Friday, June 13, 2003

Press Freedom on the Internet Conference, June 26-28, 2003, New York City. (Mostly at the Bar Association of the City of New York, 42 West 44th St.) 7:34:27 PM    comment []

Bill: You won't plagiarize, because you know that even accidental plagiarism will fail the assignment, and plagiarism that I judge to be malicious will cause a grade of F for the course, all other work notwithstanding. 2:32:19 PM    comment []

Rivals Say Microsoft Flouts Deal: Firms Complain About Charges, Terms of Licensing Program. By Jonathan Krim, Washington Post. Microsoft's implementation of the communications protocol licensing program has been and continues to be fraught with delay and commercially unreasonable terms that prevent a server manufacturer from bringing to market a competitive general purpose server under Microsoft's license, said Lee Patch, corporate counsel for Sun Microsystems, which has a separate civil antitrust suit against Microsoft. Asked by The Washington Post to review the license terms, several software licensing experts said that although the terms often are within the realm of general industry practice, they are aggressive and should be approached with caution. You have to start from the position that there's nothing industry standard about deals with Microsoft, said Mark Ostrau, a Silicon Valley patent lawyer. Typically . . . legal agreements with monopolists have a different bargain balance than deals in a competitive market. Douglas Curry, who helped found Open Channel Software, which assists academic and other institutions license software they develop, said that the initial fees would be prohibitive for small software developers. And at the higher end, Patch of Sun Microsystems said that the royalty rates for his company's most expensive servers could exceed $200,000 per unit. Other firms agree. There is something fundamentally wrong with requiring Novell to pay large sums of money to access information that the court determined Microsoft illegally withheld, said Ryan Richards, a Novell vice president and deputy general counsel. Microsoft breaks the law and Novell pays for the remedy. Mike Pettit, president of ProComp, an industry trade group made up of Microsoft rivals that supported the antitrust case and criticized the settlement, said the Justice Department needs to do more. Sadly, DOJ seems too intimidated by Microsoft to force them to do anything the company finds inconvenient in the least, Pettit said. 1:32:11 PM    comment []

Youth Prefer Texting to Voice Calls. BBC reports the results of a new survey — if you are under 25 in the UK, you probably prefer sending SMS messages over making voice calls. If you are over 55, your preference is reversed. Worldwide, I am sensing generational-specific preferences in regard to the always-on, always-connected lifestyle. (Thanks, Jason!) [Smart Mobs] 11:10:02 AM    comment []

Rural folks need e-rate subsidies. To answer Declan McCullagh's question, yes, we do really need "to spend billions of dollars a year on subsidizing rural America's landlines." As a rural citizen, I can tell you why. [CNET News.com] 9:42:41 AM    comment []

NSA 4. NSA Honors 4 Cryptologists June 13, 2003 [Cryptome] 9:41:43 AM    comment []

Moore collateral effects. While I believe your fundamental point is spot-on, there are some collateral effects of Moore's Law that are less obvious and generally under-reported. [CNET News.com] 9:39:56 AM    comment []

Martin E. Hellman: Moore's Law and Communications. [Hack the Planet] 9:36:19 AM    comment []

Monsanto Pursues Seed Pirates. In a move to recoup lost profits from illicit use of genetically modified soybean seeds in Brazil, the Monsanto Company is demanding that exporters sign licensing agreements and pay royalties. [New York Times: Business] 9:35:19 AM    comment []

Turing Machines aren't as universal as they could be. That's Cory's teaser for a piece by Geoff Cohen. [bOing bOing] 9:34:13 AM    comment []

xian's back! Bass player offenses/fines list. No saw like an old saw: bass player offenses and fines [Radio Free Blogistan] 9:30:21 AM    comment []

Some Kid-Play on the Way to Mars. To humanize planetary exploration, NASA created 'astrobot' Lego mascots and set up blogs to chronicle their adventures on the way to Mars. Kids of all ages are enjoying their ride. By Michelle Delio. [Wired News] 9:24:23 AM    comment []

Residential computing at Cal Berkeley: Network Monitoring Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) 03. Does Bro read my email and see my credit card numbers? Bro does not proactively read your email or credit card numbers. A situation may arise in which a security administrator will read email, but only when absolutely necessary or when asked by law enforcement officials. 04. Does Bro archive anything? If so, for how long? Bro archives logs and some content. Every visit to each website hosted outside of UC Berkeley is recorded, however the content of those web pages are not recorded. Protocol specific information is kept no longer than 6 months. All logs of TCP (Transmission Control Protocol) connections that are made to sites outside UCB are saved for one year. Recordings of network traffic (tcpdump) are kept no longer than one week. 5:07:14 AM    comment []