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> Otherwise the division should be spun off as a research company, purely focussed on IP. IBM is a good example in point.

IBM may be a good example, but it is a bad model ethically and pragmatically example. Its patents hoarding heightens the barrier to entry, because basically to do real business in IT now you have to have enough fundamental patents to bargain on IBM out of paying them huge, confiscatory royalties on everything under the Sun.

Actually, according to Cringley's standards, IBM patents are part of the problem, not of the solution.

And remember, there is no such thing as IP!

Robert Cringley had an interesting take on this in one of his old weekly columns.

"The single most driving force in the development of Bill Gates today or any day is his competitive nature. The guy simply has to win, and will do pretty much whatever it takes to succeed. ... And if he can't win, then he'd rather not play." ...

"The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has committed $750 million to childhood vaccination programs, primarily in the Third World.

"This change in focus doesn't mean that Bill Gates is any less competitive, just that he has once again redefined the game into one at which he knows he can win. When you are the richest man in the world, nobody can beat you at giving money away."

The branch davidians, among quite a lot of other things, refused to cooperate with an ATF investigation that was being carried out as much in accordance with due process of law as one could possibly ask, and shot some ATF agents. The south in the civil war, among quite a lot of other things, seceded from the united states despite having no clear authority to do so just because they didn't like the results of a presidential election, and fired on U.S. naval ships outside charleston.

The 20,000 people in the article have a plan to move to some state and then vote there. And y'all are comparing that to armed attempts to declare oneself outside of federal jurisdiction??

I don't think the Free State project or whatever is all that realistic, and i don't know if i agree with all of their goals. But they are serious, honest attempts to work within the system to effect change. Their goal basically comes down to using the democratic system for its intended purpose.

As such, i have to respect them as a movement, and i don't really think comparisons to the confederate states or the branch davidians are really in order. The free state people (look at their FAQ :P) are actually trying to achieve their goals by nonviolent, political, legal means. That is a big, big difference! The government isn't going to send troops in to stop people from bloc voting (unlike in some countries i could name).

I for one would say attempting to force some kind of 10th amendment confrontation between state and federal governments is a noble goal, and would be beneficial at least in that it would bring a marginalized issue to the forefront and force the supreme court to clarify a constitutional question that right now seems very very muddy (where is the border between state and federal jurisdiction?). And i for one would say this even if the confrontation in question were caused by a movement led by a zombified resurrection of Ayn Wacko Libertarian Rand herself :)

The best I can come up with is a link to the frontline 'fooling with nature' site.

Go into any factory, and read a few MSDS sheets. Then see what products are being made that use these chemicals. Then try to find supporting product safety studies that have any real meat to them. It's kind of scary.

The PBS series "Frontline" did a show called "Bigger Than Enron" that has an excellent website to go along with the show. It contains interviews with many of the key players here, including former SEC Chairman Arthur Levitt, current chairman Arthur Pitt, and others.

It's acutally more robust than the B2.0 article, and goes into some detail about how politicians and businesspeople push for the SEC to have less power than it needs. At one point Levitt describes how the heads of different congressioinal committees were threating to pull funding entirely from the SEC if Levitt didn't quit pushing for accounting reforms, the exact reforms that turned out to be so necessary. This was in April of 2000, just before the all the shit started to hit the fan.

Coming on in conjunction with today's announcement by the Bush Administration that they don't want to give the SEC too much money, it's certainly not too much of a stretch to see a pattern develop.

The PBS series "Frontline" did a show called "Bigger Than Enron" that has an excellent website to go along with the show. It contains interviews with many of the key players here, including former SEC Chairman Arthur Levitt, current chairman Arthur Pitt, and others.

It's acutally more robust than the B2.0 article, and goes into some detail about how politicians and businesspeople push for the SEC to have less power than it needs. At one point Levitt describes how the heads of different congressioinal committees were threating to pull funding entirely from the SEC if Levitt didn't quit pushing for accounting reforms, the exact reforms that turned out to be so necessary. This was in April of 2000, just before the all the shit started to hit the fan.

Coming on in conjunction with today's announcement by the Bush Administration that they don't want to give the SEC too much money, it's certainly not too much of a stretch to see a pattern develop.

"The technology would paste a digital certificate on every byte of data"
O'Reilly
(see item 5)
(google cache of de-generationx)
Cringely--slightly off-topic, but still interesting

I think this should be treated the same as any invitation to submit questions to an interviewee.

MS, in this case.

It's disappointing to see the flamage herein. Yep, Slashdot may be homogenizing, as some have asserted - becoming bland, grey, doubleplusungood sameness in all directions. Personified by Prolific Puking Proselytizing Punks!?!

Yet ---- on the flip side, there are too many superficial questions asked, which by their phrasing or their supposed "subtlety" or "indirection" will somehow be "sprung" upon the erstwhile MS drones standing under the bright lights.

Sigh.

This is a very rare opportunity, if indeed someone will represent "our" interests at this forum (and assuming the chance to speak).

We should be asking all the questions that have come up before, but that have not yet been answered: in Salon by Bruce Perens ('Perens is convinced that Palladium will let Microsoft decide which applications can run on a machine and which are simply too unsafe for public consumption -- such as programs written by open-source hackers. Perens even thinks that's the point of Palladium: "It's designed to kill off open-source development."') and in Dan Gillmor ("Microsoft has launched its Palladium initiative, a hardware-software system designed to make computing more secure from viruses and malevolent hackers. Palladium, unfortunately, could also be used by intellectual-property owners to lock down copyrighted materials in ways that would damage users' rights. Critics have also suggested that Palladium could be used to freeze out open source software -- and they make a compelling case.")

A few example questions:

1. What special considerations will be given to corporations whose desktop computers may not have live access to "verification" servers or other real-time "authorization" mechanisms?
2. What will prevent the "considerations" given to corporations from being subverted for use by non-corporate users?
3. From Robert Cringely (here): "Under Palladium as I understand it, the Internet goes from being ours to being theirs. The very data on your hard drive ceases to be yours because it could self-destruct at any time. We'll end up paying rent to use our own data!"

   What is Microsoft's response to Cringely's allegation that data will no longer be "permanently readable" - a characteristic of computing that is taken for granted today?

4. From Digital ID World:

   DIDW: Because Palladium will have an installed public/private key for at least bootstrap purposes...
   Juarez: Which is never revealed to anybody, including you.
   DIDW: But it raises the questions, all the old Clipper Chip issues, of will the government pressure you for key escrow and things like that?
   Juarez: We are talking to the government now, and maybe this is where we get some advantage from having a broad industry initiative. Our fundamental goal is "let's do the right thing." We have pretty strong feelings about what the right thing is on terms of making sure that things are truly anonymous and that key escrow kinds of things don't happen. But there ARE governments in the world, and not just the U.S. Government.
   

   What are Microsoft's present commitments to governments regarding key escrow? U.S.? England? France? Germany? Afghanistan? Iraq/Iran?

5. From InternetNews.com: "The big question from everyone is," says Elias Levy, a computer-security expert and CTO of Security Focus, "who is going to have control - is it going to be in the hands of the user or Microsoft?"
6. From InternetNews.com: "But by integrating Palladium with its Windows operating system (OS), Microsoft is taking another strike at Linux users. Juarez won't rule out Palladium ever being available for alternative operating systems, but it won't be initially."

   What is Microsoft's position today on this issue?

7. As noted in BSDVault, a patch to MS Media Player to address security bulletin MS02-032 includes the following EULA language:

   * Digital Rights Management (Security). You agree that in order to protect the integrity of content and software protected by digital rights management ("Secure Content"), Microsoft may provide security related updates to the OS Components that will be automatically downloaded onto your computer. These security related updates may disable your ability to copy and/or play Secure Content and use other software on your computer. If we provide such a security update, we will use reasonable efforts to post notices on a web site explaining the update.

   Is this DRM part of (or related to) Palladium? In any event, what recourse will users have when (if) their existing software ceases to function as a result of these new "features"?

Search Google, read all the material, find the unanswered questions - and it won't matter that Microsoft sees this slashdot thread. Ask the questions that MS knows about, but has not been able or willing to answer...

Freeh needs to find a whipping boy for the failures of correlating the various peices intelligence datum, which occurred on his watch. Restricting legal access to crypto will only assist in the illicit observation of constitutionally protected speech by private individuals, and destroy what little competitive advantage is enjoyed by U.S. software industries over their counterparts in Israel and India.

The algorithms and the source will not go "back in the can."

Louis Freeh is responsible, in a large part, for the biggest intelligence failure in modern recollection. None of the failure in this effort was for lack of access to encrypted communications, but from standard failures of organization and communications within the concerned agencies.

The Heritage Foundation - not normally critical of the FBI's mission - has this to say:

But what if FBI intelligence fails to collect, analyze and share this information? This could happen, the commission found, because "the guidelines under which FBI agents operate ... are badly written and confusing. These are guidelines that set out the terms under which the FBI can open a preliminary inquiry against somebody who may be suspected of being a terrorist. All of us read them (they run to about 42 pages) and we had a number of current and former FBI agents testify that they found them confusing."

The commission recommended that then Attorney General Janet Reno and former FBI Director Louis Freeh rewrite the guidelines into "more easily understood English."

Moreover, the FBI had no procedure for disseminating useful information for analysis within the agency or sharing it with other government agencies.

Information which was obtained, in Los Angeles, for example, but did not immediately apply to the case at hand, would simply not leave the regional office, even though it might provide important clues for another investigation, says Ambassador L. Paul Bremer, Ambassador at Large for Counterintelligence during the Reagan Administration and former Managing Director of Kissinger Associates.

I agree 100% with what David H. Lynch says, and he certainly says it eloquently. But suppose the worst: what if the Supreme Court upholds copyright extension, the RIAA gets its hacking license, and the government embarks on a War on Piracy with the zeal of its decades-long War on Drugs. What do we do then?

I'm thinking what should happen is open defiance of copyright extension. As many people as possible should post as many pictures of Steamboat Willie as they can find, on as many webservers and p2p networks as possible. Give the courts so many cases to handle that they simply can't do it. Robert Cringely proposed this same idea , and I like it. But I wonder how many people would actually participate? The legal system's only trump card is that few people ever go all the way to the wall to defend a principle. That's a significant fact. Who wants to risk going to a real jail in order to share some music files over Kazaa?

I sure don't. I have a family to support, and if people started getting snatched out of their houses there's no way I am going to have my house seized and be the bitch for some knuckle scraping troglodyte in a cell. Even if those prospects didn't bother me, justifying my actions to my wife would be another matter. Actually, I'm not sure which would be worse. If the enforcement starts to get harsh, my p2p files are coming right down. And I bet 99% of you reading this are the same way. When the rubber meets the road, how many of you have stood your ground when you knew you were going to get your ass kicked?

That's one thing that gives me a really fatalistic feeling about all this. I sure hope the legal brains arguing Eldred vs Ashcroft are in top form, because I really believe that the fate of this issue will rest on the shoulders of a few heroes, not on the masses who will mostly run for cover if the shit hits the fan.

Yeah, IIRC, he won the suit that attempted to block him from continuing to use "Robert X. Cringely" as a pen name. There's a tiny bit of info here, probably more if you Google on "Cringely lawsuit".

Wrong Cringely. Here are the 2002 predictions from the "real" RXC

Let's see how close he was... Anyone got a link?

Cringely prides himself on the accuracy of his predictions. Here's links to the last few years' worth:

2002
2001
2000
1999

Let's see how close he was... Anyone got a link?

Cringely prides himself on the accuracy of his predictions. Here's links to the last few years' worth:

2002
2001
2000
1999

Let's see how close he was... Anyone got a link?

Cringely prides himself on the accuracy of his predictions. Here's links to the last few years' worth:

2002
2001
2000
1999

Let's see how close he was... Anyone got a link?

Cringely prides himself on the accuracy of his predictions. Here's links to the last few years' worth:

2002
2001
2000
1999

Oh wait: it is

I'm one of them. And you know what: I don't care. Here's why:

Music is our birthright. It has been around for far longer than any of us have. Every culture has developed their own music, often very unique and distinctive. It is a human heritage we should be proud of, music can inspire and influence many emotions and express our dreams and fears. It joins people together in a common bond that we all enjoy.

In the past 100 years, technology has been developed to deliver pre-recorded music. From these inventions an entire industry has grown. The term "record label" comes from the fact that artists would go to the labels (who had the required equipment) to get their music cut to vinyl. The label would then reproduce the record and give the artist a good cut of the profits. The "label" attached indicated who had produced the record.

Fast forward to the 60s. Pre-recorded music is getting very popular, e.g. The Beatles. Live musical performances are becoming rarer as alternatives to live music are becoming cheaper and more accepted into society.

As the labels gain more and more power over the next 30 years, they start to realise that they have a large influence in what people listen to. Shops begin to be forced to promote certain albums with threats like "sure, you can sell this, but you must also sell this other product in a prominent place in your store". Eventually radio is given the same blow, the stations begin to lose control of what they can play. Currently, Clear Channel control/own an unbelievable chunk of the radio market. You can't play their music unless you stick to their rules. You can't have your music played on their stations unless you paid them. When was the last time you heard a discussion or even the mention of p2p technology on commercial radio?

This control of the market leads to the "industry" we have today. There are only 7 companies that control almost all of the media you can access. Everything is controlled and managed. Have you ever listened to the radio to hear a song from an artist that you haven't heard from in a while, only to find that they have new material that gets announced a few days/weeks later? That's them at work, playing the older stuff to get you ready for the marketing.

Over the past 40 years, the profits to be made are staggering. CDs are incredibly cheap to manufacture, yet they are able to price-fix the market due to their control. This control of the industry keeps the small acts and labels (indies) down. Even the current "indies" in the "charts" are owned by the large companies and them using that name is an affront to what it means and stands for. The true indies are still there, but only a select few people ever hear about them, mostly through word of mouth. When was the last time you went to a record store and listened to music from an act you haven't heard of before?

In the past few years, things have only gotten worse. The Billboard charts is a catalogue of music for you to buy, nothing more. The acts that consistently make it are the same old drivel; bubble-gum pop for the masses. Yet, the makeup of these charts comes from sales and radio play. Limiting the data sources to only stick to major retailers that are already under control controls the "sales". The radio play is also very controlled as we have already seen. What sort of a system is that to run a popularity chart? A fixed and corrupt one.

What really gets to me the most however, is the fact that the artists get a ridiculously small cut of these revenues. They get tied into disgraceful contracts that control everything they do for years, and when it's over the industry, not the artists, own the rights to their work. Artists only really get rich through touring, that's where their profit lies. Many acts have had major hits/albums and ended up very poor or even owing the record labels money.

Over the past few years, technology has advanced to the point that anyone can easily record, promote and distribute music. This scares the music industry more than the loss of sales through piracy. Internet radio has turned people onto acts that they would have never heard of had they limited themselves to traditional media. My own personal tastes in music have evolved completely away from the commercial music out there. My hatred of the industry came long after I "abandoned" it, my tastes merely evolved based on what I have access to. They have now lost a customer. Me.

Every time you download a song instead of buying it, you are contributing to the downfall of this bastardisation of an industry. It interests me that they once compared p2p to "downloading communism". Cold War politics and the lack of understanding of the difference between Soviet totalitarism and true communism aside, the only thing that sounds like the negative impression they are trying to convey on p2p is ironically their own control of the industry. Downloading music is a statement against it. If the legal/moral issues bother you, don't download from the major labels. Get yourself onto Shoutcast Internet Radio and start listening to the genres that interest you. Grab a pen while you are at it and note down the names of the acts you like. Download some of their songs to see if you like them. If you do, support them by buying albums, merchandise and live performances. Especially the live performances.

But don't buy Brittany because it's "cool". It's not, your just following the rest of the sheep and "cool" is never defined by following other people. Even the "alternative" scenes, like the gothic Marylyn Manson culture is merely an extension of this market, but the kids into it believe they are expressing their individualism by dressing like each other and listening to the same music as each other!

A few companies should not be allowed to dominate the development of one of the most creative fruits of human culture. They should not be allowed to bribe government (what else are "campaign contributions"?) into making laws that protect their backward and repressive business models. Civil disobedience is a valid way to protest laws you don't agree with, as long you don't cause harm to others. It is technically impossible to stop p2p without complete centralised control and censorship of every single person in the worlds internet access. That is never going to happen. Anyone that doesn't get that belongs in the past like the dinosaurs they are. Where would we be today if the railroads had halted the development of the aeroplane because it harms their business model? Don't let the music industry do this to something as important as music. Please. Think of the children.

Nice old article but exaggerated. Microsoft doesn't want to ruine tcp/ip, just want to make money making it "trustworthy".

When I heard this announced I kept confusing these guys with UCSF's Dr. Cynthia Kenyon, who was on Scientific American Frontiers not long ago talking about her work with elegans and their age-resistant genes. Anyone know what's the difference between her research and these guy's?

I've heard it said that almost all the knowledge of the world is available over the Internet, and most of what isn't can be purchased or ordered through the Internet. If so much is available then the regulation of them are pretty insignificant. Examples from my own viewpoint:

• porn: Global consensus seems to be that it's bad for kids, but adults can choose. The regulation problem is finding a global age when the choice is acceptable. 21? 18? 16? 14? Regulation seems to be within a country or within friendly countries.
• kiddie-porn: Global consensus seems to be that taking porn pictures of kids will basically ruin their life, so no real complaints when any country crosses international boundaries. Some nations object until their pockets are properly lined with cash.
• Shipping Drugs, Alchohol & Tobacco: Global consensus seems to vary based on location and national laws. It seems that trade by major groups is acceptable (since they follow laws and are licensed, pay tarrifs, etc) but minor groups are being attacked -- mainly because of tarrifs and not other laws. Regulation seems to be either "friendly companies that pay taxes and basically don't traffic in narcotics" or criminals who bypass the few restrictions in place.
• IP Theft: The only people who really seem to care are the people having their employee's ideas made available. The individuals who assert their IP rights seem to love the extra exposure, and don't mind being sent around the world as long as their name stays attached.
• Music & Movies: You don't see India asserting this kind of laws, even though they produce most of the world's feature-length films. That seems to be a US-Only issue, more specific, an issue only with the mega-corps associated with RIAA and MPAA. So when these groups try to get the US to put P2P on the same moral level as kiddie-porn, there are pretty bad reactions.

frob.

I, Cringley(pbs.org) talked about home networks and WiFi and meshes and wotnot in August. Sounds really cool to me.

I saw a great show on PBS about the history of this and the engineering complexity surrounding the project(s). It is massive. Excellent show if you can find it on your local listings. Here's the website:

http://www.pbs.org/greatprojects/tour/bigdig_1.htm l

Whatever. You'd be tracked down and your ass would be history. The government would have a little talk with your ISP and you would lose access. For some turds, that is worse than getting thrown into jail with Bubba. Then again, you wouldn't have access in jail either. In any event, you'd be hunted as a cyber terrorist and you'd get your ass kicked. It wouldn't be private or secret, although you know that, don't you. So, you'd hand your ass out on a line because you would be part of a collective of terrorists. At least in this climate. This is kind of the same reason Cringley is full of pig shit. You'll never reach the tipping point. Gotta run. Otherwise I'd say other stupid shit that makes sense to most of you. By the way, Slashdot tracks all this crap. They will tell the government and you'll go to jail and meet Bubba and little Bubba and Bubba's friend.

PBS created the first reality show "An American Family" in 1973.

They aren't following anyone. You should also see "Frontier House," another PBS reality show. Nothing like the network stuff.

I don't need fossils. Look at this picture. These animals didn't exist in 4004 BC. What more proof do you want? Just remember that breeding is evolution with people doing the selecting, instead of the dangers of survival.

Hey, I liked Triumph of the Nerds as much as the next guy, but this column is just not good, and I don't think it deserves front-page space on ./. The fact that one of foci of the column and the blurb about it is that last week's column was good is an indicator of maybe not the most scintillating read ever. I think he phoned it in, and I called /. on giving it such credence. Screw Cringley and his access--the only industry leaders he talked to this week were the folks penning him emails.

Hey, I liked Triumph of the Nerds as much as the next guy, but this column is just not good, and I don't think it deserves front-page space on ./. The fact that one of foci of the column and the blurb about it is that last week's column was good is an indicator of maybe not the most scintillating read ever. I think he phoned it in, and I called /. on giving it such credence. Screw Cringley and his access--the only industry leaders he talked to this week were the folks penning him emails.

In the 1960s, Ford said we'd be driving atomic-powered cars in 20 years. In the 1930s, just about everyone assumed we'd all have our private helicopter or airplane by 1980. (Imagine the air congestion and accidents with that...soccer moms flying their SUV-copters.) And we're still waiting on our Mr. Fusion powerplants...

Yogi Berra said it best. "It's tough to make predictions. Especially about the future."

Cheers,

Ethelred

Um, you're insane. Totally out to lunch. Bonkers. Stark raving mad.

Get some help

So you're saying an alien UFO had transistors, um discrete transistors, not integrated circuits, not quantum dots, no no no, discrete transistors that could be analyzed with 40s technology? Did it also use a "blueberry-yogurt to energy converter" to power the racks of vacuum tubes?

You honestly believe that people are so stupid they can't invent the transistor, but in 50 years we were able to develop ICs with 100s of millions of transistors? Unless you're claiming Noyce & Kilby found a UFO in their backyards?

You need help. People like you spreading their lies, makes the human race look helpless. Oh, we can't invent the transistor, we need aliens to help us.

And for your 'well documented' case, why do they need to use big fonts and sensational claims with no evidence?

There really is something wrong with you.

Google is your friend.

http://www.dotpoint.com/xnumber/kilby.htm
http: //ewh.ieee.org/reg/7/millennium/radio/radio_r adioscientist.html
http://www.nsa.gov/wwii/papers /start_of_digital_re volution.htm
http://www.ibiblio.org/pioneers/engl ebart.html
http://www.tvhandbook.com/History/Hist ory_TV.htm
http://www-smirc.stanford.edu/papers/c hapter1.pdf

Read up on the incredibly smart people out there. Then ask yourself, do you really need aliens to explain the transistor? Lots of inventions come out of the blue. People love to tinker.

Ask yourself if those people also needed a downed UFO to help them invent what they did? Did Englebart see a workstation with a mouse in a UFO, or did he work at it himself? Did Russian inventors discover LEDs in the 1920s and where ignored because of political upheaval, or did the aliens kill them for daring to invent LEDs before they could crash a UFO with LEDs in it? Did the IC also come from a UFO? Did the same UFO also not contain enough technology for us to get to the Moon, is that faked too?

yeah the woodwright shop is a much better and more interesting show because he likes to talk about how the various tools were invented, their history and all. besides, you can't say that a guy who makes his own tools isn't cool.

Actually, most movies make more from the DVD release than from the box office. Most of that money comes in the form of rentals. Check out this page for more info. It's part of a larger feature called The Monster That Ate Hollywood

Of course, you still can't compare the two, because renting CDs doesn't happen, for various reasons.

Actually, most movies make more from the DVD release than from the box office. Most of that money comes in the form of rentals. Check out this page for more info. It's part of a larger feature called The Monster That Ate Hollywood

Of course, you still can't compare the two, because renting CDs doesn't happen, for various reasons.

The creator of the sculpture, Tilted Arc, was Richard Serra, and the sculpture was, unfortunately, removed. Here's more info on this.

NPR has archives of many of their programs. I don't know it you're able to download them or not (and I think that the format varies from program to program), but it might be worth looking into.

Also, Bob Cringely just announced that he'll be doing a new interview program called "NerdTV." The full article is here: http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/pulpit20020912. html.

The kicker is that he's going to GPL the raw footage so that people can create their own programs. I expect that it would be trivial to extract the audio stream and burn it onto a cd or download it onto an mp3 player.

Couple that with the undisputed fact that CO2 increases due to fossil fuel burning have been measured for a long time (the Keeling curve, e.g. these plots ) Now, throw in the physics of radiative transfer to see how increases in CO2 trap IR radiation and hence increase temperatures, and I'd say you have a pretty strong case. You have a plausible mechanism, observations of the putative cause, and observations of the effect.

I think at this point it's harder to come up with a mechanism why we wouldn't be causing global warming; you have to explain a) why the observed human-caused CO2 increase doesn't cause a net heating, while at the same time b) you have to come up with a reason for the system to still show some warming from "natural" causes. Warming that is very different (in that it is very rapid) from what is seen is climate records of the past. Oh, and you also have to explain why your point of view isn't at all influenced by financial interests in maintaining the status quo (remember, scientists working on global warming don't get paid to cry wolf - if anything they'd get more research funds if they could provide a soothing reassurance that there is no global warming).

It is true that the climate is variable and complex, and that we are only beginning to understand it well. It is also true that scientific opinion changes as new data, theories and people get involved. However, the point of science (as opposed to pretty much any other intellectual activity) is that it eventually converges toward the right answer. That is often a long, painful process - but I think we can be confident that we understand climate better now than we did in the 70's. Unfortunately the answers we are finding makes a lot of people uncomfortable. But instead of "shooting the messenger" (by trying to discredit the scientists), wouldn't it be wiser to try and deal with reality as it is?

Check out Robert X. Cringely's new setup where he's prepping to build a NerdTV... coming Real Soon Now. He has tips into hardware and thoughts on a bunch of issues you'll probably have to address...

• " ...the guys at Apple, like Bill Atkinson [one of the Lisa programmers who later developed the MacPaint program for the Apple Macintosh computer] -- I think Atkinson is the greatest--and Bill Budge [who programmed Pinball Construction Set for Electronic Arts]. These guys are all great.
  
  We don't have much to talk about. We feel good vibes and exchange three or four words. I know that if one of these guys opens his mouth, he knows what he is talking about. So when he does open his mouth and he does know what he is talking about, it's not a great shock. And since I tend to know what I am talking about, too, I would probably say the same thing, so why bother talking, really? It's like the joke tellers' convention where people sit around and they don't even have to tell a joke. They just say the joke number and everybody laughs. It would be great to be able to work with all these guys, but we are business competitors. I think we could do incredible stuff together. Maybe the Martians will invade and we will have to do a Manhattan project in computers. We would all be shipped to New Mexico. Who knows?"

• ".. A patent was rarely given, so most inventors applied for an author's certificate. The Soviet government owned the intellectual property that the author's certificate documented, so the certificate was merely an acknowledgement of the inventor's contribution. Ironically, it is the simple, direct format of the author certificate that facilitated Altschuller's research into the inventive process ... During the formulation of TRIZ, Altshuller and colleagues reviewed tens of thousands of author's certificates and patents.
  
  In 1946, Altshuller decided that he must create a new science for the theory of invention ... author certificates ... included a cover sheet, a one-page sketch and a short invention description. This simple format made it easy to identify underlying patterns of the inventive process ... Altshuller identified patterns frequently used in the more innovative patents.
  
  ... These patterns identified in the development of a design contain two major components: regularities in design evolution, and principles used in innovative solutions. Altshuller's observations led to an additional breakthrough; since the evolution of engineering design was a process governed by definable laws, it could be taught ... a revolution in the field of inventive problem solving had begun.
  
  ... Altshuller and his boyhood friend, Raphael Shapiro ... in a 1948 letter to Stalin ... criticized the inventive process used throughout the nation and offered some measures to improve the methodology. Their proposed improvements were an embroyonic form of TRIZ. Unfortunately, their patriotism and valuable ideas were not rewarded. Altshuller and Shapiro were charged with "inventing with the purpose to do harm to the country." After a year of interrogation and torture, they were sentenced to 25 years in a prison camp above the Arctic Circle.
  
  What would have been a hellish existence for most people became a time of significant intellectual growth and productivity for Altshuller. The prison camp contained dozens of professors, eminent scientists, musicians, and artists, all of whom were jailed during Stalin's great Purges. As a result, Altschuller's education continued. Because fellow prisoners were happy to have someone who was eager to learn and listen for hours, the prison camp became Altshuller's private university. The worst punishment for Altshuller was the prohibition on writing. A prisoner could be beaten cruelly and placed in a cell if he were found in possession of a notebook. Despite this considerable obstacle, Altshuller continued to develop the science of innovation.
  
  Stalin died in 1953, and Altshuller and Shapiro were released one year later ... publishing their first article on principles of their theory in a 1956 issue of a scientific magazine ... Under the pseudonymn Altov, Altshuller wrote science fiction stories to earn his living. But here again he found an application for TRIZ in the creation of many of the ideas for his futuristic devices and creatures.
  
  ... During the 1970s, translations of Altshuller's books and articles circulated in Germany and Poland, eventually reaching Japan, the U.S.A. and other Western countries ... Only two of Altshuller's books have been translated into English ... key findings are explained in these books, which reflect his study of over 200,000 patents, focusing on 40,000 identified as containined the most innovative design solutions.
  
  Traditional problem solving builds on past experiences ... What if we have never encountered a problem analagous to the one we face? This obvious question reveals the shortcomings of our standard approach to inventive problems. A table of conflicts (Contradiction Table, Appendix D) between 39 design parameters (Table 1) answers this question of how we can face an unfamiliar conflict by offering 1201 generic problems that were solved using at least one of 40 generic principles (Appendix C and Table 2).

• elementary school using TRIZ
• weapons technology, Kowalick
• Cringely on Kowalick updating TRIZ for GM and NASA
• more refs

UWB is very low-power and is less subject to interference than other wireless protocols. Robert Cringely had a good writeup about UWB and its capabilities in his column earlier this year.

See also the earlier /. discussions here and here.

Schools have cable TV ayways, with shows (note: I said "shows", not "news") like CNN. Don't you think NerdTV will be at least as good as one of these shows, if not significantly better? I'd watch Cringely over Zahn any day (speaking about the news content, of course!)

Here are the original articles which have some more information about the new show.

1. Is the World Ready for a Cringely Open Source TV Show?

2. Downloadable Video Cringely is on His Way

Here are the original articles which have some more information about the new show.

1. Is the World Ready for a Cringely Open Source TV Show?

2. Downloadable Video Cringely is on His Way

Technically an H-bomb, which uses fusion instead of fission, is more powerful. If you are curious about what would happen if your city was nuked, PBS has a blast mapper page.

No, no basis at all.

Huh? Why does that belong there? Not a single person died. Nobody was injured. Granted, it was a PR disaster.

I'd add the Nedelin Catastrophe to your list. October 24 1960. Over a hundred Soviet rocket scientists burned alive. Destroying the USSR's ability to compete in the Moon race. Imagine what space would be like today if the space race continued beyond the Moon...

The point of all this is simple. It may actually make the Internet somewhat safer. But the real purpose of this stuff, I fear, is to take technology owned by nobody (TCP/IP) and replace it with technology owned by Redmond. That's taking the Internet and turning it into MSN. Oh, and we'll all have to buy new computers.

You say they can't do anything? You obviously don't know about the agressive actions taken by Canadian fisherman when they barricaded our state's (Alaska) ferries!

They're viscous I tell ya! They turned me into a NEWT! ... ... I got betta

"I have on my main system every word I have written since 1992, which is around three million words. I also have every e-mail worth keeping, a couple databases, and many spreadsheets and Powerpoint presentations. Uncompressed, it adds up to less than 200 megabytes. Heck, that is small enough to fit on one of those USB flash drives that attaches to your key ring!"

He's kicking more ass than the average euroPEON leader. For such an "idiot", GW Bush beats his opponents 100% of the time leaving them bitching and moaning like a 5 year old kicked in the nuts.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/1446863. stm
Friday, 20 July, 2001, 06:51 GMT 07:51 UK
Bush's BBC interview in full

President Bush:
Well, I think the leaders appreciate somebody who is straightforward and open. I guess I could have gone with a strategy of playing like this makes sense. But I chose to be as open as I could and explain in terms that we share the same goal, that we will come with a strategy that makes sense, but that the treaty wasn't going to pass.

And there was no need for me to play like it was going to pass, particularly since the United States Senate had delivered a pretty clear message on a 95-to-nothing vote about our nation adhering to 1990 CO2 emission levels and reducing from there. That would be an economic impossibility for us to do.

We're spending a lot of money and time and effort on looking at interesting technologies - conservation technologies - and we look forward to sharing that with the rest of the world, as we all aim to reduce greenhouse gases.

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/environment/jan-jun e01/bushenv_3-29.html
BUSH AND THE ENVIRONMENT
March 29, 2001

GWEN IFILL: After barely more than 60 days in office, President Bush has placed a distinctive mark on U.S. environmental policy, rolling back campaign promises on clean air, reversing Clinton administration initiatives on drinking water, and promoting new oil exploration in previously protected regions. And now the White House is taking steps to have the U.S. withdraw its support for a landmark 1997 global warming agreement signed in Kyoto, Japan. Environmental Protection Administrator Christie Todd Whitman told reporters the president had "no interest in implementing it." White House spokesman Ari Fleischer was even more blunt.

ARI FLEISCHER: The president has been unequivocal: He does not support the Kyoto treaty. It exempts the developing nations around the world and it is not in the United States' economic best interest. The president has directed his cabinet secretaries to begin a review so we can, as a nation, address a serious problem, which is global warming.

[ later in the article ]

PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: We are now in an energy crisis. And that's why I decided to not have mandatory caps on CO2, because in order to meet those caps, our nation would have had to have had a lot of natural gas immediately flow into the system, which is impossible. We don't have the infrastructure able to move natural gas. We need to have an active exploration program. One of the big debates that's taking place in the Congress, or will take place in the Congress is whether or not we should be exploring for natural gas in Alaska -- for example, in ANWR. I strongly think we should. We have an energy shortage. I look forward to explaining this today to the leader of Germany as to why I made the decision I made. We'll be working with Germany. We'll be working with our allies to reduce greenhouse gases, but I will not accept a plan that will harm our economy and hurt American workers.

But of course this is just fine when Tony Blair and Criminal Traitor Lifetime-Cocaine-Addict Pathological-Liar George Worthless Bush share the same toothpaste.

People with Satellite or Digital Cable or even HDTV in some markets can watch PBS's PBS YOU channel.

PBS YOU airs a show called Standard Deviants that airs weekdays with a different theme each day. They refer to Tuesdays as "Test Tube Tuesday" and air science episodes (Monday is Math, Wednesday is Writing). It's a well done series and can bring the novice up to speed on basic knowledge from which you can then move on to harder hitting subject matter.