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Here's a link to 'non-convoy' uses: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4199935.stm Also, Carnegie Melon's TUGV: http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/05217/548931.stm

Let me illustrate with an example: Sony regularly names Sony as a defendant in copyright lawsuits.

Sony Corporation is: several mini-divisions of Sony Electronics (Walkmans, stereo gear, camcorders, TVs, phones, not to mention an entire division dedicated to pro-level broadcast hardware and Betacam SP); a large media arm in Sony-BMG Music Group which has its own problems, Sony's movie studio - again, schizo in performance but huge and sprawling; Sony's various software divisions (SCE*), in NA, Japan, and Europe; 'online' or SonyConnect verisons for each of those again...not to mention weirdo initiatives like Sony Ericsson (very successful)...

You see where I'm going with this. Here's an article that does a good job summing it up.

It is pointless to discuss an entity called SONY as if it were a coherent entity. It is more like the EU. Very competitive, aligned loosely, but basically all fighting each other tooth and nail for internal dominance, which usually translates to external dominance. This has been Sony's culture for a long time, only recently changing under their new CEO (a Welsh guy, another first for the corporation).

If you ask Sony's hardware guys about the iPod, most of them will readily concede that they were soundly thrashed by Apple. iPod is the new Walkman, no doubt. Sony could have competed with Apple if they didn't have the content arms sniping at them throughout the development process (and also if they had let go of certain insane engineers who loved minidisc a little too much).

So when you guys are boycotting Sony products - a principal I do not disagree with - I do have to wonder a little if you know exactly what you are boycotting. Sony-BMG are bastards, I deal with them all the time and they really just are the epitome of the 'evil record label'. Sony hardware is a completely different entity, and they more or less hate Sony-BMG as well. When you stop buying Sony TVs and whatnot, you are actually punishing the guys who are (now somewhat successfully) pushing against the DRM in the hardware. They hate this shit, and they know what consumers want (mostly...). DRM comes from the media arms, and its dictating product design inside Sony, and that is the battle.

What I am saying is, you need the carrot and the stick. Don't buy Sony-BMG music, they cam eup with the rootkit. DO buy those Sony products that are free of DRM. The message will be clear. I have a Sony Ericsson phone (W600i) and it does not have any DRM for loading and playing music, short of the veil necessary to keep you from beaming pre-canned content into other phones. it actually is the iTunes phone that everyone wanted, and no one shipped, including Motorola/Apple. My iTunes collection, all uninfected MP3 and AAC, loads (both directions) and plays beautifully.

Sony Electronics has typically kept the underperforming divisions from showing up more drastically on the balance sheet (PS2) but they are suffering now as well. Let's hope the hardware guys win over the media guys.

How is a true statement a troll?

In Pittsburgh, PA the government has been busy tossing old women into the streets and taking their homes,
all because granny can't pay for the tripled taxes and new stadiums.

The sheriff has been busy taking more homes away from
families in 2003, 2004, 2005, and 2006 than back when the steel mills closed.

Explain to this 5 year old boy why armed men chasing his family out of his home is 'Just a Troll'.

He lived through it.

How is a true statement a troll?

In Pittsburgh, PA the government has been busy tossing old women into the streets and taking their homes,
all because granny can't pay for the tripled taxes and new stadiums.

The sheriff has been busy taking more homes away from
families in 2003, 2004, 2005, and 2006 than back when the steel mills closed.

Explain to this 5 year old boy why armed men chasing his family out of his home is 'Just a Troll'.

He lived through it.

How is a true statement a troll?

In Pittsburgh, PA the government has been busy tossing old women into the streets and taking their homes,
all because granny can't pay for the tripled taxes and new stadiums.

The sheriff has been busy taking more homes away from
families in 2003, 2004, 2005, and 2006 than back when the steel mills closed.

Explain to this 5 year old boy why armed men chasing his family out of his home is 'Just a Troll'.

He lived through it.

I assume you're in Pittsburgh based on those place names; in that case I recommend a trek up Rialto Street (Pig Hill) on the North Side (a 25% grade) or Canton Street in Beechview (a 37% grade, among the steepest streets in the world). That's what I call "heavy mode."

But no way in hell am I going to fork over top dollar for a machine that's not just the same as but EQUAL in quality (same Chinese imported crap) as any beige box is.

The great irony here is that if you buy an iPod, it WILL ship from China.
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/05226/553353.stm
MacMini made in China too..
http://duncandavidson.com/essay/2005/01/mac_mini_o n_its

I bought a $1200 Hewlette Packard laptop a month ago..
Guess what it says on the bottom?
"Designed by Hewlett-Packard. Made in China"
And they shipped it FedEx from Shanzen (sp?) China

Now that's just a heartless thing to say. Many good parents still lose their children, often through no fault of their own.

"Many" is a relative term. Curiously, nobody seems to be keeping statistics on this particular crime. Kind of odd considering how "popular" child abuction and murder crimes are in the news. But at least one study has been done and it indicates a rate of less than 100 per year nationwide.

I'm pretty sure that nationwide more than 100 kids die due to falling out of trees each year. So, while it certainly sucks to be one of those kids who fall out of a tree or who are kidnapped and murdered, it is not really a problem that can be described as happening to "many" parents.

Learn to read, anonymous dipshit

Personally, I try to treat everyone with the respect I expect to receive.

To paraphrase Dave Chapelle: "Oh, this irony is killing me inside."

http://www.post-gazette.com/columnists/20040127nor manp5.asp

More on this? Sure, look here (Irish unit lets Microsoft cut taxes in U.S., Europe) or here (Microsoft Corp.'s Round Island One unit is Ireland's most profitable company). Or do like I did to get $insert_favourite_search_engine to produce these results: search on 'Microsoft ireland eu tax'...

They are not after the data because they want to know how many people are searching for porn. They're after the data because they want to use it to bolster their case for the Child Online Protection Act, an act which is a thinly veiled attempt to push anti-porn decency laws.

Exactly.

COPA would require age-verification schemes, which the DOJ says are necessary because porn is so prevalent and filters are not effective.

What I'd like to know is that if filters are so ineffective, then why according to the Children's Internet Protection Act are public and school libraries required to have them installed in order to receive technology funding?

I am a librarian, and our filters are ridiculously ineffective. They block lots of stuff they shouldn't, and I can only fix the ones that I know about. If a patron is too shy to ask to have the filtering turned off or the page unblocked... well, they can't see something they're entitled to see. So, they let in porn, block sites that aren't porn, waste lots of staff (and patron) time, and cost us money. We had a policy and system and a choice of filtered or unfiltered access before this. *sigh*

And to top it off, politicians are still trying to punish libraries if those filters don't work properly.

The problem with both CIPA and COPA is taht they attempt to solve a moral issue with a technological solution, and I simply don't think that's feasible.

You think you're kidding. Accuweather, which derives its forecasts from raw data supplied to it by the National Weather Service, is pushing to stop the NWS from supplying its data to anyone who asks for free, as they do now.

Profit does not equal taxable income because of accounting games such as Round Island One Ltd., which I mentioned earlier.

In case you are link-adverse - "Round Island One provides a structure for Microsoft to radically reduce its corporate taxes in much of Europe, and similarly shields billions of dollars from U.S. taxation."

Do you think that is fair? If so, then I guess you have Leona Helmsley's take on taxes then - Only the little people pay taxes.

Microsoft enjoyed more than $12 billion in total tax breaks over the past five years. In fact, Microsoft actually paid no tax at all in 1999, despite $12.3 billion in reported U.S. profits. Microsoft's tax rate for the past two years was only 1.8 percent on $21.9 billion in pretax U.S. profits.

General Electric, America's most profitable corporation, reported $50.8 billion in U.S. profits over the past five years, but paid only 11.5 percent of that in federal income taxes. That low tax rate reflected almost $12 billion in corporate tax welfare for GE.

IBM reported $5.7 billion in U.S. profits in 2000, but paid only 3.4 percent of that in federal income taxes. In 1997, IBM reported $3.1 billion in U.S. profits, and instead of paying taxes, got an outright tax rebate. Over the past five years, IBM enjoyed a total of $4.7 billion in corporate tax welfare.

In the US, corporate taxes (state + federal) are about 40%! 40%!
Maybe you meant 4%, not 40%?

even more...
If big corporations actually paid 35 percent of their U.S. profits in federal income taxes, as the tax code ostensibly requires, corporate income taxes this year would total at least $308 billion. But actual corporate-tax payments this year are expected to be only $136 billion. In other words, this year (and next), for the first time since the early 1980S, corporate-tax loopholes will actually cost the U.S. Treasury more than the amount companies pay in income taxes.

Check out for more examples.

How about this?

The more you learn!

Don't you know Ireland is in the EU ? http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/05311/602213.stm

I mean the lost productivity due to poor interoperability (even with other MS products), bit rot, incomplete products and difficult interfaces must be on the order of billions every quarter. That's along side the problem of security and having a system that's more or less designed to spread viruses, spyware, spam, Denial of Service attacks and worms. Each of those is estimated to individually cost many tens of billions of dollars per quarter. All are only made possible due to persistent design flaws and an architecture unsuited for any kind of networked environment. These flaws have been around long enoug that at this point they can be called intentional.

So that's the damage to any computer-using business.

On top of all that you have the damage that Gate's empire has done to the IT sector, especially in the US. He took a thriving, diverse, competitive, innovative industry and crushed it with give aways (illegal tying), strong arming (esp. OEMs), sabotage, false advertising, predatory and illegal business practices, overcharging and lobbying.

All that bleeds the country (pick one, any one) in way that bin Laden couldn't even begin to dream about.

But the good side is all the tax money the MS movement brings in right? Wrong. MS pays nothing and hides in foreign tax havens. So in return for all that damage, MS gives nothing. Ok maybe some feel-good advertising and nice lobbying budgets, but not much more.

Dipshit. Apparently, you are way to stupid to get an education.

Since So click right here. Google will help you. You will find that Medical bills account for a fair number of bankruptcy (which suddenly became difficult).

That's a perfactly valid reason for a personal call, IMO, and how hard is it to ask one's boss if they can take a private call from their doctor?

It's none of your boss's business that you're discussing a medical problem with your doctor. That's between you and the doctor. If you wanted people to know that you were talking to your doctor about a medical problem, then you wouldn't care about privacy, would you?

It doesn't matter if you have your boss's permission to use a private phone because the doctor will call you at your desk. They won't have patience when you put them on hold, only to discover that the conference room with the designated private phone is in use. It's not a plan.

Not offering privacy to people in the bathroom is a violation of an expected freedom that people have in this country.

So your expectation of privacy in a public (or business) restroom must be met, but professionals with an expectation of privacy for phone calls at work are just to be written off as unreasonable? There are public restrooms in this country with no doors on the stalls. School districts have even removed stall doors. Apparently, not everyone shares your expectation of privacy in restrooms.

It's not actually illegal, but it can still land them in a whole crapload of trouble if the lack of privacy is not directly connected with what the business actually does.

So just what kind of "crapload of trouble" can a business get for providing doorless restroom stalls? No one is making you use the stalls. No one is forcing you to work for that company. Can you provide any links to newspaper articles or court cases showing that a business got in serious trouble for not having doors on bathroom stalls?

Professionals have long expected privacy for occasional personal phone calls and it's only in the last two decades that this expectation has been eroded by the disgusting trend of putting people in cubicles. People like you are only making the situation. By condoning this type of arrangement, you're telling businesses that it's okay to put people in doorless cubicles where their every word is overheard. You're saying that it's normal for a professional to be in a cubicle where everyone within 50 feet knows when they clip a fingernail, cough, sneeze, or fart. Grow a pair and tell your boss that you expect to work in an office with a door. Tell him that you expect to be able to make or receive a phone call without everyone in the area hearing your every word. Don't sing the company song while they tear down office walls.

I think you mean the American Federation of Teachers (AFT ). Believe it or not, teacher's unions have typically opposed bonuses based on above average performance. The thinking is that every dollar of bonus paid to top teachers takes away from the teachers who are below average or average, but who make up a voting majority within the union.

Unfortunately, for all their rhetoric, the NFT as an organization is more interested in lining their pockets than in improving education in the US. Because of their selfishness, common sense remedies to the appalling state of the American public school system such as pay for performance are politically untenable.

That's easy for someone who already has a photo id to say. What about the people who have no driver's license? Like the elderly or the people in the inner city? Here's a couple of articles you should read, before you are so quick to codemn anybody that wants equal access to voting for ALL citizens.
  article 1
  article 2

dupe

U.S. Moves to Kill Leap Seconds
Posted by CowboyNeal on Saturday July 30, @09:53PM
from the time-to-kill dept.
blacklite001 writes "Not content with merely extending Daylight Savings Time, the U.S. government now also proposes to eliminate leap seconds, according to a Wall Street Journal story. Their proposal, 'made secretly to a United Nations body,' includes adding 'a "leap hour" every 500 to 600 years.' Hey, anyone remember the last bunch of people to mess with the calendar?"

I'll see your special intrest group and raise you the "independent" Chinese media.
Twice.

It can't be that there are people who care but realize socialist ideas don't work

Something seems to be working:
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/05133/504149.stm
Do socialist countries have more social mobility than capitalist ones? Actually with free education, health care and a high minimum wage, it is not all that surprising...

Note the original article came from that old socialist rag, The Wall Street Journal.

Every time I hear about a mechanical / atomic clock to be supremely accurate, I have to wonder, what about daylight savings time? what about leap years? leap seconds?

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/05210/545823.stm

http://www.leaphour.com/

http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/time/leap/

unless either:

1) The world (not just the US) completely and finally breaks ther link between astronomical events and time, or
2) Atomic clocks are programmed to comprehend astronomical events such as sunrise / sunset, variances in the length in solar years, and others,

Then the next finder of this wonder may be as lost as to its real function and meaning as we are about stonehinge.

One may assume that civilization constantly marches forward technologically, but that one must explain why the ancient Romans had flush toilets when the American settlers did not.

Hulk'in Halloween Display/Webcam is up

There are a couple of companies called Freedom Wireless operating in other parts of the world (a Telus Mobility dealership in Canada, a WiFi "solutions provider" in the UK), but neither are the company that constitute the subject of this article. This article talks a little more about them.

I remember reading about this case a few weeks ago in the Wall Street Journal. The article was entitled "Patent litigants pose growing threat to business."

The first paragraph brought to light one of Freedom Wireless' founder's criminal past (it involved stolen cars) as well as the fact that the founders had previously gone after GTE for similar issues (alleging stolen trade secret). GTE ended up getting paid $90,000 in legal fees, a statement that GTE had never stolen a trade secret, and a promise never to sue GTE again.

Fast forward a few years. Freedom Wireless currently does nothing but patent ligitation. These men are patent trolls.

The Wall Street Journal charges for their archives, but the full text of the same article is available here.

- Neil Wehneman

What pisses off people who believe in intelligent design is not people who don't believe in intelligent design, but people who are trying to completely erase their beliefs from the curriculum.

... and people trying to erase intelligent design from the curriculum are just as close-minded and just as guilty of forcing their beliefs on others as those who try to erase evolutionary theory from the curiculum

William "Red" Whittaker, the Red Team leader, minimized whatever disappointment he felt at the finish, noting the close links between Carnegie Mellon and the Stanford leaders -- former CMU professor Sebastian Thrun and a former doctorate student of Dr. Whittaker, Michael Montemerlo.

"You take off those blue shirts," Dr. Whittaker said, referring to the Stanford Racing Team color, "and they're Carnegie Mellon."

Here's the article: http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/05282/585369.stm

We need to stop blaming tools for the actions of people. It's not the drug's fault that you're stoned. It's that you decided to consume it. It's not the gun's fault that you murdered somebody. You decided to shoot it. This hellbent determination to excuse the actions of individuals by blaming their bad decision making on tools or circumstances has got to end at some point, or our tangled web of indulging and empathetic laws will result in a soup of legal abstractness that makes it impossible for anybody to ever do anything wrong. It will always go back to being the fault of some company that manufactured some product or tool that enabled a person to commit a crime, and since the corporation as a peopleless legal entity will be held responsible, we end up with a legal system in which individual people are never responsible for anything. That's going to suck.

If you'd been paying attention, you'd realize that this isn't the problem at all. It's not that people won't be held accountable for their actions, it's that rich people and big corporations are able to see to it that poor people and small companies are held liable for interfering with their profits. RIAA et al don't give a damn whether you're a small startup with a new product that happens to bring in unwanted competition or a 13 year old girl who simply didn't know any better, they will throw so many lawyers at you that you'll have lost your case financially before ever having a day in court.

Your gun and pot analogies have the wrong context. We all know that the vast majority of us would be quickly convicted and thrown in jail if we were caught doing drugs or killing people. The implication here isn't that we'll all suddenly be able to blame gun and drug dealers for our crimes, it's that very rich people and very large corporations have the financial ability to walk all over the laws and rights of everyone else.

Sure.

How about the erosion of the 4th Amendment with the USA Patriot Act?
Or perhaps the human rights violations in Guantanamo bay?
Or the government intervention in something as personal as marriage?
Or the War on Privacy, err War on drugs?
Maybe the widening gap between the rich and poor? Perhaps the government endorsing religion?

Is that a good enough start?

Silly news can be fun sometimes, but it can also get you into trouble.

Thank you for that fascinating string of ad hominems, misinterpretations of both my statements and motives, and uncited factually incorrect assertions. That is certainly a wonderful way to bring up the level of discourse and help others whom you believe misunderstand the situation to come to a better understanding.

As I am in a generous mood, I will go ahead and let you know the thing you desperately need to know:

No matter how earnest or angry you are, citing links to specific non-partisan sources to back up your assertions is much more persuasive than writing things you wished were true punctuated with bits of all caps ranting and using lots of exclamation points.

Here is an example. I have a position. FEMA and the White House screwed up royally in this crisis. Besides the obvious top level things like Bush staying on vacation through the disaster and for days afterwards, besides Condi Rice going on vacation after the crisis started, besides Dick Cheney staying on vacation for a week after the hurricane hit, Mike Brown screwing up so badly he was fired, etc., how else have they screwed up since the disaster started? Take a look at the evidence:

Some have denied that FEMA was responsible, or wasn't called in until after the disaster hit. This is false:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2005/08/20 050827-1.html

The White House held up deployment of other state's Nat'l Guard in LA:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050903/ap_on_re_us/ka trina_national_guard

Bush dragged his feet on rubber stamping deploying the navy - it was his job to authorize their use and he sat on his hands. The USS Bataan, a naval vessel with helicopters, doctors, hospital beds, food, and water had been cruising off the Gulf since the Friday before the hurricane unable to act for more than a week:
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi -0509040369sep04,1,4144825.story?page=1&coll=chi-n ewsnationworld-hed

FEMA sent back volunteers with flotilla of 500 boats:
http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0509/01/acd .01.html

FEMA prevented a convoy of Wal-Mart trucks from delivering food and water:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9179790/

FEMA won't accept Amtrak's help in evacuations:
http://news.ft.com/cms/s/84aa35cc-1da8-11da-b40b-0 0000e2511c8.html

FEMA turned away power generators:
http://www.wwltv.com/local/stories/WWLBLOG.ac3fcea .html

FEMA prevented the Coast Guard from delivering diesel fuel:
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/05/national/nationa lspecial/05blame.html?ex=1283572800&en=1d14ebfbd94 2a7d0&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss

FEMA won't allow Red Cross deliver food:
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/05246/565143.stm

FEMA blocks morticians from entering New Orleans:
http://www.zwire.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=15147862 &BRD=1817&PAG=461&dept_id=68561&rfi=6

FEMA snubbed Chicago's offer o

What is your belief that the federal response was slow based on? Have you seen a timeline of the response and compared it to previous hurricane responses? Are you personally involved in hurricane responses? Or are you just absorbing what the talking heads on TV tell you to think?

Of course, once you start looking at facts instead of the media's instajudgment how-can-we-bash-Bush party line, you notice that the federal response wasn't slow. Actually, it was faster than in past storm situations.

But don't let the facts get in the way of your beliefs.

"One more thing we can't forget is that a man can make a phone call and order thousands of people to be killed instantly by napalm, but that same man cannot make a phone call and order thousands of water bottles dropped on a city ravaged by a hurricane? Think about this one real carefully: We can more quickly and capably kill our purported enemies than we can help our own citizens. Is that the kind of nation you want to be a part of?"

It has always been, and will always be, easier to create chaos out of order than to create order out of chaos.

For a more enlightened and researched view of Federal Response to hurricane Katrina, checkout http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/05254/568876.stm

Computers have consistently exhibited rapid technological change that must be taken into account to avoid biased estimates of inflation.2 For example, a mainstream desktop computer that sold for $2,200 in 1993 may have included a 33 megahertz (MHz) central processing unit (CPU), 8 megabytes (MB) of dynamic random access memory (DRAM), a 210MB hard drive, a 15-inch monitor, as well as many other defining technological characteristics. In 1998, however, a desktop computer that sold for $2,200 could easily have been configured with a 450MHz CPU, 128MB of SDRAM, an 8,000MB hard drive, a 17-inch monitor, and included other advanced features unavailable in 1993, such as a DVD player and 3D-graphics capabilities. In this example the observed prices for the 1993 and 1998 computers are identical. However, technological change over this 5-year period has been remarkable: CPU speed (MHz) jumped 1,263 percent (this actually understates the change in CPU performance3), system memory increased 1,500 percent, hard drive capacity increased 3,700 percent, and monitor size increased 13 percent.

We have an economic mobility in this nation that's unheard of most other places in the world.

Unheard of you say? (ripping off someone elses link ;)

"The U.S. and Britain appear to stand out as the least mobile societies among the rich countries studied," he finds. France and Germany are somewhat more mobile than the U.S.; Canada and the Nordic countries are much more so.

Google's job is to navigate and not deceive. If you told a cab driver "Take me to the Holiday Inn" and he took you to some shady motel that paid off the taxi driver, you'd be pissed off.

Google makes money off of ads which are supposed to be "related" to your search query. Misusing someone's trademark to link to other companies is not legal.

Related story in which colleges' names were being used to sell disreputable degrees.

...about three guys driving a Toyota Prius non-stop for 48 hrs last weekend, in Pittsburgh, while trying to get 100 miles per gallon using one tank of gas. They used a gas-saving technique called pulse and glide, "a form of coasting that involves releasing the gas pedal, then pressing it slightly again to disengage the electric motors" according to this article.

They actually ended up doing better than they had hoped and got 110 MPG.

This seems to contradict your assertion about average miles per commute, a much more reasonable 11 miles (probably more since then since the data is old). This article seems to say that this person gets 110 miles per gallon in his Hybrid.

Also, it is a new technology whereas your Geo and the internal combustion engine has been around for quite a while. The Geo is extraordinarily tiny for a normal person to fit in. The Prius is more normal.

Also, the smart car is fundamentally more for European culture and streets. Canada is not simply America up north and they may not necessarily work here.

Yeah, well good luck with that plan. If Bush has his way, that's going to be F**Ked up as well.

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/05210/545823.stm

It should be noted that the privacy notations on student records don't apply to military recuriters (and presumably, other government institutions).

You can think your congressman for this: http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/05123/498098.stm

"Steal someone's idea, and do a halfassed job..."

I have read that M$' implementation is better than Google's in some ways:

http://blog.searchenginewatch.com/blog/050523-1252 08

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/05042/455971.stm

IIRC M$ has been in the map business for a long time.

Concentration of wealth is not in the public interest.

I thought it was phony too. Googled the center and Dr. Safar.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/artic le/2005/04/21/AR2005042101262_2.html

The center exists and they do this kind of science.

http://www.post-gazette.com/lifestyle/20020331safa r0331fnp2.asp The doctor exists and he's done some cool shit. Or did. He's passed on.

This sounds like intriguing science.

Soon my Master will walk the Earth again.

Igor! Bring Rover to me!

Some better links are here, here, and here.

If you visit the story that's linked to in the post, there's a photograph of the unit. It's about 2 finger-widths long on the guy's hand, which is probaly about 20-30mm. So who really knows...