Slashdot Mirror

And of course there's this brilliant tidbit where he blasts CNN's crossfire for being theater instead of actual news. The best part is when conservative crossfire host Tucker Carlson tries to ask Jon Stewart why he gave Kerry softball questions when he was on the Daily Show, Stewart responded (paraphrased from memory) "What I didn't realize, and maybe this explains alot, is that CNN takes its queues on integrity from Comedy Central. The show that leads into mine is puppets making crank phone calls."

Jon Stewart is brilliant, and since the Daily Show has the satirical factor embedded in it, it allows him more freedom than most other media outlets. And ironically in many cases he does a better job at explaining the news. For example, Daily Show viewers tend to be more informed than viewers of many other programs.

It's on NYT too... but I just couldn't do that to everyone :)

You are correct, the USA is falling behind in http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=FB0 F16FB38590C708CDDAC0894DC404482

The American military is working on a new generation of soldiers, far different from the army it has.

"They don't get hungry," said Gordon Johnson of the Joint Forces Command at the Pentagon. "They're not afraid. They don't forget their orders. They don't care if the guy next to them has just been shot. Will they do a better job than humans? Yes."

The robot soldier is coming.

The Pentagon predicts that robots will be a major fighting force in the American military in less than a decade, hunting and killing enemies in combat. Robots are a crucial part of the Army's effort to rebuild itself as a 21st-century fighting force, and a $127 billion project called Future Combat Systems is the biggest military contract in American history.

The military plans to invest tens of billions of dollars in automated armed forces. The costs of that transformation will help drive the Defense Department's budget up almost 20 percent, from a requested $419.3 billion for next year to $502.3 billion in 2010, excluding the costs of war. The annual costs of buying new weapons is scheduled to rise 52 percent, from $78 billion to $118.6 billion.

Military planners say robot soldiers will think, see and react increasingly like humans. In the beginning, they will be remote-controlled, looking and acting like lethal toy trucks. As the technology develops, they may take many shapes. And as their intelligence grows, so will their autonomy.

The robot soldier has been a dream at the Pentagon for 30 years. And some involved in the work say it may take at least 30 more years to realize in full. Well before then, they say, the military will have to answer tough questions if it intends to trust robots with the responsibility of distinguishing friend from foe, combatant from bystander.

Even the strongest advocates of automatons say war will always be a human endeavor, with death and disaster. And supporters like Robert Finkelstein, president of Robotic Technology in Potomac, Md., are telling the Pentagon it could take until 2035 to develop a robot that looks, thinks and fights like a soldier. The Pentagon's "goal is there," he said, "but the path is not totally clear."

Robots in battle, as envisioned by their builders, may look and move like humans or hummingbirds, tractors or tanks, cockroaches or crickets. With the development of nanotechnology - the science of very small structures - they may become swarms of "smart dust." The Pentagon intends for robots to haul munitions, gather intelligence, search buildings or blow them up.

All these are in the works, but not yet in battle. Already, however, several hundred robots are digging up roadside bombs in Iraq, scouring caves in Afghanistan and serving as armed sentries at weapons depots.

By April, an armed version of the bomb-disposal robot will be in Baghdad, capable of firing 1,000 rounds a minute. Though controlled by a soldier with a laptop, the robot will be the first thinking machine of its kind to take up a front-line infantry position, ready to kill enemies.

"The real world is not Hollywood," said Rodney A. Brooks, director of the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory at M.I.T. and a co-founder of the iRobot Corporation. "Right now we have the first few robots that are actually useful to the military."

Despite the obstacles, Congress ordered in 2000 that a third of the ground vehicles and a third of deep-strike aircraft in the military must become robotic within a decade. If that mandate is to be met, the United States will spend many billions of dollars on military robots by 2010.

As the first lethal robots head for Iraq, the role of the robot soldier as a killing machine has barely

Actually, it's quite possible -- all you need to do is insulate the room with Aerogel, and you'll be good to go.

seems to be "fascinated" by the Columbine tragedy. Will Michael Moore be blamed?

FW News
Reuters
NYTimes
Daily Herald
Google News

Thomas Friedman's has written a column about it. Interesting argument in fact on why the US should have to use alternative energy sources.

In addition, we don't really understand the effect on wind patterns caused by the farms on the surrounding ecology and weather patterns. I wonder if the tidal generation has similar problems? Imagine the effect to Europe if the Gulf Stream was disturbed by a series of wave turbines? (Ok, a somewhat far-fetched question there.)

Flat tax would be nice. Current tax law pushes most of the burden onto the lower and middle classes. Higher classes get most of their incomes from different areas, like capital gains, which do not pay their due burden for our government. The higher tax brackets they're supposed to have for those higher incomes are rarely effective, as so few make money in traditional ways.

Remember that SS was put into place because most Americans weren't putting any (or enough) money away for retirement. History has shown time and time again that people don't learn from history, so if we were to remove it, most Americans would likely be in the same poor state as before at retirement.

The current SS reform idea is little more than a smoke and mirrors game to cut out the benefits, without reducing the tax load.

Those who know how to invest well enough to make money in this scheme can do well with 401(k)s, and likely won't depend so much on social security (although they will receive their fair share). However, the rest of America (which, history keeps telling us, is the majority) will likely blow it and are left with even less money to retire with than SS provides now.

Hate Messages on Google Site Draw Concern.

Wow that is really stretching to tie thoses two together.

Um, considering that the Social Security surplus is currently funding 20% of the general deficit - no, it isn't.

When the Social Security trust fund runs out, the US government will need to borrow money until the baby boomers die off. That demographic lump will go away, and it's actually possible the problem will never happen.

When the Social Security trust fund runs out of money, the government borrows to pay for the trustees. The Social Security surplus now - caused by Greenspan and Reagan doubling payroll taxes in the 80s - is actually pre-paying for this borrowing.

What theoretically should be happening is the US government paying down the deficit, and preparing to borrow when the trust fund runs out. Given that Bush reversed Clinton's surplus and is spending money like a drunken sailor, he wants to reneg on those promises and promise the moon. His plan won't kick in until 2009, when he's safely gone.

You did know that social security is taking in more than it's paying out now, right? And those funds go straight into the general pool?

So, let's summarize from your perspective: current budget deficits that are weakening the dollar and appear to be structural: OK. Budget defecits that won't kick in for 40 or 50 years because they've been prepaid for? Not only much worse, but totally different!

If the payroll tax hike in the 80s is meaningless - the way Bush says it is - then US govenment bonds are worthless. Hello, major economic meltdown. (By the way, most of Bush's money is in US government bonds. I don't think he really feels they are worthless.)

But then I am not a hate filled person who considers every corrected mistake a lie

I hate stupidity. Would you please show me where Bush admitted that Social Security won't be bankrupt in 2042, or that US government bonds aren't worthless? By the way, the non-partisan CBO says that Social Security won't exhaust its trust funds until 2052. Wow, ten years of solvency right there!

Every year or two, the date of social security meltdown gets pushed back another year. If this happens often enough, problem solved.

Can you show me where Bush admitted that voluntary pollution controls and abstinence-only education don't work. Oh! How about all those times he apologized for taking credit for bills that he had opposed, or even vetoed? (Bush even opposed the Iraqi vote for over a year - imagine what would have happened if the vote were last May, like Sistanti originally wanted?)

You could also show the cite where Bush admitted that going into Iraq without a post-war plan was a mistake.

I know, I know - I'm full of hate for clinging to reality.

You know - or you probably don't - 10 years ago, the crisis was scheduled to happen sooner than 2018 and 2042. Do you know why this is? I bet not.

Like the chump you are, you repeat your 2% talking point. The Social Security trustees use an amazingly pessimistic forecast, while the private account numbers are done with an optimistic one.

This is repeatedly and deliberately using misleading numbers to create a phony 'crisis', then proposing a "solution" that doesn't address the problem. If you don't think this is lying, today's Republican party is the right party for you.

It was discovered that he was using an alias to get past White House security.

Uh, no. He was using an alias, but White House security requires you to give your name, address and social security # to get press credentials and access to CIA documents. They do a background check.

No, this guy did not "get past" White House security. He was a ringer, a shill, for the White House. A go-to guy when questions get tough.

How long had Talon news existed when "Gannon" got his press credentials? I just heard (have not yet confirmed) it was less than a week. And Talon News (Metatag: "Talon News is your source for unbiased news coverage and no-spin reporting. If you want the facts without all the slant, Talon News is the place to go for political, national, and international news.") is affiliated with who?

GOPUSA. How many of their 'no-spin' news stories were rewrites of GOP press releases?

Never mind that they've been paying off reporters to promote their agenda. Does anyone remember reporters Karen Ryan or Alberto Garcia from last year?

We can't trust the science. We are not told the truth until it's too late. Now we can't trust the independent reporting of what we think is the media.

Our country is in some deep trouble.

The city itself shouldn't be talking about forming a monopoly, supporting a monopoly or operating a utility. Instead the city should be doing what it needs to do to facilitate the creation of city-wide mesh networks by private providers.

There are several impediments to the creation of city-wide wireless mesh networks. The first, and perhaps most important, is right of way. The second is cost.

A good model would include the city throwing out an RFP asking for proposals to create a city-wide mesh network that accomplishes the following:

• Covers at least X% of the city, where X is a large enough percentage to ensure that poor areas of the city are at least partially covered in mesh.
• Provides at least X mbps throughput to all users
• Allows independent providers to use the network to provide their own brand of wireless mesh services, for appropriate fees

• The right to borrow money at favorable rates through the use of the city's credit. The city floats bonds, and then loans the money to the chosen provider(s) at the same interest rate as the bonds themselves
• Streamlined approval of right of way throughout the city, probably using the city's lamposts
• A temporary monopoly on some types of premium services on the network (i.e. the provider is forced to allow the rebranding of the regular tier of service, but a higher tier of service [twice as fast?] is the sole province of the provider for X years).

So what do you say to the accusations that it was all fudged?
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/06/18/science/life/18M OTH.html?ex=1108270800&en=9170935c44d9b974&ei=5070 &oref=login
Oh, the irony of fudging results given the main article's subject...

There is a very simple explanation for this. Satellite radio is not yes sufficiently fault-free to be put into a mass market portable device yet. This article from the NY Times looks at one of the first such portable devices and explains why it doesn't work. The radios require line-of-sight to the satellite (so you can forget about all the subway commuters, the primary city iPod audience), and need a good antenna to get a really clear signal. There's also too much "geek factor" involved in all the various attachments necessary to get it to work properly in different conditions (a separate antenna for each type of listening location).

Apple is not interested in the iPod becoming (just) a geek toy. Most users, I suspect, would want satellite radio to work normally if they are underground, lying around in their apartment, or walking through the streets -- just like their iPods do now. Until Apple can figure out a way to get the technology to work as simply as most people expect, they'd rather not add it to a mass-product device.

I suspect Apple will eventually be the first company to offer a really usable satellite radio device though. Jobs likes to say no until the technology is ready.

NYT coverage.

Gadgetopia coverage.

CASPIAN/Rense coverage.

Slashdot coverage.

The 100,000 figure does not come from them however, it is from a study led by Les Roberts of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health which was released last October. It was covered in the media, more in the international media of course.

Guardian
NYT
International Herald Tribune
Washington Post

What are you basing your assertion that the gas was VX on? The DIA investigation determined that the Kurds had been killed by a cyanide-based gas that Iran, but not Iraq, had at time.

You bringing up the Geneva Convention is interesting given the large number of violations of that same convention committed by America and the UK since the invasion of Iraq. In fact, this is yet another form of what I was trying to convey with the comment about battlefields: war is wrong. As Donald Rumsfeld has reminded us over and over again, bad things happen in war. Whether Saddam actually ordered those Kurds gassed is questionable, but regardless of the truth using Saddam's violations and the killing of 5,000 civilians to justify our own violations, killing 100,000+ and counting just makes no sense. Two wrongs do not make a right. What does continuing the misdeeds of a tyrant at a larger scale make us?

While I completely agree with your comment .. we never realistically posed a military threat to N. Korea. Kim could mortar Seoul off the face of the planet before we could ever launch a crippling strike on N. Korea. And given all the new Worlds of Warcraft players in S. Korea, that might cripple our economy.

This probably come as a surprise to Washington, since Bush seemed to deliberately use a softer tone towards North Korea in his State of the Union address, saying only that Washington was "working closely with governments in Asia to convince North Korea to abandon its nuclear ambitions." That's buch better than three years ago when he branded North Korea part of the "axis of evil".

Analysts in South Korea had predicted that the absence of harsh words would help restart the nuclear talks, since several weeks earlier North Korea had announced they were willing to return to six-party nuclear talks and would treat the United States as a friend if Washington would stop slandering their leader Kim Jong Il.

Further evidence that this came as a surprise to Washington came four hours before the official pullout statement, when a top Bush administration official told the New York Times that North Korea's return to the nuclear talks was expected by all other participants -- the United States, Japan, South Korea, Russia and China.

Pakistan Ended Aid to Taliban Only Hesitantly December 8, 2001
Pakistan spy service 'aiding Bin Laden' 30 December, 2001
Musharraf: Bin Laden may be dead 23 December, 2001
Pakistan's leader thinks bin Laden dead January 18, 2002
Bin Laden trail is cold, Musharraf admits December 6, 2004
A Hostile Land Foils the Quest for bin Laden December 13, 2004
Protest at Musharraf's army role 19 December, 2004 So much for us supporting democracy and "freedom"
Musharraf Scorns Nuclear Probe

Pakistan Ended Aid to Taliban Only Hesitantly December 8, 2001
Pakistan spy service 'aiding Bin Laden' 30 December, 2001
Musharraf: Bin Laden may be dead 23 December, 2001
Pakistan's leader thinks bin Laden dead January 18, 2002
Bin Laden trail is cold, Musharraf admits December 6, 2004
A Hostile Land Foils the Quest for bin Laden December 13, 2004
Protest at Musharraf's army role 19 December, 2004 So much for us supporting democracy and "freedom"
Musharraf Scorns Nuclear Probe

Wow. Talk about kismet, CF has just been asked to resign. nytimes article Maybe I should start complaining about my boss on /. , get him fired too.

No. It isn't. You pay with obligation if you're not paying with money.

WTF? What are you talking about? The majority of Linux GUI toolkit are under the LGPL. That means that you can develop Open Source apps _OR_ closed source apps. Your choice, there are no strings attached. There are no "obligations", you don't have to give away your code, you can keep it "secret". That is the _whole_ point of the LGPL you ninny.

You also pay with time, because a lot of this stuff needs work, you have to pick and choose which one,

All right crack smoker, come back when you have actually used Linux for more than 30 seconds. You really don't have a clue to what you are talking about. Gnome and even KDE are very full featured desktop environments and have many features that MS windows users would love to have. If what you said was even remotely true, why on earth would professionals like Disney Animation migrate to Linux (Disney Shifting to Linux for Film Animation, I have tons more links)?

Look at putting the current GIMP on stock RH9, which is actually a very recent distribution if you think about it; yet, it simply won't go

Damn, you must have about three brain cells? Please tell me exactly _why_ the current Gimp won't work on RH9? Did you know you can download as many versions of GTK+ and Gimp you want, and install them all? The latest Gimp _will_ work on RH9. Even if the version of GTK+ on RH9 is not new enough, you can just install a newer version and Gimp will run.

My situation is that I have a complex, powerful product I'd like to bring to Linux. Every path we could find had significant roadblocks on it.

Please tell me what this "complex, powerful product" is exactly. Oh and what are these "significant roadblocks". Based on your previous responses, I am sure that I or another /. member can solve these "significant roadblocks" in about 30 seconds.

unacceptable source code obligations

Huh? You can pay a little money for QT (just as you would pay under MS for Visual Studio) and develop in a cross-platform environment, Linux, MS Windows and Mac OS X. Or, you can use a bunch of the other tool-kits that I already pointed out in a previous post such as GTK+ or wxWindows(x-platform, Linux, Mac, MS). These products have _no_ legal roadblocks. They are under the LGPL, which means you can develop your "super secret" closed source app and not had to worry about it. Please, tell me what your "unacceptable source code obligations" were? What tool-kit were you using that _required_ you to give away your code? I am going to have to say BS on your post.

What I think I know about Linux at this point in time is that to get our app ported in such a way as to work on the very largest set of machines without legal pitfalls and unacceptable source code obligations seems to require that we build our own widget set and incorporate it so that all we require from the OS is XWindows and basically fopen() and crew.

Damn, dude, you must be one piss-poor developer when it comes to Linux in that case. So what language is your "great" application written in? What tool-kit/API does it use? What tool-kit under Linux did you try to use that caused you such "burdens". I know you are talking FUD, since there are _NO_ source code obligations with Linux GUI tool-kits. You can keep your code closed as much as you like.

In very sharp contrast, when we looked at porting to the Mac, it all went smooth as butter. Standard GUI, standard API, dev tools all lined up and ready to go. So there is a significant difference here, much as you might not want to acknowledge it.

Nope, Linux has all this as well. Standard GUI? Check. Pick

Many domestic programs would be slashed under the plan, while spending on the military and homeland security would rise.

Given the recent tales of editorial misconduct do /. editors have anything to declare?

I recently blogged a short review of this book from the perspective of somebody in the online learning business. What's interesting to me is that Koster believes "fun" is an evolutionary adaptation to reward learning. Fun comes with mastery of skills, he suggests. So when you hear somebody say that a game is "better than sex," it's possible that there's more to it than a game geek whose memory of sex is somewhat...hazy.

Also interesting is Koster's comparison of what games can teach versus what stories can teach. He believes that games teach abstract pattern recognition. You beat the game by grokking the pattern. The fact that the obstacles you have to eliminate happen to be human beings...well, games aren't so good at getting you to empathize. Stories do that much better (he claims).

For a contrasting view, you might want to check out "Is Instructional Video Game an Oxymoron?" in this week's New York Times (registration required).

I'd just submitted the same item, but with some additional background...

Moreford isn't the only person noting crap quality of Microsoft. The New York Times saw fit to run 2300 words on erasing a hard drive and reinstalling the OS, to terminate spyware with extreme prejudice. I mean, when was nuking your C:\ drive national news? A few months earlier, I was interviewed for an expose of the adware/spyware industry in Barbiarians at the Digital Gates. My own technical followup, Spyware, Adware, Windows, GNU/Linux, and Software Culture has garnered a number of responses, most variations of "why do people put up with this cr*p?!"

Even the local small-town paper's usually Microsoft partisan columnist is suggesting it's time for the Microsoft Empire to begin to crumble. And he's not the only one.

The point is that these aren't geeks and gearheads talking out, it's the current in the popular press. Ordinary people. Which wouldn't be so significant if there weren't clearly identifiable, far better alternatives. Linux. Mac OS X. ABMS - Anything but Microsoft.

I think we're finally seeing the ediface crumble.

I'd just submitted the same item, but with some additional background...

Moreford isn't the only person noting crap quality of Microsoft. The New York Times saw fit to run 2300 words on erasing a hard drive and reinstalling the OS, to terminate spyware with extreme prejudice. I mean, when was nuking your C:\ drive national news? A few months earlier, I was interviewed for an expose of the adware/spyware industry in Barbiarians at the Digital Gates. My own technical followup, Spyware, Adware, Windows, GNU/Linux, and Software Culture has garnered a number of responses, most variations of "why do people put up with this cr*p?!"

Even the local small-town paper's usually Microsoft partisan columnist is suggesting it's time for the Microsoft Empire to begin to crumble. And he's not the only one.

The point is that these aren't geeks and gearheads talking out, it's the current in the popular press. Ordinary people. Which wouldn't be so significant if there weren't clearly identifiable, far better alternatives. Linux. Mac OS X. ABMS - Anything but Microsoft.

I think we're finally seeing the ediface crumble.

I understand that, but I think the point still remains. If the goal of Social Security is to guarantee everyone a minimum retirement, and some people invest unwisely so that their overall return is less than that minimum, are we going to make up the shortfall?

If you're correct, the answer is no. Also, the fact that a retiree would still be guaranteed 90% would make them more willing to invest riskily with the remaining 10%.

As an aside, you may be interested in Paul Krugman's latest column on the matter.

I'm definitely not a Bush fanboy but it's the House Science Committee that is really deciding on the fate of Hubble. If we want to direct our frustrations with the decision somewhere, do it towards them.

Gosling offers a bit of insight when he says:

Reverse-engineering in the United States is now "legal for stuff, except stuff doing digital rights management," or DRM, he said. "So what has been happening is folks like Microsoft have been putting DRM into everything. DRM has been put into places you wouldn't think would make a whole lot of sense, like the document format being wrapped in DRM stuff...Under the sheets, the major justification is to make reverse-engineering illegal."

Bill Gates, on the other hand, offers a very different (albeit hardly suprising) point of view in a recent NY Times article.

``Over the years, our industry has tried many approaches to come to grips with the heterogeneity of software,'' Gates said, ``But the solution that has proven consistently effective -- and the one that yields the greatest success for developers today -- is a strong commitment to interoperability.''

Microsoft is also facing competition from Linux and other software that can be copied and modified freely. Proponents of such software say its flexible distribution makes it easier to design to work with other software.

Gates argued, however, that open source software encourages the proliferation of different software systems, making it harder to integrate them with other proprietary systems.

Many Microsoft products already work with other non-Microsoft products, and the company will build more interoperability into the design of its products, Gates said.

So, there you have it. Things are fine, and getting better.

Wow, if I had mod points I would have modded you up but I'll just have to give you my agreement here.

That's exactly how I feel, and I wish people would realize that they had blood on their hands.

An article with some similar ideas, by Professor Ward Churchill, entitled Some People Push Back: On the Justice of Roosting Chickens.

Support free speech, and support Professor Ward Churchill.

link, second source

From the NYT article:
Federal authorities made a total of 1,727 applications last year before the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, the secret panel that oversees the country's most delicate terrorism and espionage investigations, according to the new data.

The total represents an increase of about 500 warrant applications over 2002 and a doubling of the applications since 2001, the Justice Department said in its report, which was submitted to the federal courts and to Vice President Dick Cheney as required by law.

All but three of applications for electronic surveillance and physical searches of suspects were approved in whole or part by the court....

The F.B.I. told the commission that "there is now less hesitancy" in seeking the intelligence warrants, the report said. Nonetheless, it added, "requests for such approvals are overwhelming the ability of the system to process them and to conduct the surveillance."

I don't remember exactly what the number of warrants requested were before sept 11th, but I know it was very few. 1,727 is a lot of warrants - more than the number killed in Iraq. To put that in perspective, if you know of somebody killed in Iraq, you are more likely to know somebody whom the FBI is watching.

AC: Why doesn't someone just once TRY showing a kid's anime subtitled and see how it does, instead of just asuming all kids are to stupid to read?

You're right, there are probably some kids that are interested enough in a show to watch it subtitled. (You could even claim to their parents that it's educational, because it provides a tiny fraction of foreign-language education).

However, childrens' cartoons means television, and television in the USA means English (or Spanish, on special channels). No broadcaster will put on a show their audience can't auditorally comprehend, at least in the next 10 years.

Article Text:

A year after a sweeping federal antispam law went into effect, there is more junk e-mail on the Internet than ever, and Levon Gillespie, according to Microsoft, is one reason.

Lawyers for the company seemed well on the way to shutting down Mr. Gillespie last September after he agreed to meet them at a Starbucks in Los Angeles near the University of Southern California. There they served him a court summons and a lawsuit accusing him, his Web site and 50 unnamed customers of violating state and federal law - including the year-old federal Can Spam Act - by flooding Microsoft's internal and customer e-mail networks with illegal spam, among other charges.

But that was the last the company saw of the young entrepreneur.

Mr. Gillespie, who operated a service that gives bulk advertisers off-shore shelter from the antispam crusade, did not show up last month for a court hearing in King County, Wash. The judge issued a default judgment against him in the amount of $1.4 million.

In a telephone interview yesterday from his home in Los Angeles, Mr. Gillespie, 21, said he was unaware of the judgment and that no one from Microsoft or the court had yet followed up. But he insisted that he had done nothing wrong and vowed that lawsuits would not stop him - nor any of the other players in the lucrative spam chain.

"There's way too much money involved," Mr. Gillespie said, noting that his service, which is currently down, provided him with a six-figure income at its peak. "And if there's money to be made, people are going to go out and get it."

Since the Can Spam Act went into effect in January 2004, unsolicited junk e-mail on the Internet has come to total perhaps 80 percent or more of all e-mail sent, according to most measures. That is up from 50 percent to 60 percent of all e-mail before the law went into effect.

To some antispam crusaders, the surge comes as no surprise. They had long argued that the law would make the spam problem worse by effectively giving bulk advertisers permission to send junk e-mail as long as they followed certain rules.

"Can Spam legalized spamming itself," said Steve Linford, the founder of the Spamhaus Project, a London organization that is one of the leading groups intent on eliminating junk e-mail. And in making spam legal, he said, the new rules also invited flouting by those intent on being outlaws.

Not everyone agrees that the Can Spam law is to blame, and lawsuits invoking the new legislation - along with other suits using state laws - have been mounted in the name of combating the problem. Besides Microsoft, other large Internet companies like AOL and Yahoo have used the federal law as the basis for suits.

Two prolific spam distributors, Jeremy D. Jaynes and Jessica DeGroot, were convicted under a Virginia antispam law in November, and a $1 billion judgment was issued in an Iowa federal court against three spam marketers in December.

The law's chief sponsor, Senator Conrad Burns, Republican of Montana, said that it was too soon to judge the law's effectiveness, although he indicated in an e-mail message that the Federal Trade Commission, which oversees its enforcement, might simply need some nudging.

"As we progress into the next legislative session," Mr. Burns said, "I'll be working to make sure the F.T.C. utilizes the tools now in place to enforce the act and effectively stem the tide of this burden."

The F.T.C. has made some recent moves that include winning a court order in January to shut down illegal advertisi

Correlation (or lack thereof) does not imply causation (or lack thereof).

If you look at the graphic carefully, you'll notice that there is a nice linear trend line. I'd like to argue that CAN-SPAM is entirely irrelevant to criminal activities, and posit that whether or not the bill had been passed that we'd still be exactly where we are today.

As a side note, with a 20% growth per annum, by next year illegitimate email traffic should reach 100% of all email traffic!

Interesting in the same week that the NYT would slam Mythtv as tv show pirates

I thought it was an interesting read. Not that I learned a lot from it per se, but it seemed a decent summary of what's going on, if you know enough of it yourself to sort out the half-truths. At least it sounds like the content producers are planning (trying?) to innovate in response.

In another article on this $100 PC it is clear that the display will use a chip like the one in a protector and an LED as a light source. There will be a little pop-up tent so you have a rear-projection system. With this you really can make a very cheap portable that uses very little power. Remember also that all the chips will be cheaper in 2006 than now.

In case of slashdotting, the article is also available from the NY Times.

It wasn't a very informative read -- quick summary is that Yahoo and MSN are catching up to Google (they don't give many specifics as to what "catching up" means) and each of these companies is making more money from searches than they have in the past. They allude briefly to Yahoo improving their search technology and Google losing focus somewhat due to management being preoccupied by their IPO.

If this was a step toward an actual stable democracy with respect for human rights, there might be some benefit to the world. But this elections is more show than substance. Sunni regions mostly boycotted.

Perhaps you haven't heard the news? Actually, even the Sunnis have turned out in large numbers. In the Al Anbar province, which is predominantly Sunni, they overwhelmed by the big turnout. This isn't show, this is real democracy in action. There's no problem with being against the war and not "cheering," but let's face it: the elections were a success. It doesn't mean this war is over by a long shot, but it is definitely a "step toward an actual stable democracy with respect for human rights." lasindi

And the NY Times story from yesterday's slashdot story on this same crack by the same team.

Yet, no one prosecuted The New York Times when they published links to the same material here. (reg. req.) and it was the same information. (except now 2600 took down the links that were showing before)

I guess it shows that its only illegal if you don't have lots of money and lawyers. So no, the US courts have only shown that Money = Justice once again, at least when it comes to free speech.

I just read another article (reg. required) that describes how Apple with their Genius Bars give person to person tech support for free. With this computer being so light weight, it is convenient just to carry it over to an Apple store when there is a problem. That is much better than Dell's approach which relies on wasting time having an automated system diagnose your problem before a technician will talk to you.

Also, I don't think the cube was such a failure in light of the Mac Mini. I am sure whatever Apple learned from designing the Cube was apply to designing the Mini. The first thing I thought when the Mini was introduced was that it is the Cube was reborn. Also, one button mouse is debateable. Apple still ships computers with them. Moreover, I have never really needed a second button.

Custom Tailor a Web Browser Just for You

"Zonk and the other editors seemed to have embarked on a jihad against EA for some odd reason. Did you get turned down for a job there or something?"

Didja stop and think to ask why EA's such a big deal before being so critical about Slashdot's feelings towards EA?

I suggest you have a peek at this article here. The basic gist of the story is that EA's been seriously overworking their employees. Since a lot of them are artists, tehy are exempt from getting overtime or any real compensation.

Certainly not stuff that matters to most people here? Show of hands: Who all here either has a salaried position or is on their way to one? Not only do quite a few of us reading Slashdot find this sort of treatement disgusting, but it's also an awful thought that a lot of us could be treated bad if the idea catches on at other corps.

You may not care. Fine. Ignore the stories. But there really is a reason people are passionate about them. Heck, Slashdot's not the only place I get to hear about it. A bunch of fellow artists over CGTalk are just as pissed and it's a hot topic over there, too.

Slashdot's 'obsession' with it reflects the feelings of a significant portion of the population. (as opposed to the actions of a handful of people like you implied.) It may be childish or whatever, but it's not like somebody read their horoscope today and randomly determined they were going to attack EA.

Anyone else read Michael Crichton's latest novel State of Fear?

He has an interesting take on the subject, backed with documentation to his sources.

It seems that Gates has doubled the amount of the donation to $1.5 billion. Here's a NYT link (yes, I know, registration...): Gates Charity is Doubling Vaccination Gift

Make the beacons more dense. Make them infinitely dense.

Even if infinitely dense, this would not equate to a conductor if the flash of each beacon were occuring independent of its adjacents.

Definitely a specific point!) and it "travels" faster than light. Still, you only "squeeze separate events together", you don't make one continuous transfer.

Actually in this latter analogy, the speed only reaches C. If you imagine the same analogy with water hoses, the speed would not exceed that of the water. But again, it's an analogy which does not apply to the experiment with the coaxial cables.

Neither is the cable experiment merely detecting an ordinary interference pattern nor is it just clocking a phase velocity as suggested in other posts.

Rather, what's described is a laboratory situation where one wave is made to actually accelerate the wavefront of another.

The total energy of the squeezed wave is not claimed to exceed light speed, but that is less important since the information-bearing wavefront does indeed exceed light speed.

For some mind-wrenchingly superluminal speeds of transporting actual photons, see my link regarding "300X lightspeed through a cesium plasma."

The speed of light in a vacuum may very well be constant. However these experiments show that in other, more energetic media, the speed can indeed be faster.

Best regards,

-"The Parent AC"