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For the next harvest it looks as though central planning will lead to reduced soy and cotton in favor of corn: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/30/business/30wire- corn.html. Funny how the State of the Union Speech gets so many mixups.
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Solar: It's more Efficient! http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-users -selling-solar.html

In a way this is a pretty standard result. One can reduce the ringing in a Fourrier transform by including non-periodic sampling. What is provacative is the implication that there is some flaw in the surface plasmon interpretaion. Namely, they point to straight interference as being important rather than the constrained response of the surface electons.
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Get solar: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-users -selling-solar.html

It is the recording companies that need copyright. Throughout history, making money has never been difficult for artists. They were always patronized by friends and fans. How did Homer survive ? How did Leanardo da Vinci survive ? How did Wagner survive ? How did all these people make money ? Did anybody buy their music or literature ? No Even today, every great artist has been carefully patronized by his immediate circle of friends before he/she finds his fame. Hollywood/recording industry has nevery done a decent job of discovering and patronizing artists. They are indeed responsible for the suicides and desperation of many talented people.

Patronizing artists is a basic trait of human nature. We have been doing it ever since we existed. Sometimes, it is individuals who do it. And sometimes, it is associations (feudal lords, church, kings) who do it. In the age of the internet, the power to patronize artists is within the reach of every single person - not only the rich and the famous.

The recording/publishing industry has outsurvived its time. It needs to die. The battle between Google and Viacom is only a part of the bigger war.

Can patronizing of an art earn enough money to undertake large projects ? Can anybody make "the lord of the rings" out of donations ? If you are not convinced, please visit my blog The answer is YES . The very symbol of freedom is a sign of the promise in the democracy of art. I am talking about the statue of liberty . If it could have been built out of donations of people, nothing else is impossible.

I tend to agree but there is one hitch: The algae achieve high photosynthetic efficiency right now by using concentrated CO2 so we need such a source without it coming from fossil fuels eventually. But, for now you can recapture about 70% of the CO2 and give it a second use as a biofuel. I give some relative efficiency estimates here: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/02/photosynthesis .html.
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Get Efficient, Get Solar: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-users -selling-solar.html

I tend to agree but there is one hitch: The algae achieve high photosynthetic efficiency right now by using concentrated CO2 so we need such a source without it coming from fossil fuels eventually. But, for now you can recapture about 70% of the CO2 and give it a second use as a biofuel. I give some relative efficiency estimates here: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/02/photosynthesis .html.
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Get Efficient, Get Solar: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-users -selling-solar.html

I think he's into biodiesel. That often comes from soy not corn. You still get the leftovers as feed.
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Get Real! Get Solar: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-users -selling-solar.html

According to this blog, Azerbaijan is actually a good place to get an iPod, compared to the surrounding countries.

http://zfs-on-fuse.blogspot.com/

Yes, there are some things you cannot do due to this being a user-space implementation, but for many purposes it is (will be once it reaches 1.0) sufficient.

No - the kernel is currently distributed under GPL v2 BUT it is not entirely comprised of GPL v2 only code. 40% of the Linux kernel has the "or later versions" message intact and can be trivially relicensed.

How much of the Linux kernel is GPLv2?

GPL v2 and GPL v3 code can be compiled into a single entity without issue. What you can't do is take some GPL v2 code, rewrite part of it and call it GPL v3. Aggregation of code has never been an issue.

Cheers,
Toby Haynes

I was just writing to my Senator Mac Middleton (Maryland Senate) that losing the ritual of hand counting ballots means that we also lose a means of strengthening community ties. You don't actually have one person count all the ballots, it is done in a group with observes from all campaigns watching for errors. In the end everyone goes to bed late and is civil about the result. There is a greater level of participation and more human interaction this way.

Maryland's house passed a bill to adopt optical scanners unanimously but now the senate leadership is balking at the cost which they claim (unusually for infrastructure) is all front ended. However, the last payment for the Diebold systems in use now is due in 2014 so the leadship's objections seem a little strange since financing is how this kind of thing has been done in the past. Hopefully my Senator can clear this issue up for them since he chairs the Finance Committee and ought to see the problem with the leadership's view.
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Removing finacial risk from Solar: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-users -selling-solar.html

The request by Diebold to block Massachusetts from buying from another vendor was blocked: http://computerworld.com/action/article.do?command =viewArticleBasic&taxonomyName=hardware&articleId= 9014518&taxonomyId=12&intsrc=kc_top
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The proper use of a silicon ballot: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-users -selling-solar.html

> Just how did these baby polar bears, kola bears, blind cave fish and blind mole rats make the oceanic journey and arrive in the Middle East.

And don't forget about the ducks. http://fourdinnersblog.blogspot.com/2007/03/tyrann y-of-ducks.html

Ashley Olsen in a t-shirt and PANTIES

Maybe you should read up on the powers that the RIAA are already using. There's some legal terms in there like ex parte discovery which you might like to look up too. So.. thank you very much for insulting me with absolutely no basis as you clearly don't know what you are talking about.

Oh, and thank you moderators for modding up this asshole just because he's saying what you want to hear.

Fuckin' Slashdot.

There are plenty of states trying to get spaceports built, because a spaceport means high paying jobs.

I bet a lot of people balked at the idea of building airports at first too.

I thought about buying a GWT book, but the general documentation at http://code.google.com/webtoolkit/documentation/ made it simple to build and modify projects.

See for yourself, use the section "Creating an Application from Scratch (without Eclipse)" at http://code.google.com/webtoolkit/gettingstarted.h tml (using command line tools).

I keep the GWT "Kitchen Sink" examples source handy to copy CSS, code, etc.

GWT is very cool, especially if you need to build one large application. I must say though, if you just need little bits of AJAX, it is trivial using other toolkits (e.g., "Java + AJAX in 18 lines" http://mark-watson.blogspot.com/2007/02/java-ajax- in-18-lines.html - my example of trivially adding AJAX support to JSP forms).

Please pardon a link to my own blog: http://mark-watson.blogspot.com/search/label/econo my

but it is relevant.

While I agree with your grumblings, I also believe it is the job of a government to prop up critical infrastructure.

I disagree. I'd rather the government do trivial things that are hard to mess up, so that it can leave the critical things to the free market. The New Orleans disaster (and the aftermath) is what happens when we leave critical infrastructure to the government:

Katrina and Two Bridges

"In August, 2005, Hurricane Katrina flattened two bridges, one for cars, one for trains, that span the two miles of water separating this city of 8,000 from the town of Pass Christian. Sixteen months later, the automobile bridge remains little more than pilings. The railroad bridge is busy with trains."

"The difference: The still-wrecked bridge is owned by the U.S. government. The other is owned by railroad giant CSX Corp. of Jacksonville, Fla. Within weeks of Katrina's landfall, CSX dispatched construction crews to fix the freight line; six months later, the bridge reopened. Even a partial reopening of the road bridge, part of U.S. Highway 90, is at least five months away."

Mr. Ledford did the right thing.

For his client - which is what he is required to do.

And accomplished a great result.

This I don't see. He (Mr Ledford) did do a good thing for his client by getting the action dismissed, but he failed to get a dismissal 'with prejudice' to prevent a re-filing ofthe action, and he failed to get an acknowledgement that the RIAA had no case in the first place. He did not prevent these same actions by these same people against other defendants.

I fail to see any "great" accomplishment achieved.

On the other hand, not caving to confidentiallity demands, and making public their own defense, as well as the back-down generated, may give other lawyers a plan of attack that may help them defend THEIR clients effectively. That COULD result in a great accomplishment - we don't know yet, only time will show if it was great or not.

On that note, someone else is helping greatly by making this more widely visable - thanks, Mr. Beckerman and http://recordingindustryvspeople.blogspot.com/ your web site.

Actually, the immediate supply problem is coming as a result of some floods and reduced stockpiles. The stockpiles became large because of the conversion of weapons to fuel. This reduced mining activity. You can read more here http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/28/business/28urani um.html.

On the other hand, there is a limited suppy of ore which makes reliance on nuclear power to avoid further gloabl warming a poor proposition. Converting current power production to all nuclear runs out the recoverable fuel before the new plants end their design lifetimes so nuclear would be much more expensive than anticipated at a lower level of use.
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Get Real! Go solar: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-users -selling-solar.html

Yeah, it is like the media's obsession with "the first women to ..." or "the first black to ..."

Christ, it is 2007 get over yourself!! I am sorry but all the important "firsts" have happened already. Claiming to be "the first women to do X on a a Tuesday ... in March .. on a day ending in 3 ... in California" is not fucking important, and it doesn't make you important either. You are not Madam Curie. You lead a life of pathetic desperation and trumpeting your non-successes only highlights that.

What it really is is an attempt to simultaneously claim victim status and winner status. Of course, today being a vicitim is being a winner. DoubleThink is hard. DoubleThink is easy.
For further reference, I send you to "THE IDIOT"S GUIDE TO VICTIMHOOD - Getting It and Keeping It"

Sit down and shut-up like the rest of us.

You can use CastCluster to tag youtube and google video for download through itunes (or whatever)... *cough*Apple TV*cough*

http://code.google.com/p/castcluster/

there are some screenshots of the bookmarklet injector thingy here:

http://castcluster.blogspot.com/2007/03/after-read ing-this-article-httpwww.html

In Capitol v. Foster the RIAA moved to dismiss "with prejudice".

And this is only Tuesday.

And this is only Tuesday.

And this is only Tuesday.

And this is only Tuesday.

And this is only Tuesday.

Judging by the pollution content of the atmosphere, I believe we have arrived at the late 20th century. -Spock

Hummm... can "intelligent" life change the structure of an atmosphere? Doesn't sound so smart to me....
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Go solar: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-users -selling-solar.html

Have you seen/tried GimpShop? http://gimpshop.blogspot.com/

For windows users (especially PhotoShop people) it is a nice comprimise.

The first thing I thought of when reading this was, "how are these people making the threats any different than the people issuing fatwahs against 'enemies of Islam'? I thought of a friend blogger, Anarchangel, who's had a fatwah issued against him.

His solution? Tell 'em off and make it known he's packing pistols. Over a year later and he's fine. I'd suggest she do the same, for her own safety. And don't back down, for goodness sake! That's what they're after - terroristic behavior is done to make you back down and give ground.

Apparently there are some folks out there who really don't like Java. I mean, I dislike the damn stuff myself, but I'm not crazy about it or anything...

Education resources, Please enter http://education-resources.blogspot.com/

Investment banks, Please enter http://investment-bank.blogspot.com/ Education resources, Please enter http://education-resources.blogspot.com/

Investment banks, Please enter http://investment-bank.blogspot.com/ Education resources, Please enter http://education-resources.blogspot.com/

Stop imagining conspiracies of collusion between cutthroat competitors.

http://www.usatoday.com/life/music/news/2002-09-30 -cd-settlement_x.htm
http://www.engadget.com/2007/03/21/sony-others-nam ed-in-video-tape-price-fixing-scheme/
http://news.com.com/Samsung+to+pay+300+million+for +price+fixing/2100-1004_3-5894862.html
http://illinoisissuesblog.blogspot.com/2007/03/pri ce-fixing.html
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/ch ronicle/archive/2002/05/10/MN24643.DTL
http://www.reviewjournal.com/lvrj_home/2002/May-08 -Wed-2002/business/18699104.html
http://www.powells.com/biblio?PID=28734&cgi=produc t&isbn=0767903277

What's more, you don't have to spend long in today's business culture before it becomes *obvious* that there's enough of a critical mass of actors who believe in getting ahead by amassing control over channels and perception (rather than producing/adding value) that the emergence of price-fixing behavior is practically inevitable.

Read this before getting all self-righteous about your so-called "war on terror". There's only one organization terrorizing and killing thousands of people at the moment: the Coalition of the Willing.

To me, the biggest source of resistance from the music industry lies in two areas. One is that their investment in CD-production facilities have been fully amortized and so the marginal cost of producing CD's is trivial. Protecting those CD profit margins is at the top of their list. I would venture that the CD-duplication plants are essentially worth scrap value at this point, except for marginal revenue from CD production. The second source is the traditional system where A & R people would spend tons of money on throwing promotional parties, expense account meals, payola and so forth. These people don't want to see their gravy train derailed. I talk about this more at Music CD sales shrinking constantly.

My other thought on this issue is that since buyers can now purchase their music by the song, they are not bothering to purchase the "filler" songs that in the past made up the bulk of the content on albums/CDs. There's no doubt in my mind that just about every adult American has bought a CD after hearing a song they liked and then were disappointed with the rest of the songs included. I personally have had the misfortune of purchasing several CD's due to a popular song only to find out that the style of the hit song was nothing like the artist's core style or any other songs on the CD. That means you, Goo Goo Dolls! The conclusion I draw is that the incumbent music industry infrastructure will inevitably shrink to the point where the fixed costs can be supported by what consumers are willing to pay for music.

To me, the biggest source of resistance from the music industry lies in two areas. One is that their investment in CD-production facilities have been fully amortized and so the marginal cost of producing CD's is trivial. Protecting those CD profit margins is at the top of their list. I would venture that the CD-duplication plants are essentially worth scrap value at this point, except for marginal revenue from CD production. The second source is the traditional system where A & R people would spend tons of money on throwing promotional parties, expense account meals, payola and so forth. These people don't want to see their gravy train derailed. I talk about this more at Music CD sales shrinking constantly.

My other thought on this issue is that since buyers can now purchase their music by the song, they are not bothering to purchase the "filler" songs that in the past made up the bulk of the content on albums/CDs. There's no doubt in my mind that just about every adult American has bought a CD after hearing a song they liked and then were disappointed with the rest of the songs included. I personally have had the misfortune of purchasing several CD's due to a popular song only to find out that the style of the hit song was nothing like the artist's core style or any other songs on the CD. That means you, Goo Goo Dolls! The conclusion I draw is that the incumbent music industry infrastructure will inevitably shrink to the point where the fixed costs can be supported by what consumers are willing to pay for music.

But if you simply put a video on YouTube, then everyone can simply ignore it. In fact, most politicians are probably unaware of the existence of YouTube. How does that advance your cause?

It does not get popular thanks to millions of people spending their time hooked on YouTube and trying to sort the best videos out of the flowing mess that's being uploaded everyday.

It gets popular because of a few people who upload their videos, then spread the word around them, mailing the URLs to tens of people, who in turn post those URLs on their blogs or mail/post them around for the whole world to discover them.

So if your average politician has somebody on his PR staff doing his job, they will surely get the message, sooner or later. In France, there has already been public outrage among teachers because one of the candidates had stated in a video that they should be working more. And this is thanks to DailyMotion. Meanwhile, her main opponent, Nicolas Sarkozy, is doing his best to get a few embarrassing video off the Net, and has succeeded twice in taking down a MySpace account to shut up dissenting voices.

Cell phones already play music. Who wants to lug two bulky gadgets around when one will hack it? Cell phones will replace laptops and desktops too. The phone's biggest drawback is its dinky screen and keyboard size, but public generic (read browser) docking stations at work, home, cyber cafes, cars and 'planes will give us big screen access to the apps on our phones when we need it. See my blog http://trevors-trinkets.blogspot.com/2007/03/mobil izing-mobiles.html

Meanwhile, this was only round 1. It had a deadline of March 20th.

116 settlements is nothing.

Let's see what happens after the initial shock reaction dies down, and students start talking to each other, to their student legal services offices, to lawyers, etc. After they start reading and seeing what their legal rights are. After their ISP's and colleges get to think through what is going on here.

Round 2's letters have just gone out, to 405 students at 23 universities just added to the RIAA hit list.

I'm betting that more people in this group, having had a time to do some research, are getting their act together to resist.

Unfortunately, you're not right about that. The RIAA keeps its cases against 100% innocent people open as long as it can... that way it has subpoena power for an investigation into trying to find out who, if anyone, it should have sued in the first place. This practice was described well by the ACLU, Public Citizen, EFF, American Association of Law Libraries, and ACLU Foundation of Oklahoma in the amicus curiae brief they submitted in Capitol v. Foster.

If I were a student receiving a letter, I would do the following:
-bring to the attention of the college's administration and legal counsel's office my Open Letter to Universities Targeted by the RIAA;
-band together with other students who've also received letters, pool our financial resources, and retain a lawyer to fight the RIAA's "discovery" proceeding against the John Does. If 10 students got together, and put in $500 each, $5000 would be enough to hire a lawyer to fight the discovery motion. If the discovery motion is defeated, case closed. The RIAA won't know who they are, and they will not be sued.

I agree with your argument. I would object just as much if they had instead been hoovering up how many delegates visited prostitutes.
Oh wait, those were the prosecutors Gonzales kept on board. (Nice picture here, great shot, won't want your wife to see it though. How about staring an investigation of a democrat. See how useful investigations can be?)
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Solar power at atmospheric pressure: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-users -selling-solar.html

I know the student who was rounded up and made a phone-call to his aunt, who is fairly affluent. She in turn contacted a lawyer who filed the writ of habeas corpus on behalf of everyone who was rounded up. The judge who heard it was spitting mad about the whole thing. I'm posting anonymous because I'm not sure if he'd (or his family) would like me speaking like this. In any case, here is the NYT article about him, on an admittedly biased source (but so because of the fee NYT charges for outdated articles): http://anarchywatch.blogspot.com/2004_09_01_anarch ywatch_archive.html - note that it's almost verbatim from the NYT article, minus a letter at the beginning and ugly formatting. He's an amazing guy.

The RIAA should have to prove beyond doubt that you committed the offense before they are even allowed to contact you.

This group already exists. But remember, representation isn't free. Do your part and chip in.