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Okay, clear this up for us. I Enoch Root one man in both Cryptonomicon and the Baroque Cycle or several? In Cryptonomicon Enoch talks about his "religious order," and I posit that "Enoch" is some sort of (mortal) atificial construct with mind that can be transferred when that "body" wears out/is killed or what have you - a clone perhaps.

Are you ever going to clear up this mystery in another book or are you going to let us twist in the wind forever?

And just thanks for all the great writing over the years. Your books are what I pack on long trips and have kept me company in Poland, Russia, California, and an excruciating mid-December move from Chicago to Dubuque, Iowa. I'd like to make a special plug aimed at oter Slashdotters for the Wired article Hacker Tourist: Mother Earth Motherboard which kept me fascinated during a long trip up the Pacific Coast Highway in 1996. I'd buy your grocery list, man.

Although the Korean retail business is miniture in comparison to Japan's (page 13 of this document), you've got to consider things like the ring-back, or caller-tune market (explained here and here) which have quickly grown into a $100 million market, showing that if you move in tune with technology you can make profits...

>I assume the purportedly non-sexist English language allows for this?

Unfortunately, you've used it incorrectly in that case.

If you'd like to take a look at the dictionary one more time, you'll find no sexless definitions for the word "woman". In fact, the word "woman" could be considered sexist, as some definitions mean it to be a female servant.

>Actually, I would have said "person" rather than "man" or "woman", but I don't think it's safe to debate pronoun usage with a woman such as yourself, as you seem to have taken my joke very seriously.

I take "jokes" like that seriously because I do tire of seeing certain groups corrupt not only our language (I consider it a corruption when a simple shortening of the word "human" can somehow become an insult), but worse yet, corrupt our legal system. IMHO, a man without a hate crime law is like a fish without a bicycle. Interestingly enough, that law is now used to eject certain non-mainstream media from Canada.

Yeah. I'll just go in a corner and chill out now. That's ok. Don't worry about anything.

MS gives them price breaks if they don't bundle any competitors on any of the machines they sell. MS gives them even more price breaks if they don't even mention any competitors. MS wines and dines politicians, and even invokes US politicians to lean on them [en espanol], to get them to toe the MS party line. It's hard to get any closer to the Ground Zero of anti-competitiveness.

Have you got the idea now?

I'm curious (assuming the original writer is reading this) about how that writer would respond to Mossberg's criticism.

Brought to mind a article in a previous edition of wired that I read. The story. I think this is a great use of search tools. It brings chills to my spine, the story, and the way that this man seems to be fighting with his own ghosts. Well written, and shows promise to anyone who has had to hole a memorial service for someone who couldn't be found. I hope that the police to hop on this train and use the tools that they have right in front of them. It also is great that there is a netowrk like the John Doe network of people, all looking out, trying to help these lost souls...

One fo the authors of this book was in the news on Wired and a couple of TV programs because he found a real vulnerability in Diebold's e-voting software (not that it's probably hard to do). Is this REALLY a novel or a prediction for November?

What's next, banning cell phone cameras in book stores, or libraries?

Funny you should mention this (unless it was deliberate?) The magazine's publishers in Japan are trying to convince stores to ban camera phones in stores, exactly as you described.

This seems to go rather strongly against the principle of "Don't be evil.".

I'm just waiting for step 3 when more of my few remaining rights have been taken away.

If you're right about steps 1 and 2, then this *was* step 3.

There's no way we'd let him. Wired wrote

The American military has begun planning for combat in space, an Air Force report reveals. And commercial spacecraft, neutral countries' launching pads -- even weather satellites -- are all on the potential target list.
...
Keeping this "space superiority"...

Most of the charm of an Apple I probably comes from the warm fuzzies of having something of which only 30-50 exist. When you make your own, that kind of defeats the purpose. Seems kind of a silly thing to care about though.

There are people who have made Apple I replicas, although for practical reasons they don't use the same exact chips, which probably lowers the "warm fuzzies" even more.

And to be a stickler, Woz was the one giving them out. Besides the fact that he was the one who actually designed the thing, Jobs doesn't seem like the kind of guy to give out schematics.

Earlier last month, the Secret Service requested visitor logs from Indymedia to determine who posted personal info about GOP delegates. It looks like Big Brother really wanted that info.

See link for more info.

This guy must be the person who gets all the used games and systems that people trade in to their local (insert your favorite console gaming retailer name here) for a minor pittance toward the latest and greatest game(s), when the stores finally realize they can't resell them.
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Slim Cognito

Get your own FREE iPod and help me get mine at the same time.

If you're concerned about the legitimacy of the free iPod offer, check out this Wired magazine article.

It must certainly be better to 'treadmill' while being a superhero than to play an MMO that's even more pointless where you are just a Joe Schmoe.
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Slim Cognito

Get your own FREE iPod and help me get mine at the same time.

If you're concerned about the legitimacy of the free iPod offer, check out this Wired magazine article.

What about those people who play the opposite gender in online games?

By at least one account up to 56% of male players and up to 33% of female players play an opposite gender character. Do these avatars reflect their real-life persona in some way? I personally don't feel I'm anything like my EQ level 63 Female High-Elf Cleric. I simply played a female because of the social advantage gained in a game like EQ.
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Slim Cognito

Get your own FREE iPod and help me get mine at the same time.

If you're concerned about the legitimacy of the free iPod offer, check out this Wired magazine article.

The bills come at a time when the music and movie industries are exerting enormous pressure on all branches of government at the federal and state levels to crack down on P2P content piracy. The industries also are pushing to portray P2P networks as dens of terrorists, child pornographers and criminals -- a strategy that would make it more palatable for politicians to pass laws against products that are very popular with their constituents.

There's also increased enforcement activity. The US Department of Justice released this announcementearlier this year. According to this article possessing obscene material is legal but not distributing it:

Under federal law, it is illegal to knowingly possess or distribute child pornography. It generally is legal to possess "obscene" materials--defined by the U.S. Supreme Court as sexually explicit materials lacking scientific, literary, artistic or political value--but illegal to distribute them. Magazines such as Hustler or Penthouse are typically not considered obscene, but legal standards vary from state to state.

Law enforcement are ramping up their efforts and soon enough folks will find that distributing GBs of hardcore material is not just illegal but might earn them a visit to the pokey where their music sharing friends can visit them after paying their settlement.

Where was Slashdot when all the fraud was being reported?

"Clear Channel holds only 8.3 million shares of XM common stock, or an approximately 3% stake...

"Perhaps more importantly, Clear Channel does not hold any seats on XM's board and its stake in XM entitles it to no extraordinary voting rights. Clear Channel executive Randall Mays did sit on XM's board for a time, but once Clear Channel's stake in XM fell below 5%, the company was no longer entitled to a seat.

"Clear Channel, according to XM's own SEC filings, does provide "certain programming services" to XM. Likewise, XM has a sponsorship agreement to advertise at Clear Channel-owned venues. XM also leases a few terrestrial repeaters from Clear Channel and utilized Premiere Radio Networks, a Clear Channel subsidiary for some of its advertising sales. However, XM appears to be doing less business with Clear Channel as payments to Premiere fell from approximately $2.96 million in the first quarter of 2003 to about $1.59 million in the first quarter of 2004.

"To put it simply, Clear Channel is just a large institutional holder of XM stock... The business relationship between the companies has shrunk to the point of insignificance and Clear Channel increasingly views XM as a competitive threat."

On XM Radio and its founder. Very interesting discussion of how they are gonna kill the Clear Channel republican monopoly. I for one am almost about ready to go out and buy one even though I cant stand Stern...

Coal can be Black or maybe Brown, but never Green..

But seriously, there is now a massive power struggle for power - all the different interest groups are jockeying for position to be the next big "green" fuel.

My own 2c (per kw/hour) is that the very simple obvious non-polluting green alternatives - wind, tide, wave, solar, etc - have quietly evolved to a stage where they could take over as the western worlds main source of energy. Why do we need to mess around with nuclear/coal/oil? All the supporting technologies have developed sufficiently that they are either already economical, or at worse should be soon with a little more work. If you just take wind alone, the latest batch of offshore wind farms are contracted to supply power to the UK grid at 0.03 pounds/kilowatt/hour - pretty competitive, and set to come down with scale. (British Wind Energy Association page) (American Wind Energy Association page)

The latest windmills do not present loading problems for the grid, probably kill less wildlife than other things (ie tall structures in general, glass windows, cars, oil rigs etc..) & do not really mess up the landscape for 99.99% of people.

The UK alone has many times its energy needs already available in potential off-shore sites. The USA and Australia have similar huge (and worryingly largely unsurveyed) potentials - off & on shore.

And then you can look at other sources - tide, wave, solar.. For instance, Australia is building 1 km high towers that can generate power by solar power.

Ok, back to coal - can it be green? Well if you can safely bury 100% (or close to) emmissions - dont forget all the other by-products (CO, SO2, mercury, lead.. ) and you mine it in a green manner, you would have something resembling a green source of power for a short while - until all the easily minable resources were gone, then renewables become cheaper anyway..

Nuclear? Oh sure its "cheap" - until you have to decommission the sites, and get rid of the waste safely - which has to be looked after for centuries.. Billions of pounds were wasted on Nuclear power generation in the UK to no avail - the money would have been much better spent on researching renewables, which have had a pittance by comparison.

Results of a systems penetration and perversion by contrast would depend on how good intrusion detection systems are on the target, and the nature of the target for an intrusion. Financial systems would be an obvious target. Subtle corruption of data might be harder to correct. Were I wearing my black hat and at my most destructive, I'd try for a major financial institution (one of the top 10 banks, the five major financial exchanges, or the federal reserve); try for something that inserted a human-possible error (digit transpose, single digit error, or doubling a digit) into one transaction in every 1E6 or so to start. Rig the code so that this rate remains constant for 30 days. After 30 days, the rate begins an acceleration program, doubling the error rate every ten days. I'd also drop in something to initiate financial transfers after about day 30 if I could.

I'd want a trustworthy and trained team of about 30 to do it; at least a dozen broadband zombies per team member, with scattered IP addresses and locations; probably three months to determine the best system entry point, about a month for studying system design (replacable by a spy with access to system documentation, and a week to study it), about a week for the sabotage coding, and about a day for the intrusion itself. If it wasn't caught quickly, they'll have a major headache.

Hacking is not directly useful for land/sea/air warfare. It is more useful for "cold" wars (spy games), or "cool" wars (economic warfare).

South Korea has regularly issued warnings like this since 1994. What the South Korean government fails to note is that its own military has nearly 200 "computer training facilities" and had trained more than 200,000 "information technicians." What's more, because North Korea's IT infrastructure is very centralized, it's particularly vulnerable to physical attacks.

JFGI (just freaking Google it):

Google Search

Some nice pictures:

• http://www.wired.com/news/images/0,2334,64440-1376 6,00.html
• http://www.livejournal.com/users/benjiesque/72874. html

In other news, security in Iraq requires that we are now officially at peace with Iraq. We have always been at peace with Iraq.

trom
Harry Tuttle: "Listen, this old system of yours could be on fire and I couldn't even turn on the kitchen tap without filling out a 27b/6... Bloody paperwork."

to
"We don't care. We don't have to. (snort) We're the Phone Company." - Lily (Ernestine) Tomlin

to
Friendster rep Lisa Kopp insists, "We have a policy that we are not being hacked."

These are the Pointy Haired Bushites who are protecting us from terrorists.

about the team behind Halo 2

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.10/halo.html

It's a good read if you're into the game!

-- james

Here's wired's story on it from 1999:

http://www.wired.com/news/print/0,1294,32263,00.ht ml

Basically what happened was that the Xing DVD player didn't encrypt their decryption code/keys, so it was possible for the hackers to easily reverse-engineer it and figure the system out.

N.

Very interesting concept thank you for posting it (hadn't heard about it before).

## Links for the interested ##
The Australian company involved: http://www.enviromission.com.au/index1.htm
The designers/inventors Schlaich Bergermann and Partner: http://www.sbp.de/en/fla/index.html
(choose Projects | Solar Energy | All Solar-Power Plants, first and last pictures take you to the two solar tower projects)
A recent Wired news item on the subject: http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,54917, 00.html

Please mod parent up as interesting :)

It looks like a couple of the sites have been slashdotted.

Wired ran a story last year on the Read Regular typeface which was designed to make each character more distinctive.

Just check out www.wired.com. They use a CSS / XHMTL approach and read the Interview With Douglas Bowman of Wired News about it.

Fine and pretty and nice as they are (and i mean no disrespect to the authors) those are simple sites.(not large scale corp sites) and yes i know of fastcompany.com.

AOL, Wired, ESPN not large enough?

I've heard this theory too (I think it comes from a Wired article), but it doesn't really make economic sense - you'd need buildings to house the sheep, food for them to eat over winter, somebody to take care of them, etc. And besides, CERN has real (i.e. mechanical) lawnmowers too. Moreover, there are certain areas, like the hill in front of Restaurant 2, which appear to be reserved for sheep-grazing because they are fenced off and the mechanical lawnmowers don't mow there very often. On top of that, grazing sheep don't actually do a really good job mowing lawns - some grass does get eaten, and more gets flattened when the sheep lay down, but an awful lot of the grass just gets really long and the area doesn't look well-maintained at all until the mechanical lawnmowers come do their thing (which they do every once in a while, even in the sheep-grazing areas).

For what it's worth, I still think the king-granting-permanent-grazing-rights theory fits the data the best. :)

Actually, arbitrary imprisonment is now simple and convenient - you just need to be declared a "material witness":

• Intel programmer "material witness",
• aliens
• military custody
• 800 detainees!
• lawyer losing rights after misidentified fingerprint, (with great terrorist media smear campagain!)
• legal limbo for "material witnesses"

Wired takes a lot of artistic license. Consider the internet, for example.

They definitely have editors. They are just being punny. They had an article on how the the word "internet" would no longer be capitalized a little while ago, that impressed me with how seriously they take the style/grammar/whatever_you_want_to_call_it of their journalism.

They definitely have editors. They are just being punny. They had an article on how the the word "internet" would no longer be capitalized a little while ago, that impressed me with how seriously they take the style/grammar/whatever_you_want_to_call_it of their journalism.

This reuters story has an interesting quote: "One provision of the bill is likely to anger Hollywood, as it shields companies that edit out sex and violence from movies to make them more "family friendly." Movie directors have sought to shut down such companies in court."

So big government apparently doesn't care just about copyright as long as it fits with their moral agenda.

For anyone interested in the Incude Act and what it is, here's a reasonably good Wired article on it.

Catholic, are you?

Jedi perhaps? The movement, which started in New Zealand, is now a legal religion according to census officials in the UK, although it endures religious persecution in Australia, where people can be fined for declaring their faith.

"May the Force be with you"

"... and also with you." (Catholics will get that one)

Thanks for that, Karl Rove. Please back that assertion up with facts. Because it sure seems to anyone who's actually paying attention that there's a huge disparity between Bush and Kerry. Let me list just a few of the differences that I've observed.

Kerry actually mentioned science in his DNC acceptence speech. Kerry actually mentioned his web site in his DNC acceptence speech. Kerry actually saved the lives of several people in Vietnam and afterwards. Kerry is a documented war hero. Everyone who was actually there at the time says so. (Lots of people who weren't there and just happen to be funded by wealthy Republicans from Texas claim otherwise.)

Meanwhile Bush's favorite philosopher is Jesus, which is fair enough. Lots of Christians love Jesus. But Bush can't name anything Jesus ever said, let alone abide by His word. Still, Jesus is a good name-drop sop to the sacreligious right for him, so he'll continue to use that line.

Bush has never saved anyone's life. Bush started a preemptive war that has so far resulted in over 1000 American deaths and at least ten times that number of Iraqi deaths -- including innocent women and children.

Come on, man, pick up the beat. Kerry is much superior to Bush. Don't listen to the right-wing talking heads. Think for yourself.

Wow, that's disappointing; this is something Kerry really needs to address. With the advancement of Intelligent Design (see the latest edition of Wired or Google it) our development is being backtracked from the very basics: our children. The drive is to teach creationism in schools as a legitimate counterpart to evolution, despite the fact that it has no scientific evidence (the mathematics are flawed and skewed based on misunderstandings of macro/micro evolution), is picking up. Will kids weigh the two objectively? Hardly... they'll go with the faith they were raised on. More to the point, is it really appropriate to allow public schools to teach this considering the separation of church and state? No.

But then, this would be an election-killer answer south of the bible belt...

On the heels of the parent post, people could go read about Ted Nelson. Xanadu has been in the making for 35 years. This is a fun read, but also see the rebuttal here.

There's also this article over at Kuro5hin.

The self-promoting, ever-insistent, look-at-me, look-at-me inventor of hypertext, the world, and everything?

• Linux Versus NT
• Linux versus FreeBSD
• Linux versus TwinView Nvidia GForce4 MX 4000 (ok, it's a bizarre one, but we are being thorough :)
• Linux versus MacOS X Server
• Linux Versus On Time RTOS-32 for Real-Time Embedded Systems

Ok, this was the first page.. I got bored copy'n'pasting afterward.

According to a screenshot, you can have your sims play the old version of The Sims. Doesn't this really mean that someone is playing The Sims 3, with us as sims?

No. The nonsense about widespread election problems is not grounded in facts and logic. Many groups have reported there were no problems and yet this is still brought up. Don't expect this (very politicaly useful) charge to go away just because some Europeans say it isn't true.

2. Observers claim they see problems. They might be telling the truth. They might be lying. Everyone gets upset. We never find out conclusively one way or the other.

It all depends on which end of the process you are talking about. I would be stunned if there were more than a couple of instances of election problems at the polling places, on election day. Its all the work of purging the election rolls of "undesirables" (i.e., Democrats) that occurs months before the election that is the problem that is most often brought up. There is story after story about those problems, especially in Florida.

The funny thing is, the Sims in Sim2 can play Sim1. Who says no one wants a game to remind them of their monotonous life ; ) Link.