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This is coming from the guy that thought the next version of Windows should be built on Linux.
Allow me to quote him:
"Windows XP is not an operating system"
"The idea of Windows as an operating system is purely a product of the Microsoft marketing department..."
He then goes on to say:
"Even today, you can still get to a C: prompt under Windows XP, which means a disk operating system is hiding there..."

Cringely is known for his use of heavy drugs such as psychodelic hallucinogens. This is where he gets all his ideas from.

Afterall, this is the guy who suggested that Microsoft should put the next generation Windows on top of Linux Kernel.

Read this:

Its about how Tesla filed for patent on the radio in 1897, Marconi applied for his patent in 1900.

Marconi's patents were thrown out at first. Marconi became rich and powerful, then Tesla's patents were thrown out in place of Marconi's.

So you end up with a market in which the patent owner isn't the inventor and the whole purpose of patents - to reward the inventor, is turned on its head.

You can see the same pattern happening in software patents and the constant requests on Slashdot for prior art.

You know, of course, that the web was invented in Switzerland

Yes and it's completely irrellevant. the Internet sprang out from ARPANET. Read a little history. As you say http was developed at CERN an international laboratory located in switzerland. Does that mean that the swiss has the best web infrastructure in the world and the highest usage among it's population? And that the US r0olz when it comes to serving every other protocol? And how does that affect the french? The fact that someone (not a swiss afaik was in switzerland at the time he invented something vaguely like what we know as the web doesn't prove anything

And still no matter who invented the Internet doesn't matter in this context. Someone (possibly you, but you never know with ACs) made the claim that since the newspaper was japanese it was likely to get slashdotted. And the argument was that french newspaper wouldn't stand up to slashdotting. I made the point that france and japan are very different countries (culturally at least) and that what is (perhaps) true for france has nothing to do with japan.

Look at some statistics
There are 61.4 M japanese speaking internet users, compared to 230.6 M english speaking and 22.0 M french speakin
I think we can expect that one of Japan's biggest newspapers should withstand a little slashdotting if it can cope with any significant market share of 61.4 M potential visitors

Don't even know why I care to answer your stupid troll post.

Thank you and the same to you, if you have problems with me (or anyone) making a point about a stupid post you shouldn't be reading slashdot

yeah, they are called LAWYERS...

here's an interesting read about stupid patents:

sbc patent part 1, 2 and 3...

yeah, they are called LAWYERS...

here's an interesting read about stupid patents:

sbc patent part 1, 2 and 3...

yeah, they are called LAWYERS...

here's an interesting read about stupid patents:

sbc patent part 1, 2 and 3...

Where does this Slashdot obsession with a cashless/e-gold/alternative currency come from?

Money has been around for 3200 years. Trade "I'll give you 2 sheep for one cow" has been around for thousands more.

I remember hearing these "cashless society" arguments in 1980. I look in my wallet 23 years later, and I still have a wad of cash in there, along with a credit card and ATM card. Sure, much of my purchasing is electronic, but it's far from cashless.

Now people are again saying "We'll be a cashless society in 25 years", and I still don't believe them. I've heard it before.

It reminds me of the "computers will solve all your paperwork problems. We will be a paperless society in 25 years." Cash is not going away anytime soon just because some money-geeks think they found an alternative.

As Ivanova from Babylon 5 said:
"Every time somebody says we're coming into a paperless society, I get 10 more forms to fill out."

Useful link page from the 'Now with Bill Moyers' site, including interview transcripts, DOJ response, etc. I'm sure a lot of people saw the show Friday and tried to submit it (I did), but didn't bother to read deeper for the encryption stuff (me again) that would make it 'News for Nerds'.

I'm worried that if, in the future, I expouse beliefs that are opposed to what the government believes, I will become labeled a "terrorist", and will have my rights unilaterally suspended.

Where was the outcry from the left when Clinton/Reno were attacking Americans with tanks and using FBI snipers to shoot American women and children? As far as I have heard, Bush has not summarily executed any Americans yet.

Apparently you are only concerned with your left-wing speech being oppressed by a right-wing government, while the reverse occurred for nearly a decade with nary a whisper from you.

Perhaps those of you on the right and left should realize that the Reps/Dems do not give a FU** about the Constitution or any ideals of freedom and liberty, and seriously examine the Libertarian Party.

According to PBS, "George W. Bush would have widened his 537-vote victory to a 1,665-vote margin if the recount ordered by the Florida Supreme Court would have been allowed to continue, using standards that would have allowed even faintly dimpled "undervotes" to be counted." And if the popular vote is what would have counted, maybe Bush's election strategy would have been different -- and perhaps he would have won that one too. One thing I am glad of is that Gore is not president today. The man has no political identity or ideas of his own besides opposing George W. Bush -- nor does most of the American Left, sans the New Republic and Thomas Friedman and very few other exceptions.

Best mirror for the full draft is here.

All they need is another conveniently timed terrorist attack, and the gestapo will be even more powerful.

http://www.publicintegrity.org/dtaweb/report.asp?R eportID=502&L1=10&L2=10&L3=0&L4=0&L5=0

http://www.publicintegrity.org/dtaweb/downloads/St ory_01_020703_Doc_1.pdf
http://www.pbs.org/now/transcript/transcript_lewis 2.html

Section 501, "Expatriation of Terrorists": This provision, the drafters say, would establish that an American citizen could be expatriated "if, with the intent to relinquish his nationality, he becomes a member of, or provides material support to, a group that the United Stated has designated as a 'terrorist organization'." But whereas a citizen formerly had to state his intent to relinquish his citizenship, the new law affirms that his intent can be "inferred from conduct." Thus, engaging in the lawful activities of a group designated as a "terrorist organization" by the Attorney General could be presumptive grounds for expatriation.


MOYERS: Do you see any protection in here against potential abuse?

LEWIS: I don't think there's very much -- there's a lot more authority and power for government. There's less oversight and information about what government is doing. That's the headline and that's the theme. And the safeguards seem to be pretty minimal to me.

MOYERS: I just go through here, you know? "Will give the Attorney General the unchecked power to deport any foreigner?"

LEWIS: Right.

Actually, the human genome isn't all that big by today's data storage standards - just three gigs for the whole thing. And individuals are only 0.2% different, so maybe 10 megs per additional person.

Neither of you are correct. Marconi applied for a British patent on the use of radio waves for communication in 1896. Tesla filed a similar American patent in 1897, and was granted patents 645,576 and 649,621. Marconi applied for US patents in 1900 and was initially turned down, at least partially on the basis of Tesla's prior patents. Marconi took his case to court, and the US patent office eventually overturned its prior rulings. In 1904 Marconi was granted a US patent for wireless comminication. Lawsuits between Tesla and Marconi ensued. In 1943 the US Supreme Court upheld the priority of Tesla's patent.

See Who Invented Radio? for a quick summary of this controversy.

There's an article on I, Cringely that describes this exact scenario.

However, he wanted to sit in a coffeeshop in town and use his home network, so he claims he installed a couple of high powered "pringle antennae" climbed tree, installed another one as a repeater in a tree somewhere (to get around a mountain) and he was in business. Shouldn't be too hard to line-of-sight something 2 miles.

I think instead of trying to make a feature film with music videos, they could make a good old fashioned concert movie. This wouldn't require as much apparatus as making a feature from scratch, and if it were in movie theaters, you would get somewhat of a concert experience (more immersive than watching a concert on TV I think) at a regular movie price. Cringely talked about something like this but was proposing a full concert tour before the album was released as the only way to experience the music. This is not to say that bands and their labels couldn't do both a concert tour and a movie. I tend to just listen to my existing (physical and downloaded) music collection and just have no real interest in current pop.

On the other hand, there must be some reason that you don't see all that many concert movies these days. Or maybe you do and I haven't been paying attention. So many possibilities.

Ravi

There is a related story about using an electromagnetic field to stun a portion of the brain to see how it affects congitive performance.
Scared the hell out of me.

There was a PBS program about Boggs during a visit the US. If you can see it, it is definitely worth seeing.

There are some examples of his work, interview transcript and whatnot.

--

Are you really serious? Rwanda is a member of the UN too, but that did not save 800,000 Tutsis from being massacred by the Hutus despite advance warnings and pleas for help. In fact, if you dig into the record, the UN (deliberately, thanks to certain *cough* France *cough* member states) turned a deaf ear to the situation. Relying on the UN for military assistance is suicidal.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't the Hutu-led Rwandan government the one _doing_ the killing (see summary here)? I agree that the UN should have done more, but comparing this to what would happen if the US was attacked makes no sense.

Either way, time for a reality check. Small African nations are not treated the same as nations which are important enough to be members of the Security Council. It's sad but true. You say below that the UN is dependant on the US for defense, yet you also think that they wouldn't come to our aid? If nothing else, our economic ties to the rest of the world would assure that UN nations would come to our aid, at least in a defensive war (an offensive war is obviously another story!)

Both of those states are NATO members are rely ultimately on the United States for their defense. They could not defend themselves without the US. That's how they pull that trick off.

Defend themselves from who? Who exactly is going to invade Canada in the near future? Remember where I said that you should think about "what's _actually_ going on"? This is what I'm talking about. The enemies of the UN are a few individual nations, not a superpower (a la the Cold War). Some nations actually act like this is the case.

Besides, I've argued that the US military could afford to shrink. I didn't say that it should go away entirely!

Because US allies with the exception of the UK lack the capability to even deploy their forces abroad. Also, they increasingly lack the ability to operate with US forces due to antiquated command, control and communications systems.

Personally, I think that is so wrong it's laughable. You really think that no other military in the world is capable of sending troops abroad except the US and (conveniently) it's one major ally?

So, why do I think you're wrong. Here's a list of UN peacekeeping operations as of Mid 2002 and the percentage of US troops involved in each. Notice that the US supplies an average of 1.5% of troops to these operations. If this article is correct, then even some smaller nations supply thousands of UN Peacekeepers. There's my proof that other nations can deploy their forces. They could do it last year, and I assume that they can still do it now!

Now, where's your proof to back up your claim that only the US and England can deploy forces abroad?

Because it takes a long time to acquire modern warfighting capability.

Actually, I agree with this whole bit, but I was talking about the US gearing _itself_ up for war, by calling up reserves (or instituting a draft), building more weaponry, etc. We're talking about two different things here.

From the points you made, it seems you need to do a lot more informed thinking about modern military affairs.

I hate to tell you this pal, but unsubstantiated claims and misunderstanding what I'm talking about aren't exactly convincing me to listen to you.

1) Linus Torvalds is one hunky piece of gourmet man-candy.
2) Richard M Stallman cannot say "GNU/Linux World" three times fast.
3) This year will feature the first shooting spree in Linux World history.
4) As a result, next year's Linux World will be devoted to the memory of Bill Claybrook of the Aberdeen Group, gunned down while interposing his body between the shooter and the visiting school children from Greater Houlton Christian Academy.
5) This will cause all Linux users to be branded as terrorists, even though the shooter is a disgruntled BSD user, because the authorities don't even know the difference.
6) When MS memos surface planning a publicity stunt / shooting spree at one of their own trade shows, no one will even care.
7) MS has secretly rented a theatre to showcase their line of Linux apps, including a Windows/GUI that runs on top of the Linux kernel.
8) No such products exist. Those entering the theatre will be brainwashed.
9) The Society of Women Engineers is sponsoring a special recruitment event for high school aged future women engineers in my hotel room; any woman aged 15-19 with an interest in pursuing a four year degree in engineering or the applied sciences is welcome to attend. Dress should be informal and not too complicated as I intend to be blasted.
10) Despite the best efforts of the conference organizers, funding was unavailable to spike the drinking water in the hotel with acid. Your generous donations could help make next year's Linux World that much more surreal.
11) Spinal Tap will play a free concert in front of the Expo on the last day. Yes, the volume will be turned all the way up to 11.

Sure, here are the first signs. Hard to believe? Even Bob X. Cringely says "Even today, you can still get to a C: prompt under Windows XP, which means a disk operating system is hiding there no matter what Microsoft wants us to believe." I don't know what he means with this, but it has DOS in it.

Ironic this post comes at the same time of Cringely's comments on the subject. Now, not only am I a solaris admin, I guess I'm also a Forth admin!

this week's Pulpit, after MacWorld:
I, Cringely

The jazzy piece is called take five.

actually, you might find this article interesting as it mentions woz's visicalc hack...

Bob Cringley wrote this article last year, talking about a decline in the amount of basic research being carried out at companies within the US. It would seem that the first part of a company to suffer cutbacks and layoffs in times of economic hardship is the research department. It would stand to reason that anyone coming through college and seeing the decline in the number of jobs in scientific and engineering research are more likely to opt for something that may give them a more secure future.

Which is a shame really, because these are exactly the sort of people who are likely to be developing my flying car.

Bob Cringley wrote this article last year, talking about a decline in the amount of basic research being carried out at companies within the US. It would seem that the first part of a company to suffer cutbacks and layoffs in times of economic hardship is the research department. It would stand to reason that anyone coming through college and seeing the decline in the number of jobs in scientific and engineering research are more likely to opt for something that may give them a more secure future.

Which is a shame really, because these are exactly the sort of people who are likely to be developing my flying car.

all reports indicate they are decades away from producing Nukes

Huh? All reports indicate that they are a few months to a couple of years away from producing nukes.

Sigh. I think it's a good war. But that's based on knowing a hell of a lot more stuff than I can put into a posting.

But just because I'll fail is no excuse not to try:

1. Saddam IS so oppressive that we should go in and liberate the country. I know we're all too damn cynical these days to use words like "liberate" but that's the damn reality. Our grandparents weren't too sophisticated to believe that you can liberate a country, but were too damn "smart".

2. The middle east is a fucking hell hole. Saudi Arabia has 1/4 of all of the world's oil and for them it's fucking free, on tap. But the Saudi princes claim to be descendants of Sheikh Muhammad Ibn Abd Al-Wahhab the founder of an Islamist cult that teaches it is the duty of his followers to invade the entire earth, subjugate all infidels and convert by the sword. Guess what the Saudis spend their oil money on? Spreading the good word. That's why oil matters. The Saudis are our enemies, but whenever they raise the price of oil a little our economy completely tanks. We need enough independent sources of oil that we are no longer reliant on our enemies and can put them in their place.

3. In other ways I'll say it again, "the middle east is a fucking hell hole." It's very hard to describe what you'll read if you read Arab newspapers.

It's a constant stream of what, to western eyes, looks like nonsensical hatred and lies about the west, about Americans and about Isralies. Their sense of history is SO screwed, and they really don't consider non-mulsims to be human beings worthy of survival. I hate to bring up the big old German Fuerer again, but he is a hero over there - every now and then you can find an article moaning that it's too bad he didn't get to finish the holocaust.

Anyway the problem is this. Remember Soviet newpapers? They printed nothing but propaganda too, but there's a difference. No one believed Soviet propaganda, not even the folks back in Russia. They were too well educated and Soviet propaganda was dry, it didn't stir up passion.

Arab's are different. They are very poorly educated when they are educated at all (50% illiteracy) and their propaganda is pure passion. The mob wants blood and lots of it.

Despite all the oil, the regular people in the Arab world are very poor, mostly because they're governments are archaic and becase they've rejected everything the rest of the world has learned over the past couple of hundred years - it's absolutely beneath their dignity to learn anything from us non-muslim trash.

But their newspapers have a ready excuse for every failure. It's a conspiracy. They believe that the Jews (and to a lesser but significant extent, the Americans and other westerners) have stolen them blind. It can be funny. When a poorly constructed radio tower in Afganistan blows over in the wind, the authorities say Massad (Israeli intelligence) must have destroyed it. When the date crop in Saudi Arabia doesn't bring good money on the world market, it must be because the Israelis (who's crop is 1/100th the size) must have spitefully undercut their price.

The place is drowning in ignorance, foolishness, oppression, misery and unimaginable violence.

Oh the violence... I'll get to that in a second, but I want to finish my point.

* The people there are living in a closed society. It's not changing from within. They're stuck.

* They're under terrible oppression.

* Because of Militant Islam, the Suadis, Al Qa'eda etc. they're a danger to us. We need to mess with their society so that, in the eyes of 100 million Militant Mulsims and 400 million Militant Muslim sympathizers around the world, modernity, with 3 squares a day, freedom, tolerance, prosparity and peace look better than destroying all infidels for Allah. I know it sounds crazy, but they don't all believe that right now.

We need to shoehorn a good example into the middle east as soon as possible.

I don't know as much about Korea. On thing I keep hearing is that we can't fight on two fronts at once, so Korea gets a temporary pass.

I should write more but I've got to go...

Rocky J. Squirrel

Here's a very old article on why we are attacking Iraq.

The original is no longer available for free on Strategic Forcasting's web site (it costs $120/year to join these days and it's worth it if your rich). So here's a link to a usenet posting of it post

After eight months of searching I've only turned up four sane Arabs. Since I've included all of their web sites this will give you an unrealistic view that of the sanity of Arab society, but these have to go on any list of the best web sites on the Middle east.
Other good sites:
http://www.memri.org/index.html
(best selection of translations from the Arab press)

http://www.mideastweb.org/LessonofIraq.htm
(other articles by Mahamad Mosaad)
http://www.mideastweb.org/arabpeacenow.htm
http://www.mideastweb.org/Arabpeace.htm
http://www.mideastweb.org/nothinghappened.htm
http://www.mideastweb.org/onlythem.htm

http://www.danielpipes.org

http://www.amarji.org/index.htm

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/articles.php3?ty pe=1
(this should be their translations of the arab press)

Tarek Heggy (Egyptian writer)
http://www.heggy.org
turn down your sound card before
going there

Ali Salem (an Egyptian writer and playwrite).
My favorite articles so far are at
http://www.meforum.org/pf.php?id=130 ,
http://sol.spaceports.com/~melinks/site2/ali_salem .html and
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/terrorism/july-dec0 1/playwright_11-27.html

You can also look up Arab newspapers with english translations on Google Web Directory under newspapers. There's one fake Saudi newspaper to look out for. The editor lives and writes in California if that tells you anything.

The easier way is that MS just says "Sorry folks, we have a patent on XXXX, and you can't use MONO any more. Oh by the way, since it is now so ingrained into Gnome, you can't use it either. Oh, and since all those Linux disks have Gnome on them, you'll have to destroy them all too."

If, by encumbering patents, Gnome and other tools can be taken out of the market, then that's a loss for users and has economic ramifications in itself. However, the real goal looks to be to transfer vendor lock-in to the Internet which would be far more expensive. Proprietary protocols are one means. I. Cringley is not the only one to point this strategy out. Bill Gates has himself mentioned similar ideas as an aside in his critique of Symbian:

According to his quote, he thought that Microsoft should create proprietary protocols in a few areas beside just the PC so that other devices have to pay them royalties if they want to interoperate. Gates suggests action to patent Microsoft's schemas and not to be asleep on "key issues like this".

The guy is Robert X. Cringely and this is the column.

Personally I believe that TCP/IP is just too entrenched too be changed into TCP/MS. MS will probably focus more on the protocols at a higher level of abstraction, like HTML, NetBeui and the layers on top of SOAP+XML.

I'm sure many here would disagree, but the best science show I've ever seen is PBS' NOVA. If the BBC doesn't already carry this somewhere then they absolutely should. This series totally inspired me as a kid, and now that I'm actually doing science as an adult my admiration for it has only grown. Nothing else on TV comes close to conveying what it's actually like to be a scientist.

For lighter fare I'd recommend either Scientific American Frontiers or the already mentioned Beyond 2000.If New Scientist doesn't already have a TV series, though, they really should.

I'm sure many here would disagree, but the best science show I've ever seen is PBS' NOVA. If the BBC doesn't already carry this somewhere then they absolutely should. This series totally inspired me as a kid, and now that I'm actually doing science as an adult my admiration for it has only grown. Nothing else on TV comes close to conveying what it's actually like to be a scientist.

For lighter fare I'd recommend either Scientific American Frontiers or the already mentioned Beyond 2000.If New Scientist doesn't already have a TV series, though, they really should.

Tsk-tsk, have you forgotton our administration's pledge to "Leave no redneck behind?" (kidding) (sort of)

From an economic standpoint, gov't intervention makes a lot of sense for market failure (private market fails to exploit opportunity), projects with high entry costs but long-term profits (airports, cell phone expansion?), and social projects that loses money but yield other benefits (universal mail delivery, public transit, gee-whiz pointless boodoogle manned space exploration :).

Then there's Keynes to argue about...

I'm sure someone has stated it in a more poetic way. But I do think gov't has a role, and that it should step out at the earliest opportunity.

This is called winning.

You can also read about the upcoming CPUs, and you will see who is loosing.

Why, thank you Mr. Cringely...

for me to poop on! (or in soviet russia, cringely drools on you :)

Well, Mr Cringely thinks the Opteron will be a huge win for AMD and makes quite a nice argument about it (based on hearsay though): link

(top sci/tech link from memigo currently; yes it's the holidays but a few things are happening /.ers...)

I think they've got land cheap up at Three Mile Island that might be able to accomodate some of the waste.

Artificial diamonds most certaintly do not "look wrong".

According to the NOVA program "Diamond Deception" originally broadcast on 2/01/2000, "These synthetic diamonds are such good copies of the real thing that they not only have the identical atomic structure but can even replicate their flaws."

Nature has a lot of adaptations but no reasons.

At least if you take the secular view. :)

Ten fingers is hardly the only solution on our planet, others have been "tried" and perhaps will be tried. Hemingway's 6-toed cats are a famous example that breed true, and humans occasionally are born with an extra digit or two. Some mammals like horses fuse five fingers into one, or another number. Our ancestors may have had more. Try this PBS article on evolution of digits.

We have 10 fingers and base-10 math. Fingers are also called digits Hmm. What significance would a different base have had on us?

I fall into the "why do we have..." trap myself. There are no whys exactly, just some way that something is well adapted and selected-for or not; and even that is a gross oversimplification.

By the way, here we have 5 bases (only 4 used at a time), not the 20 (?) amino acids used in protein biosynthesis.

The situation has greatly improved since the oil for food program was instituted.

Recently saw a Frontline episode where a Brit reporter toured Iraq. He went to the hospitals, went to the children's ward. Most of the children were in there for drinking untreated water. He asked the hospital administrator if they were in need of any drugs, nope. He went into a local pharmacy. Well stocked. He wandered the markets, plenty of food.

Since then, he's written dozens of other books, which he's sold scads of, and plenty of folks still rant and rave about his theories.

So no, debunking these theories with actual facts just doesn't work...

Since then, he's written dozens of other books, which he's sold scads of, and plenty of folks still rant and rave about his theories.

So no, debunking these theories with actual facts just doesn't work...

Creationism is NOT a THEORY. In order for it to be a theory, it must be first hypothesized, then tested through experiments. However, since it is based on faith and untestable preconditions, this is not possible!

WAKE UP!!!

If you think I'm wrong, post the name of an actual archeologist who follows this "theory"'s guidelines for performing his/her job. And post an Amazon link to a book detailing the legitimate alternative nomenclature to the flora and fauna that don't refer to their genus and species, because, after all they aren't related..

"In creationism, species are described as "fixed" in the sense that they are believed not to change their form, or appearance, through time."
- PBS.org

Why is it that people forget that religion is the source of revelations such as the earth is FLAT, and the center of the universe?

The only good that believing in gods ever did for us, was to give extra time to some otherwise intelligent people by allowing them to be priests instead of getting real jobs. At least they're not full time politicians.

Bomber pilots in particular work incredibly long hours to be active just a few minutes here and there -- those trans-polar missions over Afghanistan to Diego Garcia for example.

Re the Gulf War.

I think the military has been careful to play it down, but drug use is a significant factor on a wink-wink basis. The public doesn't want to think too hard about sleep -starved pilots flying planes that might be nuclear-armed.

PBS/Frontline has extensive data on this project -- a FAQ that talks about Judge Ted Poe a bit, and similar tapings to date.

This is a good example of the First Amendment running into fair trial concerns.

The only completely safe way to do it would be to tape it without telling any of the jurors.

But that might raise certain privacy issues, plus it would just pollute every single jury deliberation that follows! ([whisper]Hey ... where do you think they hid the camera?)

I'm 90% they were going to ask consent at voir dire. Only 14 of 110 refused. Funny, the prosecution's objection: "Allowing a camera in the jury room during capital murder deliberations would violate Texas law by creating new reasons to disqualify potential jurors, Harris County prosecutors are arguing." However, "a lawyer for state District Judge Ted Poe, who approved the videotaping for a documentary, said Wednesday that the new argument to ban the camera was raised too late." Note that the judge has a lawyer!

I agree that the prosecution's standing is a little hard to figure, though I would really want their agreement to videotaping. They appear to be positioning themselves as defending the jurors, although 9 out of 20 jurors said no problem. At bottom, they must feel that the cameras will decrease likelihood of a death sentence -- now why it would is an interesting question. If death is chosen or not, we know how everyone voted anyway. So it must be something in the deliberations themselves.

Veto power is a very good suggestion, at least before the verdict is in. It's all really in the trial court's discretion, unless the appeals court says never in Texas. It could then go to the TX Supreme Court. This is interesting.

Of course, more important is that they get the verdict right. Cameras helped make hash of the OJ trial.

Yes, they're thinking the same things as you.

Guess who opposes it? The prosecutor.

Texas is #1 in U.S. executions and so is of particular interest for a capital trial. The show is the kind of thing I'd like to see, and Frontline is pretty level-headed, but not if it were possibly damaging to a life/death decision. So I'd like to see it but don't think they should do it. :)

Oral arguments are scheduled for Jan 15.