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 Wednesday, January 8, 2003
One More Reason to Hate Direct Attached Disks. I've written before about the benefits of enterprise storage solutions. In short they promote better file management, backup, and security. Today the Salt Lake Tribune is reporting a story that is a perfect example of why this is true: [Windley's Enterprise Computing Weblog]
A very real problem for anyone storing important information. I hope Poindexter's group (the one that will collect all information about everyone) thinks a little more about security. The problem is that their database will be so temppting to get that someone will find a way. Humans are just so engenious. 11:09:20 PM 
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Peeve on. Here's something to piss ya off. [The Doc Searls Weblog]
Wonderful story explaining why IE connecting to MS servers would be very fast but would be very slow connecting to non-MS servers. Since the solution was to just buy a MS server, it worked out well for MS. MS could always just blame it on someone else. Break the rules to their own advantage. It will catch up with them someday. 11:07:36 PM
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Public Release: 6-Jan-2003
Leading cloning experts challenge Clonaid to prove claim
In reaction to the recent claim by Clonaid that it had produced the first human clone, three international cloning experts maintain current cloning techniques have been shown to seriously compromise the health of cloned offspring. Randall Prather, University of Missouri-Columbia; Ian Wilmut, Roslin Institute, Edinburgh, Scotland; and Gerald Schatten, University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, say it is highly likely cloned children would suffer similar health problems. This should deter scientists from cloning human beings.
Contact: Michele Baum
412-647-3555
University of Pittsburgh Medical Center
[Eurekalert - Biology]
There are two main problems with their claim. One is scientific. Cloning mammals is very hard to do. Even when done, it is not that easy to demonstrate that it happened the way you expected. And, in almost every case, there resulting offspring have developed severe physical problems later in life. This leads to the second problem. It is horrific to beleive that any thinking, rational human being would attempt such a thing before we know more about the consequences. The first in vitro baby was carefully watched. But those techniques had been widely used successfully on other mammals with no harmful effects. This is a process where we KNOW that the results WILL be harmful. This report is not only horrible science but totally immoral. My opinion - There are no overiding problems with clones in a perfect world. If there are no harmful effects, I do not see huge ethical problems. They are really just delayed twins. People have all sorts of reasons for having children. It will be a very expensive procedure. As long as it takes a woman to incubate the fetus, you will not see hoards of genetically engineered soldiers sweeping the countryside. Now, if there was a working artificial womb...Because, the clone would not be a replica. Different environments will create different people. They may look like someone but they will not act like them.
This work examined cloned pigs. Now I think this procedure used twinning of a fertilized egg, waiting until the 4-8 cell stage to split them into individual anuimals. This is in contrast to the procedure the Raelians claimed to use, where cells were fused to create the embryo. In this work, they found that the range of behavior and even appearance of litters of cloned animals was as great as with normal litters. Epigenetic events can have a huge effect on the final outcome. I would find it very unlikely that a clone would behave like the original and may even be physically different. 10:49:24 PM
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Warming planet shifts life north and early. Nature Jan 6 2003 7:04PM ET [Moreover - moreover...]
Is this something that is occuring at all latitudes or only in temperate? The rate of change is not out of range from that seen from ice cores. There have been rapid changes in global temperatures before. I think the world has a tremendous ability to buffer extreme changes in the environment. Remember Lovelock's Gaia hypothesis. But, at a certain point, there can be a shift in equilibrium to another stable environment - one that is not nearly as hospitable as today's. This may have happened in the past. There is a model of the early Earth in which the oceans froze. The data supporting this are pretty reasonable. We may not be the primary cause of glabal warming but we are a contributor. During a phase shift, it does not look ike much is happening but once the system can no longer 'buffer' the changes, things can happen very rapidly. I believe human processes could get us to this point faster than if they were not present. So finding ways to reduce our effect would probably be helpful. 10:33:58 PM
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Morons in the News: Five "Terrorists" Never Existed. Too quiet of a week means the government needed something to stir things up... so the FBI invented 5 terrorists for us [Morons Dot Org]
Well, the FBI called off its manhunt for the 5 terrorists because they never really existed. Seems they were misinformed. Good for them for admitting it. False positives will always be a problem. At least no one was arrested before they discovered this. But they had photos and everything. I wonder whose? 10:09:00 PM
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Lessig Blog writes about the wisdom in norway:
In a second, important defeat for the RIAA, and DMCA-defender types, Johansen was acquitted by a Norwegian court. And as the EFF is nicely publicizing, the principles on which this court in Norway decided the case might be familiar to those who remember our own constitutional tradition. As the chief judge said in reading the verdict, "no one could be convicted of breaking into their own property" and "consumers have rights to legally obtained DVD films 'even if the films are played in a different way than the makers had foreseen." The freedom to tinker in Norway is real. So too should it be so here.
[Universal Rule]
This is great stuff. We should all have shirts made saying 'No one could be convicted of breaking into their own property.' 9:44:59 PM
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Stephen's Web ~ Copyright and Theft. Quote: "The relation between copyright and ethics is not nearly so clear as supposed. While it is easy to piously pronounce that people who copy online content are unethical and even evil, it is also wrong. The copyright debate is not a case of the morally right trying to maintain the defense against the morally wrong. It is a debate about what should even count as morally right or wrong. "
Comment: Well-written and articulate argument. [Serious Instructional Technology]
An very interesting article. The idea of a copyright stems from the social contarct implicit in publishing works. Society as a whole is enriched if creativity is permitted to be dispersed instead of hidden. By allowing the creator to be paid, we encourage this dispersal. But fair use prevents the creator from absolute control and the Constitution provids for copyright to only last a limited time, so that society can expand on the ideas. Some people have forgotten the needs for fair use. they have forgotten that copyright is a social contract that is supposed to enrich both creator and society equally. we have gone way too far on the creative side and need to re-engage copyright's societal responsibilities. 9:40:10 PM
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It is a lot easier to resist intimidation if you are rich and famous but it is nice to see. Read what Penn did after an airport security guard inappropriately touched Penn. I'm glad that they are still trying to make a difficult system work and his response should make it better, but I wonder what would have happened if I had been the person. 12:33:15 PM
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Okay. I'm trying to get back on track. Going through tons of emails, as well as unpack, go to the grocery store, etc. takes a lot of time. 11:33:36 AM
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