This case is all about intent. DeCSS was made possible because a rather stupid blunder by one licensed manufacturer of DVD stuff. Later on, Sony produced and sold their PS2 in Japan. They too made a mistake and allowed for the circumvention of the regional code restriction. Ampex sold a DVD player that allowed for the noise free copying of DVD's to VCR's and, IIRC, allowed for the circumvention of the regional code restrictions.
IIRC, these all represented violations of the licensing agreements between the MPAA and manufacturers. To the best of my knowledge, there has been no major action taken against these companies. Hence, the only thing that makes sense is intent. They didn't intend to harm the industry. If you read this order, the issue of intent is prominently mentioned.
Personally, I think that this sucks. However, the reason for these types of cases is simple. They cite past cases but there isn't one the actually is directly applicable to this one. The issue of reverse engineering is a murky one. The higher courts haven't decided on this, but they ultimately will.
IANAL, but I have many friends who are, and I like to think that I'm not the Baron of Gray Matter (hey Curly!). The key thing is intent and the presence or absence of any other legitimate use. Why do you think that recipes for bombs are allowed on the net?
Finally, this should end the debate between the semantic argument between open and free source. Did I say open, no I meant to say free.
I said this before and I will say this again. There is exotic life on this planet that is localized along the deep-sea mid-ocen ridge system. The existence of these critters form the basis for the speculation that weird forms of life can exist in other harsh environments. We should be figuring out why this life-form even exists on this planet before going out on a wild-goose chase of unknown speculative life in outer space.
Remember, the basis for this hypothesis is based on an incomplete knowledge of what happens here on Earth.
You are correct. But I hate the stereotype that a nerd must need eye-glasses. This is unacceptable! Additionally, this is only shown on cable and does not reach the masses.
We must break the racial/religion stereotypes in this country. We must follow in the ground-breaking work of the Three Stooges that show that not Jewish people were Einsteins.
I hate to say, but the cartoons today pale in comparison to the old ones that taught young people the virtues of being a nerd. These were highly educational TV.
Jonny Quest: Dr. Quest made it cool to be a scientist. One week, he's a physicist, the next week he's a biologist. Little known fact: Haji was the initial recipient of a H1B visa.
Roadrunner: Physics lessons disguise as a cartoon. I learned all about sudden changes in momentum and about the laws of gravity.
George of the Jungle: Same physics lessons thus reinforcing what was taught by watching the Roadrunner show. Demonstrated that the laws of physics are universal.
Scooby Doo: Taught the scientific method. Plus the cartoon featured real nerds in action.
Speed Racer: An import from Japan that enjoyed a brief period of popularity in the US. This show inspired a generation of Japanese youths to become automotive engineers. Youth in the US wanted to become NASCAR drivers. Marked the beginning of the rise of the Japanese automotive industry.
Is it any wonder why science and math scores in this country are decreasing? Coincidence? I don't think so. It is sad that not a single Presidential candidate has spoken up about this.
Well I spelled it MIPS, but I pronounce it romp.:) Thanks for the correction. BTW, that information page is pretty neat. I had no idea that ppl still had an interest in the RT. It's actually kind of scary.
I don't know about MIPS Unix, but the IBM RT (AIX) used a MIPS cpu. It was the first commercial RISC workstation, IIRC. It had an AT bus and the cpu had a heat sink. It was the first time I saw a cpu heat sink in workstation/PC. I believe that this was back in 1986.
The old Apollo workstations initially ran DomainOS, then later had the option of using Unix. It was a version of BSD that they called Domain/IX.
Well that's just great. What I want to know is how many actors played Batman?
My favorite villain death scene is still The Joker.
Gotta agree with you. As a Linux user, I hated when they killed off the Penguin. Maybe in the next movie, they can have a villian in a red devil's outfit holding a pitchfork. Wearing a Red Hat. Doing battle against a lizard doing the samba. With a gnome as his assistant. Who seeks enlightenment. While being chase by the Batmobile doing Maximum RPM's. With the final battle in a sawmill. Used to cut pine. And elm.
Yellow journalism was the realm of William Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer. They liked any bogus headline or story that could sell more newspapers. H.L. Mencken was an extreme critic of the disparity, hypocrisy, and problems of American society of the early 1900's. To call Mencken a "yellow" journalist does him a major disservice.
Again OT, but this whole story has been mainly OT. So...
Buddy, Buddy, Buddy! A while back they did a city audit. Missing: One building crane, 3 trucks, and something like 40 manhole covers. Manhole covers? A local politician get convicted. His crime? His used car dealership was turning back odometers! How cliche! Another politician changes his name by adding A to the last name so that we would be listed 1st on the ballot. An opponent does the same. The 1st guy then changes it to a little A. He wins. The Providence police once had a raid on a whore house. The walked to it as it was next door to the Police station. A few cops got caught up in the raid. In the pre-Revolution days, the "import" businessmen met at a tavern, got drunk and decided to burn the damn Brit ship (Gaspee), thereby striking a blow for freedom.
Gawd I miss RI.:-) The people of RI are great once they get to know you; then you are like family. RI is a laugh a minute and I did like living there (10 yrs). But I do not back down on one thing. RI drivers are "interesting".
WTF? Has/. stooped so low to post a story from the ProJo? This is the lead paper from the great state of Rhode Island (pronounced Row Die Lan). Yikes.
RI a state whose capital of Providence has a mayor (Cianci) who once had to leave office because he kidnapped and beat up his ex-wife's lover. The ProJo once published a picture (on the front page) of the State's Chief Justice zipping up his pants as he was leaving a motel. RI, a state with the fine cities of Pawtucket and Cranston (Ever here a person from Cranson say, I need a fork? ROFLMAO). Honest to God, the RI multiple choice written test for your driver's licence had "Honk your horn, proceed with caution" as an answer for all of their questions. Ahh yes, the RI slide, right turn from the left lane.
RI, the thirteenth of the original states. The last because they didn't want to give up a major source of income, smuggling.
A school in RI sent me a brochure saying, "And the beaches in RI are excellent". Yo! Dudes! I'm from Hawaii, your beaches suck. Well you do have Moonstone beach.
RI, a state that gave us the Farrelly brothers. Do you know what the inspiration for Dumb and Dumber was?
Providence, the site of a sappy chick flick TV show.
Your point about the UN is correct but in an manner that you might not realize. The international panel of scientist have reached their decision. The draft report represents this. Now the bureaucrats will try to water down the report as they don't want to face reality. And I would take intellectual rambling over political rambling when it comes to this problem.
BTW, the figure doesn't represent one strong conclusion. It is just one piece of the evidence. Furthermore, the plot represents data. Do you understand the difference between a model and data?
Scientific debates on/. are always interesting. The study of past, present, and future climate (not weather) changes is a multidisciplinary field. It include micropaleontology which studies the relative abundance of foramanifera deposited on the seafloor; this yields a coarse climate history back millions of year. Palynology studies old pollen distributions deposited in lake beds. This gives a more detail, short time period picture of climate. Oceanographers study the temperature distribution (3-D) in the oceans using CTD's, satellites, and acoustics. Volcanologist provide info about past large eruptions that cause short-term changes. Geodesist provide evidence of ice cap thickness changes like the thinning taking place on Greenland. Atmospheric scientists have mapped out atmospheric temperature distributions and greenhouse gas levels. People study ice cores and tree rings.
Then there are the computer simulations that attempt to model and reproduce the various observations.
Please note, these types of research are relatively independent of each other. After decades of work, the diverse set of results are starting to reach one strong conclusion. There will be an United Nations sponsored report due out at the end of the year by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Currently in draft form, this report will state, "there has been a discernible human influence on global climate." Remember scientists are conservative in stating their conclusions. This is in reality, a very strong statement.
A short review of this report was presented in Science. Please check out the figure showing temperature fluctuations over the past 1000 years. If this doesn't scare you, nothing will.
Anybody remember the Daniel Bernstein case involving the publishing of his encryption program, snuggle, on the web? In case you forgot, the US District Court and the 9th Appeals Court essentially ruled that software was a form of language, and thus protected by the 1st Amendment. Note however, that there were other important issues related to this case that may or may not be applicable to DeCSS.
Thank god K&R entitled their book, The C Programming Language.:)
I thought that the DoJ were going to take this to the Supreme Court. I don't recall reading about such an appeal as of yet.
Many of you seem to be uninformed about how all of this Ph.D. stuff works. So here's a primer.
Q: Why do some Ph.D.'s seem to be unaware of the rules regarding UMI when they sign the legal papers? A: We're still rather hung-over from the post defense party.
Q: How long has UMI been selling theses? A: I learned about this shortly after entering grad school. This was way back before most of you were even a glint in your daddy's eye.
Q: Why would somebody want to buy your thesis? A: Most info in a thesis gets published. If it isn't published, then it is probably crap anyway. Even your advisor doesn't care.
Q: Any other reasons for buying? A: Yes, to obtain raw data contained in some Appendix that is too detailed to get published. This is bad because somebody might discover that the fundamental basis for your results may be bogus.
Q: Does getting a Ph.D. make you a responsible outstanding member of society? A: Bwaahahaha, hehe, um, why of course it does.
Q: What does getting your Ph.D. feel like? A: Like getting a get out jail card in monopoly.
Q: Why is it called piled higher and deeper? A: This is actually a misconception as there is no pile when you finish; you already swallowed all the shit.
Q: Do you have a Ph.D? You seem kind of cynical. A: Yeah, tell me about it.
My 1st thought when I read this is, does mean there is going to be a AOL Linux distro? Take a standard Linux distro, toss out all the stuff that a typical AOL'er would not use (e.g., compilers, emacs), then tighten it up to be "idiot" proof. The installation procedure could be something like the Caldera's, or with some tweaks, RedHat's 6.2. The key would be to eliminate the ability to select individual packages during the install.
The next important thing is obviously networking. They would have to streamline the setting up of a modem by the inclusion of a database of the settings of available modems out there. I do shudder at the thought of network security. Then again, they could turn off all services, and make the computer primarily a client machine.
New hardware? Run something like kudzu. Obviously, a lot extra modules will have to already be in place. Printer? Improve something like printtool by making the selection of a printer something like the selection of a modem; have a large data base of available printers. Installing new software? Something like gnorpm, only simplier. Monitor and graphics card? Once again, got to have a large data base available.
I know that there are other issues, but I have to believe that it is possible to make a user friendly linux distro. This would probably mean eliminating "options" in installation and setup.
They'll also probably have to change the name of fsck.:)
Hopefully you will see this very late comment. I agree, Sir Alec's role as Faisel(sp?) was critical and very compelling. The end of movie would not have been as good if there was no prior political manipulations. Every time I watch the movie I see more and more of this. Nearly everybody was a pawn being pushed around, but who was the one pushing the pawn?
In hindsight, I can appreciate why Sir Alec didn't like the diatribe in Star Wars compared to what he did before. In a more humorous mode, someone posted a parody of the whistling tune from the Bridge on the River Kwai. This was a parody of a US TV commercial that dates back to about 30 yrs ago.
Comet, it makes your teeth turn green Comet, it tastes like gasoline Comet, it make you vomit So try new Comet, and vomit, today!
The adaptive optical system used is called PUEO. Pueo is the name of a Hawaiian owl. This is appropriate as the observatory is located on top of Mauna Kea on the island of Hawaii.
Me and my buddy once tried to take a rental car to this place. 1st off, rental cars are banned from the saddle road that eventually leads to the Mauna Kea access road. F*ck this. So off we went. Then as we went up towards Mauna Kea we eventually reached the end of the paved road at 9000 ft. The top of Mauna Kea is greater than 13000 ft. So up we went. After we passed the sign that said 11,000 ft our rental car died due to lack of air.
At this altitiude the view was spectacular. Another volcano (Mauna Loa) was visible above the clouds. The unpaved road up there is basically cinder. So we turned the car around, and coasted down hill.
I saw a great picture of one of my Profs who was up there with a hangover. It showed him lying flat down in some snow. Altitude and hangovers do not mix. BTW, it does snow in Hawaii. You just have to be really high to see this. Really high in Hawaii doesn't necessarily mean pakalolo.:)
I have to agree with you. The Bridge on the River Kwai and Lawrence of Arabia are two outstanding movies; both were a great examination of the human psyche. The River Kwai was especially great because of the battle of will and discipline between Guinness and Hayakawa. We will build this bridge, but its "our" bridge. Hmmmm, what's that I see over there. What going on? If you saw the movie, then you know what I mean.
Lawrence of Arabia was O'Toole's movie. The rest of the cast was very good, but O'Toole stole the show.
The mini-series Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy is also definitely worth watching if you like spy and intrigue stories. Maybe my local PBS will rebroadcast this.
Woohoo! Geeks talking politics. First off, Rob has every right to state his political opinion. For those of you spouting off about journalism, consider this. Newspapers routinely endorse candidates for elected office. Some of you should read the editorial pages more often.
As for News for Nerds? I would like to think that choosing the next President of the US would have some relevance to nerds. Let's see, we bitch and moan about COPA, export restrictions, patent law, FCC, FBI, NSA, DMCA, DoJ, etc... Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe the the President can have an influence in these matters. You cannot on one hand say I don't want to hear about politics, and then later say that US laws suck.
Hackers don't upset TiVo--yet If you build it, they will hack. The latest company to face hacking is TiVo,... Hacking has become a big issue for makers of devices... hackers found a way to turn Netpliance's I-opener... Unlike the well-publicized Netpliance hack... There are people out there that will hack into anything... While the current hacking apparently is not of much concern to TiVo...
Hmmm, the article doesn't use the word innovate.
Multi-tasking here, SNL just reran Nick Burns, The Company Computer Guy. Move...
Cases related to the 4th Amendment seem to vex the US Supreme Court. If you don't what the 4th Amendment says then I strongly suggest that you set your/. threshold to -1. I don't think I have to explain this.:)
For instance, there were three recent interesting cases. The 1st involved someone that ran away after Five-Oh showed up in a high crime area. The cops got very reasonably suspicious, ran him down, and then found that he had a gun. I won't say what the Supreme Court ruled, but it was a 5-4 decision. If you have a clue about the make-up of the court, then you can figure out what side won.
The second case involved law enforcement personnel incidentally feeling a bus passenger's luggage. They get suspicious and look at the contents. This was rejected. Finally, the court ruled that one cannot search somebody based on an anonymous tip.
Right now, the Supreme Court is in a precarious balance. The next President will probably have the opportunity to sway the balance one way or the other.
Finally, I realize how I can be a karma whore. I'm not saying that you are, just that the moderation for this story clearly indicate the method. The Feds are evil, Give me my privacy no matter what the consequences are, did I say that the Feds are evil. Of course, many of you already now this.
I wonder how future laws are going to handle things like net telephony (net to phone), or net-to-net audio/video communications. It would seem that it would be "safer" to sign up for a net telephony service via a cable company. Additionally, how are the feds going to monitor/tap things like CU-SeeMe? All they are going to get is an intercepted e-mail msg saying, "Hey Joe, I'll contact you at 6 pm via computer video conferencing."
As a side note, Congress will eventually begin to explore taxing telephony; the telecos will lobby them to death.
Slashdot Mirror
IIRC, these all represented violations of the licensing agreements between the MPAA and manufacturers. To the best of my knowledge, there has been no major action taken against these companies. Hence, the only thing that makes sense is intent. They didn't intend to harm the industry. If you read this order, the issue of intent is prominently mentioned.
Personally, I think that this sucks. However, the reason for these types of cases is simple. They cite past cases but there isn't one the actually is directly applicable to this one. The issue of reverse engineering is a murky one. The higher courts haven't decided on this, but they ultimately will.
IANAL, but I have many friends who are, and I like to think that I'm not the Baron of Gray Matter (hey Curly!). The key thing is intent and the presence or absence of any other legitimate use. Why do you think that recipes for bombs are allowed on the net?
Finally, this should end the debate between the semantic argument between open and free source. Did I say open, no I meant to say free.
Remember, the basis for this hypothesis is based on an incomplete knowledge of what happens here on Earth.
We must break the racial/religion stereotypes in this country. We must follow in the ground-breaking work of the Three Stooges that show that not Jewish people were Einsteins.
Jonny Quest: Dr. Quest made it cool to be a scientist. One week, he's a physicist, the next week he's a biologist. Little known fact: Haji was the initial recipient of a H1B visa.
Roadrunner: Physics lessons disguise as a cartoon. I learned all about sudden changes in momentum and about the laws of gravity.
George of the Jungle: Same physics lessons thus reinforcing what was taught by watching the Roadrunner show. Demonstrated that the laws of physics are universal.
Scooby Doo: Taught the scientific method. Plus the cartoon featured real nerds in action.
Speed Racer: An import from Japan that enjoyed a brief period of popularity in the US. This show inspired a generation of Japanese youths to become automotive engineers. Youth in the US wanted to become NASCAR drivers. Marked the beginning of the rise of the Japanese automotive industry.
Is it any wonder why science and math scores in this country are decreasing? Coincidence? I don't think so. It is sad that not a single Presidential candidate has spoken up about this.
Well I spelled it MIPS, but I pronounce it romp.:) Thanks for the correction. BTW, that information page is pretty neat. I had no idea that ppl still had an interest in the RT. It's actually kind of scary.
Wow, I'm such a freaking pack rat. I found this file fragment in one of my archive directories. You had a choice of BSD or SYSV.
//UPDATE_ME).
//meow
$ install_sysadmin
Software installation TYPES are:
RESTART -- Restart the DOMAIN/IX software installation.
DOMAIN_IX -- Install the full DOMAIN/IX software package.
Please enter installation TYPE: domain_ix
**** SYSTEM ADMINISTRATOR ONLY INSTALLATION ****
You must provide the name of the TARGET volume on which to
install the software (e.g.,
Please enter TARGET Volume or type quit:
The DOMAIN/IX PRODUCT TYPES are:
BSD4.2 -- Berkeley 4.2
SYS5 -- System 5
BOTH -- Berkeley 4.2 and System 5
Please enter the PRODUCT TYPE you wish to install, or type quit: bsd4.2
Hmmmm, I guess I was a BSD snob back then.:)
The old Apollo workstations initially ran DomainOS, then later had the option of using Unix. It was a version of BSD that they called Domain/IX.
Well that's just great. What I want to know is how many actors played Batman?
My favorite villain death scene is still The Joker.
Gotta agree with you. As a Linux user, I hated when they killed off the Penguin. Maybe in the next movie, they can have a villian in a red devil's outfit holding a pitchfork. Wearing a Red Hat. Doing battle against a lizard doing the samba. With a gnome as his assistant. Who seeks enlightenment. While being chase by the Batmobile doing Maximum RPM's. With the final battle in a sawmill. Used to cut pine. And elm.
Yellow journalism was the realm of William Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer. They liked any bogus headline or story that could sell more newspapers. H.L. Mencken was an extreme critic of the disparity, hypocrisy, and problems of American society of the early 1900's. To call Mencken a "yellow" journalist does him a major disservice.
Buddy, Buddy, Buddy! A while back they did a city audit. Missing: One building crane, 3 trucks, and something like 40 manhole covers. Manhole covers? A local politician get convicted. His crime? His used car dealership was turning back odometers! How cliche! Another politician changes his name by adding A to the last name so that we would be listed 1st on the ballot. An opponent does the same. The 1st guy then changes it to a little A. He wins. The Providence police once had a raid on a whore house. The walked to it as it was next door to the Police station. A few cops got caught up in the raid. In the pre-Revolution days, the "import" businessmen met at a tavern, got drunk and decided to burn the damn Brit ship (Gaspee), thereby striking a blow for freedom.
Gawd I miss RI.:-) The people of RI are great once they get to know you; then you are like family. RI is a laugh a minute and I did like living there (10 yrs). But I do not back down on one thing. RI drivers are "interesting".
RI a state whose capital of Providence has a mayor (Cianci) who once had to leave office because he kidnapped and beat up his ex-wife's lover. The ProJo once published a picture (on the front page) of the State's Chief Justice zipping up his pants as he was leaving a motel. RI, a state with the fine cities of Pawtucket and Cranston (Ever here a person from Cranson say, I need a fork? ROFLMAO). Honest to God, the RI multiple choice written test for your driver's licence had "Honk your horn, proceed with caution" as an answer for all of their questions. Ahh yes, the RI slide, right turn from the left lane.
RI, the thirteenth of the original states. The last because they didn't want to give up a major source of income, smuggling.
A school in RI sent me a brochure saying, "And the beaches in RI are excellent". Yo! Dudes! I'm from Hawaii, your beaches suck. Well you do have Moonstone beach.
RI, a state that gave us the Farrelly brothers. Do you know what the inspiration for Dumb and Dumber was?
Providence, the site of a sappy chick flick TV show.
Have a Gansett neighbor!
BTW, the figure doesn't represent one strong conclusion. It is just one piece of the evidence. Furthermore, the plot represents data. Do you understand the difference between a model and data?
Then there are the computer simulations that attempt to model and reproduce the various observations.
Please note, these types of research are relatively independent of each other. After decades of work, the diverse set of results are starting to reach one strong conclusion. There will be an United Nations sponsored report due out at the end of the year by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Currently in draft form, this report will state, "there has been a discernible human influence on global climate." Remember scientists are conservative in stating their conclusions. This is in reality, a very strong statement.
A short review of this report was presented in Science. Please check out the figure showing temperature fluctuations over the past 1000 years. If this doesn't scare you, nothing will.
Thank god K&R entitled their book, The C Programming Language.:)
I thought that the DoJ were going to take this to the Supreme Court. I don't recall reading about such an appeal as of yet.
Q: Why do some Ph.D.'s seem to be unaware of the rules regarding UMI when they sign the legal papers? A: We're still rather hung-over from the post defense party.
Q: How long has UMI been selling theses? A: I learned about this shortly after entering grad school. This was way back before most of you were even a glint in your daddy's eye.
Q: Why would somebody want to buy your thesis? A: Most info in a thesis gets published. If it isn't published, then it is probably crap anyway. Even your advisor doesn't care.
Q: Any other reasons for buying? A: Yes, to obtain raw data contained in some Appendix that is too detailed to get published. This is bad because somebody might discover that the fundamental basis for your results may be bogus.
Q: Does getting a Ph.D. make you a responsible outstanding member of society? A: Bwaahahaha, hehe, um, why of course it does.
Q: What does getting your Ph.D. feel like? A: Like getting a get out jail card in monopoly.
Q: Why is it called piled higher and deeper? A: This is actually a misconception as there is no pile when you finish; you already swallowed all the shit.
Q: Do you have a Ph.D? You seem kind of cynical. A: Yeah, tell me about it.
The next important thing is obviously networking. They would have to streamline the setting up of a modem by the inclusion of a database of the settings of available modems out there. I do shudder at the thought of network security. Then again, they could turn off all services, and make the computer primarily a client machine.
New hardware? Run something like kudzu. Obviously, a lot extra modules will have to already be in place. Printer? Improve something like printtool by making the selection of a printer something like the selection of a modem; have a large data base of available printers. Installing new software? Something like gnorpm, only simplier. Monitor and graphics card? Once again, got to have a large data base available.
I know that there are other issues, but I have to believe that it is possible to make a user friendly linux distro. This would probably mean eliminating "options" in installation and setup.
They'll also probably have to change the name of fsck.:)
In hindsight, I can appreciate why Sir Alec didn't like the diatribe in Star Wars compared to what he did before. In a more humorous mode, someone posted a parody of the whistling tune from the Bridge on the River Kwai. This was a parody of a US TV commercial that dates back to about 30 yrs ago.
Comet, it makes your teeth turn green
Comet, it tastes like gasoline
Comet, it make you vomit
So try new Comet, and vomit, today!
Good bye Sir Alec, tinker, tailor, soldier, spy.
Please turn off all electronic devices until 10 minutes after takeoff.
Are you trolling?
Me and my buddy once tried to take a rental car to this place. 1st off, rental cars are banned from the saddle road that eventually leads to the Mauna Kea access road. F*ck this. So off we went. Then as we went up towards Mauna Kea we eventually reached the end of the paved road at 9000 ft. The top of Mauna Kea is greater than 13000 ft. So up we went. After we passed the sign that said 11,000 ft our rental car died due to lack of air.
At this altitiude the view was spectacular. Another volcano (Mauna Loa) was visible above the clouds. The unpaved road up there is basically cinder. So we turned the car around, and coasted down hill.
I saw a great picture of one of my Profs who was up there with a hangover. It showed him lying flat down in some snow. Altitude and hangovers do not mix. BTW, it does snow in Hawaii. You just have to be really high to see this. Really high in Hawaii doesn't necessarily mean pakalolo.:)
Lawrence of Arabia was O'Toole's movie. The rest of the cast was very good, but O'Toole stole the show.
The mini-series Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy is also definitely worth watching if you like spy and intrigue stories. Maybe my local PBS will rebroadcast this.
As for News for Nerds? I would like to think that choosing the next President of the US would have some relevance to nerds. Let's see, we bitch and moan about COPA, export restrictions, patent law, FCC, FBI, NSA, DMCA, DoJ, etc... Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe the the President can have an influence in these matters. You cannot on one hand say I don't want to hear about politics, and then later say that US laws suck.
Hackers don't upset TiVo--yet
If you build it, they will hack.
The latest company to face hacking is TiVo,...
Hacking has become a big issue for makers of devices...
hackers found a way to turn Netpliance's I-opener...
Unlike the well-publicized Netpliance hack...
There are people out there that will hack into anything...
While the current hacking apparently is not of much concern to TiVo...
Hmmm, the article doesn't use the word innovate.
Multi-tasking here, SNL just reran Nick Burns, The Company Computer Guy. Move...
For instance, there were three recent interesting cases. The 1st involved someone that ran away after Five-Oh showed up in a high crime area. The cops got very reasonably suspicious, ran him down, and then found that he had a gun. I won't say what the Supreme Court ruled, but it was a 5-4 decision. If you have a clue about the make-up of the court, then you can figure out what side won.
The second case involved law enforcement personnel incidentally feeling a bus passenger's luggage. They get suspicious and look at the contents. This was rejected. Finally, the court ruled that one cannot search somebody based on an anonymous tip.
Right now, the Supreme Court is in a precarious balance. The next President will probably have the opportunity to sway the balance one way or the other.
Finally, I realize how I can be a karma whore. I'm not saying that you are, just that the moderation for this story clearly indicate the method. The Feds are evil, Give me my privacy no matter what the consequences are, did I say that the Feds are evil. Of course, many of you already now this.
As a side note, Congress will eventually begin to explore taxing telephony; the telecos will lobby them to death.