Another good source was Michael Shermer's "E-Skeptic" email for February 17, 2001. I won't copy and paste it in because I don't know if that's allowed; unfortunately I also can't find it online at
the Skeptic magazine website. Oh well...
"The nasa guy on the show commonly said that their arguements did not make sense, but he never actually said why. He never gave any explanation for their arguements, just a general, that guys crazy."
As Skeptic's writeup commented,
"Unfortunately, this NASA guy had obviously never read any of the
conspiracy claims, or the answers to them, for this is the biggest
no-brainer debunking in skeptical history that anyone who actually
knew something about the Apollo space program could have handled."
This is a common trick used by sensationalistic crap TV. They have an "expert" who has not had time to think about debunking the specific issues, and then frame the presentation as if his failure to immediately respond means that all scientists everywhere are similarly dumbfounded. This is not science, it's National Enquirer type entertainment.
"1. The lack of any dust on the landing feet of the lunar lander. (It would seem to me a landing like that would kick up quite a bit of dust, some of which would setttle on the landing feet)."
First, the lunar dust is denser than what we think of as dust; it's apparently more like dense sand.
Second, your intuition about how much dust would be "kicked up" is based on your experience in an atmosphere. If you spread out dust and blow straight down into it, the pressure of your breath into the atmosphere will spread around the dust a lot more than your breath alone. You'll see dust curling up and around, and being pushed out, and drifting down slowly, due to the atmosphere.
With a rocket in a vacuum, only those dust particles directly pushed by the rocket exhaust move. An area directly underneath the rocket would be swept clean, but just a few feet away there may be no effect -- or there may be thicker dust because what was under the rocket had to go somewhere.
"2. The cameras the astronauts had crosshairs permanantly in the frames. In some moon photos the crosshairs are BEHIND objects on the moon."
It's bleed-over. When the thin black lines appear in front of something light-colored, the exposed film appears to erase the thin black lines. You see this all the time, and it's something photographers have to be aware of.
Besides, what is the claim here? That NASA didn't actually use crosshair cameras in their $30 billion "simulated" moon landing? Is the theory that NASA instead went out of their way to meticulously paint black crosshairs on the background of the photo? Absurd.
"3. The lack of a blast crater. (This one was partial explained, an expert said that the lander didn't need much actual blast force to land... however i would have thought in the lower gravity of space, it would have made an indentation because of how the entire surface seemed to be just a dust or sand.)"
See number 1 above. The crater was there, but more localized than your experience in an atmosphere would expect.
Also, the main point here is the rocket motor which the non-moonie suggests had "30,000 pounds" of thrust. Guess what? It had a throttle. Would the astronauts endanger their lives and mission by roaring down at the surface at maximum velocity so that they had to have the throttle wide-open to land? Of course not.
They did the 30,000-pound burns high above the surface, and by the time they were a few feet above the surface, it was operating at a fraction of its capacity.
"4. There is no engine noise on the tape during the landing. Wouldn't there be a lot of engine noise?"
I didn't see the show and I don't know what was said about this; this is the only point that isn't addressed at badastronomy.com or in the Skeptic writeup.
I guess the issue is that the LEM lander was doing rocket burns during descent and we should have heard the noise on the tape. I would point out, first, they were not doing continuous burns, I don't know what fraction of the descent time the rocket was actually on. Second, I do not believe the comm link was open the whole time. Third, I would not be at all surprised if the rocket motor caused more vibration than noise inside the LEM. Again, our experience in an atmosphere can be counter-intuitive, and rockets are constructed so that most of the energy, sound and otherwise, goes out the nozzle.
Fourth, given the deceitful way that these charlatans try to convince the gullible, I would not be at all surprised if they distorted the evidence regarding rocket noise.
He can orbit the sun, he can look like a moon
He can leave the ecliptic from April to June
He'll be just a faint smudge, magnitude twenty-three
He hides in the sky, but he's always a planet to me
Ohhh...a potato-shaped ball...
He can drift where he wants
He's a relic of time
Ohhh...if he's made of pure ice
Or of vapor and dust
It's the same to my mind
If he zooms in near us, would he show us a tail?
Was the Kuiper Belt once the great home whence he sailed?
And if he gets demoted, who'll be next, Mercury?
And the most he can do is cast shadows, it's true
But he's always a planet to me
"Why does this seem to happen so often? Editor overload (not enough cooks), duplication of efforts (too many cooks), interface problems with viewing the submissions queue (it was a only a week-old story), or what?"
"Jamie maybe you (or Rob, or Hemos) could explain to us why you seem to be willing to sell ad space to evil corps? Do you or Andover really have no control over it."
This is a really popular question, I seem to get it every time I post a story that is in any way negative about a company that has ever advertised on Slashdot.
I really have no control over it. Let me explain this to you. Our editorial and writing staff are not influenced by, nor do we influence, our staff that buys banner ads. There is a total disconnect there. They can sell ads to whoever they want, I have -- let me say this again because apparently it's such an awe-inspiringly difficult concept that few people are able to comprehend it -- I have no control over whose ads appear on a story I post.
Brace for reality: most places consider this a good thing. You know, like, not having the ad for Famous Ray's Website appear on the page facing the flattering review of Famous Ray's Website?
Like, not having the marketing department staffers come sit down in my cubicle and say "we'd like you to review Famous Ray's Website, and we think they're really good, you'll probably agree with us, we hope."
I don't know those staffers. I don't want to know those staffers. They have never done that and it doesn't come up because we don't talk to each other.
While it is a little annoying to me that some companies whose policies I disagree with *cough* DoubleClick continue to put banner ads on our webpages, I will not try to influence ad sales, because then ad sales will come try to influence me. They leave me alone; I leave them alone.
Don't like it? Tough. Think that this is an "oversight" or that this makes Slashdot or myself somehow corrupt or stupid or evil? Please go away.
(Sorry. I'm in a bad mood. I just posted a story duplicate -- except for the dmoz.org search tool, that's cool and it's new, go download it and mess with it.)
Not much. Sorry, my fault, I didn't notice Rob posted this last week.
But the news about ODPsearch being open-sourced is new. You can skip over the rest of the story. Ignore it. Just read the part about ODP. Ahhhhhhhh, that's nice.
"unlike California, most other states actually build Power Plants... nifty concept ya know."
This has nothing to do with the current crisis. There is energy available. The plants aren't selling it because the terms of deregulation, which they locked in expecting to make a killing, turned around and bit them in the ass a few years later.
The current crisis is a financial one, caused by price-gouging and price wars between the various entities who make and distribute power. If the power companies hadn't pushed for wholesale energy prices to be deregulated, they wouldn't be in the mess they're in. They sat down with the governor and wrote the legislation. They have nobody to blame but themselves.
When I first heard about these blackouts following right on the heels of deregulation, I predicted the conservative/libertarian response was going to be "there wasn't enough deregulation." Sure enough, that's the automatic response. It'd be funny if it weren't so annoying.
NPR did a good story on this yesterday. Their
electricity primer
interview (5.5 minutes) gives an excellent overview, and their discussion of
Southern California Edison's default on payments
(4.5 minutes) is interesting too. Both require RealAudio. The page with these links is
here
but I don't know how long that URL will last.
Near the end of the article, it makes clear that the rise of the
internet and the information economy has actually reduced
power consumption:
"between 1987 and 1990, electricity consumption grew 3.3 percent a
year... from 1992 to 1996 total energy demand grew at about 2.4
percent a year in the U.S., during a period when the gross domestic
product was growing at a rate of 3.2 percent a year. But from 1996 to
2000, when the Net boom was really taking off, the gross domestic
product grew at an average of 4 percent a year while energy demand
grew at a rate of only 1 percent."
Years GDP Growth Energy Growth
1987-1990 ? 3.3%
1992-1996 3.2% 2.4%
1996-2000 4.0% 1.0%
"I have personal information on almost 8,000 members at my 'company'. Under no circumstances would I hand this data over to another company or agency for money. I would sooner delete the data from my database..."
Unfortunately, you may be liable for destruction of company property if you do that. I don't know the law but I wouldn't be at all surprised if you could go to jail for that. You may also be personally liable for whatever the data was valued at, just as if you intentionally broke the company refrigerator or smashed up a company car.
"Before spouting off about things of which you know nothing, do some research."
Please do. I'd like to respond to you personally to offer some good research sources, but you posted anonymously so I can't.
One good source that debunks 66 common Holocaust-denier fantasies is the
"66 QAR"
(questions, answers, replies). It happens to be written by two friends and myself and it's a little old (1996, I think) but it's still very much on-target. Most of the lies you'll hear about the Holocaust are addressed in here.
For information specifically about Auschwitz, I recommend The Holocaust History Project's website, at
http://www.holocaust-history.org/auschwitz/.
Disclaimer: I happen to be the site's webmaster.
Please note that we include reproductions of several documents which deal specifically with the annihilation of the Jews at that death camp.
You may want to read and listen to
Hitler's own intentions for the Jews,
which he and Goebbels made the climax of a 1940 propaganda film so you know it wasn't just something he said off the cuff.
And you'll also want to listen to
Heinrich Himmler's description of the final solution,
given in a private talk to SS leaders in 1943. Himmler, Hitler's #2 man, describes how the Nazi intentions are being carried out. Luckily for historians, Himmler recorded his speeches, and this tape was one of the few that survived:
"I want to also mention a very difficult subject before you, with complete candor. It should be discussed amongst us, yet nevertheless, we will never speak about it in public.... I am talking about the evacuation of the Jews, the extermination of the Jewish people. It is one of those things that is easily said. 'The Jewish people is being exterminated,' every Party member will tell you, 'perfectly clear, it's part of our plans, we're eliminating the Jews, exterminating them, a small matter.'... We have the moral right, we had the duty to our people to do it, to kill this people who would kill us."
If you're interested in the antisemitic movement to deny the Holocaust, which calls itself Holocaust "revisionism," the best source to start with is Deborah Lipstadt's book
Denying the Holocaust.
It discusses the origins of such groups as the Institute for Historical Review, which you name; really they're just fancy, pseudoscientific wrappers around the same racism and hate that the world has known since, well, since human beings existed I suppose.
If you have any questions about specific matters, please feel free to email me personally.
As the little blurb I wrote makes abundantly clear for any of you who would actually care to read it, the issue is not whether this individual decision is "censorship" or not. You can split hairs over that word's meaning all day, have fun, I put it in that topic category because I didn't have one for "American corporation kowtows to foreign nation's irrelevant laws."
So can we please shut up about whether Yahoo has the right to write its own terms of service however it wants? It does. Thank you. Next.
The point is that corporations will kowtow to foreign anti-speech laws. This is a high-profile example. Hell, I don't care that I won't be able to buy a Nazi pin from Yahoo; if I really wanted one (I don't) I'd just go to eBay. Until eBay does the same. And then all the other auction sites. And then they refuse to sell John Wayne Gacy paintings. And Civil War memorabilia from the Confederate side because it promotes slavery.
And then it's not just auctions, it's email sent to and from your free Yahoo account. And then web traffic sent over
AboveNet's backbone.
What I was hoping was that people like you would think about what this could mean. Instead of getting up on your high horse and announcing that this decision is meaningless and that I'm a loon for thinking it's noteworthy, please just use your head for a minute.
Will photons need visas? I'm afraid too many people have been trained to recite comforting mantras like that whenever they see something that looks like censorship. The internet knows no national borders, cyberspace considers national laws to be local ordinances, etc.
But in ten years, your photons damn well may need visas because every corporation that delivers you any service you care about finds it easier to censor you because they want to continue doing business with Outer Schizovania, and Outer Schizovania demands that its national pride not be injured by hateful references to the War of 1827.
Possibly the greatest threat to free expression on the internet, over the next ten years, is the complacent attitude of those who think free expression is guaranteed.
"I had an apartment contract that said I could be evicted if I had guests after 2AM."
You'd be surprised how many have clauses like that.
By the time of the signing ceremony, the apartment people want you to move in (they've invested time in showing you around, answering your questions, etc.). Both sides have leverage and can use it.
My routine by now is to plan on spending a good half-hour going over the rental agreement, and to be ready to walk out without having signed if it seems necessary.
If you look trustworthy there's a 90% chance they'll let you cross out the stupid clauses, initial your changes in the margin, hand it back to them, and get their signature. Voila: a contract you can live with.
pudge: what kind of name is Letty Cottin Pogrebin?
pudge: (President of the Authors Guild)
jamie: That sounds like an anagram.
pudge: anyway, i understand that authors are kinda pissed about what amazon is doing, but they need to get over it.
jamie: pudge, that name is an anagram for "bigot plenty contrite." pudge: jamie, ha!
jamie: and "glint byte protection" hemos: jamie: Ha!
hemos: Ooo! I like the first one.
hemos: Hmmmm...over two hours till my meeting. I think it might be time to play SC3U.
pudge: SETEC ASTRONOMY
jamie: and "gent protect nobility." geez, he's just Mr. Anagram.
jamie: and "Bony Title Protecting." timothy: I think Bony Title Protecting is good.
timothy: We should (as a service to readers) provide anagrams for famous people whenever possible.
timothy: And / or when the anagrams are funny.
jamie: or "Protect Goblin Entity," or "Percent Booty Tilting," or "Boycott Letting Ripen." jamie: My favorite anagram for someone disapproving of Amazon:
jamie: "Tripling teen boycott." timothy: ok. I'll bite. anagram for what?
jamie: pudge: what kind of name is Letty Cottin Pogrebin?
jamie: pudge: (President of the Authors Guild)
timothy: Ah, ok.
"censor: an official who examines material (as in
publications or films) for offensive matter
Are SurfWatch, CyberPatrol, etc doing this? Yes. [...]
Is MAPS doing this? No. They are completely content-neutral. They
don't examine anything for offensive material. [...] At no point is
the content of the blocked traffic an issue."
Censoring offensive material is exactly what MAPS is doing in this
case. Some censorware is offended by pornography or the Ku Klux Klan and is designed to block that.
MAPS is offended by websites which sell bulk email software, and is designed to block that.
For the twenty spam websites being blocked by MAPS customers
who use the BGP (including, until recently, AboveNet), the
content of those websites is the one and only issue.
The 1000 other, innocent websites being blocked as well
probably wish content was an issue for them, but,
unfortunately, they were caught in the crossfire...
"...they're not blocking innocent or guilty
websites, they're blocking the network.
Isn't this slicing it a little thin? When you find a website you
don't like, and then block all traffic from its IP number, I call
that blocking a website.
"I don't want to give up seeing all the YRO articles, but if I could filter out all of them posted by Jamie, I'm sure that all I would be cancelling is articles about these peacefire.org ninnies."
Go
here,
click on the box next to my name under "Exclude Stories From The Homepage: Authors," then scroll to the bottom and click "savehome."
Or, just ignore my stories, which works about as well:)
Peacefire was the one who drew my attention to this story which is why they got a mention.
"Just a correction, according to spamhaus media3 is hosting not 1 but 21 spam sites, the largest on the list, and considering media3 is a grand total of a few class C networks, thats a pretty high percentage of their customers being spammers."
2. Not a single one of the IP numbers listed there sends spam. Let me repeat that: you could drop every one of those IP numbers off your network and it would not stop a single piece of spam from reaching you. Those are websites. Spamhaus and MAPS don't like ths products those websites are selling and that is why they (and over a thousand other websites) are blocked.
3. Media3 has 42 Class C blocks, which means that 0.2% of their IP numbers house websites which sell spam-friendly software (but, again, those IP numbers are not sending spam). I would not say 0.2% is a "high percentage."
The situation is analogous to a censorware company blackmailing a service provider into removing Holocaust-denial material, by blocking thousands of innocent websites. Now,
I don't like Holocaust denial,
but standing up for free speech means standing up for speech I don't believe in.
This situation is no different (except that, on my scale of evil, spammers aren't even close to those who want to rehabilitate Hitler).
"So, you decided to post the article anyway rather than wait for a response from the individuals who you are attacking? That doesn't seem like very good journalism to me."
I contacted them this afternoon (PST) and said the story was time-sensitive. The PR person I talked to assured me someone would contact me to answer my questions "in a few minutes." No phone call or email for four hours, so I ran the story.
Or maybe they tried but my email address was on the RBL...who knows...
Jamie McCarthy
Re:Great, except that...
on
Deja.com Vu!
·
· Score: 1
"I was just going to post asking if anybody knows when this temporary situation was going to end."
I emailed them to ask, but didn't hear back by press time.
We can't actually observe the motion of the sun; that's far too small to see. We observe the change in frequency of its light as it approaches and recedes from us, the Doppler effect.
If you don't understand why this is important, go read
Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace,
by Lawrence Lessig. The future he fears is one where freedom and anonymity
on the net are erased because general-purpose computing devices will
no longer be able to connect.
The only freedom we have exists because we can connect Turing
devices to the net. Once we are forced to use hardware or software
that can perform only "approved" functions, any freedoms we have are
in the hands of the people who approve those functions. You will only
be anonymous if Bill Gates wants to allow anonymity. You will only
have free speech if Bill Gates prefers it. Even your intellectual
property rights will be mediated through Bill Gates' software.
Here's how the net ends -- not with a bang but an upgrade. The
government won't put a gun to your head and make you give up your
civil rights online. Instead, Microsoft and other vendors will come
out with new features that you've just got to have. Well, maybe not
you, but when every other person on the internet blindly upgrades, you
will find yourself longing for them.
That's the dark flipside of the law of network efficiency. A
network's value is proporational to the square of the number of people
on it. And as the rest of the net flees to a Microsoft-only, proprietary
operating system, using proprietary protocols, with none of your code
allowed, you will discover that the remaining free network's value to
you is being square-rooted.
No, you say, I'm a hardcore free-software supporter. Sure. You may be the
hardest of the hard-core, but will even you continue to use a
truly free, non-proprietary internet when the only people on it are
you and RMS? How will it feel, being the Amish of the next century? As
the world around you embraces Windows 20xx and its wonderful
billg-approved code, you'll be stuck in your horse and buggy, refusing
to use them newfangled zippers because you think they're the tool of
the devil.
C'mon, you know you'll want to send email to all your friends, and
check out the cool new holographic websites (that 2-D stuff is
so 2000). All you have to do is install the new version of
Windows. No, you might not be able to compile your own programs, or
upload websites which the Nonobscenity Certification Board fails to
approve, but isn't that a small price to pay?
How long until everybody starts running off and registering slashdotsucks.org, slashdotreallysucks.org, etc. Will Slashdot go out of their way to protect their name?
Hell no. Go ahead and register them. I think I can safely say that none of us is going to sue you over "slashdotsucks."
We're not even suing
this guy,
and frankly if we wanted to take those domains, under the existing WIPO rules it'd take us about 2 seconds. (If our legal dept. ever does decide to go after him, I'll (a) try to talk them out of it, (b) post a story about how lame they're being and encourage you all to send them persuasive email.)
In email, the guy told me that he didn't bother replying to WIPO because he knew that, whatever he said, he was going to lose anyway. He'd guessed that WIPO would decide his case before the facts were presented, and that, because he had lost some cybersquatting cases before, he was going to lose this one regardless of its merits.
And he was right. This was clearly a case of criticism of a corporation, whether he'd gotten around to putting critical content on the domains' website or not. You can't get more fairly critical than "-sucks.com". But they threw the book at him.
And in the decision (read
it!)
a large part of their reason for taking away his domain was that he had squatted on other domains before. They talked about a lot of those other cases.
In other words, it was something like:
Prosecutor:
"Your Honor, we can't find any proof that the defendant actually stole the case of beer. But he admits to being an angry young man, and he was convicted last year of stealing two magazines, a toothbrush and a pit bull."
Judge: "Lock him up!"
I find this just as offensive as their other specious reasons (anger, eyeball-stealing) but didn't get into it in the story because it's a lot of background that would take a while to explain and this was just supposed to be a short story. The long versions are coming sometime in November (I hope) and will go into detail about more cases.
The fundamental issue is, was this guy treated fairly in this case? And it seems clear to me that the answer is no.
Frankly, I can't think of any good reason why any individual should under any circumstances have their "XYZsucks.com" domain taken away and given to corporation XYZ, ever.
Slashdot Mirror
Three of your four questions were answered in the link given in the article.
Another good source was Michael Shermer's "E-Skeptic" email for February 17, 2001. I won't copy and paste it in because I don't know if that's allowed; unfortunately I also can't find it online at the Skeptic magazine website. Oh well...
As Skeptic's writeup commented,
"Unfortunately, this NASA guy had obviously never read any of the conspiracy claims, or the answers to them, for this is the biggest no-brainer debunking in skeptical history that anyone who actually knew something about the Apollo space program could have handled."
This is a common trick used by sensationalistic crap TV. They have an "expert" who has not had time to think about debunking the specific issues, and then frame the presentation as if his failure to immediately respond means that all scientists everywhere are similarly dumbfounded. This is not science, it's National Enquirer type entertainment.
The badastronomy.com link given in the story writeup answers this.
First, the lunar dust is denser than what we think of as dust; it's apparently more like dense sand.
Second, your intuition about how much dust would be "kicked up" is based on your experience in an atmosphere. If you spread out dust and blow straight down into it, the pressure of your breath into the atmosphere will spread around the dust a lot more than your breath alone. You'll see dust curling up and around, and being pushed out, and drifting down slowly, due to the atmosphere.
With a rocket in a vacuum, only those dust particles directly pushed by the rocket exhaust move. An area directly underneath the rocket would be swept clean, but just a few feet away there may be no effect -- or there may be thicker dust because what was under the rocket had to go somewhere.
The badastronomy.com link given in the story writeup answers this.
It's bleed-over. When the thin black lines appear in front of something light-colored, the exposed film appears to erase the thin black lines. You see this all the time, and it's something photographers have to be aware of.
Besides, what is the claim here? That NASA didn't actually use crosshair cameras in their $30 billion "simulated" moon landing? Is the theory that NASA instead went out of their way to meticulously paint black crosshairs on the background of the photo? Absurd.
The badastronomy.com link given in the story writeup answers this.
See number 1 above. The crater was there, but more localized than your experience in an atmosphere would expect.
Also, the main point here is the rocket motor which the non-moonie suggests had "30,000 pounds" of thrust. Guess what? It had a throttle. Would the astronauts endanger their lives and mission by roaring down at the surface at maximum velocity so that they had to have the throttle wide-open to land? Of course not.
They did the 30,000-pound burns high above the surface, and by the time they were a few feet above the surface, it was operating at a fraction of its capacity.
I didn't see the show and I don't know what was said about this; this is the only point that isn't addressed at badastronomy.com or in the Skeptic writeup.
I guess the issue is that the LEM lander was doing rocket burns during descent and we should have heard the noise on the tape. I would point out, first, they were not doing continuous burns, I don't know what fraction of the descent time the rocket was actually on. Second, I do not believe the comm link was open the whole time. Third, I would not be at all surprised if the rocket motor caused more vibration than noise inside the LEM. Again, our experience in an atmosphere can be counter-intuitive, and rockets are constructed so that most of the energy, sound and otherwise, goes out the nozzle.
Fourth, given the deceitful way that these charlatans try to convince the gullible, I would not be at all surprised if they distorted the evidence regarding rocket noise.
Jamie McCarthy
Jamie McCarthy
Read the link. Third sentence of the linked story reads: "Kent State University police obtained a warrant after consulting with the prosecutor."
Jamie McCarthy
He can orbit the sun, he can look like a moon
He can leave the ecliptic from April to June
He'll be just a faint smudge, magnitude twenty-three
He hides in the sky, but he's always a planet to me
Ohhh...a potato-shaped ball...
He can drift where he wants
He's a relic of time
Ohhh...if he's made of pure ice
Or of vapor and dust
It's the same to my mind
If he zooms in near us, would he show us a tail?
Was the Kuiper Belt once the great home whence he sailed?
And if he gets demoted, who'll be next, Mercury?
And the most he can do is cast shadows, it's true
But he's always a planet to me
Jamie McCarthy
Um, basically, we just suck.
Jamie McCarthy
This is a really popular question, I seem to get it every time I post a story that is in any way negative about a company that has ever advertised on Slashdot.
I really have no control over it. Let me explain this to you. Our editorial and writing staff are not influenced by, nor do we influence, our staff that buys banner ads. There is a total disconnect there. They can sell ads to whoever they want, I have -- let me say this again because apparently it's such an awe-inspiringly difficult concept that few people are able to comprehend it -- I have no control over whose ads appear on a story I post.
Brace for reality: most places consider this a good thing. You know, like, not having the ad for Famous Ray's Website appear on the page facing the flattering review of Famous Ray's Website?
Like, not having the marketing department staffers come sit down in my cubicle and say "we'd like you to review Famous Ray's Website, and we think they're really good, you'll probably agree with us, we hope."
I don't know those staffers. I don't want to know those staffers. They have never done that and it doesn't come up because we don't talk to each other.
While it is a little annoying to me that some companies whose policies I disagree with *cough* DoubleClick continue to put banner ads on our webpages, I will not try to influence ad sales, because then ad sales will come try to influence me. They leave me alone; I leave them alone.
Don't like it? Tough. Think that this is an "oversight" or that this makes Slashdot or myself somehow corrupt or stupid or evil? Please go away.
(Sorry. I'm in a bad mood. I just posted a story duplicate -- except for the dmoz.org search tool, that's cool and it's new, go download it and mess with it.)
Jamie McCarthy
But the news about ODPsearch being open-sourced is new. You can skip over the rest of the story. Ignore it. Just read the part about ODP. Ahhhhhhhh, that's nice.
Jamie McCarthy
This has nothing to do with the current crisis. There is energy available. The plants aren't selling it because the terms of deregulation, which they locked in expecting to make a killing, turned around and bit them in the ass a few years later.
The current crisis is a financial one, caused by price-gouging and price wars between the various entities who make and distribute power. If the power companies hadn't pushed for wholesale energy prices to be deregulated, they wouldn't be in the mess they're in. They sat down with the governor and wrote the legislation. They have nobody to blame but themselves.
When I first heard about these blackouts following right on the heels of deregulation, I predicted the conservative/libertarian response was going to be "there wasn't enough deregulation." Sure enough, that's the automatic response. It'd be funny if it weren't so annoying.
NPR did a good story on this yesterday. Their electricity primer interview (5.5 minutes) gives an excellent overview, and their discussion of Southern California Edison's default on payments (4.5 minutes) is interesting too. Both require RealAudio. The page with these links is here but I don't know how long that URL will last.
Jamie McCarthy
Near the end of the article, it makes clear that the rise of the internet and the information economy has actually reduced power consumption:
"between 1987 and 1990, electricity consumption grew 3.3 percent a year ... from 1992 to 1996 total energy demand grew at about 2.4
percent a year in the U.S., during a period when the gross domestic
product was growing at a rate of 3.2 percent a year. But from 1996 to
2000, when the Net boom was really taking off, the gross domestic
product grew at an average of 4 percent a year while energy demand
grew at a rate of only 1 percent."
Years GDP Growth Energy Growth
1987-1990 ? 3.3%
1992-1996 3.2% 2.4%
1996-2000 4.0% 1.0%
Jamie McCarthy
whoah();
Jamie McCarthy
Unfortunately, you may be liable for destruction of company property if you do that. I don't know the law but I wouldn't be at all surprised if you could go to jail for that. You may also be personally liable for whatever the data was valued at, just as if you intentionally broke the company refrigerator or smashed up a company car.
I respect your strong stand though!
Jamie McCarthy
Please do. I'd like to respond to you personally to offer some good research sources, but you posted anonymously so I can't.
One good source that debunks 66 common Holocaust-denier fantasies is the "66 QAR" (questions, answers, replies). It happens to be written by two friends and myself and it's a little old (1996, I think) but it's still very much on-target. Most of the lies you'll hear about the Holocaust are addressed in here.
For information specifically about Auschwitz, I recommend The Holocaust History Project's website, at http://www.holocaust-history.org/auschwitz/. Disclaimer: I happen to be the site's webmaster. Please note that we include reproductions of several documents which deal specifically with the annihilation of the Jews at that death camp.
You may want to read and listen to Hitler's own intentions for the Jews, which he and Goebbels made the climax of a 1940 propaganda film so you know it wasn't just something he said off the cuff.
And you'll also want to listen to Heinrich Himmler's description of the final solution, given in a private talk to SS leaders in 1943. Himmler, Hitler's #2 man, describes how the Nazi intentions are being carried out. Luckily for historians, Himmler recorded his speeches, and this tape was one of the few that survived:
If you're interested in the antisemitic movement to deny the Holocaust, which calls itself Holocaust "revisionism," the best source to start with is Deborah Lipstadt's book Denying the Holocaust. It discusses the origins of such groups as the Institute for Historical Review, which you name; really they're just fancy, pseudoscientific wrappers around the same racism and hate that the world has known since, well, since human beings existed I suppose.
If you have any questions about specific matters, please feel free to email me personally.
Jamie McCarthy
So can we please shut up about whether Yahoo has the right to write its own terms of service however it wants? It does. Thank you. Next.
The point is that corporations will kowtow to foreign anti-speech laws. This is a high-profile example. Hell, I don't care that I won't be able to buy a Nazi pin from Yahoo; if I really wanted one (I don't) I'd just go to eBay. Until eBay does the same. And then all the other auction sites. And then they refuse to sell John Wayne Gacy paintings. And Civil War memorabilia from the Confederate side because it promotes slavery.
And then it's not just auctions, it's email sent to and from your free Yahoo account. And then web traffic sent over AboveNet's backbone.
What I was hoping was that people like you would think about what this could mean. Instead of getting up on your high horse and announcing that this decision is meaningless and that I'm a loon for thinking it's noteworthy, please just use your head for a minute.
Will photons need visas? I'm afraid too many people have been trained to recite comforting mantras like that whenever they see something that looks like censorship. The internet knows no national borders, cyberspace considers national laws to be local ordinances, etc.
But in ten years, your photons damn well may need visas because every corporation that delivers you any service you care about finds it easier to censor you because they want to continue doing business with Outer Schizovania, and Outer Schizovania demands that its national pride not be injured by hateful references to the War of 1827.
Possibly the greatest threat to free expression on the internet, over the next ten years, is the complacent attitude of those who think free expression is guaranteed.
Jamie McCarthy
You'd be surprised how many have clauses like that.
By the time of the signing ceremony, the apartment people want you to move in (they've invested time in showing you around, answering your questions, etc.). Both sides have leverage and can use it.
My routine by now is to plan on spending a good half-hour going over the rental agreement, and to be ready to walk out without having signed if it seems necessary.
If you look trustworthy there's a 90% chance they'll let you cross out the stupid clauses, initial your changes in the margin, hand it back to them, and get their signature. Voila: a contract you can live with.
Jamie McCarthy
pudge: (President of the Authors Guild)
jamie: That sounds like an anagram.
pudge: anyway, i understand that authors are kinda pissed about what amazon is doing, but they need to get over it.
jamie: pudge, that name is an anagram for "bigot plenty contrite."
pudge: jamie, ha!
jamie: and "glint byte protection"
hemos: jamie: Ha!
hemos: Ooo! I like the first one.
hemos: Hmmmm...over two hours till my meeting. I think it might be time to play SC3U.
pudge: SETEC ASTRONOMY
jamie: and "gent protect nobility." geez, he's just Mr. Anagram.
jamie: and "Bony Title Protecting."
timothy: I think Bony Title Protecting is good.
timothy: We should (as a service to readers) provide anagrams for famous people whenever possible.
timothy: And / or when the anagrams are funny.
jamie: or "Protect Goblin Entity," or "Percent Booty Tilting," or "Boycott Letting Ripen."
jamie: My favorite anagram for someone disapproving of Amazon:
jamie: "Tripling teen boycott."
timothy: ok. I'll bite. anagram for what?
jamie: pudge: what kind of name is Letty Cottin Pogrebin?
jamie: pudge: (President of the Authors Guild)
timothy: Ah, ok.
Jamie McCarthy
Censoring offensive material is exactly what MAPS is doing in this case. Some censorware is offended by pornography or the Ku Klux Klan and is designed to block that. MAPS is offended by websites which sell bulk email software, and is designed to block that.
For the twenty spam websites being blocked by MAPS customers who use the BGP (including, until recently, AboveNet), the content of those websites is the one and only issue.
The 1000 other, innocent websites being blocked as well probably wish content was an issue for them, but, unfortunately, they were caught in the crossfire...
Isn't this slicing it a little thin? When you find a website you don't like, and then block all traffic from its IP number, I call that blocking a website.
Jamie McCarthy
Go here, click on the box next to my name under "Exclude Stories From The Homepage: Authors," then scroll to the bottom and click "savehome."
Or, just ignore my stories, which works about as well :)
Peacefire was the one who drew my attention to this story which is why they got a mention.
Jamie McCarthy
Just some corrections of your correction. :)
1. The Spamhaus list is here.
2. Not a single one of the IP numbers listed there sends spam. Let me repeat that: you could drop every one of those IP numbers off your network and it would not stop a single piece of spam from reaching you. Those are websites. Spamhaus and MAPS don't like ths products those websites are selling and that is why they (and over a thousand other websites) are blocked.
3. Media3 has 42 Class C blocks, which means that 0.2% of their IP numbers house websites which sell spam-friendly software (but, again, those IP numbers are not sending spam). I would not say 0.2% is a "high percentage."
The situation is analogous to a censorware company blackmailing a service provider into removing Holocaust-denial material, by blocking thousands of innocent websites. Now, I don't like Holocaust denial, but standing up for free speech means standing up for speech I don't believe in.
This situation is no different (except that, on my scale of evil, spammers aren't even close to those who want to rehabilitate Hitler).
Jamie McCarthy
I contacted them this afternoon (PST) and said the story was time-sensitive. The PR person I talked to assured me someone would contact me to answer my questions "in a few minutes." No phone call or email for four hours, so I ran the story.
Or maybe they tried but my email address was on the RBL...who knows...
Jamie McCarthy
I emailed them to ask, but didn't hear back by press time.
Jamie McCarthy
We can't actually observe the motion of the sun; that's far too small to see. We observe the change in frequency of its light as it approaches and recedes from us, the Doppler effect.
Jamie McCarthy
The only freedom we have exists because we can connect Turing devices to the net. Once we are forced to use hardware or software that can perform only "approved" functions, any freedoms we have are in the hands of the people who approve those functions. You will only be anonymous if Bill Gates wants to allow anonymity. You will only have free speech if Bill Gates prefers it. Even your intellectual property rights will be mediated through Bill Gates' software.
Here's how the net ends -- not with a bang but an upgrade. The government won't put a gun to your head and make you give up your civil rights online. Instead, Microsoft and other vendors will come out with new features that you've just got to have. Well, maybe not you, but when every other person on the internet blindly upgrades, you will find yourself longing for them.
That's the dark flipside of the law of network efficiency. A network's value is proporational to the square of the number of people on it. And as the rest of the net flees to a Microsoft-only, proprietary operating system, using proprietary protocols, with none of your code allowed, you will discover that the remaining free network's value to you is being square-rooted.
No, you say, I'm a hardcore free-software supporter. Sure. You may be the hardest of the hard-core, but will even you continue to use a truly free, non-proprietary internet when the only people on it are you and RMS? How will it feel, being the Amish of the next century? As the world around you embraces Windows 20xx and its wonderful billg-approved code, you'll be stuck in your horse and buggy, refusing to use them newfangled zippers because you think they're the tool of the devil.
C'mon, you know you'll want to send email to all your friends, and check out the cool new holographic websites (that 2-D stuff is so 2000). All you have to do is install the new version of Windows. No, you might not be able to compile your own programs, or upload websites which the Nonobscenity Certification Board fails to approve, but isn't that a small price to pay?
Jamie McCarthy
Hell no. Go ahead and register them. I think I can safely say that none of us is going to sue you over "slashdotsucks."
We're not even suing this guy, and frankly if we wanted to take those domains, under the existing WIPO rules it'd take us about 2 seconds. (If our legal dept. ever does decide to go after him, I'll (a) try to talk them out of it, (b) post a story about how lame they're being and encourage you all to send them persuasive email.)
Jamie McCarthy
And he was right. This was clearly a case of criticism of a corporation, whether he'd gotten around to putting critical content on the domains' website or not. You can't get more fairly critical than "-sucks.com". But they threw the book at him.
And in the decision (read it!) a large part of their reason for taking away his domain was that he had squatted on other domains before. They talked about a lot of those other cases.
In other words, it was something like:
I find this just as offensive as their other specious reasons (anger, eyeball-stealing) but didn't get into it in the story because it's a lot of background that would take a while to explain and this was just supposed to be a short story. The long versions are coming sometime in November (I hope) and will go into detail about more cases.
The fundamental issue is, was this guy treated fairly in this case? And it seems clear to me that the answer is no.
Frankly, I can't think of any good reason why any individual should under any circumstances have their "XYZsucks.com" domain taken away and given to corporation XYZ, ever.
Jamie McCarthy
Jamie McCarthy