Wednesday, October 06, 2004

Also from Salon: Washington Post: Here's a "refereed" transcript of the vice presidential debate last night -- staff writers from the Post add analysis and factchecking where marked on the transcript, and readers weigh in with their own comments. 3:15:43 PM    comment []

Why You Should Care About Science, and a Mouse.   I am in Montreal at the 4th World Conference of Science Journalists, and Barbara Vanderhyden of the University of Ottawa is talking about her mouse. It is an extraordinary mouse, genetically engineered to reliably develop ovarian cancer. She and her team invented it last year, and now scientists and pharmaceutical companies are clamoring to study the mouse and try out various screening tests on blood and urine to see if ovarian cancer, usually detected too late to save women, can be identified early enough to make a difference.   What took so long to develop this mouse? Why are there no screening tests for the most lethal of gynecological cancers, which strikes, and invariably kills, 1 in 70 women?   Vanderhyden cites some classic reasons for the research delay. For one thing, “no one wants to talk about diseases below the waist” she says…pointing out that this was even true for prostate cancer in men, until Senator Bob Dole was afflicted. (I interviewed him on this topic for the Washington Post back in 1992…he spoke candidly in his Senate office, positioning himself in front of a roaring fire in the marble fireplace.)   Secondly, there are rarely survivors of ovarian cancer to serve as advocates for research…unlike breast cancer where those women with the pink ribbons incessantly call attention to the disease. Lastly, and sadly, there has been an historical dearth of research on women’s health issues. In 1992, while Dole was talking about prostate cancer, I wrote an article in the Washington Post “What Doctors Don’t Know About Women” after reading a government report on the state of women’s medical research. One telling finding, that got me especially annoyed, was that doctors knew next to nothing about the lowly uterine fibroid, one of the most common gynecological afflictions, which can range from periodically painful to a major health threat requiring hysterectomy.   For more info you can visit the Gilda Radner Familial Ovarian Cancer Registry….named for the Saturday Night Live comedian who died in 1989 of ovarian cancer at age 42.  [Girl In the Locker Room!™] 3:13:23 PM    comment []

My first time with Dylan. Johnny Cash, Joan Baez, Cher, Allen Ginsberg, Jimmy Buffett, Andy Warhol and others on their initial meetings with the folk legend. [Salon.com] 3:10:15 PM    comment []

Unintended consequences of Cheney's dot-com v dot-org debate goof During last night's vice presidential debate, Dick Cheney advised viewers interested in his version of the facts about Halliburton to visit factcheck.com. Evidently, he meant to direct them to factcheck dot ORG, a site run by the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania, but mis-spoke. Factcheck dot COM redirects you to GeorgeSoros.com which contains arguments on "why we must not re-elect President George Bush." Whups. For their part, the factcheck dot ORG folks say: Cheney got our domain name wrong -- calling us "FactCheck.com" -- and wrongly implied that we had rebutted allegations Edwards was making about what Cheney had done as chief executive officer of Halliburton. In fact, we did post an article pointing out that Cheney hasn't profited personally while in office from Halliburton's Iraq contracts, as falsely implied by a Kerry TV ad. But Edwards was talking about Cheney's responsibility for earlier Halliburton troubles. And in fact, Edwards was mostly right. Link to factcheck dot COM. BoingBoing reader Clay says Soros and Co. have no idea who directed the vicepresidential linklove their way. "My friend designed the Soros blog and says [redirecting factcheck.com to the Soros site] was a happy and unrequested favor. Whois turns up not enough of a clue..." Update: BoingBoing reader Dave Hayden points us to an AP story which says: Cheney cited FactCheck.com, a for-profit advertising site based in the Cayman Islands. The company decided to redirect traffic to the Soros site after it became inundated with hits -- ” about 100 a second after the debate, John Berryhill, a Philadelphia lawyer for FactCheck.com, said Wednesday. "This was to relieve stress on the service and to express a political point of view," said Berryhill, who spoke with the site's administrators shortly after the debate ended. They picked Soros not only for his political views, Berryhill said, but because the billionaire could afford the costly deluge of hits the site would receive in the wake of the debate. Plus, the site administrators didn't want to point surfers to a candidate's site that was asking for money. Link to story. [bOing bOing] 3:10:11 PM    comment []

FactCheck.what?. In one of his "the senator can't get his facts straight" scoldings last night, Dick Cheney just couldn't get his own facts straight. Cheney plugged Brooks Jackson's truth-squadding FactCheck Web site as an outfit that, according to Cheney, had debunked claims John Edwards made about Cheney's tenure at Hallburton. Edwards said: "Here's why we didn't think Halliburton should have a no bid contract. While he was C.E.O. of Halliburton, they paid millions of dollars in fines for providing false information on on their company, just like Enron and Ken Lay. They did business with Libya and Iran, two sworn enemies of the United States. They're now under investigation for having bribed foreign officials during that period of time. Not only that, they've gotten a $7 billion no-bid contract in Iraq and, instead of part of their money being withheld, which is the way it's normally done, because they're under investigation, they've continued to get their money." Cheney promptly called Edwards a liar and used the FactCheck web site as corroborating evidence. "Well, the reason they keep mentioning Halliburton is because they're trying to throw up a smoke screen," Cheney said. "They know the charges are false. They know that if you go, for example, to factcheck.com, an independent Web site sponsored by the University of Pennsylvania, you can get the specific details with respect to Halliburton. It's an effort that they've made repeatedly to try to confuse the voters and to raise questions, but there's no substance to the charges." There were two glaring problems with the vice president's answer, however. First, as FactCheck lays out today, the document Cheney was referring to was on a different subject entirely -- it examined charges that Cheney profited personally from Halliburton's Iraq contracts while in office. In that document, FactCheck said a Kerry-Edwards campaign ad that claimed Cheney profited from these contracts as VP was misleading. But on the point Edwards made in the debate -- the point Cheney dodged by changing the subject -- the senator was "mostly right," FactCheck says. But Cheney didn't even get the Web site address right, he directed viewers to "FactCheck.com," when the Brooks Jackson Web site is actually "FactCheck.org." If you visit FactCheck.com, as Cheney recommends, you'll get automatically redirected to the Web site of liberal benefactor George Soros, which bears this message: "Why we must not re-elect President Bush." [Update from Salon's Michelle Goldberg: It’s still not clear who owns FactCheck.com. The domain is registered to what looks like a reseller in the Cayman Islands, and whoever controls it hasn’t had any contact with Soros or DonorDigital, the company that created and maintains his site. "GeorgeSoros.com had nothing to do with the redirect to our site -- but we thank whomever did it," says Donor Digital president Nick Allen.] [Salon.com] 3:07:33 PM    comment []

Microsoft ships Virtual PC 7. The emulation software works with Apple computers that use the G5 processor. [CNET News.com] 3:03:43 PM    comment []

Fair Use, and The Limits Of Contract. Yet one more noted atrocious aspect of the Blizzard v. BNETD case is the contact-supremacy view which overrides other consideration. Again, the relevant passage (my notes in brackets): The Court finds the reasoning in [the case] Bowers [v Baystate] persuasive. The defendants in this [Blizzard v. BNETD] case waived their "fair use" right to reverse engineer by agreeing to the licensing agreement. Parties may waive their statutory rights under law in a contract. See, e.g, The Older Workers Benefit Protection Act, 29 U.S.C. § 626(f) (2004) (statute outlines minimum requirements for waiver of statutory right to sue under the ADEA). In this case, defendants gave up their fair use rights and must be bound by that waiver. That's about as clear a statement of reasoning as one can get. It's a contract. But the overall difficulty with challenging this view of contract, is that, for example, one can readily contract-away one's free-speech rights. That's exactly what a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) is. It's a contract to bargain away the right to talk about a topic in return for some benefit. Some Libertarians will literally argue that you should be able to sell all your internal organs, or even sell your children (excuse me, your "parental rights"). So the question is about the limits of contract. Now, I can say that a contract to take away one's fair use and reverse-engineering rights should not be permitted, as against public policy. Do you hear me? This ruling is an abomination, a stink in the nostrils, unfit to be bird-cage liner. But, who cares if I say that? It's not my opinion which matters. I can point out that the market won't fix this, and reverse-engineering is a very much a minority right. But that's not likely to get far either. Saying the decision is wrong unfortunately provides no way to change it. [Infothought] 7:19:14 AM    comment []

Quantum chromodynamics: Three Americans Win Nobel for Particle Physics Work. Three Americans who helped describe the force that binds together the atomic nucleus were named winners of the Nobel Prize in Physics. By By DENNIS OVERBYE. [The New York Times > Science] 7:17:52 AM    comment []

Senate Wants Database Dragnet. Lawmakers may soon pass a bill that would set up a huge network of databases that law enforcement officials could tap to find terrorists. But that kind of unfettered access to data about Americans raises eyebrows. By Ryan Singel. [Wired News] 7:17:38 AM    comment []

At the risk otherwise of showing no respect (gee, am I the only one to use that sort of line?), R.I.P., Rodney Dangerfield, dead at 82. On CNN [NewsIsFree: Popular Items] 7:17:18 AM    comment []

Interview with Simolean Man; Going out of Business. I had the chance to speak to the most popular simolean seller around, SimoleanMan. SimoleanMan has been previously interviewed on the Herald a few... [The Second Life Herald] 7:16:38 AM    comment []

EU Wants Windows Cleaned of DRM. The acquisition by Microsoft and Time Warner of a company with a significant portfolio of patents covering digital rights management technologies generates scrutiny by European antitrust regulators. The main focus of the investigation: Microsoft. By Wendy M. Grossman. [Wired News] 7:16:37 AM    comment []