Ten years ago you were considered to be unusually well-informed if you subscribed to two newspapers--even if those newspapers mostly regurgitated national content from the Associated Press wire. Nowadays it is a trivial exercise to cross-reference stories in "new media" news sites (CNet, ZDNet) with traditional American print media (N.Y. Times, Wall St. Journal, Washington Post) as well as sites from overseas.
Lightbulb!
Here's a thought: how about a website, like SlashDot or Kuro5hin, that provides links to a variety of different angles on a given story. Pick a story or two per day and provide links (with a modicum of commentary) to coverage from a variety of sources.
Hmmm... A splendid idea to contemplate, and thus a good reason to procrastinate.
There are many unfortunate children (not just babies) without a quality home, why not take that route? Was it considered?
Hi!
Yes--there are unfortunate children without quality homes. I don't know if my brother and his wife considered adoption--but my brother and I grew up with a neighbor who was adopted (as a young teen), and we had several adopted kids when we were camp counselors. I'm certain they were aware of adoption as an option.
But while my sister-in-law's family has an inherited genetic condition, it is not an insurmountable obstacle. Yes--you might say, "gee--I don't want this genetic trait to continue." But think about that in the context of a family--how do you say to your brother (or your father), "I don't want to have any children like you." Kind of a tricky issue.
Would you and you're wife had child #3 if you knew she would have down syndrom before you got pregnant?
Er--ah, um. Actually, it was my wife who got pregnant. (Although she kept saying, "you did this to me!" all through labor....)
All jesting aside, I can't answer the question in the abstract. The question I can answer is "if you knew Daughter #3 would have Down syndrome, would you have aborted her?" The answer is a simple "no." When the doctor offered amniocentesis my wife refused. When the doctor more or less insisted, she refused. When the doctor suggested that she should return with me for "counseling" she asked if he thought she was incompetent--all amniocentesis does is give you the bad news. Since abortion was simply out of the question, she refused.
That said, Down syndrome is not, by any means, the worst possible disability. There are other trisomies (where there are three chromosomes in a "pair"); there is Tay-Sachs; there are other genetic defects; there is cerebral palsy. Handicapped kids frequently start in "early intervention" programs within weeks of birth--of the kids in Annie's first class fewer than half are alive nine years later. We know mothers and fathers with preschoolers that can't lift their heads off the floor--we know parents of "kids" who are in their twenties and still wearing diapers. None of them would "dispose" of their kids--none of them would give them away.
The closest I can come to answering your question is to tell you about my brother and sister-in-law. She comes from a family with a genetic condition that prevents the body from absorbing iodine--boys usually get it, girls usually carry it. If they have the disease they develop terrible rickets (bowing of the legs) and have to have a series of orthopedic operations through their growing years. When Dave and Suzanne married they had to face the question: do they have children or not? They have two daughters--and their second daughter (in a very rare circumstance) has the disease. Every summer they fly to St. Louis (he's in the Air Force, so every summer they're flying from somewhere new) for observation and study of her condition, and usually surgery to insert pins into her legs.
There is a clear benefit to knowing in advance if your child is going to have a serious medical concern of any time - it allows proper prenatal care and both practical and emotional preparation.
I wish that were true. I don't mean to flame you--before Annie was born I had that innocent view of the medical world as well. I daresay you have never been offered amniocentesis, or had a child born with a serious disability.
Let's start with some simple biology. Down syndrome happens at conception. My little girl doesn't have a birth defect--she has a genetic defect. Amniocentesis, as far as I know, doesn't tell you of any condition that can be helped with prenatal care. Unless you define abortion as prenatal care. The purpose of amniocentesis is to identify genetic defects.
We've been called by the county several times to counsel parents who have had amniocentesis and heard the words "Down syndrome." The doctor's advice is always abort, abort, abort. The doctor is in full-blown damage control: the parents hear the worst possible case--how the child will have a damaged heart, damaged lungs, will require open-heart surgery within weeks, will live less than 5 years. They hear about mental retardation and the likelihood of spinal injury and the meager prospects for a "meaningful life." The "emotional preparation" they get from the doctor is a combination snow job and horror story.
What the doctor doesn't tell you is the million and one things that make Downs kids unique. That they have "loose ligaments" that make them the stretchiest and snuggliest kids in the world. (Daughter #3 crosses her legs Indian-style in front of her pillow, then bends forward onto her pillow and falls asleep--if you don't have Downs, you'll permanently injure yourself. This is how they take naps.) That there is something mysterious--something mystical--about Downs kids and animals. We have off-the-racetrack Thoroughbreds, and they're tough for experienced horse people to handle--but they'll stand for Annie, and docilely stand while she holds them on leads.
Is every obstetrician in America needlessly, hopelessly, cruel? No--but every obstetrician in America is in, by far, the most expensive medical specialty due to the crushing liability premiums they pay. If there is any possibility of any kind of problem they have a built-in incentive to encourage--to the point of a really hard-sell--abortion. That's why they push amniocentesis--and if you refuse amniocentesis, they will haul out legal forms and insist that both you and your husband sign waivers of any right to sue.
The reason I think the article conveys the view that children are now disposable commodities is that the author never even suggests that having a child with Down syndrome might not be a bad thing. Instead the fact that two kids with Downs were born is written as a failure, as a breakdown of the government system, and as a reason to call for a new "reference" program against which all other such programs will be compared.
I'm--obviously, right?--close to the subject. So perhaps I'm quick to hear the echoes of Peter Singer's "end the suffering" (by which he means, "off the imperfect") palaver. Down syndrome represents tragedy and suffering: suffering is bad; thus, end Down syndrome. (Singer says this with more or less those words.)
I'm not going to say that Down syndrome is completely without suffering. In fact, Daughter #3 is still up (it's 11:12 pm) telling knock-knock jokes, way past her bed time. So there's going to be a little suffering on her bottom if she's not in bed in about thirty seconds....
I'm at a client's this afternoon for a meeting. When I'm done I'll go home to my wife and three daughters. Daughter #3 has Down syndrome.
There is no such thing as impartial journalism--the words a writer uses color the facts (and opinions) that he or she presents. In an article about a simple date validation problem the writer--and the hospital--manage to convey the idea that this simple computer bug is a catastrophe. After all--two children were born with Down syndrome.
Some readers might miss a point that isn't adequately made in the article: the computer program did not tell the mother whether or not the baby had Down syndrome--all it did was some simple calculation based on age (that's about the only significant factor) and project a statistical risk for Downs. A woman in the high-risk group would be informed that she might wish to have amniocentesis performed--there is no indication (or reason to believe) that the two mothers would have agreed to have the test, or if they had the test they would choose to dispose of their babies.
I submit that there's no moral catastrophe. But this article is an obvious symptom of a serious moral disease: use technology to select characteristics we like in children, and to dispose of children we don't want. Great heavens! A child who might have an extra chromosome, or a child who might have a predisposition to red hair. Egad--a child who might not have a Y chromosome (that would be a girl, if you slept through biology). Nope--terminate her, we'll try again.
The moral issue here isn't the software bug. (The bug, IMHO, is not that big a deal--any Ob/Gyn knows the risk factors. The program strikes me as a boondoggle.) The moral issue is the tone of the article--the obvious belief of the writer that families have been injured by having their children.
I appreciate your advice--but I must disagree. The differences between SQL Server 6.5 and SQL Server 7.0 are substantial--and very significant. There are significant performance and feature improvements in SQL Server 7.0 (and 2000) that make a very compelling case for upgrading 6.5 installations to 7.0.
Don't let the version numbers mislead you--SQL Server 6.5 is the last version of the source code developed by Sybase and jointly marketed with Microsoft. When Microsoft and Sybase "divorced" back in the '90s MS set about creating a completely new database product. Because of contractual limitations they continued evolutionary development of SQL Server 6.0 and 6.5--while building the new product (7.0) and deploying it internally within Microsoft.
SQL Server 7.0 is really a 1.0 product. It is a complete, from-the-ground-up rewrite of SQL Server. And while a lot of 1.0 Microsoft products are pretty dreadful (well, okay, practically all 1.0 Microsoft products are dreadful), SQL Server 7.0 positively rocks.
For starters, SQL Server does not require a fixed disk partition anymore--so resizing your database is no big deal. (We typically configure them to auto-grow, so we don't have to spend a lot of time monitoring available space.) The query optimization is dramatically enhanced. In 6.5 and earlier (and most competitive databases) the query optimizer quits when you add a fourth table to an INNER JOIN. In 7.0 and higher the query optimizer is substantially more robust--you can create JOINs with dozens of tables, review the execution plan, provide optimizer hints (hint: don't--the optimizer is very smart), and really get a handle on exactly what's going on. For data warehouse applications the query optimizer and query performance in general--alone--make upgrading from 6.5 a very good idea.
Another compelling feature is scalability: 7.0 handles very large tables, including full-text indexing, without breathing hard. We do a lot of performance testing on our projects--we have found performance testing with SQL Server 7.0 to be difficult because the database generally handles requests faster than we can create them. It takes serious work to maintain multiple SQL Server 7.0 connections from a single test machine--and if we're using a pool manager (such as COM+) we can run test scripts from more than a dozen machines (simulating hundreds of users) and still share a single connection.
In short, performance of SQL Server 7.0 is extremely good.
SQL Server 2000 is also good stuff--in particular, I really like the new User-Defined Functions (a feature Oracle has had for years). But for solutions that have already been written for SQL Server 7.0 (that is, where we aren't going to do any new work, so UDFs aren't an issue) there's no compelling case to make the move.
Except Microsoft holding the "Software Assurance" gun to my head....
Forced upgrading: it isn't evil--but it is most certainly designed to generate licensing fees. Look at Microsoft's own words: "join the Software Assurance program or face substantially higher upgrade prices in the future."
SQL Server 2000 pricing: the 5-client license price is immaterial: this is a web app, so I have to buy the per-processor license. Charity pricing: we'll look into it, but we're going to host the solution--not Equi-Librium.
We're still a Microsoft shop--but Microsoft is forcing us to look at other options because of their recent pricing moves.
Like others, I'm a bit disturbed by the anonymous "case study" that was presented in this article. I'd feel a lot more comfortable knowing who the company is, and some third-party verification that such a change actually took place.
But there's no denying the central argument: Microsoft's licensing fees have dramatically jumped in price, and the terms of their licensing agreements have gotten substantially worse. Yesterday, for instance, I received an email from Microsoft regarding SQL Server licensing. In short, I have till October 1 to upgrade all of my SQL Server 7 licenses to SQL Server 2000--or I lose the right to to "upgrade" price for SQL Server 2000. If I choose to upgrade after October 1 I will have to pay the full retail price.
I'm a big believer in the concept of "don't fix what isn't broken." While the move from SQL Server 7.0 to SQL Server 2000 isn't a big deal (at least for our SS7 applications) I see little reason to spend bucks upgrading server databases that don't need to be changed. But if I need to migrate those down the road, I'll have to pay substantially higher fees--the pay-me-now-or-pay-me-later demand from Microsoft just infuriates me.
But the licensing problem gets worse. Microsoft has dramatically raised their prices and dramatically restricted their terms. Case in point: we're starting to develop a project for a small startup non-profit organization. This is a group that does physical therapy on horseback for handicapped kids--they used to be part of Easter Seals, but Easter Seals has dropped them. (Long, sad story.) They're on their own, and they need to get organized. We want to help them (we're working pro bono publico) and we're recommending a "virtual office" concept. Don't build/buy/rent an office building: instead, let volunteers and paid staff function from home. Manage the office functions in a web application, handle the phones with call forwarding and related telephony stuff, and so forth--it's the 21st century, and there's lots of cool things we can do to hold costs down so program funds can be focused on kids and horses.
Sounds great, right? Except--we run right smack into Microsoft licensing. We're a Microsoft shop--and part of the benefit of doing pro bono projects like this is the hands-on experience we get with new development tools. This would be the perfect project for Microsoft's dot-Net technologies. That is, until we go live--and have to pay $2500 per processor for the server license for the OS, and another $2500 per processor for the SQL Server 2000 license. I'm entirely willing to develop the site for Equi-Librium pro bono--I am also willing to pay Microsoft a reasonable fee for the software we'll use. But five thousand U.S. currency one-dollar simolians is most definitely not a reasonable fee.
So this lets-all-get-experience project may well get done with PHP, PostgreSQL, and FreeBSD. And when we're done we'll have experience with a bunch of non-Microsoft tools, and we may have a different answer for clients who want scaleable applications but can't (or don't want to) pay Microsoft's fees.
Despite the propaganda, Microsoft didn't win the PC wars by skullduggery or deceit. They won by targetting the "influential end user" (their words) and providing lots of information. Software consultants are precisely the kind of people that Microsoft has depended upon, and we've been a very loyal Microsoft shop. We've benefitted enormously from the Microsoft Developer Network program, and we've steered a lot of clients to Microsoft-based solutions (and thus Microsoft operating systems) over the years. But Microsoft's pricing, and licensing, and upgrade policies have us--among the most loyal of Microsoft loyalists--actively questioning our relationship to them.
The world leader in the production of liquid hydrogen is Air Products & Chemicals. Their website includes information on how they produce liquid hydrogen, and current research they are doing on powering automobiles with hydrogen.
First, hydrogen is rarely produced by electrolysis--it's cheaper to use a reformer to extract it from waste gas at a petroleum refinery.
Second, there are two proposed methods of powering fuel cells in cars with hydrogen. One way is to separate the hydrogen from gasoline (or propane) in the vehicle. This is less efficient, but is simpler: you don't have to replace the gas station infrastructure. The other route is to ship and store liquid hydrogen, and go through the hassle of replacing the gas station infrastructure.
There are a lot of benefits of liquid hydrogen. There's lots of power there--but nobody should forget that liquid hydrogen is what sends the space shuttle blasting into space. While the explosion risk is real, the more likely risk is the extreme temperatures: liquid hydrogen boils at more than 400 degrees (F) below zero. If a little bit of liquid splashes on you, you can lose a limb.
This is yet another example of why we should require licenses to use computers. Because that way we would not be pestered with idiots like Judge Rosenbaum and silly notions like the "cyber time-out."
This sounds great. And I'd bet that this will dramatically improve Judge Rosenbaum's standing as a with-it, 21st-century judge. No doubt he'll be assigned the next DMCA-related case to surface in his circuit, and he'll be asked to speak on this issue at state bar conventions across the Midwest.
This would be a catastrophe. This lunacy must be stopped before it gains the slightest credibility in any circles, anywhere. (And no, I am not kidding.)
Example #1: Quick quiz: what's been the big computer story of the week? Right--the SirCam virus. Well, lessee. Suppose you're the network sysadmin for the U.S. Court of Appeals in Minneapolis. You have been infected by the SirCam virus, which is wreaking havoc on your email system (and sending random files from your users desktops all over the Internet). How can you stop it?
"That's a no-brainer," you say. "I just identify the infected machines, isolate them, and remove the virus." Bzzzzt! Wrong! You see--you can't remove that virus from that machine. It's the computer used by a moron circuit court judge who has propounded the theory of the "Cyber Time-Out"--72-hour notice of an intent to search the computer, in which you must specify the exact files you intend to review. (More on that delirious bit of nonsense below.) So for the next 72 hours, after you have identified that the problem is Judge Rosenbaum, after you have identified the specific files that are causing the virus, after you have jumped through the hoops that define "proper notice" (what? he's on vacation? with no phone number?) and after he has had recourse through the courts to prevent that search, you finally get the chance to address the virus.
And what, pray tell, do you do if the yutz decides to get really stupid and insist that he won't let you search the PC, because he doesn't think he has a virus. And what happens if he manages to convince some lawyer and/or a judge to agree with him, and gets an injunction against you?
Example #2:
You are the Vice President and Legal Counsel for a major corporation. Your counterpart at a competitor calls you, and follows up with a document sent by messenger. One of your sales managers has been negotiating for a position at your competitor, and has gratuitously offered extremely confidential information as a show of his enthusiasm for his new employer. (You might think that the competitor would say, "eureka! we have the secret plans!" but it isn't true. The legal consequences of getting caught are horrendous [and can include jail time]. Standard corporate practice is to return competitor secrets as quickly as possible, using publicly-documented methods.)
What do you do? You call the network admins and tell them that you want the bozo's network passwords changed immediately, and you want his machine seized. Who knows what other corporate secrets this guy has handed out?
Bzzzt! Sorry! The bozo in question has a lawyer, and the lawyer has been reading The Green Bag. And the lawyer has read this cockamamie theory about a "cyber time-out" that requires you to a) notify the employee about a search 72 hours in advance; and b) specify the exact files you wish to view. The "Rosenbaum Rule" (coming soon, to a courtroom near you) explicitly frowns on general searches--you can't just go fishing on the fellow's hard drive to see if he's doing something nefarious.
Rosenbaum's Tautology
Beyond the practical problems that I have raised above, Judge Rosenbaum's proposed "cyber time-out" includes a "reasonable" provision that effectively prevents any search of an employee's hard drive at all. Rosenbaum specifies two (really three) tests:
1. The employee must be notified 72 hours in advance;
1a. The employee must be properly notified (and what constitutes proper notice will be litigated for years); and
2. The employer must specify which specific files are to be searched.
That's a tautology: you can't search the hard drive unless you know the names of the specific file you're looking for; and you can't know the specific file you're looking for unless you search the hard drive. Think of the SirCam virus again (or just snooping in the employee's email). Lots of email clients (including Microsoft Outlook, the most commonly-used MUA) permit you to specify the name of the file where mail is stored. If the user changes the file name from the default (say, to "porn_drugs_terrorism.pst") the employer has no way of knowing the file name. And hence cannot properly inform the employee of a search--so the employee cannot be searched.
Is Rosenbaum that dumb?
Ask yourself. Is Judge Rosenbaum really so stupid as to not realize that his oh-so-reasonable "cyber time-out" effectively prevents employers from searching employee hard drives at all? I honestly don't think so. Lawyers get through law school by learning to carefully understand the meaning and implication of every word: and to write contracts (and legal journal articles) that carefully exploit the full meaning of each word. Rosenbaum isn't just a lawyer--he's a judge. He isn't just a judge, he is a federal judge; and he isn't just a federal judge, he is an appellate court judge. He didn't just write this article on the back of an envelope--he wrote it for a legal journal, hoping to promote a new legal theory. His clever little tautology is intentional: you can't search the hard drive unless you know the file name. And you can't know the file name unless you search the drive. (Question: what's the file name on a boot track virus?)
Bottom line:
This is a really, really, really bad idea.
Since when does the first amendment give the right to anonymous speech?
One need look no further than the framers of the Constitution to realize that the forms of expression protected by the First Amendment specifically included anonymous speech. "Pamphlets"--short tracts akin to today's Op-Ed essays--were a widely read form of communication in 18th century England and America. And those pamphlets were, in the main, written anonymously or pseudonomously. Samuel Adams was a prolific and sometimes vitriolic pamphleteer--it was his rabble-rousing pamphlets that helped foment the Boston Tea Party. Thomas Jefferson was another well-known pamphleteer; Ben Franklin wrote (and printed) many pamphlets, as well as producing an anonymous periodical known as "Poor Richard's Almanac." In a similar manner, anonymous pamphlets were a common form of political expression in England. The Hanover kings did not tolerate dissent--they had firm sedition laws, and people were jailed (or transported to America and later Australia) for publicly criticizing the government or the King.
Did you ever wonder why the Declaration of Independence is such a significant document? It isn't because it is particularly eloquent (though it is); or that it specifies the reasons for declaring independence (though it does). Think about it: the Declaration of Independence is revered in the U.S. (and around the world) as a cornerstone of democracy and freedom. But--the Declaration of Independence has no force of law in the United States. To the contrary: the U.S. Constitution specifically rejects the notion that "each man is endowed by his Creator with certain inalienable rights, among these life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." The Constitution, instead, reserves that to white men--"negro" slaves had no rights, and were only counted as worth 60% of a white man for purposes of the census. So what made the Declaration of Independence a big deal?
What made it a big deal was that it specifically maligned the King in explicit sedition--and it was signed. The revolutionary sentiments of nameless, anonymous "patriots" were inflammatory--the public statement of the criminal acts of the King (the "charges against the King" is the section of the Declaration of Independence that you typically don't read in high school), signed by the leading men of the colonies, meant an open break with England. That the Declaration was not anonymous is precisely why it is significant.
Still don't believe me? Note the Federalist Papers--most of them were unsigned.
I had a friend and sometime colleague join my little firm. Only one problem: he lived in New York City, and we're in the suburbs of Wind Gap, Pennsylvania. And...he truly believes that he's a better code when he's buck naked.
And oh, yeah--Charlie is a little over the optimal weight for his size. By, um, oh, well--quite a bit.
We said, "trust us--we'll never adopt video-conferencing" and made a mental note to never discuss wardrobe choices when we'd have our daily chats on the phone. When he'd come out to visit every month or so he'd always be respectably dressed. And we just carefully avoided the subject of what he wore when he was at working at home alone.
Two points for you to ponder: he's now a senior programmer at a major American television network; and he's an avid SlashDot reader.
OK. Then show me a Linux distribution developed in Africa or India.
How about Brazil? Linux Brazil is a southern hemisphere distro, and reportedly growing in popularity by leaps and bounds. Note that there are few Portugese-speaking developers on the Debian team--maybe because that's because they're working on a Portugese distro!
You might also look at this SlashDot article, declaring that Linux will be proclaimed the "official OS" of the People's Republic of China. For more third-world Linux you can view sites from Indonesia, Malaysia, and Zaire.
And, while I'm at it, you might view this article from SlashDot describing the Mexican Federal District's adoption of Linux. Mexico City, of course, is not south of the Equator--but most people still lump Mexico into the Third World.
It also forces companies by law to reveal passwords, keys, codes, cryptographic and steganographic methods used to protect information.
This is more than just comic stupidity. This appears to be the Aussie Liberals doing their darndest to get right smack into the same disputes that the EU and the US are having over data and privacy rights. Think about the implications this has for corporations that have connected Aussie offices to the corporate WAN. If having an Aussie office means you have to give up all hope of corporate security to the Aussie cyber cops, you're faced two options. Option 1: bet your company's IT strategy on the dubious notion that the Aussie cyber cops are smarter and/or more reliable than the morons who wrote this bit of lunacy; or disconnect the Aussie office from the WAN.
And funny thing! If that's what happens, doesn't that all of a sudden cripple the Aussie office, and give the local competition a big edge?
If the Aussies say that they're entitled to hack into the network, wherever the network takes them, they're fomenting a trade war. If they say that they're only interested in data stored in Australia, they're just going to clobber IT jobs in Australia, because every multinational will move data and jobs offshore.
When will governments learn? One of the reasons we buy door locks is to protect ourselves from the police.
I'm a GIS developer, so I'm just as happy to geocode data points and map them as anybody. Party on, you geo-coding dudes! But the "center" you have defined assumes that you're traveling "as the crow flies"--and (pardon the old joke) that's only useful if you're a crow. If you're really serious about coming up with a logically-derived meeting location, central to as many people as possible, I'd suggest a slightly different method.
First, identify major international airports in the areas where you have Debian developers.
Map those points, and then identify (for each Debian developer) the two or three closest airports. (For developers in the more remote regions of the world you might need to just deal with the one choice they have.)
Then identify a dozen or so centrally-located international airports. Don't immediately pick Heathrow, DeGaulle, and JFK! In particular, consider Shannon (Ireland) and Anchorage (Alaska)--both see a lot of air traffic from very long distance flights, and have an amazing number of connections to/from practically anywhere.
Then identify median airfares from airports to these potential central locations. I suspect that you'll find that airfares in Europe are higher than fares in the U.S., and fares south of the equator are higher than fares to the north. This should "tilt" the scales toward a European location.
I'd bet that this wouldn't take that long to figure out. You've probably only got 20-25 airports to check, and using any of the travel sites you can shop for fares in very little time. You're not going to come up with a single solution: but you're going to narrow your list down rapidly to just a few choices--you can then consider other factors (how expensive hotel, food, and rental car expenses will be; costs for conference organizers to bring keynote speakers [since the conference pays for those], etc.; whether suitable space for the conference is available on your dates) and make your choice.
And, oh, yeah--where does everybody want to junket to next year? Even if Shannon, Ireland is the ideal location, you can't have the conference there every year....
There isn't going to be a Third World War. And the Internet is the reason why. When the masses can--at trivial expense--discover what they choose from wherever they choose to find it, the power of governments (including those spouting the rhetoric of Lenin and Engels) is demonstrably weakened. The Internet really does bring "power to the people."
Power to the people. Right on!
But the deficiencies of Lenin and Engels are sort of off-topic, so let's rein in our political diatribes just a bit and look at a slightly different point: you're making a whopping great logical mistake. Just because 90% of the Debian developers live north of the equator doesn't prove that the "billions upon billions of...unwashed masses" don't have access to the Internet. Note that the concentrations of Debian developers are also heavily distributed toward parts of the world where most educated people speak English (with the notable exception of India). You're also assuming that Debian developers are evenly distributed across the Internet--but there's nothing to prove that's true.
Analogy: what results would we conclude by doing this same pseudo-analysis of the FetchMail developers? I'd bet we'd discover that they're disproportionately close to Chester County, Pennsylvania, and that lots of them own guns. Why? Because ESR lives in Chester County, Pa., and is something of a gun nut. Developer communities tend to be social communities--so if you're a pistol-packin' programmer, you're likely to be among friends on the FetchMail project. That does not mean that Internet programmers in general, Mail subsystem programmers in particular, or even American programmers are disproportionately armed. It's a self-selected cluster, and you can't draw valid conclusions from the traits of self-selected clusters.
Of course "super voters" represent a special interest. These people are the most die-hard activitsts there are, and only rarely do activists join a political party for the sake of the party. People vote because something motivates them to.
With respect, I disagree. There are activists in any election, but only rarely are they Super Voters. Activists, particularly the Christian Right activists, only tend to show up at the polls when they are animated by a particular issue. They tend to not be Super Voters--SVs vote in every single election, rain or shine.
Case in point: Mario Andretti. He lives in our township, and he is a gold-plated Super Voter. He votes in every election, every year, no matter what. He has voted by absentee ballot from Indy in a completely uncontested municipal primary. He (and his entire family) vote absolutely every time. Mario's not an "activist" by most definitions. Yes--he'll lend his name to a Republican party fundraiser every now and again--but typically for a candidate that he's known for years, rather than out of ideological or political loyalty.
The Super Voters, in my experience, are good, old-fashioned patriots. Real believers in the electoral process, people who view voting as their civic duty, and who will cheerfully mouth the words "civic duty" without a hint of sarcasm or embarassment. A lot of them are naturalized citizens, or first- or second-generation Americans. A *lot* of them are vets. You see a lot of them at the Memorial Day parade, you see a lot of them at the fire company July 4th picnic.
Twenty years ago I viewed them as old codgers with a simplistic view of the world and not enough to do. Today I think they're a lot more important--and their views are more important--than I used to give them credit for. Even if I agree with the Christian Right agenda (at least most of the time) these are the people whom I most respect.
Only question is... Does this create a political elite in the voting pool? In other words, do these "Super Voters" represent a special interest that has a lock on the power to get politicians into office, or is it just the apathy of everyone else that makes catering to them so effective?
No--if anything, this moves power away from the political elite. This is the ultimate grass-roots campaign: no consultants, no pollsters, no "positioning", no "image advisors." Just a guy whose on the school board who thinks the current state rep is a jerk, calling to ask for your vote. And calling back to mention that he'd talked to some other veterans, and now he understands why getting funding for the VA hospital expansion is such a worthwhile thing, and so forth.
I can't point to statistical evidence that N phone calls increases voter turnout by Y--but I have plenty of anecdotal evidence. After the second or third phone call, those Super Voters really feel special. They start to view themselves as part of the campaign. And since they're so interested in politics (which is why they vote in every election) they tend to be opinion leaders--they influence other people. Get a few of these people, get them to really understand who you are and why you're running, and you have a powerful political force.
We're getting off-topic, but there's a larger conversation to be had here. Everybody thinks that "special-interest money" is a bad thing, especially the influence that special-interest money had in the last presidential race. If primary delegates and presidential electors were selected by congressional district (as opposed to "winner takes all") this kind of I'm-calling-to-ask-for-your-vote approach would be incredibly effective. You'd have to spend unbelievable amounts of money to overwhelm the grass-roots communication methods of thousands of local leaders who are routinely talking to their constituents. I'm biased--but I think that would be a positive thing for the nation as a whole.
Okay--I'll confess. Although I've been working with computers and networks since 1983, I'm not a real geek. I've never read anything by Robert Heinlein. So I'm not familiar with the book "Farleyfile".
But I am very familiar with a very successful political strategy that combines two database methods to produce a very, very effective (and inexpensive) campaign. And it sounds very similar to what you describe. Here's how it works:
Every state requires some government entity (the county in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Illinois, don't know about other states) to maintain voter registration records. For purposes of purging records of inactive voters (and for double-checking when there are allegations of vote fraud) the county maintains records of which elections you have voted in during the past N years. So in Pennsylvania, for instance, the county keeps track of the past 8 elections (primary and general in each of the past 4 years). That data is a matter of public record: along with the voter's date of birth, residence, and political party. (Pennsylvania is a "closed primary" state: you have to register as a member of a political party, and you can only vote in that party's primary election. You can't "choose your ballot" as you can in some other states.)
When you review this data, it does not take you long to recognize some patterns (which, ex post facto, seem obvious): a lot of people only vote in the presidential general election. A lot of people only vote in the congressional general elections (1998, 2002, etc.). Relatively few vote in "off-year" general elections (1999, 2001, 2003), and practically nobody votes in off-year primaries. That much is reasonably obvious.
But oh--when you look at who votes in off-year primaries, the lightbulb comes on. These people--to a person--are the diehards. They vote in every single election, and they have voted in every single election since they were eligible to vote. (And they know what year it was that the voting age dropped from 21 to 18.) The ultimate test of political junkihood is this: "can you name the last three losing vice-presidential candidates?" Most of these voters can.
Key point:These voters are extremely influential. They like politics, they talk politics, and if they get excited about somebody they will shape voter opinions. With the slightest motivation/provocation they can bring half a dozen relatives and/or friends to the polls with them. When politicians prate about "grass-roots" support, these are the people they're talking about.
So step #1 is to identify the Super Voter. Step #2 is to send a dozen volunteers through the phone books (you can hire firms to do this as well) to associate a phone number with every single Super Voter (that is, Super Voters in your party) on the list. Step #3 is simple: sit the candidate down at the phone in front of a computer with a contact manager (like Act! or any similar tool). Have the candidate--personally--call every single voter. And have the candidate keep notes, in the contact manager, of every single conversation. Between the time you file petitions at the county registrar's office in February and the primary in May, the candidate should have spoken to every single Super Voter twice. Between the primary and the general election, the candidate should speak to every single Super Voter another 3 times. Each time, the candidate should make notes of the conversation. Whenever possible, the candidate should quickly respond to any need or problem the voter is having.
The results? The first time I saw this used, the candidate was a neophyte: he'd been on the school board, and was running for state representative. He did practically no advertising--but he called every Super Voter in the district two or three times before the primary: there were whole voting districts where he won 100% of the vote. In the general election he faced an 8-term incumbent--and spent essentially zero on advertising. His opponent strolled through the campaign, and was actually on TV (ostensibly to accept congratulations) when he discovered that he'd been beaten.
As a gimmick, this is terrific. But it's more than that: After the election my candidate kept right on calling. He called the super voter list to thank them for their support; he calls newly-registered voters to encourage them to come out to vote; and he calls his lists several times per year. It was so effective that he was unopposed in the next 3 or 4 elections.
Is using a database in this way a bad thing? I don't think so. The end result is that the voters got to recognize their state rep's voice on the phone--and the state rep talked to people across his district, one-on-one, several times a year.
A politician actually calling up his constituents and listening to them. Now that's a scary idea....
Uh...did anybody actually read the article? In particular, did anybody read the second paragraph? And, perhaps, think about exactly what it says? Here is it again, just to save you the hassle of linking back to ZDNet:
StarOffice, Sun's open source productivity application suite that includes word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, and database applications for the Solaris, Windows and Linux platforms, would replace Applix on more than 10,000 of DISA's Unix workstations at 600 client organizations worldwide, said Susan Grabau, the product line manager for StarOffice.
The phrase that everybody seems to have missed here is "...would replace Applix on more than 10,000 of DISA's Unix workstations at 600 client organizations worldwide...."
Well, gosh. So what does this mean? It is kind of a stretch to say that this is a win for Sun vs. Microsoft--Microsoft doesn't sell Office for Unix workstations. You could even view this as a win for Microsoft--now 10-25,000 DISA Unix workstations can read/write Office file formats. Which would seem to more permanently entrench Microsoft at the Dept. of Defense.
My point isn't to be a Microsoft apologist, or to denegrate Sun. My point is that it seems we're all busy cheering about this wonderful event--and practically nobody has read this critically to see what this article really amounts to. Here's my take on it:
The article cites two obviously linked sources: a Sun sales exec and the DISA counterpart. Which is a surefire indication that this article is based on a Sun press release.
The article trumpets that the government has "adopted" up to 25,000 copies of StarOffice--and emphasizes that all these copies of StarOffice won't cost a thing.
The article mentions, lower down, that in fact the government is only installing 10,000 copies. The 25,000 number is an "upper bound" for the contract.
The article stuffs the notion that while it won't cost anything to install these copies, the DISA is currently paying a substantial amount of money to Sun for support--presumably of Applix. Those support contracts will continue--and will continue to provide a revenue stream to Sun.
In other words, the DISA is replacing 10,000 existing copies of Applix with StarOffice, under the terms of existing support contracts. Which is to say, this is a software upgrade.
When you see an article like this, you really, really have to view it critically. A single-source article (in this case, two obviously related sources) is almost always based on a press release--and lots of the "news" you read consists of PR plants. (Generally a lot more sophisticated than this one--but PR plants nonetheless.) Sun did not magnanimously offer to remove 10,000 copies of Applix in order to promote the GPL among the Defense Department. What Sun wanted to do (and there is significant bucks behind this) is to continue an existing Defense Department contract for software support. Sun isn't working on StarOffice for free--it keeps Sun in the position as the incumbent supplier of Unix software, and helps Sun sell Sun hardware too. And that's Sun's bottom line: they're a hardware vendor, and they're out to sell hardware.
A few years back I was fuming about the horrendous inefficiency of IBM's DB2 product running on the AS/400. A colleague reminded me of an important truth: IBM is in the hardware business--so they have no incentive at all to write a faster, more efficient database solution. Sun (or Compaq, or Intel, or Transmeta) is in the same position--at the end of the day, they want to sell you hardware. You can say the same thing about Microsoft: they're in the OS business. They'll prate about their wonderful vision for this, and their glorious plans for that--but at the end of the day they want to sell you tools that--what a surprise!--require their OS. If you saw a single-source article on ZDNet, quoting a Microsoft sales exec gloating about providing 10,000 "free" copies of MSN Instant Messaging to the DISA, you shouldn't think of this as a "win" for Microsoft, or a "loss" for Sun or the GPL. You should think instead, that what really happened was that Microsoft "gave" the DISA 10,000 pieces of software that require a Microsoft OS to be installed on the box.
At the end of the day, Sun is out to sell hardware, just as Microsoft is out to sell an OS, Intel is out to sell Pentium or Itanium chips, and Frito-Lay is out to sell potato chips. And every time they do a deal with big numbers--like this one--it gives them a chance to issue a press release that they can spin as a "success", a win for the little guy, a bonus for the beleaguered taxpayer, etc. In truth, its just another software upgrade, an extension of a contract, and nothing more.
When you see Dubya wearing a FreeBSD t-shirt, OTOH....
Regardless of whether the amateur Egyptologists are correct or not, this is a significant piece of work for reasons only alluded to at the bottom of the DailyNews article: using kites affords low-tech (or no-tech) societies the means to achieve substantial power. They demonstrated substantial lift capacity in the Mojave Desert--but think about applying that lift to a lever, or using blocks (systems of pulleys) to lift, pry, or drag.
That's substantially more important than most/. readers might think. While we're living in a high-tech world that seems to only be getting that much more sophisticated, there are vast parts of the world that are still farming, building, and lifting with oxen. The Rodale Institute International Program has worked to get international food organizations away from a North American mindset that focuses on capital-intensive (and diesel-fuel-intensive) methods with big tractors and combines. Instead, they've applied a lot of what's been learned about farm implements to traditional means of propulsion (oxen). They're making a lot of headway--showing that a lot can be accomplished using low-tech methods.
This nice and neatly fits into the same scheme. Nobody's hoisting obelisks these days--but if you're building a road in Senegal, or upstream from the Three Gorges Dam, you may have a multi-ton rock to move. Instead of tackling the problem of finding earth movers big enough to solve your problem, you can drag it out of the way with kites. A vastly simpler, less expensive, more feasible solution.
All kidding aside, Microsoft does have a mapping product: Microsoft MapPoint 2002. And as somebody in the business, I can tell you three things:
It absolutely rocks
It drops the price of high-end map servers by orders (plural) of magnitude
Oh yeah--contrary to other posts, it is not based on public domain data.
The first version of MapPoint (2001) was nice--but this version is substantially better, at least from a programmer's perspective. The object model exposed by the product is substantially richer--doing something like reverse geo-coding (which is very complicated using MapQuest's server engine) is a breeze.
Pricing: With regard and respect to enthusiasts for the GPL, Microsoft is by no means the bad guy when it comes to software pricing. Go price any kind of small-market toolset--the prices can be hideous. For example, GIS mapping systems: the big guns come from ESRI, MapInfo, and MapQuest (now part of AOL). You license the server software--and then you license data (typically on a quarterly subscription). (Data usually comes from GDT or NavTech.) How much? We're paying an annual subscription fee (for the server license and the data) of roughly $40,000. And that doesn't include any Canadian data.
Yeah, you read it right. Forty thousand bucks per year.
And here comes Microsoft with MapPoint 2002. Better data, substantially easier programming model, more reliable tool--for $295. Not $295/year--just $295.
That's not all we're going to end up paying. Microsoft themselves doesn't seem to have figured out that you can use MapPoint in a server setting--we're inquiring about what a server license will cost. But we're confident that it will be substantially less than we're paying presently. (The client, who actually has to foot this bill, is late for a meeting here. That's why I'm cruising/. at midday.)
Public domain data: Most GIS systems focusing on the United States use street data based on the public-domain TIGR data files. You can download the TIGR data from a number of sources--but don't get your hopes up. The data isn't very good. Any commercial GIS system will use data that has been "enhanced" by GDT, NavTech, or another data provider--to make sure, for instance, that Main Street in your town actually runs from 41.44323N/-75.3323W to 41.87332N/-75.40012W. The original TIGR files were created by the Census Bureau--to be sure that every house was enumerated. They didn't plan on people using GPS units to compare with the maps, and basing life-or-death decisions on their data. When municipalities began developing 911 emergency response systems (and literally making life-or-death decisions based on the map data) the flaws in the TIGR data became all-too-apparent. So third-party providers like GDT exist to compare the map data with satellite imagery and aerial photographs to make sure that map objects are correctly placed. MapPoint, like any other commercial GIS tool, is based on third-party-enhanced data from GDT and NavTech.
If you're doing GIS work, this is a tool that's definitely worth looking into.
I've been a freelance writer for years--and I'm surprised that the Supreme Court regards this case as being worth the trouble to even review. Every publisher I've ever dealt with has paid me for "all rights" to an article--whether in the next issue of the magazine, in a reprint they sell to a vendor, or if (fat chance) they turn my article into a movie script. I've had articles reprinted in other languages, reprinted on CD-ROM, and published on websites. All I ever got paid for was the initial article.
Did I get ripped off? No--because that was the bargain. I write 3000 words on a given topic, I get paid a few bucks, and that's that. If the magazine publisher can figure out a way to distribute the article in a different form, and they can make a few extra bucks, that only gives them that much more incentive to ask me to write the next article.
Is this hypocrisy by the big media companies?
For the most part, I don't think so. When I sell an article I'm selling all rights to it--so the publisher can reproduce that content "in any form or by any means" (quote from actual contract) without paying me any additional compensation.
So what's the big deal? Frankly, I'd be positively floored if any publisher didn't essentially have the same contract--they buy all rights. I've written for half a dozen programming magazines, for "popular" magazines, and for a major children's magazine--every single one of them bought all rights. If my name were John Grisham or Stephen King my agent might be able to negotiate a better deal--but I'd be really, really surprised if better than 1% of freelance articles are bought on anything other than "all rights" terms.
Is this hypocrisy?
No--this isn't. When I buy a DVD or a music CD, I'm not buying all rights--I'm just buying the right to play the content on the DVD or CD. The media companies could (yeah, right) offer "any media" versions of the same content at a different price. Then if you wanted to convert the content to MPEG or some other format you could.
On the other hand...
What is blatantly hypocritical is the coming fight in Hollywood over residuals. Every time a TV episode, or a movie, or a commercial airs, the writers and the performers get paid a fee. For many actors residuals become a lifelong source of income--minor players in the 1970s mega-hit "M*A*S*H" continue to earn substantial income from reruns. The studios cry poor--they want to end residuals and pay on an "all rights" or "work-for-hire" basis. In other words, they want to buy creative content on an "all rights" basis; they want to sell that same creative content on a per-use basis. (They will not, for instance, sell "all rights" to, say, ER to your local TV station.) That's hypocrisy.
The GPS in the car simply records a time record of the travel path of the vehicle. This information is occasionally fed to local (or satellite) receivers scattered about. The information is then fed into an algorithm that calculates a monthly bill for moving violations, etc.
Your point is interesting. And, in fact, it can be implemented immediately, without GPS chips or GIS systems. It has been technically feasible, on some specific roads, for twenty years or more. I'm talking, of course, about toll tickets.
When you enter a toll highway that uses a ticket system (such as the Pennsylvania Turnpike) you get a mag-striped ticket that records the date and time you entered the turnpike, the weight of your vehicle, and where you entered. When you exit the turnpike the toll collector inserts your ticket into a mag stripe reader that checks where you entered, what your vehicle currently weighs (so truckers can't swap tickets to beat tolls), and how long you've been on the turnpike. The system can, with ease, determine how fast you have traveled between points A and B.
The toll highways have had the ability to do that for decades. With trasponder-based systems (like the EZ-Pass system in use from New York to Virginia) it can be even simpler--when a vehicle enters a highway its position is noted, along with the time, by a master server. Any device along the highway could send in a report of a specific vehicle at a specific location at a specific time--the server can do the math and determine if the vehicle has been speeding.
So why haven't the cops been all over this technology?
Because of an interesting quirk in the law. To paraphrase the National Rifle Association, cars don't break speed limit laws, people break speed limit laws. All that the computer, the transponders, or the toll tickets can prove is that the vehicle traveled at faster than the speed limit--they can't tell who was driving. You can't charge the car with speeding--you have to charge the driver.
There may yet come a day when we can do that. Several manufacturers now provide "smart keys" that identify the driver when inserted into the car's ignition. (This is a really cool feature--insert your keys, and the power seats, mirrors, etc. all move to your settings.) Replace the vehicle license tag with a transponder and you can tell who is driving the car. (The cops could argue, for instance, that the unique identification characteristics of the key constitute a "signature" under the Digital Signature Act.)
That, frankly, is substantially more feasible to implement that a GIS-enabled Big Brother system. Several municipalities across America are presently installing photographic systems to catch people running red lights or speeding--they take your photograph through the windshield, and get your license plate simultaneously from behind. With that, and some legislation, they can charge you more or less by remote control. That can work--and doesn't require anything so mission-critical as on-vehicle speed governors driven by a colossal GIS system.
Slashdot Mirror
They still do:
Visual Basic
Hi!
Yeah, but...
Ten years ago you were considered to be unusually well-informed if you subscribed to two newspapers--even if those newspapers mostly regurgitated national content from the Associated Press wire. Nowadays it is a trivial exercise to cross-reference stories in "new media" news sites (CNet, ZDNet) with traditional American print media (N.Y. Times, Wall St. Journal, Washington Post) as well as sites from overseas.
Here's a thought: how about a website, like SlashDot or Kuro5hin, that provides links to a variety of different angles on a given story. Pick a story or two per day and provide links (with a modicum of commentary) to coverage from a variety of sources.
Hmmm... A splendid idea to contemplate, and thus a good reason to procrastinate.
Hi!
Yes--there are unfortunate children without quality homes. I don't know if my brother and his wife considered adoption--but my brother and I grew up with a neighbor who was adopted (as a young teen), and we had several adopted kids when we were camp counselors. I'm certain they were aware of adoption as an option.
But while my sister-in-law's family has an inherited genetic condition, it is not an insurmountable obstacle. Yes--you might say, "gee--I don't want this genetic trait to continue." But think about that in the context of a family--how do you say to your brother (or your father), "I don't want to have any children like you." Kind of a tricky issue.
Er--ah, um. Actually, it was my wife who got pregnant. (Although she kept saying, "you did this to me!" all through labor....)
All jesting aside, I can't answer the question in the abstract. The question I can answer is "if you knew Daughter #3 would have Down syndrome, would you have aborted her?" The answer is a simple "no." When the doctor offered amniocentesis my wife refused. When the doctor more or less insisted, she refused. When the doctor suggested that she should return with me for "counseling" she asked if he thought she was incompetent--all amniocentesis does is give you the bad news. Since abortion was simply out of the question, she refused.
That said, Down syndrome is not, by any means, the worst possible disability. There are other trisomies (where there are three chromosomes in a "pair"); there is Tay-Sachs; there are other genetic defects; there is cerebral palsy. Handicapped kids frequently start in "early intervention" programs within weeks of birth--of the kids in Annie's first class fewer than half are alive nine years later. We know mothers and fathers with preschoolers that can't lift their heads off the floor--we know parents of "kids" who are in their twenties and still wearing diapers. None of them would "dispose" of their kids--none of them would give them away.
The closest I can come to answering your question is to tell you about my brother and sister-in-law. She comes from a family with a genetic condition that prevents the body from absorbing iodine--boys usually get it, girls usually carry it. If they have the disease they develop terrible rickets (bowing of the legs) and have to have a series of orthopedic operations through their growing years. When Dave and Suzanne married they had to face the question: do they have children or not? They have two daughters--and their second daughter (in a very rare circumstance) has the disease. Every summer they fly to St. Louis (he's in the Air Force, so every summer they're flying from somewhere new) for observation and study of her condition, and usually surgery to insert pins into her legs.
I think they made the right choice.
I wish that were true. I don't mean to flame you--before Annie was born I had that innocent view of the medical world as well. I daresay you have never been offered amniocentesis, or had a child born with a serious disability.
Let's start with some simple biology. Down syndrome happens at conception. My little girl doesn't have a birth defect--she has a genetic defect. Amniocentesis, as far as I know, doesn't tell you of any condition that can be helped with prenatal care. Unless you define abortion as prenatal care. The purpose of amniocentesis is to identify genetic defects.
We've been called by the county several times to counsel parents who have had amniocentesis and heard the words "Down syndrome." The doctor's advice is always abort, abort, abort. The doctor is in full-blown damage control: the parents hear the worst possible case--how the child will have a damaged heart, damaged lungs, will require open-heart surgery within weeks, will live less than 5 years. They hear about mental retardation and the likelihood of spinal injury and the meager prospects for a "meaningful life." The "emotional preparation" they get from the doctor is a combination snow job and horror story.
What the doctor doesn't tell you is the million and one things that make Downs kids unique. That they have "loose ligaments" that make them the stretchiest and snuggliest kids in the world. (Daughter #3 crosses her legs Indian-style in front of her pillow, then bends forward onto her pillow and falls asleep--if you don't have Downs, you'll permanently injure yourself. This is how they take naps.) That there is something mysterious--something mystical--about Downs kids and animals. We have off-the-racetrack Thoroughbreds, and they're tough for experienced horse people to handle--but they'll stand for Annie, and docilely stand while she holds them on leads.
Is every obstetrician in America needlessly, hopelessly, cruel? No--but every obstetrician in America is in, by far, the most expensive medical specialty due to the crushing liability premiums they pay. If there is any possibility of any kind of problem they have a built-in incentive to encourage--to the point of a really hard-sell--abortion. That's why they push amniocentesis--and if you refuse amniocentesis, they will haul out legal forms and insist that both you and your husband sign waivers of any right to sue.
The reason I think the article conveys the view that children are now disposable commodities is that the author never even suggests that having a child with Down syndrome might not be a bad thing. Instead the fact that two kids with Downs were born is written as a failure, as a breakdown of the government system, and as a reason to call for a new "reference" program against which all other such programs will be compared.
I'm--obviously, right?--close to the subject. So perhaps I'm quick to hear the echoes of Peter Singer's "end the suffering" (by which he means, "off the imperfect") palaver. Down syndrome represents tragedy and suffering: suffering is bad; thus, end Down syndrome. (Singer says this with more or less those words.)
I'm not going to say that Down syndrome is completely without suffering. In fact, Daughter #3 is still up (it's 11:12 pm) telling knock-knock jokes, way past her bed time. So there's going to be a little suffering on her bottom if she's not in bed in about thirty seconds....
This is just...sad.
I'm at a client's this afternoon for a meeting. When I'm done I'll go home to my wife and three daughters. Daughter #3 has Down syndrome.
There is no such thing as impartial journalism--the words a writer uses color the facts (and opinions) that he or she presents. In an article about a simple date validation problem the writer--and the hospital--manage to convey the idea that this simple computer bug is a catastrophe. After all--two children were born with Down syndrome.
Some readers might miss a point that isn't adequately made in the article: the computer program did not tell the mother whether or not the baby had Down syndrome--all it did was some simple calculation based on age (that's about the only significant factor) and project a statistical risk for Downs. A woman in the high-risk group would be informed that she might wish to have amniocentesis performed--there is no indication (or reason to believe) that the two mothers would have agreed to have the test, or if they had the test they would choose to dispose of their babies.
I submit that there's no moral catastrophe. But this article is an obvious symptom of a serious moral disease: use technology to select characteristics we like in children, and to dispose of children we don't want. Great heavens! A child who might have an extra chromosome, or a child who might have a predisposition to red hair. Egad--a child who might not have a Y chromosome (that would be a girl, if you slept through biology). Nope--terminate her, we'll try again.
The moral issue here isn't the software bug. (The bug, IMHO, is not that big a deal--any Ob/Gyn knows the risk factors. The program strikes me as a boondoggle.) The moral issue is the tone of the article--the obvious belief of the writer that families have been injured by having their children.
Hi!
I appreciate your advice--but I must disagree. The differences between SQL Server 6.5 and SQL Server 7.0 are substantial--and very significant. There are significant performance and feature improvements in SQL Server 7.0 (and 2000) that make a very compelling case for upgrading 6.5 installations to 7.0.
Don't let the version numbers mislead you--SQL Server 6.5 is the last version of the source code developed by Sybase and jointly marketed with Microsoft. When Microsoft and Sybase "divorced" back in the '90s MS set about creating a completely new database product. Because of contractual limitations they continued evolutionary development of SQL Server 6.0 and 6.5--while building the new product (7.0) and deploying it internally within Microsoft.
SQL Server 7.0 is really a 1.0 product. It is a complete, from-the-ground-up rewrite of SQL Server. And while a lot of 1.0 Microsoft products are pretty dreadful (well, okay, practically all 1.0 Microsoft products are dreadful), SQL Server 7.0 positively rocks.
For starters, SQL Server does not require a fixed disk partition anymore--so resizing your database is no big deal. (We typically configure them to auto-grow, so we don't have to spend a lot of time monitoring available space.) The query optimization is dramatically enhanced. In 6.5 and earlier (and most competitive databases) the query optimizer quits when you add a fourth table to an INNER JOIN. In 7.0 and higher the query optimizer is substantially more robust--you can create JOINs with dozens of tables, review the execution plan, provide optimizer hints (hint: don't--the optimizer is very smart), and really get a handle on exactly what's going on. For data warehouse applications the query optimizer and query performance in general--alone--make upgrading from 6.5 a very good idea.
Another compelling feature is scalability: 7.0 handles very large tables, including full-text indexing, without breathing hard. We do a lot of performance testing on our projects--we have found performance testing with SQL Server 7.0 to be difficult because the database generally handles requests faster than we can create them. It takes serious work to maintain multiple SQL Server 7.0 connections from a single test machine--and if we're using a pool manager (such as COM+) we can run test scripts from more than a dozen machines (simulating hundreds of users) and still share a single connection.
In short, performance of SQL Server 7.0 is extremely good.
SQL Server 2000 is also good stuff--in particular, I really like the new User-Defined Functions (a feature Oracle has had for years). But for solutions that have already been written for SQL Server 7.0 (that is, where we aren't going to do any new work, so UDFs aren't an issue) there's no compelling case to make the move.
Except Microsoft holding the "Software Assurance" gun to my head....
Hi!
Forced upgrading: it isn't evil--but it is most certainly designed to generate licensing fees. Look at Microsoft's own words: "join the Software Assurance program or face substantially higher upgrade prices in the future."
SQL Server 2000 pricing: the 5-client license price is immaterial: this is a web app, so I have to buy the per-processor license. Charity pricing: we'll look into it, but we're going to host the solution--not Equi-Librium.
We're still a Microsoft shop--but Microsoft is forcing us to look at other options because of their recent pricing moves.
Hi!
Like others, I'm a bit disturbed by the anonymous "case study" that was presented in this article. I'd feel a lot more comfortable knowing who the company is, and some third-party verification that such a change actually took place.
But there's no denying the central argument: Microsoft's licensing fees have dramatically jumped in price, and the terms of their licensing agreements have gotten substantially worse. Yesterday, for instance, I received an email from Microsoft regarding SQL Server licensing. In short, I have till October 1 to upgrade all of my SQL Server 7 licenses to SQL Server 2000--or I lose the right to to "upgrade" price for SQL Server 2000. If I choose to upgrade after October 1 I will have to pay the full retail price.
I'm a big believer in the concept of "don't fix what isn't broken." While the move from SQL Server 7.0 to SQL Server 2000 isn't a big deal (at least for our SS7 applications) I see little reason to spend bucks upgrading server databases that don't need to be changed. But if I need to migrate those down the road, I'll have to pay substantially higher fees--the pay-me-now-or-pay-me-later demand from Microsoft just infuriates me.
But the licensing problem gets worse. Microsoft has dramatically raised their prices and dramatically restricted their terms. Case in point: we're starting to develop a project for a small startup non-profit organization. This is a group that does physical therapy on horseback for handicapped kids--they used to be part of Easter Seals, but Easter Seals has dropped them. (Long, sad story.) They're on their own, and they need to get organized. We want to help them (we're working pro bono publico) and we're recommending a "virtual office" concept. Don't build/buy/rent an office building: instead, let volunteers and paid staff function from home. Manage the office functions in a web application, handle the phones with call forwarding and related telephony stuff, and so forth--it's the 21st century, and there's lots of cool things we can do to hold costs down so program funds can be focused on kids and horses.
Sounds great, right? Except--we run right smack into Microsoft licensing. We're a Microsoft shop--and part of the benefit of doing pro bono projects like this is the hands-on experience we get with new development tools. This would be the perfect project for Microsoft's dot-Net technologies. That is, until we go live--and have to pay $2500 per processor for the server license for the OS, and another $2500 per processor for the SQL Server 2000 license. I'm entirely willing to develop the site for Equi-Librium pro bono--I am also willing to pay Microsoft a reasonable fee for the software we'll use. But five thousand U.S. currency one-dollar simolians is most definitely not a reasonable fee.
So this lets-all-get-experience project may well get done with PHP, PostgreSQL, and FreeBSD. And when we're done we'll have experience with a bunch of non-Microsoft tools, and we may have a different answer for clients who want scaleable applications but can't (or don't want to) pay Microsoft's fees.
Despite the propaganda, Microsoft didn't win the PC wars by skullduggery or deceit. They won by targetting the "influential end user" (their words) and providing lots of information. Software consultants are precisely the kind of people that Microsoft has depended upon, and we've been a very loyal Microsoft shop. We've benefitted enormously from the Microsoft Developer Network program, and we've steered a lot of clients to Microsoft-based solutions (and thus Microsoft operating systems) over the years. But Microsoft's pricing, and licensing, and upgrade policies have us--among the most loyal of Microsoft loyalists--actively questioning our relationship to them.
John Murdoch
Wind Gap Technology Group
The world leader in the production of liquid hydrogen is Air Products & Chemicals. Their website includes information on how they produce liquid hydrogen, and current research they are doing on powering automobiles with hydrogen.
First, hydrogen is rarely produced by electrolysis--it's cheaper to use a reformer to extract it from waste gas at a petroleum refinery.
Second, there are two proposed methods of powering fuel cells in cars with hydrogen. One way is to separate the hydrogen from gasoline (or propane) in the vehicle. This is less efficient, but is simpler: you don't have to replace the gas station infrastructure. The other route is to ship and store liquid hydrogen, and go through the hassle of replacing the gas station infrastructure.
There are a lot of benefits of liquid hydrogen. There's lots of power there--but nobody should forget that liquid hydrogen is what sends the space shuttle blasting into space. While the explosion risk is real, the more likely risk is the extreme temperatures: liquid hydrogen boils at more than 400 degrees (F) below zero. If a little bit of liquid splashes on you, you can lose a limb.
This is yet another example of why we should require licenses to use computers. Because that way we would not be pestered with idiots like Judge Rosenbaum and silly notions like the "cyber time-out."
This sounds great. And I'd bet that this will dramatically improve Judge Rosenbaum's standing as a with-it, 21st-century judge. No doubt he'll be assigned the next DMCA-related case to surface in his circuit, and he'll be asked to speak on this issue at state bar conventions across the Midwest.
This would be a catastrophe. This lunacy must be stopped before it gains the slightest credibility in any circles, anywhere. (And no, I am not kidding.)
Example #1:
Quick quiz: what's been the big computer story of the week? Right--the SirCam virus. Well, lessee. Suppose you're the network sysadmin for the U.S. Court of Appeals in Minneapolis. You have been infected by the SirCam virus, which is wreaking havoc on your email system (and sending random files from your users desktops all over the Internet). How can you stop it?
"That's a no-brainer," you say. "I just identify the infected machines, isolate them, and remove the virus." Bzzzzt! Wrong! You see--you can't remove that virus from that machine. It's the computer used by a moron circuit court judge who has propounded the theory of the "Cyber Time-Out"--72-hour notice of an intent to search the computer, in which you must specify the exact files you intend to review. (More on that delirious bit of nonsense below.) So for the next 72 hours, after you have identified that the problem is Judge Rosenbaum, after you have identified the specific files that are causing the virus, after you have jumped through the hoops that define "proper notice" (what? he's on vacation? with no phone number?) and after he has had recourse through the courts to prevent that search, you finally get the chance to address the virus.
And what, pray tell, do you do if the yutz decides to get really stupid and insist that he won't let you search the PC, because he doesn't think he has a virus. And what happens if he manages to convince some lawyer and/or a judge to agree with him, and gets an injunction against you?
Example #2:
You are the Vice President and Legal Counsel for a major corporation. Your counterpart at a competitor calls you, and follows up with a document sent by messenger. One of your sales managers has been negotiating for a position at your competitor, and has gratuitously offered extremely confidential information as a show of his enthusiasm for his new employer. (You might think that the competitor would say, "eureka! we have the secret plans!" but it isn't true. The legal consequences of getting caught are horrendous [and can include jail time]. Standard corporate practice is to return competitor secrets as quickly as possible, using publicly-documented methods.)
What do you do? You call the network admins and tell them that you want the bozo's network passwords changed immediately, and you want his machine seized. Who knows what other corporate secrets this guy has handed out?
Bzzzt! Sorry! The bozo in question has a lawyer, and the lawyer has been reading The Green Bag. And the lawyer has read this cockamamie theory about a "cyber time-out" that requires you to a) notify the employee about a search 72 hours in advance; and b) specify the exact files you wish to view. The "Rosenbaum Rule" (coming soon, to a courtroom near you) explicitly frowns on general searches--you can't just go fishing on the fellow's hard drive to see if he's doing something nefarious.
Rosenbaum's Tautology
Beyond the practical problems that I have raised above, Judge Rosenbaum's proposed "cyber time-out" includes a "reasonable" provision that effectively prevents any search of an employee's hard drive at all. Rosenbaum specifies two (really three) tests:
1. The employee must be notified 72 hours in advance;
1a. The employee must be properly notified (and what constitutes proper notice will be litigated for years); and
2. The employer must specify which specific files are to be searched.
That's a tautology: you can't search the hard drive unless you know the names of the specific file you're looking for; and you can't know the specific file you're looking for unless you search the hard drive. Think of the SirCam virus again (or just snooping in the employee's email). Lots of email clients (including Microsoft Outlook, the most commonly-used MUA) permit you to specify the name of the file where mail is stored. If the user changes the file name from the default (say, to "porn_drugs_terrorism.pst") the employer has no way of knowing the file name. And hence cannot properly inform the employee of a search--so the employee cannot be searched.
Is Rosenbaum that dumb?
Ask yourself. Is Judge Rosenbaum really so stupid as to not realize that his oh-so-reasonable "cyber time-out" effectively prevents employers from searching employee hard drives at all? I honestly don't think so. Lawyers get through law school by learning to carefully understand the meaning and implication of every word: and to write contracts (and legal journal articles) that carefully exploit the full meaning of each word. Rosenbaum isn't just a lawyer--he's a judge. He isn't just a judge, he is a federal judge; and he isn't just a federal judge, he is an appellate court judge. He didn't just write this article on the back of an envelope--he wrote it for a legal journal, hoping to promote a new legal theory. His clever little tautology is intentional: you can't search the hard drive unless you know the file name. And you can't know the file name unless you search the drive. (Question: what's the file name on a boot track virus?)
Bottom line:
This is a really, really, really bad idea.
One need look no further than the framers of the Constitution to realize that the forms of expression protected by the First Amendment specifically included anonymous speech. "Pamphlets"--short tracts akin to today's Op-Ed essays--were a widely read form of communication in 18th century England and America. And those pamphlets were, in the main, written anonymously or pseudonomously. Samuel Adams was a prolific and sometimes vitriolic pamphleteer--it was his rabble-rousing pamphlets that helped foment the Boston Tea Party. Thomas Jefferson was another well-known pamphleteer; Ben Franklin wrote (and printed) many pamphlets, as well as producing an anonymous periodical known as "Poor Richard's Almanac." In a similar manner, anonymous pamphlets were a common form of political expression in England. The Hanover kings did not tolerate dissent--they had firm sedition laws, and people were jailed (or transported to America and later Australia) for publicly criticizing the government or the King.
Did you ever wonder why the Declaration of Independence is such a significant document? It isn't because it is particularly eloquent (though it is); or that it specifies the reasons for declaring independence (though it does). Think about it: the Declaration of Independence is revered in the U.S. (and around the world) as a cornerstone of democracy and freedom. But--the Declaration of Independence has no force of law in the United States. To the contrary: the U.S. Constitution specifically rejects the notion that "each man is endowed by his Creator with certain inalienable rights, among these life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." The Constitution, instead, reserves that to white men--"negro" slaves had no rights, and were only counted as worth 60% of a white man for purposes of the census. So what made the Declaration of Independence a big deal?
What made it a big deal was that it specifically maligned the King in explicit sedition--and it was signed. The revolutionary sentiments of nameless, anonymous "patriots" were inflammatory--the public statement of the criminal acts of the King (the "charges against the King" is the section of the Declaration of Independence that you typically don't read in high school), signed by the leading men of the colonies, meant an open break with England. That the Declaration was not anonymous is precisely why it is significant.
Still don't believe me? Note the Federalist Papers--most of them were unsigned.
No joke...
I had a friend and sometime colleague join my little firm. Only one problem: he lived in New York City, and we're in the suburbs of Wind Gap, Pennsylvania. And...he truly believes that he's a better code when he's buck naked.
And oh, yeah--Charlie is a little over the optimal weight for his size. By, um, oh, well--quite a bit.
We said, "trust us--we'll never adopt video-conferencing" and made a mental note to never discuss wardrobe choices when we'd have our daily chats on the phone. When he'd come out to visit every month or so he'd always be respectably dressed. And we just carefully avoided the subject of what he wore when he was at working at home alone.
Two points for you to ponder: he's now a senior programmer at a major American television network; and he's an avid SlashDot reader.
I am not making this up.
This is more than just comic stupidity. This appears to be the Aussie Liberals doing their darndest to get right smack into the same disputes that the EU and the US are having over data and privacy rights. Think about the implications this has for corporations that have connected Aussie offices to the corporate WAN. If having an Aussie office means you have to give up all hope of corporate security to the Aussie cyber cops, you're faced two options. Option 1: bet your company's IT strategy on the dubious notion that the Aussie cyber cops are smarter and/or more reliable than the morons who wrote this bit of lunacy; or disconnect the Aussie office from the WAN.
And funny thing! If that's what happens, doesn't that all of a sudden cripple the Aussie office, and give the local competition a big edge?
If the Aussies say that they're entitled to hack into the network, wherever the network takes them, they're fomenting a trade war. If they say that they're only interested in data stored in Australia, they're just going to clobber IT jobs in Australia, because every multinational will move data and jobs offshore.
When will governments learn? One of the reasons we buy door locks is to protect ourselves from the police.
Hi!
I'm a GIS developer, so I'm just as happy to geocode data points and map them as anybody. Party on, you geo-coding dudes! But the "center" you have defined assumes that you're traveling "as the crow flies"--and (pardon the old joke) that's only useful if you're a crow. If you're really serious about coming up with a logically-derived meeting location, central to as many people as possible, I'd suggest a slightly different method.
I'd bet that this wouldn't take that long to figure out. You've probably only got 20-25 airports to check, and using any of the travel sites you can shop for fares in very little time. You're not going to come up with a single solution: but you're going to narrow your list down rapidly to just a few choices--you can then consider other factors (how expensive hotel, food, and rental car expenses will be; costs for conference organizers to bring keynote speakers [since the conference pays for those], etc.; whether suitable space for the conference is available on your dates) and make your choice.
And, oh, yeah--where does everybody want to junket to next year? Even if Shannon, Ireland is the ideal location, you can't have the conference there every year....
Um, sorry....
There isn't going to be a Third World War. And the Internet is the reason why. When the masses can--at trivial expense--discover what they choose from wherever they choose to find it, the power of governments (including those spouting the rhetoric of Lenin and Engels) is demonstrably weakened. The Internet really does bring "power to the people."
Power to the people. Right on!
But the deficiencies of Lenin and Engels are sort of off-topic, so let's rein in our political diatribes just a bit and look at a slightly different point: you're making a whopping great logical mistake. Just because 90% of the Debian developers live north of the equator doesn't prove that the "billions upon billions of...unwashed masses" don't have access to the Internet. Note that the concentrations of Debian developers are also heavily distributed toward parts of the world where most educated people speak English (with the notable exception of India). You're also assuming that Debian developers are evenly distributed across the Internet--but there's nothing to prove that's true.
Analogy: what results would we conclude by doing this same pseudo-analysis of the FetchMail developers? I'd bet we'd discover that they're disproportionately close to Chester County, Pennsylvania, and that lots of them own guns. Why? Because ESR lives in Chester County, Pa., and is something of a gun nut. Developer communities tend to be social communities--so if you're a pistol-packin' programmer, you're likely to be among friends on the FetchMail project. That does not mean that Internet programmers in general, Mail subsystem programmers in particular, or even American programmers are disproportionately armed. It's a self-selected cluster, and you can't draw valid conclusions from the traits of self-selected clusters.
With respect, I disagree. There are activists in any election, but only rarely are they Super Voters. Activists, particularly the Christian Right activists, only tend to show up at the polls when they are animated by a particular issue. They tend to not be Super Voters--SVs vote in every single election, rain or shine.
Case in point: Mario Andretti. He lives in our township, and he is a gold-plated Super Voter. He votes in every election, every year, no matter what. He has voted by absentee ballot from Indy in a completely uncontested municipal primary. He (and his entire family) vote absolutely every time. Mario's not an "activist" by most definitions. Yes--he'll lend his name to a Republican party fundraiser every now and again--but typically for a candidate that he's known for years, rather than out of ideological or political loyalty.
The Super Voters, in my experience, are good, old-fashioned patriots. Real believers in the electoral process, people who view voting as their civic duty, and who will cheerfully mouth the words "civic duty" without a hint of sarcasm or embarassment. A lot of them are naturalized citizens, or first- or second-generation Americans. A *lot* of them are vets. You see a lot of them at the Memorial Day parade, you see a lot of them at the fire company July 4th picnic.
Twenty years ago I viewed them as old codgers with a simplistic view of the world and not enough to do. Today I think they're a lot more important--and their views are more important--than I used to give them credit for. Even if I agree with the Christian Right agenda (at least most of the time) these are the people whom I most respect.
No--if anything, this moves power away from the political elite. This is the ultimate grass-roots campaign: no consultants, no pollsters, no "positioning", no "image advisors." Just a guy whose on the school board who thinks the current state rep is a jerk, calling to ask for your vote. And calling back to mention that he'd talked to some other veterans, and now he understands why getting funding for the VA hospital expansion is such a worthwhile thing, and so forth.
I can't point to statistical evidence that N phone calls increases voter turnout by Y--but I have plenty of anecdotal evidence. After the second or third phone call, those Super Voters really feel special. They start to view themselves as part of the campaign. And since they're so interested in politics (which is why they vote in every election) they tend to be opinion leaders--they influence other people. Get a few of these people, get them to really understand who you are and why you're running, and you have a powerful political force.
We're getting off-topic, but there's a larger conversation to be had here. Everybody thinks that "special-interest money" is a bad thing, especially the influence that special-interest money had in the last presidential race. If primary delegates and presidential electors were selected by congressional district (as opposed to "winner takes all") this kind of I'm-calling-to-ask-for-your-vote approach would be incredibly effective. You'd have to spend unbelievable amounts of money to overwhelm the grass-roots communication methods of thousands of local leaders who are routinely talking to their constituents. I'm biased--but I think that would be a positive thing for the nation as a whole.
Hi!
Okay--I'll confess. Although I've been working with computers and networks since 1983, I'm not a real geek. I've never read anything by Robert Heinlein. So I'm not familiar with the book "Farleyfile".
But I am very familiar with a very successful political strategy that combines two database methods to produce a very, very effective (and inexpensive) campaign. And it sounds very similar to what you describe. Here's how it works:
Every state requires some government entity (the county in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Illinois, don't know about other states) to maintain voter registration records. For purposes of purging records of inactive voters (and for double-checking when there are allegations of vote fraud) the county maintains records of which elections you have voted in during the past N years. So in Pennsylvania, for instance, the county keeps track of the past 8 elections (primary and general in each of the past 4 years). That data is a matter of public record: along with the voter's date of birth, residence, and political party. (Pennsylvania is a "closed primary" state: you have to register as a member of a political party, and you can only vote in that party's primary election. You can't "choose your ballot" as you can in some other states.)
When you review this data, it does not take you long to recognize some patterns (which, ex post facto, seem obvious): a lot of people only vote in the presidential general election. A lot of people only vote in the congressional general elections (1998, 2002, etc.). Relatively few vote in "off-year" general elections (1999, 2001, 2003), and practically nobody votes in off-year primaries. That much is reasonably obvious.
But oh--when you look at who votes in off-year primaries, the lightbulb comes on. These people--to a person--are the diehards. They vote in every single election, and they have voted in every single election since they were eligible to vote. (And they know what year it was that the voting age dropped from 21 to 18.) The ultimate test of political junkihood is this: "can you name the last three losing vice-presidential candidates?" Most of these voters can.
Key point:These voters are extremely influential. They like politics, they talk politics, and if they get excited about somebody they will shape voter opinions. With the slightest motivation/provocation they can bring half a dozen relatives and/or friends to the polls with them. When politicians prate about "grass-roots" support, these are the people they're talking about.
So step #1 is to identify the Super Voter. Step #2 is to send a dozen volunteers through the phone books (you can hire firms to do this as well) to associate a phone number with every single Super Voter (that is, Super Voters in your party) on the list. Step #3 is simple: sit the candidate down at the phone in front of a computer with a contact manager (like Act! or any similar tool). Have the candidate--personally--call every single voter. And have the candidate keep notes, in the contact manager, of every single conversation. Between the time you file petitions at the county registrar's office in February and the primary in May, the candidate should have spoken to every single Super Voter twice. Between the primary and the general election, the candidate should speak to every single Super Voter another 3 times. Each time, the candidate should make notes of the conversation. Whenever possible, the candidate should quickly respond to any need or problem the voter is having.
The results? The first time I saw this used, the candidate was a neophyte: he'd been on the school board, and was running for state representative. He did practically no advertising--but he called every Super Voter in the district two or three times before the primary: there were whole voting districts where he won 100% of the vote. In the general election he faced an 8-term incumbent--and spent essentially zero on advertising. His opponent strolled through the campaign, and was actually on TV (ostensibly to accept congratulations) when he discovered that he'd been beaten.
As a gimmick, this is terrific. But it's more than that: After the election my candidate kept right on calling. He called the super voter list to thank them for their support; he calls newly-registered voters to encourage them to come out to vote; and he calls his lists several times per year. It was so effective that he was unopposed in the next 3 or 4 elections.
Is using a database in this way a bad thing? I don't think so. The end result is that the voters got to recognize their state rep's voice on the phone--and the state rep talked to people across his district, one-on-one, several times a year.
A politician actually calling up his constituents and listening to them. Now that's a scary idea....
Hi!
Uh...did anybody actually read the article? In particular, did anybody read the second paragraph? And, perhaps, think about exactly what it says? Here is it again, just to save you the hassle of linking back to ZDNet:
The phrase that everybody seems to have missed here is "...would replace Applix on more than 10,000 of DISA's Unix workstations at 600 client organizations worldwide...."
Well, gosh. So what does this mean? It is kind of a stretch to say that this is a win for Sun vs. Microsoft--Microsoft doesn't sell Office for Unix workstations. You could even view this as a win for Microsoft--now 10-25,000 DISA Unix workstations can read/write Office file formats. Which would seem to more permanently entrench Microsoft at the Dept. of Defense.
My point isn't to be a Microsoft apologist, or to denegrate Sun. My point is that it seems we're all busy cheering about this wonderful event--and practically nobody has read this critically to see what this article really amounts to. Here's my take on it:
When you see an article like this, you really, really have to view it critically. A single-source article (in this case, two obviously related sources) is almost always based on a press release--and lots of the "news" you read consists of PR plants. (Generally a lot more sophisticated than this one--but PR plants nonetheless.) Sun did not magnanimously offer to remove 10,000 copies of Applix in order to promote the GPL among the Defense Department. What Sun wanted to do (and there is significant bucks behind this) is to continue an existing Defense Department contract for software support. Sun isn't working on StarOffice for free--it keeps Sun in the position as the incumbent supplier of Unix software, and helps Sun sell Sun hardware too. And that's Sun's bottom line: they're a hardware vendor, and they're out to sell hardware.
A few years back I was fuming about the horrendous inefficiency of IBM's DB2 product running on the AS/400. A colleague reminded me of an important truth: IBM is in the hardware business--so they have no incentive at all to write a faster, more efficient database solution. Sun (or Compaq, or Intel, or Transmeta) is in the same position--at the end of the day, they want to sell you hardware. You can say the same thing about Microsoft: they're in the OS business. They'll prate about their wonderful vision for this, and their glorious plans for that--but at the end of the day they want to sell you tools that--what a surprise!--require their OS. If you saw a single-source article on ZDNet, quoting a Microsoft sales exec gloating about providing 10,000 "free" copies of MSN Instant Messaging to the DISA, you shouldn't think of this as a "win" for Microsoft, or a "loss" for Sun or the GPL. You should think instead, that what really happened was that Microsoft "gave" the DISA 10,000 pieces of software that require a Microsoft OS to be installed on the box.
At the end of the day, Sun is out to sell hardware, just as Microsoft is out to sell an OS, Intel is out to sell Pentium or Itanium chips, and Frito-Lay is out to sell potato chips. And every time they do a deal with big numbers--like this one--it gives them a chance to issue a press release that they can spin as a "success", a win for the little guy, a bonus for the beleaguered taxpayer, etc. In truth, its just another software upgrade, an extension of a contract, and nothing more.
When you see Dubya wearing a FreeBSD t-shirt, OTOH....
Hi!
Regardless of whether the amateur Egyptologists are correct or not, this is a significant piece of work for reasons only alluded to at the bottom of the DailyNews article: using kites affords low-tech (or no-tech) societies the means to achieve substantial power. They demonstrated substantial lift capacity in the Mojave Desert--but think about applying that lift to a lever, or using blocks (systems of pulleys) to lift, pry, or drag.
That's substantially more important than most /. readers might think. While we're living in a high-tech world that seems to only be getting that much more sophisticated, there are vast parts of the world that are still farming, building, and lifting with oxen. The Rodale Institute International Program has worked to get international food organizations away from a North American mindset that focuses on capital-intensive (and diesel-fuel-intensive) methods with big tractors and combines. Instead, they've applied a lot of what's been learned about farm implements to traditional means of propulsion (oxen). They're making a lot of headway--showing that a lot can be accomplished using low-tech methods.
This nice and neatly fits into the same scheme. Nobody's hoisting obelisks these days--but if you're building a road in Senegal, or upstream from the Three Gorges Dam, you may have a multi-ton rock to move. Instead of tackling the problem of finding earth movers big enough to solve your problem, you can drag it out of the way with kites. A vastly simpler, less expensive, more feasible solution.
Hi!
All kidding aside, Microsoft does have a mapping product: Microsoft MapPoint 2002. And as somebody in the business, I can tell you three things:
The first version of MapPoint (2001) was nice--but this version is substantially better, at least from a programmer's perspective. The object model exposed by the product is substantially richer--doing something like reverse geo-coding (which is very complicated using MapQuest's server engine) is a breeze.
Pricing: With regard and respect to enthusiasts for the GPL, Microsoft is by no means the bad guy when it comes to software pricing. Go price any kind of small-market toolset--the prices can be hideous. For example, GIS mapping systems: the big guns come from ESRI, MapInfo, and MapQuest (now part of AOL). You license the server software--and then you license data (typically on a quarterly subscription). (Data usually comes from GDT or NavTech.) How much? We're paying an annual subscription fee (for the server license and the data) of roughly $40,000. And that doesn't include any Canadian data.
Yeah, you read it right. Forty thousand bucks per year.
And here comes Microsoft with MapPoint 2002. Better data, substantially easier programming model, more reliable tool--for $295. Not $295/year--just $295.
That's not all we're going to end up paying. Microsoft themselves doesn't seem to have figured out that you can use MapPoint in a server setting--we're inquiring about what a server license will cost. But we're confident that it will be substantially less than we're paying presently. (The client, who actually has to foot this bill, is late for a meeting here. That's why I'm cruising /. at midday.)
Public domain data: Most GIS systems focusing on the United States use street data based on the public-domain TIGR data files. You can download the TIGR data from a number of sources--but don't get your hopes up. The data isn't very good. Any commercial GIS system will use data that has been "enhanced" by GDT, NavTech, or another data provider--to make sure, for instance, that Main Street in your town actually runs from 41.44323N/-75.3323W to 41.87332N/-75.40012W. The original TIGR files were created by the Census Bureau--to be sure that every house was enumerated. They didn't plan on people using GPS units to compare with the maps, and basing life-or-death decisions on their data. When municipalities began developing 911 emergency response systems (and literally making life-or-death decisions based on the map data) the flaws in the TIGR data became all-too-apparent. So third-party providers like GDT exist to compare the map data with satellite imagery and aerial photographs to make sure that map objects are correctly placed. MapPoint, like any other commercial GIS tool, is based on third-party-enhanced data from GDT and NavTech.
If you're doing GIS work, this is a tool that's definitely worth looking into.
Hi!
I've been a freelance writer for years--and I'm surprised that the Supreme Court regards this case as being worth the trouble to even review. Every publisher I've ever dealt with has paid me for "all rights" to an article--whether in the next issue of the magazine, in a reprint they sell to a vendor, or if (fat chance) they turn my article into a movie script. I've had articles reprinted in other languages, reprinted on CD-ROM, and published on websites. All I ever got paid for was the initial article.
Did I get ripped off? No--because that was the bargain. I write 3000 words on a given topic, I get paid a few bucks, and that's that. If the magazine publisher can figure out a way to distribute the article in a different form, and they can make a few extra bucks, that only gives them that much more incentive to ask me to write the next article.
Is this hypocrisy by the big media companies?
For the most part, I don't think so. When I sell an article I'm selling all rights to it--so the publisher can reproduce that content "in any form or by any means" (quote from actual contract) without paying me any additional compensation.
So what's the big deal? Frankly, I'd be positively floored if any publisher didn't essentially have the same contract--they buy all rights. I've written for half a dozen programming magazines, for "popular" magazines, and for a major children's magazine--every single one of them bought all rights. If my name were John Grisham or Stephen King my agent might be able to negotiate a better deal--but I'd be really, really surprised if better than 1% of freelance articles are bought on anything other than "all rights" terms.
Is this hypocrisy?
No--this isn't. When I buy a DVD or a music CD, I'm not buying all rights--I'm just buying the right to play the content on the DVD or CD. The media companies could (yeah, right) offer "any media" versions of the same content at a different price. Then if you wanted to convert the content to MPEG or some other format you could.
On the other hand...
What is blatantly hypocritical is the coming fight in Hollywood over residuals. Every time a TV episode, or a movie, or a commercial airs, the writers and the performers get paid a fee. For many actors residuals become a lifelong source of income--minor players in the 1970s mega-hit "M*A*S*H" continue to earn substantial income from reruns. The studios cry poor--they want to end residuals and pay on an "all rights" or "work-for-hire" basis. In other words, they want to buy creative content on an "all rights" basis; they want to sell that same creative content on a per-use basis. (They will not, for instance, sell "all rights" to, say, ER to your local TV station.) That's hypocrisy.
Your point is interesting. And, in fact, it can be implemented immediately, without GPS chips or GIS systems. It has been technically feasible, on some specific roads, for twenty years or more. I'm talking, of course, about toll tickets.
When you enter a toll highway that uses a ticket system (such as the Pennsylvania Turnpike) you get a mag-striped ticket that records the date and time you entered the turnpike, the weight of your vehicle, and where you entered. When you exit the turnpike the toll collector inserts your ticket into a mag stripe reader that checks where you entered, what your vehicle currently weighs (so truckers can't swap tickets to beat tolls), and how long you've been on the turnpike. The system can, with ease, determine how fast you have traveled between points A and B.
The toll highways have had the ability to do that for decades. With trasponder-based systems (like the EZ-Pass system in use from New York to Virginia) it can be even simpler--when a vehicle enters a highway its position is noted, along with the time, by a master server. Any device along the highway could send in a report of a specific vehicle at a specific location at a specific time--the server can do the math and determine if the vehicle has been speeding.
So why haven't the cops been all over this technology?
Because of an interesting quirk in the law. To paraphrase the National Rifle Association, cars don't break speed limit laws, people break speed limit laws. All that the computer, the transponders, or the toll tickets can prove is that the vehicle traveled at faster than the speed limit--they can't tell who was driving. You can't charge the car with speeding--you have to charge the driver.
There may yet come a day when we can do that. Several manufacturers now provide "smart keys" that identify the driver when inserted into the car's ignition. (This is a really cool feature--insert your keys, and the power seats, mirrors, etc. all move to your settings.) Replace the vehicle license tag with a transponder and you can tell who is driving the car. (The cops could argue, for instance, that the unique identification characteristics of the key constitute a "signature" under the Digital Signature Act.)
That, frankly, is substantially more feasible to implement that a GIS-enabled Big Brother system. Several municipalities across America are presently installing photographic systems to catch people running red lights or speeding--they take your photograph through the windshield, and get your license plate simultaneously from behind. With that, and some legislation, they can charge you more or less by remote control. That can work--and doesn't require anything so mission-critical as on-vehicle speed governors driven by a colossal GIS system.