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Prosecution of Bush Six Back On
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In a ruling in Madrid today, Judge Baltasar Garzón has announced that an inquiry into the Bush administration’s torture policymakers now will proceed to a formal criminal investigation. The ruling came as a jolt following the recommendation of Spanish Attorney General Cándido Conde-Pumpido against proceeding with a criminal inquiry, which was reported in The Daily Beast on April 16.
Judge Garzón previously initiated and handled investigations involving Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, Argentine “Dirty War” strategist Adolfo Scilingo and Guatemalan strongman José Efraín Ríos Montt, often over the objections of the Spanish attorney general. His case against Pinochet gained international attention when the Chilean general was apprehended in England on a Spanish arrest warrant. Scilingo was extradited to Spain and is now serving a sentence of 30 years for his role in the torture and murder of some 30 people, several of whom were Spanish citizens.
Now, Garzón has announced a preliminary criminal inquiry into the Bush administration torture policy, specifying the evidence that a crime had been perpetrated against Spanish subjects, but not yet specifying the specific targets of the investigation.
Durbin On Congress: The Banks “Own The Place”
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DURBIN: And the banks — hard to believe in a time when we’re facing a banking crisis that many of the banks created — are still the most powerful lobby on Capitol Hill. And they frankly own the place.
French film-makers and science fiction writers protest new anti-P2P law
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Artists, creators, all those cultural actors without whom that word would be emptied of meaning, are being instrumentalised for the benefit of a law which, we must remind everyone, contains measures to filter the net, install spyware on individuals machines, and suspend internet connections without the involvement of a judge on the basis of IP numbers (whose lack of reliability has long been established) collected by private companies, and the extension of measures initially conceived for police anti-terrorist activity to the sharing of files between individuals.
Whilst deeply attached to copyright, which represents the sole or principal source of income for many precarious intellectual workers in our ranks, we protest against those who brandish it incessantly to justify measures which, while technically unfeasible, are certainly dangerous, and whose potential to erode our rights is only too obvious in the eyes of those of us whose daily work involves the scientific, political and social thought which is at the core of science-fiction.
Likewise, conscious of the interests and value of creative communities, we also protest against the danger that this law poses to the universe of culture distributed and shared under free licenses, which constitutes a wealth accessible to all.
The internet is not a chaos but rather a collective work, where no actor can demand a privileged position, and it is aberrant to legislate on practices born from 21st century technologies on the basis of schemas taken from 19th. Think about it.
Because the future is our trade.
Pictures, pictures…
Many more (including some graphic) here
Remarks by Secretary Napolitano at Today’s Media Briefing on the H1N1 Flu Outbreak and the U.S. Government’s Response
In 1918, 97.5% of those who got the flu survived. It appears the USA wants to decrease that number to 0%…
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This is the daily briefing to bring everybody up to speed on where things are with respect to the 2009 H1N1 virus.
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We’re also actively monitoring travelers at our land, sea, and air ports. We’re watching them for signs of illness, and we have appropriate protocols in place to deal with those who are sick. Precautions are being taken to protect travelers and border personnel. Anyone exhibiting symptoms is being referred to an isolation room where they can be evaluated by a public health official before proceeding to their destruction.
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Car hits crowd near Dutch queen’s bus
Amazing how fast you can find the video online nowadays…
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Two people have been killed and 12 wounded when a car careered into a crowd of people watching the Dutch royal family riding past in an open-top bus, police said.
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FIRE, Detroit, GOP, Microsoft
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The point isn’t MICROSOFT SUXXX0RS!!! AAPL ROOLZ!!!, though if you had to boil it down to four words those ones are much closer to true than to false. Rather, the problem is that Microsoft is the Detroit of software. It makes big, ugly, dangerous, resource-hogging crap, and its “success” is based on…its “success.” Vast sectors of our economy, from enormous enterprises to mom-and-pop shops, desperately depend on its continued dominance; and when it collapses, they—and we—will be screwed. It was hardly obvious that falling real-estate values would materially contribute to the sudden collapse of Detroit; and it’s far from obvious what will topple Microsoft.
The Playing Field
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In the town of Wilson, North Carolina, an ISP battle is underway that could have implications across the entire United States. When Greenlight began offering cheaper and faster internet service to the town’s residents, Embarq and Time Warner couldn’t compete. So they responded by sponsoring legislation that “would effectively either cripple or ban the service all together“, and backing this up by phoning local residents to urge their support. The city of Wilson has responded: “[Embarq and Time Warner] don’t want to level the playing field. They want to be the only team on the field.” Time Warner defends the legislation, saying in part that, “Cities can cross-subsidize their service, using income from water or electric service fees to pay for the system. We can’t solict door to door. They can.”
[..]
So corporations are angry that they can’t monopolize a public good because the government is handling it better? Is that what this has come to?
Office 2010 screenshots emerge
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So, in 2010, how many people will still recognize that icon as a “floppy disk” and know what that means?
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Cartoons
Too much knowledge can exaggerate the danger of a pandemic
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“Eighty-one dead in Mexico; U.S. declares emergency,” read one of the headlines Sunday. Yes, 81 dead in Mexico is something to grieve and is cause for public concern. Each one of those dead represents the anguish of a family. Yet, as the aphorism goes, one death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic. It’s confusing the statistic for the tragedy that exaggerates fear.
We seldom hear daily updates on the numbers of those infected who have recovered, for example. Yet consider the much-cited Spanish influenza pandemic of 1918. It’s common for commentary to cite infection rates and total associated fatalities.
It’s estimated that about 28 per cent of Canadians and Americans contracted the Spanish flu. Worldwide, an estimated 2.5 per cent of the sick died of complications, which made the pandemic one of the most lethal flu outbreaks in recorded history. Certainly it was one that imprinted itself upon human consciousness for several generations.
But there’s another way to look at those statistics. You might observe, for example, that they mean that even during the worst ravages of the 1918 flu, 97.5 per cent of those infected survived and recovered. Or that 72 per cent of the population — even in the absence of the sophisticated public health planning and infrastructure that Canada and the U.S. have since built — was not infected during the pandemic.
So, even if we had a repeat of the 1918 flu, the chances were seven out of 10 that you wouldn’t catch it and if you did, the odds were better than nine out of 10 that you’d survive.
And the Onion, of course, was already on top of it back in 1999
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Not Smart: Warner Music Issues DMCA Takedown On Larry Lessig Presentation
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If there were anyone out there to whom you would not want to send a random takedown notice for an online video, it would probably be Larry Lessig. Given that Lessig has become the public face for those who feel that copyright has been stretched too far, as well as being a founder of Stanford’s Fair Use Project, and who’s written multiple books on these issues, you would think (just maybe) that any copyright holder would at least think twice before sending a DMCA takedown on a Larry Lessig presentation.
Apparently, you’d be wrong.
Lessig has announced that Warner Music issued a DMCA takedown on one of Lessig’s own presentations, in which his use is almost certainly fair use. Lessig, of course, is a lawyer, and a big supporter of fair use, so it’s no surprise that he’s also said he’s going to be fighting this.
The Specter of Republican marginalization
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What strikes me, however, is the extent to which this is a self-inflicted wound. If Pat Toomey of the Club for Growth weren’t so diligent about enforcing supply-side purity; if Republicans hadn’t made Rush Limbaugh the effective head of the party; Specter might still be GOP, and the Obama agenda much more limited.
Instead, though, we have a party that seems to be in a death spiral: the smaller it gets, the more it’s dominated by the hard right, which makes it even smaller. In the long run, this is not good for American democracy– we really do need two major parties in competition. But I’ll settle for getting that back after we get universal health care and cap-and-trade.
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Intelligent Design Sort
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Introduction Intelligent design sort is a sorting algorithm based on the theory of intelligent design.
Algorithm Description The probability of the original input list being in the exact order it’s in is 1/(n!). There is such a small likelihood of this that it’s clearly absurd to say that this happened by chance, so it must have been consciously put in that order by an intelligent Sorter. Therefore it’s safe to assume that it’s already optimally Sorted in some way that transcends our naïve mortal understanding of “ascending order”. Any attempt to change that order to conform to our own preconceptions would actually make it less sorted.
Analysis
This algorithm is constant in time, and sorts the list in-place, requiring no additional memory at all. In fact, it doesn’t even require any of that suspicious technological computer stuff. Praise the Sorter!
Creationists? Help me here.
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You dare say you know more about evolution & DNA that mainstream scientists?
Let’s see what you can find.
Can you tell me based on the sequences (yes, I saved you the trouble and aligned them)
1. Which ones are common designer, which ones are common ancestor?
2. Where is there any “new information” that mutation could not have given?
3. Which one of these is a “meaningless word” by mis-shuffling useful information into useless information?
4. Can you tell which one I “designed” (forged) to test you?
I wanna know, if you’re so good at telling us evolution and common descent is myth, lie, religion or anything less than scientifically based. Scientific tests should tell you right away if you know what you’re talking about.
The comments in that thread are priceless..
Court Rebuffs Feds, Reinstates Torture Suit | CommonDreams.org
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A federal appeals court rebuffed the Obama administration’s assertion of secrecy today and reinstated a lawsuit by five men who say a Bay Area subsidiary of Boeing Co. helped the CIA fly them to foreign countries to be tortured.
A lawyer from President Obama’s Justice Department argued to the court in February that the issues surrounding the “extraordinary rendition,” program, including government-sanctioned interrogation methods and the company’s alleged connection to the CIA, were so sensitive that the very existence of the suit threatened national security.
The Bush administration had taken the same position and persuaded a federal judge in San Jose to dismiss the suit.
In today’s ruling, however, the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco said the government and the company could take steps to protect national secrets as the case proceeded. The suit should be dismissed only if secret information is essential for the plaintiffs to prove their case or for the Bay Area company to defend itself, the court said.
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The court did not address the plaintiffs’ claims that they were kidnapped and tortured, but said judges have an important role to play in reviewing allegations of secret government conduct that violates individual liberties.
“As the founders of this nation knew well, arbitrary imprisonment and torture under any circumstances is a ‘gross and notorious … act of despotism,’ ” Hawkins said, citing language from a 2004 Supreme Court decision.
CDC numbers
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Using new and improved statistical models, CDC scientists estimate that an average of 36,000 people (up from 20,000 in previous estimates) die from influenza-related complications each year in the United States. In addition, about 11,000 people die per year from respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), a virus that causes upper and lower respiratory tract infections primarily in young children and older adults.
so, how many swine-flu infections are there at the moment?
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Is Palm Rolling Out The Pre The Day Before Apple’s WWDC Keynote?
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It’s now just about May and there’s still been no official word from Palm when it comes to an official launch date or pricing for the Pre. All we know is what we’ve known for a long time — it’ll launch the first half of 2009; a window that is quickly closing. But a few pieces of new evidence today point to an actual specific date. And it’s a very intriguing one — June 7: The day before a likely Apple keynote address at its WWDC conference.
That is of course interesting because Apple could very well use that keynote to unveil the next version of the iPhone, just as it did last year for the iPhone 3G. A public launch of the Pre the day before could suck some of the wind out of Apple’s sails. But it’s also pretty risky, as it means Palm only has one day to convince everyone that its product is better then the latest version of the iPhone which is likely to have some substantial improvements. And no one knows for sure what all those improvements are — it could very well blow the Pre right out of the water, one day into its young life.
100 Days of Obama: the Flickr Potustream
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After one hundred days, the wait is over: Pete Souza’s Gargantuan Presidential High-Definition Executive Flickrdump is here. Warning: If you put it on fullscreen you won’t get anything else done for a while.
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Miro Adoption Center
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We aren’t here to make money, we’re here for a mission: to distribute wonderful video around the world in a system that’s more open and decentralized than ever before. To do that, we need you to help us care for a little tiny piece of Miro.
We have thousands of lines of code that are waiting for you to adopt them. Not only will you get an adorable line of code with a cute name and face, we’ll also put your name in the source code and in the about box on every copy of Miro
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I just adopted this little gem:
}
I hope they won’t port it to Python any day soon, though…
Swine flu
translation: “Have you been in contact with a pig recently?”
Cartoons
Home Office official offered advice and “comfort” to Phorm spyware vendor
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Newly released emails secured through a Freedom of Information request show that a UK Home Office official colluded with and offered guidance to Phorm, providers of illegal spyware that British Telecom infected its users’ PCs with. BT deployed a secret test of Phorm that involved infecting its customers’ PCs with the spyware, which then rewrote every web-page they viewed with BT’s advertising, while gathering information on their browsing habits and delivering it to Phorm and its marketing partners. Subsequently, BT switched from running Phorm as client-side spyware and instead implemented it as a server-side spyware app that captured every web-page visited by affected BT subscribers and inserted BT ads and captured users’ clickstreams for BT’s marketing partners. The EU has initiated legal action against Phorm for violating European privacy and consumer-protection laws.
Now it transpires that a UK Home Office official provided guidance to Phorm, offering advice on how to skirt British law with a minimum of fuss, tenderly asking if the Phorm executives and partners could be “comforted” by Home Office assurances.
And the proper government response is, of course, denial. Does anybody believe this?
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The Home Office denied the accusation of collusion with Phorm.
A spokesman said: “Any suggestion of ‘collusion’ is totally unfounded. We have repeatedly said since these documents were released a year ago that the Government has not endorsed Phorm or its technology.
Catholic Church’s Archdiocesan Youth Commission
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“Yes, this is an actual logo designed in 1973 for the Catholic Church’s Archdiocesan Youth Commission. It even won an award from the Art Directors Club of Los Angeles.”
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iTunes Connect
The suspense is killing me….
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Apple is sued after pressuring open-source iTunes project
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The operator of a technology discussion forum has sued Apple Inc., claiming that the company used U.S. copyright law to curb legitimate discussion of its iTunes software.
The lawsuit, filed Monday, could test the limits of the U.S. Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). It centers around an open-source effort to help iPods and iPhones work with software other than Apple’s iTunes. Last November, Apple’s lawyers demanded that the Bluwiki.com Web site remove a project called iPodhash, saying that it violated the DMCA’s anti-circumvention provisions.
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The EFF has previously argued that reverse-engineering in order to build new products is permitted under the DMCA. However, this case is a little different, according to Fred von Lohmann, an attorney with the digital civil liberties organization. “This is the first time I’ve seen a company suggest that simply talking about reverse-engineering violates the DMCA,” he said. “All of the previous cases have been cases that involved actual successful reverse-engineered tools.”
Fake pope-mobile charges dropped
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Police have withdrawn charges against a man who was found driving a fake pope-mobile around Sydney.
The car was built as a protest against the Pope’s visit and World Youth Day in July last year.
Police charged the driver, Ian Bryce, for distracting motorists and ordered him to take the car off the road.
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Mr Bryce says he had a barrister and solicitor from the NSW Council of Civil Liberties, which he believes persuaded the police to drop the charges.
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Mr Bryce says the charge that was dropped was one related to his vehicle being an annoyance to other motorists.
He says he was trying to aggitate attention about World Youth Day and, when asked if he was an annoyance, he replied, “I hope so, I think the Pope is a bigger annoyance.”
Colbert Study: Conservatives Don’t Know He’s Joking
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This study investigated biased message processing of political satire in The Colbert Report and the influence of political ideology on perceptions of Stephen Colbert. Results indicate that political ideology influences biased processing of ambiguous political messages and source in late-night comedy. Using data from an experiment (N = 332), we found that individual-level political ideology significantly predicted perceptions of Colbert’s political ideology. Additionally, there was no significant difference between the groups in thinking Colbert was funny, but conservatives were more likely to report that Colbert only pretends to be joking and genuinely meant what he said while liberals were more likely to report that Colbert used satire and was not serious when offering political statements. Conservatism also significantly predicted perceptions that Colbert disliked liberalism. Finally, a post hoc analysis revealed that perceptions of Colbert’s political opinions fully mediated the relationship between political ideology and individual-level opinion.
Swastika priest
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A priest has shocked parishioners by welcoming them to church wearing a swastika armband.
Fascist Father Angelo Idi, 51 – who once saw off a charity box thief with a truncheon at his church in Vigevano, Italy – confessed: “I am proud of my right wing beliefs. But people shouldn’t care about my politics, they should care about how good a priest I am.”
That would be a “not very good at all”, I guess..
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Swine Flu
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Go! Go! Garzón! He da man!
At some point, the Obama administration is going to have to face the decision of whether to start prosecution here. If the Spanish call for justice gets louder, then any US action will be seen as a reaction.
I personally think the best win-win outcome would be to move the jurisdiction to the ICC – not that the US government will ever let that happen.