With your hypothetical 18-key keyboard, there actually would be a way to label the keys.
On each key you would have 18 symbols drawn in a very tiny font. The position of the symbol determines which other key to press to get that symbol. For example, on the top left key you would have the following picture: |-----------| |-bc def ghi| |jkl mno pqr| |stu vwx yzA| |-----------|
With this configuration, you would type a "b" by holding the top left key and the key in the number 2 position of the top row. I know it's a little small but I think its doable hypothetically.
de Grey heads the Methuselah Foundation that awards prize money scientists who achieve certain benchmarks in the extension of life in mice. The foundation is supported by private donations. You can become a sponsor of the prize by donating to the M-Prize.
A growing number of organizations and scientists know that the control of aging is foreseeable and desirable. It is no longer a question of if but when true medical interventions for aging will be developed. These people are pioneers in more ways than one: more than a few hardy visionaries have decided to become members of the Foundation as donors and by joining The Three Hundred. We share a common vision for the future - a world in which aging has been defeated and the years ahead become open ended.
"...it's possible that we could change a human gene and double our life span." Cynthia Kenyon Ph.D. ref
Cash Prize Total: $122,129
Cash and Pledges: $855,687
On the Three Hundred:
Much like The Three Hundred Greek warriors of Sparta, who bought the armies of Greece precious time at Thermopylae, this is a special group committed to defending the human race from a more ancient enemy... the suffering and misery of the aging process.
The Methuselah Foundation is a non-profit 501(c)(3) registered organization. We are a group of dedicated professional and non-professional VOLUNTEERS who believe that the control of aging is forseeable preserving health and wisdom in a world that sorely needs it. There are NO salaries paid and no money given in compensation for the many hours invested in spreading this message. It is a labor of love. Below find a list of just a few of the individuals who have worked tirelessly in building the bedrock from which the Foundation arises to become the first organization of its kind in the world.
Cover, keyboard, case, and system stank
on
New Treo Reviewed
·
· Score: 1
The flimsy case is the tip of the iceberg. The fliptop lids on Treo 300s or 270s always break off. When you flip shut the lid, it depresses a couple keypad keys (the "q" and the "p") and enters those letters into whatever application you were running. Also, several aspects of the current models, if not fixed, would make this new model inexcusably flawed, and the article doesn't really shed light on those problems:
1. The tiny keypad buttons are used to dial phone numbers. But, there are no tactile indicators to differentiate the number keys from the other keys. That means you can't feel around for something like the little bumps that you have on a qwerty keyboard on the "f" and "j" home keys in order to dial without looking. The picture of the new 600 indiciates this has not been fixed.
2. The keypad and backlight don't light up without closing and opening or turning on the phone. If you are on a call, and the backlight times off (which happens after about 10 seconds), you can't see the screen or use the keypad in the dark. This means if it is dark, you can't make a call that requires the pressing of any buttons, such as a call to check your voicemail, unless you have memorized exactly where the featureless keys are that double as phone number keys. Also, you can't look stuff up.
3. Unlike the Kyocera SmartPhone, the PDA function and the phone function do not share phone number data, except through an incredibly klunky speed dial application (contrary to the reviewer's baseless hype). That means there is a great waste of energy after syncing with your palm or outlook contacts database, since you have to manually copy and paste phone numbers with your stylus and the keypad in a maneuver that always requires both hands.
4. The Treo's speed dial application has to be loaded by pushing a button with your left hand, and then you use the stylus on the screen or you have to use a jog dial that is imprecise and requires you to be looking at your phone. Thus speed-dialing usually requires two steps, it requires two hands, and you need to be looking at the phone. A traditional cell phone lets you speed dial by holding a number key or thumb dialing a two-digit number and pressing enter with the same hand and no need to look.
5. The SIM card in the GMS model has a phonebook that does not merge with the PDA phone book, so when you move from a traditional SIM card phone, you don't get to transfer your numbers over to your palm contact system.
6. The web browser is garbage in so many ways that I can barely start. Let me just mention that you have to use both the keyboard and the stylus to use it. Entering URLs always requires two hands. It takes 60 seconds to start up and "connect". The phone function dumps you out irretrievably, erasing your session.
7. The desktop app requires a two-key combo to activate (unless you replace a quickstart button function with the desktop app).
8. Nobody can hear me speaking into the off-center mouthpiece if I hold the phone on the wrong side of my face.
9. The speaker phone annoys people with whom I am speaking; they can always tell when I use it.
Some of these problems seem to me just accidents that could easily be fixed, yet they have propagated through several models. Others require real engineering. Either way, unless these and other problems are fixed, the handspring treo phones are a serious disappointment. I wish Kyocera Smartphones were made for T-Mobile.
I've been getting emails from a friend at Globix, the giant internet exchange in southern Manhattan. Here is the latest news:
Globix is located on Centre Street south of Canal Street. Businesses south of Canal have been asked to evacuate. The dust from the WTC collapse has forced buildings to shut down their air conditioning. Only a few large computer operations can operate without normal air conditioning, but major exchanges, like the AT&T telephone building and Globix, have backup cooling systems that should hopefully operate in these conditions.
Globix engineers are taking care of major service problems and trying to prevent potential major problems so they can leave as soon as possible.
Globix is hooked into the 3 largest backbones that pass through the region, and at least one must still be operating. Email messages originating from Globix are making their way out, but messages sent to Globix are not coming in.
A telephone call to (212-334-xxxx) from NJ (856-672-xxxx) got through, but no calls to the 718 area code are working. I just received a call from a 212 phone as well.
My friend at Globix was walking to a class at Sun Microsystems at the World Trade Center when the first plane hit. His view of the collision was obscured, and he was not injured. He commented:
> I ran down to the woolworth building and stood
> looking in shock at the North tower, the smoke
> billowing out of it and the thousands of papers
> fluttering down against the blue sky. Suddenly
> I saw something hurtling down the side of the
> building. It was a man, limbs, tie and suitcoat
> flailing. several more followed. I turned and
> slowly walked back towars the sunny, newly
> renovated park in front of city hall.
>
> I heard the second explosion hit, and people
> began screaming and running past me.
>
> As I sit here at my comfortable nest of a
> workspace, my skin crawls, and I feel sick to
> my stomach. I have read about events this bad
> or worse a hundred times in the novels my
> father derisively terms storybooks, but the
> reality is completely incomparable. Perhaps he
> had a point.
>
Another friend of mine was in the 70th floor of the second building to get hit, and he made it out alive. I don't yet have the details on that.
Transportation update (from a Brooklyn friend):
Subway lines are running off and on, and bridges and tunnels are closed to cars. The W line was still bringing people into Manhattan at 9:30, but that has ceased. The N/R is now running above 14th Street. Pedestrian traffic is allowed on the Brooklyn Bridge and the Manhattan Bridge. People in suits have been streaming over these bridges into Brooklyn all morning.
Historical Note:
Today, September 11, is the 28th anniversary of the CIA-led coup that overthrew the democratically elected government headed by Allende in Chile. Why is this relevant? I feel an immense amount of anger towards the people who caused this, and I think the people who caused this are the murderers sitting in Washington D.C. who direct U.S. foreign policy. They recklessly inspire anti-U.S. sentiment in every other country in this world. We ruthlessly bombed civilian targets in Yugoslavia (including water purification sites); we starve the children of Iraq; we blockade Cuba for no good reason; we topple democratically elected socialist governments in order to install pro-U.S. dictatorships. My anger does not direct itself solely towards the government officials who have perpetrated these crimes. I am furious at the millions of Americans who voted for George W. Bush. They are responsible for putting into power a person who is walking all over international agreements about global warming and arms control. And anybody who sits by and pays taxes and watches our imperialistic military and State Department do its dirty work has to take some responsibility for these murders. WAKE UP AMERICA: THIS IS YOUR FAULT. No missile defense shield will protect us from the hate that is justifiably spawned worldwide by our pro-corporate foreign policy.
Experience of an anarchist:
When the mail carrier knocked on my door this morning, I was worried that I was about to be taken in by the FBI. If you know what I've been through, you would not think this was a paranoid reaction. There will be a witchhunt following these events, and the U.S. government will probably use it as an excuse to harass activists. Right now the joint anti-terrorism task forces around the country spend most of their money tracking and harassing the anti-corporate activists who have been targeting world financial summits. A good chunk is also spent on the Earth Liberation Front and the Animal Liberation Front, neither of which actually have any members; they are just slogans that autonomous cells apply to their acts of vandalism. Today's events show yet again that money spent on national security does not in fact serve national security, but rather serves the insidious ends of the people controlling this country. Expect there to be calls for more money to fund politically motivated witchhunts against the Left. Expect calls for outlawing consumer use of encryption.
Finally:
Eben Moglen, Columbia University Law Professor and general counsel of the FSF once said about the inevitable rise of encrypted communications:
I don't doubt that there will be downsides. You should accept the truth that harms will be caused, as harms are caused by free speech all the time. But don't let yourself be panicked about this. The world of the twenty-first century will be more free, and will continue to be, as the spooks often say, "a tough neighborhood." Indeed, some bombs will go off; there will be, in Stewart Baker's signature phrase, "some mangled, burnt bodies." You will notice that there are already. But fewer of them will be in Iraqi prisons; none of them will ever again be in a gulag or Lager maintained by a KGB or SS state with a tap on every telephone. And of that you should be very proud, because it is we who will have made it possible.
I've been getting emails from a friend at Globix, the giant internet exchange in southern Manhattan. Here is the latest news:
Globix is located on Centre Street south of Canal Street. Businesses south of Canal have been asked to evacuate. The dust from the WTC collapse has forced buildings to shut down their air conditioning. Only a few large computer operations can operate without normal air conditioning, but major exchanges, like the AT&T telephone building and Globix, have backup cooling systems that should hopefully operate in these conditions.
Globix engineers are taking care of major service problems and trying to prevent potential major problems so they can leave as soon as possible.
Globix is hooked into the 3 largest backbones that pass through the region, and at least one must still be operating. Email messages originating from Globix are making their way out, but messages sent to Globix are not coming in.
A telephone call to (212-334-xxxx) from NJ (856-672-xxxx) got through, but no calls to the 718 area code are working. I just received a call from a 212 phone as well.
My friend at Globix was walking to a class at Sun Microsystems at the World Trade Center when the first plane hit. His view of the collision was obscured, and he was not injured. He commented:
> I ran down to the woolworth building and stood
> looking in shock at the North tower, the smoke
> billowing out of it and the thousands of papers
> fluttering down against the blue sky. Suddenly
> I saw something hurtling down the side of the
> building. It was a man, limbs, tie and suitcoat
> flailing. several more followed. I turned and
> slowly walked back towars the sunny, newly
> renovated park in front of city hall.
>
> I heard the second explosion hit, and people
> began screaming and running past me.
>
> As I sit here at my comfortable nest of a
> workspace, my skin crawls, and I feel sick to
> my stomach. I have read about events this bad
> or worse a hundred times in the novels my
> father derisively terms storybooks, but the
> reality is completely incomparable. Perhaps he
> had a point.
>
Another friend of mine was in the 70th floor of the second building to get hit, and he made it out alive. I don't yet have the details on that.
Transportation update (from a Brooklyn friend):
Subway lines are running off and on, and bridges and tunnels are closed to cars. The W line was still bringing people into Manhattan at 9:30, but that has ceased. The N/R is now running above 14th Street. Pedestrian traffic is allowed on the Brooklyn Bridge and the Manhattan Bridge. People in suits have been streaming over these bridges into Brooklyn all morning.
Historical Note:
Today, September 11, is the 28th anniversary of the CIA-led coup that overthrew the democratically elected government headed by Allende in Chile. Why is this relevant? I feel an immense amount of anger towards the people who caused this, and I think the people who caused this are the murderers sitting in Washington D.C. who direct U.S. foreign policy. They recklessly inspire anti-U.S. sentiment in every other country in this world. We ruthlessly bombed civilian targets in Yugoslavia (including water purification sites); we starve the children of Iraq; we blockade Cuba for no good reason; we topple democratically elected socialist governments in order to install pro-U.S. dictatorships. My anger does not direct itself solely towards the government officials who have perpetrated these crimes. I am furious at the millions of Americans who voted for George W. Bush. They are responsible for putting into power a person who is walking all over international agreements about global warming and arms control. And anybody who sits by and pays taxes and watches our imperialistic military and State Department do its dirty work has to take some responsibility for these murders. WAKE UP AMERICA: THIS IS YOUR FAULT. No missile defense shield will protect us from the hate that is justifiably spawned worldwide by our pro-corporate foreign policy.
Experience of an anarchist:
When the mail carrier knocked on my door this morning, I was worried that I was about to be taken in by the FBI. If you know what I've been through, you would not think this was a paranoid reaction. There will be a witchhunt following these events, and the U.S. government will probably use it as an excuse to harass activists. Right now the joint anti-terrorism task forces around the country spend most of their money tracking and harassing the anti-corporate activists who have been targeting world financial summits. A good chunk is also spent on the Earth Liberation Front and the Animal Liberation Front, neither of which actually have any members; they are just slogans that autonomous cells apply to their acts of vandalism. Today's events show yet again that money spent on national security does not in fact serve national security, but rather serves the insidious ends of the people controlling this country. Expect there to be calls for more money to fund politically motivated witchhunts against the Left. Expect calls for outlawing consumer use of encryption.
Finally:
Eben Moglen, Columbia University Law Professor and general counsel of the FSF once said about the inevitable rise of encrypted communications:
I don't doubt that there will be downsides. You should accept the truth that harms will be caused, as harms are caused by free speech all the time. But don't let yourself be panicked about this. The world of the twenty-first century will be more free, and will continue to be, as the spooks often say, "a tough neighborhood." Indeed, some bombs will go off; there will be, in Stewart Baker's signature phrase, "some mangled, burnt bodies." You will notice that there are already. But fewer of them will be in Iraqi prisons; none of them will ever again be in a gulag or Lager maintained by a KGB or SS state with a tap on every telephone. And of that you should be very proud, because it is we who will have made it possible.
The primary reason for the assignation of the copyright is 17 U.S.C. 205e, of the United States copyright law!!!
This law says that if a company tries to coopt GPL software by buying exclusive rights from the authors, the GPL can be destroyed unless there was a WRITTEN INSTRUMENT SIGNED BY THE OWNER of the rights to the software transferring non-exclusive ownership to someone like the FSF.
If it weren't for this law, and a programmer's failure to follow the suggestion of the FSF, the hack of Cyber Patrol could have been an opportunity to test the perpetual freeness open source software.
The Cyber Patrol Case:
Some people reverse engineered Cyber Patrol and found out the access code for disabling the program. Reverse engineering is a violation of US copyright law, so Mattel (owner of C.P.) sued.
The two people who worked together on the hack, Matt and Eddy, settled the lawsuit with Mattel, and granted to Mattel all rights to the software and the accompanying essay.
After that, someone noticed (and told slashdot) that the source code of the hack contained the following line in a header file: "CPHack v0.1.0 by Eddy L O Jansson / Released under the GPL". After the GPL line was discovered, people wondered: Maybe the programmers couldn't sign over all of the rights to Mattel, because they had granted non-exclusive licenses to everyone who already downloaded the source code. That is, if it is released under the GPL, nobody should be able to take it out of the public domain. This proposition is something the Open Source movement has been waiting to test in the courts once and for all.
Unfortunately, there are a few things that made this a very bad test case for the GPL. In fact, there is no chance that this will be a test case. 17 U.S.C. 205e, of the United States copyright law states that the transfer of exclusive rights to someone includes the elimination of all nonexclusive rights (such as GPL rights) that may have been given to other people, UNLESS there is "a written instrument signed by the owner of the rights licensed" proving there was a transfer of nonexclusive rights. Matt and Eddy never signed over non-exclusive copyrights to the FSF in a "written instrument," so the opensource-ness of the code could be destroyed by Mattel. That is, the programmers' transfer of all rights to Mattel included the elimination of the nonexclusive rights that the public had already been granted by the line in the source code. As Professor Moglen stated in a Wired article: "This is one of the reasons why the Free Software Foundation strongly urges authors of free software to assign their rights to FSF. It does them no harm and it provides us with precisely the signed instrument."
The other reason this would have been a bad test case was Eddy's own explanation of his intention that he posted to slashdot:
I had finished the software and thought'd I'd write something in the header expressing my intentions as to it's use, distribution and so forth, and so I entered simply 'Released under the GPL'. Now, I made a mental note about speaking to Matthew, that maybe we should release the whole thing under the GPL. For one thing, part of the code was simply my translation of his c-code, so I had to ask him about it, right? Guess what? I forgot. It really didn't hit me until it made conversation on Slashdot, and now I'm not sure what, if anything, I can do about it. All I ever wanted was for people to use the (admittedly crappy) software in any way they saw fit, never having to wonder (or ask) if it was okay by me. As far as I'm concerned, the string weren't [sic] meant to be in the distribution, and Mattel got my rights to it.
I did not put any GPL notices on the portions of the package that I wrote, I did not intend my work to be GPL, and I did not lie to the plaintiffs about what rights I owned or could assign to them.
Thus it seems the GPL assigment was accidental and incomplete. If the GPL assignment had been intended, though, there might have been an interesting loophole in the copyright law that allows for a solid release into the public domain, even without the signed instrument. According to a quote by Moglen in that Wired article, "New works made pursuant to the license at the time before Mattel [acquired rights to cphack] present Mattel with other difficulties." That is, if you altered and released a modified version under the GPL before you knew that Mattel had the rights to the program, you might have subverted Mattel's attempt to fully suppress the program, because you would have been a co-owner of rights to the new program, and you would have held onto what Matt and Eddy tried to extinguish.
The moral of the story: always obtain a written signed instrument that assigns non-exclusive rights to somebody other than the author, so the software remains open source forever.
Slashdot Mirror
With your hypothetical 18-key keyboard, there actually would be a way to label the keys.
On each key you would have 18 symbols drawn in a very tiny font. The position of the symbol determines which other key to press to get that symbol. For example, on the top left key you would have the following picture:
|-----------|
|-bc def ghi|
|jkl mno pqr|
|stu vwx yzA|
|-----------|
With this configuration, you would type a "b" by holding the top left key and the key in the number 2 position of the top row. I know it's a little small but I think its doable hypothetically.
Instead of searching for "there god", try "* there * god". Google is tossing the words, but it is keeping place holders where they were.
From http://www.mprize.org/:
Cash Prize Total: $122,129
Cash and Pledges: $855,687
On the Three Hundred:
The flimsy case is the tip of the iceberg. The fliptop lids on Treo 300s or 270s always break off. When you flip shut the lid, it depresses a couple keypad keys (the "q" and the "p") and enters those letters into whatever application you were running. Also, several aspects of the current models, if not fixed, would make this new model inexcusably flawed, and the article doesn't really shed light on those problems:
1. The tiny keypad buttons are used to dial phone numbers. But, there are no tactile indicators to differentiate the number keys from the other keys. That means you can't feel around for something like the little bumps that you have on a qwerty keyboard on the "f" and "j" home keys in order to dial without looking. The picture of the new 600 indiciates this has not been fixed.
2. The keypad and backlight don't light up without closing and opening or turning on the phone. If you are on a call, and the backlight times off (which happens after about 10 seconds), you can't see the screen or use the keypad in the dark. This means if it is dark, you can't make a call that requires the pressing of any buttons, such as a call to check your voicemail, unless you have memorized exactly where the featureless keys are that double as phone number keys. Also, you can't look stuff up.
3. Unlike the Kyocera SmartPhone, the PDA function and the phone function do not share phone number data, except through an incredibly klunky speed dial application (contrary to the reviewer's baseless hype). That means there is a great waste of energy after syncing with your palm or outlook contacts database, since you have to manually copy and paste phone numbers with your stylus and the keypad in a maneuver that always requires both hands.
4. The Treo's speed dial application has to be loaded by pushing a button with your left hand, and then you use the stylus on the screen or you have to use a jog dial that is imprecise and requires you to be looking at your phone. Thus speed-dialing usually requires two steps, it requires two hands, and you need to be looking at the phone. A traditional cell phone lets you speed dial by holding a number key or thumb dialing a two-digit number and pressing enter with the same hand and no need to look.
5. The SIM card in the GMS model has a phonebook that does not merge with the PDA phone book, so when you move from a traditional SIM card phone, you don't get to transfer your numbers over to your palm contact system.
6. The web browser is garbage in so many ways that I can barely start. Let me just mention that you have to use both the keyboard and the stylus to use it. Entering URLs always requires two hands. It takes 60 seconds to start up and "connect". The phone function dumps you out irretrievably, erasing your session.
7. The desktop app requires a two-key combo to activate (unless you replace a quickstart button function with the desktop app).
8. Nobody can hear me speaking into the off-center mouthpiece if I hold the phone on the wrong side of my face.
9. The speaker phone annoys people with whom I am speaking; they can always tell when I use it.
Some of these problems seem to me just accidents that could easily be fixed, yet they have propagated through several models. Others require real engineering. Either way, unless these and other problems are fixed, the handspring treo phones are a serious disappointment. I wish Kyocera Smartphones were made for T-Mobile.
I've been getting emails from a friend at Globix, the giant internet exchange in southern Manhattan. Here is the latest news:
Globix is located on Centre Street south of Canal Street. Businesses south of Canal have been asked to evacuate. The dust from the WTC collapse has forced buildings to shut down their air conditioning. Only a few large computer operations can operate without normal air conditioning, but major exchanges, like the AT&T telephone building and Globix, have backup cooling systems that should hopefully operate in these conditions.
Globix engineers are taking care of major service problems and trying to prevent potential major problems so they can leave as soon as possible.
Globix is hooked into the 3 largest backbones that pass through the region, and at least one must still be operating. Email messages originating from Globix are making their way out, but messages sent to Globix are not coming in.
A telephone call to (212-334-xxxx) from NJ (856-672-xxxx) got through, but no calls to the 718 area code are working. I just received a call from a 212 phone as well.
My friend at Globix was walking to a class at Sun Microsystems at the World Trade Center when the first plane hit. His view of the collision was obscured, and he was not injured. He commented:
> I ran down to the woolworth building and stood
> looking in shock at the North tower, the smoke
> billowing out of it and the thousands of papers
> fluttering down against the blue sky. Suddenly
> I saw something hurtling down the side of the
> building. It was a man, limbs, tie and suitcoat
> flailing. several more followed. I turned and
> slowly walked back towars the sunny, newly
> renovated park in front of city hall.
>
> I heard the second explosion hit, and people
> began screaming and running past me.
>
> As I sit here at my comfortable nest of a
> workspace, my skin crawls, and I feel sick to
> my stomach. I have read about events this bad
> or worse a hundred times in the novels my
> father derisively terms storybooks, but the
> reality is completely incomparable. Perhaps he
> had a point.
>
Another friend of mine was in the 70th floor of the second building to get hit, and he made it out alive. I don't yet have the details on that.
Transportation update (from a Brooklyn friend):
Subway lines are running off and on, and bridges and tunnels are closed to cars. The W line was still bringing people into Manhattan at 9:30, but that has ceased. The N/R is now running above 14th Street. Pedestrian traffic is allowed on the Brooklyn Bridge and the Manhattan Bridge. People in suits have been streaming over these bridges into Brooklyn all morning.
Historical Note:
Today, September 11, is the 28th anniversary of the CIA-led coup that overthrew the democratically elected government headed by Allende in Chile. Why is this relevant? I feel an immense amount of anger towards the people who caused this, and I think the people who caused this are the murderers sitting in Washington D.C. who direct U.S. foreign policy. They recklessly inspire anti-U.S. sentiment in every other country in this world. We ruthlessly bombed civilian targets in Yugoslavia (including water purification sites); we starve the children of Iraq; we blockade Cuba for no good reason; we topple democratically elected socialist governments in order to install pro-U.S. dictatorships. My anger does not direct itself solely towards the government officials who have perpetrated these crimes. I am furious at the millions of Americans who voted for George W. Bush. They are responsible for putting into power a person who is walking all over international agreements about global warming and arms control. And anybody who sits by and pays taxes and watches our imperialistic military and State Department do its dirty work has to take some responsibility for these murders. WAKE UP AMERICA: THIS IS YOUR FAULT. No missile defense shield will protect us from the hate that is justifiably spawned worldwide by our pro-corporate foreign policy.
Experience of an anarchist:
When the mail carrier knocked on my door this morning, I was worried that I was about to be taken in by the FBI. If you know what I've been through, you would not think this was a paranoid reaction. There will be a witchhunt following these events, and the U.S. government will probably use it as an excuse to harass activists. Right now the joint anti-terrorism task forces around the country spend most of their money tracking and harassing the anti-corporate activists who have been targeting world financial summits. A good chunk is also spent on the Earth Liberation Front and the Animal Liberation Front, neither of which actually have any members; they are just slogans that autonomous cells apply to their acts of vandalism. Today's events show yet again that money spent on national security does not in fact serve national security, but rather serves the insidious ends of the people controlling this country. Expect there to be calls for more money to fund politically motivated witchhunts against the Left. Expect calls for outlawing consumer use of encryption.
Finally:
Eben Moglen, Columbia University Law Professor and general counsel of the FSF once said about the inevitable rise of encrypted communications:
I don't doubt that there will be downsides. You should accept the truth that harms will be caused, as harms are caused by free speech all the time. But don't let yourself be panicked about this. The world of the twenty-first century will be more free, and will continue to be, as the spooks often say, "a tough neighborhood." Indeed, some bombs will go off; there will be, in Stewart Baker's signature phrase, "some mangled, burnt bodies." You will notice that there are already. But fewer of them will be in Iraqi prisons; none of them will ever again be in a gulag or Lager maintained by a KGB or SS state with a tap on every telephone. And of that you should be very proud, because it is we who will have made it possible.
I've been getting emails from a friend at Globix, the giant internet exchange in southern Manhattan. Here is the latest news:
Globix is located on Centre Street south of Canal Street. Businesses south of Canal have been asked to evacuate. The dust from the WTC collapse has forced buildings to shut down their air conditioning. Only a few large computer operations can operate without normal air conditioning, but major exchanges, like the AT&T telephone building and Globix, have backup cooling systems that should hopefully operate in these conditions.
Globix engineers are taking care of major service problems and trying to prevent potential major problems so they can leave as soon as possible.
Globix is hooked into the 3 largest backbones that pass through the region, and at least one must still be operating. Email messages originating from Globix are making their way out, but messages sent to Globix are not coming in.
A telephone call to (212-334-xxxx) from NJ (856-672-xxxx) got through, but no calls to the 718 area code are working. I just received a call from a 212 phone as well.
My friend at Globix was walking to a class at Sun Microsystems at the World Trade Center when the first plane hit. His view of the collision was obscured, and he was not injured. He commented:
> I ran down to the woolworth building and stood
> looking in shock at the North tower, the smoke
> billowing out of it and the thousands of papers
> fluttering down against the blue sky. Suddenly
> I saw something hurtling down the side of the
> building. It was a man, limbs, tie and suitcoat
> flailing. several more followed. I turned and
> slowly walked back towars the sunny, newly
> renovated park in front of city hall.
>
> I heard the second explosion hit, and people
> began screaming and running past me.
>
> As I sit here at my comfortable nest of a
> workspace, my skin crawls, and I feel sick to
> my stomach. I have read about events this bad
> or worse a hundred times in the novels my
> father derisively terms storybooks, but the
> reality is completely incomparable. Perhaps he
> had a point.
>
Another friend of mine was in the 70th floor of the second building to get hit, and he made it out alive. I don't yet have the details on that.
Transportation update (from a Brooklyn friend):
Subway lines are running off and on, and bridges and tunnels are closed to cars. The W line was still bringing people into Manhattan at 9:30, but that has ceased. The N/R is now running above 14th Street. Pedestrian traffic is allowed on the Brooklyn Bridge and the Manhattan Bridge. People in suits have been streaming over these bridges into Brooklyn all morning.
Historical Note:
Today, September 11, is the 28th anniversary of the CIA-led coup that overthrew the democratically elected government headed by Allende in Chile. Why is this relevant? I feel an immense amount of anger towards the people who caused this, and I think the people who caused this are the murderers sitting in Washington D.C. who direct U.S. foreign policy. They recklessly inspire anti-U.S. sentiment in every other country in this world. We ruthlessly bombed civilian targets in Yugoslavia (including water purification sites); we starve the children of Iraq; we blockade Cuba for no good reason; we topple democratically elected socialist governments in order to install pro-U.S. dictatorships. My anger does not direct itself solely towards the government officials who have perpetrated these crimes. I am furious at the millions of Americans who voted for George W. Bush. They are responsible for putting into power a person who is walking all over international agreements about global warming and arms control. And anybody who sits by and pays taxes and watches our imperialistic military and State Department do its dirty work has to take some responsibility for these murders. WAKE UP AMERICA: THIS IS YOUR FAULT. No missile defense shield will protect us from the hate that is justifiably spawned worldwide by our pro-corporate foreign policy.
Experience of an anarchist:
When the mail carrier knocked on my door this morning, I was worried that I was about to be taken in by the FBI. If you know what I've been through, you would not think this was a paranoid reaction. There will be a witchhunt following these events, and the U.S. government will probably use it as an excuse to harass activists. Right now the joint anti-terrorism task forces around the country spend most of their money tracking and harassing the anti-corporate activists who have been targeting world financial summits. A good chunk is also spent on the Earth Liberation Front and the Animal Liberation Front, neither of which actually have any members; they are just slogans that autonomous cells apply to their acts of vandalism. Today's events show yet again that money spent on national security does not in fact serve national security, but rather serves the insidious ends of the people controlling this country. Expect there to be calls for more money to fund politically motivated witchhunts against the Left. Expect calls for outlawing consumer use of encryption.
Finally:
Eben Moglen, Columbia University Law Professor and general counsel of the FSF once said about the inevitable rise of encrypted communications:
I don't doubt that there will be downsides. You should accept the truth that harms will be caused, as harms are caused by free speech all the time. But don't let yourself be panicked about this. The world of the twenty-first century will be more free, and will continue to be, as the spooks often say, "a tough neighborhood." Indeed, some bombs will go off; there will be, in Stewart Baker's signature phrase, "some mangled, burnt bodies." You will notice that there are already. But fewer of them will be in Iraqi prisons; none of them will ever again be in a gulag or Lager maintained by a KGB or SS state with a tap on every telephone. And of that you should be very proud, because it is we who will have made it possible.
This law says that if a company tries to coopt GPL software by buying exclusive rights from the authors, the GPL can be destroyed unless there was a WRITTEN INSTRUMENT SIGNED BY THE OWNER of the rights to the software transferring non-exclusive ownership to someone like the FSF.
If it weren't for this law, and a programmer's failure to follow the suggestion of the FSF, the hack of Cyber Patrol could have been an opportunity to test the perpetual freeness open source software.
The Cyber Patrol Case:
Some people reverse engineered Cyber Patrol and found out the access code for disabling the program. Reverse engineering is a violation of US copyright law, so Mattel (owner of C.P.) sued.
The two people who worked together on the hack, Matt and Eddy, settled the lawsuit with Mattel, and granted to Mattel all rights to the software and the accompanying essay.
After that, someone noticed (and told slashdot) that the source code of the hack contained the following line in a header file: "CPHack v0.1.0 by Eddy L O Jansson / Released under the GPL". After the GPL line was discovered, people wondered: Maybe the programmers couldn't sign over all of the rights to Mattel, because they had granted non-exclusive licenses to everyone who already downloaded the source code. That is, if it is released under the GPL, nobody should be able to take it out of the public domain. This proposition is something the Open Source movement has been waiting to test in the courts once and for all.
Unfortunately, there are a few things that made this a very bad test case for the GPL. In fact, there is no chance that this will be a test case. 17 U.S.C. 205e, of the United States copyright law states that the transfer of exclusive rights to someone includes the elimination of all nonexclusive rights (such as GPL rights) that may have been given to other people, UNLESS there is "a written instrument signed by the owner of the rights licensed" proving there was a transfer of nonexclusive rights. Matt and Eddy never signed over non-exclusive copyrights to the FSF in a "written instrument," so the opensource-ness of the code could be destroyed by Mattel. That is, the programmers' transfer of all rights to Mattel included the elimination of the nonexclusive rights that the public had already been granted by the line in the source code. As Professor Moglen stated in a Wired article: "This is one of the reasons why the Free Software Foundation strongly urges authors of free software to assign their rights to FSF. It does them no harm and it provides us with precisely the signed instrument."
The other reason this would have been a bad test case was Eddy's own explanation of his intention that he posted to slashdot:
Here is Matt's comment from his web page:Thus it seems the GPL assigment was accidental and incomplete. If the GPL assignment had been intended, though, there might have been an interesting loophole in the copyright law that allows for a solid release into the public domain, even without the signed instrument. According to a quote by Moglen in that Wired article, "New works made pursuant to the license at the time before Mattel [acquired rights to cphack] present Mattel with other difficulties." That is, if you altered and released a modified version under the GPL before you knew that Mattel had the rights to the program, you might have subverted Mattel's attempt to fully suppress the program, because you would have been a co-owner of rights to the new program, and you would have held onto what Matt and Eddy tried to extinguish.
The moral of the story: always obtain a written signed instrument that assigns non-exclusive rights to somebody other than the author, so the software remains open source forever.