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I noticed in reading the comments that people seem to have confused COPA, the Children's Online Protection Act, which seeks to restrict content posted by web site owners, and CIPA, the Children's Internet Protection Act, which seeks to require schools and libraries to use Internet filters to block access to sexually explicit material.

I can't believe you can't keep these laws straight! ;) Don't forget COPPA, the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act, and CPPA, the so-called "virtual child porn" law.

Short & sweet VERY GOOD article explaining which law is which, and their current status (if, like COPA and CIPA, currently being challenged in the courts): http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A397 48-2002May31.html

Liza

Hell, in theory I could run nighttime bombing ops from a F-117 and probably make it back to the base in one piece if the simulators are even half-accurate.

They're close, but according to some pilots on the Abe Lincoln, not close enough.

If only this were true. See this article from the Washington Post about libraries and e-books. Having been involved briefly with e-books and talking to several publishers about fair use and DRM, it became obvious to us that book publishers want what the rest of the entertainment industry wants: pay-per-view. Libraries, used book stores, and people who loan books to their friends are all part of the same problem. And while the discussions started out about e-books, they always ended up talking about books in general.

Think about it, the Department of Homeland Security (and by proxy, the entire US Government) is getting a heads up on potential exploits.

The US spies on it's allies. If you're the Germans, then the NSA are the blackhats. Nobody but the US government themselves should feel more comfortable knowing that they're being informed first.

Just because one thing is broken doesn't mean you should leave other things broken.

Fix what's important first, and worry about the small things later.

Somebody accessed patient data at Indiana University Center for Sleep Disorders through a Trojan horse. Last month, somebody got ahold of 8 million credit card numbers, and while the details of the theft haven't been released yet, you can be sure it wasn't through HTTP.

If you want to waste your time implementing security measures that won't help and ignoring those that will, that's your business. But if you do, don't make the mistake of thinking that you're doing a good job.

No, you're confused.

It's Mr. Rogers that passed away, at 74. Now that's an American Icon.

Back on topic: The BSA rep apologized for the mistake, which implies she's a) not a lawyer, and b) knew something about OpenOffice- if only that it's GPL/free-as-in-beer.

It would have been more of a story if the BSA started trying to find out which company owns OpenOffice, or just blindly pressed on with their accusations... but they didn't.

You can find an excellent article here. Although there has actually been a fair amount of coverage in the media, it doesn't stay in the news long, and most of it does not cover what I would think would be the most important issue to Americans, which is the possible American involvement in the April 11, 2002 coup, and the continual "tacit approval" by both the Bush adminstration and a lot of Western media of the current _management_ led strike and the opposition politics it represents. If you try Googling for information, most of the articles seem to accuse Chavez of mismanaging the economy. I don't know enough about his policies to say anything, but the country has been in steady decline for 20 years, and the seemingly constant political turmoil is probably a big part of that. He certainly is not a communist, marxist, or even a socialist. The economy is very much capitalist, and very much a democracy. In fact, his reaction to these protests seems a lot more measured than what it would be in the US.

Actually, it so happens one of my good friends emigrated from Venezulea in the early 90s. He's pretty proud of his heritage, and a strong supporter of Chavez. Anecdotal evidence might not be scientific, but it still does a lot for me.

Retard.

Retard.

Retard.

Your support for the Bush administration does not make you smart, cool or a rebel. It makes you a fucking tool.

You, sir, are a troll.

After WWII and continuing today, the UN mandates the teaching of the Nazi era to all German school children

This is untrue. After the war, the Allies did in fact educate the public about Nazi crimes, but in modern times, the Germans do it all by themselves. The UN has neither the legal competence to enact nor the means to enforce any such legislation.

The only examples of blatant propaganda that come even close to [American media] are Stalinst-era Soviet broadcasts and the works of Goebels in Nazi Germany.

This, too, is evidently untrue. Be it in print media, on the Internet or on TV, the government line is not only criticized regularly, but often derided. Even entire cities publicly oppose the war. The mere comparison is a disgrace and an insult to those who suffered under and helped owerthrow totalitarian systems.

Plus, I invoke Godwin's Law. Go home.

I just heard some sad news on talk radio - star of Mr. Rodger's Neighborhood and community advocate Fred Rodgers was found dead in his Pittsburgh home this morning. There weren't any more details. I'm sure everyone in the Slashdot community will miss him - even if you didn't enjoy his television show, there's no denying his contributions to popular culture. Truly an American icon.

Funny, it seems to me that there was assault and battery AND murder in congress; where is the big crackdown? Amazing how when laws start affecting congresswhores, laws (and interns) seem to dissapear. I thought goverment was by, for, and all about the goddamn people - when did it turn into a service to the highest bidder? Where is equal protection and justice under the law?

"While I'm sympathetic to the young people, they're breaking the law," warned Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif. "Until the university or this committee is going to do something about it, we're wasting everyone's time."

First of all Maxine, we don't care if you're 'sympathetic to the young people'. That's crap. If you were, you would work to change the law, rather than pursue a unpopular law.

Maxine, you are sympathetic to the money ($12,500) you recieved from the Entertainment industry, much like your pal. meh.

Quote:

---
Two Justice Department attorneys said Internet users would eventually be steered to the government's address as name servers across the Internet are updated over the next several hours.

"There is going to be some lag time between the domain-name switch-over," one attorney said. "But the domain name isonews.com now belongs to the federal government."

---

Enjoy...

GameTab

The New York Times, the BBC, The Washington Post, and others While not using any new technology, the protest was organized completely via the Internet, and could be indicative of the way digital culture is blending with traditional culture every passing day."

The New York Times, the BBC, The Washington Post, and others While not using any new technology, the protest was organized completely via the Internet, and could be indicative of the way digital culture is blending with traditional culture every passing day."

1) Yahoo! Mail - our motto: "Better than Hotmail!"
2) Slashdot - News for Nerds
3) Washington Post - GF takes the morning paper with her
4) ArsTechnica - always looking for new hardware
5) eBay - not news? it's kinda like my price checking engine...

--trb

The Bush administration plans to take complete, unilateral control of a post-Saddam Hussein Iraq, with an interim administration headed by a yet-to-be named American civilian who would direct the reconstruction of the country and the creation of a "representative" Iraqi government, according to a now-finalized blueprint described by U.S. officials and other sources.

Overall, this seems to be a mixed decision, the summary at top not withstanding. Covad, et al, might have more difficulty, but the Bells did not get everything they wanted. Frankly, this seems like it will be in the courts for so long, it will easily drag out past 2004.

According to Reuters, the FCC today decided to greatly curtail the laws that force incumbent phone companies to share their lines with their competition at cost.

ILECs have not been forced to share their lines at cost. That is a myth invented by the baby Bells to convince lawmakers that linesharing makes them lose money. Actually what the 1996 Telecom Act says is that they have to rent their lines to outside customers and they must charge everybody the same rate, including internal customers.

A popular stunt among the ILECs is to rent lines to their own internet divisions at way below cost, thus making their internet business seem more profitable than it is. The 1996 Telecom Act just evens the playing field in that respect and prevents the Bells from using their local loop monopoly to prop up other corporate divisions.

The new rules do force line sharing as long as companies are willing to offer voice service, but this essentially states that if you are not already a phone company, you cannot offer DSL.

This is actually not as bad as it sounds when you consider that FCC Chairman Michael Powell *spit* wanted to completely sweep away ALL the regulations that require the ILECs to share lines. His proposal was defeated with respect to local phone service because Republican commissioner Kevin J. Martin jumped the fence and sided with the Democrats. So while this may suck for Covad, Speakeasy, etc., at least it won't totally eliminate DSL competition for now.

Probably both sides are going to be unhappy about this. Expect this battle to go to the courts next.

This article has more good info.

in College Park Airport is one of the small airports that is in trouble. The general aviation rule changes put in place since September 11th have made it difficult for them to maitain anything resembling normal operations. The airport, established in 1909 by Orville and Wilbur Wright may have to close

That's my car in the middle. Where's yours?

SETI is quite different. It gets data from some misterious source, does some unknown analysis of it (in theory), draws pretty pictures, and sends processed data back. It could as well work on cracking encryption, and I bet nobody would notice.

Perhaps I am not nearly as concerned that Berkeley is actually a front organization for Ashcroft and the rest of the "right wing conspiracy".

But seriously, I consider the source. It is sponsored by a university known for protesting against every military action, located in a town that was one of the first to pass a resolution against the current war.

Also, SETI@home major users of the client include Sun, Ohio University, Intel and others, who have surely looked inside. If you go to SETI@home they explain in great detail what the program is doing.

Because Berkeley is so liberal and what I consider "anti-USA" I had considered NOT participating in SETI. In the end, I decided the science was more important than the politics.

Basically, I am saying that there is so much info out there, you would have to be paranoid to be worried that Berkeley is actually a front to have us decrypt stuff for the govt. I have done my homework (more than the moderator who modded this as a troll). I know what server it connects to, its not a mysterious source. (I have a firewall that only lets it connect on port 80 to one FQDN)

We may disagree on principal, which is fine. But don't be under any illusion that I have not done my homework. I trust seti because I feel I have good reason to trust them. More so than other distributed computing programs.

Oh, and Adobe Photoshop ALSO is for editing pictures. It tries to connect to mysterious servers all the time. Ask anyone who has it behind a firewall.

What Microsoft needs is an Ellen Feiss equivalent.

They had one, but he got arrested.

Just another waste of taxpayer money trying to prove that God doesn't exist.

Looking for a state-sponsored theocracy? Try the administration of George W. Bush and his Helpful Friend, John Ashcroft!

Scaring the bejeezus out of center-left citizens since January, 2000. :P
-j

Just another waste of taxpayer money trying to prove that God doesn't exist.

Looking for a state-sponsored theocracy? Try the administration of George W. Bush and his Helpful Friend, John Ashcroft!

Scaring the bejeezus out of center-left citizens since January, 2000. :P
-j

"When it's over, "Barton Fink" feels like a sophisticated joke you didn't get but laughed at anyway for fear of looking stupid."

I submitted this story to /. but was ignored so here it is for you :

Galileo's Space Flight to End Soon

As NASA temporarily grounds its shuttle fleet following the Columbia disaster, an unmanned spacecraft that has been exploring the solar system for 14 years is nearing the end of its mission - and still revealing the secrets of a planet hundreds of millions of miles from Earth.

It took the Galileo probe five years to reach Jupiter. It photographed asteroids, and the stormy red spot, and then turned its cameras on the giant planet's moons, each a world in its own right.

The photos and measurements sent back to Earth have provided tantalizing clues suggesting three of those moons - Callisto, Europa and Ganymede - have liquid oceans, an idea that has fueled the imagination of scientists who speculate the salty water could harbor extraterrestrial life.

Read the full story here

The study by The Post and other media groups, an unprecedented effort that involved examining 175,010 ballots in 67 counties, underscores what began to be apparent as soon as the polls closed in the nation's third most populous state Nov. 7, 2000: that no one can say with certainty who actually won Florida. Under every scenario used in the study, the winning margin remains less than 500 votes out of almost 6 million cast.

" We want America to attack because of the bad situation in our country. ... We have two blankets for every soldier, but they are very thin and don't keep us warm. The officers beat us. And the food is disgusting. I'm only paid 50 dinars [about £3] a month."

The State of Kuwait has a great web site that documents much of Iraq's brutality. And don't forget Saddam's goons cheering the crashing of the Columbia space shuttle. "We are happy that it broke up," Iraqi government employee Abdul Jabbar al-Quraishi said.

The Iraqi leadership has been painted correctly.

The site's starting to get a bit sluggish - this link will help ease the load.

This one ....
Happy War to you :-P

yeah, it's british, like, say, The Washington Post?
Funny how some googling could prevent you from sounding like a nationalist prick.

On the Contrary, Iraq has "largest and most efficient food-distribution system of its kind in the world... employing a massive network of trucks, computers, warehouses and neighborhood distributors to provide basic sustenance for every Iraqi." This is from the Washington Post.

If Iraq uses a huge, intricate computer system to distribute food, you don't think they'd also use it for military purposes? I think, rather, that a computerized attack would be very effective.

Especially if they use Windows.

Here's the single-page, pop-up-free, printer-ready version of the article.

Right, because it's so much better when the union steals of your dues to buy vacations, and jewelry? Fuck that.

Good intentions don't make money for Ma Bell.

Of course this has nothing to do with the floppy drive as the payphone revenue stream has nothing in common with computer hardware. But the notion is the same.

Hey! _MR_ Huffy is my father! :)

Sorry, I was not trying to rant in my post.

I got that from (I believe) the Washington Post - which I also thought was referenced in the original article but I could have found it from some other surfing start point, but the article now does not specify the transactions "timed out", only that it made transactions "difficult".

Washington Post

From the article (current?)

"Gagnon said that the worm, which slows down computer networks by replicating rapidly and spreading to other servers, did not cause any damage to customer information, but slowed down or blocked access to that sensitive information, making transactions difficult. "

Other reading seems to point to the slowdown being caused, as you said, by the overlap of services that use ATM as well as public internet.

Beats me. If you want to read the original context for this tidbit, look in this Charles Krauthammer column

I couldn't agree more, which is surprising since I usually don't agree with anything he says. But I really believe that changing NASA's focus might be the ideal solution to the public's (read: media's) boredom with our space program.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A213 40-2003Feb3.html
http://slate.msn.com/id/2078104/
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A167 19-2003Feb2.html
http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/035/oped/Rebuild ing_the_dream_of_space_exploration+.shtml
http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/story.hts/editorial/17 63385
http://www.nypost.com/postopinion/editorial/68231. htm
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,482-564534 ,00.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/03/opinion/03ALDR.h tml
http://www.msnbc.com/news/867640.asp?0cv=KB10
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Artic les/000/000/002/204pkfxj.asp
http://www.time.com/time/covers/1101030210/sctone. html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A134 74-2003Feb2.html
http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/news/editorial/ 5086944.htm
http://www2.bostonherald.com/news/columnists/bev02 022003.htm

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A213 40-2003Feb3.html
http://slate.msn.com/id/2078104/
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A167 19-2003Feb2.html
http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/035/oped/Rebuild ing_the_dream_of_space_exploration+.shtml
http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/story.hts/editorial/17 63385
http://www.nypost.com/postopinion/editorial/68231. htm
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,482-564534 ,00.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/03/opinion/03ALDR.h tml
http://www.msnbc.com/news/867640.asp?0cv=KB10
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Artic les/000/000/002/204pkfxj.asp
http://www.time.com/time/covers/1101030210/sctone. html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A134 74-2003Feb2.html
http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/news/editorial/ 5086944.htm
http://www2.bostonherald.com/news/columnists/bev02 022003.htm

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A213 40-2003Feb3.html
http://slate.msn.com/id/2078104/
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A167 19-2003Feb2.html
http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/035/oped/Rebuild ing_the_dream_of_space_exploration+.shtml
http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/story.hts/editorial/17 63385
http://www.nypost.com/postopinion/editorial/68231. htm
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,482-564534 ,00.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/03/opinion/03ALDR.h tml
http://www.msnbc.com/news/867640.asp?0cv=KB10
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Artic les/000/000/002/204pkfxj.asp
http://www.time.com/time/covers/1101030210/sctone. html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A134 74-2003Feb2.html
http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/news/editorial/ 5086944.htm
http://www2.bostonherald.com/news/columnists/bev02 022003.htm

There was an ANT COLONY on the shuttle:

...There was an amazing variety of work being done aboard Columbia. Spiders, flowers, cancer cells, ants, carpenter bees, fish embryos, silkworms and rats were all onboard.

Students from Fowler High School in Syracuse, New York, had worked for three years on an experiment to find out whether ants tunnel at a slower rate in space gravity.

Doesn't look like it.

"sources close to Clarke insist... he simply wants to pursue new challenges outside government after 30 years of public service and a stint as deputy assistant secretary in the State Department.

My assumption was that they were talking about ATM (Asynchronous Transfer Mode).

I'll give you a few reasons:

• Here is a story from the Washington Post about how our goverment does not think it was terrorism. If they say that, it's probably the case. First, they have a lot of people working on it with more expertese and a hell of a lot more information than us. Second, in general they have been quick to suspect terrorism as a cause for incidents since 9/11 and it would probably be politically beneficial to the Bush administration, meaning they have little good reason to cover it up.
• If you don't beleive the government, think about the fact that most acts of terrorism happen in places members of the public can get access to. They happen in public business establishments, marketplaces, night clubs, airports, and airplanes. They don't happen in restricted places where only authorized individuals can be. Even the bombing of the USS Cole didn't happen from within, it happened because any member of the public and operate a boat in public waters. In short, you don't just waltz on to the space shuttle like you do an airplane or an office builing. On the space shuttle is not exactly the kind of place that you can get lot in a crowd, and it is a place where every peice of cargo is tightly inventoried.
• If it was terrorists, why did they wait nearly two weeks to destroy the thing? If you plant a bomb, you're not going to want to leave weeks for it to be discovered. It seems pretty much impossible that anyone could have stowed away, certainly for two weeks. Moreover, even if they had, why not blow it up more dramatically in space or crash it into a target on land?
• I guess you could suggest that it was shot down. This also is pretty much impossible. News said it was at 200,000 feet and traveling 12,500 mph when it broke up. Now it seems to me that shooting down something at that speed and altitude would be basically like trying to shoot down an ICBM, something the vast monetary and technological resources of the US governement remain unable to do effectively. Of course, the space shuttle would have a much bigger radio and heat signature, but then our national missle defense program fails a good portion of th time even when targets at tagged with a transmitter or baked in an oven. Another comparison you could make is to the SR71. From numbers I've seen, the space shuttle was flighing more than twice as high and 5 times as fast as the SR71 at the time of the incident. While the SR71 was designed to have minimal radar signature, as far as I understand its speed and altitude were also designed to make it nearly impossible to shoot down (many air-to-air missles only travel about as fast). The point being, shooting down the space shuttle at that point would have been basically impossible even for "the world's only superpower", let alone a terrorist organization with limited resources and expertese.

Now, I won't even begin to go into the fallacies in your bigoted statements about muslims. Suffice it to say they are even more incorrect. I hope that your message was just an insensative troll and that you don't actually feel that way.

Here's a better article from the Washington Post.

It should be noted that, 'Despite the small decline in the number of AOL subscribers in the United States during the fourth quarter, the total number of subscribers grew enough during the other nine months of the year to enable America Online to post a 1.2 million net increase in customers during 2002.'

Also, AOL is still by far the number one ISP with 26.5 million U.S. customers to MSN's 9 million.

Here is the picture:
Shuttle breaking into pieces

Check this out!!! The washington post reported that the shuttle landed safely!

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A994 3-2003Feb1.html

You can
watch MSNBC video on Realplayer.