I agree with you that the media (with the obvious exception of Fox News) tries to be unbiased in its reporting, and I applaud them for doing so. But sometimes their attempts to be balanced actually causes their story to be unbalanced. For example, does every story about teaching creationism or "intelligent design" in school really need to have quotes by the Discovery Institute or some other creationist? Why even give them any publicity or credibility?
In my opinion, one of the reasons why The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and The Colbert Report are so popular is their ability to make fun of a story, often at the expense of impartiality. The Georgia-Russia conflict led the media to bring up the "3 AM phone call" ad with respect to a certain candidate's qualifications; Stewart, on the other hand, showed the clips of the media to point out how ridiculous the argument is.
Publicity and attention? I would think that having a politician on the show increases their visibility.
There's an old NY Times article that describes how (non-fiction) authors have their Amazon.com sales figures "pop" immediately after appearing on The Daily Show and The Colbert Report. Not many numbers there, but they talk to some reporters and publishers, who agree with that belief.
That's a really retarded and overused argument. Are you saying that the decisions by the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit are examples of that bullshit known called "judicial activism"? According to the 2000 census, the states within its jurisdiction comprise 20% of the country's population. And they also see a fifth of the federal appellate workload. Therefore, the Ninth Circuit probably has the most cases upheld by the Supreme Court.
Your lawyer buddies probably also know that Judge Kozinski tends to be conservative/libertarian, not "liberal" (as the court is often characterized), and is a highly respect jurist. I'm not defending him or his actions, but I'm saying that dismissing an entire court due to some stupid belief is just... naive. What do you know?
However, a question that should be asked is whether or not printed journals are obsolete. Whenever I need to research papers, I search almost exclusively through online journals and professors' publication pages. Google scholar makes this search pretty painless, and there are free, open journals that are getting quite decent. My understanding of "online journal" is a journal that is only published online, such as PLoS. Most journals that have printed articles also have websites, often e-publishing before the printed journal comes out.
I work in the biomedical sciences, and it seems that most journals are not open-access, and most scientists do not publish their articles on their websites. Personally, I find Google Scholar to be lacking when compared to PubMed, and gives far too many odd results and dates. I wish that the open-access journals would be able to support themselves through advertising, rather than having authors pay thousands of dollars.
From my understanding, they were monitoring the calls of journalists and their contacts -- which may or may not have included board members. Here's the quote from my other post in this thread:
The goal of the "Clipper" and "Rheingold" surveillance programs, as well as other "secondary projects," the fax makes clear, was to "analyze several hundred thousand landline and mobile connection data sets of key German journalists reporting on Telekom and their private contacts." Furthermore, this is a telecommunications company that (presumably) has the calling logs of its customers. Sure, it's not like they hacked another company's data, but it's still an incredible abuse of power. There's also a limit to the "fair game for monitoring." Deutsche Telekom may own the central infrastructure (or whatever) to route calls, but that doesn't mean they can listen in, though that wasn't what you meant. In any case, the anti-government folks might point out that Telekom is partially owned by the German government, which somewhat blurs the line between government and private entities.
Good point. The article isn't very clear what type of spying was used, but the other article linked in the story does mention some of the tactics:
The goal of the "Clipper" and "Rheingold" surveillance programs, as well as other "secondary projects," the fax makes clear, was to "analyze several hundred thousand landline and mobile connection data sets of key German journalists reporting on Telekom and their private contacts." It seems very similar to the HP scandal, which also involved boardroom leaks and spying on telephone records. Of course, HP is not a telecommunications company, unlike Deutsche Telekom. The article continues, ominously:
Moreover, the letter continues, the office of an "important business journalist," had been infiltrated by a mole who had reported "directly to corporate security" at Telekom for several months. It's actually kind of amusing (or sad) how the scandal erupted. The outside "consultant" hired to do the spying sent an angry fax, demanding to be paid. Remember, kids, if you've hired evil Anthony Pellicano-consultant types, please remember to pay them and to end those business arrangements when you leave office.
It's not exactly that cut-and-dried. In the US, a (private) company can monitor it's email and phones, have cameras set up, and filter web traffic because it's their property.
I doubt companies actually care about your calls or emails to your wife or daughter. Honestly, imagine how ridiculous it would look if they had to explain to a judge that you always did all your work, but you were fired because your loved your family? Companies are much more worried about employees disclosing protected information or harrassing other people. And as others pointed out, the SEC requires financial services companies to monitor their email to prevent brokers, for example, to illegally disclose information. Sometimes those companies will go even further to protect themselves. In one of many examples, a receptionist was fired and his boss censured because the employee sent inappropriate jokes from his work email. Really, though, if you were a stock broker or analyst (or even credit-rating agencies like Moody's), your statements can have huge effects on the world market.
Microsoft has clear prior art in the market for "operating systems proactively affected by viruses." With this new patent, it's going to be able to proactively take over the entire proactive virus market!
I agree, I don't think it's actually going to make much of a difference. The 1980 Olympic Games in Moscow was boycotted by many countries and was led by the US, though I don't know if it amounted to much. However, this is the perfect time to air our grievances against China. When a country signs on to host the Olympic Games, it must also agree to allow the press to move freely around the country -- which has obviously not been done in Tibet. Additionally, the Olympic Charter states that "sport is a human right." When can we bring up human rights in China, if not now?
In contrast, the 1988 Summer Olympics in Seoul, South Korea was one of the major causes that led to the downfall of the president, Chun Doo-hwan, who had violently suppressed a protest. This led to democratic elections. It's unlikely, but possible.
Tibet is unusual because (Tibetan) Buddhism has an image of peace and goodwill. When people think of Buddhism, they're much more likely to think of meditation and peaceful monks than the feudalism that it had years ago. Similarly, there's a huge difference between a man shooting a little old lady and that same man shooting a drug dealer. There was a victim in both cases, yet the old lady will receive much more sympathy. It's just how psychology works. Whether Tibet is better off is largely debatable. Hell, the Dalai Lama fled to India, and China even abducted the Panchen Lama (the second-highest ranking person in Tibetan Buddhism). I believe most Tibetans think they're better off without China bringing in tons of Han Chinese (and FWIW, I am Han Chinese). Furthermore, Tibet is "autonomous" in name only, and is still ruled by China. Hong Kong, which at least has its own judicial system and a bill of rights established when it was under UK rule, still has a CEO, which is just creepy. Half of its politicians are appointed by China.
And China does not have "total copyright freedom," nor do they care about "keeping their citizens out of poverty." First of all, the former is a complete misrepresentation -- I highly doubt that a bunch of programmers want "total copyright freedom." A license, which dictates how software (or music or video) can be used, is mutually exclusive from a copyright (though I think you already know that). China is really about protecting itself, while allowing some of its citizens to make tons of money at any cost. Do you think it was the government who revealed the child labor/kidnapping ring in Sichuan last week? No, of course not, it was a newspaper. It's hard to believe that people didn't know this was going on.
They had a speaker, Michael Schlesinger, first give the "keynote remark" (Mr. Beckerman does not have the transcript of this). The panel discussion followed. It seems like the first part must have been of substantial length for him to make the many false or misleading statements Mr. Beckerman mentioned. I also found the biased moderator to be almost pathetic. He asks for a quick yes-or-no vote, concludes that file-sharing has been proved to be illegal, and moves to "statutory damages." Someone should have interjected Prof Hansen and said: "Yo, Hugh-C. You dumb. Yannowhatimean? You don't know shit about these cases, so keep yo mouth shut." Or maybe a little more eloquently than that.
It's not just Darfur. What about Burma? The only major supporters of Burma/Myanmar are China and Russia. Aung San Suu Kyi is the only Nobel Peace Prize Laureate in the world who is still imprisoned. And China also backs Robert Mugabe's government in Zimbabwe, where the inflation is at something insane like 100,000%, and has not even pushed the government to release election results from the recent presidential and parliamentary elections. And let's not forget their support of Kim Jong-il's creepy cult in North Korea. It's shocking that China has been a major supporter of so many of the worst countries in the world.
I'm not trying to minimize the Darfur situation at all. I think all the countries, especially the US, should play a larger voice in stopping the genocide. Things are only getting worse, now that more fighting is occurring in Chad and refugees are being caught in the crossfire on both sides of the border.
Much as I dislike the Olympic Games, I think this is a great opportunity to air grievances and, hopefully, force the Chinese government to stop backing those governments. Though I wouldn't bet on it.
Because of China's overt and explicit censorship of the news media, those outside of China (and probably those inside China, too, for that matter) can't possibly be aware of the actual sentiments of the Chinese people. Actually, I think it's obvious what their sentiments are -- they think the entire world is against them. This view isn't just held by the people within China, but even held by many overseas Chinese, which is quite sad because they don't even bother learning about what actually happened. My parents didn't even grow up in China (they grew up in Taiwan, which hates China) and they were taught that Tibet was always a part of China. Furthermore, there are instances like this one, at an American University, that show how far the propaganda reaches.
I'm Chinese-American, and even many of my friends go along with the bullshit that equating the protesting of the Olympics with protesting the Chinese people. I think it's a sense of nationalism, plus some belief that China was ignored by the rest of the world, that lead them to hold such a view.
No, a doctor can prescribe a drug for off-label use. A person cannot elect to consume a drug (excluding over-the-counter drugs and the like) for off-label use. And that is drug abuse. Furthermore, whether or not you have a prescription does not make the usage of a drug legal. The prescription may have been obtained through fraudulent means, in which case it most certainly is illegal. And I doubt that all those scientists are affected by those disorders.
That does remind me though... I need to mail in my prescription.
I agree. AP classes may be good for high school students who want a "challenge," but it shouldn't be used for courses for a major. I kinda said the same thing in the sibling posts too.
Wow, I was actually a student in your class:P I took it while taking another science class, and since then have told others never to combine a programming class with anything else in the summer. Biggest mistake ever...
Yep, that's fine. In my opinion, AP credits should only be applied for courses that you would not rely on in the future (i.e., outside of the core classes for the major). Trust me, the only class for EECS that I can think of to use AP credits in is Math 1A. You can use AP credit for biology or chemistry for your natural sciences requirement, and other courses for some of the humanities requirements.
You'll have to take 2 semesters of Reading and Comprehension (English) courses, only 1 of which can be satisfied with AP credit. If you took AP US History, you can get out of the history and institutions requirement. There are some interesting R&C classes, but I just took 1 year of regular English because I decided to do pre-med (and finish off the EECS degree with the minimum number of upper div EECS units...)
I just graduated from EECS at Berkeley last year. Admittedly I kinda sucked at programming and engineering, but that's another matter.
Berkeley will take almost all AP exam scores for credit, provided you get the minimum score. I found AP courses to be nothing like the level of college courses, save for straightforward things like calculus and history, where the material (IMO) is generally the same everywhere. Most of the AP courses just counted toward units; I had junior standing after my first semester. Since I took easy classes that first semester, I qualified for the engineering honor societies:P That was good because my grades fell after that semester.
Anyway, even if you do get credit for them, I would strongly recommend you retake the classes that matter most. IIRC, you must take the CS and physics classes for EECS anyway; AP credit won't count for fulfilling the major's requirements. You can use AP credit for calculus (Math 1A only), general chemistry, econ, etc. Good luck!
That reminds me of a joke my math professor once told us (though kinda paraphrased):
Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson are in a hot air balloon, when they discover that they are lost. They see a man on the ground and yell, "Excuse me, can you tell me where we are?"
The man, after thinking for a second, shouts back, "You're in a hot air balloon!"
Frustrated by the answer, Watson asks Holmes, "Who was that man?"
"He was a mathematician," Holmes replies.
Watson asks, "How did you know?"
Holmes says, "Well, his answer was precise and well thought-out. And it was completely useless."
Oops, I didn't even read all the linked articles. Joe's last link says the two lawsuits have been moved to the Western District of Arkansas and the Eastern District of Texas, under different judges.
Several other articles about the story are at law.com, including this one. For those who haven't read the articles: One of the plaintiffs is the son of Judge T. John Ward, who sits in the Eastern District Court of Texas. The case is assigned to U.S. District Judge David Folsom. Folsom is quoted as saying:
"I have a Cisco case [ESN v. Cisco] pending in my court, and Johnny Ward's son is representing one of the parties, so I probably shouldn't say anything, but it won't influence my outlook on matters a bit." I don't know, but it sounds a little too "chummy." Can the case be moved to a more neutral district?
The blog is not "shuttered" per se, but viewable by invitation only. Hopefully, Frenkel will continue to write, but it might be hard with the lawsuit.
The Slashdot headline is misleading -- the study did not compare which company was faster, but compared the rate at which they released zero-day patches. While these numbers are highly skewed by the number of unknown (or undiscovered) vulnerabilities, they're still interesting nonetheless. I doubt either company releases a patch the same day they find out about a vulnerability, and shows the relationships the companies have with security companies (as mentioned in the article). Of course, all of this depends on whether the vulnerabilities are published or not.
The point is not that they followed the law, but that they did not fight it. It's the same reason we were angry at Yahoo! (or its Hong Kong subsidiary) when the company gave away the information for Shi Tao to China. Similarly, most of the American telecommunication companies, most notably AT&T, obliged the Executive Branch's request to give telephone records to the NSA.
Sometimes following a court order does not absolve you of all blame.
I've heard a lot of good things about Gandi too. It's a little pricy for my needs, especially considering the weakening US dollar. But I guess it will have to do. Thanks.
Slashdot Mirror
I agree with you that the media (with the obvious exception of Fox News) tries to be unbiased in its reporting, and I applaud them for doing so. But sometimes their attempts to be balanced actually causes their story to be unbalanced. For example, does every story about teaching creationism or "intelligent design" in school really need to have quotes by the Discovery Institute or some other creationist? Why even give them any publicity or credibility?
In my opinion, one of the reasons why The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and The Colbert Report are so popular is their ability to make fun of a story, often at the expense of impartiality. The Georgia-Russia conflict led the media to bring up the "3 AM phone call" ad with respect to a certain candidate's qualifications; Stewart, on the other hand, showed the clips of the media to point out how ridiculous the argument is.
Publicity and attention? I would think that having a politician on the show increases their visibility.
There's an old NY Times article that describes how (non-fiction) authors have their Amazon.com sales figures "pop" immediately after appearing on The Daily Show and The Colbert Report. Not many numbers there, but they talk to some reporters and publishers, who agree with that belief.
(Login may be required for the article, sorry.)
If there are posts on Slashdot advocating for the boycott of China and the Olympics, would the government block access to Slashdot?
Yes, this is a test.
He made a statement against retroactive legal immunity for telecommunications companies in an earlier FISA bill.
On the other hand, McCain seems to grow closer to Bush every day.
That's a really retarded and overused argument. Are you saying that the decisions by the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit are examples of that bullshit known called "judicial activism"? According to the 2000 census, the states within its jurisdiction comprise 20% of the country's population. And they also see a fifth of the federal appellate workload. Therefore, the Ninth Circuit probably has the most cases upheld by the Supreme Court.
... naive. What do you know?
Your lawyer buddies probably also know that Judge Kozinski tends to be conservative/libertarian, not "liberal" (as the court is often characterized), and is a highly respect jurist. I'm not defending him or his actions, but I'm saying that dismissing an entire court due to some stupid belief is just
I work in the biomedical sciences, and it seems that most journals are not open-access, and most scientists do not publish their articles on their websites. Personally, I find Google Scholar to be lacking when compared to PubMed, and gives far too many odd results and dates. I wish that the open-access journals would be able to support themselves through advertising, rather than having authors pay thousands of dollars.
It's not exactly that cut-and-dried. In the US, a (private) company can monitor it's email and phones, have cameras set up, and filter web traffic because it's their property.
I doubt companies actually care about your calls or emails to your wife or daughter. Honestly, imagine how ridiculous it would look if they had to explain to a judge that you always did all your work, but you were fired because your loved your family? Companies are much more worried about employees disclosing protected information or harrassing other people. And as others pointed out, the SEC requires financial services companies to monitor their email to prevent brokers, for example, to illegally disclose information. Sometimes those companies will go even further to protect themselves. In one of many examples, a receptionist was fired and his boss censured because the employee sent inappropriate jokes from his work email. Really, though, if you were a stock broker or analyst (or even credit-rating agencies like Moody's), your statements can have huge effects on the world market.
Microsoft has clear prior art in the market for "operating systems proactively affected by viruses." With this new patent, it's going to be able to proactively take over the entire proactive virus market!
I agree, I don't think it's actually going to make much of a difference. The 1980 Olympic Games in Moscow was boycotted by many countries and was led by the US, though I don't know if it amounted to much. However, this is the perfect time to air our grievances against China. When a country signs on to host the Olympic Games, it must also agree to allow the press to move freely around the country -- which has obviously not been done in Tibet. Additionally, the Olympic Charter states that "sport is a human right." When can we bring up human rights in China, if not now?
In contrast, the 1988 Summer Olympics in Seoul, South Korea was one of the major causes that led to the downfall of the president, Chun Doo-hwan, who had violently suppressed a protest. This led to democratic elections. It's unlikely, but possible.
Tibet is unusual because (Tibetan) Buddhism has an image of peace and goodwill. When people think of Buddhism, they're much more likely to think of meditation and peaceful monks than the feudalism that it had years ago. Similarly, there's a huge difference between a man shooting a little old lady and that same man shooting a drug dealer. There was a victim in both cases, yet the old lady will receive much more sympathy. It's just how psychology works. Whether Tibet is better off is largely debatable. Hell, the Dalai Lama fled to India, and China even abducted the Panchen Lama (the second-highest ranking person in Tibetan Buddhism). I believe most Tibetans think they're better off without China bringing in tons of Han Chinese (and FWIW, I am Han Chinese). Furthermore, Tibet is "autonomous" in name only, and is still ruled by China. Hong Kong, which at least has its own judicial system and a bill of rights established when it was under UK rule, still has a CEO, which is just creepy. Half of its politicians are appointed by China.
And China does not have "total copyright freedom," nor do they care about "keeping their citizens out of poverty." First of all, the former is a complete misrepresentation -- I highly doubt that a bunch of programmers want "total copyright freedom." A license, which dictates how software (or music or video) can be used, is mutually exclusive from a copyright (though I think you already know that). China is really about protecting itself, while allowing some of its citizens to make tons of money at any cost. Do you think it was the government who revealed the child labor/kidnapping ring in Sichuan last week? No, of course not, it was a newspaper. It's hard to believe that people didn't know this was going on.
They had a speaker, Michael Schlesinger, first give the "keynote remark" (Mr. Beckerman does not have the transcript of this). The panel discussion followed. It seems like the first part must have been of substantial length for him to make the many false or misleading statements Mr. Beckerman mentioned. I also found the biased moderator to be almost pathetic. He asks for a quick yes-or-no vote, concludes that file-sharing has been proved to be illegal, and moves to "statutory damages." Someone should have interjected Prof Hansen and said: "Yo, Hugh-C. You dumb. Yannowhatimean? You don't know shit about these cases, so keep yo mouth shut." Or maybe a little more eloquently than that.
It's not just Darfur. What about Burma? The only major supporters of Burma/Myanmar are China and Russia. Aung San Suu Kyi is the only Nobel Peace Prize Laureate in the world who is still imprisoned. And China also backs Robert Mugabe's government in Zimbabwe, where the inflation is at something insane like 100,000%, and has not even pushed the government to release election results from the recent presidential and parliamentary elections. And let's not forget their support of Kim Jong-il's creepy cult in North Korea. It's shocking that China has been a major supporter of so many of the worst countries in the world.
I'm not trying to minimize the Darfur situation at all. I think all the countries, especially the US, should play a larger voice in stopping the genocide. Things are only getting worse, now that more fighting is occurring in Chad and refugees are being caught in the crossfire on both sides of the border.
Much as I dislike the Olympic Games, I think this is a great opportunity to air grievances and, hopefully, force the Chinese government to stop backing those governments. Though I wouldn't bet on it.
I'm Chinese-American, and even many of my friends go along with the bullshit that equating the protesting of the Olympics with protesting the Chinese people. I think it's a sense of nationalism, plus some belief that China was ignored by the rest of the world, that lead them to hold such a view.
No, a doctor can prescribe a drug for off-label use. A person cannot elect to consume a drug (excluding over-the-counter drugs and the like) for off-label use. And that is drug abuse. Furthermore, whether or not you have a prescription does not make the usage of a drug legal. The prescription may have been obtained through fraudulent means, in which case it most certainly is illegal. And I doubt that all those scientists are affected by those disorders.
That does remind me though... I need to mail in my prescription.
I agree. AP classes may be good for high school students who want a "challenge," but it shouldn't be used for courses for a major. I kinda said the same thing in the sibling posts too.
:P I took it while taking another science class, and since then have told others never to combine a programming class with anything else in the summer. Biggest mistake ever...
Wow, I was actually a student in your class
Yep, that's fine. In my opinion, AP credits should only be applied for courses that you would not rely on in the future (i.e., outside of the core classes for the major). Trust me, the only class for EECS that I can think of to use AP credits in is Math 1A. You can use AP credit for biology or chemistry for your natural sciences requirement, and other courses for some of the humanities requirements.
You'll have to take 2 semesters of Reading and Comprehension (English) courses, only 1 of which can be satisfied with AP credit. If you took AP US History, you can get out of the history and institutions requirement. There are some interesting R&C classes, but I just took 1 year of regular English because I decided to do pre-med (and finish off the EECS degree with the minimum number of upper div EECS units...)
I just graduated from EECS at Berkeley last year. Admittedly I kinda sucked at programming and engineering, but that's another matter.
:P That was good because my grades fell after that semester.
Berkeley will take almost all AP exam scores for credit, provided you get the minimum score. I found AP courses to be nothing like the level of college courses, save for straightforward things like calculus and history, where the material (IMO) is generally the same everywhere. Most of the AP courses just counted toward units; I had junior standing after my first semester. Since I took easy classes that first semester, I qualified for the engineering honor societies
Anyway, even if you do get credit for them, I would strongly recommend you retake the classes that matter most. IIRC, you must take the CS and physics classes for EECS anyway; AP credit won't count for fulfilling the major's requirements. You can use AP credit for calculus (Math 1A only), general chemistry, econ, etc. Good luck!
That reminds me of a joke my math professor once told us (though kinda paraphrased):
Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson are in a hot air balloon, when they discover that they are lost. They see a man on the ground and yell, "Excuse me, can you tell me where we are?"
The man, after thinking for a second, shouts back, "You're in a hot air balloon!"
Frustrated by the answer, Watson asks Holmes, "Who was that man?"
"He was a mathematician," Holmes replies.
Watson asks, "How did you know?"
Holmes says, "Well, his answer was precise and well thought-out. And it was completely useless."
Oops, I didn't even read all the linked articles. Joe's last link says the two lawsuits have been moved to the Western District of Arkansas and the Eastern District of Texas, under different judges.
The blog is not "shuttered" per se, but viewable by invitation only. Hopefully, Frenkel will continue to write, but it might be hard with the lawsuit.
The Slashdot headline is misleading -- the study did not compare which company was faster, but compared the rate at which they released zero-day patches. While these numbers are highly skewed by the number of unknown (or undiscovered) vulnerabilities, they're still interesting nonetheless. I doubt either company releases a patch the same day they find out about a vulnerability, and shows the relationships the companies have with security companies (as mentioned in the article). Of course, all of this depends on whether the vulnerabilities are published or not.
The point is not that they followed the law, but that they did not fight it. It's the same reason we were angry at Yahoo! (or its Hong Kong subsidiary) when the company gave away the information for Shi Tao to China. Similarly, most of the American telecommunication companies, most notably AT&T, obliged the Executive Branch's request to give telephone records to the NSA.
Sometimes following a court order does not absolve you of all blame.
I've heard a lot of good things about Gandi too. It's a little pricy for my needs, especially considering the weakening US dollar. But I guess it will have to do. Thanks.