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Mr. Cringely seems to think that Microsoft will tank in its attempt to control the anti-spyware and anti-virus market. I am not quite sure what his arguments are because he doesn't offer any but he promises to write about this extensively in his next column.

Lots of them, here and here.

The 12% number is off, but the 25% number is correct. The US does have the largest prison population in the world, both as an absolute number and in percentage terms. More than China and Russia, and 5 to 8 times the rates of Canada and Western European countries. And a lot of people are there for nonviolent drug offenses, including this 25-year-old who's going to be in prison until age 81, with no chance of parole.

I wish this insanity would stop, although I don't hold out much hope at the rate things are going.

6) VoIP will continue to shatter the telephone industry with the arrival of WiFi phones, which might finally be the killer app for hotspots. Eventually, all the backbone suppliers will figure out that VoIP is their salvation and will either start their own VoIP companies or ally with big VoIP players.

Cringely [...] The sex symbol http://www.pbs.org/cringely/about/

I would consider waiting for this to happen I am reffering to the predicted release of a $249 Mac in 2005. Apparantly there's about a 73% chance of it actually happening.

- A preemtive for the pedants out there - I know he wrote PC!

In his own words

easy, read about him on his site.

This may be of interest to you.

Well, perhaps it's the right of the Spanish to prepare anti-terrorist contingencies

And Bill is a "master presenter"? I'll buy that. According to Robert Cringely, in his book Accidental Empires, Gates had an innate ability to steer around various major known and unknown bugs (the BSOD sort). Probably this was nothing supernatural, just his excellent instinct and experience with software, having done a fair bit of coding himself unlike Jobs. But apparently he's gotten a little out too far from the code nowadays.

Iraqi TV aired _nightly_ "music" videos praising Saddam like this one. The music sounds kind-of cool until you read the translation:

Our father, indeed, Saddam, is our father
With him at home there is no fear
Our father, the kind Saddam, is our father
With him at home there is no fear
He spread his love equally among all of us
Oudai, Qusai, are his soul, we are his heart
He spread his love equally among all of us
Oudai, Qusai, and there is a lot more room in his heart for all
Has the world ever seen anyone like our father?
Has the world ever seen anyone like our father?
When he sits with us he fills the home with light
Looking at all of us old and young
When he sits with us he fills the home with light-
Looking at all of us old and young
There words of love and poems become sweeter

(repeat)

Has the world ever seen anyone like our father?

(repeat)

Our father and we are proud to carry his name
He always fulfills his words to any of us

# Actual live castrations of Kurds.

# Two beheadings, with one featuring the executioners singing "Happy Birthday, Saddam" in Arabic as they carry out the grisly murder.

# A detainee whose hand is tied to a board while his fingers are cut off one by one.

# People being thrown off four-story buildings, including one who was forced to wear a Superman costume.

# A man scourged 99 times.

# Babies being gassed to death.

Although I'm not a big fan of spin, the current political climate makes renaming things with misleading names a necessity.

That's the way the game is played. You can thank Frank Luntz of "death tax" and "clear skies"/"healthy forests" fame for that. Trully a genius. A genius for evil, but still a genius.

It's sad when all of this liberal's politcal heros are whack job Republicans. They're just so much better at playing the game.

It seems kind of odd that this comes out as if it's recent news. Here is the link to a PBS transcript which details the findings of the gene which is mentioned in Wired.

Nicolai Tesla demonstrated electrical power could be sent wirelessly, so why bother with all the equipment? Hell, just piggyback broadband on wireless power transmission! No wires, no repeaters every km, no grid to break down -- just one huge global RF field for porn and p2p for all! I want to instantaneously download everything into my iMac from a bolt of lightning from the sky... yeah, now THAT'S the internet I want...

Too bad we'd all have to walk around with tinfoil caps.

Policies using international trade to improve the economies of the 50 poorest and least developed countries (LDCs) have not generated long-term reductions in poverty, the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) says in a new report. ... if current trends persist, the number of people living in extreme poverty will increase to 471 million by 2015 from 334 million people in 2000, it predicts.

As a faltering U.S. economy, skyrocketing housing prices and reduced government services force people from their homes, agencies are scrambling to find ways to provide shelter and assistance to a growing and changing homeless population.

Has anyone watched Tucker's PBS Show? Personally I don't see why people are hating on Tucker so bad. I get the impression that Novak actually believes the shit he spews, and that Tucker is spewing the shit for the purpose of debate, playing devil's advocate perhaps. In my opinion, the only time Crossfire was ever tolerable was when it was Begala vs. Carlson. Mostly because Begala is easier on the eyes than Carville.

Crossfire was pretty dumbass, but i found it interesting because it was a daily testing ground for the political operatives' spin of the day. If you've ever seen The War Room you'll see that this is how these guys actually act. The show never had any educational or informational value other than observing how political operatives think. Which to me is very interesting, especially in an election year. Plus, Crossfire and perhaps the McLaughlin Group are the only truly non-partisan politics shows. Both sides get equal time.

And I like Jon Stewart, but he's a comedian, not a journalist. Because of this he is able to protect what he says behind the guise of satire. Nothing he says on his show matters beyond humor, though obviously he is able influence his audience, and beyond.

I'm disappointed that Stewart chose to come out from behind the protective shield of satire only to attack some dumb TV show. Why does he not criticize the government without his tongue-in-cheek? I speculate that seriously criticizing officials without the protection of satire would open him up to counter criticsm and jeapordize his career. A 2-bit, non-partisan cable show, he can get away with that.

Cringley, in this article, http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/pulpit20041216. html, speculates that Microsoft will someday release an XBox3 that combines the PC, Media Center, and Gaming Console, freeing Microsoft from their current reliance on PC manufacturers.

Sadly, we won't be entirely rid of Tucker: even if he doesn't land the MSNBC job, he'll still have this.

Most of the waste products of nuclear reactors can themselves be used in nuclear reactors, but this sort of irrational fear of it being used in weapons is what causes it to become harmful waste instead of fuel.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/reac tion/

Not to mention that there is rampant child sex slavery in India.

The Indian outrage over this video is laughable given their society's acceptance/indifference to the kidnapping of children who are forced into a horrible existence of torture, prostitution, and AIDS.

(You need to see this film)
http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/daymygoddied/

And, I believe being done in Toronto by Starnix (along with a few other cool things). Remember this?:

"That's one PDA doing the job of two desktop PCs, a notebook PC, and three telephones."

I suspect using a trimode card with any PDA\Palm\laptop you could home brew your own version of this that could pick up GSM as well.

Still, pretty interesting...

Not exactly. The RedCross responds to ALL disasters and many more places where relief is needed. The only error was that many people expected their donations to go directly to 9/11 only.

In response the Red Cross changed their donation policies and guidelines to better reflect what actually happens with the money.

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/updates/redcross_06-05 -02.html
http://www.redcross.org/press/disaster/ds_pr/02060 5dsfunds.html

Basically now, if you give to the "Disaster Relief Fund" they use it wherever they see fit, and if you give to the "International Response Fund" if you want the funds to go exclusively to the tsunami relief efforts.

In addition they have all sorts of other areas you can "designate" such as Military efforts, Local chapters, Vaccination efforts, etc etc.

When it comes to charities - the Red Cross and Red Crescent(American and International) are about as real and helpful as you get. They help everyone everywhere.

While there there has been an International Tsunami Warning system in place since 1965, the affected countries were not part of that system and had no mechanism in place to allow for early warning.

NPR has a few good reports on the problem.

Cringely has a rather interesting solution that does not rely on governmental action, though with a serious flaw. It only relies on earthquake data, which isn't necessarily conclusive, nor the only cause of Tsunami's.

The problem with Einstein (if you can call it a problem) is that he *was* the most important physicist since Newton.

He stands completely unchallenged in the scope and quantity of contributions he's made to physics. He's the poster boy not because of the media, but because to this day the problems he couldn't solve are the problems we're still working on today, and no one single-handedly has so much changed the way we look at the universe (except for Newton).

At least for him, he _was_ "the opera singer super model brain surgeon sports star" of physics.

I've linked this article a lot (I think it's fascinating), but it specifically talks about physicists trying to "measure up" to other greats. But, trying to measure up against Einstein is a sort of dream:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/einstein/genius/

I Agree.

according to:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/einstein/genius/

"Einstein's work anchors the most shocking idea in twentieth century physics: we live in a quantum universe, one built out of tiny, discrete chunks of energy and matter."

"Before anyone else, Einstein recognizes the essential dualism in nature, the co-existence of particles and waves at the level of quanta. In 1911 he declares resolving the quantum issue to be the central problem of physics."

He disliked the theory, he didn't disbelieve it -- it was his search for a more fundamental theory that led him to the ground work that string theory is based on. Basically, unless someone can prove that string theories are wrong (or that there will never be a grand unified theory), you can't really say Einstein was "wrong" about quantum mechanics. For him to be wrong, QM would have to be the final and most fundamental explanation of our universe -- he felt there was more underneath that could explain QM (like the grand unified theory). AFAIK that's still the "cutting edge" physicists are working on still today.

Fascinating article, btw. Apparently, the questions he couldn't answer still define to this day the cutting edge of physics. That, and the fact that no other physicist has had as long a ride in the cutting edge is why Einstein is remembered as the greatest physicist since Newton.

They also have the video programs on PBS, for free viewing. :)

On October 13, 1983, Reagan was made aware of possible trouble in Grenada. Deputy Prime Minister Bernard Coard, a Communist hard-liner backed by the Grenadian Army, had deposed Prime Minister Maurice Bishop and established military rule. Six days later, Bishop was murdered.

Reagan was most concerned by the presence of Cuban construction workers and military personnel building a 10,000-foot airstrip on Grenada.

Also weighing on Reagan was the security of the 800 American medical students enrolled at St. George's School of Medicine in the former British commonwealth. After the coup, there was violence and anarchy, and with martial law and a shoot-on-sight curfew in effect in Grenada, Reagan was joined by many of his advisers, as well as much of the American public, in believing that the rescue of the American students was justification for an invasion.

Grenada had been something of a pet project for Reagan since his visit to Barbados in 1982, where Caribbean leaders echoed Reagan's own fear: that Grenada, with its socialist government and proximity to Cuba, could become a Communist beachhead in the Caribbean.

>> What's wrong with Interstates?

Hearing people make comments like this always reminds me of Robert Moses and the proposed Lower Manhattan Expressway and the Cross-Bronx Expressway.

Most people don't stop to think about the destruction that occurs when building a highway. Indeed interstates are necessary, but they are often planned with little concern for historic preservation or the neighborhoods that they devastate.

Think for a moment if Robert Moses would have been successful in building the Lower Manhattan Expressway. Imagine a NYC with no Greenwich Village, Soho, or Chinatown as we know it today.

Granted we are talking about Texas :-) but I have to wonder what historically significant neighborhoods will be bulldozed to make this interstate happen.

What many people don't know is that Sun actually did this a while back. I have an ATX rack-mount server with a Sun AXi motherboard in it, and it acts exactly like a Sun machine -- because it is a Sun machine. I'd love to see Apple do this.

And by golly it pulled Sun out of the hole!

Really, at this point, is Sun a good example for anything anymore? I love Sun. I learned UNIX on Sparq pizza boxes. Solaris has a warm place in my heart. But come on, they've been on a downward spiral for years, and there's no signs to suggest that they're ever going to be able to pull themselves back together.

Apple may not be doing everything right, but their track record over the past few years is starkly different from Sun's. I think they're catching on to what examples not to follow in...

I suggest you watching "Triumph of Nerds - History of Personal Computers", a good history of the birth of computers and softwares. I suppose it was broadcasted some years ago in the US, but u can find it in DVD or visit the site that has a complete transcript of the show

One argument (WM pushes manufacturers to move factories overseas):
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/walm art/view/
(It's not that manufacturers aren't efficient enough; it's that they can't compete with foreign manufactures and suppliers. A textile company moving overseas from the U.S. couldn't compete by staying even if it did not pay wages.)

Another argument is that many manufacturers selling to WM must sell so many low-end materials that they eventually stop producing high-end goods.

Following these arguments, if manufacturers had more power, the consumer would keep traditional manufacturing jobs, and have available, at lower prices, mid- and high-end goods.

you are not far from the truth, according to "String Theory" there could be as many as 11 dimentions. check out this series of videos sponcered by PBS (quicktime or RealPlayer required)

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/elegant/program.html

Spelling aside, the grandparent is correct in reporting NOVA.
see:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/transcripts/3111_orig ins.html (pbs.org)

It says: "Without Earth's liquid iron core, life would be in trouble. This swirling ball of molten iron is what generates the magnetic field around our planet. And we need that magnetic field because every day a deadly stream of electrically charged particles bombards the Earth.

Ejected by the sun in monstrous solar flares, these particles hurtle through space at about a million miles an hour, forming what is known as the solar wind. Some think that if the solar wind ever reached our planet, it would strip away the atmosphere. But Earth's magnetic field creates a protective shield that deflects these deadly particles."

So maybe NEIL deGRASSE TYSON is wrong.

I agree that it's unlikely any administration would go after them, given that (in modern times) an honest politician is one who stays bought. (Before anyone takes umbrage, read over this: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/president/ .)

But the current administration is beyond merely not going after criminals: they reward failure and incompetence. The original poster's remark that they'd give Darl an award is exactly on point.

But most depressingly, given how the last election went, I think the population of the USA would support giving Darl an award. In sum, I think the majority of the population no longer cares about results, and no longer cares to hold accountable people who screw up. My sense is that Darwinian principles are due to kick in any time now.

It is JUST these kinds of people that systems like Tor are designed to protect

Tell that to the tens of thousands of Chinese dissidents using freenet to communicate and spread their word of democracy and religion.

Tell that to the reporter who was sentenced to six months of jail time for not caving in to the judge's order to reveal his source for a "secret" tape depicting wanton corruption within the government.

Tell that to whistleblowers across the country who either lose their jobs or have their lives made miserable when they reveal the soulless corporations who run our country (and the soulless executives who run them) for the criminals that they are.

But hey, we have to think of the children, even as they grow up in a world thats increasingly going to Hell. I guess its ok for you until the pedos run a giant energy company and hand out millions to make sure the police overlook their little trips to the local school. What are you going to do then?

Robert X Cringley posted this article earlier in the summer describing a system that offers high quality video on demand over narrowband connections. I'm a little sceptical about the codec he describes - I'll believe it when I see it - but interesting, nevertheless. Anyone have any first hand experience with this?

... breaking into the entertainment industry is unbelieveably hard without having a solid DRM solution...

Which is why I think the 'TV will save the telcos' idea is bogus. These people are hyping the idea to each other, to help convince themselves it is a good idea, but its rather like re-arranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.

Internet usage is up, TV viewership is down, and the interactive nature of the internet makes that a trend in one direction only - doom for broadcasting.

A quote in the FA says: "There's one application knocking on the door and consumers are truly hungering for it: real-time TV and streaming TV,"

I strongly disagree. I own two Replay TV's and really quite dislike real-time TV. That the satellite and cable providers are doing a push to lease PVRs to us end-users is not lost on me.

I do see narrowcasting as a niche that will survive; but, with multiple delivery systems, the profit margin is going to be extremely thin. Add to that the expense of a DRM system (primarily in pissed off customers who cancel service because of it), and the whole thing seems a house of cards.

Bob Cringely points out that WiMax will probably eat the telco's lunch. I think he is right, and this is just a desperate clutching at straws in hopes they don't drown quickly.

Thanks for the link! Here it is linkified: How Independent is the FDA? Karma whoring, of course! :-)

Origins, by definition, cross the boundaries of what is testable within this framework of knowledge.

As a result, something apparently supernatural (more than natural, or outside the understood bounds of nature) occurred to establish the universe as we know it.

1. MacroEvolution (change from one type to another - as opposed to adaptation - variation within kind) requires that things move from less ordered to more ordered without something to put them in order. This seems to run contrary to the principle encapsulated within the 2nd law of thermodynamics - that things tend to move from order to disorder. If evolution is true, life moves opposite the natural tendency of the universe.

2. Irreduceable complexity - How can complex biological structures have been developed when individual components would not have been beneficial? Even if a human-type eye developed, it would have had to develop at the same time that the optic nerve and brain components that receive and interpret those signals. It seems unlikely to me.

3. Occam's razor tells me that if I find a watch on the beach, the most likely explanation is that there was a designer, manufacturer, and some cause for the manufactured item to be transported to that location, rather than the parts appearing by chance, and they fell into the correct order by chance.

4. The cambrian explosion shows a huge number of distinct species all at the same time - and no clear transitions

I think above user is referring to:

Front Line: Is Wal-mart Good for America?
Fast Company: The Wal-mart You Don't Know
NY Times: Ideas & Trends: Discount Nation; Is Wal-Mart Good for America?

Robert X. Cringley has an interesting theory on IBM's recent PC sell-off here and here.

It's convoluted and mad enough to be the truth...

Robert X. Cringley has an interesting theory on IBM's recent PC sell-off here and here.

It's convoluted and mad enough to be the truth...

Actully, according to This Article the porn industry brings in between 4 and 10 billion. I heard on the news the other day a figure of 9 billion, which they said we more then the big 3 networks combined

-d

Stealing CC numbers is a bad thing and needs to be punished but let's face it, in the US we have a criminal injustice system that favors rich, white people who steal large amounts of money and have access to lots of lawyers. Everyone else gets caught up in the great meat grinder of "justice".

Check out: frontline: the plea

Sorry, I think we can go at this forever, but in parting comments:

1. You said: "Uh if taking sides with the opposition to President Bush as all-pervasive as that is then fine, yea i take sides.". Opposition to President Bush can't be as 'all-pervasive' as you imply, if he was fairly elected. Your grammer is a little funny so I'm hopeful I'm interpreting your sentence incorrectly. I live in Massachusetts (a stone's throw from Kerry's house, actually). *Everyone* around me is a democrat. Most races in the state are uncontested. Most spending proposals are unquestioned (like the "Big Dig"). But I'm not foolish enough to think it's like that in the entire country. Clearly it's not. But most democrats have this unshakeable conviction that everyone thinks like them. Most think the only way Bush got elected was through fraud. Most think people who voted for Bush must be "dumb hicks". They'll think anything to avoid the uncomfortable reality that their viewpoint is not universally accepted by all thinking beings, great and small.

2. You said: "What you do is have someone independent of the group verify the evidence, like say the IAEA". Was that meant to be a joke? I can't imagine you picking a worse example that the IAEA. In case you didn't know, the IAEA is a branch of the United Nations. And the UN, it is now publicly known, had a "horse in the race" when they opined on WMDs. By a "horse in the race", I mean that the UN leadership (namely, Kofi Annan and his son) had deliberately corrupted the "Oil for Food" program. "There's no dispute that Saddam Hussein perpetrated a massive fraud on the Oil-for-Food Program, stole billions of dollars, used it to fund terrorism, rearm himself and to bribe high-ranking individuals connected to member states and Kofi Annan was the guy at the center. He was the boss at that point in time." So should we rely on the word of the UN to say whether Iraq should be invaded, and have the whole "Oil for Food" scheme disrupted? (You should have picked a better example than any UN-related agency, as the "Oil for Food" corruption problem puts any recommendations made by the UN about Iraq over the past several years on highly questionable footing. And the fact that WMDs were, in fact, not found doesn't make the UN's position or reputation any more respectable)

3. You said: "You dont have to verify to _my_ satisfaction, you verify to the standards satisfaction". You're dodging the question. I'd like to formally request what the standards are. They do exist, right? Don't you agree that there are situations that should lead us to war? Is this Kerry's "global test" redux? And how do these standards avoid the risk of my #2 point (UN corruption) above? Millions of people died this summer while the UN pussy-footed around trying to decide if they should get involved. What if those millions were American? Would you still be all for the UN? Or are they just Africans, an inconsequential and unimportant example of global governance gone bureaucratic? I don't blame you for dodging the question. I'd try to dodge it if I was in your situation, too.

I feel very sorry you think the way you do, many people are dying because of it. As soon as you realize an effective global governance and "war standards" organization does not exist, you're on your way to grasping -- and articulating -- the scope of the problems and available solutions to issues involving the use of international force.

How about now. Product placements in movies have been on the rise over the past few years. If you've been to see National Treasure, then you know what I'm talking about. Good lord that had a lot of placement in it.

If you want to see one of the best documentaries I've seen about advertising, check this out. It includes the latest methods advertisers are conjuring up to get around the public's methods of blocking advertising in television (i.e. Tivo) and movies.

PBS' Router Workshop

Father and son team, as I remember that they don't have a lathe. The spend most of the time on using their router as well. I only seemed to catch it late at night, so it was probably after a night of drinking that I watched. So I'm not even sure if they are still on.

I believe that one of thier sponsors was porter cable (or dewalt). A little on the high end, but you can always get the black and decker version as well. Plus, I forget who owns who in the consumer tools market.

Still looked like something I could try and fuck up.

Yeah, because credit card companies are completely above board and treat their customers with complete integrity.

Agree with heroic Hertzfeld (more info in Programmers at Work ). I'd add Warnock and also strongly endorse Wolfram (whose invincible iconoclasm is admirable). And PARC should be better represented, I'd cite Adele Goldberg for the under-appreciated Smalltalk-80. At least she gets to contribute to Cringely's Triumph of the Nerds.

Where are Dijkstra and Wirth (who did far more than most people realise - Wirth essentially created a European "Sun Microsystems" at ETH)? Remove the "+10:American" bias - but Knuth should probably be mentioned at least twice. :)