history

I met somebody today who used to own an Apple Lisa.

Do you have any idea how expensive those were?

Google introduced Video.google.com today.

You can apparently search for video, and play it using a slightly updated version of VLC .0.8.2 (which came out yesterday.)

The version that Google puts up for download is for windows only, and uses ActiveX.

I have bacon in the freezer I really should be "taking care" of pretty soon.

This device sounds great. How is the bacon cooled overnight though? Perhaps a nice modification would be a connected tank of Liquid Nitrogen to make sure that the bacon sits nice and cool.

Wake n' Bacon: wake up and smell the... bacon?: "src="http://img.engadget.com/common/images/3868866987697409.jpg?0.44719566945168576" align="top" border="1" height="163" hspace="4" vspace="4" width="420" />

There are oh so many ways to bring home that bacon, but only a precious few to get those lovely saturated fats ready
for your system. But thanks to the Wake n’ Bacon, now you too can shave a few steps off your morning process while also
managing to add a little oily greasiness to your environs. As soon as your alarm goes off, boom, halogen lamp broils
you up some bacon in about 20 minutes no problem—just don’t keep smacking the snooze button, or you might wind up with
some seriously charred remains.



[Via Near Near Future]

Read	Permalink | Email this | Linking Blogs | Comments
© 2005 Weblogs, Inc.

Ads by Google

"

(Via engadget.com.)

The question of whether we are spending enough money to protect the troops in Iraq can best be described by asking the question, "Do American Government officials travel in US Military vehicles when traveling in Iraq?"

The Answer.

Air Guitar World Championships.

There are videos.

Does the use of the phrase "London-Rome Axis" bother anybody else?

If I didn't have dinner plans, I would be here:

Giant Robot: "

Today, the store Giant Robot, known in L.A. and San Francisco for its selection of cool toys, books and clothes (hello, Mr. Dob), opens a New York location - Giant Robot New York - in the East Village. And tonight, there's an opening reception from 6-10PM, with sponsors like Dumpling Man, Glaceau, Uglydoll and Matador/Beggars (we suspect there will be eats, good tunes, and, hopefully, a lifesize Jeero!)! Plus, the artwork of Eishi Takaoka (whose sculpture is on the cover of Haruki Murakami's Kafka on the Shore) will be displayed for through July.

Giant Robot

437 East 9th Street

Between 1st Avenue and Avenue A

"

(Via Gothamist.)

Here and Now

Here and Now
Originally uploaded by satmandu.

David Enders (on the left), before another trip to Baghdad.

H5N1 why don't you love me.

Has a certain ring to it, doesn't it?

Say what you will about AOL, their new AIM.com mail service (which gives everybody with a AIM screen name a mail account) offers 2Gb of IMAP mail.

This will complement my gmail account very very nicely...

Most any Sigur Rós news is good news.

MUSIC: Sigur Rós "More Rock and Roll" on New Album: "Sigur Rós have spent over a year and a half working on their fourth album, according to their recent interview with Icelandic newspaper morgunbla?i? (what vowels are those?), and the results might surprise long-time fans of the band.

The songs i heard didn't exactly fall under the short pop/rock structure which is rumoured to be the theme of the new album, but it's clear that there is a transition in style here: the songs are more focused, while at the same time more 'rock and roll' than previous material. Kjartan, the keyboardist, goes on to say later in the interview that this is precisely what sigur rós is all about: rock and roll. Somehow it is a more popular opinion that the members of Sigur Rós are tea drinking new age hippies who write songs about elves and lava. Jónsi exclaims 'no, we only drink hardcore coffee around these parts'. but then he adds with a smirk 'well, hardcore coffee topped off with a little soy milk'.

Their official site says that the as-yet-unnamed (as if we'd understand it, anyway) album will feature ten songs, has been completed, and is being mixed in New York as we speak.

Suddenly i decide to make a bold move, and ask plainly whether there is any ideology behind the new album. Kjartan does the talking: 'Hmm. It was just a natural progression from the last album. The last album was so heavy, so it felt better to rock this one out. Damn, that was a really lame sentence.'

[Hat-tip: One Louder]

(Written by: Keith)

"

(Via SuicideGirls: News Wire.)

Check out the picture associated with the article.

They have found a second instance of mad cow in the US in less than two weeks.

Factoring in the industrial capture of the US Agriculture Department, this is likely in indicator of a much much larger problem. Now would probably be a good time to stop eating regular beef from your supermarkets, and asking questions when you go out to eat at any restaurant.

Thank the gods I can afford Organic Beef.

I guess it is pork from here on out.

pissing off the roommates

I threw out the roommate's coffee into the kitchen sink.

It was sitting on the island in the kitchen on this warm day, all
lonely.

I opened it, checking to see if it still looked good, but it had a
old milk in coffee thing going.

The small paper cup it was in, a greek cup, was tossed, with its
white plastic cover, slightly stained, unceremoniously into the trash
can, joining the empty can of sweetened condensed milk.

Alas, the roommate still wanted yesterday's coffee.

Alas.

Google for @$$ to @$$.

Jeopardastic

Brandy (yet another friend from Ted' s home town) won on Jeopardy
tonight.

College Quiz Bowlers rock.

gmail tempations

Gmail dangles html editing buttons in front of my face.

So tempting. No. I must resist.

Also, must stop gratuitous use of the ellipsis.

..

FW: [IP] Flag-Burning Amendment and Another Word War

Note that the Daily Show "accidentally" juxtaposed a patriotic sparkler and a small American flag, leading to a flag burning, earlier this week.

To the tune of "killing me softly" now:

Burning my flag for my country...
-----Original Message-----
From: David Farber <dave@farber.net>
Date: Thursday, Jun 23, 2005 6:29 am
Subject: [IP] Flag-Burning Amendment and Another Word War

Begin forwarded message:

From: Lauren Weinstein <lauren@vortex.com>
Date: June 22, 2005 10:41:29 PM EDT
To: dave@farber.net
Cc: lauren@vortex.com
Subject: Flag-Burning Amendment and Another Word War

Dave,

The proposed amendment reads:

"The Congress shall have power to prohibit the physical desecration
of the flag of the United States."

Since it specifically says "physical," we can assume that non-physical representations such as illustrations, photos, and so on are not
covered.

But what does "desecration" mean in this context?

Public burning is obvious, but what about hanging the flag in
unusual orientations, making subtle (or obvious)
alterations/additions, or juxtaposing the physical flag with
unsavory or unpopular items or imagery? We've been trying for
decades to deal with the meaning of "obscenity" -- are we now
setting up for similar battles over yet another word?

One thing seems pretty certain. The passage of such an amendment
would convert the currently very rare, generally ignored act of flag
burning in this country into a potent symbol of political protest
with vastly expanded power to draw attention. As such, we're likely
to see a massive *increase* in flag burning -- and subsequent
crackdowns -- as a result.

One hopes that this isn't what the proponents of the amendment
actually have in mind.

--Lauren--
Lauren Weinstein
lauren@pfir.org or lauren@vortex.com or lauren@eepi.org
Tel: +1 (818) 225-2800
http://www.pfir.org/lauren
Co-Founder, PFIR
- People For Internet Responsibility - http://www.pfir.org
Co-Founder, EEPI
- Electronic Entertainment Policy Initiative - http://www.eepi.org Moderator, PRIVACY Forum - http://www.vortex.com
Member, ACM Committee on Computers and Public Policy
Lauren's Blog: http://lauren.vortex.com
DayThink: http://daythink.vortex.com

-------------------------------------

If you're a history/sci-fi buff, you should pick up Kim Stanley Robinson's excellent The Years of Rice and Salt. A lot more on this in there.

When Zheng He sailed the ocean blue: "

History buff that I am I was shocked to learn from July's issue of National Geographic Magazine that I had never heard of Admiral Zheng He. His story is movie-worthy and his exploits provide a new lens through which one may view South Asia during what were the Dark Ages in Europe and much of Asia. The article about Zheng He was brought to my attention by my father (because the article that immediately follows it was about the Mars rovers). From the article by Frank Viviano [I transcribed most of the quotes below since the full article is not available online]:

Exactly 600 years ago this month the great Ming armada weighed anchor in Nanjing, on the first of seven epic voyages as far west as Africa-almost a century before Christopher Columbus's arrival in the Americas and Vasco da Gama's in India. Even the European expeditions would seem paltry by comparison: All the ships of Columbus and da Gama combined could have been stored on a single deck of a single vessel in the fleet that set sail under Zheng He.




Its commander was, without question, the most towering maritime figure in the 4,000-year annals of China, a visionary who imagined a new world and set out consciously to fashion it. He was also a profoundly unlikely candidate for admiral in anyone's navy, much less that of the Dragon Throne.




The greatest seafarer in China's history was raised in the mountainous heart of Asia, several weeks' travel from the closest port. More improbable yet, Zheng was not even Chinese-he was by origin a Central Asian Muslim. Born Ma He, the son of a rural official in the Mongol province of Yunnan, he had been taken captive as an invading Chinese army overthrew the Mongols in 1382. Ritually castrated, he was trained as an imperial eunuch and assigned to the court of Zhu Di, the bellicose Prince of Yan.




...Renamed Zheng after his exploits at the battle of Zhenglumba, near Beijing, he was chosen to lead one of the most powerful naval forces ever assembled.

"

(Via Sepia Mutiny.)

TECHNOLOGY: Microchip Pioneer Dies at 81: "Over at TotalFark, we call this [sad]

DALLAS - Nobel laureate Jack Kilby, whose 1958 invention of the integrated circuit opened the way for the microchips that are the brains of today's computers, video games, DVD players and cell phones, has died after a battle with cancer. He was 81.



[. . .]



In 1958, his first year working with Texas Instruments in Dallas, Kilby used borrowed equipment to build the first integrated circuit, in which all the components were fabricated in a single piece of semiconductor material half the size of a paper clip. He also co-invented the hand-held calculator.



Kilby's fingernail-size integrated circuit, a forerunner of the microchip used in today's computers, replaced the bulky and unreliable switches and tubes that had been used in the first computing devices.



He won the 2000 Nobel Prize in physics for his work, which according to the Nobel citation 'has laid the foundation of modern information technology, particularly through their invention of rapid transistors, laser diodes and integrated circuits.'

Without Mr. Kilby's work, there would be no Suicide Girls . . . and a world without hot goth boobies on my computer is a world I don't even want to think about. So thank you, Mr. Kilby. May you rest in peace.



The full story, including some pretty cool thoughts from his friends and co-workers, is at Yahoo News,

(Written by: WilWheaton)

"

(Via SuicideGirls: News Wire.)

Nooooooooooo

Nooooooooooo
Originally uploaded by Valeriekt.

Cyrus is a man.

US Dept of Breakfast

US Dept of Breakfast
Originally uploaded by satmandu.

E pluribus bacon,

In bacon, veritas.

Shana's old laptop

Shana's old laptop
Originally uploaded by satmandu.

The Powerbook 190cs.



"This is a prop"

"(for funny)"

I am a terrible person

Shana's birthday presents are sitting in my fridge.

And there they shall stay, all weekend.

Before Warren posts it, a two faced cat.

Stop Hurting My Country

When traveling along a curve, you can take a tangent from the point you happen to be at, which will show you the direction you would travel if you flew off of the curve at that moment.

The curve I'm plotting in my head tends to travel through each disturbing story I read about the direction of this country. If you want links, you can ask for them, but it shouldn't be too hard to find them for yourself.

Sixteen year old girls who only speak english being sent back to Bangladesh because they dared to, like many many other high schoolers, explore their faith.

Congressmen who decide that Crony Capitalism is too moderate of a position to stand on, and unabashedly form symbiotic by the book corrupt relationships with companies in their districts they funnel government contracts to.

White House political flacks that edit scientific articles for content based upon their past experiences lobbying against the same.

DOJ lawyers reducing the requested judgement against the Tobacco industry by 120 Billion dollars. (Yes, I have read the rebuttal on this issue by the DOJ lead attorney on this case - but you can not expect to be listened to as an impartial participant in this issue when the higher ups are former attorneys for... the tobacco industry.)

Bye Bye PBS?

Bitching about Democracy in the middle east, in countries such as Iran, and Saudi Arabia, Syria, Pakistan.

This all in the last several days.

What bothers me the most is two years ago, there was at least a semblance (ah the rose colored glasses of looking at yesteryear) of playing by some of the rules.

Be wary of conflicts of interest, be honest with and respect the people you represent. Is this too much to ask?

In the eighties, Reagan's appointee to the EPA James Watts said that there was no reason to worry about the environment since the second coming was at hand.

I now feel that is how the Republicans in power feel about the country. Don't worry. The rapture is at hand.

The tangent from where we are right now is pretty grim. The world doesn't respect us. We are travelling on inertia. We are governed by born again believers in the Great Chain of Being. Where's a Great Awakening when we need one? Billy Graham in a stadium just isn't cutting it any more.

And if you think I am unnecessarily bitter, I'd just like five minutes with your god. Outside. Right now.

Half-male, half-female, all crab: "David Pescovitz:
Fishermen caught a crab in the lower Chesapeake Bay that's literally half male, half female. Among other differences, male blue crabs have deep blue claws while females' claw tips look like they were painted with red nail polish. The fishermen noticed that this particular crab had one of each. Researchers at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science say that the condition, known as bilateral gynandromorphism, is caused by a 'chromosomal mishap.' Studying the rare animal could increase understanding of crab sexual development and breeding behavior. From the Washington Post:

Before turning over the crab to the scientists, (boat captain David) Johnson and other watermen conducted their own experiment into its sex life, with bewildering results. They dropped a female crab, which was just about ready to mate, into its tank.



First, the half-and-half crab cradled the female under his legs, as a male crab would do in preparation for mating.



Then, the crab seemed to lose interest in the female and let her go, Johnson said.



Then a day later . . .



'He ate half of her,' Johnson said.

Link to Washington Post article, Link to Virginia Institute press release (Thanks, Vann Hall!)"

(Via Boing Boing.)

Best fake quote evar.

Mr. President, Democrats are claiming you don't have a mandate. Would
you like one? It's $200 per hour. - Jeff Gannon

jwz points me to this blog, which has this beautiful piece:

It's a measure of our country's desperation that many hopes among US government officials are pinned to the just-completed 1000-mile oil pipeline between Baku on the Caspian Sea and the Turkish port of Ceyhan on the Mediterranean. The idea is to get oil from Kazakhstan on the far eastern side of the Caspian sea through several other former Soviet states, bypassing a shorter, older route through the Black Sea, and creating an alternative to the ongoing horror show of the Persian Gulf.



The main problem is the idea that the American economy, and the easy-motoring lifestyle that holds it hostage, will now depend on a 42-inch wide oil pipe running through nations fraught with Muslim-Christian conflict on top of post-Soviet gangster politics. The good news is that the $4 billion pipe is buried underground so it will not be vulnerable to the small arms so abundant in that part of the world: shoulder-launched missiles, rocket propelled grenades, or .50 caliber bullets. The bad news is that it is only a few feet underground and can still be blown up by five pounds of Semtech strapped to a donkey.

They may be hypocrites but damn it they're our hypocrites.

Blaming the Victim: the latest twists in the Mukhtar Mai saga: "

We reported earlier on Mukhtar Mai / Mukhtaran Bibi, who fought back after having been savagely raped on the orders of her village jirga. Instead of staying silent, she took her rapists to court, and used the compensation awarded by the government to open a school for girls. Her bravery and class made her a cause celebre all over the world.

Unfortunately, her story didn't end there. Recently, she was invited to come speak in the US by ANAA (Asian American Network Against the Abuse of Women). In response the Pakistani government flipped out and put her under house arrest. She is banned from leaving the country, and hasn't been able to see her lawyer.

In phone conversations in the last few days, she said that when she tried to step outside, police pointed their guns at her. To silence her, the police cut off her land line... Ms. Mukhtaran continued her protests by cellphone. But at dawn yesterday the police bustled her off, and there's been no word from her since. Her cellphone doesn't answer.

Asma Jahangir, a Pakistani lawyer who is head of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, said she had learned that Ms. Mukhtaran was taken to Islamabad, furiously berated and told that President Pervez Musharraf was very angry with her. She was led sobbing to detention at a secret location. She is barred from contacting anyone, including her lawyer. [NYT]

Incredibly, the government claims it is just trying to protect her:

Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz told reporters in Islamabad that any security measures in place were for the protection of Ms Mai. [BBC]

And the US government has made it clear that it is unconcerned:

... on Friday, just as all this was happening, President Bush received Pakistan's foreign minister in the White House and praised President Musharraf's 'bold leadership.' [NYT]

"

(Via Sepia Mutiny.)

FW: [IP] Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger for x86 Leaked?

-----Original Message-----
From: David Farber <dave@farber.net>
Date: Monday, Jun 13, 2005 6:39 pm
Subject: [IP] Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger for x86 Leaked?

Begin forwarded message:

From: Benjamin Black <ben@layer8.net>
Date: June 13, 2005 4:03:45 PM EDT
To: dave@farber.net
Subject: Re: [IP] Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger for x86 Leaked?

Dave,

While something claiming to be Tiger x86 might be on the warez sites, those hoping to have OS X on their PC will be sorely disappointed when it boots (unless they have a thing for really disturbing porn).

Ben

-------------------------------------
http://v2.listbox.com/member/?listname=ip

Archives at: http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/

This is what I've been thinking about the last several days, before I bought my air conditioner. But this setup would work especially well hooked up to a faucet...

Good thing I don't pay for water.

jwz wrote xscreensaver...


I for one am much looking forward to Sunbird...

Vendor lockin sucks.

Apple lockin sucks harder.

that was, in fact, the final straw.: "

Remember last week, when I tried to buy exactly the same audio card that 99.99% of the world owns and convince Linux to be able to play two sounds at once? Yeah, turns out, that was the last straw. I bought an iMac, and now I play my music with iTunes.

This took... let me see... just about zero effort. Well, I still have to go buy some longer audio cables, but that's it.

I plugged a mouse with three buttons and a wheel into the Mac, and it just worked without me having to read the man page on xorg.conf or anything. Oh frabjous day.

Go ahead and say 'I told you so' if it makes you feel better.

Anyway, this means several things:

• You shouldn't be holding your breath waiting for a new release of Gronk.

• I also got to stop using the crapware known as Mozilla Sunbird; now I can use iCal, which Just Works (for example, the alarms actually go off, and it doesn't periodically shit a WAV file into my .ics file.)

• The future direction of xscreensaver has become... highly ambiguous.

I'm still using my other Linux machine to read mail and run XEmacs, but I'm hoping to wean myself of that eventually, one way or another. If all goes well, then in six months or so, the only Linux machines I'll ever have to touch will have no video or sound cards in them at all.

The only thing I couldn't figure out how to do: compile xscreensaver. It stopped working some time between OSX 10.3 and 10.4 due to some GTK/Fink stupidity where pkgconfig/gobject-2.0.pc never gets installed. I'm trying not to care. That's going quite well.

Dear Slashdot: please don't post about this. Screw you guys."

(Via jwz.)

dork love

Dave's DVD player remote has the same battery as my first graphing calculator (which used three), the Casio 7500, which had 26 user accessible registers and a whole 4 kilobytes of NVRAM. The manual that came with it had a program you could enter into the calculator to solve quadratic equations. I wrote my first program on that machine, a clock that updated every minute, that had a timing loop that had to be hand adjusted.

Sigh.

Did I mention the battery in the remote is almost dead.

Dave? Are you listening? You need 1 CR2025 battery.

Z is for Zedra

Procrastination is hitting full steam this morning.
First, Neil Gaiman on Tea. I'm not quite sure what it is about British writers that brings them to write about tea. I have a hankering suspicion that it may be Love.

I had a discussion with a roommate last night about the defense of the religious. For the record, I'm not opposed to the religious. I'm opposed to the religious ignorant - those that cloak their ignorance in a mantle of religion, and thus denigrate all other religious people.

Now for some gleeful moral equivalence: If a vocal minority of ice cream eaters (say in the larger tens of millions) suddenly takes to fits of savagely beating a good friend of yours (for the sake of the argument, let us call him progress), you might begin to give the ice cream eaters (who coincidentally largely look away and focus on sucking on their cones) some dirty looks.

Just a leetle bit, no?

An article at the nyt reports on the growing movement of the religious ignorant to spread bigotry through the land:

Georgia State Senator Nancy Schaefer on gay/straight alliance clubs in (gay/straight integrated) high schools:

"I just don't feel like homosexual clubs have anything to do with readin', writin' and 'rithmetic."

And now for something completely different

I had forgotten about Pokey.

No longer.

Store Wars

Thanks to Kt for this cute gem:

http://www.storewars.org/flash/index.html

I miss Bill Nye.

Two Words: Road Trip.

Singing at the gates or Mordor: "

Spamalot and The Light in the Piazza were the big winners at Sunday’s 59th annual Tony Awards. Any early favorites for next year? From April’s Detroit Free Press:

The next big thing in theater, the musical version of ‘The Lord of the Rings,’ is scheduled for its world premiere in 2006 in Toronto. Previews won’t begin until Feb. 2 and the show has yet to be cast but producer Kevin Wallace offered a preview Thursday night to tour operators and other invited guests at the Renaissance Center.




Emphasizing ‘LOTR’s’ human aspects before he mentioned its special effects, Wallace called the show ‘as powerful and emotional a story as you’ve ever experienced in the theater.’




Some particulars: The show will run 3 1/2 hours, including two intermissions; the music is by Indian composer A.R. Rahman (‘Bombay Dreams’) and Finnish folk group Varttina, and there will be Hobbits mingling with playgoers before the show.

Playbill.com recently noted that advance tickets are already being snatched up:

In the first week of sales toward the February 2006 Toronto world premiere of the musical The Lord of the Rings, theatregoers snapped up $7 million (Canadian) in tickets, a spokesperson for the Toronto producers confirmed.




One might cringe imagining a quirky show tune of sweet admonition from Frodo called ‘Oh, Sam!,’ about hobbit pal Sam’s dogged faithfulness. Don’t expect it: Traditional musical theatre is not what India’s most popular composer, A.R. Rahman, and the Finnish group Värttinä, collaborating with Christopher Nightingale, write.




What would the elves sing? What is the sound a hobbit dances to? Can an orc carry a tune?




Expect varied Asian- and European-influenced sounds to suggest the many tribes of the story.

No word yet as to whether or not the Orcs will dance Bollywood style in the background.

"

(Via Sepia Mutiny.)

Köszönöm to Antonia enlightening me on the correct spelling of köszönöm.

Also, Shanakah nears...

I want gills.

It amuses me to no end that the Times does reviews of hip-hop albums.

Where is the stodginess of that old fashioned journalism?

FW: [IP] Clyde Prestowitz: Globalization game

This reminds me a discussion I had with Ziv this morning about the problem with Consumption's valuation in GDP.

-----Original Message-----
From: David Farber <dave@farber.net>
Date: Sunday, Jun 5, 2005 7:58 am
Subject: [IP] Clyde Prestowitz: Globalization game

Begin forwarded message:

From: "John F. McMullen" <observer@westnet.com>
Date: June 5, 2005 4:58:15 AM EDT
To: johnmac's living room <johnmacsgroup@yahoogroups.com>
Cc: Dave Farber <farber@cis.upenn.edu>
Subject: Clyde Prestowitz: Globalization game
From the Boston Globe -- http://www.boston.com/news/globe/ editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2005/05/31/globalization_game/

Globalization game
By Clyde Prestowitz

US PRESSURE on Beijing to revalue its yuan is now dominating the news, but China is only following Japan as a manifestation of a much bigger problem. Globalization is broken. As currently structured, it is undermining US productive capability and becoming unsustainable.

Without fundamental change in the rules of globalization, any conceivable yuan revaluation now won't have much impact on world economic imbalances. Remember that economists said a 20-30 percent revaluation of Japan's yen (then at 260 yen to the dollar) would balance trade in the 1980s. But the yen has more than doubled since then, and Japan still maintains a large trade surplus both globally and with the United States, as do all of the world's major economies.

The real problem is that globalization is a different game for many countries than it is for America. While China's peg of the yuan to the dollar is now the focus of criticism, most Asian countries have long managed their currencies to remain weak against the dollar in order to stimulate their exports. Japan has spent over $300 billion in currency intervention in recent years to keep the dollar up and the yen and export prices down. In addition, many countries offer tax holidays, financial incentives, and protected markets to attract new facilities in ''strategic" industries that no one expects to move just because currencies fluctuate.

These actions follow from policies specifically aimed at accumulating large trade and dollar surpluses as a matter both of stimulating growth from exports and of assuring national economic sovereignty by avoiding dependence on foreign lenders.

While US state governors extend financial incentives to attract investment, they have only peanuts to offer compared to foreign countries, and, of course, do not control their own currencies. The federal government has long shown no interest in attracting foreign factories to or keeping US factories on its shores. Rather, America's emphasis is entirely on consumption-led growth. Banks aggressively offer credit cards to students with only part-time jobs. Home equity loans with tax deductible interest payments are used to pay for vacation trips. Not only does the White House call for tax cuts in wartime, but tells consumers it's their patriotic duty to buy more.
Americans at all levels really do believe that debt and deficits don't matter.

The confluence of America's consumerism with the strategic, export- led growth policies of many other countries has produced a world with one net consumer, the United States, which now consumes about $700 billion a year more than it produces. All other major economies are net sellers, depending directly or indirectly on US-bound exports for much or all of their growth. Because America consumes more than it makes, it must borrow from abroad to finance its excess consumption.
In a kind of vendor finance program, a few foreign central banks provide the financing by buying US Treasury bills and other US assets.

Thus, globalization has evolved into a kind of pyramid scheme. To maintain global growth, the United States must consume and borrow ever more while foreign banks buy ever more US Treasuries so their producers can export ever more.

America has long been ambivalent about this situation. Consumers love the low import prices, US CEOs love the foreign tax holidays, and the
US government loves the foreign lending that helps keep US interest rates low. But the chronically overvalued dollar and the foreign investment incentives also cause a steady transfer of production and technology abroad while putting downward pressure on wages and building large foreign claims on future US income. This results in political pressures and US charges of unfairness against trading partners with big surpluses. In the past, cosmetic ''fixes" like
''voluntary" export restraint agreements were used to relieve pressure while the fundamental forces kept operating until the next
''fix."

Now the sustainability of the system has been put in question by the entrance of 3 billion new players from China, India, and the former
Soviet bloc at a moment when the Internet and global air express have negated time and distance along with the long standard economic assumptions that labor, capital, and technology don't move between countries.

These new players are unusual. While having the low wages of developing countries, several hundred million of them have first world skills. That they are effectively next door and also planning to grow by exporting to US markets dramatically increases the pressure on an already stressed system. Even for America there are ultimate limits on consumption and borrowing. US borrowing already absorbs 80 percent of the world's available savings. At 100 percent the global economy will be in deep crisis.

The only way to avoid that is to insist that the globalization game be played the same way by all its players. Sure, China needs to revalue, but without other big changes, globalization as we know it will be on life support.

Clyde Prestowitz is the author of the recently published ''Three
Billion New Capitalists: The Great Shift of Wealth and Power to the
East."

-------------------------------------

Archives at: http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/

FW: [IP] !!! More on Apple to Ditch IBM

Now this sounds quite credible.

-----Original Message-----
From: David Farber <dave@farber.net>
Date: Saturday, Jun 4, 2005 7:47 pm
Subject: [IP] !!! More on Apple to Ditch IBM

Begin forwarded message:

From: Anthony Baker <anthony@thinkbigideas.com>
Date: June 4, 2005 6:06:43 PM EDT
To: David Farber <dave@farber.net>
Subject: More on Apple to Ditch IBM

Dave,

This is a post from Anonymous Coward over on Slashdot. He's provided a lot of great insight on Apple issues in the past and this message, in response to another post, seems to make a lot of sense.

If true, it just means that Apple might be arranging a deal with
Intel to have them manufacture PowerPC chips for them -- not switching to the x86 chipset.

-----------

You are close but your anger is clouding your vision. I will fix up your list.

- IBM and Apple sign a multi chip agreement with very specific clock speed, power usage, production quantities and target dates built into the contract. the first chip is the PPC970.

- Jobs and IBM publicly trumpets that the chip will hit 3GHz in a year's time which is actually well below the contractual promises IBM made.

- Jobs and IBM get humiliated by the fact they didn't even come close and still aren't there after 2 years.

- Jobs throws constant fits and points out that IBM has missed every metric they contractually promised to meet. Jobs also points out that the way the contract is structured that Apple now has a right to a significant chunk of IBM IP and the right to shop for a manufacturer who is able to produce any and all of the chips under the original agreement.

While this is unfolding, IBM has been making the same pie in the sky promises to Sony and MS. As with Apple, IBM begins significantly scaling back the promises made to Sony and MS.

- Jobs get jealous of the attention paid to said console manufacturers

- Jobs exercises the options available and IBM gets taken to the cleaners.

I will restate. The contract Apple has with IBM has a "Moto" contingency. There are extremely tough provisions in the contract that Apple insisted upon to prevent another Motorola scenario from happening. IBM had no problem with the provisions because they were positive the could beet the goals by two in half the time. IBM fucked up badly.

Apple now owns a large amount of PPC IP and Intel will now be manufacturing and designing PPC chips.

One last comment on the Altivec "debacle." Considering that 99% of the chips IBM will manufacture over the next five years will have
Altivec or a close derivative, the debacle is IBM's blindness to the importance of vector processing for so long.
-------------------------------------

Archives at: http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/

Ok, this news is everywhere. Having said that, I'm very very curious to see how apple pulls off promoting its outdated PPC hardware since people know that there's new hardware coming.

Palm has had this problem for the last year, where they announced PalmOS 6.0 (Cobalt), and then immediately pointed out that there was a version coming right after that with the features everybody wants. Not surprisingly, everybody has been waiting for PalmOS 6.1. Then Palm announced that they were switching to Linux, and we all want to wait till that comes out...

There's also the story of the PC maker in the early 80s which started selling a model, and then immediately announced a better model that wasn't going to be out for many months. Everybody stopped buying their current model, and Osbourne went out of business shortly thereafter.

But I hope that Apple does succeed at this, and I look forward to making a tidy profit installing OS X on your PC (because say what they will, we WILL find ways to run OS X on your PC.)

Steve Jobs, like Howard Hughes, Mystifies: "

Some men dream the future. He built it.

Steve Jobs, the maverick who has architected one of the greatest comebacks in the history of Silicon Valley, continues to prove that he is a modern day Howard Hughes. Unpredictable, charming, loving, petulant, and perhaps more than anything deviously mysterious. But more than anything brilliant. When everyone including Intel’s own CEO designate said, that it would be a cold day in hell, before Apple uses Intel’s x86 chips, Jobs goes ahead and does it anyway.

It is a Machiavellian move, directed to rattle the Rajahs of Redmond. It is a subtle message - all things equal, Apple OS is much better than Microsoft’s Windows and the market place will prove it. You might think it is bit of conjecture, but look at the reality of the situation. Now Apple can get Intel’s marketing subsidies. The economics of x86 that Microsoft so adroitly has made work over decades now start to benefit its rival, in the mainstay PC business. The price and speed factors, two issues the Wintel PC makers have so often touted are now working for Apple as well. That leaves the platform - Windows XP versus OS-X! Insecure versus Secure! Work versus Fun! Bill versus Steve!

So how do I see this playing out?


First, this deal is going to be all about the laptops, especially those which can handle OS-X nicely, are light weight and consume less power. Because if that was not so, then Apple could as easily have signed a deal with AMD, which makes better x86 chips for the desktop. IBM has failed to deliver the low power consuming yet muscular versions of its G5 chips fine tuned for Powerbooks. Secondly, I think Apple will exploit Intel’s chips for often rumored Tablet PC, that could have features in common with Nokia 770 tablet. I would not be surprised that Monday morning, the announcement circles around XScale, or low powered Centrino chips.

The implications of this announcement for rest of the industry are not trivial. Intel, with this deal, and its previous efforts with Linux, is willing to part ways with its partner in crime, Microsoft. Expect, Microsoft to get cozier with AMD. It also would ensure that AMD chips might end up in Dell machines, since all bets are off. These are trying times for Microsoft, but I would not even wager even a dime against Chairman Gates.

There is more to this move, and it has got nothing to do with the PC platform. Its all about the consumer electronics devices. Jobs knows that he has to get the Apple a bigger footprint in the computer business, if he can successfully execute on his CE strategy. It needs to ensure that it can still use iPod as the carrot and the stick, not just for consumers but also for the media business. He needs to ensure his DRM is a better option than Windows. In his own autocratic way he wants the world to march to his tune. And if consumers respond well, he might get his wish.

Wall Street Journal has just confirmed that on Monday, Apple is going to announce that it is slowly going to transition to the x86 chips. C/Net had reported on Friday that Apple would make an announcement on Monday at WWDC. WSJ had reported about the likelihood in its Heard On The Street column on May 23rd. (Thanks Bill!)

PS: Just to clarify, this means Apple will make computers that will use Intel x86 chips, not that you can run OS-X on a Stink Pad.

"

(Via Om Malik on Broadband.)

Interesting things come up when you google for "2850 hardware RNG".

Another excellent centrist pithy political blog.

Nature abhors a vacuum, and the Bush administration abhors a truce. Not coincidentally, many people think that vacuums and the Bush administration both suck.

Krispy Kreme's free doughnut day: "Today only, Krispy Kreme celebrates Doughnut Day by giving away a free doughnut of your choice at all participating retail stores, as we mentioned...(more)"

(Via dealnews - 20 most recent deals..)

Beautiful Photos of Calcutta's other big train station, Howrah (which was always across the bridge for me).

[IP] Diebold Optical Scan Voting System Hacked (3 Ways)

-----Original Message-----
From: David Farber <dave@farber.net>
Date: Wednesday, Jun 1, 2005 9:20 am
Subject: [IP] Diebold Optical Scan Voting System Hacked (3 Ways)

Begin forwarded message:

From: EEkid@aol.com
Date: May 31, 2005 9:55:00 PM EDT
To: dave@farber.net
Subject: Diebold Optical Scan Voting System Hacked (3 Ways)
Diebold Optical Scan Voting System Hacked (3 Ways)
Tuesday, 31 May 2005, 1:10 pm
Article: www.blackboxvoting.org
Diebold Optical Scan Voting System Hacked (3 Ways) - BBV Exclusive

http://www.blackboxvoting.org/ - Source URL

Tallahassee, FL: "Are we having fun yet?"

This is the message that appeared in the window of a county optical scan machine, startling Leon County Information Systems Officer
Thomas James. Visibly shaken, he immediately turned the machine off.

Diebold's opti-scan (paper ballot) voting system uses a curious memory card design, offering penetration by a lone programmer such that standard canvassing procedures cannot detect election manipulation.

The Diebold optical scan system was used in about 800 jurisdictions in 2004. Among them were several hotbeds of controversy: Volusia
County (FL); King County (WA); and the New Hampshire primary election, where machine results differed markedly from hand-counted localities.

New regs: Counting paper ballots forbidden

Most states prohibit elections officials from checking on optical scan tallies by examining the paper ballots. In Washington, Secretary of State Sam Reed declared such spontaneous checkups to be "unauthorized recounts" and prohibited them altogether. New Florida regulations will forbid counting paper ballots, even in recounts, except in highly unusual circumstances. Without paper ballot hand- counts, the hacks demonstrated below show that optical-scan elections can be destroyed in seconds.

A little man living in every ballot box

The Diebold optical scan system uses a dangerous programming methodology, with an executable program living inside the electronic ballot box. This method is the equivalent of having a little man living in the ballot box, holding an eraser and a pencil. With an executable program in the memory card, no Diebold opti-scan ballot box can be considered "empty" at the start of the election.

The Black Box Voting team proved that the Diebold optical scan program, housed on a chip inside the voting machine, places a call to a program living in the removable memory card during the election.
The demonstration also showed that the executable program on the memory card (ballot box) can easily be changed, and that checks and balances, required by FEC standards to catch unauthorized changes, were not implemented by Diebold -- yet the system was certified anyway.

The Diebold system in Leon County, Florida succumbed to multiple attacks.

Ion Sancho: Truth and Excellence in Elections

Leon County Elections Supervisor Ion Sancho and Information Systems
Officer Thomas James had already implemented security procedures in
Leon County far exceeding the norm in elections management. This testing, done by a team of researchers including Black Box Voting, independent filmmakers, security expert Dr. Herbert Thompson, and special consultant Harri Hursti, was authorized by Mr. Sancho, in an unusual act of openness and courage, to identify any remaining holes in Leon County's election security.

The results of the memory card hack demonstration will assist elections supervisors throughout the U.S., by emphasizing the critical importance of accounting for each and every memory card and protecting access.

Findings:

Computer expert Harri Hursti gained control over Leon County memory cards, which handle the vote-reporting from the precincts. Dr.
Herbert Thompson, a security expert, took control of the Leon County central tabulator by implanting a trojan horse-like script.

Two programmers can become a lone programmer, says Hursti, who has figured out a way to control the entire central tabulator by way of a single memory card swap, and also how to make tampered polling place tapes match tampered central tabulator results. This more complex approach is untested, but based on testing performed May 26, Hursti says he has absolutely no reason to believe it wouldn't work.

Three memory card tests demonstrated successful manipulation of election results, and showed that 1990 and 2002 FEC-required safeguards are being violated in the Diebold version 1.94 opti-scan system.

Three memory card hacks

1. An altered memory card (electronic ballot box) was substituted for a real one. The optical scan machine performed seamlessly, issuing a report that looked like the real thing. No checksum captured the change in the executable program Diebold designed into the memory card.

2. A second altered memory card was demonstrated, using a program that was shorter than the original. It still worked, showing that there is also no check for the number of bytes in the program.

3. A third altered memory card was demonstrated with the votes themselves changed, showing that the data block (votes) can be altered without triggering any error message.

How to "Roll over the odometer" in Diebold optical scan machines

Integer overflow checks do not seem to exist in this system, making it possible to stuff the ballot box without triggering any error message. This would be like pre-loading minus 100 votes for Tom and plus 100 votes for Rick (-100+100=ZERO) -- changing the candidate totals without changing the overall number of votes.

A more precise comparison would be this: The odometer on a car rolls over to zero after 999,999. In the Diebold system tested, the rollover to zero happens at 65,536 votes. By pre-loading 65,511 votes for a candidate, after 25 real votes appear (65,511 plus 25 = 65,536) the report "rolls over" so that the candidate's total is ZERO.

This manipulation can be balanced out by preloading votes for candidate "A" at 65,511 and candidate "B" at 25 votes -- producing an articifial 50-vote spread between the candidates, which will not be obvious after the first 25 votes for candidate "A" roll over to zero.
The "negative 25" votes from the odometer rollover counterbalance the "plus 25" votes for the other candidates, making the total number of votes cast at the end of the day exactly equal to the number of voters.

While testing the hack on the Leon County optical scan machine,
Hursti was stunned to find that pre-stuffing the ballot box to "roll over the odometer" produced no error message whatsoever.*

*We did not have the opportunity to scan ballots after stuffing the ballot box. Therefore, the rollover to zero was not tested in Leon
County. This integer overflow capability is discernable in the program itself. We did have the opportunity to test a pre-stuffed ballot box, which showed that pre-loaded ballot boxes do not trigger any error message.

Simple tweaks to pass L&A test and survive zero tape

Though the additional tweaks were not demonstrated at the Leon County elections office, Hursti believes that the integer overflow hack can be covered up on the "zero tape" produced at the beginning of the election. The programming to cover up manipulations during the "logic
& accuracy test" is even simpler, since the program allows you to specify on which reports (and, if you like, date and time of day) the manipulation will affect.

The testing demonstrated, using the actual voting system used in a real elections office, that Diebold programmers developed a system that sacrifices security in favor of dangerously flexible programming, violating FEC standards and calling the actions of ITA testing labs and certifiers into question.

In the case of Leon County, inside access was used to achieve the hacks, but there are numerous ways to introduce the hacks without inside access. Outside access methods will be described in the technical report to be released in mid-June.

Security concerns

Putting an executable program into removable memory card "ballot boxes" -- and then programming the opti-scan chip to call and invoke whatever program is in the live ballot box during the middle of an election -- is a mind-boggling design from a security standpoint.
Combining this idiotic design with a program that doesn't even check to see whether someone has tampered with it constitutes negligence and should result in a product recall.

Counties that purchased the Diebold 1.94 optical scan machines should not pay for any upgraded program; instead, Diebold should be required to recall the faulty program and correct the problem at its own expense.

None of the attacks left any telltale marks, rendering all audits and logs useless, except for hand-counting all the paper ballots.

Is it real? Or is it Memorex?

For example, Election Supervisor Ion Sancho was unable to tell, at first, whether the poll tape printed with manipulated results was the real thing. Only the message at the end of the tape, which read "Is this real? Or is it Memorex?" identified the tape as a tampered version of results.

In another test, Congresswoman Corrine Brown (FL-Dem) was shocked to see the impact of a trojan implanted by Dr. Herbert Thompson. She asked if the program could be manipulated in such a way as to flip every fifth vote.

"No problem," Dr. Thompson replied.

"It IS a problem. It's a PROBLEM!" exclaimed Brown, whose district includes the troubled Volusia County, along with Duval County -- both currently using the Diebold opti-scan system.

This system is also used in Congressman John Conyers' home district, in contentious King County, Washington, and in Lucas County, Ohio
(where six election officials resigned or were suspended after many irregularities were found.)

Diebold optical scans were used in San Diego for its ill-fated mayoral election in Nov. 2004.

- - - - - - - - - - -

Optical scan systems have paper ballots, but election officials are crippled in their ability to hand count these ballots due to restrictive state regulations and budget limitations.

The canvassing (audit) procedure used to certify results from optical scan systems involves comparing the "poll tapes" (cash register-like results receipts) with the printout from the central tabulator. These tests demonstrate that both results can be manipulated easily and quickly.

Minimum requirements to perform this hack:

1. A single specimen memory card from any county using the Diebold
1.94 optical scan series. (These cards were seen scattered on tables in King County, piled in baskets accessible to the public in Georgia, and jumbled on desktops in Volusia county.)

2. A copy of the compiler for the AccuBasic program. (These compilers have been fairly widely distributed by Diebold and its predecessor company, and there are workarounds if no compiler is available.)

3. Modest working language of any one of the higher level computer languages (Pascal, C, Cobol, Basic, Fortran...) along with introductory-level knowledge of assembler or machine language.
(Machine language knowledge needed is less than an advanced refrigerator or TV repairmen needs. The optical scan system is much simpler than modern appliances).

The existence of the executable program in the memory card was discernable from a review of the Diebold memos. The test hacks took just a few hours for Black Box Voting consultants to develop.

Nearly 800 jurisdictions conducted a presidential election on this system. This system is so profoundly hackable that an advanced-level
TV repairman can manipulate votes on it.

Black Box Voting asked Dr. Thompson and Hursti to examine the central tabulator and the optical scan system after becoming concerned that not enough attention had been paid to optical scans, tabulators and remote access.

Thompson and Hursti each found the vulnerabilities for their respective hacks in less than 24 hours.

"Open for Business"

When it comes to this optical-scan system, as Hursti says, "It's not that they left the door open. There is no door. This system is 'open for business.'"

The question now is: How brisk has business been? Based on this new evidence, it is time to sequester and examine the memory cards used with Diebold optical scans in Nov. 2004.

The popularity of tamper-friendly machines that are "open for business" in heavily Democratic areas may explain the lethargy with which Democratic leaders have been approaching voting machine security concerns.

The enthusiasm with which Republicans have endorsed machines with no paper ballots at all indicates that neither party really wants to have intact auditing of elections.

The ease with which a system -- which clearly violates dozens of FEC standards going back to 1990 -- was certified calls into question the honesty, competence, and personal financial transactions of both testing labs and NASED certifiers.

Revamp and update hand-counted paper ballot technology?

Perhaps it is time to revisit the idea of hand-counted paper ballots, printed by machines for legibility, with color-coded choices for quick, easy, accurate sorting and counting. We should also take another look at bringing counting teams in when the polls close, to relieve tired poll workers.

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0505/S00381.htm

------------------------------------
Archives at: http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/

I am very very very close to wiping OS X from my machine and installing OpenBSD or linux.

grrrr.

What's the point of a very complicated beautiful operating system for me if it keeps crashing, can't sync with my palm properly, and can't switch between wireless modem and Wifi.

How long is it going to be before a Bagle variant appears that doesn't download from a preset list of URLs, but instead has an embedded trackerless Bittorrent client.

You Windows users are so screwed.

No, You windows users are so going to screw us over...

Interview with the Hitchens Brothers:

Female audience member Excuse me. I'm not usually awkward at all but I'm sitting here and we're asked not to smoke. And I don't like being in a room where smoking is going on.


CH (smoking heavily): Well, you don't have to stay, do you darling. I'm working here and I'm your guest. OK . This is what I like.


IK Would you just stub that one out?


CH No. I cleared it with the festival a long time ago. They let me do it. If anyone doesn't like it they can kiss my ass.


(Woman walks out)

A glance at a WSJ sitting on a desk, which in turn was reporting on a site ballyhooed using something called blogging pointed me to Backpackit.com.

It feels like a very elegant (elegant == Good) response to the world of CRM apps that want you to customize your workflow to their database design.

Backpackit lets you create bunches of web based to-do lists in a wiki format.

I'm trying it out...

There's something to finding originality on the web in a phrase that has never been used before, at least according to google.

Here's "Forensic UI Design".

Enter Spring

After a week of sogginess in the fifties, it even looks like spring.

Charging the iPod

The airport express works great, considering the USB ports in my laptop are dead.

moral equivalency

I'm sick of all this posturing over the defense of zygotic life. Mr. President, when, I ask of you, will you be dealing with the far larger issue of tangled iPod headphone cords?

Day after day I deal with a tangle of white cords. The productivity lost must be immeasurable.

Come now. Surely at least a Blue Ribbon Commission.

My left hard contact snapped in two before I put it in my eye.

I did not put it in my eye.

grrr.

Where's the cheapest place to get an eye exam in NYC?

Any recommendations on hard contacts?

After cursory research, the Boston XO lenses show ridiculous oxygen permeability - which is good, right?

The Cafe WiFi backlash:

I also just found a (non starbucks) cafe a couple of blocks from me that also seems to have WiFi and a wine list.

Coffeeshop Turns off Wi-Fi on Weekends: "

It's too early to say whether it's a trend, but Victrola Coffee & Art in Seattle shuts down its free Wi-Fi on Saturday and Sunday: I spoke to co-owner and co-founder Jen Strongin today after a colleague tipped me to the fact that this lovely, single-shop coffee establishment had decided to experiment with taking back its culture by turning off the Wi-Fi juice on weekends.

Strongin said that the five-year-old cafe added free Wi-Fi when it seemed their customers wanted it a couple of years ago. It initially brought in more people, she said, but over the past year 'we noticed a significant change in the environment of the cafe.' Before Wi-Fi, 'People talked to each other, strangers met each other,' she said. Solitary activities might involve reading and writing, but it was part of the milieu. 'Those people co-existed with people having conversations,' said Strongin.

But 'over the past year it seems that nobody talks to each other any more,' she said. On the weekends, 80 to 90 percent of tables and chairs are taken up by people using computers. Many laptop users occupy two or more seats by themselves, as well. Victrola isn't on the way to anywhere; it's in the middle of a vibrant stretch of shops and restaurants on Capitol Hill's 15th Ave. It's exactly the kind of place that you want to sit down in, not just breeze through.

Worse than just the sheer number of laptop users, Strongin noted, is that many of these patrons will camp six to eight hours--and not buy anything. This seemed astounding to me, but she said that it was typical, not unusual. The staff doesn't want to have to enforce the cafe's unspoken policy of making a purchase to use the space (and the Wi-Fi), and on the occasions that they approach a non-buyer about a purchase asking, 'Can I get you a beverage?' the squatter often becomes defensive, explains they've bought a lot in the past or just the day before.

'It's just really really difficult. We've had so many heated debates about it. We want people to linger at the cafe. We're not a fast-food coffeeshop. We want people to feel comfortable staying here as long as they please,' Strongin said.

They've gone two weekends with no Wi-Fi, and so far, they're pleased with the results. The staff 'loves it,' she said, and regular customers are 'coming up to us and thanking us.' They have received a few nasty emails. But Strongin said that last Sunday was one of the best revenue days they've had on the weekends in a while. 'It was kind of a bold move.'

Strongin says that Victrola isn't interested in charging for Wi-Fi as a tool to limit or moderate use, and still thinks that free Wi-Fi is a great amenity that they can offer their customers at the right time. They have no plans to remove it entirely.

But, she said, 'I don't like going into a cafe, any cafe, including my own, and just seeing a sea of laptops and people not interacting.'

"

(Via Wi-Fi Networking News.)

Democratic Foreign Policy.

I forgot if Clark had an e at the end of his name today.

So sad...

The benefit of a liberal arts education.

Slashdot bans its own rss feed

A note on "unmarried and had no children" in the obituaries of gay men who have partners.

Rasputina at Southpaw, Wednesday

So we saw Rasputina tonight at Southpaw in Brooklyn, a venue comparable in tenor to venerable Blind Pig. (I also saw a Pig being carried across Union St in Brooklyn tonight, but that's another story.)

The concept of rock with cellos is a good one. Adding a witty front girl with cowboy boots and a headband with a feather sticking out Indian style, better.

Then you add a sidekick cellist in dreads and make lots of "Oh Look at Me, I'm anti-Bush" comments and you start to lose me a little.

It was quite an energetic show (coming nowhere near that of Amy Ray) but still fun. We had a lovely medley (sp?) thrown at us (more medleys please...) and also a very nice cover of Barracuda immediately preceded by the promise to go classical now, by which they indicated was playing music with class, such that class might rub off on the audience.

As if playing cellos already isn't classy enough.

Zing.

Power Outage in Moscow

In an event harkening back to Soviet Russia, there is currently a
massive power outage in Moscow, causing major disruptions to Russian
internet traffic.

A poster on slashdot points out that luckily for all of you, http://
bride.ru is still up.

Cheney has a Posse

I'd like to take this opportunity to entirely concur with my now distant colleague Antonia on this matter:

Woof woof, it's sausage time!

Speaking of sausage, I discovered a quaint little Hungarian Meat Market (take that as you will) between 84th & 80th on 2nd Ave. I saw some sausage there (take that as you will) that quite poignantly reminded me of the sausage from Budapest Duty Free so brazenly confiscated by US Customs at JFK...


[Edit: The day finally arrived when my roommate chastised me on spelling. Lordy lordy. Thanks. (problem now corrected.]

There's a very very good article here on Law Professor Lawrence Lessig and the American Boychoir School.

Laura Bush is traipsing through the middle east congratulating despots on their support of democracy.

Anybody who had any problems with Hillary Clinton while her husband was in office should step back and get some context...

The exercise of power to destroy a church.

It is exactly as I had expected.

Most Excellent

For the second time in ten years, I have read the term consilience in a book.

This makes me happy.

Catblogging

Catblogging
Originally uploaded by satmandu.

The new firefox alphas have the code name of "Deer Park".

Hmmmm. I'm seeing some Nugent cross promotion here...

sage words on episode 3 from a slashdot thread

However, to look at this and see that as the overriding point of the trilogy is to miss the point: the one critical mistake that could've averted Anakin's fall and the empire's rise. He didn't use a condom. If Padme/Anakin had used proper birth control, Luke/Leia wouldn't have been born but more importantly Anakin would have lost his biggest motivation to go to the dark side.


So remember kids, for the sake of the galaxy, use proper contraception.

By the way, if you haven't seen it already, Episode three really is
That Good.

theatre shenanigans

It takes serious chutzah to claim that since you were "at the theatre two hours early" you can, alone, hold ten seats for people who aren't at the theatre yet - especially at a showing for SW, a showing that has a huge line before the purported showtime.

Respectfully Denied.

Kevin Smith on Star Wars.

Technocracy: "

Found by Atticus:

"

(Via Warrenellis.com.)

Interview with a former housemate.

Killer Quote: " そうです。僕がアイデアを出しました。表紙は実際にスタックを足場にしたオーバーフロー攻撃を行っている様子です。この本の中でも詳しく説明しています。"

The Military is broken.

I blame the commander in chief, but more than that, I am (again) ashamed.

I can't remember the last time I turned on the Caps Lock key on purpose.

My favorite Tiger feature: "My favorite Tiger feature is that I can turn off the caps lock key. Yes!



I hit that key several times a day accidentally, and it just drives me nuts. I never actually use it for anything—it’s just an annoyance.



No longer!







In case you haven’t run across it, here’s how to turn it off.



1. Open System Preferences.



2. Click on Keyboard & Mouse.



3. At the bottom of the Keyboard tab is a ‘Modifier Keys...’ button. Click it.



4. A sheet appears that lets you remap caps lock (and other keys). Choose ‘No Action’ from the popup menu, then click OK.



It is a thing of beauty."

(Via inessential.com.)

Time for a new monitor

Let's see what the options are...

The Eighties All Over Again

I was told on my way down into the subway station this morning:

"May the force be with you."

[IP] Economics vs. spam

-----Original Message-----
From: "David Farber" <dave@farber.net>
Date: Tuesday, May 17, 2005 6:18 pm
Subject: [IP] Economics vs. spam

_______________ Forward Header _______________
Subject: Re: [IP] Economics vs. spam
Author: "James H. Morris" <james.morris@cmu.edu>
Date: 17th May 2005 5:12:24 pm

Advertising is Flirtation

I liked the van Alstyn and Loder paper on how to fight spam. It is actually being used by a start-up, Vanquish.com. I've sampled their software and it works as a challenge response system, at least.

Based on the premise that a message can have value to both the sender and receiver, they present an elegant argument to show that even a perfect filter is not a good idea. Economists say that these unilateral solutions are bad because they decrease net social welfare, and they look for mechanisms that promote the transmission and reading of those messages where the sum of the value to sender and receiver is positive. To do so, they recommend the obvious: exchange money to pay the partner who is reluctant to communicate. This works fine when you're paying the sender, but paying the receiver is more dubious.

Alladvantage.com tried this scheme in the 90's and failed miserably.

Apparently economists don't frequent singles bars -- notwithstanding the bar scene in "A Beautiful Mind" in which John Nash discovers Nash equilibriums. Paying someone to read an ad doesn't work anymore than offering a woman $5 to talk with you does. You can pay for her drink, but don't offer to pay her. Either she is offended; or, worse, she takes the money and blows you off. Van Alstyn embellishes this scheme by suggesting you escrow the $5 and she take it only if she doesn't like your line. This seems unproductive, too.

The point is: advertisements are not one-time "information transactions"; they are inducements to learn more and eventually pay for something far more expensive than the ad. They are flirtations; and, as any frequenter of singles scenes knows, where and how you flirt is very important because you are signaling about the kind of relationship you seek. Thus, it is much better to simply buy her a drink, include a quarter in a junk mailing, or throw money away in some other visible way. It makes you look generous, encouraging interest.

Advertisers don't want to force their material on unwilling readers. Nobody wants to show ads the reader no interest in. So if he know that an item was ultimately not interesting, he wouldn't send it.

The essence of communication is that A tells B something B didn't know. Thus the sender/receiver relationship is very non-symmetric. First, the sender knows precisely what the information is and why he would like someone to read it. He also is economically motivated, either to take money for information or pay for advertising. The receiver, of course, doesn't know what the information is. She might pay for it if she expects it to be valuable, but is reluctant to read information for payment. More precisely, if she does read it simply for payment; the sender is unlikely to receive what he ultimately wants. Economists called this adverse selection.

But let's not ignore the economists' main point: the arms race between spammers and browsers is wasteful because it leaves social welfare on the table. We need to find ways to get more of those messages through. Bundling is a better approach than direct payments.

Magazines are a way of bundling information in a way that accomplishes this. The magazine pays authors for content that might interest the readers and it charges advertisers. The reader pays the magazine, presumably for the content; but maybe also for the ads that come along.

What is the the value of an item in a magazine to the writer and reader? The crucial measure is reading time, how long the reader spends looking at the item. It reflects the cost to the reader, her time, but also the value to the sender, how much attention he's getting. Of course, the ultimate value to an advertiser is the profit on something the reader buys; but reading time should be correlate

The new idea here is that the value to both the sender and receiver increases with reading time.

Whether something is content, advertising, editorial, op-ed, or a letter to the editor, is really just a question of labelling the author properly so that the reader can judge the content. The value of an article to the sender rises with the level of rhetoric; i.e. the degree to which the reader is persuaded to do something. But it is not a zero-sum game. Maybe I'd be happier with a penis enlargement. :-)
James H. Morris
Professor of Computer Science
Dean, Carnegie Mellon West
412 609-5000 http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~jhm -------------------------------------

Archives at: http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/

Musical recommendations

I need people to suggest some Woody Guthrie Albums.

I'm still at a stage where I can't tell Guthrie apart from Dylan.

This needs to be remedied as soon as possible.

Open source political data analysis: 2004 Election Hypotheses of Fraud Remain Credible

Note that I worked with Edison in the last election.

-----Original Message-----
From: "David Farber" <dave@farber.net>

Date: Sunday, May 15, 2005 10:35 am
Subject: [IP] Open source political data analysis: 2004 Election Hypotheses of Fraud Remain Credible

_______________ Forward Header _______________
Subject: Open source political data analysis: 2004 Election Hypotheses of FraudRemain Credible
Author: Peter Jones <peter@redesignresearch.com>
Date: 14th May 2005 12:19:04 pm
Dave - This is what you might call open source political analysis. But what's needed is open access to the public data that we as citizens have paid for! This team - four statisticians and a political scientist -
collaborated remotely much of this year on analyzing the 2004 presidential election exit poll data. It's the strongest study of its kind I've seen.
They have run multiple simulations with sensitivity analysis to assess the
Edison/Mitofsky hypotheses about Democratic vs. Republican exit poll responders, and definitively reject their hypothesis. They statistically support that the most plausible explanation supported by simulation was a significant vote "shift" from Kerry to Bush.

They emphasize that: "Simulations are only used in the absence of detailed source data. Edison/Mitofsky could help us resolve the lingering questions about exit poll discrepancies by releasing the data to enable us to directly measure - rather than infer - precinct level variance between poll results and official vote tallies." Link to report at bottom of post.
Press contact in press release.

Peter Jones http://redesignresearch.com
>From the Abstract:
New evidence from mathematical simulations conclusively shows that any constant mean exit poll response bias hypothesis such as the "reluctant Bush responder" (rBr) hypothesis is not consistent with the pattern shown by the
Edison/Mitofsky exit polling data. Other explanations are required to explain the Edison/Mitofsky pattern of exit poll discrepancies and overall response rates.

US Count Votes' simulations have demonstrated that exit poll patterns in the
November 2004 presidential election could be produced by an exit poll response bias distribution with constant mean if accompanied by shifting of votes cast for Kerry to Bush; or alternatively, the patterns could be caused by a differential pattern of exit poll response bias that would require further explanation.
FROM THE PRESS RELEASE

2004 Presidential Election: Hypotheses of Fraud Remain Credible; New
Scientific Study Released

kathy@uscountvotes.org electionarchive.org

The persistence of credible hypotheses of election fraud, six months after the election, underscores the fragility of the U.S. electoral system. US
Count Votes continues its systematic statistical study of the discrepancy between the Edison-Mitofsky exit polls and November's reported presidential election results.

Miami, FL. - Ron Baiman, Ph.D. of US Count Votes and the Institute of
Government and Public Affairs of Chicago, will release the new results at the meeting of the American Association of Political Opinion Researchers today, Saturday at a 2:15 p.m. Press Conference in the Hotel Fontainebleau Hilton Resort lobby, 4441 Collins Avenue, Miami Beach, FL
33140.

Mitofsky, of the Edison/Mitofsky group who released an analysis on January
19th of their November 2nd exit poll that had predicted a strong win for Kerry, will also be in attendance at the AAPOR conference.

The National Election Data Archive (NEDA) today has released a new report, demonstrating that data from the Edison/Mitofsky analysis is consistent with the hypothesis of a corrupted vote count, and inconsistent with the competing idea that Bush voters were under-sampled in the poll. Using numerical modeling techniques to simulate the effect of polling bias, NEDA scientists are able to reproduce signature patterns in the Edison/Mitofsky data by incorporating a general shift in the official vote tally in the model.

Most telling is the fact that the highest participation rates and the peak disparity between poll and official returns both occurred in precincts where
Bush made his strongest showing. This feature of the data is inconsistent with the Edison/Mitofsky assumption that polling bias was responsible for the gap.

For the complete report, see http://uscountvotes.org/ucvAnalysis/US/exit-polls/USCV_exit_poll_simulations .pdf
This paper follows an earlier study released on March 31, 2005, by a group of statisticians for the National Election Data Archive Project, Analysis of the 2004 Presidential Election Exit Poll Discrepancies.

-------------------------------------

My Kitchen has a monolith

Two Sofas, up an average of four floors each, coffee tables, and moving two people from two different apartments to two other apartments, while one person is still packing up to move from one of the moved into apartments.

That and thank you Craigslist.

overheard while moving today

"We need bigger friends."