|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
By John W. Dean; Barry M. Goldwater, Jr.
By Toni Morrison $14.37
$22
|
|
|
|
 AP photo / LM Otero
|
By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — A good politician triumphs by adapting to the times and taking advantage of opportunities as they come. A great politician anticipates openings others don’t see and creates possibilities that were not there before.
|
 White House photo / Paul Morse
|
Humans may be susceptible to methods of persuasion that play on the emotions and circumvent logic, but computers are another story. Enter a software program that purports to detect “spin” in politicians’ speeches by using a complex (albeit man-made) algorithm to hunt for truth-stretching words and phrases.
|
|
Satire by Andy Borowitz —
In a daring bid to wrench attention from his Democratic rival in the 2008 presidential race, Sen. John McCain today embarked on a historic first-ever visit to the Internet.
|
|
By Ellen Goodman — We are expected to interact with “labor-saving technology” without realizing that it’s labor-transferring technology. The job has not been “saved”; it’s been taken out of the paid sector, where employees have a nasty habit of expecting salaries, and put into the unpaid sector, where suckers ‘r’ us.
|
 www.prezydent.pl
|
It’s official: Microsoft’s top-geek-made-good, Bill Gates, is leaving his full-time position as head of Microsoft on Friday. Now that he’s made more money than regular mortals can even fathom (aside from those congresspeople who approve the defense budget), he’s stepping down in order to focus on his philanthropic work with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
|
 Flickr / LHOON
|
Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton agree on many issues, but it’s a bit surprising to see two candidates who’ve talked so much about the climate crisis and a new green economy tout their love of coal. Obama has an ad up in Kentucky that claims “Barack understands” the plight of the coal industry, while Clinton has promised voters in the state she would put more money into coal programs.
|
 The Sydney Morning Herald
|
Iranian President and up-and-coming schoolyard brawler Mahmoud Ahmadinejad declared in a televised address Wednesday his country’s willingness to “bloody the enemy’s nose” in order to defend its national sovereignty. At issue is Iran’s controversial nuclear program, which Ahmadinejad has declared is negotiable only with U.N. nuclear officials, not the politicized Security Council.
|
 AP photo / Mark Wilson, pool)
|
The official reason the U.S. military offered for its show of fireworks Wednesday night high above the Pacific was to shoot down, using an anti-satellite missile, a failed spy satellite before it might do damage upon reentry. However, not everyone read the skywriting that way.
|
 guardian.co.uk
|
During a panel discussion at the annual consumer electronics show, representatives from NBC, Microsoft and AT&T made the case for filtering Internet content at the service provider level. The idea is to stop the movement of copyrighted material, but there is a large, scary implication: allowing the pipe owner to control what passes through.
|
 guardian.co.uk
|
Al Gore’s Generation Investment Management has teamed up with venture capital heavyweight Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers to try to close the “significant gap between the capital needed and the capital currently deployed to create enduring solutions to the climate crisis.” The alliance will have a global focus and will seek to multiply by “many times” the $200 million already invested by KPCB in green projects.
|
|
The North Korean government has denied allegations that it shared nuclear technology with Syria. A senior U.S. nuclear official earlier insisted that North Koreans were in Syria, possibly to supply the latter with illicit equipment.
|
|
By Ellen Goodman — As technology becomes exponentially more sophisticated and pervasive, the sports world finds itself awash in ethical dilemmas. So where does a lightning fast amputee fit in the spectrum of Barry Bonds with his alleged doping and Tiger Woods with his better-than-perfect Lasik eyes?
|
|
A human rights organization is suing Yahoo for assisting the Chinese government in arresting dissidents by providing information on its users. Like Google and Microsoft, Yahoo has defended the practice of handing over data to China as a necessary evil mitigated by the benefits of the Internet, crippled and corrupt though it may be.
|
 microsoft.com
|
Microsoft has given itself less than eight years to find another billion PC users. To help meet that goal, the company has pledged to sell $3 bundles of Windows XP and Office software to governments that provide schools with free computers. That’s about 2 percent of the cost of Office alone.
|
|
A deluge of tax procrastinators attempting to file electronically before the midnight deadline on Tuesday slowed the TurboTax servers to a crawl, causing wait times in the hours. A spokesman for the company that makes the popular tax preparation software said it was “absolutely amazing” how many people had waited until the last possible moment.
|
 tpmmuckraker.com
|
Patrick Leahy, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, balked at the White House’s suggestion that several e-mails related to the U.S. attorneys scandal have been deleted. As many as 50 White House employees have used Republican National Committee e-mail accounts, possibly to conceal communications.
|
|
Internet social network MySpace has developed a sophisticated national database of sex offenders it uses to police memberships and protect users, many of them minors. On Monday, the company announced it would share the information with the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children in an effort to aid law enforcement.
(h/t: Sex Drive Daily)
|

|
If you’ve been struggling to decide whether HD DVD or Blu-ray is right for your next-generation video needs, consider this: The porn industry has apparently chosen HD DVD as its preferred high-definition format. Sony, beware: The same people who probably gave VHS a win over Betamax in the last major format war have taken sides.
|
|
Etiquette experts still don’t approve of sending thank-you notes via e-mail, despite the growing popularity of the practice. Because it’s not the sentiment that counts, but the former tree it’s written on.
|
|
While the British plane-bombing suspects allegedly were planning their attacks, the Bush administration was seeking to quietly divert funds for developing new technologies that could have scanned for liquid explosives.
|
|
PayPal will now allow users to buy goods and exchange money using their cell phones.
Sweet! It’s been getting far too hard to blow money on impulse items in recent years.
Posted on Apr 17, 2006
READ MORE
|
|
Forty-eight percent support striking Iran if it continues down its nuclear course, but a majority do not trust the president to make the “right decision,” according to an L.A. Times-Bloomberg poll.
|
 From the BBC
|
The apparatus will search for light emissions from distant galaxies. Scientists say light beams would be a logical way for alien civilizations to attempt communication.
|
|
The company’s free wireless service in San Francisco would allow Google to monitor all its users’ whereabouts—ostensibly to serve up location-specific advertising.
The feeling you just got? That would be the hairs on the back on your neck rising.
|
|
Former intelligence officer and United Nations weapons inspector Scott Ritter cuts through a recent L.A. Times story which claimed that “Iran could manufacture enough highly enriched uranium to build a bomb within three years.” He provides a rather technical, but extremely convincing, argument for why it is unlikely that Iran could pose a nuclear threat anytime soon. (video: h/t Crooks and Liars)
|
|
Until recently, a user who typed in “abortion” received a prompt asking, “Did you mean adoption?” The online retailer has since erased the prompt.
Posted on Mar 21, 2006
READ MORE
|
View the most popular tags overall?
|
|