Tuesday, December 10, 2002

Al-Q Lie. Al Qaeda Lie Detection /G November 17, 2002 [Cryptome] 7:02:33 PM    comment []

Reverse cowgirl finds out how real "tv reality" is. [Adam Curry: Adam Curry's Weblog] 7:01:41 PM    comment []

Eschaton notes: Trent Lott's home state led the nation in black victims of lynching from 1882- 1930, both in terms of the absolute numbers and per capita of the black population. And through 1962 as well. . . . It is important to note that the purpose of lynchings, and defending the right to keep on doing it, wasn't just to punish the victims for their perceived transgressions. It was terrorism, plain and simple, designed to intimidate the black population. 1:44:44 PM    comment []

Joe Conason's Journal: The Senate majority leader is nostalgic for segregation and no one seems to care -- including the New York Times, NPR and the Democratic Party. Well, they all know the truth about Trent Lott. They just wish he would keep his mouth shut. In fact, this doesn't surprise anyone familiar with Lott's views and background, except that he normally obliges us by concealing his bigotry. He prefers to be regarded as a sleazy hustler, and who can blame him? That's by far the more attractive side of his character. On the issue of overt racism, Lott is a two-time loser. In late 1998, Salon and other publications exposed the Mississippi Republican's close political and familial ties with the Council of Conservative Citizens. Guess who is featured on the current cover of Citizens Informer, the racist group's publication? The CCC leaders have passed a resolution commending Lott for his imbecilic call to post troops around the nation's borders (uttered on the O'Reilly show, of course). The last time around, Lott's spokesman gave a desultory and probably dishonest denial of the senator's links to this unsavory group -- as if he had no idea what they stand for. Now we know that he knew, and that he agreed, and that he still holds to the Dixiecrat platform of 1948. Includes this link to one of Thurmond's ''colorful'' presidential campaign speeches 12:44:33 PM    comment []

CIA Report on Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction Programs 11:44:31 AM    comment []

Caught whistling Dixie: Four days later, Lott's controversial comment gets some attention. But not from top congressional Democrats. By Anthony York, in Salon. On Monday, however, Al Gore spoke up. In an interview with CNN's Judy Woodruff Monday, Gore said, It is not a small thing, Judy, for one of the half dozen most prominent political leaders in America to say that our problems are caused by integration and that we should have had a segregationist candidate. That is divisive and it is divisive along racial lines. That's the definition of a racist comment. 11:44:28 AM    comment []

George H. W. Bush a Moonie? 10:44:20 AM    comment []

Germany cautious on Microsoft security. The German government is worried about the adoption by federal agencies of Microsoft's upcoming Palladium security technology, fearing the system could lead to higher costs. [CNET News.com] 7:55:06 AM    comment []

Bruce Sterling's 1992 speech to the Library Information Technology Association is eerily prescient -- the "Information Economy" is bankrupt, and it's taking the public domain down with it. Ladies and gentlemen, there's a problem with showing Mr Franklin the door. The problem is that Mr Franklin was right in 1731 and Mr Franklin is still right! Information is not something you can successfully peddle like Coca-Cola. If it were a genuine commodity, then information would cost nothing when you had a glut of it. God knows we've got enough data! We're drowning in data. Nevertheless we're only gonna make more. Money just does not map the world of information at all well. How much is the Bible worth? You can get a Bible in any hotel room. They're worthless as commodities, but not valueless to humankind. Money and value are not identical. What's information really about? It seems to me there's something direly wrong with the ``Information Economy.'' It's not about data, it's about attention. In a few years you may be able to carry the Library of Congress around in your hip pocket. So? You're never gonna read the Library of Congress. You'll die long before you access one tenth of one percent of it. What's important --- increasingly important --- is the process by which you figure out what to look at. This is the beginning of the real and true economics of information. Not who owns the books, who prints the books, who has the holdings. The crux here is access, not holdings. And not even access itself, but the signposts that tell you what to access --- what to pay attention to. In the Information Economy everything is plentiful --- except attention. (thanks, Cory!) 5:54:04 AM    comment []

Former CEO Comes With Some Baggage: Snow's Record Like O'Neill's, Up to a Point, by Paul Blustein, Don Phillips and David S. Hilzenrath, Washington Post. Two years ago, for example, the railroad was cited by federal authorities for significant track-safety violations -- a stark contrast with the situation at Alcoa, where O'Neill's obsession with eliminating workplace accidents made the aluminum company America's safest major firm. A merger that Snow engineered with Conrail, the freight line once owned by the government, has been plagued by problems. Perhaps most important, Snow's compensation and the ties between members of the company's board of directors are akin to some of the practices that have aroused public fury at business executives' behavior after a series of scandals over the past year. Through an executive compensation program, as of late 1996 CSX had lent Snow $24.5 million toward the purchase of company stock valued at $32.3 million, according to a report the firm filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. CSX's stock price stock subsequently declined, and in 2000 the company forgave outstanding loans to Snow and other executives. Furthermore, the independence of the CSX board of directors' compensation committee was compromised, the AFL-CIO charged, because its chairman and one of its members had purchased millions of dollars of property from CSX subsidiaries in the real estate business. . . . Snow also sold 120,000 shares of CSX stock at $35.22 a share on Aug. 8, less than a month before the company announced that its third- quarter outlook was weakening because of slowing coal traffic -- a revelation that caused its shares to drop to about $29. The stock has hovered at $26 to $29 since then. The White House responds that these were all legal. So there. 5:51:02 AM    comment []

GREAT writer. Yea! Anne Lamott is back!. She's tanned, she's rested, she's traumatized by the elections, she's ready to roll. After a three-year absence, longtime Salon columnist Anne Lamott returns. [Salon Headlines] 5:48:04 AM    comment []

Raided Firm's Software Checks Out. A search of Ptech, prompted by suspected links to terrorist groups, apparently shows the Massachusetts company did not design software with backdoor access to national security data. Some security experts aren't so sure. By Michelle Delio. [Wired News] See also earlier coverage at A blog doesn't need a clever name yesterday and last week. 5:45:22 AM    comment []

Just caught this smart (sort of) defense (or maybe explanation or rationale) of a many-worlds view from Mitsu: Suppose you were watching a screen filled with totally random dots. Except, you're sitting in a room in which, without fail, in some instantaneous way, if what you're looking at doesn't correspond to a shape that looks like a square bouncing off the edges of the screen, the room will kill you. Now, imagine that, a la the old Everett Many-Worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics, every possibility happened. There would be some universe in which you survived indefinitely, watching what appears to be a square, bouncing off the edges of the screen. You might measure the square's trajectory and conclude that it was a law of physics that made the square move that way --- but in fact, it's just that in the universes where the square turns into random noise or fails to move according to certain rules, you simply get instantaneously killed, and therefore don't have the time to discover the violation of the law. 2:42:58 AM    comment []