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I was under the impression that China was moving away from Windows...

:-/

Do we get a link with this or you just gonna say it and hope we believe it. Either way it isn't the same way now. The USMC and Army are totally different than their Vietnam era counterparts which were undisciplined and unmotivated. The Army is slipping now with lower expectations for recruits but over all we are hundreds times better off today than 40 years ago. http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/ a/2006/07/11/MNG03JT3ER1.DTL

Microsoft WAS convicted

Microsoft was not "convicted" of anything. Please point me to a legal document that implies they were "convicted", I'd love to see it. Besides, the GP's point is that there are no "rights revoked" as implied by Twitter The Head Zealot for whatever reason, a point that you didn't even address.

• "In a stunning setback for Bill Gates' software empire, the judge in the Microsoft antitrust trial ruled yesterday that the software giant is a monopoly that wielded its power to stifle competition."
• "Judge rules software giant's business practices violated antitrust laws "
• " Judge finds that Microsoft Corp. violated the Sherman Antitrust Act, 'maintained its monopoly power by anticompetitive means'"

The number of credit card offers you get in the mail your first year at college are ridiculous. At least, they were when I went, and I rather suspect the same is true today.

The goal is simple: hook them early, let them blow a wad of bills they don't have, and then get their parents to pay for it. For a true horror story on this, take a look at this example of a student who had no business getting a credit card getting one, and what happened. (Before you say it, this sort of thing doesn't just happen in South Korea.)

Developing a brand new drug is incredibly expensive, involving many rounds of clinical trials and government reviews. The fact that drug companies spend a lot on advertising has nothing to do with their huge fixed investment required to research and test the drug and getting it approved for production. Maybe some of the R&D can be outsourced to places like India and China, and I'm sure some of it has, but in the end you need substantial numbers of incredibly bright scientists with advanced degrees willing to work for many years on what is essentially a gamble, something that may turn out to be almost a complete waste of time. And you need to conduct many rounds of those expensive trials (and sometimes you still end up with a disaster like Vioxx).

And no, financially it's not an easy business to run either.

Pesticides? One beekeper thinks it's genetic engineering of agricultural plants. I tend to agree. I say, let's just put the beaker and lazer tweezers away already. Let insects do what they do best - suckling off mother nature's teat, not father human's trampling feet.

If I would live in the states this scare the shit out of me because the next...and the next...and the next...and the next presidents would have the same rights.

It is easier and much cheaper for Google not to store the data and exclude even the option of their data being abused beyond their power. This is exactly the difference between not being evil (and ignore what you know) and being good. Or the difference between buying a gun to protect yourself and not buying a gun to protect others (and eventually yourself)...

Here's an example on how B of A does business:

This guy just wanted to check to see if a check was good!

You can bet B of A will go after this hacker guy.

1. Inflight wifi has been around for a while, for example the Connexion by Boeing service which was killed last August. Why was it discontinued? "The market for this service has not materialized as had been expected"...

2. The cell phone digression is now largely irrelevant now that the FCC has announced that it will continue to ban cell phones inflight.

3. Why are we so fixated on voice? VoIP? Cell phone conversations? Seems like most Americans still believe the mobile phone is just a voice tool. Take Japan, for instance, where *phone calls* have been banned on public transit since forever, but you can make good use of mobile data services like text messaging.

   I find it surprising that in America, the possibility of non-obtrusive mobile data use is a minor consideration, while the whole debate about annoying cell phone / VoIP conversations takes center stage.

   Shouldn't it be the other way around?

Evolution can not be wrong. It's not a theory - it's just a plain fact. If your DNA causes you to have more children than me, then the DNA of our species has taken a step in the direction of your DNA rather than mine. If the DNA of species A group #1 has diverged from that of species A group #2 to the extent that they can't interbreed then (by definition) one of these groups is a new species. There may be additional subtleties to how evolution actually plays out (there's plenty of post-Darwin realizations such as that it's environmental change that drives punctuated equilibrium), but the mechanism itself can't be wrong - it's just plain fact. More children = more descendents with your DNA.
Actually, evolution is an interpretation of facts observed in nature and is thus a theory. All the data observed could conveivably be used to support another theory as to how life came to be the way it is. Also, such things as proof of http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2 007/01/21/ING5LNJSBF1.DTL retrocausality could throw a curveball to evolutionism.

Right..... The Chinese exchanges clearly are not href="http://www.resourceinvestor.com/pebble.asp?r elid=29511">overvalued. Try again.

> I don't understand why they are not trying to market this for the educational market in developed countries.
Because in "developed" countries we have "developed marketing departments" who's job it is to make sure that the local ed tech buys "only the best" for the kids, even if "the best" is way more capacity than most kids writing papers and watching flash-powered chemistry sims online need.

This situation is not unique to schools:
There's a $200M study to track the effects of pre-school on children - does it *really* take that kind of money to track a bunch of pre-school kids?
We have pretty good roads, but a large segment of the population still thinks you won't be safe on the road unless you drive a $70,000 mil-spec automobile.
If you don't have insurance, you can spend $12,000 just for cracked ribs.

We'll spend $100M/mile on a ROAD.

We have so much $$ in the US ($3 TRILLON FY2007 Fed Budget) we seem to believe that there are no cheap problems.

Stop imagining conspiracies of collusion between cutthroat competitors.

http://www.usatoday.com/life/music/news/2002-09-30 -cd-settlement_x.htm
http://www.engadget.com/2007/03/21/sony-others-nam ed-in-video-tape-price-fixing-scheme/
http://news.com.com/Samsung+to+pay+300+million+for +price+fixing/2100-1004_3-5894862.html
http://illinoisissuesblog.blogspot.com/2007/03/pri ce-fixing.html
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/ch ronicle/archive/2002/05/10/MN24643.DTL
http://www.reviewjournal.com/lvrj_home/2002/May-08 -Wed-2002/business/18699104.html
http://www.powells.com/biblio?PID=28734&cgi=produc t&isbn=0767903277

What's more, you don't have to spend long in today's business culture before it becomes *obvious* that there's enough of a critical mass of actors who believe in getting ahead by amassing control over channels and perception (rather than producing/adding value) that the emergence of price-fixing behavior is practically inevitable.

In 2000, Peacefire was hosted by ISP Media3, which also hosted of major spammers. That year, Media3 moved Peacefire into a new block of IP addresses which it knew was already listed in the MAPS RBL due to spamming. No reason was ever given for this move. Speculation was that this was either some sort of publicity stunt, or that Media3 was trying to use Peacefire as a sort of "human shield" to convince MAPS to drop the listing. That's when Haselton began complaining about censorship.

It was suggested that Haselton ask Media3 to move him back out of the block of IP addresses being listed. He refused. Haselton was offered free hosting at other ISPs which were not listed in the RBL. He refused. It almost seemed like he wanted to be listed in the RBL to make some sort of point.

More details can be found in the San Francisco Chronicle article Markets battle with e-mail activists over your inbox and Usenet threads The truth behind Peacefire/Media3, and Media3/Peacefire developments.

Like Canadian Environment Minister Christine Stewart (a nurse by training, if you can believe that):

"No matter if the science is all phony, there are collateral environmental benefits. . . Climate change [provides] the greatest chance to bring about justice and equality in the world."

As long as the public faces of the global warming scare are building vast energy-hogging mansions, flying around the world in private jets, and shooting down alternative-power proposals that clash with their refined aesthetic sensibilities, I will assume they are all power-crazed liars and mountebanks of the ilk of Christine Stewart.

We are being asked to overturn the very edifice of free-market capitalism, on the basis of wild speculation about the significance of mere statistical noise, teased out of scant and questionable data by grant-chasing academics, and shouted hysterically by power-mad left-wing politicians who won't abide by the same draconian regulations they advocate for the rest of us. No thanks. I'm going to keep living my life as I please.

-ccm

There are limits to the "many files in the same filesystem". It's still possible to overwhelm any filesystem with too many files in it

ReiserFS has other problems: see. (See http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2 007/03/09/BAG1OOI9ID46.DTL and numerous other articles.) It's always bad news for a filesystem when its author manages to lose something that way: it tends to hinder development, and make one wonder what else is buried where.

I THOUGHT it was Los Angeles -- but it's Louisana.

Found a link.

There are a number of things that might make the above case 2nd degree, not 1st. "I just wanted to scare her" would mean 2nd degree.

Finding the google searches in TOPIC case pretty much supports 1st degree premeditation.

HSBC's long term TCO decision making strategies of late may be deemed... well... questionable.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/sfgate/detail? blogid=5&entry_id=12853

hehe

Bah, Bangalore is fairly small in that respect. Mumbai's public transport system was designed to carry employees to factories. It carries a few million people more than all of Bangalore's transit. For the Americans, the trains in Mumbai alone carry more passengers than the total number of passengers travelling by mass transit in NYC.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/ch ronicle/archive/2004/11/12/MNG2P9PCR11.DTL

The Constitution was not made to protect criminals but to prevent the Government from becoming criminals.

Yeah, but if you just change your reading of the Constitution, then you can do whatever you want! It's just a goddamn piece of paper, right?

And when someone attempts to violate those rights, one should expect that society will afford them the ability to defend themselves against that violation. But that doesn't mean that one should expect a gun to be the arbiter of that defense.

While there's plenty of non-lethal alternatives, most of them fall short of firearms in one way or another. Not everyone has the time or physical ability to become an expert in martial arts. Even if they did, if the aggressor has a gun, you're toast. (The example of Alex Gong comes to mind.) Most non-lethal weapons (pepper spray & tasers spring to mind quickly) have much shorter effective range than firearms.

While it would be nice if there was an non-lethal,man-portable weapon with an effective range of 5 feet to a hundred, there really isn't.

...to the list of alternative ocean-based energy sources:

Tides around Golden Gate are potential energy source [Sept 2006]

and

San Francisco Plans Tidal-Energy Pilot Project [older]

That's actually how they manage it now.

See Superman for the XBox 360 - it's not fun, but it's not fun in part because it's trying something new that didn't work out.

Q: I wonder if you can think a little further out. Give us your vision for the gaming experience say, five or 10 years from now.

A: I can't give you a vision 10 years out. Anybody that pretends that they can, get as far away from them as you can get because they're making it up. Five years, in terms of what are the products going to look like, imagine Nemo-like graphics with much more realistic characters and animation. What I think is going to be important to the future of this business, in addition to better graphics and better sound and smoother animation, is that we have to be better storytellers and that we start to create characters that people care about. I think that, longer term, (it will) help to broaden the demographics where we get more women into the demographic and even broaden the age demographic.

If they're in a bad spot now, I think it's because they classified everything for the Wii as "high risk" and managed accordingly.

Are there really that many powersellers on ebay that they expect to get $2B from this small amount? I doubt it.

If we look at this article http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/20 07/02/24/MNGMPOAK5C1.DTL it says the total amount of goods sold on ebay last year was $25.2 billion.

They're assuming then that they can raking in 10% of this amount as taxes. That would be amazing, particular if we assume a cost basis of 50%, particularly since the bulk of ebay-ers probably come under the $5,000 amount and if anything, probably sell for a "loss".

Do the math people, this doesn't add up. One of two things will happen: Either they're going to go after every eBay transaction, of they're going to get probably 1/20th of the amount they claim. They may be counting on the fact that when you sell a Stereo you bought in 1978 for $400, you won't keep the original receipt making you liable for the entire $400 amount.

Really, this will add up to a tax bill for everybody who uses ebay, and the only people who will truly benefit will be accountants and TurboTax.

Thats a blatent lie.
No successful Fast Breeder Reactor exists.

Assuming we switched the entire grid over to Light Water Reactors.
We'd only have 6 years worth of uranium supply.
Assuming no new reactors are built, we'd only have 50-65 years.
http://www.oxfordresearchgroup.org.uk/publications /briefings/energyfactsheet4_fullreport_2006.pdf

And then you get into the issue that the lifecycle carbon emmisions of 3/5ths the uranium releases more carbon than a natural gas firepower powerplant.
http://www.nirs.org/climate/background/climatetalk _mary_un_050306.htm

And if we had enough Light Water Reactors for the entire world grid, we'd need a Yucca Mountain worth of waste disposal every 4 years.
http://www.nirs.org/factsheets/nukesclimatefact606 .pdf

And each new plant would cost a 4 billion to 2 billion dollars to build.
Which is many times less than all US solar research funding for an entire year.

Nuclear looks rather foolish to me.
Especially when we could spend far less on renewables and achieve the same ends.
As is, energy effeciency costs 7 less than Nuclear.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2 005/08/07/ING95E1VQ71.DTL

_

Besides which enriching uranium in the US is the biggest emmitter of CFCs in the nation.
CFCs are banned by the Montreal Protocol.
Only reason our existing enrichment locations exist is because they were grandfathered.

Fat chance of expanding enrichment without flaunting the Montreal protocol.
http://www.nirs.org/factsheets/nukesclimatefact606 .pdf

You remind me of someone...

http://cdn.sfgate.com/blogs/sounds/sfgate/chroncas t/2007/01/23/CorrectMe-001-2.mp3

-Low cube walls... hopefully nobody talks on their phone.
-Snack room... ok so the 'Whole Foods' styled snack dispensers are cool, however, not sure of the value over your standard vending machine.
-Game room? How about a gym? Do they have workout facilities or is the game room supposed to be similar to the "DDR in Schools" phenom we're starting to see? http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/ch ronicle/archive/2006/01/25/BUGA6GSFCG1.DTL

Google reminds me of MSFT, they have a cash cow (search, Windows and Office), but as an investor I'd have to ask both those companies "What have you done for me lately?" Plenty of released projects that just aren't generating any revenue....

Just you watch, one of these days Google finance will say "All this free food/massages etc... costs too much money... time to cut back.."

Wishful thinking there. MS is just as big a tax dodger in the US as it is in Europe. Just because you pay your taxes and your company pays it's taxes doesn't mean that either Big Bill or his company do so.

It gets even simpler. You can't trust any closed source code. Now, there is still some quality stuff out there that MS hasn't run out of business or bought out, but the bottom line is regardless of whether it's from the MS movement or from a normal company, if you don't have access to the code for the entire tool chain, it could contain just about anything.

However, you don't have to be technically oriented to know that MS presents a problem here. Just read the EULA for 2000 SP3, XP SP1, and 2003 and later. It says flat out that you grant admin rights to Big Bill or his designated representatives.

The bottom line is that the school and the teacher were asking for trouble when they risked it with MS Windows. MS has tried the same thing in many other school districts, sometimes with success and other times driving the whole district to more appropriate technology.

Because if you don't, this might happen to Toronto and Montreal... it'd be a shame, wouldn't it?

To me it is quite clear as well. To the Attorney General of the United States, it is not so clear. There is an article in the San Francisco Chronicle that gives his quotes and some analysis.

Well, the subpoena was sort of a formality. If he showed up they would have simply tossed him in jail when he refused to identify his sources.

This case has a long and storied history but basically it's part of an emerging pattern by the US DOJ of eliminating confidentiality for journalism sources. Say what you will about whether journalists have a legal privilege to protect sources or not, the fact remains that this is a deliberate break from 35 years of tradition dating back to (and this is not a coincidence) Watergate. The reason this case is troubling is because the Feds shouldn't even be involved--their argument is that because a city squad car which was partially funded by federal dollars was damaged during the protest, it's a federal case. In other words, they have no other reason to butt in other than to fuck with this kid. To me that's disturbing.

Moreover, even if you feel that this is an acceptable practice for national security matters (Judy Miller, Matt Cooper), the government is doing the same thing in cases that have no national security purview whatsoever. You might have heard about the two SF reporters who were jailed for refusing to identify their sources in the steroids/BALCO case? Same deal. To me that's really disturbing.

If anyone is interested, there's a 4-part series on PBS frontline which discusses all these issues, including this specific case.

Looks like YouTube has responded, and is taking everything down. Not a big surprise

Lowering the bar for the rest of you who had no idea:

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/sfgate/detail? blogid=5&entry_id=12853

In other Bay Area biofuels news, Berkeley (along with U of I) just got a $500 million grant to set up a major center for biofuels and clean-energy research. So I suspect there will be a lot more startups and collaborative realtionships in this space very soon....

not dolphins - killer whales http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/ 01/30/BAGGTNR5FK1.DTL

(01-29) 15:23 PST SAN FRANCISCO -- The U.S. Coast Guard is looking for a San Francisco computer scientist who may be lost at sea after he failed to return from an outing to the Farallon Islands Sunday afternoon.

Jim Gray, 63, set out alone on his 40-foot sailboat, "Tenacious," Sunday morning and was expected back sometime that afternoon, officials said.

Gray is a prize-winning researcher and the manager of the Microsoft Science Group in downtown San Francisco.

His wife notified authorities at 8:35 p.m. Sunday after Gray failed to return and did not answer cell phone calls, the Coast Guard said.

The Coast Guard searched all night with an aircraft, helicopter, coastal patrol boat and motor life boat, officials said, but found no sign of the missing vessel. They also found no signs of distress.

Officials said that Gray has more than 10 years of sailing experience and that his boat is "well-equipped with communication, safety and emergency gear."

The Farallon Islands are about 27 miles off the coast from the Golden Gate Bridge.

It's described here.

but in the specific context of flight software, it's true
Actually, it's also true for hardware, I heard NASA was starting to have trouble finding the obsolete parts they need for maintenance.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/ch ronicle/archive/2002/05/12/MN141658.DTL&type=tech

Google hyponatremia.

http://geo-outdoors.info/hyponatremia.htm

There have also been past incidents where frats, having been banned from using alcohol in initiations (to prevent alcohol poisoning), switched to water, because "water is safe!"

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,146359,00.html (short version)
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/ a/2005/02/04/BAGNSB576121.DTL (longer article)

http://www.mashinc.org/resources-essay-water.html (another frat initiation using water that resulted in death)

There's a reason they tell you to eat and drink and the trail... and not just drink. If you want to get into the nitty-gritty of the mechanisms of water posioning, consider this:

1. Your nervous system uses electrical impulses
2. These electrical impulses rely on ions from such elements as Sodium (Na), Potassium (K), and Calcium
3. These electrical impulses regulate everything from brain function to the beating of your heart
4. Imbalance of ions due to excessive water consumption without some sort of accompanying salt (for example, a snack bar, or a bag of chips) disrupts your nervous system
5. Various organs shut down, or go unregulated
6. You die

See: http://www.people.eku.edu/ritchisong/301notes2.htm

Today I read two articles about 3D printing, TFA and one about printing micro miniature machine parts.

While the technologies are different, they both convert a digital representation of a 3D object into a physical object by spraying construction material out of a nozzle. From tiny ear bones to four bedroom ramblers.

What an age we live in!

One thing I like about this debate is the cool quotes :):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feynman

Feynman, "I don't like that they're not calculating anything. I don't like that they don't check their ideas. I don't like that for anything that disagrees with an experiment, they cook up an explanation - a fix-up to say, 'Well, it still might be true.'"

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2005/ 03/14/MNGRMBOURE1.DTL

Another Nobel Prize winner, Robert Laughlin considers string theory to be physic's version of postmodernism:

"I think string theory is textbook 'post-modernism' (and) fueled by irresponsible expenditures of money."
"People have been changing string theory in wild ways because it has never worked."

And don't ever mention string theory to Nobel Prize winner Phil Anderson,

"we from outside the (string) field are disturbed by our colleagues' insistence that every new semi-adolescent who has done something in string theory is the greatest genius since Einstein and therefore must occupy yet another tenure track. ... Our sciences are becoming increasingly infected with quasi-theology, a tendency which needs to be openly debated."

The article has some quotes in defence of string theory too but they're not as interesting. The usual blah, blah, blah, give us more time and eventually you'll see that we're right thing.

...besides it being completely voluntary and them telling her that she should quit if she feels at risk healthwise.


By the time she felt sick, she was liely past the threshold of easy assistance.

Administering an emetic would not have helped when she felt the onset of a headache - there was already significant edema in her brain and cardiac muscles.

The radio station is in big trouble here. They should have known better, especially when a kid from the commuter college up the road died from water toxicity almost exactly two years ago.

... this event (apparently not quite an isolated incident either) people would know better by now.

Mod parent through the roof, especially since we're getting citywide WiFi soon in SF ... I am guessing Apple's engineers could come up with smoothly integrated voice-over-ip software of their own in the next six months, to integrate with various networks, perhaps via iChat. And I doubt the company would think twice about selling the phone "naked" without service, now that all the public kissy face Cingular is done.