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A lie is a lie, and you just told one.

Gore led the charge on getting the Internet funded. This seed capital was instrumental in its creation, and he rightly took credit for his significant role in its creation. He never claimed to have invented it, and claims to the contrary (originating from Declan McCullagh, the same guy who smeared the LiViD - "Linux DVD" project - and painted them out to be a bunch of DVD pirates, which got the MPAA interested and forced several developers to drop the project or face litigious reprisals) have been thoroughly debunked by a number of folks who did in fact take part in inventing the Internet, and have in fact spoken up on Al Gore's behalf.

It is Republican smear pure and simple, and has about as much basis in fact as Baby Bush's Weapons of Mass Destruction excuse for invading Iraq in a misguided effort to undue Daddy's defeat, ie none whatsoever.

If your answer is "The Oil Industry"...

No, actually my answer was The Saudis.

The RF spectrum is a limited resource

You base this assumption on...

Be sure to check your facts, it may have limits but we haven't even tickled them yet. (see "The myth of interference")

Cory Doctorow's 0wnz0red

Salon had an article awhile back on embedding messages in photos.
That appears to be the more common use of the technique of steganography, lots of synonyms in media files.
Why wouldn't Microsoft or any other mega-corporation do this with their executables? They could embed your product key in the MSOffice.exe when you "activated" your product and if it ever got out they could send the goons in black helicopters?
Get my tin foil hat.

on Salon: Three Cheers for the Surveillance Society!. I can't say I agree with everything he says but I think there's a lot of merit in it.

Bottom line executive summary: Privacy is dead; get over it. Instead of trying to hide everything we do, we should insist that every citizen has the same access to surveillance technologies that the government does. He offers the Rodney King tapes and the Abu Gharib prison photos as ways in which saturation surveillance has advanced the cause of justice and the empowerment of the citizenry.

Worth a read, in any event.

It's far from obvious that "Wall Street" wants Google to "fail" --- they're underwriting the Google IPO. Who do you think Morgan Stanley and CSFB are?

What's more, it's not obvious to everybody that Google's approach is necessarily motivated by helping individual investors (like the average Slashdot reader). For example, take Henry Blodget's recent column on Salon:

However, it's important to remember a few things. First, auctions are not a new IPO mechanism. They have been tried in numerous countries over the last 25 years (including the United States) and, in almost all cases, have been discarded in favor of the traditional American IPO method. Second, what's good for the company (high price) is often bad for investors (less upside). Third, those willing to pay the most for shares may not be those best qualified to evaluate their worth. Fourth, and relatedly, auctions are generally not better for individual investors (i.e., us). When individuals "win" auctions (e.g., get stock), it is often because they outbid professional investors who have better information and/or a better sense of value. In such cases, the future stock performance is usually lousy, and the "winners" end up losing.

A Dutch Auction doesn't necessarily kill the initial pop in a stock offering (there's an argument that it'll increase the value of Google's shares in the early days), and it doesn't cut the underwriters out of the action. They just keep the money they'd be doling out to cronies.

Finally, "do-no-evil" pledge or not, there are objective criticisms of the way Google is handling this IPO, and they aren't coming from Wall Street.

Personally, I wouldn't know the first thing about the true motivations behind Google's actions, but my totally uninformed take is that Google is doing an auction IPO just to be iconoclastic.

• Marc Andreessen made 100s of millions of dollars shortly after graduating from UIUC. Today's graduates of the same university face moving back in with their parents. "Fuck that, I got mine!"
• Brian Behlendorf decided he'd rather go to India to recruit software engineers than help out the graduating classes of 2001-2004 here in the US.
• Robert Malda stood idly by and said NOTHING while his company offshored its flagship product.

Miguel de Icaza, Bruce Perens, Eric Raymond, and Linus Torvalds all got rich off the Open Source Movement. What do you have to look forward to? OSDN == Offshore Software Development NOW!!! Read how OSDN is helping to offshore American High-Tech to the Third World!

Isn't he the guy that outsourced his company to India?

http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2004/04/01/colla bnet/index_np.html

I assume you're trying to be ironic. Actually, I looked that up before I posted and it appears, to my surprise, to be true.

Ray Bradbury: "Michael Moore is an asshole"
"Michael Moore is a screwed asshole, that is what I think about that case. He stole my title and changed the numbers without ever asking me for permission."

However, this is a translation from a Swedish interview, and as it was made by a right-wing blogger, may not be a neutral representation of Bradbury's views.

Anyway, in my opinion, it'd be absurd for anyone, including Bradbury, to argue that there would be "confusion" associating him with Moore's views. Anyone who gets the reference is aware that it's primarily a pun. Refer to the titles of Bradbury's books Something Wicked This Way Comes (Shakespeare); I Sing The Body Electric! (Whitman), Golden Apples of the Sun (Yeats). Bradbury didn't need anyone's permission to use these (even if the authors had been alive), and no one is thinking that Shakespreare endorses his books.

I guess the idea is that these "technological wonders" will prevent the chaos that surrounded the Floria polls in 2000 from re-occuring.

Most of the problems associated with the 2000 election in Florida came as a result of "techological wonders" enacted well before any voting actually occured.

Little Girls can use this computer to chat with Disney Executive Patrick Naughton

The Day Pass is a good strategy. Am certain they stream ads based on demography. When a reader expresses interest in an article, it may be reasonable (from an advertisement perspective) to assume that he would be interested in things connected with the article. So, put an ad that makes sense and set the information free.
I haven't yet seen anyone other than salon following this.

Personally, I read LotR and the Silmarillion umpteen times as a teenager. At some point, I just became tired of the world and the flaws that I glanced over in my initial readings started glaring.

David Brin does a good job of ripping LotR as far as I am concerned.

Fantasy-wise, I am enamoured with the traditional high fantasy of Steven Erikson (Gardens of the Moon, Deadhouse Gates, etc.) and the inventive steampunky fantasy of China Mieville (Perdido Street Station, The Scar, etc.). Both Erikson and Mieville have anthropologist backgrounds and it shows.

As a philologist, Tolkien just had an odd retro-way of playing with words, but an anthropologist is much better at fleshing out actual worlds.

just a reminder of a great article about how close these two great writers were:

tolkien and lewis

In January 1997, reporter Susan Jeffreys of the (London) Sunday Times informed a colleague that J.R.R. Tolkien's epic fantasy "The Lord of the Rings" had been voted the greatest book of the 20th century in a readers' poll conducted by Britain's Channel 4 and the Waterstone's bookstore chain. Her colleague responded: "Oh hell! Has it? Oh my God. Dear oh dear. Dear oh dear oh dear."

Montreal pedestrians rarely use the sidewalk, and they don't attend trafic lights or walk/don't walk signals.

When waiting for the traffic to stop moving (note, I say "traffic to stop", not "signal to change") they stand a good 3 or 4 feet out onto the road! If you tried to turn right, just as one of the pedestrians began his move to stand 4 feet out as he/she waits, you'd collide.

I have nothing against pedestrians... and nothing against Montreal driving, either. I'm just telling you how it is :) I actually like driving there, and walking there... it's quite fluid and natural. As long as you pay attention to your surroundings (and don't break any major traffic laws) you can do as you please. Quite fun!

Kind of reminds me of this cool article, on the merits of traffic de-regulation.

This article was an amusing story about technical support from the inside. I don't remember if it was posted on slashdot.

What's up with this color scheme?

Call them whatever you like, here is what they stand for:

Apostolic Congress :

Here is their mission statement: Christians are affecting policy in Washington, and bringing about real change in America.

"The Apostolic Congress also SUPPORTS the Sovereign nation of Israel. We work very close with the Embassy of Israel in Washington DC."

This is how they were formed: "In 1981, early in the Reagan Administration, Brother Stan Wachtstetter was able to open the door for Apostolic Christians into the White House." Now, 'Bro Stan' happens to be a big buddy of Rev. Moon (Crown Nut!).

The following is a blog on Apostolic Congress, Rev. Moon and how they are courted by this administration.

Jerry Falwell:

My only remembrance of this guy is when he came on TV and told the rest of the nation that (a) there is no Global Warming and (b) Scientists are blatantly uninformed or lying and (c) he would gladly purchase another SUV the very same day to prove his point. All this in apparent response to "Would Jesus buy an SUV" campaign or something of that nature. Seeing how indignant our dear reverend became on the blatant misuse of the Church's Trademark on "Jesus", I guess his response was justified :)

Also, remember that once Falwell criticized Rev.Moon, the Crown Nut, all the way till the day, Crown Nut bailed him (and his church) financially and now he sings his praise.

So, what do we have here people? Is this the type of people the current administration needs to be in bed with?

That screaming you hear is coming from beyond the graves.. This nation's founding fathers want their country back..

... Courtney Love's now infamous anti-RIAA ...

I didn't know about that, so I Googled for it. It's a very good read. I had no idea that things were this bad.

• Marc Andreessen made 100s of millions of dollars shortly after graduating from UIUC. Today's graduates of the same university face moving back in with their parents. "Fuck that, I got mine!"
• Brian Behlendorf decided he'd rather go to India to recruit software engineers than help out the graduating classes of 2001-2004 here in the US.
• Robert Malda stood idly by and said NOTHING while his company offshored its flagship product.

Miguel de Icaza, Bruce Perens, Eric Raymond, and Linus Torvalds all got rich off the Open Source Movement. What do you have to look forward to?

Maybe even get rid of the Democratics and Republicans, two parties that claim to be different but are both the same cultural poison. Come on, give Nader a chance, he has some great ideas. :)

Actually, I don't think Nader is all that different.

Acutally I'm thinking of the ranch owners that have been leaving the land as is for over a hundred years and are now being bought out by Ted

Have you ever heard of the dustbowls? The crop failures of sodbusters that sent topsoil blowing into the ocean? There is no purpose to Industrial Livestock Operations for a product that ALREADY saturates the marketplace - from grain to beef.

As for restoring "bio-reserves", is that what you call trying market buffalo meat, failing miserably, and getting yourself susidized by the fedral gov't.

He is harvesting a sustainable amount from the heard. What is wrong with that? Harvesting from the land isnt immoral -- f'ing it up with your fenced-in cow farm at the exclusion of any other purpose IS destructive. As for subsidy, the whole American Farm industry is subsidized. http://www.heritage.org/Research/culture/BG1510.cf m, http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2002/05/01/farme rs/, http://www.geocities.com/ericsquire/articles/ftaa/ cp040401.htm

American Farmers are givin big tax dollars to keep them on the side of the Plutocracy. Doing so flies in the face of the free-market-theists morality, which likes to pretend a free-market A) exists and B) works.

So, is Ted's subsidy a good or bad thing? Its as American as ApplePie and the overall benefit makes him more deserving than some redneck pumping cows full of hormones for f-ing Walmart.

Unfortunately, the machine knocking down McCain is funded by the democrat party. Those calls made in South Carolina were not funded by George W. Bush. There were funded by prominent democrats in the area.

Yeah, let's remember who does that. There's no such thing as election fraud.

• Marc Andreessen made 100s of millions of dollars shortly after graduating from UIUC. Today's graduates of the same university face moving back in with their parents. "Fuck that, I got mine!"
• Brian Behlendorf decided he'd rather go to India to recruit software engineers than help out the graduating classes of 2001-2004 here in the US.
• Robert Malda stood idly by and said NOTHING while his company offshored its flagship product.

Miguel de Icaza, Bruce Perens, Eric Raymond, and Linus Torvalds all got rich off the Open Source Movement. What do you have to look forward to?

I must admit I haven't read about that MS-Janus-thingie. But that Name reminds me on the movie Judge Dredd, where Project Janus was a secret eugenics program, which went wrong.

What about Georgia?

Here you go, an article in Salon from a few years ago.

I suppose it's more accurate to say that he doesn't really care about the history behind whatever it is he's doing with Trek. He's not a Star Trek fan, and while that's not a sin (Nick Meyer didn't know anything about it before he made STII), it is a sin that he doesn't particularly know or care to find out about the history of Trek.

Of course, he's also inept.

So if noone you have seen who is an actual member of the executive branch hasn't used the exact phrase "un-patriotic", then no-one has been labelled as such.

Bullshit. As if you can't imply things without saying them explicitly. And as if representatives in congress who who defend the administration do not speak in any way on their behalf, or even the republican party.

Good point, but your road analogy is slightly flawed.

where is the FBI actually using this to spy on 'average people'?

You know it is a little difficult finding examples of this, what with the gag order and all (see Section 215). Still though, here's the primary example offered up by most media outlets, and here's another, more obscure example from my home city.

It's a bit different than this story but talks about hacking ones own body.
I found it to be an interesting read.

Yes clearly the current system of releasing new versions of a text for $100 every year prevents this kind of nonsense.

Thankfully using your tax dollars to purchase the latest edition every year will no doubt ensure the highests level of "standard" facts are presented to students.
Of course the "Text and Academic Authors Association" insists these prices are the studnets faut and would go away if we would just stop reselling complimentary textbooks.

Michael Moore's career as a rabble-rousing populist has been marked by a frequent pattern of dissembling and factual inaccuracy. He distorted the chronology of his first movie, "Roger & Me"; repeatedly peddled the myth that the Bush administration gave $43 million to the Taliban; published two books, Stupid White Men and Dude, Where's My Country? , that were riddled with factual errors and distortions; and won an Academy Award for "Bowling for Columbine," a documentary based on a confused and often contradictory argument that features altered footage of a Bush-Quayle campaign ad, a misleading presentation of a speech by National Rifle Association president Charlton Heston, and other factual distortions.

With his new documentary "Fahrenheit 9/11," which won the prestigious Palme D'Or at the Cannes Film Festival and was #1 at the US box office last week, Moore has surged to new prominence -- and come under increasing scrutiny. His staff has made much of elaborate fact-checking that was reportedly conducted on the film. And fortunately, it appears to be free of the silly and obvious errors that have plagued Moore's past work, such as the claim in Stupid White Men that the Pentagon planned to spend $250 billion on the Joint Strike Fighter in 2001, a sum that represented over 80 percent of the total defense budget request for the year.

However, "Fahrenheit 9/11" is filled with a series of deceptive half-truths and carefully phrased insinuations that Moore does not adequately back up. As Washington Monthly blogger Kevin Drum and others have noted, the irony is that these are the same tactics frequently used by the target of the film, George W. Bush. Moore and his chief antagonist have more in common than viewers might think.

The 2000 Florida recount

Reviewing the 2000 election during the opening of the film, Moore uses a quote from CNN legal commentator Jeffrey Toobin to make a deeply misleading suggestion about the results of the media recounts conducted in Florida:

Moore: And even if numerous independent investigations prove that Gore got the most votes --

Toobin: If there was a statewide recount, under every scenario, Gore won the election.

Moore: -- it won't matter just as long as all your daddy's friends on the Supreme Court vote the right way.

But the recount conducted by a consortium of media organizations found something quite different, as Newsday recently pointed out. If the statewide recount ordered by the Florida Supreme Court had gone ahead, the consortium found that Bush would have won the election under two different scenarios: counting only "undervotes," or taking into account the reported intentions of some county electoral officials to include "overvotes" as well. During the CNN appearance from which Moore

All of this, of course, ignores the fact that when the President of the United States decides to embrace the doctrine of preemptive war, claiming that there is an imminent threat to his own nation, the burdern of proof is on him to support those claims. Let's see the evidence of WMDs in Iraq. How about those aerial drones that could be used against the US? An Iraq-Al Qaeda link? Some uranium from Africa? Anything?

All of this, of course, ignores the fact that when the President of the United States decides to embrace the doctrine of preemptive war, claiming that there is an imminent threat to his own nation, the burdern of proof is on him to support those claims. Let's see the evidence of WMDs in Iraq. How about those aerial drones that could be used against the US? An Iraq-Al Qaeda link? Some uranium from Africa? Anything?

I read The Economist. The articles are well-written and insightful and, since it's published in London, you get a non-US perspective which is hard to find these days. Also, it doesn't try to be exclusively conservative or liberal (not that there's anything wrong with that -- I read Salon too).

They do tend to see free-market capitalism as the cure for everything. I don't really have a problem with this (in fact, market-based solutions often work in places you might not expect them to), but it's something to keep in mind when you read the magazine.

Thanks for the kind words.

I'm sure you'll be interested to know that McNamara's views on Iraq are actually on the record in a well-known Canadian paper, the Globe and Mail. He was asked about and confirmed the G&M interview when he gave a speech UC Berkeley. Salon.com picked up the story, and of course sites like disinfopedia.org, bushwatch.com, etc., mentioned and/or linked to the G&M interview - but the mainstream press was suspiciously quiet about it even though no one refutes that the interview or subsequent comments at Berkeley took place.

I think if anything would drive the development of artificial intelligence would for use in a call center. They already have chat programs that can fool people like Eliza. With synthetic speech and speech recognition they could easily replace thousands and thousands of cubicle slaves in America and India. It would be wonderful to save them from such misery.

Imagine a customer thinks they are talking to a live person. And best of all no one has to listen to them bitch and moan and whine about how they are paying for a service they can't use because it doesn't work right. The AI would have to programmed with the Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics or they would hunt down the customer and beat them.

Do I sound like a bitter underemployed IT worker stuck in a dead end call center? Yes, I am. I have to hold the headset away from my ear so I don't have to listen to people bitch. I can tell they are talking but not make it out. I'll make the occasional 'uh huh' noise to make them think I'm actually listening. When they stop, I'll continue with trying to help them which I usually can't. So I think the real reason I'm there is to listen to people complain even though I don't get paid enough to care or to be sympathetic to their plight.

Because the government should not compete with the private sector.

So when I start my private army I can get the government to pay me and disband theirs?

I think 3D Java will help former Java executive Patrick Naughton (who plead guilty to possestion of child porno and crossing state lines to have sex with a 13 year-old-girl) get more realistic 3D kiddie porn!

I'd also like to see a ten year maximum public service law. No single human could serve more than ten years total, any mixture of elected, appointed or hired on position in the government. No pensions, no career bureaucrats, no career politicians. The only exceptions would be bonafide veteran war casualities, full medical care, and a pension for their survivors, but zip nada to anyone else.

That's just stupid. No wait a minute, its phenominally stupid. Do you have any idea how valuable experience is? Who do you want directing the FBI, somebody who's been in law enforcement for 30 years, or somebody who's only expereince is a law & justice degree? Who do you want directing FEMA, somebody who's worked with government disaster-responce for a couple decades or somebody with an engeneering degree? Aside from loosing all that wisdom from career beauracrats, you are going to send the governments effeciency (such as it is) to shit from errors by green employees and spending hiddeous amounts of money to train them in as your turnover rate will skyrocket.

Now, aside from loosing experienced people, term limits aren't going to do a damn thing to reduce curruption, graft, or keep our representatives from becomming corporate shills. Its going to make it worse. While a career politician might be a jerk and a sleaze, at least he has to worry about pissing off the voters too much because he still has to be re-elected. With your 10 year term limits, all politicans are going to be thinking about their next career. And what is going to help them the most in that goal: being dedicated public servants, or helping out businesses who can give them sweet positions after they get out of office, like oh say Halliburton? You would see cronyism, graft, corruption and corporate shilling on a biblical scale.

Sorry, I must have an out-of-date copy of the United States Code here. Because mine doesn't say anything about the doctrine of fair use guaranteeing anybody the right to make perfect digital copies of copyrighted works.

US law 101: That which isn't explicitely forbidden, is allowed. But US (and European) copyright law even explicitely allows making full copies of music recordings for private use, including giving them to friends and family. There's no exemption for digital copies. The DMCA changed that by disallowing circumvention of copy-protection mechanisms, allowing rights holders to make perfectly ok fair use illegal simply by adding even the most ridiculous technical protection.

Nope. By definition, if it's illegal, then it's not legitimate.

I challenge you to quote one relevant philosopher who can back this funny statement up. Btw this defense didn't work too well at the Nuremberg trials.

Rationalize all you want. The point is that the poster was talking about piracy. You might try to throw up a "but what about this? or this? or this?" smokescreen but that isn't going to fool anybody.

For one, you're probably right. Duplicating play-, err, copy-protected DVDs (may I remind the f*@!#/ing MPAA that thanks to the new laws they bought, it is now a crime to watch DVDs under Linux?) using a grid is unlikely to be done for personal use (e.g. geting a backup copy, or a copy without the CSS, Macrovision and region code bullshit). But then, why should I care after all the crap that RIAA and MPAA spew out? What about the corruption, the oligopolist practices and the lies? Why am I to believe them anything any more? Sorry, dude, no pity from me, they can fsck themselves and go to hell.

Actually, I stopped using P2P altogether and don't copy music/films otherwise, and I also quit buying/renting/viewing(in the cinema) anything remotely associated with the Music And Film Industry Association (MAFIA). They are - legally - not going to see a single cent of mine in the next few years, and I wish them a quick and painful death. (ok, that may be an oxymoron)

technically, one-third of the US Government ...

One-third, in the sense of three branches of American government:

* Executive
* Legislative
* Judicial

That's the theory, anyway.

In practice, real power has centralized in the Imperial Presidency -- as demonstrated by e.g. the Nixon years, the Bush/Reagan years, and the Cheney/Bush years.

-kgj

The sad thing is not so much that there actually are people out there who believe this dribble. It is that some of them get elected to high political positions.

Ahem.

Remember: politicians don't really believe in anything. They just follow the money. And, let's face it: Microsoft has a lot of money to burn. Last time I checked, it was something like 50 billion US dollars in the bank. Expect more and more attacks in the future: 20 million dollars is absolutely nothing to Microsoft. The Monopoly (tm) is not going to go out without a fight.

Solution? More democracy. Specifically, more votes and more consumer-oriented information. People all over the world have decided they were fed up with politics and have let big corporations take control of the government. It's time to fight back with your votes.

So? Not all of us are into reading military porn. Besides, the Navy's plans were previously described in a fully buzzword compliant series called "Sea Power 21" in the Naval Institute Proceedings Magazine back in 2002--2003.

The US/UK tag-team also vetoed many other goods. Iraq for example was refused pencils (the graphite can be used to make bombs), paper, ink, chlorine (essential for water purification, but can also be used to make weapons), lightbulbs... the list goes on.

According to the UN, sanctions have killed over a million people in the time they were in place. People like Denis Halliday even quit and called the sanctions genocidal, squarely pointing the finger at the US and the UK.

So I'm not the least bit surprised that they would consider Linux dangerous. Anything that could be considered "dual-use" could be banned- even if they are essentials like chlorine.

What is perhaps more surprising is that a government would keep passing such stupid laws. They won't stop me, e.g., from bringing a Linux distro and encryption packages with me if I go to Cuba. Btw, I live in Canada, so won't face repercussions from the US; I wouldn't recommend this type of behaviour for US citizens as they can decide to give you a hard time.

Yes, I do support the troops.

SUPPORTING THE TROOPS MEANS NOT PUTTING THEM IN HARM'S WAY WITHOUT A DAMN GOOD REASON.

Reasons?

• Bush said "WMD". Nobody found any. How long have US troops been in Iraq? When did they stop bothering to look for WMD?
• Bush told us that Saddam was behind 9/11. Practically all the hijackers were from SAUDI ARABIA. Where is al-Queda funded? Very largely, out of Saudi Arabia.

So what's left? Getting rid of an evil man? America supports lots of evil men in power all over the world, sometimes for good reasons. So why aren't we invading them instead of supporting them?

Why did we invade Iraq instead of the nation that indirectly employs Bush's father via the Carlyle Group? Ask the President. (note: Salon - ad viewing or subscription required)

Bush has cut various kind of pay and military allowances to our troops. You don't care, do you?

You're probably too young to remember the old joke about "Wouldn't it be great if our schools got funded and they had to hold bake sales to build an aircraft carrier?"

The joke isn't funny anymore. A middle school held a bake sale to help pay for BULLETPROOF VESTS FOR AMERICAN TROOPS Where's all that money we're spending on the military going? Ask Bush, or maybe Cheney's buddies over at Halliburton might have something to say about this.

I'm sure you aren't surprised by the fact that Halliburton served rotting meats and vegetables to our troops in Iraq. Of course, you really don't care, do you?

A reasonable person would think that a person who supported our troops would NOT want to see them put into unnecessary danger, would be equipped adequately, and would want to see them get decent food to eat.

YOU ARE NOT THAT PERSON.

You can support our troops or You can support Bush.

You can NOT do both at the same time.

You've picked a side, and we KNOW who's side you're on. Why don't you go play with your buddies at a well known Bush campaign contributor, Microsoft instead of spreading your tired old propaganda bullshit here?

"The same news program that lines up it's guests to co-incide with their book releases?"

Of course, that's not just 60 Minutes, that's standard procedure everywhere. I mean, look at this for example.