Slashback: VoIPersecution, Israel, Plug-in 334
That damn eye of Sauron is just everywhere! Amigan writes "Over a year ago, the Israeli government did a buyout on their contract with Microsoft - and it was hailed as a great opportunity for OSS. It is now being reported that the Israeli government is back in the Microsoft fold - and again licensing software - not outright purchasing."
No good technology goes unpunished by the inertia police. First it was the state of Texas that decided to sue Vonage over consumer impressions of its support of 911 service; now, as kamikaze-Tech writes "Luispr, a member of the Vonage VoIP Forum has posted a TMC.net article titled VoIP E911: Michigan Atty. General Says Vonage Misleads." That article notes Michigan Attorney General Mike Cox's announcement "that Internet-based telephone service provider Vonage Holdings Corporation will now face legal action for misleading consumers about the company's emergency 9-1-1 service."
Note that this is specifically about ads alleged to mislead customers about 911 capabilities, related to but distinct from the objection to VoIP that it doesn't in the first place provide the same location information to 911 operators that conventional telephone service does. See also this earlier story about the FCC pushing 911 requirements on VoIP providers.
Anything you like as long as we already agree. Lawrence Person writes "According to this article, the widely reported study showing unanimous 'scientific consensus' on Global Warming ('not a single paper asserted otherwise') is not only deeply flawed, but that same consensus is artificially maintained by Science and Nature rejecting any papers which disagree with it. 'Dr Benny Peiser, a senior lecturer in the science faculty at Liverpool John Moores University, who decided to conduct his own analysis of the same set of 1,000 documents - and concluded that only one third backed the consensus view, while only one per cent did so explicitly. Dr Peiser submitted his findings to Science in January, and was asked to edit his paper for publication - but has now been told that his results have been rejected on the grounds that the points he make had been "widely dispersed on the internet."'"
Larger bounty could be a quicker picker-upper. crhylove writes "The good people over at downhillbattle.org have upped the bounty for their gaim filesharing plugin from $500 to a nice $1k. They say their initial developer has gone AWOL, and that there is an additional $332 in the fund for the developers discretion. I myself want this plugin! Go GAIM!"
It's so good that people give it away for free. Beth writes with what may be the most impressive of the various agit-prop, free-labor Firefox marketing campaigns undertaken around the event of the 50 millionth download of the browser; "To celebrate 50 million downloads of Firefox, a crew of six students from Oregon State University painted a 30 foot wide mural in the Memorial Union Quad. With kool-aid. And cornstarch. Over 20 pounds of it."
Isaeli Government's Playing by the Old Rules (Score:4, Interesting)
They abused FOSS as an ace card against Microsoft, and never intended to proceed further. People have already speculated this would happen back then, but now I guess it's settled. Too bad our elected representatives don't give a damn about anything but their own seat in the Knesset and their own bank account.
Ummm..... ever think there's a reason? (Score:1, Interesting)
So before we all start yelling "Foul! Those scientists are siding with the environmentalists! They're out to get the Bush Administration!" maybe we should take a look at the papers that were rejected. Lets face it. Pretty much all scientists are out to find truth. We're interested in teh way the world works. But if someone has a bad method, or makes assumptions that aren't borne out by good science or their data, then they don't belong in a serious scientific journal.
Re:on global warming (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm sure some of us would survive...
Oh My God! (Score:3, Interesting)
By Nic Fleming, Science Correspondent
(Filed: 06/05/2005)
More sunlight is reaching the Earth's surface than it was 15 years ago, scientists reveal today.
American researchers say there has been a four per cent rise in the amount of solar radiation reaching the planet's surface since 1990.
Several studies have shown that up until the late 1980s, four to six per cent less sunlight penetrated the atmosphere than during the 1950s.
Researchers believe the shift could be explained by the varying quantity and composition of aerosols, tiny solid and liquid particles suspended in the air.
Other theories include changes in cloud cover or in atmospheric transparency caused by volcanic eruptions.
Scientists believe that an increase in the amount of sunlight reaching the Earth's surface could add to the greenhouse effect, the warming caused by the build-up of carbon dioxide and other gasses that trap heat in the atmosphere.
Many believe the effects of these trends are already being seen in the melting of polar ice and glaciers.
Re:I'll admit... (Score:3, Interesting)
OTOH, I happen to think that Global Warming is probably the result of normal (over geological time) variances in global temperature, but this doesn't lead me to the conclusion you *seem* to have drawn, that curtailing our contributions of greenhouse gasses is futile and counterproductive. I think that it's a fairly high probability that the Earth's climate is a chaotic system, and as such, our contribution *might*, in fact, affect the future climate.
Either way, I see no sin in reducing the profligate amount of pollution we contribute to the environment, and think that a reduction can only have a positive effect on the future.
So, keep your sneering, misguided commie references to yourself.
Reinventing the wheel (Score:4, Interesting)
Windows version:
My AIM menu > Options > Preferences > File Sharing section
Looks fairly functional. You can allow users from your entire buddy list to browse your files, or limit it to a certain group; and optionally have it prompt you before each browse request. The one major thing missing is the ability to search everyone on your buddy list at once, but I suspect this is because AOL doesn't want to become a ??AA target.
Finally the point of my post: Gaim's eventual goal is to have complete compatability with all of the IM networks, yes? Perhaps they should strive to be compatable with official AIM's already-existing feature before reinventing it.
Re:Science often reject dispersed papers (Score:5, Interesting)
Peiser's work was not previously disseminated. Science just made that up. See Peiser's web page about this [livjm.ac.uk].
And Nature has always allowed--indeed, supported--preprint archives [nature.com].
Moderators: please note that I've provided links to back up what I say; the parent seems to be a troll or similar.
(Peiser's submission to Science is available on his web page. It's short and easy to read. If it's right, then the original Oreskes paper was fraudulent.)
Re:On the Global Warming consensus (Score:3, Interesting)
But it still does.
Here endeth the lesson
So which does your statement fall under: lies, damned lies, or politics? Your proof consists entirely of "but it still does" and "there is global warming". At least the media tries to use statistics... you just make an assertion and expect others to view it as proof.
Re:On the Global Warming consensus (Score:3, Interesting)
> warming can
Is that why, based on everything that was published by the major media regarding about global warming in the early nineties, Florida should be underwater by now, but it's, like, not? The media, as near as I can tell, are all so gung-ho about how big a deal global warming is, they exaggerate it out of all proportion.
This isn't to say I don't believe climactic patterns can shift; they can and they (gradually) do. I'm just saying the media exaggerates -- and some scientists exaggerate too, perhaps inadvertently, in an overzealous effort to produce groundbreaking research.
Re:I'll admit... (Score:1, Interesting)
I ask because the only people I know who would have been content were the ones who were blissfully unaware of the atrocities Saddam was committing under the UN's and the US's nose.
Get this through the soft spot at the top of your head: SADDAM WAS A STALIN-TYPE FASCIST SOCIALIST. He was the ENEMY of liberalism. We should have been OPPOSING him.
I'm not necessarily saying we should have supported the war, but honestly we did a huge disservice by making the US go it alone. The US was right to go into Iraq, even though they did it for the wrong reasons. We should have been marching in the streets demanding that our home countries (like mine) work with the US to drop all the WMD bullshit and just say what they meant: that Saddam was an evil son of a bitch who needed to be taken out. That would have been the progressive position.
Instead, it was a reflexive NO WAR thing, and we ended up making the situation a million times worse by having the US go in completely alone, not enough troops, no realism about the plan, to much of an occuptaion. And now innocent Iraqis are dieing by the thousands because the USians tried to impose their brand of corporate "democracy" on Iraqis who knew better. So now, bombs.
If Canada and the EU and the Russians and the UN had all gone in together, Iraq would be a paradise right now instead of a fucking war zone, or instead of the police state Saddam was running.
Re:The newer scientific consensus on global warmin (Score:2, Interesting)
Change might be coming. But to call it a "catastrophe" is just braying alarmism, the sort of hype that so-called environmental movements use to scare people into sending them money.
And there is no solid evidence whatsoever - not a smidgeon - that human beings have caused this change, or are contributing to it. Even if you accept the idea that humans are contributing to climate change (based on faith, since you have nothing else to support this view) there's no idea what the human contribution is. It could be tiny, absolutely inconsequential compared to natural causes.
Assuming you could ever prove such a connection, you'd still have to prove that whatever tactic you've dreamed up to combat this change is going to be effective. And not just effective, but cost-effective as well. That is, if it's not already too late to do anything about it.
I'm all for studying global climate change. Clearly the science involved in the debate is just one step above voodoo, which is testament to the fact that we need to put more effort into comprehending the system. But without comprehension there can be no talk of cause and certainly no talk of manipulation. It's all blather and baseless speculation until enough science has been done to describe how the system works and how it can be altered.
Max
Honest question for global warming advocates (Score:4, Interesting)
It seems well established by that same data that begining in the early fourties there was an extended period of gradually decreasing global temperatures.
It seems well established that atmospheric concentrations of CO2 have been increasing throughout this entire period.
How do environmentalists account for the two decades of decreasing global temperatures?
If sometimes CO2 goes up and global temperatures go up, while other times CO2 goes up and global teperatures go down and we have no explanation for this, isn't the only reasonable conclusion that we don't understand global temperature well enough to draw conclusions about the factors that drive global climate change?
I wouldn't accept any other scientific theory that suspended operation for two decades unless there were some clear explanation for this aberation. Why do we accept global warming?
It is not an exact science... (Score:1, Interesting)
For example,
Seidel,et. al. 2004: Uncertainty in signals of large-scale climate variations in radiosonde and satellite upper-air temperature datasets. Journal of Climate Vol. 17, No. 11, June 2004. Is it against or for the change? Some "sceptics" used it as an evidence against the climate change, but when I read it, I could not find a thing that was against the change. I might be stupid, of course.
It would be nice to see some real results from the "sceptics", instead of this boring whining that has been going on for more than ten years...
Re:Honest question for global warming advocates (Score:3, Interesting)
True (underlying temps at least).
"It seems well established by that same data that begining in the early fourties there was an extended period of gradually decreasing global temperatures."
WAR + aftermath
"It seems well established that atmospheric concentrations of CO2 have been increasing throughout this entire period."
Prior to 1960 the CO2 numbers are not reliable.
Imagine the end of WW2, you shut down the factories making planes, tanks and ships and start rebuilding your agriculture so you can eventually end rationing. How would the CO2 increase post war? Wouldn't it have dropped till we recovered in the 1950s?
"How do environmentalists account for the two decades of decreasing global temperatures?"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warming [wikipedia.org]
Take a look at the graph here. Notice the upshoot in temperature as the second world war kicked in, then notice the sharp drop at the end of the second world war.
I put it to you that common sense says that humans burning fossil fuels -> makes co2 -> more co2 in atmosphere -> higher temperature.
I also put it to you that its not a problem because oil will run out too soon.
Re:I'll admit... (Score:3, Interesting)
Nations can't make choices. Even democracies do not have the right to violate individual rights (Which she mentions, but doesn't seem to grasp.)
Our government is a criminal conspiracy that doesn't even follow its own laws-- and just because we are less enslaved than the people in the USSR, does not mean we are free.
Re:I'll admit... (Score:1, Interesting)
WTF? How the hell can you be both a fascist and a socialist? Don't bring up the Nazi "national socialism" crap; it doesn't really work like that.
And stop pretending that the US went into Iraq to bring the Iraqis "freedom". If Bush was so interested in freedom, he wouldn't be supporting the dictatorships of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Pakistan, just to name a few.
Re:I'll admit... (Score:1, Interesting)