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Back to what I set out to say, there are many temperature series out there. Some of them go back over one hundred years. Reliable global temperature series don't seem possible in the pre-satelite era. Yes, many European cities have temperature series going back way further than that, and we have cores from the Greenland icecap which give us hints about the local-to-Greenland weather for hundreds of thousands of years. There is still some controversy about the conclusions to be drawn from them.

Here are a couple of links:
National Ice Coring Lab This has some ice core data sets, and some perspective on them.

Global Climate Perspectives System These guys have some models and some data up on the web.

Global Temperature Anomolies" This is a NASA site...

This is a fellow who seems to take it as given that the temperatures have increased (I'm still not convinced), but isn't sure about why.

Here is a site put up by some folks who aren't convinced by the popular press coverage of global warming.

I know I've found some much more usefull links in the past, but I can't stumble over them right now. One thing that you want to keep in mind is that ( according to researchers I've talked to) being trendy is vital to getting grant money. If the politicians and the bureaucrats they fund are convinced that global warming is politically significant, you base your grant proposals on the idea that global warming is real, even if the really interesting questions start from another premise. Or, you don't get funded. So while I won't say that anyone is whoring for grants, I will say that the scientific debate might be on rather different terms if it weren't for politics.

Here is an opinion I expressed earlier about Myst on the Interactifiction site:

This game probably did more to damage the adventure genre than any other. It meant that people who hated adventure games could suddenly consider themselves fans of the genre, which spread the same deadly (anti-qualitative) memes that Star Wars had spread over Science Fiction. Millions of people -- people who didn't know or care what a slavering grue was! -- sat enraptured by a slideshow with polished but sterile graphics and token elements of gameplay. Meeting another fan of adventure games become a trepidatious, usually painful experience: "I love adventure games!" could now most-often be translated: "I've played Myst and Riven! What's a Zork? Isn't Scott Addams the guy who writes Dilbert?"

Looking is OK as long as you don't try to break-in.

When I advertise my TCP services, that is a welcome mat, or an invitation for entry. Probing my system to find openings (even if you don't enter) is invasive and counter to decency.

Ergo, I report every TCP Port Scan of my systems to the proper authorities (ISPs, etc.). When I find someone running a SATAN-type scanner (more aggressive than just TCP port scanning) against my systems I report to legal authorities. Have a nice day.

Now hiring experienced client- & server-side developers

However, with a warrant (although the Ellian Gonzalez case is a counter example), the government can for the most part do what they want with me and my property.

The government hasn't needed a warrant to seize your property for quite some time now. Thanks in large part to the War on Drugs, the government can take anything they want from you, whenever they feel like it! It's called Civil Asset Forfeiture.

It's all for the children, of course.

Combine this with some of the other available snooping tools and technologies, such (Echelon, C arnivore, etc..) and there are IS no privacy on the net.

Throw ICANN into the mix and see how they are "protecting" the internet, and it makes me very glad the Microsoft, regardless of the disagreements I have from them, is proactively making it possible for users to protect themselves from these abuses.

Lets look at the facts folks:

We've made them bigger.
We've made them smarter.
We've made them glow.
We've cured their diabetes.
We've even armed them with ears on their back!

Am I saying the world is going to be taken over by hyperintelligent glowing super mice that shoot insulin from the ears on their backs?

Of course not!

I'm saying the pan-galactic beings from another dimension who run this planet are getting ready for war, and they are using the Earth as a training facility.


(If you haven't read the hitchhickers guide to the galaxy let me first say don't panic! Secondly, go read it.)

Lets look at the facts folks:

We've made them bigger.
We've made them smarter.
We've made them glow.
We've cured their diabetes.
We've even armed them with ears on their back!

Am I saying the world is going to be taken over by hyperintelligent glowing super mice that shoot insulin from the ears on their backs?

Of course not!

I'm saying the pan-galactic beings from another dimension who run this planet are getting ready for war, and they are using the Earth as a training facility.


(If you haven't read the hitchhickers guide to the galaxy let me first say don't panic! Secondly, go read it.)

ex. I buy a stock with a pgp or what ever signed electronic doc.

That stock dives.

My broker calls, I say "Oh my private key and passphrase got stolen because my system was compromised"

Time for a visit to court.

I haven't read the legislation for digital signatures and I don't know what sort of system they are proposing. I don't think that it was a good idea for this law to be passed especial by people who know little about technology. Ok I looked at the bill now and it seems that each agency that uses signatures will have to come decide what they want to use independently. That's quite nice. I guess also today's system doesn't work all that well either, there's nothing stopping me from filling out 1040's for random people in the phone book.

www-eshoo.house.gov,office of bill's proposer

bill text

Whatever, hope it works out.

The DRAM market seems to alternate between drought and glut. Intel got their start making DRAMs, with the i1103 DRAM, a 1024 bit chip which helped kill magnetic core memory.

But admit it -- computers didn't become big business until Bill Gates got copyright protection on BASIC back in the early 80's. Then computers took off.

For the home computer market to expand, it needed a lot of customers. Not just hobbiests. Buisnesses, followed by people buying computers for home due to exposure to them at work. But why would business be interested in a microcomputer? You needed a killer app.

That killer app was VisiCalc. If you look a bit in to its histor y, you'll find that VisiCalc was that killer app. It quickly paid for itself by reducing errors and reducing hours spent crunching numbers. VisiCalc was THE reason for a business to buy a microcomputer. What was once scoffed at as a non-serious hobbiest toy suddenly became a valuable tool and spawned a whole new industry. BASIC didn't do that, much less copyright law.

I know, you think this is flame-bait, but I'm serious. Free software is good to get things going, but copyright makes it big business and if you look at companies like IBM or Sony, big business can innovate and often does a damn better job than what comes out of somebody's garage.

Sure... things have changed since then for all those companies. And Corporations are able to do things on an amazing scale - something required to make some innovations and manufacture products. But so much of what we enjoy today does not exist because of corporate innovation - it exists because a corporation has expanded on the innovative work done in somebody's garage. Without that work, there would be little for corporations to offer.

Conspiracy theories aside, Titan A.E. was in more theaters than any new movie coming out last weekend with 2,733. Shaft was right behind at 2,377, and Boys and Girls at 1,983. Fantasia 2000 had a meager 1,313. I had another friend tell me that he was sad that the movie didn't have many theaters (he saw it on Saturday and liked it, I've decided if I see it, it'll either be for free or on video).

What is it with these theories that people are out to 'get' this movie? Maybe I'm overstating the phenomenon, but I've heard it a lot lately...

Here's to hoping X-Men doesn't share the same fate as its FOX Animated brethren...

(here is the link to box office results.)

Oh, and instead of seeing TAE, I ended up seeing Chicken Run as a sneak... now _that_ is a great movie!

The article neglects to mention that PCR is covered by several patents. For instance, here's the fine print from an advertisement for Clontech's AdvanTaq DNA polymerase:

"Purchase of Advantage PCR reagents is accompanied by a limited license to use them in the Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) process for research in conjunction with with a thermal cycler whose use in the automated performance of the PCR process is covered by the up-front license fee, either by payment to Perkin-Elmer or as purchased, i.e., an authorized thermal cycler."

Roche holds most of the relevant patents on PCR, though they recently lost one of them as a result of a long, ugly lawsuit against Promega. For details, see this page at about.com. Perkin-Elmer holds a bunch of patents on machines for performing the thermal cycling step.

Fiddling with PCR in your own home is arguably an "experimental use" (i.e. you just want to see if it works) and therefore permitted under patent law, but don't make any commercial plans to Make DNA Fast.

But [you] can count the number of sites that actually use [PNG images] on one hand, can't you?

For a set to be counted on one standard human hand, there must be thirty-one or fewer elements (all five fingers up = binary 11111 = 31). Here's a short list; can you think of more?

1. Pinocchio's Brother and redpinocchio (my homepage)
2. Every other site I've designed (can't name them; confidentiality)
3. PNG headquarters
4. League for Programming Freedom
5. Burn All GIFs Day
6. Campaign for Real Ale
7. AuctionBeagle
8. University of Puerto Ricto Institute of Neurobiology
9. Eressea Fantasy PBEM
10. several clip art sites (here or here)

Actually, a mailing list I used to be on distrobuted a version of this program. It would pop out the CDROM tray, and play the Coke jingle. Of course, I was running a virus shield at the time, and it detected the attachment as being dubious in nature. The moderator had to send out a second message explaining that he wasn't sending people virii.

If you'ld like to read more about this 'virii', click here. A little description of the faux 'trojan'.

Judge Jackson, 63 years old, is a bear of a man, with a shock of white hair, a deep tan and an old black pipe he often stoked during the interview. Reclining in a leather swivel chair in his book-lined chambers in U.S. District Court here...

After reading your TOS I have become rather curious in regards to the following cluase:

Unacceptable publications include, but are not limited to:

1. Material that is ruled unlawful in the jurisdiction of the originating server (Such as child pornography, in the case of our flagship Sealand datacenter)

In the case of the Sealand datacenter, what are some of the limitations?

Please note that in the following examples I am not equating one example with any other or implying that any of the following should be censored; rather they are examples of what I would consider sticky wickets when running a "data haven" and wonder how such things will be handled.

Imagine the following:

I am a rabid anti-choice activist in the United States. I wish to post a site with a hit list of doctors performing abortions in the United States. After each "accident" I wish to mark them with a big red X. I publish detailed information on how to find each of these doctors.

Is this site permitted?

I am a hacker who wants to play DVDs on my Linux box and I want to use free software. I want to place source code on my website. The United States says this violates some stupid law and some annoying people object.

Is this site permitted?

I am a devote Iron Chef fan and Fuji TV has just sent me a cease and desist order. I wish to move my materials to Sealand.

Is this site permitted?

I am a regular guy in the UK creating a website about my daily life. Some people don't like the way I talk about them and my site is pulled.

Is this site permitted?

Will you allow sites advocating the overthrow of rival goverments, challenged uses of intellectual property, bomb making instructions, and other information that will get other nation-states panties in a twist?

See also: Fall of Roman Civilization We ARE in their footsteps in very many ways.

Please Start reading here.

There are several good links to follow for more detail. The similarities really are enough to wake you up!

Sic scribit timothy:

Book burning has been a hallmark of our century, although we certainly did not invent it.

The hoax part could be pretty simple like this: cross-reference with the 5 best sites listing and explaining hoaxes, then add to the first lines of the mail (this could be shared as a joke too) that this is a hoax and not to be takes seriously and few links to sites explaining the hoax. It would require some intelligence to detect variations of a theme. Since we have language barriers it's next to impossible start judging the senders intentions so it's not good to just delete the mail outright.

Few sites:

• http://www.urbanlegends.com/ (exellent)
• http://www.Europe.F-Secure.com/viru s-info/hoax/ (focuses on viruses, very good/exellent)
• http://www.scambusters.com/ (good)
• http://www.urbanmyths.com/ (worth checking)
• http://www.nonprofit.net/hoax/ (usable)
• http://urbanlegends.about.com/ c ulture/urbanlegends/ (not so good)

Spam doesn't have the language problem (it's mainly english anyways) but it is certainly hard to recognize without some kind of AI (spammers will surely come around any simple script).

It would be good if this could be implemented as some kind of plugin/API so that any mailserver could use with as little variation as possible.

This would be ultra cool and nail the goddam spammers for good, it would also significantly reduce damage from hoaxes and even (hopefully) educate the masses of hoaxes (by telling what they are).

If you're going to have such a program for people to chat with, that is called a Cha tterbot. It's been done.

There are an assortment of Vi rtual Robots for different web tasks. Personally, I think the searching/indexing problem is still lacking a solution -- although librarians have been working on it for decades.

Dan Briklin

"Bricklin never received a patent for VisiCalc, it was not until 1981 that software programs were made eligible for patenting by the supreme court. "

Hmm, I'm not amazingly well read up on these things myself, but it was my view that XHTML is a well-formed version of HTML. It's really the follow on to HTML 4, but instead of being HTML 5 it will be XHTML 1.0. It is designed to be portable across all kinds of applications and platforms, and the fact that it is well-formed means that the applications required to view it will be simpler than today's browsers. Also, since it is XML-based, new elements can simply be added to the existing DTD rather than having to rewrite it from scratch.

Anyway, what is XHTML and how does it differ from HTML? Well, the following points apply:

• All XTHML tags and attributes must be lowercase.
• All tags must be closed. This means that tags which are currently not closed, such as must close themselves e.g. . Also, nested tags must be closed as well, and closed in the order they were nested in.
• Attribute values must be quoted. So no more BORDER=0 - it must become border="0".
• Attribute value pairs cannot be minimised. So instead of tags like you must instead write .

For an overview of all things XHTML, see here.

AMEN!

It's very gratifying to see there are others out there with a clue. I was beginning to think I was the only one who realized that as soon as guns are outlawed and only outlaws have guns, the outlaws will be our only defense against the government corruption that has been running rampant in America almost since its inception.

History lesson: Hitler gains power in Germany and immediately disarms the population. How could the Jews defend themselves then?

People who say things like "Oh, the Second Amendment was only put there so people could hunt for food" are clueless morons. Hunting for your dinner with a rifle was a given back then... if you didn't shoot things, you didn't eat. The entire purpose of the Second Amendment was to ensure that the population would always be able to defend itself against all enemies, FOREIGN OR DOMESTIC. A "domestic enemy" is one that attacks you from within... i.e., the government itself. And we, my friends, have been under attack for centuries.

Wake up, people. Stop believing everything you see on CNN. Let me give you an example: Elian Gonzalez. I saw, live, that pre-dawn raid on the home he was in. I agree that they should have returned him to his father, but not the way they did it. They went in and waved M-16's at everyone, grabbed the kid at gunpoint, and then on their way out, they sprayed everyone in the place with pepper spray and tear gas. You didn't see THAT on the reruns, did you? It only appeared on the LIVE footage and they never mentioned gas or sprays again... but they damn sure showed all the people that were in that house weeping their asses off, trying to give us the impression that they were just upset. Now, if CNN can twist the truth around like that in a case this simple, what's to prevent them from inventing the truth whenever it suits them?

Oh, still don't believe me? How about another example? Remember the Oklahoma City bombing? Sure, who doesn't? But how many people besides me saw it WHILE it was happening? That's the only time you can catch glimpses of the truth. EVERY eyewitness they interviewed said there were TWO blasts, two distinct and separate explosions separated by almost one second. And as if that wasn't enough, CNN itself was reporting that in addition to the truck bomb out in front of the place, they had found FOUR unexploded bombs strapped to the remaining support pillars in the basement! In other words, that truck bomb was a diversion, and the real damage had been done from WITHIN. If you look at the blast damage from just afterwards, it's VERY obvious that that building blew up From The Inside Out. Speculation continues as to what REALLY happened that day and who was really responsible. I'm sure Timothy McVeigh had something to do with it, but (just like Oswald) he and Terry McNichol were patsies. Ask yourselves, also, why they were in such a hurry to bulldoze the place and permanently destroy ALL evidence about anything that happened there? Their pitiful excuses of "It's to minimize everyone's bereavement; out of sight, out of mind" was just that -- a pitiful excuse.

My point? Never believe anything CNN tells you, including "Gun control is the answer to violence! Save the children -- Gun Control Now!" If you ever want to get something banned, just claim (whether true or not) that it threatens children, and if enough people hear and believe it, they'll clamor for its banning until the legislative bodies in question have no choice but to do so or be thrown out of office.

It wouldn't surprise me one bit if the US government was behind every assassination, every terrorist bombing, every school/church/nursing home shooting, and every other sneaky bit of nastiness in recent history. Not One Bit. Everything that's happened since about 1900 has seemed to be leading towards the government and/or Big Business being in control of All Things. How many of you knew that the US Constitution specifically says, in the Tenth Amendment, "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people"? Do you know what that means? That means that the STATES in the US are supposed to have more power than the federal government, and should be allowed to decide for themselves all things that aren't *specifically* granted to the Federal government in the constitution. Have you EVER seen the federal government exhibit that behavior? Nooooo. What they do is say "Okay; if you don't enact such-and-such a law, we'll cut off funding for, say, your highways." This is coercion, plain and simple. The federal government is no better than the Mafia telling a shop owner "Yeah, ya needs to pay us 'insurance' to make sure nothin' bad happens to ya..."

Go ahead. Call me a nut. They called Galileo a nut for saying the earth rotates around the sun. They called Columbus a nut for saying the earth was round. They called Louis Pasteur a nut for saying diseases were caused by tiny little invisible creatures that got inside your cells and did bad things. They called Orville and Wilbur Wright nuts for attempting to fly. They called Ben Franklin nuts for flying kites in lightning storms. But no matter how outrageous the claims, they were all right, weren't they?

In case anyone still doubts the opinions of the Founding Fathers and what they had in mind when they wrote the Constitution (and especially with regard to gun control), here's a quote from a letter Thomas Jefferson wrote to William Smith on the subject:

"What country before ever existed a century & half without a rebellion? And what country can preserve its liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon & pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots & tyrants. It is its natural manure."

(You can find the whole letter here if you're interested.

Read that quote over and over and over until you understand it completely, and realize what he was saying. We have lost the "spirit of resistance." Our rulers believe us to be the sheep we are, and are taking advantage of it Right Now. Not a day goes by anymore that they don't take away one liberty or another from us, because we LET them take them away. Do we have the courage to "set them right as to facts, pardon and pacify them"? Thomas Jefferson knew the truth. The rest of the founding fathers knew the truth too. But somewhere between then and now, something happened and everyone forgot history... so now, we're repeating it, presumably until we get it right.

Let's get it right this time, people... Think Of The Children! :-)

However, US iodine deficiency has quadrupled to 12%. Are people who are "eating healthy" by avoiding salt causing a problem?

For that matter, this New Scientist article caught my eye. This research shows that sperm count decrease may be simply due to iodized salt. What really caught my attention was the mention that iodine deficiency causes smaller brains. We may be smarter than our ancestors 80 years ago.

I knew that iodine is added to salt to prevent goiter, but had missed the medical knowledge that it also prevents cretinism. Iodine is needed for proper brain development. The high incidence (17-60%) of goiter in affected areas indicates the level of the problem (still 43 million people).

So until the 1920s, perhaps half of the world population was less intelligent than now. Is it a coincidence that as the first iodized generation suffused society we had many fields boom in the 1960s?

GPS is such a vital tool in land surveying that I fear having to relocate those pins scattered all though the US, and can you imagine the inaccuracies that this would cause? How far would it set us back? Think of the
NOAA experiment that found the Washington Monument to be a different height then previously measured. (new height is
here)

Yes, but they've been the enemies of "upstanding" Americans for years anyway - see here for a Christian perspective on D&D and here for a Time magazine article, both of which are anti RPGs. There is a good overview of the whole situation with lots of links here at about.com.

right here

The Hitch-hiker's Guide to Evolutionary Computation contains links to some online software, most of which is free and open-source.

The comp.ai related FAQs.

The about.com AI page appears to be a good starting point for many AI related web sites.

Hope this helps.

And maybe in Quebec?Hmm. I hadn't realized that Mark Lepine was a full decade ago. If that's the one you were thinking of, it was a college-level event.

This from canadanews.about.com
and
another from www.indiatribune.com

What an odd comparison. The Hindenberg was using Hydrogen gas as a source of buoyancy, not fuel. Although you're right about the explosive doping compound (look here for more info), the whole point of using hydrogen as a fuel is that it is *combustible*. Its explosiveness is what makes it a good fuel.

smallstar

--

Polynitrocubances are still at the molecule level of development at this time and it is not expected that multigram quantities will be available anytime in the immediate future.

HMX and RDX

Another resource:

Cub ane Applications

The examples you give of AI research are pretty narrow. I don't know much about game bots, but personally I'm not sure if they qualify as "artificial intelligence" in anything but the loosest sense. Expert systems like chess-playing computers represent only very small subset of all the true research being done in AI.

The kind of project that the Great AIP site seems to be proposing is an entirely different idea. From what I can tell, they are proposing to create an online environment that allows AI's to interact and evolve and eventually "reach intelligence". We're talking about an artificial intelligence that should be able to interact, experience, develop, learn and create... not a big computer that can calculate and evaluate insanely huge numbers of chess moves.

The project itself concerns me a little, because I'm not sure that its creators have fully investigated and appreciated the magnitude of the task they are undertaking. The history of AI research shows a recurring pattern: periods of extreme optimism and lofty aspirations, followed by periods of cynicism as people's ideas fail to pan out as expected. Over and over we are confronted with the fact that this thing we call "intelligence" (which I notice the Great AIP still hasn't even *defined*) is far more complex and elusive than we previously suspected.

Not that I'm trying to say that AI research is pointless or that an open source AI project has no merit; I simply hope that people involved will do some serious research into previous attempts at finding "intelligence". Otherwise, I worry that they will simply repeat past mistakes.

For more information on the huge range of ideas and research falling under the category of AI, check out the collection of links at http://ai.about.com/compute/ai/. For a good beginner's overview (and a chance shamelessly plug a friend's site ) I recommend this AI Tutorial Review.

Portent:

AOL, Time Cite Social Goals

I think you have a valid concern for most parts of the world. However, I think GB does have a consistent record of violating their peoples rights for their saftey. One such saftey factor actually might make this a little bit better than the situation you describe above though... that is GB's TOUGH gun laws...

Here is some history.
Here is a pretty damn frightening article.
Here is some more interesting discussion.
Here is a chart.

I think that any reasonable person would agree that the country would be better off if there were fewer abortions.

Actually, there is some statistical information indicating that higher abortion rates result in lower crime rates. You pick your poison; I don't think there's a clear "reasonable person" position here. The country as a whole (distinct from the individuals that compose it) probably DOES benefit from more abortions.

I find it telling how recently this post and the one on saving /. from Natalie Portman/Trolls have come up together--both are the result of Too Much Information needing to be distilled down. /. turned to moderators. About.com is all about that, too.

I first learned the term "reintermediation" from an article by Nicholas Negroponte in WIRED magazine. In another article by him (which I can't find right now) he says that while some people believe that librarians will be out of jobs, he predicts that there will be a new form of librarian. The old librarian could help you find what book you were looking for in the library. The new librarian will help you find the content you need from the 'net.

As a personal aside, I'm shocked and dismayed that search engines don't index database queries--I *just* finished rolling out my new personal web site which is totally database-driven, and thorhoughly meant to be indexed. Now you're telling me that because all my URLs look like this "content.asp?nodeid=dejavu" that search engines won't find all the delicious content I'm creating? Botheration!

I suppose *a* workaround here is to create an application which traverses the site and builds some mirrored heirarchy of it in static pages for the search engine to index, which uses JavaScript to bounce the user to the *right* page once they get there.

*sigh*

However, it has also been conventional wisdom that learning requires some kind of change of "brainal" configuration. But I think CW has been that this is done by changing the strengths of synapses rather than the number of synapses.

see my other posts on this article regardiong this topic. As I said there, many researchers think that the strength (weight for you cosi people) is modified by adding additional synspases between neurons that are already connected. Regarding the Research considering the growth of new neurons, check out the press release and the article istelf at nature

In the majority of cases, if not all, the use of frames can be replaced by nested tables. And there is an increasing trend to do this.

Using tables instead of frames will increase the number of potential users who can make sense of your website. If you have a frames based website, you should also provide a non-frames version out of consideration for people using a browser that doesn't support frames.

Anyone authoring a website with Frontpage (ugggh) will invariably have a frame based website when they don't need to. This means that a lot of mom and pop websites, as well as small commercial websites have frames.

Larger commercial sites are tending to not use frames unless they have a really good reason. Look at the source code for sites such as Oracle TechNet, Wired, and About.com for examples of sites that use tables over frames. Interestingly, Oracle Technet has only recently made the change and Oracle still uses frames.

Many commercial software packages for website design favour tables over frames. Macromedia Dreamweaver will do this I think, although their site uses frames.

Webmonkey has a good guide to how to construct frames, but the article does say
ask yourself: Do I really need frames at all? Most of the time, the answer is no. In my opinion, frames are only appropriate when you have a complex navigation structure going on - especially one that involves retaining a search query while reloading the search results (as in Cocktail or Net Surf Central).

At the end of the day the person you've hired has been asked to provide functionality into your existing web site, and while they shouldn't be stopped from making suggestions on how to improve your site, they do have a job to do. I'd be surprised if having frames actually prevents functionality being added.

"Rules of Engagement" are as old as conflict itself, and as silly as it might sound, they're better than nothing at all.

In regards to this particular gem, i'm not entirely sure how this is a "new" revelation - impersonating enemy leaders has always been "illegal", in any form - whether it be cardboard cutouts or professional actors.
Digital imaging is just another form of said impersonation. Why, exactly, did we need a study to show this to be true? Ah, the tax money hard at work.


This is a little off topic, but there's always room for informational links on the Laws of War, so i say :).

What are the rules of Engagement? - about.com

Y! - The Rules of War

Rules of Warfare - Arms Control

The Geneva Convention(s) - Modern "Laws of War".


.------------ - - -
| big bad mr. frosty
`------------ - - -

abo ut.com has another such poll, for those who answer these things recreationally. ;-)

• But in places where close attention is paid to what words actually say, the states'-rights reading of the Second Amendment has attracted surprisingly little support. After all, the Second Amendment does not say, "A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, shall not be infringed." Nor do the words of the amendment assert that "the right of the people to keep and bear arms" is conditional upon membership in some sort of organized soldiery like the National Guard. Indeed, if there is conditional language in the Second Amendment at all, evidently the contingency runs the other way: "Because the people have a right to keep and bear arms, states will be assured of the well regulated militias that are necessary for their security." Some version of this reading is supported by almost all of the constitutional historians and lawyers who have published research on the subject. Indeed, this view is so dominant in the academy that Garry Wills, the lone dissenter among historians on the proper reading of "the right of the people to keep and bear arms," has dubbed it the Standard Model of the Second Amendment.
• ...no ambiguity at all surrounds the attitude of the constitutional generation concerning "the right of the people to keep and bear arms." To put the matter bluntly, the Founders of the United States were what we would nowadays call gun nuts. "One loves to possess arms," Thomas Jefferson wrote to President Washington (whose own gun collection, Don Kates notes, contained more than 50 specimens). And to his teenage nephew, the author of the Declaration of Independence had this to say: "A strong body makes the mind strong. As to the species of exercises, I advise the gun. While this gives a moderate exercise to the body, it gives boldness, enterprise and independence to the mind. Games played with the ball, and others of that nature, are too violent for the body and stamp no character on the mind. Let your gun therefore be the constant companion of your walks."
• They took from Locke the principle that people have a right to defend themselves, with arms if necessary, and from both Hobbes and Locke--to say nothing of their own experience with the Crown --the principle that central governments have a tendency, which requires systematic mitigation, to become overmighty with those subject to their power. The purpose of an armed population was to guarantee that the central government could not possess a monopoly of violence (no wonder modern-day liberals find the Second Amendment so hateful) and to assure that citizens would have the wherewithal to defend themselves and their communities against tyrants and wrongdoers.

One of the quotes from the sidebar:

Guard with jealous attention the public liberty. Suspect everyone who approaches that jewel. Unfortunately, nothing will preserve it but downright force. Whenever you give up that force, you are ruined...The great object is that every man be armed. Everyone who is able might have a gun. -Patrick Henry

A lot of people would like to make the Second Amendment irrelevant to these times, and ignore it. You can't just ignore Constitutional Amendments, especially one on the Bill of Rights! If it is not relevant, it should be repealed. If allowed to remain, it should not be ignored.

Special Note: The NSI dotcomnow.com e-mail system vulnerability was discovered with a PalmIII PDA via a CDPD Novatel Plus Wireless modem connection to the internet using the Proxiweb browser..

Reply to Buddy on 01:17 PM September 20th, 1999 EDT

Well, you haven't seen it in the media because they are ignoring it. I've been paying way too much attention to this topic and I haven't heard a peep except what the hacker community already knows. This is not because I didn't try..Read On..

I messaged all the news media starting late Thursday night, Sept 16, 1999 and then into Friday. Tips@wired.com was the first place to be e-mailed: no response. Then I mailed local news and got the same. CNN, ABC, CBS, MSNBC, Microsoft (for the H of it), and NSI to name a few, were all mailed: again no response. Slashdot was also messaged sometime on Saturday, but there were 100+ submission pending, so I understand. http://slashdot.org/faq.shtml#Q42

The following message was sent:
You may already know this. I know at least one other person has figured it out.
The new Network Solutions E-mail systems are wide open. There are two ways to break in.
The first is to know the name of someone with an account with NSI, type
User: name
Pass: namensi
The second is this...
Here is the entry to the support account.
http://mail.dotcomnow.com/signup/poll/support?dlan g=default
Replace the word support with any valid account and bang, you're in.

The only response I received was sometime on Monday from http://netsecurity.about.com but well after it became public knowledge. .

As an ethical person, I wanted to give NSI fair warning. They were officially notified on Saturday, September 18, 1999. Since they were changing their production billing system on Saturday I figured that someone would react by verifying the hole and then taking down the system. This did not happen. I also tried calling. Don't try calling them; it's waste of time. 48 hours after notifying NSI, I released the information to various and nefarious sources detailing a 6-step process for guaranteed access. www.2600.com responded within minutes. In fact, they were so fast that they edited and posted the info about 5 minutes after it was sent. Now that's action.

Here's a copy of the original instructions:
Here is how to do it..
Instructions:
1. Click on Access Free Web Mail from Http://www.networksolutions.com
2. Click on one of the e-mail address near the bottom of the screen.
3. Click Click Here
4. Enter first and last name
5. Create a valid e-mail account
6. Wait until the screen says "Your Mailbox has been Created".
From here you can change the account name in this line
http://mail.dotcomnow.com/signup/poll/nametochange >?dlang=defaut
http://mail.dotcomnow.com/signup/poll/support?dlan g=default Actual Support Account

Here's a copy of the original mail I sent to my friends at 12:52 AM Sep. 18, 1999
Get this!
I just created an account on the Network Solutions new e-mail server and guess what...
I discovered a back door! NO SH***ING.....
Someone didn't do a good programming job here at all.
Simply type any name where you see the word "support"..
The link here will take you to their support e-mail
http://mail.dotcomnow.com/signup/poll/support?dlan g=default
If the account exists you will get in
http://mail.dotcomnow.com/signup/poll/oracle?dlang =default
http://mail.dotcomnow.com/signup/poll/microsoft?dl ang=default
http://mail.dotcomnow.com/signup/poll/whitehouse?d lang=default

Needless to say, We had a lot of fun collecting accounts over the weekend. Slightly on the dark side of ethical? Maybe, but isn't it more unethical to offer a service that you know is flawed and yet do nothing to fix it. More importantly, we collected these accounts to demonstrate that Hole #2 is still open. Yet, where is the news coverage, where is the outrage, and where does NSI get off ignoring this personal privacy breach. If you want to try out Hole #2 for yourself, you can e-mail me for a small list of inconsequential accounts. Hey M$, This method is also being used on Hotmail.

Message to the people who use Network Solutions freemail:
You should be scared. I'm nice and I'm trying to save you. I won't do anything, but I will make this information available to anyone (members of congress, the media, NSI, your neighbors) via request.
What does this mean?
IT MEANS WE CAN STILL READ YOUR E-MAIL
Solution: Forward and then delete all of your mail. Don't have any passwords mailed to the account. Don't register any Domain Names using the account. Stop using the NSI mail system until it's really fixed.

Message to NSI:
Shut down the server, fix the problem, and be nice. What you are doing is just wrong, very wrong. Get your third-party e-mail vendor to shape up. Or is that third-party thing just your way of shifting the blame? Tell us, who is this vendor and why do they suck so badly?

Message to the Mainstream News Media ( /. Excluded)
You Suck! Maybe NSI has some commercial hold on you or maybe you're just stupid. Why so much coverage on the Hotmail gaffs? NSI provided the world with a code free hack; a front door into their system. This was an idiot door far worse (my opinion) than the Hotmail blunder(s). I stumbled upon it with no thinking required. Is this not news? I guess that a mail system that is used by mostly "nerds" (taken from someone's previous post) isn't worth the attention. I understand that an earthquake in Taiwan, Raisa Gorbachev dying, and of course, Hurricane Floyd, are all big issues, but why so little comment in the tech and headline news media. Personally, I wanted to hear Sarah Baskin report it to the world. Oh well, poor me. Maybe some reporter will summarize what I've said here and get the word out that FREE MAIL IS NOT SAFE. Let me say it again...FREE MAIL IS NOT SAFE. I'm just a regular guy, I'm no "hacker". Look how easy it was to open up their system. This should be a wakeup call.

Well I have to go now. Unlike the folks at NSI, I need to stop playing around and get some real work done.

I agree, modern ECT can be a useful treatment for many people. However, THE PATIENT (and/or their guardian) and the doctor make the call to use ECT. Turing had NO say in his "treatment." The British government ordered it or prison. I cannot agree that "... what Turing and others endured ... was needed to clarify what ECT has evolved into." A statement such as this would also support the syphilis "research" that the US government performed on uninformed African Americans as "needed to clarify" our modern treatment regime. Without informed consent, any treatment or research is a violation of a patient's rights.

You are quite right, homosexuality is no longer classified by the DSM as a mental illness. However, there are quite a few psychologists and psychiatrists who will commit someone because they identify as gay or because the family wants them committed. The diagnosis will not be homosexuality; instead it might be Depression, Obsessive / Compulsive behavior, or Sexual Disorder Not Otherwise Specified. Simply removing homosexuality from the DSM is only another step on the long road to learning about and accepting the diversity that is human sexuality.

Related Links

Treatments - ECT

Tuskegee Syphilis Study and Aftershocks

Hopefully, no one takes this thing seriously, but I fear it already too late, judging by the amount of /.'s resources wasted by this thread.

http://www.snopes.com/
http://urbanlegends.about.com/
http://www.scambusters.com/
Try researching things independantly before going off half-cocked, you half-wit. This is a 'net legend that has been going around for some time. /. is just the latest dupe.
The U.S. Gov. tossed the idea around for a bit, but then scrapped it. There is no pending legislation about taxing email, get the fuck over it.

Check out the following sites for the bogus "email tax" 'net legend:
http://urbanlegends.about.com/
http://www.scambusters.com/
http://www.snopes.com/
Just to name a few. I can't believe /. fell for this tripe...

the correct url for the review needs www prefix.

1. Attempts to automate searches for you along lines of your interest

Organize the results in a 3d vrml-navigable universe. Like Neuromancer.

Oh yeah, the beta is available for Linux right now, in one simple RPM.

Go here for a miningco.com review, or here for the software.