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certainly not true in my country - apart from matters of national security the UK has a very free press - witness the regular scandals, often with little hint of real evidence. The British press is one of the biggest reasons we still have a vaguely functioning democracy

That was offtopic, but...

Video Games may very well be decreasing our mental activity by (as somebody stated earlier) making our brains more efficient. After all, if our bodies are becoming more efficient as a result of playing video games, why not our brains as well?

According to the Guardian, those who oppose a One World-One Mind-Leftist Mantra should be called

balaclava rock-throwers with their nihilist ideology

Always nice to see such Progressive thinking on the 'Net :)

Clickable version of above URL (extra space got inserted):

Fury over Europe's secret plan to access computer and phone data.

"The other difficulty for the recording industry's new CD protection strategy surfaced on 28 December in a letter from the Virginia Congressman Rick Boucher (Democrat) to executives of the recording industry's trade association. The letter reminds them that their fancy new technology may violate a statute for which they themselves lobbied vigorously a decade ago. This is the 1992 Act which gave music listeners the right to make some personal digital copies of their music in return for allowing recording companies to collect royalties on the blank media used for this purpose . Under this, the industry cheerfully collects a few cents for every digital audio tape, blank audio CD or minidisc sold. Boucher has not yet had a reply from the movie and record moguls. But when he does he will discover vicious animals are at their most dangerous when cornered."

And (I'd like to believe) judges are a lot harder to buy or exert pressure on than politicians
I'd like to believe that, too, but unfortunately the Federalist Society gets in the way. The integrity of the judiciary has been undermined, with all the dangers for our system of government that that implies. (I don't wish to imply that the Federalist society, with whom I personally disagree and for whom I certainly do not speak, has a monolithic position on the Microsoft case. Orrin Hatch, as just one prominent example, takes a strong anti-Microsoft position. Here's a recent symposium they had on the subject. )

"Conservatives try to excuse this inequality by arguing that American income and social mobility is uniquely high, as befits an exceptional civilisation. It is not; indeed it compares badly with the Europe about whom American conservatives are so patronising"

IMAO, this dichotomy reflects the contrast between the egalitarian USA and the more stratified European society. European feudalism may be long dead, but its effects still persist.

Um... if you really believe that the US is "egalatarian" and Europe is "stratified," please read this article and then come back so we can talk.

Basically, it uses - *gasp!* - hard data to establish a claim that virtually unchecked corporate power in America has actually lead to a society much more stratified than most European nations, and moreso than at any time in America's own past.

To a significantly larger degree than in the USA, European workers consider themselves as a class apart from and in opposition to the employers. The American worker considers him/herself just as good as the employer...

Yes, and that's actually sort of the problem with contemporary America: we consider these things to be true without insisting that they in fact be so. If workers consider themselves a seperate stratum in a European country, maybe it's a good first step to awareness of their current situation, which can lead to changes and protections as necessary.

from the UK Sunday The Observer can be found here

Yet even [Elvis] Costello acknowledges that, at least in terms of the big record companies, ''They've loaded the game so the house has been winning for a long time. Now it's time maybe for the house not to win for a while. Maybe they have to take some losses.''

Actually it looks like they are taking some losses now - there's a very interesting (but long and a bit heavy on the piracy angle) article from the Observer newspaper in the UK, that used a net monitoring company to track how many downloads of music and movies are being done through KaZaA and similar. The article has a table of the top 10 downloads: number one was Linkin Park's Hybrid Theory with more than 5 million in a month - that's how many copies the album sold retail last year in total. You may not like the music industry, or agree with their tactics, but they gotta be hurting. Get ready for copy-protected music CDs, coming soon to every store near you.

From the article:

Top 10 downloaded movies
1 Black Hawk Down 169,000
2 The Fast and the Furious 168,000
3 The Lord of the Rings 165,000
4 Ocean's Eleven 154,000
5 Harry Potter 147,000
6 Monsters Inc 146,000
7 Collateral Damage 134,000
8 American Pie 2 126,000
9 A Beautiful Mind 125,000
10 Ali 100,000

Top 10 pirated albums downloaded last month
1 Linkin Park -Hybrid Theory 5,300,000
2 POD - Satellite 2,800,000
3 Creed - Weathered 2,600,000
4 Sum 41 - All Killer No Filler 2,500,000
5 Britney Spears - Britney 2,000,000
6 Nelly - Country Grammar 2,000,000
7 Nelly, et al - Training Day Soundtrack 1,800,000
8 Creed - Human Clay 1,600,000
9 Usher - 8701 1,500,000
10 Incubus - Make Yourself 1,500,000

And from here (the very first return from the search "French maquis terror"): In my wartime youth a member of French Maquis who threw a bomb into a café killing a few German officers and a number of innocent drinkers was a hero of the resistance.

Both comments support my contention, if not exactly your straw man 'suicide bombers' contention.

A nice article in Observer "Limit copying and we may end up copying the USSR":
http://www.observer.co.uk/business/story/0,6903,67 2840,00.html

I know this is getting off-topic, but it's something I just wanted to mention. The Original Article for this story makes the quote:

'The mobile is fast becoming an essential prop in the social life of 20-year-olds,' she said. 'It has even become part of their mating display, with young men trying to impress women with the advanced technology of their phones.'

Everywhere I look, there are these young guys who hardly can't afford to eat because they spent all their money on clothing, cars, loud stereos, and mobile phones... flashy stuff, in other words. Material posessions to give the impression to the world that they're rich, successful, and smart. Every talk to one of them? They are dumb as rocks. They seem to be slaves to their self-image. And I'm not talking about the occasional paycheck-waster; where I'm currently living, this demographic accounts for something like 80% of the population of 18-25 year old males.

Given a figure like that, it shouldn't seem so out of the ordinary to me, but it does. Maybe it's because I'm perfectly happy with my '92 Mercury Topaz. Or that I don't feel I need/want a cellphone. Or because I haven't bought a thread of clothing in a year and a half.

I've attributed much of this to being a mating ritual, but (and I could be wrong here) I don't believe my mating habits are the same as these guys. I don't feel the need to impress anyone, female or otherwise. If they do happen to be impressed with me then great. But I'm not going to make a conscious effort to be attractive. (In my mind, the effort is usually not worth the gain.) It should be noted that I am in fact engaged, though I assume my fiance did not say "yes," due to my sexy Mercury Topaz.

As the Reuters article says, this came from the Observer. So why not read the original article here

The British Sunday newspaper referred to in the Reuters report is the Observer, and their story, which has a few more details and some funny bits, is here.

Here's a link to the original story - original story. In it mutation is not mentioned at all - which makes me think it was added when the article was re-written at Reuters - then the mistake added. Strangely the /. headline is the original Observer one & not the Reuters one.

It seems to me that this might be our second next step in evolution. There was recently an article about how evolution might be halting in humanity since we allow too much intermigling and no isolated populations where mutants may form (and exploit the survival of the fittest). Even if evolution isn't halting, it is unlikely that natural evolution over millions of years will be fast enough to satiate humanity's goal of advancement. Obviously the closest thing that we are going to do is genetic alteration of newborn. Whether this is legal initially is inconsequential. In the long run we won't be able to hold it back, the world is too big. A genetically altered mutant is more likely to advance in society due to greater intelligence, strength, and reduced genetic diseases. And since they'll breed, society will eventually be altered.

But concievably there is a limit to how far we can advance humanity this way. From here we will have to turn to machines. This is really our next big step in evolution. Regardless of whether we like it or not, if we come and visit humanity 10,000 years from now, it is likely humans will be partly machine. Of course the initial gains might be first in military strength since it is the easiest to realize the value of technology. Imagine the power of an infantryman with just a few enhancements! And due to this fact, the countries that embrace cyborgs will have the greatest advantage (not only in military might, but potential other areas such as communications and memory) in the new age of cyborgs. Those who don't will be punished (due to the lack of the inherent advantages) and will either convert or be reduced in power.

As for being unholy integrating humans an machines: I don't think so. Since machines are really just products of our minds, its more like an extension of the mind: making the body able to fully harness the mind's power.

That's not such a weird idea. Apparently the The Observer, a UK newspaper, agrees with you, and presents some supporting evidence.

But I'm sticking with the cockup theory. I'd readily believe that the US military and the CIA would like to have us believe that they're devastatingly clever rather than ploddingly dumb. I'm less sure that I should accept their self-assessment, and wouldn't put it past them to plant deniable stories like this as a face-saver. It's cheaper than getting things right in the first place.

That Ananova link is really crap. Bite-sized (or should that be Byte-sized), pre-chewed, over-simplified gibberish. It summarizes, badly, an article from the Observer, and doesn't even publish the link! It simply links to the Observer's main welcome page.

The Ananova scribblers seem to think we all have the attention span of a goldfish. Well, this might come as a surprise, but there are still some of us capable of better than that.

The Observer's article is here.
This article is a little better, but is still unclear as to what the problem is.

• Lack of hardware capable of reading raw data from the media?
• Lack of software capable of interpreting and rendering the information useful?
• Physically degraded and unreadable media?

For instance:

The special computers developed to play the 12in video discs of text, photographs, maps and archive footage of British life are - quite simply - obsolete.

seems to suggest one or other (or a combination) of the first two cases.

But:

'We have got a couple of rather scratchy pairs of discs, and we are confident we will eventually be able to read all their images, maps and text,' [said Paul Wheatley]

sugests the third case.

Finally:

Jeff Rothenberg of the Rand Corporation, one of the world's experts on data preservation, points out: 'There is currently no demonstrably viable technical solution to this problem..."

I fail to see the really difficult problem here... I have heard of technicians using ovens and hair-dryers to prepare 9 and 21 track tapes for reading. The Australian government has a project to migrate vast quantities of mineral-prospection data from obsolete magnetic tape to magnetic disc and database archives. Admittedly, this is a Big Money project; a solution has been found.

Nobody seems to consider this 1986 project to be worth doing properly.

Where there's a will, theres a way... Unfortunately, it seems that the only Will left in England is a hard copy of Shakespeare gathering dust on a library shelf.

The Observer is the original source of this article. The linked version is a reshash of that, but the Observer is more informative.

The ananova story is a strangely stilted summary of this Observer story

From that article:

Betamax video players, 8in and 5in computer disks, and eight-track music cartridges have all become redundant, making it impossible to access records stored on them. Data stored on the 3in disks used in the pioneering Amstrad word-processor is now equally inaccessible.

Needless to say, the term redundant simply means that using standard equipment you'd have problems reading this data. But specialist media recovery firms maintain old machines and there are several that will convert your old 3-inch Amstrad disks or that Betamax wedding recording, for a fee.

The Domesday 1986 disks are undoubtedly difficult to access without specialist equipment, and that's the real problem--eventually any nascent technology will become obsolete and data will be lost. Eventually it will no longer be economic for data recovery companies to maintain their obsolete machines.

Paul Wheatley: "That means we have to find a way to emulate this data, in other words to turn into a form that can be used no matter what is the computer format of the future. That is the real goal of this project."

If they have any sense they'll store most of it on fiche and store that in good conditions.

The problem with this assumption is that you don't know what other things you're screening out when you screen out the disease. A somewhat contrived example of this is Stephen Hawking. Of course no really knows the cause of ALS, but suppose it turns out to be genetic. Stephen Hawking would have been screened out of existance, and consequently all of his contributions to science.

In both of these links,

http://www.observer.co.uk/politics/story/0,6903,65 6107,00.html
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/uk/newsid_1838000 /1838185.stm

they talk about charges being per mile and not per kilometer... Perhaps there's a glitch in the Matrix today?

1. The ships can be made small (which leaves more room for fuel/supplies).
2. There's no need to plan for generations of occupation -- with any luck the first generations of animals will be born in robotically-deployed buildings on the surface of their new home.
3. You're not wasting the current generation of talent by sending them off on missions that won't be completed until after their lives end.
4. It is considerably easier to build these smaller vessels, so larger quantities of them can be made and sent out relatively quickly.

A while back, a group of Japanese scientists conducted a test that showed that hi-tech maps of the mind show that computer/video games are damaging to the brain development and could lead to children being unable to control violent behaviour.

The article can be found here and is a good read.

You're correct about some things. The airline bailout is a glaring recent example of Big Business getting money for nothing from taxpayers. (Note that the airlines still laid off thousands of workers for whom aid would have been, in the words of House Majority Leader Dick Armey, "not . . . commensurate with the American spirit.")

Big Business will always fail with no government intervention, eventually. 10 smaller companies in a co-op situation will always do better in the long run if they have the competitive edge and no sanctions to hurt them or subsidies to help the Big Business competition.

You assume many things here that don't fit real situations, such as no barriers to entry in the market. Generally it's not difficult for a monopoly or oligopoly to keep prices low enough to take away the incentive of potential competitors while still getting significant "monopoly rents" from consumers paying more than would be Pareto efficient. So your coop would not come into existence. And not to point out the obvious, but MS didn't need government intervention to become what they are, even if the Bush administration would now like to help them stay what they are.

You also seem to believe that (a) Government is controlled by Big Business interests and (b) those interests are against free trade. It's not hard to agree with (a) (if you ever get the chance, look at the agenda for a GOP or Democratic National Convention!), although corporations are certainly not the only ones. Regarding (b), while you will find industries such as steel and agriculture that want protectionism, most corporations profit more from free trade as it is being implemented.

Just like everything else, there are good ways to approach globalization and bad ways, and unfortunately, the way the world is doing it now disregards the poor, the environment, democracy, and even sound economic theory. Read what recent economics Nobel Prize winner and former World Bank president Joseph Stiglitz had to say to The Observer about the neo-imperialist policies of the IMF, World Bank, and (of course) the WTO. And think before you mod up posts like the parent post!

You're correct about some things. The airline bailout is a glaring recent example of Big Business getting money for nothing from taxpayers. (Note that the airlines still laid off thousands of workers for whom aid would have been, in the words of House Majority Leader Dick Armey, "not . . . commensurate with the American spirit.")

Big Business will always fail with no government intervention, eventually. 10 smaller companies in a co-op situation will always do better in the long run if they have the competitive edge and no sanctions to hurt them or subsidies to help the Big Business competition.

You assume many things here that don't fit real situations, such as no barriers to entry in the market. Generally it's not difficult for a monopoly or oligopoly to keep prices low enough to take away the incentive of potential competitors while still getting significant "monopoly rents" from consumers paying more than would be Pareto efficient. So your coop would not come into existence. And not to point out the obvious, but MS didn't need government intervention to become what they are, even if the Bush administration would now like to help them stay what they are.

You also seem to believe that (a) Government is controlled by Big Business interests and (b) those interests are against free trade. It's not hard to agree with (a) (if you ever get the chance, look at the agenda for a GOP or Democratic National Convention!), although corporations are certainly not the only ones. Regarding (b), while you will find industries such as steel and agriculture that want protectionism, most corporations profit more from free trade as it is being implemented.

Just like everything else, there are good ways to approach globalization and bad ways, and unfortunately, the way the world is doing it now disregards the poor, the environment, democracy, and even sound economic theory. Read what recent economics Nobel Prize winner and former World Bank president Joseph Stiglitz had to say to The Observer about the neo-imperialist policies of the IMF, World Bank, and (of course) the WTO. And think before you mod up posts like the parent post!

http://www.observer.co.uk/Print/0,3858,4291653,00. html

Paraphrasing here, "the agency's main hopes lie with persuading Congress to bail it out. It is estimated it needs 8 billion dollars to fulfill its commitments and to cover a 5 billion dollar debt, a vastly improbable sum given that America is on a war footing and has priorities far removed from space travel. Instead, a desperate slashing back of costs and missions seems the agency's likely future."

Not a pretty picture at all.

Iraq! Allegedly because of the airborne anthrax. Ex-Cia James Woolsey suggested Iraqi in the Daily Telegraph the first week.

Iraq

The mail in question supposedly came from Malaysia. Most Malays are Muslim, and Malays are the largest ethnic group in Malaysia, making up about half the population. The rest are ethnically Chinese, Indian, or indiginous (Dayak, Kadazan, what have you). AFAIK Neither the ethnicity nor the religion of the person who sent the letter has been reported on the wires.

In breaking news, the Observer quotes US intelligence sourcres pointing to Iraq as the origin of the Anthrax.

Extremists Seen Dancing And Cheering In Guardian
Fanatical anti-American supporters of the sinister leader Al-Rubbisha were seen openly celebrating in the offices of the Guardian newspaper at the news that the WTC had collapsed. Rubbisha was quick to deny the charge, saying "Only a proportion of my columnists, i.e. 80%, were involved."

(For those offended by the Eye's attempts at humour about the disaster, the magazine helpfully included a pre-printed response slip for cancelling subscriptions).

--

Just spotted this too: Revealed: British plan for Afghan onslaught

The observer newspaper ran two stories on this today, a roundup here, and an interesting comment by John Naughton here.

The observer newspaper ran two stories on this today, a roundup here, and an interesting comment by John Naughton here.

Besides, I get sick of conspiracy-freak, one-world-government types in the U.S., and I hate it when something helps prove them right.

Same here. On this topic I found a very worrying British article about a new GATS agreement in the WTO which could erode away our rights. I urge everyone whose country is a WTO member (that means EU, US and most other industrialized and many developing countries) to read this!

I agree. There are bacteria that live right next to underwater lava flows, there are bacteria that love to munch sulfur -- ship a few canisters to Venus and wait a couple million years. It'd be ripe for a colony right up until the Sun explodes. Of course, if it is too hot on Venus, they could always try this trick with it.

---

Introducing this as a desktop device at this late date seems pointless. On portable devices it might make more sense. What's needed is a cell phone with a chord keyboard for messaging. Make it in colors with a cute shape and sell it to mobile girls in Japan.

You would be twice as right to fear today... The beginning of the end was that spy plane of course (don't complain tomorrow that nobody told you... See the link.) Russia: land of the free

May be it is time to learn to read... Russia: land of the free

I don't believe that because I think government organizations have better things to do than worry about what some joe schmoe is reading about.

Ok what about the Uk governments RIP Act and other assorted snooping laws? Try here and here and here and here for the latest insanity brought to you by our esteemed leaders.

I don't believe that because I think government organizations have better things to do than worry about what some joe schmoe is reading about.

Ok what about the Uk governments RIP Act and other assorted snooping laws? Try here and here and here and here for the latest insanity brought to you by our esteemed leaders.

here's a timely article on "the options for companies that want to share some of the wealth with their workers" from The Observer, a UK broadsheet.

What you'll find is that it will mainly end up benefitting shifty corporations and individuals that want to avoid paying their fair share of taxes or want to hide unwholesome sources of income. Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation, for one example, almost completely avoids paying any tax whatsoever, mainly by using offshore tax havens. It has paid no British corporation tax in the last 11 years, despite making profits of 2 billion dollars.

However, these sorts of havens exist only to the extent that they are tolerated by governments of states with major economies. After all, any advantage that a company receives from such havens can be shut down by the countries they do business in, through embargo. You can be sure that if the volume of transactions channeled through havens gets too large, and governments so choose, the Rupert Murdochs of the world will have to choose one or the other: do business in the Cayman Islands, or do business in the US or Europe.

Some reading:

The Observer (UK), April 2, 2000, Pg. 1:
"Trouble in paradise: Michael Ashcroft has one. So have Rupert Murdoch and Richard Branson. In fact, no self-respecting plutocrat is without an offshore tax haven. But, as John Sweeney reports from the Turks and Caicos Islands, these financial refuges are finally under threat"

The Observer (UK), March 28, 1999, P. 23

Read this:
http://www.observer.co.uk/international/story/0,69 03,393015,00.html

This single article reversed 180 degrees my opinion of Mr. Gates.
I previously believed him to be a greedy, naieve, power-hungry egomaniac. If this article is accurate, and he will be giving away his money for food and medicine instead of for computers (which are pretty useless if you don't have anything to eat) then maybe slashdot should look into not portraying his as such an evil person. Maybe he has finally matured?

(I know this goes completely against the conventional wisdom on Slashdot, but read the article, maybe submit it as a story here... show that even geeks can be open-minded)

Open Source, Closed Minds. We are Slashdot.

First of all, nukes are expensive, as is a trip to the moon. But...

The US Air Force did have plans to nuke the moon.

Still, it seems like a lot of hassle to make a useless hole. The engineering might also be a bit different, reducing the experimental value. Obviously the gravity is much lower. And, would the lack of umpteen tons of air sitting on top of the area make a difference?

Here's a source from The Observer, a fairly reputable UK Sunday newspaper. It's not a good idea to discriminate on the basis of a domain name. Obviously if there's nothing else to go on, then you may be suspicious, but as a rule, that kind of discrimination just makes you sound like Eric Cartman ("It must be written by hippies, and hippies suck!).

It was in the British Sunday newspaper "The Observer"
You can read the story here

It was in the British Sunday newspaper "The Observer"
You can read the story here