Slashdot Mirror

Here you go. I particularly like the phrase "Even though its anonymous, it's still ominous". Try saying that 20 times after a couple of beers.

The company I work for has two franchised, retail stores in the New Orleans area--one on the riverfront downtown, and another in the Metairie area, north of the main town. These satellite images have provided us with the first comfirmation of the damage, and are remarkably useful (in our case, the stores appear to be dry 48 hours after Katrina's passage). The executives were delighted to see this, and earned the IT group some nice brownie points... There is a similar link on the Denver Post site today. The images are from the same company, and for the same date and time, but are markedly different in color from the Google images. Does anybody know why?

Buy the iBook off of eBay?? Isn't it cheaper just to to go down to your local school auction? :)

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/C/COMPUTER_FR ENZY?SITE=PAPIT&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=home.htm

How many sources do you want?

German
Assosiated Press

I was very impressed by Justice Breyer's concuring opinion:
---Cut---
"Such legitimate noninfringing uses are coming to include the swapping of: research information (the initial purpose of many peer-to-peer networks); public domain films (e.g., those owned by the Prelinger Archive); historical recordings and digital educational materials (e.g., those stored on the Internet Archive); digital photos (OurPictures, for example, is starting a P2P photo-swapping service); "shareware" and "freeware" (e.g., Linux and certain Windows software); secure licensed music and movie files (Intent MediaWorks, for example, protects licensed content sent across P2P networks); news broadcasts past and present (the BBC Creative Archive lets users "rip, mix and share the BBC"); user-created audio and video files (including "podcasts" that may be distributed through P2P software); and all manner of free "open content" works collected by Creative Commons (one can search for Creative Commons material on StreamCast). See Brief for Distributed Computing Industry Association as Amicus Curiae 1526; Merges, A New Dynamism in the Public Domain, 71 U. Chi. L. Rev. 183 (2004). I can find nothing in the record that suggests that this course of events will not continue to flow naturally as a consequence of the character of the software taken together with the foreseeable development of the Internet and of information technology. Cf. ante, at 12 (opinion of the Court) (discussing the significant benefits of peer-to-peer technology)."
--End----
http://wid.ap.org/scotus/pdf/04-480P.ZC1.pdf

I think that it shows that at least some of the Justices do have views that Technology proficient would agree with.
Is the ruling "Right"? I don't know, but I feel better knowing that it was a concenting opinion and that at least one of the Justices seems to know something technology.

In a concurrence, Breyer, Stevens and O'Connor, note

"When measured against Sony's underlying evidence and analysis, the evidence now before us shows that Grokster passes Sony's test --that is, whether the company's product is capable of substantial or commercially significant noninfringing use."

pg. 4. In other words, the concurrence thinks that p2p even in Grokster's and StreamCast's context would be okay. However, the concurrence notes that Breyer's opinion somewhat modifies the outcome by requiring that "defendants to provide, for example, detailed evidence-- say business plans, rofitability estimates, projected technological modifications, and so forth--" while making the burden "easier for copyrightholder plaintiffs." id. at 12.

Opinion by Justice Souter: http://wid.ap.org/scotus/pdf/04-480P.ZO.pdf

Concurrence by Justice Ginsberg:
http://wid.ap.org/scotus/pdf/04-480P.ZC.pdf

Concurrence by Justice Breyer:
http://wid.ap.org/scotus/pdf/04-480P.ZC1.pdf

Opinion by Justice Souter: http://wid.ap.org/scotus/pdf/04-480P.ZO.pdf

Concurrence by Justice Ginsberg:
http://wid.ap.org/scotus/pdf/04-480P.ZC.pdf

Concurrence by Justice Breyer:
http://wid.ap.org/scotus/pdf/04-480P.ZC1.pdf

Opinion by Justice Souter: http://wid.ap.org/scotus/pdf/04-480P.ZO.pdf

Concurrence by Justice Ginsberg:
http://wid.ap.org/scotus/pdf/04-480P.ZC.pdf

Concurrence by Justice Breyer:
http://wid.ap.org/scotus/pdf/04-480P.ZC1.pdf

1. The Opinion of the Court, but Justice Souter.
2. The Concurrence of Justice Ginsburg, joined by the Chief Justice and Justice Kennedy.
3. The Concurrence of Justice Breyer, joined by Justices Stevens and O'Connor.

1. The Opinion of the Court, but Justice Souter.
2. The Concurrence of Justice Ginsburg, joined by the Chief Justice and Justice Kennedy.
3. The Concurrence of Justice Breyer, joined by Justices Stevens and O'Connor.

1. The Opinion of the Court, but Justice Souter.
2. The Concurrence of Justice Ginsburg, joined by the Chief Justice and Justice Kennedy.
3. The Concurrence of Justice Breyer, joined by Justices Stevens and O'Connor.

Bram Cohen is not guilty. Tim Berners-Lee is not guilty. Settle down.

Read the opinion.

We hold that one who distributes a device with the object of promoting its use to infringe copyright, as shown by clear expression or other affirmative steps taken to foster infringement, is liable for the resulting acts of infringement by third parties.

...

In sum, this case is significantly different from Sony and reliance on that case to rule in favor of StreamCast and Grokster was error. Sony dealt with a claim of liability based solely on distributing a product with alternative lawful and unlawful uses, with knowledge that some users would follow the unlawful course. The case struck a balance between the interests of protection and innovation by holding that the product's capability of substantial lawful employment should bar the imputation of fault and consequent secondary liability for the unlawful acts of others.

MGM's evidence in this case most obviously addresses a different basis of liability for distributing a product open to alternative uses. Here, evidence of the distributors' words and deeds going beyond distribution as such shows a purpose to cause and profit from third-party acts of copyright infringement. If liability for inducing infringement is ultimately found, it will not be on the basis of presuming or imputing fault, but from inferring a patently illegal objective from statements and actions showing what that objective was.

I think we should wait for the text of the ruling to be posted online (to happen here) before rushing to say "the sky is falling". We'll be much wiser after reading what they had to say.

AP has a story. It seems the ruling turned on the grounds that they distributed the software "with the object of promoting infringement of copyright", and that they may be liable for third-party infringement by their users, depending on how egregious this promition was. We'll only know had bleak the future is though after reading what the justices had to say.

Naah. It's not because Apple is failing. It's because desktops themselves are failing. Already, laptops are outselling desktop computers. Other mobile computing devices are becoming increasingly popular as well.

After all, these are terrorists, right? Well, how do we know? Is the military infallable? Is every accused person guilty?

In fact we know with as much certainty as we know anything that some of the 500 people incarcerated in Guantanomo Bay are not terrorists. Simple statistics is all that is required to prove this. We know that the cops sometimes arrest the wrong person, and that for that reason we have courts. And we know that sometimes courts convict the wrong people, and for that reason we don't have the death penalty (oops, sorry, you guys in the U.S. do, don't you?)

We also know that the Guantanomo detainees were captured in an environment very much subject to "the fog of war", which gets used as an excuse every time the U.S. military fucks up and kills a few Canadians.

Given all this, it is extremely doubtful that the error rate in accusations of terrorism is less than 1%. If it is 1%, then on average we would expect 5 innocent people to be incarcerated in Gauntanomo Bay with no rights. A Poisson distribution with a mean of 5 has P(0) = 0.0067, so there is a 99.3% chance that there is at least one innocent in Gauntanomo Bay, even under these extremely conservative assumptions.

Given that the U.S. military tribunals that are passing judgment on the detainees believe that wearing a Casio watch constitutes evidence of terrorism it is pretty clear that the rate of incarceration of innocents is much higher than this. It is also worth noting that the tribunal does not even get the model of the watch correct--the F91 does not have a compass. It makes one wonder what other mistakes they have made in the evidence that still remains classified.

--Tom

That's because you're leaving the spaces in the URL.

http://hosted.ap.org/lineups/TOPHEADS.rss?SITE=APW EB&SECTION=HOME
http://hosted.ap.org/lineups/WORLDHEADS.rss?SITE=A PWEB&SECTION=HOME
http://hosted.ap.org/lineups/USHEADS.rss?SITE=APWE B&SECTION=HOME

That's because you're leaving the spaces in the URL.

http://hosted.ap.org/lineups/TOPHEADS.rss?SITE=APW EB&SECTION=HOME
http://hosted.ap.org/lineups/WORLDHEADS.rss?SITE=A PWEB&SECTION=HOME
http://hosted.ap.org/lineups/USHEADS.rss?SITE=APWE B&SECTION=HOME

That's because you're leaving the spaces in the URL.

http://hosted.ap.org/lineups/TOPHEADS.rss?SITE=APW EB&SECTION=HOME
http://hosted.ap.org/lineups/WORLDHEADS.rss?SITE=A PWEB&SECTION=HOME
http://hosted.ap.org/lineups/USHEADS.rss?SITE=APWE B&SECTION=HOME

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

I don't know which is funnier, that Google felt that people actually needed 2GB, or that Slashdot thought it was a April Fool's joke. :)

1. If you don't want a search engine spidering your pictures and news stories, don't put them on the web. If AFP were paper only, Google could not violate their copyright. It saves AFP money to stay offline.
2. If AFP decides to pay to go online to make money, they should know the rules of the Internet. First rule about search engines like Google: robots.txt. If they don't want Google to spider them, any half-decent Internet expert they hire would be able to keep Google out of their webspace in the time it takes to type

   User-agent: *
   Disallow: /

   AFP didn't do their homework, and that's a poor way to protect any investment.

3. Speaking of investments, even if they somehow managed to stay completely ignorant of search engine operation, anyone who wants to sell something online needs to protect it. This is as easy as adding password accounts. Other online news services do just that.
4. Copyright protects the rights of authors so that they can make money. Why should we give them the benefit of governmental protection when it's obvious they don't care about protecting the content themselves enough to use basic measures to do so?

To sum up: AFP, of their own volition, paid to get on the web. They completely ignored RFCs. They ignored standard practices by established companies in their business sector. They wait until $17M in damages accrue, which doesn't happen overnight. Only then do they cry foul, and sue using copyright law to protect something they won't protect themselves when they have the chance. If you were a judge, which way would you rule?

Notice that I didn't even need to talk about fair use rights. France doesn't use the US Constitution. My arguments are purely economic, and I'm fairly sure the French understand money. If any lawyers at Google are reading this, please fight this suit. AFP are being unreasonable, and need to be taught a lesson.

Creativity abounds.

According to this AP article, the total number of people affected may reach 500,000. Politicians are jumping on the bandwagon. It looks like this is turning into a major scandal

Some article excerpts:

"attorneys general from 38 states demanded that ChoicePoint warn any victims in their states as well, "

"The volume of data compromised was so huge that deputies are almost certain that a 41-year-old Nigerian man sentenced Thursday to 16 months in jail in the scam did not act alone."

"ChoicePoint had required the con artists to fax copies of business licenses, and verified through a background check that licenses were valid for nonbank financial institutions. But they didn't perform physical checks or visit the addresses, as they sometimes do, to make sure they were legitimate."

I think this last quote is the most important.
This scam was conducted without any face-to-face contact. The criminals used Kinkos to fax in applications, and outfits like Mail-Boxes-Etc to act as professional addresses. They redirected mail from stolen identities to these PO boxes.

Our disconnected world where there is no face-to-face contact and where nobody pounds the pavement to check on reality makes scams like this too easy.

Yes, that's what I was in fact trying to say.

However, as it turns out, it's not that hard as I thought. They just caught a guy who admitted to doing it.

Man admits to points at aircract . I guess these really are bored hobbyists.

The sick park is he tried to blame it on his kid!

"what the pictures also show is that areas with many trees look less damaged than areas with few trees."

That's not all that's unusual.
"YALA NATIONAL PARK, Sri Lanka (AP) -- Wildlife officials in Sri Lanka expressed surprise Wednesday that they found no evidence of large-scale animal deaths from the tsunamis - indicating that animals may have sensed the wave coming and fled to higher ground."

Newspapers actually pay for services like the AP or UPI or Reuters.

Roland makes money by copy and pasting articles and then writing a few sentences about them. I have nothing against his blog. I do have something against him profiting from it.

Hardly a surprise considering that Microsoft showed off MSN search using FireFox! :D

a slight majority of Iraqis believed things were better since the Saddam ruled

And a vast majority view us as occupiers (NOT liberators). And they want us to leave.

Consult this poll for info. It's a little dated, but I would imagine their opinion of us,if anything, has gotten worse since.

Gonzales has been at the center of developing Bush's positions on balancing civil liberties with waging the war on terrorism - opening the White House counsel to the same line of criticism that has dogged Ashcroft.

For instance, Gonzales publicly defended the administration's policy - essentially repudiated by the Supreme Court and now being fought out in the lower courts - of detaining certain terrorism suspects for extended periods without access to lawyers or courts.

He also wrote a controversial February 2002 memo in which Bush claimed the right to waive anti-torture law and international treaties providing protections to prisoners of war. That position drew fire from human rights groups, which said it helped led to the type of abuses uncovered in the Abu Ghraib prison scandal.

Anyone else notice the boob is back in plain view at the Justice department?

Check out the AP story here. Notice the statue in the background. I hope everyone appreciates the irony.

OK. Here's the article. The statement in question occurs in paragraph three. Please explain how was it taken "out of context"?

Here's an explanation of how the AP will "provide results in 2004 with the speed and accuracy on which its members and subscribers have learned to rely."

http://www.ap.org/pages/about/pressreleases/pr_102 204b.html

The Associated Press will be the offical vote tallier according to an AP report. I wouldn't look for complete predictions before the West coast polls close after 2000's problems.

#4 Being greeted as Liberators. As far as I can see, we are.

According to a poll taken this May by the CPA (that's the US Coalition Provisional Authority, which has since been disbanded) 92% of Iraqis considered the US to be an occupying force. Only 2% saw us a liberators. I sincerly doubt it has changed much since.
It's one thing to argue that we were "liberators", but it's just plain wrong to assert that Iraqis see us that way.

The poll does not render properly with when viewed with some browsers. Use IE to view it.

I hate to tell you this, but the Al-Qaqaa explosives story is only "debunked" among the Bush campaign staff. A spokesman for the 101st Airborne Division stated that the 2nd Brigade had no orders to search Al-Qaqaa for high explosives.

Orders were not given from higher to search or to secure the facility or to search for HE type munitions, as they were everywhere in Iraq.

I can't say anything about the SUV/Earth Day assertion, since you didn't cite your source.

As for John Kerry's priorities, let me ask you something. What's more important for you to remember?

• Your Social Security Number
• Pedro's pitch count when Suppan got picked off 3rd

And if you can keep your priorities straight, what makes you think a nominee for President of the United States of America can't?

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/R/REGISTRATIO N_SCAM?SITE=1010WINS&SECTION=POLITICS&TEMPLATE=DEF AULT

DEFIANCE, Ohio (AP) -- Elections officials knew something was wrong when they got voter registration cards for Mary Poppins, Dick Tracy, Michael Jordan and George Foreman.

They notified the Defiance County sheriff, who arrested Chad Staton on Monday on a felony charge of submitting phony voter registration forms. Investigators also were looking into allegations that he was paid with cocaine in exchange for his efforts.

Staton, 22, had fraudulently filled out more than 100 voter registration forms, Sheriff David Westrick said.

"Staton was to be paid for each registration form that he could get citizens to fill out," the sheriff said. "However, Staton himself filled out the registrations and returned them to the woman who hired him from Toledo."

Staton was charged with false registration and was released without bond pending arraignment.

No other charges had been filed in the case Monday, authorities said.

According to Westrick, the NAACP's National Voter Fund had submitted the false registrations to the elections board in Cleveland. George Forbes, Cleveland chapter president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, said Monday that the voter fund operates independently from his chapter.

Officers said they interviewed a Toledo woman who claimed that she had paid Staton with cocaine for the registrations. Officers said they obtained a search warrant and took voter registrations and drug paraphernalia from her home.

The woman claimed she had been recruited by a Cleveland man to obtain voter registrations, Westrick said.

Contact/feedback pages:

FoxNews: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,77538,00.html
MSNBC: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3303518/
Newsweek: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4925877/site/newsweek/ ?contact
NY Times: http://nytimes.com/ref/membercenter/help/infoservd irectory.html
CNN: http://www.cnn.com/feedback/
ABC News: http://abcnews.go.com/service/help/abccontact.html
CBS News: http://www.cbsnews.com/htdocs/feedback/fb_news_for m.shtml
BBC: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/help/3281777.stm

Associated Press: http://www.ap.org/pages/contact/contact.html
Reuters: http://www.reuters.com/-helpSection.jhtml;p=contac tUs

3. If the superscript "th" was a function of Word's Auto Format, why didn't it happen in the "111th" in the letterhead?

This Olympic surveillence is not just "any attempt at surveillence", it's "supposedly [the] largest surveillance network ever". People are concerned about the protection of our basic human rights, because we don't trust the government. Governments do bad things, always have, probably always will. America was founded on distrust of the government, which spread around the world once we demonstrated how to build a better government based on the mitigations of that distrust.

Terrorist attacks don't just "happen". In the case of Al Qaeda's WTC planebombings, their organization was created and protected by the CIA. There was a great deal of information available to prevent the attacks, but the expensive, intrusive government structure that we pay and elect to protect us failed. The result has been not only the counterattacks on these terrorists, that they accept as the price of sowing chaos, but the increase in the oppressive power of our government.

That distrust of government is the unifying factor between the questions of "acceptable surveillence" you started asking, and your defense of DHS (that you drifted into) in their release of Al Qaeda info this past week, in conjunction with raising the Threat Level in NYC and DC. In early July, reporters predicted that Bush would produce a Pakistani terrorist during the Democratic National Convention, as he had asked. Bush asked for someone, the Pakistanis produced someone, DHS waited several days to announce it. *Hours* before Kerry's acceptance speech, and prematurely for intelligence purposes, slashing the terrorist's value as a double agent, and sending capturable terrorists into hiding. The importance of the pre-9/11 plans reportedly siezed in Pakistan, that were invoked to explain the new security measures in NYC and DC, are apparently higher than in Las Vegas, where similar info has caused no escalation, nor even notification of the city. The difference is that NYC is the site of the Republican National Convention this month, and DC is of course the perennial focus of both parties.

It doesn't take much all-American distrust of the government to see the appropriation of terrorism by the government to campaign for reelection, regardless of the cost in protecting us from terrorism. That's consistent with the government's appropriation of terrorism to get the war in Iraq they wanted. And that same government will use surveillence for all its other purposes, mainly perpetuation of its power, regardless of the cost in basic human rights, including liberty, and even life itself.

We're not facing some theoretical Constitutional scenario. We're facing vast abuses of our rights daily, on a scale only before imagined by paranoids. Small wonder that we are kicking back. And our fear is underscored, because we *need* the government to protect us from the actual threat of these terrorists. So we reject the actual destruction of our rights, while we search for ways to continue to protect us from the threat of terrorism. That seems sensible, and patriotic, to me.

Don't buy it, just download it for free.

1. I have pretty much abandoned reading my local printed newspaper, in favor of the online edition (and I'm sure I'm not alone).
2. When reading the local (printed) paper I read both local as well as national and international stories
3. Everyone (CNN, The New York Times, MSNBC, Yahoo!, you name it) carries stories from the wire services (AP, Reuters etc) and since there are all the same stuff, does it matter that you are reading that story on CNN.com vs, for example The Des Moines Register?
4. My goal is to get my news and not spend all day looking for it. I can start with my local paper's site and then move on to other sources for more in depth coverage and/or different news.
5. The goal of most businesses is to make money and newspapers are no exception. If they keep a reader on their web site longer they get more page views and therefore, generate more ad revenue. I want my local paper to do well. Newspapers are not the profit centers the once were and many have scaled back operations over the years. I don't want to see this happen any more.
   

clarence thomas (a judge hated by left leaners)...

..ruled very clearly against this. it seems in this SCOTUS opinion that forfeiture is limited by the 8th amendment.

I like how you link to a website last updated in 1997 when an opinion relavent to the material was posted in 1998.

Cheers,
Craig

The linked article was a little slim on details, but I found the AP article that says that Tarantino was the president of the jury for Palme d'Or, and actress Kathleen Tuner (of Baby Geniuses fame) sits on the panel as well. Plus in other cool news, the AP article says that an edited-together 4-hour complete version of Kill Bill was shown. Can't wait for the special edition DVD on that one.

There was little media support for the war in Iraq - at least in television and print media. Ever notice how MSNBC and CNN all report on how many casualties occurred that day in Iraq? When have you heard them discuss how power and water levels in Iraq have been restored to pre-war levels. What about the great morale of the Afghanistan troops and how they are geared up to capture Osama now that Saddam has been jailed?

Oh, god, you're one of those people who thinks Fox News is a legitimate news source, huh? It exists because Rupert Murdoch is a crazy, nutball conservative (who is, ironically, not even from America) who happens to own a major media company. They routinely make shit up on air and then pretend they never said it. The Bush administration apparently learned this trick from them.

I do care about the economy. See that GDP number recently? I don't know about you, but my 401k added a huge chunk of change over the last year. The market is up 30%. The job market is soon to follow I believe. By the way, the recessionary trend started while Clinton was still in office.

Yep. See that huge trade deficit? We're basically just shipping our money overseas. And since when did the stock market determnine the health of the economy? The stock market is always doing really well before it crashes hard. And for the record, 9/11 (which had nothing to do with Bush or Clinton) was the real reason for the severity of the recession (recessions are unavoidable, but tax cuts are not the solution when you're racking up $7 trillion in deficit) as it dramatically reduced consumer confidence and thus, spending.

I'd rather it get spent on defense than some program to provide free condoms and needles to reduce HIV infections or welfare programs.

Why? Who's going to attack us? Terrorists, yes, but more Americans die from HIV and poverty every year than in terrorist attacks. A whole lot more, in fact. Or do we need a strong military to project our will on the rest of the world? Why can't we spend $700 billion helping solve the cause of these problems? Or simply by not using it to kill people? And would you feel the same way if your kid (hypothetical child, I don't know if you have one or not) had sex with an IV drug user and got AIDS? Wouldn't you have wished the government had done more? I'm not saying these programs are always well managed, but then, military projects aren't always either.

Is adultery legal? Immoral I know. I guess his version of the Ten Commandments is pick five.

Yup, adultery is legal. It may be immoral, but that depends on each person and what their morals are. In some cultures in Africa, it's not immoral for a wife to cheat on her husband if he can't satisfy her. Hate to break it to you, but most of the world does not believe in Christ. Or even in your idea of God. Just because it doesn't adhere to your idea of right and wrong doesn't mean it IS right or wrong (though this is an ENTIRELY different philosophical debate which I'd rather not get into ;)

As usual, the conservatives tell the truth

Well I guess the truth is subjective then :)

They are not an SBC company.

AP
Washington Post

Imagine the fun you could have adding these marks to documents that are typically scanned.

...pictures two students taking SAT's. First student goes to the restroom, second student adds circular marks to first students SAT paper.

Really though, the ability to create anti-copy documents would be kind of interesting. I wonder is someone like Reuters or Associated Press has considered using this to control distribution of their photos. They can give out a copy with the marks, but in order to use it, they need one without the marks.

Jim

Needless to say, AP and Reuters are for-profit entities who only care about making money.

You're wrong on that. AP is a not for profit cooperative that is owned by all the newspapers that participate. So any "profit" that AP makes is merely passed back to the owners who paid for the service.

The original Iwo Jima photo by Joe Rosenthal was faked the day after the victory.

No, it was not faked. There were two flag raisings on the same morning. Rosenthal just happen to catch the second one. And it was not the day after the victory. The actual raising was the instant they took Mt. Suribachi.

Here is the Associated Press account of what happened. (not that that is a credible source, though) The story is about half way thru the article.

I never did like the NetBSD logo. It shows me that the people who designed it, at the least, don't really know what kind of sacrifice those Marines made that day. At worse, it's just downright disrespectful. I'm not saying they can't draw what they want, they certainly can. But I'm just as free to draw my own conclusinos about them based on what they draw.