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On a recent run from Boston to Cape Cod, I test drove the 2008 Honda Accord, the latest version of this family favorite. The new Accord boasts an environmental first: a six-cylinder gasoline engine that’s cleaner than many hybrid systems.

There’s only one catch: You can’t actually buy this ultra-green Accord, or the four-cylinder version that also produces near-zero pollution. That is, unless you live in California, New York or six other northeast states that follow California’s tougher pollution rules. Only there can you buy this Accord, or the roughly two dozen other models that meet so-called Partial Zero Emissions Vehicle standards, PZEV for short.

Not only can’t you buy one, but the government says it’s currently illegal for automakers to sell these green cars outside of the special states. Under terms of the Clean Air Act—in the kind of delicious irony only our government can pull off—anyone (dealer, consumer, automaker) involved in an out-of-bounds PZEV sale could be subject to civil fines of up to $27,500. Volvo sent its dealers a memo alerting them to this fact, noting that its greenest S40 and V50 models were only for the special states.

So, just how green is a PZEV machine? Well, if you just cut your lawn with a gas mower, congratulations, you just put out more pollution in one hour than these cars do in 2,000 miles of driving.

And what marketeer came up with “Partial Zero”? What the fuck does it even mean? And more importantly, can you divide by partial zero?

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Consider first a Baptist school in Texas whose description of a geometry course begins:

Students will examine the nature of God as they progress in their understanding of mathematics. Students will understand the absolute consistency of mathematical principles and know that God was the inventor of that consistency. They will see God’s nature revealed in the order and precision they review foundational concepts while being able to demonstrate geometric thinking and spatial reasoning. The study of the basics of geometry through making and testing conjectures regarding mathematical and real-world patterns will allow the students to understand the absolute consistency of God as seen in the geometric principles he created.

I wonder if the school teaches that non-Euclidean geometry is the work of the devil or at least of non-Christians.

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Microsoft Corp. last week blamed “human error” on the part of its IT staff for a server problem that caused the company’s Windows Genuine Advantage (WGA) validation service to incorrectly tag legitimate users of Windows XP and Windows Vista as software pirates.

The software vendor also promised that internal changes are being made to avoid a repeat of the glitch, which affected users for nearly 20 hours on Aug. 24 and 25. Users whose copies of Windows erroneously failed WGA’s antipiracy tests were prevented from downloading most software from Microsoft’s Web site. And those with Vista were unable to use some of the operating system’s features.

Alex Kochis, Microsoft’s senior WGA product manager, wrote in a blog posting that the troubles began after “preproduction code” was installed on live servers.

Those systems had yet to be upgraded with another code change designed to enable stronger encryption and decryption of product keys, Kochis added. As a result, “the production servers declined activation and validation requests that should have passed,” he wrote.

So, if you’re using Windows, your computer is at the mercy of whether somebody in Redmond had his coffee this morning. Thanks, but no thanks. No supplier is going to decide if my computer may run software I need, I’ll shop elsewhere.

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Internet service providers (ISPs) may soon be required by Swedish law to take greater responsibility for unlawful file-sharing.

The author of the official report – ‘Music and Film on the Internet – Threat or Opportunity? -, appeals court judge Cecilia Renfors, has called for internet providers to shoulder the burden of defending against breaches of copyright.

“I propose that internet providers should be required to contribute to bringing all copyright infringement to an end,” she wrote.

So donating to an organisation lobbying to abolish all copyright would qualify? After all, that is the only way to effectively stop all infringement. And as a bonus, it might reinvigorate creation of music and movies by killing the middle-man.

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Tackling a dilemma right out of a science fiction novel, the state Senate passed legislation Thursday that would bar employers from requiring workers to have identification devices implanted under their skin.

State Sen. Joe Simitian (D-Palo Alto) proposed the measure after at least one company began marketing radio frequency identification devices for use in humans.

The devices, as small as a grain of rice, can be used by employers to identify workers. A scanner passing over a body part implanted with one can instantly identify the person.

[..]

One company, VeriChip, has been licensed by the Food and Drug Administration to sell implanted identification devices, and about 2,000 people have had them implanted, Simitian said. A representative of the firm did not return calls seeking comment Thursday.

CityWatcher.com, a Cincinnati video surveillance company, has required employees who work in its secure data center to have a microchip implanted in an arm.

Clients of CityWatcher take note: the company you hired to do surveillance for you has two kinds of employees: cattle who cannot think, and people who cannot get a job elsewhere. Your surveillance is bound to be of far lower quality than that provided by other suppliers.

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Amid intense lobbying, Microsoft is expected to squeak out a victory this week to have its open document format, Office Open XML, recognized as an international standard, people tracking the vote said Monday.

The move would help Microsoft, the world’s largest software maker, maintain its competitive advantage in the expanding field of open document formats.

“After what basically has amounted to unprecedented lobbying, I think that Microsoft’s standard is going to get the necessary amount of support,” said Pieter Hintjens, president of Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure, a Brussels group that led the opposition.

The proposal would already have failed, but the last weeks a large number of countries upgraded their status from Observer to Participating member. Despite that, it appears the vote is failing anyway. Here’s the current situation:

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Summary:

Votes	P-M JTC1 (41)	P-M SC34 (36)	Others	Total
yes	7	8	1	11
no	13	9	1	15
abstain	5	5	2	9
unclear	16	14	0	20

This process should be evaluated very, very carefully, so that a single vendor cannot fuck up the process like this:

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The result of this intensive process was that during the last meeting on the subject on August 16th 2007 in Delft – where the vote was to be cast – after a majority rejection of a proposal for an “Approval” a final proposal for a so called conditional approval (i.e.: a no vote that would turn into a yes vote if a number of reasonable and already determined conditions were met at the next stage) almost got unanimous support – from all but the local support branch of Microsoft. This isolated position caused the vote to fail and the Netherlands to automatically vote for an “Abstain”.

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Electronics giant Sony has confirmed a recently discovered security flaw in some of its products that could leave PCs vulnerable to attack by hackers.

The firm said that the fault, which affected software packaged with memory sticks, was developed by a third-party.

Sony said it was conducting an internal investigation into the problem and would offer a fix “by mid-September”.

Excellent! Since there’s only one fix that will really make sure this never happens again, Sony will disband the entire company by mid-september! Rejoice everybody!

(and if they don’t, you can make sure these problems never hit you by simply pretending that Sony did indeed disband, and ignoring everything they do after today)

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Op een offerte verwijzen naar een webadres waar algemene voorwaarden zijn te downloaden is voldoende, zo heeft de kantonrechter in Haarlem geoordeeld.

De kantonrechter deed deze uitspraak woensdag in een zaak aangespannen door de Haarlemse vormgever Marijn Ontwerp tegen Hanson Bedrijfsmakelaardij. De ontwerpster had op haar offerte gemeld dat haar algemene leveringsvoorwaarden te vinden waren op haar website.

In die voorwaarden stond dat facturen binnen 14 dagen betaald moeten worden. De makelaar betaalde te laat en vond dat het verwijzen naar een site volgens de wet niet voldoende was, waardoor de voorwaarden niet zouden gelden.

De Haarlemse kantonrechter oordeelde woensdag echter dat het gebruik van internet ‘in het huidige tijdsgewricht zodanig is ingeburgerd’ dat het verwijzen naar een webadres waar de algemene voorwaarden staan ‘gelijkwaardig geacht kan worden aan de feitelijke terhandstelling daarvan’. In het Burgerlijk Wetboek staat dat de leveringsvoorwaarden ‘ter hand’ moeten worden gesteld.

Volgens de kantonrechter waren er ‘geen feiten of omstandigheden’ waardoor het voor de makelaar onmogelijk was om via internet kennis te nemen van de algemene voorwaarden.

Doe ik al jaren op m’n fakturen. Handig om te weten dat het ook correct is. Met dit verschil dat ik op de faktuur ook nog de betalingstermijn meld…

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Beloningen voor topbestuurders in het bedrijfsleven moeten aan banden worden gelegd door de raad commissarissen, vindt minister van Financiën Wouter Bos. In een interview met deze krant zegt hij dat commissarissen de salarispakketten van bestuurders aan een maximum moeten binden.

‘Niet alleen worden er absurd hoge bedragen betaald, ook is het verband tussen beloning en prestatie onduidelijk geworden’, aldus Bos. ‘Hier ligt echt een taak voor de raad van commissarissen om de beloning op orde te hebben, en dat kan concreet met een beloningsplafond.’

Het is zo simpel – zet gewoon in de wet dat de totale beloning van de meestverdienende in een bedrijf niet meer dan 15 maal de totale beloning van de minstverdienende mag zijn. als een topbestuurder dan nog steeds met 15 miljoen per jaar naar huis wil, dan kan dat: hoeft hij er alleen maar voor te zorgen dat het bedrijf het zo goed doet dat de schoonmakers een miljoen gaan verdienen.

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Minister van Justitie Hirsch Ballin (CDA) onderzoekt de mogelijkheid om downloaden van films, muziek en software via internet te verbieden. Dat blijkt uit zijn antwoorden op Kamervragen van Ada Gerkens (SP).

De Nederlandse wet staat consumenten toe om voor eigen gebruik een kopie te maken van auteursrechtelijk beschermd materiaal, bijvoorbeeld voor studiedoeleinden. Dat geldt ook voor materiaal dat op internet staat. Het is echter niet toegestaan zo’n kopie verder te verspreiden, al of niet tegen betaling. Downloaden van bijvoorbeeld films is daarom niet verboden, maar uploaden wel.

Voor de wet maakt het bij deze zogenoemde ‘thuiskopieregeling’ niet uit of het materiaal dat gekopieerd wordt, wel of niet legaal is. Bij de vaststelling van de regelgeving meende de Tweede Kamer dat van burgers niet verwacht mocht worden dat ze van ieder gedownload bestand nagaan of de aanbieder het recht heeft het te verspreiden. Bovendien zou een verbod in de praktijk nauwelijks te handhaven zijn, en maakt ook de Europese regelgeving geen onderscheid tussen legale en illegale bronnen.

Wedden dat de extra heffing op blanco media dan toch gewoon gehandhaafd blijft? Hirsch Ballin heeft zich kennelijk gewoon laten omkopen door de industrie.