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Of course once your Segway runs out of juice and flips you into an intersection you end up buying Dean Kamen's other big invention...

Its kind of a Microsoft tactic. Cripple the user so they'll be forced to upgrade.

PARIS, Sept. 25 -- Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is the Ace of Spades and al-Qaida chief Osama bin Laden a Joker in a provocative pack of French playing cards depicting "the 52 most dangerous American officials."

A RIPOSTE TO the "most-wanted" cards of Iraqi leaders issued to U.S. soldiers, the deck is the latest commercial offering by a radical think tank whose conspiracy theory account of the Sept. 11 attacks stormed French bestseller charts last year.

"We've already sold some 2,500 decks. That's not bad considering we couldn't find anyone who was willing to print them at first," said Thierry Meyssan, president of the Paris-based Reseau Voltaire group.

"We were shocked by the indecency of the cards distributed by the U.S. military. It was as if arresting people was some kind of game," Meyssan told Reuters Thursday.

Two hundred packs of the original Pentagon-devised U.S. cards were sent to U.S. soldiers in Iraq. The American public has since snapped up hundreds of thousands of the decks, which portray Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein as the Ace of Spades.

The French cards bestow that honor not on President Bush but Rumsfeld. Under his mug shot, he is accused of using the Sept. 11 attacks "to increase military budgets and plan an army in space that could completely dominate Earth."

As King of Diamonds -- the suit chosen to represent economic power in the U.S. administration -- Bush is described merely as "head of a baseball club ... designated president of the United States by friends of his father at the Supreme Court."

In the 2000 election, the Court stopped a potentially decisive recount in Florida, a move that handed the presidency to Bush.

Osama bin Laden, whose al-Qaida network Washington blames for the Sept. 11 attacks on U.S. landmarks, is a Joker described as "a CIA agent charged ... with provoking a clash between the 'Arab-Muslim' and 'Judeo-Christian' worlds."

Meyssan won notoriety for his book "L'Effroyable Imposture" ("The Appalling Fraud"), which suggested U.S. military insiders were probably behind the Sept. 11 attacks.

I am now looking to buy that french deck of cards - cood be a very insightful gift here in North America (especially here in Canada) for people who has not completely lost the sense of humor :)

And Apple, NEWSWEEK learned, quietly informed some music insiders that it's moved up the date for expanding its current Mac-only iTunes for the vast universe of Windows-based PCs to mid-October. Apple couldn't be reached for comment.

Another federal Judge has stepped in and blocked it according to "Free Speech" rights.

MSN
nytimes

Quote:
U.S. District Judge Edward Nottingham in Denver said, "The Federal Trade Commission has chosen to entangle itself too much in the consumers' decision by manipulating consumer choice and favoring speech by charitable (organizations) over commercial speech."

The FTC's list would prevent telemarketers from calling the phone numbers of those who did not want to hear from them. It would not apply to political or charitable calls.
End quote.

Hmmm 50 million people have voiced their decision by saying they don't want these calls. Stupid Judge!

Anyhow, here's the real spin here: Apple fucked up, and now they're going to pay.

And Apple, NEWSWEEK learned, quietly informed some music insiders that it's moved up the date for expanding its current Mac-only iTunes for the vast universe of Windows-based PCs to mid-October.

Dell products that will be available for purchase in time for the holidays include a digital music player, online music service, multifunction LCD television and computer monitor, a home entertainment projector and a wireless handheld.

linkage

But according to this new article: The U.S. District Court in Oklahoma City said the Federal Trade Commission overstepped its authority when it set up the popular anti-telemarketing measure, according to a court decision filed late on Tuesday.

OK, now I'm confused....How did the FTC overstep its authority if it supposedly did exactly what the President wanted? Or was the DNC list supposed to implemented by some other government organization?

The court appears to be saying that the DNC list was supposed to implemented by some other government organization. However, I simply don't understand their basis for denying that Congress had the right to delegate this authority to the FTC (under the bill signed by President Bush on March 11), unless they're rejecting the whole notion that Congress may delegate authority to Executive Branch agencies (which would open up a humongous can of worms).

According to this MSNBC Article: President Bush on Tuesday signed legislation creating a national "do-not-call" list intended to help consumers block unwanted telemarketing calls.

But according to this new article: The U.S. District Court in Oklahoma City said the Federal Trade Commission overstepped its authority when it set up the popular anti-telemarketing measure, according to a court decision filed late on Tuesday.

OK, now I'm confused....How did the FTC overstep its authority if it supposedly did exactly what the President wanted? Or was the DNC list supposed to implemented by some other government organization?

You cite Clinton's "failure to deal with Iraq" and then you admit that Iraq had nothing to do with al Qaeda, 9-11, or terrorism. Why would his dealing with Iraq in 1998 have stopped 9-11? I would argue (and the evidence is quite clearly on my side here) that Bush's handling of Iraq has dramatically increased terrorism; there were no Iraqi suicide bombers prior to April 2003. I would also argue that the Bush Admin was well aware of this.

Try re-reading the news for the first 8 months of Bush's presidency. There was no significant talk of Iraq at all. Nothing. Even after 9/11 the target was Afghanistan, not Iraq.

Wrong. The Bush Admin was gunning for Iraq from 9/11 on, and it is clear from statements by Wolfowitz, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and even Bush. I don't have time to do your homework for you, but a quick look at the Defense Department website turns up this example. And whether or not you think Bush wanted to go after Iraq from the beginning, it was obvious by mid- to late-2002 that attacking Iraq was on America's agenda whether we found a good reason to do so or not. And despite all the claims we haven't even found a single chemical weapon there, not to mention the dreaded biological and nuclear weapons Bush scared America into believing existed.

If Bush knew there was no threat in Iraq and sent us to war anyway, he should be impeached. But so far there is no evidence of that.

Actually, there's quite a bit of evidence that his administration lied, starting with his claims of an IAEA report on Saddam's nuclear weapons that didn't exist, the claim that there was evidence Iraq was involved in al Qaeda (which he has since backed off of), and the Nigerian yellow cake uranium documents that were such obvious forgeries they could only have been included in the Bush Administration's "evidence" for propaganda purposes. If the Administration didn't know these things were lies, then they are beyond incompetent. I won't even get into the half-truths his administration has been snowing us with; the above are the demonstrable lies.

Now, that said, I really don't think impeachment hearings are the best thing for this nation, and I probably wouldn't support them. But there's surely more than enough evidence to justify them then there was during the Clinton impeachment fiasco. Lying about an affair in front of your wife is a very different thing than lying about national security issues to the American people while supporting policies that you are well aware make us less secure as a nation.

But in a worst-case scenario we have one less ruthless dictator in the middle east.

And you have a massive increase in chaos, death, and terrorism in the middle east. And some ten attacks on American soldiers per day. And a billion-dollar per week price tag, not to mention the $87 billion more Bush asked for.

Actually, Singapore is now liberalizing their policies in their drive to increase their cultural capital, attract new talents, prevent brain drain, and generally pulling out all stops to stimulate their flagging economy in any way.

Things that have recently been either legalized or at least implicitly tolerated by the government includes chewing gum, bar-top dancing and homosexuality.

If an astronomer tells me, that the collision of a specified object with Earth within the next 50 years has a probability of X, I believe him more than a meterologist who tells me, that it will rain with the probability of X in the next 5 hours.

This is all part of the combined Meterologist/Psychologist Social Experiment. Ever wonder why weather reports are so far off? Ever noticed why there are never any weekly polls/accuracy studies about the value of weather predicters?

See, the ability to manipulate the masses' emotions is easy if you can disappoint them by predicting blue skies when in fact ball lightning will set their cars on fire. Similarly, predict snow in June in Montreal and watch everyone go into a depression.

I'm telling you, this guy is the ringleader of the nefarious plot.

Bull. There are indeed cases where vulnerabilities and exploit code are held from public disclosure during the "responsible disclosure" process. Many of the more current announcements out of Microsoft fall under this process.

It might also be interesting to note that in the current environment, certain groups (usually large corps and gov't bodies) get announcements well in advance of the public. And there has been a couple cases when public disclosure of a vulnerability was sped up by a leak of the semi-private announcement.

Then there are times when disclosure of a vulnerability comes on the heals of a known exploit "in the wild".

Sure - the big worms tend to take advantage of vulnerabilities well after they become publicly known; weeks, if not months after the fact.

But worms are not the only "problem" code to be found.

Not just anyone - Blair asked advisor Alastair Campbell how he should begin his televised address to the nation. "How about 'My fellow Americans...?' replied Campbell. See MSNBVC story?

[link]

Not only do you waste more non-renewable energy sources, you get a hugh tax break to do it. Only in America.

H2 is 6,400 according to this article.

In addition, business owners are allowed a federal tax deduction of $37,640 (assuming 40% tax bracket - see the article), making the $55,000 price a much more palitable $17,360.

Apparently he has stolen this identity:

MSNBC

Can't you all see the resemblence?

I mean we let people from all over come here and work. Ummmmm, except we don't.

Um, YES we do!

The H-1 and L-1 Visa programs were invented specifically for this reason. In the US, we have no standard like those I've read about in Australia and elsewhere. Well, we have some regulations, but recently they've gone completely unenforced. If a company in this country can hire someone from overseas to do a job for which they're currently paying an American worker, and pay that worker half or less what the American makes, the company is under no pressure not to hire the foreign worker. It's happening for real. In the REAL world.

http://www.rescueamericanjobs.org/
http://www.local6.com/money/2381343/detail.html
http://www.thenetworkadministrator.com/LosingYou rJ ob.htm
http://www.house.gov/delauro/press/2003/L1_bill_7- 10-03.htm

Further, US jobs now are being sent TO other countries. By some estimates, 2 million plus jobs in the next few years. Than't a HUGE chunk of the IT sector.

http://www.cio.com/archive/090103/backlash.html (accoring to this article, the number is like 10% of IT jobs)
http://www.informationweek.com/story/showArticle.j html?articleID=14700325
http://www.msnbc.com/news/947478.asp?cp1=1
http://www.techsunite.org/news/techind/030722_ibm. cfm
http://comment.cio.com/comments/13404.html

The reason this is a story here, is because a good number of us work in the IT sector. This has HUGE implications for us.

Consider the fact that many colleges around the nation are scaling back IT programs (my stepmother teaches various IT classes at a local college) and thike about what that means for those of us who spent money on educations or who have been relying on our IT experience as means to acquire jobs.

The economy and job prospects have been bad enough just dealing with the economic slowdown without having to deal with the jobs that are still there going away from the US (I know, I was unemployed for the greater portion of 2002, and I'm only employed now because I new the guy who ran the IT department for the company I work for now).

In many countries in the EU and also in Australia, they cannot hire a non-citizen unless they CANNOT find a qualified candidate who IS a citizen. The US government needs to step up and implement some similar legislation. Even if you think about this from a lawmakers perspective, an American who makes $50,000 a year pays a whole lot more than an unemployed American and the foreigner who takes his job for $30,000. They'll see a WHOLE LOT less than that from the unemployed American and the job that's no longer in the US! Even the companies that do use outsourcing are killing their own market. How many computers or programs or Coke ayr you going to buy when you're unemployed, and can the foreigner who's making half of what you were making pick up the slack? I don't think so...

Anyway, I'm done...

Check this link out for details on the process RIAA used to target people:

File-sharing lawsuits: Are you next?

Ironic that Bobby McFerrin's "Don't Worry, Be Happy" is in the list of target songs. Indeed.

Please tell me you pulled that number out of your arse.

Nope, not out of their... out of thin air.

MSNBC

StarTribune

USAToday

Note that they all seem to reference the same poll by the Washington Post...

If you didn't, I think American commonsense has surrendered.

Look at the current administration, the current economic situation, the current legal atmosphere, and if you DIDN'T think American commonsense was seriously deficient, you would either be on drugs like SCO (ObReference) or you just woke from your twenty year nap...

"No, we are still waiting for a peer-reviewed study to be published that shows something other than caloriesIn-caloriesBurned*0 = weightLoss, regardless of the type of caloric intake."

You mean like this one
and this one ?

Sorry abou the MSNBC link, but the New England Journal of Medicine's website seems to be down right now....the article discusses two studies on Atkins.

NCAA conducted a two year study found that most schools only broke-even.

Here's an article.

If a hippo could drive then maybe This?

Revised data rule out the possibility of a collision in 2014: Read about it here.

Mafiaboy.

Given the age (he was only 15!), and given the media, he was still crucified. There was no sympathy angle, there was no "youngster gets hassled by overzealous feds" angle. He was, as could be expected, generally portrayed as an evil h4x0r who DoSed eTrade, eBay, Yahoo, etc.

No, whomever launched MSBlaster.B is not going to become a media darling, and he damned sure isn't going to win the hearts and minds of Joe Sixpack, whose computer kept rebooting itself due to the various incarnations of MSBlaster.

From a personal standpoint, I think it's sort of shitty that this kid is getting busted for what seems to amount to no more than a bit of hex editing. I'd rather see the FBI investing its resources into tracking down the author of the original MSBlaster (as opposed to a barely-modified variant which didn't propagate widely)... And I'd much rather see them go after whatever assclown is responsible for SoBig.F, of which I've now received more than 6,000 copies at 100KB apiece. That's not to say that they aren't investigating these things, and I hope they find the perps eventually; but I think it's a bad deal that they're going to bust a kid who made a knock-off instead of the guy who started it.

I really don't buy the sympathy angle. The guy allegedly launched a worm variant, he probably bragged about it (another similarity to Mafiaboy), according to MSNBC, the FBI subpoenaed IRC server logs to track him down. Launch a worm and gloat about it to your 31337 buddies, and you get what's coming.

Do you mean this article?

Couldn't we then find out who wrote the virus just by interrogating the companies who benefit from the advertising?

according to this article: "Computer networks would be taxed at that percent on either annual lease payments or depreciation."

(Imagine that, though: a computer that would glow different colors based on how much of its processing power was being used. When it turned red, you'd know that a crash was imminent.)

So based on the above statement, if I run video editing software, or defrag my hard drive, or even run CPUIdle, then the computer will glow hot red, and therefore a crash is imminent.

Cool!

In the first paragraph, it looks like Apple is trying to pull a Taco Bell.

Resveratrol activates enzymes that prevent cancer, stave off cell death and boost cellular-repair systems. A naturally occurring molecule, it builds up in under-nourished animals and plants attacked by fungi. One of the latter is the grapevine. . . But wine doesn't contain much resveratrol, and the compound degrades quickly in both the glass and the body.

About Featured Sites results

Featured Sites are links that MSN Search editors believe are likely to be particularly relevant and useful. These sites are chosen from ones published by MSN affiliates, partners, sponsors, and advertisers, as well as other sites proven to be especially popular among our users. Featured Sites that best match your search words are drawn from:

• The top sites for news in entertainment, sports, business, and politics.
• The most popular musical artist sites for biographies and song samples.
• MSN Encarta for encyclopedia information.
• MSN content.
• MSN content partners.
• MSN advertising partners. (Microsoft accepts payment for listings from these.)

Note

Depending on the search words you type, Featured Sites results may not display for all searches.

--------
Isn't it interesting how 4 of the 6 sources in the list are MSN sites? And the first one is "news in entertainment, sports, business, and politics". How much do you want to bet that they use MSN news sources for those too?

Exxon's speedpass and the automatic toll payment systems use RFID. Both are very convenient. They do require you to give credit card info, but it is a conscious decision and you can always opt not to do it.

California has experienced increasing rates of net domestic outmigration since 1990. Its 1993 to 1994 net domestic outmigration rate reached 1.4 percent, the highest of any State, and represented a net loss of 426,000 migrants to other States. Only its high rates of net international migration and natural increase are allowing California a modest growth rate.

I'm sorry, but this is a pretty ignorant way to base a vote, especially in an election that is already becoming a joke. That comment reminds me of:

Arnold Schwarzenegger has plenty of rich and famous friends. But to become governor of California, he really needs people like Marlon Sandoval. Sandoval, 26, a hip-hop musician and part-time security guard in Los Angeles, has never cast a ballot in his life. But he says that he'll go to the polls for Arnold "plain and simple". Sandoval, who saw "Terminator 3" last week for the second time, admits he has no idea where Arnold stands on the issues. "It doesn't matter," he says. "I'd vote for the Terminator anyway."

This is from this week's Newsweek, the whole article.

The sad part is that the parent's post and Marlon Sandoval (above) is probably how a lot of people are going to justify their votes; however, can you blame them? Look at some of the people running (Gary Coleman, Gray Davis, Arnold Schwarzenegger) most people won't know where they stand on issues or their history in politics, but will instead judge them by who they are. This is like ultra-democracy, where the People can recall a leader and anyone can run for office -- ultimately, the People have the final say, for better or worse.

MSNBCis doing a series on spam (who isn't these days!). You are right that it is the money controlling spam, and if people would not buy from the spammers, they would be out of business. Better education of the casual Internet user is another step in the right direction. That could start at the ISP level, when a customer signs up and receives their "Welcome to..." package, and really read it and heed the warnings about unknown attachments in email, spam, etc.

Of course, most ISP's do not have the time or resources to really educate users, that is why sites such as ours are becoming more popular (google "internet chat safety" and we come up second). I wouldn't go so far as to say a licence to use the Internet should be created, but a proficiency test would help :)

The actual article was written by Sean Gorman of George Mason university as part of his Ph.D. thesis. It was covered by many networks

Despardes

MSNBC>

Here's an interesting quote from M. Derrick Jr., chairman of the board of Pepco Holdings Inc: When a reporter showed him sample pages of Gorman's findings, he exhaled sharply. "This is why CEOs of major power companies don't sleep well these days," Derrick said, flattening the pages with his fist.

I wonder if things would have been any different if he had chosen to map the power grid instead of fibre-optics instead.

You trust the BBC?

BBC Leak Blows Al-Qaeda Sting Operation

They are obviously more concerned about getting attention then in things like accuracy and responsibility.

>>Was it the MSblaster?

"The CERT Coordination Center said it also did not appear to be related to the W32/Blaster worm or other computer intruder activity." clicky

Dateline Videos

Here is a news report which has even better info + an interview with the guy that made it.

If you did the work for a company then why should you worry? As long as it was sent to you at work and others can back up your claim you should have a fair chance. Actually, you should explain that they need to sue the company, not you as an individual. This is the type of case that people at the EFF are most likely wanting to support. It also goes on to support the people trying to bring on the class action lawsuits -- YES people are getting unfairly sued.

This Lawsuit is designed to crush people like me so that people who have the money to pay the ransom, will do so.

No, not to be an asshole but 99% of the people getting these letters ARE stealing DirecTv. It's not designed to crush you it's designed to make up some of the losses due to piracy: "...(with the) trade in pirate cards clipping along at a multi-million dollar pace. A "fresh hack" could be worth up to $5 million..." With all this money flowing to the pirates DTV was missing out. Rather than punishing or stopping pirates they decided to make money off of the situation. Just think about it, 10,000 people times $3,000 is $30,000,000.

[and not some ultra-capitalist western cowboy-regime driven company who has come up with the vaccine. Thank's to the last part of Soviet, this vaccine may come to use even for the ones who need it the most (poor African and Asian countries) and not only the people who can afford it.

You couldn't possibly be talking about the same ultra-capitalist country who wants to give a 25 billion dollars to Africa while it's country is in the middle of a recession could you?

Yes, the big evil US empire that allows foreign workers to take US jobs via the H-1B and other liberal immigration/foreign labor laws, and who's pharmaceutical industry charges it's own citizens more money for prescription drugs than foreign countries. If an HIV vaccine were found in the US, the US citizens would pay the most for us.

Yes, the ultra-capitalist western cowboy-regime driven nation has it out for you.

$521,000,000 USD isn't much to Microsoft. They probably have 8 times this amount saved up for legal issues anyways.

How about 100 times as much? Microsoft has near 50 billion of good ole cash in the bank.

I know this sounds like a troll but consider the following:

1) Americans probably get more t.v. advertising than anybody else on the planet, yet slashdoters (apart from tivio style conversations) rarely complain about t.v. adds

2) If you saw 10 advertisments per ad-break and had an ad-break per 10 minutes of viewing time, thats 60 ads per hour.

3) I read recently that the average american watches between 4-8 hours of t.v. a day. (thats increadible, where do they get time to crap and eat and work etc?) which translates to 8*60 which is 480 adverts per day.

thepaytons and msnbc

4) very few of us get 480 spams per day.

The solution isn't to complain or to sue or to punish any advertisers (whilst there are purchasers willing there is always an incentive to spam)

In fact maybee like the bafta awards for commercials immediate future
where tv shows case the best advertisements (funny, sexiest, shockingest etc etc) perhaps spam will mature into stuff we tolerate and maybe even laugh at.

People say that the spammers should be made to pay, or that we should charge for email so that spammers would stop or slow down. Well last time i checked they do pay for email. Sure fat pipes with pre-paid gig bandwidth's is v cheap, but its still bought and paid for.

People say that everyone hates spammers, yet that simply isn't true. No matter how much geeks hate spammers, there are more customers out there willing to buy dick extenders, boob enhancers and the staying power of a donkey!

The correct thing to do with spam is to wait for the market to mature, and silently use technology to strip it out whilst we can.

Whilst we are on the subject of unsolicited advertising, consider junk-mail, bill boards, video previews, movie theater advertising, sports brand promotions, corporate sponsorships etc etc etc.

Advertising and spam is here to stay. Stop whining, and accept it. The vast majority of the world simply does not hate spam as much as the average slashdotter.

Jech.

Actually, Arnold is incredibly intelligent.

He was a bodybuilder who put himself through business school, developing a fitness business after repeatedly winning top competitions. He began investing successfully in real estate, and was a millionaire long before he became a movie star.

He was eventually given an honorary doctorate from the Univeristy of Wisconsin-Superior.

The recession officially begins in March 2001 and ends in November 2001. Feel like a recovery to you?

This tax cut was about 50% less than requested. But it was the third in 3 years (though the 90% figure is far too high; a rough check makes 70% look more likely). The way the phase-outs are designed, the real tax cut is well over a trillion dollars. Mostly for extremely rich folk. Why not cut some payroll taxes so everybody can get some relief?

And I forget, exactly how many US soldiers died because Clinton got a blow job and lied about it?

Second off, the conclusion is fallacious. The problem supposedly demonstrated is not so much too much technology as too little socialization, though for my money, the problem is the sudden removal of habit-forming face-to-face interpersonal communcication.

Oh, please. Humans, just like the rest of the great apes, are social animals. Face-to-face communication isn't some weird drug; it's been part of our evolution for millions of years. Like sunlight, exercise, or vitamin C, we can do without social relationships for limited periods of time, but we need them to flourish.

People need to remember that, just like every other living thing, they evolved in a particular environmental niche. I like technology a lot, but I try to keep in mind that every technology-induced distortion of our lives can have unexpected consequences. A fine example is artificial light: the disrupted sleep schedules it enables can cause depression, but it took us a long time to realize that.

Maybe shifting more towards computer-mediated communication will have absolutely no side effects. But I wouldn't bet that way. There's a lot going on that most people don't notice and scientists are only starting to understand. For example, consider the recent discovery that the odor of mail sweat improves women's moods. I look forward to seeing the RFC to add that MIME type.

How many Sysadmins are running spam filters to catch that crap so the end user never sees it?

What is impressive and life-changing about the segway is not the segway itself, but the technology it employs. The same technology that powers the segway also powers the IBOT, something like a wheelchair, delivering a previously unheard of amount of mobility to disabled users.

...Actually this is kinda scary stuff to think about, especially right after watching T3...