Slashdot Mirror

Leonid Khachiyan Is Dead at 52; Advanced Computer Math

"Dr. Khachiyan proposed using an ellipsoid algorithm in approaching theoretical problems believed to be too demanding for the simplex method"

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/22/nyregion/22khach iyan.html?pagewanted=print

-- From an article on the imminent collapse of Zimbabwe, but it seemed germane to the thread...

President Merkin Muffley: But this is absolute madness, Ambassador! Why should you *build* such a thing?

Ambassador de Sadesky: There were those of us who fought against it, but in the end we could not keep up with the expense involved in the arms race, the space race, and the peace race. At the same time our people grumbled for more nylons and washing machines. Our doomsday scheme cost us just a small fraction of what we had been spending on defense in a single year. The deciding factor was when we learned that your country was working along similar lines, and we were afraid of a doomsday gap.

President Merkin Muffley: This is preposterous. I've never approved of anything like that.

Ambassador de Sadesky: Our source was the New York Times.

Okay, so I suck at HTML. New Yorker review, NY Times review.

Okay, so I suck at HTML. New Yorker review, NY Times review.

The New Yorker has a . They don't seem to be quite as excited as Ebert, though. Also, the : "This is by far the best film in the more recent trilogy, and also the best of the four episodes Mr. Lucas has directed. That's right (and my inner 11-year-old shudders as I type this): it's better than 'Star Wars.'"

and it was positive: A.O. Scott in the New York Times.

Registration required (and fix the slash'ed URL):
http://movies2.nytimes.com/2005/05/16/movies/16sta r.html

Or for a perceptive scathing (and amusing) review, see Anthony Lane in the New Yorker (right now at http://www.newyorker.com/critics/cinema).

This article appears in the NY Times today http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/18/technology/18dat a.html?
and the primary focus of the article is on how easy it is to steal identities on line using legal methods and less than $50.

The slashdot title implies that a college course was used to invade the privacy of Baltimore individuals. This is most misleading. While this is nothing new to most readers here, the significant thing is that this article is in a mainstream media publication and may help to strengthen some of the right to privacy laws that are currently under the gun.

I purchase the worst local paper just because the carry the Times daily puzzle.

You can use their RSS feeds without registration. Also you can go to http://nytimes.blogspace.com/genlink and paste a link to a NYT page to get a version that doesn't require a login.

Here's the article mentioned above that doesn't require registration:

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/17/business/media/1 7times.html?ex=1273982400&en=0b9bad06a1930877&ei=5 090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss

I have been an on-line Op-Ed NYTimes reader for many years now. The pieces represent the full political spectrum from the left (Krugman) to the right (Brooks). The pieces are very well written and highly intelligent. Unfortunately, $50/year is kind of steep for my budget, so I will deeply miss this source of information.

However, I understand their reason for targeting the Op-Ed pieces. They are usually the "Most E-Mailed Articles". Over the last 7 days, for example, Op-Ed articles were 11 out of the 25 most e-mailed articles.

I have been an on-line Op-Ed NYTimes reader for many years now. The pieces represent the full political spectrum from the left (Krugman) to the right (Brooks). The pieces are very well written and highly intelligent. Unfortunately, $50/year is kind of steep for my budget, so I will deeply miss this source of information.

However, I understand their reason for targeting the Op-Ed pieces. They are usually the "Most E-Mailed Articles". Over the last 7 days, for example, Op-Ed articles were 11 out of the 25 most e-mailed articles.

The cases of MoG and Jayson Blair are fundamentally different from events surrounding Rather's resignation or the retraction of the claims in the Newsweek article. Rather and Newsweek ran stories about events that were based on fact- that is they actually happened in the real world- while MoG and Blair just MADE STUFF UP. MoG carried it a step further and engaged in ad-hominem attacks on the subject of her reporting- behavior that is totally unprofessional, uncalled-for, and possibly actionable.

As the Gannon/Guckert insanity shows, it's OK to make stuff up and pass it off as fact, as long as it's an echo chamber for whatever Rove told McClellan to say. MoG's strategic failure isn't that she's reporting lies as fact, it's that she doesn't have a bunch of religious whack-jobs employed by ClearChannel to repeat her lies as if they're the truth. She does have a network of MS apologists and astroturfers who copy/paste her specious claims, and Dvorak is one of those guys.

The media has 3 audiences, and are held accountable to two masters: the audiences are (1) sheep who believe what they're told, (2) people who are willing to read past the headline and actually question the news being presented to them, and (3) the people who made the news happen and want to see it reported a certain way so (1) and (2) can know how cool/important/rich/dangerous (3) is living. The masters are (A) the corporate entities who sign the paychecks, and (B) to a much lesser extent, the news-reading public composed of (1) and (2) who vote with their eyes and dollars.

The problem with news in this country today is that group (3) and group (A) are increasingly the same people, using the news media to influence the opinions of groups (1) and (2). We have a name for this kind of media communication- it's called advertizing.

Or marketing. And when you see an ad, the important questions to ask are: "who is paying for this?" "What are they selling?" and "how much did this ad cost?" So those are the questions I (and I think many other folks who have had opportunity to appreciate what PJ is doing with Groklaw) would like to ask MoG, preferably after a subpoena and under oath.

Hopefully these kids (and those who are following this story) will learn the following lesson:

It doesn't matter how many security holes a system has; never, ever talk about them or try to get them fixed.

Take, for example, the US's Airport "security." That system is a complete joke. I mean, it is not even funny how easy it is to sneak things past the "guards." If you try to point out where the flaws are, they will arrest you.

Remember, their goal is not to provide security, but rather the illusion of security. The unwashed masses need the government to "do something" so they can go on about their little lives without fear. It doesn't matter if that "something" works or not, or how much money is wasted.

The highlight of the "discovery" is, that they did not manage to get enough money together to pay the hunters to catch them a life rodent. I guess they spent all of their research money on asian hookers the night before.

According to NYT
"As far as he knew, Dr. Timmins said, no Western scientists have ever seen a kha-nyou alive."

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/12/science/12rodent .html

The NY Times article about this.

Local farmers and hunters trapped or snared the animals, which they also referred to as rock rats, slaughtered them and took them to market

A species that no western scientist has ever seen, and the locals are trying as hard as they can to make them extinct. It seems to be a common theme in history. Is this the future of mankind on earth?

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/13/technology/13xbo x.html

Sounds crazy to me, but there it is...

Click here. :)

service providers want real operating systems on their hardware

Easy there tiger. Or were you thinking about service providers other than the three biggest in NA?

The trouble is, all of these features saddle the poor little device with a complexity that will boggle even the veteran cell fan. You have to wade your way through a staggering 583 menu commands, along with far too many pointless "Are you sure?" confirmations, to find them all. Just looking up your own phone number requires eight button presses, for goodness' sake.

...

Now do you want to tell me that this picture is all rosy? Or are you willing to open your eyes and note that there may be issues here?

No, of course there are issues here. For example, effective indentured servitude is indeed an abuse of the H-1B system. I personally can't imagine how you think American visas are "designed for international co-operation"; anyone who's spent hours in the "non-US Citizens" line at a US airport (even pre-2001) knows better, but never mind this.

What I am trying to do is cast a different light on the issues. Let's step back, for a moment, from this tricky question of who's projecting onto whom, and consider some history.

In 1870, the Irish labor union "The Secret Order of the Knights of St Crispin" went on strike in a shoe factory in North Adams, MA. The factory owner, Calvin Sampson, responded by using the railroad to bring in a contingent of 75 Chinese strikebreakers from San Francisco. This was an amazingly effective tactic. The Knights made an abortive attempt to bring the Chinese into their union, but it failed, and Sampson's tactic became a model for other East coast entrepreneurs.

The history of race relations in the US can be viewed in these terms: exploitative bosses using race as a divide-and-conquer tactic. The writings of Ronald Takaki on this subject make a good read, and he's a Berkeley local :-)

Now, to me, the fundamental problem here is not that the Chinese were prepared to work for less than the Irish, but that the Irish labor union failed to build an effective dialogue with the Chinese. Indeed, they lacked a clear ideological underpinning for such a dialogue. Presumably (and now I freely admit I may be projecting) it was quite hard for them to separate the issue of "the Chinese should have the same rights as us" with the issue of "the Chinese shouldn't be taking our jobs".

I see the same confusion in the present dialogue. To use two examples from your post: The fact that local, qualified workers exist is not a huge issue to me. The fact that the foreign workers aren't getting the same rights as the local workers (such as free movement from employer to employer) is an issue.

I'm not accusing you of hating immigrants (honest), nor am I looking through rose-colored glasses and saying no problem exists. I'm simply suggesting that we need to disentangle these two issues, and reduce the emphasis on "American jobs". Otherwise, we'll end up like the Irish shoemakers of St Crispin, unable to talk to the Chinese.

Perhaps you feel exactly the same way. If so, I apologise for the redundancy.

As for your discussion of outsourcing, I'm unable to comment on the quality of coders from Bangalore. Otherwise, it just seems to me like the same thing on a global scale. Good question: how can we build a dialogue with these workers, to create global standards and rights? Bad question: how can we stop low-skilled hacks stealing our jobs? (And no, I'm not claiming you said either one of these; they're just illustrative.)

Viewed from this perspective of workers' rights, I think the idea that H-1Bs are "bad for the economy" is a bit of a distraction, though yes, you could probably phrase it in these terms. Oh, and by the way, regarding your opinion of higher ed: sounds pretty bad down your neck of the woods. Please, encourage your kids to come to Berkeley. I for one try not to turn out "degreed idiots". HTH

"The Constitution prohibits treason ("aid and comfort to the enemy")."

Section 805 is an abomination dripping with the potential for abuse. If you're not concerned about the abuse, read this latest article. 16 year-old girls detained for 6 weeks. No real cause. Released without charges. But the defense lawyer is still under a gag order and can't even discuss the freakin' case.

The problem is when "The Enemy" becomes such a slapdash label that grouping anyone who opposes you into "The Bad Guys" becomes almost an afterthought.

"People and entities that want to harm or destroy the US are the enemy."

Except that the current powers-that-be in Washington D.C. seem not to have much problem extending that to mean "anyone wanting to harm the interests of those in power". If DeLay and crew were so eager to falsely report a "missing plane" to the Dept. of Homeland Security and exploit those assets during a mere political tiff, doesn't that raise the hair on the back of your neck? Because it should.

What if Doctors Without Borders treat a series of casualties somewhere in Africa, and it later turns out some of the patients happened to be with some "officially designated terrorist group".

What if you take on a perl project that someone on the Web has offered up on a contract basis? Quick little contract job. Later turns out the person paying you was with a charity group linked to Hamas?

Far-fetched? Hard to say. But the fact is that there should not even be the potential for such a situation. If the U.S. gov't wants to put you away, they've now got an arsenal of laws in PATRIOT that can do so on the most tenuous of connections.

Once again, if that doesn't make the hair on the back of your neck, maybe you need to reexamine what's been going on.

And while no one gets too riled up about foreign practices in foreign countries, when the polygamists move next door, people get upset

Finally, you're argument seems to be that just because some people somewhere else or long ago thought it was good, then most Americans now don't think it's bad, which seems to me to be faulty logic. By that rational, a doctor who suggests that patients should be regularly bled to rebalance the humors would be practicing what is called "good medicine", just because it was "good medicine" 200 years ago. (BTW, whether or not something really is good medicine ought to be a scientific question, IMHO, not subject to opinions or social consensus or religio-political debate or corporate lobbying or ad campaigns, but that doesn't seem to be the current state of things, if it ever was...)

Please note that I'm not arguing here for or against any of the aforementioned practices. I've definetly got pro or con opinions on all of 'em, but Slashdot just isn't the place. I'm just challenging the bare assertion that nothing the LDS does (or did) is considered extreme or offensive by others. This really isn't a Slashdot issue either, but if inaccurate information isn't challenged just because it's off-topic, the casual reader will get the idea that the claim is accurate and undisputed.

Their summary: Microsoft is under 'attack' on all fronts

Really, I'm not out to destroy Microsoft. That will just be a completely unintentional side effect.

• Marc Andreessen made 100s of millions of dollars shortly after graduating from UIUC. Today's graduates of the same university face moving back in with their parents. "Fuck that, I got mine!"
• Brian Behlendorf decided he'd rather go to India to recruit software engineers than help out the graduating classes of 2001-2004 here in the US.
• Robert Malda stood idly by and said NOTHING while his company offshored its flagship product.

Miguel de Icaza, Bruce Perens, Eric Raymond, and Linus Torvalds all got rich off the Open Source Movement. What do you have to look forward to?

OSDN == Offshore Software Development NOW!!! Read how OSDN is helping to offshore American High-Tech to the Third World!

/.'s article here is the first I've heard of this Real ID plan...

Well, aside from the obvious fact that since the neo-con coup the network media hasn't covered anything except talking-dubya-points, the reason you haven't noticed this tidbit of legistlation (which apparently started back in Feburary) is because "liberal media" has painted it as an immagration issue - that is: the only people targeted by this legislation according to the to PTB and their media cheerleaders were illegal aliens - I heard it debated on Faux News as an immagration issue a least a month ago. I would have to say either a) you haven't been paying attention, or b) you are foolish enough to a ctually believe the that the motives these pseudo-news agencies put forward are the actual intent of the neo-con coup. Nothing could be further from the truth, of course...

Here is a list of articles about this legislation (trivially found using Google) from some touchy feely immagration rights outfit that no one will pay any attention to.

[ -- copied & pasted -- ]

The REAL ID Act in the Media

• "Jewish Groups Oppose US's Stricter Controls on Asylum," Jerusalem Post, March 9, 2005
• "Death Sentence?" Christianity Today, March 8, 2005
• "Republican Plan Would Tighten Laws for Asylum Cases," Hearst Newspapers, March 6, 2005
• "Keep the Doors Open," The Jewish Week editorial, February 25, 2005
• "Unwelcome Mat," The Boston Globe, February 25, 2005
• "Religious Asylum Assailed," Family News in Focus, February 22, 2005 (PDF - 51KB)
• "Proyecto de ley torpedea el derecho de asilo," El Nuevo Herald, February 22, 2005
• "Conservative camps split on tightening asylum," The Boston Globe, February 21, 2005
• "Not broke, don't fix," The Washington Times, February 20, 2005
• "National ID Party," The Wall Street Journal editorial, February 17, 2005 (subscription required)
• "On Guard, America," The New York Times editorial, February 15, 2005
• "Refugee Politics," The Baltimore Sun editorial, February 14, 2005
• "Real ID Act deserves defeat in the Senate," San Antonio Express-News editorial, February 18, 2005
• "Playing the terror card," Contra Costa Times, February 14, 2005
• "Ineffectual migrant policy," Milwaukee Journal Sentinel editorial

Wow, is anyone else surprised CNET put this in here:

> Why did these ID requirements get attached to an "emergency" military
> spending bill??
> Because it's difficult for politicians to vote against money that will go to the troops
> in Iraq and tsunami relief. The funds cover ammunition, weapons, tracked combat
> vehicles, aircraft, troop housing, death benefits, and so on.

The Republicans control congress and the executive branch now, and they wanted to have this National ID bill. By attaching this to a wholly unrelated military spending bill, the so-called advocates of small government will get their national ID card wish.

As an interesting aside it's funny that they chose to stick this into a military spending bill for Iraq. Anyone recall that the Bush Administration told us told this war was going to cost? I thought this was was supposed to cost between $10 and $100 billion? We're already more than three times the high end figure, with no end in sight. This is the fourth emergency allocation of money Bush has asked for for his war "on the cheap".

Anyway, make no mistake about it. The Republicans are now using their complete control to railroad this bill through, by sticking this thing in a military spending bill. It's a perfect catch-22. If the Democrats voted against it, they would have been accused of being against our troops (John Kerry, please take some time to describe how that feels). If they voted for it, it miraculously becomes a bipartisan bill so the Republicans can pass the blame around to evade responsibility. Even after this, the Democrats can be accused of "flip-flopping" since they voted against the national ID before, and now they're voting for it when it's buried in a military spending bill (Senator Kerry, your turn again). Wow, it's a win-win-win situation for the Republicans.

Of course, for the Democrats and the public in general, it's a nice lose-lose-lose situation though. Maybe a brave Democrat can filibuster this bill so it doesn't get railroaded through. Oh, wait, the Republicans want to get rid of the filibuster, too.

I call upon all the Democratic senators and representatives who read Slashdot to stop this as soon as possible! There. I've done my part.

Get back to me when mainstream American christians applaud murder in their god's name.

NC residents mainstream enough?

First of all, you're mischaracterizing the Taliban. All murder carried out with the Taliban's approval was according to their interpretation of Islamic law. The Taliban were/are extremely religious people, just like Al Qaeda is full of extremely religious people and all those Catholics and Protestants who slaughtered each other in Europe were extremely religious people.

It's not a far out comparison to note that extremist Christian sects have gained more visibility and that many politicians pander to them. We don't have to have these people's vision completely implemented before there is a problem, some of the proposals these extremists advocate may be acceptable to mainstream Christians, but completely antithetical to American ideology, like same-sex marriage.

The comparison with the Taliban is because the Taliban was a theocracy, and if you look at many mainstream Christians, they don't really have a problem with ideas like US law comes from the Bible. That is a problem as it is a direct contradiction to the principles upon which our system operates. Our government is secular, it has NO OPINION of religious issues or edicts. Just look at the Mass Supremes ruling on gay-marriage, they found the state had no legitimate interest in banning gay-marriage, that the ban was based entirely on religious or moral views and therefore violated the liberty of conscience (religious freedom) of gay citizens of Mass.

Once mainstream Americans applaude the denial of certain citizen's rights because of religion, how far off is murder? Ashcroft's Justice Dept. already approved torture in contradiction to US precedent and law without consequences, what's to stop Gonzales from deciding that there isn't really a separation of church and state? Mainstream America doesn't seem to see this behavior as abnormal, they re-elected these people.

You have to read several sources, liberal and conservative, to get a good balanced view of the world.

Sure, why not.

Here's the registration-free link.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/04/technology/techs pecial/04zezima.html?ex=1272859200&en=162c148f441a 31ff&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss

Interestingly, that article also pointed out a favorable alternative. Instead of Firefly, though, it was Blade Runner:

"And even now, 20 years later, it still looks like the future... That's a neat trick."

"What George Lucas may have seen as eternal in his "Star Wars" blockbusters, science fiction writers have tended to see as antique"

It started out 30 years behind," said Ursula K. Le Guin. "Science fiction was doing all sorts of thinking and literary experiments on a totally different plane. 'Star Wars' was just sort of fun."

"It takes these very stock metaphors of empire in space and monstrously bad people and wonderfully good people and plays out a bunch of stock operatic themes in space suits," she said. "You can do it with cowboy suits as well."

If truth be told, sci-fi writers say, their work and "Star Wars" never had much in common.

Like science itself, science fiction has evolved since the days of H. G. Wells and Jules Verne in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Since the end of World War II, the genre has shifted its focus from space and time travel to more complex speculations on how the future, whatever its shape, will affect the individual.

That shift has only accelerated in recent years, as biotech and genetic engineering have moved to center stage in science and captured writers' imaginations, and as the lines between science fiction and other genres begin to blur. . . .

One problem with "Star Wars," science fiction writers say, is that it is not, ultimately, concerned with science, but rather with a timeless vision of good and evil. . . .

The literature is filled with writing by Greg Benford, the 'how to empathize with ordinary deathless people' writer Greg Egan, Ken Macleod, Richard Morgan, Ian Banks, Cory Doctorow , or Charlie Stross. Movies haven't made it past the 70's (Bladerunner, the Matrix) other than perhaps 'Eternal Sunshine' (similar to a few 80's stories), and T.V. shows have only tentatively reached the 80's or early 90's (some Outer Limits and Twighlight Zone episodes). With Star Wars and Star Trek out of the way perhaps there'll be more room for the average media SF to catch up to at least the 80's.

from the smoke&mirrors.con project?

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/30/opinion/30dowd.h tml?incamp=article_popular_3

3 cheers (once again) to the nyt's for helping to keep US in touch with some sense of reality, amidst the phonIE stock markup FraUD, corepirate nazi, softwar gangster, pr ?firm? scriptdead hypenosys.

vote with (what's left in) yOUR wallet. help bring an end to unprecedented evile's manifestation through yOUR owned felonious life0cidal glowbull warmongering execrable.

some of US should consider ourselves very fortunate to be among those scheduled to survive after the big flash/implementation of the creators' wwwildly popular planet/population rescue initiative/mandate.

it's right in the manual, 'world without end', etc....

as we all ?know?, change is inevitable, & denying/ignoring gravity, logic, morality, etc..., is only possible, on a temporary basis.

concern about the course of events that will occur should the corepirate nazi life0cidal execrable fail to be intervened upon is in order.

'do not be dismayed' (also from the manual). however, it's ok/recommended, to not attempt to live under/accept, fauxking nazi felon mindphuking hypenosys.

for each of the creators' innocents harmed, there is a debt that must/will be repaid by you/us, as the perpetrators/minions of unprecedented evile, will not be available.

consult with/trust in yOUR creators. providing more than enough of everything for everyone (without any distracting/spiritdead personal gain motives), whilst badtolling unprecedented evile, using an unlimited supply of newclear power, since/until forever. see you there?

"If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land."

There's some spammy/spyware like "iWon" thing wrapped in that link. It places a little "iWon" banner at the top of the NYT page, which of course links to some bullshit "iWon" page, which of course probably makes our friend prostoalex a bunch of money.

I'm not sure what else it does as I'm running OmniWeb on my Mac, but Windows users beware.

Clean link: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/01/business/01tower s.html?

Go team slashdot.

"The towers, sometimes disguised as fir trees, cacti or flagpoles, were once confined mostly to sparsely populated stretches of highway or industrial zones. More are being planted in residential areas as the wireless companies - responding to subscriber demands - race to build their networks for seamless coverage."

Look at the article to see the pictures of the mentioned cacti and fir tree

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/01/business/01tower s.html?ei=5058&en=6871db49a586b2da&ex=1115611200&p artner=IWON&pagewanted=all&position=

NewYork times had a detailed sunday magazine article on Apr 10 . (now you have to pay to read this) The article included about the politics among scientists behind this research. I quote few of them below, including the most bizzare possiblity!

..For several years, Brivanlou, a 45-year-old developmental biologist at Rockefeller University in New York, has been arguing that one of the best ways to understand the usefulness of stem cells for regenerative medicine is to first insert them in an animal embryo and see how they divide and differentiate in a living system. The experiment is explicitly prohibited by the institutions that supply the stem-cell lines approved by the Bush administration, so he is using private funds to develop his own lines. He plans to insert them into 3-to-5-day-old mouse embryos, which he will then implant in the wombs of female mice. Brivanlou is anxiously awaiting the publication of the National Academy of Sciences guidelines before proceeding, but he says he doubts that they will prove an impediment. In his view, showing the potency of stem cells only in a petri dish is like testing the power of a new car by revving its engine in the garage. He wants to take the car out on the track and see how it might perform some day on the open road.

....
Robert Lanza, vice president for medical and scientific development at Advanced Cell Technology in Worcester, Mass., says much the same thing. ''I personally don't want to engage in those kinds of experiments, and I won't have any of my scientists do that work,'' he says. ''Sure, we could reach our endpoints quicker that way. But it takes you into very murky water.''

Why all the shuddering? For starters, there is the gonad quandary. If the experiment really works, the human cells should differentiate into all of the embryo's cell lineages, including the one that eventually forms the animal's reproductive cells. If the mouse were male, some of its sperm might thus be human, and if it were female, some of its eggs might be human eggs. If two such creatures were to mate, there would be a chance that a human embryo could be conceived and begin to grow in a mouse uterus -- a sort of Stuart Little scenario, but in reverse and not so cute.

''Literally nobody wants to see an experiment where two mice that have eggs and sperm of human origin have the opportunity to mate and produce human offspring,'' says Dr. Norman Fost, professor of pediatrics and director of the bioethics program at the University of Wisconsin and a member of the National Academy of Sciences committee reviewing stem-cell research policies. ''That's beyond anybody's wildest nightmare.''

Is the concern over the reproductive issue overblown? It is, of course, biologically impossible for a human fetus to be delivered from a rodent uterus. Moreover, for a human embryo to be conceived, the chimeras would have to be born first in order to mate, and Brivanlou says he has no intention of allowing them to come to term. He plans to terminate them and examine the fate of the human cells after a week. Still, there remains the question of what kind of being would be present during those seven days. Nobody knows. Does even the fleeting, prenatal existence of a chimera of unknown aspect cross a moral line -- not because of what it might look like or become but simply for what it is?

Non-registration version. :)

Today's NY Times also has an article on the impending death of Enterprise.

David Pogue made a semi-related post to this just the other day (Apr 27 entry). Of course, it being on the NYTimes site, registration is required. Oh, the irony...

... read this New York Times article (no registration): Anywhere else in the world, a train running 90 seconds late would perhaps be considered on time. But in Japan, 90 seconds would foil commuters who depend on trains' connecting to one another with balletic precision, often with only a couple of minutes to spare... .. Across the country, the accident has already caused much soul-searching over Japan's attention - some would say obsession - with punctuality and efficiency. To many, the driver's single-minded focus on making up the 90 seconds seemed to reveal the weak points of a society where the trains really do run on time, but where people have lost sight of the bigger picture.

"Japanese believe that if they board a train, they'll arrive on time. There is no flexibility in our society; people are not flexible, either. If you go abroad, you find that trains don't necessarily arrive on time," Mr. Sawada said. "This disaster was produced by Japanese civilization and Japanese people." said Yasuyuki Sawada, a 49-year-old railway worker.

The Japanese search for rail perfection is relentless, from the humble commuter train to the country's most famous tracks. In 2004, on the 40th anniversary of the bullet train, there was much hand-wringing over the fact that a year earlier the trains on that line had registered on average a delay - of six seconds...

I mentioned this on my AQFL site.

I spent a couple hours earlier today reading it, and I gotta say, the article is right on about the Finder and metadata. How cool would it be if Finder had a "Keywords" utility palette that let you "tag" files in a Gmail-esque manner? Instead we get to deal with the continued inconsistent behavior of Finder. Their video of the "Smart Folder" constantly jumping around after being opened and closed is hilarious, but sadly accurate. Here's hoping the 10.5 will be the release where Apple digs up the Finder and rebuilds it from scratch in Cocoa. It seems like lately Apple's been really lax in the HIG department. (Mail 2.0 buttons, anyone?) Someone in that department needs to find religion and start cracking the whip on their projects.

Still, Tiger is really, really impressive compared to their competition. While Longhorn continues to look more and more like a cross between Copland and the White Whale, Apple delivered its project on-time and with all the features they promised. It looks like the computing mainstream is finally starting to give Apple some credit for their accomplishments, too. Even the New York Times put out an editorial about how cool it is to upgrade to Tiger! It's just interesting to think about how much more it could be.

A truly spacial Finder with real metadata? Incomparable!

Us Western Europeans generally take home more money than Americans do, especially as our minimum wage is quite a bit higher

You might not be as well-off as you think you are.
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=FA0 915F73A5A0C748DDDAD0894DD404482&incamp=archive:sea rch

Reports that NY Times writer David Pogue found a severed finger in his copy of the new operating system have not been confirmed, although there is photographic evidence in his video review.

Reports that NY Times writer David Pogue found a severed finger in his copy of the new operating system have not been confirmed, although there is photographic evidence in his video review.

I was a little uneasy with the original NYT article "Illegal Immigrants Are Bolstering Social Security With Billions

This is mainly because the ariticle says that it gets its numbers from those whom the Social Security Administration terms "other than legal immigrants." (The article is archived at the Times website, but Slate synopsis with the quote can be seen here)

This makes the numbers essentially meaningless since this could whole host of people including H1-Bs (who are working legally, but are NOT legal immigrants).

Besides it does not make sense to compare the money a H1-B worker brings in to the money an illegal immigrant brings in for several reasons. (Like many other consultants, the majority of the money, for many H1Bs, goes to middle vendors; H1s also often spend less time in one city, resulting in high relocation costs and household setup costs, which benefits the local economy directly,

I was a little uneasy with the original NYT article "Illegal Immigrants Are Bolstering Social Security With Billions

This is mainly because the ariticle says that it gets its numbers from those whom the Social Security Administration terms "other than legal immigrants." (The article is archived at the Times website, but Slate synopsis with the quote can be seen here)

This makes the numbers essentially meaningless since this could whole host of people including H1-Bs (who are working legally, but are NOT legal immigrants).

Besides it does not make sense to compare the money a H1-B worker brings in to the money an illegal immigrant brings in for several reasons. (Like many other consultants, the majority of the money, for many H1Bs, goes to middle vendors; H1s also often spend less time in one city, resulting in high relocation costs and household setup costs, which benefits the local economy directly,

Likewise, I couldn't get mplayer to play it, but the linux version of real would play it.
Here is the link:
http://www.nytimes.com/video/src/2005/04/27/techno logy/highbandwidth/realmedia/20050427_pogue_VIDEO_ HI.rpm

Moderators and editors should not condone this copyright infringement. After all, we would be pissed if someone didn't abide by the GPL, right? Right?

A link to the NYT article that doesn't need registration.

When pointing to the NYT, can you please use the New York Times Link Generator! Links are the whole point of the web! While cutting-and-pasting the text is possible it's a bit of a kludge IMHO.

Instead of moderating your post, I'll respond.

MANY Mexican illegals have fake SSNs and pay all those taxes you think they don't. And many don't get returns or anything. A recent article in the NY Times was title, "Illegal Immigrants Are Bolstering Social Security With Billions" and that all future IRS and government income assumes that these numbers will continue to rise.

Second, it's IMPOSSIBLE to close off or secure the border with Mexico, while it's much easier to check people at airports.

Another, many Americans go to college and seek those IT jobs. People aren't flocking to work those fields in Idaho, do construction around Las Vegas, etc. North Carolina is growing in population largely to the illegals and the state's economy is seeing the effects.

And they don't work for $3/hr. sure, some do. I had friends working for $4/hr for 12 hours a day for a while. but that was 10 years ago and non-taxed. But I'm working illegally for $7/hr (fast-food cashier). All on the books, and the Federal and States are getting a piece. And I know others doing the same.

I think the immigration policy seriously needs to be looked into. But there are so many ideological blow hards (on various sides of the spectrum) that changes are taking way too long.

Personally, on some level, I'd be happy with a change since I'm seeking a software engineering job and need sponsorship. But I don't think it needs to be increased. If companies start leaving the US to be based elsewhere, then maybe..