I am surprised/. folks are so cynical about this move by Microsoft.
Why would you be surprised.
After all, OLPC is *all about the children*, isn't it?
Well, no, its all about human development. Its not all about "the children", though its centers on them.
I mean OLPC isn't just a component of some religious war on Microsoft, is it?
Nope.
Because I thought OLPC was about giving tools to those who needed them so they could lift themselves up out of poverty.
Yup.
This move by Microsoft does exactly that, just as OLPC does.
This move does not do "exactly" that, nor is it designed to. Whether it might have some tangential utility to economic development is a matter about which I think reasonable people can disagree (I'd argue that, even given the alternatives, there might be some utility in some narrow cases, so its not completely a counterproductive move.) But its designed to do one thing: make money for Microsoft. Particularly, its meant to use government as a way to get Microsoft a dominant position in developing market like it has in much of the developed world so that it doesn't have to compete on quality, because it has network (in the market rather than computing sense) effects to reinforce its position.
Now, is this simply a response to the OLPC program?
Clearly.
If it is, then once again we see clear evidence that competition is a much better way to foster progress than is regulation or coercion.
Both the Microsoft effort and the OLPC project are aimed at purchase by governments which will provide the relevant hardware and software either to schools or individuals. To see this as saying something about "competition" vs. "regulation" is, well, a bit ludicrous. Either system is a centrally-mandated government-imposed solution. In either case, its about "regulation" or, as libertarian fanatics like to characterize government action, "coercion".
So people (and countries) make different choices and this offends you?
I certainly neither said nor implied that. In fact, nothing in the strand of conversation leading here has discussed (1) purchasers actually making different decisions, or (2) me being offended.
Perhaps if you can't respond to what people actually write, you should just not respond at all, rather than making up insults entirely unrelated to the discussion at hand.
Yeah, it's not OSS, but they're not making any money off of it
The unit cost to Microsoft of XP licenses to mass purchasers is so close to nil as to be difficult to discern as existing at all, and even at $3 a license, enough licenses adds up to some money.
And, of course, anyone buying those basic machines is going to naturally want more capable machines for teachers, servers, etc., that are compatible with them, with more capable but compatible (and, hence, Microsoft) software—which won't the same sharp discount. And once institutions have invested in those machines, when they need machines for other users, well, they'll want to simplify support by having those machines and their software be compatible, too.
As opposed to what the schools REALLY want, which is?
Well, apparently, in many cases, a computer whose hardware and software suite designed from the ground up for both the physical environment and the expected uses, with a user interface, security model, application stack, and supporting hardware (like school servers, satellite uplinks, etc.) and services (like donated satellite time) all built around the needs involved.
At least, I infer that desire in several cases from the number of countries signed up to participate in the launch of the OLPC, to which Microsoft is responding with this offering.
Well, no, but an unbiased observermight consider that a for-profit, publicly-traded corporation with a legally enforceable duty to its shareholders is probably not doing anything purely out of kindness.
An unbiased observer might notice the Microsoft spokesman quoted in TFA saying as much: "This is not a philanthropic effort, this is a business," Orlando Ayala of Microsoft told the Reuter's news agency.
An unbiased observer might note that this sudden concern for getting cheap software to governments willing to provide Windows-running PCs to schools occurs at the exact time a project Microsoft had first offered its non-free operating system too, then when that was rejected, railed against the project as misguided, had entered the testing stages with its launch customers. A project in which governments would purchase computers not designed to run Windows to their schools and individually to every student, computers which would come with loaded with free software. An unbiased observer might consider that that timing is unlikely to be purely coincidental.
The reason that I care is not because of "morality" or something like that, it's because the pushing of non-Free alternatives robs the Free software of market share. That's all. I can't see why people can't just buy hardware that's supported, use the Free software on it and enjoy.
(1) Because people have hardware they bought before they became interested in Free Software. (2) Because people are interested in particular bits of Free Software for reasons other than an ideological attachment to Free Software as a religion. (3) Because people have limited funds, and limiting selection to hardware that has good, completely Free Software support may cut out the most affordable options, whereas there choices may be broader if they accept hardware with non-Free modules supporting working with the Free Software they are concerned about. (4) Because people have specialized needs and interests outside of Free Software ideology, and where those needs already narrow the field of available options to a handful of choices, it may be the case that none of them have adequate, completely Free Software support.
People who use particular Free Software products often do it for price, performance, etc., reasons attached to the particular product, not because of attachment to Free Software ideology, and not because they hope to bring about the utopian future that you seem to think present sacrifice in favor of rigorous devotion to Free Software ideals makes possible.
Of course, they wouldn't have known that the pages were stuck together unless they opened the motion.
Its quite possible, as the photo demonstrating the "booby trap" shows, to open the pages enough to be aware that someone is playing games without breaking the "trap".
Some are, some aren't (many states have a mix of elected and appointed judges in different courts.) Not sure which applies to Washington small claims judges.
The judge was correct about your taping the phone call but for the wrong reasons. You cannot record anyone without permission unless you have a court order.
Under federal law, only one party to a conversation has to consent. Some states (e.g., California) require both parties to agree. Anyhow, generally, in civil cases, illegally collected evidence is not categorically subject to an exclusionary rule, though the person who was wronged may, of course, counterclaim for the offense involved in collecting the evidence.
no, judges have a responsibility to read and understand what motions are put in front of them, including reading the entire motion regardless of its percieved worthlessness.
Actually, judges are generally are permitted by law to reject out of hand motions which are filed in forms that don't meet the rather detailed format requirements most courts have, though I think usually they are required to notify the filer of the problem and provide an opportunity to correct the defect. I'm wouldn't be surprised if having pages deliberately glued together is inconsistent with whatever filing requirements Washington Small Claims courts have.
The results, detailed in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, go against the conventional wisdom that humans are the result of a high degree of genetic selection, evidenced by our relatively large brains, cognitive abilities, and bipedalism.
Since when is that the conventional wisdom? My understanding was that the "conventional wisdom", inasmuch as there was any, on that issue was that humanity's having evolved massive and extremely useful brains provided means of adaptation on a much shorter timescale which would be expected to, if anything, reduce the pace of genetic evolution from that point forward.
How having an human killed by a robot is any worse than an human killed by another human?
Humans are likely to be far better than robots for well into the foreseeable future at distinguishing features and behaviors of other humans that mark them as individuals that should not be targetted for lethal force. It is quite arguable that using robots programmed to attack humans would, in many circumstances, be inevitably an indiscriminate application of force endangering noncombatants that are protected under international law in a way which violates various widely accepted norms of armed combat recognized in existing treaties and customary international law. It is not that it is any worse for any particular person to be killed by a robot than for that same person to be killed by a human, its that a robot designed to kill humans is more likely to kill humans whose killing is unjustifiable.
Is it just me or is a discussion of ethics laws for robots premature given the state of the art in artificial intelligence?
These aren't ethics laws for self-willed, scifi-like robots. These are ethics laws for users of fairly stupid (by scifi standards) autonomous armed combat systems. And since such systems are currently in active development, it is not at all premature to discuss what, if any, limits ought to be placed on their application.
If you are trying to criticize/demonstrate groupthink, I think you mean "must" rather than "might".
Wiki-anything is probably the best example of this sort of thinking there is.
Well, no, its not.
This is extraordinarly bad for schools and for people that do not have the capabilities to really think for themselves. This isn't something that can be trained - it is something that you pretty much have or don't have.
Yes, actually, its something that can be trained quite readily. Now, the fact that most schools don't teach critical thinking and source analysis, or teach it well, is, of course, a problem, but not one solved by limiting the array of available sources (which, actually, is a way of encouraging groupthink, not fighting it.)
Lots of people here saying that Wikipedia has about the same level of accuracy as textbooks.
Yes, and while textbooks can be wrong, and Wikipedia can be extremely accurate in some areas, this is probably generally false. (Those comparing it to other encyclopedias are probably more correct, and certainly, given the Nature review, are at least on firmer ground in claiming an evidentiary basis for their claim.)
Wikipedia isn't a valid source for anything - it is a collection of popular stuff and a clear insight into what people consider important.
Wikipedia isn't, for the most part, a citable source for anything (though many schools, particularly in earlier grades, allowing citing an encyclopedia as one of the sources, and at the level Wikipedia is citable) because its generally a tertiary source, by design.
OTOH, its a useful research tool because (1) it has extremely broad coverage—much more so than most traditional encyclopedias—and (2) it has, at least in articles conforming to the editorial standards, listed sources for its fact claims, which are generally citable sources.
Actually, if one was doing a report on Britney Spears it would be a good place to start. If you wanted to find out what the name of the person that was on American Idol that sang "I'm so hot" it might be useful.
It'd also be fairly useful if you were interested in, say, the Rete algorithm, Red-black trees, the Droop quota, or any of a number of other topics.
There is no lack of hard AI problems that could benefit immensely from a decent AI solution. Examples abound: 1. Self driving vehicles as in the DARPA driving challenge 2. Computer vision for autonomous robots 3. Image classification systems (even for desktop apps)
If "examples abound", why are your first three essentially increasingly broad characterizations of the same problem?
The reason given was that Wikipedia (being user created and edited) did not represent a credible or reliable source of information for schools.
Virtually the entirety of the web (and, for that matter, a lot of the non-fiction, dead-tree books you'll find in most school libraries) are not a "credible or reliable source of information for schools". OTOH, schools ought to be teaching students to evaluate sources that have the kind of systematic problems that frequently encountered sources like Wikipedia has, and how to use them (e.g., as a gateway or refresher) to get value, and when not to use them, and not to use them exclusively. They ought not be blocking access to information on the basis that it is not up to some gold standard of reliability.
Now, there may be other valid reasons for blocking access to Wikipedia, but the reliability and credibility one is, from my perspective, pretty stupid.
(If there is a problem with students too-frequently citing—or plagiarizing—Wikipedia, the solution to that ought to be appropriate, well-communicated grading standards when it comes to appropriate sources and appropriate use and citation of those sources.)
Regardless of there being a God, brains, humans, birds, or diamonds, to be honest we don't want to create a brainlike computer.
Human brains can do amazing things, but one thing we like about computers over human brains is that human brains, even the best ones, are simply wrong from time to time, and our goal with "brainlike computers" is not to recreate these mistakes, but rather to overcome them.
The thing is, computers can already do lots of things that brains are bad at. Making brainlike software that allows computers to do things brains are good at is something we want to do, because lots of times we'd like our computers to do tasks that involve repetitively doing things brains are bad at mixed with things that brains are good at, while our actual brains are off doing completely unrelated things rather than be interrupted everytime the computer needs someone to do the part brains are good at.
Obviously, it would be good ultimately to make computers that do things that brains are good at even better than brains do them, but since we're far from as good as brains in our computers in many areas, we've got even more distance to cover till we get to better than brains. In the short-term, we're aiming more for "close enough to brains" so that for tasks which are hard for computers but trivial for brains, we can reduce the amount of human involvement needed to get the task done.
But we still can't fly like a bird with flapping wings
I'm just saying that the human brain is a thing made by god, and we can't copy it.
How does that follow? Granting, for the sake of discussion, that everything in the natural universe, including brains, was created by God, that hardly implies that we can't copy brains. We can reproduce many naturally occurring things, after all, through understanding their structure and composition.
Diamonds are things made by God, and we can copy them.
Wasn't doing a better job than CSS at providing that for a wide variety of media one of the big purposes of XSL:FO? Unfortunately, while there were a few proof of concept browsers early on with rough support for XSL:FO, mostly support for it seems, from what I've seen, to have gone all to tools designed for print/PDF production.
I wouldn't trust USB stick security unless there was a 3rd party assessment of the security from a reputable security firm and that assessment was published.
"USB stick security" seems to be something that is largely unnecessary in the first place. You don't need any special security on the stick, assuming you have reasonably strong encryption available on the computers you use the stick with: you encrypt data, give it to the stick, and decrypt it when you take it off. There are vanishingly few cases where more security than that is really needed, like self-destruct mechanisms.
But maybe we should look to the security through obscurity methodology as an additional layer of protection.
If you had actual security (i.e., used reasonably strong encryption) to start with, the obscurity wouldn't add substantially to the security. Here, the only protection was security through insufficient obscurity, so yes, additional obscurity would have made it marginally less easy to access, but would have been nowhere near as good as actually using strong encryption on the data, and wouldn't have made the system "secure" in any significant sense.
Even though I have a scanner and can send them encrypted PDFs, they insist that I fax them various bits of information for "security purposes." This isn't much of a problem since my computer has a built-in fax modem, but why they don't accept encrypted PDFs is beyond me. It's just as secure as a fax.
Its not as secure, in at least one potentially important sense, as a fax if the printers on which they can print the encrypted PDF are shared and not in a location that is locked 24/7 with limited access, but the fax machine they have you send it to is.
It may be equally or more secure in transmission, but that may not be their concern.
It's not like they're violating anyone's rights by not being cited. And indeed, there are very good reasons why the police might speed, even in non-emergency situations.
I'm presuming a situation where, as is common, police are already generally forbidden by law or regulation to violate traffic laws except in emergencies, and the issue is just whether or not they should be automatically ticketed if the jurisdiction has a system which automatically tickets non-police vehicles.
If the jurisdiction has given police a blanket exemption from traffic laws even in non-emergency situations, for whatever reason, clearly they shouldn't be ticketed for violating them, whether automatically or otherwise.
IOW, if the law applies to the police, it ought to be applied to the police. If it doesn't, clearly it shouldn't; debate over whether the law ought to apply to the police is a separate issue from the point I was making.
Not always. I can think of one case where I was going the legal limit, 45 IIRC, and the light suddenly changed.
I can't speak for other states, but California's speed law places the posted limit as an upper bound, but also makes it speeding to at any time exceed the speed that is safe for the conditions and circumstances even where that is lower than the posted limit; if you are going too fast to respond to a red light at an intersection, you are also going too fast to respond to the traffic that has the green light and therefore the right of way in that intersection and are, ipso facto, speeding.
This also extends to the case of rain or snow: if you are driving fast enough that your safe stopping distance under the conditions does not allow you to react to the light changing, you are again driving faster than is safe for the road conditions, and therefore speeding.
Most cops have informal "code 2 high" which means not using lights or siren and breaking traffic laws as safely as possible. Sometimes they will just use a quick squirt of the lights to get through an intersection.
My understanding is that such "Code 2 high" response is used in circumstances that warrant a Code 3 response but where there are particular grounds for concern that using lights-and-siren would further endanger lives by alerting subjects to the approach of law enforcement.
While, clearly, this is a dangerous practice, its also dangerous not to do it where it is legitimate called for. While one might fault specific decisions to do it, its not hard, I would say, to see the potential need here.
Slashdot Mirror
Why would you be surprised.
Well, no, its all about human development. Its not all about "the children", though its centers on them.
Nope.
Yup.
This move does not do "exactly" that, nor is it designed to. Whether it might have some tangential utility to economic development is a matter about which I think reasonable people can disagree (I'd argue that, even given the alternatives, there might be some utility in some narrow cases, so its not completely a counterproductive move.) But its designed to do one thing: make money for Microsoft. Particularly, its meant to use government as a way to get Microsoft a dominant position in developing market like it has in much of the developed world so that it doesn't have to compete on quality, because it has network (in the market rather than computing sense) effects to reinforce its position.
Clearly.
Both the Microsoft effort and the OLPC project are aimed at purchase by governments which will provide the relevant hardware and software either to schools or individuals. To see this as saying something about "competition" vs. "regulation" is, well, a bit ludicrous. Either system is a centrally-mandated government-imposed solution. In either case, its about "regulation" or, as libertarian fanatics like to characterize government action, "coercion".
I certainly neither said nor implied that. In fact, nothing in the strand of conversation leading here has discussed (1) purchasers actually making different decisions, or (2) me being offended.
Perhaps if you can't respond to what people actually write, you should just not respond at all, rather than making up insults entirely unrelated to the discussion at hand.
The unit cost to Microsoft of XP licenses to mass purchasers is so close to nil as to be difficult to discern as existing at all, and even at $3 a license, enough licenses adds up to some money.
And, of course, anyone buying those basic machines is going to naturally want more capable machines for teachers, servers, etc., that are compatible with them, with more capable but compatible (and, hence, Microsoft) software—which won't the same sharp discount. And once institutions have invested in those machines, when they need machines for other users, well, they'll want to simplify support by having those machines and their software be compatible, too.
Well, apparently, in many cases, a computer whose hardware and software suite designed from the ground up for both the physical environment and the expected uses, with a user interface, security model, application stack, and supporting hardware (like school servers, satellite uplinks, etc.) and services (like donated satellite time) all built around the needs involved.
At least, I infer that desire in several cases from the number of countries signed up to participate in the launch of the OLPC, to which Microsoft is responding with this offering.
Well, no, but an unbiased observermight consider that a for-profit, publicly-traded corporation with a legally enforceable duty to its shareholders is probably not doing anything purely out of kindness.
An unbiased observer might notice the Microsoft spokesman quoted in TFA saying as much: "This is not a philanthropic effort, this is a business," Orlando Ayala of Microsoft told the Reuter's news agency.
An unbiased observer might note that this sudden concern for getting cheap software to governments willing to provide Windows-running PCs to schools occurs at the exact time a project Microsoft had first offered its non-free operating system too, then when that was rejected, railed against the project as misguided, had entered the testing stages with its launch customers. A project in which governments would purchase computers not designed to run Windows to their schools and individually to every student, computers which would come with loaded with free software. An unbiased observer might consider that that timing is unlikely to be purely coincidental.
(1) Because people have hardware they bought before they became interested in Free Software.
(2) Because people are interested in particular bits of Free Software for reasons other than an ideological attachment to Free Software as a religion.
(3) Because people have limited funds, and limiting selection to hardware that has good, completely Free Software support may cut out the most affordable options, whereas there choices may be broader if they accept hardware with non-Free modules supporting working with the Free Software they are concerned about.
(4) Because people have specialized needs and interests outside of Free Software ideology, and where those needs already narrow the field of available options to a handful of choices, it may be the case that none of them have adequate, completely Free Software support.
People who use particular Free Software products often do it for price, performance, etc., reasons attached to the particular product, not because of attachment to Free Software ideology, and not because they hope to bring about the utopian future that you seem to think present sacrifice in favor of rigorous devotion to Free Software ideals makes possible.
Its quite possible, as the photo demonstrating the "booby trap" shows, to open the pages enough to be aware that someone is playing games without breaking the "trap".
Some are, some aren't (many states have a mix of elected and appointed judges in different courts.) Not sure which applies to Washington small claims judges.
Under federal law, only one party to a conversation has to consent. Some states (e.g., California) require both parties to agree. Anyhow, generally, in civil cases, illegally collected evidence is not categorically subject to an exclusionary rule, though the person who was wronged may, of course, counterclaim for the offense involved in collecting the evidence.
Actually, judges are generally are permitted by law to reject out of hand motions which are filed in forms that don't meet the rather detailed format requirements most courts have, though I think usually they are required to notify the filer of the problem and provide an opportunity to correct the defect. I'm wouldn't be surprised if having pages deliberately glued together is inconsistent with whatever filing requirements Washington Small Claims courts have.
Since when is that the conventional wisdom? My understanding was that the "conventional wisdom", inasmuch as there was any, on that issue was that humanity's having evolved massive and extremely useful brains provided means of adaptation on a much shorter timescale which would be expected to, if anything, reduce the pace of genetic evolution from that point forward.
Humans are likely to be far better than robots for well into the foreseeable future at distinguishing features and behaviors of other humans that mark them as individuals that should not be targetted for lethal force. It is quite arguable that using robots programmed to attack humans would, in many circumstances, be inevitably an indiscriminate application of force endangering noncombatants that are protected under international law in a way which violates various widely accepted norms of armed combat recognized in existing treaties and customary international law. It is not that it is any worse for any particular person to be killed by a robot than for that same person to be killed by a human, its that a robot designed to kill humans is more likely to kill humans whose killing is unjustifiable.
These aren't ethics laws for self-willed, scifi-like robots. These are ethics laws for users of fairly stupid (by scifi standards) autonomous armed combat systems. And since such systems are currently in active development, it is not at all premature to discuss what, if any, limits ought to be placed on their application.
If you are trying to criticize/demonstrate groupthink, I think you mean "must" rather than "might".
Well, no, its not.
Yes, actually, its something that can be trained quite readily. Now, the fact that most schools don't teach critical thinking and source analysis, or teach it well, is, of course, a problem, but not one solved by limiting the array of available sources (which, actually, is a way of encouraging groupthink, not fighting it.)
Yes, and while textbooks can be wrong, and Wikipedia can be extremely accurate in some areas, this is probably generally false. (Those comparing it to other encyclopedias are probably more correct, and certainly, given the Nature review, are at least on firmer ground in claiming an evidentiary basis for their claim.)
Wikipedia isn't, for the most part, a citable source for anything (though many schools, particularly in earlier grades, allowing citing an encyclopedia as one of the sources, and at the level Wikipedia is citable) because its generally a tertiary source, by design.
OTOH, its a useful research tool because (1) it has extremely broad coverage—much more so than most traditional encyclopedias—and (2) it has, at least in articles conforming to the editorial standards, listed sources for its fact claims, which are generally citable sources.
It'd also be fairly useful if you were interested in, say, the Rete algorithm, Red-black trees, the Droop quota, or any of a number of other topics.
If "examples abound", why are your first three essentially increasingly broad characterizations of the same problem?
Virtually the entirety of the web (and, for that matter, a lot of the non-fiction, dead-tree books you'll find in most school libraries) are not a "credible or reliable source of information for schools". OTOH, schools ought to be teaching students to evaluate sources that have the kind of systematic problems that frequently encountered sources like Wikipedia has, and how to use them (e.g., as a gateway or refresher) to get value, and when not to use them, and not to use them exclusively. They ought not be blocking access to information on the basis that it is not up to some gold standard of reliability.
Now, there may be other valid reasons for blocking access to Wikipedia, but the reliability and credibility one is, from my perspective, pretty stupid.
(If there is a problem with students too-frequently citing—or plagiarizing—Wikipedia, the solution to that ought to be appropriate, well-communicated grading standards when it comes to appropriate sources and appropriate use and citation of those sources.)
The thing is, computers can already do lots of things that brains are bad at. Making brainlike software that allows computers to do things brains are good at is something we want to do, because lots of times we'd like our computers to do tasks that involve repetitively doing things brains are bad at mixed with things that brains are good at, while our actual brains are off doing completely unrelated things rather than be interrupted everytime the computer needs someone to do the part brains are good at.
Obviously, it would be good ultimately to make computers that do things that brains are good at even better than brains do them, but since we're far from as good as brains in our computers in many areas, we've got even more distance to cover till we get to better than brains. In the short-term, we're aiming more for "close enough to brains" so that for tasks which are hard for computers but trivial for brains, we can reduce the amount of human involvement needed to get the task done.
That's not entirely true.
How does that follow? Granting, for the sake of discussion, that everything in the natural universe, including brains, was created by God, that hardly implies that we can't copy brains. We can reproduce many naturally occurring things, after all, through understanding their structure and composition.
Diamonds are things made by God, and we can copy them.
Wasn't doing a better job than CSS at providing that for a wide variety of media one of the big purposes of XSL:FO? Unfortunately, while there were a few proof of concept browsers early on with rough support for XSL:FO, mostly support for it seems, from what I've seen, to have gone all to tools designed for print/PDF production.
"USB stick security" seems to be something that is largely unnecessary in the first place. You don't need any special security on the stick, assuming you have reasonably strong encryption available on the computers you use the stick with: you encrypt data, give it to the stick, and decrypt it when you take it off. There are vanishingly few cases where more security than that is really needed, like self-destruct mechanisms.
If you had actual security (i.e., used reasonably strong encryption) to start with, the obscurity wouldn't add substantially to the security. Here, the only protection was security through insufficient obscurity, so yes, additional obscurity would have made it marginally less easy to access, but would have been nowhere near as good as actually using strong encryption on the data, and wouldn't have made the system "secure" in any significant sense.
Its not as secure, in at least one potentially important sense, as a fax if the printers on which they can print the encrypted PDF are shared and not in a location that is locked 24/7 with limited access, but the fax machine they have you send it to is.
It may be equally or more secure in transmission, but that may not be their concern.
I'm presuming a situation where, as is common, police are already generally forbidden by law or regulation to violate traffic laws except in emergencies, and the issue is just whether or not they should be automatically ticketed if the jurisdiction has a system which automatically tickets non-police vehicles.
If the jurisdiction has given police a blanket exemption from traffic laws even in non-emergency situations, for whatever reason, clearly they shouldn't be ticketed for violating them, whether automatically or otherwise.
IOW, if the law applies to the police, it ought to be applied to the police. If it doesn't, clearly it shouldn't; debate over whether the law ought to apply to the police is a separate issue from the point I was making.
I can't speak for other states, but California's speed law places the posted limit as an upper bound, but also makes it speeding to at any time exceed the speed that is safe for the conditions and circumstances even where that is lower than the posted limit; if you are going too fast to respond to a red light at an intersection, you are also going too fast to respond to the traffic that has the green light and therefore the right of way in that intersection and are, ipso facto, speeding.
This also extends to the case of rain or snow: if you are driving fast enough that your safe stopping distance under the conditions does not allow you to react to the light changing, you are again driving faster than is safe for the road conditions, and therefore speeding.
My understanding is that such "Code 2 high" response is used in circumstances that warrant a Code 3 response but where there are particular grounds for concern that using lights-and-siren would further endanger lives by alerting subjects to the approach of law enforcement.
While, clearly, this is a dangerous practice, its also dangerous not to do it where it is legitimate called for. While one might fault specific decisions to do it, its not hard, I would say, to see the potential need here.