The Chemical council was not the petitioner in this case. They merely called attention to the fact that a principal researcher was chairing an evaluation of her own work. They were insisting that the same rules they were required to live by be followed in all cases. No conspiracy here. Except the one in your mind.
I am no fan of Monsanto, but this is a very one-sided statement. These farmers knew full well that they were planting GMO seed, they knew that Monsanto had a patent on it, and they took full advantage of the GMO by
Wait, you didn't read the article did you...
However, farmers are able to buy excess soybeans from local grain elevators, many of which are likely to be Roundup Ready seeds. One of Bowman's trips to such a grain elevator put him in Monsanto’s sights....
Monsanto has claimed it maintains patent rights on its genetically modified seeds, even if sold by a third party such as a grain elevator. The company also said this protection extends for generations down, which means it owns seeds that are 'descendants' of original Monsanto seeds.
So one bag of Monsanto derived grain in every grain elevator means (to your way of thinking) that Monsanto hence forth owns all see stock in the entire country? Or the entire planet? Forever?
Genetic modification isn't the only way to make new crops. Cross breeding (the original form of genetic modification) also works. Does this mean the University of Minnesota owns every Honey Crisp apple seed in the world?
I suspect you strongly believe in the first sale doctrine when it comes to books, records, and video games, but some how this is different? Have you really thought this through?
Had the panel been assigned to APPROVE a chemical, and the panel was chaired by the principal investigator who performed all the safety testing for the manufacturer, wouldn't that be considered totally unethical? Wouldn't everybody be screaming about that?
She should not have accepted the position on the panel, much less the chairperson. She should have only been called as a witness.
is it just a slow enough news day that someone has to reach back 6 years to find something controversial?
Careful reading of the story shows no obvious reason this is being trotted out now. Perhaps there is another push to oust someone else going on behind the scenes that we are not aware of.
But the story does hint at a less controversial reason for the removal, in that as a federal official, she was in charge of essentially propping up her own work, previously done at the state level.
Also conflicts of interest are not necessarily simply personal. There are also institutional conflicts of interest.
" In Maine, Rice's research had supported a state ban on the chemical."
Now Rice Chairs a similar review at a federal level. For federal researchers, voting on any research protocol regarding a chemical when also having been in a principal investigator position regarding the same protocol regarding that chemical (or supervising those voting on the protocol/supervising the principal investigators on) is an ethics violation.
In short, there is valid reasons for this action to have been taken. Imagine, if you will, that a chemical was being voted for APPROVAL, instead of being banned. Imagine further that a researcher who did all the studies about safety on this chemical sat on and chaired the approval committee. Would we want that to be allowed? Wouldn't people be screaming about that pretty loudly?
The American Chemical Council has no particular dog in this fight. Flame retardant is simply one of thousands of chemicals covered by this organization which has members in hundreds of different companies. I doubt flame retardant is even a blip on their radar. Yet the story makes it out as if this organization exists solely to make sure this flame retardant is not banned.
In actuality, "The EPA itself had raised concerns -- ones so significant that in late 2009 the agency and several chemical companies agreed to phase out its production." Presumably these several chemical companies were already members of the American Chemistry Council.
One could also take the position that a strictly ethical researcher would not have accepted an appointment to a panel investigating the very work that he/she pioneered. And, at the very least, would not have accepted the CHAIR of such a panel. Its sort of like doing your own peer reviews.
In short, I think your assessment of digging for controversy where none exists is spot on.
You don't have to calculate it. You can see the remaining range indicator in real time, and see in advance that you won't make it and seek a recharge instead of stubbornly pushing on until you run out of power in the middle of nowhere.
What kind of idiot ignores the gas gage in a regular car just because the dealer said you would get er miles per gallon? Apparently the same kind of idiot that starts under charged, adds a detour, and insist on running out of power to prove a point.
Logs don't mean much in this case, unless they show the journalist purposefully took the car out on half charge and drove around much more than he's describing. These two are quite unlikely to have happened.
I'm betting the logs show every bit of that level of detail and much much more.
Probably a complete GPS track, State of charge no less than every 5 minutes), speed, rate of climb/descent, how much the lights were on, the strip heat, the air conditioner, the fans, everything. Why would you NOT but that level of logging in a smart car that depends on battery power?
That really really depends on whether it was the cars fault or not, if it was they obviously wouldn't want to, but would that be a statement in and of itself? It typically is, otherwise they can use the logs as weight against Times.
If the logs show the exact route, including the detour, they should publish them in a full page ad in the NYT, then ask the editor once again if they still want to stand by their story that there was no detour. If the editor says yes, sue them for several hundred million. If the Editor say, well, er, no, maybe the route wasn't exactly as we said, send the bill for the advertisement back stamped paid in full.
If Tesla won't publish the entire log, including speed, route, state of charge, how much was used for heat, then that would be your clue that they might not exactly be totally honest in their promotional material.
Seeing how secure Twitter is, what could possibly go wrong?
Exactly so. Twitter and security don't even fit in the same sentence. Everything you do or say on twitter is available world wide to anyone that cares to listen. This is the worst possible platform on which to do anything that might cost you money. When you tell the world that you just ordered that toy, at least some of those people will watch your door step for you.
You are right or course, it needs to be installed and turned on over a significant number of devices. Some think this software should be mandatory. Even if only for disasters or power failure, it would be worth while.
Theoretically, mesh networks, if done properly can manage bandwidth demands based on the number of working broadband connections. If not, text messages get through and voice becomes hopeless, but people adapt. In disasters, all you need is one working cable modem somewhere.
As for the guy sitting in the middle of nowhere, they are always screwed in a disaster, so no change there.
If you're close enough to have an ad-hoc network on the crappy wifi signal a phone has, you're close enough to not need to use your phone to talk to them.
You don't understand Mesh networks. Go read up on them first, then post back.
Hint: you only have to be close to ANY mesh access point to be able to get to EVERY other access point, and then bridge to the first working broadband connection, which could be a long way away.
Home wifi does not have QoS. Jitter is going to be terrible. If you are going to do this you want much more sophisticated software helping the whole thing end to end. Which is essentially what commercial SIP solutions do. Why reinvented SIP?
Actually, home wifi works great for voice. Jitter issues not withstanding.
The built in TALK app in Android can open a voice (or video) chat with any other Android user, and the quality is more than acceptable.
True, Sip is better. Using the built in SIP (Internet calling) feature of just about any Android phone (or any of a dozen such apps on the Play store) you can make calls to any other SIP phone. Calls to Land lines usually requires a sip to POTS gateway subscription somewhere. This is slightly harder to set up, because you have to know a thing or three about SIP to get it to work.
Or simply install GrooVe IP and you can use your Free Google Voice account to make and receive calls from your cell phone, as long as you have wifi. Calls are free anywhere in north America. This app emulates the Google Chat client found in Gmail and as a stand alone app on windows, to allow calls in and out over wifi (or 3g). Voice quality is exceptional.
(For 38 bucks you can also use Google Voice with your home phones. For most people this pays for itself in the first month).
Agreed, probably voice is out of the question, if for no other reasons than bandwidth, to say nothing of getting the session handed off to POTS somewhere if you need to communicate outside of the immediate area.
But text chats (google talk, twitter, etc) and email are probably enough in situations like this, as long as one of your mesh partners somewhere along the line has a working internet connection.
The problem here is that nobody will have this set up ahead of time. So nobody will be able to download what ever is necessary, nor do the research to find out how it works. Basic Chicken/Egg problem, unless it comes pre-installed, or geeks adopt it widely.
Unless or until there is a one-stop App you can freely install, configure, and test ahead of time, its not likely to happen. You would think FEMA would mandate this sort of thing if they weren't so busy worrying about Control instead of Assistance.
It's been years since most people ever saw any training on MS Office, if ever, and the sands have shifted under their feet. It has become more obtuse every release.
At work we switched totally to Office Libre, and haven't looked back. There is a wealth of How To information on line, making the training available on par with anything Microsoft provides.
You're right. They run. Exactly the same as they did on Windows 7 for Tablets, Windows Vista for Tablets, and Windows XP for tablets.
So what exactly does Windows 8 bring that new for legacy apps?
Better hardware, faster, more responsive touch screen.
In the business world people aren't' looking for flashy new confusing UIs or re-writing all their existing apps so that they look and operate differently. They want immediate functionality. They don't want a retraining curve just to run the same inventory management, patient care, shop-floor management apps. They just want it to work.
This is why RT was universally panned in the corporate world. By the time you rewrote for RT, you might as well rewrite for IOS or Android. The job was just about as big, and your platform ended up costing way less.
I have one of the older Win7 32bit tablet. Too small (tap sensitivity way too flaky). It was hard to use. Why? Because touch layer was a bolt on. (You could actually go in and shut the touch layer down if you had a keyboard and mouse attached by USB or Bluetooth. And when you did, it ran BETTER). In essence its a toy.
Surface Pro brings an OS and Hardware optimized for touch, while maintaining backward compatibility with people's huge software investment.
But you're talking about running legacy non-RT software, which is NOT designed for touch from the ground up. It's the same software using the same touch unfriendly widgets present in every single prior version of Windows. Yes, the RT layer is touch friendly, but it doesn't run legacy software. To get your software as touch friendly, you have to port to RT,
See, that's where you are mistaken, right there in that last sentence. Perhaps that's the source of your misconception.
In Surface Pro, (win32) existing applications all run just fine on touch screens. Buttons push. Check boxes check, data entry fields pop up on screen keyboards, scroll bars scroll, all with just a finger tap. Zero rewrite needed. RT not needed.
Hell, this much even worked under Windows 7 on prior versions of the windows tablets such as the HP Slate. Finger is mouse, except when a keyboard appears. And it just knows when a keyboard is appropriate.
So, a full win32 Surface Pro works fine with legacy software, and you can even get some level of integration with the desktop UI to some extent (icons etc) with no reprogramming.
Oh, I don't know, seems to me naming anything after the Holodeck is just asking for trouble. Second to warp drive, Holodeck failures seemed to suggest they were the most troublesome piece of equipment ever invented.
Given the amount of trouble I have convincing supposedly intelligent people NOT to hook things up to our control network willy-nilly, I certainly agree with this sentiment.
While that might be part of solution, remember that Stuxnet was delivered on a thumb drive.
Also remember that you need some computer system for plant management in the modern world. If not for doing actual machine control, at least for doing monitoring and reporting. And therein lies the problem. Even if you air-gap your control network from your corporate net, you have to put stuff onto the control net and take stuff off. And you still end up hooking a lot of machine controllers to your control network.
Other than physically locking the cable plant, removing USB ports, diskette drives, and wifi, you are always going to face the possibility of rogue software creeping onto your control net somehow.
Maybe it would be easier to detect, profile, and filter machine control at the transmission layer than to rely solely on preventing any future camel from getting its nose under the tent.
How is this new? Full Windows has existed in a tablet form for almost a decade.
True it has existed, but it universally sucked which is exactly why they bought the laptop instead.
How is it different? I should have thought that would be obvious. Windows 8 is designed for touch from the ground up, not having touch bolted on in slapdash fashion after the fact. Being smaller lighter and easier to use than prior tablets, it has a chance of being successful.
There are wealth of uses for the portability that the tablet offers above and beyond the laptop. First and foremost among them being no need for an actual LAP. You have absolutely no hope of getting a Doctor to schlep a laptop around. Most won't even touch them for research.
Slashdot Mirror
Yup.
Nothing wrong with either of those.
The Chemical council was not the petitioner in this case.
They merely called attention to the fact that a principal researcher was chairing an evaluation of her own work.
They were insisting that the same rules they were required to live by be followed in all cases.
No conspiracy here. Except the one in your mind.
I am no fan of Monsanto, but this is a very one-sided statement. These farmers knew full well that they were planting GMO seed, they knew that Monsanto had a patent on it, and they took full advantage of the GMO by
Wait, you didn't read the article did you...
However, farmers are able to buy excess soybeans from local grain elevators, many of which are likely to be Roundup Ready seeds. One of Bowman's trips to such a grain elevator put him in Monsanto’s sights. ...
Monsanto has claimed it maintains patent rights on its genetically modified seeds, even if sold by a third party such as a grain elevator. The company also said this protection extends for generations down, which means it owns seeds that are 'descendants' of original Monsanto seeds.
So one bag of Monsanto derived grain in every grain elevator means (to your way of thinking) that Monsanto hence forth owns all see stock in the entire country? Or the entire planet? Forever?
Genetic modification isn't the only way to make new crops. Cross breeding (the original form of genetic modification) also works. Does this mean the University of Minnesota owns every Honey Crisp apple seed in the world?
I suspect you strongly believe in the first sale doctrine when it comes to books, records, and video games, but some how this is different?
Have you really thought this through?
An (apparently serious) complex battle analyses of a hastily written mythical battle !!
All the while not blinking an eye in disbelief at either FTL or the existence of Darth Vader.
Either that, or they could put in a "Copyright, United States Government" in the malware. That would stop those reverse engineering freetards.
Exactly.
Had the panel been assigned to APPROVE a chemical, and the panel was chaired by the principal investigator who performed all the safety testing for the manufacturer, wouldn't that be considered totally unethical? Wouldn't everybody be screaming about that?
She should not have accepted the position on the panel, much less the chairperson. She should have only been called as a witness.
You should't get to peer review your own work.
They should have been angry that she accepted the position in the first place. That was unethical.
is it just a slow enough news day that someone has to reach back 6 years to find something controversial?
Careful reading of the story shows no obvious reason this is being trotted out now. Perhaps there is another push to oust someone
else going on behind the scenes that we are not aware of.
But the story does hint at a less controversial reason for the removal, in that as a federal official, she was in charge of
essentially propping up her own work, previously done at the state level.
I think one of the comments on TFA said it best:
Also conflicts of interest are not necessarily simply personal. There are also institutional conflicts of interest.
" In Maine, Rice's research had supported a state ban on the chemical."
Now Rice Chairs a similar review at a federal level. For federal researchers, voting on any research protocol regarding a chemical when also having been in a principal investigator position regarding the same protocol regarding that chemical (or supervising those voting on the protocol/supervising the principal investigators on) is an ethics violation.
In short, there is valid reasons for this action to have been taken. Imagine, if you will, that a chemical was being voted for APPROVAL, instead of being banned. Imagine further that a researcher who did all the studies about safety on this chemical sat on and chaired the approval committee. Would we want that to be allowed? Wouldn't people be screaming about that pretty loudly?
The American Chemical Council has no particular dog in this fight. Flame retardant is simply one of thousands of chemicals covered by this organization which has members in hundreds of different companies. I doubt flame retardant is even a blip on their radar. Yet the story makes it out as if this organization exists solely to make sure this flame retardant is not banned.
In actuality, "The EPA itself had raised concerns -- ones so significant that in late 2009 the agency and several chemical companies agreed to phase out its production." Presumably these several chemical companies were already members of the American Chemistry Council.
One could also take the position that a strictly ethical researcher would not have accepted an appointment to a panel investigating the very work that he/she pioneered. And, at the very least, would not have accepted the CHAIR of such a panel. Its sort of like doing your own peer reviews.
In short, I think your assessment of digging for controversy where none exists is spot on.
You don't have to calculate it. You can see the remaining range indicator in real time, and see in advance that you won't make it and seek a recharge instead of stubbornly pushing on until you run out of power in the middle of nowhere.
What kind of idiot ignores the gas gage in a regular car just because the dealer said you would get er miles per gallon? Apparently the same kind of idiot that starts under charged, adds a detour, and insist on running out of power to prove a point.
But they can expect the user to understand that the range would be reduced accordingly.
Logs don't mean much in this case, unless they show the journalist purposefully took the car out on half charge and drove around much more than he's describing. These two are quite unlikely to have happened.
I'm betting the logs show every bit of that level of detail and much much more.
Probably a complete GPS track, State of charge no less than every 5 minutes), speed, rate of climb/descent, how much the lights were on, the strip heat, the air conditioner, the fans, everything. Why would you NOT but that level of logging in a smart car that depends on battery power?
So the logs mean everything.
That really really depends on whether it was the cars fault or not, if it was they obviously wouldn't want to, but would that be a statement in and of itself? It typically is, otherwise they can use the logs as weight against Times.
If the logs show the exact route, including the detour, they should publish them in a full page ad in the NYT, then ask the editor once again if they still want to stand by their story that there was no detour. If the editor says yes, sue them for several hundred million. If the Editor say, well, er, no, maybe the route wasn't exactly as we said, send the bill for the advertisement back stamped paid in full.
If Tesla won't publish the entire log, including speed, route, state of charge, how much was used for heat, then that would be your clue that they might not exactly be totally honest in their promotional material.
Takes several clicks to tweet a hashtag, or even retweet one.
Seeing how secure Twitter is, what could possibly go wrong?
Exactly so.
Twitter and security don't even fit in the same sentence. Everything you do or say on twitter is available world wide to anyone that cares to listen. This is the worst possible platform on which to do anything that might cost you money. When you tell the world that you just ordered that toy, at least some of those people will watch your door step for you.
Mesh networks can carry quite a load.
You are right or course, it needs to be installed and turned on over a significant number of devices. Some think this software should be mandatory.
Even if only for disasters or power failure, it would be worth while.
Theoretically, mesh networks, if done properly can manage bandwidth demands based on the number of working broadband connections. If not, text messages get through and voice becomes hopeless, but people adapt. In disasters, all you need is one working cable modem somewhere.
As for the guy sitting in the middle of nowhere, they are always screwed in a disaster, so no change there.
One could make the case that there should be Laws FOR this, and that FEMA should be tasked with making sure it works and that apps are available.
(Not that anyone is likely to trust FEMA to do anything right).
If you're close enough to have an ad-hoc network on the crappy wifi signal a phone has, you're close enough to not need to use your phone to talk to them.
You don't understand Mesh networks. Go read up on them first, then post back.
Hint: you only have to be close to ANY mesh access point to be able to get to EVERY other access point, and then bridge to the first working broadband connection, which could be a long way away.
Home wifi does not have QoS. Jitter is going to be terrible. If you are going to do this you want much more sophisticated software helping the whole thing end to end. Which is essentially what commercial SIP solutions do. Why reinvented SIP?
Actually, home wifi works great for voice. Jitter issues not withstanding.
The built in TALK app in Android can open a voice (or video) chat with any other Android user, and the quality is more than acceptable.
True, Sip is better. Using the built in SIP (Internet calling) feature of just about any Android phone (or any of a dozen such apps on the Play store) you can make calls to any other SIP phone. Calls to Land lines usually requires a sip to POTS gateway subscription somewhere. This is slightly harder to set up, because you have to know a thing or three about SIP to get it to work.
Or simply install GrooVe IP and you can use your Free Google Voice account to make and receive calls from your cell phone, as long as you have wifi. Calls are free anywhere in north America. This app emulates the Google Chat client found in Gmail and as a stand alone app on windows, to allow calls in and out over wifi (or 3g). Voice quality is exceptional.
(For 38 bucks you can also use Google Voice with your home phones. For most people this pays for itself in the first month).
Agreed, probably voice is out of the question, if for no other reasons than bandwidth, to say nothing of getting the session handed off to POTS somewhere if you need to communicate outside of the immediate area.
But text chats (google talk, twitter, etc) and email are probably enough in situations like this, as long as one of your mesh partners somewhere along the line has a working internet connection.
The problem here is that nobody will have this set up ahead of time. So nobody will be able to download what ever is necessary, nor do the research
to find out how it works. Basic Chicken/Egg problem, unless it comes pre-installed, or geeks adopt it widely.
Unless or until there is a one-stop App you can freely install, configure, and test ahead of time, its not likely to happen. You would think FEMA would mandate this sort of thing if they weren't so busy worrying about Control instead of Assistance.
Sorry, I missed the memo that appointed you meme master.
This.
It's been years since most people ever saw any training on MS Office, if ever, and the sands have shifted under their feet. It has become more obtuse every release.
At work we switched totally to Office Libre, and haven't looked back. There is a wealth of How To information on line, making the training available on par with anything Microsoft provides.
You're right. They run. Exactly the same as they did on Windows 7 for Tablets, Windows Vista for Tablets, and Windows XP for tablets.
So what exactly does Windows 8 bring that new for legacy apps?
Better hardware, faster, more responsive touch screen.
In the business world people aren't' looking for flashy new confusing UIs or re-writing all their existing apps so that they look and operate differently. They want immediate functionality. They don't want a retraining curve just to run the same inventory management, patient care, shop-floor management apps. They just want it to work.
This is why RT was universally panned in the corporate world. By the time you rewrote for RT, you might as well rewrite for IOS or Android. The job was just about as big, and your platform ended up costing way less.
I have one of the older Win7 32bit tablet. Too small (tap sensitivity way too flaky). It was hard to use.
Why? Because touch layer was a bolt on. (You could actually go in and shut the touch layer down if you had a keyboard and mouse attached by USB or Bluetooth. And when you did, it ran BETTER). In essence its a toy.
Surface Pro brings an OS and Hardware optimized for touch, while maintaining backward compatibility with people's huge software investment.
But you're talking about running legacy non-RT software, which is NOT designed for touch from the ground up. It's the same software using the same touch unfriendly widgets present in every single prior version of Windows. Yes, the RT layer is touch friendly, but it doesn't run legacy software. To get your software as touch friendly, you have to port to RT,
See, that's where you are mistaken, right there in that last sentence. Perhaps that's the source of your misconception.
In Surface Pro, (win32) existing applications all run just fine on touch screens. Buttons push. Check boxes check, data entry fields pop up on screen keyboards, scroll bars scroll, all with just a finger tap. Zero rewrite needed. RT not needed.
Hell, this much even worked under Windows 7 on prior versions of the windows tablets such as the HP Slate. Finger is mouse, except when a keyboard appears. And it just knows when a keyboard is appropriate.
So, a full win32 Surface Pro works fine with legacy software, and you can even get some level of integration with the desktop UI to some extent (icons etc) with no reprogramming.
Oh, I don't know, seems to me naming anything after the Holodeck is just asking for trouble. Second to warp drive, Holodeck failures seemed to suggest they were the most troublesome piece of equipment ever invented.
Given the amount of trouble I have convincing supposedly intelligent people NOT to hook things up to our control network willy-nilly, I certainly agree with this sentiment.
While that might be part of solution, remember that Stuxnet was delivered on a thumb drive.
Also remember that you need some computer system for plant management in the modern world. If not for doing actual machine control, at least for doing monitoring and reporting. And therein lies the problem. Even if you air-gap your control network from your corporate net, you have to put stuff onto the control net and take stuff off. And you still end up hooking a lot of machine controllers to your control network.
Other than physically locking the cable plant, removing USB ports, diskette drives, and wifi, you are always going to face the possibility of rogue software creeping onto your control net somehow.
Maybe it would be easier to detect, profile, and filter machine control at the transmission layer than to rely solely on preventing any future camel from getting its nose under the tent.
How is this new? Full Windows has existed in a tablet form for almost a decade.
True it has existed, but it universally sucked which is exactly why they bought the laptop instead.
How is it different? I should have thought that would be obvious. Windows 8 is designed for touch
from the ground up, not having touch bolted on in slapdash fashion after the fact. Being
smaller lighter and easier to use than prior tablets, it has a chance of being successful.
There are wealth of uses for the portability that the tablet offers above and beyond the laptop.
First and foremost among them being no need for an actual LAP. You have absolutely no hope
of getting a Doctor to schlep a laptop around. Most won't even touch them for research.