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20. januar 2003
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RIAA wants ISPs to pay for music piracy
Hillary Rosen, chair of the RIAA, has announced a plan to make Internet Service Providers pay for the losses record companies sustain through piracy over peer-to-peer networks.
It's nonsense like this which is the reason Hillary Rosen is the most hated person on the Net, beating Bin Laden by a landslide.
10:14:30 PM 
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Headache out, busy in
Researchers from the Kinsey Institute has found that modern women have less sex than their 1950s counterparts. Women blame a more busy lifestyle, and TV, and say they don't have energy left for sex.
5:44:00 PM
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Prosecution appeals DVD acquittal
The Norwegian police's white-collar crime unit, who lost spectacularly in the court case against 19-year-old Jon Lech Johansen, has decided to appeal. Johansen, widely called "DVD-Jon" in Norwegian media, had been charged with breaking the code protection of DVD records and distributing the code-breaking tool, called DeCSS.
Halvor Manshaus, legal counsel for Johansen, said it was no surprise that the prosecution chose to appeal. He pointed out, however, that the first decision was very thorough.
5:21:31 PM
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London Police Raid Mosque
 British anti-terror police has raided a Mosque in north London in what is described as an intelligence-gathering raid. The police used helicopters, dozens of vans and around 150 officers, using battering rams to secure access. Seven men 'residing' in the mosque were arrested, six of which of North African origin and one East European. A significant number of documents and some computers were seized.
Sheikh Abu Hamza, who has been accused of using the Mosque prayers for 'inflammatory and highly political' messages, insisted the raid shows there is a 'war' against Muslims and a 'provocative act.'
Home Secretary David Blunkett gave the operation his complete support.
4:28:30 PM
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"It still moves."
Science and technology is getting ever more important in our lives, but at the same time a large fraction of the population stays scientifically illiterate. A recent survey by the National Science Foundation (NSF) shows that 42% of American adults couldn't even be bothered with these issues. Perhaps not surprising then, that about the same amount of people had no idea how long it takes the Earth to orbit the sun.
What science needs, desperately, is good popularisers. People like Stephen Hawking, Carl Sagan and Richard Dawkins not only knows their science, they know how to convey both the hard facts and a true enthusiasm for science. For some adults, especially those totally immersed in superstitious ideas or pseudo-science, it is little hope. What is needed is teaching young people, not primarily scientific facts (which may bore them) but how to think critically.
The Internet has caused easy availability of facts, but surely immense amounts of rubbish as well. Teaching critical thinking, not only actual scientific facts, will give people a tool to distinguish between quality and garbage themselves. And hopefully, also give people a desire to learn how long it takes the Earth to revolve around the sun.
5:57:52 AM
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Do patients have to pay for those tools, too?
"A study on medical mistakes found operating room teams around the country leave sponges, clamps and other tools inside about 1,500 patients every year, largely because of stress from emergencies or complications discovered during surgery." (Seattle Post-Intelligencer)
"But even if the surgical tools have been miscounted, doctors can often look inside a patient and see an instrument or sponge, he added. When a patient is overweight or obese, however, the tool may be obstructed by fat, Gawande said. "But in a very lean person, you just look around and you find something."" (Yahoo! News)
Yeah, fat chance of them finding a leftover sponge in there.
5:07:54 AM
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South Korean president-elect puts foot in mouth
 President-elect Roh Moo Hyun (picture), who rode to victory on an Anti-American sentiment, will only take office next month, but he's already caused major embarrassment with his public claim that top US hardline officials had discussed a military attack on North Korea. His spin-doctors are working overtime these days.
Roh is not wrong, of course. Senior officials surely discussed the question, and obviously the administration ruled against attacking. However, rules of diplomacy says you cannot admit such a thing. Diplomats and top officials must always pretend otherwise, as any open admission of even entertaining the mere thought of military action is interpreted as a direct threat. Roh should have known that. He'll have a hard enough time as the anti-American president of a country whose security rests entirely on the United States, and this gaffe wasn't exactly helpful. As expected, he's been very pro-American in his statements lately.
Recently, some 40,000 Christian Koreans demonstrated in support of the US military presence. I suspect the latest sabre-rattling from their northern neighbour has given pause to a few of Roh's supporters, too.
3:51:27 AM
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Does God decide what is right and what is wrong?
Christians sometimes feel they have a natural right to the moral high ground. One of the most common arguments heard by an atheist is that if you don't believe in God, you are a less moral person, and that you cannot have morality without a God. The argument is called the Divine Command Theory of Ethics, and asserts that morality cannot be evaluated apart from God, and that "good" is by definition what God says is good, and "evil" is by definition whatever God says is evil. Many Christians will agree with this at first, but I will demonstrate that most Christians, and the Bible itself, have implicitly rejected this argument already. [Read more...]
My decision to post this article was inspired by a debate on Real Live Preacher's blog, in response to a well recived article denouncing fundamentalism.
2:34:45 AM
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Arab media fears war
The discovery of missiles for chemical warfare and papers related to enrichment of uranium in Iraq has drawn the world closer to a military showdown, the media in the Middle East region believes. Especially worrisome, they think, was Blix' statements about Iraq failing to cooperate fully. Egypt's Al-Ahram was especially critical to the inspectors, saying
"The weapons inspectors and their chief have a responsibility to be highly objective because if they create excuses for war, they would be committing a crime against the region and against humanity."
If objective, factual statements create "excuses" for war, the blame should be put on whoever is the cause for those statements to be true. And quite a few Arab papers weren't exactly happy with Saddam's latest public statements.
12:22:07 AM
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© Copyright 2003 Jan Haugland.
Last update: 01.02.03; 00:37:06.
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