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"Which is better--to be ruled by one tyrant three thousand miles away, or by three thousand tyrants not a mile away?" Mather Blyles

This is a good list. Allow me to weigh in with a few more of my own.

• Nexuiz is a fun networked 3D deathmatch FPS.
• Sauerbraten is a great, mindless FPS for both networked and single player mode.
• You should definitely give tremulous a try. Its innovative, asymmetrical approach to team based network play is outstanding.
• You can read a review that I wrote of these games and many other FOSS projects.
• A lot of these games are on a live Linux DVD that I reviewed recently.

I mean, it's not like there was an animated series, an 80s TV sitcom, or some movie featuring that kid from The Sixth Sense or Alan Thick. Was there? As long as they don't have access to a dematerializing gun, I guess it's all right.

*cough* http://www.fantabulousflashfun.blogspot.com/ *cough*

Despite claims of "fairness", they have a huge chip on their shoulder.

Have a look at Biased BBC.

Especially the part where the BBC spends millions covering up a BBC report (!) that conclusively proves they are biased.

As far as I see it, Google mobile platform is the same thing inside an OS package. The platform will be "open" to carriers and makers who are participants of the Google alliance. However, nowhere in the Google materials have i seen a commitment to make the phone open to the outside developers. Nor does it make any sense for them to open it.

Depending on how it is rolled out, we may see some sources, but likely we'll never have a chance to apply a patch to the OS actually in the device, or build an application outside of whatever sandbox they put in the OS. There will likely be APIs and widgets tied to the google servers and services, but hardly much freedom beyond that.

Sounds plausible: http://eventarithmetic.blogspot.com/

People like owning private property. In fact, they like it so much that given a chance to "borrow" a vehicle, they'll never return it. But if someone follows through on this idea, thefts will probably go down for a week or so when the same people who stole yellow bikes to support their drug habit do the same with the cars, at a much higher profit.

I recently finished the game and wrote my review on Sunday, giving it an 8 out of 10. I felt like that the new stylus driven gameplay aspects were great and really added to the series, but the game focused way too much on repetitiveness. You literally run through the same dungeon something like 5 or 6 times throughout the course of the game, and the dungeon is just kind of obnoxious. Plus the whole "phantom hourglass" only matters in that one particular dungeon, basically negating what could have been a cool concept or object nearly completely.

I didn't think the sailing was as bad in this game as in Wind Waker (which I still enjoyed in that game too). You would draw on a map point A to point B, and your ship would go there for you. The only annoying part was having to fight enemies on the way with your cannon (very basic bad guys - cannon fodder if you excuse me) on the way, sometimes it's just nice to sit back and check out the scenery as you sail. There were also six warp points that allowed you to get to point B very quickly, basically eliminating any long and tedious journeys.

I also thought the exploration was fun, and appreciated "uncharted islands" and such, really kind of felt like I was setting out on the new ground. There was an island shaped like a Nintendo DS though, and that breaking of the fourth wall was really out of place.

Anyways, my review is here if you're interested, just a little side site I run to more or less keep track of what games I beat.

Peak Oil has always predicted that the global Hubbert Peak (not be be confused with regional Hubbert Peaks) would occur within a few years of 2005. Now that 2005 has come and gone and demand is not outstripping supply the timing is being reconsidered, but the underlying reasoning is rock solid. There is a finite amount of oil, we are using it at a finite rate, eventually there will be none left. This is no different from drinking from a keg of beer. Once the keg is empty, it is time to switch to whisky. In the case of oil there is currently no economically viable equivalent of "whisky". Perhaps one will be found in the coming decades, but betting on future discoveries rather dangerous.

http://mrsquid.blogspot.com/

The threats from the owner of simplemillionaire.com also detailed how he was going to sue me to pay for HIS legal expenses. Again, I don't know how kosher that sort of threat is.

As far as I understand it, and assuming you're in the US, not at all. See here for a blog entry written by C. E. Petit, a successful IP lawyer. I quote:

For one thing, it's a lot harder to get an award of attorney's fees in trademark actions (requires an "exceptional case") than in copyright actions.

BFR's blog actually makes that claim (sub-6 hours).

""The PC's role in Japanese homes is diminishing, as its once-awesome monopoly on processing power is encroached by gadgets such as smart phones that act like pocket-size computers, advanced Internet-connected game consoles, digital video recorders with terabytes of memory NEC's annual PC shipments in Japan shrank 6.2 percent to 2.72 million units in 2006, and the trend is continuing into the first quarter of fiscal 2007 with a 14 percent decline from a year earlier. Sony's PC shipments for Japan shrank 10 percent in 2006 from a year earlier."

Yeah, right! Everyone knows the real reason is the increasing spread of illegal online PC sharing/downloading by people habituated to piracy by the illegal sharing of music and video! The real thing we need to fear is when people start downloading food online. When you see that starting to happen, run for the hills!

all the best,

drew

http://dangernovel.blogspot.com/
Danger - A Safe Bahamian Novel
Being written for NaNoWriMo 2007

A couple of weeks ago, I did a post for Alexa Internet about this sort of thing. This Post is the New Black took a look at the frequency of "* is the new *" on the web and came up with this graph; the data says that Apple, Facebook, Google, and MySpace are all the new Microsoft, which is really just the new IBM.

I've also been meaning to read the arguments and decision in Kitzmiller v. Dover. However, from what I've read so far, I get the impression that the defense team was borderline incompetent.

The testimony is freely available and is an educational but fairly easy read, since it is intended for a more general audience. I was especially impressed by the testimony of Dr. Padian. The defense recruited who they thought were the most distinguished ID proponents, though a few did not appear due to disagreements, but still, I think those that did take the stand failed to provide solid scientific evidence for ID, which was a serious deficit given that the goal was to allow ID into science classes. Reasonable people could disagree whether the legal team took a bad approach or faltered due to internal squabbling, but I think it is reasonable to conclude that the scientific arguments for ID failed to impress. Over the years since, basically every example Behe proposed for irreducible complexity and the inability of evolution to produce new genes/information and new functions was reasonably refuted, with the classic example being the bacterial flagellum. Here is one more recent disagreement with an argument from Behe's latest book (with lots of technical details and references):
http://endogenousretrovirus.blogspot.com/2007/08/michael-behe-please-allow-me-to.html

We can't assume that the majority has exclusive access to the truth, but nevertheless Behe's own academic department has a statement on the their main homepage about his ideas (see the left column):
http://www.lehigh.edu/~inbios/
I've never seen a similar statement on any university department's web site, so I think it is safe to assume this isn't just a minor disagreement, but the result of someone completely lacking any hint of support from his colleagues. From what I've heard, many of the faculty members are quite embarrassed. This doesn't necessarily make him wrong, but it is something to consider.

However, obviously, the vast majority of human beings have not studied comparative cellular biology or genetics in any detail.

Sadly, you are correct that most people have limited scientific exposure. In general, belief in evolution (and atheism) in the US correlates with increasing levels of academic education (undergraduate degree, graduate degree, National Academy of Science, etc.), though medical doctors (not PhDs!) are a notable exception in the area of atheism. One explanation for this trend is that more educated people are better prepared to make reasoned decisions based on the current evidence, but others say that the secular educational system is brainwashing people. Given the traditional emphasis on education in Jewish culture, I'm not surprised to see evolution acceptance fairly high there.

Moreover, assuming that God exists, one can't really say that He didn't give us enough compelling proof of Himself, seeing how the vast majority of human beings do in fact believe.

I'd be careful here, since "God" has a strong Judeo-Christian connotation, and the vast majority of humans are not Christians/Jews (and an even smaller percentage of all humans that have ever lived). Popular support for a notion is a limited form of evidence, I'd prefer a meritocracy of ideas, where the ones supported by the best evidence survive. I don't want membership numbers to determine which of the many religions or non-religions is more likely to be correct/true (and I assume you'd agree). Current growth rates predict that Islam will become more popular than Christia

I hate to be a bit self referential, but when Dr Keller came out with her press release, I wrote up a comparison of the Permian-Triassic and the Cretaceous-Tertiary Extinctions. The whole article centers around the idea that the Permian Extinction is assumed to be one caused by vulcanism where there is VERY strong evidence for that being the root cause so we ought to compare the KT to the PT if we want to see if lava trumps meteor.

... , for instance at this place, where we have, as only one example of a high ranking AI-researcher, Dr. Feiyue Wang, Chinese Academy of Sciences (also advisor to the government), who does interesting research like, e.g. "Pedestrian Detection from a Moving Vehicle" (translate for yourself). I had this person on the radar earlier.

CC.

But they're the ones who have f*cked up, and want to have their cake and eat it too. They're the ones who still have "Unlimited Bandwidth!!!" ads at the malls still today.

I'd love to see one. You can post it on my blog or send a note there where I can find it and post it.

I was one of the original customers in my area when they came four years ago. They advertised "Unlimited use for a flat monthly fee". I still have the advertisement and have posted a link on my blog so people can see it's true. Unlimited use means All You Can Eat :D

I'm though with the company and have been pushing for Network Neutrality and Utopia fiber to the home in Utah. I'm glad Concast did this actually. Nothing like the company validating their own arrogance.

1. Silent
2. Denied by Comcast
3. Disruptive
4. Trying to cover it up

Currently #2: http://end-times-hoaxes.blogspot.com/ from http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%22hoaxes+exposed%22 Google, God's angelic warrior in Illuminati End Times - Information Highway Parallel Lanes - Traffic Jam in the Lane to Hell... http://end-times-information.blogspot.com/

Currently #2: http://end-times-hoaxes.blogspot.com/ from http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%22hoaxes+exposed%22 Google, God's angelic warrior in Illuminati End Times - Information Highway Parallel Lanes - Traffic Jam in the Lane to Hell... http://end-times-information.blogspot.com/

CBC Radio Live Streams

Initially all Windows, but when geeks complained they threw us a bone of two ogg streams from Ontario. It has been that way for some time, with no sign of other regions being offered in ogg. Another reason to hate Toronto, I guess.

This was already revealed by Ionut Alex Chitu 2 days ago.
http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2007/10/gmails-new-version-is-now-available.html

This isn't a simple grammatical correction - it's an opinion.

Generally, criticizing someone on Slashdot as harshly as the parent did, using terms such as "idiots" and "damn fools" (which I suspect should be "damned fools", unless it's an imperative sentence), on a matter of disagreement of opinion is modded as flamebait (e.g., "What the fuck kind of idiot would use AJAX?").

I'm not going to speculate on whether they're talking client-side back-end or server-side back-end, but it could be server side: Steve Yegge has been working on some server side JS architecture at Google for nearly a year now.

I remember for while when digg became popular, people would often complain that they had seen it on digg yesterday.
I decided to give digg a try, but found that so much crap got through as well that I was wading around trying to find the
"good stuff". Also, the comments are about on par with a pre teen message board, and headlines frequently look like a 9 year old wrote them.

This kept me on slashdot, where the worst that I have to endure is old jokes (that still make me laugh when executed correctly).
Most trolls get modded down pretty quickly, and I have actually end up learning something most of the time.

I still check digg every now and then, and the new fad is for a single (AWESOME!) picture to get dugg up.

I had an interesting IT experience about a year back, and said to myself, "self, I bet you could make the front page of digg with this".

So, as an experiment, I created a blogger blog and submitted it to digg. Lo and behold a few short hours later this non news story, personal
blog had hit the front page of digg. I enabled adsense and made about $20.00 from the thing. Its just not a news site anymore, and easily gamed.

http://leofud.blogspot.com/

Specifically that the open|filtered may mean the ports are in a stealth mode... which is what you want!

I did a port scan of my Leopard machine from a Tiger machine and didn't see any open ports at all. I'm not running the firewall either -- but I don't have any services turned on right now. That's the way OS X ships by default (and has since as least 10.2).

Not arguing that things couldn't be better communicated by Apple, but I think an article claiming they're taking a Microsoft-esque tact toward security is more than likely politically loaded.

Hope IBM is not planning on patenting their method. This kind of thing has been studied already to understand the energy savings from recycling solar cells. Recycling solar cells requires about one third the energy of making new cells: http://www.solarworld.de/solarmaterial/english/press/8AV.3.14.pdf. And, basically, you scrape off what was on the waffer before and then start again. Note that in the link, they assume about 2.7 peak equivilent sun hours per day. A typical value for the US is 5 so that the energy payback time would be about 2 years for a new panel and 8 months for a recycled panel. For 40 years of use you get EROEIs of 20 and 60 for new and recycled respectively. But, you have to wait 40 years to start getting the cheaper deal ;-)
--
Rent solar and save: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-users-selling-solar.html

You presume to much. The transportation cost for moving coal to a power plant is 200 times higher for the amount of energy produced than the transportation cost of taking a solar panel from a factory to your roof. Solar beat nuclear in this measure as well if you consider that uranium is mined in Austraia and enriched in France. Of course it makes sense to make panels where there is hydro power. But, there is hydro power in a lot of places so why the globalization jab? Shipping solar panels a long way is less stupid that shipping coal a long way or uranium a long way, but with the latter two, you don't have much choice, with solar panels you can set up factories in a distributed manner, so you save even more.
--
Save with solar power: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-users-selling-solar.html

Legitimate businesses have no reason to hide their identity.

That's not always accurate. My mother runs a housing information web site (talking about the Housing Bubble). People doing this can, and do, receive death threats. Anonymity is crucial when saying things people don't want to hear. Sometimes, it's spam, sometimes it's political or speech that others want to shut up. Besides, what's to stop someone from joe-jobbing someone to get their contact information - be it to intimidate, kill, or harass them?

People should be free to say what they want on their sites, even if it's something others consider "spammy". It's only when they connect to other servers (spam) the problem starts to be a problem. If that's the case, block the IPs, and go after the money trail (transaction processors, banks, etc). It may not be as easy as a whois and a lawsuit, but it's necessary to protect religious, political, and otherwise risky speech.

Furthermore, web sites aren't always ran by corporations - if one of my personal software development domains is down, or busted, or whatever, oh well. You shouldn't be calling me.

I also used to keep my personal cell number and email on all my business-related domains - if there was a problem, people would call or email, and all was good. Between the solicitors (no-call list doesn't apply to companies) and spammers, I've had to change my email and switch the phone to a voicemail system. It's not that I'm hiding, but rather that if I dealt with all the spam I received by hand, I would never get anything done.

At least with the on-domain contact pages, people have to exert a little bit of effort to talk to me - the captcha keeps the bots out, and it's redirected to my push email on the phone, ensuring I get it near instantly.

Kill WHOIS already. It's outlived it's usefulness.

> Having lived in a poor country myself for a number of years, I suspect that some member of the ruling oligarchy

Ah, but Nigeria isn't a poor country (per-capita not withstanding):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nominal)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)_per_capita
read the bbc notes about Nigeria's informal economy which is estimated to be at least twice these official numbers:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/1689165.stm
http://rru.worldbank.org/Discussions/Topics/Topic18.aspx

"Nigeria, is set to lead mobile phone market in the continent by December 2007, surpassing South Africa".
http://emergingworld.blogspot.com/2006/11/nigeria-another-giant-in-mobile-market.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communications_in_Nigeria

How many poor economies of oligarchs can support 40 million cellular phone subscribers? (from a total of 140 million)?

Just saying, the view that Nigeria is poor is sorely outdated and outmoded. I'm actually surprised they ordered "only" 17,000 units.

Someone already came up with solutions that seem to work for both Windows and Linux For Windows: http://redhatcat.blogspot.com/2007/09/beating-sandvine-on-windows-with-wipfw.html For Linux http://redhatcat.blogspot.com/2007/09/beating-sandvine-with-linux-iptables.html

Someone already came up with solutions that seem to work for both Windows and Linux For Windows: http://redhatcat.blogspot.com/2007/09/beating-sandvine-on-windows-with-wipfw.html For Linux http://redhatcat.blogspot.com/2007/09/beating-sandvine-with-linux-iptables.html

It's well-known in linguistics and philosophy that "You don't get semantics from syntax."

No it's not. It's well known that the philosopher John Searle advanced that thesis and that his "Chinese room" thought experiment is supposed to support it. But the thesis itself has been contentious from the outset. See, for instance, http://blindimpress.blogspot.com/2007/06/uplift-bytecode.html.

When congress allows the telecoms to charge more, to build on public easements, or to screw their competitors and offer more services than they should fairly be allowed to, it's the public paying the tab. We've let them have more than enough leeway with what is rightfully the public's infrastructure.

If you come across any more like this let me know. I'm spending a great deal of my free time researching this and have been very upset with what I've learned. You can post it freely on my blog. I appreciate it.

I noticed Senator John Kerry has been speaking about something very close to this lately. I'm hoping we'll see some movement to fix this and accountability.

Don't like hard drive. Don't trust it. The happy failure is when the /var partition goes wonky, and I can retrieve my data from the /home partition. The unhappy failure is when the drive (less than 3 year old Seagate Barracuda) stops reading my /home partition, and the Linux kernel starts complaining and making stuff up. This is why the stuff I really don't want to lose, I put in more than one hard drive. And DVDs with separate par2 disks.

Eee doesn't have disk option; it's soldered for cost, energy, and space reasons. It seems too small to fit any hard drive that I've heard of, but you could try some external hard drive. (Disclaimer: Nobody I've heard of has tried that particular external hard drive with the Eee.)

There's a reason Ubuntu uses Gnome

>The drug companies spend about a third of their revenues on marketing ("selling and administration"). About $8,000 to $12,000 yearly is spent on marketing toward each individual doc per year total. There is one drug rep for every 4.7 office-based physicians. Residents are obviously more prone to influence: "residents in a psychiatry program in Toronto Attended up to 70 lunches that had been sponsored by drug companies and received 75 promotional items over the course of one year," notes David Blumenthal, MD, MPP in a special policy report in the New England Journal of Medicine. (351;18, 1887, 10/28/04).

The key here is that the RIAA doesn't have any additional evidence to bring to the hearing; it has admitted under oath that it can't identify the individual.

So what they'll do is come armed with a bunch of backdated printouts and a lot of doubletalk, and hope to confuse the judge. Whether they can confuse this judge, as they have confused so many others, is, however, as you can see from the decision, quite problematic.

... more easily on a female geek's beaver -- http://freshpics.blogspot.com/2007/04/beaver-pc-modding.html

CC.

Lots of people are pissed off about this:

http://javablasphemy.blogspot.com/

He could further disrupt a nation already in trouble.

I've already written a full opinion on the matter in my blog

Someone else in this thread suggested that I blog about this. I'll try to do that. I'll add it to my moribund blog at http://jpgoldberg.blogspot.com/

Not yet. But I have a poorly maintained blog on various rants (so far mostly about religion) at http://jpgoldberg.blogspot.com/, but I will add this on. Thanks for the suggestion.

I should add that I tried this one other time (around 2003) when I first played with iMovie for a home movie and added a sound track from some songs I'd purchased from iTunes. I never received a response at that time either, but didn't follow things up.

It boils down to no options at all: Grey's law.

That's how the Washington Post puts it:

More people believe in ghosts and ESP than believe in President Bush.

Nearly a third of Americans believe in ghosts.

A new Associated Press/Ipsos poll found 34% of people believe in ghosts. And 23% even claim to have seen one.

If you feel haunted -- think how President Bush must feel.

http://watchingwashington.blogspot.com/2007/10/more-people-believe-in-ghosts-than-bush.html?referer=sphere_related_content