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> The cool thing about nukes is, all of the evidence to its origin is obliterated in the blast.

Why does factually wrong get marked as interesting?
Three other posters have pointed out that parent is wrong.
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0319-04.ht m
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/02/politics/02nuke. html?ex=1296536400&en=341f6ecfda09ee14&ei=5090&par tner=rssuserland&emc=rss

Too late now. The article is stale and in the future it will only be read at +4 and the parent will seem accurate to those who don't know any better...

Crossposting your comments to the New York Times now? Or stealing someone else's ideas? http://news.blogs.nytimes.com/?p=59

Anyone spot the need for shades in the room? Perhaps someone at Micrsoft does indeed think the future is that bright ...?

And what a team demo like this has to do with bug fixing I don't know?

In terms of directly dealing with the problem(s) and imperfections of a software release ... everybody sitting in a room taking notes on someone's demo ... I am not sure the world is ready for what real software enginnering really looks like. I (and the vast majority of my team mates) do our best and most productive work when keeping such 'mass migrations to a meeting room' to an absolute minimum.

And, however much the software engineering world is predominantly male, why is there only 1 lady in the room?

Anyone else wonder if this picture was taken for padding the media story? If so, then I have to admit they did work hard at making it look messy and busy. Unfocussed and secondary ... but messy and busy, indeed.

Looking at the picture.... http://graphics10.nytimes.com/images/2006/10/09/bu siness/09vista.xlarge1.jpg
looks like the so-called developers are having a LAN party. Certainly not like professional bug fixers who know what they're doing.

Besides, did anyone notice ALL the chairs are taken? Even some of the tables too, just in case!!!!

Microsoft issued an relatively unusual press release in mid-September 2003, announcing that Emerson was leaving to "spend more time with his family". The announcement got published in the New York Times, and Emerson's supposed end date was August 31, 2003. He would consult on "complicated transactions".

Emerson's position as "SVP Corporate Development" reporting directly to Steve Ballmer was abolished on his resignation, and the Corp Development division demoted to supervision by the CFO. After a period, Brian Roberts, Emerson's long time deputy was promoted to run the division. Robert's left Microsoft in 2005 to work with Emerson at his new position at Evercore Partners. Roberts and Emerson have been associated since running telecomunications portfolio in the dot-com days at the investment bank Lazard-Freres.

Emerson made political contributions to the Bush re-election campaign in mid-September 2003, and listed his occupation as Microsoft Executive, so his August 2003 resignation is a bit atmospheric or conveniently backdated.

Emerson had been given a 12 Million dollar loan as a signing bonus to MSFT in 2000. A mid-September 2003 proxy noted that he was paying the loan back with vested stock options. The options were underwater, but had a positive Black-Scholes valuation based on their future potential to be profitable. Emerson used this positive valuation to retire the loan on a cash free basis.

Emerson had little public trace through most of 2004, and then acquired a position at Evercore Partners, a mergers and acquisitions investment advisor. Evercore has since IPO'd, and is traded as EVR.

Emerson and a Baystar principal Andrew Farkas were both listed as advisors/investors in a NYC Venture, I-Hatch Partners. A Farkas relative (Younger brother, I believe) is the fund executive. This is good evidence that the Baystar and Emerson relationship had alternative means of communication, and unreturned phone calls from MSFT headquarters should be considered a convenient fiction.

Emerson and deputy Roberts also show up in July 2003 SEC documents as the signatory for the Microsoft investment in IMMR (Immersion) that had patent suits against Sony and MSFT. The MSFT stock investment in IMMR ended the Microsoft portion of the suit (for game controllers) while ensuring the suit against arch-rival Sony would continue. This "investment in a strategic lawsuit" has echoes in the Baystar Pipe deal occuring just months later. We can conclude that the IMMR and SCOX investments are implementations of a similar strategic idea. Sources:
http://news.com.com/2100-1022_3-5079594.html
http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/789019/0001 19312503051346/ddef14a.htm
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=950 3E6DB103AF933A1575AC0A9659C8B63
http://www.newsmeat.com/fec/bystate_detail.php?cit y=SEATTLE&st=WA&;last=EMerson&first=RICHARD

Who blew the plane up? Maybe that plane they blew up was only on jag.

this one had a different ending. In piece too but from another means.

It's almost too much to bear! I want my big animals back, now!

As far as I know, the Nicholson Baker, author of Checkpoint, is still enjoying life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, even though his book explores the idea of violently deposing the president:
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C0 3E6D6113DF93BA3575BC0A9629C8B63

...and many of those 70 year olds get their disinformation from shows like the O'Reilly Factor, where the average age of the viewers is 71. That's right, a frightened, bigoted generation of "warriors" who haven't been in touch with the world since the Depression votes en masse to shape our political landscape. It makes logical sense, I suppose--wouldn't you vote for people who didn't care about long-term environmental or human rights issues and offered only short-term tax cuts if you weren't long for this world anyway? If somebody wanted to use your property tax money to help pay for public schooling, wouldn't your selfish, asshole answer be "I'm old and my kids are grown up, so why should I care about the schools..let's switch to a vouchers-based system?"

Well no, I wouldn't think and vote that way either when I'm that age. But many of these ignorant bluehairs do.

By the time this gets to court, either or both houses of Congress will be controlled by Democrats. Which means that Congress can and will investigate this.

A lot of people here are predicting this.

I predict the opposite. I predict the Republicans will retain control over both houses of Congress.

I predict this because despite the fact that awareness of the problems of electronic voting is higher now than ever before (keep in mind that awareness and caring are not the same thing), about 40% (cite) of the country will be using unauditable electronic voting machines for the November election. That's easily enough to make it possible to undetectably change the outcome of any race that's reasonably close and where such machines are in use. And the Republicans are in a much better position to pressure the machine manufacturers into subtlely changing (via software) the results in regions that matter the most, if only because they control the two electable branches of government.

The outcome may be "surprising" in some cases, but people will accept it just the same as they always have.

Condit was never labeled as a Republican. He was labeled as a Representative

National Briefing | West: California: Support For Condit Challenger
Sens Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein will support Assemblyman Dennis Cardoza, one of several Democrats, in California primary for candidate to run against incumbent Republican Repr Gary Condit for House seat

Considering that the alternative consists of ad hominem attacks and bizarre rhetoric even most conservatives reject, and that the average age of that show is 71, it's no wonder that you would like The Daily Show instead. I also like to be both informed and entertained, and The Daily Show does both perfectly.

National Briefing | West: California: Support For Condit Challenger

Sens Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein will support Assemblyman Dennis Cardoza, one of several Democrats, in California primary for candidate to run against incumbent Republican Repr Gary Condit for House seat
January 26, 2002 News web site:

A review of White House records has determined that George J. Tenet, then the director of central intelligence, did brief Condoleezza Rice and other top officials on July 10, 2001, about the looming threat from Al Qaeda, a State Department spokesman said Monday.

The account by Sean McCormack came hours after Ms. Rice, the secretary of state, told reporters aboard her airplane that she did not recall the specific meeting on July 10, 2001, noting that she had met repeatedly with Mr. Tenet that summer about terrorist threats. Ms. Rice, the national security adviser at the time, said it was "incomprehensible" she ignored dire terrorist threats two months before the Sept. 11 attacks.

Hmm your post reminded me of this relevant story in Sunday's NYTimes:

So The Talmud Is A Parenting Guide?

I'm sure it was timed to coincide with the Jewish High Holidays, but the article's point is less about raising kids Jewish and more about how this one woman's interpretation of Talmudic parenting advice basically says to love and care for kids carefully, but give them enough rope to make their own mistakes, feel their own way, so that that by adulthood they are not too insulated to deal with the real world. The article talks about the imbalance between extraordinary modern pressures to succeed at school, coupled with (or compensated by)extraordinary modern coddling at home--and how, purportedly, this woman's Talmudic insights address both.

Anyone like myself who WAS actually raised by a fairly stereotypical Jewish mom will immediately see that despite what the author claims the Talmud says about giving kids "autonomy", "independence", and "freedom from smothering", these are certainly NOT part of the "traditional" Jewish upbringing. ;)

In a quest to better movie recommendations, Netflix is opening their database (nytimes, registration and first child required)...

The problem is not easy. Says one researcher: "You're competing with 15 years of really smart people banging away at the problem."

In a quest to better movie recommendations, Netflix is opening their database (nytimes, registration and first child required)...

The problem is not easy. Says one researcher: "You're competing with 15 years of really smart people banging away at the problem."

Article in NY Times from 2004: US Is Losing Its Dominance in the Sciences , or directly from NY Times. Also Tracking Achivement

Article in NY Times from 2004: US Is Losing Its Dominance in the Sciences , or directly from NY Times. Also Tracking Achivement

The NYT business section recently noted that "...wages and salaries now make up the lowest share of the nation's gross domestic product since the government began recording the data in 1947, while corporate profits have climbed to their highest share since the 1960's. UBS, the investment bank, recently described the current period as "the golden era of profitability"

So it certainly looks like the current setup is rigged against workers. No doubt there are a lot of explanations, but certainly globablization seems to put most of the cards in the hands of big money.

Continuing to vote in favor of more of it doesn't seem very smart unless you're in the 1% who own the country (to a first approximation.)

How about corruption? How about Gore having money laundered through chinese monks for the oh-so-pure Democrats? Gore's fundraiser, Maria Hsia, was conviced on all counts.

Speaking of stealing elections, why is that the Democrats are the ones who push to ease registration (such as "motor voter") and yet oppose any Republican attempts to require people at the polls to actually present identification to prove that they are who they claim to be? Photo id needed at Blockbuster, but we'll take your word at the polls!

hmm destroying the world? Maybe that means something like voting against Kyoto? the 95 votes against it in the Senate would suggest that there are some democrats out to destroy the world too. Rove must have waterboarded them ...

wget -O foo.htm --referer=http://www.google.com http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/28/technology/28bas ics.html?ref=technology

NY times
Wikipedia

Prolly too late for a little karma whoring here, but since i've been here in karaoke 5 years, I have to tell this tale.

In 2001 I was a laid off Sysadmin in Silicon Valley. I had no desire to move from here, I was staying. I took a job at a karaoke bar after looking for 6 months to get back into the trade I had been in for 10 years. I figured at this point, anything as long as it was money.

Being a Sysadmin type, I showed the former KJ how to use a PC with karaoke. After he quit, I got promoted from doorman to KJ. Shortly after I got promoted, I started broadcasting the show online, got a shoutcast partner sponsorship from Nullsoft, got printed up in the new york times and the rest was history. My tips skyrocketed, business here at 7 Bamboo was slamming in 2003.

We got printed up in a lot of newspapers around here as well. Folks would come in, see our PC setup and figure if it's that easy, they could do the same thing themselves. San Jose has seen a hardcore proliferation in PC based karaoke setups over the last 2 years.

Well, here's where the trickle effect comes in.

I would say most of these new KJ's are pirating. 7 Bamboo has been in business over 20 years, and has a collection of about 6000 songs. (Retail value of over $15,000) Most of these new guys have collections of anywhere from 20-100,000 songs. How is it someone that has only been in business less than a year can afford that much karaoke? The answer is they can't, the answer is they just download songs from limewire, alt.binaries.sounds.karaoke and other P2P type places. Karaoke piracy is so rampant, it's really affected our attendance here.

In 2003, we were one of only 5 or 6 venues here in San Jose. Now there is over 50. When my old 70yro boss scratches his head wondering WTF is going on, it's hard to explain to him. Conversations go like this:

Toshi: Bobbysan, what's happening? (note, heavy japanese accent)
Me: Toshi, bad people, steal karaoke, start business
Toshi: Steal from us?
Me: No toshi, steal from the internet
Toshi: Should unplug the internet when you leave
Me: No not like that toshi
Toshi: Oh? Explain bobbysan
Me: There are places on the internet people download them for free
Toshi: Oh? Why don't we do the same?

You guys get the idea. Trying to explain this to a 70yro Japanese man is near impossible.

Bottom line though is there are so many new karaoke venues that have been enabled by piracy, it's really hurting us. We play it straight, but remember karaoke is a small pond compared to film or regular music. A small pebble of piracy here is like having a boulder chucked into a puddle.

--toq

Hollywood needs to start getting its house in order before it can critise piracy for it's falling profits. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/19/business/media/1 9hollywood.html?ex=1313640000&en=a3d7d097e8c79a00& ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

I wonder how this fits in with his recent announcement to fight global warming.

You're fortunate that you don't live in a rural area where Verizon is busy trying to sell off their landlines. From today's New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/28/technology/28ver mont.html

You'd lose your bet.

As a New York county lawyer, you've doubtless heard of William Glaberson's "Broken Bench" series for the Times (part one), part two, username/password "cyberpunks" if you need one).

At least five dozen sources were contacted, and probably hundreds more; this series has been maybe a year in the making.

Do you think that citizen journalists, working alone with little "journalism school experience" and presumably holding down some other job, can produce similarly well-researched articles?

As a New York county lawyer, you've doubtless heard of William Glaberson's "Broken Bench" series for the Times (part one), part two, username/password "cyberpunks" if you need one).

At least five dozen sources were contacted, and probably hundreds more; this series has been maybe a year in the making.

Do you think that citizen journalists, working alone with little "journalism school experience" and presumably holding down some other job, can produce similarly well-researched articles?

The company was authorized to put together ballots, program machines and train poll workers across the state - all without any official supervision. "We ran the election," says Hood. "We had 356 people that Diebold brought into the state. Diebold opened and closed the polls and tabulated the votes. Diebold convinced (Georgia Secretary of State Cathy) Cox that it would be best if the company ran everything due to the time constraints, and in the interest of a trouble-free election, she let us do it."

Then, one muggy day in mid-August, Hood was surprised to see the president of Diebold's election unit, Bob Urosevich, arrive in Georgia from his headquarters in Texas. With the primaries looming, Urosevich was personally distributing a "patch," a little piece of software designed to correct glitches in the computer program. "We were told that it was intended to fix the clock in the system, which it didn't do," Hood says. "The curious thing is the very swift, covert way this was done."

"It was an unauthorized patch, and they were trying to keep it secret from the state," Hood told me. "We were told not to talk to county personnel about it. I received instructions directly from Urosevich. It was very unusual that a president of the company would give an order like that and be involved at that level."

Election officials get jobs at voting machine vendors, and my summary for your friends and relatives.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/background/arar/

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/21/world/americas/2 1canada.html?ex=1316491200&en=c01819e14cf573a8&ei= 5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss

Insightful post. A label and another RLE (real life example) to back this:

the label: fundamental attribution error

see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_attributi on_error

the data point: sexual behavior data among teenagers identifying themselves as virgins

''We're seeing more evidence of anal sex in cultures with a high value on technical virginity, and it often causes lacerations and microabrasions that can lead to infections,'' said Ms. Alexander of the American Social Health Association. ''You have to worry about AIDS. And we have heard that some girls use muscle relaxants, which can also be risky.''

source: http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9E0 6E0D81239F93AA25751C1A9669C8B63&sec=health&pagewan ted=print

Compared to where?

If you measure by "living through infancy", then compared to the United States. Cuba has a lower per-capita infant mortality than the US. Sad but true.

>I know, dumb answer, because Diebold pays the people who decide lots and lots of money.

That's a documented fact, not random cynicism:

Voting machine vendors offer cruises, funding and jobs to election officials.

Clicky, Clicky.

Clicky, Clicky.

In Silion Valley, the divorce rate is about 30% higher than the national rate.

Equally interesting to me was the title: "LIFE IN HIGH-STRESS SILICON VALLRY TAKES A TOLL" with the word Valley misspelled. I wonder if it was scanned in by the NY Times.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/14/technology/14goo gle.html?ex=1315886400&en=56861c8f4ca9b3e7&ei=5090 &partner=rssuserland&emc=rss

Both /. submitters and /. editors should use the link generator for The New York Times .

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/14/technology/14goo gle.html?ex=1315886400&en=56861c8f4ca9b3e7&ei=5090 &partner=rssuserland&emc=rss

Both /. submitters and /. editors should use the link generator for The New York Times .

There is really no mystery here. More old people means larger government spending on health care. More spending means more jobs in the health care industry.

There are 2 other factors that have increased health-care spending. First is the millions of illegal aliens who have no insurance. They usually go straight to the emergency room, where physicians do not refuse service (even to people without insurance). The services are not paid by the illegal aliens but are paid by the government.

Illegal aliens do become sick. They often work at grueling, backbreaking work. There is no incentive for American businesses (that employ illegal labor) to improve the working conditions because they can always find another desperate laborer if the current laborer becomes too sick to work. After all, the USA has an open-border policy with Mexico and the rest of South/Central America.

The other factor that has increased health-care spending is the excessive hours which Americans are forced to work. "60 Minutes", the renowned CBS program, recentedly reported that the average American now works more hours than even the average Japanese. These additional hours of work take a severe toll on workers' health. For example, 60+ hours of computer work per week leads to cardiovascular problems due to lack of exercise. The excessive hours also strain family relations, leading to the need for counseling or psychotherapy. In Silion Valley, the divorce rate is about 30% higher than the national rate.

> My irregular or perverse browsing habits are but a drop in the statistical pond.

I bet that's what AOL Searcher #4417749 or #927 thought...

• They screwed up.
• The early numbers released were inaccurate due to bad gender participation weighting factors. (the end-of-day results were actually much closer to the actuals than most people realize)
• There was no difference in exit poll errors between touch screen and other methods."Some have suggested that the exit poll data could be used as evidence of voter fraud in the 2004 Election by showing error rates were higher in precincts with touch screen and optical scan voting equipment. Our evaluation does not support this hypothesis. In our exit poll sample overall, precincts with touch screen and optical scan voting have essentially the same error rates as those using punch card systems. In the larger urban areas these systems had lower WPEs than punch card precincts."
• Kerry supporters were more likely to participate and complete an exit poll
• strong correllation between the age of the poll volunteer and the pollee's willingness to participate

I'm not a professor; but I am a poorly paid graduate student teaching composition at a large university. And Wikipedia is, in my experience, the most common source used by plagiarists.

See, it used to be HARD to plagiarize papers. Plagiarizing required going to the library, doing research to find a good essay that would answer the assignment, and then copying it out (or typing it up) in order to turn it in. And if you were ready to put THAT much work into it, why not just write the thing yourself? So most students did.

Then computers came along. They soon had "copy-and-paste" functionality that makes it easy to duplicate large chunks of text. And then the Internet came along, supplying a gigantic amount of pre-made chunks of text to copy-n-paste. All of a sudden, plagiarism got really easy. All you have to do is go to Google, round up four or five sources vaguely related to the assignment, and then mash a bunch of bleeding chunks from those sources into something like an essay. While the honest students labor far into the night over their tortured prose, the dis-honest student spends about an hour mashing together pre-tortured prose from the Internet, and then goes to bed.

So Wikipedia isn't the problem; it's just a common source. I had one paper (on the topic of marijuana legalization) in which approximately 40% of the 1,500 word assignment was copied from Wikipedia. Another 40% or so was copied from non-Wikipedia sources, and the remaining 20% consisted of an opening, a conclusion, and a few sentences attempting to link together the copied chunks.

Sometimes they'll find whole papers, complete, intact, and ready-to-submit. I heard one story of a student who copied a whole essay from the Internet, but failed to actually remove the copyright notice before turning it in. Oy.

Other sites, known as "paper mills" offer to write papers FOR you, at a high price. Why bother writing your own paper, when you can pay somebody $10 a page to do it for you? (Though even then, the quality will usually suck.) If they don't suck, they're damn hard to identify.

If you assign papers in college, you need to know that the Internet makes it possible to plagiarize left, right, and center. I've never had more than 3 plagiarists in a class of 25, but that small chunk means you have to constantly check for plagiarism even in the remaining students. It pretty much sucks.

I can't think of better hands to handle GM: Bayer!

They're socially conscious ...
http://www.ahrp.org/infomail/05/01/27a.php

They provide health-care products to the world ...
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?sec=hea lth&res=9B0DE7D91239F93BA25750C0A961948260

We should probably turn over the nuclear arsenal to them while we're at it.

>the next tack that will be taken by Diebold will be, "Well, who in their right mind would want to tamper with an election? Calm down, citizens, this is just scaremongering by the right/left/pedestrians..."

They've already said the equivalent:
"For there to be a problem here, you're basically assuming a premise where you have some evil and nefarious election officials who would sneak in and introduce a piece of software," [Diebold spokesman David Bear] said. "I don't believe these evil elections people exist."

Worst. Threat model. Ever.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/05/technology/05goo gle.html?ex=1286164800&en=bf0a64b22abd15b8&ei=5088 &partner=rssnyt&emc=rssSun Java

http://www.newsfactor.com/news/Adobe-To-Bundle-Goo gle-Toolbar/story.xhtml?story_id=112003LQO47KAdobe shockwave

There's more then that but thoes 2 are at the top of my head

Perhaps Google is just trying to balance out their lobbying efforts?

When you start handing out money to both sides of the aisle, you can get better results.

IIRC, Google was mostly throwing money at Democratic party people.

P.S. here's the No-Reg Required RSS Link

That's interesting. It's too bad you fail to point to the law that prohibits "broadcasting terrorist media". Oh, and you said he was only receiving these broadcasts, which is not the same as broadcasting. Oh wait, you don't even provide a link to this story that you obviously "read recently" and I totally can't make this up guys.