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NY Times(Free registration required, blah blah blah)

You're forgetting that the desire to make money doesn't drive innovation. Innovation only occurs when there's competition, and competition tends to die when large companies have too much say in government, which is what happens when Republicans are in charge. Look at big business' contributions to each party to see which party they think will benefit them the most. Big business contributed $60M to the recent Republican US election runs, four to five times the amount received by Democrats. The bigger the business the less they'll be interested in innovation since they'll be more eager to maintain control of their market. It's easier to control your market by shutting out competition than by innovating.

As an example look at the phone company. Before the Bell breakup they made plenty of money and produced probably nothing innovative, at least nothing that benefited the consumer. Innovation requires a push from government in the form of anti-monopolistic policies.

The charitable group that Mr. Gates started with his wife, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, is now giving away $1.2 billion a year. Mr. Gates said he was pleased that its first major philanthropic effort, the library project, had helped to narrow the digital divide.

I'm not going to minimize my attachments by giving it all away, though, so you evangelists for a zillion worthy causes can just calm down out there and forget about hitting me up for megabucks. I am *not* going to be a soft touch, and will rudely refuse all importunities.

Well, you see, in America we don't have to be reminded to vote.

Most of us don't do it, reminded or not. But the nerds will vote in droves if they ever put in on the Internet. ;-)

I think turnout today is predicted below 40%. OK, it's not a Presidential election, but if you're following Yank politics the Senate is hanging in the balance, politically. And just a couple of years ago those nice folks in Florida showed us that each vote does count (usually).

Gotta go pick up my 6 y.o. so we can go vote (I let him press the buttons but not make the choices).

Law enforcement has to have some particular reason to suspect YOU specifically before it probes through generally accepted expectations of privacy. The depth of the intrusion is propotional to the persuasiveness of the evidence. BUT NO FISHING EXPEDITIONS.

The Patriot Act relies on a hysterical and ill-defined notion of a future terrorist threat to provide justification. This has been characteristic of many "emergency measures" in many countries over the years -- you know, we have to shut down the presses because it might cause trouble, etc. Now, it's been fairly quiet for over a year in the States -- when do you think they'll dilute the Act?

A recent example abroad -- the Russian gov't interfered with internet and print press in the wake of the theater hostage-taking crisis. Although antiterrorism was the justification, a good portion of this appears to have been to save face for the gov't. They politely call this censorship "media restrictions." (NYT 11/2) Good precedent?

Now, are we aiming to be more like the Russians, or more like us?

If we go to war in Iraq, we'll see even more severe censorship than in Gulf I (when they couldn't lay hands on Peter Arnett) and who knows what sort of internal investigations looking for seditious intent. How many people here will end up on the list? (Actually, with the increased use of sniffers looking for keywords in email and postings, you probably all are on the list. ;-) Look what happened to the medical students in Florida, where even the traffic violation was a lie, disproved by videotape." Watch out for the next Eunice Stone, aided by fear.

I am a great supporter of our government, but stop snooping in our libraries, this is pathetic.

AMERICANS: VOTE TODAY!

Despite what the summary says, I wasn't prompted for registration, but thanks to news.google.com,
Here is the article sans-registration for those of you that are prompted.

Google Link

Google Partner Link

I swear, it takes all of 60 seconds effort - why can't submitters/editors include the Google partner link as well as the reg-required one!

partner=all_your_news_are_belong_to_us

I'm not sure which settlement you're refering to, but Microsoft's business practices are currently still under investigation by the European Commission. And let's not forget Japan, who are conducting their own investigations in these matters.

Similarly to the US, the EU has brought an antitrust case against Microsoft, with a preliminary ruling expected later this year. It is not unthinkable that the failure of the United States to take decisive measures against Microsoft may prompt harsher action from the EU.

The EC is particularly concerned that Microsoft may extend its monopoly to include server software and media services. Aside from that, the EU has a separate investigation into Microsoft's Passport service

it's even simpler than that. You don't need the ex, en, ei values. And it doesn't care what partner is set to: http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/01/sports/otherspor ts/01RACI.html?partner=YOMAMA works just fine. Brilliant coding, I must say.

Replace GOOGLE with SLASHDOT and you are in.

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/29/sports/othersp or ts/29RACI.html?ex=1036472400&en=51e22b7df3931513&e i=5062&partner=SLASHDOT

Linked to Partner "Slashdot"

Note that if you follow this link, there is a link to the NYT story that you can see without registration. The URL ends with "&partner=GOOGLE" so it seems that if you are a partner of the NYT, you can access articles without registration. Could /. apply to the Times for partnership status?

there's an article in the NYTimes's Circuits section today: From Inside, Palm Makes a New Start It's an interesting read

IBM launched this initiative with a full-page ad in the new york times for a "business time machine" to allow you to go back in time and fix business mistakes. Here's a story on the ad. It was supposedly produced by bagotronics; the website now goes to the page on ibm's site (the picture of the device is at the top right). Here's a reuters article on the ad.

Ok, it's not a dot com superbowl ad, but still clever. A subtle way to acknowledge that their new initiative is like the old mainframe days.

IBM launched this initiative with a full-page ad in the new york times for a "business time machine" to allow you to go back in time and fix business mistakes. Here's a story on the ad. It was supposedly produced by bagotronics; the website now goes to the page on ibm's site (the picture of the device is at the top right). Here's a reuters article on the ad.

Ok, it's not a dot com superbowl ad, but still clever. A subtle way to acknowledge that their new initiative is like the old mainframe days.

The EPA has released the Top Ten List of fuel economy winners for year 2003. The top slots are occupied by the Hybrid electrics (as expected) followed closely by Diesel cars. Diesel fuel injection systems are responsible for some European cars able to achieve remarkable fuel efficiencies of upto 75 mpg. They also have lower emissions and are quieter to drive. Europe's embrace of Diesel powered vehicles has caused their refiners to unload their excess gasoline across the Atlantic helping keep gasoline prices at our pumps steady even if crude oil prices keep rising. Increasing the popularity of Diesel powered passenger vehicles has always been known to be a part of the solution to meet todays national environmental and energy goals. However, the lineup of cars with diesel engine options for the North American buyer is still very limited. I wonder why . Here is a website dedicated to Turbo Direct Injection Diesel (TDI) cars that are known to have phenomenal fuel efficiency. You can read more about fuel efficient diesel applications in this Diesel Forum .

All fact-checking aside, it defies belief that any NYC agency has the power or the inclination to issue permits for the plastering of decals over public subway signs, private building facades, and public sidewalks.

-renard

Today's NYTimes has a story on the new Palm devices.

(of course free reg. req.)

These are not the same story!

Google story "Many Universes, Several Theories."
Times story which I posted. "A New View of Our Universe: Only One of Many."

The one on Google appeared in the times weeks ago - remember the Slasdot discussion on Branes? In spite of the URL assigned by google (which includes todays date,) the free (as in privacy) story is not current.

These are not the same story!

Google story "Many Universes, Several Theories."
Times story which I posted. "A New View of Our Universe: Only One of Many."

The one on Google appeared in the times weeks ago - remember the Slasdot discussion on Branes? In spite of the URL assigned by google (which includes todays date,) the free (as in privacy) story is not current.

Please link to the Google version which doesn't require registration.

It's already happened, without the help of robots or hackers.

Date: Fri, 31 May 2002 10:41:18 -0400
From: Seth Finkelstein
To: Seth Finkelstein's InfoThought list
Subject: IT: Federal censorware law down! (and Seth Finkelstein's reports!)

I'm ecstatic that the court seems to have used my pioneering efforts in anticensorware work as one factor in its decision, in passages such as these:

Another technique that filtering companies use in order to deal with a structural feature of the Internet is blocking the root level URLs of so-called loophole Web sites. These are Web sites that provide access to a particular Web page, but display in the user's browser a URL that is different from the URL with which the particular page is usually associated. Because of this feature, they provide a loophole that can be used to get around filtering software, i.e., they display a URL that is different from the one that appears on the filtering company's control list. Loophole Web sites include caches of Web pages that have been removed from their original location, anonymizer sites, and translation sites.

Caches are archived copies that some search engines, such as Google, keep of the Web pages they index. The cached copy stored by Google will have a URL that is different from the original URL. Because Web sites often change rapidly, caches are the only way to access pages that have been taken down, revised, or have changed their URLs for some reason. For example, a magazine might place its current stories under a given URL, and replace them monthly with new stories. If a user wanted to find an article published six months ago, he or she would be unable to access it if not for Google's cached version.

Some sites on the Web serve as a proxy or intermediary between a user and another Web page. When using a proxy server, a user does not access the page from its original URL, but rather from the URL of the proxy server. One type of proxy service is an anonymizer. Users may access Web sites indirectly via an anonymizer when they do not want the Web site they are visiting to be able to determine the IP address from which they are accessing the site, or to leave cookies on their browser.(8) Some proxy servers can be used to attempt to translate Web page content from one language to another. Rather than directly accessing the original Web page in its original language, users can instead indirectly access the page via a proxy server offering translation features.

As noted above, filtering companies often block loophole sites, such as caches, anonymizers, and translation sites. The practice of blocking loophole sites necessarily results in a significant amount of overblocking, because the vast majority of the pages that are cached, for example, do not contain content that would match a filtering company's category definitions. Filters that do not block these loophole sites, however, may enable users to access any URL on the Web via the loophole site, thus resulting in substantial underblocking.

This is an aspect which I've been trying to get into the censorware debate for ages. I'm overjoyed that the court heard, they got it, they listened, and it helped strike down Federal censorware law! These are the reports which seem to have made a difference in the above:

BESS's Secret LOOPHOLE: (censorware vs. privacy & anonymity) - a secret category of BESS (N2H2), and more about why censorware must blacklist privacy, anonymity, and translators
http://sethf.com/anticensorware/bess/loophole.php

BESS vs The Google Search Engine (Cache, Groups, Images) - BESS bans cached web pages, passes porn in groups, and considers all image searching to be pornography.
http://sethf.com/anticensorware/bess/google.php

SmartFilter's Greatest Evils - why censorware must blacklist privacy, anonymity, and language translators
http://sethf.com/anticensorware/smartfilter/greate stevils.php

The Pre-Slipped Slope - censorware vs the Wayback Machine web archive - The logic of censorware programs suppressing an enormous digital library.
http://sethf.com/anticensorware/general/slip.php

-- Seth Finkelstein Consulting Programmer http://sethf.com
Anticensorware Investigations: http://sethf.com/anticensorware/
Seth Finkelstein's Infothought list - http://sethf.com/infothought/
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/07/19/technology/circu its/19HACK.html

There's a link of for this story on the NY times at the bottom of the page.
I figure i'd post it here for reference:
And here it is.

That said, Iraq is probably the only Arab country where women can wear whatever they want, fully participate in political life (well, to the same limited, oppressed amount the men can, anyway) and have full legal equality in both professional and personal domains.

Bahrain held an election this week in which women could both vote and run for office.

You and Slashdot are partners too!

You and Slashdot are partners too!

For those of you who don't like to register...

Google News (Beta) Link

Light-Emitting Silicon Shines Much Brighter in New Invention
Why can't slashdot become a partner to NYT?

If you don't want to give google false page hits there's always majcher

here

"Sweden middle class has a lower standard of living than the lowest earning group in US - Blacks."

Conservatives keep claiming this. It's been debunked before. Here's the best example, from p. 5 of Paul Krugman's excellent piece "For Richer":

Let me use the example of Sweden, that great conservative bete noire.

A few months ago the conservative cyberpundit Glenn Reynolds made a splash when he pointed out that Sweden's G.D.P. per capita is roughly comparable with that of Mississippi -- see, those foolish believers in the welfare state have impoverished themselves! Presumably he assumed that this means that the typical Swede is as poor as the typical resident of Mississippi, and therefore much worse off than the typical American.

But life expectancy in Sweden is about three years higher than that of the U.S. Infant mortality is half the U.S. level, and less than a third the rate in Mississippi. Functional illiteracy is much less common than in the U.S.

How is this possible? One answer is that G.D.P. per capita is in some ways a misleading measure. Swedes take longer vacations than Americans, so they work fewer hours per year. That's a choice, not a failure of economic performance. Real G.D.P. per hour worked is 16 percent lower than in the United States, which makes Swedish productivity about the same as Canada's.

But the main point is that though Sweden may have lower average income than the United States, that's mainly because our rich are so much richer. The median Swedish family has a standard of living roughly comparable with that of the median U.S. family: wages are if anything higher in Sweden, and a higher tax burden is offset by public provision of health care and generally better public services. And as you move further down the income distribution, Swedish living standards are way ahead of those in the U.S. Swedish families with children that are at the 10th percentile -- poorer than 90 percent of the population -- have incomes 60 percent higher than their U.S. counterparts. And very few people in Sweden experience the deep poverty that is all too common in the United States. One measure: in 1994 only 6 percent of Swedes lived on less than $11 per day, compared with 14 percent in the U.S.

The moral of this comparison is that even if you think that America's high levels of inequality are the price of our high level of national income, it's not at all clear that this price is worth paying. The reason conservatives engage in bouts of Sweden-bashing is that they want to convince us that there is no tradeoff between economic efficiency and equity -- that if you try to take from the rich and give to the poor, you actually make everyone worse off. But the comparison between the U.S. and other advanced countries doesn't support this conclusion at all. Yes, we are the richest major nation. But because so much of our national income is concentrated in relatively few hands, large numbers of Americans are worse off economically than their counterparts in other advanced countries.

You can (and should) go read the whole thing right now: For Richer

partner=cmdrtaco

Today's Times has a story to the effect that Microsoft has apologized and is going to begin removing the decals.

CmdrTaco did, in this NYTimes article. He said he "still considers the site his own personal soapbox" [para]. Given his new TiBook, I think we're going to see more and more stories like this.

Certainly not! However, there are a few countries that have events and issues that are newsworthy to the rest of the world... and Iceland and Finland, and the others vaunted in this article, are less frequently among that group.

Let's take a look at what is on the front page of one of Reykjavik's major newspapers today... Well, quite a bit of news from the USA! Hmm, how about the New York Times? Or the London Times? Or the Moscow News? Any stories about Iceland there? Not likely.

The point I'm trying to make is that an article stating that the US is 17th in "Freedom of the Press" is like saying that Moosejaw, Montana* is doing a better job than Los Angeles, California at managing rush-hour traffic congestion. You can't make blanket comparisons between the United States and most other countries in an apples-to-apples manner, as this article tried to do.

Why these people dont post the no registration required link provided by making minor modifications to the ones provided byGoogle news, I dont know ;)

From the article:
"I trust and hope that these offensive activities are not the authorized acts of your organization's employees and agents," Mr. Fernandez [Assistant counsel of the Transportation Department] wrote..."

Does Mr. Fernandez perhaps believe that Microsoft employees paid for thousands of 20" Microsoft butterflies with Microsoft advertising out of their own pockets?

OF COURSE IT WAS AN AUTHORIZED ACT YOU TWIT!

And here is Google's entrance to the NYT article

NYT without the registration

posted anonymously so i don't look like a karma whore.

Why these people dont post the no registration required links provided by Google news I don't know

Hemos is currently quashing it for some reason, but apparently Maryland police may have caught the sniper. Offtopic, but seriously read the article. So far this looks to be the real thing.

try
like this:

click here

It's a feature in Slashcode to prevent page-widening posts.

try
like this:

click here

It's a feature in Slashcode to prevent page-widening posts.

17th? Really, even after Frau Dowd refers to the person sitting in the highest office in the country as the "Boy Emperor" ... and the worse she gets for it is a severe fisking from a grad student at Oxford?

Puleaeeasse! Spare me.

> What sort of imbeciles is the patent office hiring these days?

Look at this and laugh, or weep, or both.

The link is from this article by James Gleick (of "Genius" fame) which has been discussed on Slashdot two years ago.

This morning I read the Science Times and read a piece on Botulism and it detailed how a bottom feeder named a goby fish, an invasive species from Eastern Europe, was killing the eco-system of the lake. I guess here is an example of a bottom feeder killing the eco-system of the web...

Googlefied NYT article for the No reg types

partner=cmdrtaco

SEC's budget last year: $438 million
Budget under new law: $776 million
Budget after Bush cut: $568 million

So my question is, what does the SEC need so much money for?

Two months ago, the commission received an increase of $30 million over its $438 million budget from last year, which was widely considered inadequate, to begin hiring another 100 staff members to join its 3,100 current employees.

$30 million / 100 new employees = $300,000 per new employee.
$438 million / 3,100 employees = $141,000 per employee.

The law calls for $102 million for raises and $108 million for better computer systems and financing for restoring the agency after the Sept. 11 attacks that destroyed its New York offices.

$102 million / 3,100 employees = $33,000 raise per employee
$108 million / 3,100 employees = $35,000 per employee for computers and 'financing' to restore the agency after losing its New York offices.

Where is all of the SEC's money going?