Slashdot Mirror

The links are just abbreviations, so you have to explore to discover what they mean, but the advantage to this is that I can cite the abbreviation easily each time I link a story found via that source.

The idea of putting them in rows at the top is so that frequent visitors to my blog can jump to other sources if they don't find anything new/interesting at mine. (I call them 'jumpbars'.) Lately I've started adding little asterisks for sources that have recently done especially noteworthy updates.

My local startpage duplicates the jumpbars, and adds less-frequent sources like monthlies. When I started blogging I made a serious effort to learn the update schedules of every online periodical, and I created a generic startpage that summarised these. (It's badly out of date now.) The idea was to encourage people to copy this page and customise it to their interests. But knowing when zines usually update makes it easy to prioritize my surfing-schedule. (I wish all periodicals spelled this info out on their front page, eg The Onion comes out late Tuesday.)

I think NewsHub still isn't appreciated for its headline-aggregation pages. I'd use NewsLinx too except that most all the tech zines have decided to use obnoxiously junky html-design, so I stick with Slashdot and the Register for tech news.

My politics are lefty, and Sam Smith's Progressive Review gives a very deep daily summary with links, while Common Dreams reprints full articles from many major sources. A newcomer is Memory Hole that specializes in stories the mainstream media tries to suppress/ignore.

For space news, NasaWatch is tops. I've mostly given up on Drudge and Salon, and am having doubts about the BBC science page.

Other daily faves include the AstroPic of the Day, two poem-of-the-day sites, Zippy the Pinhead, and various blogs. A weekly that I think is underappreciated is Dean Baker's Economic Reporting Review that gives a very dry weekly critique of economics-propaganda in the NY Times and Washington Post. (They very systematically distort the facts with the obvious goal of redistributing the wealth upwards.)

USA PATRIOT ACT 2 is coming. Kiss your few remaining rights goodbye.

!!!!!!!

I never understood bad credit.

Lucky you.

90% of bankruptcies, for instance, are due to medical bills, job loss, or divorce. See, for instance, this link By and large, people with serious credit problems are not somehow morally weak, they are people who had really shitty runs of luck. (For instance, 68% of people filing for bankruptcy in 2001 had just had a job loss, and 50% had just had a serious medical problem in the family -- eg, there were a lot of people in 2001 who filed for bankruptcy because they had just been hit by *two* major events.)

Here is an excellent article on the issues involved with this lawsuit. http://tompaine.com/feature.cfm/ID/7050

We would probably be in much worse shape as a country, if we didn't have such a well trained, well supplied military.

• $189 million from higher education
• $541 million from Training and Employment Services
• $1.026 billion from Law Enforcement Assistance, Community Policing and other justice programs.
• $223 million from Small and Minority Business Assistance, a 31% reduction
• $227 million from disaster relief
• $109 million from Small Business Administration Disaster loans, a 59% reduction
• $338 million from Energy Supply programs
• $354.1 million from clean up programs at former defense sites
• $756 million from Water Resources programs, including flood prevention efforts
• $498 million from Pollution control and abatement programs
• $1.23 billion from Conservation and Land Management programs
• $144 million from Animal and Plant inspection programs

If you think that folks like Hitler, Stalin, Hussien, etc. wouldn't already be over here, then you are crazy.

And if you think the likely source of that threat today is not from within, then you are crazy, or, more likely, just following orders.

I am a strong believer in a well prepared military and a well armed nation.

Clearly, you have greater belief in military and arms than in your God's commandment against killing. Remember your drill sergeant telling you to obey without question? You have made him very proud. I hope he is there to congratulate you when you receive your "heavenly reward" for your actions.

These two things are what will keep the U.S. free and at peace most of the time.

Then you are a fool. How many troops are worth one more student in your children's classes? How many bombs are worth one more undiagnosed tuberculosis patient in your town? How many bullets are worth one fewer book in your public library? How many rifles are worth one fewer ambulance in your neighborhood?

The Constitution you have sworn to uphold has been eroded to the point of unrecognizability. Are you such a coward that you refuse to see that "folks like Hitler, Stalin, Hussien, etc." are in your own backyard?

Saddam's regime is heavily secular, and Saddam himself is nominally Sunni. Neither of these traits endear him to the fundamentalish Shiite terrorist types. He's funded anti-Iran terrorists (for obvious reasons) and some Palestinian terrorists (more as public-relations with the rest of the Arab world than because he actually cares).

There is, at the moment, zero evidence that Hussein has worked with al Queda, and a lot of reasons to suppose that he wouldn't. Sure, all those Ay-rabs look the same to us patriotic Americans, but they do have differences.

See, e.g. here, or here. So far as I can see, our government wants to attack Iraq because it knows how to attack armies, but has no clue how to go after mobile and decentralized terrorists.

Ah, but that brings us to the agendas of both organizations like the Washington Times and of FAIR.

Actually, if you have to resort to the ad hominem dodge right off the bat, you've already lost.

FAIR is not high on my list of "objective" organizations. Now maybe the Washington Times isn't either.

You certainly weren't offering any such provisos when you quoted them to support your position.

...well, I'll take a conservative editorial slant and exercise my judgement with it over the liberal slant from nearly every other news organization and groups like FAIR.

Except, of course, that the myth that most of the media have a liberal slant has itself been thoroughly debunked. [You will, no doubt, dismiss all this evidence out of hand as coming from "liberal" sources, a neatly circular argument. Exercising judgment, indeed.]

Ah, but that brings us to the agendas of both organizations like the Washington Times and of FAIR.

Actually, if you have to resort to the ad hominem dodge right off the bat, you've already lost.

FAIR is not high on my list of "objective" organizations. Now maybe the Washington Times isn't either.

You certainly weren't offering any such provisos when you quoted them to support your position.

...well, I'll take a conservative editorial slant and exercise my judgement with it over the liberal slant from nearly every other news organization and groups like FAIR.

Except, of course, that the myth that most of the media have a liberal slant has itself been thoroughly debunked. [You will, no doubt, dismiss all this evidence out of hand as coming from "liberal" sources, a neatly circular argument. Exercising judgment, indeed.]

Next time, before everyone spends a lot of time and energy debating the morality of copyright laws and the hypocrisy of Hollywood and the MPAA, we should probably take a look at the source of the article to determine how seriously we should take it (even though that's not as much fun).

First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win. -- Gandhi

An article on TomPaine.com kind of sums that up nicely.

• ...Even if Yucca is approved, built, and safely filled with nuclear waste, the industry's waste problem will still remain unsolved. Yucca Mountain will have a maximum capacity of 77,000 tons of high-level waste. Even if no new nuclear plants are built, existing plants will produce about 105,000 metric tons of wastes by the end of their lifetimes, according to DOE's Allen Benson. They will produce even more if, as the Bush administration has proposed, reactors receive extensions of their operating licenses.

Even if it is built and used as planned, there will still be thousands of tons of nuclear waste left sitting all over the country.

Actually, in contrast to what the /. heading says, the articles are implying that this is a step in the wrong direction. But I'll assume you read the article and understand WHY these people think this and go stright to the question, "if we assume FCC+CPUC=flawed decision, then why is this bad? Should we care?"

First, to alleviate one myth: This guy thinks the FCC is indirectly threatening the entire internet from some tom paine article:
The Federal Communications Commission is also poised, because of cable industry lobbying, to end the traditional policy of open access to the Internet, which places now the Internet in jeopardy....The FCC is poised to eliminate all of these public interest safeguards allowing a handful of media giants...with being able to extend their domain to the Internet as well.
--Jeff Chester, Executive Director for Center for Digital Democracy

(Note that this would imply that CPUC+FCC=good.) But is it True? Maybe... The internet extends outside the U.S., so to bring it all under media-giant control would require these "giants" to have some influence on other governments. Do they have any influence? We have seen the RIAA, MPAA, MS(MSNBC) try it (unsuccessfully). But that doesn't mean they can't through other means such as trying to control the "toys" everyone uses (ie:mother boards with copy protection). EXCEPT, we seem to be forgetting that private/public colleges, libraries, Big Corporations, etc. have their own T1s, as well as dial-ups (non-AOL/Time Warner) still surviving, and then there are those random links in HAM radio clusters to the internet. There's also new technology coming out yielding more vays of connecting to the net as mentioned in one of the comments above. In fact, if everyone worked together, we could build a huge 802.11b network and form our own 'net which would link to the internet somewhere. So, I would say no, it will take more than dsl/cable issues to jeopordize the internet. Unless you believe in the connecting theories with the globalization mumbo jumbo katz was ranting about.

And then there's the concern about content and applications, as Mike Jackman, executive director of CISPA, puts it (from the article):
"What's ultimately at stake here is not just competition in broadband access, but whether Internet users will have a choice in the content and applications that will become available in the future."
This is similar to Chester's logic. except dsl users != all internet users.So if its just the dsl/cable crowd whose "content" will be effected, then they can go out and find a proxy server that will get your content to you. On a side note, this reminds me of the Chinese govn'mt trying to control certain content over their own population. So no, content is not in jeopardy either. And I'm not sure how to interpret "applications".

So, as long as there are ways of packets getting to you and you can control their integrity then all this *really* is about is money. But not *your* money, the dsl-wannabes, Because, in the same way MS kept Apple alive, Ma Bell will keep at least a couple dsl businesses alive, which means competition, which means prices will only get lower. Assuming CPUC is unsuccessful in getting the baby-dsl companies into the competition, but all the better if they do.

Nothing at stake here folks. Move along.

"What we are seeing on television are not really party conventions, where representative delegates come to confer and choose, rather, these are basically now corporate trade shows for the delegates, while the main show is behind closed doors at big dollar soft money fund-raisers, and those soft money contributions, make no mistake, are setting the agenda for the American congress, and for the United States as a whole.

So, my friends, these conventions are both examples and symbols of a broader problem. We have devolved from a representative democracy to a corporate democracy in this country. This is not a system of one person one vote, or one delegate one vote, but a system of one million dollars, one million votes. It is a system of legalized bribery and legalized extortion."

What a nice way to make a statement without having the facts or arguments to support it. "I don't feel like saying the Earth is flat, so I am not going to say it is, even though I believe it is, and most serious scientists will eventually agree with me."

What I will say is that MS, even *if* they are a monopoly and we assume so

What is a monopoly by your definition? Are 90% of the marketshare enough? 95%?

has done nothing to prevent you, the user

*beep* Wrong line of argument. Monopolies are not about direct coercion. Monopolies, while they do have immense market power, are not governments, otherwise they would be called governments. Monopolies, through accumulation of capital and mindshare, may be able to create a market in which it is impossible or very hard for competitors to thrive, even though this may be in the best interest of the consumers. Microsoft is such a monopoly.

"Freedom of choice" arguments sound nice and are exactly the kind of rhetoric you would expect a Microsoft-propagandist to employ -- however, they are fundamentally flawed in that they omit an essential factor that determines our decisions: information. By being a monopoly, Microsoft has the advantage (and, rarely, the disadvantage) of being the focus of all media attention. And they have loads of money to spend on propaganda, too. Your decision to use or not to use a Microsoft OS may be free of direct coercion, but it is certainly not free of manipulation. And because of the nature of an operating system, being the basis for all other software run on a computer, any program that is written exclusively for a Microsoft OS strengthens Microsoft's monopoly. Thus, any switchover can obviously only be gradual, with many people using two or more operating systems at the same time (which, incidentally, has been confirmed in a recent survey of 10000 Linux users, where only 38% used no other OS besides Linux -- even many professionals boot Windows NT or 2K together with Linux).

Linux is now in a position where it can actually compete with Windows in most fields, even in spite of Microsoft's market domination (a fact which lends tremendous support to arguments for open, patent-free software development). But consumers know little about Linux because of Microsoft's media domination, and they can't give it a try easily because of Microsoft's coercive OEM licensing. These are clearly practices of a monopoly by any reasonable definition, and they make it hard for the little competition to gain market share. Whether such practices are illegal under US antitrust law, I cannot say -- I care more about morals than about law. On the basis of morals, I can see no reasonable argument why the kind of coercive OEM licensing Microsoft uses should be allowed.

If we want to find the BIO terrorists, we really only have to look in the mirror. BiotechCentury.org, is one example, but there are thousands of sites on this subject. Just do a google search on Monsanto to see the innumerable ways that they have screwed little farmers (who didn't even want their product, but were charged anyway when pollen from other fields spread to their lang.)

If you are a US citizen then you already live in the ultimate BIO terrorist state baby.

I'm not talking about what Stossel says. If you read my post, I'm advising to listen to what the *kids* said. Their responses prove my point, not his reporting.

Um, did you even read the letter from the parents of the children that were interviewed, in which they described Stossel as "ask[ing] leading questions to get [the children] to say what [he] wanted"? That immediately and irreparably destroys the credibility of anything the children might have been portrayed on screen as saying; given Stossel's track record, it's very easy to believe that he simply edited out the children that didn't say anything he could use.

On a side note, he does not have a dubious track record, as you say, [...]

*blink* Wow, can I get the address of the cave you've been living in these past few years? Perhaps you just missed that incident last summer, when Stossel was caught faking test results on organic foods and had to apologize on air. And that's just the one he got caught on; he does this sort of thing consistently nowadays. Particulary notable, for instance, was his April`94 20/20special on the environment; two of the three producers resigned in protest after Stossel and the third producer systematically threw out evidence that refuted the ideological position they wanted to present.

Do you also not put much credence in network news and CNN, given their track records?

(shrug) Granted, CNN's demonstrated pro-establishment, pro-corporate, anti-liberal bias does give me pause (as does the fact that they're owned by AOL/Time-Warner). And no, the rest of the mainstream media isn't much better.

You won't read any of these links, of course, as you probably didn't in my previous article -- or perhaps you'll read just enough to convince yourself that they're just "a load of leftist whining" and can therefore be dismissed out of hand, without any need to actually try to refute them or anything.
--
#/usr/bin/perl
require 6.0;

I think it's idiotic on both sides to label the other party 'the bad guys', as if they weren't organizations made up of individuals with different views and morals.

How are Republicans so pristine, when the Hagel amendment was possibly the worst thing that could've ever happened to campaign finance reform? Everyone I see supporting Hagel talked about how it limited soft money, how it was real reform because it also limited other groups and parties -- no one would address the fact that limiting (not banning) soft money, would have had the complete opposite effect of reform, because it would've been written into law that soft money was an acceptable practice, not deserving of complete removal. We're talking about illegal contributions here. A practice that isn't even necessary; that only exists to serve greed; to "legalize bribes and legalize extortion".

How are the Democrats any better, when John Breaux co-wrote the Hagel Amendment?

How is John McCain so evil? When did he try to put groups like the EFF out of the loop? Who does the EFF contribute to, exactly? Maybe you mean the restrictions on TV ads, which require disclosure of the people funding it? Restrictions that only ban an ad when it's aimed at electing 1 person or the other, and even then only when it's within 60 days of the election. Restrictions that have no effect on ads which only list facts or compare stances, without saying "So and so voted to kill babies." Restrictions that, despite that, still raise questions about the right of people to criticize their government, and so they are restrictions that many people (including McCain) didn't support. And when they were passed, people like McCain voted against the non-severability amendment so that when those restrictions are removed as unconstitutional they won't destroy McCain-Feingold.

How can Democrats be so bad with respectable people like Feingold, Joseph Biden, and John Edwards in their ranks?

There's good people, and there's stupid people. Both parties have their share. And I blame the way this slanted article was phrased for ever starting all this nonsense.

"These people are presumptively innocent," said Godwin, an attorney who writes frequently about law and technology. "Even if they are subjects of a federal investigation, the Secret Service should know better than to swoop in and engage in disruptive searches of people they're not ready to arrest."

Yea, I know that whole 1970s thing was the National Guard getting just a tisch trigger happy. But the Kent State UPD just bought freaking M16s

Supposedly, they're being modified to semi-automatic. Still, what the hell does a UPD need M16s for? If it's that bad, call in the city police or sherrifs for help. Or even the National Guard if you have a riot on your hands.... oh wait... that happened already. My bad.

Damn Electoral College.

Here's the original article:

http://www.tompaine.com/opinio n/2 000/09/29/7.html

So, please stop. Corporations are not people, the shareholders are and we already pay lots of taxes.

yes, they are people. read this