Friday, August 30, 2002 :::
 

More on the RIAA fiasco
I am laughing long and loudly over this report on pcworld.com. These wretched idiots are in the process of putting internet radio out of business, and so I have no sympathy for them and their website woes.

::: posted by Evie at 11:25 AM

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Thursday, August 29, 2002 :::
 

I encourage everyone I know to read and sign this petition: Protect Marine Life from Low Frequency Active radar

If you're like me, you wonder about unsupported statements like "LFA is proven to injure and destroy whales and dolphins." Proven by whom? What about that 2001 study? I'm still looking for it, but what I did find, by following some of the links, is an article in the Christian Science Monitor that points to another article in Nature magazine, both of which seem to support this position.

I signed.

Some supporting documentation:

ABC News article
Talks about one of the Navy-funded studies of the effect of LFA. Study conclusion: LFA affects whale-song duration, long-term effect unknown. No harm or damage reported. This was also the focus of the report in Nature magazine.

Cornell University
Site has links to three of the 11 groups participating in Navy-funded study 1997-1998 in Surveillance Towed Array Sensor System Low Frequency Active (SURTASS LFA). Unfortunately the linked sites have no information on this study.

The Navy
Web site for LFA

Mind you, I think the Navy-funded study is bound to be biased in their favor. Do we trust tobacco studies funded by Phillip-Morris?

Ocean Mammal Institute
This site actually documents its assertions. I like that.

NOAA preliminary report
Report from NOAA fisheries re: stranding of 16 whales in Bahamas in March 2000. Extended use of sonar most probable contributing sound source (though it was not LFA).

More from the Navy
The Navy's side of the story. It is the most transparent piece of CYA I've ever seen. Judge for yourself.

::: posted by Evie at 10:03 AM

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Wednesday, August 28, 2002 :::
 

I've heard it said that time is nature's way of keeping everything from happening all at once.

It appears this weekend is the exception.

After several weekends of nothing much happening - and no yardwork getting done, despite that - I have an action-packed weekend of recording, Fair-going and Bumbershoot. How much can I pack into three days anyway?

So it looks like it's going to be recording on Saturday and Sunday, Fair on Sunday and Richard Thompson (!!!) at Bumbershoot on Monday. I'm going to try to catch Ani DeFranco as well, but I have a feeling that by Monday I'm going to be all wrung out.

::: posted by Evie at 8:55 AM

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Tuesday, August 27, 2002 :::
 

The Wonders of Litigation

Did you know that British Telecom is claiming it has a patent on hyperlinking?

It's lawsuit against Prodigy has been dismissed. BT has sued some 16 ISPs, wanting to require them to purchase a license for the priviledge of using hyperlinks.

Read a report at zdnet.com

If they were to win such a lawsuit, one wonders about the rest of us. Would we have to have a hyperlink license to travel the web?

It's just one more argument for the open source philosophy.

And then there's this: the beginnings of a class-action suit against Intel, alleging that they misled consumers into thinking the Pentium 4 was a better processor than the P-III and Athalon.

To quote:
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The plaintiffs don't appear to be accusing Intel of lying about the Pentium 4's clock speed, said Rob Enderle, a research fellow at Giga Information Group Inc. They're complaining about the chip's performance, and that's a crucial element to the case's viability, he said.

"As long as the market is going after megahertz, and Intel is reporting the correct megahertz, then I do not think this is actionable," he said. "Megahertz is misleading, but that has to do with the fact that the industry doesn't use benchmarks."

Enderle said the PC industry should throw out megahertz altogether as a system of measuring performance. The actual clock speed matters less than the overall system performance, he said.

"The right answer really is benchmarks," he said. "We need to have a way that people can really see the difference between PCs."

In fact, in the tech industry several benchmarks have achieved enough coverage to qualify as industry standards.

However, it's unlikely any one benchmark would satisfy the legion of vendors that build the components of any one PC.

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An educated consumer is a better consumer.

::: posted by Evie at 9:02 AM

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