Slashdot Mirror

At the risk of touting MSFT...
search.msn.com let's you do this too.

In the "search builder" tab (subtab results ranking) there are slidebars that let you rank based on page freshness. Or just include it in your search: http://search.msn.com/results.aspx?q=linux+%7Bfrsh %3D100%7D&FORM=QBRE vs. http://search.msn.com/results.aspx?q=linux+%7Bfrsh %3D0%7D&FORM=QBRE

Go here for a free service from if you have real control of your email server's ip address:

http://postmaster.msn.com/

Bring on nuclear batteries. Or is the Duracell lobby to strong for them to ever be legal?

• the white house is harbouring and protecting a traitor
• Has a gag order on a whistleblower
• North Korea and Iran are about to (or have ) aquire Nukes due to this admin being interested in oil rather than national interest.
• Trying to silence the whistle blower about the halliburton deal.
• In light of the recent UK memo, I am surprised that few are pointing out that GWB awarded Tenet with the medal of freedom. If Tenet was what GWB claimed (and the CIA says was not the case), then he should be in prison.

Read this for when an animal is considered extinct.

Read this quote from here:

"It is important to emphasize that I am talking about complete extinctions, not mere reduction in numbers; if left alone, populations almost always make a comeback, no matter how badly their stock is depleted. In other words, despite the fact that the American bison, pronghorn, African and Indian elephants, and all whales have suffered tremendous population depletions thanks to human depredations, all have made it back to sustainability (including the right whale). For the continents and oceans, such examples are the rule rather than the exception. For islands, things have gone in various directions, although mostly downhill (i.e., toward complete extinction). This is why I maintain that the biodiversity crisis has already come and gone for the world's islands -- susceptible species were pinched out during the initial spread of humans to these places. Continental extinctions seem to be quite a different deal. At least for mammals and birds, there have been relatively few of them in the last 500 years. (E.g., no mammal extinctions at the species level at all in Eurasia; one or two in the Americas; perhaps a dozen or more in Australia, the island continent.)"

Babies as young as 25 weeks premature have survived to be healthy adults outside after care and treatment in the NICU. That is far earlier than most terminations!

Lies! Judging from the actual numbers, it looks to me like the majority (54%) of abortions are performed prior to 8 weeks of gestation, and especially before 10 weeks (77%). At 10 weeks, the fetus is about 1 inch in length. It's just a ball of stuff that in a few weeks will become a human.

Unwanted pregnancy sucks, but it's not the end of the world. A culture that values only the convience of now, and the "benefit of the species", is very likely going to be a very unpleasant place to live long term.

You are extremely naive. You probably haven't had sex yet, but I'd say you are in need of a good near-pregnancy scare or two. Even the most careful people have them now and then. It certainly makes you think about what you would do.

Compassion is a very valuable force in society, which pays more than it costs.

Yes, but what if the compassionate thing is to prevent another unwanted baby? ...and some research even indicates it may very well make society a better place to live in.

The imperial Roman culture of the Augustian age would have suited you well, you're a fascist babykiller, etc, etc...

You're nuts if you can't differentiate between destroying a ball of tissue the size of a marble and killing fully-developed beings.

You've been lucky. I run across it a lot, especially with parts of MSN.

See if you can get in this one (chat in an MSN group): http://groups.msn.com/CoolPeopleRevisited/chat.msn w

That's why I said "otherwise rightfully". It's like a two-person project at school where one person does 90% of the work and both get 50% of the credit. The understanding before the project starts is that they'll share credit equally, but the one who put more effort into the final result ends up feeling kind of bitter.

Keenspot makes money off of advertisement (and maybe other things, but I only know of the advertising part), but they need good webcomics to lure advertisers.

All I meant by that comment is that I recall that some of the webcartoonists have felt like the guy doing 90% of the work.

Beyond that, I wholly concede your point.

And the "ideally" comment was more a shot at people who start webcomics only because they've seen the success that a few have attained and want to achieve the same success. It happens a lot, and the general concensus amongst webcartoonists (based on various rants I've read and webcomic panels I've attended) seems to be that if you're doing it solely for the fame, you're doing it for the wrong reasons.

I usually fall on the side of "love of your craft," but I can certainly appreciate the other side too.

I've really got no problem with a webcartoonist who runs his webcomic like a business, because art supplies, bandwidth and hosting do cost a lot of money. And if you're making a living off of your strip it costs that much more.

A few artists who live off of their webcomics:

Penny Arcade
Sluggy Freelance
MegaTokyo
8-Bit Theatre
Player vs Player
Schlock Mercenary
Something Positive
Ctrl-Alt-Delete

And those are just some of the ones that I read and can remember.

No price anywhere. Can it unseat the competition? Who knows?

The use of Honda's unrelated Type-R performance label tells me they are appealing to quality by association to something they deserve no merit for.

The review site talks up the need for a beefy PSU, but shows no methodical testing whatsoever.

Seems to me the editors are a bit detached from if not journalistic integrity, at least some base duty they have to give us relevant stories. This is a clue to the sort of fuzzy logic is used when choosing submissions. Choices seem related more to pandering than genuine identification with the interests of slashdot readers.

No wonder they got rid of John Katz, lest it be too obvious. He writes for MSN now.

"On Saturday, Isikoff spoke to his original source, the senior government official, who said that he clearly recalled reading investigative reports about mishandling the Qur'an, including a toilet incident. But the official, still speaking anonymously, could no longer be sure that these concerns had surfaced in the SouthCom report."

that is a GREAT idea! I'd like to see a similar service for Google Images, sorted by PageRank.

Unfortunately, his Unsafe Search doesn't seem to work very well:


Unsafe Search Results

A Google query for microsoft returned 53,300,000 normal results and 0 SafeSearch results,
making it 0.0 percent safe.

Of the top 30 normal query results, the following 3 results were "unsafe":

1. MSN UK
Portal and ISP offering subscription-free and monthly pre-paid packages from Microsoft.
http://www.msn.co.uk/ -

2. MSN Search
Miscroft provides search of the web, news, images and its own encyclopedia, Encarta.
Also offers desktop search via a toolbar.
http://search.msn.com/ - 4k

3. http://www.windowsupdate.com/

Ya know what... I live in San Diego, a border city, and I used to live within sight of the border. And let me tell you, I was a whole lot more terrified of the illegals sneaking across the border (attacks on Border Patrol Agents are up 150% over last year) with their drugs and guns.

I live where illegal smuggling causes car accident deaths of innocents every week. Where they live in migrant tent tracts and rape and force women and children to prostitute. And this is why, I carry a gun. I'm a gorgeous redhead with a great body.... I can so get kidnapped and disposed of very quickly. Do me a favor... Google crime in San Diego County. Read any of the local news rags... SignonSanDiego.com is pretty good. Most of the violent crime is committed by crankheads or Mexican Illegals whacked out on meth - the major cheap street drug in TJ).

All of that being said.... I go to Mexico about once a month. I drive my American Car with California plates, and I hang out with my American friends. I *love* my time in Mexico. I go down along Baja, and I have a great time... that was until the Police Chief of Rosarito (where we go) was murdered in cold blood in front of his house... over 100 bullet holes were found in him. I'm sorry, sir, but that's just not safe. I have a great time in Mexico, but does it mean that I am not afraid for my life? NO!!!! That's why I have 2 huge guys on either side of me constantly. Oh, and they are CONSTANTLY screwing over Americans in terms of money. Do yourself a favor, change your money in San Ysidro before you go over!!!! They will buttrape you for $$s to pesos.

I did get pulled over by Federales when I was driving home one midnight. I was scared to death, because they really love to throw Americans in Mexican jails for doing nothing wrong. But the officer was very sweet, and I tried my best to speak what very little spanish I know, and he had me follow him to the highway. He asked me - Do you have any drugs... any guns? Of course not!!!! Like I would say yes if I did. :P

So ya know, there are whole parts of this country for thousands of square miles that are really safe, and perfectly fine to walk around nude in the middle of the street and not have anyone attack you... you might get a laugh or even a ticket, but you won't get abducted, raped and killed. And it's those places, where the 2nd amendment is respected, embraced, and everyone knows old boy might be packing. That's my freedom, my right, and damnit, I WILL PROTECT MYSELF! :D

XM's strategic investors include General Motors Corp., American Honda Motor Corp., DIRECTV, Eastbourne Capital, Hearst Corporation and Baystar Capital.
-- http://www.xmradio.com/faq/faq_list_servlet.jsp?se ction_id=1&section_main=XM%20Satellite%20Radio#141

"Sirius... Tends to be more hits based but not anywhere near FM"
-- http://www.xmorsirius.com/programming.html

"En masse, they are led by a Music Director, Lee Abrams, who has set forth the prime directive: "Respect the listener, respect the artist." As long as this rule is adhered to, the individual Program Directors are free to play what they want. Except for one other tiny rule: "If it sounds like FM, you're out." That means play music, lots of it, with lots of variety within the channel's genre."
-- http://www.crutchfieldadvisor.com/ISEO-rgbtcspd/re views/20030623/xm_hq.html?print=1&page=all

"SIRIUS has a song library of 500,000 tunes"
-- http://radio.about.com/library/weekly/aa062403a.ht m

"The designers also had to make the system capable of holding music from 200,000 CDs assembled by the company - about 2 million songs"
--http://www.rwonline.com/reference-room/t rans-2-d igital/05_rwf_xm_1.shtml

try msn to get the scoop...

It may have something to do with this webpad (hmm, funny. It's posted on MSnbc...)

What do you call getting who knows how many church leaders to plug the film, then? Best marketing campaign since The Blair Witch Project, and about as profitable...

So post-WW II Germany, Japan, and South Korea, Afghanistan, Serbia, etc. don't count? I can give you dozens of countries with US-supported and sometimes US-build democracies, yet you just have Pinochet on your example. It's time that you started backing your assertions with facts (and no, stuff you got off of Michael Moore or your local liberal rag don't count as facts). Frankly, you're so mis-informed it's getting boring.

You listed CIVILIAN deaths with respect to Pinochet, however with Saddam you could ALL deaths on BOTH sides of a long running war.

If you bothered to look at the link, the non-civilian deaths on the Pinochet case added up to 3,000, still nowhere near Saddam's killings.

UN sanctions killed a million Iraqis as well. Saddam did no such thing, you are once again being selective with the facts. I feel I am wasting my time here.

UN Sanctions lined the pockets of Saddam and many UN officials at the expense of the Iraqi people. But let's pretend that your absurd claim is true. Saddam's aggression caused the sanctions. Are you excusing Saddam from the death of a million people? It sure sounds like it. Would you rather the sanctions continue?

Oh, and the Lancet lists the civilan causualties as over 100,000, and that does not include hotspots like Faluja. I always discuss the most conservative numbers as people like you deny the truth when it hurts.

The most concervative numbers? I hope that your knowledge of statistics is better than your knowledge of Pinochet since you keep putting your foot in your mouth (I suggest you take a class or two in statistical analysis, it's very helpful). Do you know what a confidence interval is? Well, it turns out that the Lancet study has been discredited because it had a confidence interval of 95% (a standard confidence interval for a t-distribution) for a range between 8,000 and 194,000 deaths. In other words, the "study" by the Lancet was so broad as to be meaningless. Picking a mid-point of 100,000 in the distribution is even a worse choice since you have no real mathematical basis for doing so. In short, the Lancet "study" was a shot-in-the dark guess and has been debunked by anyone with an ounce of knowledge on statistics. What the Lancet is saying based on its study is that they are 95% certain that the death toll is within the range of 8,000-190,000, but that they have no idea where, so they picked the middle. That is not a conservative method by any stretch of the imagination. In fact, it's not a method at all! Further, it turns out that the Lancet's methodolgy for collecting the numbers was also flawed (ignored recording differences, natural causes, wasn't random, used low-ball estimates of natural Iraqi death rates, used a statistically-biased sample, etc), inflating the upper limit of the range to a ridiculous 190,000+. Here's one article: http://slate.msn.com/id/2108887/ However, I suggest that you study statistics and look up a few more resources before claiming your numbers are "conservative".

Stick your bullshit straw man argument up your arse. Because I don't agree with a war that's killing people right now as you read this, this means that I want to see Iraqi people repressed?....

Blah, blah, blah.. Why don't you answer my challenge. If you hold the truth you have nothing to fear, right? Should the occupation end now? Is that ethical? Focus, bud, you are the smart one after all. Try someting radically different and give me some smart arguments supported with actual facts and real statistics.

I hope you believe in God, because you are hell bound for your support of this. Thou shalt not kill.

If you had a chance to kill a mass murderer before he commited more murders, would you? For your enlighement, the word in the orginal Hebrew is "ratsach" which actually translates

Wodge not a word? Encarta and everyone else who speaks proper English would disagree with that.

What about the guy who decided to jump out of a moving car (60mph) to retrieve a cigarette that blew out of the car window? http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7964860/ Maybe those folks in the tinfoil house know something we don't know...

I guess this is just typical Slashdot pro-Google cheerleading.

Disclaimer: I work at MSN.

I've always been a fan of the screen savers but some of the newer people on the show are complete idiots. I'm glad to see he is going out on his own.

My favorite segment had to be the dark tips where Kevin would show how to hack XBOX, sniff network data, ect. Now that this segment will no longer be FCC controlled, I would imagine the segments may be much more interesting.

He may not be far off by going on his own either - MSNBC has an article linked from the msn.com homepage on the proliferation of InternetTV and it's niche market capability.

Some states allow citizens to block use of their credit report. Thus, even if someone steals your SSN, your birth certificate, and your drivers license, they're unable to obtain any new credit in your name, because no one is going to give credit without first getting a credit report.

Sure, it doesn't solve all problems with ID theft, but it certainly helps.

This is why I switched to a local credit union a few years ago. Seems like the bigger the bank, the bigger the security breach. Worse... they nickel-and-dime you on everything else.

Credit unions are no panacea

Of course, with a building looking like that, and the name "Need Action Credit Union", maybe nobody should be all that surprised.

you forgot msn

I disagree. Futurama and The Simpsons are quite similar, where one focuses on family members, and the other on co-workers. They both have similar three-act formats, but Futurama is more of an ensemble show (like early Simpsons, before the "Jerkass Homer" years). The main draw for Family Guy on the other hand isn't the family plotline, but the numerous short flashbacks.

<rant>
The less said about American Dad, however, the better. In other animated shows (Simpsons, Family Guy, Futurama) the main character is basically a dumb guy with no authority. That's fine. He's an idiot, but can't do any harm.

In American Dad, the main character is not only dumb, but psychotic. He has anger management and control issues, and readily abuses his position of authority to impose his idiotic will on others. In addition, there are no intelligent characters to counter-balance his insanity (Homer has Lisa, Peter has Brian, Fry has Leela). He is a nightmare bully who isn't checked by anything.

Every character on the show is a whinging loser. With whom are we supposed to identify? For whom are we supposed to cheer?
</rant>

Sigh.

Just saw this on MSN Entertainment.

http://movies.msn.com/beacon/editorial1.aspx?ptid= 779df5c6-71c1-48c0-bdb1-1306b5d221e4

Kevin Smith to direct the series (at least some) = GLEE!

The efficient market theory at work.

I guess soon Google will start providing feeds for Google News. Finally, they will have a place for those ads they left out.

I kow you're trying to be funny but MSN has had a personalized homepage for years now. You should try it some time, it's actually pretty damn good. MSNBC used to have a great personalized news page for the Outlook Today page in Outlook but they stopped supporting it and closed the site down; bummer.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7896613/

Article describes how they want to simply protect Satellites, while also revealing the counter-point regarding how this could turn into a Space Weapon race.

Concerns such as:

Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association, said, "This is a military system that is unnecessary and provocative. It will lead other states to pursue military systems to knock out our space-based assets. The rationale of this program is to defend those assets. But this will have the reverse effect." Kimball said any move by the United States to start developing and testing space-based weapons will be met with very strong international condemnation, from foes and allies alike.

That can't be right. Allen and Albert Hughes directed Menace to Society, Dead Presidents, American Pimp and From Hell, and are both credited. The above doesn't make sense.

Why couldn't Rodriguez bring in a co-director? The guild has stuck to a one-director-per-film policy since 1978, to keep producers and stars from demanding "gift credits." Exceptions are made under special circumstances: The guild recognizes "bona fide directing teams," like the Coen brothers, the Farrelly brothers, and the Wachowski brothers; and the policy can be waived for directors on films with multiple languages or stories. Rodriguez was unable to get a waiver for Frank Miller, who had never directed a movie before, so he quit the guild.

Yet it wasn't until the 1978 contract negotiations that studios agreed that there would be only one director assigned to direct a motion picture at any given time. (Article 7-208 of the Basic Agreement)

Newsweek reported that American Guantanamo guards, among other abuse and torture, threw a Koran in a toilet. That specific abuse has been reported many times over the past couple of years, including just recently, by witnesses released from the prison. After years of being held without cause. Newsweek confirmed those stories with Federal source, and the Pentagon had reviewed it days before publication, without contradicting the claim.

What kind of "proof" is Newsweek, or anyone, going to get? Investigate the inside of an overseas US torture prison, in Cuba, where even Congressional investigations have met with fraud? Even Newsweek's "retraction" is nominal - they don't admit they got the facts wrong, just that they regret the consequences of publishing it. Like pissing off the Bush administration, which they've been so careful to otherwise support. In fact, Newsweek is continuing to investigate the story, hardly a rejection of the report as "false".

The week the story was published, violent demonstrations in Afghanistan, where we run other torture prisons, and an ongoing, inconclusive war, kill many people. Which isn't unusual in our adminstration of Afghanistan. What is unusual is for Afghans to read Newsweek. Even Bush's Chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff, Richard Myers (Rumsfeld's right-hand man), blames Afghani "politics", not Newsweek. But since Rice's State Department blames Newsweek, rather than itself, it must be true, right? Especially since they've gotten the rest of the mass media to carry that story.

In fairness, I wonder: what do you think about the lies Newsweek published about WMD in Iraq, shepherding us to war, which came from the Pentagon? Which the Pentagon blames on the uncorroborated lies of one man, Chalabi, an Iranian agent?

Still, after reading the article I still don't know who conducted the poll, or how they worded the questions. I still don't know how wide their sampling of students was. One school district? One town? One state? A better article that answers those questions can be found here

As large as the survey as being touted, it still sounds like it was done locally in Conn. So one could say that Conn. or New England students have a serious lack of understanding of the First Amendment, but compared to nationwide it is still a small sample. That's the inherent problem with surveys. I remain skeptical. The students I know aren't that ignorant. YMMV

Great username, btw. Must be popular with the chicks... ;)

Hmmm, sounds like another hyped product.

The three Elektron units on board the space station are the last of their kind. The company that manufactured them has gone out of business, and the engineer who almost single-handedly made the final adjustments of flight units died several years ago. Reportedly he retained some "trade secret" about the final adjustments of the devices -- and it died with him.

Ack, wrong link: here's the right one. I shuold porffraed.

Here's an awesome writeup of the legal issues surrounding allofmp3. Probably not legal, but probably not dangerous to use, either.

This thing looks big, bigger than Xbox 1 or 360. And I mean size, not market. MSN has a picture of Ken Kutaragi holding the PS3.

http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/j/msnbc/Components/Photo s/050516/050516_playstation_hmed.hsmall.jpg

What happened to that fluff about the Xbox's biggest problem in Japan was that it's too big?

Was size the real issue or was it simply unpatriotic to buy American?

PS: the controller looks terrible. I hope it's a lot more ergonomic than it looks.

Yeah, I can't reach http://www.msn.com/ (not that I'd normally want to).

Easy enough. It was borrowed.

FirefoxADM is a way of allowing centrally managed locked and/or default settings in Firefox via Group Policy and Administrative Templates in Active Directory Latest news about FirefoxADM at http://spaces.msn.com/members/in-cider/
http://sourceforge.net/projects/firefoxadm

Unoffical Firefox MSI builds can be found at
http://www.frontmotion.com/Firefox/

Official Firefox Msi installers will be avaible in the 1.1 release nightly msi builds can be found at http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/nig htly/latest-trunk/ the nighlies are not ready for general use yet, but are availbe for testing.

That little thing? That has nothing on my 15 pound burger.

Ah, but that's what vitamins and flax seed oil are for. Having a master's degree in biology, I'm quite aware of dietary requirements.

I lift weights most days and have bulked up considerably over the last few years (up to 190 lbs from 165). Most people would consider me in excellent health.

On the other hand, my stepfather recently died of pancreatic cancer, a disease closely linked to eating processed meats. My father-in-law just had a heart attack a few months ago. Both had traditional high-meat American diets.

My father, who married a Japanese woman, has been following a "flexitarian" diet, as well as exercising reguarly. He's in great shape.

All anecdotal, of course, but the research continues to pile up. Diets heavy in fruit, vegitables, and whole grains are generally good for you. Minimizing fats, sugars, and processed foods is best as well.

IQ is a lousy way to determine intelligence. IQ seems most closely associated with the ability to do well on tests, rather than some innate "smarts".

If you want to get silly, take a look at this page. Clearly the future will be populated by idiotic Republicans, breeding like mad, while a handful of super-genius tree-hugging Democrats survive in Utopian nanotech habitats.

More practically, bearing children seems more closely related to urbanization rather than IQ. What's happening is that people are moving to cities where children are a burden. You still have high population growth in rural places, such as parts of India and China. Once 90% of the population are in cities, I say there's a good chance that populations worldwide start to decline.

MSN Ripped the Ubuntu Logo

Does anybody else have examples of MS blatantly stealing and profiting from somebody else's creation or innovation? What are the other examples of MS passing off other people's hard work as the property of their own?

When I click on "view source", it's obfuscated in the typical javascript way, but the header refers to

http%3a%2f%2fuk.my.msn.com

But, of course, that's just the hex for

http://uk.my.msn.com/

To me, it looks legit, so far. Somebody has a sense of humor.

Thad

I'm so glad someone decided to finally put together a service that lets me look up movie times in my area!

Thank GOD Google is here to push the envelope and bring us new, exciting features!!

WHAT NEXT?! WILL THEY LET US BUY MOVIE TICKETS OVER THE WEB TOO? LOL!

No.

The breakdown of the top 15 is:

1 82.63% Mozilla
2 14.70% Microsoft Internet Explorer
3 0.46% Opera/8.0 (Windows NT 5.1; U; en)
4 0.25% msnbot/1.0 (+http://search.msn.com/msnbot.htm)
5 0.25% Googlebot/2.1 (+http://www.google.com/bot.html)
6 0.21% Mediapartners-Google/2.1
7 0.18% Microsoft URL Control - 6.01.9782
8 0.16% Opera/8.0 (X11; Linux i686; U; en)
9 0.10% Opera/8.0 (Windows NT 5.0; U; en)
10 0.07% Opera/7.54 (Windows NT 5.1; U) [en]
11 0.07% Opera/7.54 (X11; Linux i686; U) [en]
12 0.02% Avant Browser (http://www.avantbrowser.com/
13 0.02% Opera/7.20 (Windows NT 5.0; U) [en]
14 0.02% Googlebot/2.1 (+http://www.googlebot.com/bot.html)
15 0.02% Links (2.1pre17; Linux 2.6.10-gentoo-r1 i686; x)

Except for, you know, the one FIVE YEARS AGO. Richard Paez ring a bell?

In 1999 and 2000, before he became majority leader, Frist was one of the Republican senators blocking President Clinton's nominee to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, Richard Paez.

Frist and others repeatedly prevented a vote on the Paez nomination. In 1999, Frist and 52 other Republicans voted against a motion to proceed to a vote on Paez.

Six months later, Frist voted against cutting off extended debate -- a filibuster -- on the nomination.

Then he voted for a motion to postpone a vote on the nomination.

And finally on March 9, 2000, four years after Clinton nominated Paez to the appeals court, Frist was on the losing end of a 59-39 vote on the nomination itself.

from MSNBC.

Downloads are a good indication of popularity by what metric? Oh, I forgot, popularity is by definition the metric of last resort. In Soviet Russia, Natalie Portman's grits are popular.

What you meant, if you had turned on your brain, is that total downloads are the best available proxy on Firefox's broad-based mindshare. The other proxy available, user agent strings reported to web servers, is a better proxy on page views. But even this proxy is weak, since it fails to account for a wide range of caching effects. Anyone extrapolating short-term trends based on these metrics would be challenged to outperform fortune cookies.