Florida judge approves class-action lawsuit against AOL Humor/Amusing6/26/2000; 8:35:59 AM "A Florida judge has approved a class-action, multimillion-dollar lawsuit against the world's largest Internet service provider, America Online, on behalf of hourly subscribers who viewed so-called "pop-up" advertisements."This is too funny. Both sides are nuts. According to the article, AOL does let you shut the pop-ups off, but turns them on again after a while (strange). Meanwhile, the plaintiff seeks a solution of bundling all the pop-ups at once at the end of the session... not realizing that it will still cost the user the time to download, because they don't understand how modems work.Specifically, the modem takes time to download those advertisements no matter when you view them. Even if you store them for off-line viewing (assuming you'd look at them at all), your modem still had to download them at a maximum speed of five kilobytes per second.What a world, what a world...

NYT Site Exposes CIA Agents Political Speech6/26/2000; 7:48:04 AM "A freedom of information activist plans to publish online a classified CIA document that was pulled from The New York Times' site after newspaper officials learned it exposed the identities of Iranians involved in the 1953 U.S. and British-backed coup that overthrew Iran's elected officials. "The Times used the graphic to accompany an article detailing the coup. In a technical glitch, those who visited the Times website on June 16 were able to read the names of the agents when they downloaded the graphic. ...I've read this story since last weekend. What made me finally post it here was the quote on the end of this Wired article: (This was in three lines, I've put it all in one)'Young said Friday that he'll post a text version of the complete document this weekend. He said he is not putting the lives of agents in danger, but is trying to help them. "It is more dangerous to withhold the document," Young said Friday. "It's important that those who were threatened by the leak know it is out there."'What an arrogant jackass! If he's so interested in making sure the people mentioned know that their name may have been leaked, why doesn't he seek them out and contact them directly? We're not dealing with script kiddies getting a hold of some secret information and hacking a few computers before the exploit is blocked, we're possible talking assasains killing or torturing these people or their family and friends long before ever finding out they've been compromised.That said, the cat's out of the bag (others have seen the names, not just Young) and I hope whoever is responsible for these people (State Department? CIA?) has gone out of their way to notify them of the danger. Still, simple cost/benefit analysis says to keep the names secret... the American public isn't really interested in the names anyhow, just the rest of the document (inasmuch as we're even interested in that).

Interview with the CEO of Election.com
Political Speech
6/26/2000; 7:35:51 AM A Salon interview with the CEO of Election.com, mostly about how it is kept secure and why he thinks it's fair.

The Tangled Web of E-Voting Polical Speech6/26/2000; 7:33:50 AM This is one of the fullest news articles I've seen in a while about online voting, covering both sides of the issue with a more-or-less even hand, and full of helpful information. For instance, I didn't know that the Alaskan Republican Straw Poll was done by Internet Voting. (35 voters participated, that's probably why we've never heard of it ) Despite the companies assurances, there's a lot of reason to worry about online voting in the future. Said about the Arizona Democratic Primary, '"The image is that it was a successful process," said Election Center director Doug Lewis. "(It was) successful only if you compare it to nothing. If you compare it to any official election held in the country, it would have been labeled a disaster."' Nice quote!Internet voting is an importent step to take in empowering everybody to vote, but it does need to be taken slowly, even despite the companies that want to make a buck off of it. Perhaps even because companies want to make a buck off of it."It is not a good idea for governments to outsource the most basic element of democracy," said [David] Jefferson. "Governments should conduct elections."

British Telecom Patent: Lachey, Uninfringed, and Invalid? Patents6/24/2000; 4:35:08 PM This article said everything I was trying to say about the British Telecom (BT) patent. It's nice to see lawyers backing up my understanding on this issue.

So after having to narrowly interpret these means-plus-function claims, is there anyone infringing in its entirety whatever is left to be claimed? And if there is anything left to be claimed after the claims analysis, is what is left novel and unobvious in light of prior art not disclosed to the PTO? In short, is what is left a valid patent? In particular, is the concept of blocks of texts with pointers to other blocks of texts and with formatting information for the texts, are these techniques novel and unobvious?Most likely, NO.
Move along, theres' nothing to see here.

Happiness is your past haunting you... Personal Notes6/23/2000; 1:06:57 PM I'm geeked today... I went home last week and finally found a particular floppy from 1994 that I backed up a lot of my early MOD music onto. I've got it all lined up at work here.I had a sick sense of harmony back then. Isn't it odd to look at your work from 6-8 years ago? I often hear people talk about it doesn't even seem like theirs. Oddly, I still feel like I wrote it. Pretty cool, though. I thought it was lost.

Icon Explanation Technology & Sociology6/23/2000; 12:58:19 PM I wanted to explain the icon I've chosen for the Technology & Sociology section. One of my sub-hobbies is the study of the interplay of technology and social effects. It's something that I wish more policy makers were aware of.The cannon is one of the canonical examples of a piece of technology that completely overthrows previous social structures. I'm simplifying wildly here, but cannons cause the overthrow of kings. The feudal structure assumes a strongly defensive system of war (amoung other assumptions). It assumes that fortifications (castles) can be built that cannot be penetrated without massive loss of resources by the enemy. This is why you must lay siege to a castle, and run them out of supplies before you can take the castle.The cannon changed that. With the cannon, one could tear apart a castle before those inside had a chance to retaliate, and from a distance that made it impossible to reliably counter-attack without leaving the protection of the castle. Suddenly, wars turned into battles of offense, and the castles ceased to be invincible fortresses. This meant that the castles were no longer the central authority they once were. Though the castles would still be important, and forts would still be built, the erosion of the power of the castle owners was inevitable, which meant a change away from feudalism.While the cannon doesn't represent much to us on the Internet, technology and sociology still intertwine in surprising and unpredictable ways, esp. now that we are able to customize technology to the effects we want to achieve, for example with privacy.

What Larry Doesn't Get
Technology & Sociology
6/23/2000; 12:28:23 PM This [lengthy] article provides a good overview of the history of privacy and technology, in a challenge to Lessig's statement that "Code is law." It's worth a read. I place it under Technology & Sociology because it's more interesting as a discussion on the interplay between code and privacy then strictly as an argument against Lessig's statement.

Court Says Anti-Smut Law Illegal Censorship6/23/2000; 8:23:12 AM 'A federal anti-smut law violates Internet free-speech rights, an appeals court ruled on Thursday.... "To avoid liability under COPA, affected Web publishers would either need to severely censor their publications or implement an age or credit card verification system whereby any material that might be deemed harmful by the most puritan of communities in any state is shielded behind such a verification system," a three-judge panel wrote in its decision.'The anti-smut law in question is the Child Online Protection Act (COPA), another good-natured attempt to make the Internet safe for children. Unfortunately, it does indeed require that the internet be utterly safe for children by absolutely everyone's standards, including "the most puritan of communities", which kind of leaves even this site in danger of being in violation.It would also put a strong burden on smaller sites, as only the larger ones have the resources to pay for a age-verification service. I'm glad to see it shut down. Perhaps before we worry about making cyberspace 100% safe at all times, we could worry about making the real world 100% safe at all times. (What, that's impossible you say? What a coincidence, I was just about to say something similar...)