Slashdot Mirror

Oh, and the government recently RESCINDED an apology for forcing Korean women to be sex slaves for Japanese soldiers during WWII. Why did they do this? BECAUSE "THE KOREANS VOLUNTEERED."

Hmmm... I was curious about this, so I did some digging. It looks like an official apology was issued in 1993, but that in 2007 Japan's PM Shinzo Abe made some comments indicating that the services of the "comfort women" were voluntary. Abe refused to re-issue a new apology, but did ultimately say that he stands by the 1993 statement.

Still... pretty shocking.

An important distinction...

Two seasons, about 30-ish episodes IIRC, isn't so bad as things go. But the problem is that due to the lack of any kind of notice, I'm left with the feeling of only seeing half a story - as if I'd been watching a film that cut out half way through. Sure, the first half might have been really really good, but you'd be annoyed - and you'd never recommend it to anyone else for watching.

Whilst I realise that a lack of long term planning seems to be common for networks like Fox, it seems like most other shows have had a chance to wrap up their story, whether they went on for 10 seasons, or were cancelled after a few episodes. Even Firefly got a DVD to finish up. Rome is another example which was cancelled after only the second season, but they knew in advance, so could pick up the pace and at least tell a complete story.

Terminator OTOH ended on a cliffhanger in Season Two, with many loose ends unanswered through the season. To add to that, Season One suffered due to the writer's strike, and that also had many loose ends that were simply dropped and never resolved. Given that season two had several episodes in the middle that were slow moving and didn't seem to go anywhere, there would have been opportunity to drop some material out to finish the story, if only they knew in advance.

Thankfully they'd made the decision to keep the storyline a separate story from the canon of the films - and a good thing too, what use is half a story to the franchise? Which is a shame, because it was a good story they were telling.

As an aside, I'm curious what ratings are considered "popular" in the US. Here in the UK, over 10 million would be mainstream major success, and about 3 million would still be okay - and that's for a mainstream terrestrial channel. Of course there are also much more people in the US - but I was also under the impression of there being a lot more channels. Given the hundreds of channels of rubbish that gets churned out, it seems odd that good shows have to fight to survive...

Virgin 1, which showed Terminator in the UK, gets ratings of the order of hundreds of thousands ( http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2007/oct/02/tvratings ), which would be considered good for a non-terrestrial channel. I'd be curious to know what the UK figures for Terminator were like (they were over a million for the debut, record ratings for the channel - http://www.digital-tv.co.uk/blog/terminator-debut-breaks-virgin-1-viewing-figures.html - but I realise it would've dropped off since). Anyone know?

Sun may have overlooked one thing: Apple don't actually make much money from the app store, at least according to this article.

Presumably, it makes business sense for Apple as the app store contributes to the appeal of the iPhone. Sun won't be selling the PCs that are running these apps, and as others have pointed out the expense of reviewing full applications rather than small iPhone apps will be much greater.

Perhaps there are other benefits for Sun, but from a short-term profit-making perspective it won't work.

Having said that, a package-manager-esque software distribution method for Windows is a no-brainer. Microsoft are probably the best company to implement that, though.

RS

What do I need to read and where do I need to go to get android running on one of those old oneTs? Or whatever - it's a testing ground, sold to a very generic audience. I would love to be able to run an ubuntu distro on there, although android sounds worth trying on a netbook.

One thing about netbooks though is they are half way between a phone and a computer, so they shouldn't need to be so complicated - both in interface design and in expectations. Another is this reliance on google docs or youtube and other commercial free-as-in-beer (I never thought I'd say that) services that just don't seem to have a proper funding model in a very unstable economy.

We really need to develop distributed software models that we can use to keep this kind of thing going. Projects like opengoo, or various mesh network wifi projects and organisations seem really useful, and ones that could easily adapt towards it, but I think the netbook will eventually be their playground...

I would love to find out for sure if at 30-50 watts we're finally at something I can attach an exercise bike or a couple of solar panels to and actually get enough power to run it. In environmental terms it would be a huge breakthrough. And I wouldn't spend so much time reading email.

Same with auto deaths. An interesting chat about this was on Radio 4 on the BBC one morning recently. Somebody was arguing that car crashes should warrant full investigations the same as when planes crash or trains have fatal accidents. the argument was that its national and international news if a plane falls out the sky and 100 people die, they will often ground all aircraft round the world of that make until the investigation works out what went wrong, or at least upgrade all the other planes of the same model.

The argument was that 2943 people died on UK roads last year, if that many people died in plane or train crashes or by swine flu (UK swine flu toll: zero - yet millions spent on health alerts, tv advertising, upgrading medical services) - there would be national outrage, but we're happy to accept this many deaths by auto.

To Whom It May Be Concerned:

Fox, taking a clue from the RIAA and MPAA in an ill-advised attempt to piss off its own fanbase, cancelled Terminator: The Sarah Conor Chronicles.

We joke about SkyNet. And we don't have to worry about such things because even the most sophisticated drones and killbots in service require humans to pull the trigger.

The moment you give a computer the responsibility of deciding when to pull the trigger, that's a pretty fundamental change.

And yet, is it fundamentally a bad thing? We give less-than-stable humans that responsibility all the time.

I suppose it's the military equivalent to the civilian tech quandary of one day letting autonomous vehicles on the roads. Perhaps once the tech has advanced to the point where it can demonstrate not merely parity with but vast superiority to the discernment exhibited by humans, it will be a shift we're ready to make.

For most people, sound in Linux works, but it doesn't work well for anyone. By "work well", I mean MIDI and sound stream control. Windows, MacOS X and even (and especially) BeOS have the sound sewn down and are viable platforms for music creation. Linux definitely isn't and ALSA has inherent flaws that guarantee it never will.

Windows has the sound "sewn down"? Why were there so many complaints about the sound system in Vista (their current OS)? They hosed sound so badly that articles were written about it in mainstream publications. A cursory google searchshows thousands of users with audio issues under Vista. I would hardly call the current state of windows audio bug-free.

This is good old fashioned journalism at its best; a competent team of reporters going over a huge amount of data and expressing it clearly and succinctly in terms the public can understand.

But apparently they paid for the data. Some peddler was trying to sell it to major news organizations and they're the ones who decided to buy it after several refused. You skipped that part, otherwise nice post.

That depends how you define unrelated, but I think that the Anti-terrorism, Crime and Security Act of 2001 is a perfect example of the fact that the name of a law is chosen to try and make sure that it gets passed.

Maybe future historians will consider this a dark age, whose intellectual production was lost.

Current historians and librarians already do.

What's the EU going to do? Send a strongly-worded letter? ;-)

Overturn the ruling

This reminds me of this 4/1 joke about the Guardian converting its 188-year-old archive of news articles to a Twitter feed.

First, your arithmetic is atrocious. Work on that. Second, I'm not entirely sure what you mean by "the Microsoft fine", seeing how Microsoft has been fined several times, since unlike those European companies, it just doesn't want to learn. Third, none of the companies I listed were stupid enough to try to string the commission along. But then, with profit margins reaching 81%(par. 464), perhaps it's not really a matter of "stupidity", ey.

Why don't we ask Israel how they're keeping their borders secure and take a few hints?

Woah... Isreal is a model non-racist country?!! Their treatment towards their neighbors should be emulated in US/Mexican relations?!!

NOT

I know you have an ax to grind with nuclear power for some reason - but calling it "dirty" compared to it's alternatives is just silly and you should know better.

BS! Nuclear power is dirtier than either solar or wind. With both there is no waste to be stored. And there is no processing or reprocessing of fuel. The sun or wind is the fuel.

Does it create some potentially hazardous materials that have to be dealt with? Yes
Are they in reality THAT HARD to deal with? No

Yes it is hard to deal with. Even the French, who have gone further with reprocessing nuclear waste has problems doing it. "France is aggravating both problems: spent fuel and separated plutonium stocks." "Reprocessing [pdf] and MOX fuel use are uneconomical and will remain so for the foreseeable future;"

"Nuclear France - The Myths Uncovered"
"France gets nearly 80% of its electricity from its 58 reactors. However, such a heavy reliance on nuclear power brings with it many major, unsolved problems, most especially that of radioactive waste. Despite assertions to the contrary, the French nuclear story is far from a gleaming example of nuclear success. The example, set by the French nuclear infrastructure - and best exemplified by its giant nuclear corporation, Areva, is not to be emulated."

Are they really that bad for the environment? Not really

If you believe that you haven't seen the effects of uranium mining. "The Effects of Uranium Mining are Disastrous."

biggest problem with dealing with nuclear byproducts is NIMBY.

The biggest problem with wind is NIMBYism. The government's National Renewable Energy Lab has produced an atlas of wind potential through the US. The Rocky Mountains alone contain enough potential wind power to power the continental US. Which I might add that Texas Oil Man T Boone Pickens is pushing with his Pickens Plan. But that's not all. The Pacific Northwest has a lot as well. If you draw a line south from there to Southern CA then turn east to Texas, you'll see more potential. Now go east, the Appalachians is a good location for wind as well. The mountains up the east coast have good locations. Offshore from Cape Hatteras to Cape Cod there's another line of good cites.

Oh, I think it's rather telling that so called environmentalist activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr is one of those NIMBYs fighting wind farms in Cape Cod, from that first link on Nimbys.

pollution equal to 50 million cars annually. Just 15 of these ships = the entire worlds auto output (SO2/SoX) There are 19,000 ocean going cargo ships, granted of various sizes.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/apr/09/shipping-pollution.

While I'm not complaining about making car emissions cleaner lets start looking at making some of the current big offenders cleaner.

"God this is brilliant...what's the difference between a fridge and poofter?"

"Well, when you pull the meat out of the fridge, it doesn't fart!" tit

"Sun publisher News International calls the topless girls "fun family, content""

Both the Guardian & the Independent has this quote in their obits.
So did BBC Music Magazine.
http://www.google.com/search?q=%22maurice+jarre%22++%22music+was+my+life

The Guardian has even published a retraction blaming it on the Wikipedia vandalizer - poor Guardian.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2009/mar/31/maurice-jarre-obituary

This article was amended on Friday 3 April 2009. Maurice Jarre died on 28 March 2009, not 29 March. We opened with a quotation which we are now advised had been invented as a hoax, and was never said by the composer: "My life has been one long soundtrack. Music was my life, music brought me to life." The article closed with: "Music is how I will be remembered," said Jarre. "When I die there will be a final waltz playing in my head and that only I can hear." These quotes appear to have originated as a deliberate insertion in the composer's Wikipedia entry in the wake of his death on 28 March, and from there were duplicated on various internet sites. These errors have been corrected.

And Hewlett-Packard sold 13.3 million a quarter - your point? You're comparing different markets.

The mobile phone market is vastly bigger than handheld consoles. If they were going to be worried about someone, they should be worried about Nokia (who shipped 117.8 million phones a quarter during last year). They might, after that, be worried about Samsung (51.8 million a quarter), Motorola (25.4 million a quarter) and LG (23 million a quarter) ( http://www.electronista.com/articles/08/10/30/motorola.q3.2008.results/ ). And the vast majority of these phones can play games (using an industry standard method that's been around over a decade allowing different models of phones to run the same software, though the Iphone has yet to catch up to this ability). (If you're going to quibble about sales of an individual model, then that unfairly penalises other companies for offering more choice to consumers, and anyway there have been different models of the Iphone; but even for single models, the Motorola RAZR alone sold 110 million.)

Sorry guys, but despite all the stories that Slashdot posts about it ("You can read this website on an Iphone! Isn't that amazing!"), at 4 million sales they're a niche player in the mobile phone market.

None of those articles talk seriously about the Labour party splitting in two, only some MPs defecting. I doubt much will come of it though, as defecting to the Lib Dems is basically ensuring you have no place in the next or any government in the foreseeable future. Ashdown's speculation is just that.

You are correct that none of the articles provide any evidence that Labour will fragment into separate factions, I simply wanted to point out that the suggestion originated in the broadsheets. It is possible that some Labour MP's will defect to the Liberals if Labour lose at the next general election. Labour defections have happened in the past.

This is classic newspaper tactics. The Mail is by far the worst for it. Every edition has reader's letters starting "If the government does such-and-such..." when the government has no plans to do such-and-such, and has often never even hinted at even considering such-and-such.

Indeed. With Gordon Brown appearing to be both unpopular and ineffective this is behaviour that all the UK newspapers are indulging in, not just the Daily Mail. I will concede that the Mail is one of the worst at this and should not be considered a quality news source.

More hyperbole. Before the credit crunch spending was fairly low compared to other nations, and now it's being done to lessen the effects of the recession by stimulating the economy with cash injections (e.g. car scappage scheme) and government projects (building contracts etc). Of course a lot went to prop up the banks, but people talk about that as if it was a free hand-out. We own those banks now and it's hard to imagine a situation so catastrophic that we wouldn't get out investment back with interest at some point in the medium term.

Hyperbole, really?. I think I was being quite restrained. Comparing UK government spending levels to other nations is not useful. Others have different population levels, GDP and citizen expectations. What is useful is comparing spending to GDP, the good old fashioned can we afford it metric. Why not take a look at the ever amusing (and full of hyperbole) Buring our Money blog. The articles in the debt category should convey a sense of the debt disaster Labours spending has built up with far more eloquence than I have time for here. In case you were wondering where it all goes here is the handy Guardian (PDF) chart of government spending.

The government could have handled the bank bailouts considerably better. I really liked the good bank idea I read about in the FT. This idea would have left the UK with a much smaller debt problem and several profitable banks to sell off in a few years time.

If you think that's "like a drunken sailor" you clearly have no understanding of even basic economics. I'll spell it out for you: in a recession the problem is people stop spending, so work dries up and businesses find it hard to get loans or credit (and they all rely on that). The only way you can lessen the effect is to put money into the economy by spending and making sure banks still offer loans.

We are going to have to disagree here, the fastest way back to a healthy economy is to cut tax, regulation and the public sector. The government is now starting to find it difficult to open new lines of credit. We may be close to the time when there are no buyers of government debt. If this happens expect the government to have to go cap in hand to the IMF. It is unlikely that Alistair Darlings spend our way out of the recession plan is going to be an option.

The best

They're opening their network to other broadband companies, as a way of increasing revenues and heading off any issues with monopolisation of cable infrastructure. (They gradually hoovered up most of the UK's other cable companies.)

How about having a scalpel taken to your penis?

While the act may have been carried out in Morocco, it was done on US orders and sanctioned by the UK.

That's torture any way you spin it, and I guarantee you would redefine your opinion of what is, and is not torture if they ever let me practice these acts on you.

This Guardian article argues that the
story is complete hot air, the two sources (Tech Crunch and ValleyWag) are both unconvinced themselves and the Twitter execs seem to be in the wrong
part of the US to be locked into negotiations with Apple.

Leaving aside whether it is true or not, it seems a very strange fit. Apple doesn't seem to gain very much in its core business from the
acquisition

It makes more sense when you see kdawson posted it.

This Guardian article argues that the story is complete hot air, the two sources (Tech Crunch and ValleyWag) are both unconvinced themselves and the Twitter execs seem to be in the wrong part of the US to be locked into negotiations with Apple.

Leaving aside whether it is true or not, it seems a very strange fit. Apple doesn't seem to gain very much in its core business from the acquisition

Via Google http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2009/apr/20/google-uk-tax-avoidance

"So the ability to criticize government/politicians, religion/church, commerce/companies or any other inefficient system without going to jail, or losing your life is just an illusion? Try living in China, or Singapore, or India and trying criticizing anything on the list."

That extreme is always used to justify control. The smoke screen that is sold is that our country cannot be as bad as other countries (que highlighting worse case cherry picked examples from other countries), then use that as a justification to carry on as before.

In the UK, we have rich bankers robbing millions from taxpayers. In the UK, we have corrupt politicians using false expenses to (between them all) rob millions of tax payers money. We have morally corrupt corporations like Phorm turning the UK into a Big Brother police state for their goal of spying on everyone 24/7 for their own financial gain and working with the government on this goal. The UK is becoming an ever better place for the rich and an ever worse place for the majority of people. For example, this news link is from 2004, yet it shows NuLabour's true focus...
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2004/dec/08/politics.socialexclusion

The majority of the population struggle to live, can't afford housing, can barely hold onto their jobs. While the elite get ever richer with ever more power to control the majority.

For example, there are ever more groups in the UK being singled out to be spied on and controlled ever more. Dangerous people like the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, who have over 2 million members in the UK. (2 million people standing together on an issue can oppose government policies and their high profile campaigns can make millions more people join in and stand up to the politicians ... thats why the government spy on groups like this. Its for political goals, not safety goals).

Come to the UK, its turning into a real utopia.

I agree with you. Something of value WILL be lost when the newspapers are gone. However, their added value has still diminished over the years.

Here's some of my favorite articles produced by major news outlets:

What if It's All Been a Big Fat Lie?
Dark cloud over good works of Gates Foundation
How Bush's grandfather helped Hitler's rise to power

Some would suggest that Google is avoiding paying taxes that are due to the UK exchequer http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2009/apr/20/google-uk-tax-avoidance so let them do no evil.

This article in the Guardian (Hardly a Tory paper) puts the Tories firmly on course for a landslide victory. http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/blog/2009/apr/28/tories-on-course-for-landslide/

Most people I know who were NuLab supporters think ElGordo has totally lost the plot but can't think of anyone who can replace him in time for the election who has any chance of stopping the rot.

The BBC got in trouble when they took control of a botnet for one of their technology shows: http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/blog/2009/mar/12/bbc-botnet-legality-questioned. While this research was performed in the US, I think they must have broken a law somewhere. I don't see how grabbing personal info obtained illegally for the sake of research, even if they didn't infect the computers originally, makes it permissible under US law.

(If it ever was cool that is)

Twitter is becomming the butt of jokes in the mainstream media this is not happening because the media are scared of Twitter. Its because Twitter has become a byword for ill informed content and mob mentality to the extent that I've heard stand up comedians can get a laugh out of mocking it.

This is not good for Twitter. It needs to reinvent itself fast or it will die a victim of its own success.

"That would explain why all the kids these days want to grow up to be a wealthy scientist, rather than a pro athlete, rapper, or movie star. Stupid science, stealing our best minds!"

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2001/apr/21/highereducation.education

Sure, no one's perfect. The Chinese may have their Great Firewall, the Australians may have their insane copyright laws, the Germans may have their list of things you cannot say online, and the NSA may be secretly hoarding a copy of the entire internet feed in a bunker in the Southwest.

But as far as Big-Brother-is-watching-you-style surveillance, the U.K. wins hands-down. It's like they were using 1984 as an instructional guide. So it is at least a little ironic that Orwell is British.

If you care about your health , DON'T travel to U.S.A.
This will accomplish two things: (1) Keep you healthy and
(2) Prevent tourist dollars from buffering U.S.A. economic
collapse.

Thanks for your PatRIOTism.

Yours In Socialism,
Kilgore Trout

And guess whose partner/husband may have a use for such a database.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/apr/07/jacqui-smith-mps-expenses

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article5999287.ece

Quick question: Is anyone else buying up physical, in-your-possession gold?

Given the recession crime-wave meaning more burglaries, it seems a bit risky to be storing gold yourself?

Remember this little stunt, when Greenpeace tried to starve a whole bunch of people to push their agenda? Reread that a few times until it sinks in. They were willing to let people starve to death for their anti-GMO goals. Yes, I realize that they only advised government officials to do that, and maybe they would have done it anyway for political purposes, but Greenpeace still supported the decision. As far as I'm concerned, monsters like that have less than zero credibility concerning genetically modified food.

MI5 were recently in the news for alleged complicity in the torture of detainees in Pakistan.

Before you jump at this glamorous top secret job, think about who you will be working for.

This is just (expensive) security theatre.

MacBeki

Link was missing a final s
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2008/dec/04/law-genetics

the US is one of the richest countries in the world, but at the same time for sure the biggest polluter

Not quite. In fact, the US and Canada are net carbon sinks.

So now it seems the global warming theory can have its ice and melt it too.

You're wrong. Images from NASA.

The UK has a huge DNA database including large numbers of minors and people subsequently found innocent.
The much maligned European Court is protecting our liberties by declaring this illegal:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2008/dec/04/law-genetic
Such a shame that the mother of democracies should come to this.
Be warned by our bad example

But not everyone pays the same amount of tax. The average joe gets the same benefits after paying a smaller tax than someone making more money. http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/2008/nov/16/sweden-tax-burden-welfare

I liked him when he was just doing small gigs, but once he got a whiff of fame he sold out.

Oh boy, no. I know you are joking, but Wittgenstein was crazy enough that the truth is funnier than the joke.

Wittgenstein believed that his first book, the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, solved all of the problems of philosophy. Therefore, since there were no more problems left to solve, Wittgenstein quit philosophy and became a grade school teacher in rural Austria.

After he lost that job (because of beating up a student), he temporarily became a gardener in a monastery he wanted to join, until the monks supposedly convinced him that he wasn't really cut out for the monastic life. (Gee, you have to wonder why they told him that.) So he then became an amateur architect to help his sister build a house she liked (which is now a historical building).

Then he started chatting with some philosophers and mathematicians once in a while and changed his mind about his book: he concluded that, after all, he had not solved all of the problems in philosophy. So he moved to Cambridge to go back to doing philosophy, and after a couple of years, he discovered that he had not solved all of the problems in philosophy because there are none. After that, he spent the next 18 years or so, nearly the rest of his life, writing and rewriting the Logical Investigations, a book that nobody has ever understood, and whose publication he only allowed to happen after his death, because his writing sucked so much he couldn't bear to subject the general public to it while he was still alive.

Oh, and his father was the richest man in Austria, but he surrendered his portion of the inheritance because he didn't believe in money...

It is even worse than that I am afraid.

Most commercial products do not even have a dividing line between "cobbled" and "polished" now days.

How many different commercial off the shelf Wireless AP's now days come with "cobbled" open source software?

I do not mind paying for software, I do. I just do not like companies that rip off the open source community, then whine and complain when their proprietary code is leaked to the net and it is a crime along with prison and fines, if you touch our code. Apparently you can do anything you like with GNU software.

I want to see Cisco execs in jail like the Pirate Bay people. Unlike the Pirate Bay people though they are actively making a direct profit from breaking the law.

5 years in the pen along with 50 Million put in a trust to start and fund more open source projects. Preferably building open wireless drivers for more cards.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/blog/2008/dec/12/cisco-fsf-opensource

-Hack

Yet D&D gamers grew up and they don't run amok in our streets fighting imaginary orcs and dragons.

That's because as we grew up we realized that we have enough real monsters to deal with. Orcs and dragons are for pussies, just let me get my .30-06.

Here's a short article by Dr. Richard Clayton that might explain a few things. http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/apr/15/phorm-internet-privacy-european-union