Well, er, it's Federal funding that's the issue. I suspect that if the researchers *leave* to operate outside the FDA regulations, they also likely lose Federal money, which is what this whole mess is about.
I suspect that Mr. Will has an appropriate point -- that it is very, very difficult to officially identify, let alone remove even an utterly incompetent teacher today, without the unions screaming for blood -- and that negatively impacts the profession rather drastically.
Ah. But should we draw a teacher for Subject X from the general pool of those who want to teach... or just from those who wish to teach and have some background in Subject X? Remember that we do not, normally, randomly choose teachers...
Teacher qualification requirements are generally set at no higher than the state level (there's going to be some Federal influence, because while the Federal government really does not provide a lot of funding, percentage-wise, compared to state-level funding in most states, losing it would still hurt), and may not include, say, even a degree in Subject X. This is more than a little odd, since teaching nominally presupposes foreknowledge in the relevant area...
* The importance of hard, empirical evidence, which is useful for evaluating theories.
* The importance of rational deductive and inductive skills.
Questions in the social sciences are much more likely to relate to unquantifiables and to statistical analysis, and won't by themselves necessarily provide a solid grounding in analytical thought -- since it's usually impossible to find a "right" answer, or to truly evaluate correctness, to even nominally basic questions such as the root causes of the Crusades.
Such logic and technical skills are useful even in daily life, such as questioning the reasoning used by proponents and opponents of modern agricultural and food-science techniques, such as genetically modified food. A person need not necessarily have a deep understanding non-Mendelian genetics, the exact process of mitosis, and protein synthesis, if he can ask himself whether proponents and opponents are backing up their claims with evidence and sound logic, or merely extravagant claims or unfounded paranoia.
Pyramid/Ponzi schemes that require payment through the mails (most of the "Make Money Fast" ones) are violations of the US Postal Code, and many of those bozos reside in areas covered by those rules. I forward quite a few mailings and USENET posts to the US Postal Inspectors.
Some are pump-and-dump messages, and stock manipulation is something that interests the Securities and Exchange Commission.
There's also spam soliciting offshore internet gambling. The Feds appear to be of the opinion that this is illegal, although the only statutes I found in a brief US Code search referred directly to sports wagering over the wire.
A fair bit is fraudulent; there's somebody spamming a few groups several times a day advertising ancient, non-functional links to w4r3z; since his product/service is, from what I've read, not performing what he says it does -- since the links are dead -- that's arguably fraud. He seems to go through ISPs like hotcakes.
You'd be surprised. That pumpin' dumpin' brat named Lebed (I think that's the name... but I could merely be phonetically mis-matching and instead drawing a bead on the ex-Soviet general turned politician) sent out an awful lot of anonymous posts on online forums.
Apparently, enough people listened and bought when he touted a stock, so that he made a killing. It might have worked the other way around, if he'd been shorting, instead.
Re:There are lots of games that run on Pentium
on
Windows in 2020
·
· Score: 1
Any game that has an AI could benefit from a better CPU. _Combat Mission_, for instance, could use a better tactical AI, as well as dynamic lighting (right now, for instance, being next to a burning tank during a night battle doesn't have any particular effects -- such as worsening your vision and possibly making it easier for others to spot you).
And it's certainly not a twitch game; in fact, the tactical AI is there because it is not, and due to its company/battalion-level scope should not be a twitch game. Instead, the AI needs to be able to intelligently override your commands during each 60-second turns if, say, something you didn't anticipate shows up.
You wouldn't want your tanks merrily proceeding down the road as ordered if the leader hits a minefield and a previously hidden 88mm FlaK opens up; it's up to the computer to decide what to do, and it's fairly important that it does so reasonably quickly so that the user doesn't get fed up with turn computation times.
The celebrity bit isn't terribly surprising. Aren't there a vast number of widely-distributed rags dealing solely with celebrity gossip? Celebs generally seem to crave publicity... and so do many Congressmen, and various talking heads. Put the two together, and except for the really serious-minded -- there may be Congressmen who are serious enough that, say, being lectured by Gere on Chinese diplomatic relations or Streisand on firearms would offend them or J. Random Celebrity on the need to concentrate research funding on HIV -- it's a win-win for them. Voters apparently don't care sufficiently, or if they do, it's treated as a positive, not negative; perhaps they appreciate seeing their favorites.
Remember, it's a world in which romance novels outsell every other genre, if memory serves. Readers know it's often trash, but they'll eat it up anyway.
How often do reporters consult technical experts, 'tho? Even the networks know enough to consult financial analysts (without, of course, disclosing any possible conflicts of interest, or analysts' track records, or...), and sometimes they bring in a medical doctor.
A reputable newspaper may interview both experts and lay users in a computing field when appropriate... but I don't recall either, say, NBC or CBS interviewing a tech guru to explain, oh, Code Red.
Perhaps it has to do with the fact that computers are more everyday objects, and that legions of non-experts work with them frequently, whereas an average Joe does not deal frequently with medical science. And if it's an everyday object, then everybody (such as reporters and the audience) should be able to use, explain and understand it, eh? So why bother with the technical guru...(or so the logic might go)
(Strange grouping you've got there -- my comments below relate more towards the first three.)
They may know how to, but how often do they bother? CNN, ABC and NBC have all been nailed for various "issues" in their stories, if memory serves; for instance, there was CNN's story claiming that members of US Army SOGs used chemical weapons to kill American defectors in 'Nam, IIRC. The reporters involved were fired.
NBC Dateline got nailed for not only misreporting a story (the CNN SOG bit apparently hinged on selective use and interpretation of interviews), but for basically making one up: they deliberately uncapped the gas tanks of certain GM vehicles for a collision test, in order to help them burst dramatically into flame. Not too many people drive around with their gas tanks open. My memory's telling me that there was also a minor pyrotechnic device involved...
And it might have been ABC's _Prime Time Live_ that got sued (successfully) by _Food Lion_ regarding their investigative practices.
Newspapers aren't untainted; ISTR that the SJ Mercury eventually retracted the CIA-Contra-Cocaine Conspiracy story.
If they're busy finding their own dodgy bits of news to present for the sake of ratings / circulation, then how much time are they spending checking their own?
I wouldn't often associate the news programs with integrity, when it comes to more dramatic stories. When they report that yet another bomb went off in the Middle East or that Bush meets Putin in Genoa or that the DJIA dropped a bit, that's quite possibly correct -- but when they veer off to "beware! beware!" stories, well... beware.
Maybe the reporters -- and their audience -- simply aren't cynical enough?
An example --
Might have been yesterday or the day before, but either NBC or CBS had a brief piece on some study regarding red wine. The anchor implied that the study showed that people who drink red wine tend to have better social status, higher intelligence, and what not...
...and, IIRC, completely ignored fundamental questions such as what variables were controlled for, such as whether non-drinkers could *afford* the red wine/dinner party/"cultured" lifestyle. Correlation versus causation went unmentioned, as if the anchor were merely reporting a press release.
Similarly, the editors of "Social Text" -- apparently, a left-leaning social studies journal -- were severely burned when they published the infamous Sokal Hoax; the editors claimed that they accepted it primarily on the basis of the reputation of the author (a physics professor). One suspects that they didn't bother reading the paper very much, since it's quite deliberately impenetrable nonsense. I highly recommend looking at it for amusement's sake.
* Morality.
For instance, whistleblowers could use anonymity. Some countries have laws protecting them, but they probably won't pay your expenses to *invoke* the laws...
Another issue is that not everybody lives in a country which would have any restraint when it comes to, oh, dissent -- merely criticizing an official might land you in very serious trouble.
* Legal issues.
Say you figured out that some punk is spamming you... from, say, Thailand. What are you going to do -- contact the embassy? I don't think so; it's not important enough for the diplomatic staff to care about, and there's also the little matter of jurisdiction.
* Technical issues.
How, prithee tell, *would* one tie physical identity to a stream of bytes? You'd need a HUGE web of trust, one sufficient to encompass the entire online population of the world. That means ridiculously massive, interwined key-signing parties (not going to happen), plus huge, universally trusted, incredibly secure keyservers (again, improbable).
I believe that, in fact, there actually is a contract between the two that barred Intel from introducing non-RDRAM chipsets for the Pentium 4 as early as they would have liked, and that a similar restriction had been in place for the Pentium 3. Maybe the agreement also barred them from cooperating with others (Via, say; and nVidia -- with their nForce project presumably not being a one-off) that would consider designing a non-RDRAM chipset.
Er, why clone people? For despondent parents to replace their lost children, or what? (and in such a case, think about the pressure on the kid...) For parents who, for some strange reason, simply want a large number of genetically identical kids?
I see medical potential for stem cell research, ranging from producing organs to replacing damaged nerve tissue. I don't see that many applications for cloning people, at least as far as people are concerned -- clearly, if aliens come down and start munching on people, *they* might want to clone, genetically engineer, selectively breed, or otherwise improve the stock, but most of us aren't anthrophages.
He's doomed to have to compromise, because not only did he not have a significant mandate (a statistician might be able to call the election, statistically, a tie), but he doesn't have the Senate, either. And the Senate Democrats have the power to be *really* irritating if they so choose, since not only do all bills have to be passed there before they become laws, but they also have to confirm nominees and approve treaties.
And it's a plausible threat; both parties have amply shown that they can engage in bitter, partisan warfare, with near-100% party-line votes (the WJC impeachment trial, for instance)...
For that, I'd have to give more credit to Lenin, Stalin, Khruschev, Brezhnev, et al... heck, probably the Tsars as well, at least until Peter the Great, who actually cared about modernizing his country. Their economy imploded. Quota systems, minimal incentives to do quality work, collective agriculture, purges, *visible* diversion of wealth to the extreme elite, lack of strong consumer goods market...
Reagan speeded it up via the arms race, making it incredibly expensive for the Soviets to keep up, but their economy was weak long before Reagan. Gorbachev, thankfully, had the clue to guide it into a peaceful collapse.
Science was once dominated by Aristotleian philosophy -- deductive logic, rather than empirical work. Once, what we now consider "the scientific method" wasn't really a major part of science...
Hence, Ptolemaic models... which became increasingly complicated (for instance, adding epicycles) in order to maintain the basic geocentric assumption. It definitely predates the heyday of Catholicism, if that's what you're thinking.
And Lebed's father wasn't exactly lamenting, either. In a _60 Minutes_ interview, the parents seemed happy and proud -- well, perhaps a touch bitter that the son got caught. Might have something to do with the fact that the son bought them nice toys like cars...
No person shall manufacture, import, offer to the public, provide, or otherwise traffic in any technology, product, service, device, component, or part thereof that --
(A) is primarily designed or produced for the purpose of circumventing a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title;
(B) has only limited commercially significant purpose or use other than to circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title; or
(C) is marketed by that person or another acting in concert with that person with that person's knowledge for use in circumventing a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title.
Also,
(3) As used in this subsection --
(A) to `circumvent a technological measure' means to descramble a scrambled work, to decrypt an encrypted work, or otherwise to avoid, bypass, remove, deactivate, or impair a technological measure, without the authority of the copyright owner; and
(B) a technological measure `effectively controls access to a work' if the measure, in the ordinary course of its operation, requires the application of information, or a process or a treatment, with the authority of the copyright holder, to gain access to the work.
: end quote :
It goes further on to detail similar constrainsts on circumventing methods that protect rights of copyright owners.
DeCSS is certainly technology. It is clearly designed for, produced for, and marketed as, a method for circumventing access protection, put in place by people who are clearly working with the authorization of the copyright holder.
If he were in a Federal court being tried for DMCA violations under that particular part, I wouldn't bet on his winning (unless that part were struck down...).
Incidentally, people who suggest that the law could be used against general-purpose things like 'dd', computers in general, or phone lines are spouting nonsense; perhaps they forget that Congressmen are people, and aren't that often blind idiots when it comes to writing laws and considering their scope. They don't have to be geeks to be intelligent, and I rarely see Slashdotters give them more credit than they would award to a 14-year-old. There are quite a few exemptions in the law, covering research, computer repair, a safe harbor for service providers, reverse engineering for interoperability, and so forth.
Even if one accepts that it's speech, being speech does not mean that it's suddenly immune to law, anymore than conspirators in a crime can claim that their dealings were protected by the 1st, either.
My understanding is that the CSS protection on a DVD is supposed to block unauthorized *playing*, not duplication. In other words, to mass-duplicate CDs, a byte-by-byte duplicator suffices, and the CSS (or DeCSS, for that matter) is irrelevant.
What DeCSS infringes upon is access control from the player point of view; it allows unauthorized *playing* of DVDs on devices that weren't licensed to as CSS decoders. In other words, he might be nailable under DMCA (circumvention of digital access protection method), but it's irrelevant from a *duplication* point of view.
The US does have jurisdiction if you choose to enter the country, after all -- it's not a *right* to enter, but a privilege based on circumstances (such as asylum seekers are treated in such-and-such a way, people who say "Yes, I'm a terrorist" on their visa applications can expect a different sort of treatment, et al). Thumbing one's nose from outside the country is generally safe (not that many notable exceptions; Noriega is a glaring one), but don't expect to be welcomed.
Well, you may have to still do a fair bit of manual tweaking.
SuSE 7.2, for instance, didn't reliably deal well with my USB mouse. The XFree86 version included can't automatically figure out the protocol, nor does Sax2 (SuSE configurer) have much clue about the device file, either. Eventually, I simply used PS/2 emulation (via a kernel boot-time driver, and/dev/input/mice), and did manual tweaking of the config file. It certainly didn't recognize the mouse (when connected to USB) during installation, despite having an option to do so.
Likewise (due to licensing issues) it doesn't provide 3D acceleration for nVidia cards; those drivers need to be downloaded and installed manually, complete with symlink checking, config file editing, and so forth. That's probably not good for the Linux newbie, and may be a concern since nVidia cards aren't exactly rare (and these drivers are *necessary* for good 3D; TuxRacer goes from several seconds per frame with the XFree86 nv driver to 50-100+ FPS with nVidia's.)
Slashdot Mirror
Well, er, it's Federal funding that's the issue. I suspect that if the researchers *leave* to operate outside the FDA regulations, they also likely lose Federal money, which is what this whole mess is about.
I suspect that Mr. Will has an appropriate point -- that it is very, very difficult to officially identify, let alone remove even an utterly incompetent teacher today, without the unions screaming for blood -- and that negatively impacts the profession rather drastically.
Teacher qualification requirements are generally set at no higher than the state level (there's going to be some Federal influence, because while the Federal government really does not provide a lot of funding, percentage-wise, compared to state-level funding in most states, losing it would still hurt), and may not include, say, even a degree in Subject X. This is more than a little odd, since teaching nominally presupposes foreknowledge in the relevant area...
Science courses are more likely to teach:
* The importance of hard, empirical evidence, which is useful for evaluating theories.
* The importance of rational deductive and inductive skills.
Questions in the social sciences are much more likely to relate to unquantifiables and to statistical analysis, and won't by themselves necessarily provide a solid grounding in analytical thought -- since it's usually impossible to find a "right" answer, or to truly evaluate correctness, to even nominally basic questions such as the root causes of the Crusades.
Such logic and technical skills are useful even in daily life, such as questioning the reasoning used by proponents and opponents of modern agricultural and food-science techniques, such as genetically modified food. A person need not necessarily have a deep understanding non-Mendelian genetics, the exact process of mitosis, and protein synthesis, if he can ask himself whether proponents and opponents are backing up their claims with evidence and sound logic, or merely extravagant claims or unfounded paranoia.
Pyramid/Ponzi schemes that require payment through the mails (most of the "Make Money Fast" ones) are violations of the US Postal Code, and many of those bozos reside in areas covered by those rules. I forward quite a few mailings and USENET posts to the US Postal Inspectors.
Some are pump-and-dump messages, and stock manipulation is something that interests the Securities and Exchange Commission.
There's also spam soliciting offshore internet gambling. The Feds appear to be of the opinion that this is illegal, although the only statutes I found in a brief US Code search referred directly to sports wagering over the wire.
A fair bit is fraudulent; there's somebody spamming a few groups several times a day advertising ancient, non-functional links to w4r3z; since his product/service is, from what I've read, not performing what he says it does -- since the links are dead -- that's arguably fraud. He seems to go through ISPs like hotcakes.
That's a start...
You'd be surprised. That pumpin' dumpin' brat named Lebed (I think that's the name... but I could merely be phonetically mis-matching and instead drawing a bead on the ex-Soviet general turned politician) sent out an awful lot of anonymous posts on online forums.
Apparently, enough people listened and bought when he touted a stock, so that he made a killing. It might have worked the other way around, if he'd been shorting, instead.
Any game that has an AI could benefit from a better CPU. _Combat Mission_, for instance, could use a better tactical AI, as well as dynamic lighting (right now, for instance, being next to a burning tank during a night battle doesn't have any particular effects -- such as worsening your vision and possibly making it easier for others to spot you). And it's certainly not a twitch game; in fact, the tactical AI is there because it is not, and due to its company/battalion-level scope should not be a twitch game. Instead, the AI needs to be able to intelligently override your commands during each 60-second turns if, say, something you didn't anticipate shows up. You wouldn't want your tanks merrily proceeding down the road as ordered if the leader hits a minefield and a previously hidden 88mm FlaK opens up; it's up to the computer to decide what to do, and it's fairly important that it does so reasonably quickly so that the user doesn't get fed up with turn computation times.
The celebrity bit isn't terribly surprising. Aren't there a vast number of widely-distributed rags dealing solely with celebrity gossip? Celebs generally seem to crave publicity... and so do many Congressmen, and various talking heads. Put the two together, and except for the really serious-minded -- there may be Congressmen who are serious enough that, say, being lectured by Gere on Chinese diplomatic relations or Streisand on firearms would offend them or J. Random Celebrity on the need to concentrate research funding on HIV -- it's a win-win for them. Voters apparently don't care sufficiently, or if they do, it's treated as a positive, not negative; perhaps they appreciate seeing their favorites.
Remember, it's a world in which romance novels outsell every other genre, if memory serves. Readers know it's often trash, but they'll eat it up anyway.
How often do reporters consult technical experts, 'tho? Even the networks know enough to consult financial analysts (without, of course, disclosing any possible conflicts of interest, or analysts' track records, or...), and sometimes they bring in a medical doctor.
A reputable newspaper may interview both experts and lay users in a computing field when appropriate... but I don't recall either, say, NBC or CBS interviewing a tech guru to explain, oh, Code Red.
Perhaps it has to do with the fact that computers are more everyday objects, and that legions of non-experts work with them frequently, whereas an average Joe does not deal frequently with medical science. And if it's an everyday object, then everybody (such as reporters and the audience) should be able to use, explain and understand it, eh? So why bother with the technical guru...(or so the logic might go)
(Strange grouping you've got there -- my comments below relate more towards the first three.)
They may know how to, but how often do they bother? CNN, ABC and NBC have all been nailed for various "issues" in their stories, if memory serves; for instance, there was CNN's story claiming that members of US Army SOGs used chemical weapons to kill American defectors in 'Nam, IIRC. The reporters involved were fired.
NBC Dateline got nailed for not only misreporting a story (the CNN SOG bit apparently hinged on selective use and interpretation of interviews), but for basically making one up: they deliberately uncapped the gas tanks of certain GM vehicles for a collision test, in order to help them burst dramatically into flame. Not too many people drive around with their gas tanks open. My memory's telling me that there was also a minor pyrotechnic device involved...
And it might have been ABC's _Prime Time Live_ that got sued (successfully) by _Food Lion_ regarding their investigative practices.
Newspapers aren't untainted; ISTR that the SJ Mercury eventually retracted the CIA-Contra-Cocaine Conspiracy story.
If they're busy finding their own dodgy bits of news to present for the sake of ratings / circulation, then how much time are they spending checking their own?
I wouldn't often associate the news programs with integrity, when it comes to more dramatic stories. When they report that yet another bomb went off in the Middle East or that Bush meets Putin in Genoa or that the DJIA dropped a bit, that's quite possibly correct -- but when they veer off to "beware! beware!" stories, well... beware.
Maybe the reporters -- and their audience -- simply aren't cynical enough?
An example --
Might have been yesterday or the day before, but either NBC or CBS had a brief piece on some study regarding red wine. The anchor implied that the study showed that people who drink red wine tend to have better social status, higher intelligence, and what not...
...and, IIRC, completely ignored fundamental questions such as what variables were controlled for, such as whether non-drinkers could *afford* the red wine/dinner party/"cultured" lifestyle. Correlation versus causation went unmentioned, as if the anchor were merely reporting a press release.
Similarly, the editors of "Social Text" -- apparently, a left-leaning social studies journal -- were severely burned when they published the infamous Sokal Hoax; the editors claimed that they accepted it primarily on the basis of the reputation of the author (a physics professor). One suspects that they didn't bother reading the paper very much, since it's quite deliberately impenetrable nonsense. I highly recommend looking at it for amusement's sake.
Two angles of opposition --
* Morality.
For instance, whistleblowers could use anonymity. Some countries have laws protecting them, but they probably won't pay your expenses to *invoke* the laws...
Another issue is that not everybody lives in a country which would have any restraint when it comes to, oh, dissent -- merely criticizing an official might land you in very serious trouble.
* Legal issues.
Say you figured out that some punk is spamming you... from, say, Thailand. What are you going to do -- contact the embassy? I don't think so; it's not important enough for the diplomatic staff to care about, and there's also the little matter of jurisdiction.
* Technical issues.
How, prithee tell, *would* one tie physical identity to a stream of bytes? You'd need a HUGE web of trust, one sufficient to encompass the entire online population of the world. That means ridiculously massive, interwined key-signing parties (not going to happen), plus huge, universally trusted, incredibly secure keyservers (again, improbable).
I believe that, in fact, there actually is a contract between the two that barred Intel from introducing non-RDRAM chipsets for the Pentium 4 as early as they would have liked, and that a similar restriction had been in place for the Pentium 3. Maybe the agreement also barred them from cooperating with others (Via, say; and nVidia -- with their nForce project presumably not being a one-off) that would consider designing a non-RDRAM chipset.
Er, why clone people? For despondent parents to replace their lost children, or what? (and in such a case, think about the pressure on the kid...) For parents who, for some strange reason, simply want a large number of genetically identical kids?
I see medical potential for stem cell research, ranging from producing organs to replacing damaged nerve tissue. I don't see that many applications for cloning people, at least as far as people are concerned -- clearly, if aliens come down and start munching on people, *they* might want to clone, genetically engineer, selectively breed, or otherwise improve the stock, but most of us aren't anthrophages.
*snort*
He's doomed to have to compromise, because not only did he not have a significant mandate (a statistician might be able to call the election, statistically, a tie), but he doesn't have the Senate, either. And the Senate Democrats have the power to be *really* irritating if they so choose, since not only do all bills have to be passed there before they become laws, but they also have to confirm nominees and approve treaties.
And it's a plausible threat; both parties have amply shown that they can engage in bitter, partisan warfare, with near-100% party-line votes (the WJC impeachment trial, for instance)...
For that, I'd have to give more credit to Lenin, Stalin, Khruschev, Brezhnev, et al... heck, probably the Tsars as well, at least until Peter the Great, who actually cared about modernizing his country. Their economy imploded. Quota systems, minimal incentives to do quality work, collective agriculture, purges, *visible* diversion of wealth to the extreme elite, lack of strong consumer goods market...
Reagan speeded it up via the arms race, making it incredibly expensive for the Soviets to keep up, but their economy was weak long before Reagan. Gorbachev, thankfully, had the clue to guide it into a peaceful collapse.
Science was once dominated by Aristotleian philosophy -- deductive logic, rather than empirical work. Once, what we now consider "the scientific method" wasn't really a major part of science...
Hence, Ptolemaic models... which became increasingly complicated (for instance, adding epicycles) in order to maintain the basic geocentric assumption. It definitely predates the heyday of Catholicism, if that's what you're thinking.
And Lebed's father wasn't exactly lamenting, either. In a _60 Minutes_ interview, the parents seemed happy and proud -- well, perhaps a touch bitter that the son got caught. Might have something to do with the fact that the son bought them nice toys like cars...
It might consume excess bandwidth
a) just *checking* for infected hosts, and
b) having many copies trying to disinfect the same host, over and over...
Section 1201, (2):
No person shall manufacture, import, offer to the public, provide, or otherwise traffic in any technology, product, service, device, component, or part thereof that --
(A) is primarily designed or produced for the purpose of circumventing a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title;
(B) has only limited commercially significant purpose or use other than to circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title; or
(C) is marketed by that person or another acting in concert with that person with that person's knowledge for use in circumventing a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title.
Also,
(3) As used in this subsection --
(A) to `circumvent a technological measure' means to descramble a scrambled work, to decrypt an encrypted work, or otherwise to avoid, bypass, remove, deactivate, or impair a technological measure, without the authority of the copyright owner; and
(B) a technological measure `effectively controls access to a work' if the measure, in the ordinary course of its operation, requires the application of information, or a process or a treatment, with the authority of the copyright holder, to gain access to the work.
: end quote :
It goes further on to detail similar constrainsts on circumventing methods that protect rights of copyright owners.
DeCSS is certainly technology. It is clearly designed for, produced for, and marketed as, a method for circumventing access protection, put in place by people who are clearly working with the authorization of the copyright holder.
If he were in a Federal court being tried for DMCA violations under that particular part, I wouldn't bet on his winning (unless that part were struck down...).
Incidentally, people who suggest that the law could be used against general-purpose things like 'dd', computers in general, or phone lines are spouting nonsense; perhaps they forget that Congressmen are people, and aren't that often blind idiots when it comes to writing laws and considering their scope. They don't have to be geeks to be intelligent, and I rarely see Slashdotters give them more credit than they would award to a 14-year-old. There are quite a few exemptions in the law, covering research, computer repair, a safe harbor for service providers, reverse engineering for interoperability, and so forth.
Even if one accepts that it's speech, being speech does not mean that it's suddenly immune to law, anymore than conspirators in a crime can claim that their dealings were protected by the 1st, either.
I'd have to disagree.
My understanding is that the CSS protection on a DVD is supposed to block unauthorized *playing*, not duplication. In other words, to mass-duplicate CDs, a byte-by-byte duplicator suffices, and the CSS (or DeCSS, for that matter) is irrelevant.
What DeCSS infringes upon is access control from the player point of view; it allows unauthorized *playing* of DVDs on devices that weren't licensed to as CSS decoders. In other words, he might be nailable under DMCA (circumvention of digital access protection method), but it's irrelevant from a *duplication* point of view.
Did he knowingly authorize distribution? If he's the copyright holder, and his employer isn't out to shaft him, he almost certainly did...
...but it wouldn't be surprising, would it?
The US does have jurisdiction if you choose to enter the country, after all -- it's not a *right* to enter, but a privilege based on circumstances (such as asylum seekers are treated in such-and-such a way, people who say "Yes, I'm a terrorist" on their visa applications can expect a different sort of treatment, et al). Thumbing one's nose from outside the country is generally safe (not that many notable exceptions; Noriega is a glaring one), but don't expect to be welcomed.
Well, you may have to still do a fair bit of manual tweaking.
/dev/input/mice), and did manual tweaking of the config file. It certainly didn't recognize the mouse (when connected to USB) during installation, despite having an option to do so.
SuSE 7.2, for instance, didn't reliably deal well with my USB mouse. The XFree86 version included can't automatically figure out the protocol, nor does Sax2 (SuSE configurer) have much clue about the device file, either. Eventually, I simply used PS/2 emulation (via a kernel boot-time driver, and
Likewise (due to licensing issues) it doesn't provide 3D acceleration for nVidia cards; those drivers need to be downloaded and installed manually, complete with symlink checking, config file editing, and so forth. That's probably not good for the Linux newbie, and may be a concern since nVidia cards aren't exactly rare (and these drivers are *necessary* for good 3D; TuxRacer goes from several seconds per frame with the XFree86 nv driver to 50-100+ FPS with nVidia's.)