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2001's predictions

he might be 70% right on the obvious stuff, but his stock predictions are 0% right, so I won't take any notice of the new ones

Not never, but not nearly as high as today. Check these two charts from PBS:

• Premarital Sex
• Nonmarital Births

Not never, but not nearly as high as today. Check these two charts from PBS:

• Premarital Sex
• Nonmarital Births

U.S. Constitution, Art. 1, Sec. 8, Para. 8:
The Congress shall have Power To :
promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;

Property rights is one of the things that distinguishes the rich countries from the poor ones. It can be hard to see that and see only the problems with it when one has the freedom to do it from this side of the divide.

Personally, I don't think this is much bigger than mail fraud. IMHO, Rather than criminalize sending unsolicited email, I would criminalize sending spam without an ADV: prefix or ADV ADULT: prefix.

This would effectively give them the freedom to send as much unsolicited junk to people who want it, and let us who don't want it to filter it out.

As far as regulating technology goes, I think there's bigger fish to fry. Here's some examples of how the FCC helps the communication monopolies keep thier monopolies...

UWB technology gets stuck in red tape

Roll your own DSL

My point: Communications and tech have been regulated for YEARS. So while you're pondering if criminalizing spam MAY set a bad precident, existing technology and communication monopolies are doing everything to criminalize and patent truely liberating technology (Ultra-Wide-Band) (DSL without the telcos): (That is before they figure out how to use it for thier own advantage)

...and that's just one very small facit of the problem...

To those who wonder what GM crops have to do with PCB/chemical dumping, they're missing the point. The point is that if a company has a history of putting profits over public safety and have blatant disregard for human life, then how can you trust them when they say GM crops are safe? They may be safe, they may not be, but I for one do not find their opinions credible.

Show Summary:

Surveys of public opinion show that the majority of Americans believe that the government is making sure that they are protected against harmful chemicals. Is their understanding justified? Journalist Bill Moyers and producer Sherry Jones report on how the chemical revolution of the past 50 years has produced thousands of man-made chemicals that have not been tested for their effect on the public's health and safety. The report is based on documents never before published and interviews with historians, scientists, and physicians who are exploring how chemicals affect the human body.

Here are some quotes from industry documents from transcript of Trade Secrets. I'll let you interpret them yourself:

September 28, 1981. Government Relations Committee. Pebble Beach.

"The Committee believes that the new climate in Washington is more reasoned and responsive. ...The election of the Reagan Administration appears to have produced changes which bode well for our industry."

"President Reagan directed EPA to delay proposing or finalizing regulations until it could be determined that they were cost-effective and necessary."

January 11, 1982. CMA Board of Directors. Grand Ballroom, Arizona Biltmore. "Just ten days ago, TSCA celebrated its fifth birthday. The first five years of TSCA have seen numerous rules proposed by the Agency. To date, we have seen none of these types of rules finalized."

[TSCA: the Toxic Substances Control Act, one law intended to give the Environmental Protection Agency broad authority to regulate toxic chemicals]

[Fact:To this day - almost 25 years after the Toxic Substances Control Act was enacted - only five types of chemicals, out of thousands, have been banned under the law.]

To those who wonder what GM crops have to do with PCB/chemical dumping, they're missing the point. The point is that if a company has a history of putting profits over public safety and have blatant disregard for human life, then how can you trust them when they say GM crops are safe? They may be safe, they may not be, but I for one do not find their opinions credible.

Show Summary:

Surveys of public opinion show that the majority of Americans believe that the government is making sure that they are protected against harmful chemicals. Is their understanding justified? Journalist Bill Moyers and producer Sherry Jones report on how the chemical revolution of the past 50 years has produced thousands of man-made chemicals that have not been tested for their effect on the public's health and safety. The report is based on documents never before published and interviews with historians, scientists, and physicians who are exploring how chemicals affect the human body.

Here are some quotes from industry documents from transcript of Trade Secrets. I'll let you interpret them yourself:

September 28, 1981. Government Relations Committee. Pebble Beach.

"The Committee believes that the new climate in Washington is more reasoned and responsive. ...The election of the Reagan Administration appears to have produced changes which bode well for our industry."

"President Reagan directed EPA to delay proposing or finalizing regulations until it could be determined that they were cost-effective and necessary."

January 11, 1982. CMA Board of Directors. Grand Ballroom, Arizona Biltmore. "Just ten days ago, TSCA celebrated its fifth birthday. The first five years of TSCA have seen numerous rules proposed by the Agency. To date, we have seen none of these types of rules finalized."

[TSCA: the Toxic Substances Control Act, one law intended to give the Environmental Protection Agency broad authority to regulate toxic chemicals]

[Fact:To this day - almost 25 years after the Toxic Substances Control Act was enacted - only five types of chemicals, out of thousands, have been banned under the law.]

If you look at the article, there's an email this story link which enables you to send the story off to someone of your choice, along with comments. My choices were: NPR and PBS, both organizations which rely heavily upon corporate donations, notably the Monsanto Corporation. In the comments, I requested that they consider refusing donations from Monsanto, which would have the dual effect of making a public stand for what is right as well as denying Monsanto a hefty tax write-off. Like they need it. I agree with a previous poster who compared them to Microsoft. No doubt a merger is in the works :)
Other good choices for the email link would, of course, be your state and national representatives, particularly if you live in a state which Monsanto has operations in (Like, almost anywhere?)
Fortunately, the Post is a big paper with a good reputation. Stories like this need to see the bright light of day. It is what evildoers fear most.

Remember a while ago when Cringely wrote the article about Microsoft building their own version of TCP/IP?

I really thought that Cringely had misheard some information at that point. I couldn't see how or why Microsoft would want to do that.

Then I read the interview with Bill Gates that was part of C|Net's end-of-year wrap-up. Check out this quote:

[C|Net] As described by Microsoft, HailStorm has to be hosted on servers globally for the system to work. How do you plan to do that and ensure security?
[Gates] "We are doing a lot. All of those things are being done with other people. The very protocols of the Internet will evolve for security and quality of service and richer caching. And so we are out talking with the Ciscos and the Akamais and Intel--you name it--for that level of stuff." [italics mine]

All I can say is: wow.

How much do you want to bet that Microsoft will be calling this "Secure TCP/IP"?

As someone with their own supercomputer (ACME and /. of 6/6/2000) I can say that you'll come up with a bunch of things you would like to do but haven't found the CPU time to do. This of course presumes that you have half a brain.

We run NP complete problems to completion. Our idle loop is a prime number factoring of one of the RSA challenge numbers. If we were to hit one of those numbers (even the $10k one) we'd more than pay for the machine (but not the A/C or power).

I do ponder what a typical PBS.org reader would do with their own supercomputer. Most lack the sophistication to get a return on investment on even just the air conditioning and electricity better yet the cost of the hardware and the set up. But what do you expect from someone who practices identity theft?

All that said, it is having this class of power out in the hands of the masses that could well bring the next BIG NEW IDEA. It is neat that it can be done and I hope a bunch of /.ers write the code they want to run on such a thing then build one to run it.

-- Multics

Either commercial interests will have to learn to live in balance with the public network or risk losing their customers. If they squeeze too hard, the smart ones move on.

I saw a very interesting report on Frontline about hackers. In the show they briefly discussed how a sheer lack of government regulations governing security standards has led to a glut of problems with such programs as (ee-gads) Windows.

Considering that you need a license in this country to cut someone's hair, it is odd that one does not need a license to write mission critical code.

In any event, while I am against government control of software development for the most part - the idea is not without certain merits!

I saw a very interesting report on Frontline about hackers. In the show they briefly discussed how a sheer lack of government regulations governing security standards has led to a glut of problems with such programs as (ee-gads) Windows.

Considering that you need a license in this country to cut someone's hair, it is odd that one does not need a license to write mission critical code.

In any event, while I am against government control of software development for the most part - the idea is not without certain merits!

China now has Hong Kong and they intend to keep it capitalistic for it gives them a way to study it from all sides.

There is something else as well. China is the only country doing economicly well right now. The reason for this is that they were not playing in the world stock market that has cause so much damage from the "card counters".

As identified in the Trillion Dollar Bet!

"In the summer of 1997, across Thailand, property prices plummeted. This sparked a panic that swept through Asia. As banks went bust from Japan to Indonesia, people took to the streets - events so improbable they had never been included in anyone's models."

and in Indonesia May 1998: abcnews

"Sources all over Asia tell Uscher that Asians know about local corruption but believe America is taking advantage of the situation to grab Asian
markets and Asian wealth."

and (read the article!!!): CNN

"The austerity measures were a condition of the International Monetary Fund's $43 billion aid package to bail out the southeast Asian nation. "

Where the US bailout was only (pbs article):
"We expect that they're going to explain to the members of this Committee why the Federal Reserve has organized the $3.5 billion bail-out for billionaires, why Americans should be worried about the gambling practices of the Wall Street elite"

And this rabbit hole goes deeper: More!

But the point is: As man moves forward in his trial and error approach to society, there is a diversity kept in place so that all of mankind is unlikely to fall should things go bad. It was said The Former Soviet Union was mans experiment gone bad.....

China is part of the Lab. Their entrance into the WTO only helps verify this. [shrug]

Considering that the earth 90% water and how little we have catalouged the deep sea, its going to be interestig to see what we find...

The deep sea pages at Whitman College have some cool pictures of wierd deep sea creatures.

The Beastiary at NOVA also has a decent rundown of whats down there.

Everyone should understand by now that there is no way you're going to be able to solve the Microsoft problem by forcing them to include this or exclude that from the OS. It just can't work. What this guy should be focusing on is Microsoft's business arrangements, contracts, and tactics. They should not be allowed to make exclusive deals with OEMs or anyone else. They should not be allowed to pressure OEMs into favoring their software with threats of revoking licenses or increasing costs and the like. They should not be allowed to charge per-processor, per-machine, or per-model fees for Windows, or use any other similar criteria for that purpose. OEMs should be allowed to ship PCs with no OS at all if that's what the customer wants. It should be entirely up to the seller, not Microsoft.

Then, if the DOJ isn't completely incompetent, the agreement should be modified to remove all the loopholes that allow Microsoft to get out of revealing their APIs and protocols and whatnot when they deem it to be a security risk. That's utter nonsense and needs to be fixed. If it isn't, then just watch them begin to consider everything a security risk. They blatantly violated the intent of the first consent decree in the same way, don't think they won't do it again if there is even a tiny loophole in the agreement. This guy needs to make sure they comply and that they actually reveal this information. If they don't, he should be able to give us a damn good reason why not.

I read the Cringely article, and I don't have any problem with this guy from what I know of him so far (which is admittedly still very little), so I'm hopefull that he could be a good person for the job. Now, I hear that Microsoft wants to be able to name 3 of the people on the overwatch committee. I don't see why they should get to name anyone for the job. Does this make sense to anyone else? That's like getting to pick one of your friends to be your parole officer.

Unfortunately, the 1st world war kicked in before Tesla could do the same in the US. The US government said "hey, all your patents are belong to us", or something like that, thus preventing Tesla from setting the record straight.

While you are correct up to this point, the story does not end there. In 1943, just a few months after Tesla died, the US Supreme Court upheld Tesla's patent. A good explanation is here.

To the nay-sayers who point out that this is simply a celebration of the first transatlantic radio transmission, and thus Marconi should be credited, you should remember that Marconi was claiming that he did indeed invent the radio even though he completely stole Tesla's design. Furthermore it enforces the common myth that Marconi invented the radio when Tesla was the real genius. Tesla simply couldn't muster the funds to demonstrate it first. He was never good at raising money and was being duped by rich robber-barons like JP Morgan who had an interest in putting down his world changing ideas which would reallocate money out of their pockets.

What does that mean, anyway? Did someone just pee on the newspaper?

This answers that question fairly well.

Spot on. Anyone else see the 'Frontline' show a week ago or so entitled "The Monster that ate Hollywood"?

This excellent piece went into exactly why movies are focused on the all-important opening weekend. Basically the huge megacorps that own all of the studios want to minimize their risk and maximize return so they gravitate to formulas with known elements.

What's behind the opening-weekend box-office mania? Does marketing hold too much power over the fate of a film? Here are excerpts from FRONTLINE's interviews with Mandalay's chairman, Peter Guber; Bob Levin, president of worldwide marketing and distribution for MGM; journalist Richard Natale; longtime studio executive Lucy Fisher; actor and producer Michael Douglas; Sony Corporation of America's chief executive, Howard Stringer; and Bill Mechanic, former Fox studio chief.

If this program airs again in your area, I highly recommend you check it out.

Cringely's new article comes out every Thursday at the I, Cringely website.

You can add an automatic link to the newest article from your Slashdot Homepage Preferences. Scroll down to the Customize Slashboxes tab and add I, Cringely.

My proposal is this: rather than having to submit a story about Cringely's latest article (as is done every week) in order for the article to receive acceptance by a Slashdot editor in order for it to become a story and receive a Slashdot forum, why not just have an automatic forum placed at the bottom of the I, Cringely slashbox? Every Thursday, a new forum is created for the new article, and there's no need to submit the story to the editors and wait until Sunday to post our comments. Kind of like the way the Slashdot Poll is handled.

::Colz Grigor

--

After reading this article, I begin to see why it will be doubly tough for Slashdot to make the jump to subscription-based revenue.

The biggest problem I see with Slashdot is that Slashdot doesn't have a Cringely or a Coursey or a Dvorak. Sure, Slashot has Jon Katz, but I just don't find his articles as readable as a Cringley column or a Dvorak rant.

I see the real difference between Slashdot and Salon on a couple of other fronts as well. Besides not having several columns by intersting authors, most of Slashdot's content is made interesting by the readers, not by the story submitters. Personally, I am horrified by both the obvious lack of attention given to grammar, as well as the oft-biased one-liners added by the story submitters. Finally, although it has gotten better in recent times, Slashdot seems to crash a lot... even more than an overloaded MySQL database would suggest.

For Slashdot to take a viable community and turn it profitable, the story editors do a lot more than Salon did. The fact remains that Salon's content is mostly unique, whereas Slashdot's content (in terms of story submissions) is mostly regurgitated. Salon's readers will pay because it's hard to find Salon-like articles anywhere else. On the other hand, I can honestly say that if ZDNet had a moderation system, I'd only rarely visit Slashdot. ZDNet's columnists keep me entertained, and their news is grammatically correct and up-to-date because they pay people to go out and write it.

It all boils down to whether Slashdot can successfully differentiate itself from the hundreds of other "Cool Linux Stories" sites. In the end, what keeps Slashdot's readers coming back is the discussion and the attached moderation system. What remains to be seen is whether or not people will pay for that.

For this article...

http://www.pbs.org/cringely/like/like20011206.html

Which impact will this discovery have on the recently overhyped global warming debate ?

It will give ammunition to people who, having an interest in not cutting back in CO2 emissions, want to argue that the global warming we've observed recently on earth is a "natural" phenomenon.

Firstly, this isn't an observation of increased temperature on mars. This is an observation of polar CO2 erosion. No temperature increase (which has been observed on earth) has been observed on Mars.

Secondly, we allready knew that climate change occurs periodically and naturally. The fact that Mars may be in the process of exiting a "dry ice age" at the moment indicates nothing about the earth.

Furthermore, I'm going to take common-sense issue with the scientists announcement that this (which they have observed over only 1 yr. martian) is "definitely not a seasonal trend." They can't know that. As an example, the ice sheets could melt in summers and reform every third or fourth winter which hapened to be extra cold. Point is there would be no long term change. I don't see any data on the actual rate at which these ice sheets are eroding, either.

The Earth, on the other hand, is allready warm by recent-meteorological standards (personally, I'm a great fan of the theory that the himalayas caused the ice ages by stripping CO2 out of the atmosphere - Nova did an episode about it.) The rate at which CO2 is going back into the earth's atmosphere is highly unusual given our knowledge of the climatic history of the earth so I don't see how our much-more-limited knowledge of the climate on Mars reveals much.

Speaking of flame wars, I have to resist the impulse to insult the previous poster. This has nothing to do with the ozone layer!

In 91 OS/2 was out. It was a 32 bit os with a GUI. Very technically sweet for it's day. It also cost about 5 times what Dos+Windows cost. IBM was held up as the shining example of a company that couldn't market space heaters in Alaska in January. Everyone (except IBM) knew that the pricing was killing OS2. People who used OS2 were as fanatical about it as the Mac users are. IBM could easily taken the desktop if it had lowered the price. It didn't. As Cringely pointed out a month ago Microsoft has succeeded because its competitors have acted like idiots.

a tad OT, but: Text search for GUENTER NIMTZ on http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/transcripts/2612time. html Similar, but not the same . . .

Yes, there are a lot of companies who have been squashed (or, as Joel would say, "Had their lunch eaten") by Microsoft in large part because of Microsoft's money/marketing, but there are also a lot of companies that nose dived into failure because of their own ignorant business and technology decisions.

While Microsoft may not like the costs and annoyance of court cases and DOJ action, it must give them some satisfaction because most of those companies bringing suit against Microsoft are doing so because they think that's their best option. I would argue that for these plantiffs making better products would be a "better option."

You may want to check out this article by Robert Cringely: Microsoft's C# Language Might Be the Death of Java, but Sun's the One to Blame.

A lot of truth in that...

The deal for Excite was not that bad in some ways, when they bought Excite it had positive cash flow and was about number 3 or 4 in the portal game. The problem was that they synergy didn't happen.
Cringely wrote a good column about it months before all this happened.
His prognosis was also remarkably sharp, about how AT and T would come back and get the network, although it seems people are justifiably annoyed at their tactics.

1) the various quantum tunneling experiments, where the Mozart 40th Symphony was transmitted through solid metal at several times the speed of light. There is a good link here. There was even a NOVA special or something on that (see that transcript here, - info about 2/3rds into the material)

2) maybe something involving the research of Steven Wolfram (developer of Mathematica), as seen in his forth coming book A New Kind of Science, which is very geeky, very bizarre, and right up this alley, and is supposed to be a rethinking of the very fundamentals of how science works. My head hurts already. This book is due for publication in January 2002, and is well worth pre-ordering.

You're thinking of William Shockley, one of the inventors of the transistor, and the man who put the silicon in Silicon Valley.

The article mentions the PBS special Nerds 2.0.1 but doesn't link to the compendium site, which is worth checking out. Check out the Nerds 2.0.1 site, or more specifically, the section on Cisco.

It was a good series that is defiantly worth checking out if its on your local PBS station.

The article mentions the PBS special Nerds 2.0.1 but doesn't link to the compendium site, which is worth checking out. Check out the Nerds 2.0.1 site, or more specifically, the section on Cisco.

It was a good series that is defiantly worth checking out if its on your local PBS station.

I don't know what this guy's job was, but I don't think he had the responsibility of making all the software secure.

First off, not to single you out, but this is so friggin typical of slashdot. Everyone (including chrisd from ./) is posting all this stuff, taking their shots, and not having a clue who the guy is and what he does. Second, it is pretty damn irresponsible of slashdot to post an article based off a message on a mailing list.

Finally, apparently this guy knows his shit. From this PBS interview

He is Chief of Information Security for the Microsoft Corporation. Prior to this he was a Supervisory Special Agent, Director of the Air Force Office of Special Investigations, Computer Forensic Lab and Computer Crime and Information Warfare.

Now, does it seem like a mistake to hire him? After all, he is *leaving* MSFT to go back to the government. Enjoy your crow, everyone!

Or am I misunderstanding what's actually going on. Are they simply doing things like creating human hearts in monkeys and the like? As with the tobacco plants we rigged up to create hemoglobin or insulin or whatever? I don't really see a problem with that, I guess.

Yes, that's pretty much what they're doing.

This is a problem that I first saw raised in a shadowrun sourcebook (and yes, I really am a biologist, but that's still the first place I saw it mentioned): you can't grow an organ in isolation. It just doesn't work that way.

Before I even start, let me suggest some background reading:
why transplants are rejected and what genes actually are and a random example of what alternative technologies exist.

Both of the first two are good introductions for an intelligent layman, although they include a lot of info tangential to this discussion.

Finally, scads more info on the general state of this sort of research in japan, if that's what interests people, can be found here.

So, you can do one of several things if you want to produce organs for use in humans:
1) You can grow up an entire human (possibly with the gray matter destroyed, in order to be "humane") and then harvest it for the organs you want. This is the route of choice in the awful future of Shadowrun.

2) You can try and grow an organ in isolation in some kind of synthetic nutrient bath. Long story short: only works for skin or bone, move along.

3) You can genetically modify an animal so that it has organs that humans won't reject. This animal is "part human" in a more real sense than option 4 (which is what the japanese are proposing) because, basically by definition, it has human DNA in every single cell in it's body, so that the organ you want to donate to a human will produce proteins that cause your recipient to think that it's part of his own body.

4) The Japanese proposition. In order to generate the environment which will cause a single human cell to become a human heart, you implant that cell into a babboon, in such a place and in such a way that it will grow into a heart. In this case, you're basically using the baboon as the "nutrient bath" from option 2. There are a whole host of technical hurdles (of course) but I wholeheartedly agree with the previous poster. This is actually less "bothersome" than option 3, and if there's a chance it will work, go for it.

I think this is the scariest frontline documentary I've ever seen:

Organ Farm

Actually CNN has had several roundtable discussions on the secret military tribunals featuring several members (usually those from the ACLU).

Also remember that CNN is the MacDonalds of news: fast, cheap, and everywhere.

Most people who give a damn usually get their info from better sources (NYTimes, Salon, Frontline, the alternative press, etc) many of which bring up these issues all the time.

Don't badmouth the whole of American media when all you see of it is through the CNN keyhole.

There's a Robert Cringely Geek History video out there that discusses the Altair. They had no real use for the contraption, and some inventive geek sat down in front of it at a convention for an hour or so reading a list of switches to flip and the order to flip them in off a piece of paper. Halfway through someone kicked the plug out by mistake...and he restarted. At the end, when he'd finally flipped all the switches he needed to flip, he put an AM radio on top of the Altair, and hit run. The radio picked up a tinny version of "Fool on the Hill"
They were so impressed he got a standing ovation and a "Stripped Philips Screw" Award.

Remember Cringley's columnabout Microsoft wanting to replace TCP/IP with their own protocols? Imagine a requirement that American's only use software that the FBI can get at- and if that software ran on proprietary Microsoft protocols, the government could force American ISPs to block the older protocols that only criminals need anyway. Given that George Bush will likely be elected if he can drag on his "war on terrorism" until 2004 (Americans always re-elect wartime preisdents.), that leaves us with seven more years of a federal government supports Microsoft, supports John Ashscroft's assault on the freedoms provided by our constitution, and is not afraid of the political ramifications of extreme actions.

I think we all have a reason to be paranoid...

No, they don't. These companies have revenue measured in the trillions of dollars. They are owned by international conglomerates that are looking for 15% growth every year. 1/2 a mil is no big deal to these companies, as long as they find artists who engage in the "same thing, only new" method of creative development.

Hollywood seems to have been taken over by the suits. They don't want to take a risk, because if they do, they won't see the 15% increase in year over year revenue that has become the norm for business these days.

What is needed is small, privately held companies fronting new artists. If the person putting the money up for the project actually has an intrest in the industry other than the sexyness factor, the train wreck that American media has become may have a chance of getting back to being the best entertainment in the world.

Frontline just aired a story about Hollywood and the film industry, but since they're the same companies in most cases, the story still applies. They weren't anywhere near as nice as the article about what has become of the modern studio. The only thing that they missed (as does the article), is that there is no reason with modern recording equipment it should cost 1/2 a mil for producing 10 songs, or a movie, and just what the heck all those lawyers are for!

Why wait? They'll be happy to take your money right now, today!.

You can probably even do it online.

This matter is dealt with in another Cringley article. I infer that the source code was published to make it more difficult to sell an IBM clone while having a legal leg to stand on. That's why Compaq had to spend $1 million to reverse engineer it in a completely legal manner.

The answer comes down to how Nintendo ran (and probably still runs) its distribution system in Japan. The system dates from Nintendo's days as a card game company, and in it, the wealth creation was tied to people at various levels in the complex system of middlemen buying more product than they could legitimately use.

No returns were allowed. And since masked ROMs had long manufacturing lead times and assembly caused delays, developers and publishers were encouraged to buy lots of cartridges lest they be stuck without stock if the game became a big hit. For Nintendo, the game was already a hit if an optimistic publisher could be persuaded to buy lots of cartridges. Except for the biggest of blockbuster hit games, it didn't matter to Nintendo's accounting department whether the game was good or not, or whether customers even bought it.

One thing's for sure, the mini-dvd driver certainly wasn't an engineering decision.

Frontline special: Plague Wars

This is the most balanced, incisive, and original presentation I've seen on the topic. It was written several years ago and was not rushing to meet some deadline or focused on the current agent du jour. It's fantastic.

Anyone who likes Laurie Garrett's work (or Ken Alibek's) will find this site worth digging into, deeply.

Have "fun".

There was a episode of Nova about the very same topic last night on our local PBS affiliate. Quite disturbing, especially in regards to the experiments of the Soviet Union even after global treaties had been signed.
The pictures of smallpox victims were even more disturbing.
Check out the schedule, maybe it's on again, for those interested.

The Super Bridge documentary contained an excellent quote:

JOE LEACH: Anyone can build a bridge that will carry a given loading. But if you look at the way that some of those of us in construction look at it, it takes a real craftsman to build a bridge that will, that will just barely carry it.

In software, the opposite seems true. Almost anyone can write a program that will just barely perform a given task. It takes a real craftsman to write a program that will handle the task reliably and efficiently, and lend itself to modification to handle related tasks.

The barriers to practice each craft and the consequences of doing them badly are hardly comparable. A bridge about to fail would be condemned immediately, but if you tried to stop someone selling software that didn't work you'd be sued or jailed.
There is a cost analogy though. Just as a perfect bridge would be unaffordable to construct, so would be a perfect program. Unless there were some magical source of volunteer labor, donated materials, and expert advice.

You should also check out the Nova show if you can buy the video. Their website is http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/longitude/.

Is Osama's belief about American intervention or his version of Islam?

It's both. Read Osama's interview in 1998.

Osama bin Laden on America in Saudi countries:
"The call to wage war against America was made because America has spear-headed the crusade against the Islamic nation, sending tens of thousands of its troops to the land of the two Holy Mosques over and above its meddling in its affairs and its politics, and its support of the oppressive, corrupt and tyrannical regime that is in control. These are the reasons behind the singling out of America as a target. And not exempt of responsibility are those Western regimes whose presence in the region offers support to the American troops there."

Questions: Why doesn't America helping the Muslim Kuwaitis in Desert Storm count? Also, what about helping the Muslim Croats fight against the Eastern Orthodox Serbs in the Balkans? If you read the article, most of Osama's criticism revolves around the US' support of Israel. Is this issue really about Islam or anti-Semitism?

Osama bin Laden on spreading (his twisted version) of Islam:
"I am one of the servants of Allah. We do our duty of fighting for the sake of the religion of Allah. It is also our duty to send a call to all the people of the world to enjoy this great light and to embrace Islam and experience the happiness in Islam. Our primary mission is nothing but the furthering of this religion."

While spreading a religion is fine, I personally don't consider ObL's interpretation of Islam to be accurate or representative of the religion, as many Muslims have been telling us. That's why I say his philosophy is twisted.

Not to troll (or even take sides), but Bob has replied to your open letter in this weeks column.
Indeed, he seems to quote you.

The link for those who still care.

It's is suspected that the Gulf of Tonkin Incident was actually based on the above operation.

If you havent read it already check out Body of Secrets , a recent history of the NSA, and proof that the land of the free is far from that

140 x 114 JPG of Ms. Rosen, courtesy of pbs.org