Slashdot Mirror

It would be even funnier if it weren't so true.

mp3.com (biggest >1.5 million tunes, now owned by Universal Vivendi who, so far, haven't messed it up too much)

IUMA (based in the USA, but international)

Besonic (based in Germany, but international)

mp3.de (based in Germany, but international)

Soundclick (based in the USA, but international)

(Garageband based in the USA, but international)

France mp3 (based in France)

Vitaminic (free + pay - based in the USA, but international)

Washington Post (yup, the newspaper)

Online Rock (based in the USA, but international)

Peoplesound based England

mp3.com Australia (not the same mp3.com - based in Australia, but international)

Emusic (pay and not really indie per se, but smaller label and re-release oriented, based in USA)

Artistlaunch (based in the USA, but international)

mp3 Poland - (Based in Poland - mostly domestic)

Good Google will searches turn up more small sites, thousands of independent artists' sites with free mp3's, some smaller labels that have free samples, many, many links pages. The biggest problem here is that it takes time to separate the wheat from the chaff. There is some incredibly good stuff out there and a lot of crap.

Use Google - many local newspaper sites have mp3 sections for local artists and there are many mp3 sites that are specifically for local talent.

If you're not familiar with mp3.com, it can be daunting in the sheer volume of material (no pun intended). And they accept material of all (musical) quality from absolute crap to incredibly good. They have many genre-based top-40 style charts and new-release charts. Walking through those is a natural first step. One concept they have that can be a big help is "stations" - really a euphemism for fan-generated lists of tunes by various artists. The tunes can be played separately or sequentially. So, when you find an artist that you like and get to their page, click on the "stations now playing" tab. On that page could be one to several "stations" where you might find additional good material that someone else has taken the time to comb out and list. I've seen lists from 2 to 200 tunes long - this can expand your options very quickly.

I have looked for ogg sources and found precious few. Unfortunately, Ogg is still a long way from critical mass.

The Washington Post has an excellent mp3 section focusing on local bands. If you're a DC band you can Post your MP3s there. T&C seem pretty generous - you retain copyright, and just let WP distribute your songs. And anyone who has Chuck Brown available is worth doing business with, definitely.

The Washington Post has an excellent mp3 section focusing on local bands. If you're a DC band you can Post your MP3s there. T&C seem pretty generous - you retain copyright, and just let WP distribute your songs. And anyone who has Chuck Brown available is worth doing business with, definitely.

Yeah, American newspapers always toe the Government line, right?

mp3.com (biggest >1.5 million tunes, now owned by Universal Vivendi, but so far they haven't messed it up too much)

IUMA

Besonic

mp3.de

Soundclick

Garageband

France mp3

Vitaminic (free + pay)

Washington Post (yup)

Online Rock

Peoplesound

mp3.com Australia(not the same mp3.com)

Emusic (pay)

Artistlaunch

Good Google will searches turn up more small sites, thousands of independent artists' sites with free mp3's, smaller labels have free samples, many, many links pages. The biggest problem here is that it takes time to separate the wheat from the chaff. There is some incredibly good stuff out there and a lot of crap. I hope that you have a high bandwidth connection. Who needs the big labels? I don't.

it would be interesting to know whether there are any productive scientists who are religious fanatics.

I'm not really sure what your definition of fanatic is, but every few years, a poll is done to measure religious attitudes among scientists. The Washington Post had a story on it quite a while back...here are some highlights that should let you make up your own mind...

These contemporary researchers found that about four in 10 randomly selected scientists two years ago professed belief "in a personal God," almost exactly the same proportion as in 1916, Bishop reported.

One key result from the current study to a question that wasn't asked in 1916: More than half - 55 percent - endorsed the Darwinian view that "humans developed over millions of years from less advanced forms of life. God had no part in this process."

Bishop notes, however, that "a surprisingly large percentage (40 percent) subscribed to the 'theistic evolutionist' idea that 'humans developed over millions of years from less advanced forms of life, but God guided this process, including humankind's creation.'" Only 5 percent endorsed a creationist view that God created humans "pretty much in their present form at one time within the past 10,000 years."

(Emphasis added by me)

Original Washington Post Article

"the CIA can assasinate with impunity"

And not only that...it can assassinate US citizens. "Administration officials, intelligence operatives and military analysts...praised the CIA strikes as an innovative way to get the job done." You know that whole "pre-emptive strike" debate? Well it's over now. Everybody grab their sled because we're in for a nice ride down this slippery slope from moral highground! Weeeee!

Obviously, you have forgotten that the FBI was recently repremanded for lying to a federal court?

Didn't you see A Fish Called Wanda? It's "unbe-fucking-lieveable."

I know you're posting flamebait regarding one of the Slashdot crowd's favorite Linux distros, but you make a good point about China. Their actions regarding Taiwan is a matter of importance for all those who care about democracy.

While Beijing continues to bully Taiwan, it's also oppressing the Uighurs, a minority group that resides in the northwest portion of China. Under the false rubric of the American-led "war on terrorism", China is smearing the Uighurs' national movement for sovereignty and civil rights. As an example of this, read today's Washington Post article titled "Uighurs Banned From Beijing Hotels During Congress". Couple this state-sponsored discrimination with their disgusting behavior in Tibet, and it is clear that China is a rogue state on par with North Korea, Iraq, and Israel.

In case anyone likes to follow the results this late at night.. it appears that the GOP is now in the majority of the House and Senate. And CNN provides overall statistics for the exact numbers between the two major parties.
I also find it interesting that as of right now (3:11am est), MSNBC isn't ready to assume that the GOP has control of the Senate and the House. But everyone knows CNN leans towards the right anyways.

Now, if VNS were as good at predicting the outcome of software development projects, as they are at predicting election results... Hmmm, maybe the problem is, they are.

I used to think that it was all about the votes -- you know, people come in, write on a peice of paper (or punch out a little hole). Then the papers were all gathered up and tallied.. whoever got the most votes wins. Right?

Welp, not true. Gore got more votes than Bush did. Bush's buddies in government elected him. It certainly wasn't the people of the United States.

Yes, it really is all about the Benjamins

This is a scoop. Nobody else has it yet - Yahoo, NYT, WP. Here's the WP's pre-announcement.

"The programmer "had a password into the system and the ability to do what he did. He could have altered the ticket internally," Weil said, ...,

and

"The vulnerability in the system still exists, Weil acknowledged, but he said that his company will be watching future races closely until a fix can be found."

So did someone with a lame password have his access hacked to the tune of 3+ MegaDollars?

Well, they do want some registration stuff, but nothing identifiable to you.

TORONTO -- The Canadian government issued a travel advisory this week with a twist: It suggests citizens born in Iraq, Syria and other countries targeted by U.S. anti-terrorism policies consider avoiding travel to the United States.

The Washington Post article on this has this nifty nugget: "Bentley said the experiment should not be confused with industry efforts to agree on a general standard for interoperability of separate instant-messaging programs. AOL says it is worried that such connections could compromise the security of its systems and expose users to more unwanted appeals from strangers and other junk messages."

With elections coming up (US) I wanted to poll the my candidates on where they stand regarding issues I care a lot
about (e.g. the DMCA,
CBDTPA, etc). This is not only time consuming when done
individually, but also tends to result in vague replies: For example Adam
Smith, (yes, that congressman, featured on Slashdot recently here and here) would not explicitly state whether he
supports or opposes Rep. Boucher's legislation on Digital Media Consumers' Rights (Although with the recent events coming to light about him
it seems to matter less). What I would like to know if there is a web site, where I can find out who the
slashdot-type community (i.e. EFF, DigitalSpeech, etc.) endorses (or opposes) in each race. It would be even
nicer if this would go down to the sate level.

Can anyone imagine that there is still a market for people who need their hands held as they walk along the Information Superhighway? Nonetheless, I have GOT to get a clip of Billy G. in the reported "Butterfly Suit."

I am sick and tired of the RIAA/MPAA et al trying to punish law abiding users. One of my favorite rappers Jay Z, has taken a very innovative and effective approach to fighting piracy. Read about it here. I'm sure this guy won't be selling anymore bootlegs!

washingtonpost.com reports that hours after the root-server attack ended, a second DDOS attack occurred targeting name servers. No proof that attacks were perpetrated by same person(s), but similarities abound.

Those of you who actually took the time to read my essay, "Cyberwar: How Terrorists Could Defeat the U.S., and Why They Won't," (requires Acrobat 5, not 4.) might get chill running up your backs when you read this. I'm still sticking to my original thesis, however: The Internet won't be brought down by terrorists because corporations and governments need it, and the terrorists serve the interests of corporations and governments. Regardless, I hope this DNS attack isn't a prelude to a bigger operation. Note how they say that it just ran for an hour and then stopped! Note this story, which detailed the creation of attack zombies with P2P capabilities, allowing them to be targetted at will. Also note that a top infrastructure protection analyst was just killed by the Maryland area sniper! And within a couple of days we see the largest DDOS attack on root DNS systems ever!? (Long Pause) Keep a sharp eye out for weirdness, folks, something BIG might be coming down:

Here's what I wrote back on September 14, 2002:

Maybe the terrorists start taking out some or all of the thirteen root domain name server systems (I think there are still 13) or interrupting communications to those root servers [today's DDOS incident]. (Thankfully, a couple of these systems are located in places that have people with guns guarding them.) These root servers are used by thousands of other lower level domain name systems and receive about 300 million requests per day.

Domain name systems are used to translate human readable URLs, like www.cryptogon.com into machine usable IP addresses like 209.115.132.59. There is much concern about the root DNS systems. Many articles on this topic are easily accessible. Much of the concern, however, is focused on hackers DOSsing the root servers. Again, this misses the point.

What is the physical security like at the non-military root DNS facilities?

I've driven by one of the buildings hundreds of times because I used to live near it. It looks just like any other small office building. How long would this place hold up against a few armed terrorists who were willing to die TO BRING DOWN A ROOT DNS NODE? Think about it. The same goes for the data centers mentioned previously. Surely these places should have armed security. But even if they did, are they prepared to stop terrorists who have no intention of ever getting out alive?

Here's what just happened:

The heart of the Internet sustained its largest and most sophisticated attack ever, starting late Monday, according to officials at key online backbone organizations.

Around 5:00 p.m. EDT on Monday, a "distributed denial of service" (DDOS) attack struck the 13 "root servers" that provide the primary roadmap for almost all Internet communications. Despite the scale of the attack, which lasted about an hour, Internet users worldwide were largely unaffected, experts said.

FBI officials would not speculate on who might have planned or carried out the attack.

David Wray, a spokesman for the FBI's National Infrastructure Protection Center (NIPC), said the bureau is "aware of the reports and looking into it."

DDOS attacks overwhelm networks with an onslaught of data until they cannot be used. According to security experts, the incident probably was the result of multiple attacks, in which attackers concentrate the power of many computers against a single network to prevent it from operating.

"This was the largest and most complex DDOS attack ever against the root server system," said a source at one of the organizations responsible for operating the root servers.

Here is Hernandez's assessment of Ivy League admissions officers: "They may consist of graduate students, former teachers, spouses of professors and college staff; and career administrators. The majority of this group did not graduate from any highly selective college, let alone an Ivy League one. . . . [Many] are not expert readers . . . and most of them are not scholars or intellectuals. . . . What I am trying to say without shocking too much is that the very best of applicants will often be brighter than many of those who will be evaluating them."

Oh my. I can only imagine, with horror, what might happen if an applicant accepted this analysis as a guide for proper interview behavior. It is not a good idea to think you are smarter than other people, particularly those from whom you need a favorable report. Say, for example, a young applicant in the middle of an interview mentions his term paper on progressive education and, trying to be helpful, says, "Maybe you haven't heard of John Dewey, he helped launched that movement." Or what will an alumni interviewer think when he asks an applicant about her science fair entry and hears these words: "Well, this gets very complicated, but I will try to summarize it for you."

Here is Hernandez's assessment of Ivy League admissions officers: "They may consist of graduate students, former teachers, spouses of professors and college staff; and career administrators. The majority of this group did not graduate from any highly selective college, let alone an Ivy League one. . . . [Many] are not expert readers . . . and most of them are not scholars or intellectuals. . . . What I am trying to say without shocking too much is that the very best of applicants will often be brighter than many of those who will be evaluating them."

Oh my. I can only imagine, with horror, what might happen if an applicant accepted this analysis as a guide for proper interview behavior. It is not a good idea to think you are smarter than other people, particularly those from whom you need a favorable report. Say, for example, a young applicant in the middle of an interview mentions his term paper on progressive education and, trying to be helpful, says, "Maybe you haven't heard of John Dewey, he helped launched that movement." Or what will an alumni interviewer think when he asks an applicant about her science fair entry and hears these words: "Well, this gets very complicated, but I will try to summarize it for you."

Here is Hernandez's assessment of Ivy League admissions officers: "They may consist of graduate students, former teachers, spouses of professors and college staff; and career administrators. The majority of this group did not graduate from any highly selective college, let alone an Ivy League one. . . . [Many] are not expert readers . . . and most of them are not scholars or intellectuals. . . . What I am trying to say without shocking too much is that the very best of applicants will often be brighter than many of those who will be evaluating them."

Oh my. I can only imagine, with horror, what might happen if an applicant accepted this analysis as a guide for proper interview behavior. It is not a good idea to think you are smarter than other people, particularly those from whom you need a favorable report. Say, for example, a young applicant in the middle of an interview mentions his term paper on progressive education and, trying to be helpful, says, "Maybe you haven't heard of John Dewey, he helped launched that movement." Or what will an alumni interviewer think when he asks an applicant about her science fair entry and hears these words: "Well, this gets very complicated, but I will try to summarize it for you."

No it does not. There is clearly an area where taxation has an effect on GDP and also clearly an area where the effects are irrelevant. Even the infamous Laffer-curve used to justify Reaganomics accepted that. Now Economics 101 taught by Phil Gramm might teach that but most genuine economists explain that economics is very complex and that simple minded ideology does not give infallible answers.

Deficit spending can clearly have a negative effect on GDP by raising long term interest rates and hence the cost of capital. So tax cuts that increase the deficit without creating offsetting incentives for greater economic activity can actually reduce GDP. In particular eliminating inheritance tax does not encourage people to die.

The claim that tax cuts cost nothing because every dollar of lost revenue will somehow be made up in increased GDP is clearly a right-wing fairy tale.

The point is that we were told that the tax cuts would not cause or worsen the deficit over and over again. At no point did the administration admit that the tax cut might result in deficit spending. When Gore challenged Bush on this in the debate Bush made his infamous 'fuzzy math' claim. It is very clear now that Bush was the one using fuzzy math.

To take a more clear cut example, Bush has repeatedly asserted that he had said during the campaign that his balanced budget pledge was subject to conditions, it might be necessary to run a deficit for war, a recession or national emergency. Only thing is that this was actually said by Gore, there is no contemporary press record of the conditions, nor can the administration provide any evidence that they were ever made, or any press release of policy statement that mentions them. The oft repeated pledge to balance the budget unconditionally is retrospectively made subject to a condition that was never stated at the time.

One wonders what secret conditions might apply to the numerous other undertakings the Bush administration has made.

...maybe it was a month ago on washingtonpost.com. Cool picture too.

According to a recent article in the Washington Post, "In today's Hollywood, box office revenue makes up less than a quarter of a film's total take. The largest piece of a movie's money pie comes from sales and rentals of its DVDs." It goes on to note that while "Monster's Inc." grossed $255 million at the box office it is expected to generate $380 million+ from DVDs (DVD sales have already topped $140 million). Seems like hollywood will be running pretty strong even if box office sales do decline.

In general, it seems unlikely that an industry could destory itself economically when the products in competition both generate revenue for the same industry. Of course, it might have some effect on quality. The low overhead for DVD production relative to theater releases allow crappy films to generate profits. Something akin to what video did to the porn industry a la "Boogie Nights." Of course, this also means good things for indy films and pieces that appeal only a cross-section of society, which could yield some high quality pictures.

Actually in larger metropolitan areas Police helicopters are equipped with Steadicam style cameras and near military grade image recognition systems that once locked onto a vehicle will keep the camera tracked to it at all times. Older systems required manual reacquisition of the target after it passed under a bridge or similar obstruction, but many of the newest units are perfectly capable of doing this on their own. The D.C. area even has a U.K. like ground based video surveillance and tracking network.

What the military can provide is a larger number of high resolution imaging and tracking systems making it more likely that they will be in the right spot at the right time to be able to acquire the fleeing suspect's vehicle.

Still I would have expected it to be cheaper to borrow air units from Baltimore and other neighboring cities than to re-task surveillance aircraft from the military. The "sword vs scalpel" analogy is apt. The military is a very big stick and tends to be a bit cumbersome to communicate and interoperate with. Particularly when going through multiple levels of city, state, and national governing bodies.

But it is also likely that this is partly about the blame game. With military units involved the D.C. police department has some of the pressure and blame removed from its shoulders should this drag on too much longer. That is not to say that passing the buck is a primary goal of involving the military, but you can be certain that the benifit has been brought up by someone within the police department when they were discussing this idea.

How is this story ground-breaking news? I posted this story over a year ago on Sept 6, 2001. The original post's article even states that they estimate the mass to be 2.6 million times that of the sun. Nice repeat.

I just got off of the phone with my boy Tariq Aziz [WashingtonPost.com] and evidently there's a new project called SaddamNet that hopes to utilize extra cycles to create new nerve gases, toxins and other WoMD.

More details and the project URL to come soon..

washingtonpost.com's story on the dot-org decision is online here.

For more info on the FISA court, see the FAS page on FISA

The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 prescribes procedures for requesting judicial authorization for electronic surveillance and physical search of persons engaged in espionage or international terrorism against the United States on behalf of a foreign power.

Requests are adjudicated by a special eleven member court called the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.

"Our life tenure is all the more reason for us to be able to communicate informally on occasion with a public that must live with our decisions, yet can never vote us out of office,"

The article states that "(The appeals court)...sent the case to a new judge and sternly chastised Jackson for 'deliberate, repeated, egregious, and flagrant' violations of ethical canons... ". Seems to me they were chastising the wrong party. Unless, of course, MS's use of less-than-ethical tactics were just an oversight on the part of Gates, Ballmer, et al...

more convenient link

Wow, this is so far off-topic I think its off the map, so apologies for the AC posting.

And the Bush Jr. administration is attempting to make the import of ANY hemp product (cloth, clothing, foods, soaps, balms, etc.) illegal.

Actualy they tried and succeeded in getting any hemp based food products made illegal. Clothing, birdseed, rope, etc are still perfectly legal. And when you consider that US Navy still uses hemp rope for certain applications, you can understand that it will likely be a long time before they try to make the fibre illegal.

The fuzzy line is health and beauty aids. You can't market hemp oil as a nutritional supplement anymore, but I think you can still market it as a skin product. So how many people that beleive in the healthful effects of hemp oil supplements (its very high in Omega 3 fatty acids that help reduce cholesterol) will just go out and buy the hand lotion for personal consumption.

The whole thing is pretty bizarre since you have to drink something like your entire body weight in hemp seed oil to get high off it, and you'd be dead by then. Making it less intoxicating than even dihydrogen monoxide.

BTW, Anybody else read Drug Czar Asa Hutchinson's screed against pot legalization in the Washington Post editorial section Wednesday? He argued that making pot legal in Lambeth was clearly a failure since he saw people shooting heroin when he was touring there after the experiment ended. He also said that decriminalization of adult use in Alaska in the 80's was a failure, because teens made pot smoking a regular habit. In both of these cases he uses the example of the police failing to enforce the laws that remained on the books as reasoning to show that failing to enforce laws that weren't on the books was a failure. Hopefully Canada and/or Nevada will soon be providing a large scale example that all forms of hemp were put on this planet by the creator for consumption by His/Her childeren. You would think a good Christian like Asa would have to agree with that reasoning.

HILL VOTES IT A GO...
Mother Asks Bush to Send Son Home...
State Dept. Warns Americans Abroad... DICK MORRIS: Hillary owes NY POST an apology... BBC: Lemon juice 'could stop Aids'... Senator Retreats From Belafonte Awards Dinner... Smoking Ban Causes Debate in N.Y... AP WORLD
AP NATIONAL
AP WASHINGTON
AP BUSINESS
AP ENTERTAINMENT
AP ON THE HOUR
AP HEADLINES

HILL VOTES IT A GO...
Mother Asks Bush to Send Son Home...
State Dept. Warns Americans Abroad... DICK MORRIS: Hillary owes NY POST an apology... BBC: Lemon juice 'could stop Aids'... Senator Retreats From Belafonte Awards Dinner... Smoking Ban Causes Debate in N.Y... AP WORLD
AP NATIONAL
AP WASHINGTON
AP BUSINESS
AP ENTERTAINMENT
AP ON THE HOUR
AP HEADLINES

HILL VOTES IT A GO...
Mother Asks Bush to Send Son Home...
State Dept. Warns Americans Abroad... DICK MORRIS: Hillary owes NY POST an apology... BBC: Lemon juice 'could stop Aids'... Senator Retreats From Belafonte Awards Dinner... Smoking Ban Causes Debate in N.Y... AP WORLD
AP NATIONAL
AP WASHINGTON
AP BUSINESS
AP ENTERTAINMENT
AP ON THE HOUR
AP HEADLINES

HILL VOTES IT A GO...
Mother Asks Bush to Send Son Home...
State Dept. Warns Americans Abroad... DICK MORRIS: Hillary owes NY POST an apology... BBC: Lemon juice 'could stop Aids'... Senator Retreats From Belafonte Awards Dinner... Smoking Ban Causes Debate in N.Y... AP WORLD
AP NATIONAL
AP WASHINGTON
AP BUSINESS
AP ENTERTAINMENT
AP ON THE HOUR
AP HEADLINES

HILL VOTES IT A GO...
Mother Asks Bush to Send Son Home...
State Dept. Warns Americans Abroad... DICK MORRIS: Hillary owes NY POST an apology... BBC: Lemon juice 'could stop Aids'... Senator Retreats From Belafonte Awards Dinner... Smoking Ban Causes Debate in N.Y... AP WORLD
AP NATIONAL
AP WASHINGTON
AP BUSINESS
AP ENTERTAINMENT
AP ON THE HOUR
AP HEADLINES

HILL VOTES IT A GO...
Mother Asks Bush to Send Son Home...
State Dept. Warns Americans Abroad... DICK MORRIS: Hillary owes NY POST an apology... BBC: Lemon juice 'could stop Aids'... Senator Retreats From Belafonte Awards Dinner... Smoking Ban Causes Debate in N.Y... AP WORLD
AP NATIONAL
AP WASHINGTON
AP BUSINESS
AP ENTERTAINMENT
AP ON THE HOUR
AP HEADLINES

HILL VOTES IT A GO...
Mother Asks Bush to Send Son Home...
State Dept. Warns Americans Abroad... DICK MORRIS: Hillary owes NY POST an apology... BBC: Lemon juice 'could stop Aids'... Senator Retreats From Belafonte Awards Dinner... Smoking Ban Causes Debate in N.Y... AP WORLD
AP NATIONAL
AP WASHINGTON
AP BUSINESS
AP ENTERTAINMENT
AP ON THE HOUR
AP HEADLINES

HILL VOTES IT A GO...
Mother Asks Bush to Send Son Home...
State Dept. Warns Americans Abroad... DICK MORRIS: Hillary owes NY POST an apology... BBC: Lemon juice 'could stop Aids'... Senator Retreats From Belafonte Awards Dinner... Smoking Ban Causes Debate in N.Y... AP WORLD
AP NATIONAL
AP WASHINGTON
AP BUSINESS
AP ENTERTAINMENT
AP ON THE HOUR
AP HEADLINES

people are saying they don't hear the shots, or don't hear very loud shots

I don't know where you read that. A witness near the school shooting heard a loud pow, and some people inside a restaurant heard the gunshot near a gas station tonight (if that was the sniper), and several other witnesses reported hearing loud bangs in other attacks. (The Washington Post website has been down for the last couple hours, or I'd find a source or two.)

He may be wearing a cloak of invisibility, but his rifle isn't silent.

Consulting is bad for the commercial market. It is VERY GOOD for the US Federal Government sector.

Would you approve if Italy took this pilot and condemned him for life for slaughtering twenty people (luckily for him there would be no death penalty in the EU) ? Would you approve if they lured him somehow out of US territory and then do whatever they pleased with him?

After all, he got almost nothing done to him here, despite the fact that he killed 20 people.

You might want to ask your Congressman if
the Cheney-Rumsfeld administation knows something
that the Amerikan public does not:

Smallpox Vaccine For All By 2004

Is there not another presidential race in 2004?

Thanks in advance.