Disqus - Latest Comments for garym

Re: The Technology Liberation Front » Archive » Should Computer Software Receive Copyright Protection?

garym — Wed, 15 Dec 2004 08:43:40 -0000

This suit claims that software copyright protection is unconstitutionally vague, yet claims that patents provide a better alternative. If this suit succeeds, we might as well forget about having a software industry; legitimate code will be plagiarized without protection, while developers of new code will have to search through an impossible-to-negotiate maze of patents. (Try reading any software patent and figuring out what it says.) There will have to be four lawyers to every programmer.

What's Ahronian's purpose with this insane lawsuit? To give employment to a horde of patent lawyers, perhaps?

Re: Red Lion R.I.P.: FCC Declares the Scarcity Doctrine Dead

garym — Fri, 18 Mar 2005 08:39:13 -0000

My immediate thought is the opposite of Colin Samuels'; that the FCC is moving away from the bandwidth scarcity doctrine in order to adopt rationales that allow the government to censor cable and satellite broadcasts.

Re: Good Technology Used the Wrong Way

garym — Tue, 05 Apr 2005 14:17:00 -0000

Strictly speaking, the designs under consideration are encrypted, though with a public key. This prevents counterfeiting a new passport with transmitted data (a point the ACLU apparently has missed). But it does allow others to read the data undetected (at ranges greater than four inches, though reliability will decrease with distance), and thus potentially put people in danger.

Re: National ID sneaked through

garym — Thu, 12 May 2005 08:40:49 -0000

You aren't required to have an ID at all -- if you don't want to drive, or get on an airplane, or work for a living.

But even if you throw it out, the law turns the Department of Homeland Security into a gestapo outside the reach of the law.

Sec. 102 (c) (1):

(1) IN GENERAL- Notwithstanding any other provision of law, the Secretary of Homeland Security shall have the authority to waive all legal requirements such Secretary, in such Secretary's sole discretion, determines necessary to ensure expeditious construction of the barriers and roads under this section.

So if Homeland Security wants to just force people out of their houses and tear them down (not necessarily in that order), it can. Constitutional challenges are still permitted, but only if filed within 60 days.

Re: 911 for the 21st century

garym — Sat, 21 May 2005 10:14:29 -0000

If the issue is being informed, the FCC could have addressed that simply by requiring providers to state that they do or don't offer 911 service.

I'm not sure whether by "physical address" you mean the IP address of a computer or its physical location. Getting the IP address is trivial; figuring out where that computer actually is, is an unsolvable problem in the general case. Where would the geographic information initially come from, other than people's own assertions?

Perhaps the government will eventually mandate a GPS device in every computer -- not to keep people under surveillance, of course, but just so they can find us if we call 911. Purely for our own good.

Re: I’m an Intruding Hacker

garym — Fri, 08 Jul 2005 12:09:16 -0000

"To hack," in modern parlance, means "to do something with a computer which I don't like."

Re: Voip on the Rocks? More News of the Digital Bizarre

garym — Mon, 19 Dec 2005 08:46:57 -0000

Der Spiegel has even used "voipen" as a German verb.

Re: Question of the day

garym — Thu, 16 Aug 2007 14:03:03 -0000

A lot of people do not realize that the Illinois Horse Racing Industry from the Breeders up to the Trainers and every supplier in-between (Vets, Farriers, Straw and Hay Producers, Grain, Equipment and farm implements are a $ 1.3 Billion tax revenue producing industry. This does not include racetracks in the numbers. In fact excluding racetracks, over 35,000 Illinois residents rely on this industry for their livelihood. If this agribusiness takes a dive due to competition from casinos and riverboats, this will be a huge drain on unemployment, healthcare and local economies. The parties involved throughout the industry will either move to Indiana, Kansas, Louisiana or another state that supports their horseracing with Slots at tracks.

Illinois has been the poster child for what not to do regarding gaming, horseracing and funding schools and education for the last six years. It's time we do something right.