Yes, "Tag" does mean "day," but then we have words like "Bundestag" and "Reichstag," where it does not. Not sure exactly what the Germans had in mind here, but I suspect this "Tag" in "Linux-Tag" is related to "Tagung," which means something like meeting, congress, convocation. That's why "Bundestag" can be translated as "Federal Parliament" instead of "Federal Day." So for "Linux-Tag" we might say "Linux Forum," maybe. CMIIAW. As for "Mahnung," this noun means warning only in the sense of admonition, reminder, exhortation; you don't use in expressions like, "Warning! Minefield!" It's more for, "I warned you once already, so this time you get sent off."
"Fishy" is right. This story is a lot less about computers than it is about Thai politics, which is why so many posts are expressing puzzlement, confusion, and comments that are off target.
The current prime minister of Thailand, Thaksin Shinawatra (pronounced more or less Toxin Sheen-ah-waht, and yes, we got the joke a long time ago) is a populist who got his start in politics by somehow talking someone in the military junta that was running the country at the time into giving him a monopoly on mobile phones. Thais all gotta have the dratted things, it shows status and confers prestige. The result: millions and zillions for Thaksin, and outrageously high phone rates here, even now, years later. He's the richest man in the nation, and the stories about how he works his taxes would curl your hair.
Well, according to his critics, he's basically buying the whole country, and the Thais love him for it (yes, we got that joke, too). Relatives of his go to high posts in the police and military, though unqualified; the English-language papers here are howling that some news media are lapdogs (very true of the radio, slightly less so of the TV, not so true of the newspapers, but they are running scared, as I see it), and the voters have been seduced by a plan that provides medical care for 30 Thai baht (less than a US buck) per visit. Never mind that the care is slapdash and provided by exhausted, harried doctors. Thaksin is, in short, to Thailand what Juan Peron was to Argentina. So far the economy is holding up under the strain, but it can't last.
Nor can the population: over 2,000 people were just shot to death in a wild anti-drugs campaign, and nobody knows how many were simply executed by the cops, and how many were hit by rival drug gangs -- no one is investigating, either, because they know where their best interests lie. The corruption that is a fact of every part of Thai life is becoming even more blatant. The latest little gift for the Thai nation: a tax on telecoms that benefits -- oh, you guessed! And the tax was imposed unconstitutionally, but the courts have been corrupted, too.
The "cheap computers" thing has little to do with HP or Linux. It's a Thai deal, just another aspect of the Southeast Asian version of bread and circuses. In fact, I question whether this item even belongs on/. --So I go on and on offtopic -- sorry, but my point was that this giveaway is the government buying the computers and selling them at a loss, using tax revenues to buy votes while incidentally undercutting and damaging legitimate businesses. Huey Long would be impressed.
BTW, "farang" (my user name) is the Thai word for "Westerner." It comes from the Thai pronunciation of the French word for "French."
There are a lot of unstated assumptions in the posts here that attack the US government. One is that our everyday activities are somehow private.
What we buy, where we go, where we live, and a great many other detials about our lives are not private; they are facts that are available to anyone who might be interested, and we have no God-given right to get upset if somebody collects them. We are not private entities, we are social entities, and that means that only those things that we deliberately hide are private: if we lock our secrets away, encrypt our messages, act so as to mislead anyone who MIGHT be watching, then we have privacy. But privacy is a condition, not a right.
There is no statement in the Bill of Rights, no part of the US Constitution that deals with privacy, because the fact of privacy has always been correctly recognized to be a state that is totally up to the individual to create regarding his affairs.
Now what you do in the sanctity of your residence is something else again, as the Constituion makes very clear: you are protected against unreasonable searches, for example. This reflects the feeling that "a man's home is his castle," a very English sentiment. It also expresses a concern for property rights. The framers of the Constitution could not justify denying protection from unreasonable searches to renters, but they were not defining privacy when they limited police power by placing it under judicial control (the court, not the police agency, issues the warrant to search).
The courts have presumed an aspect of privacy in their attitude toward abortion, however, and if this is extended, we may see a judicial effort to define privacy. It really should be done by Congress, if it is to be done. There is no constitutional concept of privacy, but that could be changed through constitutional amendment.
At present, the laws restrict the government from doing some things that any private citizen is free to do legally. This is the approach found in the Constitution: it clearly states that "Congress shall make no law..." and so on. It does not say that other entities, other than Congress, shall be restricted from, for example, limiting free speech. (Only after the Civil War were the restrictions on the federal Congress extended to the state legislatures. There for a while, the federal government could not do what the states could, and did.) We are, in other words, on solid legal ground with our current attitude toward privacy. And yes, it does seem to me illegal for the government to contract for private companies to do what the government is forbidden to do! "I won't bite you, but my dog will."
As for paranoia, it seems to me that the folks who are throwing a hissy-fit about data mining are the paranoids. Much ado about darn little, as I see it. But suppose the public disagrees with me. Well, if there is to be a comprehensive definition of privacy, along with an assertion that it is a fundamental human right -- so far there really is nothing substantial in this area -- it is up to the voters to tell their government what to do. Does anyone actually think the legislators would resist such a request from the public? There are many precedents to show that they would not, Prohibition and its repeal being just one. We can and will change the Constitution as we see fit, period.
One thing seems likely, IMHO: privacy is a legal area in which we need to spend some serious thought before we act. And our first act might well be to stop the government from hiring firms to do for it what it is not allowed to do itself.
For now, however, the basic situation is very simple: if you want privacy, then take the steps necessary to get it. You are able to select those aspects of your life you wish to hide from public view, and you will be able to do a very good job indeed of misleading the "Watchers."
So go to it, you nervous conspiracy theorists: hide from Them. After all, They are listening every time you call, aren't They? They a
You asked for rates around the world, so here's what I pay in Bangkok: 1,400 Thai baht (about US$34) for 100 hours of dial-up. Don't know about broadband, nor can I comment on connectivity outside Bangkok. Service here varies from pretty good to impossibly horrible. Convincing your ISP's service desk that you don't use any Microsoft products at all can cause patches of bloody scalp to collect on your floor. Mentioning Galeon and Evolution leaves the ISP rep totally speechless.
Lawyers say hard cases make bad law; on/. , polarized, passionate argument makes for injudicious moderation. Here we see prime examples of incompetent, blatantly biased rating of posts. Whether you want to fix it or junk it as forever hopeless, the fact is moderation is a mess.
Thanks for the information on my asbestos post. Off topic (so sue me): my father worked in a shipyard, and told me that he was often in the engine rooms of ships undergoing refitting--the asbestos dust was, as he described it, like a "heavy fog." No protective clothing; maybe masks, I don't know. Later I heard that my dad might well have poisoned his family when he exposed us to his clothing. No one in my family has ever had any asbestos-related health problems. Our first exposure was over a half century ago and continued for 20 plus years.
One of the goofy things reported shortly after the collapse: that the WTC contained huge quantities of asbestos. The deadly dust would cause thousands of cases of cancer in years to come, according to this urban myth. No mention of asbestos in the article, CMIIAW. Anyone else hear this asbestos rumor? I think I need to be a little more selective in my news sources....
Amazing. The news is, first of all, that a number of ethical cretins are trying to clone a human baby, and next that proposed treatments for serious diseases have failed disastrously, next that a couple of nasty diseases turn out to be more dangerous than expected, and finally that research continues in areas that can not be expected to produce anything to ease suffering for years, if not decades. Where is the good news?
Next look at the smartass, off-topic, smutty reactions of lots of/. posters. Ye gods....!! If this is an indication of how the public reacts to questions of health and science, we are in for a rough century.
It seems IMHO time to question seriously the basic approach the scientific community is taking toward biomedical research. What, exactly, is the cost/benefit ratio these days?
Further, how sensible is it to buy into the article of faith that all we have to do is continue to pour billions into basic research, expecting that sooner or later we will all lead longer and better lives as a result? It could be that we are wasting tons of money. It would be an excellent idea to re-examine how we allocate scarce resources in the pursuit of knowledge. I'm not a Luddite, but I am very disappointed that our progress has been so slow. Consider, for example, when you last saw any statistics showing how much money has been spent researching cancer (both on basic research and in the development of clinical tools), and how the suvival rates for the disease have changed over the last half-century. I think you don't see these figures because they are grim, indeed.
Maybe thirty years ago a physician told me that childhood leukemia was "almost not fatal any more." Where is it today? "Not fatal?" Are we chasing a will-o'-the-wisp, or have we really got a grip on where we want to go, and how to get there? How uncoordinated and goofy are our efforts? Should we not be further along by now??
My argument is not against science, basic research, or knowledge. It is simply that it would be better--more efficient--if we spent our money more wisely, that is, according to rational plans that consider results and costs when deciding where to put our efforts. Are we in this to learn things, or to save human life? Can we do both? Sometimes it appears that there IS a very real difference between two camps: one pushing for more labs and money for whatever it wants to pursue, the other genuinely concerned with saving lives. Consider:
Long ago the Nixon administration tried to shift funds to the implementation of widespread early detection programs, in the sure knowledge that certain cancers (not all) can be cured if detected when small. The scientific community howled like a stuck pig. Sure, Nixon was a jerk, but his priority was the saving of lives, now. As a result of intensive lobbying, the early detection approach was scrapped, and who knows how many lives have been lost because of that? I could not criticize this if it could be shown that pressing on with expensive basic research had saved even an equivalent number of lives, but I am sure no such result was obtained. Those who argued against Nixon's approach were willing to sacrifice hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of human beings in order to be able to carry on programs whose results could only be speculated about. I do not call that ethical--it seems more like selfishness, and inhumane selfishness at that.
We ought to have another look, ask some hard questions, and consider whether the scientific establishment has taken the bit in its teeth. Poor results for 2001 are a hint that I might be right.
...when I read about the legal problems bloggers can get into, my reaction is to assert even more strongly that freedom of speech should be absolute. The current judicial system is a means of intimidation used by bullies who want to prevent communication. If there were no such thing as libel, everyone would know that just because something is in print (in any sense), it cannot be automatically trusted. Let people say whatever they want, in other words; the negative impact of negative statements, including outright lies, varies inversely with the degree of freedom of speech. A radical approach, certainly, but if we all lived under a system that refused to make any utterance or expression legally actionable, our assumptions about information would be different. Today we tend to believe what we read; that is foolish, and the legal system encourages that foolishness.
I also wonder: who bothers to read the babble of all these bloggers? Who has the time, or the lack of discrimination required, to give bloggers any attention? I look at/. for news, and sometimes the comments contain interesting things, but I can't quite imagine seeking weblogs to read, or wasting eyesight on them.
It sometimes seems to me that we live in a society that communicates both too little and too much. It's a matter of quality, in other words, and that involves taste and discrimination. My limited contact with some very clever people on the net has led me to constuct a (very unfair and inaccurate) stereotype: a hacker, and especially a young hacker, is remarkably skilled in a narrow, arcane field, and almost totally ignorant outside it. The older ones who have already had a decent education and a real life don't fit the stereotype very well. Yes, I know that's not always true, but...hackers have left me feeling that I am dealing with people who utterly lack the information that should be conveyed in a solid liberal education. We are living on different planets, and our fundamental assumptions and core information do not mesh well at all. So...if (I said "if"!)most blogs are constructed by narrowly informed and partially-formed people, the reasons for reading blogs must be few indeed.
Yes, all of the above means that I would be unlikely to read my own comment, and very unlikely to believe it. -- Happy holidays to everyone anyway. Grumble, grumble....
...that tolerates sloppy writing and even outright fraud in science, and it's not new.
In the 1960's, I was informed that a biology prof at a California state university was telling his undergrad classes that a female gorilla had been articifically inseminated with human semen and had subsequently given birth to a live baby--half ape, half human. I was astounded that anyone would perpetrate such a hoax, and eventually not only had an interview with the hoaxer, but corresponded with many biologists, zoologists and institutes in an effort to prove that his (shifting) sources were sheer inventions.
My point: as I tried to bring up the issue of academic ethics and scientific responsibility, I was shocked to discover that no one wanted to deal with this hoax. The prof stuck to his story, and his colleagues avoided comment and involvement. In fact I was warned to shut up and stop making waves. The scientific community was upset with ME.
There is no happy ending to this story of hoax and lies and disgraceful cover-up. The scientific community is, IMHO, unwilling to police itself adequately; it is sloppy, lacking in stringent ethical guidelines, and lethargic. That's a generalization that doubtless has exceptions.
I was able to establish that the hoax was not a teaching technique. The lies seemed to have been part of an effort by the prof to discredit political figures: he evidently wanted to show that because of the nature of the "research," creationists had used political pressure to cut funding for the program.
The hoaxer has a Ph. D. from the University of Southern California, which means...nothing. Back in the 1960's, I thought that an advanced degree was not only an academic accomplishment, but also a kind of certification as to the ethics of a researcher. How naive I was.
So this story about sloppy writing comes as no surprise at all. I believe that if more research were done into the ethics of researchers, a lot of nasty things would be exposed. Scientists are not demi-gods--some are rascals, and many of those who are not have a distressing tendency to tolerate sloppy research and even blatant hoaxes.
You asked for unbiased sources. I did a search of the comments (over 1,400 so far) and did not find this:
The PBS (Public Broadcasting System, the government-sponsored TV network in the USA) had an excellent program years ago on its FRONTLINE series. It was hosted by the late Jessica Savich. This was the most objective and informative program I have ever seen on the topic you ask about. I hope you can obtain a videotape of the hour-long documentary; it is fundamentally useful, and it is absolutely NOT dated today.
Next: in that program, a book was mentioned, and the author was interviewed. Sorry, I don't have the bibliographic data at hand, but: the author was, as far as I can recall, at the University of Chicago. His research on gun crimes and crime prevention was seminal and, as far as I could tell, dispassionate.
Also: there is some legal scholarship available on the supreme court's interpretation of the second amendment. Look in particular for the ruling, in the 1870's if I recall correctly, that made gun ownership a collective or social right, as opposed to an individual right. The case involved freed former slaves who resorted to firearms to defend themselves from night riders, lynch mobs, the KKK and other murdering racists. Since the southern states could not tolerate this, laws restricting gun ownership were passed and enforced against blacks only. This is the root cause of the legal confusion over the dispute today.
Your attempts to find good data on the internet are not surprising--I have interests that take me back to articles published twenty, thirty and more years ago, and the results of Google searches are dismal, to say the least. Perhaps this tendency to ignore the past, or not archive it properly for search engines, accounts for the fact that no one has mentioned the excellent sources I give you here. You will have to dig. Contact PBS and ask for help getting a copy of the FRONTLINE documentary; they may help you. Good luck, and persist!
From the article: "Red hair is the first visible human trait...linked to anesthetic requirement."
Not sure what "anesthetic requirement" actually is, but I recall that years ago it was reported that blue-eyed people have a higher tolerance for pain. Whether that lowers their anesthetic requirement... I believe "anesthesia" means "without sensation," in other words unconscious. So what are we talking about here? Do we mean the ability to tolerate perceived pain, or how easily one slips into unconsciousness after being drugged? Are the two related?
Thanks! I thought maybe bio-Diesel was an error, or an in-joke. Now I know. I knew Diesels will run on various fluids, but the term was new to me......And your answer, polite and informative as it was, got you a Zero??
Don't feel bad about that score of Zero: you could be on to something here. Bob Carver used to make a gadget called a "Digital Time Lens" to improve the sound of CD's, and as I recall it not only worked, it added random information to the signal. I was also reminded of the dithering that is a vital part of the digital audio record/playback process. The same, only different. Yeah, I know, score of Zero for me, too. I still say.......
In this proposal (to make Echelon more public and transparent), there is one indication up front that the author is a bit goofy. The rest of his suggestions lack common sense.
He says early on that the Japanese attack on Hawaii in 1941 was not all that secret--that the USA had some knowledge that it was about to occur, and fumbled the ball. This has never been demonstrated, but a lot of people believe it. There were some data which, in retrospect, looked consistent with an attack, and some mistakes were made (General Short made the biggest ones), but the truth is that no one knew what was going to happen and by the time a nonspecific warning was issued, it was too late to do anything much. The folks in Hawaii had no reason to believe it applied to them--in fact, they assumed they were safe by virtue of geography. We do know that the War Department figured the Philippines were the certain target (correct, but incomplete), that MacAruthur got the same warning Hawaii did, and that he ignored it. His incompetence was actually far greater than that of Admiral Kimmel, yet Kimmel was crucified and Mac became an icon. I digress.
A roughly parallel pattern emerges in the WTC attack. Looking back, we can see things that might have tipped us off that something nasty was up, but there is nothing clear and the target was not specified. (If it had been, someone in NSA would have said, "Well, duh, we knew that. What's new?") US intelligence services are awash in suggestive information; virtually all the time, it is impossible for them to predict based on this flood of hints, possibilities, suggestions, contradictory data and odd events.
There is one development a more public Echelon could not possibly address. The Bad Guys can flood the communications media with "smoke," bogus messages that will overwhelm the spooks and distract them. That becomes all the easier for the terrorists as the intelligence people come under political pressure not to ignore anything, to predict on the basis of incomplete information, and connect unrelated dots.
Finally, if Echelon has a new more public existence, its main functions will simply recede into the secretive background anyway. Net effect: either Zero, or possibly even detrimental.
IMHO Echelon may be doing a lot better job than we know. Recall the US general who was kidnapped in Italy by a bunch of self-styled Commies? A reporter said at one point that every single telephone in Italy was tapped. True or not, that feat was never referred to again. The general was recovered in one piece.
The author of this proposal to make Echelon into a more visible and therefore somehow more responsible organization is out to lunch.
Fascinating. But tell me this: what, exactly, does the North-South split offer as a preventive for corruption?
The problem here is that a major company gulled CA into buying more licenses than it has employees, remember? The impact of LA on nearby cities is irrelevant in this case, because what we have here is a case of simple, pure, quintessential dishonesty. It's a lack of ethics in government, not a case study for a political scientist in an ivory tower.
Yes, you can reorganize governments, add new levels of government, make things either simpler or more complex if you want--but realize that NONE of that changes what's in people's hearts. If people are greedy, dishonest, corrupt and conniving rascals, that's what they are, and no structural changes will prevent them from doing their dirty work. Geographic redrawing of political boundaries? Might as well try voodoo as a fix.
What is needed is a process of oversight and transparency that works to militate against corruption. That means honest people looking at what goes on, with full disclosure required. That can be put into place in any governmental structure, no matter how large.
Yes, finding honest people and keeping them honest is not easy. But it's easier if the entire system is totally transparent, with so many people aware of what is going on that keeping secrets is extremely difficult.
Like mosquito abatement and doing the laundry, keeping government honest is a task that never ends. It requires continual work. The is no use whining about that fact of life!
Davis and company need to be handed their walking papers, and new laws need to be enacted to open up the process that lies behind the awarding of contracts.
Recent news item: in vitro babies have double the number of major birth defects. A lot of selfish would-be parents are going to cause a lot of misery...everything known about cloning calls for slow, cautious research, not attempts to press the immature technology into service....yet this loony Italian is rushing into unknown territory. Consider carefully this from the article: "...they have reduced the risk of deformation in cloning...." To what level? (He does not say, because he does not know! After all, how many human clones are there?) And then the doctor says, "I concede the risk but you have to be careful." What, exactly, does THAT mean?? Nothing. It's just empty words. He's a salesman, not an ethical physician.
There is another side, no part of which takes anything away from Edison's accomplishments. He paid kids a quarter for puppies and kittens he could electrocute in his demonstarations of how dangerous AC power is, and even electrocuted an adult male elephant. He filmed the spectacle. He was little more than a gangster when it came to promoting his businesses, using every dirty trick in the book to intimidate the competition and gain a monopoly on movies and their distribution. No one knows how frequently he took credit for the work of others, but my guess is he was very good at it. He often slept curled up like a dog on old newspapers in a closet beneath the stairs--just another manifestation of a unique, driven personality. A fascinating man, but in my book, by no means totally admirable. A lot of his inventions, in fact all of them, I suspect, would have been made by others in time. We would not be reading by candlelight today if Edison had been run over by a beer wagon. If he was such a total genius, why did he seriously propose DC power? IMHO Bell Labs, not Edison, played a greater role in the development of technology, and Edison is sixty percent hype and forty percent solid contributions. Certainly old Thos. A. was nowhere near the intellectual equal of Maxwell, whose theoretical work was vastly more important and seminal. Still--credit where credit is due!
I agree that charity is the only way to fund research into diseases like malaria. Next I have to ask: who funded this aritificial womb resarch, and why? Was it strictly a business proposition on which someone expected to make money? If so, then I guess we have no proper complaint, because, as you say, that's the way the market works and facts are facts.
If, however, the funding for this project was provided in an altruisitc, pro-science effort to increase understanding, then I feel we can and should be critical. There are infinitely better uses for the money.
Yes! Scary is the best word for it. It's a frightening misallocation of resources. While some people are working on an artificial womb (why??), not enough are working on things like malaria, which is a huge killer that could be stopped if science made a serious effort. But only poor people get malaria, so there is not enough money for a real research and development project. We also are paying far too little attention to the development of new antibiotics, the use of microphages, and a number of other catastrophic diseases that ought to submit to serious research programs. There is so much work that really needs doing.....
All animals are a gene's way of making another gene; all animals learn; all animals communicate. That does NOT mean humans are not different FROM all other animals, it merely means the species have a lot in common. Yes, you can trick an embryo, just as you can torture a child to death. Should you do either? The fact is that humans, for better or worse, have ethics -- sometimes lousy ethics, sometimes pretty good systems for living properly, but ethics nonetheless. Now what are we gong to do with our lives? Are we headed straight into Huxley's Brave New World? -- OK, so we embrace knowledge. Knowledge is a tool, and any tool can be used for evil, right? So the debate is whether we SHOULD do this or that with any given tool. That's a lot more complex, and possibly a lot more difficult to deal with, than simply "embracing knowledge." My personal view: I'm willing to let you young folks deal with the monsters that are being created by seekers after more knowledge. I don't want to live for a few hundred more years: it's just too scary for me. So take over, Technofreaks, and build your artificial wombs and who knows what else, I won't be here to see it. Thank my lucky stars.
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Yes, "Tag" does mean "day," but then we have words like "Bundestag" and "Reichstag," where it does not. Not sure exactly what the Germans had in mind here, but I suspect this "Tag" in "Linux-Tag" is related to "Tagung," which means something like meeting, congress, convocation. That's why "Bundestag" can be translated as "Federal Parliament" instead of "Federal Day." So for "Linux-Tag" we might say "Linux Forum," maybe. CMIIAW. As for "Mahnung," this noun means warning only in the sense of admonition, reminder, exhortation; you don't use in expressions like, "Warning! Minefield!" It's more for, "I warned you once already, so this time you get sent off."
"Fishy" is right. This story is a lot less about computers than it is about Thai politics, which is why so many posts are expressing puzzlement, confusion, and comments that are off target.
/. --So I go on and on offtopic -- sorry, but my point was that this giveaway is the government buying the computers and selling them at a loss, using tax revenues to buy votes while incidentally undercutting and damaging legitimate businesses. Huey Long would be impressed.
The current prime minister of Thailand, Thaksin Shinawatra (pronounced more or less Toxin Sheen-ah-waht, and yes, we got the joke a long time ago) is a populist who got his start in politics by somehow talking someone in the military junta that was running the country at the time into giving him a monopoly on mobile phones. Thais all gotta have the dratted things, it shows status and confers prestige. The result: millions and zillions for Thaksin, and outrageously high phone rates here, even now, years later. He's the richest man in the nation, and the stories about how he works his taxes would curl your hair.
Well, according to his critics, he's basically buying the whole country, and the Thais love him for it (yes, we got that joke, too). Relatives of his go to high posts in the police and military, though unqualified; the English-language papers here are howling that some news media are lapdogs (very true of the radio, slightly less so of the TV, not so true of the newspapers, but they are running scared, as I see it), and the voters have been seduced by a plan that provides medical care for 30 Thai baht (less than a US buck) per visit. Never mind that the care is slapdash and provided by exhausted, harried doctors. Thaksin is, in short, to Thailand what Juan Peron was to Argentina. So far the economy is holding up under the strain, but it can't last.
Nor can the population: over 2,000 people were just shot to death in a wild anti-drugs campaign, and nobody knows how many were simply executed by the cops, and how many were hit by rival drug gangs -- no one is investigating, either, because they know where their best interests lie. The corruption that is a fact of every part of Thai life is becoming even more blatant. The latest little gift for the Thai nation: a tax on telecoms that benefits -- oh, you guessed! And the tax was imposed unconstitutionally, but the courts have been corrupted, too.
The "cheap computers" thing has little to do with HP or Linux. It's a Thai deal, just another aspect of the Southeast Asian version of bread and circuses. In fact, I question whether this item even belongs on
BTW, "farang" (my user name) is the Thai word for "Westerner." It comes from the Thai pronunciation of the French word for "French."
There are a lot of unstated assumptions in the posts here that attack the US government. One is that our everyday activities are somehow private.
What we buy, where we go, where we live, and a great many other detials about our lives are not private; they are facts that are available to anyone who might be interested, and we have no God-given right to get upset if somebody collects them. We are not private entities, we are social entities, and that means that only those things that we deliberately hide are private: if we lock our secrets away, encrypt our messages, act so as to mislead anyone who MIGHT be watching, then we have privacy. But privacy is a condition, not a right.
There is no statement in the Bill of Rights, no part of the US Constitution that deals with privacy, because the fact of privacy has always been correctly recognized to be a state that is totally up to the individual to create regarding his affairs.
Now what you do in the sanctity of your residence is something else again, as the Constituion makes very clear: you are protected against unreasonable searches, for example. This reflects the feeling that "a man's home is his castle," a very English sentiment. It also expresses a concern for property rights. The framers of the Constitution could not justify denying protection from unreasonable searches to renters, but they were not defining privacy when they limited police power by placing it under judicial control (the court, not the police agency, issues the warrant to search).
The courts have presumed an aspect of privacy in their attitude toward abortion, however, and if this is extended, we may see a judicial effort to define privacy. It really should be done by Congress, if it is to be done. There is no constitutional concept of privacy, but that could be changed through constitutional amendment.
At present, the laws restrict the government from doing some things that any private citizen is free to do legally. This is the approach found in the Constitution: it clearly states that "Congress shall make no law..." and so on. It does not say that other entities, other than Congress, shall be restricted from, for example, limiting free speech. (Only after the Civil War were the restrictions on the federal Congress extended to the state legislatures. There for a while, the federal government could not do what the states could, and did.) We are, in other words, on solid legal ground with our current attitude toward privacy. And yes, it does seem to me illegal for the government to contract for private companies to do what the government is forbidden to do! "I won't bite you, but my dog will."
As for paranoia, it seems to me that the folks who are throwing a hissy-fit about data mining are the paranoids. Much ado about darn little, as I see it. But suppose the public disagrees with me. Well, if there is to be a comprehensive definition of privacy, along with an assertion that it is a fundamental human right -- so far there really is nothing substantial in this area -- it is up to the voters to tell their government what to do. Does anyone actually think the legislators would resist such a request from the public? There are many precedents to show that they would not, Prohibition and its repeal being just one. We can and will change the Constitution as we see fit, period.
One thing seems likely, IMHO: privacy is a legal area in which we need to spend some serious thought before we act. And our first act might well be to stop the government from hiring firms to do for it what it is not allowed to do itself.
For now, however, the basic situation is very simple: if you want privacy, then take the steps necessary to get it. You are able to select those aspects of your life you wish to hide from public view, and you will be able to do a very good job indeed of misleading the "Watchers."
So go to it, you nervous conspiracy theorists: hide from Them. After all, They are listening every time you call, aren't They? They a
You asked for rates around the world, so here's what I pay in Bangkok: 1,400 Thai baht (about US$34) for 100 hours of dial-up. Don't know about broadband, nor can I comment on connectivity outside Bangkok. Service here varies from pretty good to impossibly horrible. Convincing your ISP's service desk that you don't use any Microsoft products at all can cause patches of bloody scalp to collect on your floor. Mentioning Galeon and Evolution leaves the ISP rep totally speechless.
Lawyers say hard cases make bad law; on /. , polarized, passionate argument makes for injudicious moderation. Here we see prime examples of incompetent, blatantly biased rating of posts. Whether you want to fix it or junk it as forever hopeless, the fact is moderation is a mess.
Thanks for the information on my asbestos post. Off topic (so sue me): my father worked in a shipyard, and told me that he was often in the engine rooms of ships undergoing refitting--the asbestos dust was, as he described it, like a "heavy fog." No protective clothing; maybe masks, I don't know. Later I heard that my dad might well have poisoned his family when he exposed us to his clothing. No one in my family has ever had any asbestos-related health problems. Our first exposure was over a half century ago and continued for 20 plus years.
One of the goofy things reported shortly after the collapse: that the WTC contained huge quantities of asbestos. The deadly dust would cause thousands of cases of cancer in years to come, according to this urban myth. No mention of asbestos in the article, CMIIAW. Anyone else hear this asbestos rumor? I think I need to be a little more selective in my news sources....
Amazing. The news is, first of all, that a number of ethical cretins are trying to clone a human baby, and next that proposed treatments for serious diseases have failed disastrously, next that a couple of nasty diseases turn out to be more dangerous than expected, and finally that research continues in areas that can not be expected to produce anything to ease suffering for years, if not decades. Where is the good news?
/. posters. Ye gods....!! If this is an indication of how the public reacts to questions of health and science, we are in for a rough century.
Next look at the smartass, off-topic, smutty reactions of lots of
It seems IMHO time to question seriously the basic approach the scientific community is taking toward biomedical research. What, exactly, is the cost/benefit ratio these days?
Further, how sensible is it to buy into the article of faith that all we have to do is continue to pour billions into basic research, expecting that sooner or later we will all lead longer and better lives as a result? It could be that we are wasting tons of money. It would be an excellent idea to re-examine how we allocate scarce resources in the pursuit of knowledge. I'm not a Luddite, but I am very disappointed that our progress has been so slow. Consider, for example, when you last saw any statistics showing how much money has been spent researching cancer (both on basic research and in the development of clinical tools), and how the suvival rates for the disease have changed over the last half-century. I think you don't see these figures because they are grim, indeed.
Maybe thirty years ago a physician told me that childhood leukemia was "almost not fatal any more." Where is it today? "Not fatal?" Are we chasing a will-o'-the-wisp, or have we really got a grip on where we want to go, and how to get there? How uncoordinated and goofy are our efforts? Should we not be further along by now??
My argument is not against science, basic research, or knowledge. It is simply that it would be better--more efficient--if we spent our money more wisely, that is, according to rational plans that consider results and costs when deciding where to put our efforts. Are we in this to learn things, or to save human life? Can we do both? Sometimes it appears that there IS a very real difference between two camps: one pushing for more labs and money for whatever it wants to pursue, the other genuinely concerned with saving lives. Consider:
Long ago the Nixon administration tried to shift funds to the implementation of widespread early detection programs, in the sure knowledge that certain cancers (not all) can be cured if detected when small. The scientific community howled like a stuck pig. Sure, Nixon was a jerk, but his priority was the saving of lives, now. As a result of intensive lobbying, the early detection approach was scrapped, and who knows how many lives have been lost because of that? I could not criticize this if it could be shown that pressing on with expensive basic research had saved even an equivalent number of lives, but I am sure no such result was obtained. Those who argued against Nixon's approach were willing to sacrifice hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of human beings in order to be able to carry on programs whose results could only be speculated about. I do not call that ethical--it seems more like selfishness, and inhumane selfishness at that.
We ought to have another look, ask some hard questions, and consider whether the scientific establishment has taken the bit in its teeth. Poor results for 2001 are a hint that I might be right.
...when I read about the legal problems bloggers can get into, my reaction is to assert even more strongly that freedom of speech should be absolute. The current judicial system is a means of intimidation used by bullies who want to prevent communication. If there were no such thing as libel, everyone would know that just because something is in print (in any sense), it cannot be automatically trusted. Let people say whatever they want, in other words; the negative impact of negative statements, including outright lies, varies inversely with the degree of freedom of speech. A radical approach, certainly, but if we all lived under a system that refused to make any utterance or expression legally actionable, our assumptions about information would be different. Today we tend to believe what we read; that is foolish, and the legal system encourages that foolishness.
/. for news, and sometimes the comments contain interesting things, but I can't quite imagine seeking weblogs to read, or wasting eyesight on them.
I also wonder: who bothers to read the babble of all these bloggers? Who has the time, or the lack of discrimination required, to give bloggers any attention? I look at
It sometimes seems to me that we live in a society that communicates both too little and too much. It's a matter of quality, in other words, and that involves taste and discrimination. My limited contact with some very clever people on the net has led me to constuct a (very unfair and inaccurate) stereotype: a hacker, and especially a young hacker, is remarkably skilled in a narrow, arcane field, and almost totally ignorant outside it. The older ones who have already had a decent education and a real life don't fit the stereotype very well. Yes, I know that's not always true, but...hackers have left me feeling that I am dealing with people who utterly lack the information that should be conveyed in a solid liberal education. We are living on different planets, and our fundamental assumptions and core information do not mesh well at all. So...if (I said "if"!)most blogs are constructed by narrowly informed and partially-formed people, the reasons for reading blogs must be few indeed.
Yes, all of the above means that I would be unlikely to read my own comment, and very unlikely to believe it. -- Happy holidays to everyone anyway. Grumble, grumble....
...that tolerates sloppy writing and even outright fraud in science, and it's not new.
In the 1960's, I was informed that a biology prof at a California state university was telling his undergrad classes that a female gorilla had been articifically inseminated with human semen and had subsequently given birth to a live baby--half ape, half human. I was astounded that anyone would perpetrate such a hoax, and eventually not only had an interview with the hoaxer, but corresponded with many biologists, zoologists and institutes in an effort to prove that his (shifting) sources were sheer inventions.
My point: as I tried to bring up the issue of academic ethics and scientific responsibility, I was shocked to discover that no one wanted to deal with this hoax. The prof stuck to his story, and his colleagues avoided comment and involvement. In fact I was warned to shut up and stop making waves. The scientific community was upset with ME.
There is no happy ending to this story of hoax and lies and disgraceful cover-up. The scientific community is, IMHO, unwilling to police itself adequately; it is sloppy, lacking in stringent ethical guidelines, and lethargic. That's a generalization that doubtless has exceptions.
I was able to establish that the hoax was not a teaching technique. The lies seemed to have been part of an effort by the prof to discredit political figures: he evidently wanted to show that because of the nature of the "research," creationists had used political pressure to cut funding for the program.
The hoaxer has a Ph. D. from the University of Southern California, which means...nothing. Back in the 1960's, I thought that an advanced degree was not only an academic accomplishment, but also a kind of certification as to the ethics of a researcher. How naive I was.
So this story about sloppy writing comes as no surprise at all. I believe that if more research were done into the ethics of researchers, a lot of nasty things would be exposed. Scientists are not demi-gods--some are rascals, and many of those who are not have a distressing tendency to tolerate sloppy research and even blatant hoaxes.
Lyapunov:
You asked for unbiased sources. I did a search of the comments (over 1,400 so far) and did not find this:
The PBS (Public Broadcasting System, the government-sponsored TV network in the USA) had an excellent program years ago on its FRONTLINE series. It was hosted by the late Jessica Savich. This was the most objective and informative program I have ever seen on the topic you ask about. I hope you can obtain a videotape of the hour-long documentary; it is fundamentally useful, and it is absolutely NOT dated today.
Next: in that program, a book was mentioned, and the author was interviewed. Sorry, I don't have the bibliographic data at hand, but: the author was, as far as I can recall, at the University of Chicago. His research on gun crimes and crime prevention was seminal and, as far as I could tell, dispassionate.
Also: there is some legal scholarship available on the supreme court's interpretation of the second amendment. Look in particular for the ruling, in the 1870's if I recall correctly, that made gun ownership a collective or social right, as opposed to an individual right. The case involved freed former slaves who resorted to firearms to defend themselves from night riders, lynch mobs, the KKK and other murdering racists. Since the southern states could not tolerate this, laws restricting gun ownership were passed and enforced against blacks only. This is the root cause of the legal confusion over the dispute today.
Your attempts to find good data on the internet are not surprising--I have interests that take me back to articles published twenty, thirty and more years ago, and the results of Google searches are dismal, to say the least. Perhaps this tendency to ignore the past, or not archive it properly for search engines, accounts for the fact that no one has mentioned the excellent sources I give you here. You will have to dig. Contact PBS and ask for help getting a copy of the FRONTLINE documentary; they may help you. Good luck, and persist!
From the article: "Red hair is the first visible human trait...linked to anesthetic requirement." Not sure what "anesthetic requirement" actually is, but I recall that years ago it was reported that blue-eyed people have a higher tolerance for pain. Whether that lowers their anesthetic requirement... I believe "anesthesia" means "without sensation," in other words unconscious. So what are we talking about here? Do we mean the ability to tolerate perceived pain, or how easily one slips into unconsciousness after being drugged? Are the two related?
Thanks! I thought maybe bio-Diesel was an error, or an in-joke. Now I know. I knew Diesels will run on various fluids, but the term was new to me. .....And your answer, polite and informative as it was, got you a Zero??
OK, it's a dumb question posed by an ignoramus....but what in the world is a "bio-Diesel/electric" engine? "BIO"??? What part of it is alive?
Don't feel bad about that score of Zero: you could be on to something here. Bob Carver used to make a gadget called a "Digital Time Lens" to improve the sound of CD's, and as I recall it not only worked, it added random information to the signal. I was also reminded of the dithering that is a vital part of the digital audio record/playback process. The same, only different. Yeah, I know, score of Zero for me, too. I still say.......
In this proposal (to make Echelon more public and transparent), there is one indication up front that the author is a bit goofy. The rest of his suggestions lack common sense.
He says early on that the Japanese attack on Hawaii in 1941 was not all that secret--that the USA had some knowledge that it was about to occur, and fumbled the ball. This has never been demonstrated, but a lot of people believe it. There were some data which, in retrospect, looked consistent with an attack, and some mistakes were made (General Short made the biggest ones), but the truth is that no one knew what was going to happen and by the time a nonspecific warning was issued, it was too late to do anything much. The folks in Hawaii had no reason to believe it applied to them--in fact, they assumed they were safe by virtue of geography. We do know that the War Department figured the Philippines were the certain target (correct, but incomplete), that MacAruthur got the same warning Hawaii did, and that he ignored it. His incompetence was actually far greater than that of Admiral Kimmel, yet Kimmel was crucified and Mac became an icon. I digress.
A roughly parallel pattern emerges in the WTC attack. Looking back, we can see things that might have tipped us off that something nasty was up, but there is nothing clear and the target was not specified. (If it had been, someone in NSA would have said, "Well, duh, we knew that. What's new?") US intelligence services are awash in suggestive information; virtually all the time, it is impossible for them to predict based on this flood of hints, possibilities, suggestions, contradictory data and odd events.
There is one development a more public Echelon could not possibly address. The Bad Guys can flood the communications media with "smoke," bogus messages that will overwhelm the spooks and distract them. That becomes all the easier for the terrorists as the intelligence people come under political pressure not to ignore anything, to predict on the basis of incomplete information, and connect unrelated dots.
Finally, if Echelon has a new more public existence, its main functions will simply recede into the secretive background anyway. Net effect: either Zero, or possibly even detrimental.
IMHO Echelon may be doing a lot better job than we know. Recall the US general who was kidnapped in Italy by a bunch of self-styled Commies? A reporter said at one point that every single telephone in Italy was tapped. True or not, that feat was never referred to again. The general was recovered in one piece.
The author of this proposal to make Echelon into a more visible and therefore somehow more responsible organization is out to lunch.
Excellent. I have been waiting for some common sense to appear here. Long overdue.
Amen!
Fascinating. But tell me this: what, exactly, does the North-South split offer as a preventive for corruption?
The problem here is that a major company gulled CA into buying more licenses than it has employees, remember? The impact of LA on nearby cities is irrelevant in this case, because what we have here is a case of simple, pure, quintessential dishonesty. It's a lack of ethics in government, not a case study for a political scientist in an ivory tower.
Yes, you can reorganize governments, add new levels of government, make things either simpler or more complex if you want--but realize that NONE of that changes what's in people's hearts. If people are greedy, dishonest, corrupt and conniving rascals, that's what they are, and no structural changes will prevent them from doing their dirty work. Geographic redrawing of political boundaries? Might as well try voodoo as a fix.
What is needed is a process of oversight and transparency that works to militate against corruption. That means honest people looking at what goes on, with full disclosure required. That can be put into place in any governmental structure, no matter how large.
Yes, finding honest people and keeping them honest is not easy. But it's easier if the entire system is totally transparent, with so many people aware of what is going on that keeping secrets is extremely difficult.
Like mosquito abatement and doing the laundry, keeping government honest is a task that never ends. It requires continual work. The is no use whining about that fact of life!
Davis and company need to be handed their walking papers, and new laws need to be enacted to open up the process that lies behind the awarding of contracts.
CA is not too big. It's too dishonest.
Recent news item: in vitro babies have double the number of major birth defects. A lot of selfish would-be parents are going to cause a lot of misery...everything known about cloning calls for slow, cautious research, not attempts to press the immature technology into service....yet this loony Italian is rushing into unknown territory. Consider carefully this from the article: "...they have reduced the risk of deformation in cloning...." To what level? (He does not say, because he does not know! After all, how many human clones are there?) And then the doctor says, "I concede the risk but you have to be careful." What, exactly, does THAT mean?? Nothing. It's just empty words. He's a salesman, not an ethical physician.
There is another side, no part of which takes anything away from Edison's accomplishments. He paid kids a quarter for puppies and kittens he could electrocute in his demonstarations of how dangerous AC power is, and even electrocuted an adult male elephant. He filmed the spectacle. He was little more than a gangster when it came to promoting his businesses, using every dirty trick in the book to intimidate the competition and gain a monopoly on movies and their distribution. No one knows how frequently he took credit for the work of others, but my guess is he was very good at it. He often slept curled up like a dog on old newspapers in a closet beneath the stairs--just another manifestation of a unique, driven personality. A fascinating man, but in my book, by no means totally admirable. A lot of his inventions, in fact all of them, I suspect, would have been made by others in time. We would not be reading by candlelight today if Edison had been run over by a beer wagon. If he was such a total genius, why did he seriously propose DC power? IMHO Bell Labs, not Edison, played a greater role in the development of technology, and Edison is sixty percent hype and forty percent solid contributions. Certainly old Thos. A. was nowhere near the intellectual equal of Maxwell, whose theoretical work was vastly more important and seminal. Still--credit where credit is due!
I agree that charity is the only way to fund research into diseases like malaria. Next I have to ask: who funded this aritificial womb resarch, and why? Was it strictly a business proposition on which someone expected to make money? If so, then I guess we have no proper complaint, because, as you say, that's the way the market works and facts are facts. If, however, the funding for this project was provided in an altruisitc, pro-science effort to increase understanding, then I feel we can and should be critical. There are infinitely better uses for the money.
Yes! Scary is the best word for it. It's a frightening misallocation of resources. While some people are working on an artificial womb (why??), not enough are working on things like malaria, which is a huge killer that could be stopped if science made a serious effort. But only poor people get malaria, so there is not enough money for a real research and development project. We also are paying far too little attention to the development of new antibiotics, the use of microphages, and a number of other catastrophic diseases that ought to submit to serious research programs. There is so much work that really needs doing.....
All animals are a gene's way of making another gene; all animals learn; all animals communicate. That does NOT mean humans are not different FROM all other animals, it merely means the species have a lot in common. Yes, you can trick an embryo, just as you can torture a child to death. Should you do either? The fact is that humans, for better or worse, have ethics -- sometimes lousy ethics, sometimes pretty good systems for living properly, but ethics nonetheless. Now what are we gong to do with our lives? Are we headed straight into Huxley's Brave New World? -- OK, so we embrace knowledge. Knowledge is a tool, and any tool can be used for evil, right? So the debate is whether we SHOULD do this or that with any given tool. That's a lot more complex, and possibly a lot more difficult to deal with, than simply "embracing knowledge." My personal view: I'm willing to let you young folks deal with the monsters that are being created by seekers after more knowledge. I don't want to live for a few hundred more years: it's just too scary for me. So take over, Technofreaks, and build your artificial wombs and who knows what else, I won't be here to see it. Thank my lucky stars.
"Rather paranoid" ?? "RATHER" ??? Oh, my.....