Slashdot Mirror

Davak
http://www.carotids.com

The Associated Press is saying "FBI investigating reports of hijacking." I know it is way to early in this crisis to say, but hijacking looks more and more likely.

AP website:

http://wire.ap.org/APnews/main.html?PACKAGEID=TE CH test

daily herald:

http://www.dailyherald.com/main_story.asp?intid= 37 13737

Amazing, the site is /.'ed and I haven't even gotten first post yet.

Try this AP link

The AP is stuck between a rock and a hard place in the Internet era. As a content provider, they would like to be able to sell stories, photos and packages to any potential client, including Yahoo, AOL, etc. On the other hand, as a non-profit cooperative, the AP can be controlled by a block of smaller local newspapers, who need to maintain their readership. This is the fine line that the AP has been walking on for the last few years -- it's anybody's guess as to what their ultimate business strategy will be.

In any event, thanks to those that posted the Yahoo story link. I still find it hard to believe that /. has such poor editorial review for the simplest things! (although I guess I shouldn't be)

- Richie

I have a few points, too.

"The federal appeals court earlier this summer threw out Jackson's ruling breaking Microsoft into two companies, removed the judge from the case and harshly criticized his comments to news media in which he compared Gates to Napoleon and the company to a drug-dealing street gang. Through a spokeswoman, Jackson declined comment Tuesday. "

If one of his rulings can be thrown out, why not the others?

I agree that the judge was psycho in his comparisons, probably all part of the plan.

I think the 'spokeswoman' was Mrs. Jackson.

"You answer the phone, if it's the press - tell them NO COMMENT..."

"I'll be in the den, counting my swiss bank account balances and other miscellaneous kick-backs from harvey's new wallpaper (streched to fit, of course.)"

http://wire.ap.org/APnews/main.html?SLUG=MICROSOFT %2dLICENSING

Sequence of links to get to the article:

http://wire.ap.org/APnews/?SITE=KSPAR&FRONTID=HOME

then "tech"

then "Cyber Currencies Spawn Money-Laundering Fears"
(sigh, as if green paper doesn't work for that!)
JMR

(speaking only for myself.)

I looked on the AP site before I posted, but this list was all I could find, and it's not very helpful. I think contacting the BBC is not in vain, though; hell, maybe the AP will hear from them.

So much for the code of ethics they claim to adhere to...

- BMO
ortega@nospam.mindless.com

This is the sort of story that should be turned into a mass mailing to your local and national news outlets.

Here's a few addresses:

letters@nytimes.com

letters@sjmercury.com

dmnweb.dallasnews.com/letters

AP Bureaus by State

(I get a kick out of their triple-bank rolodex logo. Someone needs to add one of those to Aqua.)

--Blair

This is the sort of story that should be turned into a mass mailing to your local and national news outlets.

Here's a few addresses:

letters@nytimes.com

letters@sjmercury.com

dmnweb.dallasnews.com/letters

AP Bureaus by State

(I get a kick out of their triple-bank rolodex logo. Someone needs to add one of those to Aqua.)

--Blair

If a man and woman with one mutated gene had kids, on average 1/4 of their kids would have no mutated genes (normal life span), 1/2 of their kids would have one mutated gene (expanded life span) and 1/4 of their kids would have two mutated genes (shortened life span).

This would preclude a permanent "tweak" to the human geonome, perhaps via a "friendly" virus. It would help one generation live longer, but doom half their decendants to normal or shorter than normal lives.

Yes, California doesn't need to tally the absentee ballots in their race, since Gore won by over a million, but those ballots could put Bush into the lead in the POPULAR vote!

California only has 110,000 absentee ballots left to count and Gore is now ahead by 330,000 votes in the national popular vote, according to AP.

Now (gasp!) Gore doesn't think that the electoral system is fair.

That is not true. Gore said in a speech after the election that he supports the Electoral College and would not support electors choosing him when they were assigned by their state delegations to support Bush.

He won by a margin of somewhere in the vicinity of 200,000 votes.

Gore is ahead by 330,000 votes in the popular vote. (Source: AP).

The AP article without registration:

Court Overturns AT&T Cable Decision

I am a karma whore (who hates it when the partners trick doesn't work on ny times articles).

--

Only a dynamic list of the current state of the electoral college would be news. And that is already provided by most major news sites .

Slashdot is superb in the space that it has: it's faster than daily newspapers, but it's more in-depth than TV or radio news. However, it still doesn't compete with the immediacy of TV or radio. Immediate news reporting is still far better served by TV and radio.

Just as I wouldn't expect Slashdot to give me traffic information, I feel that this article was a weak choice for Slashdot.

Having learned long ago you don't argue with a copy editor armed with the AP Stylebook (particularly when he/she is on deadline), I'll go with e-mail.

You should, too.

--

For tech news, I check BBC Tech News, Ace's Hardware, Tom's Hardware , or ARS Technicia. ZDNet has become way to sensational and biased. And all the crappy banners! More like The National Enquirer of geekdom.

For discussions, I check K5 or Rootprompt. And Slashdot. But it's tough to have a discussion here anymore.

I'm sorry to say, but Slashdot, while I check it regularly, is starting to have too high a signal-to-noise ratio. Not enough "discussion" too much "babooey to natalie portman's beowulf cluster of hot grits and penis bird on toast."

It's safer to stay off the main page if I want some interesting discussion. As well, I don't tolerate mistakes in my profession. No matter what I do, I like it to be as perfect as humanly possible. While I know mistakes happen, there have been far too many here, adding to the signal-to-noise ratio, and reducing my faith in accurate articles.

I get my news elsewhere, but I still come back, hoping the old days will return.

I think perhaps you should research some of your remarks and accusations about Bush. *shakes head* Here, Here, or Here.

---------------------------------

Isn't DeCSS a content-scramling system for playback control, not copy control? And isn't the purpose of DeCSS to enable playback, not permit copying? After all, one could do bit-by-bit copying of a scrambled source without DeCSS.

I've contacted AP to see if there is any recourse for such invalid facts. After all, the AP's Code of Ethics clearly states they aim for the truth.

There wouldn't be any huge parent companies anymore (at least temporarily). We would all get our news from smaller, independent outlets.

We would all get our news from smaller, independent outlets. We would, of course, have to decide for ourselves on the credibility of said news outlets. That in and of itself is a scary thought, we would have to make an important decision with information that we would have to go out and gather ourselves.

The foundation of today's news media is organizations like United Press International, BBC News, National Public Radio News, the Associated Press, the New York Times. These are all outstanding news organizations.

The Washington Post (a pretty good paper) owns Newsweek, an alright magazine, though its website is now hosted by MSNBC.

US News and World Report is also pretty good.

Skipping the rest of the good newspapers and the plethora of great magazines around the country (as well as the really bad ones) we get to Corporate Media. Time isn't really bad per se, but knowing what we know about Time Warner (I am an employee of the company) I personally stay away.

I stay away from all U.S. television news sources for reliable information, except for the excellent Newshour with Jim Lehrer and C-SPAN, both independent media. The former rocks, and I live in the neighborhood where Lehrer grew up; the latter isn't really news but has very informative content on current issues.

Okay! I hope I have convinced everyone that you don't have to worry about your news source if you know where to go. Even if Time Warner bought up half of these news souces somehow, it could never get them all. Also remember that if good journalists realize they are working for a company with a deteriorating reputation, they jump ship.

AOL.com, News.com, and MSN.com -- and all the rest (including Slashdot) are just barking dogs chasing their wheels?

There's also the online version of most major papers; I go to The New York Times a lot more frequently than I do any of the ones you've mentioned, and they tend to have more credibility (with me at least). There's also syndicates like the Associated Press and Reuters which allow just about anyone to compete with the bigger news sites, at least on some level.

I'm totally behind you guys. If there's anything that we as readers can do, just post it.

I think that we readers can certainly help by calling attention to this. I'm begging everyone to send e-mail to Microsoft, the press, and representation in Congress. While the folks at Andover are waging the war on the legal front, we can get a lot accomplished using our power as consumers. Let people know that you're angry. Don't just sit there and stew about it.

Here are some great places to start:
contact@microsoft.com
Reuter's News Agency
Associated Press
ZDNet
New York Times
Tech Section of MSNBC

Also find out who your representatives in Congress are and tell them what you think about Microsoft's bending of the law.

Here's an associated press article on this:

http:// wire.ap.org/APnews/main.html?FRONTID=TECHNOLOGY&ST ORYID=APIS73RF7J80

Sorry to weasel into a reply to the first comment here...


--

Since a link is only been given on the Wall Street Journal (pay site), Here's an associated press article on this:

http:// wire.ap.org/APnews/main.html?FRONTID=TECHNOLOGY&ST ORYID=APIS73RF7J80

Sorry to weasel into a reply to the first comment here with this...


--

I found an image of the chopper here . I don't know about you, but I'll wait for the Family Model that can tote 10 of my friends.

Hey! Don't just agree with this post about the reporting story, let the people that distribute this story know!!

Contact feedback@ap.org and let them know why you feel the article run in Yahoo news was "whatever".

We should be taking our views out to the world, not just agreeing amongst ourselves, which amounts to a head in the sand.

I saw this story briefly on the wire this morning, but it appears to have been pulled. Maybe the MIB phoned the AP and said "We would be so much happier if you would show a little more discretion in running stories of this nature..."

I quit quit my subscription to the local dead-tree print several years ago, when they went online. IMO their website sucks royally (layout is width constrained to 640, looks bad on my 1600SW) but the local news is still there. I might read 10% of the articles posted.

When it comes to national and international news I feel like once I've scanned the wire I've read all the news for the day that I'm likely to hear or read anywhere else in the non-specialized media. It really bothers me that the AP has so much control over the news .. maybe the "Justice" Dept. should go after them after they get done with M$.

Associated press story: http:// wire.ap.org/APnews/main.html?FRONTID=TECHNOLOGY&ST ORYID=APIS7271RSG0

Y2K Briefs

Yes, absolutely! In fact, I had assumed, given that this is so obviously interesting, that someone would have worked on this already and made an email distribution-tracking web site. Certainly such a thing exists. Please, someone out there in slashdot land tell us where to find it!

Right now I'm interested in the whole Mahir Cagri "I Kiss You" website craze that was entirely fueled by email. Salon has followed this pretty closely, but, unfortunately, unlike some of their other decent writing, this thread of theirs doesn't provide much depth. I want to know why this silly website became popular and how (i.e, who started passing the url around?). The AP had a much more in depth article on the matter (weeks after the story broke, of course). Here's that link (you may have to tell the AP you're coming from one or another newspaper before they'll let you get to the article, but the link should work. For some reason, old NYTimes links to AP articles no longer work, they used to. Argh.)

According to the AP story:

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Then, a month and a half ago, hackers invaded and embellished his site, spicing up the text with ``I like sex!'' and adding that Mahir enjoys taking photos of ``nice nude models.'' The hackers also moved it to a new location, and quickly spread the word about the site.

Cagri soon became a most unlikely cyber-celebrity.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Yeah, it's a meagre excuse for an explanation, but it does more than the salon article, if I recall correctly. Ok, so I can understand stage 1: hackers [sic] mess up the site in fun ways. This is fun and amusing (though illegal, I assume). What I don't understand is stage 2-3: friend of hacker and friend of friend of hacker receive e-mail saying "hey check out this goofy site." Ok, I can see them checking out the site, but why oh why would they think it was funny enough to pass on to x of their friends (who obviously thought it was funny enough to do the same thing)? This really baffles me.

It's amazing to see what has happened to this guy since his site got cracked. He's become an instomatic celebrity. The AP article says that Turkish tourism authorities are hoping that this will boost tourism. Whoa!

So, someone needs to set up a where's george? type site where people can log on and track the flow of email explosions. Who passed what to whom? Trace it back.

Ok, rant over.

______________________(
// ///#\)

http: //wire.ap.org/APnews/center_story.html?FRONTID=ART S&STORYID=APIS7146D4G0

The NYT link is already dead; try going the long way through wire.ap.org, pick one of the wire subscribers, look under the "tech" tab.

This article appeared on the front page of the Columbus, OH newspaper this morning.

The article raises some interesting points. While I think the general privacy concerns are overblown, I'm glad people are at least considering it.

The copy on the NY Times site is just an AP wire story You can also get it at http://wire.ap.org/APnew s/main.html?PACKAGEID=BIZcomputers.