61
3DHS / For those bitter gun owners out there.
« on: July 05, 2008, 06:20:51 PM »
Don't know if anyone is making one for the bitter god worshipers...
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63
3DHS / Judge Orders YouTube to Give All User Histories to Viacom
« on: July 03, 2008, 06:35:34 PM »
By Ryan Singel
Google will have to turn over every record of every video watched by YouTube users, including users' names and IP addresses, to Viacom, which is suing Google for allowing clips of its copyright videos to appear on YouTube, a judge ruled Wednesday.
Viacom wants the data to prove that infringing material is more popular than user-created videos, which could be used to increase Google's liability if it is found guilty of contributory infringement.
Viacom filed suit against Google in March 2007, seeking more than $1 billion in damages for allowing users to upload clips of Viacom's copyright material. Google argues that the law provides a safe harbor for online services so long as they comply with copyright takedown requests.
Although Google argued that turning over the data would invade its users' privacy, the judge's ruling (.pdf) described that argument as "speculative" and ordered Google to turn over the logs on a set of four tera-byte hard drives.
The judge also turned Google's own defense of its data retention policies -- that IP addresses of computers aren't personally revealing in and of themselves, against it to justify the log dump.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation has already reacted, calling the order a violation of the Video Privacy Protection act that "threatens to expose deeply private information."
The order also requires Google to turn over copies of all videos that it has taken down for any reason.
Viacom also requested YouTube's source code, the code for identifying repeat copyright infringement uploads, copies of all videos marked private, and Google's advertising database schema.
Those requests were denied in whole, except that Google will have to turn over data about how often each private video has been watched and by how many persons.
Original Article
Google will have to turn over every record of every video watched by YouTube users, including users' names and IP addresses, to Viacom, which is suing Google for allowing clips of its copyright videos to appear on YouTube, a judge ruled Wednesday.
Viacom wants the data to prove that infringing material is more popular than user-created videos, which could be used to increase Google's liability if it is found guilty of contributory infringement.
Viacom filed suit against Google in March 2007, seeking more than $1 billion in damages for allowing users to upload clips of Viacom's copyright material. Google argues that the law provides a safe harbor for online services so long as they comply with copyright takedown requests.
Although Google argued that turning over the data would invade its users' privacy, the judge's ruling (.pdf) described that argument as "speculative" and ordered Google to turn over the logs on a set of four tera-byte hard drives.
The judge also turned Google's own defense of its data retention policies -- that IP addresses of computers aren't personally revealing in and of themselves, against it to justify the log dump.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation has already reacted, calling the order a violation of the Video Privacy Protection act that "threatens to expose deeply private information."
The order also requires Google to turn over copies of all videos that it has taken down for any reason.
Viacom also requested YouTube's source code, the code for identifying repeat copyright infringement uploads, copies of all videos marked private, and Google's advertising database schema.
Those requests were denied in whole, except that Google will have to turn over data about how often each private video has been watched and by how many persons.
Original Article
64
3DHS / Rescued hostages arrive in United States
« on: July 03, 2008, 07:50:58 AM »
SAN ANTONIO, Texas (CNN) -- Three rescued Americans held hostage for more than five years by a Colombian rebel group arrived home in the United States late Wednesday.
Marc Gonsalves, Thomas Howes and Keith Stansell were U.S. government contractors who had been captured and held by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) since their plane crashed in a remote region of the country in February 2003.
The men were quickly ferried across town in helicopters to Brooke Army Medical Center, where they were to undergo medical examinations and debriefing.
They were among 15 hostages rescued Wednesday in a Colombian military operation, according to the country's defense minister.
"I didn't even know what to do," said Kyle Stansell, Keith's son, who said he was on the beach when his stepfather called with the news. "I just started freaking out -- screaming, yelling. I ran as fast as I could off the beach." Video Stansell family eagerly awaits captive's return ?
The contractors were conducting a joint U.S.-Colombian aerial counternarcotics mission when their aircraft made an emergency landing because of mechanical failure. FARC members patrolling the area reached the aircraft and killed two crew members.
"This is a day of enormous joy for Marc, Keith and Tom and their families," said Admiral James Stavridis, commander of the U.S. military's southern command. "My deepest congratulations to the Colombian security forces, who executed a brilliant operation to successfully free the hostages."
Stavridis has kept a picture of the hostages on his desk since taking command in 2006 and said their release has been one of his top priorities.
"You could hear the cheers throughout the building when we announced the success of the rescue," he said.
The U.S. government considers the FARC a terrorist group and has refused to negotiate with them while publicly urging the group to release the Americans.
"We have supported and continue to support any credible initiative by any leader or organization, in coordination with the government of Colombia, to achieve the safe recovery of all of the hostages," the U.S. State Department said in a written statement in February marking the fifth year of their captivity. "Our thoughts and prayers remain with the hostages and their loved ones."
The FARC, which has fought a long-standing and complicated conflict with Colombia's government and right-wing paramilitary groups, defends the taking of captives as a legitimate act of war and is believed to hold roughly 750 prisoners in the nation's remote jungles.
Before news of the rescue broke Wednesday, U.S. senator and presumptive Republican presidential nominee John McCain said he had mentioned the three in talks with government officials during his visit to Colombia -- part of a three-day visit to Latin America -- and that Colombian President Alvaro Uribe had briefed him on the planned raid Tuesday night.
"It is great news," McCain said. "Now we must renew our efforts to free all of the other innocent people held hostage."
Earlier this year, Bill Richardson, the Democratic governor of New Mexico and a former presidential candidate and U.S. ambassador, met with Uribe and Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez at the request of the contractors' families.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said the U.S. government was working Wednesday afternoon to reunite the former hostages with their families. Rice also called on the FARC to release its remaining hostages.
"We hold the FARC responsible for the health and well-being of all hostages," she said in a written statement. "We commend the government of Colombia for its sustained efforts to secure the safe return of all FARC hostages. Our thoughts and prayers remain with those still held by the FARC and their loved ones."
Several months after their capture, a Colombian journalist filmed the three men at a rebel camp, where FARC commanders branded them CIA spies and prisoners of war. Family members never saw them again until just months ago, when they were shown in a captured rebel video.
"It's been a long haul here," George Gonsalves, Marc's father, said at the time. "It has been a very trying experience, to say the least, not knowing how he is doing, what he is doing." The video showed Gonsalves brushing bugs away from his face and Stansell staring silently into the camera.
Only Howes spoke, giving details about his will and telling his wife he is proud of her.
"You think every year is going to be the year," George Gonsalves said. "That is what I thought last year and certainly I'll hope for that this year."
Original Article
67
3DHS / And people wonder why everyone should understand machines before they use them..
« on: June 23, 2008, 08:15:50 AM »
Woman Calls Orem Police To Free Her From Her Locked Car
Automatic car features are supposed to make life easier for motorists, but they may be leaving some people without the know-how to do things the old-fashioned way. That's what happened to a driver in Utah County who became trapped inside her own car.
A woman called Orem police Friday afternoon needing help because her battery died and she was locked inside her car.
When police arrived, they found the woman sitting in the car, unable to get herself out. She couldn't hear the officers instructions through the rolled-up windows so she motioned to them to call her on her cell phone, according to police.
Once officers were able to talk to the woman on the phone, they were able to tell her how to manually operate the slide lock mechanism on the inside door panel to open the door and free herself.
"I'm just glad she had a cell phone to call for help," an officer said.
Original Article
Automatic car features are supposed to make life easier for motorists, but they may be leaving some people without the know-how to do things the old-fashioned way. That's what happened to a driver in Utah County who became trapped inside her own car.
A woman called Orem police Friday afternoon needing help because her battery died and she was locked inside her car.
When police arrived, they found the woman sitting in the car, unable to get herself out. She couldn't hear the officers instructions through the rolled-up windows so she motioned to them to call her on her cell phone, according to police.
Once officers were able to talk to the woman on the phone, they were able to tell her how to manually operate the slide lock mechanism on the inside door panel to open the door and free herself.
"I'm just glad she had a cell phone to call for help," an officer said.
Original Article
69
3DHS / Comedian George Carlin Dies in Los Angeles at 71
« on: June 23, 2008, 07:49:19 AM »
George Carlin, 71, the much-honored American stand-up comedian whose long career was distinguished by pointed social commentary that placed him on the cultural cutting edge, died last night in Santa Monica, Calif.
His death was reported by the Reuters news agency and on the Los Angeles Times Web site. He had long struggled with health problems and a heart condition dating to the 1970s.
Carlin was selected last week by the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts to receive this year's Mark Twain Prize, a lifetime achievement award presented to an outstanding comedian.
Over a career of half a century, Carlin placed himself in the forefront of comic commentators on the American scene. He was particularly known for an album that referred to what he described as the seven words that could not be used on television.
The playing of the album on a radio station led to a case that went to the Supreme Court, and the material was judged indecent but not obscene. The legal controversy brought about the enunciation of a rule permitting a ban on certain material when children are most likely to be in the audience.
The case was one of the highlights of a career that included TV and radio performances, including HBO specials and many comic albums.
The New York-born performer, who also was an Air Force veteran, once summed up his approach:
"I think it is the duty of the comedian to find out where the line is drawn and cross it deliberately."
Carlin's entertainment career began in 1956 at a radio station in Shreveport, La. while he was in the service.
In the early 1960s, he began his one-man act, and his live appearances and the albums he recorded proved highly popular.
His wife Brenda, predeceased him. They had a daughter, Kelly. A second wife survives him.
Original Article
His death was reported by the Reuters news agency and on the Los Angeles Times Web site. He had long struggled with health problems and a heart condition dating to the 1970s.
Carlin was selected last week by the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts to receive this year's Mark Twain Prize, a lifetime achievement award presented to an outstanding comedian.
Over a career of half a century, Carlin placed himself in the forefront of comic commentators on the American scene. He was particularly known for an album that referred to what he described as the seven words that could not be used on television.
The playing of the album on a radio station led to a case that went to the Supreme Court, and the material was judged indecent but not obscene. The legal controversy brought about the enunciation of a rule permitting a ban on certain material when children are most likely to be in the audience.
The case was one of the highlights of a career that included TV and radio performances, including HBO specials and many comic albums.
The New York-born performer, who also was an Air Force veteran, once summed up his approach:
"I think it is the duty of the comedian to find out where the line is drawn and cross it deliberately."
Carlin's entertainment career began in 1956 at a radio station in Shreveport, La. while he was in the service.
In the early 1960s, he began his one-man act, and his live appearances and the albums he recorded proved highly popular.
His wife Brenda, predeceased him. They had a daughter, Kelly. A second wife survives him.
Original Article
70
3DHS / Narrow Interview
« on: June 22, 2008, 10:01:45 AM »Quote
This from Major General Buckman (Ret.)
My niece, Katelyn, stationed at Baluud , Iraq was assigned, with others of her detachment, to be an escort/guard for Martha Raddatz of ABC News as she covered John McCain's recent trip to Iraq. Katelyn and her Captain stood directly behind Raddatz as she queried GI's walking past. They kept count of the GI's and you should remember these numbers. She asked 60 GI's who they planned to vote for in November. 54 said John McCain, 4 said Obama and 2 said Hillary. Katelyn called home and told her Mom and Dad to watch ABC news the next night because she was standing directly behind Raddatz and maybe they'd see her on TV. Mom and Dad of course, called and emailed all the kinfolk to watch the newscast and maybe see Katelyn. Well, of course, we all watched and what we saw wasn't a glimpse of Katelyn, but got a hell'uva view of skewed news! After a dissertation on McCain's trip and speech, ABC showed 5 GI's being asked by Raddatz how they were going to vote in November; 3 for Obama and 2 for Clinton. Not one mention of the 54 for McCain!
On 7 April 2008, ABC News aired a report about how closely U.S. military personnel stationed in Iraq and Afghanistan are following the current U.S. presidential campaigns. The segment featured reporter Martha Raddatz questioning service members in Iraq about what issues were important to them and which candidates they were supporting. In June 2008 the above-quoted e-mail account began circulating, claiming that Raddatz had interviewed some 60 soldiers in Iraq, 54 of whom expressed a preference for the Republican presidential candidate, Senator John McCain -- but none of those 54 interviews was used in the aired segment, which instead featured 5 different interviewees expressing a preference for one of the two Democratic candidates, Senators Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.
As for what material actually made it into the finished segment, the e-mail is largely true, although it's a tiny bit off in claiming that there was "not one mention of the 54 [soldiers] for McCain": The beginning of the aired segment included six brief interviews with soldiers, three of whom expressed a preference for Barack Obama, two for Hillary Clinton, and one for John McCain.
As to the question of whether Martha Raddatz really interviewed 60 service members in Iraq and found 54 of them to be John McCain supporters, that's difficult to independently verify without access to outtakes (or to someone who has viewed them). It's probably fair to say, though, that any random, representative sampling of U.S. military personnel in Iraq would find a much higher proportion of support for John McCain (over either of the two leading Democratic candidates) than one in six!
Whether this segment reveals some deliberate agenda on the part of ABC to mispresent the political preferences of U.S. military personnel is an argumentative and subjective issue. One the one hand, one side claims that the ABC report wasn't supposed to be a representative sampling of party preferences; it was supposed to illustrate that American troops are following the presidential campaign closely and evaluating candidates based on their positions on all the issues, not just the war in Iraq. Hence, the preponderance of interviews showing soldiers who were not (as many might expect) reflexively endorsing the Republican candidate, John McCain, even though he would almost certainly be more supportive of continuing their current mission than either of the Democrats.
On the other hand, critics maintain that by showing only one soldier's expressing a preference for the Republican candidate (prefaced by a laconic Martha Raddatz voice-over intoning, "there were some McCain backers ..."), by separating the portion of the report in which soldiers discussed their candidate preferences from the portion in which they discussed what issues (other than the war) were important to them, and by identifying the report with titles such as "Whom Are Our Troops Endorsing?" and "Surprising Political Endorsements by U.S. Troops," ABC News presented the piece as being a survey of American troops' presidential preferences while offering viewers a distinctly skewed perspective of those preferences.
Based on the wide circulation of the original e-mail and the flood of (mostly negative) comments about this report that have been posted to ABC's web site, we expect that ABC News and/or Martha Raddatz will be offering some insight into this now-controversial segment in the near future.
http://www.snopes.com/politics/war/raddatz.asp
71
3DHS / Mars Emerging from Ice Age, Data Suggest
« on: June 14, 2008, 08:18:09 PM »
Article from about 5 years ago. Data continues to be collected, and it all indicates that Mars is undergoing global warming.
Scientists have suspected in recent years that Mars might be undergoing some sort of global warming. New data points to the possibility it is emerging from an ice age.
NASA's Mars Odyssey orbiter has been surveying the planet for nearly a full Martian year now, and it has spotted seasonal changes like the advance and retreat of polar ice. It's also gathering data of a possible longer trend.
There appears to be too much frozen water at low-latitude regions -- away from the frigid poles -- given the current climate of Mars. The situation is not in equilibrium, said William Feldman of the Los Alamos National Laboratory.
"One explanation could be that Mars is just coming out of an ice age," Feldman said. "In some low-latitude areas, the ice has already dissipated. In others, that process is slower and hasn't reached an equilibrium yet. Those areas are like the patches of snow you sometimes see persisting in protected spots long after the last snowfall of the winter."
Frozen water makes up as much as 10 percent of the top 3 feet (1 meter) of surface material in some regions close to the equator. Dust deposits may be covering and insulating the lingering ice, Feldman said.
Feldman is the lead scientist for an Odyssey instrument that assesses water content indirectly through measurements of neutron emissions. He and other Odyssey scientists described their recent findings today at the fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco.
"Odyssey is giving us indications of recent global climate change in Mars," said Jeffrey Plaut, project scientist for the mission at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
High latitude regions of Mars have layers with differing ice content within the top 20 inches (half-meter) or so of the surface, researchers conclude from mapping of hydrogen abundance based on gamma-ray emissions.
"A model that fits the data has three layers near the surface," said William Boynton of the University of Arizona, Tucson, team leader for the gamma-ray spectrometer instrument on Odyssey. "The very top layer would be dry, with no ice. The next layer would contain ice in the pore spaces between grains of soil. Beneath that would be a very ice-rich layer, 60 to nearly 100 percent water ice."
Boynton interprets the iciest layer as a deposit of snow or frost, mixed with a little windblown dust, from an era when the climate was colder than nowadays. The middle layer could be the result of changes brought in a warmer era, when ice down to a certain depth dissipated into the atmosphere. The dust left behind collapsed into a soil layer with limited pore space for returning ice.
More study is needed to determine for sure what's going on.
Other Odyssey instruments are providing other pieces of the puzzle. Images from the orbiter's camera system have been combined into the highest resolution complete map ever made of Mars' south polar region.
"We can now accurately count craters in the layered materials of the polar regions to get an idea how old they are," said Phil Christensen of Arizona State University, Tempe, principal investigator for the camera system.
Temperature information from the camera system's infrared imaging has produced a surprise about dark patches that dot bright expanses of seasonal carbon-dioxide ice.
"Those dark features look like places where the ice has gone away, but thermal infrared maps show that even the dark areas have temperatures so low they must be carbon-dioxide ice." Christensen said. "One possibility is that the ice is clear in these areas and we're seeing down through the ice to features underneath."
Original Article
Scientists have suspected in recent years that Mars might be undergoing some sort of global warming. New data points to the possibility it is emerging from an ice age.
NASA's Mars Odyssey orbiter has been surveying the planet for nearly a full Martian year now, and it has spotted seasonal changes like the advance and retreat of polar ice. It's also gathering data of a possible longer trend.
There appears to be too much frozen water at low-latitude regions -- away from the frigid poles -- given the current climate of Mars. The situation is not in equilibrium, said William Feldman of the Los Alamos National Laboratory.
"One explanation could be that Mars is just coming out of an ice age," Feldman said. "In some low-latitude areas, the ice has already dissipated. In others, that process is slower and hasn't reached an equilibrium yet. Those areas are like the patches of snow you sometimes see persisting in protected spots long after the last snowfall of the winter."
Frozen water makes up as much as 10 percent of the top 3 feet (1 meter) of surface material in some regions close to the equator. Dust deposits may be covering and insulating the lingering ice, Feldman said.
Feldman is the lead scientist for an Odyssey instrument that assesses water content indirectly through measurements of neutron emissions. He and other Odyssey scientists described their recent findings today at the fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco.
"Odyssey is giving us indications of recent global climate change in Mars," said Jeffrey Plaut, project scientist for the mission at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
High latitude regions of Mars have layers with differing ice content within the top 20 inches (half-meter) or so of the surface, researchers conclude from mapping of hydrogen abundance based on gamma-ray emissions.
"A model that fits the data has three layers near the surface," said William Boynton of the University of Arizona, Tucson, team leader for the gamma-ray spectrometer instrument on Odyssey. "The very top layer would be dry, with no ice. The next layer would contain ice in the pore spaces between grains of soil. Beneath that would be a very ice-rich layer, 60 to nearly 100 percent water ice."
Boynton interprets the iciest layer as a deposit of snow or frost, mixed with a little windblown dust, from an era when the climate was colder than nowadays. The middle layer could be the result of changes brought in a warmer era, when ice down to a certain depth dissipated into the atmosphere. The dust left behind collapsed into a soil layer with limited pore space for returning ice.
More study is needed to determine for sure what's going on.
Other Odyssey instruments are providing other pieces of the puzzle. Images from the orbiter's camera system have been combined into the highest resolution complete map ever made of Mars' south polar region.
"We can now accurately count craters in the layered materials of the polar regions to get an idea how old they are," said Phil Christensen of Arizona State University, Tempe, principal investigator for the camera system.
Temperature information from the camera system's infrared imaging has produced a surprise about dark patches that dot bright expanses of seasonal carbon-dioxide ice.
"Those dark features look like places where the ice has gone away, but thermal infrared maps show that even the dark areas have temperatures so low they must be carbon-dioxide ice." Christensen said. "One possibility is that the ice is clear in these areas and we're seeing down through the ice to features underneath."
Original Article
72
3DHS / Brown wins crunch vote on 42 days
« on: June 14, 2008, 08:07:48 PM »
Prime Minister Gordon Brown has narrowly won a House of Commons vote on extending the maximum time police can hold terror suspects to 42 days.
Thirty-six Labour MPs joined forces with Conservatives and Lib Dems to vote against the proposals.
But that was not enough to defeat them - although the government still faces a battle in the House of Lords.
The 42-day proposal was passed by 315 MPs to 306 - with votes by the nine DUP MPs proving crucial.
Six SNP MPs also voted against the proposal, as did three Plaid Cymru MPs and three from the Northern Ireland-based SDLP.
But there was uproar in the Commons as the result of the key vote on 42 days was announced after five hours of tense debate - with Tory and Lib Dem MPs shouting "You've been bought" at the DUP benches.
They claim the DUP was offered a string of inducements - including extra financial help for Northern Ireland - to guarantee its support.
Labour rebels claimed the DUP had obtained guarantees that the government would block efforts to use the Human Embryology and Fertility Bill, currently going through Parliament, to loosen abortion rules in Northern Ireland.
They are also said to have cut a deal to keep revenue from water rates, which Westminster had been set to claw back.
But the DUP denies it was promised any financial support and insists it voted out of principle.
DUP MP Rev William McCrea said: "The issue was on national security."
Northern Ireland Secretary Shaun Woodward told the BBC: "There was no deal. There is no deal. They decided on principle. They made up their own minds."
For the Conservatives, shadow home secretary David Davis the government had lost the argument "hands down" but had "bought the vote".
And he vowed to fight it in the Lords - predicting the 42-day proposal would never become law.
"It has no authority, it has no legitimacy and it will be thrown out," he added.
Lib Dem home affairs spokesman Chris Huhne said the manner of Labour's victory had been "astonishing" - and for them to rely on the DUP to get such a crucial vote through the Commons would "have been laughed out of court a few weeks ago".
The sole Ulster Unionist MP, Lady Hermon, voted with the government.
'National security'
Home Office minister Tony McNulty acknowledged the government still faced a battle to get 42-day detention on to the statute books.
"I accept fully that I continue to have a real job with some 30 or so of my colleagues to show that this is the way to go, that this is proportionate and accords with civil liberties and democracy.
"I don't profess it [the 42-days proposal] to be in a perfect state yet."
He added that he wanted to talk to Labour colleagues and opposition MPs to see "how this reserve power can be put through both houses in a consensual fashion."
Keith Vaz, Labour chairman of the Home Affairs Committee, defended Home Secretary Jacqui Smith for offering concessions to MPs in an attempt to win them over.
"That is the nature of government. How dreadful it would be that the government should decide on a particular course of action and then not consult with anyone else," he said.
Tony Lloyd, chairman of the Parliamentary Labour Party, said the result leaves the government "very much in tune with what the nation wants" and accuses other parties of acting "opportunistically".
And Lord Carlile, the government's independent reviewer of anti-terror legislation, said he was "satisfied that Parliament has done the right thing".
But one of the Labour rebels, John McDonnell, said: "Any attempt to present this as some sort of victory for the government will ring absolutely hollow.
"There will be widespread consternation among our supporters in the country seeing a Labour government prepared to use every tactic available in its determination to crush essential civil liberties, which have been won by the labour movement over generations."
Original Article
Thirty-six Labour MPs joined forces with Conservatives and Lib Dems to vote against the proposals.
But that was not enough to defeat them - although the government still faces a battle in the House of Lords.
The 42-day proposal was passed by 315 MPs to 306 - with votes by the nine DUP MPs proving crucial.
Six SNP MPs also voted against the proposal, as did three Plaid Cymru MPs and three from the Northern Ireland-based SDLP.
But there was uproar in the Commons as the result of the key vote on 42 days was announced after five hours of tense debate - with Tory and Lib Dem MPs shouting "You've been bought" at the DUP benches.
They claim the DUP was offered a string of inducements - including extra financial help for Northern Ireland - to guarantee its support.
Labour rebels claimed the DUP had obtained guarantees that the government would block efforts to use the Human Embryology and Fertility Bill, currently going through Parliament, to loosen abortion rules in Northern Ireland.
They are also said to have cut a deal to keep revenue from water rates, which Westminster had been set to claw back.
But the DUP denies it was promised any financial support and insists it voted out of principle.
DUP MP Rev William McCrea said: "The issue was on national security."
Northern Ireland Secretary Shaun Woodward told the BBC: "There was no deal. There is no deal. They decided on principle. They made up their own minds."
For the Conservatives, shadow home secretary David Davis the government had lost the argument "hands down" but had "bought the vote".
And he vowed to fight it in the Lords - predicting the 42-day proposal would never become law.
"It has no authority, it has no legitimacy and it will be thrown out," he added.
Lib Dem home affairs spokesman Chris Huhne said the manner of Labour's victory had been "astonishing" - and for them to rely on the DUP to get such a crucial vote through the Commons would "have been laughed out of court a few weeks ago".
The sole Ulster Unionist MP, Lady Hermon, voted with the government.
'National security'
Home Office minister Tony McNulty acknowledged the government still faced a battle to get 42-day detention on to the statute books.
"I accept fully that I continue to have a real job with some 30 or so of my colleagues to show that this is the way to go, that this is proportionate and accords with civil liberties and democracy.
"I don't profess it [the 42-days proposal] to be in a perfect state yet."
He added that he wanted to talk to Labour colleagues and opposition MPs to see "how this reserve power can be put through both houses in a consensual fashion."
Keith Vaz, Labour chairman of the Home Affairs Committee, defended Home Secretary Jacqui Smith for offering concessions to MPs in an attempt to win them over.
"That is the nature of government. How dreadful it would be that the government should decide on a particular course of action and then not consult with anyone else," he said.
Tony Lloyd, chairman of the Parliamentary Labour Party, said the result leaves the government "very much in tune with what the nation wants" and accuses other parties of acting "opportunistically".
And Lord Carlile, the government's independent reviewer of anti-terror legislation, said he was "satisfied that Parliament has done the right thing".
But one of the Labour rebels, John McDonnell, said: "Any attempt to present this as some sort of victory for the government will ring absolutely hollow.
"There will be widespread consternation among our supporters in the country seeing a Labour government prepared to use every tactic available in its determination to crush essential civil liberties, which have been won by the labour movement over generations."
Original Article
73
3DHS / It's the Platform, Stupid: Baby steps are the way to energy independence.
« on: June 14, 2008, 08:04:46 PM »
By Robert X. Cringely
bob@cringely.com External Link
When this column first appeared in 1997, the price of oil in 2007 dollars was about $20 per barrel. This week it is $122 per barrel -- more than six times as high. Many things besides the price of oil have changed in those 11 years. Thanks to Moore's Law a new PC today is typically 25-30 times as powerful as the machines we had in 1997 yet costs less than half as many dollars to buy. Consider inflation and the cost of computing is even lower. Our new PCs are substantially more energy-efficient on a per-MIPS basis, too. Though the bigger shift of attitude might simply be that now we care about how much power our computer is using versus simply not noticing a decade ago. Back then data center power consumption was inconsequential compared to the cost of Internet bandwidth. Today Google builds its data centers where the power is, not where the fiber or even the users are. Power is everything in modern computing and is becoming ever more important to our lives in general. The high cost of energy is starting to cause real pain in our society and real pain is, unfortunately, about the only incentive strong enough to make us change our ways.
I know a little bit about the oil business, which is at the root of our energy crisis today. At one point my job was to write about the international oil industry. I worked off and on in the Middle East back then and attended OPEC meetings in Vienna and Geneva during an earlier oil crisis when prices went for a moment to $43 per barrel and we all held our breath then, too. I was sitting in the lobby of OPEC headquarters in Vienna that day when Carlos "The Jackal" came in the door, told the sleepy off-duty Vienna cop providing security that he was from "the Palestinian delegation" and walked right into the big meeting, taking the oil ministers hostage.
Given that I know a little bit about the energy business, then, and I still have friends in it, here is what's going to happen over the next 2-3 years. The price of oil is going to come down substantially, but probably never to pre-9/11 price points. At least half of the current price for crude oil is driven by speculation and market manipulation as it was during the original oil crisis of 1973 (I have an interesting story about that in this week's links). But unlike '73, today our flexibility is less and our excess capacity is less, too. High prices will cut demand, spur exploration, and force governments to open new areas for exploration, but it is doubtful that we will EVER see oil prices under $60 per barrel again.
This is not all bad. Just as high oil prices spur exploration they also encourage conservation. With $2.50-$3 gas with us probably forever, we're finally starting to learn to do things somewhat differently, though it isn't at all clear to me whether these lessons will stay learned after prices subside somewhat.
Which brings me to the moral of this story -- the importance of platforms and standards, and when and how to abandon or change them. This applies to ANY capital-intensive technology, whether it is computing or energy or transportation.
The life expectancy of a car in the U.S. is about 10 years, during which it will pass through an average of three owners. I use cars as an example because they are an intrinsic part of any American energy crisis and we generally all own one. This automobile life expectancy means that any technology improvement has to trickle into the market because only about 10 percent of the total fleet is replaced each year with new cars -- the only cars that are likely to have the latest technology. So if some car company comes up with a way to get 100 miles per gallon, it is likely that no more than 10 percent of us will be getting mileage like that a year from now. The rest of us are stuck with old technology until we can afford to change: we're on the old platform.
Platform, in this automotive example, means some significantly different technology that offers real advantages though usually at a cost. Hybrids, diesels, electric cars, fuel cells, hydrogen, and ethanol cars are all examples of platforms.
If we want revolutionary change -- change where nearly everyone moves to the new platform in short order -- that is usually going to require heroic action on the part of government or the occasional mad scientist. If the mad scientist were able to offer a car that got 100 miles per gallon, was safer than the current standard, yet cost substantially LESS to buy, then maybe more of us would transition more than the traditional 10 percent replacement model suggests. Governments, on the other hand, could simply outlaw the old cars and force us to upgrade, though it still might not happen if we couldn't afford the new cars.
What's key here is the push and pull of platform change. We see this all the time in computing where somebody comes up with a clever new idea but for that idea to succeed we all have to get new computers. How likely is that? Well it depends on how great the improvement being offered. With computers I can tell you that the improvement has to be pretty darned substantial to inspire us all to jump. That's because Moore's Law is going to give us a 100 percent improvement anyway on our next PC without having to throw away any software or peripherals. So inspiring a revolution in computing generally requires a performance improvement of 10X or more.
There is a similar effect to be seen in the adoption of new energy technologies. That list of platforms I rattled off a few paragraphs back offer advantages but not without cost. Hybrids and diesels are the easiest to accept, but both are a bit more expensive. Electric, fuel cells, hydrogen, and ethanol are more expensive, too, but they also require infrastructure changes like finding new ways to manufacture, transport, store, and sell fuel. You won't go on a long road trip in your electric car until there are reliable places to plug in and recharge, for example.
This is our dilemma: we want to make radical energy improvements but these typically require expensive platform changes and platform changes can take a decade or more to happen.
A better solution would be to leave the platform alone and find a single variable that could be changed for everyone practically overnight.
Cars are the key to U.S. energy consumption. The dominant automotive platform here, whether you drive a truck, a car, or a motorcycle, relies on gasoline-fueled internal combustion engines. That's the platform we are unlikely to change quickly. So how do we leave that platform intact and unchanged, ask nobody to significantly sacrifice, yet still achieve the noble (and Nobel) goals of lower fuel consumption, lower greenhouse gas emissions, lower pollution levels, dramatically lower oil consumption, lower cost, and lower geopolitical vulnerability for our country? There's only one way I know to accomplish this: change the fuel.
This happened to a certain extent in Brazil during the '70s and '80s by embracing ethanol. But ethanol has less energy per gallon so fuel consumption goes up and mileage goes down. Ethanol can't be shipped in pipelines also used for oil. Cars have to be modified to run on it and even then there are issues about internal corrosion. Ethanol is far from perfect. What's needed is a replacement for gasoline that looks and feels and tastes just like gas to your car but isn't made from oil. Then the platform could remain completely unchanged yet my 1966 Thunderbird (and the world) could benefit starting with the very next tankful.
There is such a fuel, developed by a husband and wife team of scientists working in Indiana in cooperation with Purdue University. This new fuel, called SwiftFuel, is right now intended for airplanes, not cars, but the lessons are the same.
Piston-powered airplanes have a unique fuel problem. Their high-compression air-cooled engines require higher-octane fuel to avoid destructive engine knock. This higher octane is achieved through the use of tetraethyl lead as a fuel additive. Remember lead was outlawed from car gas in the U.S. more than 30 years ago to good effect: we all have significantly less of the toxic metal in our bodies than we used to. But lead is still used in aviation fuel, which accounts for an infinitesimal portion of total U.S. gasoline consumption. Lead is on its way out for aircraft use, too, with international treaties scheduling its demise in 2010.
If we aren't going to retire all the little airplanes in America -- force a total platform change -- we'll have to come up with a replacement for tetraethyl lead. The additive used most for this is ethanol added to gasoline to bump up the octane number. But ethanol does a number on seals and hoses typically used in aircraft to an extent that it is specifically prohibited by the Federal Aviation Administration from being used in certified aircraft. At the same time, U.S. energy policy is moving toward the mandated use of ethanol in ALL motor fuel, meaning there may be nothing available two years from now to fuel your Piper Cub.
Enter SwiftFuel, the Splenda of motor fuels because it is made from ethanol yet contains no ethanol. SwiftFuel is the invention of John and Mary Rusek from Swift Enterprises in Indiana. To your airplane SwiftFuel looks and tastes just like gasoline. It has an octane rating of 104 (higher than the 100 octane fuel it replaces) yet contains no lead or ethanol. SwiftFuel mixes with gasoline, can be stored in the same tanks as gasoline, and be shipped in the same pipelines as gasoline. It is made entirely from biomass, which means it has a net zero carbon footprint and does nothing to increase global warming. Its emission of other polluting byproducts of burning gasoline are significantly lower, too. SwiftFuel has more energy per gallon than gasoline so your airplane (or your car) will go 15-20 percent further on each gallon.
Oh, and based on an average $1.42 per gallon wholesale cost for the ethanol used as its feedstock, SwiftFuel costs $1.80 per gallon to produce, meaning that it ought to be able to sell for $3 per gallon or less no matter what happens in the Middle East.
Heck of a deal.
The ethanol used to make SwiftFuel can be any type, according to Mary Rusek, president of Swift Enterprises. The pilot plant they are building in Indiana will, interestingly, make ethanol from sorghum, not corn. The Ruseks claim that sorghum, which isn't a typical U.S. crop, can produce six times the ethanol per acre of corn, turning on its head the argument that ethanol production consumes more energy than it produces. China, the third largest producer of ethanol after Brazil and the U.S., is switching entirely to sorghum for its ethanol production.
The FAA is already testing SwiftFuel with the goal of approving it for use without modification in all aircraft, leaving the platform unchanged while improving its impact on almost any scale. Hopefully by the 2010 cutoff for tetraethyl lead SwiftFuel will replace the 1.8 million gallons of 100LL aviation fuel used every day.
"But what about cars?" I asked Mary Rusek. "We don't say much about that," she replied. "The aviation fuel market is tiny and has a real need we can fulfill so everyone wants us to succeed. Cars are different and we don't want to make any enemies."
I hope that SwiftFuel is a success. I hope it fulfills all Mary Rusek's claims. But if SwiftFuel doesn't succeed, I also hope that isn't because entrenched oil interests kill it. Yet I don't think many of us would be surprised if that is exactly what happens.
Original Article
bob@cringely.com External Link
When this column first appeared in 1997, the price of oil in 2007 dollars was about $20 per barrel. This week it is $122 per barrel -- more than six times as high. Many things besides the price of oil have changed in those 11 years. Thanks to Moore's Law a new PC today is typically 25-30 times as powerful as the machines we had in 1997 yet costs less than half as many dollars to buy. Consider inflation and the cost of computing is even lower. Our new PCs are substantially more energy-efficient on a per-MIPS basis, too. Though the bigger shift of attitude might simply be that now we care about how much power our computer is using versus simply not noticing a decade ago. Back then data center power consumption was inconsequential compared to the cost of Internet bandwidth. Today Google builds its data centers where the power is, not where the fiber or even the users are. Power is everything in modern computing and is becoming ever more important to our lives in general. The high cost of energy is starting to cause real pain in our society and real pain is, unfortunately, about the only incentive strong enough to make us change our ways.
I know a little bit about the oil business, which is at the root of our energy crisis today. At one point my job was to write about the international oil industry. I worked off and on in the Middle East back then and attended OPEC meetings in Vienna and Geneva during an earlier oil crisis when prices went for a moment to $43 per barrel and we all held our breath then, too. I was sitting in the lobby of OPEC headquarters in Vienna that day when Carlos "The Jackal" came in the door, told the sleepy off-duty Vienna cop providing security that he was from "the Palestinian delegation" and walked right into the big meeting, taking the oil ministers hostage.
Given that I know a little bit about the energy business, then, and I still have friends in it, here is what's going to happen over the next 2-3 years. The price of oil is going to come down substantially, but probably never to pre-9/11 price points. At least half of the current price for crude oil is driven by speculation and market manipulation as it was during the original oil crisis of 1973 (I have an interesting story about that in this week's links). But unlike '73, today our flexibility is less and our excess capacity is less, too. High prices will cut demand, spur exploration, and force governments to open new areas for exploration, but it is doubtful that we will EVER see oil prices under $60 per barrel again.
This is not all bad. Just as high oil prices spur exploration they also encourage conservation. With $2.50-$3 gas with us probably forever, we're finally starting to learn to do things somewhat differently, though it isn't at all clear to me whether these lessons will stay learned after prices subside somewhat.
Which brings me to the moral of this story -- the importance of platforms and standards, and when and how to abandon or change them. This applies to ANY capital-intensive technology, whether it is computing or energy or transportation.
The life expectancy of a car in the U.S. is about 10 years, during which it will pass through an average of three owners. I use cars as an example because they are an intrinsic part of any American energy crisis and we generally all own one. This automobile life expectancy means that any technology improvement has to trickle into the market because only about 10 percent of the total fleet is replaced each year with new cars -- the only cars that are likely to have the latest technology. So if some car company comes up with a way to get 100 miles per gallon, it is likely that no more than 10 percent of us will be getting mileage like that a year from now. The rest of us are stuck with old technology until we can afford to change: we're on the old platform.
Platform, in this automotive example, means some significantly different technology that offers real advantages though usually at a cost. Hybrids, diesels, electric cars, fuel cells, hydrogen, and ethanol cars are all examples of platforms.
If we want revolutionary change -- change where nearly everyone moves to the new platform in short order -- that is usually going to require heroic action on the part of government or the occasional mad scientist. If the mad scientist were able to offer a car that got 100 miles per gallon, was safer than the current standard, yet cost substantially LESS to buy, then maybe more of us would transition more than the traditional 10 percent replacement model suggests. Governments, on the other hand, could simply outlaw the old cars and force us to upgrade, though it still might not happen if we couldn't afford the new cars.
What's key here is the push and pull of platform change. We see this all the time in computing where somebody comes up with a clever new idea but for that idea to succeed we all have to get new computers. How likely is that? Well it depends on how great the improvement being offered. With computers I can tell you that the improvement has to be pretty darned substantial to inspire us all to jump. That's because Moore's Law is going to give us a 100 percent improvement anyway on our next PC without having to throw away any software or peripherals. So inspiring a revolution in computing generally requires a performance improvement of 10X or more.
There is a similar effect to be seen in the adoption of new energy technologies. That list of platforms I rattled off a few paragraphs back offer advantages but not without cost. Hybrids and diesels are the easiest to accept, but both are a bit more expensive. Electric, fuel cells, hydrogen, and ethanol are more expensive, too, but they also require infrastructure changes like finding new ways to manufacture, transport, store, and sell fuel. You won't go on a long road trip in your electric car until there are reliable places to plug in and recharge, for example.
This is our dilemma: we want to make radical energy improvements but these typically require expensive platform changes and platform changes can take a decade or more to happen.
A better solution would be to leave the platform alone and find a single variable that could be changed for everyone practically overnight.
Cars are the key to U.S. energy consumption. The dominant automotive platform here, whether you drive a truck, a car, or a motorcycle, relies on gasoline-fueled internal combustion engines. That's the platform we are unlikely to change quickly. So how do we leave that platform intact and unchanged, ask nobody to significantly sacrifice, yet still achieve the noble (and Nobel) goals of lower fuel consumption, lower greenhouse gas emissions, lower pollution levels, dramatically lower oil consumption, lower cost, and lower geopolitical vulnerability for our country? There's only one way I know to accomplish this: change the fuel.
This happened to a certain extent in Brazil during the '70s and '80s by embracing ethanol. But ethanol has less energy per gallon so fuel consumption goes up and mileage goes down. Ethanol can't be shipped in pipelines also used for oil. Cars have to be modified to run on it and even then there are issues about internal corrosion. Ethanol is far from perfect. What's needed is a replacement for gasoline that looks and feels and tastes just like gas to your car but isn't made from oil. Then the platform could remain completely unchanged yet my 1966 Thunderbird (and the world) could benefit starting with the very next tankful.
There is such a fuel, developed by a husband and wife team of scientists working in Indiana in cooperation with Purdue University. This new fuel, called SwiftFuel, is right now intended for airplanes, not cars, but the lessons are the same.
Piston-powered airplanes have a unique fuel problem. Their high-compression air-cooled engines require higher-octane fuel to avoid destructive engine knock. This higher octane is achieved through the use of tetraethyl lead as a fuel additive. Remember lead was outlawed from car gas in the U.S. more than 30 years ago to good effect: we all have significantly less of the toxic metal in our bodies than we used to. But lead is still used in aviation fuel, which accounts for an infinitesimal portion of total U.S. gasoline consumption. Lead is on its way out for aircraft use, too, with international treaties scheduling its demise in 2010.
If we aren't going to retire all the little airplanes in America -- force a total platform change -- we'll have to come up with a replacement for tetraethyl lead. The additive used most for this is ethanol added to gasoline to bump up the octane number. But ethanol does a number on seals and hoses typically used in aircraft to an extent that it is specifically prohibited by the Federal Aviation Administration from being used in certified aircraft. At the same time, U.S. energy policy is moving toward the mandated use of ethanol in ALL motor fuel, meaning there may be nothing available two years from now to fuel your Piper Cub.
Enter SwiftFuel, the Splenda of motor fuels because it is made from ethanol yet contains no ethanol. SwiftFuel is the invention of John and Mary Rusek from Swift Enterprises in Indiana. To your airplane SwiftFuel looks and tastes just like gasoline. It has an octane rating of 104 (higher than the 100 octane fuel it replaces) yet contains no lead or ethanol. SwiftFuel mixes with gasoline, can be stored in the same tanks as gasoline, and be shipped in the same pipelines as gasoline. It is made entirely from biomass, which means it has a net zero carbon footprint and does nothing to increase global warming. Its emission of other polluting byproducts of burning gasoline are significantly lower, too. SwiftFuel has more energy per gallon than gasoline so your airplane (or your car) will go 15-20 percent further on each gallon.
Oh, and based on an average $1.42 per gallon wholesale cost for the ethanol used as its feedstock, SwiftFuel costs $1.80 per gallon to produce, meaning that it ought to be able to sell for $3 per gallon or less no matter what happens in the Middle East.
Heck of a deal.
The ethanol used to make SwiftFuel can be any type, according to Mary Rusek, president of Swift Enterprises. The pilot plant they are building in Indiana will, interestingly, make ethanol from sorghum, not corn. The Ruseks claim that sorghum, which isn't a typical U.S. crop, can produce six times the ethanol per acre of corn, turning on its head the argument that ethanol production consumes more energy than it produces. China, the third largest producer of ethanol after Brazil and the U.S., is switching entirely to sorghum for its ethanol production.
The FAA is already testing SwiftFuel with the goal of approving it for use without modification in all aircraft, leaving the platform unchanged while improving its impact on almost any scale. Hopefully by the 2010 cutoff for tetraethyl lead SwiftFuel will replace the 1.8 million gallons of 100LL aviation fuel used every day.
"But what about cars?" I asked Mary Rusek. "We don't say much about that," she replied. "The aviation fuel market is tiny and has a real need we can fulfill so everyone wants us to succeed. Cars are different and we don't want to make any enemies."
I hope that SwiftFuel is a success. I hope it fulfills all Mary Rusek's claims. But if SwiftFuel doesn't succeed, I also hope that isn't because entrenched oil interests kill it. Yet I don't think many of us would be surprised if that is exactly what happens.
Original Article
