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Joe Stack's adult daughter, Samantha Bell, spoke to ABC's "Good Morning America" from her home in Norway. Asked during a phone interview broadcast Monday if she considered her father a hero, she said: "Yes. Because now maybe people will listen." Authorities say Stack, 53, targeted the IRS office building in Austin on Thursday, killing employee Vernon Hunter and himself, after posting a ranting manifesto against the agency and the government. He apparently set fire to his home before flying his plane into the office building. Hunter's son, Ken Hunter, said he's alarmed by comments that the pilot was a hero. "How can you call someone a hero who after he burns down his house, he gets into his plane ... and flies it into a building to kill people?" Hunter told ABC." "My dad Vernon did two tours of duty in Vietnam. My dad's a hero." Bell said she offered her deepest condolences to Hunter's family. She said her father's last actions were wrong. "But if nobody comes out and speaks up on behalf of injustice, then nothing will ever be accomplished," she told ABC. "But I do not agree with his last action with what he did. But I do agree about the government,"

In his new book, "The Double Helix and the Law of Evidence" (Harvard University Press), Kaye focuses on the intersection of science and law, and emphasizes that DNA evidence is merely information. "There's a popular perception that with DNA, you get results," Kaye said. "You're either guilty or innocent, and the DNA speaks the truth. That goes too far. DNA is a tool. Perhaps in many cases it's open and shut, in other cases it's not. There's ambiguity."

One of the book's key themes is that using science in court is hard to do right. "It requires lawyers and judges to understand a lot about the science," Kaye noted. "They don't have to be scientists or technicians, but they do have to know enough to understand what's going on and whether the statements that experts are making are well-founded. The lawyers need to be able to translate that information into a form that a judge or a jury can understand." Kaye also believes that lawyers need to better understand statistics and probability, an area that has traditionally been neglected in law school curricula. His book attempts to close this gap in understanding with several sections on genetic science and probability. The book also contends that scientists, too, have contributed to the false sense of certainty, when they are so often led by either side of one particular case to take an extreme position. Scientists need to approach their role as experts less as partisans and more as defenders of truth. Aiming to be a definitive history of the use of DNA evidence, "The Double Helix and the Law of Evidence" chronicles precedent-setting criminal trials, battles among factions of the scientific community and a multitude of issues with the use of probability and statistics related to DNA. From the Simpson trial to the search for the last Russian Tsar, Kaye tells the story of how DNA science has impacted society. He delves into the history of the application of DNA science and probability within the legal system and depicts its advances and setbacks.

University of Edinburgh law lecturer Andres Guadamuz wrote a blog entry this week highlighting some particularly troubling aspects of the IIPA's 301 recommendations. The organization has condemned Indonesia and several other countries for encouraging government adoption of open source software. According to the IIPA, official government endorsements of open source software create "trade barriers" and restrict "equitable market access" for software companies. The profound absurdity of this accusation is exacerbated by the fact that Indonesia's move towards open source software was almost entirely motivated by a desire to eliminate the use of pirated software within the government IT infrastructure. It's important to understand that Indonesia has not mandated the adoption of open source software or barred government agencies from purchasing proprietary commercial software. The Indonesian government issued a statement in 2009 informing municipal governments that they had to stop using pirated software. The statement said that government agencies must either purchase legally licensed commercial software or switch to free and open source alternatives in order to comply with copyright law. This attempt by Indonesia to promote legal software procurement processes by endorsing the viability of open source software has apparently angered the IIPA. In its 301 recommendations for Indonesia, the IIPA demands that the government rescind its 2009 statement. According to the IIPA, Indonesia's policy "weakens the software industry and undermines its long-term competitiveness" because open source software "encourages a mindset that does not give due consideration to the value to intellectual creations [and] fails to build respect for intellectual property rights." The number of ways in which the IIPA's statements regarding open source software are egregiously misleading and dishonest are too numerous to count. The IIPA seems to have completely missed the fact that there is a very robust ecosystem of commercial software vendors in the open source software market and that open source software is at the heart of some of the most popular consumer electronics products that are sold in the United States. It has clearly become an important part of the US software economy and increasingly serves as an enabler of innovation and technological progress. In light of the profitability of Red Hat and other open source leaders, it seems absurd to contend that open source software adoption will weaken the software industry or reduce its competitiveness. In fact, the emergence of open source software has contributed to creating a more competitive landscape in the software industry by offering alternative business models that enable smaller companies to gain traction against the dominant incumbent players. The IIPA's position is profoundly hypocritical, because many parts of the US government, including the Department of Defense, have issued their own memos endorsing open source software adoption. The IIPA's disingenuous move to equate open source software with piracy reeks of desperation. The BSA and other IIPA members are likely losing sleep over open source software because that development model and approach to licensing will empower developing countries to build their own domestic IT industries, eliminating the need for them to tithe to American software giants. It's another failing of the 301 review, which Big Content wants used to coerce other countries into adopting ever-more-stringent copyright laws.