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Isn't just not using Windows until Microsoft stops the said monopoly activities the "correct way" in capitialism to change a product if you don't like it? (See Adam Smith).

[snip]Pharmacy - corrupt and overpriced
In what way does this have to do with the government? Compare the "market-based" (read: monopoly-controlled) US system with the Canadian system. Note that buses of US citizens head to Canada for cheap drugs -- not the other way around.[/snip]

How do you explain the textbook market then? Has overregulation resulted in the high price we pay here in the US for college textbooks? No. It's corporate behemoths raping us because they can.

NY Times article

The DOJ's resolution was all smoke and mirrors. It may have helped by allowing OEM's to ship no OS or Linux, etc, however, it still did nothing to stop the MS monopoly. The MS monopoly is much deeper then what OS an OEM can install. MS's monopooly power is in all the back room deals with a wink and a hand shake that give them control. A little email to Intel, AMD, HP, IBM, etc is all that is often needed for MS to get what they want.

Whenever you append "&partner=google" to the end of a NYTimes URL, you're in sans registration.

Well, whenever you append "&partner=[Anything]" you are in ...

Try http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/24/technology/24sof t.html?ex=1080709200&en=81be83eda9c09dad&ei=5062&p artner=AlQaida

I was going to point to the Google link of the story, as I'm some people will do.
But also remember the login/pass: slashdot1234/slashdot1234 to quickly log into a slashdot NY Times acct, which beats searching google for the other...

The article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/24/technology/24sof t.html?ex=1080709200&en=81be83eda9c09dad&ei=5062&p artner=GOOGLE

and again without ads...
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/24/technology/24sof t.html?ei=5062&en=81be83eda9c09dad&ex=1080709200&p artner=GOOGLE&pagewanted=print&position=&g t;

The article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/24/technology/24sof t.html?ex=1080709200&en=81be83eda9c09dad&ei=5062&p artner=GOOGLE

and again without ads...
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/24/technology/24sof t.html?ei=5062&en=81be83eda9c09dad&ex=1080709200&p artner=GOOGLE&pagewanted=print&position=&g t;

...

Yet he said he was surprised by what was revealed about Microsoft's activities in the documents. "I was shocked," Mr. Kaplan said in a telephone interview. "This was a corporate mugging that went uncorrected and unknown."

Kensian economics has been on the decline for decades. The truth is massive government hurts the economy. This is because the excessive government spending perverts the free market and prevents investment in new ideas. It does this by taking money away from would-be investors and dedicating it to bone headed, woefully inadequate social programs.

-FL

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/21/magazine/21NAMES .html

Reg Free link

"Reg Free Link [nytimes.com]"

Who gives a flying fuck link."

Ad vertisement Free Link

Read this story without registering, thanks to Google.

Reg Free Link

However, the cost of doing things like this is astonishing, even in countries outside the US where medical treatment is priced more sanely. How many infants and other folks people could be saved by spending this money elsewhere? For example, from today's NY Times:

Terror of Childbirth

here

Here

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/19/national/19NUKE. html?ex=1080277200&en=e0e70d58d50239e4&ei=5062&par tner=GOOGLE

That was a funny comment, but do remember that in all the recounts that occurred in Florida AFTER the whole bru-haha, Dubya still came out ahead.

To say Bush won every media recount (those are the recounts that happened after the election) is a distortion. The truth is Bush won every recount using only undervotes (i.e. where the problem with the ballot was a hanging chad or there was only a dimple) (See USA Today). That is the most widely used standard, and the one that Gore was asking for, so ultimately Bush won. Fine.

But I think it might worth at least mentioning that if you include the overvotes (such as where people checked Gore and wrote in Gore) Gore won. That is to say, if the standard is voter intent, in every recount more people went to the polls intending to vote for Gore than Bush. So when you say Bush won every recount, be sure and include that little footnote, because otherwise people may think you are being dishonest. See Guardian. See USA Today. See Salon. See Washington Post.

And you know, maybe if minority votes counted for as much as a non-minority vote, that would make a difference. See New York Times.

Personally before Florida, I thought the voter's intent was the standard. How silly.

Then there was the minorities being intimidated at the polls thing. Then there was Republican officials writing on a bunch of ballots to "fill in missing information." I'm not saying they didn't just fill in missing social security numbers, but it is obviously a violation of election standards to have partisan non-election officials writing on ballots. There are media references for all this stuff too. Go find them yourself. I'm tired.

Diebolds voting technology was actually put to the test by some security experts this year who found that:

- It was an "easy matter," they reported, to reprogram the access cards used by voters and vote multiple times.

- They were able to attach a keyboard to a voting terminal and change its vote count.

- And by exploiting a software flaw and using a modem, they were able to change votes from a remote location.

"Diebold, the machines' manufacturer, rushed to issue a self-congratulatory press release with the headline "Maryland Security Study Validates Diebold Election Systems Equipment for March Primary." The study's authors were shocked to see their findings spun so positively."

Chandler is "Intended as an open source personal information manager for email, calendars, contacts, tasks, and general information management, as well as a platform for developing information management applications". That's pretty much the exact same decentralized server-less information distribution and synchronization space Groove is in. Building that while sitting on the Groove board, well, the conflict-of-interest is pretty obvious.

By the way, not to join the tinfoil-hat wearing crowd but it was was widely reported several years ago that Notes' vaunted security was compromised in international (non-US) versions by including an NSA private key. Supposedly 24 of the 64 bits used in the keys were always an NSA key, thus leaving holders of the US's key 40 bits to crack instead of the 64 needed by anyone else. This news apparently caused consternation among non-US customers, especially folks like embassies and other government agencies. I don't recall how the whole thing played out, not even how valid it was, and probably worded it wrong, but I'd be concerned about Groove having a similar set of "privileged keys".

Registration free link

I wish article authors would at least put up some effort to find and use reg-free links when possible.

Mr. Invisible and the Secret Mission to Hollywood
By JOHN HODGMAN

Article Photo
(c) Catherine Ledner, The New York Times

Kerry Conran is not what you would call descript. He has very short, tan-colored hair, usually covered with a clean, logoless baseball cap. He is 37, somewhat baby-faced and often quiet, with a smile in the corner of his pale blue eyes that suggests he is observing you from a far-off world of his own. And while he can be genial and funny, his default setting seems to be self-deprecation to the point of self-erasure. The second thing of any note he ever said to me was ''I am basically an amorphous blob of nothing.'' The first thing was ''I'm shy.''

This was on the set of his movie ''Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow.'' You might expect a little more brio from a writer-director who is making a summer blockbuster with almost unlimited creative control. Set in 1939, the movie stars Jude Law as the daring flying ace Sky Captain, who teams up with his former flame, the intrepid reporter Polly Perkins, played by Gwyneth Paltrow, as they track down a mysterious mad scientist named Totenkopf. It is in part a nostalgic homage to the movies of the 30's and 40's: the hammy fisticuffs and golly-inspiring proto-technology of sci-fi cliffhangers like ''Flash Gordon'' alongside the snappy patter (and even snappier clothes) of the era's noir thrillers.

But like the old serials it emulates, ''Sky Captain'' is mainly preoccupied with the strange promises of the future. The astonishing things you will see in the world of tomorrow include: an immense, silvery zeppelin docking at the Empire State Building; an elephant that fits in the palm of your hand; a troop of giant robots marching down Sixth Avenue and the carpet at Radio City Music Hall. None of these things actually exist, though. Conran has not constructed a single set or miniature. Rather, they are computer images, built and animated in a virtual 3-D environment, or stitched together from photographs, which are then draped around the flesh-and-blood actors, who have been shot separately on an empty set in front of a blank ''blue-screen'' background, along with those few minimal props with which they actually interact (a ray gun, a robot blueprint, a bottle of milk of magnesia). The film, in other words, is one long special effect with Jude-Law-size holes in it.

''The goal was to make a live-action film, but to use conventions of traditional animation,'' Conran said. The reason? ''First and foremost, to do it cheaper.'' It's a model that would appeal to anyone who, like Conran, does not seem entirely comfortable spending other people's money; to anyone who might dream of shooting in Nepal or Paris (or in the 1930's) but doesn't have the means to get there; to anyone who is shy.

For Conran, the question, as he put it, was ''Could you be ambitious and make a film of some scope without ever leaving your room?'' And so 10 years ago, Kerry Conran went into a room in his apartment to make a movie. In some ways, he is just now beginning to come out of it.

At first, he was a mystery. Word of ''Sky Captain'' began to spread around the Internet only after Conran finished primary shooting in London last spring -- extraordinarily late for the Internet, which often seems invented specifically to track movies with giant robots in them. Even then, no one knew who Kerry Conran was. Google couldn't touch him. He was so undocumented in the world of Hollywood that I briefly wondered, when I began pursuing him, if perhaps he was just a front for his producer and partner and mentor Jon Avnet, who is well known for producing ''Risky Business'' and directing ''Fried Green Tomatoes'' but who is not so well known for retro-science-fiction summertime blockbusters, and who unlike Conran seems to have been photographed at least once in his life. I don't think Conran would mind that I doubted his existence. In fact, for a long time, that w

Google link

Google Story Link

No-reg link (free of karma whoring)

It's a NYT story about google, but without the google no-reg link, heh.

My suspicion is that their sensor suite was ill-chosen. They had four line scanners, three fixed and one steerable. The fixed ones were aimed to the left, the right, and slightly upward. The steerable one was presumably aimed as far forward as it can get good data.

This sounds good, but it's not that effective a system. All of them were single-line scanners. So the vehicle has to assemble ground profiles from successive line scans. The hard-mounted units weren't stabilized, so they wouldn't produce good profiles beyond slow speeds. The long-range gimballed Reigl scanner was stabilized in three axes, but it's still a line scanner. It only gets one chance to see any point on the ground, and it sees it at maximum range and at the most oblique angle possible, the worst possible condition. Any problems, and you have to slow down and try to use the gimbal to pick up the missing data. Or you can just go plowing ahead, which is apparently what they did.

I think this establishes that line scanners aren't going to solve this problem. CMU had the fanciest single-line scanner ever built, and they crashed into a very clear obstacle. CMU was more successful in the 1980s with a 3D laser rangefinder on the Navlab project. That unit was too slow for this event, but was the right idea.

We'd been through this analysis a year ago on Team Overbot, and knew we needed something better. We know what's needed, but couldn't get it built in time. Our custom laser rangefinder vendor went out of business, and the alternative vendor couldn't deliver in time. Next time.

CMU's race log is silent about this. Their last entry ends "We can win this. Spare nothing. Victory or demise."

It beats that "dead" feeling you get when you lose" - Buffy

Agreed: "The Bush administration and the Republican majority in Congress have used the tragedy of 9/11 to spread fear among Americans, and are using that fear to gain control of all three branches of government - legislative, executive and judicial. If we don't stop allowing the right-wing factions in this country to consolidate their power by taking away our freedoms one by one we won't have a country worth saving."

The U.S. government is rapidly becoming more corrupt. Here are just a few examples, which were posted before to another story:

Killing people and destroying their property:
N.Y. Times editorial
"... Americans paid Ahmad Chalabi to gull them into a war that is costing them a billion a week and a precious human cost."

Lying about scientific facts:
"The Bush administration has deliberately and systematically distorted scientific fact in the service of policy goals..."
N.Y. Times
The Guardian
Wired News
Union of Concerned Scientists

The present terrorism against the U.S. people is partly the result of the U.S. government's secret violence:
About a year ago, I hastily put together a short, incomplete history that shows what has happened: History surrounding the U.S. war with Iraq: Four short stories.

If you don't like it, vote accordingly.

Agreed: "The Bush administration and the Republican majority in Congress have used the tragedy of 9/11 to spread fear among Americans, and are using that fear to gain control of all three branches of government - legislative, executive and judicial. If we don't stop allowing the right-wing factions in this country to consolidate their power by taking away our freedoms one by one we won't have a country worth saving."

The U.S. government is rapidly becoming more corrupt. Here are just a few examples, which were posted before to another story:

Killing people and destroying their property:
N.Y. Times editorial
"... Americans paid Ahmad Chalabi to gull them into a war that is costing them a billion a week and a precious human cost."

Lying about scientific facts:
"The Bush administration has deliberately and systematically distorted scientific fact in the service of policy goals..."
N.Y. Times
The Guardian
Wired News
Union of Concerned Scientists

The present terrorism against the U.S. people is partly the result of the U.S. government's secret violence:
About a year ago, I hastily put together a short, incomplete history that shows what has happened: History surrounding the U.S. war with Iraq: Four short stories.

If you don't like it, vote accordingly.

Yamini Narayanan is an Indian-born 35-year-old with a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Oklahoma. After graduation, she worked for a U.S. computer company in Virginia and recently moved back to Bangalore with her husband to be closer to family. When I asked her how she felt about the outsourcing of jobs from her adopted country, America, to her native country, India, she responded with a revealing story:

"I just read about a guy in America who lost his job to India and he made a T-shirt that said, `I lost my job to India and all I got was this [lousy] T-shirt.' And he made all kinds of money." Only in America, she said, shaking her head, would someone figure out how to profit from his own unemployment. And that, she insisted, was the reason America need not fear outsourcing to India: America is so much more innovative a place than any other country.

He goes on to make his usual case: Americans needn't fear globalization, because our innate pluckiness will always overcome any obstacle. I was a little curious about that guy who made all the money off those shirts, though, and after doing a little Googling I found what I thought was a rather glaring flaw in the anecdote: the shirtmaker was neither unemployed nor American.

Except I got that one wrong. Sort of. You see, Friedman responded, pointing out that there was, in fact, an American selling a similar shirt:

The argument seems to be that it was a British Web site that came up with the idea of the T-shirt -- ``My job was lost Indiaand all I got was this lousy T-shirt'' -- and therefore the whole premise of my column was wrong, that Americans are not innovative.

First, all one has to do is Google that phrase and you will discover that it is not only a British Web site offeringthis t-shirt for sale, but that a U.S.-based Web site, indeed one located in Palo Alto where so many jobs have been lost, has been selling the same T-shirt for some time. It is the online design-your-own t-shirt and apparel store, Zazzle.com

So either someone in America copied it -- or independently came up with the idea themselves and therefore it is not aBritish exclusive. The point I was making about the innovative nature of American society and institutions obviously rests on more than a T-shirt.

Well, the larger point may rest on more, but the specific column is planted firmly atop that anecdotal t-shirt. And it was still an anecdote I found...questionable.

So I tracked down this guy--to whom, let us remember, Friedman personally pointed as a justification for the anecdote upon which Sunday's column was predicated--and sent him an email, and asked (1) if he is or was unemployed and, (2) if he's made a bundle of money off his shirts. (Also (3), if he's an American, which he is--Friedman got that much right.)

His name is Gary Young, and he was gracious enough to respond promptly:

Wow! So that WAS my shirt Friedman was talking about. I had seen the article and laughed...

To answer your questions:

1. No, I didn't lose my job YET. My department has been told month after month for the last 6 months that we'd be next in line to be offshored. Several peers at my work have had their jobs sent to India, and my partner had his job offshored.

2. Have I made all kinds of money? This is where I laughed the hardest. I've made about $10 profit total.

So there you have it. At the risk of beating a dead horse, I'll say i

I just read about a guy in America who lost his job to India and he made a T-shirt that said, `I lost my job to India and all I got was this [lousy] T-shirt.' And he made all kinds of money." Only in America, she said, shaking her head, would someone figure out how to profit from his own unemployment. And that, she insisted, was the reason America need not fear outsourcing to India: America is so much more innovative a place than any other country.

Friedman bloviates further, using the T-shirt anecdote to tout American superior innovation that renders these outsourced job losses as trivial.

But once again, the reality detached scribe is exposed again. This time, famed progressive cartoonist Tom Tomorrow got the straight dope on Friedman's "Americans profiting from their unemployment" spiel. It turns out, that the savvy entrepreneur highlighted in Friedman's piece is neither American nor unemployed.

Then, Friedman fired off a missive to the skeptical cartoonist in defense of his corporatist claptrap:

First, all one has to do is Google that phrase and you will discover that it is not only a British Web site offeringthis t-shirt for sale, but that a U.S.-based Web site, indeed one located in Palo Alto where so many jobs have been lost, has been selling the same T-shirt for some time. It is the online design-your-own t-shirt and apparel store, Zazzle.com

Mr. Tomorrow treaded on and located the enterprising zazzle.com proprietor, eager to discover if his tech career unemployment had led to new found riches. Here is how Mr. Gary Young answered the query:

Wow! So that WAS my shirt Friedman was talking about. I had seen the article and laughed...

1. No, I didn't lose my job YET. My department has been told month after month for the last 6 months that we'd be next in line to be offshored. Several peers at my work have had their jobs sent to India, and my partner had his job offshored.

2. Have I made all kinds of money? This is where I laughed the hardest. I've made about $10 profit total.

You can't go Mars rover slow. According to this NYT article:
"To win the $1 million, a vehicle must complete the desert course, expected to be as long as 200 miles, in less than 10 hours."

200 miles in 10 hours equals a min speed of 20 MPH. If they cut the couse to 150 miles it will still require a min speed of 15MPH.

New York Times article

Automate the construction of the homes with this.

Or you can link it this way using this page.

No reg needed!

From NYT story:

EchoStar has said it will credit each subscriber who loses CBS $1 a month. Consumers who lose the cable networks will receive a comparable-size credit.

Other stories suggest the credit will be $1 per channel per month.

Do you think that the only thing that students are using their laptops for is to type up reports in Word? There is a LOT more that goes on in schools with Student Laptop Programs than just composition, though increasing writing is an important part of improving student achievement.
A number of recent studies have shown that 1:1 laptop ratios can have a very positive effect on student achievement rates (as well as increasing student engagement, reducing drop-out rates and school truancy...)

If you implement right (plan it fully, have professional development ready for teachers, fully communicate to students AND parents what appropriate use is for the machine - e.g. no games, no IM, etc. - and enforce it), laptops can positively impact schools.

Sources:
Detroit Free Press
New York Times
Montana Associated Technology Roundtables
Public Policy Institute: Laptop for Every Student?

I am uncertain why you suggest the parent read a newspaper or turn on the television news, considering your implication that it would prove you correct. Instead, it proves that your theory is a conspiracy denied countless times. The NY Times, Washington Post and other newspapers you're referring to have all consistently reported that this theory has been denied. Most cable news channels have had limited coverage altogether, reporting on the status of the Marines stationed in Haiti and noting only briefly Aristide's quaint claim that he was kidnapped, followed by a quotation of the Pentagon's denial and subsequent dismissal. I watch daily CNN, FNC and MSNBC, meaning those are the channels I refer to. Located here is an editorial which covers the majority of the material. For the record, both the Seattle Times and San Francisco Chronicle are respected in the industry, but the NY Times is included here as well.

Here (eatme123/eatme123)
Here
Here
Here

There are occasions in which skepticism is warranted, in which the government is lying to you in order to further its agenda. There may even be times in which the White House spokesman can casually lie to you without showing an iota of remorse, although that would be remarkable. This is not one of those times, as is obvious to those of us who are paying attention. Pull your head out of your ass.

No Reggie Link for the Article

If you want to be able to help out your fellow slashdotter... create your link using http://nytimes.blogspace.com/genlink for now on.

Davak

The Article W/O Reg.
thought i could help...

Subject: Pig iron [Was: Article: Gates memo calls for security focus]

On Fri, 18 Jan 2002 15:16:08 GMT, Alun Jones <alun@texis.com> wrote:

>In article <u0O18.81315$Sj1.32399626@typhoon.ne.mediaone.net> , Simon Chang
><schang@quantumslipstream.net> wrote:
>>It remains to be seen whether Gates & Co. continues to treat inadequate
>>security policy and implementation as just public relations issues.
>

>In Microsoft's favour, look what happened when Gates wrote a memo suggesting
>that the company should get with the Internet. Complete U-turn on the part of
>the whole company, with a huge emphasis on Internet development. What Gates
>says, goes. Just maybe those doomsayers within Microsoft who have been saying
>yes, but what about the security angle? (I presume there are some) will now
>be listened to, and their recommendations acted on. I certainly hope so.
>

I fully admit, it is a Great Leap Forward, just like another one in history...

http://www.asiaweek.com/asiaweek/magazine/99/0924/ cn_economy.html
+Mao launched the Great Leap Forward program in 1958, arguably the greatest
+economic folly of the 20th century. To help China surpass the economies of
+Britain and the U.S. in 15 years, he decreed that every Chinese should
+produce smelt iron. Hundreds of millions of citizens neglected farms to make
+low-grade pig iron. Beijing did not know that grain was rotting in the fields

Why the above quote? Check out the language Mr Gates uses in his letter
( see the register
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/4/23715.html
). Remind you of the announcements of the old five year plans from
the old Soviet and Maoist regimes? Even down to the use of catch phrases!

If Microsoft's Management is serous ( and given their past pronouncements
on the security of their products - thats a very big if ) , it is a
Herculean but not impossible task ahead. It will not happen overnight.


Microsoft Makes Software Safety a Top Goal - January 17, 2002
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/01/17/technology/17SEC U.html
+Every developer is going to be told not to write any new line of code, Mr.
+Allchin said, until they have thought out the security implications for the
+product.

YES !!! Finally, but a little too late since almost all of the core OS and
application code has already been written.

Microsoft should have started this process three years ago.
The attempt to turn their current inherently designed insecure products
into a trusted system is like that of turning a sows ear into a silk
purse. The result is more likely to be pots and pans into useless,
unsaleable pig iron. A lot of the core design for many of the products
is going to have to be rewritten.

As for Trustworthy computing See

Avoiding bogus encryption products: Snake Oil FAQ ...
http://www.faqs.org/faqs/cryptography-faq/snake-oi l/
... the warning principals apply as much to secure software
products as it does to cryptographic products.

For software to be Trustworthy it requires that both the source and
build processes be verifiable by public inspection by peers in the
industry. That *requires* an unrestrictive license such as open
source (

maybe this could be more generally useful. perhaps spas that now offer facials etc. could also offer auto-bubblebath.

Your parents don't have a dream of looking like Captain Pike? Human washing machine, my ass! Where's the blinky light?

How about about "Chernobyl...18 Up"? Like the continuing 7 Up .. 42 Up series of documentary films, this story has a while to go. (eevil NY Times link)

If you're interested in dying languages, there's a great article in this week's New York Times Magazine (sign over soul, etc.) about how and why languages die, and what can sometimes be done to save them.