Slashdot Mirror
The Future of Free Weather Data on the Internet
An anonymous reader writes "The National Weather Service wants to update a 1991 policy that limits what data it can put on the Internet. The proposed new policy makes putting free data on the Internet official. The Private Weather Sector wants NWS to provide its new digital forecasts only in specialized data formats and would like NWS to shut down new XML data feeds. Barry Myers (MS Word doc), president of Accuweather wants you to have pay before using Kweather and other similar tools. Myers is asking friends to comment against the new NWS policy by June 30. Should we have to pay twice to get weather forecasts?"
In an obscure but related story, Barry Myers admits he has received non-trivial amounts of business advice and financial assistance from the RIAA.
dubito ergo sum
Solid, but for how long?
Sep 20th 2001 | BRUSSELS
European solidarity with the United States will depend on just what a global "war" against terrorism entails
A WEEK after the terrorist atrocities in America, the talk in the European Union was all still of "solidarity". "We stand four-square with our American allies and friends," said Chris Patten, the EU's commissioner for foreign affairs, in a statement echoed by scores of politicians across the continent. Opinion polls showed that most West Europeans wanted their governments to take part in military action against terrorism, with the French almost as eager as the British (see chart). Though Germans in general are edgier, Chancellor Gerhard Schröder has sounded as robust as the French. [...] But the possible limits to European support for the United States are also becoming evident. [...]
It was noted with relief in Brussels and elsewhere that in the attacks' immediate aftermath, America and Iran appeared to undergo something of a small rapprochement. But it is also clear that a strong school of thought in the United States considers Iraq to be the main state promoter of terrorism. A recent book arguing that Iraq was behind the first attack on the World Trade Centre, in 1993, has won plaudits from, among others, Paul Wolfowitz, now Mr Rumsfeld's deputy at the Pentagon.
If the United States chose to attack Iraq without convincing public evidence of its involvement in the latest terror, Europe's solidarity might begin to crack. The anti-Saddam coalition that the United States built up during the Gulf war has fizzled. France dropped out of the air patrols over Iraq's "no-fly" zones in 1998, leaving Britain as America's only ally in the skies. A clutch of French MPs has visited Baghdad, Iraq's capital. France has its eyes on lucrative Iraqi oil contracts, if and when UN sanctions against Iraq are lifted. Many governments and people in the EU now think sanctions against Iraq are ineffective--and needlessly cruel to ordinary Iraqis.
If the attempt to widen the war on terrorism beyond Mr bin Laden and Afghanistan is confined to judicial and intelligence co-operation, the EU should stay enthusiastic. But broader military strikes may cause public unease, except perhaps in Britain, with its emotional and security ties to the United States. Europe's reluctance is not just to do with evidence or with fear of the humanitarian consequences of military action. For all the talk of the attack on America being "an attack on all of us", some Europeans fear that if they cleave too closely to a broad, punitive American policy, terrorist reprisals against European cities will be far more likely. Rudolf Scharping, Germany's defence minister, at first seemed to distance himself from American war talk by cautioning against the use of emotive language: "We aren't on the brink of war."
A lot of Europeans, hoping that their advice may temper what they regard as the Pentagon's wilder instincts, say that the Americans should consult them--and "co-operate" with them--more. This partly reflects some Europeans' long-standing resentment of what they see as America's high-handedness. In this view, common in Paris, Berlin and Brussels, the crisis may have a beneficial side-effect if it makes America seek more equal relations with its European allies. But members of the British government tend not to take this line. A senior British politician points out that "America considers that it has a fundamental responsibility to respond to an attack on its own soil. What action Americans take is a matter for them."
In other news, Microsoft has patented Looking Out The Window, crushing both personal weather forecasts, as well as another senseless infringement on their OS trademark.