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LiveJournal's staff has clearly stated that they believe LiveJournal's Terms of Service is not to be taken literally, and that it in no way shape or form dictates actual LJ policy. What document does state that is left as an exercise to the reader.

The Service, or relevant third parties, may provide links to other web sites or resources. Because LiveJournal has no control over such sites and resources, you acknowledge and agree that LiveJournal is not responsible for the availability of such external sites or resources, and does not endorse and is not responsible or liable for any content, advertising, products, or other materials on or available from such sites or resources. You further acknowledge and agree that LiveJournal shall not be responsible or liable, directly or indirectly, for any damage or loss caused or alleged to be caused by or in connection with use of or reliance on any such content, goods or services available on or through any such site or resource.

Enjoy a few pics here. Incidentally "Song airlines" were the first ones Delta put these on. Song went out of business (there's a Frontline episode you can watch about it) and the Song planes were turned back into Delta planes. Now all the Delta planes are scheduled to have the inflight video stuff too.

I've always wanted to see better benchmarking systems that show how efficient various architectures are for various types of tasks, rather than just lists of MFLOPS and MIPS numbers. I know there's always a business push to be able to compare everything from vector-oriented supercomputers with huge registers to commodity clusters to massively parallel RISC arrays using just one single "magic" number (typically MFLOPS), but, this has so little effect on real-world performance. I want a benchmark to spit out dozens of numbers, and different architectures should show their particular strengths readily through those numbers, if the benchmark was designed well.

In many of the more relaxed corners of the Outer Eastern Rim of the Internet, Wikipedia has already supplanted the great Encyclopaedia Britannica as the standard repository of all knowledge and wisdom, for though it has many omissions and contains much that is apocryphal, or at least wildly inaccurate, it scores over the older, more pedestrian work in two important respects.

First, it is slightly cheaper; and secondly it has the words "anyone can edit" inscribed in large friendly letters on its cover.

When it comes to the body of work that is Uwe Boll, I think that Howard Tayler put it best:

I'm serious. If I find out that you went and saw this film after I told you not to, I'll phone your friends up and tell them to go to your house and pour ants in your bed. And when you wake up screaming, covered in ants, you'll think "at least I'm not still watching BloodRayne."

Lisp code is unreadable.

Its hard to explain the theory behind why Lisp code is unreadable, so a lot of rational people who like to believe only what they can prove theoretically have a dissonance about it. Nevertheless, many Lisp hackers prefer Python for their daily work :-)

"Yeah, Lisp is better, but I'm using Python for this and that" :-)

Here are my thoughts on Lisp: A critique of Lisp.

James Morris has put up an analysis of the same vulnerabilities.

And pushing the system code down into lower echelons of execution (i.e kernel), the way SELinux does it, is a valid fix.

If you're going to recommend that people check out the "Male Privilege Checklist" then I'll point you to the "Female Privilege Checklist": http://mepersoner.livejournal.com/200705.html

You can set up RSS feeds from other sites to view on your friendslist, as this FAQ explains: http://www.livejournal.com/support/faqbrowse.bml?f aqid=137

Livejournal does supports OpenID, which is basically what the site in this article is trying to do. Basically, with OpenID, if you're a member of any site that uses OpenID then you can use that login on any other site that uses it, and thus have access to information on all the participating sites. Livejournal, Wordpress, and AOL.com are a few of the sites that use it. I don't know how much use it gets; I don't think I've seen anyone post on Livejournal that doesn't actually have a LJ account, but then I don't check everyone's username. All those I've clicked on led to real LJs, though.

Automatix may look nice on the surface but it is not integrated at all well with the .deb policy or the apt package management framework. Ubuntu's Matthew Garrett has recently completed an analysis of Automatix and has severe criticisms of its methods and end results. It seems to me to be a good way to ensure you need a reinstall.

Automatix may look nice on the surface but it is not integrated at all well with the .deb policy or the apt package management framework. Ubuntu's Matthew Garrett has recently completed an analysis of Automatix and has severe criticisms of its methods and end results. It seems to me to be a good way to ensure you need a reinstall.

This article should not have the Linux Tux logo. Tux only came much later. I suggest an egg or something.

The logo prior to Tux (maybe not "official" but community-driven) was Virtual Beer ...

If you're in Europe, http://www.linuxbierwanderung.org/ still has a beer-related annual event to attend (covered on slashdot earlier)

Bram Cohen (Bittorrent inventor) commented on Avalanche on his blog two years ago and said that he thinks "the paper is complete garbarge."

However, the Wikipedia article on network coding lists a lot of fields where this techology might be useful, so I guess it's not really garbage after all, but neither the holy grail of p2p.

See AMD/ATI graphics drivers Slashdot greatest hits for some further details. I would love to see better (and ideally Free) Linux support from their drivers (yes there is some Linux support out there but I'm told if you have the very latest ATI/AMD HD X2xxx cards then you will have no 3D on Linux). This is not too surprising because for around 6 months after launch there was no X1xxx Linux support. The drivers have DEFINITELY improved over time (the number of crashes due to binary ATI drivers has fallen) but while AMD/ATI are still doing stuff like refusing to get back to developers or AMD/ATI are allegedly misappropriating developer code I feel very uneasy and currently I would be wary of buying a machine with a new AMD/ATI graphics card for use with Linux.

See AMD/ATI graphics drivers Slashdot greatest hits for some further details. I would love to see better (and ideally Free) Linux support from their drivers (yes there is some Linux support out there but I'm told if you have the very latest ATI/AMD HD X2xxx cards then you will have no 3D on Linux). This is not too surprising because for around 6 months after launch there was no X1xxx Linux support. The drivers have DEFINITELY improved over time (the number of crashes due to binary ATI drivers has fallen) but while AMD/ATI are still doing stuff like refusing to get back to developers or AMD/ATI are allegedly misappropriating developer code I feel very uneasy and currently I would be wary of buying a machine with a new AMD/ATI graphics card for use with Linux.

Most of their recent releases will either fix/patch bugs, support newer cards, break previous features or increase/decrease performance -- including this one. For example, version 8.31.5 broke suspend and cpu usage for video has increased in recent versions. Support for AIGLX still hasn't been included.

I really hope this pushes ATI to push feature development and improve their QA on the drivers so that performance and features are maintained between releases.

Abuse on wikipedia is systemic and ridiculous. The number of people who have been through it are numerous. The number of reliable, credentialed academics who've been abused, voluminous. The number of times they have covered up their abuses, the number of sheer scandals. (note that they've deleted all of the Essjay material, to cover up and try to hide what he pulled; a long-running scam to abuse and mistreat and demean Catholics).

Wikipedia administrators regularly abuse their power - in any way possible. The caste system of wikipedia is set up this way; gather thousands of mindless edits (and they keep pushing the boundary upwards, for fear that someone might get in and try to fix the system from within). Decry anyone who rightly points out that the system is broken and needs fixing as a "troll."

Abuse and attack; ban and call them a "troll" later; lie about the results of "CheckUser", lie about what a user said and what a metric really means, attack attack and do your best to smear anyone who says anything at all.

This is the method by which wikipedia administrators exist; this is the methodology by which the caste system is enforced. It used to be, way back when, that users were encouraged to seek out another administrator if one was giving them grief for redress: now the policy is against "wheel warring", and no administrator is allowed to undo the action of another for fear of being accused of such, and administrative policies have been changed to enforce this.

In the Wikipedia system, the administrators are the pigs of animal farm - "more equal than others."

Jason Scott put it very well indeed.
So did Jerry Holkins: "a kind of quantum encyclopedia, where genuine data both exists and doesn't exist depending on the precise moment I rely upon your discordant fucking mob for my information."

However, the core of it is worse than that. Wikipedia is not merely controlled by "consensus": it is actively controlled by cliques whose goal is to bias the hell out of articles and keep them in their biased mode. They operate by getting their friends, members of their clique, elevated to admin status and then patrolling these articles, ostensibly for "trolls" but really for anyone who might try to un-bias them. They abuse these newcomers, make false accusations against them, hurl insults and then have their friend ban the newcomer for fighting back. They abuse the prohibitions on "multiple reversions" like a game; instead of a real consensus, all you have to have is one more guy than the opposing viewpoint and you completely control the damn article - and since you have a sympathetic admin on your side, you can have them block the new user for "edit warring", which comes in real handy when you have your buddy bring them to the drumhead trial system called "Arbcom" and say "see he should be banned he's got X blocks already."

Wikipedia is beyond broken - at its best, it is a worthless pile of crap with some whipped cream sprayed on top to try to make it look presentable. At its worst it is a classic case of letting the inmates run the asylum, of the Lord of the Flies syndrome; the worst abusers of the system are those who are "highly-ranked" and "respected" administrators, who operate by fiat, who can and regularly do abuse anyone else without mercy.

The caste system is mercilessly enforced by the admins - without it, they would not have nearly so much power. The whole point of being an administrator of wikipedia is not to make the encyclopedia better but rather to protect your friends, protect your clique, rise in

As usual, people are posting replies without any clue about the actual situation (or at least the claims of important people involved)

See http://mulix.livejournal.com/199931.html

"Now the real project can get the credit it deserves. I hate it when people steal credit. It was so annoying to read interviews where it was claimed that behind openMosix are years of research, when all this research was actually behind MOSIX."

Her first album was a live recording from a convention. She took pre-orders (at, IIRC, a discounted price) on the album until she had enough money gathered up to do a run of CDs, distributed the pre-ordered CDs to the people who got them, and sold the rest at her going rate.

That (as I understand it) was the seed money for the next project, a studio album. Her blog chronicles the recording process in a very widely assorted range of home studio type situations (and it's worth a read if you're into wacky hijinks). She took pre-orders on that as well, and the combination of the money from the previous stuff and the 250 pre-orders (with optional above-and-beyond sponsorship donation) produced the current CD. The rest of the run of CDs are being sold at the non-pre-order price.

I don't know what she plans to do with the music itself when she runs out of printed CDs. (She's already plotting her next album, and taking votes from her fanbase about what songs will be included in it.) It would be nice if she released it to the wild freely, though I'm guessing she might be more likely to make it available as an inexpensive paid download to at least help pay for bandwidth. It would be awesome if she could actually make a living at this and devote a larger portion of her time to it.

As a follow-up to my own post (yes, yes, poor form), someone has done a little analysis of the aforementioned crash log and points out some of the more interesting bits.

Ok, so you'll need to get a handful of people in every DMA to key in the guide data for every station in that DMA. Every. Day. At least a day ahead of time. That'll cover the thousand or so broadcast stations. This doesn't address how they know what's going to be on -- paying for newspapers, TV Guide, etc. or manually reentering data from various web pages.

And then get a second bunch of suckers, err, people to do the same for all the premium/non-broadcast channels. (btw, some of them don't even update their own listings correctly.)

In total, it'll take thousands of people all over the country constantly pushing updates. TMS has a dedicated, experienced staff with direct data feeds from the stations... and they still mess it up frequently. One might think this is just like CDDB, but TV listings are highly dynamic and time sensitive making it much more difficult to maintain -- nobody cares what was on last week; MythTV cannot record things in the past. It's closest to the undertaking of Moiveminder... and that was more than enough work for a dozen people to keep up with the slowly changing movie listings for RDU. TV lists are many orders of magnitude more work.

The best you could do is what Tivo, ReplayTV, cable companies, DISH, DTV, et. al. do... get a commercial data feed from TMS, transform it for the specific system(s) and push it to the receivers. This is VERY non-free. It takes infrastructure... mainly people and bandwidth. And then people will do to you what they've been doing to zap2it/xmltv... buy one account and use it on thousands of commercial systems.

I would love to see someone sell tv listing data feeds. It's far cheaper and more useful than dead-tree listings. Neither TV Guide nor local newspapers provide a "digital subscription." However, this still wouldn't address those cheap bastards that refuse to pay at all, but it'd be a start. (and it would still have the same issues of today's zap2it... commericial devices sold using a "personal" account.)

"I've worked with Windows all my working life and, despite what you may hear, it has been a blessing to us all: without it we would still be running Wang word processors on Wang hardware that saved documents in a Wang file format that can only be read by other Wang applications and printed on Wang Printers. Or HP, Or IBM, or Toshiba: whatever. It took a Big Bad Corporation to build a big enough operating system that everyone uses it, and every other software vendor works with it rather than against it, each other, and the user population. I fully expect the Big Bad Corporation to make a handsome profit from their systems and I am certain that Microsoft have behaved far, far better than IBM would've done if their DOS and their visual interface had established the natural monopoly that emerges from a widely-used operating system. But Vista and Microsoft's implementation of DRM is a clear indication that they have failed to balance the constant commercial compromise of profit, competition, quality, and customer service."

> What is most showing is how fast it will be till Yahoo fixes this vunerability as a sign of their metal.

It is already fixed. And probably the security testing team added a new test-case to prevent recurrences.

What went on here is a pure case of ASWing. Nearly every non-trivial application has a fair share of holes, some are just more high-rewards than others. We've found XSS issues in Orkut, during random exploration. But having grown past sixteen, I've sent an email to the orkut feedback black hole and next morning found the bug to be fixed without even a thank-you in reply (it sucks, but that's how nearly everyone treats security bug reporters).

I'd have settled for a free Google t-shirt, but the guy in TFA doesn't deserve anything but censure for his fear-mongering.

JWZ, of original Netscape, famously referred to AOL's continual efforts to slap the "Netscape" name on something, anything -- a browser variant, a portal, a low-cost internet connection, whatever -- as "brand necrophilia".

There was a Samba vulnerability recently whose damage was mitigated by SELinux. Link

http://www.911myths.com/
http://www.debunking911.com/
http://www.jnani.org/mrking/writings/911/king911.h tm
http://911debunker.livejournal.com/
http://www.no911conspiracy.com/mythsvsfacts.html
http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/militar y_law/1227842.html?page=1
http://www.public-action.com/911/jmcm/sciam/
http://wtc7lies.googlepages.com/home

The article is a long excuse explaining why AMD/ATI are unable to release decent GNU/Linux drivers. That's interesting enough as far as it goes: AMD/ATI and Nvidia both have crap closed, proprietary drivers which don't work well, make kernel updgrading difficult and are unauditable for security. So why bother with them? Further ATI have a history of dragging their ass and blocking the release of Free drivers,

Why bother with this crap? Just get an Intel GMA X3000 integrated motherboard and save time, power, money and hassle due to Intel "getting it" and releasing Open Source drivers and full specs. (You'll probably also be able to benefit from their free wireless drivers.

If you're into hardcore gaming then you're probably running a PS3 or an Xbox on the side anyway.

http://pics.livejournal.com/hpnic06/pic/0008ya61/

There's a screenshot I took of the Interests part of our Edit User Info pages. It clearly states that you should be able to fit the word or phrase into "I like ____"

Admittedly not all of my interests coherently fit that scheme, but I've no objectionable interests in my profile, either.

his explanations seem reasonable

Thank you for contacting the LiveJournal Abuse Team. While we cannot discuss any particular cases except with the individuals directly involved, we will be happy to explain our policy to you. LiveJournal is committed to the principle of free speech. This means that users are allowed to post a wide variety of content, including that which others may find objectionable. This includes the theoretical discussion of, or expressed interest in illegal activity. This discussion, even at a level of detail which others may find objectionable, is not in-and-of itself illegal, and in keeping with our commitment to free speech, we will not suspend a journal this reason. Our policy does indicate that if there is reasonable belief that a journal is being used to solicit minors, the journal will be terminated. However, theoretical discussion is not in itself illegal, and should a journal owner explicitly disclaim that their discussion is theoretical, and not intended for the purpose of soliciting minors, we will not take any action.

well i suppose its not that different, however i don't know how realistic it would be to have well over 2,000 people author one blog on blogger (or if thats even possible) which is entirely possible on livejournal. (see this and this). that being said the friends function of livejournal is pretty comparable to only letting some people see your blogger posts.

well i suppose its not that different, however i don't know how realistic it would be to have well over 2,000 people author one blog on blogger (or if thats even possible) which is entirely possible on livejournal. (see this and this). that being said the friends function of livejournal is pretty comparable to only letting some people see your blogger posts.

NORAD response information:
http://www.911myths.com/html/intercepts__norad_and _the_faa.html
http://www.911myths.com/html/intercept_time.html
http://www.911myths.com/html/andrews_afb.html
http://www.911myths.com/html/fighter_speeds.html
http://www.911myths.com/html/recognising_the_threa t.html
http://www.debunk911myths.org/topics/index.php?tit le=NORAD
http://calan8.livejournal.com/

As for me, I already stated my thoughts quite clearly in my own journal entry.

(Full disclosure: I'm a permanent account holder, have been since before Six Apart took over. That means I paid $150 to have paid rights for life. So I'm a regular LJ user, though I don't use it for fandom reasons).

True - but I think this does touch on constitutional issues because of the suggestion that merely talking about something is in itself illegal. In fact, merely listing "incest" in the "Interests" list on a user or community profile was enough to get suspended. Supposedly from Livejournal's abuse team:

"we have been advised that listing an interest in an illegal activity must be viewed as using LiveJournal to solicit that illegal activity."

And will they unsuspend you if you'll remove the interest? Nope:

"Our legal counsel advises us that it would increase LiveJournal's liability if we were to allow your journal to be unsuspended for you to delete the illegal interests from your profile. This is because if someone were to remove the illegal interests from his or her profile, but was in fact using LiveJournal to coordinate, solicit, or participate in illegal activity, LiveJournal would most likely be considered to have foreknowledge of that activity and thus become liable."

So although no one's being prosecuted (which itself is interesting - if we really were talking about pedophiles are, shouldn't LiveJournal and/or the 3rd party which reported the accounts to them be, I dunno, talking to the police?) they're acting under the belief that it's illegal to talk about, or write fiction about (in the case of fan-fiction, which counts for many deleted accounts) things which are illegal.

And it's people like this 3rd party ("warriors for innocence") who try to make it actually illegal to talk, write fiction or draw pictures about illegal things, and even extend that to consensual adults acts which have nothing to do with child abuse (e.g., adult incest, or things like BDSM). I'm in the UK, and I see a similar fight here with the Government and pro-censorship groups such as Mediawatch-UK wanting to criminalise possession of various adult porn.

In that sense, this is more than simply accounts on LiveJournal (although that in itself worries me, as a paid user of the service). It's a fight about freedom of speech versus censorship, and I fear the belief that freedom of speech shouldn't extend to things some people personally find distasteful when it comes to sex is all too strong.

True - but I think this does touch on constitutional issues because of the suggestion that merely talking about something is in itself illegal. In fact, merely listing "incest" in the "Interests" list on a user or community profile was enough to get suspended. Supposedly from Livejournal's abuse team:

"we have been advised that listing an interest in an illegal activity must be viewed as using LiveJournal to solicit that illegal activity."

And will they unsuspend you if you'll remove the interest? Nope:

"Our legal counsel advises us that it would increase LiveJournal's liability if we were to allow your journal to be unsuspended for you to delete the illegal interests from your profile. This is because if someone were to remove the illegal interests from his or her profile, but was in fact using LiveJournal to coordinate, solicit, or participate in illegal activity, LiveJournal would most likely be considered to have foreknowledge of that activity and thus become liable."

So although no one's being prosecuted (which itself is interesting - if we really were talking about pedophiles are, shouldn't LiveJournal and/or the 3rd party which reported the accounts to them be, I dunno, talking to the police?) they're acting under the belief that it's illegal to talk about, or write fiction about (in the case of fan-fiction, which counts for many deleted accounts) things which are illegal.

And it's people like this 3rd party ("warriors for innocence") who try to make it actually illegal to talk, write fiction or draw pictures about illegal things, and even extend that to consensual adults acts which have nothing to do with child abuse (e.g., adult incest, or things like BDSM). I'm in the UK, and I see a similar fight here with the Government and pro-censorship groups such as Mediawatch-UK wanting to criminalise possession of various adult porn.

In that sense, this is more than simply accounts on LiveJournal (although that in itself worries me, as a paid user of the service). It's a fight about freedom of speech versus censorship, and I fear the belief that freedom of speech shouldn't extend to things some people personally find distasteful when it comes to sex is all too strong.

Barak Berkowitz, of Six Apart, Livejournal's parent company, posted a reply a little while ago. Unlike digg a few weeks ago, Berkowitz sounds both sorry and his explanations seem reasonable.

Repost from http://news.livejournal.com/99159.html ...

Well we really screwed this one up...

For reasons we are still trying to figure out what was supposed to be a well planned attempt to clean up a few journals that were violating LiveJournal's policies that protect minors turned into a total mess. I can only say I'm sorry, explain what we did wrong and what we are doing to correct these problems and explain what we were trying to do but messed up so completely.

What we did wrong;

1) Over the last couple of days we have suspended (not deleted) about 500 journals out of many millions on LJ.
2) It is now clear that in an unfortunate number of cases these journals were suspended for easily correctable problems in their profiles that would then allow them to be reinstated and that this was not communicated to the journal or community owners at all.
3) Further, because of miscommunication these journals were taken down before review could be completed to avoid mistakes.

How we are fixing it.

1) Over the next few hours we will review the journals that were taken down and wherever appropriate we will restore these journals or communities before 12 noon PDT. Sorry it will take that long but we do not want to reinstate true and clear violators of community policy.
2) In some cases Journals that were restored will be asked to clarify their profiles to avoid the appearance that they are soliciting or encouraging illegal activities.
3) Journals that we do not restore will be journals that we are fairly sure are actually intended to encourage activities that put minors at risk but we will review them if requested by their owner to be certain that we did not make a mistake.
4) In cases that we ask owners to clarify their profiles and they fail to do so within 7 days we will suspend their journals again.

So what were we trying to do when we messed up so badly?

As most of you know, LJ has a zero tolerance policy toward content that supports child abuse, pedophilia, or sexual violence. In implementation of this zero tolerance policy there were two issues that made it hard to apply these policies consistently;

Issue one was profiles.

There were a number of profiles that expressed "interest" in activities that most of us would agree put children at risk, notably pedophilia and child rape. Both in the instructions for profiles and in other places on the site we make it clear that interests listed should be evaluated within the context of "I like x", "I'm in favor of x" or "I support x". As many profiles are the only public part of a private journal and profiles serve partly as an advertisement for people of like interests, it is important that the content of a profile can be evaluated as if it stands alone. If your profile were to express interest in pedophilia with no other content that describes this interest as in helping survivors or protecting children from it we must read the profile as "I like or I support or I'm in favor of it." For this reason we suspended profiles that meet this criteria.

Another issue we needed to deal with was journals that used a thin veneer of fictional or academic interest in events and storylines that include child rape, pedophilia, and similar themes in order to actually promote these activities. While there are stories, essays, and discussions that include discussion of these issues in an effort to understand and prevent them, others use a pretext to promote these activities. It's often very hard to tell the difference. As such, we have suspended reported journals that do not clearly and substantially object to these activities while at the same time portraying them.

We recently received a complaint from outside the community about a number of journals. When we receive such complaints it is our obligation to look into them but it is our sta

http://catrinella.livejournal.com/151812.html

http://www.livejournal.com/export.bml

If their deletion policy is this random, then it'd be a good idea to get out now.

Me, I'm going somewhere else - if this is the way lj acts, they've seriously lost my trust, and therefore my financial support.

I liked the livejournal of user spuller a lot: http://spuller.livejournal.com/
Anyone know where he moved to ?

They're even worse than that -- they seem to be buddy-buddy with a lot of hard right wing Christian dominionist type groups. The same community has a bit of peeking through records in an attempt to get some info about the site's servers (and thus location), but it looks like all they came up with is that they're hosted through GoDaddy.

They're even worse than that -- they seem to be buddy-buddy with a lot of hard right wing Christian dominionist type groups. The same community has a bit of peeking through records in an attempt to get some info about the site's servers (and thus location), but it looks like all they came up with is that they're hosted through GoDaddy.

We recognize that many people list these types of interests for shock value, as a method of expressing opposition for these illegal activities, or to indicate fictional activity. Unfortunately, the Abuse team does not have any discretion in these cases; if a journal profile contains interests that support illegal activity, we must suspend the journal. Journals, on the other hand, may express or imply interest in illegal activity or express or imply a desire to meet and/or interact with others with similar interests, but only if the journal clearly (1) is in opposition to or condemnation of the illegal activity, (2) does not encourage the illegal activity and (3) is not used in furtherance of any illegal activity.

I offer you pr0n based on the FanLib ads. Pink dude/Blue guy 4EVA! http://lizbee.livejournal.com/640762.html?format=l ight The Yahoo execs are not attractive enough to write porn about. Let me know when the FanLib saga is turned into a made-for-tv flick starring Wentworth Miller and that one guy in that movie.