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Indeed, it is:

1113982824 -> 0x42660768

0x42 0x66 0x07 0x68
__66_.102_.__7_.104

104.7.102.66.in-addr.arpa. 86400 IN PTR lax04s01-in-f104.1e100.net.

66.102.7.104

I did not know you could do this until just now, so thanks GP!

(Also slashdot's layout mangling is awful, so please excuse the underscores)

"bIjatlh 'e' yImev"

(http://www.kli.org/tlh/phrases.html link currently down see: http://66.102.7.104/search?q=cache:EAermHOwpFEJ:ww w.kli.org/tlh/phrases.html+klingon&hl=en&gl=us&ct= clnk&cd=2&client=firefox-a)

Exactly correct. To which I'll add Ford, GM, and ITT as American bastions of capitalism that were more than happy to do business with the Nazis and profit from both sides of the war.

Aside from the idea that capitalism is amoral, I agree with nothing the grandparent said. Comparing China to Nazi Germany is laughable.

Enter In Passwords This is a new screen that prompts the users to enter the Passwords so that the VEPP can verify the user. There are two passwords that are required to be entered. Factory default for these passwords is 000000.

Hmmm..that site seems to be down (plus no updates since april 2005) Maybe you should have pointed to the google cache or the wayback machine... Or is it no longer in slashdot fashon to point to mirrors?

Of course, my question is: are there any free programs for Linux which will help anyone write shader programs? I thought I saw something or other a long time ago, but I had an old Voodoo card, so I didn't bother with it.

we don't really _need_ voting, you're right.

afterall, we already have a decider.

(cnn via google cache)

has EA EVER released a PC game for anything but windows?

No. Ken Thompson invented the the hierarchy file system. What people don't know is he invented the hierarchy music player too! This was in the late 1980s. He even talks about it in his interview (PDF or HTML) "UNIX and beyond."

If Apple bothered to learn a bit about Plan 9's history they would of saved themselves 100 million USD.

Or maybe fortunate that people with mental illness can still be brilliant.

its a blizzard game released by blizzard created from blizzard original content. i'm pretty sure they get 100% of the money after the initial store sale. unless their parent company takes a cut.

Where the fuck do you Apple kooks get this crap! Apple's worldwide marketshare has been in a constant decline ever since Jobs took over.

Here's some more links on the subject

http://www.macnn.com/articles/05/12/02/safari.popu larity.growing/

http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/jun 2006/tc20060615_080175.htm

http://www.macobserver.com/article/2006/07/19.18.s html

Explaination of the Myth of Market Share (Google Cache)

I mean, drivers would only ever have a vigil and risk getting arrested for a sucky car....(ever heard of a vigil for any petrol powered car? me neither)

I guess they sucked so much, perhaps the former drivers wanted to pay the nearly 2 million offered to stop GM crushing them just so they could smash them themselves? Sure wish I had that much money to throw away on sucky cars...

In other words, do a little research yourself and realise something very important.

One Hint: You're a moron. (not everyone needs to drive further than 122 miles per day. In fact, not many (as a percentage) really do)

This is what is known to the world as Carbon Sequestration, and in fact many very important advances need to be made in this arena. So far, it seems that Germany is leading the world in this area, especially with their development of a carbon-emissions-free coal power plant (by actively capturing carbon in the process.)

While I don't see much good in utilizing hydrogen-carrying fuels over non-carbon-emission methods including hydrogen itself, since one set of methods creates Carbon Dioxide and another set creates water (I hope someone starts an electrolysis debate), you'll still get mad props and points (at least from people like me) if you can get this to work, because I don't see how it could really be problematic especially due to the numerous capture-condusive properties of carbon in its many molecular forms.

This field of research is ripe for harvest, and I'd be willing to bet there are a lot of financial backers willing to invest in working demonstrations.

You are being a pedantic anti-"microsloth" fanboy, and you have no clue how modern operating systems work.

So I shouldn't have said "one iota", because memory saved is memory saved, no matter how insignifigant. But we're talking in the 20-30MB range. On all but the most pathetic of systems, this is for all intents and purposes, nothing. These services that people turn off are for the most part idle 99% of the time, and regardless of how "horribly inneficient" you think Windows is, Windows does in fact swap these processes' memory out to virtual memory with no problem.

"It takes significant time to swap crap in and out of RAM from/to slower magnetic storage. It takes some finite amount of time (overhead) to switch tasks.

Yes. "Finite", as in, "not noticable or even measurable on any system that Windows XP will run on".

Memory that is being used by some lame Winblows service that you aren't actually utilizing productively is wasted and forces the programs you are really using to make due with less.

No it's not. The memory of idle processes is paged out to disk, so your apps still have access to all of the phyical memory. They might have 20MB less space in the page file, but who cares? If your apps need to use the page file, your screwed performance-wise anyway.

What part of finite resources do you not understand?"

What part of premptive multitasking and virtual memory management don't you understand?

Here is a link for you. It's a google cache of a thread showing the test results of an experiment some guy did to see if turning off services in Windows XP helped performance. The conclusion was that turning off a bunch of services doesn't help performance one bit. I've done similar tests myself on my own computer out of curiosity and found the same thing: Turning of services in Windows to increase performance is a waste of time. Now, it *may* help boot-up times a bit, and turning off a few select services may help security, but as for performance, once you're up and running all turning off services will do is make things that depend on those services fail.

"I can now sleep better having done my good deed for today."

Yes. Thank you for showing your ignorance to the world.

Why does every analysis of electric vs ICE efficiency include an exhaustive analysis of the "well-to-wheel" cycle for electric, but no such analysis for gasoline?

Hey, I'm on your side. Neither of my calculations was well-to-wheel; the electric started at the powerplant, where whatever is burned, and the gasoline started at the pump. This presentation from one of the national labs puts the well-to-pump efficiency for gasoline at 80%, diesel at 82%. Similar estimates for natural gas put well-to-powerplant at about 90% (dropping to 80% for imported LNG). Coal also appears to come in at about 90%. So assume 80% and 90% for getting fuel to the pump and the powerplant respectively and get 16% and 31% for end-to-end numbers. The dominant factors are still the 20% efficient ICE versus the 45% efficient powerplant.

Schemat1c, I want to buy your rock.

It's become quite en vogue for schools to have their disciplinary codes include "having knowledge of" as a violation for many offenses. here's an excerpt* from my old college's student handbook, for example, listing some of the offenses for which they consider just KNOWING about something taking place "constitutes equal responsibility and involvement" as those actually doing the wrong.

I was never aware of that particular bit being tested or enforced. But that's right... According to the letter of the policy, even if you decide you want nothing to do with what's going on, you don't take part in any way, and even if you get yourself the hell out of there; you're still considered just as guilty!

(*Caution, it's a rather nastily formatted "view as html" page generated from the original PDF. Just search for "knowledge" and you'll quickly get to the relevant parts.)

cya,
john

I did a rewrite of a similar study back in January 2002 for the American Statistical Association. [PDF version. Google's HTML cache.]

It found, essentially, the same thing. That study looked at accident records and found that the effect of cell phone usage was similar to borderline legal intoxication, but less than the level of impairment suffered by the typical person busted for DWI.

The link is directly to a .pdf file. This should link to the Google html cache.

In Re Birch, 10 Cal.3d 314, 515 P.2d 12, 110 Cal.Rptr. 212 (1973), specifically
"While petitioner possibly might have suspected that a guilty plea could result in a short jail sentence, we cannot believe that he was aware that as a consequence of urinating in a parking lot at 1:30 in the morning he would be required to register as a sex offender. Certainly counsel would have advised him of this grave and direct consequence of his guilty plea; in the absence of counsel the responsibility for such advice rested with the court. Without this advice, we conclude that petitioner's waiver of counsel and plea of guilty cannot be regarded as having been knowingly and intelligently made."

Mooning (and a couple other oddities)
http://66.102.7.104/search?q=cache:eylies1q7nQJ:ww w.appa-net.org/revisitingmegan.pdf+sex+offender+mo oning&hl=en&gl=ca&ct=clnk&cd=15&client=firefox-a
Specifically an 18-year-old
male, who engaged in a "senior prank" of "mooning" the school principal was
convicted of indecent exposure, had to register with the state for 25 years, and has
his name, address, and crime publicly posted

Took me about a minute using google to find those.

Statutory rape is a offence that requires registration, look around and you'll find tons of these case. And yes, if your're 18 and she's 17 and mommmy complains, that's statutory rape.
Actually, in michigan, even minors are put in the registry.

Sex in a public place - i.e. a couple having sex in the woods, ditto.

Homosexuals have been prosecuted in the past for sodomy, and although most of those convictions predate the registries, certain states still prosecute people for that offense. A completely consensual act (actually, blow jobs fall under sodomy in certain states too) between two adults can get you put on the registry.
I have not heard of a single case where the requirements to register, et al, were nullified when the legislature overturned the law (so, even though the activity is completely legal now, you're still considered a sex offender)

In some states, if you are urinating in public in a place where children might see you (i.e., bushes outside a school yard at night), you get the kiddie offender bonus (there isn't really a consistent naming scheme)

Now, the people put on the registries for stupid stuff like this aren't classified as violent offenders or anything (the levels / classes aren't standard either, an offense that will get you on the level one list in one state is public urination and in another state, level 1 will be a violent sexual predator), but everyone on the sex offender lists still have to deal with the registration bullshit for 25 years (if not forever, again, depends on state) - and also deal with the fairly abusive legislation that has been passed as PR stunts and parts of re-election campaigns for politicians.
i.e.
http://www.kfmb.com/stories/story.54227.html (this is clearly a stunt - I don't have all that much problem with the law if it applied to only violent sexual predaors, actually)
or this
http://www.forsythnews.com/news/stories/20060618/l ocalnews/103911.shtml
In any other case, we'd argue against ex post facto punishments, but hey, if you can look tough on crime, you'll probably get re-elected.

Reuters reported awhile ago that LG plans on relasing a hybrid player in the fall. I imagine it'll be quite expensive. Google cache of retuers article - couldn't find it anymore on Retuers' site.

Personally, I will only buy a hybrid player. Too many content and hardware companies are behind both format's camps, so I think you'll see a lot of content exclusive to BluRay and HD-DVD for the next few years. And even ignoring the cost of buying two players, I don't have room for two players, a hybrid will be a must if you want HD content before the format war is over (if ever).

Article text, from the google cache:

http://66.102.7.104/search?q=cache:OxIU8nS0KaIJ:bl ogs.msdn.com/philipsu/archive/2006/06/05/617988.as px+site:blogs.msdn.com+%22Broken+Windows+Theory%22 +vista&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1

Broken Windows Theory

Vista. The term stirs the imagination to conceive of beautiful possibilities just around the corner. And "just around the corner" is what Windows Vista has been, and has remained, for the past two years. In this time, Vista has suffered a series of high-profile delays, including most recently the announcement that it would be delayed until 2007. The largest software project in mankind's history now threatens to also be the longest.

Admittedly, this essay would be easier written for Slashdot, where taut lines divide the world crisply into black and white. "Vista is a bloated piece of crap," my furry little penguine would opine, "written by the bumbling serfs of an evil capitalistic megalomaniac." But that'd be dead wrong. The truth is far more nuanced than that. Deeper than that. More subtle than that.

I managed developer teams in Windows for five years, and have only begun to reflect on the experience now that I have recently switched teams. Through a series of conversations with other leaders that have similarly left The Collective, several root causes have emerged as lasting characterizations of what's really wrong in The Empire.

Useless Trivia Sidebar: Broken Windows Theory

The original broken windows theory, first coined by Wilson and Kelling, describes the purported phenomenon whereby an abandoned warehouse with no broken windows is mostly left alone, but as soon as one window is broken, it acts as an open invitation to passers-by that it's open-season for rock-throwing.

This was generally accepted for many years as being true, but is recently coming under fire from different angles. We won't delve into those here, since we mostly commandeered the phrase because it sounded good, not because it actually has anything at all to do with our subject matter.

The Usual Suspects

Ask any developer in Windows why Vista is plagued by delays, and they'll say that the code is way too complicated, and that the pace of coding has been tremendously slowed down by overbearing process. These claims have already been covered in other popular literature. A quick recap for those of you just joining the broadcast:

* Windows code is too complicated. It's not the components themselves, it's their interdependencies. An architectural diagram of Windows would suggest there are more than 50 dependency layers (never mind that there also exist circular dependencies). After working in Windows for five years, you understand only, say, two of them. Add to this the fact that building Windows on a dual-proc dev box takes nearly 24 hours, and you'll be slow enough to drive Miss Daisy.
* Windows process has gone thermonuclear. Imagine each little email you send asking someone else to fill out a spreadsheet, comment on a report, sign off on a decision - is a little neutron shooting about in space. Your innocent-seeming little neutron now causes your heretofore mostly-harmless neighbors to release neutrons of their own. Now imagine there are 9000 of you, all jammed into a tight little space called Redmond. It's Windows Gone Thermonuclear, a phenomenon by which process engenders further process, eventually becoming a self-sustaining buzz of fervent destructive activity.

Let's see if, quantitatively, there's any truth to the perception that the code velocity (net lines shipped per developer-year) of Windows has slowed, or is slow relative to the industry. Vista is said to have over 50 million li

Everyone you meet on the Internet is a man...

Everyone on the Internet is a man EXCEPT YOUR MOTHER.

> Yet WoW has passed 6 million users,
> If this is failure, what's success?

1. There is more then one definition of success. Success = Popular, is only one definition.
2. Popularity != Quality.
TV (Reality Shows), Fast-Food (McDonalds), etc, all prove that.

WoW isn't a great game -- it is "good enough" and better then most other MMORPGs. Is is fun game? Yes. While it's yet-another-mmorpg that streamlines most of the annoying problems others still have, it still lacks "rich game design."
i.e.
Character types are restricted to classes. The only real thing to do at level is 60 is waste ridiculous amounts of time farming for "phat loot." The world is static and boring because quests have absolutely no influence in the world. Crafting is limited. Combat is the only way to level up. It's designers have no clue on gaming dead-time. World interaction is almost non-existent. i.e. no rock climbing, treasure hunting, sailing, etc. I could go on, but I'm tired of playing another boring MMORPG. I want the diversity of Ultima 7 / UO in a modern engine, with WoW's streamlined interface.

> If we're exhaling now (and I'm not convinced we are), relax. The industry will inhale soon enough.
I'm glad you mentioned this -- far too many people forget about the life cycles, especially how gaming goes through it's 11-yr life cycle. i.e. Down cycles in ~83, ~94, ~05.
See Video Game Timeline (Word Doc)
Video Game Timeline (Google HTML cache)

--
Why is Windows Explorer so bone-headed? Try renaming a file/directory to start with
- a period. i.e. ".config"
- a space, so it shows up first when sorted. i.e. " Shortcuts"

Although federal funding constitutes roughly seven percent of a school districts budget, it is needed to fund increased costs for services that are attributable to rising student enrollment and inflation. A primary concern regarding federal funding for education programs appropriated by Congress each year is that the actual amounts fall below what has been designated, or authorized, under laws such as the Individuals With Disabilities Education Act (IDEA).. . ."

Laughable? You go tell a school board at a meeting that they really don't need 7% of their budget. While you might get laughter as a response, they aren't going to be laughing with you, they'll be laughing at you.

http://66.102.7.104/search?q=cache:GOBPKZ4kT-4J:ww w.faulkner.com/freereport/contentdeliverynets.htm+ akamai+caching+server&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=7

we are going to delay the boycott for the last time? And this time we mean it, right? I just don't get it. People hate the ??AAs and yet they continue to feed the beast. Well, I guess if a boycott was successful and they died off, we wouldn't have anything to complain about now, would we? Is there such a small amount of news that the page has to be filled ads in such flimsy disguises? Is this the shareholders talking? What a bizarre world. Complain bitch pay, Complain bitch pay, pay, pay, pay

Totally. I mean, those three letters are so icky. *shudder* I'm with you, I also base my decisions on what products I use by whether I imagine I dislike any arbitrary sequences of letters that are in any way associated with the product. Much more logical than deciding on, say, features.

BTW, it used to be for "Least-Privileged User Account". Then for Vista it was reassigned to "Least User Access", and then renamed to "User Account Protection ", and now it's "User Access Control".

Problem is, it's not just some 24 plot style decrypt-the-code-and-save-the-world scenario. There is also 'urgent' on a relative scale.

A single 128-bit SSL session (as an example) takes literally years and beyond to decrypt w/o a key given current best-effort technologies. ( Google cache of relevant info) Similar encryption schemes could(can?) make it near-to-impossible for even the most valid law enforcement action to decrypt the hard way. Consider how much time that would give someone w/ bad intent to plan and execute their ideas.

I will not defend abuse by any authority, but I can certainly sympathize with the need to timely access to potentially harmful information between parties who may be a credible threat to life and liberty.

Balance is the key - not some polarized either-or scenario.

/P

Google plagiarised it, too.

Link

This article reminded me of a great science fiction short story: Microcosmic God, by Theodore Sturgeon. In the story a scientist runs an experiment somewhat like the real one discussed above, though on a much greater scale...

http://66.102.7.104/search?q=cache:8a4dsw9UqdwJ:ww w.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1556433018%3F v%3Dglance+neoterics+science+fiction+short+story+e volution&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=1

How much mass and how much reinforced structure is it hitting?

I like physics.. care to hash out the problem for me? I'm lazy..

Besides, seismic data cannot be falsified. Care to explain how a building could create a magnitude 2.3 seismic disturbance moments before its collapse? A truck bomb, or anything not attacked to the ground, doesn't even register.

http://66.102.7.104/search?q=cache:mWrTSEreU6UJ:ww w.ldeo.columbia.edu/LCSN/Eq/20010911_WTC/WTC_LDEO_ KIM.pdf+Lamont-Doherty+Earth+Observatory+Sep.+11+2 001&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=4&client=firefox-a

In case you don't read it, here's a quote:

An explosion at a gasoline tank farm near Newark NJ on January 7, 1983 generated observable P and S waves and short-period Rg waves (ML3) at PAL. Its Rg is comparable to that for
WTC collapse 2.

Whatever happened on Sep. 11th, it wasn't just planes flying into buildings. To believe the official story you gotta throw the laws of physics out the window. Thus the US government is lying. Duh!

There is proof that the official story is bullshit. So what you got to put this genie back in the bottle, hmm?

A quick google gives some funny reading ...
http://66.102.7.104/search?q=cache:pebp5iyrBeIJ:li nuxmafia.com/~rick/eblug-lecture-2004-12-15.sxi

Quote follows:

Back in the mid-1970s, several of the system support staff at Motorola discovered a relatively simple way to crack system security on the Xerox CP-V timesharing system. Through a simple programming strategy, it was possible for a user program to trick the system into running a portion of the program in `master mode' (supervisor state), in which memory protection does not apply. The program could then poke a large value into its `privilege level' byte (normally write-protected) and could then proceed to bypass all levels of security within the file-management system, patch the system monitor, and do numerous other interesting things. In short, the barn door was wide open. Motorola quite properly reported this problem to Xerox via an official `level 1 SIDR' (a bug report with an intended urgency of `needs to be fixed yesterday'). Because the text of each SIDR was entered into a database that could be viewed by quite a number of people, Motorola followed the approved procedure: they simply reported the problem as `Security SIDR', and attached all of the necessary documentation, ways-to-reproduce, etc. The CP-V people at Xerox sat on their thumbs; they either didn't realize the severity of the problem, or didn't assign the necessary operating-system-staff resources to develop and distribute an official patch. Months passed. The Motorola guys pestered their Xerox field-support rep, to no avail. Finally they decided to take direct action, to demonstrate to Xerox management just how easily the system could be cracked and just how thoroughly the security safeguards could be subverted. They dug around in the operating-system listings and devised a thoroughly devilish set of patches. These patches were then incorporated into a pair of programs called `Robin Hood' and `Friar Tuck'. Robin Hood and Friar Tuck were designed to run as `ghost jobs' (daemons, in UNIX terminology); they would use the existing loophole to subvert system security, install the necessary patches, and then keep an eye on one another's statuses in order to keep the system operator (in effect, the superuser) from aborting them. One fine day, the system operator on the main CP-V software development system in El Segundo was surprised by a number of unusual phenomena. These included the following: * Tape drives would rewind and dismount their tapes in the middle of a job. * Disk drives would seek back and forth so rapidly that they would attempt to walk across the floor (see walking drives ). * The card-punch output device would occasionally start up of itself and punch a lace card. These would usually jam in the punch. * The console would print snide and insulting messages from Robin Hood to Friar Tuck, or vice versa. * The Xerox card reader had two output stackers; it could be instructed to stack into A, stack into B, or stack into A (unless a card was unreadable, in which case the bad card was placed into stacker B). One of the patches installed by the ghosts added some code to the card-reader driver... after reading a card, it would flip over to the opposite stacker. As a result, card decks would divide themselves in half when they were read, leaving the operator to recollate them manually. Naturally, the operator called in the operating-system developers. They found the bandit ghost jobs running, and X'ed them... and were once again surprised. When Robin Hood was X'ed, the following sequence of events took place: !X id1 id1: Friar Tuck... I am under attack! Pray save me! id1: Off (aborted) id2: Fear not, friend Robin! I shall rout the Sheriff of Nottingham's men! id1: Thank you, my good fellow! Each ghost-job would detect the fact that the other had been killed, and would start a new copy of the recently slain program within a few millisecond

It sounds apocryphal, but I really want it to be true. :-)

It really is true, but it happened in a simulator.

CIS (the ISP) was asking for punative damages equal to the (original) statuatory damages, which the judge granted them. Plus RICO and the Iowa Ongoing Criminal Conduct Act allowed them to tripple the statuatory damages. So, instead of paying $10/email, they ended up paying $40/email. See the Court docs here.

http://66.102.7.104/search?q=cache:vu0EKWi4lTYJ:ww w.hamilton-co.org/cinlawlib/resources/303cv80109.p df+%22James+McCalla%22+%2Bspam&hl=en

In a public policy debate, the idea is supposed to be that the law in question is maybe actually good public policy in that it has indirect benefits for the public, as well as direct benefits for certain individuals.

For example, in the copyright debate, some people will argue that the copyright monopoly offers the population at large a benefit by giving an incentive for creators to create new works. Moreover, some people argue this even though they themselves do not have a significant financial stake in copyright; that is, they will only benefit through that indirect gain of more new works. The fact that some people will argue even this position even though they only gain indirectly gives some credence to the idea that it's a legitimate public policy argument.

On the other hand, you have the patent argument. A similar claim is advanced re: innovation. However, in my experience, everyone who defends (software) patents turns out to have a direct financial stake:

• patent holders (and patent-holders-to-be)
• patent lawyers
• the patent office

Obviously a government program that gives money to people of type A, B, and C is beneficial to people of type A, B, and C, and of course people of type A, B, and C are going to be in favor of such a program. But this is not evidence that such a program is good public policy, especially if it deprives other people of something (in this case, by granting a monopoly).

So when an individual in the patent debate turns out to have a direct stake in patents, I think it's perfectly reasonable to say "I'm not even going to bother reading that because I've seen this pattern far too many times over the last 15 years.

you didn't catch the 3 +5 informative posts in a row giving you the cached link, here it is again: http://66.102.7.104/search?q=cache:KqYsB31xnwcJ:ww w.thejemreport.com/mambo/content/view/212/1/&hl=en &lr=&client=firefox-a&strip=1

Please mod me +5, too!

And here is that same google cache link without the annoying highlighting on every second word.

Looks like the google cache is running slowly, since it's trying to pull images from the slashdotted server, which slows stuff down. here's a link directly to the text of the article (no images).

Here's a link to the google cached version of the page. Google Cache.

No, an exploitable process must have a window on the user's interactive desktop. That's how it works - by sending messages to windows.

Further, most admin-level processes are broken in this regard. When I say most, I mean most of the ones that are supplied directly by MS.

Examples ?

The vulnerability exposed by Shatter is precisely why Microsoft have always recommended never having processes with elevated privileges running on the users interactive desktop as a matter of course. IOW, Shatter largely depends on poorly written software to be dangerous.

Read this.

NSFW, I think. Oh, Harry! Is this how you spend your money?

Mod pathetic parent perv down?

The private prison industry in the United States is in the hands of four huge companies that make billions in profits every year ($2.3 billion in 2004 alone) and is in a state of constant growth. The living conditions in those prisons, such as population density, health and the severity of punishment, are disgraceful. Guards with low levels of training are employed by manpower agencies at starvation wages, with a high turnover rate in employment. The violence in those prisons is on a constant rise, as are escapes and drug abuse. Experts who examined the privatized prisons over long periods of time even argue that handing over the prisons to private hands did not make it any cheaper for the state, and that it is difficult, if not impossible, to guarantee proper supervision of such institutions. All this is dwarfed by the most worrisome fact of all: The companies who own the prisons spend millions of dollars every year lobbying for stricter legislation. They say that some 2,000 legislators around the country "work" for them, and make sure to initiate harsher minimum sentences, define new crimes and monstrous punishments (such as the "three strikes and you're out" law in California that sends a person to life in prison if they are convicted of three crimes, even if they are light), promote the appointment of tough prosecutors and cancel state-run rehabilitation plans. They do everything they can to guarantee more profits for the franchise holders.

To put another spin on it, arnold would be accepting a ban on something that he personally profits for.

I'm not sure what that sentence means exactly, but the Governer has been known to not allow conflicts of interest to stand in the way of his policies.

This is interesting because it already supports (albeit incompletely) more languages than .Net and is a whole hell of a lot newer

I'm all for another multi-language VM, especially if it's built from the ground up for dynamic typing, but you're joking about the languages, right?

I count 33 Parrot Languages (including duplicates) but only 15 that have ANY tests (even ones that fail).

Of all the lists that I checked, the only one that short was the one for the Mono Project (and they list 13)...

I mean, it's certainly fair to claim that Parrot is newer, if by newer you mean "still not done" (at the current rate, we might see .NET 3 before Parrot 1.0), or "released a beta most recently" (0.4 came out JUST after .NET 2 went gold). But to say it has more languages is just ignorant.

Even with current cellphones, off is not really off. When switched 'off' your phone still keeps track of the time, date and other settings that, with the battery removed completely, need to be reset.

On January 12, the body was found, partly with the help of advanced technology that tracked the phone in Robert's pocket.

For the past eight days, gardai admitted that Robert's clear-fascia Nokia 3200 - which was a Christmas gift from his parents - was crucial to their investigation and the possible location of the boy. Yesterday, sources within the mammoth search operation indicated to the Irish Independent that gardai were in a position to focus their search on specific locations thanks to a boosted signal from a strategic mobile phone mast in East Cork. The last trace of Robert before yesterday's discovery was a phone call he attempted to make at 2.36pm on January 4 last, just minutes after he left his home at Ballyedmond. Robert ran out of credit as he attempted to ring a friend - and then disappeared without trace until yesterday's grim discovery at Inch strand. However, telecommunications experts assisting the Garda hunt kept working on ways of possibly tracing a signal from his handset. It was felt that, if the signal from the key transmission mast could be significantly boosted, it could trace the handset even if the mobile was switched off. The only way that this effort would not work was if the handset had been disabled - or if it had been exposed to serious water damage. Until now, all that was known about Robert's phone was that his last call was diverted via the mobile phone mast in Cloyne - effectively ensuring the search radius included the greater Midleton and East Cork areas. Yesterday, members of the search campaign expressed belief that the telecommunications gurus provided the critical breakthrough the Gardai required.

These are computers installed for educational purposes in a number of telecenters in the public libraries in Mexico for all the young students preparing for a global world.

So these are special purpose computers that have a limited role. Preventing users from installing software seems like a pretty good idea. The BSD systems I used at the university had similar restrictions. How did we manage to get those CS degree under such oppression. More seriously:

Doesn't MIT engage in philosophically similar practices with the $100 laptop initiative. Apple was turned down for no other reason than to promote the donating community when Apple wanted to donate Mac OS X. The "tinkering" thing is a fraud, a cover story, basic computer literacy does not require tinkering. Wouldn't the children have been better off with a Unix based OS that also had the premier UI for their demographic. Apple designs for novices and school age kids. The education market has been a focus for decades.

"Steve Jobs, Apple Computer Inc.'s chief executive, offered to provide free copies of the company's operating system, OS X, for the machine, according to Seymour Papert, a professor emeritus at MIT who is one of the initiative's founders. "We declined because it's not open source," says Dr. Papert, noting the designers want an operating system that can be tinkered with. An Apple spokesman declined to comment."

http://66.102.7.104/search?q=cache:PAAMCASTOyMJ:on line.wsj.com/public/article/SB113193305149696140-4 42o71jo_IlBrLpyUeeOdsqDs7E_20061113.html%3Fmod%3Dt ff_main_tff_top+%24100+laptop+mit+apple&hl=en&clie nt=firefox-a

Well I certainly remember babies getting quite a bit of attention (and I'm pretty sure treats) when they were being taught how to speak (and I do remember having them taught how to speak).

There's a lot of evidence that how ever much people may try to teach babies to speak, babies ignore them. The best evidence for this is that babies will persist in making systematic errors (e.g. "sheeps") even if explicitly corrected by an adult. Of course, whenever you speak to a baby, what you say is potentially available to the baby as linguistic data, but that doesn't mean that there's any teaching going on.

But regardless, apes have learnt sign language without being actively taught (just go to the links I provided).

A quick look at the links you've provided shows no such thing. The closest I found was that apes were observed signing to each other without trainers present, which of course just goes to show that they had at some point been trained. "Loulis", according to this article managed to aquire 50 signs without instruction, but (leaving aside the fact that this is a miniscule achievement compared to the vocabulary a baby learns in similar circumstances) we don't know whether she showed any significant ability to produce structured sentences using these signs. The chimps at the CHCI (allegedly) show some limited ability in this regard, but they were trained.

Some of the scholarship in the articles you link to is a little shoddy. For example, this article describes Chomsky's (supposed) views on the subject, but only cites a secondary source as justification (Booth). Chomsky would in fact probably agree that apes have many of the cognitive mechanisms necessary for language (see the recent work by Chomsky, Hauser & Fitch), though he still denies that chimps have a fully formed language faculty. These days, he would say that the crucial ability they lack is recursion.

the researchers were very lax about what they accepted as a sign, etc.
they of course had their own agenda to push

While research bias (either for or against chimps communicating) is a problem that is difficult to overcome in such a strong issue (for many), I have read quite a bit on the successes. I was referring to an instance where chimpanzee's (or another primate) did create words. The example I remember is "bad+dream" for nightmare.

they imitated some key words, but didn't originate their own

Humans have the "inventing words gene," while I believe other primates don't. But that isn't a bad thing (IMO), as it allows us to continue to understand them. If they did invent new words, they would have to teach us, and their ability to teach humans (they are, after all, not equal to our intelligence) could be limited.

Having said that this article says that it's quite possible bonobo's (a type of chimpanzee) do create verbal sounds for specific things, which I presume they've invented. I don't know if it is true that they are verbal "words," but it does bear more research.

However I don't see their inability to create words as them being unable to learn language. This page (it was only a quick search, info may be a bit suspect, but it seems fairly valid and jibes with what I've read in the past) has info on both success and failures. Why I like it is because it outlines those against the results proving language's opinions, as well as those opinions who are for it. One man called Herb Terrace doesn't believe the results so far are indicative of language aquisition, but merely "aping." Some of his complaints are:
* That the apes were were performing rote memorization tasks similar to pigeons who are taught to peck at colors in specific orders.

This I take issue with, because the page earlier shows an ape taking a word in one context "more" and using it in others. It isn't a simple case of "sign X always follows action Y" but instead, reasoning what sign X actually means, and applying it in other situations.

* Primates only signed in order to please their trainers, not for the personal gratification of using the signs.

I take issue with this, as many sources I've read say apes do spontaneously speak with each other. Having said that, it appears Terrace's complaints were actually made a few decades ago, and that research since then has proven him wrong. More info here

* A primate might learn to connect a sign with food and reproduce the sign through simple conditioning, just as Pavlov's dogs were conditioned to salivate at the sound of a bell.

To be honest, is it possible to prove that human children don't speak for the same reasons? I don't think so. Think about it, when a baby is learning to speak, we heap attention and treats on them. The Pavlovian method of teaching requires this to begin with, which is then removed and the taught actions continue regardless. A problem with detractors of ape speech is that they often ask questions we can't answer when it comes to humans.

but if anyone did do some proper communicating with chimps, i don't know about it.

Unfortunately I to, do not know if anyone has. The article I linked to before, does suggest that researchers are doing their best to communicate properly with apes, but it's a hot issue for those involved. I believe current research is very indicative, but it can't silence critics yet. But I do believe it's enough (or at least enough to warrant a much more structured research program with a definitive goal of giving apes more rights) to say "y'know. Maybe we should reconsider how we treat them. Perhaps there is a better place in our society for them."