Oops
Administrative
6/27/2000; 9:04:27 PM I botched the link earlier. The execution discussion David Carter-Tod started is here. It forked, too, and someone posted this message.

U.S.-EU Net Privacy Proposal in Jeopardy
Privacy from Companies
6/27/2000; 9:47:53 AM "A controversial data-privacy protocol hammered out by the Commerce Department and the European Commission earlier this year could get derailed at the last minute by opponents who say it doesn't go far enough to protect European personal privacy from U.S. companies." - referring to the "safe harbor" proposal by the US, wherein the US companies promise to be really good little boys and girls, cross their hearts and hope to die.

Good for you, Europe.

Major Music Labels Sue MP3Board on Copyrights
Music & MP3
6/26/2000; 9:31:18 AM ''Major record labels, including BMG Music, Sony Music Entertainment Inc. and Warner Bros. Records, on Friday sued MP3Board Inc., seeking to prevent its Web site from linking users to "pirated" music on the Internet.''

It's the same old story... linking to something constitutes distributing it. If you want to shut down MP3Board, you need to shut down all the internet search engines, too. They are just as guilty of exactly the same thing.

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.