So which provider actually do have them available and how are they surviving in todays times where sharing a little bit of music can get you jail time?
You can't block usenet, nor can you block posters. It's a relay system, no one hosts the content. What this company is doing is slurping it of the news line and archiving it. There is no central authority on usenet, especially in the "alt.*" area.
My ISP carries many of the binary groups, including some of the more iffy ones. Warez, filth, nothing blatantly illegal (though that sort of thing goes on on usenet anyway, some nasty stuff). It's down to the usenet provider which groups they carry, and how much space to give each ("retention"). Poor retention means missing posts, which is useless. You gotta pay for decent access to usenet, always have had to really, certainally in the last 5-6 years.
From what I understand, plasma screens don't age well at all. A figure I heard was "two years" before it starts to noticably affect the picture. For the money they cost, no thanks!
These ads are sort of hit & run con men. When someone signs up, they get sent X ringtones per month that they did not request. It's in the small print, so it's legal. Word of mouth gets around and people stop buying when they hear of a friend getting stung for 30 pounds. That's how I'm explaining the saturation advertising of them to myself, it makes sense. I've not noticed so many of them lately, but I gotta admit that around 3 months ago my broadcast-TV watching went to non-existent. Now it's just dvds and bittorrent, and no fucking frog!! Surely some of the TV stations must have realised this has cost them viewers.
Recently, the crazy frog was banned here in the UK before the 9pm "watershed" after many complaints from parents of ripped-off children.
However, I feel compelled to point out that the worst thing we all can do is to simply roll over and accept censorship of any kind.[snip] in the U.S. and I make it a point to watch news shows from Europe to counter-balance the often one-sided and myopic reporting I mostly witness on most U.S. news stations/channels.
Good for you; I do the same with US news funilly enough. However, the fundamental problem is that for most folk who's news is censored/filtered for whatever reasons, they just don't realise it. The most effective censorship is invisible; if it's not then it's next-to-worthless.
Find out who owns your stations. Then ask yourself; when was the last time you heard anything remotely negative about them or their other industries? If you can't remember, switch station. This is one of the things I like about the BBC, it reports on itself third-person, which is kinda weird to listen to, but probably the most ethical media outlet available. I'm not saying it's 100% neutral, but it's lightyears ahead of the Murdoch owned news channels Fox & Sky News. Their coverage of anything done by the BBC is laughable.
Remember the old expression: If working towards freedom, prepare for war.
Ironic, you directly quote propaganda in a rant about censorship and totalitairian governments...;-) look here more more similar propaganda. Interesting stuff. Whatever side of it you are, you're getting played either way...
How can they err on such a simple thing as a flawed system of voting when it is the foundation of democracy?
Please point out the one country you think has this correct in it's national elections. All "democracies" are self-imposed delusions. Once every four years? Pluuuease. All voting systems in use are flawed, but they work out well for those who know how to work the system, so it's alright I suppose...
I was surprised to learn that Microsoft would quietly discard any messages which contained a link to suspicious executables. It even blocked links to fake.pif files I hosted myself, so it wasn't a URL blacklist.
Not entirely correct, from my own experience. What I've seen, in both Office Outlook and Outlook Express, is that you get the message "Outlook has blocked access to a potentially damaging attachment" and the attachment is simply not available. There is nothing you can do to get it back, short of hacking the registry or getting your Exchange server config changed to allow it. Or use webmail to get on your IMAP server directly... >:-)
Following this, many trojan writers started to zip the binaries to get them through Outlook. This still works; blocking an exe isn't too bad, but blocking zip would be a major PITA for email.
Blocking the messages before they even arrive is by far the most effective way to stop this infection vector. I'm hard-pressed to think of a reason why this is a bad idea.
"Thank you for purchacing our software, your order ID is 1234. Please click on setup.exe to install your software". There is no reason why you should not trust exe's you requested. The Outlook block annoys me at least 3 or 4 times a year, when someone wants to sent a binary to you. Need to explain to some of them on how to make a zip of it (and why they need to redo it in the first place).
And for the person who is no doubt going to ask "Well how do you know you don't have a virus if you have no virus scanning software?". Simple. If I had a virus it would have to be one that:
- Did not affect the running of my computer negatively.
- Did not create any network traffic.
- Did not attempt to infect files.
So, if I had a virus that met all of those criteria, I don't think I'd have to worry about catching it.
How did you know that it didn't dial home? You said you had no security and no anti-virus, and that you were running natd/ipfw. Perhaps if you were also running some intrusion detection software on the firewall, or had an application-level firewall, you might actually be able to say "did not create any network traffic"? What were doing to make this assertion? Watching the blinkenlights on the hub?
prevent other viruses stealing away the rooted box
prevent other viruses from impacting the operation of the PC (meaning it gets fixed or reinstalled)
Don't have any programs, I MEAN ANY, which automatically run any sort of executable. That's just asking for it.
You truely are an idiot. ALL programs can do this. It's a basic part of how programs work, they make calls to other programs! The question is, can they be made to run malware through either bad design or exploit (e.g. buffer overflow). There is NOTHING you can do against the latter. Even the infalible Firefox is currently on v1.07 because of EXPLOITS in older versions.
The only system I can think of that can stop apps running system commands is Java. You don't seem like the Java type somehow though.
"Don't use your firewall to do your job for you. Shut off the services you don't need."
That's IN ADDITION to a firewall. NEVER rely on software on your PC to sort out what you have open. A virus can easilly (silently) restart a service, and you'd NEVER know. Likewise with "personal firewalls". The firewall should be a different box with different accounts. If you are truely paranoid, never enter it's password on a potentially hacked machine and stick to console access only.
I hope you are running security for anything important...
What part of the gospel are you under the impression says that? (re: me saying rape is apparently OK for godly people)
Deuteronomy 21:
"When you go forth to war against your enemies, and the LORD your God gives them into your hands, and you take them captive, 11 and see among the captives a beautiful woman, and you have desire for her and would take her for yourself as wife, 12 then you shall bring her home to your house, and she shall shave her head and pare her nails. 13 And she shall put off her captive's garb, and shall remain in your house and bewail her father and her mother a full month; after that you may go in to her, and be her husband, and she shall be your wife. 14 Then, if you have no delight in her, you shall let her go where she will; but you shall not sell her for money, you shall not treat her as a slave, since you have humiliated her. 15
A prime example of people pick & mixing what they take from the bible. Another great example is the concept of charging interest. Originally, it was a MAJOR sin to do this, however some time in the last 2000 years (IIRC) this got forgotten as it got in the way of profit. The adoptation of arabic numerals over roman ones derives from this; you can't work out compound interest using IIVX.
One of my friends, for instance, had to flee Iran when he converted to Christianity. Not a lot of incentive from family there.
One in a million. Literally. The vast majority of believers were born into their beliefs via geography or historical period. Are you more correct than those who worshipped Ra? Care to back that up with some reasoning?
Also, your anecdote proves my point. If your friend had fled to any other country, his current religion whould undoubtably be different.
Science is not an alternative to religion. It's a tool for building models of the universe in an attempt to make predictions about how it will behave. It tells us nothing about God, nothing about history, nothing about morality, etc.
Science is the opposite of religion. Religion is based on faith and believing the words of others. Science is founded on observable cause & effect, and repeatable experiments. I see nothing of that in religion.
You condemn Christians for being anti-logic, anti-reason, etc. then go and make an ad-hominen like this. Don't you see the blatant hypocrisy and inconsistency in that?
Bill Hicks was a stand-up comedian, sorry if you've not heard of him. It was meant as a joke, in an attempt to avoid the invetiable flame war (smiting?;-) that these threads tend to bring up.
I respect you as a person if you believe in god. Just don't ask me to respect your reasoning, m'kay?:-)
What about the part (in the same gospel), where it says that RAPE is OK, provided you give her a month to grieve the parents you MURDERED (sorry, it's 'slain' when they are unbelievers).
I respect your right to believe what you want, but anyone who believes in this nonsense is an idiot IMHO. If you had been born in any other time or any other country, you'd likely have completely different beliefs than you have now. Zeus, Ra, Budda yadda yadda yadda.
I just find it a little too convenient that so many people were BORN INTO the 'one true religion'. If you blindly accept the religion of your parents 'just because? without study of the alternates, then yes, you are anti-science. You are anti-logic, anti-reasoning and anti-common sense.
Bill Hicks said it best: 'have you noticed how people who believe in creationism look unevolved?'
According to a classified document, "Special Operations and Joint Forces in Countering Terrorism" prepared for Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld by his Defense Science Board, a new organization has been created to thwart potential terrorist attacks on the United States. This counter-terror operations group-- the "Proactive Preemptive Operations Group" (P2OG) will require 100 people and at least $100 million a year. The team of covert counter-intelligence agents will be responsible for secret missions designed to target terrorist leaders. The secret missions are designed to "stimulate reactions" among terrorist groups, provoking them into committing violent acts which would then expose them to "counterattack" by U.S. forces.
Not covered in US media at all, apart from the LA Times where it apparently first appeared. The article seems to have disappeared down the memory hole; it's not on their website anymore.
They might as well just paint red white and blue targets on us!
Donald Rumsfeld has stated that encouraging terrorism is good as it "brings them out of the woodwood" (or something to that effect). Maybe you are more correct than you realise!;-)
I mean, you can take someones TV away. But you be DAMNED if they lose internet connection.
Here in the UK, the TV is on the list of things that debt collectors cannot collect, alongside fridges, heating etc. I wonder how long it will be before computers are added to that list; especially with the personal data on the drive.
The BBC tech department amuses me. Not patching on schedule, etc.
The BBC run one of the most advanced networks in the world. It's been covered on Slashdot before. Granted they have different depts and I doubt this gaff was done by the same people.
Which impies that the Beeb's tech division believes PocketPC to be secure.
No, they probably believe that it's the most secure. And as it works with SSL out of the box and there are no known viruses on the platform. Those two things are right at the top on my security checklist. If the mail doesn't do SSL, I'm not interested. Sending plain-text passwords over-the-air is for chumps.
I'm sure there are several celebrities who would love to testify on the security of the blackberry. Mind you, my tinfoil hat is whispering in my ear that they were likely all PR stunts anyway!;-)
What, like Palm caused PDAs to emit toxins or explode in 2002?
Probably not, but Nokias are good at that! It's a strange ruling though "health and safety risks". I'm gonna be honest here; I've got a PPC2003 device and it really is the dogs danglies. However, RSI is infinitely worse than a regular keyboard (despite the qwerty), writing long essays isn't all that fun. WRT to IT, that's the only health & safety impact I can think of.
My definition of terrorism is "the use of fear to achieve a political goal". As the famous Nazi said:
"Of course the people don't want war. But after all, it's the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it's always a simple matter to drag the people along whether it's a democracy, a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism, and exposing the country to greater danger." -- Herman Goering at the Nuremberg trials
Do us all a favour and stay out of the field of statistics. I'm no expert myself, but I do know that you don't measure freedom and human liberty "per-capita".
Are you forgetting that China's population is MUCH larger than yours? By your logic, there are less abuses of basic human rights there than there are in the west.
If i was Bin Laden i'd be pi**ing myself laughing - it's amazing how a couple of planes and a bomb here and there can derail centuries of democracy and accountable government
That isn't, nor has it ever been Bin Ladens aim, despite attempts by Bush & Blair to convince you otherwise. He doesn't care about democracy. He doesn't care about freedom. His stated goal is the removal of US troops from Saudi Arabia. He won; they've moved into Iraq.
I often wonder if invading Iraq wasn't partly to appease him. The US seeks to maintain a military presence in the Middle East to protect it's investments. By shifting the troops out of Saudi, Bin Laden has essentially won and note that no one has heard from him in a while. And that makes Bush looks as though he's winning the "war on terror".
I feel your pain. However, I personally very strongly believe that the internet is the one thing that can stop politicians abusing power. Prior to the net, everyone got their information from media sources local to them. Sources that, well, we all know the problems with mass media, and those who seek to mislead us.
The internet has the potential to break down so many barriers. It has the potential to out those that do wrong. It has already been involved in a large number of important events in recent news, both in the west and elsewhere. Expect this trend to continue as more and more stories break on the net that would not otherwise appear on our old media.
Information is power. The net is my one hope for the future because I can't think of anything else that has any chance of solving this underlying problem in our society.
stand up to China or Iran and say "Fuck you you murdering scumbags, you ain't gonna mess with root TLDs"
"America, fuck you you murdering scumbags, you ain't gonna mess with root TLDs".
Sorry, nothing personal mate, but it had to be said. People in glass houses shouldn't throw stones. I don't recall China or Iran killing 30,000 innocent people over the past two years. I missed that memo apparently.
includes the idea that the US abuses its position as far as assigning root level domains.
Where are all the *.iq sites? We don't trust you not to do such a thing. You've just illegally occupied a country and are now holding clown courts that aren't recognized by any international law. Given that, dicking around with DNS isn't looking all that unlikely now, is it?
You see, we'd rather not wait until the "smoking gun". A pre-emtive strike is neccessary to protect our infrastructures. Hopefully, put in these terms, the point I'm trying to make might become clear.
In a similar fashion, your parents are guilty for your idiotic posts.
What a fucking ridiculus statement! I am "guilty" for my own actions, because of a little thing called "responsibility". A DVD of Daredevil, regardless of how crap the film may be, has no responsibility.
It's not even like comparing apples and oranges. At least they are both fruit.
The NY Times is unethical. Partly it's because they hate Bush, partly because they don't really want to be ethical.
No, it's purely financial. They have their niche with those who expect that style of reporting, but many people rotate papers depending on what looks the most interesting on that day. On the web, that translates to reading more articles. "Good" headlines help increase those figures.
Besides, I've yet to meet someone that doesn't "hate Bush" who actually knows the issues in question & can view it objectively!;-) Following him requires either historical ignorance, or outright propaganda & nationalistic tendancies. Media like the NYT, but on the "other side", are responsible for people actually believing his calls to profit^H^H^H^H^H^Hwar. But lets not go there, as I reckon you'll probably disagree with me on this topic.;-)
The info left out of the story misinforms readers as much or more than the info included in the story informs readers.
The point I was trying to make was that ALL media is like that. It's the rule, not the exception. Christ, your ID suggests you've been around here for a while. Ever consider why there are so many inflamatory topics that continually get flogged to death? Because it gets page views which equates to cash-money.
Never trust a commercial news source, ever. If you have no choice, try to read several different ones.
It seems unnecessary and precisely akin to protecting one's signature from appearing on material that pokes fun at oneself
Someone gets it. Seals predate signatures, and served the same purpose. Parchments of old were sealed shut with hot wax and the "seal" was used to imprint the ownership of this. It's a stamp. It was an early form of the "void if removed" sticker. The words "seal" and "stamp" in our popular culture derive from this practice, for example "seal the deal".
So, sure, it's probably parody and OK, but I think a lot of people fail to understand what exactly "using a seal" involves.
Slashdot Mirror
You can't block usenet, nor can you block posters. It's a relay system, no one hosts the content. What this company is doing is slurping it of the news line and archiving it. There is no central authority on usenet, especially in the "alt.*" area.
My ISP carries many of the binary groups, including some of the more iffy ones. Warez, filth, nothing blatantly illegal (though that sort of thing goes on on usenet anyway, some nasty stuff). It's down to the usenet provider which groups they carry, and how much space to give each ("retention"). Poor retention means missing posts, which is useless. You gotta pay for decent access to usenet, always have had to really, certainally in the last 5-6 years.
From what I understand, plasma screens don't age well at all. A figure I heard was "two years" before it starts to noticably affect the picture. For the money they cost, no thanks!
Recently, the crazy frog was banned here in the UK before the 9pm "watershed" after many complaints from parents of ripped-off children.
Good for you; I do the same with US news funilly enough. However, the fundamental problem is that for most folk who's news is censored/filtered for whatever reasons, they just don't realise it. The most effective censorship is invisible; if it's not then it's next-to-worthless.
Find out who owns your stations. Then ask yourself; when was the last time you heard anything remotely negative about them or their other industries? If you can't remember, switch station. This is one of the things I like about the BBC, it reports on itself third-person, which is kinda weird to listen to, but probably the most ethical media outlet available. I'm not saying it's 100% neutral, but it's lightyears ahead of the Murdoch owned news channels Fox & Sky News. Their coverage of anything done by the BBC is laughable.
Remember the old expression: If working towards freedom, prepare for war.
Ironic, you directly quote propaganda in a rant about censorship and totalitairian governments... ;-) look here more more similar propaganda. Interesting stuff. Whatever side of it you are, you're getting played either way...
Shhhh, don't confuse the children. We have always been at war with China, they eat babies over there I hear...
Please point out the one country you think has this correct in it's national elections. All "democracies" are self-imposed delusions. Once every four years? Pluuuease. All voting systems in use are flawed, but they work out well for those who know how to work the system, so it's alright I suppose...
Not entirely correct, from my own experience. What I've seen, in both Office Outlook and Outlook Express, is that you get the message "Outlook has blocked access to a potentially damaging attachment" and the attachment is simply not available. There is nothing you can do to get it back, short of hacking the registry or getting your Exchange server config changed to allow it. Or use webmail to get on your IMAP server directly... >:-)
Following this, many trojan writers started to zip the binaries to get them through Outlook. This still works; blocking an exe isn't too bad, but blocking zip would be a major PITA for email.
Blocking the messages before they even arrive is by far the most effective way to stop this infection vector. I'm hard-pressed to think of a reason why this is a bad idea.
"Thank you for purchacing our software, your order ID is 1234. Please click on setup.exe to install your software". There is no reason why you should not trust exe's you requested. The Outlook block annoys me at least 3 or 4 times a year, when someone wants to sent a binary to you. Need to explain to some of them on how to make a zip of it (and why they need to redo it in the first place).
"What's an executable?" - Your mom.
How did you know that it didn't dial home? You said you had no security and no anti-virus, and that you were running natd/ipfw. Perhaps if you were also running some intrusion detection software on the firewall, or had an application-level firewall, you might actually be able to say "did not create any network traffic"? What were doing to make this assertion? Watching the blinkenlights on the hub?
The perfect virus (nowadays) does the following:
Don't have any programs, I MEAN ANY, which automatically run any sort of executable. That's just asking for it.
You truely are an idiot. ALL programs can do this. It's a basic part of how programs work, they make calls to other programs! The question is, can they be made to run malware through either bad design or exploit (e.g. buffer overflow). There is NOTHING you can do against the latter. Even the infalible Firefox is currently on v1.07 because of EXPLOITS in older versions.
The only system I can think of that can stop apps running system commands is Java. You don't seem like the Java type somehow though.
"Don't use your firewall to do your job for you. Shut off the services you don't need."
That's IN ADDITION to a firewall. NEVER rely on software on your PC to sort out what you have open. A virus can easilly (silently) restart a service, and you'd NEVER know. Likewise with "personal firewalls". The firewall should be a different box with different accounts. If you are truely paranoid, never enter it's password on a potentially hacked machine and stick to console access only.
I hope you are running security for anything important...
Based on what most STD clinics say, that's not going to happen...people just don't learn!
Deuteronomy 21:
A prime example of people pick & mixing what they take from the bible. Another great example is the concept of charging interest. Originally, it was a MAJOR sin to do this, however some time in the last 2000 years (IIRC) this got forgotten as it got in the way of profit. The adoptation of arabic numerals over roman ones derives from this; you can't work out compound interest using IIVX.
One of my friends, for instance, had to flee Iran when he converted to Christianity. Not a lot of incentive from family there.
One in a million. Literally. The vast majority of believers were born into their beliefs via geography or historical period. Are you more correct than those who worshipped Ra? Care to back that up with some reasoning?
Also, your anecdote proves my point. If your friend had fled to any other country, his current religion whould undoubtably be different.
Science is not an alternative to religion. It's a tool for building models of the universe in an attempt to make predictions about how it will behave. It tells us nothing about God, nothing about history, nothing about morality, etc.
Science is the opposite of religion. Religion is based on faith and believing the words of others. Science is founded on observable cause & effect, and repeatable experiments. I see nothing of that in religion.
You condemn Christians for being anti-logic, anti-reason, etc. then go and make an ad-hominen like this. Don't you see the blatant hypocrisy and inconsistency in that?
Bill Hicks was a stand-up comedian, sorry if you've not heard of him. It was meant as a joke, in an attempt to avoid the invetiable flame war (smiting? ;-) that these threads tend to bring up.
I respect you as a person if you believe in god. Just don't ask me to respect your reasoning, m'kay? :-)
I respect your right to believe what you want, but anyone who believes in this nonsense is an idiot IMHO. If you had been born in any other time or any other country, you'd likely have completely different beliefs than you have now. Zeus, Ra, Budda yadda yadda yadda.
I just find it a little too convenient that so many people were BORN INTO the 'one true religion'. If you blindly accept the religion of your parents 'just because? without study of the alternates, then yes, you are anti-science. You are anti-logic, anti-reasoning and anti-common sense.
Bill Hicks said it best: 'have you noticed how people who believe in creationism look unevolved?'
Not covered in US media at all, apart from the LA Times where it apparently first appeared. The article seems to have disappeared down the memory hole; it's not on their website anymore.
A google for "Special Operations and Joint Forces in Countering Terrorism" throws back lots of info on this story.
Donald Rumsfeld has stated that encouraging terrorism is good as it "brings them out of the woodwood" (or something to that effect). Maybe you are more correct than you realise! ;-)
Here in the UK, the TV is on the list of things that debt collectors cannot collect, alongside fridges, heating etc. I wonder how long it will be before computers are added to that list; especially with the personal data on the drive.
The BBC run one of the most advanced networks in the world. It's been covered on Slashdot before. Granted they have different depts and I doubt this gaff was done by the same people.
Which impies that the Beeb's tech division believes PocketPC to be secure.
No, they probably believe that it's the most secure. And as it works with SSL out of the box and there are no known viruses on the platform. Those two things are right at the top on my security checklist. If the mail doesn't do SSL, I'm not interested. Sending plain-text passwords over-the-air is for chumps.
I'm sure there are several celebrities who would love to testify on the security of the blackberry. Mind you, my tinfoil hat is whispering in my ear that they were likely all PR stunts anyway! ;-)
What, like Palm caused PDAs to emit toxins or explode in 2002?
Probably not, but Nokias are good at that! It's a strange ruling though "health and safety risks". I'm gonna be honest here; I've got a PPC2003 device and it really is the dogs danglies. However, RSI is infinitely worse than a regular keyboard (despite the qwerty), writing long essays isn't all that fun. WRT to IT, that's the only health & safety impact I can think of.
"Patriot act" indeed.
Are you forgetting that China's population is MUCH larger than yours? By your logic, there are less abuses of basic human rights there than there are in the west.
That isn't, nor has it ever been Bin Ladens aim, despite attempts by Bush & Blair to convince you otherwise. He doesn't care about democracy. He doesn't care about freedom. His stated goal is the removal of US troops from Saudi Arabia. He won; they've moved into Iraq.
I often wonder if invading Iraq wasn't partly to appease him. The US seeks to maintain a military presence in the Middle East to protect it's investments. By shifting the troops out of Saudi, Bin Laden has essentially won and note that no one has heard from him in a while. And that makes Bush looks as though he's winning the "war on terror".
Yes. It's a contentious subject and advertisers pay by the eyeball. I keep promising myself I won't get sucked in to posting, but....dammmit!!
The internet has the potential to break down so many barriers. It has the potential to out those that do wrong. It has already been involved in a large number of important events in recent news, both in the west and elsewhere. Expect this trend to continue as more and more stories break on the net that would not otherwise appear on our old media.
Information is power. The net is my one hope for the future because I can't think of anything else that has any chance of solving this underlying problem in our society.
"America, fuck you you murdering scumbags, you ain't gonna mess with root TLDs".
Sorry, nothing personal mate, but it had to be said. People in glass houses shouldn't throw stones. I don't recall China or Iran killing 30,000 innocent people over the past two years. I missed that memo apparently.
includes the idea that the US abuses its position as far as assigning root level domains.
Where are all the *.iq sites? We don't trust you not to do such a thing. You've just illegally occupied a country and are now holding clown courts that aren't recognized by any international law. Given that, dicking around with DNS isn't looking all that unlikely now, is it?
You see, we'd rather not wait until the "smoking gun". A pre-emtive strike is neccessary to protect our infrastructures. Hopefully, put in these terms, the point I'm trying to make might become clear.
What a fucking ridiculus statement! I am "guilty" for my own actions, because of a little thing called "responsibility". A DVD of Daredevil, regardless of how crap the film may be, has no responsibility.
It's not even like comparing apples and oranges. At least they are both fruit.
No, it's purely financial. They have their niche with those who expect that style of reporting, but many people rotate papers depending on what looks the most interesting on that day. On the web, that translates to reading more articles. "Good" headlines help increase those figures.
Besides, I've yet to meet someone that doesn't "hate Bush" who actually knows the issues in question & can view it objectively! ;-) Following him requires either historical ignorance, or outright propaganda & nationalistic tendancies. Media like the NYT, but on the "other side", are responsible for people actually believing his calls to profit^H^H^H^H^H^Hwar. But lets not go there, as I reckon you'll probably disagree with me on this topic. ;-)
The info left out of the story misinforms readers as much or more than the info included in the story informs readers.
The point I was trying to make was that ALL media is like that. It's the rule, not the exception. Christ, your ID suggests you've been around here for a while. Ever consider why there are so many inflamatory topics that continually get flogged to death? Because it gets page views which equates to cash-money.
Never trust a commercial news source, ever. If you have no choice, try to read several different ones.
Someone gets it. Seals predate signatures, and served the same purpose. Parchments of old were sealed shut with hot wax and the "seal" was used to imprint the ownership of this. It's a stamp. It was an early form of the "void if removed" sticker. The words "seal" and "stamp" in our popular culture derive from this practice, for example "seal the deal".
So, sure, it's probably parody and OK, but I think a lot of people fail to understand what exactly "using a seal" involves.