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From the CNET article:

• "It's not our preference to say Gnutella is infringing or that our search of Gnutella is infringing," said Ira Rothken, MP3Board's attorney. "But if a court finds that it is, we believe that AOL should share part of the blame."

• But it goes on to argue that if it loses the suit, AOL and Time Warner should help shoulder any penalties because of their indirect role in creating Gnutella.

I just posted a story from the LA Times on Libertyboard which you may be interested in...

It describes how a free-market society has arisen in Somalia after the overthrow of their socialist dictator and a 10 year power vacuum. It's the closest thing to anarcho-capitalism I've read about in modern history.

LA Times story here

Please allow me to refer you to this story in the LA Times (found through NTK.net) about grannies trading needlepoint patterns. Don't tell them there is a generation gap!

There wouldn't be any huge parent companies anymore (at least temporarily). We would all get our news from smaller, independent outlets.

We would all get our news from smaller, independent outlets. We would, of course, have to decide for ourselves on the credibility of said news outlets. That in and of itself is a scary thought, we would have to make an important decision with information that we would have to go out and gather ourselves.

The foundation of today's news media is organizations like United Press International, BBC News, National Public Radio News, the Associated Press, the New York Times. These are all outstanding news organizations.

The Washington Post (a pretty good paper) owns Newsweek, an alright magazine, though its website is now hosted by MSNBC.

US News and World Report is also pretty good.

Skipping the rest of the good newspapers and the plethora of great magazines around the country (as well as the really bad ones) we get to Corporate Media. Time isn't really bad per se, but knowing what we know about Time Warner (I am an employee of the company) I personally stay away.

I stay away from all U.S. television news sources for reliable information, except for the excellent Newshour with Jim Lehrer and C-SPAN, both independent media. The former rocks, and I live in the neighborhood where Lehrer grew up; the latter isn't really news but has very informative content on current issues.

Okay! I hope I have convinced everyone that you don't have to worry about your news source if you know where to go. Even if Time Warner bought up half of these news souces somehow, it could never get them all. Also remember that if good journalists realize they are working for a company with a deteriorating reputation, they jump ship.

www.latimes.com/business/20000717/t000066998.html

The Reuters story at excite is pretty thorough; basically it's unclear whether the two hard drives were destroyed, lost, or stolen. Funny thing is, they were discovered lost May 7 - but the Energy Department wasn't notified until June 1. Employees are to take lie detector tests, and it seems they whole search setup is becoming a big mess.

The Washington Post story also has a good wrap-up. According to most sources, the drives were last seen in a suitcase in a vault in a Los Alamos lab. I think the confusion of the evacuation due to the recent fires might have something to do with this...

And here's the Los Angeles Times article.

By morning I guess most major newspapers will have it in print and on their websites, but in the case of something like this I've always thought earlier is better. Let's just hope the drives are recovered...

I think you really have to be a little humor-impaired to take the whole thing seriously...

Okay not mine - I actually like it for the challenge - but a lot of people's. A pretty interesting story nonetheless, so even if you hate my stylish implicit linkage check it out...

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There's another link at: http://www.latimes.com/news/ nation/20000514/t000045621.html

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First Lars. Now Dre.

My Monday paper also contained an attack on Napster, from "Komputer Klinic" Kolumnist Kim Komando. Now, she may not have the star power of Lars, but in certain circles, especially newer users of computers, she does have a following. She has a talk radio show, and runs a nationally syndicated column in papers like the Los Angeles Times . She attacked Napster pretty brutally in her column this week, intending to scare new users away.

Someone needs to get out and hit back against these folks and the RIAA....
==
"This is the nineties. You don't just go around punching people. You have to say something cool first."

"Matt Householder, the producer of "Diablo II," said he is still uncertain about how his game will deal with this phenomena. "These are relatively uncharted waters," he said, adding that he has considered creating some sort of "escrow" service for equipment sales on the idea that if you can't beat them, you might as well join them"

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I did run that LA Times search URL posted elsewhere, and it's pretty clear that the LAPD will do whyatever they think they can get away with. For example,

If Not Guilty verdicts and overturned convictions are the price we pay to send a message that police misconduct Will Not Be Tolerated, then we grit our teeth and bear it. Remember, America is supposed to be a free society, and police misconduct cannot be tolerated.

It's happening here in the US. Once they finish licensing and registering and banning guns and gun owners, they'll start in on the rest of the Bill of Rights in earnest, making the Rampart division of the LAPD look like choir boys.

And then we'll wind up like Britain - where law-abiding citizens are not permitted to have privacy on their computers, nor to own the tools with which they can defend themselves, and criminal thugs may attack with impunity thanks to a government guarantee of disarmed victims, and since the penalty for a .22 popgun and a submachine gun are essentially the same, nat urally they opt for the submachine gun.

All freedoms are intertwined, and the right to armed self-defense lies at the foundation.

If you live in California and haven't signed the self-defense Constitutional amendment initiative, get thee to http://www.vetothegovernor.org/ post haste.

-Michael Pelletier

LA TIMES LETTERS: http://www.latimes.com /news/comment/20000203/t000010908.html

From L.A. Times

Judge Bans Indefinite Jailing by INS

A U.S. District Court judge in Los Angeles has ruled that the federal government may not indefinitely jail noncitizens who have been ordered deported because of crimes, but whose home countries will not take them back.

Send mail to letters@latimes.com

You must include your full name, street address, and daytime phone number.

Instructions page for how to write letters.

Remember, short letters that make one correct factual point each are most likely to get printed.

Send mail to letters@latimes.com

You must include your full name, street address, and daytime phone number.

Instructions page for how to write letters.

Remember, short letters that make one correct factual point each are most likely to get printed.

Consider the placement of the article in question. So far, there isn't a comparable article for the opposite time, which really isn't required, but would be only fair.

Unfortunatly, it seems this isn't the only slight bias the Times has shown, if you're looking for what the Open Source community would consider balanced coverage. See Another Blow Against Internet DVD Piracy from earlier in the month.

I just mailed this to John Forgetta, editor Angeles Times:


Dear Editor

When I read Jack Valentri's article
(http://www.calendarlive.com/calendarlive/movies /20000130/t000009450.html),
I was horrified. He clearly tries to misslead your readers, when he tries
to link DVD playback from a computer hard drive with piracy. It is legal
to copy DVD's for personal use, even when they are protected agains it.

(Ref, DMCA, Copyright Office Summary, December 1998, Page 4 :
[...to assure that the public will have the continued ability to make fair
use of copyrighted works. Since copying of a work may be a fair use
under appropriate circumstances, section 1201 does not prohibit the act of
circumvent-ing a technological measure that prevents copying. By contrast,
since the fair use doctrine is not a defense to the act of gaining
unauthorized access to a work, the act of circumventing a technological
measure in order to gain access is prohibited.]

In the quoted text uses the terms "fair use" and "unauthorized access".
Reading and playing a DVD movie I've payed for, can' be described as
"unauthorized access".

The main feature of the DeCSS program he describes i to enable playing of
DVD movies on PC's not using Windows or MacOS.

In fact, it is just as easy to copy a DVD without the "criminal hacker"
made. The only way DeCSS could be used for piracy, is if you want to
convert the DVD to a medium with lower density, and quality (like a video
CD). So his statement about "perfect copies" is obviously wrong. He also
talks about using DVD-R to pirate DVD's, that has absoulutly nothing to to
with the DeCSS program, as these copies will not be readable in any
stationary DVD player. Furthermore, even with access to a DVD stamper,
the DeCSS program would not be of any use. No DVD player will read a
decrypted DVD. The "easiest" way to copy a DVD is buying a DVD stamper
($100.000+). You don't need to know what the DVD contains, if you want to
make a "presine and pure" copy. Just read the raw encrypted data, and copy
it.

This case is about a norwegian boy, aged 16. Who live on a farm, with his
famely. And the way MPAA tries to controll the way we watch our movies.
This is the real thing, if it doesn't stop here. Where will it end? If a
US court of law can clain juristiction in this case (websites outside the
US, and a non US "hacker"), what is to stop, let's say China, from
prosecuting "criminals", who hosts websites with "illegal" information
(like Amnesty etc.)?

Stian
/ITK

Logic is a wonderful thing but doesn't always beat actual thought.

Our problem is we have no voice ourside our own circles.

I beg of you - please don't flame, or the MPAA will win. Please read the Advocacy guide, and stay calm no matter how angry you might be.

You think maybe they forgot?

Read it all!

Did you read them? Good.
E-Mail John Forgetta, Editor of CalendarLive at john.forgetta@latimes.com

Remember, if you are being idiots, you are only hurting us, and not helping us one bit.

"I do think [employers] should help pay for ergonomic furniture and an appropriate working environment."--Slashdot

"An employer is responsible for ensuring that its employees have a safe and healthful workplace, not a safe and healthful home,"--OSHA

Looks like OSHA's done something Slashdot agrees with. Oh the humanity!

An LA Times article giving views both pro- and con- can be read here.

I, for one, am very disturbed by the fact that most of the clothes I'm wearing were most likely made by underpriviledged workers, not only in third-world countries, but also here in the US. When the people have a very limited choice, when all they've been given are what they don't want, it's not necessarily their fault if they use it. It is their fault if they don't do anything about it.

I'm just afraid that the overly sensational US media is going to focus on the 20 or 30 idiots who made serious trouble, while the other 40-50K people there behaved themselves. The tension in this country has been growing at a very visible rate in the last few years and I think this is just one of the first (mostly) good outwards signs of it.

Being a (young) 20-something myself, most of the people I know (an interesting mix, seeing as I have both leftist or libertarian friends yet go to a very conservative school) are frustrated and angry about the state of politics in this country. The average person no longer has a voice, and large corporations and government institutions are working hard to make sure we have even less of a voice. Restrictions on encryption, anyone? More wiretapping capabilities built into our hardware and software? The "right" of the NSA and FBI to circumvent due process and keep people under surveillence without a warrant?

The WTO (good article here in pdf) has a track record of leveragaing their power to tromp the soverign laws of independent countries in order to make more money (article here). Powerful representatives from the US and large corporations convince small, developing nations that they need the latest whiz-bang-all-in-one products to even survive in the new world. These representatives then provide tasty soundbites wherein they ask for free trade and villify the protestors for not allowing their poor, starving country to get the best TVs out there (yes, bad example, but you get the point). It's for reasons like this that when I have kids they will never ever have Gerber baby food.

And for everyone who's been saying "Hippie, go home", RTFA (articles) before you make yourself look stupid. Thousands of people from all different walks of life are protesting this, not just a few "burnt-out acid-dropping hippies who crawled out of the woodwork", as much as you'd like to believe that. Middle-aged people who know this is a Bad Thing (TM) are right next to youth who feel they want to make a difference and are motivated to do so. Prominent figures have lent their voices to causes such as this, and the difference is starting to be felt. Previous generations had The Who, The Clash and U2 to send out the call for arms and action against the oppresive elements of their times. Today, groups like Rage Against The Machine are sending out the call to action and education to the youth of today. Do you think it's an accident their album debuted at #1 and is currently the #2 selling album in the world?? I don't think anything short of physical action on this scale (meaning large peaceful yet committed protest groups) are going to bring about the change we need.

Educate yourself. Let yourself get angry. And then do something constructive and meaningful to channel that anger. My 100% support to the protesters in Seattle. Not to mention somewhat reluctant thanks to the police out there for not allowing a re-creation of the 1968 Democratic convention in Chicago to occur.

-jdm

Howdy folks. As somebody who has interacted with at least two of the authors of the preprint, I suppose i should make a few things clear: the authors *are* well respected members of the high energy theory community, and there is a *lot* of current research going into theories with extra dimensions, of several different sorts: Planck scale extra dimensions (10^-33cm or so, from string/M theory) - which would not be directly observable any time soon, sub-millimeter extra dimensions (i.e. only barely sub-millimeter, as opposed to the above 33 orders of magnitude sub.), in which "Standard Model" forces are constrained to live in a 3 dimensional (spatial) slice of higher dimensional space, where gravity sees the whole D-dimensional space (but since gravity is so weak, we have only probed it accurately on scales longer than a cm or so, so it is conceivable that on shorter scales the 1/r^2 law of 3 dimensions is modified to a 1/r^2 + k/r^4 law, where k is a constant related to the size of the extra dimension (and the number of extra dimensions)), the third extra-dimensional scenario allows for possibly *infinite* extra dimensions, with both gravity and the Standard Model forces (strong and electro-weak) are confined to our 3-dimensional slice (called a 3-brane).

The interesting new idea in this paper is that the brane may not be flatly embedded in the higher dimensional space, but it may be folded, possibly many times over (thus the name, "manyfold" - a pun on the mathematical term "manifold" referring to a smooth curved surface of arbitrary dimension - this manyfold is also a manifold, most likely). This allows for an explanation of dark matter as just matter living on other folds - electromagnetically they may be whole galaxies billions of megaparsecs away, but in the higher dimensional space, gravity sees them as only a millimeter away, so it looks like invisible heavy matter.

Another thing which is important to note about these folded branes is that they are most likely not stable in that configuration (technically, they are not BPS saturated objects), meaning they may cause certain postulated symmetries to be broken (i.e. supersymmetry), which is good, because we know that if these symmetries are real, they are broken. I cannot see why the universe would stay in such a configuration at first glance, but after I read the article more carefully, I'll report back.

-jake

spam-free-mannix@spamless.stanford.edu

Because I care:

GUID

Win98 profiling

Professor Spokesman

Astroturf

Ads as news

Video

When you toss in the sub-woofer it might be pretty good. Beats me, but it's best not to berate them until you've really hat a chance to test them out.

For example: Apple brags it's iBook gets a 6 hour battery life (what laptop actually gets it's marketted battery life?). I've read two reviews from people, one from the L.A. Times and the other from the Wall Street Journal, that actually got 6 or more hours from the battery.

I'd like to point out that the reporting on this story is very muddy. None of the science writers seem to know how to use the words force, velocity, impulse, or energy correctly in a sentence, nor which units go with which measurements.

I'd like to offer the following as evidence:

• SF Chronicle
  
  Their computers used the metric term newtons, or grams per second of force, to send final course and velocity commands to the Mars-bound spacecraft.
  
  A newton is not a gram per second!
• LA Times
  
  As a result, JPL engineers mistook acceleration readings measured in English units of pound-seconds for a metric measure of force called newton-seconds.
  
  Force is not measured in newton-seconds!
• Washing ton Post
  
  The navigators, in turn, performed their analysis of the spacecraft's position in space based on the assumption that the descriptions of these firings were in metric units of force per second (newtons). In fact, the numbers instead represented pounds (of force per second).
  
  A pound is not force per second!
• LA Times
  
  But, basically, Lockheed was providing the JetPropulsion Laboratory with data on the amount of energy imparted to the spacecraft by its thrusters that are fired periodically. This was measured in pound-seconds, Hinners said.
  
  Energy is not measured in pound-seconds! Perhaps an energy change was indicated by a reading in pound-seconds, but it's erroneous to write that energy is measured in those units.

It looks to me that either a Reuters, AP, or some press release initially confused impulses with force, and the error has propogated through every major news organization in the country. Either that, or quite a few science writers would seem to think that the general public has no real idea about what they're reading and couldn't care less if it's technically correct. Something should be written about the correct relationship between force, impulse, and energy using the words correctly in a sentence, along with the correct units of measurement so that some education of the American public comes of this.

Or it could be that I'm being too nit-picky. Sue me for being an engineer...

Robby

http://www.latimes.com/CNS_D AYS/990927/t000086706.html

That original URL was insanely long when I was trying to send it to a friend through email...

This article was in the LA Times today. Apparently some company has "patented" the idea of renting and selling movies over the internet. Mainly talks about the big boys, Disney, WB et al and the potential problems they face but it seems as though just about anything is patentable these days. Now if only I had patented the idea of selling naked pictures of "teens" I'd be "almost" as rich as BG.

Vehicular seizure for mere suspicion of drug use has become a normal practice (one that, by the way, disproportionately targets blacks and latinos) - police in many states do not even need to arrest a suspect or charge them with anything, and they can simply take and sell their vehicle. It has become a very profitable enterprise for many departments.

The ACLU has a good resource page with links to information about some of the abuses - both illegal and currently legal - that law enforcement agencies are engaging in, but one of my favorite sites is this one, run by a former LA policeman who began documenting police abuses and racism after he was attacked by another cop while operating undercover - he now leads a non-profit group that 'stings' officers with hidden cameras and recorders in new vehicles being driven by black men, and the results are dismaying. It's a bit disappointing to me that many so-called libertarians seem a lot more concerned about getting rid of environmental and consumer protection regulations and lowering taxes, than actually protecting citizens from direct and overt abuses of power. The selectiveness of law enforcement is excrutiangly painful in light of the G.W. Bush debacle - the powers-that-be are more than happy to jail the rest of us for mistakes that they have the luxury to simply "outgrow."

Here's another story of police enforcement going out of control, and another.

Vehicular seizure for mere suspicion of drug use has become a normal practice (one that, by the way, disproportionately targets blacks and latinos) - police in many states do not even need to arrest a suspect or charge them with anything, and they can simply take and sell their vehicle. It has become a very profitable enterprise for many departments.

The ACLU has a good resource page with links to information about some of the abuses - both illegal and currently legal - that law enforcement agencies are engaging in, but one of my favorite sites is this one, run by a former LA policeman who began documenting police abuses and racism after he was attacked by another cop while operating undercover - he now leads a non-profit group that 'stings' officers with hidden cameras and recorders in new vehicles being driven by black men, and the results are dismaying. It's a bit disappointing to me that many so-called libertarians seem a lot more concerned about getting rid of environmental and consumer protection regulations and lowering taxes, than actually protecting citizens from direct and overt abuses of power. The selectiveness of law enforcement is excrutiangly painful in light of the G.W. Bush debacle - the powers-that-be are more than happy to jail the rest of us for mistakes that they have the luxury to simply "outgrow."

Here's another story of police enforcement going out of control, and another.

Feh. I just submitted this on the main form when Roblimo's post shows up on the page.

The LA Times has a nice summary article titled Red Hat's IPO Battles Timing, Microsoft detailing the positives, flaws, and hurt feelings of the Red Hat, Inc. IPO. Perhaps the most interesting line reads, 'Analysts worry that this could destroy the cooperative mood that has been a feature of the Linux community and a key reason for its success.'

Any comments on this?

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Feh. I just submitted this on the main form when Roblimo's post shows up on the page.

The LA Times has a nice summary article titled Red Hat's IPO Battles Timing, Microsoft detailing the positives, flaws, and hurt feelings of the Red Hat, Inc. IPO. Perhaps the most interesting line reads, 'Analysts worry that this could destroy the cooperative mood that has been a feature of the Linux community and a key reason for its success.'

Any comments on this?

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The first IMP installation thirty years ago is described in today's L.A. Times. Nobody took a picture of the start of the ARPANET.

Here's a legendary astroturf campain...

The story refers to a previous one in the Los Angeles Times.

When I'm not wasting time posting to /., anyway.

I'm terrible with names, and have pretty much illegible handwriting, so a PDA with something like grafitti is considerably more useful to me than a paper notebook. Not to mention the ability to search the entire database, try doing that with a random collection of post-its stuck insde a day runner.

As for computers improving productivity, check out this article from the LA times.

I don't know how long that URL is going to work.

The first link basically says that the eBay guys weren't paranoid enough about making sure the setup was reliable. This is always a problem. (hey, I'm working on a commercial web site that only got a proper sys-admin 2 years after it started...). Little side-note - one guy says Sun's clustering stuff is not that great... I know Sun have been a bit late in starting doing clustering stuff, but I've also heard that what they have done is pretty good, *shrug*. Actually, they just annouced version 3 last week, which also allows clustering of 16 Starfires, for 1024 processors. (they're also making the source code for this available...)

Here's a direct URL to the LA Times story

Yup, Katz's article (including a few choice quotes) is mentioned in the LA Times today. Follow the link to read it.


-mike kania