mm, if you ask me, IE won the browser wars despite that Active desktop shit. I don't know anyone that uses it. It's completely irrelevant in any sort of "browser wars" discussion. While Microsoft may have thought they'd 'win' by making the desktop more like a web browser, they actually won be producing a stable, fast product more standards compliant than anything else at the time.
Just to let you know, I did the following.
I went to www.98lite.net, and downloaded their IEradicator program. This removes IE from win 9x, including win 98 and Millenium.
It works great. And guess what. Netscape is 5 times faster, and is 5 times more stable.
Now tell me that MS would never screw over the competition in their code. All this does is to make me more angry an MS.
One can only hope that the balkanization of the internet contributes to the balkanization of the OS market. This would contribute to the growth of all of the small time players.
I don't think China is near foolish enough to try to go nuclear.
Sadly Chinese interests do have control in places like the San Diego shipyards, the Panama Canel, and even in the Bahamas. Given that and covert operations, the potential is there for things to get messy.
Some people speculate that the Chinese military wants a war with the US in a few years, just as a way to grab power and to short circuit certain internal problems due to poor planning of infra structure. Heck the military may want to get nuked just to help handle excess population, crule as that sounds.
Could it be that they are removing the black box or attempting to temper with it?
Because of security reasons, etc. Military aircraft generally do NOT have black boxes.
Even if the hardware is all busted up and the drives been wiped. There is still alot you can do in data recovery with a government level budget and a lot of time.
Personally, I would have hoped that they were tossing things out the door into the ocean. Salt water is wonderful for electronics
In a similar story, many many years ago, a USS aircraft carrier (I forget if it was the JFK or the Eisenhower) had a machine shop that was discovered missing. Somehow, during a shipyard period when many renovations were going on, someone had to cut through a wall and found it. It had been built with no doors. Everything was there, still neatly locked away.
For those who cannot imagine this, remember that a ship is built inside the shell one floor at a time. Some compartments typically are only accessible via stairways. So if you do not have the big picture, it is easy to miss a detail if you are a basic welder, or whatever.
Management technology for planning these things has hopefully imporoved to cover problems like this.
You got to wonder about the priorities here at slash. What is chosen to be posted as news stories is very much part of what builds or destroys this community. Lately it seems to be trending to the very short sighted and shallow.
For example, I know that someone submitted this link from the MIT Tech Review about the REbuilding of the Library of Alexandria (which was one of the biggest and most impressive geek communites of all time). (project link here)The lessons learned from that Library are very very relevant today in our attempts to build a future civilization.
This obviously goes over the heads of the editors, and gets rejected.
But this stuff, isn't even summarized here, or quoted, just everyone go look at it. And feedback suggests that it is basically a high class troll.
The US plane was in international airspace on autopilot, the Chinese fighter pilot got cocky and accidentally hit the US plane. The US plane was in distress and landed at the nearest airfield, which was the Chinese base. Seems to me like the Chinese should apologize for the hot dog pilot.
A few extra items that might be relevant.
1) In Chinese culture, an apology inclludes the idea that the version of the story told by the other person is the truth. not yours. this can get sticky, because this is not the viewpoint of apology in the west. In the West, the statement of sorrow is very often separated from the investigation of thetruth of the matter 2)The internal politics of China in this are very important. There has been speculation in the fringe press that this incident was set up by the Chinese Military for their own goals. While this is speculation, if true, this leaves them (the Chines Military) with a win/win situation. If the USA backs down, then they win in the international arena. If the USA does not back down then The Military gets to strengthen their position inside China.
The road out of this mess would be delicate, and maybe requires some technology, etc. as follows:
1) A video/computer simulation of the accident, as believed to have happened, showing and highlighting the obvious manueverability (sp?) of the jet vs the prop plane, and the difficulty of controlling the prop plane when the jet wash hits the props. Demonstrate how the jet can throws the prop plane out of control, and what happens when the jet gets too close. 2)Praise the obvious bravery of the Chinese pilot in the pursuit of patriotism for his homeland. Note that what he probably wanted to do was something that should be reserved for the mosty highly skilled pilots. The Pilot was obviously trying to intimidate the American plane, and throw the American plane out of control. 3) We can say something like "The american pilot was not skilled enough to keep control of his aircraft when it was upset and disrupted by the suprisingly powerful engines of the Chinese Jets nearby, and we will work on improving the skill of our pilots.
ecetera. We build up the strength of the Chinese military in the PR lines.
Of course, if other means are needed, then planning would have to work to take everyone by surprise, instead of giving everyone and their grandmother time to prepare a defense, increasing casualties, etc.
IE won the browser wars despite that Active desktop shit. I don't know anyone that uses it. It's completely irrelevant in any sort of "browser wars" discussion. While Microsoft may have thought they'd 'win' by making the desktop more like a web browser, they actually won be producing a stable, fast product more standards compliant than anything else at the time.
the Active desktop has been renamed, and is coming back in all sorts of user freindly features in the future. Just watch>
IE on an open fair market is one thing. Fine. Forcing me to use it, and blocking out the competition I suppose is superior marketing, And making it damn hard to remove is another.
The proof in the pudding are products like 98Lite that remove Internet Explorer from windows, and result in faster and more stable systems. Rememeber, MS has testified in court that not only was this impossible, but that doing this would destroy windows.
Yeah, the nerve of those people.... They replaced netscape, still one of the dodgiest computer products ever released, with a more
stable, more powerful, faster, easier to use alternative.... meanwhile netscape rested on their laurels.... yeah, it must have been dirty tricks... "Oh but they gave it away for free!" - you bastards! Or maybe give away the razor (ie) and make money on the blades (iis)?
The major primary complaint I have had with MS is the pervasion of inferior technology by means of superior marketing. Check Out my blurb on Boiling Frogs.
You comment on giving away the razor and making money on the blades is flawed, because for shear quantity, IE outnumbers iis. So to be precise, If they were giving away the razor and making money on the blades, they should be giving away iis, and selling IE at 5 or 10 bucks a pop. This is not the place to review the wonderful emails and duplicitious testimony of MS at the anti trust trial. "We gotta integrate IE into Windows because we'll never win otherwise"
In other words, they couldn't win on the merits of the program. So they HAD to win by other means. This was well in advance of IE 5. Are you still Enthusiastically using the ActiveX desktop?
I used to like Microsoft, really. but I got ticked off everytime they did something that that tried to lock me into their system. Maybe you like handcuffs.
"No these are not handcuffs, they are golden bracelets, really!"
He is not one to sugarcoat his criticisms. "Every time I use the Web I am reminded why I hate Microsoft," he wrote in a recent DaveNet posting.
"What could have been a lovely competitive space, overseen and supported by a statesman-like
Microsoft, turned into a cesspool of lawyers and dirty tricks.
While I wouldn't be so complementary to MS (short on coffee today) this sums it up nicely.
Script kiddies hacking the air conditioner, the stereo system, etc?
It reeminds of of that Babylon 5 Episode where Molari angered someone he should not have, and wound up having his quarters and his life ruined not by a virus, but by a holodemon program.
Londo is in his quarters, having considerable difficulty, when Vir enters. Londo explains that a holodemon has possessed his data system. It is eating up files, records, and buying stocks he would never purchase for himself, in addition to playing painful Narn opera continually. Vir suggests that Londo apologize. Londo refuses at first, but when his computer suddenly reports that he is the new owner of 500,000 shares of Fireflies Incorporated, then blacks out the entire room, Londo agrees.
There is a delicious paranoia that goes with this territory. This paranois infects not only the user, but law enforcement as well.
I am not a psych, and I am sure I would not want to be. But in this case, a few novel ideas might be applicable.
To start from a place that is familiar: We know about paranoia, and we know about hypochondria. and so I made the leap to the idea of something that could be called paranoid hypochondria, which would be a disease where the person is constantly seeing diseases in others. This disease would be very dangerous to have in doctors and shrinks, etc., since whoever checks them?
The next step would be a form of paranoia where a person sees criminality constantly popping up in others, even when inappropriate. This would be dangerous in law enforcement, in legislators, erc.
The implications for human rights are easy enough to work out.
But if you need something catchy? Microsoft.NET is the Next Chernobyl. Actually I am sure that on thier timeline. someplace down the line 25 to 50 years out, they have something on the chart called the Microsoft Planet, complete with Microsoft govermental services, military services, etc.
it might be unreal, but you got to make plans to cover the possibillities.
The idea of a great product is that it makes something easier for the end user. UIs have made or broken otherwise functionally excellent
apps simply because they were hard as hell to use.
If MS's evil is to sell to the lazy, then what company appeals to the Rube Goldbergs of the world?Heck, I know people who are professionals, just not cmputer professionals, who sit there and they just LOVE the little msn butterfly and the voice that says you got mail, etc. They eat it up.
There is the old story about how to boil/cook a frog. For the purposes of this story it is important to remem ber that frogs are amphibians.
Now, If you just toss a frog straight into a pot of boiling water, this is not going to to anything but upset the frog and make the frog jump out of the pot. BUT, if you put the frog into the pot when tha water is cool, the frog will like it. If you then very gradually raise the temperature of the water the frog will not notice it. You can eventually raise the temperature of the water until it is boiling, and you now have one cooked frog dinner. NOTE, California bullfrogs, weighing in at about 3 or 4 pounds, have enough meat to make a decent meal.
How does this relate? Simple.
The long term strategy of MS is to slowly increment changes in the way things worked so that in the end, everything works they way they want, and they can dictate how it goes together. If they got greedy and tried to do it all in a year or so, then they would never get agreeement. But by implementing it bit and piece, they can continue to carve a large and larger section of the pie for themselves. All they have to do is think longer term than their opponents.
Actually, I am sure they have on a wall someplace their equivalent of a 5 or 10 year plan to conquer the known (software) world, subject to revision and new discoveries, etc. They likely planned killing off Windows about 3 to 5 years ago when it became obvious that the legal suites were beginning to be a real pain. They are not there yet, but they needed an escape plan. Part of the move to taking over the Internet was part of this escape plan, which is why Gates made sure it was the equivalent of a oceanliner coming to a halt and turning on a dime.
How to we handle this?
We need as far reaching an effort and long range vision as they do. A competitive Argument that resonates. Microsofts's sells to the inherently lazy streak in people, even if the PR is twisted. They sell to "we make it easier for you".
What competitive meme do we offer to fight this Microsoft meme virus?
Like many films of this type, alot of the film depends of the political attitude vs drugs. How much of the film is a fantasy, or a glorification of the lifestyle?
(For Example, this classic scene: having a house literally filled with money neatly wrapped in plastic bundles with no place to put it.) I can see kids now, "y'know, if I could only avoid getting busted..."
a minor nitpick is the impression that the star of the film is depicted as the first person to introduce cocaine to the US, like the US was totally virgin territory.
Note: All tests were carried out using Windows 98SE.
Which brings up the question of drivers for other platforms. Of course you could use generics. Some folks may like to use some of the more exotic features that you can get at by hacking the Win Registry.
But this might not be needed in some cases. For example, we all know that Linux users are all serious coders dedicated to the OS Revolution, and so *never* have any time available for something as trivial as games
an interesting set of specs: being a spaceship, it must be extremely lightweight, yet able to withstand a hundred atmospheres of pressure at 400 degrees Centigrade, passing through sulphuric acid mist to get there.
I am sure there is a joke in here someplace, with the climate of Venus, etc. Probably along the line of "Love is Hell", or some such thing.
how many sites there are that are like this? I remember how there was some sort of bruhaha in the past year or so about sites needing to be made more secure. I also recall some sites, that is you went into them via a search engine, seemed okay, but if you went up to the parent you got this big nasty warning that said basically if you proceed past this point you better be official or else well will track everything you do and hand it over to the NSA, etc.
So I wonder how smart it is to have sites like this available to the public and unpassworded, or not verified as coming from a.MIL domain or something.
I would be interested of learning when Nasa decides to perform similar probes on our more local cellestial partners Venus and Mercury,
or any other local body for that matter.
except for potential flybyes, none most likely.
After all, for both you would need something that could sustain extended times on the inside of a blast furnace.
and in the case of Venus a blast furnace whose primary atmospheric component is sulphuric acid, or some such thing.
Looks like the Mars defense force is going to have another target so shoot at.
I mean, how many times do you have to send a packet or something before you figure out that the problem is at the other end?
We do not want to end up like that engineer in the old joke about the engineer at the army firing range, however.
Very quickly, he was at target partice, and kept missing the target. The DI chewed him out for missing the target. Engineer puts his finger in the barrel of the gun, pulls the trigger, blowing off the finger tip. And so he promptly informs the DI that the problem must be at the other end.
Some how I am sure that if lots of folks contacted them via their public contact points, informing them of the PR problem they have, and if someone brought this to the attention of the local Consumer Reports program on the Local TV station...
This seems like another one of those double edged swords.
Closed Peer Reviews can lead to group think and political agendas
Open peer reviews opens the process to people who are not peers, which is fine by itself, opens up the speculations and discussions of experts among themselves to criticism buy others with other political agendas.
This is not restricted to the easily cited religious groups.
For example, there is always the competition for research dollars. In support of this idea there is this article over at Netslaves, not particularly a geek site, but certainly devoted to the run of the mill technology worker. To quote one snippet:
Got a problem? Well, if you have you can be sure that a politician will tell you that "there is no evidence that..." that the problem exists. Of course, not - they don't put research money into exploring the really serious problems anyway. (Depleted uranium weapons for example). "Science" - it's what people with money decide they want measured up with numbers.
Academics often analyse, without providing real solutions, always expecting someone else to find the solutions. These other people (politicians, business leaders, etc.) often give research grants to academics, as a substitute for doing anything about the identified problems. The way it works is very clever - the officials give grants for academics to analyse problems as they say they cannot do
anything about a problem until there is "evidence". The reseachers then produce research which concludes by proving the need for future research - i.e. more work for them. Sometimes, of course, the academics come up with a different way of doing things, then this is turned into a procedure which ensures that practioners in a field work in the new approved fashion. This "evidence based" method doesn't really change anything except it does provide another set of paper work so that the effected practioners tick
boxes to prove they have done the things in the new way. Nothing else much changes - except that everyone becomes very highly educated.
You'll say that that is a jaundiced view - it doesn't quite match the way the world is. There is no way I can provide "scientific evidence" for it. Yet I think its "good enough" a description.
Here we have the vested interest for research dollars that corrupts the process. Opening up the peer reveiw process would make expose this. I do not know that this fix the situation. But it would make more resources available so that it could be fixed.
Slashdot Mirror
Just to let you know, I did the following.
I went to www.98lite.net, and downloaded their IEradicator program. This removes IE from win 9x, including win 98 and Millenium.
It works great. And guess what. Netscape is 5 times faster, and is 5 times more stable.
Now tell me that MS would never screw over the competition in their code. All this does is to make me more angry an MS.
Check out the Vinny the Vampire comic strip
Although this has it's downside as well.
Check out the Vinny the Vampire comic strip
The home page of the Information Society is here
Try to find a link to the actual full legislative text however.
Check out the Vinny the Vampire comic strip
Sadly Chinese interests do have control in places like the San Diego shipyards, the Panama Canel, and even in the Bahamas. Given that and covert operations, the potential is there for things to get messy.
Some people speculate that the Chinese military wants a war with the US in a few years, just as a way to grab power and to short circuit certain internal problems due to poor planning of infra structure. Heck the military may want to get nuked just to help handle excess population, crule as that sounds.
Check out the Vinny the Vampire comic strip
Because of security reasons, etc. Military aircraft generally do NOT have black boxes.
Even if the hardware is all busted up and the drives been wiped. There is still alot you can do in data recovery with a government level budget and a lot of time.
Personally, I would have hoped that they were tossing things out the door into the ocean. Salt water is wonderful for electronics
Check out the Vinny the Vampire comic strip
In a similar story, many many years ago, a USS aircraft carrier (I forget if it was the JFK or the Eisenhower) had a machine shop that was discovered missing. Somehow, during a shipyard period when many renovations were going on, someone had to cut through a wall and found it. It had been built with no doors. Everything was there, still neatly locked away.
For those who cannot imagine this, remember that a ship is built inside the shell one floor at a time. Some compartments typically are only accessible via stairways. So if you do not have the big picture, it is easy to miss a detail if you are a basic welder, or whatever.
Management technology for planning these things has hopefully imporoved to cover problems like this.
Check out the Vinny the Vampire comic strip
For example, I know that someone submitted this link from the MIT Tech Review about the REbuilding of the Library of Alexandria (which was one of the biggest and most impressive geek communites of all time). (project link here)The lessons learned from that Library are very very relevant today in our attempts to build a future civilization.
This obviously goes over the heads of the editors, and gets rejected.
But this stuff, isn't even summarized here, or quoted, just everyone go look at it. And feedback suggests that it is basically a high class troll.
This is no way to build a community.
Check out the Vinny the Vampire comic strip
A few extra items that might be relevant.
1) In Chinese culture, an apology inclludes the idea that the version of the story told by the other person is the truth. not yours. this can get sticky, because this is not the viewpoint of apology in the west. In the West, the statement of sorrow is very often separated from the investigation of thetruth of the matter
2)The internal politics of China in this are very important. There has been speculation in the fringe press that this incident was set up by the Chinese Military for their own goals. While this is speculation, if true, this leaves them (the Chines Military) with a win/win situation. If the USA backs down, then they win in the international arena. If the USA does not back down then The Military gets to strengthen their position inside China.
The road out of this mess would be delicate, and maybe requires some technology, etc. as follows:
1) A video/computer simulation of the accident, as believed to have happened, showing and highlighting the obvious manueverability (sp?) of the jet vs the prop plane, and the difficulty of controlling the prop plane when the jet wash hits the props. Demonstrate how the jet can throws the prop plane out of control, and what happens when the jet gets too close.
2)Praise the obvious bravery of the Chinese pilot in the pursuit of patriotism for his homeland. Note that what he probably wanted to do was something that should be reserved for the mosty highly skilled pilots. The Pilot was obviously trying to intimidate the American plane, and throw the American plane out of control.
3) We can say something like "The american pilot was not skilled enough to keep control of his aircraft when it was upset and disrupted by the suprisingly powerful engines of the Chinese Jets nearby, and we will work on improving the skill of our pilots.
ecetera. We build up the strength of the Chinese military in the PR lines.
Of course, if other means are needed, then planning would have to work to take everyone by surprise, instead of giving everyone and their grandmother time to prepare a defense, increasing casualties, etc.
Check out the Vinny the Vampire comic strip
the Active desktop has been renamed, and is coming back in all sorts of user freindly features in the future. Just watch>
IE on an open fair market is one thing. Fine. Forcing me to use it, and blocking out the competition I suppose is superior marketing, And making it damn hard to remove is another.
The proof in the pudding are products like 98Lite that remove Internet Explorer from windows, and result in faster and more stable systems. Rememeber, MS has testified in court that not only was this impossible, but that doing this would destroy windows.
ha. nice try
Check out the Vinny the Vampire comic strip
The major primary complaint I have had with MS is the pervasion of inferior technology by means of superior marketing. Check Out my blurb on Boiling Frogs.
You comment on giving away the razor and making money on the blades is flawed, because for shear quantity, IE outnumbers iis. So to be precise, If they were giving away the razor and making money on the blades, they should be giving away iis, and selling IE at 5 or 10 bucks a pop. This is not the place to review the wonderful emails and duplicitious testimony of MS at the anti trust trial. "We gotta integrate IE into Windows because we'll never win otherwise"
In other words, they couldn't win on the merits of the program. So they HAD to win by other means. This was well in advance of IE 5. Are you still Enthusiastically using the ActiveX desktop?
I used to like Microsoft, really. but I got ticked off everytime they did something that that tried to lock me into their system. Maybe you like handcuffs.
"No these are not handcuffs, they are golden bracelets, really!"
ha
Check out the Vinny the Vampire comic strip
While I wouldn't be so complementary to MS (short on coffee today) this sums it up nicely.
Check out the Vinny the Vampire comic strip
It reeminds of of that Babylon 5 Episode where Molari angered someone he should not have, and wound up having his quarters and his life ruined not by a virus, but by a holodemon program.
The Lurker's Guide has this:
Londo is in his quarters, having considerable difficulty, when Vir enters. Londo explains that a holodemon has possessed his data system. It is eating up files, records, and buying stocks he would never purchase for himself, in addition to playing painful Narn opera continually. Vir suggests that Londo apologize. Londo refuses at first, but when his computer suddenly reports that he is the new owner of 500,000 shares of Fireflies Incorporated, then blacks out the entire room, Londo agrees.
Check out the Vinny the Vampire comic strip
I am not a psych, and I am sure I would not want to be. But in this case, a few novel ideas might be applicable.
To start from a place that is familiar: We know about paranoia, and we know about hypochondria. and so I made the leap to the idea of something that could be called paranoid hypochondria, which would be a disease where the person is constantly seeing diseases in others. This disease would be very dangerous to have in doctors and shrinks, etc., since whoever checks them?
The next step would be a form of paranoia where a person sees criminality constantly popping up in others, even when inappropriate. This would be dangerous in law enforcement, in legislators, erc.
The implications for human rights are easy enough to work out.
Check out the Vinny the Vampire comic strip
it might be unreal, but you got to make plans to cover the possibillities.
:)
Check out the Vinny the Vampire comic strip
Well, there is this User Friendly cartoon sequence on Geek Jeopardy
"I'll tale Obscure Modem Commands for 300, Alex"
(there are several of these in the following week or so of cartoons)
Check out the Vinny the Vampire comic strip
Check out the Vinny the Vampire comic strip
Now, If you just toss a frog straight into a pot of boiling water, this is not going to to anything but upset the frog and make the frog jump out of the pot. BUT, if you put the frog into the pot when tha water is cool, the frog will like it. If you then very gradually raise the temperature of the water the frog will not notice it. You can eventually raise the temperature of the water until it is boiling, and you now have one cooked frog dinner. NOTE, California bullfrogs, weighing in at about 3 or 4 pounds, have enough meat to make a decent meal.
How does this relate? Simple.
The long term strategy of MS is to slowly increment changes in the way things worked so that in the end, everything works they way they want, and they can dictate how it goes together. If they got greedy and tried to do it all in a year or so, then they would never get agreeement. But by implementing it bit and piece, they can continue to carve a large and larger section of the pie for themselves. All they have to do is think longer term than their opponents.
Actually, I am sure they have on a wall someplace their equivalent of a 5 or 10 year plan to conquer the known (software) world, subject to revision and new discoveries, etc. They likely planned killing off Windows about 3 to 5 years ago when it became obvious that the legal suites were beginning to be a real pain. They are not there yet, but they needed an escape plan. Part of the move to taking over the Internet was part of this escape plan, which is why Gates made sure it was the equivalent of a oceanliner coming to a halt and turning on a dime.
How to we handle this?
We need as far reaching an effort and long range vision as they do. A competitive Argument that resonates. Microsofts's sells to the inherently lazy streak in people, even if the PR is twisted. They sell to "we make it easier for you".
What competitive meme do we offer to fight this Microsoft meme virus?
Check out the Vinny the Vampire comic strip
(For Example, this classic scene: having a house literally filled with money neatly wrapped in plastic bundles with no place to put it.) I can see kids now, "y'know, if I could only avoid getting busted ..."
a minor nitpick is the impression that the star of the film is depicted as the first person to introduce cocaine to the US, like the US was totally virgin territory.
Check out the Vinny the Vampire comic strip
Which brings up the question of drivers for other platforms. Of course you could use generics. Some folks may like to use some of the more exotic features that you can get at by hacking the Win Registry.
But this might not be needed in some cases. For example, we all know that Linux users are all serious coders dedicated to the OS Revolution, and so *never* have any time available for something as trivial as games
[JOKE! JOKE!]
Check out the Vinny the Vampire comic strip
I am sure there is a joke in here someplace, with the climate of Venus, etc. Probably along the line of "Love is Hell", or some such thing.
Check out the Vinny the Vampire comic strip
So I wonder how smart it is to have sites like this available to the public and unpassworded, or not verified as coming from a .MIL domain or something.
Check out the Vinny the Vampire comic strip
except for potential flybyes, none most likely.
After all, for both you would need something that could sustain extended times on the inside of a blast furnace.
and in the case of Venus a blast furnace whose primary atmospheric component is sulphuric acid, or some such thing.
Check out the Vinny the Vampire comic strip
I mean, how many times do you have to send a packet or something before you figure out that the problem is at the other end?
We do not want to end up like that engineer in the old joke about the engineer at the army firing range, however.
Very quickly, he was at target partice, and kept missing the target. The DI chewed him out for missing the target. Engineer puts his finger in the barrel of the gun, pulls the trigger, blowing off the finger tip. And so he promptly informs the DI that the problem must be at the other end.
Check out the Vinny the Vampire comic strip
There might be a reaction.
Check out the Vinny the Vampire comic strip
Closed Peer Reviews can lead to group think and political agendas
Open peer reviews opens the process to people who are not peers, which is fine by itself, opens up the speculations and discussions of experts among themselves to criticism buy others with other political agendas.
This is not restricted to the easily cited religious groups.
For example, there is always the competition for research dollars. In support of this idea there is this article over at Netslaves, not particularly a geek site, but certainly devoted to the run of the mill technology worker. To quote one snippet:
Here we have the vested interest for research dollars that corrupts the process. Opening up the peer reveiw process would make expose this. I do not know that this fix the situation. But it would make more resources available so that it could be fixed.Check out the Vinny the Vampire comic strip