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what did you learn in school today
I will go to a music shop and buy more CD's

that is the scariest bit of news i've heard lately
(mpaa has a new program that teaches children they should buy more , 'if you don't pay for it - you've stolen it' , by giving , get this, the teachers yearly free movie passes,... there's more , worth your time ..)
originally here , a couple of days ago, and making waves

This is quite interesting Ashcroft testified in the 9/11 proceedings. Interesting things to note is that "a now-famous memo from the Phoenix FBI office about possible terrorist infiltration of aviation schools did not reach decision-makers until after the attacks." As well as, FBI directory Juis Freeh stating "One is that there was a lack of resources."

Hmm...a lack of resources and information not getting to the proper people. Could it be because they are using thier resources to bust little kids? I am glad our country has thier priorities in order.

Are you sure that we are talking about the same innocent iraqi civilians?

It's difficult to keep a cease-fire with these "innocent" people. Regardless of the basis for the war, there is no reason that it should involve any stories such as that. None of those civilians are innocent.

All you had to do is ask =)
The Massachusetts Revenue Department says it plans to start suing Internet cigarette retailers in a bid to track down customers in the state who are not paying the $1.51-a-pack state excise tax.

And lest you count on your dealer standing up for its and its customers' privacy, don't forget there's another party usually involved when you buy through the internet...the shipper.
United Parcel Service, apparently breaking an earlier pledge, appears to have turned over to the Massachusetts Department of Revenue the names and addresses of Bay State customers to whom it has delivered cigarettes from out-of-state vendors. The Revenue Department, which obtained the information by using an administrative summons, is sending letters to the customers demanding they remit unpaid cigarette excise taxes plus interest and penalties. The agency also threatened civil fines and imprisonment if the taxes are not paid within 30 days.

Of course...how do they know what's in the box? Some low-tax state smoke dealer could be sending me used t.p. for all UPS knows. But in just in case, I get my fix shipped USPS, which so far has refused (at least publically) to hand over such information.

All you had to do is ask =)
The Massachusetts Revenue Department says it plans to start suing Internet cigarette retailers in a bid to track down customers in the state who are not paying the $1.51-a-pack state excise tax.

And lest you count on your dealer standing up for its and its customers' privacy, don't forget there's another party usually involved when you buy through the internet...the shipper.
United Parcel Service, apparently breaking an earlier pledge, appears to have turned over to the Massachusetts Department of Revenue the names and addresses of Bay State customers to whom it has delivered cigarettes from out-of-state vendors. The Revenue Department, which obtained the information by using an administrative summons, is sending letters to the customers demanding they remit unpaid cigarette excise taxes plus interest and penalties. The agency also threatened civil fines and imprisonment if the taxes are not paid within 30 days.

Of course...how do they know what's in the box? Some low-tax state smoke dealer could be sending me used t.p. for all UPS knows. But in just in case, I get my fix shipped USPS, which so far has refused (at least publically) to hand over such information.

But in Texas, all of the major highways have a specific kind of etching on each side of the road in the pavement. When you go over this with your tire, it creates a really loud noise that vibrates the entire car. It would wake up just about anybody, and I think it's been around for a good number of years.

Ford spokesman Mike Vaughn said they tested computerized optical scanning and a variety of warnings: a vibrating steering wheel, the sound of a car driving over rumble strips and a visual warning projected on the windshield.

Many trucks on US highways already have systems in place to gauge a driver's roadworthiness by analyzing steering and pedalwork patterns or by detecting frequent blinking and heavy eyelids. But because of drivers' fears that this data might be used against them in court, such technology has not caught on in American passenger cars, according to Tsuda [of Nissan's Technical Center North America], who designed a short-lived fatigue-monitoring car for Nissan Japan in the 1980's.

Since John Kerry was a volunteer for a war where he killed communists, Kerry can be counted on to deal strongly with communist China. Just don't count on Kerry to sacrifice hundreds of US soldiers lifes when war is unnecessary. He knows what a hell war is.

Actually, Kerry is part French.

John Forbes Kerry is not part French, but he speaks French fluently since he went to a boarding schools in Switzerland.

Apparently this hamster thought the printer was equiped with such a device

As the original poster of one of the referenced articles, I have a couple thoughts on Open Source Software in Massachusetts.

First, the cited announcement of the Open Source Trough is really encouraging news. How can one find fault with the notion of having Apache, Zope, Linux, OpenLDAP, etc. all pre-packaged and distributed around to all the different state departments? Better still, this same package will be being made available to the various cities and towns of Massachusetts, too. The fact that other states may start working with Massachusetts to embrace / expand the Trough is icing on the cake.

Second, the question that immediately comes to mind is why it took so long? If GNU (along with Linux) is viewed as one of the parents of the Open Source Movement (or even just an important element), then the Boston / Cambridge / Rt. 128 area is arguably one of the most important sites worldwide for both the past and the present of the Open Source Movement. While it's true that some of the key Massachusetts regional sites like Saugus.net and Boston.com are (and have been for quite awhile) both users and advocates of open source software, there are many more regional sites that aren't. As for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts itself, it's great that it's sticking out against Microsoft even when so many others caved, and it's great that it's finally pushing open source software to its various departments, but it's amazing to me that they're only just starting to do so now.

If the Open Source Movement is taking so long to convince the governments right in its own backyard to switch, how long is it going to take to influence governments more distant? We can only hope that this Trough will have a positive impact and really serve to introduce open source software to those who otherwise would never have even looked.

There are no tech jobs here and the real estate market is the priciest in the country. Please stay where you are.

There are no tech jobs here and the real estate market is the priciest in the country. Please stay where you are.

Does anyone actually think that this Supreme Court and it's ties to big business and partial views (Scalia and Cheney) will actually rule for the people? Then I've gor some land to sell you!

May I also ask :

Combine this with an impressive background in math and logic (though he modestly claims a "medium-strong amateur interest in math and formal systems")

What exactly this "impressive background" is as I was unable to find any information except for his litterature classes? I nice link to a complete bio would be appreciated, thank you.

Just look at Big Dig, that thing is never going to finish. It's a political blackhole for sucking up $$$.

Er, the Big Dig is very nearly complete and open to traffic now.

It's mere hours after the single WORST TERRORIST ATTACK IN RECORDED HISTORY and you people are talking about windowing systems???? MY GOD, people, GET SOME PRIORITIES!!!!!!

now this is a large ugly piece of stuff for us to live with this way linkwordhere

Is this yet another example of technologically illiterate politicians eagerly passing bills without bothering to find out what the law is going to do?

H2O mixup creates scare

ALISO VIEJO, Calif. (AP) -- City officials were so concerned about the potentially dangerous properties of dihydrogen monoxide that they considered banning foam cups after they learned the chemical was used in their production.

Then they learned, to their chagrin, that dihydrogen monoxide -- H2O for short -- is the scientific term for water.

"It's embarrassing," said City Manager David J. Norman. "We had a paralegal who did bad research."

I don't fault folks for not knowing what dihydrogen monoxide is, but for charging ahead, guns blazing, completely unburdened by the thought process. Sounds like presidential material to me.

How many companies these days are willing to drop money into some technology that may not turn a profit for many years?

Moody's Cuts Computer Associates to Junk
http://www.boston.com/business/technology/articles /2004/03/11/moodys_cuts_computer_associates_to_jun k/

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Moody's Investors Service cut Computer Associates International's debt ratings by one notch to junk on Thursday, citing government investigations into the software company's accounting, maturing debt, and intensifying competition.

Downgrades to junk often raise a company's borrowing costs substantially, because many investors are not permitted to buy
non-investment-grade rated companies' debt. But Computer Associates' stock fell less than 2 percent as investors believe the company, despite being more leveraged than its peers, has enough cash to cover its operations.

"I don't think the downgrade is meaningful to equities investors because the company is paying down debt as opposed to borrowing more money," said Janney Montgomery Scott analyst Richard Sherman.

In the next few months, this cut will likely have little impact on the company, said Philip Olesen, bond analyst at UBS in Stamford, Connecticut.

Computer Associates has no short-term debt to refinance, and had about $1.4 billion of cash and marketable securities on its balance sheet as of December, Olesen said.

The cut may hinder big acquisitions, but the company, which has not done a big deal in the past four years, is in no rush to resume launching large acquisitions. Computer Associates bought a 30-employee software company on Thursday in all cash deal for an undisclosed amount.

The downgrade came two months after CA received a formal notice from the Securities and Exchange Commission, which indicates the government may take civil enforcement actions soon.

Moody's cited uncertainty surrounding the long-running probe by the SEC and Department of Justice associated with a $1 billion accounting scandal which reflects "a history of corporate governance concerns."

The rating agency said the uncertainty could hamper the company's refinancing of upcoming maturing debt, including $825 million of senior notes maturing in April 2005.

Free cash flow of $1.1 billion in the last 12 months represents a 5 percent year-over-year decline. Moody's also said its partner, systems integrator Electronic Data Systems Corp., is suffering from a drastic fall in contract signings, which could also impact CA's future sales.

Moody's cut Computer Associates senior unsecured debt ratings to Ba1, the highest junk rating, from Baa3, the lowest investment-grade rating. It reduced the company's short-term rating to "Not-prime" from "Prime-3." The outlook is stable, as Computer Associates has a substantial amount of backlogs and improved its corporate governance, Moody's said.

Standard & Poor's Ratings Services rates the company's senior unsecured debt "BBB-plus," three notches above junk, although S&P has said it may cut the rating.

Computer Associates has about $2.3 billion of outstanding debt securities. Its notes with a 6.5 percent coupon, maturing in 2008, fell to 108.5 cents on the dollar, a decline of 1.5 cents on the dollar.

The company's shares fell 41 cents, or 1.53 percent, to $26.36 in early afternoon trading on the New York Stock Exchange.

Oops, I just checked GoogleNews and Haliburton is is back in it. Lying about Iraq contracts.

Definately no scandal.

Actually, Epic did recently say that GNU/Linux sales account for fewer than 1% of client sales, so they don't produce cross-platform clients for commercial reasons.

Rather, according to Epic's Mark Rein, "Sometimes you've just got to do the right thing ... even if it doesn't make you money." And "our feeling is we can't give them a Linux server and not give them a Linux client... that wouldn't be fair."

That was one of the largest patent verdicts ever. According to this article, not only did Kodak have to pay over $900M to Polaroid, they had to buy back all their product. In total, it cost them over $3B.

But I think the interesting case in the context of /. is cigarette sales, because states are specifically going after internet sales and not other cases such as residents driving to a neighboring state with lower taxes. In one case, Massachusetts is not only going after the resident or requesting customer details from the merchant, but they've gone so far as to go to shipping companies.

Of course UPS rolled over like a crack whore. The USPS is at least putting up a front of standing up for customers' privacy.

What, and have all that research eventually go down the drain?

Do we really need this stuff? I could see arguments for more communications hardware up there, but hypervelocity weapons and lasers?

Iran has a secret nuclear weapons program, long range missiles, calls the US "The Great Satan," and would no doubt love to nuke, in order: Israel, the US.

Libya had had a secret nuclear weapons program for years, long range missiles, a history of terrorism. It was only the example of Iraq, diplomatic pressure from the US & UK, and Libya's hope to rejoin the civilized world that is causing them to drop it. Will they reverse course? Who knows.

North Korea has had secret nuclear weapons program for years, claims to have nuclear weapons now, has long range missiles that could reach the US. This is also a country with which the US is still technically at war. It has pursued expensive nuclear weapons programs while it let as many as 2,000,000 people starve to death over the last couple of years, conducted experiments with chemical weapons on prisoners, and other atrocities.

Pakistan has developed nuclear weapons, long range missiles, and is in danger of falling under the power of Islamist extremists.

Space based defense probably won't help much against Al Qaida's nuclear weapons, if they really have them, but maybe space based surveillance capability will be useful.

Brazils leftist government has been making anti-American noises and has publicly indicated an interest in nuclear weapons. They already have some of the most advanced capabilities in South America.

There are a number of other countries pursuing nuclear weapons, some of which may be hostile to the US.

What we could put in the field now may be good enough against the wacko nations like North Korea. We've waited long enough.

all the reps should have them installed in thier own cars for a year or so

No. You're probably thinking of the stop-sign/red-light runner detector for congresspersons.

Of course, if they could adapt this breathalyzer to fit on a congressperson's chair in the assembly and passing the breath test as a prerequisite for voting on bills, maybe it could prevent absurd taxes and foolish restrictions of our liberties!

"Save a life... stop a Senator!"

Oh really? They're VERY careful, I see. They don't make mistakes.

Well, according the article, they're in the process of figuring out who owes use tax. They're starting on people who buy cigarettes over the internet with the help of shipping companies. See this additional article. The shipping companies can give them info by vendor and value of shipment. No reason they can't go after everybody, not just people buying cigarettes.

Christ, whores, grenades, and triplegic and you still can't make a decent joke. How incompetent are you? I mean, what really happened (one of the guys in his unit dropped a live grenade, Max tried to pick it up, and it blew off all his legs and concussed him into forgetting who dropped it) is funnier than that crap.

Look, I'll start off Kerry for you.

Back in '68 Kerry and Da Bean Boyz (from right to left: Tweak, Token, Jeff Goldbloom, Emo Kid, and Treebeard) were taking a break from pimpin' up and down the Cai Lon. Token had scored a box of Hershey bars from some fuck's jeep downriver, so they broke out Jeff's bamboo bong and some of the finest pipe weed in the Shire...

Actually, I believe it's Cox Cable that's making such a big fuss about ESPN. Look here

Another benefit is that more than 1 in 10 Germans gets 365 days off from work every year. What a country!

I talked to one of the runners last year about it and we were laughing over the story. we also have a lot of ham radio operators in the city who broadcast results as they're anounced; i'm wondering what's next with RFID. Will hardcore athletes just have permanent chips in their bodies? Or will they be embedded in the sneakers?

The Boston Globe has an article by Hiawatha Bray about the event entitled "Mr. Unpopular".

Since the Republicans told the Democrats that they could see their political files, I really don't think you can call it spying.

It amazes me that you say that I am "trying to manufacture a scandal where one does not exist", when it is clear that one does exist. Just the leaking of documents is a scandal of itself, the current Republican President has said himself that people who leak government information should be procecuted to the fullest extent of the law. From a follow-up article.

Senate staffers referred to a statement last November by Judiciary chairman Orrin Hatch, Republican of Utah, after he conducted his own preliminary probe. He said he was "mortified that this improper, unethical, and simply unacceptable breach of confidential files may have occurred on my watch."

Yea, right nothing wrong here !, when a leading member of your party says something like that watch out

BTW, going Bold is a tool to help people clearly understand the point, much like using paragraphs so that the words don't all jumble together, or blockquotes to separate text, or lists to enumerate points. I am glad to hear that you were "almost" converted by my use of Bold words, it's very heartening to know that my carefully planned deception nearly worked - (note: SARCASM).

BTW, the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA, as you refer to it) pertains to archieved documents over 30 year old. Even then, certain documents (or parts of document) can be kept secret, and what is sent out is a paper blizard, which can take months even if you know what to look for. It (the FOIA) certainly doesn't allow anyone to see current materials. I would however suggest that you go the the Senate to assert what you believe to be your "right" and try, we'll miss you and your wisdom for 3 to 7 years.

Major hack attack on the U.S. Senate

Is a printed out list of file names and an ip address enough evidence to award thousands or even the millions of dollars the RIAA was shooting for? Anyone who has ever used a P2P application knows for a fact there are tons of fake material floating around. In fact some sources (here,here, and here indicate RIAA represented companies were behind some of the fakes. Don't forget the people that were sued previously that had nothing illegal. The RIAA's tactics of carpet bombing is not an exact science.

This gibberish from email messages is now being recycled by a whole cadre avant-garde poets into "found" poems:

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/magazine/articles /2004/01/04/spam%5Fpoets/

http://poetry.about.com/b/a/055812.htm

Actually, aleatoric methods for generating poetry have been around since Dada (they used to literally pull words out of hats as a randomizing algorithm...). These guys are just piggybacking on the spamming hash software.

Kopin Corp
Color Kinetics
Luminus Devices

The biggest issue was the overhead of the LED for the residential aspects, whereas larger corporations may be better equipped financially to handle the current cost.

To quote this article directly

"The problem is cost. Like early computer chips, today's LEDs are still too expensive to spark mass adoption. "You could replace a 100-watt light bulb with a 60-watt LED, and get the same brightness," says John Fan, chairman and founder of Kopin Corp., a Taunton company that makes LEDs. "You'd save 40 percent on power, but it would cost about $100. We need to bring that price down.""

Personally that is far outside of my price range. At that rate I'd be replacing one household bulb each year... hmmm.. I should have my entire house finsihed when I'm about 87 years old. And by that time I'll be blind and won't need lights anyway.

This accounts for the VERY(maximum permissable grade under fed law) steep decline southbound; they had to go over one thing, under another.

Here's a story from the Globe that goes into detail about that.

Whoa there. Not quite. How the federal money spent on Big Dig was used was and probably still is being investigated and the state is suing the engineering firms involved. On a more direct note for those that realize that such a large amount of money doesn't just disappear, some outrightly state that it simply went to organized crime. While the States Attorney General's office offers a hotline to call in about it. The extra cash was NOT spent on some technological endeavor or some "save the whales" environmental concern, although that may have been added. The cash, most likely, went into some gangster's pocket. Plain and simple.

My biggest complaint -- possibly even counting the cost-overruns and delays -- is that they designed and built a world-class bridge ... without a pedestrian/bicycle lane!

I took a walking tour of the Zakim Bridge about a year ago, a few months before northbound traffic started using it, and I got a chance to ask the bridge project's chief engineer exactly that question. Apparently, I wasn't the first one to ask him that.

His first response was that the bridge was designed as a federal interstate roadway, and federal guidelines for such roads explicitly forbid any kind of pedestrian or non-motored traffic. Yes there seem to be exceptions, such as the Golden Gate Bridge, but apparently the feds don't like granting exceptions in most cases.

The second reason was an engineering problem. It's been a while and I forget the details of what he said, but basically it comes down to the fact that vehicles & pedestrians place different kinds of stress on a structure, and that in fact pedestrians bring a much greater load than vechicles do. Why? Because cars have their mass distributed more or less evenly across four pads placed very close to the corners of that overall mass; humans, on the other hand, have all of their mass bearing down on just two points, and those two points are directly underneath that mass. Moreover, people tend to move in groups, so you could end up with 20 people standing on the same surface area that one car takes up, and placing many times more stress on that area.

In other words, the bridge would have had to be completely redesigned to support any kind of pedestrian traffic. As it is now, the bridge appears from a distance to be a kind of delicate web of cables & roadway, and it seems like it should have been easy to cantilever a pedestrian lane off to the west side of the bridge (the side away from the harbor, facing towards the Museum of Science and the Charles River Basin). In reality, adding that pedestrian lane would have involved adding massive reinforcements to the support structure of the bridge, and the whole thing would have looked a lot less "delicate" than it does today. It wouldn't, in short, have been the same bridge.

The federal guidelines only made the problem more annoying, but they weren't the main reason so much as the straw that broke the idea's back. It would have been more complex, more expensive, less aesthetically appealing, and even then it might not have been able to get federal approval. As a result, they ditched the idea early on.

But yeah, it would have been nice -- from where I live in Somerville, a bike ride over the bridge into downtown Boston would definitely be the shortest & prettiest way to go. Oh well...

Really, I wish whoever submitted this had done a little better job with the story, considering how big a project this was :-)

There was no lottery on the first person through. However, Ravi Jain and Stefan Economou were the last people to drive over the old elevated central artery. Ravi Jain and Stefan Economu are self-described transportation pioneers. You can find out more about this at Ravi Jain's web site. There is also quite a bit of Big Dig coverage at Boston.com.

I am a native New Yorker who moved to Boston in 1984. I've never been to the Javits convention center in New York. I have been to several convetions at the Hines convention center in Boston. The Hines is great place to hold a convention. It's also a nice location for people from out of town because it is in the middle of the Back Bay neighborhood.

The fact is we know what the iraqis think because there is an interesting poll made by Oxford Research International that somehow hasn't seem to be too much know in US. Wonder why, had to watch CNN :-)
Some quotes:
"50 percent said the United States will hurt Iraq; only 35.3 percent said the United States would help"
"while 42.3 percent of Iraqis say the best thing that happened to them was the demise of the Saddam regime, 35.1 percent said the worst thing that happened was the war, the bombings, and the defeat of the Iraqi army."
"Asked how much confidence they had in U.S. and British forces in Iraq, 56.6 percent of respondents said they had none at all and 22.2 percent said they didn't have very much confidence, while only 7.6 percent had ``a great deal.''"

Guardian article.
Boston article

There's a model of the Flyer on the Great Dome (Pictures from the Boston Globe).

punctuation Nazi

Words, words, words. You really should've used "Zoilist" there instead of "Nazi". Much more precise.

That was one of the Akamai cofounders:

Akamai Technologies, the Cambridge Internet company whose 31-year-old cofounder Daniel Lewin died when Los Angeles-bound American Airlines Flight 11 became the first hijacked jet to slam into a World Trade Center tower, held a private service but also remembered Lewin with a tribute at its Web page.

Story

The Heritage Foundation and other conservative groups expressed concerns yesterday about the spending habits of a Republican Congress that had promised fiscal restraint. The foundation said this Congress's spending increases went well beyond outlays for defense and homeland security: Subtracting those, spending still went up 11 percent over the past two years.