I believe what was meant was that it uses 10 Watts, which of course would means 10 Joules per second or 36,000 Joules per hour. For those who prefer the old English measures that is roughly 34 1/8 BTU per hour. Or 26,554 foot-pounds per hour. Or 0.0134 horsepower.
Uh, excuse me, but it seems to me that there is a significant difference between "notify the people in your address book of a change of e-mail address" and "notify the people in your address book of a change of e-mail address and include in that message a totally unsoliciated advertisement implying your endorsement of our service and we are not going to let you read this message before we send it out".
Not only that, but their current name ICSA is deliberately misleading too. They claim now that it is "not an acronym" (Of course it's not an acronym, it's an abbreviation. Acronyms are abbreviations that are pronounced as a word. E.g., FBI - abbreviation; COBOL - acronym. Unless they want it to be pronounced "ick-suh".), but not so long ago it stood for International Computer Security Association. This makes it sound like it is some international organization, like the Information Systems Security Association, only it isn't, wasn't and didn't even try to be. It is a company that wants to sell computer security consulting, evaluation and similar services. Do not mistake it for an standards body made up of experts from around the world, like the IETF. It is just a company, kindof like the Wheel Group (before Cisco bought them), only not as good.
The Common Criteria;its predecesor, the DoD Orange Book; and British Standard 7799 are not actually "security" certifications, per se. What I'm saying is that being "C2" certified does not mean that the system was certified as "secure". It means the system has certain features and functions and that they worked as described when tested.
So, for example, one of the C2 criteria is that user be uniquely identified. Sure enough, any C2 certified system has user identifiers and every process on the system uses one. Does that make the system secure? No, but it helps an administrator secure the system. The certification just means that feature is there.
In fact, by looking at your own logs, you can say, "Well, Yahoo sends 10,000 people a day to my site
Yes, but you can only look at your own logs to see that Yahoo sends you 10,000 people a day after paying them substantial money for what they said should average 20,000 people a day, based on their (or Media Mextrix's) logs.
Furthermore, you should be able to take notes on your PDA while talking on your phone, and I _don't_ want yet another wire/cable/dongle to carry around, or lose, or break, or forget, etc, so don't recommend the "hands-free" solution:)
Well, if you want to risk brain tumors by holding your "small(ish)" cell phone to your ear, by all means, be my guest. Me, I already use an earphone/mic wire to talk on my cell (as do most people I've seen using cell phones in Europe lately). Since I already have to carry around my PDA anyway, why not have the option to plug that earphone/mic wire into my Palm or Handspring or whatever and use it as a phone too?
However, I don't like the idea in this article of shrinking the Palm into a phone (like the Qualcomm pdQ phone). I'd much rather just leave my Palm the size it is and add phone functionality to it (like Handspring).
How about because the "smart ways to do business" that they have come up with is illegal? What is being discussed here is not some "subarticle in some section of some USPO law". It is a basic component of US law that all direct mail marketers should be familiar with.
If some company's "smart ways to do business" are not smart enough to check with their lawyer to make sure that what they are doing is legal, well then it wasn't very smart was it.
And good old Guv'ner George 'Dubya' Bush was the man in charge when the case was thrown out in Texas. Expect similar treatment of consumers ("Let the market decide what's good and bad business practices, not the courts.") when he becomes President.
Looking beyond just they ICE-electric hybrid, we can look at one petroleum replacement, and another one electrical source (other than direct battery storage and recharge). CNG (compressed natural gas) is one since it burns much cleaner than petroleum, and is in limited used in largely application-specific commercial vehicles (like various commercial utility trucks, etc...). Hydrogen fuel cells are a promising technology that will make electric cars much more efficient than charged and discharged batteries. But, both CNG and fuel cells have serious safety issues in their on-board storage in that massive explosions can result in rupture of their tanks (much larger than possible with petroleum-based ones because of the pressure and density of CNG, and the volitity of hydrogen in fuel cells).
Couple of points about this: First, you greatly exagerate the danger of CNG. CNG is used as the primary fuel for automobiles (especially taxis) in Buenos Aires, Argentina and there is no greater risk of blowing up spontaniously, or in a car crash than there is in the US. The main reason that CNG has not been more widely adopted in the US is the lack of infrastructure. It is a classic catch 22. Until there is sufficient demand, no one will build the CNG refueling stations. And until there are abundent refueling stations, no one will buy CNG powered cars. The only reason that CNG has been restricted in the US to commercial and government vehicals is that those entities can also provide refueling stations.
As for hydrogen fuel cells - again the big problem is not that they might blow up (although people certainly have lasting memories, right or wrong, about the Hindenburg and the Challenger). While hydrogen fuel cells can certainly provide power more efficiently once the hydrogen is in the car and they produce no toxic emmissions (again once the hydrogen is in the car), this largely ignores the fact that the vast majority of hydrogen production in the US is from fossil fuels. Hydrogen is a byproduct of the oil refining process. Yes, hydrogen can be produced in other ways, but many of them are also fraught with dangers, toxic byproducts, or expensive infrastructure. For example, would you prefer to have hydrogen produced from sulfuric acid and iron filings, as it was commonly produced in the early days of balooning?
It seems to me that if a phone company can squeeze the functionality of a PDA into their phone then surely a PDA company could put a cell phone in their box. Since most Europeans - rightly or wrongly - fear that their cell phones are going to cause tumors in their brains, and this threat is starting to register in the States now, nobody is holding their cell phone up to their heads anymore anyway. (Stream of Consciousness - I wonder why they don't worry that they'll get tumors in the hands, or - maybe worse - in their hips.)
I'd much rather have the equivalent of a Palm V with the OmniSky wireless Internet thingee attached to it. Add a ear bud/mic set to it and voice functionality and you've got an almost perfect personal assistant.
Did you mean "still compensated hugely for minimal effort?" Life is not fair. There is no guarantee that what made you rich last year will make you rich next year. Consider the poor wheat farmer. Twenty acres can produce enough wheat to feed a whole town for a year; that's a HUGE amount of wealth...in a subsistence economy. But the economy has changed, and now it's barely worth it to farm a single field. The music industry, whether it realizes it or not, has changed. Mass production of music has arrived (near-infinite perfect copies at zero marginal cost) and NOTHING can change that (cue Jon Katz - "Look what we geeks have done to the recording industry!") The question now is who will cling to the old business model until it dies (taking them with it), and who will work to develop new models.
So does this mean that family farmers will have to throw benefits for Willie Nelson?
Aiding and abetting is a crime both in the the real world and online. But this is not a criminal case, it is a civil case. No one has been charged (yet) with either committing a crime or aiding and abetting one.
First, IANAL, but I do know how to read. Title 17 of the United States Code (Copyrights) does not contain a "contributory infringement" clause. The closest you get is Chapter 12, (the DMCA) Section 1201, paragraph (c)(2) which states, "Nothing in this section shall enlarge or diminish vicarious or contributory liability for copyright infringement in connection with any technology, product, service, device, component, or part thereof."
Notice it says both "enlarge" and "diminish". The concept of contributory liability is grounded in common law and has been held in US cases to apply where a person or entity induces, causes or materially contributes to the infringing conduct of another. I don't see how that applies in this situation.
Vicarious liability, the related area of common law mentioned above, is traditionally imposed where the defendant has the right and ability to supervise the infringing activity and has a direct financial interest in such activites. You might argue that these folks have an direct financial interest in the infringing activities, but they have not right or ability to supervise the infriging activity.
Given the above, the case we are discussing here is simply a free speach issue. Can a Web site point people to locations where they can obtain illegally reproduced material? You might not agree with the content of the speach, but then that's free speach for you.
Let me put together a hypothetical that has close parallels to the situation under discussion here and see what you think.
Say a university library has a public bulletin board. (The original, physical kind. Not a BBS.) Students, faculty, and members of the general public are allowed to stick messages of any kind on this bulletin board - for sale signs, tutoring advertisements, requests for rides home, poems,... whatever.
One day somebody sticks the photocopied pages of an article from the Microsoft Systems Journal onto that bulletin board. Did the person who stuck the photocopy up violate copyright laws? Possibly, perhaps even probably. Does the library then have an obligation to take the photocopy down? If so, why? The library did not make the copy. What has the library done wrong?
Would the scenario be any different if the person had instead just tacked the original pages ripped out of the magazine to the board? Why?
If someone stands outside the window of the Today show on Times Square and holds up a sign with the Microsoft Kerberos specification on it would NBC have any responsibility for the copyright violation? Would they have to erase all tapes of that show (or at least that segment)? What about all the people who recorded that show on the VCRs?
Copyright laws face severe difficulties in this digital age (as we have seen time and time again). I would say it is time to have open debates on this subject in Congress, but given that virtually every member of Congress in the US is beholden to corporate money for helping them get elected I think I could predict where that debate would end up. What to do...
(There's also the little matter of what underlying assets these securities really represent. If they're merely trading instruments, with nothing backing them, then they're simply a form of betting and aren't hedging anything at all. Traditional options actually give the holder an option to purchase or sell a particular asset. Common stocks, while the connection is a bit more tenuous, do represent the ability of the issuing corporation to pay dividends, buy back its own stock, and otherwise benefit the shareholder. For this kind of scheme to work, a pool of doctors would have to pledge some fraction of their future income as ultimate payment on the security. That implies that they expect that income to be less than the price they write the option at. Uh huh.)
You can have securities with no underlying assets. Traditional options are frequently traded this way - for example, selling "naked" calls, which is selling somebody the option to buy from you at some future date a stock that you do not currently own for a fixed price. This may sound like pure betting, but there are sound, well-understood and thoroughly studied ways to make these into true hedges, and not bets.
To give you an example that I am familiar with: Airline profits are very sensitive to the price of jet fuel. When jet fuel prices move up in sync with travel demand airlines can move their ticket prices up and maintain their margins. If jet fuel costs go up when travel demand is low, however, pricing pressure (competition) may not allow the airline to raise its prices. This can cut into the airlines profits.
There are a couple of ways for the airline to hedge this risk that jet fuel prices may not move in sync with the airline business cycle. First, the airline could buy jet fuel futures. This would lock in the future price of jet fuel for them, but if fuel prices go down they get screwed (other airlines buying jet fuel on the spot market can undercut their price). A second route is to use a derivative investment to hedge the risk. One possibility would be to trade in what is known as a "basis" or "index" swap. In this type of deal the airline would agree to pay the counterparty in the deal an amount based on an index that follows its business cycle (something like the Dow Jones Transportation Index); the counterparty agrees to pay the airline an amount based on the jet fuel price index (presumably hedging their transportation costs). In this way, if the price of fuel is up when business is slow, the airline is okay because the basis swap makes up the difference. Likewise, if fuel costs go down when demand for travel is high the airline must make payments to the counterparty, but the airline is still making more money.
There may be no physical assets underlying these trades, but there is a contractual obligation to pay. Yes, your counterparty could go bankrupt and not pay, but then that Fortune 500 company you just invested in could go bankrupt and make your stock worthless. All investment carries some degree of risk, otherwise there would be no point.
Ask ten economists whether the stock markets are overvalued and why and you'll get fifteen answers. Bob Shiller and those who agree with him, such as Harvard's John Campbell, look at the current market valuations versus historical valuations and are flabbergasted. Surely this can only be the result of irrational exuberance. However,...
Professor Jeremy Siegel of the Wharton School of Business has said of stock market valuation that, "historical yardsticks for valuation have been rendered useless in the past." He believes that investors' understanding of the long-term stability of stocks could explain current valuations.
Abby Cohen of Goldman, Sachs & Co. believes that such factors as our historically high productivity and rising profit margins can justify current valuations.
Alan Greenspan himself did not say that the stock market was overvalued due to "irrational exuberance", but rather he asked, "How do we know when irrational exuberance has unduly escalated asset values?" His answer based on his words and actions recently seems to be: You can't know, except in hindsight.
In my mind, only one thing is certain. If pure psychology could explain the behavior of the stock markets Warren Buffett would be the most famous psychologist ever. He's not.
Actually, Mr. Greenspan first uttered the phrase "irrational exuberance" on December 5, 1996 during a speach at a black-tie banquet at the Washington Hilton. His exact words were "How do we know when irrational exuberance has unduly escalated asset values? And how do we factor that assessment into monetary policy?"
Note he did not say that there was irrational exuberance in the market, nor that irrational exuberance was the cause for the markets' long run up. But he did imply that and within minutes of his speach the Tokyo stock market began to fall.
Excuse me? "Microsoft practically single-handedly" did what?
Let's review actual history for a moment and see how Microsoft "single-handedly" made computers easy to use.
Apple introduces the Lisa "borrowing" some great user interface ideas from Xerox's Palo Alto Research Center...
Steve Balmer: Hey, Bill. Have you seen those new machines that Apple is selling. People seem to think that they're pretty cool.
Bill: So what?
Steve: No, I mean I think they're really going to sell a lot of them.
Bill: Oh! Why didn't your say so. Let's get into Apple so we can understand just what they're doing. Then let's license a lot of their stuff so we can make our own version without them suing us.
A few years later - Intuit creates "electronic checkbook" software called Quicken...
Steve: Hey, Bill. Have you seen that new "electronic checkbook" stuff. Pretty cool.
Bill: Get a life. Nobody would ever want to balance their checkbook on a computer.
Steve: Well, they sold $50 million worth last year.
Bill: That's what I said. Go out and buy some company that makes similar software so we can have the same thing.
A few years later - Netscape makes the Web easy to access for millions of people.
Steve: Hey, Bill. Have you seen that Netscape thing for accessing the Internet. Pretty cool.
Bill: The Internet? Isn't that some old Department of Defense research project? Why the heck would anybody be interested in that? Haven't you gotten a life yet?
Steve: They sold $70 million worth of advertising on their home page, that everybody using their software more or less has to visit, last year.
Bill: That's what I said. Go out and buy some company that makes similar software so we can have the same thing. Then give the software away so everyone will want to use it. Then make it an "integral" part of Windows so it's really hard for people to use anything else, so we can have all the advertising revenue.
Yeah, you're right. That Microsoft sure has made it easier for everyone to use computers.
And how exactly will it be bad for consumers if Microsoft has to actually work with developers to come up with the API specification for Windows and actually publish all the details so all developers' software can compete on an equal basis. Are you saying that forcing Microsoft to finally publish the full details of their API to all developers will somehow make PCs harder to use?
This is all very interesting, but it's practical uses are limited by a few factors.
First, the quantum key must be physically transmitted to the receiver. This means that the medium for transmission (in most demonstrations, fiber optics) must be in place between the communicating parties and both parties must have the equipment to detect the value of the key. This equipment must be capable of detecting the polarization of single photons. Not exactly the type of stuff people have just lying around.
Second, there can be no amplification of the signal transmitting the key. Amplification of the signal is equivalent to someone eavesdropping on the key. The usefulness of the key would be destroyed. So forget about using this over normal phone lines or the Internet.
Third, the longer the transmission distance the greater the likeliness of errors in the key. Quantum encryption keys have been successfully transmitted approximately 20 kilometer through fiber optics and 500 meters through the atmosphere, but with about a 2% to 3% error rate. This will probably be acceptable for text messages, but may not be for data streams unless multiple redundent copies of the data or sent, or other error correction techniques are used (adding length to the data transmission). This will work well going from say the White House to the Pentagon, but unless all your secret friends live within 20 kilometers...
Fourth, if transmission speed is a factor for you, quantum encryption poses several problems. Only about 25% of the transmitted quantum key bits will be successfully detected (due to the 4 possible quantum states the photons can be in). This means to have a successful one-time-pad you must generate a key 4 times longer than the message you want to encrypt. Then the receiver has to confirm a sample of the key with the sender to ensure that the key has not been intercepted. Then you can transmit your message with about a 2% error rate.
So this is cool technology, but will really only be useful for military purposes or extremely sensitive corporate secrets.
Uh, forgive me for being idealistic, but not all mp3z are illegal rip-offs. I would assume that the use for this device would be so that people who legitimately own the CDs could create MP3z from them to play in their cars. Beats the heck out of opening the trunk to replace six or twenty or whatever CDs in the changer.
Your attempt to draw a distinction between source and binary is interesting and on the surface would seem to be valid, but it takes us down some interesting paths:
1. What about programs written in interpreted rather than compiled languages (for example, BASIC, PERL, or - most notably in the virus field - Visual Basic for Applications, the macro language of Micro$oft's applications). Should these be protected free speach?
2. Compiling is in essence just a way of translating or "encoding" the source code. Compiled binaries can (with some effort) be translated back into the original algorithms. If it is compiling that would turn free speach source code into something not free speach, what about encrypting the source code? What about compressing it into a zip archive? It is possible to draw distinctions between these methods of encoding, but the further you go down this path the greyer the boundries get.
3. Along the same lines as item two above, if it is translating the source code into something a machine can understand better than a human that allows us to draw the distinction between free speach and other things what about TDD services where a human calls a machine that then translates the human's speach into something a machine can understand so that that machine can then display charaters to the hearing impared person on the other end of the line? Does what would otherwise be free speach become something else during its translation into that machine?
Actually, now it seems to be "sell the problem and it'll go away". See this article. Mattel is trying to sell The Learning Company, producer of CyberPatrol.
Let's hope that whoever buys The Learning Company has a better understanding of the value of opening the blocked sites list than Mattel did. Anybody know if the CPHack settlement was with Mattel or The Learning Company (or both)? I wonder if the terms of the settlement will pass to the company buying The Learning Company.
Actually, I did read both the article and what you wrote. I also did a bit of further research myself. The only time Podkletnov published a paper in a scientific journal was in 1992 when he wrote a brief technical article describing the effect he was seeing in some preliminary experiments. No one has been able to successfully duplicate these results.
The article reference by others in this thread was not actually published, it was submitted to the Journal of Physics, reportedly accepted for publication, but withdrawn before publication by Podkletnov. I will not speculate as to the reasons, but again in numerous attempts, including some by NASA researchers working on novel propulsion systems, no one has successfully duplicated any of his results.
Torr and Li may have been delighted to see their
theoretical
work appear to be vaildated, but this was not duplication of any earlier experiments.
Care to support any of your "cold fusion" claims with published articles, or did you read about that in "Popular Science" too.
"I cannot believe," writes Davies near the end of the book, "that our existence in this universe is a mere quirk of fate...
Aye, there's the rub. I too find many things difficult to believe. It is hard to believe that two clocks placed at different distances from the center of a graviational source will run at different rates. I find it hard to believe that a stream of electrons, one electron wide, aimed at a metal plate with two slits in it will produce an interference pattern on the other side of the plate. Pre-Renaissance Europeans had difficulty believing that the Sun was the center of the Solar system. Yet all of these things are true.
How do I know they are true? Have I seen these things for myself? Well, I have observed the motion of the Sun, Moon, planets and stars through the sky and they seem to strongly support Copernicus' theory. The others I have not observed for myself, but I have read the accounts of many others who have seen these things. I have, of course, also read many religious writings - including the Bible and Qu'ran (or Koran, if you prefer) - where people claim to have observed remarkable effects of God's existance.
The difference is that the scientists have given me experiments that I could (I have faith), given time and funding, duplicate to observe the same results they saw and reproduce those results consistently. No religious scholar that I am familiar with has given us an experiment that anyone with the time and funding could duplicate that would either allow one to observe the existance of God directly or observe effects that could only logically be attributed to the existance of a Supreme Being, at least not reproducably. (Besides, Peyote gives me a terrible hangover).
For example, a recent study of "healing" among cancer suffers at the shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe showed that the rate of "healing" was somewhat lower than the rate of spontanious cancer remissions in the general population (including those who do not pray or do not believe in God). Now, absence of proof is not proof of absence, so I will withhold final judgment. It is certainly conforting to think that death is not the end and that evil doers will be punished for eternity. I still like to follow the advise of that old Russian proverb that Ronald Reagan used to paraphase, "Trust, but verify".
Slashdot Mirror
I believe what was meant was that it uses 10 Watts, which of course would means 10 Joules per second or 36,000 Joules per hour. For those who prefer the old English measures that is roughly 34 1/8 BTU per hour. Or 26,554 foot-pounds per hour. Or 0.0134 horsepower.
Uh, excuse me, but it seems to me that there is a significant difference between "notify the people in your address book of a change of e-mail address" and "notify the people in your address book of a change of e-mail address and include in that message a totally unsoliciated advertisement implying your endorsement of our service and we are not going to let you read this message before we send it out".
Clearly, proof of possession is understandable, but "lawful possession?"
;)
Well, I've always heard that "possession is 9/10ths of the law".
Not only that, but their current name ICSA is deliberately misleading too. They claim now that it is "not an acronym" (Of course it's not an acronym, it's an abbreviation. Acronyms are abbreviations that are pronounced as a word. E.g., FBI - abbreviation; COBOL - acronym. Unless they want it to be pronounced "ick-suh".), but not so long ago it stood for International Computer Security Association. This makes it sound like it is some international organization, like the Information Systems Security Association, only it isn't, wasn't and didn't even try to be. It is a company that wants to sell computer security consulting, evaluation and similar services. Do not mistake it for an standards body made up of experts from around the world, like the IETF. It is just a company, kindof like the Wheel Group (before Cisco bought them), only not as good.
The Common Criteria;its predecesor, the DoD Orange Book; and British Standard 7799 are not actually "security" certifications, per se. What I'm saying is that being "C2" certified does not mean that the system was certified as "secure". It means the system has certain features and functions and that they worked as described when tested.
So, for example, one of the C2 criteria is that user be uniquely identified. Sure enough, any C2 certified system has user identifiers and every process on the system uses one. Does that make the system secure? No, but it helps an administrator secure the system. The certification just means that feature is there.
In fact, by looking at your own logs, you can say, "Well, Yahoo sends 10,000 people a day to my site
Yes, but you can only look at your own logs to see that Yahoo sends you 10,000 people a day after paying them substantial money for what they said should average 20,000 people a day, based on their (or Media Mextrix's) logs.
Furthermore, you should be able to take notes on your PDA while talking on your phone, and I _don't_ want yet another wire/cable/dongle to carry around, or lose, or break, or forget, etc, so don't recommend the "hands-free" solution :)
Well, if you want to risk brain tumors by holding your "small(ish)" cell phone to your ear, by all means, be my guest. Me, I already use an earphone/mic wire to talk on my cell (as do most people I've seen using cell phones in Europe lately). Since I already have to carry around my PDA anyway, why not have the option to plug that earphone/mic wire into my Palm or Handspring or whatever and use it as a phone too?
However, I don't like the idea in this article of shrinking the Palm into a phone (like the Qualcomm pdQ phone). I'd much rather just leave my Palm the size it is and add phone functionality to it (like Handspring).
How about because the "smart ways to do business" that they have come up with is illegal? What is being discussed here is not some "subarticle in some section of some USPO law". It is a basic component of US law that all direct mail marketers should be familiar with.
If some company's "smart ways to do business" are not smart enough to check with their lawyer to make sure that what they are doing is legal, well then it wasn't very smart was it.
And good old Guv'ner George 'Dubya' Bush was the man in charge when the case was thrown out in Texas. Expect similar treatment of consumers ("Let the market decide what's good and bad business practices, not the courts.") when he becomes President.
Looking beyond just they ICE-electric hybrid, we can look at one petroleum replacement, and another one electrical source (other than direct battery storage and recharge). CNG (compressed natural gas) is one since it burns much cleaner than petroleum, and is in limited used in largely application-specific commercial vehicles (like various commercial utility trucks, etc...). Hydrogen fuel cells are a promising technology that will make electric cars much more efficient than charged and discharged batteries. But, both CNG and fuel cells have serious safety issues in their on-board storage in that massive explosions can result in rupture of their tanks (much larger than possible with petroleum-based ones because of the pressure and density of CNG, and the volitity of hydrogen in fuel cells).
Couple of points about this: First, you greatly exagerate the danger of CNG. CNG is used as the primary fuel for automobiles (especially taxis) in Buenos Aires, Argentina and there is no greater risk of blowing up spontaniously, or in a car crash than there is in the US. The main reason that CNG has not been more widely adopted in the US is the lack of infrastructure. It is a classic catch 22. Until there is sufficient demand, no one will build the CNG refueling stations. And until there are abundent refueling stations, no one will buy CNG powered cars. The only reason that CNG has been restricted in the US to commercial and government vehicals is that those entities can also provide refueling stations.
As for hydrogen fuel cells - again the big problem is not that they might blow up (although people certainly have lasting memories, right or wrong, about the Hindenburg and the Challenger). While hydrogen fuel cells can certainly provide power more efficiently once the hydrogen is in the car and they produce no toxic emmissions (again once the hydrogen is in the car), this largely ignores the fact that the vast majority of hydrogen production in the US is from fossil fuels. Hydrogen is a byproduct of the oil refining process. Yes, hydrogen can be produced in other ways, but many of them are also fraught with dangers, toxic byproducts, or expensive infrastructure. For example, would you prefer to have hydrogen produced from sulfuric acid and iron filings, as it was commonly produced in the early days of balooning?
It seems to me that if a phone company can squeeze the functionality of a PDA into their phone then surely a PDA company could put a cell phone in their box. Since most Europeans - rightly or wrongly - fear that their cell phones are going to cause tumors in their brains, and this threat is starting to register in the States now, nobody is holding their cell phone up to their heads anymore anyway. (Stream of Consciousness - I wonder why they don't worry that they'll get tumors in the hands, or - maybe worse - in their hips.)
I'd much rather have the equivalent of a Palm V with the OmniSky wireless Internet thingee attached to it. Add a ear bud/mic set to it and voice functionality and you've got an almost perfect personal assistant.
Did you mean "still compensated hugely for minimal effort?" Life is not fair. There is no guarantee that what made you rich last year will make you rich next year. Consider the poor wheat farmer. Twenty acres can produce enough wheat to feed a whole town for a year; that's a HUGE amount of wealth...in a subsistence economy. But the economy has changed, and now it's barely worth it to farm a single field. The music industry, whether it realizes it or not, has changed. Mass production of music has arrived (near-infinite perfect copies at zero marginal cost) and NOTHING can change that (cue Jon Katz - "Look what we geeks have done to the recording industry!") The question now is who will cling to the old business model until it dies (taking them with it), and who will work to develop new models.
So does this mean that family farmers will have to throw benefits for Willie Nelson?
Aiding and abetting is a crime both in the the real world and online. But this is not a criminal case, it is a civil case. No one has been charged (yet) with either committing a crime or aiding and abetting one.
First, IANAL, but I do know how to read. Title 17 of the United States Code (Copyrights) does not contain a "contributory infringement" clause. The closest you get is Chapter 12, (the DMCA) Section 1201, paragraph (c)(2) which states, "Nothing in this section shall enlarge or diminish vicarious or contributory liability for copyright infringement in connection with any technology, product, service, device, component, or part thereof."
Notice it says both "enlarge" and "diminish". The concept of contributory liability is grounded in common law and has been held in US cases to apply where a person or entity induces, causes or materially contributes to the infringing conduct of another. I don't see how that applies in this situation.
Vicarious liability, the related area of common law mentioned above, is traditionally imposed where the defendant has the right and ability to supervise the infringing activity and has a direct financial interest in such activites. You might argue that these folks have an direct financial interest in the infringing activities, but they have not right or ability to supervise the infriging activity.
Given the above, the case we are discussing here is simply a free speach issue. Can a Web site point people to locations where they can obtain illegally reproduced material? You might not agree with the content of the speach, but then that's free speach for you.
Let me put together a hypothetical that has close parallels to the situation under discussion here and see what you think.
... whatever.
Say a university library has a public bulletin board. (The original, physical kind. Not a BBS.) Students, faculty, and members of the general public are allowed to stick messages of any kind on this bulletin board - for sale signs, tutoring advertisements, requests for rides home, poems,
One day somebody sticks the photocopied pages of an article from the Microsoft Systems Journal onto that bulletin board. Did the person who stuck the photocopy up violate copyright laws? Possibly, perhaps even probably. Does the library then have an obligation to take the photocopy down? If so, why? The library did not make the copy. What has the library done wrong?
Would the scenario be any different if the person had instead just tacked the original pages ripped out of the magazine to the board? Why?
If someone stands outside the window of the Today show on Times Square and holds up a sign with the Microsoft Kerberos specification on it would NBC have any responsibility for the copyright violation? Would they have to erase all tapes of that show (or at least that segment)? What about all the people who recorded that show on the VCRs?
Copyright laws face severe difficulties in this digital age (as we have seen time and time again). I would say it is time to have open debates on this subject in Congress, but given that virtually every member of Congress in the US is beholden to corporate money for helping them get elected I think I could predict where that debate would end up. What to do...
(There's also the little matter of what underlying assets these securities really represent. If they're merely trading instruments, with nothing backing them, then they're simply a form of betting and aren't hedging anything at all. Traditional options actually give the holder an option to purchase or sell a particular asset. Common stocks, while the connection is a bit more tenuous, do represent the ability of the issuing corporation to pay dividends, buy back its own stock, and otherwise benefit the shareholder. For this kind of scheme to work, a pool of doctors would have to pledge some fraction of their future income as ultimate payment on the security. That implies that they expect that income to be less than the price they write the option at. Uh huh.)
You can have securities with no underlying assets. Traditional options are frequently traded this way - for example, selling "naked" calls, which is selling somebody the option to buy from you at some future date a stock that you do not currently own for a fixed price. This may sound like pure betting, but there are sound, well-understood and thoroughly studied ways to make these into true hedges, and not bets.
To give you an example that I am familiar with: Airline profits are very sensitive to the price of jet fuel. When jet fuel prices move up in sync with travel demand airlines can move their ticket prices up and maintain their margins. If jet fuel costs go up when travel demand is low, however, pricing pressure (competition) may not allow the airline to raise its prices. This can cut into the airlines profits.
There are a couple of ways for the airline to hedge this risk that jet fuel prices may not move in sync with the airline business cycle. First, the airline could buy jet fuel futures. This would lock in the future price of jet fuel for them, but if fuel prices go down they get screwed (other airlines buying jet fuel on the spot market can undercut their price). A second route is to use a derivative investment to hedge the risk. One possibility would be to trade in what is known as a "basis" or "index" swap. In this type of deal the airline would agree to pay the counterparty in the deal an amount based on an index that follows its business cycle (something like the Dow Jones Transportation Index); the counterparty agrees to pay the airline an amount based on the jet fuel price index (presumably hedging their transportation costs). In this way, if the price of fuel is up when business is slow, the airline is okay because the basis swap makes up the difference. Likewise, if fuel costs go down when demand for travel is high the airline must make payments to the counterparty, but the airline is still making more money.
There may be no physical assets underlying these trades, but there is a contractual obligation to pay. Yes, your counterparty could go bankrupt and not pay, but then that Fortune 500 company you just invested in could go bankrupt and make your stock worthless. All investment carries some degree of risk, otherwise there would be no point.
Ask ten economists whether the stock markets are overvalued and why and you'll get fifteen answers. Bob Shiller and those who agree with him, such as Harvard's John Campbell, look at the current market valuations versus historical valuations and are flabbergasted. Surely this can only be the result of irrational exuberance. However, ...
Professor Jeremy Siegel of the Wharton School of Business has said of stock market valuation that, "historical yardsticks for valuation have been rendered useless in the past." He believes that investors' understanding of the long-term stability of stocks could explain current valuations.
Abby Cohen of Goldman, Sachs & Co. believes that such factors as our historically high productivity and rising profit margins can justify current valuations.
Alan Greenspan himself did not say that the stock market was overvalued due to "irrational exuberance", but rather he asked, "How do we know when irrational exuberance has unduly escalated asset values?" His answer based on his words and actions recently seems to be: You can't know, except in hindsight.
In my mind, only one thing is certain. If pure psychology could explain the behavior of the stock markets Warren Buffett would be the most famous psychologist ever. He's not.
Actually, Mr. Greenspan first uttered the phrase "irrational exuberance" on December 5, 1996 during a speach at a black-tie banquet at the Washington Hilton. His exact words were "How do we know when irrational exuberance has unduly escalated asset values? And how do we factor that assessment into monetary policy?"
Note he did not say that there was irrational exuberance in the market, nor that irrational exuberance was the cause for the markets' long run up. But he did imply that and within minutes of his speach the Tokyo stock market began to fall.
Excuse me? "Microsoft practically single-handedly" did what?
Let's review actual history for a moment and see how Microsoft "single-handedly" made computers easy to use.
Apple introduces the Lisa "borrowing" some great user interface ideas from Xerox's Palo Alto Research Center...
Steve Balmer: Hey, Bill. Have you seen those new machines that Apple is selling. People seem to think that they're pretty cool.
Bill: So what?
Steve: No, I mean I think they're really going to sell a lot of them.
Bill: Oh! Why didn't your say so. Let's get into Apple so we can understand just what they're doing. Then let's license a lot of their stuff so we can make our own version without them suing us.
A few years later - Intuit creates "electronic checkbook" software called Quicken...
Steve: Hey, Bill. Have you seen that new "electronic checkbook" stuff. Pretty cool.
Bill: Get a life. Nobody would ever want to balance their checkbook on a computer.
Steve: Well, they sold $50 million worth last year.
Bill: That's what I said. Go out and buy some company that makes similar software so we can have the same thing.
A few years later - Netscape makes the Web easy to access for millions of people.
Steve: Hey, Bill. Have you seen that Netscape thing for accessing the Internet. Pretty cool.
Bill: The Internet? Isn't that some old Department of Defense research project? Why the heck would anybody be interested in that? Haven't you gotten a life yet?
Steve: They sold $70 million worth of advertising on their home page, that everybody using their software more or less has to visit, last year.
Bill: That's what I said. Go out and buy some company that makes similar software so we can have the same thing. Then give the software away so everyone will want to use it. Then make it an "integral" part of Windows so it's really hard for people to use anything else, so we can have all the advertising revenue.
Yeah, you're right. That Microsoft sure has made it easier for everyone to use computers.
And how exactly will it be bad for consumers if Microsoft has to actually work with developers to come up with the API specification for Windows and actually publish all the details so all developers' software can compete on an equal basis. Are you saying that forcing Microsoft to finally publish the full details of their API to all developers will somehow make PCs harder to use?
This is all very interesting, but it's practical uses are limited by a few factors.
First, the quantum key must be physically transmitted to the receiver. This means that the medium for transmission (in most demonstrations, fiber optics) must be in place between the communicating parties and both parties must have the equipment to detect the value of the key. This equipment must be capable of detecting the polarization of single photons. Not exactly the type of stuff people have just lying around.
Second, there can be no amplification of the signal transmitting the key. Amplification of the signal is equivalent to someone eavesdropping on the key. The usefulness of the key would be destroyed. So forget about using this over normal phone lines or the Internet.
Third, the longer the transmission distance the greater the likeliness of errors in the key. Quantum encryption keys have been successfully transmitted approximately 20 kilometer through fiber optics and 500 meters through the atmosphere, but with about a 2% to 3% error rate. This will probably be acceptable for text messages, but may not be for data streams unless multiple redundent copies of the data or sent, or other error correction techniques are used (adding length to the data transmission). This will work well going from say the White House to the Pentagon, but unless all your secret friends live within 20 kilometers...
Fourth, if transmission speed is a factor for you, quantum encryption poses several problems. Only about 25% of the transmitted quantum key bits will be successfully detected (due to the 4 possible quantum states the photons can be in). This means to have a successful one-time-pad you must generate a key 4 times longer than the message you want to encrypt. Then the receiver has to confirm a sample of the key with the sender to ensure that the key has not been intercepted. Then you can transmit your message with about a 2% error rate.
So this is cool technology, but will really only be useful for military purposes or extremely sensitive corporate secrets.
Uh, forgive me for being idealistic, but not all mp3z are illegal rip-offs. I would assume that the use for this device would be so that people who legitimately own the CDs could create MP3z from them to play in their cars. Beats the heck out of opening the trunk to replace six or twenty or whatever CDs in the changer.
Your attempt to draw a distinction between source and binary is interesting and on the surface would seem to be valid, but it takes us down some interesting paths:
1. What about programs written in interpreted rather than compiled languages (for example, BASIC, PERL, or - most notably in the virus field - Visual Basic for Applications, the macro language of Micro$oft's applications). Should these be protected free speach?
2. Compiling is in essence just a way of translating or "encoding" the source code. Compiled binaries can (with some effort) be translated back into the original algorithms. If it is compiling that would turn free speach source code into something not free speach, what about encrypting the source code? What about compressing it into a zip archive? It is possible to draw distinctions between these methods of encoding, but the further you go down this path the greyer the boundries get.
3. Along the same lines as item two above, if it is translating the source code into something a machine can understand better than a human that allows us to draw the distinction between free speach and other things what about TDD services where a human calls a machine that then translates the human's speach into something a machine can understand so that that machine can then display charaters to the hearing impared person on the other end of the line? Does what would otherwise be free speach become something else during its translation into that machine?
Just some things to think about.
Mark
Actually, now it seems to be "sell the problem and it'll go away". See this article. Mattel is trying to sell The Learning Company, producer of CyberPatrol.
Let's hope that whoever buys The Learning Company has a better understanding of the value of opening the blocked sites list than Mattel did. Anybody know if the CPHack settlement was with Mattel or The Learning Company (or both)? I wonder if the terms of the settlement will pass to the company buying The Learning Company.
The article reference by others in this thread was not actually published, it was submitted to the Journal of Physics, reportedly accepted for publication, but withdrawn before publication by Podkletnov. I will not speculate as to the reasons, but again in numerous attempts, including some by NASA researchers working on novel propulsion systems, no one has successfully duplicated any of his results.
Torr and Li may have been delighted to see their
- theoretical
work appear to be vaildated, but this was not duplication of any earlier experiments.Care to support any of your "cold fusion" claims with published articles, or did you read about that in "Popular Science" too.
Cheers
"I cannot believe," writes Davies near the end of the book, "that our existence in this universe is a mere quirk of fate ...
Aye, there's the rub. I too find many things difficult to believe. It is hard to believe that two clocks placed at different distances from the center of a graviational source will run at different rates. I find it hard to believe that a stream of electrons, one electron wide, aimed at a metal plate with two slits in it will produce an interference pattern on the other side of the plate. Pre-Renaissance Europeans had difficulty believing that the Sun was the center of the Solar system. Yet all of these things are true.
How do I know they are true? Have I seen these things for myself? Well, I have observed the motion of the Sun, Moon, planets and stars through the sky and they seem to strongly support Copernicus' theory. The others I have not observed for myself, but I have read the accounts of many others who have seen these things. I have, of course, also read many religious writings - including the Bible and Qu'ran (or Koran, if you prefer) - where people claim to have observed remarkable effects of God's existance.
The difference is that the scientists have given me experiments that I could (I have faith), given time and funding, duplicate to observe the same results they saw and reproduce those results consistently. No religious scholar that I am familiar with has given us an experiment that anyone with the time and funding could duplicate that would either allow one to observe the existance of God directly or observe effects that could only logically be attributed to the existance of a Supreme Being, at least not reproducably. (Besides, Peyote gives me a terrible hangover).
For example, a recent study of "healing" among cancer suffers at the shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe showed that the rate of "healing" was somewhat lower than the rate of spontanious cancer remissions in the general population (including those who do not pray or do not believe in God). Now, absence of proof is not proof of absence, so I will withhold final judgment. It is certainly conforting to think that death is not the end and that evil doers will be punished for eternity. I still like to follow the advise of that old Russian proverb that Ronald Reagan used to paraphase, "Trust, but verify".