Technology and Society

Bad, Bad, Bad idea

There’s a bill working its way through congress that will criminalize sale of technology that intentionally induces a person to infringe copyright. That places all recording media under threat. This is one of those bills which is written at the behest of major corporations looking to compete via legislation rather than the marketplace.

Information simply cannot be force fit into the conventional mold of property rights law that originated in the ownership of land. Patents are workable as a means of protecting intellectual property, though they have been abused somewhat recently. Copyrights on the other hand are being abused and manipulated to an unprecedented degree. We recently saw the extension of copyright by an additional 20 years (thanks to some heavy lobbying by Disney, among others), and there’s no doubt that when those 20 years are up efforts will be well under way to extend by another 20. The copyright system is broken, and this latest bill will just break it still further. We need to completely rethink the way we handle copyrights from the ground up. I can’t claim to know what the answer is, but it’s clear what it isn’t: banning technologies just because they can infringe copyright. That is an idiotic route that leads to making pen and paper technically illegal.

Space

What’s DeLay’s Angle?

There’s an article in the Houston Chronicle about the cuts to NASA’s 2005 budget request. The Majority Leader does seem to be on the warpath about it:

House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, the Sugar Land Republican whose district includes NASA’s Johnson Space Center, called the cuts “unacceptable,” then warned: “It would be very hard to get this bill to the floor if it’s unacceptable to me.”

DeLay, the second-highest-ranking House Republican, schedules measures for floor consideration and wields considerable power over spending bills.

So, why?

I haven’t looked at the cuts in detail, but they seems mainly to affect the president’s new vision. One of the biggest cuts is in the Prometheus Program (largely Jupiter Icy Moons Orbiter at this point), most of which would go to California (JPL and whatever contractor is selected) and DOE labs for the reactor work. No money for JSC there. The general exploration activities, including CEV, are nominally funded out of Houston, but it’s managed at HQ and will go to contractors all over the place. Shuttle is fully funded, as is ISS. This action doesn’t seem to be bad for JSC at all, all things considered, from a pork perspective.

So why is DeLay up in arms about it? He is supposedly, after all, one of those Republicans who are supposed to be concerned about federal spending.

Theory 1: He’s greedy, and assumes that any budget cuts will affect JSC to some degree, however minor (probably a valid assumption).

Theory 2: He wants to support the president in his budget request, out of loyalty to the White House.

Theory 3: He actually believes in the vision, and wants it to be funded this coming year.

Theory 1 doesn’t seem worth holding up an appropriations bill over. I’ve got to surmise that it’s theories 2 and 3 in some proportion. Can it be that the Hammer has become a space nut?

Space

What’s DeLay’s Angle?

There’s an article in the Houston Chronicle about the cuts to NASA’s 2005 budget request. The Majority Leader does seem to be on the warpath about it:

House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, the Sugar Land Republican whose district includes NASA’s Johnson Space Center, called the cuts “unacceptable,” then warned: “It would be very hard to get this bill to the floor if it’s unacceptable to me.”

DeLay, the second-highest-ranking House Republican, schedules measures for floor consideration and wields considerable power over spending bills.

So, why?

I haven’t looked at the cuts in detail, but they seems mainly to affect the president’s new vision. One of the biggest cuts is in the Prometheus Program (largely Jupiter Icy Moons Orbiter at this point), most of which would go to California (JPL and whatever contractor is selected) and DOE labs for the reactor work. No money for JSC there. The general exploration activities, including CEV, are nominally funded out of Houston, but it’s managed at HQ and will go to contractors all over the place. Shuttle is fully funded, as is ISS. This action doesn’t seem to be bad for JSC at all, all things considered, from a pork perspective.

So why is DeLay up in arms about it? He is supposedly, after all, one of those Republicans who are supposed to be concerned about federal spending.

Theory 1: He’s greedy, and assumes that any budget cuts will affect JSC to some degree, however minor (probably a valid assumption).

Theory 2: He wants to support the president in his budget request, out of loyalty to the White House.

Theory 3: He actually believes in the vision, and wants it to be funded this coming year.

Theory 1 doesn’t seem worth holding up an appropriations bill over. I’ve got to surmise that it’s theories 2 and 3 in some proportion. Can it be that the Hammer has become a space nut?

Space

What’s DeLay’s Angle?

There’s an article in the Houston Chronicle about the cuts to NASA’s 2005 budget request. The Majority Leader does seem to be on the warpath about it:

House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, the Sugar Land Republican whose district includes NASA’s Johnson Space Center, called the cuts “unacceptable,” then warned: “It would be very hard to get this bill to the floor if it’s unacceptable to me.”

DeLay, the second-highest-ranking House Republican, schedules measures for floor consideration and wields considerable power over spending bills.

So, why?

I haven’t looked at the cuts in detail, but they seems mainly to affect the president’s new vision. One of the biggest cuts is in the Prometheus Program (largely Jupiter Icy Moons Orbiter at this point), most of which would go to California (JPL and whatever contractor is selected) and DOE labs for the reactor work. No money for JSC there. The general exploration activities, including CEV, are nominally funded out of Houston, but it’s managed at HQ and will go to contractors all over the place. Shuttle is fully funded, as is ISS. This action doesn’t seem to be bad for JSC at all, all things considered, from a pork perspective.

So why is DeLay up in arms about it? He is supposedly, after all, one of those Republicans who are supposed to be concerned about federal spending.

Theory 1: He’s greedy, and assumes that any budget cuts will affect JSC to some degree, however minor (probably a valid assumption).

Theory 2: He wants to support the president in his budget request, out of loyalty to the White House.

Theory 3: He actually believes in the vision, and wants it to be funded this coming year.

Theory 1 doesn’t seem worth holding up an appropriations bill over. I’ve got to surmise that it’s theories 2 and 3 in some proportion. Can it be that the Hammer has become a space nut?

Political Commentary

More Deja Vu

Kate O’Beirne agrees with me.

Anyone who doesn’t appreciate how the Berger bunch has used the fortuitous timing to their advantage must have slept through the Clinton years. The defense is classic. First, the mean Republicans, then the meaningless personal testimonials–“if you knew Sandy Berger like I know Sandy Berger (or Betty Currie). . .,” then the irrelevant–he is an extremely hardworking guy who was only trying to help the Commission (we’re working, working, working here at the White House), and finally (the political use of FBI files, the lost billing records) the removal of the classified documents was “inadvertent.”

Space

Screw The Future

Jeff Foust rounds up more stories on the House cuts to the NASA budget request. A quote from Congressman Weldon:

This bill takes care of most of our needs at Kennedy Space Center, so I’m hard pressed not to support my chairman when he’s taking care of Florida.

Yup.

I’ve got mine. What did posterity ever do for me?

I also always wonder if they understand the impact of “delaying” a program for a year. A contractor has a team put together, and they can’t just put them in cold storage until Congress decides to finally fund the program. They get reassigned to other projects, and it’s hard to reassemble them later, resulting in putting together a new team, with associated learning curve. This is one of the reasons that government space programs are so inefficient and costly.

Biting Commentary about Infinity…and Beyond!