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You mean the wiretapping the Democrats in Congress just voted to OK?

MMM, is that the smell of hypocrisy in the morning?
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/06/washington/06nsa .html?ei=5065&en=4e05f95a4b60ac78&ex=1187064000&pa rtner=MYWAY&pagewanted=print

And as for getting arrested, see how your buddy Hugo Chavez handles the media.

Amanda Hesser did a NYT piece on Sous Vide cooking a while back. Pretty good overview of the technique along with some history.

A warrant is not required to listen to communications between foreign nationals outside of the United States

President Bush signed into law on Sunday legislation that broadly expanded the government's authority to eavesdrop on the international telephone calls and e-mail messages of American citizens without warrants.

I remember reading a column by the physicist Paul Davies in which he showed that the multiverse model of the universe leads inevitably to the conclusion that we're just a computer simulation within a simulation within a simulation:

"For every original world, there will be a stupendous number of available virtual worlds -- some of which would even include machines simulating virtual worlds of their own, and so on ad infinitum."

- A Brief History of the Multiverse

That said, maybe we just need the cheap bastard who's running our little MMPORM(ultiverse) to ante up for the expansion pack.

The reason you don't get much real news is that you read crap. You certainly didn't read the New York Times on December 16, 2005. The only reason you know about it is because of the media. You have two choices here: either you get disclosure of one of the most egregious civil rights violations in modern history along with much heated debate, or it is kept secret and no one knows about it. I know which one I'd pick.

If you're so troubled by the Britney's and the Lindsey's of the world, stop buying tabloids and start buying a real newspaper.

14.August 2nd, 2007 1:39 am

Compare the collapsed steel truss bridge with the reinforced concrete arches of the intact bridge in the background of some of the photographs. The concrete bridge consists of inherent stable arches, a design which has stood the test of time since the Roman Empire. Even if one arch of this bridge had fallen, the remaining arches would have remained intact and loss of life and injury would have been limited to the failed section.

Compare this with the more recent bridge, composed of steel trusses which held up a concrete deck. The entire 1000 foot long section was tied together structurally to save money. It had no tolerance for partial failure. If one section failed, the entire section would go down. This more modern bridge was ugly as well as a poor design. This bridge was designed by modern engineers who have no sense of beauty and think they can calculate every decision on the basis of cost/benefit. They practice a destructive type of design called value engineering - taking out the expensive stuff if it's redundant or optional.

We don't yet know which piece of the structure failed, but it may have been a small one - such as rusted steel, steel which looked OK on the surface but had deteriorated in its carrying capacity, perhaps in tension. The connection between concrete rebar and the supporting steel space frame.

This poor design based primarily on cost considerations has been required all over this country in countless projects for the past 50 years.

One section of the old San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge failed in the 1989 Loma Prieta Earthquake because there wasn't enough "give" for the shaking due to the quake. Two lives were lost - one by a woman who tried to drive her car across the gap and who would have survived had she waited for help. However, the rest of the bridge remained and will be used until this fall when it is destroyed after the new bridge opens.

The new San Francisco-Oakland bridge which is replacing the old bridge has the same basic flaw as the bridge which collapsed in Minneapolis today: If any one piece failes, the entire bridge will fail catastrophically! The new Bay Bridge is designed to look elegant and be a landmark - but it has no redundancy in an area with severe earthquakes. It too was designed by modern engineers. It will be a disaster waiting to happen, just like the World Trade Center and the Route 35 Minneapolis Bridge, and the New Orleans levies. America no longer has the leading structural engineers of the world designing its infrastructure. How many of them owe their jobs to our failing political system?

It is ironic that the lack of redundancy in any structure also makes it inherently more susceptible to terrorism - witness the collapse in the World Trade Center.

America is in bad shape, and we seem to be addressing our problems in a piecemeal and ultimately stupid way.

-- Posted by MJ

I'm still amazed at how people still push to help girls succeed. It makes me think it has become a larger political issue about advancing women's views, and not because they are actually struggling. All the recent evidence points to girls succeeding beyond boys, and yet, where are the pro-boy programs? You will always be able to point out a specific area of work that men outnumber women, or vice versa, but that doesn't mean we should rectify that "problem". There's a much larger issue where boys are being left behind.

Women have outnumbered men at colleges for ~25 years now. Women outnumber men 58% to 42%.

75 percent of girls aim for college degrees vs. 66 percent of boys

The study found that not only are girls in the nation's 100 largest school districts graduating at a ">72 percent rate versus 65 percent for their male counterparts, but that the gender gap is even wider among minority students.

there is a road to fascism and ignoring human rights. we both understand that. you allude to a slippery slope

so when the usa moves a yard down that road, you are going to get your panties in a twist and scream bloody murder

but when other countries are a MILE down that road, we're not going to say one peep

that's my problem with you

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/02/world/middleeast /02iran.html

just picked that story from this morning, out of many i could have picked over many days and many countries

how do you feel about this story?

i mean, do you care about the universal human issue of basic human rights? or does the concept only enter your mind when the usa is involved somehow?

do you have a human conscience? or an american conscience?

the world doesn't revolve around the usa. why do you?

i have a problem with people who scream bloody murder when the usa infringes rights (and it does, and it needs to be criticized for that)

but i never hear a peep from that crowd when other countries do far, far worse

why is that?

there is a road to fascism and ignoring human rights. and although some countries are a mile down that road, we're going to scream bloody murder only because the usa has moved a yard down that road

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/02/world/middleeast /02iran.html

how do you feel about this story this morning?

i mean, do you care about the universal human issue of basic human rights? or does the concept only enter your mind when the usa is involved somehow?

do you have a human conscience? or an american conscience?

the world doesn't revolve around the usa. why do you?

how upset are you about this?

do you have a human conscience on the issues of basic human rights?

or do you just have an american conscience?

the world doesn't revolve around the usa. why do you?

It was not the Kodak Star cameras. It was the Kodak Instant Cameras

http://www.kodak.com/global/en/service/faqs/faq009 8.shtml

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9D0 7E5D61139F936A25753C1A963948260

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=940 DEFD61F3EF934A25756C0A96E948260

On top of that the Kodak Star Cameras uses the 110 and 135 (35 mm) film sizes:

http://www.kodak.com/global/en/consumer/products/t echInfo/aa13/aa13pg2.shtml

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/110_film

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/135_film

35 mm film (135 size) is still available, and I believe you can still purchase 110 size film as well.

http://www.walgreens.com/store/productlist.jsp?CAT ID=100555&selectedBrand=

http://www.walgreens.com/store/productlist.jsp?CAT ID=100384&navAction=push&navCount=1

It was not the Kodak Star cameras. It was the Kodak Instant Cameras

http://www.kodak.com/global/en/service/faqs/faq009 8.shtml

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9D0 7E5D61139F936A25753C1A963948260

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=940 DEFD61F3EF934A25756C0A96E948260

On top of that the Kodak Star Cameras uses the 110 and 135 (35 mm) film sizes:

http://www.kodak.com/global/en/consumer/products/t echInfo/aa13/aa13pg2.shtml

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/110_film

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/135_film

35 mm film (135 size) is still available, and I believe you can still purchase 110 size film as well.

http://www.walgreens.com/store/productlist.jsp?CAT ID=100555&selectedBrand=

http://www.walgreens.com/store/productlist.jsp?CAT ID=100384&navAction=push&navCount=1

A quick Google search turned up these.

http://www.kodak.com/global/en/service/faqs/faq009 8.shtml

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9D0 7E5D61139F936A25753C1A963948260

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=940 DEFD61F3EF934A25756C0A96E948260

A quick Google search turned up these.

http://www.kodak.com/global/en/service/faqs/faq009 8.shtml

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9D0 7E5D61139F936A25753C1A963948260

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=940 DEFD61F3EF934A25756C0A96E948260

A silly AC taunts:

XP did not do well - No, it only managed to capture 97% of the desktop market.

By M$ standards and needs, even your inflated share is not good enough. It took two or three years for XP to gain majority share, which is one of the reasons M$ has delayed Vista for so long. Their absolute growth has not been anything good and Wall Street was not convinced - M$'s stock price has remained flat since the tech crash of the late 90's:

Microsofts dominance is being challenged as never before by Google in particular, and Wall Street refuses to believe the company will regain its edge. The companys stock has largely remained flat since the end of the dot-com era.

Ouch, that's got to hurt. Wait till they see how well Vista is really doing. It's all over for them.

This is definitely not a car oriented towards commuting suburbanites. But nobody is claiming that. For zipping around the city though, I could see this being ideal for myself and a lot of my friends/coworkers. First, $13000 is pocket change to spend on a car in any major metropolitan area. By the time I finish writing this post, probably $2 million worth of expensive luxury import cars will have driven past my window. I don't know anyone who drives a car worth less than twice that amount. And of course, at that price, the car pays for itself in about six years with what you stop spending on gas (~$2000/yr per family.) And then there is the issue of parking--it looks like this car is about as long as others are wide, meaning you could virtually back in. In an age where people are paying $250k for a parking space, this could also be a big selling point.

But let's not even talk about that. Let's not even talk about the horrid spelling, grammar, and general rambling idiocy of the lawsuit. Let's not even consider that these questions have been asked and answered[1] for years with the iPod. Let's actually focus on the actual issues at hand.

The iPhone doesn't have a user-replaceable battery, but it is replaceable. This is the same as all iPods for the last several years. And no, the iPhone isn't the first of these devices to have a battery that is soldered. Various iPod models have already had soldered batteries. Also, the battery replacement information was available the day the iPhone shipped. So, nothing new here.

As to the "difficulty" of finding the information on Apple's site:

Main iPhone support page -> Battery Service: FAQ and iPhone Service: FAQ

and

Apple Batteries -> Apple iPhone Batteries

Wow. Difficult.

Additionally, asking any Apple retail store, customer service representative, dealer, authorized service provider, etc., will yield a direct and immediate answer about battery replacement.

It's also utterly and ridiculously false to say that a new battery is required every year. All lithium ion batteries have about the same lifetime. The iPhone's lithium ion battery is no different. Most people will not need, or feel they need, to replace the battery in the lifetime of the phone (i.e., while they own and are using it). The "400 charges" thing isn't any 400 charges; partial charges are just that: partial. This lithium ion battery is no different from any other.

Also, the battery is covered by the warranty, and if you choose to extend the warranty to two years with the $69 AppleCare Protection Plan for iPhone, the battery is covered under that as well. There are even already third party replacement options. As with iPod, more are sure to come.

The customer also doesn't have to be without a phone for several days, and claiming that they do because there is a fee for a loaner is ridiculous. Just pretend that the battery replacement costs $29 more, then. You are not without a phone at all: you swap SIMs, sync once with iTunes, and it will literally look, act, feel, and behave like your phone, with your phone number and all of your data. Seeing how Apple has done such programs in the past, the loaner phone will probably be a new service phone or a factory-refurbished phone in a brand new enclosure (so it looks physically brand new). The total price is almost the same as the official iPod battery replacement plan was for years. If you choose to not have a phone in the meantime, that's your choice.

A recent New York Times article by Joe Nocera sums it up best:

I'm convinced the answer is that the chief executive, Steven P. Jobs, and Apple's design chief, Jonathan Ive, are design snobs, who care more about form than function. Larry Keeley, the president of the design firm Doblin Inc., wrote me an e-mail message after he'd seen the innards of the iPhone, which several Web sites have now published. The battery, he told me, lacks the normal metal jacket, making it ''thinner and lighter, while also making it more difficult for consumers to handle or dispose of.'' He added: ''This is clear evidence that they are optimizing the INSIDES of the phone to the OUTSIDE form factor that they have designed. It is far more common and much cheaper to design the oth

For some reason, the one in the story asked me to log in. Here's a non-registration link.

I know Nokia is Finnish. I believe you brought up Asia at some point and I was responding to that. India does in fact have Apple retailers my mistake but several tariffs make the products ridiculously expensive. Here's the article I was referencing: "iPod Gray Market Booms in India" http://www.wired.com/gadgets/mac/news/2006/08/7163 9

Also here is the NYTimes article about asian manufacturers being worried about the iPhone: "Rival Manufacturers Chase the iPhone: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/02/technology/02cel lphone.html?ex=1185940800&en=692ba75438328700&ei=5 070

If you can't log in I'll just C&P the entire article for you here:

Rival Manufacturers Chasing the iPhone

By MARTIN FACKLER
SEOUL, South Korea, June 29 -- While Americans have been blitzed with news about the iPhone's debut, many in South Korea's and Japan's technology industries initially greeted Apple's flashy new handset with yawns.

Cellphones in these technology-saturated countries can already play digital songs and video games and receive satellite television. But now that analysts and industry executives are getting their first good look at the iPhone, many here are concerned that Asian manufacturers may have underestimated the Apple threat.

Analysts and executives in South Korea say that the iPhone, with its full-scale Internet browser and distinctive touch screen with colorful icons, is more than just another souped-up cellphone. They fear this Silicon Valley challenger could leap past Asian makers into the age of digital convergence by combining personal computing and mobile technologies as no device has before.

"Apple's impact will be bigger than Asian handset makers think," said Kim Yoon-ho, an analyst in Seoul at Prudential Securities. "The iPhone is different from previous mobile phones. It is the prototype of the future of mobile phones."

The fear now is that Apple may repeat in wireless communications what it accomplished in portable music with the iPod: changing the industry. And just as when the iPod came out six years ago, big Asian manufacturers like Samsung Electronics and Sony could find themselves wondering what hit them, say analysts and industry executives.

Here in South Korea, manufacturers are taking the threat seriously, and are rushing out their own iPhone-like handsets. By the end of the year, Samsung, South Korea's biggest cellphone maker, will unveil its Ultra Smart F700, with a large touch-controlled screen displaying rows of icons, much as the iPhone does.

LG Electronics, another large Korean handset maker, has begun selling a smartphone in Italy that can view full-size Web pages. Pantech, which sells most of its phones in the United States under the carriers' brand names, will also unveil its first touch-screen smartphone this fall.

Sony Ericsson plans this fall to introduce its latest Walkman phone, the W960i, which will feature a touch screen and memory space for 8,000 songs. Nokia of Finland, whose N95 is probably the closest competitor to the iPhone in the United States, said it also plans a touch-screen cellphone called the Aeon, though the company has not said when it will go on sale.

Motorola, based in Schaumburg, Ill., plans to sell this summer the Razr 2, the successor to its once-popular Razr upgraded with a Linux operating system and full-scale Web browser.

"If the iPhone changes the rules in the cellphone market, then we have to adapt as soon as possible," said Yi Seung-soo, a cellphone designer at Pantech. "We can take advantage of being a follower," he said.

It's the same method Korean manufacturers have used before -- quickly developing similar products that are cheaper but which contain a few more features than Apple, he said. That strategy has not diminishe

Google FTW - http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/28/business/28ebay. html

When the face of the top first person shooter or real time strategy game changes from year to year, it is a very difficult to garner a strong fan base.

However, in South Korea this is not the case, where since it came out in 1998, StarCraft: Brood War has been at the top of professional gaming. The OnGameNet StarLeague has been around broadcasting StarCraft matches since 1999 and Munhwa Broadcasting Corporation, one of the top four South Korean television networks, started it's own MBC StarLeague of their own around 2001. Both of these leagues are going strong thanks to their fans' love of Blizzard's creation. I am one of these fans of StarCraft pro gaming in Korea, though I don't contribute to their revenue, I follow the leagues through Team Liquid's coverage and watching live streams of the matches late at night on SC2.org.

The rules of the game are critical to its excitement. Letting certain glitches be used by the players, or limiting the game's UI can make or break balance of a game. In games with unknown information, keeping players in a sound proof booth is important too. There were a few notable instances where a pro gamer was about to make a fatal move, but stopped at the last second due to the crowds reaction to the impending encounter.

It will be interesting with the advent of StarCraft 2 on the horizon whether or not Starcraft: Brood War will continue to be successful in South Korean pro gaming. Many of the gamers and commentators have said they will go where the money is. Will the fans support their tried and true game of 9 years or will they move on to its next iteration? Whatever the case, this article hints that with 20% of South Korea's population following E-sports, pro gaming will be alive and kicking for quite a while.

On Friday, the panel released some details of the drinking allegations, but emphasized that they were anecdotal and had not been corroborated. [...]

At a news conference here Friday, the panel's chairman, Colonel Bachmann, said via telephone hookup that the reason the anecdotal references to the drinking incidents were included in the report that the panel delivered to NASA was not to suggest that the agency necessarily had an alcohol problem, but to emphasize the importance of heeding flight surgeons.

The panel did not ask for details of the accounts, including reports of heavy alcohol use by astronauts immediately before flights, and does not know how any such episodes were resolved, he said.

"In none of these can we say factually they did or did not occur," he continued, adding that the panel's mission had been not to investigate allegations but to point out that health and safety concerns might have been ignored.

To quote Dean Acosta, deputy assistant administrator for public affairs at NASA, "There was no effort to silence Dr. Hansen. That's not the way we operate here at NASA. We promote openness and we speak with the facts." He went on to say that, according to NASA policy, "the restrictions on Dr. Hansen applied to all National Aeronautics and Space Administration personnel", also adding that "government scientists were free to discuss scientific findings, but that policy statements should be left to policy makers and appointed spokesmen." link. Maybe you shouldn't believe everything that you read in Rolling Stone Magazine.

...gaping flaws in both their business model...

Would you really trust anything that Yahoo puts out? Yahoo has previously ratted on journalists and bloggers to the Chinese Authorities. Worse: They were unapologetic about it, and kept doing it. One Yahoo 'satisfied customer' got ten years jail for criticizing the Government.

So when Yahoo trundles along offering me neat tracking software, umm, no thanks. There's no telling where you might end up reading about it. Now sure, in the U.S. you don't get locked up for criticizing the government, but things do get leaked or given to the wrong people. Anyone who has ever written a comment that was less that P.R.-worthy should consider that. Yahoo has shown itself to be less than trustworthy.

http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0909/p01s03-woap.htm l
http://www.rsf.org/article.php3?id_article=14884
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/12/business/worldbu siness/12search.html?ex=1185508800&en=a0a01819d3ec c0ca&ei=5070

You fool! There is nothing else worth talking about in the entire industry!

You might think people are obsessed.

I realize that they're talking about very, very small wires, but how about the big fat 12 gauge suckers in my wall? The price of copper is going through the roof. Is there any chance we can wire up our house with left over charcoal? I love to see the price of copper drop so we can go back to the days when a penny was actually worth a penny (or less).

After recent rash of copper and metal thief, I hope this will cut down on cooper and metal thieves... if Darwin doesn't win first:

http://www.wbir.com/news/local/story.aspx?storyid= 44907
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/17/us/17brfs-copper .html?ex=1185336000&en=a76b664a9720e53d&ei=5055&pa rtner=RRCOLUMBUS
http://www.wyff4.com/news/9484796/detail.html
http://www.sabcnews.com/south_africa/general/0,217 2,152949,00.html

Subscription is free for anyone with an .edu email address
http://www.nytimes.com/gst/ts_university_email_ver ify.html
Dozens of Blogs also carry times select articles, although you may want to aviod them as posting the article in full (like the site below does) violates copyright
http://welcome-to-pottersville.blogspot.com/

God does not answer prayers. This is established scientific fact.

Adopting an argument made by lawyers for NBC, the judges then cited examples in which Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney had used the same language that would be penalized under the policy. Mr. Bush was caught on videotape last July using a common vulgarity that the commission finds objectionable in a conversation with Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain. Three years ago, Mr. Cheney was widely reported to have muttered an angry obscene version of "get lost" to Senator Patrick Leahy on the floor of the United States Senate.

The new research proves that Chinook is invincible in the traditional game of checkers. But in most tournament play, a match starts with three moves chosen at random. In solving the traditional game, the researchers have also solved 21 of the 156 three-move openings, leaving a crack of hope for humans, at least for now.

Where do you live that this happens? I've never lived anywhere where someone picked up for suspected DWI gets his car 'seized'.

New York City has been doing it since at least 1999, though they were authorized under state law to do it for repeat offenders even earlier. See here for an explanation of some of the legal justifications. This policy has been modified a bit over the years, but city cops can still seize your vehicle at the time of arrest.

Seizure and forfeiture are two different things, and a lot of people do get their cars back in court.

How about this?
http://www.nytimes.com/library/national/science/05 3000sci-physics-light.html

What this experiment will ostensibly prove is the EPR Paradox (if I recall my college Q physics), but I'm betting it won't work. It's always sounded great, but I've always strongly suspected it is based upon faulty math...

The military has also showed an interest in bio-fuels. In fact, I believe that was part of the impetus for this Boeing project.

Of course, the military's interest is not ecological, but strategic. They need oil to operate and want a backup for foreign oil. The military investing in bio-fuels is win-win-win because:
1.) It secures their supply
2.) It makes the civillian supply less affected by military demand
3.) Processes and technology the military develops for it are likely to work their way into the civillian market if proven feasible.

In fact, because the military is a little less risk averse, a lot of the initial qualification of blended fuels for aircraft will likely be driven by the Air Force.

NY Times Article on Air Force Bio-Fuel

I'm not sure that Cancer cells have 'undone' differentiation and their own preprogrammed lifespan. I recall reading research that detailed errant stem cells, replicating uncontrolled, directly related to the proliferation of particular types of cancer. In the examples, one type of fast growing cancer had 3x the number of stem cells in it than a slower growing one did. It would also seem to play into the difficulty of treatment, as stem cells are/have to be far more resistant and resilient to environmental influences. (Ref from New York Times).

Of course, this statement can't state that ALL cancers are from stem cells, or that the two types are even in conflict. But it does make more sense if the cancer stems from a cell already able to reproduce forever and just normally chooses not to.

Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants. Pollan points out the corn -> cheap calories -> obesity link in the article. He also criticizes nutritionism, which is in abundant supply in the replies to this post. His book, The Omnivore's Dilemma, is a good read, and quite relevant to the discussion.

This ran a few years ago and was REALLY interesting. Corn in america == money. Farmers have a corn glut to deal with. 100 years ago, they put the extra corn to work as alcohol (whiskey), and soon we had a nation of alcoholics. So then they came up with corn syrup. That hasn't worked out too well considering how fat Americans are.

Next up-- ethanol!

The last guy to try that is serving a 40 year sentence at ADX Florence.

Possibly this is all part of a drive to get people with no technical experience to buy new computers. If you apply patches, Microsoft has control over how fast your computer runs.

For example, Problems with an important Windows component, svchost.exe, can consume up to 100% of CPU time.

On one computer with which I am familiar, the RPC service takes 30%-70% of the CPU time.

I'm not saying Microsoft managers deliberately slow computers. I'm saying that maybe they are not particularly intense about fixing bugs that slow computers.

I'm not the only person who thinks that may be an issue. See this quote from the parent comment: "I've been thinking that MS would come up with something that would make XP less useful - some sort of bug or new type of unpatchable vulnerability to force Windows users to adopt Vista. Maybe this is the beginning of the end of XP."

For a lot of us, using Microsoft software has the feeling of partnering with an enemy.

The person who wrote the parent comment could fix the problem himself. Most people, maybe 99% of Windows XP users, could not. Most people who find that there computer is running very slow will buy another computer. The New York Times article Corrupted PC's Find New Home makes that point.

What's wrong with the above equation? Well, Microsoft is missing from it, yet it is a viable equation. What we are seeing with VmWare is a classic Innovator Dilemma of Christensen lore. I would have added Ubuntu (on VmWare???) but it's still too early to tell as there is nothing really compelling enough in Ubuntu at this stage to bring about a new standard: just because a production ingredient - software services - is done cheaply does not necessarily make a good business or product. In any case, while Microsoft was gunning for Google a far more dangerous and sinister competitor was taking a foothold at the very root of its source of domination. As Ballmer said in a February NyTimes article on VmWare, "Everybody in the operating system business wants to be the guy on the bottom" . I would replace "operating system" with simply "computing". Moore's law, basic economics, and, most of all, what users want are driving the changes. Intel will be at the very bottom, then VmWare being the key value addition on the server, and then stuff goes out the Internet organized by Google, and you, the end user, rely on a string of Apple devices to connect with that information.

I'm not saying Microsoft won't matter, but the companies that make it big in tech sit at the sweet critical value spots in the whole package and right now those spot are moving away from Microsoft. I have no idea why Gates is leaving now when his company is no doubt facing the worst threats of its entire life. At least IBM had its ivory towers of untouchable mainframes built over years of honest work to see it through and that business is still healthy. It also has services which are actually more fundamental to its roots from the days Thomas Watson Sr transformed the company using the skills he learned as a salesman under John Patterson of the National Cash Register. Anyways, the problem with the way big tech growth areas emerge is that once you notice them, it's almost too late to stop the trend. Companies like Xensource will remain dwarfs unless VmWare seriously F***s up. Microsoft got away with heavy handed aggressive tactics against Netscape, but now we all know about those tactics and they won't work quite as well against VmWare and Google. Of the two VmWare is a far worse nightmare because Google could very well be a passing cloud due to the torrential growth of the web: the web will continuously demand new ways of organizing information and it will not be one size fits all so the search engine market will evolve like the dog eat dog market for hard drives (incidentally, that's why I applaud Yahoo's appointment of Jerry Yang as CEO because in my view search is still very much a computing guts business and we need "warrior CEOs" like Gates was to lead such companies). Dominating the guts of computing is the best sweet spot. Apple is also in a very sweet spot because its instinct for design and "grokking" what the user wants is an extremely tangible asset that is not easily replicated. At first I ridiculed the iPhone but now I can't wait to get my hands on one. If I were Microsoft I would harakiri myself and break up into pieces that can more effectively compete against these threats. The value of the individual pieces separated may be greater than their current value. Standard Oil did this back in the early 1900s and that's what actually made Rockefeller a billionaire.

In fact Official Use Only was a category required by the Navy for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's dealings with Nuclear Fuel Services Erwin Plant in Tennessee. This OUO classification meant that after a major incident, a public licensing hearing was held, but nobody attended because the NRC could not even reveal the accident at the NRC licensed plant. The FOUO is being used as a work around to areas where there is required public disclosure (NRC rules) but a national security interest (how Navy reactor fuel is handled). This may turn out to be an abuse, but it is certainly the way it is being used http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/05/us/06cnd-nuke.ht ml. In the past, DOE handled military use of nuclear materials and NRC handled civilian use. Here we have weapons material being converted to fuel under NRC licensing, but with OUO restrictions. This is obviously not working very well at all.
--
Do energy right: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-users -selling-solar.html

It could have something to do with how rising temperatures can cause death.

Or it could be related to fears that rising temperatures may cause higher rates of mosquito born illnesses.

There is also evidence pointing to more potent and prevalent poison ivy.

Let's not forget rising rates of asthma, food supply problems, increasing number and severity of natural disasters, mass extinction and global economic collapse.

All of those are related to our health in one way or another--even the extinction of species. Consider it the global equivalent of the canaries in mine shafts.

Quoted from this article. No wonder someone used it for a worm.

Also discussed here on /.:

Evolution of the 'Captcha'
Posted by CmdrTaco on Monday June 11, @08:36AM
from the why-can't-i-even-read-them-half-the-time dept.

FireballX301 writes

Here is a little snippet from the Fine ruling..... Surveillance techniques that enable the government to determine not only the IP addresses that a person accesses but also the uniform resource locators (URL) of the pages visited might be more constitutionally problematic. A URL, unlike an IP address, identifies the particular document within a website that a person views and thus reveals much more information about the persons Internet activity. For instance, a surveillance technique that captures IP addresses would show only that a person visited the New York Times' website at http://www.nytimes.com/ whereas a technique that captures URLs would also divulge the particular articles the person viewed. They seem to be saying it's more problematic if this surveillance technique is capable of yielding any useful information. Please explain why the government would even want to use any technique that's not useful ? Well, ok, some hypothetical other government, not the incompetent boobs we are stuck with. But you get my point. Another point to consider, the 9th circuit is the most frequently overturned court in the countryhttp://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2 006/11/supreme_court_cleans_up_after.html If reviewed by the supreme court, it very well might not stand.

Surveillance techniques that enable the government to determine not only the IP addresses that a person accesses but also the uniform resource locators (URL) of the pages visited might be more constitutionally problematic. A URL, unlike an IP address, identifies the particular document within a website that a person views and thus reveals much more information about the persons Internet activity. For instance, a surveillance technique that captures IP addresses would show only that a person visited the New York Times' website at http://www.nytimes.com/ whereas a technique that captures URLs would also divulge the particular articles the person viewed.

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Friday in United States vs. Forester that IP addresses and the To/From fields in emails are the legal equivalent of dialed phone numbers and the government can get a court order to obtain them without showing probable cause as would be needed in a search one's house.

The Court extended to the internet a 1979 case known as Smith vs. Maryland, where the Supreme Court found that individuals have no reasonable expectation of privacy in the phone numbers they dial because they transmitted them to the phone company in order to complete the call. However, under Smith, the contents of the calls could not be listened in on without proving probable cause to a judge.

The Ninth Circuit, ruling in an appeal of an Ecstasy-drug ring conviction found that emails' To/From fields and visited IP addresses were the internet's equivalent of phone numbers. For example, the government could get a log that said a person visited to http://66.230.200.100/ (Wikipedia's address). However, the court suggested that knowing full urls are very close to content (e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecstasy) and would likely require a higher burden of proof to obtain than mere IP addresses.

From a footnote in the decision:

Professor Orin Kerr questions whether the decision is about getting this information from an ISP or whether it was from a device installed on a computer surreptitiously. He suggests the latter should require a higher standard, but I'm not sure why? Perhaps it's because that might require law enforcement to enter a person's house?

Apparently ALL anti-virus software gives false positives. Most of the users have little technical knowledge, and the software makers want to give the impression their software is more useful than it really is. I've seen numerous false positives on systems I use. One "virus" was a text file, with a .TXT extension, and nothing in it but documentation!

But why is anti-virus software so important? Apparently only because Microsoft profits more when its software is full of bugs and malware, and Microsoft is very adversarial toward its customers.

The true cost of a Microsoft operating system is perhaps 10 times its retail cost, because of the heavy maintenance expenses.

Microsoft's anti-customer behavior: Here are some paragraphs I wrote to someone having problems with temp files taking gigabytes of drive space.

On one computer I checked, temp files were stored in 49 different places, and that includes only temp file folders made by the Windows operating system and not temp file folders made by application software.

Why doesn't Microsoft provide a utility to find all the temporary file folders and delete the files when starting or shutting down the computer? Apparently because the company is heavily engaged in adversarial behavior. Most people don't know that temporary files are a problem, and they certainly don't know where to find them; that was a challenge even for me. The temp files sometimes take so much space that there is not enough free space, and the file system begins running much slower.

The file defragmentation program won't run when there is limited free space. A fragmented file system is much slower. And most people don't even know that the defragmentation program exists, or why they should run it. So, their computers become imperceptibly slower and slower until they buy a new computer.

That's apparently why Microsoft software has so much malware, also. At present, there are 30 known vulnerabilities in Windows XP alone that haven't been fixed. There are 7 known vulnerabilities in the latest version of Microsoft Internet Explorer browser the the company has not fixed.

Some people say Microsoft software is targeted more often because there are so many copies in use. However, it is well known how to write secure software. Apparently Microsoft managers don't let their programmers finish their work.

Many people who don't know how to keep Microsoft products running buy new computers. Every time someone buys a new PC, they buy a new copy of the Microsoft operating system, even if they already owned a copy. So Microsoft makes more money if the company has defective products.

Microsoft gives each new version of Windows a new name, and many people think the new version is a new product. Somehow it has been arranged that people pay the full amount for new versions, instead of an upgrade price.

The New York Times article Corrupted PC's Find New Home also makes that point.

Note that the Apple operating system, OS X, and the Open BSD operating system have very few vulnerabilities. (The Open BSD web site says 2 in 10 years.) So it is possible to make a secure operating system. The volunteers that make the Open BSD system do security reviews of software to make sure vulnerabilities are not released to customers.

We use Microsoft operating systems because of historical reasons, and because it is expensive to change. In actuality, the business very seldom uses software that runs only under Microsoft Windows, and that is only in specific departments, where it would be easy to provide a second computer.