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So there are pipes traversing Utah ...

which carry pig... er... waste? From the farms to... where? Landfills?

Perhaps this should be required of all factory-sized animal feeding operations; open waste lagoons rupture, and the consequences are nasty whether the crap is coming from pigs, steers or chickens

So there are pipes traversing Utah ...

which carry pig... er... waste? From the farms to... where? Landfills?

Perhaps this should be required of all factory-sized animal feeding operations; open waste lagoons rupture, and the consequences are nasty whether the crap is coming from pigs, steers or chickens

Once again America doesn't need MORE laws just to apply the existing ones judiciously.

In all seriousness, could some one explain to me why we need to crack down on "Cyber Terrorists"? I thought it was the regular, box-cutter-weilding, gun-toting, bomb-making kind that were giving us problems lately. Shouldn't the government be trying to stream line its paperwork processes and attempting to fix internal security problems?

Shouldn't we be working harder to fix existing government agencies that don't work as intended instead of making new ones?

Sometimes it seems that the more things change, the more they stay the same.

I consider myself to be one of the pioneers of news aggregation and linking -- having done this on a number of my own sites since 1995.

Back in 1998 I came into conflict with the Nando Times when my 7am.com news site over the use of their headlines and links on the syndicated Java news ticker and news-aggregation pages.

Nando tried to claim that use of its headlines and links to its pages were a breach of copyright and that anyone wishing to do this would have to pay $100/month for
the privilege.

I told them to go take a hike and they threatened to sue for breach of copyright. Suffice to say that once they checked with their legal department as to the validity of their claims they decided to back down.

Although they were one of the first news sites on the Web, Nando simply didn't get the concept that links drive traffic and traffic generates ad revenues -- or at least it did when there were advertisers willing to pay for placements.

The stupid thing about this whole situation was that the 7am.com News Ticker became so popular and drove so much traffic to the various sites included on it that if I decided to remove the links to a particular news site I'd often get an email complaining that I *wasn't* linking.

Around the same time I had similar problems with my Aardvark site and found myself battling a long list of local news publishers who threatened legal action if I continued to deep link to the stories they were carrying.

As with Nando, these sites eventually worked out that traffic = revenues and withdrew their stupid threats.

I should make it clear that I have a very ethical and honest linking policy which I advertise on my sites so that both the linkers and linkees know what I expect and offer. It's a shame that more sites don't do the same so as to avoid confusion and conflict.

I've been deep linking for some seven years, been threatened with law suits over my linking activities by much bigger publishers on no less than six occasions -- but never had to spend a day in court and never backed down.

Some people just take longer to learn that the WWW is *made* from deep links and that to disallow them will effectively destroy the fabric of the web.

One could also check out specialty websites like Game Trading Zone, where users trade games they don't play anymore for ones they want. The system matches the user up with other users that have compatible needs, so a trade can be possibly negotiated. Pretty neat, and the system has enough users on it to make the matching effect worthwhile.

There are many, many ways to pull dirty tricks on ebay, false feedback from dummy accounts is only one of them. One guy in particular took off with $300,000 in auction profits after establishing a stellar reputation with ebay's feedback system. Ebay's real problem is its success...it's too big. Once a system of any kind gets that big, it begins to be able to support predators, and the sharks come out and start eating people alive. I used to buy things from ebay frequently, but now I only use it as a last resort for otherwise-unfindable items like videos...the non-censored version of "Weird Al" Yankovic's UHF (the comedy channel version SUCKS), and Penn & Teller Get Killed.

A similar system in Florida (not an airport, but probably a vaguely-similar number of people) had 14 false positives in the first 4 days of operation.
(Two of the false positives even got the sex of the suspect wrong)

Since they state that it was the first days, perhaps it just needed tuning?

I'd like to respond to a few of the points you make here:

• "...we might find largbe bombers with large loads are capable of attacking it just as effectively s a number of smaller tactical jets." That sounds like carpet bombing to me -- does it? Carpet bombing means dropping of large quantities of bombs indiscriminately over a large area without using guidance techniques to ensure that only military targets are aimed for. We have simply not done this at any point during the current campaign.
• A B-52 would almost never be called upon to drop a single bomb within a 10-meter circle. If they are so accurate, then why did we invent cruise missiles? -- oh no, we would never invent two weapons capable of hitting the same target, would we? Please see the nando times article I linked in my previous post.
• Is 600 ... civilian deaths in Afghanistan accetpable? (Qrlx apparently did not read the article very carefully, as he suggests the discredited number `5000' as a possible number of casualties) -- I certainly welcome your suggestion for how we could eliminate al Qaeda without causing any civilian casualties at all, but back here on earth we have done our utmost to avoid such casualties, while our enemies have done their utmost to maximize them. So again, your suggestion that there is some sort of equivalence here is absurd.
• I was trying to make the point that it wasn't *just* an attack on a civilian population. It had deep symbolic significance. It was an attack on civilians, but also an attack on the perceived Excesses of the West. -- and again, you speak as if this made the attacks the equivalent of attacks on military targets of nations which have attacked us. Do you really believe this?
• I'm saying that the "dual use" standard knowingly puts civilians at risk. -- but your definition of `dual use' is `considered by others to be a symbol of our culture'. Are you really suggsting that because a madman like Osama Bin Laden considered the WTC to be a symbol of America, we were `knowingly putting civilians at risk' by letting people work there? Really?
• Maybe we would have finished the job in '91 if we actually cared about civilians -- I certainly agree that we should have, but to claim that civilians are suffering because of our actions and not because Mr. Hussein is funneling off relief money to pay for palaces and tanks is nonsense. Please see the article from The New Republic which I posted earlier in this thread.
• We are a free nation which was brutally attacked by terrorists. So we don't have to concern ourselves with civilian casualties? -- no, as I've pointed out repeatedly, we are going to great lengths (and putting our men on the ground at grave risk) to avoid civilian casualties. To pretend that because some civilians are inadvertently hit means that we should not be fighting is nonsense unless you can propose some other way to adequately defend ourselves.
• The problem with having the moral high ground is that your morals are unique to you and not really a basis for a rational foreign or military policy -- no, no they are not. That the attacks of September 11 were morally wrong is an objective fact, not a `point of view' which is open to debate, and about which all opinions are equally valid.
• Morally, Osama bin Laden is just as entitled to his belief of Death to America as I am to my belief that he should rot in a collapsed cave -- no, he is not. To pretend that the belief that America should be destroyed is morally equivalent to a belief that it should not is nonsense.
• None of that will ever convince us that the other is "right." -- the fact that this is true does not change the fact that one of us is right and the other isn't. If I couldn't convince you that two and two make four, they still would. But I notice that you put the word `right' in sneer quotes. Perhaps you believe that there is no such thing?
• I submit that ANY TIME that civilians are killed it is a horrible thing. -- while true, that doesn't make it an equally horrible thing for us to hit civilians by accident while attempting not to do so as it is for them to intentionally kill as many civilians as possible.

I'd like to respond to some of your points, since plenty of what you're reporting is flat out wrong (and the mods should probably take note of that):

• we have "carpet bombed" plenty in Afghanistan -- nonsense. Even the Taliban didn't bother to claim this one, as it's obviously untrue, so why do you? We dropped many bombs on troop positions in the field, but always in close coordination with ground forces in the area to ensure maximal accuracy. See, among many other references this article for more.
• Carpet bombing is pretty much all a B-52 is good for -- your information is about two decades out of date. With modern GPS technology, a properly equipped B-52 can drop even a `dumb' bomb in a 10-meter diameter circle, based on coordinates radioed in from the ground realtime.
• Second, U.S. troops are not particulary in harm's way. -- wow, I'm floored by this whole paragraph of yours. You're complaining that US troops are too well equipped, and you're upset that they don't put themselves in more danger? How odd.
• What about the thousands [cursor.org] of civilian deaths in Afghanistan? -- these numbers have been discredited so many times, I'm getting tired of posting this link, but for one more time, see the section on civilian casualties at the end of this article for details.
• Do you think that the attacks on the World Trade Center were designed to maximize civilian casualties -- yes, I do. But don't take my word on it -- Mr. Bin Laden says the same thing in his tapes.
• I would argue that the World Trade Centers are a "dual use" target -- so it's clear for any readers who may not have realized the bankrupcy of your position -- are you really arguing that the September 11 attacks were acceptable?
• Casualties from that one eclipse 9-11, though it might not seem in since they occur over a generation, not in a single day. -- care to provide a reference to that one? No, I suppose not, since you apparently stopped reading after that article. As is well known, the plants in question have been rebuilt as part of the oil-for-food program which the US signed on to. But it certainly is true that there are people starving in Iraq -- what you miss is that they starve because Mr. Hussein diverts the relief shipments he receives to pay for palace-building and other megalomaniacal schemes. See this article for more on Mr. Hussein.
• My beef is people like you, who are ignorant about the fact that we have killed more of their civilians than they did on Sep. 11. -- ignorant of your half-baked conspiracy theories, sure. Again, please read the spectator.co.uk article above.
• Rationalize it all you want, civilians die in wars. We don't have any claim to the moral high ground just because we lost 3,000 civilians last year. -- no, we have the moral high ground because we are a free nation which was brutally attacked by terrorists, and are fighting to defend ourselves. The moral ground doesn't get much higher than that.

Some corporations seems to be into it, kodak, and others are reporting of how great this new technology is.

I surely hope this will never catch on seeing how a normal CD is better and more conveniant than this RIAA loved piece of trash but you never know, especially if it continues to get touted in the medias like this. "Ohh so it is ALMOST as good as a CD and can protect our valuable music GUARANTEED? Give me 5 000 000 please and...yeah...those...them old CDs over there...you know what to...yeah ok good..THANK YOU pleasure doing business with you!"

all you accomplished was providing multiple links for people to click on to get to nando.net. Woopee. You just ensured that we (I work for them) get more ad revenue from page views. Man you're a real rebel.

As an aside, the biggest objection is when people rip off our content. Why? A couple reasons. First, we make money (gee...a business trying to turn a profit...an online news business even) based on page views through advertising. Yeah, I know, most people ALT+W ad windows or ignore banners. We also make money by reselling our content to people. The other reason is that copyright is involved. Slashdot may be "take my content, take my code, do as you please unless you're trying to write a book with it" but the Associate Press, Reuters, etc., take a dim view of such things. As such, we're protecting ourselves and them via threat of lawsuit. Then too, the link posted is a four year old story. You'll notice that there haven't been threats of lawsuits to Slashdot which has posted more links to McClatchy sites than I can count...Fresno Bee, Minneapolis Star-Tribune, even the Nando Times.

IANAL, I don't speak for my company, yadda yadda yadda, hence the anonymous post.

oops! I Did it again!

oops! I Did it again!

oops! I Did it again!

oops! I Did it again!

oops! I Did it again!

More medical news...

We've all heard the stories concerning Nazi's and their use of medical experiments in the death camps. One of the major beneficiaries to this was the Bayer Company, a German owned, medicinal guru. Being a student of Nietzsche I understand that there is nothing stronger than the tenacity of the German people, but its been over 50 years and this story provides proof that they are still as bitter as their medicine about getting a can of whup-arse opened up on them.

You do know that was just a movie? Most mutations are quite unphotogenic.

There seemed to be a number of different viewpoints coming out of Washington this weekend, each pointing in a different direction.

I found this pull-together and analysis (originally written for the Christian Science Monitor) over at Nando.net . I strongly recommend the full article -- I just hope that she is right in her conclusions, that voices for extreme carefulness are prevailing, in deciding the US response.

ANALYSIS: U.S. calculates a war with little room for error
...
The upshot is that, behind the rhetoric about ridding the world of "evildoers," the Bush administration must walk a tightrope, balancing the imperative of fighting terrorists with the risk of unleashing new threats, these experts say. Key to staying on the tightrope, they suggest, are a meticulous strategy, prudent planning and a crystal-clear mission.

"There is no margin for error," said Ken Duberstein, a former White House chief of staff, in a television interview Sunday.

Public statements over the past week by top American officials suggest that the Bush administration is engaged in an intense internal debate over exactly what the right strategy should be.
...

There seemed to be a number of different viewpoints coming out of Washington this weekend, each pointing in a different direction.

I found this pull-together and analysis (originally written for the Christian Science Monitor) over at Nando.net . I strongly recommend the full article -- I just hope that she is right in her conclusions, that voices for extreme carefulness are prevailing, in deciding the US response.

ANALYSIS: U.S. calculates a war with little room for error
...
The upshot is that, behind the rhetoric about ridding the world of "evildoers," the Bush administration must walk a tightrope, balancing the imperative of fighting terrorists with the risk of unleashing new threats, these experts say. Key to staying on the tightrope, they suggest, are a meticulous strategy, prudent planning and a crystal-clear mission.

"There is no margin for error," said Ken Duberstein, a former White House chief of staff, in a television interview Sunday.

Public statements over the past week by top American officials suggest that the Bush administration is engaged in an intense internal debate over exactly what the right strategy should be.
...

I work for Nando Media. My name isn't altogether uncommon, but more on that in a bit. Another gentleman, of the same first and last name, works for The News and Observer. The two companies are sister companies (in point of fact, they created us once upon a time).

I work as a programmer. He is an associate editor, or something like that. I'm white. He's not (he's president of the NABJ). We work in different buildings with different office numbers. One of these days I need to go introduce myself to him. In the six months I've been here, he's gotten a package meant for me, I've gotten a package meant for him, and I've gotten probably 10 phone calls for him (two at home around 11 pm, from someone on the west coast).

This isn't just the company mail messing up, or the company switchboard. The regional phone company blew it too. Fortunately, we're both aware of each other's presence, and politely refer the caller/package/etc to the other individual.

What's most frustrating about all this is that that first package was a Valntine's gift sent 2-day mail, with my full name emblazoned, complete with roman numeral (I'm the IVth, ladies and gentlemen), and it still got mis-routed. *SIGH*

It sure seems like it would be fun to compromise someone's secrets, or post everyone's inane family letters, or whatever, until it happens to you. I have to applaud the writer of the parent post for doing the ethically right thing.


if ($user =~ m/shaldannon/i) {
print "\n-- $user :)\n"
}

wont just be a triumph of india, but of every underdog out there who just didnt accept defeat when the odds were against them, but decided that "I am gonna do it myself ". Isnt this what Torvalds did ?

It's also what Saddam Hussein did when Iraq invaded Kuwait. Should we celebrate destabilization because other nations had applied diplomatic pressure in an attempt to stem hostility? No.

Sure, I'd like to think that India intends to use this newfound ability to improve its economy. I doubt the real intention behind this launch capability is to jumpstart a satellite launching industry in India. How profitable can that possibly be? It usually costs something like a hundred million dollars (US) to get a satellite up in the sky. Insurance on these launches is almost as high as their intended orbits. Can you possibly imagine how much it's going to cost to insure the launch of a satellite by a rookie program like this? Sorry to say, but this is all about intimidating Pakistan.

This is a pretty descent article about what this means to India and Pakistan.

• SlugBot
• RoachBot
• AntBot
• MonkeyBot

Collect them all, take over the world.

LimpDawg,

First, let me tell you that I've watched your non-coding, teenage career with much interest, and it's a pleasure to have the opportunity to interview you.

And now the questions.

The handle 'limpdawg'...brilliant. How did you come up with that one? Personally, I lack the creativity to invent unique handles, thus the only handle my inferior intelect was able to invent was that of a popular Simpson's character. I regret my choice every day of my life.

Judging by your user info page, you have only recently emerged on the Slashdot comment posting scene. Why the long wait in posting? I, for one, have been eagerly awaiting the opportunity to engage in thoughtful conversation (as we are now).

Allow me to again express how fortunate I feel in being granted this interview.

Seriously, though. There seems to be some controversy around the timing of your Slashdot debut. What is your response to the people who claim that your debut is, rather conveniently, timed just after the death of 300 chinese in a horrible christmas fire. Are these people to believe that it is mere coincidence?

Thank you, and god bless.

article here

1. ... operating from Aerial Images' [] facility ...

1. ... operating from Aerial Images' [] facility ...

1. ... operating from Aerial Images' [] facility ...

1. ... operating from Aerial Images' [] facility ...

1. ... operating from Aerial Images' [] facility ...

The Carolinas themselves aren't all that interesting to the world at large, and my choice of Duke basketball as a highly relevant topic was intentionally frivolous. My point, boiled down, is that "new media" do an awful job of covering news of regional and non-technological interest.

It may not be Slashdot's or CNN's place to cover regional news, but I'd like to see some Raleigh/Durham-centric news portal (the Slash engine might not be a bad choice to run such a site) before I'd even consider giving up paper news sources. The News and Observer does have a web presence, which Slashdot links to with surprising frequency (it's fun to see a story on Slashdot that I read a couple hours earlier in the paper edition). They even have a a regional news site. However, the Raleigh area is an exception -- my guess is that relatively few small towns are this well represented by online news sources.

I still haven't switched over to the N&O's Web site in favor of the print edition (even though I'd save 20 or 30 cents a day), because paper is more convenient and has an aesthetic appeal still lacking in even the best flat-panel displays. I prefer paperbacks over e-books, too, and I usually print out any research paper I read over 5 pages long. For now.

For the new media to really rule the world, they have to stop neglecting small and medium towns' news, and they have to find something better than a web browser, a 15" monitor, and a 28.8 modem to get content to users.

Russians don't drink anymore? =P

This guy's a little pzykotic. He blamed Jews for the Holocaust and WWII, since "there were too many Jews"... this guys a looney.

Take the recent case of plagiarist.org... the artist responsible for the site did a piece called Plagiarist Acquisitions in which plagiarist.org pretended to have "acquired" 27 of the world's largest corporations, in a spoof of neverending corporate takeovers. DuPont, one of the "acquired" companies, didn't like it. But, rather than sending a letter to plagiarist.org outlining legal reasons for their complaint, they took the shortcut - their legal department made phone calls and sent faxes full of largely irrelevant and unrelated documents to the artists' employer, saying that plagiarist.org had associated DuPont and the other companies with threatening and violent content. They sent a page from an unrelated website in which some entirely unrelated person called "plagiarist" had made death threats against the public relations director of the Jewish Defense league. When the artist, forced to remove the piece by the employer (who evidently was serving as ISP) posted a commentary documenting the situation, DuPont sent another fax requesting that be removed too (though that appears to still be there.) A more detailed story of this is archived at rhizome.org.

This type of censorship has been going on for years... take a look at this 1996 Associated Press article about the PR Firm of Middleberg and Associates, who evidently take pride in helping corporations intimidate people commit acts of free speech. And Markwatch a big-brotheresque corporate trademark monitoring service, who takes pride in spying on every nook and cranny of the web and newsgroups for mentions of product trademarks.... have you checked your web server logs for their sniffers? They are in mine!

Basically, the Corporations have decided they are going to do to dissenting voices on the Internet what they did to Public Access TV, and it is going to take massive and continual Bad PR about them to turn the tide.

Of course, there were a few problems in the past, such as always having to shake out my shoes before I go to work in the morning; being able to track them; and preventing them from uncontrolled reproducing. Controlling breeding is accomplished by keeping only one male in a tank - all the hunters in home are female(you learn to identify the gender pretty quick). Every now and then, you pop a female in the tank and see if they'll go at it (it looks more like a fight than mating). Tracking is still a problem though. I used to glue keychains to their backs, the kind that beep when you whistle, but well, um, those things fall off after the scorpion molts. I'm thinking of switching to a transmitter to relay to position of each scorpion, so when my database tells me it's time for one of them to molt, I can just find her and keep her in a tank until she's done - the transmitter can then be reglued and she can be released back into my kitchen. The database is already set up; it uses the MSDE, which is simply the engine behind MS-SQL Server. If you want to see the front end (written in VB) I'll be happy to send it to you, but I don't yet have routines to account for input from a receiver - but my current plans call for using two or more to accurately gauge the position of any specific scorpion. Source code available on request.

While on the topic of a Roachbot, you should check out this story, where a Japanese company attached electrodes to a roach's brain and take full control of its motor functions. I can just see the implications: you release your robo-roaches armed with extra electronics and assembly instructions into a new slum and within minutes, they have taken new "converts". [Insert evil smirk here]

Skevin
MCSE/MCDBA (Slashdot is also read by us Evil Empire people too)
malusdei@pacbell.net

The story refers to a previous one in the Los Angeles Times.

Actually - according to an article in the NandoTimes there
are answers to many of the questions posed.
1. The customers for the data will be Banks, lenders and Car dealers (probably others)
2. The party requesting the data will be responsible for gaining permission. (and it is based on an honor system. So the state will "believe" them if they say they have permission)

There will be auditors checking that they really have permission, but this will be on a spot basis and as far as I am concerned hardly provides any real protection to the individual.

With this kind of program in effect, it may soon be the case that you are refused a loan if you refuse to let the government make money off your information.

Actually - according to an article in the NandoTimes there
are answers to many of the questions posed.
1. The customers for the data will be Banks, lenders and Car dealers (probably others)
2. The party requesting the data will be responsible for gaining permission. (and it is based on an honor system. So the state will "believe" them if they say they have permission)

There will be auditors checking that they really have permission, but this will be on a spot basis and as far as I am concerned hardly provides any real protection to the individual.

With this kind of program in effect, it may soon be the case that you are refused a loan if you refuse to let the government make money off your information.