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"Oh, and for those concerned, I'm sure MSNBC will give Microsoft plenty of fair reporting. "

You'd think MSNBC would be quite pro-Microsoft. However, a lot of negative stories about MS have been reported on Slashdot with MSNBC as the source. Want an example? How about reporting of MS product flaws?

I wouldn't have any doubt that MSNBC has its biases, but I doubt that your view of MSNBC would support the idea that they'd question the usefulness of TabletPCs.

Pervasive computing? Nah, I'll stick with my stupid screen/keyboard paradigm for now.

Anyway, your cell phone won't work on a plane, it goes to fast to do hand-offs between cells properly.

Cell calls from planes reveal horror (during the 9/11 hijackings)

Not to start a conspiracy theory or anything; but, does any one else think the picture on MSNBC looks like one of those little models they use in the movies?

Does it seem odd to anyone else that this [msnbc.com]article and this [cnn.com] article are almost word-for-word identical?

Does it seem odd to anyone else that this article and this article are almost word-for-word identical?

Buy tracks for 99c/track or $9.99/album.

Unlimited backups, iPod transfers, and 10 burns per unique playlist.

Each song to up to three macs (yep, DRM)

Everything is AAC @ 128k - claimed to be better than MP3 @ same bitrate.

Free 30 second previews.

Built-in to iTunes.

There is one for the Media player as well. Seems to be less busy. msnbc

Click on Apple/Online Piracy ;)

In related news about foxes watching hen houses, the Federal Trade Commission has selected AT&T to operate the new national do-not-call telemarketing list. Unfortunately, AT&T is #1 on the FCC's list of telemarketing complaints for 2001, 2002, and 2003 Q1.

http://www.msnbc.com/news/904102.asp?0cv=CB20

Where did my MSNBC link go? Oh well, here it is again:

http://www.msnbc.com/news/903748.asp?0dm=C26BT

A few months back Newsweek did a cover story on the Matrix movies.

read it here

Terrorism is really a path to world socalism and a world government - in the same vein as the UN. Every time an "terrorist threat" appears, there is always a call for money. Money from the government. Also, each new claim comes with associated calls for limits to our freedoms.

It's easy for (some of you) Americans to shout "socialism!" everytime there is something you don't like, isn't there?

i hunt and fish, and love the outdoors as much as anyone. but, i think capitalism and freedom are far more important. do you really want the corrupt third world dictators telling the US how to run its economy?

I don't know about you, but I'm pretty damned sure I DON'T want the US telling the world what to do. I mean, how can the US sit and pontificate when their Congress" is corrupt? Or how about profiteering from a war which the US started preemtively and unilaterally on "humanitarian" grounds? Or actively supports terrorists" and backs dictatorial regimes when they are in the apparent best interest of the US? Or the best interests of certain member's of government?

Do I really want the corrupt nuclear supperpower to be telling the world how to run their affairs? No. And you should be worried too. The US is becoming the Land of the Progressively Less Free.

(I apologize for this being off-topic. When someone spouts off like this person did, I feel a need to respond. As for the current war in Iraq and the soldiers on the ground there: I support you and hope you come back safely. I do not support the government who sent you, or the reasons they give for doing so.)

I challange you that you will yawn by the time you read the last line of this article (no cheating, you have to read entire article)

The mysteries of time and sleep

In other words, no, this operation isn't about delivering democracy to the Iraqi people, but it's a key component for building long-term stability there. There's no guarantee it will work, of course, but the alternative is to leave a proven aggressive dictator in power and just wait for a cataclysm before taking action. The biggest problem the antiwar protesters have is that they have no credible alternative plan to deal with the problem. "Negotiations" had gone on for over a decade and failed to achieve success, with no hope for improvement.

I have no idea if it's all fake or real, except for this one. Frogs and goldfish living together? Hardly. And it's obvious that since there's no specular highlight on the back of the goldfish, that it was from a different picture with different lighting conditions. Just look at the white glare off the top of the frog's head! Also, I think the goldfish has been enlarged to be more menacing. And some of the water molecules are duplicates.

Which one is the original - this or this.

The consensus on the BBS I found these at was that both are touched. Go figure.

I think that's been beta tested here. Or maybe that's from the Death Star...

You complain about YOUR liberties being taken away. You think you have it bad? How about being forced to work back-breaking labor...All for the profit of the white man. How about being torn away from you family and being brought to a strange land so you can work like an animal. You see, this is the legacy of slavery in America that continues through today.

How about waking up everyday and being judged by the color of your skin? How about not being able to get a job because your name is too black sounding. Sure, send us African Americans off to fight your battles overseas. Continue the legacy of the black man working for YOU. But you are probably only aware of what the 3 pages in your history book mentioned.

It is about time we are compensated for the years of restricted liberty that we have undergone.

Assalam Alaikum.

The injustice of slavery continues. Now black brothers and sisters can't keep their name and find a job:

http://www.msnbc.com/news/859373.asp

I guess it all hinges on to what "communication" refers. From reading the posts it seems as if most people think it refers to e-mail, for example, with the origin being the sender and the destination being the recipient. I think "communication" refers to the travel of data from the person/customer/end user to the service provider (ISP, satellite TV company). Perhaps a prohibited device would be something like pay-per-view filters.

We'll see what comes of it all...clearly the law needs to be clarified in some places. Thanks for the intelligent discussion.

By the way....have you heard....that bomb that went off in a civilian section of Bagdad was not ours! Also, the Iraqi militia is firing on the same civilians they are supposed to defend. The Iraqi's are the only people that I see targetting their own people! Collateral Damage is going to happen. Not might happen....GOING to happen. It's unfortunate that is does happen. This whole thing could have been solved before a single bomb was dropped if Saddam and his regime would have left the country.

Supposedly they're pretty good - an interesting note in the article also about how our own media censors the news.

It's not a "similar" outlet. Unless you mean to bomb any foreign media that don't toe Rumsfeld's line. In spite of David Letterman sketches, al-Jazeera is neither Afghani or Iraqi, but is based in Qatar.

See this article on its origins.

Today, al-Jazeera is staffed by many of the same [BBC] journalists I saw weeping in London that day, including Azar. It is the lone Arabic broadcast outlet to put truth and objectivity above even its survival. For its pains during the five years of its existence, it has been attacked by virtually every government in the Middle East.

According to this article on MSNBC the US government is considering purchasing advertising time on Al Jazeera in order to get their message to "Arab Street".

I went looking at the mail Al Jazeera web page looking for english information a few weeks ago( I don't speak any other language>, but I didn't see any link to this site. I don't know if its new, or they just don't link there from their Arabic language pages.

I can't find a google cache of it anyway, I hope it comes back up soon.

Oh, I'm sorry, that's supposed to be some comfort to the mothers, wives and children of the deceased?

Did the news team really pose an immediate threat to the troops that fired upon them? Were they shooting bullets rather than film?

Did the crew of the RAF Tornado that was shot down by a Patriot missile battery start firing on the US soldiers on the ground, or were they just shot down out of the sky because someone or something cocked up?

Did the Canadian troops murdered by their US "allies" in Afghanistan die a meaningful death? Or were their lives needlessly wasted?

Did the countless men and women who died as a result of US "friendly fire" in the first Gulf War do the same? Or were their lives also thrown away courtesy of some trigger jock who was just too eager to shoot at something?

Do yourself a favour and educate yourself. Read articles like this, this and this.

Here's a quote from one of those articles:

"According to US government figures, 'friendly fire' incidents accounted for 24% of US military fatalities during Operation 'Desert Storm': the 1991 campaign to liberate Kuwait. The only combat casualties for UK forces during the campaign occurred when a USAF A-10 ground attack aircraft mistakenly attacked two Warrior infantry fighting vehicles."

So, almost one quarter of all US fatalities and all UK fatalities during the first Gulf War were caused by US forces firing on their own.

What's even worse it that the US military covers these incidents up rather than investigate them fully - the A-10 attack against British Warrior APCs was disgraceful, yet the USAF never divulged the name of the pilot concerned, conveniently "lost" the on-board camera footage of the attack and even denied the incident took place until they could no longer pretend that it didn't happen.

And this a good track record? You're defending this level of incompetence?

ENN - Environmental News Network (complete with banner ads for Shell Oil, no less. :-) This excerpt is slightly misleading since this particular study mostly used ground station data, but compensating for the urban heat island effect.

"A clear pattern of global warming is emerging as American space scientists analyze satellite data from more than 7,000 weather stations around the world.

The layer of air that wraps the Earth is indeed warmer than it has been in the past, according to Dr. James Hansen of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York and Marc Imhoff of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.

Atmospheric CO2 has increased about 25 percent since the early 1800s. Climatologists at the Goddard Space Flight Center estimate the increase since 1958 has been about 10 percent. Currently the level of atmospheric C02 is increasing at a rate of about 0.4 percent a year."

Also ENN, but a different study.

" Some reports have pointed to a link between recent warming and rising emissions of greenhouse gases. According to a University of Michigan study, the last century was the warmest of the previous five.

The new data, collected by two orbiting spacecraft, is consistent with theoretical simulations that have raised concerns over so-called "radiative forcing" of the climate as a result of human emissions of gases thought to cause global warming, scientists said. Radiative forcing is a measure of the climate effect of greenhouse gases.

This is the first direct observation of the effect over an extended time frame, said lead study author John Harries of the Department of Physics at Imperial College in London.

The researchers analyzed the spectra of Earth's outgoing long-wave radiation, which carries the signature of the planet's cooling to space.

The noted differences point to a significant increase in Earth's greenhouse effect and provide the first direct observational evidence for changes in the radiative forcing of Earth's climate over the past 20 years, the authors said."

has concluded that strong evidence exists to show an "undoubtedly real" warming of Earth's surface over the last 20 years -- even if satellites and weather balloons show little or no warming five miles up."

Nevertheless, there's a lot of uncertainty going on with regards to the causes of the warming. What I think we can agree on is that some weird shit is happening with our weather and we should try our best to figure out what, why and how to stop it, or if that's impossible, how to adapt to it. Sticking your head in the sand and claiming that there is no problem is simply not an option.

What the developed countries SHOULD do is not to try and maintain the current level of technology with regards to oil-burning motor vehicles and other wasteful resource hogs. This will not end well, if not else for the simple reason that the developing countries also will want these commodities and they will be able to produce them themselves (more and more products are being made in developing nations with low wages). If we take the tech to the next level, we will still be able to sell them our stuff and/or knowledge. Besides, no one has yet started a war to get at another's hydrogen reserves...

Sony is introducing a new robot, but this is only part of the story. Sony is betting its future on robots. Sony believes robotics will be bigger than the computer industry in 30 years. And there are many other robots coming, in hospitals, in New York steam pipes or on the battlefield. Look for example at Elvis, designed by Pyxis, which carries medications, or the future Mitsubishi Heavy Industries' Wakamaru, a home caretaker for the elderly. Check this column for more details or read this Newsweekarticle.

It's not about the country. It's about being a member of the world community. Iraq is a soverign nation. now that the bush administration has bumbled its way across the ideal of sovereignty, no nation can feel safe.

So sovereign must mean always right in your eyes? What must Saddam do to ever justify taking the guy down?

How about using VX gas--the most deadly chemical weapon on earth--against his own people is OK...because Iraq is a sovereign nation.

Dumping thousands of gallons of oil--several times more than the Exxon Valdez--into the Persian Gulf after Gulf War 1 is okay--because Iraq is a sovereign nation.

Lighting up hundreds of oil wells, causing untold environmental damage was okay--because Iraq is a sovereign nation.

Violating all 18 of the UN sanctions--need I mention Resolution 1441 passed unanimously? And in Resolution 1441 it said disarm or suffer grave consequences (Did you think grave consequences meant--more time for the inspectors?). Anyway, all this is okay--because Iraq is a sovereign nation.

Trying to assassinate George H.W. Bush in 1993 was okay--because Iraq is a sovereign nation.

How about cutting
up your own minister of Health into pieces and giving them to his wife. Is that okay? Of course it is--because Iraq is a sovereign nation.

Yup, I guess we're the bad guys, aren't we? You make me sick if you believe the crap the left shoves down your throat. For crying out loud, think man! Use your friggin' brain. This guy is a madman. Watch the news. Ignore the vomiting communists in San Francisco and see the Iraqis celebrating in the streets that the Americans have come to remove this modern-day Hitler from power.

Mark my words, political scientists will be studying George W. Bush's presidency. Not because he was rash and didn't care about the world. No, because he did what was right. Bit the bullet, didn't pass the buck, and made the hard choices that made the world a better place for the whole world.

Oh, by the way. . . Boycott France.

Haliburton may get contracts through USAid, but Cheney won't benefit, of course, because he had to sever all financial ties before taking office.

Anyway, if enriching friends is such a high motivation for the administration, why did Haliburton stock go down today, against the best week for stocks since 1982? Seems Cheney's doing an awful job lining their pockets. Fact is, oilmen were happiest when tensions and oil prices were high the past few months. If Iraq starts pumping oil soon like they used to, prices will plummet and American oil interests will lose out 'Big time' (as Cheney would say).

It seems you need to wake up, yourself, and quit passing around hand-me-down Naderite class-warfare and conspiracy nonsense.

-Matthew

My guess would be because in Kosovo, we were taking sides in a war already in progress. In Iraq, we are starting a war. There is a world of difference. The Bush administration's policy of "pre-emptive" war against a country which may (or may not) pose a threat to the US in the future is quite dangerous. I can guarantee that North Korea is going to begin saber rattling and saying that pre-emptive wars are legitimate because the US says so. And if you can't see any danger in that, you need to open your eyes. Most of the civilised world sees that danger, and realise that a world where it's "OK" to attack somebody because you think (but can't prove) they are going to be a threat in the future will be an unbelievably dangerous place to live. Why this is lost on most Americans I don't understand. Probably because most of us truly believe "might makes right", so as long as we are the biggest badass in the world we'll be OK.

The folks who say Bush is an evil oilman are motivated in part because even the most casual overview of American foreign policies will show that we don't give a rats ass about evil dictators. In fact, we often support them. Remember, Hussein was considered our friend the whole time he was gassing Iranian troops and the Kurds. Ethnic cleansing? We didn't even lift a finger to stop the horrors in Rwanda. Shall we talk about the many years we turned a blind eye to the Taliban? Shall we talk about the many years of support we gave to the "evil men" who ran brutal dictatorships in Latin America? Shall we talk about our support of the Shah of Iran?

Oh, and here's a fun picture. It's Donald Rumsfeld shaking hands with Saddam Hussein in 1983. After Iraq invaded Iran. After Iraq began using chemical weapons. But to his credit, before Iraq killed 37 Americans onboard the USS Stark in 1987. (not that that ended our support of Hussein) Rumsfeld and Hussein

Baghdad camera of MSNBCs live stream is broadcasting test patterns and a humming sound since more than 30 minutes.

I know this could be the result of a power outage or bandwidth problems, but...

And don't forget to point out that before Kuwait, Saddam was one of the US's best friends in the region. Here is a picture of one of your American leaders (Donald Rumsfeld) shaking hands with this "evil" man.

I know it's hard to see with your head up your ass

Wow, tad bit defensive there? Chill.

the reports of oil wells burning came hours before we had even crossed the De-Militarized Zone into Iraq

Here we have a report from somewhere around 01:00GMT on the 20th discussing *active* fighting in and around Basra, with specific mention of occupying the oilfields.

On the other hand, this seems like the earliest report of burning oil wells, from 05:30 GMT on the 21st, over a full day later.


since the Iraqies and Iranians are mortal enemies

Of course. I know I constantly lie to make my "mortal enemies" look better, with no gain to myself.

A friend of mine, known as Jfragment on Xbox Live, started the GamerTag Database. It's a site where you can comment on the etiquette of other XbL players, and rate them accordingly.

The site has gotten a surprising amount of attention, considering that it's all done in Jay's spare time It's been featured in Penny Arcade, Forbes, and MSNBC.

So, if some 13-year-old from Prague has been talking trash, you can log in and kinda 'mod him down' :-)

MSNBC had an article covering something similar to this a while ago. Good read, somewhat insiteful, and includes a link that shows reviews on the best and worst X-Box players.

news.google.com is much better (less biased) source of news these days:

March 19 A DC-3 aircraft on a flight out of Cuba was hijacked Wednesday evening with 35 people aboard but landed safely in Key West, Fla., under military escort. The incident involving a domestic airliner was first reported by NBC ...

link here

nothing mentioned about reporters being killed.

i don't know how appropriate it is to slashdot this, but this guy's ability to blog is probably already somewhat sketchy due to oh, about 25 different reasons you or i can think of right now, so here it is: blogging from baghdad.

who knows? maybe we'll catch a first hand account. cross your fingers for him. please post updates if you notice a glimmer of activity.

i found it through an msnbc.com story.

he updated the site at 5:46 AM... which is 9:46 PM EST here in the US i believe. about an hour ago at the time of this post, half an hour before president bush made his 4 minute speech.

if you can't get to his blog, here is the top most few paragraphs right now... :: Thursday, March 20, 2003 ::

air raid sirens in baghdad but the only sounds you can here are the anti-aircraft machine guns. will go now. :: salam 5:46 AM [+] :: ...
It is even too late for last minute things to buy, there are too few shops open. We went again for a drive thru Baghdad's main streets. Too depressing. I have never seen Baghdad like this. Today the Ba'ath party people started taking their places in the trenches and main squares and intersections, fully armed and freshly shaven. They looked too clean and well groomed to defend anything. And the most shocking thing was the number of kids. They couldn't be older than 20, sitting in trenches sipping Miranda fizzy drinks and eating chocolate (that was at the end of our street) other places you would see them sitting bored in the sun. more cars with guns and loads of Kalashnikovs everywhere.
The worst is seeing and feeling the city come to a halt. Nothing. No buying, no selling, no people running after buses. We drove home quickly. At least inside it did not feel so sad.
The ultimatum ends at 4 in the morning her in Baghdad, and the big question is will the attack be at the same night or not. Stories about the first gulf war are being told for the 100th time.
The Syrian border is now closed to Iraqis. They are being turned back. What is worse is that people wanting to go to Deyala which is in Iraq are being told to drive back to baghdad, there was a runor going around that baghdad will be "closed" no one goes in or out [check the map go from Baghdad in a N/E direction until you reach Baqubah, this is the center of Deyala governerate] people are being turned back at the borders of Baghdad city. There is a checkpoint and they will not let you pass it. there are rumors that many people have taken the path thru Deyala to go to the Iranian border. Maybe, maybe not.
If you remember I told you a while ago that you can get 14 satellite channels sanctioned by the state, retransmitted and decoded by receivers you have to buy from a state company. This service has been suspended. Internet will follow I am sure.

what are chances this is related to http://www.msnbc.com/news/886524.asp?0cv=CB20

army sites being hacked with "disturbing" effectiveness?

Sorry, here's the link

It seems quite likely to me that that was an under-reported version of this incident reported on MSNBC, that permitted an intruder with apparent quite-hostile intent onto US Army sites.

It looks like this was the exploit used to hack into an Army machine recently. Check out the link from MSNBC here.

And they matter how?

I just got finished reading on MSNewsweek that the US economy is as large as the next 3 added together (Japan, Germany and Britain). Our military budget (4% of our GDP, lowest in any wartime in history) is as large as every UN member country's added together (191 countries). What I see is a majority of the world ruled by nationalist gov's trying to protect THEIR interests who don't let their people express views like we are allowed to here --- with state-owned medias, who don't show us what their citizens really think, only what CSPAN with its anti-american biases filters for the local audiences.

I see Iraqis who fled their homelands actively protesting Saddam, and supporting american liberation of their country.

I see Turkey opressing their Kurdish populations, with a government against the US because they don't want the Iraqi Kurds to have their own nation-state.

I see Arabian & OPEC countries protesting the US because they are about to lose their dominance of the oil market -- Iraqi freedom fighters have already said they will not honor Geman & France's existing contracts for oil exports when Iraq is democratized. Iraq has the worlds's second largest oil reserves, most of which are still untapped. Middle eastern nations live in fear of this reserve coming under US control.

I see Germany's socialist government on shaky ground about to collapse with an almost 11% unemployment rate. Don't forget that in Germany's January elections, the existing anti-american socialist party lost LOTS of electorates. Not to mention that Iraq is a good customer for German weaponry... Germany doesn't want the world to discover that they are arming these tirants.

I see France living in fear of the "National Front" party, consisting of Islams who are persecuted by the French government, like African-Americans were in the US in the 40's and 50's. They will not do anything to anger this sector of population, or Chirac and his socialist party are sure to be kicked out (which if you recall he almost was, two years ago by Le Pen during a run-off)

Then you have Britain... All these stories about Blair being in danger of being removed for supporting Bush. Don't forget that they have a parlimentary system -- the people don't vote for Blair, they vote for the party, and the party appoints Blair. And the labor party hates Blair now, even though 75% of likely voters would support the war if the UN says go.

The united states is experiencing a surge in support rallys, but the television won't show them. The rally in Atlanta yesterday (of several thousand people) was reportedly larger than the one in Washington DC, but the anti-war ralley got the 12 hours of TV time in CSPAN. Today's ralley in Valley Forge PA is expected to be even larger.

Ask yourself, who is really against the united states? the governments (who only wish to protect their personal interests), or the populations themselves who don't have a voice? As long as the anti-conservative media controls what we see, we'll never have the real picture presented to us. Only those that bother to keep themselves know that the citizens of the world NEEDS the US to act, and that these misguided governements need to fall.

Quick, someone call up that SCO lawyer. Tell them that OpenBSD has got recognition from DARPA for security. I am sure they will file a claim of $1 billion against them too. The next day, the U.S. army will "accidently" test a MOAB on SCO hearquarters.

We will no longer need to worry about the lawsuit they filed against IBM.

the debate so far of linear vs scanning sort of touches on the concept of push vs pull media . the good thing w/ text blogs being that one can pull down whatever you want & skip the fodder. but...

blogs are starting to be abused by advertsiers -- see the Raging Cow ad campaign here and here. And this is only going to get worse with vlogs -- as blogs shift from pull to push.

Is news blogging important? Ask Trent Lott. The news about his racist comments was small news on an AP wire that no major news organization covered. Instapundit covered it immediately (after being pointed to it by Josh Marshall, another blogger. IIRC, the comments were made on a Thursday. Instapundit was all over the story, calling for his ouster by Friday and Saturday, but the major news organizations didn't cover the story until Tuesday.

The C|Net article... you know, the one slashdot linked to....

Quoting from the article:

"They were a good resource in helping us make sure that the protection was put in place," Greg Olson, chairman and co-founder of Sendmail Inc., said of the response staff at NIPC, now with the directorate. "You need to contact a lot of people and make sure they understand this is important and (make sure they) apply the patch." Sendmail Inc. develops a proprietary version of the mail server.

And also this similar article on MSNBC

Would that necessarily be good? An unexamined patch might contain nearly anything.

Are you serious?

Are you really suggesting they should not do everything reasonably possible to get the patch widely installed? Have you not paid attention to the last several worms that exploited well known problems months after the patches had been announced but never widely installed? Do you not understand what a remote root exploit is? Have you no concept of sendmail's massice installed base handling 50% to 75% of all email messages?

And I'm talking in terms of a couple days. If the affected parties hit the snooze button and two weeks roll by, then yes, release the info and make fun of them for the havoc it causes. ;)

FYI, this flaw was actually found in December and just reported yesterday, roughly two months later.

so, here are some others for your reading enjoyment:

MSN Money Article

Boston Globe Article

BizReport Article

On an offtopic note, the new strong bad email is also slashdotted. Anybody got a link for me?

From http://www.msnbc.com/news/880094.asp?0cv=CB10:

THE FLAW WAS ACTUALLY found in late December, but not revealed until today. That gave the Department of Homeland Security time to organize efforts that would protect against possible attacks, said Alan Paller, director of security research firm SANS.

[...]

Paller also said the Department of Homeland Security has become more proactive in dealing with critical software flaws that might impact national security or the critical functions of the Internet. "The government got involved in Code Red not when the vendor announced the vulnerability, but when the worm hit. That's the wrong time for the government to get involved," he said. "The right time is now, and to use the bully pulpit so a larger percentage of machines get the fix.

Does the open-source world really need the assistance or oversight of the Department of Homeland Security? That's just sort of... creepy.

Dear Infidel,

Donald Rumsfeld, who is now the US Secretary of Defence, gave Saddam chemical and biological weapons during the Iran-Iraq war including Anthrax. So, when you come to invade my country, we will kill you with the same weapons that you sold us.

Have a nice day.

Yours sincerely,
Saddam Hussain.

PS. http://www.msnbc.com/news/1639839.jpg