Every time a problem arises, the essential thing is to immediately become aware that the problem comes from our selfish mind, that it is created by self-cherishing thoughts. As long as you put the blame outside yourself, there can be no happiness.

Lama Zopa Rinpoche,

Judge Invalidates Patriot Act Provisions - Washington Post

A federal judge struck down controversial portions of the USA Patriot Act in a ruling that declared them unconstitutional yesterday, ordering the FBI to stop its wide use of a warrantless tactic for obtaining e-mail and telephone data from private companies for counterterrorism investigations.

The ruling by U.S. District Judge Victor Marrero in New York said the FBI's use of secret "national security letters" to demand such data violates the First Amendment and constitutional provisions on the separation of powers, because the FBI can impose indefinite gag orders on the companies and the courts have little opportunity to review the letters.

The secrecy provisions are "the legislative equivalent of breaking and entering, with an ominous free pass to the hijacking of constitutional values," Marrero wrote. His strongly worded 103-page opinion amounted to a rebuke of both the administration and Congress, which had revised the act in 2005 to take into account an earlier ruling by the judge on the same topic.

Read on ...

New York Times Blogs

How To Remember 9/11 - Time

U.S. remembers 9/11 attacks in silence - Reuters

~

9.11.2001 screen captures:

Why Linux won't make it to a desktop near you - DesktopLinux

You're a marketer who finds an exciting new product developed by some really smart people. A great product few people have heard of is the Holy Grail of marketing -- all you have to do is tell everyone about it, and the world will beat a path to your door.

Isn't that the theory?

When you look more closely, you find it's not that simple. In fact, you find a set of insurmountable obstacles.

Read on ...

Gorillas head race to extinction - BBC

Gorillas, orangutans, and corals are among the plants and animals which are sliding closer to extinction.

The Red List of Threatened Species for 2007 names habitat loss, hunting and climate change among the causes.

The World Conservation Union (IUCN) has identified more than 16,000 species threatened with extinction, while prospects have brightened for only one.

Read on ...

~

Is a Virus Behind the Bee Plague? - MIT Technology Review

Scientists have identified a likely culprit underlying the massive and mysterious plague that has killed off tens of millions of bees in the United States over the past year. By sequencing the DNA of every microbe inhabiting the bees, researchers have pinpointed a novel virus strongly linked to infected hives. The findings could help beekeepers protect their colonies. The research also suggests an effective new method for identifying infectious pathogens, be they from bees or humans.

"This is a very significant finding," says Dewey Caron, an entomologist at the University of Delaware, in Maryland, who was not involved in the study. "It's not yet a smoking gun, but it really helps narrow the search."

Over the past year, tens of millions of bees have mysteriously vanished from their hives, amounting to a loss of 50 to 90 percent of U.S. colonies. While honeybee populations have sustained several major hits to their numbers over the past century, this particular plague is unique in that adult bees seem to disappear from their hives without a trace. Because honeybees pollinate hundreds of species of fruits, vegetables, and nuts--commercial beekeepers truck their hives across the country during flowering season to pollinate crops--that loss is a major agricultural concern.

Read on ...

~

Carmakers Defeated On Emissions Rules: States Can Set Standards, Judge Says - Washington Post

A federal judge in Vermont yesterday rejected an attempt by automakers to block individual states from adopting their own standards for limiting greenhouse gas emissions from cars and trucks.

Judge William Sessions III of U.S. District Court in Burlington ruled that state action to limit greenhouse gas emissions from new vehicles -- standards that originated in California in 2002 and have since been adopted by Vermont and at least 10 other states -- was not preempted by federal rules on vehicle fuel economy.

The decision follows a Supreme Court ruling in April that the Environmental Protection Agency violated the Clean Air Act by declining to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from vehicles. It also comes as automakers are confronted with growing public demand and governmental pressure to build more fuel-efficient vehicles. This fall, Congress is to take up vehicle fuel-efficiency legislation that could bring about the biggest change in fuel-economy laws since the 1970s.

Read on ...

Homeland Insecurity - An Investigative Series by James Ridgeway - MotherJones.com

What happened to the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission, which Democratic leaders promised to make one of their top legislative priorities? What are the most deadly potential terrorist targets no one talks about—and who's lobbying against securing them? What's the one measure that could improve our chances of preventing an attack—without costing a penny? Why are the 2008 presidential candidates—Republicans and Democrats alike—nowhere on this issue? In this seven-part series Mother Jones' senior correspondent James Ridgeway examines how the government has let homeland security languish since September 11, 2001, with dire consequences.

Read on ...

Tomorrow with be the 16th anniversary of Linus Torvalds upload of Linux kernal 0.0.1 to the internet. In honor here is his initial email about Linux

From: torvalds@klaava.Helsinki.FI (Linus Benedict Torvalds)
Newsgroups: comp.os.minix
Subject: What would you like to see most in minix?
Summary: small poll for my new operating system
Message-ID: <1991Aug25.205708.9541@klaava.Helsinki.FI>
Date: 25 Aug 91 20:57:08 GMT
Organization: University of Helsinki

Hello everybody out there using minix -
I'm doing a (free) operating system (just a hobby, won't be big and
professional like gnu) for 386(486) AT clones. This has been brewing
since april, and is starting to get ready.I'd like any feedback on
things people like/dislike in minix, as my OS resembles it somewhat
(same physical layout of the file-system(due to practical reasons)
among other things). I've currently ported bash(1.08) and gcc(1.40),and
things seem to work.This implies that I'll get something practical within a
few months, andI'd like to know what features most people would want. Any
suggestions are welcome, but I won't promise I'll implement them :-)
Linus (torvalds@kruuna.helsinki.fi)
PS. Yes - it's free of any minix code, and it has a multi-threaded fs.
It is NOT protable (uses 386 task switching etc), and it probably never
will support anything other than AT-harddisks, as that's
all I have :-(.

New iPods reengineered to block synching with Linux - boingboing

The latest iPods have a cryptographic "checksum" in their song databases that prevents third-party applications from synching with the portable music players. This means that iPods can no longer be used with operating systems where iTunes doesn't exist -- like Linux, where gtkpod and Amarok are common free tools used by iPod owners to load their players.

Notice that this has nothing to do with piracy -- this is about Apple limiting the choices available to people who buy their iPod hardware. I kept my iPod when I switched to Ubuntu Linux a year ago, and I've been using it happily with my machine ever since (though it took me a solid week to get all my DRMed Audible audiobooks out of iTunes -- I had to run two machines 24/7, playing hundreds of hours of audio through a program called AudioHijack, to remove the DRM from my collection, which had cost me thousands of dollars to build). I'd considered buying another iPod when this one started to show its age -- it's a perfectly nice player to use, provided you stay away from the DRM.

The new hardware limits the number of potential customers for Apple's products, adding engineering cost to a device in order to reduce its functionality. It's hard to understand why Apple would do this, but the most likely explanations are that Apple wants to be sure that competitors can't build their own players to load up iPods -- now that half of the major labels have gone DRM free, it's conceivable that we'd get a Rhapsody or Amazon player that automatically loaded the non-DRM tracks they sold you on your iPod (again, note that this has nothing to do with preventing piracy -- this is about preventing competition with the iTunes Store).

Read on ...

Microsoft is updating Windows without user permission - ZDNet

Is your Vista or XP system set to not automatically update? Doesn't matter. Microsoft is fiddling with your system files -- without asking or telling you.

Read on ...

https://www.flyingfrock.com/

This one fixes some problems that were present in the last Circumventors; it is now possible to log in to MySpace, to reply to wall posts on Facebook, etc. The new Circumventor sites will have tips posted on them describing what is and is not possible (for example, with Facebook's current interface, when you're signed in through the Circumventor it is possible to reply to existing wall-to-wall discussions, but not to start a new wall-to-wall discussion). This changes from week to week, depending on what Facebook, MySpace, etc. are doing with their user interface, so we'll try to stay on top of things!

https://www.cheeseglobe.com/

https://www.kitebroth.com/

https://www.applefroth.com/

https://www.benchdance.com/

https://www.coughingcow.com/

https://www.cornercake.com/

Some FYI's:

1) With https:// sites, if you get an error about the site's "security certificate" or something similar, just ignore it and proceed. The reasons are too complicated to explain, but don't worry, these errors won't stop the sites from working if you just continue. Similarly, if you get a message saying "Page contains secure and nonsecure items, do you want to display the nonsecure items?" always say "Yes".

2) Again with https:// sites, sometimes if the site is blocked, you will actually see the "page cannot be displayed" error message instead of the usual "This site has been blocked" message. Thus it can be difficult to tell if the site is actually blocked, or if it's just down. Usually, you can tell the difference by attempting to access the site using "http://" instead of "https://".

For example, if https://www.MagicHelicopter.com/ is giving a "page cannot be displayed" error, try going to http://www.MagicHelicopter.com/ instead (note "http" instead of "https" at the beginning). If that says "page cannot be displayed", then the server might be down. But if it says "this site has been blocked", then that's why the https:// version of the site isn't working either.

Many more CV's here

European Court Rejects Microsoft Antitrust Appeal - NYTimes

In a stinging rebuke to the world's largest software maker, the second-highest European court rejected today a request by Microsoft to overturn a 2004 European Commission antitrust ruling that the company had abused its dominance in computer operating systems.

The European Court of First Instance, in a starkly worded summary read to a courtroom of about 150 journalists and lawyers here, ordered Microsoft to obey a March 2004 commission order and upheld the €497.2 million, or $689.4 million, fine against the company.

The court's presiding judge, Bo Vesterdorf, reading a summary of the decision on his final day in office, said, "The court finds the commission did not err in assessing the gravity and duration of the infringement and did not err in setting the amount of the fine. Since the abuse of a dominant position is confirmed by the court, the amount of the fine remains unchanged."

Read on ...

Alexandre Dumas rides again - 137 years later - CSMonitor

Alexandre Dumas died 137 years ago, but he still has a new novel to offer readers this fall.

Indeed, the story of The Last Cavalier could serve as an example of the characteristic twist of fate found in Dumas swashbucklers such as "The Count of Monte Cristo" and "The Three Musketeers." Eminent Dumas scholar Claude Schopp discovered the vestiges of the manuscript while researching the novelist's life during the late-1980s at the National Library in Paris.

Schopp stumbled upon it while making a request for a long-forgotten scrap of information on Dumas. Instead he found a letter written by Dumas in response to a critique of a story set in the Napoleonic era. A little more probing led Schopp to "The Last Cavalier," a typically epic Dumas offering that runs 118 chapters - and still reaches no conclusions.

Read on ...

Wars arise from a failure to understand one another's humanness. Instead of summit meetings, why not have families meet for a picnic and get to know each other while the children play together?

His Holiness the Dalai Lama

U.S. Home Foreclosures Soar in August - AP/US News & World Report

The number of foreclosure filings reported in the U.S. last month more than doubled versus August 2006 and jumped 36 percent from July, a trend that signals many homeowners are increasingly unable to make timely payments on their mortgages or sell their homes amid a national housing slump.

A total of 243,947 foreclosure filings were reported in August, up 115 percent from 113,300 in the same month a year ago, Irvine, Calif.-based RealtyTrac Inc. said Tuesday.

Read on ...

~

:-) Digital 'Smiley Face' Turns 25 - AP/US News & World Report

It was a serious contribution to the electronic lexicon. :-) Twenty-five years ago, Carnegie Mellon University professor Scott E. Fahlman says, he was the first to use three keystrokes - a colon followed by a hyphen and a parenthesis - as a horizontal "smiley face" in a computer message.

To mark the anniversary Wednesday, Fahlman and his colleagues are starting an annual student contest for innovation in technology-assisted, person-to-person communication. The Smiley Award, sponsored by Yahoo Inc., carries a $500 cash prize.

Language experts say the smiley face and other emotional icons, known as emoticons, have given people a concise way in e-mail and other electronic messages of expressing sentiments that otherwise would be difficult to detect.

Read on ...

~

With Justice Pick, Bush Hopes to Avoid a Fight - Washington Post

President Bush opted to try to avoid a confirmation fight by nominating Michael B. Mukasey to be attorney general, concluding that the retired federal judge shares his approach to national security issues, but without the appearance of partisanship, administration officials and others close to the White House said yesterday.

Bush gave serious consideration to former solicitor general Theodore B. Olson, but the president's top advisers thought Olson would face too many obstacles in the Senate, according to those familiar with Mukasey's selection. White House officials denied that Bush was cowed by Senate Democrats opposed to Olson, a respected lawyer and active participant in a number of past conservative battles, but acknowledged that "confirmability" was a factor that the president considered.

"What you want is somebody who is superbly qualified and quickly confirmable -- Mukasey hit both of those elements," said a senior White House official, who like others spoke on the condition of anonymity because of a policy that only the president should comment publicly on the nomination.

Read on ...

~

New Chinese rules on Dalai Lama - BBC

Communist China has introduced new rules that appear aimed at controlling the selection of the next Dalai Lama, Tibetan Buddhism's spiritual head.

Most Tibetans believe that eminent monks, such as the Dalai Lama, are reincarnated after death.

China, which governs Tibet, will now have the final say over who can be selected as a reincarnated monk.

Read on ...

The Chinese government has already show it's heavy hand with Tibet as shown with the naming of the the 11th Panchen Lama and his disappearance effectively creating the world's youngest political prisoner.

The Road from Media Ethics to Information Anarchy - John C. Dvorak

The definition of "media" has undergone some major changes over the past few years. Many of the changes—and confusion—can be attributed to the immediate nature of information, thanks to new media and the arrival of bloggers and vloggers.

Is a blogger a journalist? The answer is evolving to "Yes, if he/she wants to be." The fact is that in this country, anyone can be a journalist, as there is largely a protected right to a free press. And a free press does not mean that you have to be owned by the Times-Mirror, or anyone else for that matter.

Newsletter writers are journalists just as much as New York Times reporters are (albeit without the NYT structure and all of its ethical and other rules). The subject of ethics always enters the "journalist" debate because it gets attention. What we consider ethical journalistic behavior, for the most part, is dictated by the corporate policies designed for specific news organizations. The big news organizations usually preach that their ethical standards are the best and that everyone should use them. This is a form of marketing and nothing more. Unfortunately, it's a trick that tends to confuse the small fries who often no longer define themselves as "true" media.

Old media ethics bugaboo. Much of what is deemed ethical by The New York Times is simply impractical for a low-budget online publication. Here's the example I often use to prove this point: A small-time publication is given the opportunity to cover an event in a faraway place, and the sponsoring corporation offers to pay for the trip. The Times would insist on picking up the tab itself. But the small-timer may not have the budget to do so. If it doesn't accept the sponsor's offer, it doesn't get the story, and the Times does. How is that fair to the readers? In fact, if the small-time publication adopts the same ethical code as the Times, it loses out. It's as if the small-timer was tricked into submission.

Read on ...

Real Eyes
Realize
Real Lies

Ice withdrawal 'shatters record' - BBC

Arctic sea ice shrank to the smallest area on record this year, US scientists have confirmed.

The National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) said the minimum extent of 4.13 million sq km (1.59 million sq miles) was reached on 16 September.

The figure shatters all previous satellite surveys, including the previous record low of 5.32 million sq km measured in 2005.

Earlier this month, it was reported that the Northwest Passage was open.

The fabled Arctic shipping route from the Atlantic to the Pacific is normally ice-bound at some location throughout the year; but this year, ships have been able to complete an unimpeded navigation.

Read on ...

Fertilizers, deformities linked - Rocky Mountain News

Fertilizers from farms and lawns are responsible for frog deformities cropping up in ponds and lakes across North America, a new study shows.

The finding not only has implications for worldwide amphibian declines, but could shine light on such diseases as cholera, malaria, West Nile virus and diseases affecting coral reefs, said assistant professor Pieter Johnson of the University of Colorado's ecology and evolutionary biology department.

Andrew Blaustein, zoologist from Oregon State University, hailed the CU finding as one of the first to connect the "drastic" problem of fertilizers with the proliferation of parasites and several diseases that can deform amphibians and sicken humans.

Read on ...

Great spirits have often encountered violent opposition from mediocrities.

- Albert Einstein

After reading Xandros 4: The best desktop Linux for Windows users on DesktopLinux I headed over to Xandros to check it out. I happened to click on one of the purchase links and this page came up with the following:

Through its agreement with Xandros, Microsoft offers patent covenants for Xandros customers. These covenants will provide customers confidence that the Xandros technologies they use and deploy in their environments are compliant with Microsoft's intellectual property.

Would you like to purchase patent protection for your Xandros Desktop?

If you click on the "Yes, please tell me more" link you go to this page with the following:

Microsoft's patent assurance program provides you with perpetual protection for your Xandros Desktop. This includes the software included when you purchase Xandros Desktop, any service packs to that version, and any additional software that is available from Xandros' repository through Xandros Networks. It does not include third-party software not included with your Xandros Desktop, software downloaded through non-Xandros repositories, or major version upgrades (e.g. from version 4.2 to 5.0).

With its assurance program, Microsoft agrees to never hold you legally liable for violating Microsoft intellectual property. This program is available for $50.

Let me get this right, I have to pay an additional $50 for not being liable for a possible 235 patents that Microsoft claims LInux and other open-source programs violate but will not actually identify.

It makes me wonder what this money really is for. Is it just a kick back to Microsoft?

Overall it just sounds like extortion to me.

If carrots are so good for your eyes, why are there so many dead rabbits on the highway?

https://www.sunclap.com/

more here

Sabotaging Google - John C. Dvorak

A reader, Courtney Cox (no relation to the actress), recently pointed out to me that the top results of recent complex Google searches turned out to be inane Chinese sites that were not even parking sites, just an assortment of keywords that somehow got indexed and brought to the top of the results list. After seeing a few of these sites, I have to wonder what's going on. Is it sabotage?

Let's start by showing you a typical site: http://vmk.wtoxd.cn/xmijotb.html (there's some annoying Active X here. So visit at your own risk). This site was the top result listed when the search term "reset mp3 player m240d" was entered. And here are the full search results, in which nine of the top ten results are these weird Chinese sites.

Courtney sent me numerous examples of this phenomenon, and it's obvious that the more specific and detailed the search request, the more likely Google is to list these Chinese sites. The issue has apparently been reported to Google, but if the basic algorithms allow this sort of result, even banning the specific sites will not stop this sort of abuse.

Read on ...

Even in the case of individuals, there is no possibility to feel happiness through anger. If in a difficult situation one becomes disturbed internally, overwhelmed by mental discomfort, then external things will not help at all. However, if despite external difficulties or problems, internally one's attitude is of love, warmth, and kindheartedness, then problems can be faced and accepted.

His Holiness the Dalai Lama

Do you want to know what my body is? My body is the same as the whole earth.

Do you want to know what my mind is? My mind is the same as space itself.

Do you want to know what my vision is? I see there is nothing to see.

Do you want to know what I hear? I hear the unheard.

Since I have been seeing and hearing, why then do I speak of the unheard? "If you listen with your ears, after all you cannot understand; when you hear through your eyes, only then will you know."

Ssu-hsin