Slashdot Mirror

Didn't read the article, ej? The other bill was also considered to be sort of an anti-spam bill by those who introduced it, and Microsoft, well ... Bowen contended that Microsoft backs the Murray bill because it wants to be in a position to charge spammers to send ads over its system and to continue to sell anti-spam blockers to their customers. [1]

The link says "Consumer-Backed Anti-Spam Bill Passes", but the actual page is titled "Consumer-Backed Anti-Spam Bill Fails". Other links talk about an anti-spam measure passing, but that's the M$ one, not the consumer-backed one.

1937: Hormel rolls out its first can of a luncheon meat it calls Spiced Ham. Kenneth Daigneau. An actor and friend of the Hormel family, wins $100 in a contest to name the pink product. The winner combined the "sp" with the "am" and got Spam.

"Personally, I hope they misunderestimate Linux[...]"

"misunderestimate"? Oh no... George W. starts using it, and now it's common in American parlance. I guess this is the way standard English is turned into American English. The rest of us just keep misunderestimating the benefits of US cultural enrichment.

No... "misunderestimate" is a valid word. It's new, so you must embetter your language skills and learn it. It was created in 2002 by our extra-cool President G.W. Bush.

CIA Kryptos Sculpture

Located in the northwest corner of the New Headquarters Building courtyard is a sculpture by artist James Sanborn entitled "Kryptos." Dedicated on November 3, 1990, the theme of this sculpture is "intelligence gathering." "Kryptos" incorporates native American materials such as wood and metal. A piece of petrified wood supports a large S-shaped copper screen that looks like a piece of paper coming out of a computer printer. On the "paper" are inscribed several enigmatic messages, each written in a different code.

CIA Website

ABC News Article

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However, our population is sparse and I believe distance plays heavily into this pattern. Finland has roughly equivalent land mass compared to England, and carries only a tenth of the population. That's a lot of forest.

In a high-tech country, separated far from your friends, using a computer for company and communication becomes a lot more attractive. We are to blame for IRC, Linux and Nokia, how's that for a pattern?

The links are all appropriately chat-related...

Jouni

"A new British bill would enable law enforcement officials to watch every byte of e-mail as it passes through the country's networks, in real time. The government's Home Office says the new system is necessary to catch criminals who do their business online."

You have to wonder about a politician who doesn't tell voters about his drunk driving conviction, because, he said, he didn't want to set a bad example for his children and then doesn't tell the Secret Service to keep them out of bars underage. Maybe he thought it went without saying. I guess you've got to be very precise when you've got pardoning powers.

Neither precision nor accuracy are Bush's strong suits.

You have been watching too much TV. Look at the numbers- all of the high income groups pay 22+% in taxes, and that is substantially more than any lower income group. Even if some rich people find loopholes and don't pay any taxes (and according to the IRS, that was about 2000 people out of 2.5 million high income returns in the year 2000), they are still paying way more taxes than the poor.

It may make you feel better to point your finger at the rich to explain your problems, or to believe that the only way that somebody could be successful is by cheating, but doing that doesn't help your situation at all. Our society rewards people that take risks- go make something happen for yourself!

Speaking as an Australian, I'm very glad that you are totally incorrect.

It gives a figure of 44% creationist beliefs in the US. I can't find results for Australia, but there is no way we have that level of ignorance here. People are generally well educated here, and the average person would laugh at anyone professing belief in Creationism.

How can police tell if you are pointing the toy version or the deadly version? This is not going to fly, unless in a game arena of some sort, like paint gun wars.

How long will I have to wait until I get shot with one of these? Could be worse, I suppose.

"Their stance is the same as the Dead's."

uhhhh....not exactly...

...when you consider that a Grateful Dead lyricist (John Perry Barlow) co-founded the Electronic Frontier Foundation, whereas Lars Ulrich has sued Napster.

Maybe their Metallica and the Grateful Dead have the same terms on paper, but I strongly doubt that The Dead would ever sue a p2p company, alleging infringement.

And then there's the guys who invented a game where you whip your schlong (or attach a strap-on garden hose nozzle) and piss on hamsters after drinking a few at the local bar. A multiplayer option is forthcoming.

Respecting intellectual property IS important.

That said, intellectual property is also supposed to pass into the public domain in a timely manner. That is no longer true. I honestly think people would have more respect for copyright if there were ever a chance it would end in their lifetime.

And frankly, my big gripe with the RIAA is not that they attempt to protect their livelihood and the rights of their artists. It's that in order to do so, they pick on the innocents: people who build generic search engines that others abuse, people who buy CD-Rs for general data use and yet pay a tax on them (actually seems to apply to pretty much any audio recording device or medium, and so on.

It's one thing to protect your rights. It's another to be so desperate you screw the bejesus out of anyone you can lay your hands on.

There are two problems with the questec system. First, it does nothing. You can't overrule a call. It doesn't markedly better than humans. It's not even used to determine who calls the World Series. Yet, the umpires are being held up to the machine. Therefore, it superfluous at best, and a distraction at worse.

Secondly (and here's the real rub) a questec ball/strike isn't necessarily a legal ball/strike. The rule is that the ball must cross the plate. The questec system only checks where the ball is in relation to the front of the plate. If the ball tails over the plate later, questec call is it a ball, but it's legally a strike. A real umpire knows this. The machine doesn't. That was
the whole point Curt Shilling was making.

Yet another craptacular thing brought to baseball by Bud Selig -- The Man with the Reverse Midas Touch.

Um, Pac Bell Park has actually been a pitchers park. Giants only hit 72 out of their 198 HRs there last year.
(see here: play with the multiselect box

That being said, the rulebook does not say that the strike zone shall be whatever the umpires say so long as it is consistent, the rulebook defines the strike zone, and there is nothing wrong with bringing a machine in to enforce the rules.

The real way to solve this is physical violence. Of course, if you're an ump athletes of this capability are only 60 feet, 6 inches away.
Nice job Curt

One factor in the Home Run Derby that MLB has become is the incredibly shrinking strike zone...

Ask, and ye shall receive.

Here's an article about the incident. Schilling's outrage is understandable. His ERA is around 4.00 in Arizona (which has the questec system installed), and under 2.00 on the road. Schilling, and a lot of other pitchers in the league, thrive on catching the outside corner of plate or throwing high-and-tight fastballs to stike batters out. The umpires are essentially graded by the machines, and have said they want to call certain pitches strikes, but can't because they know the machine will say it was a ball.

The league installed the machines to get a "uniform" strike zone. I personally think the machines will take away an important part of the game. As a fan, I want to see the pitching dual. I want to see a game called by a home-plate ump that can call close pitches how he see's 'em (or how he wants to see 'em). I love baseball because it's so human: relaxed time divided by moments of tension. Questec will take away a little of that humanity.

Besides, it's kind of a slap in the face to the league umps to say they need machines checking their work.

If you have caught any of the myriad of Sportscenters in the past few weeks, the QuesTec system got fair discussion by baseball 'experts.'

One of the main points they brought up, is that right now the system is only in place in 13 of the 31 ballparks, and that is definitely causing problems. If you are a pitcher with QuesTec in your park, you have it more than half your games, where other pitchers have it in far fewer. One of the points of the system was to standardize the strike zone, and they aren't doing that by not having it in all ballparks.

Also they have inexperienced people operating the system. The people who run the system should be trained well. Some people even suggested they use former umps or umps in training.

As for the umpires getting all excited, wouldn't you be upset if your livelihood and usefulness was being threatened by a machine? I'm sure there are countless TV movies with workers getting kicked out factories by robots that'll sum up that emotion. I know it's a little different, since they still need umps, but it is literally question the ump ability.

Personally, I don't think it's a bad idea, but aren't executing it in the best possible way. Get it in all the ballparks, train the operators, make friends with the umps - not enemies.

For people who want more info:
Here's a short FAQ from ESPN
Some of Rob Neyer's cool-as-usual statistical analysis

If you have caught any of the myriad of Sportscenters in the past few weeks, the QuesTec system got fair discussion by baseball 'experts.'

One of the main points they brought up, is that right now the system is only in place in 13 of the 31 ballparks, and that is definitely causing problems. If you are a pitcher with QuesTec in your park, you have it more than half your games, where other pitchers have it in far fewer. One of the points of the system was to standardize the strike zone, and they aren't doing that by not having it in all ballparks.

Also they have inexperienced people operating the system. The people who run the system should be trained well. Some people even suggested they use former umps or umps in training.

As for the umpires getting all excited, wouldn't you be upset if your livelihood and usefulness was being threatened by a machine? I'm sure there are countless TV movies with workers getting kicked out factories by robots that'll sum up that emotion. I know it's a little different, since they still need umps, but it is literally question the ump ability.

Personally, I don't think it's a bad idea, but aren't executing it in the best possible way. Get it in all the ballparks, train the operators, make friends with the umps - not enemies.

For people who want more info:
Here's a short FAQ from ESPN
Some of Rob Neyer's cool-as-usual statistical analysis

If you have caught any of the myriad of Sportscenters in the past few weeks, the QuesTec system got fair discussion by baseball 'experts.'

One of the main points they brought up, is that right now the system is only in place in 13 of the 31 ballparks, and that is definitely causing problems. If you are a pitcher with QuesTec in your park, you have it more than half your games, where other pitchers have it in far fewer. One of the points of the system was to standardize the strike zone, and they aren't doing that by not having it in all ballparks.

Also they have inexperienced people operating the system. The people who run the system should be trained well. Some people even suggested they use former umps or umps in training.

As for the umpires getting all excited, wouldn't you be upset if your livelihood and usefulness was being threatened by a machine? I'm sure there are countless TV movies with workers getting kicked out factories by robots that'll sum up that emotion. I know it's a little different, since they still need umps, but it is literally question the ump ability.

Personally, I don't think it's a bad idea, but aren't executing it in the best possible way. Get it in all the ballparks, train the operators, make friends with the umps - not enemies.

For people who want more info:
Here's a short FAQ from ESPN
Some of Rob Neyer's cool-as-usual statistical analysis

Where just because somebody can type they think they know what the hell they're talking about.

The machines won't replace the umpires. That's not the umpires concern. Please stop posting that.

The core of beef on this system is a struggle for control between the umpires union and MLB. Ever since Richie Phillips (head of the Umpires Union) Tried to wrestle control of umpiring from MLB the two sides have been fighting over exactly who controls the game. MLB has been trying to get umpires to call the rulebook strike zone and Umpires have been trying to maintain their autonomy (a difficult task after the massive f**kup Phillips organized). Questec is a grading system for umpires and umpires don't like it. Players (Curt Schilling most famously) don't like it because they feel it makes the umpires tentative and inconsistent.

So far the system has had no affect.

The editors are apparently not quite capable of discerning exactly what the story is about or they wouldn't have titled it "Digital Baseball Umpires", which in turn would have kept the slashdot masses from posting random contributions pulled out of their ass. Honestly, do you think that a system which grades strike zone judgement is in anyway a threat to umpiring jobs? Will the strike zone grading system handle calls at the plate? Ejections? Can it call a ground rule double? Infield fly? Seriously people, think about it for about 30 seconds before you post the kneejerk crap that's flooding this story (Umpires == factory workers losing thier jobs to technology? What the hell are you smoking).

Where just because somebody can type they think they know what the hell they're talking about.

The machines won't replace the umpires. That's not the umpires concern. Please stop posting that.

The core of beef on this system is a struggle for control between the umpires union and MLB. Ever since Richie Phillips (head of the Umpires Union) Tried to wrestle control of umpiring from MLB the two sides have been fighting over exactly who controls the game. MLB has been trying to get umpires to call the rulebook strike zone and Umpires have been trying to maintain their autonomy (a difficult task after the massive f**kup Phillips organized). Questec is a grading system for umpires and umpires don't like it. Players (Curt Schilling most famously) don't like it because they feel it makes the umpires tentative and inconsistent.

So far the system has had no affect.

The editors are apparently not quite capable of discerning exactly what the story is about or they wouldn't have titled it "Digital Baseball Umpires", which in turn would have kept the slashdot masses from posting random contributions pulled out of their ass. Honestly, do you think that a system which grades strike zone judgement is in anyway a threat to umpiring jobs? Will the strike zone grading system handle calls at the plate? Ejections? Can it call a ground rule double? Infield fly? Seriously people, think about it for about 30 seconds before you post the kneejerk crap that's flooding this story (Umpires == factory workers losing thier jobs to technology? What the hell are you smoking).

The fine folks at Baseball Prospectus, the top web site for baseball analysis, asked the question: given that QuestTec is installed at some parks and not others, how is it affecting how the umpires call the game?

The answer: read this espn article.

Good stuff.

Major League Baseball's disciplinarian is looking into Diamondbacks pitcher Curt Schilling's destruction of a camera used to evaluate umpires.

QuesTec not yet showing consistency from umpires

A look at the QuesTec system

MLB striking out on QuesTec

Major League Baseball's disciplinarian is looking into Diamondbacks pitcher Curt Schilling's destruction of a camera used to evaluate umpires.

QuesTec not yet showing consistency from umpires

A look at the QuesTec system

MLB striking out on QuesTec

Major League Baseball's disciplinarian is looking into Diamondbacks pitcher Curt Schilling's destruction of a camera used to evaluate umpires.

QuesTec not yet showing consistency from umpires

A look at the QuesTec system

MLB striking out on QuesTec

Major League Baseball's disciplinarian is looking into Diamondbacks pitcher Curt Schilling's destruction of a camera used to evaluate umpires.

QuesTec not yet showing consistency from umpires

A look at the QuesTec system

MLB striking out on QuesTec

Some pitchers are really mad about it. Curt Schilling was fined earlier in the season for destroying a QuesTec camera in Bank One Ballpark, his home park in Arizona.

This, of course, is the same Curt Schilling who gave up two homers to a fellow player he abandoned in "Everquest," allowing said player's character to die.

QuestTec seems to be a perfect example of conspicuous technology, which distracts more than it helps. We need a machine to tell us the umps are accurate? Does that really help us enough to justify the distraction to the pitchers and the umpires themselves. ESPN had this article on the Schilling incident, and they mention more about evaluating ump performance against this machine. Of course the umpires are pissed; I wouldn't want a poorly implemented, incompletely rolled out new technology used to judge my work in a field I'm experienced in either.

Ok, heres some supporting evidence. You can follow my sources of research.

Source1

source3
source4
source5
source6 Warning Warnings

"Methylphenidate should not be used in children under 6 years of age, since safety and efficacy in this age group have not been established.

Although a causal relationship has not been established, suppression of growth (i.e. weight gain and/or height) has been reported with the long-term use of stimulants in children. Therefore, patients requiring long-term therapy should be carefully monitored. In addition, the use of "Drug Holidays" is recommended, that is, withholding the drug on weekends and during school holidays in as much as the clinical situation permits.

Methylphenidate should not be used for severe depression of either exogenous or endogenous origin. Clinical experience suggests that in psychotic children, administration of methylphenidate may exacerbate symptoms of behavior disturbance and thought disorder.

Methylphenidate should not be used for the prevention or treatment of normal fatigue states.
There is some clinical evidence that methylphenidate may lower the convulsive threshold in patients with prior history of seizures, with prior EEG abnormalities in absence of seizures and, very rarely, in patients with no prior EEG evidence nor history of seizures. Safe concomitant use of anticonvulsants and methylphenidate has not been established. In the presence of seizures, the drug should be discontinued. Use cautiously in patients with hypertension. Blood pressure should be monitored at appropriate intervals in all patients taking methylphenidate, especially those with hypertension."
source7a
source7b
source8

source9 Yet, "since the late 1990s, a spate of scientific research has begun to establish that adults do generate new brain cells in some regions of the brain, well into old age.

And now, for the first time, scientists have seen that new neurons become functional members of the brain, forging new connections and firing "action potentials" like any other neuron.

Although this latest discovery has only been observed in the brains of mice, the analogy to humans suggests that the rules of the card game have indeed changed. It also points toward new directions in potential therapies for neurological disorders or brain injuries."

Source10
"biologists at Princeton University have found that thousands of freshly born neurons arrive each day in the cerebral cortex, the outer rind of the brain where higher intellectual functions and personality are centered."

When are those SCOundrels going to stop abusing Mickey Mouse in the logo? Mickey Mouse is a trademark of the Walt Disney Company.

I guess this is kind of a late reply, but I researched it and....hate to admit it....you're right. Dammit. :)

See this article

...but what happens why Goliath goes after the little guy and the little guy is right?

...a $12,000 settlement.

Ah a walking, talking tragedy... To think, I spent four years in the Army defending your freedom. Such is the state of public education in the nookyooler power known as 'merika. I mean, really--if you're going to lay flamebait on me, at least make it worthy of response.

Ken Lay (or as prezitend george likes to call him "kenny boy"), has a long history contributing to the prezitend.

I'm talking about Enron executives, not Enron. Get it? I'm talking about people directly responsible for creating the California energy crisis, who were responsible for stealing the retirement of thousands of hard working aging people, who are still walking free. I'm talking about Ken Lay in particular. A person who has been working closely with the Bush family for over a decade.

I'd invite you to discuss this, but I'm sure you'll just cry some more. It's okay, you can cry, just don't expect me to listen.

Sweden's standard of living is below that of the lowest standard of living of any US state.

On the contrary, the suitability index for child rearing is designed to be a big aggregate standard of living measure, with some extra woman's issues mixed in, published every Mothers' Day. This year, Sweden was 1st, and the U.S. was 11th.

No matter how you slice it -- life expectancy (+2.4 years), unemployment (2% less), literacy (from 2% to 14% more, depending on whether you belive U.S. statistics ignoring undocumented workers), median purchasing power ($8,000 more per capita) -- Sweden's standard of living is superior to that of the U.S.

What is Sweden's secret? Progressive taxation. Average production workers in Sweden pay no income tax to their central government because the bottom bracket starts about a tenth above the average production worker's salary. The Swedish tax rate is typically about 57% of income earned above that base. Sweden only has two central government tax brackets: 0% and 25%, so their "federal" taxes are actually closer to the "flat tax" than ours are in the U.S. The additional 32% or so varies by local jurisdiction, as does the income bracket at which it takes effect.

The problem in the U.S. is that top-bracket income earners (including corporations, medium-sized businesses, and most of the top 1% rich, excluding some of the prominent top rich in the media spotlight) pay a huge amount of money in order to help elect government officials who will keep the top tax brackets low. This effectivly "saves" them an even larger amount of money, except for the externalities like crime rate, debt, and property values. We used to have regulations providing equal air time for federal candidates, but Reagan's FCC did away with those, so most candidates today, even most nationally prominent Democrats, sure know which side of their bread is buttered on. There are some notable exceptions, however.

Not to mention, there is mounting evidence that complex protiens rain down on Earth (and of course, everywhere else) from space via ) all the time. So, from my seat, this "video" strengthens that view, not the creationist view.

Yes we have air powered engines and devices. Need proof? Here


A nitrogen powered car.

Tell me about it. The Tron Collector's edition DVD mentions a sequel movie in some of the interview tracks. It also mentions a "Tron 2.0: Killer App", but the website appears to be dedicated to the game, not any future movie.

That's part of the charm to these old sci-fi shows. They had limited capability to what they could do.

Nowadays I imagine that it would be entirely realistic either with advanced animatronics or CG generated images, probably both. It probably would be small potatoes.

Look at the recent movie Reign of Fire for realistic looking dragons that would have been impossible 20 years ago.

It will be interesting to see what they could do with the story with modern technology.

Lying about an adulterous relationship isn't a felony, either. But lying about it under oath surely is a felony. It's called "perjury". Trying to get others to lie under oath is a felony too. It's called "suborning perjury". Both of these felonies were committed by Clinton.

On the other hand, to my knowledge no one at the Bush White House has lied under oath about the intelligence data, so lying about it wouldn't quite be a felony. Additionally, it's really tremendously easy for us (that would include me) to be suspicious about the intelligence data, since of course the only way that it will ever be discussed is going to be in executive session in a Senate committee hearing. So of course, it's tremendously easy for the Bush administration's critics - and that too would include me - to criticize them, because the White House can't show us what classified information that they have (if in fact there is any).

Lastly, you are the umpteenth person to commit two or three errors in this thread.

First, you falsely assume that I am a Republican.

Second, you falsely assume that I am a Bush supporter.

Thirdly, and perhaps most damagingly, you fallaciously attempt to change the subject from Clinton's crimes to the (so far only alleged) crimes of George Jr. Let me ask you, as a representative of Bill's defenders: do you have so little faith in Bill's "innocence" that you have to change the subject like this to try and talk about something else instead? Wouldn't it be easier to just admit that he was a perjurer, and that he suborned perjury, and that he really deserved to be thrown out of office for that - the abject failures of the Senate GOP "leadership" notwithstanding? Wouldn't doing so be a lot less embarrassing than trying to rehabilitate an all-but-convicted felon?

Perhaps here would be a good place to point out that while he wasn't impeached, Bill's behavior wasn't entirely unpunished: he was disbarred from the Supreme Court of the US, and his law license was suspended for 5 years. Read all about it here. Now, I ask you: considering that Billy agreed to the Arkansas suspension, should we really pretend that he was innocent?

Fourthly and finally, you have also fallaciously resorted to various ad hominems in your efforts to rehabilitate the perjurer Bill Clinton: you have attacked me (falsely, as it turns out, since I'm not a Republican) and you have attacked Republicans, as though doing so in any way justifies the corrupt acts of Bill Clinton. "Everybody does it" is an argument best left for little kids and adolescents.

I'll try and be as plain as possible: I believe that the war in Iraq was an unjust, immoral, and unconstitutional war, in that it was a) a war of aggression and not self-defense, and b) a war against a "foe" that had never represented a credible threat to the US, and c) a war that was never declared by the US Congress - the only body that may, under the Constitution, declare war. There. Your ad hominem against me was fallacious, and (as I've now demonstrated) also completely false.

Now, if you want to participate in the discussion, please feel free! But please don't evade the present issue, which is Clinton's behavior.

The single difference is that Jones told Clinton to zip it, and Lewinsky didn't. If you're attempting to make the case - as the Jones lawyers would have had to do - that Clinton has a history of and a propensity for indulging in sexual relations with subordinates, then the Lewinsky affair is entirely relevant. Let's be honest: if a man is accused of harassing his secretary, and he has a history of pursuing sex with subordinates, is that history not relevant? Of course it is!

If my memory serves me, one of Clinton's staff called Lowensky and asked what she was going to say. That is a stretch for "suborning perjury" even for a Clinton hater.

I'm sure that more than one staffer called her - Currie, the secretary, did (in order to get back gifts). But that's not all.

• Clinton discusses "cover stories" with Lewinsky
• "Lewinsky has reportedly said on tape that Clinton and Jordan tried to get her to lie about the alleged affair."
• Lewinsky said in the tapes "she had a sexual relationship with Clinton and that the president later tried to persuade her to lie about it."

Tell me, O ye of little faith, is it such a stretch now?

What's more, the fact that Clinton's goons (Jordan and then-UN Ambassador Nolan Richardson) were trying to get the airhead Lewinsky jobs for which she could never otherwise qualify raised yet another issue of obstruction of justice.

Please, friend. Don't embarrass yourself by attempting to defend Clinton over this. What he did was indefensible, and you know it. He should have been thrown out of office.

(RIAA's Cary) Sherman said, "Nobody is expecting kids to pay that kind of money â" and they won't." He added, "That's just the legal stuff, that you put in papers."

ABC's 20/20 features a weekly segment by John Stossel (a very good journalist, IMO) called "Give me a break"

A few weeks ago this case of the four students and the RIAA was covered:
http://abcnews.go.com/sections/2020/GiveMeABreak/s tossel_gmabfilesharing030509.html