Comment broccoli (Score 2, Interesting) 255
and here I thought I was coming to read a post about Romanesco Broccoli (link goes to gis for "romanesco"). Seriously, it's like eating math.
Comment Re:Radio? (Score 1) 160
anyone who thinks different from me isn't necessarily weird, but if they arrive at a different conclusion than I reached, they're most likely wrong.
Comment Re:Colonel Tribune (Score 1) 245
funny. You are my new hero.
Comment Re:More like what Google THINKS it knows (Score 1) 260
my kingdom for mod points- even though parent is AC it deserves to be a 5...
Comment in the beginning was the command line (Score 1) 460
and after that was Earth 2025.
Don't bother starting without a build strategy.
Submission + - Crowdsourcing the Google Books Settlement (thepublicindex.org)
oliphaunt writes: "The folks at NY Law have launched The Public Index to explore the proposed settlement agreement that would end all of the various class-action lawsuits that were filed to stop Google from scanning every book in the world. They've republished all the litigation documents and the proposed agreement, and they're inviting world + dog to post commentary. Even if you're not a lawyer, here's your chance to post a comment that might end up in a legal brief.
"The Public Index is a project of the Public-Interest Book Search Initiative and the Institute for Information Law and Policy at New York Law School. We are a group of professors, students, and volunteers who believe that the Google Book Search lawsuit and settlement deserve a full, careful, and thoughtful public discussion. The Public Index is a site for people from all points of view to learn from each other about the settlement and join together to make their voices heard in the public debate.
Comment Re:Even simple steps would improve their image (Score 1) 272
if you had a treo running palm OS, you could get something like TreoButler or CallFilter (or, I'm sure, any number of other apps) to control incoming calls. I have CallFilter, which allows me to sort calls by caller ID. You can select straight-to-voicemail, ring-to-voicemail, pickup/hangup with or without alerting, etc. I have all incoming 1-800 numbers and unknown callers set to go straigt to voicemail, and when I encounter a pest like the autodialer you've described they get the pickup/hangup treatment.
Works great. I'm sure something similar will come out for the Pre soon, because people expect that functionality. I don't know if the iPhone has something like this, but if it doesn't, it should. This is a feature that should come standard on every smartfone.
Comment Re:Impossible (Score 4, Informative) 272
The iPhone and Blackberries would bounce up to more normal $800+ pricing.
I call BS. You can buy an 8 gig ipod touch today for under $200. According to the iSupply teardown, the GSM chipset in the iphone costs $2.80.
$179.00 + $3.00 != $800
Comment Re:Ah yes (Score 1) 174
Or had your drunk 6-year-old child change lanes with his eyes closed. Which, when you think about it, is actually a pretty apt description of the way the Bushies ran the country.
Comment Re:Al-Haramain Islamic Foundation (Score 1) 174
Bush didn't see himself as breaking any laws.
the fact that he was wrong doesn't make his conduct lawful. Ignorance of the law is no defense.
Comment Re:Campaign promises? (Score 1) 174
I don't think the intent is to make the promise binding on this case. I think the intent is to make Obama look like a hypocrite in front of the whole world. The problem isn't with this judge, it's with the Obama administration's approach to dealing with the wholesale criminality of their predecessors. People can try to change that policy by winning lawsuits, or they can try to change it by shaming Obama into actually sacking up and doing something about it. This case just presents a nice opportunity to do both at the same time.
Comment EFF updates their commentary (Score 3, Informative) 174
Since I wrote the summary, the EFF has a new page up with some analysis and commentary.
the IG report does confirm that the warrantless surveillance involved "unprecedented collection activities," beyond the surveillance program of Al-Qaeda touted by President Bush. The report described the scope of the additional spying only as "Other Intelligence Activities." Collectively, the so-called terrorist surveillance program and the Other Intelligence Activities were referred to as the "President's Surveillance Program." The report does not use the program's code name, Stellar Wind, which remains classified. Given the scope of the Nixon Administration's illegal spying (which led to FISA in the first place), it is sobering to consider that the Other Intelligence Activities were unprecedented.
[...]The report damns the effectiveness of the program with faint praise. [...]
The IG report provided a dramatic summary of the dispute in March 2004, when dozens of Bush Administration officials nearly resigned in protest over the Other Intelligence Activities. The Department of Justice could find no legal support for these activities, and found that the factual basis for prior legal opinions was substantially incorrect. [emphasis mine]
that last bit is referring to some of John Yoo's embarrassingly shoddy 'legal' work, which (now 9th Circuit Judge-for-life) Jay Bybee signed off on.
Comment Re:Al-Haramain Islamic Foundation (Score 1) 174
It does kinda seem like the people running the show picked the fall guy in advance. Emptywheel's thread does point out one interesting detail - After Comey refused to sign off, George W. Bush personally called Ashcroft at the hospital, to try to hide what was going on just one more time.
The man's entire presidency was an exercise in law breaking and ass-covering.
Submission + - DOJ report on NSA wiretaps finally released (eff.org)
oliphaunt writes: "As regular readers will recall, after the 2004 elections the New York Times revealed that the NSA had been conducting illegal wiretaps of American citizens since early 2001. Over the course of the next four years, more information about the illegal program trickled out, leading to several lawsuits against the government and various officials involved in its implementation. This week several of these matters are coming to a head: Yesterday, the lawyers for the Al-Haramain Islamic Foundation filed a motion for summary judgment in their lawsuit against the Obama DOJ. The motion begins by quoting a statement made by Candidate Obama in 2007, acknowledging that the warrantless wiretap program was illegal. US District Judge Vaughn Walker has given indications that he is increasingly skeptical of the government's arguments in this case. In what might just be a coincidence of timing, today the long-awaited report from the DOJ inspector general to the US Congress about the wiretapping program was declassified and released. Emptywheel has the beginnings of a working thread going here."
Submission + - "swarm of tremors" on san andreas fault (sfgate.com)
mtrachtenberg writes: "SF Chronicle Science Editor David Perlman:
"Swarms of small tremors deep beneath the ground after two recent quakes in Monterey County may be adding stress to a seismically locked segment of the San Andreas fault and could presage a major earthquake, two Berkeley scientists suggest."
I've spent the last few evenings watching "When the Levees Failed," about the heckuvajobbrownie response to Katrina. So reading this story is more than a little frightening. Here's a case where scientists can say something's going on, but can hardly tell Central California to evacuate for a few months or years.
I suppose the bright side is that this story, having nothing to do with Michael Jackson or Sarah Palin, still managed to make it into the mainstream media. Thank you, Robert Nadeau and Aurélie Guilhem, for the warning; thank you, David Perlman, for telling those of us who don't have subscriptions to Science"
