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I am really disappointed to see the lack of balanced coverage regarding this issue. So far, all I've seen is articles obviously in favor. A little in-depth reporting would lead you to see how the school district does not fully inform communities and sometimes outright lies to us re this issue. We were promised as recently as 2011 that no lights would be installed (a letter from the district can be found on our website).
As of now, there is no "green light" for lights and a public-address system at PLHS. Our group is determined to stop this and save our neighborhood from the lasting effects of this. All anyone has to do is come here and look at the campus and its proximity to homes to realize how terrible this plan is.
Also note the one parking lot, which is a few blocks away from the new improved entrance to the stadium. My daughter just graduated in June. We were sent an email from the school directing everybody to come early as there was no parking on campus and we would all have to park on the neighborhood streets. Every graduation day, the streets are lined with cars for blocks around. This also happens on Homecoming Day. The streets are narrow. Nobody directs traffic, especially at the intersection of Clove and Voltaire streets, where people are crossing on foot and cars are crossing as well. Imagine having large events there once stadium seating is installed, lights and a PA system. We would go from having this problem twice a year to possibly weekly events both day and night — all year long.
School district Trustee Scott Barnett is not seeking re-election. He makes promises that cannot be kept, and who knows who will follow on the district after he leaves. He has not promised us that the stadium will not be used for outside groups. In fact, the school already rents the stadium out. It is my understanding the school district made about $2 million last year renting out the field. Why else would the district spend so much money on lights when funds are so limited?
That school campus is a mess. Poor air conditioning, little green space, buildings that have no bathroom facilities — those are just some of the problems. Not to mention that the campus is just plain ugly. Why isn't the district addressing these issues first? And why aren't you and your publication writing about that?
Our group has interviewed neighbors from Clairemont who are really upset about what has happened at Claremont High School. They report weekly, sometimes 4 or 5 days a week; events take place at the school day and night. The PA system is really loud, even with windows closed. The sound of people stomping on the new aluminum bleachers is deafening and the light shines way beyond the campus.
The stadium there is used for events that sometimes last all day and into the night. These neighbors have tried to get [District 2 City Councilman-elect] Lori Zapf to help them, but so far no luck. One prominent San Diegan, Walter Andersen of Andersen's nursery, is actually selling his house because of this.
I have lived in this neighborhood all of my life. I live in my parents' house, which they built in 1950. I had planned to stay here for the rest of my life and hopefully leave it to our daughters. This stadium plan will have a terrible effect on the quality of life here and our property values. I am very-pro PLHS. I'm an alumni and I belong to the alumni association. My class donated money to the school this year in the form of a scholarship. My mother graduated from Point Loma High in 1942, as did my aunt and two uncles.
I am one of seven children, all of whom attended PLHS, and our own daughters both did.
I resent being made to look like a NIMBY [Not in My Backyard] neighbor who does not care about the school or the students who go there. But this situation will be intolerable, and I think so unnecessary, especially since the district is planning a large sports complex at Correia.
I challenge you and your publication to do your job and research this issue. I am looking forward to seeing a fair, balanced report.


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Summer operational hours have been announced for East Central University, beginning Monday, June 6 and ending Friday, July 29.
Office hours will be from 7:30 a.m.-5 p.m. Monday through Thursday and from 8 a.m.-noon each Friday. Additionally, the campus will be closed on Friday, May 27, and Monday, May 30, for the Memorial Day holiday weekend and Friday, July 1 and Monday, July 4, for the Independence Day holiday weekend.
East Central University junior Elsa Colette Mosley was selected as a 2016 Russian Scholar Laureate, it was announced recently by the American Council of Teachers of Russian.
Mosley is political science and studio art major, with a Russian studies minor, from Sulphur.
She was nominated for the award by Dr. Mara Sukholutskaya, director of ECU's Russian Studies and Global Education programs. Mosley is president of ECU's Russian Club and was able to put her Russian language skills to work after going to St. Petersburg, Russia in May of 2015.
East Central University's Dr. Mara Sukholutskaya was awarded the prestigious "Excellence in the Teaching of Russian Language Award" at the recent Central Association of Russian Teachers of America (CARTA) Conference in Kansas City, Mo.
Sukholutskaya was accompanied by 12 of her students, who were there to experience the academic conference - many for the first time - and to celebrate her receiving of the award.
Children can hone their basketball series through a series of camps being staged on the East Central University campus this summer:
All area teachers and administrators are invited to experience one of the most innovative STEM teacher professional development events in Oklahoma at the new Pitsco Makerspace, housed in the Center for Innovative Teaching and Learning in the Lanoy Education Building at East Central University.
Twenty-seven faculty and staff members have announced their retirement after investing over a combined 600 years of service to East Central University.
They were recognized at "An Evening of Employee Recognition" on April 26 in Foundation Hall of the Chickasaw Business and Conference Center.
Four East Central University faculty members were recognized with Teaching Excellence Awards at "An Evening of Employee Recognition" on April 26 in the ECU Foundation Hall of the Chickasaw Business and Conference Center. Pictured from left to right are: Dr. Phyllis Isaacs, department chair and associate professor of education; Dr. Kenneth Hada, professor of English and languages; Dr. Stacey Bolin, assistant professor and director of the Wilburn L. Smith Center for Entrepreneurship and Dr. Mary Harper, assistant professor of mathematics.
Three East Central University employees from its Physical Plant were honored with quarterly awards at "An Evening of Employee Recognition" on April 26 in ECU Foundation Hall of the Chickasaw Business and Conference Center. Pictured left to right are: Jeff Osborne, journeyman HVAC, for the third quarter of the year; Jane Erickson, custodian/assistant supervisor for the weekend setup crew, for the second quarter and Robert Martinez, custodian, for the first quarter. Erickson was also selected as ECU Physical Plant Employee of the Year.

subset: commoncrawl


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ENGLEWOOD, Colo. (AP) — The usually even-tempered Champ Bailey admonished his team after an aggravating performance against Tom Brady and the New England Patriots.
His rebuke was out of frustration and maybe a twinge of fear.
After all, Bailey certainly doesn't want to experience yet another late-season collapse.
The Denver Broncos are not only chasing their first playoff spot in six seasons, but also fighting recent history.
For the third time in four years, the team has taken an 8-5 record into the final three weeks of the season. Twice before, the Broncos failed to make the postseason.
In 2008, the flop cost Mike Shanahan his job.
And in 2009, it rendered then-coach Josh McDaniels' team a footnote in NFL history — one of just a handful of squads to start 6-0 and fail to make the playoffs.
Now, the Broncos (8-6) are trying to avoid another December nosedive after a 41-23 loss to the Patriots on Sunday. They're just a game up on the Oakland Raiders and the suddenly surging San Diego Chargers in the AFC West.
There's little margin for error anymore.
That's why Bailey, who's been around for both downfalls, exhorted his team after Brady carved up a patchwork secondary that was missing the leadership of Brian Dawkins.
"We need to concentrate on getting better. We showed today that we're not ready to go to the playoffs and make a push," Bailey said Sunday. "We've got to get better and we only have two or three weeks to do it.
"If we don't, then we'll be sitting home in the playoffs."
The task ahead won't be easy for the Broncos as they travel to Buffalo on short rest before closing out the season against the Kansas City Chiefs and Kyle Orton, who's eager to keep his former team from the playoffs after they benched him in favor of Tim Tebow and then released him.
"We have to play a whole lot better if we want to win," said cornerback Andre' Goodman, who was back in the lineup Sunday after suffering a concussion the week before. "We haven't played our best football yet, but I think we feel good about the position we're in, in terms of the division race and right now that's the only thing we can focus on."
Denver has been in this position before, only to fall short when a playoff spot looked almost certain.
Under Shanahan in 2008, the Broncos were outscored 112-54 over the final three weeks to finish at 8-8 and miss the postseason. Soon after, Shanahan was fired.
In came McDaniels, who had the team off to a sensational start.
Only they couldn't sustain the momentum, losing their last four games to become just the third team since the 1970 AFL-NFL merger to go unbeaten through six games and miss the playoffs, joining the '78 Redskins and the '03 Vikings.
However, this version of the Broncos isn't paying any attention to the past.
"At the end of the day, don't give up, and just go out there and continue to believe," linebacker Wesley Woodyard recently said. "That's something that we have this year. We believe in each other."
After an impressive six-week winning streak that included four fourth-quarter comebacks, the Broncos fell apart Sunday, exposing weaknesses that hadn't shown up since October.
— They were a solid ball control offense, turning it over just five times in six games. But they coughed up the ball three times in the second quarter, leading to 13 New England points and costing them the chance to keep up with the prolific Patriots.
— Their defense, so reliable this season, was shredded by Brady & Co., giving up 451 total yards.
— Their special teams faltered as returner Quan Cosby had a critical mistake just before halftime, muffing a punt and setting up a 21-yard field goal by New England. The usually sure-handed Lonie Paxton also had a bad snap on a botched extra point.
"It's very frustrating. But at the end of the day, it's just one game," Goodman said. "I think that's what we have to take out of it. It's one game and we're still in a good position in terms of the division race, and we're just going to have to learn from this, but be able to move on quickly from an emotional standpoint."
Overshadowed by the breakdowns and mistakes was this: Tebow turned in one of his finest games. He was solid and steady all afternoon, even staking the team to a quick 16-7 lead. Scoring early has been the Broncos' Achilles' heel lately.
Then, the turnovers hit. Lance Ball fumbled. Tebow fumbled. Cosby couldn't hold onto a punt he never should have tried to catch.
As is his nature, Tebow kept a rosy outlook after the game.
"I definitely feel like we're all right," said Tebow, who ran for 93 yards and threw for another 194. "We're excited about where we're at, and we're going to continue to be positive and stay motivated and just try to improve."
With Dawkins out because of a neck injury, the Broncos had to rely on rookies Quinton Carter and Rahim Moore. That simply opened the door for Brady, who exploited the secondary as he threw for 320 yards and two scores.
"Mentally, we just didn't play smart enough to win," Carter said. "Got to play smarter. Can't make those mistakes."
Notes: Broncos coach John Fox said Monday there was no update on RB Willis McGahee, who was hampered by a left leg injury against the Patriots. … Asked if Cosby was still his returner, Fox said: "Yeah. I haven't seen him since the game."
By PAT GRAHAM, Associated Press
(© Copyright 2011 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.)


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i've given it the treatment of a four inch lift kit with obs struts. now that i have 215/75/r15 bfg km2s, im having a heck of a time with steep hills. seems to me the next step is a d/r
i have a complete 86 gl parts car
all the other things i would need to get would be a clutch pedal assembly, dash gauge, adapter kit, from another legacy. i'm sure there is something that i am forgetting.
Edited by Turbone, 08 July 2012 - 10:48 AM.


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An Arizona-based algae technology company says it's on to something big: harnessing the growth of algae at a commercial scale so that it can ultimately be used as a transportation fuel. "Heliae" broke ground Friday on its new plant. Now, all it needs is an abundance of sunshine, water and carbon dioxide.
But while the ingredients to make algae may be simple, it is still an open question as to whether current pilot facilities can attract private investors that will enable the industry to gear up. Beyond the financial concerns, environmental worries persist. It can involve taking carbon emissions from power plants to grow the algae before converting it to something that would run cars, trucks and airplanes.
In a phone interview, Heliae's Chief Executive Dan Simon explained to this writer that the company's ultimate goal is to produce transportation fuels. To get to that point, though, it will focus on near-term aims that are more attainable: chemicals, cosmetics and healthy foods. As it develops, the enterprise will then expand overseas and into the Asia Pacific region.
"We will never take our eyes off the transportation fuels," says Simon. "But there are stepping stones to get us there. Production costs have to come down. Right now, the economics don't work. It will be 5 to 10 years before all of this will affect the price at the pump."
Simon continues, saying that "good science takes time" and that by first picking the "low hanging fruit" the company will drive revenues and efficiencies, and bring down production costs. Among the key goals the company is working towards: Ensuring that the process has a "positive energy impact," meaning that it can't take more energy to grow the algae than the amount of carbon dioxide that the algae would absorb.
Critics maintain that the recycling of carbon lends credence to the burning of fossil fuels and in the end, more carbon is emitted than is captured. The journal of Environmental Science and Technology, furthermore, looked two years ago at the life cycle of algae compared to other bio-fuels such as corn and switch-grass. It concluded that using conventional crops to create fuels will result in fewer greenhouse gas emissions and less water consumption than if algae is used to do the same thing.
The study also says that most of the carbon that is getting captured is coming from places other than power plants and oil refineries. That's because there is not yet an effective way to bottle such releases from industrial sources.
Those findings, however, have been refuted by the Algae Biomass Association, which says that researchers have used outdated data that is tied to older production methods to draw their conclusions. To that end, the industry, which has kept its production processes proprietary, is now saying that it may be willing to share its newest information so that such students can better understand today's technologies.
"If it cost you more energy to make it, then what is the point," says Nick Donowitz, director of corporate development for Heliae. "Based on the work we've done, we are charging on a path toward an energy neutral or energy positive system."
Algae, today, is a blip on the radar. But, tomorrow, it may become a full-scale blimp. According to Pike Research, it could be a 61 million barrels a year commodity with a market value of $1.3 billion by 2020. That's a compound growth rate of 72 percent, it adds. To put that in context, 83 million barrels of oil are consumed each day around the world. Of that, the United States uses about 18 million a day.


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Editor's note: Each week "Chris P. Beycon" shares tales from behind the kitchen door, where she works as an apprentice at a popular restaurant. Read her column here each Thursday! —The Mgmt.
At home, chopsticks are my Kunz spoon. I can pick up anything from tofu to steak, beat eggs, flip pieces of fish more delicately than with a spatula, turn strips of bacon more quickly than with tongs. When I went away for college, I brought several pairs with me, certain I wouldn't be able to find anything like them—unvarnished and textured—available in Central New York. I didn't do much cooking my first two years except for the rice and grits I made out of my (contraband) mini rice cooker, but the chopsticks were still a comfort to have.
At The Restaurant, my three inch paring knife is one of my best friends, along with my notebook and sharpie. With my paring knife, I peel potatoes, cut tape, trim sheets of pasta dough, halve artichokes, open tins of olive oil and occasionally nick myself.
Considering how I didn't know how to hold a knife properly when I first plunged into BOH work, I'm sure nobody will be surprised when I say I had no idea how to take care of knives either. I bought knife covers only after I noticed that the tip of my very sharp chef's knife had slipped through several layers of my knife roll. After months of using the same two knives at The Restaurant, it occurred to me that they might be in want of sharpening.
I'd watched line cooks sharpen their knives on the whetstones soaking in containers around the kitchen. Whenever I asked someone how they knew when a knife was ready, I seemed to receive the same answer: "You just feel it." Maybe. If I knew what "it" was supposed to feel like.
I was reluctant to attempt eking out what that might be on my own, at the expense of my knives. One of the line cooks recommended that if nobody had any downtime to show me, I could take my knives to Korin. I had mixed feelings about that: all the practical knowledge I needed was right there in the kitchen, ripe for harvesting. But in the end, I couldn't find a good time in between production and service to ask for help, and I really didn't feel like ruining my precious knives on my first try at sharpening them.
And so to Korin I went. I dropped in on a Saturday and spent a happy half and hour ogling knives that looked better suited for feudal-era combat than butchering tuna while the sharpening sensei examined my knives. The sales associate approached me before the sharpening commenced.
"Did you know that both your knives are bent in one direction?"
What the hell?! How did I even do that? It was like bringing a car to a mechanic for an oil change, only to be informed gingerly that the transmission needed to be replaced.
"It's ok, we can fix that. Very easy."
"Oh. Ok."
The sharpening master clicked around the store in his clogs and samue. I wanted to follow my knives into the OR but I had to pay for the services ($30...oh my heart) and didn't get to see the sensei at work. After a couple of passes on an enormous grinding stone, he disappeared downstairs to put the finishing touches on the blades. He re-emerged with my knives in one hand and a wad of newspaper in the other. Holding a single sheet in between his index finger and thumb, he swiped through the paper on a bias. Both blades sliced through the newspaper with only the slightest shhppp.
A sage nod. They were ready.
I'll say. Jesus.
For the record, learning how to sharpen a knife properly is on my long list of culinary to-do's, right behind sprouting some self-confidence and mastering basic techniques for cooking eggs. So it might be a while, but I'm sure I'll get there eventually. In the meantime, I will be sure to review Kenji's tips and attend a couple of Korin's free knife-sharpening demos before I set blade to stone myself.
Which tools in your kitchen/knife rolls do you hold dear?


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Qantas feud at the top turns nastier
THE standoff between Qantas chief executive Alan Joyce and his former mentor, Geoff Dixon, deepened on Wednesday night after Tourism Australia backed its chairman in the feud between the pair.
THE standoff between Qantas chief executive Alan Joyce and his former mentor, Geoff Dixon, deepened on Wednesday night after Tourism Australia backed its chairman in the feud between the pair.After an emergency meeting, the tourism body's board gave its full support to Mr Dixon and said that his investment in Qantas was not a conflict of interest.In reply, the Qantas board said its corporate governance charter was best practice.To try to end what it sees as a slow-burn strategy, Qantas had earlier said it would cut its funding to Tourism Australia unless Mr Dixon stepped down as chairman or dissociated himself from a rebel investor group agitating for a big change in direction at the airline.The board's decision leaves it at odds with Qantas, which has said it does not believe Tourism Australia can manage what it deems Mr Dixon's conflicts of interest. Mr Joyce also launched a stinging attack on the group of renegade investors he labelled as "Airline Partners Australia Mark II", as he tried to put an end to their destabilisation strategy.He mounted a spirited defence of his own five-year blueprint for Qantas, and criticised key aspects of the rebel investors' plans to sell its budget offshoot, Jetstar, and the frequent-flyer loyalty scheme.While declining to detail the breakdown in his relationship with Mr Dixon, he insisted that his priority was the airline and his strategy aimed at turning around its underperforming international division."I don't want to be distracted from it," he said. "Personal relationships and anything else around it are secondary to doing the right thing by Qantas," he said. Mr Joyce said he had not met Mr Dixon, the former Qantas boss, for a "catch-up" for eight months. Before their relationship soured late last year, the pair met as often as every fortnight in swish Sydney eateries.The investors, including Mr Dixon, former Qantas executive Peter Gregg, Sydney financier Mark Carnegie and ad man John Singleton, have been seeking support from large shareholders and unions for a change in strategic direction at the airline. They have questioned the benefits to Qantas of the proposed alliance with Emirates.Mr Joyce said Mr Dixon was a member of the "APA Mark II club", noting that the group included some key players in the failed $11.1 billion bid for Qantas in 2007 by Airline Partners Australia. Mr Dixon, who had once been a mentor to Mr Joyce, declined to comment.The Qantas boss said Mr Dixon was "very much out there briefing against the company", and he had no choice but to suspend the airline's relationship with Tourism Australia.Late on Tuesday, Mr Joyce wrote to federal Tourism Minister Martin Ferguson to tell him that Qantas was suspending its dealings with Tourism Australia because he believed Mr Dixon was in a position of "untenable potential conflict"."The consortium is determined to stymie the Qantas-Emirates partnership, which has otherwise been enthusiastically embraced by the tourism industry, our customers and our shareholders," he said in the letter to the minister.Qantas is the largest private funder to Tourism Australia, followed by Emirates. Its three-year funding program for the tourism body totals $44 million and is up for renewal next July.The Tourism Minister appoints the chairman and the rest of the body's board, which includes as a director former Virgin boss Brett Godfrey.Describing the dispute as a "commercial matter", the minister left it in the hands of the board to resolve.
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|Illustration by Sophie Griotto
Ever since I started this blog three years ago, I've had a dream. My dream has come true. In fact, it's far, far better than I ever dreamed or imagined.
Rizzoli said "Yes (!), yes we want to publish your book on French women." In my wildest fantasies -- and I've had quite a few -- had someone said to me "if you could choose any publishing house in the world which one would it be?" I would have said, "Rizzoli."
If you click here and once there on "fashion and beauty" you will see the extraordinary books they publish.
Without your support, interest, feedback and kindness this never would have happened. It was entirely possible that no one was interested in a subject that fascinated me, but you were and you inspired me and I could never have done it without you. Truly, this is your book as well and I will never be able to thank you enough for your generosity and support.
You may recall some time ago I wrote a post about believing -- really believing -- and working hard, very, very hard, sometimes dreams really do come true. Never forget that.
The news was announced this week in Publishers Weekly and Rizzoli gave me permission to tell you.
I have a lot of work to do which means I will be writing fewer posts, but I've turned to my darling Marsi (formerly of Luxebytes) who has been in on the secret since day one, and my pal The Class Factotum both of whom have graciously agreed to write posts when their schedules permit.
I've wanted to tell you for such a long time.


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2002-03 Women's Basketball
weekly recap
Bluffton out-rebounds Mount St. Joseph by 11 but falls 68-42By Tim Stried
December 16, 2002
|Special to: The Bluffton News (Dec. 19), The Witmarsum, Alumni e-newsletter (Dec. 17), but you read it here first.
The Bluffton College women's basketball team took a +11 advantage on the boards but fell 68-42 at Mount St. Joseph Saturday afternoon in BC's only game last week.
Bluffton falls to 0-7 overall and 0-3 in the Heartland Collegiate Athletic Conference. The Beavers travel to Lake Erie College on Mon., Dec. 16 before having an 11-day break from games. BC will play in the Notre Dame of Ohio Holiday Tournament Dec. 27 and 28.
Mount St. Joseph
The Beavers' 47 rebounds marked a season high, while the Mount grabbed 36 boards, but the host Lion squad scored 24 points off 27 Bluffton turnovers and jumped out to a 43-23 halftime lead.
Mount St. Joseph then opened the second half with a 14-4 run to put the game out of reach as Bluffton falls to 0-7 overall and 0-3 in the Heartland Collegiate Athletic Conference. MSJ improves to 6-1 overall and 3-0 in the HCAC.
Senior Melissa James scored 10 points to lead Bluffton, while senior Lyndsey Robinson added seven points. Sophomore Cara Young grabbed a game-high eight rebounds and scored six points, as did senior Erica Rock.
Bluffton shot a season-best 80.0% from the free throw line, but the Beavers only got to the line 10 times-a season low. BC committed a season-low 12 personal fouls but their 42 points marked a new season low and BC grabbed a season-low five steals.


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News Feature
Originally published in Island Ad-Vantages, June 21, 2012
CSD School board makes spending choices after public vote
Some voter requests granted, some not
by Jessica Brophy
At a special meeting on June 14, the CSD school board deliberated on what to do with the additional $147,000 voted into the 2012-13 school budget with nearly two-to-one support at the June 7 budget meeting and with more than two-to-one support at the ballot box June 12.
The funds had been added to the school board's proposed budget at the district budget meeting June 7. Former school board member Andy Vaughn, who made the motions increasing the budget, and several parents, teachers and community members spoke about the funds.
During discussion, those in favor of the increased funds asked the funds be used to reinstate the half-time librarian, the middle-level literacy position, the second fifth-grade teacher and to reinstate the gifted and talented teacher's position from 2.5 to four days per week. These four positions had been eliminated or reduced as part of the budget process.
Legally, the public can change the amount of money raised for warrant articles, but the public cannot dictate how those funds are spent. Maine law grants the school board broad authority to expend publicly-approved funds at the board's discretion.
At the June 14 special meeting, the board voted 2-3 (Cormier, Zelnick, Nelson) against reinstating the high school librarian position.
The board voted 2-3 (Cormier, Zelnick, Nelson) against increasing the gifted and talented teacher's position from 2.5 to four days per week.
The board voted for restoring the middle-level reading position 4-1 (Zelnick).
The board voted for having two fifth-grade classes for next year 4-1 (Cormier).
The board meets Monday, July 2, at 5 p.m. at the high school.
Debate over the votes
Approximately 40 parents, teachers and community members gathered at the June 14 special meeting. Several spoke in favor of using the funds to reinstate the four positions eliminated or reduced during the budget process. Many expressed frustration that the board did not do so for all the positions, despite the district budget meeting vote and island-wide ballot vote that validated the increased budget.
Parent Amy Vaughn said to ignore voter intent and the "public mandate" of the votes was "paternalistic."
Board member Linda Nelson said people who voted at the ballot box on June 12 "did not know what they were voting for," a comment that prompted outcry from those present at the meeting. In a follow-up interview, Nelson said what she meant by the statement is that with only four days between the district meeting and the referendum vote, many people did not have time to find out what, if any, changes had been made to the budget.
"I had a lot of people say they voted for the budget at the ballot because they trusted the school board," said Nelson. "They didn't know the budget had been changed."
"I am really tired of hearing about the board hearing from unknown constituents," said industrial arts teacher Dennis Saindon. "If they are so concerned, they could get out and vote. The way I look at it, the public has spoken."
Parent Deena Staples agreed with Saindon. "I don't think people are uneducated [about the budget]. It feels kind of disrespectful to say we don't know what is going on."
Nelson also said there are groups of people who don't feel comfortable coming to a public meeting and speaking up for a smaller budget, because they don't want to be seen as anti-education or anti-children.
Board member Stephen York said he did not think voters had been misled, and supported reinstating the funds as suggested at the district budget meeting.
Board member Vicki Zelnick said the board is faced with the problem of a "really big budget" for an enrollment that is not big, and that the board could have curtailed the budget through attrition for next year. Zelnick said she would prefer to see the funds added to the budget used for professional development to improve the current teaching staff.
Skip Greenlaw, board member, said that "after months of debate," the public "overwhelmingly approved" the addition of funds, and urged the other members of the board to vote in favor of using the funds to reinstate the requested positions.
In terms of the second fifth-grade class, fifth-grade teacher Linda Weed reported that another student had signed up for next year's fifth-grade, bringing the total number of students to 24.
Board chairman Mark Cormier said he had been on school boards over the years that believed in the benefit of small class sizes, but hadn't "seen the fruits" of those small classes.
When asked why he did not align all of his votes with public opinion, in a follow-up interview, Cormier said the board asked administrators to make cuts for a flat budget. When the funds are added back in, people assume the administration would reinstate the same positions and programs. In fact, Cormier said, administrators may want to take the school in a new direction.
Reduction in force for high school positions
Two partial reductions in force at the high school level were considered by the board at its June 14 meeting. The first was to reduce English and social studies teacher Marion Austin's position by .82 full-time equivalent, leaving Austin with one U.S. History course. The board approved this RIF 4-1 (York).
The second reduction recommended was a .33-reduction of the full-time English position held by Lee Lehto. The recommendation was made by the administration when a course of Lehto's failed to enroll any students. A class size policy passed earlier this year says any high school elective enrolling less than five students would be cancelled.
At the meeting on June 14, Lehto said she had students who were interested in taking the course but had not signed up. She also said she was considering other employment opportunities.
The school board went into executive session, and when members returned from executive session, they voted 0-5 against reducing Lehto's position.
In a follow-up interview, Superintendent Robert Webster said the situation was similar to Congress requiring the Navy to build a battleship it didn't need.
"Each member may have had their own reason [to vote to keep Lehto on full time]," said Cormier. "I think the strongest may have been that it is hard to offer a teacher a part-time position." Cormier said he is sure principal Todd West will find a productive use for Lehto's open class time.
Other business
At the request of board member Stephen York, the board reconsidered its position on whether to include administrator, teacher and staff salaries as part of the annual school report in the Island Ad-Vantages. York said withholding the information from the report "seems adversarial" since the information is requested by the newspaper each year and published anyway. Greenlaw said he didn't think the publishing of salaries served any purpose. The board approved the motion to publish employee salaries, 4-1 (Greenlaw).
The board also decided 5-0 to hold its meetings at the high school on a regular basis, instead of switching between the high school and the elementary school. All meetings will now be held at 5 p.m. in the high school cafeteria, unless otherwise scheduled.
The board also saw plans drawn up by architect Mike Sealander for the renovation of part of the high school into a new central office location. The board voiced support for a revision made to an earlier Sealander design. Webster encouraged the board to engage Sealander for a design for the library, which will be renovated into a library/media center.
During the June 14 meeting, a concern was raised about the nature of the relationship between the school system and Opera House Arts. In a follow-up interview, Webster said there is no contract for funding between the school system and OHA, and no plans for one. There are occasional ad-hoc programs that involve visiting artists, events or performances (some of which may involve OHA and other area organizations); these are determined by the principals on a case-by-case basis and paid for (if not donated) out of the schools' budgets for assemblies, workshops and student activities. Cormier confirmed that if any vote were to come before the board involving OHA, Nelson would abstain from that vote.
In a follow-up interview, Nelson said, "Opera House Arts, like several island nonprofits, invests a great deal of resources in programs that benefit our students and schools—in OHA's case approximately $35,000-$50,000 annually."
During the citizen comments period, parent Hyeja Poling addressed the board with concerns about reductions to the food budget. "I met with [Forrest Davis in Food Service] and he said the food quality will have to go down next year because of a reduction of staff hours and the increase of the cost of food," said Poling. "I think we need to think seriously about the food. What is more important than food for our children—not maintenance or the librarian."
Cormier said the board periodically revisits the school lunch program, and invited Poling to come back to the board with her concerns then.


text:
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You've heard it said, "It's about the children." I say, "It's about the parents."
Parent Cortical Mass is a blog for parents who want to get smarter and more effective at facilitating kids' learning and education.
Cortical Mass Sounds Like Critical Mass, Right? The idea is that if enough parents get smarter about learning and education, we could boost educational outcomes in America.
Of course it's about the children, but it's got to be about the parents, too!


text:
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A basket weave designed expressly for applications that require a more opaque and nondirectional fabric. An ideal fabric for roman shades, roll-ups and vertical blinds. Average openness 10%.
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|SheerWeave® is a registered trademark of Phifer Inc. Microban® is a registered trademark of Microban Products Company. GREENGUARD® is a registered trademark of GREENGUARD Environmental Institute.


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The coming week is pivotal for the effort to end DADT. And, as a reminder of how dangerous the DADT policy is for gay and lesbian servicemembers, I just received this via email from SLDN:
CONFIRMED TODAY: As the U.S. Senate is poised to take up repeal legislation, service members still cannot come out. A general just approved the separation of an SLDN client serving overseas in the U.S. Air Force. This service member now faces an administrative separation board. If the discharge moves forward, the fate of the service member's career will ultimately fall to Secretary Michael B. Donley, Dept. of Defense General Counsel Jeh Johnson, and Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel Dr. Clifford L. Stanley." Warning to service members: www.SLDN.org/StillAtRisk
We're running out of time for the Senate to act on the DADT language, which is included in the Defense Authorization bill.
The Obama administration has really screwed up this process. And, they're still discharging gay and lesbian servicemembers. This is beyond appalling.


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Ian J. Mehr, MBA '99
A managing director at biotech seed fund Golden Pine Ventures (Research Triangle Park, N.C.), Ian J. Mehr, MBA '99, PhD, describes his job as " a ton of fun," noting that it's "very exciting to be at the cutting edge of the intersection of science and business." With a BS in microbiology (from the University of Illinois) and PhD in genetics (from Northwestern) plus an MBA (Johnson School), Mehr has the ideal background for a seed fund focusing on company inception in the life sciences.
"I feel have a natural head for business, which combined with my scientific background means I can speak both languages and bridge two relatively disparate worlds . . . which means I can have a large personal impact on the success of small bio-businesses," Mehr says. "Company formation is a delicate dance where so many things can result in abysmal failure. Mix that risk with the potential to create life-saving drugs, add in the unique personalities that populate this industry (founding scientists, biotech execs, VCs, I-bankers, etc.), and it's a recipe for one heck of a wild - and entertaining - ride."
Mehr started on the path to his current position after he realized that he wasn't cut out for the bench life. "I long had my eye on jobs in biotechnology or pharmaceuticals, but found during my PhD that, while I loved talking about and learning about the science, I didn't enjoy actually doing the science," says Mehr. "Upon learning that, I spent a great deal of time researching alternative career paths in the bio-sciences. I thought it would be great if I could find myself in a business capacity where I could remain close to bioscience research, but not be directly responsible for it."
After actively seeking out and consulting with other PhD grads who were in business school, Mehr decided an MBA would provide the best way to jump-start his career transition. "I was lucky enough to be accepted into Cornell's Twelve Month Option [now Accelerated MBA] program," he says. "The MBA degree was positively essential for my transition, as the education I received at [the Johnson School] provided me knowledge and tools I use on a daily basis."
Since graduating, Mehr has "worked in progressively smaller organizations," he says, "starting at the multi-billion dollar LabCorp where I wrote the business strategy for pharmacogenetic testing and eventually led the top-line of the $40 million genetic testing business, followed by a stint with a small-cap publicly traded biotechnology firm called Paradigm Genetics, and most recently with a spin-out of the University of North Carolina called Qualyst, Inc., where, as employee number six, I was responsible for all non-science aspects of the business, growing their revenues from zero to several million dollars and helping them raise three rounds of equity financing."
Below, Mehr talks about what fascinates him about biotechnology, why he finds his job fun and exciting, describes the most compelling and most frustrating aspects of his job, and discusses the issues affecting the biotechnology industry today.
What drew you to biotechnology?
Mehr: I'm drawn to biotechnology because, frankly, it's fascinating. The scientific advances that have occurred in my lifetime alone are astounding, and I love learning and understanding new discoveries and how they may eventually turn into new therapeutics or diagnostics, and therefore studying and capitalizing upon their potential to grow new businesses.
What is a typical day like for you at Golden Pine?
Mehr: At Golden Pine, our business encompasses uncovering exciting academic research, co-founding companies with the university faculty, financing those companies we establish with our seed fund, and actively managing those companies as the interim CEO, eventually raising money from institutional investors (primarily VCs) on behalf of the company, subsequently turning over the reins to a new executive team and doing it all over again. At any given time, one partner at GPV can handle about three portfolio companies, provided they are at different stages of maturity. This means on any typical day I play the following roles at least once per day: technical reviewer of primary scientific literature and intellectual property, salesman to university professors on Golden Pine's value, financier for biotechnology companies, CEO, and fundraiser. It's exhausting but a lot of fun.
Q. What's the most compelling aspect of your job? The most frustrating?
Mehr: What gets me up in the morning is knowing that there's a pretty good chance that I could be playing a pivotal role in creating a company that will bring a life-saving therapeutic to the market, and perhaps receive financial rewards in the process. I become most frustrated when I encounter faculty at universities where I am challenged to convince them of GPV's value. Some faculty believe they can successfully launch a bioscience company all by themselves; perhaps some can, but most cannot due to the complexities and resource demands (time, money, talent) necessary for success. When they try to go it alone, they will often doom their company (and as a result, their technology) to commercial failure. Considering that the technology could eventually save lives, that is a very frustrating experience.
Q. What key issues are affecting your field today?
Mehr: If we define my field as starting companies out of universities, the key issues are lack of resources at academic institutions and their environs to support faculty-founded companies. Academic spin-outs need time, money, and talent. Faculty members don't have enough time to address the administrative needs of a spin-out, and neither do the university technology transfer offices. Seed capital ($100,000-$500,000 investments) has dried up across the nation, which most spin-outs require in order to get their business operations going. And talented, experienced management that are willing to work for an un-capitalized spin-out are practically non-existent.
Fortunately, Golden Pine exists to address these key issues and successfully launch more bioscience spin-out companies.
Q. Are you affected by the decrease in research dollars that many academicians are speaking about today?
Mehr: Personally, no. However, every single professor I have spoken with - and that amounts to hundreds in the last year - has commented on this situation. Most are very concerned about the drying up of the NIH wells. It has the potential to severely affect the quality of science in this country in the coming years.


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I've thought they've ended this flame war several years ago?
Well then, here we go, let the flaming commence...
he couldn't have pushed the "Linux succeeded because BSD had legal troubles" thing any harder
What was that? Three mentions of it?
I don't personally agree, I think Linux succeeded on it's own merit, but anyhow
He comes off as a super-asshole in general. "I published a paper in 1978 on something very close to the Java Virtual Machine, but we never got much credit for it although we were years ahead of Sun. Such is life sometimes." Too bad it was just a paper. But the truth is that Smalltalk is the language which actually existed which deserves the credit that Java got technically, but it also went nowhere because it was neither packaged more marketed attractively. The state of documentation for Squeak is distressing. So, Java it is!
Tanenbaum is clearly grumpy about continually being asked questions about why Linux ate Minix's lunch, and he's very defensive of his stupid license choices which have kept Minix an "also-ran". Maybe if they couldn't get a rise out of him, people would stop asking him about it. As long as he says stupid quotable things about Linux the questions will keep coming.
Tanenbaum has always been the kind of person with good technical insights, but no sense whatsoever about what makes something successful as a product or "in the real world." I have a lot of sympathy for that, because I'm like that as well. I'm a researcher - I write papers, they have good technical insights and contributions, they definitely impact the science of the field, and I hope that along the line they can affect practice - but I know there's a world of difference between what I do and making a product. Tanenbaum doesn't seem to get that.
And as far as the Java bit, yeah a LOT of people had that idea. It long predates what Tanenbaum did, back to o-code in the 1960's and p-code in the early 1970's (with the most popular version, remarkably similar to the Java/JVM model being UCSD's Pascal/pSystem). Those didn't take off like Java either - because there's a huge difference between having a good technical idea and having a successful product. Some is timing, some is "cool factor", some is marketing and sheer determination and drive. But superior technology, or having the first idea technically, has very little to do with it. See the success of MS-DOS or Windows for further examples...
First, on the Linux vs Minix piece - Minix wasn't ready for any use at all or at least so it was perceived. So Linux won that one. Regarding BSD, Linux ran on current hardware that hobbyists had laying around, BSD generally required a level of effort above and beyond that, so despite being a much better system, Linux won there also. Quite honestly, BSD is just a much better designed system, but that's not going to help it win outright converts when Linux appears to meet the needs and has mindshare. However, BSD may yet make a come back. I don't think the final chapter has been written yet. There's all those Windows machines that can be converted, after all.
On the Java piece - Java took off because it actually worked for the things people needed. It had the libraries, so even though Smalltalk might be better designed, it fails to meet those goals for 90+% of the folks that needed something. Java was truly the first to deliver adequate functionality and performance across platforms, and people (and companies) embraced it for it came with a license and was backed by a company that everyone felt they could tolerate and trust. So far, neither's been violated. We'll see what happens now that Oracle is in charge.
Seriously? Smalltalk failed do to bad marketing? This is a fallacy of the highest order. Languages become popular because they solve real problems. What problems did Smalltalk solve?
Smalltalk is unmaintainable for teams - Java is highly maintainable over a long period of time.
Smalltalk has no goal to be cross-platform - Java does.
Smalltalk has no standard for math, memory or treading - Java does.
Real world solutions sell a language. Not academic "pure oop" nonsense.
Smalltalk has no goal to be cross-platform - Java does.
I can't speak to the rest of your opinions, but you're outright wrong about this. The current implementation of Smalltalk is Squeak, and Squeak is cross-platform, implements a virtual machine which is ostensibly the same across platforms just as Java is ostensibly the same across platforms, et cetera.
The question is not why Linux succeeded, but why Minix failed.
The answer is simple, Tanenbaum refused to develop a 386 version,
claiming bizarrely that there were so many 286's in the world
that people would always use them.
If he had brought out a 386 version of Minix
I doubt if Linux would have taken off.
My impression at the time was that he got bored with Minix,
and wanted to move on to other things.
But the way in which Minix has been written out of the Linux story
is very strange, in my opinion.
In its origins, Linux was simply a fork of Minix.
Admittedly Torvalds had to re-write everything,
but that was just because Tanenbaum had a veto
on Minix development, and only allowed a tiny handful
of devotees to add code.
Torvalds was infinitely better at getting a team
to co-operate with him.
That was the secret of his success.
And to get it, you had to buy a book that cost more than I paid for a used car that year. (Yes, I did buy the book too!)
It was not meant to be a sueable system.
Is that a Freudian typo?
In its origins, Linux was simply a fork of Minix.
Oh come on. How many people still believe this Ken Brown nonsense? Even Tanenbaum himself said this is complete nonsense [cs.vu.nl].
"The question is not why Linux succeeded, but why Minix failed."
Well.. then I would one to question where exactly Minix failed.
It was not intended as a hobbyist system, it was not even intended to be usable and Tanenbaum even explicitly stated so, so it's no wonder it did became neither usable nor a hobbyist system.
On the other hand, Minix was intended as an educational tool to learn the basics of an OS. For this it should remain simple and true to its intention. Well, I think Linus himself said to have learned quite a bit from Minix as a lot of other engineers too, so again, how exactly did Minix fail?
"In its origins, Linux was simply a fork of Minix."
True, only for the little fact of being false.
"Admittedly Torvalds had to re-write everything,
but that was just because Tanenbaum had a veto
on Minix development"
Admittedly Tanenbaum restricted Minix license out of his own reasons but Linus did *not* "rewrote" Minix because of the license; he *wrote* Linux from scratch for the pleasure of doing it, because he was a hacker and he had a shinny new 386 on his desk.
In its origins, Linux was simply a fork of Minix. Admittedly Torvalds had to re-write everything,
Nope. That's called a clone or a re-implementation, not a fork. A fork is based on the original project's source code. Since Linus wrote everything from scratch, it wasn't not a fork.
IMO, Linux was successful where Minx & *BSD were not, for three main reasons:
- Linus himself - makes a near-ideal benevolent dictator for his project
- The GPL - guaranteed other devs that their work would always be Free Software
- Support for 386 and later 486 chips - a major itch that needed scratching
There were numerous secondary reasons too, but IMO the above are the main ones. In order of importance
"If 386BSD had been available when I started on Linux, Linux would probably never had happened."
Read the current article, then the one linked to another interview with Linus. It will become clear.
Linus Torvalds himself says the same thing - that if it weren't for the BDSI lawsuits, he would have just used BSD.
That is not the same thing. Torvalds is saying Linux likely would not have existed. That doesn't mean the success of Linux is correlated to the temporarily hamstrung BSD, that simply means Linux may not have had an opportunity to succeed if BSD was not hamstrung because it would not have existed.
It may very well be that Linux would not have experienced the success that it has if BSD was not legally hamstrung but you are drawing an incorrect conclusion from Torvalds' statement.
If BSD was not hamstrung and Torvalds still decided to start the Linux project it still may have succeeded. The decision on whether or not to start the project only determined whether Linux would exist in the first place.
Linus Torvalds himself says the same thing - that if it weren't for the BDSI lawsuits, he would have just used BSD.
That is not the same thing. Torvalds is saying Linux likely would not have existed. That doesn't mean the success of Linux is correlated to the temporarily hamstrung BSD, that simply means Linux may not have had an opportunity to succeed if BSD was not hamstrung because it would not have existed.
No, the most enthusiastic Linux developer and hobbyist is saying he would have spent his time somewhere else if BSD were available. Other early developers would have had similar behaviors. The pool of people willing to work on Linux would have been severely diminished. In other words, there would not have been a vacuum for Linux to fill.
No, Linux "succeeded" because BSD was frozen out of the market by AT&T at a crucial time.
Having lived thru that, I'd disagree. BSD was way too elitist, "oh, you wanna run a BSD flavor on a 386? Oh how cute, but you suck. We all use PDP11s here. We'll let you try, if you promise not to pester us with bug reports and things, now here's a nickel kid, go buy youself a real computer like a VAX.". Minix wanted you to buy a book and the hardware support was kinda limited so its unclear if you'd be wasting your money or not, which in the pre-amazon days meant finding out the ISBN and pestering an intimidating bookstore clerk to order it for you and then rolling the dice once it arrived. Linux? That was just some downloads off the local BBSes and/or early internet provider link, and everyone was mostly friendly most of the time, unlike the *BSD guys.
The *BSD community has been painted as being "elitist" for well over 20 years now. But that's just not the case. It's a merely a community that's built around a meritocracy. They don't care who you are, or where you're from, or what your experience is, just as long as you have skill. That's all they ask for, and that's actually quite reasonable. That's why the *BSD operating systems are so damn solid; they're built by very talented developers who know exactly what they're doing.
Those who call them "elitist"
It requires the same amount of effort to politely redirect someone to the appropriate place, without mistreating the "ignorant". They are ignorant, because they don't know, they are trying to learn, but instead of being helpful, you turn to being abusive? I wouldn't call someone like that elitist, I'd simply call them an asshole.
Back in 90-smth I used to be a Debian user. I used to ask a lot on Usenet and lists. That's because the system was so bad, and the documentation so shitty (Linux users back them used to use the "LDP" - Linux Documentation Project - which in effect was a bunch of badly written and outdated documents.
Then some dude from a Debian LUG (I helped begin, BTW) talked greatly about the virtues of FreeBSD. I never looked back. Right he was, indeed. Soo much better than Debian. I actually felt a sort of relief. You do
My experience with BSD development is that it comprises core teams of fairly smart geeks with tireless sycophants on the sidelines taken under the wings of the elders on the basis of their ability to suck up. This is why everything BSD beyond the kernel and a few specific userland apps is an also-ran.
And the BSD operating systems are "so damn solid" only in the sense that many parts are very mature and the pace of development is fairly slow, lagging well behind Linux for a good decade. This is not to say that stability isn't sometimes a good choice - which is why many people choose Debian.
Linux, meanwhile, is much more meritocratic. Your code good enough? We'll take it, even though we're not sure who you are. Big business wanting to contribute time, money and resources? We'll take it. Not up to scratch? We'll give you advice but we won't include you in anything mainline. Hell, we'll not only give you advice but we'll point you to the copious amount of documentation produced to help kernel and userland developers.
Here's a simple challenge for you: try writing a functional network card driver for Linux over a weekend. Now try the same in FreeBSD.
Here's a simple challenge for you: try writing a functional network card driver for Linux over a weekend. Now try the same in FreeBSD.
I have to say your right on the money with that statement. One of the things that made Linux so attractive was Linus et el put a lot of effort in allowing people to add driver support for hardware. It stands to reason making an OS for machines people slap together themselves you need to be able to quickly add support for a multitude of hardware. This alone is a huge reason for the success of Linux. The BSD developers on the other hand, had a clear idea of what hardware they wanted to support -- big ass servers -- so the means to support "oh look a new graphics card" type new hardware was low priority and never built in.
And the BSD operating systems are "so damn solid" only in the sense that many parts are very mature and the pace of development is fairly slow, lagging well behind Linux for a good decade.
Right... That was why head-to-head benchmarks of Linux and FreeBSD on SMP and file-system performance showed FreeBSD coming out ahead pretty consistently. These days, people have stopped caring about a little performance one way or the other, but it's utterly ridiculous to claim FreeBSD lags "a good decade" behind Linux.
The *BSD community has been painted as being "elitist" for well over 20 years now. But that's just not the case. It's a merely a community that's built around a meritocracy. They don't care who you are, or where you're from, or what your experience is, just as long as you have skill.
I got in an argument with Theo the Rat about the performance hit of Position Independent Executables on x86. Spoiler: It's 1%, however you get a 5% boost by -fomit-stack-pointer--which doesn't work with -fPIE -fPIC, so you take a 6% hit. Most processes spend less than 0.1% in the main executable process, and so the 6% hit becomes 0.006%. The exception is X11 itself, which at the time spent a whopping 8% of its time in the main executable, making the 6% hit a 0.48% hit.
When I posted the opening argume
Having also lived through this....
Remember, that prior to Minix, Linux or any of the x86 BSDs, the idea of a personal, affordable, up-to-date Unix platform was something of a Holy Grail. The basic options were either expensive (SCO XENIX), loosely compatible (Coherent, PC-Unix) or discontinued surplus (AT&T UnixPC). The stage was set for somebody to take over the world.
In the beginning, you had two choices for running BSD on a 386- BSD/386 or 386BSD. BSD/386 was an expensive commercial product. 386BSD was free, but initially flawed and slow to release updates. It was a project basically under the control of a single person, William Jolitz, and his wife.
Quoting from the Wikipedia entry for 386BSD:
"After the release of 386BSD 0.1, a group of users began collecting bug fixes and enhancements, releasing them as an unofficial patchkit. Due to differences of opinion between the Jolitzes and the patchkit maintainers over the future direction and release schedule of 386BSD, the maintainers of the patchkit founded the FreeBSD project in 1993 to continue their work.[2] Around the same time, the NetBSD project was founded by a different group of 386BSD users, with the aim of unifying 386BSD with other strands of BSD development into one multi-platform system. Both projects continue to this day."
In this case, the issue was not elitism so much as vested self-interest. (The Jolitzes has various ties to Dr. Dobbs Journal and the original 386BSD porting effort was documented in a series of articles.
The AT&T lawsuits did occur at this time, but is has been noted that 386BSD was never party to any of them.
My personal feeling is that the success of Linux was a combination of timing, personality and community response. Had Linus taken a more controlling stance (not a benevolent dictator), things might have gone very different.
BSD/386 was an expensive commercial product
I distinctly recall seeing a featurelist / marketing PR material around '93 or '94 and I got all excited and ready to buy until I saw the $995 pricetag. No not $899 or $999 or $1000, exactly $995. On the other hand I could have gone 386BSD but then spent $995 on the rather narrow compatible hardware list, I remember my desktop would not have been able to boot 386BSD at that time, but maybe I could have hacked it into working. In the end I downloaded a set of linux SLS floppy disk sets from a local BBS wh
"I think Linux succeeded against BSD, which was a stable mature system at the time simply because BSDI got stuck in a lawsuit and was effectively stopped for several years."
The reasons may also be more to do with Linux and the way it was run! Early hackers have noted that they preferred BSD, but could not use it due to lack of dual booting, this would have meant deleting windows which may have been needed for work. It was also easier for aspiring hackers to contribute to Linux, you didn't have to be one of the inner circle to contribute. There was also a lack of politics, persons within the rival operating systems had noted and open differences which would have affected work.
In 1992, the ability to put Linux on its own partitiion and have it coexist with DOS on a single physical drive was the *ENTIRE* reason why I originally decided to go with Linux instead of 386BSD, which was also freely available at the time, even though BSD offered considerably more functionality than Linux during that period.
It had absolutely squat to do with lawsuits.
I'm sure he knows more about operating system design than I will ever even want to know, but he knows jack shit about why Linux succeeded and it has nothing to do with lawsuits against BSDi, which in turn has nothing to do with BSD-4.4-lite, upon which all free *BSDs are based (and so is OSX, for that matter, although it may still retain code from BSD-4.3 for all I know, via NeXTStep.)
Linux succeeded because of the GPL, plain and simple. It had less than a year's start before 386BSD, which was not affected by the lawsuit [wikipedia.org].
Tanenbaum will say anything to make himself sound like less of a douche for placing such strident restrictions on Minix and thus killing it, and so he wants to take anything away from Linux that he possibly can. If he has to ignore history to do so, so be it. Thankfully there's Wikipedia.
Let me be clear, the *BSDs WERE based on 386BSD which is why it's relevant, and they therefore still are (sort of) but they've inherited code from 4.4-BSD-lite since.
In hindsight, perhaps, this is all clear. At the time, would you have bet your house on the proposition of 386BSD remaining unscathed if the BSDi lawsuit had come to a different outcome? But wait, I have a reference.
From Open Sources: Voices from the Open Source Revolution [oreilly.com]:
Like the other groups, they started by adding the six missing files that Bill Jolitz had written for his 386/BSD release.
... At the preliminary hearing for the injunction, BSDI contended that they were simply using the sources being freely distributed by the University of California plus six additional files. They were willing to discuss the content of any of the six added files, but did not believe that they should be held responsible for the files being distributed by the University of California [which 386BSD also used, one would think]. The judge agreed with BSDI's argument and told USL that they would have to restate their complaint based solely on the six files or he would dismiss it. Recognizing that they would have a hard time making a case from just the six files, USL decided to refile the suit against both BSDI and the University of California.
Yeah, totally clear how 386BSD was free and clear of the legal fog of war. And a huge debt owed by everyone to Marshall Kirk McKusick and friends who fought this battle on our behalf while Linux thrived under the legal radar.
In my own view, Linux had a crazy-making anthill culture, which appealed to many young coders with more energy than brains. But you know, I wouldn't bet against energy in retrospect. The annual ipchains rewrite boggled my mind. Not my cup of tea. An even crazier splinter group made hay with PHP, breaking just about every rule of thoughtfulness and elegance known to God and man. And look where that got them: pretty damn far.
I would personally, however, have jumped on the BSD wagon at the time had it been able to promote a coherent vision of life after lawsuit. What would be the balance be now if BSD had gathered twice as many elitist greybeards into the fold? I have a feeling it would have continued to lag in the department of crappy consumer product device drivers, compromising a major defection path from Windows 98. Greybeards don't do popularity worth a damn.
Debian zealots notwithstanding, Linux quickly became popular enough to become a willing host for binary blobs.
I don't understand how one can say BSDI suit could do anything much for Linux. The suit did not preclude the creation of FreeBSD/NetBSD and thus Linux and BSD both had opportunity. If the claim is that BSDI lent some sort of credibility/support, during that time Linux had none of that either (Red Hat didn't even technically have an offering until 94, and I would say it wasn't worth taking seriously until '97 or so).
Whatever went 'right' for Linux and 'wrong' for BSD had nothing to do with that suit.
Try doing a simple modification to the MINIX kernel like adding a new system call. The new system call doesn't even have to do anything interesting or touch hardware: just add some numbers and return them, for the sake of argument or something. Last I tried in MINIX this required touching something like 6 or 7 different files in the source. There are a lot of different components in the kernel that need to know about the new system call, which component it gets forwarded to, how to package up the message to send to that server. I think Linus is bang on when he says microkernels add complexity on to the interactions between components, which is where the worst of the complexity was to begin with.
Linux does run every component of the kernel in the same address space, which has its downsides (a buggy video driver can theoretically affect your network driver), but I haven't seen these downsides come up in practice. Truth be told, if one of your drivers crashes, there's little hope of maintaining a useful system and you'll likely want to reboot anyway.
As far as AST's assertion that Linux is "spaghetti" code, no no no, look at the code for yourself. The components in Linux are very well separated. Linux keeps them separated by coding discipline rather than by some technical enforcement (like different address spaces), but this discipline is kept up very well. I suspect the high-level Linux developers (like Linus) spend a lot of time and effort tracking people down and yelling at them for breaking this discipline and trying to put in some spaghetti, but in my dealings with the kernel, they've done a very good job of staying disciplined. I haven't come across anything in the Linux kernel that I'd call "spaghetti".
Back to the example of adding a system call, I think in Linux this requires 3 source files that need to change. I've only spent a few weeks on each of them, but in my experiences, Linux has the edge on MINIX when it comes down to keeping components logically separated. In Linux, what you do in one place, no other code ever needs to know about that. In MINIX, you have to worry about how and where to forward messages and, while it is sort of elegant in its design, but I don't see an actual benefit coming out of it.
Why would you be modifying the kernel/adding a system call? The kernel, in this case, is just a kernel.
Truth be told, if one of your drivers crashes, there's little hope of maintaining a useful system and you'll likely want to reboot anyway.
Except this isn't true of microkernel systems like Minix. And this is the point: microkernels enforce protection boundaries between components so failure and recovery become feasible. That simply isn't possible in a monolithic kernel without resorting to proof-carrying code of some sort.
As far as AST's assertion that Linux is "spaghetti" code, no no no, look at the code for yourself. The components in Linux are very well separated. Linux keeps them separated by coding discipline rather than by some technical enforcement (like different address spaces), but this discipline is kept up very well.
Here is a link [kerneltrap.org] to a good example of of such discipline. It contains excerpts from a discussion on the lkml over the use of "goto" in Linux kernel code. The kernel devs have found a situation where the judicious use of "goto" makes the code cleaner, clearer, and easier to maintain. The wisdom of this use is challenged by someone who dogmatically believes that all goto statements are evil. It is quite amusing (and a little sad).
The license is really less important than community in making a project successful. What is important is a high pace of development and a large developer community, not whether a project uses the BSD or GPL licenses. In these cases, economically most commercial players will contribute most of their changes back.
The license is really less important than community in making a project successful.
The license helps determine what kind of community you will attract; is it people who want to help everyone, or people who want to help themselves first and anyone else only as an unintended consequence? As it turns out, the kind of people who want to help everyone have produced a more popular system, in spite of the supposedly increased improved commercial appeal of the other one.
Download Minix and you get a microkernel OS. Browsing the FTP site for packages and I see SSH, X, Vim, the make suite and Perl. It seems any actual useful programs are left as an exercise to the student.
Loads of education fun -- if I was stuck on a rocket to Jupiter and had a few years to kill reinventing the wheel. In Perl, none-the-less. *shudder*
No, Linux "succeeded" because BSD was frozen out of the market by AT&T at a crucial time. That's just dumb luck. Also, success is relative. I run a political website that ordinary people read. On that site statistics show that about 5% is Linux, 30% is Macintosh (which is BSD inside) and the rest is Windows. These are ordinary people, not computer geeks. I don't think of 5% as that big a success story. [AST]
I'm still convinced that it's one of those ideas that sounds nice on paper, but ends up being a failure in practice, because in real life the real complexity is in the interactions, not in the individual modules. And microkernels strive to make the modules more independent, making the interactions more indirect and complicated. The separation essentially ends up also cutting a lot of obvious and direct communication channels. [LBT]
Maybe the webserver itself is running Linux, though. As well as your home broadband router, prof. Tanenbaum!
I'm sad because of the short sight.
Linux is successfull (no quotes). This is a fact. Also Windows is (used to be) successful at some time.
Do you see Windows everywhere? Nope. Do you see Linux everywhere. Nope as well, but it's very, very popular.
Maybe it's not popular in desktops. But it is, indeed.
With the computing power available today, wasting a bunch of cycles in safer communication for microkern
All the cool kids started wearing Tux t-shirts. Linus Torvalds did interviews with the press, and it didn't hurt that he's somewhat photogenic. Wired Magazine said you weren't hip unless you ran Red Hat and had a frame relay connection to your house.
And then the startups in the 1990s didn't want to (or just couldn't) spend money on SUN boxes, so they found a "good enough" solution.
So the HP guy comes up to me (at the Melbourne conference) and he says, 'If you say nasty things like that to vendors you're not going to get anything'. I said 'no, in eight years of saying nothing, we've got nothing, and I'm going to start saying nasty things, in the hope that some of these vendors will start giving me money so I'll shut up'.
Hardware donations do not come from vendors who use OpenSSH on parts of their stuff. They come from individuals. The hardware vendors who use OpenSSH on all of their products have given us a total of one laptop since we developed OpenSSH five years ago. And asking them for that laptop took a year. That was IBM.
Yes, people have mentioned a million times how much BSD has done for OS X. What has OS X done for BSD? On the desktop it's fallen off the map, it used to be listed at 0.01% at hitslink now it's nothing. Nobody uses just BSD and I strongly doubt anyone using OS X contributes much to BSD so that the next version of OS X will be better. That I think would have happened with or without Linux. At least on the server side there's a few using BSD as-is, perhaps we'd have a BAMP stack instead of a LAMP stack. But without all the corporate contributions I'd probably be more of a Win/Unix market with BSD as a simplistic, free server.
BSD depends on people and corporations that are willing to give, give and then give some more. Would Linux be where it is if everybody has constantly grabbed features to put in AIX, SCO (before they turned troll), Solaris, OS/2, MacOS, Windows and so on? No. The BSD license lacks the self-preservation to exist as an independent product, sure the code won't go away but all the users disappear on proprietary spin-offs and so too in essence all the potential developers. With or without Linux it'd end up just as libraries for products people actually use. Then you can pound your chest and say our BSD code is in the TCP/IP stack of Windows, while Microsoft laughs all the way to the bank.
Has it occurred to you that some people don't share your view that everyone should be forced to use their code in a way consistent with Stallman's ideologies?
(As an aside: Apple has actually done a fair bit -- but since you're borderline trolling I wouldn't expect you to mention that.)
And yes, I do use FreeBSD exclusively on everything but my laptop. Who gives a shit if it's not listed on some popularity-ranking website? There were plenty of doofuses saying the same thing about Linux when it started, and Mac OS X back in 2001.
The BSD license allows people to use code for pretty much whatever purpose, provided that they don't claim to have written it. The GPL allows people to use code for whatever purpose -- provided they conform to the GPL ideology, license their code under the GPL, and don't use it in certain ways that Stallman et al. think are unacceptable.
You tell me which embodies the spirit of freedom more.
Has it occurred to you that some people don't share your view that everyone should be forced to use their code in a way consistent with Stallman's ideologies?
That's irrelevant to his point of software dominance via natural selection. His point was simply that the GPL is a better survivor given software market dynamics and the human mindset, and that's why it's thrived more than BSD. Nobody cares what license you choose, but it's undeniable that the GPL is more successful.
Nobody uses just BSD
They don't? If I wasn't required to use Linux at work, I'd be 100% FreeBSD, no Linux, no Windows, nothing. FreeBSD remains a far superior desktop system. Linux remains a nightmarish fight to get a system stable and with the software you want installed. Load up RHEL5/6 with all the repos you want, and it's still completely hit or miss as to whether the program you've been using for decades will be in any of the repos. So go get the source RPM and cross your fingers and hope... Ever tried to compile OpenSuSe SRPMs on RHEL? Yikes!
In FreeBSD, there's a port (and probably a package if not for license issues) for everything you could ever want to have installed. And if it's older and was since deleted, you can probably pull it in from an old ports tree, and it'll still work just fine.
One simple little thing ALL the BSDs get right, that ALL the Linux distros (except Slackware) get wrong... Headers (-devel) included in the package, not separately. They're tiny, they'll never cause any problems, and almost everyone will end up needing them at some point, so it's incomprehensible that they're universally shunned...
The BSD license lacks the self-preservation to exist as an independent product, sure the code won't go away but all the users disappear on proprietary spin-offs and so too in essence all the potential developers.
Linux and GNU aren't dependant on companies and developers just doing the bare minimum to comply with the GPL. No, they have to go above and beyond that, to working with the community to get their changes merged. Apple's tar dumps of WebKit source code were useless, yet this is the license you were saying was going to keep them honest? Sorry, no, it was public pressure that got them playing nice, NOT license obligations.
There are many examples of non-CopyLeft licenses working out fine, and furthermore, being NECESSARY.
Theo is complaining, because he personally burned a lot of bridges, and I'm not sure companies want to be associated with him at all. FreeBSD is doing just fine and developing quite well, even if it gets vastly less press than Linux. Jimmy Wales is begging for money every day, does that mean Wikipedia, like BSD, is a failed idea, and it needs a copyright that requires contributions to Wikimedia for all commercial redistribution?
There are plenty of examples of BSD/MITX licensed software being NECESSARY. Pretty much EVERYTHING that is a de-facto internet standard was released as BSD/MITX-licensed software, and I'd say next to nothing released as CopyLeft has ever risen to that level...
OpenSSH wouldn't have caught-on if it was GPL'd. Why do you think FreSSH has negligible installed base? Telnet and rsh stayed in-use far after they should have died out, yet it wasn't until OpenSSH came along that everyone agreed on a standard.
Apache has done quite well, both in funding and code contributions, despite their very free license across their projects.
The same is true of BIND and SENDMAIL.
NFS (v3) was looking horribly decrepit for a number of years. Yet it kept being used, while all the GPL'd network filesystems being developed without the drawbacks and features like encryption died on the vine. And now with NFSv4, the freer option is back up to snuff, and all those CopyLeft alternatives remain dead.
rsync is a great service, but will it ever be established as an alternative to primitive FTP file transfers? It actually looks like SFTP is taking over a lot of those functions.
NTP? LPD? Kerberos & LDP? iSCSI?
Go ahead, just name one piece of CopyLeft software that has gone on to become a defacto internet standard, and prove me wrong.
The moral of the story is, you want to say if it was BSD instead of Linux, it would have been "stolen" and locked-up in proprietary products. I'd say if it had been BSD instead of Linux, penetration would have been VASTLY faster, and COMPLETE. Sure, th
BSDI got stuck in a lawsuit and was effectively stopped for several years
Linux kernel started in 1991. Lawsuit started in 1992 and settled in 1993. Linux kernel 1.0.0 was released in 1994.
Good to know that mature BSD was no match to Linux v.1.0.0.
You'd think he's sore because Linux took his ball away.
Surely not?
One of the main reasons Minix crashed and burned was the difficulty in getting the bloody thing. I have a copy of his book "Operating Systems, Design and Implementation", published by Prentice Hall INternational Editions in 1987. I bought a copy in 1990 as I was interested in Unix like operating systems. The prices listed for the Minix software at the end of the preface were out of date even then, Prentice Hall in the UK wanted about
A few years later I heard somewhere (May have been Wired) about this spiffy new Linux operating system. By then I had a (more or less) stable internet connection and the instructions were quite easy; download 20-some-odd slakware diskettes from Sunsite and you were in business. Nothing was mentioned about BSD. So I downloaded 20-some-odd diskettes from Sunsite and I was in business.
At least in my case, Linux won out over BSD largely due to marketing and the easy distribution method. No one every really talked about BSD, and Linux worked brilliantly for me, so I used Linux.
I can say, with some authority, that Linux succeeded on it's own merit, mostly because it supported a broad range of commodity hardware. It got a boost because everyone started buying 386s, which were the first competent hardware for the IBM PC. There were lots of options back in the late eighties, all vying for some kind of position, but most of them had big problems of community: Coherent, MINIX, xinu, Xenix, Apple A/UX, netBSD, OS/2, OS-9, QNX, Lynx, etc. I looked at all of them as reasonable alternatives to the laughable PC operating systems of the day (MS-DOS and Macintosh System 7). NetBSD was a reasonable competitor right up through the mid-nineties, but Linux hardware support eventually blew it out of the water. By 1995 it was clear that Linux and the open source development methodology had won handily.
Yes, licensing had something to do with all of this, but so did Linus' management style: people wanted to work on Linux, and Linus did not turn them away: he welcomed them. I wouldn't want to say anything bad about Dr. Tanenbaum, I have the greatest respect for him and his work, but other than netBSD, none of the other free and open OSs of the day were making any attempt to take the general market, MINIX included. I remember looking at MINIX and rejecting it because of it's limitation to academic use (the limitation to the 286 wasn't that much of a concern, though it probably should have been).
A consultant is a person who borrows your watch, tells you what time it is, pockets the watch, and sends you a bill for it.


text:
For the first time in union history, Winnebago County workers are on strike. More than 300 union members walked off the job and onto the picket lines at 4:30 Thursday morning.
Rockford mother Julia Walsh says she's walking the picket line to provide a better life for her kids.
"It's very hard. My kids are young, I pay for day care. I'm a single mom, it's tough," Julia says.
A nurse aide at River Bluff Nursing Home, Walsh makes $7.25 an hour.
"I feed the patients. I make the beds. I wash the beds. Change the linen stations, everything," adds Julia.
Walsh and other striking workers say they'd rather be on the job and are worried about the patients, animals, or work they've left behind.
"It's hard work but we do it because we love the residents, but pay us a fair share so we can make ends meet. We have bills too," says Beverly Finley.
But for many of those walking the picket line, it's not just about a pay increase. They say they're protesting the way county leaders manage money.
They can pass all kinds of budget items and have these studies and what not and pay them x number of dollars. But they can't look out for employees. I have a problem with that," says Duwayne Morgan.
County leaders say they've offered all they can in tough economic times, but for struggling mothers like Julia Walsh, it's not enough. The union is asking for a two-year contract that includes a three percent raise now, another in April and then another three percent raise on worker's anniversaries starting in October 2004.
The county has agreed to just about all of that except the last three percent raise. Other stumbling blocks include health care and a step pay plan. To put this in perspective, the average county worker salary is just over $11.


text: Jazz impresario Fred Taylor ran into Lady Gaga (above) at the Montreal Jazz Festival this week, and reports that the pop star knows a little something about jazz. Gaga made a surprise appearance with Tony Bennett, and was still backstage afterward when Taylor went around to say hello to his friend of several decades. The two chatted for a few minutes about music. Gaga, who played at TD Garden Monday, was in Montreal for a show but took the stage with Bennett to sing several songs off their upcoming jazz collaboration, "Cheek to Cheek."


text:
Manchester City are planning a shock January move for Stoke City captain and reported Manchester United target Ryan Shawcross, according to the Daily Mail.
The 25-year-old looks to be stalling on the six-year contract the Potters have offered, with rumours starting to circulate that the defender wants to run down the remaining 18 months of his current deal at the Britannia Stadium.
Red Devils boss Sir Alex Ferguson is a long-term admirer of the England international, who was allowed to leave Old Trafford to join up with Stoke in a £1million deal in 2008.
However, Shawcross has been earning rave reviews this season, as Tony Pulis's side have gatecrashed the top half of the Premier League table, with the centre-back's fine individual performances attracting the attention of a number of clubs.
Roberto Mancini is another manager keeping tabs on the player's ongoing contract situation, with a view to enticing him to the Etihad Stadium in the New Year.
Joleon Lescott has fallen down the first-team pecking order, and has been linked with a move away from Manchester City, while Kolo Toure will be heading off for Africa Cup of Nations duty next month.
Manchester United have stronger central defensive options following the recent return of club captain Nemanja Vidic, but with Rio Ferdinand's long-term future far from certain, they too could still renew interest in Shawcross if he becomes available in January.
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text:
Meneses sworn in as new SISD Board Trustee
The Sweetwater Independent School District (SISD) Board of Trustees met for its regular session meeting on Monday evening, May 16 at Sweetwater High School (SHS) in "The Hub" conference room.Several presentations were made to open the meeting, including a variety of resolutions, a robotic demonstration and the recognition of a departing board member.Four resolutions were given to a wide range of extracurricular organizations within the school district. Sixteen students in the Sweetwater FFA (Future Farmers of America) were recognized for qualifying to the state level in the areas of Cotton, Dairy Foods, Land, Meats, Poultry and Range. Three Sweetwater High schoolers were also recognized and presented with resolutions. One member of the SHS Choir, Austin Burt, was commended for qualifying to the state competition for his solo. Jayci Shelton was recognized for qualifying to the state track meet, and Ryan Mercer was honored for being a state qualifier in boys' golf.Also, the Sweetwater Middle School Robotics team led a demonstration of three of their robots. Led by sponsor Shana Hrbacek, the group of middle schoolers recounted their recent robotic workshop, the forming of the boys and girls team and an overview of their program.Departing SISD Trustee Bryan Studdard, who opted out of reelection, was presented with a plaque for his nine years of service to the school district by Superintendent Terry Pittman, who praised Studdard for always keeping the interests of the students in mind during his tenure. Studdard offered his appreciation to his fellow board members and reiterated his concern for the students, saying he was "blessed" with the opportunity to serve.With Studdard exiting the board, new Trustee Mark Meneses was sworn into office along with current board member Russ Petty, who were both unopposed for the positions. Following the oath, the board reorganized into its new order as Becky Jimenez now presides over the meetings.Approved at the meeting was the consent agenda, which featured the minutes of the regular meeting held on April 18, the called meeting on April 20, the investment statement and budget amendment. The April 2011 financial statements and bills were approved as well, and the delinquent tax lot bids — which were deemed too low, thus unacceptable — were also approved.The board also approved the hiring of EIC, or Educational Independent Contractors. The entity specializes in employing and paying teachers through their company rather than the school district itself. Some current SISD employees have expressed interest and those who participate will greatly benefit from a financial standpoint.Another consideration for approval were some changes within a couple of local policies. Regarding the FNF, which deals with drug testing, some revisions were implemented such as refusals for testing being the equivalent to a positive test result and the timeline and measures to take for reinstatement to participate in extracurricular activities. An insightful discussion on the matter took place among the board and with its approval, students will be informed of the changes that will take effect as early as next school year. Also approved for changes was in the BE local policy for the time of board meetings to be set at 5:30 p.m., in contrast to the previous statement of 6:30 p.m.Other changes that will also be implemented for next school year are the changes in dress code. As previously reported, the public forum held regarding standard attire within SISD led to the formation of a committee to determine if the school should transition into standard attire or make changes to the current dress code.Assistant Superintendent Kathy Smartt praised the cooperative work of the committee members, who ranged from each end of the dress code spectrum. The committee concluded in a majority to make changes to the current code in an effort to be more specific in expectations. Another main factor will be the consistent enforcement of the updated dress code, which not only addresses clothing issues like sagging and cleavage but continual cultural trends such as tattoos and piercings. The board approved the new dress code and the board stated that parents will be informed through a variety of outlets. SISD faculty and staff members will also have to comply with the dress code, with the only exception being facial hair.Several personnel changes — both professionally and paraprofessionally — were noted in the meeting for next year's staff. Four resignations, one retirement and two new hires will take place in professional personnel, while three resignations and two retirements were named in paraprofessional personnel. In the Superintendent's Report, it was noted that the tax collections at the end of April 2011 stand at $6,339,545.15, equaling 95.82% being collected. The enrollment numbers were positively reported as being higher than last year, and the district is ending the year with more students than it originally started with.An update on Hobbs was also given, in that items in the current facility will be cleared out to move to the district's new location. The release date is set for June 15, in which the building will be turned over to Rotan ISD at that time.A retention report was presented, and while communication between the involved parents and teachers was commended, there are concerns of high retention numbers within the elementary schools. However, a positive outlook was presented for projected growth in the overall kindergarten class for next school year.Also reported was the proposed bus routes for the 2011-12 school year by the Bus Transportation Director of SISD, Scott Lambert. The district plans on implementing 25 local bus stops in comparison to the current stops which stand at over 100. The new plan should prove to be convenient not only from a financial perspective but for the students as well.


text:
The vote seems quite likely to be five to four. The more liberal members pressed both the narrow argument that an Alabama county was not a proper plaintiff because it inevitably would be covered and the broader argument that there was a sufficient record to justify the current formula. But the more conservative majority was plainly not persuaded by either point. It is unlikely that the Court will write an opinion forbidding a preclearance regime. But it may be difficult politically for Congress to enact a new measure.Adam Liptak recounts the "tough questioning... from the Supreme Court's more conservative members":
Justice Antonin Scalia called the provision, which requires nine states, mostly in the South, to get federal permission before changing voting procedures, a "perpetuation of racial entitlement." Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. asked a skeptical question about whether people in the South are more racist than those in the North. Justice Anthony M. Kennedy asked how much longer Alabama must live "under the trusteeship of the United States government."I look forward to reading the transcript later today. The issue isn't whether there are still some racial inequities in voting procedures, but whether federal law can continue to treat some states differently from others based on a calculation using statistics from 1972.
The court's more liberal members, citing data and history, said Congress remained entitled to make the judgment that the provision was still needed in the covered jurisdictions.
"It's an old disease," Justice Stephen G. Breyer said of efforts to thwart minority voting. "It's gotten a lot better. A lot better. But it's still there."
ADDED: Here's the transcript (PDF). I'll extract some good parts when I can.