Month: March 2002

News.Com: Amazon, Barnes&Noble settle patent suit. Amazon.com said Wednesday that it has settled its long-running patent-infringement suit against Barnes&Noble.com over its 1-Click checkout system. The details of the settlement were not disclosed. The settlement filed Tuesday with the U.S. district court in Seattle ends the dispute… [Tomalak’s Realm]

I stopped buying from Amazon in protest of their ridiculous patent policy. If this settlement involved Amazon admitting they were wrong, they ought to say so publicly so that they might get back they customers they had previously driven away.

O’Reilly: The Changing Mac Community [MacSlash: A daily dose of Macintosh News and Discussion]

Some interesting comments about changes in the Mac community as OS X turns it into a Unix community. Personally, I despise OS X. I’ll stick to the Mac OS on my personal systems, because the Mac OS is still the best desktop OS out there for people who just want to use their computers quickly and easily. If I wanted to waste time struggling with a bad interface and fragile OS, I’d switch to Windows, which at least has lots of games and is faster than the Mac OS (OS X is much slower).

I’ve been working in Mac software development since 1995, and OS X has prompted me to move on. I’m also interested in PDAs and wireless technology, so I will be heading in that direction.

Bush steel tariffs anger allies. A trade war looms as President Bush announces tariffs of up to 30% on
steel imports. [BBC News: world]

It’s no surprise that the US steel producers, being thoroughly uncompetitive, have once again turned to the government to protect them from the consequences of their poor decisions. What the article doesn’t mention, though, is that this doesn’t just affect other countries–the US government is in effect declaring a trade war against its own citizens. These tariffs won’t save any American jobs, they’ll just transfer the layoffs from the politically powerful (if economically incompetent) steel industry to other industries, such as construction, and everyone will suffer from artificially high steel prices.

Berkeley conservatives tell of death threats for criticism. A conservative student group at the University of California at Berkeley has become a target of death threats after the group printed a story criticizing a Hispanic campus group’s call for revolutionary liberation from white people. [Washington Times]

Yet another case of liberals behaving badly. It’s sad–I’m not even that old, and I can still remember the days when the conservative groups were the racists. The way things are going, it wouldn’t surprise me if within ten years conservatives and liberals switch positions on religious subjects (including abortion). Then the role reversal will be complete.

Fusion controversy rekindled. A report that scientists have reproduced nuclear fusion – the energy
source of the Sun – in a tabletop experiment is dividing scientific
opinion. [BBC News: sci/tech]

bq. The research, to be published in Friday’s issue of the journal Science but widely leaked, says that scientists at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee, and at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in New York have fired ultrasound at liquid acetone causing minute bubbles to collapse at temperatures of millions of degrees.

I suspect this will disappear, just as “cold fusion” did. Which is a shame, because even if it’s not really fusion, it’s obviously something. It’s worth figuring out just what is going on, even if that turns out to be something other than what these scientists think it is.

Adobe Hackers: We’re Immune. The company that offered software to break Adobe’s copyright protection code did not do anything illegal in the U.S. because it’s a Russian company, its defenders say in court. Farhad Manjoo reports from San Jose, California. [Wired News]

Although this is perfectly true, it won’t necessarily help. The US government has already demonstrated a willingness to apply American laws to anyone, anywhere in the world, regardless of whether the “offender” has ever set foot in America.

Ridge says arming pilots ‘doesn’t make a lot of sense’. Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge says pilots should not be allowed to keep guns in cockpits to thwart hijackings. ”I don’t think we want to equip our pilots with firearms,” Ridge said in an interview. ”That doesn’t make a lot of sense to me.” [FirearmNews.com]

Of course it doesn’t make sense to him. If pilots were armed, it would be very difficult or impossible to hijack a plane. The government wants hijacking to be easier, not harder, because if people aren’t afraid of hijacking the government won’t be able to scare them into throwing away their freedom.

Ridge knows that any hijacked plane that flies in his direction will be shot down. Why should the government allow people to defend themselves from hijackers when the government can just let them be hijacked, then kill them and express “regret” after the fact? As far as the government is concerned, it’s better for people to die than to take responsibility for their own lives.

EU one step from Kyoto ratification. Europe’s environment ministers agree that all member states should
implement the Kyoto Protocol on climate change. [BBC News: sci/tech]

If the EU wants to commit economic suicide, I don’t mind. I hope the US will loosen imigration restrictions so that all those soon-to-be-unemployed Europeans who still care about political and economic freedom can move here.

Landowner Wins Big – Prevails in ‘Taking’ Case!. Mountain States Legal Foundation –

Landowner Wins Big – Prevails in ‘Taking’ Case! – Dr. Larry
Squires had his business shut down by the e.p.a. This was recently
ruled a “taking”, and he is due “just compensation”. [market]
bq.
MSLF’s victory in this important case is huge. It may be one of the
first rulings in the country holding that a statute that protects
species and their habitat causes a taking. Not surprisingly, many are
thrilled: “Great news! [It] [h]olds promise for all of us in natural
resources and agricultural production,” enthused Roni Bell of LaSalle,
Colorado.
[End the War on Freedom]

This is good news for Dr. Squires, but I’m not optimistic about how much good it will do anyone else. The government generally ignores any laws or court decisions that restrain it. The EPA will just continue their Nazi tactics, because most property owners don’t have the money or time to stand up to the entire government.

A Freedom Lover’s Rant Against the Almighty State. John deLaubenfels at Strike the Root –

A Freedom Lover’s Rant Against the Almighty State – Wonderful!
[market]
bq.
To those (and there are many today) who say that it is wrong to break
any law, simply because it is the law, I would ask, is that the advice
you would give to people who hid Jews in wartime Germany? Is that the
advice you would give to members of the Underground Railroad who
helped slaves escape in the 19th Century? Is that the advice you would
give to Martin Luther King Jr., if you could speak to him in the ’60s?
All of these people made a conscious decision to break the law in
service of a greater morality. Many risked imprisonment or death to do
so.
[End the War on Freedom]