If it's free you don't want it. It'll be buggy, it'll lack focus, customer support will be lacking and you'll end up having to pay far more to get someone to sort it out than if you had paid for software in the first place. Free software is a false economy. Free software is UnAmerican. Free software destroys decent hardworking mom-and-pop all-american companies. Free software causes acne. Don't buy free software, pay through the nose for our good old, secure, reliable microsoft products. Errr, hang on...
This is a very important step forward, though not for the "evacuation" purposes that people have been talking about. Previously earthquake "prediction" has been on the level of "a major earthquake is likely to happen somewhere along the fault in the next X years".
If you can go from that to saying "A serious earthquake will most likely happen in these _specific_ places in the next X years" then you can plan development to avoid the key hotspots, and thus reduce the damage when one does strike.
It is also, of course, on step along the road to better earthquake prediction. We won't know how accurate it is until 2010 - you can't check the false positive rate in a prediction for events between 2000-2010 until the period is over...:-)
The problem is that previously everyone (legal or not) _could_ update their PC. Obviously not everyone did so, which is why the vulnerable machines are still out there.
Now that a significant number of machines can't be patched you can expect the percentage of vulnerable machines to increase. This will inevitably increase the load borne by all the legitimate machines. As time goes on and more vulnerabilities are announced it will get worse, since almost all illegal PCs will be ripe for Zombie-hood.
I can see why Microsoft would want to prevent illegal machines from getting "functionality" upgrades, but it makes no sense at all to prevent them from getting security upgrades. Zombie PCs hurt Microsoft's legitimate paying customers.
No, but I do have a PhD in modelling glacial systems during the last Ice Age, so I'll give it a go (appolgies for only using examples from the gulf stream in the N.E.Atlantic, that's the region that I know).
There is a potential risk to the warm surface currents from the loss of floating ice, though it isn't to do with a one-off influx of fresh water. This will rapidly disperse over the ocean and make no perceptable difference.
However, the 'pump' driving the global conveyer is the constant differential melting and freezing at the base of the sea ice. Sea ice is essentially floating fresh water. If you freeze part of sea water into fresh water you are left with dense, cold, salty water. This sinks to the bottom, and then flows south from the arctic. Warm, surface water then flows north to replace it, forming the Gulf Stream (and other similar currents around the world).
Over the last few decades the extent of sea ice in the Arctic has shrunk noticably. There must be a point at which this will have an effect on these currents[1].
It is not clear what the level of sea-ice required to maintain the currents is, nor on quite how the currents will respond (gradually decreasing or simply shutting down). However there is evidence from the sedimentary record of the last interglacial that the gulf stream in the North East Antlantic, at least, switched on and off a number of times, and that the switch from 'on' to 'off' was very rapid.
There is thus the possibility that current climate trends will result in a situation in which the flow of warm water to the N.E.Atlantic may cease (or dramatically reduce) over a timespan of years or decades, producing dramatic climate changes in north Western Europe (especially Iceland and North Norway, but Britain, Ireland and France are also major beneficaries of the Gulf Stream). The lack of transfer of heat from the warmer regions may also result in higher sea-surface temperatures in those regions, which in turn could provide more energy for severe bad weather and hurricanes. There are futher possible effects from the lack of the cold water current. These are important in carrying oxygen around the oceans, and when they upwell against continental shelves they bring nutrients from the deep ocean to the surface, producing rich fishing grounds.
[1] It is also, incidentally, having a major effect on polar bears, which rely on sea ice in their hunting.
I have transfered a number between mobile phone companies in the UK, and for the person with the phone it makes a lot of sense.
But for anyone trying to make a call to you it means that there is no way of telling what network you are currently with, and thus how much the call will cost. Now I can live with this, I just assume that calls to unknown mobiles will be expensive, and it's a nice bonus if they aren't.
But transfering land-line numbers to mobile phones is opening a whole new can of worms. If I'm calling what appears to be a local number and it turns out to be mobile, which may not even be in the same country as me, then I'm likely to start getting aggrieved when my phone bill comes through...
The actual meat of the story is interesting, an a hopeful sign, but so is the lead paragraph. It presents Microsoft as bullying it's clients into agreeing to it's terms.
Nothing new there, but when this is the tone taken by mainstream media, and seen as so non-controversial that it's mentioned and then passed over, then Microsoft have already lost their key battle. Their marketing depends on them being seen as the safe option. If they are seen as the problem, then (as here) people will go looking for solutions.
Actually you can get major canyon systems formed in a period of few days following a major flood - there's a canyon in Iceland that runs from Vatnajokull glacier in the south to the north coast, which was largely formed from a single jokulhaup (very large flood from beneath the glacier). Such jokulhaups are caused by vulcanism beneath glaciers - and the exact same mechanism has been suggested for the origin of Martian canyons.
Mars was tectonically active until relatively recently (perhaps less than 100 million years ago). Yet the article talks about impacts 3.5 billion years ago, continuing for less tha 0.5 billion years. Why have these not been obliterated by the more recent tectonics? And as I recall some of the canyons have eroded much more recent small impact craters, suggesting that free water has flowed much more recently.
Note also that 3.5. billion years ago is close to the formation of the planets. Planets form by the accretion of many such impacts, so this *is* a good explanation of how mars aquired it's water (and indeed all of it's mass).
But it is unlikely to account for subsequent melting and flow of that water, which is more likely to be due to 'weather' system (which implies an atmosphere), or subsequent melting by volcanic activity. The mechanism described in the article ceases c. 3 billion years ago, yet 'water-based' errosion processes have been occuring much more recently.
Whatever happened to 'amber mutations' for this sort of genetically engineered 'drugs factory'? An amber mutation is one which will not kill the plant/animal with it, provided it gets some substance not commonly available in the environment. But if the susbtance is not provided then the organism simply dies.
It was originally used with lab and sealed-vat based organisms to protect against accidental releases, but it could easilly be applied to farm based plants. Since the kind of farming that uses genetically modified organisms also tends to use a significant quantity of pesticides, herbicides, and fertilizers it would be simple to add one more non-toxic chemical to the mix, without which the plants would simply die (or fail to reproduce). You could then deal with any problems by withdrawing the supplement, and any escapees would quickly die. There would still be a slight risk of genetic 'contamination' of nearby crops, but it would be much lower than at present.
If I were a cynical type I would suspect that biotechnology companies are counting on accidental contamination to make it impossible to ever go back to a 'GMO free' state, thus safeguarding their business. Another (cynical) alternative is that to build in a safeguard is tantamount to admitting that you *need* a safeguard, which would adversly affect their sales.
Actually the melting of sea ice does have several, albeit indirect, effects on the sea level, since it influences world climate.
Firstly sea ice is white, the sea is not. So melting the ice lowers the albedo in the polar regions, which will have a small warming effect as less heat is reflected.
Secondly differential melting and freezing at the base of the sea ice is a major driving force in several ocean circulation systems, notably the 'Gulf Stream'. This plays a major role in transporting heat around the globe, especially to North West Europe and Iceland. It is believed that extensive reduction of the sea ice will reduce or even eliminate this current. There is evidence that in the last few tens of thousands of years the current has turned on and off several times.
Regional changes are likely to include colder winters and drier summers in western europe, and warmer waters and thus potentially more active tropical storms and huricanes in the Gulf of Mexico, although these changes would also depend on the (unpredicatble) response of other major ocean currents to the change.
Exactly what effect such a large change would have on overall world climate is difficult to predict, but since our current population and land-use patterns are based on existing climatic conditions, the maxim of 'any change is likely to be bad for us in the short or medium term' probably applies here.
The internet is not most people's main source of news.
But it is most people's main source of news _during the working day_. If an event happens during the evening people are most likely to tune to their TV. But if it happens during the day they are more likely to use the internet, simply because that's more convenient. And as you say, they want real time audio and video - from the internet if it's during the day.
There will always be bottlenecks, simply because it doesn't make economic sense to plan for such rare events. But as traffic in general grows on the internet, available bandwidth/server capacity will grow to meet the average demand (including pictures). This should make it easier for news sites to cope with peaks in demand by switching to low graphics formats.
Quite apart from the campaign trying to dictate how governments should release their research results there are three different things here. The campaign seems to avoid them in welter of vague sounding language.
1) Open file transfer standards Governments need to be able to be sure they can transfer their data without being reliant on one company. And this has to include guarentees that all future versions of the software will use an open standard as well.But that's not the only factor that needs to be considered.
2) Cost Laws that say government departments should look at the cheapest option seem reasonable to a tax payer like me.
and the biggy:
3) Security How does a government know that the black box software it just bought doesn't have a backdoor alloing the CIA to read every file they store on it? They don't. So a law that says 'only use software where we can examine the code' is justified on the grounds of National Security. The Initiative for Software Choice doesn't seem to mention this at all.
If they want to compete in the government sector under 'pro-open source' laws nothing is stopping them, but any company that can't meet these three criteria shouldn't be getting government business in the first place.
OK, try looking at it from the other side of the Atlantic.
A consortium of countries, led by the USA, is spying on (among others) European governments and comapnies. It is doing this using equipment based in (among other places) the UK. It is denying doing this.
So the US government is in cahoots with part of the European Union to spy on another part of the EU. There are also suggestions that the results of this spying are used for commercial benefit as well as national security.
Try imagining it was Canada and Texas spying on the rest of the USA, and using the results to compete against US companies and see if that changes the way you feel about it...
No, it's more than that. The settlement requires the CD maker to put warnings on the protected CD. If a manufacturer has to alert buyers to the fact that this CD won't work on some computers, DVD players and MP3 players then that's going to hurt sales.
And manufacturers are going to think twice before implimenting something that hurts their sales.
The efforts we've seen so far have been low key, trying to put protection on without making a big deal out of it. Forcing such protection schemes to be advertized on the product will be a big disincentive to their use.
I don't know how these particular figures are collected, but the numbers quoted by manufacturers are generally how many units they've shipped to the stores, and survey figures are an estimate of the number actually bought by individual consumers. So the estimates are likely to be a better reflection of how many of the things are ending up being used.
Oh, and the manufacturer's claims fall into the realm of 'adverts', and if you believe any company's adverts without question then, well, I've got this nice bridge here that you might like to buy...
On the one hand it seems like a better place to see exotic animals than in cages in a zoo, and there's less land-use pressure in the outback than in much of Africa. But Australia doesn't exactly have a happy record with introduced species (rabbits, rats and domestic cats all spring to mind).
Provided they only introduce mega fauna it'll probably be alright (though with a possibility of spreading disease). If animals escape (and it's a fairly safe bet that some will eventually) then the key to stopping their spread into the surrounding areas is in knowing that there has been a break-out, and then finding all the escapees.
Obviously this is a lot easier with elephants than meercats or rabbits...
More to the point I don't see why I (a UK citizen, working in Iceland) should not be able to check for unauthorized intrusion into my computer system by a foreign government.
And why should, say, the Icelandic govenment, buy such software?
First a disclaimer: I worked on the designing some of the processing for this year's UK census, so I might actually know what I'm talking about:-)
The full census form (complete with name) *will* be released to the public - in 100 years time. The full census returns form an important historical record. And ask anyone who's ever tried to research their family tree if the names were helpful...
Furthermore there was a follow-up survey in some areas, used to estimate the number of people missed by the census. This is important because many of those who tend to missed (especially the elderly) have major consequences for government spending. Obviously 'name' is an important field in identifying which people were found by both the census and the survey.
The aggregate census data (how many people of type X in each area) will be used now, for such things as allocating local goverment money, and planning for major public spending. This does not include your name, or any data which might enable you to be identified. There are people who's full time job is to ensure that the released tables cannot be used to identify individuals.
Two different uses, one immediate and one in 100 years time, with the data being released in different ways at different times.
Why do they want to know where you work? Mostly for the historical record in 100 years time, but also because getting an estimate of how far people are travelling to work is important in town planning.
The religion question isn't especially important - except in Northern Ireland where it is of major importance for anti-discrimination laws.
Slashdot Mirror
If it's free you don't want it. It'll be buggy, it'll lack focus, customer support will be lacking and you'll end up having to pay far more to get someone to sort it out than if you had paid for software in the first place. Free software is a false economy. Free software is UnAmerican. Free software destroys decent hardworking mom-and-pop all-american companies. Free software causes acne. Don't buy free software, pay through the nose for our good old, secure, reliable microsoft products. Errr, hang on...
This is a very important step forward, though not for the "evacuation" purposes that people have been talking about. Previously earthquake "prediction" has been on the level of "a major earthquake is likely to happen somewhere along the fault in the next X years".
:-)
If you can go from that to saying "A serious earthquake will most likely happen in these _specific_ places in the next X years" then you can plan development to avoid the key hotspots, and thus reduce the damage when one does strike.
It is also, of course, on step along the road to better earthquake prediction. We won't know how accurate it is until 2010 - you can't check the false positive rate in a prediction for events between 2000-2010 until the period is over...
The problem is that previously everyone (legal or not) _could_ update their PC. Obviously not everyone did so, which is why the vulnerable machines are still out there.
Now that a significant number of machines can't be patched you can expect the percentage of vulnerable machines to increase. This will inevitably increase the load borne by all the legitimate machines. As time goes on and more vulnerabilities are announced it will get worse, since almost all illegal PCs will be ripe for Zombie-hood.
I can see why Microsoft would want to prevent illegal machines from getting "functionality" upgrades, but it makes no sense at all to prevent them from getting security upgrades. Zombie PCs hurt Microsoft's legitimate paying customers.
No, but I do have a PhD in modelling glacial systems during the last Ice Age, so I'll give it a go (appolgies for only using examples from the gulf stream in the N.E.Atlantic, that's the region that I know).
There is a potential risk to the warm surface currents from the loss of floating ice, though it isn't to do with a one-off influx of fresh water. This will rapidly disperse over the ocean and make no perceptable difference.
However, the 'pump' driving the global conveyer is the constant differential melting and freezing at the base of the sea ice. Sea ice is essentially floating fresh water. If you freeze part of sea water into fresh water you are left with dense, cold, salty water. This sinks to the bottom, and then flows south from the arctic. Warm, surface water then flows north to replace it, forming the Gulf Stream (and other similar currents around the world).
Over the last few decades the extent of sea ice in the Arctic has shrunk noticably. There must be a point at which this will have an effect on these currents[1].
It is not clear what the level of sea-ice required to maintain the currents is, nor on quite how the currents will respond (gradually decreasing or simply shutting down). However there is evidence from the sedimentary record of the last interglacial that the gulf stream in the North East Antlantic, at least, switched on and off a number of times, and that the switch from 'on' to 'off' was very rapid.
There is thus the possibility that current climate trends will result in a situation in which the flow of warm water to the N.E.Atlantic may cease (or dramatically reduce) over a timespan of years or decades, producing dramatic climate changes in north Western Europe (especially Iceland and North Norway, but Britain, Ireland and France are also major beneficaries of the Gulf Stream). The lack of transfer of heat from the warmer regions may also result in higher sea-surface temperatures in those regions, which in turn could provide more energy for severe bad weather and hurricanes. There are futher possible effects from the lack of the cold water current. These are important in carrying oxygen around the oceans, and when they upwell against continental shelves they bring nutrients from the deep ocean to the surface, producing rich fishing grounds.
[1] It is also, incidentally, having a major effect on polar bears, which rely on sea ice in their hunting.
How about the spammer gets 1 minute in jail per recipient for any unsolicited commercial email they send?
I have transfered a number between mobile phone companies in the UK, and for the person with the phone it makes a lot of sense.
But for anyone trying to make a call to you it means that there is no way of telling what network you are currently with, and thus how much the call will cost. Now I can live with this, I just assume that calls to unknown mobiles will be expensive, and it's a nice bonus if they aren't.
But transfering land-line numbers to mobile phones is opening a whole new can of worms. If I'm calling what appears to be a local number and it turns out to be mobile, which may not even be in the same country as me, then I'm likely to start getting aggrieved when my phone bill comes through...
The actual meat of the story is interesting, an a hopeful sign, but so is the lead paragraph. It presents Microsoft as bullying it's clients into agreeing to it's terms.
Nothing new there, but when this is the tone taken by mainstream media, and seen as so non-controversial that it's mentioned and then passed over, then Microsoft have already lost their key battle. Their marketing depends on them being seen as the safe option. If they are seen as the problem, then (as here) people will go looking for solutions.
Actually you can get major canyon systems formed in a period of few days following a major flood - there's a canyon in Iceland that runs from Vatnajokull glacier in the south to the north coast, which was largely formed from a single jokulhaup (very large flood from beneath the glacier). Such jokulhaups are caused by vulcanism beneath glaciers - and the exact same mechanism has been suggested for the origin of Martian canyons.
Mars was tectonically active until relatively recently (perhaps less than 100 million years ago). Yet the article talks about impacts 3.5 billion years ago, continuing for less tha 0.5 billion years. Why have these not been obliterated by the more recent tectonics? And as I recall some of the canyons have eroded much more recent small impact craters, suggesting that free water has flowed much more recently.
Note also that 3.5. billion years ago is close to the formation of the planets. Planets form by the accretion of many such impacts, so this *is* a good explanation of how mars aquired it's water (and indeed all of it's mass).
But it is unlikely to account for subsequent melting and flow of that water, which is more likely to be due to 'weather' system (which implies an atmosphere), or subsequent melting by volcanic activity. The mechanism described in the article ceases c. 3 billion years ago, yet 'water-based' errosion processes have been occuring much more recently.
Whatever happened to 'amber mutations' for this sort of genetically engineered 'drugs factory'? An amber mutation is one which will not kill the plant/animal with it, provided it gets some substance not commonly available in the environment. But if the susbtance is not provided then the organism simply dies.
It was originally used with lab and sealed-vat based organisms to protect against accidental releases, but it could easilly be applied to farm based plants. Since the kind of farming that uses genetically modified organisms also tends to use a significant quantity of pesticides, herbicides, and fertilizers it would be simple to add one more non-toxic chemical to the mix, without which the plants would simply die (or fail to reproduce). You could then deal with any problems by withdrawing the supplement, and any escapees would quickly die. There would still be a slight risk of genetic 'contamination' of nearby crops, but it would be much lower than at present.
If I were a cynical type I would suspect that biotechnology companies are counting on accidental contamination to make it impossible to ever go back to a 'GMO free' state, thus safeguarding their business. Another (cynical) alternative is that to build in a safeguard is tantamount to admitting that you *need* a safeguard, which would adversly affect their sales.
Sometimes it's hard not to be a cynic.
Actually the melting of sea ice does have several, albeit indirect, effects on the sea level, since it influences world climate.
Firstly sea ice is white, the sea is not. So melting the ice lowers the albedo in the polar regions, which will have a small warming effect as less heat is reflected.
Secondly differential melting and freezing at the base of the sea ice is a major driving force in several ocean circulation systems, notably the 'Gulf Stream'. This plays a major role in transporting heat around the globe, especially to North West Europe and Iceland. It is believed that extensive reduction of the sea ice will reduce or even eliminate this current. There is evidence that in the last few tens of thousands of years the current has turned on and off several times.
Regional changes are likely to include colder winters and drier summers in western europe, and warmer waters and thus potentially more active tropical storms and huricanes in the Gulf of Mexico, although these changes would also depend on the (unpredicatble) response of other major ocean currents to the change.
Exactly what effect such a large change would have on overall world climate is difficult to predict, but since our current population and land-use patterns are based on existing climatic conditions, the maxim of 'any change is likely to be bad for us in the short or medium term' probably applies here.
The internet is not most people's main source of news.
But it is most people's main source of news _during the working day_. If an event happens during the evening people are most likely to tune to their TV. But if it happens during the day they are more likely to use the internet, simply because that's more convenient. And as you say, they want real time audio and video - from the internet if it's during the day.
There will always be bottlenecks, simply because it doesn't make economic sense to plan for such rare events. But as traffic in general grows on the internet, available bandwidth/server capacity will grow to meet the average demand (including pictures). This should make it easier for news sites to cope with peaks in demand by switching to low graphics formats.
Quite apart from the campaign trying to dictate how governments should release their research results there are three different things here. The campaign seems to avoid them in welter of vague sounding language.
1) Open file transfer standards
Governments need to be able to be sure they can transfer their data without being reliant on one company. And this has to include guarentees that all future versions of the software will use an open standard as well.But that's not the only factor that needs to be considered.
2) Cost
Laws that say government departments should look at the cheapest option seem reasonable to a tax payer like me.
and the biggy:
3) Security
How does a government know that the black box software it just bought doesn't have a backdoor alloing the CIA to read every file they store on it? They don't. So a law that says 'only use software where we can examine the code' is justified on the grounds of National Security. The Initiative for Software Choice doesn't seem to mention this at all.
If they want to compete in the government sector under 'pro-open source' laws nothing is stopping them, but any company that can't meet these three criteria shouldn't be getting government business in the first place.
OK, try looking at it from the other side of the Atlantic.
A consortium of countries, led by the USA, is spying on (among others) European governments and comapnies. It is doing this using equipment based in (among other places) the UK. It is denying doing this.
So the US government is in cahoots with part of the European Union to spy on another part of the EU. There are also suggestions that the results of this spying are used for commercial benefit as well as national security.
Try imagining it was Canada and Texas spying on the rest of the USA, and using the results to compete against US companies and see if that changes the way you feel about it...
No, it's more than that. The settlement requires the CD maker to put warnings on the protected CD. If a manufacturer has to alert buyers to the fact that this CD won't work on some computers, DVD players and MP3 players then that's going to hurt sales.
And manufacturers are going to think twice before implimenting something that hurts their sales.
The efforts we've seen so far have been low key, trying to put protection on without making a big deal out of it. Forcing such protection schemes to be advertized on the product will be a big disincentive to their use.
Maybe they just write all the 1s and 0s *really small*?
I don't know how these particular figures are collected, but the numbers quoted by manufacturers are generally how many units they've shipped to the stores, and survey figures are an estimate of the number actually bought by individual consumers. So the estimates are likely to be a better reflection of how many of the things are ending up being used.
Oh, and the manufacturer's claims fall into the realm of 'adverts', and if you believe any company's adverts without question then, well, I've got this nice bridge here that you might like to buy...
On the one hand it seems like a better place to see exotic animals than in cages in a zoo, and there's less land-use pressure in the outback than in much of Africa. But Australia doesn't exactly have a happy record with introduced species (rabbits, rats and domestic cats all spring to mind).
Provided they only introduce mega fauna it'll probably be alright (though with a possibility of spreading disease). If animals escape (and it's a fairly safe bet that some will eventually) then the key to stopping their spread into the surrounding areas is in knowing that there has been a break-out, and then finding all the escapees.
Obviously this is a lot easier with elephants than meercats or rabbits...
I would if I didn't live in the USA.
More to the point I don't see why I (a UK citizen, working in Iceland) should not be able to check for unauthorized intrusion into my computer system by a foreign government.
And why should, say, the Icelandic govenment, buy such software?
First a disclaimer: I worked on the designing some of the processing for this year's UK census, so I might actually know what I'm talking about :-)
The full census form (complete with name) *will* be released to the public - in 100 years time. The full census returns form an important historical record. And ask anyone who's ever tried to research their family tree if the names were helpful...
Furthermore there was a follow-up survey in some areas, used to estimate the number of people missed by the census. This is important because many of those who tend to missed (especially the elderly) have major consequences for government spending. Obviously 'name' is an important field in identifying which people were found by both the census and the survey.
The aggregate census data (how many people of type X in each area) will be used now, for such things as allocating local goverment money, and planning for major public spending. This does not include your name, or any data which might enable you to be identified. There are people who's full time job is to ensure that the released tables cannot be used to identify individuals.
Two different uses, one immediate and one in 100 years time, with the data being released in different ways at different times.
Why do they want to know where you work? Mostly for the historical record in 100 years time, but also because getting an estimate of how far people are travelling to work is important in town planning.
The religion question isn't especially important - except in Northern Ireland where it is of major importance for anti-discrimination laws.
More details at the census web site here.