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That manager was named Richard Earl Blee and he is now the subject of a documentary by Ray Nowosielski and John Duffy, of secrecykills.org, who confirmed his identity using techniques right out of the 70s film All the President's Men.

They had an FBI Associate Director feed them information?

Well, if you listen to the interview @ http://secrecy-kills.s3.amazonaws.com/BleePodcast1.m4a George Tenet--former CIA director--slipped up and gave the information necessary to identify Richard Earl Blee: His last initial and the fact he was a controversial son of former CIA officers. The last initial and the other information was enough to narrow it down to one person. So drop the "Associate," an "ex-" and change the acronym, and yes, exactly.

http://s3.amazonaws.com/kym-assets/photos/images/original/000/131/399/fry.PNG?1307468855

Here you go...

Here you go...

Obligatory comic

You don't fly to China for vacation or reporting, You go tthere to MILK the shit out of those dollars. Anyway now we know everything is fine. Since the "floating Chinese officials" are reporting to the Jobs and nobody seem be being strangled, guess everything is A-OK.

Hey Slashdot, if you insist on continuing to use the Microsoft Borg icon, then it's only fair that you use this icon for Apple.

LG and Samsung had phones that "looked like the iPhone" before the iPhone existed. http://www.engadget.com/2007/06/29/apple-iphone-vs-lg-prada-separated-at-birth-part-2/ http://phandroid.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/Samsungvs.Apple_-550x391.jpg

Samsung F700 (2006) vs iPhone (2007). LG Prada (2006) vs iPhone (2007) Engadget titled that article "Apple iPhone vs LG Prada: separated at birth?" because the phones are so similar.

All of the phone manufacturers have experimented with different case designs and UIs. It is disingenuous for Apple to pretend that they have innovated more than, say, Nokia. If Nokia had filed for patents in the 1970s and 1980s that were as broad as Apple's are now then they'd have patented the dialler, the idea of having a graphical display, the idea of attaching it to a battery for mobile comms etc, and the result would've been only one single cellphone manufacturer, instead of the competitive market that's benefited us all over the last two decades.

Patents are a government granted right to be the only producer of a single item. Patents were designed to destroy the competitiveness of the free market. The only other system where governments gave individual companies the right to be the sole manufacturer of an item was under communism, where factories would be allocated as an "item X supplier" regardless of whether they were the best or most productive. When the government grants a sole supplier the right to sell an item to the nation, whether via mandate or patent, then the effect is the same - the people lose their right to freely choose which companies they do business with.

Patents erode your freedom. They remove your freedom to create and sell items, and they remove your freedom to choose who you do business with.

Yeah, well that is the cost of allowing war to dictate what goes in the ground. Koran-thumpers will hurt you and than ask questions later... that sounds like something we have here... Bible-thumpers who will blow up abortion clinics, or kill you if you don't fit into their way of thought (like that one guy who killed the abortionist that went to the same church because he felt the abortionist was in the wrong.

Uneducated world, it is bigger than you think. I have ran into so many idiots in the states that I am thing "I don't want to live on this planet anymore." - http://s3.amazonaws.com/kym-assets/photos/images/original/000/126/314/3cd8a33a.png?1306264975 It is a shame.

Upside, little to no light pollution. I would kill for that (no pun intended).

"Also, note that Apple is only suing Samsung for producing a device that looks a lot like the iPhone in many more ways than just a rectangular icon grid."

Such as, say, the phone's shape?

Apple isn't suing Google over the Android UI, just Samsung for making the Android UI look more like the iPhone UI than other Android phones.

Which particular aspects of the iPhone UI do you think should be owned exclusively by Apple? If Apple were to sell its UI as a product (just the UI, not the operating system), what would the sales brochure look like?

Good thing you were able to find a Samsung phone that doesn't look like an iPhone, rather than looking at every news article about the suit. Like this one. http://www.zdnet.com/blog/hardware/yowza-apple-hits-samsung-with-lawsuit-over-iphone-clones/12360

"Also, note that Apple is only suing Samsung for producing a device that looks a lot like the iPhone in many more ways than just a rectangular icon grid."

Such as, say, the phone's shape?

Apple isn't suing Google over the Android UI, just Samsung for making the Android UI look more like the iPhone UI than other Android phones.

Which particular aspects of the iPhone UI do you think should be owned exclusively by Apple? If Apple were to sell its UI as a product (just the UI, not the operating system), what would the sales brochure look like?

Agreed - I haven't actually found anything in iOS4 for the iPad 1 that I have needed yet, besides the fact that they removed my favourite wallpaper from iOS4 (the desert island scene), so really I lost out :( Haven't found anywhere that offers it as a download yet either.

You mean this one ?

Just from looking at the screenshots on the site I can say

a) tons of wasted vertical whitespace in lists (both left column and track lists
b) wildly inconsistent borders between screen elements - the borders between menu bar, left column, right area and bottom panel are all different.
c) weird striped effect on the bottom panel instead of a gradient at least
d) alert box options are inconsistent with other Windows programs
e) left sidebar headings are harder to see than the items under them - lighter font, no indentation

Unfortunately, I'm sure some of that is down to using GTK, which produces horrible-looking apps on Windows.

If the raptor comes, I don't think those he takes will simply disappear cleanly, probably very messy instead. How do you think the raptor actually gets to your soul?

As I understand it, all this raptor mythology arose among evangelic protestants who believe most people are too sinful to be taken. Even a divinely hungry raptor driving around on Santa's sleigh just doesn't take all that many people. In Catholicism, there are many more people who've been resolved of their sins by confession, meaning catholics believe that God will take far more people.

Yes

Yes.

Look up the old liverys of american airlines. Thats not silver paint, thats polished aluminium.
for example: http://s3.amazonaws.com/collectapedia_prod/images/62178/American_Airlines_990_Astrojet.jpg

Nowadays that does not fly anymore, as more and more composites are used, which are
a) not as sexy unpainted
and
b) non-conductive, so need a conductive paint layer to prevent damage in thunderstorms

I think it's time for a Firefox Plug-in, or Grease Monkey script or something like that, that auto-clicks "I agree" for the Terms of Service of the top websites (get it to work with Facebook and Google first, and slowly work your way down the Alexa Top Million Sites list).

Some genius on here has got to be smart enough or think this is an interesting enough project to crank something out to do this. With the Plug-In installed, if the user gets to the Terms Of Service click-through agreement, then it auto-clicks.

Then a court challenge would be VERY interesting! "I didn't agree to it! I didn't even SEE the agreement!" ....Filing patent now...

I met many, many people like you in the early 90's
shaking their canes at me, tellin me to get off their
lawn, as I was trying to sell them on this new thing
called the internet. And that they should buy their
domains NOW before the land-rush when they won't
be available anymore. "Stake out your presence on
the internet, it's not going away... it's where all the
commerce will eventually take place."

Oh, btw... I can tell alot about you from #1. I didn't
tell you to make a website you ludd. In fact, since I
said PRIVATE WEBSITE, that should have been an
indicator as to the NATURE of the site. I said store it
on a website. MUCH difference there.

And if you can't cough up $50 PER YEAR for hosting
with a provider like 1and1 you need to get a better job.
(No, I understand the difference between can't and won't)
But won't(s) only excuse is lazy, scared, etc. Can't may
have mitigating factors.

Being in the cloud is a HUGE advantage and just
like 1993, there are going to be those that get it and
those that will have great stories to tell their kids and
friends (if they will listen) about how they missed out
on the next big thing.

If there is a single nerd, geek, whathaveyou on /. that
doesn't have some type of cloud account... turn in your
badge...

... and you better look out your front window, I think
someone is on your lawn.
[for the ludds that use expense as an excuse...
it's FREE for a t1.micro instance, that you can run in
perpetuity for the entire year on EC2... did I say FREE?]

-AI

FWIW, EC2 is like having a FREE 2.66 GHz Xeon PC,
with a (unfortunately paltry) half gig memory but 7 Gigs
of drive storage... that you could hold in the palm of your
hand. [For those of us that have smartphones.] Yeah, I
know you can do that with your home PC, but you don't
have to expose your home computer this way and that's
not really the point anyway. The point is, it's a free box.
A +1 to your collection. And you can access it just like
any other computer you sit in front of (or access via
some wireless device)

I ran a half million prime sieve on it... and I got every
cycle promised. Loaded a rainbow in 'memory' and did
some hash blasting. You can do heavy cracking of
encryption from a cell phone.

EC2's been around for a long time. No excuses geeks.

EC2 is really simple. Get an Amazon account.
[ https://aws-portal.amazon.com/gp/aws/developer/registration/index.html ]
Then get the AWS account. Log in. Click on Launch
Instance. Click on the Community AMI's tab, select the
OS image of your choice. They have Linux AND Windows.

                            SELECT A t1.micro INSTANCE!
If you select another one, it won't be free but it won't cost
an arm and a leg either. It's nice, you can scale up to a
[pay] BIG iron box with multi CPUs, tons of RAM to test
on, after you've made your distro and did dev on a free tier.

Set up the params, security and storage, and grab a snack
or coffee (Takes like 2-3min).

Then log in... here's the LAMP I just assembled as a
test bed for a WordPress blog. Yeah, it's not exposed yet.
http://ec2-50-17-49-155.compute-1.amazonaws.com/
just has a hi world on it.

They have LAMP instances, but I put mine together
myself so I could test some install scripts.

Actually, if you would read the entire blog, there is a good photograph of the final airplane design, except without the fancy printing.

For those who are link-challenged, here is a link to the blog entry:

http://projectspaceplanes.com/post/1222772296/weve-finally-decided-on-the-space-plane-design-to

and this is a link to a picture of the airplane itself:

http://s3.amazonaws.com/data.tumblr.com/tumblr_l9mhq6XVFB1qdcoh8o1_1280.jpg?AWSAccessKeyId=0RYTHV9YYQ4W5Q3HQMG2&Expires=1297285744&Signature=Hvs3kCBFGFbuQYaDS2iMFyR%2BH7k%3D

The "idea of Obama" link is a 403. Here is the only other link Google has, from amazon, so I suppose slashdotting fears won't close that one like your first.

Not to mention there is more than just Chrome which shows up AS Chrome so that will skew the results if you strictly go by net stats as well. For example just off the top of my head there is Chromium and Comodo Dragon and IIRC both of those show up as Chrome under UA, and I'm sure there are probably other Chromium based that also show up as Chrome under UA. Does Flock show up as Chrome as well?

Me personally I am just damned glad we have plenty of choices now, screw the whole "who has the biggest" ePeen BS. I remember when you had the "choices" of Internet Exploiter on one hand and Nutscrape on the other, which was kinda like saying "Would you rather be punched or kicked in the balls?" as having choices in the matter. Now we have Gecko based- Firefox, Seamonkey, Kmeleon, you have webkit based Chrome/Chromium, SWIron, Comodo Dragon, Flock, Safari, and you even have trident based like Maxthon and Avant, and of course Opera all by itself running Presto.

So I am just glad we have a wealth of choices, so that when one company screws the pooch when it comes to the browser we are not stuck with a choice of that or IE. As far as IE goes I think this picture sums it up best.

A *sitting* PRESIDENT however, needs no more than "someone" claiming that they've *seen* his birth certificate to satisfy the presidential requirement of citizenship by birth...

Here. Now even you have seen it.

despite his own grandmother asserting he was born in another country.

No, she didn't. There was a miscommunication. This happens when you ask oddly-worded questions to an illiterate 90-year old non-English speaker through an interpreter. Who know's what her understanding of the question was. It could have been translated to her as something like "were you in Kenya when Obama was born?" Here's the actual transcript:

MCRAE: Could I ask her about his actual birthplace? I would like to see his birthplace when I come to Kenya in December. Was she present when he was born in Kenya?

OGOMBE: Yes. She says, yes, she was, she was present when Obama was born.

MCRAE: When I come in December. I would like to come by the place, the hospital, where he was born. Could you tell me where he was born? Was he born in Mombasa?

OGOMBE: No, Obama was not born in Mombasa. He was born in America.

MCRAE: Whereabouts was he born? I thought he was born in Kenya.

OGOMBE: No, he was born in America, not in Mombasa.

MCRAE: Do you know where he was born? I thought he was born in Kenya. I was going to go by and see where he was born.

OGOMBE: Hawaii. Hawaii. Sir, she says he was born in Hawaii. In the state of Hawaii, where his father was also learning, there. The state of Hawaii.

So any word on that birth certificate?

You mean this one? That's been available for years.

But the idiots who are so convinced of the Kenya stupidity will just claim it's a fake (and they have). Hell, you could put them in a time machine, travel back to 1961 so they can witness the birth themselves, and they'll still be convinced that it's a scam. When people desperately want to believe something, all the facts in the world won't change their minds.

Coincidence - my sister just sent me this :O
I'm afraid you have humans.

Gee, 4 or 5 articles ago Amazon EC2 gets massive free advertising on slashdot, and now I can't buy anything because of this:

http://ec2-50-16-43-113.compute-1.amazonaws.com/#temporary-url-for-traffic-reasons

I would say, Humble Bundle is succeeding just fine where Anonymous failed. So much for using Amazon to help coping with webload! I hope the indie authors didn't pay too much for using the "most invincible website" service.

Here's a picture to help illustrate your point.

Before I discovered lego I also liked these http://s3.amazonaws.com/bzzagent-bzzscapes-prod/classic-little-people-house--lrg.png from fisher price, sadly they don't make them anymore, but they were amazing! they had a whole town! with school, a main street, a fire house with a cool truck, me and my brother loved them!

Experts are wrong sometimes. While the link in the article is slashdotted, her is a similar one that's pretty persuasive: http://uncinus.wordpress.com/2010/11/09/4/ Can your expert tell the difference between an actual aircraft contrail at sunset (taken on Dec 31st last year):

Just the standard government cover-up over the fact that they launched the missile in a vain attempt to stop this UFO invasion.

Experts are wrong sometimes. While the link in the article is slashdotted, her is a similar one that's pretty persuasive: http://uncinus.wordpress.com/2010/11/09/4/ Can your expert tell the difference between an actual aircraft contrail at sunset (taken on Dec 31st last year):

http://consci.s3.amazonaws.com//skitch/Preview-20100119-154110.jpg

and what he thinks was a missile:

http://consci.s3.amazonaws.com//skitch/Mystery_Missile_Launch_Seen_off_Calif._Coast_-_CBS_News-20101109-073423.jpg

Here is an actual missile launch: http://www.air-and-space.com/20061214%20Camino%20Cielo/_BEL7403%20Delta-II%20NRO%20launch%20l.jpg

Experts are wrong sometimes. While the link in the article is slashdotted, her is a similar one that's pretty persuasive: http://uncinus.wordpress.com/2010/11/09/4/ Can your expert tell the difference between an actual aircraft contrail at sunset (taken on Dec 31st last year):

http://consci.s3.amazonaws.com//skitch/Preview-20100119-154110.jpg

and what he thinks was a missile:

http://consci.s3.amazonaws.com//skitch/Mystery_Missile_Launch_Seen_off_Calif._Coast_-_CBS_News-20101109-073423.jpg

Here is an actual missile launch: http://www.air-and-space.com/20061214%20Camino%20Cielo/_BEL7403%20Delta-II%20NRO%20launch%20l.jpg

orly?

Perhaps this info-graphic can help explain the current absurd state of mutual destruction in the mobile industry. It tries to show who is suing whom.

It's a couple of weeks old though so obviously massively out of date:
http://infobeautiful2.s3.amazonaws.com/whos_suing_whom.png

I'm sure yacht brochures are being mailed to all the lawyers as we speak.

A nice data visualization will help

Then, in 2003, the same data set, which in [the IPCC's] publications, in their website, was a straight line--suddenly it changed, and showed a very strong line of uplift, 2.3 mm per year, the same as from the tide gauge. And that didn't look so nice. It looked as though they had recorded something; but they hadn't recorded anything. It was the original one which they had suddenly twisted up, because they entered a "correction factor," which they took from the tide gauge. So it was not a measured thing, but a figure introduced from outside. I accused them of this at the Academy of Sciences in Moscow --I said you have introduced factors from outside; it's not a measurement. It looks like it is measured from the satellite, but you don't say what really happened. And they answered, that we had to do it, because otherwise we would not have gotten any trend!

Dr. Nils-Axel Mörner is the head of the Paleogeophysics and Geodynamics department at Stockholm University in Sweden. He is past president (1999-2003) of the INQUA Commission on Sea Level Changes and Coastal Evolution, leader of the Maldives Sea Level Project Interview

Ahh, the good old correction factor.

You sure are right son. Here is what we use out here in Australia for "mosquito net", "fly wire", "screen" or whatever you wish to call it. Pretty big mosquitoes they are for sure ! :

http://go635254.s3.amazonaws.com/cleantechnica/files/2009/02/sewer-grate.jpg

http://rookery9.aviary.com.s3.amazonaws.com/4294000/4294479_659f_625x1000.jpg

First pics are back:

http://rookery.s3.amazonaws.com/828500/828687_2c76_625x1000.jpg

Sure, I used bugmenot:

http://s3.amazonaws.com/ppt-download/slaviero2010memcache-100803232447-phpapp02.pdf?Signature=CatPvvPgJL3nxkECUrqgQ%2ByH4OE%3D&Expires=1281288118&AWSAccessKeyId=AKIAJLJT267DEGKZDHEQ

PS: I also have no Flash installed and felt your pain as well.

I agree the battery packs are and will be installed in different locations in different cars.

Which makes the notion of standardization a pipe dream.

Even so I don't think the cost for the swapping station really comes in to play.

Of course it does. PBP's already cost a fortune and they're about as simple as it gets. You're talking about basically turning them into a factory of multi-configuration 6-axis robots rated for holding tonnes of weight. Something like the $100,000 Kuka KR1000 Titan. *Just for the battery disconnects/reconnects* -- never mind the inventory management hardware. The cost of the inventory itself would be in the millions and take up a tremendous amount of space. Here's just one Leaf battery pack. And the Leaf isn't all that long range.

You personally don't need to own one and businesses will recover the capital over time.

No, they won't; that's the point. The costs are just way too high.

With swappable batteries you need to be able to access them from the outside of the vehicle, but that's about it.

That's not "about it". They're an integral part of the structure of the vehicle. It's like saying "To remove the frame of the car, you have to be able to access it from outside of the vehicle, but that's about it". Only that the battery pack is an even larger percent of the vehicle's mass than the frame. It's a structural element. It's the most important part of the car's CG. It's what the entire EV is built around. It's not "about it".

If Better Place is able to achieve reliable coupling with their scheme, I wouldn't think say 5 smaller couplings would be unworkable. When you increase the number of couplings, you decrease the amount of current each has to carry, making each one cheaper.

That's not how battery packs work. If you knew anything about the industry, you'd be aware of the huge disparity between the cost of the cells and the cost of an assembled battery pack. The smaller you make a pack, the greater the disparity. A pack is not just cells. It's cells, casing, charge management, wiring, connectors, cooling, hard point attachments, cell failure isolation, fuses and crash-triggered disconnects, etc, plus a ton of labor.

Also for the cost of the pack, you would be leasing them anyway.

Cost is cost. It will always have to be borne by someone. Available money is finite.

You listed a few profiles for batteries; two in fact. High power and low power.

Not at all. There are entirely different voltage curves, heat management profiles, lifespans under different conditions, charge rates, discharge rates, energy densities (there's a 3x spread, from ~70Wh/kg titanates to ~220Wh/kg nickel-cobalt li-ions), and price per unit energy (10x spread, from $300/kWh junky Chinese cells to $3/kWh AltairNano cells).

Quick charging is, while also solvable, a completely different beast.

Not "solvable". "Solved." As in, "in vehicles today". As in, "today's best li-ion batteries can literally charge in just a couple minutes without relevant lifespan problems if you give them sufficient power and cooling."

With the swapping stations you can charge the batteries a bit slower anticipating demand, with less need for expensive high-voltage high-amperage infrastructure all over the place when compared to ubiquitous quick charging.

That's not how quick charging works except on the lower end in isolated stations. On the mass scale, rapid chargers are run from a battery bank which is trickle charged -- just like with a battery swap station, but without all of the massive complications, allowing

they neglected to include a high-level API to deal with what will be by far the most common use cases.

Actually, they didn't. You can do, e.g.

conn = boto.gs.GSConnection(API_KEY, SECRET)
key = conn.get_bucket('mybucket').get_key('myfilename')
f = open('local_file')
key.send_file(f)

The API docs only show the bits of the API that Google added. Most of the convenience methods you're looking for are part of the boto library.

Republican Jesus would shoot your commie ass for saying that.

Incidentally, though, some, er.. fine conservative minds have taken up the challenge of eradicating the taint of liberalism from the bible...

Kindle User's Guide (pdf), page 99. Notes and highlights have been backed up to Amazon's servers since the v1 launch, .....snip....

Why should I care that Amazon builds an aggregate summary?

Are there companies that would send documents to the Kindle of employees?

Field service representatives, executive paperwork, and other "Confidential" content.

A reader that is also a communication device.... There are some obvious areas where phone home and other trespass of content could cause interesting liability issues for the Kindle holder as well as Amazon.

you may be interested in this, http://s3.amazonaws.com/thf_media/2006/pdf/wm1140.pdf The heritage foundation's memo regarding oil drilling from 2006

Kindle User's Guide (pdf), page 99. Notes and highlights have been backed up to Amazon's servers since the v1 launch, and you can easily turn off sync of your own data.

You can enable or disable automatic backup by following the steps below:
1. If you are not already on the Home screen, press the Home button.
2. Press the Menu button.
3. Move the 5-way to underline "Settings" and press to select.
4. Press the Menu button.
5. Move the 5-way to underline "Disable/Enable Annotations Backup" and press to select.

Why should I care that Amazon builds an aggregate summary?

for anyone looking to download the whole memo it's posted here http://s3.amazonaws.com/thf_media/2006/pdf/wm1140.pdf/ i have a feeling the page on heritage.org will be 404ing soon

"Feeling trolly today?"

Did you read what they're accused of stealing? They're accused of stealing website design.

Here's a photo demonstrating exactly what they're accused of stealing

While I'd admit they look very similar (FlightDeck looks better IMHO) this is the internet, every well designed site ends up on other sites. How many websites look like Amazon? Look at all the identical looking blogs created with wordpress. Honestly MetaLab I think you're mad they took your design and improved upon it.

From another source:

http://s3.amazonaws.com/lazyjock/117509.flv

Using Amazon S3 is pretty good way to ensure that when this gets modded +5, it's still available.

I'd hate to be the guy who's paying the bill on that bucket...

From the site in TFA:

http://www.njnvideo.com/njn/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/luge_accident2.flv

From another source:

http://s3.amazonaws.com/lazyjock/117509.flv