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Dude, come on. The platypus is a dead giveaway.

My theory may be completely off-the-mark, but just following the threads of Apple's recent products, I'm lead to consider this sort of possibility.

One of Apple's strongest selling lines has been their notebooks. Considering that some people actually buy notebooks as desktop replacements, you may not be completely off-the-mark. A desktop iMac with a small footprint and a dockable tablet that links wirelessly would fit this market well, working as a desktop, yet providing portability. It would fit the same niche market for people that use notebooks around the home, while alleviating the problem of dealing with plugging and unplugging cables. Steve Jobs did seem to give a clue that Apple may be working on some kind of wireless product- here's a quote from AppleInsider...

When Jobs was demonstrating the new Airport Express, Walt Mossberg said that the biggest problem he saw was that users had to get up and walk to their computers to change play lists. Jobs joked that walking was good, but when pressed, he smiled a wry smile. AppleInsider correspondents took this to mean that Apple is developing in this area, and the Airport Express is just a step along the way.

It seems to me that anything to deal with anti-trust and Microsoft is just a calculated facade designed to maintain the status quo.

Bob Cringely wrote an interesting article (covered in Slashdot)explaining the economics of these anti-trust suits and how Micro$oft actually benefits.

And since these companies don't pay taxes or get tax breaks from Republicans, these suits are a sort of different way for the people in Washinton to get paid. Except this time, the trial lawyers get paid too!

So, the lawyer$ sue Micro$oft so that they can take a huge cut of the money they are going to hand over to the politician$. With class-action lawsuits, they have private lawyers (read expensive lawyers) representing individual claimants, most of whom don't care if they ever get the $20 rebate good toward more Microsoft products (because that's probably all they'll get.) This is a calculated public payoff to those in power (lawyers and politicians) by Microsoft to maintain they're monopoly.

Government: Freeze Microsoft!
Microsoft: What do you want? We're busy screwing the marketplace and raping consumers!
Government: This is a shakedown! Give us what we want and we'll let you go about your business.
Microsoft: Here take it! Now get it out here!

So, why doesn't Microsoft just roll over that easy? Cause they're just trying to talk down the car dealer. It's the same reason parents shouldn't get their kids everything they want, because then they'll just become spoiled and want more and more. They guys just fight over how much to they agree to be extorted for, throw in some free software for schools and libraries (cause that's a good campaign story) allowing the violator of the law to further entrench himself on his gang-land turf.

If enough people bug their senators and representatives they'll be forced to take some kind of action lest they be concerned with losing a re-election bid

How does the opinion of a few thousand computer enthusiasts affect a re-election bid when the voting demographic is overwhelmingly influenced by what they see and hear on television? Let's have a look at our democracy. According to here and here voter turnout for Presidential elections can be as high as 70% but, in the midterm elections, can be as low as 35%. Of those polled who didn't cast a ballot, one in five said they were too busy. In a midterm election that's 12% of the theoretical votes--clearly enough to sway the decision. In our last presidential election, one in five of thirty percent is still 6%--an enormous number compared to the margin that Bush used to assume victory. It doesn't take a conspiracy theory to note that when the yearly tax burden is heavier the advantage will clearly be given to candidates who support platforms which will further benefit already wealthy voters. The wealthy classes win on both sides: first, they're closer to the government trough from which those tax dollars get disbursed and second, the elected candidates are going to hold their interests as more important than the interests of working class America.

This is part of why they can't bust someone for drug paraphernelia unless they have actual drugs on them,

I know several people who've been taken into custody. To be honest they were only given a ticket--$180 for a pack of papers, in one case, because he didn't have any tobacco to prove they weren't for marijuana. Does that count as "busted"? The public defender recommended a plea of "no contest" and the individual couldn't afford private legal counsel.

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In the mean time Robert X Cringley thinks that they should turn the old lines into video streaming conduits for on-demand programming.

Seems like a good idea, but there is no way the telcos could sit down and think of doing that. They just aren't that innovative. Otherwise, they'd have been on VoIP awhile ago.

this has been on the public radar (PBS: Frontline: Cyberwar) for a while now

Often forming ridiculous juxtaposition:
Zoning: Amerika's communism spotted outside a junkyard in the 80's
Integration = communism signs held by white segregationists in Hoxie: The First Stand

It's a basic tenet of [marketing|propaganda] to short-circuit thought and draw associations.
it.slashdot.org is color terrorism

There are stretches of border and coast guarded by nothing but empty space.

No, there are not. Why would you think that there are? Do you think that the people in charge of HomeSec are idiots? Or are you the idiot? Which is more likely?

The gamma radiation can be shielded as well with a few inches of the proper materials

Wrong. A "few inches" of lead will stop a sizable fraction of gamma radiation, but in order to stop enough of it to avoid detection, we're talking about tons upon tons of lead, or even more concrete. Definitely possible, but a bomb thus shielded would be impossible to transport.

I'd call 1 kiloton a "tiny" nuclear blast. Small would be, say, 20 kiloton.

Thing is, though, that a 20-kiloton bomb would be the size of a Volkswagen. Shielded to avoid detection, it would be the size of a shipping container, but it would weigh as much as a jumbo jet. It's just not possible to get something like that across our border. And if the weapon were unshielded, it'd be impossible to get it across the border undetected. And if the core were removed somehow so the bomb could be assembled here, it would be impossible to get the core across the boarder undetected. It just can't happen. We're defended in ways that you, evidently, can't even imagine.

Since when is "jihadism" a completely uniform phenomenon with one black and white founding philosophy?

Since 1996. But beyond that, you're either sadly ignorant of or completely ignoring Islam itself. Islam is not a messianic or an apocalyptic religion.

There are, by any account, many Muslim terrorists who evoke Islam's eschatology to justify "suicidal martyrdom," whatever the hell that is. How exactly is that rejection of eschatology?

Okay, at this point it's obvious that you are using words without understanding what they mean. This is par for the course for Slashdot, but I don't think that's a very good excuse.

Martyrdom means sacrificing one's own life for a greater cause to ensure entry into Paradise. Eschatology is a system of beliefs regarding the end of the world. Messianic and/or apocalyptic cults (there's some overlap, but they can also be distinct) carry out acts of terror (Aum Shinrikio) or mass suicide (Heaven's Gate) with the belief that doing so will trigger the coming of a messiah or the end of the world.

Jihadists are not messianic or apocalyptic.

You are a fucking idiot. I really wish you, like all the other spout-offs here, would just shut the hell up about a subject about which you know nothing at all.

Enron and Kenneth Lay each donated $100,000 to incoming President Bush's inaugural committee fund, early in 2001. The incoming president invited Mr Lay to become and advisor to his transition team.

Mr Lay and other Enron directors met Mr Cheney and others three times in the first half of the year, the last meeting a month before he published his conclusions on 17 May 2001.

Sept. 10, 2000: Enron Chairman Kenneth Lay contributes more than $290,000 to George W. Bush's election campaign.

The amygdala has also been linked to preceptions of "cosmic-connectedness," for want of a better word, or better yet the deep belief of existance of God Nova: 'Secrets of the Mind' and so therefore one would expect the more religious to be Democrats not Republicans.

Funny that you mention brain-envy. I consider myself somewhat literate in physics (engineer by training however), but until I came across this article in the PBS website, I never really appreciated Einstein (and knew him mostly just for the special theory of relativity).

I love this quote at the bottom:


The problems he could not solve remain the ones that define the cutting edge, the most tantalizing and compelling.


You want to make a name for yourself in physics? Einstein is the one to beat.

oppression in America

Here in the US we've forgotten our history so we're not as geographically sensitive as other countries are these days (Kashmir, Israel/Palestine, Taiwan, N/SKorea).

We Americans got whupped for trying to extend revolutionary freedom too far to the North in the 18th century, and didn't get our way in the 19th century with that memorable slogan

"Fifty-four forty or fight!"

This Eurekalert article discusses a new technique using chemical messengers to lead nerve growth toward a specific site. While originally intended for spinal regrowth after severe trauma, it (and the many other research projects online the same line) would appear relevant to this artificial vision project. They're trying to save the optical nerve so they can stimulate from the eye to the brain. If they could regrow nerve tissue care in surgical placement of the implant during eye surgery might be of less concern.

Also, PBS has a series Innovation - Life, inspired where one of the episodes discusses another artificial vision procedure consisting of a direct ocular brain implant currently in human trials. The program follows a patient who has the surgical procedure done and then her recuperation and initial testing of the implant. Most interesting. They also show another group who is trying a different kind of brain implant, but who haven't yet made it to human trials.

Between nerve / brain cell regrowth and implant research ongoing we will likely see amazing cures for formerly untreatable injuries and illnesses within our lifetimes. It's pretty amazing to see the beginnings of Bionic Man type stuff actually happen in my lifetime. --M

But what about

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

It's free (as in beer and speech*) programming; there's not much excuse for failing to avail yourself of it.


_____
* Yes, I'm oversimplifying.

Obviously noone at the Fed watched CYBERWAR! on PBS, if they think going over the internet is a good idea.

That's platypus feet for the Aussies, thank you very much! That way, they'll have a spur to ward off any opposition...

Fine, how about his - the director of the CIA was George Tenet, a Clinton appointee. He was definitely not a GWB loyalist or anything like that. So do you really see Bush walking up to this guy and pressuring him to do *anything* that could come back to haunt him?

You should do a little research on Mr Tenet before assuming that he is a Democratic party water-boy. He worked for the late Senator John Heinz -- a republican -- until 1985 when he became staff director for the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, under the wing of Senator Boren (democrat, but big-time connected to the CIA - the CIA that George Bush Sr. had been director of).

The point is that he has ample reason to be friendly to Bush - after all, if he were loyal to the democrats you can bet Bush would not have left him in such a senior position in the first place -- he's as much a Bush appointee as he is a Clinton appointee.

But to make that work, you also have to believe it of Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, and Powell. Not one of them has ever been accused of being stupid,

Well, they sure have now. The first two were probably just blinded by a false world-view (not so uncommon among the rich and isolated). Rice, I haven't thought about too much, she may just not have a big enough swinging dick to win the internal debate, or she may have enough financial interest in the outcome not care -- when Chevron names an oil tanker after you, that means you're pretty well hooked up. I suspect that Powell was convinced that he was going to lose the internal debate about the invasion and so decided to cut his losses and support the hawks, probably in exchange for concessions like more involvement of the state department in the post-war, rebuilding and relations stuff, the kind of thing that the state department is good at. If so, he got suckered on that one, because Rumsfeld certainly tried to pull as much state-department category work into the pentagon as could, and of course fucked it up in the process since that's not what the pentagon knows how to do. Powell probably ended up throwing away any future he might have had as en elected politician by doing that. For what it's worth, I bet that if Bush gets re-elected, Powell will resign before the end of March 2005. He'll stick out the current term to avoid hurting Bush at the polls because he's the type to be loyal to his boss, even if he's not happy about it.

Even assuming that everyone listed above is pure evil, do you really believe any of them is stupid enought to have lied without a plan to make the lie come true?

So, at what point does self-delusional arrogance begin to qualify as evil?

Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and Perle were clearly just looking for any excuse to invade Iraq, since it had been on their agenda for many years already as their 1998 Letter to Clinton illustrates. They were so deluded with the righteousness of their cause that they, "found it hard to conceive that it would be harder to occupy Iraq than it had been to conquer it." That despite some serious disagreement from the Army - so serious that General Shinseki, the number one guy at the army, end up "retiring" not too long afterwards.

My condolences to all those close to the tragic accident.

I have no doubt that research into solar-based vehicles will fulfill an important niche in the future.

However, for mass market vehicles, the wave of the future is hydrogen. Alan Alda on "Scientific American Frontiers" on PBS recently hosted a fascinating episode in which he visited various automobile manufacturers around the world to see what their plans were. Some were quite startling, including a revolutionary "skateboard" chassis from the Ford Motor Company that runs entirely on electronics, rather than, say, hydraulics. This is old hat to some, but I'd never seen it before.

The remaining stumbling blocks seem to be:

1) Storing enough hydrogen fuel in one car tank for a 300-mile ride without refueling.
2) Making the hydrogen safe to transport. As discussed on the show, nickel-metal hydrides can store hydrogen in a solid state form, albeit at cold temperatures.
3) Making the hydrogen safe to distribute at the pump.

As shown on the show, Iceland is one country that has the political will-power to go completely hydrogen, but they aren't there yet. So it is not merely will-power, but technology.

Even if you're not in the United States, you can see the show for free at http://www.pbs.org/saf/1403/video/watchonline.htm (no gimmicks, but you do need a broadband connection), courtesy of PBS (which relies on monetary donations from viewers like you).

In the future, that fancy SUV is going to be running on hydrogen, and it won't make a bit of difference to the owner. But a smog-filled freeway is going to be a distant memory.

As but one example (having to do with landmark litigation in the history of radio, as it turns out), Justice Benjamin Cardozo -- one of the most respected legal minds of the early 20th century -- blundered badly in writing the majority opinion in the suit between Armstrong and De Forest in 1934. Read Tom Lewis' excellent Empire of the Air, or see Ken Burns' documentary, to see the overwhelming disdain with which the engineering community at large viewed the Court's decision (most believed it to be factually wrong, and wrote the Court and the papers saying so).

So, yeah, when it comes to technology, SCOTUS can be a bunch of irrational fanboys.

-HJ

About 3 years ago, Bob Cringely wrote in his PBS.org column about Microsoft purposely putting Windows in peril by making a number of changes to the TCP/IP stack. The goal? According to Cringely, Microsoft wants to offer it's own 'secure' version of TCP/IP.

An excerpt:

Now to the other approach, the one some people attribute to Microsoft. I am not making this up. The story came to me from people I have come to trust, and I have looked into it closely enough to think it might have some validity. But for the sake of keeping lawyers off my back, let's just call it a rumor, and only use it as a basis for discussion. To be perfectly clear, I am not claiming that the following is true--just that I have heard it from more than one source,and think it accurately characterizes some past behaviors of Microsoft. Perhaps by bringing it into the light, we can insure that Redmond takes a more thoughtful course. I certainly hope it is wrong.

Programmers who ought to be familiar with Microsoft's plans have suggested that the real motive for raw socket support is for Microsoft to use Windows XP to exploit a bad situation, to deliberately make things worse.

According to these programmers, Microsoft wants to replace TCP/IP with a proprietary protocol--a protocol owned by Microsoft--that it will tout as being more secure. Actually, the new protocol would likely be TCP/IP with some of the reserved fields used as pointers to proprietary extensions, quite similar to Vines IP, if you remember that product from Banyan Systems. I'll call it TCP/MS.

How do you push for the acceptance of a new protocol? First, make the old one unworkable by placing millions of exploitable TCP/IP stacks out on the Net, ready-to-use by any teenage sociopath. When the Net slows or crashes, the blame would not be assigned to Microsoft. Then ship the new protocol with every new copy of Windows, and install it with every Windows Update over the Internet. Zero to 100 million copies could happen in less than a year, and that year could be prior to the new protocol even being announced. It could be shipping right now.

Suppose you are a typical firm that also has some non-Microsoft servers. You will want to use this new protocol between your Microsoft and non-Microsoft servers. Microsoft could charge Sun millions to put TCP/MS on their systems. Microsoft can promise open support, but make it financially impractical. Then use it in a marketing attack against competitors. Zero-Footprint network drivers, ODBC, and MAPI are examples of Microsoft "open" standards that took years for non-Microsoft firms to use. Almost anyone who would have wanted to use these open standards has been driven out of business.

The full article can be found here.

I leave you to discuss this amongst yourselves.

How about his "I told you so"?

Cringely

The references I gave talk more about the general GUI concept as popularized by the Mac, but we can talk about icons specifically. First, what do we mean my icon? For this post, when I refer to an icon, I'm talking about a graphical representation of an object (file, text, etc) that can be maneuvered and manipulated using the mouse. I seem to remember reading somewhere that Xerox used icons to represent "actions" rather than "objects" (kinda like a toolbar). Unfortunately, I can't find the reference right now.

This source claims that " the Apple work extended PARC's considerably, adding windows that can be overlapped, manipulable icons and..." This source quotes an unnamed Lisa developer: "[the Xerox Star] didn't use icons at all..."

Now that's not to say the Xerox didn't come up with, and develop, the idea on their own - I'm just supplying evidence to counter the convential wisdom that Apple got all of their GUI ideas from PARC. I believe that Raskin, Tessler, and a lot of the PARC/Apple GUI people knew each other before the formation of PARC and Apple, and it was likely that they were all working off concepts they had researched in the 60's and early 70's. (of course that doesn't mean Apple didn't think they were stealing ideas - supposedly Mac programmers spent lots of time working on overlapping/self-repairing windows because they thought they saw that at PARC, but it turns out they didn't:)

But you have to look at the context of the trip: the GUI was new to Jobs, but not to Raskin. Raskin convinced Jobs to go on the trip, not to "discover" the GUI, but because Jobs kept trying to kill the Mac project, and Raskin wanted him to see an implementation of a GUI so he could see for himself that it wasn't a waste of time.

You also have to look at the context of the interview: Jobs was cementing his status as "Father of the Macintosh." Raskin had a few comments on the interview (Search for "Raskin" and then scroll up a little bit), and later Cringley acknowledged Raskin's contributions.

Go read Michael S. Malone's Infinite Loop:How Apple, The World's Most Insanely Great Computer Company Went Insane . It goes into great detail about the origins of the Mac.

The references I gave talk more about the general GUI concept as popularized by the Mac, but we can talk about icons specifically. First, what do we mean my icon? For this post, when I refer to an icon, I'm talking about a graphical representation of an object (file, text, etc) that can be maneuvered and manipulated using the mouse. I seem to remember reading somewhere that Xerox used icons to represent "actions" rather than "objects" (kinda like a toolbar). Unfortunately, I can't find the reference right now.

This source claims that " the Apple work extended PARC's considerably, adding windows that can be overlapped, manipulable icons and..." This source quotes an unnamed Lisa developer: "[the Xerox Star] didn't use icons at all..."

Now that's not to say the Xerox didn't come up with, and develop, the idea on their own - I'm just supplying evidence to counter the convential wisdom that Apple got all of their GUI ideas from PARC. I believe that Raskin, Tessler, and a lot of the PARC/Apple GUI people knew each other before the formation of PARC and Apple, and it was likely that they were all working off concepts they had researched in the 60's and early 70's. (of course that doesn't mean Apple didn't think they were stealing ideas - supposedly Mac programmers spent lots of time working on overlapping/self-repairing windows because they thought they saw that at PARC, but it turns out they didn't:)

But you have to look at the context of the trip: the GUI was new to Jobs, but not to Raskin. Raskin convinced Jobs to go on the trip, not to "discover" the GUI, but because Jobs kept trying to kill the Mac project, and Raskin wanted him to see an implementation of a GUI so he could see for himself that it wasn't a waste of time.

You also have to look at the context of the interview: Jobs was cementing his status as "Father of the Macintosh." Raskin had a few comments on the interview (Search for "Raskin" and then scroll up a little bit), and later Cringley acknowledged Raskin's contributions.

Go read Michael S. Malone's Infinite Loop:How Apple, The World's Most Insanely Great Computer Company Went Insane . It goes into great detail about the origins of the Mac.

Actually, NOVA got footage from NASA for a show on the first repair mission to Hubble.

The third one does, and but only in the context of dragging icons and double clicking them (in the June of 1981 line item). It comes up tangentally later in the 1988 and 1991 sections amount Microsoft. That particular line item in June of '81 I believe is referencing a computer made by Xerox not Apple.

Any chance you'll point out the specifics of the text that clarify that the Mac's didn't specifically take the concept of Icon's from Xerox? Or that Job's inspiration for developing a GUI based computer didn't come directly from his visits to PARC.

Heck, even Jobs openly admits that at PARC, they showed him three things, and he was so blinded by the GUI that he didn't even notice the other two (OO programing, and networking).

http://www.pbs.org/nerds/part3.html

Search for the text "three things". It's right there. Now, Raskin did work there for a little under two years before the PARC visit, but unless it's the "PITS" thing, I don't see anything that leads me to believe that Apple didn't get the idea of a GUI directly from PARC. Raskin might have had the concept in a design 15 years early in his Ph.D, but PARC appears to be the one who shocked Jobs into realizing it was a revolutionary idea. So in the end, it appears PARC deserves a lot of credit you seem to want to deny them.

Yeah sure everyone wants the majic formula regarding financial matters, but here is what happened last time - trillion dollar bet gone really bad --- like where do you think the dot com money came from, where did the enron, worldcom, etc.. money go... easy come easy go??? and teh economic caos it caused and lead to world economic problem and yes... even the war crap we are in now...

SO NO to trying to find the next magic financial formula.... at least until we really much better unberstand and nutralize GREED!...

Or do you really want to help teh few be greedy and take from the many, what they have themselves NOT honestly earned?

I don't care what its called or how sweet it sounds....untill greed is checkmated... there is no formula... only illusion and dillusion..

If these trends continue, we're in for a very intereseting time.

And Ray isn't just any old crackpot. He has a good track record at not just forseeing the future, but executing well on it - he's responsible for the first omni-font optical character recognition, the first print-to-speech reading machine for the blind, the first CCD flat-bed scanner, the first text-to-speech synthesizer, the first music synthesizer capable of recreating the grand piano and other orchestral instruments, and the first commercially marketed large-vocabulary speech recognition....

Nope. Good code is when you accuratly and efficiently implement the solution to a problem that has already thoroughly and correctly defined. By the time a single line of code has been written, 90% of the Software Engineering should already have happened.

Don't act like it's an insult to compare coding to auto repair or plumbing. Once you've dealt with bad plumbing, or stripped and scored half the bolts in a car's engine without actually fixing anything, you'll have gain some respect for the genuine craftsmanship involved in either trade. A master plumber spends years earning his title.

John Gardner once said:

The society which scorns excellence in plumbing because plumbing is a humble activity, and tolerates shoddiness in philosophy because philosophy is an exalted activity, will have neither good plumbing nor good philosophy. Neither its pipes nor its theories will hold water.

Most major ideas are basically bound to happen once a certain point of technological and intellectual advancement are reached. We celebrate the people who invented this or that, but the reality is in most cases of "major" inventions, there are actually several people who can lay claim to the invention and we just remember the one who happened to market it or get the patent. Radio,
Telephones, these are major inventions, but many people arrived at the same point more or less simultaneously.

In the distant past, things tended to get invented by one person at a time because few were educated and had the advantage of our species collective knowledge. Now with printing presses and near instant communication we've all got that benefit. Quite a lot of things get invented in several places at once.

Now, I'm not opposed to patents for real inventions. However, I think our patent system has gotten ridiculous. Business method patents are a mistake, as are in my opinion patents on software methods which should fall under the category of mathematical algorithms which are not patentable. In other words, lets start inforcing the provision about not patenting things that are obvious to people in the field and start requiring that you actually _invent_ something worth mentioning to get it patented.


I worked my ass off earning $8/hour, in a manufacturing job (wood products), in middle of f*cking August with no a/c to pay for my application. I did not get any 'help' from 'Society'; in fact, I was impeded by you idiots. "For the children" and "For the good of the people" bullsh*t. Get off your fat ass, quit complaining about your life, and actually do something.

As for this little rant: If you to sell your idea with government protection, you have to pay for the application. If you've really invented something unique, good for you. Go reap the fruits of your effort. On the other hand, if you've come up with the stunningly original idea of say, having a "buy it now at this price" button on an online auction, your sweating in a factory doesn't really justify my having to pay you to do that.

Cringely had an interesting column about EDS et al and the contracting process. Read it here.

Did you know that the founders of Lockheed..., Allan and Malcolm Loughead, changed their name to "Lockheed" because they were tired of everyone pronouncing their name as "log head".

Well, actually they already have that-sort of. The Apache attack helicopter uses a targeting system that aims based on what the pilot looks at. Except that it uses a monocle over the right eye of the pilot. The monocle displays targeting information and presents a cross-hairs to the pilot. The pilot merely puts the cross-hairs on his target by turning his head and "looking" at it with the monocle and then pressing the trigger for the appropriate weapon. However, it's not REALLY based on what his eyeball is focused on, it's what the cross-hairs are pointed at. He could point the monocle towards the horizon and without moving his head, he could rotate his eyeballs to look down and fire, but unless he moves his head, the guns/missiles will still fire at what the monocle is pointed/looking at. Here are just a few pages that a quick Google search turned up: How Apache Helicopters Work-Controls and Sensors or "PBS-Frontline or this page that talks about the M142 INTEGRATED HELMET AND DISPLAY SIGHT SYSTEM (IHADSS)specifically.

So direct synthesis of a prion, and demonstrating that it was disease-causing, was a useful research project. Now we know.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/evolution/library/06/3/l_0 63_01.html

• It's a blatant attempt to prepare for reopening the BSD settlement. Just before their IBM/Novel souts fold, they will announce ownership of BSD and all BSD-related code (TCP/IP stack, anyone?).

• Won't matter, though; stock has lost its $5 support, and it's only a matter of time before the shutters close on them.

I didn't think leftie enumerated anything. Another key reason the South fell was the continued support the North got from the USSR after the US gave up on supporting the South...

As for Mao its noteworthy that he is dead. But his party still runs China, but for some reason you didn't list Jiang Zemin or Wen Jiabao. They've moderated since Mao but they are still basically the same party and a repressive dictatorship for all practical purposes. The only thing thats changed is they now allow private ownership of capital and a lot of rich American business men and multinationals are making a pretty penny there so right wingers don't bad mouth them anymore.

I made my point without having to list the current leaders of China. And the Democrats don't bad mouth them either - one of the great mysteries of US policy...

I think Muammar is the best friends of the Bush administration now, since he turned over his WMD's, WMD's I wager he bought some just so he could turn them over and get the sanctions lifted. They like him because they can claim him as proof their "get tough" policy in Iraq worked though that is a dubious claim. I'm pretty sure Cheney/Halliburton and the rest of the U.S. oil and gas industry are chomping at the bit to do business with Muammar and get back in to his oil fields. Again as long as there is money to be made the U.S. LOVES dictators.

Ad hominem attack on the US in general, and Bush in particular. If the US in general and Bush in particular LOVED dicators when there was money to be made, they would have made the deal with Saddam that the French did: let us have all you oil contracts and we'll work to lift the post-Gulf War I sanctions.

Hugo Chavez is democratically elected. He is a socialist and the Republican's hate him with a passion, he hates them too, but he was still elected. The Bush administration has tried to overthrow him at least once, and if they succeed that would probably lead to a dictatorship, but Venezuala isn't under one now.

I hate to have to throw this in here, but Hitler was also democratically elected. And just like Chavez, it only happened once. Chavez has rewritten the Venezuelan Constitution - among other things abolishing congress and the Venezuelan Supreme Court. He's also undemocratically extended his own term. Hardly the acts of a leader that isn't a dictator.

Khomeini, well that one is interesting. He came to power because the U.S. toppled the elected government of Iran when they nationalized their oil fields taking control of them from their former colonial masters the British, who were taking the lions share of the profits. The U.S. installed the Shah of Iran who was a brutal repressive dictator. The Iranians turned to Khomeni because they hated the Shah more, and hate the U.S. to this day for inflicting him on them.

Gee, if we're going to keep putting on the tinfoil hat, why not try to examine the role the Soviet Union played in the actions of the pre-Shah Iranian government? The simple fact is the Soviet Union was bent on world domination despite all the revisionist history being spewed nowadays. Marxist belief in "historical inevitability" and Kruschev's "We will bury you" exclamation - among other inconvenient-to-the-left facts - belie this. Russia has historically coveted the Persian Gulf area - an attitude the Great Russian Empire (for a time known as the Soviet Union) continued well into the 1970s and 1980s.

France does plutonium reprocessing, in fact they reprocess HUGE amounts of waste. It's our current policy of "no reprocessing == minimized proliferation" that is causing this waste nightmare. More about this on this PBS frontline special.

France does plutonium reprocessing, in fact they reprocess HUGE amounts of waste. It's our current policy of "no reprocessing == minimized proliferation" that is causing this waste nightmare. More about this on this PBS frontline special.

But the look brought back a lot of memories of my old atari 2600!

Going by the size of the thing, I'd say it's more likely to bring back memories of ENIAC.

From the GPL:

Activities other than copying, distribution and modification are not covered by this License; they are outside its scope.

Therefore, the subscription agreement is obviously outside the scope of the GPL. You are entitled access to beta versions of source in exchange for a fee and the agreement that you won't redistribute the code.

If you redistribute the code, your rights under the subscription agreement are terminated but your rights under the GPL are not. You are free to redistribute the code under the GPL but you are not entitled to any future versions under the subscription agreement. They are two different agreements. Your rights under the GPL don't release you from any obligations you agreed to under the subscription agreement.

Here's Cringley's take on it.

I urge all of you to watch two PBS "Nature" documentaries:

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/octopus/index.html

and

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/suckers/index.html

The filming shows some extraordinary intelligent behavior, whether during the courtship rituals in the shallow waters off the coast or surviving the deepest reaches of the sea. Placed inside odd shaped aqurium containers with thin tubes, octopuses would instinctively explore, sliding their into the narrowist of crevices. At a major public aquarium, an octopus actually crawled out of its container and invaded a nearby container containing crabs: Did it see the crabs and recognize them visually? The doucumentaries also show how octopuses can also change the bumpiness of their skin to disguise themselves to look like rocks, as well as change the color and reflectivity of their skin to match their surroundings.

Many species of octopuses exist in the far deepest reaches of the ocean that are bizarrely unfamiliar -- ablino species that look like "fleshy" jellyfish with two flapping "ears", or the gentle "vampire octopus" with "teeth" instead of suckers on its tentacles.

Folks, these ARE aliens. They are extremely intelligent, and some appear bizarre. But:

(1) they don't communicate verbally
(2) they don't have electronics
(3) we as a human species EAT them (or some types of them), which is pretty horrible

If we are going to search for life outside our solar system, we should always keep in mind that we have a responsibility to learn about and protect the various species of animals we already have here on Earth, and that "intelligence" demonstrates itself in a myriad of ways in different species.

I urge all of you to watch two PBS "Nature" documentaries:

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/octopus/index.html

and

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/suckers/index.html

The filming shows some extraordinary intelligent behavior, whether during the courtship rituals in the shallow waters off the coast or surviving the deepest reaches of the sea. Placed inside odd shaped aqurium containers with thin tubes, octopuses would instinctively explore, sliding their into the narrowist of crevices. At a major public aquarium, an octopus actually crawled out of its container and invaded a nearby container containing crabs: Did it see the crabs and recognize them visually? The doucumentaries also show how octopuses can also change the bumpiness of their skin to disguise themselves to look like rocks, as well as change the color and reflectivity of their skin to match their surroundings.

Many species of octopuses exist in the far deepest reaches of the ocean that are bizarrely unfamiliar -- ablino species that look like "fleshy" jellyfish with two flapping "ears", or the gentle "vampire octopus" with "teeth" instead of suckers on its tentacles.

Folks, these ARE aliens. They are extremely intelligent, and some appear bizarre. But:

(1) they don't communicate verbally
(2) they don't have electronics
(3) we as a human species EAT them (or some types of them), which is pretty horrible

If we are going to search for life outside our solar system, we should always keep in mind that we have a responsibility to learn about and protect the various species of animals we already have here on Earth, and that "intelligence" demonstrates itself in a myriad of ways in different species.

You know, I had one person tell me on a talk show, "You know, I just quit watching news," and I'm thinking, "That's really--that's a shame." Pick up the phone. E-mail, pick up the phone, call the network or call the news station and say, "I disagree." If only one person does it, it's not gonna make a difference. I pick up the phone constantly and call my local stations and say, "Why on earth did you just do that?" But if you do get a lot of people who are complaining, who say, "This is not the quality of news we need"--if it becomes a movement and if people realize that it's patriotic to speak out this way--this is true patriotism. Let's demand something that our Constitution protects for us. Let's demand it. And so pick up the phone, write letters, you know, write e-mails, and just say, "We want news that is far more directed towards everybody in this country and that's honest and truly fair."

How about it? Let's slashdot bad news agencies!

Thank you for your funny post. I had a good laugh. Just in case anyone thinks any of your points have a trace of connection to reality, I'll adress them:

- Big Bang: I know this is difficult to understand, but, as time is a feature of this universe, wondering what could happen "before" the Big Bang is just nonsense. There is no "before".

- Earth "fine tuned": This is known as the Anthropic principle. To say that the universe is what it is in order for us to be here is the same as to say that the surfers in Hawaii prove that the waves and the beaches of Hawaii where created for them to surf, because if not they wouldn't be so suitable for surfing.

- Life could not have appeared in Earth: maybe I'm too simple, but I don't understand how can you say that this whole universe was fine tuned in order to support life on Earth and at the same time that life on Earth could not come into existence as the result of this universe. Henry Ford created a system to get cars to come into existence, and they were produced without him needing to act in the actual process. Surely your creator could do better in a universe created all by himself just for the purpose of life.

- Information as proof of intelligent design. Actually, the more we know about genetic code, more things we find that any competent designer could not have made: a high percentage of code meaning nothing, redundant information, bad information (that translate into illness) that is difficult to delete due to the characteristics of the system...You seem to confuse information for communication. Information have no purpose, and require no actors. Is a property of any system, related to enthropy. Communication is transmission of information, requiere actors, and gives a purpose to information.

- Fossil record: no transitional forms? have you been in any Natural History museum? You could have seen transitional forms between fish and amphibian, between dinosaurs and avians, and of course between apes and men, just to name a few.

And what should be more disturbing to you, we have found that THREE species of humans coexisted 75.000 years ago: homo sapiens (we) in Africa, neanderthals in Europe, and erectus in Asia. You should think a little bit to justify why your creator allowed these other intelligent human beings to exist at the same time as homo sapiens for thousands of years just to be later substituted by us. And please remember that neanderthals were able to produce art, and they buried their dead ones.
Just another thing: try to explain convergent evolution by creationism. Please give an explanation as to why your creator would create ichthyosarus and 50 millions of years after they dissapeared would create dolphins.

haha, Maybe i'll learn to count someday, that's the 6th paragraph. woops.
http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/pulpit20020725. html

Well, I never understood the craze about ebay

Maybe you don't but plenty of people do.

Cringely says:
(4th para)
"eBay makes more profit than all the rest of the retail Internet businesses COMBINED. It is a money machine. In retail economic terms, eBay IS the Internet."

I agree with what dasunt said. An expanded explanation that says mostly the same is at pbs.org.