Slashdot Mirror

The New York Times - no registration needed

"Look, the Eleventh Circuit recognized that there is another place out there that is not in Tampa, that is not anywhere, but is where these people are offering services," said David Post, a law professor at Temple University who specializes in Internet law. "The way the court talked is meaningful," he said, adding later: "It suggests that judges are wrestling with the idea that in some cases we are going to have to come up with new legal frameworks" to address cyberspace.

Try this!

Reg-free link!

I beat the karma-whores!

Stupid lameness filter!

Important Stuff:

Please try to keep posts on topic.
Try to reply to other people comments instead of starting new threads.
Read other people's messages before posting your own to avoid simply duplicating what has already been said.
Use a clear subject that describes what your message is about.
Offtopic, Inflammatory, Inappropriate, Illegal, or Offensive comments might be moderated. (You can read everything, even moderated posts, by adjusting your threshold on the User Preferences Page)

Yesterday, the New York Times had an article reporting claims that "The Black Death" was not neccesarily the Bubonic Plague (Yersinia pestis) (NY Times article), and might have been a hemhorhagic fever-- perhaps even Ebola. The genome of Ebola, is, by the way, known.

Sorry... the actual link to the NY Times article "New Theories Link Black Death to Ebola-Like Virus" is here

Okay here goes

http://archives.nytimes.com/2001/10/03/technology/ 03PRIV.html

There is nothing you can do about it. Slashcode is adding the space in the text. If you want to post correct urls you'll to use html coding in your message.
Like this: http://archives.nytimes.com/2001/10/03/technology/ 03PRIV.html

The format is like this:
<a href="put the url here">put highlighted text here</a> continue text...

You and your follow-up pawn are dumb.

Duh, I know HTML

Here's a good NY Times article about the black hole idea.

http://archive.nytimes.com/learning/general/featur ed_articles/000803thursday.html for a no-login version

This article at NY Times has an interesting article on other methods of using body energy to power things.

It mentions methods such as cranking and pumping, and of course, stride (i.e. stride-powered watches). One company created a human-powered electricity generator which creates electricity by hand pumping. If you pump one of these for a few minutes, it can power a cell phone for around 20 minutes.

This link works better

http://KARMAWHORE@archives.nytimes.com/2001/10/01/ technology/01TELE.html

Seth P. Waxman, a former solicitor general in the Clinton administration, who argued cases involving the act, was more succinct. "It is the single most poorly drafted statute ever enacted by Congress," he said in an interview.

hope that helps everyone! Gant

With the deprecation or removal of an API, they can put people out of business, or send companies into bankruptcy.

MSFT has already done that sort of thing already, at least with 3D rendering APIs, and of course, to Netscape.

Industry analysts acknowledge this sort of thing. Go here, and look for the Dan Kuznetsky quote:

But Microsoft's support of Mono is simply the same old same old for the software giant, IDC analyst Dan Kusnetzky said. Microsoft has historically achieved market dominance by controlling APIs, and forcing competitors to write software to its APIs, only to turn around and change those same APIs. "Instead of satisfying their own customers' demand, competitors are busy catching up with Microsoft," Kusnetzky said. "It looks like they've gotten someone in the open source community to play the game of following Microsoft around and trying to do what they do."

The old Software Publishers Association knew about it. They issued a white paper on the topic. Read pages 12 to 15 of that document for an older view of the problem.

Anyway, the field of robotic USR at this point is so new that a lot of interesting and very different technologies are being developed. A lot of groups use platforms that wouldn't be of great use in a real rescue situation, such as the iRobot Magellan Pros we used, simply because they're research robots designed to roll around on flat surfaces. These in particular lack sensors specifically designed for rescue use - they have a ring of sonar and infrared range sensors around them and a video camera. Others, like the Urbans used at USF, are very rugged (they are tracked and can climb things) and have very sensitive FLIR sensors for detecting people.

Autonomy versus teleoperation was the subject of some debate at the competition last summer. The scoring for the contest was done according to an equation that rewarded for the number of people found, penalized for the number of people it took to operate the robots, and so on. The formula gave a very clear advantage to teleoperated robots: even though teleoperating is very difficult (it's not like RC cars!), it's a lot easier for a human to look at a screen and navigate/find people than it is for a robot to derive this information from the same image. In a way, this is a very pragmatic approach: we need to develop useful technologies soon. On the other hand, this contest took place at an AI conference, where naturally advancing the state of the art of machine intelligence is viewed as a pretty important goal.

Because of the robots' differing abilities, the contest featured three seperate NIST-developed standard courses; one with flat floors, one with more challenging debris, and one with what essentially was a big pile of rubble. Our Magellans could only handle the first room; the Urbans and a huge homebrew tracked robot from the Sharif University of Technology in Tehran took the more challenging rooms.

In any case, here (at last) is a summary of some of the technologies used in the competition:

• Swarthmore College (us): Standard Magellan Pro wheeled research bot with a Canon pan-tilt-zoom camera on top. Final version used "semi-autonomous" guidance, where an operator would tell the robot to go to a point not too far away and the robot would go there. Big lead-acid gel batteries; PC on board did lots of processing. <gimmick>Robot could also generate red-blue stereogram images of site on operator command by rotating slowly and compiling distance data.</gimmick>
• University of South Florida: Teleoperated Urban tracked robots with FLIR sensors. Some info. Probably lead-acid batteries, don't know about onboard processing (suspect no much).
• Sharif University of Technology: Medium dog-sized tracked robot with binocular vision. Teleoperated by laptop or Palm. I wouldn't want to get in the way of this thing. Few or no sonars IIRC, giant lead-acid gel batteries, probably very little onboard processing.
• University of Minnesota: Cute tube-shaped robots designed (no joke) on a DARPA grant to be shot out of a grenade launcher. Completely radio controlled; AFAIK no smarts on board. Sent wireless video feed to monitors. A spring mechanism allowed them to jump out of tight spots. DARPA doesn't let them talk about power supply, other info.
• ?University of Utah?: A commodity approach: robots were Radio Shack RC cars with Basic STAMPs on board. While not completed at the contest, eventually they will swarm with complete autonomy around the disaster site, detect people (or other hot things) with IR sensors, and relay their position to a central controller. Power is a simple 9V battery.
• University of Edinbugh: don't recall exactly; despite all their valiant efforts, they couldn't get anything working in time. I think they were also working on an autonomous system of two or three bots.

Enough rambling for now. In any case, it was a really cool experience to go out to Seattle and see all the stuff the teams were trying. For me, robotics is a great, growing field that is a whole lot of fun, and the conference was one unforgettable week.

--Tom

http://archive.nytimes.com/2001/09/27/technology/c ircuits/27ROBO.html

This trick has been seen on slashdot before. It should be a FAQ. Editors should automatically use the archive subdomain in NYT links rather than the www subdomain.

-matt

http://archives.nytimes.com/2001/09/27/technology/ circuits/27ROBO.html

http://archives.nytimes.com/2001/09/25/science/phy sical/25CYBO.html

Karmawhoringly yours,

check this link:
http://archive.nytimes.com/2001/09/25/science/phys ical/25CYBO.html

There's another article in the NYT about the encryption restrictions being brought up for debate and it includes a nice jab at the Washington Post for misquoting Zimmermann on his PGP interview. Check it out here:

http://www.nytimes.com/2001/09/25/technology/25COD E.html

Why Login?

While we're minimizing the threat of wrong-doing, lets not forget to shut down the razor factories, the internet cafes, rental car companies, etc..

why not just stay in bed all day? Its probably safer than wandering out in the street and getting hit by an errant solar flare, a bad driver, etc..

Right Here, Right Now. Enjoy.

What the hell is this stupid postercomment compression filter?

"Your comment must be THIS LONG to be posted to Slashdot."

"You must be THIS TALL to ride this rollercoaster."

Sheesh.

Most striking to me is the before and after satelite pictures on the same site. Notice that the before is 180 degrees off the after (they should have aligned them...).

See article here.

There is a LIDAR topo-map of the WTC area - click the first link in the "Multimedia" secton on the right of the page ("Mapping the Surface of a Disaster").

Pretty disturbing to see just two 60-foot mounds, especially in the cross-section view.

6 did partially collapse, as did most of the reb-colored buildings in the map. See this for more info (thanks to the other poster who posted the link originally)

Today's New York Times has an article linking to images derived from infrared laser measurements taken from a plane orbiting 5,000 ft ASL. The link is the first one in the "multimedia" box.

An article from today's NY Times has disturbing topographic images of the site generated using lidar.

An article from today's NY Times has disturbing topographic images of the site generated using lidar.

As the father of a son aboard a smaller destroyer and whose enlistment buddy is aboard another larger one, I was priviledged to receive this copy of an email from an ensign aboard the USS Winston Churchill. An uplifting piece of sentiment - compared to Steven Erlanger's recent story, which you can read here

Dear Dad,

Well, we are still out at sea, with little direction as to what our next priority is. The remainder of our port visits, which were to be centered around max liberty and goodwill to the United Kingdom, have all but been cancelled. We have spent every day since the attacks going back and forth within imaginary boxes drawn in the ocean, standing high-security watches, and trying to make the best of our time. It hasn't been that fun I must confess, and to be even more honest, a lot of people are frustrated at the fact that they either can't be home, or we don't have more direction right now. We have seen the articles and the photographs, and they are sickening. Being isolated as we are, I don't think we appreciate the full scope of what is happening back home, but we are definitely feeling the effects.

About two hours ago the junior officers were called to the bridge to conduct Shiphandling drills. We were about to do a man overboard when we got a call from the LUTJENS(D185), a German warship that was moored ahead of us on the pier in Plymouth, England. While in port, the WINSTON S CHURCHILL and the LUTJENS got together for a sports day/cookout on our fantail, and we made some pretty good friends.

Now at sea they called over on bridge-to-bridge,requesting to pass us close up on our port side, to say goodbye. We prepared to render them honors on the bridgewing, and the Captain told the crew to come topside to wish them farewell. As they were making their approach, our Conning Officer announced through her binoculars that they were flying an American flag. As they came even closer, we saw that it was flying at half-mast.

The bridgewing was crowded with people as the Boatswain's Mate blew two whistles- Attention to Port- the ship came up alongside and we saw that the entire crew of the German ship were manning the rails, in their dress blues. They had made up a sign that was displayed on the side that read "We Stand By You".

Needless to say there was not a dry eye on the bridge as they stayed alongside us for a few minutes and we cut our salutes. It was probably the most powerful thing I have seen in my entire life and more than a few of us fought to retain our composure. It was a beautiful day outside today.

We are no longer at liberty to divulge over unsecure e-mail our location, but we could not have asked for a finer day at sea. The German Navy did an incredible thing for this crew, and it has truly been the highest point in the days since the attacks. It's amazing to think that only a half-century ago things were quite different,and to see the unity that is being demonstrated throughout Europe and the world makes us all feel proud to be out here doing our job.

After the ship pulled away and we prepared to begin our man overboard drills the Officer of the Deck turned to me and said "I'm staying Navy."

I'll write you when I know more about when I'll be home, but for now, this is probably the best news that I could send you. Love you guys.

There's a NYTimes article that I read yesterday that pretty much blows holes in that idea. Here's the link. I apparently have a login cookie at work, but not at home, so I'm gonna have to quote from memory.

The author asked a bunch of young militant "Muslim" seminary students if they'd belive that Osama bin Laden was an evil man if the author showed them video of him doing evil acts. Their answer: "Everybody knows Americans can make fake pictures and movies, so we wouldn't believe it."

I'm afraid that they've got that angle covered.

How nice that you give bin Laden et.al. the benefit of western tought and action.

Read This

Perhaps after you understand the religious suicide cult we're up against, you'll understand that this isn't about vengence nor anti-Islamic rhetoric.

It's about dealing with a confederation of hate cults. A network of people who hold in disdain to the lives of those outside their cult. And treat any and all disagreement with violence and jihad.

The purpose of taking bin Laden out, guilty or not will serve two useful purposes. First, it puts a kink in their death-machine-network, both financially and with regards to the adhesion of their confederation (causing internal strife is one sure way to get them off our backs). Second, it conveys to them a message in their preferred language.

Traditionally, the most prolific and trusted spies are planted in a target country from youth to allay suspicion. They are then groomed, secretly indoctrinated, and let loose. This application works poorly against terrorists overseas because of the turbulence of foreign people and governments. Average lifespan in these countries is short, and new regimes waltz in and out every so often; these things foul a spy network. But against terrorists residing in North America this application has only one formidable obstacle-- the number of agents required. This number will exceed even the federal government's ability to support. That means any effort without direct involvement of Joe Citizen will have minimal impact at best. The easiest way to get Joe Citizen involved is to comp them for ratting out their friends. Safe (seemingly), simple, and profitable. Hey, it worked in the Soviet Union. It even worked on Jesus, who predicted it on himself and us (sorry, no direct hyperlinks).

Not true. 1.58 million votes were never recounted even once. You're just repeating one of the many, many lies the Bush campaign told that month.

There were also a lot of people who lost their right to vote because they were wrongly labelled as felons by a private company Kathryn Harris hired to scrub the voters lists.

And then there were all those illegal absentee ballots, some postdated as much as a week after the election, that did get counted. The only way Bush could have won is if all these scams were pulled off successfully. Amazingly, they were.

Maybe you can explain further how ignoring the subversion of our democracy equates to "growing up"? I just can't see the connection.

This week the papers are getting down to business. Check out these two articles from today's New York Times:

This one recomends ISP censorship. with the lame excuse for corporate control of the public network as, "But the community standards that most Internet service providers apply can be more restrictive." Today it's hate speach, tomorow it will be embarasing or unpopular speach.

This one detailing the FBI making it easier for an ISP to turn over email. Try this thrilling quote that got their attention, "The online posting on Aug. 30 sounded like the rantings of a crank: The subject was "911," and it warned "Something is going to happen tomorrow . . . REPENT!" On Sept. 4, the author of the first message, "Xinoehpoel," was back: "Wait 7 days," he wrote." At least the article goes on to worry about improper collection making such priceless quotes inadmissable. So what's the solution, hint hint? Monitoring? Geee, to bad that it won't work as the above quote really could contain a message and is indiscerable from pure garbage.

There you go. Reputable, non speculative reporting for you advocating government and corporate controls on the internet. Why would big publishers like that? Other news sources have not even bothered to mention privacy.

This week the papers are getting down to business. Check out these two articles from today's New York Times:

This one recomends ISP censorship. with the lame excuse for corporate control of the public network as, "But the community standards that most Internet service providers apply can be more restrictive." Today it's hate speach, tomorow it will be embarasing or unpopular speach.

This one detailing the FBI making it easier for an ISP to turn over email. Try this thrilling quote that got their attention, "The online posting on Aug. 30 sounded like the rantings of a crank: The subject was "911," and it warned "Something is going to happen tomorrow . . . REPENT!" On Sept. 4, the author of the first message, "Xinoehpoel," was back: "Wait 7 days," he wrote." At least the article goes on to worry about improper collection making such priceless quotes inadmissable. So what's the solution, hint hint? Monitoring? Geee, to bad that it won't work as the above quote really could contain a message and is indiscerable from pure garbage.

There you go. Reputable, non speculative reporting for you advocating government and corporate controls on the internet. Why would big publishers like that? Other news sources have not even bothered to mention privacy.

"The Suffering Find Their Champions, and They Are Not All Gandhis", at here. I can't express this sentiment any better. Those who are ready to join organizations like bin Laden's suffer from opression, whether Israeli or of a corrupt and totalarian government. And their oppressors receive massive US government backing (Israel, Egypt, Saudi Arabia).

This also another US policy backfiring- the US fomented (with Pakistani, Saudi and other nation's intelligence services) a pan-Islamist movement to combat the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Once the Soviet spectre was gone, the movement turned it's sights on the US.

In war, it is said, the first casualty is truth. The article linked to above by Caleb Carr draws a comparison between the War of 1812 and the terrorist attack on American symbols:

In short, the British gratuitously destroyed important structures in Washington (and killed many innocent people) because those buildings were obnoxious symbols of American values whose spread and propagation the London government feared would spell the disempowerment of their own.

I hesitate to disagree with so imminent an historian, but he cites none of the usual evidence for this assertion, like orders, documents, speeches. In their absence, one does not need to know much history of the period to doubt his thesis.

England was itself a democracy and the model for America's institutions. England's parliament was at the time as potent a symbol as any they might destroy 3,000 miles across the ocean.

The causes of the war had nothing to with such concerns. They involved England's control of the seas during its war with France and impressment of sailors on American ships.

America invaded Canada during the war with some of the same ravages as Carr describes in the British counterattack. In that context, the British actions can be seen more as conventional reprisals.

After the war, American relations with England were fairly cozy, including England's failure to support the South in the Civil War despite some strong economic reasons to do so.

One would hate to think that Carr was deliberately distorting history to bolster America's policies today, but if he did, he wouldn't be the first.

Ann Coulter's THIS IS WAR Op/Ed is not only offensive, it in violation of Yahoo's Terms of Service - it seems ironic that, while Yahoo is yanking down sites, they would choose to run this hateful piece. From Ms. Coulter's article: "We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity."

From Yahoo's Terms of Service: You agree to not use the Service to:
upload, post, email, transmit or otherwise make available any Content that is unlawful, harmful, threatening, abusive, harassing, tortious, defamatory, vulgar, obscene, libelous, invasive of another's privacy, hateful, or racially, ethnically or otherwise objectionable [emphasis mine].

You want to know why?
You want to understand?

Read this
http://www.nytimes.com/library/magazine/home/20000 625mag-taliban.html

and it will be clear.

The NY Times Magazine printed an article back on June 25, 2000 by Jeffrey Goldberg on the training of "jihad machines" in Pakistan. You can pay for it online, or go to your friendly local library and look for a dead-tree version. Here's the lead:

In a Pakistani religious school called the Haqqania madrasa, Osama bin Laden is a hero, the Taliban's leaders are famous alums and the next generation of mujahedeen is being militantly groomed.

I then asked: Who wants to see Osama bin Laden armed with nuclear weapons? Every hand in the room shot up. The students laughed, and some applauded.

You are very much mistaken, according to the New York Times.

How dare you even propose this concept. You should be ashamed of yourself.

Why do these theories anger you so? Right now CNN and the rest of the mainstream media are generally promoting the immolation of various muslim peoples around the world based on evidence which is no more credible than the various conspiracy theories going around. Should CNN be ashamed of itself?

A Terrorist Profile Emerges That Confounds the Experts.

Those who think we can't afford to kill innocent civilians there too, though, please take your rose-tinted glasses off.

People who want to understand how terrorists could target civilians need read no further than this comment and similar ones on slashdot.

If the profile of the WTC terrorists could be based on the people who make these sort of comments here, it would a person of above average intelligence, technically inclined, a bit of an idealist, hardworking, thoughtful and disciplined.

Also, the person will have no direct experience of the evil he seeks to avenge.

This New York Times story is headlined: A Terrorist Profile Emerges That Confounds the Experts.

That profile is: They were adults with education and skill, not hopeless young zealots. At least one left behind a wife and young children. They mingled in secular society, even drinking forbidden alcohol, hardly typical of Islamic militants.

And this story, also from the New York Times, is headlined: An Unobtrusive Man's Odyssey: Polite Student to Suicide Hijacker.

The story described suspected terrorist Mohammed Atta as: He was diligent. He was polite. He had, until quite recently, a taste for black jeans and a liking for a hangout here called Sharky's Billiard Bar, which calls itself "The Bar With Mega-Possibilities." But Mohammed Atta, 33, was not what he long appeared to his teachers at the Technical University...: an unobtrusive man leading an unobtrusive life.

How close are these descriptions to everyone you know? If you want to understand these monsters we have only to look into our own hearts.

This slashdot post says: Folks, this war is going to take a long time. This isn't gonna be over in days or weeks or months, and the resolution is not gonna be on tomorrow's news. He is speaking for the terrorists as well as America.

The designer of the WTC, Henry Guthard, agrees with you. He says:

We believe that if the building is not replaced by a building very much like it, the failure to do so would be a monument to terrorism.

(from the New York Times)

He then offered a broad criticism of the evolution of the C.I.A., saying it had moved too far away from "human intelligence," involving agents who infiltrate organizations, to relying on the Internet, bugs and satellites.

"Many of our human intelligence sources dried up" because of the risks, Mr. Bush said, noting that using people who are willing to betray their friends and their country was a "dirty business" filled with "unsavory" characters, but perhaps necessary.

He said the nation needed to "strengthen our intelligence," adding, "I think you're going to see a little effort to do that."

In other words, simply banning encryption isn't going to make the problem go away. Somebody is going to have to go out and get up close and personal with these scumbags.

I agree that AF1 is obviously a very different and more difficult target than the WTC. My point is just that an attack that would have been considered unthinkable had just taken place. It just seems like prudent and effective security policy for the military/secret service to act as if AF1 was a target until things were secured. Anyway, here is a link to a NYT article with the most info I've sen on the possible threat.

Urgh. I don't even know where to start.

First of all, MY analysis of two media. The integration of TV and the Internet has created a bizarre mutant child of online and offline media, where the repetitive imagery and propellerheads of television news are subject to the scrutiny and discussion of numerous newshounds with too much time on their hands... the result being that along with television's processed, plastic-packaged presentation of events, we have the opportunity to view with a few clicks of the mouse how hundreds, maybe thousands (we won't have specific numbers for possibly three weeks, so stop asking... ... hmm, poor taste alert) of people feel about the presentation, and how other people feel about how people feel... and so on and so forth. This makes media uniquely responsible for what they present... not so much now, but as interactive forums become larger and more common, television will bend to the will of the message maniacs.

It's quite obvious that Mr. Katz didn't vote for President Bush. That's fine; I didn't, either. I think the president rose to the occasion quite nicely, though; his staff made sure that he was safe for the duration of the attacks (I bet Mr. Katz feels pretty silly now that the New York Times reports there was a credible and specific threat to the President), and he played his political cards right.

When our president addressed the nation, he had two options. He could read a teleprompter containing a script approved by his staff and listen to their advice on how to remain calm and deliver it so that he didn't identify with and therefore justify the violent feelings brewing in most of America and start a mass lynching of Arab-Americans... or he could just say whatever was on his mind at the moment. Given those two options, I think we were pretty lucky.

It's also rather obvious that Mr. Katz also shares my distaste for television network news. I think the news organizations of America performed far above and beyond the call of duty... the Three Horsemen (Rather, Jennings, and Brokaw) put in two back-to-back sixteen-hour days on the air. Aaron Brown and Shep Smith both remained with us, commercial-free, for the first two days after the attacks. Ashleigh Banfield herself narrowly escaped WTC 1, and was struggling to remain composed as she related the story of herself and her crew. No thought was given to the advertisers who weren't having their products or services displayed for us to buy; in fact, CNN was broadcast over nearly every Turner network instead of regular programming. In times of ongoing crisis such as this, the news becomes a grueling business. Everyone involved with every network displayed a tremendous amount of intestinal fortitude as they reported on this most, ah, unique event. Rather than dismiss them, I think they all deserve our praise... for a change.

With their usual hubris, reporters and politicians were promising us that everything was going to change.

I have late-breaking news for you, Mr. Katz. Everything HAS changed. The bar has been raised for Shocking Terrorist Acts. Americans everywhere are fortified with cellular phones and the memory of this incident, coupled with a firm resolve to never let it happen again. (I would like to see anyone try to hijack a plane with a knife now.) All of us have seen the powerful impact that the Internet and wireless communications can have and have had in this situation, and we will use this knowledge the next time disaster strikes.

...bringing me to my final point. Sadly, the change that will have the most impact on America is that despite increased security, despite carriers off the coasts, despite air marshals, despite military strikes around the world... there will no doubt be a next time.

... 2 Palestinians in Nablus were killed and 20 injured as Israeli tanks shelled a refugee camp in the West Bank city of Jenin...

"Two Israeli soldiers were slain by Palestinian snipers.... Shortly afterward, Israeli tanks ringing Jenin, also in the West Bank, began shelling Palestinian security positions just outside the town... Israeli security officials say an Israeli Arab suicide bomber who killed himself and three others on Sunday had earlier taken shelter in Jenin."
The New York Times

Funny how the emotional impact changes when you have all the facts. Shelling a refugee camp versus shelling Palestinian security positions just outside a town which sheltered terrorists and attacked Israelis.