Category: Tech

Supreme Court Ends Aereo Broadcasts

The Supreme Court ruled, today, June 25, that Aereo Inc. was violating the copyrights of broadcasters in providing its service.

Aereo had developed a technology to allow persons to watch over-the-air television broadcasts on their computers.

The broadcasters led by ABC said no fair.

The ruling, written by Stephen Breyer, was 6-3 with Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Anthony Kennedy, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan joining him.

The dissent, written by Justice Antonin Scalia and joined by Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, was not so much in sympathy with Aereo but noted that the technical claim made by the networks in the lower courts —  namely that Aereo was the primary abuser of copyright which means actually using copyrighted work — was incorrect.

They recommended that the case be returned to the lower courts and appeared to have an expectation that Aereo would be found in violation of  “secondary liability” which means that they would be responsible for infringement by third parties.

The danger of ignoring the reasoning in the dissent means that it creates the possibility of new claims against internet service providers and such that previously had an expectation of immunity.

 

Supreme Court Ends Aereo Broadcasts

Supreme Court Ends Aereo Broadcasts

 

HB 2107 Punishes Digital Degraders

A bill to protect against digital degraders is now before the Pennsylvania Senate.

HB 2107, which passed the House on June 9 with a 197-0 vote, wil make it a third-degree misdemeanor to share an intimate image of another person without consent.

“With the rise of digital photography through the use of social media, protecting one’s privacy continues to be an important issue, especially when unscrupulous individuals use social media to post intimate images of others,” says State Rep. Jim Cox (R-129).

The law allows for state-level prosecution of an alleged perpetrator, if the victim is a Pennsylvania resident, regardless of the perpetrator’s state of residence.

The bill also would allow victims to bring both criminal and civil charges against someone who engages in this activity. Conviction for this charge includes a criminal sentence of up to six months in prison and up to a $1,000 fine. Civil penalties could be much higher, including the cost of actual damages, attorney fees and additional relief the court deems necessary and proper for loss of reputation, money and property.

HB 2107 Punishes Digital Degraders

HB 2107 Punishes Digital Degraders

Pierre Sprey Disses F-35

Pierre Sprey Disses F-35

The F-35, an “inherently terrible airplane”?

Pierre Sprey, the jazz musician/gospel singer who designed the legendary F-16 fighter, went on Canadian TV to call the new backbone of the United States Air Force “a turkey” that can neither win a dogfight nor provide ground support.

Why? Canada is making the F-35 the backbone of its air force as well.

Sprey says the plane’s vaunted stealth technology can be defeated by low frequency, long wave-length World War II era radars.

In fact, he says all our stealth technology can be defeated by such radar and that the Russians have picked up on this.

With all this doom and gloom, it should be pointed out that Sprey also dissed the F-15 which turned out to be a pretty successful aircraft.

In related matter, Sen. John McCain is trying to save the legendary A-10 Warthog, the beloved ground support aircraft that is slated to be replaced by the F-35.

And who designed the A-10? Pierre Sprey.

Sprey’s music was sampled on Kayne West’s rap hit Jesus Walks.

Below is Sprey’s interview last year with the Canadian Broadcast System’s Fifth Estate program.

 

 

Pierre Sprey Disses F-35

 

 

 

Supreme Court Changes Decisions

Apparently, the Supreme Court changes decisions after issuing rulings.

It’s not something taught in the typical civics lesson.

The matter was revealed by New York Times columnist Adam Liptak last month.

David Zvenyach, the general counsel to the Council of the District of Columbia, writes computer code as a hobby. He applied the JavaScript application Node to crawl the opinions posted on the Supreme Court  every five minutes.  He  then follows up with a manual tweet.

He explains why here.

Kudos to Zvenyach and all hail institutional transparency.

Hat tip Gigaom.com

Supreme Court Changes Decisions

 

Supreme Court Changes Decisions

 

Internet Now Full

Internet Now Full

There are fewer than 17 million IPv4 internet address remaining in North America,  the American Registry for Internet Numbers (ARIN) reported in April.

This means that officially the internet is full.

The IPv4 standard allows for 4.295 billion addresses worldwide. As 536 million of them are reserved, there is only about 3.7 billion usable.

There are 7 billion people in the world.

The web has reached its limit.

The solution is to advance to the IPv6 standard — IP means Internet Protocol and the “v” stands for version — which would provide 2 followed by 128 zeros worth of addresses.

The sticking point is that IPv4 and IPv6 are not compatible.

We feel it will all work out somehow.

If you think about it, it is kind of a good problem.

Internet Now Full

Internet now full and time is running out to fix the problem.

 

 

 

Baldness Cured Via Laser Hat

Baldness Cured With Laser HatBaldness Cured With Laser Hat

A guy tinkering in his garage has cured baldness by inventing a laser hat, at least according to Bloomberg Businessweek.

The inventor is Tamim Hamid is a former NASA research engineer, who has degrees in electrical engineering, computer engineering and biomedicine. His company is Theradome.

The hat contains 80 lasers that mimic sunlight and help bring hair follicles back to life. It is based on research from the mid-60s in which Dr. Endre Mester while trying to trigger the growth of cancerous tumors in rats miscalibrated a laser resulting in the growth of hair instead.

The product was financed with crowdfunding via IndieGoGo. Hamid’s motivation was, well, take a guess.

The devices cost $795 and as of now are only approved for use by women. Approval for men is expected soon though, according to Hamid.

 Baldness Cured Via Laser Hat

 

 

Soylent Finally Appears

A young, software engineer named Rob Rhinehart decided to create a food that would supply all the nutrients we need without the time, money and effort that usually goes into food preparation.

He developed the recipe through online research, textbooks, scientific journals and self-experimentation, and now he’s marketing the product, which he calls “Soylent”.

Yep.

Just like in the 1973 movie starring Charlton Heston about a bleak, cannibalistic future.

Hipsters will be doofuses.

In fairness, Rhinehart’s product does not contain people but rather things like fish oil, rice protein and lots of raw chemical powders.

And in further fairness, it’s not that dumb of an idea. Rhinehart seems to have his priorities correct as per this interview with Forbes.

 

Soylent Finally Appears

Soylent Finally Appears

Pittsburgh Author Predicts Earthquake

David Nabhan, a former California teacher now living in Pittsburgh, says the West Coast is going to be hit by a massive earthquake before the summer is over.

Nabhan is the author of “Earthquake Prediction: Answers in Plain Slight” in which he says earthquakes can be predicted.

So he is predicting one.

Nabhan says the quakes occur when lunar and solar gravitational tides are conjoined and that they happen either at dusk or dawn.

“Just imagine the muscle required to move our oceans around every day. Our fractured fault lines are not immune to this,” he says.

He says the next big quake will be between July 12 and Sept. 9 between 4:45 and 7:55 a.m. or p.m.

Hat tip KDKA.

Pittsburgh Author Predicts Earthquake

Pittsburgh Author Predicts Earthquake

 

 

Possible Bright Future

For those in intellectual property (IP) and other matters relating to how technological advances may radically transform the world’s economy for the better Mark Lemley of Stanford Law School has posted online his paper, IP in a World With Scarcity.

Even the abstract is interesting.

It can be found here.

 

Visit BillLawrenceDittos.com for Possible Bright Future
Visit BillLawrenceOnline.com for Possible Bright Future

 

Firefox Alternatives

Brendan Eich, the creator of JavaScript and one of the pioneer greats of the internet, was picked to run the Mozilla Corp. in March.

The corporation was founded in 2005 and stems from the Mozilla project started in 1998 in response to the then hegemonic and predatory actions of Microsoft regarding access to the World Wide Web.

The name comes from “Mosaic” — which was the first true web browser — and Godzilla, the Japanese monster. Geeks will be geeks, one guesses.

Mozilla was created to stand for freedom of thought and open discourse. The software was open source. It gave us the web browser Firefox and the email program Mozilla Thunderbird.

Well, it was soon revealed that Eich contributed $1,000 to Proposition 8, the successful 2008 California ballot initiative that amended the state constitution to recognize biological reality and declare that marriage is between one man and one woman — assuming, of course, they are not siblings or first cousins.

The influential crowd that puts hipness and political fashion ahead of freedom of thought and open discourse went nuts. Eich was forced out last week.

For those Firefox users interested in some free alternatives check this link.

 

Visit BillLawrenceDittos.com for Firefox Alternatives
Visit BillLawrenceOnline.com for Firefox Alternatives