Slashdot Mirror

That may be so, but other links could have been used. Here's RTE news, for example, or tothecenter, or any of a hundred other links you could get from Googlenews or your search engine of choice.

daveschroeder continued: "The fact of the matter is that Habeas Corpus was not suspended in any way, shape, or form."

The co-sponsor of the bill, Senator Leahy, explicitly stated that the bill was about habeas corpus: "The truth is, casting aside the time-honored protection of habeas corpus makes us more vulnerable as a nation because it leads us away from our core American values and calls into question our historic role as a defender of human rights around the world."

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/11/technology/11apple.html?n=Top%2FReference%2FTimes%20Topics%2FSubjects%2FI%2FiPhone

Yeah, exactly what they deserve. I'm no fanboy (don't own any Apple products), but I can recognize when a product has some signs of success.

This will probably be most (it is more than 12 hrs that the story was posted, so the likelihood of this being read diminishes exponentially inverse).

Why are the Slashdot editors so lame and lazy? Instead of pointing to Reuters for the story go a link to the original editorial by the New York Times!

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/18/business/media/18times.html

It explains that editorials are now free. That some (but not all) the archives are free.
That the decision is driven by the importance of search engines and the traffic that they generate. That
they see readers of the archives as potential opportunities that should not be turned away.

Edit the story, lazy slashdot editors!

dmg

What is actually happening - the way I see it - is that Mozilla (corporation/foundation) is finally abandoning its mail&news client formally. In practice this has been true for years - the number of mail&news developers is currently 2, compared to about... 150 IIRC people working on the browser (although this includes people working on joint core code, such as XPCOM, NSPR, necko, XUL, etc).

In recent years Mozilla is being bankrolled by Google: The choice of Google as the default search engine in Firefox means added revenue of > $5 Billion a year. Google has been paying back with some drops from that bucket - a few tens of Millions a year, see e.g. here (NY Times).

It seems to me (as an outsider and an occasional Thunderbird/Seamonkey extension developer) that effectively means that Google's interests have become, and will be from now paramount in Mozilla's policy. Now, if you're Google, you would be more interested in developing and expanding the use of a browser rather than a fast, modern, full-featured and easily extensible mail and newsgroups client (which I feel Thunderbird is _not_yet_, unfortunately) - this would mean people will tend not to use your webmail system and your web interface for newsgroups. This is bad for you, since you'll be seeing less ad revenue, you'll be able to collect a lot less useful marketing information about users, and your efforts to centralize users' Internet experience around services-servers-content which you control or are involved in will be impeded. So, obviously, you will want the money you donate to Mozilla - which should have 'rightfully' been divided differently (say, at least 25% for e-mail and news work - and that's being modest and not making 'affirmative action' demands).

Now you just need to spin this somehow, e.g. like this.

There's more info in the NYTimes' own article: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/18/business/media/18times.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/18/technology/18blue.html?_r=1&oref=slogin&ref=technology&pagewanted=print

Coverage of the announcement plus some comments on the fact that 3 of the "big" firms, IBM, Google & Sun are now squarely behind ODF. As for the announcement - the 35 FT developers on OOO can't be a bad thing - OOO has the potential to become a large force for good, but it has always been a couple of steps away from where it could, and should, be - hopefully this might help rectify that.

For sure I believe we should use the science. My point was that lack of science, or scientific evidence, doesn't necessarily mean the cure doesn't "work". For sure we should reject the attempts of alternative practitioners to promote their products through pseudo-science, but we also must be careful about hubris, particularly when dealing with the human body and the difficulties of carrying out the kind of controlled studies needed to determine if something works or doesn't. I recommend the following article, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/16/magazine/16epidemiology-t.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
on the difficulties of epidemiological studies.

Unfortunately their innovative Times Reader appears to be pay-only as of yet.

One would think that there are two sure-proof things NY Times could do to secure large audience for their advertisers.

1. Their image as a respect newspaper, not just NY, not just US, but world-wide. Their journalists are respected, and their content verified, their analysis intelligent.

2. Better presentation than the average site.

Well, Times Reader is that point 2. If they gave me the reader for free, I'll most likely to there for my shot of news and editorials, since it's simply better than browsing a web site.

And hence, the NY Times won't have to compete with the other blogs and sites as much as if they remained free only in-browser.

You can get the article here.

Consumers' rights are based on the general idea of "fair use," which isn't a right defined in law. Instead, it's a general defense against claims of copyright infringement. If the recording industry were to sue an individual for copying music from their CDs onto their iPod, they would likely lose because the idea of fair use generally determines that consumers can use their own music in reasonable ways.

Unfortunately, fair use has not been upheld in clear court precedents or in law to the point where it can really be called a right. This leaves things enshrouded in a grey fog where consumers assume that anything they can do with "their music" is fine, while the music industry seeks to find new ways to sell its products.

Let's dissect those two paragraphs. A simple Google search yields the following reference as its first result: http://www.copyright.gov/fls/fl102.html

Let me quote the salient points from the U.S. Copyright Office's website:

One of the more important limitations is the doctrine of "fair use." Although fair use was not mentioned in the previous copyright law, the doctrine has developed through a substantial number of court decisions over the years. This doctrine has been codified in section 107 of the copyright law.

Section 107 contains a list of the various purposes for which the reproduction of a particular work may be considered "fair," such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research. Section 107 also sets out four factors to be considered in determining whether or not a particular use is fair[...]

So, what have we learned about TFA?

1. The author of TFA claims that fair use is not actually defined in law. This is contradicted by Section 107 of Title 17, U.S. Code. Section 107 even helpfully enumerates examples of fair use.
2. The author of TFA claims that there have been no clear court precedents upholding fair use. In fact, there have been many, too numerous to list here, but I'll simply mention the landmark case of the RIAA vs. Diamond Multimedia which established that the RIO, and all subsequent MP3 players, are non-infringing devices used for space shifting. It is because of this legal precedent that we have a market segment for MP3 players at all.
3. The author of TFA totally misses one of the oldest and best-known prior legal precedents establishing the right to time-shift and space-shift, the infamous Betamax case, Sony vs. Universal City Studios
4. The author apparently doesn't know how to do basic fact checking using a resource like Google.

The article was great right up until the section on fair use, and I couldn't really stomach reading the rest of the article because the author clearly didn't bother checking any facts. Whether that's due to laziness or some twisted personal interpretation of U.S. copyright law, I couldn't say. I thought maybe this article was written from a European/British perspective (since fair use is not an established right in the U.K., for example), but no, he's using American spellings and seems to be writing from an American (albeit ignorant) POV. Sad, really.

The info about the dispute between Apple and NBC is interesting, as it explains Apple's comments about needing to charge almos

nytimes article

allbusiness.com article

I suppose the DOJ has jurisdiction if it's criminal, but price fixing allegations that don't rise to that level are the FTC's to look at?

> I never understood why the iPod became so immensely popular compared to other personal players in the first place.

You're falling into the classic geek (well, human) trap: you assume other people have the same values and priorities as you do. (This is why geeks don't make good salespeople.)

Writing in the NYT, David Pogue summed it up thusly:
In fact, at least six factors make the iPod such a hit: cool-looking hardware; a fun-to-use, variable-speed scroll wheel; an ultrasimple software menu; effortless song synchronization with Mac or Windows; seamless, rock-solid integration with an online music store (iTunes); and a universe of accessories. Mess up any aspect of the formula, and your iPod killer is doomed to market-share crumbs.

Looking at just the specs doesn't capture it. It's the experience. You can buy other cars that are as fast as a Porsche, for example, but subtleties of handling, fit and finish, and the ergonomic experience separate the well designed products from the ones that merely bolt the pieces together.

The iPod provides a superior experience to those people who just want to listen to music, and don't care or don't want to think about formatting, music organizational structure, alternative software managers, etc. And no matter how many times that's said, there will still be a camp of people who don't get it. That's fine. Go play with linux. ;-)

While Comcast's recent actions threaten to stifle innovation in this space, Netflix and Amazon Unbox will eventually win. Not to mention YouTube. What is interesting is that related industries such as video search engines and content producers like this will flourish.

I'd like to see some statistics on how many people upload videos vs. how many download/watch them.

http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/g/bill_gates/index.html?offset=120&s=oldest&inline=nyt-per

New Jet Eases Travel Hassles For Bill Gates
By LAURENCE ZUCKERMAN

Microsoft Corp's chairman, William H Gates, buys $21 million private jet with his own money; Gates has long been known for flying coach and barring his employees from flying first class
October 27, 1997 Technology News

A study has shown we produce as much carbon dioxide walking the same distance as driving a car. I hope that's not the pollutant you meant.

While it's quite obvious that smog isn't natural, and is unhealthy to us, there's still no definitive studies to say we are killing the planet. Most 'save the planet' campaigns still rely more on 'common sense' (which is just about non-existant, imho) instead of scientific proof. I used to believe all that rot. But then I started asking questions instead of just taking what they say as gospel.

If it were safe, convenient, and cheap, I'd take public transportation, too. It's none of those things in my area. (Safe could be debated, I suppose.)

Click here for no ad link.

BTW, even Bush could find this link in the article easily, so please don't mod.

Just imagine the effort it would take to continually watch even a small percentage of the population at any given time. Not to mention, effective surveillance would require people to do the watching (not just machines) and word would get out about it, no matter how oppressive the regime.

Hedge fund money from the United States has paid for the development of not just better video cameras, but face-recognition software and even newer behavior-recognition software designed to spot the beginnings of a street protest and notify police. [...] his company's software made it possible for security cameras to count the number of people in crosswalks and alert the police if a crowd forms at an unusual hour, a possible sign of an unsanctioned protest.

China Security and Surveillance is involved in some of the most controversial areas of public security. [...] one of the company's growth areas involved surveillance systems for Internet cafes; the government is trying to clamp down on users of the cafes in order to discourage pornography and prostitution.

In Shenzhen, white poles resembling street lights now line the roads every block or two, ready to be fitted with cameras. In a nondescript building linked to nearby street cameras, a desktop computer displayed streaming video images from outside and drew a green square around each face to check it against a "blacklist."

I also like that they managed to get a picture of a chick in there as well!

If it means my computer gets to look like that thing from TFA, then I'm SO in!

I am not against the government using FISA to intercept communications to fight CRIME ('terrorism' is vague, and overly subjective) but I am AGAINST the government doing so without warrants, going against their own prescribed checks and balances. The FISA court was set up to handle this type of thing. The FISA court was sidestepped by the current administration for years before it came to light. The government should do what it can to maintain national security, however it should do so LEGALLY.

Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm...

Like the only publicised use of the USA PATRIOT Act so far has been to bust some guys in Vegas for influencing the local government? They could just as easily been prosecuted under RICO. It's been 6 years since 9/11. Where's Osama? How many detainees in Gitmo are going to be prosecuted for it? I'm sorry, but shredding 'that goddamned piece of paper' and spending all that money on not one but two wars with only 'Well, we helped the Germans shut down Al-Queda's competitors so we need to make these changes permenant' just doesn't cut it with me.

And the government trying to tell me 'Hey, we didn't have a clue this was gonna happen' doesn't wash either when the CIA says 'Hey, we screwed up and transposed 2 letters in this guy's name. We bad. Sorry.'

Bin-Laden was prosecuted and convicted in absentia for the previous bombing attempt against the WTC back in the 90's. Why did we need USA PATRIOT to go after him when RICO was just fine? Bin-Laden has never been a priority. If he were, we'dve had him long before 9/11. Whether or not the Powers That Be had anything to do with pulling off the 9/11 attacks is immaterial. The fact remains they certainly benefited from the attacks.

You have no duty to consume advertising. There is no implied agreement between you and the sponsor whereby the sponsor finances a Web site in exchange for your perusing a sales pitch. Advertisers know that many people will flip past a magazine ad or hit ''mute'' when a TV commercial comes on. That you have automated the avoidance of ads shows not ethical laxity but technological ingenuity.

[...]

If no one consumed advertising, it might in theory vanish along with the TV shows and Web sites it finances. However, other means of financing could be found. Public television relies on fund-raising and sponsorship; many European countries finance TV through taxes. Another possible outcome: your embargo raises the quality of ads, if such a thing is possible, so they seize your eye or stay your finger from the mute button.

A likelier prospect, if many follow your lead: online advertisers will develop countertechnology to thwart this blocking. Then you'll overcome their advance, and they'll return to their labs, creating a rivalry like that of early last century when designers of artillery shells vied with designers of battleship armor. Each spurred the other to greater achievements. A result was World War I. O.K., maybe that isn't a happy result, but progress of a sort was made. And without anybody singing about soda pop.

They're the good guys!

A few minutes with Google shows clearly that the corporation filed chapter 11, and that those proceedings protected the assets of corporate officers and other significant assets worth at least 900 million dollars, and furthermore the bankruptcy court denied compensation to over a half a million victims who apparently missed a filing deadline.

An apparently well researched and well respected source of information on the corporate fiasco that was the Dalkon Shield is this book:
Bending the Law: The Story of the Dalkon Shield Bankruptcy (by Richard B. Sobol. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1991.)

A review of the book containing enough details to confirm that a simplistic interpretation "AH Robins went out of business" is not sufficiently detailed to be a meaningful contribution to the discussion:
Reviewed by Cary Coglianese, Department of Political Science, University of Michigan

An article from the day that bankruptcy was filed:
Robins, in Bankruptcy Filing, Cites Dalkon Shield Claims

A band named after the fiasco, with MP3 files online:
Dalkon Shield

Please, get a login, use it, and post under your real name. It might help provide you with incentive to read more and mouth off less.

Oh yeah, nobody would ever use a private plane as a weapon, right?

>>Do you really think that Giuliani would be worse than Bush/Cheney?

When fielding a fascist baseball team, it like being forced to pick between Ruth, DiMaggio, and Mantle. Ruddy has every instinct and skill to carry on the Bush/Cheney traditions.

To quote Ruddy:

Freedom is about authority. Freedom is about the willingness of every single human being to cede to lawful authority a great deal of discretion about what you do.

In the context of the speech in which this was given (NY Times),it almost sounds reasonable. In the hands of President Giuliani it most definitely won't.

This is less likely in a B-52 that has a fairly large crew, but sometimes military pilots fly off and purposely crash into a mountain. In that case, they never recovered any of the 4 500 pound conventional bombs the airplane was carrying: how much more exciting would it be if there were six lost nukes somewhere on land? (There are a half-dozen missing nuclear weapons in the sea, but very few have been lost on land, and they've all been mostly recovered, from what I know.)

Red Square is located just outside the Kremlin, along it's Eastern wall. In the late 15th Century, people came to this square, called Torg or Market Square, to purchase food, livestock, or other wares. By the late 16th Century, it was renamed Trinity Square, and served as the main entrance to the Kremlin. It got the name Krasnaya Ploschad (Red Square) in 17th Century. In this sense Krasnaya (Red) means beautiful. The Pokrovsky (St. Basil's the Blessed) Cathedral, the Lenin's Mausoleum and the State History Museum are located on Red Square.

Hotel-Rates.com page for Maxima Irbis hotel in Moscow

This sites for a bell foundry in Russia states "Krasny" means "red", and "red" means "beautiful".

Photo tour of Moscow, in which the phrase "Red Square (meaning beautiful square in Russian)" is written.

Another tourist of Moscow reports, "Our first stop is St Basil's Cathedral at the end of Red Square. In Russian, it is Krasne square meaning red or beautiful."

Russian traditional costume seller says, "The word "krasnoye" meaning "red" became identified in the people's minds with "prekrasno-ye" meaning "beautiful". Moscow's most beautiful central square is called "Krasnaya Ploshchad" (Red Square)."

You may notice that Red Square isn't really red...it is paved with black and grey stones. In the Russian language, "Krasny"("red") also meant "beautiful", so "Krasnaya Ploschad" can also be translated as "Beautiful Square". The translation "Red Square" which is now used, was established in the 20th century.

talks about the modern link that still exists between "red" and "beauty"

Eduard Shevardnadze relays to the US State Department Chief of Protocol that krasny can mean "beautiful" as well as "red" -- in 1987.

Russia

Red Square is located just outside the Kremlin, along it's Eastern wall. In the late 15th Century, people came to this square, called Torg or Market Square, to purchase food, livestock, or other wares. By the late 16th Century, it was renamed Trinity Square, and served as the main entrance to the Kremlin. It got the name Krasnaya Ploschad (Red Square) in 17th Century. In this sense Krasnaya (Red) means beautiful. The Pokrovsky (St. Basil's the Blessed) Cathedral, the Lenin's Mausoleum and the State History Museum are located on Red Square.

Hotel-Rates.com page for Maxima Irbis hotel in Moscow

This sites for a bell foundry in Russia states "Krasny" means "red", and "red" means "beautiful".

Photo tour of Moscow, in which the phrase "Red Square (meaning beautiful square in Russian)" is written.

Another tourist of Moscow reports, "Our first stop is St Basil's Cathedral at the end of Red Square. In Russian, it is Krasne square meaning red or beautiful."

Russian traditional costume seller says, "The word "krasnoye" meaning "red" became identified in the people's minds with "prekrasno-ye" meaning "beautiful". Moscow's most beautiful central square is called "Krasnaya Ploshchad" (Red Square)."

You may notice that Red Square isn't really red...it is paved with black and grey stones. In the Russian language, "Krasny"("red") also meant "beautiful", so "Krasnaya Ploschad" can also be translated as "Beautiful Square". The translation "Red Square" which is now used, was established in the 20th century.

talks about the modern link that still exists between "red" and "beauty"

Eduard Shevardnadze relays to the US State Department Chief of Protocol that krasny can mean "beautiful" as well as "red" -- in 1987.

Russia

You're thinking way after the evolution of morality occurred :) For instance, apes dispay behaviour we would consider moral.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/20/science/20moral. html?ex=1332043200&en=84f902c89c5a9173&ei=5124&par tner=digg&exprod=digg

You are incorrect. You are assuming that living in social groups is inevitable, which I dispute.

I did not make that assumption.

You are also making an untestable assertion which I will not accept. Evolution does not produce morals. What morals do bears have? What morals do fish have? What morals do plants have?

If you want to engage in a debate or attempt to rebut my point, attacking it rather than a strawman might help.

I never said that evolution inevitably lead to morals, nor that evolution inevitably lead to social groups. I that that the combination of evolution and social groups inevitably leads to social groups.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/20/science/20moral. html?ex=1332043200&en=84f902c89c5a9173&ei=5124&par tner=digg&exprod=digg

(From the New York Times website: properly cited, and being used for criticism and discussion so if you want to complain that reposting it here is violating copyright, I call if Fair Use so go stuff yourself.)

From http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/02/magazine/02rubin .t.html?pagewanted=print

September 2, 2007
The Music Man
By LYNN HIRSCHBERG

Rick Rubin is listening. A song by a new band called the Gossip is playing, and he is concentrating. He appears to be in a trance. His eyes are tightly closed and he is swaying back and forth to the beat, trying at once to hear what is right and wrong about the music. Rubin, who resembles a medium-size bear with a long, gray beard, is curled into the corner of a tufted velvet couch in the library of a house he owns but where he no longer lives. This three-story 1923 Spanish villa steeped in music history -- Johnny Cash recorded in the basement studio; Jakob Dylan is recording a solo album there now -- is used by Rubin for meetings. And ever since May, when he officially became co-head of Columbia Records, Rubin has been having nearly constant meetings. Beginning in 1984, when he started Def Jam Recordings, until his more recent occupation as a career-transforming, chart-topping, Grammy Award-winning producer for dozens of artists, as diverse as the Dixie Chicks, Slayer, Red Hot Chili Peppers and Neil Diamond, Rubin, who is 44, has never gone to an office of any kind. One of his conditions for taking the job at Sony, which owns Columbia, was that he wouldn't be required to have a desk or a phone in any of the corporate outposts. That wasn't a problem: Columbia didn't want Rubin to punch a clock. It wanted him to save the company. And just maybe the record business.

What that means, most of all, is that the company wants him to listen. It is Columbia's belief that Rubin will hear the answers in the music -- that he will find the solution to its ever-increasing woes. The mighty music business is in free fall -- it has lost control of radio; retail outlets like Tower Records have shut down; MTV rarely broadcasts music videos; and the once lucrative album market has been overshadowed by downloaded singles, which mainly benefits Apple. "The music business, as a whole, has lost its faith in content," David Geffen, the legendary music mogul, told me recently. "Only 10 years ago, companies wanted to make records, presumably good records, and see if they sold. But panic has set in, and now it's no longer about making music, it's all about how to sell music. And there's no clear answer about how to fix that problem. But I still believe that the top priority at any record company has to be coming up with great music. And for that reason, Sony was very smart to hire Rick."

Though Rubin maintains that his intention is simply to hear music with the fresh ears of a true fan, he has built his reputation on the simultaneously mystical and entirely decisive way he listens to a song. As the Gossip, which is fronted by a large, raucous woman named Beth Ditto, shouts to a stop, Rubin opens his eyes and nods yes. This is the first new band signed to Columbia that he has been enthralled by, but he is not yet sure how to organize the Gossip's future. "Let's hear something else," Rubin says to Kevin Kusatsu, who would, at any other record company, be called an A & R executive. (Traditionally, A & R executives spot, woo, recruit and oversee the talent of a record company.) "We don't have any titles at the new Columbia," Rubin explains, as Kusatsu, the first person Rubin hired, slips a disc out of its sleeve. "I don't want to create a new hierarchy to replace the old hierarchy."

Rubin, wearing his usual uniform of loose khaki pants and billowing white T-shirt, his sunglasses in his pocket, his feet bare, fingers a string of lapis lazuli Buddhist prayer beads, believed to bring wisdom to the wearer. Since Rubin's beard and hair nearly cover his face, his

It sounds as if the record industry is upping the rates for people they know they can get it out of. I would draw a parallel between this and colleges upping tuition to current students.

Last night I read an interesting article in the New York Times that centered around Producing Guru Rick Reuben: for whom I have tremendous respect. In amongst the 10 pages typed is what he deems to be an effective model to bring the recording industry back: charge everyone a subscription fee.

I'm not too fond of a model where the user only owns a subscription and the record companies have 100% control over the content. But Reuben is right, if only in principal. The only way the recording industry can sustain itself over the long term is to change its way of doing business.

Okay, then let's compare Pensions in Europe (the bastion of none free think socialism) and Chile. Better yet, I'll let you all look that one up.

If I were you, I wouldn't use Chile as an example of a private pension plan working. The average return for people who went into the private system is lower than that of those who stuck with the public system, and overhead costs in the private system (run by a few for-profit companies) are significantly larger than that in the public system. Look into Thatcher's system in Britain for another great example of private overhead costs eating away pension money contrasted to the 1% overhead in America's Social Security system.

Also, the entire reason for social security is to provide security in old age and not a system of haves and have-nots based on how well/lucky they invested -- like Chile's system did -- and to protect against elderly poverty -- like Chile's system didn't.

Okay, then let's compare Pensions in Europe (the bastion of none free think socialism) and Chile. Better yet, I'll let you all look that one up.

If I were you, I wouldn't use Chile as an example of a private pension plan working. The average return for people who went into the private system is lower than that of those who stuck with the public system, and overhead costs in the private system (run by a few for-profit companies) are significantly larger than that in the public system. Look into Thatcher's system in Britain for another great example of private overhead costs eating away pension money contrasted to the 1% overhead in America's Social Security system.

Also, the entire reason for social security is to provide security in old age and not a system of haves and have-nots based on how well/lucky they invested -- like Chile's system did -- and to protect against elderly poverty -- like Chile's system didn't.

Ah. I see the problem here. I was writing about the world as it actually exists, and you were writing about an abstract definition of capitalism that has not and will not ever exist.

Ah but for a brief period capitalism did exist, from the late 1700s to the early 1800s. In some places it lasted until the US Civil War.

Case in point: given that much of the labor force in the US was held in slavery in the 1830s, wouldn't it be fair to say that they were not, in fact, engaged in the free "voluntary exchange" of their labor?

You could say slaves only if you included indentured servants, those who were made serfs until their debt was paid off. Fact is is most slaves were in the south, which had a lower population density, more people lived in a given area of land in the northeast than did the same amount of land in the south. As for slavery, studies in economics of the period conclude that without the civil war slavery would have ended within a generation anyway. Forced labor as the slave provided is economically unsustainable. It costs more to buy, own, and secure slaves than it does to pay freemen a living wage when those slaves want to be free.

This is why you don't leave your keys in the car, and why, if your car is taken from you, you file a report with a branch of the state. This is why people who have no home don't just come and take yours while you are away on vacation -- because the state will come in with laws (and guns if necessary) to protect your property

None of these exhibit capitalism. Capitalism is a free and voluntary exchange. Having your car stolen isn't voluntary, neither is having someone move into your home uninvited. Yes, it's government's job to do something about these. The purpose of government is to protect it's citizens, mostly from invasion but also from criminals who would deny someone their rights. Otherwise for other things civil society can do a better job than government. I recall back in the late '80s and early '90s Mother Teresa wanted to setup a shelter for the homeless and abused in NYC, however the city had so many requirements and regulations that would of had to be met it became too expensive. If the city had gotten out of the way she could have helped many people. Look at those in India she helped, though she was Catholic many Hindus admired her. Heck even China has realized capitalism, pseudo capitalism, even if it's corrupted, works.

A nuclear power plant has some waste to dispose of but lacks the space to dispose of it. It is willing to pay for someone to take it. I have a place to put it, which is my own private property. They pay me. I bury the stuff in my backyard. This is free, voluntary exchange. Now, in your capitalist Utopia, would there be anything to stop me, or not?

Yes, because it's still a threat to your neighbors, those downwind, and those downstream. Let me clue you into something, though most Libertarians would abolish the EPA, I actually support a strong Environmental Protection Agency. Not only do I support one at the state and federal levels, I'd actually support one for all of earth, I'd support one for space if we ever colonize space. Pollution doesn't know anything about imaginary lines drawn on a paper map by humans. Take a look at the Inuit of the Artic Circle, the Inuit have high blood count of PCBs and other manmade toxic chemicals they'd never made or used themself.

• Toxic chemicals poison Inuit food.
• Our Stolen Future: PCB contamination of Inuit.
• High PCB Levels Found I

Since you haven't made much effort to persuade me otherwise, I maintain that there exists a design philosophy difference between Apple and the rest of the cell phone industry, and that this philosophy is a carry over from their PC design philosophy. Honestly, I didn't really expect the address book example to be contentious. Programmers (like bjourne) who understand the relative horse power requirements of different storage and search solutions should know that most phones on the market in the past several years had enough horse power to solve this problem, and there has been plenty of time. For crying out loud, iPhone was in development for three years. Apple designed a new phone from scratch. Surely Nokia or Motorola could have built a decent address book in all that time? The fact that they did not should tell you something. Furthermore, you don't need to be a programmer to get this. Anybody who has ever filled up their address book should know the frustration of being forced to pick which ones to carry with you on your phone. I chose this example, rather than others, because quite honestly it's not really controversial and it's pretty easy to understand.

There are counter examples, of course, perhaps there will soon be another, ring tones, which we are likely to discover next week will be absurdly restricted on iPhone: you'll be able to pay to use any section of a song you like as a ringtone, but you might not be able to use your own audio files as ringtones. If that happens, it will be an interesting counter example to my argument. Note, however, other music related restrictions that people didn't like about iTunes (e.g. DRM) turned out to be due to the requirements of industry partners, and Apple has been quietly working in the background to move the industry away from excessively restrictive DRM, at signifiant risk to Apple's own business model, I might add, as evidenced by today's announcement regarding NBC Universal. (DRM is only one factor in that negotiation, of course, but it is a factor.)

It would be amusing to run style (1) comparing a large sample of Anonymous Coward postings to those by logged in users. If you really think the words I use are too big, please consider that you came to Slashdot, not ZDNet, and presumably nobody forced you. Didn't you know that Paul Murphy uncovered the astounding truth that Slashdot posts have an average reading grade level higher than some other tech industry rag forums (see: Are Mac Users Smarter Than PC Users? )? The Macintouch crowd put us Slashdot geeks to shame, though, so we can't get too smug. Yeah, I'm perhaps a bit of a geek, since I really do read the dictionary for fun sometimes. And Dude... uh... like, did you fail to notice that I'm posting a series of connected statements intended to establish a proposition, logged in using my real true name no less, while you are calling me names as an anonymous coward? I'm definitely not worried about being perceived as the friendless geek with no social skills in this conversation. Since I don't care what you think, try calling me a sociopath next. You'll still be wrong, but you'll get to use a big word and I won't be much affected by your tantrum. Heck, maybe you're not a pedant, you only play one on Slashdot. Perhaps I give you insufficient credit for a fine sarcastic wit.

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For kicks, I ran

roughly 8% of our own species' genome consists of bacterial and viral genetic material. some of the segments are nearly complete with at least one case of a virus being resurected called Phoenix. it seems to be a fairly common process, viruses can lose critical genes while trying to replicate in cells which can leave them unable to reproduce as usual, the genome becomes integrated into our own. there are also cases [herpes for example] which can integrate their genome with ours in certyain cells and effectively become dormant, they start the cycle again when and if certain conditions are met. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/07/science/07virus. html?ei=5088&en=492dd1d370217836&ex=1320555600&adx nnl=1&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss&adxnnlx=1163032655-5n RqAOkgWGeKvh/qQcSYCg

Don't be fooled by his attempt to confuse the issue. Microsoft Windows is EXPENSIVE, in my opinion, and becoming more so. We often have had to re-load Windows XP to remove system instability caused by sloppy coding and by system files modified by malware.

It has been more than 2 years since WinXP service pack 2 was released (August 25, 2004), even though updating Windows XP from an SP2 CD requires downloading more than 170 Megabytes of files, a difficult problem when there is no internet connection or only a dial-up connection. The Windows XP updates of just last Patch Tuesday were more than 20 Megabytes.

Microsoft seems to have delayed releasing an SP3 for Windows XP to try to discourage people from using their XP operating system. But the really major problems in Windows XP stopped only after the SP2 was released.

We have had eight different kinds of problems with Microsoft update; Microsoft Update gets my vote for the buggiest Microsoft software, and that's a tough title to get. Other people have many, many different kinds of problems with Windows Update. See, for example, Windows Update Discussion Group.

I'm guessing that tens or hundreds of millions of hours and billions of dollars are lost every year because of the sloppy coding in Windows XP. Steve Ballmer took Bill Gates' position as the Chief of Grief.

Corporate Rule: Never use a new version of Windows until after the 2nd service pack has been released, and others have had a chance to see if there are problems. It is expensive in re-training costs to use a different operating system, so a company that has a virtual monopoly can abuse the customer by releasing unfinished and sloppy software, and still not lose most of its customers.

Remember that the cost of Windows is much more than the cost of the OS itself for many reasons besides the high maintenance costs. Microsoft's biggest customers are the giant computer manufacturers, and they want to manipulate people to buy new computers. So, each new version of Microsoft Windows requires more powerful hardware. Those who use Windows are dragged through the adversarial business schemes of one of the most anti-customer large corporations in the world, in my opinion.

Microsoft Windows maintenance is so expensive that people throw away their computers and buy new ones because the maintenance cost is so high. See, for example, the New York Times article, Corrupted PC's Find New Home in the Dumpster. (Free NYT registration required.)

Many people depend for making a living on maintaining Microsoft Windows. Many of those people have no other way of making a living. They often try to confuse discussions of the maintenance costs of Windows and discussions of Microsoft's adversarial practices; don't be fooled by their misdirection.

As David Pogue recently wrote, "When the iPhone came out, everybody grumbled and moaned about how Apple had chosen AT&T as its exclusive carrier. I grumbled along with them--and then it hit me: Whom wouldn't people have grumbled about? People also hate Verizon, and T-Mobile, and Sprint."

Billy Bragg read the MySpace terms of service, thought through the consequences, and did something about it.

That nothing like this this happened, was a very commendable achievement of the city government.

Absolutely. That is the only possible outcome of political demonstrations. Too bad there wasn't more of this, eh? Sadly, just things like this, this, and this.

I was using 89 billion per year...

I looked around for your 6.5 billion per week figure and could not find it.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/17/business/17leonh ardt.html?ex=1326690000&en=7f221bfce7a6408c&ei=509 0
The Times is known as a liberal paper and they are saying 700 billion total- at a rate of about 2 billion per week.

http://www.kiplinger.com/businessresource/forecast /archive/The_True_Cost_0720723.html
Kiplinger says about 2.5 billion per week:
The war in Iraq is exacting a large taxpayer toll that will fuel much debate and affect the ability of Congress to find funding for popular domestic programs. With 158,000 troops in Iraq, at least until September and probably much longer, the war costs $300 million a day -- or almost $10 billion a month.

Here...
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2006/10/selling_so lar_t.php

It looks like 1kw is 22,000 (for a non battery backed up system) so that's $33,000 for a non battery backed up 1.5kw system. That's lower than the $50k per house subsidized ($100k per house raw cost) I was using a couple years ago.

Its not clear that this is unsubsidized but I think it is before subsidies (and is MUCH cheaper than when I did my last rough calculation).

So say $40k for a battery backed system (and 7k per 10 years for replacing batteries and inverters but ignoring that).

At 40k, you'd get 6,200 houses per week or about 322k houses per year.

Per wiki..
In the year 2005, there were approximately 113,146,000 households in the United States.

So it would take 3 centuries to give them solar power.

Drop the cost factor to a 10th of what it is now and it would take 30 years (exciting!).

I think they are going to bottom out at about $5k per system + batteries if you want those and then inflate up after that.

The cool thing about solar is that it doesn't add energy to the environment. Burning coal/Nuclear/Fusion adds energy that was stored in the past. Solar just converts current energy that was shining on the house anyway.

This is really cool to read and compare to the NY Times profile of the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. The feature popped up on Slashdot a few months back.

While the LHC is much bigger and has more advanced detectors, the basic ideas are similar. Both take free protons, then send them through multiple accellerators, finally delivering them to the big circular accellerators for the collisions.

The LHC is 17 miles around, while the Tevatron is only about 4 miles. The LHC will cause collisions at 14 TeV compared to Tevatron's 2 TeV. The LHC is completely underground, while the Tevatron is visible on the surface.

Once the Tevatron is decommissioned, there will still be the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider in New York doing high energy particle physics in the US, and I understand Fermilab and other American institutes will be involved in processing the deluge of data produced by LHC.

I doubt that this was put into place specifically to poke the Democrats - they just wanted to be first in the South. Besides, everybody wants in on the act. The South Carolina Republican party wants to move theirs to Jan 19th as a result of Florida's vote. California moved its primary from June 6th to Feb 5th earlier this year.

I doubt that this was put into place specifically to poke the Democrats - they just wanted to be first in the South. Besides, everybody wants in on the act. The South Carolina Republican party wants to move theirs to Jan 19th as a result of Florida's vote. California moved its primary from June 6th to Feb 5th earlier this year.

right. you realise that eu auto and steel industries are highly unionised and they still kick your ass? the us auto industry is suffering from too much success. they've been really successful at lobbying govt. to protect them from economic reality. while the rest of the world has been developing cheaper, safer, more efficient cars produced in better and better plants, the us has been building hummers. 30 years ago if your car wasn't made in the us, or possibly scandinavia, it was a steaming pile. then they decided they didn't want to compete any more. already your workforce is one of the least skilled and poorly trained in the western world, it's hilarious that you want to erode that human capital even more. how the hell do you produce cheap cars if you have to teach your workers to read first and lose productivity because they don't see doctors until they're nearly dead?

Hasn't every single customer canceled their orders for these things?

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/03/business/worldbu siness/03airbus.html?ex=1330578000&en=10af4fc9a19a 34e5&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

Why not put this system in planes people might fly in?