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I believe you are not aware of the whole picture about the big drug companies. Drugs companies at least spend twice as much money on marketing than they do on actually R&D. Also, to cut costs, they tend to take an existing patented drug that is about to expire, modify a bit so a new patent can be obtained, and then market it as a new improved version of the older drug.

The U.S. is the only major country that allows a private company to obtain exclusive rights on a patent where research received funding from public dollars. Hence, people pay up to twice as much for prescription drugs than in countries like Britain, Japan, and Australia.

Big pharma is now just a big marketing engine, where only the real innovative research is mainly being done by public funds.

Some articles worth reading:
http://www.namiscc.org/newsletters/July01/DrugPric es.htm
http://www.jsonline.com/news/state/apr01/scrip0204 0101.asp
http://bernie.house.gov/documents/articles/2001-07 -21-nat_journal-Rx_Drugs.asp
http://abcnews.go.com/onair/ABCNEWSSpecials/pharma ceuticals_020529_pjr_feature.html
http://www.startribune.com/stories/1519/3240359.ht ml
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&cid=5 34&u=/ap/20021001/ap_on_go_co/drug_wars&printe r=1
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&cid=5 34&u=/ap/20021002/ap_on_he_me/pharmaceutical_marke ting&printer=1
http://www.prwatch.org/forum/showthread.php?thread id=420
http://www.prospect.org/print/V12/17/elliott-c.htm l
http://www.prwatch.org/forum/showthread.php?thread id=638
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename= article&node=&contentId=A1208-2001Jul15&notFound=t rue

The difference is that Cringely isn't asking people to smash Citibank windows and throw smoke bombs at the cops. Playing a DVD on Linux (say) doesn't piss off the neighbors quite in the same way, surprisingly enough.

Hows this for a catastrophe? And some companies are unwilling to avert it to protect their precious IP. Oh wait- that's all happening in Africa, so it can't matter.

Somehow, I don't think it's the lack of a catastrophe that's the problem- I think its the general public's ignorance of the impact of IP laws that is.

The Washington Post today looks at the RIAA's new ad campaign, which features music stars asking consumers not to download. "Hey, I've got a mortgage on a $10 million pad in the Hills. I gotta get paid!"

What the head article fails to mention is that a Federal judge ordered the Department of the Interior to shut down all internet connections last year. With no from-the-outside network attacks, the Microsoft systems might stay up for days, even.

I know you are kidding, but read this:

Asthma Risk May Be Cut by Dirt, Study Says

The average American (and probably European too, but I can't say) consumer can run word, e-mail, the web, e-mail, and probably a few games. They are blissful on Windows...

Have you ever even talked to an average consumer? Most of the Windows users I've talked to hate much of it. Things crash and break randomly, there's always some new expensive piece of software to buy, the interfaces are baffling. They put up with it because they have no idea there's any choice, but "blissful" is a blissfully ignorant description of their state. Why else would they be so excited every time a new version of Windows comes out?

For a fairly "average" Windows user's view, try this Dave Barry column. It jives much better with my experience than your observations do.

Yes. Bush is much better, especially since he started quietly started dissolving government agencies that examine the effects of pollution on human health.

A Ph.D. is not something that is waved about publically in polite society, even in academia. I should say especially in academia. It's pretty much assumed that all faculty members have one, so the important title is the one that indicates their position. Consequently, "Dr." suggests that they have no other title worth mentioning, and the really high-strung academic types will regard it as a positive insult.

In normal society, only MDs and holders of similar degrees such as DDS or DO -- that is, those who actually treat ailing people -- are addressed socially as "Dr." Everyone else, including boastful Ph.D.s, are "Mr." or "Ms". Just ask Miss Manners. That Brin insists on trumpeting his degree does him no credit.

I found Ann Landers to be OK, but the Washington Post (my local paper) replaced her with Dear Abby (Iguess they had to), whom I've found to be vapid and flat. Thank heavens for a local (but also syndicated and more power to her!) alternative. Carolyn Hax writes the Tell Me About It advice column. It's advice with a hip, edgy attitude, along with some kewl comics to go with it.

Saddam's regime is heavily secular, and Saddam himself is nominally Sunni. Neither of these traits endear him to the fundamentalish Shiite terrorist types. He's funded anti-Iran terrorists (for obvious reasons) and some Palestinian terrorists (more as public-relations with the rest of the Arab world than because he actually cares).

There is, at the moment, zero evidence that Hussein has worked with al Queda, and a lot of reasons to suppose that he wouldn't. Sure, all those Ay-rabs look the same to us patriotic Americans, but they do have differences.

See, e.g. here, or here. So far as I can see, our government wants to attack Iraq because it knows how to attack armies, but has no clue how to go after mobile and decentralized terrorists.

Could it be that the real reason Simonyi wants away from Microsoft is that he's interested in aspect-oriented programming? And the language that's getting the buzz in aspect-oriented programming is AspectJ, where J stands for Java? And promoting Java would be a career-limiting move at Microsoft for anyone these days?

Instead of the Times article, look at this one in the Washington Post which gets a little closer to this interpretation.

Washington Post

Why post only a link to a page that requires registration for such a well reported story?

Ah, but that brings us to the agendas of both organizations like the Washington Times and of FAIR.

Actually, if you have to resort to the ad hominem dodge right off the bat, you've already lost.

FAIR is not high on my list of "objective" organizations. Now maybe the Washington Times isn't either.

You certainly weren't offering any such provisos when you quoted them to support your position.

...well, I'll take a conservative editorial slant and exercise my judgement with it over the liberal slant from nearly every other news organization and groups like FAIR.

Except, of course, that the myth that most of the media have a liberal slant has itself been thoroughly debunked. [You will, no doubt, dismiss all this evidence out of hand as coming from "liberal" sources, a neatly circular argument. Exercising judgment, indeed.]

Quoting Washington Post:

In the course of researching the state of liberty and security after 9/11, I've been especially struck by how restrained America's legal response appears when contrasted with that of our European allies. Although they weren't directly attacked, the countries of the European Union passed anti-terrorism measures during the past year that are far more sweeping than anything adopted in the United States. In October, France expanded the powers of the police to search private property without a warrant. Germany has engaged in religious profiling of suspected terrorists, a practice that was upheld in a court challenge. In Britain, which has become a kind of privacy dystopia, Parliament passed a sweeping anti-terrorism law in December that authorizes a central government authority to record and store all communications data generated by e-mail, Internet browsing or other electronic communications, and to make the data available to law enforcement without a court order. In May, the European Union authorized all of its members to pass similar laws requiring data retention.

At least the Americans seem to be half-aware of what's happening. As a European with an interest in the protection of privacy and human rights I am appalled at how little my fellow EU citizens seem to know about the erosion of their rights and how readily they accept it when they're told about the recent changes. European media doesn't really criticize this process because they can either be silenced (even big news broadcasters like BBC have been under heavy pressure from the UK Home Office) or they censor themselves in fear of appearing sensationalist.

Point is, they didn't make an alternative to their IC cars because, well, it's suicide for them!

Except that us Californians just changed the rules.

Basically, auto emissions are going to have to come down. Honda is about the only automaker that won't have to do something drastic to meet these requirements, and Toyota is a close second. We can probably kiss Excursions and Ferarris goodby (I won't miss the Excursions, but I get to see a Ferarri at least once a day, and I'll miss that) and the SUVs will either need to go hybrid, fuel-cell, or hack themselves back so badly nobody will buy one who doesn't really need it.

Why is CA doing this now? Well, in part because the air quality issues here, though that's been steadily improving over the last 20 years to the point that LA barely even ranks for bad air quality these days. Personally, I think the state got so soundly fucked by Enron last year while Bush and the rest of DC sat back and watched that this is an opportunity for CA to drive the rest of the nation for a while.

California is unique among states in having the ability to set pollution standards for cars. Automakers won't make two distinct cars for the US market, so CAs rules become the nations rules. I don't expect that CA is going to back down on their timelines either - the automakers are going to have to make some changes. Time to stick it to the Texans, I suppose...

Muslim doesn't represent terrorism to 2/3 of the world, only the US and the Jewish states (oh that includes the US i think).

And New Yorker stock analysts don't represent oppression to 2/3 of the world, only Marxists (speaking of REAL knock on the door in the middle of the night jackbooted, "workers paradise" gulag opression) and Klansmen/Nazi's (ditto) Ever notice how close either extreme really are to each other? Either way the state will MAKE you be what it wants you to be and all your problems are caused by "The international Banking Conspicary" not your own irresponsible decisions or the failings (corruption, oppression, etc) of your own government.

I won't argue that *some* banks and corporations aren't complicit in oppression around the world but it is governments that are DOING the oppression - gulags, "dissapearances", murders, genocides etc. The argument against those businessmen is NOT generally that the oppress anyone themselves but that they are willing to do business with or aid or seek the aid of those who are. But just as most Arabs are NOT terrorist most businessmen (and certainly most of their employees) are NOT oppresing anyone outside of the fantasies of losers like the KKK (& their islamic equivalent) or other sad little extremists that are upset they are not the ones that get to do the oppressing.

As for Arabs & Muslims not having a reputation outside of the US and the Jewish states (aside from Israel which other state(s) are jewish?) I think you could find a few Pakistani's Indians Filipinos Indonesians, Susanese, Kenyans & Tanzanians, Germans, Brits, Egyptians, Turks, Swedes, French, Austrians, Romanians, etc. etc. etc. that have fairly sound reasons to disagree with you. The point is not that Muslim==Terrorist but that SOME muslims are and the argument you made that because SOME businessmen (or Muslims) are guilty of oppression (or terrorism) that means ALL businessmen (or Muslims) are guilty and deserve to have a plane flown into their office (or drop bombs on their village). If your argument is collective guilt fine - but it is a two-way street and you have no basis if you adhere to it to protest even *intentional* civillian deaths.

BTW what would I want with a loan?

I don't know, I didn't suggets that you did. Just that not getting one, or having to pay it back if you DID get one is not being oppressed. Two contradictory reasons bankers are often accused of "oppressing" people.

Amen.

But margarine will kill you! Not kidding. Watch out for trans-fats. They are evil, artificial, broken fats.

Check out the Washington Post article.

Exceptions: Brummel & Brown is yummy and has no trans fat. (Don't have any stock in or relation to whatever company makes Brummel & Brown)

This
interview with Ralph Bodenstein, who worked with him on a universoty project in Hamburg, gives an interesting look at Atta's mindset. See also
Hamburg's Cauldron of Terror.

Anyone who's half decient could join together to make there own lable [sic] without the RIAA.

So, if you don't go with the RIAA, you can't play your song on any ClearChannel station and you can't have your concert at any ClearChannel venue. Basically, you'll play local bars and clubs and hopefully get big enough to be invited to a mainstream venue.

Ever wonder why none of Prince's post-WB stuff is on the radio? Hmm...

>And the Taliban ... They instituted the death penalty for Opium cultivation , or don't you remember that either.

According to a recent article: "When the Taliban ruled Afghanistan, according to Pakistani intelligence officials, it actively engaged in opium and heroin production, and allowed al Qaeda to raise funds through taxing the cultivation of poppy, the raw material for heroin."

Books and movies are available from libraries. I'm sure they hate that too.

A long list of special pleaders now gets free use of copyrighted works, including small businesses, veterans' groups, bars, scholars, restaurants, fraternal groups, marching bands, Boy Scout troops, nursing homes, libraries, radio broadcasters and home tapers. [emphasis added]

A Nation of Thieves?

Something happened on the way to the 21st century. Media and entertainment companies started "converging" and "shareholder value" became far more important than customer service and respect for company employees ever managed to be. Compensation packages for company executives hit the stratosphere -- while holding them accountable for their company's results became nearly impossible.

These executives are indeed very naïve if they think that people haven't noticed.

People are noticing that something isn't quite right -- that something is indeed very wrong. After a decade during which the stock market gained apparent respectability as a legitimate, sensible form of investing, the recent slew of huge corporate scandals reveals that it is still what it has always been: a sick place where neurotic, puerile gamblers get their kicks off the backs of millions of "anonymous" workers and individuals, who have no control over what happens to their hard-earned retirement savings.

Yet this is the place that most company executives feel is much more important to watch than the actual people for whom they produce their goods and services. This is the place where the fate of thousands of employees is decided every day by people staring at computer monitors showing ever-changing, meaningless lists of numbers and charts. And if you happen to personally hold shares in a company that has just announced that it is "restructuring" in order to improve its bottom-line and thus increase its "shareholder value", don't kid yourself: When the company is talking about "shareholders", it's not talking about you and your measly couple of thousands of shares. It's only talking about big shareholders -- i.e. other companies that own a more significant share of its market value.

This is a world where "hostile takeovers" and government-approved "mergers" are feeding a never-ending cycle of fewer and fewer executives wielding more and more power on a multinational scale. Soon enough, the "World Company" and George Orwell's 1984 will no longer be the stuff of satire or fiction -- but prophetic descriptions of a very real "New World Order" gradually unfolding before our eyes.

A Little History

Let's start with a simple list: America Online, Time, Life, Warner Bros., Fortune, Elektra, Sports Illustrated, HBO, Turner Broadcasting, CNN, Cinemax, Entertainment Weekly, New Line Cinema, In Style, Warner/Chappell Music, Time Warner Cable, WBN, ICQ, Warner Music Group, Netscape, People, Reprise, Rhino, Atlantic, WEA, TNT, MapQuest, WinAmp, In Demand, Erato, Moviefone, Road Runner, etc.. All owned by the same corporate giant (AOL Time Warner).

And another one: Universal Music Group, Verve, Nathan, Canal+, Impulse!, Cegetel, USA Networks, Decca, Interscope, Geffen, A&M, Barclay, Armand Colin, L'Express, Universal Studios, Larousse, Sierra, MP3.com, MCA Records, Deutsche Grammophon, Cineplex, etc.. All owned by the same corporate giant (Vivendi Universal).

And yet another one: Disney, ABC, ESPN, Hyperion, Miramax, Touchstone, Hollywood Pictures, A&E, The History Channel, E! Entertainment, RTL-2, Buena Vista, Mr. Showbiz, Wall of Sound, Mammoth Records, etc.. All owned by the same corporate giant (Walt Disney).

Need we say more? See for yourself... There's already only 7 of these corporate giants in total -- and how long will it be before there are even fewer?

It all began innocently enough. Young entrepreneurs in the early 20th century started up new companies with a mix of creative ambition and business acumen. Then these companies grew bigger and bigger, and whatever entrepreneurial vision was present at their birth became more and more diluted and less and less relevant. Then corporate accountants suggested merging with or taking over other companies -- and it all became an all-too-real game of Monopoly.

Then the Internet and "new technologies" came about, and the accountants' next big idea was convergence -- i.e. the merging of "content" providers and "access" providers in order to control everything from the inception of a "cultural product" to its ultimate consumption by the unsuspecting masses.

The Art of Manipulation

It is easy to guess what got lost along the way... Creativity. Artistry. Independence. Critical objectivity. Uncontrolled access. The ability to "break through" cultural barriers. Cultural diversity. Innovation. Freedom. Real music. Real art.

Juggling between art and commerce is a delicate balance at the best of times... and these are definitely NOT the best of times.

So now we have a so-called magazine "reporting" on the latest new blockbuster movie with a 10-page, full-color spread -- as if the reporters weren't aware that the same company that produced the movie also owns their magazine... Yes, this is still called a "magazine". These are still called "reporters". And this is still called "journalism"... And yet millions of people are gleefully letting themselves be had.

Maybe we should stop calling this "art", or even "entertainment" for that matter -- for what is so entertaining about being involved in a collective hallucination? Maybe we should start calling it what it really is, i.e. unfettered MANIPULATION.

In 1995, Clear Channel Communications owned 43 radio stations. Now it owns more than 1,200 -- and its army of so-called "independent promoters" are letting legalized payola dictate what you get (or rather don't get) to hear on the radio.

Everywhere you look, the story is the same: more and more money, less and less choice, less and less freedom of access, fewer and fewer companies. How far will this have to go before a big shift in people's attitude causes this commercial hubris to collapse onto itself and implode?

Power Struggles

The first major cracks in this highly concentrated corporate world have, of course, already begun to appear, in what has been making the headlines in the past few months, i.e. shady accounting practices involving enormous amounts of money -- enough to shake the economy of the most powerful nation of the world. And the hysterical stock markets have of course been swayed by this news, at the expense of tens of thousands of workers worldwide and millions of small investors who thought that their holdings had nowhere to go but up.

The value of AOL Time Warner's stock is now a quarter of what it was at the time of the merger between AOL and Time Warner, and this decline forced the company to take a $54 billion writedown earlier this year. And now it too is being investigated about its accounting practices. The story at Vivendi Universal is similar. Disney shares are near an 8-year low. And there is little doubt in people's mind that the problems are similar everywhere, in every big conglomerate that has become utterly out of touch with the reality of everyday work and the essence of human creativity.

In addition, people also realize all too well that governments have little -- if any -- power left when it comes to regulating these multinational monsters. Governments have much more power when it comes to regulating the lives of ordinary, law-abiding citizens -- and they use and abuse this power as a way to distract people's attention from how much control the conglomerates have over what we get to hear, watch, read, eat, drink, buy, and generally experience as "free" citizens of the world.

One of the areas where this struggle is most acutely felt is, of course, the online world -- a sprawling, anarchic community that is still in its infancy and whose exponential development in the last decade took everyone by surprise. And nothing exemplifies the struggle between government, big business, and individual rights better than the highly controversial issue of "peer-2-peer" file sharing and its many digital variations.

A Nation of Thieves?

Will the media/technology giants recover from the latest stock market slump? They probably will -- but at what cost? In all likelihood, the cost will be more "restructuring", more layoffs, more executive shuffles and golden parachutes, causing even further alienation from their own employees and customers. And this, in turn, will further encourage the very behaviors that they claim are illegal and want punished by criminal law -- all the while preserving their own impunity as they continue to carelessly flounder a capital that they do not own.

Napster may have gone bankrupt and become a closed chapter in the Internet's short history, but its death is by no means a reflection of a decline in peer-2-peer (P2P) file sharing, quite the contrary. If anything, P2P has grown even further -- but since it's becoming totally decentralized, there is no easy way to measure its significance.

What is for sure, however, is that, in spite of its many claims to the contrary, the recording industry has yet to provide evidence that P2P is actually detrimental to music making as an artistic endeavor, and even as a commercial venture. It is worth remembering, for example, that sales of music CDs actually increased when Napster was at its peak, and declined after Napster was abruptly shut down. Even economists who thought that file sharing "should be" hurting the recording industry are now expressing their doubts, based on what they say is simply not happening.

More importantly, many well-respected artists have sided with Internet users against corporate greed and actually use the Internet to promote alternative ways to distribute their music and reach out to a non-captive, legitimate audience of authentic music lovers.

This does not mean, of course, that all forms of file sharing are equally innocuous. There is little doubt that, when people use the Internet as a substitute for radio, i.e. as a way to discover new music, it can help promote the work of artists. But when a young junior high school student downloads tracks off the Internet and makes CD-R copies of them that he then sells for $5 in the schoolyard, it hurts sales of the original CD and it's disrespectful of the artist -- regardless of how small a cut of the actual CD price the artist actually gets after all the executives and the middlemen in the recording industry have taken their piece of the pie.

Still, can we really go as far as to say that digital technology is creating a "nation of thieves" who no longer recognize the just value of art?

Protecting the Product

It is worth noting, to begin with, that the recording industry itself is far from having distinguished itself by recognizing the true value of art. Instead, it has consistently fought to be allowed to deprive many artists of their most fundamental rights. It has allowed popular artists to go bankrupt even though their albums were selling by the millions. It has reduced the artists' cut of the album sales pie to a ridiculously small portion of the actual income generated by these sales. It has consistently pushed commercial musical products at the expense of real musical artistry.

This hardly entitles the recording industry to lecture anyone about recognizing the just value of art.

It is also interesting to note that the cultural products that seem to be the primary concern of the industry giants are those that are already the most popular ones, and that things such as CD copy protection are being experimentally used mostly with items that will sell millions regardless of whether they are copy-protected or not.

So are most citizens really being completely disrespectful of the value of art and the need to provide appropriate compensation to the artists for their works? We've said it before and we'll say it again: the rise of digital technology and peer-2-peer file sharing has little to do with people's intrinsic respect for art and artists, and everything to do with the cynical attitude of big industry conglomerates, which have consistently pushed for more and more commercial, highly profitable products at the expense of authentic art and respect for artists.

If people do not feel enough guilt to prevent them from making digital copies of the latest episode of a popular TV show or hit pop song, it is precisely because the industry giants have succeeded in making these works purely commercial products, with little or no consideration for their actual artistic value. It is precisely because these companies have been consistently promoting commercial products at the expense of artistic works.

The fact that actual works of art still manage to seep through the cracks of this huge profit-driven industry does not change anything about the fundamental equations that have been driving and still drive the industry, today more than ever -- i.e. that art = money, artists = money-makers, and art lovers = consumers.

As a simple example of how little music is valued as an art form by the industry, it is estimated that only about 20 percent of music ever recorded is currently available -- and, of this 20 percent, what proportion is actually readily available to music lovers? What proportion is not the current 100 top albums on the SoundScan charts?

It simply appears that the instinctive reaction of the lover of art (be it music, TV shows, movies, or other forms of art) is such that, if the industry has no respect for his or her identity as an appreciator of art, then he or she has no reason to have any respect for the industry as a purveyor of art. By making digital copies of so-called cultural products, many people are not demonstrating their lack of respect for art and for artists, but are expressing -- consciously or not -- their frustration with the way the entertainment industry profits from art at the expense of both art makers and art lovers.

The consumers of the commercial products of the entertainment industry are only as cynical as the industry has deliberately made them, by dumbing down their products, by exploiting artists, by making profit-driven choices and decisions, and by providing their own kind with obscene compensations and legal impunity that are completely out of touch with the real world of ordinary people.

Don't Get It Twisted

That being said, the whole debate about file sharing and digital piracy is, most of all, a convenient way for industry conglomerates to deflect attention from their own shady business practices and dubious alliances.

For example, it is worth noting that the Warner Music Group is heavily involved in the recording industry's fight against piracy, but that its own parent company, AOL Time Warner, is directly benefiting from file sharing, as a provider of Internet access to millions of Internet users worldwide. When AOL Time Warner repeatedly flaunts its ever-increasing number of members (34 million and counting) and the billions of hours that they spend online, is there any doubt that a good part of this growth involves the "unlawful" exchange of computer files at the detriment of recording artists?

In other words, the real "thieves" are not necessarily those that are currently getting the blame... Rather than a "nation of thieves", the current situation looks, to us, much more like an "elite of thieves".

And the real victims of this thievery are very much, as usual, the recording artists themselves, who will never get their share of AOL's profits as an Internet access provider, even though these profits are partly based on the content that they originally provided. And the real victims also include authentic music lovers, who already suffer from restricted access to the full range of music that they would like to explore, and who are also likely to suffer from technological restrictions that will soon prevent them from making legitimate copies of the works that they have lawfully purchased for their own enjoyment.

Make no mistake: the entertainment industry (including TV, movies and music) might be big, but the technology industry is even bigger. Remember that it is AOL that bought Time Warner, and not the other way around. Remember that Sony makes much more money in electronics and computer equipment than it does in record sales...

If the technology industry ends up implementing technological limitations that prevent users from lawfully enjoying their purchases -- as it is threatening to do -- the beneficiaries will not be the artists whose works are thus being allegedly "protected". And it will certainly not be the art lovers whose enjoyment of art will thus be restricted. No, it will simply be, once again... the industry conglomerates, who will have yet another generation of incompatible media and devices to sell to us under the guise of "technological improvement".

Conclusion

The technology and entertainment industries are simply to big for us to expect any overnight changes. The industry giants will continue to do their best to deflect people's attention away from their own wrongdoings and to blame falling profits and commercial failures on piracy at the same time that they are encouraging their customers to adopt the very technologies that make piracy possible. Artists will continue to be lured by unrealistic promises and contracts with big numbers and lots of small print.

How long, however, before a critical mass of established artists realize that it is in their best interests, both artistically and commercially, to leave the system for good? How long before a critical mass of young aspiring artists become aware of the enslaving aspects of the system and are careful not to get involved in it without a maximum of precautions? And how long before a critical mass of art lovers get together to provide these artists with a real, valuable, legitimate, truthfully enthusiastic alternative audience that completes the process of rendering the existing system artistically irrelevant?

It all depends on us -- and it all depends on you.

[Ed: original used "2" for both "to" and "too" -- grammatical errors in that department are my fault. Only changes should be related to spelling, formatting and links preserved. Various Unicode characters translated to ASCII for the benifit of Slashdot. "Peer-2-peer" is kept as original.]

Next time, before everyone spends a lot of time and energy debating the morality of copyright laws and the hypocrisy of Hollywood and the MPAA, we should probably take a look at the source of the article to determine how seriously we should take it (even though that's not as much fun).

First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win. -- Gandhi

For those of you outside the Beltway, the Post already covered the Science Friction: MIT's 'Soldier' Is Comics Heroine on Friday. The print edition did have illustrations for the article, and you could see the 'uncanny' resemblance.

A craven coward

"Hotmail is phenomenal if you get there within the right time frame," said Kevin Mandia, a former Air Force investigator now working as a consultant with Foundstone Inc. "You can actually see people as they travel, checking messages from different computers. You can really track people effectively."

Article on Provigil - not sure if this was mentioned.

For Sleep-Deprived, a Dream Drug?
Doctors Question Use of Narcolepsy Medicine to Support Lifestyle Choice
By Shankar Vedantam
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, April 28, 2002; Page A03
Linky link link

Like Starbucks, there are 3 or 4 new installations every day ;)

• More, higher resolution pictures
• Detailed timeline
• A 2 minute NPR segment
• A longer segment at the end of Science News Roundup on NPR

• Reuters
• BBC
• Washington Post

If you actually read the opinion (page 16), you'll find: "In September 2000, the government came forward to confess error in some 75 FISA applications." So, presumably, those 75 errors occurred in 2000 or before.

Found these via Drudge...

Special Court Rejects Ashcroft Rules and Secret Court Rebuffs Ashcroft (related to the main story).

And from the second story... "The department discovered the misrepresentations and reported them to the FISA court beginning in 2000.".. which means the improper actions occured before 2000.. i.e. Before Bush. So Bush/Ashcroft are not responsible for those infractions.

Having said that (and despite being a conservative), I do hope these revalations reign in some of the trampling of civil liberties Ashcroft/Bush are considering. I fully understand their desire to fight terrorism, and I understand some liberties we were used to in the past may be crimped in the process. But eliminated? Virtually removed? A number of their proposals (and some things currently put in place) are simply troubling and I hope this is a wake-up call they cannot simply trample over the Constitution in the name of protecting the public. Freedom is not without its risks, either to those who defend it or the society which enjoys it. We all simply need to be aware of that risk and vigilant in our own way to insure we don't lose our freedom to either the terrorist, the criminal or our own government.

(and no, I don't get my music via gnutella either)

-'fester

Found these via Drudge...

Special Court Rejects Ashcroft Rules and Secret Court Rebuffs Ashcroft (related to the main story).

And from the second story... "The department discovered the misrepresentations and reported them to the FISA court beginning in 2000.".. which means the improper actions occured before 2000.. i.e. Before Bush. So Bush/Ashcroft are not responsible for those infractions.

Having said that (and despite being a conservative), I do hope these revalations reign in some of the trampling of civil liberties Ashcroft/Bush are considering. I fully understand their desire to fight terrorism, and I understand some liberties we were used to in the past may be crimped in the process. But eliminated? Virtually removed? A number of their proposals (and some things currently put in place) are simply troubling and I hope this is a wake-up call they cannot simply trample over the Constitution in the name of protecting the public. Freedom is not without its risks, either to those who defend it or the society which enjoys it. We all simply need to be aware of that risk and vigilant in our own way to insure we don't lose our freedom to either the terrorist, the criminal or our own government.

(and no, I don't get my music via gnutella either)

-'fester

Can anyone find a link to the document the court released yesterday?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/onpolitics/tr anscripts/fisa_opinion.pdf

In a TV interview on election eve, McKinney's father, state Rep. Billy McKinney (D-Atlanta), was asked to explain why his daughter was in a tough fight. He spelled out his answer: "J-E-W-S."

The response, clever in its audacity, is to complement the previous anticompetitive strategy, documented so well in Judge Jackson's Findings of Face, of employing the financial largesse acquired through its "private" international computer taxation powers to "dump" product on the market for free (but only in terms of immediate financial cost, of course).

Print that message out and mail it to the post. It would make an excellent letter to the editor, I bet you would get published.

I honestly have to wonder whether the music industry paid to put propaganda on the front page of The Washington Post, because David Segal has been around long enough to know better than to write a piece like "A New Tactic in the Download War" (8/21/02).

Segal repeatedly points to falling sales of CDs and implies that piracy is the cause:

"The record labels have been spurred to action by figures they find terrifying: The number of 'units shipped' -- CDs sent to record stores or directly to consumers -- fell by more than 6 percent last year, and it's widely expected to fall 6 to 10 percent more by the end of 2002. Those drops are already hitting the industry hard. Labels are laying off employees, ditching artists, slashing budgets for tours and videos, and combing their back catalogues for reissues that cost almost nothing to release."

Yet he neglects to mention that every industry has been hit hard and is laying off people -- even the news media. If CD sales fell 6 percent last year, I'd say the music industry is doing extremely well, because the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell about 9 percent in that same period (including the post-9-11 recovery).

Segal goes on to say sales are "widely expected to fall 6 to 10 percent more by the end of 2002." Guess what? The Dow has fallen over 10 percent since the beginning of the year, on top of last year's 9 percent loss, and the economy is widely expected to get worse. Could it be that people are spending less money on trivial things like CDs because they have less money in their pockets? Or because their retirement savings have been wiped out? We would all like to be patriotic and buy an album a day, but one must have priorities. At least until CDs become edible and wholesome.

"There's evidence, though, that Americans are spending more time than ever listening to CDs," Segal continues.

What is Segal's evidence?

"Market surveys suggest that more blank CDs (CD-Rs) than recorded CDs are now sold in the United States."

Perhaps Segal could explain how an increase in CD-R sales constitutes evidence "that Americans are spending more time than ever listening to CDs."

CD-Rs are also facilitate fair-use activities. The 40-something who has just discovered CD-Rs decides to put his deteriorating record collection on CDs so he can listen to them for years to come. The 20-something creates a custom mix of his favorite songs from several CDs so he doesn't have to take his eyes off the road to change discs on his way to work.

CD-Rs are also used to archive data. We live in an age where the data repositories we depend on, from the computers in our homes to the physical documents in the World Trade Center, are no longer safe. They can disappear in an instant when anything from a software glitch to a terrorist attack occurs. It stands to reason that people look to the CD format to archive their tax documents, emails, family photos, scans of their kids' artwork and anything else that's important to them.

What mother couldn't turn up enough content to fill a spindle-full of CD-Rs a month? And as she realizes the potential for storing memories and documents, she begins to collect even more. She takes more digital photos and more video of her family. She starts scanning in old family photos and scanning the catalogues for a moderately-priced DVD-R burner because she needs more space.

CD-Rs are also quickly replacing the floppy disk. Floppy disks wear out, they are susceptible to magnetic fields, they don't mail very well, they're slow, and they only hold 1.4 megabytes of data. A DSL user can download 1.4 megabytes of data from the Internet faster than he can read 1.4 megabytes of data from his own floppy drive. CD-Rs will not wear out in your lifetime (unless you microwave them), they are impervious to magnetic fields, AOL has proven that you can transport them in many creative, inexpensive ways, they offer fast data transfer rates and they hold at least 650 megabytes of data. There is also evidence of a growing market for CD-Rs to be used as frisbees, travel mirrors, cetrifuge shrapnel and kid-safe Chinese throwing stars.

However, Segal's "evidence" proves nothing about American listening trends.

Segal also mentions the music industry's support of a bill that would make it legal to "impair the operation of peer-to-peer" networks and follows it up with a quote from RIAA chairwoman Hilary Rosen in which she announces that the industry has a "history" of being "generous with consumers," and that it is simply looking to enforce its existing rights.

Segal tries to present the appearance of a balanaced story by noting that the bill's "strategy has generated plenty of skepticism." This is true. However, the only skepticism he cites is the industry concern that "foolproof locks... don't exist in the digital realm."

He neglects to mention the larger concern: that the wording of the supported bill would make it legal for the music industry to attack any network it "suspects" may contain pirated files. It allows big business to engage in unrestrained vigilante justice on the digital frontier with the kind of attacks that have brought down major Internet services like Yahoo and ETrade in the past. These attacks are currently federal crimes, for good reason. The bill would give the music industry the legal authority to shut down any service on the Internet indefinitely, without a court order or subsequent review. The Washington Post may want to bear this in mind the next time it publishes an unfavorable review of a music album.

This shoddy journalism smacks of the kind of factually incorrect propaganda corporations distribute in their press releases.

Segal's article fits well with the music industry's propaganda campaign. At a time when the bill is being considered in Congress, a front-page story in the only Washington paper that ends up in every Congressman and Senator's office highlighting the alleged need for legislation to save the industry and combat lawlessness is worth its weight in gold.

I find it exceptionally difficult to believe that the music industry could "buy" this story. I also find it hard to believe that a seasoned reporter like Segal could be lazy enough to write this article and that a front-page story would not undergo the scrutiny necessary to uncover its deep holes and steep slant. The most plausible explanation I can find is that The Post is so genuinely concerned about the implications of the bill it wants to secure its place on the industry's alleged "generous" side.

David McGuire from Washingtonpost.com was the first reporter to report the ICANN Dot-org news, not Cnet or ZDnet or wherever. His much better story is online here, and his original 2:01 a.m. Tuesday post is here.

David McGuire from Washingtonpost.com was the first reporter to report the ICANN Dot-org news, not Cnet or ZDnet or wherever. His much better story is online here, and his original 2:01 a.m. Tuesday post is here.

Just look at the article image and answer this question: How many milliseconds does it take to decide with whom to sleep with?

Your claim that Ogg Vorbis "sounds better" is a matter of debate. In this Washington Post article and in another article here on slashdot about a comparison between Ogg Vorbis, mp3, and wma, both have shown the difference in Ogg's dominance. I recall that Ogg was terrible for electronica music, even worse for rock, and good for jazz. Something like that, anyways it comes down to support for me, and so I use .mp3 at 192k. -------- Url? Who's Url?

I love cooking, and I love having music on when I cook. (For me and many people here on /. you could substitute the word "code" for "cook") I saw in one of your online chats a discussion about Steeley Dan. Without getting into my personal feelings about said band, I'll ask if you like to listen to music while cooking/entertaining, and if so, what bands/songs/genres do you usually pull up in iTunes to entertain yourself and your guests?

I think the case itself is more focused on the term of the copyright laws rather than on the good vs. bad arguments about copyrights.

An interesting editorial linked off of the Edlred case site has a good explanation of how this has worked through the judicial system. Two lower courts have rebuffed the plaintiff's argument, saying that the term of the copyright is up to Congress and the courts can't judge that. But one dissenting opinion in a lower court argued that Congress's actions (extending the copyright term, even for existing works, every few years as the deadline approaches for major companies such as Disney), amounts to a perpetual copyright, which is unconsitutional.

I tend to think that having a fixed term copyright, regardless of length, is better than having a copyright that just keeps growing and growing.

Rumor has it the Bush administration is looking at the possibility of folding NASA and Amtrak into the new Department of Homeland Security. This is part of Mr. Bush's greater effort to make the federal government more like a corporation by consolidating all government organizations that are crippled by cracks in the system into one, easily-ignorable department.

The Washington Post Sunday Magazine has an article on the corporatization of boarding.

If they keep a record of every place you travel, and you just happen to be in the vicinity of most Athiests United gatherings, they can conclude with a fairly large degree of certainty, that your planned trip to Washington DC is to attend the planned Athiests United protest. They could block you and most other Athiests United members while blocking only a few people who are not associated with Athiests United.

They can't do that without breaking their own laws and throwing even (especially?) the right-wingers into a tizzy.

The last paragraph was to illustrate that our government has no qualms about breaking its own laws. As another example, suppose you're a government agency, and a gourt issues an order which you disagree with. Normally, you would file an appeal. In an unprecedented move earlier this week, the Bush administration simply refused to comply with a court order. I don't see any right-wingers going into a 'tizzy' over it.

Here's a flash version of your rant.

Worldcom, Imclone, Global Crossing, Enron, Adelphia, Anderson -- "a few bad apples" or a systemic problem? I think Bush saying that the American people don't care about this "stock market stuff" just shows how out of touch he is. Either that, or he simply doesn't care and he's just filling time until the next topic of the day comes along.

Here's what we know:
- George W. Bush wanted to run the government like a business
- George W. Bush has never come within 50 feet of a successful business himself. Not Harkin, not the sweetheart deal with the Texas Rangers, not even that stupid airline catering company
- Neither has Dick Cheney
- Both Cheney and Bush are so close to the oil industry that they're willing to allow companies steal money from taxpayers and business in fradulent energy schemes.

Any talk of this being a Clinton-caused recession is just willfully ignoring that the Bush's tax cut caused nearly half of the budget shortfall.

What can you do?

- Demand that the Bush Administration release information on the secret energy task force. We want to know how Enron, Haliburton, Harkin, and Unocal were involved in this
- Demand that the Bush Adminstration support an independent investigation of the goverment's actions before and after September 11. If the attacks were due to the U.S.'s quest for oil, the American people deserve to know.
- Demand that the SEC open the files on Bush's dealings with Harkin
- Demand the Justice Department come down hard on Enron
- Demand to know why Bush is so interested in attacking Iraq
- Ask yourself if you're better off now or 4 years ago. Good, now vote Democrat in November.

Oh, and ... uh ... run Linux too.

"These people ran on responsibility, but as soon as you scratch them, they go straight to blame," Clinton told WJLA-TV, an ABC News affiliate in Washington, referring to Republican leaders. "It's factually wrong. There was corporate malfeasance both before [Bush] took office and after. The difference is, I actually tried to do something about it, and their party stopped it."

You wannabes cry like a girl about lost freedom, constitutional rights, etc. when it comes to the DMCA, yet when american citizens are granted some their most fundamental rights, that's "sugar coating" for you. stfu and sit down you little hypocrite.

I'll grant you your point: it's premature and unfair to call this "fraud" as yet.

However, calling it an "irregularity" is covering your ass in order to avoid libel because of "innocent until proven guilty". Calling it an "error" is not. "Rrror" means a mistake was definitely involved. Just as we don't know it was deliberate, we also don't know it was accidental, so we shouldn't say anything either way.

Besides, it's not like every news media outlet is keeping its ass similarly covered. As another poster noticed, the Washington Post has no problem with calling this "fraud".

As for pre-empting *future* attacks by Iraq, that's a good motivation for ousting Saddam, but it's not covered by the resolution you cited.