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This website has been debunked for a long time. See
http://biffovision.blogspot.com/2006/06/chernobyl- diary-part-six.html
and scroll down a few paragraphs. The Kid of Speed girl used props to enhance her photos, but she didn't ride her motorcycle as claimed through the exclusion zone.

I'm originally from Michigan, thanks, and am well placed to make such an observation. There's a reason so many groups are interested in NHL ownership in the post-lockout environment, and that's because the business is actually doing quite well.

I do agree that Hartford would probably make the most attractive expansion option, given the size of the market and the hockey fan base.

The thing about the NHL is that as a business, it's more about ticket-buying butts in the seats than national TV deals. As far as attendance and ticket prices go, by and large the NHL is doing quite well. That's why RIM's Jim Balsillie is ponying up $220 million for the Nashville Predators, and there's word that expansion teams may be coming soon to Las Vegas and Kansas City.

Most commentators (particularly sports-radio hosts) associate national TV ratings with the overall health of a sports league, and in hockey, that's never been a huge factor here in the US.

The thing about the NHL is that as a business, it's more about ticket-buying butts in the seats than national TV deals. As far as attendance and ticket prices go, by and large the NHL is doing quite well. That's why RIM's Jim Balsillie is ponying up $220 million for the Nashville Predators, and there's word that expansion teams may be coming soon to Las Vegas and Kansas City.

Most commentators (particularly sports-radio hosts) associate national TV ratings with the overall health of a sports league, and in hockey, that's never been a huge factor here in the US.

I think an idea I had this morning has the potential to to fix this problem...

http://zotzbro.blogspot.com/2007/06/simple-idea-fo r-patent-reform.html

I would like your thoughts...

all the best,

drew

This idea I had this morning might help and is simple enough that it may have a chance of getting through:

http://zotzbro.blogspot.com/2007/06/simple-idea-fo r-patent-reform.html

Patents must be sought as "defensive purposes only" or regular...

Regular, gets much more careful examination, must get everything right from the break.

"defensive only" last twice as long, can't be used to bring a suit, only to defend oneself.

This situation would allow people seeking patents only to prevent them from being given to someone else and used against them to go on doing so without them posing a danger to others.

Thoughts?

all the best,

drew

Well, I had this idea this morning and can't remember seeing it before.

http://zotzbro.blogspot.com/2007/06/simple-idea-fo r-patent-reform.html

Have you seen this before? If so, links would be welcome.

all the best,

drew

Here's the explanation...

http://blogs.msdn.com/brian_jones/archive/2006/10/ 12/comparison-of-openxml-math-and-mathml.aspx

You can get MathML out of Office docx documents quite easily using XSL transforms...

http://dpcarlisle.blogspot.com/2007/04/xhtml-and-m athml-from-office-20007.html

Unfortunately, he doesn't seem to be sufficiently self-aware to spend the rest of his days agonizing over the fact that he's been such an abysmal failure.

His record, as president, matches perfectly his business record.

The thing that scares me the most is I vaguely recall him saying something like, "I want to preside over the Rapture prophesied in Revelations" (which of course requires an Armageddon), and forcing Russia to change the direction their nukes are pointing seems like a good first step down the road to Hell for all of us.

I definitely remember him saying, "I want to be a war president."

(Holy fuck, when I started this I didn't realize that I'd find so much evidence to link to. Wow.)

They could just put the games on a real network instead of Versus. Half of the Detroit market couldn't see half the playoff games the Wings were in.This works too, I'll be able to actually watch games instead of having to drive to my folks house. This won't help the NHL from continuing to alienate their less technical audience.

http://sportsbiznews.blogspot.com/2007/05/nhl-spor ts-league-that-sports-fans-cant.html

There are more dangers on the Net over which you have no control. The dangers of surfing porn sites is something inflicted on yourself, if you can't control yourself then you will need to face the consequences. But what about the junk thrown in our faces when we browse on sites when it is least expected? What about the disgusting spam e-mails, what about the nasty spyware popping up with nasty pictures all over your screen?

We need stronger laws to keep the sexual maniacs at bay. Sexual maniacs is not people who wait for you to visit their porn sites, that is a sexual maniac visiting a website owned by another sexual maniac. The real sexual maniacs is the people who pollute our mailboxes with porn spam and infect our PC's with porn promoting spyware. If we can get rid of these people we are in a situation where only people who want porn is surfing porn.

Parents need to raise their children better so that they know it is wrong and bad to visit these sites. If they want to use monitoring software or adult content filters, let them do it, but parents need to be open about this, children need to know they are being monitored. On the other hand if you really raise your children well, building trust between each other, there is no need to use software like this. The moment you consider monitoring software or censorware, then you should start working on the trust issues between you and your children.

The bottom line is: Stop arguing about how effective or ethical monitoring software and censorware is and get rid if the psychopaths ruling the Internet with porn and material harmful to children (in fact some material is so bad, not even adults should be allowed to see it). If we don't have to deal with predators like this we won't have to use any of this software in the first place. We keep shifting the boundaries allowing more and more junk to infiltrate our homes.

Let the authorities do their work, it is because of liberal people interfering and complaining all the time that we can't get proper laws implemented and enforced on the perpetrators. No wonder the world is such a crazy place these days.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but some sort of ZFS driver is in the Linux kernel

I've had lots of memory trouble lately as a symptom of chemobrain. I get chemotherapy two weeks per month and develop lots of holes in my memory of those chemo days. I also received intensive chemotherapy two years ago and have whole weeks missing from my memory.

But lately I've been getting lots of flashbacks. A scent or a sound associated with the missing memories will make them all come flooding back. And it's very powerful -- I recall all of the sights, smells, sounds, conversations, weather, even internal thoughts that I had experienced and forgotten.

I realized that this means that my ability to store memories is still good, I just have a hard time retrieving them at will. The recall is either involuntary (triggered by a related sense) or aided by a reminder from somebody else who was there.

I'd say that this is a situation where forgetting can be a very useful process. By forgetting most of my worst chemo days I can enjoy the good days in ignorant bliss. But, boy, time travels fast when 50% of your days don't register.

AlpineR

I've had lots of memory trouble lately as a symptom of chemobrain. I get chemotherapy two weeks per month and develop lots of holes in my memory of those chemo days. I also received intensive chemotherapy two years ago and have whole weeks missing from my memory.

But lately I've been getting lots of flashbacks. A scent or a sound associated with the missing memories will make them all come flooding back. And it's very powerful -- I recall all of the sights, smells, sounds, conversations, weather, even internal thoughts that I had experienced and forgotten.

I realized that this means that my ability to store memories is still good, I just have a hard time retrieving them at will. The recall is either involuntary (triggered by a related sense) or aided by a reminder from somebody else who was there.

I'd say that this is a situation where forgetting can be a very useful process. By forgetting most of my worst chemo days I can enjoy the good days in ignorant bliss. But, boy, time travels fast when 50% of your days don't register.

AlpineR

Been out for a while - I posted more on my blog. http://deancollinsblog.blogspot.com/2007/05/micros oft-photosynth.html

Isn't the notion of a "company respecting user privacy" illusory? In other words, when you give your private information away, you're not giving it to another person. You're giving it to a corporation. If the management changes, if the shareholders demand a greater quarterly return, the same company can alter their "privacy policies" and sell all the information they like. Sure, a random user can sue, but can they afford the same kind of attorneys as the company? There's an old proverb about "what you whisper in your room will be shouted from the rooftops". I don't think that changes in the internet age. Jed Check out the Ad-Supported Music Central blog: http://ad-supported-music.blogspot.com/

Having said that I would now like to relate a very recent Vista experience:

The Dell Vista OEM install crashed after a week to the point where it would not boot, and had to be "restored" to the factory image in the hidden partition, losing some Excel data in the process.
Unfortunately, I could not get to the machine to use a Knoppix CD on it, to get the files saved to a USB drive.
Dell has improved the process, when the machine leaves the factory, the "image" has everything in it, unlike the XP setup where nearly 60% of the drivers were not restored, and had to be obtained from the Dell website however you could. You got a minimal XP restoration, not what was shipped by Dell. They have, then, improved with the Vista image, that has everything you paid for, all the software, such as Office.
The point here is that Vista did crash so soon, not something that my knoppix remaster does at all. Sure, I've had an application crash, but the OS is still there, and will come back up tomorrow also. This particular Vista install did not measure up in this regard.
I can run my remaster entirely from a 2 GB Sandisk Cruzer, partitioned to include even a linux swap. I'm doing that right now. To be honest, the "host" computer needs a small HD, with MSDOS, and these files, to be able to boot the USB drive.
The small HD will only run for 30 seconds or so, then that's it for today, now we run from the USB drive.
I'm talking "older computers" here, This box is a HP Pavilion 8250, with RAM maxed out. Every old Windows 98 PC can run the USB drive's OS, need at least 128 MB of RAM and perhaps 266 MHZ or better processor.
It is cool to be able to move your OS and your own downloaded files, email, etc. to another computer so quickly, as long as those files (link above) are installed on the new computer.
Sure, I'm going back on my word and selling something here, but at least I do believe in it.

- Rapidweather

The Navy Marine Corp Intranet http://www.eds.com/sites/nmci/ is controlled by EDS, Ross Perot's old company. It is very restrictive and last I knew only allowed windows on it. Only selected applications can be installed on a computer on this network and it is tough to make the list. This could be good for some software that runs on windows to show it is ready for prime time, but it is going to be tough to get managers to go through the hassle of getting it approved. The Navy and Marine Corps have put themselves in a Microsoft box on this one I think.
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Rent Solar Power, no installation cost: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-users -selling-solar.html

Or even better ! Have an RIAA version of Grocklaw!

Maybe like the one hosting TFA?

3D Graphics: You asked for it, and we delivered. Kick around your favorite Windows-only OpenGL and DirectX games and apps in a virtual machine on your Mac, without shutting down OS X!

...Director of Unix Development, Andy Ritger; the BSDTalk podcast interviewed him and Christian Zander last year about NVidia's support for the BSDs.

Just so you know, the submitter's name is Ray Beckerman. He is a New York lawyer who has represented his share of RIAA victims and he has posted many articles updating us on the progress of these cases, including the one where he asked us to respond to the RIAA's "expert" witness who had basically admitted in a deposition to having essentially no scientific basis for his findings.

Because his clients are generally not wealthy and cannot afford thousands of dollars on experts and legal fees, he's turned to those of us in the technical community who are sick of the RIAA's bullying legal tactics, and I believe he found an Ask Slashdot helpful for once, in spite of the trolls (surely that must be a first...).

If you want to know about the cases he's involved in, he posts about those (and others) over on his blog. Or just talk to him when he shows up on Slashdot. He's a nice guy, he reads (and responds to) pretty much all replies to his posts, save maybe the trolls. And if he seems a bit curt at times, it's because the RIAA is also watching him. That's right, they've taken note of his blog and possibly other things and tried to twist the things he says and does to use against him in court. I can't see how it's even relevant (it probably isn't), but the RIAA lawyers aren't known for playing nice (or even by the rules, if you look at all the stuff they try and pull ex parte; one Texas judge got mad at them for trying to "defraud" the state of filing fees).

In other words, he's a good lawyer, and one of our few allies in the fight against the RIAA. Very, very few people can afford to represent themselves in court, even if they're innocent, and the RIAA is taking every advantage of that fact :(

I, for one, intend to do pretty much anything in my power to help him out.

There are some neat updates to the wireless networking stuff, adding pretty boxes to make the whole thing somewhat more comprehensible to your average computer user, complete with a huge "this is an open network, anyone can connect to it!" type message.

The update also adds the "information bar" to IE, a little bar that slides down when it blocks a pop-up or activex control. You have to click the bar and then click the right option on the menu to get either things to display. Dialog boxes make more sense: yes/no in activex prompts has been replaced with "install/don't install" and a "never install from [whoever]" option added. "Open/Save" becomes "Run/Save" in the dialog box for download executables. Little shields pop up all over the place to alert you if you're about to do something insecure.

Compare this to SELinux, which -- quite apart from screwing things up whenever I try to install it -- has all sorts of insecure services that no-one would use enabled by default. If you sign up to something like the Mandrake security mailing list, you get a ludicruous number of emails -- and I don't think SELinux has any real equivalent to this completely-hands-off automatic update functionality.

So which OS is more secure? Windows gives you the tools you need, while SELinux gives you just enough rope to hang yourself with.

Incidentally, Snape dies so Harry can kill Voldemort and survive

For watching unencrypted digital cable on a PC, take a look at the HDHomeRun:
http://www.silicondust.com/wiki/products/hdhomerun

Two tuners, works with MCE (2005, Vista, x86, x64), BeyondTV, SageTV, etc.
Linux - works with MythTV and VLC.
Mac support is rumored to be soon.

http://brentevans.blogspot.com/2007/03/silicondust -hdhomerun-qam-tuner-review.html
http://www.linux.com/article.pl?sid=07/04/18/15312 47

> staring at Ma Bush staring back at you from CNN.

It could be worse

I do know the Energy Star http://www.energystar.gov/index.cfm?c=about.ab_his tory has has some successes. I was doing carbon neutraility using light bulbs for a Renewable Fuels Conference held at the Aspen Institute which is managed by Marriott. I spoke with the facilities manager there who gave me the scoop on how much they have reduced their electricity use over the last few years. It was pretty impressive, about 7% in the 2005-2006 timeframe. They are also using about 8% renewable energy from PEPCO. As you can see from the link, Energy Star started in 1992 so what this administration can claim is that it did not interfere with the program and is continuing some prior policies. More recently, (under this administration) the Navy has been looking for subsantial energy savings and I think some of DOD has been following. This is not voluntary though. Organizations like the Chicago Climate Exchange are not really of this administration's making. State and municipality level efforts are largely in response to a lack of leadership at the federal level. But, it is not all that unusual for administrations to take credit for good news and shift blame for bad news regardless of what level of responsibility they have. To me, the positive thing is that some good things are happening despite the policies of the administration.
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Make your own effort: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-users -selling-solar.html

This design is German-Swiss: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passivhaus. This one is pretty amazing.
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It's easy to shift off fossil fuels: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-users -selling-solar.html

You, and others who have offered similar comments, are right that the record companies are to blame, and that it is important to name them so people will know whose music not to buy. The only reason I don't name each of the 5 or 6 plaintiffs in each case, in addition to the RIAA, is just laziness. I just don't have the time.

But it is not inaccurate to say the RIAA is bringing these cases; the RIAA is actually commencing and administering the lawsuits day-to-day. The record companies have nothing to do with it except on those rare occasions -- such as pretending for the Attorney General's sake that they do not know each other's prices in UMG v. Lindor -- where they have a strategic reason to pretend to be working independently of each other.

So when I say "RIAA" please accept it as shorthand for the litigation cartel of the "Big 4" record companies and their affiliated labels. And if you have the time to dig down into the court papers and supply the names of the culprits in any particular cases, please accept my sincere thanks for doing so.

The only crashers I get:
- java. some applets seem badly behaved, like the jboss web management console (theres a bug filed for this by someone else) (windows)
- the divx web player. crashes on resize, sometimes on ff/rew (os x)
- javascript (os x and windows)

The last one's harder to pin down, but its usually cos I had NoScript turned off at the time. With NoScript on, none of these issues get me, and the browser is rock-solid. Yes I hear you say, how can you call it rock solid if javascript can crash it...

BTW re the plugin thing, Zack Rusin has been blogging recently about how the plugin architecture could/should be changed on X to avoid badly-behaving plugins crashing the browser, with code. Interesting stuff.

http://zrusin.blogspot.com/2007/05/browser-plugins .html

Your point about China switching away from coal is an interesting one. A recent German report estimated that China will reach peak coal in about 15 years (linked here http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/05/three-cornered -ghost.html). China takes enourmous staged hits from global warming but it is not clear that their conversion is owing to recognition of that particular problem.
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Orient toward the Sun: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-users -selling-solar.html

Your point about China switching away from coal is an interesting one. A recent German report estimated that China will reach peak coal in about 15 years (linked here http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/05/three-cornered -ghost.html). China takes enourmous staged hits from global warming but it is not clear that their conversion is owing to recognition of that particular problem.
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Orient toward the Sun: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-users -selling-solar.html

Griffin did not dispute the reality of global warming, he's just not sure it is worth doing anything about it. This is strange coming from an engineer since one would think the basic reaction would be "Wow! If we can change the planet with out meaning to, what could we do if we engineered it?" but he seems to have some philosophical hangup about not interfering in how we are interfering with the planet. Here's a summary: http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/NASA_Administrat or_Michael_Griffin_Not_Sure_Global_Warming_A_Probl em_999.html.

More to the point on emissions from various countries, here is a recent Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences tabulation of emission trends. http://www.pnas.org/cgi/reprint/0700609104v1. China appears to be primarily responsible for the acceleration of emissions. With the US reducing it's emissions 1.3% between 2005 and 2006 http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18831796/, it look as though China will continue to dominate the acceleration.

While TFA has some valid points, the main thing is that industrialized countries have a better opportunity to slow or reduce emissions since, for them, efficiency improvements can pace growth while for developing nations efficiency cannot help with a growth from zero situation.
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Out pace growth: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-users -selling-solar.html

There is an interesting report linked here: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/05/three-cornered -ghost.html suggesting that the US has already seen peak energy production from coal. As you'll see I'm not completely persuaded of that, but surely you'll concede that the duration coal reserves is dependent on how quickly they are used. The coal industry is now trying to recapture the transportation market making inefficent use of the resource so your estimate might need revision.
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Get Inexhaustible: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-users -selling-solar.html

There is an interesting report linked here: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/05/three-cornered -ghost.html suggesting that the US has already seen peak energy production from coal. As you'll see I'm not completely persuaded of that, but surely you'll concede that the duration coal reserves is dependent on how quickly they are used. The coal industry is now trying to recapture the transportation market making inefficent use of the resource so your estimate might need revision.
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Get Inexhaustible: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-users -selling-solar.html

• The Real 'Inconvenient Truth'
• Climate Momentum Shifting: Prominent Scientists Reverse Belief in Man-made Global Warming - Now Skeptics
• The Deniers
• New findings indicate today's greenhouse gas levels not unusual
• Global Warming as a Religion
• I Was On the Global Warming Gravy Train (By David Evans)
• GREENIE WATCH
• (Streaming video) The Great Global Warming Swindle - Documentary Film
• 'The global-warmers were bound to attack, but why are they so feeble?'

Make sure you know about Ron Paul's links to white supremicist organizations before you go endorsing the man: http://dneiwert.blogspot.com/2007/06/man-of-hour.h tml

Here's a chance to get the blue-collar side going: http://www.citizenre.com/web/index.php?p=franchise d.
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US job growth through solar power: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-users -selling-solar.html

Their comparison on efficiency is to a small generator, so it seems likely to me that comparison to grid efficiency is less favorable even for fossil fuels, particularly if a combined cycle plant is being used. It is not that fuel cell efficiencies are scale dependent the way that ICEs/turbines are but that, when using fuels other than hydrogen, you don't really get to use the energy content of the carbon because carbon fuel cells are a big order: http://www.netl.doe.gov/publications/proceedings/0 3/dcfcw/dcfcw03.html#Conversion.
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Carbon free power: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-users -selling-solar.html

It's obvious who the missiles are intended to intimidate, the Russians, just in case they try and steal our oil. It's straight out of the NeoCons plan for Pax Americana

The plan is for the Core to be safe while us here in the Gap will take the brunt of the war on whoever. Of course one of the unintended ironies of this 'war' is that in the course of defending 'democracy' at home, America is destroy it abroad.

http://cernigsnewshog.blogspot.com/2007/05/new-neo con-cold-war.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_for_the_New_A merican_Century

http://www.thomaspmbarnett.com/projects/newrulesse t/The%20'Core'%20And%20The%20'Gap'.htm

And take a look at Murray Sargent's blog entry that has a pointer to David Carlisle's blog entry about extracting MathML from Office 2007 documents.

David Carlisle has made changes to omml2mml.xsl stylesheet supplied by Microsoft to fix the issue.

http://bhandler.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!70F64BC91 0C9F7F3!2029.entry

http://dpcarlisle.blogspot.com/2007/04/xhtml-and-m athml-from-office-20007.html

What a total pile of twaddle...

Microsoft 2007 formats are compatible with Office 2003, Office XP, and Office 2000, all you need to do is download and install this patch.

Microsoft has actually made a commendable effort in providing support for existing versions of office. The problems being referenced here have actually already been addressed. This fix comes not from Microsoft but from someone who has utilised the open framework that is Office 2007 to resolve the issue.

Office 2007 formats are basically zip files containing xml files all with schemas that have been submitted to the ECMA standards body. Combined with sdk and api inbuilt into the .NET framework Office 2007 has turned office into a very powerful development platform for document processing.

Anyone reacting as you've described I'm afraid is doing so as a result of total incompetence and complete ignorance.

I think migration to Office 2007 in the corporate world is going to be relatively swift (inspite of the support for previous versions of office offered by Microsoft). Migration to Office 2007 will occur because it is a great product that is more open and easy to extend and manipulate than any over version of office (as demonstrated in David Carlisle blog). It will also be a no brainer for any organisation using Sharepoint as it offers good integration with sharepoint.

Or the blog from which it's drawn. I don't normally go about recommending blogs, but this one's quite good!

The right to post photographs wherever you like is simply freedom of speech, if we support freedom of expression how can we limit it to specific means of communication? As usual I've argued far more here: http://alittlebitoffreedom.blogspot.com.