response 11 of 104:

Jul 15 14:37 UTC 2002

   http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,53704,00.html
   
   Quiet, Sad Death of Net Pioneer
   
   2:00 a.m. July 9, 2002 PST
   
   It's horribly ironic that the news of Gene Kan's death has  trav-
   eled so slowly -- no tributes posted on Usenet, no mention of his
   passing at any of the usual geek news sites.
   
   Perhaps the story of how a 25-year-old genius took his  own  life
   is  simply something that is just too difficult for folks to talk
   about.
   
   Kan, peer-to-peer file-sharing programmer extraordinaire, died on
   June  29.  His  professional  life revolved around developing new
   ways to share information easily and quickly. Thousands of people
   use  Gnutella  to  swap  files, a program Kan was instrumental in
   developing and promoting.
   
   Kan's suicide was not completely unexpected, according to some of
   his  friends. They had hoped Kan was winning his hard-fought bat-
   tle against depression exacerbated by personal problems.
   
   "We did all the things you're supposed to do," said Cody  Oliver,
   Gene's   business   partner  in  peer-to-peer  search  technology
   gonesilent.com. "We got him on Prozac; we connected  him  to  the
   suicide  hotlines.  He  promised he wouldn't do anything drastic.
   But now he's gone. It's a really rough time."
   
   The signs of impending awfulness were there,  Oliver  said.  Very
   recently,  Gene  had  changed his resume, which was stored on the
   University of California at Berkeley's server, to read: "Summary:
   Sad example of a human being. Specializing in failure."
   
   The university has removed Kan's pages.
   
   Whatever was going on in his personal life,  friends,  colleagues
   and  industry observers all agree that Gene Kan was not a failure
   -- either as a professional or as a human being.
   
   Kan was among the first programmers  to  produce  an  open-source
   version  of  the file-sharing application Gnutella, which enables
   users to search for and transfer files from computer to computer.
   
   His ability  to  translate  complicated  technology  into  easily
   understandable  terms  quickly led to his becoming the unofficial
   spokesman for Gnutella in particular, and for file-sharing appli-
   cations in general.
   
   "Gene was one of the first people to make hay with the idea  that
   peer-to-peer  file  sharing  wasn't just about music, but about a
   powerful  approach  to  problems  in  computer  networking,"  Tim
   O'Reilly, of O'Reilly Publishing, said.
   
   "It was Gnutella and Freenet, more than Napster, that got the at-
   tention  of  the  technical  elite  and made us think more deeply
   about the way the Internet was evolving," O'Reilly added.
   
   "And years from now, when we  have  an  Internet-scale  operating
   system,  and  don't  think of a computer as something on our desk
   but as something pervasive that we interact with through hundreds
   or  thousands  of different points of contact, we'll look back at
   pioneers like Gene and see the soil  in  which  the  future  took
   root."
   
   Kan was always careful to point up all the good things that could
   be done with peer-to-peer applications, while never mincing words
   about the problems the music industry perceived with file-sharing
   technologies  that also allow users to swap music and other media
   files.
   
   He testified before the Senate  Judiciary  Committee  last  June,
   advising  the  recording industry that "the toothpaste is already
   out of the tube," and it would be best to adjust their businesses
   to  the  new reality of file sharing, as opposed to trying to ban
   it.
   
   "I had the privilege of sitting next to Gene when we both  testi-
   fied  before the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on file shar-
   ing -- his cool and calm, and centrality of purpose set  my  ner-
   vous  mind at ease," recalled Jim Griffin, CEO of Cherry Lane Di-
   gital, a music-publishing firm.
   
   "Gene's mind and talents were sharp  and  always  in  service  to
   mankind  and  the  bigger picture, and it is truly ironic that he
   sped the sharing of information but word of his death  has  trav-
   eled so very slowly."
   
   (page 2)
   
   Kan's most recent project, InfraSearch, is  based  on  Gnutella's
   technology.  InfraSearch allows any connected device on a network
   -- from cell phones and wireless PDAs to PCs and  servers  --  to
   communicate, collaborate and share information.
   
   Sun Microsystems bought Kan's company, then known as  GoneSilent,
   last  March  for  a reported $10 million, and until his death Kan
   worked for Sun as a consultant on the connected  search  project,
   now known as Project JXTA.
   
   "He was happy with the work. It was going well and he was getting
   paid,"  Oliver  said.  "Sun  wanted him to do some things that he
   wasn't thrilled about, but he knew that was part of the deal when
   you work for a big corporation."
   
   Oliver said when he thinks  of  Kan,  he  doesn't  dwell  on  his
   friend's  brilliant mind or advanced technical skills, but on the
   "damn good fun we had together before this whole mess."
   
   In his private life, Kan loved racing cars  and  writing  strange
   haikus.  He also collected license plates with technology-related
   expressions but refused to have  the  oft-suggested  "MP3"  plate
   made,  believing  it  would  cause hassles he didn't want to deal
   with.
   
   "It is hard to imagine any good coming from his  death,"  Griffin
   said. "But I'm guessing the peer-to-peer network will soon extend
   to the great beyond."
     
   
 .

response 13 of 104:

Jul 15 16:46 UTC 2002

As sad as it is, stories like Kan's help me when I am feeling like a 
failure. It helps to know that even people I consider successful get 
those feelings and get depressed and whatnot. It helps me to remember 
that one doesnt have an objective view when one is depressed.

response 15 of 104:

Jul 22 13:40 UTC 2002

The Register is reporting that a videoconferencing company in Austin,
Texas is claiming patent rights to technology used in the JPEG standard,
and is demanding royalties on pretty much everything that decodes them.
 Sony has apparently already ponied up $15 million:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/4/26272.html
The JPEG committee seems confident they can get the patent overturned
with evidence of prior art:
http://www.theregus.com/content/6/25676.html

Also, fair use advocates apparently weren't welcome at a U.S. Department
of Commerce public workshop on digital rights management:
http://www.theregus.com/content/6/25660.html

response 17 of 104:

Jul 22 15:42 UTC 2002

PNG isn't really a good replacement for JPEG, because it's a lossless
compression -- it just can't match the file size reductions you can get
with a lossy compression like JPEG.  An 800x600 color photograph ends up
huge as a PNG file.  PNG is an excellent replacement for GIF, though.

response 19 of 104:

Jul 23 01:30 UTC 2002

gull, how did you get "gull.us"?  I didn't think anything but the fifty states
and DC had been created under .us.

response 21 of 104:

Jul 23 03:30 UTC 2002

And once again I mourn the loss of Mr. Postel.

response 23 of 104:

Jul 23 16:06 UTC 2002

Slashdot points to the EFF blog on digital TV issues.  
In separate letters, Sen. Hollings and Rep. Tauzin urge Federal 
Communications Commission chairman Michael Powell to move forward
immediately on requiring equipment to respect the "do-not-copy" flag/
"broadcast flag" in all digitial television applications.  
The legislators says the FCC already has the authority to do this.
 
Rep Tauzin's letter is co-signed by Rep John Dingell (D-Mich), 
who will shortly be appearing on a primary ballot for many of you.  :)

response 25 of 104:

Jul 24 13:20 UTC 2002

More on the JPEG patent issue:
http://www.theregus.com/content/4/25713.html
The ISO standards body has said they'll no longer list JPEG as a formal
standard if Fogent continues to demand royalties on it.  The patent
expires in 2004 anyway, though, so I suspect a lot of companies will
just wait this one out.  There's also some comments by JPEG committee
member Richard Clark on the flaws in current patent law:

'"It's becoming impossible to set standards in multimedia; huge numbers
of patents are granted. In Japan there are 4,000 patents on image and
wavelet technology in Japan alone. It's followed the US model, where for
many, many years, the US has allowed patents on very small changes to
very detailed technical terms and where the benefits are few," said Clark.'
...
'And there aren't any safe havens, he warns.'

'"You can't create a standard that doesn't infringe patents - PNG or Ogg
Vorbis could equally be challenged. So it's no good saying something is
patent free: you have to persuade a US jury of that, and it's a crapshoot."'

Personally, I think it's particularly egregious when a company waits
until a standard has been firmly entrenched for over a decade, then pops
up to make a claim.

response 27 of 104:

Jul 24 14:27 UTC 2002

That's pretty much what Fogent is claiming -- that if you create a
program or device that decodes JPEGs, you're using their patented
technology and have to cough up a royalty.

response 29 of 104:

Jul 25 09:58 UTC 2002

gull, #18, that's a really nice   images  page. but, uh, the smtpe 
color bars are, ummm 'off.'  he left-=most bar is supposed to be 70% white
adn teh absolute (100%)  black and white bars are the squares on
the bottom.
  
also, that looks WAY oversaturated, and the green and purple tint
seems a bit 'off' to my eyes.
 
are teh smpte color bars and the ntsc color bars supposed to be the same?
  
notice that my observations are based onthe ntsc bars, please.
  
(yes, i'm using a calibrated ibm p260 monitor, fwiw)

response 31 of 104:

Jul 26 20:32 UTC 2002

Re #16: The Register ran some reader letters recently about the JPEG
patent problem.  They noted that several readers have suggested, as you
did, that switching to PNG might be a solution.  They pointed out
something I'd forgotten -- that PNG also has a patent encumbering it. 
Apple has a patent on alpha blending that appears to cover technology
used in PNG.  So far they haven't tried to enforce it, but there's
nothing to prevent them from deciding to in the future.  Reference:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/39/22898.html

So, you're pretty much going to run afoul of *someone's* patent claims
no matter what format you try to work with.

response 33 of 104:

Jul 31 15:11 UTC 2002

http://www.theregus.com/content/55/25813.html

Remeber those fears that the DMCA would be used to quash legitimate security
research?  It looks like they're coming true.  HP's threatening to sue a
group of researches who found a buffer overflow in the 'su' command of
Tru64.