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Open-Source may help drive even the biggest software company toward a service model, by putting downward pressure on the market-determined price of software licenses.

A Seattle Times review of Microsoft's Linux lab boss ends with a comment by IDC's Al Gillen: "...open-source software is going to help drive the acquisition cost of software down toward zero," he [Gillen] said, a shift that will require software companies to move "over to a maintenance and support model."

"Pluged in to Microsoft's biggest rival" - Seattle Times (May require no-cost signup to view.)

Apparently, the whole idea comes from a policeman from Toronto who sent an email to Bill Gates to convince him to help them do something about kiddie orn.

More details here

And you just took his word for it?

Why would he lie to his fellow Republicans about something that will be part of the public court record next month? Come on.

As to the juvenile stuff, that was all in the news. They identified far less than half in their partial check, and I've not seen anything since that makes me think the problem is greater than identified here.

Are you a troll, misinformed, or just plain untruthful?

Washington law forced the first recount because it was so close. There's a summary here.

The initial count was performed by machine. The results of that count put Rossi ahead by 261. This was a small enough % of voters to force a second machine count.

The results of this count (We're on Recount #1 now) placed Gregoire ahead by 42 votes. This of course prompted a recount demand from- guess who?

Recount #2 - this one a hand recount - Gregoire defeats Rossi by 129 votes. Rossi then takes the case to the courts. Now go and draw conclusions.

Disclaimer: I'm in Oregon, couldn't care less about who ends up winning, but I hate to see people misrepresenting information in such a way as the parent.

Are you a troll, misinformed, or just plain untruthful?

Washington law forced the first recount because it was so close. There's a summary here.

The initial count was performed by machine. The results of that count put Rossi ahead by 261. This was a small enough % of voters to force a second machine count.

The results of this count (We're on Recount #1 now) placed Gregoire ahead by 42 votes. This of course prompted a recount demand from- guess who?

Recount #2 - this one a hand recount - Gregoire defeats Rossi by 129 votes. Rossi then takes the case to the courts. Now go and draw conclusions.

Disclaimer: I'm in Oregon, couldn't care less about who ends up winning, but I hate to see people misrepresenting information in such a way as the parent.

When Pudge returns for a SlashBack, only the "Republicans wronged" phase of the contested WA governor election gets press. When their candidate was ahead by a statistically identical margin, after the first count, Pudge didn't seem to care how small it was. Even though the Republican margin, 46 votes out of 2.9 million, 3x smaler than this Democrat's final "small margin". And all the Republican rhetoric was "it's over, we won", and "Democrat crybabies just get over it". Especially poignant was the Republican candidate's public speeches demanding the Democrat stop the challenge, for "the good of the state". Now that it's months later, the good of the state demands a Republican challenge. Apparently, the good of the state of Washington originally demanded that hundreds of Seattle (Democratic) absentee ballots be rejected, including that of Seattle Councilman Larry Phillips. Isn't Pudge just a Republican partisan hack, sliding promotion of his side's weaselly campaign into the first story of a SlashBack peppered with other news of broad appeal?

This article reminded me of the Seattle Star Wars squater, Jeff Tweiten. Aparently, he was kicked off his couch by a city ordinance and an anonymous complaint back in January. He has managed to continue his wait for the movie opening without a permanent station.

The guy that did get caught was trying to cross, on a ferry, from Victoria BC to Port Angeles WA. And the current system did work... smart border guards figuring that this guy was dodgy... and the fact he produced a Costco Card as his "ID".

Here is a link to that story...

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/news/nation-world /terroristwithin/chapter10.html

Fact is, the requirement of passports for Canadian and US citizens to enter either country won't make either country more secure. It'll make things easier for the border staff on both sides to do their job, but relying on ID only to sniff out potential terrorists is idiotic. And the potential economic costs will be large... ask some of the border communities how much they rely on cross-border traffic.

This is more of a PR move to make people think that they are more secure. If a terrorist wants to get into either Canada or the US, there are far better ways of doing so than try to fake a driver's license and a birth certificate to get through. Like applying for a student visa...

But the problem for Microsoft is that it's basically a house of cards. Every other facet of Microsoft loses money other than Office and Windows.

I'm sorry, but you're uninformed. It's really easy to research the facts a bit, rather than just parroting slashbot folklore. Find the numbers as presented by Microsoft here. Or, if you want a simplified presentation look here for a nice graph with Microsoft's revenue per division. Note that four out of seven divisions are profitable (and, for the last quarter, the XBox group was profitable too, but that's probably a glitch produced by Halo 2). Also, note that the Server and Tools division had revenue of $2,235 million for the 3 month ending September 04, comparable with either Client (that's mostly Windows) at $2,993 million and Information Worker (that's Office) at $2,560 million

If either of those fail, the entire company would fail with it.

Wrong again; the most successful division, Client, has an operating income of $2,392 million. Microsoft's total operating income is over $4 billion. If the Client division were to bring no income whatsoever, Microsoft's total operating income would still be almost 2 billion for the quarter.

That's why it is so desperate to do something different, e.g., Xbox, WebTV, WinCE, search, Windows Media Video 9/HD-DVD, etc. Thus, if Microsoft was forced to lower prices on Office/Windows, they'd have to start dumping all of their money losing areas to stay afloat.

Bad analysis, based on ignorance and hear-say. You're only looking to consumer-side stuff and ignoring all corporation-level work. Note that Microsoft is pushing a lot in the corporate space, with the Server and Tools and Business Solutions divisions. The Server and Tools divisions I mentioned already. The Business Solutions one has a lot of potential: Microsoft owns some pretty nifty tools there, like Axapta or Navision. While their current offer in the CRM area is rather confused at this moment, expect them to clarify and expand it in the next couple of years.

The reverse was featured in today's Zits comic strip. It won't let you see your cube wall, but it can allow for undetected sleep at work.

Sorry, direct link won't work after today. But you can choose today's date (March 27) in the drop-down for two weeks or so.

While an application of this technology could be used to stealthly deliver narcotics from South America or WMD from who-knows-where. With a zero sonar fingerprint, a submarine glider drone would be tough to stop.

And if you that was absurd, recently a WWII Japanese submarine that was orginally intended to carry plague rats to America was just found off of Hawaii.
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/ 2002214428_sub21.html/

If they did reveal their funding during the RSA presentation .......

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/business/212384_msft linux17.html

Linux vs Windows Security
(a Microsoft production)

Thompson and Ford walk on onto the stage.

Thompson: "My name is Thompson and I love Microsoft."

Ford: "My name is Ford and I love Linux. Hey Thompson, how many Microsoft programmers does it take to change a light bulb?"

T: "I don't know, Ford. How many Microsoft programmers DOES it take to change a light bulb?"

F: "None. They just declare dark to be the new standard. Ha ha!"

T: "Ha .... How about we do some of our 'research' to find out who has better security then?"

F: "Sure. I am sure that Linux will have better security than Windows, after all, I am Ford and I love Linux."

T: "Because we are security professionals, we will choose only the default settings of both systems. Is that okay with you my fellow security expert?"

F: "Yes, we should only choose the default settings because we are security experts."

T: "And then we should count how many security patches were released and how long it took to release them (after the public announcement)."

F: "That sounds like a very reasonable and fair way to determine who has better security. We should only count the days and number of vulnerabilities. We should under no circumstances do any comparision of vulnerabilities or determination of actual attack vulnerability. That would be very difficult and I'm only a Ph.D."

T: "Yes, that would be very difficult for I also am only a Ph.D. But even this limited scope will be expensive. In only we had someone willing to fund our 'research'."

Bill Gates walks on stage with a huge cardboard check.

BG: "Hi! I heard about your 'independant' 'research' project and I thought I'd give you some money to fund it. But please do not feel that this in any way obligates you to find that Windows is superior in every way to Linux. byacceptingthischeckyouagreethatallfindingswillber estrictedtomicrosoftsapprovalandallfindingswillreq uiremicrosoftsapprovalbeforebeingpublished"

F: "What was that last part?"

T: "Never mind. It can't be that important if he said it so fast. How about we make a small wager on the outcome of this Microsoft funded research program concerning Linux vs Windows security?"

F: "Of course. I will bet $20 that Linux is more secure than Windows. After all, I hardly see how Linux can lose a security comparision in a Microsoft funded 'research' program." winks at audience.

T: "I agree. This 'research' will be completely independant and verifiable."

F: "On with the counting!"

Both of them pull out calculators and furiously punch buttons.

F: "Oh the shame! How could I ever be so WRONG?!?"

T: "It does seem that our Microsoft funded 'research' has determined that Win2003 is more secure than Linux."

F: "Yes, the fact that Red Hat took longer to release patches for publicly known vulnerabilities in software included in our default installations does show that I was wrong about Linux being superior to Win2003."

T: "Once again, when you ... Get The Facts ... you find that Windows isn't as bad as the urban myths would have you believe. It's actually more secure than Linux." smiles at audience.

This has been a dramatization of an actual event.

We would like to thank Microsoft and Bill Gates for their generous contribution without which this "research" could not have been possible (it costs a lot of money looking up vulnerabilities on a website).

I just read about this in the Seattle Times, and wrote a letter to the columnist (the article is: PlayStation Portable: Sony's new handheld does a lot more than play games):

Hi Mark,

Long time Seattle Times reader here....

Liked your article on Sony's new playstation... a few thoughts though...

I too have long considered Sony to be a great innovator but here is what has frustrated me for sooooo long and here is why I probably will NEVER buy a Sony product again unless and until they change some of their practices.... I'll illustrate by example:

• long ago, after a few years of owning one of Yamaha's very first digital receivers with no remote control, I decided to "move up".... and fell in lust with a nice Sony unit at the local electronics store (this was in Omaha)... The Sony boasted 100 watts per channel to my Yamaha's 50 watts per channel AND it had a remote control. I excitedly told the salesman how much I looked forward to having a remote control unit and the doubling of the power would be a nice bonus. When I told him I was "replacing" my Yamaha, to his credit, he stopped me and told me if I took the Sony home I would be SO disappointed. He said the 100 watt Sony in a side-by-side comparison with my 50 watt Yamaha would be pathetic, the Sony wouldn't even stand a chance. Whaaaa? He also showed me how when you turned the volume all the way up on the Sony when it was set to phono input (yes it was in the day of LP's), you could hear bleed over sound from the FM tuner, ick..... He told me to try that with the Yamaha, I did, dead silence... He explained Sony sold sizzle, but no steak.... by skimping on things like shielding on wires to block induction of adjacent signal sources. Okay, lesson learned.... but my Sony radar was up.
• Skip to the mid 90's or so. I was absolutely infatuated with Sony's new Minidisk format -- what a cool way to have such great sounding music in such a small form factor. Granted, the recording unit I purchased was $700, but I was willing to pay the bleeding edge price knowing from experience technology prices drop steeply and when I would be ready to buy additional units I could get a comparable recorder for less than half the price I paid then. I watched for 2 years.... no price drop.... mentioned to a salesman at Magnolia (now I'd moved to Seattle)... He explained the minidisk technology was Sony's own proprietary format, and Sony had refused to license the technology to anyone else for any reasonable fees and thus maintained a lock on the market and the pricing... and that was the reason the price never came down. Shit! My original unit has long since broken and I have long since abandoned Minidisks.
• Then came digital cameras. Again, Sony jumped in with THEIR answer to the evolving standard storage media at the time, their memory stick.... proprietary, expensive, and non-standard. This time I didn't bite, but watched the same behavior... the memory stick, while adopted by some never came down in price and never was released from the Sony control. (Their prerogative of course.)
• Now they've introduced their UMDs (Universal Media Discs), a proprietary new medium , yet ANOTHER proprietary format?!? It's almost unbelievable -- they're kind of like the Microsoft of the electronics industry except they don't have near the control and monopoly. No thanks, I don't need their proprietary solutions that are incompatible with anything else I own....

  Come to think of it... I'm not so surprised, or maybe it's a lucky thing Sony's Beta never became the standard, while I wasn't really there to be part of that decision in my purchasing power... but maybe VHS was the better choice after all (even though it wasn't quite as good technically).

  Just my $.02

  Anyway, thanks for the article, a good read....

So you're saying that farming reduces GDP?

The OP said that having farming in the calculation for GDP reduces the number that results.

Somebody asked why that would be, and I came up with what I think is a reasonable explanation.

The fact is that we pay a huge amount of money to farmers as subsidies and various other incentives.
Given this it seems reasonable that, depending on how the GDP numbers are calculated, that taking a huge welfare recipient out of the equation might change the result.

The basis for the whole tax thing is the public records. Here
is an article I happened upon which explains it pretty well. If you don't like how they say it, they do provide references.
As to why it came up, whenever I hear about farm subsidies, or other things like that, it pisses me off that people whose lifestyle depends entirely upon leeching off of me do not have the basic human decency to be grateful. They prefer to try and shove their attitudes, which are a huge reason for their poverty, down the throats of those who are providing for them.

I think it's important to present the facts about the welfare states when it comes up. How else will they ever be able to get their words and actions in the same universe?

So, when I lived in the US, all those corn (ADM?) commercials that I saw on PBS weren't representing that the company made lots of money?

I'm not sure what you are talking about here. PBS is Public television, and as such doesn't have commercials.

You seem to think that Terri's husband has her out on his front porch. She's in a hospital. Several courts have upheld the right to remove her artificial life support. Even BUSH thinks that the husband should have the right to decide in these cases. He signed into law such a system while he was governor of Texas.

Btw, it's perfectly legal to take a dog to a vet and have it put down. It happens probably millions of times a week.

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/153690_mars23. html It's not covered in this article, but the local paper where I live had a story about the Marsdial, when it was launched.

Evidently, Nye's Father was a Vietnam POW, and managed to stay relatively 'sane' (he wasn't crazy, when he got back, but wasn't totally normal, either. Kind of like those guys from WWII who did math during sense deprivation)

No, Nye was stuck in a chain-link fenced area, with a small shed to huddle in from the rain for most of that time. He had lots of sticks to play with, and made thousands of sun dials. Years later, he tried to start a sun dial store, but the idea didn't go over too well, so I guess Bill Nye now has a whole bunch of sun dials in his storage. We all need an outlet. Not everyone uses /.

He even made the sundial used on the Mars Rovers.

Intel is trying to release Linux drivers at the same they release hardware. They are also trying to create a hardware copatability matrix. If you are a system builder or VAR this would be very helpfull. Some background:
http/news.com.com/Intel+more+active+in+desktop+Lin ux/2100-7344_3-5465225.html?tag=nefd.top/ http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstech nology/2002099285_intelasialinux24.html/ http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstech nology/2002099285_intelasialinux24.html/ http://techrepublic.com.com/5100-22_11-5465929.htm l?part=rss&tag=feed&subj=tr/

Intel is trying to release Linux drivers at the same they release hardware. They are also trying to create a hardware copatability matrix. If you are a system builder or VAR this would be very helpfull. Some background:
http/news.com.com/Intel+more+active+in+desktop+Lin ux/2100-7344_3-5465225.html?tag=nefd.top/ http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstech nology/2002099285_intelasialinux24.html/ http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstech nology/2002099285_intelasialinux24.html/ http://techrepublic.com.com/5100-22_11-5465929.htm l?part=rss&tag=feed&subj=tr/

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/business/apbiz_story .asp?category=1310&slug=Film%20Digital%203%20D

who investigated themselves and found themselves not-guilty for torture

the sad thing is all these abuses just increase the hate and distain for USA, make no mistake USA will pay for its crimes one way or another

but the world is safer right ?

What does the military need a robo-car for anyway?

Supply convoys. Do you remember that story from last year where troops refused to go on a supply mission because it was too dangerous? From DARPA's 2004 FAQ:

Q: How will autonomous ground vehicle technology benefit the military?

A: The military is looking toward a future in which manned and unmanned systems work together on the ground and in the air to provide enhanced capabilities for U.S. forces. For an example of the utility of unmanned ground systems, consider Operation Iraqi Freedom. The combat troops moved quickly toward Baghdad, and were followed by supplies and materiel. Protecting the supply lines was critical. In the future, unmanned systems may be able to conduct resupply missions without using humans as drivers, and without requiring additional troops for protection.

how many in IT are 25 to 35 now? Because that's the age when many people have kids now. My wife was in IT till our son was born. She's staying home with him. Although not as many moms stay home while the kids are in school, a lot more stay home with them for the first year or so.

About 45% are home atleast a year -- "55 percent of women who gave birth between July 1999 and July 2000 returned to the labor force within a year of having their babies". "Of the 41.8 million kids under 15 who lived with two parents last year, more than 25 percent had mothers who stayed home, according to a Census Bureau report."

Some might think this is a bad thing. But "You're not how much money you have in the bank."

Ultimately, the *real* solution to mitigating the problem of taxes' regressive nature against the poor is to cut taxes as much as possible and eliminate as many govn't services as possible, leaving more of the the money in the pockets of private individuals, not politicians...


Our tax rates are much lower than Norway and Sweden but yet the number of children living in poverty there is WAAAY lower. By your logic they should have more children in poverty, non? So what's your explanation? The evidence clearly shows that there is a direct corelation between government transfer of wealth to the poor and decreased rates of poverty. So where does Reganomics stand on this one?

Damn. Dunno where the trailing / came from... here is the correct link:

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/business/aptech_stor y.asp?category=1700&slug=Computer%20Piracy

"It's a competition of different groups racing to release pirated software over the Internet," said Seth Kleinberg, a 26-year-old Los Angeles man who, with a high-school education and a home computer, cracked the computer industry's toughest copyright protections.

Kleinberg, who lives with his dad, faces between five and six years in prison when he is sentenced in July.

Regarding why no OpenOffice - well, I guess the OpenOffice lobbiests just didn't know as nice restaraunts to take the decision makers.

I built a Myth system last year, so you can be sure that this issue has concerned me greatly. But I am still optimistic that we're going to see the system actually work for a change.

I don't know if the flag was Michael Powell's idea or not, but he was appointed by Clinton. Funny ways of regulating whole industries, as well as coziness with Big Hollywood, are much more Democratic traits than Republican.

Anyway, Powell's out, the broadcast flag has been successfully challenged (at least the first step), and this is an issue that can get people excited.

I am betting the Republicans gang up and squash the broadcast flag before it comes into effect, mostly because it can make them look very good to their constituents. For one thing, they can do something very loudly to protect consumers from Big Bad Government. For another, they can twist Hollywood's nose (the GOP is no friend of big movie studios, believe me). And the kicker is that they can somehow blame it all on Clinton.

All you need is someone like John McCain to start making noise about this -- he's gone after cable companies before and is pushing cable a la carte -- and people will line up to back him.

It's very easy to speak persuasively about letting Joe Sixpack (or Jane Sixfigure) keep a DVD archive of Masterpiece Theater (or Pimp My Ride). It's much harder to explain how being able to take your shows with you is a mortal threat to God, Mom, and The American Way(TM).

The Republicans in Congress will be able to colonize C-Span with catchy populist rhetoric, while anyone defending the flag -- it would have to be a Democrat, maybe Sen Feinstein (D-CA, who wrote a bill to throw people in jail for sharing screeners) -- would have a hard time not looking like a shill.

For some perspective, there was a very good op-ed piece in the Seattle Times on March 1 about retooling the FCC after the Powell era.

I am no Republican, but it's clear that they have the most to gain from scuttling the broadcast flag, and very little to lose. I wouldn't trust Democrats give up a chance at regulation, or to piss off Hollywood.

They could combine spinoffs from their iLoo Microsoft potty. (Sure, they denied that it was a real project.)

Unfortunately, your rights are decided by 51% of the mob standing outside the unemployment office. They can be voted away in the blink of an eye. They'll be starting with the 1st amendment when these kids start voting.

With the way things are going, all those pesky laws will be voted away pretty soon.

My parent comment was moderated up, and then moderated down as "Flamebait", for being too negative about Microsoft.

Funny thing, though, someone is even more negative than I, a few stories later: Richard Clarke on Microsoft security: "Richard Clarke, former White House cybersecurity and counterterrorism adviser, harshly critized Microsoft's security track record. 'Given their record in the security area, I don't know why anybody would buy from them.'

There was recently a case in Washington State where a suspicious mother had picked up the phone to listen to her daughter's conversation with one of her friends. Well it turns out the friend was a suspect in a robbery and the mother was called to testify. Now the testemony has been ruled inadmissible for similar reasons.

I'm so sick and tired of the words "Innovation" and "Technology" used in the same sentence coming from the mouths of Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer (Story from earlier)

Netscape pretty much goes under for 4 years, has limited resources, and out comes Mozilla from scratch.

IE sits for 4 years and festers. A company with unlimited resources is going to just stick a label on it and call it #7 with no innovation.

From www.m-w.com
Main Entry: innovation
Pronunciation: "i-n&-'vA-sh&n
Function: noun
1 : the introduction of something new
2 : a new idea, method, or device

Demand for the GameCube last year was hurt by the lack of hit games for the console. - Bloomberg

uters and other news agencies have reported out of Japan that Nintendo's net profit has fallen 43 percent in the latest quarter, and that the videogame maker has also cut its forecast for the full year by more than one fifth, citing a strong yen and weak sales of the GameCube. - Reuters

Only one Nintendo title made it to NPD's Top 10 list: "Pokémon FireRed" for the Game Boy Advance. The company's highest-selling GameCube game, "Pokémon Coliseum," ranked 25th, according to Lowenstein. - Seattle Times

The company now expects that by the end of June it will have sold 21 million to 22 million Xboxes since the product debuted, up from an earlier forecast of less than 20 million. - CNET News.com

The Home and Entertainment division, which includes the Xbox and all games sales, reported sales of the console up 30% on the same period last year... Ferrango

PS: Name one killer game that came with psx2 on launch. Ready to Rumble, Timesplitters.. I think not.

PSPS: I remember having the same type of debate when xbox originally came out. Which just proves slashbotters have no insight on how consumer markets work.

Did everyone miss the rather scary, sexual connotation used by Ballmer while hyping the Xbox2?

It's going to blow by Sony.

Also from TFA: His voice escalated to a crescendo as the audience laughed and applauded. "I'm feeling a little frisky on this topic right now!" he added.

Whoa there, big boy. Though it did remind me of a good line from Family Guy:

Peter Griffin: Hey, where's my VCR?
Hillbilly #1: Dangit, Buck, I wanna use the sex box.
Hillbilly #2: It's *my* sex box. And her name is Sony.

people will be harassed and intimidated merely for taking photos of public landmarks!

Here's a link to an article about it.
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/20 01857104_lovemath13m.html

Interesting stuff.

The main problem regarding contracts is that their whole theorization stands on the equality of the bargain power, which does NOT exist when you look at an employee/employer relationship.
Besides, the first famous case of freedom of speech reduction occured when Micro$oft fired someone who took pix of G5's @ MS HQ and posted them on his personnal blog... There was no contract there, exept the hiring contract that, I suppose, didn't not mention a critical and ironical vision of the corporation.
The question to be asked is where to draw the line between freedom of speech, which can even help a corp. to progress, and deference to one's employer. Somehow, I cannot help but being pessimistic about the issue.

Tedious twaddle says the coward.

Pray tell, in what country does the U.S. have a military base where the local government seeks the base removed.

Every time an American soldier rapes someone in Japan theres a pretty big push to kick the Americans out. Panama was a pretty risky occupation there for a while when the canal ownership transfer didn't look like it was going too smoothly.

Pray tell, oh enlightened one, about trade barriers.

Very well, lets talk about Iraq, and the oil embargo, and how the US ignores barriers whenever it feels like it. Or how America (and other countries, America isn't alone in this) backs such barriers only when it benefits corporations, not consumers or laborers.

God, please do do tell me just what those 8 million Iraqi's were doing last weekend

Wait, were we there for the election last week? Only months ago it seemed we were there to depose Saddam, and months before that to protect the United States from WMDs, and months before that to protect the United States from Al Quaeda terrorists, all the time using battle maps drawn up before 9/11 when the plan was to go to war for oil.

I'm glad Bush finally got his story in synch with reality. Those votes only cost us about $12 billion each... At that expense you'd think that we could spare the $200 to fly Iraqis in America to one of the 8 voting places set aside for them. With the names of the campaigners not revealed until days before the election, and very few of those even campainging, confusion was rampant, and voters had no choice but to vote randomly. This is the democracy we died for? At least women's rights will be restored to pre-american-interference levels. Who knows, maybe in a decade or two being publically Christian will be non-fatal again.

Oh, and BTW, you people know very little about the Patriot Act

And what do YOU know about it, other than what you've read in the law itself and what little your government admitted to you?

But hey, cowards like you just like to spout off nonsense and run, thinking "gee I showed that guy" when all you really showed is that you can spout off a lot of stuff.

$199 gets you a PC, with everything you need except a keyboard, mouse, and monitor. It even has a decent speed processor (granted it is only a Semperon)

And before you ask -- yes, these sorts of deals are commonplace. PC hardware is damned cheap, Mac hardware is so much more it is really hard to compare it.

Microsoft still hopes that people will buy the Encarta software for additional tools not included in the search engine, such as a guide that helps children finish their homework. The Encarta features will make a huge difference in setting MSN Search apart from rivals, said Charlene Li, an analyst tracking the search industry for Forrester. "Here is this objective, fact-based information that you need," she said. "It's really hard to find that objective point of view" online.

For one, the use of the online Encarta isn't completely free. If you make an Encarta search, you'll notice a clock ticking in the left side of the screen: you only have two hours of "free" Encarta (remember, kids, there ain't no such thing as a free lunch, especially coming from Microsoft). It seems that it won't stay free for long.

So, here's the dilemma: should one use non-free but objective Encarta or free but biased Wikipedia?

For example, shortly after 9/11, President Bush landed at Offut Air Force Base. All the news stations broke in to report that "Air Force One has landed in Omaha." Come on! Not wise.

To add, don't forget that thanksgiving 2003 the press asked where Bush was. The aides responded "Iraq" and the press thought that they were joking. They actually kept that secret.

http://www.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/meast/11/27/sprj.irq .main/

Althought I do like this part: The White House has updated its account of an airborne conversation in which a British Airways pilot was said to have wondered into his radio if he had just seen Air Force One and was told that it was a Gulfstream 5, a much smaller plane. White House officials first said the British Airways pilot had talked with the Air Force One pilot. Bush aides now say the conversation occurred between the British Airways pilot and an air-traffic-control worker.

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/politics/200 1806972_bushturkey04.html

Where I live (Northwest USA), the ski areas are closed down this winter due to lack of snow. Guess what: local weather varies a lot more than global average temperature. Global warming means global, not local. Your backyard will vary a lot, and that variation tells us very little about the global trend.

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/snowsports/2 002157838_skiworkers22.html

And now Verizon joins SBC and BellSouth in adopting MS formats for TV over their fiber nets. As SBC tries to buy AT&T. MPEG was a nice format while it lasted, but in 10 years it'll be as ubiquitous as MacWrite.

MS recently gave up it's option to buy land in nearby Issaquah. To me, that says they aren't as interested in expanding as they used to be

This will probably interest you. Microsoft is looking to add space in the Redmond campus for 10000 - 12000 new additional employees over the next 10-20 years.

Me: The "white news media" that I've seen, namely the US media and the BBC, are mostly liberal.

You: Ever watch Fox news? It might as well be run by the Ku-Klux-Klan!

That's why I said mostly. Fox is a well known conservative news network. Talk radio is also fairly conservative. However, that does not change the fact that the majority of the news sources are liberal.

When rednecks refer to "Indians" with their lips, the inflexions scream the N-Word and various other racial epithets... I've heard broadcasts from the Aryan Nations that are hijacked from regular network television here in Texas that clarify this point with nauseating accuracy.

I had the displeasure of attending college in Texas. I do understand what you're talking about and I certainly sympathize. Yes, racism is a large problem there, although most Texans would proclaim they are not racist. As a white person in Texas, I heard every derogatory term from my white friends including "nigger", "wetback", "chink", etc. I couldn't stand the hypocracy any more and ended up moving to Seattle. In the seven years since I've moved here, I haven't heard any of those terms uttered from any of my white friends - not once!

Rednecks are a small minority of the population outside of the US south. But, there are a lot of them still living in the south-eastern states. The south is an odd place where the US Civil War is still called the "War of Northern Aggression". Everywhere else in the US the Civil War is referred to as the time when slavery of our black population ended. In some ways, I still think the south would like to go back to that time. However, there are a lot of people, white people included, who violently disagree with them.

As for the twisting of the regular network television by the Aryan Nations, you have to remember that they purposefully take things out of context and warp them. That certainly doesn't make the original news source bad or non-liberal. That doesn't mean that all or even the majority of the Slashdotters talking about Indian citizens are conservative, racist, rednecks.

Given all that, I still stand by my argument that talk about Indians is not racism just like talk about Canadians or Americans is not racism. Nationality is separate from race.

I've seen doctored programs on National Geographic that describe Indians as cannibals, necrophiles, rapists, and generally less than human.

Where? This is all news to me. National Geographic is a well respected association. You said these where doctored. I'm assuming that they where edited by some racist with an agenda?

Also, witness the now-legendary "Tsunami Song" that targets at East-Asians as well as South-Asians and The 'Rat-Eaters' broadcast.

Sorry, I can't comment on that yet. I'll have to look at those when I get home.

The yanks make fun of our caste system, but the truth is that the racial and anti-semetic bigotry and hatred in this country is an order of magnitude more than in any other Asian Country (Surpassed only by Western Europe).

That is ridiculous. I've read a news reports of the tsunami-sticken area where members of India's Untouchable class are told to "go away" and they "will be fed only if there is extra food". People are literally dying because this bullshit, primitive caste system. I can't believe you would actually defend it. There they said there is "no deliberate caste discrimination". However, to me that sounds just like those white people from Texas who say they aren't racist and then say "nigger" and "wetback".

There is a large difference between our countries. When a natural disaster hits Texas or Florida, people don't die from lack of food because they're black or hispanic. If you remember, Florida was hit by hurricanes four times last year. Even though there are a number of racists in those areas, there are also a number of good people who aren't racist who made sure everyone got what they needed.

...Global Warming supporting scientific community have mountains of evidence...
But they have NO evidence that this warming is caused by human activity.

There is quite a lot of evidence, or at least indicators. A simple one:
As a child, did you ever make a small ecosystem? Basically a plant sealed in a bottle. If you did not, I can tell you that increasing carbon dioxide increases temperature. And as a comparison, burning fossile fuels releases a lot of stored carbon dioxide. Now, the earth is not a closed system like the bottle, but we can suspect that the same principles apply. Get it? Or was I too smart-@ss for you?

Climate, like much in nature goes in cycles, some of very long periodicity compared to the short human life time.

As I, and many others, have mentioned before on Slashdot, scientists do not dispute that climate changes over time. What they worry about is a much more rapid change than has been seen before. And before you say we don't have measurements from the past, we do. We can check trees, sediments, ice layers in the Arctic and Antarctic to see temperatures and levels of carbon dioxide.

Think of it as a pendulum slowly going back and forth. It was already going in the direction of slightly warmer, and no, it has not reached the temperature levels it has in the past. However, when we compare the speed of change, it looks like someone whacked this pendulum hard and sent it rocketing in one direction. And this at the same time that humans started releasing a lot of greenhouse gasses. How far will the pendulum go? Where will it stop? Is there something we can do about it? That is the questions being discussed.

And before the old lie of volcanoes releasing more greenhouse gasses pop up - read this. Volcanoes release more pollutants such as sulfur dioxide, but NOT as much carbon dioxide. Not even close to what humans release.

A physical bank, on the otherhand, is without fail, a physical bank.

Make sure that ATM isn't fake, police say

From the Seattle Times:

Ciarelli had sought legal help from groups including the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), a San Francisco-based organization that Gross has represented in the past.

The EFF declined to take Ciarelli's case.

Given that the EFF is defending AppleInder and PowerPage in a similar case, the question comes to mind: why not defend ThinkSecret?

Does anyone know?