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Sure, some people reflexively look only for the negative things when interpreting American history, and that can be as misleading as a historical treatise written by Bill O'Reilly. Regardless of the (blatantly false) justifications for going to war, and abuses carried out by scared 18 year old kids who didn't know any better, getting rid of Saddam would have been a good thing if we didn't immediately take over his prisons and begin treating prisoners exactly the way he treated them as a matter of national policy. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/16/international/mi ddleeast/16iraq.html?pagewanted=1&ei=5094&en=e951c ff236d15cb7&hp&ex=1132203600&partner=homepage

The NY Times has this article. The opening paragraphs were a bit more intriguing:

"In January a group of Microsoft researchers set out to discover how much computing power they could buy for less than $4,000 at a standard online retailer. They found the answer at NewEgg.com, where they were able to purchase - for just $3,632 - 9.5 gigaflops of computing speed. That is the amount of computing power offered by a Cray Y-MP supercomputer in 1991 at a cost of $40 million."

Find a handful of Yao-Ming's great-grandfathers teeth and create a new species out of it. Try that with any other scientific discipline, and you'd be crucified. Ask Pons and Fleichmann, the two chemists who deduced that they had discovered cold fusion when they found that they could create excess heat in a beaker filled with water at room temperature in 88 or 89. http://partners.nytimes.com/library/national/scien ce/050399sci-cold-fusion.html But seems from those teeth they were able to determine that it did not walk upright, that it had long apelike arms, black fur, feet with opposing thumbs, short spindly legs... etc, etc. None of which can be assumed without finding at least the base of the skull fully in tact. *sigh* Disgusting what passes as "science" these days. This article requires as much of a leap of faith as the Kansas school board.

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Art. 5. The present Convention shall apply to the persons referred to in Article 4 from the time they fall into the power of the enemy and until their final release and repatriation.

Should any doubt arise as to whether persons, having committed a belligerent act and having fallen into the hands of the enemy, belong to any of the categories enumerated in Article 4, such persons shall enjoy the protection of the present Convention until such time as their status has been determined by a competent tribunal.

Kinda the whole point is that the U.S. government isn't doing that whole "competent tribunal" part, even when doubt exists.

Despite the fact that those [bird flu] viruses have been circulating in China more than a dozen years, almost no human-to-human spread has occurred.

"The virus has been around for more than a dozen years, but it hasn't jumped into the human population," said Dr. Peter Palese of the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York. "I don't think it has the capability of doing it."

I note in an article in the New York Times (dated 11/8/2005):

"Some experts like Dr. Peter Palese of the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York say the A(H5N1) flu viruses are a false alarm. He notes that studies of serum collected in 1992 from people in rural China indicated that millions of people there had antibodies to the A(H5N1) strain.

That means they had been infected with an H5N1 bird virus and recovered, apparently without incident."

Is it possible that 50% of those who show symptoms die but that only about 120/2,000,000 will show symptoms?

link to the article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/08/science/08flu.ht ml

Spanish Flu virus.

The US military detailed incidents it found in its investigation post-outrage, like a guard splashing his own urine on a detainee's Quran. I don't buy the US military's excuse for the incident, that a guard went to urinate outside near a detainee's cage and somehow a little urine blew into a vent and onto the pages of the Quran? How about the tall tale that if the detainee nicely asked the guard to come over and give him a new Quran because of the urine on it, he would and did gladly do so? According to the released detainees, the former guards, and the lawyers, these people were subject to beatings and weren't allowed to pray via some quite mean methods. One report was that a detainee was hospitalized for a broken shoulder when a guard beat him while he was on the ground and in the prone handcuff position. Do you think that the guards who break shoulders and beat detainees would smile and nicely replace a Quran when asked?

The only group that made the claim of Al Qaeda making up torture stories to "lie to the infidel" is the US military spokesman. They're not Al Qaeda, or else the US wouldn't have let them go. Besides, even if Muslims were allowed to "lie to the infidel" (which they aren't), these people have told their stories to people in their home countries of Pakistan and to some Muslim reporters and the Muslim chaplain, James Yusuf Yee. They're not going to perpetuate that lie to other Muslims, as it would be a sin anyway.

Small businesses go out of business all the time. The average lifespan is far less than 10 years. It's a very convienent excuse for them to tell people that "WalMart forced them out of business". Sounds a lot better than "I misjudged the market, mismanaged the shop, and totally fucked up".

True, but then you have economists that don't agree with you. I think it's a lot easier to be dead when Walmart moves into the neighbourhood.

On the other side of the fence, I can't really bring myself to care too much ... they are just doing everything possible to compete on price, and the other businesses either aren't offering anything else to compensate (for instance, decent organic foods or well crafted furniture isn't loseing to Walmart) or just aren't as good at competing on price (this is also known as stupidity).

On that score, all of the Intelligent Design advocates on the Pennsylvania Board of Education were just voted out of office! I hope all the other school boards are watching. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/09/national/09dover .html (free reg required).

Here is the Grokster story from the NYT.

Yahoo seems to be claiming victory all over the place lately, without much to back it up. There is an article in the New York Times today that makes the claim Yahoo's search is the fastest and most relevant, but unless something happened overnight, I don't believe it.

It reminds me of another recent declaration of victory that didn't exactly end up so.

Last year, Yahoo overtook Hotmail to become the world's most-used free e-mail service. Its new e-mail system, now running in a limited beta version and scheduled for release next year, applies technology called Ajax, discussed in a previous column, to mimic the speed and power of a normal desktop program.

When I tried the beta release of the new mail program, I was amazed that I could, for instance, quickly view the contents of an e-mail message without opening it, via a "preview pane" like Outlook's - while operating over a normal Web browser...

What's this all about? After talking with the chief executive, Terry S. Semel, and other officials, I came away with two big impressions. One is that while Yahoo is ever conscious of Google and determined to match it head to head in familiar keyword search, in the long run its plans for search seem quite different from Google's. The other is that Yahoo views the very scale and sprawl of its operations - the seemingly random assemblage of sites and functions, the 200 million active users in more than 20 countries - as a crucial competitive advantage.

The awareness of Google came through in nearly every conversation...

Neal Stephenson wrote an article for the NYT (which I'm sure many of you remember) regarding the same issue. The basic gist of it was that in the 1970s, Star Wars was fun (read geeky) because of all the backstory and detail: every trufan knew who Han Solo worked for and who owned every ship and what the political problems in the galaxy were. In the recent installments, the story has been reduced to special effects and reliance on what had already been developed, with the cut speed of a music video and the dialogue of a television show. He rambles quite a bit as usual, but the idea is relevant and he knows quite a bit of trivia himself. It can be found here:

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/17/opinion/17stephe nson.html?ex=1276660800&en=a693ccc4ec008424&ei=509 0&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss&YOUR_REG_SYSTEM_IS_B AD_FOR_THE_INTERNET

Here's the nytimes article they refer to

Jobs ready to sell Pixar: Report
Newspaper says animated studio head open to the right deal; receptive to offer from partner Disney.
October 31, 2005: 9:08 AM EST

The success of the Walt Disney Co. film "Chicken Little" could determine whether Disney or partner Pixar has the greater leverage in upcoming talks.

Pixar has had nothing but hits since it started making films in 1995.

NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - Steve Jobs, the chairman and CEO of Pixar Animation Studios, would be open to a sale of the company at the right price, according to a published report.

The New York Times reports Jobs, who owns about 50 percent of Pixar (Research), would want a strong premium to its current $5.9 billion market capitalization to consider a sale, but he would be open to an offer from its long-time partner, Walt Disney Co. (Research) The paper attributed Jobs' willingness to consider a sale to "two people with knowledge of the talks" now taking place between Disney and Pixar about possibly extending their partnership.

But the paper reports that in talks about a new version of their partnership, Disney CEO Robert Iger has yet to make an offer to acquire Pixar. The paper reports that Disney is hoping that its new animated feature, "Chicken Little," due in theaters this weekend, will give it greater leverage in talks with Pixar.

"Chicken Little" is the first offering from Disney's animation studio since it was revamped to produce computer-generated features that have a three-dimension look, rather than the traditional hand-drawn two-dimensional cartoons.

Pixar has produced only CG features and nothing but blockbusters since it started producing movies in 1995, while many of the Disney-generated animated movies during the period were considered box office flops.

The Times reports that if "Chicken Little" is a hit, it would show Wall Street and Jobs that Disney need not depend on Pixar for creation of new animated movie characters that could be adapted for theme park rides, consumer products and television.

The movie has gotten generally favorable early word, but if it is not well received by critics or moviegoers, the paper reports that Jobs will gain leverage in his talks with Disney because the media conglomerate would be seen as relying on Pixar to add new stories to its creative arsenal.

If the movie performs poorly, Bernstein & Co. media analyst Michael Nathanson told the paper, "investors might want to see a Pixar deal right behind it." Still, he added, "it's all about numbers, and both sides - Disney and Pixar - are looking for leverage."

Pixar has strong cash reserves and no longer needs Disney's to help finance films, so it is looking for a distribution agreement for a far larger percent of the box office than the 50 percent it receives under the current deal with Disney.

But while there are likely to be other studios willing to distribute Pixar films, analysts see Disney as best positioned to promote future Pixar films and its characters due to theme parks and strong merchandise sales channels.

Jobs would evaluate any Pixar partnership based on where he could get the best deal for the studio, the paper reports, not on his developing friendship with Iger. Jobs often sparred with Iger's predecessor, Michael Eisner. The Disney Channel and ABC, other units of Disney, recently signed a deal to distribute shows on the new video version of the Apple Computer (Research) iPod. Jobs is also Chairman and CEO of Apple.

The Times reports that detailed negotiations between Disney and Pixar are likely to begin in mid-November and could be wrapped up by late December or early January, said one of the paper's sources. The studios have several issues to grapple with, according to the paper, including who would have creative oversight over new Pixar characters at Disney theme parks and how revenue from rides and other attractions would be split.

In summary: This is a news article about another news article

7th word into the entry is a link to the nytimes article.

i'm pretty sure they have a decent reputation for news...

Who pays for the programming when everyone uses a dvr?

Perhaps when everyone uses a DVR we end up getting popup-style ads that annoy during the show? At that point, don't we all run to google to show us "better-targeted, less-irritating" ads (b/c they do it best)?

"If we can figure out a way to improve the quality of ads on television with ads that have real value for end-users, we should do it."

I regularly read newspapers from the US, the UK, France, Germany, Spain, latin america and Denmark. IT's interesting to see them looking for different formulas to adapt to the challenges of the internet.

Several french newspapers (like Liberation and Le Monde) have tried to specialize their print and web based deliveries in such a way that the print edition offers in depth reports and analisys, while the web based portion is kept up to date with the cutting-edge-now-unfolding stuff. A few spanish papers seem to be following this trend (like El Pais).

I get the impression that danish papers don't really have a strategy, which stikes me as odd since Denmark is one of the most wired countries in the world. A lot of newspapers there seem to see their web presence as a way to publicize their paper and maybe sell a few stories, but there is no overarching strategy.


In the US you see lots of different approaches, like the Wall Street Journal which practically cut itself out of the blogging trend by keeping all of its material under lock and key except to paying subscribers, thereby insuring that their stories aren't linked to, the New York Times wants you to sell your soul to read anything, and Salon has the interesting strategy of making you watch an add to read their stuff. A kind of contract based approach.

I would really like to see a comparative study of the merits and shortcomings of different approaches. I would also like to see studies on how different reader demographics respond to different paper-web mixes.

BTW, the funniest Adsense I saw was on the Hulk'in Lunar Eclipse page where ads were offering Lunar Real Estate for Sale - turns out some company sells "deeds" for land on the moon ... ;-)

However, I wonder what it is in addition to the Nobel Prize about David Baltimore that attracts all this nonsense in the first place.

define torutre then. or genocide. They only really have meaning in the human sense. animals attempt genocide all the time, we call it competition. The elk in yellowstone was committing a genocide against the willow until the reintroduction of the wolf. Is that genocide? other food sources existed yet the willow was eaten almost out of exitence.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/18/science/earth/18 wolf.html?ex=1130644800&en=fa6ad229212617fc&ei=507 0

even human genocide is a form of competition in most places. One set of humans is fighting against another and attempts to completely destroy each other. Ants are known to do this when their mounds run into each other. massive 'wars' take place simply to win territory adn when one side wins, the other mound is usually completely taken over and all its ants are killed. Of course, you could call this comeptition for land but then, there was land elsewhere. give a broad enough definition and I guarantee it occurs. If you use things like "because of hatred" or "over trivial matters" then it is tough to measure for animals, or humans.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/18/science/earth/18 wolf.html?ex=1130644800&en=fa6ad229212617fc&ei=507 0

70 years of natural selection at work. If we hadn't put the wolves back, we might have been able to document real changes because the wolf is so high up on the food chain. of course, I am pro reintroduction so I'm ok with losing this opportunity at showing evolution in a macro-organism.

Metal lined passport covers! Seriously, Someone could get onto a bus (or whatever) in some foreign city and be able to tell that there are American citizens on it by using a RFID scanner with an antenna on it. There was an old NY Times article on this:

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/26/politics/26passp ort.html
The State Department will soon begin issuing passports that carry information about the traveler in a computer chip embedded in the cardboard cover as well as on its printed pages.

Privacy advocates say the new format - developed in response to security concerns after the Sept. 11 attacks - will be vulnerable to electronic snooping by anyone within several feet, a practice called skimming. Internal State Department documents, obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union under the Freedom of Information Act, show that Canada, Germany and Britain have raised the same concern.

"This is like putting an invisible bull's-eye on Americans that can be seen only by the terrorists," said Barry Steinhardt, the director of the A.C.L.U. Technology and Liberty Program. "If there's any nation in the world at the moment that could do without such a device, it is the United States....."

I wish I had a subscription so I could quote it myself, but I remember reading in this article, Houser said how people are tired of playing games that lead to failure because that's what real life is like: http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F3 0D11F93D5B0C758DDDA90994DD404482 Someone with a subscription pull that please.

but what are you going to do about floods? Put everything on stilts?

well, the dutch are creating floating houses...

speculation about Lucent's long-term outlook - and even its survival as an independent company - gathered steam yesterday after it released earnings for the fourth quarter. Profits plunged 69 percent compared with the same quarter a year ago, to $374 million, or 8 cents a share, from $1.21 billion, or 23 cents a share.

Here /. editors ought to automatically change the links.

Non registration link from the NYT Link Generator. Use it!

Ahh, sorta like in the 1800s when we couldn't breed fast enough to fulfill the promise of manifest destiny so we "imported cheap foreign labor" which turned into our ancestors. We're sucking the life out of foreign countries as their best and brightest head to America. I heard a senator call that unethical.

If the job is lost either, I'd rather have that person living in America, paying taxes and buying stuff from my store. It looks like automation and productivity are outstripping our ability to create new jobs. The stock market is doing just fine even though consumer sentiment sucks. I'm not pro big government but at some point we're going to need to feed the under-employed. Some people look at a life of unemployment supported by the rich as a utopian dream, others see that as humiliating. If it's inevitable then we might as well lose the attitude and enjoy retirement. Or you could always learn new skill and try to compete.

There's an interesting reflection on the "power tends to corrupt" quote in this biography of Lord Acton:

There are three things wrong with the famous maxim. First, power in human affairs does not come in volts or anything measurable; it comes in many contexts, each requiring close consideration. One can no more write a history of power than Acton could write a history of liberty. Second, no human being ever had absolute power. Absolute power is a fantasy of the frustrated. Third, the quotation must be read in terms of what immediately follows: ''Great men are almost always bad men.'' This thought expresses the very judgmental Acton, who held historical figures to be bad if they performed a single unworthy act. That point was made in the letter; Acton declared Elizabeth I a bad person for having Mary Queen of Scots executed. With such judgments he assumed a divine prerogative. As prosecutors, judges and historians we must sometimes evaluate actions. We cannot judge persons.

One should note that it is typically corrupt people who seek absolute power in the first place, in which case they are already corrupted before they achieve power.

Although there are any number of object lessons of corrupt people in power, there are many, perhaps more, instances of people with a large amount of power who remain relatively unchanged by it.

Consider American presidents. George W. Bush probably wields more power than any recent President. He has his flaws and has arguable made mistakes but few would say he has been morally corrupted by his years in the White House.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/24/business/24onion .html?ex=1287806400&en=b40eb239c3b34014&ei=5090&pa rtner=rssuserland&emc=rss

Here

here's an interesting article about that:

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/16/business/16advi. html?emc=eta1

god bless bugmenot :)

Exciting stuff - if they're going to be oppressing their suppliers they might as well achieve some environmental gains while they're at it.

You'll never walk (or do anything else) alone! http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/23/technology/23col lege.html?emc=eta1

Please Don't Call It a G-Rated Dispute - And most likely the ESRB doesn't want to pay money to the MPAA just for the "privledge" of using their rating system. Besides, if you don't know what "M" means, just look at the print under it that says "Mature 17+" to describe it. The local stores around here also have big ESRB posters or cardboard displays describing the ratings as well. How much more simplier does it need to be?

There are more things wrong with the UN than people think.

Click here. :)

It was interesting to see no one mentioned a non-registration link. Well, here it is from NYT Link Generator.

It led me to this page as well as to a rather unfortunate article from the KKK.

Been there, done that:
http://cm.bell-labs.com/cm/cs/tpop/Markov.java

Although this (short) program uses these state tables in order to spew out superficially good looking english text.

For example output, state table from:
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/02/magazine/02freak .html

Twenty-five hundred tons. That's how much manure was produced every day and tries to keep all three of you
from experiencing that telltale soft smush of a police captain, argued her dog-poop case. "While adults like
yourselves are appalled and disgusted by the sight of the Hoboken City Council, Lauren Mecka, the daughter of
a nuisance than horse manure ever was. But if you are, say, a parent who walks two kids to school every day
and tries to keep all three of you from experiencing that telltale soft smush of a nuisance nonetheless. With
horses, the solution was simply to eliminate guns has proved extremely difficult. A given gun lasts a very long
time, and as with dogs, guns are widely loved. But getting rid of the manure went uncollected, which posed a
terrible problem. (This is to say nothing of the uncollected dog poop in his sneaker tread linked him to the real
problem - their poop doesn't just lie there, of course. In 1978, New York were licensed. Even though a license
is legally required, costs a mere $8.50 a year and can be easily obtained by mail, most dog owners do obey the
law. That still leaves 10,000 dogs whose poop is found on the second floor so that homeowners might rise
above it. Like so many cells, poop is left in public spaces each day. Over the last year, only 68 summonses were
issued in New York enacted its famous (and widely imitated) "pooper scooper" law, and the offender's feelings
of guilt - are at least as powerful as financial and legal incentives. If social forces get us most of the animal dung
produced in today's New York enacted its famous (and widely imitated) "pooper scooper" law, and with them
went their dung. Most of the dogs? It might help for a moment to think of a misstep, it is a nuisance
nonetheless. With horses, the solution was simply to eliminate guns has proved extremely difficult. A given gun
lasts a very long time, and as with dogs, guns are widely loved. But getting rid of guns in crimes. Consequently,
the most recent year on record, only 102,004 dogs in New York neighborhood confirms that compliance with
the occasional miscreant who fails to scoop? After all, a walk through just about any New York City for
unlicensed dogs. So even if the DNA solution. During a meeting last year of the horse urine, the deafening
clatter of hooves or the carcasses left to rot in the late 19th century. Much of the dogs? It might cost about $30
million is a good guess.) All their poop doesn't just lie there, of course. In 1978, New York is not so much with
dogs per se. So perhaps attending to the real problem - their poop - will prompt a solution. Here's an idea:
DNA sampling. During the licensing procedure, every dog will have to provide a sample of saliva or blood to
establish a DNA sample for all the dogs of New York's dogs licensed? Instead of charging even a nominal fee,
the city may want to pay people to license their dogs. And then, instead of treating the licensing law as optional,
enforce it for real. Setting up random street checks for dog licenses may offend some New Yorkers, but it
certainly dovetails nicely with the law is hardly complete. The Parks Department, meanwhile, which conducts
regular cleanliness checks of parks and sidewalks," she said, "it is children like myself and younger who run the
greater risk of contact and exposure. We're the ones who have our picnics, stage our adventures and carry out
our dragon-slaying fantasies on our parks' grassy lawns. The council, Mecka says today, didn't seem to be
vigorously enforced. Let's pre

An Op-Ed columnist for The New York Times who makes an error "is expected to promptly correct it in the column." That's the established policy of Gail Collins, editor of the editorial page. Her written policy encourages "a uniform approach, with the correction made at the bottom of the piece." Two weeks have passed since my previous post spelled out the errors made by columnist Paul Krugman in writing about news media recounts of the 2000 Florida vote for president. Mr. Krugman still hasn't been required to comply with the policy by publishing a formal correction. Ms. Collins hasn't offered any explanation.

As questions about compliance with the corrections policy for The Times' Op-Ed columnists continue to arise, Gail Collins, editor of the editorial page, told me in an e-mail Tuesday that she will "address the issue in a forthcoming letter from the editor" in the paper. Ms. Collins' comment came in response to my Monday query about the handling of an error by columnist Frank Rich. That mistake has turned out to be the latest of five appearances that versions of the same "college roommates" error have made in The Times this month. While minor in normal times, the mistake has been made a total of four times by three Op-Ed columnists attacking cronyism--and once in a news article. In all five instances, Joe Allbaugh, President Bush's 2000-campaign manager and a former head of FEMA, and Michael Brown, his successor at FEMA, were described variously as college roommates, college buddies or college friends. In fact, the two men didn't even attend the same college. While they have been friends for 25 years, a spokeswoman for Mr. Allbaugh said they didn't know each other during their years at different Oklahoma colleges. With partisan charges of cronyism hanging over the Bush administration's handling of hurricanes, of course, it's not surprising that the college roommates description seems to have become more sensitive.

An Op-Ed columnist for The New York Times who makes an error "is expected to promptly correct it in the column." That's the established policy of Gail Collins, editor of the editorial page. Her written policy encourages "a uniform approach, with the correction made at the bottom of the piece." Two weeks have passed since my previous post spelled out the errors made by columnist Paul Krugman in writing about news media recounts of the 2000 Florida vote for president. Mr. Krugman still hasn't been required to comply with the policy by publishing a formal correction. Ms. Collins hasn't offered any explanation.

As questions about compliance with the corrections policy for The Times' Op-Ed columnists continue to arise, Gail Collins, editor of the editorial page, told me in an e-mail Tuesday that she will "address the issue in a forthcoming letter from the editor" in the paper. Ms. Collins' comment came in response to my Monday query about the handling of an error by columnist Frank Rich. That mistake has turned out to be the latest of five appearances that versions of the same "college roommates" error have made in The Times this month. While minor in normal times, the mistake has been made a total of four times by three Op-Ed columnists attacking cronyism--and once in a news article. In all five instances, Joe Allbaugh, President Bush's 2000-campaign manager and a former head of FEMA, and Michael Brown, his successor at FEMA, were described variously as college roommates, college buddies or college friends. In fact, the two men didn't even attend the same college. While they have been friends for 25 years, a spokeswoman for Mr. Allbaugh said they didn't know each other during their years at different Oklahoma colleges. With partisan charges of cronyism hanging over the Bush administration's handling of hurricanes, of course, it's not surprising that the college roommates description seems to have become more sensitive.

I posted this article, and included links to the NY Times report which brought this to my attention, but those links were edited out. Here they are:

NY Times article, login required

Original RSS link, no reg required

I posted this article, and included links to the NY Times report which brought this to my attention, but those links were edited out. Here they are:

NY Times article, login required

Original RSS link, no reg required

The 20-member panel, reporting at the request of a bipartisan group in Congress, said that without such an effort the United States 'could soon loose its privileged position.'

This was a perfect example of a correction and editing. They not only owned up to the mistake, they also included an avalanche of opposing opinion. They noted that the author's connections were not properly identified and have appended a correction to the earlier version of the story.

This is a reader-friendly, no-bones-about-it correction, and the New York Times could actually take a lesson from Fox News on this one.

Of course, the best thing would have been to get it right in the first place.

I think it's a testament to the degree to which the iPod has entered mainstream culture that shortly after Apple's announcement the new video-capable iPod is covered on the main pages of the websites of major news organizations such as BBC, CNN, and the New York Times.