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What I really meant was "effectively never".

Many things fall under fair use. Most specific examples are rare. Everybody uses fair use many times during their life, some people do it daily as part of their work or hobby. Multiply by hundreds of millions of people and "effectively never" is really every day.

I prefer to be realistic. I don't think our laws should cater to edge cases and idealists.

Sklyarov was arrested for making a bookreader for the BLIND. Oops, sorry, blind people are an edge case.

Laws are narrowly drawn to put people in jail for commiting bad acts. You do not put people in jail for doing things that are, by definition, fair.

If you're doing research into audio compression and you work for a major university, I'll bet you could persuade the major labels to help you out.

Please tell me you're joking. Try asking professor Felton. Recording industry lawyers where real helpful(sarcasm) with his legitimate research (audio, but not compression). Fair use means you have the right - you don't need permission, completely vital when it comes to criticism and satire.

>>attempt to dodge "fair use" objections by allowances
>>for specific cases of fair use. Bogus defense.
I disagree. If you want to be pragmatic (which I do), the specific cases matter a great deal. The fair use laws were developed years ago in response to specific circumstances at the time. The law needs to adapt as the circumstances change. Therefore, the specific situation that exists today is very relevant.

I think you missed my point. I was saying that DRM allowing a single backup is a bogus defence because it still blocks every other kind of fair use. Actually you supported my position even more. Fair use is very dependent upon specific circumstances. Even if a DRM scheme was magicaly designed to allow all known kinds of fair use, it would still block new kinds fair use. Courts regularly recognize new things as falling under fair use.

I don't know why you make such a big deal out of a "right" that
a) you happily lived without 10 years ago(before CD burners were common).

10 years ago all my music/movies were on cassette/vcr, and I certainly did have the right to make a backup again if the original was destroyed. I don't know why you feel you can take away my rights now.

b) you don't get with most other consumer products (e.g. a car).

Cars are not protected by copyright. Try a book. I can do anything I like with a book except distribute reproductions. I can change letters, rip out pages, chop it up in pieces and glue them back together in a diferent order. What makes you think that should be crime? Any DRM file (music, movie, anything) can be printed as letters on paper. It will look like gobbly gook, but it's the same information. I could change / rearrange the letters to make it play in reverse. I do it to characters on paper it's ok, I do the exact same thing to letters on my computer I go to jail??

I am not fighting for new rights. I'm fighting to keep the rights I have. Just because you don't care about or use some of your rights doesn't mean you can take mine away. And as a programmer, the DMCA affects my rights. I promise you, if they win, it will eventually affect yours. Ever buy or sell anything at a garage sale? Oops, they're also killing "right of first sale" which says you have a right to sell your old books and stuff. If you have DRM books/music/movies you lost the right to have a garage sale.

As far as I know, you wouldn't be guilty of copyright violation in this case.
Exactly my point - I'm not doing anything wrong.
You would be guilty of reverse engineering the DRM
I'm not commiting a bad act, so why are you putting me in jail?
makes me wonder why you enabled DRM for that file.
People do all sorts of unexpected things for perfectly good reasons. You couldn't imagine why a copyright holder would ever want to make a copy of an internet audio stream. I gave three perfectly good examples. You do not put people into jail for doing things outside your tunnel vision.

I doubt that anyone really believes that the copy protection is infallible.

Executives at the recording and movies industries have repeatedly demanded exactly that. There was a senate hearing on Feb 28...

Eisner: "If it's a fact you cannot protect intellectual property on the Internet, I do not accept that".

The president of Intel tried to explain it was impossible.

"Mr. Eisner suggested that computer manufacturers did not want to find a technical solution because they profit from piracy."

Hollywood studios have been promoting a project that would embed a "flag," or watermark in every piece of digital video content. Computers, digital video recorders and other devices would then be designed to play the material only if they detected the presence of the markers.

It's a New York Times quote. I am not being alarmist or extreme - the DRM lobby really truely does want something insane...

Read it carefully - if it's not tagged by hollywood, you can't view it. All of your existing files become unusable. You can videotape a wedding, but you're SOL as far as making copies.

When someone wants something insane, saying "NO" is not idealism, and being pragmatic and realistic does not mean you try to compromise on something only half as bad.

-

STAR WARS: EPISODE 2 -- ATTACK OF THE CLONES, by R. A. Salvatore. (Lucas/Del Rey/Ballantine, $26.) As the Republic edges toward disaster, Anakin Skywalker falls for Senator Padmé Amidala.

I guess this doesn't count as Science Fiction since it has less literary merit than most Science Fiction...

I think the pop-up ad killing capabilities are great, but there seem to be workarounds for web developers. Everytime I go to the NY times, I still get Orbitz pop-ups from ad.doubleclick.net. Obviously, I can block ad.doubleclick.net in /etc/hosts, but for less technically minded users, there has to be a better solution. You can test out the specific ad in mozilla, here.

In "Uncle Tungsten: Memories of a Chemical Boyhood," Oliver Sacks describes a giant periodic table at the British Museum, or perhaps it was the Natural Science Museum, in London. It was built onto a large wall (quite large, by his description, perhaps thirty feet wide) and there were cubbyholes containing samples of each element that could easily or safely be stored. Sacks, in his childhood, was a chemistry hacker, and his description of the table, and of his feelings for chemistry, especially metals, is beautiful. The first chapter of Uncle Tungsten is available on the New York Times site.

Microsofties testifying poorly for the company. Yesterday, Microsoft's Will Poole, vice president in charge of the company's Windows New Media Platform division, conceded that he couldn't think of anything Microsoft had done with its audio and video capabilities to address a trial court's April 2000 findings against the company.

The states also brought out an email from a different Microsoft employee, Kurt Buecheler, who wrote that when Microsoft went to distribute market development money to computer manufacturers, "a key criteria will be shipping Windows Media Player."

Today, when the states lawyer enquired as to why IE6 played music files with WMP technology even if the user had selected RealPlayer as their default, Microsoft executive Linda Averett said Microsoft could use RealNetworks software to play music in Internet Explorer, but chooses not to.

"The reason it is not replaceable is that Microsoft does not allow it to be replaceable, correct?" Schmidtlein (dissenting states attorney) asked.

"Correct, it is an integrated feature," Averett testified.

She also testified about the complaint by RealNetworks that the XP search program couldn't find RealNetworks files. She claimed it was a mistake that had been fixed two weeks ago. This would make it a month after states' top lawyer, Brendan Sullivan, showed the search problem during opening arguments as evidence of Microsoft's wrongdoing.

Yesterday's testimony: http://news.com.com/2100-1001-900213.html
Today's testimony: http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/technology/AP-Micr osoft-Antitrust.html

don't forget to visit this NYT Forum where billy's paid2post ?pr? ?community? ?members? prattle on 24/7/365 about the advantages of PayPer LieSense FUDgePacking, over anything else that moves IT.

... and they get the money from people on slashdot donating, ...

Money makes the world go round ... or lawyers on the tables pound ...

DVD Copyright Case Grinds Through Courts

"Underwriting the defense of the hacker- oriented magazine has put a strain on the foundation's finances. That is one reason Martin Garbus, the First Amendment lawyer who handled the earlier stages of the case, will no longer represent the magazine. Foundation officials said that even at a discounted rate, Mr. Garbus's bills came to about $1.5 million in 2000, nearly doubling the annual expenditure of the group, which gets about three-quarters of its financing from individual donors."

The magazine's new lead lawyer is Kathleen Sullivan, the dean of Stanford Law School, who volunteered to handle the appeal free.

"It's not a slam on the Garbus firm," said Cindy Cohn, the foundation's legal director. "We just couldn't sustain that kind of an outlay."

Sig: What Happened To The Censorware Project (censorware.org)

Here are links to news stories on six of the deaths.

Dr Benito Que was beaten to death on Nov 12 by 4 unknown men Miami Herald. He was a cell biologist working on infection diseases at the University of Miami's School of medicine, and was killed as he left work.

Dr Don Wiley drowned under mysterious circumstances on Nov 16.

CNN.

Only a week after Dr Que, Dr Wiley disappeared after a dinner party. Criminal intent has been noted by the Memphis police. Dr Wiley was the foremost infectious disease research at Harvard.

Dr. Vladimir Pasechnik was found dead on November 23 Nytimes.

Dr pasechnik was a soviet defector from the Russian biological warfare who was an expert in Anthrax.

Dr. Robert M. Schwartz was stabbed to death on Dec 10. msnbc.

Dr Schwartz was an expert in DNA sequencing, 'cultists' are blamed.

Set Van Nguyen died in an airlock on Dec 14. Chemical incidents report center. He was in the field of animal diseases (anthrax) and died in an airlock filled with nitrogen. This is very odd since he should have been able to notice he was suffocating and open the door.

Steven Mostow died in a mysterious plane crash on March 25.Colorado 9news
One of the country's leading infectious disease and bioterrorism experts from the Colorado Health Sciences Center. Preliminary reports say the airplane engine failed. This is an extremely uncommon event, and does not necessarily lead to fatality. I am a pilot and can testify that the events of this death are highly suspicious.

Stan Lee has an editorial in today's New York Times (free reg required blah blah blah), wherein he talks about Spidey's long-lasting appeal. Short on depth but fulla Stan Lee goodness, it's worth a read.

There will be a tradesman class, so after work people can go home and exist in a fantasy world where they... work...

If this pays, why not? :)

SAN FRANCISCO, May 1 -- Edward J. Zander, the gregarious executive who oversaw daily operations at Sun Microsystems, plans to retire on July 1, the company said today.

Mr. Zander, the No. 2 executive at Sun, a troubled computer maker, is the fourth prominent executive there to announce a retirement in recent weeks. A fifth manager, Stephen DeWitt, the vice president of an important business unit that leads Sun's efforts with the Linux operating system, quietly left Sun on Friday, the company confirmed today.

Investors showed their disappointment with Mr. Zander's departure. The stock plunged $1.21, or 14.8 percent, to $6.97, a low not seen since 1998. Mr. Zander, who is 55, was credited by many analysts as the driving force behind Sun's rapid ascension before the Internet bubble burst.

Sun, which makes high-powered computers and software for networks, will not immediately replace Mr. Zander as president and chief operating officer. Instead, Scott G. McNealy, Sun's chairman and chief executive, said he would assume the role of president on July 1, the beginning of Sun's next fiscal year.

"You've literally had the top three executives outside of McNealy resign within two weeks," said A. M. Sacconaghi Jr., an analyst with Sanford C. Bernstein & Company. "It has to raise the same kinds of doubts that investors raised today among some customers."

Mr. Zander said he had decided to leave Sun last year but had wanted to wait until the company showed signs of emerging from a slump brought on by a slowdown in corporate spending and a sharp downturn in its main customer base, dot-coms.

In an interview, Mr. Zander, who joined Sun in 1987 from Apollo Computer, said his future plans were not set. But he did not rule out taking the helm of another company as early as next year. As it became clear that Mr. McNealy had no intention of leaving soon, Mr. Zander said, he realized that he would have to leave if he wanted to be a chief executive.

"That's not necessarily saying that I wanted to be C.E.O.," he said, "but I knew that Scott was going to be in control here. If I was going to experience something else in life, whatever that is, I had to move on, but I didn't want to move on until I felt the company was in a shape that was a lot better than a year ago."

In the last two weeks, three other top executives have announced their plans to leave the company on July 1. They include the chief financial officer, Michael E. Lehman; the executive vice president of Sun's computer systems business, John Shoemaker; and the head of Sun's enterprise services business, Larry Hambly.

Another executive, Mr. DeWitt, who resigned without a public announcement on Friday, had served as vice president of Sun's content delivery and edge computing division since Cobalt, the company he had led as chief executive, was acquired by Sun in September 2000. He had been viewed as an up-and-comer within Sun and was featured prominently at the company's meeting for Wall Street analysts in February.

In a conference call with the company, some Wall Street analysts criticized Sun officials for stringing them along with four separate announcements of the retirements. They also expressed concern that other retirement announcements would soon follow -- a fear that Mr. McNealy did not dispel during the call.

Mr. McNealy said several executives had wanted to retire last year but had decided to stay on through the end of this fiscal year to help the company through "the rough patch."

"The fiscal year is the right time to go do this thing," Mr. McNealy said. "I know it looks like a flurry here, but I think it's been positive and planned out."

While Sun's fortunes are tied heavily to the overall economy and the return of corporate spending on information-technology systems, Mr. McNealy said that Sun was in better shape than it had been in the last two years. Its losses of $37 million for its fiscal third quarter, which ended March 31, narrowed in spite of flat sales, and Sun said it expected to turn a profit in this quarter.

As the top field marshal for Mr. McNealy, Mr. Zander has been responsible for intensifying Sun's competition with International Business Machines in high-end computer systems that run networks and corporate data centers.

Laura Conigliaro, an analyst with Goldman, Sachs, said it was unclear how Sun would replace Mr. Zander's mixture of intelligence and deep understanding of the marketplace. Mr. Zander has been an effective foil for Mr. McNealy, the brash and visionary leader who sets Sun's strategy and has jousted on the public and legal stage with Microsoft for years.

"When you look around the computer industry, or even more broadly," she said, "it's hard to find the qualities that Ed Zander has brought to Sun."

SAN FRANCISCO, May 1 -- Edward J. Zander, the gregarious executive who oversaw daily operations at Sun Microsystems, plans to retire on July 1, the company said today.

Mr. Zander, the No. 2 executive at Sun, a troubled computer maker, is the fourth prominent executive there to announce a retirement in recent weeks. A fifth manager, Stephen DeWitt, the vice president of an important business unit that leads Sun's efforts with the Linux operating system, quietly left Sun on Friday, the company confirmed today.

Investors showed their disappointment with Mr. Zander's departure. The stock plunged $1.21, or 14.8 percent, to $6.97, a low not seen since 1998. Mr. Zander, who is 55, was credited by many analysts as the driving force behind Sun's rapid ascension before the Internet bubble burst.

Sun, which makes high-powered computers and software for networks, will not immediately replace Mr. Zander as president and chief operating officer. Instead, Scott G. McNealy, Sun's chairman and chief executive, said he would assume the role of president on July 1, the beginning of Sun's next fiscal year.

"You've literally had the top three executives outside of McNealy resign within two weeks," said A. M. Sacconaghi Jr., an analyst with Sanford C. Bernstein & Company. "It has to raise the same kinds of doubts that investors raised today among some customers."

Mr. Zander said he had decided to leave Sun last year but had wanted to wait until the company showed signs of emerging from a slump brought on by a slowdown in corporate spending and a sharp downturn in its main customer base, dot-coms.

In an interview, Mr. Zander, who joined Sun in 1987 from Apollo Computer, said his future plans were not set. But he did not rule out taking the helm of another company as early as next year. As it became clear that Mr. McNealy had no intention of leaving soon, Mr. Zander said, he realized that he would have to leave if he wanted to be a chief executive.

"That's not necessarily saying that I wanted to be C.E.O.," he said, "but I knew that Scott was going to be in control here. If I was going to experience something else in life, whatever that is, I had to move on, but I didn't want to move on until I felt the company was in a shape that was a lot better than a year ago."

In the last two weeks, three other top executives have announced their plans to leave the company on July 1. They include the chief financial officer, Michael E. Lehman; the executive vice president of Sun's computer systems business, John Shoemaker; and the head of Sun's enterprise services business, Larry Hambly.

Another executive, Mr. DeWitt, who resigned without a public announcement on Friday, had served as vice president of Sun's content delivery and edge computing division since Cobalt, the company he had led as chief executive, was acquired by Sun in September 2000. He had been viewed as an up-and-comer within Sun and was featured prominently at the company's meeting for Wall Street analysts in February.

In a conference call with the company, some Wall Street analysts criticized Sun officials for stringing them along with four separate announcements of the retirements. They also expressed concern that other retirement announcements would soon follow -- a fear that Mr. McNealy did not dispel during the call.

Mr. McNealy said several executives had wanted to retire last year but had decided to stay on through the end of this fiscal year to help the company through "the rough patch."

"The fiscal year is the right time to go do this thing," Mr. McNealy said. "I know it looks like a flurry here, but I think it's been positive and planned out."

While Sun's fortunes are tied heavily to the overall economy and the return of corporate spending on information-technology systems, Mr. McNealy said that Sun was in better shape than it had been in the last two years. Its losses of $37 million for its fiscal third quarter, which ended March 31, narrowed in spite of flat sales, and Sun said it expected to turn a profit in this quarter.

As the top field marshal for Mr. McNealy, Mr. Zander has been responsible for intensifying Sun's competition with International Business Machines in high-end computer systems that run networks and corporate data centers.

Laura Conigliaro, an analyst with Goldman, Sachs, said it was unclear how Sun would replace Mr. Zander's mixture of intelligence and deep understanding of the marketplace. Mr. Zander has been an effective foil for Mr. McNealy, the brash and visionary leader who sets Sun's strategy and has jousted on the public and legal stage with Microsoft for years.

"When you look around the computer industry, or even more broadly," she said, "it's hard to find the qualities that Ed Zander has brought to Sun."

SAN FRANCISCO, May 1 -- Edward J. Zander, the gregarious executive who oversaw daily operations at Sun Microsystems, plans to retire on July 1, the company said today.

Mr. Zander, the No. 2 executive at Sun, a troubled computer maker, is the fourth prominent executive there to announce a retirement in recent weeks. A fifth manager, Stephen DeWitt, the vice president of an important business unit that leads Sun's efforts with the Linux operating system, quietly left Sun on Friday, the company confirmed today.

Investors showed their disappointment with Mr. Zander's departure. The stock plunged $1.21, or 14.8 percent, to $6.97, a low not seen since 1998. Mr. Zander, who is 55, was credited by many analysts as the driving force behind Sun's rapid ascension before the Internet bubble burst.

Sun, which makes high-powered computers and software for networks, will not immediately replace Mr. Zander as president and chief operating officer. Instead, Scott G. McNealy, Sun's chairman and chief executive, said he would assume the role of president on July 1, the beginning of Sun's next fiscal year.

"You've literally had the top three executives outside of McNealy resign within two weeks," said A. M. Sacconaghi Jr., an analyst with Sanford C. Bernstein & Company. "It has to raise the same kinds of doubts that investors raised today among some customers."

Mr. Zander said he had decided to leave Sun last year but had wanted to wait until the company showed signs of emerging from a slump brought on by a slowdown in corporate spending and a sharp downturn in its main customer base, dot-coms.

In an interview, Mr. Zander, who joined Sun in 1987 from Apollo Computer, said his future plans were not set. But he did not rule out taking the helm of another company as early as next year. As it became clear that Mr. McNealy had no intention of leaving soon, Mr. Zander said, he realized that he would have to leave if he wanted to be a chief executive.

"That's not necessarily saying that I wanted to be C.E.O.," he said, "but I knew that Scott was going to be in control here. If I was going to experience something else in life, whatever that is, I had to move on, but I didn't want to move on until I felt the company was in a shape that was a lot better than a year ago."

In the last two weeks, three other top executives have announced their plans to leave the company on July 1. They include the chief financial officer, Michael E. Lehman; the executive vice president of Sun's computer systems business, John Shoemaker; and the head of Sun's enterprise services business, Larry Hambly.

Another executive, Mr. DeWitt, who resigned without a public announcement on Friday, had served as vice president of Sun's content delivery and edge computing division since Cobalt, the company he had led as chief executive, was acquired by Sun in September 2000. He had been viewed as an up-and-comer within Sun and was featured prominently at the company's meeting for Wall Street analysts in February.

In a conference call with the company, some Wall Street analysts criticized Sun officials for stringing them along with four separate announcements of the retirements. They also expressed concern that other retirement announcements would soon follow -- a fear that Mr. McNealy did not dispel during the call.

Mr. McNealy said several executives had wanted to retire last year but had decided to stay on through the end of this fiscal year to help the company through "the rough patch."

"The fiscal year is the right time to go do this thing," Mr. McNealy said. "I know it looks like a flurry here, but I think it's been positive and planned out."

While Sun's fortunes are tied heavily to the overall economy and the return of corporate spending on information-technology systems, Mr. McNealy said that Sun was in better shape than it had been in the last two years. Its losses of $37 million for its fiscal third quarter, which ended March 31, narrowed in spite of flat sales, and Sun said it expected to turn a profit in this quarter.

As the top field marshal for Mr. McNealy, Mr. Zander has been responsible for intensifying Sun's competition with International Business Machines in high-end computer systems that run networks and corporate data centers.

Laura Conigliaro, an analyst with Goldman, Sachs, said it was unclear how Sun would replace Mr. Zander's mixture of intelligence and deep understanding of the marketplace. Mr. Zander has been an effective foil for Mr. McNealy, the brash and visionary leader who sets Sun's strategy and has jousted on the public and legal stage with Microsoft for years.

"When you look around the computer industry, or even more broadly," she said, "it's hard to find the qualities that Ed Zander has brought to Sun."

Hello???

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/05/02/technology/02SUN . tml?pagewanted=print&position=bottom

> It seems that there are some legitimate artists out there against piracy

Yes. In Sunday's New York Times Magazine, Elvis Costello dismissed file sharing as outright thievery: "I know that if you make something and someone steals it, that's theft. That's all you need to say about file sharing, isn't it? Where's the ambiguity?" And don't try claiming that he's a friend of record companies: his battles with record companies are well-documented, and in the same interview he says: "You know, I haven't made any money off records for 20 years. I've made all my money off publishing. So I don't care what the record industry whines about."

In today's (4/29/02) New York Times there is an article (requires login but its free) about a new Blackberry device that also works as a cellphone. I have been so happy with my Blackberry that we call 'em "crackberries" at work because they are so addictive. The email from my 550 (the cheapo unit) always gets out using a store and forward system that waits for a good signal.

"Synergies": dot.com-speak for "We don't know what the hell we are going to do next".

Don't believe me? Look at Margaret Wente's commentary on BCE's chair resigning at the Globe and Mail, Michael Posner's comments on Vivendi's fall from grace, and perhaps most damagingly, a recent NYT comment (registration, blah blah).

One problem is that 'content driving distribution' ends up looking like trying to play monopoly (in general terms, not the board game), especially when the 'synergistic' entity restricts content competition on distribution channels. Remember the ABC cable fiasco from a couple of years ago, when they wouldn't let one channel show up on people's tv screens?

Another is not restricting access to avoid the public/governmental response outlined above: where's the 'synergy'? If there is no 'synergy', why bother?

AOL-TW is just the biggest failure, not the only one. And to be honest, the prospect of seeing this kind of 21st century 'new' mercantilism fail actually doesn't bother me a whit.

Sorry to reply to my own post, but after I big of Googling, I've found that while identical twins do not have identical fingerprints, their finger prints are often very similar, according to this site and this site. this site even states that the close similarity between the fingerprints of identical twins was used (before the advent of genetic testing) to distinguish between identical and fraternal twins at birth.

"President Bush's penchant for stark religious terminology has waned in the international arena now that he has lost his innocence in the Middle East. He has yet to brand the Israelis, the Palestinians or, for that matter, the Saudis "evildoers." But on the domestic front he has joined Mr. Ashcroft in pumping up the volume of his preening sanctimony, referring to the Almighty so frequently that He is becoming his de facto running mate for 2004."

Just replace the "www" part of the URL with "archive" and you no longer need to register! Marvel!

Observe:

http://archive.nytimes.com/2002/04/26/technology/2 6SOFT.html

Enjoy.

They've even collected good evidence that the speed of light has changed over time... I'm really starting to doubt einstein.

Citations, please?


I'm not sure what theories they were, but my physics professors have told me that Einstein has been proven wrong before.

Gave the link above in another reply... but here it is again. I thought it was pretty damn big news and most people who knew their physics would know about it... I'm just goin into college and I knew. :\

http://www.nytimes.com/2001/08/15/science/15PHYS.h tml

Here's another one that I've saved

http://www.trdtech.com/2/personal/matrixsupport/

I don't think any real revelations or changes have been made, or need to be made for that matter, to our current theories, but it's quite interesting and it does lead to more thining; showing us that there is still much to be learned.

It was a slashdot post a while ago... but here's the actual page it was linking too http://www.nytimes.com/2001/08/15/science/15PHYS.h tml... pretty big news.

well, I don't know if it'll be China, but its gotta be someone.

1. Potential for a MASSIVE consumer market. Imagine if every little chink became a consumer. I mean, what is that, a billion people? Of course this isn't necessarily for the exclusive benefit of china, but combined with (2) it is..

2. Government that distrusts foreigners and seeks to promote internal industry. This sounds a bit sophomoric, but the Chinese government has always been distrustful of foreigners. The Chinese hate the fact that their economy is dependent upon trade with the US, and would rather do everything domestically.

3. Sheer manpower. The new global economy is based on information, not resources. I mean, once the common chink learns how to program, that's a TON of competition for American programmers. I can't find the article right now, but the entire asian subcontinent is promoting IT education (mostly China and India, though)

4. Chinese people are poor and oppressed. They won't really give a fuck about they're human rights, and they probably won't fight for good wages. They're ripe for the exploiting by burgeoning Chinese corporations.

5. Chinese people work hard. They're good at math and shit. Americans don't work hard, and we still make the most amount of money. Incongruities like this historically balance themselves out.

6. Current events: Japanese are exporting industries to China, which is rapidly building its infrastructure.

Fuck, I'm too lazy to get articles. There are plenty..

As for why they're a threat to the US: Ever since Mao's time, Chinese-American relations have been shit. Taiwain is a touchy issue. So is communism; I mean, we're not exactly having a red scare, but capitalist-communist tension is always a tinderbox).

On the Middle East though, I think that the main reason that Bush wanted to stay out of the middle east was to avoid becoming the world's police force. That was the main problem with Clinton's foreign policy. Civil wars will happen, and that can't be helped. You can't be the mediator in every conflict and you can't stop all the violence in the world. I don't see why the US has to weigh in on every issue.

Unfortunately what the administration has found is that it has opened up Pandora's box and does not know how to handle it anymore. And like you said, it has fallen back 15 years to Reaganism. The thing is, a good majority of the administration are from the Reagan era. It is much easier to lead a country back during the Cold War than it is now. When you know who your enemies are and can rally support against a common enemy, you can pretty much push anything through legistlation. In the past 6 months or so, the administration has tried to find a common enemy (first terrorists, but since that is a broad term, moved onto Usama Bin ladin, and since we can't find him, moved onto al Qaeda then Taliban, etc, etc...)

Bush has had it out for China since he first stepped into office. Remember the US spy plane incident?. And honestly, China isn't doing anything worse than what the US has been doing for years. I would say distrupting and ousting a democratically elected leader of a country is a bigger crime than DDoS that is talked about in this article.

(registration required) Here's an article at the New York Times with a little more detail.

1. There is weather here, making a project like that demand huge ongoing costs. Rain/Snow/Wind/Erosion are all very powerful forces.

Well putting so many hundred/thousand tons of solar panels on the moon does have a significant cost attached to it. Plus the occasional meteor strike....

5. If we don't want the world to stay as it is, 1 Super-Power/100 Little Powers/1,000 Crappy Third world nations where people still die of the plague, something like this needs to be built.

Oh but we do, we do. If you didn't catch Margaret Thatcher's editorial in the New York times (article no longer free, sorry), the powers that be firmly believe that the U.S. "must" always remain numero uno, for the good of the population of earth, war against terrorism, think of the children, etc. We're not exactly holding back from totally screwing over third world countries now, I don't think a huge lunar power station, which no thrid world power could afford to contribute to, would change much....

I am all for it if it helps. Personally I would rather pay some recycle tax and have recycling centers all over than see something like what's going on in New York happen. If you haven't heard they are thinking of recycling almost all recycling because it costs too much, this is a huge negative and if I have to pay 25-30 bucks upfront on my PC to help defer the cost of recycling the stinking thing that's good for me. Here's the NYTimes Article on the push to stop recycling in NYC due to budgetary reasons.

or you can go here all it costs is your privacy.

This is the single most important piece of
information, and they nearly swept it under the rug in the article.

To give credit where it's due, the New York Times essentially broke that story back in February. (No doubt this is where the News magazine heard of it). Read the abstract (or buy it ha ha) Here.

The New York Times had an interesting article a few months ago about the fact that most PCs "recycled" in the US are shipped to Asia, where the valuable metals are stripped out while the rest are left to contaminate the ground and water.

I think the article can be purchased here:

http://query.nytimes.com/search/abstract?res=F5091 EF83E5E0C708EDDA80994D8404482

but I have not paid to view old NYTimes articles yet, and so can't be sure.

(Someday soon I will. Just not tonight.)

That's right - even in a densely-packed metropolis like NYC, where you don't have to haul small amounts of junk halfway across the state to recycle it, the "blue box" types of curbside recycling are big eaters of tax dollars.

Apart from paper (which is marginal), most plastics/glass, while recyclable, aren't recyclable at a profit.

If you want to recycle, you can either pay a tax at the point of purchase (like the one being discussed for computers), or in the form of higher bills for waste disposal and property taxes (like the "recycling programs" at the municipal level.

Of course, nowhere is the notion of "Hey, how about just stuff it into landfills, because we don't want to pay more" ever discussed. Funny, that.

Why not just make recycling voluntary? Those who want to "help save the cute fluffy bunnies" can pay market rates to dispose of their waste in an environmentally-friendly manner, and those of us who don't give a rat's ass can just dump it. (Hey, if you enviro-types really believed that recycling stuff - even at a net energy loss - why aren't you buying landfills, digging them up, and recycling them with your own money? :-)

Interesting note - apparently, you burn less fossil fuel over time if you "dig more oil out of the ground to make new plastics from scratch" than you do in "melting down old plastics to make new plastics". Newsprint is about the only commodity for which recycling makes sense (on either an energy-use or a dollar-cost basis)

"I know that Microsoft could not have developed Windows 95, one of the most successful software programs in history, if (the requirement) had been in effect in the early 1990s,'' Gates said."

Yes, Windows 95 was a DOS application, not an OS.

The other day, the NY Times had an article about how Microsoft wanted to help out Mexico get online. I wonder if this had anything to do with it.

Here is a link, (sorry but there is a registration)
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/04/17/technology/17MEX I.html

2002-04-20 06:27:35 [-0000] World (Fastest Super Computer) x 20: Japan 1, US (articles,news) (rejected)

The NY Times free reg.is reporting on Japan's thunderbolt in the supercomputing wars: ``Japanese laboratory has built the world's fastest computer, a machine so powerful that it matches the raw processing power of the 20 fastest American computers combined and far outstrips the previous leader, an I.B.M.-built machine.'' Quoting an American scientist on his schock at the news: `` `In some sense we have a Computenik on our hands,' said Jack Dongarra, a University of Tennessee computer scientist'' The piece is short on technical bits, but broaches on the _fad_(?) of American designers away from specialized CPUs and toward off-the-shelf versions. Hubris/complacent thinking, IOW. Heck, and I was feeling good about trying the new GNU/Linux beowulf distros out there just ten minuten ago. *yikees*

This article has an interesting sidebar in the paper edition regarding the Altair which chose "a classy powder blue exterior" instead of beige as the color for it's pc's.

Best quote: "..the company chose blue because of the blue mainframe computers used by IBM, as if to suggest that the inexpensive, general-purpose Altair microcomputer was also a real computer"

2. Increased surveillance of the populace seems to be accompanied by decreased surveillance and supervision of those in power ... President Bush has done his best to minimize any further revelations about the history of his team's relations with his biggest backer by depositing his Texas gubernatorial papers not in the Texas State Library and Archives, where they'd be subject to the state's tough Public Information Act, but at his father's presidential library, where they may not be. - from march 03 NY Times.

3. How will this increased surveillance actually prevent terrorism ? The Sept 11 guys were legal imigrants / visitors to the US. What would have shown up about them ? How many foreign nationals come to the US to learn to fly ? How many foreign nationals who study together live together ?

4. On an entirely personal issue, could a conservative bush / cheney / rumsfeld government stand a person like Mark Bingham ?

Hey, where are the karma whoring posts for how to bypass the free registration at NYTimes.com?

In case you're interested, you can always go to asahi.com to view the stories registration-free. This story can be found here.

It's time for some Q&A.Let's start with familiar /. lore.
Q. Who invented the Internet?
A. The US federal gummint (DARPA)
Q. On whose dime?
A. The US taxpayers'
Q. What industry occupies the largest portion of the US federal government's trillions of dollars in expenditures?
A. Defense. 35% in 2001. Welfare and other means-tested entitlments were 6%.
Q. What has the US Dept. of Defense been focusing on since the end of the Cold War? A. Technology - computerized planes, satellites, drones, tanks, etc. Read any Afghanistan story in the Washington Post or New York Times, or any other major newspaper, and you will hear nothing but raves about our high-tech military.
Q. And who does that money employ?
A. Engineers, technologists, programmers.
Q. What do they make on average?
A. A starting salary of $60K, if not more

Q. Wow, Eric, sounds like the geeks get the most welfare of all! Why do you think they complain so much?
A. (stumped)

And don't even dare to complain how hard it is to figure out what the government spends - it took me 6 seconds to find the US budget. Whew!

Actually, according to this, [nytimes.com], the part of the bill involving actual children was upheld.

That is a good thing. The real kids will be left alone, while the only kids being harmed will exist only in the minds of sickos.

or, out with the baby, the bathwater, the tub, the plumbing, the plumbers, etc....

or, IT may work just fine for those gnu fangled hobbyists, butt we knead something that costs A LOT, & keeps J. dependeNT on some kind of PayPer LieSense scammage.

And the NYT has already deleted it. They're not as dim as you might think...

I much prefer the method of finding alternate links, such as this one. It's easy: Simply go to http://www.asahi.com/english/nyt/index.html and search away!

this is nothing new, I've read in the NYTimes (The Peril of Too Much Power) that America spends more on the military then the next 8 world powers combined!! We've always had the ability, we can just do it more efficiently.

From a NYT article on the same protest:

(emphasis mine)


"We asked could we at least talk about when something could become available as a used book? Could we maybe wait three months after the book was published?" said Patricia Schroeder, president of the Association of American Publishers. "The biggest problem is that it is legal, I think. I wring my hands, pound my desk and say, `Aargh.' " (Most individual publishers are reluctant to criticize Amazon publicly for fear of alienating an important customer.)


Patricia needs to realize that books aren't special, and that if the books are a commodity that are to be consumed rapidly and then sold, then their business model should probably take that into account.

Mind you, I practically NEVER sell books, but then I'm really a packrat in human form. 'sides, some of the books took a while to get, like a good translation of "Romance of the Three Kingdoms", and that one's a keeper.

My favorite quote:
"We asked could we at least talk about when something could become available as a used book? Could we maybe wait three months after the book was published?" said Patricia Schroeder, president of the Association of American Publishers. "The biggest problem is that it is legal, I think. I wring my hands, pound my desk and say, `Aargh.'"

Easy solution: outlaw used book sales. As the RIAA/MPAA have shown, convenient new laws can be bought on Capitol Hill. It's time for the Association of American Publishers to pay up....

This is interesting. The following post about this very topic was Pending for 3 months (I submitted it in January) until last week, when it was somewhat surprisingly rejected. Here it is for those interested.

2002-01-08 15:54:26 'The Future of Ideas': Intellectual Property (yro,doj)

Stanford Law professor Lawrence Lessig's book is about intellectual property, copyright law and the Internet. He proposes an 'open access' society with less of the IP extremism we've seen in the recent years. Lessig thinks patents and copyrights should be short, renewable 5-year terms vs. the current 90- to 150-year terms, writing, 'The distinctive feature of modern American copyright law is its almost limitless bloating.' And on the Internet he writes 'An environment designed to enable the new is being transformed to protect the old.' Lessig is pro-Napster and anti-RIAA and rails against Lucasfilm on the Phantom Edit. You can read a review at the New York Times, as well as the first chapter of 'The Future of Ideas'.

This is interesting. The following post about this very topic was Pending for 3 months (I submitted it in January) until last week, when it was somewhat surprisingly rejected. Here it is for those interested.

2002-01-08 15:54:26 'The Future of Ideas': Intellectual Property (yro,doj)

Stanford Law professor Lawrence Lessig's book is about intellectual property, copyright law and the Internet. He proposes an 'open access' society with less of the IP extremism we've seen in the recent years. Lessig thinks patents and copyrights should be short, renewable 5-year terms vs. the current 90- to 150-year terms, writing, 'The distinctive feature of modern American copyright law is its almost limitless bloating.' And on the Internet he writes 'An environment designed to enable the new is being transformed to protect the old.' Lessig is pro-Napster and anti-RIAA and rails against Lucasfilm on the Phantom Edit. You can read a review at the New York Times, as well as the first chapter of 'The Future of Ideas'.

Who clicked on the article link just to see Britney?

I went to the extreme and created an account just to see Britney.

cypherpunks/cypherpunks no longer works.

Someone posted nologin/nologin in this thread, but that didn't work either.

I tried creating fuckyou/fuckyou but apparently their software's smarter than that. ;-)

To be helpful, the picture is here , and doesn't require a login to view.

It appears that the old way of getting around the login (replacing "www" with "college" in the URL) no longer works.

Er, uh, is it just me or does it look like she's wearing her underwear outside of her pants?