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Wrong, Europe is not under the bear. In fact what you don't seem to realize is that Europe's relationship with Russia is more complex. As for energy policy one European country, Norway, is the world's third largest exporter of oil and gas. In the south North-African countries are just beginning to supply Europe. But we are keeping tabs on how Russia behaves, not giving into their tantrum politics (Ukraine). EU-Russia relationship And Europe is doing plenty to encourage development of democratic institutions and free press in Russia. But fighting a tyrant like Putin, his friends and KGB troops is not exactly easy. I don't see a massive US campaign helping the oppressed Russian journalists?! At least in Europe we are aiding the democratic Russian forces in the European Court of Justice. Oh, and where's your comment on US censorship?

Wherein :

"First, 'open source' software developers will be able to access and use the interoperability information."

...

"The agreements will be enforceable before the High Court in London, and will provide for effective remedies, including damages, for third party developers in the event that Microsoft breaches those agreements. Effective private enforcement will therefore complement the Commission's public enforcement powers."

1.What exactly does this cover? Which network protocols? Which data formats?

See the EC ruling (PDF), especially article 999 on page 277:

(999) Microsoft should be ordered to disclose complete and accurate specifications for the protocols used by Windows work group servers in order to provide file, print and group and user administration services to Windows work group networks. This includes both direct interconnection and interaction between a Windows work group server and a Windows client PC, as well as interconnection and interaction between a Windows work group server and a Windows client PC that is indirect and passes through another Windows work group server. The use of the term specifications makes clear that Microsoft should not be required to disclose its own implementation of these specifications, that is to say, its own source code. The term protocol relates to the rules of interconnection and interaction between instances of the Windows client PC operating system and the Windows work group server operating system.

Also interesting:

(1008) The requirement for the terms imposed by Microsoft to be reasonable and non- discriminatory applies in particular: [...] there is a need to ensure that potential beneficiaries will have the opportunity to review, themselves or through third parties designated by them, the specifications to be disclosed; Microsoft should be able to impose reasonable and non-discriminatory conditions to ensure that this access to the disclosed specifications is granted for evaluation purposes only;
[...] to any remuneration that Microsoft might charge for supply; such a remuneration should not reflect the strategic value stemming from Microsoft s market power in the client PC operating system market or in the work group server operating system market;

The decision does not seem to give a hard number for how much MS may charge for disclosure of the specs.

If you are not in France why don't you complain here and request a similar unrestricted iPhone product:
http://ec.europa.eu/comm/competition/forms/consumer_form.html

Would be great fun if they could not offer a restricted iphone in Europe for legal reasons. A restriction on reimports as decribed is a trade barrier ans combatted as such by the governments.

Eurobarometer survey on language skills makes interesting reading:

http://ec.europa.eu/public_opinion/archives/ebs/ebs_243_en.pdf

56 % of Europeans can have a conversation in 1 foreign language
28 % with 2 foreign languages
11 % with 3 or more foreign languages

Clearly, there are lots of benefits from knowing another language in Europe, and it's probably also a status symbol to some extent. For a college educated European being able to speak 2 foreign languages is a norm. This is what I've always loved about in Europe - an endless supply of true cosmopolitans.

Or, come to think of it, check out the EU's own website, http://europa.eu/abc/european_countries/index_en.htm, which lists the UK as a member state of the EU.

I was going to argue with you, but I clicked your website (to see what country you're in). I don't want to argue any more; you're hot, wear black and have similar musical taste to me.

(Well, anyway: the EU is helping startups here, by allowing fairer competition and reducing the likelihood of a single company excluding small businesses from the market. They seem to give grants to small businesses as well.) :-)

I am from Sweden, so I was interested about the subject and searched on the Internet. I found a very good link on the European Commission website that contains some simplified information about the different justice systems in the european union. Below is the link to the english version of the chapter discussing evidence and proof in Sweden (There are also quick links to pages discussion the same for each and every country in the EU)

8. Can evidence that has been acquired in an unlawful manner be referred to as evidence?

The principle of admissibility of evidence means that there are only certain rare exceptions where it is forbidden to use certain types of evidence. That evidence has been acquired in an unlawful manner does not therefore, in principle, prevent the proof being referred to during the trial. This can, however, be of significance in the weighing of evidence.

UNLESS OTHERWISE MUTUALLY AGREED TO BY THE PARTIES IN WRITING, LICENSOR OFFERS THE WORK AS-IS AND ONLY TO THE EXTENT OF ANY RIGHTS HELD IN THE LICENSED WORK BY THE LICENSOR. THE LICENSOR MAKES NO

A bit offtopic, but could anyone explain to me why English-language license texts and Terms of Service always are written in obfuscated language that is full of capitals? What's wrong with bold face or italic for emphasis? I recently looked at the judgment by the European court on the Microsoft antitrust case, and I was surprised by how comprehensible it was. Apparently, being legally clear and being human-readible are not mutually exclusive.

No spying yet, but this is the reason the European Union want their own version of GPS.

In the past I have often wondered why the EU thought they needed a GPS system of their own. Now I know why they made Galileo. Thanks.

No article I've read on the subject so far has made any mention of how the specifications need to be licensed, however. If anyone is in the know, please share that information.

Here is the full EC ruling of 2004: Commission Decision of 24.03.2004 relating to a proceeding under Article 82 of the EC Treaty (Case COMP/C-3/37.792 Microsoft). It contains all the reasoning behind the decision in surprisingly non-legalese English, as well as the decision itself on page 299--301:

5a) ... make the Interoperability Information available to any undertaking having an interest in developing and distributing work group server operating system products and shall, on reasonable and non-discriminatory terms, allow the use of the Interoperability Information ...

1008-ii) to any remuneration that Microsoft might charge for supply; such a remuneration should not reflect the strategic value stemming from Microsofts market power in the client PC operating system market or in the work group server operating system market;
1008-iii) to restrictions that Microsoft may impose as to the type of products in which the specifications may be implemented; such restrictions should not create disincentives to compete with Microsoft, or unnecessarily restrain the ability of the beneficiaries to innovate;

No article I've read on the subject so far has made any mention of how the specifications need to be licensed, however. If anyone is in the know, please share that information.

Here is the full EC ruling of 2004: Commission Decision of 24.03.2004 relating to a proceeding under Article 82 of the EC Treaty (Case COMP/C-3/37.792 Microsoft). It contains all the reasoning behind the decision in surprisingly non-legalese English, as well as the decision itself on page 299--301:

5a) ... make the Interoperability Information available to any undertaking having an interest in developing and distributing work group server operating system products and shall, on reasonable and non-discriminatory terms, allow the use of the Interoperability Information ...

1008-ii) to any remuneration that Microsoft might charge for supply; such a remuneration should not reflect the strategic value stemming from Microsofts market power in the client PC operating system market or in the work group server operating system market;
1008-iii) to restrictions that Microsoft may impose as to the type of products in which the specifications may be implemented; such restrictions should not create disincentives to compete with Microsoft, or unnecessarily restrain the ability of the beneficiaries to innovate;

That is right: competition policy alone won't solve it but interoperability enforcement is the other side of the debate.

I am speaking of an amendment that got almost 92% support in the software patents debate

"Wherever the use of a patented technique is necessary in order to ensure interoperability between two different data processing systems, in the sense that no equally efficient and equally effective alternative non-patented means of achieving such interoperability between them is available, such use is not considered to be a patent infringement, nor is the development, testing, making, offering for sale or licence, or importation of programs making such use of a patented technique to be considered a patent infringement."

and I am speaking of the EU IDABC and its European Interoperability Framework. Sure, they are working on its obnstruction but it looks like Microsoft can't do it anymore. Everybody is fed up with them. And another important field is standard policy.

Don't forget: anyone can start an antitrust complaint e.g. against EULA provisions. Here is the complaint form.

Rubbish. Take a look at EU anti-trust cases, and you'll see there's plenty of home-grown cases too.

http://ec.europa.eu/comm/competition/antitrust/cases/index/by_nr_75.html

We love you Americans really....let's kiss and make-up ok?

The fines will increase (exponentially I believe) until they pay. The court can freeze and seize their European assets and they have much of their money within the EU in Ireland as a US tax dodge. Also, the EU is by far MS's largest market. Not complying would be a BAD idea.

BTW, the legal detail is over at Groklaw (basically the court sided with the EC except a minor point about the EC giving too much power to the MS appointed monitoring trustee) and there is a joint FSFE/Samba press release. Also, the the court published the full judgement and other court docs.

It a mainstay of classic economic thought that competition is good and monopolies are bad, the classical definition of monopoly was actually 25%. The problem with having companies have more than that is that they start to wield control over the rest, their size allows them to game access to customers and suppliers.

You argument seems to stem from the misbelief that Operating System software is a competitive market and that Microsoft got to 90% by competing fairly. If so then you would be very wrong.

If you read today's judgement, you will see that Microsoft has regularly abused its' position by bundling, threats, bribes, agreements with OEMs and so on.

Operating Systems is not a competitive market at all, if you use Linux then you will know that the biggest problem is not Windows itself but the fact that it is so dominant. As soon as you use Linux you find that shops, ISPs, firms, manufacturers and so on treat you as a second class citizen. This needs to be broken for the social good.

They have not yet paid another fine that was imposed on them for not paying this fine, as the BBC article mentions, although in no great depth:

I have a problem with Privacy International's Index. How credible is it when the UK and China are both described as "endemic surveillance societies"? Hello: one is a democracy, the other a totalitarian state where people get jailed for their beliefs and voicing their political opinions too openly. Is there a "great Hadrian Firewall" in England? I don't think so.

The major flaw in their study is that they seem to focus on one very limited aspect of "privacy", i.e. wiretapping,etc. What they should also take into account is whether there are clear rules governing admissibility of those materials in court. After all, if the government can listen to what you say or watch what you do but cannot use it in court, why should you be too worried?

And don't forget that most European countries are now restricting freedom of speech in unacceptable ways. Take a look at this EU directive: http://www.europarl.europa.eu/oeil/file.jsp?id=216962. Someone who criticizes Islam, Christianity, Judaism or any other religion might be charged under this statute, since it might be argued that he is inciting hatred against members of this religion.

All in all, I think the US is still 'freer' than most countries in Europe: can you be a holocaust denier in Europe? Can you reveal a politician's dirty secrets without being charged for slander or libel (in many European countries, if it is a 'private matter', you're not even allowed to prove in court that what you wrote or said is true).

http://ec.europa.eu/commission_barroso/frattini/index_en.htm

funny his web page at http://ec.europa.eu/commission_barroso/frattini/index_en.htm I am the Vice President of the European Commission. I am responsible for Freedom, Security and Justice. These web pages tell you about my key priorities which include: Fundamental Rights and citizenship (...)

Try his disliked words in the search at the top of

http://europa.eu/index_en.htm

EU members would not be able to get documents such as

Council Decision 2002/494/JHA of 13 June 2002, setting up a European network of contact points in respect of persons responsible for genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes

Then again, perhaps he's a proponent of Turkish and Serb membership? Neither of those nations like the term "genocide" applied to their past... or maybe he likes revisionist history which claims Holocaust was a hoax...

Try his disliked words in the search at the top of

http://europa.eu/index_en.htm

EU members would not be able to get documents such as

Council Decision 2002/494/JHA of 13 June 2002, setting up a European network of contact points in respect of persons responsible for genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes

Then again, perhaps he's a proponent of Turkish and Serb membership? Neither of those nations like the term "genocide" applied to their past... or maybe he likes revisionist history which claims Holocaust was a hoax...

Quick answer: Two years.

For the first six months the burden of proof lies with the seller, and from then on it lies with the buyer.

So in this case PC World would have to explain how installing a different OS will crack the case, and that this is what likely happened. (Basically it wouldn't be worth their while)

If he'd have left it a month later, then he would have to prove that the crack is the result of a fault in the product.
This shouldn't be too hard, if he can reasonably explain that the crack resulted without any inproper treatment, and that installing a different OS should not affect the casing.

This is the appropriate European directive, and for the specific national legislation, I think you have to look for the "sale of goods acts" for the UK.

In you sister's case I believe it is reasonable for the seller to simply repair the product, and the buyer cannot insist on replacement or refund (unless the seller has repeatedly failed to repair the product adequately).

The new EU roaming tariff only applies when using a sim from a operator located in the EU. The aim is to harmonize roaming costs within the EU. So it doesn't apply to an AT&T sim. http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/activities/roaming/ Secondly, the tariff only applies to voice calls and NOT to SMS, MMS or GPRS/UMTS. Thirdly, I have noticed that people seem to get charged for absurd amounts of data. It is quite impossible to verify that those amounts have actually been used. I have a theory that the calculation method used by the operators is responsible for charging people for amounts that are bigger then the actual use. It would be interesting to measure the actual use (possibly through a tcpdump) and compare this with the bill. I haven't seen any operator that explains in detail which calculation method (using increments) is used.

Was that a hotel or a mobile phone bill? Roaming charges were recently the subject of an EU court case which has placed a cap on them:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/4851730.stm

http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/activities /roaming/roaming_regulation/index_en.htm

Though I can't see it helping much if you're using a US cell phone in the EU.

Thanks, I hadn't noticed that little discrepancy. In fact, I was under the impression that the one exemption that member states weren't allowed to limit under the EUCD was the transient copying part that applies here (Article 5, clause 1 of the EUCD). Note that the subsequent clauses begin "Member States may provide for exceptions or limitations to ...", but this one does not.

I don't see how one could argue the exception that has appeared in the UK law is permitted under the EUCD, unless perhaps you take the rather weak position that such an exemption would somehow be prejudicial to the legitimate rights of the rightholder (Article 5, clause 5). Personally, I don't accept that being able to enforce a licence agreement imposing all sorts of one-sided conditions not otherwise supported by copyright law is a legitimate right of the rightholder!

(yes, there's Linux, there's MacOS, but what company would switch?)

Ernie Ball
Wotif.com
Burlington Coat Factory
Peugeot

Just to name a few.

And of course IBM and Novell, but they don't count, as they are strong GNU/Linux players.

Of course, Siemens was a bit off in their prediction of 20% market share by 2008. But I'd say there's the chance we might make 20% some day.

Because the coders of FOSS applications have writing ever cleaner code as one of their primary motivations. A study published for the European Commission (page 49) last year showed that approximately 50% of the code in the Debian repository had been replaced at least every 5 years. Cleaner code leads inevitably to more efficient code, so over time the applications tend to become more efficient even as they add features. Therefore, the machines running a majority of FOSS code tend to become more stable over time and also tend to take longer to become limited by their hardware when compared to closed source apps.

In addition, the pool of available FOSS code is doubling every 18 to 24 months /even while/ the existing codebase is being completely rewritten every 10 years or so. I'd love to see a comparison to closed source code. I'd be willing to bet that there's no way that COTS code comes close to those kinds of numbers.

Closed source apps designs are primarily driven by a need to meet a ship date in order to satisfy marketing. Patching such code after the fact has to deal with grafting on to whatever is currently in place. Rewriting code frequently simply isn't an option.

"Geothermal" is an extremely large umbrella under which many different types of systems are developed. I am a field supervisor for a company that specializes in the development high temperature geothermal aquifers. Right now (like tonight) I'm drilling in the Ohaaki-Broadlands field in New Zealand. I'll be leaving here to return to Iceland where they've been developing the Reykjanes (Blue Lagoon) and Hellisheidi fields.

This is (at least) the second time these "hot rock" systems have been mentioned on Slashdot. Each time this type of geothermal power is mentioned as being "first", it means that it is the first of its kind to be commercially viable. It involves (at a MINIMUM of 2 wells - one to inject and one to drain - for a heat transfer loop to occur from the temperature of the surrounding rock. A "path" for the water to move from one well to the other is where the "art" or science comes into play. I'm really speculating now but from what I gathered between the lines of the article was that where they drilled the injection well was along a natural fault. This would save them the cost of a "frac" job to create a path between the injection and the recovery well.
(I'm leaving out the possibility of a reverse circulation well which would pump down the outside of a tubing string and recover up through it).
http://ec.europa.eu/research/energy/nn/nn_rt/nn_rt _geo/article_1136_en.htm

These projects are the "first" of it's type (to be commercially viable (in the future)). Geothermal power generation has been in production (on a large, commercial scale) from the late '40s and early '50s.

The power generation wells we drill typically flow "water" at 290-315C - you can tell (on surface while drilling) how hot they get by indicator minerals and their melting points. When we drill into one of these aquifers the "water" wants to become 100C and "steam" at atmosphere - that's where the energy to power turbines comes in. I'm leaving out the "typical" production figures since this varies from country to country - some fields produce 8-10MW/well and others can produce 35-40MW/well - that's alot of power to be coming out of the ground from a single hole (usually 12 1/4" or 8 5/8")!

The wells then get tied into a pipeline system and feed a turbine generating station (after pre-plant treatment if required). This is similar to how oil/gas wells are tied into a refinery. In most cases the water outflow from these plants are re-injected into wells that are drilled for this purpose on the edge of the aquifer systems.
I just wanted to throw some point of view out there for this stuff - I can try to answer other questions related to geothermal power (since it's kinda my "hobby" now like Linux was when I was dd'ing onto 14 floppies back in '94). I didn't write the book on this stuff but I work along side the people who did.
Cheers

Actually, this is getting less and less true as companies are getting involved either directly or indirectly. For instance this article refers to a report by the European Commission on the Economic Impact of FLOSS and the numbers speaks for themselves.

Although the report states 61.2% of the code has been contributed by individuals, it also mentions SUN, IBM, Red Hat, Silicon Graphics (!) and others as heavy contributors.

That being said, I don't care much for OS wars and I think it's great to have options (proprietary or otherwise).

You could set up such a camera in the USA. In many parts of Europe, it would be illegal. Even if you were allowed yo set up the camera in the first place, in Europe personal information is owned by that person, irrespective of who collects it. You would need the permission of everyone passing by to collect and store the information, and you would also need to provide a mechanism for people to find out what information you are storing on them and a mechanism for them to correct errors in the database. There is a difference between noticing things pass by on a public street, and setting up an automatic system for pervasive surveillance. For some reason, it seems that many slashdotters don't recognize a difference?!?!

By the way, the credit database example would also be illegal in Europe (not that being illegal means it never happens of course - the Swift fiasco transferring data to the CIA is one large scale example, as far as I know no one was ever prosecuted and it is probably still continuing. And there is probably a large number of low-level violations of the data protection laws going on all the time). See here.

Not directly related, but Hungary is very much into open source. Also, according to google analytics for my open source project, I get quite a few hits from Hungary. And remember European Firefox usage from a few weeks ago? Hungary is one of the leading adopters of Firefox in the world. I wonder if this kind of IT culture has any bearing on how hard they will go after M$.

Read 'em yourselves: EU's official statement and Intel's official response.

Organic and conventionally bred crops are not necessarily safer than GM foods. GM foods go through so much more testing and regulation that most don't even make it to market. Conventional/organic produce is never tested before reaching the market, and dangerous varieties are only removed after something has happened to consumers.

Furthermore, there HAVE been conventionally/traditionally bred crops, bred to be pest resistant, that had to be pulled off shelves because the level of toxicity found in these crops were at least 7x that of the controls. The specific instance I'm talking about is a celery cultivar that had 6200 ppb of carcinogenic psoralens, as opposed to 800 ppb in the control. Field workers reported rashes after handling this celery variety, and the cultivar was pulled from shelves. I've appended an article that mentions this. Open, and search for "psoralens", and you should find the right passage.

http://ec.europa.eu/environment/ppps/pdf/ma_reding _annex1.pdf

From the other side of the issue, looking at GM foods, the only recall that comes to mind (and I'm pretty positive this is the only major one, or else anti-GM people would've had a field day and gotten GM foods banned internationally already) is that of Starlink corn contaminated foods, which wasn't ever directly linked to actual deaths or illness. The only grounds for recall was that the specific Bt toxin found in Starlink (which isn't toxic to humans at all) wasn't digested as quickly as other Bt toxin proteins, and may have passed through the human stomach and been absorbed by the intestines (I think), posing a threat as a possible allergen. What is interesting, is that Starlink was never approved for human consumption; it was meant for animal feed. In other words, someone on the supply side screwed up, and Starlink corn wasn't properly labeled as such. This allowed Starlink to be sold as normal corn, and it permeated into our food supply. Of course, this isn't the only issue with GM foods, as people point out that transgene insertions are random. The result is that we have no way of being 100% sure that gene expression is not going to be altered in a way that'll harm us. Then again, that's why GM crops are subject to numerous tests and regulations.

Point: Anything can be potentially dangerous. I don't think saying one thing is worse than the other is going to do any good; rather, responsible development of all forms of technological/agricultural advancement is the way to go, and, of course, this is much easier said than done.

I thought we had signed up to make the european court the highest court in the land sometime ago

Microsoft actually got in trouble for this type of behavior in Europe.

http://europa.eu/rapid/pressReleasesAction.do?refe rence=IP/01/569&format=HTML&aged=0&language=EN&gui Language=en

"Microsoft agrees not to influence technology decisions of European digital cable operators
The European Commission has carried out an investigation into the investments of US software company Microsoft Corp in the European digital cable television industry. This was to ensure that the technology decisions of cable operators are made on merit and that suppliers of set-top box technology can compete with Microsoft on equal terms. The investigation will be closed now that Microsoft and its strategic allies have agreed to abolish or change their so-called "Technology Boards" so that the latter's recommendations are no longer binding."

Mod parent insightful - this is exactly how it works. In the Early '90s, I was president of the union of university students of the Dutch-speaking part of Belgium. Europe has no authority on education, but they do on employment and therefor on vocational training. Some lobyists inside and outside the European institutions wanted to stretch their authority on vocational training into the complete system of Education. A report was written by the European Round Table of industrialists, which was rewritten by the semi-official IRDAC, which was in its turn rewritten as a "green paper", a "white paper" and finally a "Memorandum on Higher Education" of the European Comission. If these reports were implemented as a European Directive, this would have been a total sell-out of education to industry - there was true brain control in it also (professors who were not sympathetic to the "European Project" would not get promoted). We were first alerted by the Swedish union of students (IIRC, it may have been the Danes), and because we were based in Brussels we organised the protest against this new legislation. We managed to torpedo the Memorandum on Higher Education by convincing several ministers of education to oppose this new set of directives. So what do we see now: the Memorandum on Higher Education is being implemented slowly (which is pretty fast) step by step in several countries, where it is being sold as "uniform lay-out of diploma's" (you can't possibly be against THAT) and more such stuff - all the "Bologna" nonsense of the past few years also fits in here, who can be against the exchange of students (while they're selling the professors). I can imagine the patent folks work the same way.

I posted this elsewhere in the comments, but it does bear repeating that there was a directive issued in 2003 to specifically forbid these sorts of lock-outs. The full legalese is here...

These "clever chips" are already banned in the EU, and similar directives forbid many "custom" changes to lock out third party suppliers. See the Waste Electronic and Electric Equipment Directive for more details.

They are running Solaris there, the servers serving that Wmedia Junk will be possibly (if gets popular) Helix Servers (Real) since there is no such thing as "Windows Media Server for Solaris". Windows Media Server is a joke for any real World load especially BBC size.

These guys doesn't know about open source? Open source is not very popular in UK? Half of my open source stuff comes from UK.

The "partnership agreement" is the right part. I hope there are courts or mechanisms there to question the recent love of Wmedia at BBC. We could be hearing about some IT bribe scandal of the decade.

Windows Media and their tricks are already documented at
http://ec.europa.eu/comm/competition/antitrust/cas es/index/by_nr_75.html#i37_792

MS LOST that case and BBC is trying to lock people to that specific format/platform.

This thing is a very serious one, that open source organization really knows what they are doing while taking it to court.

It is not explicit, but as I understand it, it is implied. I just quickly reviewed the directives (95/46/EC):

http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do? uri=CELEX:31995L0046:EN:HTML

In 95/46/EC you have Article 6.e stating that data must be stored for no longer than needed in order to process the data for the purposes the data was collected. Article 7.a requires consent of the data subject or 7.b that processing is required to perform a task on the request of the data subject.

Which, I deduce, means that if you object to data processing or terminate a contract or cancel a request, then there no longer exist the justification for storing data and they must be deleted.

Or at least they must be deleted upon requets: Article 12.b grants the subject right to "as appropriate the rectification, erasure or blocking of data the processing the processing of which does not comply with the provisions of this Directive". But when can this be used? Well, I guess if you have objected to the processing, then processing is against the provisions of the directive and hence data may be deleted - but IANAL.

Now, the directive states some common requirements, but individual member states may add extra conditions and the directive also includes room for exceptions.

Finally, I must correct myself, the directive does mention some controls, but in practice there is no inspection and while guidelines should be "encouraged" I have yet to see these. Investigation is not made until some data subject complains or other evidence shows up. And since there is no requirement to disclose incidents, everything can be kept quiet.

Third and probably the most important is that the EU and the rest of the world have only been attempting to reduce Co2 emisiosn since 2000 when the kyoto accord was in effect. Comparing to anything previous is senseless and misleading. It implies there was an effort that isn't and attempt to say look, we are guilty because we done this before that.

Reducing CO2 emissions is often a side effect of other efforts to curb pollution. Besides that, some of the EU-15 member states are the driving force behind Kyoto, and cared about CO2 emissions long before it was signed.

For instance, the main reasons for the favourable trend in Germany in the 90s are an effort to increase efficiency in power plants and the restructuring of the industry of the former DDR after reunification, and the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions in the UK was primarily the result of fuel switches from oil and coal to gas in electricity production and N2O emissions reduction measures in the chemical industry.

Also the shift towards smaller cars and diesel engines, driven by higher excise taxes on gas, and improvement of (legally required) catalytic converters on cars, are contributors, as well as thermal isolation subsidies and requirements for households in many EU-15 member states. The reform of the CAP in 1992 led to reduced use of fertilizer and less cattle, and the landfill waste directive to recovery of CH4 from landfills in the EU-15. (cf. generally Gugele et al, 2002) All of those efforts have CO2 emissions reduction as a side effect.

It is relevant to include recent history in evaluating track record, because countries that started to curb pollution early have to make a greater effort to achieve the same reduction (certainly if the target is set as a percentage of current emissions). The US has a long way to go to have CO2 emissions per capita equal to the EU-15, and the US does not have any excuses for high emissions: it's not a major exporter of energy-intensive manufactured goods like for instance Germany or Japan.

I'm one of those .01% too. And to back up your claims of biased nonsense, Think about this.

The article linked to doesn't even use the same data set the White House uses. It grabs data from two separate sources and one of those sources is labeled as a draft report. But more importantly, the data sources provide different data calculations all together. The US data is derived from here (pdf) which covers everything under the sun and the Europe numbers come from here(pdf) Now the US data lists everything it is counting while the EU data list reported totals whatever they may be. They list a few more details in the other parts about the data ofr the EU here I read through some o it and it doesn't look like everything counted is the same. I haven't and will not do an in depth analysis of it to find out one way or another.

I won't do this because the White House cited data from the International Energy Agency which pulls the same data from the countries and do the same calculations for it. We know the data here, even though it doesn't encompass anything that isn't Co2 or from burning fuel sources, uses the same information available for both geographical areas. I think this is interesting for several reasons. One is because the White House said that according to a report by the IEA, and then made their claims. And another is that as I said above, we know the information collected is accurately represented for both areas. There must be a reason they selected only natural gas for some extra supporting evidence at yet another site with more different data.

SO the article makes several claims that are just blatantly false. One is that the White House cherry picked information, The truth is an international agency provided the data, the years were selected because they were the years he was president and you need a qualifier year previous to this to show the changes between what he claims has been accomplished. Another is that there is some conspiracy to skew science. The fact is, the only people manipulating numbers are the one throwing rocks.

Another problem is that they aren't even talking about the same stuff. Yet the Pacinst report claims it is for some reason. The president/White House has said from the start that the IEA provided the numbers. and the IEA report only talks about emissions from combustible sources.

I hope I haven't rambled on too much. It didn't take long to find these problems out when I first saw the pacinst thing on the 9th or 10 of may. This thing is a sham from the start and as you put it, the bias just elevates it.

I'm one of those .01% too. And to back up your claims of biased nonsense, Think about this.

The article linked to doesn't even use the same data set the White House uses. It grabs data from two separate sources and one of those sources is labeled as a draft report. But more importantly, the data sources provide different data calculations all together. The US data is derived from here (pdf) which covers everything under the sun and the Europe numbers come from here(pdf) Now the US data lists everything it is counting while the EU data list reported totals whatever they may be. They list a few more details in the other parts about the data ofr the EU here I read through some o it and it doesn't look like everything counted is the same. I haven't and will not do an in depth analysis of it to find out one way or another.

I won't do this because the White House cited data from the International Energy Agency which pulls the same data from the countries and do the same calculations for it. We know the data here, even though it doesn't encompass anything that isn't Co2 or from burning fuel sources, uses the same information available for both geographical areas. I think this is interesting for several reasons. One is because the White House said that according to a report by the IEA, and then made their claims. And another is that as I said above, we know the information collected is accurately represented for both areas. There must be a reason they selected only natural gas for some extra supporting evidence at yet another site with more different data.

SO the article makes several claims that are just blatantly false. One is that the White House cherry picked information, The truth is an international agency provided the data, the years were selected because they were the years he was president and you need a qualifier year previous to this to show the changes between what he claims has been accomplished. Another is that there is some conspiracy to skew science. The fact is, the only people manipulating numbers are the one throwing rocks.

Another problem is that they aren't even talking about the same stuff. Yet the Pacinst report claims it is for some reason. The president/White House has said from the start that the IEA provided the numbers. and the IEA report only talks about emissions from combustible sources.

I hope I haven't rambled on too much. It didn't take long to find these problems out when I first saw the pacinst thing on the 9th or 10 of may. This thing is a sham from the start and as you put it, the bias just elevates it.

Fine, but that value comes from... Their customers. And those customers do not get any such value.

The question of whether the GPL would be preferable to the BSDL in the long run depends on how the benefits of relatively larger increases in P over time, derived through persuading some who would otherwise close their work to open it, compare with the losses incurred by not allowing P to be combined with C.

No, not at all. Even if all I ever do is write and release Free works, and never use anyone else's Free works, I can still be concerned with Freedom.

Link: http://ec.europa.eu/research/energy/nn/nn_rt/nn_rt _dg/article_1158_en.htm. It should appeal to us internet-loving nerds ;-)