I can understand Junior wanting to avoid scrutiny under the FOIA. But if Presidential email is public record {FOIAble], why isn't paper mail? Is there some sort of special exemption for private correspondence?
There is a practical difficulty in searching through paper as the tobacco litigants are discovering. They now have a warehouse full of documents on court discovery but no index to find stuff.
The President's fear is that someone would download the docs and use grep to find the incriminating stuff.
Don't expect this president to be giving written orders to sell arms to terrorists in Iran to buy arms for terrorists in Central america.
Problem with plausible deniability is that if there is a similar screw up under Bush it may not matter that people cannot prove it was his fault. The most damaging criticism of Bush amongst voters is the accusation that he is not in control.
Hey this topic is flamebait, so don't blame me if as a democrat you don't like my opinion of your president.
Bush certainly knows about digital signatures and encryption. His poppy was director of the CIA. His fear is that any record of what he does may become a political liability. As Ollie North and Bill Gates found out an email trail can look real bad in court
I did some security work on a project deployed at the Whitehouse during the days when they still counted the votes in elections. First thing that Clinton did was to put out every press release on the Internet - this was back in 1992. First thing the Bush crew did was to shut the server down. They want to control the flow of information.
The purpose of FOIA is to make elected officials accountable. Under FOIA every memo that reaches the president's desk is discoverable. PGP does nothing for Bush since if he used it to prevent FOIA discovery he would be facing a second criminal conviction. When the EOP screwed up the archiving process and lost a number of Gore emails the 'liberal press' had a field day. If Bush deliberately prevented his email being read Wolf Blitzer and co would, would, well explain it away to their viewers.
After having hounded the democrats for eight years it is entirely logical for the GOP to expect the same medicine in return.
The minute that the GOP loose control of either half of Congress they have a very real threat of trial by endless investigation. The more evidence they allow to be created the greater the liability. As one GOP lawyer told the incomming Clinton administration, never take any notes at meetings.
In summary it is certainly an understandable political move, if not an acceptable one. Bush is certainly not attempting to have the most accountable Presidency ever.
Bush may be doing the right thing to insulate himself from scandal. But he is also insulating himself from the administration he is meant to be in control of. I don't know many modern CEOs who insist on being kept out of the decision loop. But that is exactly what not using email means today.
MPEG4 like GIF is patent encumbered up the wazoo. Forget GPL on the code, if the patent holders won't give a free public license the spec can never be open.
[Incidentally MP3 has this problem, the Fraunhoffer Institute owns the patent and charges royalties on it. The GIF UNISYS patent was pretty despicable, the patent was only published after Compuserve had adopted the algorithm thinking it was an open algorithm.
2 Is the code open?
This is not the biggest issue for me, if the spec is interesting and useful an open code verison is likely to follow. Point (1) is much bigger
Incidentaly I don't think that the GPL vs other open models is a big issue. Richard Stallman put a lot of his personal politics into the GPL, it is not possible to use GPL code in a commercial project. Apache and Linux are far more 'open' in my view, they are certainly less restrictive.
3. Is there actual code
No code, no use. Starting an open source project is fine but until you have a release it does not do anyone much good.
So far DVIX/Project Mayo loose on 1 and probably on 2 but win big on 3. Lots of folk win on 1 and 2 but loose on 3.
The real problem is that nobody can ever know if they are safe on 1 in the US. Submarine patents can be filled and kept in progress for decades.
The main fireworks are going to happen tommorow when Jackson gets panned. Having insulted the Appeals court judges in print the question is how severe the criticism will be, not whether he will be criticised. I would expect at least one Appelate judge to make a coded invitation to resign.
The case was sunk from the moment they went after the Internet Explorer case. Netscape drove its competitors (Spyglass, OpenMarket, Spry) from the market by giving away the product - in all but the most legalistic sense. Microsoft did the same to Netscape, tough luck.
Marc Andressen must also bear a lot of the blame. He blabbed his mouth off everywhere about replacing Microsoft and generally made it impossible for Gates to ignore him.
Happily Bill squished Marc like a bug. Serve the @#(@#^%(& right.
The claim describes a web browser that has a wireless interface.
I really won't accept the claim that PTO examineers are not dim. The idea of running a Web browser on a PC with a wireless network connection is obvious.
Don't give me the lawyer crap about the legal definition of obvious being as bogus as the supreme court's Florida fixup.
Geoworks contributed zilch to the development of the Web and zilch to the development of the wireless web browser. Making bogus patent claims should be a criminal offense.
As a former game programmer I can tell folk the reason for the console crash, the grasping business models of the console manufaturers. To write a game for a console you have to put up a huge chunk of cash upfront and agree to pay a large fee per copy. Otherwise you don't get the info necessary to write a game.
Back in 1984 most games were written by freelancers or by smallish groups. It did not take long for the independents to surpass the tepid offerings from Atari - a console that rapidly showed its age.
The entry of Microsoft's X-box will be a good thing since it will be the first console that is an 'open-ish' platform. Not open as we know it but open compared to the SDMI-type closedness of the traditional consoles. It will be very easy to move games from the PC to the X-Box.
The main divide between consoles and PCs in future are going to be display and configuration. Consoles typically plug into a TV an have limited resolution graphics as a result. This is likely to change over time.
The other issue is configuration, the X-box is an appliance. If you are reading slashdot then you probably don't need one. But you might want to buy one to keep the kiddies busy without worrying that they will screw up the windows registry. Or as with Web TV buy one to get granny on the net without hassle.
Really the X-box is not aimed so much at the console market as the home infopliance market. It would not take much to upgrade X-box to create a Tivo, or for that matter a general media jukebox. Jam an 802.11B card in one and it could be a low cost media store for the home.
Slashdot Mirror
There is a practical difficulty in searching through paper as the tobacco litigants are discovering. They now have a warehouse full of documents on court discovery but no index to find stuff.
The President's fear is that someone would download the docs and use grep to find the incriminating stuff.
Don't expect this president to be giving written orders to sell arms to terrorists in Iran to buy arms for terrorists in Central america.
Problem with plausible deniability is that if there is a similar screw up under Bush it may not matter that people cannot prove it was his fault. The most damaging criticism of Bush amongst voters is the accusation that he is not in control.
Bush certainly knows about digital signatures and encryption. His poppy was director of the CIA. His fear is that any record of what he does may become a political liability. As Ollie North and Bill Gates found out an email trail can look real bad in court
I did some security work on a project deployed at the Whitehouse during the days when they still counted the votes in elections. First thing that Clinton did was to put out every press release on the Internet - this was back in 1992. First thing the Bush crew did was to shut the server down. They want to control the flow of information.
The purpose of FOIA is to make elected officials accountable. Under FOIA every memo that reaches the president's desk is discoverable. PGP does nothing for Bush since if he used it to prevent FOIA discovery he would be facing a second criminal conviction. When the EOP screwed up the archiving process and lost a number of Gore emails the 'liberal press' had a field day. If Bush deliberately prevented his email being read Wolf Blitzer and co would, would, well explain it away to their viewers.
After having hounded the democrats for eight years it is entirely logical for the GOP to expect the same medicine in return.
The minute that the GOP loose control of either half of Congress they have a very real threat of trial by endless investigation. The more evidence they allow to be created the greater the liability. As one GOP lawyer told the incomming Clinton administration, never take any notes at meetings.
In summary it is certainly an understandable political move, if not an acceptable one. Bush is certainly not attempting to have the most accountable Presidency ever.
Bush may be doing the right thing to insulate himself from scandal. But he is also insulating himself from the administration he is meant to be in control of. I don't know many modern CEOs who insist on being kept out of the decision loop. But that is exactly what not using email means today.
1: Is it patent encumbered.
MPEG4 like GIF is patent encumbered up the wazoo. Forget GPL on the code, if the patent holders won't give a free public license the spec can never be open.
[Incidentally MP3 has this problem, the Fraunhoffer Institute owns the patent and charges royalties on it. The GIF UNISYS patent was pretty despicable, the patent was only published after Compuserve had adopted the algorithm thinking it was an open algorithm.
2 Is the code open?
This is not the biggest issue for me, if the spec is interesting and useful an open code verison is likely to follow. Point (1) is much bigger
Incidentaly I don't think that the GPL vs other open models is a big issue. Richard Stallman put a lot of his personal politics into the GPL, it is not possible to use GPL code in a commercial project. Apache and Linux are far more 'open' in my view, they are certainly less restrictive.
3. Is there actual code
No code, no use. Starting an open source project is fine but until you have a release it does not do anyone much good.
So far DVIX/Project Mayo loose on 1 and probably on 2 but win big on 3. Lots of folk win on 1 and 2 but loose on 3.
The real problem is that nobody can ever know if they are safe on 1 in the US. Submarine patents can be filled and kept in progress for decades.
The main fireworks are going to happen tommorow when Jackson gets panned. Having insulted the Appeals court judges in print the question is how severe the criticism will be, not whether he will be criticised. I would expect at least one Appelate judge to make a coded invitation to resign. The case was sunk from the moment they went after the Internet Explorer case. Netscape drove its competitors (Spyglass, OpenMarket, Spry) from the market by giving away the product - in all but the most legalistic sense. Microsoft did the same to Netscape, tough luck. Marc Andressen must also bear a lot of the blame. He blabbed his mouth off everywhere about replacing Microsoft and generally made it impossible for Gates to ignore him. Happily Bill squished Marc like a bug. Serve the @#(@#^%(& right.
The claim describes a web browser that has a wireless interface. I really won't accept the claim that PTO examineers are not dim. The idea of running a Web browser on a PC with a wireless network connection is obvious. Don't give me the lawyer crap about the legal definition of obvious being as bogus as the supreme court's Florida fixup. Geoworks contributed zilch to the development of the Web and zilch to the development of the wireless web browser. Making bogus patent claims should be a criminal offense.
Back in 1984 most games were written by freelancers or by smallish groups. It did not take long for the independents to surpass the tepid offerings from Atari - a console that rapidly showed its age.
The entry of Microsoft's X-box will be a good thing since it will be the first console that is an 'open-ish' platform. Not open as we know it but open compared to the SDMI-type closedness of the traditional consoles. It will be very easy to move games from the PC to the X-Box.
The main divide between consoles and PCs in future are going to be display and configuration. Consoles typically plug into a TV an have limited resolution graphics as a result. This is likely to change over time.
The other issue is configuration, the X-box is an appliance. If you are reading slashdot then you probably don't need one. But you might want to buy one to keep the kiddies busy without worrying that they will screw up the windows registry. Or as with Web TV buy one to get granny on the net without hassle.
Really the X-box is not aimed so much at the console market as the home infopliance market. It would not take much to upgrade X-box to create a Tivo, or for that matter a general media jukebox. Jam an 802.11B card in one and it could be a low cost media store for the home.