The network's ability to provide me with a particular file would go up dramatically if everyone else switched to my revolutionary real-time non-searching model.
# 2002-07-05 22:03:16 Russia Proposes International Mission to Mars (articles,space) (rejected)
Only in my description, I mentioned that this article comes one day after the Iraqi ambassador announced his country is ready to repay the $8 billion Russia loaned it. That would conveniently cover 30% of $20 billion with money Russia probably never really expected to see, boost morale and raise Russia's international public image.
I'm sure there are plenty of starving Russians who could think of something better to do with that money. Iraq doesn't feed its people either, but we know it has the money because of its oil trading and we know it's willing to pay that amount to gain Russia's friendship at a time when we are seeing regular reports in the news about Bush's plan to invade Iraq.
I'm not grousing about the fact that my story was rejected, just adding information that the lucky submitter left out.
Who are they expecting needs to be faught against, anyway?
Saddam Hussein. Who else?
U.S. Plan Calls for Massive Attack on Iraq - Report WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A draft U.S. military plan for an invasion of Iraq envisions a multi-pronged attack with tens of thousands of Marines and soldiers probably invading from Kuwait, The New York Times reported on Friday.
This isn't a CBS article. Television news reporters don't go far enough in-depth on a story to understand something like Palladium, so they don't try -- they use the Associated Press.
The article was written by Ted Bridis (whose coverage of Microsoft has been around for a while but I've often been unimpressed by his articles -- sometimes I think he just paraphrases MS's press releases) who works for the Associated Press.
While CBS may have an incentive to spin DRM (it's owned by media giant Viacom, which also owns Blockbuster and MTV, IIRC), the AP does not. Note the headline change the wire editors made:
With books or newspapers, it's easy, but on the net, it can be a very difficult issue.
It's a very simple issue made complicated by dot com lobbyists/marketeers who want to convince everyone that existing laws (whether they be laws of economics or laws of a society) don't apply to the Internet. (IANAL, but I am "familiar" with U.S. communications law)
The date that a book is made available to the public is its publishing date. Likewise, the date that content is made available to the public on a Web site (whether it's linked or not -- just because a book is not advertised or read doesn't mean it wasn't published) is its publishing date.
If I go to the library and read a book that has been sitting on the shelf for 2 years, the publishing date doesn't change. Likewise, if slashdot links to a story that's been sitting on a server for two years, its publishing date does not change.
If someone sells their copy of a book to a used bookstore, and someone else buys it from the bookstore, the book's publishing date does not change. Likewise, if Google caches a page that's been sitting on a server for a while and distributes the cached version to someone else, the page's publishing date does not change. Google has issued a reprint of the original publication (and may be violating the publisher's copyright), but it is no more responsible for the defamatory content of the reprint than a microfilm publisher would be responsible for defamatory content in an archived copy of a newspaper article.
If you don't do business w/my company, or keep your account current you will never hear from me.
I can back him up on this one. You don't want to hear from stoolpigeon. I got behind on my payments to his company once and 32 days later I heard this knocking at the window. There was a pigeon perched on my window sill, tapping frantically at the glass. I ran it through a Morse Code translator: "Pay me or else." The next day there were two pigeons. Then four, then eight.
It seems to me that in an energy crisis...
(pick one)
OPEC raises the price of oil to pressure the U.S. to leave Arafat/Hussein in power
we can't get to Canada's giant oil reserve because it's frozen solid and no one wants to risk trying to artificially "defrost" a few billion gallons of it
some unscrupulous energy corporation hoards oil to drive prices up
something else
...California is still screwed.
Wouldn't it be quicker just to build traditional power plants somewhere in the state and transfer power to needy locations as necessary? Doesn't electricity travel faster than a speeding locomotive? This seems comparable to the Postal Service announcing that you can now print out your emails and mail them to recipients using a special stamp.
A real newsworthy breakthrough would be the announcement that they're going to build a giant solar energy collector in the desert along Interstate 10. It's not like there's any shortage of space... there are approximately 2 towns in the couple hundred miles between Palm Springs and the Arizona border.
And what's to stop AT&T from claiming I never asked them to put me on their DNC list?
The phone company may have a record of the time the call was made and the numbers involved, but there's no record of the content of the call.
It's illegal in many states to record a telephone conversation without both parties' consent, so in court it's my word against their lawyer's (who will claim that I'm some opportunistic prole looking to score some easy money from a company that is an upstanding pillar of society).
I typically do this, but one day I got a call from someone trying to sell me AT&T long distance. As usual, I said, "put me on your do not call list."
"All right," she said, "I just need your name."
"You don't need my name. You just need to put the phone number you just called on your do not call list, as required by law."
"I can't put you on the do not call list unless you give me your name, address, phone number, email address and answer a few questions about why you don't want to save money with us."
So I told her my name was John, I live at 123 Main Street, and my email address is abuse@yahoo.com. At that point she hung up on me. Someone else called from AT&T the next day, looking to sell long distance. I told him about the ordeal I went through the day before, and he promptly hung up.
Ever since then I just put them on hold whenever they call. "Yeah, I'm really thinking about switching my long distance, because I make so many calls and my bill is so huge. Can you hold on for a minute?" Five minutes later: "Hi, you still there? So what was it you said you were offering? Uh huh. Oh, hold on a sec, it's my call waiting." And then I leave them on hold for about an hour before hanging up.
My roommate prefers to waste his time driving them crazy. He'll wait for his turn to speak, pick some abstract word, like "Cheese" and stick with it.
"So how are you doing today, sir?"
"Cheese."
"I'm sorry, I didn't catch that."
"Cheese."
"Um... OK. I'm calling from AT&T and we thought you might like to take advantage of the opportunity to save some money on your long distance bill."
You obviously don't understand catechistic logic: read, memorize, regurgitate. Understanding and challenging are not required, but if you are forced to analyze a discrepancy, proceed with the assumption that the unsubstantiated information you memorized as a child is infallibly correct.
Therefore, since we "know" Jesus spent 40 days in a fiery hell between his resurrection and his ascent to heaven (Lesson 7 of the Baltimore Catechism), it's reasonable to assume that he may have used nuclear fusion to slip away undetected. And used a force field to contain the explosion. And protected the shroud from being incinerated, but exposed it just enough to leave his shadow. After all, God created fusion "thousands" of years before man discovered it. It stands to reason he would be able to control it better than we do.
Another -- more plausible -- theory is that Jesus "miracled" himself up to heaven.
Personally, I believe the guards were drunk and didn't notice him slip out the back and hop a ship to the Bahamas. Hey, I'm entitled to my beliefs.
At $99 for the device, it costs more than the Game Boy, plus you still have to buy storage media. If you fill the device's two slots with two 128MB flash memory cards, you've got a bulky $370 MP3 player that requires two to four AA batteries. You may as well buy a smaller, rechargeable 5GB iPod. Plus the iPod isn't going to show you ads.
Better yet, buy a used Rio-PMP300. It uses the same flash memory cards, runs for days on one AA and is even smaller than the iPod.
...the idea of strict rules (either from the govt or some trade organization) regarding what can and can't be called 'news'.
The age-old problem with this idea is that it is vulnerable to abuse. Let's say a law to this effect is passed, and a new or existing government agency (presumably reporting to the President, since responsibility for enforcement and regulation falls to the executive branch) is given the authority to license [journalists|news organizations]. A reporter writes an article Bush doesn't like and the agency revokes the journalist's license and suddenly every journalist is hesitant write anything that might upset the President.
Journalism is often referred to as the "fourth estate" of government (the first three being the execitive, legislative and judicial branches, which are set up to check each others power). It is the independent watchdog that ensures the citizens know what their elected officials are doing. If an elected official is not acting in the interests of the people, he/she won't be re-elected. If you make the news media subservient to the president, he gains too much power. It's all about the balance of power.
Trade associations are just as susceptible to corruption if given too much power. When I was in journalism school, the professors kept pitching the Society of Professional Journalists to us, saying that a paid membership would help us get jobs. I didn't sign up because I didn't see any benefit to the organization, and I had a good job in the field before I finished college. The organization was primarily a marketing tool for the university ("we're a leading j-school because the SPJ is headquartered on our campus.")
As for distinguishing "news" from "crap," there are two important things to keep in mind.
Real news organizations are out to make a profit (both the NYTimes and WashPost are public companies). That's how they survive and pay the salaries of the reporters. However, there is a strict division between the editorial staff (editors, reporters, photographers, etc.) and the publishers (the publisher, the payroll staff, the advertising staff, etc.). They each have defined roles to play and generally stay out of each others business. But when one group attempts to intrude on the other's territory, religious wars break out.
A few years ago the editorial staff at washingtonpost.com forced out the site's publisher when he tried to turn the home page into a big advertising portal. They didn't have the authority to force him out, but they prevented him from accomplishing anything so he left.
As a consumer, you should be able to distinguish news from advertising/infotainment.
Pick up just about any publication that calls itself a "business journal" and you'll find plenty of articles that read like some company paid them to write and print a favorable story.
Most television "news" is just infotainment -- you're not going to watch their commercials unless they make their "news" entertaining/sensational, but the majority of news isn't entertaining. It's informative. (See my recent rant on newspapers here).
Has assorted facts and figures, including how much sites' traffic dropped when registration was required. Even though a fair percentage of people just make up the data they are asked to provide
As I was reading through the article description above, I thought, "Exactly! A fair percentage (most) of the people providing data about how much their Web site traffic dropped after they required registration are just going to make up the data. Oh wait, they were talking about the users."
While you may trust the <NEWSPAPER_NAME>'s editorial integrity, you should not assume that it applies the same standards to data the corporation releases about its own performance. The people releasing that information often have nothing to do with the editorial staff, though they would like to use your "trust" to sell you ad space/subscriptions/registration data/etc.
Even if the news sites could be certain that their registration info was accurate, I still wouldn't believe a word they say about their user numbers/demographics.
For instance, this quote from Dallasnews's Eric Christensen is blatantly untrue:
There was an initial drop of 30 percent or so in various sections, but when breaking news occurred, we fully recovered.
He's claiming that 70% of the site's traffic remained after registration right away, and that eventually it all came back. Not a single person stopped using the site because of the registration system. If you'll believe that one I'm sure he's got a Web site to sell you, too...
Let's look at newspaper front pages from a recent big news day (Thursday):
I would post examples from The NYTimes, but they don't let you see previous issues of the paper online for free. However, as I recall their picks closely mirrored The Washington Post's:
The Los Angeles Times shows a consistent bias toward "Reader's Digest" type stories that are entertaining and give you something to gossip about but don't really tell you anything of value. I also get the sense that many LA Times reporters are really failed screenplay writers who can't let go of the need to create drama. However, they do occasionally print something worth reading.
The LA Times is owned by The Chicago Tribune, which puts even less original content on its Web site and is more "in-your-face" about pressuring you to subscribe.
I suspect Slashdot would link to The Wall Street Journal more often if the paper made more than 1% of its content available to non-paying subscribers. (I had a paid subscription to wsj.com for about a year, but I no longer do because it's just not worth that much to me.)
I'd like to read Le Monde, but the French refuse to publish an English version. Go figure.
All of Knight-Ridder's newspapers (The San Jose Mercury News, Miami Herald, Philadelphia Inquirer, et al) have been crippled by the "RealCities Network" which forces all of its sites to use the same content-poor, ad-rich design. The saddest story of the group is the SJMercury though, which has just fallen apart since the parent company began slashing costs and forcing the RealCities conformity on its once industry-leading site. The Miami Herald is an unofficial training school for future Washington Post reporters, but that doesn't matter if you can't find their content on the Web.
Slashdot doesn't link to the Financial Times often (ever?), though it's a great paper. It just doesn't turn out a lot of unique content that's of interest to most Slashdot readers.
Newspapers aside, Slashdot has linked to CNN and the BBC in the past, though not the CBC. ABC, CBS and NBC generally provide watered down news for people who don't like to read newspapers -- not Slashdot readers.
Slashdot often links to MSNBC, but I expect that will begin to decline -- MSNBC.com's founding editor (Merrill Brown, a former Washington Post reporter) recently announced that he's resigning after 6 years to pursue other, undisclosed "opportunities." The New York Times noted on June 12 (you'll have to pay for the archived version of the story) that he offhandedly mentioned that MSNBC.com is about to be swallowed by MSN for economic reasons. (In other words, Microsoft put its foot down and said financial concerns outweigh editorial concerns.)
The International Herald-Tribune writes some of its own content, but a lot of the paper is an amalgamation of New York Times and Washington Post stories.
Bottom Line: Slashdot links to a disproportionate number of New York Times and Washington Post stories because both papers' sites post a lot of content and that content is top notch. It also helps that they're among the most recognizable names in journalism, but the Slashdot system is set up to allow editors to pick from the best stories that are submitted, regardless of the content provider's brand recognition. If you read a good story somewhere, submit it -- the quality of the story is more important than the misguided registration policies of the content provider. And if I've missed a good site people should be reading, reply to this message and let people know.
If it's encased in Lucite, how do they know it's a real moon rock?
I'm sure there are plenty of people who would take a rock from their backyard, encase it in a Lucite ball and sell it on eBay if they thought people would fall for it. Heck, from the looks of the photo, that could be a piece of dried dog poop.
Let's take it one step further: Nixon wanted to placate the Honduran dictator without giving him anything of real value, so he had some of Checkers's excrement encased in a futuristic-looking Lucite ball. Deliver it with a plaque and you have a great joke to tell your friends. In fact, I'll bet that's what he was talking about during the famous gap...
Teletubby 1: Ooooh! (picks up rock at his feet) Pretty! Teletubbies 2&3: Ooooh! Pretty!
(Commercial Interruption crackles on one of the Tubbies tummies) Jerry Falwell: Hi kids, Reverend Falwell here. Don't watch the Teletubbies. Teletubbies are evil.
Teletubby 1:(antenna lights up) Teletubby 2:(gets a box) Teletubby 3:(gets a stamp) Teletubby 1:(Packs the rock into a box and ships it to Falwell) Now he's our friend! Teletubby 3: He's special! Teletubby 2: Who's special? Teletubby 1: Jerry is! Falwell: I don't want your worthless rock! (sells it to the church of scientology, church sells it on EBay to some kid in Florida) (Teletubbies beat Florida kid senseless, steal his rock and ship it back to Falwell)
I realize this may seem like an overly-simplified comparison, but I think it paints a pretty accurate portrait of just how important this issue is.
It is conceived to carry 800 passengers... This is almost twice the passenger capacity of the Boeing 747-400... This design would reduce fuel burn and harmful emissions per passenger mile by almost a third in comparison to today's aircraft.
So it's one third more efficient on fuel costs when carrying twice as many passengers.
These days many airlines are having trouble filling their 400 or 200-passenger jets. If they're only able to book a maximum of 200-400 passengers on these planes, the airlines are going to end up paying even more for fuel per passenger than they are now.
There went that idea. Next?
Re:The Obvious Question
on
Cyber-Attacks?
·
· Score: 3, Informative
What kind of fscking imbecile allows critical infrastructure control systems to be connected to the Internet?
I don't know, maybe the same kind of person who would code infrastructure control systems to rely on only the last two digits of a date's year.
I'm sure there are people who have a Web interface set up for some seemingly non-critical facet (though there probably aren't many cases of "Look Honey, I can manage the dam's intake system from my iBook in the backyard!"), but there is probably a greater number of people who use the Internet for some communication/reporting feature ("Hey, I'm encrypting all transmissions, I'm using port 18937, I'm not publishing this info on a Web site and I'm not controlling the infrastructure in any way through this interface, so I should be safe."). Should such people be running infrastructure control systems? No. Does that mean they're not running these systems? No.
I think the article's primary purpose is to send a "Hey, infrastructure engineers, this means YOU" (or "does that guy who works for you have infrastructure controls connected to the Internet? Ask him.") message to people who think they're already covered.
Many people become so attached to their prejudices and positions that they filter out all alternative points of view. Sometimes this is a conscious defense, but it often becomes autonomic. In such cases, the only way to slip an idea past the zombie defense is through a trojan horse called humor. Humor is a convenient vehicle for ideas because it's contagious -- if an idea has a tasty coating a person will share the gem with his friends before he finds the dark humor center.
A gravely-serious subject is often more deserving of humor than a whimsical one.
On this particular subject, people are so conditioned to defend the pledge they ridicule the ruling for "declaring the Declaration of Independence unconstitutional." As a number of people on Slashdot have pointed out, the Declaration has nothing to do with the Constitution. But the people who need to hear that are not listening, and they include members of Congress and the president -- people who should know better because they are charged with writing and enforcing the laws that keep the Constitution relevant.
If we've reached the point where Slashdot posters need to explain the Constitution itself to the elected politicians in Washington, I think inappropriate humor is justified in attempting to jump-start the critical thought processes in the minds of readers.
Thursday, June 27, 2002 A platoon of U.S. Marines stormed the United States Court of Appeals in San Francisco today and retrieved a group of "enemy combatants" that was allegedly plotting an attack against the moral fiber of the country.
The combatants, disguised as federal judges in black robes, were flown directly to Guantanamo Bay for detention.
Correction: When Bill Gates paints himself into a corner, he knocks some holes in the wall, calls them windows, and uses them to climb into his neighbor's apartment and keep painting.
Apple has nothing it could possibly replace it with. There is no new idea out there short of a talking computer. And the technology for the talking computer is decades away.
About five years ago I walked into a Staples location and saw a Power Mac that was selling for about $500 more than the catalogs were charging. So I walked up to the display model, messed with SimpleText's text-to-speech feature for a minute and walked away as the computer began stating the first of 1,000 repetitions of "I am an overpriced machine. You can buy the exact same model Macintosh at MacConnection for..."
The store clerks didn't know how to operate the machine and they were afraid to just unplug it so they directed people away from that part of the store while someone called for the manager.
Slashdot Mirror
The network's ability to provide me with a particular file would go up dramatically if everyone else switched to my revolutionary real-time non-searching model.
I'm sure there are plenty of starving Russians who could think of something better to do with that money. Iraq doesn't feed its people either, but we know it has the money because of its oil trading and we know it's willing to pay that amount to gain Russia's friendship at a time when we are seeing regular reports in the news about Bush's plan to invade Iraq.
I'm not grousing about the fact that my story was rejected, just adding information that the lucky submitter left out.
The article was written by Ted Bridis (whose coverage of Microsoft has been around for a while but I've often been unimpressed by his articles -- sometimes I think he just paraphrases MS's press releases) who works for the Associated Press.
While CBS may have an incentive to spin DRM (it's owned by media giant Viacom, which also owns Blockbuster and MTV, IIRC), the AP does not. Note the headline change the wire editors made:
They took the fanfare down a notch.The date that a book is made available to the public is its publishing date. Likewise, the date that content is made available to the public on a Web site (whether it's linked or not -- just because a book is not advertised or read doesn't mean it wasn't published) is its publishing date.
If I go to the library and read a book that has been sitting on the shelf for 2 years, the publishing date doesn't change. Likewise, if slashdot links to a story that's been sitting on a server for two years, its publishing date does not change.
If someone sells their copy of a book to a used bookstore, and someone else buys it from the bookstore, the book's publishing date does not change. Likewise, if Google caches a page that's been sitting on a server for a while and distributes the cached version to someone else, the page's publishing date does not change. Google has issued a reprint of the original publication (and may be violating the publisher's copyright), but it is no more responsible for the defamatory content of the reprint than a microfilm publisher would be responsible for defamatory content in an archived copy of a newspaper article.
Just pay him and spare your sanity!
Wouldn't it be quicker just to build traditional power plants somewhere in the state and transfer power to needy locations as necessary? Doesn't electricity travel faster than a speeding locomotive? This seems comparable to the Postal Service announcing that you can now print out your emails and mail them to recipients using a special stamp.
A real newsworthy breakthrough would be the announcement that they're going to build a giant solar energy collector in the desert along Interstate 10. It's not like there's any shortage of space... there are approximately 2 towns in the couple hundred miles between Palm Springs and the Arizona border.
The phone company may have a record of the time the call was made and the numbers involved, but there's no record of the content of the call.
It's illegal in many states to record a telephone conversation without both parties' consent, so in court it's my word against their lawyer's (who will claim that I'm some opportunistic prole looking to score some easy money from a company that is an upstanding pillar of society).
"All right," she said, "I just need your name."
"You don't need my name. You just need to put the phone number you just called on your do not call list, as required by law."
"I can't put you on the do not call list unless you give me your name, address, phone number, email address and answer a few questions about why you don't want to save money with us."
So I told her my name was John, I live at 123 Main Street, and my email address is abuse@yahoo.com. At that point she hung up on me. Someone else called from AT&T the next day, looking to sell long distance. I told him about the ordeal I went through the day before, and he promptly hung up.
Ever since then I just put them on hold whenever they call. "Yeah, I'm really thinking about switching my long distance, because I make so many calls and my bill is so huge. Can you hold on for a minute?" Five minutes later: "Hi, you still there? So what was it you said you were offering? Uh huh. Oh, hold on a sec, it's my call waiting." And then I leave them on hold for about an hour before hanging up.
My roommate prefers to waste his time driving them crazy. He'll wait for his turn to speak, pick some abstract word, like "Cheese" and stick with it.
"So how are you doing today, sir?"
"Cheese."
"I'm sorry, I didn't catch that."
"Cheese."
"Um... OK. I'm calling from AT&T and we thought you might like to take advantage of the opportunity to save some money on your long distance bill."
"Cheese."
Therefore, since we "know" Jesus spent 40 days in a fiery hell between his resurrection and his ascent to heaven (Lesson 7 of the Baltimore Catechism), it's reasonable to assume that he may have used nuclear fusion to slip away undetected. And used a force field to contain the explosion. And protected the shroud from being incinerated, but exposed it just enough to leave his shadow. After all, God created fusion "thousands" of years before man discovered it. It stands to reason he would be able to control it better than we do.
Another -- more plausible -- theory is that Jesus "miracled" himself up to heaven.
Personally, I believe the guards were drunk and didn't notice him slip out the back and hop a ship to the Bahamas. Hey, I'm entitled to my beliefs.
Better yet, buy a used Rio-PMP300. It uses the same flash memory cards, runs for days on one AA and is even smaller than the iPod.
Journalism is often referred to as the "fourth estate" of government (the first three being the execitive, legislative and judicial branches, which are set up to check each others power). It is the independent watchdog that ensures the citizens know what their elected officials are doing. If an elected official is not acting in the interests of the people, he/she won't be re-elected. If you make the news media subservient to the president, he gains too much power. It's all about the balance of power.
Trade associations are just as susceptible to corruption if given too much power. When I was in journalism school, the professors kept pitching the Society of Professional Journalists to us, saying that a paid membership would help us get jobs. I didn't sign up because I didn't see any benefit to the organization, and I had a good job in the field before I finished college. The organization was primarily a marketing tool for the university ("we're a leading j-school because the SPJ is headquartered on our campus.")
As for distinguishing "news" from "crap," there are two important things to keep in mind.
A few years ago the editorial staff at washingtonpost.com forced out the site's publisher when he tried to turn the home page into a big advertising portal. They didn't have the authority to force him out, but they prevented him from accomplishing anything so he left.
Pick up just about any publication that calls itself a "business journal" and you'll find plenty of articles that read like some company paid them to write and print a favorable story.
Most television "news" is just infotainment -- you're not going to watch their commercials unless they make their "news" entertaining/sensational, but the majority of news isn't entertaining. It's informative. (See my recent rant on newspapers here).
It's worse than that. Technically, "nearly a quarter of a million dollars" is about two dimes and four pennies, not $200,000.
While you may trust the <NEWSPAPER_NAME>'s editorial integrity, you should not assume that it applies the same standards to data the corporation releases about its own performance. The people releasing that information often have nothing to do with the editorial staff, though they would like to use your "trust" to sell you ad space/subscriptions/registration data/etc.
Even if the news sites could be certain that their registration info was accurate, I still wouldn't believe a word they say about their user numbers/demographics.
For instance, this quote from Dallasnews's Eric Christensen is blatantly untrue:
He's claiming that 70% of the site's traffic remained after registration right away, and that eventually it all came back. Not a single person stopped using the site because of the registration system. If you'll believe that one I'm sure he's got a Web site to sell you, too...I would post examples from The NYTimes, but they don't let you see previous issues of the paper online for free. However, as I recall their picks closely mirrored The Washington Post's:
The Washington Post
Top Story: Cyber-Attacks by Al Qaeda Feared
No. 2 Story: SEC Charges WorldCom With Fraud
No. 3 Story: U.S. Court Votes to Bar Pledge of Allegiance
The Los angeles Times
Top Story: 'Tweens: From Dolls to Thongs
One of the store mannequins wears a fringed denim skirt riding low on the hips and a top pushed high on the midriff. Another has shorts that roll down on the tummy and a one-shoulder top.
No. 2 Story: Pledge of Allegiance Violates Constitution, Court Declares
No. 3 Story: WorldCom Hit With Federal Fraud Lawsuit
The Los Angeles Times shows a consistent bias toward "Reader's Digest" type stories that are entertaining and give you something to gossip about but don't really tell you anything of value. I also get the sense that many LA Times reporters are really failed screenplay writers who can't let go of the need to create drama. However, they do occasionally print something worth reading.
The LA Times is owned by The Chicago Tribune , which puts even less original content on its Web site and is more "in-your-face" about pressuring you to subscribe.
I suspect Slashdot would link to The Wall Street Journal more often if the paper made more than 1% of its content available to non-paying subscribers. (I had a paid subscription to wsj.com for about a year, but I no longer do because it's just not worth that much to me.)
I'd like to read Le Monde , but the French refuse to publish an English version. Go figure.
All of Knight-Ridder's newspapers (The San Jose Mercury News , Miami Herald , Philadelphia Inquirer , et al) have been crippled by the "RealCities Network" which forces all of its sites to use the same content-poor, ad-rich design. The saddest story of the group is the SJMercury though, which has just fallen apart since the parent company began slashing costs and forcing the RealCities conformity on its once industry-leading site. The Miami Herald is an unofficial training school for future Washington Post reporters, but that doesn't matter if you can't find their content on the Web.
Slashdot doesn't link to the Financial Times often (ever?), though it's a great paper. It just doesn't turn out a lot of unique content that's of interest to most Slashdot readers.
Newspapers aside, Slashdot has linked to CNN and the BBC in the past, though not the CBC . ABC, CBS and NBC generally provide watered down news for people who don't like to read newspapers -- not Slashdot readers.
Slashdot often links to MSNBC , but I expect that will begin to decline -- MSNBC.com's founding editor (Merrill Brown, a former Washington Post reporter) recently announced that he's resigning after 6 years to pursue other, undisclosed "opportunities." The New York Times noted on June 12 (you'll have to pay for the archived version of the story) that he offhandedly mentioned that MSNBC.com is about to be swallowed by MSN for economic reasons. (In other words, Microsoft put its foot down and said financial concerns outweigh editorial concerns.)
The International Herald-Tribune writes some of its own content, but a lot of the paper is an amalgamation of New York Times and Washington Post stories.
I haven't read the Seattle Post-Intelligencer or the Seattle Times in a while, but you may find some good technology stories there.
Bottom Line: Slashdot links to a disproportionate number of New York Times and Washington Post stories because both papers' sites post a lot of content and that content is top notch. It also helps that they're among the most recognizable names in journalism, but the Slashdot system is set up to allow editors to pick from the best stories that are submitted, regardless of the content provider's brand recognition. If you read a good story somewhere, submit it -- the quality of the story is more important than the misguided registration policies of the content provider. And if I've missed a good site people should be reading, reply to this message and let people know.
I'm sure there are plenty of people who would take a rock from their backyard, encase it in a Lucite ball and sell it on eBay if they thought people would fall for it. Heck, from the looks of the photo, that could be a piece of dried dog poop.
Let's take it one step further: Nixon wanted to placate the Honduran dictator without giving him anything of real value, so he had some of Checkers's excrement encased in a futuristic-looking Lucite ball. Deliver it with a plaque and you have a great joke to tell your friends. In fact, I'll bet that's what he was talking about during the famous gap...
Teletubby 1: Ooooh! (picks up rock at his feet) Pretty!
Teletubbies 2&3: Ooooh! Pretty!
(Commercial Interruption crackles on one of the Tubbies tummies)
Jerry Falwell: Hi kids, Reverend Falwell here. Don't watch the Teletubbies. Teletubbies are evil.
Teletubby 1: (antenna lights up)
Teletubby 2: (gets a box)
Teletubby 3: (gets a stamp)
Teletubby 1: (Packs the rock into a box and ships it to Falwell) Now he's our friend!
Teletubby 3: He's special!
Teletubby 2: Who's special?
Teletubby 1: Jerry is!
Falwell: I don't want your worthless rock! (sells it to the church of scientology, church sells it on EBay to some kid in Florida)
(Teletubbies beat Florida kid senseless, steal his rock and ship it back to Falwell)
I realize this may seem like an overly-simplified comparison, but I think it paints a pretty accurate portrait of just how important this issue is.
These days many airlines are having trouble filling their 400 or 200-passenger jets. If they're only able to book a maximum of 200-400 passengers on these planes, the airlines are going to end up paying even more for fuel per passenger than they are now.
There went that idea. Next?
I'm sure there are people who have a Web interface set up for some seemingly non-critical facet (though there probably aren't many cases of "Look Honey, I can manage the dam's intake system from my iBook in the backyard!"), but there is probably a greater number of people who use the Internet for some communication/reporting feature ("Hey, I'm encrypting all transmissions, I'm using port 18937, I'm not publishing this info on a Web site and I'm not controlling the infrastructure in any way through this interface, so I should be safe."). Should such people be running infrastructure control systems? No. Does that mean they're not running these systems? No.
I think the article's primary purpose is to send a "Hey, infrastructure engineers, this means YOU" (or "does that guy who works for you have infrastructure controls connected to the Internet? Ask him.") message to people who think they're already covered.
Many people become so attached to their prejudices and positions that they filter out all alternative points of view. Sometimes this is a conscious defense, but it often becomes autonomic. In such cases, the only way to slip an idea past the zombie defense is through a trojan horse called humor. Humor is a convenient vehicle for ideas because it's contagious -- if an idea has a tasty coating a person will share the gem with his friends before he finds the dark humor center.
A gravely-serious subject is often more deserving of humor than a whimsical one.
On this particular subject, people are so conditioned to defend the pledge they ridicule the ruling for "declaring the Declaration of Independence unconstitutional." As a number of people on Slashdot have pointed out, the Declaration has nothing to do with the Constitution. But the people who need to hear that are not listening, and they include members of Congress and the president -- people who should know better because they are charged with writing and enforcing the laws that keep the Constitution relevant.
If we've reached the point where Slashdot posters need to explain the Constitution itself to the elected politicians in Washington, I think inappropriate humor is justified in attempting to jump-start the critical thought processes in the minds of readers.
A platoon of U.S. Marines stormed the United States Court of Appeals in San Francisco today and retrieved a group of "enemy combatants" that was allegedly plotting an attack against the moral fiber of the country.
The combatants, disguised as federal judges in black robes, were flown directly to Guantanamo Bay for detention.
Correction: When Bill Gates paints himself into a corner, he knocks some holes in the wall, calls them windows, and uses them to climb into his neighbor's apartment and keep painting.
The store clerks didn't know how to operate the machine and they were afraid to just unplug it so they directed people away from that part of the store while someone called for the manager.