02 May
2007
Various sites on the internet, including this one, have been deluged by visitors attempting to visit the web page named 09-F9-11 ... -56-88-C0
even where that page does not exist! The result is errors in my web log with this code. This is a number is used to
decode HD-DVD's and there is a major flurry of activity over the fact that there have been efforts using the DMCA to suppress this information. For sites in the USA, it may be illegal even to post a news article like this one, despite that fact I am only reporting on this ongoing phenomenon.
The social news aggregation site digg.com was over-run with posters putting up various articles about this number, or simply featuring this number with posts going up faster that they could be removed. This activity was provoked, in particular, because an article with this number in it was removed and this was interpreted as censorship.
12 May
2007
The first reviewing phase for the International Conference on Computer Vision (ICCV) ended this weekend. This first page was intended to cull those papers that clearly didn't fit the ICCV template without even providing them with a full normal review. ICCV should accept a couple of hundred papers, but there were about 1200 submission, so culling some papers quickly is attractive. The downside is that some of these culled authors probably worked hard on their papers, but I appears that they won't get back complete reviews.
15 May
2007
The US Attorney General has proposed some astonishly harsh changes to the already Draconian and repressive copyright legislation in place in the United States. As described at CNET, the new laws would criminalize merely "attempting" to infringe copyrights and add additional penalities (to the existing 10 year maximum) for "intended" copyright crimes that had not taken place.
In general I think the US Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA) is already too strong, with its prohibition on taking apart devices you personally own. For a person who came to like science and engineering by figuring out electro-mechanical things we had at home, this is an awful prohibition. It also inhibits the creation of devices that leverage existing technology.
Just to be balanced, I think the the DMCA does have some redeeming features. The safe habour component that stipulates how to deal with copyright material placed on public web sites is quite reasonable.
At any rate, if you're in the US this new proposal deserves comment and oppsition.
