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"Too many children are being labeled for attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder and improperly placed on psychotropic drugs such as Ritalin and Adderall to be 'calmed down,' according to House testimony. Most child-health specialists agree that about 2% of schoolchildren 'are so pervasively overactive or inattentive that they are very difficult for anyone to manage.' But up to 17% of schoolchildren are being labeled for attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, or ADHD, said Dr. William B. Carey, director of behavioral pediatrics at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia." --The Washington Times - 9 Jun 2003

---------

David Neeleman is the CEO of JetBlue Airways. He has now been told that he has ADD. He didnâ(TM)t take drugs. I wonder where he would be today if his parents had forced Ritalin on him. Most probably not the head of a profitable airline.
NYTimes - ADHD - Neeleman

--------

"They made a list of the most common symptoms of emotional discomfiture of children; those which bother teachers and parents most, and in a stroke that could not be more devoid of science or Hippocratic motive--termed them a 'disease.' Twenty five years of research, not deserving of the term 'research.,' has failed to validate ADD/ADHD as a disease. Tragically--the "epidemic" having grown from 500 thousand in 1985 to between 5 and 7 million today--this remains the state of the 'science' of ADHD."
adhdfraud.com

a few years ago, there was an interesting roundtable discussion between sen. hatch, hilary rosen, director keven smith, and a few others regarding file sharing in general. at the time, i didn't much like senator hatch, but his views in the roundtable seemed remarkably enlightened for a congressman. i hope that this ap article is taken out of context, or i'll have to go back to disliking him again.

I submitted this a few hours ago (always a bridesmaid, *snif*), along with two links not in the story above. One was to the NY Times story about it. The other was to this story which just came out at Wired . . .a brief interview with Linus about his efforts to stand apart from political issues surrounding Open Source, which refers to the discussion here on Slashdot about his opinions on incorporating DRM into the Linux kernel (among other things).

Kudos to Transmeta for hiring Linus in the first place ( even if they did transport him to the USA in reach of overlitigious bastards such as The SCO Group ) and supporting his work on Linux for so many years.

Oops! I forgot about this NYTimes article including an interview with Dear ol' Trink from Saturday 6-14-03.

Here

The story sans registration.

But first I'd like to add a proper PARTNER=SLASHDOT link to the article .

Bet you didn't know you could do that. ;)

Like I said before, This NIMBY stuff really irks me to no end. Especially if it's generated by something as good an idea as a windfarm, but Cronkite's concern (private, for proffit usage of public space) is quite valid. This concern could be addressed by permitting the purchase or lease of the land, by the company, from the community.

That said, the Nantucket community should be welcoming the wind farm as an opportunity to further the cause of energy independance for the United States, and of leaving behind a cleaner planet for future generations.

The reality is that the coastal plains of the New England Atlantic coast are ideal locations to find steady and strong winds (at least they were thirteen years ago), making them ideal for this application. It disturbs me that NIMBY ever happens at all (why should the poor be the only ones to smell the landfill, paper mill, power plant, etc), but it is especially troubling when it is blocking something as sensible as a wind farm that will be three to six miles away.

NYT Story

From the article:

The case, regardless of its outcome, also points to a broader issue that will not go away: how to manage the meeting of two worlds of programming. The traditional kind produces proprietary software guarded by strict intellectual property laws of copyright and patent, while the fast-growing open-source movement, responsible for software like Linux, has thrived by freely sharing code and shunning the constraints of intellectual property.

Excuse me?

Software development was originally and traditionally open source. The first software came from academic researchers who had no need to sell software, and from computer equipment manufacturers who initially only viewed the market for selling hardware. There was no concept of proprietary software when the computer industry started. Eventually that was brought into the scheme of things as competitors came along, such as RCA when it first tried to clone the IBM mainframes. But all along, most academically developed software was free and open source. That tradition just became more noticed by businesses once critical mass (e.g. Linux) was reached that attracted everyone to it.

Check out his reply from the AO forums and read 'TheDeacon's' response to the article.

Keep in mind the recent problems with the NY Times and their Editors/Reporters not providing or checking facts in their stories.

Here's a sample of a few of his replies (it's a pretty good read):

Let me tell you something. The article about me written by Seth Schiesel, AKA Amis (his ingame name) is such a roving pack of lies slandering the person I really am in real life that I'm flat out disgusted by the whole thing.

right now I'm too stunned and upset at the amount of lies, miscontext, misquotes and outright slander posted on the article to even log in.

I'll be filing a lawsuit against the New York Times for slander, as many of the things put in that article about my real life (and even ingame) are so horribly untrue or twisted and the truth stretched to paint me in a much much different light than the person I really am.

He paints me as a shy, akward, socially inept reclusive nerd which is such a contrast to the person I really am. I make racy jokes, but he paints me as a virtual rapist. I'm broke in RL, but he paints me as a suicidal, emotionally unstable man that lives in the slums (I live in a good neighborhood) and can't afford to buy food. This article is absolutely ruinous to myself, my business, my future. It's the lowest form of slander imaginable.

Even the pictures used were horrible. The first is dark and brooding and in the second picture I was about to bust out laughing, which also looks a hell of alot like crying and is just a flat out BAD pic.

Please keep any jokes off this thread as I feel serious about this. I can see some pretty horrid real life repercussions as a result of this article.

So much of what I said to him in the four days that he was here was taken FAR out of context and quotes that I had supposedly said were either entirely made up or the wording was changed to change the focus of what I was saying.

Sound familiar? Well about a month ago, another NY Times reporter by the name of Jayson Blair did the exact same thing. I just never had any idea something like this would happen to me. He told me that he was doing a general article about the community of AO through my eyes. Instead, a pack of lies gets slammed on the world's largest newspaper about me. The entire focus of the article was misrepresented.

The writer, Seth Schiesel is a reporter for the NY Times and his ingame character is named "Amis", a high level Omni MP. The article was so vicious and untrue at some points that it seems to have been written with malice in mind.

I'm so humiliated at some of the things said in that article. it shocks and amazes me how someone can so callously and deliberately say such untruths. I'm painted as a socially inept reject that never leaves his home, which is the opposite of who I really am.

It's one thing to flame someone ingame, but this goes way beyond that and extends into my personal life.....worst of all, 80% of what he says is an outright lie. The other 20% is an exaggeration or was taken out of context.

While it may not seem bad to many of you, if you knew me in real life, you'd know why I was so upset right now.

thanks alot Amis (his ingame name). Never figured to be stabbed in back like this.

Dolemite
______________________

No registration required link

Read it here (courtesy of google news).

Google link to article

Geez, no wonder the guy is lv 200, and rich in the game. It looks like he's trying to 'lay an egg' right now.

Apparently, some people *can* mix their 'buisiness' with pleasure.

How are we to make a distinction between a hardcore gamer, and an addict? It seems to be a pretty fine line.

Mike

(ps, the nytimes link is the google link)

No-Reg Courtesy of Google

And it's becoming a sufficiently workable practice (c.f. SCO) that it's easy to imagine stockholders demanding it. Short of tort reform, is there a way to discourage this destructive pattern?

I hope you have some healthy exceptions to your vision of pure innovation. There are plenty of disasters that have occurred because people rushed into new, exciting ideas that could make themselves lots of money, and then something very bad happened.

The FDA exists because innovation-happy U.S. companies were selling untested poisons nationally to consumers and killing them by the hundreds. We don't hear about these stories much any more, strangely.

The overwhelming revulsion at photos of Thalidomide babies, the permanent nerve damage caused in adults from the use of this drug, the massive die-offs of animals caused by DDT, etc. is what finally brought government regulation in and made it stick. There have been periods in U.S. history where companies were seen as greedy and evil. Sinclair's "The Jungle" was written in reaction to the indiscriminate power corporations were gaining and abusing.

I'll include some links to nytimes.com; as usual, you can use "slashdot.com" for the username and password to get past registration.

Here is the first chapter from a book retelling the excesses of some national corporations at the start of the 20th century. Here is a review of the book.

I hope you have some healthy exceptions to your vision of pure innovation. There are plenty of disasters that have occurred because people rushed into new, exciting ideas that could make themselves lots of money, and then something very bad happened.

The FDA exists because innovation-happy U.S. companies were selling untested poisons nationally to consumers and killing them by the hundreds. We don't hear about these stories much any more, strangely.

The overwhelming revulsion at photos of Thalidomide babies, the permanent nerve damage caused in adults from the use of this drug, the massive die-offs of animals caused by DDT, etc. is what finally brought government regulation in and made it stick. There have been periods in U.S. history where companies were seen as greedy and evil. Sinclair's "The Jungle" was written in reaction to the indiscriminate power corporations were gaining and abusing.

I'll include some links to nytimes.com; as usual, you can use "slashdot.com" for the username and password to get past registration.

Here is the first chapter from a book retelling the excesses of some national corporations at the start of the 20th century. Here is a review of the book.

The 43 million is secondary (or even tertiary) to the story. The real story is about the changing tactics of the industry and how it continues its attempts to force music-lovers to listen to music how the industry wants them to, instead of being responsive to customers as any good business should.

Now that a direct sales model is viable (iTunes, Prince and others) because the means of production and inexpensive distribution is widely available for a low cost, the industry has lost its main competitive advantage.

The oligopoly that the record companies have had is coming to an end and instead of embracing a new business model they keep trying to force everyone to adhere to the old broken model.

Also, please refer to the following articles from 2 days ago, paying special attention to the editorial:

Music Industry Changes its Tune on Sharing ... Sort Of

The NYT has a pair of stories about online music today. The first is a long article about how the music industry is trying to transform its image and its business by embracing online music and sharing ... within limits. But at the same time comments about filesharing like ''We're going to continue to address this with harsher and harsher means,'' by Universal's CEO aren't encouraging that the attitude has changed. The NYT Editorial page comes down firmly on the side of music-lovers with this gem: ''You don't have to be a 19-year-old college student to sense that there's something indecent in the concentration of the recording industry...''

* 2003-06-07 19:15:59 Music Industry Changes its Tune on Sharing ... Sor (articles,music) (rejected)

The 43 million is secondary (or even tertiary) to the story. The real story is about the changing tactics of the industry and how it continues its attempts to force music-lovers to listen to music how the industry wants them to, instead of being responsive to customers as any good business should.

Now that a direct sales model is viable (iTunes, Prince and others) because the means of production and inexpensive distribution is widely available for a low cost, the industry has lost its main competitive advantage.

The oligopoly that the record companies have had is coming to an end and instead of embracing a new business model they keep trying to force everyone to adhere to the old broken model.

Also, please refer to the following articles from 2 days ago, paying special attention to the editorial:

Music Industry Changes its Tune on Sharing ... Sort Of

The NYT has a pair of stories about online music today. The first is a long article about how the music industry is trying to transform its image and its business by embracing online music and sharing ... within limits. But at the same time comments about filesharing like ''We're going to continue to address this with harsher and harsher means,'' by Universal's CEO aren't encouraging that the attitude has changed. The NYT Editorial page comes down firmly on the side of music-lovers with this gem: ''You don't have to be a 19-year-old college student to sense that there's something indecent in the concentration of the recording industry...''

* 2003-06-07 19:15:59 Music Industry Changes its Tune on Sharing ... Sor (articles,music) (rejected)

Industry Offers a Carrot in Online Music Fight
In Battle Over Online Music, Industry Offers A Carrot

TIA has nothing to do with protecting U.S. citizens from terrorism. It is instead part of a hidden political agenda.

Every year, the U.S. government gives between $3.5 billion and $5.5 billion to Jews in Israel. This money is used to kill Arabs. (The Jews call it defense.) The terrorism toward the U.S. was caused by Arabs who feel they have no other way to protest the brutality of moving them from their homeland, and continuing to kill them, to make a new country called Israel. They are sacrificing their lives to try to make a statement. I don't think violence is justified, but the U.S. government thinks violence is justified, the Jews think violence is justified, and it would be illogical to think that violence is okay for politically powerful groups in the U.S., but not for the people they want to kill.

The people who have brought you TIA have also put the U.S. government back into the huge debt it was in during the Reagan-Bush years. The people who want corruption cause the U.S. government to borrow money so that they can spend it (tax cut) to make themselves look good and on high-profit weapons.

Here are a few links that discuss other kinds of corruption:

War Profiteers card deck.

"Speaking to Pentagon reporters in a video teleconference from Iraq, General Conway said, 'What the regime was intending to do in terms of its use of the weapons, we thought we understood.' He added, 'We were simply wrong.'" [last paragraphs]

Secretary of State General Powell believes he may have been lied to about weapons in Iraq: Powell's doubts over CIA intelligence on Iraq prompted him to set up secret review.

"Could be the greatest intelligence hoax of all time."

More about war profiteers and conflict of interest: Lawmaker Questions Scope Of Iraq-Related Contracts.

Questionable accounting practices -- The U.S. government becomes another Enron scam:

Questionable accounting practices in the U.S. government: "The U.S. government is broke." George Bush gave U.S. citizens a tax cut, but it was fraud. The tax cut will be paid by money the U.S. government will borrow.

Questionable accounting practices at Halliburton, Vice President of the U.S. Dick Cheney's company.

Should U.S. President George W. Bush be impeached?

In a CNN article, John Dean asks, "Is lying about the reason for a war an impeachable offense?"

An Associated Press article reports that a retired Department of State analyst says the Bush administration was "not entirely honest".

International reaction is extremely negative. The Hindustan Times mentions that "a former CIA analyst with 25 years' experience" ... "accused the Bush administration of lying to Congress".

What is morally wrong is EXPLOITING those third world countries, making them wage-slaves because if they ask for fair payment for their services the "nice company" will drop them faster than a SARS-infected rock.(I know rocks don't get SARS, but you get the drift)

There is a good way to develop 3rd world countries while getting cheap(er?) labor: stay in when wages go up. Do not close shop. Only this way can we bring those countries up to our standards. Of course this is as far as possible from corporate policies. Google up for "maquiladoras" or read this to educate yourself. ---------- In communist Russia, the company works for YOU!

Google Link

The article mentions a mother fearing that her sons will become socially isolated if they play video games, I think this is totally wrong. I just graduated high school and the majority of the guys all had atleast one gaming system and played them regularly. Those who didn't play video games were normally the kids that were in either the church group, or the alcoholic jocks.

It's great that video games improve your visual skills, but if you shelter your children then they'll never learn.

Another thing, I don't think there should be any laws deciding what I can and can not buy in terms of video games. On more than one occasion my mother has went out and bought the game for me because I wasn't allowed to. If you don't want your kids playing a game, then it should be your respondsibility to make sure they don't, not the governments/corperations. I feel the same way about movies, I was able to buy rated R tickets when I was 14 but for the last two years I couldn't. Thank you very much Tipper Gore.

Brownback's number one source of campaign cash for 2001-2002 was (drumroll) the Telecommunications Industry--i.e., BellSouth, SBC and a little firm on the East Coast by the name of Verizon (click on communications/electronics then "telephone utilities"). He only received $26k total for those two years, but he's up for reelection now and has likely been pulling down additional funds from his lead suppliers.

Interestingly, Verizon's lead counsel was quoted in a NY Times article as saying "in light of the court's decision, it is time for Congress to become involved and offer a legislative solution" when they agreed to name the names of their four filesharers.

IMHO, the only portion of Brownback's bill to pass will be the part concerning big telecom firms... we'll have to wait for Boucher or whoever to reform the DMCA, but I would have liked to have seen Fritz Hollings' face when his fellow committee member offered up this legislation.

no-registration link

reg free link

HIS MESSAGE: With no immediate breakthroughs in technology coming, and with the Linux computer operating system and a batch of other open-source programs biting at its heels, Microsoft will have to do a better job of persuading customers it has something they need.

Here's the google link to the nytimes betting pool story. Damn the ny times for that reg crap anyway.

-robSlimo

The Supreme Court ruled yesterday that they can't use tradmark as a form of pseudo-copyright.

It was covered on NPR yesterday and was front page news on most newspapers (Time, NY Times) today. How you missed it, I don't know. I will agree that CNN is pathetic though...

Uh...because it's damned good journalism

and most people don't mind giving a little back (when this "a little" happens just to be the satisfaction of them being able to confirm that they have x amount of readers, and don't use it for anything else other than that)?

You don't think those articles write themselves and the writers live off of your wet dreams of free everything, do you?

Or better yet, find the Google link to this very story at NYT

A Million and one" other articles about the Miss Vermont Story.

NYTimes No-Reg linkof the Miss Vermont Story.

it's also possible to direct link as a google partner. thus, avoiding pasting the entire article into an overly long comment.

Seems to me this is very similar to the nuclear situation with north korea. At the same time the pentagon is pressing for new research in nuclear weopons they're pressing Iran and North Korea to cease they efforts.

From my rejected post late last night:

Today TiVo begins selling information about its customers' viewing habits to advertisers and others. Two years ago TiVo admitted it had plans to sell subscriber information - it looks like that day is finally here. This should be interesting if only due to the new TiVo hacking book about to be published.

Subject: FW: IMMEDIATE ATTENTION NEEDED: HIGHLY CONFIDENTIAL

URGENT ASSISTANCE - FROM USA

IMMEDIATE ATTENTION NEEDED : HIGHLY CONFIDENTIAL

FROM: GEORGE WALKER BUSH
202.456.1414 / 202.456.1111
FAX: 202.456.2461

Dear Sir/Madam,

I am GEORGE WALKER BUSH, son of the former president of the United States of America George Herbert Walker Bush, and currently serving as President of the United States of America. This letter might surprise you because we have not met neither in person nor by correspondence. I came to know of you in my search for a reliable and reputable person to handle a very confidential business transaction, which involves the transfer of a huge sum of money to an account requiring maximum confidence.

I am writing you in absolute confidence primarily to seek your assistance in acquiring oil funds that are presently trapped in the republic of iraq. My partners and I solicit your assistance in completing a transaction begun by my father, who has long been actively engaged in the extraction of petroleum in the United States of America, and bravely served his country as director of the United States Central Intelligence Agency.

In the decade of the nineteen-eighties, my father, then vice-president of the United States of America, sought to work with the good offices of the President of the Republic of Iraq to regain lost oil revenue sources in the neighboring islamic republic of Iran. This unsuccessful venture was soon followed by a falling-out with his Iraqi partner, who sought to acquire additional oil revenue sources in the neighboring emirate of Kuwait, a wholly-owned U.S.-British subsidiary.

My father re-secured the petroleum assets of Kuwait in 1991 at a cost of sixty-one billion U.S. dollars ($61,000,000,000). Out of that cost, thirty-six billion dollars ($36,000,000,000) were supplied by his partners in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and other persian gulf monarchies, and sixteen billion dollars ($16,000,000,000) by German and Jap

Buffy fans will want to use this link
partner=SARAHMICHELLEGELLER
Thanks NYT!!!

Probably the most significant statement surrounding all this was made by Viacom Stations Group head Fred Reynolds, quoted in a NY Times story (frrbbb): "We're in the business of making money." So much for the public interest, convenience and necessity.

By rewriting existing scientific programs, they say, researchers will be able to get powerful computing from inexpensive clusters of personal computers that are running the free Linux software operating system. Many scientists are now adapting their work to these parallel computing systems, known as Beowulfs, which make it possible to cobble together tremendous computing power at low cost.

"The supercomputer vendors are adamant that I am wrong," Dr. Bell said. "But the Beowulf is a Volkswagen and these people are selling trucks."

You could at least use partner=SLASHDOT

Here is a link w/o registering.

No Registration Required

Just use the google link!

IANAL, but as I understand it, it isn't unless Apple have specifically granted that right, as you would be creating a derivative work (which you can do for yourself, but not others) and selling it. In a similar vein, making a tape of a CD, and destroying the original, you can't then sell the tape, for the same reason. I haven't been able to find the itunes music store terms and conditions on apple's website, and since I use linux (and don't live in the US), I can't check directly. I'd be pretty surprised if Apple granted that right though.

>Ah, you say, I can burn it to CD, and copy that >into MP3, and work from that - substantional >artifacts and all

So work with the AIFF directly. And there are several ways to do the conversion without burning a CD. Fair enough, that's not one of the advertised features, and as I've said, I don't have a mac to check it out. But still... AIFF is uncompressed, yes? So we've lost the one advantage of lossy compression (small size), while keeping the disadvantage, i.e. inability to recode due to transcoding artifacts. Not ideal, by any stretch. But as I said, that's a limitation of the method of digital distribution, rather than a specifc problem with the DRM itself.

Plus, by making copies of the AIFF, even for fair use purposes such as education, you could technically be nailed for breach of the DMCA, as I don't believe that has an exemption for bypassing copy control mechanisms for fair use. Of course, that's not a problem, because laws are fuzzily interpreted with common sense, by humans, right? ;) (Finally comes back on topic with the article)

Copyright expiring? You're quite optimistic :)/

Well, as I mentioned, I think Disney will continue to do their level best to make copyright in the US perpetual. Whether they then manage to make it perpetual worldwide through WIPO is another matter altogether. There was some broughaha recently about some recordings expiring in europe, and the RIAA making threatening noises about how it would be illegal to import reissues of those into the US.
Fortunately, I do live in europe, and there is some hope over here of copyright continuing to expire eventually.

I fully agree with your criticisms of DRM. But I don't believe that they apply to the iTunes store, because its "DRM" is specifically not intended to impose hard limits.

As I've said, kudos to Apple for getting a DRM scheme that most people could live with past the recording industry lawyers.

But when it comes restrictions upon fair use and reasonable or fuzzy breaches of copyright (such as itunes broadcast streaming capability), I still think that Apple's DRM and methods are still too tight. If you'd like another example, a good fuzzy breach of copyright is itunes ability to stream to a limited number of people. Not a definite breach, but in the grey area around what is a 'public performance'. Apple have just removed the ability to stream over the 'net in itunes, and as I understand it, there are additinal limits on how you can broadcast shop bought AAC's. OK, spend the time to covert them to AIFF, but again, a lossy recorded file that's 40Meg in size, just to get round the DRM. W00t.

As I've said, apple is DRM lite. but it's still DRM. but I guess we'll have to agree to differ.

It should make us nervous whenever companies of this size adopt a cooperative, rather than a competitive, stance towards each other. Why was this case really settled? Probably because they both were able to agree to cooperate in the future on new DRM. Caveat Emptor!