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Comment Re:He was *not* a plant (Score 1) 793

by mbulge (#25524529) Attached to: Gov't Computers Used to Find Info on "Joe the Plumber"

Obama has been running for president for two years, and some plumber asks a more digging question than any mainstream media reporter has asked the whole time. No wonder you got suspicious. After all, this is supposed to be a coronation, not an actual election.

Maybe after two years of Obama laying out his tax policy, reporters don't need to ask questions which have been answered hundreds of times.

Here is a quick overview

Sen. Obama explained his reasoning for middle class tax cuts to Joe the plumber. The Senator spent five minutes answering Joe's question. And he has answered the question in every debate. And in many public speeches. Asking the same question one more time with partisan phrasing is not a "digging question."

A true "digging question" would be asking why John McCain feels the real "Joe the plumber" deserves to pay higher taxes.
United States

White House Wins Ruling On E-mail Records 243

Posted by CmdrTaco from the unleash-the-shredders dept.
An anonymous reader writes "The White House Office of Administration is not required to turn over records about a trove of possibly missing e-mails, a federal judge ruled Monday. The ruling by U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly found the agency does not have 'substantial independent authority,' so it is not subject to the Freedom of Information Act."
Books

An Acerbic Look At the Future of Reading 318

Posted by kdawson from the drm-weaver dept.
theodp writes "Using Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos' own words against him, Mark Pilgrim offers his chilling take on The Future of Reading with a mash-up of Bezos' Open Letter to the Authors Guild, the Amazon Kindle Terms of Service, Steven Levy's Newsweek article on the Kindle, 1984, and Richard Stallman's 'The Right to Read.'"

Tools To Squash the Botnets 135

Posted by Zonk from the squish-squish-little-bugs dept.
Roland Piquepaille writes "This is the intention of Paul Barford, a computer scientist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He wants to build a new line of defense against malicious traffic which has become today a billion-dollar 'shadow industry.' As one of 'the most menacing aspects of botnets is that they can go largely undetected' by a PC owner, he developed a new computer security technique for detecting network intrusions. His system has a 99.9% detection rate of malicious signatures, roughly equivalent to some of the best commercial systems. But it has zero false positives when commercial systems have high numbers. This new system could soon be available commercially."
Republicans

Journal Journal: Asked About Sicko, Huckabee Attacks Moore's Fitness

Journal by cybermage

When asked about the issues raised in the movie 'Sicko', Republican presidential candidate and former governor of Arkansas, Mike Huckabee, deflected the issue by suggesting that overweight people like Moore are the reason for rising medical costs.
PC Games (Games)

Submission + - Free PC Games List (esgameservers.com)

Submitted by sleepysentry
sleepysentry writes: eSports Game Servers has a good list of 200 free PC games. Among the goodies on the list include FPS shooters, MMORPGs, puzzle games, RPGs, and flight simulators. You won't find the latest and greatest games on the list, but many of the games come close to rivaling their commercial counterparts. Some of the games work for Linux and Mac, too.
The Internet

The Virtual Teacher 94

Posted by samzenpus from the aibo-ate-my-homework dept.
Roland Piquepaille writes "Researchers from Illinois and Florida are developing a networking system which will create virtual representations of real people to improve our knowledge. They will use artificial intelligence and natural language processing software to enable us to interact with these avatars. The goal of the project, sponsored by the National Science Foundation (NSF), is to give us the possibility to interact with these virtual representations as if they were the actual person, complete with the ability to understand and answer questions. We should see the results at the beginning of 2008 — if the researchers succeed."

Dvorak to Apple - Stop The iPhone 409

Posted by Zonk from the wave-off-wave-off dept.
eldavojohn writes "John Dvorak is advising Apple to cease all efforts on the iPhone, citing the mobile handset business as a 'buzz saw waiting to chop up newbies.' With Apple's image as a 'hot company that can do no wrong' on the line, Dvorak warns that the extremely fad-prone marketplace for cell phones will quickly turn the 'hot' iPhone passe'. Unless the company has several new models in the pipeline to release after the original offering, he says, they're likely to fail. 'If it's smart it will call the iPhone a "reference design" and pass it to some suckers to build with someone else's marketing budget. Then it can wash its hands of any marketplace failures.'"
Media

The Economist Magazine Looks Outside For Insight 139

Posted by kdawson from the next-big-thing dept.
An anonymous reader writes "All of traditional media is scrambling to remain relevant on the Net, but The Economist of London is taking it to extremes, with a skunkworks operation called Project Red Stripe. The magazine gathered six staffers from around the world, set them up in a London office, and gave them six months to come up with a radically new idea for the business. As a magazine for free markets, they figured others would have the best ideas — so are throwing open the doors for community input."
Businesses

Why Consumer Macs Are Enterprise-Worthy 449

Posted by kdawson from the toys-no-longer dept.
cyberkahn tips us to an article in Computerworld that makes the case for Apple's consumer machines moving into corporations. (The article dismisses Linux desktops in the enterprise in a single bullet item.) With the press that Vista has been getting, is Apple moving into a perfect storm? Quoting: "There is no comparison between Apple's 'consumer' machines and the consumer lines of its competitors. All of Apple's machines are ready to move into the enterprise, depending on the job at hand. The company's simple and elegant product line, which is also highly customizable, will be Apple's entree to the business market — if IT decision-makers can get over their prejudice against equipment that's traditionally been aimed at consumers."
Microsoft

MS Promotion Site Flagged By MS Anti-Phishing 279

Posted by kdawson from the too-good-to-be-true dept.
Stony Stevenson writes "Microsoft has launched a marketing campaign that lets any student at an Australian university buy the Ultimate edition of Office 2007, usual price $1,150, for only $75 — a discount of about 93%. But when students go to the promotion site, Microsoft Live OneCare pops up a warning that the site may be a phishing scam. The warning reads: 'Phishing filter has determined this might be a phishing website. We recommend that you do not give any of your information to such websites. Phishing websites impersonate trustworthy websites for the purpose of obtaining your personal or financial information.'"
Music

New Royalty Rates Could Kill Internet Radio 273

Posted by Zonk from the one-of-my-favorite-things-about-the-internet dept.
FlatCatInASlatVat writes "Kurt Hanson's Radio Internet Newsletter has an analysis of the new royalty rates for Internet Radio announced by the US Copyright Office. The decision is likely to put most internet radio stations out of business by making the cost of broadcasting much higher than revenues. From the article: 'The Copyright Royalty Board is rejecting all of the arguments made by Webcasters and instead adopting the "per play" rate proposal put forth by SoundExchange (a digital music fee collection body created by the RIAA)...[The] math suggests that the royalty rate decision — for the performance alone, not even including composers' royalties! — is in the in the ballpark of 100% or more of total revenues.'"
The Internet

Wikipedia's Wales Reverses Decision on Problem Admin 241

Posted by Zonk from the who-can-you-trust dept.
ToiletDuck writes "Wikipedia co-founder Jimbo Wales appears to have changed his mind concerning Essjay, the administrator who was caught lying about his academic credentials. Wales issued a statement today on his User Talk page requesting that EssJay voluntarily step down. Wales defended his earlier comment about EssJay, claiming 'I only learned this morning that EssJay used his false credentials in content disputes ... I want to make it perfectly clear that my past support of EssJay in this matter was fully based on a lack of knowledge about what has been going on.' Wales did not comment on whether EssJay would continue to serve in his paid position at Wikia, the for-profit cousin of Wikipedia."
Music

RIAA Announces New Campus Lawsuit Strategy 299

Posted by samzenpus from the tell-us-everything dept.
An anonymous reader writes "The RIAA is once again revising their lawsuit strategy, and will now be sending college students and others "pre-lawsuit letters." People will now be able to settle for a discount. How nice."
Linux Business

Dell To Linux Users — Not So Fast 356

Posted by kdawson from the still-with-the-Windows-tax? dept.
PetManimal writes to tell us that after all the hubbub over Dell's note about manufacturing Linux-friendly Dells and choosing distros, the company is now telling users not to expect factory-installed Linux laptops and desktops anytime soon. According to the article, Dell says that lining up certification, support, and training will 'take a lot of work.' "The company said today that the note was just about certifying the hardware for being ready to work with Novell SUSE Linux, not an announcement that the computers would be loaded and sold with the operating system in the near future..."

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