A huge range of physical phones can run java j2me based software without needing to determine device configurations etc. Sun says there are about 2.5 Billion j2me/midp enabled handsets out there.

Unfortunately the various carriers then balkanized this 'code once run everywhere' capability in order to try to capture cashflow from developers (independent testing. certification, and signing anyone?) and customers (all the many app stores).

Can you provide a link to substantiate your claim? I had trouble finding anything definitive.

Also for everyone's reference here is a more complete quote of Jefferson:

If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it. Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density at any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation.

Ever notice how there was never one part of the map overlapping another? At any point there was always only ever the floor and the ceiling - at various levels, and able to raise/lower (lifts/doors anyone?). In that important sense it was 2D; a 2D map 'extruded' as a special case into 3D - not an arbitrary collection of 3D geometry. Oh and the sprites, they were bill-boarded 2D also.

Not so stupid, depending one what you mean.

I read the summary as them finding a way to create a p2p network of 'customers' (clients who pay to be in your p2p network where you deliver paid content) and protecting yourself from the 'customers' who 'collude' (e.g. hacked client s/w?) with non paying client s/w to allow non paying customers to get the content. I don't think it's about subverting an existing network, it's about protecting a network from subversion. If so then the techniques could presumably be used for other purposes, poisoning surveillance perhaps.

Maybe they/we need a crypto-twitter app?

• Make minimal assumptions of the phone capabilities.
• Don't rely on 'external' certificate / cert providers etc, roll your own.
• Don't rely on the device libraries, you cannot afford to trust even the phone.
• Phone app to include some kind of cert to authenticate itself to the service (at least make an effort).
• ssl based coms
• http or sms transport
• some kind of distributed multiple redundant backend; tor-ish and resistant to dns spoofing
• certificate based authentication of the servers to the client
• structure social network/email/bbs style systems over that underlying safe communication channel.
• Ensure the system and legals are structured so that breaking into it to read the clear text comes under DMCA 'circumvention of technical measures to control access to copyright material' - about the most draconian laws there are.

Does something like this exist?

If the phone had a real preemptive time sharing OS and an appropriately restricted API (enforced time/space/cpu quota, only screen, touch, and sound access) then it would be a trivial exercise to know a prog was 'safe'. At the moment they have a broad API and Apple's idea of safe and your might well not be the same (location data anyone? what exactly is the app going to do with the network access it's asking for...).

Perhaps Pandora hopes to have radio come to the aid of internet radio - "We'll drag you down with us if you don't step up!".

they could/should have!

It's very complex for people to know what they could take from a work like Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan, at best the publishers over broad claim has a chilling effect at worst it might indeed be copyfraud.

It would be good for the public if the copyright notices called out exactly what they were claiming, a footer on every page would be fine and do-able. In the commonly claimed case of adding prefaces etc if would be very easy.

It's better for publishers to make broad vague claims. The exclusionary effect of the claims are supported by the huge penalties for infringement. Conversely the cost of over claiming seems small/unlikely to be called out - publishers can always 'clarify away' their over-claim if it comes to the crunch.