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hey, i'm not going to take a side, except to say that it'd be awesome if we knew what was going on here. a prominent critic of a sitting president has been silenced, setting a bad precedent. furthermore, they did not charge the critic, but subpeona'd the ISP. that's not good.

so, let's force the people with access to start asking questions.
nytimes
newsweek
o'reilly
msnbc


plus you can go to various other websites and fill out their forms--CNN, for example.
again, no sides taken, but let's try and cause a stink--this is a big deal. I'll even make it easy for you--copy'n'paste!

The FBI has effectively shut down Indymedia.org (IMC) by issuing an order to RackSpace US to hand over server hard drives located in London. As a result, over 20 local Indymedia sites have been shut off. At this time, no one knows why the FBI wants the drives or what they are investigating. It is also unclear why Rackspace US complied with a demand for materials held by Rackspace UK. Indymedia is a vocal critic of the Bush Administration, and also of the mass media. There is some history of this administration's dislike of Indymedia: before the RNC, there was a Secret Service order to shut down nyc.indymedia.org, which was organizing protests. More information can be found at the general Indymedia site, http://www.indymedia.org.

http://www.msnbc.com/ renders horribly on Firefox (duh, MS owned site) but when you try to view any video, slideshows, etc. the resultant poop-up windows all refer you to getting IE 6. Not that it's a big deal, but it is one of the highest-volume news sites on the WWW. Don't you think that us FireFoxers would like to see Today Show interviews and replays of the Genesis probe crashing in the desert???

Altercation (what liberal media?)

Here are some blogs I like that are often political, but not stupidly partisan, such as:

• The Volokh Conspiracy -- mostly libertarian law professors
• Marginal Revolution -- a couple of economists, one of whom also posts at The Volokh Conspiracy
• Daniel Drezner-- a political scientist
• Foreign Dispatches--a Nigerian-American programmer with many interesting perspectives.
• ParaPundit--some random bloke named Randall Parker, a computer programmer, I think.

In case you haven't heard, BlogLines is a great way to read blogs online.

Atrios/Eschaton
Josh Marshall's Talking Points Memo
Billmon's Whiskey Bar
Matthew Yglesias
Eric Alterman
Kevin Drum
Brad DeLong
Daily Kos
Digby
Mark Kleiman
Hesiod's Counterspin
Bob Somerby's incomparable Daily Howler

and the inimitable Bartcop
(and Fafblog)

Oh, it's hard to narrow it down to a small list.

The previously mentioned Talking Points Memo is quite good.

Also see:

Washington Monthly (Kevin Drum, formerly of Calpundit)
Altercation (what liberal media?)
Daily Howler
Columbia Journalism Review de-spins the media.
Juan Cole (very insightful Iraq commentary from this professor of history)
White House Briefing (political round-up)

I don't think it's hopeless, but the only hope is for a massive public backlash against Trusted Computing. For those not familiar with Trusted Computing it is vital to explain just how evil it is. For those who already know Trusted Computing is evil it is often neccessary to explain that it is not evil in they way they often think, there there is in fact a very very reasonable and plausible plan for getting the public to adopt it.

The surest way to lose a battle is to underestimate the enemy. Anyone who thinks there is no possible way Trusted Computing could succeed is is badly underestimating the enemy. There are some very rich and powerful and smart people behind the Trusted Computing movement. Most of the "obvious" reasons it "has" to fail are missunderstandings.

We need more mainstream news, like this Newsweek article, informing the public of the dangers of Trusted Computing.

-

To quote that second article:

At the CIA, it happens often enough to have a code name: Blowback. Simply defined, this is the term that describes an agent, an operative or an operation that has turned on its creators.

1. I have pretty much abandoned reading my local printed newspaper, in favor of the online edition (and I'm sure I'm not alone).
2. When reading the local (printed) paper I read both local as well as national and international stories
3. Everyone (CNN, The New York Times, MSNBC, Yahoo!, you name it) carries stories from the wire services (AP, Reuters etc) and since there are all the same stuff, does it matter that you are reading that story on CNN.com vs, for example The Des Moines Register?
4. My goal is to get my news and not spend all day looking for it. I can start with my local paper's site and then move on to other sources for more in depth coverage and/or different news.
5. The goal of most businesses is to make money and newspapers are no exception. If they keep a reader on their web site longer they get more page views and therefore, generate more ad revenue. I want my local paper to do well. Newspapers are not the profit centers the once were and many have scaled back operations over the years. I don't want to see this happen any more.
   

Interesting that you left the Second Amendment out of your list at the end.

I don't like guns.

But I'm against gun control precisely because I won't be a hypocrite who fights for the First Amendment and ignores that inconvenient Second one. Indeed, my worries about the injustice of convicting under Federal gun laws recently prevented me from sitting on a jury after I voiced my concerns.

But I don't know of any case where Ashcroft or the current Administration has eroded Second Amendment rights; indeed, when it came to searching for terrorists after 9-11, Ashcroft told the government to search for terrorist suspects' names on all government lists except lists of gun owners.

I'd be glad to add to my list however: if you know of an example where Ashcroft or the Bush administration has abrogated Second, Third, or Seventh Amendment rights, please let me know!

You're preaching to the choir. :)

Basically there is no more informed consent in this country. This is not due to external controls that prevent its exercise, but more as a result of a steady decline in people actually learning (and caring) about the world at-large and their place (how they can and do fit into it, rather than a "station") in it. Forget about informed consent, people don't even care enough to consent in the first place, let alone spend the time to decide which way to go. Liberty will always be hard, because not only do those who want it have to fight those who want to control it, they also have to fight the inertial mass of those who just don't give a damn (and who thus resist movement in any direction).

People are so ignorant that most don't realize 9/11 was a result of our troops being stationed in Saudi Arabia. That's it . That's the entire reason, spoken from the lips of bin Laden himself. Also, who trained bin Laden in the first place?

----------------
One thing I like about Oregon is the first line of the State Constitution, after the Preamble:

We declare that all men, when they form a social compact are equal in right: that all power is inherent in the people, and all free governments are founded on their authority, and instituted for their peace, safety, and happiness; and they have at all times a right to alter, reform, or abolish the government in such manner as they may think proper.

I, for one, don't give my authority or consent. Now to convince everyone else. :)

"the UK is part of the EU, but its intelligence services are among Echelon's sponsors."

It's kind of an open secret that the UK and the US together spy on Europe. In particular, there is evidence that the US used intelligence supplied from UK-based surveillance stations in order to give American companies advantages. One of those stations is at Menwith Hill. Mark Thomas did a stunt by flying over it IIRC in a balloon to see what would happen and had a party too.

I've been trying a similar experiment but all tests seem to end at the fifth hop.

It goes through a couple of bounces - it's just a standard redirect. Example of a standard redirect. Apparently you can put anything after the "0ADP/".

;-)

Slate's Logo

This is a knife!

This is a moon!

It's news because now we have close-up photos, which we didn't have before.

And remember, whatever you do, DON'T PICK UP THE SOAP

Orbital animation, plus some close-up photos of the new moon! There is also a photo of the rocket that they plan to use to go to the new moon.

Orbital animation, plus some close-up photos of the new moon! There is also a photo of the rocket that they plan to use to go to the new moon.

here

better than tv "They may make you sharper, according to a new study. Researchers at the University of Rochester found that young adults who regularly played action-based video games showed better visual skills than those who didn't."

"but you can't (effectively) defend yourself against someone with a gun who wants you dead."

Oh is that a fact?
Really?

if somebody wants you dead they dont need a gun to do it, and you are wrong about being able to defend yourself against such things.

moron.

"Anyone who slaps a 'this page is best viewed with Browser X' label on a Web page appears to be yearning for the bad old days, before the Web, when you had very little chance of reading a document written on another computer, another word processor, or another network."

I can't resist feeding an ignorant troll

Who in hell made you God and gave you the right to decide what constitutes an honest job or enterprise? Where does this "corruption of minds" crap come from? Don't you think that perhaps it was humankind tht invented it? I'm sure you'd be the first to go along with prohibition too?

As for "double standards" what do you say about a music industry association that says downloading is illegal when it clearly isn't?

Come to Canada, where the CRIA (the RIAA equivalent) has the gall to suggest downloading is illegal. The CRIA perpetuates a myth that downloading music is illegal - its not!

Section 80 of the Copyright Act specifically gives Canadians the right to download and copy music. Even the Copyright Board of Canada stated that downloading is legal

/Rant on. The CRIA (and presumably the RIAA) are lying skunks, trying to mislead the public. Personally, while there are many CDs I would LOVE to purchase, I won't. They can go to hell.

Megamedia like CNN, MSNBC, etc. don't want you to get information from the Internet.

Then why are CNN.com and MSNBC.com such full-featured sites?

Don't confuse the content with the medium. Major media companies fine with you getting news content over the internet -- especially if you get it from them.

And quite frankly, any time you say something that generalizes "corporations, governments, and megamedia" into one big homogenous group, it starts to sound like a Conspiracy Theory to me.

The last time we even came close to "supporting" Saddam was while Iran and Iraq were at war.

Donald Rumsfeld shaking the hands of Saddam Hussein, circa 1983 or so. This is back when Saddam was a buddy of Reagan's America. You know, back when we were arming Iraq.

The only way DRM could work is if MSFT gets behind it and FORCES it on the world, and then just maybe. This will never work. To use a very 90ies term it's a non-starter.

Unfortunately you are exactly half right. Microsoft is forcing it on the world, so it isn't a "non-starter".

Microsoft has announced that thier next operating system (Longhorn) will come with a "Nexus". The system will only fully function on a motherboard with a Trusted Platform Module inside. This is also known by many different names such as Palladium, NGSCB, Trusted Computing, TCPA, TCG, Fritz chip, Treacherous Computing and more.

Any motherboard that doesn't have the new Trust chip built in won't be fully Windows Compatible. People without the chip would get error messages and Microsoft will just say it's a hardware problem. No PC motherboard manufacturer can survive if it's not Certified Windows Compatible.

Micorosft simply make an announcement like that and hardware manufacturers have no choice but to comply. Microsoft has done it before. You almost certainly have a DRM-crippled soundcard in your computer alread. It's called SAP - Secure Audio Path. What it does is lock out the digital outputs on your soundcard when it is activated. Why would anyone ever want their soundcard to lock-out it's digital output ports? They wouldn't, but pretty much all new soundcards have it because Microsoft demanded it. More info.

The new "Universal DRM System" is an open standard that runs on top of this Trust chip. If you don't have the chip you can't use any of the new files. The chip will come pre-installed on all new PC motherboards within a year or so, and they are going to shove this chip inside all new consumer electronic devices.

It looks like they will succeed unless there is a massive public backlash against it. The main-stream media is just beginning to take notice, here's a Newsweek article.

-

Yes, I hope that nobody actually takes these things seriously. In an economy that has not yet fully recovered (and despite G.W.'s claims, doesn't look immediately hopeful either), the last thing we need is this distraction.

The argument is that patents drive innovation because there is a motivation to innovate because of the exclusive profits that can be seen. And now we're getting a taste of the darker (and perhaps previously unrealized) side of patents: that they hurt business.

The last thing that we really need right now are businesses being too timid to jump into the market and invest in the economy because they haven't spent (or are unwilling to spend) the time and money to ensure that they are not remotely stepping on any toes. "Gosh, before I start, I better spend 2 months and $20,000 to make sure it's even legal." In our economy, this effort and investment isn't always that much worthwhile.

And on top of that, we additionally don't need the "innovators" (read: patent-holders) to stop innovating and instead spend all their time as patent-police (and padding the pockets of lawyers in the process ... giving lawyers more money is not, to me, a substantial economic investment) rather than actually developing something of use to our economy, our people, whatever. It's a sad day for our software and technology sector when you see more legal stories about these companies than technology stories.

I hope that we get over lawsuit (suing McDonald's because you're fat?!?) and actually manage to progress as a society.

Tech should do tech, not law.

MSNBC has been going a GREAT job of putting out the "Microsoft" side of its news stories.
Let us compare the "retirement" of Windows 98, among others.
MSNBC Link: Microsoft to retire Windows 98
and ZDNET: Microsoft to ditch older products
So, I guess this merger has been a huge success... for Microsoft.

Here is a nice picture of Rumsfeld shakind hands with the evil Saddam. Oh wait, he wasn't evil then..

Maybe Donald collected it himself?

• CNN
• Fox News
• MSNBC

Your comment has too few characters per line

Your comment has too few characters per line

Your comment has too few characters per line

"NRA may buy TV station: Would allow group to avoid limits on campaign financing" :-)

Yeah, and we all know MS has no media aspirations at all

Another thing worth mentioning is that the moon story was crap. And didn't I tell ya? I think I did.

Rush was not using Oxycontin.

It's beside the point of the grandparent post, but signs point to yes

You don't read slashdot on a very regular basis, do you.

Sure he was. Rush Limbaugh To Return To Airwaves

Scroll down, he was using Oxycontin.

Not trying to troll here, but Debian, GNU and the people who write the Linux kernel are not the ones I would trust with my operating system of choice.

note Gender as the word not SEX.

Gender:
The condition of being female or male; sex.
(American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)

Yea, good job there.

As for the thinking differently That's bollocks, that's tied into the constructed social roles argument.

Hopefully this will cure your "non-difference" stance:

Read me
Me too
Don't forget me
I'll end with this one

Such ballocks.... indeed... (be sure to read the WHOLE article in each case...)

Physical characteristics aside... men and women think differently. End of story.

The philosophical and logical attack you have when presenting your arguments is entirely unscientific. You state statistics, probibilities, and analise human behavior on a purely social and artificial standpoint... much in the same effect as politicians actually choosing the most rational course of action for the government - that method is horrible at actually getting the job done.

The only way to fully understand a problem is to figure out what is going on below the surface. Your approach of analyzing social behavior and performance in the work place based on how they were brought up is like trying to understand a computer by measuing how hot the insides get and what kinds of noises it makes.... you can't.

I'm done with this argument.

We must take action before this crap bill is passed!

You apparently missed the part where this bill was passed last week. Only the lack of a presidential signature is keeping it from law at this point.

Jay (=

check this week's Newsweek here and here. Read the articles + links at the bottom. The studio is trying to push the movie as an actor's film (i.e., something to give an Oscar to), so clearly they have faith in the acting job + special effects + everything if they are hoping for Oscars...

check this week's Newsweek here and here. Read the articles + links at the bottom. The studio is trying to push the movie as an actor's film (i.e., something to give an Oscar to), so clearly they have faith in the acting job + special effects + everything if they are hoping for Oscars...

All I know is that California recently mandated paper receipts for all its voting machines. Sucks is that this isn't required for all of them until 2006, which is a little too late for the 2004 elections.

One to add to the mix. How about the new "SERV" system being setup by the Pentagon to allow voting from overseas?

I have absolutely no evidence of any foul doings here, but I am extremely suspicious of a system that once compromised in just one place, allows those that compromise it to direct a few 'extra', relatively undetectable, votes to any crucial/balance districts in the republic. And is the Pentagon more secretive, and liable to cover up its 'blunders' than Diebold - you bet !

Also, please remember this stuff - election rigging - happens all the time, this is not *theoretical* this is real. Just the other week there was accusations of Election rigging for Shevardnadze in Georgia.

And the US is far from immune to election rigging scandals.

They've let a whole pile out of Gitmo since they started that thing up. Some of them are just getting sent to Saudi Arabia or wherever to get their nuts set on fire, but most of them were just in the wrong place at the wrong time. Of course, none of them have ever been accused of terrorism, the only accusation anybody at Gitmo specifically gets is "you're the worst of the worst". The 13 year olds and the 15 year old Canadian they sent along for buttsex are still in there though, so don't worry.

And then there was this one. And of course, although Ashcroft wasn't in charge yet back then, I doubt he'd be more rational than the last guy.

Pro-linux

Anti-microsoft