Slashdot Mirror

Here's a link to the actual article on BBC News.

And here's a link to the study in PDF, sans blogads.

They're thoroughly incompetent, and arrogant as hell to boot - do business with these clowns at your peril.

They're thoroughly incompetent, and arrogant as hell to boot - do business with these clowns at your peril.

The venerable Obscurestore got comments when Romenesko moved to typepad.

And very shortly afterwards comments were suspended due to unruly users (as we say, the comments were RomeneskOWNED!!!@#1!)

To see this happen to the WaPo is completely predictable. Michelle Singletary had a lot of hateful posts to her moderated online chat after she criticized Bill Cosby. Since it was moderated, the offensive posts weren't shown, but she was obviously ticked off by the whole deal.

And after a while you hit a global truth about the Tragedy of the Commons; If there is no barrier for entry, then any immature, overzealous crackpot can spoil the resources for everyone.
Which leads to either having moderators (who will have to be compensated) or a paid admission.

Money; seperating me from the riff raff.

I don't know which is more shameful, the sorry state of government today, or that so few people think there's a problem. It's sad.

Most people don't think it is a problem for one of two reasons:

1) They think that conducting surveillance on people in direct communication with known members of terrorist organizations that have recently attacked the United States is actually a good idea.

2) They understand that the NSA program is very likely legal, as noted by:
The current Attorney General
A former Clinton administration Assistant Attorney General
The Lawyers at Powerline blog
and others in commentary & response.

High treason is quite explicitly attempting to forcibly overthrow the government. While that might be the effect of the Bush administration, it would be very difficult to prove it as the aim

High treason? Impeachment? right....

President Bush's post- Sept. 11, 2001, authorization to the National Security Agency to carry out electronic surveillance into private phone calls and e-mails is consistent with court decisions and with the positions of the Justice Department under prior presidents.

The Fourth Amendment includes requirements for the issuance of search warrants, and many critics of the NSA program seem to assume that this means that all searches must be executed pursuant to a warrant. This assumption is wrong. There are dozens of situations where warrantless searches have been approved by the courts. The overriding principle is that searches of Americans (defined to include resident aliens) must be reasonable.

One of the many situations where warrantless searches have been approved is when the government is seeking foreign intelligence information, such as information relating to potential terrorist threats. Next to the Constitution itself, of course, the highest authority is the United States Supreme Court. At least three Supreme Court cases have discussed this subject.

The Supreme Court held in 1800 (Bas v. Tingy), and again in 1801 (Talbot v. Seamen), that Congress could formally authorize war by joint resolution without passing a formal declaration of war; and in the post-U.N. Charter era no state has issued a formal declaration of war. Such declarations, in fact, have become as much an anachronism as the power of Congress to issue letters of marque and reprisal (outlawed by treaty in 1856). - Robert Turner, co-founder of the Center for National Security Law at the University of Virginia School of Law, FISA vs. the Constitution

And what shall we say about the dark realm of criminality as such? Legal frames (especially in the United States) are broad enough to encourage not only individual freedom but also certain individual crimes. The culprit can go unpunished or obtain undeserved leniency with the support of thousands of public defenders. When a government starts an earnest fight against terrorism, public opinion immediately accuses it of violating the terrorists' civil rights. There are many such cases. - Alexander Solzhenitsyn, A World Split Apart, 1978

This gives a whole new meaning to "Web 2.0 is made of people!"

Actually, thanks to the recording industry, yes, you can.

You're wrong about the legal aspects of this. There is a strong argument that the President's actions were legal and consistent with his Constitutional powers.

Here's what happened. After 9/11, authorities found a bunch of e-mail addresses and phone numbers in the phones and computers of confirmed terrorists. They tracked down those leads. Most of the people the NSA started eavesdropping on -- about 7,000 -- lived overseas, and their phone calls were to other foreigners living abroad. But, according to Risen's book, "about 500 people" living in the U.S. who were in contact with suspected terrorists had their communications tapped. Risen calls this "large-scale" spying on the American people even though, as the Weekly Standard recently noted, this constitutes "1.7 ten-thousandths of 1 percent of the U.S. population."

The Fourth Amendment includes requirements for the issuance of search warrants, and many critics of the NSA program seem to assume that this means that all searches must be executed pursuant to a warrant. This assumption is wrong. There are dozens of situations where warrantless searches have been approved by the courts. The overriding principle is that searches of Americans (defined to include resident aliens) must be reasonable.

One of the many situations where warrantless searches have been approved is when the government is seeking foreign intelligence information, such as information relating to potential terrorist threats. Next to the Constitution itself, of course, the highest authority is the United States Supreme Court. At least three Supreme Court cases have discussed this subject.

The judges modified only two search warrant orders out of the 13,102 applications that were approved over the first 22 years of the court's operation. In 20 of the first 21 annual reports on the court's activities up to 1999, the Justice Department told Congress that "no orders were entered (by the FISA court) which modified or denied the requested authority" submitted by the government.

But since 2001, the judges have modified 179 of the 5,645 requests for court-ordered surveillance by the Bush administration. A total of 173 of those court-ordered "substantive modifications" took place in 2003 and 2004, the most recent years for which public records are available.

Warrant requests rejected

The judges also rejected or deferred at least six requests for warrants during those two years -- the first outright rejection of a wiretap request in the court's history.

It just shows you Bush's comtempt for the rule of law. They couldn't do what they wanted to do legally, so they just went ahead and did it anyway.

There are strong arguments that what the administration did was legal. You seldom see those arguments strongly presented in the media, if they are presented at all. I would be "shocked" if this had anything to do with certain historical voting patterns and the the irrational hatred of President Bush by some in Amerik^Hca.

f the amount of data collected can be used as an argument for "discarding", keep in mind what amounts of data other companies are collecting on their customers:

http://brandautopsy.typepad.com/brandautopsy/2004/ 11/knowledge_is_po.html

Shamelessly stolen from JustOneMinute

"Let me propose my own hypothetical:

Let's *ASSUME* that the NSA *records* every digital transmission from Afghanistan to the US that they can get ahold of. Decrypting and translating take time, so initially they simply maintain a huge vault of raw intercepts. Let's imagine that in June, a telephone of no apparent interest in Kabul dials a phone number of no apparent interest in Manhattan.

That phone in Manhattan is then used to dial a number in Washington DC; the call is also recorded but not decrypted.

A month goes by. Then, come July, Osama himself calls the formerly-uninteresting phone in Kabul. Wow! The NSA is interested now, you betcha!

So, some questions for spies and lawyers:

(a) Is it now worth the computer time to decrypt and translate the June calls from Kabul to Manhattan?

Easy - of course it is, and I think there is broad agreement that, since one leg originated overseas and the interception occurred overseas (broadly defined, perhaps, to include the border), FISA warrants are not necessary.

(b) Will spychasers want to decrypt the Manhattan-Washington DC phone call recorded in June?

I promise, the questions will get more difficult - as to decrypting the call to Washington, of course they will want to.

(c) Can the NSA invoke the 72 hour rule and get a retrospective warrant for that call?

I don't know, but I do know that a lot more than 72 hours have passed since the recording was made. Can the NSA argue that "interception" includes decryption? Would that fly? I don't know (but I would guess not).

So, what is a President to do?

It may be that our data storage capability simply does not mesh well with FISA. Let's go back to 1801(f) for the definition of surveillance:

"Electronic surveillance" means-- (1) the acquisition by an electronic, mechanical, or other surveillance device of the contents of any wire or radio communication...

Emphasis added. One might argue that, until the call has been decrypted and evaluated, the "contents" have not been captured - all that has been stored are digital ones and zeros. If a tree falls in the forest and no one is there to hear it, did it make a sound?

Consequently, the act of "intercepting" and storing the call in digital form was legal (one might argue). And decrypting it later? Well, a probable cause argument is a lot easier if the connection to Osama can be shown."

Me talking now. Basically, it seems that once again, the technology has outpaced the letter of the law. We are seeing this happen everywhere nowadays, like in roving wiretaps (which make so much sense I dont know why people say they are controversial).

Perhaps most surprisingly though, AppleInsider was exceedingly accurate back in November. And yesterday (day before keynote), several blogs such as the one by Kevin Rose did post about the name MacBook Pro and the updates, but with less than 24 hours before unveiling, Apple did do a good job of being secretive.

In case you are wondering about the obscure 'H5N1' reference, it is the name assigned to the virus being used to perpetuate the 'bird flu' scam.

It may work best for prior art, resembling one of the systems discussed in the article.

Everyone is entitled to his or her opinion. Amazon pays $40m in patent settlement. HP pays $141m in patent settlement. Digene Corp. pays Georgetown University $7.5m plus royalties in patent settlement. Medtronic pays $1.35 billion in patent settlement. I mean, I don't want to call you a liar, but it seems to me, just kinda, jumps out at me, maybe I'm just mistaken, but it seems like patents are worth more than the paper they're printed on.

I've said it before (check my post history) and I'll say it again. Slashdot is the Fox News of Patents. It's just a bunch of people standing around a burning barrel bitching about something they don't (or refuse) to understand.

And no shit nobody pays any attention to that.

But if you ask anybody around Slashdot, it's because Slashdot has the geniuses while they system is filled with idiots. I'm no psychologist, but I'm pretty sure that begins to meet the symptoms of schizophrenia.

But don't let me slow anybody down. By the way, I'm in no way associated with but recommend Patently-O. Try understanding the system that you hate so that you don't end up making statement like:

For example, it's not unusual to word a patent in such a way that a genuinely innovative company that would not even compete with the patent 'taker' will have to go and license (overbroad patenting by design).

I mean seriously, WTF. Please show one legitimate example of this . Don't be like this guy. Know what you're talking about.

Did some digging around after reading this, found this:

http://tokendissent.blogspot.com/

and this barn burner at:

http://secondthoughts.typepad.com/second_thoughts/ 2006/01/the_sic.html

Sounds like some folks aren't happy with this game and they sure paint a very different picture of things.

I think it's because the PSP is truly outrageous.

In one of Seth Godin's online talks, he talks about how he stuck a suction cup to his head (he's bald) and burst all the blood vessels underneath, so he had a huge red mark for three or four months. He says, "blogging is like this; what may seem funny at the time may make it impossible to get a job for months or years into the future. What I'm here to tell you all is that you should do it anyway." And I think he's dead on.

Few companies want to actually let their employees share their thoughts with the general public.

Traditional companies, maybe. Companies of the future will have to support at least the appearance of openness. See blogs at Google, Red Hat, Amazon... See also the Cluetrain Manifesto.

I would imagine that its sworn testimoney. So one way or other its perjury. Either she lied for RIAA or she lied about them. You can verify by the links that she said what she said.

As for the USA, check out where we've (including the president) admitted to illigal wiretaps. DESPITE there being a special court setup for secret wiretaps in cases like these. In fact you can go ahead and start the wiretap, and inform that special court a few days AFTER you start if its time critical. And if that court denies you, you can CONTINUE to wiretap while you appeal. There's really no excuse for not taking advantage of that specially created court for these situations. Very sloppy, and odds are if we do get anything useful, it wont be able to be used in criminal cases because of this "oops."
Quote"FISA created a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (the "FISA Court") made up of federal district judges, to review just such types of surveillance."
http://counterterror.typepad.com/the_counterterror ism_blog/2005/12/the_presidents_.html
Oh and check out how many wiretaps of ANY kind have been denied in last couple years (especially the special patriot act ones). Its an incredibly small percentage. So its not like we had the excuse of (but it might have been denied!). We also dont have the excuse of "that specia FISA court might have leaked it!" because they all have some of the highest security clearances.

If you ask me, this is FAR more serious than some books being checked out. I've been on Bush's side for a lot of things, but this is over the top.

But those people are not buying $300 game consoles, $49 games every month, $X per year online gaming subscriptions, and so on. So sure there are casual gamers, but no significant casual gaming market. At least not until someone figures out a long tail strategy to make 10 cents off each of a billion people.

The federal government was going to get to use their Blackberries anyway, citing the case of Trojan v. Shat-R-Shield as precedent. Patent office reexamination took off recently, I guess in the past three or four years as a cheaper alternative to litigation. Not that it helps NTP or RIM at this point. Heh, heh.

interesting, isn't it?
(the dutch part do not understand)

http://jurgenverstrepen.typepad.com/zwartofwit/200 5/05/shortwave_descr.html

Correctness check indeed:

• Jurgen Verstrepen hosted ZwartWit, which aired for several years (Topradio/Kanaal2 1998-2001).
  Easily verified on his curriculum: http://jurgenverstrepen.typepad.com/about.html
• Yes the biggest party in Flanders: http://polling2004.belgium.be/en/vla/results/resul ts_graph_etop.html
  (note that the cartel CD&V+N-VA is composed of two parties and N-VA scores around the electoral threshold of 5%, the reason why they were compelled to form the carte)
  It's quite logical that if you count the French-speaking Walloon part, the VB scores zero. But all other Flemish parties also score zero there, just as all Walloon parties score zero in Flanders. So the argument stands: largest party, in Flanders or even Belgium.

I hope this kind of reality, with URLs included, is better checkable than random assertions.

And again: why should these trivia even play a role in the discussion about the usurpation of dictatorial powers by the Belgian government?

• There is a war on, and wars always cost some civil liberties. However, there's no draft, no wage and price controls, no concentration camps. We should count our blessings that all we have to put up with is some wiretapping and data mining.
  
  
• You can't fight a war with just the tools of criminal justice. (Well, you can, but you'll probably lose.)
  
  
• It should be clear to everyone that war with international bands of terrorists who hide as civilians is a new kind of war. Of necessity, it is fought largely in the shadows, which means sneaking and spying. I'm not happy with it, but it seems undeniable.
  
  
• Hate Bush or not, I believe he's doing this to defend the country. (And yes, if Clinton or Kerry or Gore were President and doing the same thing, I'd still say so.) I have seen no real evidence that he's doing it to spy on Democrats or look good in the polls or line his pockets. If he's ever shown to have done any of that, I'll join the chorus of condemnation. Until then, though, I'm a bit tired of all the hysteria of the supposedly descending night of totalitarianism in the U.S., which I've heard has been just around the corner since the late '60s.
  

The summary you quoted said that "Pricing/booking" is done by the MySQL servers. You don't think telling people the prices and letting the people book their trips is mission-critical? It seems unlikely that they would earn much money if they didn't let anyone make bookings and get those credit card numbers from them.

What Sabre said about MySQL is "To provide the best possible service requires maintaining a massive database that can meet extreme performance demands, with very high reliability. The MySQL database has easily met these needs, and for a low total cost of ownership" and "We benchmarked our application on several databases, including open source, commercial and a specialized in-memory relational database, and MySQL was the best performing database". From http://www.mysql.com/news-and-events/press-release /release_2003_33.html

When it comest to AdWords, an "unmitigated disaster" that even "heroic performance tuning" couldn't save, even after rewriting every query for it, followed by reverting to the better-performing MySQL solution, is not what I'd call a resounding success story for a migration to a purely commercial database. Zack has some useful quotes and other links at http://zurlocker.typepad.com/theopenforce/2005/12/ googles_use_of_.html (he's MySQL's VP of Marketing).

Notice the consistency here: for both Sabre and Google, MySQL was the best performing solution, not the databases they compared it to.

One manager tried going from MySQL to commercial and had a disaster, even after rewriting everything, while the other went from commercial to MySQL and saved their company millions of dollars in TCO while delivering a world-class solution. I know which manager I'd rather be! :)

I've done the multiple database support routine myself. Best to know the databases you're going to support in advance. Standards might as well not exist when you go for maximum efficiency. Fortunately I generally didn't need maximum efficiency and the worst I generally had to deal with was Oracle limitations compared to Sybase and Microsoft SQL Server.

Even with the success stories here, there really are some cases where MySQL doesn't provide the best business case - but it's getting harder and harder to find them. There always will be some, though.

Thank you Captain Obvious. I'll take over.

Now we fast forward to 2005 and look at the latest technology helping us in our daily lives:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B00004SPO3/ 103-6259078-8189458

http://www.brandsonsale.com/cg-003691.html

or my personal favorite:
http://sandalsandsocks.typepad.com/soapbox/2004/05 /useless_gadgets.html

Personally, I'd throw nosehair trimmers, most PDAs, and most feature-laden cell-phones in that bin.

"At some point in time an intelligent being had to be involved."
Seriously, when I read that, I honestly saw "At some point in time an intelligent being had to be evolved." Funny blunder on my part.

Anyway, I gave someone mod points earlier today for posting this short essay by Scott Adams. I recommend you read it.

The best argument I've read for both Intelligent Design and Evolution are from Scott Adams the writer of Dilbert.

Exactly how is posting Wil's slashdot screen name (CleverNickName ) invading his privacy? Will *wants* people to read what he thinks, else he wouldn't be blogging. And BTW, he's been blogging over at WWdN In Exile since September.

Crap, should have been AC as I had mod points.

Anyway the blurb about the book and the download link are here

For those that still think that PCB stands for printed circuit board, or it may mean this, in this context it is "plasma kinetics of procarbazine" that appears to be an anti-cancer thing.

For me being a white boy, I wouldn't take something that was 100x more toxic in people over there. I'll stick to the stuff that isn't known to readily kill any human after determining that its OK (by the survival or death of others, right?!?).

No, I don't mean the stuff that they just put on TV ads like this. I'd take a risk of an STD (standard deviation) to get to know the author of this piece.

Two of the larger examples I would point out are Howard Dean and Micheal Moore.

Two days ago my roomate asked me what I thought about Bush's quote, "It's just a G*dd@mn piece of paper". When I said I suspected that was a hoax, since I doubt any politician in this country would be foolish enough to say something, she wouldn't believe me, because to her and her friends it was just a confirmation of what they believe to be true (that Bush would say something like that). Five minutes later with Google showed that every article about that was linked back to one blogger, who never linked his article.

The poster wasn't alleging any actual capital crime carrying the death sentence, but was suggesting the President should be killed because of policies he disagreed with, as an example.

Do you really think the President could / would / should be impeached and imprisoned for LIFE, or even EXECUTED, because somewhere between 500 and a couple of thousand people with possible / likely connections to terrorists didn't (allegedly) have all of the needed paperwork for proper surveillance filled out by the government? Life imprisonment or execution for a violation of privacy, even if it is 2,000 people? That view seems extreme. That sort of thing is normally handled by throwing out illegally gained evidence in court.

As a clear enemy to the people of the United States, upon Bush's indictment for war crimes, he should be held in prison before seeing trial for the exact number of days that he has held Jose Padilla (who is on his third year and counting).

Don't be troubled. Now that he has been indicted, Mr. Padilla will finally get the justice he deserves. I doubt that the likely outcome of that will leave you any happier.

As far as "war crimes" go... you're kidding yourself.

"...a clear enemy to the people of the United States.."

It would be far more accurate to refer to President Bush as "an object of obsession and hatred to the moon bats of the looney left fringe."

Anybody who doesn't understand this about Wikipedia at this point must be from Mars.

"Just had dinner with my dad and his high school buddies. One is college-educated (Dartmouth), a very successful professional. And he's about seventy.

On the way out the door, he asked, "What's an MP3?"

Before you decide that everyone knows something (or no one does), take a second to realize that you're wrong." --Seth Godin's Blog

Any links to those videos?

Dude, just Google for a while, read the texts, watch the videos and listen to the audio to get pointers on what to search for next. Go with it for a while. There is a crap load out there and it will come back to haunt GWB one day.

Unidentified crowd of people walking through street in Iraq being bombed.
A dead child is collateral damage?
Torture.
What is wrong with the three pictures at the bottom? Besides the fresh blood, tied person in civilian clothes and people in US soldier uniforms with identities masked as an afterthought?
Rape.
Murder and American pride.
British mercenaries working for Aegis made this video of driving around Baghdad shooting at random cars for fun.
Don't hit the mosque!!! Just kill those that come out, but only once they are well clear of that mosque!!!. (Afghanistan)
Small boy. Arms blown off, torso very badly burned.
Well said.
Another small boy. Badly burned torso also.
Ah, so this is liberation?
Another shocking death of an innocent child.
What could a little girl have done to deserve that?
I can imagine without US ugliness painted on her face, she must have been a pretty young girl.
Oh, say can you see, by the dawn's early light...
A coffin load of dead children.
The enemy.
Poor sweetheart.
Wouldn't you feel free too?
A US soldier ties a terrorist up.
This all seems reasonable doesn't it? I mean I know how dangerous my own 8 year old niece is.
Good old Yankee respect.
What must those damn parents be putting in their children's heads? Thankfully, unlike the US, not bullets. Just the fear of them.
U S A ! U S A !
Some people say these photos are bullshit, because US does not wear jungle camo in Iraq...
Well what the fuck is this?

"Please note an easier and more acceptable solution requires cooperation from Apple, who we have already reached out to in hopes of addressing this issue. To help speed this effort, we ask that you use the following link to contact Apple and ask them to provide a solution that would easily allow you to move content from protected CDs into iTunes or onto your iPod rather than having to go through the additional steps above."

        http://www.apple.com/feedback/ipod.html

So you're saying this is all a bunch of kat FUD? (Oh, pleasepleaseplease...)

David Jaffe makes a few good points on whole are games art discussion.

Here's a couple of relevant quotes on The Sims:

At a conference I went to, Will Wright talked about how the SIMS was designed to be read as a metaphor for greed and how as you got more and more and more stuff, it became more of a hassle to take care of it all and eventually things began to break down.

...

games can- by USING THE INTERACTIVE MEDIUM (not using film technique) SAY something via play/interactive mechanics...

Now this Ebert guy may know about story telling, but by his own admission he has no experience of the very thing that makes a game not a film. A linear narrative isn't even necessary in gaming, Ebert doesn't understand that and will never be able to give meaningful criticism unless he bothers to spend some time playing.

This can be used for another form of Hydrogen Boost for Truckers. Instead of using electicity and water, it can use water, exaust gas, and microbe. Not only will it further reduce emissions by using them to produce hydrogen.

Well, I was going to do the fairly obvious reply, but it looks like about a dozen others beat me to it.

One last one: TV - Nipkow, Rosing, Baird... German, Russian and Scots. Do you propose handing control of all worldwide TV networks to these nations? No...?

The parent poster may want to read this for further debating hints.

Pink Potato

Warning - clicking on the above link may cause spontaneous vomiting.

A: Come up with a good slogan.

Umm.... perhaps you've stumbled on the wrong site.

Bush didn't sign the Kyoto protocol

Clinton didn't sign it, either. Thankfully, neither one could sign it without the Senate's approval.

You had it coming, suckers!

Uh, excuse me, but who's running more and more Diesel engines? You're not exactly complying with Kyoto either, and you did sign it.

Dude. You just totally snarfed most (if not all) of the ideas from Scott Adams' Tell Me Why I'm Stupid experiment. Either I owe you congratulations for the good troll, or condolences for how your brain turned out.

Do you even read what it is you type? Do you really think that Texas is in some kind of a vacuum? That it resides in its own universe? Or that Texas is some kind of golden boy country just because we happen to have someone from Texas in the White House? And do I really need to list the thousands of GOOGLED court cases that talk about the unusual methods used in our court systems?

Ok, you asked for it. Here are some Texas Jurisprudence instead of out of state stuff

Example #1: Texas courts affecting, or in this case, not affecting other country's courts:For example, in Agar Corp. Inc. v. Multi-Fluid, Inc. a Texas court held that a Norway-based company was not subject to suit in Texas because its products could not be purchased and contractual relations could not be made through its website.
Notes: The thing to notice here is that a Texas court feels it has the power to affect things that are going on in other countries. Especially if money is exchanged. I would have thought that Texas courts could only affect things that went on in Texas or maybe the United States itself - but certainly not in places like Norway.

Example #2:This week's analysis focuses on the offensive use of the Texas Attorney General's concession in Saldano v. Texas that the application of the death penalty in some cases in Texas has been impermissible infected with racial animus.
Notes: Using race to make or apply laws was outlawed years ago yet - here it is!

Example #3:With respect to the sentencing issues, the Court conludes that the state court unreasonably applied Strickland when it concluded that Lowe had not been ineffective when he failed to object to the introduction of lots of prejudicial evidence.
Notes: Usage of laws written outside of Texas by the courts in Texas.

You know - I could go on and on and on but I think you get the picture. Since you don't know what you are talking about I think I'm going to stop posting back. So say what you will but if I were you - I'd do a bit more reading first.

To quote you, go blow smoke up someone's ass, as mine's full of yours.

Tssk - Tssk - you really should take that pipe out of your mouth before you begin blowing smoke. Use some common sense next time. If something is happening in one state - it usually happens in all of the states in varying degrees.