If the original author is not in court but I am--then, uh, who is suing whom?
Assume a hypothetical case where author A writes a program that B modifies, then gives to C, who makes further modifications. If B and C go to court, the questions the court would settle would be the tort agreement between B and C--the nature of the agreement between A and B will not be at issue, because C does not have standing to question the tort agreement between A and B.
So if I find myself in court and the original author is not in court--then the original author will have no say. What I tell the court, so long as it matches a reasonable reading of the agreement I have in my hand with the original author, is what the court will assume when litigating with a third party. If the original author disagrees with that interpretation, then because (at least in theory, though not really in practice) all court proceedings are public unless ordered otherwise, then the original author is free to show up in court.
But if the original author is not in court, the court cannot presume that the original author is reserving additional rights that a reasonable reading of the agreement does not explicitly reserve.
Again, this looks like you're just trying to figure out how to claim additional rights that, oh, by the way, happen to help a third party who has no interest otherwise in the outcome of this case. The fact that you're now trying to hornswaggle these additional rights by assuming the court will step in and reserve those rights when no-one goes to court to demand those rights strikes me as a very perverse understanding of how the court system actually works.
Essentially you're advocating Theft by Judge. If you next say "well, there should be a law"--well, that's Theft by Legislation. Either way, it stinks, and makes no legal sense.
If a meteorologist can't speak to the fundamental science of climate change, then maybe the AMS shouldn't give them a Seal of Approval. Clearly, the AMS doesn't agree that global warming can be blamed on cyclical weather patterns. It's like allowing a meteorologist to go on-air and say that hurricanes rotate clockwise and tsunamis are caused by the weather. It's not a political statement...it's just an incorrect statement.
Ex-friggin'-cuse me?
While this is not as extreme as the originally linked article makes it sound like, and while it is clear that this is being expressed as a personal opinion rather than as a serious proposal to be carried out by the American Meterological Society, is it reasonable for scientists or even television meterologists to tow the party line or else have one's "seal of approval" revoked?
There is a rather dangerous trend here, where people seem to want to force consensus by shutting down anyone who doesn't spout out the party line. This sort of shutting people down by going after their livelihoods (the AMS "Seal of Approval") in order to force a consensus does not help strengthen the competition in the arena of ideas--it only shuts people up by threatening their pocketbooks if they don't spout the desired group-think du-joir.
What's next? Memory Holes to erase all previous dissent from the party line of Global Warming as a man-made phenomina? Thought Police? Reworking the language to introduce Newspeak, so even the idea that mankind is not responsible or that Global Warming may not be happening is impossible to frame as a coherent sentence?
It's a bad idea.
But thank goodness it's just that--an idea, blithly suggested undoubtedly without a lot of reflection on a personal blog.
Just to address the CFC thing: it appears that the whole CFC debate is following the same trajectory as the debate on DDT half a century ago, or using Alar. A "huge problem" was discovered; people were villanized, we got rid of the chemical, everyone is happy.
Perhaps in Louisiana that will be the case--but in most Common Law Courts, intent is a factor in any tort case. Of course if the understanding of the parties do not match, then the language of a contract is picked apart--but rarely are additional rights awarded to a party in a tort case that the party did not intend to reserve.
By stating that a court will award me rights I do not intend to reserve because I did not understand the language of a license I put together between me and another party--and awarding me rights which, oh, by the way, happen to benefit a third party who was not involved in the original license--what we have here is a form of theft. And this sort of intellectual property theft, by coercing someone I never intended to coerce to release their software into the public--I'm sorry, but it's a pathetic and mean-spirited attack on a number of companies (such as Apple and Microsoft) because someone like myself decided it was sort of cool that they're using a snippet of my code (such as my GUID generator work which wound up in Apple's OS X kernel).
It is pretty clear to me that the language of a BSD-like license matches the intent I outlined: use it, but don't sue me, leave me out of the promotionals, and mention me in the copyright. (I'm simplifying, of course--but not as much as those claiming BSD really is a closet GPL.)
I was about to Google the law in California, out of personal curiosity, as to the rules of ownership of a copyright for works produced under certain employment circumstances. I found a very good article on Ownership of Copyrights, but sorting out who is right was giving me a headache.
I suspect the officer doesn't have a legal leg to stand on--but answering that question is going to require a peek at his employment contract, the work that was done, the other compensation or tools provided: in short, it's going to require lawyers and courts and judges to sort it out. Which is, sadly, the primary reason why we have lawyers, courts and judges.
Look, when I release software under a BSD-like license, my intent as the owner of the work is to do the following:
(1) Permit people to do whatever they want with the software--including relicensing the software, so long as (2) if you use my software, you don't then plaster my name all over it as if I endorce whatever cause or crappy software you're creating, and (3) you don't sue my ass if and when the software you downloaded from me breaks.
Basically, do what you want--just leave me out of it.
In one sense the article is correct: in imposing a new license you cannot remove the old one. But as the intent of the old license is to cover my ass and keep my name around so people know what sort of a cool dude I am, so long as the new license also covers my ass and keeps my name around so people know what sort of a cool dude I am, I don't see the problem--either from a common-sense perspective or from a legal one.
Apple officially calls its own standard "FairPlay," but fair it is not.... You are always going to have to buy Apple stuff. Forever and ever.'
Yeah, because the moment I take my MP3s ripped off my music CDs and play it on an Apple device, this dreaded FairPlay thing takes over, steals my credit card, and automatically orders stuff Apple thinks I will need forever and ever. And the FairPlay thing infects the MP3s, reprogramming me so that I feel irrational joy everytime Steve Jobs speaks, causing me to wake up the next day three thousand dollars poorer and tons of empty Apple boxes surrounding my bed from a purchasing binge that I had the night before.
And God Help Me if I should ever even think about buying a Zune and burning the few songs I bought through iTunes onto a CD then re-ripping them for the Zune. Hell, even typing in the four letters 'z', 'u', 'n' and 'e' in that order is causing me incredible amounts of pain and suffering from the FairPlay mental virus that Apple planted in my brain. And besides, if any of my FairPlay ripped CDs ever get into the Zune, it will cripple the Zune forever with a horrible user interface and turn the Zune a crappy shade of brown.
Please. Do you think Steve Jobs gives a flying flip about DRM--outside the fact that it was the only way he could get the music industry to allow him to sell music via the iTunes store? Hell, the DRM lock-in isn't even applied on the iTunes servers--it's applied after the song is downloaded, which means the microsecond the music industry allows Apple to sell DRM-free music, it would take a simple upgrade to iTunes to remove DRM.
Besides, FairPlay is an odd duck--has anyone with an iPod noticed that DRM locked FairPlay music just plays on any iPod without having to register the device first? I mean talk about a weak form of DRM--I suspect it's a slightly more sophisticated version of the bozo bit used in MacOS System 5 or earlier, which was a file attribute bit which told the finder not to copy the specified file. This is unlike every other DRM-enabled device which requires that the device be registered with whatever ID you're using so it can read those files.
In my opinion the single most important clause in the United States Constitution is not the First Amendment nor the Second nor the 14th. It is Article IV, section 4, clause 1:
The United States shall guarantee to every state in this union a republican form of government,...
In order for any state in the United States to be a member of the United States, it must establish a constitution and elections within the borders of that State. It's why every state in the United States has an elected governor, and not an unelected King. Its why every state has some sort of parlimentary system, with representatives elected from various dictricts within that state, instead of representatives from various warlords and clans being sent to the King's Castle to parlay over internal matters.
It may sound stupid, but there is no reason why the states of the United States are republics except for that one clause. Without that clause, Governor Schwarzenegger could dissolve the California Assembly and declare himself King, and there would be nothing the United States Congress could do about it, as it is an interior matter. (Well, they may try to invoke the Commerse Clause and the Full Faith clause--but those are legal stretches that were only recently widened.)
The United Nations has no such clause.
And that is my problem with the United Nations.
Even though it was started as a hopeful experiment to convince the powers of the world to adopt Democracy, often we have some of the most un-democratic countries and some of the worse abusers of Human Rights taking control of various committees. Very few countries within the United Nations even give a damn about the Rule of Law--which is why we get endless declarations and resolutions and mandates coming out of the United Nations falling on deaf ears.
Now if the United Nations would adopt a resolution making it mandatory that continued membership in the United Nations requires adopting a Republican form of government, and if we were to elevate Democracy to an ideal rather than denegrate Democracy as a byproduct of United States emperialism, and if we were to make our representatives to the United Nations elected positions rather than appointed ambassadors, then it would be something I could fully support.
Until then, the United Nations is at best worthless and at worse, evil.
(1) Everyone has duties to the community in which alone the free and full development of his personality is possible.
(2) In the exercise of his rights and freedoms, everyone shall be subject only to such limitations as are determined by law solely for the purpose of securing due recognition and respect for the rights and freedoms of others and of meeting the just requirements of morality, public order and the general welfare in a democratic society.
(3) These rights and freedoms may in no case be exercised contrary to the purposes and principles of the United Nations.
Article 30.
Nothing in this Declaration may be interpreted as implying for any State, group or person any right to engage in any activity or to perform any act aimed at the destruction of any of the rights and freedoms set forth herein.
Article 29(1) means that everyone has duties to the community in which he belongs--and the free and full development of his personality is not possible without such allegience. Thus, if you are a Chinese person in China, you owe allegience to China and have duties as defined by your community. This is in sharp contrast from the United States, where communities and countries derive from individual rights, rather than the other way around.
Article 29(2) indicates that your "rights" and "freedoms" are not limitless, but are subject to limitations, including the limitations of the morality, need for public order and "general welfare". Since you as an individual derive your rights from the community in which you live (rather than the community coming about because a group of free individuals voluntarily band together), rather than individuals shaping the morality of the community in which they live, individuals are subject to the morality of the community they live in--and communities may make laws limiting your actions so that you behave in a moral fashion.
Article 29(3) indiciates that your "rights" and "freedoms" are further limited--you may not commit any action that runs "contrary to the purposes and principles of the United Nations."
And to cap all of this off, Article 30 states that you may not engage in any activity which destroys any of the rights outlined in the document--including the right to rest, reasonable limitations on working hours, and the fundamental right to an adequate standard of living--including the fundamental right to clothing and medical care. (Should we interpret a doctor who goes home rather than treats a sick man as an infringment on the man's fundamental right to medical care, or an infringement on the doctor's fundamental right to reasonable limitations on working hours?)
The whole document is a Utopian fantasy that no nation-state in the world takes seriously, so don't be surprised if UN officials wipe their asses with the document--as that is all the document is really worth.
How can an individual have fundamental rights if all fundamental rights are legislated by committee?
First, if it was really OSX, why would they need Google's help to implement Google Maps? It would just run.
I suspect this is a port of the Google Maps for cell phones application to fit on the iPhone, and not the web site Google Maps. And unless the iPhone implements the Java J2ME layer, this is a little more complicated than just connecting to http://maps.google.com./
Third, it's hard to believe a handheld would have the resources to run OSX.
It depends on what we call "OS X". At its core, OS X is Unix on a Mach kernel, with a separate window process which presents the UI which uses the Objective C class libraries for its API. There are a number of cell phones running Linux; if you can fit Linux on a cell phone, why not OS X?
Finally, if it was really OSX, then any OSX app would run on it (in theory).
If those cell phones were really running Linux on them, then any X window based application should run on it (in theory)--after being cross-compiled, and the UI stripped down, of course, and the application made to fit in the correct footprint.
If we can still call it "Linux" even though its on a cell phone or a router or a network hard disk and can't just run any ol' RPM we find lying around, then why can't we call it "OS X" even though you can't pop your favorite OS X software CD into the iPhone and just run it?
The one thing Steve Jobs has been is ruthless in getting well-thought out design and integrated software projects working across multiple product teams, so that the final user experience is a unified one across most of Apple's products.
Compare this to Sony's reported "silo" approach to developing hardware, software and services, music and video--where many times individual managers within Sony actively squabble over the right approach to take, each fueled more by the individual needs of each division within Sony rather than the needs of the overall company. Such a "silo" mentality is inevitable at any large company unless someone at the top actively forces people to work together for the benefit of the entire company rather than for the individual gains of a particular division.
I don't know if there is a technologically savvy enough uber-geek asshole out there which could replace Steve Jobs if he were to leave Apple--which means Apple would eventually fall back on the habits it had under Spindler and Amelio, where every division internally competed without any sort of unified direction, beyond the imperitive that the sell something.
H.264 is another name for the video compression scheme for MPEG-4, and is fairly common on the Macintosh. As someone else has noted you can rip DVDs on the Macintosh with Handbrake; I've ripped about two dozen DVDs using this program to put them on my iPod. And H.264 will also play on the PSP. (Originally I was ripping movies so I could download them to my PSP, prior to getting my 5G iPod.)
Not supporting MPEG-2 makes sense: compared to MPEG-4 the standard is extremely bloaty, especially for a 40 gig drive. (I have a ReplayTV which uses MPEG-2, and 1 gig translates to 1 hour of TV, if you are willing to watch a pixellated fuzzy mess. That same 1 gig translates to 1 hour of TV on MPEG-4 for something that is absolutely beautiful and clear.)
Right now you can buy third party software (games) for a 5G iPod, though the selection is limited. Apple has also gone through a couple of iterations of the underlying OS for the iPod, starting with an OS licensed from a third party, then bringing the iPod OS development in-house.
What many people seem to be missing here is that the iPhone is the first iPod to run OS X.
It would explain why Apple was so hesitant to get a 5G iPod SDK out into the hands of more game developers--they knew that they were going to replace the underlying OS with OS X real soon.
Further, the June/July timeframe is about when Apple would be refreshing their iPod lineup anyway.
It appears Apple needed to announce the new iPhone because they needed to make an FCC filing, and they'd rather announce it themselves than allow people to broadcast rumors of the phone based on its FCC filing. By hammering for two hours the message that this is the iPhone, Apple has managed to engage in its classic strategy of indirection: everyone is so expectant about a new iPhone that no-one is talking about an iPod lineup refresh, nor is anyone talking about other computing devices that may or may not show up in the June/July timeframe based on the iPhone touch screen/portable device UI/OS X technology.
Here's the thing: There are some basic skills we expect everyone to have: Reading, simple arithmetic, understanding traffic signs, how to buy food at a grocery store. None of these are intuitive, everyone had to learn them. For a normal person with an office job, using a computer GUI comes up just as frequently as those basic skills.
Yes, but this is not an excuse to foster an overly complex or over-engineered technology-centric interface upon some poor sap who just wants to get their job done.
Certainly reading is a basic skill. Reading Latin and Greek is not. Simple arithmetic and understanding traffic signs are basic skills. Calculus and understanding Feynman Diagrams are not. What has happened is that technologists who are being paid to solve problems instead build technology--then bitch because their target audience are a bunch of lusers who are unwilling to learn the technology. And the first company to come along and attempt to solve problems rather than build technology will do well--such as Apple is starting to do and Cisco used to do.
Uh, not exactly. And you get a tax refund if you install solar power panels on your home which makes the net costs cheaper over the lifetime of the system than if you just bought the electricity off the grid at prevailing costs.
The problem is that the anti-Global Warming crowd has doubled-down on the position that Global Warming does not exist at all.
Not at all.
I've seen three attacks on Global Warming. The first attack is as you suggest--that it isn't happening at all.
The second attack is on if mankind is causing Global Warming or if it has a natural source. Further, if mankind is causing any problems at all, to what degree is global warming our fault--and is it being caused by CO2 output, methane, water vapor, or other things?
The third attack is on what sort of governmental action--if any--needs to be taken to solve the problem.
The reason why I personally think the debate is all to convince us that we need to engage in a massive re-engineering of the world's economy is twofold. First, Kyoto would have done nothing about CO2 emissions, while transfering billions of dollars of net wealth from the rich countries to the poor countries. A massive multi-billion dollar redistribution of wealth that would have no effect on CO2 emissions over the first twenty years of the treaty--if that doesn't prove that at least part of this is about government control, then I don't know what would.
Second, any suggestion to fix global warming through any alternate means other than restructuring the economy (and villifying the United States for having the most successful economy)--such as seeding the oceans with iron fertilizer to help algae grow and absorb more CO2 from the atmosphere--is met with the harshest criticisms.
The people who are driving the debate in Global Warming seem to be anti-technologists who want to see mankind revert to a nomadic, pre-technological state controlled by a world socialist government which makes sure no-one has more than anyone else. Which is why any technological solution to Global Warming is scoffed at without even a second hearing, while at the same time massive government restructuring is being demanded by environmentalists who decry capitalism.
Your problem is with freedom. Namely, people's right to recreate and or self-medicate with their bodies (a natural right). If you think some corporations lied, you might argue for their liquidation. Instead, you (society - and assholes like you, personally) take away the freedom of private business owners and tax the fuck out of a product you don't like*.
Back up a second. I was just outlining where the next debate would be, and pointing out that even though Tobacco companies have been thoroughly villified and everyone in political power has demanded we "do something"--people still smoke. So the same pattern would occur with Global Warming.
I happen to agree with you, by the way, that the biggest problem with the Global Warming debate is the same as the debate over fast food, tobacco, and other similar debates--ultimately it comes down to creating a new governmental program to control people and to take people's freedoms away.
Global Warming is the worse of the bunch, as far as I'm concern, because up until now every other issue has involved national regulation. Global Warming advocates are demanding (through things like Kyoto) that we create a trans-national socialist world government to combat the problem, a socialist regime which would have control over every aspect of our economic lives from what we can drive--and in the future potentially even how far we are allowed to drive each day--to where we live, to what we eat, to how we work--and all in the name of reducing CO2 output to help reduce global warming by a degree centegrade.
Would a 'global warming controversy' exist without the millions of dollars spent by fossil fuel companies to discredit scientific conclusions?"
Yes, but the shape of the debate may be slightly different.
Look at it this way: Bill Clinton, in the eleventh hour of his presidency, buried the Kyoto treaty--and admission from Kyoto supporters suggest the reduction of CO2 may only slow global warming by the tiniest fraction of a degree. So assuming everyone was on the same page--that is, assuming we all knew that Global Warming was a fact, and further assuming we all knew that Global Warming was entirely caused by human activities--the real political battle over control of how (or if) we can solve this problem would be under way.
The fact that opponents to the idea that Global Warming is real or is as big a problem as presented--and those who believe in Global Warming but who believe it is not entirely (or largly) mankind's fault--have received funding from the oil companies does not take away from the fact that "solving" the problem of manmade Global Warming is a big political undertaking. And anything that is this big political undertaking will inevitably be a big political mess involving trillions of dollars and lots of opportunities for lying, cheating and stealing. (To think otherwise is to think all of our politicians are as pure and clean as the wind-driven snow. Hah!)
I mean, even though we now have proved the Tobacco Companies falsified clear evidence and used tactics to falsify scientific evidence--evidence that has a much more solid basis in double-blind studies on smokers than Global Warmings evidence of computer models and tree ring studies--we still haven't solved the problem of smoking. People still smoke like chimineys, and the evil Tobacco Companies are still selling cigarettes like crazy.
So even though we have reached a solid consensus that smoking kills you and it's all the fault of the Tobacco Companies--they are still in business. And a good friend of mine died of lung cancer at the age of 41 just last year, caused by smoking.
So, there is this myriad combination of "states", not too complex for slashdotters to understand but off the scale for lay users. It doesn't help we use "our" terminology. I've stopped trying to explain and describe the difference between "hibernate" and "standby".
You know, I think this captures the fundamental problem here.
From a technology standpoint we programmers think in terms of how the underlying stuff works. To us, it's clear what hibernate and standby are doing, why they're different and what the relative advantages and disadvantages of each technology are. However, in being so focused on the underlying technology and how it works, we start overlooking the problem that both technologies are trying to solve, which is this: how to extend the life of a computer (computer's battery, in the case of a laptop) when a computer is left on but is not in use--and do it in such a way that the computer can come back on relatively quickly when the user comes back.
Users want us to solve problems, we want to provide technology.
And so when the user wants to solve the problem "I walked away from my laptop for an hour; please make it so the battery doesn't drain dry when it is idle", we come back with "well, we have sleep and standby and hibernate; hibernate is really cool because the computer is almost completely powered off but standby allows the computer to come back a lot faster"--of course we're going to get a glazed look on the poor user's eyes. All he wants is to come back, jiggle something, and have the computer come back to life.
Unfortunately because we talk about providing technology and the user wants to solve problems, we then wander off grumbling "stupid lusers; they're not willing to learn how to use their computer." And the poor users stumble off grumbling "why do they make these damned thing so hard to use? I don't care about bits and bytes; just tell me what I need to do so I can get my important work done."
The really ironic part is that users are not stupid--contrary to about 90% (caution: made up statistic) of technologists complaints. They just happen to have a different job than us. I mean it's easy for us to look at some poor overworked doctor (for example) and claim he's a moron because he doesn't know the difference between suspend and hybernate--but then, the reason why he doesn't know the difference is because he's more worried about knowing the difference between opioids and non-opioid drugs and knowing which class of drugs will better relieve his poor cancer victim's pain.
Even your interpretation doesn't admit to the possibility that a scientist may not wish to bother fighting the regulations. That is, by accepting the workplace requirements it's not an endorcement of pseudoscience, but simply not wishing to bother fighting the regulations.
More and more I've seen people demand scientists become political advocates of one form or another. Al Gore asks scientists to become advocates of Global Warming policy change. This guy demands scientists rebel against workplace changes intended to reduce secrecy leaks. And all demand that scientists become political advocates and engage in policy discussions--and suggest that if scientists are not advocates, they cannot possibly be scientists. (After all, if as a scientist you are not demanding passage of HR bill something-or-another, you're just supporting pseudo-science.)
Uh, excuse me, but my fundamental problem here is that science is not advocacy. Science is about discovery and uncovering the truth. Politics is about advocating people change their behavior either through coersion or through force, such as the force of laws. The more and more I hear people state that Science is about Advocacy--that is, the more and more I see people demand scientists become politicians and advocates, the more and more I see science being perverted and twisted away from the desire for Truth and towards framing research to support a particular policy position.
Frankly it concerns me that as science is used for advocacy purposes and not for the simple joy of discovering the truth, we will see more and more "scientific" results framed to advocate a point of view--be it the "health benefits" of cigarette smoking to the "damaging results" of game playing or pornography--and "science" itself will be perverted to the point of untrustworthiness.
In fact, we're most of the way there: how quickly would people on Slashdot reject a "scientific report" showing that people who play video games are more antisocial and more prone to violent behavior?
The logic as given by Brad Hollan is this: assume polygraphs are unscientific. If you agree to a polygraph, you are agreeing to something unscientific; therefore you cannot claim to be a scientist.
With me so far?
Religion has no scientific basis; it is based in faith. (Both philosophers studying the philosophy of science and religions theologians more or less agree on this point.) If you are religious, you are agreeing with something that is not scientific; therefore--by the same logic as given above--you cannot claim to be a scientist.
The pattern is: "if you agree with/to something unscientific, you cannot claim to be a scientist." It's just a matter of finding unscientific things to agree with/to to fit the first half of the clause in order to make the second half of the clause apply. Religion fits the pattern much better than polygraph tests: religion admits to being based on faith, whereas there are those who believe polygraphs at least has some basis in physiology--that is, there are those who believe it is based in part on science.
Polygraphy is an insulting affront to scientists, since a committee of the National Academy of Sciences has declared that, beyond being inadmissible in court, there is no scientific basis for polygraphs. In my opinion, by agreeing to be polygraphed, one thereby seriously jeopardizes his or her claim to being a scientist, which is presumably the principal reason for employment for many scientists at Los Alamos.'
Le'me see: because there is no scientific basis for polygraphs (because they are not admissible in court--having nothing to do with the science of polygraphs, but because of court standards for admission of evidence), if you agree to something this unscientific, then you cannot possibly claim to be a scientist.
By that logic because religion has no scientific basis, anyone who is religious cannot also be a scientist. I'm sure this guy gets along real well with Richard Dawkins at parties. It's a standard fallacy: if you claim to be an 'X', you must do 'Y'--and if you don't do 'Y' (whatever I tell you 'Y' is), you cannot possibly be an 'X'. I can do without that sort of mind control, than you very much.
Of course this does not admit the possibility that there are other reasons why a scientist would agree to be polygraphed, including the possibility that someone working at a sensitive facility such as Los Alamos may just feel that it ain't worth the hassle to fight it.
And if you believe it is unscientific for someone to act apathetic rather than engage in advocacy by fighting polygraphs in the workplace, then you have obviously confused advocacy with discovery--a common enough disease in this day and age, I suppose, given the number of "scientific" papers which are little more than thinly veiled advocacy position papers against computer games and pornography.
Measuring sea levels is even more complicated than that.
First, realize that the level of the seas has to do with the gravitational equipotential around the Earth. Figuring out what that equipotential was and is--and to a precision of millimeters on a globe where there isn't a single land mass that isn't itself moving up or down. Without a frame of reference to measure the sea levels all we can do is guess.
Second, the idea that sea levels are rising due to global warming comes from the notion that land-based glacers are melting and releasing their water into the oceans. But anything falling into the oceans will cause sea levels to rise--including erosion washing land mass into the oceans. So what percentage of ocean level rise (assuming it is in fact happening) is coming from land-based glacers and what percentage is coming from erosion would have to be determined.
Keep in mind melting artic ice--that is, ice that is already afloat on the water--will not contribute to rising ocean levels: the ice already displaces all the water it will displace.
So while its easy to look at some phenominon such as erosion at Santa Monica or the sinking of some island somewhere on the Earth and cry "global warming," unless 10,000 people were living on a sandy mass about an inch (on average) above sea level, it seems more likely that either erosion or local tectonic movements are more likely than global sea levels rising.
Perhaps if you really want to tie this into global warming you could try to suggest that increased solar input into the weather system has made the oceans more turbulent--thus causing an accelleration of the natural erosion process. But it's easier to sell people on the notion that the seas are rising.
And it's the fact that people are being sold the notion that sea levels are rising--so we must curb industrial output (and stop George Bush NOW!)--rather than lapse into a more probable explanation involving global warming accelerating erosion that tells me this entire thing is a sales job selling people on the fear of global warming than it is accurate reporting.
Slashdot Mirror
If the original author is not in court but I am--then, uh, who is suing whom?
Assume a hypothetical case where author A writes a program that B modifies, then gives to C, who makes further modifications. If B and C go to court, the questions the court would settle would be the tort agreement between B and C--the nature of the agreement between A and B will not be at issue, because C does not have standing to question the tort agreement between A and B.
So if I find myself in court and the original author is not in court--then the original author will have no say. What I tell the court, so long as it matches a reasonable reading of the agreement I have in my hand with the original author, is what the court will assume when litigating with a third party. If the original author disagrees with that interpretation, then because (at least in theory, though not really in practice) all court proceedings are public unless ordered otherwise, then the original author is free to show up in court.
But if the original author is not in court, the court cannot presume that the original author is reserving additional rights that a reasonable reading of the agreement does not explicitly reserve.
Again, this looks like you're just trying to figure out how to claim additional rights that, oh, by the way, happen to help a third party who has no interest otherwise in the outcome of this case. The fact that you're now trying to hornswaggle these additional rights by assuming the court will step in and reserve those rights when no-one goes to court to demand those rights strikes me as a very perverse understanding of how the court system actually works.
Essentially you're advocating Theft by Judge. If you next say "well, there should be a law"--well, that's Theft by Legislation. Either way, it stinks, and makes no legal sense.
While this is not as extreme as the originally linked article makes it sound like, and while it is clear that this is being expressed as a personal opinion rather than as a serious proposal to be carried out by the American Meterological Society, is it reasonable for scientists or even television meterologists to tow the party line or else have one's "seal of approval" revoked?
There is a rather dangerous trend here, where people seem to want to force consensus by shutting down anyone who doesn't spout out the party line. This sort of shutting people down by going after their livelihoods (the AMS "Seal of Approval") in order to force a consensus does not help strengthen the competition in the arena of ideas--it only shuts people up by threatening their pocketbooks if they don't spout the desired group-think du-joir.
What's next? Memory Holes to erase all previous dissent from the party line of Global Warming as a man-made phenomina? Thought Police? Reworking the language to introduce Newspeak, so even the idea that mankind is not responsible or that Global Warming may not be happening is impossible to frame as a coherent sentence?
It's a bad idea.
But thank goodness it's just that--an idea, blithly suggested undoubtedly without a lot of reflection on a personal blog.
Erp?
Just to address the CFC thing: it appears that the whole CFC debate is following the same trajectory as the debate on DDT half a century ago, or using Alar. A "huge problem" was discovered; people were villanized, we got rid of the chemical, everyone is happy.
Now the question is how many decades will pass before people start saying "well, you know, CFCs weren't really that bad after all, and look at all of the problems we created without it?" (That's the stage where we are at with DDT: the "hey, DDT wasn't that bad, and by eliminating it, we caused millions of deaths" stage.)
Perhaps in Louisiana that will be the case--but in most Common Law Courts, intent is a factor in any tort case. Of course if the understanding of the parties do not match, then the language of a contract is picked apart--but rarely are additional rights awarded to a party in a tort case that the party did not intend to reserve.
By stating that a court will award me rights I do not intend to reserve because I did not understand the language of a license I put together between me and another party--and awarding me rights which, oh, by the way, happen to benefit a third party who was not involved in the original license--what we have here is a form of theft. And this sort of intellectual property theft, by coercing someone I never intended to coerce to release their software into the public--I'm sorry, but it's a pathetic and mean-spirited attack on a number of companies (such as Apple and Microsoft) because someone like myself decided it was sort of cool that they're using a snippet of my code (such as my GUID generator work which wound up in Apple's OS X kernel).
It is pretty clear to me that the language of a BSD-like license matches the intent I outlined: use it, but don't sue me, leave me out of the promotionals, and mention me in the copyright. (I'm simplifying, of course--but not as much as those claiming BSD really is a closet GPL.)
I was about to Google the law in California, out of personal curiosity, as to the rules of ownership of a copyright for works produced under certain employment circumstances. I found a very good article on Ownership of Copyrights, but sorting out who is right was giving me a headache.
I suspect the officer doesn't have a legal leg to stand on--but answering that question is going to require a peek at his employment contract, the work that was done, the other compensation or tools provided: in short, it's going to require lawyers and courts and judges to sort it out. Which is, sadly, the primary reason why we have lawyers, courts and judges.
Look, when I release software under a BSD-like license, my intent as the owner of the work is to do the following:
(1) Permit people to do whatever they want with the software--including relicensing the software, so long as
(2) if you use my software, you don't then plaster my name all over it as if I endorce whatever cause or crappy software you're creating, and
(3) you don't sue my ass if and when the software you downloaded from me breaks.
Basically, do what you want--just leave me out of it.
In one sense the article is correct: in imposing a new license you cannot remove the old one. But as the intent of the old license is to cover my ass and keep my name around so people know what sort of a cool dude I am, so long as the new license also covers my ass and keeps my name around so people know what sort of a cool dude I am, I don't see the problem--either from a common-sense perspective or from a legal one.
And God Help Me if I should ever even think about buying a Zune and burning the few songs I bought through iTunes onto a CD then re-ripping them for the Zune. Hell, even typing in the four letters 'z', 'u', 'n' and 'e' in that order is causing me incredible amounts of pain and suffering from the FairPlay mental virus that Apple planted in my brain. And besides, if any of my FairPlay ripped CDs ever get into the Zune, it will cripple the Zune forever with a horrible user interface and turn the Zune a crappy shade of brown.
Please. Do you think Steve Jobs gives a flying flip about DRM--outside the fact that it was the only way he could get the music industry to allow him to sell music via the iTunes store? Hell, the DRM lock-in isn't even applied on the iTunes servers--it's applied after the song is downloaded, which means the microsecond the music industry allows Apple to sell DRM-free music, it would take a simple upgrade to iTunes to remove DRM.
Besides, FairPlay is an odd duck--has anyone with an iPod noticed that DRM locked FairPlay music just plays on any iPod without having to register the device first? I mean talk about a weak form of DRM--I suspect it's a slightly more sophisticated version of the bozo bit used in MacOS System 5 or earlier, which was a file attribute bit which told the finder not to copy the specified file. This is unlike every other DRM-enabled device which requires that the device be registered with whatever ID you're using so it can read those files.
In order for any state in the United States to be a member of the United States, it must establish a constitution and elections within the borders of that State. It's why every state in the United States has an elected governor, and not an unelected King. Its why every state has some sort of parlimentary system, with representatives elected from various dictricts within that state, instead of representatives from various warlords and clans being sent to the King's Castle to parlay over internal matters.
It may sound stupid, but there is no reason why the states of the United States are republics except for that one clause. Without that clause, Governor Schwarzenegger could dissolve the California Assembly and declare himself King, and there would be nothing the United States Congress could do about it, as it is an interior matter. (Well, they may try to invoke the Commerse Clause and the Full Faith clause--but those are legal stretches that were only recently widened.)
The United Nations has no such clause.
And that is my problem with the United Nations.
Even though it was started as a hopeful experiment to convince the powers of the world to adopt Democracy, often we have some of the most un-democratic countries and some of the worse abusers of Human Rights taking control of various committees. Very few countries within the United Nations even give a damn about the Rule of Law--which is why we get endless declarations and resolutions and mandates coming out of the United Nations falling on deaf ears.
Now if the United Nations would adopt a resolution making it mandatory that continued membership in the United Nations requires adopting a Republican form of government, and if we were to elevate Democracy to an ideal rather than denegrate Democracy as a byproduct of United States emperialism, and if we were to make our representatives to the United Nations elected positions rather than appointed ambassadors, then it would be something I could fully support.
Until then, the United Nations is at best worthless and at worse, evil.
Article 29(1) means that everyone has duties to the community in which he belongs--and the free and full development of his personality is not possible without such allegience. Thus, if you are a Chinese person in China, you owe allegience to China and have duties as defined by your community. This is in sharp contrast from the United States, where communities and countries derive from individual rights, rather than the other way around.
Article 29(2) indicates that your "rights" and "freedoms" are not limitless, but are subject to limitations, including the limitations of the morality, need for public order and "general welfare". Since you as an individual derive your rights from the community in which you live (rather than the community coming about because a group of free individuals voluntarily band together), rather than individuals shaping the morality of the community in which they live, individuals are subject to the morality of the community they live in--and communities may make laws limiting your actions so that you behave in a moral fashion.
Article 29(3) indiciates that your "rights" and "freedoms" are further limited--you may not commit any action that runs "contrary to the purposes and principles of the United Nations."
And to cap all of this off, Article 30 states that you may not engage in any activity which destroys any of the rights outlined in the document--including the right to rest, reasonable limitations on working hours, and the fundamental right to an adequate standard of living--including the fundamental right to clothing and medical care. (Should we interpret a doctor who goes home rather than treats a sick man as an infringment on the man's fundamental right to medical care, or an infringement on the doctor's fundamental right to reasonable limitations on working hours?)
The whole document is a Utopian fantasy that no nation-state in the world takes seriously, so don't be surprised if UN officials wipe their asses with the document--as that is all the document is really worth.
How can an individual have fundamental rights if all fundamental rights are legislated by committee?
It depends on what we call "OS X". At its core, OS X is Unix on a Mach kernel, with a separate window process which presents the UI which uses the Objective C class libraries for its API. There are a number of cell phones running Linux; if you can fit Linux on a cell phone, why not OS X?
If those cell phones were really running Linux on them, then any X window based application should run on it (in theory)--after being cross-compiled, and the UI stripped down, of course, and the application made to fit in the correct footprint.
If we can still call it "Linux" even though its on a cell phone or a router or a network hard disk and can't just run any ol' RPM we find lying around, then why can't we call it "OS X" even though you can't pop your favorite OS X software CD into the iPhone and just run it?
The one thing Steve Jobs has been is ruthless in getting well-thought out design and integrated software projects working across multiple product teams, so that the final user experience is a unified one across most of Apple's products.
Compare this to Sony's reported "silo" approach to developing hardware, software and services, music and video--where many times individual managers within Sony actively squabble over the right approach to take, each fueled more by the individual needs of each division within Sony rather than the needs of the overall company. Such a "silo" mentality is inevitable at any large company unless someone at the top actively forces people to work together for the benefit of the entire company rather than for the individual gains of a particular division.
I don't know if there is a technologically savvy enough uber-geek asshole out there which could replace Steve Jobs if he were to leave Apple--which means Apple would eventually fall back on the habits it had under Spindler and Amelio, where every division internally competed without any sort of unified direction, beyond the imperitive that the sell something.
H.264 is another name for the video compression scheme for MPEG-4, and is fairly common on the Macintosh. As someone else has noted you can rip DVDs on the Macintosh with Handbrake; I've ripped about two dozen DVDs using this program to put them on my iPod. And H.264 will also play on the PSP. (Originally I was ripping movies so I could download them to my PSP, prior to getting my 5G iPod.)
Not supporting MPEG-2 makes sense: compared to MPEG-4 the standard is extremely bloaty, especially for a 40 gig drive. (I have a ReplayTV which uses MPEG-2, and 1 gig translates to 1 hour of TV, if you are willing to watch a pixellated fuzzy mess. That same 1 gig translates to 1 hour of TV on MPEG-4 for something that is absolutely beautiful and clear.)
Right now you can buy third party software (games) for a 5G iPod, though the selection is limited. Apple has also gone through a couple of iterations of the underlying OS for the iPod, starting with an OS licensed from a third party, then bringing the iPod OS development in-house.
What many people seem to be missing here is that the iPhone is the first iPod to run OS X.
It would explain why Apple was so hesitant to get a 5G iPod SDK out into the hands of more game developers--they knew that they were going to replace the underlying OS with OS X real soon.
Further, the June/July timeframe is about when Apple would be refreshing their iPod lineup anyway.
It appears Apple needed to announce the new iPhone because they needed to make an FCC filing, and they'd rather announce it themselves than allow people to broadcast rumors of the phone based on its FCC filing. By hammering for two hours the message that this is the iPhone, Apple has managed to engage in its classic strategy of indirection: everyone is so expectant about a new iPhone that no-one is talking about an iPod lineup refresh, nor is anyone talking about other computing devices that may or may not show up in the June/July timeframe based on the iPhone touch screen/portable device UI/OS X technology.
Certainly reading is a basic skill. Reading Latin and Greek is not. Simple arithmetic and understanding traffic signs are basic skills. Calculus and understanding Feynman Diagrams are not. What has happened is that technologists who are being paid to solve problems instead build technology--then bitch because their target audience are a bunch of lusers who are unwilling to learn the technology. And the first company to come along and attempt to solve problems rather than build technology will do well--such as Apple is starting to do and Cisco used to do.
Uh, not exactly. And you get a tax refund if you install solar power panels on your home which makes the net costs cheaper over the lifetime of the system than if you just bought the electricity off the grid at prevailing costs.
I've seen three attacks on Global Warming. The first attack is as you suggest--that it isn't happening at all.
The second attack is on if mankind is causing Global Warming or if it has a natural source. Further, if mankind is causing any problems at all, to what degree is global warming our fault--and is it being caused by CO2 output, methane, water vapor, or other things?
The third attack is on what sort of governmental action--if any--needs to be taken to solve the problem.
The reason why I personally think the debate is all to convince us that we need to engage in a massive re-engineering of the world's economy is twofold. First, Kyoto would have done nothing about CO2 emissions, while transfering billions of dollars of net wealth from the rich countries to the poor countries. A massive multi-billion dollar redistribution of wealth that would have no effect on CO2 emissions over the first twenty years of the treaty--if that doesn't prove that at least part of this is about government control, then I don't know what would.
Second, any suggestion to fix global warming through any alternate means other than restructuring the economy (and villifying the United States for having the most successful economy)--such as seeding the oceans with iron fertilizer to help algae grow and absorb more CO2 from the atmosphere--is met with the harshest criticisms.
The people who are driving the debate in Global Warming seem to be anti-technologists who want to see mankind revert to a nomadic, pre-technological state controlled by a world socialist government which makes sure no-one has more than anyone else. Which is why any technological solution to Global Warming is scoffed at without even a second hearing, while at the same time massive government restructuring is being demanded by environmentalists who decry capitalism.
I happen to agree with you, by the way, that the biggest problem with the Global Warming debate is the same as the debate over fast food, tobacco, and other similar debates--ultimately it comes down to creating a new governmental program to control people and to take people's freedoms away.
Global Warming is the worse of the bunch, as far as I'm concern, because up until now every other issue has involved national regulation. Global Warming advocates are demanding (through things like Kyoto) that we create a trans-national socialist world government to combat the problem, a socialist regime which would have control over every aspect of our economic lives from what we can drive--and in the future potentially even how far we are allowed to drive each day--to where we live, to what we eat, to how we work--and all in the name of reducing CO2 output to help reduce global warming by a degree centegrade.
Look at it this way: Bill Clinton, in the eleventh hour of his presidency, buried the Kyoto treaty--and admission from Kyoto supporters suggest the reduction of CO2 may only slow global warming by the tiniest fraction of a degree. So assuming everyone was on the same page--that is, assuming we all knew that Global Warming was a fact, and further assuming we all knew that Global Warming was entirely caused by human activities--the real political battle over control of how (or if) we can solve this problem would be under way.
The fact that opponents to the idea that Global Warming is real or is as big a problem as presented--and those who believe in Global Warming but who believe it is not entirely (or largly) mankind's fault--have received funding from the oil companies does not take away from the fact that "solving" the problem of manmade Global Warming is a big political undertaking. And anything that is this big political undertaking will inevitably be a big political mess involving trillions of dollars and lots of opportunities for lying, cheating and stealing. (To think otherwise is to think all of our politicians are as pure and clean as the wind-driven snow. Hah!)
I mean, even though we now have proved the Tobacco Companies falsified clear evidence and used tactics to falsify scientific evidence--evidence that has a much more solid basis in double-blind studies on smokers than Global Warmings evidence of computer models and tree ring studies--we still haven't solved the problem of smoking. People still smoke like chimineys, and the evil Tobacco Companies are still selling cigarettes like crazy.
So even though we have reached a solid consensus that smoking kills you and it's all the fault of the Tobacco Companies--they are still in business. And a good friend of mine died of lung cancer at the age of 41 just last year, caused by smoking.
From a technology standpoint we programmers think in terms of how the underlying stuff works. To us, it's clear what hibernate and standby are doing, why they're different and what the relative advantages and disadvantages of each technology are. However, in being so focused on the underlying technology and how it works, we start overlooking the problem that both technologies are trying to solve, which is this: how to extend the life of a computer (computer's battery, in the case of a laptop) when a computer is left on but is not in use--and do it in such a way that the computer can come back on relatively quickly when the user comes back.
Users want us to solve problems, we want to provide technology.
And so when the user wants to solve the problem "I walked away from my laptop for an hour; please make it so the battery doesn't drain dry when it is idle", we come back with "well, we have sleep and standby and hibernate; hibernate is really cool because the computer is almost completely powered off but standby allows the computer to come back a lot faster"--of course we're going to get a glazed look on the poor user's eyes. All he wants is to come back, jiggle something, and have the computer come back to life.
Unfortunately because we talk about providing technology and the user wants to solve problems, we then wander off grumbling "stupid lusers; they're not willing to learn how to use their computer." And the poor users stumble off grumbling "why do they make these damned thing so hard to use? I don't care about bits and bytes; just tell me what I need to do so I can get my important work done."
The really ironic part is that users are not stupid--contrary to about 90% (caution: made up statistic) of technologists complaints. They just happen to have a different job than us. I mean it's easy for us to look at some poor overworked doctor (for example) and claim he's a moron because he doesn't know the difference between suspend and hybernate--but then, the reason why he doesn't know the difference is because he's more worried about knowing the difference between opioids and non-opioid drugs and knowing which class of drugs will better relieve his poor cancer victim's pain.
Even your interpretation doesn't admit to the possibility that a scientist may not wish to bother fighting the regulations. That is, by accepting the workplace requirements it's not an endorcement of pseudoscience, but simply not wishing to bother fighting the regulations.
More and more I've seen people demand scientists become political advocates of one form or another. Al Gore asks scientists to become advocates of Global Warming policy change. This guy demands scientists rebel against workplace changes intended to reduce secrecy leaks. And all demand that scientists become political advocates and engage in policy discussions--and suggest that if scientists are not advocates, they cannot possibly be scientists. (After all, if as a scientist you are not demanding passage of HR bill something-or-another, you're just supporting pseudo-science.)
Uh, excuse me, but my fundamental problem here is that science is not advocacy. Science is about discovery and uncovering the truth. Politics is about advocating people change their behavior either through coersion or through force, such as the force of laws. The more and more I hear people state that Science is about Advocacy--that is, the more and more I see people demand scientists become politicians and advocates, the more and more I see science being perverted and twisted away from the desire for Truth and towards framing research to support a particular policy position.
Frankly it concerns me that as science is used for advocacy purposes and not for the simple joy of discovering the truth, we will see more and more "scientific" results framed to advocate a point of view--be it the "health benefits" of cigarette smoking to the "damaging results" of game playing or pornography--and "science" itself will be perverted to the point of untrustworthiness.
In fact, we're most of the way there: how quickly would people on Slashdot reject a "scientific report" showing that people who play video games are more antisocial and more prone to violent behavior?
It's not a strawman. Let me rewrite:
The logic as given by Brad Hollan is this: assume polygraphs are unscientific. If you agree to a polygraph, you are agreeing to something unscientific; therefore you cannot claim to be a scientist.
With me so far?
Religion has no scientific basis; it is based in faith. (Both philosophers studying the philosophy of science and religions theologians more or less agree on this point.) If you are religious, you are agreeing with something that is not scientific; therefore--by the same logic as given above--you cannot claim to be a scientist.
The pattern is: "if you agree with/to something unscientific, you cannot claim to be a scientist." It's just a matter of finding unscientific things to agree with/to to fit the first half of the clause in order to make the second half of the clause apply. Religion fits the pattern much better than polygraph tests: religion admits to being based on faith, whereas there are those who believe polygraphs at least has some basis in physiology--that is, there are those who believe it is based in part on science.
By that logic because religion has no scientific basis, anyone who is religious cannot also be a scientist. I'm sure this guy gets along real well with Richard Dawkins at parties. It's a standard fallacy: if you claim to be an 'X', you must do 'Y'--and if you don't do 'Y' (whatever I tell you 'Y' is), you cannot possibly be an 'X'. I can do without that sort of mind control, than you very much.
Of course this does not admit the possibility that there are other reasons why a scientist would agree to be polygraphed, including the possibility that someone working at a sensitive facility such as Los Alamos may just feel that it ain't worth the hassle to fight it.
And if you believe it is unscientific for someone to act apathetic rather than engage in advocacy by fighting polygraphs in the workplace, then you have obviously confused advocacy with discovery--a common enough disease in this day and age, I suppose, given the number of "scientific" papers which are little more than thinly veiled advocacy position papers against computer games and pornography.
Measuring sea levels is even more complicated than that.
First, realize that the level of the seas has to do with the gravitational equipotential around the Earth. Figuring out what that equipotential was and is--and to a precision of millimeters on a globe where there isn't a single land mass that isn't itself moving up or down. Without a frame of reference to measure the sea levels all we can do is guess.
Second, the idea that sea levels are rising due to global warming comes from the notion that land-based glacers are melting and releasing their water into the oceans. But anything falling into the oceans will cause sea levels to rise--including erosion washing land mass into the oceans. So what percentage of ocean level rise (assuming it is in fact happening) is coming from land-based glacers and what percentage is coming from erosion would have to be determined.
Keep in mind melting artic ice--that is, ice that is already afloat on the water--will not contribute to rising ocean levels: the ice already displaces all the water it will displace.
So while its easy to look at some phenominon such as erosion at Santa Monica or the sinking of some island somewhere on the Earth and cry "global warming," unless 10,000 people were living on a sandy mass about an inch (on average) above sea level, it seems more likely that either erosion or local tectonic movements are more likely than global sea levels rising.
Perhaps if you really want to tie this into global warming you could try to suggest that increased solar input into the weather system has made the oceans more turbulent--thus causing an accelleration of the natural erosion process. But it's easier to sell people on the notion that the seas are rising.
And it's the fact that people are being sold the notion that sea levels are rising--so we must curb industrial output (and stop George Bush NOW!)--rather than lapse into a more probable explanation involving global warming accelerating erosion that tells me this entire thing is a sales job selling people on the fear of global warming than it is accurate reporting.