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That document is a load of scare mongering [...]

...but it is a document which the inventor of TCPA himself, Bill Arbaugh, seem to agree with. He opens his comment on Ross Anderson with this statement:

"We are all aware of the criticisms that the TCPA has received. Ross Anderson did a good job of explaining the problems in an abstract fashion, but I felt that there were some things left out (Privacy concerns)." (my emphasis).

You write:

And I don't care if he uses words like "could" or "may" or any other wishy-washy term.

The rest of your comment, "Reality Master 101", builds on ignoring what Anderson is actually saying and is thus just a straw man argument, with which you have apparently fooled yourself.

I hope they gave this guy some credit for the idea!

(I discovered this site about a year ago, and even called him to comment on how "brilliant" all of his ideas are. Check out the rest of it here!

I hope they gave this guy some credit for the idea!

(I discovered this site about a year ago, and even called him to comment on how "brilliant" all of his ideas are. Check out the rest of it here!

Since I have repeated my pattern skepticism on /. before numerous times, I will just link to my rant this time:

http://www.geocities.com/tablizer/prpats.htm#for mu las

Indeed they did. It had a red stripe as well. Here is a photo gallery of the said van.

Sorry, but that's not very well thought out. There is nothing childish about sticking to your morals. Anyone who compromises their morals and ethics for profic is someone I don't trust. If the CEO is a racist, I'd like to know it. I decide where I spend my money, and given the choice of pockets, I'd give it to the guy whose morals I agree with. Oh, and what the hell are you basing your 'Brin can/will become a racist' point on? What's the difference, anyway? If he becomes a racist, then change. You can't go around not trusting people because of what they can or might do. Cynicism is fine, but not when you make it so extreme.

You say you can't trust someone for being honest? That's preposterous. Would you do business with a lying money whore?

I have long said that there is nothing worse than a lie, and I stand by it. If you're a racist, I'd rather know it than have you keep it secret. If you want me dead, let me know, then at least I can defend myself.

"Poorly though-out" is the definition of your comments. I choose to do business with people who are honest and stick to their guns. I may not agree with Howard Stern, et al., but at least they say what they think, and don't change to make more money.

The biggest issue I have with your post is actually one that most people overlook. You list "without religion" in your list of 'evil' traits. It's no secret that religion has nothing to do with morality. Atheists are no more 'evil' than priests, rabbis, or any other religious folk. Your statement is a prejudiced one, and one that I don't agree with. But again, I'm happier having heard it, because it lets me get a clearer picture of you and your mind. I can easily tell, by that statement alone, that you aren't my kind of person. I'm honest, I'm atheist, and I'm moralistic (The Pierce Code). Deal with it. Religion isn't all it's cracked up to be, and your point isn't either.

I've posted my story on a website here. I got too curious and decided to go for a ride, since this guy was right on the way home from a service call at work. Best to hit the photo mirrors here so the photo sites can be a bit more distributed.

I had a story submission on this that Taco and his bunch have sat on since Friday morning. Why?

Rich

I haven't tried the NANAE link. I'm already there, and something bad might happen if I meet myself.

I guess you're all interested in this, ok, more or less :) Yes, the Jaguar actually followed the spotter and he got threaten on his voice mailbox. Mirrors here.

Oh yeah, the sleep part - knew I was forgetting something.

While you are correct that bioinformatics involves a lot of string matching, you are trivalizing the scope, and the fruits of bioinformatics.

For example, doing an MSA on a set of strings is easy enough, and the computation involved in the algorithim to find the best alignment is slightly interesting. But the point of an MSA is not to parse the file, but to gain new knowledge from a bunch of data that was previously meaningless. And when we have thousands upon thousands of genetic sequences from various organisms, comparing them on a genetic level is definitely "new and exciting".

A Simple Example
For those that know that Humans are 98.7% similar in DNA to a chimp, the question is really why are we so physically different. Well, bioinformatics, combined with lab research has provided insight into this.

We now know what makes us fundamentally different from the Chimps is that the SNPs that we have that make us 1.3% different are in key locations such as a genes which plays a role in developmentmental processes (and particullaraly the brain). For additional information on this, see: "Intra- and Interspecific variation in Primate Gene Expression Patterns; Science 4/13/02"

And in the 8/16/02 issue of Science, there was a short snippet on the discovery of a particular gene, FOXP2, that plays a role in speech and jaw development. They discuss that mutations in this gene have varied, and wide effects on the phenotypic expression in the organism. Now, lets apply what we know bioinformatics can apply, by asking the question. "What difference in the FOXP2 gene causes the differences between humans and chimpanzees in speech and jaw development".

There are SNP databases out there that have been constructed by analyzing the various known genetic sequences and if you search that database, you will notice there *is* a SNP in humans that is unique to humans.... now we have a really interesting argument to why humans can talk and other species can't. (http://www.geocities.com/asdut2002/FOXP2.html

Conclusion
So the bottom line is that yes, bioinformatics allows us to do a lot of string comparisions, but the benefit of those comarisions are the real gem. And without computer scientists to construct algorithims, and IT professionals to develop world class database systems, this information just isn't useful.

Ghost in the Shell is great anime; it's among the many which inspire BANANA CHAN! BANANA CHAN is a teleplay development project on the net whose goal is to use plot devices from ALL anime in a single well-told storyline about the comic misadventures of a single teenage mother and her grandson from the future. So far, nine episodes, and one movie, are on the site, in teleplay form. So what's this have to do with GHOST IN THE SHELL, you ask? A set of future episodes of BANANA CHAN take place in a future which closely resembles the one on GHOST IN THE SHELL. However, instead of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, it's a company called Megalith which creates orphan-drones for the purpose of murder, large bus-like killing machines called deathlercoasters, and ... well, to say more would give it away. Sorry for the blatant ad -- no, I'm not.

goat fucking gnu hippies!

This entire 'landing on the moon' thing was all just a conspiracy. Proof:

Moontruth
Moon Landing Hoax
Moon Landings Faked

...and probably the most important single piece of evidence, this clearly genuine movie of the moon landing.

Watch out for the lumberjacks

Could he get off by singing the "I'm very sorry" song?. Join in with the counterpoint, everyone!

• Heres the very sorry song. Won't you help and sing along?
  • Bum Bum Bum
• I blew it!
  • He's sorry!
• I knew it!
  • So sorry!
• I'm very very sorry that I took your precious flagggg!
  • Just don't do it anymore you scurvy scalawaggggg!

Ack! No, I forgot, the one rule about Calvinball is that you can't play it the same way twice. Damn those cunning Norwegian prosecutors, they think of everything.

For those who are a bit confused about the rules of Calvin Ball...

Its only absolute rule is you can't play it the same way twice.

If anybody is interested, here is my take on the current state of web development and how to make it more client/server-like (Delphi/VB/PB) from a developer's perspective.


http://geocities.com/tablizer/webstif.htm

I'm not sure why you would purposely come up with bad code ... but if you want to see some good examples of bad html just surf to any goeshities page and enjoy the horror that it is.

http://www.geocities.com/pratiksolanki/

// Turn off domain guessing (which adds www. and .com) for link URLs
// This means that if you type http://cnn/, Mozilla will not try
// to go to http://www.cnn.com. For more details read bug 34943
// This will also fix the nasty bug where clicking in history folder
// results in Mozilla going to www.apps5.oingo.com
user_pref("browser.fixup.alternate.enabled", false);

Back then I'd enter in a short program to make it wait for a few minutes (for i = 1 to 10000 ; next) and then start spouting (saying out loud, not to the screen) obscenities.

The local grocery store (Carrs -- still there, but now owned by Safeway, blech!) had one for a demo (I guess they sold a few of them.) The people often didn't even know how to shut it off (and weren't smart enough to turn off the TV it was connected to,) which made it even more fun.

Ok, so it was immature. But to a 10 or so year old, it was great fun!

More on the TI 99/4A here.

I also used to go to the hardware store, and put batteries in the motion alarms, and set them to go off when somebody walked by.

(In reterospect, I was an annoying little sh*t!)

"If there are two or more ways to do something, and one of those ways can result in a catastrophe, then someone will do it."

Beware...some Christians are far far smarter than you.

That link is to a fledgling Christian group of people with IQ an in the 99.9537 percentile or above. I am good and fucking sick of all of the 'intellectuals' around here thinking that religeous beliefs automatically make someone wrong, or backwards, or any of the other drivel they are indoctrinated into thinking. (Although sonme just want to think the things that their peer group finds fashionable...typical groupthink mentality that pervades slashdot.)

Yes...indoctrinated. Where? In their "educations".

Fun quote for the day: "Mao's China subjected university students to "thought reform" known also as "re-education" that was not complete until citizens were deemed "progressive". Sound familiar?"

Fun fact for the day: "Out of 40 Political Science professors at the University of Florida zero are Greens, Libertarians, Reformers or Republicans. 34 are Democrats."

...or so I read somewhere, they'd better hurry up if they want to get it into Santa's sleigh...

So all you ex UK OnDigital subscribers who are going to be forced to return or pay for your set top box, there is hope of a getter gizmo.

This is a new suscription free PVR for the UK market that receives all the free to air DTTV channels.

Not much in the way of details or prices yet...

According to this page, the expected realistic life of "high-quality" CD-R media can range from 50 to 100+ years.

Apparently, since DVD+R and DVD-R use higher quality versions of the same materials and read/write process, the expected shelf life for them is also from 50 to 100+ years.

(A quick search on Google will show you all sorts of estimates, but the 50 to 100+ year life expectancy numbers are quotes from TDK and Kodak. The question is, do you believe them? I guess I do...)

P.

In terms of UK having more violent crime but fewer murders, someone else posting to this article detailed the differences between UK and US statistics keeping.
The basic tendancy is that the UK Home office does everything it can to show the smallest number of crimes, and the US DoJ processes data in a way to give the highest possible numbers. The UK actually redid it's statistics-keeping a couple years ago because the numbers were becoming quite an embarrassment. As far as I can tell, they're still an embarrassment. The DoJ thought though is that the higher the crime rate, the more funding law enforcement departments will get. Once they've got the funding, it's rarely cut, even when crime falls. But again, someone else described the statistics keeping differences, so please look for them.
Assuming that the net result is still true- that the US has more murders (I can believe this) but a lower violent crime rate otherwise, I think your initial conclusion is true- the easy availibility of arms + tradition of self defense does count for much of the difference. And quite frankly, I'm not going to cry if some rapist gets his brains blown out. Also, the Urban areas of the United States suffer from a huge gang violence problem, a problem just starting to arise in the UK. (Their murder rates have been skyrocketing lately, including gun related homicides.) If you leave out gang-ridden urban areas, crime rates in the US are comparable to any european country or canada, and often times better. Even including those high-crime areas, I think we're probably 7th on the list of violence in developed countries.
Now certainly gang & drug related crime is a huge problem that needs to be dealt with, but leaving it out helps put the rest of the country's crime rates in perspective.
Also, the British people are generally famed for their restraint, which may help explain the lesser murder. Perhaps their criminals are a little less apt to 'finish the job' when attacking or robbing someone. Just a guess.

for the other points:
1. The instant death tool of choice for alot of japanese lately is the train. Just as effective as a gun, and alot messier. (Get this- they bill the family for the cleanup. Real Nice.) But suicide is acceptable over there anyway. There's alot of ins and outs about suicide that make it's analysis difficult, and I think it's been said that the availability of guns does increase elderly suicide rates. This makes some sense, because if your mobility is limited, you don't have the option of jumping in front of a truck or train, or jumping off a ledge, or perhaps even hanging yourself.
For the physically capable though, they have a number of choices on how to kill themselves, many of them instantenous. I've read somewhere (sorry, no reference) that females attempt suicide more often than guys, but guys succeed more often than girls. This is for a couple of reasons:
A) Some think that often times girls try to commit suicide as a desperate plea for help, in a time of crisis, whereas guys will comtemplate suicide for sometime and make a definate decision that they want to die.
B) Because of A, guys will choose a more violent, final method of killing themselves, because they've thought about it.
So i think among feeble groups, the availability of guns may increase suicide rates. Among able-bodied though, I don't think that the availibility of guns would have a significant impact.

2. The comparison to swimming pools was meant to show that it's not a huge public health problem, that we allow our children to engage in statistically deadlier activities daily. No lives are saved by a child swimming recreationally, are they? If there's no net benefit to swimming, why alow it at all? Just stay away from lakes and you're all set.
But we allow our children to swim, and swim ourselves, because we acknowledge that some acceptable risk is inherent in every activity, and that the enjoyment derived from that activity outweighs the slim risk of death we run performing it. In that light, even as a purely recreational activity, it's acceptable to have guns around for just target shooting.
For the number of childrens lives saved by shooting, I'd like to again point to Klecks high estimate of 2 million legal, defensive, life saving uses of guns yearly by American citizens. Gun control advocates place the number at around 200,000. This is still two orders of magnitude larger than the number of murders, by any method, of children in 1997- 2,100. (see Here For 1997, the cause of child death are as follows, starting at 44,000 for Motor vehicles:

1. Motor Vehicles
2. Falls
3. Poison
4. Drowning
5. Fires & Burns
6. Ingestion of Food & Objects
7. Firearms
8. Poison Gases

Yes, tape is a "true backup medium", but it is *not* a suitable medium for longterm archival storage - at least, none of the affordable formats up till this point (like the DAT-derived DDS format) have been. There's a big difference between a backup medium (a copy that's probably replaced every day / week / month and is intended for use in the immediate future) and archival storage (a copy that's intended for use 5+ years in the future).

While the failure of a tape drive won't separate you from your data (unless the drive damages the tape at the same time it fails . . .), tapes themselves deteriorate over time. Here's an article about the problems the National Archives here in the United States have encountered with preserving copies of the Nixon tapes on DDS's audio cousin DAT. An excerpt:

"During the National Archives' routine monitoring of the tapes'
condition, the analog reel-to-reel copies have shown no signs of
deterioration whereas there is an estimated 5-10% catastrophic failure
rate among the DATs in the collection. There appears to be no pattern
to the failures. It has occurred on new tapes that were recorded six
months ago, and it has occurred on tapes that were recorded six years
ago. It has occurred on all brands of DAT purchased throughout the
previous seven years. Accordingly, the archivists routinely reduplicate
these DATS on multiple copies. As insurance, archivists also transfer
DAT copies back onto analog reel-to-reel preservation copies. Unlike
the other preservation analog copies, these copies have not been
filtered and closely "mirror" the original tapes. Therefore, in the
future when technology has progressed, the archivists can retrieve
conversations that are extremely close to the original audio recordings
and enhance these with the latest technology."

Leading audio preservationists have issued their own warning. This company deals with audio preservation, and has some interesting things to say about tape formats - analog and digital.

Of course, DDS tapes have supposedly been manufactured to a higher standard than their Audio DAT cousins, sport finer particles and stronger binders, and the format includes additional error correction and redundancy. Still, these issues with a modern tape format like Audio DAT are not an encouraging sign for those seeking to perform archival storage using DDS and it contemporaries. HP for example only claims a 10 year archival life for DDS. Contrast that with the 75-100 year lifespans Kodak and TDK are claiming for CD-R.

These longevity issues won't just be confined to older tape backup formats though, if history is any indication. It's the nature of the medium. I think Sony is currently claiming a 30-year lifespan for AIT, and HP something similar for their new format, but of course we only have a couple of years' experience with them so far, and given the incredible data density of those formats, if something should go wrong with either of them the results could be catastrophic. Unexpected deterioration has certainly happened with tape before - witness this article composer and synthesizer pioneer Wendy Carlos put on her website, as well as her own experience with her older tape masters.

Hard drives certainly aren't a great archival medium either, but I wouldn't be so quick to assert that tape is superior. At least drives have the advantage of being sealed from the outside atmosphere, and contain within them all the logic and hardware required to extract that information in the future. The only big issues I can see are, will there still be equipment to interface with them in 10 to 20 years (probably, since IDE is so widespread) and will the drives still spin up in 10 to 20 years (who knows). It's that second issue that's the real buzzkill for HD's as a longterm storage medium. Manufacturers won't even issue a decent warranty on drives anymore. What does that say about their planned longevity?

Me, I think your best bet is DVD. But if you really want to be able to read that data in the future, I'd suggest copying it to at least two different formats, perhaps AIT *and* DVD. Don't forget to check on it every few years, too. If there's any sign of deterioration, you'll hopefully be able to make another clone before the failure becomes catastrophic (perhaps to a superior format that hasn't even been invented yet). If you want something you can just throw in a hole and forget about, sorry - that media doesn't exist.

[PDF] Artificial Intelligence AI = A + I Replicating human ...
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See for yourself ladies and gentlemen .

Who is this girl who's with CmdrTaco in this picture??? What will Hemos say now??? :) :) :) :) :) HarHarHar!

CmdrTaco had another secret affair! Take a look at this picture.

Wonder what will Hemos do now than Taco is married??? :) :) :) It's a joke boys :) :) :)

CmdrTaco had another AFFAIR!!

This picture proves it quite well :)

It is M$ gimmick. They're gonna take your snaps while shopping PCs. Have a look at this new technology that takes snap through monitor.

which flavor gets the strongest signal?

According to this site it seems to be Cheese & Chives "a little too strong", followed by CheezeUms "Very strong", and Barbecue "strong".

Note that Salt & Vinegar is Currently Untested.

-

And, just for the sake of humor, you can see the second amendment statement diagrammed, where the well-armed militia part really has nothing to do with the sentence itself:

This is the 2nd amendment as it is diagrammed.

Keep your data out of the databases. Use cash, ask marketers to remove your name from their lists. Use cash. Use cash. Use cash.

If you've got a "shoppers club" card with your name attached to it. Give it up. Cut it up. Get another one - without your real name and address.

Encrypt your IM traffic with others that are capable. Put SSL on your web server.

Adopt IPv6. Setup IPsec on IPv4/v6 connections. Use SSH (duh!). Get an anonymizer.com account. $30 bones for a year. You can get a 6-month free trial if you sign up as a member of the EFF. $25 bones. You get a sticker. Spend a little more and you get a hat or a T-shirt. Do it.

If you've got flash, watch this.

No need to contribute "useful" data to the databases, right?

I just want everybody to know, OJ is innocent, THEY did it !

Reference to this project will undoubtedly draw crude abuse from a certain subset of /. readers and is maybe a little off-topic, but take a look at the CD Adams Motor. Whether or not you believe this motor's claimed abilities, you must admit it's a cool thing to do with AOL CDs!

Whenever I see "cheep" it makes me think of the little red fishes in Super Mario Bros...

Yes, I collect AOL CD, as do a lot of other people. It's truly amazing how many different styles and variations there are of these things (it's in the thousands). I feel like they've become icons of a generation.

~GP

I'm sorry, Wil, but anybody whose photo has been in Teen Beat has a limit to how purely geek they can be.

Chris Elliott

I'm sure this hasn't been covered by people who want to make fun of AOL's CD spamming policies. In fact, I'm sure using a major search engine would fail to produce any results

Actually it's a rewrite of the theodice problem (spelling anyone?) or The Problem of Evil, or at least that's my interpretation of it.

...especially if you want the Guardian to look like it REALLY should.

(Taken from here, under misc section.)

My favorite Super Chicken quote!

Which inspired me to find an audio file for that: see www.geocities.com/TelevisionCity/5991/sounds.htm

(I don't think anyone who has watched Super Chicken would call this way off topic, but I could be wrong :-)

Only goat fuckers call it guh-new-slash-li-nu-cks, every one else calls it linucks!

I had a good look but I couldn't find Hobbs End anywhere

I recall a friend telling me, when we passed thru it, that there used to be a fairly huge industrial area nearby, until the 80's. Once the Soviet Union fell and the factories closed, they boarded up the place with aluminium siding and demolished the building at the entrance in 1989. The station itself was built on a bridge running over one of Moscow's rivers (I forgot which one). At one point, someone decided to call the long demolished site "cleared for future reconstruction work" and reopening was targetted for 2002. Perhaps someone in Moscow can update us?

• Photo album of the Moscow Metro: Leninskie Gory station
• Someone's favorite Moscow metro stations, including pictures of the former Leninskie Gory station.

Yes, but OCP is going to change all that. See more here.

When I was in college, I wrote a distibuted computing project that drew detailed plot of the Mandelbrot Beetle. I fantasized that if I could zoom in on JUST the right spot, I'd see "God was here" as if in graffiti. Wouldn't that just be kick ass?