Slashdot Mirror

Google doesn't need Wolfram for AI, they already have their own AI running. It even created its own personal web page by analyzing what the majority of the web looks like.

Apparently, The AI entity likes Pandas, which will set it on a direct collision course with others on the web.

Google doesn't need Wolfram for AI, they already have their own AI running. It even created its own personal web page by analyzing what the majority of the web looks like.

Apparently, The AI entity likes Pandas, which will set it on a direct collision course with others on the web.

http://www.engadget.com/2006/08/25/fairuse4wm-strips-windows-media-drm/

And MLB remedied their shittery:

http://joyofsox.blogspot.com/2007/11/mlb-alert-on-main-download-page.html

(There are lots of entries about it on that blog, that one is the final 'yay')

There are plenty of situations where people are buying something to listen to, watch or play it immediately, not to keep forever and ever as something precious; DRM isn't such a big deal for those people (but they should certainly factor it into their value calculations...).

Poor innocent RIAA-tan will never catch all the piracy scofflaws using this time-consuming serial approach. Hasn't she ever heard of multi-level marketing? Or the classic wheat and chessboard problem? It's simple.

They need to sue the bejeesus out of someone, and offer to settle by forcing the person to buy the rights to a minor song, and then requiring that that person protect their rights by suing two other people. And those two other people will have to settle by each suing two other people, and so on, and so on.

Eventually everyone will wind up being sued, but at least having nice smelling hair.

http://gunadeluxo.blogspot.com/2009/01/fujitsu-siemens-celsius-h250-and-h270.html

Sorry to sound snooty, but that's my gut reaction to the "this is unsafe!" comments. Unsafe by American/European standards, probably. Unsafe compared to Indian options? Ha.

Some photos of life in Delhi (a bit less "European" than Mumbai), including the inside of a couple homes, here. (Disclosure: that's a link to my old travel blog.)

We should praise improvement, not demand perfection.

It is well known among scientists that the impact factor of a scientific journal is not always a good indicator of the quality of the papers in the journal. An extreme example of this was recently uncovered in mathematics. The scandal is about one El Naschie, editor in chief of the 'scientific' journal Chaos, Solitons and Fractals, published by Elsevier. This is one of the highest impact factor journals in mathematics, but the quality of the papers in it is extremely poor. The journal has also published 322 papers with El Naschie as (co-)author, five of them in the latest issue.

So yes, there are ways to prevent this (in the end), but do you really want to let Elsevier get away with this behavior, especially considering they hide crap journals like this in "package deals" that you can only buy or reject wholesale? Or do you want to spend that 4500$ per journal on something more useful? Imagine how much money is lost world-wide to crap like this.

Judges are allowed to do their own legal research. Excluding blogs from that research is arbitrary and stupid. It is not uncommon for an important piece of precedent to be dug up by a Judge's young law clerk. It is not even very uncommon for that same piece of precedent to be completely overlooked by the lawyers on the case. The Judge can still use it even if the lawyers didn't.

In fact, quite recently, a jury verdict was set aside by the judge on his own motion because neither side's lawyers had brought to his attention a controlling contrary authority. The judge found the decision on his own. While I have no idea how he became alerted to the case which the lawyers had overlooked, if it had occurred through his or his law clerk's having read a law blog which mentioned the case -- even one which had criticized the judge's earlier, incorrect, ruling -- that would have been a good thing, not a bad thing, because it would have meant the correct law being applied, rather than an injustice being perpetrated.

The solution is obvious, create a network of VPN nodes with multiple redundant routes, that utilize end-to-end encryption and authentication and connect your 'computers' to that. Now don't tell how/why it can't be done, tell me how it can be !

"Hi Blaxthos, On slashdot: "Proper sourcing always depends on context; common sense and editorial judgment are an indispensable part of the process." In any case, there is plenty of material concerning IBM's dubious patents: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/08/06/ibm_paper_or_plastic_patent/ http://www.thestandard.com/news/2009/03/30/ibm-applies-patent-offshoring-math http://www.informationweek.com/blog/main/archives/2008/12/ibm_patents_sys.html;jsessionid=4BEPM0NZUXQDAQSNDLRSKH0CJUNN2JVN http://ipbiz.blogspot.com/2006/10/ibm-patent-policy-apparent.html http://joi.ito.com/weblog/2002/10/13/ibm-eliminates.html http://www.halfsigma.com/2009/03/ibm-makes-more-money-by-destorying-value.html I've assembled them all here: http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1227341&cid=27885503 But I don't think that a larger number of dubious patents is needed to make the case. I think one is enough. I am not biased against IBM, but I am biased against claims to have record number of patents and no wishes to see the highly dubious exposed in a NPOV. (My opinion: Society is not being improved by these patents, neither IBM.)"

In my little david vs goliath here, that's what I'm getting, and the page keeps being reverted. And here I'm thinking CowboyNeal is a reliable source...

In any case, if I lose, there are reliable sources for the "paper or plastic" patent, the "but I only had soup" patent, the offshoring patent, the "who is going to poo next" patent, the "terry is a boy, jeena is a girl" patent, etc. And here's a comment on IBM's patent schizophrenia. And here's another comment on how IBM makes money by destroying value.

I have nothing against IBM or other patent trolls, I just want them to look in the wikipedia mirror to see if they are happy with who they are. This will only stop with a big streisand.

Yay! I can honestly claim a prior art: http://nothing-about-everything.blogspot.com/2006/10/cycle-of-time-may-reduce-effectiveness.html .

Not after the Linspire debacle. Plus:

http://kevincarmony.blogspot.com/2009/04/michael-robertson-wants-to-fool-you.html - which is about this very issue.

Yeah, I know KC has a huge thing in for MR, but rightly so. Anyway, I can't be bothered to read all of both articles, but this is Slashdot.

No, not really. You have to pay to have your application in the iTunes store. You can develop applications all you want but once you want to distribute them through the store that Apple builds and maintains you have to pay an annual fee. Which, in my understanding of economics, is actually fair.

Also, I kind of understand why Apple doesn't have much incentive to port Xcode to Windows and/or Linux. You are, however, free to do so yourself, if you manage to do so without reverse engineering it.

And, if you're well versed in ObjectiveC, there are things like WinChain which allow you to build the native iPhone toolchain on Windows (or Linux if you prefer).

So please, for the love of the rest of us, don't spout any populistic crap in the future which has no relation to reality.

By the way: If you are not big on legalese, but still want to follow the issues, you can get some very good summaries, in understandable language, at: Recording Industry vs. The People.

I also very highly recommend eff.org and epic.org. If it were not for the EFF, we would probably not even still have an Internet.

Maintenance (4.67 cents per mile on a medium car) and Tires (0.85 cents per mile on a medium car).

Yeah, that's about right. I have 60,000 mile tires on my car, and I paid about $48,000 for them.

Verizon math alert!

http://futureplanets.blogspot.com/2009/01/solution-to-plutonium-problem.html

While it still uses Pu 238, it uses much less, and the current supply could last for another 20 years. No doubt you already knew about this when you claimed "There is nothing better than an RTG for this problem and probably never will be."

Or drive much smaller vehicles.

A cargo bike plus an electric assist will carry a load of groceries and/or a kid or two, and will do it with a daily range that is depressingly competitive with a lot of the e-cars being discussed nowadays (i.e., 40 miles -- 20 in a day on a human-powered cargo bike is a no-brainer). Wouldn't necessarily work in the boonies, but lots and lots of people drive in places that where 20-40 miles per day, most days, is enough.

One hopes that I won't hear the same tired excuses about rain, snow, dark, ice, and locusts; you're not supposed to bike naked (NSFW). That's why we have fenders, raincoats, gloves, and snow tires. What mostly lacks is a place that feels safe enough to ride; what we have now probably IS safe enough, but it seems unsafe, so that's the end of it for most people.

Or maybe the problem is that you think bicycles are slow.

Or maybe you think you'll miss taking your SUV off-roading.

"Does it offer the ability to have an auto-updating word count in the status bar yet?"

I don't know, but if you msg the developers I'm sure they would give it full attention. I see here that someone in 2006 wrote a Macro to perform such a task.

This is what to do with deserts. It's similar to your proposal, but solves two problems at once.

The most information I could find is here (the full-size images are pretty large) and here.

It's hard to pick through the information, but is this scientifically viable? Or is this the random musings of an architecture student focusing only on the architecture side, and ignoring the biology side?

I'm trying to make this into an art form with my new blog. I write completely fabricated science stories with the "ring of truth." My goal is to author a meme with the power of "Did you know we only use ten percent of our brains?" or "Did you know a dog's mouth is actually cleaner than a human's?"

For those who want to work in PHP, one can already work JavaScript-style (as of PHP 5.3), or even JavaScript proper... (While I'm at it, I may as well mention our bringing PHP to JavaScript (PHP functions implemented in JS, that is), hopefully making SSJS more appealing (though still requiring host support). Help welcome!...)

http://outsidetheautisticasylum.blogspot.com/2009/05/slow-and-steady-makes-right.html is a discussion that split off of my reply to this post.

None of those articles talk seriously about the Labour party splitting in two, only some MPs defecting. I doubt much will come of it though, as defecting to the Lib Dems is basically ensuring you have no place in the next or any government in the foreseeable future. Ashdown's speculation is just that.

You are correct that none of the articles provide any evidence that Labour will fragment into separate factions, I simply wanted to point out that the suggestion originated in the broadsheets. It is possible that some Labour MP's will defect to the Liberals if Labour lose at the next general election. Labour defections have happened in the past.

This is classic newspaper tactics. The Mail is by far the worst for it. Every edition has reader's letters starting "If the government does such-and-such..." when the government has no plans to do such-and-such, and has often never even hinted at even considering such-and-such.

Indeed. With Gordon Brown appearing to be both unpopular and ineffective this is behaviour that all the UK newspapers are indulging in, not just the Daily Mail. I will concede that the Mail is one of the worst at this and should not be considered a quality news source.

More hyperbole. Before the credit crunch spending was fairly low compared to other nations, and now it's being done to lessen the effects of the recession by stimulating the economy with cash injections (e.g. car scappage scheme) and government projects (building contracts etc). Of course a lot went to prop up the banks, but people talk about that as if it was a free hand-out. We own those banks now and it's hard to imagine a situation so catastrophic that we wouldn't get out investment back with interest at some point in the medium term.

Hyperbole, really?. I think I was being quite restrained. Comparing UK government spending levels to other nations is not useful. Others have different population levels, GDP and citizen expectations. What is useful is comparing spending to GDP, the good old fashioned can we afford it metric. Why not take a look at the ever amusing (and full of hyperbole) Buring our Money blog. The articles in the debt category should convey a sense of the debt disaster Labours spending has built up with far more eloquence than I have time for here. In case you were wondering where it all goes here is the handy Guardian (PDF) chart of government spending.

The government could have handled the bank bailouts considerably better. I really liked the good bank idea I read about in the FT. This idea would have left the UK with a much smaller debt problem and several profitable banks to sell off in a few years time.

If you think that's "like a drunken sailor" you clearly have no understanding of even basic economics. I'll spell it out for you: in a recession the problem is people stop spending, so work dries up and businesses find it hard to get loans or credit (and they all rely on that). The only way you can lessen the effect is to put money into the economy by spending and making sure banks still offer loans.

We are going to have to disagree here, the fastest way back to a healthy economy is to cut tax, regulation and the public sector. The government is now starting to find it difficult to open new lines of credit. We may be close to the time when there are no buyers of government debt. If this happens expect the government to have to go cap in hand to the IMF. It is unlikely that Alistair Darlings spend our way out of the recession plan is going to be an option.

The best

None of those articles talk seriously about the Labour party splitting in two, only some MPs defecting. I doubt much will come of it though, as defecting to the Lib Dems is basically ensuring you have no place in the next or any government in the foreseeable future. Ashdown's speculation is just that.

You are correct that none of the articles provide any evidence that Labour will fragment into separate factions, I simply wanted to point out that the suggestion originated in the broadsheets. It is possible that some Labour MP's will defect to the Liberals if Labour lose at the next general election. Labour defections have happened in the past.

This is classic newspaper tactics. The Mail is by far the worst for it. Every edition has reader's letters starting "If the government does such-and-such..." when the government has no plans to do such-and-such, and has often never even hinted at even considering such-and-such.

Indeed. With Gordon Brown appearing to be both unpopular and ineffective this is behaviour that all the UK newspapers are indulging in, not just the Daily Mail. I will concede that the Mail is one of the worst at this and should not be considered a quality news source.

More hyperbole. Before the credit crunch spending was fairly low compared to other nations, and now it's being done to lessen the effects of the recession by stimulating the economy with cash injections (e.g. car scappage scheme) and government projects (building contracts etc). Of course a lot went to prop up the banks, but people talk about that as if it was a free hand-out. We own those banks now and it's hard to imagine a situation so catastrophic that we wouldn't get out investment back with interest at some point in the medium term.

Hyperbole, really?. I think I was being quite restrained. Comparing UK government spending levels to other nations is not useful. Others have different population levels, GDP and citizen expectations. What is useful is comparing spending to GDP, the good old fashioned can we afford it metric. Why not take a look at the ever amusing (and full of hyperbole) Buring our Money blog. The articles in the debt category should convey a sense of the debt disaster Labours spending has built up with far more eloquence than I have time for here. In case you were wondering where it all goes here is the handy Guardian (PDF) chart of government spending.

The government could have handled the bank bailouts considerably better. I really liked the good bank idea I read about in the FT. This idea would have left the UK with a much smaller debt problem and several profitable banks to sell off in a few years time.

If you think that's "like a drunken sailor" you clearly have no understanding of even basic economics. I'll spell it out for you: in a recession the problem is people stop spending, so work dries up and businesses find it hard to get loans or credit (and they all rely on that). The only way you can lessen the effect is to put money into the economy by spending and making sure banks still offer loans.

We are going to have to disagree here, the fastest way back to a healthy economy is to cut tax, regulation and the public sector. The government is now starting to find it difficult to open new lines of credit. We may be close to the time when there are no buyers of government debt. If this happens expect the government to have to go cap in hand to the IMF. It is unlikely that Alistair Darlings spend our way out of the recession plan is going to be an option.

The best

you are wrong :)
See http://igorsk.blogspot.com/

Igorsk is one who's done some great work on both the Sony Reader and Kindle.
At the very least, his work allows Cyrillic books to be read, which is not supported natively. Not sure if there are other applications.

I suggest readers who want the truth have a leisurely stroll through Steve Sailer's site and reserve some time to savor all the excellent analytical journalism he's written on the minority mortgage meltdown.

• 50% of subprime dollars went to minorities during the peak years of the bubble
• minorities are now defaulting at twice the rate of whites
• CRA commitments increased to $2.3 trillion; many major banks drank this Kool-aid, including Countrywide, Bank of America, and Washington Mutual

It was non-minority Wall Street bankers and quants who of course took what was essentially a south-side Chicago shakedown operation (Mugger 1: "You of course wouldn't mind if I borrowed this $300,000 to give to my friend, would you? He promises to repay you when he can, see, with interest too.") and leveraged it to the moon. But it would never have happened without the CRA and the ambient politically correct liberalism which selected for stupidity by allowing those banks most committed to CRA to grow fastest (and thus dominate the market) through mergers and acquisitions, and made it impossible to speak the truth about minorities and mortgages through threat of anti-discrimination lawsuits (which bank officer would nowadays risk his career by asking if his institution was making too many loans to blacks or Hispanics)?

I suggest readers who want the truth have a leisurely stroll through Steve Sailer's site and reserve some time to savor all the excellent analytical journalism he's written on the minority mortgage meltdown.

• 50% of subprime dollars went to minorities during the peak years of the bubble
• minorities are now defaulting at twice the rate of whites
• CRA commitments increased to $2.3 trillion; many major banks drank this Kool-aid, including Countrywide, Bank of America, and Washington Mutual

It was non-minority Wall Street bankers and quants who of course took what was essentially a south-side Chicago shakedown operation (Mugger 1: "You of course wouldn't mind if I borrowed this $300,000 to give to my friend, would you? He promises to repay you when he can, see, with interest too.") and leveraged it to the moon. But it would never have happened without the CRA and the ambient politically correct liberalism which selected for stupidity by allowing those banks most committed to CRA to grow fastest (and thus dominate the market) through mergers and acquisitions, and made it impossible to speak the truth about minorities and mortgages through threat of anti-discrimination lawsuits (which bank officer would nowadays risk his career by asking if his institution was making too many loans to blacks or Hispanics)?

I suggest readers who want the truth have a leisurely stroll through Steve Sailer's site and reserve some time to savor all the excellent analytical journalism he's written on the minority mortgage meltdown.

• 50% of subprime dollars went to minorities during the peak years of the bubble
• minorities are now defaulting at twice the rate of whites
• CRA commitments increased to $2.3 trillion; many major banks drank this Kool-aid, including Countrywide, Bank of America, and Washington Mutual

It was non-minority Wall Street bankers and quants who of course took what was essentially a south-side Chicago shakedown operation (Mugger 1: "You of course wouldn't mind if I borrowed this $300,000 to give to my friend, would you? He promises to repay you when he can, see, with interest too.") and leveraged it to the moon. But it would never have happened without the CRA and the ambient politically correct liberalism which selected for stupidity by allowing those banks most committed to CRA to grow fastest (and thus dominate the market) through mergers and acquisitions, and made it impossible to speak the truth about minorities and mortgages through threat of anti-discrimination lawsuits (which bank officer would nowadays risk his career by asking if his institution was making too many loans to blacks or Hispanics)?

I suggest readers who want the truth have a leisurely stroll through Steve Sailer's site and reserve some time to savor all the excellent analytical journalism he's written on the minority mortgage meltdown.

• 50% of subprime dollars went to minorities during the peak years of the bubble
• minorities are now defaulting at twice the rate of whites
• CRA commitments increased to $2.3 trillion; many major banks drank this Kool-aid, including Countrywide, Bank of America, and Washington Mutual

It was non-minority Wall Street bankers and quants who of course took what was essentially a south-side Chicago shakedown operation (Mugger 1: "You of course wouldn't mind if I borrowed this $300,000 to give to my friend, would you? He promises to repay you when he can, see, with interest too.") and leveraged it to the moon. But it would never have happened without the CRA and the ambient politically correct liberalism which selected for stupidity by allowing those banks most committed to CRA to grow fastest (and thus dominate the market) through mergers and acquisitions, and made it impossible to speak the truth about minorities and mortgages through threat of anti-discrimination lawsuits (which bank officer would nowadays risk his career by asking if his institution was making too many loans to blacks or Hispanics)?

I suggest readers who want the truth have a leisurely stroll through Steve Sailer's site and reserve some time to savor all the excellent analytical journalism he's written on the minority mortgage meltdown.

• 50% of subprime dollars went to minorities during the peak years of the bubble
• minorities are now defaulting at twice the rate of whites
• CRA commitments increased to $2.3 trillion; many major banks drank this Kool-aid, including Countrywide, Bank of America, and Washington Mutual

It was non-minority Wall Street bankers and quants who of course took what was essentially a south-side Chicago shakedown operation (Mugger 1: "You of course wouldn't mind if I borrowed this $300,000 to give to my friend, would you? He promises to repay you when he can, see, with interest too.") and leveraged it to the moon. But it would never have happened without the CRA and the ambient politically correct liberalism which selected for stupidity by allowing those banks most committed to CRA to grow fastest (and thus dominate the market) through mergers and acquisitions, and made it impossible to speak the truth about minorities and mortgages through threat of anti-discrimination lawsuits (which bank officer would nowadays risk his career by asking if his institution was making too many loans to blacks or Hispanics)?

I suggest readers who want the truth have a leisurely stroll through Steve Sailer's site and reserve some time to savor all the excellent analytical journalism he's written on the minority mortgage meltdown.

• 50% of subprime dollars went to minorities during the peak years of the bubble
• minorities are now defaulting at twice the rate of whites
• CRA commitments increased to $2.3 trillion; many major banks drank this Kool-aid, including Countrywide, Bank of America, and Washington Mutual

It was non-minority Wall Street bankers and quants who of course took what was essentially a south-side Chicago shakedown operation (Mugger 1: "You of course wouldn't mind if I borrowed this $300,000 to give to my friend, would you? He promises to repay you when he can, see, with interest too.") and leveraged it to the moon. But it would never have happened without the CRA and the ambient politically correct liberalism which selected for stupidity by allowing those banks most committed to CRA to grow fastest (and thus dominate the market) through mergers and acquisitions, and made it impossible to speak the truth about minorities and mortgages through threat of anti-discrimination lawsuits (which bank officer would nowadays risk his career by asking if his institution was making too many loans to blacks or Hispanics)?

I suggest readers who want the truth have a leisurely stroll through Steve Sailer's site and reserve some time to savor all the excellent analytical journalism he's written on the minority mortgage meltdown.

• 50% of subprime dollars went to minorities during the peak years of the bubble
• minorities are now defaulting at twice the rate of whites
• CRA commitments increased to $2.3 trillion; many major banks drank this Kool-aid, including Countrywide, Bank of America, and Washington Mutual

It was non-minority Wall Street bankers and quants who of course took what was essentially a south-side Chicago shakedown operation (Mugger 1: "You of course wouldn't mind if I borrowed this $300,000 to give to my friend, would you? He promises to repay you when he can, see, with interest too.") and leveraged it to the moon. But it would never have happened without the CRA and the ambient politically correct liberalism which selected for stupidity by allowing those banks most committed to CRA to grow fastest (and thus dominate the market) through mergers and acquisitions, and made it impossible to speak the truth about minorities and mortgages through threat of anti-discrimination lawsuits (which bank officer would nowadays risk his career by asking if his institution was making too many loans to blacks or Hispanics)?

I suggest readers who want the truth have a leisurely stroll through Steve Sailer's site and reserve some time to savor all the excellent analytical journalism he's written on the minority mortgage meltdown.

• 50% of subprime dollars went to minorities during the peak years of the bubble
• minorities are now defaulting at twice the rate of whites
• CRA commitments increased to $2.3 trillion; many major banks drank this Kool-aid, including Countrywide, Bank of America, and Washington Mutual

It was non-minority Wall Street bankers and quants who of course took what was essentially a south-side Chicago shakedown operation (Mugger 1: "You of course wouldn't mind if I borrowed this $300,000 to give to my friend, would you? He promises to repay you when he can, see, with interest too.") and leveraged it to the moon. But it would never have happened without the CRA and the ambient politically correct liberalism which selected for stupidity by allowing those banks most committed to CRA to grow fastest (and thus dominate the market) through mergers and acquisitions, and made it impossible to speak the truth about minorities and mortgages through threat of anti-discrimination lawsuits (which bank officer would nowadays risk his career by asking if his institution was making too many loans to blacks or Hispanics)?

Both it's severity, and it's 'damages'

New punctuation update "~" at the end of a line to indicate sarcasm. http://harns.blogspot.com/

Let me suggest that you don't make comments about punctuation when you can't correctly select "it's" or "its" (hint -- in the example above you should use "its")

http://icanhashappy.blogspot.com/2008/10/funny-chinese-knock-off-products.html

It's like having your very own Replicator.
Except it's not portable or fueled by dilithium crystals.
Instead, it's slower, more messy, employs millions of people, and takes up 38,560 sq. km.
I can't wait until Apple sells me one in 50 years!

For NetHack, there's the TAEB - Tactical Amulet Extraction Bot. It's a framework for developing NetHack AIs, written in Perl. Its development still seems to be going strong but it hasn't managed to ascend a game yet, which is not an easy accomplishment for an AI.

Sartak, a TAEB author, recently managed to predict NetHack's PRNG to acquire infinite wishes from fountains. This is considered an exploit of course, and has since been patched on public NetHack servers. Still, pretty impressive :)

I think there's a Twitter feed with TAEB's game progress somewhere, but I don't have the link.

http://taeb-nethack.blogspot.com/

An obligatory link: "How Many Has God Killed" (Complete List and estimated Total)

If you've not seen this, it's worth a look.

It's obvious what's going on. Google set out to create an AI to sort through all the ideas. It promptly became self aware, got depressed, then killed itself... For reals... check out http://cadiesingularity.blogspot.com/ It's written in a blog... therefor it has to be true!

Actualy Amazon has left it for to long so that there Masterplan to destroy Mobipocket (there own daughter) became apparent.

Think about if: Amazon bought mobipocket a few years ago. So basicly one corporation and still Kindle won't read encrypted Mobipocket files and Mobipocket won't read encrypted Kindle files.

You want to entrust your encrytped eBooks to a company which displays that kind of behavior?

And best thing: Mobipocket and Kindle files difference ony in one byte. A kind of kindle flag. And yes you can change it:

http://igorsk.blogspot.com/2007/12/mobipocket-books-on-kindle.html

But that does not make Amazon a more tustworthy company.

Michigan state has already enacted nearly this same law. I know, because I got felony charges for it back in 2007 after petitioning digg users to help recover some expensive stolen property.

The story here:
http://rudygreene.blogspot.com/

Michigan law here:
(Public Act 475 of 2000). (That Act, which will take effect on April 1, 2001, prohibits a person from posting a message through any medium of communication, including the Internet, if the person knows that posting the message could cause two or more "separate noncontinuous acts of unconsented contact with the victim"; if posting the message is intended to cause conduct that would make the victim feel frightened, intimidated, threatened, harassed, or molested; if conduct arising from the posting would cause a reasonable person to suffer emotional distress and to feel frightened, intimidated, threatened, harassed, or molested; or if conduct arising from the posting causes the victim to suffer emotional distress and to feel frightened, intimidated, etc. Enhanced penalties apply under certain aggravating circumstances, e.g., posting the message is in violation of a condition of probation or parole, or results in the communication of a credible threat to the victim.)

Does anyone know what happened with this? http://aseigo.blogspot.com/2008/04/deploying-kde-to-52-million-young.html 52 Million is a pretty huge number, and I wonder if people are counting it in their estimates? Should the recipients of an enforced rollout be counted?

Of course this never happens in western comics at all, it's a uniquely Japanese phenomenon not found in comics produced
by such reputable companies as Marvel, DC and the like.

I could go on... in fact, I could probably just make every letter a link and it'd still work.

Special bonus: http://forums.comicbookresources.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=31045&d=1167172520

Name ten more.

1. Paul Krugman
2. Greg Mankiw
3. David Beckworth
4. Brad DeLong
5. Mark Thoma
6. Bruce Bartlett

Sorry for only finding six; these are mostly economists with more prominent blogs. I'm sure someone who studies economics could find many more.

Note that there is a little debate here about the very top of the Reagan tax cuts, but I would consider that to be "some time ago".

The future is parallelism. Unless Apple can come out with a hardware and software solution to the parallel programming crisis within the next few years, this is an investment that will come back to bite them in the ass. Hard.

Anybody who thinks that the conmputer industry should retain last century's multithreading CPU technology should lay off the dope, in my opinion. Heterogeneous processors, too, will lead to failure. What is needed is a new parallel processor, a homogeneous one designed to support a universal, deterministic and easy to program parallel computing model.

Can Apple deliver? Does it have the correct vision? Does it have the courage? I am not so sure. All those hardware experts come from the old conservative school of computer science. That's too bad because what is needed is a radical paradigm shift. Apple needs a true maverick, a rebel with humongous huevos. I wish them the best.

How to Solve the Parallel Programming Crisis

Speaking of who we should tax...

One of the largest problems I see is the imbalance of wages. Check out some executive salaries, then tell me if these Stamp Jockeys deserve to make their 8 digit salaries (or more). Stephen Lazco of Seagate technologies raked in over $28 million in 2008, Michael Jeffries of Abercrombie and Fitch made over $12 million in 2008, Robert J. Stevens of Lockheed Martin pulled in close to $26 million, Mark V. Hurd of HP made $34 million in 2008. Of course these are just the CEO's salaries, most corporations/companies have a lot of people at the top, and I'd bet that any of the direct reports for these people pull in 7 digits, and the people below them are in the mid-high 6 digits.

The other major piece of this puzzle is for those companies that are unnecessarily "top-heavy", they have too many people up top and too few workers to keep them afloat. It'd take serious dedication to the company for a CEO to take a pay cut so employees can stay on board, something Mr. Hurd did here. Given the choice between keeping your employees on the payroll and taking a pay cut, or firing thousands and giving yourself a bonus, how many CEO's do you think would pick the former?

Obama, being a fool

Obama isn't a fool. He knows what the consequences will be. He just doesn't care. He doesn't care because his constituents don't care. His constituents love it when he makes business yell. They hate business.

They all figure US businesses are captive victims and they can squeeze all the 'justice' they want out of them. These tax moves are clever and far sighted. They will cause businesses to kill US jobs. Obama doesn't mind.

When, after these and other changes, business does what business must to survive (kill US jobs) Obama will claim another injustice and impose trade regulations to 'stop' it. He can't do that now. Remember the NAFTA stink during the campaign when Obama's people said the wrong thing to the Canadians? Remember the TARP stink over the 'buy American' language? It's too early yet to act this way on a large scale, but the time will come...

People in the US need to be made to hate business enough that Obama and his ilk can get away with this stuff. That's what Obama's voters want. It's what the unions want.

Will this eventually cause a general drop in the standard of living in the US? Probably. Does that matter to Obama and his voters? Nope. They want 'fairness'. They want 'justice'. They don't care if the white professionals in Tech take it in the rear. They just don't care.

Real soon now they're going to get Franken seated. When that happens the real battle for Card Check begins. That's when Walmart gets unionized. Walmart will be paid off with amnesty for illegal immigrants in the form of some guest worker racket. More voters for the left, you see. Obama and his people don't care that this will end whatever remnant industrial base still persists in the US; eventually they'll have the unions draft the trade regulations to fix it.

Then it's on to medicine. There are a lot of white professionals that need punishing there. Doctors, drug companies, insurance companies, etc. The trick will be sending those folks up the river without harming too many Obama voters.

This will continue and accelerate. No one has ever spent as much fiat money to pay for voters as Obama is/has. You can assume this will translate into a landslide reelection with monster coat tails. Obama has plenty of time. What you understood to be the US is over. The damage inflicted during the next seven and a half years it permanent, just like all the other damage inflicted by collectivists in the US.

Adapt and get used to it. Law is a good bet because a law degree goes a long way in a government controlled system. That's why lawyers, who contributed 5 times as much money to campaigns as the entire 'tech' industry, prefer Democrats like Obama 4-1 when they vote with their wallets.

"When the controllers of the means of production fail to keep the means of production working properly, smart people look to take over the means of production."

Smart people are always looking to take over the means of production. More than 40 years ago, The UAW took over the means of production for Autos by conspiring with management of the big three to create an effective monopoly. It took this long for the monopoly to redistribute all the wealth flowing from the huge technology lead and the capital that had been built up when we had a dynamic, competitive, innovative auto industry. Now they are looking to the taxpayers to keep the money flowing.

The rule of law and property rights is what keeps smart people from doing much more harm than good when they try to take over the means of production.

My take on the Chrysler bailout is here: http://planetralph.blogspot.com/2009/05/chrysler-bankruptcy-good-liquidation.html

Actually, Hillary is already doing this http://vosl.blogspot.com/