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This was filed on the AP wire (and shown on the Washington Post's web site) just 32 minutes before the shuttle came down. Kind of eerie when you look at what David Brown said. -- Columbia Streaks Toward Florida Landing By Marcia Dunn AP Aerospace Writer Saturday, February 1, 2003; 8:28 AM CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- With security tighter than usual, space shuttle Columbia streaked toward a Florida touchdown Saturday to end a successful 16-day scientific research mission that included the first Israeli astronaut. The early morning fog burned off as the sun rose, and Mission Control gave the seven astronauts the go-ahead to come home on time. "I guess you've been wondering, but you are 'go' for the deorbit burn," Mission Control radioed at practically the last minute. Ilan Ramon, a colonel in Israel's air force and former fighter pilot, became the first man from his country to fly in space, and his presence resulted in an increase in security, not only for Columbia's Jan. 16 launch, but also for its landing. Space agency officials feared his presence might make the shuttle more of a terrorist target. "We've taken all reasonable measures, and all of our landings so far since 9- 11 have gone perfectly," said Lt. Col. Michael Rein, an Air Force spokesman. Columbia's crew - Ramon and six Americans - completed all of their 80-plus experiments in orbit. They studied ant, bee and spider behavior in weightlessness as well as changes in flames and flower scents, and took measurements of atmospheric dust with a pair of Israeli cameras. The 13 lab rats on board - part of a brain and heart study - had to face the guillotine following the flight so researchers could see up-close the effects of so much time in weightlessness. The insects and other animals had a brighter, longer future: the student experimenters were going to get them back and many of the youngsters planned to keep them, almost like pets. All of the scientific objectives were accomplished during the round-the-clock laboratory mission, and some of the work may be continued aboard the international space station, researchers said. The only problem of note was a pair of malfunctioning dehumidifiers, which temporarily raised temperatures inside the laboratory to the low 80s, 10 degrees higher than desired. Some of Columbia's crew members didn't want their time in space to end. "Do we really have to come back?" astronaut David Brown jokingly asked Mission Control before the ride home. NASA's next shuttle flight, a space station construction mission, is scheduled for March. The next time Columbia flies will be in November, when it carries into orbit educator-astronaut Barbara Morgan, who was the backup for Challenger crew member Christa McAuliffe in 1986.

Mod parent up...this from the Washington Post: On launch day, a piece of insulating foam on the external fuel tank came off during liftoff and was believed to have struck the left wing of the shuttle. Leroy Cain, the lead flight director in Mission Control, had assured reporters Friday that engineers had concluded that any damage to the wing was considered minor and posed no safety hazard.

I wonder if we'll see large budget adware games in the future. Considering the 400billion to Trillion[1] dollar expenditures on direct and indirect advertising along with the increased popularity of ad-blocking software and consumer electronics, creative --foolhardy?-- ad producers might see piggyback ads as a way to micro-target consumers.

Some modern ad examples: Kazaa makes (millions) off of their file sharing service. We see product placement ads in movies Happy Gilmore (Subway sandwitch), tv shows Drew Carey(Aqua Java drink) nowadays. Some oneline chat (MMORPG) "There.com" (Levis/Nike)

Former FTC Chairman Robert Pitofsky projected online advertising revenue to projected to increase. From 3E8$ to 2E9$ to 11 billion dollars by 2003[2]. If advertisers aren't seeing good returns from banner ads, they might after making their "ads" more entertaining by bundling some entertainment... =)
_____________
[1]COMMUNICATION FROM THE UNITED STATES: Advertising and Related Services (2001 July). World Trade Organization notes (?)
[2]Opening Remarks, FTC Chairman Robert Pitofsky, Public Workshop on Online Profiling, November 8, 1999. Volume XIX. Issue 22. November 15, 1999. Page 5-8. [see hyperlink]. --the linked article is some sort of critque of Pitosfsky's policies.

Shorter article on the same subject.

My rejected submission -- more details, but a bit long. The big news in my mind was not the microsoft bit--it was that ATM machines were unavilable because of the worm.

~~~

The worm that slowed the internet to a crawl over the weekend apparently did more damage than most originally believed. On Monday, many companies were still struggling to clean up. Financial companies and airlines seemed to be hit most acutely. Many web sites that manage payments and check loans were inaccessible. Inexplicably--and really inexcusably--some ATMS were also unavailable. Investigators are also struggling to pinpoint the worms starting point, but are having little success because it took off so fast.

Apparently similar code was released by David Litchfield of NGS Software Inc a few months ago. Virus "author," "Lion" credited Litchfield's code.

The Washington Post has an AP story up as well as this, which is older but has some additional details. The kicker to all this--the worm hit one year after Microsoft launched its "Trustworthy Computing." That and even some of Microsoft's own computers were hit (NYT Reg. Req.).

(Yep, still bitter ;-) )

My rejected submission -- more details, but a bit long. The big news in my mind was not the microsoft bit--it was that ATM machines were unavilable because of the worm.

~~~

The worm that slowed the internet to a crawl over the weekend apparently did more damage than most originally believed. On Monday, many companies were still struggling to clean up. Financial companies and airlines seemed to be hit most acutely. Many web sites that manage payments and check loans were inaccessible. Inexplicably--and really inexcusably--some ATMS were also unavailable. Investigators are also struggling to pinpoint the worms starting point, but are having little success because it took off so fast.

Apparently similar code was released by David Litchfield of NGS Software Inc a few months ago. Virus "author," "Lion" credited Litchfield's code.

The Washington Post has an AP story up as well as this, which is older but has some additional details. The kicker to all this--the worm hit one year after Microsoft launched its "Trustworthy Computing." That and even some of Microsoft's own computers were hit (NYT Reg. Req.).

(Yep, still bitter ;-) )

Um. The camp x-ray folks aren't the biggest concern. This is an issue of our constitutional rights: Maybe Zacarias Moussaoui belongs in a military prison. Jose Padilla however, as far as facts in evidence show, no different from you or I. Of course, I believe wholeheartedly that he is different from you or I, it just hasn't been proven to a judge. And if we're in "wartime" right now, please, tell me when in history we should have been at peace.

Washington Post

Heh, looks like it took out a big portion of Bank of America's ATM (cash) machines!
Link

I can't believe that BoA has their ATM's on the internet -- anyone know more about how it got to their ATM network?

Heh, looks like it took out a big portion of Bank of America's ATM (cash) machines! Link

There was also an interesting article about this in the Washington Post's TechNews section yesterday.

Hillary Rosen announced her resignation from the group today to spend more time with her family.

Washington Post Story

there was a 7.6 quake w/ epicenter in Colima, Mexico (a bit south of Puerto Vallarta, west coast) that hit a few hours ago. Shook the house a fair deal here in Guadalajara. Far as I can tell, Guadalajara (only six million people) is a deal closer to the epicenter than Mexico City, but the sensationalist US media seem to think nobody else exists. Oh well.

a better Link with many more links , first linked on Google news 5 minutes ago.....

"And a solution hasn't yet been invented for the biggest obstacle he's encountered so far: the weather. It has been a frosty winter. The battery expires too quickly when the temperature drops to 40 or so."

Way down at the bottom of this article.

How about this story about Congress realizing that patent problems may take away their blackberrys? Who knows, maybe they'll wake up a bit to all that we've been kvetching about for some long...

Yeesh, a couple of days later I'm reading a confirmation of my thinking here on /. Since you said your father has worked with Unix for a long time, ask him if any of this looks familiar. I bet it does...

I think your belief is misdirected. The *nix community is heavily populated by narcissists who have always hated Gates and Jobs for bringing powerful computing to the unwashed consumer, and especially to the untouchable non-annointed programmers who make a living using things like Flash, VB, Office and Mac DTP/video editing apps. MR is by any definition undeserving of recognition by the *nix priesthood, and he is not the first one to try to make his *nix the 'nix. This is an old game with new players, that's all. In general, it's important to recognize that tech is an extremely difficult business proposition. There are really only four people I can think of who know how to execute it well: Gates, Jobs, Chambers, and Ellison.

As for Linux, I still think its most compelling application is as an embedded OS. Just look at TiVo. How may other devices have been called "God's Machine" by government officials? Note also that TiVo/Linux has a consistent UI, is almost plug and play, provides a valuable service, and, is more affordable since it does not carry a big license load from a proprietary OS. If you want to hit it big in the Linux game, get to know some hardware people! It's a waste of time to get into this desktop conflict. You know what is said about those who ignore history...

He wants to start a preemptive attack on a another nation

Where was your outrage in 1998?

Cindy Webb, author of the Filter column on washingtonpost.com, surveyed the media landscape in her column on Thursday.

Justices John Paul Stevens and Stephen Breyer disagreed with their colleagues. Stevens wrote that the court was "failing to protect the public interest in free access to the products of inventive and artistic genius."

"I can find a lot of fault with what Congress did," Justice Sandra Day O'Connor said. "This flies directly in the face of what the framers of the Constitution had in mind. But is it unconstitutional?"

The Washington Post had an online chat with Mitnick a month or two back.

(Bitterness continues long after submission! ;-) )

Interesting read, but I really enjoyed this part:

"Per the terms of his parole agreement, Mitnick is barred from using nearly all computers except a court-approved laptop. He is also prohibited from sending e-mail or surfing the Internet. As such, Mitnick dictated his responses to a washingtonpost.com staffer who transcribed."

That said, I wonder, was this the last book every written without a computer? ;-). Or maybe he could use his court-approved laptop. ;-)

The grand-prize winner for Distinguished Ultra-Male Behavior is Seth Brown, 23, of Williamstown, Mass. I heard of Seth's accomplishment third-hand, and assumed it was an urban legend, but called anyway.

Seth is a freelance writer, looking for work. His roommate Tom is an artist, looking for work. The two guys don't see much of their third roommate, Mandy, so they pretty much are in charge of their own upkeep, which suits them just fine, thank you. It's not like guys can't fend for themselves.

Seth has taken over the cooking chores, and for months he and Tom have eaten splendidly, without female accompaniment or advice.

What do you guys eat?

"Potatoes. Fried, sometimes baked. Salt, vinegar. We've got a dish called Smoky Cowboy Rice and Beans. And burritos. I fry burritos with beans and rice and whatever else is on hand. Beef. Baba ghanouj. You know."

The two guys were doing great, until one day something happened. Can you tell the readers what happened, Seth?

C'mon, don't be bashful.

"We got scurvy."

U.S. Decision On Iraq - How Policy Was Set

By Glenn Kessler Washington Post Staff Writer (Sunday, January 12, 2003; Page A01)

On Sept. 17, 2001, six days after the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, President Bush signed a 21/2-page document marked "TOP SECRET" that outlined the plan for going to war in Afghanistan as part of a global campaign against terrorism. Almost as a footnote, the document also directed the Pentagon to begin planning military options for an invasion of Iraq, senior administration officials said.
The previously undisclosed Iraq directive is characteristic of an internal decision-making process that has been obscured from public view. Over the next nine months, the administration would make Iraq the central focus of its war on terrorism without producing a rich paper trail or record of key meetings and events leading to a formal decision to act against President Saddam Hussein, according to a review of administration decision-making based on interviews with more than 20 participants. Instead, participants said, the decision to confront Hussein at this time emerged in an ad hoc fashion. Often, the process circumvented traditional policymaking channels as longtime advocates of ousting Hussein pushed Iraq to the top of the agenda by connecting their cause to the war on terrorism.
With the nation possibly on the brink of war, the result of this murky process continues to reverberate today: tepid support for military action at the State Department, muted concern in the military ranks of the Pentagon and general confusion among relatively senior officials -- and the public -- about how or even when the policy was decided.............

Read the full article here - How U.S. Policy On Iraq Was Set

U.S. Decision On Iraq - How Policy Was Set

By Glenn Kessler Washington Post Staff Writer (Sunday, January 12, 2003; Page A01)

On Sept. 17, 2001, six days after the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, President Bush signed a 21/2-page document marked "TOP SECRET" that outlined the plan for going to war in Afghanistan as part of a global campaign against terrorism. Almost as a footnote, the document also directed the Pentagon to begin planning military options for an invasion of Iraq, senior administration officials said.
The previously undisclosed Iraq directive is characteristic of an internal decision-making process that has been obscured from public view. Over the next nine months, the administration would make Iraq the central focus of its war on terrorism without producing a rich paper trail or record of key meetings and events leading to a formal decision to act against President Saddam Hussein, according to a review of administration decision-making based on interviews with more than 20 participants. Instead, participants said, the decision to confront Hussein at this time emerged in an ad hoc fashion. Often, the process circumvented traditional policymaking channels as longtime advocates of ousting Hussein pushed Iraq to the top of the agenda by connecting their cause to the war on terrorism.
With the nation possibly on the brink of war, the result of this murky process continues to reverberate today: tepid support for military action at the State Department, muted concern in the military ranks of the Pentagon and general confusion among relatively senior officials -- and the public -- about how or even when the policy was decided.............

Read the full article here - How U.S. Policy On Iraq Was Set

Washington Post technology columnist Leslie Walker writes about There in her column today. Excerpt: It's meant to be a destination where people can do lots of things -- race dune buggies, fly on hoverboards, flirt, hang out with their dogs -- but it has no defined objectives. "There" offers tools for people to create their own worlds and virtual lifestyles. The company also hopes to make money licensing its tools to other companies such as ski resorts to create their own virtual environments."

U.S. Decision On Iraq - How Policy Was Set

By Glenn Kessler Washington Post Staff Writer (Sunday, January 12, 2003; Page A01)
On Sept. 17, 2001, six days after the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, President Bush signed a 21/2-page document marked "TOP SECRET" that outlined the plan for going to war in Afghanistan as part of a global campaign against terrorism.
Almost as a footnote, the document also directed the Pentagon to begin planning military options for an invasion of Iraq, senior administration officials said.

The previously undisclosed Iraq directive is characteristic of an internal decision-making process that has been obscured from public view. Over the next nine months, the administration would make Iraq the central focus of its war on terrorism without producing a rich paper trail or record of key meetings and events leading to a formal decision to act against President Saddam Hussein, according to a review of administration decision-making based on interviews with more than 20 participants.
Instead, participants said, the decision to confront Hussein at this time emerged in an ad hoc fashion. Often, the process circumvented traditional policymaking channels as longtime advocates of ousting Hussein pushed Iraq to the top of the agenda by connecting their cause to the war on terrorism.
With the nation possibly on the brink of war, the result of this murky process continues to reverberate today: tepid support for military action at the State Department, muted concern in the military ranks of the Pentagon and general confusion among relatively senior officials -- and the public -- about how or even when the policy was decided.............

Read the full article here - How U.S. Policy On Iraq Was Set

U.S. Decision On Iraq - How Policy Was Set

By Glenn Kessler Washington Post Staff Writer (Sunday, January 12, 2003; Page A01)
On Sept. 17, 2001, six days after the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, President Bush signed a 21/2-page document marked "TOP SECRET" that outlined the plan for going to war in Afghanistan as part of a global campaign against terrorism.
Almost as a footnote, the document also directed the Pentagon to begin planning military options for an invasion of Iraq, senior administration officials said.

The previously undisclosed Iraq directive is characteristic of an internal decision-making process that has been obscured from public view. Over the next nine months, the administration would make Iraq the central focus of its war on terrorism without producing a rich paper trail or record of key meetings and events leading to a formal decision to act against President Saddam Hussein, according to a review of administration decision-making based on interviews with more than 20 participants.
Instead, participants said, the decision to confront Hussein at this time emerged in an ad hoc fashion. Often, the process circumvented traditional policymaking channels as longtime advocates of ousting Hussein pushed Iraq to the top of the agenda by connecting their cause to the war on terrorism.
With the nation possibly on the brink of war, the result of this murky process continues to reverberate today: tepid support for military action at the State Department, muted concern in the military ranks of the Pentagon and general confusion among relatively senior officials -- and the public -- about how or even when the policy was decided.............

Read the full article here - How U.S. Policy On Iraq Was Set

U.S. Decision On Iraq - How Policy Was Set

On Sept. 17, 2001, six days after the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, President Bush signed a 21/2-page document marked "TOP SECRET" that outlined the plan for going to war in Afghanistan as part of a global campaign against terrorism.
Almost as a footnote, the document also directed the Pentagon to begin planning military options for an invasion of Iraq, senior administration officials said.
The previously undisclosed Iraq directive is characteristic of an internal decision-making process that has been obscured from public view. Over the next nine months, the administration would make Iraq the central focus of its war on terrorism without producing a rich paper trail or record of key meetings and events leading to a formal decision to act against President Saddam Hussein, according to a review of administration decision-making based on interviews with more than 20 participants.
Instead, participants said, the decision to confront Hussein at this time emerged in an ad hoc fashion. Often, the process circumvented traditional policymaking channels as longtime advocates of ousting Hussein pushed Iraq to the top of the agenda by connecting their cause to the war on terrorism.
With the nation possibly on the brink of war, the result of this murky process continues to reverberate today: tepid support for military action at the State Department, muted concern in the military ranks of the Pentagon and general confusion among relatively senior officials -- and the public -- about how or even when the policy was decided.............

Read the full article here - How U.S. Policy On Iraq Was Set

U.S. Decision On Iraq - How Policy Was Set

On Sept. 17, 2001, six days after the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, President Bush signed a 21/2-page document marked "TOP SECRET" that outlined the plan for going to war in Afghanistan as part of a global campaign against terrorism.
Almost as a footnote, the document also directed the Pentagon to begin planning military options for an invasion of Iraq, senior administration officials said.
The previously undisclosed Iraq directive is characteristic of an internal decision-making process that has been obscured from public view. Over the next nine months, the administration would make Iraq the central focus of its war on terrorism without producing a rich paper trail or record of key meetings and events leading to a formal decision to act against President Saddam Hussein, according to a review of administration decision-making based on interviews with more than 20 participants.
Instead, participants said, the decision to confront Hussein at this time emerged in an ad hoc fashion. Often, the process circumvented traditional policymaking channels as longtime advocates of ousting Hussein pushed Iraq to the top of the agenda by connecting their cause to the war on terrorism.
With the nation possibly on the brink of war, the result of this murky process continues to reverberate today: tepid support for military action at the State Department, muted concern in the military ranks of the Pentagon and general confusion among relatively senior officials -- and the public -- about how or even when the policy was decided.............

Read the full article here - How U.S. Policy On Iraq Was Set

U.S. Decision On Iraq - How Policy Was Set

By Glenn Kessler Washington Post Staff Writer Sunday, January 12, 2003; Page A01
On Sept. 17, 2001, six days after the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, President Bush signed a 21/2-page document marked "TOP SECRET" that outlined the plan for going to war in Afghanistan as part of a global campaign against terrorism.
Almost as a footnote, the document also directed the Pentagon to begin planning military options for an invasion of Iraq, senior administration officials said.
The previously undisclosed Iraq directive is characteristic of an internal decision-making process that has been obscured from public view. Over the next nine months, the administration would make Iraq the central focus of its war on terrorism without producing a rich paper trail or record of key meetings and events leading to a formal decision to act against President Saddam Hussein, according to a review of administration decision-making based on interviews with more than 20 participants.
Instead, participants said, the decision to confront Hussein at this time emerged in an ad hoc fashion. Often, the process circumvented traditional policymaking channels as longtime advocates of ousting Hussein pushed Iraq to the top of the agenda by connecting their cause to the war on terrorism.
With the nation possibly on the brink of war, the result of this murky process continues to reverberate today: tepid support for military action at the State Department, muted concern in the military ranks of the Pentagon and general confusion among relatively senior officials -- and the public -- about how or even when the policy was decided.............

Read the full article here - How U.S. Policy On Iraq Was Set

U.S. Decision On Iraq - How Policy Was Set

By Glenn Kessler Washington Post Staff Writer Sunday, January 12, 2003; Page A01
On Sept. 17, 2001, six days after the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, President Bush signed a 21/2-page document marked "TOP SECRET" that outlined the plan for going to war in Afghanistan as part of a global campaign against terrorism.
Almost as a footnote, the document also directed the Pentagon to begin planning military options for an invasion of Iraq, senior administration officials said.
The previously undisclosed Iraq directive is characteristic of an internal decision-making process that has been obscured from public view. Over the next nine months, the administration would make Iraq the central focus of its war on terrorism without producing a rich paper trail or record of key meetings and events leading to a formal decision to act against President Saddam Hussein, according to a review of administration decision-making based on interviews with more than 20 participants.
Instead, participants said, the decision to confront Hussein at this time emerged in an ad hoc fashion. Often, the process circumvented traditional policymaking channels as longtime advocates of ousting Hussein pushed Iraq to the top of the agenda by connecting their cause to the war on terrorism.
With the nation possibly on the brink of war, the result of this murky process continues to reverberate today: tepid support for military action at the State Department, muted concern in the military ranks of the Pentagon and general confusion among relatively senior officials -- and the public -- about how or even when the policy was decided.............

Read the full article here - How U.S. Policy On Iraq Was Set

I read CNN website to read what news other people are being fed.

Then I read the following for real version of news:

* Washingtonpost (http://www.washingtonpost.com/),
* NewYork Times (http://www.nytimes.com/) and
* Google news (http://news.google.com/)

Today, we have this settlement, which allows consumers to claim a voucher. We also have a request by California Gov. Davis to cut funding to social services and education, as well as to increase state income taxes. Consumers should be allowed to settle their increased tax bill by handing over their settlement voucher to the California government, in exchange for a guarantee that the voucher would be used to purchase computer technology equipment and other educational resources for state schools. Perhaps also the California government should be awarded any unclaimed consumer vouchers after a certain (short) settlement period. This way, schools would be able to purchase whatever resources best fit their needs (instead of having free Microsoft products handed to them), and some of the sting of the increased taxes could be reduced.

Just a thought...

My God... for those of you who've seen the article, isn't that a giant yellow jacket behind the middle chair? These guys really do work for Symantec.

The Post also has a video (real) up with interviews and some views inside the building.

Web page

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/mmedia/washte ch/010603-20v.htm

Direct Link

http://mfile.akamai.com/920/rm/thepost.download.ak amai.com/920/washtech/010603-20v.ram

washingtonpost.com also features a short video look inside the Symantec operations center in Alexandria, Va.

On that note, for those of you who missed the link at the bottom of the article, a video of the facility is also included:

Original Embedded Video Page
Direct Link

The video is in Real format.

TechNews.com's Cynthia L. Webb surveys the media coverage of CES in her daily column today.

Take, for example, an ugly, little wiggle-work of a thing that Michelin plans to implant in its tires, beginning in 2005. Gettys calls it a "radio frequency identification transponder," or an RFID.

The RFID technology allows vital tire identification information-such as tire size, type, serial number, date of manufacture and speed rating-to be stored on a chip the size of a match head.

If GWB annexed Iraq and started sucking out all the oil for US use, that would just tank the prices of oil and lower the demand for Texas oil.

t0qer's argument is correct, though, just not formulated quite accurately. It's not support for Texan oil. There really isn't any more Texan oil. What oil the US produces is mostly offshore or Alaskan, but even so it's small fraction of what we use.

Bush isn't trying to support pumping of oil; imported crude goes straight into the US petrochemical industry. Many of the refineries are in Texas, but even where they aren't, GWB is a friend of the industry. It's where he made his millions, and it's all he knows.

It's not simple selfishness and wanting to pad his wallet. It's just that that industry is where he grew up. He's conditioned to think of it as central to US wealth and prosperity, the driver of the economy. In his mind, whatever is good for the oil companies is good for every American. He really honestly believes he's doing the right thing for all of us by suppressing alternative technologies and making war with Iraq.

Bush is not smart and worldly enough to see the bigger picture, or to take the long view.

Getting the Iraqi oil fields under a friendly regime means the US has more *control* over oil prices and fewer "bad guys" to worry about messing up the economics for his favorite companies.

It isn't GWB holding up electric cars in some oil conspiracy, it's the population as a whole - who collectively don't seem all that interested in alternative fuel vehicles or higher fuel usage vehicles.

Yes and no. US consumers don't want a wimpy EV1, for the most part. They want the bulk, power, and capacity of an SUV. Thus, the consumer is to blame.

But... The government spends many billions on petroleum research, exploration, and foreign policy to support the petroleum economy. The cost of just the first war with Iraq and the subsequent decade-long airspace occupation is estimated in the back hall of congress to be in the range of $100 to $200 billion. Billions more are spent every year to subsidize activities (research and exlporation) that benefit the oil companies. I've seen figures (can't find them right now) that estimate you pay $5 to $8 per gallon of gas in income taxes to support petroleum ... so that you can think you're filling for $1.79/gallon. (based on the cost of drilling, wars, local goverment concessions to bring industry to the area, etc.)

Now... if over the last fifteen years the government had spent that same half a trillion dollars on electric, fuel cell, and hybrid vehicle research, don't you think we'd already have big powerful SUVs that don't depend on oil? We'd have a cleaner country, consumers just as happy, and fewer foreign policy messes. What if we'd been doing that since 1920? Shouldn't we start now so we're not asking the same question again in 2040?

This story would sound reasonable, except that there is another story in which the facts are easier to check: Telephone Price Wars Called Off. The story says that the long distance companies are losing money and need to raise their rates. I think the truth is that providing long-distance services has become cheaper, and they are only trying to squeeze the customers. Why do I think that? Look at BigZoo. That company is able to make a profit at 2.9 cents per minute and 75 cents per month.

If you begin to doubt the "telephone companies are poor" story, then it is likely that you will doubt the "Billy Tauzin is only thinking of how to manage this best" story.

Here is a southern Repbulican man who, even though he is an adult, is still called by the diminutive name "Billy". Is is possible that he would take $16,250 to slow the passage of extremely popular legislation while he tries to stop it? Has such a thing ever happened before? Or, is it true that Billy is taking an intellectual interest in the bill?

Did this whole idea of having a do-not-call list jump into reality last week? No, it has been around for a long time. Billy Tauzin could have "studied" it before.

A lot of newspaper stories are really paid advertisements for a point of view the payers want you to believe.

The site is slashdotted, so I haven't been able to have a look at it. However, if I were building a geo-search engine, I'd use the WHOIS data for the bulk of the indexing work, and for providing a default location for visitors. The tweaking around the edges (changing the location of the website or page), is just icing on the cake.

No one really knows the accuracy of IP->Country lookup. There's an onlgoing thread on the london perl mongers list about this topic. Some geolocation companies state 98% accuracy, which is pure bullshit. It's more likely to be around 70%, with most of the error occuring in overestimation of US addresses.

By the way, if you want a fast IP locator, here's one that's just as accurate as any of the commercial products. I'm surprised more people don't use this sort of stuff for providing intelligent defaults for their users when filling in HTML forms.

The Washington Post article mentioned is actually pretty lame. If you strip out the boring "real chaos" vs. "math chaos" jokes and the explanation of chaos theory that is pretty much what Jeff Goldblum's character said in the _first_ Jurassic Park film, there's almost nothing there.

The article also mentions a Simpsons episode which relates to chaos theory, but didn't bother to mention that it was a take-off on Ray Bradbury's "The Sound of Thunder," a short story written in 1951, well before chaos theory had a name.

Why is it that even the Washington Post can't scrape up a numerate reporter? Would they send an illiterate reporter to interview the winner of the Nobel prize in literature?

i couldnt agree with you more. a good overview of our involvement in iraq can be found at the washington post.

See this article about the Fed lowering rates for electronic purchases, while rasing fees for checks.

Banks will probably change their fee structures as check fees for them increase.

Not all ISP's peer for free with other ISP's. In a lot of cases, they have to "settle up" for their peering costs at the end of the month, per megabyte, with their peers. UUNet is big on doing this with their peers and it's where they make 50% of their income...

Cogent and AOL just had a fallout about this - Cogent felt that they should have free peering with AOL but AOL felt Cogent should pay for usage because most of the traffic going to AOL was for Cogent customers and not vice versa.

(see 'Peering' Dispute With AOL Slows Cogent Customer Access and Paid Peering )

So yes, the short answer is that upstream ISP's do pay per Mb in a good amount of instances if they aren't a huge transit hub. Obviously some ISP's aren't subject to this and just charge by the MB figuring the more traffic you're getting, the more money you're making from their connection.

Let me see if I have this straight.

The government that brought us arms sales to Iran's Ayatollah, supported al Queda et al when it was Russia they were fighting, funded CIA-trained death squads in South America, that has killed a million-plus Iraqi children with their embargo (and noted "we think the price is worth it"), who have so far provded Turkey with $15B (yes, billions) worth of weapons and training to fight the Northern Kurds (who the U.S. claims to be protecting from Saddam) ...this is the same government which claims to want to protect my child (yes, I have one) from the implication of violence?

If I want to keep my daughter away from violence, I think my best bet is to turn off the nightly news and give her permission to skip history class.

The Supreme Court is not "taking up" the case. Justice O'Connor granted an interim stay to consider whether a longer one is necessary. Today, she dismissed that stay and declined to impost a longer one.

See this AP story.

Whether the AP takes up the jurisdictional question in the case is another issue, yet to be decided on, and even if it does take it up, it is just that, solely a jurisdictional issue.

... unless you're gay.