Slashdot Mirror
New Bill Would Ban Public NOAA Weather Data
ckokotay writes "Here we go again. Apparently for-pay weather companies (specifically Accuweather) have lobbied Senator Rick Santorum to introduce a bill to ban the National Weather Service from 'competing.' The NOAA just made data available for free on the internet in XML format. Essentially, that means no more free data, and the possible elimination of the NOAA web presence all together. Nothing like being able to buy off a clueless Senator - lets hope the rest do not fall in line, as I for one, do not like to pay for my information twice." This debate picks up where the last one left off. According to the article, the bill's biggest critics are complaining of the bill's vague wording which makes it unclear what exactly is being banned.
Once the bill motors through the Senate and House, and has the signature of the prez (Hey, the GOP loves private businesses, right?) I'll be able to direct when and where war actually takes place.
This should undoubtably improve my popularity gasp and maybe get me a gulp date with that cutie gosh I've had my eye on for a while!
Ok, Kim's check bounced, you can invade now.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
... just as soon as they build their own space launch facilities.
If I'm not allowed to see the benefits of what my tax dollars are paying for, than neither should they. That means no more access to NOAA satellites and no more help paying for Kennedy Space Center and the heavy-lift rockets they need for their geosynchronus launches.
I'm feeling generous, I'll let taxpayer-funded NORAD tell them if and when Something Bad is about to happen to their satellites, but beyond that...
Without my money going to NOAA, these for-pay services would still be stuck with nothing but ground-based radar, to the point where I doubt they'd even spring to pay for off-shore buoys (where'd the profit be?). And that means things like not being able to see hurricanes until it's too late.
They shouldn't be allowed to have it both ways, but I'm sure they'll get it anyway. Thanks, Congress!
In response to:
Barry Myers, AccuWeather's executive vice president, said the bill would improve public safety by making the weather service devote its efforts to hurricanes, tsunamis and other dangers, rather than duplicating products already available from the private sector.
Ed Johnson, the weather service's director of strategic planning and policy, said:
"If someone claims that our core mission is just warning the public of hazardous conditions, that's really impossible unless we forecast the weather all the time. You don't just plug in your clock when you want to know what time it is."
And then this gem from Accuweather:
Myers argued that nearly all consumers get their weather information for free through commercial providers, including the news media, so there's little reason for the federal agency to duplicate their efforts.
"Do you really need that from the NOAA Web site?" he asked.
Um, gee, if everyone already doesn't get their weather information from the National Weather Service, then what the fuck are they so worried about? Incidentally, the stated mission of the National Weather Service is:
The National Weather Service (NWS) provides weather, hydrologic, and climate forecasts and warnings for the United States, its territories, adjacent waters and ocean areas, for the protection of life and property and the enhancement of the national economy. NWS data and products form a national information database and infrastructure which can be used by other governmental agencies, the private sector, the public, and the global community.
Clear, timely, comprehensive, accurate - and now open - weather forecasts are critical for many, many sectors of public and private society. The new, open formats of weather data also make its integration into myriad other services and tools trivial. It's only good for the public. I don't think Sen. Santorum realizes how critical the NWS's weather, climate, and marine data is to so many sectors of US society.
The National Weather Service is funded for this mission, among others, by the taxpayers of the United States.
I hope Rick Santorum realizes that in a world where this bill passes, there should also be a corresponding reduction of funding to the NWS, in addition to a wholesale change of its mission. In fact, what would its mission be?
The best part of all of this is that in order for the NWS to effectively be able to gather the necessary data to still predict and warn against life- and property-threatening dangers, it still has to do almost all of the continuing data collection it does now. Removing the public access to this does absolutely nothing for anyone.
Except for-profit weather forecasting providers like Accuweather, of course.
For now, at least, Johnson of the NWS notes his agency is expanding its online offerings to serve the public.
Remember, too, that a "bill" is just that. Time to remind your elected officials of what you think...
here
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
Seriously: tough luck to weather companies! If this is a public service for Americans given by their government, then the American public should be allowed to use that service. Considering they paid for it with their taxes, I don't see how this bill could be passed!
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
He is an extremley conservative senator, and so Dan Savage of Savage Love decided to name something horrible after him and try to overtake Santorum's official site as the number one site on Google. He succeeded... Hilarity Ensued. Check it out!
http://www.pterrys.com
I love how now I can get the weather report everyday on my Gnome panel without paying. If the free ride ends (without a Linux client in sight) I guess I'll have to buy a thermometer and look outside (shudder)...
Open Source Sushi
Uh...free? I think I just paid for some of that data. Maybe Accuweather could compete the old fashioned way--in the marketplace.
the Weather Channel is asking cable companies to add a surcharge based on the number of windows in a subscriber's household, to recoup lost revenues due to subscriber's looking outside to see what the weather is like...
Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain.
If accuweather is so concerned about the national weather service undermining private companies, this bill should also forbid the national weather service from providing their data to accuweather itself. By providing all this data to accuweather, they are undercutting the ability of private comapnies to set up their own weather monitoring instruments and SELL the data to accuweather.
Well Senator M-O-D Santorum had better hurry up and pass the bill because he is about to have his lunch handed to him in his 2006 relection efforts:
8 65
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/4/21/11132/9
He's dropping faster than a rock so if this bill is stalled or set aside Accuweather will have to find some other "go to" guy...
Not that would be too difficuly unfornataly...
Someone mod that post up!
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
Like my grandfather used to say, "Politicians change their minds as often as the weather changes, except a bribe won't make the weather change."
Is it just me, or do others think that we need to give politicians a common sense quotient test before they're allowed to run for office?
If I pay taxes and those taxes are allowed to fund a bureau like NOAA, that data better stay accessible to the public.
If "disco" means "I learn" in Latin, does "discothèque" mean "I learn technology"?
Santorum is "analubepoo"
Should we shutdown the wonderful NOAA Weather Radio system also? After all, the competes directly with all those commericial radio stations out there. (Never mind that we get alerts in the event of severe weather.)
Someone just pay Rick Man-on-Dog Santorum off to just sit down and shut up already?
Democrats can't capitalize on this and go after Man-on-dog Santorum? !@#!@
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
Ugggh, talk about nickel and diming... It's like driving the Jersey Turnpike.
should be doing is stop bitching to a bunch of 14 year olds on Slashdot, head over to here and find your Senators; write them, and complain. Explain to them why sponsoring this bill is bad and that doing so will cause them a loss of your vote--enough of these and they -will- listen.
I think that since we've paid for that data through our taxes we should get to see it for free.
There are several reasons why NOAA exists, but one of them is to protect the public: think tornados and hurricanes. The public deserves to see that data.
Dad gummit. I PAID for NOAA....with my TAXES. I have EVERY right under FOIA to all that data. The nly reason this is being brought up is the Accuweathers, the DTN's and to a lesser extent, the Weather Channels of the world.
Gorkman
Clearly you're being rhetorical, but I'll fire off a response anyway:
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
The Congressional part especially has a lot of merit, since I'm sure Congress would prefer that we not find out about stuff like this except as duly authorized sources see fit to pass it along.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
Santorum (n.)
1. That frothy mixture of lube and fecal matter that is sometimes the by-product of anal sex.
2. Senator Rick Santorum (R-PA)
There are many, many senators and representatives who are just conduits for corruption. Most people in the U.S. are overwhelmed and just don't want to know how corrupt their government is.
I wrote a short article that discusses a small percentage of that corruption -- Unprecedented Corruption: A guide to conflict of interest in the U.S. government
You're going to have a lot of angry/annoyed pilots once they find out they can't use websites such as aviationweather.gov, duats.com, and duat.com just to name a few.
Yet another stupid bill brought to you by Corporate America(R).
Who the fuck votes for this guy?
/boggle
Yeah, this is flamebait, trolling, whatever. The number of bad ideas this guy supports is mind boggling.
...write him a letter or give him a call:
Santorum, Rick- (R - PA) Class I
511 DIRKSEN
SENATE OFFICE BUILDING
WASHINGTON DC 20510
(202) 224-6324
Web Form: santorum.senate.gov/contactform.cfm
Source
Accuweather is headquartered in Pennsylvania. And Santorum is a senator from PA. I mean, come on, what are the odds of that? ;)
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
Here's the text of S. 786. Thankfully, no co-sponsors yet. Here's hoping that most Congresspeople see this bill for what it is - lunacy.
You might want to indicate that googling Santorum (or at least clicking on the links in that search result) is probably not safe for work. I already knew what it meant, just thought the rest of the community should know..
The Doormat
If you're not outraged, then you're not paying attention.
Not only do we pay for those satellites, but the NOAA weather data is used extensively in the shipping and aviation industries.
Without that data, we'd be risking the lives of all those sailors and pilots, not to mention their passengers and cargos.
Why does Mr. Santorum hate our brave sailors and pilots? Why does he hate cruise ship passengers and people who fly in planes?
How about if I make a company that generates BS?
Could I then ask the congress to NOT supply the public with free BS?
Seriously - these guys are basically robbing the patent office. Next up is probably the public school system. As private schools provide this service for a fee, then public schools must close in order not to compete????????
The government should just get out of the information business. The free market is the best way to ensure that we get the most unbiased information.
Test 1 2 3 4
It's times like this that I really hate the fact I live in DC.....
In accordance with the current trend public schools should be banned because they compete unfairly with private schools. Similar bans should of course be enacted on public transportation, public roads, public utilities, and public management.
I think I have a new sig...
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
I use this to make my school's weather center, if this bill goes through, I'm screwed, pretty much. Ironically, I do use AccuWeather for some of the maps.
In America, you spam computers In Soviet Russia, computers spam you!
We pay taxes... so, collectively, we are
/. audience (L Lessig?) ;-)
- in effect - like members of a cooperative
(analogy: farmer's co-op), and - for part
of our "co-op fees" (ie, taxes) - we get
services, such as weather data, etc.
C'mon, lawyers in the
help us get value for our "co-op fee" bucks,
here.
Lets not forget that most of these pay and private services SUCK and make it difficult to obtain the data you are looking for...let alone in a easily usable format like XML....Funny thing is you can bet that most of this data is collected at government sponsored weather stations...why should we publically fund data collection for private companies?
Our government is one step away from complete corporate dominance of its policy...weakening the judiciary..the one thing that stands in the way of our corrupt legislative branch...god have mercy on our souls.. =P
Just unethical, immoral and without a soul, having sold it to Satan in exchange for the support of the religious right and the business lobby.
And one of the biggest reasons I almost exclusively use weather.gov is that I don't have to deal with annoying pop-ups and cute little qasi-spyware apps to view weather data.
Add to that that other government agencies (both Federal and State) would have to staff up, duplicating the no-doubt-now-classified military work. Bottom line is that shutting down the NOAA forecast role will be a sizable net cost to the US, along with some unknown harm to both the economy and national security.
Great move, Senator.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
Aviators everywhere depend on NOAA for weather all the time and AOPA will never let this bill get passed. AOPA has a long history of protecting the citizens from stupid laws like this so I'm not worried at all.
http://www.srh.noaa.gov/data/forecasts/NYZ072.php
http://www.erh.noaa.gov/er/okx/digital/NY072afmwk
I wonder this will include GOES satellite data. This will be a major blow to me becuase I run my school's weather center. This is stupid if you ask me? Hopefully this won't spell the end for the NWS.
In America, you spam computers In Soviet Russia, computers spam you!
You have an even bigger problem with Westlaw. you cannot cite a case w/o using a specific case by what volume and page, etc that it is in from one of their publications.
It would be nice if all of this sort of thing were taken into account throughout all agencies, and that information that should be free was really free.
Workaround: Learn to read FAA weather reports. It will be a little difficuly to take away access through that channel.
Is for me to get out my pen and paper and neatly write my senator a letter asking him to oppose this bill. I notice (at least in a quick read) that TFA does not state the bill number. Can anyone provide it?
Trying to use sarcasm in text-based forums does not work.
Seriously, either write to them or call them up explaining that you are about to go out of business because of this proposed bill. Unless they know about you (they most likely won't), then they won't be able to lob this little bomb on Rick Santorum, who then will be unable to say that his bill is designed to protect businesses. After all, it's a bit hard to say this when other senators are giving examples of companies his bill will put out of business!
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
"It is not an easy prospect for a business to attract advertisers, subscribers or investors when the government is providing similar products and services for free," Santorum said.
Perhaps we can we expect Senator Santorum to next intervene on behalf of the unjustifiably repressed legions of private firefighters, police, water safety testers, and maintainers of roads?
After all, it's hard to compete in the market when the government does it for free!
This is also a good time to mention Spreading Santorum, a personal crusade by the advice columnist Dan Savage to popularize the use of the word 'santorum' to describe a (mostly) gay sex act, with the intention of embarrassing the anti-gay senator: spreadingsantorum.com
...it had damn well better stay public. But the internet routes around damage --- if noaa can't do it, it'll just become another open source project, as it partially is now...
My weather station
(the flatline yesterday was a power outage)
Citizen's Weather Observer Program
You should definitely check out the official spin on this:
Santorum Proposes to Modernize National Weather Service to Better Serve Public
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
My guess: anything that could be provided by a for-profit commercial service.
Halliburton has beat you to it (and might hold the patent).
Sustainability and energy independence essay
made that happen. Just do the google search on santorum" and see what comes up.
/bin/fortune | slashdotsig.sh
Just so everyone understands, we here at NOAA provide many other products and services that have nothing to do with the National Weather Service. Check out noaa.gov to see the eight major areas of work, of which weather is just one. :)
Liberté, egalité, fraternité - choose 1.6, tops.
asshole.
Say hello to my little sig.
Well you could get the information through other means. Like building your own dish. Picking up weather transmissions. Plugging into universities.*
*Incidently, has anyone noticed that TV stations are getting their own weather resources? Bypassing the monopoly?
Makes you wonder how much longer Rand McNally will let this go on...
... are you saying that they don't pay for all their own equipment? They use government equipment, yet they want to stop the government (the providers of infrastructure to run their business!) to stop giving out that information?! wtf? How can they make demands at all?!
I agree with the AC. Stop them from gaining access to all the government satellites if they feel that the government is competing with them!
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
Now, I only worked (past tense) for the NZ MetSvc for 10 months so I've probably got this stuff wrong. :)
o c
My understanding is that by agreement national weather services share data with each other without charge - other than data distribution charges.
If the US started to charge for this, they might run into problems with (say) the UKMO.
It is standard practice for met organisations to make their model data freely available, Environment Canada does this:
http://weatheroffice.ec.gc.ca/grib/index_e.html
The WMO lays it out pretty clearly:
http://www.wmo.ch/web/pla/Res40Cg-XII.d
If the US govt decides not to offer XML anymore, that's fine, they'll probably have to provide the grib... Grib is a lot bigger than the XML...
Google for "free grib data". GRIB is the file format used by the computer models.
So, if we really wanted to, we could parse the GRIB data and relay it as XML for everyone else.
Jason Pollock
...'cause we need to stop this dead in its tracks. If every Slashdotter sent a form letter to their Representative and their Senators, Washington would be swamped!
Is anyone out there legalistic enough to be able to write a good form letter?
Just leave blanks for our name, and our Representative/Senator's name. Then we each print off a few (I would need three, but Californians need ~60 or so, I think), customize them, and send 'em off! I would do it!
-stalefries
I actually had an Accuweather account for years, dial-up (paid for long distance bill plus $10 per month). I stopped using it once weather via internet (both gopher and later http) became available because the internet product provided vastly more information (like satellite .gif images, radar maps) and in a much more usable format. The cost was only secondary. Remind me again, how will this bill better serve the public?
Screw that, I'm not going to have a harder time next hurricane season because this jackass wants to protect the interests of private companies. One of the benefits of living in a modern rich-as-hell country is having public programs like this.
... didn't even include us in the warnings. They were focused on its conical path, yet the storm turned and hit us directly. Even then, their data is momentary and fleeting because of the methods of TV. Their web site has some more info but it can't compare with what I got w/ NWS
My last home got destroyed by hurricane Charley. I have NOAA/NWS to thank for giving me the data I needed to make a decision to take what was important and LEAVE. I got to study (and freak out over) model-generated charts, tables of probabilities, storm surge/pressure data from off-shore buoys and a host of other stuff. The Weather Channel had static pics that
This prick wants to make me have a harder time next year? For the gain of WHO ?
And I was right.
Our constitution defines treason as aiding and abetting the enemy. Clearly our greatest enemies are the corporations. I call for Santorum to be tried as a traitor. If he is convicted, he should be sentenced as harshly as possible.
eat shiat and bark at the moon
i hate corrupt politicians. but remember, in a democracy ('demos' is greek for 'people'), if you dont like whos running the show, you can put yourself up for election (with a bit of hard work, of course)...well, before a corrupt politician changes that anyway, i smell a dictatorship ;)
They are just duplicating the efforts of private security firms.
I love my Gnome Weather applet. It's nice to be able to tell, at a glance, whether I need a jacket, or shorts, or an umbrella. (My only windows look out onto a small alley, no help there.)
Is there a Canadian equivalent to this service, and how do I configure the Gnome Weather applet to use it?
"I'm not impatient. I just hate waiting." - My Dad
Ewww! santorum..
Starsucks
If you're a Pennsylvania voter, vote Santorum out in 2006. If you're not convinced, I implore you to do some research on the man, his various scandals (such as claiming PA residency but living full time in Virginia -- at PA taxpayer expense) or some of the crap he has pulled in the Senate.
the article has a little box of weather information right there with the article of the text wrapped around it.
That's nice (WiFi Weather). Now were do I get the NexRad images? How about the upper-atmosphere readings? Climate models? Buoy readings? There's a reason we have a centralized service, and your suggestion is only a small part of it.
His Washington D.C. Office number is: 202-224-6324 I just left a messages expressing how it seems unfair to the very people paying for NOAA, the American taxpayer, to pay for a service that would only be available through corporations. If we could slashdot his phone message service with many calls, at least he will know that the american people want free weather service!
Markos "Paid-by-Howard-Dean" Zuniga was 0 for 2004.
Not one of his candidates won. Nada. Zilch. The big bagel. Zero. None.
Accuweather can go pound salt!
NOAA weather radio is the perfect use of government.
Low cost, low power radio provides weather info 24x7 almost everywhere in the country.
Great for camping, boating, sports, travel, farming, business, and anyone who lives on the planet and needs to know the weather.
The NOAA weather radio Mr. Roboto voice is a welcome guest in our home, especially during storms that knock out the electricity!
ALL of the NOAA data is bought and paid for by our taxes,
the USA put those sat's up in orbit,
(not Accuweather - they probably couldn't afford one launch.)
and the US taxpayer pays to maintain them.
So, How do we go about sueing Accuweather for being a bunch of nits?
Should anyone be interested in expressing your opinions about this bill, visit http://santorum.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAc tion=ContactInformation.ContactForm to send him an email.
insist on calling these people "clueless". This guy is a six time congressman. He seems fairly popular. Tell me again. Who are the clueless ones? Apart from this, he may be doing some good for the people that elected him. And besides, how many of you "clueful" people have $1,360,093 usd in your pocket? Hmmm? The guy is a real corporate shill, but that doesn't seem to matter to the people responsible for putting him into office.
After reading some of the info, I did find a need to write my congressman to pass a new law that would require all web sites to label all links that open a pdf file to label them as such. Damn, I hate that!
What?
What's NOAA have to say about this? Do they WANT to only be responsible for warnings?
Google is readying it's newest beta release: Google-Weather.
"I'm not impatient. I just hate waiting." - My Dad
WIth Tiger around the corner, Accuweather is going to see quite the increase in traffic due to the new Weather widget. Just a few days ago all previously free features (i.e. 15-day forecast) have gone subscriber only. Coincidence? I think not!
I notice that a lot of people are saying they paid for it through taxes and they should get it. Probably a cunning plan would be to start making inquiries under some official information act or something similar to get the information.
Send information about the cost of getting that info to the 1/2 witted senator bloke and see if he is prepared to endorse an increase in funding to the weather service to enable them to respond to the projected inundation of regular requests for information.
We see the following seemingly contradictory clauses:
XXX
(b) COMPETITION WITH PRIVATE SECTOR- The National Weather Service shall not provide, or assist other entities in providing, a service or product (other than a service or product described in subsection (a)(1)(A)) that is or could be provided by the private sector unless--
(1) the Secretary determines that the private sector is unwilling or unable to provide such service or product; or
(2) the United States Government is obligated to provide such service or product under international aviation agreements to provide meteorological services and exchange meteorological information.
(c) ISSUANCE OF DATA, FORECASTS, AND WARNINGS- All data, information, guidance, forecasts, and warnings received, collected, created, or prepared by the National Weather Service shall, to the maximum extent practicable, be issued in real time, and without delay, in a manner that ensures that all members of the public have the opportunity for simultaneous and equal access to such data, information, guidance, forecasts, and warnings.
XXX
Don't compete, but you have to inform the public, "without delay" in a way that the public "have the opportunity for simultaneous and equal access to such data, information, guidance, forecasts, and warnings."
Hmmmm.
The next logical step is simply to privatize the Senate, and ban competing government organizations.
After all, private lobbyists ALREADY write legislation, conduct research and collect money.
What do we need a government-run Senate for?
--- Attorneys Assisting Citizen-Soldiers & Families -
"They shouldn't be allowed to have it both ways, but I'm sure they'll get it anyway. Thanks, Congress!"
Why? You don't plan to write your congress-critter? You planning to not write to your local paper? Are you going to stop voting? Continue to use Accuweather products, directly, or indirectly? Posting complaints strictly to Slashdot?
For those who actually want to use the xml service while it's around, here's the link.
We paid for it via taxes.
Corporate control of this country is sickening.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
I wrote (and continue to do so) a very high profile applicaiton that maps strategic locations via geocode the the CAP XML data available over http from NOAA.
This application has been very successfull and has been used in critical situations. I loathe the fact that this bill exists. Someone wants to sell us information collected via our taxes that they get for free from the source itself. Pathetic.
If they really want to take the free market approach, do it better. NOAA's feed isn't perfect. Do to the style there is a lot of repeated data. For example, if the same watch covers two different geocodes (basically county codes), the entire watch will be repeated twice. Full text and all. There's no parent-child relationship between the watch (parent) and the locations it covers (children) as one would naturally expect.
During times like last year's hurricane season in Florida, the XML data could reach megs, where a more elegant schema would have cut that size into only a few dozen k. I see room for them to make money by providing a better service. The Weather Channel still makes money. Why can't they?
Basically, the Air Force will not let this happen. The Air Force is reliant in many ways upon the NOAA data for its forecasts.
While NOAA does make its data available over a satellite uplink (called a NOAAPort), this data is typically only used for detailed local modeling and display on AWIPS terminals. I've personally witnessed Air Force Forecasters using the NOAA website and its XML data to do their reports, and that is part of The Procedure.
Which means, it costs a huge boat of money to change, which means it costs concrete tax dollars which must be allocated to cover the costs to change. You and I might find such a change trivial, but I assure you the sheer volume of paperwork that needs to be revised, analyized, reported on and certified means that the process would easily take millions, and take years.
No. As much as Accuweather would like to stifle NOAA to turn a profit, they're too late on the scene.
Slashdot. It's Not For Common Sense
---off topic rude irony---
I'm planing to sell the air in bottles. Would you please ban the free distribution of air, it's nothig but unfair competition.
---end off topic rude irony---
---on topic slight sarcasm---
And what about aircrafts? How are they supposed to land? Or aren't they going to ban AWOS and ATIS as well? They are just, goddamnit, spitting the forcasts in the air, that's what I call unfair competition!
---end on topic slight sarcasm---
Some of us perfer to judge the character of a man on a lot more than the size of his wallet.
lastname.senate.gov is the URL for your senators' pages. Compose your own message and impress them with the seriousness of the issue. If you want to see what is at stake, go to nws.noaa.gov and enter your zip code. Maybe the outpouring of sentiment without any lobbyist backing will get the job done. I truly hope so.
How amusing, the person posting here (I suspect) comes from the Stormfront forums (a Nazi website).
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
and it's always for sale now that the Republicans are in power....
Latin for asshole.
I knew I heard that somewhere before!
So if this passes, Then all of the other weather sites can decide that they won't provide anything for free and charge for the weather. If I want access to see weather information as a hurricane bares down on family members in Florida I guess it would go something like this :
:
1. Find out a hurricane is heading to Florida.
2. Check weather.com or accuweather for the information. Hmm, seems I need to pay for it there.
3. File a Frredom of Information Act request to NOAA for the weather data.
4. Wait several weeks for the request to be processed.
5. In the meantime, watch CNN, Fox, MSNBC, etc. for continuing coverage on "Orange Rage! Hurricane's Aftermath" or some nonsense like that.
6. Take that vacation to Disney anyway.
7. Return from vacation in time to recive the NOAA data from 2 months ago.
8. Call my aunt, warn her that a hurricane probably blew through some time ago.
Now some would say the following is redundant, but it is merely repetition for reinforcement of the arguemnt
Don't taxes pay for at least PART of NOAA's budget? What's next, making me pay to find out what the "terror" alert level is? Or wait, the IRS allows people to file their tax returns for free, thereby competing with private business.
our favorite senator from pennsylvania who believes the first amendment should be done away with because "some kinds of free speech can offend people"
... whenever he opens his mouth, i'm offended. so, without it, he couldn't speak any more ... hmm
maybe he's right
vodka, straight up, thank you!
Thanks to NAFTA
They just tested the tornado sirens all around the state of Wisconsin at 1pm today. Why dont they make us pay to gain access to these services? Oh yeah, tax day was just a few days ago, Im all paid up for the year.
"Your comment is imflammatory, inappropriate and offensive." So are most of the things you stand for. Deal with it. We do.
Hats off to your IT department!
is the same cock-up who said legalizing homosexuality would lead to beastiality and kiddie porn legalization.
That's about as clueless as it gets. I could probably buy him off myself.
The question does beg itself, does the government have a role in dispensing this data to the public? I say yes but I can see where someone might think not.
"Fighting the underpants gnomes since 1998!" "Bruce Schneier knows the state of schroedinger's cat"
Take it somewhere else, Frenchie. The daily kos is a leftist bullshit site.
Considering that weather forcasting is pretty necessary for commerce travelling via ship and plane, it's pretty easy to put weather forecasting as easily within the powers granted by the Consititution.
Never mind that it's pretty damn hard to "promote the general welfare" of a population so that it has the required "general liberty" to "[pursue] happiness" if said population has no warning that a hurricane is about to wax it.
The front page post on /. links to an article, and yet gives a completely lopsided summary of the article.
/.
Also from the article:
"But Barry Myers, AccuWeather's executive vice president, said the bill would improve public safety by making the weather service devote its efforts to hurricanes, tsunamis and other dangers, rather than duplicating products already available from the private sector.
"The National Weather Service has not focused on what its core mission should be, which is protecting other people's lives and property," said Myers, whose company is based in State College, Pa. Instead, he said, "It spends hundreds of millions of dollars a year, every day, producing forecasts of 'warm and sunny.'"
Whether or not you agree with the opposing viewpoint, you should make some effort to report it. Michael Moore would be proud of this lopsided reporting that he claims is documentary work, and now apparently passes for news on
Vote for Pedro
C'mon Ricky! You didn't embarrass yourself enough screaming on the house floor? Now, you go and get yourself bought off by Accuweather? So, what, the citizens of this country can't access the info that our tax dollars pay for without paying some shill to put it up with pretty pictures and spyware??? Wake up Santorum! If you don't, I may have to move up to PA just so I can vote against you
But Officer, I DID read the f**king article!
Lets see, public museums compete with private museums.
Public schools compete with private schools.
Public parks compete with private parks.
etc etc etc
I wouldnt be surprised if Rick doesn't agree with these as well.
By the same logic, they may as well get rid of the US Postal Service. And yet, FedEx and pals seem to do fine despite the looming USPS.
Santorum is not clueless. He knows exactly what he's doing, i.e. favors for corporations in exchange for massive campaign contributions later. It's against the public's will, but that's never stopped him before. The money in politics problem is systemic, and the only real hope for change is full public financing of campaigns so elected officials respond to the public instead of corporate interests.
Simple. Just create a new bill banning Congress from giving news conferences, emailing, XMLing, or posting out government info in any way. You see, they are competing with political news organizations. Congress shouldn't compete, or duplicate all the info we can get from commercial radio, news, and online organizations. Plus it means we won't have to listen to their B.S.
Party at O'zorgnax's Pub! Buy me a Slurmtini aye?
Yes, other vectors of communication could be established. I even mentioned they allready get most of the data via a satellite uplink (along with other things that only a NOAAPort subscription will get you, like the raw data of their high detail forecast models).
The point is that many places aren't doing that. The procedure says, "Check the NOAA website for..." That's where the cost is represented. And it's not an insignificant cost and it's easy to show how expensive it is.
Combine that with the general argument that the government-gathered weather data is government property and thusly subject to standard information disclosure rules, and you're going to have a hard time getting this bill to go anywhere.
Slashdot. It's Not For Common Sense
I don't know if you... um... read, but Kos doesn't do these polls himself. He posts info on polls produced by various polling institutions. It was his original niche in the blogging biz. And as far as his 'candidates' went, these were people he was helping to raise money for from links on his website. To say that they lost (not all did, he helped raise money for Obama before that one turned into a laugher against carpetbagger Keyes) is akin to saying 'Democrats did poorly in the last cycle'. Thank you very much, Captain Obvious.
Here's the link to write to the senator: Santorum For Weatherman Headquarters
But Officer, I DID read the f**king article!
AccuMessenger
"The cost was only secondary. Remind me again, how will this bill better serve the public?"
/. posts. The opposing viewpoint is that the NOAA is wasting taxpayer money providing these services for free. Their arguemnet is the public is better served paying less taxes for service they don't necessarily need.
RTFA. Don't rely on biased
Vote for Pedro
One of the things that the FED should do .. it keep the population safe.
Natural Disasters all but 3 of which are Weather based have kill more people world wide then any other events.
So I would submit that providing the population of the US with Free Weather servies and Information is a MANDATE.
Oz
Despite of international agreements, the German Wether Service (Deutscher Wetterdienst, DWD) doesn't publish data for free. They sell them to commercial companies which provide forecasts for media. The DWD publishes weather forcasts ans warnings but not the data the forecasts are based on. Tzey worward station measurements to other weather serveces for free according to the WMO agreement but the other European weather services don't publish them either because most of them have similar policies than the DWD. But the NOAA publishes them and so European hobby meteorologists get their weather data from the NOAA. The really strange thing is that a lot of commercial services in Europe obtain the free GFS oputput and plot weather maps from that which are copyrighted to them. So we may have the crazy situation that the national weather services in Europe such as DWD or UKMO would like the bill and ther commercial services won't.
So? [S]He's right in this case, its exactly what should be done.
Senator Santorum's bill would probably cause a measurable loss of life, given that numerous spotters such as myself rely upon NWS's Internet-accessible data to assist us in our spotting activities.
I just returned from spotting in extreme southwest Iowa (and am actually headed back out, as we have flash flooding to assess). I'm a trained weather spotter (not a chaser, mind you) and am an amateur radio operator. I'm one of two active spotters covering the far southwest-most county. Unlike spotting in a major metro (where I was first active), rural spotting often requires you work without a lot of coordination from net control at the NWS offices. We have to move to cover the storm, and this requires we watch NWS radar data very closely - both to allow us to be positioned to get a good view of activity (e.g. the north of most typical Midwestern supercells is a great place for hail but not for visibility - get southeast of it!), and to cover our backsides when things suddenly change and we're too close to the action.
I've used Intellicast, Accuweather and other sites. Their free data is delayed, poor, lacking sufficient detail, and simply not usable. As I donate annual training, several thousand dollars of equipment, radios, mobile broadband Internet, and my time, I'm not about to also purchase a subscription to Accuweather just so I can assist NWS and save lives. (A note about the NWS XML example: I've actually prototyped an XML to APRS relay of NWS data that uses their XML feeds - it's not just webpages we require!)
The people that will suffer will be those of you who are not weather aware and count on the quiet volunteers out there watching your back. Santorum's bill might prohibit our access to open source information and provide a handful of investors with financial gain, but it'll be someone's grandma in a rural community who will pay for that gain.
Please email your Senators on this bill and let them know that open source information is our property. Your weather spotters and ultimately our communities depend on this access.
According to the NWS website, their FY2002 budget(the most recent I saw) was approx. $743 million. Allowing for a bit of inflation, I'll guess the NWS current budget to be $800 million or so. If we give Accuweather a monopoly on the information produced by NWS, is that a gift of $800 million per year to Accuweather? Or are Accuweather stating that they're willing to fund NWS for that amount in exchange for the monopoly?
Rick is our resident state wackadoodle. It's amazing that he's risen to be the third highest Republican in Congress. His most recent claim to fame was during the Terri disaster. Or more correctly after she died where he went on TV and said that he would be sponsoring laws to restrict the kinds of rulings that judges could make. Sigh. Only 18 months until the November elections and we can get rid of him.
Yesterday there were news reports that the Bush administration is suppressing the generation of a report which would estimate the success of the War On Terror. Last years report was such an embarassment to the administration because the first release of the report indicated that Bush was completely triumphant in that world terrorism was reduced significantly. He ran with this news in the run up to the 2004 election. Shortly after the election a footnote appeared which explained that the results of that report were flawed, and that world terrorism has actually increased since Bush was in office. This was very, very embarassing for the dumb-fark Bush.
SOLUTION: Don't come out with the report this year. We don't want people to know the truth that America is losing the war on terrorism. Less information is good for the administration, because it becomes easier for them to lie to the people.
This is the worst damn administration and worst president EVER...
Michael
Link to story
Michael A. Uman
Sr Software Engineer
softwaremagic.net
S 786 states that the NWS must publish the information it collects and generates to the general public immediately. It also states that the NWS can't publish information in so doing it competes with the private sector. So the NWS is actually prevented from making weather reports (and this would, in fact, include hurricane warnings).
if you want to sell a product then give the customer value for the money.
you still have to prosess the raw xml right?
provide them with solutions that preprosess the data for them.
but i guess the question they are asking themselfs is the same that microsoft is doing towards linux, how can i fight somethings thats free?
comment first, facts later. http://chem.tufts.edu/AnswersInScience/RelativityofWrong.htm
As a resident of the Caribbean, I know you're software would do even better if you added Caribbean cities/islands. Almost everyone that lives here is glued to the computer during the hurricane season (June-November). A consolidated tool like this one would be a nice alternative to checking several different websites every time we want an update.
I think, therefore I doh.
Maybe some sort of open source P2P weather service? I'd pop to put in some sort of hardware reporting node and contribute, weather info is just too vital to ignore. It probably exists (distributed community weather dealie), anyone know of one?
Even if that's true (which I doubt, you AC troll), how does that devalue his contribution to the discussion?
I'm not really sure how something paid for by my taxes is "free".
I get frustrated when I hear about how everyone has the right to a "free" education. That gaping hole in my wallet says, "That's not free!"
And fuck Accuweather!
You lost. 60 years ago. FOAD, you degenerate Nazi.
Your move to stifle NWS data, which Americans have already paid for is ridiculous. Your assertion that preventing NOAA and the NWS from publishing data online will allow them to focus more on natural catastrophies is fallacious at best. The data collected by the NWS and posted to its website is data that will be collected by NOAA and the NWS regardless of whether or not it is offered to the public. The process of understanding, predicting, and tracking natural disasters requires a knowledge of the entire system, including the day-to-day changes in weather patterns in addition to ocean currents and a number of other subtleties, which NOAA and the NWS are charged with measuring. If your goal, as it seems to be presented, is ultimately to keep NOAA and the NWS from collecting the meteorological data which is the backbone of our (sometimes admittedly limited) understanding of a number of things, from hurricanes to global warming, then you might as well dissolve the entire agency, because you have taken away its most potent tool, not given it the freedom to pursue those projects more intensely. However, if your goal is merely to keep data collected using public money away from the public so that your friends can reap in the cash from subscriptions to their services, then that is despicable. If the data is collected by a government institution using public monies, then the data deserves to be public, along with medical research and any other publicly-funded research data. There is a minimum of money and effort required in taking computer-acquired data and presenting it using a webserver over the internet. And the manpower required for the NWS to perform forecasting is, as I have already mentioned, going to be used anyway. So lets drop the charade and talk about the real issue. I've already paid for my forecasts once. I don't want to do it again.
Doubt I'll hear anything, but oh well... worth a shot...
I cant believe american senators are so stupid and corrupt!
sex is better than war!
The bill number is S786. It has been refered to the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation. You can search by the bill number at http://senate.gov/
I had a sig once, but someone stole it.
IMO, the government should not be any business that can be handled better, more efficiently, and more economically by the private sector. But weather data collection is not a business. The NWS is an essential function of national security, commerce, transportation, science, etc., and transcends many government functions. So, it's conducted as part of essential services and paid for by tax revenue.
Any information gathered by the Federal government in this way, that is not classified, should be available to all citizens, free of charge (or only a charge for delivery, media, etc.).
If you can't create a business model from something I can get elsewhere free, then you don't have a business. Go do something else.
Research shows that 67% of those who use the term "research shows", are just making shit up.
the DC area to experience a shower of bullshit tapering to blowing turds in the early evening. Accumulations of twelve to fourteen inches are anticipated while Congress is in session...
to be exact.
-pyrrho
Why am I not surprised?
(%i1) factor(777353);
(%o1) 777353
Someone told me that santorum was the word for the substance that drains from an anus when someone ejaculates into it. This is quite an irony considering that this man, when he isn't pimping for the complete corporativization of America, is getting worked up about the supposed "rights" of microscopic foetuses who still have gill slits and tails or wondering aloud what exactly gay men do together in the privacy of their own homes.
The flag just makes more sense than the constitution. - Judas Gutenberg
it's already happening
'Private Security Contractor' is just a politically correct term for 'Mercenary'. There are already a host of beltway bandit, er um... I mean 'freedom loving free enterpise institutions' already doing this.
Too bad mercenaries have no vested interest in peace
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
While our letter writing to editors and to the esteemed Sen. Santorum will have some effect, a real difference could probably be made by donating even say $10 to his opponent, Bob Casey. I'm not affiliated with that campaign's staff or the candidate but I do know that if Santorum is defeated and if this bill is a lightning rod, it will serve notice on other members of our Congress. It's time that we put our money where our interests are, same as all the other special interests. In case you do want to visit his site (poor guy is gonna get /.'ed!LOL!) then head to http://www.bobcaseyforpa.com/ (not sure if it's his "official" site but do some checking.)
I assume that Acuweather is getting their data from US taxpayer funded weather satellites...so why should they be able to charge the taxpayers for this information?
The same thing happened a few years ago with USGS satellite data (height maps). You used to be able to download the data for free. Now you have to pay for it.
http://query.nictusa.com/cgi-bin/ind_detail/MYERS| JOEL+N+DR|STATE+COLLEGE|PA|16801|ACCU+WEATHER/
Presented by the Federal Election Commission
Contributions Arranged By Type And Recipient
MYERS, JOEL N DR
STATE COLLEGE, PA 16801
ACCU WEATHER
Contributions to Political Committees
SANTORUM, RICHARD J
VIA SANTORUM 2000
05/16/2000 1000.00 20020202948
06/07/2000 300.00 20020202948
SANTORUM, RICHARD J
VIA SANTORUM 2006
10/09/2003 250.00 24020050667
12/31/2003 250.00 24020050668
12/31/2003 1750.00 24020050667
Total Contributions: 3550.00
just wanted to make sure everyone has seen what rick santorum's lovely actions in congress have earned his last name describing: http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=san torum&r=f
Err, I'm going to get modded down for saying this but... Doesn't the government providing such a service to the people using tax money make it communistic? In capitalism the government doesn't provide services like this (and doesn't make people pay for this) and lets private companies/people take care of this. Isn't that the idea of capitalism?
And what did you say to your boss?
"I was just reading Slashdot and I had to follow a link to something funny that myheroBobHope told me about."
Get back to work, you fucking slacker.
Got news for you folks, this is hardly an isolated event. I contract for a government agency. We deal with financial information at a point in our application. It is not possible to get a feed from Treasury of interest rate information. We can go to a web site and screen scrape it, but they won't give us a feed. We've been trying for over a year and constantly getting the runaround. It's been elevated to just below the undersecretary level and still no progress. No one at the undersecretary level cares and won't push Treasury to help their own agency. They do however tell us of a private company that will provide this government agency with a feed for an annual fee. Treasury provides the feed to this private company for free.
For those of you who can't do the math:
1 - Treasury provides a private company with a daily update electronically
2 - Treasury will not provide the same update to another government agency
3 - The taxpayers will have to pay for this either through a) this agency paying the private company or b) writing software to screen scrape the website (which changes layout at least quarterly ensuring code rewrites several times per year)
4 - profit!
Posted anonymously because I like having a job.
These are all truly what I would consider value-added services. It's odd that Accuweather feels that the average consumer can drop enough cash to install their own radar system to achieve the same kinds of results. The NOAA data is just text for crying out loud. But then again, when you have a government with its nose so TIGHTLY wedged between the ass cheeks of corporate america, logic doesn't apply - I guess the lack of oxygen is taking its toll. In 2008, expect to hear a loud sucking noise, and a shortage of the color brown.
OOOIY.... for the love of god... i NEED my free internet weather. XD Lets all write letters to that Senitor guy and get them to stop this...
If I pay enough can I order my choice of weather? How much for sunny and warm?
allegr0ph0t0
Hey, you want to send this idiot Senator a message?
Contribute $1 - 5 dollars to any organized campaign or fund of your choice to be used to unseat him in the next election. If you are a Republican, send your contribution to funds for moderate Republican opposition. If you are a Democrat send your contribution to a fund directed at unseating him. Don't be put off by the fact that the election may not happen soon. If the fund is invested, it will accumulate interest until the time is right for payback.
When this lobbyist's whore recognizes that the cost of taking the bribe might be larger than the gratification gained by bending over to lobbyists, he will stop. Results guaranteed.
I live down here on the Mississippi Gulf coast, where knowing the forcast checking on the weather constantly can be the difference between life and death. The last thing I need is some dumb fuck, trying to get a bribe from cronies who want to charge me for information I've already paid for. If the people of Pennsylvania are too stupid to recognize this, then they can rest assured that I and other like-minded persons pledge not to buy a stinking thing made in their state.
Rick Santorum
511 DIRKSEN SENATE OFFICE BUILDING WASHINGTON DC 20510
(202) 224-6324
(202) 224-0610
partiucularly disturbing of his bill is Sec.2:
(g) CONFORMING AMENDMENTS- The Act of October 1, 1890 (26 Stat. 653) is amended as follows:
(1) Section 3 (15 U.S.C. 313) is repealed.
which reads:
SEC. 3. That the Chief of the Weather Bureau, under the direction of the Secretary of Agriculture, on and after July first, eighteen hundred and ninety-one, shall have charge of the forecasting of weather, the issue of storm warnings, the display of weather and flood signals for the benefit of agriculture, commerce, and navigation, the gauging and reporting of rivers, the maintenance and operation of sea-coast telegraph lines and the collection and transmission of marine intelligence for the benefit of commerce and navigation, the reporting of temperature and rain-fall conditions for the cotton interests, the display of frost and cold-wave signals, the distribution of meteorological information in the interests of agriculture and commerce, and the taking of such meteorological observations as may be necessary to establish and record the climatic conditions of the United States, or as are essential for the proper execution of the foregoing duties.
Produce plans for a very inexpensive, homebrew USB weather station that can sense humidity, temperature and barometric pressure. Design a very simple IRC program that pulls the current weather data from the connected pc's station when sent a request. Host the program, plans and step by step instructions on how to build/operate the station on a free website. Post link to website on /.
F U weather data hogs.
It takes just a moment and an action to destroy. It takes some time and thought to create.
forbid use of national weather service data by all private forecasting companies.
hey, they're the private sector, they can do better all on their own without pesky government interference, right?
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
Doesn't the postal service compete then against commercial parcel services? how is this any different????? no one is banning the postal service from delivering parcels are they??!?!
A friend of mine was getting a PHD in urban development while working in a city planning office for a rather large city near Los Angeles. Apparently, one branch of city government had created some impressively detailed maps of the city, based upon race, economic level, education, utility usage, average commute length... you name it. This would have been useful to nearly every area of city government, and possibly to the people living within the city. However, that branch of city government was charging all other branches of city government 500,000 dollars per year for access to that database. Most couldn't afford the high cost, including, ironically, the division of urban development my friend worked at, despite that they would have undoubtedly allowed the division to do it's work better and more cheaply. And so the city government paid a lot of money to create the wonderful maps that went largely unused because the city government wanted to charge itself too much to use them.
Sometimes government processes are stranger than fiction.
The ______ Agenda
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/D?c109:1:./tem p/~c109lAuHez::
Here's the bill and TFA is right. Also, it's very short, which tells me the senator from PA has no idea why this is a bad idea. DO fill out a web form for your senator. Make this bill die on thefloor of the senate.
Gorkman
Maybe we should (I wish I could, but I don't know XUL) change ForecastFox to not use weather.com. Link it up directly to the NOAA data.
I am not sure what this would do - except piss off weather.com even more - but this is the only knee-jerk reaction I can come up with.
Too bad that less than half votes in greater numbers than the more than half...
They are often hired to train armies in africa and latin america. The mercenaries are hired to do a job, if they can get paid doing military training that doesnt put their neck on the line they will do that happily. There is plenty of highly paid security work without war.
Politicians(on the winning side) are the ones who benefit from war.
AccuWeather's argument reminds me of the example used in Frederick Bastiat's "Economic Sophisms" where the candlemakers argued for legislation to block sunlight because it deprived them of their just livelihood. Pathetic, isn't it?
"The mind works quicker than you think!"
I don't know about the rest of this country, but in Florida, from June through November, this site becomes my browser homepage. Along with the satellite page, it contains the most consistently useful information regarding tropical activity.
I do not think it is a reasonable idea to pay for access to this required information. This information is a type of 'raw feed'. People can go to the commercial sites for the hyped-up, chicken little, 'we'er all gonna die!' media show.
This smells like another insane party politic trick. Get NOAA to stop publishing, then do away with the NOAA & the NWS. Privatize weather forecasting. All lies, no liability. Gotta love what corporations are doing to politics and our government.
It's misleading that the article suggests NOAA just scrapped a policy that stated what the National Weather Service's role would be in relation to private industry. A law had been in effect defining these roles, but the law had expired. In absence of such regulation, NOAA found an applicable OMB requiring them to disseminate the data in an open format. NOAA has made an effort to comply with the regulation and follow the law.
It is absolutely false that the NWS spends lots of time producing forecasts of warm and sunny. This is nothing short of a lie. Forecasts are issued twice daily in most situations. It will still be necessary for the NWS to produce a forecast in all cases because even if it's warm and sunny today and tomorrow, it's very useful for example to monitor and be aware of a storm system that will have an impact a few days out. Forecasts are produced more often or are updated when a change in the weather is expected, such as showers and thunderstorms. This is referred to as nowcasting and is a necessary function of the NWS. While I can't cite this as a fact, I would expect a much greater amount of time is spent nowcasting or forecasting significant weather than is spent producing these forecasts of warm and sunny.
The National Hurricane Center disseminates information about tropical cyclones and is not disseminating these forecasts of warm and sunny that the private industry suggests NOAA spends too much time doing. The NHC has an extremely important function and is working to improve its products for the purpose of providing better alerts to the general public about approaching threats. To suggest the NHC is hampered by such duties as producing warm and sunny forecasts is a lie.
Furthermore, it is extremely important that accurate weather data be available to emergency managers and to weather spotters. These are important beneficiaries of data such as radar data and nowcasts produced by the NWS and the Storm Prediction Center. While emergency managers will likely pay the fee and get access to data provided by private industry, it is less likely that spotters, which are the general public, will be willing to pay. Effectively, this could cripple an important means of detecting severe weather. I guarantee that without accurate radar data, I'm not going to try to spot a tornado and relay the information in; it's just too dangerous.
I am a meteorologist and I have also heard the opinions of many other meteorologists that I attend school with. The consensus about companies such as the Weather Channel is that they do not provide accurate timely data. Their on-air personalities generally have little knowledge of meteorology. They operate their own forecast model which my fellow meteorologists do not believe produces quality and reasonably accurate solutions. And I've heard that many of the actual meteorologists at the Weather Channel lost their jobs. Anyone who's watched their broadcasts probably has noticed their tendencies to focus on the East and West Coasts even when the middle of the country is receiving severe weather. They hardly do a reliable job of disseminating information about potentially dangerous weather to the public. Is this really who we want in charge of forecasting and providing information to the public?
I find this bill to be based around lies and to have the ability to be extremely harmful to the ability to detect severe weather. The Senate should not approve this bill.
Senator Rick Santorum introduced thre National Weather Services Duties Act of 2005 with the purpose of restoring the NWS non-competition policy.
Please oppose this bill.
The NWS and NOAA provide a valuable service to everyday citizens. Their no cost to access weather forcasts - with unparralled granularity - and other weather data are wonderful resources. I use them on a weekly basis. I also subscribe to a commercial weather service, Weather Underground, for the value added services it provides. Both have their place in the world. It would be a loss to Americans if the services now provided by the NOAA web presence were legislated out of existance.
There's more to it than this.
"...the bill's vague wording which makes it unclear what exactly is being banned" Not if you read between the lines...apparently competing with AccuWeather!
Well maybe not for all congressmen, but most are paranoid about paper mail. Remember the anthrax scares of a few years ago? Staffers are still afraid. When mail arrives at their office they don't open it, they send it to an irradiation plant, then open it. The process intentionally takes weeks. (Some poisons are better destroyed by time than irradiation)
A post card is better because there is no easy way to hide poison on it (without killing everyone in the post office anyway). Still best is an email or fax, which cannot be tampered with by the sender.
Bill Frist's web site has a side bar "PLEASE NOTE: security restrictions now cause considerable delay in processing postal mail sent to the offices of Senator Frist. Accordingly, please consider e-mail, fax"
I think that says it all really.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
move!
seriously, the free enterprise answer is, if a service isn't being provided because you aren't economically viable, move to a place that is economically viable.
yeah, it's sad, kinda like market failure, but then isn't the market the end-all be-all of human existence to the gop? like riding a train off a cliff cause the rails lead that way.
not anti-capitalism, just that capitalism tends to be anti-human-life in some cases, ala environment and labor conditions.
The first rule of USENET is you do not talk about USENET.
You wrote:
If your company cannot exist without handouts from the government, then your company does not deserve to exist. This bill is totally justified, the government should not be in the business of competing with corporations.
I guess so. I do believe, however, that if you apply that reasoning to the companies pushing for the bill to be passed, then they should not be getting any access to government resources (which they currently receive). After all, in a free market no one corporation should get special help from the government!
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
Doesn't look to me like the AOPA had much power at Meigs field.
My local congressman, Mark Kennedy claimed on some radio call interview a few years back that he was the only one in congress who cared about it. (His son is a private pilot) Don't know if it is true, but an interesting claim. At least he instantly understood the issue when a caller got on the air about it.
National Weather Services Duties Act of 2005
The sig box doesn't allow for enough characters.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
If/When this goes in to effect I will begin and internet stream of KGG68 (SE/TX) weather. I suggest others do the same!
To find out more about the bill, and to track it via RSS or email updates, see:
9 -786
http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=s10
Ew! I tell you, those gay hippies shouldn't pick on conservatives so much.
Soldier: I'm sorry thats classified
>
>No. More than half.
More than half... of whom?
Last time I checked, the only halves that mattered were "half of 435" and "half of 100".
And the answer to the original question is "of course they do". Show some respect to the nobility -- you can start by resolving not to insult the intelligence of your betters, fellow serf.
This is simply a public safety issue. Period. Should we rely on a private entity to provide hurricane or tornado warnings? Does this apply to NOAA weather radio?
The reason weather data is made available to the public is because it enables the public to go about their business in a safer manner that is planned around the obstacles that weather tosses in the way.
From commercial passenger and freight aircraft, ships, and other forms of commercial transit, to the commuter just trying to get to work, free weather data from NOAA is an essential part of the economy.
Shall we require pilots to subscribe to AccuWeather in order to know the weather forecast for their flight path? I think not.
Normally, I'm not a fan of the government doing what private business can do, but NOAA has become essential to public infrastructure. It's not a perfect analogy, but you wouldn't let a for-profit private company run the (armed) police department, while it may be perfectly appropriate for private companies to provide *additional* security services on top of what the public provides through the police.
Start writing your representatives and Senators now.
"Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives" should be a convenience store, not a government agency.
Read the original message again: it's implied that it is over half the population of the U.S..
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
So reduce it to a smaller, less prestigious yacht race. The point here is that a commercial weather service didn't cut the mustard, and people couldn't get accurate information due to the Australia Federal govt privatising the Bureau of Meterology! Incidently, I was not aware that they did this...
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
The only thing that is clueless about this issue is in this story's comment. Rick Santorum is profoundly corrupted, and not clueless at all when it comes to supporting his contributors, no matter at whose expense. One short summary here.
Why not do both: write to your senator AND the papers?
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
Once the NPOESS constellation of weather and climate satellites are launched (starting in 2008), anyone with a field terminal and a one-meter dish can listen in to weather data. Furthermore, anyone can take the data and format it in JPG or GIF and post it to a website, RSS feed, or what-have-you.
Don't have the cash to buy a field terminal? That's okay, you should be able to build your own from a relatively powerful Linux box, a COTS receiver, and a one-or-two-meter dish. You can FOIA the algorithms and write an open source client.
It needs to be said.
Public tax money pays for this weather data to be collected. The public has the RIGHT to access this information, because they've already PAID FOR IT.
If a private company can not survive doing "value-add" with this free information, then that company does not deserve to exist. Plain and simple. You can't ban that information from being free and then charge people for it!
There are only two ways to procede with this problem. Either the government stops spending tax money recording the weather information, leaving the corporations to set up and maintain their own weather stations, or the entire board of directors of AccuWeather is drawn and quartered. Either one is fine with me.
As an ex-employee of AccuWeather, I'm really not surprised to see this. Joel Myers is a corrupt tyrant. Slimeball Pennsylvania politicians were always coming into the building to meet with him. There's a picture hanging in the hallway of Myers shaking hands with Bill Clinton. I'm not surprised he has Santorum in his pocket now.
During my years at AccuWeather, there seemed to be only two things Joel Myers tried to accomplish - to stop NOAA, and to prevent the employees from creating a union. Joel Myers treats his employees like slave labor. He entices young meteorology students from Penn State into signing contracts with them - then works them rediciously long hours without compensation. If you want to quit, they will sick their horde of corporate lawyers on you quicker than you can bat an eyelash. Their lawyers write up big complicated contracts with their customers, which happen to have automatic renewal clauses if AccuWeather is not notified by certified mail within 60 days of the end of the contract. This is the way they run their business. They don't give a shit about their employees, customers, or the general welfare of American citizens who support NOAA with their tax money.
Anyone in Happy Valley reading this, avoid working at this place like the plague!
By the way, for those of you who don't know Rick Santorum, you may remember him from a few years ago when he made national headlines by comparing homesexuality to incest and beastiality.
Several years ago, before Rick Santorum was a big shot politician, I was living in Pittsburgh and he was running for some local office, going door to door trying to get support. I was in middle school at the time, in the yard playing with my dog. She saw Santorum coming and didn't like him at all.. she ran to him, started barking and growling. I guess she was a good judge of character.
Oh man, now I'm sorry I posted earlier, or I'da used one of today's mod points on your post!
;)
[eyeing nym] You might be the man for the job, too
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
Santorum represents Pennsylvania, and AccuWeather is headquartered in Pennsylvania. If AccuWeather makes more money, Pennsylvania voters have more money in their pockets, and they will naturally be inclined to re-elect the guy who made it happen.
Politicians want votes. Voters want pork.
And that's your answer.
Easy, automatic testing for Perl.
One could argue that they're fighting for Iraq.
...is there no end to it? If it isn't news of government idiocy, it's partisan leftist crap here. News flash for the geniuses who can't stop themselves from slamming President Bush and the Republican Party every five nanoseconds: ALL politicians are open to this sort of thing.
Many many years ago, a leftist friend of mine said that liberalism respected rights. So I read him chapter and verse from my own lifetime experiences about how liberalism and the nanny state's substitution of constitutional rights (elimination of gun ownership, taxation become confiscation, speech abridged in the name of political correctness, income redistribution via welfare) with invented rights and the lazy thinking general public's acceptance of this would simply play into his hated opposition's fringe element.
Such has come to pass. We've had decades of subversion of our rights and false basic education on our real rights from the left under the guise of getting something for nothing and now we're getting it from the right and while the right is more hamfisted about it than the left, the people are pretty much way past caring.
They're fat, dumb, relatively happy, and raised on many years of "government is your friend". The noise on the surface is just noise. In the end, their cynicism itself cynically false and the people no longer truly fear the power of the government to remain its vigilant masters rather than the other way around.
If one side can play the game, so can the other. Now we're firmly in an Aliens vs. Predator world: whoever wins, we lose.
Vote NONE of the above.
If my grammar and spelling are off, I am [distracted/tired/careless] (take your pick)
thats like saying that the government shouldn't provide roads to taxpayers because it puts private road makers at an unfair disadvantage.
or that the government shouldn't provide a police/military to taxpayers because it puts private bodyguards/mercenaries at an unfair disadvantage.
what a load of BS... where does it stop? very few slashdot articles actually have enough stupid people in them to piss me off, this one has a senator...
The Answer
http://www.webslingerz.com/jhoffman/congress-email .html
That's a great site for looking up your Senators and Representatives. I wrote Virginia's senators and Pennsylvania's senators over this issue. I probably got the link from Slashdot originally so I'm returning the favor if this is where I originally found it.
I think this is a case of a Senator putting a business agenda ahead of the welfare of taxpayers. Our tax money pays for the National Weather Service and we have every right to see the weather data via our taxpayer funded organization.
Don't need to restrict the tax code, as many apparently find it too complex to understand already. Therefore, a large percentage already go to some private organization (HR Block, CPA, tax lawyers, etc.) to do their taxes already. Now we have a have a huge private infrastructure layer that will do anything to prevent tax simplification, including buying off congress.
I bet most don't even read their own mail
Mail? Ha...I bet most don't even read the laws they're proposing, much less voting for.
i don't see nearly as many trolls as i used to...good to have ya back.....
besides,maybe your boss just wanted to make sure you knew to clean up afterwards...
I mod everyone down who says "I'll get modded down for this." I hate to disappoint.
The first step in corporate ownership of the US Senate is this:
http://www.senate.gov/favicon.ico
I thought it was just a simple configuration error, but I've sent email to their webmaster and it hasn't been fixed. Perhaps if other people were to politely let them know that, while Sun Microsystems may or may not be a fine company, their logo appearing on the web site of the US Senate is probably not appropriate.
http://www.welton.it/davidw/
i'd be pissed off, you alreayd pay for that data with your tax's, you should be allowed to access it, you paid for it after all. too bad for private companies, they just have to learn to compete
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
Um, you just noticed that Santorum is clueless? Hello?
Senator Santorum: I'm frequently more articulate and polite than what will follow, but at the moment I'm livid with disbelief and don't believe you've even earned politeness. After learning of your introduction of the proposed bill S.786, there are only two explanations of your character that seem capable of explaining such a gaping breach of common sense: either (1) you're a gullible idiot, or (2) you're a self-serving schemer. Given what I've already observed of Republican tendencies toward Machiavellianism, I consider the latter a more likely explanation. I don't believe that I need to explain to you exactly why this a poorly written bill that threatens freedoms, because you've unquestionably already had many people telling you exactly why that is so. The fact that you've chosen to ignore the clear logic they've presented to you is even more damning of your character. Do yourself and the nation a huge favor and retract or kill this bill, before you find yourself exposed to your constituents as a Champion of Greed or gullible or stupid... or all of the above. Is the padding of a few corporations' wallets really worth the risk of political suicide? No amount of promised campaign contributions will help your political career once word of this becomes widespread... and it is beginning.
So I should download all the data I can get and then put it out on P2P ?
Or will the RIAA come gunning for me ?
Speaking as someone who monitored the NOAA website for months after Charley, Frances, and Jeannie... I really can't imagine what the hell they are thinking. Tax dollars paid for NOAA, but for us hurricane survivors, the effects of this could be all too real...
"Honey, bring me the credit card. I have to pay AccuWeather and make a campaign contribution to see where the damn hurricane is."
We had the TV until 30 minutes before Charley hit our area. I was one of the lucky ones that had cellular service restored within 2 days. Power and normal phone service were out for a week. We were able to use the Verizon wireless access to check weather, news, and the occasional Slashdot article. Of course, we needed to charge the laptops with a power inverter in the car. I can't imagine being in that situation again, and also having to pay for AccuWeather. NOAA is still one of the pages that loads when I start Firefox...
I have no disagreement with the rest of your comment.
Copyrights, Patents, Trademarks: temporary loans from the Public Domain, not real property ("intellectual" or otherwise)
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/D?c109:1:./tem p/~c109N2CQBe::/
No, i understand how it works, but i dont have to like it.
Im sure our founding fathers would be just as dissapointed and frustrated.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
NOAA data is not a matter of National Security. If the spy data weren't we'd have a right to that without the delay as well.
"The best laid plans of mice and men gang oft agley..." - ROBERT BURNS
Between the two cities in PA, there's a place we call Pennsyltucky, populated largely by ignorant dipshits. It is this population of reactionary hicks, that fear the negroes in the two major cities, that vote only to prevent abortion or gay marriage, that Santorum represents.
If your representatives are doing a poor job, let them know. ;-)
Are you writing a Star Wars prequel or something?
"No fair, you changed the outcome by measuring it!" - Professor Hubert J. Farnsworth
We file freedom of information act papers for the weather forecasts? If we all do it, we should be able to bury the government in even more paperwork.
I know alot about nothing Has a few relevant posts regarding the ability of Re-pubs to effectly voice any valid concerns, dissent, critical thinking skills, or anything else requiring enough backbone to stand up to the trolling neocons. Religious Reich Do the Repubs have the balls to think for themselves? I ain't holding out any hope. 'Sig, I don't need no stinking sig!'
Do you know what really pisses me off?
they use the SAME weather data (NEXRAD NWS radars) that we do.
-ND
You pay for the president, the CIA, FBI as well as hundreds of other federal organizations. They all have data that may be useful to you as well. Your argument applies to them too, do you mean it to?
For those of you who live in the US, you can DO SOMETHING about this. Contact your Senators! I just did, and it took about 3 minutes total. They all have online comment submission pages, which are available from http://www.senate.gov/.
Don't just bitch about it on Slashdot. Bitch about it where it really matters. Bitch about it to the people who can actually stop this from passing.
What a 100% load of crap. AccuWeather and Santorum are a bunch of morons. "It spends hundreds of millions of dollars a year, every day, producing forecasts of 'warm and sunny.'" Barry Myers, AccuWeather's executive vice president What Barry means to say is that he wants us to be paying HIM hundreds of millions of dollars a year to "produce" warm and sunny forecasts. I use the term produce so incredibly loosely because all they do is repackage the national weather services forecast. They take their data and make slightly different pretty pictures and charge people an arm and a leg to view the exact same thing they could see for free. "It is not an easy prospect for a business to attract advertisers, subscribers or investors when the government is providing similar products and services for free." Good call Santorum, you come with that all by yourself or did your boyfriend help you? Of course it is not easy, gee do I want to get something for free or pay for it, that is a tough one. Maybe if they were able to actually offer something worthwhile above and beyond what the NWS is offering then you have justification for charging people money. And guess what, we (as well as AccuSucks customers) are all having to pay for this imbecile putting together this bill and trying to get it passed. PS AccuWeather's forecast for my area today....warm and sunny.
Only in America!
And yet there are still a great many citizens who can't understand why terrorists are willing to fly planes and themsleves into your buildings.
1. Outlaw free public weather data
2. Profit!
You don't seem to be aware of exactly what is being discussed here. Check out www.weather.gov. Note that it is a far better weather site than most, particularly since they don't have to clutter up the page with ads.
...it is raining outside?
I don't see this bill getting passed, simply because of all the money that's been spent to create the public side of NOAA/NWS.
I use the NWS Doppler radar almost every day during the storm season. It's accurate and timely, unlike the other services out there (AccuWeather, TWC, Unisys). I used to use Unisys' maps (http://weather.unisys.com/) but they would be delayed by up to an hour at times!
When I finally found the public radar access provided by NOAA, I gave Unisys the finger.
I just can't see several thousand (millions maybe?) dollars worth of websites being shut down, the people that operate them getting the boot, and the country being happy.
I'm not tense. I'm just terribly, terribly, alert.
He's astroturfing for the American Angle Brackets Manufacturers Association.
friday 3pm est - in a torrential thunder storm. I have pieces of trees fallling on my house. Its nasty out there. Weather.gov tells me I'm in a tornado warning zone. Yeah, looks like it.
Accuweather tells me its partly sunny and nice. doomed.
On April 14, 2005, our Junior Senator, Rick Santorum, introduced a bill (S.786) in the United States Senate that, if enacted, would specifically protect private, for-profit weather forecasting companies like State College's Accuweather, from "competition." Who is competing with these companies, you might ask? The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). How? By putting the weather information that they publish, that every one of us pays for with our tax dollars, on the Internet, FOR FREE!
Now, I can understand how Weather.com and Accuweather.com, which charge for their services (which they also sell to television stations, radio stations, newspapers, and others) would be upset if another company gave away the same services for free. I could even understand asking a Senator to help out. But let's take a close look at what's going on here.
You see, Accuweather and its commercial brethren don't have extensive networks of sensors located worldwide. They don't have satellites orbiting and hurricane hunter crews flying into storms. They don't have supercomputers. What they do have is access to all of this information provided to them by NOAA -- for free. That's the information that your tax dollars paid for, and they make a profit reselling it to others. Now they don't want you to be able to get that information from NOAA on its website, and Senator Santorum, champion of free enterprise, is right there with a law to help out.
My suggestion: if NOAA can't make the information that we paid for available to us on the Internet, then the law should also prevent private companies from accessing, using, or reselling NOAA information in their businesses. Let Accuweather pay to design, launch and operate a fleet of weather satellites! Let Weather.com lease locations around the globe and tie them together into a monitoring network. Let other private companies fly into hurricanes.
Mr. Santorum: doesn't our country have more important issues facing it than protecting a purely private interest in a way that harms the public? Do the right thing -- withdraw your bill.
Try it yourself.
I don't know weather to laugh or cry.