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If nationality is irrelevant here, then why did the United States government just ban corporations from Germany, France, and Russia from bidding on major reconstruction contracts in Iraq? These are private corporations, not sent by their governments, yet are being punished for just for being from countries that opposed the war. These two incidents, among many others, provide a very telling example of how the U.S. government often choses to ignore its own open market philosophy to gain influence. Don't believe me, then check out the articles here, here, and here. Whether you view this decision as right or wrong is your own opinion, however your statement that nationality shouldn't play a part in government's official opinion on something seems very misguided.

I think it's just been done.
Although the Tuesday SF Chronicle article (referred to in this slashdot article) claims that Jimo will be up to 300 feet long, Both the astrobio.net article, (also referred to here) and a Monday SF Chronicle article (pointed to by today's SFC article) refer to Jimo being 60-100 feet long.

I'm thinking that somebody saw 100 feet, and thought metres. Hopefully they're not the engineers for the current mission.

I think it's just been done.
Although the Tuesday SF Chronicle article (referred to in this slashdot article) claims that Jimo will be up to 300 feet long, Both the astrobio.net article, (also referred to here) and a Monday SF Chronicle article (pointed to by today's SFC article) refer to Jimo being 60-100 feet long.

I'm thinking that somebody saw 100 feet, and thought metres. Hopefully they're not the engineers for the current mission.

this new research grant seems to follow pretty closely on the heels of new activity occuring at yellowstone national park, described here, here, and here (where you can also buy your own survey equipment.)

apparently, yellowstone park is right on top of a vent or something that has exploded catastrophically and according to some is overdue to do the same soon.

i'm willing to bet that the funding discussed in the article i linked to above:

Grants totaling $319 million from the National Science Foundation have been awarded to cover the first five years of the major new project, called EarthScope. Work has already begun on its array of instruments and facilities, which will provide the tools for decades of future detailed studies.

... has eveything to do with attempting to determine just how soon and how badly North America is going to be covered with ash and oochi-hot burning lava. Cool, or what?

another ramp up in seismic survey was reported in this article in the san francisco chronicle.

Scientists might not be united that humans are the cause of global warming, but the U.S. government head atmospheric scientists are.

The reason for the recesion is clear. Clinton/Gore kept pumping and pumping the bubble. Where were they when Enron / Worldcom / Wall Street were up to their shenanigans? That's right hitting, up the ChiComs for campaign donations and hitting up interns for BJ's.

Clear to only the hard-line Clinton haters. Do you really think any significant regulation of Wall Street would have made it out of the Republican majority Congress? You can blame Clinton all you want, but hardly anybody outside of Alan "irrational exuberance" Greenspan and Warren Buffett was saying much during the bubble. It was most assuredly a bipartisan bubble.

And James K. Glassman, the author of Dow 36,000, one of the most notorious of the pro-bubble books, is now a "well-respected" fellow at the conservative American Enterprise Institute and making big bucks on the corporate lecture circuit. Your claim about Clinton/Gore causing the bubble is disingenuous at best.

And it seems you right-wingers are just obsessed over this BJ thing. As the advocacy group group said, censure and Move On.

Bush's approval rating is at 61%

As was mentioned in the same article that you quoted, it was a 5 point rise (61-5=56) from the previous poll taken four days before Thanksgiving, and it was probably caused by the pictures from his Thanksgiving trip to Baghdad.

And as an added bonus, he's now got new pictures to use on the campaign to replace those discredited "mission accomplished" flight suit photos.

We know what (the Democratic Agenda) is. 1. Raise taxes. 2. Surreder to Hussein.

Ann Coulter? Is that you?

Hopelessly pedantic since 1963.

I'm not so concerned with the global warming/cooling. I think that all sane people will agree that it is now cooler than when the dinosaurs roamed the earth, warmer than the mini-ice age.

What I am concerned about, however, are things like mercury in fish, which acts as a neurotoxin in humans that eat it.

Does that include the number of discourged workers who aren't even counted in the "benefit rolls", because their benefits have run out? No.

That's why BLS measures unemployment not just by the household survey, which is what you are referring to, but also by tyhe payroll survey. Learn all about it here Employment Situation Summary

Note both of these may actually overestimate unemployment because they don't account for workers payed underthe table in cash.

The reason for the recesion is clear. Clinton/Gore kept pumping and pumping the bubble. Where were they when Enron / Worldcom / Wall Street were up to their shenanigans? That's right hitting, up the ChiComs for campaign donations and hitting up interns for BJ's.

We will never forget Gore claiming that Bush was "talking down the economy" in 2000. Everyone in the world except to D's realized the mess they had gotten us in.

and FYI

Bush's approval rating is at 61%

And some Democrats (Dean, Kucinich) do have an agenda

We know what it is.

1. Raise taxes.
2. Surreder to Hussein.

Good luck with that platform.

Actually, that's not the RIAA's area. That's the ASCAP (I swear I'm not making that up -- it stands for American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers). They sue bars who have cover bands who don't pay for protectio... er, a performance license. If your crazy guy is playing anything remotely copyrighted, he'd better watch out or that wild paranoia may become justified.

Article in today's Chronicle about them (I linked to it elsewhere in this thread, too -- it's my "Jesus, I'm not really surprised, but Jesus..." item).

ASCAP. Ass cap. Huh huh.

Of course, it wasn't really the lawsuits that dissuaded me so much as the utter crap the labels have been putting out. But still, effective tactics are effective tactics. Why, I'll bet they could stop music piracy completely in 2004 if the tunes continue to be as gut-wrenchingly terrible as, say, Britney's last album (or any of those that preceded it, come to think of it. She sure is hot, though).

On a related note, there's an interesting article in the SF Chronicle about how small local bars are getting hit with lawsuits because the bands they hire play covers of copyrighted songs. Wonder how far we are from surgical lobotomies for people who get copyrighted tunes stuck in their heads...

MS is not forcing you to connect to the Internet!

As the article and summary both mention, the release comes a week before the Premiere's visit to the US. An article in Der Spiegel claims, however, that the release was primarily motivated by the visit of German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder.

An AP version of the story mentions Schroeders visit (which the Reuters story linked to by the summary does not), but does not go as far as claiming as Der Spiegel does that "[the release] is a gift for Schroeder" (my translation). That particular quote is attributed to Frank Lu of the Information Center for Democracy and Human Rights, a Hong Kong-based watchdog group that is a primary source for both the AP and Spiegel articles.

Moved to Archive at:

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/ch ronicle/archive/2003/11/27/MNGUO3BN101.DTL

Is it so much to ask that institutions who have our Really Import Data take some basic steps to protect it? This whole thing could have been rendered moot with something as simple and easy as an encrypted filesystem.

But nobody, nobody is talking about it. So they'll continue putting customer data on laptops, HMOs will keel putting patient records on tablet PCs or shipping it overseas for testing or whatever... I wonder what it'll take to change it...

Investigators knew where to look for the gear not because of unusually intrepid sleuthing but because Krastof allegedly used the computer to log on to an AOL account belonging to the system's owner, Peter Gascoyne.

Investigators knew where to look for the gear not because of unusually intrepid sleuthing but because Krastof allegedly used the computer to log on to an AOL account belonging to the system's owner, Peter Gascoyne.

I found this version posted on www.securityfocus.com. It says the thief used the laptop owner's dial-up AOL account, which the FBI had asked AOL to monitor.

Careful now

-Bruce

Link to article.

don't trust me. trust the sf chroncial

fbi scrutinizing anti-war protestors

choice quote:

Particularly chilling, he said, was the use of the phrase "training camps'' to describe instruction on nonviolence given to demonstrators. That phrase is often used to describe terrorist training sites.

i predict with these new powers the fbi will be surveilling all suspiscious "training camp" attendees such as major league baseball players.

Well, after the charges that broke this week, around the time of the game's release, CBS pulled its Jackson special, and a marching band struck 'Thriller' from their repertoire for the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade.

So, while it's stupid to pull a title just for Jackson associations, it might be argued that, if the game had been any higher-profile a title, they might have delayed the release. So, I would claim, not insane. YMMV.

All them faggoty Apple owners are sharing MORE than their iPods.

Sometimes, the best links on an article are the ones that go to yet another story.

SFGate.com also has this interesting article from almost a year ago on the return of Ricochet:
Ricochet is also targeting residents who can't get high-speed access otherwise. Its signals are sent from radios on poles and rooftops, allowing users with laptops and other mobile devices to stay connected while they roam around.

It sounds like Ricochet is going to use the unregulated 900 MHz band to do the same thing that the FCC is going to do with regulated spectrum (that's already in use by the military).

Of course, another kicker is this paragraph:
Aerie Networks Inc. has resurrected Ricochet, spending $8.25 million for technology and equipment that Metricom spent $1.3 billion developing.

Of all the times to have spent $8,250,000 on lottery tickets!

...if this decision is upheld in higher court.

Here's two.

Am I the only one that noticed it looks like a toilet seat?

These things are no joke and I hope this bill gets through.

Were they using touchscreen machines in Bolinas, CA?

hmm is that a game cube i see? here

leading to loads of free time, so much so I even have time to give out to others. Based upon this groundbreaking research, I am at the height of my efficiency. In fact I wrote this comment on November 1st 2003 by my calendar.

There are too many uncertainties nowadays for companies to spend spend spend on R&D and other things which really sucks, so I would hold my breathe waiting for the 'next big thing'.

Latest Comprelated/Financial news

Merrill Lynch analyst Steven Milunovich offered a plan to revive "bloated, underachieving, unfocused" server-computer maker Sun Microsystems -- including a personality makeover for Chief Executive Scott McNealy.

Warning that Sun is headed for a ravine "filled with carcasses" of defunct computer companies, the analyst wrote a research report as an open letter to McNealy and Sun's board. He said they should slash as much as 19 percent of the company's staff members and settle on a single new mission. [Full story

A Wall Street analyst's warning that Sun Microsystems could end up as another corporate carcass has led at least one rival to smell blood.

In an aggressive move, Hewlett-Packard said Friday that it is offering $25,000 in services and other incentives to Sun customers who move their computer systems to HP products.

Full article

No one will spend money (real money) until this government gets their act together. Iraq, Korea, Iran, etc., there is too much to lose in investing, when there is no stability over here.

...according to news reports, 52 out of 261 of the people sued have settled so far.

On the other other hand, this bit of news is brought to us by the RIAA themselves -- a continuation of their FUD PR stuntery.

On the other other other hand, all this still makes the RIAA look bad.

Good night, and screw the RIAA.

Futher, the idea that corporations are evil is more BS.

If it was true monopoly laws would be thrown out, corporate taxes would be nullified, companies would have the right to vote, environmental protections would go away and corporations would be protected from lawsuits by the public.

Futher, the idea that corporations are evil is more BS.

I think the law is a good idea, but if the execution is flawed, it could be short-lived.

Flawed execution is what this is all about. Do you think Grey Davis has any intention of keeping this up? With the CA recall election now slated for Oct 7th, he will do whatever he can to appeal to "the people" . Even if it's with empty legislation.

Please note, the above analysis in no way endorses the RIAA viewpoint that the primary cause of their troubles is from filesharing. In fact, didn't we see that filesharing has decreased and, looking at their album sales, they are still selling fewer units.

AP talks about another Sun thing, code Mad Hatter or "Sun Java Desktop". What's the relationship between StarOffice and this Mad Hatter deal? Why would they work on two parallel projects like this? Presumably MH builds on the translation libraries from OpenOffice? Inquiring minds want to know...

I don't think that is true. From a recent interview with Scott McNealy:

We have $5.7 billion of cash in the bank. We didn't have that five years ago. We have generated positive cash flow from operations for 35 straight quarters.

In fact, headcount-based pricing may be a viable pricing strategy for Free Software too. There is no reason to condemn it. Providing computer software is inherently a service, hence it makes perfect sense to charge for it in a manner that is appropriate for a service.

If nothing is done to stem the bleeding of America's IT, it's probably true that American tech will not disappear entirely, but it will be reduced to that of other countries. While those countries we've chosen over others, to gain hard-earned tech experience in our place, will rise and surpass their teacher. This may very well result in an economical reversal of roles. Corporations will move labor (IT/management/research/scientists) from cheap country to cheaper country (causing economic crises is less stable economies as jobs leave) until corporations find themselves hiring IT in an economically unrecognizable United States; an America probably still significant in IT (otherwise the IT jobs wouldn't come back), but as a country no more the super power than Canada is now. This may take anywhere from a few short years to decades, but companies will manage to get cheap labor that by happenstance also speaks English (assuming that English is still the language of business).

If there was a person of middle-eastern ethnicity who could at the flip of a switch cause America to lose its IT workers, we (knowing all the benefits of even HAVING an IT capability) would've called it an act of terrorism and gone to war. If an American citizen were able to intentionally cause a massive disruption that resulted in the loss of the American IT to a foreign power, we (understanding the economic and security capabilities one gains from having IT capability at home) would declare the citizen a traitor. When an American company does this to America, what do we call it? Sun's Scott McNealy calls it an "international company". If the Chief Executive Officer of Sun no longer considers Sun an American company, it should be treated as such. Otherwise, it is given an unfair advantage over other foreign companies that don't have the luxury of pretending to be an American company and all the benefits of allowing it to operate in America as an American company. The pretense should be dropped in fairness to others if fairness can be attributed to a libertarian, and to allow the status of being an American company reserved for those that really are American. I don't think McNealy (despite his complaints of taxes, employee benefits...etc) would consider the idea either profitable or plausible. I wonder why? I don't mean to single out Sun. I consider McNealy's attitude inimical towards American citizens, but not a dangerous one when acting alone. It is when many companies as a whole start considering themselves as "international", but behave in unfair self-interest that specifically hurts American citizens, that I co

Sun doesn't seem to be interested in letting go of their platform any more than MS does.

I don't hear Microsoft saying they will consider opensourcing .NET when the time is right. At least, Sun is open to the idea.

Also consider checking out websites like www.openoffice.org, and www.sunsource.net. Sun is a non-trivial member of the Open Source community.

In this interview with Scott McNealy, McNealy mentions he is a libertarian. As is ESR. We shouldn't underestimate Sun's attitude towards giving people the tools they need to excersize choice.

This was a major effort by the DoJ involving hundreds of agents and taking place after 9/11. I'm glad we have our priorities straight.

We've got the No. 1 64-bit computing architecture out there.

Perhaps, McNealy is referring to #1 in the sense of #1 performance. Again, the #1 in performance is the triad: Power architecture (with implementations being Power4, Power4+, Power5), the Itanium architecture (with implementations being Itanium 2, 3, etc.), and the x86 architecture (with implementations being the Pentium 4, etc.). A quick review of the performance stats at SPEC should clarify any confusion. The SPARC is among the worst processors in terms of performance.

Below is the second key quote.

Shouldn't India be a little upset that we have most of their software programmers here?

Compared to IBM, Sun is #1 -- in the sense that Sun has more H-1B employees. IBM, as a matter of corporate policy, refuses to hire any H-1B workers unless they are applying for a job that requires a Ph.D. The Power4, which handily beats the UltraSPARC III in performance, was built almost exclusively by American citizens or permanent residents. No H-1Bs.

Perhaps, McNealy was referring to the number of H-1Bs when he was talking about the SPARC being the supposed #1 computing architecture.

... from the desk of the reporter

* Where did all the UN Food for Oil money disppear to?
Food for oil, I don't see much money in that deal. No money can't disappear.

Well, you don't walk into a grocery store with 10 gallons of unleaded and trade it for food. Oil gets sold, money buys food, food goes to Iraq... or at least that's what was supposed to happen. The UN got a nice "administation" cut off the top, but no one seems to know exactly where those billions went. And as much as people like to point the finger at Haliburton and claim they're a bunch of war profiteers its interesting how no one brings up the TotalFinaElf scandals and their involvement in some very, very shading dealings in Iraq.

* How much business did France and Germany do with Iraq in violation of UN resolutions?
None that I know of. Of course I have seen a lot of this crap on public forums or frog-bashing sites. But no report of those on any remotely reliable source, not even on Fox News (only exception is an op'ed column by William Safire in the NYT, which allegations have been denied by the US administration itself). Given the unusually aggressive stance the Bush administration has taken against those countries, I guess that any credible lead on that subject would have been leaked to the press in no time.

See the TotalElfFina articles above. Plus, the Germans and the French were trading *a lot* with the Iraqi gov't in the late 90s. It would be interesting to see just how "liberal" their interpretations of the sanctions exactly were. I think its been underreported.

* How the "sactions are killing millions of Iraqi babies" stories were bogus.
Economic sanctions are a useful tool to destabilize a regime or prevent it from endangering its neighbours but you have to admit that the population ends up paying the highest price to them. It might eventually be worth the price (South African Apartheid regime) or not (Cuba comes to mind). In the case of Irak, I guess that the food for oil program somehow prevented the most severe famines but I don't know of hard facts. Do you have them?

This assumes that if there was no oil for food program there would have been "severe famines" which also seems to be a pretty unsubstaciated claim. What looks like what happened was Saddam hyped up and played the "starving" baby angle for all it was worth. The "food" he got for his oil didn't make it to the Iraqi people. If you average $5billion a year in aid and spend $13million on healthcare, that's a lot of money unaccounted for.

* How much of the Arab and some European press were getting paid by Saddam
Come on! You're not saying that any media that voiced opinions differing from the official White House point of view were sold to Saddam, are you?

Not at all. What I am saying is that there were reporters/editors in the Arab press who were getting money (commissions, bribes, call it what you want) from the Iraqi gov't to file reports that were sympathetic to Saddam. There was speculation that some European editor/reporters were pocketing cash. That, as far as I know, hasn't been proven, but the point of this entire /. article is about stuff that hasn't gotten a lot of attention. There's been no followup as far as I know.

And which countries do you target in "some European press". Given your post's general tone, I guess you include France and Germany. But what about Spain, England or Poland. Even thou

Lawmakers see abuses in Iraqi oil-for-food programs

Only losers
use Microslop products.

Cheers,
W00t

The Barbie Doll Threat

Read this AP story for more details.

Article from SFGate:

Michael Dell, who built an empire selling computers based on other companies' innovations, argued Monday that the future in the technology market belongs to players who embrace industry standards, not proprietary systems.

The 38-year-old chief executive of Dell Inc. also strongly suggested that one of his company's top Silicon Valley rivals, Sun Microsystems, may never get back on its feet because it's stuck in a business model that no longer works.
"I think there are parts of the industry that will never recover, and the reason is that their business is fundamentally based on things that people aren't going to buy very much of anymore," Dell told The Chronicle after his keynote speech at OracleWorld, Oracle's annual user conference in San Francisco.

"They're waiting for (demand for proprietary systems) to come back," he added. "Sorry, it ain't going to happen."

Larry Singer, Sun's senior vice president for global market strategies, disputed Dell's view of the Santa Clara company and the trends in the technology industry.

"When Michael Dell gets up there and says those who don't follow industry standards won't make it, it's a bit disingenuous," he said in a phone interview.

"Innovation still matters. Market standards come from new innovations and new technologies."

Like other major companies such as Hewlett-Packard and IBM, the Texas firm sells computers, servers and other hardware based on widely used technologies developed by such companies as Intel and Microsoft.

On the other hand, Sun, which was once recognized as the top provider of corporate computing, has been a major industry player by offering products based mainly on its proprietary systems.

Asked if he believed that the struggling Sun would never recover, Dell, who typically shies away from comments on competitors, answered: "I sort of said that, but I didn't say that.

"But if you look at their peak revenues and where they are now, it's a pretty big difference, right?" he added. "And if you look at what people are buying now and what they were buying then, it's a big difference."

Singer defended Sun's strategy and performance.

"For Michael Dell, his definition of a market standard is the company that's selling the most today, and that's a pretty easy standard to pick," Singer said. Citing the rapid expansion of Sun's Java technology, particularly in mobile computing, he added, "The definition of what a standard is is beginning to change."

Dell's remarks underscored the debate over the role of innovation and research and development in the tech industry as top players, such as Dell, Sun and HP, maneuver for advantage in the anticipated rise in corporate spending on technology.

Dell Inc. became a tech behemoth by selling directly to consumers and keeping its spending on research and development down.

But rivals like HP and Sun have portrayed the Texas firm as a technological lightweight that grew on the backs of other companies' hard work in research and development.

Dell Inc. has made inroads in the low-end server market, defined as systems under $100,000 each.

But its critics scoff at the company's bid to move up the corporate technology market, arguing that only companies that invest in innovation can afford to compete in the mid-range and higher-end corporate markets.

Sun lost $2.38 billion in its fiscal year that ended in June, compared with a loss of $587 million the previous year. But the company has remained a respected technology innovator, particularly in the high-end market.

"The companies that will survive will be those that innovate technologies," and that means spending on research and development, Singer said.

But Dell has been unfazed by such criticism. In the interview, he reaffirmed his belief that hefty R&D budgets can be overrated and don't necessarily lead to hi

• 2003-08-11 NSA's Statement on Cybersecurity (articles,security) (rejected)
• 2003-08-19 DNA based game playing computer (science,science) (rejected)
• 2003-09-06 Brown Dwarfs fingerprinted (radio,science) (rejected)
• 2003-09-06 Study Indicates Possible Surface Water on Mars (science,science) (rejected)
• 2003-09-07 GSM cellular phone encryption cracked (articles,security) (rejected)

It has been 14 years since two little-known electrochemists announced what sounded like the biggest physics breakthrough since Enrico Fermi produced a nuclear chain reaction on a squash court in Chicago. Using a tabletop setup, Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischmann, of the University of Utah, said they had induced deuterium nuclei to fuse inside metal electrodes, producing measurable quantities of heat. That was the opening bell for one of the craziest periods in science. Cold fusion, if real, promised to solve the world's energy problems forever. Scientists around the world dropped what they were doing to try to replicate the astounding claim. Full story

Astronomers using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope have discovered three of the faintest and smallest objects ever detected beyond Neptune. Each lump of ice and rock is roughly the size of Philadelphia and orbits just beyond Neptune and Pluto, where they may have rested since the formation of the solar system 4.5 billion years ago. The objects reside in a ring-shaped region called the Kuiper Belt, which houses a swarm of icy rocks that are leftover building blocks, or "planetesimals," from the solar system's creation. The results of the search were announced by a group led by Gary Bernstein of the University of Pennsylvania at a meeting of NASA's Division of Planetary Sciences in Monterey, Calif. Full article

From the SFGate story:

Overall, recorded music sales are down 31 percent since mid-2000, when the Napster online file-sharing phenomenon was in full bloom, said RIAA President Cary Sherman.

So, is it possible the full-bloom Napster phenomenon actually delayed a drop in recorded music sales? (Online music file-sharing exposed more people to more music than they were being exposed to by other media such as radio, and this could have been driving demand. More demands meant more sales.)

It's been a long time since I read one of those "I just spent a weekend trying to get on this Information Superhighway thing..." articles. Thank God. My mom made a habit of clipping 'em and sending them to me. Oh, look. Another idiot explaining that the first thing you need is an AOL disk and a modem.

Unfortunately, now we're starting to see the flipside, such as this idiot who thinks the Internet was spawned in 1995 and "frankly, the whole thing is starting to get a bit old anyway." Don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way out.