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Didn't I just read this somewhere...

• Coca-Cola Rewires Your Brain; Pepsi Cannot
  22:21 Tuesday 19 October 2004
  Rejected

Where's that article... okay, here it is, althought I suspect it will have gone into subscription-only archive by now. Probably there's a mirror somewhere.

One of the points was that, using brain scans, we can accurately predict which of the colas you'll prefer. Also, there's no scientific basis for the "blindfolded taste test": it'll come out 50/50... which makes me wonder what a truly "blindfolded" political survey would show.

$0.45 Distribution...

Actually, $0.45 is a high estimate for distribution costs. Apple retains about four cents from the sale of each track. The lion's share--about two thirds of your $0.99--goes to labels.

If there was proof, he wouldn't be saying if the tipping point has been reached, would he? Too busy doing statistics to do logic?

Anyway, that article might not specifiy the levels before, but this one does.
The key parts: "measurements that have been made since 1958 ... When he began, ... 315 parts per million by volume (ppm); today ... 376ppm."
"Across all 46 years of Dr Keeling's measurements, the average annual CO2 rise has been 1.3ppm, although in recent decades it has gone up to about 1.6ppm.
There have been several peaks, all associated with El Niño"
[...]
"Throughout the series those peaks have been followed by troughs, and there has been no annual increase in CO2 above 2ppm that has been sustained for more than a year. Until now.
From 2001 to 2002, the increase was 2.08ppm (from 371.02 to 373.10); and from 2002 to 2003 the increase was 2.54ppm (from 373.10 to 375.64). Neither of these were El Niño years, and there has been no sudden leap in emissions."

It seems the greed factor is running just as high as ever in the music industry, even in the face of a radically changing environment. These guys seem to think that it's their God-given right to continue to make more and more money while providing less and less value to customers.

-FL

-FL

here. It's independEnt, BTW.

Any argument for which you cite the BNP is likely to be bullshit. The BNP, if you don't know, are a far right racist political party known to be a haven for neo-Nazis, anti-semites and general racist motherfuckers. They fucking hate all the media because all the media realise that they're racist motherfuckers. As for the Telegraph article, it seems as though the murder was completely unrelated to any work he did for the BBC, even less BBC News. He happened to murder somebody, after being employed by the BBC.

As for the left right scale, CNN and PBS are leftist, Fox News are right wing twats and MSNBC I haven't seen enough of to know.

For the record, I get my news from the Guardian (left wing newspaper), the Independent (nice, politically independent (although VERY slightly leftist) newspaper which employs Robert Fisk), the BBC and CNN International (a completely different beast from the American CNN, with more concentration on world affairs). Anybody looking for radio can do no worse than the BBC World Service. If you haven't noticed, most of those are British (and even CNNI comes from London). That's because we kick ass :)

• The current population of the US,
• The base of the Taliban and al-Qa'ida,
• A question about the Euro (I can't believe ANY Europeans could've possibly got this wrong),
• A question about Kashmir,
• The location of the US on a world map (the Russians, Japanese, Mexicans, Italians, and Swedish all did better at locating their own countries),

I wouldn't expect the average person to know the answer to some of the questions (for example, the question on El Nino), but the ones above are real howlers. I think part of the problem is the 'tabloid culture' that exists (on this side of the Atlantic, anyway). People need to stop reading toilet paper and start reading real newspapers.

And just for the record, I got 18 out of 20. I guessed the religion question wrong and incorrectly stated that China and Russia both have populations of over a billion.

Yes I think so too, The BBC unlike some other codec providers is putting the project on sourceforge. I also notice that the project is being put together at the R&D department of the BBC whereas the new iMP player (http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/media/story.jsp? story=549713) from the BBC is not. Strange?

Currently the BBC are trialing iMP (interactive media player), which allows users to download TV content from the last 8 days. It uses a peer to peer basis for downloading (like Bittorrent), and is currently using Windows Media 9 with its DRM to restrict the content. As I gather, it is a standalone application.

Cross platform compatibility is a fairly hot subject at the Beeb at the moment, and one of the developers hinted that WM9 is just a stand in for any other codec. Presumably when Dirac matures, we'll see Dirac being used.

It's currently in trials with up to 1000 users.

This is probably the best public article about it.

I'm originally from Australia, and we have advert breaks every 14.9997 minutes or less. Here in the UK there is sooo much less advertising. For every Eastenders there is a Panorama to make up for it.

This codec is another good step. The new Director has ordered a financial audit. How is this codec going to fare?? Hopefully well. It doesn't show in this link to the Independent web version, but the print edition says the:

total broadcasting expenditure is £2.99bn
revenue from licence: £2.8 bn
average staff salary: £37,275.62 wow!

How about looking at it this way? Based on a sample size of two (Mars and Earth) both having the chemistry needed for life what is the probability that life exists elsewhere in the universe? I'd say pretty good.

I said nothing about Moore and there was nothing in his movie that was new to people who get their news from sources other than Fox News. I'm always puzzled that people are learning all this stuff for the first time from Moore's movie. The international media have been covering it for ages.

Where I live in city-centre Liverpool (England) there are CCTV cameras on all the main streets. If I walk out of my house, I'm on camera, and if I walk into the town centre nearly every step of the way I'm on camera. The aim is to have around 240 cameras around the city centre monitoring millions of square metres as part for the Liverpool CitySafe Initiative.

And you know what? When I'm walking back from town at night I'm extremely glad of it. When you've been assaulted and most of your friends who live nearby have been mugged then perhaps you'll understand why. I'm normally extremely libertarian in my views but when you and your partners safety are in question then it sadly pays to be pragmatic. The Guardian newspaper featured an interesting article on CCTV in Liverpool and it's privacy implications, but the fact remains that surveys show that 93% of people are in favour. It works, too, because crime has been cut quite dramatically as part of the initiative.

Of course, were are more accustomed to CCTV cameras in Britain. We have the highest ratio of CCTV cameras per population of any country - something like 4m (or one for every 13 people). There are traffic cameras on many roads capable of snapping speeding drivers or those that jump red lights. It is estimated that each person in Britain is caught on camera 300 times a day. The implications are worrying, and the situation needs to be carefully monitored, but when I'm walking back from the pub at night I can't help but feel a little more reassured.

So would you be willing to drive 66 miles? 6 miles? 0.6 miles?

I gave up on my search for these articles due to this barrier.

And was this barrier ($3, you later say) more than fuel and parking, not to mention time spent driving to a nearby library? Heck, it's less than return subway fare in NYC. By your reasoning, unless you can walk to the nearest public library and find it, it's not worth having.

But while doing research about NEPA I find that The Scranton Times has a much better free searchable archive of information than does the The Times Leader which requires you to pay to visit their archive. Wonder who gets my visits?

Well, in your case, the answer seems obvious, but I'd pay for quality and reputation when I have to. I don't subscribe to the New York Times online (I don't think they're worth it) but I do subscribe to the Independent, and if the Guardian charged for archived material, I'd pay them too (I do pay for their crossword, in fact). And rest assured I'm not alone.

I thought you were joking until I looked it up. The Independent has an article.

Anyway, if they wanted to make voting machines more like slots, why not put a seal on them over the screws, floppy, CD, USB, network ports. etc from the time they're certified until after the election? Tampering subject to criminal penalty. They can do it on every gas pump and supermarket scale, why not on voting machines?

There's also a full page spread about CERT's advice on page 3 of today's Independent, which can also be read online.

Why I hate Michael Moore, by Down8:

He makes up "controversy".

He pretends his movies are 'documentaries', and lets them be promoted as such, but when confronted, he'll tell you, "oh, by the way, they are just my opinion" (on the most recent Daily Show).

He fakes his films - such as cutting together 2 week apart film to make it look as if you could walk into a bank and walk out with a gun, when, in fact, he arranged to have the gun delievered there, after his 2 week waiting period.

And more than anything, his 'need to be heard'. That smacks of a fat, lonely bastard, with a need to be the center of attention, and I hate that kind of person. He needs to go back to writing a weblog like a normal, attention-starved 14yr old girl.

This has nothing to do with his politics. Point of fact, I can't stand to sit thru any of his garbage for the way it's presented, so I don't know much about his politics. He's a poseur, in the worst sense of the term, and he should not be listened to by anyone with a useful brain cell.

But that's just me, and I prefer to think for myself,
-bZj

The independant has it priced at UK pound 22,000 while another website has is at UK pound 26,000.

Reviews: 3-Wheelers and The independant.

What scares me about all of this is that four years after the last election, it is still not common knowledge that Florida purged thousands of people from the electoral role illegally. This was admitted by Choicepoint in a special congressional hearing. Why Jeb Bush is still Governor in Florida I'll never know. (Notice that I'm saying nothing about the hanging chads business, that's a different kettle fish altogether).

What really amazes me though is that it's happening again and no-one is doing a thing! Why in god's name doesnt the media in your country do it's job? I'm absolutely amazed that you're allowing this to happen again.

Of course it all depends on what article you read.
This one has a much gloomier interpretation - especially about 2/3 of the way through where it starts comparing percentages of green-house gases then and now. :(

Yeah, there's nothing wrong with the UN. (Linked story: UN troops buy sex from teenage refugees in Congo camp.)

Fisking is probably the opposite of blogging. Blogging involves sitting on your ass behind a computer speculating about places you're never been to. Fisking involves getting lynched by angy Afghans, shot at by Israelis, or actually talking to people on the ground. Fisk may not always be right, but he has balls.

Bzzt. You fail the retard test.

Saddam Hussein killed, on average, 40,000 of his own people every year.

And what about UN workers "buying" sex from children? UN, not US.

If the world stopped trading with us, the world would be fucked. Let the US pull it's troops out of Europe and Japan and see what happens.

There are safety precautions, have you heard of OSHA? There are unions. No industrialized nation has agreed to Kyoto. What the fuck are you talking about, you idiot?

Teenage rape victims fleeing war in the Democratic Republic of Congo are being sexually exploited by the United Nations peace-keeping troops sent to the stop their suffering.

The Independent has found that mothers as young as 13 - the victims of multiple rape by militiamen - can only secure enough food to survive in the sprawling refugee camp by routinely sleeping with UN peace-keepers.

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/story .jsp?story=518901

Less than 24 hours after accusing the Walt Disney Company of pulling the plug on his latest documentary in a blatant attempt at political censorship, the rabble-rousing film-maker Michael Moore has admitted he knew a year ago that Disney had no intention of distributing it.

To set the record straight, again: Moore admitted that this was a publicity stunt (through a slip-up, not intentionally).

-bZj

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/story .jsp?story=518901

Less than 24 hours after accusing the Walt Disney Company of pulling the plug on his latest documentary in a blatant attempt at political censorship, the rabble-rousing film-maker Michael Moore has admitted he knew a year ago that Disney had no intention of distributing it.

To set the record straight: Moore admitted that this was a publicity stunt (through a slip-up, not intentionally).

-bZj

-- Interview with Jonathan Ive (designer of the iMac) --

Certainly, the PC industry has never revered design, preferring blocky
beige boxes or, more recently, coloured go-faster curves devoid of real
function. He's scornful of those who use 'swoopy shapes to look good,
stuff that is so aggressively designed, just to catch the eye. I think
that's arrogance, it's not done for the benefit of the user.'

By contrast, he says, 'you won't be able to find a single thing on an
Apple that hasn't had thought put into it'...

With the first iMac the goal wasn't to look different, but to build the
best integrated consumer computer we could. If as a consequence the shape
is different, then that's how it is. The thing is, it's very easy to be
different, but very difficult to be better. That's what we have tried to
do with the new iMac.'

(THE SHAPE OF THINGS TO COME, Interview with Jonathan Ive,
Charles Arthur talks to the designer of the iMac, January 14 2002)

Bletchley Park tries to crack a 250-year mystery: Do 10 letters at stately home lead to Holy Grail?

The Daily Mirror (now just The Mirror) is a left-wing tabloid newspaper in the UK. Last month, the paper (which was until yesterday edited by Piers Morgan) published pictures of alleged abuse in Iraq which are now widely believed to be fake. Morgan quit last night and has not apologised, while his paper has.

I used to have some respect for the guy, but fuck him now-he's dragged his paper's reputation through the mud and he's making a bad name for everybody who was every against this war. If you're in the UK and want a decent anti-war left-wing newspaper, try here, here or maybe even (for the insanely left wing) here.

From the article:

The Sasser worm, which exploits a flaw in Microsoft's Windows software, disrupted work at the Marine and Coastguard Agency, forcing staff to use pencil and paper to find ships and locate distress calls on maps. [...]

Anyone with an infected machine should visit Microsoft's website to download a software "patch" to fix their system.

No! Anyone with an infected machine should stop visiting Microsoft's website and never use Windows in such a critical environment as the Marine and Coastguard Agency for God's sake!

...that they can't have hot space sex.

But many relatives of soldiers who died in Iraq believe the White House is trying to cover up what is happening there. Sue Niederer said she was refused permission to see the return of her son Seth Dvorin's body as it was flown into the Dover base. Lieutenant Dvorin, 24, from the 101st Airborne Division, was killed in February while trying to disarm a roadside bomb, a task for which he was not trained.

Speaking from her home in New Jersey, Mrs Niederer said: "They killed my son and they did not permit me to be there to see the coffin. They said it was for health reasons, and ... they did not want the public to see it and they did not want the newspapers there." She added: "They don't want any of this being shown because it's reality. A coffin strikes home. If you don't see the coffin you just say: 'Oh, there's another one who has died.' But when you show the coffin, you show families, you show people and emotions. This is what they are doing this is what they do not want you to see."

But many relatives of soldiers who died in Iraq believe the White House is trying to cover up what is happening there. Sue Niederer said she was refused permission to see the return of her son Seth Dvorin's body as it was flown into the Dover base. Lieutenant Dvorin, 24, from the 101st Airborne Division, was killed in February while trying to disarm a roadside bomb, a task for which he was not trained.

Speaking from her home in New Jersey, Mrs Niederer said: "They killed my son and they did not permit me to be there to see the coffin. They said it was for health reasons, and ... they did not want the public to see it and they did not want the newspapers there." She added: "They don't want any of this being shown because it's reality. A coffin strikes home. If you don't see the coffin you just say: 'Oh, there's another one who has died.' But when you show the coffin, you show families, you show people and emotions. This is what they are doing this is what they do not want you to see."

Thanks, that's what I was trying to imply but didn't say. I should have said that because it appeared that they were going after only copyrights, IP was too broad because it implied that they were also going to go after patent infringement.

I left trademarks out of it because I assumed that they may actually charge copyright violators with this just for good measure. Kinda like throwing WMD charges at illegal drug manufacturers.

Ever decreasing circles

Story in The Independent is also a good read.

The last parking meter I parked at was 25 cents for 10 minutes.

That's nothing. See this story in last week's Independent:

"Nearby, off Oxford Street, there is what must be some of the most expensive weekday parking in Britain: Pay & Display at 1.20 for 15 minutes."

Which at current exchange rates is about $2 (er, no $2.20... er $2.40...)

[note to self - must stop making fun of piss weak dollar]

Why yes, the estate of avant garde musician John Cage managed to wring a six figure settlement out of alleged infringer Mike Batt, according to CNN. Batt's infringement would have had a better chance of going unnoticed, had he not jointly credited himself and Cage for his own silent composition. In an article in The Independent, prior to the settlment, Batt defended his One Minute's Silence as not infringing Cage's 4'33", saying "But my silence is original silence, not a quotation from his silence."

Half the reason for creating GM crop varieties is (supposedly) to make life easier for farmers, so that they don't have to use so many pesticides, etc. Creating a need for them to use more pesticides such as you suggest is counter-productive, time-consuming and expensive.

Also, contrary to what you believe, lab analysis doesn't constitute letting a farmer "easily tell" what variety of GM infestation he's dealing with: lab analysis takes time and money too, plus there's no telling how many samples a farmer might have to send in to determine the various infestations that he's dealing with at any one time.

Lastly, you clearly know nothing about organic farming (which is no surprise, because you clearly no nothing about farming whatsoever). People buy organic produce because they want food that's been processed as little as possible, that's been grown (or reared) non-intensively using only natural methods and without the use of artificial pesticides or stimulants and they want it for medical as well as ethical reasons: there's proof linking pesticides found in modern farming use to dietary and other disorders, and research into the effects of the growth hormones given to chickens and other livestock to humans after consumption is also disturbing.

If you have no concerns whatsoever about the widespread use of GM foods and GM plants in general then you are a fool. Michael Meacher, the UK government minister in charge of DEFRA (the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs), had some pretty damning things to say about GM crops until he was fired by Tony Blair. Given that Mr Meacher had probably read more briefings about GM products than you've had hot dinners I think that you shouldn't be so keen to turn over your long-term health to company's as unethical as Monsanto.

Courtesy of The Independent>The Independent

'I saw papers that show US knew al-Qa'ida would attack cities with aeroplanes'
Whistleblower the White House wants to silence speaks to The Independent
By Andrew Buncombe in Washington

02 April 2004

A former translator for the FBI with top-secret security clearance says she has provided information to the panel investigating the 11 September attacks which proves senior officials knew of al-Qa'ida's plans to attack the US with aircraft months before the strikes happened.

She said the claim by the National Security Adviser, Condoleezza Rice, that there was no such information was "an outrageous lie".

Sibel Edmonds said she spent more than three hours in a closed session with the commission's investigators providing information that was circulating within the FBI in the spring and summer of 2001 suggesting that an attack using aircraft was just months away and the terrorists were in place. The Bush administration, meanwhile, has sought to silence her and has obtained a gagging order from a court by citing the rarely used "state secrets privilege".

She told The Independent yesterday: "I gave [the commission] details of specific investigation files, the specific dates, specific target information, specific managers in charge of the investigation. I gave them everything so that they could go back and follow up. This is not hearsay. These are things that are documented. These things can be established very easily."

She added: "There was general information about the time-frame, about methods to be used but not specifically about how they would be used and about people being in place and who was ordering these sorts of terror attacks. There were other cities that were mentioned. Major cities with skyscrapers."

The accusations from Mrs Edmonds, 33, a Turkish-American who speaks Azerbaijani, Farsi, Turkish and English, will reignite the controversy over whether the administration ignored warnings about al-Qa'ida. That controversy was sparked most recently by Richard Clarke, a former counter-terrorism official, who has accused the administration of ignoring his warnings.

The issue what the administration knew and when is central to the investigation by the 9/11 Commission, which has been hearing testimony in public and private from government officials, intelligence officials and secret sources. Earlier this week, the White House made a U-turn when it said that Ms Rice would appear in public before the commission to answer questions. Mr Bush and his deputy, Dick Cheney, will also be questioned in a closed-door session.

Mrs Edmonds, 33, says she gave her evidence to the commission in a specially constructed "secure" room at its offices in Washington on 11 February. She was hired as a translator for the FBI's Washington field office on 13 September 2001, just two days after the al-Qa'ida attacks. Her job was to translate documents and recordings from FBI wire-taps.

She said said it was clear there was sufficient information during the spring and summer of 2001 to indicate terrorists were planning an attack. "Most of what I told the commission 90 per cent of it related to the investigations that I was involved in or just from working in the department. Two hundred translators side by side, you get to see and hear a lot of other things as well."

"President Bush said they had no specific information about 11 September and that is accurate but only because he said 11 September," she said. There was, however, general information about the use of airplanes and that an attack was just months away.

To try to refute Mr Clarke's accusations, Ms Rice said the administration did take steps to counter al-Qa'ida. But in an opinion piece in The Washington Post on 22 March, Ms Rice wrote: "Despite what some have suggested, we received no intelligence that terrorists were preparing to attack the homeland

Five different British news papers with reporters all over the world all starying the story with "Dough!".

Why are we so willing to comprimise our rights?

Hey, I thought you guys had freedom of speech? If so, why is it that virtually no USA based media is reporting that an FBI insider, Sibel Edmonds, has said that the Bush administration knew about the 911 attacks before they happened. Apparently your government has used a law to stop this story in the press.

Freedom of speech indeed!

• Email the government, check if is real and if it is a plan. The treasury public email address is public.enquiries@hm-treasury.gov.uk. If real, move on to the next step.
• Contact a news source, giving details, URLs, any reply you got from the Treasury, whatever. I recommend The Independent and The Telegraph, they seem less likely to reject something like this.

Salon

Independent

However, they are both premium-only articles. I'd say the parent is probably a bigot. But he might just be ignorant. I don't know him, so that may not be fair. Most of these "sources" take great pains to point out that Zack is Jewish.

Quaoar (though some claim it's too small for a planet...)

Alf predicted them both!

Note the especially fallacious argument at the end:

He compares "Ugg" with "Biro" and "Hoover" which, although commonly used generically, are protected by trademark.

A false comparison, say Tony Mortel. In those cases, a product was developed and marketed and a name invented and trademarked. In the case of Ugg, all the hard work was put in by others, then Deckers came along and bought the name.... Tony Watson does not have an answer to this point...He adds that Australian traders should accept reality and develop another brand. "How about Surfers' Sheepskin Boots?" he suggests.

They even referenced the blank lines 30 and 33.

Maybe they've been taking lessons from the estate of John Cage?