The U.S. Supreme Court decided around 1992 in the case of Feist v. Rural Telephone that the mere aggregation of customer information of a telephone company is inadequate to obtain copyright protection, basically tossing out the entire premise that "sweat of the brow" alone was adequate, and overturning a more than 80 year precedent in Pacific Telephone v. Leon from 1911, I think.

Since there is no creativity in the computer generating an automated result, I suspect the results are not copyrightable.

Paul Robinson <paul@paul-robinson.us> - My Blog

In case you're unaware, The Times, among other outlets, back during the Iranian Hostage crisis, did not mention - until after they got out of Iran - that Americans were hiding in the Canadian embassy in Teheran.

So the Times should not report to the American public when the U.S. Government operates secret facilities which are used to capture some people? If we go that route, and decide that "this hidden government program is a good idea and we shouldn't report on it," while "this hidden government program isn't a good idea and we should report on it," then we get into cases where you have suppression of torture or other misconduct - like Abu Ghraib or the CIA "extraordinary rendition" black sites - because some reporter agrees with the behavior being done by the government. We live in a constitutional republic which, for all intents and purposes is a democracy, and as such, we the people are the sovereign power to which the government must answer to; and we as a people cannot know if our government is acting in a way we agree it should be if reporters do less than their job, and deciding which secret government programs to cheerlead is not a reporter's job.

Besides, if the Times can discover it, probably anyone could, and then you would have the bad guys knowing about it while the public is kept in the dark. Besides, any terrorist worth his salt is not using traceable financing methods anyway, all the Times probably did is expose the "low hanging fruit" of the obvious and easily detectable transfer methods. If I was going to be doing finance transfers for some terrorist group, I'd be using shell companies that had no connection to the operation and switch them on a regular basis. How is someone going to know that a $100,000 wire transfer from Steel Corporation of London LTD to Islamabad Ore SDN BHD is a terrorist transfer or a funds transfer for several tons of iron ore?

In this case, the information about this reporter was suppressed to protect his life, not to prevent, say, someone else's embarrassment or to cover-up misconduct or otherwise prevent the publication of information the public should know to protect the democratic process.

Back during the Iranian Hostage crisis, the news media cooperatively agreed not to publicize the information that there were Americans hiding in the Canadian embassy until after they were able to get out of Iran. One reporter likened the potential for publishing such information to be on the level of "giving the Nazis' Anne Frank's home address."

This is the sort of limited exception to the free publication of relevant information to the public where the news media can and does suppress a story on a temporary basis in order to prevent death or injury to others or where it is important to the issues involved that the story not be exposed for a short time. When people talk about "responsible journalism," it is this sort of behavior they are referring to.

Paul Robinson - <paul@paul-robinson.us> - My Blog

The statement that software engineering - which is a mislabel - cannot be a rigorous, formal system is so obvious that it might as well be one of those things we never think about until we have to and when we do think about it it's intuitively obvious.

Consider what will happen when you die, there are only three possibilities: You exist after you die and you like the results; you exist after you die and you do not like the results; you do not exist after you die. All three possibilities are equally valid since we have no evidence of any of them. If as it turns out, that when you die you cease to exist, it is not something you need to worry about. Now, the thought probably terrifies you - it used to terrify me, too - until you realize something: if you cease to exist, you will know nothing. You'll never know that you don't exist.

So consider the conditions of the existence of software. Software is always perfect and is always the same, it never changes. It does not rot, rust, age, get moldy, crumble, break, shatter or fail. It never needs maintenance, lubrication, cleaning, sharpening, polishing, repair or replacement. As long as the hardware that copies it makes identical copies, it is perfect and always will be perfect, except for the extremely rare and unusual case of deterioration of the storage media due to cosmic ray damage. Which can be detected by mathematical algorithm, in which case, if there is another source, another perfect copy can be made and it's right back where it was. Software is never defective and can never be defective other than the case I've given of the rare possibility of cosmic-ray damage to media or hardware failure in copying, and thus it never needs change, modification or updating.

Every year, every country makes changes to its tax laws. Any software which must comply with those new changes has to be changed according to the decisions of tax accountants and lawyers as to what is needed to be in compliance. If you have a cellular network and want to add new features, you have to modify the software - in the switches, the handsets, the gateways, and/or all of these - to be able to enable them to offer new features. In both cases the software needs updating.

Both statements are true, but you might ask how they can be when they appear to be conflicting. They're not, and I'll explain why.

Any software package, from a 1-line APL function to a 20 million-line COBOL behemoth application suite that runs a trillion dollar bank, large insurance company or government agency, only requires maintenance or change because in someone's subjective opinion it needs a change. A bridge needs replacement when it collapses or when it is beyond its useful life; a building needs replacement under the same circumstances. A piece of metal furniture needs replacement when its structure rusts into dust, fails or is unable to support a load due to metal fatigue. These are objective facts, either the structure is usable or it isn't. An engineer can determine by experience and judgment that the structure is at its lifespan limit or can point to signs of physical rust, deterioration, or structure failure indicators that prove their opinion.

Any declaration that a software package needs updating, change, or replacement is strictly based upon the subjective opinion of someone saying that it needs the work. All software change is the result of some person's opinion that the change needs to be made and have no basis in reality except their opinion. Their opinion is correct if you agree with them or if in your opinion you can't disagree with their opinion. They may be correct that because of errors in how the software performs its desired function, need for new function, or need for changes in existing function, the software needs change, replacement or updating, but they can only be "correct" because it is considered that in someone's opinion they agree with their opinion that the change is needed.

But the claim by someone that a software package needs change, updating or replacement is, and always will be, a subjective opinion based on nothing more than "because I say so,"

Paul Robinson <paul@paul-robinson.us> — My Blog

Right now, a typical 100 watt incandescent light bulb lasts, oh, 500-1000 hours, costs about 25c and uses, of course, 100 watts.

I am currently using a 23 watt compact fluorescent light bulb, which produces the same amount of light, and because of economies of scale has gotten down to 12 times the price of an incandescent, about $3.75 and supposedly will last as much as 10,000 hours. On total cost if you include electricity, a CF is going to be less expensive long term.

But the best deal so far, if the numbers are correct, is the LED light bulb, which unfortunately is about 8 times as expensive as a compact fluorescent at about $8.00, but the electricity numbers are shocking (pun unintentional). The $8 bulb will presumably run about as long as a CF, and produce about the equivalent of 100 watts of light, and do so on ONE WATT. If the LED can produce the same lumens for 1% of the electrical cost and 10 times the operating life, it would be hands down the best bargain in net total costs even though it's basically about 64 times as expensive for the bulb as the Incandescent. Presuming a cost of 6c per KWH, an incandescent will burn $6 worth of electricity at 100 hours, while the CF would have burned $2 and the LED would have burned 6c. For the expected lifetimes, that is, 10 Incandescent bulbs or 1 CF or LED, the costs would be as follows.

• Incandescent, $2.50 for bulbs, $60 worth of electricity, $62.50
• CF, $3.75 for bulb, $20 worth of electricity, $23.75

• LED, $8 for bulb, 60c worth of electricity, $8.60

Maybe I'm jaded, but this issue was already settled by science fiction more than 20 years ago. In space, you can't be disposing water and importing it - other than the amounts needed to startup the facility - would be ruinously expensive. If you're going to be staying there for any period of time you have to do the same thing to water that the earth has been doing for four billion years: recycle it.

You're most likely going to run the urine, plus possibly sweat and shower water, through activated charcoal or ordinary sand to capture solids. But on second thought, you might not even need to filter the water. You've got plenty of heat from direct exposure to the sun, so you boil the water and recapture the steam, which will be pure water and sterilized. You can cool it through a radiator to bring it down to room temperature.

Because police will use illegal evidence otherwise.

How do you determine what is "real" evidence and what might be fabricated, lies or worse, evidence obtained by serious criminality, like beating a suspect to obtain a conviction?

Doesn't happen that way. Police officers will almost never be arrested for misconduct. Has to be a stinking mess in the newspapers before that happens. As a result, what you'd get is police committing crimes to collect evidence and the protections of the Constitution being nothing but a toothless paper tiger.

A number of police and prosecutors conspired to convict people in Illinois and knowing they were innocent still put them on trial and on death row. This went on for years until arrests were made, and the mess stank so bad the governor of Illinois had to commute over 150 death sentences. In the mean time a lot of people had their lives ruined. Expecting police misconduct to be punished doesn't help much if you end up on death row for a crime you didn't commit.

If they were using the chalk to track your vehicle and where it has been, I would say yes. But that's not what a meter maid is doing it for; they're doing it to determine if your vehicle is still sitting in the same spot on a public street, not to track its movements, (other than to track it has moved from a parking space :) ).

Because the electronic device can track the person's movements everywhere, including places on private property that the police could not go.

Isn't that the guy where they had the signs around saying, "Experts agree: Meese is a Pig"? Who are you to be arguing with the experts? :)

Funny, they said that in CSI once. A cop was talking to someone who was in a gang, and said that if he wanted to join a better gang, he should consider the police department, they have better guns. Where upon one of the CSI quips, "And dental!"

Except that in such cases, the police are never disciplined for such "improper procedures" and thus the protections of the Constitution become mere cant. Prosecutors need police to provide the evidence to get convictions; if the prosecutors went after police on a regular basis for misconduct, the cops would soon stop doing much to help the prosecutors. And the police can't be trusted to investigate themselves, it will almost always be a whitewash or a slap on the wrist. The only means that guarantees that illegal evidence will not be used is to deny its use. That requires illegally obtained evidence to be suppressed.

No, they cannot. The Supreme Court has ruled that the highest court of a state is the final arbiter on the meaning of a state statute or the state constitution. If a state Supreme Court decides the state constitution gives more protection to citizens than the equivalent Federal constitution, or decides that a state law is unconstitutional on state Constitutional grounds, that is the end of the matter unless the provision of the state Constitution violates the Federal Constitution or a federal statute. So there still has to be a federal nexus.

Actually, I think it does, it's called the 4th Amendment:

I think clearly being "secure in their person" would mean not to have a tracking device attached to them or their "effects" such that it tells every place you have been, even where the police were not watching. Further, we can argue the Tenth Amendment:

Might restrict what the specific states can do absent a grant of power from the people of that state.