Slashdot Mirror

Right now, I can't get to BBC, The Guardian, or The Register.

Maybe they've shut the uk domain down for boxing day.

All they have to do to make some quick money is take a lot of potentially embarassing pictures of dead civilians in Afghanistan, and then the Pentagon will buy the exclusive rights at the taxpayer's expens! (FOIA, anyone?)

I don't know how anyone can review the Heaney Beowulf without mentioning his Irishness (whose vernacular is used to capture the flavour of the original). For a less superficial review, try this one or this one

I don't know how anyone can review the Heaney Beowulf without mentioning his Irishness (whose vernacular is used to capture the flavour of the original). For a less superficial review, try this one or this one

Actually, Kubrick himself withdrew 'A Clockwork Orange', reputedly due to copycat attacks. They did ban 'The Exorcist', another recently released but I can't imagine copycat demonic possessions. The point is that 'A Clock Orange' does not seek to glorify violence, whereas games like GTA3 make it fun. I like stealing cars and killing the pigs, its not going to make me do it, but I do get desensitised. Lets not forget that video and cinema censorship are many times more effective than games censorship (which is a joke) so maybe they feel that an outright ban is the only practical solution.

So have the Aussies banned the Thief games too? Or is it the mindless violence that they object to? (and mindless violence has been around since the days of 'Hunt the Wumpus' et al.) And what about the 'Cannon Fodder' theme (and game)?
(War) Never been so much fun
(War) Never been so much fun
Go to your brother, kill him with you gun
Leave him lying in his uniform, dying in the sun
(War)

And lo, Bradshaw did review it, and he didn't like it. (mind you I don't recall a single film he has liked that wasn't from Iran)

I live a couple kilometres from Signal Hill in St. John's Newfoundland (that's where Marconi is said to have received the transmission).

Interesting aside: Marconi was for all intents and purposes kicked out (asked to leave and threatened with lawsuits if he didn't) of Newfoundland, which was then not part of Canada. The Anglo-American Telegraph Company had a Government-mandated monopoly on telecommunications. Much of the transatlantic telegraph cable traffic was at the time routed through Newfoundland, it being the closest point in North America to Europe. Marconi subsequently relocated to Glace Bay Nova Scotia at the invitation of the Canadian Government.

Here's the link to a mention of what Tolkien sold the rights for. 10,000 pounds plus a percentage of the royalties (I wonder if this is all royalties or just the movie?) plus even more if the film takes in more than 2 and a half its cost!

It is a myth almost as cherished as JRR Tolkien's tales of Middle Earth: that nearing the end of his life, and under pressure from the taxman and a wolfpack of sharp Hollywood suits, the cloistered Oxford scholar signed away the rights to The Lord of the Rings for a mere £10,000.
But like many good yarns that have grown in the telling, it is - the Guardian can reveal - just that, a myth.

...

Far from the £10,000 of lore, he got $250,000 (then worth about £102,500) and a percentage of the royalties, which could eventually be a massive fillip to his estate, already fat from the sale of 100m books around the globe. The estate's solicitors confirmed yesterday that it would get more royalties if the film took two and a half times its costs.

According to the article here if Tolkien hadn't of sold the rights to the movie for $250,000 before he died then there never would have been a LOTR film. Christopher Tolkien (son of JRR) has ceased almost all contact with his son Simon since Simon began working with Jackson (the Director) on the film. So I am thankful that the movie rights were sold so that I have the opportunity of seeing the epic story depicted on film.

I do, however, think it's a shame that the LOTR is going to be bastardized (and is: eg Burger King) into so many commercial products that we're going to lose site of the brilliance of the literature behind it. The "Hollywood Effect" I suppose.

I guess the real question is: Is it worth releasing the LOTR as a motion picture even though the film (and the commercialism, etc. that comes with it) might forever scar Tolkien's epic??

When I look at it that way i can see why Christopher is so vehement about it not being released as a film.

~shlamo

I think you'll find the family aren't getting a penny: Tolkien sold the film rights to pay off a mortgage.

I think you'll find you didn't read the articles...

The Guardian did research on this and:

"Far from the £10,000 of lore, he got $250,000 (then worth about £102,500) and a percentage of the royalties, which could eventually be a massive fillip to his estate, already fat from the sale of 100m books around the globe."

J.R.R. Tolkien sold the movie rights in the 60s. He and his descendents can do nothing except whine while making money. I doubt if the director even had a say.

I'll admit I was worried after reading stories like Feedback: Not the subtractions, but the additions about changes made to the story during the making of the film.

But after hearing last nights interview with Peter Jackson on World News for Public Television, my fears have been allayed. Jackson was asked what John Ronald Raoul would have thought about the movie. Peter said (approx.), "I hope he'd see the love we put into it over the years. But I think he'd be grumpy about many of the changes we had to make."

He seemed to have a deep understanding of Tolkien the man, and was quite aware that he'd meddled with literature that had been canonized. The seriousness with which he approached his task impressed me.

Thats not the usual Guardian critic, either, just one of their media weenies. They'll certainly have a much less superficial review (probably by resident film critic Peter Bradshaw) in Friday's edition. I'd check back later.

Actually, the text of the Guardian review is here.

Uh, good post - but bad example. J. K. Rowling drove a hard bargain and looks set to become the UK's first billionaire author... through merchandising. I think she's making more than enough.

• "Internet2 plans to offer 10 gigabit capacity by 2003," says Marine Chartois of Dante. "By that time I think we will already be looking at 40 gigabits per second. That covers a larger area, more people and a much more difficult environment."

There was interesting article about this a few weeks ago in the gaurdian newspaper.

Although it's pretty thin on technical details, it does provide some insight into some of the questions people are posting, such as why they need all this bandwidth, why the US arent part of the project etc.

BMG records already had an embarassing setback with this type of scheme in the UK. Customer returns forced them into withdrawing the copy inhibited version and re-releasing a "standard" CD. They're a business, and cannot sell something which people don't want to buy. Returns cost, in real money as well as bad publicity.

It is your civic duty to protect your rights by buying and returning these CDs. The attempt to force copy inhibited products on us can be defeated simply by making digital rights infringement technologies too expensive to introduce.

And don't use a mobile phone. Article in today's Guardian newspaper on mobile phone tracking. A journalist eventually got a list from his mobile provider telling him which mobile masts his calls connected to, but the company wouldn't tell him the location of the masts!

Remember that if your mobile is switched on it 'squawks' every couple of minutes so the system knows where you are. Even if you dont make any calls 'they' can still track you.

And also if people say "If you haven't done anything why are you avoiding surveillance cameras?", then reply with "If I haven't done anything why do the cameras need to see me?".

Baz

The excellent Mark Thomas Product, a show on c4 in the UK had a pop at "the Data Protection Act and in particular its sections covering Closed Circuit Television".

Essentially, in the UK, if a CCTV camera records your image you just have to write to the owner of the camera with a £10 cheque asking for a copy of all information they hold on you. By law under the DPA they have to provide you with a copy. If they don't they can go to jail.

He went into a McDonalds with a troup of tumblers and jugglers and asked for a copy of the tape. He went a bunch of other places aswell, get him on video, very funny!

Lots of info starting here, at his own FAQ, and if you get hooked check out google directory for stacks of links.

This is trigger happy TV for the broadsheet reader!

This is true, The Guardian has the story here.

Basically the other guy wanted to call his restaurant McChina. After he had tried to do this McDonalds first threatened him with lawyers, then released their disgusting semi-chinese sauce covered mcRibs in a crap attempt to get some kinda chinese association with McDonalds which would allow them to prevent the use of McChina as the products would be similar. The judge threw it out :)

from the Guardian

KWA: Karma Whore's Anonymous

- crayz

It's not only Norway who are against the Nuclear Plant at Sellafield.

The Irish posted a full page ad in the British press on Friday. Story here

There's nothing safe about being in care. Bad parents usually manage better than good social workers.

These children are murdering each other. I think the parenting has gone way beyond "bad".

I suppose playing a musical instrument exposes me as a non-geek

To critics of the sale of content filters, software company executives say that they are only providing politically neutral tools. "Once we sell them the product, we can't enforce how they use it," said Matthew Holt, a sales executive for Secure Computing (news/quote), of San Jose, Calif., that currently provides Internet-filtering software to the Saudi government under a contract that expires in 2003.

What a fine way to salve the conscience: "Once we sell them the product, we can't enforce how they use it." They're happy enough to take the money, just as IBM was happy to take the money from the Nazis for Jew-tracking systems, since no IBMers were actually involved in killing anyone.

US corporate and government support for this brutal dicatorship is a disgrace. Both GOP and Dem administrations are happy to allow trade with this vile regime to thrive as long as it pays, just as they were happy to arm and support Iraq as long as it paid, and just as they continue to profit handsomely from deals with China.

It still amazes me how Bush and pals can talk without a trace of irony about how they are fighting one gov't or another in defense of Freedom and Justice, then turn around and support the Saudis. Will Laura Bush be arguing passionately for the rights of Saudi women anytime soon? Of course she will, as soon as the pro-Western govt gets thrown out, and they transform overnight into America's Eternal Foe.

This excellent Guardian article exposes leaked documents that demonstrate how a secretive "inner circle" of rich countries in the WTO draft key resolutions well in advance that safeguard their industries while planning to further impoverish the developing nations. Then they present these "decisions" at WTO conferences as fait accompli.
They also secretly forward on sensitive research and policy documents to Western corporations, giving them decisive competitive advantages.

"Globalization" means that capital can move where it wants, but labour (ie, you and me) are constrained in where we can emigrate to in order to follow the money flow. Borders restrain and impede people searching for better standards of living while being deliberately porous for capitalists.

What exactly is "globalization" all about? The IMF/World Bank/WTO knowingly bribe local officials to sell off national assets cheaply, deliberately push people into the poverty trap to inflame "social unrest" so that Western companies can buy assets cheaply during the ensuing panic, and "condemns people to death".

But it's not just me saying that. Or those rather smelly anarcho-crusties swinging their dreads forlornly. It's all in the words of Joseph Stiglitz, current Economics Nobel winner and former chief economist boffin at the World Bank. He seems to have done a Vadar and come back from the Dark Side.

Just how badly has globalized moneterism failed to achieve universal prosperity for all?

In the United States, the median real wage is about the same today as it was 28 years ago.This means that the majority of the labor force has failed to share in the gains from economic growth over the last 28 years. That is drastically different from the previous 27 years, during which the typical wage increased by about 80% in real terms. Trade has doubled as a percentage of our economy since the early 1970s, and there is no doubt that globalization has played a significant role in the worsening distribution of income here.

Now, international trade per se is obviously not the issue here, it's international trade under the deliberately poverty-inducing stategies of the IMF-led cartel. International trade could be defined and regulated in such a way as to promote prosperity of ordinary people within economic areas:

Globalization is no more natural or inevitable than the construction of skyscrapers. The globalization we have seen in recent decades has been driven by a laborious process of rule making. It is the establishment and enforcement of these rules that allows Timberland shoes, for example, to make their product in China at wages of 22 cents an hour, and then sell it at the local suburban mall. Advances in transportation and communications did not determine this result. Our leaders have rewritten the rules of the game in a way that has driven down wages for the vast majority of American employees. One may agree or disagree with this policy, but it should be understood as a conscious political choice.
...
The same thing could have been done to the salaries of doctors, for example. With much less effort and expense than it has taken to negotiate investment and trade agreements like NAFTA and the WTO, we could license and regulate the training of doctors in foreign medical schools. By allowing these doctors to practice medicine in the United States, we could lower the salaries of doctors and greatly reduce health care costs, without any loss of quality. Interestingly, the savings to consumers from reducing American doctors' salaries to even those of Europe would be enormous: about $70 billion a year.

This is about a hundred times more than the gains from tariff reduction in our most comprehensive trade liberalization agreements, such as the one that established the WTO five years ago. Huge savings could also be achieved by introducing international competition to the practice of accountants, lawyers, economists, and other professionals. But it is unlikely to happen, because these professionals -- unlike the majority of the US labor force -- have enough political clout to protect themselves from international competition.

This Economist article is well-reasoned. But it ignores the underlying fact that globalization means the increasing freedom of movement of capital without complementing freedom of movement of labour, has led to a massive democratic imbalance in the world.

This is because Corporations have lobbyists and expense accounts whereas poor people can only throw rocks.

Corporations prosper while working people are denied freedome of migration and emigration and suffer and end up rotting in huge unemployed pockets of poverty. This is not right and leads to the kind of tensions that I see expressed as fundamentalism in Muslim countries and riots by rich Western kids in Genoa.

Apparently, "unbridled laissez-faire" has got us into this predicament. Maybe it's time to restructure international trade to prevent plunging so many countries into IMF misery?

This is not unprecedented. Before World War One the global economy was very tightly knited together. Unfortunately, this imperial, colonialist and racist system massively benefitted certain countries at the expense of others. What we call today's "laissez-faire" is in fact nothing of the kind but a complex regulatory system designed to perpetuate Western Hegemony.

I benefit greatly from this, getting to eat candies when I want and buy cheap shoes at Payless. But if I had to settle for less candies and knew this was in some way reducing the risk of a suicidal airliner dropping on my head then I'm all for it.

Maybe it's time for a Tobin Tax? Make all those currency speculators produce something worthwhile from their mindless machinations. Donate the proceeds to developing world educational programs....

"Globalization" means that capital can move where it wants, but labour (ie, you and me) are constrained in where we can emigrate to in order to follow the money flow. Borders restrain and impede people searching for better standards of living while being deliberately porous for capitalists.

What exactly is "globalization" all about? The IMF/World Bank/WTO knowingly bribe local officials to sell off national assets cheaply, deliberately push people into the poverty trap to inflame "social unrest" so that Western companies can buy assets cheaply during the ensuing panic, and "condemns people to death".

But it's not just me saying that. Or those rather smelly anarcho-crusties swinging their dreads forlornly. It's all in the words of Joseph Stiglitz, current Economics Nobel winner and former chief economist boffin at the World Bank. He seems to have done a Vadar and come back from the Dark Side.

Just how badly has globalized moneterism failed to achieve universal prosperity for all?

In the United States, the median real wage is about the same today as it was 28 years ago.This means that the majority of the labor force has failed to share in the gains from economic growth over the last 28 years. That is drastically different from the previous 27 years, during which the typical wage increased by about 80% in real terms. Trade has doubled as a percentage of our economy since the early 1970s, and there is no doubt that globalization has played a significant role in the worsening distribution of income here.

Now, international trade per se is obviously not the issue here, it's international trade under the deliberately poverty-inducing stategies of the IMF-led cartel. International trade could be defined and regulated in such a way as to promote prosperity of ordinary people within economic areas:

Globalization is no more natural or inevitable than the construction of skyscrapers. The globalization we have seen in recent decades has been driven by a laborious process of rule making. It is the establishment and enforcement of these rules that allows Timberland shoes, for example, to make their product in China at wages of 22 cents an hour, and then sell it at the local suburban mall. Advances in transportation and communications did not determine this result. Our leaders have rewritten the rules of the game in a way that has driven down wages for the vast majority of American employees. One may agree or disagree with this policy, but it should be understood as a conscious political choice.
...
The same thing could have been done to the salaries of doctors, for example. With much less effort and expense than it has taken to negotiate investment and trade agreements like NAFTA and the WTO, we could license and regulate the training of doctors in foreign medical schools. By allowing these doctors to practice medicine in the United States, we could lower the salaries of doctors and greatly reduce health care costs, without any loss of quality. Interestingly, the savings to consumers from reducing American doctors' salaries to even those of Europe would be enormous: about $70 billion a year.

This is about a hundred times more than the gains from tariff reduction in our most comprehensive trade liberalization agreements, such as the one that established the WTO five years ago. Huge savings could also be achieved by introducing international competition to the practice of accountants, lawyers, economists, and other professionals. But it is unlikely to happen, because these professionals -- unlike the majority of the US labor force -- have enough political clout to protect themselves from international competition.

This Economist article is well-reasoned. But it ignores the underlying fact that globalization means the increasing freedom of movement of capital without complementing freedom of movement of labour, has led to a massive democratic imbalance in the world.

This is because Corporations have lobbyists and expense accounts whereas poor people can only throw rocks.

Corporations prosper while working people are denied freedome of migration and emigration and suffer and end up rotting in huge unemployed pockets of poverty. This is not right and leads to the kind of tensions that I see expressed as fundamentalism in Muslim countries and riots by rich Western kids in Genoa.

Apparently, "unbridled laissez-faire" has got us into this predicament. Maybe it's time to restructure international trade to prevent plunging so many countries into IMF misery?

This is not unprecedented. Before World War One the global economy was very tightly knited together. Unfortunately, this imperial, colonialist and racist system massively benefitted certain countries at the expense of others. What we call today's "laissez-faire" is in fact nothing of the kind but a complex regulatory system designed to perpetuate Western Hegemony.

I benefit greatly from this, getting to eat candies when I want and buy cheap shoes at Payless. But if I had to settle for less candies and knew this was in some way reducing the risk of a suicidal airliner dropping on my head then I'm all for it.

Maybe it's time for a Tobin Tax? Make all those currency speculators produce something worthwhile from their mindless machinations. Donate the proceeds to developing world educational programs....

"He is not always given full credit for his contribution because Paul Baran, an American working at the Rand Corporation in California, had independently come up with the same idea. However, Baran was focusing on a way to restructure AT&T's telephone system. Davies was creating a data network, and the design of the Arpanet, the precursor of the internet, was changed completely to adopt his technique.

Also, Davies's term for the idea, which he called "packet switching", was much catchier than Baran's "distributed adaptive message block switching".

It states:

Article 3 Illegal interception
Each Party shall adopt such legislative and other measures as may be necessary to establish as criminal offences under its domestic law, when committed intentionally, the interception without right, made by technical means, of non-public transmissions of computer data to, from or within a computer system, including electromagnetic emissions from a computer system carrying such computer data. A Party may require that the offence be committed with dishonest intent, or in relation to a computer system that is connected to another computer system.

Given the number of organisations that the UK government is planning to give access to your IT data under "anti terrorist legislation" (eg Guardian article), this will surely require some tricky legal manouvers to get every man and his dog working for the government classed as "with right" to intercept?

Also, what it'll be interesting to see how the data that the ISPs are being told to collect for "anti terrorist" means will be classed as "with right" to intercept, given the provisions in the human rights act on privacy...

For the resolution-impaired.

You don't? Are you sure?

FBI claims Bin Laden inquiry was frustrated
by Greg Palast and David Pallister
November 07 2001

FBI and military intelligence officials in Washington say they were prevented for political reasons from carrying out full investigations into members of the Bin Laden family in the US before the terrorist attacks of September 11.

Read about it here:

FBI claims Bin Laden inquiry was frustrated

Thank you and have a nice day.

The title Article In The Guardian On Internet2 is erroneous. The article is actually about Geant, "the new pan-European network serving more than 3,000 of the continent's academic and research institutions". Basically, Europes version of I2.

This was reported almost 2 months ago (Sep. 11) here. Admittedly our attention was focused elsewhere.

A fresh batch of newly declassified CIA documents, however, provides a more nuanced picture of the CIA's directorate of science and technology. The documents - requested under the Freedom of Information Act by Jeffrey Richelson, a senior fellow at the national security archive in Washington - chart the development of the extraordinary US spy satellites as well as the U-2 and A-12 spy planes. But they also record some of the gaffes and wrong turns along the way, which reveal the CIA's boffins to be as accident-prone as any government institution.

There is an article on The Guardian about how a company in Iceland is working on (and getting close to) using Hydrogen for energy.

There is an article on The Guardian about how a company in Iceland is working on (and getting close to) using Hydrogen for energy.

What I'm saying is that these extremists want us dead and our society destroyed. And there is absolutely nothing we can peacefully do, politically or otherwise, to change that. There is no reasoning with these extremists because their end goal is the complete and utter destruction of our (re: most average Americans') way of life.

Oh, and as far as military action in the Middle East for centuries goes...don't forget war amongst the tribes, fueding warlords, etc, etc. It ins't just the West that's been fighting there.

If there were effective alternatives to forcefully protecting ourselves, then I'd love to hear them.

And just what is the West trying to accomplish in Afghanistan?

• whatreallyhappened.com
• WAR ON TERROR: THE REAL VICTIMS
• Boom, Bust and Echo: A Dark Theory Behind Black Tuesday (This one is a little over the top, but there is some interesting information)
• Asking "Why?"
• Explaining Arab anger
• They can't see why they are hated
• Who did it? Foreign Report presents an alternative view
• When Will We Learn?
• Why we should reject American propaganda
• emperors-clothes.com
• zmag.org, see especially:
  • The New War Against Terror

But, you can make it clear to other nations that a given government will not be allowed to exist if said government either turns a blind eye to terrorists operating in its borders or, even worse, endorses and supports terrorists.

My opinion? Fukuyama would be correct if people actually did act rationally. But, having grown up among many fundamentalists (of the good, Christian variety :-), I know that people will often do things against their own best interests in the name of their religions, their cultures, and their personal identities. It's not even clear that there is any apparent march toward traditional, western rationality - look at how quickly things devolved in Yugoslavia.

Today, there are enough cultural (Notice how that word starts with "cult"? Same Greek root!) differences and irrationality about to make Huntington's thesis look more believable at this time.

Last week, while scanning the various news sites for information, I was constantly faced with examples of the unreliability of the major US news sources. I noted this in particular:

On cnn.com, Oct 15:

"(Gen. Myers, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff) said that despite the Taliban claims of civilian deaths in Koram 'there were no bomb craters in that village.'"

"The Taliban also escorted journalists to the village, which appeared to have been largely destroyed. Giant craters were visible as well as several fresh graves. Carcasses of dead animals lay here and there along with bloodied pillows."

That sort of reporting merely strengthening my total lack of faith in corporate media. I've been relying more heavily on the Guardian for better coverage, and IndyMedia for posts of stories buried in smaller publications.

Plenty of other references on Steve's site, as well...

Ummm... I'm curios. Is this sarcasm? Are you suggesting there is a movement in the U.S. government to cover up any opposing views of what's happening in this "war".

Ummm... I'm curios. Is this sarcasm? Are you suggesting there is a movement in the U.S. government to cover up any opposing views of what's happening in this "war".

It's a good time to attend to the unfinished business we have with Saddam - Bush Sr./Powell dropped the ball big time there 10 years ago.

"In liquid form, anthrax is useless - droplets would fall to the ground, rather than staying suspended in the air to be breathed by victims. Making powder needs repeated washings in huge centrifuges, followed by intensive drying, which requires sealed environments. The technology would cost millions. "

The right to trial by jury would be abolished in all instances where the sentence was likely to be less than two years. This would include most prosecutions under sec. 296 of the Copyrights Designs and Patents Act (the UK's DMCA), as well as serious reputation-destroying charges such as theft, assault and drug offences, where defendants can at the moment insist on jury trials. To prevent "perverse" decisions, Auld also recommends that judges should be allowed to ask juries specific menus of questions about the facts of the case instead of innocent-or-guilty verdicts, reserving the final decision for the judge themself.

In a democratic system, the last ditch defence against a really bad law is that a jury can refuse to convict, in spite of the evidence, if they think that the prosecution is unfair or unreasonable. Cases thrown out by UK juries against the evidence in recent years include vandalism charges against GM crop protesters, official secrets charges against civil service whistleblowers and shoplifting charges against confused elderly people. Juries have also tended to be more critical of police evidence than judges and court officials; and to have had more relaxed views in obscenity and pornography cases.

Specific comment: Independent, Guardian
General reports: BBC, Times, Telegraph, Guardian, Independent
(submitted to /. yro yesterday; rejected).

And remember, as this week's NTK points out, bad UK law is often just version 0.1 for bad law in the US.

The right to trial by jury would be abolished in all instances where the sentence was likely to be less than two years. This would include most prosecutions under sec. 296 of the Copyrights Designs and Patents Act (the UK's DMCA), as well as serious reputation-destroying charges such as theft, assault and drug offences, where defendants can at the moment insist on jury trials. To prevent "perverse" decisions, Auld also recommends that judges should be allowed to ask juries specific menus of questions about the facts of the case instead of innocent-or-guilty verdicts, reserving the final decision for the judge themself.

In a democratic system, the last ditch defence against a really bad law is that a jury can refuse to convict, in spite of the evidence, if they think that the prosecution is unfair or unreasonable. Cases thrown out by UK juries against the evidence in recent years include vandalism charges against GM crop protesters, official secrets charges against civil service whistleblowers and shoplifting charges against confused elderly people. Juries have also tended to be more critical of police evidence than judges and court officials; and to have had more relaxed views in obscenity and pornography cases.

Specific comment: Independent, Guardian
General reports: BBC, Times, Telegraph, Guardian, Independent
(submitted to /. yro yesterday; rejected).

And remember, as this week's NTK points out, bad UK law is often just version 0.1 for bad law in the US.