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A recent Wired cover story said "A typical person might be a fiscally conservative, socially liberal, free marketeer. That doesn't line up with either party". It sounds to me that the 'typical person' has libertarian tendancies. What is the Libertarian Party in general, and your campaign specifically, doing to tap the un-represented masses? What has Howard Dean's success, both in popularity and in fundraising, shown the potential internet has in undercutting "politics as usual"?

here is the link to wired.com talking about exactly this Wired.com

I've never even heard of half of these "prominent science fiction writers." Guess I've been living under a rock!

Yup. You might want to grab a copy of the Encylopedia of Science Fiction and catch up with the rest of us. My guess is that you're a hard SF / space opera fan, and you haven't heard of the authors listed because they write new wave / cyberpunk SF rather than the stuff you're into.

Cory Doctorow is a new author who has had success giving away his books under the creative commons licence. You might know him better as a blogger.

Pat Murphy has been around for a while. She mostly writes science-fantasy stuff... kind of like a midway between LeGuin and Cherryh, if you've heard of them.

Kim Stanley Robinson writes hugely popular airport newsstand bestsellers. Y'know, those big thumping books with gold leaf on the front. You've probably read his Mars books.

Norman Spinrad is one of my all time favourite writers. He is often compared to Norman Mailer (also a favourite), a comparison I find apt. You'd probably hate him, as he presents a strong criticism of psychology space opera fans in his novel The Iron Dream.

Bruce Sterling is probably best known to Slashdotters as the author of The Hacker Crackdown (full text here) and my sig. He's also a blogger for Wired and the Pope Emperor of the Virdian movement.

Ken Wharton is a relatively new writer, but a long time physicist. He's probably the most convention hard SF type writer of the lot.

Infrasearch was working on this, until Sun paid $8M for the company, them had them work on something else, then Gene Kan committed suicide. Be careful what you work on.

Everyone clicking on the PayPal button on eBay

tiny sellers of services/products on the Web without a credit card merchant account

And everyone sending money to their friend across the Net without needing to process credit cards.

as there are other marginal players

That's a huge market, and growing much more quickly than online credit card billing.

Here: http://www.anoto.com/

Their concept will blow your mind. Basically the best integration between traditional paper and pens, computers and the Internet.

Wired (the magazine, not the website) ran an article about them a few years ago. You can read it here: http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/9.04/anoto.html ?pg=1&topic=&topic_set=

Regards,
AIH

With all the discussion about city wide WiFi networks in Grand Haven, Philadelphia, Redmond, etc and disputes over WiFi right of ways at universities and stadiums, it is becoming more obvious that WiFi will be eroding the markets of tradition broadcast technologies... radio, television, cellular.

When I was at SXSW last year, not only could you listen to the authorized SXSW iTunes playlists, but hundreds of Mac using convention goers were sharing their playlists via Rendezvous.

With standards like WMM and applications like Skype, have we finally taken the airwaves back?

the real problem is the link to freeipods.com - even though it appears to be legit, there are more links to that site in forums then there were cat pictures on homepages in the 90's.

Wired ran an article about Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow several months ago.

the fact that it was one man's vision, and started in his garage using off-the-shelf software and a whole lot of time before any studios ever got involved.

Wired had an article about it a while ago, and i've been excited to see it ever since.

Horray for garage studios!!

In 2038, according to Ritchie and other experts, that 32-bit signed integer that Unix uses to count time will finally reach its last digit, and the change could conceivably cause problems.

Craig Venter (yes, the Craig Venter of Celera/Human Genome fame) is undertaking a mission to do just that - catalog every species on earth's DNA. He's starting with the largely under-explored ocean species.

Here's the Wired News article about it.

There was a lawsuit a while back that was settled out of court that may have some relevance to linking. However, in that case, it involved a website called TotalNEWS making stories from other websites appear like parts of its own pages using frames. News organisations like The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal and CNN sued the site and forced them to stop linking to their own sites in a frames fashion. Since it was settled out of court, I presume it hasn't really set legal pecedence, but it did bring up some of the legal implications of linking.

That's why so many people ignore all the free porn on the internet and pay for, essentially, a resolution upgrade. Speak for yourself, man. I want my porn as high res as possible.

I found this Wired article, Making Free IPods Pay Off much more informative. The same company also offers free flatscreens (with 8 referrals).

I found this Wired article, Making Free IPods Pay Off much more informative. The same company also offers free flatscreens (with 8 referrals).

This is censorship.

But, I guess it's ok, since Mugabe is "anti-imperialist" or something--yes, leftists actually peddle lines like that to excuse the crimes of their favoured dictators!

Here's another suppressed story the left won't talk about, because it might threaten the purity of another sacred cow. And to think, the same people who screamed for every spoiled ballot in the 2000 presidential election to be counted want to go by a quick overview of a few machines to declare a stolen referendum legitimate. Pathetic, but it's the kind of hypocrisy you have to expect from the left.

Wired magazine had an interesting article about outsourcing I read on a flight a while back from a IT training course. The article is titled "The new face of the Silicon Age" and it addresses what some analysts say is needed to overcome outsourcing from the U.S.

Their approach seems to be along the lines of the workers in the U.S. being the designers with the the outsourced workers building off the designs. This isn't always a good approach for obvious reasons, but the overall tone suggests that there is a push for more of a creative aspect for US workers and less detail and end product development being done here.

Being in the IT industry myself, I find this a bit disturbing. Most engineers employed in IT focus on architecture of designs, but then the detailed work and support of their designs becomes the real task. Once you pull together an idea, making it happen and supporting it is where the real work comes in. Is it a good idea to focus solely on the first step. Once you loose touch of the detail and support aspects, it's only a matter of time before you loose all of it. After all it's very conceded for engineers in the US to try and think they are the only ones who can create great things as the wired article mentioned seems to imply.

Some things that you can do:

1. Support free (as in freedom) software, open-source software, and software such as shareware or freeware, produced by individuals.
   
2. Support open standards that are not patent-encumbered i.e. HTML, Ogg Vorbis (audio), and PNG (graphics.) Discourage MS Word attachments for e-mail.
   
3. In addition to the EFF, there is the League for Programming Freedom. They have a paper opposing software patents.
4. For engineers and software developers, it may actually be better to not search for or examine software patents. Willfully infringing a patent is said to be much more serious than innocently infringing a patent. See this article on patents. It was written by an attorney who comments that he can no longer deal with patents in good conscience. The article mentions that the risk of examining software patents serves to defeat the supposed advantage that patents increase public knowledge of technology. Also see this article about Linus Torvalds; he comments on the idea of not looking for software patents.

Making Free IPods Pay Off

This sounds very much like the reactors the Chinese are trying to deploy, covered in Wired this month.

Wired had a much better article a few days back on China's nuclear strategy. Personally, it looks a whole lot better and WAAAAAAY safer then the American fuel rod based designs. Meltdowns are not a problem, no water contamination and it may even help generate hydrogen for fuel purposes.

These type of reactors were discussed in the latest edition of Wired.

It gets better. Pons et al had figured out a way to make a denser pellet, and had a trade secret worked out with a palladium supplier that provided their samples. They were trying to make money off their discoveries, and in so doing, didn't disseminate their trade secrets. Of course, when the hot-fusion-funded universities tried to reproduce expirements based on photographs and interviews, they failed and cried FRAUD! The media, feeling they had been suckered, promptly turned and smeared Pons-Fleischmann.

Of course, if I remember correctly, Pons-Fleischmann didn't help things by exaggurating their claims and having inaccurate graphs.

Can't find the link just yet where I read that tidbit. Here's a good one, though, at wired. Just how do you explain an excess of Helium with anything but nuclear processes?

I just finished reading about these in Wired.

That's a bit like saying that a TV channel depends on the one company that at a certain time is buying most of the comercial time.

The threat to pull advertising to censor publications does happen.

I thought the ads are served by a 3rd party company, based on keywords/page content or something like that?

The ads on this site are served by OSDN.com, which owns Slashdot, so it isn't exactly a third party company. OSDN is now called OSTG, but the ads still use the "ads.osdn.com" URL.

From another Wired article:

"At our current rate of consumption, Cliffside will likely be empty in 10 to 25 years, and the Earth will be virtually helium-free by the end of the 21st century."

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/8.08/helium.htm l

It's really sad when you hear about china making these ambitious pans and really moving forward.
When I was a kid, my mother used to tell me to eat all my food because there were poor kids in china dying of starvation.
Technologically and economically we used to use china as an example of what is wrong with communism. Now china is growing.

1. A space Program
2. A nuclear power program, based on the safest design available.
3. An economy that is growing
4. More land mass
5. and more people.

It is obvious that the grandchildren of todays china will be telling their children to eat all their food because of the poor starving children in America. People will look at America with pity and revulsion. And our country will probably no longer be a superpower (we'll probably be speaking mandarin).
WHY
because.
Like fahrenheit, 451 this country is being torn apart by petty monopolistic groups bent on dominating each other.
If were lucky this might happen.

I cdnuolt blveiee taht I cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd waht I was rdgnieg.
The phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer inwaht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoatnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit a porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Amzanig huh? yaeh and I awlyas thought slpeling was ipmorantt!

Get a free iPod. Here is how it works .

Usually there isn't press about the legitimacy of scams.

Unbelievable but true: TriangleBoy e.g. SafeWeb is CIA funded project.

And that anonymous-surfing technology turns out not to be very safe after all.

See this link here: http://www.ifcomp.org/ Also there is this about the IM bots which serve up INFOCOM games. Those can be found here: http://wired.com/news/games/0,2101,62791,00.html

• Most players are made in China.
• The Chinese government wants to reduce dependencies on foreign technology that requires royalties.
• With players selling for as little as $29.95, paying royalties to high-wage countries is no longer competitive.
• The top-grossing movie this week is Hero. It's from China.

Did I just read that correctly? In the United States of America you must have a permit to protest?

Worse, at the conventions they are quarantining people with differing opinions in a "Free Speech Zone" that is away from the convention, away from cameras and the eyes of delegates.

Make no mastake, America is not the bastion of freedom and democracy that we claim to be. And by claiming to be such, George W. Bush is a rather large hypocrite.

-- Bob

All good points, but there's one flaw in the strategy this time. iPods don't do WMA. They really are going to need that $50 vapor player if they plan to take the market this time. And since iPods are only $0 to $69, it's going to be a hard sell :-)

In all seriousness though, Apple has momentum. They've got a greater marketshare with iPods and iTunes than they ever had with the Macintosh. This time, Apple has the ubiquitous hardware advantage. Microsoft is Tyson fighting Buster Douglas. MS is getting soft. XBox hasn't gone according to plan. Licensing and product activation is leading their customers to jump ship. They've peaked. There's nowhere to go but down now ;-)

This sounds like a great tool. I know we have a lot of problems with getting our data into a report form for corporate. We are thinking about bringing someone on to write such reports full time because their nature and specs are constantly changing. If this tool can allow someone with limited technical ability to mine our data for marketing information we could save a lot of money with it.


warning ... shameless plug to get myself a free ipod follows (yes it's legit)

Because by signing up and not becoming a profitable lead (ie: cancelling your aol account before it rolls over) you make the advertisers pay. Oh, and it's not a pyramid scheme because I don't profit from your leads. Check out this article for more details.

for helping me to get laid in the UK.

http://www.wired.com/news/wireless/0,1382,62687,00 .html

Coming to the Staples Center! Stare in amazement as the Giants of Anime take on the Monsters of Rock! Can the vixens of Sailor Moon survive in the Spiked Cage of Death for three minutes with the hellcats of L7? Cringe in horror as the KISS Army takes a full frontal assault from the Red Ribbon Army!

As allways, we'll sell you the whole seat, but you'll only need the edge!

I am not an anime fan, so I won't even comment on that aspect, but on the referenced page there was a link to an interesting interview with TAFKA Prince. Here's the most interesting part:

What sort of marketing tactics are you using for Musicology and the current tour?
We introduced the concept of purchasing a brand-new CD with the concert ticket. That's all that really matters anyway: getting the music 2 the people. By any means necessary.

Does that include P2P file-sharing?
File-sharing seems 2 occur most when people want more QUALITY over quantity. One good tune on a 20-song CD is a rip. The corporations that created this situation will get the fate they deserve. 4 better or 4 worse, 4 every action there is a reaction. An MP3 is merely a tool. There is nothing 2 fear.

"Notwithstanding the provisions of sections 106 and 106A, the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright."

Reference is also made to "the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes" -- to which "remix[ing] a few seconds of a Hollywood movie into a home movie project" certainly applies, and argument could be made that that remixing constitutes criticism, comment, or even teaching (video editing is a skill, too).

Between Valenti making claims like these, and the American Library Association going head-to-head with the Business Software Alliance to combat their misinformation about copyright, I have to wonder whether these guys realise the long-term damage they're doing to their reputations, since eventually, the truth will out.

Anyway, the law exists, just in case anyone was wondering. Kthxbye.

For many years now Bruce Schneier has been writing on this topic extensively and since I share his views I decided to put together the most relevant excerpts from his excellent Crypto-Gram newsletter and let them speak for themselves. If you really want to get up to speed on this topic, this is what you've been looking for.

Crypto-Gram: September 15, 2003 :: News:

Interesting report on the security of Diebold's voting machines. Scary stuff, especially if you consider that these are already being purchased for use in U.S. elections.
http://avirubin.com/vote.pdf

Crypto-Gram: October 15, 2003 :: News:

Despite admitting that Diebold voting machines have a high risk of compromise, the state of Maryland is going to buy them:
http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,60583,00 .html

Crypto-Gram: December 15, 2003 :: Computerized and Electronic Voting:

There are dozens of stories about computerized voting machines producing erroneous results. Votes mysteriously appear or disappear. Votes cast for one person are credited to another. Here are two from the most recent election: One candidate in Virginia found that the computerized election machines failed to register votes for her, and in fact subtracted a vote for her, in about "one out of a hundred tries." And in Indiana, 5,352 voters in an district of 19,000 managed to cast 144,000 ballots on a computerized machine.

These problems were only caught because their effects were obvious--and obviously wrong. Subtle problems remain undetected, and for every problem we catch--even though their effects often can't be undone--there are probably dozens that escape our notice.

Computers are fallible and software is unreliable; election machines are no different than your home computer.

Even more frightening than software mistakes is the potential for fraud. The companies producing voting machine software use poor computer-security practices. They leave sensitive code unprotected on networks. They install patches and updates without proper security auditing. And they use the law to prohibit public scrutiny of their practices. When damning memos from Diebold became public, the company sued to suppress them. Given these shoddy security practices, what confidence do we have that someone didn't break into the company's network and modify the voting software?

And because elections happen all at once, there would be no means of recovery. Imagine if, in the next presidential election, someone hacked the vote in New York. Would we let New York vote again in a week? Would we redo the entire national election? Would we tell New York that their votes didn't count?

Any discussion of computerized voting necessarily leads to Internet voting. Why not just do away with voting machines entirely, and let everyone vote remotely?

Online voting schemes have even more potential for failure and abuse. Internet systems are extremely difficult to secure, as evidenced by the never-ending stream of computer vulnerabilities and the widespread effect of Internet worms and viruses. It might be convenient to vote from your home computer, but it would also open new opportunities for people to play Hack the Vote.

And any remote voting scheme has its own problems. The voting booth provides security against coercion. I may be bribed or threatened to vote a certain way, but when I enter the privacy of the voting booth I can vote the way I want. Remote voting, whether by

After all, if it wasn't for him linventing the internet, we would have no reason to celebrate.

the bike in action!
wired has a video:
http://www.wired.com/news/mediaplayer/0,2108,64417 -64417-iloveny_qt_hi,00.html

Well the bad guy on season 3 of 24 had an OQO

You've noticed the product placement that has been used in Hollywood where good guys use Macs and bad guys use PC's. Apparently it's really evident in "24".

And now it's time to repeat... Man, I'm in the wrong business.

It's for real. I normally don't go for these things but...Free ipods (click here to get yours) .

sounds like your having a bit of a hippy flashback.

• ... His fortunes changed in 1999. Red Hat and VA Linux, both leading purveyors of Linux-based software packages tailored for large enterprises, had granted him stock options with no strings attached, thank-yous from entrepreneurs who hoped to grow rich off his creation. When Red Hat went public that year, Torvalds was suddenly worth $1 million. On the day VA Linux (now VA Software) went public, Torvalds was worth roughly $20 million, though by the time he could sell his shares, they were valued at only a fraction of that. ... [Wired Magazine, Gary Livlin, 11.11, Leader of the Free World]

sounds like your having a bit of a hippy flashback.

• ... His fortunes changed in 1999. Red Hat and VA Linux, both leading purveyors of Linux-based software packages tailored for large enterprises, had granted him stock options with no strings attached, thank-yous from entrepreneurs who hoped to grow rich off his creation. When Red Hat went public that year, Torvalds was suddenly worth $1 million. On the day VA Linux (now VA Software) went public, Torvalds was worth roughly $20 million, though by the time he could sell his shares, they were valued at only a fraction of that. ... [Wired Magazine, Gary Livlin, 11.11, Leader of the Free World]