UPC code matching a single input string, the idea/expression merger removes it from copyright coverage.
Since the Cue:Cat doesn't add anything (other than a fixed serial number, which isn't authorship, either) to the UPC code, its output is not subject to copyright, and therefore is not subject to the DMCA, either.
* If there's only one way to express an idea, to protect that expression would also protect the idea, and that's not the role of copyright (that's what patents are for). So, to avoid copyright overreaching its constitutional bounds, such works do not get copyright protection.
As I understand it, Cue:Cat claims that the simple XOR scrambling they do of their output brings the device under the anti-circumvention provision. This points out a flaw in DMCA: it encourages content owners to be lazy; if (for example) ROT13 counts as "encryption" for anti-circumvention purposes, what's the incentive to use anything stronger? The end result is protection through legal intimidation rather than much more effective technical solutions.
(The case that set this idea out was Baker v. Selden, which was decided at the turn of the last century and had to do with a book of accounting forms -- the expression of the form was its idea, and as a result people were free to copyright the layout of the form.)
Sorry -- cut and paste error -- that should be "... as a result, people were free to _copy_ the layout of the form.
There's a good chance that a DTD wouldn't be subject to copyright.
Copyright protects the expression of ideas, and not ideas themselves (that's what patents are for). There's a copyright law concept called "the merger doctrine" that says (more or less) that you cannot copyright a work that represents the only possible expression of an idea -- to do so would result in copyright protecting the idea along with its expression, and that's beyond a copyright's power. The idea and its only expression are said to merge, and thereby fall out of the scope of copyright protection.
(The case that set this idea out was Baker v. Selden, which was decided at the turn of the last century and had to do with a book of accounting forms -- the expression of the form was its idea, and as a result people were free to copyright the layout of the form.)
This is the reason right-thinking people believe that APIs cannot be copyrighted -- by definition, the API is the only accurate expression of the idea represented by the interface, and the merger doctrine applies.
A DTD would likely be subject to the same reasoning.
I've been looking for a web interface to my mail system for a while now, without much luck. Ideally, I'd love something that would interface to my mh folders, but even reading from the mail spool would be worthwhile. Any suggestions?
If those are the boxes I'm thinking of, they were designed and manufactured by Convergent Systems who OEM'd them to a couple of companies (NCR sold them as the "Worksaver"). They didn't run QNX, but rather CTOS (Convergent Technologies Operating System) which was not bad -- among other things, it had tightly integrated networking using some sort of daisy-chain serial protocol (RS-???). I think it also supported long filenames.
The NCR version, which I used for several years, was used by most customers exclusively as a word processor, and it was really quite nice for that, though the CRT was hideously small. When we shifted to PCs in my department, many of our secretaries viewed Word Perfect as a distinct step backwards.
The one in e-Bay looks like a different lineage than the German military ones (not surprising, really -- you wouldn't expect them to sell the good stuff to foreign governments). From the photos, it appears to be lacking the plugboard (I think called a "stecker" that the military ones had). I'm not sure, but I don't think the two piece design (separate indicator box) was used in the military enigma, either.
In any event, it's a pretty cool item. But a bit beyond my discretionary budget, alas.
I've also had a chance to see Tony Sale's reconstruction of Colossus. He's published a little booklet with a description of the process used to figure out the design, and in that he says that all the blueprints and other technical information on Colussus was destroyed after the war; his reconstruction was put together from a handful of old photographs, a few scraps of paper, and interviews with a couple of the original developers (though I don't remember seeing the name of the fellow quoted in the story). After all that reverse engineering, this new report must have been a bittersweet moment for him -- had it been released a few years earlier, he would have had a much easier time of it (but perhaps not as much fun...)
This is all true, but it's time to speak up for the other oppressed peoples without high-speed access... the suburbanites. There are many areas where the cable companies haven't upgraded their systems, and where there's no DSL access. And, even if DSL (or ISDN) are nominally available, the distance limits rule out a surprising percentage of households. I live in a fairly densely populated suburb, but I'm too many kFeet from the central office for DSL; even ISDN requires a repeater that about doubles the monthly cost. Wireless is a nice idea, but the obstructions in a suburban environment (trees in particular) make it difficult to implement (I know, I've tried).
Both the cable company and the telco say they're working on it, but for now there's a significant suburban population that has no high speed access available.
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When they allowed spread-spectrum devices to use these bands, no one at the FCC ever envisioned people would be building metro-area-networks, or miles-long links, with them. (Whether they should have is another debate).
But then companies like Richochet started making major investments in Part 15 infrastructre, and in addition to ruining operation for other users of this shared spectrum, started trying to get FCC rule changes to protect them from interference from other devices! (I may be mistaken, but I believe that Metricom/Ricochet was a loud voice in that lobbying effort.)
The Part 15 metro-area-LAN stuff is cool, but this is an interesting example of trying to change the rules of the game at half-time. What new and potentially useful service will be thwarted because of rules designed to protect existing unlicensed users (not to mention the interference a city full of Richochet stations would create)? On the other hand, what will the reaction be if a new service comes along and its interference knocks a city's worth of Richochet users off the 'net?
It's an interesting conundrum, but the bottom line is that anyone using Part 15 devices for anything more than LAN purposes is building on a foundation of sand.
Some important attributes simply require experience and maturity to develop, no matter how brilliant or skilled you may be. Like it or not, "soft" criteria such as good judgment and people skills are important elements of business success. And the respect you get at work will be based on all of you -- not just the technical bits.
I'll admit that I'm an old fart (43) but I spent a long time being the youngest of my work peers. And, looking back, most of my progression has come not because my technical skills got better but because my soft skills did.
I have exmh running on my home system virtually all the time, and use mh remotely (via ssh) to keep up with things when I'm away. As long as I do a "rescan folder" first thing when I sit down at the exmh console, having mh and exmh sitting on the same maildir seems to work fine. It's a pretty handy setup. Now, if I could just find a simple web interface to my maildir...
I hope that a new GPL version, in its attempt to close loopholes, doesn't become even more difficult to parse, and thus more likely to result in a bad decision.
40MB of RAM??? To run a web browser??? Why do we tolerate such bloated programs?
That's where ASCAP and BMI, who license virtually all public performances of recordings, get their clout (and, I'm surprised they're not going after the on-line franchise -- presumably RIAA is trying to do an end run). There's another agency that has the licensing rights for virtually every piece of sheet music published (you have to go there to get permission to record a song, as opposed to playing a recording), and yet another that handles the right to include music in movies and TV. Finally, there's something called the Copyright Clearance Center that attempts to collect fees from businesses and others for photocopies made from books and journals.
My reasoning is that the Cue:Cat merely transmits the UPC code that's created by someone else, and therefore doesn't represent a "work of authorship" as required by the Copyright Act. Further, the UPC code is not a work of authorship, either, as it is a purely functional work that is covered under the "idea/expression merger" concept.* Since there can be only one UPC code matching a single input string, the idea/expression merger removes it from copyright coverage.
Since the Cue:Cat doesn't add anything (other than a fixed serial number, which isn't authorship, either) to the UPC code, its output is not subject to copyright, and therefore is not subject to the DMCA, either.
* If there's only one way to express an idea, to protect that expression would also protect the idea, and that's not the role of copyright (that's what patents are for). So, to avoid copyright overreaching its constitutional bounds, such works do not get copyright protection.
As I understand it, Cue:Cat claims that the simple XOR scrambling they do of their output brings the device under the anti-circumvention provision. This points out a flaw in DMCA: it encourages content owners to be lazy; if (for example) ROT13 counts as "encryption" for anti-circumvention purposes, what's the incentive to use anything stronger? The end result is protection through legal intimidation rather than much more effective technical solutions.
Sorry -- cut and paste error -- that should be "... as a result, people were free to _copy_ the layout of the form.
There's a good chance that a DTD wouldn't be subject to copyright.
Copyright protects the expression of ideas, and not ideas themselves (that's what patents are for). There's a copyright law concept called "the merger doctrine" that says (more or less) that you cannot copyright a work that represents the only possible expression of an idea -- to do so would result in copyright protecting the idea along with its expression, and that's beyond a copyright's power. The idea and its only expression are said to merge, and thereby fall out of the scope of copyright protection.
(The case that set this idea out was Baker v. Selden, which was decided at the turn of the last century and had to do with a book of accounting forms -- the expression of the form was its idea, and as a result people were free to copyright the layout of the form.)
This is the reason right-thinking people believe that APIs cannot be copyrighted -- by definition, the API is the only accurate expression of the idea represented by the interface, and the merger doctrine applies.
A DTD would likely be subject to the same reasoning.
If 2600 offered a DVD of the Valenti deposition, I'd buy one. And I don't even own a DVD player.
I've been looking for a web interface to my mail system for a while now, without much luck. Ideally, I'd love something that would interface to my mh folders, but even reading from the mail spool would be worthwhile. Any suggestions?
If those are the boxes I'm thinking of, they were designed and manufactured by Convergent Systems who OEM'd them to a couple of companies (NCR sold them as the "Worksaver"). They didn't run QNX, but rather CTOS (Convergent Technologies Operating System) which was not bad -- among other things, it had tightly integrated networking using some sort of daisy-chain serial protocol (RS-???). I think it also supported long filenames. The NCR version, which I used for several years, was used by most customers exclusively as a word processor, and it was really quite nice for that, though the CRT was hideously small. When we shifted to PCs in my department, many of our secretaries viewed Word Perfect as a distinct step backwards.
The one in e-Bay looks like a different lineage than the German military ones (not surprising, really -- you wouldn't expect them to sell the good stuff to foreign governments). From the photos, it appears to be lacking the plugboard (I think called a "stecker" that the military ones had). I'm not sure, but I don't think the two piece design (separate indicator box) was used in the military enigma, either. In any event, it's a pretty cool item. But a bit beyond my discretionary budget, alas.
I've also had a chance to see Tony Sale's reconstruction of Colossus. He's published a little booklet with a description of the process used to figure out the design, and in that he says that all the blueprints and other technical information on Colussus was destroyed after the war; his reconstruction was put together from a handful of old photographs, a few scraps of paper, and interviews with a couple of the original developers (though I don't remember seeing the name of the fellow quoted in the story). After all that reverse engineering, this new report must have been a bittersweet moment for him -- had it been released a few years earlier, he would have had a much easier time of it (but perhaps not as much fun...)
This is all true, but it's time to speak up for the other oppressed peoples without high-speed access... the suburbanites. There are many areas where the cable companies haven't upgraded their systems, and where there's no DSL access. And, even if DSL (or ISDN) are nominally available, the distance limits rule out a surprising percentage of households. I live in a fairly densely populated suburb, but I'm too many kFeet from the central office for DSL; even ISDN requires a repeater that about doubles the monthly cost. Wireless is a nice idea, but the obstructions in a suburban environment (trees in particular) make it difficult to implement (I know, I've tried). Both the cable company and the telco say they're working on it, but for now there's a significant suburban population that has no high speed access available.