Slashdot Mirror
Slashback: Fairness, Radioactivity, Recovery
Ha, ha, puny earthlings! TinoMNYY24 writes "The Independent broke the story of SpaceShipOne leaving the Earth's atmosphere. The headline of the story is "'SpaceShipOne' becomes first privately funded vehicle to break through earth's atmosphere." One more step towards the X-Prize."
A data recovery success story - please send more. bigdog1 writes "I also had the IBM 75GXP data loss problem reported on slashdot. Like the guy in this article, I was not able to pay someone to do my data recovery. However, I eventually was able to get almost all of my data back using a free program, NTFS Reader. The only problem was that the file names were not in the long format. From now on I am buying an extra hard drive, but has anyone else had success stories recovering their data? Long file names?"
Too little, too late. An anonymous reader writes "I recently e-mailed paypals's public relations department and urged them to restore Freenet's paypal account. Their reply indicates that they have reexamined Freenet's account and decided not to terminate it after all. No news on the freenet project page, but here's paypal's reply:
'I apologize that your concerns were not addressed in the previous email. Our Compliance Department has reviewed The Freenet Project account in question and the service has been fully restored. If you have any further questions, please feel free to contact us again.
Sincerely,
Andrew
PayPal Account Manager'"
ultranova writes "Because PayPal has offered no explanation or apology, the project does not intend to continue advocating its usage, and has migrated to Amazon Honor System."
'Adventure Capitalist' is a much better motorcycle story anyhow. malign writes "Mary Mycio notes that the 'Ghost town' photo essay is probably faked, and notes her reasons. There go my fantasies! :(" Rumors and grumblings to this effect have been around for quite a while, but this seems the most straightforward debunking I've seen of the trip a Ukrainian woman named Elena claimed to have taken through the Chernobyl area.
(We posted two stories about the alleged trip in March.)
Corporate machinations meet the mounties. los furtive writes "The CBC is reporting that HP has agreed to pay back the Canadian Government $146 million that had been defrauded from the Department of National Defense (previously mentioned here). HP claims it was the victim of 'a complex scheme designed to exploit both parties through contracts inherited through HP's merger with Compaq Computer Corp.' In the end they decided it was more appropriate to take action against those responsible and not engage in protracted litigation with the government."
I'm on a couple of these "fax your representative and senators" alert systems now. I have two feelings on them, either they've opened a new avenue (or rather mass transport for an older one" for communicating with our public servants, or they will just further immunize our representatives from individual opinions.
"PayPal's restoration of Freenet doesn't help at all. It's hard to unring that bell, and Freenet now doesn't want to deal with them anyway."
Err hold on, you need to think about the bigger picture. Paypal's restoration helps at least some. I mean, didn't you consider never ever using Paypal again over it? I did. Restoring service made me feel a bit better about it, but offering no explanation still bothers me.
However, there is something to think about: Slashdot's involvement in it. I have a feeling the negative press they got (on a massive scale, mind you) changed their minds in the first place. But now they've restored it, any reason they gave would either be real boneheaded/unfair, or they would say that Freenet did something wrong, in which case most people who'd be active in a discussion here would blindly run to Freenet's defense. No win scenario for Paypal.
So the only real choice I can make right now is "Something happened, and it's really a private matter that I have no right to know about." It still makes me wary, though.
"Derp de derp."
Great. Now, instead of the whole company being held responsible for the actions of employees, the company will instead be able to throw a couple of those employees to the lions and go on with what they were doing. How much do you want to bet it will never be high-level management that takes the fall for this kind of thing? Personally, I think I kind of prefer it when the whole company takes a hit - at least it hits the managers (the ones ultimately responsible) in the pocketbook, if nowhere else.
I guess employees just better become a lot more careful - get all directives in writing, and ignore anything your boss tells you to do that they don't write down. Employees are going to be held responsible for what they have most likely been directed to do, or at least have done with full knowledge of their bosses, so they better learn to protect themselves.
Basically, my point is (if I actually have one), while it is great that "those responsible" are being held responsible, somehow I doubt they are the ones that are really responsible.
Maybe she just wanted to write a good story - which she succeeded in doing. Sure, she should have said something to that effect on the website, but it was still a good story.
A lonely motorcycle ride through Chernobyl sure makes a better story than "a standard Chernobyl tourist ride".
I still don't get the point why would she bother to make a story like that. Back when I read it the first time it did seem odd that anyone would let her into the zone by herself. What if she fell and broke her leg or something, or had an accident. But I guess the risk made the fantasy so much more thrilling. I suspect she might have wanted to try to either publish a photo album, or was expecting that someone from the West would pay her to go back and shoot some more, or maybe invite her on Oprah. I grew up and lived in those parts and I know that as nice and hospitable as Ukranians (and Russians for that matter) are, they can also be liars and manipulators (learned from papa lenin himself). I think the young couple wanted to somehow make money off of it, which if true, would be very sad.
No they are technically not fake in that at least some, if not all that do not include a motorcycle, are indeed from that area. But, her husband probably took them since she is *in* most of them herself.
So, the lesson to be learned from this is that hot single science chicks with motorcycles and coolness to bike through radioactive deadzones on their own don't really exist except in the dreams of the slashdot collective mind.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
Or maybe it just brought home the arbitrary and capricious way in which PayPal can freeze the account of anyone they feel like.
Maybe FreeNet just decided that they wanted to go with an organization that showed a little more responsiveness and responsibility.
I don't think the point is that PayPal has frozen or unfrozen the account; the point is that they could do so again at any time, without giving any reason.
What really sucks is that Mary Mycio's article debunking the Chernobyl photos has so little
verifiable information.
"They traveled in a Chornobyl car that picked them up in Kyiv." I'm sorry, who picked them up? What was their name? Or was this an untraceable Chornobyl ghost car?
"They organized their trip through a Kyiv travel agency", but what was the name of the agency? Can we get a quote from someone at the agency?
"Zone Administration personnel were in an uproar", but what were their names and what positions of authority do they hold? Why no direct quotes?
If we have become savvy enough not take take the Chernobyl diary at face value, then why should we believe the undocumented assertions in Mycio's article?
It was not an error, it was a conscious decision. If I remember correctly, RBMK reactors have design that allows exchange of fuel rods without shutting down the reactor. Weapon-grade plutonium is almost-pure isotope 239, isotope 240 (which is what 239 turns into when staying in the reactor for too long) doesn't produce neutrons during fission, so the resulting bombushka has less boom for the same bucks. Shutdown of the reactor is easy to see even from the space (eg. drop in the temperature of the cooling towers) and shutdown intervals of the plants are carefully monitored. Reactor that doesn't require observable shutdown to refuel, and thus allows unmonitored shortening of the refueling intervals, is a big military advantage; as another advantage, the RBMK construction was fairly simple and easy to build.
Then the day D came, a snafu escalated to a fubar, and the rest is a well-known story.
Hi. I'm not a lawyer, and (despite the handle) I don't speak for e-gold Ltd. either, but here goes...
1. Gold is not only legal to use as money, it and silver are, if you actually read the constitution once in a while (which apparently rules-out all US politicians besides Dr. Ron Paul) you might find there are more problems with using green paper as money. I agree that the feds have a history of taking stuff away, that might be why e-gold Ltd. is a Nevis company instead of a USA one. I had no idea it was illegal to back loans with gold (might be news to some central banks!).
2. If "it will be shut down" how come e-gold has been chuggin' along since 1996? (2A. But why haven't I heard of you?? Because the news media were either too-clueless, or too busy covering "beenz" & "Flooz," -- both RIP -- which both spent LOTS of money on ads instead of concentrating on hiring smart geeks & doing money better than the Federal Reserve!) I'd agree that some individuals (especially at large banks) don't like thinking about an honest, weight denominated currency, but that's tough luck for them, I guess. BTW, not many folks seem to know this, but the Federal Reserve is (supposedly...) a private corporation -- insert Jefferson-quote about banks!
3. I pay my taxes, and (I guess?) you pay your taxes. e-gold is a currency denominated by weight, it's not a government (a good thing if you want honesty in money, IMO) or a tax-collector or a tax-evasion-mechanism. It's just Better Money(tm) and even though people tend to think in political terms about EVERYTHING these days, e-gold is IMO very apolitical (but I'll admit, it tended to appeal to libertarians like me in the past).
4. Markets fluctuate, it's a fact of life. The price of green paper in grams has gone from a bit over $8 to a bit under $13 per gram since I started working here, but gold's buying-power tends to be stable over time compared to fiat currencies like the paper dollar. And NOTHING keeps people from manipulating the price of gold except (we hope!) the marketplace! (As it is, there are constantly accusations of manipulation in the metal markets -- see www.gata.org or just google around for them!) That's why e-gold prefers LBMA "allocated, good delivery bars" instead of paper promises that you might be storing some "pooled" gold.
JMR
Try e-gold - (contact me). I'm NOT e-