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http://dilbertblog.typepad.com/the_dilbert_blog/20 05/11/intelligent_des.html

Interesting background on the creation of OSM:

http://dennisthepeasant.typepad.com/dennis_the_pea sant/2005/11/the_certain_thi.html

Doesn't sound like their principles are very "open source"...

until recently it was entirely clear to the law. Things could have owners and ideas could not.

This is baloney. It's been quite a while since the constitution was written, and right there in Article 1 section 8 clause 8 is the statement by the framers that is the basis for our patent system. Ideas could be owned in 1789, and long before that as well, as England also had a patent system.

Patents (originally) were/are not monopolies on ideas, but on inventions. Those are not quite the same. And originally, all such "inventions" were limited to the physical world. It is only fairly recently that patent offices and courts have started extending what can be protected by patent to the immaterial world.

Even with the latest reform, the USPTO is still paying lip service to the original principle, by demanding a "Concrete, and Tangible Result". Of course, in practice it doesn't exclude much anymore (of course you always want to monopolise real-world actions in the end, and every innovation in the abstract can be applied to the real world if that includes things like "provide a commercial benefit").

And the main problem with these extensions are that they are not based on economic needs, but simply pushed by a small in-crowd who stand to gain from them.

Not to mention the fact that money is an idea, equitable servitudes are ideas, usufructs are ideas, loans are ideas, contracts are ideas, and, now this will really blow your mind --

options on options...

I think you're extending the term "idea" beyond the context in which the author used it. That's easy of course, since "idea" has no legal definition and can be interpreted quite broadly. My interpretation of the article is that the author used idea in a more abstract sense, as in "the idea of using money instead of property", "the idea of lending money" etc.

In this world, size is no protection. It just makes you a more succulent target for enemy lawyers.

I would just like to point out that both sides have lawyers -- this makes it sound like lawyers are the enemy. In fact, lawyers are just the guys that help their clients get what they deserve under the law.

But in general society is better off when less lawyers are needed. After all, (and please don't take this personally) all money that goes into lawyers is money which cannot be invested in useful things (like R&D). It's an overhead cost. And by creating more "rights" you automatically increase the number of lawsuits, license agreements etc.

I'm not saying that a world without rights or lawyers would be ideal, but on the other hand extending rights and adding more rights does increase the overhead and at a certain point starts reducing the overall "justice" and "efficiency" of the system.

People with more money have always been able to hire better lawyers in our legal system, and that problem has nothing to do with intellectual property.

It is an argument to balance the situations in which you may need a lawyer though.

The system is supposed to work this way. It incentivizes companies to research and patent things as fast as they can, pushing the limits of technology, and then disclosing them to the public.

That's the theory, but in practice it doesn't always work that way. Witness e.g. Machlup already saying in the fifties:

If one does not know whether a system "as a whole" (in contrast to certain features of it) is good or bad, the safest "policy conclusion" is to "muddl

"... Help-desk staff were named as the worst
  offenders, followed by those working in
  technology start-ups, many of whom had
  continued to wear T-shirts to work as a
  consequence of the casual web culture
  of the '90s. ..." [1]

  `... More than 150 tech professionals
  attended a corporate fashion show in
  Sydney last night as organisers
  officially dubbed the industry "the
  worst dressed" in Australia. ... Short
  sleeved shirts, man-made fibres and the
  wrong coloured socks were some of the
  most common fashion faux-pas cited by
  corporate stylist, Melanie Moss, who
  hosted the event. ...` [2]

I reflect on this dressed in running shorts, Oxford blue shirt, vendorware tee shirt & black socks at my terminal. It`s a constant bone of contention to my better half who says I should dress a bit smarter. But I digress. I read an article a couple of months ago that confirmed my choice of dress.

It was by Kathy Sierra [3], who managed snare a ringside seat at the internal Amazon developers conference featuring Paul Graham [4]. This the only reference to this talk I have found. It goes something like this.... dignity is deadly ...

  `... When you evolve out of start-up
  mode and start worrying about being
  professional and dignified, you only
  lose capabilities. You don't add
  anything... you only take away. Dignity
  is deadly. ...` [5]

Reference:

[1], [2] Louisa Horn, `IT workers dubbed ``worst dressed``:
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2005/11/17/11320169 09640.html?oneclick=true
[Accessed Friday, 18 November 2005]

[3] Dignity is deadly, `Kathy Sierra comments on Paul Graham talk to Amazon developers why worring about clothes, dress & unessentials detracts from startup based companies.`:
http://headrush.typepad.com/creating_passionate_us ers/2005/09/dignity_is_dead.html
[Accessed Friday, 18 November 2005]

[4] Paul Graham, `Paul Grahams website`:
http://www.paulgraham.com/bio.html
[Accessed Friday, 18 November 2005]

[5] Dignity is deadly, Kathy Sierras take on Paul Grahams comments. Ibid.

http://wilwheaton.typepad.com/wwdnbackup/2005/10/t he_myth.html

Lie detectors are also used in Kansas. I am surprized they don't use the good old medieval torture techniques to find witches.

It's not there anymore, but http://www.legos.com/ used to open to a personal note (screenshot here: http://jaffejuice.typepad.com/photos/uncategorized /legoslas.jpg) from the muti-million dollar world-reknown company telling you that they did not want their name tainted by calling Lego® Blocks "legos".

Actually, if you take a look at the "article" they were talking about, digg.com got more hits than slashdot.com (not slashdot.org).

I'm sure that digg.com gets more hits than slashdot.gov too, thus proving digg's ultimate superiority...

"Yes, it will start jumping but by the time it does the western world will be prepared."

The very point of all the concern is that at this point in time there _is_ no way to prepare for this pandemic other than stocking up on food so you can hole up for 3 months when it comes. Tamiflu may mitigate the seriousness in someone already displaying symptoms. Reflenza might do the same. But there is nothing else, and we don't have much of either drug and there are indications from Viet Nam that avian flu has already developed resistance to Tamiflu. Maybe some scientific breakthrough will happen that will help us, but it hasn't happened yet and no one is suggesting that one is near. It is very possible, even probable, that human-human transmission will start before that breakthrough occurs. If it happens in the next few months, as some scientists fear, then it is simply Katie-bar-the-door (very literally).

Here is the article that has the most helpful info I have seen on avian flu, preparation for, treatment for, analysis of statistical projections, etc.

http://crofsblogs.typepad.com/h5n1/files/ComingPan demic.pdf

Be sure to check out the diagram that show how fast the 1918 flu spread (without the benefit of air travel)

Good luck!

Cost and pricing, according to economic theory, are supposed to represent actual real-world values of labor and resources consumed to produce something.

The fact that economics cannot properly account, even remotely, the degradation of the environment and account for how this will impact us in ten to 100 years means that its recommendations should be taken within a strictly constrainted box.

The world continues to ramp up nonsustainable consumption of all resources

Apparently Sony did not learn from past music CD DRM lessons - one of its vendors (Sunncomm) was sued, in a consumer protection case, for alleged DRM abuses back in September 2001 the lawsuit can be found here: http://techfirm.typepad.com/clickrights/2005/11/in dex.html#a0007468925 The lawsuit against Sunncomm, with a few changes for the new "root kit" methods, looks very much like allegations one could make in the Sony case. The settlement agreement in the above case could be found here: http://techfirm.typepad.com/clickrights/2005/11/in dex.html#a0007349270 Like (apparently) Sony - the defendants in the Sunncomm case stopped the DRM after litigation was filed.

Apparently Sony did not learn from past music CD DRM lessons - one of its vendors (Sunncomm) was sued, in a consumer protection case, for alleged DRM abuses back in September 2001 the lawsuit can be found here: http://techfirm.typepad.com/clickrights/2005/11/in dex.html#a0007468925 The lawsuit against Sunncomm, with a few changes for the new "root kit" methods, looks very much like allegations one could make in the Sony case. The settlement agreement in the above case could be found here: http://techfirm.typepad.com/clickrights/2005/11/in dex.html#a0007349270 Like (apparently) Sony - the defendants in the Sunncomm case stopped the DRM after litigation was filed.

Well, one thing they don't take into account is the dollar value of the emissions reduction you'd get by driving a Prius. Turns out polluting isn't all that expensive.

From Cascadia Scorecard Weblog:
"In reality, the cost of offsetting a ton of CO2 emissions isn't all that high. Today's L.A. Times reports on a company that's selling what it calls a TerraPass: "essentially, a pricey bumper sticker that identifies the driver as a volunteer in the fight against global warming." When you buy a TerraPass, the parent company buys up CO2 credits in the newly established Chicago Climate Exchange, whose member corporations have committed to reducing greenhouse emissions. The rub: a TerraPass that offsets 10 metric tons of CO2 emissions costs just $79.95. If the program really works as advertised (a big if, obviously) $120 would be more than enough to offset the increase in emissions from buying a Corolla vs. a Prius. If you were willing to commit just one-tenth of the cost difference between the Prius and the Corolla, you could make your driving climate neutral for 10 full years. For one-fifth the savings vs. a Prius, you could offset both your emissions, plus a neighbor's. And so on."

All of which has nothing to do with the problem. The threat is not from bird to human transmission. It is from human-to-human transmission. No one gives a hoot about getting bird flu from birds. Human-to-human transmission does not happen at this time to the best of our knowledge. But once the final mutations happen to allow that (five of ten necessary ones already have), then all bets are off and most of what we have learned about medicine since 1918 will be of no practical use. Tamiflu might mitigate it for those lucky enough to get their hands on some. But other than that, about the only thing you can do is keep the patient hydrated, and I believe they understood that in 1918. Here is an article that might help you to understand the problem and what you can do to prepare yourself and care for your family if they should get it. http://crofsblogs.typepad.com/h5n1/files/ComingPan demic.pdf

Read this http://crofsblogs.typepad.com/h5n1/files/ComingPan demic.pdf for some very good suggestions on what you can do.

Read this http://crofsblogs.typepad.com/h5n1/files/ComingPan demic.pdf. It tells you quite specifically what you can do.

To those who say, what can I do before and if the pandemic strikes, read this excellent monogram by a physician who wrote it for his patients. By far the best thing I have seen to date. It also answers a lot of questions about the virulence, mortality rate, and estimates of expected deaths. Pretty much straight facts, no sensationalism, just damned useful information: http://crofsblogs.typepad.com/h5n1/files/ComingPan demic.pdf

It looks like they didn't even have the name Riya as of August of this year. It was Ojos. Their main guy even has a blog where you can follow up on their Series B financing from the VCs. If this guy wants to make it big, their US and India teams should get the technology polished and then license it to Google for inclusion in their Google Desktop, with support for external media (e.g. DVDs full of photos).

Later, they could expand it out to search for the same faces in movies. Whoa! Hold on. You all are getting carried away. This is not recognizing everybody that passes by a security camera. The success of their codes depends on you having photographed the same individual multiple times. That's why facial recognition in security camera's is such a bad idea - you normally only get to train such a system on: one good photograph, or lots of terrible photographs. And then people want to pick out the bad guy as one of 5,000 people per camera per day???

If you tie this in to the running email address debate, you'll understand a little deeper. They do in fact keep track of the facial (and other) highlights, but there are too many to compare them to everyone ever scanned. Using an e-mail address significantly narrows the fields down, and then they reused the feature attributes. But otherwise, they statistically never reuse the patterns outside of your photo collection.

If you'll take a gander at the following: http://bigpicture.typepad.com/photos/uncategorized /where.jpg. You'll see that Kerry had very strong showings in large urban counties with high population densities. The fact that Kerry got about 48% of the popular vote is due to the very large margins that he accumulated in few heavily populated urban counties.

If you do a bit of homework you'll find that seven states: Washington, Oregon, Minnesota, Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Illinois, would have been won by Bush but for the largest urban county (please note the singular tense) in each of those states.

Furthermore, New York State would have fallen into the Bush column but for NYC, and California was but three counties (LA County, SF County, and Contra Costa County) from going into the Bush column.

The point of my post is that the US is divided, politically, into urban, and non-urban political spheres. The Demos win LARGE margins in urban counties, but the GOP hold sway in the vast majority of non-urban counties. This has lead to very close elections in 2000, and 2004 in terms of the popular vote.

One odd element of this dispute is this: Canada has also filed amicus brief in the case. http://patentlaw.typepad.com/patent/2005/01/canada _challeng.html Canada argues that essential part of their system, the email relay operation, is located entirely in Canada. Therefore US government is saying they have put a foreign corporation (Blackberry LTD) in the critical path of essential government communication.

Steve Gillmor: It's striking that you're not aware of RSS.

Shai Agassi: Believe me, I'm going to Google it the minute we're done.

What Amazon is doing, of course, is protecting a vast amount of intellectual property that it has amassed over the years in the form of consumer reviews. While Amazon does not own the copyright to those reviews, they do have extensive rights to them as set out in the Amazon Conditions of Use:

If you do post content or submit material, and unless we indicate otherwise, you grant Amazon.com and its affiliates a nonexclusive, royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable, and fully sublicensable right to use, reproduce, modify, adapt, publish, translate, create derivative works from, distribute, and display such content throughout the world in any media. You grant Amazon.com and its affiliates and sublicensees the right to use the name that you submit in connection with such content, if they choose. You represent and warrant that you own or otherwise control all of the rights to the content that you post; that the content is accurate; that use of the content you supply does not violate this policy and will not cause injury to any person or entity; and that you will indemnify Amazon.com or its affiliates for all claims resulting from content you supply. Amazon.com has the right but not the obligation to monitor and edit or remove any activity or content. Amazon.com takes no responsibility and assumes no liability for any content posted by you or any third party.

This data that it has managed to collect is an important selling tool, especially for book authors. Why? Because potential book buyers often look at the Amazon reviews to get more details about what a book is really about, even if they don't end up buying it on Amazon (but it gives Amazon more opportunities to push products on those eyeballs). Sure, us authors will fuss over the star ratings (of course you want a 5-star rating, who wouldn't!) but the reality is that the negative ratings can also sell books -- if they're constructive. Those reviews get shared with Amazon partners through the Amazon Web Services, so they just don't end up on the Amazon.com site (though I do find it odd that the reviews aren't shared between the different English-locale Amazon sites). All this data just helps them become the e-commerce portal of choice.

So trying to protect the gathering and processing of this information -- visitor-supplied metadata -- is completely understandable from their point of view. They'd be fools not to do so, especially with the ease with which these kinds of patents seem to be granted.

Eric
Read my Invisible Fence story

actually its +3 informative so far. heh,

sorry I dont have any lefty blog posts to link to off hand, but you could probably find something at TPM, Matt Yglesias, or Kevin Drum if you look. I dont read a lot of lefty blogs myself, but I've heard mostly pretty good things on those guys. I've seen a lot of different points of view over the past few days in the blogosphere. I tend to take the view somewhat similar to wretchard at belmont, that this is not intifadam its economic and social, but looking to the future, the radical islamists would be fools not to try to capitalize off of a large muslim and north african population rioting in a western nation.

Why do you think we have all of these "wage slave" and "temp slave" T-shirts and e-jokes around? Americans like to turn everything painfully true into a little quip, as if by quippifying the painful truth, as if by becoming self-aware of one's shameful and intolerable existence, one partially nullifies one's pain. This is what you'd call "slave humor." Slaves did the same thing, turning their pain into quips. And remember, there were almost no slave rebellions at all in America, less than a dozen.

As for the slave tendency in humanity, I think it's a lot stronger in America than in most other countries in part because no other country on earth has so successfully crushed every internal rebellion. Slaves in the Caribbean for example rebelled a lot more because their oppressors weren't as good at oppressing as Americans were. America has put down every rebellion, brutally, from the Whiskey Rebellion to the Confederate Rebellion to the proletarian rebellions, Black Panthers, white militias... you name it. This creates a powerful slave mentality, a sense that it's pointless to rebel. --- From Going Postal by Mark Ames, excerpted at Blood & Treasure

Right, because CDs never have anything related to DRM...

(Just to list a few)

It's OK to sell anything these days.
Personally, I'm a whole lot more offended that people like Rumsfeld & the Bush family get rich on oil wars and manufacturing hype about avian flus.
Put into perspective, why is selling information any more wrong than killing thousands of innocent people for a few bucks?
Go ahead and mod me down, but at least think about it first.

So in contrast, I am impressed that they went to the trouble of making it as international as they feasibly could without bankrupting themselves on legal fees and delaying the contest for another year while it was approved.

Bankruptcy? Not likely http://markpincus.typepad.com/markpincus/2005/05/f irefox_foxy_ca.html

There is a lot of debate surrounding the efforts of Google and Microsoft to scan the books of the world and make them available electronically. I say Scan Them All!

I say don't stop with what is sitting on the library shelves of the world, but start a World Wide Effort to get every scrap of information that resides on paper and make it electronic. Books, Magazines, Brochures, Handouts, Catalogues, and the entire output of every local copy shop on the planet. All those announcements about bake sales, rummage sales, and lost pet posters. I don't know if any of this will be significant, but I do know that if it is available, somebody a lot smarter than you or I will be able to see things that we don't.

Index and make it all searchable. Collate and store copies of everything on the Internet as well. Devote a ton of money to create electronic libraries to spider, update and back it all up. Create Root Servers to do nothing but collect and update this effort.

The debate surrounding this effort revolves around the Straightjacket of Copyright. We need to repeal current extensions and bring Copyright back to sanity. I am a proponent of 14 Years.

Owners and Holders

Copyright in it's original form, was a deal between the author, and the government that the author was a member of. Simply stated, You got a Limited Monopoly, in the case of the US, 14 years originally, to make your best deal with someone to create and market copies of your work. In return, at the end of this period, the work became Public Domain , forming a part of the intellectual capital of the society that granted you copyright.

Copyright originally covered the printed word, as the printing press was the first duplication device capable of making copies, that were for the sake of discussion, true copies. Ownership belonged to the creator. This has not changed, but the assignment of rights of duplication, the lunacy of copyright extensions, has transformed what was a simple bargain into an swirling vortex of intellectual capital kidnapping. Not only are the owners rights being trampled, but the ability of society to promote further growth of the Public Domain, our end of the bargain, which is yeast for future creators, to ferment new thought, ideas, to promote the intellectual, spiritual and emotional growth of our societies, is being held hostage by Copyright Holders, also known as Publishers.

In order to get 'published', you need to make a deal with a Publisher. Publishers are in the business of making copies of things to sell to make money. Fair enough, if it were a simple arrangement of sharing the risk of producing your work, in sufficient quantity to cover the costs of production, distribution, and enough sales to produce a profit which you would share.

This is not how it works.

It doesn't matter if it is a novel, text book, a song, play, map, photo, or motion picture, you have to assign your rights to the publisher, which gives them the power to control every aspect of your work. There are very few exceptions to this arrangement and the terms of these arrangement are never equitable to the creators.

The whole cycle of creation, publication and compensation has been one of the most inefficient business processes ever devised by mankind. As a creator, you have to search out a publisher, which puts you at a disadvantage in the first place, being put in the position of begging for attention from an industry whose primary focus is the largest quantity at the lowest possible cost. Your chances of publication, are so small as to make the lottery look much more attractive for making a living.

In addition to the gauntlet of submission, rejection, submission, review, and acceptance of your work for publication, is the hydra headed monster of subsid

There is a lot of debate surrounding the efforts of Google and Microsoft to scan the books of the world and make them available electronically. I say Scan Them All!

I say don't stop with what is sitting on the library shelves of the world, but start a World Wide Effort to get every scrap of information that resides on paper and make it electronic. Books, Magazines, Brochures, Handouts, Catalogues, and the entire output of every local copy shop on the planet. All those announcements about bake sales, rummage sales, and lost pet posters. I don't know if any of this will be significant, but I do know that if it is available, somebody a lot smarter than you or I will be able to see things that we don't.

Index and make it all searchable. Collate and store copies of everything on the Internet as well. Devote a ton of money to create electronic libraries to spider, update and back it all up. Create Root Servers to do nothing but collect and update this effort.

The debate surrounding this effort revolves around the Straightjacket of Copyright. We need to repeal current extensions and bring Copyright back to sanity. I am a proponent of 14 Years.

Owners and Holders

Copyright in it's original form, was a deal between the author, and the government that the author was a member of. Simply stated, You got a Limited Monopoly, in the case of the US, 14 years originally, to make your best deal with someone to create and market copies of your work. In return, at the end of this period, the work became Public Domain , forming a part of the intellectual capital of the society that granted you copyright.

Copyright originally covered the printed word, as the printing press was the first duplication device capable of making copies, that were for the sake of discussion, true copies. Ownership belonged to the creator. This has not changed, but the assignment of rights of duplication, the lunacy of copyright extensions, has transformed what was a simple bargain into an swirling vortex of intellectual capital kidnapping. Not only are the owners rights being trampled, but the ability of society to promote further growth of the Public Domain, our end of the bargain, which is yeast for future creators, to ferment new thought, ideas, to promote the intellectual, spiritual and emotional growth of our societies, is being held hostage by Copyright Holders, also known as Publishers.

In order to get 'published', you need to make a deal with a Publisher. Publishers are in the business of making copies of things to sell to make money. Fair enough, if it were a simple arrangement of sharing the risk of producing your work, in sufficient quantity to cover the costs of production, distribution, and enough sales to produce a profit which you would share.

This is not how it works.

It doesn't matter if it is a novel, text book, a song, play, map, photo, or motion picture, you have to assign your rights to the publisher, which gives them the power to control every aspect of your work. There are very few exceptions to this arrangement and the terms of these arrangement are never equitable to the creators.

The whole cycle of creation, publication and compensation has been one of the most inefficient business processes ever devised by mankind. As a creator, you have to search out a publisher, which puts you at a disadvantage in the first place, being put in the position of begging for attention from an industry whose primary focus is the largest quantity at the lowest possible cost. Your chances of publication, are so small as to make the lottery look much more attractive for making a living.

In addition to the gauntlet of submission, rejection, submission, review, and acceptance of your work for publication, is the hydra headed monster of subsid

Taxing peoples' income twice clearly restricts interstate commerce. It is an incentive to live in the state in which business is conducted, rather than conducting business remotely; an outdated practice for our time.

Because it is a restriction, and ultimately serves the same function as a tariff -- and since tariffs between states are illegal, by Constitutional definition (Sec. 9, Clause 5) -- it would seem to me that this double-taxation ought to be illegal too. The NY Appeals court saw things differently.

This seems like something the ICC should take up, and as an interstate case, it's necessarily a federal case. Where's the reasoning for the USSC's refusal to hear the case? This is right up their alley...

I'll take some of that there shitty economy.

Massachusetts is slightly behind Cali in the States Receiving Least in Federal Spending Per Dollar of Federal Taxes Paid

I'm so glad that I can support the southern zealots with my federal taxes. *cough*

80MB may be awkward for those on a dial up modem, but put into context, it isn't that bad.

just try downloading MS Office via a modem then... of course, you can't legally do that though... personally, I can't exactly see why they're all wimping about bloat... OOo is free for the cost of a download... MS-Office however, is very expensive in comparison...

'scuse the typing... I'm slightly pissed and enjoying a very long mashup mix and trying to type whilst dancing to it.... ;)

"Although it ran a scant 13 episodes, the western series 'Johnny Nuance' still prompts fond memories among baby boomers who followed the exciting weekly adventures of the treaty-slinging frontier diplomat.

Johnny Nuance! Johnny Nuance!
From the shores of Martha's Vineyard he rode his horse out West,
With a treaty in his holster and a medal on his chest,
Bringing law and justice to a wild and violent land,
Talking was his creed and sanctions were his brand!
Johnny Nuance! Johnny Nuance! (Hyahhh!)
Outlaws feared his blazing pen!"

For better analysis of the War on Terror than anything I've seen in mainstream media:

http://globalguerrillas.typepad.com/johnrobb/

http://globalguerrillas.typepad.com/globalguerrill as/

http://www.schneier.com/blog/

For better analysis of the War on Terror than anything I've seen in mainstream media:

http://globalguerrillas.typepad.com/johnrobb/

http://globalguerrillas.typepad.com/globalguerrill as/

http://www.schneier.com/blog/

In case you mised it then... Typepad is having issues @ the data center so lets all link to them from SLASHDOT...

Heh...

The subject of the decision is 35 U.S.C. 101, which covers what subject matter can be patented. You could conceivably patent strawberry lima-bean hollandaise sauce. No joke. It would qualify as a "new and useful . . . composition of matter," assuming the rest of the statutory provisions are met. On the other hand, apparently crustless peanut butter and jelly sandwiches aren't patentable.

There is also a video link from hre:

http://giantology.typepad.com/giantology/2005/10/g iant_creature_.html

The "Giantology Website".

An Op-Ed columnist for The New York Times who makes an error "is expected to promptly correct it in the column." That's the established policy of Gail Collins, editor of the editorial page. Her written policy encourages "a uniform approach, with the correction made at the bottom of the piece." Two weeks have passed since my previous post spelled out the errors made by columnist Paul Krugman in writing about news media recounts of the 2000 Florida vote for president. Mr. Krugman still hasn't been required to comply with the policy by publishing a formal correction. Ms. Collins hasn't offered any explanation.

As questions about compliance with the corrections policy for The Times' Op-Ed columnists continue to arise, Gail Collins, editor of the editorial page, told me in an e-mail Tuesday that she will "address the issue in a forthcoming letter from the editor" in the paper. Ms. Collins' comment came in response to my Monday query about the handling of an error by columnist Frank Rich. That mistake has turned out to be the latest of five appearances that versions of the same "college roommates" error have made in The Times this month. While minor in normal times, the mistake has been made a total of four times by three Op-Ed columnists attacking cronyism--and once in a news article. In all five instances, Joe Allbaugh, President Bush's 2000-campaign manager and a former head of FEMA, and Michael Brown, his successor at FEMA, were described variously as college roommates, college buddies or college friends. In fact, the two men didn't even attend the same college. While they have been friends for 25 years, a spokeswoman for Mr. Allbaugh said they didn't know each other during their years at different Oklahoma colleges. With partisan charges of cronyism hanging over the Bush administration's handling of hurricanes, of course, it's not surprising that the college roommates description seems to have become more sensitive.

Our levels of Spam would suddenly become a fraction of what it is now.

Since 3/4 is a fraction, you are correct.

Has there ever been a case where the government has bailed out an individual company because they rely on that company's technology?

It's unnecessary to do so if you can simply use the technology anyway, yet prevent the civil case agaist the infringer. See http://patentlaw.typepad.com/patent/2005/09/govern ment_secr.html or look up Crater Corp v. Lucent (Fed. Cir. 2005)

Think of the children.

I don't understand why folks think this is so surprising:

The RIAA knew the Chan's computer did some downloading.
Momma waited until the last minute to claim it wasn't she who did the downloading.
Momma refused to take responsibility for her daughter.
Now the RIAA has to go after the daughter.

If they just drop the case, where does it end? If they don't smash this smartass momma and her kid, they might as well go out of business. Their job now is to make momma Chan rue the day she ever let her kid do this. The bit about the legal guardian has to do with momma Chan refusing to take responsibility for daughter Chan.

The world is full of folks like the momma who will try to screw over the RIAA. That's what Napster showed -- people want free music, and don't care about paying for it. So the RIAA has to get tough.

At least the RIAA didn't send in the cops and their own thugs to bust the family, and then have a pizza party in her livingroom, like they did recently at Kim's video -- this one is really out there:

http://newsgrist.typepad.com/underbelly/2005/06/ra id_on_mondo_k.html

My journal (http://yro.slashdot.org/~putko/journal/) has more on this topic; this one is a watershed event, as the RIAA is going after mixtapes -- the viral marketing method favored by "urban" musicians.

I think its funny all of these comments dissing on Finland when people know nothing about the country, i mean compared to the US finland is way better, have any of u been there? If not read some of these.. http://archives.cnn.com/2000/WORLD/europe/09/13/ge rmany.corruption/ -- CNN= Finland least corrupt http://wef.typepad.com/blog/2004/10/finland_most_c o.html -- Finland, worlds most competitive economy http://www.eubusiness.com/Finland/55691 --- Finland= Worlds most technologically advanced country yeah sure maybe this/some laws or whatever are stupid, but the US has plenty of those too,it doesnt mean the whole cuntry sucks just cause you don't agree with one thing.

Talk about self-defeating logic. You say it's not then lead into this next sentence:

"The mostly Arab fighters who inhabit the Iraqi battlefields use whatever Islamic mythology suits them at the moment, be it Mongol, Moorish, or Arab."

So which is it? They are culturally influenced or are they not? Secondly, what has this to do with combative methods and strategic thought? You have failed to elaborate about this mythology makes the bound from myth to combative action.

"Of the 50% of them who can read, I doubt they know who Sun Tzu is other than an infidel."

How does this refute my point? I said they were culturally influenced and they are. Look at the history. Much of the chinese classicists writings on warfare spread throughout the silk road from as far south as Indonesia and as far west as Turkey. Take a look at this map of the silk road. The methods of Middle Eastern fighting stem from Eastern fighting methods that had its roots in a mix of the Steepes people and ancient chinese strategists. For proof of this read up on Thomas X. Hammes, Van Creveld, Keegan , and most importantly Poole.

Oh, if you don't believe that middle eastern groups are not reading current strategy you are entirely mislead. Here is an up-to-date news article from a Kurdish website that analyzes Turkey's war against extremist groups and quotes the American strategist John Boyd Boyd. His material is based on a lot of Sun Tzu. It states that what Turkey is doing is what Boyd has suggested all along, which suggests that the cultural influence of Chinese military thought holds true.

"Furthermore, if what you say is true, then the 'insurgents's support base would be much larger. They would be winning after all."

How did you come to that conclusion? Do you know how large the insurgents support base is? There is suggestions that is up to 184,800. And that is just the Sunni insurgency and support base. That doesn't count the influence from the Iranians .

I'd say that in terms of evilness, Mao > Current Chinese Government >> America.

The American government, BTW, isn't holding it's own citizens in gitmo, just people who where a) foreign and b) captured in a war figthing out of uniform for the other side. Back in WWII, spies and saboteurs where routinely shot not just held in dubious conditions. Traitors too actually, which would cover anyone in gitmo with US citizenship if they fought for the wrong side. So gitmo is actually an improvement on WWII. That said, people probably got tortured there, which I can't condone.

But the Chinese government is holding and torturing thousands of people without any pretence of a legal process. It also doing it to it's own citizens purely for peaceful opposition, which the American one doesn't. I'd guess that if you're American, you're not in mortal danger for criticising the US gov your last post, which wouldn't be true if you were Chinese. Also, unlike in America, the orders for the repression are absolutely linked to the people in power - read the Tiananmen Papers if you're interested. Now some memo could pop up tomorrow linking Rumsfeld to torture of course, but if it did it would be covered by the media (unlike China), people would lose their jobs and/or go to jail (ditto) and the US government would end up apologising and paying compensation. So the two US and Chinese government aren't really comparable morally.

And in any case, the misdeeds of the American government in a war isn't really the point here. Democracies do some highly questionable things to their enemies in wars, but dictatorships need to do much worse to their citizens just to survive. And you need to keep in mind that the democracies conduct in recent wars is less questionable than in WWII, where Kabul&Baghdad would have been levelled to the ground, and the people in gitmo would have been summarily executed.

And this is not a 'my country right or wrong' patriotic thing btw, since America isn't my country. I just think it's important to realise that there are good guys and bad guys, even if the good guys are not exactly perfect.

Funny coincidence, too.

I've been poking through the websites of one of the band members

Oh noes! He works for the Mircosoft! You can't download the music now! (think about it -- Seattle band, guy got a CS degree, works for a "certain large software company" ...)

Well, I certainly wasn't expecting to see this pop up on Slashdot... I had actually downloaded this a couple of days ago since I already love the band's other two albums, but this isn't a massively new idea. I certainly won't begrudge them the publicity though.

But for those of you who'd like a geek tie-in, I've been poking through the websites of one of the band members and come across some interesting commentary about getting things set up on the technical side, from choosing a webserver to making sure the files are tagged properly.

While Liveplasma is certainly cool, they didn't build their own Ontology source . . . They used Amazon's Web Services. AWS blogged about it a while ago