Slashdot Mirror

This is very interesting to me since my wife has Crohn's with frequent pain and has had 10 inches of intestine removed. There's quite a bit of recent news including that British researchers suspect that MAH has entered the water supply.

Taking links from a website I know cannot handle a Slashdotting:

Waleed M Alshehri - alive and well in Casablanca, Morocco

Marwan Al Shehhi - Alive; same link as above

Ahmed Alghamdi - Alive; same link as above

Wail M Alshehri - Alive

Ahmed Alnami - Alive; same link as above

Abdulaziz Alomari - Working for Saudi Telecom

Khalid Almihdar - alive and living in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia

Salem Alhamzi - Working at a petrochemical company

Saeed Alghamdi - Alive; same link as above


We do not know who the hijackers actually were.

This could happen, but only if the people compiling the feed chose to do it like that, which, if they have any respect for their own bandwidth, they probably wouldn't.

Here's a cutdown version (I removed most of the ITEMs) of the Guardian main RSS feed (RSS 0.91):

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?>
<!DOCTYPE rss PUBLIC "-//Netscape Communications//DTD RSS 0.91//EN" "http://my.netscape.com/publish/formats/rss-0.91.d td">
<rss version="0.91">
<channel>
<title>Guardian Unlimited</title>
<link>http://www.guardian.co.uk</link>
<description>Intelligent news and comment throughout the day from The Guardian newspaper</description>
<language>en-us</language>
<copyright>Guardian Unlimited, Guardian Newspapers Limited 2002</copyright>
<image>
<title>Guardian Unlimited</title>
<url>http://image.guardian.co.uk/news/site/global/ guardian_crumb.gif</url>
<link>http://www.guardian.co.uk</link>
<width>133</width>
<height>22</height>
<description>Intelligent news and comment throughout the day from The Guardian newspaper</description>
</image>
<item>
<title>Media exposure led to Kelly suicide </title>
<link>http://www.guardian.co.uk/Politics/kelly/sto ry/0,13747,1034240,00.html?=rss</link>
<description>David Kelly committed suicide at his dismay at being exposed to the media, director of Oxford centre for suicide research tells Hutton inquiry. </description>
</item>
<item>
<title>Two held over Omagh bombing </title>
<link>http://www.guardian.co.uk/Northern_Ireland/S tory/0,2763,1034142,00.html?=rss</link>
<description>A man and woman were being questioned today by detectives investigating the Omagh bomb atrocity. </description>
</item>
<item>
<title>Baghdad police station bombed </title>
<link>http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763, 1033996,00.html?=rss</link>
<description>World: Two huge explosions heard in central Baghdad in what appeared to be a car bomb attack on a police station.</description>
</item>
</channel></rss>

Now, if I follow the link to the first story, the David Kelly one, the full page comes to about 75kB, with images etc. But the entire RSS feed comes in at 6kB.

There are RSS feeds which use the description to contain the entire text of the article, sometimes entity-escaped, sometimes as xhtml:body, sometimes in a CDATA section. But this isn't an efficient use of the medium. If you keep the Descriptions terse, just enough to tell me if I want to see the full text article, then I can choose to follow the link and consume the extra 75kB. As an RSS 0.91 feed, the Guardian feed has 15 items (the maximum from the Spec) - so that's a 6kB download containing pointers to, for the sake of argument, 1125kB of article content. Other than a bit of markup, I don't see that it's any *more* bandwidth-inefficient than an email containing links and abstracts.

TomV

In some european countries, in particular - as you say - the Nordic ones. Germany is not 'Nordic' in that sense, although a lot better than the UK which is itself better than the US.

An excellent account of life in English prisons is in a recent book by Erwin James (a pseudonym). The author is now 17 years into a life sentence for (I believe) murder and will be released soon, he does not go into any details but simply makes it clear that the sentence was a logical conclusion to the way his life was leading.
Apparently his book is required reading for inmates and staff at one young offenders prison in the UK. According to him, prison in the UK nowadays is about 'warehousing' with rehabilitation a very distant second, a change introduced by Michael Howard when he was Home Secretary in the early to mid 90's. In one of the chapters (each one a published article in a British paper), he mentions that someone he knew was raped in prison so it happens there as well. Here are a couple of his more recent articles which are not in the book.

In some european countries, in particular - as you say - the Nordic ones. Germany is not 'Nordic' in that sense, although a lot better than the UK which is itself better than the US.

An excellent account of life in English prisons is in a recent book by Erwin James (a pseudonym). The author is now 17 years into a life sentence for (I believe) murder and will be released soon, he does not go into any details but simply makes it clear that the sentence was a logical conclusion to the way his life was leading.
Apparently his book is required reading for inmates and staff at one young offenders prison in the UK. According to him, prison in the UK nowadays is about 'warehousing' with rehabilitation a very distant second, a change introduced by Michael Howard when he was Home Secretary in the early to mid 90's. In one of the chapters (each one a published article in a British paper), he mentions that someone he knew was raped in prison so it happens there as well. Here are a couple of his more recent articles which are not in the book.

Reading this thread (which of course I found via my aggregator (RSS Bandit) from the Slashdot Feed, there seems to be a lot of confusion about what RSS actually IS. The beauty of RSS, IMHO, is that is is Really Simple. The Creative Commons licensed spec for RSS 2 shows that there's a tiny core of mandatory information and reasonable extensibility through the use of XML namespaces. I use RSS to locate new articles from here, from The Register, BBC News, The Guardian, ITN news (yes, I'm a news junkie), kuro5hin, InfoWorld, Wired, for product update news from various SourceForge projects I use, for tracking a bunch of techie blogs I read without having to visit every one of them regularly, for recently-posted-article lists from thirty or so sites that I couldn't possibly keep track of by visiting them individually. I figure that if you've had a look at the examples I've given, and optionally the spec, you ALREADY have enough to successfully expose and consume RSS.

But the thing is, RSS is Really Simple. Simple to consume, simple to produce. So, since I already have my reader in place, I've also got a bunch of private feeds - an RSS file that shows me login/logout events from my server logs, an RSS feed that shows me the last 25 orders valued over 250 placed by our customers, an RSS feed that lists the 25 most recent software releases we've done, outstanding Service Requests and Change requests.

All of this could be achieved in other ways - what makes it a winner for me is that, for anything that's a series of events, it's pretty much trivial to expose those events as RSS <item>s, and then I can monitor all those items, from their diverse sources, in one place.

But then, I'm already somewhat smitten with RSS, obviously.

TomV

"Numerous people from small to medium-sized enterprises have written to me in support of my proposal."

That's right, because you can't hold children accountable, can you?

Slightly offtopic, but: Are there any papers in the UK that aren't tabloids?

The Grauniad is the most respected newspaper among the politically aware round here (and also suits my political stance of ``well over to the left''). Then, heading more towards the right, you get the Indy, the Times, and the Torygraph.

The Sunday Times mentioned it (well, according to sky's "what the papers say" on sunday). Also see Just Auto and The Observer.

Some have commented that The Sun is not the world's most authoritative journal available in the ok. You're right, it's not.

However, similar articles have been in the broadsheets over here:

The Times

BBC News

The Observer (this one slightly older)

FL should tax the spammers that operate out of 561 -- they operate HUGE networks (assuming you include their wan links and Korean relays) and could be a source of "enlarged" revenue, if you get my drift.

Actually, here is a really nice account of how one man's relationship with the USA has changed over the last five years.

The Observer had an article in its business section on Sunday by John Naughton in which he makes the very valid point that the epidemic of viruses is made a lot worse by the fact that desktop computing is in effect a Windows monoculture.

Shuttle Columbia breaks up, killing 7. Several Slashdot articles, tons of coverage. Department: "we grieve".

Brazillian rocket explodes, killing 21. A single slashdot article, small articles in the world press. Department: "try, try again"??

Have some respect, FFS.

The local papers here in Denver have all been complaining because the Princeton Review claims that the University of Colorado is the #1 party school. Here's a link to an article carried by "The Guardian" or another in the Rocky Mountain News. One thing nice about partying at a mile above sea level is there's already less oxygen so you can achieve the same buz on less total consumption for those of you on a budget.

Not an RFID thing because, if you read today's Guardian report (page 10, col 6), you'll find that the RFID tags in the Cambridge trial were placed on the packs by Tesco as part of a six-month test, NOT by Gillette. This trial has now ended and Tesco are currently testing RFID on DVDs at their Sandhurst branch. Gillette don't RFID-tag their individual packs, they tag only at Pallet level at present. So whatever you found was something else. I'd be astonished if there wasn't SOME surveillance, given that in the UK at least, small, high-value packs of razorblades are one of the most shoplifted items (which is why in many supermarkets they're no longer on the shelf, you have to ask for them at a kiosk).

TomV

Earthstation 5 also has a FREE multi-user Voice and Video chat system, FREE Dating system, provides FREE video streaming of first run movies, FREE ten SEX channels, (...)

(...) and to make our point very clear that their governing laws and policys have absolutely no meaning to us here in Palestine

Wait a sec... isn't pornography illegal in muslim countries?

Scandalous behaviour by internet users has been exercising religious authorities in the Middle East for some time. According to a Saudi scholar, internet pornography was even foretold by the Prophet as one of the evils that would occur just before the day of judgement.
Article

Where the long arm of the RIAA cannot reach, a fatwa against p2p may kill thousands (literaly).

The 727 was found on June 28.

The paper shown here is by Peter Lynds maybe it should have been put into a better context.

Anyways, Lynds' paper is so important that many people in the Science world consider Lynds to be the next Einstein. This is interesting, since Lynds is only 27 and a college dropout who postulated this new theory of time while working in a boring job.

His theory of time does also shatter all previous works that deal with time. Also, his theory puts forward the concept that time cannot be quantified (which is loggically speaking quite plausable).

The reason why many scientists do not hold his theories very well is due to the fact that all of physics would have to be revised when this paper gets published. This paper in their opinion is very scary and should not be seen by many people. There have even been death threats on the young scientist.

Ummm...what?

"Irony is a state of affairs or an event that seems deliberately contrary to what one expects and is often amusing as a result."

see also http://www.guardian.co.uk/Print/0,3858,4699357,00. html

<a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,36 04,1019996,00.html">The Gaurdian</a>

CLIPPY : I see you want to talk about evil and repressive governments using linux...
Hundreds of Iraqis civilians are being held in makeshift jails run by US troops - many without being charged or even questioned. And in these prisons are children whose parents have no way of locating them

Phillipines is notorious for having Taliban sympathizers that have kidnapped and killed US tourist there.

Both the Philippine president Gloria Macapagal Arroyo and the Indonesian president Megawati Sukarnoputri have embraced Bush's crusade as the perfect cover for their brutal cleansing of separatist movements from resource-rich regions - Mindanao in the Philippines, Aceh in Indonesia ... the soldiers were not the first to accuse the Philippine government of bombing its own people. Days before the mutiny, a coalition of church groups, lawyers and NGOs launched a "fact-finding mission" to investigate persistent rumours that the state was involved in the Davao explosions. It is also investigating the possible involvement of US intelligence agencies.

According to Branigin's testimony, Captain Ronny Johnson, in charge of the troops manning the checkpoint, ordered them to fire a warning shot.

"Fire a warning shot," he told them as the vehicle kept coming. Then, with increasing urgency, he told the platoon to shoot a 7.62mm machine-gun round into its radiator. "Stop [messing] around!" Capt Johnson yelled into the company radio network when he still saw no action being taken. Finally, he shouted at the top of his voice: "Stop him, Red 1, stop him!"

That order was immediately followed by the loud reports of 25mm cannon fire from one or more of the platoon's Bradleys. About half a dozen shots were heard.

"Cease fire!" Capt Johnson yelled over the radio. Then, as he peered into his binoculars from the intersection on Highway 9, he roared at the platoon leader, "You just [expletive] killed a family because you didn't fire a warning shot soon enough!"

The Washington Post said that 15 Iraqis were packed inside a Toyota car, along with as many possessions as the vehicle could hold.

Ten of them, including five children who appeared to be under five years old, were killed on the spot when the high-explosive rounds slammed into their target, Capt Johnson's company reported. Of the five others, one man was so severely injured that medics said he was not expected to live.

"It was the most horrible thing I've ever seen, and I hope I never see it again," Sgt Mario Manzano, 26, an Army medic with Bravo Company of the division's 3rd Battalion, 15th Infantry Regiment, said later in an interview. He said one of the wounded women sat in the vehicle holding the mangled bodies of two of her children. "She didn't want to get out of the car," he said.

There seems to be an uneasy truce between the doctors and the Americans. The doctors don't like the way the soldiers sometimes try to interfere, especially stopping them smoking in the wards. (emphasis mine)

"Like it makes any difference," says Dr Sabah, pointing at the bloodstained floor and walls.

But CaptMargolis, who seems a good, well-meaning man, is unrepentant.

"This is freedom and freedom can mean different things, and in this case freedom means we are going to have to enforce our values on them," he remarks without irony.

"The Iraqi doctors who have been to the west want their hospitals to be like ours and we have to change their values to do it." (emphasis mine)

"Your sig is irrelevant to the context of our discussion, but I'll just mention in passing that the quote you have there is in reference to allowing doctors to smoke in hospitals. Yeah, sorry, we don't allow Iraqi doctors to smoke in our hospitals."

We don't allow Iraqi doctors to smoke in *our* hospitals? Yarmuk Central Hospital in Baghdad? That's not your hospital, unless the US now owns Iraq. Guess that makes it clear where you are coming from.... And while we are contextualising my sig, you may read the whole article, and notice that the officer in question forbids smoking a minute after somebody vomited blood all over the floor, the cleaner comes to mop it up, and then proceeds to mop the beds with the same mop and water, due to lack of cleaning materials. You bring the rules, but fail to bring the tools. How typical of a PHB. If that notion of freedom was no so pathetically tragic, it would be put in a Monthy Python sketch, and people would laugh over it.

How much more intelligent you would have seemed if you would have acknowledged how tragic the article in question was, as opposed to just trying to milk it for a cheap shot. You may brand me an "anti-american eurotrash fool, full of hatred" and all that, but that just goes to show how little you know of me, and is more an attestment of the simplistic polarity of your views. I do not judge character based on a couple of messages on a messageboard (unless it is blatently obvious). People who do that look stupid.

they have to find a way to pay the CEO over a million quid a year

The annual report for HBOS, the merged Halifax and Bank of Scotland operation, showed that chief executive James Crosby was paid 1m last year - up from 690,000 when he ran just the Halifax.

Peter Burt, the HBOS deputy chairman and former chief executive of the Bank of Scotland, took home slightly less than 1m at 994,000.



just like winning the national lottery every year, so don't forget to smile when you pay them your insurance

The article says that
Near-starvation and castration both bring unusual longevity, but few of us choose either option.

Does anyone know of any human examples for this ??

-- Sig
'Bring us home': GIs flood US with war-weary emails

Yes, it was in yesterday's Guardian. I just checked, and the article in question is online as well. You can find it here. I wasn't going to read the article initially, but that quote was printed as a bold sideline, and caught my eye......

I used to think that blogs had little impact and were not real journalism, until I read Dear Raed by Salam Pax. This, for me, was most objective reporting on the US-Iraq war.

Salam now has a column in The Guardian, which AFIAK makes him the first blogger to articulate to journalist status.

That's nice and alright then. Trouble is it's rather like computer geeks talking techno babble to non-geeks. Meaningless and misleading and in this case very conveniently misleading.

If they mean "hey, we accidently hit all this shit, killed a few folks by mistake and maimed a couple of others" then that's what they should say.

A much more interesting story for /., BTW, would have been the use of the internet by frontline troops.

At one point in the article they are speaking to the rep from the Software and Information Industry Association:

Thompson said customers need to have realistic expectations. He urged buyers to ask themselves two questions before plunking down cash for software: What is it that I want this software to do? and Am I going to use this software as it's been marketed?

Make sure that your expectations are appropriate to what a product is marketing, he said.

My question would be: is how the product is marketed what is covered in the ads, or what is stated in the EULA? Ads tend to imply lots of bizarre things, but what software really does or doesn't do won't be revealed until you read the EULA. Most of the time the EULA states that the software isn't guaranteed to do anything, including harming you and your data.

Read the EULA, that's where appropriate expectations about the software should be set. Not in the marketing.

"in America 3,000 white dead outweigh by a generous margin 3,000 Afghani dead or 3,000 Iraqi dead"

But of course. US officials openly admit that "the value of a life in Iraq is less than a life in the US or UK"

In an Al Jazeera interview in October, 2001, bin Laden denied involvement in any direct planning.

"Despite this I maintain that [American] allegations [of my involvement in terrorist attacks] are false, unless it means that I am involved in inciting and goading them, which is very clear and to which I confess at all times. I was one of those who signed an edict calling for jihad and we have incited for several years now and, thank God, many brothers adhered to our calls."

I don't know where he said that the people carrying out the attacks didn't even know what they were attacking. Perhaps you can provide a link?

My impression is that he is largely just a religious leader. He calls for jihad, yes, but he does not call for what targets to be attacked, or when, or how. He did allegedly suggest the World Trade Center as a target, but this is a far cry from organizing the whole thing himself.

Fortunately back then... we didn't go try and prove Iraq had an Al Qaeda link which didn't exist. I mean, Afghanistan's was pretty obvious. But Iraq's was nonexistent.

I'm guessing you've never heard of Salman Pak, a training camp 20-25 miles southeast of Baghdad that sources ranging from Rush Limbaugh to the Guardian report as having been a likely al-Qaeda training site. So much for "no connection between Iraq and al-Qaeda"...

Contrary to popular perceptions, then, wrongful criminal convictions are a normal, everyday feature of the criminal justice system - the system doesn't just sometimes get it wrong, it gets it wrong everyday, of every week, of every month of every year. With the result that thousands of innocent people experience a whole variety of harmful consequences that wrongful criminal convictions engender.

You and all your little friends who think the U.S. is some kind of fascist police state ought to wake up and smell the coffee. Go live in one for a few years then come back and tell me how shitty you think America is.

Maybe you should take a look around a little more, Sunshine.

I'm sure with such deeply rose colored contacts in, the blood will be easier to miss.

Don't be a fool. We're being lied to left and right now, and people like you are eating it up whole. You're the kind that are giving these rat bastards the power.

Wake up. You're only as free as the leash you're on.

• -- world's largest democracy. (no link required)
• -- world's largest standing or deployed land force.
• -- world's largest employer is in India.
• -- Kerala, the state with over 99% literacy (one down, 28 to go :) )
  
  oh and i saved the best for last -- India as a country has 52% literacy.

Some claim that they merely disbelieve in God, and are not claiming that God does not exist. I'm not entirely sure how you can "not believe" in something without recognizing a possibility that it exists. This link has an interesting view about it. Ok. I'm one of those people who 'merely disbelieve in God'.

You cannot prove to me, at this time, using logic or any other scientic method, that (any) God exists. All arguments I have met so far basically devolve to the faith of the arguer or the faith of someone he quotes. That, or by pointing at a 'miracle' that cannot be explained due to lack of evidence as proof, beyond pure chance.

From your point of view, that would make me an agnostic, given two conflicting points of view.

However, I consider myself a humanist (a form of atheism). Why?

Well, let's use your 'invisible pink unicorn' example. You say that I should be agnostic about their existance. But as far as I'm concerned, you have to weigh the credibility of the source in as part of the evidence. Now, it's not a numbers game per se; science has shown that sheer weight of numbers is not proof (re: world is flat), so lack of supporting opinion is definitely not proof that something does not exist. In the absence of other proof however, I consider that credibility to be the tipping factor.

I.e. if you tell me you can see something, and nobody else can, then I take your lack of evidence, and weigh in with the proven fallibility of the human mind, along with the proven ability of man to lie to others, to come down upon the balance of probabilities that invisible pink unicorns do not exist.

However, I keep an open mind; if you are able to bring me evidence that pink unicorns exist, then I too, will agree that pink unicorns exist. Of course, it has to be verifiable, anonymously repeatable evidence.

Now, organised (and disorganised!) religion have a lot of followers. But, I weigh in with theories like this one. (long link, sorry). Basically, that we are hardwired for (a) God. Just looking at the sheer range of thing that people fervently believe , many of them that theirs is the one true God, and willing to kill those who don't believe in Him; that makes me think God is a part of the human mind.

Now, I do not believe in God. That is the scientifically standard option, given that there is no proof, and there is an acceptable theory for people believing in Him, i.e. a feature of the human brain.

However, I keep an open mind, and am willing to accept incontrovertible, independently verifiable proof that he does exist. Therefore I do not believe in God, but do not go so far as to say that a supranatural being cannot exist; merely that it up to believers to prove his existance.

Out of interest, given a lack of reliable positive evidence, why is it up to science to prove that God does not exist?

Science can prove a negative, (for proof in this whole article, read, theory that cannot reasonably be attacked with current evidence) by proving the opposite. I.e. I can prove the statement 'the moon is made of green cheese' false by reference to spectroscopy and moon rocks, for starters.

I cannot prove that God does not exist, as by definition, we have no natural tools to probe a supranatural being. The theists have taken the position that there is a being beyond all ability to see, touch or otherwise measure, then claim that it us up to ME to disprove he exists!

if it's a book-title, are you linking a full etext, or a review, or the Amazon page?

Join the America religion now: America is a religion

I don't believe the UK has juries like we do in the US

The UK does have juries (I think that's where the US originally got the idea). However, the Home Secretary, David Blunkett, is still trying hard to restrict the right to trail by jury

The Uganda quote comes from this leader.

So if you include stability provided by the US military, our foreign aid total would be much higher. (And yes that includes Iraq, so STFU

You call that stability!?! I'll take your advice.

Seeya

"Hmm, who should I vote for? The puppet on my left hand? Or the puppet on my right? Wait a second! There's one guy holding the puppets!"

Sad, but true. How can a donation be political (in support of policy), when you pay both teams?

I can see it now. Next Bush campaign - democracy in the USA! ... Maybe not :)

.02

cLive ;-)

ps - the more paranoid amongst you may also wish to check out the Bilderberg Group.

Given that the PAM only allows 1000 people a day to sign up, it'd take just under 3 years for even one million people to sign up. I don't think that the economic impact of the PAM will have any statistical significance.

You don't need that many. If this works like other futures exchanges, then most people will trade by putting an order in with a broker, who then executes that trade on your behalf.

There more on this here

Not only bacteria, but Mutant plants, Mutant mice and strange behaving worms.

1. Afghanistan, 1998, 2001, 2002, 2003
2. Bosnia, 1994, 1995
3. Cambodia, 1969-70
4. China, 1945-46
5. Congo (now Zaire), 1964
6. Cuba, 1959-1961 ("Bay of Pigs" invasion)
7. El Salvador, 1980s
8. Grenada, 1983
9. Guatemala, 1954, 1960, 1967-69
10. Indonesia, 1958
11. Iran, 1987
12. Iraq, 1991-2000, 2003 (The U.S. government used radioactive bombs in the first war against Iraq. See United States War Crimes Against Iraq for what appears to be an accurate history.)
13. Korea and China, 1950-53 (Korean War)
14. Kuwait, 1991
15. Laos, 1964-73
16. Lebanon, 1983, 1984 (both Lebanese and Syrian targets)
17. Libya, 1986
18. Nicaragua, 1980s
19. Panama, 1989. The U.S. government called it "Operation Just Cause". The link is to a U.S. military web site.
20. Peru, 1965
21. Somalia, 1993
22. Sudan 1998. There are doubts that the pharmaceutical plant that was bombed was making weapons.
23. Vietnam, 1961-73 (An estimated 2,000,000 Vietnamese were killed.)
24. Yugoslavia, 1999

There are many sources for this information. For example, see this PBS web page: PBS: A Chronology of U.S. Military Interventions (PBS is the Public Broadcasting System in the U.S.) Also see From Wounded Knee to Afghanistan: A Century of U.S. Military Interventions [zmag.org] and The government of the United States is a consistent opponent of international law. [prairie-fire.org]

I put some links and explanation together about wh

In fact, what made it a "scandal" at all was the fact that organs and tissue were removed for storage without fully informing the deceased children's parents of standard autopsy procedures. The organs and tissue were then stored without the parents' consent.

Even though this would be considered "scandalous" by some (particularly the parents involved), this doesn't suggest to me in any way that the organ donation system is fundamentally corrupt. In fact, part of me is thinking, "So what?" The kids in this situation were already dead, no one "profited" from their tissue; in fact, no one seems to have benefited at all as far as I can tell. Unfortunately many legitimate organizations have suffered as a result -- see this link for just one example.

As for your assertion that the organ donation system is untrustworthy, think about this: if a depraved "organ harvester" really wants your parts that badly, he's gonna find a way to get 'em whether you signed the little card or not! ;-)