I was just in Italy myself, and yes, compared to the rest of Europe, Italy is way behind the times. I did not experience the kind of smog you mention, Italians are definitely a messier country than most.
Keep in mind, however, that most emissions don't come from automobiles (I think the overall number is 20%). And the smog you witnessed may well come from burning of more diesel fuel than leaded gasoline (I don't know, they might still use leaded gas, did you see it yourself?), which produces more particles (bad for human lungs) than green house gas emissions. Italy is less industrialized than other countries in Europe, and is probably not much of a contributor when compared with other European countries. Dirty? Yes, bless'em.
Much of the rest of Europe is definitely cleaner than Italy. Most have banned leaded gasoline. Again, the air quality for breathing is more dubious because Europeans favor diesel (and probably lots of coal in Poland and Eastern Europe), but these are localized phenomenon and have smaller impact than the kinds of industry and agriculture that goes on in the States.
That said, Europeans like to harp on about how much the US wastes and pollutes, but forget that they contribute a higher proportion per capita than anyone else EXCEPT the States. They are definitely doing a better job than the States, but it might not be good enough either.
Actually, I saw this article a few months ago when it was making the rounds. Which government study? Where is the study? I could not find any study that matches the description from the article on the appropriate Ministry website. Nor have I found any other articles about it. Government cover up? Or just a made up story?
It doesn't look like anyone wants to talk about what the real issue is. The International Produce Market is right across the parking lot from The Milk Pail, which has a much larger selection of higher quality produce and more competitive pricing. The Milk Pail also carries a larger variety of "specialty" goods, such as European cheese, local ice cream and in particular a wide selection of Russian food imports which makes it even competitive with Samovar Deli and Bakery right across the street! The quality and price of Milk Pails produce even makes it stand up again "The Big Boys" as it has outlasted an Albertson which died in the same lot and an bustling Safeway across the street.
Before people start moaning about the loss of this "Silicon Valley Great", they should understand that if The International Produce Market wanted to keep going as the inheritor of Semi-conductor history, it maybe should have stocked more stuff, maybe some Middle Eastern or Indian specialties (because who wants to drive to Sunnyvale?), to that it could have attracted more visitors. Basic market economics here!
Wow, just last week I set up RSS to use as internal corporate communication. Only I work for a non-profit, and I did it all with free software. Now, the PhpWiki RecentChanges page shows up in my mail reader, as do recent posts to our PhpBB site. Now I don't have to remember to visit those places anymore, which is good because I can be forgetful.
Fictional data structures has it's strongest applications in the game software domain, where you need to model fictional characters, creatures and places. Very valuable. Very valuable indeed.
I have installed Linux on a system like you describe, except I could not get Gentoo running. I will try again though. I think I made a few mistakes along the way (I also installed Gentoo on two other systems successfully).
Usually there is no problem if you install windows on your hard drive FIRST and on the first partition of the first drive.
The problem I ran in to is that I installed Windows first, but on my last hard drive. Since I was using Serial ATA for that drive I had no choice. The solution was to tell the boot loader to trick Windows in to thinking it was on the first drive and first paritition. You can find out about it if you read the docs for GRUB.
I am of the mind that I should move away from Java because it is not free enough. In the work I do, ensuring that something is going to remain free and low cost and not get my partners in to political trouble is more important than usual. Truth is, we can't move away, but we can choose other routes.
I know most people don't need to think along those lines, but in Human Rights work, we need to more and more. We do use Java in our software, and I would like to see Sun commit to a freer model. It would be a great relief to me because I think Java is a good platform for a number of things.
Also, maybe I won't get criticized so badly the next time I meet RMS. The last time was very embarrassing.;)
If there is any shrill crying going on, it is on the part of the Slashdot title that singled out Microsoft, even though there were other companies implicated in their report.
Amnesty is not wrong for pointing out that those companies are most likely acting in contradiction to international norms. At no point do they try to equate them with the Chinese government, merely they are making a statement that they should not be complicit.
The people who are criticizing the headline I don't think are unjust to raise the point. I am going to try to write a post to a bulleting board of a human rights course that I trying to help out with about this article. As human rights workers who rely heavily on technology (actually, I am more of a technology worker who relies heavily on human rights) we are very concerned about the issues surrounding proprietary software vs. free software.
The only thing I can see that's different about Microsoft selling stuff to China and the Linux community freely distributing (in my view, higher quality) stuff to China is that Microsoft makes a direct profit off of what they are selling.
On the other side of the coin, when/if China returns source code to the Linux community, we are all gaining from China's contribution. This is particularly troubling if the technology they are adding were developed for repression but has a dual use. This troubles me as much as Microsoft giving them servers and stuff.
I am concerned about using proprietary software, ESPECIALLY MS software, because we can't tell what the software is doing. What if Windows secretly transmits information about the user to some server out there somewhere? Of course, it already does. Can this information be used by governments to repress dissidents? We don't know if when the software upgrades itself it has even more of these kinds of things. We believe Open and free software is less likey to have these kinds of problems.
But, from the sound of it, the repression in China is coming from the network level. A linux box could in fact be just a repressive on that level as an MS box. We (Linux folks) give it to them, and might except code back from them. I think it's a valid point. It does not excuse Microsoft from its Human Rights obligation, and Amnesty International is right to raise the issue, but it should raise some issues with free software folk as well.
But don't let that stop you from pouring energy into fighting an organization that wants to help stop human rights violations but lacks your wisdom and knowledge. Now *theres* a group of people who deserve to be on the receiving end of your activism.
I think Human Rights Watch is a more worthy organization at this time. They are more committed to taking a quantitative, scientifically argued approach to human rights work, which is something that there is not enough of in that field. If you are a geek, folks like that are what should tickle your fancy;)
I think there is a general feeling that Debian is a little more conservative with their package distribution. It's also been around the block quite a bit.
That said... gimme Gentoo. I have no more use for good'ol Red Hat. I've figured out that when it comes to doing the Java development that I happen to be doing, nothing beats running on a system where you've custom compiled the kernel, clib, x-server, window manager and VM. Blimey! I think the only way it gets easier to manage that is to build a GUI for portage.
From what I understand, by the Senate rules, if you find something out in the open that doesn't belong there you are supposed to not look at it and turn it in. So, in theory, they didn't need to protect it.
I think one of the worst jobs in science might be the people who have to code data for large scale human rights projects such as the on going work at the Sierra Leone Truth and Reconcilliation commission. Imagine that it's just like the prison rape researcher job, only not only are you constantly reading about rape, you also are faces with murder, child rape, mutilations, amputations, child soldiers, dissapearance, theft and torture (very very creative torture).
People who work on these projects enter a state where they become strongly sympathetic to what they are reading and begin to exhibit symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder.
That's assuming there are no photographic records to review (which is usually kept as far away from coders as possible).
Although helping to expose the truth about attrocities is rewarding, it's not a very good job.
I am not sure that the diamond market will look to legal action to solve their problems as it is an industry drenched in blood. If their history is of any indication, diamond smugglers will send drugged up 13 year old children in with machetes to cut the hands off any scientist who dares to produce a lab grown diamond.
The diamond business is actually worse than the music business. I fancy neither of them.
Strangly, I don't entirely see it as spitting in the face of Unix at all. None of this really takes away from the relative solidness of using a Unix foundation. Mac has in many ways done very good for the Unix world by demonstrating that it can be something that is both hackable AND PRIMARILY usable.
But as to the userland, which Dennis Ritchie and our beloved Slashdot readers hold so dear, Apple is throwing it out and telling us to use Mac tools instead. Aqua. iTunes. Safari.
By all means, they should do that. This doesn't mean people can't write X servers/clients for Mac (though I heard they were problematic). The Unix foundation makes it easier to port existing Unix stuffs.
Is this because it's not in the Unix culture to do it?
To a certain extent, yes. That is changing somewhat, with so far, good success. There is no denying that the latest Unix based interfaces pale in comparison to the beloved Mac GUI, but progress is progress. Again, as an avid GNU/Linux supporter, I do not see this as spitting in the face. Quite the opposite.
It works under Linux just fine as far as I can tell. The binary distribution is Windows only.
For DOS, you would need to do a C based client interface re-write, but the protocol for this is XMLRPC, so it's not out of the realm of possibility. We look forward to your version.
As far as the PalmOS, it's not as useful as you might think. Most of these countries don't have a use for hand-helds that are relatively expensive, get lost, broken. When you are out in the field collecting data, you need a good old fashioned pencil and paper.
On the other hand, one of the MAIN purposes of Martus is not to always prevent the authorities from gaining access, but rather to prevent the NGO from losing their documentation. Right now, most NGOs store information haphazardly in stacks of paper. This leaves them open to being damaged or stolen, particularly because it remains in the hostile country.
With Martus, that data gets transmitted to ANOTHER country where the government would not be so forthcoming about that kind of information. The data is backed up. The government could ALWAYS come in and just steal the computers, in fact it happens all the time, but the NGO still has the data.
Also, it's not always as easy for governments or hostile groups to kill activists as you think it is.
For putting people in jail you need a tool that can assemble what Martus puts out and then perform statistical analysis. Martus is just like a big e-mail system, but unlike the analysis tools in development it's more secure and can be used in a hostile country.
I've been keeping my eye on the source for a few weeks. I have more issues with the over-all design. I need it to be more modular so we can build our own client.
Oh man, you took that statement too seriously, that's for sure. Don't worry about Jedi, they are not real.
Working with GPL source code happens to be something very core to what I do. I feel very strongly about it. I do not oppose commercial software, but I recognize how important a role GPL plays in ensuring that I and the people I work with have access to continuingly evolving software. They could use public domain software, but that stuff might not be likley to evolve. With GPL, it does evolve and because of the "gentle force" that is provided by the GPL there is a much better chance that innovations on top of that code are not inaccessible.
I work in human rights, and my clients care a great deal about knowing that the code they are using does not transmit information to third parties and trap them in greivous contracts or agreements that can endanger their work or their rights. Additionally, NGO's are typically underfunded and have been known to pirate. This criminal act, which violates intellectual property law, is another excuse for governments to harass them.
So in a way, I do see the GPL as a force for good in my line of work, whereas commercial softwares interpretation of intellectual property does not help me. The GPL uses intellectual property rights to ensure the most open access to a product as possible. I apologize for being over the top greatful for that.
Man, are you over-reacting. And don't pull that South American dictator stuff on me either, I'm not impressed. If you ever had to deal with those kind of people you would realize how rediculous the comparison was.
I meant "force" in the best possible sense of the word. I think the GPL, which covers most of Linux (hence RMS pushing everyone to say GNU/Linux) does require that derivitive works remain under the same license. That's a type of force. It's the good soothing gentle kind of force.
GPL is not Public Domain, I sort of meant it like public domain with lower cases. My point was that GPL uses intellectual property, like a Jedi, not a Sith.
Well... about the Linux license. You are not entirely accurate. Linux does not reject the idea of intellectual property rights. It merely uses it to force software in to the public domain. This is a good thing.
Slashdot Mirror
I was just in Italy myself, and yes, compared to the rest of Europe, Italy is way behind the times. I did not experience the kind of smog you mention, Italians are definitely a messier country than most.
Keep in mind, however, that most emissions don't come from automobiles (I think the overall number is 20%). And the smog you witnessed may well come from burning of more diesel fuel than leaded gasoline (I don't know, they might still use leaded gas, did you see it yourself?), which produces more particles (bad for human lungs) than green house gas emissions. Italy is less industrialized than other countries in Europe, and is probably not much of a contributor when compared with other European countries. Dirty? Yes, bless'em.
Much of the rest of Europe is definitely cleaner than Italy. Most have banned leaded gasoline. Again, the air quality for breathing is more dubious because Europeans favor diesel (and probably lots of coal in Poland and Eastern Europe), but these are localized phenomenon and have smaller impact than the kinds of industry and agriculture that goes on in the States.
That said, Europeans like to harp on about how much the US wastes and pollutes, but forget that they contribute a higher proportion per capita than anyone else EXCEPT the States. They are definitely doing a better job than the States, but it might not be good enough either.
Actually, I saw this article a few months ago when it was making the rounds. Which government study? Where is the study? I could not find any study that matches the description from the article on the appropriate Ministry website. Nor have I found any other articles about it. Government cover up? Or just a made up story?
WHAT STUDY!?!
It doesn't look like anyone wants to talk about what the real issue is. The International Produce Market is right across the parking lot from The Milk Pail, which has a much larger selection of higher quality produce and more competitive pricing. The Milk Pail also carries a larger variety of "specialty" goods, such as European cheese, local ice cream and in particular a wide selection of Russian food imports which makes it even competitive with Samovar Deli and Bakery right across the street! The quality and price of Milk Pails produce even makes it stand up again "The Big Boys" as it has outlasted an Albertson which died in the same lot and an bustling Safeway across the street.
Before people start moaning about the loss of this "Silicon Valley Great", they should understand that if The International Produce Market wanted to keep going as the inheritor of Semi-conductor history, it maybe should have stocked more stuff, maybe some Middle Eastern or Indian specialties (because who wants to drive to Sunnyvale?), to that it could have attracted more visitors. Basic market economics here!
Wow, just last week I set up RSS to use as internal corporate communication. Only I work for a non-profit, and I did it all with free software. Now, the PhpWiki RecentChanges page shows up in my mail reader, as do recent posts to our PhpBB site. Now I don't have to remember to visit those places anymore, which is good because I can be forgetful.
Fictional data structures has it's strongest applications in the game software domain, where you need to model fictional characters, creatures and places. Very valuable. Very valuable indeed.
I have installed Linux on a system like you describe, except I could not get Gentoo running. I will try again though. I think I made a few mistakes along the way (I also installed Gentoo on two other systems successfully).
Usually there is no problem if you install windows on your hard drive FIRST and on the first partition of the first drive.
The problem I ran in to is that I installed Windows first, but on my last hard drive. Since I was using Serial ATA for that drive I had no choice. The solution was to tell the boot loader to trick Windows in to thinking it was on the first drive and first paritition. You can find out about it if you read the docs for GRUB.
I am of the mind that I should move away from Java because it is not free enough. In the work I do, ensuring that something is going to remain free and low cost and not get my partners in to political trouble is more important than usual. Truth is, we can't move away, but we can choose other routes.
I know most people don't need to think along those lines, but in Human Rights work, we need to more and more. We do use Java in our software, and I would like to see Sun commit to a freer model. It would be a great relief to me because I think Java is a good platform for a number of things.
Also, maybe I won't get criticized so badly the next time I meet RMS. The last time was very embarrassing. ;)
If there is any shrill crying going on, it is on the part of the Slashdot title that singled out Microsoft, even though there were other companies implicated in their report.
Amnesty is not wrong for pointing out that those companies are most likely acting in contradiction to international norms. At no point do they try to equate them with the Chinese government, merely they are making a statement that they should not be complicit.
I recommend reading the actual Amnesty report.
The people who are criticizing the headline I don't think are unjust to raise the point. I am going to try to write a post to a bulleting board of a human rights course that I trying to help out with about this article. As human rights workers who rely heavily on technology (actually, I am more of a technology worker who relies heavily on human rights) we are very concerned about the issues surrounding proprietary software vs. free software.
The only thing I can see that's different about Microsoft selling stuff to China and the Linux community freely distributing (in my view, higher quality) stuff to China is that Microsoft makes a direct profit off of what they are selling.
On the other side of the coin, when/if China returns source code to the Linux community, we are all gaining from China's contribution. This is particularly troubling if the technology they are adding were developed for repression but has a dual use. This troubles me as much as Microsoft giving them servers and stuff.
I am concerned about using proprietary software, ESPECIALLY MS software, because we can't tell what the software is doing. What if Windows secretly transmits information about the user to some server out there somewhere? Of course, it already does. Can this information be used by governments to repress dissidents? We don't know if when the software upgrades itself it has even more of these kinds of things. We believe Open and free software is less likey to have these kinds of problems.
But, from the sound of it, the repression in China is coming from the network level. A linux box could in fact be just a repressive on that level as an MS box. We (Linux folks) give it to them, and might except code back from them. I think it's a valid point. It does not excuse Microsoft from its Human Rights obligation, and Amnesty International is right to raise the issue, but it should raise some issues with free software folk as well.
I think Human Rights Watch is a more worthy organization at this time. They are more committed to taking a quantitative, scientifically argued approach to human rights work, which is something that there is not enough of in that field. If you are a geek, folks like that are what should tickle your fancy ;)
I think there is a general feeling that Debian is a little more conservative with their package distribution. It's also been around the block quite a bit.
That said... gimme Gentoo. I have no more use for good'ol Red Hat. I've figured out that when it comes to doing the Java development that I happen to be doing, nothing beats running on a system where you've custom compiled the kernel, clib, x-server, window manager and VM. Blimey! I think the only way it gets easier to manage that is to build a GUI for portage.
From what I understand, by the Senate rules, if you find something out in the open that doesn't belong there you are supposed to not look at it and turn it in. So, in theory, they didn't need to protect it.
One Libertarian I spoke too said "If having a Monopoly give us Microsoft, then I'm all in favor of Monopolies!"
I think one of the worst jobs in science might be the people who have to code data for large scale human rights projects such as the on going work at the Sierra Leone Truth and Reconcilliation commission. Imagine that it's just like the prison rape researcher job, only not only are you constantly reading about rape, you also are faces with murder, child rape, mutilations, amputations, child soldiers, dissapearance, theft and torture (very very creative torture).
People who work on these projects enter a state where they become strongly sympathetic to what they are reading and begin to exhibit symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder.
That's assuming there are no photographic records to review (which is usually kept as far away from coders as possible).
Although helping to expose the truth about attrocities is rewarding, it's not a very good job.
I am not sure that the diamond market will look to legal action to solve their problems as it is an industry drenched in blood. If their history is of any indication, diamond smugglers will send drugged up 13 year old children in with machetes to cut the hands off any scientist who dares to produce a lab grown diamond.
The diamond business is actually worse than the music business. I fancy neither of them.
I see. A likely story, knowing those users. Maybe they should have called it a "Stuff" button.
Sorry, that last post wasn't so coherent. I should have taken more time with it.
In summary, me think Apple good for Unix.
Strangly, I don't entirely see it as spitting in the face of Unix at all. None of this really takes away from the relative solidness of using a Unix foundation. Mac has in many ways done very good for the Unix world by demonstrating that it can be something that is both hackable AND PRIMARILY usable.
By all means, they should do that. This doesn't mean people can't write X servers/clients for Mac (though I heard they were problematic). The Unix foundation makes it easier to port existing Unix stuffs.
To a certain extent, yes. That is changing somewhat, with so far, good success. There is no denying that the latest Unix based interfaces pale in comparison to the beloved Mac GUI, but progress is progress. Again, as an avid GNU/Linux supporter, I do not see this as spitting in the face. Quite the opposite.
It works under Linux just fine as far as I can tell. The binary distribution is Windows only.
For DOS, you would need to do a C based client interface re-write, but the protocol for this is XMLRPC, so it's not out of the realm of possibility. We look forward to your version.
As far as the PalmOS, it's not as useful as you might think. Most of these countries don't have a use for hand-helds that are relatively expensive, get lost, broken. When you are out in the field collecting data, you need a good old fashioned pencil and paper.
Actually, you would be suprised...
On the other hand, one of the MAIN purposes of Martus is not to always prevent the authorities from gaining access, but rather to prevent the NGO from losing their documentation. Right now, most NGOs store information haphazardly in stacks of paper. This leaves them open to being damaged or stolen, particularly because it remains in the hostile country.
With Martus, that data gets transmitted to ANOTHER country where the government would not be so forthcoming about that kind of information. The data is backed up. The government could ALWAYS come in and just steal the computers, in fact it happens all the time, but the NGO still has the data.
Also, it's not always as easy for governments or hostile groups to kill activists as you think it is.
For putting people in jail you need a tool that can assemble what Martus puts out and then perform statistical analysis. Martus is just like a big e-mail system, but unlike the analysis tools in development it's more secure and can be used in a hostile country.
I've been keeping my eye on the source for a few weeks. I have more issues with the over-all design. I need it to be more modular so we can build our own client.
Oh man, you took that statement too seriously, that's for sure. Don't worry about Jedi, they are not real.
Working with GPL source code happens to be something very core to what I do. I feel very strongly about it. I do not oppose commercial software, but I recognize how important a role GPL plays in ensuring that I and the people I work with have access to continuingly evolving software. They could use public domain software, but that stuff might not be likley to evolve. With GPL, it does evolve and because of the "gentle force" that is provided by the GPL there is a much better chance that innovations on top of that code are not inaccessible.
I work in human rights, and my clients care a great deal about knowing that the code they are using does not transmit information to third parties and trap them in greivous contracts or agreements that can endanger their work or their rights. Additionally, NGO's are typically underfunded and have been known to pirate. This criminal act, which violates intellectual property law, is another excuse for governments to harass them.
So in a way, I do see the GPL as a force for good in my line of work, whereas commercial softwares interpretation of intellectual property does not help me. The GPL uses intellectual property rights to ensure the most open access to a product as possible. I apologize for being over the top greatful for that.
Man, are you over-reacting. And don't pull that South American dictator stuff on me either, I'm not impressed. If you ever had to deal with those kind of people you would realize how rediculous the comparison was.
I meant "force" in the best possible sense of the word. I think the GPL, which covers most of Linux (hence RMS pushing everyone to say GNU/Linux) does require that derivitive works remain under the same license. That's a type of force. It's the good soothing gentle kind of force.
GPL is not Public Domain, I sort of meant it like public domain with lower cases. My point was that GPL uses intellectual property, like a Jedi, not a Sith.
Well... about the Linux license. You are not entirely accurate. Linux does not reject the idea of intellectual property rights. It merely uses it to force software in to the public domain. This is a good thing.