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Yup. But NPR was instrumental in killing LPFM as well.

Sure it's a failure

Then it should be abandoned. Except that calling it a "failure" is a huge understatement. It has failed in every single one of its goals, killed and maimed innocent people in the process, and destroyed our freedoms (4th amendment, anyone?).

but that doesn't necessarily mean there's a good alternative

If it has failed it its goals (which you admit), then it is not achieving anything. Going back to the way it was before would necessarily be better, espcecially given that the War on Some Drugs also brings unintended consequences.

You can't say for sure that things would be better if we legalized drugs.

Things would be better because:

a> Citizens would no longer forfeit property (contra the 4th amendment) simply because the government suspects that it was used as part of a drug sale
b> We would have better police protection, as the police would be trying to catch predators rather than people who merely want to use a product that some people don't happen to like
c> Productive members our society who are holding jobs and hiring people that happen to use drugs would not be put in jail
d> The drugs would become less expensive and the profit (and, consequently, crime) motives for selling them would be removed
e> The U.S. military could focus on its real job (protecting the country) rather than enforcing idiotic drug laws
f> The U.S. Government could reduce in size

I could go on and on!

Perhaps *bad* is an improvement over *worse*.

Except that you have assumed that things would be worse if drugs were legalized. You have not shown it. Most people claim that things would be worse if drugs were legalized because ... well, all of their reasons suck, and I believe yours will, too. Why don't you share them and we can discuss them?

- Humorless lawyers suing attrition.org (includes reply to their letter)
- Humorless lawyers suing Ralph Nader... and losing

Should you laugh or cry at this?
TESS Info for trademark #2370508

1. Science fiction and fantasy (SF/F) and comic books are popular,
2. SF/F fans think about other worlds
3. you can't think about two worlds at once,
4. internet interactions retreat from the real world
5. retreating from the real world is bad
6. on the internet you never have to argue with people who disagree with you
7. if you feel you can't change the world you read fantasy so
8. SF/F keeps us from exploring our world and should be less popular.

Where to start? Addressing these in no particular order...

• 5: Then books in general are bad: there's just nothing worse than someone sitting around thinking.
• 5: And as the essay point out, many common activities keep people from reality (or make you talk for hours about trivia or statistics): TV, baseball games, video games, golf, martha stewart trials. These are quantiatively different from fandom how?
• 6: Huh? I suppose if you only IM with a few people and have an interlocked set of livejournal users, perhaps. But otherwise anyone with a blog with comments, or anyone on usenet is exposed to more arguments and opposing viewpoints than ever. You can keep atheists out of your physical church: its much harder to keep them out of Talk.religion.mychurch.
• 3: Not only can you think about two worlds at once, you have to if you want to understand your own time and milieu. Understanding implies the ability to step outside of it- examine it from the outside. Knowing history and traveling to other countries is critical, of course. But if your goal is understanding humanity overall you need a bigger mental space to step back in: science (evolution, anthropology) and SF/F provide this space.
• 1: Yes, SF/F movies are big- 23 out of 25 of the top grossing movies are SF/F. But modern written science fiction isn't the same as modern SF/F movies: most SF movies are 30 years behind written SF
• 7: Much popular written SF/F analyzes or confronts our society. For example, I'd done a quick analysis of Hugo award finalists for last year (what SF/F fans consider to be the best of the year). Few of the stories were standard fantasy: most were about how humans might deal with the inevitable changes coming to our society in the short and long terms.
• 2 & 4 & 8: those who "inhabit imaginary worlds" are often the ones inspired to start new science and technologies, explore our world and local neighborhood, and get us to confront upcoming problems
• 2 & 5: What conventions does he go to? The science fiction conventions I go to are filled with lectures about cutting edge science, technology, health and physiology... they're also filled with scientists [physical, bio and social]. Many fans are scientists, many SF writers are scientists, many scientists were inspired by SF to go into their careers.
• 2 & 6 & 7: Again, I think he's not at the same conventions: anyone who has seen the debates about Trotskyite libertarian cyberpunks vs. K.S.Robinson style socialism vs. LeGuin's anthro-SF isn't going to think that SF cons are a mutual agreement-fest. (Eric Raymond vs. Charlie Stross: now *that* was fun)

At the very least, gives users the option to pay or see pop-ups. Salon gives users the option to subscribe or sit through an advertisement for a day pass. I find that fair and honest.

• 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.

• 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 2003 here in the US.
• Robert Malda stood idly by and said NOTHING while his company offshored its flagship product.

Artists like Courtney Love and Janis Ian?

Odd, they are telling us the record industry is the group that's been ripping them off. Why should we believe you instead? What is your association with the music industry, should you happen to have one?

I decided not to bother with a point-by-point refutation when you repeated the *AA companies favorite lie. Given the repeated exposure of this lie, anyone who repeats it now is either too clueless to be worth discussing anything with or too interested in grabbing regular checks from *AA organization or label PR firms to care about it.

You should look to your. . . associates in the industry for an explanation as to why they are ripping artists off.

Note: if you are not on their payroll, you are an idiot. You're doing their work for them free of charge. Your getting modded as "Insightful" suggests that people should be required to take IQ tests before being allowed mod points.

If you don't like reading facts and informed speculation about M$hit and the *AA organizations and member companies, click here.

Did anyone try taking the survey?

I gave up. It was impossible for me to answer most of the questions.

I work independantly, currently. I have developed projects for clients that I released as open source, and I've done plenty of very closed-source development.

Who owns the code, legally? Duh - depends on the contract. I am not a lawyer, but I AM a fine-print-reader. Often it's not a matter of opinion; it's in there in the text above your signature. If you are working for a company as an employee, I guarantee there were clauses in your NDA and non-compete agreement.

If they're looking to see how we feel about "cheating" a little, they need to ask questions about that - would you copy and reuse a low-level generic utility method that you didn't technically own (or would you just reimplement it), would you copy a whole library of generic utility code, would you copy the bulk of the code from an application you developed on contract, slap on a new GUI and sell it as a competing product (as one Indian outsourcing firm did, according to a recent Salon.com article)?

Instead they have questions like this:

6. Would you re-use blocks of code written elsewhere
* Only if you were confident that nobody would find out
* Whether it would be found out or not

WTF is that? Suppose my answer was "NO", or "only if it's legal"?

Sorry, guys, but writing survey questions is *hard*. You cannot simply throw a bunch of questions out there and think you're going to get useful data in return. I just quit after that one -- other people will choose randomly when there is no answer that is even remotely close.

I still use Proximitron... mainly because I've been using it for years, and I have many personal filter writen for it to override many annoying features I find in many websites I visit on a regular basis.

It not only blocks ads and other annoying crap, it lets me modify damn near anything sent to my browser. That is a -GOOD THING-.

Anyway, I would like to point out an ad based system that I go for all the time: Salon. I used to have a subscription to Salon, becuase I really like it, thought it was good, and read it on a regular basis. All those things still hold true... I just use thier click through ad system to get a day long subscription when I want to read thier stuff.

Works for me... I'm even taken in by problably 60% of thier ads and click through.

I don't mind. If that is cost of me getting hours of free content (30 seconds of my time), I'm in.

Click the advertising just so they get their $$$, but while thats happening...

Get the cookie

Click the article

Now does anyone have a quick way to get through the NYtimes process?
Used to be you could add archives to the link and you'd be in.

Click the advertising just so they get their $$$, but while thats happening...

Get the cookie

Click the article

Now does anyone have a quick way to get through the NYtimes process?
Used to be you could add archives to the link and you'd be in.

Get the cookie without watching the ad and read the article (or simply load the page and not read the article, since this is slashdot :-)

Get the cookie without watching the ad and read the article (or simply load the page and not read the article, since this is slashdot :-)

Do you remember how everyone said Wag the Dog when Clinton tried to do something about al-Qaida and Usama bin Laden? Are you proud that so much time and effort went into investigating Clinton's sex life and his lies about sex?
Are you proud of the great way Bush protected us from terrorist attacks?

This contest remind me of the loebner prize, the annual contest to see whether a chat robot can pass an implementation of the turing test - with prizes of 3,000, 25,000, and 100,000 for 3rd, 2nd, and 1st prize respectively.

Seems that the loebner contest has fallen into troubles lately, however, with fewer and fewer organizations willing the host the competition, ostensibly due to the eccentricities of loebner himself, at least according to this very interesting article.

So it's good to see more contests being run for chatbots, aside from the loebner prize itself... despite the negative sentiments of the stong AI crowd, I think programming these bots can in fact lead to insights into the psychology of conversation, and AI in general.

but everyone knows slashdot sucks - Salon shouldn't be taking advantage of that... and anyway, had you googled, you'd know that he's a writer for salon with (to date) 171 articles

Actually, if I remember correctly, this is about what Altavista has looked like for some time now. Also note that by doing a WhoIs for Altavista.com, you will find that Altavista is owned by Yahoo!... Which I just don't know about, to be honest. I use their mail service, but their search page is so bloated and ugly, full of content I neither want nor need from a search engine. As a result, Google is set as my home page, and when I want to check my web-mail account, I have a hotlink directly to https://mail.yahoo.com (cleartext password transmission is bad, mmmm'kay?). When I want information, want it fast, and want it organized in manner that at least vaguely appears to be relevant, I go to Google.

Waaayyyyy back in the day when I used to work at D.E.C. ('97 to early '99), I and most of my friends and co-workers swore by Altavista... Guess it also didn't hurt that I could feel the hum from the servers that powered it through my chair some days. Boy have things changed, but then, not much changed for the better after the Comwhaq buyout.

One major annoyance with Google lately though... Those stupid results that come back as the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th result for evey search I've run in the last month+... You know, the ones that say "Find 'x' using the free 2020 search toolbar", and, "Find 'x' on smartpages.com," and "Find 'x' With Free Websearch Tools." What is up with this??? Why for they cannot make these go away, bitte? If I wanted to search for these somewhere else, I would do so. Why is Google doing free advertising for these people, as they are obviously not paid ads, but standard returns that appear to be just a database/dictionary/meta-tag exploit... Someone at Google must know about this, and I just don't understand why it's been allowed to continue, as this has completely ruined so much of their credibility since now 3 out of the first five results of any query are now completely unrelated and inaccurate =(

Otherwise, I've been loving on Google about 2 1/2 years now, and I haven't really looked back, even when I read sites (1, and 2) that called into question google's privacy practices, I wasn't really deterred, but these bad returns may be all it takes to make me start considering another move.

Well, I vote in Virginia, and you can't register as a Republican or a Democrat in Virginia. The only way that anybody ever knows your party affiliation in Virginia is when you vote in a primary, because you have to ask for either a Republican or a Democratic ballot. And in the year 2000, I voted in the Republican presidential primary. That's the only record in the state of Virginia of my interest or allegiance.

All right, let Courtney say it again.

The internet gives bands a way to finally break clear of record companies, and here you come along telling us that we need them. Do you work for the RIAA, by any chance?

Distributing CDs cost $4, you charge your customer however much you want and pocket the difference.

Recording your music doesn't cost a fortune, either, as long as you have the gear to make the music (which you obviously already have if you're playing gigs) and can make the basic connection from your gear to your computer's mic jack.

Any questions?

Yeah, those would be great examples...if any of those were tyrannies.

Are you saying the countries of Eastern Europe under communism were not tyrannies? I think in the context of the article they fit the bill perfectly.

Uh, you aren't Gerald Ford posting under a nick, are you? :)

It was the late 1940's/early 1950's. A lot of very talented folks ended up in janitorial jobs for years as a result. You didn't have to be a flaming "I love Joe Stalin" Commie either - briefly joining an organization while in college during the 1930's could come back to haunt you 15 apolitical years later. See Article in Salon

Actually, new artists are required to take out a loan, so there isn't really much of an "investment" anyway.

Most unsigned bands that give away MP3s seem to think it works out in their favor anyway.

When it comes to charity, Microsoft gets as good as it gives.

The above mentioned article on Salon is even titled "We Don't Support That" and was mentioned in a previous Slashdot headline. Unfortunately, Salon wants your money or your eyes for the privilage of reading more than the first paragraph.

Clear Channel has been doing this kind of crap and worse to their competition for years. Oddly enough, nobody ever seems to go after them. Think radio sucks nowadays? It does, and you can blame it on the ugly monopoly that has gone pretty much unchecked in that industry.

• Giant Food Inc. was caught providing its customers' prescription purchasing info to marketers
• A customer's alcohol buying habits was brought up by Von's (part of Safeway) when he sued after slipping on spilled yogurt in their store (it didn't make it to court)
• You could get rejected for health care coverage if you have a heart condition and your insurance company finds out that you've been filling your cart with potato chips and desserts.
• Any number of other problems from the sharing of your purchasing information between business partners.

I had my economics course almost a decade ago. Since then I've developed the habit of double-checking what professional economists have to say. It's illuminating how often they've been dead wrong in their predictions. The Republican ones in particular love to twist the numbers beyond all recognition in order to prove that the status quo is perfect.

If you seriously like economics, I urge you to continue to study it, but make an effort to find material published before 1970. See how the predictions made then have panned out, then compare with predictions in the modern textbooks. I found that the modern economists stopped making efforts to verify their models, meaning since about 1970 they've been pushing policies that just don't work.

Some people seem to agree with me.

When Richard Stallman gave Bill Gates the finger in front of Stanford's computer science building, I got nervous. No, it wasn't the real Bill Gates -- it was just his name, engraved in giant letters over the main entrance to the 2-year-old, Gates-funded building.

[...]

"Hey," Stallman called out to a graduate student opening the door in front of us, "is it the tradition here to give Bill the finger whenever you go through these doors?"

The student looked over his shoulder, twitched a nervous smile and disappeared inside. Stallman shrugged -- and right there on the spot decided to start his own protest movement. As we entered the building, out came what the ancient Romans used to call the "digit impudicus." Stallman flashed me a sly grin.

1. "The Internet is powered by open source."

Anybody who can exhibit a counterexample can say this is not true.

That's not how counterexamples work. If I claim my car runs on petroleum, and someone points out that it also has a electrical cell-battery providing a tiny bit of power, the existence of a 2nd power source doesn't eliminate the first. "is powered by" is not an exclusive phrase.

4. "It's simply going to be more secure than proprietary software."

This can be proven wrong, and you'll look stupid.

The fact that secrecy harms security is becoming increasingly well-documented (and that applies not just to software, but in general)

How can software which can be changed or withdrawn at a whim from Microsoft ever be considered secure? To be dependent on Microsoft is to be insecure (in the same way that the US subsidizes unneeded farming production for "national security"). Furthermore (and more related to tradional ideas of software-security), Microsoft claims that Windows has exploits that those with access to the source code can see and use. They're essentially saying "We could hack your box, if we wanted."

The difference being of course, between Perot and Bush, is that Bush is one hell of a failed business man - see here and this detailed diagram of his business failings

Let's not forget that the folks at Salon use and develop the open source CMS system Bricolage (homepage, Salon tech notes on their choice, Linux Journal article, Another).

They're not exactly the bad guys around here.

These veterans shared a starting-point assumption that the rest of the world is only slowly beginning to understand: While computer hardware seems to advance according to the exponential upward curve known as Moore's Law (doubling in speed -- or halving in cost -- every year or two), software, when it advances at all, seems to move at a more leisurely linear pace.

As Lanier said, "Software inefficiency can always outpace Moore's Law. Moore's Law isn't a match for our bad coding."

The impact of this differential is not simply a matter of which industry gets to collect more profits. It sets a maddening limit on how much good we can expect information technology to achieve. If computers are, as it has often been put, "amplifiers for our brains," then software's limitations cap the volume way too low. Or, in Simonyi's words, "Software as we know it is the bottleneck on the digital horn of plenty."

Most successful programmers are at heart can-do engineers who are optimistic that every problem has a solution. So it was only natural that, even in this relatively small gathering of software pioneers, there were multiple, and conflicting, ideas about how we should proceed in order to break that bottleneck.

Simonyi believes the answer is to unshackle the design of software from the details of implementation in code. "There are two meanings to software design," he explained on Tuesday. "One is, designing the artifact we're trying to implement. The other is the sheer software engineering to make that artifact come into being. I believe these are two separate roles -- the subject matter expert and the software engineer."

Giving the former group tools to shape software will transform the landscape, according to Simonyi. Otherwise, you're stuck in the unsatisfactory present, where the people who know the most about what the software is supposed to accomplish can't directly shape the software itself: All they can do is "make a humble request to the programmer." Simonyi left Microsoft in 2002 to start a new company, Intentional Software, aimed at turning this vision into something concrete.

Jef Raskin jumped in. "And what do they put on top of it? Another Windows!"

"What are they thinking?" Lanier continued. "Why is the idealism just about how the code is shared -- what about idealism about the code itself?"

At this point, Andy Hertzfeld, who has devoted himself in recent years to open-source projects like Eazel and Chandler, spoke up for the maligned legions of Linux-heads. "It's because they want people to use the stuff!"

His comment underscored something that's frequently misunderstood about the open-source approach, which is often wrongly stereotyped as loopily communal and out-of-touch with business reality. There's an essential pragmatism to the notion that programmers work best when they can share, and learn from, one another's work. After all, every other field of human endeavor works that way.

Bricklin sent waves of laughter through the auditorium by reading a passage from Lammers' interview with Bill Gates in which the young Microsoft founder explained that his work on different versions of Microsoft's BASIC compiler was shaped by looking at how other programmers had gone about the same task. Gates went on to say that young programmers don't need computer science degrees: "The best way to prepare is to write programs, and to study great programs that other people have written. In my case, I went to the garbage cans at the Computer Science Center and I fished out listings of their operating systems."

Bricklin finished reading Gates' words and announced, with an impish smile, "This is where Gates and [Richard]

Firstly, I'm all for DRM free content too. In all it's entirity, DRM is such a false hope anyway for now.. or for at least as long as we still need to bridge the digital-analog divide in order to render music perceptible to us.

Secondly, on the evils of the record industry and it's plague of the record labels, I think we should do well to ensure that musicians are rightly compensated by making use of services such Divendo and Mercora that are seemingly "non-feudal" and apparentely "more appropriate" in a contemporary context.

I say maybe because the link is to Money Magazine premium content? I could not read the article. What's with that? I could deal perhaps with a Salon permium link but not with this one.

The iPod alone isn't what will save Apple, Apple saves Apple with everything Apple does. (In Soviet Russia, Apple saves iPod!?) I know a lot of people who have started making the switch with laptops from Apple. I'd consider it myself but I don't have the luxury money for that yet.

I remember watching the MacWorld keynote when Jobs introduced the iMac and iPhoto (IIRC)-- he explained what they were trying to do with the "digital hub." Apple is not going to go away anytime soon-- they are seriously committed to creating the best home computers possible for the general public. It looks like they're calling it "iLife" and they are trying to create tools to simplify everything in life, unlike Microsoft which seems wholy committed to making each and every new release more complicated and harder to use. Apple seems to follow Pareto's rule and gets you 80% of everything you need well without making it complicated and this keeps the maczealots insanely happy and recruits new customers.

Free advice to Steve Jobs to help kick Microsoft's collective ass: create iPostage, an application that makes it impossibly easy to buy and print postage from the USPS and you'll create another compelling use for Mac OS X for business to switch. I know from everyone who has ever tried to go the postage-via-computer route has suffered with lost postage because of bad printings, confusing dialogs and just generally hard to use software.

> MacOS titles only sell about 5k units

Bullshit

Salon

Independent

However, they are both premium-only articles. I'd say the parent is probably a bigot. But he might just be ignorant. I don't know him, so that may not be fair. Most of these "sources" take great pains to point out that Zack is Jewish.

I must warn the world about Tom Cruise. I feel he is an utterly terrifying Superior Life Form, with the power to melt heads and braid spines. His eyes are as hard, shiny and brutally penetrating as diamond drill-bits. The new braces on his teeth suggest that he is erasing all that remained of his tiny imperfections, and he is now metamorphosing into Ultra Super Perfection Man 3000. I fear his intense, mind-beating politeness, his titanium imperviousness to human weakness, his barking power-laugh.

That was a funny comment, but do remember that in all the recounts that occurred in Florida AFTER the whole bru-haha, Dubya still came out ahead.

To say Bush won every media recount (those are the recounts that happened after the election) is a distortion. The truth is Bush won every recount using only undervotes (i.e. where the problem with the ballot was a hanging chad or there was only a dimple) (See USA Today). That is the most widely used standard, and the one that Gore was asking for, so ultimately Bush won. Fine.

But I think it might worth at least mentioning that if you include the overvotes (such as where people checked Gore and wrote in Gore) Gore won. That is to say, if the standard is voter intent, in every recount more people went to the polls intending to vote for Gore than Bush. So when you say Bush won every recount, be sure and include that little footnote, because otherwise people may think you are being dishonest. See Guardian. See USA Today. See Salon. See Washington Post.

And you know, maybe if minority votes counted for as much as a non-minority vote, that would make a difference. See New York Times.

Personally before Florida, I thought the voter's intent was the standard. How silly.

Then there was the minorities being intimidated at the polls thing. Then there was Republican officials writing on a bunch of ballots to "fill in missing information." I'm not saying they didn't just fill in missing social security numbers, but it is obviously a violation of election standards to have partisan non-election officials writing on ballots. There are media references for all this stuff too. Go find them yourself. I'm tired.

don't have access to the hardware doesn't mean you can't write the program

But Ada never wrote a program. Occasionally Babbage would walk her through the steps to create a hypothetical program, but she was no more a programmer than Plato's Meno was a mathematician.

Damn those free-loading poor people!

Let's give the rich a break.

Damn those free-loading poor people!

Let's give the rich a break.

Damn those free-loading poor people!

Let's give the rich a break.

Damn those free-loading poor people!

Let's give the rich a break.

Damn those free-loading poor people!

Let's give the rich a break.

Damn those free-loading poor people!

Let's give the rich a break.

Damn those free-loading poor people!

Let's give the rich a break.

What like the Energy Policy that Enron wrote? The Whitehouse has been fighting tooth and nail to prevent the notes from Mr.Cheney's consultation with the energy giants.

Or that Schwarzenegger met with Ken Lay and other republican plutocrats to let arnold in on the fleecing of California..

The US Government is as bought-and-paid-for as any other third rate dirthole. You people *really* need to wake the hell up -- legislation is LITERALLY being written by industry.

That's right.
Nobody's going to revive the draft.
Just like nobody's going support Patriot II.
I mean, this is America. That can't happen here

Well, the FAQ for the free pass has this foreboding entry:

Check if your browser accepts animation. In IE go to Tools > Internet Options > Advanced > Multimedia > check box "Play animations in web pages."

Even worse, the URL for the first ad includes the chilling string "RealMedia". However, the images you are required to click through for this particular day pass (or at least the ones I got, for powells.com) are simply animated gifs with image map links, so Lynx should display them just fine.

However again, I can't seem to get from the Salon article page and the 'get a free day pass' link to the actual ads, as you say, and despie accepting all cookies offered. I did get to the ads by copying the URL for the first ad page from a Safari window and pasting it into Lynx.

This is no good if you just want to use Lynx, but here's something that did work:

• Open Lynx and go to http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2004/03/02/eugen e_jarvis/index_np.html;
• Press 'L' to get a list of links;
• Follow the long URL mentioning Powells;
• Follow the imagemap links through the ad pages;
• Wind up at the Salon homepage and hope you made it.

You'll know you made it if you don't see the 'free day pass' link at the top of the page. I had to go through the process twice to get there, and had to retry a couple of 'server not found links', but it did work. And not having to wait for the animated gifs to reveal their hotspots is a genuine timesaver - the glitchy Lynx process didn't take any longer than the full-on process with the animated gif wait.

Hope that's useful, and good luck. Lynx on!