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Correction: it wasn't 150 years ago, it was 220 years ago. His name was Giovanni Pomaroli. A popularized account of the research may be found here.

Good evening, MMcP. How's the drug therapy going? Your sordid tales are 20 times more entertaining than this slashdot story.

Well, in the case of your telco, it loooks better on the books not to have capital depreciating, so their move made economic sense, from a business finance perspective.

I have serious doubts about this article though. While they make the single valid point that it costs money to light up a network, there were and still are valid mechanisms for financing that activity. Most of the telcos that have gone under were in debt to the equipment manufacturers like Lucent, Ericson, and Nortel Networks. That is all bad debt now, which causes these manufacturers to cut costs by (among other things) reducing R&D expendatures. This means advances in the industry will not come as fast as they were, but they will still come eventually.

These manufacturers are still willing to finance the lighting of fiber networks, as needed, (in that such activity requires purchase of multiplexing equipment and switches, the sale of which these companies have financed for the past two decades).

When it comes down to it, the industry is returning to a pre-tech-bouble state, not dying completely. The determination of which companies will still be standing will be which are able to adapt quickly enough. Unfortunately, this is made more difficult with a Wall Street backlash against the telecom industry, but such things happen and will be overcome in time.

There will be no shortage because the market is capable of meeting demand. The required financing will become available because it is the only way the manufacturers will stay in business.

In closing, let me just say that I always get my technology news from McPaper because after all they're known for their technical expertise and research prowess.

--CTH

Bandwidth costs are not storing. There is a ton of left over bandwidth from the .COM bubble which is going unused

I'm assuming you meant "soaring", not "storing". It's funny you should make this comment because today's USA Today has an article that explains precisely why bandwidth charges will soon start to soar. Bandwidth left over from the .com era is in DARK fibre. And while the telecoms that bought all that fibre are going under, it costs **20 times as much** as the purchase price of all that fibre to actually light it up. Not to mention it takes 9 to 18 months to do it.

So while bandwidth needs will continuously climb at dramatic rates, no one is starting projects to actually light up all that fibre to meet 1q04 needs. The article compares dark fibre to seed that farmers buy. You can't compare seed in a silo to corn being sold in a supermarket.

Do you know that a single hurricane can cause destruction on a scale that makes even our biggest nuclear bombs look puny?

Such hogwash. Huricanne Camille killed 143 people on the coast and 113 people as it moved inland. Compare those fatalities to Hiroshima, which wasn't even a big nuclear bomb.

In any case, it is an absurd line of argument. The fact than an asteroid destroyed the dinosaurs is not a license to poison our environment.

Hey, this is no time to wimp out because nobody else has pitched in with a worthwhile product yet... you've got the first mover advantage as the dot-bomb people called it, similar to First Post here on Slashdot. Sure, you might get modded down, but it's exhilarating while it lasts, eh?

note: irony intended

News Flash!! The Presidential Election is NOT decided by the national popular vote and is irrelevant.

It's designed that way so that large population states won't have too much sway over the election. The Florida recounts were just about recounting the ballots over and over again until the Gore won. Funny, they didn't bother to recount the ballots in the Republican counties in Florida, the overseas military ballots, on top of the premature announcement that Gore won the state before polls closed in western Florida. The SCOTUS stopped it because it was clearly a scam where different standards were being used to try to maximize the number of Gore votes. Even the 'recounts' by newspapers after the election was finalized showed Bush won. Only the foaming at the mouth liberals kept on manipulating the counts until they got the result they wanted. Get over it. If you don't like it, vote in the next election.

Nice map

That's right: they (or rather, someone from their advertising agency) chalked "Peace, Love and Linux" all over Chicago and San Francisco. The artist got thirty days' community service, and IBM got fined ten thousand dollars. Here's the story Slashdot ran at the time.

Oh look, a republican spinmeister. Troll on, brother...

Anyone who does think for themselves can read about Enron here...

HINT: People believe your parrot-head antics more often when you learn to spell.

The military is going to hire Cobra Commander!

The tornados will find you. Trust me.

One smashed through the middle of downtown Fort Worth, Texas - right past a camera on top of a large office building *live* during the six o'clock news. See it here. I would just deploy a large number of cameras, and play anoymous coward during the storm.

Remember, Netscape Engineers Are Weenies, and won't have the guts to actually abuse this info.

Here is the story from today's USA TODAY. The IRS is disguising junk as "aid".
What a laugh. 1000 obsolete laptops and desktops.

If you look at Mars' atmosphere, you see a 50x higher concentration of carbondioxide compared to earth.

After an initial flurry of excitement, the original Miller-Urey experiments which produced some amino acids also highlighted a number of problems on the way along said road.

• The experiment was highly artifical, not at all a good representation of putative early Earth conditions
  
• despite this, we would expect some amino acids to form anyway, due to the chemical potentials involved (there is a dip in the road to life, into which some chemical processes will roll with very little pursuasion)
  
• the dip in potential has another side, and that looks kind of like the roads you see in some cartoons, which lead up to the base of a cliff, then trundle straight on up the face of it; what this means in real terms is that not only do some simple atoms/molecules find it relatively easy to become amino acids, but also more complicated molecules find it much easier to relapse to aminoness and it's very unlikely that aminos will self-assemble into anything much more complicated
  
• the acids formed were racemised, that is, about half of them were twisted the wrong way; with one exception, amino acids in living beings are twisted left-handed (are said to have left-handed chirality)
  
• the putative primitive conditions also destroy even the simple amino acids formed by the experiment very quickly
  
• the early conditions involve a heck of a lot of chemicals unlikely to exist in useful amounts on Mars
  
• for that matter, there is much evidence that Earth did not have a reducing atmosphere like the one used in the experiment, or at least did not have one for very long.
  

I think it's more important that the presence of water enables us to create colonies on Mars in the near future

Sun's problem is that they want to be a big monopoly like Microsoft...

I really don't think so.

1) Scott McNealy has said so.

2) Sun uses many open standards in its treasured hardware business (SPARC, SBus, PCI, etc.) and its software business (UNIX, POSIX, etc.).

In general, Sun tries to compete on its implementation of standards with value-added things, such as excellent hardware features and reliability, support services, etc.

I guess this IPO won't do that well in Louisiana, where that state's banking regulators have deemed it an unlicensed banking operation.

Monday's filing conceded that the company's regulatory problems in Louisiana might not be isolated. New York has also indicated the company is operating an unlicensed banking operation. Other states that have indicated a need for licensing include Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Massachusetts, Maryland, Texas, Virginia and Vermont.

It seems the article in USA Today features this computing "brick" but is furthering the tradition of confusing the layman by publishing information that is inaccurate. On the web version of the paper the MetaPad has "10 gigabytes of storage" instead of 10 gigaBITS. The published version is even more fun claiming that the MetaPad has an astonishing 10 MEGABYTES! OOPS!

Hate to break it to you, folks, but this is already being done. It's called the Gaydar.

No, this is not a troll, and this is not a joke. Check the link.

--SC

Product placement in games

Placing Product Before Art

Since the iCEBOX link is Slashdotted, you can go here instead. You can order the iCEBOX from this page for $3,500.00.

iCEBOX Flipscreen
A complement to any contemporary kitchen, the iCEBOX is the first web-enabled entertainment center designed specifically for the kitchen. This sleek new space-efficient device combines cable-ready television, DVD and Audio CD Player, Internet access and household monitoring - all delivered to you seamlessly and with push-button simplicity. the iCEBOX also comes equipped with a waterproof, wireless keyboard and remote. The perfect union of elegance and innovation, the iCEBOX fits conveniently under a kitchen cabinet and features an adjustable LCD monitor that flips up and out of the way when not in use. Finally, an appliance that recognizes you do more in the kitchen than cook.

Screen Size: 12.1" LCD TFT
Resolution: 800 x 600
Aspect: 4:3
Contrast: 400:1
Weight: 40lbs.
Dimensions: 23.54" x 11.8" x 3.8"
Power: 110Vac, 60 Hz, 230Vac, 50Hz
Ships in two business days
CMI-ICEBOX-000
$3,500.00

There is a news article at USA Today.
Another article on Cnet
And there is the press release here.

Long before internet gaming, serious RPG addicts were paying real cash for things that didn't exist even on hard drive somewhere in Texas. Giant gaming cons would see people offering cash under the table for other members of their gaming group to have their character/s give them weapons, etc. Since you could also leave a sort of will in many cases, there was often deals of the "buy me lunch and I'll leave my mace of +4 against zombies to you when I die."

This came of age with the net, of course. Ebay finally had to ban (or just regulate?) the sale of virtual property after several Ultima-related fiascoes caused bad publicity. Katz wrote about before that here: 'Ebay launches virtual property' and there was quite a bit of mainstream coverage of this.

While looking for that coverage I found this essay on Gaming Culture that mentions Ebay. Also a mention on USA Today. Apparently the selling violated the games' terms of use.

Saludos, Mig
(Karma for sale)

No, many European countries would be freer.

Name one.

Sodomy laws are pretty damned personally invasive, if you ask me.

Sodomy laws are rarely enforced where they still exist. I would bet they are the least enforced laws on the books.

If what you are referring to by sodomy laws is discrimination against Gays, the U.S. has come a long way in a short time in the area of Gay rights. There is a growing acceptance of benefits for same sex partners. There are many outspoken, respected proponents of Gay rights and a number of openly Gay elected officials.

More importantly, I doubt if most Gay people would judge the U.S. solely by discrimination against Gays. As important as sexual preference is, Gays, like people in general, have other, larger concerns than their sexual preferences. It is in those other, larger concerns, the ones in the Bill of Rights, where America has no equal.

Gays served with distinction in America's wars and though they faced discrimination, they knew what they were fighting for.

Programmers have so far been insulated from most layoffs and foreign competition.

What freaking planet do you live on? You might want to pull your head out of the sand and check out the job market and the nonesense going on over H-1B visas after 9-11.

Or maybe that 2-1 stock split in the summer of 2000 accounts for part of the reason Apple stock is worth (admittably a little less than) half of what is was?

It looks like a large stake of the worlds herion supply is getting destroyed.
At least according to:
http://www.usatoday.com/news/attack/2002/01/14/200 2-01-14-heroin.htm
I hope their security doesn't go down when he has to enter rehab.

Yahoo is as bad as AOL....can you say LAME?

If I want to read the news I usually go to CNN...or USATODAY...

If I want to search...I've been going to Google...

I like Googles simple yet effective fast loading site, w/out all of those damn banner ads, and other advertisments that litter other search engine sites...

Just my 2 cents...

When the polar ice caps melt, the ocean level does not rise. Why? because as ice they displace the same amount of space as they would if they were water. It is achimedes' principle.

Oft stated, but actually wrong (even ignoring the fact that some polar ice is on land). When the ice melts it melts for a reason - the sea has warmed up. And when the sea warms it will expand. See this Nature Abstract or even from USA Today

Despite early reports to the contrary, the major antivirus companies came out saying they did not intend to intentionally leave any loopholes for the FBI.

http://www.usatoday.com/life/cyber/tech/2001/12/11 /fbi-virus.htm

Personally, I don't think this is much bigger than mail fraud. IMHO, Rather than criminalize sending unsolicited email, I would criminalize sending spam without an ADV: prefix or ADV ADULT: prefix.

This would effectively give them the freedom to send as much unsolicited junk to people who want it, and let us who don't want it to filter it out.

As far as regulating technology goes, I think there's bigger fish to fry. Here's some examples of how the FCC helps the communication monopolies keep thier monopolies...

UWB technology gets stuck in red tape

Roll your own DSL

My point: Communications and tech have been regulated for YEARS. So while you're pondering if criminalizing spam MAY set a bad precident, existing technology and communication monopolies are doing everything to criminalize and patent truely liberating technology (Ultra-Wide-Band) (DSL without the telcos): (That is before they figure out how to use it for thier own advantage)

...and that's just one very small facit of the problem...

Russ Cooper, who moderates a popular security mailing list and works for security firm TruSecure, said Conover's actions are irresponsible. "I think it's better to provide details of the exploit and then let other people write the actual code," Cooper said. "Unfortunately, these are fundamentally naive people with a very childish view of the world."

Hmm. Anyone else sense a little hostility from the for-profit security industry...?

Also a major threat in XP is it's centralization of everybody's ID data via the obligatory Microsoft Passport, as detailed in this morning's USA TODAY...

AOL has been screwed since day one. They have painted themselves into a very colorful corner and can't get out. Think about this: They're whole business is based on software that is tied to their executioner - Microsoft.

They never learn! You sleep with Microsoft, you get burned. For example: Spyglass, Sybase, Novell, Citrix, Norton, and now probably AOL. Norton is still around but...

How many of you remember these days?

I don't know why video game companies think they can go off and make a movie becuase they produced some cut scenes for their last title, in the same way I don't know why Hollywood thinks they can produce video games. These two things, despite sharing characteristics such as motion and sound are completely different.

Why video game companies are willing to risk large sums on a traditionally low yield business (movie making) when their own video game market is already larger than the revenue stream for movies.

The Final Fantasy movie was pretty bad. It had great hair and lighting effects, true, but who gives a rats ass when the story lopes along and the characters are 2 dimensional and sterile. Hollywood is already very good at delivering this type of garbage, I wouldn't recommend trying to compete.

> Bush was at least honest enough to question the
> justification for the case during the campaign,
> while Gore dodged the question every time it was
> raised.

So you're actually crediting GWB with being paid off by Microsoft and staying bought? I guess that is "honest" is a weird sort of way.

And, yes I do think Gore would have had a different position on this issue. Despite what you say, Gore did not "dodge the issue" every time it was raised. On the contrary, Gore told Microsoft employees during direct questioning that he believed anti-trust laws were applicable to the software industry. From a USA Today article:

Gore told the employees that "I respect your feelings." But he also said antitrust laws must be enforced when competition is unfairly stifled.

The views in the article are old fashioned to me. They take for granted that there has to be division. I for one, refer to the 2 movements as one: Open Source/Free Software - I don't want to divide them, specifically, because they are 2 movements with similar goals, OS for the commercial/popular side, and FS for the philosophy. I believe they only have a chance of long term existence if we treasure both as separate but meaningful means to change the way we think about software.

We need unity, and if you can stretch your hearts, not only between these 2 factions, also with the much hated microsoft, even though I myself find it hard to think and write such a thing.

If you ask bill gates ( for example, in this recent interview) what motivates him, he says it's because he wants a computer in every home, because he wants things to be simple to use, he wants to be involved. It's a good vision, even though he's distorted in the way he carries it out.

That's why we need unity. How memorable would it be if a person like Gates turned around and said he was wrong, and he was sorry for his limited vision on the impact of his efforts on society, that now he saw how important the method was as well as the aim.

And same for this guy in this article: Seems to me he also is attached too much to the end product than the process. The process is what we will be living through for the rest of our lives. The end product is just a party one evening. Why don't we concentrate on improving the process of getting to our different software utopias? Utopia will always be 5 steps away, that's what utopia is there for in the first place - to move you forward.

For example, computers may well be doing the kind of hard labour that clerks and secretaries used to do, but you can't predict the entire universe: that's rationalism, and that's what the great belivers in Taylor and Ford used to believe in. Better to believe that in a social environment, the best solution comes from your interaction with that environment: Social constructionism puts for the point of view that reality is constructed through our interactions, not through planning it out beforehand. Look at the work of agile methodologists for example: make small changes in increments and you have a chance to see if that's really the best way forward. Utopian visions of societies are flawed already: it might be perfect is everyone was a communist, or if everyone was a capitalist, but the reality is most people are somewhere in between(or nowhere near either), and so is reality!

But we all want to do good and change the way things are, why can't we work together and use dialogue to build our future instead of wasting time fighting between each other?

First of all, it's hard to post at all because Willow is on and it's hard to divert my attention.

Concerning Terminator 3, my griend Google me that Linda Hamilton will not be returning, Eddie Furlong will be playing John Conner, is titled Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, could possible star Chyna (WWF), will not be directed by James Cameron, up untill this past June there were talks that Ed Norton would be playing John Conner, and NoChickTrix will not be featured but is deffinatly worth checking out.

Surely you don't think that video over a mobile phone is being pushed merely to watch movies.

Please!!

The reason for video over a phone is simply to improve communication (oh and of course to show you advertisements so the companies can make more money ;). With "video phones" another dimension will be added to distance impaired personal communications. Actually seeing the person you are talking to (their facial expressions) is what makes face-to-face communication so desireable, but when that is not possible, video-phones will be the next best thing.

I work for a broadband provider and one of the big products being developed is video conferencing over an IP/VPN. People want to see the people they are talking to. It's the next logical step after standard voice communications.

Check out this article at USAToday. See the small picture. There is a small video camera in the hinge of the phone. This is what video phones will/should be used for. Not movies.

Surely you don't think that video over a mobile phone is being pushed merely to watch movies.

Please!!

The reason for video over a phone is simply to improve communication (oh and of course to show you advertisements so the companies can make more money ;). With "video phones" another dimension will be added to distance impaired personal communications. Actually seeing the person you are talking to (their facial expressions) is what makes face-to-face communication so desireable, but when that is not possible, video-phones will be the next best thing.

I work for a broadband provider and one of the big products being developed is video conferencing over an IP/VPN. People want to see the people they are talking to. It's the next logical step after standard voice communications.

Check out this article at USAToday. See the small picture. There is a small video camera in the hinge of the phone. This is what video phones will/should be used for. Not movies.

The site seems to be slashdotted, but I found a few other stories on it, and this one has a small picture of the device in question.

Enjoy

--

CNET

--MB

Hooray! I love to see more stuff getting written for the Mac. I am looking forward to the release of Magic Lantern for Mac OS X. In fact, I'll probably write some letters to the FBI demanding Mac OS X support in Magic Lantern.

I really doubt that any of these speculative predictions of yours will actually come to pass.

* They will find a way to make it work in every consumer OS.

* They will find some other way to acheive the same thing with other OSs.


These are basically the same prediction. With Microsoft's 95% domination of the desktop OS market, there's really no need for the FBI to code this thing for Amiga, BeOS, Mac OS 9 & X, Palm, SuSE, MkLinux, Red Hat, Mandrake, Yellow Dog, NetBSD, OpenBSD, and the list goes on with similar obscurities. The mass majority of criminals are going to use the OS used by the mass majority of consumers.

If this changes and terrorists / criminals wise-up to Magic Lantern and circumvent it by purchasing (or stealing) Titanium Powerbooks, then that would make Mac OS X the "criminal's choice" in OS's... hmmm. Sort of gives a new category to add in the Think Different campaign.

* They will outlaw the use of an OS that can be used to evade law enforcement.

Wow. I wonder how much Microsoft stock j. Aschcroft owns. First the slap on the wrist settlement and now the FBI is going to mandate Windows use nationwide because they can't port their trojan to all the obscure minority OS's.

You can be sure that this would NEVER happen. There are all kinds of technologies legally available in the US that thwart surveillance by law enforcement. Cell Phone Encryption, Bug Detectors, or how about plain-old PGP?

My point here is that the FBI would find Magic Lantern totally succeful if it works only on the OS used by 95% of the US population. I really can't imagine Aschcroft getting all huffy in a meeting because there are 5% of all computer users who aren't susceptible to this. There's going to be a MUCH larger percentage of Windows users who simply won't get infected with the thing in the first place.

although someone needs to beat the engineer that though not using a standard dvd was a good idea over the head with several SNES machines. what moron in engineering or management thought it was a good idea to not have a feature that everyone else has?

Forget about DVDs.

1. Nintendo isn't Sony -- they have nothing to gain by sneaking a DVD player into every kid's bedroom.
2. Nintendo is going to be the last of the console makers to worry about game piracy, because their format is nonstandard.
3. Their system is $100 cheaper off the bat, which is a plus for savings-minded parents in this economy.
4. Most people who can plunk down $200 on a next-gen console can probably plunk down $150 on a decent DVD player that fits on their stereo rack and isn't bright purple (and have already).
5. Sony's DVD implementation on PS2 wasn't even that great, my friend's "X-Men" didn't even play on it. For all their other problems, Nintendo hardware tends to be very good quality.

my first notice was the fact that the local stores still have Xboxes on the shelves.. funny, you couldnt get a PS2 for months after release, yet I could liesurely buy an Xbox.... anyone else notice this? or is it region specific?

I hope that Microsoft learned from Sony's mistake, in not providing enough units to satisfy initial demand. I know that I would have bought one the day it came out if I could have. Now I'm glad that they weren't readily available for months, because I've decided to wait and see how the other next-gen offerings will be. That's $300 that they haven't gotten from me yet.

Text:
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20011112/ts/plane_ crash_dc_1.html
http://www.cnn.com/2001/US/11/12/newyork.crash/ind ex.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/12/nyregion/12WIRE- PLANE.html
http://www.usatoday.com/hlead.htm
http://www.reuters.com/news_article.jhtml;jsession id=GX1YUYCNLN1WQCRBAE0CFFAKEEATGIWD?type=topnews&S toryID=365206
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A147 84-2001Nov12.html
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,38565,00.html
http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/wire/sns-a p-plane-crash1112nov12.story?coll=sns%2Dap%2Dnatio nworld%2Dheadlines

Video:
http://www.abcnews.go.com/sections/us/popoff/Daily News/STREAM1_video_popoff/index.html

...they're all getting sued. By whom? Guess who.

They've hired a power lawyer to get more for all their trouble. We can expect them to contest this settlement, in it's current form, I think.

It ain't over 'til it's over.

Microsoft should not be blamed if this is a hardware issue, especially overheating.
Microsoft may have designed the initial machines and the software, but it's Flextronics that manufactures them.
Also, I wonder if this is related to the Delays they were denying?

Check out http://www.usatoday.com/news/gallery/terr1010/indo n.jpg

The caption on the USATODAY.COM site said " Muslims in front of the parliament in Jakarta, Indonesia, demand that their government break diplomatic ties with the United States. (By Tatan Syuflana, AP)"

Look at the woman in the front on the right of the picture. She has an interesting scarf. It is a Mickey Mouse scarf. Yet she's participating in a protest against the US. And I think Walt Disney was Jewish. Is that funny or what?!!!

Well, since at least some security poeple seem to have less sense then Yogi and Boo Boo, maybe Ranger Smith woulodn't be so bad...

You could also say that the US citizens are worried about penalysing one of the most successful US companies.

... the likes of bin Laden hide messages in scans of Miss July (http://www.usatoday.com/life/cyber/tech/2001-02-0 5-binladen.htm)

The headline for the article screams "Terror groups hide behind Web encryption." But the best they can do in the body is
"Hidden in the X-rated pictures on several pornographic Web sites and the posted comments on sports chat rooms may lie the encrypted blueprints of the next terrorist attack against the United States or its allies."

This is followed by a bunch of outrageous speculation, all attributed to "U.S. and foreign officials", "U.S. officials", and the mysterious "officials".

What the fuck has happened to reporters and journalism?