Content-type: matter-transport/sentient-life-form

Is the Gorilla's Final Hour Soon Approaching?

That would indeed be a very sad world without primates anymore :-(

At RP-Online: Wissenschaft I found the original article.

72 Percent for Rüttgers

"My goal is victory in May 2005," said Jürgen Rüttgers today at the CDU state party conference in Bochum. - yet another horror scenario. First Koch threatens that he wants to become Chancellor (the Bavarian perpetual threat is still at the ready), Merkenix wants to cut pensions for singles, Möllemann wants to start his own party and Rüttgers wants to be allowed to run down NRW. All that's missing is Karl Dall running for Federal President ...

At WDR.de you can find the original article.

George W. Bush's Morning Reading

I'm passing along the tip about the Monitor report on Bush and religion. The report was really very interesting. Though the connections between Moon and the Bush administration (and Bush family!) are also quite noteworthy - apparently all a tangled mix of pseudo-religion, apocalyptic fantasies, and good old megalomania.

Jutta has written a few articles on the Moon sect and its connections to the Bush administration: What does the Bush family have to do with the Moon sect? and Bush appoints Josette Shiner as deputy in US foreign trade office. And then there's the strange circumstance that a very large part of the Bush administration is connected to the oil or chemical industry. At Der Rollberg you can find the original article.

George Lakoff: Metaphor and War, Again

An interesting article by George Lakoff about the metaphors that define this Gulf War and how these metaphors shape the depiction of the war. Language has great power. Or as George puts it: Metaphors can kill. Here you can find the original article.

Politicians' Language in Times of War

The article essentially says everything that needs to be said. But as long as there are politicians who don't blame the warring parties for the outbreak of a war, but instead blame those who protested against the war and refused to participate in it, we will continue to live with diminishments and downplayings of murder and manslaughter in our language.

I found the original article on RP-Online: Wissenschaft.

Anti-war slogan coined, repurposed and Googlewashed... in 42 days

An article about the effects blogs have on Google PageRanks. The author is upset that a term — "The second superpower" — is being redefined from its original meaning of public opinion through Google rankings to a blog and an article, both written by James Moore. He equates this with an erasure of the original meaning and an overwriting with a new meaning caused by a small list of A-List bloggers (there is no cabal). Fair enough. Google rankings are vulnerable to attack through links — we've known this since Google bombs. But what does that mean for terms and meanings?

I think the author is shooting way over the target by treating Google as a meaning-defining authority. Google is first and foremost just an automaton, based on arbitrary algorithms, operated by a company that wants to make money through embedded advertising blocks and selling its technology.

Just because Google is currently the most commonly used search engine (is it even?) doesn't automatically make it meaning-defining. It's not an expert team that scientifically analyzes queries. It's not even a system based on democratic consensus. It's simply based on a series of algorithms with which it calculates the relevance of a result.

As one can see, for example, in Kasparov's battle against chess computers, even in a highly deterministic environment like chess, correctly evaluating a chess position (and that's all a chess program does — evaluate positions relative to other positions that arise from a series of moves) is extremely difficult.

The contents of search engines, on the other hand, are human-authored works with all the usual problems: ambiguities, irony, typos, deliberate lies and whatever else people come up with. How is an automaton supposed to reliably determine the relevance rating of a document based on the user's input and the available alternative documents? It can't. There are only approximate solutions. And in these — necessarily, since nothing else exists — technical information and structural information are added and weighted according to predetermined rules.

The automaton doesn't grasp meaning and content. Therefore, an automaton simply cannot be meaning-defining for an expression.

The only thing Google-washing proves is the vulnerability of Google's algorithms. Nothing more and nothing less. And that one should reasonably work with meta-search engines if one wants a broader and more balanced mix of information. In the end, this is probably just someone who is pissed off for relying too much on technology.

Devilish grin

I'll spare myself an assessment of the sometimes rather apocalyptic conclusions drawn in the article, as well as the slight hint of paranoia that shines through.

Here's the original article.

Giant squid caught off Antarctica

Too small for a decent sea monster, but already quite impressive.

I found the original article on Spiegel Online: Science.

Ahhhh....

Super. No wonder they're so pissed off about the alleged persecution of the Moon sect in Germany. Well, it fits well with this president ... At MEHRZWECKBEUTEL you can find the original article.

Elephants can run quite fast

But the braking distance ...

Teufelsgrinsen

At RP-Online: Wissenschaft I found the original article.

Microsoft patent on "probabilistic classifiers"

Yeah great, Microsoft has a patent on statistical spam filters

At Gary Robinson: Gary Robinsons Spam Rants I found the original article.

Olympus Stylus 400/300 Digital Reviews

That sounds really quite interesting, like a digital replacement for an Mju II. But it's not an option as a replacement for my Contax T

I found the original article at PhotographyBLOG.

Peter Arnett and treason.

Now a Senator is calling for Peter Arnett to be charged with treason because of his interview on Iraqi television. What absurd forms is the war against the public that the USA is waging taking on?

The land of the free and the brave - where you get fired for having your own opinion and charged as a traitor. It doesn't help either if you have freedom of the press written in your constitution...

I found the original article at Ben Hammersley.com.

Photoshop in War

A LA Times photographer composited images in Photoshop because they looked better together that way than the two originals separately. And that's why he's now a former LA Times photographer. The wonderful world of digital...

Here's the original article.

Belgium defuses genocide law

Great. A few threatening gestures and simple blackmail and Belgium caves in to the USA.

I found the original article at tagesschau on the internet at tagesschau.

Businesses should be able to train more easily

And what kind of training is that supposed to be then? Shoddy work/IHK? Or maybe insolvency assistant? State-certified bankruptcy vulture?

Sorry folks, but obtaining trainer qualification isn't that difficult, that's hardly the reason for the shortage of apprenticeship positions. And apprenticeship positions without proper training don't benefit any apprentice - in the end that's just exploitation of cheap labor.

When I hear the usual reasons against hiring apprentices, it's more like statements that it would be too much work.

Well, if you want fully trained skilled workers, you have to train them at some point. But you can't do that in the small backyard shop without a trainer - and those who weren't trained properly (or were simply used as cheap labor), are out on the street after their apprenticeship.

At tagesschau im Internet there's the original article.

Kiel State Parliament increases allowances by almost 50 percent

Well, that's quite a savings plan, surely easy to communicate to the base and citizens. And this wonderful unity between SPD and CDU, absolutely delightful.

Teufelsgrinsen

At RP Online: Politik I found the original article.

Möllemann: Bush belongs before a tribunal

Hmm. Möllemännchen is now wearing blue with white doves

Teufelsgrinsen

I found the original article at RP Online: Politik.

Red-Green agrees on new terrorism paragraph

Our terrorist problem in Germany is just sooooo big, so we definitely need even stricter laws.

I found the original article at RP Online: Politik.

Sony ordered to pay $25m in patent claim

And the patent madness continues

At Imaging Resource News Page I found the original article.

Does Merkel have anything to do with 'merken'?

Clear answer: Nope.

At Zickenterror I found the original article.

New QuickTime Version

Question: (Why do I actually have a Unix kernel if I have to restart the machine anyway?)

Answer: Because Apple didn't build more sophisticated mechanisms (restart server process, reload services, update frameworks, etc.) into the installation routines, but only a restart of the entire computer.

Yes, that's stupid.

I found the original article at Der Schockwellenreiter.

NewCode, a secure PL

Now that's quite an innovative approach! I found the original article at Lambda the Ultimate.

Polaroid 600 SE completed

I recently finally tracked down the last important piece for the Polaroid 600 SE: a 6x9 roll film back. Now the camera is complete. I think I'll take some photos of all the equipment soon and post them here. Really fine gear!

Series production for IBM's "Universal Business Adapter"

So when they posted it, it was still March 31st and not April 1st.

At heise online news there is the original article.

US Special Adviser Forges Post-War Plans

Hmm. A US American colony with military rule. Hmm. So far the USA has only supported such governments through the CIA, but hasn't established them itself ...

(Quite apart from such trivial matters as the fact that the USA first has to win the war)

At tagesschau im Internet I found the original article.

USA criticize treatment of religious minorities in Germany

Ok. So to clarify once more: the state whose soldiers are currently killing people in Iraq without a UN mandate and firing on civilians, which locks up hundreds of terrorism suspects in camps without trial, without a lawyer, or contact with anyone, and has its own citizens arrested by the FBI and then allows them no contact, doesn't even tell them why they were arrested in the first place—this state is complaining that we discriminate against Scientology (a fascist sect) and Moon (ditto)?

So "complete loss of reality" is still far too positive a description for what people in the States are suffering from...

I found the original article at RP Online: Politik.

Whitespace

And that's just one innovation: I could fit a second program in Python's indentations

I found the original article at Lambda the Ultimate.

Yahoo! Store Switches Back to Lisp

Bitter. That's a really bitter April Fool's joke

I found the original article at Lambda the Ultimate.

The US Army and the Press

So this is how one imagines dealing with the press in the land of the free? Or where did the soldiers learn such a sensitive approach?

Here's the original article.

Maher (Mike) Hawash

And further judicial arbitrariness in the land-of-the-free

I found the original article at Warblogs:CC.

Peter Arnett Falls from Grace

And another piece of evidence for what free press in the land-of-the-free really means. No Pulitzer Prize helps with that. I found the original article on Telepolis News at this link.

What you shouldn't do with Debian Linux ...

Sorry esteemed colleague, but with apt-get install mozilla, apt-get shows you exactly what it will do, including which packages will be deleted and which will be installed. Whoever carelessly answers "Yes I want to" to that, please press ctrl-c very quickly in case of justified error or suffer forever

Teufelsgrinsen

At das Netzbuch - ralles Weblog you can find the original article.

Criticism of Rumsfeld from Within

First signs of dissolution?

At tagesschau im Internet there is the original article.

Explosion, Said to Be From Missile, Empty Mall in Kuwait

Extremely precise and intelligent cruise missile that lands in Kuwait instead of Baghdad. If the US military keeps this up, it will soon have won the war against its allies...

At New York Times: NYT HomePage you can find the original article.

http://www.tacitus[...]chives/000572.html

Hmm. Should the dolphin have more intelligence than its trainer?

Teufelsgrinsen

I found the original article at Warblogs:CC.

Möllemann back in court

Oh yes, the FDP keeps trying to prove how much they were screwed by the Möllemännchen

Teufelsgrinsen

At RP Online: Politik there's the original article.

Robb on the Bush Doctrine

A rather interesting analysis by John Robb about the Bush Doctrine.

I found the original article at lies.com.

USA accuse Syria of supporting Iraq

Great class. Is Rumsfeld already preparing the next war?

At tagesschau im Internet there's the original article.

Due to Iraq War: Doctor treats no Americans

A thoroughly pigheaded attitude and in my view unlawful. After all, Americans who go to a doctor in Rendsburg are certainly not automatically war criminals just because of their origin. He should read our Basic Law, what it says on the subject of discrimination based on origin...

Apart from the fact that he's degrading himself to the level of American eBay sellers who refuse to ship to Canada or old-Europe, the Freedom Fries and -Toast and similar stupid, narrow-minded actions.

At RP Online: Politik there is the original article.

Everything is Relative

"Umm Qasr is a city similar to Southampton," UK defence minister Geoff Hoon said yesterday. "He's either never been to Southampton, or he's never been to Umm Qasr" says a British Squaddie patrolling Umm Qasr. Another soldier added: "There's no beer, no prostitutes and people are shooting at us. It's more like Portsmouth."

Hehe

At Industrial Technology & Witchcraft you can find the original article.

Java, or how it came to be

A tale about the early beginnings, people and projects that ultimately led to Java. Exciting to read.

Here you can find the original article.

Health insurance company reports doctors to companies

Yes. I am in favor of establishing a health insurance secret service. It could then spy on doctors and patients. And anyway, with the patient card you can play many more games. Best to set up an online database and book everything right away. And anyone who goes to the doctor more than once a month is a malingerer anyway. And the Americans in their data collection frenzy certainly have an interest in this, so send it straight to the USA. Chronic patients are surely actually hidden terrorists who use the time to prepare attacks. Welcome to the world of madness. Sarcasm accidentally found in this posting should please be discounted by yourself and presented to the inspectors on demand.

At tagesschau im Internet there is the original article.

Merkel wants to cut pensions for the childless

And because the whole world has gone crazy and Merkel's last shreds of reason probably got stuck in Bush's backside when she crawled back out of there, she joins right in with the parade of nonsense. Probably not even the lime loaf from Bavaria could have come up with an even more idiotic and shameless proposal.

Does the Merkbefreiung from German Usenet actually exist in real life? If so, please issue one to Ms. Merkel.

At tagesschau im Internet there's the original article.

Meteorite crashed into house

I hope those were target practice from above and the next impact seeks out fancy white houses with old-fashioned facades

Teufelsgrinsen

At Astronomische Kleinigkeiten you can find the original article.

Archive 27.3.2003 - 6.4.2003