60050
submission
Doc Ruby writes:
According to the NY Times:
Eli Lilly encouraged primary care physicians to use Zyprexa, a powerful drug for
schizophrenia and
bipolar disorder, in patients who did not have either condition, according to internal Lilly marketing materials.
In 2005, the US Supreme Court ruled in MGM Studios, Inc. v. Grokster, Ltd. that:
Producers of technology who promote the ease of infringing on copyrights can be sued for inducing copyright infringement committed by their users.
Grokster was shown to have "promoted" infringing use, even though it never publicly promoted such use. Only internal documents demonstrating some Grokster execs told others that their business model depended on substantial infringing use were shown as evidence of promotion.
If such a weak standard of promotion defines copyright infringement, could Eli Lilly's explicit, public promotion make it liable for abusing prescriptions of its drug products?
48552
submission
Doc Ruby writes:
Om Malik reports at GigaOm that Skype yesterday fired practically all its global "business development" execs in a major reorganization, a "recentralization of marketing". The new firings follow a steady trend of other firings there. Are "bizdev" staff the highest evolved marketing types, whose performance is measured only in frequency of getting fired? Or has marketing just proven once again that it's superior to any new age competitive job title?
More seriously, does this reorg say more about the de/evolution of Skype, once the biggest P2P phone network, into merely a voice feature of eBay? Or more about the evolution of the VoIP biz?
38322
submission
Doc Ruby writes:
The X.Org Foundation election for the Board of Directors was concluded on 12 November 2006. Egbert Eich, Bart Massey, Keith Packard and Daniel Stone were elected for two year terms, and Stuart Kreitman was elected for a one year term.
X.Org Foundation is chartered to develop and execute effective strategies that provide worldwide stewardship of the X Window System technology and standards. The X.Org Foundation has an open membership, and a Board of Directors which is elected from the membership.
The election counted under 100 voting members. The X Window System underlies most Linux, Mac, and most Unix (and other) desktops, used by millions of people worldwide. The Foundation needs more members to contribute the project, and to help elect leaders. If you have time and good sense to help, please join and participate.
38024
submission
Doc Ruby writes:
As reported at GigaOM, 'Infinera has bonded 10 parallel 10 Gb/s channels into one logical flow while maintaining packet ordering at the receiver', bridging 100Gbps ethernet over 10 10Gbps optical WAN links:
Infinera, a San Jose, Calif.-based start-up, along with University of California, Santa Cruz, Internet2 and
Level3 Communications,
today demonstrated a 100 gigabit/second Ethernet connection that could carry data over a 4000 kilometer fiber network. The trial took place at the Super Computing Show in Tampa, Florida.
The experimental system was set up between Tampa, Florida and Houston, Texas, and back again. A 100 GbE signal was spliced into ten 10 Gb/s streams using an Infinera-proposed specification for 100GbE across multiple links. The splicing of the signal is based on a packet-reordering algorithm developed at the University of California at Santa Cruz. This algorithm preserves packet order even as individual flows are striped across multiple wavelengths.
[...]
[A]bout 14 months ago we wrote about the 10 GB/s network4 that connected the University of California, San Diego and NASA Goddard Space Flight Center over a dedicated optical path. [...] [Infinera co-founder and CTO Drew Perkins] said that the trial today shows that you can build scalable systems that can achieve higher speeds.
With most data we prosume now large multimedia objects/streams, mostly networked, we're all going to want our share of these 100Gbps networks. The current network retailers, mainly cable and DSL dealers, still haven't brought even 10Mbps to most homes, though they're now bringing Fiber to the Premises to some rich/lucky customers. Are they laying fiber that will bring them to Tbps, or will that stuff clog the way to getting these speeds ourselves?
23321
submission
Doc Ruby writes:
According to the Baltimore (MD) Sun:
Diebold Election Systems Inc. expressed alarm and state election officials contacted the FBI yesterday after a former legislator received an anonymous package containing what appears to be the computer code that ran Maryland's polls in 2004. [...] The availability of the code — the written instructions that tell the machines what to do — is important because some computer scientists worry that the machines are vulnerable to malicious and virtually undetectable vote-switching software. An examination of the instructions would enable technology experts to identify flaws, but Diebold says the code is proprietary and does not allow public scrutiny of it.
Maryland's primary elections last month were ruined by procedural and tech problems. Maryland used Diebold machines, even though its Republican governor "lost faith" in them as early as February this year, with 6 months to do something before Maryland relied on them in their elections.
The Diebold code was secret, and used at least in 2002 even though illegally uncertified even by private analysts under nondisclosure. Now that it's being "opened by force", the first concern from Diebold, the government, and the media is that it could be further exploited by crackers. What if the voting software were open from the beginning, so its security relied only on hard secrets (like passwords and keys), not mere obscurity, which can be destroyed by "leaks" like the one reported by the Sun? The system's reliability would be known, and probably more secure after thorough public review. How much damage does secret sourcecode employed in public service have to cause before we require it to be opened before we buy it, before we base our government on it?
