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Two recently published polls show that support for a national ID card has decreased. Results from a poll on the February 27 Washington Post Federal Page showed that public opinion was divided on the issue, with 47% of Americans thinking that national ID will improve interaction with government and business and 44% viewing it as "an invasion of people's civil liberties and privacy." A new survey released on March 12 by Gartner Inc. found that 26 percent of Americans are in favor of a national ID card, while 41 percent oppose the idea.
See Wired News: Support for ID Cards Waning

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As though "environmental" groups don't have their own, self-serving agendas?

The Sacremento Bee did a five part report on the environmental movement back in April, 2001, called Environment, Inc. The Bee notes that "Five other major groups -- including household names such as Greenpeace and the Sierra Club -- spend so much on fund raising, membership and overhead they don't meet standards set by philanthropic watchdog groups."

I'm too ignorant to judge claims made by most environmental groups, including Greenpeace. They may be right. But the implication that their motives are above reproach is laughable.


Junk Science reported big chunks of ice back in October 1998:

Large icebergs not new
Submitted by Paul Jensen

On October 16, it was reported that an iceberg the size of Delaware broke free from Antarctica. Of course, this was attributed to global warming.

For a little perspective, we go to page 748 of the 1996 edition of The American Navigator, the prestigious Naval text updated continuously since 1799 (sometimes referred to as "The Bowditch."

The text reads "In 1854 and 1855, several ships in the South Atlantic reported a crescent-shaped iceberg with one horn 40 miles long, the other 60 miles long, and with an embayment 40 miles wide between the tips. In 1927 a berg 100 miles long, 100 miles wide, and 130 feet high above the water was reported. The largest iceberg ever reported was sighted in 1956 by the USS Glacier, a U. S. Navy icebreaker, about 150 miles west of Scott Island. This berg was 60 miles wide and 208 miles long, more than twice the size of Connecticut. Icebergs ten miles or more in length have been seen on many occasions in the Antarctic."

Notice that this last iceberg was more than 4 times bigger than that little "ice cube" noted in the Washington Post story. And by some miracle, the world did not come to an end after the discovery of this giant.

So last week's iceberg was not so extraordinary -- except that it was perhaps the first linked to the dreaded global warming.

(Also at http://www.sepp.org/weekwas/1998/oct19_25.html and http://www.jamesphogan.com/bb/archives/environment .shtml#030899 )

The right-wing publication Scientific American, in an article about rising ocean levels in the August 1998 issue, noted that there is "some evidence that the West Antarctic ice sheet may, in fact, have melted at least once before. Between about 110,000 and 130,000 years ago, when the last shared ancestors of all humans probably fanned out of Africa into Asia and Europe, Earth experienced a climatic history strikingly similar to what has transpired in the past 20,000 years, warming abruptly from the chill of a great ice age."

(This is by the same author who wrote the cover story of the March 1997 issue about rising sea levels. That article is not available online, and I don't have it here at work with me).

From my weblog

Jack, in your sneering Washington Post piece about copy protection, you refer to professors for whom '"innovation" is legalizing the breaking of protection codes'. Michael, in your testimony to congress you badgered an Intel exec until he told you that file copying can't be prevented, then told him he must prevent it anyway.

As you are evidently impervious to logical discussion, let me tell you a story.

This is the story of a rebel, a war hero, a persecuted homosexual, and a deep thinker. His life reads like the plot of a far-fetched movie, but if anyone fits your bogeyman image of professors who break code, it is Alan Turing.

In 1936 Turing published a paper on theoretical mathematics, in which he described the Universal Turing machine. It was a simple mechanism that could read symbols from a tape, and write back different symbols or change the tape's direction. He showed that with this general purpose machine, you could simulate any special purpose computing machine. He had invented the idea of the programmable computer.

Between 1938 and 1945, Turing worked in great secrecy on computing machines that broke codes. These were the first real computers ever made, and the codes they broke were those used by the German Wehrmacht. Without his work, it is very likely that Britain would have lost the War in Europe before Pearl Harbour.

After the war, in 1950 Turing published other famous papers that laid the foundation for modern computing, and hence all the digital gadgetry that you would like to outlaw for us (though presumably you'd keep the computers you use to edit and create effects for your movies). Turing died in 1954 by biting into an apple he had previously poisoned.

What does this story have to do with you?

Turing's Universal Machine means that you cannot have a software or hardware protection scheme that is secure. Whatever scheme you come up with can be simulated by another computer. The computer industry are not opposing your bill because they want to encourage copying, or because they are bloody-minded, they are not opposing you because of your self serving rhetoric about rewarding artists (remember Peggy Lee, Michael?), they are opposing you because what you want is provably impossible. You can only succeed by making all Turing machines illegal.

If Alan Turing had made an animated film involving a poisoned apple in 1936, it would still have copyright protection. He chose a different path, and gave the world the idea of the digital computer. I know whom I repect more.

HARTFORD, Conn. -- Sony Pictures Entertainment Inc. has agreed to pay the state of Connecticut $325,000 for using fake reviews attributed to a Connecticut newspaper in promoting its films.

[...]

"What Sony did was like having a chef pose as a food critic and then give his own restaurant four stars," said James Fleming, the state's consumer protection commissioner.

Well, back in 1995, Microsoft had a good strategy for Quicken, but guess what happened...

"The case would have been a diversion from its main task, which is to compete aggressively in a way that will lead to lower prices and consumer benefits."

Wonder where Netscape would be had they been interested in playing ball with MS, even a little bit...

I was personally surprised not to see a tac-nuke strike on Tora Bora for this reason; a tenet of deterrent policy had been that a large-scale assault on mainland America would result in maximum retribution.

First, the nuclear deterent was aimed at countries with nuclear weapons. Second, the 9/11 attack was not large scale in any usual sense of the term. Third, the Al Qaeda troops at Tora Bora was not the sort of concentration for which tactical nuclear weapons are effective. Fourth, there are several villages in the area that would have been destroyed by a nuclear explosion. Fifth, Tora Bora is within 10 miles of the Pakistani border, which would certainly have received some of the fallout.

More important, the wider implications of using a nuclear bomb would have enormous and would certainly have alienated the America's allies. I can't believe that most world leaders wouldn't have been very surprised if the the U.S. had used a nuclear weapon in Afghanistan.

The Army and Marines would be expected to run through the immediate results of nuclear strikes in some cases, so its easy to see why they don't like it very much!

...which is another reason to be surprised if a nuclear weapon had been used in Afghanistan.

This article focuses on Pearce and the problems with the movie. He's amazingly outspoken and critical of the movie and the whole process that created it -- something I think the studios would be all over him for, especially so close to the opening. But I guess, happily, it's not like the old days where studios owned stars.

Also interesting (to me, at least!): Director Simon Wells is the great-grandson of H.G. Wells.

Not so. Republicans recieved *much* more

Microsoft are racketeers, robbers: essentially, organized crime. They are more like the protection racket. Other corporations specialize more in mass murder, Microsoft is more prone to shake you down. Microsoft will destroy your livelihood, your career, even your personal assets (consider what would happen if they determinedly sued you) but they will not literally kill human beings. That's for the likes of Monsanto and Union Carbide.

Here we have classic Chinese hypocrisy. The Chinese (where "Chinese" means Chinese people, not merely the Chinese government) want us Americans to lift the blocks hindering the flow of e-mail. Yet, these very Chinese fully support censorship. Specifically, these Chinese support the blocks hindering access to the web sites of Amnesty International , CNN , "Washington Post", etc.

The pro-censorship, anti-human-rights bent of most Chinese is fairly easy to spot if you follow the news regularly. For example, most Chinese in Hong Kong support the return of Hong Kong to mainland China. A CNN/Time survey showed, in fact, that 60% of the Chinese in Hong Kong support the return of Hong Kong to mainland China. (reference: "Poll: Hong Kong residents optimistic") While East Timorese fought and died for independence from the oppressive Indonesian government, the Chinese in Hong Kong cheered the mainland Chinese government.

Here's another fact. Many of you are college students. At your university, attend your local meeting of Amnesty International. The engineering and business schools will have plenty of Chinese people, but there will be virtually _NO_ Chinese faces in a meeting of Amnesty International. Chinese (and other Orientals) are over-represented in engineering and business schools, but they are under-represented in meetings of Amnesty International. Do you doubt what I say? I challenge you to disprove me. Attend that meeting of Amnesty International. I dare you.

The bottom line is this. Ignore the complaints from the Chinese on the matter of our attempts to block e-mail spam from China (which, by the way, is the software piracy capital of the world).

The Supreme Court is going to review the decision allowing NextWave Telecom Inc. to hold on to its spectrum licenses that were thought protected in the bankruptcy proceedings. This could delay the use of that bandwidth for as long as two years.

============== quote
========== quote from article
In court filings late Friday, the company said the recently released consumer operating system, Windows XP, and the business-oriented Windows 2000 system could not be redesigned to satisfy state demands that they be made available in separate versions, with and without key programs, such as the Internet Explorer Web browser.
==========end quote from article

to Jonathan Krim:

I have been running without Internet Explorer on my PC since a few months after I got Windows 95 using products provided by 98lite.net . What I got out of de-integrating MSIE from my computer is reduced resource utilization and increased stability.

I'm running Windows 98SE now without MSIE. At this point, the first thing I do with a MS operating system is to remove IE as an operating system component. MS originally claimed that 98SE doesn't work without MSIE. 98SE works *better* without MSIE as an OS component. MS lied then. I'm using Opera and Netscape at this point.

The *freeware* product below is one that will eliminate MSIE from W2000. Unfortunately, they don't have a version for XP yet.

Try it on one of your organization's Windows 2000 machines and see for yourself if Microsoft is lying about the impossibility of detaching MSIE from W2000. If their thousands of programmers can't figure out how, perhaps they can license this company's products.

I recommend trying this on a newly installed W2000 OS with no new apps or user data, like any other software running on Windows, there's no guarantee that the next installation of any Windows program whatsoever won't cause the hard drive to melt or the monitor to explode or Satan to appear in person sitting on your desk. ;-) The script version is a no-brainer, simply download the file, read the brief instructions, and run as directed.

A.Lizard
p.s. any way to get a copy of this e-mail to the law firm for the State AGs doing the MS antitrust prosecution? The script version of the deinstaller takes about 2 minutes to run and a reboot to bring up the new IE-free OS. The judge might find a demo of IE disappearing from W2000 in an effortless way entertaining. The MS attorneys who are running W2000 will probably request it. a cc of the file. For their personal use. ;-)

fair usage quote from 98lite site
http://www.98lite.net/products.html

IEradicator 2001 NEW!!!

Looking for the hit-man? IEradicator is the first and only utility to remove all versions of Internet Explorer from all versions of Windows 95/98/ Me/2000 in 8 different languages!. IEradicator uses the built- in Windows setup engine to "rub out da big fella" in less time than it takes to oil your 12-gauge.
------------- end 98lite quote
============= end quote

This version is "free as in beer", a demo for a more sophisticated product. If MS can't figure out how to get rid of MSIE, I'm sure these people could come up with reasonable licensing terms.

I'm no scientist, and I've never researched the issues involved, so I'm certainly not proposing to pass judgement on whether this (extraordinary) claim has any likelihood of being justified, or whether Dr. Park's quoted reasoning is sound. But I will say that Dr. Park's eagerness not only to reject the possibility as quickly as possible but to quickly silence those who entertain the possibility through mockery as fast as possible cannot inspire confidence about his judgement.

Dr. Park and his ilk work to make a pariah of any scientist who gives any credence to an extraordinary claim which is subsequently proven false (or is considered to have been proven false, or in fact why bother waiting for proof at all?) The resulting social impulses to avoid exclusion and join in pelting the menacing sinner are what make this a powerful means of winning arguments. "Hark: A COLLECTIVE GROAN CAN BE HEARD . Better join in the groans fast before anyone starts looking your way!"

But for Heaven's sake, if we accept that the normal process of review will be able to effectively determine whether these results are sound or not, then the absolute worst that can happen is that some time and money will be spent in finding that the results are not sound, and that some people will thus be proven wrong. In science people are proven wrong, through the expenditure of some time and expense, all the damn time! Being willing to consider new ideas necessarily entails the risk that you will consider, or take seriously, ideas that turn out to be false. If you're terrified of ever believing something that turns out to be wrong, don't do scientific research. The exact same standard should hold for extraordinary claims as for more mundane ones: if they have some prima face credibility, let them join the rough-and-tumble of review. Extraordinary claims do merit searching, skeptical examination: those who make or consider them surely don't deserve any more or less odium than scientists who turn out to have been fraudulent, or foolish, or just mistaken in regard to more mundane ones.

Oh, and for all you freshly minted M.Sc.s and docs out there who are saddling up to join the posse and defend the faith in this forum: consider first that in all academic fields it tends to be the young postgrads who are loudest and most confident in defending the current thinking. Older academics are (on average, of course) a little less sure of themselves: could it possibly be that they have learned something?

Don't ever forget that "killing Windows is killing Microsoft"*, so it will fight for it's life whenever threatened.

If that's the case then, according to a link to an article I saw reported on DSLReports, they're threatening to commit suicide.

Did anyone catch this - Microsoft may play hardball by threatening to pull its OS's off the market

Microsoft Outlines Next Move In AntiTrust Case

Enron fell despite the fact that the govt tried their damned best to keep it propped up

No they didn't.

You can say the opposite until you're blue in the face but that doesn't make it true. The Bush government could have done a great deal more to help Enron but chose not to. That doesn't mean they didn't help them at all, clearly they did but the government clearly refused to bail out Enron. The government has bailed out companies in as much or worse trouble than Enron was in, such as LTCM previously mentioned. They chose not to do that for Enron.

I very much doubt Kenneth lay would agree with your assesment that he had "an extremely helpful government".

Bakunin, Goldman, Sacco, Vanzetti You know, many of the early Anarchists, and even some young idealist types of today, were of the belief that each and every man, woman and child ought to decide which type of governance was best suited to individual taste and need, all of course through non violent peaceful means, if possible.

What these anarchists failed to understand is that every man, woman, and child do decide which type of governance they have. It's just that only through social cooperation can we actually achieve greatness. An individual could not accomplish StarCraft, and if they did, they could not enjoy it in the same way that a consumer would. So we must socialise to make our lives better. By socializing, we accept the societal norms of the societies we ally ourselves with.

There is nothing preventing any of us from getting a gun and holding up in our house until the FBI burns it down. It's just that one has to remember that authority comes from force. If the FBI or any other government agency can overpower you, then you do not have as much authority as them. I ownly own my home because if some random person kicks me out of it, I can appeal to authority to use it's force to evict the evictor. If the one with the most authority (read force) unilaterally decides to take my house, there is little I can do about it regardless of what a piece of paper thousands of miles away says.

Globalization is all of the societies deciding to cooperate in the hopes to achieve the most amount of greatness. Unfortunately it means the homogenization of system of governance among the large cluster. It also mean a bigger gap between the lifestyle of those in the cluster and those outside of the cluster. If a society falls out of line, such as allowing the free choice among it's subcribers to imbibe by any number of classified psychoactive substances, or by failing to provide unique identifiers on CDs, or by aquiring the same weapons that larger (controlling) countries own, then the society can be shunned from the whole. The gap between the quality of life and the achievable quality of life will encourage the society to homogenize and cooperate again. This will happen either by leaders changing their minds or the people changing their leaders through election or revolt. The quality of life in the society will have to become very low before revolt is an option. However, the controlling countries from the global society will be there to provide food, training, and equipment to the revolutionaries.

Note that Globalization is the result of the fall of Communism. This event depolarized the world. The psuedocapistalist system outlasted and now has a monopoly, no, a trust (def 8) on "the world system". This system, like other trusts, will abuse it's monopoly position to push down anyone entering the market: offering a new system of life. The leaders of the global system will shout "you are either with us or against us." Dissidence will be illegal in order to further increase the gap between cooperators and defectors.

The modern corporatisation of the world is scary enough to make even the most bloodthirsty early 20th century industrialist/mine owner turn white with fear.

That is because Globalization has more authority (read: force) than the robber barons ever had. It can strike down with great vengence and furious anger and those who attempt to poison and destroy it by offering alternatives.

We are truly on a vector into a dark age for individual rights. The current prevailing meme is that corporations make a society strong. Layoffs are to strengthen the corporations. High executive salaries are to ensure the corporations have the best leaders. Drugs are banned to prevent individuals from becoming slothful and unproductive. Legistlation is turned down because it might hurt the bottom line. Individual welfare is cut so that tax breaks to corporations will fit the budget. Unions like marriage are encouraged because survival as an individual will be increasingly harder and harder.

I know that eventually something will break. The pendulum will swing back. Disenfranchised individuals will no longer tolerate the restrictions put on them. The first ones will be crushed. The next ones slaughtered. Then killed. Then maimed. Then eventually, there will be enough across the world to throw off the schackles this system places on them. But we aren't talking about the few thousand deaths in the US Revolutionary War or the couple thousand of the October revolution. This will be a massive global insurrection. Hundreds of thousands of people will die.

And then the cycle will rebirth.

Uh huh. That's a deft little attempt on your part to ignore the massive election fraud that happened in Florida, without which Bush wouldn't be calling himself President. Further, Florida was the focal point of legal actions by both sides concerning the election, so in the most real sense the election was decided there. You did hear of a little case called Bush vs. Gore, didn't you?

As for "learning something", here's some starters for you.

1.58 million votes were never recounted even once.

There were also a lot of people who lost their right to vote because they were wrongly labelled as felons by a private company Kathryn Harris hired to scrub the voters lists.

And then there were all the illegal absentee ballots, some postdated as much as a week after the election, that did get counted.

According to the NORC recount, Gore won under all six possible scenarios for a state wide recount. If you count all the votes, Gore wins. If you don't count all the votes, Bush wins. It's as simple as that.

Uh huh. That's a deft little attempt on your part to ignore the massive election fraud that happened in Florida, without which Bush wouldn't be calling himself President. Further, Florida was the focal point of legal actions by both sides concerning the election, so in the most real sense the election was decided there. You did hear of a little case called Bush vs. Gore, didn't you?

As for "learning something", here's some starters for you.

1.58 million votes were never recounted even once.

There were also a lot of people who lost their right to vote because they were wrongly labelled as felons by a private company Kathryn Harris hired to scrub the voters lists.

And then there were all the illegal absentee ballots, some postdated as much as a week after the election, that did get counted.

According to the NORC recount, Gore won under all six possible scenarios for a state wide recount. If you count all the votes, Gore wins. If you don't count all the votes, Bush wins. It's as simple as that.

You can't possibly be suggesting that there's a high-tech labor shortage in this recession, can you?

Hiring of Foreign Workers Frustrates Native Job-Seekers

Microsoft and the government have released a new, revised settlement agreement, according to this article at the Washington Post. Changes include removing a provision that apparently would have let Microsoft use hardware patents without compensating the owners (?!), more requirements for API disclosure by MS, and a broadening of the language of the document to make it harder for MS to weasel out of things.

Anyway, thought it might be an interesting read to go along with this story.

Microsoft and the government have released a new, revised settlement agreement, according to this article at the Washington Post. Changes include removing a provision that apparently would have let Microsoft use hardware patents without compensating the owners (?!), more requirements for API disclosure by MS, and a broadening of the language of the document to make it harder for MS to weasel out of things.

Anyway, thought it might be an interesting read to go along with this story.

UNITED NATIONS, Feb. 26 -- The United States today proposed a "global and comprehensive ban" on human cloning and all experimentation involving human embryos. The announcement marked an expansion in the Bush administration's campaign to restrict the uses of human embryos for scientific and medical purposes.

"Human cloning is an enormously troubling development in biotechnology," U.S. delegate Carolyn L. Willson said at a meeting of the U.N.'s Committee on an International Convention Against the Reproductive Cloning of Human Beings

--

Sigh. Welcome back to the dark ages.

Cloning embryos is a far cry from reproductive cloning of human beings -- but I guess it doesn't matter to the rabid "pro-life" nuts who believe that a cluster of few cells is already a human being.

But hey, let's not forget that every sperm is sacred, too.

Here's an article from the Washington Post about how a bill in Virginia to recommend families turn off their TVs for a week and talk to each other was basically killed instantly, in large part because of lobbying from the entertainment industry.

But the unanimous vote by the Rules Committee against the resolution to promote TV-Turnoff Week also reflected the growing clout of the broadcast industry, which lobbied each lawmaker to vote against the measure.

The sucker who proposed the bill had the termerity to include part of sweeps week! If the industry is willing to shut down a non-binding suggestion that people spend more time with each other and less watching crap,we can't overestimate how hard they'll try to legislate their way to victory.

The Washington Post has an article here. It ends with the sentiment "Failure is NOT an option". Anybody remember the lens repair mission? I had almost as much fun watching that as I did watching Alan Shepard's and John Glenn's first rides into space.

One states that Jack is always full of it, and 2 mention that Jack's reference to a "Maalox Moment" is a violation of Maalox's trademark, as he doesn't bother to credit Maalox for using their name.

Its good to see that people outside of the /. world also think that Jack is full of it.

Here's some excerpts from Rep. Billy Tauzin on his telecom bill in a WashingtonPost.com web chat. I'm not sure he really knows what he's talking about.

Pasadena, Tex.: Why are you trying to kill competition for local, regional and national Internet Service Providers by giving the Bells the right to be a monopoly? As a representative from Louisiana, you will be hurting your own Louisiana ISPs. Competition is what makes the American Dream work, when you get rid of it, we might as well be in Russia in the Cold War!

Rep. Tauzin: Rather be in Pasadena than Russia any day. First, our bill will not kill the competition nor make Bell companies monopolies. If you believe that I have some great waterfront property in Russia to sell you. The truth is our bill will create the first FCC authority to hammer the Bells for any violation of their obligations to open up their local markets to competitors. The FCC currently does not have such authority except when a Bell company seeks access into the long distance market. Secondly, our bill will preserve for the competitive carriers full line sharing rights to the legacy copper networks and will additionally give local competitors rights to use the Bell companies new fiber and hybrid fiber systems for broadband competition purposes at terms and rates set not by the Bell company but by the FCC. That is as fair as it gets.

------

Silver Spring, Md.: Rep. Tauzin, I used to work for Verizon (local service) and was perpetually disgusted by how that company treated customers and other CLECs. Poor customer service, shoddy network leasing -- I've heard and seen it all. Competition is very much needed to help Verizon help itself.

Rep. Tauzin: I totally agree. Any monopoly provider as I pointed out earlier is like the single store that gives you bad products, prices, service and occasionally bad attitudes. De-monopolizing the local Bell loops remains a big part of our plans.

digital movies on the Internet can be pilfered and hurled at the speed of light to any spot on the planet. This is what gives movie producers so many Maalox moments.

...

Congress must step in to protect valuable creative works on the Net

The Clinton administration's interest in an international agreement to combat global warming also dovetailed with Enron's business plans. Enron officials envisioned the company at the center of a new trading system, in which industries worldwide could buy and sell credits to emit carbon dioxide as part of a strategy to reduce greenhouse gases. Such a system would curtail the use of inefficient coal-fired power plants that emitted large amounts of carbon dioxide, while encouraging new investments in gas-fired plants and pipelines -- precisely Enron's line of business...

On Aug. 4, 1997, Lay and seven other energy executives met with Clinton, Gore, Rubin and other top officials at the White House to discuss the U.S. position at the upcoming conference on global warming in Kyoto, Japan. Lay, in a memo to Enron employees, said there was broad consensus in favor of an emissions-trading system.

Enron officials later expressed elation at the results of the Kyoto conference. An internal memo said the Kyoto agreement, if implemented, would "do more to promote Enron's business than almost any other regulatory initiative outside of restructuring the energy and natural gas industries in Europe and the United States."

Searching Google for google results currently in two news articles about the matter:

MSNBC: Google unveils new program that lets Web sites bid for advertising
Washington Post: Google Introduces New Program

Both are almost identical, and somewhat criticize Google's actions: Online search engine maker Google Inc. is introducing a program that allows Web sites to be displayed more prominently if sponsors pay more money - an advertising-driven system derided by critics as an invitation to deceptive business practices.

Ashcroft states that if you aren't religious, you are uncivilized.

His hot air can be found here:

Ashcroft Invokes Religion

What's more dangerous than a moron? A pompous
moron: aka John Ashcroft.

The story was not written by Excite. This is not some devious "make google look bad plot." It's an AP article. Read it here if you prefer, or here. Do some basic research first next time, ok? Additionally, these "ridiculous Overture people" are a real boon to small businesses because they charge per-click rather than per-impression, so you only pay for actual results. CPM sucks, CPC is better. Commission (such as linkshare) is really the best way from a client point-of-view.

Most modern states employ a much more effective filter than anything Cisco could come up with:

People don't want to criticize their own govt's, or take responsibility for what their leaders do.

In fact, the "Great Firewall" China is using is a sign of the leadership's political naivete.

A system in which dissenting views are allowed (limited) exposure -- only to be swamped out by flag-waving and soundbytes -- gives people the illusion that they are living in an open society and participating in an open debate. But as long as vast swathes of history and unpopular facts are not widely known, critics will seem as though they are coming from left field and will be generally ignored, if not hated. Ironically, this small amount of openness serves to "immunize" the populace from taking opposing views seriously.

Ralph Reed said it best:

"In public policy, it matters less who has the best arguments and more who gets heard -- and by whom."

IMNSHO, if the Chinese leadership does a good enough job in K-12 education of instilling patriotism and belief in the fundamental justness of the regime, as well as making sure that the govt. view dominates most "respectable" news outlets and debate forums, then those rare voices arguing for, say, a withdrawal from Tibet will seem like traitorous whackos. Further, pride from allowing dissenting voices to be heard will even further reinforce the fundamental belief that they are the "good guys" in every conflict.

Wonder how big companies sway the government?

The Enron Matrix

They called it "the matrix" -- a computer program that brought a scientific dimension to Enron's effort to seduce politicians and sway bureaucrats.

With each proposed change in federal regulations, lobbyists punched details into a computer, allowing Enron economists in Houston to calculate just how much a rule change would cost. If the final figure was too high, executives used it as the cue to stoke their vast influence machine, mobilizing lobbyists and dialing up politicians who had accepted some of Enron's millions in campaign contributions.

In response to previous claims of Comcast intercepting packets, the company pledged today "to immediately stop recording the Web browsing activities of each of its 1 million high-speed Internet subscribers." This after the Associated Press announced on Tuesday that the company "has started recording the Web browsing activities of each of its 1 million high-speed Internet subscribers without notifying them of the change."

The Washington Post has this article about how Rep. Ed Markey is looking into Comcast's collection of personal internet usage info. Hey, this guy must read SlashDot!!

Markey, D-Mass., in a letter to Comcast President Brian Roberts, wrote that he was concerned about "the nature and extent of any transgressions of the law that may have resulted in consumer privacy being compromised."

Also, Comcast has a new press release in response to the fracas.

This review of "I am Sam" questions whether it is ethical to roll your eyes, laugh in a childlike way, slur your speech and call it a performance?. Another review notes that , the performance - showy and contrived - is all too obviously meant to get Oscar's attention.

I have avoided the film.

This review of "I am Sam" questions whether it is ethical to roll your eyes, laugh in a childlike way, slur your speech and call it a performance?. Another review notes that , the performance - showy and contrived - is all too obviously meant to get Oscar's attention.

I have avoided the film.

Memento got nominated for best original screenplay ("written directly for the screen"), even though it's based on a short story.

It seems a little strange that with all of the United State's [sic] vast control of a corner of the World's Intelligence Market that we wouldn't know about this meeting.

There are limits to US intelligence in other countries, particularly Somalia. One need only see the blunders made by the U.S. military in afghanistan. Like the recent raid that appears to have killed "friendly" Afghan forces.

If Internet streaming depletes television revenue, then why did ESPN put X-Games content (including live) on the Internet?

As for the "well, I'll just watch it on television" argument, I got about 5 minutes (after commercials and mindless personal story crap) of kayaking on television for the Sydney Olympics last year. If someone would stream it, I could choose what I wanted to watch, how much of it I wanted to watch, and when to watch it. I do NOT want some editor, whose primary duty is to figure out which sport is going to draw the largest audience, to decide what is on TV for the Olympics...

I just think it shows just how major networks are afraid of the Internet. Every chance they get, major networks badmouth the Internet every chance they get. Television coverage of the events just keeps getting worse. I nor my 9 year old son cannot stand to watch ALL THOSE COMMERCIALS to keep focused on the event, so how is he or others going to follow on the Olympics? I don't remember Olympic coverage inundated with this many commercials in past decades. He knows Tony Hawk and other skateboarders, but doesn't know squat about Olympic athletes or the games. The IOC and NBC is writing the obituary of the Olympics right now for the tune of $3billion.

There's a column in today's Washington Post on spam:

I arrive at my office, uncap my coffee, unwrap my bagel, open my e-mail and face the first searing public policy question of the day: "Do you want to watch teens make their first porn video?"

It's called "The Great American Spam Attack", by Ellen Goodman.

There's a column in today's Washington Post on spam:

I arrive at my office, uncap my coffee, unwrap my bagel, open my e-mail and face the first searing public policy question of the day: "Do you want to watch teens make their first porn video?"

It's called "The Great American Spam Attack", by Ellen Goodman.

Unfortunately, the Olympic board must keep alternate channels away at the likely demand of the exclusive broadcaster. Otherwise, why would people put up with the incessant and poorly timed babble of Katie Couric and nonstop goofs of sidekick Costas.

Either most of the US is comprised of idiots, or the broadcasters are absolutely out of touch.

Man Charged With Molesting Boys

A big thanks to the stupid commie assholes in Masschusetts for letting this guy out. What an assbag of a state.

An article from yesterday's Washington Post headlined "World War II-era scientist Niels Bohr said he was shocked to learn from colleague Werner Heisenberg that Germany was "vigorously in a race to be the first with atomic weapons," according to a decades-old letter released Wednesday."

Here are some snippets of the comments from some of the "big guns" who responded. This article was published last week.

These aren't just NASA standards, they were agreed on with the international partners. See the Washington Post's article: "More than two years in the making, the criteria allow Russia, the United States, Canada, Japan or the European Space Agency to select station visitors."

Some freelancers decide to go this route. The Washington Post has an excellent article on whether you should incorporate as a freelance contractor, including the tax ramifications of incorporating vs. working for yourself.