Perhaps the pressure that the US brings to bear on countries to pass laws that "protect intellectual property" (Australia for one, which and in fact makes that an outright pre-requisite for WTO entry for e.g. Russia) has something to do with the fact that many countries around the world are (reluctantly) passing laws that are compatible with US IP ideas.
It seems more than a bit disingeneous on part of mr. Dudas to bring that up in support of US style (software) patents.
Scandia Laboratories is a _National_ laboratory. It's supposed to deal intimately with matters that directly affect US security. Therefore any failure to make any information gained that shows that vital US interests at risk (such as penetration of defense contractors) immediately and unreservedly available to the FBI and Army Intelligence is absolutely inexcusable.
There seems to be an opinion among Sandia Laboratories management that they can interpret "just focusing on our job" as meaning "we are entitled to ignore evidence of penetration of defense contractors and/or government systems and sit on it". In my opinion every last one of those managers should be fired. et... why not close down Sandia Laboratories in its entirety to prevent this sort of mentality from spreading? If this is the way those clowns view their job of protection of US interests who needs them?
And to top it all off... they see fit to pile psychological pressurise on a loyal, responsable employee, and (the height of unprofessionalism) they try to blackmail him with his wife's job.
Has everyone grasped that Sandia management _actively_ tried to prevent this employee from cooperating with the FBI and Army Intelligence because it might (from the article) "bring unwanted attention to Sandia"? Am I alone in thinking that such conduct belongs in Soviet Russia of 30 years ago and not the US today?
The only thing the Internet does in this case is to make communication several orders of magnitude cheaper (in time, money, and efort). This in turn makes the market more transparant.
Apparently, in the cases mentioned in the article, businesses were doing things that prompted their customers to leave when they found out that what they were faced with was "policy" instead of just "bad luck".
Market transparency is great... it forces businesses to be honest and to actually compete on value instead of relying on (modest) barriers (including ignorance) to keep their customers. If a business uses practices that hurt it when the public finds out about it (as was the case here), can those practices be either good or reasonable? What's not to like?
And look at the flip side of the coin... if people are happy with the way a business works they will write about that too.
First off I am not a GNOME user. I'm a KDE user. I tried GNOME, didn't like it, found it unresponsive to requests, and put it on my "ignore" list. I wish GNOME all the best, and I don't mind using individual programs that are linked with the GNOME libraries (I let my distro install those too) but I don't really want to know about it anymore. Now I'm afraid that's a pretty negative and consumer-like attitude I know, but it's what I do.
With Linus and GNOME there is a bit of a history. Linus looked at GNOME, didn't like it, switched to KDE, but in the mean time actually took the time to give feedback in the form of comments and suggestions. Not once but several times. Fairly mildly at first, but more acerbic as he got irritated. That's something people might mistake for "attitude". It isn't. It's frustration.
Now Linus has put his money where his mouth is and produced patches that address his gripes with GNOME. With this he is telling GNOME very precisely what (some of) his gripes are and how he would suggest GNOME to deal with it.
Whether GNOME accepts his patches is of course entirely up to them. It's their project. I could imagine (but I don't know because I don't care) that GNOME has this really thought-through interface behaviour that they want to keep. If Linus's patches break that, then of course GNOME cannot accept them. But either way the controversy is resolved.
Either GNOME accepts the patches, and with it the implied criticism on their interface, or they reject the criticism of their interface model and then they don't want the patches. Those who want to use GNOME use it, those who don't use something else. End of problem.
It's almost as if Microsoft feels that opposing proposed "standards" is done on a basis of exchanging favours. If I don't oppose yours, you don't oppose mine. Rejection on merit? Huh? What merit? Since when did we ever judge standards applications on merit? You're just being hypocritical!
Nevermind that customers are rejecting Microsoft Office because they are trying to get out of the lock-in of Microsoft's proprietary document format. Nevermind that Microsoft is into "Open" only to fudge the line between "Open standards that are documented and that anyone can implement and use" and "Proprietary with an open wrapper". Heh... if I embed an MS-Word file into an XML document and compress the result using the Open Source program Gzip, does that make the resulting file "Open"? No? According to Microsoft's own logic, this would be the case.
And all this just to disguise the fact that their proposed "Open" standard allows them to put their their (totally proprietary) Office format into a document that follows the standard and then call it "Open". It's squarely aimed at fooling manager types into ticking a box labelled "Open Standards compliant" on their checklist.
Of course it's a fine example of complete intellectual dishonesty on Microsoft's part... but whenever did Microsoft ever care about honesty? Intellectual or otherwise? Microsoft didn't become big by using such stupid tactics...
Take that video demonstration for example. You know... the one that showed Windows "crashing" when Explorer was removed. Any ordinary person would have gone to jail for perjury on that "testimony"... but large companies are exempt it seems. "A regrettable communication error sir." Yeah, right.
As many people know... Microsoft's OOXML is a blatant attempt to perpetuate Microsoft's proprietary standards through a selection of backdoors in a 6,000 page standard proposal that Microsoft is trying to rush through. Just see the "criticism" section in this link http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_Open_XML
If (a hypothetical case) there was a serious bandwidth shortage caused by video streaming, I would have all video streaming stopped at the level of the ISPs.
The Internet provides vital services for millions of businesses and individuals that take little bandwidth. If video applications take too much bandwidth then why not cut them out for as long as it takes to increase the capacity. Something has to give, and cutting off video is relatively easy. Sure... there will always be some legitimate uses for video streams, but if it's really important they'll make themselves heard and then we can see if we are going to make exceptions.
And why not? The Internet is too precious a resource to waste on illiterates. Those who can't read can always watch the news on TV.
It's more than a bit nauseating from SCO, but unfortunately that's what we have come to expect from them. It's sad, but just when we thought they had plumbed the depths of unethical behaviour by their endless shennenigans in court, they found something new to try. Let's make it personal. Let's drag someone into the limelight who has been bugging us for years by exposing our gaffes, inconsistencies, inaccuracies, misrepresentations... and outright fabrications.
About 6 months ago there was this publicist "Maureen O'Gara" who actually went so far as to try and physically stalk Jones, and who saw fit to importune her mother. O'Gara seemed to have become obsessed with Pamela Jones who invariably pointed out holes, inaccuracies, misrepresentations, and plain lack of understanding in O'Gara's articles, and wanted to turn a factual businesslike dispute into something personal by putting Jones's address online. Regretfully, in the good old US of A this means that you will henceforth have to live with the increased probability that some random nutjob will take a shot at you or will otherwise assault you.
Having read Groklaw from the beginning, and having read a sizeable portion of the background materials, I'm firmly convinced that SCO's so-called "case" was only ever a transparant, meritless, and rather dirty attempt to extort money from Linux and Linux users, fortunately based on nothing but sloppy research, slipshod reasoning, and a shameless abuse of the US legal system to boot by trying to cash in on the threat of nuisance lawsuits.
And this "first" is brought to you by Forbes magazine, which is sort of interesting. Why? If you ever were on the lookout for biased, distorted, and inaccurate reporting favouring SCO and bashing all things GPL and Linux... look no further than Forbes Magazine. Recently they stopped supporting SCO publicly, perhaps because it became obvious that SCO has no evidence of any kind for its grandiose claims. Forbes is also the rag that proudly trumpeted in 2003 that "Linux crunchies" should take SCO's allegations seriously because SCO was such a mean opponent in court and in business: "what SCO wants SCO gets". Forbes is also the magazine that touted dirty business tactics as "capitalism", and was always ready to defend any SCO tactic, no matter how underhanded.
Clearly, as others already remarked, the identity of Pamela Jones has no bearing whatsoever on SCO's case. Jones isn't a party in the case, and neither her testimony nor her identity can make any difference one way or another. Except perhaps with one single exception. A Jury trial. You know... the place where the accumulated evidence of years is put through the mind of 10 lay persons in a few daily sessions, who then have to decide on guilt or innocence. That jury cannot access background materials on its own accord, but has to take all of its information from opposing lawyers. They may take notes, but that's it. Not put on a good enough emotional show, and you just might get that jury to overlook some home truths... if they are buried deep enough.
SCO has had two-thirds of their case thrown out already by the magistrate judge for failing to produce competent evidence for their claims, but a lot of the more vague claims (as in "Linux infringes on our IP because it used Methods and Concepts that belong to us. No your honour... we can't show you the files and line-numbers files where this happens in Linux because we're talking about methods and concepts, not actual code. It's more diffuse.") are still alive.
*sighs* This sort of talk will get you absolutely nowhere with anyone who is computer-literate... but there's the rub. SCO can ensure that no-one who even remotely knows what the case is about will be on that jury. Why? Because if they're knowledgeable they will have heard about SCO versus IBM, will have read media coverage, e.g. Groklaw, and will have laughed their head off. Can't be
One of the main architectural security problems with MS Windows that we keep hearing about is that even ordinary application such as email clients, browsers, etc. tie in so intimately with the Windows OS, that once your application is compromised, your OS is compromised.
These pictures seem to show that IIS is much more tied in with the Windows OS than Apache is with the Linux OS.
I think that's credible, and that it illustrates that in case of Windows, the wider (and much more complicated) interface between applications and OS is real. I have no difficulty believing that this offers many more opportunities to compromise the OS, and hence is less secure.
It's really too bad that just at the point where a reusable launch vehicle (like the space shuttle or its replacement) would have been handy (it doesn't leave a trail of spare parts when it goes into orbit, except perhaps the occasional ceramic tile) the Low Earth Junkj.. err Orbit is getting full.
dream_mode_on
Space shuttles (or equivalent) would be great for retrieving large objects such as rocket stages. If we were quick we might be able to prevent that "cascade" from happening by removing the big pieces of junk before they are shredded.
For the finer debris this is too much work of course. Could we perhaps send up a large lump of frozen water in a net, with some machinery to melt part of it from time to time? The frozen water would be able to absorb the kinetic energy of any impacting trash, and could be melted periodically to trap the trash safely in the ice and to maintain structural integrity.
When the ratio of trash to water becomes too high we could just melt the water, sieve it for reuse, and dunk the trash into an ocean or so.
Trawling for space trash would take an awful lot of time before it makes an impact of course, but if we can just keep the problem from getting worse, we would continue to have the current (relatively acceptable conditions).
dream_mode_off
*sighs* There probably won't be any takers of course... space shuttles have received the budget axe (and there are no replacements on the horizon), and the international political wrangle between the spacefaring nations (US, EU, Russia, China, Japan, India) about who pays for what will probably take so long that the "cascade" has already happened. Oh well... it's nice to dream from time to time...
Well... this report seems to settle several disputes about global warming and climate change, and in particular the question "What's causing it?"
It turns out the answer is "us". So now we know... only what are we going to do about it? Seriously... what is the best way to deal with this problem? Energy conservation is one way, but how far should one go? It's got tremendous inertia, and that might be working both for us and against us.
I'm asking this because somehow I cannot imagine a few hundred million people in the West ditching all their cars, turning off their PC's and the Internet, shutting down their aircos, and grounding all airliners. Much less countries like China switching off their coal-fired power plants. No matter what the long-term consequences, the short-term (economic and lifestyle) consequences will ensure that there will be no support for anything like that. Political or otherwise.
Juding by the scenarios presented it's best to do something soonish... but how do we make sure that it's not just us who bears the brunt of this problem? And what's the minimum we can do? Doing something about this is likely to hurt. Badly.
And how do we determine who should do how much? The Kyoto agreements suddenly don't seem to stupid anymore, but not even the ecological boyscouts in the EU seem to be able to achieve their agreed reduction in carbon emissions.
Any ideas who is concocting a reasonable type policy taget?
Seriously... software piracy helps Microsoft become the standard. Microsoft *would* have been worried if Romania had chosen to use Linux everywhere... because it couldn't very well afford Mircosoft and didn't want to commit piracy.
And err... about the so-called "moral" aspects. Let's not forget that industrialisation in the US was based on wholesale suspension of foreign patents. All of them. Endorsed by the founding fathers! But it turned out ok in the end, right, after the US grew into a big market?
And let's not forget that there is no danger of any major software company getting hurt. let alone going bankrupt because of piracy.
And before we wax indignant about piracy in a semi-developing country somewhere in Eastern Europe, lets think for a moment shall we? They joined the EU, so they'll have to clean up their act... even if it takes a decade. By the time they become a significant trade partner they will by and large behave lawfully. So is there anything here to loose any over? I think not.
Yes, you are completely right... the USPTO is one of those rarest things... a Government profit center. It's revenues come from the fees for the patents it awards. One granted patent = one billable fee.
This might explain why the USPTO shows so little interest in making sure that the patents it awards are of high quality. For the USPTO it makes absolutely no economic sense to it spend more time on individual patents than the absolute minimum.
After all, there is this appeal procedure right? So if people have objections to patents we issue they can use that. In the mean time, when you're paid by the item it makes absolutely no sense to spend too much time perfecting each item you make. And if people out there don't like a patent we issue, then they can pay us a fee for a review procedure.
Simple economics really. That's what management is all about, right?
Logically speaking, the text: "I don't know what generalizations can be made from this with the lack of long-term scientific data"
decomposes into (at least) two propositions:
(P1) : there is a lack of long-term scientific data
(P2) : because of P1, I don't know what generalisations can be made
Proposition (P2) is a proper admission of a lack of knowledge, but proposition (P1) is the problem.
The words "I don't know" only relate to the inference process, and not to the question of evidence. Therefore they don't provide sufficient cover for our meteorologist when he talked about climate change. He wrongly denied the existence of evidence for climate change.
One of the posters made the point that a meteorologist (concerned with short-term weather) isn't a climatologist (concerned with long-term weather). This is important as a meteorologist would be speaking outside his area of specialisation.
The blog you quote (you call it TFA) points out that the meteorologist in question doesn't seem to know that his statement
"The subject of global warming definitely makes headlines in the media and is a topic of much debate. I try to read up on the subject to have a better understanding, but it is complex. Often, it is so politicized and those on both sides don't always appear to have their facts straight. History has taught us that weather patterns are cyclical and although we have noticed a warming pattern in recent time, I don't know what generalizations can be made from this with the lack of long-term scientific data. That's all I will say about this."
contains a hooter (highlighted).
Although the man tries to exercise due caution in what he says, he definitely gives the impression that the scientific consensus
is that there is insufficient long-term data to decide whether we are seeing a climate shift or not. This is wrrong... as you can see e.g. here http://www.capitalweather.com/2006/12/since-when-d o-weather-junkies-stick.php
Sure, there are cyclical patterns of climate change and weather patterns, but he misses the more important point about trends in long-term data.
The global surface thermometer record only stretches back to the 1800s, but reliable traces of the planet's temperature can be made stretching back thousands of years using ice cores, tree ring records, ocean sediments and other "proxy" methods. Together, these records have showed a stark warming trend during the past century, particularly the last 30 years, that is out of step with previous shifts.
Climate change in other words. The point is that this meteorologist ought to have known about it, or else stated clearly that he doesn't know. He waffled a bit, but he passed on the claim that "no scientific envidence exists for climate change" as a scientific fact. In that he was wrong, and that is what half of what Cullen's blog was about.
Now back to your response...
And that is in the context of her comments, just above that,
talking about people who disagree with climate change being caused by man. The entire blog entry was about meteorologists who disagree with man being the cause.
You are right in saying that Cullen and the AMS go one step further and state that:
"There is convincing evidence that since the industrial revolution, human activities, resulting in increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases and other trace constituents in the atmosphere, have become a major agent of climate change."
Now our Meteorologist states in his own words that he has no researched opinion about the impact of man on climate change. But he was asked a question, and he let slip a wrong answer and passed it off as "scientific". If he had wanted to be precise, he would have said something like:
"The AMS is of the opinion that there is convincing evidence for the role of Man's activities on climate change. However since my personal area of expertise is more forecasting short-term weather conditions, I don't really know." and left it at that.
He didn't, and that's what the second part of Cullen's blog is about. Read with me please...
I'd like to take that suggestion a step further. If a meteorologist has an AMS Seal of Approval, which is used to confer legitimacy to TV meteorologists, then meteorologists have a responsibility to truly educate themselves on the science of global warming. (One
I certainly won't claim that China wouldn't have pressed ahead with its anti-sattelite weapon if the US hadn't stated space hegemony as its policy objective, but in terms of being provocative it really seems to be a case of the pot calling the kettle black. The US space policy is confrontational if nothing else.
I'm fairly confident that the recently unveiled US space policy caused a massive "Oh yeah? We'll see about that!" response among China, Russia, India, and perhaps others too.
The line you boldfaced: "If a meteorologist can't speak to the fundamental science of climate change, then maybe the AMS shouldn't give them a Seal of Approval." basically says:
"A Meteorologist should be knowledgeable about the evidence about climate change. It's his subject after all. If he isn't, he's incompetent and should be de-certified."
Well, that's something I agree with.
The fact that we are witnessing Climate Change in itself is pretty uncontroversial. What is controversial is to what extent this climate change we are witnessing was caused by man (specifically our carbon dioxide output as opposed tp e.g. an upwards cycle in the sun's energy output) and to what extent we can hope to halt or reverse climate change by reducing our carbon dioxide output.
Nowhere do I read anything about a proposed decertification of meteorologists who argue against climate change being caused by man. What I do read is a proposal to decertify people who call themselves Meteorologists and haven't kept up to date with evidence on climate change.
That's why I'm so certain that the issue of silencing opponents hasn't surfaced. Cullen's blog talks about de-certifying people who pose as experts but who are incompetent in their claimed area of expertise because they haven't kept up with the literature.
Lets stick to the case under consideration instead of meandering off, shall we?
The fact is that the Slashdot newsflash is highly misleading in that totally misreports the expert in question.
This is because it simply parrots a blog/rant by a someone associated with the Senate, who got his facts wrong.
Don't take my word for it... check it. This is something that you can check, from your seat, online... if you would only take the trouble to do so. I read the blog and the blog that the Slashdot newsflash referes to and the blog by the expert referred to and posted both links so that you can check what I'm saying.
And please... no amount of "But that bunch once did soandso" has any bearing on the matter at hand. So let's not get into that, shall we?
No it's not... but "telling the truth" doesn't apply to the Slashdot newsflash or the blog by Marc Morano.
Just take the time to check out the what really happened using the links I provided for you and you'll see that this affair is something between a rant or a smear campaign.
Of course not... and I don't need to be told. In addition, real scientists aren't in the habit of advocating gag orders on opponents. Ever. So what's up?
It seems that somebody (opposed to the idea of a man-made impacy on climate) seems to have worked out how to evoke a popular (knee-jerk) response from Slashdot.
The secret is that... most slashdotters simply don't read the article referred to, let alone the articles referred to by that article. They take the position that they can rely on whoever wrote the slashdot newsflash to do that for them. Instead they are happy to comment on the post and the previous comments (much more fun, and less work). So... if you can insert any statement to excite slashdotters in your newsflash, you can pretty much lead them to endorse (or condemn) whatever orginal article you like.
So... what is actually going on?
Q: Did those experts cited really propose to end scientific discussion by silencing those who oppose the idea of a man-made impact on global warning?
Q: So if there was no question of the experts proposing to stifle discussion by de-certifying opponents then where does all the hoopla come from?
A:I think we are witnessing a rant by Marc Morano which received disproportionate attention by it's referral on slashdot. In case this referral was deliberate, we are witnessing a political mear campaign. Live and in colour
I don't want to sound like an alarmist, but I strongly suspect that paying cash for a ticket will be enough to raise a yellow flag on your booking.
Why? Because it's different from the norm (most people like the convenience and safeguards that credit-card payments provide), and paying cash makes it more difficult to dig up information on you.
And incidentally, since 9 out of 10 credit-card companies have their head office in the US, I suspect that all your European credit card transactions will be as accessible to the US authorities as those of US citizins.
So... in all those bookings you'll have a mass of people who pay by credit-card, some who are in large accounts, some who purchase their tickets through a travel agency. All neat and traceable. And then you have a few percent who pay cash at the counter. Who would you pay special attention to?
It just seems so blindingly obvious that if you were tasked with screening people that you would pay special attention to anyone who seemed to be willing to go to some trouble (by paying cash) to be less easily traced. Although it's not probable that screeners will devote a lot of attention to everyone (screeners probably have a finite amount of resources), if your software can trace someone's credit card (and check where, when, and how the card has or hasn't been used over say the past 5 years...), you will know a fair amount about the holder (ideally) and you may green-flag that person if nothing suspicious turns up. Just to try and boil down the list of passengers a little, and spend more time with the rest.
After all... you don't *really* care if someone slips though to raise mayhem... it's enough if you can show your boss that *you* did your job. And that's a lot easier to prove when someone slips through your computer thought it knew all about than someone it couldn't trace very well, right? So, I'd guess (but that's just a guess on my part) that this screening program contains a line like:
"If Cash_Payment(passenger) Then Raise_Yellow_Flag(passenger)".
Why? About a fifth to a third of the textbooks I want aren't available when I want them. They either aren't in the library collection (inter-library loan here we come...), or they are on loan. The campus bookstore doesn't stock them (surprise) and they'll take weeks to arive if they are in print, or I have to chase them up on Amazon because they're out of print or in backorder.
So... I'd be very happy with the ability to print any book in the catalogue in 7 minutes. This means of course that we would have the permission of the publishers, but given that I'd be happy to pay for out-of-print or even back-order copies I suspect that the difficulties will be resolvable.
Should this happen then I think that a good case can be made for having the Library install the machine and signing deals with publishers so that the machine can print _copyrighted_ books which the Library would otherwise have to keep in its collection. I can think of several out-of-print-but-still-useful mathematics books that would benefit from wider availability.
And yes, I often want a physical book instead of a file. I much prefer reading text from paper than from a screen, (and thanks to the publishers electronic articles aren't searcheable because you get them as images, so no advantages to be had there), and because I tend to scribble in my books (*coughs* with pencil of course *coughs*), mark passages, and take them with me.
Of course this new "policy" is aimed at muzzling scientists who work at the USGS.
Just look at the blurb in the original article: [i]"Patrick Leahy, USGS's head of geology and its acting director until September, said Wednesday that the new procedures would [b]improve scientists' accountability[/b] and "harmonize'' the review process. He said they are [b]intended to maintain scientists' neutrality[/b]."[/i]
I thought that scientists were accountable mostly to their peers when they publish things... but now it seems that the USGS publicity department is the one they are accountable to.
Well... one could argue that this is only fair... since the Government pays for the USGS, and so has the fullest right to make sure that it soesn't say anything that might life difficult for the current adminstration.
I think I recognise this sort of situation from European countries like France (heavily politicised in all its aspects), The Netherlands and Britain (carefully screened so as to not release politically sensitive information unless it's the undisputable outcome of Government-mandated studies).
So what's happening isn't that strange... it's just the US becoming a little less "special" and more state-oriented in a European fashion.
First off I side with the opinion that Linux shouldn't disallow the loading of binary kernel modules.
Having said that, I also understand Greg's difficulties: he seems to be selling support for Linux, and lots of people waste his time by asking him to fix problems caused by closed-source (binary) modules hooked up into a Linux system. Which of course he can't do since the binary modules might well be at fault and he hasn't got a clue what they are doing... and no reasonable way of finding out.
So the problem is Greg being innundated by support requests from people who try to have him fix systems which are broken by binary-only modules.
I think a solution would be a piece of software that simply goes through all kernel modules and lists those that aren't Open Source.
Then Greg could limit his activities up-front to systems that don't include any Closed Source binaries (or at least only ones known to be unproblematic), and quickly determine if this is the case for any system handed to him, or even ask people to run the module checker first before he looks at their support requests.
I'm sorry, but I fail to see the point of this post.
It's full of rambling generalities about "The State" (which one?), tangentially suggests that the EU is seeking to line it's own poackets by fining Microsoft, and only refers to the matter at hand in the most oblique way possible.
For my money I see Microsoft simply (as it is wont to) trying to see what it can get away with in terms of handing over incomplete documentation of their client-server protocols. They've had years in which they've dragged their feet, hemmed, hawed, played to the public gallery, asked for "clarification" (as if... protocol documentation is protocol documentation), and apparently still haven't coughed up the specs. So if they're fined I guess they had it coming to them.
I know it's something of a fashion to moan about "Government" and "the State", especially when they crack down on public companies, and sometimes it does go too far, but not in this case. Microsoft is wiping its feet on the EU fair-competition laws by failing to hand over protocol specifications, and has done so for years. Unfortunately for them they don't have the same political clout in the EU as they have here... and so they won't be able to get away with law infringement there. Tough on them.
First off I have to acknowledge an Anonymous Coward for dealing out a little civics lesson:
"Rulemaking is a purely Executive branch function. Rules are not subject to any Congressional action other than oversight (which is clearly absent in the current Congress)."
Ok, point taken. I hadn't realised that this wasn't inteded to be a law, just a rule. The Executive branch (i.e. the current administration) can (without consulting anyone or getting any representative's say-so) put up Rules that we can't leave the country unless permitted to by the government (and I don't mean a passport: I mean premission to leave).
However, even if the Executive Branch can put up such rules as it wishes (without necessarily having to submit them to the House or Congress), those rules are still subject to tests of constitutionality. I didn't mean challenged in the media... I meant challenged in court. Especially if they run counter to the constitution. That's one of the main reasons why we have a constitution in the first place.
From the article:
"The U.S. Supreme Court has long recognized there is a constitutional
right to travel internationally. Indeed, it has declared that the
right to travel is "a virtually unconditional personal right." The
United States has also signed treaties guaranteeing "freedom of
travel." So if these regulations do go into effect, you can expect a
lengthy court battle, both nationally and internationally."
Secondly, I think that not even supporters of the current administration will side with a rule that is so obviously unconstitutional, and therefore I believe that support in the House or the Senate will be very thin on the ground so that it will (if adopted by the curretn adminstration at all) remain an adminstrative rule, and not become a law at all. In fact I think that if that happens, the political fallout will be quite serious. Serious enough to change
Finally I wonder if that might be a reason to bring up that document at this time (according to the pdf the NPRM was published on the 18th of July this year). Why didn't it make waves at that time?
Those three considerations are the reason I titled my post "Keep your shirt on".
Slashdot Mirror
It seems more than a bit disingeneous on part of mr. Dudas to bring that up in support of US style (software) patents.
There seems to be an opinion among Sandia Laboratories management that they can interpret "just focusing on our job" as meaning "we are entitled to ignore evidence of penetration of defense contractors and/or government systems and sit on it". In my opinion every last one of those managers should be fired. et ... why not close down Sandia Laboratories in its entirety to prevent this sort of mentality from spreading? If this is the way those clowns view their job of protection of US interests who needs them?
And to top it all off ... they see fit to pile psychological pressurise on a loyal, responsable employee, and (the height of unprofessionalism) they try to blackmail him with his wife's job.
Has everyone grasped that Sandia management _actively_ tried to prevent this employee from cooperating with the FBI and Army Intelligence because it might (from the article) "bring unwanted attention to Sandia"? Am I alone in thinking that such conduct belongs in Soviet Russia of 30 years ago and not the US today?
Apparently, in the cases mentioned in the article, businesses were doing things that prompted their customers to leave when they found out that what they were faced with was "policy" instead of just "bad luck".
Market transparency is great ... it forces businesses to be honest and to actually compete on value instead of relying on (modest) barriers (including ignorance) to keep their customers. If a business uses practices that hurt it when the public finds out about it (as was the case here), can those practices be either good or reasonable? What's not to like?
And look at the flip side of the coin ... if people are happy with the way a business works they will write about that too.
With Linus and GNOME there is a bit of a history. Linus looked at GNOME, didn't like it, switched to KDE, but in the mean time actually took the time to give feedback in the form of comments and suggestions. Not once but several times. Fairly mildly at first, but more acerbic as he got irritated. That's something people might mistake for "attitude". It isn't. It's frustration.
Now Linus has put his money where his mouth is and produced patches that address his gripes with GNOME. With this he is telling GNOME very precisely what (some of) his gripes are and how he would suggest GNOME to deal with it.
Whether GNOME accepts his patches is of course entirely up to them. It's their project. I could imagine (but I don't know because I don't care) that GNOME has this really thought-through interface behaviour that they want to keep. If Linus's patches break that, then of course GNOME cannot accept them. But either way the controversy is resolved.
Either GNOME accepts the patches, and with it the implied criticism on their interface, or they reject the criticism of their interface model and then they don't want the patches. Those who want to use GNOME use it, those who don't use something else. End of problem.
Nevermind that customers are rejecting Microsoft Office because they are trying to get out of the lock-in of Microsoft's proprietary document format. Nevermind that Microsoft is into "Open" only to fudge the line between "Open standards that are documented and that anyone can implement and use" and "Proprietary with an open wrapper". Heh ... if I embed an MS-Word file into an XML document and compress the result using the Open Source program Gzip, does that make the resulting file "Open"? No? According to Microsoft's own logic, this would be the case.
And all this just to disguise the fact that their proposed "Open" standard allows them to put their their (totally proprietary) Office format into a document that follows the standard and then call it "Open". It's squarely aimed at fooling manager types into ticking a box labelled "Open Standards compliant" on their checklist.
Of course it's a fine example of complete intellectual dishonesty on Microsoft's part ... but whenever did Microsoft ever care about honesty? Intellectual or otherwise? Microsoft didn't become big by using such stupid tactics ...
Take that video demonstration for example. You know ... the one that showed Windows "crashing" when Explorer was removed. Any ordinary person would have gone to jail for perjury on that "testimony" ... but large companies are exempt it seems. "A regrettable communication error sir." Yeah, right.
As many people know ... Microsoft's OOXML is a blatant attempt to perpetuate Microsoft's proprietary standards through a selection of backdoors in a 6,000 page standard proposal that Microsoft is trying to rush through. Just see the "criticism" section in this link http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_Open_XML
The Internet provides vital services for millions of businesses and individuals that take little bandwidth. If video applications take too much bandwidth then why not cut them out for as long as it takes to increase the capacity. Something has to give, and cutting off video is relatively easy. Sure ... there will always be some legitimate uses for video streams, but if it's really important they'll make themselves heard and then we can see if we are going to make exceptions.
And why not? The Internet is too precious a resource to waste on illiterates. Those who can't read can always watch the news on TV.
About 6 months ago there was this publicist "Maureen O'Gara" who actually went so far as to try and physically stalk Jones, and who saw fit to importune her mother. O'Gara seemed to have become obsessed with Pamela Jones who invariably pointed out holes, inaccuracies, misrepresentations, and plain lack of understanding in O'Gara's articles, and wanted to turn a factual businesslike dispute into something personal by putting Jones's address online. Regretfully, in the good old US of A this means that you will henceforth have to live with the increased probability that some random nutjob will take a shot at you or will otherwise assault you.
Having read Groklaw from the beginning, and having read a sizeable portion of the background materials, I'm firmly convinced that SCO's so-called "case" was only ever a transparant, meritless, and rather dirty attempt to extort money from Linux and Linux users, fortunately based on nothing but sloppy research, slipshod reasoning, and a shameless abuse of the US legal system to boot by trying to cash in on the threat of nuisance lawsuits.
And this "first" is brought to you by Forbes magazine, which is sort of interesting. Why? If you ever were on the lookout for biased, distorted, and inaccurate reporting favouring SCO and bashing all things GPL and Linux ... look no further than Forbes Magazine. Recently they stopped supporting SCO publicly, perhaps because it became obvious that SCO has no evidence of any kind for its grandiose claims. Forbes is also the rag that proudly trumpeted in 2003 that "Linux crunchies" should take SCO's allegations seriously because SCO was such a mean opponent in court and in business: "what SCO wants SCO gets". Forbes is also the magazine that touted dirty business tactics as "capitalism", and was always ready to defend any SCO tactic, no matter how underhanded.
Clearly, as others already remarked, the identity of Pamela Jones has no bearing whatsoever on SCO's case. Jones isn't a party in the case, and neither her testimony nor her identity can make any difference one way or another. Except perhaps with one single exception. A Jury trial. You know ... the place where the accumulated evidence of years is put through the mind of 10 lay persons in a few daily sessions, who then have to decide on guilt or innocence. That jury cannot access background materials on its own accord, but has to take all of its information from opposing lawyers. They may take notes, but that's it. Not put on a good enough emotional show, and you just might get that jury to overlook some home truths ... if they are buried deep enough.
SCO has had two-thirds of their case thrown out already by the magistrate judge for failing to produce competent evidence for their claims, but a lot of the more vague claims (as in "Linux infringes on our IP because it used Methods and Concepts that belong to us. No your honour ... we can't show you the files and line-numbers files where this happens in Linux because we're talking about methods and concepts, not actual code. It's more diffuse.") are still alive.
*sighs* This sort of talk will get you absolutely nowhere with anyone who is computer-literate ... but there's the rub. SCO can ensure that no-one who even remotely knows what the case is about will be on that jury. Why? Because if they're knowledgeable they will have heard about SCO versus IBM, will have read media coverage, e.g. Groklaw, and will have laughed their head off. Can't be
These pictures seem to show that IIS is much more tied in with the Windows OS than Apache is with the Linux OS.
I think that's credible, and that it illustrates that in case of Windows, the wider (and much more complicated) interface between applications and OS is real. I have no difficulty believing that this offers many more opportunities to compromise the OS, and hence is less secure.
dream_mode_on
Space shuttles (or equivalent) would be great for retrieving large objects such as rocket stages. If we were quick we might be able to prevent that "cascade" from happening by removing the big pieces of junk before they are shredded.
For the finer debris this is too much work of course. Could we perhaps send up a large lump of frozen water in a net, with some machinery to melt part of it from time to time? The frozen water would be able to absorb the kinetic energy of any impacting trash, and could be melted periodically to trap the trash safely in the ice and to maintain structural integrity.
When the ratio of trash to water becomes too high we could just melt the water, sieve it for reuse, and dunk the trash into an ocean or so.
Trawling for space trash would take an awful lot of time before it makes an impact of course, but if we can just keep the problem from getting worse, we would continue to have the current (relatively acceptable conditions).
dream_mode_off
*sighs* There probably won't be any takers of course ... space shuttles have received the budget axe (and there are no replacements on the horizon), and the international political wrangle between the spacefaring nations (US, EU, Russia, China, Japan, India) about who pays for what will probably take so long that the "cascade" has already happened. Oh well ... it's nice to dream from time to time ...
It turns out the answer is "us". So now we know ... only what are we going to do about it? Seriously ... what is the best way to deal with this problem? Energy conservation is one way, but how far should one go? It's got tremendous inertia, and that might be working both for us and against us.
I'm asking this because somehow I cannot imagine a few hundred million people in the West ditching all their cars, turning off their PC's and the Internet, shutting down their aircos, and grounding all airliners. Much less countries like China switching off their coal-fired power plants. No matter what the long-term consequences, the short-term (economic and lifestyle) consequences will ensure that there will be no support for anything like that. Political or otherwise.
Juding by the scenarios presented it's best to do something soonish ... but how do we make sure that it's not just us who bears the brunt of this problem? And what's the minimum we can do? Doing something about this is likely to hurt. Badly.
And how do we determine who should do how much? The Kyoto agreements suddenly don't seem to stupid anymore, but not even the ecological boyscouts in the EU seem to be able to achieve their agreed reduction in carbon emissions.
Any ideas who is concocting a reasonable type policy taget?
And err ... about the so-called "moral" aspects. Let's not forget that industrialisation in the US was based on wholesale suspension of foreign patents. All of them. Endorsed by the founding fathers! But it turned out ok in the end, right, after the US grew into a big market?
And let's not forget that there is no danger of any major software company getting hurt. let alone going bankrupt because of piracy.
And before we wax indignant about piracy in a semi-developing country somewhere in Eastern Europe, lets think for a moment shall we? They joined the EU, so they'll have to clean up their act ... even if it takes a decade. By the time they become a significant trade partner they will by and large behave lawfully. So is there anything here to loose any over? I think not.
This might explain why the USPTO shows so little interest in making sure that the patents it awards are of high quality. For the USPTO it makes absolutely no economic sense to it spend more time on individual patents than the absolute minimum.
After all, there is this appeal procedure right? So if people have objections to patents we issue they can use that. In the mean time, when you're paid by the item it makes absolutely no sense to spend too much time perfecting each item you make. And if people out there don't like a patent we issue, then they can pay us a fee for a review procedure.
Simple economics really. That's what management is all about, right?
It's all down to logic I think.
Logically speaking, the text: "I don't know what generalizations can be made from this with the lack of long-term scientific data"
decomposes into (at least) two propositions:
(P1) : there is a lack of long-term scientific data
(P2) : because of P1, I don't know what generalisations can be made
Proposition (P2) is a proper admission of a lack of knowledge, but proposition (P1) is the problem.
The words "I don't know" only relate to the inference process, and not to the question of evidence. Therefore they don't provide sufficient cover for our meteorologist when he talked about climate change. He wrongly denied the existence of evidence for climate change.
One of the posters made the point that a meteorologist (concerned with short-term weather) isn't a climatologist (concerned with long-term weather). This is important as a meteorologist would be speaking outside his area of specialisation.
The blog you quote (you call it TFA) points out that the meteorologist in question doesn't seem to know that his statement
contains a hooter (highlighted).
Although the man tries to exercise due caution in what he says, he definitely gives the impression that the scientific consensus is that there is insufficient long-term data to decide whether we are seeing a climate shift or not. This is wrrong ... as you can see e.g. here http://www.capitalweather.com/2006/12/since-when-d o-weather-junkies-stick.php
Climate change in other words. The point is that this meteorologist ought to have known about it, or else stated clearly that he doesn't know. He waffled a bit, but he passed on the claim that "no scientific envidence exists for climate change" as a scientific fact. In that he was wrong, and that is what half of what Cullen's blog was about.
Now back to your response ...
You are right in saying that Cullen and the AMS go one step further and state that:
Now our Meteorologist states in his own words that he has no researched opinion about the impact of man on climate change. But he was asked a question, and he let slip a wrong answer and passed it off as "scientific". If he had wanted to be precise, he would have said something like:
"The AMS is of the opinion that there is convincing evidence for the role of Man's activities on climate change. However since my personal area of expertise is more forecasting short-term weather conditions, I don't really know." and left it at that.
He didn't, and that's what the second part of Cullen's blog is about. Read with me please ...
I certainly won't claim that China wouldn't have pressed ahead with its anti-sattelite weapon if the US hadn't stated space hegemony as its policy objective, but in terms of being provocative it really seems to be a case of the pot calling the kettle black. The US space policy is confrontational if nothing else.
I'm fairly confident that the recently unveiled US space policy caused a massive "Oh yeah? We'll see about that!" response among China, Russia, India, and perhaps others too.
The line you boldfaced: "If a meteorologist can't speak to the fundamental science of climate change, then maybe the AMS shouldn't give them a Seal of Approval." basically says:
"A Meteorologist should be knowledgeable about the evidence about climate change. It's his subject after all. If he isn't, he's incompetent and should be de-certified."
Well, that's something I agree with.
The fact that we are witnessing Climate Change in itself is pretty uncontroversial. What is controversial is to what extent this climate change we are witnessing was caused by man (specifically our carbon dioxide output as opposed tp e.g. an upwards cycle in the sun's energy output) and to what extent we can hope to halt or reverse climate change by reducing our carbon dioxide output.
Nowhere do I read anything about a proposed decertification of meteorologists who argue against climate change being caused by man. What I do read is a proposal to decertify people who call themselves Meteorologists and haven't kept up to date with evidence on climate change.
That's why I'm so certain that the issue of silencing opponents hasn't surfaced. Cullen's blog talks about de-certifying people who pose as experts but who are incompetent in their claimed area of expertise because they haven't kept up with the literature.
The fact is that the Slashdot newsflash is highly misleading in that totally misreports the expert in question.
This is because it simply parrots a blog/rant by a someone associated with the Senate, who got his facts wrong.
Don't take my word for it ... check it. This is something that you can check, from your seat, online ... if you would only take the trouble to do so. I read the blog and the blog that the Slashdot newsflash referes to and the blog by the expert referred to and posted both links so that you can check what I'm saying.
And please ... no amount of "But that bunch once did soandso" has any bearing on the matter at hand. So let's not get into that, shall we?
Just take the time to check out the what really happened using the links I provided for you and you'll see that this affair is something between a rant or a smear campaign.
It seems that somebody (opposed to the idea of a man-made impacy on climate) seems to have worked out how to evoke a popular (knee-jerk) response from Slashdot.
The secret is that ... most slashdotters simply don't read the article referred to, let alone the articles referred to by that article. They take the position that they can rely on whoever wrote the slashdot newsflash to do that for them. Instead they are happy to comment on the post and the previous comments (much more fun, and less work). So ... if you can insert any statement to excite slashdotters in your newsflash, you can pretty much lead them to endorse (or condemn) whatever orginal article you like.
So ... what is actually going on?
Q: Did those experts cited really propose to end scientific discussion by silencing those who oppose the idea of a man-made impact on global warning?
A: No! (see the original blog by Heidi Cullen at http://climate.weather.com/blog/9_11396.html )
Q: So if that wasn't the case, then where did the idea come from?
A: The idea came from a certain Marc Morano (marc_morano@epw.senate.gov) who's blog was cited by slashdot. See the blog referenced by the slashdot newsflash at http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction= PressRoom.Blogs&ContentRecord_id=32abc0b0-802a-23a d-440a-88824bb8e528)
Q: So if there was no question of the experts proposing to stifle discussion by de-certifying opponents then where does all the hoopla come from?
A :I think we are witnessing a rant by Marc Morano which received disproportionate attention by it's referral on slashdot. In case this referral was deliberate, we are witnessing a political mear campaign. Live and in colour
Why? Because it's different from the norm (most people like the convenience and safeguards that credit-card payments provide), and paying cash makes it more difficult to dig up information on you. And incidentally, since 9 out of 10 credit-card companies have their head office in the US, I suspect that all your European credit card transactions will be as accessible to the US authorities as those of US citizins.
So ... in all those bookings you'll have a mass of people who pay by credit-card, some who are in large accounts, some who purchase their tickets through a travel agency. All neat and traceable. And then you have a few percent who pay cash at the counter. Who would you pay special attention to?
It just seems so blindingly obvious that if you were tasked with screening people that you would pay special attention to anyone who seemed to be willing to go to some trouble (by paying cash) to be less easily traced. Although it's not probable that screeners will devote a lot of attention to everyone (screeners probably have a finite amount of resources), if your software can trace someone's credit card (and check where, when, and how the card has or hasn't been used over say the past 5 years ...), you will know a fair amount about the holder (ideally) and you may green-flag that person if nothing suspicious turns up. Just to try and boil down the list of passengers a little, and spend more time with the rest.
After all ... you don't *really* care if someone slips though to raise mayhem ... it's enough if you can show your boss that *you* did your job. And that's a lot easier to prove when someone slips through your computer thought it knew all about than someone it couldn't trace very well, right? So, I'd guess (but that's just a guess on my part) that this screening program contains a line like:
"If Cash_Payment(passenger) Then Raise_Yellow_Flag(passenger)".
Why? About a fifth to a third of the textbooks I want aren't available when I want them. They either aren't in the library collection (inter-library loan here we come ...), or they are on loan. The campus bookstore doesn't stock them (surprise) and they'll take weeks to arive if they are in print, or I have to chase them up on Amazon because they're out of print or in backorder.
So ... I'd be very happy with the ability to print any book in the catalogue in 7 minutes. This means of course that we would have the permission of the publishers, but given that I'd be happy to pay for out-of-print or even back-order copies I suspect that the difficulties will be resolvable.
Should this happen then I think that a good case can be made for having the Library install the machine and signing deals with publishers so that the machine can print _copyrighted_ books which the Library would otherwise have to keep in its collection. I can think of several out-of-print-but-still-useful mathematics books that would benefit from wider availability.
And yes, I often want a physical book instead of a file. I much prefer reading text from paper than from a screen, (and thanks to the publishers electronic articles aren't searcheable because you get them as images, so no advantages to be had there), and because I tend to scribble in my books (*coughs* with pencil of course *coughs*), mark passages, and take them with me.
Just look at the blurb in the original article:
[i]"Patrick Leahy, USGS's head of geology and its acting director until September, said Wednesday that the new procedures would [b]improve scientists' accountability[/b] and "harmonize'' the review process. He said they are [b]intended to maintain scientists' neutrality[/b]."[/i]
I thought that scientists were accountable mostly to their peers when they publish things
Well
I think I recognise this sort of situation from European countries like France (heavily politicised in all its aspects), The Netherlands and Britain (carefully screened so as to not release politically sensitive information unless it's the undisputable outcome of Government-mandated studies).
So what's happening isn't that strange
Having said that, I also understand Greg's difficulties: he seems to be selling support for Linux, and lots of people waste his time by asking him to fix problems caused by closed-source (binary) modules hooked up into a Linux system. Which of course he can't do since the binary modules might well be at fault and he hasn't got a clue what they are doing
So the problem is Greg being innundated by support requests from people who try to have him fix systems which are broken by binary-only modules.
I think a solution would be a piece of software that simply goes through all kernel modules and lists those that aren't Open Source.
Then Greg could limit his activities up-front to systems that don't include any Closed Source binaries (or at least only ones known to be unproblematic), and quickly determine if this is the case for any system handed to him, or even ask people to run the module checker first before he looks at their support requests.
Wouldn't that take care of things?
It's full of rambling generalities about "The State" (which one?), tangentially suggests that the EU is seeking to line it's own poackets by fining Microsoft, and only refers to the matter at hand in the most oblique way possible.
For my money I see Microsoft simply (as it is wont to) trying to see what it can get away with in terms of handing over incomplete documentation of their client-server protocols. They've had years in which they've dragged their feet, hemmed, hawed, played to the public gallery, asked for "clarification" (as if ... protocol documentation is protocol documentation), and apparently still haven't coughed up the specs. So if they're fined I guess they had it coming to them.
I know it's something of a fashion to moan about "Government" and "the State", especially when they crack down on public companies, and sometimes it does go too far, but not in this case. Microsoft is wiping its feet on the EU fair-competition laws by failing to hand over protocol specifications, and has done so for years. Unfortunately for them they don't have the same political clout in the EU as they have here ... and so they won't be able to get away with law infringement there. Tough on them.
First off I have to acknowledge an Anonymous Coward for dealing out a little civics lesson:
"Rulemaking is a purely Executive branch function. Rules are not subject to any Congressional action other than oversight (which is clearly absent in the current Congress)."
Ok, point taken. I hadn't realised that this wasn't inteded to be a law, just a rule. The Executive branch (i.e. the current administration) can (without consulting anyone or getting any representative's say-so) put up Rules that we can't leave the country unless permitted to by the government (and I don't mean a passport: I mean premission to leave).
However, even if the Executive Branch can put up such rules as it wishes (without necessarily having to submit them to the House or Congress), those rules are still subject to tests of constitutionality. I didn't mean challenged in the media ... I meant challenged in court. Especially if they run counter to the constitution. That's one of the main reasons why we have a constitution in the first place.
From the article:
"The U.S. Supreme Court has long recognized there is a constitutional right to travel internationally. Indeed, it has declared that the right to travel is "a virtually unconditional personal right." The United States has also signed treaties guaranteeing "freedom of travel." So if these regulations do go into effect, you can expect a lengthy court battle, both nationally and internationally."
Secondly, I think that not even supporters of the current administration will side with a rule that is so obviously unconstitutional, and therefore I believe that support in the House or the Senate will be very thin on the ground so that it will (if adopted by the curretn adminstration at all) remain an adminstrative rule, and not become a law at all. In fact I think that if that happens, the political fallout will be quite serious. Serious enough to change
Finally I wonder if that might be a reason to bring up that document at this time (according to the pdf the NPRM was published on the 18th of July this year). Why didn't it make waves at that time?
Those three considerations are the reason I titled my post "Keep your shirt on".