Slashdot Mirror

Slashdot headlines with "Phony Wikipedia" should be marked {{tautology}}. The mere fact that supposedly responsible journalists are even citing Wikipedia shows what an intellectual cancer Wikipedia is on the Internet.

Mischievous deception of news agencies has a storied history which long predates Wikipedia:

This past spring, a physicist called Alan Sokal rocked the academic world and made the editors of a major intellectual journal look pretty silly when they published his gibberish-filled parody as an authentic scholarly work. And the humor magazine Might, in an effort to mock the sensational news media, snowed readers and Hard Copy, and set news organizations running after a story that claimed former Eight Is Enough child actor Adam Rich had died. But frankly, when it comes to making fools of the experts, there is no one like Joey Skaggs.

Skaggs, a lean ex-Brooklynite who favors cowboy boots, is a surprisingly affable artist who has made it his life's work to embarrass the Establishment, and to humiliate the media in particular. "They have a big stake in making everyone believe that they have integrity," he said matter-of factly one rainy afternoon at a SoHo café, as he handed over an immense packet of news clippings dating back more than 20 years.

...

But in 1976, his work moved to a new level. Those early brushes with the press inspired him to attempt a different kind of conceptual piece, one that would make it clear that the media were far from infallible -- that reporters, in fact, were more than willing to forgo some deep digging in their shameless pursuit of an apparently hot story.

So Skaggs took out an ad in the Village Voice that read CATHOUSE FOR DOGS and announced "a savory selection of hot bitches." And he sent out press releases trumpeting this great new way to reward your dog: get him laid. Potential customers, furious animal-rights activists, and, of course, the press started calling immediately. The local ABC affiliate did a segment. Skaggs finally gave up the truth when he was subpoenaed by the state attorney general. The ABC affiliate, he says, never retracted its story.

So, yes, people can be tricked. But you'll notice most of these types of pranks (including the one on Wikipedia) are inconsequential. You might argue that's because the pranksters are well-meaning, but it does make it uniquely hard to verify the stories, since whether they did or didn't happen has no lasting effect. Did Skaggs actually take out an ad for a doggie brothel he intended to open, or did he actually just take out an ad for a doggie brothel he was pretending to indend to open? Did one person pen a poetic remark about music influencing his life, or was it somebody else? Yes, it would be better to have the absolute truth even on such trivial issues, but this is not necessarily indicative of equally faulty reporting on more weighty matters. (Those kind of lies usually take somebody higher up in the government to start them :)

Background.

"Educational Entrepreneurship" is an enormously powerful nation-wide effort to sub-contract educational administration, curriculum, and professional development services in low-income public school districts to private for-profit partners, after districts are taken over under NCLB. Mass Insight is a leader in this drive, and you can view its proposal to coordinate the takeover process for its partners in a report on its website. They are explicit, in their report, that their eventual target is to take over the entire public education system and run it, free of "bureaucratic interference."

Another powerful player is New Schools Venture Fund, which has just added former Mass. Education Board chairman Jim Peyser to its partners; The Gates Foundation is a backer, and the Harvard Business School now offers MBA classes in
Educational Entrepreneurship.

The eventual for-profit providers of services are located under several layers of interlocking "advocacy" organizations, with a conscious strategy of leveraging investment of public and private money to promote the takeover. Texas, Massachusetts, and California are epicenters of the project, where Republican governors have built Education Boards dominated by adherents. An example of a "partner" might be K-12 Inc, which went public last week with a stock offering that raised $108 million, according to the current issue of Education Week.

The rationale for forcing public schools to consume these private services is that the services are "research-based" and have proven their effectiveness. A problem is that the research is often biased or distorted by researchers with hidden agendas. In many cases, especially in Texas, it was fabricated outright [she means Reading First]. Most activity has been in math and reading, since those are the high-stakes targets of NCLB. But as concern has risen over the condition of science instruction, vast amounts of money have been appropriated to improve it, and entrepreneurial attention has now focused on science education.

As you may know [remember this was originally sent to other teachers], the federal "What Works" clearinghouse has

The rock band Piebald did this on their tour, over a year ago . I'm not sure if they went across the entire breadth of the states, but I saw them in Seattle and they are from Boston.

During that tour the singer made a lot of noise about greasenotgas.com, which has DIY directions on how to do this to your own car. Very noble and indie rock altruistic of them. I think they haven't even been shown on the O.C. yet.

• We were raped by Microsoft. Bill Gates did it personally. Introducing Gates to the president of a small company is like introducing Mike Tyson to a virgin.

After rape a little burglary is nothing!

If you doubt Microsoft was behind this, just ask yourself: Cui bono? Can't have Linux on old hardware outdoing Vista on expensive new boxes.

Next on the agenda: beating up little old ladies for violating Vista's built-in DRM!

(Note to the humor-impaired: Yes, this entire post is a joke.)

> Can you still vote?

Interesting you should bring that first. If you were in Ohio for the last presidential election, and in the /wrong/ precinct, apparently not.

Your diatribe about what happened during WW-II is almost laughable. At least there was a real war on, not one that no one has declared and will never end.

I'm glad you think everything is A-OK.

Warner and BMI confirmed for the BBC that they've been in discussions with YouTube. That's a far cry from saying they confirmed that they've agreed to distribute music videos through YouTube.

Not only this but often times things get stuck in a sort of copyright hell. I seem to recall a band called Dumptruck who had a contract with a record company which expired (now-defunct Big Time), and they made the choice to switch labels. Again rather than do the right thing and negotiate they started a bogus lawsuit, one which they never actually went to court over, and no label would pickup a band who has an active lawsuit against them. Again, this information is based on memory of the mid 80s and is subject to error, but the point is clear. Actuall info is here. There is material outthere that is presently is copyright hell, where the rights are being disputed or the studios would rather let sit collect dust in the vault out of spite than release.

Not to speak of the fact that if youtube releases all music videos, there would be no reason to buy crappy 80s compilations.

The France thing is elaborated on in the Boston Phoenix issue this week - kind of interesting.
http://www.bostonphoenix.com/boston/news_features/ this_just_in/documents/05096826.asp

Mythbusters!

They've already busted a myth regarding a "Static Cannon", which is described below at this page:

Although, the PVC pipe they tested, looked more like 8 feet, than 8 inch, it seems like no way you can build up a charge that might ignite your clothes like that, unless you've spilled flammable chemicals like acetone (nailpolish remover) or gasoline. A friend of me who attended a welding class, once told about a classmate who used oxygen to blow away some dust from his fleece jacket, and some time later ignited a smoke, which in order ignited his jacket which even many minutes later, contained high amounts of oxygen. It might be true, but I wouldn't believe it completely unless it was confirmed by Mythbusters, of course.

So unless there where flammable liquids spilled right besides where the static spark hit, I find it highly unlikely, that a static spark would ignite the carpet and those clothes. Think about it - how much larger is the possibility that someone sooner or later drops a burning cigarette on a similar carpet and/or clothes? We'd hear about it, if there were extremely flammable clothes or carpets like this, and those products/materials would very quickly be pulled off the market. It even counts against this story how elaborate it is. One spark and perhaps one little flame or a burn mark? Perhaps yes, but not a melting trail of plastic and/or fire on that carpet, and even in his car, without him detecting what was going on a little sooner!
Did those sparks btw jump all the way from his jacket, and into the floor, or via his pants (ouch), or what?

I say this myth is completely BUSTED!

Amendment IX,

The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

coupled with IV,

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

V,

No person shall ... be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law ...

and XIV,

... No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law ...

add up to a Right To Privacy. Between them, what the Framers were saying was that if the state wants to invade your personal space, they had better be able to show a pretty compelling reason.

Oh, and when the Feds institute that system of internal passports that some folks are worried about in connection with the new driver's license law, remember that the Constitution guarantees no explicit Right To Travel either.

Well actually, it was later discovered that there was in fact an attempt to purchase uranium:

http://www.bostonphoenix.com/boston/news_features/ this_just_in/documents/03979276.asp

Also, David Kay, the head of the hunt for WMD's in Iraq believed they were moved to Syria:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/ne ws/2004/01/25/wirq25.xml

Today, both are acceptable and both are found in dictionaries. There is no appreciable difference in meaning. Whether you are a cardsharp or a card shark, you are still a shifty character.

No, as I said "card shark" sometimes means a good player and only sometimes has shify connotations (as opposed to cardsharp).

See, e.g, Webster's:
shark:
1 : a rapacious crafty person who preys upon others through usury, extortion, or trickery
2 : one who excels greatly especially in a particular field

The second definition is commonly used (as is the first), for instance:
http://www.bostonphoenix.com/archive/features/98/0 8/06/CARD_SHARK.html
http://www.news.harvard.edu/gazette/2005/06.02/03- liu.html
etc

Dear misguided Christians,

Take your fucking religion and shove it up your fucking ass. Quit telling us what the fuck we can and can't do. If you want to live by your misguided beliefs fine, don't fucking tell the rest of us that your misguided crap is the law.

You can turn your fucking box off.
Turn off your TV.
Or maybe we should start putting YOUR lights out!

The Next Great Indecency Threat ---
The Religious Right Already Have Broadcasters On The Run.

Coming Up:
Cable, Satellite, AND THE INTERNET.

No offense meant, but to have a lot of respect for Kline, you'd have to have a lot of ignorance for Kline's actions as AG. I say this as a fellow Kansan.

To those never entering the shitlist, what made a difference was the constant pounding of head against the beaurocratic [sic] brickwall, the humiliation of "sorry, you're not allowed to enter that flight", "you're not authorized by proper authorities", always have to submit to some greater authority. Always hearing "you have nothing to fear if you have done nothing wrong". To most, that's something they could live with. And what it would take to change it had very little to do with leadership, it had to do with people getting off their asses.

Yours is one of the most informative comments I've read on Slashdot.

To anyone who doubts just how much we've become like the totalitarian societies we once despised, just compare what Dovregubbens Hall (583591) writes to your last visit to an airport or a Federal building.

We've learned to fear the screener for the Transportation Security agency, because if he doesn't like your attitude, he can keep you off your flight -- or from flying ever again. A year ago that screener was a janitor or a Microsoft Certification dropout. Today he can seriously disrupt your life if he wants to -- and for the first time in his life, he know he holds that kind of power.

We've got the government "training" long-haul truck drivers -- guys who routinely drive twelve or eighteen hours straight to meet deadlines --, and bus drivers, and rest stop workers to identify "suspicious" people and report them to a secret toll-free phone number. To think that this volunteer force can't be used to suppress dissent -- "Just keep a count of pro-choice bumper stickers" --is to be willfully blind to a century or more of police misconduct.

Even guys with cameras aren't safe from being scrutinized and added to government databases, because cops today wave the bloody shirt of 9-11 and invoke "patriotism" as a fig-leaf to justify anything they care do to -- reasonable or not, legal or not.

Protesters, exercising their First Amendment rights, are already being arrested solely because of the content of their speech. Whether they are eventually convicted or just harassed by cops and city inspectors, the message is clear: dissent will cost you at least a day in jail, enough money to hire a lawyer (or rely on a possibly incompetent court-appointed lawyer), and maybe a little roughing up by the cops.

Every war attracts a few war profiteers along with the honest, self-sacrificing patriots. Every increase in police powers gives police new tools to fight crime, but at the same time gives that minority of cops who are bullies, busybodies, and braggarts interested in throwing their weight around more occasion to lord that power over the innocent citizens.

The thing to fear is not another 9-11. It's not even Stalinist knocks on the door at midnight. What we need to fear is more subtle: a steady erosion of American liberties, of what it means to be an American.

I always believed that, as an American, I had a right to protest my government. It said so right in the Constitution. But now I'm reluctant not only to protest, but to even view protests, giving that several nurses at a conference in Washington D.C. were arrested along with protesters, just for being nearby.

I always believed that, as a citizen in a democracy, the police were not to be feared -- and weren't any "better" than me. Now we have the Hiibel decisi

but according to the account I read, even he didn't get a chance to read the whole thing.

I didn't hear that part - sounds a little unbelievable to me. Do you have a link for that? Sensenbrenner (that's the committee chair) seems like a sharp enough guy that he wouldn't let a bill out of committee unless he had read it, especially since he'd already bounced it once. That sounds like a serious procedural violation. (Not that I don't think the administration would try something like that. For a good rundown of what they've been up to, this article gives an extensive overview.)

current evidence shows that there were no intelligence failures.

Key word being "current." Back then, it was a safe assumption to make that we'd been blindsided - I remember seeing an anonymous quote from an NSA employee saying "I want to know how the fuck we didn't see this coming." Anyway, the act was partly designed to increase intelligence-gathering capability and allow cooperation between agencies. There's nothing wrong with that in principle; it's all in the implementation.

Anyway, I think the PATRIOT ACT is the least of our worries. It's unpleasant in parts, and the way it was passed was pretty pathetic, but the actions the administration has taken independently are much more disturbing. At least the PATRIOT ACT is subject to sunset provisions and congressional oversight, and the proposed followup bill never made it to the floor. The most important question now is whether the SCOTUS will show some balls with these enemy combatant cases. (And on an intellectual level, I'm really curious whether Scalia will a) vote on principle, b) abandon his strict constructionism entirely and side with the administration, or c) find some contorted way to justify siding with Bush based on his strict constructionism. I'm guessing (b), but I'm optimistic that at at least five and probably six justices will do the right thing.)

True, Bush did win by the numbers. But it is also almost a given that if everyone had actually voted for who they wanted to Gore would have won.
So the people weather you go by the electoral collage or by the nation vote; the people wanted Gore. Bush just won because of mistakes.
http://www.bostonphoenix.com/boston/news_features/ daily/documents/02004358.htm

Well, to be fair, there's a bit more to that. Hell would likely *enoy* people knowing where he cribbed from.

There's not much about it on the main MTG page because it's a past show, but two good reviews appeared in the Cambridge Chronicle and the Boston Phoenix.

[It was worth nearly all the work just to hear C3PO (Nori Pritchard) get into a rant and call R2D2 an "upstaging little bitch". That wasn't onstage, sadly, 'twas a 'family friendly' show, like the original movie]

Monty

The ratio will vary from paper to paper, but I think that consistently you can assume that advertisements are paying for the bulk of the cost for any media.

In some arrangements, advertisement is high enough that the cost for the product is actually free -- radio is free, broadcast television is free, basic cable channels are "free", etc. In other cases, the audience pays for some or all of the cost that goes into production -- subscription fees for newspapers & magazines, the additional cost of premium cable channels, etc. In still others, the publication takes little or not commercial sponsorship, and the audience has to bear the cost explicitly -- think "Consumer Reports", public broadcasting, and technical publications like scientific journals (aren't "Science" & "Nature" each in the ballpark of $1000/year?).

If you look at things in terms of "following the money", then most media are not there to deliver a product (information, entertainment) to the audience, but to sell that audience to their sponsored advertisers. The only [partial] exception I can think of is public broadcasting, where the audience is the sponsor, and is begged for money several times a year. But really, that's not an exception -- that's just making the dynamic that's always there more visible to the general public.

This dynamic sheds a lot of light on the advertiser/subscriber ratio that goes into the costs of any media, including newspapers. The idea is that a non-paying audience is worth some value N, but a paying audience must be more valuable, because the act of paying a subscription fee demonstrates that they actively want this product. That's why, of the three biggest newspapers here in Boston, the Globe & Herald are both fifty cents per day, but the Phoenix has experimented for the past few years with not charging anything for a copy. This has probably increased their readership while impacting their income; if they can sell that larger audience to their advertisers, then maybe they come out ahead anyway -- I don't know. But for the other two papers, I'm sure that both (and every other fee-charging paper in the country/world) are using their paid subscription population as a bargaining chip with advertisers.

So putting all this together, web publications are just another point on the spectrum. Since very few sites have managed to do well with a subscription model (WSJ.com and Salon being maybe the most prominent attempts), most are leaning towards the advertising end of the spectrum -- just like radio, TV, and the "Boston Phoenix". This is a model that has been used for many decades now, so it's not like the web is just starting to "catch up" with traditional newspapers. Indeed, since most newspapers have seen steadily declining readership for the past 15 years or so, its not necessarily that the web is learning the newspaper world's tricks, but that one is coming up while the other is coming down. Maybe.

More optimistically, I prefer to think that the web is starting to mature & hit its stride, and certain areas are beginning to become self-sufficient & even profitable. Not all, obviously, but we're moving beyond nonsense like Pets.com :-)

(Note that, even though I happen to work for a newspaper's site, I don't speak for my employer. Moreover, I'm not giving away anything that I didn't learn in media studies 101 in college -- the economics of mass media is a well studied & analyzed subject. Just to be clear about that

How do you know what the US needs to spend on defense? Do you work for the NSC or Pentagon? No? I thought not. Your ignorance is appalling and you best serve society by remaining quiet than by spouting your ill-informed rhetoric.

Not so ignorant. What freedoms are the military protecting right now if you believe everyone who has something negative to say should just be quiet? Some people just amaze me.

Huge militaries are relative to huge security needs. Norway, Canada and Belgium have relatively little threatening them and very little international interests. The US has huge interests and is the single most threatened nation in the world (in terms of power). Apples and Oranges.

My point wasn't to stop all military and defense actions. Just to budget it better. I hardly think the $396,100,000,000.00 spent on military (52% of the total budget) is really as nessesary as the government would like you to believe.

Nothing is ever perfect, but what you are proposing is just as short sighted as the parent post. I don't agree with everything the Bush administration is doing, but I at least realize they have access to all the information and I do not.

You have almost all of the information at your finger tips. And blindly following the administration because "they have access to all the information and I do not" is such a sad thing to hear in this day and age I don't really want to respond to it.

Think about this: for this war, Bush and Blair privately met with all the other leaders of major UN countries. They provided reasoning and proof for it, yet only Australia (whose Free-Trade agreement has since then been accelerated) decided to support the movement. Either the US actually doesn't have any proof whatsoever, or, ummm... well I guess that was actually it. Only after Bush declared war did some smaller countries hop aboard (all without actually dedicating troops or resources to the mission, hmmm...).

I've been a member of Salon for quite a while and did what I could to support them. I would be sorry to see it go. I think it's funny that people think Salon is "left". I mean, if it is left, what is the Boston Phoenix or the Village Voice?

I also would be sorry, and more pertinently to Slashdot, because I think their design for semi-automated publishing was kind of neat, and it is one of the last examples of a house doing their own development work I know of. That is a dwindling group.

While I cannot address the questions of rent for their offices -- which if true, I agree seem excessive -- I think "the end of the dot-com bubble" means more than the crashing of way-out business models, excessive spending, and such. I mean, when MoTown was starting up, they were excessive in parties, liquor, etc

To me, these companies are failing as much because of deflation in the information technology industry as anything else. That deflation is caused:

• partly because of low interest rates in the economy
• partly because the hardware component of the industry is now commodity-based and people have an expectation that prices should drop, for those and telecommunications costs
• partly because programming labor is cheaper and more widely available
• partly because non-IT businesses are fiercely cutting costs, including moving to shrinkwrap solutions for their IT needs, even if they are not a good match
• partly because the Internet marketplace has long had expectations that things there should be free or available at modest charges.

The last effect is a subtle, I think. Since good news coverage and similar entertainment is now available on the Internet and cheaply, any premium or brick-and-mortar company has to deal with not so much with e-business competition but with the expectation that new can be had for much less. Why subscribe to the New York Times paper when most of what's good about it is available online for zip?

I think whatever happens to Salon is part of a trend, because what we earn for doing information technology is diminishing and will continue to diminish.

Blaming rape victims for their own recklessness.

Hiring private investigators to track down incriminating evidence.

Suing victims for slander.

Suing minor victims' parents for failing to watch over them.

Intimidating witnesses.

Concealing evidence.

Stonewalling court proceedings.

Denying knowledge of abuse -- unless the victims can prove otherwise.

In the high-stakes arena of personal-injury lawsuits, bare-knuckle tactics like these are commonplace. But it's the last thing you might expect from the world's largest and most powerful spiritual institution. For nearly two decades, however, the Roman Catholic Church has used these very methods in its defense in lawsuits alleging sexual abuse by members of the clergy.

God forbid the Cyber-Terrorists should get their hands on this! Good thing we have the far-reaching grasp of the Patriot Act and the new Cyberterrorism Act ready to defend us.

I think . . .

Please stop spreading this stupid rumor.

It's almost as bad as the Nostradamous non-sense.

It was started by an article written by "Robert Scheer", and it's factually wrong.

Did the White House give the Taliban $43 million?

> Eli Lake, who covers the State Department for UPI and who wrote an accurate report about the $43 million grant last May, calls the notion that the White House gave the money to the Taliban as a reward for their anti-drug efforts " just absurd." He notes that one of the Bush administration's first actions upon taking office was to shut down the Taliban's mission in New York, in compliance with UN sanctions.

I feel that in large part it comes down to a matter of what Noam Chomsky said in an interview with the Boston Phoenix in 1999... Here's a quote:

"Handing over the digital spectrum, or for that matter the Internet, to private power -- that's a huge blow against democracy. In the case of the Internet, it's a particularly dramatic blow against democracy because this was paid for by the public. How undemocratic can you get? Here is a major instrument, developed by the public -- first part of the Pentagon, and then universities and the National Science Foundation -- handed over in some manner that nobody knows to private corporations who want to turn it into an instrument of control. They want to turn it into a home shopping center. You know, where it will help them convert you into the kind of person they want. Namely, someone who is passive, apathetic, sees their life only as a matter of having more commodities that they don't want. Why give them a powerful weapon to turn you into that kind of a person? Especially after you paid for the weapon? Well, that's what's happening right in front of our eyes."

From: "Who Runs America? Forty Minutes With Noam Chomsky" Interview by Adrian Zupp for the Boston Phoenix: Weekly Wire

--Mark VII

ahem I ALREADY DID

Contrary to what a lot of people think, the US Constitution provides no explicit right to privacy. The few existing privacy laws are an amalgam of the prohibitions on "unreasonable search and seizure" and "self-incrimination."

The Boston Phoenix had a very interesting article recently on how to deal with this. For instance, sexual harassment could be considered an "invasion of privacy" instead of a "hostile work environment" (aren't they all?).

Its the same death knell given to any number of movements..

I'm still puzzling over the "post-modern" to.. It may be my primitive interpretation but "modern" to me seems to me to relate to the present so post-modern would be some where in the future.

I think the major difference would be not in the movement its self, but its audience, it has moved from a niche genre ( loosly defined.. ) to a vehicle in which to market gizmos to the masses ( washed or not ). So i think it could be called cyber yuppie instead of being defined in pre/post terms. The punk is gone.the mechanics remain the same.

its now almost as much a status thing in the 90's to have a palm pilot as it was to have a bmw in the 80's.

If you haven't figured it out already, here's a working link.

For those who want to read the article, he re it is.