So the provisions about new offences having sentences of less than two years could be torn up without Parliamentary oversight - under the provisions of the Bill that introduced it!
And H.M. Govt. has specifically refused to make any legislation 'safe' from this - including laws like Magna Carta (1215) and the Habeas Corpus Act (1679) - meaning that pretty much every bit of law in the UK would be up for 'revision' at the whim of ministers.
Perhaps you'd care to read the referenced version of the allegedly libellous factsheet - which includes factual and textual citations for the claims.
(Some of which are from McDonald's-internal documents; others from such international bodies as the WHO and WWF.)
One additional point, though, just to drive the full absurdity of the UK libel system home;
Look at your original post:
"My local newspaper had an editorial that was basically cheering for the guys who libeled McDonalds.
That was when I decided that, if they care that little about the truth, I didn't really need to read that newspaper any more."
You are clearly implying that the McLibel defendants are themselves liars; and this is a fairly clear example of defamation - since you can't really claim any of the three defences below;
"1. - (1) In defamation proceedings a person has a defence if he shows that-
(a) he was not the author, editor or publisher of the statement complained of,
(b) he took reasonable care in relation to its publication, and
(c) he did not know, and had no reason to believe, that what he did caused or contributed to
the publication of a defamatory statement."
Congrats, you could (on some vague and theoretical level) be taken to court in the UK for libel (since web traffic is seen in the UK, too).
Now, in practice, simply saying that you didn't know it was defamatory isn't a defence unless you can prove undeniably that you tried to check your facts first; and in this example, you'd lose; because calling someone a liar in public is defamation pretty much everywhere; and it's known to be defamatory.
And, as I've already said, libel in the UK is stacked quite heavily in favour of the plaintiff; and your ability to fight such a case is usually proportional to your capacity to pay legal bills.
Now imagine that your opponent is not some theoretical entity, but is one of the wealthiest private organisations in the world.
In the UK, if you have assets to lose, then it is simpler to post a retraction of your statement - even if it's true - than it is to risk having your assets destroyed by an expensive lawsuit. That's why SLAPPs worked when McDonald's sued various UK national media and NGOs (including the BBC and Channel 4). The tactic only failed when they tried suing people who had no real assets to lose.
Oh - and not being in the UK doesn't make you safe; due to our libel laws, we get 'libel tourism' - where British citizens like Richard Perle initiate libel proceedings against the New Yorker in a UK court - because UK readers might see the allegedly libellous material.
If you put something in the public domain that might be seen by UK citizens, then you can be sued under UK libel laws.
Right. Time for a few facts, since you seem to have a fairly serious misunderstanding of a) the case and b) the UK legal system.
Disclaimer: I was peripherally involved in the support campaign 1997-2005. As such, my neutrality may be suspect. OTOH, my knowledge of the McLibel case is excellent.
1. The burden of proof lies on the defendant
What can you prove?
Can you prove that the sky is blue, or that the sun will rise tomorrow?
UK (and, I think, Canadian) law means that you have to defend allegedly libellous statements by proving their truth.
If the jury is still out, or you can't prove it beyond a reasonable supposition, then it's libellous. It can be completely and wholly true (in the long run), but if you can't prove it, then you're guilty of libel.
You are guilty until proven innocent.
Let's take a quote in the leaflet that was ruled defamatory:
"A diet high in fat, sugar, animal products and salt and low in fibre, vitamins and minerals is linked with cancer of the breast and bowel and heart disease"
That was one of the statements in the leaflet that McDonald's found most defamatory.
When McDonald's expert witness, Dr. Sidney Arnott, was brought up in the witness box for cross-examination, he was asked what he thought of the above statement.
He said:
"If it is being directed to the public then I would say it is a very reasonable thing to say."
However, since the link between junk food and cancer had not been proven beyond all reasonable doubt, the statement was ruled to be libellous, even though it came originally from a WHO report!
(It was subsequently ruled proven during the appeal, as Lord Justices Pill, May and Keane were given access to medical data that had not been present in the original case.)
2. Not proven =/= not true.
Again, since the truth is an absolute defence against libel charges, you need to prove in a UK court that something is true. If you fail, it is not necessarily because you lied. You can repeat someone else's findings in perfect good faith, yet be sued for libel if you are unable to prove the truth of those statements. There is a big difference between something that you haven't proven to be true, and something that is proven to be false; and even with something proven to be false, there's no automatic malicious intent involved.
This goes hand in hand with another major point: at the time of the case, you didn't get Legal Aid in the UK for libel cases. It didn't matter whether the case was in the public interest or not; you had to pay the legal bills yourself.
Consider the case of two defendants earning less than $20,000 between them against one of the richest and most powerful companies in the world. The ability of both sides to summon witnesses and prepare documentation was directly linked to the amount of cash they had.
On issues like rainforest destruction, there were any number of people the McLibel defendants could have asked to act as witnesses - but they couldn't afford the flight tickets and accommodation expenses; so the witnesses never made it to the courtroom.
Over the case, McDonald's spent $16,000,000. The McLibel defendants managed to raise $35,000 in donations.
Consider how that affects a case, when your ability to produce the relevant witnesses depends on how much money you can spend.
So they had to stand up in court and defend themselves - against one of the best libel lawyers in the UK and a highly-paid team; they gave up 15 years of their life to do so, all told.
And they gave McDonald's such a bloody nose that McDonald's abandoned SLAPPs altogether.
Your local newspaper was quite right.
Gideon.
The day 3Com imploded.
on
The 3Com Saga
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
I used to work for 3Com as a tech support bob; I was one of the people laid off in 2000 when they wimped out of the medium and big-end market.
It was a pretty strange day; we got in to work as normal, only to hear wild rumours about the US HQ EOL-ing entire families of projects - including some brand new ones like the Corebuilder 9000 (and some ancient ones like the Netbuilder II).
We were told that there was an announcement downstairs; at which point they laid out the whole gory mess to us; massive layoffs, company shrinkage and retreat-in-confusion from the majority of 3Com's market areas.
As tech support, we were given three months' notice with the possibility of moving to support small hubs and low-end kit (not exactly a challenging prospect!); what most of our lot did was get straight on the phone to ex-colleagues working for Cisco.
What really got us down over the next week or so was speaking to customers. There were multi-billion dollar customers who we knew well and got on with; and 3Com's sales people had been selling them new Corebuilders the week before; suddenly, they had no upgrade path, they'd invested millions of pounds uselessly, and they were not happy with us. A couple of the bigger companies were demanding that Eric Benhamou fly over in person and tell them exactly why 3Com had sold them something one week and discontinued it the next.
(The understanding customers at least told us that they didn't blame us for random acts of management; but it still wasn't fun for us; the company we were a part of was pissing all over our customer base, and we were at the front line as public-facing employees.)
There were days during my four years at 3Com when announcements went round that made my blood run cold. The USR merger was one; 3Com putting an NT server (on a blade) in a switch was another; but the biggest one by far was The Day We Wimped Out.
I think 3Com as a company deserves a graceful death. I still insist on their NICs (which are rock solid and have never given me a day's grief); but I have no need or desire for any of their other products.
The whole Huawei tie-up is another Bad Idea, IMHO. I've had to try and configure one of those things; the interface was terrible (it was just post-Cisco-lawsuit), the hardware was laughably unreliable (bad mainboard *and* two bad interface cards) and customer support (at least in the UK) was pretty much non-existant.
Eventually, we ripped it out and replaced it with a Cisco. If 3Com are relying on rebadged Huawei kit to recapture their share of the market, then I think they're on a hiding to nothing, and the 3Com name will take another nasty dent.
ISTM that Gimp and Photoshop *aren't* really the same product.
(Caveat: I don't own a copy of Photoshop, and I'm not a graphics pro. As such, my opinions on Photoshop are unqualified; and likely to remain that way, as I don't have the money to spend on Photoshop or the time to make such an expenditure worthwhile.)
Gimp *is* currently limited on colourspaces; but, AFAIAA, that's a combination of a) a volunteer project that hasn't had the time to do it yet and b) the need to tread very carefully around heavily-protected IP. Remember Dmitry Sklyarov?
(f'rex; Pantone; proprietory; and probably owns a fair number of patents on similar ways of doing things.)
As such, I'm guessing that the Gimp isn't going to take the world of print media by storm any time soon.
Where I think Gimp does score is scripting. ICBW here, and the last Photoshop I touched was v4, but does Photoshop yet have anything as powerful as script-fu - that is open to the average end user? Does it plug into real, powerful, flexible, general-purpose scripting languages?
For example; cooltext.com has been running now for over five years. What it does isn't exactly in-depth; but think about it - a web-site that automates one of the commonest noddy-tasks that novice users want - for free.
If you have a graphics pro, they will probably go for Photoshop. They've got the money to burn.
If you don't have the money, you have the choice of Gimp, something like PSP - or sitting around whining that you don't have Photoshop.
For 95% of RGB-space photo-manipulation and general pixel-wrangling, the Gimp will serve you just as well as Photoshop.
To talk of the Gimp as a 'Photoshop-killer' is half-cocked; not least because half the 'battle' lies not in features, but in overcoming peoples' conditioned responses; the automatic 'use Photoshop for manipulation' reaction.
If you want to try building that killer feature, then fine. If not; well, it's not as if you can *only* be creative with Photoshop; art managed perfectly well without it!
IME, I didn't find the Gimp interface any more counter-intuitive than any other. I didn't start out assuming it was going to be Photoshop, and my first instinct was to RTFM. I'm no great shakes with Gimp, but I can do the things I need to do quickly, effectively, and with a minimal amount of fuss.
I simply don't need Photoshop, any more than a street busker needs a genuine Stradavarius.
The NYT is wrong to make such a claim, I'm afraid; and they don't do the scientific community any favours by giving people a misleading picture of what global warming is or isn't.
You cannot point to any one local climate event and go "That's global warming, that is."
What you say about the global mean surface temperature is absolutely right - it's not inconsistent with localised cooling.
(Running a refrigerator will heat up your house overall, regardless of the fact that the icebox is colder than room temperature.)
What happens if you increase the level of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere is that you make the system a more efficient retainer of heat - increasing the overall energy stored in the atmospheric system. The distribution of kinetic energy values in a gas is pretty well-understood - the Maxwell-Boltzmann distribution.
Extreme or anomalous weather events generally seems to require a critical energy to initiate them; if enough of the local thermodynamic system has that energy, then the likelihood of an event occurring is higher.
You can't say _when_ or _where_ this will happen; the only meaningful treatment you can really apply is statistical; by correlating the number of observed events with the estimated overall level of kinetic energy in the system.
(And there is a noticeable correlation between extreme events and the level of anthropogenic greenhouse emissions.)
Of course, it is somewhat difficult to be precise and accurate on the subject when the sceptics interpret (perfectly normal and creditable) scientific caution as lack of necessary certainty.
To paraphrase AE: if we were certain on the results, there wouldn't be much point in continuing to experiment - but that doesn't mean that there isn't a pretty good idea of what the results are likely to be.
As a (soon-to-be-former) 3Com employee and part-time Linux geek, I think that 3Com going open-source is pretty damn unlikely. Alliance with Microsoft is much more in line with the current company bulletins here.
The idea of 3Com having monopoly power is, frankly, laughable. If there is a monopoly in the world of netwrecking, it is held by Cisco and their high-end routers (although I'm not trying to sling mud here; merely stating the obvious).
The atmosphere here today in the UK is *weird*, though; there's metaphorical blood all over the walls, as they appear to be trying to get rid of the entire customer support department - their strategy appears to be to make everything so point-and-drool that even a moron can operate it and use this as an excuse not to have anything more than a vestigial customer support service.
Saw it on Saturday night; it was highly polished and very skilfully done, even if the Disney style isn't my favourite.
The thing that really jumped out at me (and others with me) was that it was aimed squarely at the US market and was at its best when referring to the US; the best piece, IMO, was Rhapsody in Blue.
In contrast, the portrayal of the Firebird was wrong - the Firebird is *never* a bad guy (or girl) in the original stories; powerful, mischievous and capricious, but not evil or vindictive.
And no-one in Europe would think of Pomp & Circumstance #1 as 'a piece played at graduations'.
It's known to most of the world as 'Land of Hope and Glory'; one of the unofficial English national anthems; and is sung every year as the finale to Last Night of the Proms.
(Elgar hated the nationalistic overtones that became attached to it in his lifetime.)
It might seem just a small thing, but it's just about one of the most English pieces of music around; an analogue would be describing Yankee Doodle as an 18th-century folk-song; while correct, it misses all of the cultural overtones that it has.
Therein lies a lot of the minor niggles I had with F2K; it was essentially American, not universal.
>Significant numbers expect a major earthquake in >California, foresee increased global warming and >predict a severe energy crisis by the middle of >the 21st century.
So what are they doing about it?
There are two issues here; firstly that the US population are living an unsustainable lifestyle that is destroying the planet's ability to support life; and secondly, that what benefits the US may not benefit other countries.
It is generally agreed that the best way to stop global warming is to lower emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases; unless we do, we could see the end of the rainforests. Yet the world's largest producer of greenhouse gases is dragging its heels over constructive action because it would damage US industry.
The overall mean surface temperature is predicted to rise by 3 degrees C over the next century; this would mean an environmental preservation bill totalling trillions of dollars, not to mention the partial destruction of low-lying countries like Egypt and the Netherlands and cities like Manhattan.
If, as New Scientist reports this week, global warming 'turns off' the North Atlantic Drift, the mean temperatures in Europe are going to start resembling those in Siberia; which will mean the productivity and fertility of Europe will be badly hit. As a Briton, I'm not exactly thrilled by this possibility!
If the economy of a country is ruined by global warming, it seems only reasonable to press for compensation on the world stage; which means that the largest producers of greenhouse gases and consumers of energy will be making the largest payout.
Compare energy usage among the following five countries;
Electricity consumption per capita
US 13477 kWh Japan 7523 kWh France 6966 kWh UK 5525 kWh Russia 5397 kWh (Source: CIA)
It should be pretty obvious that the US is producing rather more than its fair share of carbon dioxide. I'm not pretending that the US is the only overconsumer; but the US consumes a *lot* more than it should - and this isn't sustainable in the long term
>...their overall outlook about the future >remains optimistic. And technology is the reason.
Technology can be used to provide incalculable benefits; true; the whole of humanity benefits from increased knowledge in fields like medicine and meteorology; but can technology save us from the faulty assumption that we can go on consuming ever-greater amounts of non-renewable natural resources in the hope that we will develop a technofix that will solve the problem.
Necessity is the mother of invention, but there are limits to what you can do. Our entire world runs on a base of non-renewable resources; and we have no workable plans to provide a substitute as yet. It is Panglossian to insist that there's a bright new future up ahead when we've consumed half of the world's estimated reserves of natural resources since World War I and have no real contingency plans in place.
I write this on a machine made from processed oil and silicon and metals; it runs using power generated from burning fossil fuels and the metals were dug out of the ground using fossil fuels. I'm one of the privileged few who can do this. But is it really justifiable to produce more and more computers and assorted gadgetry if we are using scarce resources but aren't adding to the sum assets of humanity by doing so?
Is technology only to be used to bolster the lifestyle of the few who are already rich; or should the free exchange of information be made the platform for building a better life for everyone; a democratic, open and sustainable way of life?
I can see both sides of this, but have to admit I find Stallman's case the stronger with respect to GNU/Linux. I can understand that businesses and the tie-wearing world find Linus more cuddly (I note no mention has been made of ESR in the above article!), but I think it shows a lack of courtesy to write Stallman out of the picture.
No, I know nobody's suggesting that. Yet.
However, with Big Business falling over themselves to get a slice of the GNU/Linux pie, it would be all too easy for the voices-inna-wilderness to get forgotten about in the rush to make a buck.
Basic point; I don't want to see, five or ten years down the line, a "Linux" that is encrusted with closed bits; we need to keep the source free; it keeps the coding community interested and that is, for my money, the best thing about GNU/Linux; a sharing of challenge and achievement.
If we were ever to reach the point of "RedHat '05", I'd be tempted to switch to Hurd straight away; choppy and turbulent waters are waay more fun than the mainstream
I'm in no way denigrating Linus' work, nor the Open Source movement. I'm saying that we need all of them to be treated equally; RMS' visionary nature being as important to the OS as Linus' pragmatism.
For the record, I've never seen RMS insist that users follow his set of beliefs; the GPL isn't astoundingly far-out; it's merely a device to try and ensure some credit gets spread around the right areas without anything as restrictive as a copyright hindering progress. Hardly the blueprint for a socialist revolution!
You can adhere to the FSF's general aims without holding them as forthrightly as RMS. Personally, I sympathise with RMS (possibly because he reminds me of my dad!); agreed, he's probably made life harder for himself by his refusal to compromise; but, as the above poster mentioned, he's lived it as he speaks it.
Heck, if the Yankees have such a massive problem with non-US citizens making the future, what about Babbage and Turing;) - it really doesn't matter where the stuff comes from, as long as it works and as long as we can tweak it...
Slashdot Mirror
Except that it is recursively applicable.
So the provisions about new offences having sentences of less than two years could be torn up without Parliamentary oversight - under the provisions of the Bill that introduced it!
And H.M. Govt. has specifically refused to make any legislation 'safe' from this - including laws like Magna Carta (1215) and the Habeas Corpus Act (1679) - meaning that pretty much every bit of law in the UK would be up for 'revision' at the whim of ministers.
A troll, written by one of the regular Register staffers, for the apparent purpose of attracting flames from the gullible.
He doesn't exist.
His sole raison d'etre is to get a rise out of people.
For the love of Om, don't feed the troll any more, people!
Perhaps you'd care to read the referenced version of the allegedly libellous factsheet - which includes factual and textual citations for the claims.
(Some of which are from McDonald's-internal documents; others from such international bodies as the WHO and WWF.)
One additional point, though, just to drive the full absurdity of the UK libel system home;
Look at your original post:
"My local newspaper had an editorial that was basically cheering for the guys who libeled McDonalds.
That was when I decided that, if they care that little about the truth, I didn't really need to read that newspaper any more."
You are clearly implying that the McLibel defendants are themselves liars; and this is a fairly clear example of defamation - since you can't really claim any of the three defences below;
"1. - (1) In defamation proceedings a person has a defence if he shows that-
(a) he was not the author, editor or publisher of the statement complained of,
(b) he took reasonable care in relation to its publication, and
(c) he did not know, and had no reason to believe, that what he did caused or contributed to
the publication of a defamatory statement."
Congrats, you could (on some vague and theoretical level) be taken to court in the UK for libel (since web traffic is seen in the UK, too).
Now, in practice, simply saying that you didn't know it was defamatory isn't a defence unless you can prove undeniably that you tried to check your facts first; and in this example, you'd lose; because calling someone a liar in public is defamation pretty much everywhere; and it's known to be defamatory.
And, as I've already said, libel in the UK is stacked quite heavily in favour of the plaintiff; and your ability to fight such a case is usually proportional to your capacity to pay legal bills.
Now imagine that your opponent is not some theoretical entity, but is one of the wealthiest private organisations in the world.
In the UK, if you have assets to lose, then it is simpler to post a retraction of your statement - even if it's true - than it is to risk having your assets destroyed by an expensive lawsuit. That's why SLAPPs worked when McDonald's sued various UK national media and NGOs (including the BBC and Channel 4). The tactic only failed when they tried suing people who had no real assets to lose.
Oh - and not being in the UK doesn't make you safe; due to our libel laws, we get 'libel tourism' - where British citizens like Richard Perle initiate libel proceedings against the New Yorker in a UK court - because UK readers might see the allegedly libellous material.
If you put something in the public domain that might be seen by UK citizens, then you can be sued under UK libel laws.
Oh, and there's one other thing I forgot - the defendants weren't being prosecuted for making the leaflet.
They were being prosecuted because they handed out the leaflet in question.
Something that McDonald's paid spies also did.
McDonald's prosecuted people for doing something that they actually paid other people to do as well.
Disclaimer: I was peripherally involved in the support campaign 1997-2005. As such, my neutrality may be suspect. OTOH, my knowledge of the McLibel case is excellent.
1. The burden of proof lies on the defendant
What can you prove?
Can you prove that the sky is blue, or that the sun will rise tomorrow?
UK (and, I think, Canadian) law means that you have to defend allegedly libellous statements by proving their truth.
If the jury is still out, or you can't prove it beyond a reasonable supposition, then it's libellous. It can be completely and wholly true (in the long run), but if you can't prove it, then you're guilty of libel.
You are guilty until proven innocent.
Let's take a quote in the leaflet that was ruled defamatory:
That was one of the statements in the leaflet that McDonald's found most defamatory.
It came from a 1990 World Health Organisation report on diet and nutrition.
When McDonald's expert witness, Dr. Sidney Arnott, was brought up in the witness box for cross-examination, he was asked what he thought of the above statement.
He said:
However, since the link between junk food and cancer had not been proven beyond all reasonable doubt, the statement was ruled to be libellous, even though it came originally from a WHO report!
(It was subsequently ruled proven during the appeal, as Lord Justices Pill, May and Keane were given access to medical data that had not been present in the original case.)
2. Not proven =/= not true.
Again, since the truth is an absolute defence against libel charges, you need to prove in a UK court that something is true. If you fail, it is not necessarily because you lied. You can repeat someone else's findings in perfect good faith, yet be sued for libel if you are unable to prove the truth of those statements. There is a big difference between something that you haven't proven to be true, and something that is proven to be false; and even with something proven to be false, there's no automatic malicious intent involved.
This goes hand in hand with another major point: at the time of the case, you didn't get Legal Aid in the UK for libel cases. It didn't matter whether the case was in the public interest or not; you had to pay the legal bills yourself.
Consider the case of two defendants earning less than $20,000 between them against one of the richest and most powerful companies in the world. The ability of both sides to summon witnesses and prepare documentation was directly linked to the amount of cash they had.
On issues like rainforest destruction, there were any number of people the McLibel defendants could have asked to act as witnesses - but they couldn't afford the flight tickets and accommodation expenses; so the witnesses never made it to the courtroom.
Over the case, McDonald's spent $16,000,000. The McLibel defendants managed to raise $35,000 in donations.
Consider how that affects a case, when your ability to produce the relevant witnesses depends on how much money you can spend.
So they had to stand up in court and defend themselves - against one of the best libel lawyers in the UK and a highly-paid team; they gave up 15 years of their life to do so, all told.
And they gave McDonald's such a bloody nose that McDonald's abandoned SLAPPs altogether.
Your local newspaper was quite right.
Gideon.
I used to work for 3Com as a tech support bob; I was one of the people laid off in 2000 when they wimped out of the medium and big-end market.
It was a pretty strange day; we got in to work as normal, only to hear wild rumours about the US HQ EOL-ing entire families of projects - including some brand new ones like the Corebuilder 9000 (and some ancient ones like the Netbuilder II).
We were told that there was an announcement downstairs; at which point they laid out the whole gory mess to us; massive layoffs, company shrinkage and retreat-in-confusion from the majority of 3Com's market areas.
As tech support, we were given three months' notice with the possibility of moving to support small hubs and low-end kit (not exactly a challenging prospect!); what most of our lot did was get straight on the phone to ex-colleagues working for Cisco.
What really got us down over the next week or so was speaking to customers. There were multi-billion dollar customers who we knew well and got on with; and 3Com's sales people had been selling them new Corebuilders the week before; suddenly, they had no upgrade path, they'd invested millions of pounds uselessly, and they were not happy with us. A couple of the bigger companies were demanding that Eric Benhamou fly over in person and tell them exactly why 3Com had sold them something one week and discontinued it the next.
(The understanding customers at least told us that they didn't blame us for random acts of management; but it still wasn't fun for us; the company we were a part of was pissing all over our customer base, and we were at the front line as public-facing employees.)
There were days during my four years at 3Com when announcements went round that made my blood run cold. The USR merger was one; 3Com putting an NT server (on a blade) in a switch was another; but the biggest one by far was The Day We Wimped Out.
I think 3Com as a company deserves a graceful death. I still insist on their NICs (which are rock solid and have never given me a day's grief); but I have no need or desire for any of their other products.
The whole Huawei tie-up is another Bad Idea, IMHO. I've had to try and configure one of those things; the interface was terrible (it was just post-Cisco-lawsuit), the hardware was laughably unreliable (bad mainboard *and* two bad interface cards) and customer support (at least in the UK) was pretty much non-existant.
Eventually, we ripped it out and replaced it with a Cisco. If 3Com are relying on rebadged Huawei kit to recapture their share of the market, then I think they're on a hiding to nothing, and the 3Com name will take another nasty dent.
They had it; they blew it.
Gideon.
ISTM that Gimp and Photoshop *aren't* really the same product.
(Caveat: I don't own a copy of Photoshop, and I'm not a graphics pro. As such, my opinions on Photoshop are unqualified; and likely to remain that way, as I don't have the money to spend on Photoshop or the time to make such an expenditure worthwhile.)
Gimp *is* currently limited on colourspaces; but, AFAIAA, that's a combination of a) a volunteer project that hasn't had the time to do it yet and b) the need to tread very carefully around heavily-protected IP. Remember Dmitry Sklyarov?
(f'rex; Pantone; proprietory; and probably owns a fair number of patents on similar ways of doing things.)
As such, I'm guessing that the Gimp isn't going to take the world of print media by storm any time soon.
Where I think Gimp does score is scripting. ICBW here, and the last Photoshop I touched was v4, but does Photoshop yet have anything as powerful as script-fu - that is open to the average end user? Does it plug into real, powerful, flexible, general-purpose scripting languages?
For example; cooltext.com has been running now for over five years. What it does isn't exactly in-depth; but think about it - a web-site that automates one of the commonest noddy-tasks that novice users want - for free.
If you have a graphics pro, they will probably go for Photoshop. They've got the money to burn.
If you don't have the money, you have the choice of Gimp, something like PSP - or sitting around whining that you don't have Photoshop.
For 95% of RGB-space photo-manipulation and general pixel-wrangling, the Gimp will serve you just as well as Photoshop.
To talk of the Gimp as a 'Photoshop-killer' is half-cocked; not least because half the 'battle' lies not in features, but in overcoming peoples' conditioned responses; the automatic 'use Photoshop for manipulation' reaction.
If you want to try building that killer feature, then fine. If not; well, it's not as if you can *only* be creative with Photoshop; art managed perfectly well without it!
IME, I didn't find the Gimp interface any more counter-intuitive than any other. I didn't start out assuming it was going to be Photoshop, and my first instinct was to RTFM. I'm no great shakes with Gimp, but I can do the things I need to do quickly, effectively, and with a minimal amount of fuss.
I simply don't need Photoshop, any more than a street busker needs a genuine Stradavarius.
Gideon.
The NYT is wrong to make such a claim, I'm afraid; and they don't do the scientific community any favours by giving people a misleading picture of what global warming is or isn't.
You cannot point to any one local climate event and go "That's global warming, that is."
What you say about the global mean surface temperature is absolutely right - it's not inconsistent with localised cooling.
(Running a refrigerator will heat up your house overall, regardless of the fact that the icebox is colder than room temperature.)
What happens if you increase the level of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere is that you make the system a more efficient retainer of heat - increasing the overall energy stored in the atmospheric system. The distribution of kinetic energy values in a gas is pretty well-understood - the Maxwell-Boltzmann distribution.
Extreme or anomalous weather events generally seems to require a critical energy to initiate them; if enough of the local thermodynamic system has that energy, then the likelihood of an event occurring is higher.
You can't say _when_ or _where_ this will happen; the only meaningful treatment you can really apply is statistical; by correlating the number of observed events with the estimated overall level of kinetic energy in the system.
(And there is a noticeable correlation between extreme events and the level of anthropogenic greenhouse emissions.)
Of course, it is somewhat difficult to be precise and accurate on the subject when the sceptics interpret (perfectly normal and creditable) scientific caution as lack of necessary certainty.
To paraphrase AE: if we were certain on the results, there wouldn't be much point in continuing to experiment - but that doesn't mean that there isn't a pretty good idea of what the results are likely to be.
Gideon.
As a (soon-to-be-former) 3Com employee and part-time Linux geek, I think that 3Com going open-source is pretty damn unlikely. Alliance with Microsoft is much more in line with the current company bulletins here.
The idea of 3Com having monopoly power is, frankly, laughable. If there is a monopoly in the world of netwrecking, it is held by Cisco and their high-end routers (although I'm not trying to sling mud here; merely stating the obvious).
The atmosphere here today in the UK is *weird*, though; there's metaphorical blood all over the walls, as they appear to be trying to get rid of the entire customer support department - their strategy appears to be to make everything so point-and-drool that even a moron can operate it and use this as an excuse not to have anything more than a vestigial customer support service.
Saw it on Saturday night; it was highly polished and very skilfully done, even if the Disney style isn't my favourite.
The thing that really jumped out at me (and others with me) was that it was aimed squarely at the US market and was at its best when referring to the US; the best piece, IMO, was Rhapsody in Blue.
In contrast, the portrayal of the Firebird was wrong - the Firebird is *never* a bad guy (or girl) in the original stories; powerful, mischievous and capricious, but not evil or vindictive.
And no-one in Europe would think of Pomp & Circumstance #1 as 'a piece played at graduations'.
It's known to most of the world as 'Land of Hope and Glory'; one of the unofficial English national anthems; and is sung every year as the finale to Last Night of the Proms.
(Elgar hated the nationalistic overtones that became attached to it in his lifetime.)
It might seem just a small thing, but it's just about one of the most English pieces of music around; an analogue would be describing Yankee Doodle as an 18th-century folk-song; while correct, it misses all of the cultural overtones that it has.
Therein lies a lot of the minor niggles I had with F2K; it was essentially American, not universal.
Gideon Hallett.
So what are they doing about it?
There are two issues here; firstly that the US population are living an unsustainable lifestyle that is destroying the planet's ability to support life; and secondly, that what benefits the US may not benefit other countries.
It is generally agreed that the best way to stop global warming is to lower emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases; unless we do, we could see the end of the rainforests. Yet the world's largest producer of greenhouse gases is dragging its heels over constructive action because it would damage US industry.
The overall mean surface temperature is predicted to rise by 3 degrees C over the next century; this would mean an environmental preservation bill totalling trillions of dollars, not to mention the partial destruction of low-lying countries like Egypt and the Netherlands and cities like Manhattan.
If, as New Scientist reports this week, global warming 'turns off' the North Atlantic Drift, the mean temperatures in Europe are going to start resembling those in Siberia; which will mean the productivity and fertility of Europe will be badly hit. As a Briton, I'm not exactly thrilled by this possibility!
If the economy of a country is ruined by global warming, it seems only reasonable to press for compensation on the world stage; which means that the largest producers of greenhouse gases and consumers of energy will be making the largest payout.
Compare energy usage among the following five countries;
Electricity consumption per capita
US 13477 kWh
Japan 7523 kWh
France 6966 kWh
UK 5525 kWh
Russia 5397 kWh
(Source: CIA)
It should be pretty obvious that the US is producing rather more than its fair share of carbon dioxide. I'm not pretending that the US is the only overconsumer; but the US consumes a *lot* more than it should - and this isn't sustainable in the long term
>...their overall outlook about the future
>remains optimistic. And technology is the reason.
Technology can be used to provide incalculable benefits; true; the whole of humanity benefits from increased knowledge in fields like medicine and meteorology; but can technology save us from the faulty assumption that we can go on consuming ever-greater amounts of non-renewable natural resources in the hope that we will develop a technofix that will solve the problem.
Necessity is the mother of invention, but there are limits to what you can do. Our entire world runs on a base of non-renewable resources; and we have no workable plans to provide a substitute as yet. It is Panglossian to insist that there's a bright new future up ahead when we've consumed half of the world's estimated reserves of natural resources since World War I and have no real contingency plans in place.
I write this on a machine made from processed oil and silicon and metals; it runs using power generated from burning fossil fuels and the metals were dug out of the ground using fossil fuels. I'm one of the privileged few who can do this. But is it really justifiable to produce more and more computers and assorted gadgetry if we are using scarce resources but aren't adding to the sum assets of humanity by doing so?
Is technology only to be used to bolster the lifestyle of the few who are already rich; or should the free exchange of information be made the platform for building a better life for everyone; a democratic, open and sustainable way of life?
Gideon Hallett
...I think not, somehow.
Of course, the burning question is not "can we see anything private?" but "how hot is it today?" and "when was the last time that Ben took a shave?"
(say Hi, Ben; you're a celeb now...)
I can see both sides of this, but have to admit I find Stallman's case the stronger with respect to GNU/Linux. I can understand that businesses and the tie-wearing world find Linus more cuddly (I note no mention has been made of ESR in the above article!), but I think it shows a lack of courtesy to write Stallman out of the picture.
;) - it really doesn't matter where the stuff comes from, as long as it works and as long as we can tweak it...
No, I know nobody's suggesting that. Yet.
However, with Big Business falling over themselves to get a slice of the GNU/Linux pie, it would be all too easy for the voices-inna-wilderness to get forgotten about in the rush to make a buck.
Basic point; I don't want to see, five or ten years down the line, a "Linux" that is encrusted with closed bits; we need to keep the source free; it keeps the coding community interested and that is, for my money, the best thing about GNU/Linux; a sharing of challenge and achievement.
If we were ever to reach the point of "RedHat '05", I'd be tempted to switch to Hurd straight away; choppy and turbulent waters are waay more fun than the mainstream
I'm in no way denigrating Linus' work, nor the Open Source movement. I'm saying that we need all of them to be treated equally; RMS' visionary nature being as important to the OS as Linus' pragmatism.
For the record, I've never seen RMS insist that users follow his set of beliefs; the GPL isn't astoundingly far-out; it's merely a device to try and ensure some credit gets spread around the right areas without anything as restrictive as a copyright hindering progress. Hardly the blueprint for a socialist revolution!
You can adhere to the FSF's general aims without holding them as forthrightly as RMS. Personally, I sympathise with RMS (possibly because he reminds me of my dad!); agreed, he's probably made life harder for himself by his refusal to compromise; but, as the above poster mentioned, he's lived it as he speaks it.
Heck, if the Yankees have such a massive problem with non-US citizens making the future, what about Babbage and Turing
Gideon.