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"Wal-Mart...could very well launch an MNVO," says Current Analysis analyst Weston Henderek. "A Wal-Mart offering would most likely be targeted at value-oriented and credit-challenged prepaid customers looking for the best price."

Cringely called it, sort of.

Still waiting for my McDonalds phone.

We are not randomly rounding up citizens and putting them in internment camps.

True. The roundups are much more systematic.
muslim lawyers
immigrants
film makers
You're probably white middle class, Judeo-Xtian, and have nothing to fear.

1997 interview
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/binl aden/who/interview.html
================

Q. ... What is the meaning of your call for Muslims to take arms against America in particular, and what is the message that you wish to send to the West in general?

The call to wage war against America was made because America has spear-headed the crusade against the Islamic nation, sending tens of thousands of its troops to the land of the two Holy Mosques over and above its meddling in its affairs and its politics, and its support of the oppressive, corrupt and tyrannical regime that is in control. These are the reasons behind the singling out of America as a target. And not exempt of responsibility are those Western regimes whose presence in the region offers support to the American troops there. We know at least one reason behind the symbolic participation of the Western forces and that is to support the Jewish and Zionist plans for expansion of what is called the Great Israel. Surely, their presence is not out of concern over their interests in the region. ... Their presence has no meaning save one and that is to offer support to the Jews in Palestine who are in need of their Christian brothers to achieve full control over the Arab Peninsula which they intend to make an important part of the so called Greater Israel. ...

Q. Many of the Arabic as well as the Western mass media accuse you of terrorism and of supporting terrorism. What do you have to say to that?

There is an Arabic proverb that says "she accused me of having her malady, then snuck away." Besides, terrorism can be commendable and it can be reprehensible. Terrifying an innocent person and terrorizing him is objectionable and unjust, also unjustly terrorizing people is not right.

They rip us of our wealth, resources and oil. Our religion is under attack. They kill, murder our brothers. They compromise our honor and our dignity and dare we utter a single word of protest, we are called terrorists Whereas, terrorizing oppressors and criminals and thieves and robbers is necessary for the safety of people and for the protection of their property. There is no doubt in this. Every state and every civilization and culture has to resort to terrorism under certain circumstances for the purpose of abolishing tyranny and corruption. Every country in the world has its own security system and its own security forces, its own police and its own army. They are all designed to terrorize whoever even contemplates to attack that country or its citizens. The terrorism we practice is of the commendable kind for it is directed at the tyrants and the aggressors and the enemies of Allah, the tyrants, the traitors who commit acts of treason against their own countries and their own faith and their own prophet and their own nation. Terrorizing those and punishing them are necessary measures to straighten things and to make them right. Tyrants and oppressors who subject the Arab nation to aggression ought to be punished. The wrongs and the crimes committed against the Muslim nation are far greater than can be covered by this interview. America heads the list of aggressors against Muslims. The recurrence of aggression against Muslims everywhere is proof enough. For over half a century, Muslims in Palestine have been slaughtered and assaulted and robbed of their honor and of their property. Their houses have been blasted, their crops destroyed. And the strange thing is that any act on their part to avenge themselves or to lift the injustice befalling them causes great agitation in the United Nations which hastens to call for an emergency meeting only to convict the victim and to censure the wronged and the tyrannized whose children have been killed and whose crops have been destroyed and whose farms have been pulverized. ...

In today's wars, there

The claim you cite is an example of rationale morphing. Leave Iraq and the rationale for attacking us will change. You're dealing with people who hate us because we're not exactly the same kind of Muslim they are and will use any excuse they can conjur to attack us. Unfortunately, we fund some of them every time we fill our gas tank.

I don't know if an Al Qaedaish group did this or not but they are in Europe. Check PBS' Frontline episode "Al Qaeda's New Front". They're streaming the entire episode.

Wrong. From an article featuring prominent anthropometric historian John Komlos:

"The obvious answer would seem to be immigration. The more Mexicans and Chinese there are in the United States, the shorter the American population becomes. But the height statistics that Komlos cites include only native-born Americans who speak English at home, and he is careful to screen out people of Asian and Hispanic descent. In any case, according to Richard Steckel, who has also analyzed American heights, the United States takes in too few immigrants to account for the disparity with Northern Europe."

Actually, just so you know, that isn't fair use in the United States.

OK, that is what I was going to post until I went out and did some research. According to Matt Oppenhaim (RIAA representative),

Way back in 1992, Congress drew a distinction between analog recording (on that tape recorder) and digital recording (the computer). In legislation enacted that year, they said that infringement actions cannot be filed against consumers who engage in copying using analog devices and certain types of digital devices on which royalties have been paid and which protect against serial copying of the copy.

This was in response to the question

Why is it legal to record a song from the radio while recording a song from the Internet is considered theft and criminal?

Shamelessly lifted from http://www.pbs.org/newshour/forum/june03/copyright 9a.html

Now, what can you do with this data? Well, once it is in the google index - tomorrow, I suspect. Then the 3.5mb page of 80k validated pieces of knowledge will be able to do for consensus internal knowledge what wikipedia does for consensus external knowledge. I hope that eventually, google will trust Mindpixel as it does Wikipedia. Then commercial applications of semantic spectrum based technology can proceed, and the 50,000 owners of the

For more than 50 years sane voices have called for an end to the debate. Nature versus nurture has been declared everything from dead and finished to futile and wrong - a false dichotomy. Everybody with an ounce of common sense knows that human beings are a product of a transaction between the two.

Yes, those are sufficient answers. Your entire business exists solely to constrain the progress of science and useful arts, charging a fee as the gatekeeper. The actual promotion of progress is done by those to whom you license the patent. So the exclusive right to the discoveries of the inventors, secured for limited times, serves solely to create revenue, rather than application of the product, which would actually promote progress. That's a perfectly legal business, but everyone working there is servicing the patent itself, rather than the invention.

Hardly a refutation of my statement, "if all you want to do is come up with ideas, and pay some lawyers, without actually making anything useful, then software patents are exactly what you want". All company has done is come up with ideas, and paid some lawyers, without actually making anything. Of course you have several people who run the business, sell licenses, and otherwise administer the patent. But all that work is to limit the promotion of progress, as a means of charging for the amount of progress you allow.

I'd love to find a DIY version of this cable that connects a cell phone to Skype:

http://www.ipdrum.com/default.aspx?m=4

Such a cable would enable "free" cell phone calls as described here:

http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/pulpit20050623. html

This reminds me of this issue:

From Hubble Space Telescope pictures to the vocabulary used to describe the stars, astronomers and the media are coloring our universe, and they've been doing it for decades. While not intended to deceive, the efforts can range from the overly subjective to the absurd.

Slate explains that the raw images from space telescopes are colored with Photoshop before they are released to the public. The 'Pillars of Creation' shows the difference that color makes. You can download the free Photoshop plug-in to color your own images.

The skew in age distribution is becoming a significant problem in Japan, as many young people are avoiding having children in order to further their career or to just have fun. The abortion rate is also pretty high there. The problem is far worse than the baby boom in the U.S., and it's forecasted to get worse - if the birth rate of 1.3 children per woman continues, the population of Japan will be cut in half by the end of this century.

The problem in Japan, however, isn't anywhere near as bad as it is in parts of Africa where AIDS has decimated the adult population. In those areas, there are tons of children and lots of old people, but not nearly enough working-age adults to sustain the economy and care for the kids and elderly.

There was an interesting Nova episode called "World in the Balance" which aired several months ago in the US. You might not be able to catch another rerun for a while (check your listings, blah blah), but at least there's a transcript available here.

(darn it -- I got too itchy with the 'stumbit' button!)

Continuing with corrections:

[...] immigration is slower in Japan so there are fewer foreigners upsetting the averages.

Anyhow. There was some pretty interesting info about this on PBS the other day.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/worldbalance/

Wow that is a great idea! Some kind of content creation/distribution system that is funded by the public... we could call it the public broadcast system!

Wikipedia is wrong.

http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2001/florida.ballots/s tories/main.html

Then there's this one:

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/media/media_watch/jan- june01/recount_4-3.html

And just look at the article Wikipedia cites as proof Gore may have won under some circumstances:

http://www.consortiumnews.com/2001/112101a.html

Not exactly non-partisan journalism.

Mass Extinction Underway
The Sixth Extinction
The Holocene Extinction Event
The Current Mass Extinction

The earth, it appears, might be better off without us.

I believe the proper term is Osbourning a system.

Cringely just did a column on the Osbourne Effect and why its namesake got a bum rap. The relevant portion of Cringely's comments:

Adam Osborne was accused of pre-announcing the DOS version of his CP/M line -- in fact, he told reporters there wouldn't be a DOS version for at least a year because it was too expensive for his price-sensitive line. He announced the Executive -- the follow-on model to his successful first Osborne -- one month before delivery, and sales dropped in half for a couple of weeks while inventory cleared out. Then the Executive actually went on sale -- and sales dropped, from about 10,000 a month for the original model, to essentially zero for the new model.

The reason for the drop was that the Osborne Executive was not competitive with the Kaypro, a slapped-together rival priced at a couple hundred less ($1,795 instead of $1,995 for the Osborne 1), but it had a much larger screen -- 9 inches compared to O1's five inches.

The Executive came out, much better built, more manufacturable, but with a mere 7-inch screen. There was deep disappointment among Osborne fans. Worse, it was priced at $2,195 -- a two hundred dollar increase in a very price-sensitive end of the market! Four hundred dollars more than Kaypro for a brand name but a smaller screen? No thank you! Buyers walked away. Osborne sales dropped to fewer than a thousand a month for the next three months--which was enough to choke the high-flying company, which was forced to declare bankruptcy after a mere five months of this.

But the buyers just walked across the street to the Kaypro. Kaypro sales jumped to nearly 10,000 a month -- in other words, they captured all the disgusted Osborne buyers. Which proves the Osborne's disaster had nothing to do with, as legend has it, the "pre-announced DOS machine." The Kaypro was and remained for the next 18 months a CP/M machine.

So poor Adam Osborne is off the hook. Spread the word.

UN-FUCKING-LIKELY!

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/warr iors/

[...] and of course, we're helping developers build games that can take advantage of the huge power of the next generation of hardware, both Xbox 360 and Longhorn

Longhorn isn't next generation hardware. Longhorn will probably require next generation hardware to run well. Quote from I, Cringely, "For Intel to keep growing, people have to replace their PCs more often and Microsoft's bloatware strategy just isn't making that happen, especially if they keep delaying Longhorn."

You may not agree with Cringely's conspiracy theories but it's been fairly obvious that the Windows/Intel duopoly has long been a mechanism to drive unnecessary computer upgrades under the guise of "innovation". Looks like Chris Donahue agrees that we'll be seeing more of the same.

the biggest recipients of Oil Vouchers (which are, well, you know, VOUCHERS, not actual oil, or actual money) were US citizen and corporations.

Of course - the whole point of the oil-for-food system was to actually promote the continuing sale of Iraqi oil so that the proceeds to feed the Iraqi people, despite their glorious leader's bad habit of attacking neighboring countries or local ethnic minorities. Much of that business was done through US companies, just like it was done through companies all over the world (oil is used everywhere, don't you know). The issue is the personal receipt of those vouchers by people who used them in various forms of influence peddling. At least a couple of unscrupulous American oil traders used them for personal profit. I was referring to the receipt of them by officials (say, in France) who either themselves, or through their close associates, were able to loudly proclaim their commitment to using French security council veto power to block any UN sanction of force to remove Saddam. The Russians (another huge recipient, and shady dealer in the vouchers) pretty much said the same thing, only in even more absolute terms). Hell, both countries made regular press releases to that effect. It's one thing for people in the oil business, who trade oil every day, to buy oil vouchers from Iraq. It's quite another to receive them as "gifts" in the same period of time that you're saying Saddam should be left alone in his brutality.

"shooting at the UN-mandated no-fly-zone patrol aircraft every day" care to back that with a link? Can't find one? Yeah, thought so.

"Every day" as in "every day that they could re-assemble the anti-aircraft hardware that UK and US pilots continually destroyed when/wherever they could find it." Usually they found it by tracing the targeting radar signals and fire they were taking from it. On a first page of Google results, here is an example of a typical month or two of Iraqi AA facilities illuminating and/or shooting (once in range, if allowed by the pilots) at patroling aircraft. Or here, where a Washington Post correspondent mentions the hundreds of engagements that started to ramp up after 1998 when Saddam had started to rebuild is AA facilities (with, of course, oil-for-food money). Or here, where CNN mentions Iraq firing SA-2 missiles into Kuwaiti airspace trying to knock down observation planes over the southern no-fly zone. Or here, where pilots mention the hundreds of such encounters that started to increase after 1998. Or, articles like this
Soooo, which ethnic groups did saddam target during the "Oil for Food" program

I was referring more to the general subjugation of the Shia majority to the Sunni minority. Goes without saying that the Kurds got the shaft starting way back in the 1970s. Under the northern no-fly zone, though, which also precluded the movement of any Iraqi military hardware in that area, the Kurds actually built up substantially better lives (through trade with their northern neighbors) and were in a much better position to thrive when Saddam was completely taken out of the picture. Under the protection of the no-fly enforcement, the Kurds evolved an independent political entity that defined a de facto state including ministries, a parliament, central banking/currency, and a functional bureaucracy. Knowing they weren't getting attacked by Saddam any longer, they didn't bother waiting for his inevitable demise. The investment in that Kurdish infrastructure only came because of trust in the ongoing protection from the no-fly operations.

Then again, if you don't know what an exponential is, never mind.

cryro-protectants - sort of like antifreeze - that will prevent cells from this damage. I believe the idea is inspired by some species of fish and frogs will become almost entirely frozen during a winter and revive unharmed. Applications for the technology could include extended human space travel and all of the other sci-fi-sounding reasons for freezing people. (I fo

North American Wood Frog, for one.

freezes solid each winter.
See: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/sciencenow/3209/05.ht ml
for a 4 min video of the process.
the frog uses a sugar as a cryoprotectant, but still freezes solid.
(the sugar is biologically useful but not enough to depress the freezing point enough to keep him liquid, he is rock-hard).
My favorite are the carnivorous caterpillars that eat insects trapped on ice fields- they have low levels of ethylene glycol in their hemolymph.

I think this is a good idea. Cable companies are not like phone companies (aka DSL providers) in the U.S. The telephone companies were government imposed monopolies. They built their networks under the premise that they would have exclusive service rights for a long time. Because entry costs are so much higher than maintenance costs, they have little to fear from traditional startups since no one will waste the startup capital on laying phone lines.

Cable companies, on the other hand, built their networks in a competitive environment. Yes, there are things like local franchise agreements but the ones I've seen (Florida, mostly) aren't prohibitively expensive or exclusive. I have seen a lot of little, local cable providers that service just a subdivision or a few blocks.

The cable companies didn't have government imposed monopolies to assist them in getting going. If you don't like your options in cable, you can either get a satellite or start your own micro-cable company.

Since the biggest cost in delivering cable television and telephone services is the "last mile" -- running & servicing the cables -- this could provide a major boost to the wireless entrepeneur or small business. If the cable companies start jacking up internet access prices, a demand will be created for an alternative. Where a demand exists, a supply will be found.

But the last straw came a year ago when the pop-ups began plugging such household names as J.C. Penney Co. and Capital One Financial Corp., companies McMann expected to know better.

So this person expects Capital One, a company known for making the corniest commercials on TV, and a participant in the national scheme pushing limitless interest rates and exorbitant fees, to not engage in adware? I'd expect Capital One to be one of the FIRST and BIGGEST users of adware, popups, and direct marketing.

They put David Spade on our television screens two years longer than necessary; that alone is evil enough!

"I wont win any mod points for this but ya know bashing Wal-Mart is easy but the fact is that company is successful because they play by the rules of the game and they play really well."

That's debatable.*

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/walm art/

*If "playing by the rules" is the way our society should conduct ourselves? Then the YRO section should be disbanded. Because practically everyone mentioned is "playing by the rules".

Ironic, isn't it, that Eolas' WebRouser was cited as invalidating prior art for this patent by none other than Bob Cringely ?

From Newshour

Currently, there are 499,000 active duty Army troops, backed up by 700,000 National Guard and Army reservists.

From the article you quoted:

Pentagon officials say it's not a crisis

In April, the Army missed its recruiting goal . . . by nearly 2,800 recruits

2800 / 1,199,000 = 0.0023352793994995829858215179316097

For more info on the privatization of the army, see the frontline documentary:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/warr iors/

Jack Kilby is said to have invented the integrated circuit. This is not entirely correct for three reasons.

1) Jack Kilby simply jumpered wires around a semiconductor. At the same time and before at Fairchild, Bob Noyce produced a planar process that we use today. Subsequently, TI used Noyce's process, not Kilby's.

2) A lawyer at TI argued for years that Jack Kilby invented the IC. Fairchild was awarded the first patent for the IC, but eventually gave up. Since the lawyer won the case despite all of the evidence against Kilby, the Nobel committee should have included the lawyer in the Nobel prize. He is partly responsible for it.

3) If Intel (the eventual home of Noyce) were to claim that Noyce invented the IC, it would have given an expensive gift to Fairchild. Fairchild at one point could have sued Intel for all Noyce walked out with. It would create a mess. TI claimed all along that Kilby invented the IC. Corporate publicity won the day.

Another problem with using the Lancaster Amish as a control group is their relative lack of genetic diversity (due to the founder effect, combined with restrictive marriage practices). Remember, these are the folks who had to start having arranged marriages with Ohio Amish, in order to combat an increasing incidence of Dwarfism.

I've said it before and I've said it again. It saved lives.

Educate me.

Fix Wikipedia.

I won't say you're wrong. I will say that I can't be as certain as you are without knowing a lot of facts modern historians don't know the answers to. The fact is, I don't know the truth and I believe nobody ever will. I don't think the Japanese, Americans or Soviets knew everything that was going on. Nuclear war certainly wasn't on the table when Japan decided to make its move. How do you evaluate a risk like that when scientists haven't even proven it works?

It saved the lives of approximately One Million US Service Personnel, and it saved the lives of Millions of Japanese Civilians and Soliders

The bombings claimed 70,000+ lives in Nagasaki (they recently released the list of names) about 130,000 in Hiroshima, an additional 65,000 are estimated to have died from fallout. How many US lives would not dropping the bombs cost? Japanese lives? How many Soviet lives would it have cost, if they had finished up getting over China to Kyushu where, by modern theory, the Soviets would have accepted a conditional surrender of the Japanese, ending the war only two weeks after the atomic bombs were dropped? (57M/8 years /52 weeks in a year = 137,000 per week, 270,000 in 2 weeks and that's a severe overestimate because the Mediterranian and European theaters were over by then). Please cite some sources for killing 3 million people inside of two weeks.

How many generations does a life cost? The murdered children? The pregnant women? The women still yet to get pregnant? (Men are easy to count.) The bad will the US earned from the rest of the world by being the only nation to use atomic weapons in war?

Maybe the atomic bombs saved lives in the short term. Heck, maybe Japan would have been communist otherwise and the cold war would have not been so cold because someone would need to use the weapons in wartime to prove their effectiveness.

We're just guessing here. There are no clear cut answers. The fact of the matter is, the US had two reasons, one was saving US servicemen lives (accomplished) and two was saving Japan (and the rest of the world) from them falling to the communists (accomplished). The rest of it is retrospective optimism.

Next time you state that the atomic bombs saved lives -- without any room for question or flexibility, I'll meet you at the Peace Park in Nagasaki. We'll walk across the street together to the Atomic Bomb Museum. You just hold your head high knowing the US made the right decision. Watch how the Japanese react to your confidence. Cast aside everything inside as propaganda, because that's what it'll take not to put your American / European education into perspective.

So the only way to force an unconditional surrender was a rather raw display of power. The Bombs were a way of saying, "We don't need to use people to decimate you -- we can do it in a manner that you cannot possibly defend against. Now, will you give up?"

I agree with everything you just said. Now how many lives did it cost by dragging the war out an extra month by demanding an unconditional surrender, as suggested by then-Secretary of War Henry Stimson? (By the way, if we're going to discuss "intent to save lives", let's discuss the plan to nuke all the defenses on Kyushu before sending servicemen in to prevent another Normandy, shall we? At least

living in a small community of techno-geeks

Sounds more like a nightmare to me ;) .

hot tourists

To see the geek gehtto? XD

I guess I would go...if they promise me that tsunami would never reach the island.

Cringley predicts this (probably other did as well). Will be interesting to see the execution/format Google decides to pursue. Should pit them against Amazon and Ebay, huh?

Interview on timetravel and paradox

Your wrong :). The sonic boom is from the shockwave created when the aircraft is going faster than the speed of sound (> Mach 1). Think of the shockwave as a cone with the point at the nose of the aircraft. That cone expands outward like, well, a cone. Where that cone intersects the ground, that is a sonic boom. Here is a good description

I didn't read anything in the reports of Jobs's remarks that suggested he was claiming more than to have been sensitised to wider design issues by his calligraphy classes and being in a position, chief head kicker for the Mac development project, where he could force a brake through the conceptual bottlenecks which had long separated end user computing and elegance. (emphasis mine)

But while we're talking about "conceptual bottlenecks" to "elegance": power-of-position is clearly not the effective ingredient, or we might have seen more elegance displayed by the dark side. Jobs famously claimed Micro$oft lacks taste*. It is true that Jobs always displayed taste and even humanism (from a distance!) while amassing his billions; conversely Gates' cheap avarice and common-thug mentality were only sharpened. I see from Google that the comparison has been made many times.

the high cost of retooling developers' brains

generation after generation insisting such a revolution was also inevitable

needed Gore's political initiative to break through the final barriers to the commercial Web

----------

*In the same interview, Jobs refers to proportional fonts: "The only problem with Microsoft is they just have ... absolutely no taste, ... In the sense that they ... don't bring much culture into their product ... - well you know proportionally spaced fonts come from type setting and beautiful books, that's where one gets the idea - if it weren't for the Mac they would never have that in their products..." which is essentially the same claim he made at Stanford, but without saying "and the Mac wouldn't have had them if not for my calligraphy class".

http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/pulpit19980806. html
(after some paragraphs about iMac)

Good comment about culture.

I'm an American, and my impression is that, in general, Brazilians seem to have healthier family lives than Americans.

The person who wrote the grandparent comment said, "One town I was in the ratio of women to men was 8:1!" This is just a cultural misunderstanding. The single Brazilian women thought he was exotic, and they were interested in meeting him. Only that. In most towns, the most interesting things to do are social. It just seemed like there were more women in the town than men because the single women were more interested in meeting him. His popularity was connected to the interest that Brazilian women have in marrying.

I've read other comments to this Slashdot story, and I feel uncomfortable with the implication in some of them that the Brazilian culture is less developed. I feel uncomfortable with the idea that the Brazilian government is more corrupt than the U.S. government.

I write a column about culture, called "Duas Culturas", for a small Brazilian newspaper. The column compares Brazilian and U.S. culture. It's a new column and I will soon try to sell it to other newspapers, so most of the articles are not online. However, one of them is below, slightly modified for online reading.

Here is a translation to English of the first paragraph:

"My Brazilian friends talk a lot about corruption in the Brazilian government and violence in Brazilian society. The things that they say seem reasonable. However, the way that they speak frequently implies that corruption and violence are much worse in Brazil than in other countries. In truth, corruption and violence are very serious problems in the U.S., also."

Duas Culturas
Two Cultures

"Um americano compartilha pensamentos e opiniões sobre o Brasil e os EUA"

Meus amigos brasileiros falam bastante sobre corrupção no governo brasileiro e violência na sociedade brasileira. As coisas que eles dizem parecem razoáveis. Porém, o modo que eles falam freqüentemente insinua que corrupão e violência são muito piores no Brasil do que em outros países. Na verdade, corrupção e violência são problemas muito sérios nos Estados Unidos também.

Desde que o presidente George Bush foi eleito, o governo norte-americano tem pedido dinheiro emprestado a uma velocidade sem precedente. Os EUA devem hoje mais dinheiro do que qualquer outro governo na história do mundo. No momento, os EUA devem mais de US$ 7 trilhões. O dinheiro vai para os ricos; as pessoas da classe média ficam mais pobres. (Na internet: U.S. Debt Clock ). O empréstimo é a razão porque o valor do dólar está se desvalorizando rapidamente.

Há uma discussão sobre violência na sociedade e prisões brasileiras demonstrada no excelente filme brasileiro "Ônibus 174". Para comparação, se você sabe inglês e tem acesso à internet, você pode assistir um documentário norte-americano mostrado na televisão de lá, chamado The New Asylums . O documentário discute o fato de que o governo americano põe as pessoas mentalmente doentes em prisões. De todos os países no mundo, os EUA têm a porcentagem mais alta de seus cidadãos em prisões. Você pode comparar a superpopulação e tortura em prisões brasileiras com o tratamento extremamente agressivo em prisões norte-americanas. Houve também muitas histórias sobre o governo norte-americano torturando prisioneiros no Iraque e em Guantánamo, Cuba. Qual governo tortura mais? O governo dos EUA matou estimadas 3,000,000 de pessoas desde o fim da Segunda Guerra Mundial. Qual governo mata mais?

Dê sua opinião: Michael Jennings, Caixa Postal 122, Campos do Jordão, SP 12460-000. duasculturas AT gmail DOT com. ©2005. Duas Culturas e Two Cultures são marcas de serviço.

Apple and Intel Sitting on a Tree...

By Charles Jo
Senior Appleologist, CharlesJo.com
Rev. June 12, 2005 05:54PM PST

Forget Tom Cruz and his new and barely legal girlfriend. Or Brad Pitt and Lara Croft. The hottest couple of this summer is Apple and Intel. After years of bad-mouthing the Santa Clara-based Nelson of the chip sector, Jobs announced last week that Apple and Intel had been secretly dating for 5 years and now are comfortable enough about their relationship to announce to the world their commitment to each other. When asked about the future of the Cupertino-based computer company, Jobs said,"People want better user experience. So, with the hardware giant working on the [air quotes] exciting stuff, I would like to focus Apple's resources to the really really important stuff."
"The logo is our first priority. People love our Apple logo but I've got some neat ideas to take this to a new level that'll really make people go, 'Wow! Now that is a symbol that rappers would be proud to wear.' Watch out Mercedes. And come on, do you really want to be seen wearing a Dell logo? It's like you're advertising to the entire world that you eat at McDonalds and shop at Walmart." He then took a sip of bottled water, adjusted his Freudian spectacles, and continued,"Next on our list is the screensaver. Apple is at the top of the screensaver technology with the fades and zooms so why improve, you ask?" Before I could respond, he answered his own question with another question,"Why not? It's only a matter of time before the Windows folks and Linux folks copy me but by then, I'll have the next screensaver technology ready and BAM! I am on top again. Seriously, this is really important stuff to people. When you walk away from your workstation and your screensaver starts, you want your cubicle neighbors to turn green with envy and our R&D shows that Apple screensavers are excellent ways to increase social ranking in any corporation. Lastly, our commercials are going to so rock you. We are neck to neck with Sony and Budweiser right now and our future commercials will alter the way you view the universe." Jobs then leaned back and pushed a button on a remote control whereupon a giant white screen descended from the ceiling and in parallel, a podium rose from the floor. He insisted that this one-on-one interview continue with him standing at the podium.

____________________________
Related links:
http://stream.apple.akadns.net/
http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2005/jun/06intel.h tml
http://ptech.wsj.com/archive/ptech-20050609.html
http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/pulpit20050609. html
http://news.com.com/The+brains+behind+Apples+Roset ta+Transitive/2100-1016_3-5736190.html?tag=nefd.le de
http://www.slashnot.com/article.php3?story_id=532
http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/06/12/ 1450217&tid=118&tid=3
http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/06/06/ 1752234&tid=118&tid=179&tid=3
http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/06/12/ 130234&tid=179&tid=1

So Intel buys Apple and works with their OEMs to get products out in the market. The OEMs would love to be able to offer a higher margin product with better reliability than Microsoft. Intel/Apple enters the market just as Microsoft announces yet another delay in their next generation OS. By the way, the new Apple OS for the Intel Architecture has a compatibility mode with Windows (I'm just guessing on this one).

• Mactel developer decisions by Paul Murphy
• Going for Broke - Apple's Decision to Use Intel Processors Is Nothing Less Than an Attempt to Dethrone Microsoft. Really. by Robert X. Cringely

Several writers have suggested that a "polar shift" may occur in the near future. While I'm not a geophysicist myself, perhaps that is what we are seeing: a reverse in polarity of the north and south magnetic poles.

For what it's worth, I am a geophysicist...

If by "polar shift", you mean a magnetic reversal, then one will happen, sooner or later. The main field appears to be weaking slowly at the moment. On the other hand, the actual location of the magnetic pole is continually shifting.

Another poster gave a link to http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/magnetic/reversals.ht ml. If you look at some of the quicktime animations of a reversal in progress, you can see what happens to the field at the Earth's surface. The dominant feature of the current field is a dipole field - which is why the field can be nicely approximated to a bar magnet. As a reversal takes place, the dipole component of the field falls in strength, and quadrapole and then octopole features start to dominate - meaning there won't be an actual pair of poles.

The original poster said;

There's speculation that December's tsunami causing earthquake may have been one of the factors causing the pole to move more quickly than predicted.

This is mentioned in the original article. Although not impossible, I would tend to think it's pretty unlikely (but my speciality is seismology now, not geomagnetism). Big subduction zone earthquakes, which produce a significant vertical movement of mass, do affect the earth's moment of inertia. This leads to (small) changes in rotation speed and the orientation of the rotation pole. This is because the moment of inertia is dependant on the mass distribtion of the entire earth.

The magnetic field is produced in the liquid outer core. It's in constant motion. There's also a difference in the net rotation of the core relative to the rest of the earth, which causes a continual westward drift of the field. This means the poles are always moving. Ships have been measuring the declination between geographic and magnetic north for centuries - the movement of the magnetic pole isn't uniform.

Several writers have suggested that a "polar shift" may occur in the near future. While I'm not a geophysicist myself, perhaps that is what we are seeing: a reverse in polarity of the north and south magnetic poles.

It will happen in the close future. Actually, it'll flip-flop back and forth a few times before settling down in a reverse manner.

While it's doing that, we'll be exposed to quite a bit more radiation than usual since the magnetic field is what stops most of the nasty radiation.

This may explain quite a few questions about significant mutations and the fact that they often happen quite quickly.

I do have the feeling that the magnetic field has quite an effect on the brain (intelligence in particular...the brain relies on electricity and magnetism effects this) and that the lessening of the field (what happens before a reverse) may effecting us quite a bit now.

The magnetic field North-South was quite strong when recorded civilization did some incredible things that modern technology still hasn't completely puzzled out. The field is much more weak now than it was when they did those incredible things.

Oddly enough, even with the extremely large population we have, we don't have nearly as many (proportionally) 'out of the box' thinking people that existed in previous recorded history.

Here is a good link http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/magnetic/

BTW: I'm much more concerned with a polarity shift or no shielding at all than a random asteroid mucking up our planet.

• "very useful tool" with "copyright infringing video game"
• "exploit" with "virus"
• web server (implied) with "peer2peer network"

Here you go; this atack should be more meaningful.

If your contention were correct, Idi Amin would have lead Uganda to world domination while Margaret Thatcher tumbled the UK. Weren't the lessons of the 20th century to the contrary? Is it efficient for the Poliburo to have party members honeycombed through the whole economy, reporting every time someone neglects their duty? Would you take the Commissariat for Food over Wendy's? And doesn't hindsight (The Gipper v. Gorby) show whom to choose in a battle for military might? The Cathedral may work adequately for a campus in Redmond, but The Bazaar is the only realistic model to run a whole nation by.

There are two types of Mac fans:

The first is the more sincere user who is having a hard time figuring out what to think about the move.

The other says this was unquestionably a good move, and Jobs is, once again, steering the company right. (Forget the fact that these are the same people who defended PPC as vastly superior to x86 just a month ago.)

An example of the second type would be a guy I knew who at our company who has a habit of overstepping his bounds. He got really upset at us for buying Spruce DVD authoring systems because they were NT-based, and not going with Sonic, which was Mac-based. When Apple bought Spruce to make DVD Studio Pro 2, he told me, "You know, in retrospect Spruce was the way to go because Apple wouldn't purchase a dead-end company."

(This guy also told me regarding one of our vendors, "They're expensive, but they're coming along.")

As an example of the second type of Machead, here's a recent email thread I had with a recovering Mac zealot:

>>> This is an interesting theory that answers your random complaints...
>>>
>>> http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/pulpit20050609. html
>>>
>>> -b. smith
>> Thanks for the laugh.
>>
>> To cite a Slashdot post on the issue:
>> When a company with 30B USD market cap becomes a part of a company with 170B USD market cap it's called an acquisition, not a "merger."
>>
>> --j
>>
>>
>
> I think the guy went over the edge... but it was an interesting theory.
>
> Although, it seems like the vast majority of the Mac Community is supporting Jobs' move. Does this guy have too much power over our hearts and minds? You would say yes.
>
> -b. smith
>
>

Ah, my son. The moment you asked that question, you took your first step into a larger world.

This intel/Apple prediction is a continuation of his previous prediction:

3) Apple will take a big risk in 2005. This could be in the form of a major acquisition. With almost $6 billion in cash, Steve Jobs hinted to a group of employees not long ago that he might want to buy something big, though I am at a loss right now for what that might be. Or Apple might decide to throw some of that cash into the box along with new computers by deliberately losing some money on each unit in order to buy market share.

The division of labor is a good thing, but we're talking about something completely different here. The US built its industry based on high tariffs and high labor costs. The original EU was such a success because they implemented policies which aimed to slowly raise up poor EU countries' wages in combination with a slow lowering of the tariffs in wealthy EU countries.

Now the voters in two wealthy countries shot down the EU constitution. The opposition was overwhelmingly from the working classes. They're not stupid, they knew that constitution would force them to compete against Turks and other poor countries and their wages would go down the tubes along with the social benefits it took them decades to win.

I'd urge you to read some independent views on the subject of outsourcing. As I mentioned, Paul Craig Roberts writes extensively on the topic. Hell, even mainstream types like Lou Dobbs have begun to question the "free" trade gospel. Look at the type of jobs which are created now in the US -- they're overwhelmingly in low-paying service industries. Those service jobs do not generate anywhere near the amount of wealth as manufacturing jobs do; as the dollar plummets, those service jobs won't pay for our imported oil, let alone our other import demands.

On a consumer level, take a look at the PBS Frontline documentary "Is Wal-Mart Good for America?"; it's viewable freely online in Real video format.

When you see the part where Wal-Mart literally tells a mid-western hosiery company to shut down its US plants and move to China, ask yourself: Is that really good for America? Yes, we get cheaper socks. But hundreds of Americans get thrown out of good paying jobs and are tossed into the unemployment line.

With unfettered "free" trade, we're in a race to the bottom. American workers are literally forced to compete against the poorest workers in the world, workers who, in China's and many others' case, have no labor rights and work under appalling conditions.

Do you honestly think we can maintain our standard of living in such a situation? We're selling off and mortgaging our economic industrial power to produce things that we could easily produce here. We're in a race to the bottom forcing Americans to compete against the poorest laborers in the world. Who do you think is going to win that competition?

Disclaimer: Personally, I have no idea on how much faith to put in this particular prediction, either. I just keep my money in the S&P 500 and don't loose any sleep over the specifics./p