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UnNews:General Motors to recall 533,000 SUV drivers WASHINGTON, Friday (UNN) -- General Motors Corporation said Friday it was recalling 533,000 urban SUV and pickup truck drivers because of potential idiocy problems. GM said it has received reports of 1100 accidents and sixty-seven injuries connected to the recall.

The automaker has come under tremendous criticism for its four-wheel-drive vehicles. "We're at the stage where we can just do without this shit," said GM clue installation engineer B.F. Skinner. "The trouble is SUVs have been adopted by what in technical terms we call 'fuckheads.' The seven percent of SUV drivers that actually leave the goddamn highway might have some use for the things. It's the other ninety-three percent that are problematic and in need of repair.

"I mean, SUVs burn more gas, pollute more and are way dangerous in crashes. We know this. But like proper trucks, if they're not driven by idiots they're not a problem. Like you wouldn't give a soccer mom a semi-trailer. Much as they'd like one. But we haven't managed to get laws passed saying you need an IQ test before buying them."

The recalled drivers had notable problems with spurious justifications and clueless public statements [1] such as "I, as proud owner of an F-150 pickup, would strap myself to my windshield with dynamite taped to my chest before I let the National Coalition of Yugo-driving Salad-eaters take my truck away" or "I like that sport-utility vehicles make a lotta noise, that big, powerful truck sound, that vrooom, that you don't get in a car."

Some SUV justifications were difficult for cluefulness engineers to repair. "We keep seeing accident reports ending with 'The truck driver walked away unharmed,'" said Skinner. "That's what leads to people buying a Hummer to pick the kids up from grade school half a mile away. If you're in a crash and you're the one not in the SUV, you die and these wastes of fucking oxygen continue to breed, brains untouched.

"Our only hope for the gene pool is an SUV-pocalypse, where these vehicles will only crash into each other. Then we'll see them roll badly, fail to protect the driver, crunch into a ball and hopefully serve as an instructive example to any surviving spawn."

Actuaries from State Farm Insurance have noted[2] that sport utility vehicles save insurers money because they are more likely to kill the occupants than to maim them, and serious injuries tend to yield bigger settlements than deaths. "We're considering a nine-inch spike in the middle of the steering wheel," Skinner said.

Owners will be notified in mid-February of their being recalled and dealers will attempt to replace their brains with ones that work, at no charge to the owners' families.

Most of the early comments seem to be in the vein of "OMG wireless hax!", but consider a real worst-case scenario, like the one that brought down ValuJet 592. It was caused by a fire in the cargo hold that cut critical links between the cockpit controls and the hydraulic systems needed to keep the plane running.

As long as you have a physical connection from point A to point B, it is vulnerable to the most brute-force of DOS attacks: cut the connection and it's lost. A wireless link between the pilot and the control surfaces, on the other hand, can't be cut by a fire in the cargo hold, or even by a shoulder-fired missle (as long as it missed the kablooie stuff).

In a real-world application, I'd expect both wired/optical links *and* wireless backup links. Such a fully redundant system would work both as a sanity check (both systems should be reporting the same results) and as a backup (wired works when wireless is jammed, wireless works when wire is cut).

Plus, I can hardly wait for the netstumbler/kismet folks to write a monitor program to let me monitor things from the comfort of my tray table (on the emergency exit row, of course).

Apparently you can get sued for singing with the kids

Look, the U.S. also has the highest per capita prison population. Wouldn't you agree that you can take the whole criminalization thing a bit too far? Using your example you'd make it an imprisioning offence to do 56 MPH in a 55 MPH zone. Hey! That speeding bastard is breaking the law! Kick his ass!

Seriously, isn't part of the justice system's purpose to be reasonable when considering punishment? Besides, I wonder if your example of breaking a window is relevant here.

Music piracy isn't so much about destroying someone else's chance to listen to it - regardless of the health of the music industry's outmoded business models. True theft or vandalism would involve that. True musicians do what they do for the love of the MUSIC - and people listen to it for the same reason. No, it doesn't mean musicians shouldn't be able to make a living off of it, but you know something? There was a time before CD's, tape players, vinyl, wax, and an organized industry that is looking to make music sharing of any sort a federal crime.

This same industry sues the Girl Scouts for singing 'Happy Birthday' for God's sake!

LINK:

http://www.s-t.com/daily/08-96/08-23-96/b02li056.h tm

Do you defend this sort of bullshit activity on their part too? Should the girls be sent to slave labor in Mississippi for six days and each get fined $5000 because they danced to the Macarena in a public performance? I would say that most people don't buy into this line of thinking and that *reasonable* limitations on copyright have been breached by greedy politicans and corporations alike.

The industry saturates the airwaves with it's crap and targets children as their main audience. Again, when ClearChannel covers some 70% of the airwaves out there - where does the ability to choose come in?

At the same time, they seek to put walls around their listener's expressions of the music they hear. I'm not talking about law, I'm talking about the very real emotional response that music evokes in the young. And you expect these kids not to share what they love? And then this same industry pushes the worst kinds of depravity and depictions of 'gangsta' activity right on MTV, saying in effect, "Yo, yo, yo! Check it - yeah, it's cool to be a gangsta but DON'T STEAL OUR MUSIC!" Laughable, yo. Talk about mixed messages!

Good musicians somehow made it way back when - maybe more so than now since it appears the 5 majors and ClearChannel drown out what they don't like. The music industry is not supposed to be some sort of musician's endowment (and if it is, it's a total ripoff for 99% of them), but that's what is happening due to the heavy handed legislation and 'education' the industry force feeds.

Sure, copying is hurting the industy, blah, blah, blah. They said that back in the 80's when I made mix tapes for my friends, or (Horror!) my dad taped songs off the radio. Back in the late 60's the industry did everything they legally could to stop cassette tapes from coming into being. In the 80's it was DAT and in the 90's it was CD-R's. Somehow the industry survived our blatant wrongdoing, somehow they will survive this.

And just how do they survive? Simple. CD sales are NOT the only selling thing for most record companies. It's all about licensing! Licensing for movies, for radio, for Muzak, whatever. If not another single CD was sold from today on, the industry would survive it. So in light of this, how about a compromise then? Why not decriminalize file sharing and give the corps unlimited copyright terms for other corps' use? After all, it's not like they don't ensure they get extended copyrights anyway and making music 'free' would ensure greater acceptance among the listening audience.

The above rant written by a musician and a believer in reasonable copyright law.

Especially when ASCAP sues the Girl Scouts

Except they didn't.

But yes, there is a sometimes a fine line about what constitutes for-profit use.

Especially when ASCAP sues the Girl Scouts. The birds may sing, but campers can't unless they pay up

Holy crap, I was just going to post the exact same thing... :)

Cut me some slack, its Friday, and I'm counting down the minutes to leave... wait a minute, I'm salary, I get paid just as much to work as when I twiddle my thumbs!

I live in an apartment building with about twenty residents. I feel guilty that I don't know my neigbhors (I don't even know their names). But I feel it would be an intrusion to knock on doors and introduce myself.

Miss Manners has a good idea about how to introduce yourself to people in a large apartment building, but my building is too small for this to work. (The relevant letter is the second one in this column. It's possibly the best two-word reply ever written by an advice columnist.)

Could i-neighbors help break the ice in my building? Maybe a flyer posted by the mailboxes would do the trick. But it could just as easily be an invitation to a Labor Day party, instead of an invitation to join a website.

According to this link God Bless America is copyrighted until the year 2033.

The story says the royalties go to the composer's (Irving Berlin) favorite charities, the Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts.

ASCAP still actively collects royalties for the song, as can be witnessed here in a Wall Street Journal article where they threaten to sue none other than ... The Boy Scouts, and Girl Scouts.

Perhaps ASCAP is going to take another run at making those bastard criminals, the Scouts, pay - right after they're done with the dentists and those damned homeless buskers.

God Bless America, indeed.. Who are we kidding here though? Lets just be honest and say it's copyrighted until the end of America as we know it.

You think it's a joke? It's very real for camp groups that have been threatened for not paying royalties for singing around the camp fire.

Emm, I'm digging now, ehh; why not sew my lips shut too. I can whistle a tune without paying royalties.

Wrong bucko! You get in the line with those law breaking litte tarts! There won't be anyone singing any songs around here without paying up. And we're expecting a check from your next Birthday party too!

> So, where is the line? What does a person have to do to infringe copyright these days?

Sing in a camp?

What he was nailed for was the disappearance of a videotape filmed by his navigator.

In this case, there would most definitely have been a show trial in Italy, although the appeals would probably have eventually, quietly resulted in acquittal. Probably. However, under NATO rules, the U.S. already had jurisdiction by treaty.

the pilot was aquited Check YOUR facts before you assume the US doesn't have its head firmly up its own arse

Sony is composed of various different divisions, and there's some infighting between them. Sony Music isn't happy with the hardware side of the company making devices that allow (promote?) piracy, but there's nothing they can do about it because the business is too lucrative.

-- MarkusQ

Decriminalization of puffing the magic dragon is a completely different issue that would be better brought up on Smokedot than on Slashdot.

Oh, I get it. It appears you meant "Puff the Magic Dragon". That's this story.

but mr inoshiro has a good point.*cringe*
with rent, the amount you owe is dependant upon how long you live*, and is just as nasty if not worse than debt that has been acknowledged elsewhere.
except that in some cases it is much worse, because if you do not keep up in your payments you find yourself without shelter, and if you are lucky enough to live anywhere similar to here(saskatchewan), you freeze to death...
debt on the other hand, just grows more and more unmanigable.
take for example my old apartment. at 280$ per month, 12 months a year, for 100 years of renting would have meant roughly 336,000$ of debt, which must be paid off in the installments that the rentor wishes, or higher...

and by the way, it takes more than debt to enslave someone.
if you really wanted to do that, you would need to take a hold of something else that they need in their life, for example, the small 10X10 room that keeps them from freezing to death when they aren't allowed to be at work(see above),
OR alternatively to take hold of their wage or job security, so that they must do your bidding otherwise be eternally enslaved in another way.
if anything, however, rent is MORE debt than any other debt you may be able to imagine, because unlike other debt, that you can try to overlook, there is an automatic, expected result of not paying your rent. freezing to death or loss of livingspace.

on the other hand, all of this is really just different heads of the same beast---the stuff that people without mountains of cash can be persuaded to do horrible and terrifying things with. fuck capitalistic tyrrany!

*how long you live under rule of this rentor





and to keep from being moderated offtopic too many times,... i am visiting my parents in saskatoon [from regina, saskatchewan, canada]. i took a shower the day i got back, but when i got out i noticed my pants were all missing!!! it seems my parents dont appreciate the grunge-GNU/Hippie-not_quite_homeless look i have inherited lately...so they turned most of my clothes to rags.

so i got socks,pants,and underwear to replace my other clothes upon return. So as a christmas\birthday present, i got to have my parents dress me for two weeks :\

In a contrite statement Monday, the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers said it has "never sought, nor was it ever its intention, to license Girl Scouts singing around the campfire." The society also said it will reimburse 16 girl scout councils that did pay fees this summer ranging from $77 to $257 for the right to sing songs.

A few years back ASCAP threated to sue the girl scouts for singing campfire songs without a license.

"They buy paper, twine and glue for their crafts - they can pay for the music, too," says John Lo Frumento, ASCAP's chief operating officer. If offenders keep singing without paying, he says, we will sue them if necessary." I don't think the RIAA will care that they are going after children.

the pavement is simply asphalt with some mixed in rubber

Disposing of tires by making them into roads has been a dream for recyclers and probably the tire industry, but last I heard they had some major problems with galvanic reactions from the ground-up radial belts.

Does anybody know if they've solved that problem?

Apparently it is from an article in the Wall Street Journal, August 27 1996, p. B2. The article is mirrored here.

I would do it The Edward Teller way. If you're too lazy to click on the link, it may help to know that Edward Teller is known as the "father of the hydrogen bomb".

This reminds me of an unforgettable saga involving Roger Penrose and toilet paper. Apparently, Penrose invented something called a nonrepeating tesselation. (Which I gather is some kind of pattern on a plane which can not be mapped to itself by shifting.) One fine day Penrose (claimed to have) found the pattern on a piece of toilet paper. What did he do? Why, sue the toilet paper company for copyright violation of course! You can read about it here [gwu.edu]. It absolutely cracked me up the first time I heard it.

At first read I thought you were shitting me, but doing a GOOGLE confirmed it. Roger Penrose is a pissy little asshole apparently. How sad that someone so smart as Penrose can be a pissy little asshole.

People, Places & Things in the News
One of Britain's most distinguished mathematicians is suing Kimberly-Clark, claiming the company is using his copyright design on its Kleenex quilted toilet paper.
The suit brought by Sir Roger Penrose, a professor of mathematics at Oxford University, alleges that the company is using a pattern that has the same overall appearance as "the Penrose Pattern." Mr. Penrose devised the complex design in the 1970s.
Mr. Penrose is best known for his work with Stephen Hawking of Cambridge University on relativity, black holes and the question of whether time has a beginning. They concluded that it does.
The suit asks for the return of all copies of the pattern and the surrender or destruction of all articles and documents using the design. It also seeks unspecified damages.

Penrose Tiling v. Kleenex

What patent or copyright issues relating to computer software do this controversy suggest? Any IP paper on this subject will be considered acceptable in terms of subject matter if it manages to bring in {Baker v. Selden and/or The Rubber Tip Pencil Case} and computer software.

1. Last December, Sir Roger Penrose, the eminent British mathematician, came face to face with his own copyrighted polygon pattern in Kleenex quilted toilet paper. When his wife returned from the market with the embossed rolls, Penrose expressed "astonishment and dismay" upon seeing the use to which his discovery had been put.

Penrose devised the nonrepeating five-fold symmetrical pattern in the 1970s by using two kinds of diamond shapes--fat and thin--to create what is now called Penrose tiling. The pattern, which was thought not to exist in nature before Penrose's discovery, has subsequently been found in many physical and biological phenomena.

According to the British newspaper, The Independent, the pattern "has deeper mathematical implications because it fits halfway between chaos and orderliness and is one of a family of noncomputable problems." Noncomputability is a key concept needed to understand consciousness, according to Penrose's best-selling book The Emperor's New Mind.)

Mrs. Penrose first recognized the pattern on the loo paper in the store and brought it to her husband's attention. "He wasn't pleased," said Penrose's lawyer, as quoted in The Wall Street Journal. So Penrose and Pentaplex Ltd., the Yorkshire, England, company that owns the licensing rights to the Penrose pattern, filed a lawsuit against Kimberly-Clark for breach of copyright.

I've since tried, unsuccessfully, to find the embossed Penrose pattern in Kleenex's U.S. tissue, which although quilted doesn't offer the aperiodic design that reflects Penrose's geometric findings. The quilted British tissue is embossed with the pentagonal pattern to make it "thicker and softer," according to Kimberly-Clark literature. Penrose's writ argues that making the tissue fluffier enables manufacturers to reduce the amount of paper used on each roll. "But, if the pattern repeats itself, the tissue would likely bunch up, looking unattractive," the sui

I'll never understand people who buy things for looks rather than function, especially when that thing is a computer.

Hmm.. My PBG4 is less than 6lbs, is super thin, and its titanium case can take loads of abuse.. Sounds like it serves the function of light weight and high tensile strength to me!

Seriously though, it's comments like that which kinda make me sad, and think that geekdom won't ever really be able to make itself heard to the wider culture.. What's the function of this, or this?

The best thing I can recomend for him is to spend some more time at the Free Software Society's web site, but especially this page. That "promise to give away innovations" is indeed kind of silly. The use of one idea to extract or deny others is the key sin the Free Software Foundation is fighting against. The notion that the free software people have a problem with anyone making money is also misinformed. The FSF site is a cure for the ignorance behind statments like this, which blemish an otherwise fine article:

Open-source software programmers say they're different from Stallman in one major way: They don't have a problem with people making money off their work--or making money themselves.

The free software foundation only has a problem with people screwing others, for any reason money making included. The Free Software Foundation stands against you using your own work and that of others to extract things from people. The kinds of things extracted for the use of software currently includes everything from money to limits on what you will tell others and who you might work for. The most repulsive thing non free software vendors do is attempt to keep others from understanding how to fix their own problems so that they can extract money perpetually for a problem solved by others long ago. Let's have a look at some of the good words on the above mentioned page:

However, certain kinds of rules about the manner of distributing free software are acceptable, when they don't conflict with the central freedoms. For example, copyleft (very simply stated) is the rule that when redistributing the program, you cannot add restrictions to deny other people the central freedoms. This rule does not conflict with the central freedoms; rather it protects them.

Thus, you may have paid money to get copies of free software, or you may have obtained copies at no charge. But regardless of how you got your copies, you always have the freedom to copy and change the software, even to sell copies. ``Free software'' does not mean ``non-commercial''. A free program must be available for commercial use, commercial development, and commercial distribution. Commercial development of free software is no longer unusual; such free commercial software is very important.

In short, people are encouraged to work together to solve common problems like free men will. Using free software will no more force a company to give away confidential information than using manila folders requires people to divulge the contents of their files. The only thing you are really encouraged to do is share your impovements to other people's work, much as lawyers, doctors, engineers and all other professionals have always done.

Wow, nothing really radical there is there? Really when you think about it the restrictions created by modern publishers, especially comercial software vendors, represent the really radical departure from social norms. Telling people that they can't share their expertise in a field? That you can't share your books or even sing a song with your friends that was originally dedicated to your cause? It all starts with a non disclosure agreement, an end user license agreement, a 100 year long copyright and that little "submit" button.

FedEx and UPS Pilots are the top paid in the industry. Back in 1998, the average amongst all FedEx Pilots was 130K. They then brought it up some 15%. That has been the holy grail that the commercial airliner pilots have been seeking.
BTW, using the figures of 1998 and 3 pilots (international), a crew is still 390K.
My father as a junior 727 Captan at American was taking home 50K/year back in the 80's. For current comparisions, The starting wage for an FO at frontier is 20K, but within 2 years, they are at 40K. And that is just a FO on a low-end carrier.

oh, but it is!

Girls Scouts must pay to sing songs...

"Starting this summer, the American Society of Composers, Authors & Publishers has informed camps nationwide that they must pay license fees to use any of the four million copyrighted songs written or published by Ascap's 68,000 members. Those who sing or play but don't pay, Ascap warns, may be violating the law."

the story

Girls Scouts must pay to sing songs...

"Starting this summer, the American Society of Composers, Authors & Publishers has informed camps nationwide that they must pay license fees to use any of the four million copyrighted songs written or published by Ascap's 68,000 members. Those who sing or play but don't pay, Ascap warns, may be violating the law."

the story

Anyone remember when Alta Vista was the best search engine?

Maybe the person misheard the name... How about Joe Peace?

for folks to live on?

Better habitat for wildlife, more places for people to live, less erosion of the actual coast, etc.

Of course, it won't be so good for the surfers and the folks who paid lots of money to live right on the edge, but for the rest of us (animals & plants included) it would be very nice to have lots of places to live on the coastal shelf.

It's not just my crazy idea: Dutch planners eye a new frontier: the raging North Sea

"A square yard of land reclaimed from the North Sea costs about 260 guilders, or about $130. The same size patch of mainland can cost more than triple that."

Geeks with bad eating habits and good prescription drug plans should take note: Don't do this if you also take Lipitor to fight high cholesterol! Results can be very bad.

So, if it's this difficult to operate a ship safely at 55 mph, what additional precautions need to be taken to go to several hundred mph over the water?

Ok, I think that's enough. Look, you need to be a little less naive. The evidence you're presenting is purely anecdotal. You assume the world everywhere is just like you've seen it where you grew up. It isn't. There are nutjobs all over the place, and yes, they can think and say some pretty idiotic things, not at all any more far-fetched than the idea of BSD being satanic because of its mascot. Fundies are notorious for coming up with insane theories about things. You just need to realize that, and realize that it is not the fault of your faith, it's just those particular people.

While this is all nice and good, I'm not sure how much of an impact it'll have. I mean, for many, many of the mp3.com, besonic.com, et al groups, their music was always 'available free of charge, so long as credit is given' .. and in the situations where our music is ripped, the people who rip them arn't going to care much that your music is under (O). Since there will be no money, there's no big powerful (0) licesing watchdog to protect the interests of people under it. The problem with the industry right now is that business takes the 'all or none' approch, and the courts side with this. Either everyone pays fees for copywritten music (including Girl Scouts), or no one does. Far more useful would be to pursue better fair rights definitions, which define fair use as any situation where people listening to music are not customers of the broadcaster (like the Girl Scouts.) and where the group it is being boadcast to fits a certain minimum of ears per day (so, lets say places like funeral homes would be fine, but radio stations and malls would have to pay.) I mean, it really just comes down to some common sense that seems to have been abandoned in favour of law and precedence; should huge, rich, successful corperations get to charge you for cell phone ring tones? So long as we are not blocking these corperations' traditional path of making money (CD sales, radio broadcast), they should be made to accept that some forms of distribution without copyright payments are acceptable, and that being super-mega-rich instead of stupendously-stupidly-mega-rich will have to do.

But the *design* of that car is owned by the manufacturer. You can't make a part-by-part reconstruction of your car by making the parts yourself, unless you have permission from the manufacturer.

Where do you come up with this?

Now, the actual design documents are copyrighted, so if I copied said documents in order to make the duplicate components, that would be copyright infringement.

Some of the components I need to make might be obscured by trade secrets, so I'd have to figure them out without obtaining the trade secrets illegally.

Other components could be covered by patents, so it would be illegal to sell them until the patent expired.

And trademark law would prevent me from marketing my hand-built sports car as, say, a "Corvette", even if it was identical to the Chevrolet sports car. (see Carroll Shelby's trademark lawsuit against Factory Five Racing)

But as long as I stay within these strictures, I don't see anything that would make it illegal for me to make a component-level duplicate of my car. Could you enlighten me?