Journalists ought to learn that science reporting is not like Entertainment or even Politics reporting. It doesn't really matter who said what, but only why they say and how they came to the conclusions. I'm not holding my breath though.
Well, the summary is worse than the article in those respects. For something like the BBC, the audience cares less about the methods and more about the conclusions. That said, it doesn't excuse reporting of incorrect conclusions.
Not applicable; this is referring to an actual badge.
I'm not going to quote your entire response, but I think the debatable point is in the part not focused on by the WP lawyer:
Whoever manufactures, sells, or possesses any badge, identification card, or other insignia, of the design prescribed by the head of any department or agency of the United States for use by any officer or employee thereof, or any colorable imitation thereof, or photographs, prints, or in any other manner makes or executes any engraving, photograph, print, or impression in the likeness of any such badge, identification card, or other insignia, or any colorable imitation thereof, except as authorized under regulations made pursuant to law, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than six months, or both.
I think the FBI's point is that this image is used on actual badges and identification cards. Therefore, the law prohibits making photographs, prints, or engravings of this item. Invoking ejusdem generis on this part of the law is much less clear. The law is written to prohibit not just actual fake badges, but also photographs, prints, and engravings that could be used to manufacture fake badges. Is there really a tangible difference between print-publishing a high resolution photograph of a badge and digitally-publishing it?
As far as the intent to deceive, I think its arguable that it doesn't matter if WP has intent to deceive. The law is written to prevent materials from being available to people with the intent to deceive. And the WP image is certainly a great thing to have if you wanted to fake an FBI insignia, and is arguably covered by the letter of the law.
Well you know what they say, the grade C lawyers work for the government while the grade A lawyers work for everyone else. As someone remarked about on another site, you almost had to wonder why the FBI picked this little fights, and if someone mistakenly thought Wikipedia was somehow related to the now infamous Wikileaks. Even just reading the FBI's correspondence you can tell they're seriously out of their depth.
I'm just curious if you read the law. Because it sure reads to me like Wikipedia is in violation of the letter of the law.
TITLE 18 > PART I > CHAPTER 33 > § 701 § 701. Official badges, identification cards, other insignia Whoever manufactures, sells, or possesses any badge, identification card, or other insignia, of the design prescribed by the head of any department or agency of the United States for use by any officer or employee thereof, or any colorable imitation thereof, or photographs, prints, or in any other manner makes or executes any engraving, photograph, print, or impression in the likeness of any such badge, identification card, or other insignia, or any colorable imitation thereof, except as authorized under regulations made pursuant to law, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than six months, or both.
The fact is that Wikipedia has a super high resolution print quality and SVG image of the seal which could be used to manufacture fake credentials. This fact might explain why they are going after Wikipedia and not other places. In fact the FBI letters suggests this much.
I guess its easy to just unsubstantiatedly bash our government. At least you didn't start invoking conspiracy theories about this being some first step in the invokation of some quasi martial law state, like some other people have commented.
The reason you should care is because BP has been pretending to be a credible source of information for this event while they have been diong things to block public access and government oversight. Here is a copy of some photojournalistic ethics rules that they really should be following, if they are going to pretent to be reporters: (http://www.nppa.org/professional_development/business_practices/ethics.html)
1. Be accurate and comprehensive in the representation of subjects. 2. Resist being manipulated by staged photo opportunities. 3. Be complete and provide context when photographing or recording subjects. Avoid stereotyping individuals and groups. Recognize and work to avoid presenting one's own biases in the work. 4. Treat all subjects with respect and dignity. Give special consideration to vulnerable subjects and compassion to victims of crime or tragedy. Intrude on private moments of grief only when the public has an overriding and justifiable need to see. 5. While photographing subjects do not intentionally contribute to, alter, or seek to alter or influence events. 6. Editing should maintain the integrity of the photographic images' content and context. Do not manipulate images or add or alter sound in any way that can mislead viewers or misrepresent subjects. 7. Do not pay sources or subjects or reward them materially for information or participation. 8. Do not accept gifts, favors, or compensation from those who might seek to influence coverage. 9. Do not intentionally sabotage the efforts of other journalists.
Everyone who is a photojournalist know this. It permeates every aspect of the job. Cropping, exposure, white balance, and modest curves adjustments, and that's it. This is to maintain integrity of the image.
Yeah, BP is not a news organization. We should be taking everything they say with a grain of salt. Fine. Except that's not how the perss are treating them. The press and the government are treating them as subject matter experts who are reporting on the status of the oil spill. If nothing else, this should be a stark and public reminder that they have a conflict of interests, and they are acting on that conflict all of the time.
Maybe it's because a lot of devs from the 90s were and are quite rude due to their lack of social skills. Most people don't put up with that kind of crap.
This is it. There have been some very high profile cases of Linux kernel developers acting like complete assholes and basically getting away with it, too. Anyone remember Con Kolivas or Hans Reiser?*
* Yeah, Hans Reiser obviously had some serious problems. But his ideas were sound. Probably why many devs were hungry to discredit him and obtain the credit. This kind of behavior is more common in the F/OSS community than people like to admit, by the way.
Basically... the sad reality is that if thinking I'm smarter than those people makes me an elitist, I'd rather be an elitist than an idiot. Unfortunately, the reality is that everyone of those elitists probably will have more children than me- on account of I figured out how to use condoms and even more than most of the rest of slashdot on account of actually having sex sometimes. While the smart people are on slashdot watching porn, we're not exactly the highest reproducing members of the gene-pool anymore...
There is so much wrong with this whole post, I don't even know where to start. First of all, you come off as extremely arrogant. Second of all, you put forth the hypothesis that the smartest people on the planet are all on Slashdot watching porn (except you, who apparently gets to have sex, unlike the rest of us). I hate to burst your bubble, but the IT industry is full of people like you who are basically tech janitors with an overly exaggerated view of their own self-importance.
Trust me, there are plenty of people out there who are smart, happy, capabable, social human beings. They just aren't hanging around with you.
I don't like the way this reads. Apple does need to exert some control over their device in order to preserve their branding, but IMHO some of the draconian shit in here goes way to far.
Are you sure? The article doesn't say how hot the preheated fuel gets, other than it is supercritical. I can't find properties tables to see where this lies.
Actually, I have the definition of supercritical wrong. I had confounded it with superheated. Supercritical is a substance that is above its critical point, where the liquid and gas phases combine.
I always thought the definition of a Diesel engine was that it used the heat of compressing the chamber to ignite the spark. In this engine it sounds like they are heating the fuel before it goes into the chamber.
Not sure what is considered 'super critical' but diesel fuel under 180 MPa/26,000 psi is pretty super critical to me.
Supercritical is when a substance is above its critical point where the liquid and gas phase lose their distinction. This requires both high pressure and high temperature. So fuel at 180 MPa may not be supercritical. It depends on its temperature.
People keep saying this is a diesel engine, but it is not. In a diesel engine, the air in the chamber is heated by compresssion up to something hot enough to ignite the fuel. In this design they are heating the fuel and pressurizing it before they inject it into the chamber, so that it turns to vapor as soon as it is injected into the chamber. Someone seemed to be making fun of the term 'supercritical' but that is the word for vapor that has completely transformed from a liquid and has excess internal energy. This is very different from spraying the gas with an atomizer.
In my experience it's usually management that demands the impossible (with often very vague ideas about what the final product should be), and IT that tells them it won't happen, but are forced to do it anyway.
Or maybe the government should just let healthcare professionals decide how much IT can improve the care they give. Why do we need this government mandated health database?
This is really a nonsequitur to my original point. The fact is the mandate has been given. It doesnt matter if it came from the Government or the CEO. The CIO here is still responsible for making it happen. His claim that it won't be ready may be true, but why not? what fall-back functionality CAN be provided?
Maybe the CIO should just accept that he's not going to get the MAXIMUM incentive payment the Government is willing to hand out in order to get this done.
'I think we have nontechnology people making decisions about technology,' said Gregg Veltri, CIO at Denver Health. 'I wonder if anybody understands the reality of IT systems and how complex they are, especially when they're integrated together. You're going to sacrifice quality if you increase the speed [of the rollout].'
You know what, Gregg? Suck it up. Man up and get your system production ready. I am so tired of excuses from the IT department.
Maybe I'm being unfair here, but my experience with IT managers is that their development plans look something like this:
1. Promise the impossible 2. Get buy-in to develop an expensive system based on (1) 3. Essentially let people play with themselves until the time is up. 4. Realize what you have is not even close to (1) 5. Try to rebaseline the schedule, and GOTO 1.
Instead of telling us what you can't do, how about telling us what you can do. Meaning what functionality you can deliver (production-ready) by the deadline. Otherwise, you are just whining.
Well, this is actually pretty good advice for any developer; Don't reinvent the wheel.
That is some good folksy wisdom for your intrepid yound developer. Also:
"Don't count your chickens before they're hatched!" "A little too late is much too late!" "A small leak will sink a great ship!" "Lost time is never found!" "A chain is as strong as its weakest link!" "A bad broom leaves a dirty room!"
Anyway, my point is not that your advice is bad. But are you seriously suggesting that Brin, when he had this idea, should have gone straight for the library until he found this 1941 Economics paper? I wonder how long that would take? How about this advice:
"Go ahead and reinvent the wheel. If its useful enough, no one will care."
You make decent arguments that I've heard before, many times. And I actually agree with them to a point. At least in theory, given somewhat unrealistic assumptions about the system. But there are two major flaws in this idea. First, in practice, where real developers are making complex decisions about how they structure their programs and the resources they use, I think this sentiment results in wasteful and excessive programming practices.
In other words, the resources programs demand may be managed very well, but programmers end up demanding more than they need, forgetting that there are other users of those resources. And a scheduler isn't psychic; it has no real way to know if a program is demanding "too much."
Second, a multiqueue system with a nonzero variance of demand (e.g., a computer's resources) has high latency if its resource utilization is also high. This is due to bottlenecks being created when there is a surge in demand, and resulting system instability as those backups are cleared. If you want to have a system with consistent and predictable latency, you need some extra resource hanging around to handle spikes in demand. Otherwise the system tends to go berserk in a way that strongly resembles "thrashing" seen on computers that are being maximally utilized. People forget (or don't know) this.
Maybe I shouldn't trust the North American Certificates either, since I don't want my government spying on me either.
As long as the Chinese CA only deals with China, I have no problems with it. Any of the certifying agencies could be puppets for anyone.
I guess this is true, although considering the amount of malware coming out of China, and China's human rights record as compared to north american countries, I think there is reason not to equivocate about this.
Slashdot Mirror
I think it is important to clarify the position of the copyright office:
"Copyright law does not protect recipes that are mere listings of ingredients."
Most recipes include instructions on how to process the ingredients. This is copyrightable. All but the most elementary recipes would be.
Journalists ought to learn that science reporting is not like Entertainment or even Politics reporting. It doesn't really matter who said what, but only why they say and how they came to the conclusions. I'm not holding my breath though.
Well, the summary is worse than the article in those respects. For something like the BBC, the audience cares less about the methods and more about the conclusions. That said, it doesn't excuse reporting of incorrect conclusions.
saw that one coming
<paragraph>
<sentence>
<word>The</word>
<word>only</word>
<word>way</word>
<word>to</word>
<word>fix</word>
<word>this</word>
<word>is</word>
<word>with</word>
<word>XML</sentence>
<sentence>
<word>Totally</word>
<word>human</word>
<word>readable</sentence>
</paragraph>
Not applicable; this is referring to an actual badge.
I'm not going to quote your entire response, but I think the debatable point is in the part not focused on by the WP lawyer:
Whoever manufactures, sells, or possesses any badge,
identification card, or other insignia, of the design prescribed by
the head of any department or agency of the United States for use
by any officer or employee thereof, or any colorable imitation
thereof, or photographs, prints, or in any other manner makes or
executes any engraving, photograph, print, or impression in the
likeness of any such badge, identification card, or other insignia,
or any colorable imitation thereof, except as authorized under
regulations made pursuant to law, shall be fined under this title or
imprisoned not more than six months, or both.
I think the FBI's point is that this image is used on actual badges and identification cards. Therefore, the law prohibits making photographs, prints, or engravings of this item. Invoking ejusdem generis on this part of the law is much less clear. The law is written to prohibit not just actual fake badges, but also photographs, prints, and engravings that could be used to manufacture fake badges. Is there really a tangible difference between print-publishing a high resolution photograph of a badge and digitally-publishing it?
As far as the intent to deceive, I think its arguable that it doesn't matter if WP has intent to deceive. The law is written to prevent materials from being available to people with the intent to deceive. And the WP image is certainly a great thing to have if you wanted to fake an FBI insignia, and is arguably covered by the letter of the law.
I'm just curious if you read the law. Because it sure reads to me like Wikipedia is in violation of the letter of the law.
The fact is that Wikipedia has a super high resolution print quality and SVG image of the seal which could be used to manufacture fake credentials. This fact might explain why they are going after Wikipedia and not other places. In fact the FBI letters suggests this much.
I guess its easy to just unsubstantiatedly bash our government. At least you didn't start invoking conspiracy theories about this being some first step in the invokation of some quasi martial law state, like some other people have commented.
The reason you should care is because BP has been pretending to be a credible source of information for this event while they have been diong things to block public access and government oversight. Here is a copy of some photojournalistic ethics rules that they really should be following, if they are going to pretent to be reporters: (http://www.nppa.org/professional_development/business_practices/ethics.html)
1. Be accurate and comprehensive in the representation of subjects.
2. Resist being manipulated by staged photo opportunities.
3. Be complete and provide context when photographing or recording subjects. Avoid stereotyping individuals and groups. Recognize and work to avoid presenting one's own biases in the work.
4. Treat all subjects with respect and dignity. Give special consideration to vulnerable subjects and compassion to victims of crime or tragedy. Intrude on private moments of grief only when the public has an overriding and justifiable need to see.
5. While photographing subjects do not intentionally contribute to, alter, or seek to alter or influence events.
6. Editing should maintain the integrity of the photographic images' content and context. Do not manipulate images or add or alter sound in any way that can mislead viewers or misrepresent subjects.
7. Do not pay sources or subjects or reward them materially for information or participation.
8. Do not accept gifts, favors, or compensation from those who might seek to influence coverage.
9. Do not intentionally sabotage the efforts of other journalists.
Everyone who is a photojournalist know this. It permeates every aspect of the job. Cropping, exposure, white balance, and modest curves adjustments, and that's it. This is to maintain integrity of the image.
Yeah, BP is not a news organization. We should be taking everything they say with a grain of salt. Fine. Except that's not how the perss are treating them. The press and the government are treating them as subject matter experts who are reporting on the status of the oil spill. If nothing else, this should be a stark and public reminder that they have a conflict of interests, and they are acting on that conflict all of the time.
Maybe it's because a lot of devs from the 90s were and are quite rude due to their lack of social skills. Most people don't put up with that kind of crap.
This is it. There have been some very high profile cases of Linux kernel developers acting like complete assholes and basically getting away with it, too. Anyone remember Con Kolivas or Hans Reiser?*
* Yeah, Hans Reiser obviously had some serious problems. But his ideas were sound. Probably why many devs were hungry to discredit him and obtain the credit. This kind of behavior is more common in the F/OSS community than people like to admit, by the way.
Basically... the sad reality is that if thinking I'm smarter than those people makes me an elitist, I'd rather be an elitist than an idiot. Unfortunately, the reality is that everyone of those elitists probably will have more children than me- on account of I figured out how to use condoms and even more than most of the rest of slashdot on account of actually having sex sometimes.
While the smart people are on slashdot watching porn, we're not exactly the highest reproducing members of the gene-pool anymore...
There is so much wrong with this whole post, I don't even know where to start. First of all, you come off as extremely arrogant. Second of all, you put forth the hypothesis that the smartest people on the planet are all on Slashdot watching porn (except you, who apparently gets to have sex, unlike the rest of us). I hate to burst your bubble, but the IT industry is full of people like you who are basically tech janitors with an overly exaggerated view of their own self-importance.
Trust me, there are plenty of people out there who are smart, happy, capabable, social human beings. They just aren't hanging around with you.
exceedingly harsh? severe?
might a word in the English language evolve beyond its etymological roots? could it be?
I don't like the way this reads. Apple does need to exert some control over their device in order to preserve their branding, but IMHO some of the draconian shit in here goes way to far.
Are you sure? The article doesn't say how hot the preheated fuel gets, other than it is supercritical. I can't find properties tables to see where this lies.
It is right to be skeptical, but the theoretical efficiency of a typical Diesel is in the 50% range.
http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/Hbase/thermo/diesel.html
This thing is not a Diesel engine, but it looks like it might be similar to one.
Actually, I have the definition of supercritical wrong. I had confounded it with superheated. Supercritical is a substance that is above its critical point, where the liquid and gas phases combine.
I always thought the definition of a Diesel engine was that it used the heat of compressing the chamber to ignite the spark. In this engine it sounds like they are heating the fuel before it goes into the chamber.
Not sure what is considered 'super critical' but diesel fuel under 180 MPa/26,000 psi is pretty super critical to me.
Supercritical is when a substance is above its critical point where the liquid and gas phase lose their distinction. This requires both high pressure and high temperature. So fuel at 180 MPa may not be supercritical. It depends on its temperature.
People keep saying this is a diesel engine, but it is not. In a diesel engine, the air in the chamber is heated by compresssion up to something hot enough to ignite the fuel. In this design they are heating the fuel and pressurizing it before they inject it into the chamber, so that it turns to vapor as soon as it is injected into the chamber. Someone seemed to be making fun of the term 'supercritical' but that is the word for vapor that has completely transformed from a liquid and has excess internal energy. This is very different from spraying the gas with an atomizer.
In my experience it's usually management that demands the impossible (with often very vague ideas about what the final product should be), and IT that tells them it won't happen, but are forced to do it anyway.
This guy is the CIO. He is management.
Or maybe the government should just let healthcare professionals decide how much IT can improve the care they give. Why do we need this government mandated health database?
This is really a nonsequitur to my original point. The fact is the mandate has been given. It doesnt matter if it came from the Government or the CEO. The CIO here is still responsible for making it happen. His claim that it won't be ready may be true, but why not? what fall-back functionality CAN be provided?
Maybe the CIO should just accept that he's not going to get the MAXIMUM incentive payment the Government is willing to hand out in order to get this done.
'I think we have nontechnology people making decisions about technology,' said Gregg Veltri, CIO at Denver Health. 'I wonder if anybody understands the reality of IT systems and how complex they are, especially when they're integrated together. You're going to sacrifice quality if you increase the speed [of the rollout].'
You know what, Gregg? Suck it up. Man up and get your system production ready. I am so tired of excuses from the IT department.
Maybe I'm being unfair here, but my experience with IT managers is that their development plans look something like this:
1. Promise the impossible
2. Get buy-in to develop an expensive system based on (1)
3. Essentially let people play with themselves until the time is up.
4. Realize what you have is not even close to (1)
5. Try to rebaseline the schedule, and GOTO 1.
Instead of telling us what you can't do, how about telling us what you can do. Meaning what functionality you can deliver (production-ready) by the deadline. Otherwise, you are just whining.
Maybe Google will buy the Firefox guys an H.264 license. I wonder if they would accept it.
Well, this is actually pretty good advice for any developer; Don't reinvent the wheel.
That is some good folksy wisdom for your intrepid yound developer. Also:
"Don't count your chickens before they're hatched!"
"A little too late is much too late!"
"A small leak will sink a great ship!"
"Lost time is never found!"
"A chain is as strong as its weakest link!"
"A bad broom leaves a dirty room!"
Anyway, my point is not that your advice is bad. But are you seriously suggesting that Brin, when he had this idea, should have gone straight for the library until he found this 1941 Economics paper? I wonder how long that would take? How about this advice:
"Go ahead and reinvent the wheel. If its useful enough, no one will care."
RAM is wasted when it isn't in use.
You make decent arguments that I've heard before, many times. And I actually agree with them to a point. At least in theory, given somewhat unrealistic assumptions about the system. But there are two major flaws in this idea. First, in practice, where real developers are making complex decisions about how they structure their programs and the resources they use, I think this sentiment results in wasteful and excessive programming practices.
In other words, the resources programs demand may be managed very well, but programmers end up demanding more than they need, forgetting that there are other users of those resources. And a scheduler isn't psychic; it has no real way to know if a program is demanding "too much."
Second, a multiqueue system with a nonzero variance of demand (e.g., a computer's resources) has high latency if its resource utilization is also high. This is due to bottlenecks being created when there is a surge in demand, and resulting system instability as those backups are cleared. If you want to have a system with consistent and predictable latency, you need some extra resource hanging around to handle spikes in demand. Otherwise the system tends to go berserk in a way that strongly resembles "thrashing" seen on computers that are being maximally utilized. People forget (or don't know) this.
Maybe I shouldn't trust the North American Certificates either, since I don't want my government spying on me either.
As long as the Chinese CA only deals with China, I have no problems with it. Any of the certifying agencies could be puppets for anyone.
I guess this is true, although considering the amount of malware coming out of China, and China's human rights record as compared to north american countries, I think there is reason not to equivocate about this.
Just make it a configuration option, default NO.
Yeah, its not the most elegant solution, but welcome to the real world guys.