Slashdot Mirror

You're obviously not on an H1B visa.

See also:
http://www.iowa2010.state.ia.us/news/06_11.html
http://www.rediff.com/news/2001/may/24us1.htm
http://www.zazona.com/ShameH1B/H1BFAQs.htm
http://lists.tamil.com/lists/it/2001-01/msg00029.h tml

woof.

Is anyone else wondering why we are spending so much money on the missile defense system? This seems to have solved the problem of missile defense much more elegantly (and more cost effectively?) Maybe I'm missing something.

The military industry in the U.S. is so big and employs so many people that they will have to come up with these kinds of technologies as an addition to the already existing systems, as a justification for continued financial support and of their importance and supremacy. They will not stop spending money on that ballistic missile system, that would look as a failure. The U.S. army is not very keen on admitting failures.

A quote from Noam Chomsky (interview):

The Cold War may be over. But these days, the policies remain the same, only the pretexts have changed. It is another reason why the US military budgets have been increasing year after year. It is not a defence against Russia anymore. It is against the technological sophistication of the Third World. The US believes that globalisation has deeply polarised the handful of rich and the poor worldwide. To keep the poor nations in control, you need new military systems.

The Noam Chomsky Archives

I'd like to point to a story at rediff.com by Reeta Sinha http://www.rediff.com/news/2001/sep/12reeta.htm

In short, what it says is that the US was hit simply because their leaders are too arrogant to have considered this possible. They aren't attacking the US, their attacking their arrogance. The US shouts lout "We're the best, we're the smartest", and that tends to piss off some people. They may be within the US, or outside, but they aren't really attacking the US.

This definitely had a good brain behind it. How else could it have been so perfectly synchronised, and yet no evidence be available afterwards. Why is it that not a single US media outlet was affected? How is it that the CIA had no idea that this was even possible. How come Air traffic controllers had no idea that the planes were going the wrong way. How come they didn't notice the proximity to the WTC (surely a no-fly-zone).

US news sites may be clogged, so here are some non-us sites.
Reddif USA
times of India - Lots of photos.
Dawn - check out the editorial on Afghanistan. BTW, this is a pakistani newspaper, but very credible.
This is the text version of their site.

The times of india.

Indian Express

NDTV news.

Sify news

Rediff News

Hindustan Times

Internet News

Cnet.com

The Hindu Unity website incident is a very different situation. The site had some strong anti-Muslim views, particularly towards Muslims in India. Stuff that could be interpereted as a call for violence against Muslims in India (the current home page has a cartoon of Muslims stabbing to death a Hindu mother). And people complained to the ISP, who told the organization to take their business elsewhere. Here is an article.

The case of the ISP in Texas involves the government shutting down, albeit temporarily and as an incidental consequence of searching for evidence, lots of websites without explanation, only a sealed warrant. This includes one of the most prominent sites news of the middle east that is not controlled by a government of the region.

People get up in arms about controversial websites, like porn sites, hate sites, spammer sites, radical anti-abortion sites, etc, all the time. And sometimes, complaints to the ISP are effective in forcing the site to move to an ISP that is less concerned about complaints from the public. That isn't really news.

The government shutting down 500 mostly arab-related websites without explanation should be considered more newsworthy.

It is possible for web-based startups to succeed over traditional mass media. In India, for example, the extremely popular rediff is not controlled by the traditional newspaper houses (it came from an advertising agency, I think) and more recently, an upstart called tehelka has been making big news, mainly on corruption exposes.

What's needed is intelligent marketing, good content for a broad-spectrum audience with the occasional "scoop" to retain audience interest, and high-quality presentation. The same things as for traditional print media or TV. Nothing new here.

I know. I always see something along the lines of...

This data will help [fill in the type of scientist] understand [fill in the subject].

Yet, at the same time I'm always hearing about how much they don't know, and how they're not so sure about such and such.

In this case... how can the universe be teeming with black-holes if some people aren't even sure black holes exist?

I think a lot of them say this kind of crap because it makes it seem like all that money spent on research isn't wasted.

I personally don't feel that it is wasted, mind you. I just wish that every time they made some kind of "cool announcement" it had something more substantial than "we think we may have found something that will lead us to future understanding of a theory we might come up with based on recent findings."

"Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"

Actually, that sounds like what RMS said at Linux World Expo last year.

"It's like giving the 'Han Solo Award' to the 'Rebel Fleet' itself!"

The description says non-obvious to someone familiar with the art, not non-obvious to Joe Public.

What consitutes an invention worthy of a patent is a grey area. This thread originally started with a debate about whether or not gene sequences should be patented. A strong argument against this is that gene sequences are not an invention, but fundamentally exist. A similar argument is made against patenting algorithms, or mathematical truths. What would have been the consequences of Isaac Newton patenting F=ma? This has little to do with non-obviousness.

Obviousness is an issue with several software patents. Like the XOR patent(#4,197,590), or the one that covers saving to a buffer the portion of the screen that is being used to display another window(#4,555,775). RMS' seminal paper Against Software Patents says pretty much everything about this subject.

Then there is the issue of piracy - with companies trying to patent varieties of seeds, plants, medicinal use of natural plants, or, in a particularly egregious case - trying to patent curry.