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Btw, does anyone know why does the link from slashdot asks me for registration, but not the one from Google News?

He said it in a fund-raising letter. Diebold systems are incredibly easy to hack, and almost certainly helped in the voting irregularities in the 2004 election.

To top it off, a highly partisan republican, Kenneth Blackwell, managed the votes in Ohio and has been uncooperative in investigations.

This says nothing of the exit poll discrepancies...

What's amusing about all this is that ClearChannel has been seen as heavily pro-Bush. But it seems that Bush's "activist FCC" may not be good for business, as they reported a huge one-time loss. That same article reports that their radio business is stagnating. Frank Rich said it best: Basically, FCC regulation is on the upswing, but you get between the people and their "Desperate Housewives" at the risk of your business model.

Hmm... . So the behavior of one cartel makes every captialist a scumbag?

Are the people at Yahoo scumbags? What about the folks who run the show at 3M? Ford? IBM? Dow-Corning? ARM Holdings?

Are there any capitalists who aren't scumbags, or is a large business automatically evil?

Scandal? Bias? You do realize that the truth behind Bush's dereliction of duty from the Texas National Guard during the Vietnam War rested on more than 3 memos. If you are concerned about bias in your news media (Fox, cough, cough), you might want to take issue with Bush's White House policy of faking news (and it's not even on a comedy channel).

The 100,000 figure does not come from them however, it is from a study led by Les Roberts of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health which was released last October. It was covered in the media, more in the international media of course.

Guardian
NYT
International Herald Tribune
Washington Post

I wonder if it will have antivirus and anti-spyware bundled in the default install. They bought Giant not so long ago, and now they're getting Sybari. http://www.iht.com/articles/2005/02/08/yourmoney/m sft.html

If they're having trouble finding a "gee whiz" selling point to entice buyers to the new system, this might be it. It would also be a good answer to the pirates - a solid reason why your OS would phone home and reactivate itself every few hours.

Considering both of those countries have the same depression ratio between men and women as the United States (1.7), I expect you'd get a similar answer.

The National Comorbidity Study, a large survey of adults in the United States released last year, found that 1.7 women for every man had experienced at least one episode of depression. Roughly the same ratio has been found in recent studies in nine other countries, including Canada, Brazil, Germany and Japan, said Marta Meana, an associate professor of psychology at the University of Nevada at Las Vegas.

very unimpressive disply ... i mean notice the tables.. sheesh
and blair says this

Also, a New York Times article (mirror) says PC games are not included in the current numbers. They will be available "in the next few days."

in this article one of the things they note is "a rapid turnover among the bureau's information technology personnel." in addition to which they appear to have as many problems as any other large organization trying to manage their tech infrastructure.

That is in the works, isn't it? Last October, Poland announced plans to withdraw in 2005. See Poland sets pullout from Iraq in 2005 from International Herald Tribune. I also recall an NPR report the the Ukrane will also be withdrawing troops. Pretty soon it will be the US and the Tony 'The Poodle' Blair's UK contingent.

It pisses me off that no American company today would ever do something like this.

That is because Wall Street is so concerned with short-term profits. Gasoline is at an all-time high while Toyota/Honda are the only companies that had the patience to develop a profitable solution [ljworld.com] to the problem. In 1997 when Toyota introduced the hybrid, they were losing lots of money on every unit sold. Now, they are selling that same technology to US-based companies [iht.com].

Now, Ford isn't buying Toyota technology because it makes environmental sense. Rather, they are doing it because it makes sense for short-term profits - the same mindset that got them into this situation in the first place. This mentality will catch up to the US sooner or later. And where is solar energy? dx

I was under the impression that Japan was part of Asia -- is this incorrect?

The iPod is apparently quite popular in Japan, stomping Sony's offerings into the ground. See for example, this article.

OK, they'll be gone next year. BTW, they have 2500 troops, while America has 135,000. So they're forgettable anyway, if not by their Polish families.

Yes - even McD is outsourcing the drive-through.

The BBC was reporting in June that Microsoft was expanding it's localization program to include Kiswahili,100 million speakers, Hausa and Yoruba in West Africa, Amharic and Somali in the Horn of Africa. Microsoft to launch in Kiswahili, Microsoft's Kiswahili Edition: An Advance for African Language, Programming Africans' linguistic needs

Based on a former New Zealand prime minister's comments? From the International Herald Tribune:

"New Zealanders are mostly comfortable with their larger neighbor, Australia, although jokes fly in both directions. The late Prime Minister Robert Muldoon once was heckled that he had ruined the economy so badly that most New Zealanders were migrating to Australia. "They are merely raising the average IQ levels in both countries," he shot back."

Thomas Friedman of the NY Times had a column yesterday suggesting putting money into NSF for alternative energy research: worth a read IMHO.

There are news bites coming out about Firefox everywhere you could possibly imagine.

Thanks, but we've already heard about Google News.

I found an interesting link, not that it will change anyones mind about anything (do people ever change their minds??).Observers say

Americans work their f#cking asses off.

A valid point. But you have to ask yourself why? For me at least, and all the people I knew, it was for the hope of getting somewhere. I wasn't working just to pay the rent, I was saving for goals, and to start my own buisness (btw: an American co-worker of mine just came to my office to tell me good-bye. His home buisness just took off!! Way to go!)

The long work weeks and low vacation time, exist because people want to get ahead. And the only way to do that is to take matters into their own hands and work harder.

btw: Let's not that 4day work weak nightmare France got themselves into. Working less and having all the leasure time is not always such a great idea.

spend with their families and children, making sure they dont grow up to be criminals,

My parrents each worked 80hrs a week. And other than turning out a Republican, I grew up just fine ;) Honestly though, I can not remember a moment of want to see my parents as a child, they were always there for me no matter what. Now if I can just get them to vote for Bush the circle will be complete...

here, in Germany, a university graduate starts with SIX weeks of vacation per year

No complaints here. I left the country too. And despite loving my adopted home, there is no greater Country on Earth than the USA. I love the idea of the vacation time I get here, I just ask for time off and get it. (can you imagine that?!)

i might point out that for at least the last year the euro/dollar exchange rate has been going to hell (for me anyway, all my money is still in the US). not a good sign.

The Euro's health has been in serious question too. Europe has gotten a huge boost out of the economic efficiencies of a unified Europe, but those efficiencies are begining to wane. Even Europe is outsourceing these days. Without continued expansion of the EU, there competative advantage may be lost.

Also the next 5 years of the Kyoto protocols may have a telling impact on their ability to cope. Germany alone has 120GW capacity to acount for, and is no where near fulfilling it.

But you never know with these things. 3 years ago everyone said India would be the next economic super power, now their population is more or less tapped for IP workers, and they are running out of good english speakers.

Only time will tell.

See you on Nov 2.

What you fail to realize (RTFA!) is that the exclusion prevents Americans overseas from reaching the site as well.

According to the International Herald Tribune there are up to 4.1 million Americans living abroad. They aren't just rendering the site unreachable to non-Americans, but to a good number of voters. Of course, those voters can still visit johnkerry.com... :-)

How is America overpopulated, my anonymous friend? Aren't you aware that most industrialized societies have diminishing birthrates and some like Japan have negative birth rates?
What is considered the third world outpaces the western, industrialized sphere but does not equal the world. India + China != the world but at their current pace that could be the very case!
Please note that America has remained positive with two births for every death due to its immigration policies, Patriot Act and 9/11 notwithstanding, and should it close its borders in the same fashion as North Korea there will be serious trouble.
Cite Another Cite. Yet Another Cite.

Since the terrorist attacks of 2001, the Bush administration--specifically, the Department of Homeland Security--has wanted the world to agree on a standard for machine-readable passports. Countries whose citizens currently do not have visa requirements to enter the United States will have to issue passports that conform to the standard or risk losing their nonvisa status.

These future passports, currently being tested, will include an embedded computer chip. This chip will allow the passport to contain much more information than a simple machine-readable character font, and will allow passport officials to quickly and easily read that information. That is a reasonable requirement and a good idea for bringing passport technology into the 21st century.

But the Bush administration is advocating radio frequency identification (RFID) chips for both U.S. and foreign passports, and that's a very bad thing.

These chips are like smart cards, but they can be read from a distance. A receiving device can "talk" to the chip remotely, without any need for physical contact, and get whatever information is on it. Passport officials envision being able to download the information on the chip simply by bringing it within a few centimeters of an electronic reader.

Unfortunately, RFID chips can be read by any reader, not just the ones at passport control. The upshot of this is that travelers carrying around RFID passports are broadcasting their identity.

Think about what that means for a minute. It means that passport holders are continuously broadcasting their name, nationality, age, address and whatever else is on the RFID chip. It means that anyone with a reader can learn that information, without the passport holder's knowledge or consent. It means that pickpockets, kidnappers and terrorists can easily--and surreptitiously--pick Americans or nationals of other participating countries out of a crowd.

It is a clear threat to both privacy and personal safety, and quite simply, that is why it is bad idea. Proponents of the system claim that the chips can be read only from within a distance of a few centimeters, so there is no potential for abuse. This is a spectacularly naïve claim. All wireless protocols can work at much longer ranges than specified. In tests, RFID chips have been read by receivers 20 meters away. Improvements in technology are inevitable.

Security is always a trade-off. If the benefits of RFID outweighed the risks, then maybe it would be worth it. Certainly, there isn't a significant benefit when people present their passport to a customs official. If that customs official is going to take the passport and bring it near a reader, why can't he go those extra few centimeters that a contact chip--one the reader must actually touch--would require?

The Bush administration is deliberately choosing a less secure technology without justification. If there were a good offsetting reason to choose that technology over a contact chip, then the choice might make sense.

Unfortunately, there is only one possible reason: The administration wants surreptitious access themselves. It wants to be able to identify people in crowds. It wants to surreptitiously pick out the Americans, and pick out the foreigners. It wants to do the very thing that it insists, despite demonstrations to the contrary, can't be done.

Normally I am very careful before I ascribe such sinister motives to a government agency. Incompetence is the norm, and malevolence is much rarer. But this seems like a clear case of the Bush administration putting its own interests above the security and privacy of its citizens, and then lying about it.

This article originally appeared in the 4 October 2004 edition of the International Herald Tribune

Bruce Schneier, October 04, 2004.

We now have Billwin's Law! Well Bill thinks he's God, and bush said God spoke to him (I'm sure Bill talked to bush this summer), so from now on, when anyone brings up 'the convicted monopoly', just end the thread.

I consider IHT to be best-designed online version of a newspaper, mainly because of their use of javascript and css. With ad-blocking, it is the paradigm of readability and usability. Their use of alternate stylesheets and a clipping manager should be a model for other papers.

Now, if only their content weren't so left-leaning...

Thanks for the lesson, but I do actually know how to speak English already. On the proliferation topic, from your own link:

Nuclear proliferation is the spread from nation to nation of nuclear technology, including nuclear power plants but especially nuclear weapons.

An Israeli nuclear installation is located about ten kilometers to the south of Dimona, the Negev Nuclear Research Center. Its construction commmenced in 1958, with French assistance. ... [t]he purpose of Dimona is widely assumed to be the manufacturing of nuclear weapons, and the majority of defence experts have concluded that it does in fact do that.

As for the 'threat' posed by non-Jewish voters in Israel, start here, for example, or here. Quoting the second article: "Even if Sharon wins the national referendum, a part of the Right won't accept its results, insisting that only a "Jewish majority" is legitimate, and that the presence of Arab voters among the Israeli majority invalidates the decision." You will find plenty more about this policy position if you just google for info.

If people kick the shrub out, the US will stand a better chance at ratifying the Kyoto accord and remove the wasteful SUVs from the roads.

Bzzzzt. Wrong. (unless you're not referring to John Kerry being Bush's replacement)

As reported in the IHT and other news sources, John Kerry has made a point that he will not be getting the US back into Kyoto. This should come as no surprise. As a senator, he voted against allowing the department of the interior to fund implementation of the Kyoto protocols. On the campaign trail, he has made a point that he will fix the current rising gas prices. As the Kyoto protocols are widely estimated to cause a huge increase (as high as 30%) in national gas prices, implementing the protocol would while lowering gas prices, or even keeping them where they are, would be impossible.

(On a side note, though I hate to use the f-word here (flip-flop), in his 2003 document John Kerry's Comprehensive Vision for a Clean Environment, A Stronger Economy, Healthier Communities, his campaign claims "Dropping out of international implementation of the Kyoto Protocol was foolhardy then, and it is even more obviously foolhardy today.")

There is a popular feeling that goes something like "Bush single handedly killed Kyoto." This is absurd. Clinton couldn't get it ratified in 1997 because everyone in congress, including people from his own party (yes, even John Kerry), refused to even consider voting for it. In fact, it was only signed because Al Gore disregarded the resolution of the senate he was supposed to be in charge of. Bush's decision to not re-submit the treaty to congress for ratification was, frankly, a formality; there is no way he could have gotten congress to ratify it, even if he supported it (and he clearly doesn't).

Though I would love to see green house gas emissions get lower, the fact remains that the Kyoto protocol, as it stands, would be economic suicide for the United States, and odds are essentially zero we'll ever see it ratified

And let's not forget who the bizarre owner of this "news source" is, isn't he claiming to be God incarnate?

Indeed. And let's not forget Reverend Moon's coronation as the messiah in a Senate Office Building.

Your "prediction" about Japan ignores Japan's high investment rates in automation.

Are you referring to the robots that Japan is building to care for the elderly in it's nursing homes since there won't be enough young people around to work and take care of the eldery?

The Nursing Home Of The Future?
Japan's Push Button Nursing."
Japan Seeks Robotic Help in Caring for the Aged


I say to you sir, that warehousing the elderly of a society in storage facilities that are manned by robots is immoral. A society should have more respect for elders and care for them better.

I can not follow your argument between "slave holders vs. automation.", perhaps you could elaborate. I am not arguing we need more people to pick cotton or do slave labor. I am arguing that society must maintain certain proportions (percentage of young to old) in order to maintain stability over the longterm with social programs intact.

>I'm curious as to how "liberal" slashdot is.
I guess there are a lot of international slashdot users, and most non-americans whould vote for a liberal candidate.

Global poll shows a Kerry landslide

Remember way back in the good old days, before piracy, when a movie like Finding Nemo could really move DVDs out the door? Boy, it's too bad nowadays, that more recent releases have such dismal sales.

Poor George. Your pain must be unbearable.

No wonder. It's clear that Clippy is going to sue erstwhile Office users under the "Alienation of Affection" provision of the EULA you clicked through so quickly under the heated passion of the moment.

The Democrats have been harrasing Ralph Nader pretty bad. What they've done is they've formed a separate group called the United Progressives for Victory, and they are suing him everywhere that they can. They sue him in battleground states in order to keep him off the ballot, and they'll sue him in non-battleground states simply to harass him and deplete his resources. By forming a separate group, the United Progressives for Victory can be counter-attacked and sued out of exisxtence without putting the Democratic Party, itself, on the line.

Also the president explicitly did NOT denounce the ad; instead, he attacked all 527 campaign ads (changing the subject), and quite pointedly refrained from attacking the swift boat ad in particular. He simply said they were all "bad for the system."

Most importantly, the Bush connection is not just Ben Ginsburg but also Kenneth Cordier, Merrie Spaeth, and, less directly, Karl Rove. And everyone in DC knows this crap has Karl Rove's M.O. all over it.

Finally, you keep claiming that Bush "denied, debunked, and dismissed" these claims in 2000, yet NOBODY has stepped forward to tell anyone what Bush was actually doing during his missing year. That's because he spent the year partying.

Which really wouldn't bother me so much if he and Cheney were not painting him as some kind of freaking war hero just because he strutted around in a flight suit pretending we had won Iraq! All the while supporting the aspersions cast on Kerry's war record. By the way, Cheney's comment that voting for Kerry will lead to terrorism in the US tells us all we need to know about whether the Bush Administration is willing to capitalize politically on the Swift Boat Veteran lies.

Except that from what I know, those Chechnian rebels are also Islamic fundamentalists.

Reality check:

The first war of Chechnya was essentially secular. And the Chechens actually won it. At some point the Russians realised that Grozny was simply not worth dying for, so they gave virtual independence to the Chechens and got back home - although with deep resentment, bitterness, and a deep desire for revenge in some of those who lost friends or relatives in this war.

Then, in the few years of Chechen independence, the Cult of fundamentalists (Al Qaeda and co) essentially invaded whole parts of the country and used it as a base for perpetrating vicious attacks (mostly agaisnt unarmed people) in the region. Their "aim", if it can be said that these people still have enough of a brain to have aims, was to "liberate" all caucasian moslems from Russian rule. Of course, the caucasian moslems had never asked for anything like that - but do you think the Cult would care for this detail ? So they kidnapped and killed as much as they could. The (democratically elected) Chechen government was powerless to stop them, either by weakness or by sheer incompetence or corruption.

This wave of terror implanted by foreign terrorists culminated in the bombing of three buildings in Russia, killing 100. At that point it was almost too easy for Putin to say "look, you see that those Chechens are bandits and murderers, we can't trust them, let's go back there !"

So the Russian soldiers went back to Chechnya, waging the dirtiest war on the European continent since WWII. But this time the local, secular resistance was "complemented" by the fundamentalists, local and foreign. The Russian's brutality pushed many people into the resistance, many of which followed the fundamentalists. And this was the second war of Chechnya, which is still going on right now.

There is a good op-ed about it in today's Herald Tribune.

Now look at what I just wrote. Replace "Putin" by "Bush" and "Caucasus" by "Middle East". And "Russia" with, essentially the whole damn world.

See the picture ?

Please, please, get us rid of Bush !

Thomas Miconi

http://www.iht.com/articles/534518.html

Yeah, it's not like they ever do that.

I don't think you're going to find any single source that's never been accused of bias. There's just too many viewpoints out there-- and any source that tries to go straight down the middle of the road, like CNN, tends to be pretty dry.

So, my solution: Read a lot. I mean, a lot, and, by exposure to many viewpoints, you'll be better off when it comes time to form your own opinions.

If you're asking about specifics, I try to take in the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Drudge Report, Slate, Salon, Al-Jazeera, the International Herald-Tribune, and the Guardian. Of course, all of the above have their strengths and weaknesses.

If you don't want to spend the time on all of those, though, I recommend Slate. It leans slightly left, but has good analysis from both sides of the aisle.

Read, read, read. Don't assume you're getting the whole story from a single source.

Gold in itself functioned as money in times past, due to its value because of its limited supply and the difficulty obtaining a larger overall supply of gold, which must be done at great effort. Because gold is also a durable commodity that can be easily molded into nice pretty status symbols, it has an almost universal appeal. A slab of meat may have great immediate value to a hungry man, but unless it is eaten immediately or refrigerated, it will soon go bad and become worthless. A person can trade his services for gold and then trade it for meat as he needs it. It becomes a reliable store of value, just as idealized money should. As long as the supply of gold remains stable, one who wants to obtain gold, either to enjoy its yellow glow or to trade it for needed services generally finds it easier to trade their labor for gold than to go out and mine gold for themselves.

Gold or any hard asset as a basis for money has one major flaw: it still a lot of takes real labor and effort to produce it, and there will always be those who will seek to obtain gold for themselves by attempting to mine it themselves. If the supply of gold was indeed fixed (i.e there is no gold around that can be economically mined), then the relative prices of goods and services will float relative to the value of the fixed supply of gold. All hell breaks loose when there is the prospect of individuals being able to economically mine gold for themselves and trade it for goods. History is rife with examples of the damage done to the earth and to the men and their families in pursuit of gold.

In the end, the increased supply of gold produced during the gold rushes meant that not only the value of all other goods and services rose in relation to gold, as its value dropped, but the absolute supply of those services available dropped as well. The opportunity cost for mining gold, which turned out to be a marginal proposition at best for the majority of miners was the value of goods and services that were not produced. Many of the '49ers sunk their life savings into mining ventures that usually didn't pan out well, and left families behind to tend to farms which were then neglected, factories saw skilled workers leave, or their production of say picks, axes, and shovels diverted to the production of gold, rather than building roads or helping farmers work the land. Railroad construction slowed as workers abandoned the hard work of building rail lines in pursuit of a quick buck mining gold. In the end the gold rushes made us all poorer in a real sense.

That being said, in the Gilligan's Island example, survival and comfort meant having an efficient way of trading goods and services, and a medium of exchange that was of fixed supply, in the sense that it was unreproducible. Any effort to increase the supply of the medium of exchange is futile in the Macro sense, because it would divert efforts from the production of needed goods and services. The Professor's preserved palm leaves needed effort to produce, and the supply could be manipulated. Mr. Howell's paper money could not be reproduced on the island, and also benefitted as a medium of exchange because it had perceived value, and it was already there.

Barring Mr. Howell's millions, alternative viable means of exchange could have been established by using any other portable and unreproducible item, such as a roll of tickets that may have been used to sell rides on the Minnow.

this?

Here's how the scam allegedly worked: Saddam sold oil to his friends and allies around the world at deep discounts. The buyers resold the oil at huge profits. Saddam then got kickbacks of 10 percent from both the oil traders and the suppliers of humanitarian goods. Iraqi bean counters, fortunately, kept meticulous records. Coincidence. If you wondered why the French were so hostile to America's approach to Iraq and even opposed to ending the sanctions after the 1991 Gulf War, here's one possible explanation: French oil traders got 165 million barrels of Iraqi crude at cut-rate prices. The CEO of one French company, SOCO International, got vouchers for 36 million barrels of Iraqi oil. Was it just a coincidence that the man is a close political and financial supporter of President Jacques Chirac?

Anyway, even French President Jacques Chirac, along with the Mayor of Paris and other French officials, admit anti-Semitism is an increasing problem (after denying it for 1-2 years). Here are links from a variety of news sources. And note in the following links that all the suspects aren't necessarily North African Muslims but also Neo-Nazis from areas near the German border.

• Neo-Nazis set fire to Jewish center
• Israeli urges the French to fight anti-Semitism
• French government vows to fight against racism
• Mayor of Paris announces concrete measures against anti-Semitism
• France cautious on Jewish centre attack claim

Comparing the ratio of the size of the US economy to that of the sum of the sizes of the countries currently in the EU, you will see that this ratio was much greater than one (say, 1960) and is less than one now; the US relative advantage has disappeared.

I believe "cultural exports" includes movies (e.g. Disney) and music; I am not proud of a lot of our "cultural exports."

When I was in Pisa in June, 2002, a Euro was worth (about) US$0.86. In July, 2003 in Germany, a Euro was worth (about) US$1.14. Right now the Euro is even stronger (US$1.30 ??).

I did not notice any ill-will toward individual Americans.

As the "leader" of the world, the US has extra responsibilities.

Iraq asked us to stay: Do you mean the Iraqi's or the U.S. installed interim government?

Saddam was a cruel, murderous dictator: Why don't we take out the other murderous regimes? The Turkish seem to be a good fit.Oh wait, we've been giving them millions in military aid during the last decade, and we've been trying to get them in the EU. Hardly the same treatment that Saddam received for his similar atrocities.

And, uh, you're use of the word "fact" is not very accurate. They're opinions, or just plain wrong. As I said, it was the interim government, not Iraq (that would imply strong majority support of the populace) that asked us to stay, and it's *your* opinion tht Saddam had to be taken out. So, that whole line there is laughable.

I only assumed you listened to Hannity, O'Rielly or Limbaugh since they are the *main* purveyors of such ridiculous trash as you've been spewing. Hardly hypocritical to make an assumption. I never claimed that you were wrong for making one. Lookup hypocrite.

I just find it odd that even before the war started, we were building an oil pipeline through Kuwait up to Iraq. Don't you find that odd?

Another oil pipeline, suited for the U.S. More.

Hey, at least you do believe oil played a roll. There's hope for you yet.

Anyway, I'm not irked. I'm laughing at your expense. I find your attempts at logic enjoyably bad, and your "knowledge" of the world so sorely lacking that it is on the verge of hilarity. So, please don't stop.

Here's a copy of the article

It's not so much about enforcement as it is about giving companies leverage to scare people into submission. After all fear is effective.

For those who can't be bothered to login, or the overly paranoid:

http://www.iht.com/articles/531960.html

A (mirror?) story from the International Herald Tribune.....

Many of you may have seen last Monday's NYT article reproduced here where orders at Missouri fast food restaurants are sent to a call center in Colorado, a whole time zone away from the drive-through. Do the math. No one is safe now.