Slashdot Mirror

I'm still waiting for a demo of this phantom exploit on a Windows machine:

"Maynor said the two have found at least two similar flaws in device drivers for wireless cards either designed for or embedded in machines running the Windows OS. Still, the presenters said they ultimately decided to run the demo against a Mac due to what Maynor called the "Mac user base aura of smugness on security."

"We're not picking specifically on Macs here, but if you watch those 'Get a Mac' commercials enough, it eventually makes you want to stab one of those users in the eye with a lit cigarette or something," Maynor said." -- Hijacking a Macbook in 60 Seconds or Less

Actually, what I'm really waiting for is for Maynor to stop opening his mouth.

You forgot one juicy piece of information:

"In her official 2005 filing, Bono stated that her income from royalties and dividends was between US$402,000 and US$3.3 million."

Here and here

What a surprise...

By the way: Here's one example, from Sierra Club's own site.

Another Sierra Club action against a railroad: Here's one

It isn't political psychiatry in the sense that it is used to further political power, but the basic idea of using psychiatry as an end run around law to get rid of undesirables is not just a symptom of Chinese society.

How true. Here is a link with a great graphic on the difference between Electronic Voting Machines and Slot Machines.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/graph ic/2006/03/16/GR2006031600213.html

On average, American lawyers make 42 percent more than chemical engineers. At elite levels, huge pay gaps also exist. In 2005 the median starting salary for a new Harvard University MBA was $100,000. An MBA is a two-year degree. By contrast, a science or engineering PhD can take five to 10 years, with a few years of "post-doc" lab work. At a Business Roundtable press briefing, one CEO said his company might start this sort of scientist at $90,000. Does anyone wonder why some budding physicists switch to Wall Street?

In 2004 American colleges and universities awarded a record 233,492 undergraduate S&E degrees, reports the National Science Foundation (NSF). That was up 38 percent from 169,726 in 1990. Within that total, some fields have expanded rapidly. Computer science degrees have doubled since 1990, to 57,405.

Same time every year, (just as H1bs come up for discussion).

Feb 2004:
Reforms demanded as H-1B visa limit reached
http://news.zdnet.com/2100-3513_22-5161069.html

April 2005
http://news.zdnet.com/2100-3513_22-5687039.html
Gates wants limits scrapped on H1bs

March 2006
Bill Gates says H1B needs more freedom.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/artic le/2006/03/17/AR2006031701798.html

2007, Gates talks out of his ass.

They want more H1Bs, it helps reduce the short term cost of programmers, lets them keep a cap on their salary bill and increase their profits. It fucks up the normal supply-demand market that drives people to go to University, but what does he care, he can always fill the shortfall with more imported programmers.

I think having nukes in Iran would do great things for peace in the middle east.

This is a big issue in the Frontline Growing Old special(watch it free). The fact is that health care is not elastic. People will want to be healthier no mater what the cost. I'm sure all the dead people would agree with me. But the issue is that doing quintillion bypass surgery and having someone live for years in bed is not natural and the body can't take it. You get strange diseases from lying down etc. It's quite horrible and I find it more humane to end one's life quickly than suffer for years and years and leave huge debts to your children.

"I hope we can continue calling it the golden disk," Justice Antonin Scalia said, when one justice blandly referred to it as the master disk. "It has a certain Scheherazade quality that really adds a lot of interest to this case." wash.post

I just heard a lecture on this subject today, so I can assure you that there has *NEVER* been any reputable study that showed a link between autism and childhood vaccinations. The entire argument is based on a post-hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy: children get their vaccinations while around 1 years old, and the first signs of autism are noticeable about 6 months later, therefore the vaccinations cause autism.

What have the studies shown?

1) There is no difference in the rates of autism between vaccinated and un-vaccinated children.

2) Rates of autism have increased even though thimerosal was removed from the vaccines.

3) The increased rate of autism diagnosis is due to better identification and broader criteria, not due to a new cause.

Regardless, this has generated so much controversy that thimerosal has been removed from nearly all vaccines.
Don't get me wrong: vaccines do have a risk associated with them. But as far as the best science shows, autism is not one of them.

There is an entire community that exists to provide oversight to police departments. Each police department has its own oversight and audit members that handle internal affairs.

We complain (rightfully so) when they arrest kids for eating french fries on the metro, but then we turn around and apply a double-standard to the police. Let them do their jobs, let the oversight members do their jobs, and unless they start beating rodney king again, can't we just all get along?

Answer: The couple should just get a speed bump installed by the city. C'mon folks, it's not that hard!

In the dentists case, it looks like the county routinely uses SWAT teams for search warrants. In any case, the officer that shot Mr. Culosi was a 17 year veteran, so his carelessness should get him charged with negligent homicide rather than manslaughter.

One can only hope that the global warming deniers all have their primary residences on the coast. I'll confess to a bit of scheudenfreude when I heard that Trent Lott's beachfront home was destroyed by Katrina. I suspect that the only way these folks ever learn is when it affects them personally. It's shameful that whole countries are going to be sunk during their learning curve.

Your assertion is "obviously completely bunk". http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/artic le/2006/05/25/AR2006052501729_pf.html

The unique identification of many (soon to me most or all) inkjets and color lasers was not
done for you or me. It was done quietly for law enforcement to be able
to *find* the owner of any printed document.

The enormity of that type of underhanded removal of privacy is
just gobsmacking. And most vendors quietly went along with it.

This technology will no doubt be used in a similar vein - any
picture uploaded onto the internet can be traced back to *you*.

Freedom takes another blow.

Effectively 'Rewritten' (that is to say, very 'creatively interpreted'), or openly disregarded, in many instances, yes.

The Bill of Rights was too inconvenient for the Shrubinator, so thanks to Patriot, and other absurdly dangerous legislation, they have systematically attempted to create a 'new, convenient, streamlined legislative environment' free of such cumbersome restrictions, all, they would have it, in the name of 'national security'.

To be very clear, I agree with the quote generally attributed to Benjamin Franklin:
"Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."

Who's been paying attention? Let's take a quick inventory to see where we stand.

Amendment I
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

Freedom of speech, and the right to peaceably assemble
This now appears to apply only if you're in a 'designated free-speech *zone*' far away from the Shrub, or other government officials.

Similar aggressive tactics have been employed when confronted with any public opposition to administration positions. Steven Howards was arrested for simply voicing disagreement with Administration polices during a chance meeting with Cheney during a mall photo-op. Howards was taking his son to a piano lesson, and took the time to voice his opinion.

Another example is of the peaceful protesters ejected and threatened with arrest at the Ohio State commencement where Dubya spoke, simply because they attempted to peacfully and non-disruptively express disagreement with the Shrub and his his policies.

Still another is when two women, one the wife of a Congressman, were ejected from the Capitol building, simply for wearing T-Shirts with anti-Bush slogans into the Congressional Gallery. (The article references numerous other examples, as well.)

Freedom of the Press
Mostly, journalism from major news outlets in the US appears to be in significant danger from numerous sources. While it is still possible to find information if you dig for it, many of the significant stories never make major headlines, if they even see the light of day.

The Shrub has significantly reduced press events, and when holding them, has required journalists to submit questions in advance, selecting only those questions he chooses to answer, and calling only upon reporters who agree to 'stick to script'. Rather than challenge these policies, reporters have agreed to these stipulations, resulting in chilling effect, effectively self-censorship, rather than ask questions the President didn't like, at the risk of press room access.

Concurrently, starting in 2001, regulations limiting the scope of ownership of media outlets, designed to maintain diversity of opinion, so as to prevent control of too much of the media by a small number of individuals have been systematically attacked and dismantled. The result is that now most major media outlets in the US are owned by a small number of conservatives. (This has bee

I guess we should ban libraries too since the artist is not getting "his fair share."

I guess you haven't been following the shenanigans of Pat Schroeder and the American Association of Publishers: "We have a very serious issue with librarians." "If everyone gets a free copy," she says, "the publisher and the writer and others involved in making the book go unpaid."

Where do you get these silly ideas? Police state? The US is still THE most free nation in the world.

You don't give a shit about losing rights within your own borders because you're too worried about the boogyman to our south.

I can be arrested simply for voicing unpopular views or beliefs

Reference here for upstream bandwidth:
http://www.honeynet.org/papers/bots/

and here for the amount of bugfixes since XP rollout:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/artic le/2006/09/23/AR2006092300510.html/

EVERY Home PC that runs Windows XP needs updates, to remain stable and sane. How many home users run P2P? Very tiny fraction, IMO.

Amazing... my rectum's got more wisdom than your brain, perhaps.

What the earlier commentators miss is that journalists do have shield-laws to protect them for divulging their sources. This is so that the first amendment means something. This allows mud-racking journalists (few and far between in MSM) to protect their sources. For example, remember Mark Felt (aka. Deep Throat), the guy who brought down Nixon? Because he was talking to journalists, he knew that Woodward and Bernstein could refuse to talk under subpoena.

This is important if the press is going to be able to do their job and uncover corruption.

Now also think about this. What defines a "journalist" especially these days? A steady paycheck from an organization that owns a "newspaper" or a "tv station" or a "radio station"? If someone uses the public access station on cable to broadcast muckraking esposes on local politicians, does that make him any less (or more) of a journalist appearing on NBC or doing his own blog?

Think about Dan Gillmor. He no longer works for the Mercury News in San Jose, but he is reporting only on the internet. Is he now no longer a journalist?

Finally, how long is Josh going to be locked up? Are we going to allow an indefinite sentence? (Which in the U.S. is supposed to be illegal?). Are we going to make someone's refusal to talk about a "crime" result in a harsher punishment than the crime itself? Are we going to make it so that everyone is compelled to spy on and report the actions of their neighbor?

All the "law and order" types really need to think about the fact that civil society only respects "law and order" if everyone is equal. And journalists help find public corruption. Corruption which goes unpunished breaks down a society's respect for the law. "Journalists" or people who act as journalists by reporting to the public at-large, whatever their media, deserve the highest protection.

But what if they are active in trying to be the Ad Tracker for these sites, so that Big Brother can monitor the population a little more effectively?

Google and NSA Goolge and NSA Google and NSA

Then perhaps, it is justified.

Mexico is in the grip of the worst tortilla crisis in its modern history. Dramatically rising international corn prices, spurred by demand for the grain-based fuel ethanol, have led to expensive tortillas ... With a minimum wage of $4.60 a day, Mexican families with one wage earner have been faced in recent months with the choice of having to spend as much as a third of their income on tortillas - Washington Post

From this picture it looks like Al Gore is turning into his own carbon sink. What Happened? http://media.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/photo/homep age/hp2-9-07ee.jpg

Psst: That's already happening but doesn't appear to be doing much good.

More is spent on education than defense in this country.

Tom Toles addressed this yesterday...

You might never know, period.

BUT, this whole thing afterwards is just insane. Politicians criticizing the company for doing this post 9-11, decrying the use of them putting up "hoax bombs", etc -- that stuff just infuriates me. The company could have handled the whole thing better, that's for sure, but they weren't putting up "hoax bombs," they were putting up advertisements. I realize they could have easily been IEDs but if you nail them for putting up "hoax bombs" you'll need to nail everyone that puts up anything short of a piece of paper.

Personally, if I were in Boston right now I would be pissed off. Not at the advertisers, but at the city that wasted millions on a force that cannot tell the difference between a bomb and a 40 year old child's toy which for some reason they never got. I guess all the journalists and police got coal in their stocking instead. Not one journalist has pointed out the real problem here, which is that this *proves* that Homeland Security is too poorly run and trained to keep us safe in a real emergency. They shut down parts of a large city all day to determine that a Lite Bright is not a bomb. How long could it possibly take?

It's clear to me that they would not know a real bomb if it bit them on the ass, and that they have no idea how bombs are made or work. Don't they have demolitions classes for these guys? They shut down a whole river for a "potential bomb" smaller than a childrens' book! They wasted over a million dollars on one days' activity clearly designed to justify their existence which in reality proved their utter incompetance. But instead of taking them to task, every news show is clucking their tongues and saying we should just cane the ad guys to death and burn the bodies. Can you say "talking points?"

It's not like this is the first time a harmless gesture was ridiculously treated as terrorism. In Ohio some obviously overworked law enforcers seem unfortunately unaquainted with Mario Bros and decided that the little guys were the next incarnation of Hezbollah. Meanwhile the real Hezbollah were probably laughing their asses off right under their noses.

I think incidents like this should result in some serious public hearings on the readiness of those who claim to protect us. Obviously they are doing a piss-poor job and it's only the relative stupidity/poverty of our enemies that really protects us here (in other words, they are just that much dumber than the dumbasses protecting us from them, and that sliver has been enough).

I can tell you're almost an MD. You are bad at listening, are condescending, think you know everything, are pompous, and an idiot.

OK, I feel better. Seriously, I actually like my current doctor. He is fairly knowledgable and is one of the rare doctors who is good at listening. We have serious problems with our healthcare system, though. Anecdotal and clinical evidence shows a high error rate, misdiagnosis, slow diagnosis, unnecessary repeated visits and referrals, etc. I don't know anyone who had a nontrivial chronic problem diagnosed properly within the first 3 visits. It's ridiculous.

Here's an article about the millions of medication errors made every year in the US. You can add all the other types of errors up and easily reach tens of millions. I question how good of an education you're getting if you're unaware of and defensive about the state of medicine in this country. I doubt you or anyone from your school are going to improve matters if you deny that there is a problem and insult those who claim otherwise.

You're right that IT can help in a multi-doctor hospital setting. At the very least better communication will help, and automated systems show promise as well.

You'll do better if you try to understand. Most people don't go to hospitals a lot, so their impression of the healthcare system is from a doctor's office. When they do go to hospitals, they see the disorganized and ineffecient ER and rarely come out with a good impression. You act as if going to the doctor's office doesn't count because it isn't life threatening. Am I supposed to withhold forming an opinion until my life is in danger?

Oh, and one final thing about back pain. Your first assumption is that I'm a pill junkie, just like any other doctor. I get occasional back pain, easily treated with tramadol or cyclobenzaprine. I gave up on trying to get it from doctors. They'd give me 5 pills, or they'd give me a prescription for ibuprofen. I don't want to go to the doctor every few months to get 5 pills. So now I just order a bottle online so they're handy and take them as needed without having to see a doctor. I'd heard that medical schools were changing their attitude about pain relief, both in end-of-life and in routine situations. I'm sad to find out this isn't true.

Why are we punishing 98% of patients by withholding beneficial meds in order to punish the 2% who are prone to abuse? The abusers are abusing anyway, with street drugs or black market pharmaceuticals. It hurts many people and doesn't stop what it's designed to prevent. Watching my 4 grandparents die in hospital (over a span of 2 decades) was most instructive. They were given minimal pain medication and all died in horrible agony. Think of all the liver damage done by overuse of acetaminophen and ibuprofen instead of using more appropriate medication. It's barbaric.

Oh well. Right now the system has a disincentive for fast and correct diagnosis. A strong incentive for multiple unnecessary visits. No difference between fixing the problem and not. I don't think change is possible unless we change the system. The people in health care aren't really the problem, they're victims of the system just like us patients.

conservative values call for open and unfettered competition

The AP story mentions that UltraDNS may have been targeted. Last May DDoS attackers targeted UltraDNS as part of the attack against Blue Security that ultimately drove BS out of business. That attack managed to knock some UltraDNS customers offline. There was a previous attack on the root servers in 2002.

> In another portion of the interview, he added, "Nowadays, security guys break the Mac every single day. Every single day, they come out with a total exploit, your machine can be taken over totally. I dare anybody to do that once a month on the Windows machine."

Yeah, the Month of Apple Bugs--it's not like Microsoft hasn't ever had something like that. Hell, I wouldn't think it was that much of a challenge. True, Apple could use some improvements, but the exploits presented were dangerous, but not that bad if you want to compare them to the worst, i.e. Windows. There may have been quite a few exploits, but what was the exposure window like?

I mean, when you have all the XP machines running IE 6 0wnable for 9 months of 2006, is it any surprise that Windows is the botnet drone of choice? Bill is not one who should be talking here. Hopefully they *are* improving, but they have a LONG way to go...

Oh my, I was off by 8% on half of my data and 100% correct on the other half,

Concerning the tax thing: you made it sound like people in Germany are paying 50% income tax. That's not even correct in the extremest case. Nevermind that you have a multitude of ways to save taxes. In total average, the population in Germany pays about 1/3 of their income as taxes *and* social insurances.

Concerning the free speech stuff: Every society has its regulations that limit the freedom of the individuum, based on whatever is concidered to be "obscene" or "not tolerable". Some societies have a larger problem with nudity, or drinking in public etc. Others consider it unacceptable if people advocate to send some minority into the gas chambers. If you live in a country where you don't have the feeling that society interfers too much with your way of living, then that's great for you. I'm sure the same is true for a very large part of the German population.

Other countries are obsessed with terrorists, and apparently there one can also get into trouble for providing access to their information channels:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/artic le/2006/08/24/AR2006082401461.html

Funny that the articles claims that the distribution of this TV channel is illegal in the US. I'm sure that's freedom of speech for you.

but certainly, a true warrior would go through all of toughest moments of their respective career without wanting to be thanked for it each step of the way.

I wonder if you were to jam a police GPS you'd be obstructing justice

Steve

Here's the thing. If the people submitting to Exxon/Mobil are submitting made up bullshit then it shouldn't withstand review and become a laughingstock. If nothing else, that should help to strengthen the human derived global warming stance.

You're right, it probably won't withstand review. This is unfortunately not the point at all. Passing a peer review is an important benchmark for scientists, but it's completely meaningless to the public. Exxon/Mobil doesn't want to argue scientifically. They want to confuse the public, and especially the politicians. They'll point to the study, and say things like "Scientists can't even agree with each other", and "there is no consensus". Then their lobbyists and pet politicians can fight a rearguard action and maintain the extremely profitable status quo (have you seen the latest profit numbers for Exxon?). The whole thing is FUD written large.

The company reported $1.281 billion in their revenue stream, fueled by the Sims, Madden, and Need for Speed franchises.

See the subject line. If it needs explanation, you'll probably never get it.

The problem with most institutions like CEI is that when they fund the research, they typically add a clause that says that the results of the research cannot be published without their explicit authorization. (This happens in other fields, as well.) This is most likely not the case with either Branson or the Sierra Club. If it is, I'll gladly call shenanigans on them, as well.

Also, Senator Inhofe is not exactly the best source for such information. His position on the relative importance of the environment is well documented.

I can't speak for all project everywhere, but I write a lot of Java code and have a lot of recruiters calling me. And you know what, the technology they ask for is like a who's-who of Open Source in Java. Struts, Spring, Hibernate, Jboss, Ant, Tomcat, Lucene, MySql, Linux All open source. And if you have those skills, employers will beat a path to your door. I think the real reason these products are of such a good quality is that there is honest and very critical review of the source and design. There is also motivation to just throw it out when it makes sense. Let's face it, in corporate development there is no real forum to critique someone elses code. Infact, doing so usually makes you a new enemy and gets you a 1-on-1 with your manager for "interpersonal" skills. The Washington Post just posted an op-ed yesterday by Scott Rosenberg. The article is interesting in and of itself but look at the comments. Those are equally illuminating.

In fact, some have resigned in protest.
Susan Wood is one http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/artic le/2005/08/31/AR2005083101271.html
Rick Piltz http://www.climatesciencewatch.org/index.php/csw/d etails/ccsp-resignation/ is another.

On the other side of the conflict, the resignations have been forced as a result of the publicity surrounding their nefarious activities. Of course, the revolving door takes the sting out.
--
Good morning sunshine: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-users -selling-solar.html

"The demand continues to grow in this sector, and I suspect that online degrees will gain increasing currency because traditional schools will simply become less attractive to those that don't want to put up with everything from weird antics of professors to parking problems."

Here's something you may want to read

...considering that almost 20 percent of COLLEGE students think MLK's dream speech was about abolishing slavery: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/artic le/2007/01/14/AR2007011401026.html

You can preach to people all you want, hitting them in the wallet is a much better way to get their attention. I do agree this particular law is a waste of time, from my casual obseration the supply of CFLs has gone way up and prices have dropped dramatically. New advances in LEDs will probably have them overtaking CFLs within a few years. The incandescent bulb won't disappear but economics will dictate that it become much less prevalent.

Anonymous shithead Coward, you just offer more chances to tell the truth about this evil Iraq War and its fans like you.

Most Iraqis want us out immediately, you insane lying warmonger.

A fagot is a bundle of sticks, you illiterate homophobe.

My mother is dead, and she still wouldn't fuck a necrophile like you.

At night, the ice weasels come and eat Anonymous pisspants Cowards.

A more useful summary of the Hamdi saga can be found at:

Hamdi to be sent to Saudi Arabia, renouncing US citizenship

Hamdi Returned to Saudi Arabia

A discussion of the Hamdi ruling: Harmful Rulings - Enemy combatants and an irresponsible Court.

As for lawyers and national security: Sheik's U.S. Lawyer Convicted Of Aiding Terrorist Activity .

A more useful summary of the Hamdi saga can be found at:

Hamdi to be sent to Saudi Arabia, renouncing US citizenship

Hamdi Returned to Saudi Arabia

A discussion of the Hamdi ruling: Harmful Rulings - Enemy combatants and an irresponsible Court.

As for lawyers and national security: Sheik's U.S. Lawyer Convicted Of Aiding Terrorist Activity .

How does the 4th Amendment apply to individuals outside the US in a battlefield? Only *targets* of a wiretap need a warrant. Since the NSA operates under the DoD on *targets* outside the US, the 4th has never applied. Just like search warrant doesn't apply to a soldier raiding a house.

It is when a *lead* from a NSA tap on a foreign *target* that the FBI needs to get a warrant. That appears what the TSP was doing. It tore down the wall between the NSA and the FBI so the NSA could pass leads to the FBI. Note the FISA court would not accept "tainted" leads. That is, warrant requests that were based solely on NSA leads (see: Secret Court's Judges Were Warned About NSA Spy Data). The FISA court required the FBI to follow up on the lead before getting a FISA warrant to make the US side a *target* of a tap. It *appears* that the FISA court has agreed to the administration's legal arguments and now the FISA court will accept leads from a NSA tap and grant a warrant solely based on the lead information.

This is similar to how warrants work within the US. If a person calls a *target* of a warrant tap, their call can be monitored. They could also become the *target* of a wiretap based on a lead from the call. The difference is that the NSA have never needed a warrant to do what they do. Their missing has always been to monitor international communications.

You are missing the point here. IBM and intel, on the same day (Friday), independently announced a breakthrough in transistor design. Now isn't this strange? The biggest advance in transistors in the last 40 years or so - and two different companies announce it on the same day?!?!? Fishy.