Slashdot Mirror

The story was generated based on several presentations given at the General Assembly of the International Astronomical Union (IAU). The total number of new planets discovered is 10, including the double planet system of twin Saturn-sized planets.

The information was actually released to the various news agencies last week, but was under strict embargo until early this morning.

This brings the total number of extrasolar planets to 50.

Here're the original source links to this story:

• Geneva Extrasolar Planet Search
• Extrasolar Planet Search

And then coverage by news sources around the Internet:

• ABC News
• BBC News
• CNN Space
• Discovery.com
• Fox News
• MSNBC
• Space Chronicle

And of course, my own coverage on Universe Today.
Planet Discoveries Coming Fast and Furious - August 7, 2000

Fraser Cain

Ralph Nader?

From his website: "[We need] universal health care from the cradle through the nursing home, with a single-payer system like Canada's." Yeah, Canada's doctors think it's great: check this out.

He wants bigger government, and will raise taxes even higher (I know he said this recently but I can't find a URL right now).

Also, he says: "[A]ccording to the World Health Organization, the United States was ranked 37th among nations in the world regarding the quality of health care a country provides its people. This is not only embarrassing but also unacceptable. Western European countries provided for their people thirty to fifty years ago. Why can't we do it now in a period of economic boom?", and follows that up with "I would have labor treaties that have teeth, consumer protection treaties, and food and environmental treaties." So we have this great economic boom, but we want to put all these new restrictions on the way businesses operate? I love people who think forced redistribution of wealth will solve all of our problems. Where do you think your jobs come from?

I give a shit jball, but voting for Ralph Nader is not the answer. Nader's policies may provide a short term benefit for some, at the long term cost of the future of our country. And to your last comment, that the government is not Big Brother: the FBI might disagree with you.

Libertarian party
Harry Browne for President

--jb

The Rise and Fall of Netscape - http://www.msnbc.com/news/379409.asp

With this and the cookie bug, Netscape seems to be in quite the large hole. I've seen a lot of reports about Mozilla and previous netscape version exploits, and the publicity has been nothing been bad for the past few years. With decreasing market share and profitability at a minimum, I wonder about Netscapes future. While Sun and AOL have continued to be profitable and progressive, Netscape has been the slow brother. More then anything, a lose of faith and hope for Netscape has all but disappeared and the company I once saw as the solution to the Microsoft monopoly has been slain with nothing but their own laziness and bad decisions. By focusing on their web portal and ignoring their browser, they consequently lost their hold on the browser market that they always believed they'd have.

I know this might be offtopic, but I feel it has to be addressed. Netscape, in my view, wouldn't have survived without the merger with AOL and Sun. Some of us may still hold hopes for Netscape, but for me... my hopes are but dust in the wind

As this stated in this MSNBC article, Carnivore is just a good idea and system with a bad name.
br"The need for a system such as Carnivore may be regrettable, but it is a necessary evil. And, just like a police search of your home or a wiretap of your phone, the FBI can use its Carnivore system only with a judge's permission." I dunno, it's a trade-off: personal safety for personal liberties. Everything has it's price, including safety.

How they can spend 10 paragraphs saying how it works and not 1 paragraph explaining how it will actually help us or what the development means for practical use. The one thing I hate about scientists is they do-diddle around the fact that their experiments have some far-off (in terms of technology progress or time) implications or don't really help us at all at the present, and they often fail to rationalize it with laymans so their discoveries/invention don't get the recognition they deserve. But maybe these ultra small barings can help robots walk on two legs.

This story was originally written as an Associate Press article, and all the major space news sites have AP feeds. So, you're likely to see exactly the same coverage anywhere you go.

Right now, everything is just rumour and speculation. In fact, NASA has flatly denied that the Pluto mission is cancelled. This reminds me about the recent discovery "lakes on Mars"... er "liquid water on Mars"... er "evidence that liquid water existed on Mars in the recent geologic past"

As always, here's a comprehensive list of all the coverage I could dig up. I warn you, though, it's all very "similar"... er "identical".

• CNN Space
• Discovery.com
• MSNBC
• Space Chronicle

And of course, my own coverage on Universe Today
NASA Costs Rise Significantly - August 4, 2000

Fraser Cain

fff

I hit submit rather early. I meant to include this ZDnet article and this MSNBC article. Sorry bout dat. :)

Here's a comprehensive list of Internet resources about this story:

The original Arctic Mars homepage was providing regular updates about the research station, but they stopped around two weeks ago. They still have a lot of background material about the story.

From that point on, current news has been posted to the Mars Society Homepage.

Marc Boucher, CEO of SpaceRef is also the webmaster for the project, so SpaceRef has a tremendous amount of coverage of the project, as well as a live webcam.

In my opinion, though, MSNBC has had the absolutely best coverage, providing stories almost daily; unfortunately, they overwrite the older stories so there's no archive:
July 31 - Mars simulation begins in Arctic

And, of course, my own coverage at Universe Today:

• Arctic Mars Simulation Begins - August 1st
  
• Arctic Mars Habitat Gets a Roof - July 27th
  
• Arctic Mars Construction Begins - July 24th
  
• Mars Society Gives Green Light for Arctic Mars Station - July 20th
  
• Arctic Mars Base Damaged in Parachute Drop - July 11th

Fraser Cain

It's already in progress... From the article:

Rep. John McHugh (R., N.Y.), chairman of the House Postal Service Subcommittee, has proposed a bill that would require the agency to spin off its Internet businesses into separate companies. The subcommittee approved it last year.

Here are more Internet resources on this topic:

Check out NASA's webpage about the mission:
Pluto-Kuiper Express Homepage

The Planetary Society is organizing a campaign to make sure the mission doesn't get cancelled:
Planeta ry Society News Release

Here are other news sites covering the story:
CNN Space
MSNBC
SpaceViews

And, of course, my own coverage at Universe Today.

Fraser Cain

I submitted this link to slashdot earlier today, but since they've posted this story they're not likely to post mine. So here it is. The article covers the Black Hat Briefing sub-conference and talks a bit about just how crazy the corporations are about finding decent security people. Definitely a decent article.

noah

The MSNBC story is here.

It says in there how some Napster users are using Scour instead.

I've always been partial to finding MP3s with Altavista myself.

Reuters
CBC
Wired News
MSNBC
CNN
--

more here http://www.msnbc.com/news/438526.asp

This just gives me a few more weeks to get all the music I like so I can burn it on CD's. The ruling supposedly allows Napster to keep up until a trial begins (check this MSNBC article). Has there been any boycott sites up btw? I've vowed not to buy any more CD's for the remainder of the trial, and have promised my friends free burned CD's as long as they promise not to purchase any CD's. Is anyone doing the similar?

BTW, on a side note, has anyone noticed how in all the publicized trials, they refer to it as "napster stealing their music" (such as lars on Capital Hill). Why do they keep blaming Napster for their users behavoir? But oh well, hopefully the federal courts will realize that the RIAA has no case against Napster, only their users, and service will continue as normal soon....

Here's a list of all space news sites talking about this story. Compare and contrast the coverage.

And, of course, my own at Universe Today

U.S. scientists have collaborated to describe why it is that the net is resilient to random failures but highly vulnerable to deliberate attacks. As the net has sprawled in many directions, its growth path has not led to a random or exponential network. Rather, the pattern that has taken shape resembles the ordered hierarchy of a tree whereby a few nodes are highly connected and lead to scores of less connected nodes. While this design allows the net to chug its way through random hiccups, it makes an attack on one of the key nodes particularly damaging.

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh! Copy + Paste my ass!!!!
http://www.msnbc.com/news/437532.asp
I'll go to bed now.

Pablo Nevares, "the freshmaker".

This is a direct link to the NBC story.

yours,
john

So far, 78% of the people who've downloaded have paid for it. It looks as thought the naysayers in this case are wrong.

-Vercingetorix

Bzzzzt! According to MSNBC, ~78% of the 41,000 downloads so far have paid.
-Vercingetorix

According to MSNBC, of the 41,000 downloads for the first installment so far, 32,000 (~78%) have already paid via credit card. Kinda shoots to hell the theory that people won't pay.
-Vercingetorix

There wouldn't be any huge parent companies anymore (at least temporarily). We would all get our news from smaller, independent outlets.

We would all get our news from smaller, independent outlets. We would, of course, have to decide for ourselves on the credibility of said news outlets. That in and of itself is a scary thought, we would have to make an important decision with information that we would have to go out and gather ourselves.

The foundation of today's news media is organizations like United Press International, BBC News, National Public Radio News, the Associated Press, the New York Times. These are all outstanding news organizations.

The Washington Post (a pretty good paper) owns Newsweek, an alright magazine, though its website is now hosted by MSNBC.

US News and World Report is also pretty good.

Skipping the rest of the good newspapers and the plethora of great magazines around the country (as well as the really bad ones) we get to Corporate Media. Time isn't really bad per se, but knowing what we know about Time Warner (I am an employee of the company) I personally stay away.

I stay away from all U.S. television news sources for reliable information, except for the excellent Newshour with Jim Lehrer and C-SPAN, both independent media. The former rocks, and I live in the neighborhood where Lehrer grew up; the latter isn't really news but has very informative content on current issues.

Okay! I hope I have convinced everyone that you don't have to worry about your news source if you know where to go. Even if Time Warner bought up half of these news souces somehow, it could never get them all. Also remember that if good journalists realize they are working for a company with a deteriorating reputation, they jump ship.

There wouldn't be any huge parent companies anymore (at least temporarily). We would all get our news from smaller, independent outlets.

We would all get our news from smaller, independent outlets. We would, of course, have to decide for ourselves on the credibility of said news outlets. That in and of itself is a scary thought, we would have to make an important decision with information that we would have to go out and gather ourselves.

The foundation of today's news media is organizations like United Press International, BBC News, National Public Radio News, the Associated Press, the New York Times. These are all outstanding news organizations.

The Washington Post (a pretty good paper) owns Newsweek, an alright magazine, though its website is now hosted by MSNBC.

US News and World Report is also pretty good.

Skipping the rest of the good newspapers and the plethora of great magazines around the country (as well as the really bad ones) we get to Corporate Media. Time isn't really bad per se, but knowing what we know about Time Warner (I am an employee of the company) I personally stay away.

I stay away from all U.S. television news sources for reliable information, except for the excellent Newshour with Jim Lehrer and C-SPAN, both independent media. The former rocks, and I live in the neighborhood where Lehrer grew up; the latter isn't really news but has very informative content on current issues.

Okay! I hope I have convinced everyone that you don't have to worry about your news source if you know where to go. Even if Time Warner bought up half of these news souces somehow, it could never get them all. Also remember that if good journalists realize they are working for a company with a deteriorating reputation, they jump ship.

The link to the MSNBC article above didn't work for me, but this one does.

Hi Dan!

Funny you should mention this. The question of whether PayPal is liable in the event of a fraudulent auction is very much in the news (here is the article on MSNBC.

Short version: some wise guy auctions off hard drives on Yahoo! to a steady stream of customers. Encourages auction "winners" to pay by PayPal. Those who paid by check got their mail back from the U.S. Postal Service saying no such address exists--those who paid by PayPal got zip.

PayPal is emphasizing that they are a means of facilitating exchange between two parties--they are not a credit card, and they are not a bank. Their terms of service explicitly deny any responsibility to either party in a transaction if the other fails to do something (like ship the goods).

In other words, PayPal is covered legally. How PayPal will fare in the court of public opinion may be another question. And yet another question is whether PayPal will be able to escape the attention of the U.S. government. What PayPal is doing, after all, looks very very much like a bank processing EFT (electronic funds transfer). The courts are going to laugh at Indianapolis regulating video games--but they won't have any problem at all with the idea of the federal government banking authorities regulating an e-business that looks, walks, and sounds like a bank.

I'll reply in another note on a slightly different thread.

ZDNet Story
MSNBC Story
Information Week Story
CNN Story
SANS Story

Also : Microsoft security bulletin (irony)
Microsoft FAQ + Patch

If you feel violated, you can remove your posts from Deja.

http://www.deja.com/forms/nuke.shtml

Simple as that.

Sure , today they're only adding links, but on the basis of all the arguments saying Deja.com is doing an OK thing, what's to stop them from doing more?

Right... and teenage smoking leads to crack babies. It's a damn hyperlink. Big deal.

Do you mean this one?

http://www.msnbc.com/news/430554.asp?cp1 =1 ?

When you think about it, voting has really always been unsafe, not only from an informational integrity standpoint, but also from a physical security standpoint. Voters in Mexico recently dealt with nasty physical security issues, as did Syrians in their recent vote to elect Bashar Assad.

As for information security - hell, even our own slashdot showed just how flawed online voting can be. 36% of the votes in that poll were for one of the valid choices - the other 64% went off to la la land, but were still recorded.

Now, granted, real-life elections are orders of magnitude more secure than slashdot polls, but the problem of assumed identity exists in real life, not just in the online world. Dave Barry even touched on the subject in his recent novel Big Trouble, where an immigrant without so much as a greencard is picked up and paid to stuff votes in a Florida election.

The technology is there, and it would be exploited by people who are already exploiting it anyway. The benifits far outweigh the drawbacks - physical security issues disappear as voting doesn't take place in a central location, and even if the system isn't perfect, it will be no worse than what's in place now.

When you think about it, voting has really always been unsafe, not only from an informational integrity standpoint, but also from a physical security standpoint. Voters in Mexico recently dealt with nasty physical security issues, as did Syrians in their recent vote to elect Bashar Assad.

As for information security - hell, even our own slashdot showed just how flawed online voting can be. 36% of the votes in that poll were for one of the valid choices - the other 64% went off to la la land, but were still recorded.

Now, granted, real-life elections are orders of magnitude more secure than slashdot polls, but the problem of assumed identity exists in real life, not just in the online world. Dave Barry even touched on the subject in his recent novel Big Trouble, where an immigrant without so much as a greencard is picked up and paid to stuff votes in a Florida election.

The technology is there, and it would be exploited by people who are already exploiting it anyway. The benifits far outweigh the drawbacks - physical security issues disappear as voting doesn't take place in a central location, and even if the system isn't perfect, it will be no worse than what's in place now.

According to this article that was featured on Slashdot a few weeks ago, SETI@home is about TWICE as fast as the new IBM "fastest supercomputer in the world" is in terms of teraFLOPS. And I'm SURE that individual researchers or universities would LOVE to shell out more than $10 million for something that can be done almost for free.

i think one of the keys in this fight (if you want to call it that) is to get kids using linux.

Yes, good god, we don't want kids dealing windows now do we?

http://www.msnbc.com/news/428610.asp

They are fighting back, and it's crude.

I would like to point out that it is not a store's fault if shoplifting occurs. Same goes for Napster. If we want to pirate music, no problem. But if we break the law, we should be prepared to pay the penalties. Focus on changing laws if we deem them unsuitable.

Article on MSNBC

Please educate yourself while you still can. See my sig. (12-3PM US Eastern)

Well, a report from MSNBC suggest the missing data is more likely related to the wildfire that took place recently than espionage. Perhaps some high level official evacuated the data to prevent it from potentially being consumed by the fire. Here's the report on MSNBC: Report

---------------

...is that a few companies are looking to Microsoft for an example of how not to behave, and, as a consequence, play more fairly. I read an interesting story on it on msnbc.com the other day, and it seemed like the people at Cisco have it just about right.

What? You avoid using inflammatory language? You don't assume that everything you do is right no matter what it is? You avoid business decisions that may be looked upon unfavorably by the DOJ? What? You actually talk to them on a regular basis? Oh, puh-lease. You people are just way too reasonable...

Check out msnbc's article on similar lines.

It isn't a science. Science can tell me that given this, this, and that, you get this result. If I hold a torch under a glass of water, the water will boil. Economic theory can't do that - it can plot relationships - like if unemployment goes up that GNP may go down, but it is NOT a hard science. Economic theory can do things like tell you how to build a portfolio to eliminate risk (historical footnote: the two guys who came up with the theories surrounding risk in the stock market were one of the first to make an attempt at quantifying real, tangible, things. Until about the mid 70's economic theory had formulas consisting of things like "consumer happiness" in them). You can call it a science, even make it sound like science, but science has definable traits which economic theory lacks.. one of those would be the ability to reach a firm conclusion from the data. That's kindof the problem with economics - it is a living model. You cannot have a control group where you drop a hundred consumers into Economy A and another hundred into Economy B and see what happens. As such, it fails the first litmus test of being a science.

And the most basic discover of economics is that when things become scarce their price rises. And yet, the price of resources has been dropping.

Funny you should mention that. I just got back from the gas station - prices are up to $1.70 over here, from $1.19 this past fall. But, not being one to trust only my experiences, decided to consult my macroeconomics book (ISBN 0-07-046814-1, Economics: Principles, Problems, and Policies). The consumer price index (CPI) in 1929 was 17, and in 1970 was at 38.8. About those falling prices...

Do you realize that over most of the last century, the US has had continuous growth in the amount of land dedicated to forests?

Yes, but did you know that most forests aren't in the US?

Don't say things which are obviously wrong, or not obviously right, or provably wrong with a little bit of research and I won't slam you. Sheesh!

I did my research. Can you apologize?

Or at least his dad is...

Hacker probe nets 2nd suspect: dad (MSNBC)

"There may be more to the computer moniker "Mafiaboy" than first believed. Montreal police said today that they moved in on the 15-year-old hacker last weekend after learning from wiretaps that his father had taken out a contract to harm or frighten a business associate and that the attack was imminent. They had wiretapped the boy's house shortly after U.S. and Canadian investigators identified that someone who lived there had launched a disabling computer attack that had shut down CNN's Web site and possibly other big sites in February."

--

"Piracy is bad," says Linus Torvalds, the creator of Linux, when asked about the matter. "Of course you should be able to sue over copyrights. The one good lawsuit in the whole Napster case is the one by Metallica: a suit by the actual authors. While it's probably motivated mostly by money, I can still at least hope that there is a strong feeling of morals there, too."

http://www.msnbc.com/news/410556.asp

---------

Funny how this didn't get posted... "Piracy is bad," says Linus Torvalds, the creator of Linux, when asked about the matter. "Of course you should be able to sue over copyrights. The one good lawsuit in the whole Napster case is the one by Metallica: a suit by the actual authors. While it's probably motivated mostly by money, I can still at least hope that there is a strong feeling of morals there, too."

---------

Surprisingly MSNBC has the best coverage on all this stuff thats going on. Of course there's some bias, but it only makes the poor writer look like he's trying to give a fair estimate, while towing the company line. hehe, oh yeah, there's a poll there that i think you slashdotters will like. :-D

I'm totally behind you guys. If there's anything that we as readers can do, just post it.

I think that we readers can certainly help by calling attention to this. I'm begging everyone to send e-mail to Microsoft, the press, and representation in Congress. While the folks at Andover are waging the war on the legal front, we can get a lot accomplished using our power as consumers. Let people know that you're angry. Don't just sit there and stew about it.

Here are some great places to start:
contact@microsoft.com
Reuter's News Agency
Associated Press
ZDNet
New York Times
Tech Section of MSNBC

Also find out who your representatives in Congress are and tell them what you think about Microsoft's bending of the law.

I found this article about the difficulties PS2 developers have had with the system. Given how unconventional the PS2's design is, I'm going to wait and see until some games arrive before plunking down cash on it. Call me skeptical, but I don't see what all the drooling is about at present. Let's see how the launch titles shape up first.

They don't even address the issue of why most cds cost exactly the same across stores and record companies. This smacks of price fixing to me.

Ask and ye shall receive. Somebody else found this, I tried searching MSNBC for it, but their search sucks...it's linked from this thread somewhere else too, but it's worthy of the extra attention. Big Bidness sure is ugly when you can see behind the curtain.

--