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Thats just silly - the US has lots of interest in Canadian tar sands - Dick Cheney has visited them several times within the past year...

As for how much oil is extractable from them, thats the subject of a lot of debate - the process involves a lot of natural gas and north american natural gas production is in decline. There are some plans to start building nuclear power plants in Alberta just to run the extraction process...

Even the most optimistic projections of Canadian government don't show more than 3 million barrels per day being produced from tar sands by 2025 - current consumption is over 80 million barrels - even a small depletion rate for regular oil will result in a massive deficit in 20 years time (part of which will be made up for by coal to liquids plants).

http://dailyreckoning.com/Featured/King021406.html

http://peakenergy.blogspot.com/

They're not buying the technology, they're buying the people! People, especially talented people, are always in short supply, and buying the company is a good way to get them (as long as you're planning to be nice to them, that is).

http://saccharomyces.blogspot.com/

You may think it's silly, but there's a new sucker born every day.

The irony is that TPM *is* the backdoor into the system. fudwatcher

I've been bored recently, but for some reason I'm too lazy to take the effort to do anything entertaining, like getting my PS2 plugged into my TV again.
I'm really pathetic.

Aaron Seigo, a KDE developer who just returned from the Southern California Linux Expo, was told by presenters at the Google booth that the default desktop for the version of GNU/Linux used internally by Google employees is KDE.

Why can't banks use a similar system to the "mother's maiden name" to prove who they are? You tell them three pieces of information, and then when they call you can ask for any one of them (They may need to prompt you first).

Why can't banks use a similar system to the "mother's maiden name" to prove who they are? You tell them three pieces of information, and then when they call you can ask for any one of them (They may need to prompt you first).

An year ago, I did that already.

When I worked for a mobile game company, I read the Jamdat S-1 (an SEC filing that goes with an IPO) because it was one of the few sources of hard numbers about the mobile game industry. I blogged my comments here: http://jamdats1blog.blogspot.com/

It comes down to that mobile games are a niche, but they are a niche in a stupendously huge market. Big enough that the first-tier mobile game publishers are on track to become as big as some console and PC game publishers.

Nobody has broken out of the niche yet, but it is likely that the products that do break out will come from a leading mobile publisher. EA was only in part buying Jamdat's performance in the niche. They also bought a better chance of breaking out, and of breaking out more explosively through Jamdat's well-developed channels.

The mobile channel is unique. While it can be frustrating making a buying descision on, if you are lucky, a couple screen-shots and a terse description, it is also a very low-friction channel. You carry the shop in your pocket, and you already have a billing relationship with the shop owner. In Verizon's mobile games channel, subscription pricing is common, and lucrative. Jamdat has global channel presence where EA previously had none in the mobile "walled garden."

Here is a page of peaceful, middle-class English protesters who have been beaten bloody.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/gall/0,8542,1305225,00.h tml

Here is an article documenting their continued persecution, due to their daring to speak out against police brutality:

http://64.233.179.104/search?q=cache:ccgGv54ab-wJ: www.horseandhound.co.uk/competitionnews/article.ph p%3Faid%3D62246+Hunt+supporters+who+made+complaint s+against+the+police+officers'+behaviour+in+Parlia ment+Square+last+September+are+now+being+arrested+ for+public+order+offences&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=1

Another example of police terrorizing their critics:

http://prisonerjw7874.blogspot.com/

Despite all the jokes about "McChimpyBushHitler", it is interesting to see how US critics of the US State get rich and famous, while critics of the British State get their heads bashed in...

Hopefully something will change before it is too late.

There is another method to get round the HDCP trap, which is to buy one of the Spatz boxes - there's no way that it could be embargoed - the point of the device is to enable legacy devices to receive HDCP output. That is not illegal, or unethical.

If you follow the link to the DVI MAGIC page, you get a 404 page. It also doesn't appear to be listed among their current HD offerings, or at least not by that name. Gone also is the DVIHDCP box referenced by engadget's source.

Keep in mind that that article was written on July 15th, 2005. They may have gotten their equivalent of a cease and desist order by now.

I don't think evolution has a real answer. I have also posted a piece on an earlier story (Scientists Finally Figure Out How Bees Fly) on my blog, just to illustrate the vast amount of problems in all their theories.

We do not even know how to stop the common cold which we have under our microscopes daily - but we are eager to explain things like how a star formed even though we have never observed this event from start to finish.

http://4j.blogspot.com/2006/02/is-this-christianit y.html

Here is an example of "misinformation".

Fear is the mind killer

The do not protect you,
just justify what they do.

How much does revenue does this tax raise for the BBC?

How much does the gov't spend to administer/collect this tax and find/prosecute offenders?

I think you will find the second amount to be enourmous. By funding the BBC out of general tax revenue, the second amount will be reduced to zero.

Why should only TV viewers have to pay? The BBC has lots of other media (web/radio/shortwave) that gets a free ride.

Frankly, this is also a good time to ask why the BBC has become such a left-wing kooky organization.

Is there still a need for public funding of the BBC?

Very nice.

Now you have your liberflame off your chest perhaps you will take the trouble to read the article or if thats too much work my essay which is slightly shorter.

The issue here is not government introducing regulations to impose a two tier Internet, the issue is whether the government will allow large carriers to leverage their defacto local monopolies to extract rents from third parties in return for access to their subscribers.

'Kenny boy' Lay and his friends at Enron managed to defraud California out of about $15 billion when they persuaded Cheney to tell the regulators to look the other way. The carriers probably thought they could get the same deal.

As I point out in the essay I do not think it is exactly likely that Congress are going to support the carriers over Google. Legislation is mostly written by 20 year old staffers who spend most of their research time using Google. Thy can be expected to explain to the legislators that allowing this sort of thing would not be a smart move.

Two tier pricing could well make sense if the settlements bought a lot of extra bandwidth for a short time. It would be nice to have home videoconferencing that is actually worth something. But what the carriers are demanding at this point is money for what their subscribers are already paying for which ain't going to fly.

They sure did... his blog is gone with the wind...

Ah...plan9. I liked trying the live CD, it was fun, I got some gnarly screenshots out of it. It has a lot going for it. But seriously, the learning curve on this sucker is vertical. I have a hard enough time convincing people that they *can* *too* draw a straight line in Gimp, I run screaming from the scenario where I'm explaining the whole plan9 system!!!

The requested URL was not found on this server. Please visit the Blogger homepage or the Blogger Knowledge Base for further assistance.

So much for saying "No" to the Eecutable Internet. "They" must have gotten him.

... Old Grandma Hardcore.

I wonder if this is him...?

Wow. Lot's to digest there.

I'll just touch on a few points though.

Soulless? Well, depending on what we mean by that word, it may or may not be true.

I think you pretty much hit my actual meaning in that paragraph. In his book "Freedom Evolves", Daniel Dennet suggests an interesting difference between the religious concept of a soul (which he calls a "supernatural" soul) and a more secular concept of a soul - a "natural" soul. While his book is a highly technical philosophical discussion, most of which I don't think I got just right, I believe I understood a good deal of what I made it through, and I've been unable to honestly disagree with any of it. So, I do believe in the concept of a soul, and I do believe I have one, but it's no different in my mind from the "soul" of a bluebird, or squirrel, or cow. This doesn't make me guilty to be a meateater, either (seeing myself as part of nature, this is part of my natural existence), it does, however, makes me respect the origin of my food a little more. You might like that book, but be warned, it's not light reading.

Being open minded toward vastly different viewpoints is very brave and commendable in my opinion. :) [...]

It may be brave, but it certainly is not easy. The pitfalls you mention are probably the more minor ones in my view. The biggest (and most feared one in my opinion) is that of hypocrisy. It's a very fine line to be sure. What makes it more difficult to do, is an intolerance for intolerance itself. I have the hardest time discussing any issue of faith with people who do nothing but quote the Bible as "proof".

In my opinion spiritual life consists not in asking oneself "What should I think?" but in asking oneself "Why do I think this way?" Any organization that tells you what, when and how you should think is a disgrace. Any organization that helps the person to explore their own true condition by means of experience and reason is commendable, in my opinion. Almost everyone I know is overtly or subtly pushing this or that view onto others. Heck, even I am not immune to that weakness and may be pushing some view onto you. :) So it's good to take it with a grain of salt, but I believe it's even better to take one's own views with a grain of salt. A think a person who takes their own views with some degree if skepticism is not prone to willy nilly taking up the views of others as his/her own, because once a view is one's own, it'd be immediately questioned. So a person, who instead of questioning others questions oneself, is the most immune-to-bullshit person, in my opinion.

Now, this paragraph really hit the nail on the head for me. I had a long drawn out discussion with a cousin of mine on the importance of questioning one's own beliefs about a year and a half ago, and more recently I published a "thought out of the blue" that elaborated on it a little. I think you'll find we strongly agree on this point. Many of the other posts there demonstrate the difficulty with openmindedness as well, and probably highlight my failure in avoiding them.

And going back to China, I think you might be overcomplicating things a little. My point is that having some tool to promote (even surreptitiously, given the oppressive government) the exchange of ideas is the primary value to the Chinese people. Not just the flow of ideas from outside China, as would have been provided by "Voice of America" in the former USSR, but the flow of ideas within China. As I mentioned in one of my previous responses, it's about helping them realize the "dissidents" outnumber the comformists, or those that support the government, and helping them decide what they belive as members of the Chinese culture. They'll realize this much sooner with a restricted internet, than without any internet.

Without that service, a person m

Ub Iwerks was the superior technician, but Disney was hell-bent on taking animation beyond novelty acts like Flip The Frog. Fiddlesticks and the Colorful Mediocrity of Ub Iwerks

There is a reason why a younger generation of story-tellers like Brad Bird look to Disney, to Frank Thomas, Ollie Johnson, The Nine Old Men who took the art of animation where Iwerks could not go.

That was a joke son, a joke I say.

So you're a Foghorn Leghorn (WB character) fan? In that case, look at what Disney "appropriated" from WB.

It's true that corporate secrets and other sensitive information could be compromised through this program, however I doubt any organization that needs that kind of guarantee would actually choose to adopt it (if they do somebody probably needs to be fired). The primary audience seems to me to be institutions like schools, such as San Jose City College, which is the first to try the program according to the Google Blog, who can now offer their students a superior service without any cost.

as being expelled from school because you printed a newsletter, tho'.

As for the content of the post, it essentially sets up a series of straw men - a couple of these things come up again and again and again from people who've read a few "think tank" websites on paleoclimate one afternoon and immediately reckon they know more than any of those stupid, corrupt climate scientists who've been studying these things for a lifetime..

Ther last interglacial (i.e. 125 thousand years ago) was warmer (by 1 to 2 degrees C) than the Holocene (i.e. the last few thousand years)? No shit - we've known that for, oh thirty years now? Depending on who/what you believe, sea level at the same time was at least two metres higher and as much as seven metres higher than today, as it happens - I suppose the residents of New Orleans aand Bangladesh would all say "well, cool if it's happened before then no worries, eh!" The critical question is, if the ca. five thousand years that it took for climate to warm by 6 degrees C or so to those temperatures from the immediately preceding glaciation means that it was considered an exteremly rapid warming (which it certainly is, compared to pretty much anything else we can see in the record), then what are we to make of the current global warming rate of a bit over 1 degree C per century, i.e. ten times faster?

Antarctic ice increasing a bit? Well again, duh! Antarctic ice mass again has long been known to respond to changes in precipitation, itself strongly influenced by temperature. Some parts of the Antarctic ice cap were actually smaller during the last global ice age than they are today, since going from (for instance) minus 20 to minus 40 degrees C doesn't make ice any more frozen than it already was but it sure makes less snow fall when you're 2000 km from the nearest open water. So are the same geniuses going to tell us that less Antarctic ice during a global ice age actually means the earth must have been warmer at the time? If you want to see something that responds more closely to temperature change, check out Arctic sea ice extent, or global average alpine glacier mass (clue - both shrinking like crazy recently).

Lastly, sea level rising by 10-20 cm every 100 years over the last 6000 years? That is just plain bollocks, which is presumably why there is no citation for it. Again, Wikipedia have an excellent page on this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_level_rise, with referenced figures showing all available research (there is a lot) on the issue, and this (well-referenced) quote: "The sea level has risen more than 120 m since the peak of the last ice age about 18000 years ago. However, only 2-4 m of this increase has occurred in the last 6000 years. From 3000 years ago to the 19th century the long term change was roughly 0.5 meters at a rate of 0.1 to 0.2 mm/yr."

The biggest problem with this is that the whole exchange is antiquated: there are no more trade-secrets that can be kept for periods of time longer than 10 or 20 years. Society is trading in a lot and getting essentially nothing in return, since the invention would eventually be disclosed anyway.

BTW -- about that period of time during which the discovery hasn't yet been reverse-engineered or independently discovered -- that time period forms a natural monopoly over the invention, and the length is a natural consequence of how ground-breaking, difficult, or genius the discovery actually is. No patent office, no arbitrary examiner's decision, no arbitrary and uniform 20-year period is needed. Trade secret lets the discoverer of an idea or technology have a limited monopoly without government intervention, oversight, or artificial grant of monopoly power.

See the comments under this post for more discussion.

You do realize it can take anywhere up to 2 years or more to have a patent approved?

The patent office is doing you a favor by taking so long.

I agree it stinks, in fact I have been working on a part 4 to my essay where I make the same point.

The problem is how to get from 'this stinks' as Plankton would say,to solving the problem without creating ways to game the patent system entirely.

One solution would be to have a requirement that patent holders have to monitor major standards efforts in their field of invention, but how do you arrive at a legal definition of a standards effort? How do you avoid the problem of someone creating a bogus standards organization for the sole purpose of creating an exclusion to a patent?

OK I know this particular problem would not make slashdotters upset. However it would likely allow the patent trolls to stop the law being changed.

I am not interested in just debating the problem ad nauseam on slashdot, I want to get it fixed. To do that we need to create a wedge between the patent trolls and the major corporate holders of IP.

If you look at what free software people want and where the interests of the big computer corporations lie there is a huge overlap, probably 95%. The problem is that a small number of ultras insist on all or nothing.

Bell labs was a patent factory, they invested billions a year on research. Bell labs is an example of how the system is meant to work. Spend a non trivial amount on research, get a limited term monopoly in the invention in return.

There are many other patent holders getting royalties from MPEG4, why not AT&T if they have a valid claim?

I am not opposed to software patents in general, just the junk ones, which means at least 98%. The real problem is that the USPTO does not follow the rules it is supposed to. See my blog essay.

One of the problems with the current patent system is that there are so many junk patents being circulated by the trolls that the claims of genuine inventors are devalued.

A hoax website, bit on by a Kos diary, now gets passed into /. and we get a +5.

God I LOVE the internet.

The original blog is pretty funny.

http://muttawa.blogspot.com/

But nothing matches the pure comedy value of the gullible.

Here are are images from October

http://egyptiansandmonkey.blogspot.com/2006/02/boy cott-egypt.html

An Egyptian newspaper published these cartoons in October last year without a peep.

What?

Do you even know what the Crusades were about? Do you realize that even back them Muslims were trying to take over the world and kill Christians? Granted, at the time, the Christians killed back. And, for the record, I'm not that kind of Christian.

Christianity hasn't been without it's problems, but you don't see me out screaming and blowing things up when someone puts a cross in a bottle of urine and calls it art. Yeah, I think it's stupid and offensive, but in a free country I have to accepted that I will be offended if I am to accept that I am free...

[FTM]

Gee, thanks. You know, I'm a Christian and I am non-violent and don't think the world can, would, or should be run over by my faith. It's a theological thing, but thanks for judging me.

[FTM]

http://skender.be/supportdenmark/MohammedDrawings. jpg
http://www.antibuerokratieteam.de/wp-content/moham med_alle.jpg
http://www.stefan-herre.de/mohammed_karikaturen.jp g
http://www.welt.de/z/photos/index.php/item/karikat uren/
http://www.di2.nu/files/Muhammed_Cartoons_Jyllands _Posten.html
http://www.faithfreedom.org/Gallery/28.htm
http://www.michellemalkin.com/archives/004413.htm
http://face-of-muhammed.blogspot.com/
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/b/b0/Jyll ands-Posten_Muhammad_drawings.jpg

And some more links (page in Swedish):
http://www.flashback.se/showarticle.php?id=58

We Begin:

published a number of cartoons depicting Mohammed in ways that can only have been meant to express contempt.

The cartoons themselves are here:

http://pajamasmedia.com/2006/02/mohammed_cartoons_ published_in.php

They are the lamest bits of "contempt" westerners have ever seen.

Compare these images to the image "Piss Christ" (a crucifix in a jar of the "artists" urine)

http://instapundit.com/archives/028348.php

and then recall the non-issue it became.

To a moslem depicting the profet is totally forbidden, apparently, which the newspaper in question certainly knew;

Completely, proveably false!

Links to Pictures of the Big Mo thru history:

http://instapundit.com/archives/028427.php

also see:

http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.ht ml?id=110007934

So, to sum it up: Denmark is festering in xenophobia and inflamed rhetoric; a newspaper decides to try to cash in on stirring up the shit and behave a spoiled brat; instead of being mature and apologize, the West is spiteful. Whatever one may think of the moslem world, this is simply not an honourable way to behave.

First of all, we should all be making a careful distinction between Islamo-Facists and "moslems".

I personally am an escapee from communist eastern europe, so I understand quite well that not all eastern europeans were communists.

Second of all, some of the cartoons created by the I-F are here:

http://www.tomgrossmedia.com/ArabCartoons.htm

The thoughtfull reader can compare and contrast them with the cartoons of the Big Mo and decide who is stirring shit.

The reaction of the Islamo-Facist element fits in perfectly with this cartoon

http://thestudyofrevenge.blogspot.com/2006/01/isla m-is-poopy_21.html

Note: Cartoon is being pathetically censored by blogger.

• 1.) Reduce/remove oil dependance
• 2.) When Step 1 fails due to the control of the government by Lobbyists, extend the concept of Clean Elections to all governmental processes, both electoral and after they are in office, to legislate against corporate influence and return the government back to the control of the people.
• 3.) Try step 1 again, and offer government support to innovators. (possibly subsidy and X-Prize style?) Developing new technologies stimulates the economy via innovation, and subsidizing energy innovation is a more viable solution to fighting over a non-renewable natural resource controlled by (enter name here)
• 4.) PROFI- er, PROSPER! (We could even sell the renewable energy solutions back to the oil-controlling countries who aren't all that industrial, in an ironic twist...)

Muslims are upset over the simple act of depicting their prophet...

Some muslims are, some aren't. The Koran only specificly forbids 'idols', and this is interpreted in many different ways. What really caused the riots were the extra images that the Danish imams used to inflame Islamic uproar, the original 12 had already been printed in Egypt some months before, and caused no outrage at the time.

http://egyptiansandmonkey.blogspot.com/2006/02/boy cott-egypt.html

Apparently the cartoons were published in Egypt back in October. The guy who posted that is in Egypt and has a pretty solid grasp on how the local dictatorships are using the cartoons to their advantage. Pretty much if you see a riot in Syria and Iran it's state sponsered.

I find it sad that shallow and crude anti-Muslim comments are getting moderated "insightful" in this discussion: that in itself indicates what a mess we are in.

The Danish journalist (Flemming Rose) who commissioned these cartoons knew exactly what he was doing: he has more or less stated as much. There was a calculated intention to provoke, and it was successful.

Why should he have wanted to do this? It's been pointed out that Flemming Rose is an associate of, and has written approving about Daniel Pipes, the notorious Zionist neo-conservative figure who is behind the organisation http://www.campus-watch.org/, which is attempting a McCarthy-type witch-hunt against people in US universities who don't share their views.

At a time when the United States is planning yet another war against a Muslim nation, the images of Muslims rioting over this matter have acted as powerful propaganda for that war.

See also: http://xymphora.blogspot.com/2006/02/danish-cartoo n-conspiracy.html and http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,,1 703501,00.html for a description of how the same newspaper rejected cartoons lampooning Jesus Christ.

" Now while the arab islamic population was going crazy over the outrage created by their government's media over these cartoons, their governments was benifitting from its people's distraction. The Saudi royal Family used it to distract its people from the outrage over the Hajj stampede. The Jordanian government used it to distract its people from their new minimum wage law demanded by their labor unions. The Syrian Government used it to create secterian division in Lebanon and change the focus on the Harriri murder. And, finally, the Egyptian government is using it to distract us while it passes through the new Judiciary reforms and Social Security Bill- which will cut over $300 million dollars in benefits to some of Egypt's poorest families. But, see, the people were not paying attention, because they were too busy defending the prophet by sending out millions of e-mails and SMS-messages, boycotting cheese and Lego and burning Butter and the danish Flag. Let's not even mention the idiots who went the usual route of "It's a jewish conspiracy", spouted the stupid argument about the Holocaust, or went on a diatribe with the old favorite "There is an organized campaign-headed by the west and the jews- to attack and discredit Islam, and we have to defend it". They proved, once again, that the arab world is retarded and deserves no better than its leaders."

http://egyptiansandmonkey.blogspot.com/2006/02/boy cott-egypt.html

No, the same cartoons in Arab new papers months ago without a hint of protests and death threats.

Hypocrisy? Yes.

You find out the cartoons have already been circulating widely in the muslims world during height of ramadan in Oct 05. Next, you find out a Danish Immam invader added more cartoons to the bunch. Then you find out the Danes will head the security council in the near future. What makes it even more funny, is your own western papers ( not knowing the cartoons were circulated in the islamic world without riots ) then turn around and censor the cartoons to the american public -- out of multicultural sensitivity.

-----

The Ranting Sandmonkey, an Egyptian blog, illustrates just how bogus the MSM refusal to discuss the Danish cartoons "out of respect for Islam" is:

Freedom For Egyptians reminded me why the cartoons looked so familiar to me: they were actually printed in the Egyptian Newspaper Al Fagr back in October 2005. I repeat, October 2005, during Ramadan, for all the egyptian muslim population to see, and not a single squeak of outrage was present. Al Fagr isn't a small newspaper either: it has respectable circulation in Egypt, since it's helmed by known Journalist Adel Hamoudah. Looking around in my house I found the copy of the newspaper, so I decided to scan it and present to all of you to see.

------

'The past as prologue'

http://fallbackbelmont.blogspot.com/

The cartoons were published in Egypt, and there was no problem:

http://egyptiansandmonkey.blogspot.com/2006/02/boy cott-egypt.html

Anyone heard about this? Looks like there is a double-standard.

Actually, you, me, and everyone else on this planet has what are termed Fair Use Rights . Some examples of Fair Use Rights are that you can quote brief sections of a copyrighted work for the purposes of literary review or criticism.
Conceptually, Google makes two copies of the book in order to offer it for searching - an entire copy of the book stored on its servers, and snippets of that copy offered for public consumption.

I contend that neither copy meets requirements for fair use. In the first copy, Google is making an entire copy of the work. The copy deprives the publisher of a sale (Google didn't buy the book), copies the entire work, and intends to use that copy for commercial purposes (offering snippets from it on a public web site). There's no review or criticism at that stage, because the public doesn't see it...it's just being downloaded into a database.

The second copy (from the database to the end-user) doesn't feel like Fair Use either. I don't see any literary review or criticism attached to Google Book Search...just sentences from the book offered without question, on-demand, at the request of searchers. It's not a matter of offering the same snippet to everybody, as a typical fair-use case would; instead, they propose to offer separate snippets based on what the user asks for. Again, this service is inherently commercial - its goal is solely to get people to visit Google so they can benefit from the increased exposure and hopefully sell an ad or two.

This is probably the reason why she (and many other people and institutions) believe that Google is in the right on this issue, and why the publishers are trying to use allegations issued in the press, rather than the courts to fight against it.

If the publishers had a reasonably strong case in court for this issue, they probably wouldn't be trying their "ham-handed appeals" in their press releases and in the popular press.

The publishers are using the court to fight this, and Google is also fighting this in the popular press - or did you miss Google's own press page and Eric Schmidt's "'ham-handed appeal'" in the Wall Street Journal?

Unfortunately, Google is proposing to do something which would be of great benefit to all of mankind, and it might have a negative impact on some publisher's profits, and they are fighting claw, tooth, and nail to avoid that!

I'm both an author and a publisher, but I welcome this change -- I'd love to see my work reach wider audiences and I'm not too worried about losing a few percentage points of profits. In fact, it might be that if more people could easily find my work on Google, more of them would go out of their way to purchase it!

I actually agree with you. I think the publishers that are fighting this are short-sighted, just like I think the recording industry should find a way to co-exist with peer-to-peer networks. I don't think anybody is denying that the program itself would be a benefit for publishers and authors.

What I am personally worried about is requiring publishers to opt-out, not opt-in, to Book Search. I think the legal situation is clear, and Google needs to do the "non-evil" thing and ask for permission before including these books. You'd give permission, right? If I was in the publishing business, I would too, and I can't believe we're the only two people with an ounce of common sense.

Amazon.com has been running Search Inside the Book far longer than Google, and nobody complains because they're doing the right thing and asking the publishers to participate, not forcing them to opt-out. Google's opt-out program is especially egregious, because not only do they want publishers to opt-out, they want them to opt-out every title, and won't accept a blanket opt-out from the company.

That's wrong, and I think Google should be ashamed of themselves. The way to get people to like you is not to force yourself on them. It's not the way the Old Google did things.

Con: Having done so, he immediately hitched a ride on the short bus and drove it to Fruitcake City.

I have a solution: Let's declare the new Stallman 2.0, and say we only support the Stallman 1.0. Stallman 1.0 was the guy who was going to give us the whole, working GNU system - the most complete version of which (HURD kernel plus GNU tools with as little of anything else as possible) I got to download and review as a live CD. And damn incomplete it is, still, when the entire rest of the FOSS world has marched ahead. Then he bitches because his GNU software doesn't get enough credit, when everybody else is putting working systems together out of the bits and pieces they can grab out of the GNU system. Sorry, but as far as I'm concerned, RMS is the person who wrote a damn good editor and compiler and a couple of usable licenses. The rest is schitzophrenia.

There's other ways to make money in Second Life: Be a Second Life hooker! Make a Second Life porno magazine!