REASON Express
March 20, 2000
Vol. 3 No. 12
1) Super Cheap Computer Built by Hacker
2) Michigan Boy Latest Zero-Tolerance Victim
3) U.S. to World: You Have the Right to Remain Silent
4) Quick Hits
- - A Clean Hack - -
It is probably a stretch to call Las Vegas electronics engineer Ken Segler an inventor. He more properly belongs to the rich tradition of tinkerers and hobbyists who get a kick out of futzing with stuff with no grand purpose in mind.
Still, Segler's little hack comes at a time when various legal restrictions on inventiveness--be they copyright protections, patents, or just threatening letters from counsel at Bustyer, Balls, & Goode--seem to be on the upswing.
What Segler did was find a way to build a sub-$200 PC--and possibly destroy a company's business model in the process. Segler bought himself one of those new-fangled Internet "appliances," a $99 Netpliance box meant for simple emailing and Web browsing.
Segler next opened the thing up and, with the help of a simple connector cable and an external drive, soon had a working Pentium computer. He next did the only sensible thing and published the details of his feat on the Net, and--boom--the secret was out.
Soon Netpliances sold out in various locales, particularly ones with lotsa would-be hackers. Just as quickly came reports that Segler's process was repeatable, a key part of validating any discovery, no matter how modest.
But for Netpliance itself things aren't so clear. The company was banking on making money from selling Net access to its box buyers. Now, with a way for those boxes to be turned into clean-slate computers, Netpliance buyers could use any provider they want, or none at all, and still get value from the machines.
To further complicate things, Netpliance is in the process of going public. Can it possibly adjust to the curve that Segler has thrown it? Willit even try? Or will it go after Segler?
Segler's hack could just be a footnote in the wild-and-wooly world of technology. Or it could signal a new way to market super low-cost computers to the masses.
But it is that very uncertainty, the lack of a sure thing, that makes the larks of incorrigible tinkerers so valuable.
http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,34977,00.html
Jesse Walker looked at how intellectual property laws stifle popular culture at http://www.reason.com/0003/fe.jw.copy.html
- - Toy Story - -
The pattern has become depressingly familiar: a child takes a toy--fill in the blank: gun, knife, axe--to school, other kids claim they are threatened with said toy, and student with toy is suspended or expelled, thanks to zero-tolerance policies which allow no room for common sense.
The story that is unfolding in Michigan is similar, but with a twist. This time public school administrators are actually showing remorse for their actions.
A fifth-grade boy in Tecumseh could be expelled for up to 180 days for taking a toy gun to school so he could play James Bond during recess.
State law carries a zero-tolerance policy for "look-alike'' weapons, so administrators say they were forced to suspend the boy and hold a hearing on his expulsion.
"You could see it was plastic,'' Superintendent Rich Fauble said. "If you looked at it, you could tell it wasn't a gun. But according to police, it could be considered a gun, a look-alike weapon.''
The boy's principal also seemed squeamish about the policy.
"Personally, that might seem extreme. But we have to send a message that even toy guns, because of the look-alike nature, can't be dealt with,'' Sutton Elementary School Principal Debra Langmeyer said.
"It saddens me that we're in this day and age that we have to split hairs over this. I used to have a drawer full of squirt guns. We confiscated them from the children and gave them back on the last day of school,'' she added.
And even the school board president has doubts.
"A kid could even be nailed for waving a pencil at a kid in anger,'' said Dr. Edward Tritt, school board president. " But what does this warrant? The kid is a model student and just made a wrong choice. It's a sad situation. I hate the idea of putting a label on a fifth grade kid or see him kicked out of school.''
So here is a better idea: don't do it. Exercise a little judgment and refuse to expel the kid. Force someone to argue that the kid deserves this kind of insane punishment. Risk having the state come down on you for failing to enforce an unjust law.
That might be a real learning experience for all involved.
http://www.toledoblade.com/editorial/news/0c16gun.htm
- - Cop Land - -
Terrorism has long been recognized as war by other means. But for even longer, the United States has preferred not to recognize terrorism as war--or even war as war--but to persist in the fiction that terrorism is somehow princpally a criminal act.
A federal judge last week formalized that view, by ruling that U.S. prosecutors did not reach beyond their authority by charging Osama bin Laden and 16 others in the 1998 bombing of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.
U.S. District Judge Leonard Sand said it "would make little sense" to restrict enforcement of U.S. laws overseas to suspects who are U.S. citizens or lawful residents.
He added that laws targeting anyone who conspires to use a weapon of mass destruction against a U.S. resident or citizen outside the United States "unambiguously applied to offenders who are foreign nationals."
That is a prescription for literally policing the world. Yet no real benefit accrues to the U.S. even with successful prosecutions of foreign nationals hauled in from the four corners of the globe. Such prosecution would never be viewed as legitimate by many regimes, let alone the actual terrorists who plot against America.
There are limits to what lawyers can do, especially when bombs start going off.
http://www.cnn.com/2000/US/03/14/embassybombings.ap/index.html
QUICK HITS
- - Quote of the Week - -
"It has never been applied to a more mainstream restaurant such as this, which does not have sexual titillation as part of its theme," Todd Panther, lawyer for Cock of the Walk restaurants, an 1800s-era riverboat theme chain, on a decision by a federal jury which found the company discriminated against women by hiring only men as servers. The wait-staff also portray historical fighters and roughnecks on the riverboats. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission filed the lawsuit in 1996 after a woman applied for a job and was turned down.
http://www.tennessean.com/sii/00/03/16/cockwalk16.shtml
- - Match Made in Hell - -
It was nice while it lasted. PETA dropped its anti-milk "Got...Beer?" campaign after getting into public spats with both Mothers Against Drunk Driving and the dairy lobby. A three-way fight to the death was just too much to hope for.
http://search.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/2000-03/17/095l-031700-idx.html
- - Dead Wood - -
Woody Allen's "Bananas" coined the nonsense phrase "abortively pedantic." Only now it makes sense: Just look at Al Gore's college transcript. The man who would be Proctor-in-Chief was no ace student.
http://search.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/2000-03/19/233l-031900-idx.html
- - Quick Flip - -
U.S. troops in Kosovo raided command posts, staging areas, and arms caches belonging to those erstwhile NATO allies, the ethnic Albanians. Officials feared they were preparing to invade Serbia.
http://search.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/2000-03/16/246l-031600-idx.html
- - Gun Clubbed - -
The Clinton administration bullied the nation's largest handgun manufacturer, Smith & Wesson, into bundling trigger locks with all guns it now sells. The company also agreed that within three years any new handgun it develops will include "smart gun" technology. In return Smith & Wesson gets off the hook of lawsuits filed by several cities, as well as the promise that the feds will leave them alone too.
http://search.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/2000-03/18/163l-031800-idx.html
Jacob Sullum wondered about the strange appeal of the trigger lock among anti-gun nuts at http://www.reason.com/sullum/030800.html
- - Cold Comfort - -
The Wisconsin Court of Appeals ruled that businessman William E. Larsen should receive almost $100,000 in worker's compensation benefits. His hands froze when he passed out in sub-zero weather after downing four mixed drinks and ingesting diet pills. Larsen lost all his fingers after passing out during a sales call in a town that was 25 degrees below zero.
http://www.jsonline.com/news/metro/mar00/hand15031400a.asp
- - Net Tax - -
Down in Dallas, the Internet Tax Commission is having its final meeting. The late focus seems to be on a way to collect existing state use taxes which have been on the books since the 1930s.
http://www.ecommercecommission.org
- - March Madness - -
The ongoing cabal known as the NCAA has banned Web-based reporters from covering this year's Final Four in Indianapolis.
http://www.usatoday.com/life/cyber/tech/cth553.htm
For the latest on media appearances by Reason writers, visit http://www.reason.com/press.html.
Reason Editor-at-Large Virginia Postrel debuts as a New York Times economics columnist on Thursday, March 23, on the second page of the business section. She will be writing the "Economic Scene" column every four weeks, in rotation with three other columnists.
On March 29-30, Reason Privatization Center director Adrian Moore will chair the 2000 Summit on Federal Privatization at the Kellogg Conference Center in Washington D.C. For more information call 888/670-8200 or visit http://www.iir-ny.com.
Reason Express is made possible by a grant from The DBT Group (http://www.dbtgroup.com), manufacturers of affordable, high-performance mainframe systems and productivity software.
Current Circulation: 6021 We encourage you to forward Reason Express. If you received this issue from a forward, please subscribe.
Previous issues of Reason Express are available at http://www.reason.com/re/re.html
To subscribe visit http://www.reason.com/re/subscribe.html
Or:
To subscribe to the TEXT version just send a TEXT ONLY message to Majordomo@free-market.net with this in the body of the message:
subscribe Reason-Express youremail@yourdomain.com
For the HTML version the TEXT ONLY message would be:
subscribe Reason-ExpressHTML youremail@yourdomain.com
Your email and your domain would be something like gillespie@reason.com. To unsubscribe, use unsubscribe in place of subscribe.