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doctors...posted in the Nuremberg case are private citizens, the RNC delegates are public citizens

This is an errant distinction, for several reasons. First, the judges and legislators in the Nuremberg files were undoubtedly public servants, even if the doctors were not. Moreover, even public servants have some recognized right to privacy in public places (example of a Massachusetts motorist who illegally recorded a police officer during a traffic stop). Finally, it is not clear to me that there is such thing as a distinction between "public" and "private" citizens. Name, address, phone, spouse, etc. are available in public records and are therefore considered public domain.

Sure, the incitement to murder was illegal, but it is not my understanding that there was nothing illegal about posting the public domain information. Absent an explanation of the constructive use, though, I would still be opposed to it.

You've ignored my final question: what is the supposed constructive use, other than to harrass delegates personally? If the Nuremberg files were stripped of incitement, would you defend those?

-db

1. "
2. If I were a soldier that I would prefer a decorated war veteran as commander-in-chief"

And what are Bush's qualifications for this?

Demonstrated performance.

What are his demonstrated successes?

Afghanistan. That there hasn't been another terrorist attack on American soil.

John Kerry has killed a man with his own hands.

non sequitur.

If I was choosing someone who understood the rigors of warfare, I would choose Kerry, not Bush.

Actions thirty years ago in an individual combat situation do not necessarily translate to good performance as overall manager of a conflict. Jimmy Carter was a war hero, and he was a lousy president, especially militarily (google for "Desert One"). FDR had no military background, but he understood the threat facism posed.

John Kerry volunteered to fight in Vietnam.

Bush also volunteered for overseas service in Asia, which could have been Vietnam, while he was in the National Guard. His request was refused.

He recognized it for the bullshit we all agree on now.

What's this "we?" Do you have a tapeworm? I don't agree that it was "bullshit." The US could have won in Vietnam, but people like John Kerry made it impossible following the mess Johnson made.

He returned to America and criticized the war.

And participated in an organization that discussed assassinating US Senators. There is question as to whether he was acutally at the meeting or not. I think a further release of FBI documents could probably clear it up.

How is that seditious?

See above.

Am I committing sedition by criticizing W now?

No. There's a difference between dissent and sedition. Unless you're plotting acts against the goverment, of which I am unaware.

Do soldiers returning from war lose their right to free speech?

No, of course not. But it's still a breech of trust to make blanket statements against the people with whom you fought. Bob Kerrey was on CNN about a week ago, and said that Kerry had gone too far during his testimony before Congress.

Would it be seditious to publish photos of the flag-draped coffins arriving at Dover Air Force base?

No, but it doesn't serve any purpose to do so, other than to inflame emotion. There are many people who desperately want to re-live Vietnam. But the action would have to go on until approximately 2082 at the current casualty rate.

We certainly have found ourselves in a Brave New World.

There you go again....

Speak for yourself, please.

were put in a giant cage under a railroad trestle.

I do wonder what the impact on people's driving will be.

This is what happens when you block phone lines so Democrats can't get rides to the polls.

Are they going to claim that DDOS is freedom of speech?

Im not a huge George W. fan, I dont like his views on immigration, IMO he isn't a true reagan conservative which is what we need.

Kerry on the other hand is either a liar or a war criminal- "I personally didn't see personal atrocities in the sense I saw somebody cut a head off or something like that," Kerry said. "However, I did take part in free-fire zones, I did take part in harassment and interdiction fire, I did take part in search-and-destroy missions in which the houses of noncombatants were burned to the ground. And all of these acts, I find out later on, are contrary to the Hague and Geneva conventions and to the laws of warfare. So in that sense, anybody who took part in those, if you carry out the application of the Nuremberg Principles, is in fact guilty." - John Kerry Source Included,I hate facts pulled from no where

Did he do those things? I dont know. But either he did and he is a war criminal, or he didnt and he's a liar. It's one or the other. Living in rhode island with a fiance in MA, I see what Kerry is like up close. He doesnt do much. I just wouldnt trust him with the keys to the country.

Democrats have been the squelchers this year, not Republicans, just ask any Nader supporter. Check out this article, only one of many that I've read in the past week. Essentially, Democrats don't want Nader anywhere near a ballot. I don't get it...I'm voting Bush either way, but I still think a candidate, whose views don't coincide with Bush's, fyi, with valid points deserves to be on the ballot. He's a good guy.

Mud and police roadblocks?

To a pre-industrial man, or even more to a pre-literate man, we have already passed through at least one singularity.

I wouldn't say that. Rather I'd say that the first (and only) singularity we have passed through was the development of intelligence itself. Look, a pre-industrial person, even a pre-literate person, is capable of communicating with and even learning to understand our society well enough to live in it. Yarima Good is one example. One of the points of a Singularity (if one beyond our current intelligence is possible, a rather moot question) is that it assumes that those beyond the Singularity will be incomprehensible to those "left behind." To a "transhuman," we would seem like animals - too simple, too limited; to us, a "transhuman" would seem like a human seems to animals - perhaps inexplicable, fickle, arbitrary, with incomprehensible concerns and activities. (This may be a very, very bad thing.)

and 'Police Academy' set for eighth edition. I think they're trying to break into the top ten.

They don't dispute John Kerry served in vietnam. They don't dispute John Kerry saved a man's life. The only dispute they have is that people were not firing at John Kerry as he was saving some guys life. Oh and they don't dispute his other purple hearts either.

It would be hard to dispute that Kerry saved some guys life, since that guy is a registered Republican who has been on the campaign trail with Kerry. The guy was even with Kerry on the stage in Boston together with all the rest of the surviving crew of the boat that Kerry commanded in Vietnam. The guy's name is James Rassmann. By the way, this is not the only Republican Kerry has saved the life of :).

While John Kerry was in Vietnam, earning medals for saving his buddies' lives, Bush was illegally punching athletes in the face. Which followed his prepschool career as cheerleader. While Kerry followed his heroic Vietnam tour leading the even more heroic, and successful, Vietnam Veterans Against the War.

sickening

And in other google news you're not likely to see here on slash, the CFO of google is being investigated by the SEC. Seems his old employer, SkillSoft/SmartForce, had to restate...uh...3 and a half years of financial figures...something that earned them the loosing side of a $30M class action lawsuit.

The suit said SmartForce officers and directors, including Drummond, ''acted knowingly or in such a reckless manner as to constitute a fraud and deceit" upon shareholders. Drummond, as chief financial officer, had been responsible for SmartForce's financial reports.

Meet the new boss- same as the old boss.

I think the modern literary establishment is just as conservative, and has just as much difficulty recognizing brilliant work that does not fit into a standard literary mold. Consider some of the expressions of outrage when Stephen King won the National Book Foundation Award for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters. Tolkien's work was a fantasy for adults, written in a serious mode normally reserved for traditional mythology. Hardly surprising that many critics didn't know how to deal with it. Yet even in Tolkien's time, some people, such as WH Auden and CS Lewis recognized the work's value.

What exactly in that article are you referring to as "voter fraud"? If you're referring to the use of churches to rally voters, I suggest you read this. NewsMax is so preposterously partisan that they just completely ignore things like this.

I saw this article a couple weeks ago about a scientist who used people's brain patterns in an MRI machine to move a cursor around on a screen.

The only ones I can think of are Republicans, and we all know they never do anything illegal like that...

I know, Democrats never do anything wrong.

Those two links suck, but you get the idea. Politics is all a bunch of corrupt lawbreaking, no matter WHAT side you're on.

Mr. apears to be the correct title. Here is the Globe's head shot of Mr. Bray.

I just don't understand. Its one of the the most public,

Sure.

most newsworthy

Not really. John Kerry mathematically wrapped up the Democratic nomination by winning enough delegates over 4 months ago. He's been campaigning as the nominee since then. Voting to officially nominate him at the convention is just a formality (and an excuse to party.) They'll also be approving the official Democratic party platform, which should be a matter of "All in favor? Good. Any opposed? Done and done." It's already been written, so I would imagine any lengthy discussion about it has already happened.

and best covered events happening, and everyone's in a twist about the governement having a few cameras there as well?

Actually, there's also been a lot of discussion about trash cans, mailboxes, random bag searches, and a fairly major road closure for people north of Boston during the DNC.

BTW, I should mention I live in Massachusetts, although luckily I won't have to go anywhere near Boston during the convention. I still may be affected by the bag searches, at least, since I take the Commuter Rail to work.

Whacky, when I preview my message the text (but not the embedded link) has a space in the same place. So much for the seamless backend update...

Everybody's right. The issue is that costs and benefits are distributed unevenly.

"[XYZ] will eliminate jobs."

Answer: "[XYZ] will eliminate your jobs, but will drastically reduce our costs and benefit society as a whole."

[XYZ] is:

• OSS
• offshore outsourcing
• software sharing
• automation
• textile machinery

That's not a multiple choice question. There are winners and losers in many technological trends. The Luddites were right, in a way: they were losing their jobs, and someone else -- not them -- benefitted. It was a simple win-lose scenario, resolved in the case of the Luddites by mass hangings and other forms of repression.

There is no simple "solution" for the losers of any such trend. Innovation is usually the answer, except that it is a long term solution to a short term problem, meaning losers will continue to lose for a while. Career change is not easy: financial barriers exist where class barriers did earlier. Have you priced a college education lately? I guess the real answer is to grin and bear it.

haha, i'm no bible thumper, those are just the ones i could remember off the top of my head.

Yep... they're the ones that leap to mind when one thinks about the commandments. I suspect that this is because they're the ones that the people who are bible thumpers talk about the most. After all, they wouldn't want the commandments to seem at all unreasonable, would they? :)

Have YOU ever read the bible? Ever read leviticus? Believe me there is very little ambiguity as to what is to be done and not done.

Absolutely! I love Leviticus. It's a great book for pointing out how comically ridiculous the bible is.

Protestants and catholics shouldn't even be mentionned as they don't follow the bible, only the parts they pick and choose.

I've never met a christian who didn't follow just the parts of the bible that they pick and choose. Ever try to punish a christian for wearing clothing woven of two kinds of material? They get all huffy and offended! But it's right there in my old friend Leviticus and they just ignore it. Absolutely shameful. Yet many of them have no trouble quoting other parts of Leviticus and expecting people to care.

Do not confuse the bible with the slew of churches out there that have their own agenda.

The bible is just a book. It can't harm anyone directly (unless you hit them with it; it does tend to be rather thick). Churches, on the other hand, are often harmful.

It's pathetic how many people call themselves protestant/catholic as if it's an ethnic group and not a religion.

I suspect that to many people their religion is more important than their ethnic group. It's just a categorization and frankly I appreciate the warning. :)

online for 48 hours,
One great source--if you can trust it, contains the familiar criticism that "it lacks one vital feature of the traditional encyclopedia: accountability."

How do you respond to this comment?

Does you feel that the Wikipedia community has group standards that are comparable to, say, the group standards of people who have graduated from journalism schools?

"I think it's exactly the right price," said Michael Ross, senior vice president of corporate development at Encyclopaedia Britannica Inc. in Chicago.

Ross admits to reading and enjoying Wikipedia, and has even gotten ideas there for future Britannica articles. But the absence of traditional editorial controls makes Wikipedia unsuited to serious research. "How do they know it's accurate?" Ross asks. "People can put down anything."

A few years ago, Microsoft Corp. scoffed at free software; today the company is running scared. Britannica's Ross seems a lot more relaxed about his company's future. It's difficult to see why.

According to this story and countless others, the tapings occurred in February. The next tapings are scheduled for August.

If Ken didn't lose by the end of his season, then he could be back for those tapings. I assume the current season will continue airing even during these tapings, and while Jeopardy has been extremely good at keeping the length of the streak under wraps, I imagine if KJ shows up in August, we're going to hear about it from somebody.

<grouse>

Amen.

Every ./ user should be using bugmenot by now. And every person who whines about subscription required should be using and promoting bugmenot! I don't think there's anything wrong with the NYTimes asking for registration. I think it's wrong that you slackers are complaining about it, rather than showing them the futility of trying to gather information this way.

It's similar to people who protests against copyright laws, but aren't actively distributing copyrighted material. The only way to beat the system is to BREAK it. If you aren't being civily disobediant, you are supporting the law.

</grouse>

Finally, as regards the article itself:

But the politics surrounding open-source software do not always fit neatly into party categories. The people who work on software like the Linux operating system, the Apache Web server and others are an eclectic bunch of technologists. "You'll find gun nuts along with total lefties," Linus Torvalds, the creator of Linux, said in an e-mail message.

So the real point here is that support of open source has nothing to do with political ideology?

"It may be that the populist-versus-establishment dynamic plays out as Democrat versus Republican in this election," Mr. Weitzner said. "But the open-source movement is a populist phenomenon, enabled by the Internet, and not a partisan force in any traditional sense of politics."

So, the article says CLEARLY that open source is not a stricly republican or democrat favorite.

Eric Raymond, a leading open-source advocate, writing in his online "Jargon File," described the politics of the archetypal open-source programmer, whom he calls J. Random Hacker, as "vaguely liberal-moderate, except for the strong libertarian contingent, which rejects conventional left-right politics entirely."

And of course Libertarians are further right on the political line graph than republicans, and they are big supporters of OSS. So OSS views actually have NOTHING to do with your political party?

This story is pure and simple propoganda. The headline and opening paragraphs make it seem like republicans are against open source. It would be like saying Democrats are against gay marriage just because John Kerry is The reality is that politics, like OSS decisions are all about choice. In this case, one person chose their platform of choice. For example, This Repbulican introduced legislation in Texas which seeks to ensure that free/open-source software is given a level playing field when competing with proprietary products in state agencies There was a /. article about it a year ago, but damned if I can find it now.

That doesn't mean all republicans are pro OSS either. It just means that

OSS is prefered by everyone who gets to know it

the NYTimes is pro-Kerry

if you must read the Times, read the whole article.

Sometimes (pun intended) the reporting is good, but the headlines are rarely written by the reporters who know the story. Editors write headlines, and they write the headline that will get the most people to buy the paper. They slant them as per their personal choice and perception as to wh

"I have an issue with the film.
How does he happen to have so much good interview footage with a woman from his hometown whose son happened to die in Iraq... before he died.
Did Moore interview a ton of people and just got ahem.. lucky, or were the earlier interviews staged after the fact?"

Is that an issue with the film, or a question to the film-maker?

Google search turns up 853 US soliders killed in Iraq [but don't forget the 9436 ones we don't count ]. US news channels report 180,000 US troops in Iraq. So the problem is that Moore got "lucky" with picking an interview, given a 0.47% probablity of any given US soldier being dead by the end?

Maybe he got "luckier" by picking someone in the front-line? Maybe he did enough interviews (211?) that one was bound to end up dead. Maybe it was coincidence. Maybe it was unintentional.

The same logic can be applied to the Bush Administration's methods of convincing a majority of the American public that Sadaam Hussein was involved in 9/11. They never actually came out and _said_ it, but they used methods to make people think that there was, so much that many people today still believe it. This is the same thing, just on the other side of the road.

The Lowes theater chain has just been acquired by Bain Capital, Spectrum Equity... and the Carlyle Group, which has rather extensive ties to the Bush Family/Administration and the Bin Ladens, and plays a rather prominent role in Farenheit 9/11 if I understand correctly.

And all those same things were getting on planes before the TSA existed, but didn't seem to be enough of a problem that anyone was worried about it.

If some guy sitting next to me on a plane has a kilo of cocaine taped to his stomach, it doesn't negatively impact my security unless he opens it up and forces me to partake.

Your gun case is bogus. Obviously if the 9/11 terrorists brought no guns they must have felt that gun screening was effective enough that it would have stopped them.

If the TSA were truly effective, then maybe it would "make us secure". But it's not.

Reasonable Suspicion can also come up in a political sense. Say I'm at a protest, standing around peacably but I or someone around me is wearing black, or lookingat the cops, or looking at the sky, etc. That would probably be enough to provoke "reasaonable supicion" that I am committing a crime, have just committed a crime or am about to commit a crime since I am, after all engaged in a protest.

At this point the cops would be free to demand my name and thus compile a list of "troublemakers" or arrest me for refusing to identify myself when I have done nothing wrong. This sounds like a handy tool for the suppression of dissent and the shutting down of peaceful protests.

Before anyone argues that this wouldn't happen I would point out that a) in the 1960's the FBI ran a program called COINTELPRO In which they devoted a great deal of time to spying on peaceful civil rights protestors especially Martin Luther King who they sought to "neutralize" as a civil rights leader.

More recently New York City began denying permits to protestors during the period of the Republican National Convention (aa here, Boston Announced plans to shut down roughly 40 miles of roads in and around the city for "security reasons" See also here here also for the choice quote "What is about to happen in Boston is the continuation of the democratic process and the American way, at a time when the country is at war,"

Lastly, during the G8 summit in Georgia, the governor declared a State of Emergency before the summit even began. This executive order made it possible for U.S. Military units to operate in the city and to photograph and harass all residents. See here, here, and here to see how peaceful protestors are treated in San Francisco.

Reasonable Suspicion can also come up in a political sense. Say I'm at a protest, standing around peacably but I or someone around me is wearing black, or lookingat the cops, or looking at the sky, etc. That would probably be enough to provoke "reasaonable supicion" that I am committing a crime, have just committed a crime or am about to commit a crime since I am, after all engaged in a protest.

At this point the cops would be free to demand my name and thus compile a list of "troublemakers" or arrest me for refusing to identify myself when I have done nothing wrong. This sounds like a handy tool for the suppression of dissent and the shutting down of peaceful protests.

Before anyone argues that this wouldn't happen I would point out that a) in the 1960's the FBI ran a program called COINTELPRO In which they devoted a great deal of time to spying on peaceful civil rights protestors especially Martin Luther King who they sought to "neutralize" as a civil rights leader.

More recently New York City began denying permits to protestors during the period of the Republican National Convention (aa here, Boston Announced plans to shut down roughly 40 miles of roads in and around the city for "security reasons" See also here here also for the choice quote "What is about to happen in Boston is the continuation of the democratic process and the American way, at a time when the country is at war,"

Lastly, during the G8 summit in Georgia, the governor declared a State of Emergency before the summit even began. This executive order made it possible for U.S. Military units to operate in the city and to photograph and harass all residents. See here, here, and here to see how peaceful protestors are treated in San Francisco.

Here in Boston, the transit police are implementing a policy of randomly checking the IDs and bags of subway and train riders. They will be patrolling trains (with police dogs) starting before the upcoming Democratic National Convention in July. This is not a temporary policy change for the DNC, it is a permanent change.

And the methodology for his study is what? And he defines "fanatic" how? No disrespect meant to your friend there, but the plural of "anecdote" is not "data." Back here on earth, more credible studies paint a much bleaker picture of Iraqi sentiment towards the occupation.

ten points if you can name another company that does what halliburton does

Well, I suppose i can't...but that is largely because when Cheney took over at Haliburton, he cornered the market in certain areas (like Boots and Coots, who are controlled by Kellog and Brown, who is owned by halliburton). He then began lobbying the Clinton administration to go back to Iraq. Strangely enough, that lobbying took a precipitous tumble when he took office. They even note that no one else could implement the fire control plan on time but Halliburton, since it was Halliburton who wrote the plan. So to say that no else does what they do may be true, but it isn't the entire truth.

Like they say, its like bikinis, what they reveal is suggestive but what they hide is essential.

Evidence? You mean like this? But I guess the Boston Globe isn't on your list of approved news sources, so it doesn't count.

9/18/2003

WASHINGTON -- President Bush said yesterday that the US government has no evidence that Saddam Hussein was involved with the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, thereby undermining a claim that a majority of Americans believe is true. [...]

I recently covered the same terrain.

Dude, where's my Slashdot?

A whale identified as a regular winner, especially if it involves suspected card-counting, is not just banished from one casino. His or her picture, description, and other identifying traits are dispatched to gambling operations around the globe in a fat volume known as the Griffin Book. Every member of the MIT Blackjack Team is in it.

On a related subject there is a way to always win at every game that is without a betting limit, and were the odds means double your money (like black or red on Roulette):

• Start by betting a dollar
• if you lose, double your bet and add one dollar
• repeat until you win that damn dollar.

Do you realize that any time you try to take even 1 square mile for renewable energy, some environmentalist will sue you?

Good luck finding 10000 square miles without a brine shrimp or a yellow bellied snail darter or something that will launch a thousand lawsuits.

*raises hand* I am. And I'm not alone. Google predates googol, as was discussed in the May 9 Sunday Boston Globe, Feelin' Googly. Jan Freeman traces the life of google from 1380 to the present day. It seems more likely googol sprang from google, than other way round.

The founders of Google admit they were inspired by googol, but as words of the english language, google predates, and most likely inspired, googol. Google should sue!

*raises hand* I am. And I'm not alone. Google predates googol, as was discussed in the May 9 Sunday Boston Globe, Feelin' Googly. Jan Freeman traces the life of google from 1380 to the present day. It seems more likely googol sprang from google, than other way round.

The founders of Google admit they were inspired by googol, but as words of the english language, google predates, and most likely inspired, googol. Google should sue!

Iraqi rescue workers using a bulldozer to search the rubble said that three bodies had been recovered -- those of a small boy, a young woman and an elderly man -- and that the death toll could be as high as 14. The woman's head had been severed from her torso.

( http://www.boston.com/news/daily/08/war_leadership _strike.htm )

Rescuers said up to 14 people may have been killed in the blast, which reduced four houses to dust and blew out windows and doors of houses as far as 300 m away. The remains of a small boy, a young woman and an elderly man were pulled from the rubble.

( http://straitstimes.asia1.com.sg/iraqwar/story/0,4 395,182123,00.html )

Datum 2. If you watch politics for enough decades, you will *notice* it doesn't really matter which R or D is in the white house, or controls congress, they play good cop/ bad cop back and forth with their various constituencies, but you always get more or less the same results, more whopper government, more bogus laws, more freedoms stripped, higher taxes, more debt,more reallystrange foreign wars that you find out years later were based on lies and were scam wars,and more destruction of the backbone of the US, the productive middle class. Again, pretty obvious. When people say they voted for their idea of the lesser of two evils, they are admitting to being scared, tricked, or just didn't really care enough to NOT vote for one of those evils. Pitiful really. they didn't want to "waste their vote", even though the only 'wasted' vote is one not cast.

Of course, none of that matters now because...

#3 the elections are now officially hijacked, what little remnants of honest voting used to exist are now gone, you'll "elect" who THEY want to be in there, and THOSE guys get told what to do from international very large power and money interests. We were WARNED this would happen, and we ignored it.

#4 the only rational plan is something completely & radically different from "politics as we know it", because the old ways of doing things WILL GIVE YOU THE SAME OLD WAYS. IT ALWAYS HAPPENS. It CAN'T give you anything BUT that, it's basic math. NOTHING will change, you will always get the same results if you copy what you just did.

As was covered in this past Sunday's Boston Globe, Feelin' Googly. Jan Freeman traces the life of google from 1380 to the present day. It seems more likely googol sprang from google, than other way round.

The OED claims that google for goggle is obsolete, and refuses to commit itself on whether the variations from the dawn of the 20th century -- google-eyed (wearing glasses), googly-eyed (staring), goo-goo eyes (sappy lovers' looks) -- are revivals or new creations. But either way, they predate the googol by decades; the googly rolling peepers we associate with the "Sesame Street" crowd were familiar in America by the `20s, when the dictionary records an allusion to "movable googly eyes in hand-painted faces."

As was covered in this past Sunday's Boston Globe, Feelin' Googly. Jan Freeman traces the life of google from 1380 to the present day. It seems more likely googol sprang from google, than other way round.

The OED claims that google for goggle is obsolete, and refuses to commit itself on whether the variations from the dawn of the 20th century -- google-eyed (wearing glasses), googly-eyed (staring), goo-goo eyes (sappy lovers' looks) -- are revivals or new creations. But either way, they predate the googol by decades; the googly rolling peepers we associate with the "Sesame Street" crowd were familiar in America by the `20s, when the dictionary records an allusion to "movable googly eyes in hand-painted faces."

Just got a Vaio for our President, one of the small ones

Was it Jimmy Carter? I'd guess James Madison, but he probably doesn't use computers.

Or is your President Kim Jong Il? Would he dare to use a Japanese computer? Wow, what a thought...

If you want player run mafia games mught I suggest Sims Online ;)

It's no coincidence that this research is happening in the UK; they have a much more research-friendly policy.