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This is probably a good place to mention the No Evil Robots campaign...

And for a glimpse, if somewhat longwinded, of what lengths DARPA will go to to make this happen, check out this article: http://villagevoice.com/news/0337,baard,46901,1.ht ml

To me, the murder of children -- wherever it occurs -- secures a higher priority of national concern than some dog yapping at the feet a naked terrorist.

So we have not only a straw man going on, but also a falsehood. Saying the murder of children is a higher priority is a distraction. Why bring up that it's not a "high priority" and then proceed to argue about it?

And how about the fact that these "naked terrorists" are mostly innocent civillians (according to ICRC) ? Would you feel different if it was your son or father this happened to?
And you are ignoring the fact that a lot worse was done that "dog yapping at the feet". Inmates of Abu Grhaib have been murdered and raped.

http://www.villagevoice.com/blogs/stripclub/

Another textbook example of hypocrisy. RNC Delegates openly going to strip clubs, looking for extra 'favors'. Are these the same Republicans who are trying to close pr0n shops and strip clubs in their home states?

You obviously have not heard of Republican Jesus.

Hell, maybe one day we'll have a pill that eliminates compassion. (pops pill) Ahhh, fuck 'em.

Protesters have been using laser-projected slogans on the mountains around Davos many years ago in Switzerland.

OK, I'm being trolled, but...

People get arrested ONLY for speaking their mind more often than you think. Police will make up a crime - I've seen it done many times, and had it happen to me once - you can read about it here if you feel like it.

Of course, you're breaking a law at almost any time. It's more common to arrest someone for breaking a law that many other people are breaking, the only difference being that the arrested person spoke their mind against the current Administration.

I step off the sidewalk to walk around people every time I walk down Canal Street in Manhattan, as do the cops. However, people who have more of a history of speaking their mind get arrested for the same act - I read an article here about this just today.

So I don't find your criticism credible. I wouldn't bother posting, except you seem like someone logical who's drawn a conclusion based on incomplete information, and I wouldn't want others to do the same.

For those of you unfamiliar with the Bush version 1.0/ Dukakis matchup in 1988, the Republicans made very good negative attack ad use of the case of Willie Horton, a first degree murderer on a weekend furlough program in Massachusetts endorsed by Dukakis. Horton, surprise and shock and awe, became a recidivist violent criminal on his furlough.

Since he's trailing Bush version 2.0 right now, what Kerry needs is a good Willie Horton type attack ad.

Bin Laden anyone?

The Democrats need the balls to launch a full force negative press assault on Bush. The popularity of Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11 prove that the public is receptive to serious Bush-bashing. Not wishy washy peripheral attacks and sniffing around the perimeter that Kerry seems married to right now, but a dead on hurricane force teeth gnashing polemic. Especially dismaying in Moore's movie is the revelation that Bush let the Bin Laden family fly out of the country in the days after 9/11/2001, when noone else was allowed to fly anywhere. Clearly a case of allegiance to big oil being more important than allegiance to the American public if there ever was one.

This revelation played well in theatres in Middle America, even in communities near military bases. Hello Kerry campaign: anyone listening? The Democrats need to grow a backbone and start pounding away at Bush where he is weakest.

So let us hope the Democrats find the cojones to attack Bush full force and head on in an attack ad blitz in October, Willie Horton style, or unfortunately for Americans (and the rest of the world for that matter), it's four more years of the drunken frat boy in big oil's pocket in the White House for us all. ;-(

So for the left it's like-minded, for the right it's cross party (often via bribery).

Your post is well-intentioned, but ill-informed - I'm sorry you're so willing to state "these people were not arrested for political reasons" as fact.

First, let me state where I'm coming from. I was arrested at the Critical Mass bike ride on Friday night, and spent most of Saturday in a cell diagonally across from Josh Kinsberg. I am an active EMT (and sysadmin) here in NYC, and was present to provide medical support, not to break laws.

#1 - The arrest was for a violation - that's not even a misdemeanor. It's like getting a jaywalking or speeding ticket. People are almost NEVER arrested for violations in NYC - they receive a summons, they're not handcuffed and thrown in jail.

#2 - On 8/28/04, at 10:10AM, at Pier 57 in NYC (temporary holding cells for arrestees this weekend), Patrol Officer Hugo Dominguez said to an arrestee words to the effect that arresting for a violation was highly unusual, but "some people, not myself" thought it was a good way to keep protestors off of the streets for a few days. Giving different punishments based on someone's political beliefs is not only immoral but illegal - see here
for info on the NYPD settling a similar lawsuit out of court a few years ago.

#3 - Critical Mass takes place in the exact same way every month in NYC, and has for three years. The police have wished me a happy ride in the past. Our behavior was no different, but this time over 150 people were arrested. This, along with numerous statements by the police (the item above was only one example) indicated that arrests this weekend were political in nature.

#3 - It's quite common for the police to arrest people during protests without regard to whether they've broken the law or not. Take a look at any major protest (25000+ people) that had arrests in the past few years - the conviction rates are incredibly low, even accounting for people pleading guilty to minor charges in exchange for time served. During this weekend, people were arrested for walking to their home on the same block as a protest.

In short, people ARE arrested for political reasons and not for breaking the law, and even they ARE breaking a minor law for political reasons (such as jaywalking, or drawing in chalk on the street), they are arrested even when someone else arrested for the same crime would get a summons.

Folks who have questions, trolls, etc. about my arrest situation can reply to this post.

I'm so relieved that even though I live in an era with constant threats such as domestic terrorism, senatorial flight risks, the patriot act, the induce act, and non-Christian "citizens" running amok, that Pope Ashcroft can see through the unholy mess and guide our nation in the direction it needs. "Need not you worry", he said to his congregation of corporate leaders and wealthy elite, "For I, a federal chair, shall perform all of your duties in this civil matter." Praise Jesus that in these treacherous times a man of a singular holy vision shall unite American corporations with its 228 year old government to make the most self-righteous, most capitalistic, most federally pervasive and invasive political embodiment in all of recorded human history.

For more interesting reading on Ashcroft and his fight for the status-quo and his battles against individuality, please visit the following links:
BBC Profile
Rotten.com
Eldred v. Ashcroft
Extreme Ashcroft
Ashcroft's Detention Camps
Some guys blog

Bah. As the Aliens vs Predator trailer says: Whoever wins, we lose...

Damn. When I saw that, I thought of this.

Since you seem genuinely interested, here's an article that illustrates the kind of worries people have about Bush and his religion:
bush and the rapture

For my part, I think a guy who sees events in the middle east through a biblical filter is very likely to come to some bad conclusions.

And then there are scary things like this

"It's the morning-after pill for just about anything that produces regret, remorse, pain, or guilt," says Dr. Leon Kass, chairman of the President's Council on Bioethics, who emphasizes that he's speaking as an individual and not on behalf of the council. Barry Romo, a national coordinator for Vietnam Veterans Against the War, is even more blunt. "That's the devil pill," he says. "That's the monster pill, the anti-morality pill. That's the pill that can make men and women do anything and think they can get away with it. Even if it doesn't work, what's scary is that a young soldier could believe it will."

Are we ready for the infamous Nuremberg plea?"I was just following orders"?to be made easier with pharmaceuticals? Though the research so far has been limited to animals and the most preliminary of human trials, the question is worth debating now.

"If you have the pill, it certainly increases the temptation for the soldier to lower the standard for taking lethal action, if he thinks he'll be numbed to the personal risk of consequences. We don't want soldiers saying willy-nilly, 'Screw it. I can take my pill and even if doing this is not really warranted, I'll be OK,' " says psychiatrist Edmund G. Howe, director of the Program on Medical Ethics at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences. "If soldiers are going to have that lower threshold, we might have to build in even stronger safeguards than we have right now against, say, blowing away human shields. We'll need a higher standard of proof [that an action is justified]."

As it seems your antagonists are possibly African American, a somewhat ontopic issue that I just ran across in searching is that Bill Cosby has been harshly criticizing black youth for their street behavior. (A washington post article is here: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A245 94-2004Jul2.html, but I don't know how to do the google partner thing. The google search is here.)

Here are some links for you to look at:

Murder

Rape

Sodomy

I'll second that last sentiment.

Meanwhile, here's something to start you off if you haven't read the book. hell, google bomb:

• ashcroft christian
• john ashcroft
• control the masses
• cult-like
• faith-based initiative
• fundementalist charity

This is a major power grab, going on. C'mon, people, pay attention, now. This is not about who is bigoted against whose religious beliefs. There is a very real danger with these plans. They aim to own the lower classes in just the same way that the, eg. maddras'(sp?) in Pakistan do.

I was just saying to my gf that the lie-ing-in-state that's been all over the tube is maybe a good thing right now. Respectfully, i think Reagan couldn't have chosen a better time. What, with it being all cowboys, b&w, baseball, and wwII (was that, like, before netscape 3?) i'm hoping that many will be thinking about just why they voted for the guy in the first place. Say what you want, but George W. Bush is no gipper. I didn't vote for either of them - and wouldn't have - but i know a lot of people did.

Give me James Watt* to be worried about any day. These guys are way too fucking scary.

* first Secretary of the Interior under Reagan; felt that we might as well mine and strip the parks because the apocalypse was upon us, anyway. What a sorry, fucking state.

I'll second that last sentiment.

Meanwhile, here's something to start you off if you haven't read the book. hell, google bomb:

• ashcroft christian
• john ashcroft
• control the masses
• cult-like
• faith-based initiative
• fundementalist charity

This is a major power grab, going on. C'mon, people, pay attention, now. This is not about who is bigoted against whose religious beliefs. There is a very real danger with these plans. They aim to own the lower classes in just the same way that the, eg. maddras'(sp?) in Pakistan do.

I was just saying to my gf that the lie-ing-in-state that's been all over the tube is maybe a good thing right now. Respectfully, i think Reagan couldn't have chosen a better time. What, with it being all cowboys, b&w, baseball, and wwII (was that, like, before netscape 3?) i'm hoping that many will be thinking about just why they voted for the guy in the first place. Say what you want, but George W. Bush is no gipper. I didn't vote for either of them - and wouldn't have - but i know a lot of people did.

Give me James Watt* to be worried about any day. These guys are way too fucking scary.

* first Secretary of the Interior under Reagan; felt that we might as well mine and strip the parks because the apocalypse was upon us, anyway. What a sorry, fucking state.

I'll second that last sentiment.

Meanwhile, here's something to start you off if you haven't read the book. hell, google bomb:

• ashcroft christian
• john ashcroft
• control the masses
• cult-like
• faith-based initiative
• fundementalist charity

This is a major power grab, going on. C'mon, people, pay attention, now. This is not about who is bigoted against whose religious beliefs. There is a very real danger with these plans. They aim to own the lower classes in just the same way that the, eg. maddras'(sp?) in Pakistan do.

I was just saying to my gf that the lie-ing-in-state that's been all over the tube is maybe a good thing right now. Respectfully, i think Reagan couldn't have chosen a better time. What, with it being all cowboys, b&w, baseball, and wwII (was that, like, before netscape 3?) i'm hoping that many will be thinking about just why they voted for the guy in the first place. Say what you want, but George W. Bush is no gipper. I didn't vote for either of them - and wouldn't have - but i know a lot of people did.

Give me James Watt* to be worried about any day. These guys are way too fucking scary.

* first Secretary of the Interior under Reagan; felt that we might as well mine and strip the parks because the apocalypse was upon us, anyway. What a sorry, fucking state.

I'll second that last sentiment.

Meanwhile, here's something to start you off if you haven't read the book. hell, google bomb:

• ashcroft christian
• john ashcroft
• control the masses
• cult-like
• faith-based initiative
• fundementalist charity

This is a major power grab, going on. C'mon, people, pay attention, now. This is not about who is bigoted against whose religious beliefs. There is a very real danger with these plans. They aim to own the lower classes in just the same way that the, eg. maddras'(sp?) in Pakistan do.

I was just saying to my gf that the lie-ing-in-state that's been all over the tube is maybe a good thing right now. Respectfully, i think Reagan couldn't have chosen a better time. What, with it being all cowboys, b&w, baseball, and wwII (was that, like, before netscape 3?) i'm hoping that many will be thinking about just why they voted for the guy in the first place. Say what you want, but George W. Bush is no gipper. I didn't vote for either of them - and wouldn't have - but i know a lot of people did.

Give me James Watt* to be worried about any day. These guys are way too fucking scary.

* first Secretary of the Interior under Reagan; felt that we might as well mine and strip the parks because the apocalypse was upon us, anyway. What a sorry, fucking state.

I'll second that last sentiment.

Meanwhile, here's something to start you off if you haven't read the book. hell, google bomb:

• ashcroft christian
• john ashcroft
• control the masses
• cult-like
• faith-based initiative
• fundementalist charity

This is a major power grab, going on. C'mon, people, pay attention, now. This is not about who is bigoted against whose religious beliefs. There is a very real danger with these plans. They aim to own the lower classes in just the same way that the, eg. maddras'(sp?) in Pakistan do.

I was just saying to my gf that the lie-ing-in-state that's been all over the tube is maybe a good thing right now. Respectfully, i think Reagan couldn't have chosen a better time. What, with it being all cowboys, b&w, baseball, and wwII (was that, like, before netscape 3?) i'm hoping that many will be thinking about just why they voted for the guy in the first place. Say what you want, but George W. Bush is no gipper. I didn't vote for either of them - and wouldn't have - but i know a lot of people did.

Give me James Watt* to be worried about any day. These guys are way too fucking scary.

* first Secretary of the Interior under Reagan; felt that we might as well mine and strip the parks because the apocalypse was upon us, anyway. What a sorry, fucking state.

I'll second that last sentiment.

Meanwhile, here's something to start you off if you haven't read the book. hell, google bomb:

• ashcroft christian
• john ashcroft
• control the masses
• cult-like
• faith-based initiative
• fundementalist charity

This is a major power grab, going on. C'mon, people, pay attention, now. This is not about who is bigoted against whose religious beliefs. There is a very real danger with these plans. They aim to own the lower classes in just the same way that the, eg. maddras'(sp?) in Pakistan do.

I was just saying to my gf that the lie-ing-in-state that's been all over the tube is maybe a good thing right now. Respectfully, i think Reagan couldn't have chosen a better time. What, with it being all cowboys, b&w, baseball, and wwII (was that, like, before netscape 3?) i'm hoping that many will be thinking about just why they voted for the guy in the first place. Say what you want, but George W. Bush is no gipper. I didn't vote for either of them - and wouldn't have - but i know a lot of people did.

Give me James Watt* to be worried about any day. These guys are way too fucking scary.

* first Secretary of the Interior under Reagan; felt that we might as well mine and strip the parks because the apocalypse was upon us, anyway. What a sorry, fucking state.

I'll second that last sentiment.

Meanwhile, here's something to start you off if you haven't read the book. hell, google bomb:

• ashcroft christian
• john ashcroft
• control the masses
• cult-like
• faith-based initiative
• fundementalist charity

This is a major power grab, going on. C'mon, people, pay attention, now. This is not about who is bigoted against whose religious beliefs. There is a very real danger with these plans. They aim to own the lower classes in just the same way that the, eg. maddras'(sp?) in Pakistan do.

I was just saying to my gf that the lie-ing-in-state that's been all over the tube is maybe a good thing right now. Respectfully, i think Reagan couldn't have chosen a better time. What, with it being all cowboys, b&w, baseball, and wwII (was that, like, before netscape 3?) i'm hoping that many will be thinking about just why they voted for the guy in the first place. Say what you want, but George W. Bush is no gipper. I didn't vote for either of them - and wouldn't have - but i know a lot of people did.

Give me James Watt* to be worried about any day. These guys are way too fucking scary.

* first Secretary of the Interior under Reagan; felt that we might as well mine and strip the parks because the apocalypse was upon us, anyway. What a sorry, fucking state.

Again, intent is not an issue.

Right. No matter what you intended, if you wind up hurting someone, you must be punished.

When you break the law, you've _broken_ the law.

That's a circular argument. ("When you gimble in the wabe, you've _gimbled_ in the wabe.") Just because something is illegal doesn't make it wrong. Or even better: just because something is a law doesn't make it right.

I wasn't talking about what the law IS, but what it SHOULD BE. No laws are perfect- to judge a law, you must take a close look at what the alternatives are, and what each option leads to.

The Slate article looked at what would happen if the punishment for vermiscriptors was greatly increased. I argued that it's analysis was wrong, and offered as an alternative the natural result of what would happen if the punishment is greatly decreased.

The current law of strict punishment for virus authors who get caught is counterproductive in the long run. It will scare a lot of teenagers away from messing with computer networks- but it will also enable the software industry to continue installing insecure protocols, paving the way for major disasters when cyberterrorists start attacking from rogue states. The only defense against those attacks will be to already be using secure software.

If you want to dispute my position, then answer this small question:
If the punishment for intentional release of a worm or virus is reduced to a $500 fine, will that increase or decrease the public's willingness to buy vulnerable software?

A "prankster" who destroys your mailbox with a baseball bat as he's hanging out the window

Inapplicable, for three reasons.
(1) When you rebuild your mailbox after that attack, will you do it differently from the first time? Probably not- the replacement box will be about like the old one. But in the aftermath of a worm rampage, nobody reinstalls the old vulnerable software anymore. From then on, they only accept solutions that are totally immune to the last attack.

(2) Smashing your mailbox was a physical attack. A physical attack can only be accomplished by someone nearby, meaning a physical defense (policemen aiming guns at him) may work well. But a worm/virus is not a physical attack, but a cybernetic one. The offender has no need to come within range of arrest to do his damage. Therefore you can't rely on the police to protect you- you've got to plug the vulnerability yourself.

(3) When a mailbox is smashed, nobody is really surprised that it was possible. That's a change from the example I used, where the vandals snuck into a corporate boardroom to do their damage- that's someplace that if the security guards were doing their jobs, never would've happened at all. It shows that security which was SUPPOSED to be working was really nonexistent. And it means that the random, irritating attack revealed an exploit that could've been used for something truely destructive (bug secret negotiations for the next 6 months and ride the stock price)

But it was in a lot of cases structured as a mentor/tutor older man/younger man relationship - not just any two guys goin' at it. While I agree that the Greeks had a much more open mind about homosexuality, and that we as a society should be much more accepting of sexual minorities, I'm hesitant to cling to the Greeks as a perfect model of sexual equality. In most cities, women weren't even citizens.

And, yeah, fuckin' church, man. ;) Speaking of church and state intersections, dig this. Yeesh.

Or should we just play it safe due to the likelyhood of potential legal wranglings with large commercial interests and start calling it The Symantec Web before the boys in charge decide to open up a keg on your hippy ass!!! I'm sure El Capitan would be none too pleased, but hey! You certainly can't please everybody! These are the times we're living in!

Amazing how easy it is to feell like a gray haired grumpy old man at 35 when it comes to the web! eeehhh...when I was a kid, we had 4 KAAAAY of CORE MEMORY...1 MHz and NO SHOES! and we LIKED IT!!!

You knew it was true. Somebody leaked some memos to the Village Voice. The response from the accused? "You aren't supposed to have those!" Yup.

It's been widely held by police intelligence that protesters coordinate their demonstrations by cellphone.

Maybe, just maybe, this absurd bomb detonation thing is being set up as a pretense now, so that when terrorists^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H protestors arrive in NYC at the end of August, they will not have the use of their cell phone during demonstrations outside RNC meetings.

Ironically, the thing they fear could theoretically be accomplished using surplus police radios with CTCSS or DCS. Using the NYPD's own repeaters, the person pushing the button could be anywhere in the metro area.

Though I doubt that cellphone jamming will change protesters' plans one iota, it wouldn't surprise me if they jammed parts of NYC come August. I'm pessimistic about our government's plans for reducing or eliminating freedom of speech, and this is just another strike against G.W.

During pre-911 times, while the police got heavy-handed with protesters at times, I'm now expecting them to pull out all the stops and take whatever steps are necessary to finish building the image in the public's mind that protesters really are, somehow, terrorists. End this silly desire for free speech, public assembly and right to redress grievences. What were they thinking ~230 years ago, anyway?!?

You're proud? Why? Proud of legitimazing authoritarian rule? Proud of doing nothing to free prisoners of conscience? But you don't mind taking the time to criticize the US treatment of enemy combatants?
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/opinion/ 8222817.htm?1c
http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0351/hentoff.ph p

we have a law which allows secret investigations and arrests, and prohibits the accused from telling anyone about what's being done to them

I've wondered, when someone receives a "National Security Letter" -- since it's illegal to reveal you've gotten one -- how does the recipient go about getting a lawyer?

"Law Offices."

"Uh, hi, I think I need a lawyer."

"What sort of legal services do you need sir?"

"Uh, I can't say."

"You can't say?"

"No, that's illegal, but I need a lawyer, to help me with this thing I can't talk about. You know, a secret lawyer for secret charges."

This is not the United States of America I learned about in school.

But then neither is sending Canadian Maher Arar to Syria to be tortured, or exposing an undercover CIA agent for petty personal revenge, or setting up secret U.S. prison camps for 10,000, or Military Intelligence encouraging torture in those prisons, or lying about the reasons for going to war.

Wake up -- this is the same administration that ignored warnings of 9/11. Why do we keep rewarding this secretive, authoritarian, and incompetent administration?

Or will they remove that component so they don't have to simulate it.

I think he's just afraid that people have heard the "just following orders" before.

Until this technology becomse readily available - then it will probably be a valid defense.

As the situation in Iraq grows ever more tenuous, the Bush administration continues to spin the ominous news with matter-of-fact optimism. According to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Iraqi uprisings in half a dozen cities, accompanied by the deaths of more than 100 soldiers in the month of April alone, is something to be viewed in the context of "good days and bad days," merely "a moment in Iraq's path towards a free and democratic system." More recently, the president himself asserted, "Our coalition is standing with responsible Iraqi leaders as they establish growing authority in their country."

But according to a closely held Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) memo written in early March, the reality isn't so rosy. Iraq's chances of seeing democracy succeed, according to the memo's author, U.S. government official detailed to the CPA, who wrote this summation of observations he'd made in the field for a senior CPA director, have been severely imperiled by a year's worth of serious errors on the part of the Pentagon and the CPA, the U.S.-led multinational agency administering Iraq. Far from facilitating democracy and security, the memo's author fears, U.S. efforts have created an environment rife with corruption and sectarianism likely to result in civil war.

Provided to this reporter by a Western intelligence official, the memo was partially redacted to protect the writer's identity and to "avoid inflaming an already volatile situation" by revealing the names of certain Iraqi figures. A wide-ranging and often acerbic critique of the CPA, covering topics ranging from policy, personalities, and press operations to on-the-ground realities such as electricity, the document is not only notable for its candidly troubled assessment of Iraq's future. It is also significant, according to the intelligence official, because its author has been a steadfast advocate of "transforming" the Middle East, beginning with "regime change" in Iraq.

Signs of the author's continuing support for the U.S. invasion and occupation are all over the memo, which was written to a superior in Baghdad and circulated among other CPA officials. He praises Iraqi National Congress leader Ahmed Chalabi, and laments a lack of unqualified US support for Chalabi, a long-time favorite of Washington hawks. (It bears noting that Chalabi was tried and convicted in absentia by the Jordanian government for bank embezzlement, in 1989, and has come under fire more recently for peddling dubious pre-war intelligence to the US.) The author also asserts that "what we have accomplished in Iraq is worth it." And his predictions sometimes hew to an improbably sunny view. Violence is likely, he says, for only "two or three days after arresting" radical cleric Muqtada al Sadr, an event that would "make other populist leaders think twice" about bucking the CPA. Written only weeks ago, these predictions seem quite unwarranted, since simply trying to arrest al Sadr has resulted in more than two weeks of bloody conflict, with no end in sight, and seems to have engendered more cooperation between anti-Coalition forces than before.

Yet the memo is gloomy in most other respects, portraying a country mired in dysfunction and corruption, overseen by a CPA that "handle(s) an issue like six-year-olds play soccer: Someone kicks the ball and one hundred people chase after it hoping to be noticed, without a care as to what happens on the field." But it is particularly pointed on the subject of cronyism and corruption within the Governing Council, the provisional Iraqi government subordinate to the CPA whose responsibilities include re-staffing Iraq's government departments. "In retrospect," the memo asserts, "both for political and organizational reasons, the decision to allow the Governing Council to pick 25 ministers did the greatest damage. Not on

Here are some links:

UK. There're quite a few sites out there about facilities in the UK. Anyone remember a film (fiction) from the 80', called 'secret underground', or 'underground London', or some such?

Tokyo. Google +tokyo +underground +secret +"Shun Akiba" for more. Thanks for reminding me that i want to look into whether Mr. Akiba's book has been translated to english.

Moscow. Great article. Riveting stuff. Google +Moscow +underground +diggers "Vadim Mikhailov" for more. You might see a bunch of links to stories about the Moscow theatre hostage event (by Chechen extremists). Yes, Mr. Mikhailov showed the police how to approach the theatre basement from below.

Washington/US is much trickier, as there is a *lot* of foil-hat-type stuff out there. here's a good overview of some places.

The disparity between ambition and aptitude has doomed more than one indie, as a veritable graveyard of worthy half-hour films padded to interminable feature length attests. What a pleasure, then, that writer-director Greg Pak gives each episode in his four-part Robot Stories precisely the running time needed to explore its ideas, and not a moment more. Pak, in fact, is savvy and sensitive enough to hold something back in each tale--an audience-grabbing technique even the similarly themed, overdeveloped-in-every-sense A.I. couldn't manage.

As the title says, Pak uses an ostensible sci-fi motif to link his four pieces. What truly binds them, however, is a subtle exploration of the tension between the human and the synthetic, and the sometimes fuzzy distinction between the two. The film also has a distinguishable arc, beginning with an exceedingly nontraditional "birth" and closing with a triumphant death. "My Robot Baby" follows a yuppified couple keen on adopting a child as they take a test run with a mechanical, C-3PO-meets-Furby stand-in. After attempting a disastrous caregiving work-around, Marcia (Tamlyn Tomita), whose own tumultuous childhood is glimpsed in a brief prologue, discovers a nascent nurturing streak beneath her chilly exterior.

The most effective and least science-fictiony of the bunch, "The Robot Fixer," is a poignant, minutely observed study of loss and acceptance. A mother (Wai Ching Ho) stands watch over her comatose son, and with the help of her daughter (Cindy Cheung) and the young man's boyhood toy-robot collection (of which she has no recollection), discerns the scope of the emotional wedge she's driven between herself and her children. The final installments, "Machine Love," a Twilight Zone-esque lark concerning the dawning need for intimacy experienced by an android corporate lackey (played by Pak himself), and "Clay," an edgier look at machine love that slyly asks whether eternal life via a vast computer-network "heaven" would be all that heavenly, are slighter but just as well crafted.

For all the melodrama lurking at the edges of Robot Stories, Pak never resorts to preachiness or pathos. He's an uncannily assured visual storyteller, and his crew--particularly cinematographer Peter Olsen and editor Stephanie Sterne--matches his creative fervor. The result is a quietly impassioned, genuinely stirring indie rarity. As a character in "The Robot Fixer" puts it, "A little care goes a long way."

Source: VillageVoice

Recently discovered Nazi documents and Polish eyewitness testimony make clear that IBM's alliance with the Third Reich went far beyond its German subsidiary. A key factor in the Holocaust in Poland was IBM technology provided directly through a special wartime Polish subsidiary reporting to IBM New York, mainly to its headquarters at 590 Madison Avenue.

And that's how the trains to Auschwitz ran on time.

A lot of american companies had relationships with the nazis. But it is rather startling, the level of logistical support that IBM provided. I guess the argument could be made that computers don't kill people, Nazi madmen kill people. Though any help given to the Nazis is really impossible to defend.

Why is that great?

would you want to live in the world with the same freedoms of uncivilized times?

9/10/2001 was uncivilized times? In that case, yes! The only way to ensure democracy is transparency in the government, not in the citizenry. I would consider this age of secret trials, secret military tribunals, and illegal captivity without due process to be uncivilized.

I'm still miffed that I lost my freedom to dump toxic waste in drinking water.

I can't believe you really did that. If you did, and when you say "I lost my freedom", I hope that means you're in jail for violating the rights of others. But, what I don't understand is how that relates to the State monitoring your every move in public, and after that's allowed who knows how much longer before they do it in private?

Why can't I take guns on airlines?

Because, unlike guarding your privacy from intrusive government, carrying a lethal weapon can be contributive to intentionally lethal acts? Couple that with the ease in which a single bullet could quickly wipe-out hundreds of lives, on the plane and on the ground, made the argument for a gun-ban on planes that much easier to swallow. Mass murder, as it happens, was illegal pre-9/11.

Why can't I have the freedom to molest young children?

Because you would be violating their rights?

This cameras sounds like a good one. Do people really have an expectation of privacy when they're on public streets?

Not from each other, but from a government proven to abuse the power granted to it by the people at every opportunity. Your unreasonable fear of everything in life (from sudden heart-attacks to skidding in the rain), and incessant need for safety, encroaches upon my liberty to enjoy life without intrusive government. Just behave sensibly and you'll survive as your forefathers did across millions of years simply to produce the unique individual known as *you*. There's no government-monitored camera on you right now, and look you're still breathing!!

I'd love to see national ID's, I don't even understand the privacy argument against it.

The reluctance you don't understand stems from years of documented abuse by what at first appeared to be reasonable (to the population at the time) requests and benign acts by various governments to keep order. The arguments are always the same, as are the results. I don't have to name recent government abuses to you, you know them. We won't even go into the governmental abuses throughout history. To ignore the lessons from the past and think that they won't be repeated is naive. People haven't changed, and it's people in government who abuse their responsibilities and their authority. Most do so without penalty.

It's simple the government needs a way to identify it's citizens.

How does it do it now? Have

Federal disclosure records show that Clark lobbied directly on "information transfers, airline security, and homeland security issues" for Acxiom. The company was pushing the by now notorious CAPPS II, a creepy program designed to profile all airline passengers. Clark, who reportedly got $800,000 in fees for his work, lobbied the Justice Department, CIA, and Department of Transportation. According to The Arkansas Democrat Gazette, he met personally with Vice President Dick Cheney.

Only 9,000? Try an estimated 37,000+ as a direct result of the conflict, and subsequent chaos. All for the false premise of alleviating the threat of Saddam Hussein's non-existant weapons of mass destruction. Where is the justice?

• imprisoning American citizen terrorists indefinitely without trial or even without access to lawyers,
• and for sending that Canadian Muslim (All Muslims are terrorists!) to be tortured by Syria.

• Tommy Chong's in the federal pen for selling glass pipes over the internet,
• and now that you've made it difficult for the terminally ill to get pot despite it being legal under California state law,
• and are making sure those terminally ill people can't die with dignity in Oregon

Czech this!

Bush made it pretty clear on the USS Lincoln that he had no use for such pills.

Ouch. I was sill chuckling about reading this over at the Village Voice when I started reading this thread on Slashdot. The difference between the Israeli and American security thinking is both scary and amusing.

My favourite quote from the artcile: "No, no, no. We are not Pakistanis. We're Russians.". Security indeed. Hell, if you are going to use racial profiling at least figure out who you are profiling! :)

I ran into the post limit yesterday so I'm posting this now...

...people tend to expect their governments to actually work for their good.

Such belief is nothing more than the govt propaganda at work. The govt hardly ever works for the good of the citizens. Since you seem to support the status-quo, I guess you won't see why the system is pretty bad. Just remember: the peasents/workers in aristocratic socities claimed the same thing. They were so confident that the system was actually for their good that they allowed themselves to be sentenced to death for adultery while kings were committing adultery on a daily basis. I don't think my words will have much impact but all I can say is that, your belief in the system is misplaced.

You advocate change for the sake of change alone.

No. I'm not proposing the alternate system simply for the sake of it. There is more to it. I believe that humans are dynamic, organic beings. We change over time. Therefore, it is best if we build a society where the system is just as dynamic. Ther modern "justice" system is nothing more than a revenge system, created by the elites several thousand years ago. It was simply to keep the masses in line and let the elites carry out abuses. The same system has stuck since then. It is different; it's more egalitarian; it's more fairer; but the system is a weakness.

You misuse the word when you say that laws can be "circumvented" by passing new laws when this is in fact the Constitutional method of implementing the change you advocate.

I'm not really sure what your point is. My position is that everything should be dynamic. My point had nothing to do with my system. I was simply pointing out that the "Constitutional method of implementing change" can also lead to circumvension towards bad deeds. In other words, the system that you hold dear is not so dear. *I* can take over USA tomorrow and run it as a dictatorship simply by passing a few laws here and there. Consider the recent cases with the Guantanomo Bay prisoners. USA has classified them as "enemy combatants" which really doesn't fit any category. With a simple stroke of the pen, or more like passing a 200+ page law that no one read, USA just introduced a whole new notion that did not exist before. USA has been able to jail without trial a bunch of people that would have been unthinkable 20 years ago. If someone said that a person can be jailed without trial (by USA of all countries) how many would have believed it? Even totalitarian regimes like USSR and Nazi Germany charged people with bogus crimes (although it is not clear whether being jailed without a charge or being jailed with a bogus charge is worse). Furthermore, USA has classified Jose Padilla, a US citizen, as an "enemy combatant". How many would have thought that an American can be held in a jail perpetually without allowing any contact with family, lawyers etc?

Now, I'm not saying it is easy or that I am a dictator (I'm not :) ). In fact, people realize the mistake and are trying to undo it. BUT your perceived strength in the system is nonexistent.

Libertarians, for example, will blather on about laissez-faire capitalism as if it had never been tried. It has been tried of course; in England during the Industrial Revolution. It was disastrous economically, environmentally, and in terms of human rights. You owe it to yourself to examine past anarchic societies and see why they went wrong.

I'm neither a liberatarian nor an anarchist. I am a leftist, a socialist, with anarchist tendencies :) I don't come across as that because I'm arguing for an anarchist system. I am totally against capitalism so your Industrial Revolution

Nick Catucci's Joysticks columns are frequently typical of the artsy writing of the Village Voice, but at the same time he appreciates the aesthetics and mechanics of gaming better than any joe at a regular newspaper... in other words, he's a gamer. If only more reporters followed his lead... or if only more gamers became mainstream reporters...

Clearly much of the military research is geared toward weapon making. But is that categorically wrong? Many people would be hard-pressed to draw moral equivalence between U.S. troops and some of their foes--the bombers of the UN HQ in Baghdad, or the Taliban.

In blunt terms, the anonymous submitter who began this discussion is dreadfully wrong when he implies that the United States of America (USA) is equivalent to totalitarian states like China (which includes Taiwan and Hong Kong) that emphasize military spending. Military spending in the USA is geared towards protecting lives. For example, in the Serbian military conflict (in which the Chinese supported the Serbians committing gross human-rights atrocities against the Kosovars in Kosovo), the Americans went out of their way to use precision military technology to destroy only military targets and to avoid hitting civilian targets like hospitals and schools .

We all can agree that merely needing weapons suggests the dreadful state of human affairs. Weapons are a necessary evil. Someone must develop them. That "someone" might as well be Westerners because we need them to safeguard the finest civilization known to human history.

Even the Japanese have awoken to this reality. Unlike the militaristic Chinese (which includes Taiwanese and Hong Kongers), the Japanese are extreme pacifists and have a constitution that forbids the use of force to settle overseas conflicts. However, after (1) the recent launching of nuclear-capable missiles by the North Koreans and (2) the recent confirmation of North Koreans kidnapping Japanese, Japanese policy makers are realizing the importance of developing state-of-the-art weapons systems. For the first time in recent memory, the Japanese are initiating discussions with the Americans on researching and building an impenetrable missile shield as soon as possible.

... from the desk of the reporter

I'd really like to see your source

It was all over the news at the time.

The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (the worldwide equivalent of the RIAA) reported earlier this month that a third of all CDs sold worldwide are pirated--1.1 billion last year, for a total value of $4.6 billion. It's not clear what hat they pulled those figures out of, but as anyone who's shopped for 50 Cent rarities on Canal Street can tell you, CDs can be made and distributed for only a couple of dollars, especially if the people selling them don't pay production costs, artists' royalties, or radio promotion fees. Most pirated CDs, though, are sold in countries with bigger issues to worry about than copyright. At Russian street kiosks, for instance, 60 rubles (about $1.80) will get you a professionally manufactured greatest-hits collection by anyone from Annie Lennox to Helloween, often designed to look just like Abba's Forever Gold. Another 10 rubles, and you can get a CD with MP3s of every song by your favorite artist (Marie Osmond, Brian Eno, Nurse With Wound . . . ), with lyrics and pictures thrown in for good measure.

Yes, you are. The only problem will be when some tweaked-out police officer decides that pointing your cell-phone at someone is a crime punishable by immediate death.

don't get me wrong, sexual hypocrisy is a problem in the world, especially in the us.

but everyone can support a legal measure that insists on a hands-off attitude towards children and sexual overtures from adults... from sexual conservatives like john ashcroft, who has to cover up naked breasts on statues behind him on stage (snicker), to righteous liberal sex-advice columnists, like dan savage. nobody likes pedophilia, period. no slippery slope here folks.

now, since spammers spew indiscriminantly, they have no way of knowing if the account they are sending to is owned by a child. meanwhile, responsible email mass-mailers have means of knowing who their audience is and can easily avoid this pitfall.

result? a legal weapon against spam everyone can get behind. it can be mercilessly enforced, with moral and righteous indignation. no grey areas, no controversy. pedophilia is evil, period. jail time anyone?

this is an excellent development. bravo symantec.