The same thing may happen in Europe given enough time: if the constitution works, and the EU binds together increasingly greater ways, we may find that in 50 years, people are just calling themselves Europeans, and less concerned about being French, German, Spanish, etc.
It's hard to predict: it could occur just as a matter of social change over generations: younger people become more accustomed to freely moving around, don't care too much about their heritage being particularly national.
I doubt we'll see any major changes (even if their is a constitution) in the next 20 years - but I could be surprised.
It's not only risky, it's possibly actionable in a court of law (to be tested) if someone discovers a vulnerability and negligently releases it causing panic and disruption. There are precedents in copyright and confidential information that reduce or penalise the defence of "in the public interest" where the disclosure was not responsible. For example, in some cases it is better to go to the police first. If the police don't resolve the problem in adequate time, then it's justified to take it a more public stage.
In the same way, this is what happened here, and what "Limited Disclosure" is about: a small window of opportunity for vendors and operators to address the problem before it is openly released. It puts pressure on the vendors: they know that if they don't come up with a fix or workaround, then the vulnerability will be publically known, and they'll have customers screaming down their throat.
I've worked in product development and been on the recieving end of a large public newsarticle about the SNMPv1 ASN.1 problems discovered in Finland: a good percentage of customers called us up and watched a patch yesterday. Fortunately, the SNMP vendor for our third-party SNMP library had already resolved the problem in the past, and we'd included the fix in the recent release and we could tell the customers this. They were very pleased!
While the US is a federation of states, its citizens largely see themselves (in front of the rest of the world) as being US in identity - whatever state they come from is less important.
On the other hand, the EU is also a federation of states (in a slightly weaker way), but its citizens see themselves distinctly as having national identities and would represent themselves by their nationality rather than being of the EU.
There have been a number of high profile spats over competition law recently, notably the GE v Honeywell merger - accepted in the US, and then rejected by EU competition authorities (but later allowed after GE gave specific undertakings to divest certain business units and so on). Not to mention the banana wars:-).
In general though, the US has been getting a little techy about the growing independence of the supra-EU state. The next biggest issue is the EU's design to create its own defence forces, the US sees this as a worry because it weakens the need for NATO and creates two large divisive superpowers (witness the continentals vs. US wrt. iraq).
There are other good examples (Airbus vs. Boeing a good one for indication of how EU has succeeded in generating huge manufactures; EU space programs another one).
There is an accepted level of counterfeiting and piracy - that is a realistic I agree, and has to be taken into account. What isn't realistic is the arrogant attitude of the original poster.
The problem is the extent of the _level_ - when it becomes too high, then the small producers (i.e. the guy mentioned) are squeezed out, and in fact, it's then the big producers who have the advantage because they have such a large margin that they can wear the increased piracy loss.
>> My credits include games that have sold 50K and games that have sold 5M+. Piracy didn't cause the 50K flop, lameness did. Piracy didn't prevent the 5M+ blockbuster. >> Quick using swappers as a crutch for your own shortcomings.
That's just a really bad attitude, arrogant in fact. Not everyone can make million dollar games, yet everyone deserves fair slice of the cake for what they have created, even if it is small.
An independent developer may make just a small amount of money, but that may be just enough to try and produce the next game - which may well be a blockbuster. You seem to suggest that if you can't make the big league, then tough.
If the guy produced a lame product, or used lame marketing: then at least he knows that he failed because of what he did, not because someone avoided paying, but enjoyed the pleasure of playing.
Hey, I'm trained in intellectual property. Recently, I was part of a lecture given by law enforcement. Trust me, they _much_ prefer to spend their time on more significant crimes: drugs, health and safety, etc. They don't have enough resources as it is, and as far as they are concerned, IPR infringement is very low down on the list. Typically, they only prioritise the IPR cases when it looks like they are large in scale, or have other factors (i.e. the people involved look like they are also into other activities).
You know, quite a lot of law enforcement types that I've met (unless I've met the wrong crowd...) are pretty decent average people - especially the people that work down at the street level. They don't appreciate having _their_ time wasted by high level politics either.
Alternatively, under UK and EU law, it is _not_ an infringement of copyright to import an infringing article for personal use. This means that if you buy a counterfeit DVD in singapore, and fly home, and even if you say to customs "want to see my fake DVD", you are safe: this is an explicit part of CDPA 1988. If you design a P2P system that forces all transactions to be foreign, you would also be safe.
Now, the interesting thing is, that this indemnifies anyone in the UK from downloading ("importing") infringing copyright works from foreign countries, say China. This would include streaming too. (Note that a small problem with copyright software is that you have to then go through an EULA after you've imported it, and agreeing to the EULA sets up a contractual agreement that you may be opening yourself up litigation).
Well, UK and EU copyright law allows an exception for "time shifting" on domestic premises (i.e. video recording a television broadcast for playback later).
It doesn't state whether the time shifting copy could only be used once, but it's implied, and generally the copyright exceptions are subject to an overridding berne three step test that the exception is limited to acts that do not prejudice the right holder. This means that although the exceptions are available, if you abuse them in aggregate then it could be a problem.
However, theoretically, you could set up stream ripper to rip from thousands of stations, and only play back the song once at a later date, then delete it. Effectively, a music PVR. This would - in my interpretation - entirely justified under UK CDPA 1988 and the other EU national copyright laws that were harmonised in the late 1990s.
You missed philosophy 101. It's not that simple. Integrity can only be measured under a broader scope against his longer term behaviour.
It's certainly possible he has a lot of integrity in being a salesperson: integrity to the sales process, to taking on a particular assignment, and using respectable(!) sales techniques to make the sale. To assess this, we need to know more about the guy, his history and the tactics he uses.
Equally, I'm an engineer. I'd choose Windows, Linux, BSD, VRTX, QNX or any other operating system on a case by case basis. My integrity is to the process of solving problems with appropriate resources and technologies, _not_ to promoting one particular technology to the exclusion of others.
I would lose integrity as an engineer if my clients (internal clients...) thought that I was biased to particular types of solutions.
What about a medical doctor? You think a medical doctor has integrity if they push the product of one company to the exclusion of others?
No one has mention that there are downsides: if someone is hurt in a workplace practical joke, then the employer is liable. So it's good to have fun, but be sensible and play it safe:-).
The two pranks listed in this article are fine, but you need to be aware of the danger.
Generally, (a) keep the pranks and humour safe and non-dangerous, watch out for anything that could be considered offensive, (b) if it's a large scale prank, make sure you have some "informal" chat with people (say, your supervisor) before hand just to get a verbal indication that it won't cause any problems. Your supervisor may tell you that the global CEO is going to be in the office that day so you might want to try your prank the next day:-).
Some pranks I have experienced that don't work well: (a) giving people supposedly "funny" birthday presents (a vibrator), taken the wrong way and employee was really quite offended, (b) publishing prank photographs on internet newsgroup that also included a couple of shots that a person considered offensive. I don't think there were any legal issues in these cases, but it quickly turned from fun into a problem.
I wish I could remember the reference, but I read recently that supposedly the main issue with mobile phones on flights is the way they splatter themselves across cells on the ground. The article acknowledged that there have been many examples of people accidently leaving phones on during flights.
Personally, I've left a GSM phone on during a flight once.
Additionally, as an engineer, I would be _extremely_ suprised if the GSM standards bodies and the FCC/licensing authorities actually permitted the GSM technology to be made available to the public if there were any chance that it would interfere with navigation systems or any other critical systems (medical equivalent). We would have a string of news articles about plane crashes if this were the case. This simply doesn't happen for massively deployed technologies because it goes through all of these regulatory hurdles. I guess you could have an issue with equipment from other less rigorous countries, which may be the main point.
Equally, I've accidently travelled on a post 9/11 cross-european flight with a pocketknife keyring. I realised when I was in the air that it was in my carry on "man bag": this was after I waited one hour at Stansted to make my way through supposedly tight security. I wanted to take an in-flight photograph to prove it, yet worried that attendant would see me and I'd be meeting the boys in blue at the other end.
>> The problem with this is that cars _are_ indeed machines. People are just lazy.
Not really: cars are massively commodified products, and increasingly complex. They are infact replaceable products - they may have been "machines" in the early 1900s, but not since WW2.
But i'm not entirely convinced by this article: advanced technology in cars is a good thing, and correspondingly requires increased skill to maintain. That's just society going forward really: accept it or remain a luddite. Though, it is fair to question how things are going forward, e.g. whether car manufacturers are abusing their positions.
The main issue here seems to be not with the technology _per se_, but (a) manufacturers charging premium prices for spare parts, or using technological sophistication to own the after-market, (b) the poor design of these cars that prevents the easy and low cost replacement of components.
Part of the problem is that unlike your 80gig IDE, the majority of cars are built with custom components (save for platform sharing, such as VW) that cost premium prices (look at any corresponding computing technology that isn't sufficiently commoditised and it will also have a premium price). It's also such a fashion market (that I guess most people reading this participate in...) so the manufacturers are compelled to turn over new models frequently (then again, the manufacturers like the churn too...).
Perhaps the manufacturers need to do more standardise on components in general, but I conceed that's not easy. Producing a new car design is a very expensive process with lots of manufacturing/etc.
It's not really sad that people just want a product. Remember that most people aren't hackers and don't have the time to tinker or self fix. There will always be a market for the hackers and tinkerers (like in computing, not everybody wants the reproduction dell).
Perhaps all the people being displaced by IT outsourcing can train as "car technical support experts" and get a job in their local community:-).
Firstly, there's a W3C standard PICS that can be used to provide fine grained content identification, though sadly it is little used.
Secondly, it's obvious to me as someone with legal training that this area is ripe for litigation: i.e. the case where webwasher incorrectly denies access to your site to a large audience (i.e. its entire product base) and where you lose revenue.
If you're reading this from the future and the litigation has already occurred: I told you so.
I agree that it only takes 2-3 years of solid C++ coding experience to reach very proficient level.
However, over a period of 10 years, your value as a designer increases if you've worked in multiple problem domains, multiple products, multiple environments, etc.
'The novel as software' has long existed in the form of interactive computer games - dare we go back to nethack, maniac mansion and the various other unfolding adventures of the genre.
You are correct: basically copyright is socially agnostic, although it "leans" towards protection for the owner with a set of limited (fair use) exceptions for everyone else. Once you are empowered with the right in a work that you have created, then you can make a social choice about how to wield the power. This is a good thing.
GPL leans towards openness, hence the term 'copyleft'.
Because copyright protects expression (which, generally, is quite cheap) it has a long lifetime. On the other hand, patents protect more fundamental concepts, so have a limited lifetime. At the end of the spectrum, there is no protection for scientific discoveries and basic facts.
I think there's a fundamental difference between copying a work for personal use and copying a work to turn around and sell it for a profit.
While this is true, we have to look at the bigger picture and add the sums up, because when you take the aggregrate sum of all file sharing of music, it is in total a large figure of lost opportunity cost to the music owners even if for each individual person it is not much.
Now I'm not buying into the arguments re. evidence of lost music sales and so on, I'm just pointing out some principles underneath it all.
He's not the father of hypertext, that largely goes to Ted Nelson.
He's not the father of the internet, that largely goes to the early ARPANET pioneers and no one name in particular.
He's not the father of open source software, that largely goes to Richard Stallman and GNU.
He is the father of the Web though, which is built upon the ideas of hypertext, but uses the TCP/IP protocol suite on the internet, and a lot of the software that drives the internet is possible because of open source _and_ open standards, and as much as possible WWW embodies the idea (alongside the IETF) of openness and accessibility.
In each of these cases you can find examples of prior technology (e.g. you mention Gopher, but in fact WAIS was closer to WWW than anything else - and WAIS came out of Thinking Machines Corp. of who some of the people are now with the web archive), and related pioneers (e.g. Linux - rather than Linus - have helped drive acceptance of open source; or Andersaan and Netscape who helped turn the WWW into a practical reality with browser technology). However, the names mentioned are the key figureheads.
Be careful to distinguish the layers: - the internet (i.e. the transport) - the web (i.e. the content) - open source (i.e. the social philosophy)
My prediction of where mobile technologies are heading, but eventually with real-time assist (I hate to say it, but Terminator style... glasses and constant real-time visual annotations of field of view). I can see it quite useful for the military before civilians, but one area where it would be fantastic is tourist: e.g. visit an ancient ruin, and instead of a audio-headset, but on a real-time overlay headset.
Under UK trademark law, if you send a letter threatening legal action for trademark infringement, and turns out that there was no infringement, you can sue the trademark owner for "threats action". What the trademark owner can do is send a "nice" letter "simply" stating the presence of trademark rights and so on.
I fully support this case, because I'm sure WhenU will lose, and at the same time the courts opinion will be useful in further clarifying the nature of the rights in this area. Litigation like this is actually useful: as opposed to other places (like the UK, where I am) that trundle on for years with uncertainty about how things work.
Welcome to the "Mandatory Logging Options Act of 2004", requiring all forms of communication software that traverse state or foreign lines to require logging as a feature.
Slashdot Mirror
The same thing may happen in Europe given enough time: if the constitution works, and the EU binds together increasingly greater ways, we may find that in 50 years, people are just calling themselves Europeans, and less concerned about being French, German, Spanish, etc.
It's hard to predict: it could occur just as a matter of social change over generations: younger people become more accustomed to freely moving around, don't care too much about their heritage being particularly national.
I doubt we'll see any major changes (even if their is a constitution) in the next 20 years - but I could be surprised.
It's not only risky, it's possibly actionable in a court of law (to be tested) if someone discovers a vulnerability and negligently releases it causing panic and disruption. There are precedents in copyright and confidential information that reduce or penalise the defence of "in the public interest" where the disclosure was not responsible. For example, in some cases it is better to go to the police first. If the police don't resolve the problem in adequate time, then it's justified to take it a more public stage.
In the same way, this is what happened here, and what "Limited Disclosure" is about: a small window of opportunity for vendors and operators to address the problem before it is openly released. It puts pressure on the vendors: they know that if they don't come up with a fix or workaround, then the vulnerability will be publically known, and they'll have customers screaming down their throat.
I've worked in product development and been on the recieving end of a large public newsarticle about the SNMPv1 ASN.1 problems discovered in Finland: a good percentage of customers called us up and watched a patch yesterday. Fortunately, the SNMP vendor for our third-party SNMP library had already resolved the problem in the past, and we'd included the fix in the recent release and we could tell the customers this. They were very pleased!
It's a good social contract.
You have a key point there.
While the US is a federation of states, its citizens largely see themselves (in front of the rest of the world) as being US in identity - whatever state they come from is less important.
On the other hand, the EU is also a federation of states (in a slightly weaker way), but its citizens see themselves distinctly as having national identities and would represent themselves by their nationality rather than being of the EU.
Anyway, this is just tangential
There have been a number of high profile spats over competition law recently, notably the GE v Honeywell merger - accepted in the US, and then rejected by EU competition authorities (but later allowed after GE gave specific undertakings to divest certain business units and so on). Not to mention the banana wars
In general though, the US has been getting a little techy about the growing independence of the supra-EU state. The next biggest issue is the EU's design to create its own defence forces, the US sees this as a worry because it weakens the need for NATO and creates two large divisive superpowers (witness the continentals vs. US wrt. iraq).
There are other good examples (Airbus vs. Boeing a good one for indication of how EU has succeeded in generating huge manufactures; EU space programs another one).
There is an accepted level of counterfeiting and piracy - that is a realistic I agree, and has to be taken into account. What isn't realistic is the arrogant attitude of the original poster.
The problem is the extent of the _level_ - when it becomes too high, then the small producers (i.e. the guy mentioned) are squeezed out, and in fact, it's then the big producers who have the advantage because they have such a large margin that they can wear the increased piracy loss.
> It could seem that this type of crackdown is inherently ineffective in making a long-term difference.
It is. It's just a game that everyone plays. Piracy and counterfeiting has and will always exist, the problem is when it reaches excessive levels.
>> My credits include games that have sold 50K and games that have sold 5M+. Piracy didn't cause the 50K flop, lameness did. Piracy didn't prevent the 5M+ blockbuster.
.
>> Quick using swappers as a crutch for your own shortcomings.
That's just a really bad attitude, arrogant in fact. Not everyone can make million dollar games, yet everyone deserves fair slice of the cake for what they have created, even if it is small.
An independent developer may make just a small amount of money, but that may be just enough to try and produce the next game - which may well be a blockbuster. You seem to suggest that if you can't make the big league, then tough.
If the guy produced a lame product, or used lame marketing: then at least he knows that he failed because of what he did, not because someone avoided paying, but enjoyed the pleasure of playing
Hey, I'm trained in intellectual property. Recently, I was part of a lecture given by law enforcement. Trust me, they _much_ prefer to spend their time on more significant crimes: drugs, health and safety, etc. They don't have enough resources as it is, and as far as they are concerned, IPR infringement is very low down on the list. Typically, they only prioritise the IPR cases when it looks like they are large in scale, or have other factors (i.e. the people involved look like they are also into other activities). You know, quite a lot of law enforcement types that I've met (unless I've met the wrong crowd ...) are pretty decent average people - especially the people that work down at the street level. They don't appreciate having _their_ time wasted by high level politics either.
Sorry to reply to my own post -
Alternatively, under UK and EU law, it is _not_ an infringement of copyright to import an infringing article for personal use. This means that if you buy a counterfeit DVD in singapore, and fly home, and even if you say to customs "want to see my fake DVD", you are safe: this is an explicit part of CDPA 1988. If you design a P2P system that forces all transactions to be foreign, you would also be safe.
Now, the interesting thing is, that this indemnifies anyone in the UK from downloading ("importing") infringing copyright works from foreign countries, say China. This would include streaming too. (Note that a small problem with copyright software is that you have to then go through an EULA after you've imported it, and agreeing to the EULA sets up a contractual agreement that you may be opening yourself up litigation).
Well, UK and EU copyright law allows an exception for "time shifting" on domestic premises (i.e. video recording a television broadcast for playback later).
It doesn't state whether the time shifting copy could only be used once, but it's implied, and generally the copyright exceptions are subject to an overridding berne three step test that the exception is limited to acts that do not prejudice the right holder. This means that although the exceptions are available, if you abuse them in aggregate then it could be a problem.
However, theoretically, you could set up stream ripper to rip from thousands of stations, and only play back the song once at a later date, then delete it. Effectively, a music PVR. This would - in my interpretation - entirely justified under UK CDPA 1988 and the other EU national copyright laws that were harmonised in the late 1990s.
>> Seems there isn't such thing as integrity.
...) thought that I was biased to particular types of solutions.
You missed philosophy 101. It's not that simple. Integrity can only be measured under a broader scope against his longer term behaviour.
It's certainly possible he has a lot of integrity in being a salesperson: integrity to the sales process, to taking on a particular assignment, and using respectable(!) sales techniques to make the sale. To assess this, we need to know more about the guy, his history and the tactics he uses.
Equally, I'm an engineer. I'd choose Windows, Linux, BSD, VRTX, QNX or any other operating system on a case by case basis. My integrity is to the process of solving problems with appropriate resources and technologies, _not_ to promoting one particular technology to the exclusion of others.
I would lose integrity as an engineer if my clients (internal clients
What about a medical doctor? You think a medical doctor has integrity if they push the product of one company to the exclusion of others?
No one has mention that there are downsides: if someone is hurt in a workplace practical joke, then the employer is liable. So it's good to have fun, but be sensible and play it safe
The two pranks listed in this article are fine, but you need to be aware of the danger.
Generally, (a) keep the pranks and humour safe and non-dangerous, watch out for anything that could be considered offensive, (b) if it's a large scale prank, make sure you have some "informal" chat with people (say, your supervisor) before hand just to get a verbal indication that it won't cause any problems. Your supervisor may tell you that the global CEO is going to be in the office that day so you might want to try your prank the next day
Some pranks I have experienced that don't work well: (a) giving people supposedly "funny" birthday presents (a vibrator), taken the wrong way and employee was really quite offended, (b) publishing prank photographs on internet newsgroup that also included a couple of shots that a person considered offensive. I don't think there were any legal issues in these cases, but it quickly turned from fun into a problem.
I wish I could remember the reference, but I read recently that supposedly the main issue with mobile phones on flights is the way they splatter themselves across cells on the ground. The article acknowledged that there have been many examples of people accidently leaving phones on during flights.
Personally, I've left a GSM phone on during a flight once.
Additionally, as an engineer, I would be _extremely_ suprised if the GSM standards bodies and the FCC/licensing authorities actually permitted the GSM technology to be made available to the public if there were any chance that it would interfere with navigation systems or any other critical systems (medical equivalent). We would have a string of news articles about plane crashes if this were the case. This simply doesn't happen for massively deployed technologies because it goes through all of these regulatory hurdles. I guess you could have an issue with equipment from other less rigorous countries, which may be the main point.
Equally, I've accidently travelled on a post 9/11 cross-european flight with a pocketknife keyring. I realised when I was in the air that it was in my carry on "man bag": this was after I waited one hour at Stansted to make my way through supposedly tight security. I wanted to take an in-flight photograph to prove it, yet worried that attendant would see me and I'd be meeting the boys in blue at the other end.
>> The problem with this is that cars _are_ indeed machines. People are just lazy.
...) so the manufacturers are compelled to turn over new models frequently (then again, the manufacturers like the churn too ...).
/etc.
:-).
Not really: cars are massively commodified products, and increasingly complex. They are infact replaceable products - they may have been "machines" in the early 1900s, but not since WW2.
But i'm not entirely convinced by this article: advanced technology in cars is a good thing, and correspondingly requires increased skill to maintain. That's just society going forward really: accept it or remain a luddite. Though, it is fair to question how things are going forward, e.g. whether car manufacturers are abusing their positions.
The main issue here seems to be not with the technology _per se_, but (a) manufacturers charging premium prices for spare parts, or using technological sophistication to own the after-market, (b) the poor design of these cars that prevents the easy and low cost replacement of components.
Part of the problem is that unlike your 80gig IDE, the majority of cars are built with custom components (save for platform sharing, such as VW) that cost premium prices (look at any corresponding computing technology that isn't sufficiently commoditised and it will also have a premium price). It's also such a fashion market (that I guess most people reading this participate in
Perhaps the manufacturers need to do more standardise on components in general, but I conceed that's not easy. Producing a new car design is a very expensive process with lots of manufacturing
It's not really sad that people just want a product. Remember that most people aren't hackers and don't have the time to tinker or self fix. There will always be a market for the hackers and tinkerers (like in computing, not everybody wants the reproduction dell).
Perhaps all the people being displaced by IT outsourcing can train as "car technical support experts" and get a job in their local community
Firstly, there's a W3C standard PICS that can be used to provide fine grained content identification, though sadly it is little used.
Secondly, it's obvious to me as someone with legal training that this area is ripe for litigation: i.e. the case where webwasher incorrectly denies access to your site to a large audience (i.e. its entire product base) and where you lose revenue.
If you're reading this from the future and the litigation has already occurred: I told you so.
It's not a straightforward question/answer.
I agree that it only takes 2-3 years of solid C++ coding experience to reach very proficient level.
However, over a period of 10 years, your value as a designer increases if you've worked in multiple problem domains, multiple products, multiple environments, etc.
If you sent that in a reply to me, I'd think you were a dickhead, and not very professional.
Just say that you aren't able to read Word documents and could you please resend it in one of the following formats.
Nice going prof, but you are tunnel visioned.
'The novel as software' has long existed in the form of interactive computer games - dare we go back to nethack, maniac mansion and the various other unfolding adventures of the genre.
You are correct: basically copyright is socially agnostic, although it "leans" towards protection for the owner with a set of limited (fair use) exceptions for everyone else. Once you are empowered with the right in a work that you have created, then you can make a social choice about how to wield the power. This is a good thing.
GPL leans towards openness, hence the term 'copyleft'.
Because copyright protects expression (which, generally, is quite cheap) it has a long lifetime. On the other hand, patents protect more fundamental concepts, so have a limited lifetime. At the end of the spectrum, there is no protection for scientific discoveries and basic facts.
I think there's a fundamental difference between copying a work for personal use and copying a work to turn around and sell it for a profit.
While this is true, we have to look at the bigger picture and add the sums up, because when you take the aggregrate sum of all file sharing of music, it is in total a large figure of lost opportunity cost to the music owners even if for each individual person it is not much.
Now I'm not buying into the arguments re. evidence of lost music sales and so on, I'm just pointing out some principles underneath it all.
If you want precision:
He's not the father of hypertext, that largely goes to Ted Nelson.
He's not the father of the internet, that largely goes to the early ARPANET pioneers and no one name in particular.
He's not the father of open source software, that largely goes to Richard Stallman and GNU.
He is the father of the Web though, which is built upon the ideas of hypertext, but uses the TCP/IP protocol suite on the internet, and a lot of the software that drives the internet is possible because of open source _and_ open standards, and as much as possible WWW embodies the idea (alongside the IETF) of openness and accessibility.
In each of these cases you can find examples of prior technology (e.g. you mention Gopher, but in fact WAIS was closer to WWW than anything else - and WAIS came out of Thinking Machines Corp. of who some of the people are now with the web archive), and related pioneers (e.g. Linux - rather than Linus - have helped drive acceptance of open source; or Andersaan and Netscape who helped turn the WWW into a practical reality with browser technology). However, the names mentioned are the key figureheads.
Be careful to distinguish the layers:
- the internet (i.e. the transport)
- the web (i.e. the content)
- open source (i.e. the social philosophy)
My prediction of where mobile technologies are heading, but eventually with real-time assist (I hate to say it, but Terminator style
Under UK trademark law, if you send a letter threatening legal action for trademark infringement, and turns out that there was no infringement, you can sue the trademark owner for "threats action". What the trademark owner can do is send a "nice" letter "simply" stating the presence of trademark rights and so on.
I fully support this case, because I'm sure WhenU will lose, and at the same time the courts opinion will be useful in further clarifying the nature of the rights in this area. Litigation like this is actually useful: as opposed to other places (like the UK, where I am) that trundle on for years with uncertainty about how things work.
Welcome to the "Mandatory Logging Options Act of 2004", requiring all forms of communication software that traverse state or foreign lines to require logging as a feature.