The keynote is still going on, so I don’t have pictures yet, but did somebody hear a Zune crying in the corner?

update:

Another update: only Steve Jobs can present “free access to a store” as a great thing.. pffff….

(No mention yet what happens when you’re in range of 4 Starbucks or more at the same time)

[Quote:]

The US Air Force has launched an investigation after a B-52 bomber flew across the US last week mistakenly loaded with nuclear-armed missiles.

It follows reports in the Army Times that five missiles were unaccounted for during the three-hour flight from North Dakota to Louisiana.

The air force said the cruise missiles were safe at all times.

Army Times said the missiles were to be decommissioned but were mistakenly mounted on the bomber’s wings.

[Quote:]

International Organization for Standardization (ISO) rejected the fast-track approval of the controversial Microsoft-supported OOXML document format as an ISO standard in a vote on 2 September 2007.

During the voting process the reputation of ISO as a dependable technical standardization organization was questioned. For example, in Sweden a Microsoft representative was caught offering to recompense partners for voting yes to OOXML. Also a sudden interest from countries like Ivory Coast to the OOXML issue has been found suspicious.

We studied the relation between the corruption level and voting behaviours of the countries. We found that more corrupted the country is, the more likely it was to vote for the unreserved acceptance of the OOXML standard proposal.

We used the 2006 CPI index (Corruption Perceptions Index) as a measure of corruption. CPI index is a number between 1 and 10. A small CPI index means that the country is perceived to be very corrupted, while a large CPI index means that the country is perceived to have little corruption. Haiti has the smallest CPI index of 1.8, while the countries perceived having the least amount of corruption (Finland, Iceland, New Zealand) have a CPI index of 9.7. In barplots below the CPI index has been rounded down to the closest integer value.

CNN yesterday:

The Consumer Product Safety Commission, in cooperation with Mattel, announced a recall of 844,000 toys that contain excessive levels of lead paint Tuesday night—the third such recall of Chinese-manufactured toys by Mattel this summer.

[..]

Three Fisher-Price brand toys and various Barbie accessory toys were named in the recall, though the Barbie toys make up the majority of the affected toys. No Barbie dolls were involved in the recall, the company said.

Bill Maher August 24:

New Rule: If you were surprised that the Chinese don’t care about toy safety, then the child who needs protecting is you. Over the last couple of months, American consumers have been learning a shocking lesson about supply and demand: if you demand products that don’t cost anything, people will make them out of poison, mud and shit.

[..]

They don’t care if your precious little Britney sucks a little lead. Because in China, their kids aren’t playing with the toys, they’re the ones in the factory all day making them.

[..]

In America, there is nothing more sacred than a bargain. And that even includes the war. Yeah, there’s too much lead in the kids’ toys, but not nearly enough on the Humvees in Iraq. “Let’s have a war and cut taxes; what could go wrong?” “Let’s give mortgages to the homeless. Sounds like a plan.” “Let’s buy toys from a Communist police state. You just know they’ll put in a little extra love.”

Speaking of which, you know why today’s modern Chinese capitalist puts lead in the paint that goes on toys? Because it makes colors brighter. You’ve got to love America, a country that’s literally being killed by the stuff that makes objects shiny.

[Quote:]

As subprime borrowers began to default on their mortgages in rapidly growing numbers this year, credit card issuers increased their efforts to sign up such customers with tarnished financial histories, according to a market research firm.

Direct mail credit card offers to subprime customers in the United States jumped 41 percent in the first half of this year, compared with the first half in 2006, according to Mintel International Group. Direct mail offers targeted at customers with the best credit fell more than 13 percent.

Fuck, it’s as if the US actively wants a major recession.

(here’s what the Onion has to say on the subject)

[Quote:]

With the mortgage market reeling from massive loan defaults, analysts are now predicting disaster for the banner ad industry.

“Those eye-catching dancing motions on our nation’s web pages are in dire jeopardy,” said editor Brian Weingrad of the industry trade publication Banner AdWeek on Monday. “The reassuring sight of a smiling African-American woman jumping up and down and screaming with excitement could soon be a thing of the past.”

The collapse is considered the worst crisis in online business since the Great Flash Animation Shortage of 2003 nearly wiped out that year’s pop-up crop.

[Quote:]

Sen. Larry Craig is reconsidering his decision to resign after his arrest in a Minnesota airport sex sting and may still fight for his Senate seat, his spokesman said Tuesday evening.

[Quote:]

ChristenUnie/SGP in de gemeente Westland trekt bij het college aan de bel over een nieuw homo-erotisch filmkanaal in de regio Westland. De gemeente, die grootaandeelhouder is van de exploitant, moet het kanaal van de kabel laten verwijderen.

Dat vindt fractievoorzitter A. van Heteren van de ChristenUnie/SGP. Hij heeft vragen gesteld aan het college of zij, in overleg met kabelexploitant CAIW, alle erotische en pornoprogramma’s van de kabel wil laten verwijderen vanwege het „zedenbedervende en misdaadbevorderende effect” van deze programma’s.

Dat zijn ongetwijfeld de beste € 9.95 die van Heteren ooit per maand besteed heeft. Een andere mogelijkheid voor Arie om de barebackers te controleren is er immers niet.

Drat, I missed the 50 year anniversary yesterday…

And although we’ve come a long way, there’s a long way to go yet.

[Quote:]

It’s almost fifty pages long, but well worth the read: a recent study by the Pew Research Center for People & the Press synthesizes 165 separate national surveys and finds that American news preferences have remained “surprisingly static” over the last twenty years. Tucked behind this central conclusion, however, is a suite of more intriguing observations about readership and audience habits.

[..]

Nonetheless, there are certain ways to predict what the public will be interested in, he noted, regardless of whether the topic is politics, foreign affairs, disasters, science or anything else. “Polarizing social issues involving family, sexuality, patriotism and God engender the highest levels of attention,” Robison wrote.

There’s a clear difference between “want” and “need”. Americans may want to know what people who believe in God think about the gays, but what they need to know is what is going on with their children in Iraq. But as long as TV is based on selling eyeballs to advertisers, the “want” wins, since that gets higher viewer numbers. Thus, we end up with an uninformed public, which is very bad for democracy.

Yesterday on Zune Insider:

[Quote:]

Some of you may have already heard, but tomorrow we’re dropping the suggested retail price for Zune to $199. It’s part of the normal product lifecycle, something we’ve had on the books for months.

And the fact that Apple introduces new iPods today is a total coincidence… Suuuuuuuure…

[Quote:]

A Belgian prosecutor on Tuesday recommended that the U.S.-based Church of Scientology stand trial for fraud and extortion, following a 10-year investigation that concluded the group should be labeled a criminal organization.

Scientology said it would fight the criminal charges recommended by investigating prosecutor Jean-Claude Van Espen, who said that up to 12 unidentified people should face charges.

Van Espen’s probe also concluded that Scientology’s Brussels-based Europe office and its Belgian missions conducted unlawful practices in medicine, violated privacy laws and used illegal business contracts, said Lieve Pellens, a spokeswoman at the Federal Prosecutors Office.

“They also face charges of being … a criminal organization,” Pellens said in a telephone interview.

An administrative court will decide whether to press charges against the Scientologists.

In a statement, Scientology’s Europe office accused the prosecutor of hounding the organization and said it would contest the charges.

“For the last 10 years, the prosecutor has been using the media, trying to damage the reputation of the Church of Scientology and not being able to put a case in court,” Scientology said. “As a consequence, this created a climate of intolerance and discrimination” in Belgium.

This is Scientology:

The head of the Galactic Federation (76 planets around larger stars visible from here) (founded 95,000,000 years ago, very space opera) solved overpopulation (250 billion or so per planet, 178 billion on average) by mass implanting. He caused people to be brought to Teegeeack (Earth) and put an H-Bomb on the principal volcanos (Incident II) and then the Pacific area ones were taken in boxes to Hawaii and the Atlantic area ones to Las Palmas and there “packaged”.

His name was Xenu. He used renegades. Various misleading data by means of circuits etc. was placed in the implants.

When through with his crime loyal officers (to the people) captured him after six years of battle and put him in an electronic mountain trap where he still is. “They” are gone. The place (Confederation) has since been a desert. The length and brutality of it all was such that this Confederation never recovered. The implant is calculated to kill (by pneumonia etc) anyone who attempts to solve it. This liability has been dispensed with by my tech development.

One can freewheel through the implant and die unless it is approached as precisely outlined. The “freewheel” (auto-running on and on) lasts too long, denies sleep etc and one dies. So be careful to do only Incidents I and II as given and not plow around and fail to complete one thetan at a time.

In December 1967 I knew someone had to take the plunge. I did and emerged very knocked out, but alive. Probably the only one ever to do so in 75,000,000 years. I have all the data now, but only that given here is needful.

One’s body is a mass of individual thetans stuck to oneself or to the body.

One has to clean them off by running incident II and Incident I. It is a long job, requiring care, patience and good auditing. You are running beings. They respond like any preclear. Some large, some small.

Thetans believed they were one. This is the primary error. Good luck.

sources:
Xenu – Wikipedia [wikipedia.org]
OT III Scholarship Page [cmu.edu]
Fishman Affidavit – OT3, summary and comments [spaink.net]
DMCA complaint [chillingeffects.org]

[Quote:]

Within the last few weeks, there have been a number of reports by Comcast customers claiming that their BitTorrent downloads and uploads have been capped or worse, blocked. Torrent Freak recently reported that Comcast, a major US cable company, is using an application from Sandvine to throttle such connections.

[..]

According to Torrent Freak, Comcast is not doing this. They are instead sending a reset (or RST) packet to the Comcast customer, pretending to be from the host at the end of the BitTorrent connection. This RST packet is the TCP equivalent of stating “I don’t want to talk to you anymore, please terminate the connection”. It is extremely important to note that when Comcast creates and sends this packet, they do not identify themselves as the the source of packet, but instead impersonate one of the parties involved in the BitTorrent connection. This is where things get rather shady.

[..]

Many states make it illegal to impersonate others. New York, a state notorious for its aggressive pro-consumer office of the Attorney General, makes it a crime for someone to “[impersonate] another and [do] an act in such assumed character with intent to obtain a benefit or to injure or defraud another.” (See: NY Sec. 190.25: Criminal impersonation in the second degree). I do not believe that it would be too difficult to prove that Comcast obtains a benefit by impersonating others to eliminate or reduce BitTorrent traffic. Less torrent data flowing over their network will lead to an overall reduction in their bandwidth bill, and thus a huge cost savings.

Another solution:

iptables -A INPUT -p tcp -dport $TORRENT_CLIENT_PORT -tcp-flags RST RST -j DROP

[Quote:]

As I’ve indicated in previous posts, defense attorneys for years have been trying to discover the software source code used by manufacturers of various breathalyzer models.  (See “Secret Breathalyzer Software Still Secret”)   The accuracy of these  machines, which essentially determine a suspect’s guilt or innocence, depends upon the accuracy of the software driving them; as the computer techs say, “Garbage in, garbage out”.  But the manufacturers have refused to produce the information, relying upon a claim of “trade secrets” — that is, that the code of each model is a unique creation of the manufacturer.  And prosecutors, apparently more concerned with profits than with justice, have joined them in resisting disclosure.

[..]

New Jersey attorney Evan M. Levow was finally able to get an order from the Supreme Court of New Jersey forcing the manufacturer of the popular Draeger AlcoTest 7110 to reveal the source code. Levow turned the code over to experts, Base One Technologies, to anaylze.

Initially, Base One found that, contrary to Draeger’s protestations that the code was proprietary, the code consisted mostly of general algorithms: “That is, the code is not really unique or proprietary.“ In other words, the “trade secrets” claim which manufacturers were hiding behind was completely without merit.

Some of the more interesting excerpts from the Base One report:

1. The Alcotest Software Would Not Pass U.S. Industry Standards for Software Development and Testing

[..]

4. Catastrophic Error Detection Is Disabled

[..]

6. Diagnostics Adjust/Substitute Data Readings

[..]

7. Flow Measurements Adjusted/Substituted

[..]

10. Error Detection Logic

[Quote:]

“Protecting content” is a tip of the hat to NBC’s concerns over DRM. Amazon and Apple both use DRM for video, but Apple’s DRM policies are considered to be “too lax” by many players in the TV and movie business. Apple’s terms allow for authorized for playback on as many as five different devices. Furthermore, Apple-approved devices can be authorized to play content purchased from five different accounts.

Compare Unbox: Shows bought from Unbox can be kept on two computers max and can be stored on up to two different (approved) media players. Users cannot “mix” accounts, meaning that a PC cannot have authorized content purchased from two different accounts accessible at the same time. As you can see, Unbox is more restrictive.

And as a result, you and your spouse cannot buy content for each other. How moronic is that? Why is it that these companies keep insisting they fuck over their customers?

Here you can see what Felix did to Aruba..

[Quote:]

I love Linux and the XBOX 360, so yesterday I tried to include the word “LINUX” in the motto section on XBOX Live. I was stunned when I got a message saying “Your motto contains inappropriate language. Please try again”. Come on Microsoft is that really inappropriate? Maybe only to you guys.

update: “Horny” bad, “Anus” good