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Monsanto was on there at #27. Monsanto are the people that patent genes, have lobbied to have certain legislation* added to the new Iraq constitution, have engineered plants that are sterile and can't be replanted so people have to keep buying new seeds... that's not even the half of it, and lets not even get started on their history of litigation.

Once I saw them on there, I promptly closed the browser tab.


* Note: the article I linked came at the top of the Google search, but it may not be the most correct or objective.

Guys, I'm not a fanboy of any of these phones. I'd love to have an iphone or even a blackjack for that matter, but the chart Apple is showing was simply a marketing ploy. I made a new and improved chart with just three phones for simplicity, but it shows the Iphone, the Nokia N95 and the Samsung Blackjack. It adds the weight, the true maximum talk time (not apples version of N95 or blackjack talk time and other stuff like data speed etc. Let me know what you guys think. I'll add some other phones to the chart later today. http://brentevans.blogspot.com/2007/06/chart-apple -forgot-to-release-on-iphone.html

scary how good your words match the "updated" chart:

http://superzealot.blogspot.com/2007/06/iphone-com parison-chart-follow-up.html

This chart adds Ericsson for an even more fair comparision!

http://superzealot.blogspot.com/2007/06/iphone-com parison-chart-follow-up.html

(yes, belogspam. sue me)

Harkle has a lot of stuff. They do their own captioning for some of the posted video.

Google video with captioning and the developer instructions and tools.

Here is a related article on this topic.

Lee Kaplan responds:

Salahi has been spamming Internet techie message boards, Arab websites, anyone who will reprint his nonsense. His accusations are an insult to the judges who heard his case. He says he got no explanation for why he lost. The fact is, he lied to the court in his declarations on more than one occaision. ... Free speech does not include the right to lie about another individual.

Lots of specifics here.

I think his response deserves its own post. What do you say, kdawson?

Lee Kaplan responds:

Salahi has been spamming Internet techie message boards, Arab websites, anyone who will reprint his nonsense. His accusations are an insult to the judges who heard his case. He says he got no explanation for why he lost. The fact is, he lied to the court in his declarations on more than one occaision. ... Free speech does not include the right to lie about another individual.

Lots of specifics here.

I think his response deserves its own post. What do you say, kdawson?

It would be seconds...

http://misterscience.blogspot.com/2006/04/brief-hi story-of-earth.html

Scroll down to near the bottom:

"if the history of the Earth was condensed into a single day, then at 2 minutes to midnight - apes started to walk upright... 2 seconds to midnight, Homo Sapiens arrived."

Well, you can't expect us to do much in two seconds!

Well, the pmp i use has only Mp3 and a very few WMA files on it. AAC is not supported on my player and it never will. There are plenty of MP3 sites that cater to MP3 people and no to Apple elitests... Go Creative Zen Touch 40 gig. No IPODs allowed. http://renigade.blogspot.com/

...it is a very nice new bit of evidence that our understanding of heavy hadrons (particles composed of quarks, one of which a b or a c) is very accurate. The particles, yielding a signal whose significance exceeds seven standard deviations, have a mass in perfect agreement with theoretical expectations.

Its discovery and the measurement of its mass provide new understanding of how the strong nuclear force acts upon quarks, the basic building blocks of matter.

"Knowing the mass of the cascade b baryon gives scientists information they need in order to develop accurate models of how individual quarks are bound together into larger particles such as protons and neutrons," said Physicist and Associate Director for High Energy Physics for the Department of Energy's Office of Science Robin Staffin.

>"2) Standard PC hardware with fancy plastic that is much more overpriced than the same hardware minus fancy plastic" You're going by old info. You can configure a Dell and an Apple with the same specs and the prices are quite close.

He said minus the fancy plastic. Try pricing it on pricewatch and building it yourself. Yes, most people wouldn't do that. No, that vast majority of linux users would build it themselves, hence the vast majority of people reading your reply would build it themselves, being that the vast majority of people visiting slashdot have used linux in their lives.

The thing is you *can* buy a Mac Mini for $500, but how does it compare to even a name brand PC from Dell at that price? It might have the performance, but any additional item you want in there (save a stick of RAM) will have to be external. And upgrading it is going to be impossible in the same way you can upgrade a PC (Don't like the motherboard? Fine, throw in a new one. Don't like the hard drive? Buy a 3.5" drive anywhere and *ADD* (not just upgrade) 500 GB. One of the 44% of Americans with Dial Up? Throw in a $9.99 special. Etc, etc.

You have to go apples for apples (pun intended). Compare a Mac that has the same upgradeability and additional hardware installation ability as a PC. Hard to do and come out with as sweet a price, eh? Powermacs are what, about $1,000? Yikes!

>"3) A OS that is more expensive over it's life that even Winblows - and Apple CURRENTLY charges serious coin for major OS updates" $129 is serious coin? And remember, this is for the MAJOR updates. Also, they're lax on the DRM, since you usually have to have the hardware to run the OS.

Yes, considering windows is about $50 OEM, and is updated for features for about 5 years and for security for about 10 years. How many updates to OS X have there been in that time that have required purchasing the new OS? Plenty.

>"4) A secure coding and patch release methodology that is *years* behind MS" Patch and release when it's found, not once a month?

Yes, there's a lot of bugs in Microsoft software. But that's not his point. His point is that Microsoft can (and does) push updates onto their machines automatically without (much, sometimes none) user interaction.

>"5) Apple regularly lies about the performance capabilities of its' machines" For example? I'd love to see some examples here.

That's easy (an oldie, but such a goldie!) enough.

>"6) Apple uses Solaris and Windows (Apple china ran it until 03) because of their superior stability compared to OS X." Proof please.

I'll give you this one, I can't find anything solid one way or the other, but even so, the last time I could find references to Apple using solaris were from ages ago... to the point they might not have even had OS X in full deployment. :-)

Clearly he hasn't been paying attention. Fake Bill Gates has been paying attention and talks about Steve Jobs' secret strategy for Safari for Windows. Elgan totally misses the point, but then, so do most other pundits.

FireFox isn't going away, that's for certain. Steve Jobs doesn't want FireFox to go away. But he can't tell you what he does want. Fake Bill Gates can tell you what Steve Really wants. Safari, FireFox, Opera, and the Nokia WebKit (same open source core as Safari) will all pass the ACID test. Together they will form a standards compliant base of web browsers that add up to about 1625% of web browsers today, but maybe 25% or more of web browsers by WWDC 2008. See the *real* pie chart that Steve Jobs expects to show next year at The Secret Diary of Bill Gates.

Apparently the RIAA is very sensitive about this counterclaim issue, and has issued threats against a blog author who referred to and and linked to Download Squad's article on the subject.

Hi Charlie,

While I see the mass issues you raise, I really feel that we are turing the corner on scarcity driven thinking on energy (of necessity). The whole fossil fuel thing was short term, but, as Bucky Fuller wrote, it gave time to get better than plants at doing solar energy. So, I'm seeing exponential growth there since projects started today cost less than coal mined today. And, costs will continue to fall. Already, if you don't mind taking up some yard space, you can get lower efficiency amorphous silicon panels for a low price per watt and long warantee which undercut todays delivered electricity rates. I mess with the numbers a bit here: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/04/green-numbers. html and things look good for a fairly rapid transformation.

What does cheap abundant energy mean? It isn't a magic wand, but it sure acts like one. We siphon off abundant CPU cycles to do amazing calculations of protiens that would be prohibative if we were in scarcity but which are free with volunteer efforts. With renewable energy we probably want three times as much peak generating capacity as peak demand just to make things convenient and with the way prices are going, we'll still do this for less than we are paying now, likely much less. So, we'll have the kind of flow you are interested in sitting round unused most of the time unless we take on interesting projects such as colonization. Mere curiosity about giving it a try would likely drive that. "Because it's there" is not an economic argument. So, does an electromagnetic catapult look feasable if the used energy is donated? I would say yes. This might not be the technical modality that is ultimately used, but when you are trying to make decisions about how to get rid of extra energy rather than how to share out limited energy there is much more room for projects like colonization.
--
Solar power with no system purchase: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-users -selling-solar.html

Hi Charlie,

While I see the mass issues you raise, I really feel that we are turing the corner on scarcity driven thinking on energy (of necessity). The whole fossil fuel thing was short term, but, as Bucky Fuller wrote, it gave time to get better than plants at doing solar energy. So, I'm seeing exponential growth there since projects started today cost less than coal mined today. And, costs will continue to fall. Already, if you don't mind taking up some yard space, you can get lower efficiency amorphous silicon panels for a low price per watt and long warantee which undercut todays delivered electricity rates. I mess with the numbers a bit here: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/04/green-numbers. html and things look good for a fairly rapid transformation.

What does cheap abundant energy mean? It isn't a magic wand, but it sure acts like one. We siphon off abundant CPU cycles to do amazing calculations of protiens that would be prohibative if we were in scarcity but which are free with volunteer efforts. With renewable energy we probably want three times as much peak generating capacity as peak demand just to make things convenient and with the way prices are going, we'll still do this for less than we are paying now, likely much less. So, we'll have the kind of flow you are interested in sitting round unused most of the time unless we take on interesting projects such as colonization. Mere curiosity about giving it a try would likely drive that. "Because it's there" is not an economic argument. So, does an electromagnetic catapult look feasable if the used energy is donated? I would say yes. This might not be the technical modality that is ultimately used, but when you are trying to make decisions about how to get rid of extra energy rather than how to share out limited energy there is much more room for projects like colonization.
--
Solar power with no system purchase: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-users -selling-solar.html

http://googlevideo.blogspot.com/2006/09/finally-ca ption-playback.html

A particularly interesting piece details an alternative version of the April 2002 events. It outlines the significance of the Plan Avila, a form of martial law that Chavez intended to impose during the crisis, and the refusal of his military command to institute the plan.

Excerpts:

"Not surprisingly, the order to activate Plan Avila set off alarm bells in the military establishment. If the plan had been controversial in 1989, when it was deployed to control violent looting by armed groups of people, its application against a huge political march made up largely of unarmed civilians threatened a Tiananmen Square style political massacre... To their unending credit, the two key military officers at the top of the Plan Avila chain of command simply refused to follow the president's orders. As confirmed by the subsequent hearings in the National Assembly, this is the key decision that set off the chain of events that weekend." http://caracaschronicles.blogspot.com/2004/04/unto ld-story-of-venezuelas-2002-april.html

A particularly interesting piece details an alternative version of the April 2002 events. It outlines the significance of the Plan Avila, a form of martial law that Chavez intended to impose during the crisis, and the refusal of his military command to institute the plan.

Excerpts:

"Not surprisingly, the order to activate Plan Avila set off alarm bells in the military establishment. If the plan had been controversial in 1989, when it was deployed to control violent looting by armed groups of people, its application against a huge political march made up largely of unarmed civilians threatened a Tiananmen Square style political massacre... To their unending credit, the two key military officers at the top of the Plan Avila chain of command simply refused to follow the president's orders. As confirmed by the subsequent hearings in the National Assembly, this is the key decision that set off the chain of events that weekend." http://caracaschronicles.blogspot.com/2004/04/unto ld-story-of-venezuelas-2002-april.html

I agree. See below.

Blog: StyleMac
Post: Not a browser war again.
Link: http://stylemac.blogspot.com/2007/06/not-browser-w ar-again.html

Sure can:

Sugar Ethanol
http://www.heritage.org/Research/EnergyandEnvironm ent/wm1074.cfm
http://forums.wsj.com/viewtopic.php?t=247http://fo rums.wsj.com/viewtopic.php?t=247
http://gregmankiw.blogspot.com/2006/09/sugar-ethan ol.htmlhttp://www.newyorker.com/archive/2006/11/27 /061127ta_talk_surowiecki
http://blog.tomevslin.com/2007/03/tax_gasoline_im. html
http://www.iags.org/es82905.htm
http://www.forbes.com/2005/11/15/energy-ethanol-br azil_cx_1116energy_adams.html
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8769619/site/newsweek
(there are tons more links all over)

USA Gas Mileage Standards:
http://www.fueleconomy.gov/
http://www.nhtsa.dot.gov/cars/rules/cafe/overview. htm
http://zfacts.com/p/414.html
http://www.epa.gov/fueleconomy/
http://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/FEG2007_GasolineVeh icles.pdf [Warning: PDF]

There are tons and tons and tons of links, data, charts, .pdf files and things you can pour over if you research the topic via Google, local library, watch CSpan, etc.

And to the AC earlier: Yes, corn farmers helped influence the decision, as did domestic sugar producers, but, oil companies are also to blame for this, as they don't want competition from ethanol PERIOD.

The most amusing aspect of romanticizing the cold cruelty of the windows world is how none of it seems to be directed it Microsoft itself. Or, at least effectively directed at microsoft.

That aside, I think it's premature to pretend that we know the strategy of the Safari/Windows release at this point. True, Bill gates is afraid that Apple is trying to "fix the web" and neutralize IE as his lock-in tool, but couldn't there be more to Apple's strategy than that? Might this be a shakedown cycle for the core libraries on Windows for some other purpose? After all, Vista finally has the plumbing. A revival of the YellowBox? Or the introduction of some CoreAnimation-based web technology that would simultaneously allow for 1) a more dynamic iPhone SDK (look at the pins drop in the google maps demo) and 2) something to compete with flash. I guess these thoughts are inspired by the All Things Digital interview with Jobs and Gates. Steve seemed to be very interested in conquering rich clients that leveraged services from the cloud.

Not all knowledge is created equal, and that's one point that many "hard" exams and certifications miss.

That might be less of a problem than you think. See these comments.

If a lawyer doesn't know the intricacies of Melchett vs The Vatican, who cares? In the unlikely situation that they need it, they can google it. If they don't understand Habeas Corpus, on the other hand, they're just unfit to be a lawyer at all.

This is a common misperception about law. It's actually more important to know the laws and cases than abstract concepts, because the concepts are defined solely by specific laws and cases. In applying a concept you must always provide a citation. The best lawyers are those with a giant capacity for remembering specific laws and cases, and applying them to current situations. A general grasp of concepts is useful in writing about law for the general public, but actually not that useful for practicing law.

Right wing propaganda again, see some real data here.

Average before Chavez military spending: 1.619 billions USD, average 1.6% of GDP

Average Chavez military spending: 1.445 billions USD, average 1.2% of GDP

Yes, in absolute dollar terms military spending as increased since the 2002 USA-backed coups (but who wouldn't do that?) but relative to GDP it has decreased, and by all measure it's less than previous kleptocrats did.

Of course poverty has decreased and social spending increased, really bad bad bad.

Actually it has to be a % passing. If the supply of licensed doctors and attorneys were not limited, the costs for their services would reduce, so these exams have to be a part of the the system to control the supply. A test may be written to ensure a spread (so it tests knowledge) and also to ensure that the passing score is largely unattainable. So, I think the analysis is incorrect. The tests are not too hard to be useful as tests, it is just that their is a conflict of interest as regards their use. As medical care begins to take on the characteristics of a human right as representation in court is a political right, perhaps we'll begin to see a breaking down of the cartel system so that medical and law educations are not restricted and final competency tests can be tests of competency rather than also being a link in a chain of controlling supply to increase price.
--
Electricity without fuel costs: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-users -selling-solar.html

On the other hand, WindSat gives a LOT more detail so this looks like the future direction for wind speed and direction. It seems to me part of the difficulty is combining a cost control culture at NASA procurment with a mission specs driven culture at Air Force procurment. This has led to slowing of the deployment of joint civilian-military meteorological assets. What you need is a lead agency for procurment which is also on the hook for cost overruns. If other agencies hitch a ride, that is a cost reduction for the government, but if contractors are told two different stories then things bog down. NASA can decide to fly something that will work but not as well as designed, like the IRS on Spitzer which has filter delamination after system integration. It would have cost too much to fix it. The Air Force can't because the data integrates into other systems that have to work or they are not worth anything. This is a basic problem that I see with NPOESS.
--
Solar power without performance worries: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-users -selling-solar.html

I went to a conference last month that I report on here: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/05/juicing.html. Brazil is also going big into biodiesel using castor seed. The worry about rainforests right now seems to be palm oil while cane will likely expand into existing grazing land (possibly former forest but cut for beef if it is).
--
Solar power with no installation cost: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-users -selling-solar.html

I went to a conference last month that I report on here: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/05/juicing.html. Brazil is also going big into biodiesel using castor seed. The worry about rainforests right now seems to be palm oil while cane will likely expand into existing grazing land (possibly former forest but cut for beef if it is).
--
Solar power with no installation cost: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-users -selling-solar.html

The blog does refer to the fraudulent journalism of Lee Kaplan--but it does not do just that and walk away. If you read through some of the articles we've written, you will find that we have indeed caught this writer in lies. For example, check out this story where I show him to have lifted photographs from another website and then claim he obtained them another way, and that they are of something that they are not.

China has been a major source of new theropod fossils over the past 15 or so years. I have friends at the AMNH who are working on dinosaur and bird fossils from the Gobi. The AMNH cosponsors digs with Chinese researchers all the time. Sometimes their government is not very enthusiastic about sharing material, but we often work something out.

Check out http://palaeoblog.blogspot.com/2007/06/gigantorapt or-erlianensis-from-china.html for more information. It turns out a Japanese film crew was there when the fossil was being uncovered. You may also want to look at the link on the same page to the original journal article for this find. Hopefully Nature can live up to the high academic standards of slashdot readers.

Actually, the KDE guys (in particular, the ever awesome Zack Rusin) are working with the WebKit people in order to make WebKit work on the same rendering canvas that KDE uses (namely Qt's QPainterDevice). So Konqueror 4 will most likely use WebKit itself, rather than KHTML, on all three platforms, Linux, Windows and Mac.

The reason why this is such great news is that this could possibly make WebKit, one of the most standard compliant engines out there, the number one option after IE (alongside with Gecko), which will hopefully prompt Web developers to, at last, respect the standards as the basics for any Web development.

... Just so long as WebKit doesn't end up deviating from the standards for whichever reason, anyway. Y'know. (Yeah, I've been in this industry too long to remain optimistic, I know.)

To me it is interesting that the challenges all seem to be cross-disciplinary.

* How do complex phenomena emerge from simple ingredients?
* How will the energy demands of future generations be met?
* What is the physics of life?
* What happens far from equilibrium and why?
* What new discoveries await us in the nanoworld?
* How will the information technology revolution be extended?

How can dicipline specific funding mechanisms address these issues effectively? I think, generally, unless funding agencies are willing to entertain joint proposals (say biology and solid state) these questions will be hard to address. How can you be sure that proposals don't get rejected just because they seem out of field?
--
Electricity without rate increases: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-users -selling-solar.html

His expertise in economics does not help the fact that in his first paragraph he expresses the warming in per cent, something completely meaningless. He is out of his depth on this.
--
Rent solar power and fix your electric rate for up to 25 years: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-users -selling-solar.html

The NYT is also reporting improvement: http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Space-Shuttl e.html.
--
Hassle free solar power: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-users -selling-solar.html

T-Mobile ironically are the least restrictive when it comes to use VOIP over the data service. It's "discouraged" but not barred. Vodafone on the other hand bar it - even if they don't have a mechanism in place actually to detect it : http://leavingthedayjob.blogspot.com/2007/06/does- anyone-at-vodafone-understand.html

There are four logical ways that Apple could deliver a software development platform on the iPhone, and they will, eventually, deliver at least three out of four.

1. J2ME(a platform-independent, but probably sub-standard performance characteristics native client)
2. iPhone Cocoa Kit ("fully native applications, full client-server ability, etc.")
3. iPhone DashCode Widget Kit ("mini web / javascript applications, can be client-server")
4. Web 2.0 + AJAX in Safari ("fully server based web applications")

Heck, Safari is annoying people who USE Microsoft software, like me, because it is a piece of shit.

Shameless plug since I cba to repost it here:

My Experiences with Safari 3.0 for Windows.
http://yesthatsit.blogspot.com/2007/06/comment-why -safari-30-for-windows-sucks.html

Hopefully they'll get to work ASAP to improve their software, otherwise I doubt many
people except die hard Apple fanboys will use it on Windows (Why would they use Windows?)

Just take a look at those three pictures (black/white but very clear) founds on Business Edition: http://sugiero.blogspot.com/2007/06/windows-vista- dvd-who-are-those-people.html

http://sugiero.blogspot.com/2007/06/windows-vista- dvd-who-are-those-people.html

This page has a more close look to the 3 amigos and some explication about it.

Getting back to the real world.......

Studies have shown that people with Kazaa were mostly unaware (a) that they were sharing files and (b) which files on their computer they were sharing; in fact the studies found many people sharing all the files on their computer, totally oblivious to that fact. See, e.g., exhibit B to Answer in Atlantic v. DeMassi.

No, Apple is already a solid # 3. I think what they really want is to gnaw an enormous chunk out of the Internet Explorer share, so that FireFox 3 in combination with Safari, will make up a significant fraction of the market, a fraction that will pass the ACID Test. Apple doesn't want people and companies to continue making hideous broken web sites that conform to the broken, defacto standards of IE. Fake Bill Gates agrees. How much better would the internet be if 1/3 of the browsers out there were ACID compliant? About 99% better, I'd guess. How much more rapidly can web technology evolve if there is a solid base of browsers readily supporting new, open standards? Twice as fast? Ten times as fast?

That's what Fake Bill Gates said, too. Safari for Windows is a ploy to boost the share of the browser market belonging to standards-compliant web browsers. If they can get enough market share built up with FireFox 3 + Safari + iPhone + Nokia (WebKit based) then web sites conforming to randomly broken IE conventions will be compelled to modernize. The primary effect for Apple is that iPhone customers will find fewer and fewer web sites that don't work in their Safari browser. A secondary effect will be that Microsoft can no longer dominate the web with broken implementations of open standards.

of course i didn't report it to apple. i just bitched about it on /. like any good /.'er would do.

then i went and found a fix.

Bill Gates regrets that MS ignored Internet Explorer for so long that Apple wrote Safari in frustration. (See: Worst. Keynote. Ever. over at The Secret Diary of Bill Gates). He thinks that Apple is making a ploy to capture a large part of the web browser market now. It certainly is easy to imagine Microsoft buying Electronic Arts or ID Software or even two or three of the top dozen game software companies to inflict further damage on the Macintosh game market. I wonder how Apple could prevent that?

The unnamed bullying "Cork Ireland Professor" in the Wall Street Journal article must regret using ReputationDefender, who succeeded in having him named as Professor Ivan Perry at http://www.geocities.com/stuartdneilson/Reputation DefenderInc.htm http://bulliedacademics.blogspot.com/2007/01/reput ation-defender-to-consider-bullied.html http://bulliedacademics.blogspot.com/2007_01_01_ar chive.htmlhttp://www.indymedia.ie/article/81398> http://www.iol.ie/~stuartneilson/bullying/ http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=6377 57&mc=4&forum_id=2

That is impressive results for a few dollars.