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I fear that if I start watching commercials thinking I like it...

They are taking the unique approach of trying to create ad content interesting enough to make people want to watch, instead of the traditional ad agency approach of bludgeoning the user base over the head through interstitials and other forced ad techniques.

...and naturally, once I click on the link, I get a forced interstitial ad from the Times.

(Not that I had an ad-blocker on or anything. They're not very annoying to me yet.)

Walmart's already got this worked out. Haven't you heard of the stores which lock their employees inside 'to prevent theft'?

This guy didn't actually benefit from the patents - The Nichia Corporation did.

For inventing this, he got a bonus - not a patent royalty - of around $180. However, he later sued and they settled to give him a bonus of a little over $8 million.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/12/business/worldbu siness/12light.html?ex=1150603200&en=69d5d9638c1ca bfd&ei=5070

That certainly depends on your point of view, and I guess if you're anti-child, the choice becomes automatic.

Perhaps the most galling case involves a director in the New York City Chief Medical Examiner's office who is accused of scamming FEMA

Ok, let's debunk this here and now... 'devastating effect on wireless innovation.' A flat out lie from someone with a vested interest in keeping his fledgling "monopoly alive". Stand aside butt-wad, the train is coming through. "No matter how you slice it, bandwidth is not free," Actually, bandwidth through the airwaves belongs to the people, dumb-ass. Keep pushing, and see how quickly your product gets ignored... "If we don't set up economic incentives now" - read as "our business model blows dead camels. We need government kick-backs to keep our dead bodies floating" "research and innovation for new networks won't happen for the future". That "taxpayer funded model for innovation" worked so well for Bell Labs for years, let's keep the party rolling".. Oh, by the way, the last vestige of Bell Labs is now for sale: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/14/realestate/comme rcial/14bell.html?_r=1&oref=slogin We want companies to be encouraged to make efficient use of the network, so we don't cross over and use up all the capacity of the networks." Counters Jeff Pulver, the founder of Pulver Media, saying that (FTA) "unlimited bandwidth use in the wireless world is needed because access to the network is what spurs innovation." Uh-huh. right. efficient use of bandwidth gets us a whole bunch of other ways to stream "American Idol". Gaaak.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/14/technology/14sea rch.html?ex=1307937600&en=c96a72bbc5f90a47&ei=5088 &partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

Mamood Ahmadi-Najad (president of Iran) denies the holocust happend and threatend Israel to be "wiped off the map"

They just threatened. The USA actually attacked Iraq.

Please, no, not fingerprints. Sure, you can't loose them, but you can't change them. How is that secure? Just because it's hard to break it today doesn't mean it won't be trivial tomorrow. See Bic pen vs Kryptonite Locks) Since we're dealing with physical access, it's impossible to determine when that day will come. (Unlike passwords where you can use pretty basic math to figure out how long it will take to brute force it.)

If someone manages to steal or forge my finger prints, my life is over. I can't ever have access to anything secure again. (If everything was secured with my fingerprint that is.)

On my systems we have three strikes and out. You get three chances to enter the correct password. After that it locks you out. Either you know the password or you need to go through the recovery process (which involves a timed lockout and a catchpa). We don't put too many restrictions on the content of the passwords, and we have very few recoveries. And so far, no unauthorized access. That we know of.

"Security" is a feeling, not a state.

The big question..

Will it hear this ? (mp3)

(I'm 35 and I hear it. To me, it sounds like an annoying ringing after a loud rock concert...)

The big question..

Will it hear this ? (mp3)

(I'm 35 and I hear it. To me, it sounds like an annoying ringing after a loud rock concert...)

The New York times just had an article describing that same phenomenon today: bloggers and MySpace users that post stuff that, amazingly enough, gets seen by their potential employers and loses them the job interview.

OK, done that? Have you noticed that it says "No State shall make or enforce any law..."

In other words, it doesn't stop any school district from coming up with its own policy. It's also why cities can make ordinances banning cursing.

Former RIAA head Hilary Rosen now believes that the RIAA is wrong by pursuing their lawsuits of individuals for using P2P programs.

New York times has a bit about Oslo on a budget.

Today's New York Times has an editorial supporting municipal WiFi policies that help ensure universal access to the Internet. It's a good view of how that infrastructure figures in the broader public consciousness, to the extent that it does.

And in Germany, people were mocking black soccer players by making monkey sounds and other racial epithets...oh wait that's today!

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/04/sports/soccer/04 racism.html

Soccer is the most popular game in the world, no doubt. But have you seen the monkey chantings and racist chants prevalent in most soccer games. World Series and Super Bowl may not be the biggest sporting event in the world ,but it is certainly without complete Ku-Klux-Klan style sport or a sport of intolerance towards blacks and immigrants.

Soccer is the most popular game in the world, no doubt. But have you seen the monkey chantings and racist chants prevalent in most soccer games. World Series and Super Bowl may not be the biggest sporting event in the world ,but it is certainly without complete Ku-Klux-Klan style sport or a sport of intolerance towards blacks and immigrants.

I'd like to call academic feminists "useful idiots" in that respect, but that'd be letting them off the hook as they have often whole-heartedly promoted the idea that women have no legitimate right to choose a traditional housewife role

I think you might be a bit off the mark with "useful idiots" or any other pithy derogations of feminists as a whole. It's certainly not the case that these feminists have prevented women from choosing a housewife role, as there are certainly millions of women in the US and other countries who are housewives right now who would disagree with you. Moreover, the emphasis on other roles for women that many, including feminists, advocate has much more to do with the still-continuing barriers and difficulties that face women when they attempt to enter the workplace or government.

Look at the disparity of the college admissions scene, where women outnumber men in applications and in gross numbers altogether. Yet somehow this difference does not extend to the workplace, where women are greatly outnumbered by men in many of the higher ranks of the corporate ladder, as well as in professional jobs.

Heck, we are even requiring the Iraqis to allow for more women in their government than we actually elect to our own. It certainly doesn't seem like "the pendulum" has swung in the other direction and women really have the full opportunity to choose a different lifepath than that of the housewife.

Are you serious? There is no question that the U.S. Ban on DDT has resulted in supply shortages such that millions of Africans and South Americans are dying each year from malaria. This site and this reference at the the CDC are good places to start.

Even the New York Times has begun to accept the truth on this.

What is worse is that the philisophical routes of this ban were explicitly anti-human. Rachel Carson barely mentioned any negative impact on humans in 'Silent Spring'. Certainly, there were no such studies at the time (and studies since then have shown 0 ill effects to humans). Carson's main complaint was that DDT weakened the shells of bird eggs, thereby disrupting their cycle. This too has been disproven.

So, we have essentially sacrificed the lives of millions of humans in the name of speculation regarding the potential damage to birds! If that's not religion, I don't know what is.

You snuck one rather BAD thing in your list of things that are good about Cuba - Infant mortality is a Bad Thing.

GP meant it the other way round.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/12/opinion/12kris.h tml?ex=1263272400&en=c7ea472ff9651976&ei=5090

Here is a working link to the story. Please use the RSS feed from newspapers when submitting stories!

How do you do this? Go to the RSS feed page and select the category your article appeared in. Then do a search for the title and pull the link that declares it to be an RSS user. It's that simple!

I don't think this is morally wrong as you're going to their site and you're still getting advertisements. Slashdot is really just a hand selected RSS feed so we might as well use RSS credentials. It saves us the time of registering and it saves the site admins some wasted space & e-mail traffic due to shill registrations.

Here is a working link to the story. Please use the RSS feed from newspapers when submitting stories!

How do you do this? Go to the RSS feed page and select the category your article appeared in. Then do a search for the title and pull the link that declares it to be an RSS user. It's that simple!

I don't think this is morally wrong as you're going to their site and you're still getting advertisements. Slashdot is really just a hand selected RSS feed so we might as well use RSS credentials. It saves us the time of registering and it saves the site admins some wasted space & e-mail traffic due to shill registrations.

If you hate registering, here's the link to the NYTimes article. I know this is off topic, but let me just briefly plead with the Slashdot editors to use the RSS feed links when linking to newspapers. Please, for the love of god, I don't want to have to karma whore anymore! Go to the XML page and merely pick out your link! There's no trick to this.

Also note that prices seem to be dropping for the MovieBeam box. Quite a bit actually, the latter article states that you can get them for $49 now--$200 is the debut MSRP.

I've read a lot of luke-warm reviews on this thing and people say now that the system needs refinement. What I'm wondering is whether or not you can substitute a broadband (RJ-45) connection with the phone line connection. I don't have a land line at my home because four people in my family own cell phones. It just doesn't make sense to pay for long distance accross a land line. Is there an alternative to people like me for phoning home and notifying the company of my movie watchage?

Honestly, I guess I don't want Michael Eisner in my living room or a device that phones home to him.

If you hate registering, here's the link to the NYTimes article. I know this is off topic, but let me just briefly plead with the Slashdot editors to use the RSS feed links when linking to newspapers. Please, for the love of god, I don't want to have to karma whore anymore! Go to the XML page and merely pick out your link! There's no trick to this.

Also note that prices seem to be dropping for the MovieBeam box. Quite a bit actually, the latter article states that you can get them for $49 now--$200 is the debut MSRP.

I've read a lot of luke-warm reviews on this thing and people say now that the system needs refinement. What I'm wondering is whether or not you can substitute a broadband (RJ-45) connection with the phone line connection. I don't have a land line at my home because four people in my family own cell phones. It just doesn't make sense to pay for long distance accross a land line. Is there an alternative to people like me for phoning home and notifying the company of my movie watchage?

Honestly, I guess I don't want Michael Eisner in my living room or a device that phones home to him.

It's very unfair to group the DC-10 with these disasters. McDonnell Douglas was actually very little at fault for the 3-4 accidents that unfortunately occurred right near each other. The most spectacular crash of the American Airlines flight was actually caused by an AA maintenance crew being dumb and cracking the pylon holding the engine. But thanks to the American sensationalistically hostile TV media, the only thing that everyone saw was the engine falling off the wing, which led everyone to assume it was the DC-10's fault, and led to huge cancellations on flights on the actually safe DC-10. It was a good airplane destroyed by bad press and bad luck.

(If any of you have read Airframe by Michael Crichton, you'll know what I'm talking about...from the NYT review of that very good book:

"And, Casey explains, when something goes wrong, a media industry that has grown hostile and shallow with the ascendancy of television always jumps to the wrong conclusion. Why, just look at what happened to the DC-10, ''a good aircraft . . . destroyed by bad press,'' because the crash of an American Airlines flight from Chicago to Los Angeles in May 1979 was misreported and misunderstood. ")

... since today the Army Corps of Engineers released a report accepting fault for the breakdown of the levee system during Katrina.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/01/us/01cnd-corps.h tml?hp&ex=1149220800&en=8ac0ecfa22b1f7c8&ei=5094&p artner=homepage

Maybe it deserves a spot on the list?

What makes everyone think that the NSA is stupid enough to limit their search to that specific pattern... Logically, it seems you can assume they've thought of all these issues, right?

No, you cannot assume that. I've stoped assuming anything about the intelligence community after the massive intelligence failures surrounding 9/11 and the supposed Iraqi WMD program.

if they're doing such a lousy job, don't you find it curious that there has NOT been another successful attack in four and a half years, despite repeated hate-filled threats from Bin Laden and others like him?

I hate to burst your bubble, but the apparent lack of response from Bin Laden is not proof that the government is doing a wonderful job. It can take several years to set up and execute a terrorist attack, especially one on the same scale as 9/11, so I wouldn't be so hasty as to assume that the government has been very successful. It simply is too early to know.

Either we're just lucky, or DHS has something going right.

I would venture a guess that it is both -- we've been lucky AND the DHS has been doing some things right. The real question at hand is whether one specific thing, the NSA's massive data mining operation, is one of those "right" things. Data mining is notorious for having tons of false positives, and this program is no exception. Thus the argument that this program, other than being ripe for abuses, is very inefficient and may be diverting precious resources towards wild goose chases. You mentioned how "Aunt Zelda's goiter surgery phone calls" haven't been pegged by the NSA; the NY Times article I referenced flatly contradicts that.

It's amazing, isn't it? Japan. Gets twice the leave time that US workers get.

And these guys take their work seriously. Do a little Google searching about corporate suicide in Japan. Occasionally, if a Japanese salaryman screws up at work, he'll kill himself for absolution.

Examples here, here, and here.

These guys take work so seriously they're willing to die for it. And they get twice the vacation time we do.

It's pretty shocking.

It's amazing, isn't it? Japan. Gets twice the leave time that US workers get.

And these guys take their work seriously. Do a little Google searching about corporate suicide in Japan. Occasionally, if a Japanese salaryman screws up at work, he'll kill himself for absolution.

Examples here, here, and here.

These guys take work so seriously they're willing to die for it. And they get twice the vacation time we do.

It's pretty shocking.

and here is the link:

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/28/opinion/28sun3.h tml

IMO, the New York Times says it better, but, hey, that's just me.

What are the chances that the germans won't be monitoring phone calls!

Putting aside the fact that you came out as a complete idiot during your confrontation with other posters, please note that GM and Ford are the worst performing automakers in the US. GM is near bankruptcy, and the only thing keeping the company afloat is it's foreign acquisition's like Daewoo in Korea & Saab, just like Volvo is doing for Ford.

We live in a nation where 45% of eligible voters believe the world is 6000 years old and their kids think WWF wrestlers are quality role models to be emulated.... It doesn't surprise me at all that people are smacking each other around with frying pans.

Dunno about frying pans, but I'm eagerly waiting for Nacho Libre. And I can't stand wrestling, let along Mexican wrestling.

The director was responsible for Napoleon Dynamite, so maybe there's a geek angle to the movie. Or this post, for that matter.

David Pogue said it best in a NYTimes article (free, no reg required for Pogue's articles) about a(nother, ho hum) Samsung MP3 player.

He points out that Apple didn't get just one thing right, they got a bunch of things right AND made them work well together.

== Quote:
The iPod's competitors have wasted years of opportunity by assuming that they can beat the iPod on features and price alone. They're wrong.

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.
== Endquote.

I'd argue that they also got the ITMS business model right, in addition to the superb integration of the above six.

You'll note there's no mention of marketing anywhere there.

if Google hadn't done this, nobody would have been helped and all that would have happened is MSN would have become the default search engine in China.

[...quality of free health care in (parts of) Europe...]

Yeah, that's why the Sultan of Brunei jets over to the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota

...in the end, you get what you pay for.

Linda Macdonald, 55 years old, an employment counselor now in Vancouver, is one of those who sued for compensation. "I walked through those doors with a husband on one arm and a guitar on the other and was a healthy person and coherent," she said.

Diagnosed as an acute schizophrenic -- she had gone to Dr. Cameron for treatment -- she spent 86 days in the "sleep room" and was subjected to 109 shock treatments and megadoses of barbiturates and other drugs. Reduced to a Blank Slate

When she got out of the experiment, she could not read or write, had to be toilet-trained and could not remember her husband, her five children or any part of the first 26 years of her life.

Even though Gates is quoted in the NYTimes as saying Vista will ship "on-time" (relative to the last delay), on the same day CEO Ballmer is expecting more delays even to the current January 2007 date.

When the two cheifs can't even agree, at least in PUBLIC, it doesn't bode well for the rest of the project.

Now where did I put that OS X brochure?...

"If these companies paid a fair wage and provided good working conditions, you would see very few people complaining."

Of course, you never see any of the workers or potential workers in those countries complaining, and there's a reason for that: Nike and other "sweatshop" owners provided far better jobs than were normally available to people in those countries. People FOUGHT to get a spot in one of those factories.

Privileged, overfed and sheltered children of developed nations may forget this, but at one time in their not-to-distant past, their nation used to be filled with jobs just like the ones in the sweatshop. And eventually, wealth grew and working conditions got better. God forbid you should ASK the sweatshop workers whether or not they want the sweatshops there or not. Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn of the New York Times went to Asia to do just that. Not only do the people overwhelmingly approve of the sweatshops, but in a longer timeframe, the sweatshops contribute to a general increase in the living standards in the areas they are placed. Which is more than anybody can say for those stupid anti-globalization protests or Bono concerts.

There is no easy shortcut between being a developing nation with a subsistence agricultural economy and an information age economy. If the rise of the Asian economies in the 1980s-1990s proved one thing, it's that each and every one has to go through the same growing pains that the United States and Europe once went through. And sweatshops are a step along the way.

Got 250 dollars burning a hole in your pocket?
These Adidas have a computer onboard that changes the shoes rigidity and bounce depending on how hard the terrain is and how fast your moving. AND if you jump they make that Steve Austin 'WHOOOSH' jumping sound and allow you to leap tall buildings in a single bound!

Hurray for science!

In France they also pay you to go to college.. but that is also part of the reason why the education system is shit. See this article in the NYTimes: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/12/world/europe/12f rance.html?th&emc=th

And actually read the article before you respond... it's a lot worse than here in the U.S.

President Bush's national security adviser, Stephen J. Hadley, insisted today that a newly disclosed government effort to compile data on millions of telephone calls in search of terrorist-linked calling patterns was a legal and "narrowly designed program" that did not involve listening to individual calls.

Bullshit. The programs under the NSA do not solely tap the phones of terrorists. This administration has explicitly violated both Constitutional and federal law with regard to wiretaps, and they have no excuse; FISA even allows you to wiretap and then get a warrant 72 hours later. Nearly every "tip" in the administration's "terrorist surveillance program" had led to dead ends and innocent Americans.

The government is legally required to get a warrant even to just check out what numbers people have been calling, without a wiretap, as mentioned in the previous linked article. The administration ignored that law and the judgements of the judges that held it up. Depending on what polls you subscribe to, anywhere from 30%-60% of Americans do have a problem with the NSA program collecting phone records. I definitely have a problem with it. Not everyone is a coward like you that would have complete safety from the Big Bad Terrorists in exchange for their privacy and their freedom.

"There are some statutes on the book which, if you read the language carefully, would seem to indicate that that is a possibility," Mr. Gonzales said on the ABC News program "This Week."

"That's a policy judgment by the Congress in passing that kind of legislation," he continued. "We have an obligation to enforce those laws. We have an obligation to ensure that our national security is protected."

Asked whether he was open to the possibility that The New York Times should be prosecuted for its disclosures in December concerning a National Security Agency surveillance program, Mr. Gonzales said his department was trying to determine "the appropriate course of action in that particular case."

"I'm not going to talk about it specifically," he said. "We have an obligation to enforce the law and to prosecute those who engage in criminal activity."

Though he did not name the statutes that might allow such prosecutions, Mr. Gonzales was apparently referring to espionage laws that in some circumstances forbid the possession and publication of information concerning the national defense, government codes and "communications intelligence activities."

Those laws are the basis of a pending case against two lobbyists, but they have never been used to prosecute journalists.

Some legal scholars say that even if the plain language of the laws could be read to reach journalists, the laws were never intended to apply to the press. In any event, these scholars say, prosecuting reporters under the laws might violate the First Amendment.

Mr. Gonzales said that the administration promoted and respected the right of the press that is protected under the First Amendment.

"But it can't be the case that that right trumps over the right that Americans would like to see, the ability of the federal government to go after criminal activity," he said. "And so those two principles have to be accommodated."

Mr. Gonzales sidestepped a question concerning whether the administration had been reviewing reporters' telephone records in an effort to identify their confidential sources.

"To the extent that we engage in electronic surveillance or surveillance of content, as the president says, we don't engage in domestic-to-domestic surveillance without a court order," he said. "And obviously if, in fact, there is a basis under the Constitution to go to a federal judge and satisfy the constitutional standards of probable cause and we get a court order, that will be pursued."

...when six armed men stormed into their sons' primary school this month, shot a guard dead, and left fliers ordering it to close, Assad Bahjat knew it was time to leave.

"The main thing now is to just get out of Iraq," said Mr. Bahjat, standing in a room heaped with suitcases and bedroom furniture in eastern Baghdad.

In the latest indication of the crushing hardships weighing on the lives of Iraqis, increasing portions of the middle class seem to be doing everything they can to leave the country. In the last 10 months, the state has issued new passports to 1.85 million Iraqis, 7 percent of the population and a quarter of the country's estimated middle class.

The school system offers another clue: Since 2004, the Ministry of Education has issued 39,554 letters permitting parents to take their children's academic records abroad. The number of such letters issued in 2005 was double that in 2004, according to the director of the ministry's examination department. Iraqi officials and international organizations put the number of Iraqis in Jordan at close to a million.
...
Mr. Abdul Razzaq, who will move his family to Syria next month, where he has already rented an apartment, said a fistfight broke out while he waited for five hours in a packed passport office to fill out applications for his two young sons.
...
"At the beginning we said, 'Let's wait, maybe it will be better tomorrow,' " Mr. Kubba said.

"Now I know it is time to go."

As a counter read todays NYT story about 25% of Iraq's Middle Class has left or is leaving. When the middle class leaves it is game over.

They already want to ban pointy knives, so why not hammers?

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/27/international/eu rope/27knife.html?ex=1274846400&en=cef76721be98494 c&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss