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No kidding. I just checked his wiki article to see if he OFFICIALLY worked for dice yet.

Also, someone needs to do something fun with this: http://www.mccullagh.org/image/950-8/bennett-haselton-peacefire.html

I think it's still happening in places.

Definitely still happening.

Some really extreme stuff shows up at Burning Man.

I think it's still happening in places.

Definitely still happening.

Some really extreme stuff shows up at Burning Man.

More power to you, and here where the problem is much much worse, where would you plant them?

many will be glad to see the eyesores turn down.

These people are gigantic fucking idiots. There is no other way for me to describe them. Mod me asshole if you want, but you cannot even begin to compare the eyesore of an actual fossil fuel plant (let alone what they want it to look like) or a nuclear plant (the image is the relevant part, but I always like nuclear dangers articles, they're fun!) with a wind farm. A collection of pinwheels, or a smoking concrete monstrosity? On appearance alone, the wind farm wins. I like to mention Moss Landing because there's a junkyard right next to it, a pick and pull I think. I've been there, and the power plant only gets uglier as you get closer. It's right on Highway 1, so unlike wind farms, you have to look at it up close. See, "conventional" power plants need water for cooling, so they're built on lakes, rivers, or the ocean... you know, places where people actually want to live, unlike the bumfuck nowhere locations where they build wind farms.

I occasionally drive past the bird-killing Altamont Pass Wind Farm which I find to be quite attractive. Too bad about the birds, but newer designs are larger, higher up, and slower, mitigating this problem. And how many birds do you think die every year from lung cancer, due to breathing particulates from fossil fuel power plants? We can find smokestacks emitting excessive crap in this country as fast as we can pay people to climb up them and check them. Birds have extremely fragile respiratory systems. We all pay the same toxic debt.

Ultimately, I think that there is a place for Nuclear in our system, at least until we get space-based solar up to speed. But wind clearly has a place as well...

Look who is taking all the money from the entertainment industry:

http://www.opensecrets.org/cmteprofiles/indus.asp?cycle=2008&CmteID=S17&Cmte=SJUD&CongNo=110&Chamber=S (Senate Judicairy Committee, which makes new criminal laws, $2,675,675 from TV/Movies/Music).

http://www.opensecrets.org/politicians/indus.asp?CID=N00009918&cycle=2008 PATRICK LEAHY (D-VT) (took $250K from entertainment industry, supports Induce Act, Pirate Act)

http://www.opensecrets.org/politicians/indus.asp?CID=N00009869&cycle=2008 Orrin G. Hatch (R-UT) (has taken $114K from entertainment, sponsored Induce Act, Pirate Act)

There are even pics of the Congresswhores hobnobbing to celebrate the passage of the DMCA.

BTW, the entertainment industry tends to give more to Democrats, even when the GOP is controlling Congress.

LOL! You mean.. you mean to tell me that that was going to pass as a DefCon hacker? That is just a great end to my Friday.

The only thing surprising here was that they had to be tipped off.

Strange women standing on the steps of the Supreme Court distributing BS is no basis for a system of artist compensation.

Or bronze statues are put up in their honor and cities are named after them.

Well, lets just take a look at what Americans did when we were going to invade Iraq:

http://www.basetree.com/thumbs/theprinceofbombs.jp g
http://www.mccullagh.org/db9/d30-30/free-republic- protest-3.jpg
http://truthout.org/imgs.art_01/3.probush.082705.g rab.jpg
http://www.beyondsatire.us/files/Pro-war.jpg
http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www. brumm.com/antiwar/feb16/images/032-DefeatEvilProWa r2.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.brumm.com/antiwar/feb1 6/032.html&h=480&w=640&sz=103&hl=en&start=6&tbnid= Z_lFLjYPEHUHrM:&tbnh=103&tbnw=137&prev=/images%3Fq %3D%2522pro-war%2522%26svnum%3D10%26hl%3Den%26lr%3 D%26ie%3DUTF-8%26sa%3DG
http://www.mccullagh.org/db9/d30-30/free-republic- protest-1.jpg
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2005-08/28/xinsr c_5620802281138515300128.jpg
http://home.earthlink.net/~bobbyfoto1/sitebuilderc ontent/sitebuilderpictures/wegavepeace.jpg

Of course, that's not nearly as bad as what you see in Israel. There was the October 2000 riots which involved thousands of Jews chanting "Death to Arabs" while they ransacked arab property, for example. Oy, I could go on for hours about the sort of stuff you get in Israel. Tons of speeches by all sorts of politicians and army leaders referring to them as vermin, worms, cockroaches, a disease, etc. Sh'a Tova even carried a comic strip for children which said "Yes, a good Arab is a dead Arab." Here's a nice article, although it's only a start.

Well, lets just take a look at what Americans did when we were going to invade Iraq:

http://www.basetree.com/thumbs/theprinceofbombs.jp g
http://www.mccullagh.org/db9/d30-30/free-republic- protest-3.jpg
http://truthout.org/imgs.art_01/3.probush.082705.g rab.jpg
http://www.beyondsatire.us/files/Pro-war.jpg
http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www. brumm.com/antiwar/feb16/images/032-DefeatEvilProWa r2.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.brumm.com/antiwar/feb1 6/032.html&h=480&w=640&sz=103&hl=en&start=6&tbnid= Z_lFLjYPEHUHrM:&tbnh=103&tbnw=137&prev=/images%3Fq %3D%2522pro-war%2522%26svnum%3D10%26hl%3Den%26lr%3 D%26ie%3DUTF-8%26sa%3DG
http://www.mccullagh.org/db9/d30-30/free-republic- protest-1.jpg
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2005-08/28/xinsr c_5620802281138515300128.jpg
http://home.earthlink.net/~bobbyfoto1/sitebuilderc ontent/sitebuilderpictures/wegavepeace.jpg

Of course, that's not nearly as bad as what you see in Israel. There was the October 2000 riots which involved thousands of Jews chanting "Death to Arabs" while they ransacked arab property, for example. Oy, I could go on for hours about the sort of stuff you get in Israel. Tons of speeches by all sorts of politicians and army leaders referring to them as vermin, worms, cockroaches, a disease, etc. Sh'a Tova even carried a comic strip for children which said "Yes, a good Arab is a dead Arab." Here's a nice article, although it's only a start.

http://www.mccullagh.org/db9/10d-20/annalee-newitz .jpg

I'm sorry, but she has a signifiant other. "Annalee Newitz of the San Francisco Bay Guardian and significant other at the Computers Freedom and Privacy conference" :-)

http://flickr.com/photo_zoom.gne?id=46278165&size= o

http://www.mccullagh.org/db9/10d-20/annalee-newitz .jpg

http://www.mccullagh.org/db9/10d-2/annalee-newitz. jpg

It is official -- Netcraft confirms: FSF is dying

One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered FSF community when IDC confirmed that the FSF's mindshare has dropped yet again, now down to less than a fraction of 1 percent of all computer users. Coming on the heels of a recent announcement from Linus Torvalds, which plainly states that the Linux kernel will NOT be moving to GPLv3, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. The FSF is collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by founder Richard Stallman's hairstyle and rambling GNU/Everything Communist anti-developers'-rights "I'm-right-and-you're-stupid" commentary.

You don't need to be a Kreskin to predict the FSF's future. The hand writing is on the wall: the FSF faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for the FSF because the FSF is dying. Things are looking very bad for the FSF. As many of us are already aware, the FSF continues to lose mindshare. In a recent poll on Slashdot, 97% of computer users preferred Microsoft to the FSF in terms of both ideals and the quality of their flagship products.

The GNU operating system is the most endangered of all the FSF's projects, having lost 93% of its core developers. Unable to convince users to use GNU's own "Hurd" kernel, the FSF has made several desperate attempts to capture mindshare by riding Linux's coattails. The aforementioned sudden (although not unexpected) denouncement of the GPLv3 by Linus Torvalds only serves to underscore the point more clearly. There can no longer be any doubt, the FSF is dying.

Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.

FSF founder RMS states that there are almost 7000 remaining GNU users. How many of those use Emacs? Let's see. Consider the bell-shaped curve of an IQ distribution graph. At best, Emacs users universally score two standard deviations below the mean, which means that they make up approximately 2% of any given sample. Therefore, there are 140 Emacs users left in the world. A recent article showed that GCC usage is declining among truly free operating systems in favor of ICC or even SDCC. There's GNU and Emacs, what else does the FSF produce aside from hot air?

Due to the troubles of the GNU operating system, abysmal adoption rates and so on, the GNU folks gave up on improving their code and instead began to concentrate on marketing their beta-quality OS. Theirs is just another unfinished open source project with a poorly designed interface and a lot of ideological baggage. It's no wonder that more and more businesses are turning to Microsoft.

All major surveys show that the FSF has steadily declined in mindshare. The FSF is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If the FSF is to survive at all it will be among juvenile political dilettante dabblers. The FSF continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. People just don't want to hear their message anymore. For all practical purposes, the FSF is dead.

Fact: The FSF is dying

I don't see how people miss that it is ironic that this worm is apparently from China while most machines without SP2 are also from China. Earlier there was a story that said we should be aware/afraid of cyber attacks by the Chinese.

I think the worm originated in Fort Meade, the stories originated from the Pentagon. That or the Chinese are targeting each other, not us.

TWO MEN ENTER, ONE MAN LEAVES!

Ok, I'm going to go boldly off topic here and pass along one of the funniest things I ever heard. Remember that it was your fault.

At Burning Man there was (and probably still is) a group of people who build a Thunderdome replica and have fights. One night years ago it somehow became clown night. Clinging to the bars, you'd look around and only see painted faces and red noses.

As the clown combatants entered the arena, everybody began to chant:

two clowns enter, nine clowns leave
TWO CLOWNS ENTER, NINE CLOWNS LEAVE!

But we're discussing Richard Stallman here, who looks decidedly less business like.

Note to self: avoid shitty LDS references.

It's good that he's retiring. He hasn't been looking so good recently.

It's good that he's retiring. He hasn't been looking so good recently.

Some may prefer Dennis Ritchie or even Richard Stallman...

Here is some more background information on our new fighter:

Her BLOG
Her homepage
Her Harvard homepage
and her Picture

Here's a visual aid for this joke.

Remember Jim Bell? Posted comments to the effect of setting up a system where you can bet on who will be assassinated. He got into deep trouble with the courts who tried to censor any mention of it. Here is some more information.

http://www.mccullagh.org/image/d30-34/library-filt ering-supreme-court.html

Enjoy!

Clearly, Cary Sherman will be the new chief. The press release is all there. Rosen said: "The Board will be conducting a formal search for my replacement over the next several months and we are confident of a smooth transition. I believe that the RIAA staff is simply the best in the business and I am proud of the team we have built. "Cary Sherman will remain in his current position as RIAA President and the Board and I have asked him to serve on the search committee," concluded Rosen. Why even bother to point out he's on the search committee unless he'll head it up? After all, Dick Cheney headed up Bush II vice presidential committee during the 2000 election. Here's the appropriate links: Picture of Smiling Sherman Interview with Mr. Sherman and the /. comments on said interview Looks like Mr. Sherman will as head of the RIAA will not lead to anything different at the RIAA, except, perhaps many more tesosterone induced lawsuits.

sounds like There will turn into burning man: some photos.

If they ever decide to make a movie of this, I think Tim Robbins sure would play a good Larry Lessig...

NYLXS and NYFairUse! went down to Washington DC on July 17 to protest against the big hollywood and big media "roundtable" discussion on drm. The meeting being held at the Commerce Dept. was so lopsided it was a joke. At one reporter's count, it was about 22 big media/big entertainment/big tech against 1 consumer voice, and one half consumer/half tech rep voice, both of which kept their mouths shut for nearly the entire four hour discussion.

NYLXS and NYFairUse members came prepared. We had buttons that said DRM is theft, flyers, handouts, etc. We stood up, and made our voices heard at the meeting. Although the organizers at the Commerce Dept. attempted to shut us up, we persisted, and got the attention of others in the room. Some of the IT reps conceded on the record that more consumer voices needed to be heard on this issue.

As a fallout of NYLXS and NYFairUse actions, the Commerce Dept. was forced to schedule a meeting with consumer groups on the issue. They scheduled a private, off the record, meeting of two hours for 17 groups invited to attend. Do the math.

Thanks to the efforts both in the Commerce Committee hearing room, during the simultaneous demonstration held outside the Commerce Department headquarters, and at the NYLXS and NYFairUse impromptu news conference held outside the Commerce Committee headquarters after the meeting, enough publicity was generated that the Commerce Committee was forced to recognize that consumers are the real stakeholders on this issue.

Expect more action on this issue from NYLXS and NYFairUse.
The members of Congress cannot exclude the consumer when it comes to Fair Use rights, drm (is theft) restrictions, or anything else that restricts consumers from exercising their Fair Use rights. NYLXS and NYFairUse will be there to protect these important rights. From attacks on libraries and librarians (check out some of the notable quotables from Mr. Jack Valenti on the Fair Use web site), to expiring electronic books (also on the web site) for your higher education, to restrictive technologies like Palladium, drm firmware being silently placed in MPAA member hard drive manufacturers, and more, NYLXS and NYFairUse will be there to defend Fair Use, and the right to use your computer and other property that you paid for in any manner you like that helps society move forward, and not in a manner that restricts speech, allows ideas to be kept under lock and key or expire into oblivion, etc.

I'm making a list of legislator positions on Fair Use, and which side they choose, the public they represent or entertainment and media cartels, so that the public will have information to take to the polls with them this November. If NYFairUse accepts it, it will be up on the NYFairUse web site prior to the elections. If NYFairUse doesn't accept it, do a google search on the topic, with relevant key words, and you'll find it at another site.

After this and Declan's previous article (something along the lines, "there should be a seperation of techies and state"), which seem, well, non-Declan (who is generally a fierce advocate for freedom and is anti-DMCA) I am wondering if this is applicable...

** MISSING **
Declan McCullagh
ACLU Award: Free Speech
Time Magazine Advocate for: Privacy
Previous Plaintiff: Challenging the Communications Decency Act
Anti-DMCA Efforts: Intervened in the landmark DVD/DeCSS lawsuit asking the court to open proceedings.

Declan McCullagh was reported missing to the /. user community. He was last known to be in Washington DC, and is believed to have undergone philosophical changes upon employment with CNET's News.com.

Incident Type: DMCA Abduction

If you have information regarding the disappearance of this individual, please contact: the /. community at http://www.slashdot.org.

After this and Declan's previous article (something along the lines, "there should be a seperation of techies and state"), which seem, well, non-Declan (who is generally a fierce advocate for freedom and is anti-DMCA) I am wondering if this is applicable...

** MISSING **
Declan McCullagh
ACLU Award: Free Speech
Time Magazine Advocate for: Privacy
Previous Plaintiff: Challenging the Communications Decency Act
Anti-DMCA Efforts: Intervened in the landmark DVD/DeCSS lawsuit asking the court to open proceedings.

Declan McCullagh was reported missing to the /. user community. He was last known to be in Washington DC, and is believed to have undergone philosophical changes upon employment with CNET's News.com.

Incident Type: DMCA Abduction

If you have information regarding the disappearance of this individual, please contact: the /. community at http://www.slashdot.org.

This guy is an embarressment to the profession of "web journalist", which is saying a lot in a world of Matt Drudges. I wonder if Declan would ever protect a source. Would he refuse a request from police? Would he refuse a subpoena? Would he go to prison to protect a source?

I doubt it. Why? Because he's a coward.

Actually, au contraire, he has answered to a subpoena before (last year) and then gone on the stand to protect a source, being treated as a hostile witness in the process (though luckily for him, not jailed). Check out his website, the whole story is there. Better check the facts before you next try to make an ad hominem attack.

I'm not convinced that this attack even happened

It happened. Declan McCullagh of Politech has some logs here.

Declan also posted logs of the way the server was responding all weekend at http://www.mccullagh.org/bin/riaamon/ in case anyone is curious how bad it got...it rotates the logs out, so look before they're gone

Could there be a more appropriate representative of the MPAA than Jack Valenti!? The guy LOOKS like an oppressive tyrant.

Really! Would you buy a used car from this man?

Having Valenti as the chairman puts a surprisingly appropriate face on the MPAA, and serves as a symbol of the type of men with whom their interests really lie. I'm surprised they haven't erected a facade instead: some doe-eyed guy or gal to whine about how much money they lose and how they can't feed their families, as opposed to the crazy authoritarian who offers "sweeping proclamations" about how little freedom consumers deserve.

"I'm getting very, very angry. Go back to the sandbox and play with the other kiddies and leave me to the operations of the system. I'm in charge. You SOB.".

A parody, of course.

So when did Ron Jeremy change his name to Vincenzo? And he sure has put on some more weight! ;)

I found these by accident.

The Enduring Power of Stupidity

During the past five days I have read many essays. To me, all of them have missed a fundamental underlying point.

There are two basic forces in the world: Intelligence and stupidity. Human intelligence generally is creative, and has the potential to enhance our lives. Stupidity almost always is destructive.

A month ago, the power of stupidity was demonstrated on a routine basis when our president made an "ethical decision" that scientists should destroy small clumps of human cells by throwing them away, instead of using them in research to eradicate terrible diseases. This stupidity was justified by misinterpreting an archaic book of primitive myths.

During the half-century that I have been alive, I've seen many similar examples of stupidity depriving us of the fruits of intelligence. Random examples include the misapplication of Marxism, the Vietnam war, the cold war, dismantling the US manned space program, eco-alarmism, and the war on drugs.

No doubt every person has some favorite examples to add to this list.

At the dawn of the 21st century, when Y2K was averted by a lot of smart people doing intelligent things to prevent the paralysis of modern society, I started to hope that intelligence was finally gaining an edge over stupidity. Here I am now, using a digital computer that not only facilitates my creativity as a writer, but also revolutionizes my ability to create music, videos, or graphics. Its connectivity has changed my entire working and social life. Its power has been almost totally beneficial, and it promises still greater benefits in the future.

Computational molecular biology has the potential to eradicate all hunger and disease. Ultimately computational power should enable us to manipulate matter itself, enabling a new era of unlimited wealth while eliminating side effects such as pollution and global warming. We may also defeat death: I may die, but I believe my daughter has a chance to achieve biological immortality.

At least, I used to believe this, until last Tuesday. On Tuesday I saw that stupidity still trumps intelligence. Those hijacked airplanes were an amazing feat of intelligent engineering, making the miracle of flight not only safe but universally accessible. The World Trade Center was a brilliantly innovative piece of architecture. Yet a handful of thugs armed with box cutters destroyed those fruits of intelligence within a few hours. The thugs, of course, were acting in accordance with their stupid misinterpretation of yet another archaic book of primitive myths.

Regulatory stupidity facilitated the terrorist acts. According to the Washington Post, FAA regulations have always permitted knives up to 4 inches long on domestic flights, and all cockpit doors on all airplanes can be opened with the same master key. In any case, the doors are flimsy enough to be kicked open. At least 14 times since 1998, drunk or disturbed passengers have tried to force their way into airplane cockpits. They succeeded on 6 occasions. In 1999, a passenger on All Nippon Airways fatally stabbed a pilot.

Thus, this country has pursued an aggressive, punitive foreign policy that was guaranteed to create enemies, yet took only cosmetic steps to protect its own citizens in a situation of notorious vulnerability. Worse, in the future, passengers will remain vulnerable (instead of being allowed access to tools of nonlethal self-defense such as tasers), while the foreign policy will become more aggressive, thus creating still more enemies.

I'm old enough to remember how the unfettered, turbulent creativity of the 1960s dissipated in the ugly stupidities of a war in southeast Asia. I fear now that the incredible technological creativity of the past decade may be derailed by some equally stupid, unwinnable war in another remote, hostile country, causing socioeconomic chaos at home.

I feel a great, overwhelming melancholy. The wonderful smart innovations in the past decade have empowered us in so many ways, yet we are still impotent compared with the techno- illiterates who claim a mandate to act stupidly on our behalf.

The terrorists with box cutters, and the militants in the U.S. government, share two traits. They exercise power indiscriminately, and show no great love for technology. In fact, I believe they are hostile to it because they see how its intelligence threatens them.

Their fear is justified. In the long term, I still believe that technology will eclipse dumb political power and render it obsolete.

Alas, I no longer believe that I will see this happen within my lifetime.

--Charles Platt

Sun, 16 Sep 2001

_ _ _ _
POLITECH -- Declan McCullagh's politics and technology mailing list You may redistribute this message freely if you include this notice. Declan McCullagh's photographs are at http://www.mccullagh.org/ To subscribe to Politech: http://www.politechbot.com/info/subscribe.html This message is archived at http://www.politechbot.com/

A demonstration "bugged" document for Word 97 and Word 2000 has been set up at:
http://www.privacycenter.du.edu/de mos/bugged.doc
We also found that Excel 2000 spreadsheet files and PowerPoint 2000 slideshows can be "bugged" in the same manner.

People have said that "if it's not legal, it'll just go underground." They've posted a picture of people selling pirated videotapes a block from the courthouse, to prove their point. I think that this photo proves an entirely different point.

My family lives near where that photo was taken. A huge percentage of those pirated videotapes are copies of videos made from tapes made by people sitting in a theatre with a camcorder. The rest of them are copies so distorted it's fairly impossible to discern a picture. Either way, I'd much rather pay $4 at a blockbuster to rent (and then copy) the tape myself than $8 to buy a copy on the street when I have to sit 6" from my screen to make out what's going on in the movie, while listening to the person sitting next to the guy with the camcorder crunch his popcorn louder than the actual soundtrack of the movie.

Legalizing stuff like DeCSS will make a huge difference. You won't have to go underground, and that makes it acceptable, unpunishable, and mainstream... it means that dvd rippers with DeCSS and the like will be sold in stores for the average joe, and consumer reports will help him comparison shop. It means everyone has access, not just those people who look to the underground.

Jamie McCarthy

what's really fucked, according to the wired article, it blocked this photograph ..

where are the skin tones?

Naughty Areas : Snoopy

Genitalia : Dogs

More phalluses : vegetables

I, for one, will use this software to protect myself from all this obscenity I hadn't noticed before.

Naughty Areas : Snoopy

Genitalia : Dogs

More phalluses : vegetables

I, for one, will use this software to protect myself from all this obscenity I hadn't noticed before.

Naughty Areas : Snoopy

Genitalia : Dogs

More phalluses : vegetables

I, for one, will use this software to protect myself from all this obscenity I hadn't noticed before.

Naughty Areas : Snoopy

Genitalia : Dogs

More phalluses : vegetables

I, for one, will use this software to protect myself from all this obscenity I hadn't noticed before.