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Whoops guess he doesn't count. (nor the voice of those who voted Le Pen)

[I am not palestinian. Death to Latuff, that Cowardly foo' "artist" with his pathetic take off on an American commercial. He couldnt even be original.]

At the shooting of alleged Palestinian collaborators in Hebron, a large crowd, including children, gathered at the scene. Some of the bystanders took one of the bloodied victims and strung him, head down, on an electricity pylon. One boy climbed up to help with the hanging.

A day earlier, gunmen from the same militia, fired round after round into three accused collaborators in a downtown Ramallah square. One died as some bystanders tried to prevent ambulances from approaching the men writhing on the ground in pain.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0%2C2933%2C50938%2C00 . tml

I disagree. I think that when it comes time to choose which web sites to visit, or which portals to make your home page, people may make their choice by who follows P3P, and who doesn't. After all, if I have the choice of visiting Fox News or Cable News Network or USA Today, and each of which provide pretty much the same information, this could be the deciding factor.

Gee, I go to MSN and they protect my privacy, vs. Yahoo who will sell my information first chance they get, I think I would rather visit the site that has the better privacy policy, and thanks to P3P I know who that is!

Some links for your browsing pleasure:

suing
suing
suing
suing
the list goes on...

You obvioulsy didn't catch this horrifying look at the US entertainment industry, did you?

Link.

As I state elsewhere in this thread, I was mistaken about the EPA's role in this, that it was ultimately The City of New York that choose not to use asbestos above fl. 64.

Is it relevant? Well, it might have kept the towers standing a bit longer. Some more people might have escaped during that time. Of course, we'll never know 100%. But it makes sense to me.

Vilifying the EPA is pointless; asbestos is a separate issue.

No vilifying. In fact, I was originally mistaken in that it was not EPA that banned the asbestos, it was the city of New York. But the asbestos would have likely slowed the failure of the structure, and perhaps more lives could have been saved. The original plans for a catastophic fire would have given an estimated four hours to failure.

I was asked to provide a source elsewhere in this thread substatiating my first post. Try this link. It explains that fireproofing was not applied abouve the 64th floor.

But then again, a gun has only one rather specific specific use.

...and that would be what, exactly? (While a Glock 23 makes a fairly nice defensive weapon, a Ruger Mk. II is better suited to plinking and target shooting.)

(You'd think I'd know better by now than to respond to an anti-gun Euro-troll...oh well, it's only karma. Fat lot of good victim disarmament did the French the other day...)

As has already been cited, these FoxNews postings (see also Ken Layne's Music Fans Must Rebel Against Greedy Record Industry ) represent the beginnings of a test by the Republican Party to make Napster a "wedge issue." While the natural constituency for the CBDTPA/SSSCA would suggest that the Republicans ought to back this, the fact that the Democrats have made the entertainment industry a major source of funds has skewed things in a way that the Republicans are going to try to exploit. See, for example, how things shake out in this article by Declan McCullagh and Robert Zarate from Wired: Content Spat Split on Party Lines

It will be interesting to see if the Democrats fall into this trap.

Did you all see this article?

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,48567,00.html

It appears to be yet another article from Fox on the subject.

when Fox is THE ONLY news outlet to have carried an editorial explaining why the SSSCA was bad, in layman's terms nonetheless.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,47296,00.html

Come on Michael. You can do better.

"When ABC News (Disney) and Fox News (News Corporation) discuss this, they're not going to be spending much time talking about the downside."

That's odd. Fox News did an article bashing the SSSCA. Not that I like Fox News that much, but like MSNBC, they aren't going to skew their story to what their company feels. That would just piss off readers.

And wrote to my parents and friends an e-mail about this. It's extremely rare for me to say "Please forward" in anything I send. (Forgive me if you think this to be karma-whoring...)

Reading Slashdot every day sometimes makes me want to shoot every corporate and government entity on the planet as I figure out what they are doing to the US public every day. The DMCA, if you didn't already realize, is already doing some heavy damage, and it is highly unconstitutional: The DMCA in plain English.

Here's some of the latest abuses of the DMCA:

Writing a eBook convertor for the blind (the Sklyarov case): 1 2
No DVD software player for Linux and no research on cryptology
Blocking anti-Scientology sites

If you think that's scary, that's not even the icing on the cake! The newly-proposed law going to the Senate right now, the SSSCA, funded by the RIAA and the MPAA, is like the DMCA on crack. Passing it is suicide to all things technological!

The SSSCA in plain English: 1 2 3

The SSSCA (now the CBDTPA) is in the Senate

If this new CBDTPA gets passed, computers several years from now will not be the computers we have today. They will be limited pieces of hardware, hard-coded to prevent you from doing "bad things". They will monitor your activities. And this will affect everything from car stereos to TVs to anything else "computer related". If it has a format or something to "protect", it will be affected. This includes you and the way you use computers!

How can you make things secure, if you don't have the tools to test security? This is on par with banning crowbars because they can be used to break into a home, instead of arresting the robbers that use them.

So, what can you do about it? The ACLU actually isn't paying much attention to this one, because it's not really their realm. The real freedom fighter in cases like these is the EFF. The EFF is a well-known organization that some people have called "the ACLU for technology". Many computer techs are members. Wil Wheaton was one of the Star Trek guests on a "Weakest Link" special episode, who chose the EFF as his donating organization. (He won them $10,000 on that show.)

The EFF is truly the only line of defense for this. Voting doesn't work. Petitions don't work. The only thing that works (unforunately) is money, and fighting the system with its own laws. The RIAA and MPAA "donated" over $50 million dollars to both political parties! We need to fight back and donate to the EFF! I just donated my dues to the EFF today, because they are going to need it now.

Please forward this to all of your friends! Donate to the EFF now!!!

http://foxnews.com/printer_friendly_story/0,3566,4 8225,00.html

If you just want the content, with no pictures and ads. There is a drawback, you can't see what the robot looks like from this link, but if you don't mind that fact, enjoy.

I write my own homepage. it has links to here, tom's, my ftp, my web site, my free spam collector, comics, and satire. I realized i didn't want to connect to the internet everytime i want to open up mozilla. so i wrote myself some html, and now my homepage is fast and i can go the places I need to in one link. I'm thinking of adding some weather and some news...

If you're Sony, and you're making $4.6 billion in music sales but taking in $40 billion in sales from electronics, who are you going to listen to: the music industry complaining about people downloading music without authorization, or the electronics executives trying to make better, more expensive CD burners and MP3 players?

If Senators keep selling off to Disney and the RIAA, and with the help of unbribed-but-clueless Representatives that can be brainwashed by any well-produced snowjob, the SSSCA can actually get voted.

If this danger materializes, Intel and other electronics giants could see their income squashed by this law that demands the death of the PC and of all digital electronics as we know it. So instead of letting this happen, the electronics company could buy a few major studios. After all, all the movies's box-office revenue for 2001 amount to less than a quarter of sales for Intel.

Let's hope it comes down to a pissing match between the electronics and the media industries. IBM or Intel can buy a blocking share in Disney with their paperclip budget, and the MPAA seems to have forgotten it. Or maybe they are trying to extort some money from the electronic industry? Afer all, it worked in Europe, where a tax is now levied on CD writers and blank media.

-- SysKoll

There's a good article on Fox News about this whole copyright flap. It's a pretty decent summary of the political ramifications of the CD copy-protection debate. It can only help our cause to see these things debated more in the mainstream press. The average customer cares about himself and is likely to oppose measures he perceives as putting him at a disadvantage. Certainly, if people were more aware of what the MPAA/RIAA/etc are up to, they'd be more inclined to make a major issue of it, and I really doubt public opinion would favor the RIAA.

Off had I would suspect chaos agents of the music industry, who have been doing things the wrong way for a long time.

But this is just idle, unfounded speculation

Right.

Since it appears that the attack on your computers came from the closed proprietary FastTrack-Kazaa software, we have opted not to continue with this p2p kernel.

Which is just as well. I do note this article in newsbytes, and wonder if someone got an inside edge to fasttrack someplace.

cloak and dagger operations indeed.

If you want non-partisan scrutiny of the media and politics, check out Spinsanity, a watchdog of manipulative political rhetoric from both sides. [Disclosure: I co-edit the site.]

Katz is right that the Internet is making it possible for people outside the mediasphere to scrutinize the media and culture, but he should look more in the direction of the political weblogs. Beyond the celebrity journalist bloggers, there's a new breed of critics coming up and having an impact. Will Vehrs' Punditwatch just got picked up on FoxNews.com, and we just signed a distribution agreement with Salon.com. Both are unimaginable without the Internet.

Actually, the video quality of TiVo in it's "normal" quality is pretty bad. Very visible compression artifacts. My cheap VCR kicks its ass. To get decent quality, you have to crank TiVo up to a setting that eats up disk space quickly.

It's a good thing that upgrading the disk space is so cheap. I started with 14 GB, but added another 30 within a month or two. On the 20" TV I was using before, most programs recorded fine at high quality. (Best quality gets used for stuff like Enterprise that I save to SVCD, while medium quality is sufficient for talking-head programs such as Fox News Sunday.)

The artifacts are a bit more obvious on the 27" TV I just bought, though...maybe it's the result of now being able to use S-video out on the TiVo instead of composite out. Time to grab a bigger drive to make recording everything at best quality feasible...it should be possible to replace the two drives with a single 120-GB drive and end up with more recording time at best quality than I currently have at high quality.

Basic quality, BTW, sucks eggs...is that what you meant by "normal quality?" It's barely usable for talking-head news shows, and you can forget about using it for anything with even a little action.

"Yeah, I really really hate Fox News but oh crap there's actually NEWS there that is relevant to the discussion."

Interview with Spielberg, Kapshaw, and Ford himself.

IE6 has the ability to navigate msnbc.com in the way it was meant to be navigated. I don't know why: The menus at foxnews.com work just fine, but msnbc.com displays nothing where menus should be. windowsupdate.microsoft.com? Forget it.

Visit www.voa.gov in Mozilla and wonder why the page looks different in IE6. Simple, the comments on the page are screwy, and vim highlighting will show that. I'm thankful that voanews.com is just fine.

staroffice.com specifically does not support Netscape 6+ and will give you a message to that effect. That said, I haven't noticed any breakage. Expect more such hostility in the future from people who are happy with the one-browser market.

I can't get the RealAudio plugin to work with Mozilla. Maybe I need to install Netscape, deal with the cheesy commercial crap and special offers long enough to install the plugin, copy it to my Mozilla folder, then uninstall Netscape. A minor problem to be sure, but I'm sick of staring at that "you need a plug-in" icon for embedded objects, and I wish the Netscape plug-in finder would recognize my frustration.

I love Mozilla, but it lags behind IE6 on quite a few sites that I visit. These are just some of the sites that I visit, and I stay away from most overdone sites, especially Flash sites. I can't imagine what it's like for people who surf the web for all of its tacky glory. Mozilla has a great foundation. It just isn't there yet for the sites I visit, even less ready than the 0.9.7 moniker would suggest.

If the Washington post article is slow for you, Fox News has a writeup as well

Bush making a good decision...I must not understand the issue fully
:snip Sounds like a case of the latter
Stop being a moron and become informed on issues!
Worth reading daily
[bias but for once not to the left]
be an informed voter
View from right and left

The older version of Ebola is popping up again. I dont know about the possibilities with this new stuff.

I tell you, I just don't understand the animosity toward this amazing technology. I was hoping the subject would come up again today after people had actually SEEN it, but no such luck.

I tell you, I just don't understand the animosity toward this amazing technology. I was hoping the subject would come up again today after people had actually SEEN it, but no such luck.

A [problem threatening free speech in the U.S.] is the FBI Wiretap of the entire Internet

The new FBI plans would give the agency a technical backdoor to the networks of Internet service providers' like AOL and Earthlink and Web hosting companies, Baker said. It would concentrate Internet traffic in several central locations where e-mail and other web activity could be wiretapped.

The Dark Winter scenario apparently was based on some screwy statistics regarding rates of infection. Steven Milloy of Junkscience fame wrote an editorial on the subject.

Dark Winter assumed every infected person would infect 10 additional people. This was based on a couple of statistically abnormal infection events. A more reasonable infection rate of 2 people is what the CDC believes more likely. This obviously would reduce the catastrophic victims exponentially.

for thoughts in @rant do

If one looks to history one can find a myriad of ways wars could have been prevented. Could this war have been prevented if such broad public apathy wasn't the song of the day? Must every war be so brutal (ten years of Iraqis dying of disease and famine)? I know I'm preaching to the choir, but good God why are we (the American public in general namely) such an ignorant and arrogant group of bastards?

I don't buy the cultural imperialism argument (flooding countries around the world with Nike and Starbucks ads) as warranting such discontent. Hell, it's not like it's OUR culture either, Nike and Starbucks were thrust upon us just as they are/were other cultures.

Now political imperialism is another story. But it seems more distorted than the old Cold War mantra of "spreading freedom and democracy." Americans bleed oil. If we want to keep driving big cars and paying $1+ for gas then we better hope to God the the people of Saudi Arabia, etc. don't get a democracy. For decades the ruling families/parties of the Middle East have neglected to share their oil wealth in ways that make the US look like Finland or Sweden. I am disappointed and saddened that the country I still love (what potential we have) would support and perpetuate oppressive regimes.

I hope this "bioterrorism" FUD doesn't materialize into anthing more than an unholy media ratings campaign. Yes, there are real dangers, but, there have always been those dangers. So please, turn off CNN Headline News, MSNBC, the Oreilly Factor, etc. Instead listen to NPR, read the BBC and ArabNews (www.arabnews.com), and watch CSPAN. And please don't be charmed by the devilishly enigmatic Rumsfeld. (yeah its foxnews but its funny)

As citizens of (a) free society(ies) we are free to choose to be as apathetic as we wish, but we are still bound by the nature of our government. When everyone has a voice if you abstain from expressing yourself you choose to defer your decision to someone else (namely the collective of those that do voice themselves). It's idealistic yes, but if we (again US people) hold our Constitution as ideal, then ideally we have no one to blame but ourselves.

done

The new FBI plans would give the agency a technical backdoor to the networks of Internet service providers' like AOL and Earthlink and Web hosting companies, Baker said. It would concentrate Internet traffic in several central locations where e-mail and other web activity could be wiretapped.

The FBI could surreptitiously censor subtly or DOS sites that criticize the government, for example.

Text:
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20011112/ts/plane_ crash_dc_1.html
http://www.cnn.com/2001/US/11/12/newyork.crash/ind ex.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/12/nyregion/12WIRE- PLANE.html
http://www.usatoday.com/hlead.htm
http://www.reuters.com/news_article.jhtml;jsession id=GX1YUYCNLN1WQCRBAE0CFFAKEEATGIWD?type=topnews&S toryID=365206
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A147 84-2001Nov12.html
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,38565,00.html
http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/wire/sns-a p-plane-crash1112nov12.story?coll=sns%2Dap%2Dnatio nworld%2Dheadlines

Video:
http://www.abcnews.go.com/sections/us/popoff/Daily News/STREAM1_video_popoff/index.html

At least FoxNews is still up and running.

You can also try the following stories.
www.msnbc.com/news/652977.asp

money.cnn.com/2001/11/06/technology/microsoft/

www.cbsnews.com/now/story/0,1597,316946-412,00.sht ml

www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,38145,00.html

www.nytimes.com/2001/11/06/business/06CND-SOFT.htm l (Reg Required)

canoe.ca/MoneyMicrosoft/nov6_msfttwothirds-ap.html

Fox News
CNN

There's a lot of them. heck.

• Extends electronic surveillance periods to 120 days from 90 days and for searches to 90 days from 45 days.
• Creates two new crimes prohibiting certain persons from possessing a listed biological agent or toxin and prohibiting all persons from possessing a biological agent, toxin or delivery system of a type or in a quantity that is not reasonably justified by a peaceful purpose
• Limits delay of search warrants when this authority would result in flight or property seizure
• Requires a court application to obtain student records
• Grants authority to the president to restrict exports of agricultural products, medicine or medical devices to the Taliban or the territory of Afghanistan controlled by the Taliban
• Increases to seven days the length of time an alien may be held before being charged with criminal or immigration violations
• Defines terrorist activities but makes exceptions for people who have innocent contacts to non-certified terrorist organizations
• Enhances the secretary of state's existing power to certify groups as terrorist organizations
• Enhances data-sharing between the FBI and the State Department/INS and between the State Department and foreign governments
• Clarifies CIA director's role to set overall strategy for collection of information through court?ordered FISA surveillance, but no operational authority
• Increases CIA authority to investigate "international terrorist activities"
• Encourages CIA to recruit informants to fight terrorism
• Requires attorney general to develop guidelines for disclosing to the CIA foreign intelligence information obtained in criminal investigations
• Requires the attorney general and CIA to provide training to federal, state and local government officials to identify foreign intelligence information
• Sunsets electronic surveillance laws after two years with the authority for the president to renew in two more years
• Limits the use of Foreign Intelligence Service Act court orders to investigations of international terrorism or clandestine intelligence activities
• Requires investigations of U.S. persons be based on more than just First Amendment activities.
• Allows roving wiretap authority on electronic equipment, including cell phones
• Allows pen registers/trap and trace on particular phone numbers but restricts content collection
• Increases the number of FISA judges from seven to 11
• Expedites the hiring of translators for the FBI
• Allows seizure of voice mail messages
• Does not allow the use of information collected on Americans by foreign governments when that information was collected in violation of the U.S. Constitution
• Authorizes nationwide service of subpoenas for electronic subscriber information
• Expands list of items subject to subpoena to include the means and source of payment for electronic subscriber information
• Authorizes electronic communications service to disclose contents of and subscriber information in case of emergencies involving the immediate danger of death or serious physical injury
• Allows sharing of grand jury and wiretap information for official law enforcement duties
• Allows sharing grand jury and wiretap information that involves foreign intelligence and counterintelligence
• Does not allow disclosure of tax return information by Treasury to federal law enforcement and intelligence agencies in responding to terrorist incidents
• Triples the number of Border Patrol, Customs Service and INS inspectors at the northern border
• Authorizes $100 million to improve INS and Customs technology and additional equipment for monitoring the northern border
• Requires an integrated automated fingerprint identification system for points of entry and overseas consular posts
• Authorizes a counter-terrorism fund to reimburse the Department of Justice for any costs related to investigating and prosecuting terrorism
• Expedites disability and death payments to firefighters, law enforcement officers or emergency personnel involved in the prevention, investigation, rescue or recovery efforts related to any future terrorist attack
• Increases benefits program payments to public safety officers
• Coordinates secure information sharing among federal, state and local law enforcement agencies to investigate and prosecute terrorist conspiracies and activities
• Expands fraud and abuse laws to cover computers outside the U.S. used to affect interstate commerce or communications inside the U.S.
• Replenishes the Justice Department's antiterrorism emergency reserve with up to $50 million; authorizes private gift-giving to the fund; allows service providers to use reserve fund to expedite assistance to victims of domestic terrorism
• Creates a new criminal statute to punish for terrorist attacks and other acts of violence against mass transportation systems
• Creates a list of offenses that will carry an eight-year statute of limitations for prosecution except where they resulted in, or created a risk of, death or serious bodily injury
• Defines maximum penalties for terror-related activities where appropriate, including life imprisonment or supervision
• Adds conspiracy provisions to some criminal statutes and provides that the penalties for such conspiracies may not include death
• Adds certain terrorism-related crimes to RICO and money laundering rules

Unfortunately, I only have a link to the FoxNews site, so excuse the decided lean to the right: FBI to Broaden Web Wiretapping.

Stewart Baker, an attorney at the Washington D.C.-based Steptoe & Johnson and a former general consul to National Security Agency, said the FBI has plans to change the architecture of the Internet and route traffic through central servers that it would be able to monitor e-mail more easily.

This has been mentioned before, possibly even on slashdot, but it is probably worth repeating. Various comments from people who know suggest that the FBI will probably break the internet in trying to funnel it all through their Carnivore++ setup. If this really comes to pass.

Reading further down in the article, it would seem that the FBI is really just going to lean on AOL, earthlink, yahoo, hotmail/MS, etc to make sure it has unbridled access to email, but who knows for now. In the end, I'm sure it will all work out for the, um, best.

Ah yes, "Arming America : The Origins of a National Gun Culture" by Michael A. Bellesiles. Well, perhaps you should check out:
Gun Control Book Based on Faulty Data
University asks historian to defend his research on gun ownership book
A gun-hating historian comes under heavy fire.
One of the worst cases of academic irresponsibility in memory.

"Sesame Street has always stood for mutual respect and understanding," a spokeswoman said. "We're outraged that our characters would be used in this unfortunate and distasteful manner. This is not at all humorous.The people responsible for this should be ashamed of themselves. We are exploring all legal options to stop this abuse and any similar abuses in the future."

Yes, the British and Canadian contingient is recognized and appreciated. As is anyone else willing to send their money and their aircraft and their boys (and girls) to open a can of whoop-ass on all those who would destroy freedom in the world.

A cynic would note that the U.K. would likely not exist in its present form had it not been for its former colonies coming it its rescue about sixty years ago. Me, I'm not so certain, but I'm bloody sure that if it hadn't been for Tojo's insistience that Yamamoto awaken the sleeping giant, France would be speaking Russian these days... (not German; Hitler, like Napoleon before him, made the mistake of starting a land war in Asia after Easter... and the Red Army would not have stopped at the Rhine without Patton (and Monty!) there to keep them from it.)

So you Tories will excuse us Yanks a little tongue in cheek arrogance, no? After all, the RAF's next fighter aircraft will be built in either Marietta, Georgia, or (hopefully) right here in Seattle....

I will give the Brits credit, though. They have some of the best news services in the world.... unlike the crap we generate here in the States.... (I think it's funny that perhaps America's best news network is run by an Aussie... )

--
And gentlemen in England now-a-bed
Shall think themselves accurs'd they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day.
-- Mr. William Shakespeare, Henry V
(yes, of course we love you, John Bull, now quit being tetchy about it.)

Other posters put this better, so I'll keep it short. Just one small bit of what those media have given us:
TV -- efficient, rapid-fire data (if not info) for a long time after the attacks where news Web sites (and effectively, the whole Net) were useless. (Even if somebody were posting better information than TV at the second the attack happened -- *I* didn't see it.)
Web -- unfunny-at-this-point discussion/report on Evil Bert. Real classy stuff for all concerned.

Today's Fox News: "The Internet, they tell us, is a domain of hype and hoaxes, while traditional media can be trusted to check things out and get them right. Yet if one looks at Amazon.Com's reviews of Arming America, it is immediately evident that Amazon reviewers found the problems with Bellesiles' book a year ago, while the establishment was still smitten."

When asked about Bert's current whereabouts, however, the spokeswoman replied: "No comment."

BWAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

That poor woman must have made such a face at whoever the hell asked her that! LMAO

Here's a perfect example of what I mean:
Fox News: Texas Retailer Decides its OK to Sell bin Laden Piñatas

I'm not saying we shouldn't look for opportunities to bring about good after tragedy, but I believe in understanding and even respecting your enemy, even your mortal enemy.

I sincerely hope that the citizens and government of America will pay heed to the lessons of the past.

U.S. aircraft were spotted in Uzbekistan on Sunday, a day after the country's president permitted U.S. warplanes and troops to use an Uzbek air base for any military operations against Afghanistan.

Your reference you were looking for. Its like the new freon. 100x more deadly than the old stuff, but because of one marginal benefit, you'll die in minutes if the AC in your car leaks.

Asbestos more dangerous? Only if you like to swim in it maybe. Asbestos would have given most people up to three more hours to get out of the building.

Sheesh... check out www.junkscience.com once in a while.

For all their grievances against America, there have been no Cuban, Vietnamese or Serbian suicide bombers bringing death to our shores, and their people haven't been celebrating in the streets at the sight of American blood.

This came from a very good foxnews (surprising) article on the web.

We gave $40M to the Taleban this year for "anti-drug" efforts, so there is obviously some priortization to work on here, as well.