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I'm sure they'll apply the provisions of the Patriot Act as responsibly as they've been enforcing the no-fly list.

Guess how many times the provision allowing access to Library records was used. Never.

Says who? The FBI? You're trusting them to tell the truth? We know they've used online records of book purchases, so why not library records too? And remember, using these powers is secret, so its not like they would tell you if they did.

It's by Mark Fiore and available at the San Francisco Chronicle here

If I pay one of my specialists extra because I think he outperforms the rest, I have to pay all specialists extra. Equal rights stuff. This effectively means that you basically can't reward people individually. You are always rewarding a group of people. Effectively this leads to job-titles you only find in Dilbert, because this gives you the possibility to reward individuals who care, work overtime when needed or just perform in an extraordinary way (like not laughing at a customer when he says that his core business runs on windows and such...).

If not for the other things, this wouldnt be half bad if it were executed properly and if you didnt have the runaround you described(Retitling) - then I'd not mind seeing this in the States. This would make people think twice about hiring someone.

And the best of them .... as an employer I have to pay the salary of my workers if they get ill. And that is no problem. But I also have to keep on paying them, even if they can't work because of own decisions. And that can last two complete years. So, if one of those guys crashes his car with 200 km/h during holidays, I end up paying for his treatment, including two years of salary.... think about Skiing, Bungeejumping, etc... awww.

Well, this one you deserve, since this one gives the right benefits to the right side(keeps you from going evil). Especially with all those Enron/WorldCom scandals, those executive parachutes would be shot down by the workers who got shafted before the creditors get a bite.

It just makes you (and us) outsource everything to places where the law is a bit more normal.

I guess youlike slave labor and/or like working for them. No thanks, I'll choose saner companies (yes, that I stands for International, but they dont pride themselves in it)service over some company who gloats about sends off work to these bozos. And if no job is god given, it's going to take a real axe to the board room to stop the insanity you suggest. Yes, a real axe, and yes, Virginia, heads will roll, with careers following suit.

Recently on a radio interview I heard the investigative reporter Greg Palast make this exact point, with the addition that the fiasco will be by design. Palast also said that, as bad as the electronic voting machines are, this year the real problems will be happening outside the polling place, with policies and programs such as the "Help America Vote" act, which are designed to disenfranchise voters the same way they were disenfranchised in Florida in 2000.

Palast points out that there is a decidedly racist agenda to these voting shenanigans, which he believes are bipartisan, and I believe he is also in favor of using simple paper ballots a la Canada, or using on-site optical readers the way they were used in the non-hanging chad parts of Florida in 2000

The point then is that the chaos likely to occur in November will cover up / give room to maneuver to those who wish the election to go a certain way.

Anyway, I've been looking all over the web to find that program to link to it, but maybe I actually heard it on a real radio this time, because it's nowhere to be found.

I did find a link to a Palast article from the San Francisco Chronicle that touches on this problem of voting disenfranchisement. It's subtitled "It's not too hard to get your vote lost -- if some politicians want it to be lost" Here's another link to an article in The Nation Magazine entitled Vanishing Votes

For those interested in more of Palast's writings, they can be found at www.gregpalast.com

Oh! I remember now. It was a video on CSPAN on the Washington Weekly program. It's an hour-long interview and call-in show with Palast located here

A quick google brought this to my attention. I do believe that the boarding of another vessel without the consent of the captain/crew is considered an act of piracy.

Saddam Hussein tells the
truth
while
the "President" George W. Bush
lies

Be Patriotic: Impeach George W. Bush

Thanks and have a fun-filled weekend.

As always,
Kilgore Trout

Any relationship with Mickey was coincidence

Not at all. Disney heavily lobbied for this extension to get it passed shortly before a bunch of Disney's IP passed into the public domain. These facts are well documented, for example here, and here, and a lot more places like those. Just because the laws in Europe had protection terms of that length doesn't mean that those terms make sense. And just because someone at the USPTO says that the extension "ensures that American creators will enjoy the same term of protection in Europe as is provided to their European counterparts." doesn't mean that that's the real reason the extension was passed.

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.

According to Bear Stearns, there would be a 60% drop in profits if the new rule were imposed. Think about it. Earnings in high tech companies are so dependent on stock options that these companies will "experience" a huge drop in profitability. Conversely, how can you support an accounting trick that buffs the profit of the industry by 150% (the reciprocal of a 60% drop)?

Bottom line. Profits are grossly overstated industry-wide. Why shouldn't we have accounting that reflects that reality? Why should we let this fiction continue? Are we going to forget the lessons of the dotcom bubble? Accounting tricks do work. And investors and employees can and are scammed by them. Finally, why do we need to fight so hard to get valid information about a company? It's just wasting our time which collectively is more valuable than that of a few company accountants.

See here for more discussion of this particular story. That's where I got the link BTW.

Excerpting from this recent article about the issue:

The most potent criticism of the board's draft proposal to expense options when they are granted, came from an unlikely source: Mark Rubinstein, a finance professor at UC Berkeley's Haas School of Business, who helped develop the method.

"I was one of the inventors of the (board-proposed) model, and I say: Don't use it. It doesn't work," Rubinstein said. Companies should have to expense only the amount that an employee profits after he exercises the option to buy the stock, Rubinstein said.

That came as a surprise to the FASB board members.

In the SF Chronicle

06-23) 16:22 PDT SACRAMENTO (AP) --

California has reached a settlement of its first-in-the-nation lawsuit under the federal "do not call" law, Attorney General Bill Lockyer said Wednesday.

The state sued American Home Craft Inc. and two of its corporate officers in November, alleging the company made illegal telemarketing phone calls to more than 120 Californians who had their names on the national registry. The complaint also alleged the home improvement company violated federal law by continuing to call customers after they asked to be placed on the companys internal "do not call" list.

Lockyer, in a statement, said the Hayward-based company "blatantly disregarded one of the most significant consumer protection laws ever enacted." He said the state's investigation showed the company never purchased the federal registry when it became available in October.

But Sanjay Khurana, the company's chief operating officer, said the problem "was an honest mistake ... due to a technology glitch."

"We're on the same side as the attorney general and the people of California" in wanting to protect privacy rights, Khurana said. He said the company is now watching its list "like a hawk" to prevent a repeat.

The settlement approved by U.S. District Court Judge Jeffrey S. White in San Francisco requires the company to comply with federal and state "do not call" laws, to investigate and report complaints, and to train its employees.

The company and its president, Bradley Alan Smith, also will pay $45,000 in civil penalties, $30,000 to cover the state's cost of investigating and prosecuting the case, and $25,000 in restitution to the California residents who formally complained to the attorney general, the Federal Trade Commission or the Federal Communications Commission.

Those residents will be paid up to $200 each.

In addition to its Hayward headquarters, the company has offices in Sacramento, San Diego and Irvine selling vinyl siding, texture coating, patio doors and cabinet refacing services.

California's "do not call" law took effect Jan. 1, but Lockyer sued American Home Craft under the earlier federal law.

Lockyer has a second pending lawsuit against Florida-based L.M.A. Marketing Inc., doing business as Mortgage Concepts, after fielding more than 250 complaints from state residents.

Residents who want to register their phones under both the state and federal lists can use the National Do Not Call registry Web site or call 1-888-382-1222. Complaints can be filed through the same Web site or telephone number.

magine their chagrin when a fellow passenger coming down the aisle suddenly boomed out, "Oh, I see we have air marshals on board!"

According to an article published in the San Francisco Chronicle, the first trials will be in Wisconsin and Michigan.

Jean-Marie Messier, the former chief of Vivendi Universal, the French telecommunication and media conglomerate, was questioned by authorities on Monday and then held in custody overnight by the French financial police as part of an investigation into stock price manipulation.
Messier, who appeared for questioning early Monday morning, can be held for up to 48 hours before prosecutors decide whether to place him under formal investigation, the last step before being charged. Messier had requested that he be placed under investigation in March to be granted access to the evidence against him and others in the case, his lawyer said.

They were right. The reason they can't find a lot of it is because it's been sold as scrap metal, hidden, or moved out of the country in other ways.

Others already have posted the obvious answer that newspapers make most of their money on advertising, not circulation. I'll add some precision. (I am a strategist for a newspaper company.)

Three revenue drivers traditionally have been coequal for printed newspapers: Classified advertising, display advertising (the big ads on news pages), and circulation.

However, circulation revenues are rapidly declining due to market pressures, and circulation costs (a problem of print distribution, but not of Internet distribution) consume more than circulation sales brings in.

Display advertising has declined about 15 percentage points over the last couple of decades, largely due to retail sector consolidations and Wal-Mart (which does not advertise very much in newspapers). So newspapers are increasingly dependent on classified advertising ... which happens to work extraordinarily well on the Internet.

The audience is moving from print to the Internet, so it is imperative that newspapers find ways to serve that audience online (and deliver advertising to it).

On the Internet, the only business model that has been demonstrated to work for newspapers is the open, ad-supported model. The typical paid site gets something like 1.5 percent of the audience of the printed newspaper, while an open site may actually exceed the audience of the print product. So successful newspapers have open Web sites and rely on advertising for support.

Successful newspapers have implemented classified advertising pricing strategies that harvest that Internet-generated value. The single most effective advertising program implemented by newspapers is the "Top Jobs" program originated at sfgate,, which lets key classified advertisers pay extra for exposure on regular site content pages.

Regardless of what slashdot groupthink might dictate, the reality is that local retail banner and tile advertising also works. However, the Internet -- because of its potential global reach -- creates unique problems for local advertisers.

Consider the Washington Post. Its advertising base is local. Its Web reach is global. If you think about that for maybe five seconds, you can see why they have implemented registration. They have to develop two completely independent ad sales strategies -- one based on a global audience (which is why they ask business questions of nonlocal registrants) and another based on a local audience. And they need to be able to target local advertising based on geographic information from registration and also national advertising based on the B2B questions from registration.

It is an article of faith on slashdot that "everybody" lies on registrations. My own data shows under one percent falsification. Perhaps most people are not as dishonest as slashdotters. :-)

As for the whine about "inevitable spam" ... please demonstrate where a newspaper has abused the email addresses provided by its users. No newspaper shares those addresses with advertisers. Every news company carefully controls the use of those email addresses -- even the Tribune Company, which requires that you consent to receive ad mail as a condition of site access, severely limits both the number and the nature of the emails. It would be bad business to do otherwise.

"Keeping the code under the GPL keeps a large segment of the public who paid for it (corporations looking to sell proprietary software) from using it."

Seeing as how submissions of old stories are getting front page attention now on Slashdot...

As reported by The San Fransico Chronicle: BRAVES WIN THE WORLD SERIES! Congrats to the Atlanta nine as they walked off the field triumphant.

-JT

The findings seem similar to this slashdot article referencing this article about the findings of Garfinkel and Shelat.

he's black, isn't that enough evidence for the goverment thesedays ?
still, iam sure he can look forward to some more interrogations into the matter

"Tin-foiled hat". Bah. Try being this guy.

If you avoid getting screwed by the RIAA by not buying their stuff ASCAP will do their best to screw you and your local venues. Sickening.

I personally think the solar powered plane & the Hydrogen powered car are much more interesting than a TV on a t-shirt (direct link to pic here btw). Although alot of the stuff seems to have been on slashdot before.

Here you are. The picture with reference to "active camouflage" is also very intriguing.

Right, my point being that the 770HP number the flying car is an exaggeration because the horsepower we think of, 'peak real usable' horsepower, happens in the 2500RPM (pickup trucks) to 12,000RPM (race motorcycles) range. Not to mention the thing has 8 engines.

Then again the thing does have enough power to accelerate in a verticle climb (or else it wouldn't be able to VTOL) so I guess it isn't wimpy by any means. I looked at the pictures and it looks to have all the aerodynamic characteristics of a brick. A very pretty, glossy, metallic red colored brick, but a flying brick nonetheless. My first impressions were that it was originally designed by the same guys drawing them in the 50's and 60's - had all the same looks and lines from a design standpoint (was funny to see that I was right.)

If this guy thinks he can make these for $500k apiece, he needs to look at the Inventor sponsored Aviator here and here This thing is a one-off first run that costs a little more than a million dollars (parts, labor, design engineers) but I think would be a LOT cheaper in mass production and have a much wider appeal. A flying car sounds cool, but the penalty for losing control of a personal submarine is rarely more than your own demise (so the government restrictions would be much less stringent, and he could be quicker to market.) Given what boats cost today I think he could competitively mass market these or ones a little larger into that market. Given the $200M he has wrapped up into his flying cars, he could have built these things instead and created an underwater city where people could use them to good effect.

There is also the case of Abu Zubayr, an officer in Saddam's secret police who was also the ringleader of an al Qaeda cell in Morocco. He attended the September 5, 2001 meeting in Spain with other al Qaeda operatives, including Ramzi Bin-al-Shibh, the 9/11 financial chief. Abu Zubayr was apprehended in May, 2002, while putting together a plot to mount suicide attacks on U.S. ships passing through the straits of Gibraltar. He has allegedly since stated that Iraq trained and supplied chemical weapons to al Qaeda. In the fall of 2001 al Qaeda refugees from Afghanistan took refuge in northern Iraq until they were driven out by Coalition forces, and Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi, an al Qaeda terrorist active in Europe and North Africa, fled from Baghdad during Operation Iraqi Freedom. He has reportedly been sent back to Iraq to coordinate al Qaeda activities there.

Take note of Al-Zarqawi. You can read some of what he has to say about the war in Iraq in my next response.

Iraq also sheltered Abu Nidal, one of the most notorious terrorists of the 70s and 80s who appears to have links to 9/11. Oddly enough, Nidal committed "suicide" by shooting himself multiple times, in the head IIRC, not long before the war.

and now we're handing it over to Al Qaeda.

Al Qaeda doesn't feel that way. Here is what their leader in Iraq, Al-Zarqawi, has to saw about their fighters and efforts there only a few months ago:

1. Most of them have little expertise or experience, especially in organized collective work. Doubtlessly, they are the result of a repressive regime that militarized the country, spread dismay, propagated fear and dread, and destroyed confidence among the people. For this reason, most of the groups are working in isolation, with no political horizon, farsightedness, or preparation to inherit the land. Yes, the idea has begun to ripen, and a light whisper has arisen to become noisy talk about the need to band together and unite under one banner. But matters are still in their initial stages. With God?s praise, we are trying to ripen them quickly.

2. Jihad here unfortunately [takes the form

It's bad, but it's not quite as bad as all of that. For example, a sex offender recently moved in down the street from me. He has a job, a house, and most of the neighbors make an effort to be friendly to him. I know I do.

I've been following this story in the news for a while:

Patrick Gholotti

The guy has served his time and he's to be released. The neighbors don't look friendly to me. Granted the guy did some awful things, but still.

Can't argue with that. A criminal conviction, though, requires proof "beyond reasonable doubt". If a jury really convicted him then I doubt that the conviction rested on nothing more than browser logs. If it did go down that way, that guy had better get a better lawyer and appeal. Getting the conviction overturned will get him off the registry.

RTFA. He wasn't convicted by a jury, he pleabargained. He says it was out of fear because they told him if it went to trial he'd go to jail for a long time. Instead he ended up spending 20 days in jail, but is now labeled as a sex offender and has a felony on his record. Pretty crappy if this is indeed a result of some spyware and perhaps some naivety on his part.

<a href="http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/new s/archive/2004/05/08/international1226EDT0513.DTL" >English link</a>

Looks like MS is gonna shell out $250K for this one, actually...

It's actually pretty simple, and has the added bonus of giving people a hot-link.

It's actually pretty simple, and has the added bonus of giving people a hot-link.

That's cuz Slash breaks it up to avoid the page widening trolls.

Here's the link...

Anyway, I'd read this article last sunday (near the bottom a couple pages) and was gonna go see it.

Perhaps the theaters will be slashdotted - 30,000 people show up for the first show, lose interest and never come back or discuss it again.

To: All Patriotics
RE: Get Your War On

Where's My (Bleeping) Sex?
Who wants a DVD player that automatically deletes all the juicy bits of movies? One guess

By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist
Friday, April 23, 2004

Because what the world really needs now is more uptight little companies from Utah that will help us all block out the random messy naked blood n' guts of the world.

Companies that will, without anyone asking them to, protect us from media evildoers and exposed flesh and scary exploding things and that part in "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" wherein the universe is blessed, for the briefest of moments, with the joy of Kate Winslet's radiant nipples.

This is what is happening. This is the happy godlike agenda of Utah's ClearPlay, a twee and shrill little corporation that has taken it upon itself to sit around the cube farm all day and watch countless Hollywood flicks and zap out any and all icky violent suggestive material in, say, "Lost In Translation." For your protection. How kind.

ClearPlay has, thank the Lord Almighty, developed a method that automatically bleeps out and/or completely skips over words, scenes and entire sections of Hollywood films it has deemed offensive or inappropriate, and displays the rest in sanitized, defanged, nipple-free form, so you won't ever find yourself having to explain to your precious wide-eyed heavily Ritalined 8-year-old just exactly what part of Penelope Cruz Tom Cruise is sucking in that one part of "Vanilla Sky." I mean, praise Jesus.

ClearPlay is a content-filtering company. It relieves all twitchy God-fearing Americans of the horrible and brain-draining duty of actually taking a modicum of responsibility for what they see and hear and for what they allow their children to see and hear, and replaces it all with a type of hapless willful ignorance, mislabeled as "choice."

All you have to do is buy ClearPlay's cheapass scene-deleting DVD player from Wal-Mart (of course), set the level of filtering you want from 1 to 16 (1 being, presumably, "Sex is icky" and 16 being, I suppose, "Lobotomize me now"), pop in a ClearPlay-approved DVD from your local video store and, voilà! -- your movie experience is pure and holy and now shows only happy bunnies and nummy butterflies and people kissing sweetly without tongue or moan or bulge. And, lo, the world is a better place.

What a fabulous idea. Dammit, if only more companies would get into the act of protecting us from the crap put out by other, more heartless companies.

And then if only someone would launch a company to protect us from the crap put out by the company that is ostensibly protecting us from crap put out by the first company. Why, you'd never have to think for yourself ever again. What a wonderful world.

I volunteer. I am hereby starting a new company called SpankThis that will not only de-ClearPlay all Mormon-sanitized DVDs but will also, in fact, actively enhance the scary icky sexy parts and will actually saturate them in hi-res surround-sound 3-D Technicolor and display them on infinite loop on a 40-foot mobile screen, which I will then drive very slowly through the parking lots of all Wal-Marts of America whilst blaring old Black Sabbath and new Rufus Wainwright. IPO forthcoming.

But why stop there? Hell, if only the U.S. government and maybe the puppets of the FCC and the sneering lizard men of the U.S. Senate would step up and crack down on corrupt American broadcasters.

If only they would enforce their snippy interpretation of God's will and ensure everyone on the goddamn planet knows that the F-word is officially the absolute scariest and worst possible utterance you can possibly scream out, next to maybe the C-word or the V-word or "masturbate," why, we'd be so much better off. Damn, if only that would happen! Oh wait.

Let us not get into overly defensive mode

In addition to the ban, panel members recommended that a secretary of state's office report released Wednesday, detailing alleged failings of Diebold in California, be forwarded to the state attorney general's office to consider civil and criminal charges against the company.

An advisory panel voted unanimously to ban Diebold machines in four counties today.

"In a larger sense, Sun's actions remind us of Compaq/Digital in their later days," analyst Andrew Neff of Bear Stearns said in a research note. "If history is a guide, Sun could follow the path of those companies with further disappointments leading to an eventual acquisition."

If you think I'm being paranoid, consider that the 20th century's worst dictator's unleashed their fury against "cosmopolitan" elements in their societies. Both Stalin and Hitler considered "foreign" elements a threat to their rule and crushed them without mercy. Part of keeping your own population docile in ensuring they never have the opportunity to see how citizens of other countries live.

Jonah and Beth Mitchell, San Francisco lawyers, recently submitted an offer of a little under $1 million for a home listed for $899,000 in San Francisco's Noe Valley neighborhood. The property, which Jonah Mitchell described as a "cookie-cutter" house built in 1951, eventually sold for roughly $1.2 million. Earlier this year, Mitchell lost out on another property that attracted 31 offers.

How soon we forget.

no company would ever have enough of the game to be able to pirate it (at least not without it being obvious who did the pirating)

But even if you knew who pirated your code, how would you be able to stop them if they are in a country which has a legal system that looks the other way towards crimes like these? They'd have your code, you'd know they would have your code, and there'd be nothing you could do about it. Even if it was not enough code to finish a working product, that is still a significant investment on your part that has gone down the drain.

Personally, I am hoping more incidents like these occur and that enough people take action against these companies to reduce this practice.

It's also worth noting that I've been to a couple G movies and I've never seen an R movie advertised.

According to this article , it was enough of a problem that the MPAA decided to self-impose some rules on the subject a few years back (presumably before the government did it for them). It also seems they have recently forgotten about those rules.

I'm not saying you can't watch your pole-dancing skanks, though perhaps you could do it: a. not during something rated "Y-7" -- like a sporting event, or b. in the evening when most kids are in bed. I'm not looking for a candy coated world, maybe just one where you can watch something rated "Y-7" (as the superbowl, and most sports are) that doesn't have slutty dancing chicks in it, or in the ads. Nobody needs their daughter to see that. It's interesting that you assume I wouldn't want my son to see such women, but I was more concerned with my daughter. Kids copy what they see, and these images are not real people, they are exaggerated sex kittens. Once again, I'm talking about certain programs, so I wouldn't expect, say, Soul Train, to suddenly do away with booty dancing.

Your comparisons bring up a couple points: I wouldn't have to explain to my kids what breasts are. There's nothing wrong with them per se, in art, even a soap ad on a Paris bus stop wouldn't even get a second look from them. That's my point, outlawing that will do nothing for the eyecandy and sexual innuendo so generously sprinkled on everything else. You can never really develop enforceable rules for it, I guess the best you can hope for is to bitch at the advertisers and say, "I'm offended that you would run a commercial that implied that Tiger woods had a three way in the back of his Buick. My kids were watching that golf tournament, you bastards!"

As far as porn on public TV, sure it happens in Japan and Europe, but not in the middle of the day.

So many people in this discussion have taken the stance that you should just turn off the TV or you're a bad parent. That's just bullshit. TV can be valuable and provide positive views of the world, and I shouldn't have to weld it permanently on sesame street to make sure the kids don't get an eyeful of the pseudo-lesbo-incestuous Coors Twins in the middle of the day. Sorry to deprive you.

Everyone's been posting Jim Louderback's premonition of TiVo's death like it's the Gospel, and so I feel compelled to tell you exactly why Jim (a reporter who's been naysaying the TiVo for years) is wrong, and that punchy three-word headlines don't equate to a balanced market analysis.

The simple reason TiVo will live is because TV is intimate. People want ownership of their experience, and they want ownership of the resulting media. This is exactly the opposite of what cable and satellite companies want.

Of course TiVo as a standalone appliance will fade away as Decoder-PVRs become common, but they'll grow into three other markets: The referenced cable/satellite set-top boxes, DVD-R burning hybrids, and as an integrated component of television sets. Two of these hybrids are already on the market (DirecTiVo and two different DVDiVos) and the third, Toshiba and Phillips TVs with integrated free 'tivo lite' will be here by Christmas.

Saying that Cable-PVRs will squash TiVo is like saying that cable squashed the VCR, when in reality it made it much stronger. For all the benefits that a cable PVR has (that it seems cheaper because the cost is built into your monthly charge), there's no content provider in the world who would ship a device that would record to DVD, and no network that would deign to be included in a service that did.

Recording to a DVD isn't as easy as recording to a tape, and this is where an integrated 'export this show to that disc' solution really shines. If you're going to buy a DVD anyhow, the incremental cost of adding PVR functionality is a gimmie. And yes, within the next 4 years it will be an incremental cost.

TiVo is source independent. Cable, satellite, bunny ears or closed-circuit TV, TiVo is your box. As each content provider has their own proprietary system, if you change providers, you have to change systems, a shift as big as switching from Mac to Windows. Oh yeah, and your shows are gone, too. It's content lock-in, and it's one of the big reasons Dish Networks wants you to use their box, so leaving their fold is more painful, even when they suddenly drop CBS, MTV, Comedy Central and Nickelodeon because of a contract dispute.

As long as content providers carry copyrighted material on their networds, they'll be hobbled by the demands of organizations like the MPAA and Viacom who will use all the leverage they have to inhibit the end user's ability to export to any portable digital media. Standalone PVRs and in-TV PVRs are farther outside their control, and as that control is flexed, PVR customers will flock to these options.

TiVo-in-TV, which Sony plans to market later this year, is another gimmie. It will provide a free 3-day window to the future, with an inexpensive up-sell to season pass functionality. The TV-TiVo-DVR box is probably about 24 months away.

Jim's main point is that TiVo will fail because the costs of enteing the market and delivering product are dropping rapidly, but this is likely why they'll succeed. TiVo will never be a Yahoo or other conglomorate, but they will become a platform standard with a steady revenue stream. When prices fall uniformly, users flock to the best solution, not the cheapest. Getting PVRs into peoples hands cheaply, on the backs of other products is exactly why the market will succeed, and when the market succeeds, TiVo will likely be at the top of it, based on product quality.

True, you won't have to buy a $299 box for your parents to bring them the light, but when you see the glow in their eyes, talking about the magic recording TV they bought at Best Buy last month, you can bet it'll have a little guy with two antennae and no arms stickered onto the remote.

Xtreme

Team DAD's vehicle was held in DARPA-controlled pause for two hours, a mile behind CMU's failed vehicle. After the long pause, it was disabled. What's the story there?

it's over. how utterly disappointing.

From the wires of the Associated Press:

• "Initial reports from the field were that the entry went off course and hit a large rock, breaking its axle and stranding the vehicle."

I am uncertain why you suggest the parent read a newspaper or turn on the television news, considering your implication that it would prove you correct. Instead, it proves that your theory is a conspiracy denied countless times. The NY Times, Washington Post and other newspapers you're referring to have all consistently reported that this theory has been denied. Most cable news channels have had limited coverage altogether, reporting on the status of the Marines stationed in Haiti and noting only briefly Aristide's quaint claim that he was kidnapped, followed by a quotation of the Pentagon's denial and subsequent dismissal. I watch daily CNN, FNC and MSNBC, meaning those are the channels I refer to. Located here is an editorial which covers the majority of the material. For the record, both the Seattle Times and San Francisco Chronicle are respected in the industry, but the NY Times is included here as well.

Here (eatme123/eatme123)
Here
Here
Here

There are occasions in which skepticism is warranted, in which the government is lying to you in order to further its agenda. There may even be times in which the White House spokesman can casually lie to you without showing an iota of remorse, although that would be remarkable. This is not one of those times, as is obvious to those of us who are paying attention. Pull your head out of your ass.

how cool it would be if everyone had a Wireless Access Point on their rooftop, and formed a p2p wireless mini-internet with no bandwidth restrictions and free for all (minus the cost of the hardware).