Slashdot Mirror

So sayeth he who claimed that 640k should be enough for anyone.

The reason I didn't bother posting any links, is partly because somebody already posted a link to a wired article (http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,1484,00 .html) and partly because I assumed that everybody knows how to use google.

But here is also an email from gates: http://www.nybooks.com/articles/15180#fn*

I unfortunately can't find the original interview that i recall where he stated it most clearly, but does this matter? Surely it's the roll of the quoter to include the reference of where they're quoting from?

1) Bio-panel - a panel that uses algae to produce either hydrogen or bio-deisel oil based
off hybrid algae, a variant replacement for conventional solar panels .

My idea based on already known uses for algae .

http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,54456, 00.html

http://www.unh.edu/p2/biodiesel/article_alge.html

2) Nanite memory - non-volatile ram that is 10 - 20 times faster than current DD2,
and and Ipod could have 10 Tera-bytes of a module the size of a sugar cube .
No power required to maintain the bit state either .

http://www.nantero.com/

3) Growing human organs with the recepients DNA markers on the backs of mice,
already been done, think it through to its full possibilities .

3rd pic down http://www.pbs.org/saf/1107/features/body.htm

4) Next Gen Fuel Cell vehicles .

http://www.japancorp.net/Article.asp?Art_ID=11628

5) LED based wall projectors to reduce electrical power usage world wide .
Imagine all display systems in the world going from 100 wats plus to 1- 3 watts .

http://www.lightblueoptics.com/

6 billion ppl, probably over 2 billion display systems world wide with a over
100 fold reduction in power usage, it could have a major impact . (Tv's, monitors, etc )

Ex-MislTech

I'm not a big fan of Mr Gates either but still, get over it already. And while you're at it, none of the rest are true either.

As already mentioned by others, GNUTella networks are fairly easy to monitor, and bittorrent sites usually post statistics, and could easily be monitored with a modified client.

Also, IRC, where a lot of files start their meandering paths across the internet, can also be monitored. The technology behind IRC search sites like PacketNews could be used to monitor how many people in how many channels are sharing your file, and in some cases, when files are requested with triggers in the main channel, you can find out about how wide your file is spreading.

It may also be a good idea to read this article on file sharing, which covers the process many files follow to make their way from release groups to the general public. In the article you will see read about someone who is an insider in many file sharing rings who consults with media companies on how their files are spreadin

There are, naturally, file sharing vectors that they have no capacity to monitor, but they can get a very good picture with a bit of easily obtained data and a bit statistics. It's hard to say *exactly* how accurate it is, but it can certainly be used as a reliable relative indicator on which files are downloaded more than others.

BigChampagne is Watching You.

We have done a good job (IMHO) of keeping our nuclear power plants relatively safe, but that's mainly because the kid down the street can't build a nuclear power plant. But he can build a robot.

And imagine the robot you could build now with the resources of a rogue state. Or even a "good" state worried about it's security. Now imagine what they'll be able to build in 20 years. I could easily imagine Taiwan thinking that a deployable, independant (not remotely controlled) infantry killing robot might make a lot of sense for them in a conflict with China. And Taiwan's clearly got the ability to build state of the art stuff.

I'm not a Luddite, I'm not even saying don't make killer robots. I'm just saying that just as the guys working on The Manhatten Project were incredibly careful -- In fact alot of their genius is in the fact they did NOT accidentally blow themselves up. Programmers working on the next generation devices need to realize that there is a very credible threat that mankind could build a machine that could malfunction and kill millions.

There is no doubt in my mind that within 20 years, the U.S. Military will deploy robots with the ability to kill in places that infantry used to go. Robots would seem very likely to be incredibly effective as fighter pilots as well. Given these things as inevitable, isn't it prudent to be talking NOW about what steps are going to be taken to make sure that we don't unleash a terminator? I personally don't trust governments to be good about this either -- I'd like to make sure that the programmers are at least THINKING about these issues.

India is the world's largest democracy. They also use pencil and paper.

Actually, India votes on machine, since 2004.

Citibank is handling this just like you'd expect a credit card company would, with horrid customer service.
If you're out of the country? Tough shit. Virtually all usage outside the USA will result in your card being automatically killed and the only way (apparantly) for to continue using your card is to have a new card shipped to your home address, activate the card from your home phone, and even then, their CSRs say that if you use it outside the usa, it may get automatically killed again.
See one such story here.

You know, if this was bigger, it could be a good thing for everyone. Maybe then people would start taking things seriously. And although I usually don't think that we need new legislation, maybe in this case, it would be a good idea.
I'd like to to see criminal penalties applied against the directors of companies for losing customer information in the same way people can go to the pokey for screwing up under SOX.

Then again, this breach isn't the worst we've heard about this week. 17 million records (names, phone numbers, addresses, e-mail addresses, IP addresses, logins, passwords, credit-card types and purchase amounts - everything except credit-card numbers) were discovered floating around the net.
See here for details.

Oh, and if your card was used, good luck with trying to fix your credit
The credit sytstem could use an overhaul.

There's plenty of statistical data about failure rates of paper voting systems. In Australia, errors in manual vote counting ran at about 100 errors per 80,000 votes counted.

An open source electronic voting system was developed and tested at state elections, and independant audits showed it was accurate. http://www.wired.com/news/ebiz/0,1272,61045,00.htm l Being open source, it is available to the US, if you could get around the NIH syndrome.

The latest reports saying that the leaked data did not come from iBill.

How are we supposed to tell the good guys from the bad guys in the movies and on TV?

Here's some relief for those people. Wired have another article up which suggests the database has nothing to do with iBill and that it's just someone renaming it to make the data seem more valuable.

It does strike me as odd though if it has records dating back to 1998, I wouldn't think spammers and scammers would have a database dating that far back. And of course iBill could just be lying to save face...

The data may be fake. This followup article says that iBill claims that it was framed. From the article

"The databases, examined by Wired News, include names, phone numbers, addresses, e-mail addresses and internet IP addresses of customers making online purchases. Other fields in the compromised databases appear to be logins and passwords, credit-card types and purchase amounts, but credit-card numbers are not included.

But Spaniak says iBill cross referenced the 17 million transaction database against its own on Wednesday, and that only three e-mail addresses matched between the two.

Additionally, some entries in the stolen databases were identified as purchases on Diner's Club cards, which iBill says it has never accepted in its nine year history. Spaniak says iBill recently passed a security audit that found its databases well secured.

SunBelt Software couldn't immediately be reached for comment Thursday. But Secure Science's Lance James backed away from his conclusion that iBill, which processes most of its transactions on behalf of adult services, was the source of the leak."

So, I'd suggest that we stop with the knee-jerk reactions, and realize that everyone here may have been had by some l33t h4xor renaming a file.

~ Mike

But Spaniak says iBill cross referenced the 17 million transaction database against its own on Wednesday, and that only three e-mail addresses matched between the two.

and

Wired News found that entries from the smaller cache of one million consumers are listed as mortgage leads on a spammer community site, specialham.com. A Google search turns up scores of offers on specialham.com for purported iBill databases, one of them advertising "20mill ibill list w/Full data from 2003" for $300. But in one message, a spammer slams an underground vendor for selling him a fake iBill list.

What about something like the MediaMVP for $100
mentioned in Wired yesterday, so you could use your computer as a media center without having to dedicate it. I've never tried it, so I don't know how much bandwidth this would suck up, but a cool concept.

There was an interview with Jon Stewart and a producer of the Daily Show on Wired a while back, where Jon says that he's fine with people downloading the show. We can only hope that the bigshots at Comedy Central feel the same. Me, I would never buy cable, but I do love watching the Daily Show...

Here's a quote:
Stewart: We're not going to shut it down - we don't even know what it is. I'm having enough trouble just getting porn.

The January/2006 Wired had an article titled "How Click Fraud Could Swallow the Internet" that presented a case study of a charter-jet service victimized by this ... turns out it was their competition doing it to use up their on-line marketing budget. Google Girl basically stonewalled 'em.

http://www.wired.com/news/medtech/0,1286,66005,00. html These scientists built a robot that uses the sea lampry's nevous system to control it. They replicated the signal by creating a circuit. Eventually they hope to have humans be able to walk again using these microchips. It's a rather unique way of approaching the problem.

Nuclear power will most likely never surpass its existing use as a source of supplemental power for the world market. That said, I disagree with the article in its suggestion that it cannot make a significant dent in carbon emissions.

Nuclear power could very easily become the largest source of power for fixed location consumers. Existing coal and oil plants could simply be replaced with nuclear facilities. This eventual phase-out of legacy power supplies could easily cut carbon emissions by hundreds of tons per year.

However, nuclear power will never become the totally dominant source of all our power needs unless the near future reveals a revolutionary advance in battery or super-capacitor technology. Until then, transportation technology will never be able to efficiently harness power off the Grid. Transportation will continue to use energy sources that are easy to transport and distribute.

The major hold-up with nuclear power is two-fold. First, current generation nuclear reactors use uranium as a fuel source. This fuel creates huge amounts of radioactive waste. Although this waste was once highly desired for nuclear weapons projects in the past, today it is a worthless product that is expensive and dangerous to dispose of. Also, this fuel is quickly becoming scarce. Some scientists suggest that the world has less than 60 years worth of reactor grade uranium at current consumption. Secondly, current generation reactors have a high potential for danger. The horrific blunder of Soviet engineers when running a coolant test at the Chernobyl facility will haunt generations to come. America's own scare at Three-Mile Island brings that fear close to home.

Surprisingly, most of these issues have modern solutions. The French has developed an encapsulated uranium fuel source that places fuel within a heat resistant shell. This shell keeps the density of the fuel low enough that in the event of a coolant failure, the fuel rods never go critical.

Second, scientists have suggested that a switch from uranium to thorium could reduce radioactive waste by over half, and could reduce our plutonium stockpiles by using it as a seed for these new reactors. Furthermore, thorium is a more common element than uranium, with prices being only a fraction of uranium.

However, political pressure will most likely never allow it to happen since traditional power companies fund many anti-nuclear lobbies. Oil and coal hate nuclear. Popular media demonizes nuclear. Environmental laws make it nearly impossible to even whisper nuclear without the threat of civil lawsuits.

As such, we will continue to pump greenhouse gasses into the air. At our current rate, my home in Washington State might experience weather similar to that of Southern California today. Sunshine is good. . .

Thorium reactor acrticle: http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,68045, 00.html

Climbing the fence is a crime in progress unless the individual happens to own the property. Making a larger than usual payment on a loan is not a crime. In order for this analogy to work making the payment would have to normally be a crime.

It is always legal for me to climb my own fence.
An officer seeing someone climbing a fence can request that you prove your identity; and upon determining that the property is yours can wander on his merry way. There is no question from the officer that you might have come into possession of this fence illegally!

So, by analogy, if I move money from my bank account to my ABC Credit Card they can easily determine that I'm the owner of both accounts. Since moving my money between my accounts is not illegal they can fsk! right off. And note that all this can be done in milliseconds, requires no holds and requires no one to actually review the transaction.
The best part is that since the bank keeps a record of this transaction it's always up for review if they have a real reason to look at your finances.

This (again!) reminds me of the whole people who encrypt their data must be hiding something from the government, and so they must be criminals argument again...
Besides all this, mass monitoring isn't a very good way to go...

I've been a fan of Alamo Drafthouse for years, and I'd like to echo your sentiment. For those of you who haven't had a chance to experience the Alamo Drafthouse in Central Texas, it's more or less a combination of the dining / drinking / movie experience. Basically, you take a movie theatre, add a kitchen & bar, then remove every row in the theatre & add a table. You place your orders by writing them down on paper, and a waiter comes by, takes your order, and brings your food / drinks without disturbing your movie experience.

Of course, you can get there early to place your orders ahead of the movie showing (I enjoy that, and it's the only way to do it if you have more than just 2 people). I've attended hacker contests, movies, and even TV broadcasts, and have always enjoyed the experience.

Ultimately, I beleive that the movie experience will have to be redefined to remain relevant and competitive in the future. Alamo's done a GREAT job of doing that, IMHO.

They've also demonstrated that you don't have to show the latest Hollywood movies to pack a theatre. I've seen several "classics" while enjoying dinner and drinks at the theatre, and I'd be willing to wager that this probably plays into the long tail phenomenon.

The Alamo Drafthouse is localized to the Central Texas area, though they are rapidly multiplying. Are there any other chains or specialized movie houses that server dinner and/or drinks elsewhere in the States? List them, cause I'm a recent convert and would like to visit them while travelling.

3. The current VeriChip has nothing to do with buying or selling.

Oh YES it does. Read this:

http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,61357, 00.html/

Quote: "Applied Digital Solutions CEO Scott Silverman said he believes the company's VeriChip -- a subdermal microchip that uses radio frequency signals to broadcast an identification number to a scanner -- could someday replace credit cards."

What Would Jesus Blog? I'm not kidding. That's just wrong.

This project is still in its infancy. Of course a real mule is currently far superieor to the prototype robot, but the hope is that the project will lead to a machine that is superior to a legged animal in certian applications.

Big Dog is a proof of concept sort of robot. It can do a few tricks, enough perhaps to justify spending more money on the project.

A quick google search for "Big Dog robot" brings up an article from Wired News which says the project was started around January of 2004. Considering that these people have only been working on the project for a little over two years I don't think it's quite fair to point out all the ways the prototype is infferior to an animal that took a few billion years to evolve.

Religous people trying to stop research.

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/10.01/cadavers. html

For an instance where Israelis and US government got caught collaborating on using software to spy on allies as well as enemy states look at the PROMIS* / Inslaw scandal:

http://cryptome.org/promis-mossad.htm
(most detailed in allegations, but read critically)

http://www.eff.org/legal/cases/INSLAW/

http://wired-vig.wired.com/wired/archive/1.01/insl aw.html
(First issue of Wired - more on the DOJ's role in attempting to crush Inslaw.)

*PROMIS was and is the super-meta-database software for intelligence-gathering / analysis and prosecution management sold to dozens of different countries. It had a back-door built in which allegedly allowed surveilance of intelligence operations even of non-networked computers through spread-spectrum emissions from the dedicated Prime computers on which it ran. Inslaw made PROMIS but the DOJ tried to put them out of business by not paying for the software as contracted. The back door was not Inslaw's doing, AFAIK.

Actually you should see what Samsung Electronics did a few years back. They used to have the same kind of silo organization that Sony has, but the management decided to break the structure in order to add internal co-operation. The results were great and Samsung came out of the Asian financial crisis as one of the most innovative businesses. Wired has a nice story about it.

If they were less blatantly anti-consumer, and if they focused more on providing a product that consumers want, they might be able to compete.

Ah, but there's the rub. It's not that Sony itself is anticonsumer, it's that important divisions (specifically Sony Music and Sony Pictures) are, so everyone else must play along. This has already been discussed here in past Sony related articles and more throughly in a past Wired magazine article.

What needs to happen is for Sony to be split into separate music/content and electronics companies, and maybe even split the gaming platform off of that, too. But corporate dogs like having it all as one (one big company means more power and prestige than running one of three little ones).

Getting a breakup like that to happen will be next to impossible without a shareholder lawsuit (the different divisions holding each other back from competing and maximizing profits for shareholders is a real issue).

The FCC is demanding business records from both companies [TeleSpoof and NuFone], as well as the name of every customer that has used TeleSpoof, the date they used it and the number of phone calls they made.

Dated February 24th, the FCC letter gives TeleSpoof 20 calendar days to respond.

From TFA:

The Federal Communications Commission has never investigated the issue, spokeswoman Rosemary Kimball said.

But Wired is reporting today that the FCC has begun investigating Caller ID spoofing services, and is demanding that providers turn over the identities of all the users.

The FCC is demanding business records from both companies, as well as the name of every customer that has used TeleSpoof, the date they used it and the number of phone calls they made.

Dated February 24th, the FCC letter gives TeleSpoof 20 calendar days to respond.

All these ideas are entirely possible but it could simply be that Comcast doesn't provide the kind of broadband consistently necessary to use VoIP.

My experience with Comcast has been extensive and I am nothing but a little dissatisfied with how consistent my connection broadband width was. I'm not complaining that I lost connections (though I know people who have) but I will complain that my upload and download widths were anything but stable.

I eagerly await the broadband over power lines initiative that's inevitably going to be made available to everyone. Imagine paying for broadband but not having to pay also the cost of using an extensive cable network. Brilliant idea! Use rudimentary piggy backing techniques to deliver two signals through one line. It's actually not that difficult, I'm not sure why this took so long to develop and why it's taking even longer to make available to the public. Yes, I've heard of security concerns but there's got to be some encryption you can use.

If I ever live to see the day where cable is obsolete, I'm going to uncap my modem and host something huge to my friends. Anyone care to take a guess on how long I'd be able to keep that up before they shut me down?

There was an article in Wired a month or so ago that had some similar issues. It was specifically talking about fraud relating to Google AdSense.

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/14.01/fraud.htm l

People will put up sites withing nothing but keywords and advertisements. The site may not even have a complete sentence on it. But, because of the keywords, some search engines will rank it high, and users will end up there.

While this seems morally questionable, it's all fair in capitalism, right? It's up to Google, Yahoo et al to fight it out over who can do a better job of weeding out the crap content. I'll use the search engine that does a better job.

Please give this a read http://www.wired.com/news/medtech/0,1286,62923,00. html/
.
Or google it up here http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=Nano+particle +health+concern&btnG=Google+Search/

Of course, he was of a different opinion when his Social Security Number became pubic domain.

oh, pleez...I've been running high school courses running linux exclusively for more than 4 years now. I've forgotten what windows looks like! I enjoy eating my lunch while the windoze users are running around trying to deal with the latest plethora of windows problems.

As for elementary schools, there are lots using all kinds of open source materials, programs, etc.

Check out places like:

http://www.newbreedsoftware.com/tuxpaint/

Tuxpaint is designed as an elementary school children paint program. They also have tux math and tux type, which I have found to be excellent programs for elementary level school children.

Google for additional info such as: "linux school programs" etc. and you'll find out that there are thousands of schools using linux already.

And here's a link to a massive roll out of 300,000 linux computers! The entire state of Indiana is moving all of the student computers to linux in every high school!
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1895,1844695,00.as p

And then there is the leadership by schools in the Extramadura region of Spain:
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.12/view.html ?pg=4?tw=wn_tophead_3

And so on and so on.

Since you are considering Ubuntu, you might want to look at Edubuntu:
http://www.edubuntu.org/

It's all about marketing , getting the name and message into the minds of the people.

But you also have to fight what I like to call the name gobbling effect. For example, when you tell people about X Windows, what is their response? "you mean Windows XP?" how about Linux Live CDs? "you mean Windows Live?" Or how about, I run X on my box? "you have an xbox?"

Getting people to remember the name is important, but often difficult, look what happened to Corel Linux before it even had much of a chance? Sure, it's now Xandros, but you see, people knew Corel, and a name like Corel Linux would've stuck easily. It was Debian based and even had a GUI installer. But you see, here again the name was too powerful, and sure enough "Corel Sells Out To Microsoft" * and following shortly after with "Corel to Spin Off Desktop Linux Unit" and "Xandros Buys Corel's Linux".

"The terms of the Microsoft investment included an option under which Microsoft could request that Corel translate Microsoft's next-generation .Net server software to Linux. Hanlon said that regardless of the restructuring options it selects, the company will fulfill its contractual requirements." - quote source Yeah, I bet.

* = "It isn't quite as strange as Microsoft 's investment in Apple Computer several years ago, but it ranks right up there."

In tin foil hat speculation mode, look what erupted in the press about Google via the censorship/China/web issue, even though Microsoft itself and Yahoo were also mentioned in news articles regarding the same issue, but the outcry was all against Google, and what did this follow? The wide news coverage of a possible "Goobuntu".

How many corporations are going to tolerate pressure from an outside source to stop selling Linux if they start? Especially when the millions of dollars are wiggled in their direction. We need someone with actual balls to stand up and market Linux to the masses that won't back down under pressure. On their way to success, you can bet every skeleton in their closet will be brought out for parade when they turn down offers for buyouts.

As others have suggested elsewhere, the fight needs to be taken via EFF or some other means to break up the grip that exists at the OEM level and bring choice to the people when they purchase their computer to begin with.

First of all, it should be no surprise that virus protection companies are the ones who are the most vocal about these potential Mac OS X vulnerabilities. Without Mac viruses, they have no product to sell to the increasing numbers of Mac users.

Leap-A (the iChat worm) is essentially an executable disguised as a JPEG image file and requires the potential target user to manually accept the file download and then manually open the executable. Even Symantec classes the malware as a low threat because it doesn't automatically infect other's machines. The company says it has seen less than 50 infected machines.

The second piece of Mac OS X malware, Inqtana.A, is a Java-based "proof of concept" that exploits a vulnerability in the Bluetooth implementation in versions of Mac OS X that haven't been updated with security patches (specifically, Mac OS X 10.4.0). Inqtana.A exploits a vulnerability whereby it causes the affected machine to automatically send an Object Exchange (OBEX) Push request to any other system listening over Bluetooth. To spread, the targetted user must manually accept the data transfer. Again, this threat does not automatically infect other's machines.

Additionally, this potential Bluetooth exploit was actually documented way back in May 2005 and Apple issued a security update in June 2005 that closed the hole (Apple Security Update 2005-006). Apple also integrated that security change into all versions of Mac OS X starting with v10.4.1.

The worms that have made headline news, and now seem almost commonplace for Windows users, are the ones that spread without any user interaction due to the poor default configuration and automatic code execution of Windows -- they can infect millions of machines on the internet in hours.

The only relevant part of the article comes at the very end:

"Many viruses and worms, for instance, don't exploit security holes in operating systems. Instead, they use what are called ''social engineering'' techniques to trick users into doing things that they shouldn't do, like unwittingly installing programs."

"Rather than weaknesses in operating systems, such approaches exploit ''a bug in peoples' brains, which is much harder to patch,'' Mr. Cluley says."

Leander Kahney of Wired echos exactly my sentiments on these events:

http://www.wired.com/news/columns/0,70257-0.html?t w=wn_index_25

By the way, the Safari vulnerability talked about in the above Wired article can be attributed to poor program defaults (along with poorly tested code for backwards-compatibility to Mac OS 9) and can be completely avoided by disabling the "Open safe files after downloading" preference in Safari. Keep in mind that Safari is just an application program which runs on Mac OS X and is not integrated into it in the way that Internet Explorer is integrated into Windows. Even if this vulnerability could not mitigated by a simple preference toggle, you could just uninstall Safari (a matter of simply dragging its icon into the trash) and install a different web browser in its
stead (such as Mozilla Firefox). That's something you just can't do with Internet Explorer or other parts of Windows.

And in response to all the smug Windows apologists who think these recent developments prove that no operating system is truly safer than another and the number of exploits for an operating system are directly proportional to market share, I have this to say:

There were approximately 16,000 new viruses that targetted Windows XP in 2005. There have been 2, count them, 2 pieces of malware that targetted Mac OS X since 2001 (when Mac OS X was originally released). Taking market share into account (Windows XP at roughly 80% and Mac OS X at roughly 4%), we can extrapolate that there should have been 20,000 new viruses across all operating systems in the last 12 months (16,000 / 80%). At this rate, Mac OS X should have had 800 new viruses in the last 12 mo

http://www.wired.com/news/columns/0,70257-0.html?t w=rss.culture/

... and a shameless plug ....

http://optimist.sdf-eu.org/ssp/

Take care !

Bose (usually known for their speakers and audio systems) has been developing similar technology for replacing suspensions in cars...

There are lots of articles about this, including here and here.

From the linked article:

"These Mac security holes are a storm in a teacup. They've inspired hundreds of stories in the press and even the national network news, but if they were Windows holes, no one would have blinked.

That's because holes in Windows are routine, business as usual, while it now appears the Mac is under attack thanks to Apple's brand-new high profile. But this isn't the case.

Last month, there were four "massive" virus attacks on Windows, according to Commtouch, an antispam and antivirus vendor. Indeed, viruses are now so aggressive, they routinely outpace attempts by antivirus companies to distribute protective signatures.

This state of affairs is now so common, I hadn't noticed -- and I work for a technology news site. "Virulent computer virus infects millions worldwide, other non-news at 11."

These Mac "threats" are only news because of their novelty, not the threat level they pose."

He's probably doing what's he's always been doing: Laughing all the way to the bank.

Samsung's hiring of the same designer is nothing more than marketing hype. What Samsung hopes the public fails to realize, is that Steve Jobs is the guy who made the iPod what it is. PortalPlayer (the design company) actually delivered many iterations of the iPod that was much different from the final product. Each time, Jobs sent the device back with a laundry list of things wrong with it. Stuff that seemed completely out of place (e.g. extra bass boost because Jobs was slightly deaf) went into the design. PortalPlayer thought it was going to flop horribly after all the demands that Jobs had made. It was quite a shock to them when the iPod grabbed the market overnight.

So I would take this story with a grain of salt. If Samsung doesn't realize that they've got a cat in the bag, they will soon enough.

[Reference Article]

see if all of this isn't coming true right in front of our faces, the old wired "scared shitlist" story

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/3.01/shitlist.h tml

No, it was a cheap knockoff of the Marvel universe.

I was under the impression there was already a free Google hot spot in Union Square no?

This does seem like the ideal situation for Google to provide "free" WiFi with AdSense to all of San Francisco. It will be interesting to see how this develops in other major cities.

Google may think they are being philanthropic, but they haven't thought this one through.

There is a distinct possibility it may be the result of a competitive intelligence operation by Googles competitors.

Lets analyze the political forces involved.

Google is planning to offer, free, various library material that American taxpayers have spent billions of dollars collecting, producing and organizing. This money comes from federal, state, and local public funds as well as various private contributions, all of them usually with some sort of encumbrances.

There is always less funding for libraries than is needed, but this year represents a major shortfall. http://www.ala.org/ala/washoff/WOissues/washfundin g/funding.htm

Its an election year, and funding for schools and libraries are LOCAL politics, sure to be major issues in what promises to be many highly contested elections.

Google has lots of enemies http://wired.com/wired/archive/13.12/google.html who won't hesitate to take advantage of a situation like this; and they have plenty of lobbyists.

Here is my prediction.

Google goes ahead with their plans. Shortly after the elections, the GAO, various federal, state and local governments announce that they sueing to recover the costs of the material Google made available that was not within the encombrances posed by the original donations of funds. For bonus points, they may include the various penalties imposed by intellectual property acts as various parties assert rights to specific items in the distributed material.

*Poof* no more shortfall in library funding in the US, though Google shareholders might be a tad upset. There probably won't be a Sarbanes Oxley prosecution, and, who knows, a hostile takeover due to a cash flow crisis might be good for Google

I LIKE it... The empire strikes back with a competitive intelligence operation at it's finest. This is so much more fun than, say, a chair being thrown by a CEO or getting some congresspeople to complain about censorship. I can't wait to see if this plays out the way it looks.

Google is normally not this naive; they have competant legal staff who should have pointed all this out. I wonder what else is going on?

"Is it really so hard to fathom that the chances a popular song would be purchased at any given moment are greater than the chances an unpopular song would be purchased?"

Yes it is, because they aren't. At least not in a store that offers equal access to popular and unpopular songs alike. I do not know if ITMS fits that description.

Assuming I'm not the only one who had no idea what "I love bees" was, here are a few links:

The site (Yeah, it is freaky!)
Wired News article about the game

Sounds like I missed the boat.... :(

Or are you just being funny?

Voting machine manufacturers ARE producing ATMs. The CEO of (Diebold) is the very same that vowed to deliver Ohio to GW.

http://www.diebold.com/solutions/atms/default.htm

http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,59874,00 .html

http://www.gristforthemill.org/010418diebold.html

http://www.wanttoknow.info/051221votingmachineshac ked

There are some links to chew on. Americans of ALL stripes and affiliations should be OUTRAGED.

If you're a conservative that wants to brush this off - suggestion - Imagine Hillary Clinton's best friend becomes CEO of say... Diebold. Scared yet? Or are you consistant in your lack of outrage?

Intelligent drug delivery? More like intelligent terrorism if it came into the wrong hands. Anyone remember this article circa 2000: http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/8.04/joy.html