:: NEWS COCKTAIL aka BlahBlahBlog ::

:: 8.31.2005 ::

:: "Anti-War Protests Near Bush Ranch End" ::

From The Washington Post
By ANGELA K. BROWN.
CRAWFORD, Texas -- As anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan's protest outside President Bush's ranch comes to an end, her supporters are embarking on a three-week bus tour of the country to continue rallying people against the war in Iraq.

ALSO

Bush refusal to meet mother 'galvanised' war protest
Ireland Online

Fear and Loathing in Crawford, Texas
A commentary from The Lone Star Iconoclast
By Stephen Webster

posted by me

:: 12:59:00 PM [+] ::
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:: "On the Internet, Nobody Knows You're a Bot" ::

From Wired News
In the booming world of online poker, anyone can win. Especially with an autoplaying robot ace in the hole. Are you in, human?
By David Kushner

It's late one Wednesday afternoon, and CptPokr is logged on to PartyPoker.com and ready to play. Onscreen, the captain exudes a certain brash charisma - broad shoulders, immaculate brown hair, restless animatronic eyes. He looks like he should be playing synth in Kraftwerk. Instead, he is seated at a virtual table with nine other avatars, wagering on limit Texas hold 'em.

There's plenty at stake. An estimated 1.8 million gamblers around the world ante up for online poker every month. Last year, poker sites raked in an estimated $1.4 billion, an amount expected to double in 2005.

Ever since the aptly named accountant Chris Moneymaker parlayed a $40 Internet tournament buy-in into a $2.5 million championship at the World Series of Poker in 2003, card shark wannabes have been chasing their fantasies onto the Net. Some even quit their day jobs and try to make a living at online poker. And why not? This shadowy world is driven by no less a force than the great American dream. As the tournament's motto goes, "Anyone can win." There's one problem, though, as CptPokr is about to demonstrate: The rules of the game are different online.

CptPokr is a robot. Unlike the other icons at the table, there is no human placing his bets and playing his cards. He is controlled by WinHoldEm, the first commercially available autoplaying poker software. Seat him at the table and he will apply strategy gleaned from decades of research. While carbon-based players munch Ding Dongs, yawn, guzzle beer, reply to email, take phone calls, and chat on IM, CptPokr (a pseudonym) is running the numbers so it will know, statistically, when to hold 'em and when to fold 'em.

Smart, skilled players are rewarded in the long run, especially online, where there are plenty of beginners who would never have the nerve to sit down at a real table. But WinHoldEm isn't just smart, it's a machine. Set it to run on autopilot and it wins real money while you sleep. Flick on Team mode and you can collude with other humans running WinHoldEm at the table.

For years, there has been chatter among online players about the coming poker bot infestation. WinHoldEm is turning those rumors into reality ...

Read more here.

posted by me

:: 10:35:00 AM [+] ::
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:: "Studios mine P2P logs to sue swappers" ::

By John Borland
Staff Writer, CNET News.com

update Hollywood studios filed a new round of lawsuits against file swappers on Thursday, for the first time using peer-to-peer companies' own data to track down individuals accused of trading movies online.

The Motion Picture Association of America said it filed 286 lawsuits against people around the United States based on information acquired from file-trading sites shut down earlier in the year. Most of those sites were hubs connecting people using the BitTorrent technology, a peer-to-peer application designed for speeding downloads of large files.

The group previously said in February that a Texas court had ordered that the server logs of one big site, called LokiTorrent, be turned over to Hollywood investigators. An MPAA spokeswoman said that none of Thursday's suits were related to that action, however.

Hollywood lawyers are hoping that the fear of exposure will dissuade more people from trying to download movies for free online.

"Internet movie thieves be warned: You have no friends in the online community when you are engaging in copyright theft," MPAA Senior Vice President John Malcom said in a statement.

Studios launched an aggressive new campaign against individual file swappers and peer-to-peer services last December, in particular targeting the BitTorrent hubs that served as jumping-off points for downloading a wide array of software and movies.

Previous Next Many of the most popular sites, including SuprNova, LokiTorrent and others, have since shut down, either voluntarily or on the heels of lawsuits.

Although it is widely used for piracy, BitTorrent is increasingly being tapped for wholly legitimate applications such as distributing open-source software. Web browser company Opera Software has even built the technology into the latest version of its Net-surfing software.

BitTorrent creator Bram Cohen has warned in the past that using his technology to distribute material illegally is a "dumb idea," because the file-swapping tool is not designed to hide the identity of anyone using it.

Read more here.

ALSO @ News.com

Japan's ISPs to intervene on potential suicides

U.S. defense networks attacked via China

Scientists: Earth's center rotates faster than surface

posted by me

:: 10:19:00 AM [+] ::
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:: "Reading Green Tea Leaves in Tokyo" ::

From Wired News
iMomus » Nick Currie, aka Momus, is a Scottish musician and writer living in Berlin. His first column for Wired News discusses Japanese vending machines, green tea and the nature of capitalism.

Also @ Wired
Windows Got Ya Down? Try a Remix

How Jon Stewart Is Reinventing TV

posted by me

:: 12:23:00 PM [+] ::
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:: So Weird ::

From Chuck Shepherd's News of the Weird (.915)

In July, film director David Lynch announced that he had formed a foundation to raise $7 billion to fund 8,000 Transcendental Meditation practitioners to bring world peace by creating a "unified field" of stress-free brain waves over the Earth (which TM'ers accomplish, as they unironically describe it, by detaching their minds from the "thinking process"). Training expenses have increased dramatically in 12 years, for TM maven Dr. John Hagelin needed only $4.2 million in 1993 to bring 4,000 TM'ers to Washington, D.C., to reduce crime for eight weeks, and TM founder Maharishi Mahesh Yogi asked for only $1 billion in 2002 to train 40,000 meditators to calm the world after Sept. 11. [Reuters, 7-20-05, 7-4-02; New York Times, 8-1-93]

Send your Weird News to Chuck Shepherd, P.O. Box 18737, Tampa FL 33679 or WeirdNewsTips@yahoo.com

posted by me

:: 10:59:00 PM [+] ::
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:: "At Microsoft, the yin and yang of Linux" ::

By Ina Fried
Staff Writer, CNET News.com

As Microsoft's director of platform technology strategy, Bill Hilf spends half his time trying to figure out ways Windows can work better with Linux and the other half trying to outflank the open-source rival.

Of course, he doesn't describe it quite that starkly.

"My life is like a yin and a yang," he said in an interview at this week's LinuxWorld Conference and Expo in San Francisco. "There is just as much time thinking about the competitive...as there is about the cooperation/interoperability/opportunity. It's equal time."

Microsoft's Linux and Open Source Software Lab serves as both a place to examine the threat posed to Microsoft products by open-source offerings and a venue for testing software from Microsoft and others that's designed to span that divide. The lab is home to hundreds of servers and desktops that run dozens of different types of Linux and Unix.

The lab's dual purpose reflects an evolution in Microsoft's mindset when it comes to Linux and open-source software

Linux is still seen as a competitor that needs to be addressed head-on. The company spends plenty of time and money on its anti-Linux "Get the Facts" campaign, for example.

At the same time, though, Microsoft seems to have accepted that Linux is not going away, and the company wants to make sure it's not turning off customers--or leaving dollars on the table--by ignoring its very real rival.

Read more here.

posted by me

:: 10:56:00 AM [+] ::
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:: "Mother's Protest at Bush's Doorstep Raises the Stakes" ::

By Edwin Chen and Dana Calvo
The Los Angeles Times

CRAWFORD, Texas — For more than a year, a modest bungalow known as "Peace House," located a few miles from President Bush's ranch, has served as a headquarters for antiwar activists. It is lonely work, with little more than a skeleton crew on hand much of the time.

But then Cindy Sheehan hit town.

The 48-year-old mother of Army Spc. Casey Sheehan, who was killed in an ambush in Baghdad last year, is consumed by the kind of grief that turns into a furious determination to do something — in her case, to confront the president and force him to explain why her son died.

Now, in the space of just a few days, what started out as a seemingly quixotic personal mission has become something of a phenomenon — with media swarming around Sheehan, leading liberal and antiwar activists parachuting in to try to make her their long-sought voice, and political experts in both parties working to assess what role she may have in galvanizing the public's gathering unhappiness with the increasing American casualties in Iraq.

Read more here.

posted by me

:: 12:59:00 PM [+] ::
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:: Googling Google, OR, About Schmidt! ::

Google says Cnet went too far in googling
Carolyn Said
The SF Chronicle

Googling someone -- a prospective job candidate, a teenage crush, your son's soccer coach -- is a commonplace ritual of modern life. But the search engine company evidently doesn't appreciate a taste of its own medicine.

Google has blackballed online technology news service Cnet News.com for googling Eric Schmidt, CEO of the Mountain View company, and including some personal information about him in a story last month. Google told a Cnet editor that it will not speak with Cnet reporters until August 2006, according to Jai Singh, editor in chief of Cnet News.com in San Francisco.

"We published a story that recounted how we found information on the (Google) CEO in a public forum using their service," Singh said. "They had issue with the fact that they felt it was private information and our point is it was public information obtained through public channels using Google search."

Google declined to comment.

Reporter Elinor Mills' Cnet article made the point that Google, the search engine used by more than half of U.S. Internet users, has much potential for privacy invasion, particularly through data it collects that is not available to the public, such as logs of Google searches. She illustrated the story with information that could readily be obtained by anyone with access to Google and the Internet: Schmidt's net worth, home neighborhood, attendance at Burning Man and enthusiasm for amateur piloting.

"From what I understand, most of (Google's objection to the article) had to do with the anecdotal lead we used to illustrate the point that information could be obtained rather easily using Google search," Singh said.

Mark Glaser, a columnist with Online Journalism Review, run by the USC Annenberg School, said Google was overreacting.

"Google helps people search for this kind of information. For them to be upset that someone would publicize it is a little bit strange. It could end up backfiring on them because it gives more attention to the (privacy) problem," he said.

An entire company shunning an entire media outlet is unusual, although isolated bans are not.

Read more here.

THE CNET STORY:
Google balances privacy, reach
Published: July 14, 2005, 4:00 AM PDT
By Elinor Mills
Staff Writer, CNET News.com

Google CEO Eric Schmidt doesn't reveal much about himself on his home page.
But spending 30 minutes on the Google search engine lets one discover that Schmidt, 50, was worth an estimated $1.5 billion last year. Earlier this year, he pulled in almost $90 million from sales of Google stock and made at least another $50 million selling shares in the past two months as the stock leaped to more than $300 a share.

He and his wife Wendy live in the affluent town of Atherton, Calif., where, at a $10,000-a-plate political fund-raiser five years ago, presidential candidate Al Gore and his wife Tipper danced as Elton John belted out "Bennie and the Jets."

Schmidt has also roamed the desert at the Burning Man art festival in Nevada, and is an avid amateur pilot.

That such detailed personal information is so readily available on public Web sites makes most people uncomfortable. But it's nothing compared with the information Google collects and doesn't make public.

Assuming Schmidt uses his company's services, someone with access to Google's databases could find out what he writes in his e-mails and to whom he sends them, where he shops online or even what restaurants he's located via online maps. Like so many other Google users, his virtual life has been meticulously recorded.

The fear, of course, is that hackers, zealous government investigators, or even a Google insider who falls short of the company's ethics standards could abuse that information. Google, some worry, is amassing a tempting record of personal information, and the onus is on the Mountain View, Calif., company to keep that information under wraps.

Privacy advocates say information collected at Yahoo, Microsoft's MSN, Amazon.com's A-9 and other search and e-commerce companies poses similar risks. Indeed, many of those companies' business plans tend to mimic what Google is trying to do, and some are less careful with the data they collect. But Google, which has more than a 50 percent share of the U.S. search engine market, according to the latest data from WebSideStory, has become a lightning rod for privacy concerns because of its high profile and its unmatched impact on the Internet community.

"Google is poised to trump Microsoft in its potential to invade privacy, and it's very hard for many consumers to get it because the Google brand name has so much trust," said Chris Hoofnagle of the Electronic Privacy Information Center. "But if you step back and look at the suite of products and how they are used, you realize Google can have a lot of personal information about individuals' Internet habits--e-mail, saving search history, images, personal information from (social network site) Orkut--it represents a significant threat to privacy."

Kevin Bankston, staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said Google is amassing data that could create some of the most detailed individual profiles ever devised.

"Your search history shows your associations, beliefs, perhaps your medical problems. The things you Google for define you," Bankston said.

Read more here.

ALSO
Hidden Angle
Google Imposes Blackout On ... Google?
From CJR Daily

AND for reference...
Google's Privacy Policy.

posted by me

:: 11:24:00 AM [+] ::
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:: EPIC report ::

From EPIC.org
Spotlight: Unmanned Planes Allow Secret Surveillance of U.S. Civilians
This month's Spotlight on Surveillance shines on unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), equipped with cameras and sensors that produce high-resolution imagery and track moving targets. UAVs, which cost $350,000 to $4.5 million each, were designed for military use and have been deployed in Afghanistan and Iraq. Now this military technology could be used by the federal government for aerial surveillance of civilians in the United States. For more information, see EPIC's Spotlight on Surveillance page.

posted by me

:: 10:59:00 PM [+] ::
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:: "Hiroshima Mourns Victims of Atomic Bomb" ::

HIROSHIMA, Japan (AP) - Capping a day of solemn remembrance, thousands of paper lanterns representing the souls of the dead were floated on a Hiroshima river Saturday near ground zero for the world's first atomic bomb attack 60 years ago.

The annual lantern observance brought to a close a full day of memorials, ranging from official gatherings to a "die-in" and dozens of small-scale peace rallies.

At 8:15 a.m., the moment of the 1945 blast, the city's trolleys stopped. More than 55,000 people, including Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, observed a moment of silence at Peace Memorial Park that was broken only by the ringing of a bronze bell.

A flock of doves was released into the sky. Then wreaths and ladles of water - symbolizing the suffering of those who died in the atomic inferno - were offered at a simple, arch-shaped stone monument at the center of the park.

"I offer deep prayers from my heart to those who were killed," Koizumi said, vowing that Japan would be a leader in the international movement against nuclear proliferation.

Hiroshima Mayor Tadatoshi Akiba, an outspoken critic of Koizumi's hawkish foreign policy, was more emotional in his "Peace Declaration." He gave an empassioned plea for the abolition of all nuclear weapons and said the United States, Russia and other members of the nuclear club were "jeopardizing human survival."

"Within the United Nations, nuclear club members use their veto power to override the global majority and pursue their selfish objectives," he said. "We seek to comfort the souls of all the victims by declaring that we humbly reaffirm our responsibility never to repeat the evil."

Outside the nearby A-Bomb Dome, one of the few buildings left standing after the blast, peace activists held a "die-in" - falling to the ground to dramatize the toll from the bombing.

Though Hiroshima is now a thriving city of 3 million, most of whom were born after the war, the anniversary underscores the depth of its tragedy.

Officials estimate that about 140,000 people were killed instantly or died within a few months after the Enola Gay dropped its deadly payload over the city, which then had a population of about 350,000.

In central London, more than 200 anti-nuclear activists and others gathered at Tavistock Square, where a cherry tree was planted in 1967 in memory of the victims of the Hiroshima bombing.

In the United States, survivors of the blasts joined hundreds of people in Nevada, New Mexico and Tennessee calling for a global ban on nuclear weapons. The commemorations were held at sites significant in the development of the atomic bombs.

Read more here.

ALSO
Hiroshima, in the words of Enola Gay's bombardier
No regrets for Col. Tom Ferebee, hometown hero
Houston Chronicle
By JAMES L. MARTIN

Sixty years ago today, Hiroshima, Japan, became the first target of an atomic bomb, with Nagasaki the second target three days later. Thus, a war that lasted four years was ended in four days.

To those who decry the devastation caused by President Truman's decision to develop and detonate this awesome weapon, I remind them of the lives saved, not lost.

I'm very proud of the fact that my uncle was not only a member of the Enola Gay that dropped "Little Boy" on Hiroshima, the first atomic bomb in history, but he was actually the bombardier. The bottom line, as my uncle said many times, was that he slept well at night knowing that he helped save more lives than he killed by bringing the war to a sudden halt.

The late Tom Ferebee, a native of Mocksville, N.C., was an Army Air Force lieutenant, hand-picked for a highly secret mission by pilot Paul Tibbets Jr., to be part of the Enola Gay's 12-man crew.

Debate still swirls around the exhibit of the rebuilt Enola Gay at a Smithsonian museum near Washington's Dulles International Airport, mostly by liberals awash in shame that the United States of America would wreak such damage upon the population of Hiroshima.

Hiroshima survivor recalls flight from death
CTV, Canada

Sixty years have passed since the United States dropped the first atomic bomb on Japan, but Setsuko Thurlow remembers the day clearly -- and it still brings tears to her eyes.

Thurlow, a 13-year-old student, was huddled in a military installation in Hiroshima when the Enola Gay, a bomber named after the pilot's mother, released its payload at 8:15 a.m., with ground zero less than two kilometres away from her.

"In that instant, I saw a bluish-white flash and had this sensation that my body was floating in the air," Thurlow told CTV. "I guess I was falling along with the building." Thurlow lost consciousness. She later woke up in total darkness and silence.

"I tried to move my body but I couldn't," she recalls, her voice choking with emotion. "Soon, I could hear my classmates crying out, 'God help me!' Mother help me!'

"Suddenly, someone shook me from behind and told me not to give up, to keep moving." Lifting pieces of wood, the person created an opening in the debris. Thurlow crawled through it, toward the light, and escaped the burning building.

Many of her classmates weren't as lucky. They were consumed by the flames.

Thurlow and a few others ran to the countryside. It was a surreal flight. Though it was just before 9 a.m., the girls fled in complete darkness.

"Perhaps it was because of the dust, smoke and particles in the air that blocked the sun," says Thurlow, who now lives in Toronto. "It was the strangest feeling."

AND
For some the nightmare of Hiroshima will never end
Guardian Unlimited, UK

Hiroshima documentary makes for chilling viewing
Ireland Online

Edinburgh play Enola explores the Hiroshima bombing 60 years after ...
BBC News, UK

Anti-Nuclear Activists Mark Anniversary
Washington Post

Hiroshima, the Top News Story That Wasn't
Antiwar.com, CA

60 Years Since Hiroshima
Slashdot

Hiroshima still stokes controversy
CNN International

At the 60th Anniversary: The Embedded 'New York Times' Reporter Who Brought Us the 'Atomic Age'
Editor & Publisher
By Greg Mitchell

The myths of Hiroshima
Los Angeles Times

posted by me

:: 6:17:00 PM [+] ::
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