Slashdot Mirror

"Here's one more tidbit on wire-taps: They get you free phone service! The feds tapped the phone of the Sisters of Mercy in Washington D.C. because of some anti-war stance or something they took in the 1980s. The good sisters noticed some kind of clicking on the phone at times, and finally decided that someone must have tapped into their phone. Their solution: Don't pay the bill so the phone company will have to shut off the phone. The phone never went dead, and they quit sending them bills! The Feds wouldn't let Ma Bell shut them down, and probably began paying the bills. The sisters talked long and free with their friends across the country!"

Actually, the U.S. government's balls were TOO big.

Seriously; the original decision against MS was to break up the company.

Why was it reversed?
http://www.wired.com/news/antitrust/0,1551,44902,0 0.html

I quote:
In stentorian language seldom heard in discussions of a fellow jurist, the appeals court unanimously condemned Jackson's "rampant disregard for the judiciary's ethical obligations," and said he'd no longer be permitted anywhere near this case. ...
Remaining silent were Jackson's fans in the Washington establishment, who cheered the rotund jurist last year when he was denouncing Microsoft chairman Bill Gates as unethical and compared him to a "drug trafficker" and Napoleon. ...
Jackson repeatedly cut Microsoft attorneys short during cross-examination, while treating David Boies, who argued the case for the government, with visible deference. He appointed Larry Lessig, a prominent liberal law professor and Microsoft critic, as a special master over objections from defense lawyers.

He ordered a dismemberment of the largest software company in the world without holding one hearing on the topic, a move that seemed to shock the appeals court. Most antitrust trials of any substance take years to prepare: Jackson gave Microsoft six months. ...
Microsoft's adversaries were left fuming on Thursday, insisting that if Jackson had held his tongue, the breakup order would have remained intact.

"I wish he hadn't spoken out of turn the way he did because I truly believe that if he had exercised better judgment, we wouldn't have seen his remedies vacated," said Norm Hawker, a research fellow at the American Antitrust Institute, which advocates aggressive use of the antitrust laws.

"He essentially pulled the carpet out from under his own findings," Hawker said.

In fact, the district appeals court said the following:
"Although we find no evidence of actual bias, we hold that the actions of the trial judge seriously tainted the proceedings before the District Court and called into question the integrity of the judicial process," the judges wrote.
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/updates/june01/microso ft_6-28.html

Judge Jackson originally tore Microsoft a new asshole. If he had not gotten so caught up in the case, Microsoft would be well on its way to a breakup (or already broken up right now). He was overzealous, and in an effort to restore judicial impartiality, other judges implemented far meeker punishments. The system overcorrected, but make no mistake; the original judge and the prosecutors were out for blood, and they blew it because they went too far.

Absolute power corrupts absolutely is a tried and true cliche...but sadly it also describes human nature pretty well.

Absolute power corrupts absolutely is a tried and true cliche...but sadly it also describes human nature pretty well.

I hope that those behind Google are really committed to doing no evil. Google has the potential to greatly impact our lives. It is up to them whether the influence is good or evil. Google appears to be acting inline with their "Do No Evil" behavior commitment in this case, but I have several other concerns.

1) Censorship - While they apparently have no choice but to cave into to the wishes of the Chinese government, I'm wondering if it goes beyond that. Could Google censorship be happening in the U.S. too? There's a wealth of info buried in Slashdot archives that I seem unable to find anymore when searching through Google. (try searching using our nicknames and keywords) Also, a story that I'd seen on the BBC website a while back seems to have been buried. The story was about something like 60 % of the Iraqi oil revenue, managed by the U.S. for reconstruction, being unaccounted for. I haven't been able to find the story again by searching the BBC site directly either. I never saw it covered in the U.S. media, which was preoccupied with Jury selection for Michael Jackson at the time.

2) Potential Target of Funds From Political Corruption - This one is a hot potato. The commercial media will barely mention it, because they are where the money is going. There is a great deal of attention right now over political corruption, with influence being bought. New laws won't stop illegal behavior, and politicians are generally not going to be very effective in making changes when it means cutting the funding that got many where they are. Media attention is focused on politicians getting dirty money, but doesn't address the issue of where it is being spent. Broadcast licensees in the U.S. are supposed to be acting as "trustees of the public interest", although that seems to be an old-school concept that is conveniently forgotten. If broadcasters would not accept ANY paid political advertising, instead only providing free and equal time for legally qualified candidates/measures, politicians would not have the huge incentive to sell their souls to finance campaign advertising.

Where does Google fit in? As advertising shifts from conventional media to the net, the potential for Google to become a primary destination of campaign funds is huge. I believe Google should "Do No Evil" and publiclly state they will never provide paid political advertising or boosted search ranking, and should make a public statement that it is also time for broadcasters to kill the incentive for corruption by also refusing paid political ads.
Over time, advertising on Google could be even more insidious than television and radio broadcasting, because it is better able to selectively target tuned messages for different segments of the population. Essentially politicians would be able to tell each demographic only the things they want to hear.

Sometimes "Stuff That Matters" isn't new news. Like the toad swimming the the pot on the stove and not feeling the temperature rise, or the person looking through tinted glasses with eyes that have normalized for the color bias, issues that have developed over time often don't stand out. Some serious issues don't get nearly enough attention. Perhaps we can get Google to help with this one before they become part of the problem.
It'll take all of us working to bring about change. The commercial media aren't likely to help when it means turning away cash cows. It is up to us pressure the media, our representatives, and the F.C.C. to eliminate paid political advertising.

TWiT: This Week in Tech (former Tech TV Screensavers)
dl.tv (former Tech TV Screensavers)
diggnation (again, former Tech TV Screensavers)
CreativeCOW.net (Digital Media)
Shields and Brooks (Newshour Political Podcast)
NPR Technology (collected stories about tech from the previous week)
KCRW's The Treatment
Ricky Gervais (BBC's The Office, Extras)

The difference between science and dogma is that science is falsifiable, so other scientists can correct invalid theories.

This can be seen with evolution. Evolution explains one thing and one thing ONLY - how one organism may beat out another organism, and thus survive and proliferate. It does NOT, however, explain how things are first formed.

And why not? If approriate chemicals accidently formed into a molecule that could replicate then evolution would take off. There were number of experiments that showed how the building blocks for DNA can be formed in a test tube that replicated conditions on early Earth.

Earth existed for several BILLION years before any organisms appeared. The probability of accidental creation of a self-replicating molecule over that period of time is close to 100%.

What evolution does NOT explain is how, for example, an organ such as the eyeball was formed. No form of evolution can explain this, and trying to is just as bad as a ID or creationism believer.

Not that old thing again. Just because you cannot imagine, does not mean that it is impossible. Frankly any explanation that is not super-natural is better. Look here for example.

i.e. to think that science explains EVERYTHING. It doesn't.

No scientist would ever claim that science explains everything. Where did you get this idea? Science is a collective, self-corrective enterprise engaged in by humans. It is not perfect, but it's the best way we have to understand how the world works.

If you've seen Frontline's Diet Wars a lot of it could be due to the "Low Fat" craze. Low fat foods are not low calorie foods. In fact, they're only a few cals different from the full-fat foods. The food makers make up with something else when they remove one ingredient. Low-fat could mean high sugar/carbs instead for instance. Full-fat salad dressing is healthier than low-fat, because veggie fats are good for you, etc.

Dieting is actually all about restricting caloric intake instead which hasn't been the focus. If the Earth 2 biodome results were any indication, restricted caloric intake extends your life too.

Seen that can of soda? From 100 to 160 calories right there.. Then you have a big 1000 cal lunch and dinner (Carl's Jr?), and you're already beyond the normal 2000 calories males should be intaking a day.

This is why Atkins and South Beach seem to work because they're all about low-calorie meals (meat is slow-burning, low-cal, and high fat), and at least South Beach seems to be about eating healthier too.

Get rid of the soda machines, make the kids walk to school (with 5 pounds on each foot preferably :), would be just as effective. Then you DDR for the Olympics. :)

Disclaimer: I'm a former DDR addict also, but I've lost more inches through just pilates and a no soda diet. Still 160lbs.

Today it is a huge industry that is not as taboo as it once was. Its power and influence has given it the nickname "America's other Hollywood." A few years ago Frontline covered the industry in an episode entitled American Porn which you can watch online.

and MOST IMPORTANT OF ALL on the PRICE - AMD is slowly giving up the most important weapon they had against Intel and without some cuts on price for the X2 line AMD might seriously loose market share to Intel in 2006 !!!

Real world experience with marketing demonstrates that there are much more important things than 'price' in selecting a product. Wally World puts their cheapest "microwave" in the main trafficways. Mesmerized Customer says, "hey, good idea, I could use a new 'microwave', and damn, this thing's dirt cheap. But it's probably a POS, so I wonder what else they have..." Then they go into the isle and pick out a more expensive microwave, which has a significantly higher profit margin for WW, which is probably cheaper elsewhere (source: Frontline documentary on WalMart).

If price is all you push, your company will end up like General Motors ("We just lowered the sticker price on EVERYTHING!"), mismanaged into the ground, and have to give away your product at a loss...

I dunno. The specs. are the same as the Linksys WRT54GS, only with 2 USB ports. I think that's 8Mb of flash RAM in total; but I'm fuzzy on all that.

Have a look over at OpenWRT.org, and check out the list of packages & requirements available in their distro. Their distro is quite nice, in that installation is absolutely minimal to what is required, saving the remaining space to install, oh, let's say the Asterisk PBX package for example. Even pptp is 'optional'.

OpenWRT has a great chart of which routers are supported, plus their specs.

The asterisk possibility got me really excited, but I haven't had the time to play further. Still I kinda think that while it is a great router plus NAS, the CPU is a wee bit underpowered for full Asterisk, for example. But so what?! Its still a heckuva little server for a neat price. If it can run Asterisk, it must be able to run your libraries, but I dunno.

Here's some related info too.

What Linux package supports a webcam? The Asus stock firmware supports the webcam, but those bright purple gui colors just scream "void my warranty and flash me properly with a real Linux distro!"

Interesting thought, but I really don't think so. AFAIK, Star Trek was not emulation; it was the Mac OS APIs recompiled and re-hosted on a different platform. I've seen conflicting reports about how it was really implemented, but (forgive me), Cringely's is the most credible, IMHO. It is possible they learned a thing or two that helped them with the PowerPC platform transition.

And I suppose you could argue that if they were going to switch to Intel eventually, they should have done it sooner rather than later.

Personally, I've never believed that. I worked closely with both the 680x0 and 80x86 architectures in the 80's, and, form my perspective as a user of the instruction set, I found the 68K vastly superior to work with; the only thing the Intel platform had going for it was the fact that IBM had made it a de facto standard.

Architecturally, the Pentium started to close the gap, but the power consumption issues were pretty significant. My five-year-old fanless PowerBook G3 is still a pleasure to use over the Dell laptops my last employer supplied me with.

IMNSHO, Apple's Intel switch wasn't inevitable, it just makes sense at the moment. And I harbor a suspicion that Apple won't necessarily stay mono-architectured. Mac OS X binaries, by design, can accommodate multiple (not just two) processor architectures. Apple will pursue the direction(s) that make the most sense as things play out over the next few years.

you're thinking of an episode of frontgline wgere law professors were stumped. You can watch online or read the text.I'll save you the trouble and link it.

that's one of robert x. cringley's predictions thwarted already..

The blacks and asians didn't found this country did they?

Actually, yes. The first permanent settlement in the US was built by black people. A black man died in the Boston Massacre. Which, in case you didn't know, was the beginning of overt hostility in the American Revolution.

LK

Ok. Here's one. I don't know too much about insidehighered.com, but I doubt it's a front for the aryan brotherhood.

In summary (because this is /., so RTFA is right out. ;->), white female candidate was one of the finalists for a job. Employer's EOO ADDED a male african-american candidate to the finalist pool. White female came in second from the top[1], while african-american came in second from the bottom. University gave the job to the african-american "candidate". Here's a link [pdf, you've been warned] to the decision by the seventh circuit to allow the case to proceed. So does she sound like she qualifies as "one good man or woman"?

Then there is the case of University of California Regents v Bakke[2]. Where it was held that the UC system had discriminated against a white applicant by admitting lesser-qualified minority applicants. Yeah, that's academic reverse discrimination as opposed to employment. And it was back in the 70's so it's completely irrelevant... Except that the exact same issue came before SCOTUS again in 1996. Unless you think PBS is an angry blogger. There have been a host of similar decisions handed down over the last few years, btw.

In a more general way, this site [3] points out in #12, that "less than 2 percent of the 91,000 employment discrimination cases pending before the Equal Employment Opportunities Commission are reverse discrimination cases." Working on the assumption (because I'm too lazy to mine for the actual numbers :-P) that the number is between 1% and 2% (If it were under 1%, I would have expected the site to say so), it appears that there are between 910 and 1819 [less than 2%, after all ;->] reverse discrimination claims working thier way through the EEOC at the moment.

I don't really have a dog in the fight, and to the best of my knowledge have never been passed over for a job based on either my race or my gender. Nor do I know anyone IRL who has claimed to have been so discriminated against. But you asked for proof of "even one" example. While implying that such was a high burden. Btw, google is your friend.

A now await the flames and downmods. /me dons asbestos suit.

[1] I'm personally curious where #1 fits into all this, but that's another issue.
[2] I don't think that Findlaw counts as an angry blogger-especially as it is just the literal SCOTUS decision.
[3] Which appears to be dismissive of the idea of reverse discrimination, btw.

'As long as an invention is not clearly contrary to scientific laws - like time travel - research has no bearing on the grant of a patent.'

I think Einstein would say otherwise. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/time/think.html and http://www.iit.edu/~bosabri/time.html

Another question: Do we really want this in the hands of the defense department? There would be even less qualms about sending people into harms' way if something like this were in their medicine cabinet.

And don't think they wouldn't; they're quite willing to try and force potentially harmful vaccinations and other dubious treatments on their own personnel. Oh, and if something goes wrong, the drug company needn't worry - they probably won't be held accountable.

This drug definitely has a downside.

There's no way you can get enough people to stop shopping at Wal*Mart.

The hackers and a handful of tech savy users that want OS X on generic hardware are irrelevant.

I disagree. Completely.

They may be irrelevant to Apple's current sales objectives. And they may be irrelevant in terms of percentage of OS X units sold in the very near future.

But I think they will be highly relevant. Both in terms of increased possibilities for future market and product moves available to Apple and to the impact felt by Microsoft. Right now Microsoft is fighting mostly a one-front war with Linux.

If that handful of hackers and tech savvy users along with a few engineers can show that running OS X on commodity hardware works well and a community builds up around it, Apple may have the best opportunity it has ever had to sharply swing it's market share.

What would happen if they would stage another switch blitz, reduce the cost to $49.99, and bring back Ellen?

Is it unthinkable that they could double their market share? Especially if Apple was to throw a few dollars at NeoOffice?

WMP and MSIE are operating system components - surely you don't expect Microsoft to help Apple write their operating system? ;-)

More seriously, it might be possible that they are anticipating the same thing that Cringeley predicted for 2006 (extract from Slashdot discussion here).

It's my opinion that Microsoft are aware that, as more and more devices may effectively be defined to be computers, Windows is in danger of losing its ubiquity. If, in future, they are to make money from a services model, then they need a vehicle to extract this money. They have been talking about the wonderful web services Office will provide for some years now. Better to maintain their customer base in Apple-land now than to try to win it back from competitors in the future.

Anyway, if they don't maintain some contact with Apple, how will they be able to keep track of what they're doing?

There was a good Frontline on PBS awhile back which was mainly about Wal-Mart but also contrasted Rubbermaid with Wal-Mart: Is Wal-Mart Good For America?

The point was made in the difference between taking the high road, which relied on innovation and high profit margins but low sales, and the low road, which relied on the exact opposite. Now, Dell seems to be taking the low road and Apple taking the high road. But in the specific confrontation between Rubbermaid, which was mentioned in the show as one of the leading companies in the 90s (was named #1 American company by Fortune, not in value but in business and leadership, etc), and Wal-Mart (named #1 American company exactly 10 years later). Of course Wal-Mart won and Rubbermaid no longer exists (were bought out).

I really hope Apple wins out on this one. I mean, Rubbermaid and Wal-Mart weren't direct competitors but since Rubbermaid supplied Wal-Mart, Wal-Mart forced them out of business by requiring lower and lower prices, and eventually not even putting them on the shelves in Wal-Marts. And after that well, Rubbermaid was doomed. But still, it is a comparison of the high and low roads. I really, for reasons unknown, root for the high road more.

'... microsoft doesnt make PC's FYI, so how could they compete with making PC's? ...'

xbox perhaps? Read here for more why.

But it wasn't until last year-- under the guidance of the first Republican-controlled Congress in 40 years--that the line item veto finally became law. And it could change the rules by which spending decisions are made.

SEN. ROBERT BYRD: Will be used as a club to be held over the head of every member of the United States Senate and every member of the House of Representatives by power hungry presidents who will seek to impose their will over the legislative process to the detriment of the American people whose elected representatives in Congress can no longer be free to exercise their judgment as to what matters are in the best interests of the United States, and the people whom they serve.

KWAME HOLMAN: Last April, federal district court Judge Thomas Pennfield Jackson sided with Senator Byrd when he ruled the line item veto was unconstitutional.

The line-item veto was used once by President Bill Clinton before U.S. District Court Judge Thomas F. Hogan decided on February 12, 1998 that unilateral amendment or repeal of only parts of statutes violated the U.S. Constitution. This ruling was subsequently affirmed on June 25, 1998 by a 6-3 decision of the Supreme Court of the United States in the case Clinton v. City of New York.

4. They'll need money, of course, so I predict a supplemental stock offering timed with a 20-to-1 stock split. 2006 is a building year for Google.

The operative phrase is "They'll need money", since shares of Google have never been within the reach of the average investor splitting the stock will create a short term boost. As a result they'd split then make an offering in a week or so, enough time to let people buy the price up but before the major investment firms start taking profits. The interesting thing about this prediction is that Google just offered up 4 billion in shares. Thus to say they'll need money is to say they'll try something big (like his gCube idea). It's a pretty bold prediction and I doubt it will come true.

11TiVo will be bought by another company

When I first read that I thought "That's about as bold as saying Microsoft will still suck at security". Then I saw how many ./ers doubt this. Make no doubt about it, TiVo is worth buying for the brand name alone.

15.Whatever we expect from Google might just as easily appear from Yahoo, too. With so much attention on Google, Yahoo is operating under the RADAR and will have several surprises for the market while AOL continues to shrink.

This would have been good if he hadn't said "Whatever we expect from Google might just as easily appear from Yahoo, too." Whatever we expect from Google probably won't come out of Google because we have such high expectations. Still Yahoo has been flying under the radar, I expect them to use that to their advantage and introduce some interesting new services. The fact that he talks about Yahoo and AOL in the same sentence is very interesting. It leads me to beleive that he thinks Yahoo will start encrouching on AOL's turf.

The only way I see them doing that is if they release a browsing environment comparable to AOL and MSN to push their advertising further. Considering they don't have a dialup infrastructure to deal with they might be able to price it competitively.

I first heard about ECD in this transcript of a Scientific American Frontiers episode. Two segments on them, one talks about storing hydrogen as a solid (in alloy hydrides) and the second talks about their solar panel tech. Sort of ironic to see them pop up in this thread...

They had a Scientific American segment on this. Here is the segment transcript. It was quite interesting.

LEPP

I saw it on "Scientific American Frontiers" on PBS.

That was a cool show. They re-run those shows a lot, so check your listing. PBS' site has schedules on it.

That's a well known idea, I was going to put here some samples of the distributed backup in action but only can find when Cringely talked about the very same concept.


--
Superb hosting 20GB Storage, 1_TB_ bandwidth, ssh, $7.95

So, what... do we declassify everything every two years just to make sure> it's all completely benign by everyone's standards, everywhere?

Two years no, but ten years sounds about right.

And it's not like they get one big bank transfer every year... their funds are approved/disapproved on a project-by-project basis.

The "black budget" gets very little oversight.

So, I trust my city and county governments with some somewhat more localized secret stuff. I have to.

You don't "have" to trust them, and you shouldn't. Read up on the Rampart scandal, or the current epidemic of false arrests in Baltimore, or just skim Google for police scandals.

Welcome to Amerika: where money buys rights.

Guys, watch out with these comments. I don't bash Google, they're an excellent company, with great innovation, but did any of you read Cringely's Pupit about this? In case you didn't go here: http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/pulpit20051117. html. I don't want to cast a dark light on this, but just WHAT IF Cringely's right? If you are to become a data mover, what's your best bet? Develop applications that become ubiquitous, host the content of those updates (in the case of Google Updater), maps (in the case of Google Earth), and their freakin' cache and voilá, you've got a business set up in content delivery and hosting. Think about this seriously, I know I'm already waaaay off topic, but think about for a second. You know there's no money in pushing access to people. Google knows this. Internet access is almost a god-given right. A lot of people, including myself, require internet access - we can't live without it, but we're not willing to be gouged for it. So Google's vision is probably what? Free access, or extremely cheap access (which extremely cheap means basically universal access). OK, no money there. There's no money for THEM in backend switching, but there is money in hosting content. there is money in outsourcing other companies servers to their own infrastucture, as long as it meets with their standards. there is money in content delivery. At the end, Google may do no evil - in our eyes because it won't censor content without letting us know. because Google gives basically universal access to the universal internet, but at the end it's a company, and it's going to look for the dollar. i at least appreciate that they won't necessarily pull the dollar from my pocket, but they will somewhere. Oh, yeah, and just mod me down for what you think is bashing Google. I'm not, i'm simply looking at it from a realistic point of view - after drinking the kool-aid for a while.

France is set to generate 76% of its power needs through the nuclear option. Source: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/reac tion/readings/french.html

i have seen something like this RAM Drive back in the ISA-Bus days... it hasnt been quite successful

ISA-Bus days..lmao! SCSI and PCI based RAM Drives were a key strategy for 68K developers on the Mac (22 years ago) and Amiga (21 years ago) platforms until the early 1990s. The huge number of header files needed to support the GUI frameworks and OS-kernel/Toolbox APIs with such slow (MFM/RLL) hard-drives and busses (60KB/s) of the era dictated this as an absolute necessity. Of course, the poor guys who were dealing with "ISA-Bus" just had to pull in stdio.h (to support DOS) and thought all all of us (3,000 or so) 68K developers were insain.

[begin slowly-i-turn-step-by-step-inch-by-inch] If Irving Gould hadn't messed with Jack Tramiel and John Sculley hadn't messed with Steve Jobs, I don't think it would have taken 18 years and a few Dead Geniuses to prove them all wrong, either.[end slowly-i-turn-step-by-step-inch-by-inch]

Back in the present, if you check the latest version of Apple's development tools (included FREE with every Mac, yo), you'll find that they are more than pretty syntax-aware editors with hyper-linking and documentation-lookup. Under the hood, these tools support Killer features that decrease the compile-link-debug turnaround using every trick in the book (except reaching into the page-table-entries --they'll realize that once they come up for air from Rosetta). These features, some 20 years in the making, afford developers more time to do trial-and-error tweaks and unit-testing (since changes in the source are "instantly" visible in the executable), so the quality of the code shipped to customers can be much better, even when using dog-slow CPU chips (thank you Motorola) or (4200-5400rpm) laptop drives. In fact, unless your (executable) App needs a lot of CPU or disk performance, it's really hard to justify buying a top-of-the-line Mac with 10,000 rpm RAID-1 drives just to support software engineering and certainly no need for PCI or SCSI based RAM drives --you can get by very nicely with a 17" laptop, an external monitor, firewire 7200rpm drive and an a couple of mini-macs to play "target practice" with.

[begin lets-not-waste-another-18-years]Now, if Apple can only overcome the windfall its competitors (HP, DELL and Gateway) are in for as customers realize they really do need a new PC to support Windows Vista, then world domination is assured. Can you say to Apple, "Give me a $200 competitive upgrade discount off any IntelMac in exchange for my activated-copy of WinXP (which Apple can then tell the Microsoft-overseers to have Microsoft de-authorize some 30 days after your upgrade to OSX86)?"... If not, then Windows will likely continue its long history of "borg-ing" every other company's cool ideas and leveraging them to make money through that big market share they gained with exclusionary contracts at the end of the 1980s (when our anti-trust people were pre-occupied with IBM mainframes and Selectron typerwriters). Gates is no idiot and he just doomed PalmOS on the mobile platform (so when the PC is dethroned by cell-phones, those phones are likely going to be running Windows. Jobs is no idiot either and nobody cares about Windows Media 11 for a reason... Let's just hope he can make Gates lose as many customers as possible in the transition from XP to Vista! [end lets-not-waste-another-18-years]

I'm going to assume you actually aren't aware of what's going on, and that you're not deliberately trying to pretend, and supply you with some reading material. Please consider the following articles in support of my statements:

Let's start with the no-fly list:

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2003/07/25/no_fl y/index_np.html
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2002/ 09/27/MNNOFLY.TMP&nl=top
http://www.globenet.free-online.co.uk/reports/prot estersdetained.htm
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/957183/po sts

This one's just fun: they barred Ted Kennedy (the senator):
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/08/19/senator_on _terror_watch/

And this one just basically says the No-Fly list is managed rather stupidly:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/04/07/aclu-suit/

Now lets look at the Patriot act:

First, this google search returns almost 3 million hits on patriot act abuses:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%22Patriot+Ac t%22+abuses&btnG=Google+Search

Here's a detailed analysis by the ACLU about what's wrong with the Patriot Act:
http://www.aclu.org//safefree/general/17203leg2003 0214.html

Here's a Register article about how the Patriot Act isn't being used against terrorists, but rather regular criminals (a group for which the act was not meant to be used, I'd consider that an abuse), side-stepping their civil liberties:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2003/05/22/us_antiter ror_law_used_against/

Here's an article about an interesting talk that went on at Harvard about the subject:
http://www.pbs.org/weta/washingtonweek/voices/2003 10/1010abuses.html

Here's a fun reprint of a Village Voice article about the NYPD seeking to spy on protestors and such:
http://www.refuseandresist.org/police_state/art.ph p?aid=619

I could go on and on, but I think I've made my point. The Patriot Act should be quietly killed off and our civil liberties re-affirmed.

Enjoy your readings...

> Money is clearly not the center of Bill Gates life.

True, but that is only because the money is incidental to his quest for world domination as opposed to Steve Jobs who is equally driven, but motivated to offer the best product possible.

> If it was, he wouldn't be the biggest philanthropist of all time.

You must be young. Bill Gate's charitable giving was almost nonexistent until he was shamed into action. It was only after his miserly become so infamous that it was interfering with business that he was compelled into action. Not surprisingly, he crafted his donations for maximum PR value. The money does good work, more than you or I can ever hope to accomplish, but is a tiny amount compared to his personal fortune, let alone the wealth he controls.

True, hence the title of the book, Accidental Empires, that I cite above. But that doesn't give due credit to the full positive force of the personalities involved. These people would almost certainly have been successful (perhaps not famously so) in just about any field.

> I imagine there are probably many people who could do what Steve is doing.

That assumption is plainly incorrect. Great leaders are so rare that the U.S. cannot find compelling candidates for president. There are plenty of books about the great leaders in business. The potential for a single individual at the top to influence corporate culture is well documented. Apple's floundering without Steve Jobs, despite talented CEOs, and his demonstrated ability to lead them twice now (not to mention two other companies in the mean time) is a unique story even among these other luminaries.

Why would they bother with building a Google Cube when they could just take over the application layer of the existing almost-ubiquitous operating system - if it doesn't matter what kernel you're running (NT/Linux/Darwin/etc.) then why not use what's already there? Perhaps this is 'GooOS'? The most important component is the Google Updater and it should come as no surprise that this 'will display notifications when there are updates or new software available' (emphasis mine). It's not so much a question of what's in the Google Pack now (most of which is just fluff to get the unwashed masses interested), but what will be slipstreamed in the future - add OpenOffice.org and you've got everything your average user needs.

I've only OS X and Linux at home and I'm told 'Google Pack is only available for Windows XP' where I imagine the download would be, but I'll be sure to check this out at work next week.

I don't read Cringely very often, but I've never seen even him have anything really negative to say about google.

Actually, he has said some negative things (or least not positive) about Google. In particular he wrote some articles on how AdSense may be squeezing as much money out of advertisers as they are willing to pay. Also followups here and here.

I don't read Cringely very often, but I've never seen even him have anything really negative to say about google.

Actually, he has said some negative things (or least not positive) about Google. In particular he wrote some articles on how AdSense may be squeezing as much money out of advertisers as they are willing to pay. Also followups here and here.

I don't read Cringely very often, but I've never seen even him have anything really negative to say about google.

Actually, he has said some negative things (or least not positive) about Google. In particular he wrote some articles on how AdSense may be squeezing as much money out of advertisers as they are willing to pay. Also followups here and here.

You completely missed the point of my statement. It takes ~4 years from Earth's perspective for light to reach the nearest star outside the solar system, but from light's "frame", it takes no time. If we could get extremely close to the speed of light, we could get to that star in 1 minute, or in 10 seconds, or in 1 second. You don't have to go faster than the speed of light.

If you don't believe me, check out this flash animation which allows you to go up to 99.99% of the speed of light. Even though the total distance travelled (from Earth's perspective) is 8.4 light years, it only takes you one-third of a year to make the trip. Meanwhile, on Earth, almost 24 years pass, because you are going slower than the speed of light. If you could go the speed of light (and could stop instantaneously), you could make the trip in 0 time, and only 8.4 years would pass on Earth.

I'm guessing you are playing with words here. The Senate did vote - yes/no? In case you need more info: http://www.pbs.org/newshour/shields&gigot/february 99/sg_2-12.html

Of course there's bias. But physics is physics and those laws are absolutes (until someone comes up with better theories). SUVs tend to be more massive and have a higher center of gravity than a passenger car. If an SUV outweighs a typical passenger car by say 20-30%, it packs a more significant wallop at highway speeds. Given that they sit higher off the ground, so their bumper height is significantly greater, they are effectively mobile battering rams.

The journal "Pediatrics" just came out with a study stating that SUVs are no safer then passenger cars, based mainly on their tendency to roll over in crashes, a problem which is well documented and which the government has done nothing about. Now you might want to claim they're biased too, but the preponderance of evidence and common sense indicates that SUVs are in fact dangerous. Frankly, I'd trust the scientists over the auto industry any day.

Ok, so according to this article (http://www.guardian.co.uk/US_election_race/Story/ 0,2763,410902,00.html) the ballots were supposed to be kept under lock and key and never counted. Which is obviously incorrect, as can be seen here (http://www.amstat.org/misc/PresidentialElectionBa llots.pdf), that Florida has a Sunshine law which allows all of its ballots to be examined. The guardian article had other errors.

Quote:
"The more immediate victim however, besides Al Gore and the system, is the supreme court itself. As the liberal lion of the bench, John Paul Stevens, put it in his strident, dissenting opinion: 'Although we may never know with complete certainty the identity of the winner of this year's presidential election, the identity of the loser is perfectly clear. It is the nation's confidence in the judge as an impartial guardian of the law.'"

He was talking about the USSC ruling undermining the Flordia Supreme Court ruling, making it seem like their ruling had been done for partisan reasons. The article makes it seem like he's making the opposite claim, which is deceptive. I've read over the Flordia Supreme Court decision and consider it very reasonable and based on the correct interpretation of the law, so I understand where Justice Stevens was coming from on this.

Here's the results of one newspaper recount:
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/media/media_watch/jan- june01/recount_4-3.html

Here's the results of another:
http://www.norc.uchicago.edu/fl/index.asp

Both found that Bush probably would have won if the recounts had gone through anyway (with margins of error, it's impossible to tell, of course). NORC was disingenuous in claiming that 4 methords would have given Bush the victory, and 4 Gore, when the Gore methods mainly involved determining intent on overcounts, which is illegal in every county in America. (I.e. if someone voted for both Buchanan and Gore, then claiming it is a vote for Gore. Sure, it's probably what happened, but it's still illegal.)

1. Google, OpenOffice, and Sun form a relationship
2. Google Talk (http://www.google.com/talk/)
3. Google Mail (http://mail.google.com/
4. Google Video(http://video.google.com/
5. Google is buying dark fiber
6. Google is offering wireless
7. Google cube (speculation)
8. Google mobile data centers (speculation)
9. Google buying stake in AOL
10. Google GDRIVE.com (specualtion)

1. No hard drive
2. NO Windows Operating System
3. Java enabled
4. USB/S-Video/Audio/Network ports
5. Store everying on GDrive.com
6. Networked applications
7. Low Cost
8. New ad-revenue streams

Robert Cringely spoke of Google Boxes in late November. Some speculation, of course, but that's probably some fuel for seeing it here in this article.

Newton in the same bracket? Lets not over-play everyone else here. The rest (including Einstein) are all behind him (Einstein on Newton's legacy) not just for his impact in physics, or his postulation (which he didn't put in the final optics as it wasn't "testable" hence only a hypothesis not a theory) of wave particle duality. This was the bloke who created the scientific method, created a new branch of maths and (when head of the Royal Mint) came up with a fraud prevention device (milled edges) for coins. He also forced a change in English Law that enabled a greater freedom of religon which led in no small part to the rise of organisations like the quakers et al who drove the Industrial Revolution.

Einstein was a certifiable, grade A genius. Newton, in part thanks to the point in history he appeared at, changed not just Physics but all of science and a large part of the rest of the world.

There will not be another Newton, or Einstein (he wasn't the "next Newton") there will only be the next "X", and I for one am looking forward to what the smart-arsed bastard comes up with.

Look at da Vinci. He was a brilliant man to be sure. But if he were alive today, he'd never have been able to master so many fields

I would have to argue that and point out you are showing effect of being blindly lead.

The state of genius is one of understanding. Do you think Aristotle given a keyboard and google could not figure out how to submit a query?

Making such a blanket statement is intresting as it is a far lean towards technology or in a sence isolating (reserving?) the field to someone or something that has yet to be shows the genius of humans in general. We pick qualities which we feel would be a "key" to ourselves and look for that trait in others.

Maybe here more than most, people would be looking for a person who can create or understand the average humans needs and wants from technology. The mass would be able to apply this and a software revolution would incur. Possibly programming language would be taught side-by-side english in schools.

Does this person exist? Maybe. Will we as a race recodnize this person? Maybe.

The most exciting thing is some one like Einstein was needed by evreybody as he seemed to let evreybody answer those important questions. Even though there may not be a direct understanding of the equations, like a house of cards peoples guards droped to him.

I personally feel there will be facing a problem as with our education system and us as a race gaining intelligence as a whole. So far we mark ourselves on a strict bell curve. We believe that there is only a finite number of those who are intelligent and that number is very small. As we progress minds that may have been destined to daydreaming and manual labour will be allowed to develop and many more methods and ways of thinking will emerge. These again will be seen as the "lesser intelligent".

Lather Rince Repeat

For quick info on how Einstein fulfilled the publics needs

String theory is patent rubbish and many theoretical physicists say as much. The implications for math are profound. But as a physical theory, it is untestable for one and based on shoddy foundations from what I've understood for second. More like a shotgun wedding instead a natural union like say electromagnetism. Ok, I never got past beginning graduate quantum mechanics but you get enough of a flavor for the way things are done. Checkout the comments by Nobel laureate Sheldon Glashow: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/elegant/view-glashow. html

Has the Bush administration actually invoked FISA as their legal basis? If so, I missed it. And, from what I've heard, it wouldn't fit. AFAIK, FISA requires either a warrant or only monitoring where no US person is likely to be involved (see Q18 in the EFF writeup).

Carter and Clinton both issued executive orders authorizing FISA monitoring, but specifically quoted FISA regulations to be followed. I haven't seen a similar order from Bush, and even according to legendary conservative Rush Limbaugh, the FISA courts were bypassed. Limbaugh's take on it was that the unprecedented denials and modifications of Bush's FISA requests forced him to go around the process.

In short, the President is not asserting legal authority under FISA. According to the Attorney General, his authority hinges (PDF) on his "inherent authority" as Commander-In-Chief, and Congress's Use of Force Resolution.

Of course, in my strict interpretation, I missed the part of the Presidential Oath, Constitution or the above resolution that grants him any power over surveillance. And, according to Daschle (partisan to be sure, but you'd think records of this kind of stuff would be easily checked), Congress specifically rejected the administration's request for having the resolution cover actions in the US.