02.16.12
Links – Microsoft caught funding anti-science and manipulating education through a sleazy tobacco PR firm.
Reader’s Picks
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How Much Would Debian Cost to Develop? How About $19 Billion?
Bromberger also looks at the cost of individual projects like PHP, Apache and MySQL. Even at more than $19 billion, the figure is likely far short of what it would actually cost to produce. … The $19.1 billion doesn’t even count the additional work added by Debian developers to upstream software. … ANSI C accounts for 40% of the Debian codebase, while C++ comes in with 20%. Next is Java, with 8% of the codebase.
The greatest benefit of Debian is freedom, but the gift of billions of dollars worth of software is also nice.
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Defence/Police/Aggression
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Female Passengers Say They Were Targeted for TSA Body Scanners
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Police: download a file, go to jail for 10 years and pay an “unlimited” fine
The 70,000 daily visitors to popular music site RnBXclusive.com were met with a purposely terrifying message on Tuesday and part of Wednesday. The UK’s Serious Organized Crime Agency (SOCA) took the site down, arrested its operator, and threw up a splash page that warned downloaders of “up to 10 years imprisonment.” Thought statutory damages of up to $150,000 per infringement in the US were ludicrous? SOCA warns that downloaders from the site could face an “unlimited fine under UK law.”
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PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying
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A look behind the curtain of the Heartland Institute’s climate change spin
[Dr. Wojick's] effort will focus on providing curriculum that shows that the topic of climate change is controversial and uncertain – two key points that are effective at dissuading teachers from teaching science. … Efforts at places such as Forbes are especially important now that they have begun to allow high-profile climate scientists (such as [Peter] Gleick) to post warmist science essays that counter our own. This influential audience has usually been reliably anti-climate and it is important to keep opposing voices out.
Heartland Institute played up Climategate, and are well known global warming deniers and tobacco promoters. Microsoft also uses these scumbags in their fight against science.
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Leak exposes how Heartland Institute works to undermine climate science
“Moreover, material for classroom use must be carefully written to meet curriculum guidelines, and the amount of time teachers have for supplemental material is steadily shrinking due to the spread of standardized tests in K-12 education”
This shows us why Gates and friends want control of education.
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Censorship
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WikiLeaks denounces UNESCO after WikiLeaks banned from UNESCO conference on WikiLeaks
WPFC decided to exclude WikiLeaks and stack the UNESCO conference with a “who’s who” of WikiLeaks opponents and critics, no matter how insignificant or poorly informed. This includes speakers who are not merely critics, but four who have active legal conflicts with the organization.
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US Citizens: How you can help the Federal Research Public Access Act (FRPAA) become law
FRPAA is designed to make sure that the results of scientific research paid for by the public can be accessed by the public. Most people are surprised to learn that this isn’t automatically the case; they assume that if their tax dollars pay for a research study, they should be entitled to read the results. … Out of eleven federal agencies that fund science here in the United States, only one – the National Institutes of Health – actually has a policy that ensures that the public can freely access the results of their funded research online.
Sanity in US copyright laws will help the rest of the world too.
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Freedom of Information Act has not improved government, says MoJ
The MoJ arguments are outrageous and transparently false. “Fishing for stories” is what reporters do and it’s how most of us remaine informed. Ending FOI requests or making them more expensive will not create public trust or increase transparency.
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Intellectual Monopolies
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Open letter To Members of the European Parliament and European Commission
We are writing to you to alert you to problems caused by European Patent law. We are especially concerned about patents on plants and animals, genetic material and processes for breeding of plants and animals and food derived thereof and their impact on farmers, breeders and consumers, innovation and biodiversity.
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