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Ah, so, your counter to talk about bribery is about how judges "follow a distinct path" and are exceptionally well trained?

Consider how many years you have invested in becoming a judge-for-life. That it is the only life you have ever known. How likely is it that you will consider throwing it all away?

Did you forget that judges will meet quite a few people who choose "lawyer" at the end of that path?

The judge in a German court is more than a referee:

There is no such thing as a jury trial in Germany.

Under German law, as under American law, the accused is presumed innocent until proven guilty. In minor [criminal] cases there may be only a single judge presiding. Or, if the charges are severe and the accused faces heavy penalties, there may be five persons hearing the case - three professional judges and two lay judges.

Though he has the duty of defending the accused to the maximum of his ability, a German lawyer is not as active in court as an American lawyer. In a German trial, the judge, not the defense counsel or the prosecutor, obtains the testimony of the witnesses. After the judge is finished, the prosecutor and the defense counsel will be permitted to question witnesses. The aim is to obtain the truth from witnesses by direct questioning rather than through the examination and cross-examination generally used in a US trial. German Justice: 2 Days per Murder [2003]

ME:Frankly, I get really PO'd at those who accuse the US intentionally causing undue harm to innocents. It pissed me off during Vietnam, and it pissed me off now. It caused me to spend 2004 fighting John Kerry's campaign because he used such slander against all of us who participated in that war.

Yeah, good plan. Fight someone who spoke out against such abuses that he saw in the middle of a war, which put someone back in office who actually tortures innocents. (And not in the heat of battle, either.) Way to defend this country's image. It's like fighting crime by arresting people who report crime. That will cause crime to decrease!

There's a little problem with your assertion. He did NOT see those abuses. I know people who served with him in the Swift Boats and the reason they went after him so hard was because he was tarring them especially with phony atrocity charges - and he had been one of them. John Kerry simply stated exactly the North Vietnamese (through their front, the PRG) line - exactly, which is not surprising since he met with them in Paris before he made his infamous appearance before the Senate. That there were some abuses by American soldiers in Vietnam is, of course, true. There are ALWAYS abuses in war, no matter how hard you try to stop them - no matter what the policy. But Kerry's statements were lies, just as his and Jane Fonda's phony Winter Soldier investigation was classic agitprop guerrilla theater instead of a search for truth. Read all about it at http://www.wintersoldier.com/ .

John Kerry was not a whistle blower. He was a liar and aided our enemies. If you want to hear a bit more about this, check out the interview with Swiftboat spokesman John O'Neil at http://www.tinyvital.com/blog/2007/09/16/behind-the-scenes-swift-boat-veterans-vs-john-kerry/ .

As for the "someone who actually tortures innocents" "not

You would be very incorrect with your prediction. Despite your impression the U.S. is not a very violent place.

Some Stats for you

Yeah the numbers are a little out of date but 2003 is recent enough as I don't believe there has been a huge swing in either direction. It's the reporting myth all over again. People think there are more pedophiles in the world today for the same reason. Because you hear about it so much now and you didn't hear about it in the past. Course in the U.S. there was a time you couldn't even say pregnant on TV, let alone talk about rape or child molestation. You hear about it all now and assume everywhere is violent. Most of America is not typical inner city gangland which is also grossly portrayed. Think Compton in California. I know a group of whities that lived there for two years and not a single problem yet it is widely known to be a very violent place. Funny how reporting on the place doesn't exactly live up to reality.

This site seems to disagree with the differences in crime rates you stated. I followed some of the supportijng links and it also apears to be acurate. Well i guess interpool only wants you to know about the stats if you are a police angency. This site hereandhere seem to back it up. It is amazing that switzerland apears to have a larger crime rate then the US. This site http://www.gunowners.org/sk0703.htm apears to say that gun ownership has the oposite effect in crime then what is popularly taunted too.

I've heard this misinterpretation about the crime rates in Europe compaired to america before. I'm not sure it is something like the chicken and egg concpet were some one thinks it should be logical to have that outcome so they just spout it or if the EU news agencies under report the crimes unlike in america were it is a guarentied ratings.

plus, the only stats that

http://www.tinyvital.com/BlogArchives/000220.html

gives, is 'crime rates'. How about violent crime, or crime evening a firearm. Crime rates could be any number of small, country-specific crimes.

It's a popular meme that crime in America is "so high that it's not newsworthy." Crime happens all over the world and no higher in America than anywhere else. Crimes are more often prosecuted here than anywhere else, and many crime rates are proportionally lower here than in Europe. There are several places to look these stats up, but here's a site from Google that summarizes them:

Stats

Of course I am not going to quote you numbers, but I'm suggesting that this idea is not arguable.

In other words, you won't cite anything but will declare your argument inarguable. It's sad that this is what passes for insightful commentary on Slashdot these days!

I heard you and you are WRONG. Not to be rude or anything, but I suggest you take a modern history class.

History has jack-squat to do with it. Physics does. Let me put it this way. The dinosaur killer asteroid was estimated at 75,000,000 megatons. It was not capable of destroying the entire surface, but did wipe out 95% of life from its after-effects. If we assume that every nuke ever made was of 50 megatons (probably high for an average, but we'll go with it), then we'd need 1,500,000 nukes to equal the dinosaur killer. According to NuclearWeaponsArchive.org, the US has built about 70,000 nukes since the inception of such weapons. It isn't known how many were produced by Russia, but it's estimated to be significantly less. We'll double the 70,000 figure and then add on another 2,000 to cover incidental countries with nuclear technology. That gives us a grand total of 160,000 nukes, or about 10% of the force of the dinosaur killer.

In short, you're quoting a lie that has been repeated time and time again. YOU'RE WRONG, and repeating it won't change that. Here's some hard facts for you. Read them, understand them, and stop coming off like a friggin' idiot.
http://www.tinyvital.com/Misc/nukes.htm
http://nuclearweaponarchive.org
http://ned.ucam.org/~sdh31/misc/destroy.html

It depends on whether you think a high school diploma makes you educated or not. Given the value of a high school education these days, one could argue either way.

You missed my point. A diploma is just a piece of paper. It means nothing other than that you've been able to complete a bunch of tests and not get into too much trouble. It does not define whether you are educated or not. There have been many people throughout history who have been very well educated but haven't had diplomas from higher education (or sometimes even high school!). As time goes on and information becomes more available thanks to libraries and the internet, this only becomes more common.

i.e. If you think you *need* an American school to become educated, you've just bought into another lie.

Experience is not the same as education. That is why people separate the two.

Nonsense. If it wasn't, then schools wouldn't make you dissect animals, perform chem experiments, do word problems (math), or a million other pieces of practice that give you experience. That's why we call experience outside of the school "real world" experience, and make the point that the real-world doesn't always align with the simplicity of school experience.

If you believe that your education stops as soon as you leave school, you have bought into a third lie.

It requires a significant industrial infrastructure to process Uranium and Plutonium. [...] Then I guess you couldn't create a bomb all by yourself.

Nice try, but an industrial base is separate from the ability or inability to create bombs. i.e. Just like you need equipment to create an airplane, you need equipment to create create nuclear weapons. It's not anything sophisticated you need, either. A strong enough centrifuge is really the main ingredient. Any country that has access to semi-modern technology can build these things, so don't twist my words.

Twisting my words only pisses me off. Especially since I was only correcting the more questionable points of your original post, and not attacking you. You, OTOH, have seen fit to attack me with lies, half-truths, and twisted words. Good day to you sir, and I hope our paths shall not cross again.

By itself, it doesn't mean much.

Check here if you want more facts showing how closely they were allied. Follow some of the links.

Kerry was a Benedict Arnold, except Benedict Arnold saw much more combat and did much more for his country before turning on it.

And Fonda was already working at getting soldiers to desert before 1970.

Kerry was an officer in VVAW, which was a radical anti-war organization. He provided false testimony before the senate, testimony which significantly aided the enemy, and which was used against our POWs. Many of the most famous, false sound-bites about the Vietnam War are from that speech. Kerry was such a phoney that he didn't even write the speech (although he pretended that it was spontaneous).It was written by one of Robert Kennedy's former speechwriters (Kerry was connected to the Kennedy's when younger).

That speech, hyped by the press, led Americans to believe that US Soldiers routinely (even gleefully) engaged in atrocities as a matter of course. It implied that every Vietnam Vet was a basket case because of the horrible things they had done.

It was based on the infamous Winter Soldier "Investigation" - which was funded by Jane Fonda. In that "investigation," many "veterans" testified to having witnessed or committed atrocities. Subsequent investigations showed that many testifying had never been to Vietnam and others could not possibly have seen the atrocities they witnessed. Congress caused two investigations to be undertaken to investigate the claims and to prosecute those who committed the atrocities, but with immunity given to those at the Winter Soldier Investigation. Not a single confirmed atrocity resulted. Kerry was a fraud then and is a fraud now. Just as Benedit Arnold was a war hero who turned on his country, so is John Kerry.

In the "Operation Dewey Canyon" demonstration, Kerry "returned his medals to the government" by throwing them on the Capitol steps. When someone years later noticed them proudly displayed in his office (he became proud of his service when it became politically advantageous to do so), he admitted that he had thrown someone else's medals! Also in that demonstration, veterans set up encampments on the mall and slept there. Kerry was one of the organizers, but while the others slept on the mall, he slept in a luxurious Georgetown apartment.

BTW, the reason Fonda was not tried for treason was not because war was not declared. It was because the political will to do so was lacking. Ultimately that lack of will lost the war.

Just as almost all of us who went to Vietnam would love to have Jane Fonda executed, we are not exactly fond of John Kerry's betrayal of American troops who were still in the field after he returned from his own short tour.

And Fonda was already working at getting soldiers to desert before 1970.

Kerry was an officer in VVAW, which was a radical anti-war organization. He provided false testimony before the senate, testimony which significantly aided the enemy, and which was used against our POWs. Many of the most famous, false sound-bites about the Vietnam War are from that speech. Kerry was such a phoney that he didn't even write the speech (although he pretended that it was spontaneous).It was written by one of Robert Kennedy's former speechwriters (Kerry was connected to the Kennedy's when younger).

That speech, hyped by the press, led Americans to believe that US Soldiers routinely (even gleefully) engaged in atrocities as a matter of course. It implied that every Vietnam Vet was a basket case because of the horrible things they had done.

It was based on the infamous Winter Soldier "Investigation" - which was funded by Jane Fonda. In that "investigation," many "veterans" testified to having witnessed or committed atrocities. Subsequent investigations showed that many testifying had never been to Vietnam and others could not possibly have seen the atrocities they witnessed. Congress caused two investigations to be undertaken to investigate the claims and to prosecute those who committed the atrocities, but with immunity given to those at the Winter Soldier Investigation. Not a single confirmed atrocity resulted. Kerry was a fraud then and is a fraud now. Just as Benedit Arnold was a war hero who turned on his country, so is John Kerry.

In the "Operation Dewey Canyon" demonstration, Kerry "returned his medals to the government" by throwing them on the Capitol steps. When someone years later noticed them proudly displayed in his office (he became proud of his service when it became politically advantageous to do so), he admitted that he had thrown someone else's medals! Also in that demonstration, veterans set up encampments on the mall and slept there. Kerry was one of the organizers, but while the others slept on the mall, he slept in a luxurious Georgetown apartment.

BTW, the reason Fonda was not tried for treason was not because war was not declared. It was because the political will to do so was lacking. Ultimately that lack of will lost the war.

Just as almost all of us who went to Vietnam would love to have Jane Fonda executed, we are not exactly fond of John Kerry's betrayal of American troops who were still in the field after he returned from his own short tour.

Hmmm... I think my reply vanished.

Anyway, I have moved it to here, a more suitable forum.

By implication, you object to our freeing those people. Please explain why?

Under my logic, vigilantes provide a valuable neighborhood service when there is no police force, and the world (in spite of the pious blather of the UN) does not have a police force.

Consider... during the leadup to the Iraq war, the French intervened twice in Africa. Nobody attacked them for being vigilantes.

The freeing of Kosovo, which was done almost entirely with US military, was not a UN approved operation, but Europe didn't mind that operation. In fact, they begged us to come in and help. Again, nobody called us (or NATO) vigilantes.

There is clearly a double standard at work. When the US takes actions to defend itself, it is a vigilante and evil. But if it takes action to defend European interests, it is just fine. And the French, who have a brutal history of colonialism (which the US does not) catches nary a word of criticism for twice unilaterally intervening in Africa, while at the same time condemning the US's actions in Iraq.

Of course, since France the second largest supplier of weapons to Iraq in the period 1973-1900. USSR provided 57%, France 13%, China 12%, USA 1%. So don't give me your uninformed tripe about how the US armed those countries. In fact, the USSR was the greatest arms supplier to Arab dictatorship. Source is here.

And now you say our stance towards Israel is racism? How pathetic. When the US was far more racist, Jews were discriminated against (just like they are now starting again to be attacked in "sophisticated" Europe). The US did not support Israel until after the 1967 war, when it became clear that Israel was a useful ally to counterbalance the USSR's attempts to control the Persian Gulf through Arab allies.

But in one sense you are right. We do tend to favor people who believe in and practice democracy over those who believe in and practice dictatorship and murder.

Finally, the canard about Iraq and oil is so silly as to be hardly worth refutation. But I'll give you a few arguments anyway... Iraq has less than 1/3 the oil production of Saudi Arabia, about the same production as Venezuela. The total value of oil produced by Iraq in several years doesn't come close to paying our expenses in that war. If we wanted to wage war for oil, why not take Venezuela instead... it has an unpopular government and is much closer to us.

You say we changed our motivations on the Iraq war after we failed to find WMD's - thus implying a dishonesty about our intent. That Iraq had WMD's was assumed by almost everyone in the world, including Iraqi generals who we captured who stated that units adjoining theirs were armed with the weapons. Furthermore, anyone attacking the WMD thesis has to explain why Saddam tolerated 12 years of sanctions when they could have been easily ended by opening up Iraq to serious inspection, rather than blocking inspectors at every chance. Finally, we never claimed that WMD was the only reason to attack Iraq - there were many other reasons, but the critical ones were that Iraq had ties to many terrorist groups, had a history of misjudgement that had cost 1,000,000 lives (and hence represented a danger of providing WMD's to terrorists who would use them against the US), was a despotic regime, the demise of which could be hoped to put strong pressure on other despots - especially those supporting terrorists. But finally, the real issue, so easily glossed over by the nit pickers, is that the modern convergence of the technology of WMD's and suicidal terrorists with a stated aim of destroying the West represents a truly severe and deadly threat to the civilized world - one which Europe seems to imagine can be dealt with by placing ones head in the sand and ones rear in the air. For more facts, check out this, this,

Yes, I have argued before [see section "In 1910 They Thought They Knew the Future, Too!" that forecasting that far in advance is absurd.

Oh, also the "science" of global warming prediction involves some degree of science, but hardly any degree of scientific confidence of correctness. There are too many variables (the most important involve water vapor and clouds) which affect earth's albedo and which are sufficiently hard to predict that the science is no different from magic... we might as well roll old bones to predict that actual effect.

Another serious problem with the whole thing is the fundamental assumption that we should not cause warming. That is a theological argument to some extent. Further, one should do a cost benefit analysis to see whether our efforts should go into adapting to warming rather than trying to prevent it with silly treaties which have massive economic effects and virtual no climate effects.

You seem to have left out Russia, which has still has lots of deployed ICBMs (about as many as the US). Russia is more unstable than the US by orders of magnitude, and remains quite paranoid.

Also, the issue of first strike means different things in different conditions. A fourth generation nuke (i.e. low yield, very little fallout) used as a bunker buster is a relatively insignificant event compared to a cold-war style counter-force first strike or a retaliatory anti-population strike.

Furthermore, the political acceptability of anything other than a highly limited, low collateral damage (fourth generation) pre-emptive attack is extremely low in the US, UK and Israel. Even such a limitted attack would have enormous political repercussions in those three countries. The idea that the US is at the top of the list of those politically likely to launch an attack is absolutely insane.

I'd give a quite different order of probabilitites:

India - miscalculation or response to radical Islamic takeover of Pakistan.

Pakistan - result of miscalculation or radical Islamic takeover.

Al Qaeda - using purchased/furnished NK or Iranian (or even Russian) weapon smuggled to civilian target.

Israel - fourth generation pre-emptive strike against Iranian nuclear capabilities.

Iran - (against Israeli population centers - see this and this.) Iran and North Korea have been closely cooperating, trading Iranian money for North Korean capabilities, including long range missiles and probably nuclear weapons. Iran has its own Uranium enrichment facilities sufficient to produce weapons grade Uranium, and North Korea has a supply of Plutonium, and a Uranium enrichment program at an unknown stage of progress. Both nations have local Uranium mines. A large contingent of North Korean scientists are living in Iran, indicating that the nuclear programs may be as deeply coupled as the historic ties between the US and UK in that field.

US, UK - fourth generation strike against deep underground targets in Iran or North Korea), or strategic retaliation against terrorist supporting regimes after an Al Qaeda nuclear attack in the US.

NK - as part of an attempted conquest of the south, as a dying spasm of the regime, or less likely, as a response to a US pre-emptive strike against nuclear facilities and stockpiiles.

China - either as an extension of an Indo-Pakistani conflict, or a Taiwan crisis.

USSR (major counter-force strike against US as a result of a mistake or rogue elements in the SRF)

France - no plausible scenario until about 2050, which it becomes Dar-al-France (Islamic dominated France).

Note that only a few of these scenarios result in major nuclear war, and some (the fourth generation attacks) are only nominally nuclear, in that they are low yield with essentially no residual radiation.

Also note that all of the nuclear powers probably have the capability of using Fusion boosting to create high yield weapons, and many are probably capable of fielding true two-stage thermonuclear weapons.

Fourth generation weapons are speculative. The physics are discussed in one unclassified reference, and the recent defense spending authorization most likely funds some fourth generation research and testing. Such weapons are especially useful for bunker busters (funded) and anti-ballistic missile systems (I hope that the US ABM system is secretly using them).

By far the most deadly threat is STILL Russia. Note that this >a href="http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/missileers/fals ealarms.html">came close as recently as 1995 when a scientific sounding rocket, launched in the arctic, was misinterpreted by the aging Russian radar system as a sub-launched EMP first-phase attack. Yeltsin activated his football and had an estimat

You seem to have left out Russia, which has still has lots of deployed ICBMs (about as many as the US). Russia is more unstable than the US by orders of magnitude, and remains quite paranoid.

Also, the issue of first strike means different things in different conditions. A fourth generation nuke (i.e. low yield, very little fallout) used as a bunker buster is a relatively insignificant event compared to a cold-war style counter-force first strike or a retaliatory anti-population strike.

Furthermore, the political acceptability of anything other than a highly limited, low collateral damage (fourth generation) pre-emptive attack is extremely low in the US, UK and Israel. Even such a limitted attack would have enormous political repercussions in those three countries. The idea that the US is at the top of the list of those politically likely to launch an attack is absolutely insane.

I'd give a quite different order of probabilitites:

India - miscalculation or response to radical Islamic takeover of Pakistan.

Pakistan - result of miscalculation or radical Islamic takeover.

Al Qaeda - using purchased/furnished NK or Iranian (or even Russian) weapon smuggled to civilian target.

Israel - fourth generation pre-emptive strike against Iranian nuclear capabilities.

Iran - (against Israeli population centers - see this and this.) Iran and North Korea have been closely cooperating, trading Iranian money for North Korean capabilities, including long range missiles and probably nuclear weapons. Iran has its own Uranium enrichment facilities sufficient to produce weapons grade Uranium, and North Korea has a supply of Plutonium, and a Uranium enrichment program at an unknown stage of progress. Both nations have local Uranium mines. A large contingent of North Korean scientists are living in Iran, indicating that the nuclear programs may be as deeply coupled as the historic ties between the US and UK in that field.

US, UK - fourth generation strike against deep underground targets in Iran or North Korea), or strategic retaliation against terrorist supporting regimes after an Al Qaeda nuclear attack in the US.

NK - as part of an attempted conquest of the south, as a dying spasm of the regime, or less likely, as a response to a US pre-emptive strike against nuclear facilities and stockpiiles.

China - either as an extension of an Indo-Pakistani conflict, or a Taiwan crisis.

USSR (major counter-force strike against US as a result of a mistake or rogue elements in the SRF)

France - no plausible scenario until about 2050, which it becomes Dar-al-France (Islamic dominated France).

Note that only a few of these scenarios result in major nuclear war, and some (the fourth generation attacks) are only nominally nuclear, in that they are low yield with essentially no residual radiation.

Also note that all of the nuclear powers probably have the capability of using Fusion boosting to create high yield weapons, and many are probably capable of fielding true two-stage thermonuclear weapons.

Fourth generation weapons are speculative. The physics are discussed in one unclassified reference, and the recent defense spending authorization most likely funds some fourth generation research and testing. Such weapons are especially useful for bunker busters (funded) and anti-ballistic missile systems (I hope that the US ABM system is secretly using them).

By far the most deadly threat is STILL Russia. Note that this >a href="http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/missileers/fals ealarms.html">came close as recently as 1995 when a scientific sounding rocket, launched in the arctic, was misinterpreted by the aging Russian radar system as a sub-launched EMP first-phase attack. Yeltsin activated his football and had an estimat

loadsa guncrime in the US, hardly any in the EU (as in insignificant in comparison).

That's a great theory. Too bad you're wrong.

Crime in England and France and Germany is *HIGHER* than in the US.

Here are Interpol 2001 crime statistics (rate per 100,000):

* 4161 - US
* 7736 - Germany
* 6941 - France
* 9927 - England and Wales

From http://www.tinyvital.com/BlogArchives/000220.html

I guess we are all supposed to work on the same projects and corridinate with the thousands of other developers in OSS community so we don't duplicate our work?

The fact that there are so many Linux distros, a number of web browsers, windows managers, email clients, etc is not a bad thing. Even if it were a bad thing, how would you stop people from creating another window manager or email client? Would you require all OSS projects to submit for approval in order to even get started, that's stupid.

Some people liken OSS to communism but I actually think it's much more like capitalism. The best software gets used more than the crappy stuff that often dies on the vine. The fact that OSS users have numerous options to choose from is a good thing. There is always this massive push to create a monoculture in every aspect of life (at least in the US), I truly do not understand people that don't like choice and are afraid of people that do things differently than than status quo - even if that means doing something that someone else has already done but doing it your way. Some may call that innovating, others call it a waste of time.

Other than the debate about software occurring in a public forum rather than a meeting room, I don't see much difference between closed and open software. Go to Amazon and search for an software application, there are a number of web browsers and word processors to choose from - is that bad? Choice is good.

The debate over whether OSS is good or bad, or whether OSS can compete with closed software seems pointless - but I participate anyway (hmm). It's obvious that OSS can create good software and that it can compete against/with closed software. Is OSS going to run MS and Apple out of business, no. Is success always marked by how much money or market-share you have, not if you don't have shareholders.

Chemical weapons meaning chemicals produced to kill or seriously injure people quickly. That's pretty much the standard definition. Quickly because that's all that counts on the battlefield. The last known use of chemical weapons was by Saddam Hussein. Before that, it was the Italians in Ethiopia prior to WW-II. Chemical weapons were commonplace in WW-I, although nerve agents were not developed until WW-II, by the Germans, who didn't use them except in their extermination camps.

Biological weapons are normally pathogenic microbial life forms or their natural toxins (such as Botulin toxin, although personally I think of as a chemical weapon, since it isn't alive). We have never used biological weapons, although we did develop them. We destroyed our stocks of them in 1969. The last known use of biological weapons was by the Japanese in China before and during WW-II. The greatest amount of biological weapons were produced by the Soviet Union under Gorbachev by the Vector organization, and were put in ICBM warheads. These included smallpox, anthrax and several others.

DU, if you look at any scientific literature, has no harmful effects unless you are in the tank that gets hit with it.

There was NO fallout in Japan. Those weapons were not planned to cause fallout, and the phenomenon was not known or considered to be harmful until tests injured some people in the Marshall Islands in the '50s (which was, obviously, not a weapons use, but a test).

We used no bio weapons in the Korean war. There was a North Korean propaganda campaign to the effect that we had, and many American prisoners were tortured to elicit confessions of such use (a few were obtained). If you choose to believe the Stalinist regime of (at that time) Kim Il Sung, that's pretty sad.

Re: Agent Orange...See my other article in this thread. It was not a chemical weapon, but an herbicide. It was not designed to kill people, and was sprayed on our own troops, often at their request.

I started this subthread to refute an offhanded (and rather offensive) comment that the US had never produced a weapon that was not subsequently used, which is utter nonsense.

Have you forgotten Apple? It was a consumer system, and there were a number of vendors selling software on it - Visicalc is one software title I used on the Apple II. My daughter learned arithmetic on a software title sold on the Atari-800, another end user machine.

Microsoft merely extended a completely obvious trend. And remember, they bought their operating system from someone who was already selling it.

Microsoft made their big hit, not by opening up a consumer market, but by winning the IBM contract for the OS for the IBM PC. Before that, Microsoft was selling only to hobbyists also! Because the PC *hardware* design was open (just as Apple was transitioning to a closed design), and IBM commanded so many corporate desktops, whoever won that contract was pre-ordained to end up with the desktop monopoly, and the open hardware design guaranteed the extension of the PC platform into every place one could use a computer of that power.

So I'm sorry, but Microsoft did *nothing* creative for a long time. They ported Basic (invented while Bill was in grade school) to get their company started. The bought MS-DOS, which itself is a conceptual rip-off of CPM which was a conceptual rip-off of several DEC operating systems.

Their true ability for a long time was in their shrewd and sometimes unethical business practices, which allowed them to leverage, extend and maintain their PC OS monopoly. They were brilliant at that.

When it came to technology creativity, I saw little from Microsoft until Visual Basic, and probably someone else had a visual IDE before that, I just didn't see it.

Microsoft for a long time had the same attitude as Stephenson - if it didn't happen in the PC world, it didn't happen. Hence for many years they proclaimed the invention of various things that us old fogies had used on big machines 20 years before - such as virtual memory (I first used it in 1967 on Stanfords Wylbur system on a 360/67. That machine also had a total VMM on it).

They kept "inventing" stuff that us more experienced people had been wanting for a long time, since we had it previously, and had to step down in functionality and computer science conceptual levels to use PC's - long after they had the hardware capability to do this stuff.

And they stole ideas right and left. Remember when there were companies with file system compression? Microsoft subsequently "invented" that. Remember the original MacIntosh? Microsoft had to "invent" windows. But the Mac itself was a ripoff of a Xerox product, and it's intellectual ancestor was the Xerox PARC Dynabook project!

Furthermore, they rejected some very important ideas, such as the Unix approach of command line or shell scripting using primitive commands and the Unix approach of keeping all configuration information in human readable files.

This has cost their users immensely, probably cost Microsoft a lot, and was simply unnecessary. GUI vs Command Line is *not* either-or. I am using a GUI (Win2K/IE) to write this, but I also use Cygwin (which has its own warts to do much of my work. Cygwin gives me scripting, and very quickly executed commands with hands on the keyboard. But Windows configuration, done through GUI windows, is much easier for the non-expert than Linux configuration done through command files (although the various X tools are improving there), and I have been runing Unixes at home since 1983.

At some point in the '90s, Microsoft realized that there really people outside their world who might know something they didn't know. They started bringing in experts (although their choice for NT architecture, and hence probably NT architect was a mistake, which is why NT has so much trouble in SMP configurations - configurations which I first worked with in 1970!). Hence when they needed a good database, they stole much of Informix's crew (but still, had it run on their deficient NT Win32 kernel).

Now they have lots of serious pe

Worked every time, just like this.

The refrigerator labeling is predicated on the government's (presumed) interest in reducing national energy usage, not on making consumers happy. The same is true of your other examples except for motorcycle helmets, and there the issue is public safety.

And you are simply presuming that there are no negative effects of the labelling. But I'll bet there are. For example, perhaps more people choose to ride helmetless because the cost of helmets is higher due to the testing requirements needed for labelling. Probably not many, but hey, how much is one life worth? Does that mean the labelling is wrong? I don't know - I don't have that information and I doubt you do either.

I don't like the printer manufacturer's behavior any more than you do, btw. But I also don't like the heavy hand of government called in every time the market doesn't produce the results that people think it should. OTOH I do like being able to buy a color printer for damn near nothing, because I don't print a lot of color pictures.

Furthermore, you make the assumption that many advocates of government meddling do: that consumers are stupid. We aren't.

I have never had trouble finding out what cartridges cost for printers. I always check before buying the printers.

Don't you?

So what's the problem?

Here is my answer!

Lunacy?

I used to work in a consulting company that helped Pharmaceutical Companies deal with the FDA. The FDA regulators didn't understand statistics or experimental design, so they made ludicrous requirements. For example, one had to periodically certify that an autoclave was sterilizing properly. We are talking industrial autoclaves which sterilize thousands of culture dishes at once. So they required each test require putting the full capacity of culture dishes in the autoclave, and then growing out each one.

It isn't anti-government lunacy. Its the government actually works.

Of course, as a consumer, you never see this. You may die because it makes a drug too expensive to develop, or the FDA delays its introduction for too long, but what the heck... anything else is just anti-government lunacy, right?

The thing you forget is that bureaucracies operate for their own purposes, not yours. You are also totally ignoring the Law of Unintended Consequences.

For example, what do you do about manufacturers that cheat? How do you find out that they are cheating?

Have YOU ever dealt with FCC certification? I have developed products for it. It is something that is important and needed, but it costs a bunch and requires a bureaucracy to enforce.

There is a place for government regulation, including sticker requirements. For example, food labelling helps consumers protect their health, which is a truly important issue.

But printer cost of ownership labelling?

Sorry, but I don't think that meets the test.

It always amazes me when people read military documents and then badly misinterpret them. The document didn't say it planned to deny other countries access to space. It wants the *capability* to deny future *adversaries* access to space. It wants to stop future Saddams or North Koreans (or French?) from attacking GPS systems or deploying orbiting nuclear weapons. Well, I guess we are just bad guys for having such intentions!

The US military already has systems to deny access to land, air, sea and undersea. Does that mean that nobody can use these? Of course not. Furthermore, these systems, like any military system, are not perfect.

Capabilities to deny adversaries access to space is the natural successor and is of course necessary to a country which is highly dependent on space based technology.

It simply means that space command is doing what it should be doing: developing the capability to fight successfully in its area of operations, and to vitally defend national assets in that area.

For example, as has also been mentioned in this thread, the military is highly dependent on GPS. If, during the Iraq war, the GPS systems had been knocked out, we would have had to use a lot more "dumb bombs" - with the result that many more people, mostly Iraqi's, would have died, and we still would have won. Future adversaries, of course, will want to take out GPS, so it would be beyond stupid for the US not work on systems to protect it!

This isn't stupid and it isn't arrogant and it doesn't mean that the US doesn't need allies. We know we need allies and we wish some who did so well under our protection were a little more loyal now that we are under attack by the Islamofascists. We already have over half of our army tied up just in Iraq, and North Korea is threatening to nuke Japan (talk about a bad attitude!). Contrary to world opinion, we are not militarily omnipotent and we know it.

There have been similar knee-jerk reactions to the DARPA idea to develop hypersonic drones. Guess what... DARPA works on future projects, and these hypersonic drones are obvious weapon systems of the future, IF the engineering is practical. Furthermore, don't kid yourself that future adversaries (China in particular) aren't working on the same sorts of things.

Finally, DARPA projects produce lots of technological spin-offs. As others have pointed out, the internet was one of these.

It would seem that since the US has developed its military superiority, and has used it in the war on terrorism (after the worst terrorist attack in history) to destroy two vicious regimes that nobody on Slashdot would ever want to live under, the rest of the world suddenly imagines that we are going to use it arbitrarily and capriciously. It also seems that the minute we act in our own self defense without getting permission from actual adversaries, we are arrogant and evil and need to be boycotted.

One of these adversaries is France, which has proclaimed its desire to obstruct US efforts and set up an opposite "pole" of power - apparently in the belief that the old 19th century European polar theories produced an ideal world! This same France colluded for decades with a vicious dictator (Saddam) and even gave him our diplomatic intelligence prior to the war. The good news is that France is so busy spending its money on labor unions and welfare that its military is a joke, suitable only for interfering in its former African colonies when French economic interests are threatened, or for launching one of its 449 thermonuclear warheads at anyone who speaks improper French (I don't see France giving up its force de frappe to the UN!). Also fortunate is that the French are so laughable that they provide a new source of humor for Americans.

When the rapidly occurring demographic collapse of non-muslim France (look at the trends - France will be a muslim country in a few decades), those weapons may very well be in the hands of Islamofascists.

In addition, these are not accurate weapons. With a nuclear payload, 10 miles off target is close enough.

The published circular error probability of a Minuteman is 100 METERS, not 10 miles. In other words, they are pretty accurate.

10 miles is nowhere near enough for a nuclear weapon. Depending on the target, 100 meters is what you need.

See here for some more reasonable data on nuclear damage.

Oh, btw... otherwise I agree that Minutemen aren't the right thing for this job - too expensive.

Shortwave wouldn't be practical, not enough bandwidth, radio propagation is too variable, storms interfere a lot more with short wave.

Cellular is one of our six options for data on the road:

1) Call someone and ask him. I usually am in convoy with professional meteorologists and/or researchers, and they often have people they can call. So do I sometimes.

2) Stop at a library and use their high speed connection. Every library in the country apparently has high speed internet. Whenever we have found a library open in any tiny burg (for example, in Vega, TX - look it up if you can find it), they have internet available.

3) Stop at a truck stop, motel or other place where we can plug a land line modem into their phone line. A number of truck stops have phones at the restaurant tables. Besides, truck stops are neat places anyway. Some are now setting up Wi-Fi hotspots, which is even better. Now the truckers can order up their hookers without using the CB ;-)

4) Stop at a radio shack that has connectivity, and use their computer.

5) Stop and use the cell phone (it really pays to have free nationwide roaming!) with a cell phone modem. External antenna helps a lot. Amplifier may, although mine seemed to either not work to start with, or pooped out.

6) Try to use the cell phone while in motion (very frustrating, but occasionally you can get in an image or two).

Off the subject of phones, but for those interested in storm chasing, check out the Stormtrack website, which has replaced the eponymous magazine as the central chaser publication. Also the mailing list WX-CHASE is an active on-line chaser community. My own chase logs (not that impressive) are here. 2003 is not yet complete.

"Heavy Weather" was indeed a pretty neat book. Chasing the F-6!

Yeah... I know. I have a Kyocera 6035. I am, however, not at all happy with it. It does what I need (let me have my palm and phone in one box) but it has poor integration between the functions. It also crashes a lot.

And the other thing stopping me from getting the Kyocera 7135 is that my carrier doesn't support it (grrrrrrrrrrr). I would have to switch carriers and lose my one-number automatic switcheroonie feature (when the cell phone is on, a call to my home office goes there; when it is off, the home office rings. both share the same phone number). Of course, any solution that involves an organizer phone would require me to switch carriers, since QWest supports NO organizer phones (they didn't sell enough and the customer service drove them nuts - they are not what you would call a service oriented company!).

Oh, BTW, did I mention that Qwest Sucks 37800 Times?

I have a deal for the Europeans...

You guys give us your cellular system.

We will stop conquering countries [but you have to do it instead].

Since the reactor will not be activated until the spacecraft has safely left the earth, the potential radiation hazard is essentially zero. The only significant radioactive elements in the propulsion system are Uranium isotopes, which are widely found in nature and which, if dispersed in the atmosphere, would increase the current radiation level on earth by EXACTLY ZERO.

Hence increased public scrutiny is silly, but of course the usually ignoramuses will raise all sorts of flack. To many, their god is the nature and their devil is radiation!

See here for some demystifying of radiation and nuclear weapons.

When you see an argument full of name calling, one has to wonder about it's validity. You have called me a bigot and a moron and implicitly, a racist. You have also called me intolerant, which I confess to: I am intolerant of idiocy, especially in the area of political correctness, and ESPECIALLY, like in this case, where it affects national security.

Your inferences are crap. You assume I want to flag each arab immediately. Wrong. All I said was that ethnicity should be a factor. Factor - as in part of the equation that determines risk.

Furthermore, I would strongly contend that even if I proposed that all young male arabs should be given special attention, that would not be bigotry.

Bigotry: One who is strongly partial to one's own group, religion, race, or politics and is intolerant of those who differ.


Now, we are talking about race in this context (I would arge that intolerance of different politics, if used as a definition, would apply to LOTS of people, including, clearly yourself).

What I am talking about it security measures, not relative merits of one race or ethnic group or another. And that isn't bigotry unless it is driven by bigotted views. It is not bigoted to be more cautious of a young arab than a old black lady when we are talking about security.

Clearly you do not understand the difference between bigotry, which involves intolerance, and discrimination on the basis of risk, which need have no basis at all in intolerance.

Now I notice you have read my blog. I am sorry you were unable to understand it. You must see everything in terms like "bigotry." You strongly imply above that I am a racist, but you don't know me and you know nothing about my attitude about people of difference races. Nor do you know anything about my family (which includes members of a different race) or my friends (of all "races"). In other words, you are doing what the offended left always does - call someone a racist because you don't like their views, and stereotyping me based on my views.

Since you find my views so racist, I invite you to debate them on my blog which is a better forum than slashdot for such things. My blog is designed to, among other things, offend idiotarians. I can tell from your post that it succeeded.

How desperate are you for hits? Just link to the damn animation

I've put together an animated GIF from radar archives showing the initial appearance of the Columbia radar track and the subsequent growth and drift of it,

Go to my blog and scroll down to the "Shuttle Disaster on Radar" item and click the link at the end of the article (labeled "radar image loop").

I have an older integrated phone/PDA (Kyocera smartphone). I got it to eliminate the need to carry two information widgets in my pocket.

The display on this thing sucks (IMHO if it ain't bright and probably color, it's hard for this old guy to read). BUT... I don't use it that often as a PDA. It's there when I need it, but like many Palm users, my Palm desktop (in this case running on [asbestos on] windows [asbestos off] ) is my true personal organizer.

But having a synched copy of all of my data in my phone is extremely handy.

Unfortunately, given the stupid fragmentation of the US cellular market, and the forced practice of buying your phone from the service provider, there aren't enough choices out there. I would like a new, smaller phone/PDA but QWest doesn't have them (gratuitous factoid: "QWest Sucks generates 37800 hits on google).

Furthermore, qworst informs me that the market doesn't seem too interested in pda/phones - consumers are more likely to have phone/lames... errr phone/games than phone/PDA's. And since the market is so fragmented, only the largest demographic groups get what they want.

On top of that, some of the cool PDA/phone combos don't do analog. That means that if you leave the big city, your phone is dead. Here in Arizona, where my favorite drive to the mountains has a 90 mile stretch without NO stores or gas stations, this is a non-starter. And of course when I go tornado chasing every year in the midwest, analog is needed most of the time.

(Okay... you wonder why I still have QWorst when I think they suck. It's because they are my home phone carrier and thus are the only people who can give me totally automatic one number service. If you call my home-office number and my cell phone is turned on, the cell rings. If the cell is off, the home phone rings. Very cool!)

Modern nuclear weapons all require electronics in order to detonate. In fact, those small enough to put on a missile require very sophisticated systems, because they must precisely create a high explosive shock wave in order to compress the plutonium core, and this requires high current precisely timed detonator pulses. This is what the crytrons that Saddam was buying in the '90s are used for - pulse shaping.

Furthermore, nuclear powers tend to want very sophisticated systems to prevent unauthorized detonation of the warheads ("Permissive Action Links"). These also will have vulnerable electronics in them.

If you can disable those electronics, either with high power microwaves or with nuclear radiation (the *most effective* way to stop inbound warheads is with a nuclear warhead), the weapon will not detonate. Then at worst you have a small amount of plutonium dispersal, which is nowhere near as dangerous as a detonation. In fact, there has been at least one case where a US thermonuclear weapon hit the ground in a plane crash, and I believe the explosives detonated with no nuclear detonation. No big deal.

However, it is probably fairly easy to shield a warhead from high power microwaves. It most likely needs no external sensors (relying on accelerometers). The entire package can thus be wrapped in a conductive material. If that shield is built right, not enough microwave energy will pass to cause any problem. Also, the warheads are no doubt already shielded, as a related problem - nuclear blast generated electromagnetic pulse (EMP) - also represents a significant threat to the warheads. EMP shielding uses the same principles as microwave shielding, although the details are likely to be different since EMP trends towards a lower frequency spectrum.

For various odd factoids on nuclear weapons and the reason that fears of radiation are overhyped, check out my nuke factoid page

INVEST NOW!!! Cheap real estate in the restful town of Chernobyl! Don't miss this once in a lifetime opportunity to mutate to the good life.


Please see my nukes page
and take a look at the Chernobyl sentences in there... and you would see that it probably wouldn't be dangerous to actually do that!

The fears of nuclear power are irrational.

It is not irrational to be careful with nuclear power, but the relative fear of nuclear power vs. other technology is many orders of magnitude beyond rationality.

• Envy - the middle Eastern Islamic world was once large an powerful. Now it is pitiful (which is not a statement about the religion but about the societies where it exists in the mideast).
• Hatred of Israel - the smallest country in the Middle East which is populated by Jews - who are hated by almost all extremist movements
• A Fear of Western Mores - those same Islamic cultures (and the religion) have very strong rules about sexual behavior - which form the basis for the social structure - family relationships - and the recent sexual revolution and women's movement tempts them, threatens them and disgusts them. The portrayal of this in the western media, which is more radical than the actual western cultures - at least in the US, makes it even worse.
  
• Religious tracts that encourage and sanctify the use of violence to spread Islam. Many Muslims do not treat these as primary, the same was that many Christians are not Biblical literalists, but the radicals do.
• Broken and Corrupt Governments - Bin Laden's biggest complaint started with the corrupt government of Saudi Arabia and his own lack of access to power - even though he is rich.
• The influence of the West - they don't like the fact that the west has a lot of influence, especially in the middle east - but of course we do - we are the economically and militarily dominant culture!

Sounds like a pretty standard canned enviro-wacko rant... but what the heck, I'll respond with a few little points you might not have thought of an probably won't bother to read.

The "Warning to Humanity" top scientists had very few climatologists in its ranks, so it is utterly and completely meaningless.

Your problem is that you assume that we *can* change, and that we can do so in a beneficial way.

So let me throw just a couple of problems at you...

1) You say the environment is too complex for us to understand the effects we are having on it. That is true. And that means that any action we take is just as likely to be beneficial or not, considering we don't understand the consequences. So why should we choose the one that will cause massive economic dislocation, ultimately killing the millions of people who have such a marginal life right now that they can't *afford* any diminuation in the economic situation.

2) If you look at what the real scientists say (say, for example the IPCC report - and not the politician written summary, but the real thing), you will realize that the Kyoto recommendations, which are supposed to help with global warming, will, IF THE MODELS ARE RIGHT, make such a tiny change that it will be unmeasurable 100 years into the future.

3) If you look at how much change is reputedly needed to make a difference (again, assuming the models are correct), you would realize that Kyoto is just a Trojan horse... a way to get us used to economic sacrifice so that the REAL changes can be done - cutbacks of 30% or more on CO2 emissions which translate, with TODAYS technology, to massive economic disaster.

4)Those who want to follow some plan of change are arrogant enough to believe that they can determine how mankind will behave for the next 100 years (the normal timeline for most scientists studying the issue). They were also that arrogant in the first decade of the 20th century. They thought they had the problems of government solved. Of course, since then there were a few unanticipated events like like World War I, World War II, the rise of communism (which resulted in the worst environmental damage of any system, along with 100,000,000 murders), the invention of the computer, powered airplanes, nuclear power and bombs, quantum theory, the relativity theories, electronics, Social Security, antibiotics, modern genetics, information theory,.... But I'm sure that you believe that things like this won't happen this century, right? Or that minor things like how people really think and act won't get in the way of our punitive solutions? Pardon me if I don't take seriously those people who think they know enough to effect a solution to some vague issue (gasp, we are hurting poor mother earth), and if I am not willing to make economic sacrifices on behalf of their poorly considered ideas.

5) It is interesting that people who put out radical environmental rants tend to be anti-western. Usually this is because they haven't taken a look at how *other* societies treat the environment - which is on average with considerably less respect than we in the west do. Oh, and every one of the inventions I mentioned above... took place in the evil west.

6) The "vicious cycle of consumerism" is an unintended codeword for people exercising their economic freedoms. It is usually uttered by people who are sure they are smarter than these "consumers" - people who justify their beliefs by thinking that consumers are somehow deluded into making their choices by evil capitalist advertisers.

Finally, let me comment that your rant is a perfect example of what I find so objectionable about modern environmentalism: it encourages illogical people with little grasp of the facts and no grasp of history to act and speak as if they knew something.

Why don't you really learn something and read
THIS.

You certainly raise a more interesting and valid argument for open source than I have seen so far in this discussion, so I will comment on that.

First, a comment. I do not assume a perfect free market. Markets are in general the best known economic decision mechanism, but they aren't perfect. Microsoft is a good example - it has a monopoly. Many free market people (including far too many of my ideological comrades in conservatives) seem to have almost a religious belief in the power of the market to always produce the right result, and thus make ignorant arguments about the Microsoft case (fortunately Judge Bork is much smarter in his arguments).

I have another essay in that blog about the failure of the free market in health insurance... and how conservatives are wrong in most of their arguments. So no, my arguments make no utopian free market assumption. In cases given, the assumption is valid. In other cases, it may not be.

What I do dislike is government interaction where it is not totally necessary. Government can only operate through the implied use of deadly force (at the extreme) and thus has vast powers that should be used very rarely. Furthermore, government mandates are usually worse than the market - government tends to be stupid, slow moving, extremely bureaucratic, and often corrupt (I suspect that you in particular would enjoy my quasi-humorous essay on the subject of bureaucracies).

Now to address your point about open source proving code ownership, and that being pro-capitalist. I believe that in balance, this point fails. The reason is that while open source allows one to prove code genesis, the only value of this is to prevent criminal theft of trade secrets. But it the process it decapitalizes the code as an asset, which I think is an even worse outcome. There are other (admittedly imperfect) remedies for trade secret theft, but any forced decapitalization of code is disastrous.

In the case of privately developed software, the owners of that software can *choose* whether to let open source or closed source protect their interest in the software, and I think that is a maximal freedom approach. IOW, if you believe that *your* commercial or personal interests are best served by GPL'ing your code... go for it! I have no problem with that. If you don't, don't. You may want to BSD it. More likely, you will keep it as a trade secret.

Since government produced (or commissioned) software is the main subject of this discussion in Slashdot, I have *no objection* to anyone taking *that* software, putting a different name and a flashy package on it, and selling it for a zillion dollars. Or, more accurately, I don't like people doing that but I don't think it appropriate to sacrifice anybody's freedoms to stop them. Their behavior may be immoral but that's their problem, not ours.

Thus I think government produced software should, in general, be released to the *public domain*, not GPL or BSD or any other non-public domain license. The government's interest in the software ends at that point. Then, whatever happens to that software is up to whatever any person or group (including corporations) wants to do with *their copy* of it. Nothing in public domain release prevents the software from remaining open source, or from GPL or BSD or other trees being derived from it. Only modified versions of the software can be closed source, because the original source is freely available from the government or archives.

I also believe the government should be allowed, with suitable oversight (this is a whole discussion in itself - how to do that with minimal corruption), to contract for closed source or even proprietary software.

Several decades ago I worked for a military consulting house and we were paid by the government to develop closed source software for them. They got the benefit of cheaper software and our expertise, and we got an asset that kept our tiny consulting company alive.

I don't thing my example should be the rule, but I do think it should be totally prohibited (perhaps, again, with suitable oversight).

You certainly raise a more interesting and valid argument for open source than I have seen so far in this discussion, so I will comment on that.

First, a comment. I do not assume a perfect free market. Markets are in general the best known economic decision mechanism, but they aren't perfect. Microsoft is a good example - it has a monopoly. Many free market people (including far too many of my ideological comrades in conservatives) seem to have almost a religious belief in the power of the market to always produce the right result, and thus make ignorant arguments about the Microsoft case (fortunately Judge Bork is much smarter in his arguments).

I have another essay in that blog about the failure of the free market in health insurance... and how conservatives are wrong in most of their arguments. So no, my arguments make no utopian free market assumption. In cases given, the assumption is valid. In other cases, it may not be.

What I do dislike is government interaction where it is not totally necessary. Government can only operate through the implied use of deadly force (at the extreme) and thus has vast powers that should be used very rarely. Furthermore, government mandates are usually worse than the market - government tends to be stupid, slow moving, extremely bureaucratic, and often corrupt (I suspect that you in particular would enjoy my quasi-humorous essay on the subject of bureaucracies).

Now to address your point about open source proving code ownership, and that being pro-capitalist. I believe that in balance, this point fails. The reason is that while open source allows one to prove code genesis, the only value of this is to prevent criminal theft of trade secrets. But it the process it decapitalizes the code as an asset, which I think is an even worse outcome. There are other (admittedly imperfect) remedies for trade secret theft, but any forced decapitalization of code is disastrous.

In the case of privately developed software, the owners of that software can *choose* whether to let open source or closed source protect their interest in the software, and I think that is a maximal freedom approach. IOW, if you believe that *your* commercial or personal interests are best served by GPL'ing your code... go for it! I have no problem with that. If you don't, don't. You may want to BSD it. More likely, you will keep it as a trade secret.

Since government produced (or commissioned) software is the main subject of this discussion in Slashdot, I have *no objection* to anyone taking *that* software, putting a different name and a flashy package on it, and selling it for a zillion dollars. Or, more accurately, I don't like people doing that but I don't think it appropriate to sacrifice anybody's freedoms to stop them. Their behavior may be immoral but that's their problem, not ours.

Thus I think government produced software should, in general, be released to the *public domain*, not GPL or BSD or any other non-public domain license. The government's interest in the software ends at that point. Then, whatever happens to that software is up to whatever any person or group (including corporations) wants to do with *their copy* of it. Nothing in public domain release prevents the software from remaining open source, or from GPL or BSD or other trees being derived from it. Only modified versions of the software can be closed source, because the original source is freely available from the government or archives.

I also believe the government should be allowed, with suitable oversight (this is a whole discussion in itself - how to do that with minimal corruption), to contract for closed source or even proprietary software.

Several decades ago I worked for a military consulting house and we were paid by the government to develop closed source software for them. They got the benefit of cheaper software and our expertise, and we got an asset that kept our tiny consulting company alive.

I don't thing my example should be the rule, but I do think it should be totally prohibited (perhaps, again, with suitable oversight).

There are lots of choices that are made for consumers by manufacturers. A hardware vendor may choose to preload an OS if that is their strategy.

However, you are really addressing Microsoft, which as I have said is a special case. It is simply not relevant to the issue of whether the government should restrict its citizens from using government developed software in a private product.

Your car question puzzles me. It is *my* argument, so why do you assert it?

GPL does NOT guarantee continued access for all citizens any more than BSD or public domain does. The reason is that under GPL, a lot of code that would have gotten written will not be. It is really that simple.

Public Domain guarantees continued access for all citizens to the products of the government. The citizens don't have any inherent rights to the products of private individuals, even if those individuals used government effort as a starting point.

After all, most of our technology ultimately derives from government sponsored research. This is true in biotech, silicontech, spacetech, etc. Why do we want to pick out software as the only technology where we restrict the rights of what citizens can do with it?

See here for a more detailed discussion.

Oh, BTW, as a real programmer for over 35 years, I can tell you that *not all code rots.*

I'm sorry, but YOU are not arguing against my point, you are arguing around it.

My argument, and Microsoft's, is against those who would *force* the government into using GPL for all of its software. And don't kid yourself, if Congress wanted to, it could indeed make government software into GPL instead of public domain - you won't find anything in the US Constitution that prevents that, and the US isn't the only country in the world. My secondary discussion is an attempt to educate the Free Software utopians in the futility of their ultimate goals.

If you read my postings more carefully (and I suggest you take a look at my more detailed my recent blog posting), you would see that this is not the simple issue you assert I am arguing.

As far as "The GPL scares me because it threatens what I do for a living" - thanks for trolling by putting BS words into my mouth (NOT!)! I was simply pointing out (as you in fact do also) that the GPL, if used universally, simply won't work, and that forcing someone to give away their software is wrong. Oh, and I'm really not worried about this, because I expect that there will be proprietary software far into the future, as nobody has yet put forth any credible alternative scenario (short of global catastrophe or true AI). I'm not afraid - you just don't read carefully.

If I have any fear for my profession, it is that cheap foreign labor will take my job - but as long as that happens through fair competition, there is nothing inherently wrong with that in spite of whatever impact it might have on me. And, of course, it isn't germain to this issue.

Microsoft attacks GPL on several fronts. The main issue of interest has to do with attacks which actually affect laws - and this is where Microsoft is *defending* our freedoms, for their own private gain, of course. Is that such a hard concept.

All excellent points. When you can devise rules (as you did) to achieve anti-monopolistic results in a pro-active manner, you have done well!

However, in the case of Microsoft, that didn't happen. In fact, I have often argued that Microsoft owns a natural monopoly (using the economic sense of the term) and thus a desktop operating system monopoly would have originated with or without Microsoft. However, once such a monopoly has arisen, one needs to take measures to minimize the damage that may result as the company uses monopoly rents to unfairly compete in other markets.

BTW... I wrote a longer (and more trollish) discussion of the Free Software movement and put it on my blog for those who are interested.

Remember I am not arguing against GPL in general, but rather against forcing publicly developed software to be licensed as GPL.

Aha. But can't you see that this situation is *worse* than the GPL one? Imagine there is a mediocre health care claims processing application out there. Then some insurance company picks it up and modifies it. They turn it into a great application, but one that only processes insurance claims for their company. They then turn around and release that software. Now, sure, there is a better claims processing software, but its locked into a particular company.

But your argument sets up a straw man. It assumes that only one company can take the free, but mediocre software and improve and sell it. If there is a big enough market to justify investing in the software, then other companies will also come in and either use the free software or write proprietary closed-source software. If there is not a big enough market, then your examples actually shows the good side of non-GPL - it shows that someone will at least provide good claims processing software, but you have to pay for it.

This is better than just having the mediocre software out there, since it adds choices: the mediocre software is STILL THERE, and now there is a better, but more costly proprietary choice also!

BTW... I wrote a longer (and more trollish) discussion of this, which addresses your other issues in more detail, and put it on my blog for those who are interested.

And is there nothing wrong with supporting a family selling copies? Is code a special kind of beast where it is okay to sell the original but not the copy?

Work for hire is one mode that programmers may want. But they may also want to be able to invest their *sweat equity* (capital) into their code, and then get a *return on their investment.*

At one time, I had a business which made small hardware widgets (ham radio repeater controllers with embedded processor). The key proprietary component in this was the software. Anyone could copy the hardware and compete with me, but it took real, rare skills and real cost (which I had already invested via my time) to produce that software. I was not about, and would never, give away that competitive edge for some GPL utopia. In that case, others would simply take my work, dupe my circuit boards, and hit the market with an unfair capital advantage over me - the creator.

Your argument is inherently anti-capitalist and anti-freedom. The only people who have freedom in this case are those who *chose* to GPL their *own* (not taxpayer supported) and those who take that code under the GPL license.

Those who take the code may or may not contribute to the GPL process. They may simply take it parasitically (as many of us do when we use Linux but don't contribute to the Linux project). In the case of Linux, that is okay - because it is expressly in the interest of those who contribute to Linux. If it wasn't, they'd be fools to GPL it!

Your doctor example has nothing to do with software, except in the case of a consultant working for a client. So let's take the latter case... assume I am a consultant producing code for someone (work for hire). I would have no right to withhold it the source from my client (unless that was in the contract, which in fact is not at all unusual). But somebody would have to GPL the software. This simply pushes the capital expenditure burden from me to them, but the economic effect hits me as well as them - if they cannot operate economically in a closed-source, no-piracy mode, then they won't pay me. And for most software, this is a reality.

Utopianism is a good way to come up with creative ideas, but unfortunately (as in this case) it always results in overapplication and nonutopian results. For some of the consequences of utopianism, see my blog my blog.

Tactical nukes indeed do get down to about that size. Some of them are "dial-a-yield."

Tactical nukes were intended for all sorts of uses. For example, the anti-aircraft batteries around the US during the early cold war had nuclear warheads in the missiles. The Navy had nuclear warheads in the anti-aircraft missiles on almost all of their combat ships. I was an aircrewman in a P-3 Orion (submarine hunter) and we carried nuclear depth charges. Submarines carried nuclear torpedos.

I believe the only reason that tactical nukes are not used in the NMD anti-missile systems is political. Although there is one other possibility (exo-atmospheric burst caused EMP), the advantages of nuclear warheads for anti-ballistic missile defense seem immense - the problems of hitting the target go away - you just need to get close. (I would love to hear from anyone who *knows* why these difficult "hit-to-kill" vehicles are being used instead of nukes, if it is not political).

As far as conventional explosives go... I once watched a demonstration (and test) at Sandia Labs (Albuquerque, NM - where they did most nuclear weapons design). They set off around 1 kiloton equivalent of high explosive a few miles from where we were watching at an Armed Forces Day demonstration. It certainly produced a very nice mushroom cloud and a heck of a bang!

As a kid, I set off a small explosive in the back yard (my parents were not amused). It was about an ounce of Sodium Chlorate mixed with Sugar and a little Sulfur, with an electrical detonator (single strand of wire shorting an extension cord). I also made a very small, but distinct, mushroom cloud :-)

For more info on nukes, see This Site.

And that was an absurd comment. To compare the US to the USSR is like comparing a goldfish to a shark! There are major qualitative and quantitative differences.

And the what brainwashing are you talking about with "duck and cover?"

The only brainwashing I have seen about that is from people who have convinced you and others that the whole idea was silly.

The american public WAS brainwashed. We were brainwashed by a media with an agenda - and the brainwashing was that nuclear was was not survivable, so duck and cover is silly. This tied in to the agenda of nuclear weapons ban movements, and the purpose for the disinformation was to exagerrate the (admittedly terrible) effects of nuclear war.

Duck and cover made sense. It would have saved many lives and prevent even more injuries in the vent of a nuclear war against US cities - especially with the quantity of weapons that would have been used in the '50s and '60s.

I lived through the cuban missile crises. My father had been a nuclear weapons designer, and we lived in the city that had (and still has, apparently) the largest stored number of nuclear weapons in the united states - Albuquerque, New Mexico (check out the mountain with the bunkers and the fences just as you leave town to the east on I-40). And my father one day showed the family *how* and *where* to duck and cover to maximize our chances of surviving the weapons he was an expert on. For some info on how deadly and not deadly the are, check out my site.

Likewise, civil defense and fallout shelters made sense also, but they were also killed by the ban-the-nukes people. OF course, nukes haven't been banned, but rather have proliferated. Oh well...

Trust me, you dont want her email adress:

From his website

While science is far from proving that the current warming is caused by mankind, let us assume that in fact the hypothesis is correct. CO2 is a trace gas in the atmosphere, especially compared to the greenhouse gas called water vapor, but the actions of man have indeed caused CO2 to increase by over 30% in the last 150 years. So... assuming this increase will cause further warming, what should we do about it?

Kyoto attempts to simply reduce the warming. Environmental advocates also advocate a simple (if terribly expensive) strategy of stopping the warming and maintaining the status quo.

However, actually stopping the increase in CO2 is impossible without a massive reduction in population (i.e. a massive human catastrophe or global war). It won't happen for a number of reasons, the most important of which is the resistance of people, especally in developing countries, to the measures necessary to do so.

A more rational approach follows the following principles and facts:

1. We cannot stop the increase in CO2.
2. Any significant change in major systems such as transportation will be very expensive.
3. People who are economically well off can and do protect the environment better than poor people are able to. At the extremes, worldwide economic downturns cause massive deaths among the poorest in the world. Also, and not coincidentally, birth rate is high until a certain minimum economic threshold is reached.
4. In historic times, the earth and mankind have gone through significant periods of global warming and cooling.
5. The abilities of governments and treaties to limit human activity is limited, and the ability to extend that control into the future in a predictable manner is even more limited.

The most rational approach is to accept that global warming is inevitable (if we believe any predictions at all from the imperfect science). We should:

1. Use whatever means we can to improve the standard of living of the third world. The most important factors in this are democracy, lack of corruption, transparency of government, and an enforceable system of property rights. Without these, economic progress inevitably stalls (as the Chinese will soon find out). We should use our best efforts to further these minimum requirements for significant economic growth. We should also recognize that these factors also provide the basis for a stable system that will be able to deal with environmental issues.
2. Remove illogical impediments to energy efficiency. In the US this means removing obstacles to the development of nuclear power generation. In spite of the arguments of such provably wrong fools as Amory Lovins, centralized nuclear power is the most efficient way known to produce energy. Other methods such as photovoltaic, wind energy, biomass, cogeneration, etc have absorbed huge amounts of research dollars and yet are only marginal in contributing to the problem.
3. Continue to fund climatological research.
4. Try to determine the real costs or benefits of predicted global warming as a basis for decision making. These should be economic costs only.
5. Don't act hastily. Global warming is a long term trend. Unforseen changes in technology are likely to defeat most predictions. Likewise, global political, economic and health changes are very hard to predict. Imagine that it is 1902 and we are trying to predict the future. Could we predict fasicm, the world wars, the rise of the communist block, telecommunications and computers, nuclear power, the rapid rise of life expectancy, the rapid drop of population growth in developed countries, etc? Why do we think that we won't see similar upheavals in the next century? This perspective should show how foolish it is to attempt to make century long global plans!
6. Resist the pressures to take drastic governmental action (such as Kyoto). Recognize that governmental actions are governed by the Law of Unintended Consequences and Laws of Bureaucracy. A simple example is how the Corporate Average Fuel Economy law has caused over half of all new cars sold in the US to be SUV's and other light trucks!
7. Investigate relatively no-coercive measures whereby governments can help in the creation of long term financial derivative markets that can be used to both hedge against global warming and to properly allocate the externalities costs of CO2 emission. It is important to realize that the latter is extremely difficult, can be extremely coercive,m and is subject to strong pressures from special interest groups, and thus may not be worth doing.

1. Europe has recently engaged in many meaningless gestures in order to enhance its "moral" standing over the US. Europe has yet to understand that it is no longer the center of world affairs. It has no military worth discussing, and no will to create one. It has a living standard 2/3rds that of the US. It has a demographic problem that is causing its population to rapidly age and diminish relative to most of the rest of the world.
   Furthermore, Europe has been losing other moral edges it had over the US. For example, the violent crime rate in Britain and France is now significantly higher than that in the US. The recent anti-semitism should be a source of great shame in Europe, but the rapidly rising percentage of muslims in France and England (see demographics above - the muslims are having more children) has muted the reaction to this.
   Due to all of these factors, Europe is humiliated, and is reacting by attacking the United States wherever it can in the realm of ideology and international affairs.
2. Europe will not change its behavior as a result of the signing, so it is a no-cost effort.
3. The EU is a bureaucracy, not a democracy. The Brussells bureaucrats are far removed from the votes of individuals in Europe, and acts on its own. Bureaucracies have significant intertia and often do irrational things just because they appeared rational when the process was started (see Laws of Bureaucracy).
4. It is not clear that the US will never sign the treaty. We have had previous fits of insanity, and as long as the treaty is out there, it could be signed in the future if we ended up with a sufficiently foolish senate. Furthermore, European signing of the treaty makes it easier for US environmental organizations to pressure the US into signing it. It is a no cost effort by Europe that could pay off big in the future.

The decline of NASA started with the moon landings. After that, NASA could not justify itself to the public, because the Russians had been beaten, and the race was over.

Thus NASA had to become more "cost effective" (the moon landing was done by crash-program techniques such as paying for several alternatives and selecting the best one after it is developed). So NASA sold the concept of the Space Shuttle as an inexpensive way to get mass into orbit. In order to justify it, they also had to make it the launcher for military payloads, so they connived to force the military into fitting their payloads into the shuttle, and defunding their own launch capabilities.

The problem with the shuttle is that is far more expensive that projected (big surprise). A primary reasonis that it is man-rated, which greatly adds to cost.

In order to continue to justify their existence, NASA needed a mission. The environmental movement came along just in time for them - they could devote their resources to studying the environment, and get government bucks to put up space-borne systems to do that. But, to justify continuing the shuttle, they needed a big, manned project... and thus was born the International Space Station.

But the ISS caused NASA to put almost all of their money into one bucket, leaving little else for other research. And ISS is not a particularly good way of doing most things - because most things don't need a manned space station, they can get by with a much less expensive non-manned launch.

Furthermore, NASA did its best to quash competition in the space launch business - again to keep justifying the money for the shuttle. After the Challenger disaster and subsequent grounding, NASA had to allow the military to use its own launchers for critical payloads, but they still have not been nice to little guys.

As a result, we have a small fleet of aging shuttles, that launch at an average cost of $500,000 per mission, at a mission rate a fraction of what they were supposed to be able to do.

One solution is not to give more money to NASA. It is to create incentives for private enterprise to get into the game.

As an example, what would happen if there was a $30 billion prize to the first company to land humans on mars and bring them back successfully? Hopefully, it would lead to some pretty innovative work.

Another approach that might work is to stimulate the public with some historic vision (like Kennedy did with the moon landing) and get public support for a truly imaginative leap.

Lots of tornados don't have much a debris field. In fact, a lot of them have no visible funnel or very little funnel (hence no debris or water condensation) for much of their length - see this page for an example.

I think the hard part would be the wind shear near the wall of the vortex. It could be very extreme. And of course, if you flew in too low you could hit debris.

I've considered doing such a thing, but it would take a lot of time, have low probability of getting good stuff, and the odds of finding the plane intact are low (even though I would put an ELT-like device on it - I have found LOTS of those by RDF).