Slashdot Mirror

Here's Reuters

Is it possible this will fall under the new law outlawing anonymous website registration/fake whois info? http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=inte rnetNews&storyID=6297075

My submission earlier:

Nintendo DS Price and Release Date Finalized Tuesday September 21, @07:48AM Rejected

"These memos were not memos that you typed, and you don't think they came directly out of his files," Rather asked Knox.

"The information, yes," says Knox. "It seems that somebody did see those memos, and then tried to reproduce and maybe changed them enough so that he wouldn't get in trouble over it."

1. Saddam has WMD and is ready to use them against the US.
   
2. His tax cuts are working.
   
3. We're winning in Iraq
   

You didn't address Woodward, that's fine.

Woodward interviewed Bush privately. No transcript was released, and there certainly wasn't any video.

The point remains that Kerry has avoided the press for over a month.

Wha? He gives unsolicited speeches anytime he wants. Neither of them is avoiding reporters.

Besides, the topic is about seeing the candidates in unscripted settings, like debates. Kerry is really pushing for weekly debates, and Bush is evading the challenge.

It's true that nobody can predict the future 100%, but according to U.S. intelligence the prospects are pretty dim. Even Republicans are very concerned.

http://yahoo.reuters.com/financeQuoteCompanyNewsAr ticle.jhtml?duid=mtfh72812_2004-09-04_02-22-58_sp9 6863_newsml

"

Yonhap carried conflicting reports about the cause of the blast, quoting one source as saying it could have been a forest fire and another as saying it may have been an explosion of at a weapons depot or factory.
...
Other possibilities include a failed missile engine test, a high-explosives test as a precursor to a nuclear blast or an industrial accident, diplomats said.

"In the northern part of the country, there are a lot of weapons factories and underground missile bases. The rocket-fuel could have exploded in the underground base, or something," speculated Daniel Pinkston, a North Korea expert at the Center for Nonproliferation Studies in Monterey, California.
"

Information is still sparse but trickling in. Reuters has an article up on it right now.

Big Blast, Mushroom Cloud Reported in N.Korea
Sun Sep 12, 2004 12:54 AM ET

By Kim Miyoung and Paul Eckert

SEOUL (Reuters) - A huge explosion rocked North Korea near the border with China three days ago, producing a mushroom cloud that sparked speculation Pyongyang might have tested an atomic weapon, Yonhap news agency reported on Sunday.

The South Korean agency said the blast on Thursday in Kimhyungjik county in Ryanggang province appeared much bigger than a train explosion that killed at least 170 people in April.

South Korean Unification Minister Chung Dong-young sought to play down an atomic link, telling South Korean reporters after a National Security Council meeting that Seoul's assessment so far was the explosion was unlikely to have been part of the communist North's nuclear arms ambitions.

"There are some foreign media reporting such possibilities, but we are judging at the moment the explosion is unrelated to such reports," Yonhap quoted him as saying. Chung chairs the National Security Council, which advises President Roh Moo-hyun.

There was no immediate reaction from neighboring China. In Washington, a U.S. official said it was unclear what had happened and there were various possible explanations. Tokyo took a similar line.

"We've heard the report, and we are checking the details, including what's in the report itself," said Japanese Foreign Ministry spokesman Akira Chiba.

Thursday was the 56th anniversary of North Korea's founding. The reclusive communist state often stages extravaganzas and big events to mark important anniversaries.

South Korean intelligence officials said they were monitoring the news, but declined detailed comment on the reports, which were based on "informed sources" in Beijing and in Seoul. Yonhap did not give a description of the blast site.

ACCIDENT OR TEST?

The reports surfaced as South Korea, Japan, China, Russia and the United States were seeking to persuade North Korea to return to the negotiating table to discuss its nuclear weapons ambitions. The North, which threatened at earlier talks to test an atomic bomb, has said it doubts more negotiations will help.

"There were rumors that the explosion was much bigger than the one at Ryongchon train station and the United States is showing a big interest as the blast was seen from satellites," Yonhap quoted an unnamed source in Beijing as saying.

The cause had yet to be determined but the source said Washington was not ruling out the possibility that the blast may be linked to a nuclear test.

China was the last country to set off an above-ground nuclear test, in 1980. It carried out its last nuclear test in 1996 and has since observed a self-imposed moratorium on testing.

Yonhap quoted other unnamed officials as saying it was probably not an accident, although it also quoted one source in Washington as saying it was unlikely to have been a nuclear test. It quoted another source as saying it could be a forest fire.

Yonhap reported a mushroom cloud up to 2.5 miles in diameter was spotted after the blast in remote Ryanggang province in the country's far northeast near to known missile bases.

The New York Times reported in its Sunday editions the Bush administration had received recent intelligence reports that some experts believed could indicate North Korea was preparing to conduct its first nuclear weapons test explosion.

Train wagons exploded at the Ryongchon railway station on April 22, killing 170 and injuring an estimated 1,300. The blast was believed to have been caused by a train loaded with oil and chemicals hitting a power line. (Additional reporting by Arshad Mohammed in Washington and Isabel Reynolds in Tokyo).

One senior intelligence official noted that preparations the North knew could be detected by the United States might be a scare or a negotiating tactic by North Korea, while other officials speculated a test could be intended to influence the U.S. presidential election in November.

Give a little credit to Bush on the steel tariffs, though, since he only backed down at the end of an economic gun. Personally, why not a little trade war? We run a monthly trade deficit of $55 billion. The country could use a few less plasma TVs.

It's pretty clear that you're not British, and you've never lived there. The BBC is in fact not funded by taxpayers, but rather by the monthly licence fee paid by everyone who owns a TV in the U.K.

Your "licence fee" is enforceable by the police, is it not? That is, when you buy a TV, you don't have a choice of whether to pay the fee or not, do you?

(I ask, because you are correct, I am not British, have never been to Britain, and due to the heavy govn't surveillance of citizens there and lapdog relationship with America, only desire to go to Britain once in my life - and only then for the experience)

If you don't have a choice when buying the TV of whether to pay the fee, then that fee is a sales (or excise) tax by economic definition.

Note that taxes get paid to the government.

And by your own statement, the money from that "licence fee"/sales tax goes to the BBC.

TV buyer --> British govn't --> BBC

Not all British citizens own TVs, true, but I'm venturing a guess that > 95% of them do, which makes the tax, for practical purposes (if not absolute purposes), universal.

The upshot of all this is that the BBC is, structurally anyway, the most independant news source out there: in theory, it's free from both market and government coercion

So long as that "licence fee" -- again, sales tax -- is paid to the BBC on the sale of TVs, the BBC is beholden to the British government for revenue. Think I'm wrong? Try getting that licence fee abolished -- see how long it takes for the BBC to denounce you.

It does a good job of at least *seeming* independent though.

If the BNP says it, it's probably dead wrong: the guys are unapologetic neofascists.

"Even a broken clock is right twice a day." -Malcolm X

They may be racists, fascists, and anything else you can call them, but if they publish something that is factually-untrue, people will be outraged. I haven't seen any such outrage (besides your own) over the BNP's and Telegraph's reporting of the murder, whatever the slant may be; then again, I admit I haven't looked that hard (again, citing the Telegraph article was due to my wanting to verify that this party's claim was, in all probability, at least generally-true, b/c I knew the BNP would - like any political party - have an axe to grind).

The BBC has its flaws and problems, but in no sense is it a subsidiary of the British government

Does it receive government funding? (requires answer to my first question). If it does, then that still doesn't mean it can't be a separate corporation (similar to, but not the same as the relationship we have in America between the defense industry and the military), so the BBC could legally be a separate entity from the government.

That said, if a private corporation is receiving a govn't-enforced licence fee/sales tax from the government -- isn't that sort of public-private cooperation the definition of fascism? It may be relatively very-mild, but if in fact that tax gets paid to the BBC (and if the BBC is a separate corporation), then it is still fascism by definition.

Still, the BBC could have a public/private structure, like the American Federal Reserve banks, which is a weird structure unto itself worthy of semester-long undergrad econ. classes...

Still, I'll end on a positive, creditable note -- if the BBC stands up to the British government like it apparently did concerning the war in Iraq, then that does speak volumes for its relative independence -- which is why I still consider it among the better news sources. :-)

Found the second one: here

Two things: 1) Reuters reports that Indian is outsourcing outsourcing. 2) Reuters also report around Aug. 30/31 (but I can't find it now) that CEOs of companies that outsource make more money.

Right now they're playing the "I can find warm bodies in India" card. I expect that one will start falling apart within a few months. Just hang in there and keep looking. :-)

It will be a lot longer than a few months, especially when all the CxOs see these numbers.

A few sound bites:

Chief executives at U.S. companies that shipped jobs overseas won a 46 percent pay hike last year regular workers saw a 2 percent boost in pay average compensation for chief executives at the top 50 outsourcing companies was $10.4 million last year CEO George David's pay rose 629 percent to $70.5 million CEO Sanford Weill's pay rose 305 percent to $54.1 million CEO Lawrence Ellison's pay rose 103,974 percent to $40.6 million

Right here - "Chief executives at U.S. companies that shipped jobs overseas won a 46 percent pay hike last year, more than five times the average CEO raise, while ordinary workers' paychecks barely budged, a study showed on Tuesday."

I have no idea how they can find that the tech turnover rate has declined..

Reuters has more detail on the whole process, and how this will help not only in memory, quoting:

"In a bit of semiconductor showmanship, Bohr said Intel had manufactured a memory chip with more than a half-billion transistors using its new 65-nanometer manufacturing process, which was developed at its site in Hillsboro, Oregon. "

Thanks for clarifying the meaning of the name "WinFS" -- especially because many news media sources are getting the purpose of WinFS wrong! For example, this Reuters article says that WinFS is a whole new file system. Go figure.

Mod parent up!

Two Aircraft crash at same time in Russia yesterday. The black boxes were disabled so an organized plot is suspected. This may have something to do with the alarms.

Methinks Bush had something to do with this new action by the IOC.

Iraqi athletes object to Bush campaign ad
Soccer players say president shouldn't exploit their success

ATHENS, Greece - Iraqi soccer players reacted angrily Friday after being told that their nation's Olympic participation was mentioned in TV commercial by the re-election campaign for President Bush.

The players called on Bush to stop using them to win votes in the United States.

"Iraq as a team does not want Mr. Bush to use us for the presidential campaign," midfielder Salih Sadir was quoted as saying. "He can find another way to advertise himself."

However, the Iraqi Olympic delegation accused journalists of deliberately provoking an angry response from their players.

"Our purpose is not to politicize the football team in any way," Mark Clark, a consultant for the Iraqi Olympic Committee, said. "It seems the story was engineered."

The flags of Iraq and Afghanistan appear in the Bush commercial ahead of the Republican National Convention, to be held in September.

A narrator says: "At this Olympics there will be two more free nations--and two fewer terrorist regimes."

Another Iraqi player asked: "How will (Bush) meet his God having slaughtered so many men and women? He has committed so many crimes."

But Clark insisted journalists were wrong to take advantage of the athletes.

"It is a little naughty," he said. "The players are not very sophisticated politically; they are a little naive. Whoever posed these questions knew that the reaction would be negative.

"It is possible something was lost in translation. It's a free, new Iraq, and the players are entitled to their opinions but we are disappointed."

Iraq's soccer players once lived in fear of Uday Hussein, son of toppled dictator Saddam Hussein, who used to beat the soles of their feet or throw them in prison for slip-ups on the pitch.

Under current coach Adnan Hamd, they have defied the odds to reach the quarterfinals at the Athens Olympics, where they will play Australia on Saturday.

Hamd said, "The American army has killed so many people in Iraq. What is freedom when I go to the stadium and there are shootings on the road?"

Clark expressed hope that Iraq could play on without further political waves.

"Any success we ... have here could be beneficial in the broader picture," he said. "But we are here to play football."

My guess is a couple decades later _everyone_ will want to be enhanced for the health benefits of being able to create a physicall fit person, possibly avoiding the problems with obesity that are afflicting a large part of the population.

In the news today the California Supreme Court has ruled that Molyneux is a god and can ban gay marriage should he choose to; however, he may not, under any circumstances go against flimsy initiatives.

WASHINGTON, Aug 4 (Reuters) - Internet phone systems, seen as the wave of the future in telecommunications, must be set up in such a way that conversations can be monitored by police and intelligence agencies, the U.S. Federal Communications Commission said in a tentative ruling on Wednesday.

By a vote of 5-0, the FCC said "Voice over Internet Protocol," or VoIP, providers should be subject to the 1994 Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA), which ensures that law enforcers will be able to keep up with changing communications technologies.

The law does not apply to Internet-based communications but VoIP providers such as Vonage must comply because they are likely to replace much traditional phone service, the commission said.

The Justice Department, FBI and Drug Enforcement Administration have argued that they must be able to monitor suspicious calls no matter how they are made and have pushed the FCC to adopt rules so they will always have access.

Technology advocates have worried that the fast-growing service, which promises to slash costs by routing phone calls over the Internet, could be harmed by excessive regulation.

The ruling does not affect other pending regulatory questions surrounding VoIP service, such as how it should be taxed, FCC Chairman Michael Powell said.

"Our tentative conclusion, while correct, is expressly limited to the requirements of the CALEA statute and does not indicate a willingness on my part to find that VoIP services are telecommunications services," Powell said at a commission meeting.

Several commissioners said this attempt to avoid larger regulatory questions weakened the legal argument underpinning the ruling, though they all voted to support it.

"There are less roundabout ways to achieve this result than the collection of tentative conclusions we offer here, and there are better ways to build a system that will guarantee judicial approval," said Commissioner Michael Copps, a Democrat.

The ruling does not apply to "non-managed" VoIP services like Skype, which have more in common with file-trading networks like Kazaa than traditional phone networks.

Skype offers "peer to peer" software that allows users to talk directly with each other rather than going through pathways set up by the carrier.

Separately, the FCC ruled that commercial "push to talk" services offered by wireless providers like Nextel Communications Inc. would be subject to CALEA.

The ruling on "push to talk" services is final, but the FCC will accept further public comments before making its ruling on VoIP final.

The FCC has yet to determine how long VoIP carriers need to comply with wiretap laws, and whether outside companies can manage compliance for these carriers.

VoIP carriers offer subscribers a low monthly fee for nationwide calls and discount rates for international connections.

Major traditional carriers like Verizon Communications and AT&T Corp. have launched VoIP offerings to match services offered by independent start-ups like Vonage.

Research firm Gartner Inc. estimates that 17 percent of North American phone lines will be replaced with VoIP lines by 2008.

-- Reuters

The romance of the ocean isn't dead. If anything, it's just starting. In someways it was a little unfair to put these two articles together, since the implication for Alvin was all wrong. It's not being decommissioned, they have just announced plans to replace it.

Woods hole, the makers of Alvin, are buliding a new a sub that can go about 5,000ft deeper, which means that crews can access 99% of the ocean floor as opposed to ~68% they have accessable with Alvin. They are also building a ROV that descend the full length of the Marinara trench. Alvin still works great, but is just too old and cramped, and doesn't compare to the modern research subs operating out of Europe and Japan, which puts American researchers at a disadvantage. In fact, the operators of Alvin have not decided whether or not to decomission it. They might still decide to continue to run it after 2008 in the "shallow" waters that it accesses today in conjunction with the new submarine.

Plus, it's going to be bigger and roomier, one of the researchers compared it to "buying a new cadillac when you have a chevy in the garage."

Sounds like more of a new dawn than the death of oceanography to me. Of course, the Slashdot headline was mis-leading, but that's why we love it ;)

You can find more information here
and here

" Service Pack 2 for Windows XP Home Edition will be about 70 megabytes and the update for Windows XP Professional will be about 92 megabytes."

" Redmond, Washington-Microsoft originally had planned to deliver the final production version of Service Pack 2 (SP2) to computer makers on Wednesday, but instead said the update would be release "imminently," possibly within days."

Motorola is supposed to be selling an "iTunes compatible" phone by early 2005.

Here

and here.

Fortunately, there is a chance of a real blue moon if you live near Anchorage, Alaska. Actually, it's not really a fortunate thing, because if this volcano does erupt and spew ash everywhere, it's a big mess. It mucks up your car, you don't want to breath it, it's almost caused airplanes to crash, etc. But it does have the possibility of causing the moon to appear truely blue.

Reuters are reporting that MS have denied that they are outsourcing their development to Indian contractors. :)

they don't even bother to read the text of the laws they pass?

Yeah...Kerry has said that about various bills and reports. But then again, he doesn't even bother to vote in ~3/4 of them anyway, so I guess it doesn't matter if he reads it or not.

It looks like Steve Jobs got it wrong too. From the Reuters article:
"Wouldn't it be great if you could take a dozen of your favorite songs with you on your phone," Jobs said.

It looks like no one is really sure yet how many songs the phone will hold.

There's an interesting difference between Associated Press and Reuters on the International Space Station's planning.

Associated Press: Space Station Could Hold More Crew Members

The international space station could be expanded beyond its current three crew-member capacity by the end of the decade under an agreement reached Friday by the station's 16 partners.

Reuters: Plans for International Space Station Cut Back

NASA and its space partners on Friday approved a scaled-down International Space Station with fewer astronauts and less science so the United States can meet a 2010 deadline for ending shuttle flights, a top NASA official said.

Space agencies in Russia, Europe, Canada and Japan gave unanimous approval to a NASA plan that means the orbiting platform, now about half completed, will never become the beehive of scientific and commercial research once envisaged.

AP is positive, focusing on the increase in crew, while Reuters is negative, focusing on the decrease in planned crew.

It's interesting to see how two supposedly neutral factual articles can treat the same news so differently.

As a matter of fact they are doing quite well. I wonder, how such news reflect in the price of company, the earnings of which depend very much on trust and security. Or are the market players so stupid that they do not see the threat. Then, Acxiom is overpriced - go sell!

Sure, it would be a better idea. But how long would this take to implement? Just take the example of ICANN adding IPv6 to their root servers. They expect it'll take 20 years before IPv4 is out of the business. How many years would it take for SMTP/POP/IMAP? 10? 15? 20? ... not to mention how long it would take for the new protocols to be developed and accepted by the major players.

VeriSigns idea is a quicker but uglier solution.

This article says they are blocking 23,000 attempts per day.

with lcds falling 20% by year end it will be hard to compete... linkaroo: http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=tech nologyNews&storyID=5675145

One million people seem to disagree with you.

Well according to this Microsoft just reached one million subscribers to their Live service. One million subscribers paying on a monthly basis to almost any service amounts to a lot of gravy.

1. I have pretty much abandoned reading my local printed newspaper, in favor of the online edition (and I'm sure I'm not alone).
2. When reading the local (printed) paper I read both local as well as national and international stories
3. Everyone (CNN, The New York Times, MSNBC, Yahoo!, you name it) carries stories from the wire services (AP, Reuters etc) and since there are all the same stuff, does it matter that you are reading that story on CNN.com vs, for example The Des Moines Register?
4. My goal is to get my news and not spend all day looking for it. I can start with my local paper's site and then move on to other sources for more in depth coverage and/or different news.
5. The goal of most businesses is to make money and newspapers are no exception. If they keep a reader on their web site longer they get more page views and therefore, generate more ad revenue. I want my local paper to do well. Newspapers are not the profit centers the once were and many have scaled back operations over the years. I don't want to see this happen any more.
   

Even scarier is now the Deprtment of Homeland Security is trying to get a bill passed that would allow them to delay or cancel elections in case of terrorist attacks!

I mean how Orwellian does it have to get before people say "Ok it's getting pretty fucking Orwellian in here!"

You can read about the proposed delay and/or cancellation of the election from reuters here.

DOE radiation experiments on unsuspecting civilians

Three things about this:
1. If the Clinton administration hadn't opened these records, people would brand anyone who claimed that this stuff actually happened as tinfoil hat wearing paranoids.

2. If the tip of this iceberg was spotted during this administration,all evidence of it would have been "accidentally" destroyed like all records of the Bush family's skeletons - from the grandfathers registered foreign agent status for the German banker, the fact that the Bush brothers were all close with Hinckley when they lived in Lobbock. Why did the Hinckley family offer up their blacksheep for the Bushes to be able to take early control of the White House (which Bush, Sr. had wanted since he had Kennedy killed for fucking him on the Bay of Pigs)? Because the DOE was going to fine the Hinckley's oil company for illegal profit taking during 1973-1981, and for fear of the ensuing cans of worms that would be exposed as those dominos fell. I wonder if they ever were fined? - I would assume yes since Hinckley failed to do the job. All the way up to the idiot son's national Guard service record details, so that they could not be used against him in the election.

3. John Titor was correct, he said the civil war would start on "a day everyone would remember", my guess is that now that the Bush/Cheney regime realize that they are going to lose, they will say that there is going to be an attack on election day and delay the election, that will become (in hindsight) the day that catalyzed the civil war.

If you haven't followed it, it was essentially "If you put $150-$180 million in this offshore bank account, I'll give your company a $5 billion contract for a Nigerian Natural Gas plant; and even kick back $5million to you personally."

Apparently even this big company that should have nown better said "sure".

The kid's lucky that this recent bill isn't a law yet. He'd be looking at a maximum of 3 years instead...

So if you still happen to have an elderly relative around, make sure they are watered properly and/or are properly kept away in cool storage for the summer.

You've got to be kidding. Look at the very page you linked to, willya? A documentary that was made for $6 million, marketed for $10 million, released to a relatively small 868 screens nationwide and has already drawn in $21 million DOMESTIC in box office receipts, selling out many showings, making it NUMBER 1 for the weekend, and you call that 'poor'?

Even if it isn't in a "theater after a couple or three weeks" as you wisely predict, that would be just fine as going by those numbers he'll have broken the $100 million dollar mark handily. It hasn't even gone into wide-release yet.

Oh yes, and to be clear, WE'RE TALKING ABOUT A RATED-R DOCUMENTARY, NOT LORD OF THE RINGS. Let's put that into even more relevant perspective. Bowling for Columbine, Moore's previous documentary, Oscar winner (where Moore delivered his first shot across the bow of the current US administration), took in $21.6 million in its ENTIRE domestic run.

If its anything like my fridge, they'll find new life alright! But seriously, I think its funny how many "living fossils" were discovered by accident. Examples: ratfish, coelacanth, wollemi pine, etc.

The crew will, as they did on Thursday, exit from the Russian end of the space station. After that, they will work their way over to the U.S. segment, a border crossing that requires mission control centers from both nations to be involved.

Because they will be beyond the reliable range of Russian antennas, they may be forced to communicate with one another using hand signals.

Republished review of the original Ghost

Uh oh!! Sapagettioo!!!

Look what I found at the bottom of the page!!!

Sssshhhh!!
Everybody take note!!!
DON'T post extracts or...[NO CARRIER]

[lawsuit type="dmca" excuse="copyright-theft"]
FBI!!!
GOT YOU HIPPIES!!!
At last! First we shut down Slashdot!Then the net!!

And there's nothing you can do about it lawbreakers!!!
AHA!AHAHA!! AHAAHAAHAAA!!!
[/lawsuit?]

yep more consolidation

Sony now own BMG, great news for the consumer egh ?