"Let me be clear about one thing, we don't license our intellectual property to Linux because of the way Linux licensing GPL framework works, that's not really a possibility," said Microsoft chief executive, Steve Ballmer.
"Novell is actually just a proxy for its customers, and it's only for its customers," he added. "This does not apply to any forms of Linux other than Novell's SUSE Linux. And if people want to have peace and interoperability, they'll look at Novell's SUSE Linux. If they make other choices, they have all of the compliance and intellectual property issues that are associated with that."
IANAL, but I think these are empty threats and here is why:
Mutually Assured Destruction, or rather, IBM and its relationship to Linux and Unix. IBM has a stake in Linux and will defend its own interests. Also, Linux mostly implements Unix. Almost any challange to Linux will also be a challange to Unix. IBM (and Sun for that matter) is not about to let that happen.
Again, IANAL, but I would think this would be a case of "estoppel". Linux is a hodgepodge. It is a bunch of contributed "pieces-parts" from other people. Novell/MS can not benefit from contributed software and simutaneously oppose it for everyone else. Nor can Novell equitably get away with knowingly contributing to Open Source and then say "gotcha".
Looking for the silver-lining, I hope this will lead to an officially blessed MS smb/ad client that will reveal some of the inner workings that continously stump Samba.
With the exception of Burma (which has long been a pariah military dictatorship), all the countries are either ruled by a communist party (or direct sucessor) or they are from an islamic culture.
And have a chaotic system. I forget the exact number, but IIRC, but through the 1940's-80's, Italy had more Goverments than years - The goverment falls and a new coalition has to be elected every eight months or so, because nobody has a real majority. It is a notoriously unstable system.
The two-party republician (i.e. president and congress) winner-take-all system is substanially more stable than proportional representation. The two parties are also able to co-opt third parties by incorporating any good ideas that the third party may orgininate, thus leaving the third party with only more extreme ideas to differentiate itself from the major parties.
[visitor] Knock Knock... [you] Who's there? [visitor] Pizza Delivery [you] I didn't order any pizza. [visitor] umm....Avon [you--while opening the door]. I didn't order any....AHHHAAGG
SOA is a nice concept (and buzzword). At the local-machine level, this is exactly what unix has always been. You have a bunch of programs with a standard interface (text through pipes/stdio instead of xml through http) and you tie them togather with "glue code" shell scripts (or perl).
I don't see anything necessarily nefarious in this. As I commented in the earlier article, most likely, Novell is may making sure that Microsoft continues to support NDS/NetWare (which is now the Linux-based Open Enterprise Server) by having the client software supported on Vista. Microsoft wants to make sure that.Net has a foothold in the linux/unix backend market. They both get something out of the deal. Novell gets Windows desktops to provide a market for their server products. MS gets Novell supported Mono/.Net-based servers to provide a market for the desktop and application products. Anything that grows the NDS/Netware line is good for Novell. Anything that grows.Net is good for MS. They both win.
TFA keeps refering to "the Vole". WTF is "the Vole"? AFAIK, a vole is a rodent endemic to Northern and alpine climes. I have no idea what it means in the given context.
The article mentions several things. Two of the things mentioned are Gaming and commerical software , which is a chiken-and-egg sorta thing. There are no games, because there is no market. There is no market, because there are no Games. Same with some of the shrink-wrap off-the-shelf software. Not sure how you crack that.
As far as hardware compatabilty goes, the "it just works" situation will never happen with linux, because there is no stable kernel ABI, and there never will be one if Linus has his way (which he will for the forseeable future). This acticle has some quotes from Linus about ABIs.
Linus Torvalds, the creator of the Linux kernel, has been quite clear on his position of ABI stability on the Linux Kernel Mailing List: "It's not going to happen. I am _totally_ uninterested in a stable ABI for kernel modules, and in fact I'm actively against even _trying_. I want people to be very much aware of the fact that kernel internals do change, and that this will continue." He continues, "I occasionally get a few complaints from vendors over my non-interest in even _trying_ to help binary modules. Tough. It's a two-way street: if you don't help me, I don't help you. Binary-only modules do not help Linux, quite the reverse. As such, we should have no incentives to help make them any more common than they already are."
Linus is the kernel boss. That is the decision he has made as "benevolent dictator", so we have to live with it. But it also locks out easy access for binary drivers. It somebody could change is his mind, I'm sure you'd see all kinds of vendor provided drivers on the install disks that come with your favorite hardware. I love open source. But I would also like to use any available hardware that exists in the windows world. There are lots of libre "foomatic" drivers out there, but they often don't work as well as the vendor-privided windows binary drivers. I just want my hardware to work and for it to work with all the features that I paid for. If that means I have to use a binary driver, then OK.
Personally, I think the lack of a stable driver ABI is holding back linux adoption, because it makes hardware a painfull issue.
I suspect that Novell is may making sure that Microsoft continues to support NDS/NetWare (which is now the Linux-based Open Enterprise Server) by having the client software on Vista. Microsoft wants to make sure Mono becomes a gateway drug to.Net, given the prevalence of linux/unix backends. They both get something out of the deal. Novell gets Windows desktops to provide a market for their server products. MS gets Mono-based servers to provide a market for the desktop and application products.
Yeah... but were they maintained and calibrated?
on
E-voting State By State
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· Score: 2, Interesting
I'd be interested to know what kind of maintenance, testing, and calibration these things have to go through and how often. Any machine that is unmaintained will eventually malfunction. The errors you describe could all be credibly ascribed to the incompetance of the local election officials in not maintaining and testing the machines before the election, instead of an inherent flaw in the machinery.
I would think it should be trivial to test all these optical scan machines before the election. You just need a set of a few hundred pre-made control ballots (say 200 for Ballot Option A and 200 for Ballot Option B), feed them though the machine, and see if you get the expected result back from the machine. Do it three times. Wrong test result on any run means the machine needs to be pulled and serviced. This is an obvious test to run and if the officials don't do it, then they are incompetent.
No... the best feature is the research
on
OpenBSD 4.0 Released
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
By research, I mean the novel approaches they take to acheive new functionality in firewalling, routing, hardware drivers, and cryptography. They also have a reputation for coding "correctness" in improving the basic BSD/Unix utilities that are then used by other projects. I tend to think of the OpenBSD project as an extremely productive research institution run on the cheap. My opinion is that they are probably on a level close to Sun and its multi-million dollar R&D in pumping out Unix inovations.
No, I don't run OpenBSD myself right now (I have in the past), because I currently have no compelling need of its unique features that would justify me moving away from the comfort of apt-get for binary updates. The source-only updates are my only real complaint about OpenBSD, and even that is because I'm basically too lazy to deal with it myself.
If Oracle is going after the general purpose linux server market, then RedHat has a problem. But I think most people would use Oracle Linux as a platform for Oracle DB, not as a general purpose box. In that case, Oracle will only be taking a small portion of RH's market. Usually, an Oracle installation is on a dedicated machine, so I don't expect to see Oracle Linux serving a lot of public webpages or used as a desktop. The only reason I can think of somebody using Oracle Linux for general purpose is if they have a specific policy of limiting the number of OSes to keep support cost down and they already sunk money into Oracle.
This really hurts Sun, because Solaris is the traditional Oracle platform of choice. Now Linux will be the platform of choice for Oracle. If Oracle makes clustering and failover really easy (as an added value over a simple RH respin), then Sun will take a real beating beause you would be able to replace that good-ol'-solid-and-reliable Sparc monster with a cluster of cheap pre-configured Oracle Linux boxes (instead of buying the next generation of Sun).
They will really only need to support the host OS as long as the resident DB is supported. As a practical matter, I would expect the only reason somebody to use Oracle Enterprise Linux is as a platform for the Oracle DB and Application Server. Now those are only "certified" and supported on certain platforms. For example, IIRC, when Oracle 8 was end-of-lifed, AIX 4.x was not certified for Oracle 9i, so in order to continue to run a supported Oracle install, you had to upgrade to AIX 5L along with Oracle 9i. The same thing will probably happen with their Linux distrubition. Oracle Linux versions 1 and 2 might be certificed for Oracle 10g, but the future Oracle 12 might require Oracle Linux 3 or 4. So when they end-of-life 10g, you will also be required to upgrade the Linux install too. When the DB gets upgraded, the OS will get upgraded too.
Also, this will simply their support system and bring down cost because they will have a single linux (RHEL/Oracle EL) to support the DB on.
It also looks like they fixed a problem in IE6 where a select/combo control in the background shows through a div with a greater z-index (i.e. the div should be in front and the combo hidden behind, but the combo was peaking through). I use javascript to change a div's CSS properties to make it into a "popup" by manipulating the position and display properties when certain events were triggered. It didn't work right in IE6 if there was a select element underneath, because the select always showed through. I read somewhere that the problem in IE6 was caused because the select controls were rendered as native windows controls and not rendered by the html engine. Anyway, it looks like they fixed it in version 7. I tried it out and it now seems to be working correctly.
Ah...the simpler times. I know you were aiming at funny, but you're really insightful. HTTP/HTML is supposed to be **hypertext*** transfer protocol; not image transfer protocal, not mp3 binary transfer protocol, and not the flash rendering protocol. HTTP/HTML has more unnecessary trinkets, bells, whistles, and blinking lights (ouch, blinking tags) hanging off from it than a christmas tree. It has evolved and is used in a haphazard way far beyond its original purpose. Its not the plain text that roots a box, its all the extras.
Gopher was a lightway (although inflexible) text protocol. In a way, we are re-creating the spirit of gopher when we have Firefox extensions such as adblock, flash-block, and no-script in order to get rid of all the annoying blinking lights.
Insert Disk - Go .... very cool
on
Oracle Linux?
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· Score: 2, Insightful
Regardless of whether it was Linux or OpenSolaris as another poster commented, this would be a **VERY** good thing for people who have to install and maintain an oracle. Especially if Oracle puts a decent updater similar to RedCarpet or RedHat Network. No more fiddling with kernel shared memory parameters, no more worrying about patchsets, no more worring about "if I update the OS, will it break Oracle" (which is the whole point of the OS installation anyway- to support the DB), and no more juggling java versions ( now managed during the install/update). They could just do the "eveything on one disk" software approach, or perhaps they could move into hardware/appliance plug-and-play clustering - just add a node and it configures and integrates.
Um... why suddenly insert the "religion vs. science debate" into every possible mention about science unless it is to Karma whore (as this is a sure slam-dunk winner on Slashdot), or unless you have some irrational axe to grind with religious people and you just decide to take every tangentially germane opportunity to exercise your animus (in which case, your post really was flamebait). And here is my answer to your blunt question: My strategy is to applaud scientific achievement and promote the expansion of inquiry and knowledge; all the while refraining from gratuitously belittling other people's religion or inserting politics into every discussion.
First, You have to remember these guys are the product of yester-year's educational system (i.e. they were educated long ago probably from the 50's through 70's). It will be interesting to see what happens 20 years from now when the current generation of students reach maturity. Most students in the US probably spend more classroom time learning about the values of "diversity" and "self-esteem" than they do learning the periodic table or Newton's laws of physics. Its a very different time from the "OMG, the Russians have sputnik" era that launched a crash-program of science education throughout the 50's and 60's.
Second, As far as a "brain drain", I think it goes the other direction. Right now America's university system is considered by most measures to still be the best, but it is increasingly populated by foreign students. Lot's of them manage to stay in the US by hook-or-crook when their student visa run out (i.e. the get sponsored by US companies for H1b or they marry an American), so we still manage to reap the reward of other nation's "brain drain".
We are also still a magnet for overseas educated foreigners. I've heard stories of a nurses shortage in the Phillipeans because they are all being sponsored by US hospitals with special visas.
AFAIK.. AJAX is still young enough not to have any sort of standard organized framework (although lots of frameworks exist, none are standard). AJAX is fairly straightforward and easy to grasp, but can quickly become a nightmare of spagetti once you get beyond the simplest application.
J2EE and EJB on the otherhand are very standardized and highly organized, but complex by design and harder to initially grasp. Personnally, I'd rather try to detange AJAX than try to figure out what is going on with the dozen-odd layers of interfaces that EJBs seem to implement. I'd really wish EJB would get rid of all the complex interfaces and just allow direct acess to the object and its methods. It would much easier to grasp and work with. Why do I need muliple layers of interfaces when I just want to manipulate the object?
From what I've read int the newspapers, I think this administration (wrongly or rightly) opposes FISA on several points of constitutional principle and therefore refuses to establish a precedent on submitting to it on certain matters:
They seem to think that FISA is an unconstitutional infrigement on the constitution's explict and implicit grants of authority to the President as Command-and-Chief to protect the nation from foreign infiltrators and attacks.
They think there is a difference between wholly domestic communications (e.g. NY->Boston), wholly foreign communications (e.g. UK->Pakistan), and partially foreign communications (e.g. NY->Pakistan). They don't think the courts has proper constitutional authority to limit their actions outside of the domestic sphere.
They don't think the courts should be involved in all, because the Administration has no intent of prosecuting anybody involved before a court. They consider them a military matter, not a criminal matter and therefore normal criminal procedure legal protections would not apply. If they catch up with the enemy, they have absolutely no intent to reading them their miranda rights.
They have submitted to FISA on other matters, but those seem to be complete domestic and when they intend to bring a criminal case in court.
Here are some question for the lawyers: If the american civil war was today, would Lincoln need a warrant for Grant to listen into communications betweent the Confederate Goverment in Richmond and Lee in Chancellorsville? What about communications between the Confederate Goverment and the British Government? Would confederate prisoners (who the US maintained were US citizens in rebellion) have a right to "habeas corpus" before civil courts and a speedy trial or release?
This is a copy and paste from another of my earlier posts
The overwhelming majority of scientists (who would describe themselves as working scientists versus simple degree holders in the field) are academics working in academic university environments, or even in the case of corporate research labs, are in the academic revolving door. It is no secret that major universities are basically immersed in left-wing culture both at the official level (such as having ethnic or women's studies departments, speech codes, etc) and at the unofficial level (such as students groups). So, these guys are working and living in what amounts to a left-wing echo chamber. They can not help but have a certain amount of cultural bias against conservatives or republicans. As in most social environments, there is great pressure to conform. In some cases, non-conforming academics have been ostracized as cretins or kooks, denied tenure, and passed up for promotion. So it is not surprising that a "majority" of scientists" would land of the left-wing side of any particular debate.
Also, without accusing anybody of consciously cooking the data, its easy to see what you want to see in data when you have pre-conceived notions. I would say that even the questions they ask or don't ask (i.e. what they choose to subject to a study or ignore) is influenced by their preconceived cultural notions.
When somebody says "science is on our side", I basically evaluate it the same as if they said "the statistics are on our side" (especially if its based on statistical models and not reproducable in the lab "hard" science).
As much as we would all like to believe that scientists are selflessly searching for the "truth", they have motivations similar to everybody else (greed, fame, power, money, personel vendettas, etc). They also are capable of political bias. These motivations and bias can color the "truth".
BTW, this is one of the funniest links that pokes fun at politized science
So we can do nothing if China sends ships on the open seas to spy on us? And 'it is a violation on the freedom of other nations and a violation of the neutrality of' open seas if we demand them to go away?
We can do nothing but scowl at them. The "freedom of navigation" in international waters and airspace is a very very well established principle and custom under international law.
And please, look up the definition of "appropriation" in a dictionary. Blinding a ship is not "appropriating" a ship, and has nothing at all to do with "piracy". Man, how I hate this word.
The original post maintained that china was merely protecting their own "air space and space space" (i.e. he was asserting Chinese sovereignty outside the atmosphere). Asserting sovereignty would be "appropriating". That would be in violation of the treaty goverming such things. And, yes blinding or otherwise attacking a ship in international waters (or space) would be an act of priracy outside of a declaration of war. This is firmly established in international law and tradition.
it seems to me that the someone else has the right to disable it with proportionate force at the time when it is trying to invade their privacy
So does this mean that the US has the right to disable Chinese "fishing" vessels outside the 12 mile limit on the open seas if the "fishing" vessels are covered with anttenae? No, because that would be an act of war or piracy because nations have a right to sail on the open seas, just as nations have a right to have satellites in space. You are justifying a violation of treaties governing the neutrality of space.
According to the UN Treaty on Outer Space (also here at wikipedia), of which both China and the US are signatories, "outer space is not subject to national appropriation by claim of sovereignty, by means of use or occupation, or by any other means". So it is not "chinese space or airspace". Attacking a satellite (or blinding it) is akin to doing the same to a ship on the open seas. It is a violation on the freedom of other nations and a violation of the neutrality of space. It's just one step short of piracy or an act or war.
And BTW, other nations including China and the Soviet Union (now Russia) have been sending spy sattelites over the US for decades without the US attacking them (although we have plans to do so in time of war).
Slashdot Mirror
IANAL, but I think these are empty threats and here is why:
Looking for the silver-lining, I hope this will lead to an officially blessed MS smb/ad client that will reveal some of the inner workings that continously stump Samba.
With the exception of Burma (which has long been a pariah military dictatorship), all the countries are either ruled by a communist party (or direct sucessor) or they are from an islamic culture.
And have a chaotic system. I forget the exact number, but IIRC, but through the 1940's-80's, Italy had more Goverments than years - The goverment falls and a new coalition has to be elected every eight months or so, because nobody has a real majority. It is a notoriously unstable system.
The two-party republician (i.e. president and congress) winner-take-all system is substanially more stable than proportional representation. The two parties are also able to co-opt third parties by incorporating any good ideas that the third party may orgininate, thus leaving the third party with only more extreme ideas to differentiate itself from the major parties.
[visitor] Knock Knock...
[you] Who's there?
[visitor] Pizza Delivery
[you] I didn't order any pizza.
[visitor] umm....Avon
[you--while opening the door]. I didn't order any....AHHHAAGG
SOA is a nice concept (and buzzword). At the local-machine level, this is exactly what unix has always been. You have a bunch of programs with a standard interface (text through pipes/stdio instead of xml through http) and you tie them togather with "glue code" shell scripts (or perl).
I don't see anything necessarily nefarious in this. As I commented in the earlier article, most likely, Novell is may making sure that Microsoft continues to support NDS/NetWare (which is now the Linux-based Open Enterprise Server) by having the client software supported on Vista. Microsoft wants to make sure that .Net has a foothold in the linux/unix backend market. They both get something out of the deal. Novell gets Windows desktops to provide a market for their server products. MS gets Novell supported Mono/.Net-based servers to provide a market for the desktop and application products. Anything that grows the NDS/Netware line is good for Novell. Anything that grows .Net is good for MS. They both win.
TFA keeps refering to "the Vole". WTF is "the Vole"? AFAIK, a vole is a rodent endemic to Northern and alpine climes. I have no idea what it means in the given context.
As far as hardware compatabilty goes, the "it just works" situation will never happen with linux, because there is no stable kernel ABI, and there never will be one if Linus has his way (which he will for the forseeable future). This acticle has some quotes from Linus about ABIs.
Linus is the kernel boss. That is the decision he has made as "benevolent dictator", so we have to live with it. But it also locks out easy access for binary drivers. It somebody could change is his mind, I'm sure you'd see all kinds of vendor provided drivers on the install disks that come with your favorite hardware. I love open source. But I would also like to use any available hardware that exists in the windows world. There are lots of libre "foomatic" drivers out there, but they often don't work as well as the vendor-privided windows binary drivers. I just want my hardware to work and for it to work with all the features that I paid for. If that means I have to use a binary driver, then OK.
Personally, I think the lack of a stable driver ABI is holding back linux adoption, because it makes hardware a painfull issue.
I suspect that Novell is may making sure that Microsoft continues to support NDS/NetWare (which is now the Linux-based Open Enterprise Server) by having the client software on Vista. Microsoft wants to make sure Mono becomes a gateway drug to .Net, given the prevalence of linux/unix backends. They both get something out of the deal. Novell gets Windows desktops to provide a market for their server products. MS gets Mono-based servers to provide a market for the desktop and application products.
I'd be interested to know what kind of maintenance, testing, and calibration these things have to go through and how often. Any machine that is unmaintained will eventually malfunction. The errors you describe could all be credibly ascribed to the incompetance of the local election officials in not maintaining and testing the machines before the election, instead of an inherent flaw in the machinery.
I would think it should be trivial to test all these optical scan machines before the election. You just need a set of a few hundred pre-made control ballots (say 200 for Ballot Option A and 200 for Ballot Option B), feed them though the machine, and see if you get the expected result back from the machine. Do it three times. Wrong test result on any run means the machine needs to be pulled and serviced. This is an obvious test to run and if the officials don't do it, then they are incompetent.
By research, I mean the novel approaches they take to acheive new functionality in firewalling, routing, hardware drivers, and cryptography. They also have a reputation for coding "correctness" in improving the basic BSD/Unix utilities that are then used by other projects. I tend to think of the OpenBSD project as an extremely productive research institution run on the cheap. My opinion is that they are probably on a level close to Sun and its multi-million dollar R&D in pumping out Unix inovations.
No, I don't run OpenBSD myself right now (I have in the past), because I currently have no compelling need of its unique features that would justify me moving away from the comfort of apt-get for binary updates. The source-only updates are my only real complaint about OpenBSD, and even that is because I'm basically too lazy to deal with it myself.
If Oracle is going after the general purpose linux server market, then RedHat has a problem. But I think most people would use Oracle Linux as a platform for Oracle DB, not as a general purpose box. In that case, Oracle will only be taking a small portion of RH's market. Usually, an Oracle installation is on a dedicated machine, so I don't expect to see Oracle Linux serving a lot of public webpages or used as a desktop. The only reason I can think of somebody using Oracle Linux for general purpose is if they have a specific policy of limiting the number of OSes to keep support cost down and they already sunk money into Oracle.
This really hurts Sun, because Solaris is the traditional Oracle platform of choice. Now Linux will be the platform of choice for Oracle. If Oracle makes clustering and failover really easy (as an added value over a simple RH respin), then Sun will take a real beating beause you would be able to replace that good-ol'-solid-and-reliable Sparc monster with a cluster of cheap pre-configured Oracle Linux boxes (instead of buying the next generation of Sun).
They will really only need to support the host OS as long as the resident DB is supported. As a practical matter, I would expect the only reason somebody to use Oracle Enterprise Linux is as a platform for the Oracle DB and Application Server. Now those are only "certified" and supported on certain platforms. For example, IIRC, when Oracle 8 was end-of-lifed, AIX 4.x was not certified for Oracle 9i, so in order to continue to run a supported Oracle install, you had to upgrade to AIX 5L along with Oracle 9i. The same thing will probably happen with their Linux distrubition. Oracle Linux versions 1 and 2 might be certificed for Oracle 10g, but the future Oracle 12 might require Oracle Linux 3 or 4. So when they end-of-life 10g, you will also be required to upgrade the Linux install too. When the DB gets upgraded, the OS will get upgraded too.
Also, this will simply their support system and bring down cost because they will have a single linux (RHEL/Oracle EL) to support the DB on.
It also looks like they fixed a problem in IE6 where a select/combo control in the background shows through a div with a greater z-index (i.e. the div should be in front and the combo hidden behind, but the combo was peaking through). I use javascript to change a div's CSS properties to make it into a "popup" by manipulating the position and display properties when certain events were triggered. It didn't work right in IE6 if there was a select element underneath, because the select always showed through. I read somewhere that the problem in IE6 was caused because the select controls were rendered as native windows controls and not rendered by the html engine. Anyway, it looks like they fixed it in version 7. I tried it out and it now seems to be working correctly.
What was wrong with gopher???
Ah...the simpler times. I know you were aiming at funny, but you're really insightful. HTTP/HTML is supposed to be **hypertext*** transfer protocol; not image transfer protocal, not mp3 binary transfer protocol, and not the flash rendering protocol. HTTP/HTML has more unnecessary trinkets, bells, whistles, and blinking lights (ouch, blinking tags) hanging off from it than a christmas tree. It has evolved and is used in a haphazard way far beyond its original purpose. Its not the plain text that roots a box, its all the extras.
Gopher was a lightway (although inflexible) text protocol. In a way, we are re-creating the spirit of gopher when we have Firefox extensions such as adblock, flash-block, and no-script in order to get rid of all the annoying blinking lights.
Regardless of whether it was Linux or OpenSolaris as another poster commented, this would be a **VERY** good thing for people who have to install and maintain an oracle. Especially if Oracle puts a decent updater similar to RedCarpet or RedHat Network. No more fiddling with kernel shared memory parameters, no more worrying about patchsets, no more worring about "if I update the OS, will it break Oracle" (which is the whole point of the OS installation anyway- to support the DB), and no more juggling java versions ( now managed during the install/update). They could just do the "eveything on one disk" software approach, or perhaps they could move into hardware/appliance plug-and-play clustering - just add a node and it configures and integrates.
Um... why suddenly insert the "religion vs. science debate" into every possible mention about science unless it is to Karma whore (as this is a sure slam-dunk winner on Slashdot), or unless you have some irrational axe to grind with religious people and you just decide to take every tangentially germane opportunity to exercise your animus (in which case, your post really was flamebait). And here is my answer to your blunt question: My strategy is to applaud scientific achievement and promote the expansion of inquiry and knowledge; all the while refraining from gratuitously belittling other people's religion or inserting politics into every discussion.
I have two points here:
First, You have to remember these guys are the product of yester-year's educational system (i.e. they were educated long ago probably from the 50's through 70's). It will be interesting to see what happens 20 years from now when the current generation of students reach maturity. Most students in the US probably spend more classroom time learning about the values of "diversity" and "self-esteem" than they do learning the periodic table or Newton's laws of physics. Its a very different time from the "OMG, the Russians have sputnik" era that launched a crash-program of science education throughout the 50's and 60's.
Second, As far as a "brain drain", I think it goes the other direction. Right now America's university system is considered by most measures to still be the best, but it is increasingly populated by foreign students. Lot's of them manage to stay in the US by hook-or-crook when their student visa run out (i.e. the get sponsored by US companies for H1b or they marry an American), so we still manage to reap the reward of other nation's "brain drain".
We are also still a magnet for overseas educated foreigners. I've heard stories of a nurses shortage in the Phillipeans because they are all being sponsored by US hospitals with special visas.
AFAIK.. AJAX is still young enough not to have any sort of standard organized framework (although lots of frameworks exist, none are standard). AJAX is fairly straightforward and easy to grasp, but can quickly become a nightmare of spagetti once you get beyond the simplest application.
J2EE and EJB on the otherhand are very standardized and highly organized, but complex by design and harder to initially grasp. Personnally, I'd rather try to detange AJAX than try to figure out what is going on with the dozen-odd layers of interfaces that EJBs seem to implement. I'd really wish EJB would get rid of all the complex interfaces and just allow direct acess to the object and its methods. It would much easier to grasp and work with. Why do I need muliple layers of interfaces when I just want to manipulate the object?
- They seem to think that FISA is an unconstitutional infrigement on the constitution's explict and implicit grants of authority to the President as Command-and-Chief to protect the nation from foreign infiltrators and attacks.
- They think there is a difference between wholly domestic communications (e.g. NY->Boston), wholly foreign communications (e.g. UK->Pakistan), and partially foreign communications (e.g. NY->Pakistan). They don't think the courts has proper constitutional authority to limit their actions outside of the domestic sphere.
- They don't think the courts should be involved in all, because the Administration has no intent of prosecuting anybody involved before a court. They consider them a military matter, not a criminal matter and therefore normal criminal procedure legal protections would not apply. If they catch up with the enemy, they have absolutely no intent to reading them their miranda rights.
They have submitted to FISA on other matters, but those seem to be complete domestic and when they intend to bring a criminal case in court.Here are some question for the lawyers: If the american civil war was today, would Lincoln need a warrant for Grant to listen into communications betweent the Confederate Goverment in Richmond and Lee in Chancellorsville? What about communications between the Confederate Goverment and the British Government? Would confederate prisoners (who the US maintained were US citizens in rebellion) have a right to "habeas corpus" before civil courts and a speedy trial or release?
As much as we would all like to believe that scientists are selflessly searching for the "truth", they have motivations similar to everybody else (greed, fame, power, money, personel vendettas, etc). They also are capable of political bias. These motivations and bias can color the "truth".
BTW, this is one of the funniest links that pokes fun at politized science
So we can do nothing if China sends ships on the open seas to spy on us? And 'it is a violation on the freedom of other nations and a violation of the neutrality of' open seas if we demand them to go away?
We can do nothing but scowl at them. The "freedom of navigation" in international waters and airspace is a very very well established principle and custom under international law.
And please, look up the definition of "appropriation" in a dictionary. Blinding a ship is not "appropriating" a ship, and has nothing at all to do with "piracy". Man, how I hate this word.
The original post maintained that china was merely protecting their own "air space and space space" (i.e. he was asserting Chinese sovereignty outside the atmosphere). Asserting sovereignty would be "appropriating". That would be in violation of the treaty goverming such things. And, yes blinding or otherwise attacking a ship in international waters (or space) would be an act of priracy outside of a declaration of war. This is firmly established in international law and tradition.
it seems to me that the someone else has the right to disable it with proportionate force at the time when it is trying to invade their privacy
So does this mean that the US has the right to disable Chinese "fishing" vessels outside the 12 mile limit on the open seas if the "fishing" vessels are covered with anttenae? No, because that would be an act of war or piracy because nations have a right to sail on the open seas, just as nations have a right to have satellites in space. You are justifying a violation of treaties governing the neutrality of space.
According to the UN Treaty on Outer Space (also here at wikipedia), of which both China and the US are signatories, "outer space is not subject to national appropriation by claim of sovereignty, by means of use or occupation, or by any other means". So it is not "chinese space or airspace". Attacking a satellite (or blinding it) is akin to doing the same to a ship on the open seas. It is a violation on the freedom of other nations and a violation of the neutrality of space. It's just one step short of piracy or an act or war.
And BTW, other nations including China and the Soviet Union (now Russia) have been sending spy sattelites over the US for decades without the US attacking them (although we have plans to do so in time of war).
....pay for the bandwidth. How do they manage to pay for it now? I'd love to see some figures on their revenue vs costs.