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price fixing scheme here

See the article at FTC Settlement on MSNBC. They've gone after the industry a bit.

Talk about timing... Read this story about lowering cd prices on MSNBC.

• UniSci
  
• Space Telescope Science Institute
  
• MSNBC
  
• BBC
  
• CNN (buggy--text at bottom)
  
• Spaceflight Now
  
• Space.com
  
• USA Today (under weather... Bah!)
  
• Fox News
  
• Science Daily
  

And MSNBC gets the award for stupidest headline with their report on this story, entitled 'Telescope spots huge space bone'.

Was it wrong that it took me five minutes to stop laughing at this?


-Mad Dreamer

From the MSNBC article:

"It crashed all the computers," said Daphne Ghesquiere, a Dow Jones spokeswoman in Hong Kong. "You get the message and the topic says ILOVEYOU, and I was among the stupid ones to open it. I got about five at one time and I was suspicious, but one was from Dow Jones Newswires, so I opened it."

Once the message was opened, Ghesquiere said, it began sending the virus to other e-mail addresses within the Dow Jones computers, blocking people's ability to send and receive e-mail. Victims sometimes received dozens of e-mails, all contaminated.

"I have no idea how it got through the firewall," Ghesquiere said. "It's supposed to be protected." (emphasis mine)

The acticle even has a screen shot of the oh-so-unsuspicious attachment: "LOVE-LETTER-FOR-YOU.TXT.vbs".

Now, I'm generally all for grandmothers sending email and not-everyone-should-have-to-be-able-to-configure-X 11-to-use-the-Internet and all of that, but shouldn't there be a law against letting people this ignorant operate important computers in financial institutions??

I mean, I'm joking of course.

Or at least I think I'm joking...

Just watch out soon the RIAA is going to hire their own private militia.I can just see it.
The "Music Police".

They already have a team that surfs the web looking for illegal MP3 servers for them to close down. According to http://www.msnbc.com/news/178373.asp?cp1 =1, they have sent out hundreds upon hundreds of threatening letters to web site owners telling them to shut the site down or be at the RIAA's mercy. They even have a name for it -- they call it a "Soundbyting campaign." Heh. Can you say "Big Brother is watching you"?


=================================

Excess Vitamin C (currently anyway. Wait awhile, it may change) is harmful, for more than one reason.

Vitamin C may clog arteries

Vitamin C may worsen cancer

I believe high amount can also cause kidney stones (brief blurb here )

Excess Vitamin C (currently anyway. Wait awhile, it may change) is harmful, for more than one reason.

Vitamin C may clog arteries

Vitamin C may worsen cancer

I believe high amount can also cause kidney stones (brief blurb here )

You're absolutely right. You might want to check this MSNBC article. It talks about how the paperless office has yet to arrive and how huge is the paper market (this includes, of course, paper itself, but also printers and ink). It says that the printing and imaging worldwide is $40 billion and that Hewlett-Packard expects it to grow to $100 billion in the next three years.

Some reasons for this increase in the use of paper are:
1. More people are surfing the web everyday and not many of them like to read on a monitor, so they print EVERYTHING.
2. Some of these printing companies offer services to print information from cellphones, PDAs. More paper
3. So now you can buy digital cameras but you're still going to want a printout to put in the family album. Yet more paper used.

So, I think that it's improbable that people'll ever get used to reading everything on a monitor, maybe when a new generation of kids grow up using CRTs and LCDs panels instead of sheets of paper. So I think that the right thing to do right now is to start promoting the use of recycled paper or paper made from alternative fibers.

And his dad's too. I turns out that while they were after this canadian teenager, they discovered while wiretapping his house, that his 45-years-old dad was planning with a hitman to assault or scare the hell out of one of his business associates.

So, be careful, you never know when the police is coming to get your son =)

What a strange (and offtopic, I admit) coincidence.

The impression we get of them from the media are not real, they are cardboard cut outs meant to represent "the teenaged menace" and allow for a crackdown the like of which America has never seen.

Jon Katz Hellmouth stories weren't about two sociopaths who went on a killing spree, they were about people who were victimized in its aftermath. They aren't about a town Littleton or a school called Columbine, they are about media generated illusions designed to push a repressive political agenda.

It is irrelevant that today is the anniversary of Columbine save to those directly affected by the tragedy. Did anyone notice the anniversary of Jonesborough, Arkansas or Paducah, Kentuky? Not in the mainstream media, at any rate, they've decided the most useful instrument for their statist agenda is the illusion they created around Columbine.

Perhaps Jon Katz is not the best person to write a book and expose this agenda, but at least he is doing something. I've seen very few people elsewhere tackling the spectre created by the media who used the victims of the Columbine tragedy for their own ends. I have watched the TeeVee news this week, and you know what I hear, "This just in, the anniversary of the Columbine Tragedy (a trademark of Time/Warner Inc.) is set to come up, are your children safe. We now go to a drill being conducted by the Lutz PD, in case a similar event happens here." (Cut to scenes of kids being walked out of a school with their hands over their heads, looking like criminals. I'm not sure it was actually Lutz, but it was one of the schools around here. Oh, and of course I satirically paraphrased the newsreader's words, but that was the gist of them.)

It shouldn't shock me that so many people posting to Slashdot these days are completely duped by the media, or hate Jon Katz so much, that they'll go on and on about how this announcement is "poor taste" but I doubt have written to their local News stations to express the same sentiments. However, it is important that these people are not the only voices heard or posts read.

Someday, maybe soon, I'm going to have kids. I do not want them thrust into some Orwellian nightmare just because a bunch of people are whining about "poor taste." If you want to whine about poor taste, why not try the conventional media? MSNBCVs Article on the Anniversary I'm sure they'll really care about your complaints, and store them in a strong metal container... a trash can.

http://www.msnbc.com/news/394839.asp


When asked about the hidden insult Thursday, Jon Mittelhauser, one of Netscape's original engineers, called it "classic engineer rivalry."

heh.

Check out the MSNBC article.

kwsNI

As has been documented elsewhere, such profiling is dubious at best and harmful at worst. Further, the dubious usefulness of anonymous tips have even been questioned by our current schizophrenic Supreme Court. Anonymous tipping in the hands of angry and powerless high-school students is simply ripe with abusive potential. No program of this kind will be able to successfully prevent school shootings, no matter how good it might make us feel to know it is in place.

- Rev.

MSNBC:Hactivists to attack biotech firms

DoS people's website

Personally, I'd like to see this one stopped. Why? Because if this actually does anything, Chuck Schumer and the rest of the Washington Crowd will use it to obtain sweeping new powers. On the other hand, if it fails miserably, people can point out that the solutions to these types of things are technological, not legal.

Basically, giving the U.S. government an excuse to crack down on Internet freedom is not a useful way to protest things in my opinion. Besides, a Script-kiddie style DoS attack (they won't even have to obtain their own tools) which will be blamed on hackers isn't particularly 37337. Oh, and I would seriously hate the abomination of a word 'Hactivist' (bleah!) come into common usage... -_-

-- Give him Head? Be a Beacon?

-- Give him Head? Be a Beacon?

Yep, this is breaking some of the major news stations by the way. The verdict will be next week. You can read all about it here:

http://www.msnbc.com/news/387475.asp

--

• CNN
• MSNBC
• ABC
• CBS

Maybe it is a April fools joke, but if it is everyone is taken.

Clearly, this is a very bad thing for Microsoft as a company (who knows about the stockholders.) The decision will be released and can be used in other Microsoft trials. Settlement was really in their best interest.

--Karl

Excuse me, but I think I'll take my business to MSNBC where they don't use fake words like 'cyberpornography'...

Read this Article from MSNBC about NASA blocking out Brazil based users because they fear "Ghost Attacks"...

MSNBC is reporting that Mars is made out of swiss and cottage cheese.

It's popped up at MSNBC and The Register so far that I know of. But we still have to remember the old quote: "The price of freedom is eternal vigilance." They didn't mean just from OUTSIDE, people...

I agree that if they are going to review alpha/beta versions of other packages that they should review the beta of Corel's new suite. Other reviews for Corel's WPO2K4L should be out any time now since it has been out to beta testers since Jan. Gary Krakow already looked at an alpha verson and wrote in his 14 Jan MSNBC review of CLOS "But, I'm saving the best for last. Early next month at Linux World in New York City, Corel is announcing their Office Suite 2000 for Linux. I have a copy of the Alpha. I've seen it in action, and I can tell you that it works really smoothly and seamlessly. Seems like it's part of the operating system. I think that's what they were trying to do. Expect Office Suite 2000 for Linux to ship early this spring. I've been living with Corel on my computers for more than a month and I still find myself marveling at how easy it is to get used to this OS distribution. I also know why other writers and reviews are giving Corel's Linux top marks. If you've been waiting to see what this highly publicized Linux thing is all about, this is the easiest way I've found to do so. Highly recommended."

For one, if you burn hydrogen in an internal combustion engine...

This is especially interesting in light of recent advances in fuel cell technology. (Sorry about the source.) I'd love it if my next car ran on a hydrogen fuel cell.

First, the timesheets that I turn in to my employer [they don't determine compensation, but how much time should be credited to various departments] have no relationship to the actual number of hours I work ~60/wk. It's easier to just make everything total out to 40, because I know that I'm not getting any overtime anyway.

I think that these findings highlight the irrelevance of overtime laws and other worker protection legislation. The high-tech industry is particularly abusive regarding compensation issues. How many of you have asked about the time commitment for a prospective employer and been told 60+ hours a week or "work till the job's done?"

The Mercury News had a series of articles about exploitation in the Valley. Unfortunately, those are in the pay archives now, but they detailed the use of home assembly (piece work) among other abuses including lack of overtime pay.

The most insidious trend that Katz identifies is the blurring of the line between work and home. Every time I read a glowing profile of a company that provides in house (dentists, game rooms, nap rooms, whatever) I shudder. If you read the trade press (Business 2.0, Wired, Industry Standard, etc.) the image is of one big happy family. Guess what - there's a reason the saying goes "You can't choose your relatives" - why would I want to buy into the fantasy that by virtue of being employed someplace I have suddenly gained a new home away from home. Ack! You may as well go to work for EDS or M$ if that's what you want. Can you tell I failed my "team building class :)

There's another article on MSNBC about how high internet use isolates people. There are a few sections that deal with Katz's post, here's a sample " If personal interaction - not to mention time with such old-fashioned media as newspapers and, particularly, television - were losers, employers benefited. A quarter of the respondents said the time they spent working at home had increased, while their hours at the office had either stayed the same or gone up as well."

These attacks on Yahoo! and the like raise a lot of questions that the media seems not to be asking. Who's responsible and why the hey are they choosing a DoS attack? It seems to me that whoever it is is primarily looking for attention... this is all over the evening news, whereas a lot more serious things such as security threats, like that Hotmail password fiasco awhile ago, was passed over by the media (as far as I've heard). Reno and Co. are all "well, we'll hunt down these rabid hooligans for the law-abiding public and string them up". WHY all of this is happening would be a better question.

Hackers probably are NOT responsible, unless they're just well coordinated script kiddies. As an AC rightfully pointed out, "No selfrespecting hackers past, present or future would/will/should find any sort of fulfillment in performing such an attack, seeing as this has no bearing on the 'free flow of information', actually it's quite the opposite." I've seen a lot of posts in various places by hackers who try to find security holes and such in order to alert major companies, and they end up getting ignored... such as recently the AOL AIM account theft thing. The only good possibility that any true hackers are actually responsible would be trying to show companies/the public how weak security on these sites actually is. But, DoS attacks have nothing to do with security, only capacity. So, well-coordinated script-kiddies... But so well-coordinated...?

I concur with what someone said about the government's call for more internet regulation being too well timed. These attacks, which are essentially undefendable because they are about sheer volume and nothing else, but make a big public splash on TV by felling giants like Yahoo, and pose no real security threat, come right after a call for government regulation of the internet? Uh, can you say Big Brother Alert? Nobody has claimed responsibility, which means that the attackers want the public's feeling of unease to remain nonspecific. That means building worries about the internet's dependability, essentially by driving home how much the Law of the Jungle rules the online world. Now, why would someone want to do that? I'm guessing, to make ignorant people look to a regulatory force to stop the Big Hacker Baddies. Anti-government-surveillance paranoia isn't my usual thing, but at the moment, it seems like the most likely explanation. So far, the evidence doesn't seem to add up to anything else.

But somebody needs to give the mainstream media a clue. They're just villainizing hackers and making the FBI, govt, etc look like saints as usual. Not that hackers are all good, or the FBI, govt, etc is all bad. But all the evening news did was make people like my mom call up their family techs (me) and panic. Ugh.

Dang! So that's where my other slipper went!

Just wait till I get a-hold of that dog...

Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction

The asteroid people thought was going to kill us in 22 years may not after all: http://www.msnbc.com/news/319598.asp.

Darn. =)

Pablo Nevares, "the freshmaker".

• Yahoo isn't the only site to be DoS'd out of existance: Buy.com, eBay and stamps.com have fallen as a result as well. Relatively intelligent report on MSNBC, but it seems to promote the idea that these DoS's are by the same group of persons (not that it's not likely, but I don't like the assumption).
  
• Informed article on Wired which asks the question "Was Yahoo Smurfed or Trinooed?"
  
• Anonymous engineer blames misconfigured router for Yahoo's troubles.

So "What can QC do for AI?" Well, if humans are Turing machines, then in principle you can write down my algorithm and run it faster than my own brain can. On a quantum computer you could run my algorithm (ME essentially) not just a constant amount faster (more MHZ or a constant number of parallel processors) but quadratically faster and maybe even exponentially faster. It's not clear that "faster" would lead to more intelligence but I'd be surprised if you never ran out of time on an exam-- in those cases Faster would be smarter.

So, "What can QC do for Evolution?" We are in the proccess of decoding all 3 billion bits of the human genetic code. The specific arrangement of 3 billion bits came into existence through an evolutionary process over generations and generations of organisms (ultimately humans) on this planet. Now imagine we simulate that process. [We used to do this for fun in high-school] On a quantum computer entirely new ways of searching the available state space emerge-- once again we have a minimum of quadratic improvement on exhaustive search (for a QC) and exponential improvements are possible. That means my evolutionary simulations on a QC will be much richer and more interesting than your simulations on a classical computer.

Clearly, the simulation of evolution is not the same thing as evolution itself. My genetic algorithms will evolve more interesting behaviour than yours if mine run on a quantum computer-- that's the best --I-- can do. In "Quantum Evolution" a book that I haven't read McFadden tried to make a strong connection between QC and Evolution and previously I posted an Amazon link (lots of reviews there) that explores this QC-Evolution connection. I've read that book and I still can't explain the Many-worlds-evolution thing! Deutsch book is, for the most part, sound so maybe this new "Quantum evolution" thing is sound too. You can NEVER judge science by the press-releases. Look at this as an example. The journalists are actually talking about an experimentally verified technique (Quantum teleportation) that might be used to help us build a practical quantum computer. Did you get that from the article?

A. Wait.

Yes, it's such a shame that MSNBC never reports on Linux® anymore. Just today, February 2, I almost clicked on a link at MSNBC called The Linux Gospel According to Linus, but now that you've told me that all the Linux® articles are gone, I figure that it must be about the Commodore 64 or OS/2 or something. Thanks for the warning, pal!

Down with The Man!

Linux® is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds.

Cheers,
ZicoKnows@hotmail.com

If you missed the super bowl but want to see the commercials, this link should do the trick: MSNBC's 'Commercial' Site

"how big is the porn business"

In objective terms? I couldn't begin to tell you for sure. You can find an article here. An estimate is that in 1999 the industry pulled almost 245 million dollars to the large sites. That will grow to almost 400 million in 2001.

That number is way low IMHO. It only counts the really large sites, not the thousands of smaller sites (including ours).

"do u have to file 10k and all that?"

We file all the normal paperwork, pay taxes and so on.

"why dont u ipo?"

Some have. But the majority of the sites are either too small to IPO or they are making a lot of money as private firms and the owners have no desire to lose control.

"how much do the workers make?"

Depends on what you mean by "worker". I know some models who runt heir own sites who make 3-4K a day, I know some models who are only worth $200 a photo shoot.

Ken

Considering this MSNBC story, I don't think this Yahoo! article could have come at a better time. I don't have to say the Web gives racists (along with pedophiles, sexists, criminals, communists, and innumerable others) a haven for distributing their garbage and hate. The lack of consistent regulation online, while a blessing to all of us, is also a curse.

Some of us aren't the best writers. And some of us don't have the facts.

I don't want to lie about our position, and I want to get the facts straight. Can somebody post a letter that has correct facts, but is forceful?

Somebody help those of us who know this is really, really bad, but not much else...

I've collected these emails: (it's a start, at least)

mailto:newsonline@bbc.co.uk mailto:TechNews@MSNBC.com mailto:World@MSNBC.com mailto:letters@msnbc.com mailto:Internight@MSNBC.com mailto:opinion@msnbc.com mailto:comments@foxnews.com mailto:feedback@nytimes.com

and the following webpages:

http://www.cnn.com/feedback/ http://abc.go.com/email_abc/mail_home.html http://www.cbs.com/now/eframeset/1,1616,311,00.htm l?URL=%2Fnow%2Ffeedback%2F1%2C1611%2C311 %2C00%2Ehtml

Some of us aren't the best writers. And some of us don't have the facts.

I don't want to lie about our position, and I want to get the facts straight. Can somebody post a letter that has correct facts, but is forceful?

Somebody help those of us who know this is really, really bad, but not much else...

I've collected these emails: (it's a start, at least)

mailto:newsonline@bbc.co.uk mailto:TechNews@MSNBC.com mailto:World@MSNBC.com mailto:letters@msnbc.com mailto:Internight@MSNBC.com mailto:opinion@msnbc.com mailto:comments@foxnews.com mailto:feedback@nytimes.com

and the following webpages:

http://www.cnn.com/feedback/ http://abc.go.com/email_abc/mail_home.html http://www.cbs.com/now/eframeset/1,1616,311,00.htm l?URL=%2Fnow%2Ffeedback%2F1%2C1611%2C311 %2C00%2Ehtml

Some of us aren't the best writers. And some of us don't have the facts.

I don't want to lie about our position, and I want to get the facts straight. Can somebody post a letter that has correct facts, but is forceful?

Somebody help those of us who know this is really, really bad, but not much else...

I've collected these emails: (it's a start, at least)

mailto:newsonline@bbc.co.uk mailto:TechNews@MSNBC.com mailto:World@MSNBC.com mailto:letters@msnbc.com mailto:Internight@MSNBC.com mailto:opinion@msnbc.com mailto:comments@foxnews.com mailto:feedback@nytimes.com

and the following webpages:

http://www.cnn.com/feedback/ http://abc.go.com/email_abc/mail_home.html http://www.cbs.com/now/eframeset/1,1616,311,00.htm l?URL=%2Fnow%2Ffeedback%2F1%2C1611%2C311 %2C00%2Ehtml

Some of us aren't the best writers. And some of us don't have the facts.

I don't want to lie about our position, and I want to get the facts straight. Can somebody post a letter that has correct facts, but is forceful?

Somebody help those of us who know this is really, really bad, but not much else...

I've collected these emails: (it's a start, at least)

mailto:newsonline@bbc.co.uk mailto:TechNews@MSNBC.com mailto:World@MSNBC.com mailto:letters@msnbc.com mailto:Internight@MSNBC.com mailto:opinion@msnbc.com mailto:comments@foxnews.com mailto:feedback@nytimes.com

and the following webpages:

http://www.cnn.com/feedback/ http://abc.go.com/email_abc/mail_home.html http://www.cbs.com/now/eframeset/1,1616,311,00.htm l?URL=%2Fnow%2Ffeedback%2F1%2C1611%2C311 %2C00%2Ehtml

Some of us aren't the best writers. And some of us don't have the facts.

I don't want to lie about our position, and I want to get the facts straight. Can somebody post a letter that has correct facts, but is forceful?

Somebody help those of us who know this is really, really bad, but not much else...

I've collected these emails: (it's a start, at least)

mailto:newsonline@bbc.co.uk mailto:TechNews@MSNBC.com mailto:World@MSNBC.com mailto:letters@msnbc.com mailto:Internight@MSNBC.com mailto:opinion@msnbc.com mailto:comments@foxnews.com mailto:feedback@nytimes.com

and the following webpages:

http://www.cnn.com/feedback/ http://abc.go.com/email_abc/mail_home.html http://www.cbs.com/now/eframeset/1,1616,311,00.htm l?URL=%2Fnow%2Ffeedback%2F1%2C1611%2C311 %2C00%2Ehtml

Ditzel, a former engineer at Sun Microsystems, was integral in the development of the RISC processor, another competitor for Intel's x86 processor. RISC was faster than Intel's chips, but software designers never picked up on it, and it remained on the fringes.

I sure hope the Crusoe does better than the RISC!

BTW, Arstechnica is promising an in-depth look at the CPU later today from their CPU expert.

BTW, Arstechnica is promising an in-depth look at the CPU later today from their CPU expert.

Has anybody taken a look at the picture of this guy, it reminds me a lot of the slashdot icon for the MS Borg, only this guy is for real.
Check him out

Corel's Linux distro is built around Debian. It's one of the most slickified distros out there -- if you believe MSNBC's writeup. If you want Debian package management without the krufty interfaces, give it a whirl.

What part of "Gestalt" don't you understand?

Stop and ask yourself how many people you personally know that have had their credit card #'s stolen. I know of no one. No one in my immediate or extended family; none of my friends or coworkers. And, like good Americans, the people I know, including myself, have readily used credit cards: at restaurants, on the Net, over the phone, at brick and mortar stores...

Granted, with the Net, credit cards become a lot easier to steal. If your credit card #'s are stolen, and you can list the last five places you've charged at, that gives the credit card company a place to start their investigation. If your #'s were stolen when used at a restaurant, chances are someone at the restaurant is responsible. With the Net, finding who, exactly, stole your #'s may be a bit more difficult, if not impossible.

Regardless, though, is this that big of a problem, or is the media latched onto the next "big thing" here? Granted, no one feels comfortable when you inform them that their credit card #'s are accessible over the Web, but just because they are accessible, does that mean that people are accessing them?

Notice that the holes comes not from large, trusting sites, like Amazon.com, BN.com, eBay.com, or other powerhouse sites. These are tiny, crappy-looking sites. Have you visited some of these sites listed in the article? THEY ALL LOOK ALIKE! They seem to be part of that "Get an eCommerce store for only $30 a month!" kind of thing.

When shopping on the Internet, use common sense, just like you would use when shopping in the non-virtual world. Imagine walking into a sleazy-looking store, an unkempt, shodily arranged and managed store. Would you buy anything from here with a credit card? Just use your common sense, it's what separates us from the monkeys. :)

Finally, it is important to remember that shopping on the Net is no more dangerous than using your credit card at a department store. These sites that were vulnerable were vulnerable because they were hosted by a shoddy web host who didn't know or care about security issues. Having worked with IIS/NT/ASP/data-driven web sites using Microsoft products/technologies, I would wager the problem was from a number of things:

• The ::$DATA error not being fixed. With ASP pages, you can view the server-side code by appending ::$DATA to the querystring. However, this bug was identified a long time ago and a very simple patch has been around just as long...
  
• If you are going to use an Access database (which is what I would assume this cruddy web host uses), do not place it in the Web root or subdirectories. If you place it in the Web root, anyone can download it through a web browser!
  
• Do not hard code usernames or passwords into your server-side scripts, or do not place them in text files in your web root directory! Again, anyone can simply view these files using a web browser!

OK, enough ranting... In closing, let me say that I hope the media doesn't go crazy on issues like this. Yes, these crappy eCommerce sites are unsafe to shop at, but that doesn't mean you can feel confident shopping at Buy.com.

Gates in all his photos looked kind (and sortta geeky in a nice way). But if you need any more proof, here's another article with a picture at the same press conference, Ballmer loooks like he's giving someone the look of death.

He kind of reminds me of Scott Mcneally when he's talking about Microsoft.

here is the link. Interesting that this was posted almost simultaneously as the Gates/Ballmer one....