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http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/03/19/60minute s/main607356.shtml

"Open-source software--available widely through the Internet--has the potential to provide our nation's enemies or potential enemies with computing capabilities that are restricted by U.S. law," [...] "A computer expert in North Korea who has a number of personal computers can download the latest version of Linux...and in short order build a virtual supercomputer."

The people who read this letter include people who think like this.

That agreement was with the U.N. Are we the U.N.?

Attempt to assassinate Bush Sr.

Was that a response to us attempting to assassinate Saddam? Or, Kaddafi, or Castro, or [insert long list of U.S. successful and unsuccessful attempts to assassinate foreign leaders from South America to Asia]?

Giving aid and comfort to terrorists

Who? The U.S.? If it were that, then why not invade North Korea, or Iran, or Pakistan, or Saudi Arabia...etc? The answer is below.

Refusing to cooperate with the UN.

Again, are we the U.N.?

Being a rat-bastard tyrant

Finally, the honest answer. But, only partially honest. His daddy was made a fool by Saddam, and everyone knew that if Shrub got into office, the Iraqis would pay. Shrub's Secretary of the Treasury reports that plans for invading Iraq were in the making only within a few days of Shrub's theft of the election. If it were simply a matter of being a rat-bastard, there are plenty of others further along the road to bastard-hood: North Korea's loony leader for one. The problem is, no oil there, so no business drive to get there. Afghanistan proved a perfect, inarguable cause. Not for the one you think. True, Bin-Loonie was there, but that was simply the inescapable argument for invasion. If we could tame that country (only an asteroid dropped from space could achieve that), we could finally lay that oil pipeline we've been planning on for the past 30 years. Unfortunately, CNN and FauxNews channels don't cover this little bit of history, but we've been in a chess game with the Russians and Chinese for this bit of inhospitable land for quite a while. By the way, this is also why we're "friends" with Pakistan.

Simple failture of Washington/Baghdad diplomacy

No. Simple failure of Shrub Administration/U.N. diplomacy. His daddy was better at it, but this numbskull couldn't control his trigger finger. His only half-way feasable argument (even Powell had to excise some of the outright lies from the deceptive rhetoric he was forced to spew to the U.N.'s collective face) of Weapons of Mass Destruction have vanished into thin air, leaving a unpleasant odor that the rest of the world blames us for.

'they're trying to get nukes'

Again, why not invade Saudi Arabia, Iran, North Korea, or Pakistan? They're the biggest terrorist threats outside of Afghanistan. They've been attempting to get nuclear long before Iraq, and have actual terrorist ties. The reason is this was a personal vendetta and business agenda, and he used to this country to fulfill it. If he should force Iraq's oil wells within U.S. corporate controls in the process of taking revenge, all the better. This monkey has to go come November.

You're right in that Shrub didn't attack Iraq simply for Weapons of Mass Destruction. That's just what he used to sell it.

The truth is, the rest of the world was behind us going into Afghanistan because that's where t

abstinence: 100%

Riiiiight, that's working so very well.

Except that it's not a criminal justice issue, it's an issue for sports leagues to decide.

Anything involving discrimination, including against the physically disabled, is fair game for the Federal Gvt. (And if the TV show assumes a Bush victory this year and extrapolates from there, they might feature a more controlling legal system than we have today)

Besides, the US Senate has already injected itself into baseball's discussion on performance-enhancement...

From a quick Google search:
CBS news
Associated Press
An Australian site

Is that enough, or do you want more sources?

Both sides are throwing out complaint websites. I'd really like to see Dish succeed at this - the local cable company just told us it was raising rates $3/mo. Good to see Dish is standing up for the extortion Viacom is doing.

Dish has two links to complain: Complain to CBS here with a web form
E-mail them directly here


Wonder if we could slashdot CBS's web form? (grin)

DirecTV rules!

Their content is _arguably_ better (especially when it comes to HD), but the company is no better than the RIAA. Remember the smart card lawsuits? Why on earth would you willingly do business with a company like this?

Do you know what's the biggest cause of cancer in humans due to chemicals? Salt.

You forgot to mention the most dangerous chemical of all, dihydro monoxide. Why worry about mercury, when you have all that H2O around ...

No, the biggest environmental threat to humans isn't either radiation or chemicals, it's ignorance, stupidity, and paranoia.

It is a good thing then that we have Bush in the White House, to fight for more arsenic and lead in the water and more mercury in the air. These stupid environmental laws are just in the way when fighting against ignorance and stupidity.

What if I don't want to give another corporation information about what I'm trading... [And several
other, equally valid points]

I want to expand on this, just a bit, to highlight the problem here.

It seems highly unlikely that the RIAA would allow the end-user to download their database of "song signatures" or hashes or whatever implements this, so that the end-user could filter songs locally, deleting unauthorized songs on the honor system. After all, if the RIAA trusted its customers -- and if the customers were trustworthy -- but that's all water over the dam, isn't it?

So clearly this means uploading either the whole song, or some derived signature, to RIAA, every time you want to trade the file. This means uploading not just music, but any traded file.

And this introduces a chilling effect on free speech. Because the files I might be trading -- or the samizdat that secret Falun Gong supporter Won Ma might be sending to his fellow Chinese dissidents -- might not belong to the RIAA, but might invite government scrutiny for being unpopular dissent.

Certainly, knowing that everything that was traded, from bootleg Pete Seeger protest songs to homemade iMovies juxtaposing images of George Bush and chimpanzees to recordings of parody songs about John Ashcroft's resemblance to Darth Vader, was reported to a central repository -- the RIAA copyright detecting server -- could make that repository an irresistible target of monitoring by unscrupulous government agencies interested in tracking dissent -- whether those agencies are in Beijing or Washington D.C.

Would a government employee or contractor, worried about maintaining a security clearance, feel as free to engage in lawful and even patriotic dissent if he was worried his bosses might be able to monitor the his trading, from his home, excerpts from the documentary Guns & Mothers to which the he had added his own commentary defending his Second Amendment rights? Of course he'd worry -- and thus be discouraged from exercising his constitutional rights under not only the Second but the First Amendment as well!

Might a closeted homosexual worry that trading documentary films about Mattachine Society founder Harry Hay could reveal his sexual orientation and make him subject to blackmail?

Might Christians living in a Muslim theocracy fear persecution for trading Bibles or Christian devotional music?

Having any central server aware of all file trading gives whoever controls -- or can subvert the security of -- that central server a far too broad window into the demographics, politics, proclivities, and beliefs of anyone trading files. While this would be a boon to marketeers, governments, and anyone else whose goal is manipulation and control, it must be anathema to anyone who values privacy and liberty -- from left wing "hippie" to right wing "gun-nut", from closted homosexual to crypto-Christian.

Whatever your politics, whether you trade files or not -- and, no, I don't --, this is something you must oppose, for it threatens the liberty of all of us.

mechanisms in place, like the electoral college to prevent such tyranny of the majority out of the executive branch.
Really? Is that why the executive branch is growing in power at the expense of the Judicial and Legislative branches?

I have two issues with this statement. First, I think the executive's growth in power is only at the expense of the legislature. If anything, I'd say the judiciary's power has increased as well. Second, the checks and balances still work, but are skewed by the effect of something the founding fathers couldn't imagine -- TV. TV == the bully pulpit, which gives the president the ability (and de facto authority) to set the national agenda.

And as for declaring war, the president does not have that power (although congress essentially tried to give it to him for Iraq -- and it was debated). He does, however, have the authority as Commander in Chief to order the military into action. The legislature then basically has a veto, in the form of funding, over permitting the military action. And as for not declaring war, even though it was not formally done last year, it was in the original Gulf War.

Its time for ISP's to take responsiblity for the shit that they host. Didint Gates say that spam will be dead by 2006? ( http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/01/24/tech/mai n595595.shtml). Time to start breaking down doors Bill. I guess he could just use a backdoor in to the spammers running windows.

It's fantastically disingenous to consider only the marginal cost of media to a piece of software's price tag, and to ignore the economic reality that developing a piece of software the scale of what MS delivers requires a huge up-front R&D investement.

Get it through your head: when you buy Windows and Office, you're primarily NOT paying for programmers' salaries, nor even for the advertising or shrinkwrap. You're mostly paying for market inefficiency. That is the "economic reality... of what MS delivers."

The only people that will catch on to Speed Feed are ephedra addicts.

If your cell phone provider is Cingular or T-Mobile, then your location services are being provided by TruePosition. Since Cingular is now going to gobble up AT&T Wireless, there will probably be a huge growth in TruePosition services in the US as a result. There is some information available online but the location system is quite proprietary and not simply GPS. Since the location is actually determined from equipment in a telecom rack somewhere, don't expect to be able to hack your phone much to make use of this.

and replace it with the illusion of security

And just how many people have died on american soil from terrorism since the patriot act was passed?

Planes aren't being hijacked because we stop the dreaded nail clipper from coming on board.

The point isn't to stop nail clippers, its to stop people like this guy. If that means I have to give up my nail clippers, I really dont see the problem.

That's what shoplifters use right now to defeat the currently used radio tags. 60 minutes did a segment on professional shoplifters last Sunday. It's a $10 billion a year industry.

Who told the criminals about Faraday cages? Did they learn it on the Internet? We need to remove this dangerous physics information from places kids and robbers can get it!

I would infer he means a trillion dollars cumulatively over many years. It's still a lot of money.

here's a CBS news story that quotes Rumsfeld as saying, "According to some estimates we cannot track $2.3 trillion in transactions."

Apparently you got the memo. The neo-con line is now "we had bad intelligence, blame the CIA," not "there could still be WMDs."

I know that's inflammatory, but there really was no evidence of WMDs at the time we chose to go to war. The UN inspectors were not out to protect Saddam. He (Saddam) was a sadist prick and everyone knows it. Including the UN inspectors. But they had no evidence and, like you trust Bush et al., I trust the UN inspectors. We can debate who had the motivation to cook the books (Bush or the UN) but I'm tired of that song. The point remains that people involved were screaming at Bush "there's no WMDS there." Yet, he went ahead with war anyway.

Sure, even Bill O'Reilly is eating his own words. There are no WMDs. There were none. Not everyone thought there were WMDs. That leaves number 3.

From the article:
"only four of 10 movies earn enough at the box office to recoup"(the money)"spent on producing and marketing a film"

Look, they're saying about box office. Now from the 60 minutes about internet movie "piracy":

"Fifty percent of the revenues for any movie come out of home video"

The quote from the first article gives the impression that most movies are not profitable.
Does anyone also think they were manipulating numbers there?

Sunset provisions, are a good idea, but I see no reason to exempt quote-unquote "basic issues" such as murder or theft. It's not like, when the law against murder is up for renewal, there are going to be a lot of people saying "hey, I don't think there's nearly enough murder going on these days". On the other hand, allowing an exemption clause would just open the gates for lawmakers to describe their pet projects as "basic issues".

On the surface this seems like a pretty good idea but my only concern is that it is almost impossible for a bill (especially one with a lot of support) to get through congress without multiple pork barell and/or partisan riders attached. So I am afraid that this would result in congress critters attaching pet projects that would never pass on their own to "basic issues" renewal bills (i.e. The Murder Recriminalization and Federal Funding for a new strip club in Rep. Douchebag's district act) and if you think is is unrealisitic look no further than the energy bill considered by the senate last year which included a provision for federal funding of a Hooter's in Louisiana

And it has been used to stealth market junk long before it was used to sell candidates: push polling

You must be an admitted pedophile too, just like Patrick Naughton (inventor of Java).

Good point! I don't use Java because it was invented by an admitted pedophile (he plead guilty).

You make an interesting point. If you look at the cats that were cloned you will see that even their *physical* traits are different!

Once you bring that up, it's only a few steps away from `1984' ... and then you've gotta ask yourself, if government really wanted to stop the 'Net, could we actually do anything about it? Look at China, the FBI's Carnivore, etc.

Personally, I think that if anything's going to save the Internet from being taken over, it's the money. There's a enough money in the Internet - both as investments, in the form of intercontinental cables, etc. as well as in Internet companies to swing any government's opinion on the matter. Of course, if it comes down to a difference between money and principle, guess which most governments will take :)?

Witnesses credibility has been under debate for years. Witnesses can be influenced by suggestive questioning, their own backgrounds and prejudices, or the amount of sleep they have had on a given day. And how do you quantify or qualify that kind of tampering? Witness testimony has been used for millenia. No evidence is foolproof. The problem is 1. to know what kind of tampering can be done and be aware and wary of it and 2. to get the trust of the public in that type of evidence so it can be admitted, falible or not.

They clubbed people who were obviously tourists who had just finished shopping and were trying to find the train. They clubbed everyone after charging at them and pressing them into a narrow walkway under scaffolding. The cops clubbed people because they were nervous, not because anyone was breaking the law, rioting, or endangering anyone. It was a pure act of aggression.

Take a look at the photos of the Oakland Longshoremen if you want to see what happens when you speak your mind. They were shot because "protesters refused to move and some of them allegedly threw rocks and bolts". Note the key phrase "allegedly". The police shot longshoremen who weren't even protesting. I guess being shot by the police is about as "unlucky" as you get.

Ok - nice sarcasm.

Here:
cbs news
or better yet, here:
google/ibm
and for Ford:
ford/anti-semite

However...

After the initial recount was finished (with Bush still in the lead), this deadline passed and the results were certified. Gore then sued to force a selective recount in counties where he stood to gain the most votes after the deadline for certification, effectively changing the existing Florida election law.

Motivated by the declarations that voters - specifically black voters - were denied the right to vote. The 'scrub' of the voting roles targeted disproportionately high numbers of black voters, who, in Fla, statistically vote Democrat. Violations of the Constitutional prohibition against racial discrimination supercede state laws *of any type*.

Mrs. Harris and Gov. Bush didn't "order local elections supervisors" to purge votor registries - they didn't even have the authority to do that.

LOL! As you say, any 5th grade student should know that the legislative branch makes the laws, and the executive branch executes them... So the Fla legislature says, "Remove persons convicted of felonies in FLa and other states that don't return the vote to ex-cons from our voting roles." Then the executive branch proceeds to do so - but the exectutive branch in this case had considerable control over how that was accomplished - with the results we saw in Fla. - the exclusion of thousands of eligible black voters - at a disproportionately high rate when compared to white voters.

If you can't see how he doesn't profit from three high-on-emotion, low-on-fact-but-we-hate-republicans books on this very subject, then maybe you don't understand what a vested interest is.

Ok, I deserved that one. I don't believe that anyone is 'objective' in the absolute sense; yes, I'm certain Mr. Palast has an agenda, and I'll certainly agree that he expresses things in the most inflammatory language possible - this does not, however, invalidate the foundations of his complaints.

You do realize that Dick Cheney divested himself of all financial ties to Halliburton (with the exception of an insured retirement annuity, which doesn't change no matter how much or how little money Halliburton makes)?

And stock options. See this article.

Not to mention the fact that under Cheney's stewardship Halliburton violated several US laws about trading with sanctioned countries like Iraq.

Always true. Always.

The Army plans to spend $14.78 billion on a new combat system over the next six years...

Enough to buy desalination plants with sufficient capacity to serve over 12 million households a year ( raw figures ). Enough to run the Spirit/Opportunity mission to Mars 18 more times ( raw figures). Enough to extend unemployment benefits for 2.5 million people for 1 year (raw figures). I could go on, but you get the picture. Will we be more secure? Will we generate more enemies and terrorists? Will this make war more humane or more savage? Will this reduce or increase collateral damage to civilians? Does this make us a better people, or a bunch of psychotic bastards? Do any of you people even give enough of a shit to write your congressional representatives? Will you even after you start seeing news reports of our robots killing and destroying?

The Hubble will eventually fall out of orbit and crash to Earth, probably in 2011 or 2012. To make that event safe, Grunsfeld said, NASA will design and build a small robot craft that will be launched and guided to the Hubble.

The robot craft would "grab the Hubble and bring it into the atmosphere in a controlled manner," he said, guiding the school-bus-sized craft to harmlessly splash into a remote part of an ocean.

In this era of stealth advertising, one must be getting a pretty good bonus at the end of the month for getting a product on the slashdot front page.

(Yes, I'm stealing links from some of my old posts)

Yep, that was my neighbor. A few more searches resulted in two open arrest warrents for her in NJ, time spent in prison, and several other convictions of assult and death threats. So the moral of the story is, if you have suspicions, it doesn't hurt to take 1 minute to run a quick google search.

Was it *actually* your neighbor? Or just someone with the same name?

Careful... remember the libel suits coming down because some of Schwarzenegger's staff suggested some media folks type "Rhonda Miller" into the Los Angeles Superior Court website...

"The appellate court holds the opinion, as did the first instance court, that there has not been offered any evidence for anybody else having used DeCSS for illegally acquired DVD movies..."

This is another quite detailed look, bringing events at several locations into one timeline. Here

Known defects include stalling when making a turn, catching fire, unexpected acceleration, wheels falling off, etc. And Ford doesn't have enough $$$ to pay all the claims, so they try to blow you off. That's why the morale problem at Ford is so well-known.

Aparently someone didn't see the news.
U.S. Productivity Best In 20 Years
2003 home building best in 25 years
2004 Economic Forecast Best in 20 Years, Conference Board Reports
I first heard this news on CNN which isn't exactly pro-Bush.

You're right. 12 years of diplomacy isn't enough. Yeah right.

There were very many links to terrorists, you just refuse to believe them, not the least the fact he had for years been paying the families of suicide bombers $10K-$25K each. Also Saddam did have WMDs and programs, try reading the Kay report for a change.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/ne ws/2003/04/27/walq27.xml

http://vikingphoenix.com/public/rongstad/military/ terrorism/raid_ansar_al-qaida.htm

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/04/27/iraq/mai n551246.shtml

http://www.techcentralstation.com/092503F.html

http://www.csmonitor.com/2002/0402/p01s03-wome.htm l

http://www.terrorismanswers.com/sponsors/iraq.html

http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2002/cfr/stories/iraq/

http://usinfo.state.gov/regional/nea/iraq/text2003 /0430trrpt.htm

when Hillary and senior whitehouse officials were cleared of wrongdoing in filegate by yet another independant council 3.5 years ago.

"There was no substantial or credible evidence that Mrs. Clinton was involved in the hiring of Mr. Livingstone," Ray said in a two-page statement. "Accordingly, this office declined prosecution and has closed the Nussbaum matter" as well as its investigation into whether the files were misused.

And yet the right-wingers continue to parrot this lie as if it is news.

Sorry for what must seem like a troll, but CBS news is reporting that Howard Dean has died in an apparent suicide.

Or Donkey Carts. Stay away from that natural propulsion system based donkey cart. Everyone knows oil can't feed terroristic intents...

Criminal uses cell phone to call in kidnapping ransom. Police trace phone, find criminal + kid. Summer 2003

Kidnap victim memorizes rapists cellphone. Police check registry, find perp. Jun 2003

Kidnapped woman had cellphone hidden on person. Cops trace it to car, catch perp in parking lot. Nov 2003

And many more...

there's a difference between passion and flamage.

I think a lot of companies will respond to hatred of advertising by resorting to product placement. No more beer commercials during Friends. Now you'll just have one friend offer another 'a bud.'

yeah, that's probably coming. the problem is you can't change the advertising with time. every time that episode of friends airs, you'd still be advertising budweiser when, say, Fuhrer Wine offers you more money during reruns. i'm sure they'll figure out the technical details before long, though.

not that i've ever seen an episode of friends.

Did anybody ever catch that newscast about people hired by companies to promote products secretly? It was on cbs.

Some of these actors would be on the streets, and keep asking passerbys to take picture of them and another actor on that brand new camera that just came out.

On the more insidious end of the scale, they would hire pretty women (believe me, those REAL lookers in bars) to go smoke in bars, and give cigarettes/ask for a light. Men would of course be eager to please, and they would see what the lovely lady was smoking.

And then...there were those that were paid to surf around public forums and do publicity like "I totally saw "whatever" movie, it's really good!, you have to see it!". Basically it's manufactured word to mouth. If parent isn't one of those drones, he's trying to look like one.

I was worried about the survival of the robotic missions as well, but Bush said in his speech (here's a transcript):

"Robotic missions will serve as trailblazers, the advanced guard to the unknown. Probes, landers and other vehicles of this kind continue to prove their worth, sending spectacular images and vast amounts of data back to Earth."

So, he said he's not going to eliminate the robotic missions. There still are things like the observatories that could be vulnerable to cuts, but I doubt he would do that. Those seem to me to be much less costly than the robotic missions and have a great return in scientific value.

The only two things he said he would cut are the space station and the shuttle, neither of which are worth spending more money on.

You might say that this proves he WILL cut robotic missions, based on your earlier statements. I'm not going to try to prove that he will or not, just reporting what he said. If he doesn't live up to this statement, we can call him on it.

And this is the same president who appointed a fraud to lead our education infrastructure? Greaaaaaaaaaat.

I am sick of the latest of Bush's diversionary tactics.
To him I say,
Can manned spaceflight -- save the economy!

Really?

Looks like GWB had the let's-do-it-for-daddy plan ready from the beginning...

Fucking idiots. Get rid of the moron!