Slashback: IceWeasel, Online Gambling, GPU Folding, Evolution

Slashback tonight brings some clarifications and updates to previous Slashdot stories, including: The facts about Debian Iceweasel; A closer look at Folding@home's GPU client; David Brin's lament; Online gambling ban may violate international law; Human species may do whatnow?; and Another RIAA lawsuit dropped. Read on for details.

The facts about Debian Iceweasel. john-da-luthrun writes, "Debian Firefox/XULrunner maintainer Mike Hommey reports on the Firefox/Iceweasel wrangle, correcting various assertions that have been made in the assorted trollfests/flamewars currently raging over the proposed Firefox rename. Hommey confirms that Firefox in Etch will be renamed 'Iceweasel,' but this will only be a renamed version of the vanilla Firefox, not the GNU Iceweasel fork — though the Debian and GNU Iceweasel teams may work together in future."

A closer look at Folding@home's GPU client. TheRaindog writes, "Slashdot recently covered some impressive client statistics for Stanford's Folding@home project, but they don't tell the whole story. The Tech Report has taken a closer look at the GPU client, running it on a Radeon X1900 XTX against the CPU client on a dual-core Opteron. The results are enlightening, especially considering how Stanford has chosen to award points GPU client work units. Power consumption is more interesting, with the GPU client apparently far more power-efficient than folding with a CPU."

David Brin need not lament — KidBasic. sproketboy writes, "I was thinking about the recent slashdot story David Brin Laments Absence of Programming For Kids, and after looking around I found KidBasic. KidBasic is quite good and teaches all the basics of programming. My 4 year old nephew and I have been able to get a few simple games programmed with it."

Online gambling ban may violate international law. An anonymous reader writes, "As Slashdot noted earlier, Congress has passed an effective ban on online gambling in the U.S. This may not be the end of the story, however. The law may be struck down by the World Trade Organization on the grounds that it violates the United States' international obligation not to discriminate in favor of domestic casinos. If the WTO strikes down this U.S. gambling ban, it would not be the first time. In November of 2004, the WTO struck down a U.S. anti-gambling law as illegally discriminating against the nation of Antigua."

Human species may do whatnow?. jamie writes, "'I might have believed this nonsense could come from some late 19th century eugenicist, but now? Is there any evidence...?' That's biologist PZ Myers's comment on the BBC story that claims the human species may split in two. It was posted on Slashdot as humor, but Myers's comments are a much-needed sober appraisal of this kind of pseudoscientific claim."

Another RIAA lawsuit dropped. skelator2821 writes, "Another RIAA lawsuit has been dropped against a defendant who had been accused of illegally sharing songs online, according to Ars Technica. Looks like the Mob tactics are not paying off for our good friends at the RIAA anymore."

Comments

The rules of evolution...

[GWBasic]

The rules of evolution (from Darwin) are such that all species eventually split into seperate species. It's arrogant to suppose that humans are immune! Hopefully, we can stick together as one species long enough to populate distant solar systems, and thus let geographic boundaries be the cause of our branches.

Re:The rules of evolution...

[SpectreHiro]

Thanks for the interesting article. I've read reports of species that are isolated purely by choice - that is, fully capable of producing viable offspring, but which choose not to based on subtle, aesthetic differences. There are species of grasshopper that inhabit the same area, but which only mate with grasshoppers that sing the right "song". I believe there are also some species of salamander that are genetically compatible, but which will only breed with mates of the right color. This is the first I'd heard of a hybrid species isolating itself, though. Really interesting stuff.

The parallels with humans are amusing, but TBH I think we're in a slightly different boat. First off, in my experience (take that for what it's worth), "beauty" in humans is more strongly related to nurturing rather than nature. I seem to run into absolutely beautiful women in every walk of life, and which are often enough the offspring of unattractive parents. With the advent of cosmetic surgery, genes become even less of a factor.

More importantly, I don't think the concept of beauty in humans is quite as uniform as the media might have us believe. I'm constantly shocked by the rift between what any two men find attractive... and for women, I think matters of physical attraction are even more variable. If we factor in women's sexual preferences, which add more weight to behavior and socio-economic factors, the speciation of "beautiful people" starts to sound really unlikely. Instead, I think we'll tend to see the average human become more "beautiful" as times goes on. Maybe that's just me.

Last, and I may be off base in this, but I think humans tend toward exogamy by nature. Most people I've talked to find "exotic" to be a beauty all its own, and that strikes me as a powerful mechanism working in the favor of species solidarity. Unlike those butterflies, most people seem to prefer a mate that's from a visibly dissimilar tribe, or at least think the idea's exciting.

Anyway, that's enough of my hobbyist-biology blabbering. Thanks again for the interesting article. Now when I seduce bonobos, I can claim that it's a scientific experiment.

Re:International law?

[JanneM]

Since when does US care about international law?

Since you want to sell your products and services to other countries in turn.

Re:The World Trade Organization can strike down a

[ranton]

But they don't seem to have the power to "strike down" any laws.

The only power that anyone ever really has is military power. The only way that the US government can enforce any law on its citizens is to threaten them with force. The only way to actually "strike down" any American law would be to use force against the US government. Or at least threaten to use force.

Because the WTO has no military force, the only thing they can do is put sanctions against the US. It is the same thing that the UN is planning on doing to North Korea. It could still work if they can work up the guts, and I hope they do.

Im an American, but these gambling laws are rediculous. If it takes crippling our own economy to show our rulers that they are out of line then its a small price to pay. If I lose my job I could always become a professional gambler :-)

--

Re:F@H

[donglekey]

It's called OpenGL 2.0 and it rocks pretty hard.

Re:F@H

[SETIGuy]

Since, AFAIHBT, ATI is funding the port, a generalized GPU client might not happen for a while.

Most of the claims in TFA hinge on beleiving that the GPU client is (as Stanford has claimed) 20 to 40 times faster than the CPU client. It would be nice, and certainly beneficial to ATI, if the FAH team would allow the same work units to be processed by both the GPU and CPU versions. As it is, there is no way to test their claims, and it seems they've gone out of their way to be sure there is no way to test their claims.

Call me skeptical.

Re:The World Trade Organization can strike down a

[Teancum]

The problem with the WTO and American law is that treaties are considered "the supreme law of the land" in the USA. Indeed, if a statutory law conflicts with treaty obligations, the treaty wins out and is what gets enforced by U.S. courts.

In other words, the WTO has real teeth in terms of overruling actions of the U.S. Congress.

About the only thing that the WTO can't do is to override the U.S. Constitution, which in theory trumps even treaties (and a prime factor to consider with copyright treaties, for example). The problem here is that the current members of the U.S. Supreme Court seem very reluctant to even override treaties based on this provision, nor does Congress really fight back hard if they are told "No" by international groups like the WTO.

So there are really two approaches that can be done in this situation:

1. Withdraw completely from the WTO, as per treaty requirements - This seems incredibly unlikely to happen with the current political makeup of the U.S. Congress, and it is Congress that has to create and pass enabling legislations that would withdraw from the WTO. The President nor SCOTUS can do that.
2. Pass a Constitutional Ammendment ignoring WTO sanctions - This is even more bizzare than withdrawing from the WTO and is even more unlikely to happen unless it is starting to cost elections by double digit margins on the issue. The process of making a consitutional ammendment is deliberately difficult (2/3rd of Congress + 2/3rd of all state legislatures). And people voting on this stuff tend to vote no simply to maintain the status quo.

In short, this is a big deal in the current American legal system. Hopefully this is going to be something that will be publicized so much that Americans will finally realize how much of their soverignty has been given up to silly groups of "international law experts", answerable to nobody other than themselves. There certainly is no check or balance to allow a group like the U.S. Congress to impeach these WTO judges if they abuse their position, nor any direct citizen involvement in deciding who gets to make these decisions.

Fault is being shortsighted.

[Kadin2048]

Actually never -- if they did, they would be neglectful of their responsibilities as leaders to do the best thing for their country. However, sometimes it's best to forgo a short-term gain in favor of long term stability. In other words, by submitting to international law (or a body like the WTO), you preserve a system which you believe benefits you in the long run.

Being law abiding, whether on the individual or national level, is not self-sacrificial behavior. There are good and rational reasons for doing so. It only looks disadvantageous when you're using a very short or narrow perspective. I would argue that the main problem with U.S. foreign policy is that it sacrifices long-term goals for short-term advantages or gains. We probably have more to gain from a strong World Trade Organization than anyone; if we make it irrelevant, we hurt ourselves in the long run.

Re:Fault is being shortsighted.

[HTH NE1]

Notice how in Game Theory cooperation (e.g. abiding to international law) is often a good long term strategy.

Only so long as you don't know when the last round is to be played.

It is unfortunate for all others if any one player can bring about the final round at a time of his choosing.

If the sweet comes with bitter, you've lost.

[Kadin2048]

(As a side note, I don't like the government banning medical marijuana, but there is no question that Raich was correctly decided. The same theory is also why landmark civil rights legislation, such as the act which forbids whites-only lunch counters, also applies to lunch counters which only serve local clients. One of the unfortunate things about constitutional law is that you often have to take the bitter with the sweet.)

This is a dangerous attitude to take. Just because some good effects came out of a poorly-reasoned decision, doesn't make the decision good. It means that a whole lot of social good is resting on insecure, poorly-reasoned legal foundations.

I'd argue that a similar situation now exists with abortion and other reproductive and personal rights. Lots of things that many people take for granted rest on a series of court decisions -- Roe v. Wade chief among them -- which are rather delicate logical and jurisprudential constructs. Had Roe not been decided the way it was, political will might have developed in the 1970s to codify an actual right to privacy, rather than relying on the flawed concept of a "pneumbra." Unfortunately, the latter path was taken, and now a whole host of rights ride on a this concept. As soon as people began to take those rights for granted, the opportunity of actually having enough momentum to get an actual codified right disappeared. Today, if a handful of legal scholars can be convinced of the wrongness of Roe and the pneumbra concept, then not only abortion but the whole "right" to privacy could disappear.

Swallowing bad jurisprudence simply because it produces social good in the short term is almost always a bad idea, and it leads to less stability in the long run. It forces you to either run the risk of losing the social gains in order to overturn bad law (as in Roe), or in keeping the bad precedent and subsequent bad judgements in order to keep the social good (as with your example of Raich and civil rights).

"Rights" won on questionable legal arguments can hardly said to be 'won' at all -- they're the social-freedom versions of stock-market bubbles. Pleasant, ephemeral, but apt to cause chaos one way or another whether they burst or remain. Slow growth based on actual legislative action is far better in the long run, painful as it may be in the present. Sometimes extreme pain is what's required to motivate both the people and the Legislative branch into action.

Re:Stolen name; nice one.

[ElleyKitten]

I think it's perfect.

Debian comes up with a name, GNU applies that name to a browser, Ubuntu takes the name and makes spiffy logos for it, Debian takes the name and the browser and probably the logos and goes in a totally different direction from the other two.

Stop looking at me like I'm crazy.

What does this mean? This means that no one person or organization can have a trademark on the word IceWeasel. This Firefox mess has been because Debian is not able to do what it wants to do with Firefox because Mozilla has final say because they have the trademark. Mozilla's been demanding they break their own guidelines by including a non-free image with their distro and demanding that all patches be approved by them, even though they don't support the old versions that Debian does. The last thing anyone wants would be for the same thing to happen to IceWeasel. Happily, that looks like that's impossible, and IceWeasel will be the free Firefox.