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not really, but that's just media ignorance

full story here

I'm glad to see the miami herald is on top of the latest cyber-security trends.

be sure you cite this thingamajig from Dave Barry's gift guide as prior art on that patent application

What part of "250,000 paying subscribers" (right there in the headline) don't you understand?

Thanks for pointing out what i missed, and for doing it in such a nice, friendly way, dickhead! ;)

As far as churn, what part of "46% growth in the quarter" don't you understand?

The part where it doesn't actually answer my question. Is that 46% a result of everyone who was previously subscribed staying on plus them gaining 46% new people, or did everyone from before cancel, and 146% of that number join up new? What portion of those were gained in their acquisition of Listen.com? 250,000 subscribers is a hard number, 46% change can mean different things.

And since we're picking nits now, what portion of all these numbers is Rhapsody and what part is from their "premium radio". Those two are lumped in together everywhere. Is one a giant sucking drain while the other is doing ok, and if so which is which?

Perhaps the fact that their revenue only grew by 4% while subscriptions grew by 46% indicates that they got a bunch of new subscribers by slashing their fees? Would that be because the service blows or just that it was overpriced before?

These are not equivocal statements - these are hard numbers in an earnings report, not something any CFO who doesn't want to go to jail is going to mess with.

Actually, those are numbers from a press release summarizing an earnings report. Press releases are self-serving public relations tools that bend and spin things to make the company look good. As a matter of fact, companies have gone to court to protect their right to flat-out lie, claiming it as protected (first ammendment) speech. (Note that the case was settled before the supreme court could issue a ruling. Why did Nike settle if they had already suffered all the negative PR from the trials? Because they didn't want the additional negative PR from losing. Their strategy worked - hardly another peep came of the whole thing.)

And as far as CFO's being honest because they're worried about going to jail - yeah right! WorldCom, Enron, etc. How many CFO's went to jail? I have no reason to believe that any of those numbers are false, but they don't tell the whole story.

Look, my post was not a personal attack on you or even a refutation of your claims or Real's, so untwist your knickers. As i said, i have nothing to gain either way, and not much interest anyway, but i do like to be well-informed in case i do decide to sign up or a friend asks for my advice. At this point it would be "Go with Apple, their system is simpler and the only person with whom i've interacted who liked Rhapsody was kind of defensive about it, so i don't know what's up with that."

.... are right here, thanks to Dave Barry - "Bowel Buddy" Bran Wafers:

We here at the Holiday Gift Guide sincerely believe that this may be the best product name in the history of the world. The web page for this product begins with the following statement: ''If you suffer from constipation, chances are you know it!''

How very true those words are. And if there is somebody on your holiday list who suffers from this problem, we can think of no gift more likely to bring a grimace of joy to that person's face than tearing off the wrapping paper and seeing a nice big box of Bowel Buddy bran wafers! At that point, you can shout out this traditional and festive holiday greeting: ''Bowel Buddies quickly supply a large amount of insoluble fiber directly to the bowel where, with water, it goes to work pushing, cleaning churning and clearing.'' Ho ho ho!

Looks like a good, old fashion Hippie Ass Whooping to me. Not everyone seems to agree about it though.

Maybe the truth is somewhere in the middle ... nah, it's gotta be one or the other, no way that both sides could have valid points.

To get this on topic, I predict that in the future there will be a police reality tv show called "Big Brother Beats your Ass" and protesters will make money from a line of video's called "When Cops Attack"

Lunar rock is too busy getting its ass sued.

That's an interesting story, but you've been given a version with a strange spin on it. The moon rock was given by Nixon, not to the country but to a military dictator the US supported, Gen. Osvaldo Lopez Arellano. That dictator didn't recogize it as being valuable, and gave it to one of his colonels. There it sat, in private hands, until a US business man, Alan Rosen, started snooping around. He eventually found the owner, and bought the rock for $50,000. He was pretty surprised to find out when he took the rock in to be viewed by a potential buyer that it was to be confiscated. You can read about it in some detail here and here.

Apparently, the Indian arm of Dell computer denies everything.

http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/business/7345 841.htm "We did not send back any calls to the U.S.," the Dell International Services' spokeswoman in the high-tech hub of Bangalore, said on Tuesday. The spokeswoman said she did not want to be quoted by name. "Now, I don't know why Jon said that," the Dell spokeswoman in Bangalore said. "We are committed to India and we are growing."

Here is the Miami Herald's recap of the press-sponsored recounting of the 2000 Florida ballots. Feel free to read it.

There are two key terms to define:

"Undervotes" - these were ballots that were machine-recorded as having no vote cast for any pres/vp candidate

"Overvotes" - these were ballots that were machine-recorded as having a vote cast for more than 1 pair of pres/vp candidates

Here are some of the outcomes if you just recount undervotes - completely ignoring overvotes.

4 county recount (I believe)
1) count anything that looked like a punch: Bush wins by ~800 botes.
2) count 2-corner missing chads, Bush wins by ~300.
3) count only cleanly punched ballots - Gore wins by 3.

Lets say you include both undervotes and overvotes:

Whole state recount:
1) Count anything that looks like a punch(this race only): Gore wins by 600
2) Count anything that looks like a punch (whole ballot has punches not push-throughs): Gore wins by 300
3) Count 2-corner missing chads: Bush wins by 407
4) Count only cleanly punched ballots: Bush wins by 152

So the way I see it - the press recount said "Bush won . . . or maybe Gore. It depends." It is ironic that applying Gore's preferred method of recounting, Bush would have won. But that does not change the outcome of their recount - a Gore victory was possible under a couple of different scenarios after a recount.

This isn't ancient history - this was 2 years ago. Heck, the recount info came out just last year. Why the hell can't people get this right?

Or those who read Dave Barry or listen to NPR.

Read this , or this. Arrrr, Polly want a clue?

Miami Herald's Dave Barry (now of 'don't-call-us-we're-telemarketers' fame) has written a column on Lord of the Rings II ... which he thought was slightly too long and complicated and therefore wrote a simplified screenplay for (cached here).

read it here for a good chuckle.

Seriously, the only reference I can find on Google is another rant against it.

I'm inclined to believe that the press release is misrepresenting the facts. In fact, the other press release that I found here [www.softwarechoice.org] says that it will be "an effor requiring that all IT expenditures in 2004 and 2005 be made on open source/Linus software/platforms if possible." This seems a little different that requiring that all systems be open source, which seemed to be implied by the CCAGW press release.

...

I found this[www.miami.com], which gives a very little bit more information, talking about "open standards".

andy

Appologies in advance but I flashed on something when I read it.

I know what Dave Barry would say about this: "Briefcase Full of FUD would be a great name for a rock band."

This is an oversimplification, but murder is killing with intent, manslaughter is killing due to reckless conduct, criminally negligent homicide is death resulting from negligence -- normally more than ordinary negligent sloppiness, but no real intent to harm. there is also something called involuntary manslaughter that i think in most places means vehicular homicide. if you're curious, the various "degrees" of murder mean all sorts of different things besides what we see on Law & Order. iirc these distinctions within conduct that is all murder were introduced to soften the application of the death penalty many years ago.

the laws vary from state to state, and the feds have there own rules. thus it is hard to say what *the* law is here. regardless nothing i've seen rises to the level of criminally negligent homicide. a well-known criminal case was brought against Ford corporation for the Pinto fuel system design -- the jury acquitted.

NASA itself should be held liable and punished in civil court. singling out a few "rogue" managers as responsible is exactly what NASA wants, and a peculiar way to deal with a defective management structure. however significant punitive damages would make a statement about the agency's culpability. however, it may be legally difficult to pursue such claims -- another problem that needs fixing.

unsurprisingly it is pretty much impossible for astronauts to get excess life insurance from private companies -- especially now. thus it may be worth giving the standard federal and/or military benefits a second look rather than opening a trust fund seeking private donations after each disaster. NASA should look after its own.

this all assumes NASA is truly culpable, a judgment best withheld until all the evidence has been collected and digested, not splashed piecemeal across the headlines (much though i love NYT).

Perhaps Dave Barry said it best:

Leading the charge for the telemarketing industry is the American Teleservices Association (suggested motto: 'Some Day, We Will Get a Dictionary and Look Up 'Services''). This group argues that, if its members are prohibited from calling people who do not want to be called, then two million telemarketers will lose their jobs. Of course, you could use pretty much the same reasoning to argue that laws against mugging cause unemployment among muggers. But that would be unfair. Muggers rarely intrude into your home.

• This group argues that, if its members are prohibited from calling people who do not want to be called, then two million telemarketers will lose their jobs. Of course, you could use pretty much the same reasoning to argue that laws against mugging cause unemployment among muggers. But that would be unfair. Muggers rarely intrude into your home.

So how long before Dave Barry publishes the Oklahoma judge's phone number? ;)

So they are attributing a slashdotting, and a lot of media interest to people being positive about the service. I haven't seen one article, comment or anything that was even remotely positive. What are these guys on?

If you are going to rig an election with complete control over the votes then it should be made out to be a very narrow victory.

Here's coverage of the NCAA report by the Miami Herald

This is all just an attempt to take back the coveted title of The Doofus State from California. We reacquired it thanks to our upcoming election. (If Schwarzenegger wins, it's Total Recall, I suppose.)

Few publications ran stories about the troubles surrounding the Ohio plant around 2002. Here's the story from Miami Herald dated March 26, 2002 predicting such failures.

Then there are people who are opposed to nuclear power plants, (although their views are a bit more extreme), the source at the bottom article is quoted from NY Times and DOE.

Yes, of course alt.devilbunnies is for real. I'm surprised you ever doubted it. After the bunnies' assassination attempt on Jimmy Carter and their much-publicized terrorist takeover of Miami Airport, I thought everyone's doubts had been answered. Devilbunnies are out there. My advice to you is to run, run for the hills. :)

One county, Leon, did. And in Leon, of 694 names only 34 were ineligible voters.

Right- that was the exact intent of the list. Cast as wide of a net as they could to include any possible matches, then let the county supervisors sort it out. The legislature thought that would make it less likely that a convicted felon would slip through.

After being sued by NAACP, ChoicePoint's DBT agreed to settle and thus avoid class-action claims. DBT removed 50 000 names from the list.

The 2000 election was the first big test of the 1998 law, and after they saw how flawed that method was, they changed it.

However Harris has refused to return their civil rights.

If you are talking about convicted felons, then its not Harris's job to return their civil rights. Florida is one of around 10 states that doesnt let convicted felons vote, and Harris was bound by those laws on the books. Interestingly enough, just yesterday Florida changed some of their policies regarding felon voting rights.

ChoicePoint's vice president James Lee called the BBC in February 2000 and said, that the state "wanted there to be more names than were actually verified as being a convicted felon."

Uh, of course. Again, that is completely consistent with the stated purpose of the list, which was to generate as many hits as possible. Being on the list just meant that the county officials had to look into your status. If they couldn't verify that you were a convicted felon then nothing happened. That is a crappy way to do things, but that is what the legislature decided in 1998.

http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/world/cu ba/6370341.htm

Sure you want to meet the people who send you all the penis and enlargeners?
At Boca Raton, the spam capital
Some of the more intresting addressess: here and here

Boca Raton, proudly supporting spammers and defending their rights to spam!

It gets worse....

When you call the president a facist, you've pretty much trashed not just the country, not just its leaders, but everything the country is about.

The fact that you can say that (true or not) is more important. That shows what a cool country we can be.

But ask yourself about Guantanamo Bay, the power that the Patriot Act gives our executive branch, the stalling of the the 9/11 investigation, refusing (even now!) to backup its so-called "intelligence" on Iraq. All these things do have a somewhat fascist sound to them. Bush has done a great job of tilting the government's balance of power toward the executive branch.

Let me just present this to you: where was the large anti-war movement in Kosovo.

Clinton was smart there. He didn't send many troops in there -- and few if any reservists. Instead of reserves to take care of camp, provide food, etc., he hired a professional army. He also avoided a bloody, muderous, prolonged stay a la Ira^H^H^H^H Vietnam.

This was already done...kind of

naked airline

Half the crap that passes for art nowadays isn't art. I know people are "pushing boundaries" and crap, but when you get stuff like this passing itself off as "art", then the whole fucking concept of art doesn't mean any more to me than a bunch of industrially sealed cans of someone's piss. (Which a British museum paid $35,000 for.)

Art is a joke. People use the term to describe things they don't understand and think are cool for no apparent reason. True art, like sculpture, paintings you don't have to be high to come up with a meaning for, orchestrated music, good writing, poetry that rhymes, and isn't just someone pulling stream of consciousness shit out of their ass and wiping on a piece of paper for you to read...this...THIS is art.

Unfortunately, art's been so diluted by utter crap that the public uses it to describe any and everything. "Look at that goal!" screams the unwashed mass, "That is art!"

No, it isn't.

Don't get started on that, "well, it's art to me" shit, either. If that's all that it needs, then Everything == Art, and the discussion is still equally useless because there isn't anything that can be claimed to not be art.

The only Art is see anymore, if the guy who works across the hall from me. He isn't a game, and games aren't him.

... just so happens there's an article I saw this morning linked off of world net daily, a study that tends to show that ritalin use when younger could worsen cocaine use later if one were to use cocaine. link

With that said I've known several parents with children who had it, and some adults. They had tried a lot of different treatments to cope obviously, and no clear cut anything good about it, no matter the treatments. I have heard related that a really radical diet shift and television limitation helped some of the kids, but not all of them. Modern diets are usually too much sugar and lack of vital micro nutrients, and it can take a long time to get noticeable effects in trying to reverse damages when switching to more raw foods, better supplements, etc. It's not something you can switch your diet around and within a week see a lot of differences, it takes enough time to both remove accumulated toxins and to re build whole body strength, probably several months to even begin to get minor changes, and probably years to do a good job of it. The human body and brain are a whole and are too complex to be cavalier about it, to just dismiss the point that we really aren't designed to adequaltely deal with all the artificial chemical substances that get forced on us with modern foods and pollution and what are called "medicines" in a lot of cases, etc, there has simply been not enough time for evolution to deal with it except point out the examples of "bad" that start showing up with exposure and lack of real foods. foods now are dismal, they just are, supermarket food even produce is just so different, it's hard to explain, it's bleech, no flavor, probably very little nutrition. One of the main reasons I am a home gardener enthusiast, I merely want the same sorts of foods I grew up with.

It's a weird thing, when I was in grade school, either this problem of ADD and ADHD didn't exist much, or was not known about. There was no prescriptions that I recall for anything like add or adhd. I can't think of a single one of my friends who had anything like what I read about now or hear about. In fact, I think it was so rare that I think there has to be something in our society in general that changed radically between the late 40's and early 50s and current times that is helping to cause this phenomenon. I think any prescribing of "speed" no matter the brand of speed is more likely treating/masking symptoms and is not addressing the cause. Just a guess though, but if that isn't the case, where were the symptoms back then? What is it now in some areas, 1/4th of the children are put on various speed drugs? I sincerely hope that younger people in general don't accept this as normal human necessity or behavior, it's a completely new human phenomenon, so it shouldn't be treated as "normal" and the underlying case dealt with honestly and not exclusively by the pharmcos tame scientists, who are just as likely to ...hmm.. "fib" shall we say, as any other industry, you get your truth then you get your normal "lies for profit". That is something that really should be taken into consideration if one were to be honest about it and apply the scientific method. I remember some kids who had a hard time reading, but dyslexia was known, and if that was found out about, it was dealt with normally. Having a normal energy level was just that, it was normal, the work around was more playing, and humans did more physical work then too, including children. The concept of "chores" was more universal. Normal chores, all kids did them, and they were physical. We raked the yard with a hand rake, it wasn't some man showed up with a gas powered leaf blower. We shoveled snow with a hand shovel. We ran-in a lot of cases- non electric carpet sweepers, or took carpets outside and hung them up and beat them. The grass got cut with a mower you pushed that had no engine connected to it, it was "work". Etc etc, not child slave labor in the mines, I'm not talk

Show me a candidate who represents me, and I'll vote for him.

Dave Barry! (yep, he's "running" again.)

DAVE BARRY'S VIEWS ON THE ISSUES:

Dave Barry agrees with you 100 percent on all the issues.

If I had any interest whatsoever in voting, I might actually vote for him, too. I think Dave Barry getting a visible percentage of the votes (even half a percent) would say something.

Frankel, 24, announced his intentions late Monday, less than a week after a file-sharing program called Waste was posted and then pulled from the Nullsoft Web site.

"The company controls the most effective means of self-expression I have," he said in his Web log. "This is unacceptable to me as an individual, therefore I must leav (sic). I don't know when it will be, but I'm not going to last much longer."

Frankel, 24, announced his intentions late Monday, less than a week after a file-sharing program called Waste was posted and then pulled from the Nullsoft Web site.

"The company controls the most effective means of self-expression I have," he said in his Web log. "This is unacceptable to me as an individual, therefore I must leav (sic). I don't know when it will be, but I'm not going to last much longer."

...as the general intellectual level of South Florida is somewhere above functionally retarded...

especially if you have ever been anywhere near fire ants. (for the record, I used to be in Louisiana - and I concur every bit with the article.

But Otter, it's so much easier to just tack something on to an already existing law/bill. After all, think of all the writing one has to do to introduce a new bill for a vote which is uncertain? Just tack it onto something politically friendly, like, say, RICO, brainchild of the kennedies. Who's going to vote against expanding a racketeering law? That would make you pro-organized crime when you run for re-election, regardless of the merit of your vote.

I'll preface this by saying that I am a Linux user through and through. I can't stand Microsoft for practical and philosophical reasons. That said, I've noticed a lot of comments rated as "Funny". As evil as the company is, it is not funny. They are a bueiness with the goal of making dollars, billions of dollars, and nothing more. This may be the reason for their anti-trust tactics, for their anti-consumer EULAs, for their buggy software. I don't know. I do know that they have billions of dollars to convince people that Windows 2003 is the only solution. How? They repeat a thing over and over. It doesn't matter at all if it's true or not, as long as people keep hearing something they will start to believe.

It works simply: Run a few marketing ads full of outright lies or half-truths. These ads get picked up by some page two newspaper columnist to write a fluff piece and lend it credibility. Soon others start repeating the original advertisement as truth. Sadly, newspaper columnists are under a lot of deadlines and a technical piece may not get the rigorous fact-checking that other news gets. Pretty soon even level-headed folks start hearing the ads from a reputable source. It might be enough to even sway someone who is familiar with other technologies.

Funny graphic....Reminds me of a Dave Barry article on TTT, here
Amazingly funny article.....

Do we get to sue the Spanish for thier attacks on the Aztecs? How about the Aztecs for thier wars on neighboring tribes? Do the Israelis get to sue the EU for money the EU provided to the PA that was then passed into the hands of a Hamas cell?

It could work in the world's favor.

Well, the problem is we need a world court.

But similar things has been/are being done, with varying degrees of success, using national courts:

http://www.wiesenthal.com/swiss/mandates.cfm.

http://www.miami.com/mld/miami/3970567.htm?templat e=contentModules/printstory.jsp

It is true that spaming is getting each time less efficient to sell stuff but the problem is that the spammers proportionally compensate by increasing the volume of spam they send. Take a look a this article. They don't care to harass 1 million people for each 10 sales they accomplish. I think I threw up twice when I saw this story about "Spamming for a living".

Also a Univ. South Florida professor was caught doing the same thing that the Intel programmer did. USF professor's charities

Actually, the army *wanted* him gone with the coup attempt in 2002 after Chavez's supporters opened fire on anti-Chavez protestors. He was removed from power, which the US governement applauded because he is a right bastard. However, after a day or two, elements in the army restored him to power. At which point, he spent the next year purging the military of those he felt were disloyal to him. He's disarming opposition police forces. Now he's rounding up and murdering political enemies, truck bombing countries who criticize him, and cozying up to other dictators.

Plenty of damning evidence against Chavez, these links are just the first I found while searching.

If you get the cheap version, for only half the price you can get a former humorist to counsel you. Hi. I lost my data. > Hee hee No. You don't understand. My life is ruined. > Haah hah .. . hoo ... this is really good. I think I'm going to call the other counselor > "Over to you, Stange!"

Boeing transferred shuttle jobs to Houston in a consolidation that cost the company scores of its most experienced shuttle engineers in the past two years - including some of those who invented the methodology for debris damage and thermal analysis.

...
Boeing did indeed worry that the move to Houston could lead to a loss of knowledge in the shuttle program. When the company realized that employees were not going to move from California to Houston, they set up a "Knowledge Capture Program" to prevent a brain drain.

...
A former shuttle subsystems manager who still works for Boeing in California said the Knowledge Capture Program was "a total joke."

I checked out his year in review 2002 article, and I found this humorous:
2002 year in review: November
In a somber post-election speech, the president reaffirms his solemn commitment, no matter how long it takes, to learn to pronounce ''nuclear.''

Anyone see his State of the Union speech? He mis-pronounced "Nuclear" no less than three times. To quote Peter Griffin, "It's nu-cu-lar, dummy, the S is silent."