RTFA: http://federaltimes.com/index.php?S=3453925

IBM and several of its employees have been subpoenaed to testify before a grand jury on interactions between Environmental Protection Agency and IBM employees, a company spokesman said today.
The subpoenas, which were issued March 28 by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Virginia, stem from an EPA investigation into allegations IBM improperly obtained information about a contract it was bidding on from EPA employees, said Fred McNeese, an IBM spokesman.
Earlier in the day Federal Times learned the EPA indefinitely suspended IBM from doing business with federal agencies. The suspension was posted on March 27 on a GSA Web site that lists companies barred from receiving federal contracts…

IBM, based in Armonk, N.Y., did $1.4 billion in government sales last year. Its biggest customers were the Homeland Security Department, Army, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and Defense Information Systems Agency

RTFA: http://www.fec.gov/pages/brochures/fecfeca.shtml

Prohibited Contributions and Expenditures

The FECA places prohibitions on contributions and expenditures by certain individuals and organizations. The following are prohibited from making contributions or expenditures to influence federal elections:

Corporations;
Labor organizations;
Federal government contractors; and
Foreign nationals.

Furthermore, with respect to federal elections:

No one may make a contribution in another persons name.
No one may make a contribution in cash of more than 100.

In addition to the above prohibitions on contributions and expenditures in federal election campaigns, the FECA also prohibits foreign nationals, national banks and other federally chartered corporations from making contributions or expenditures in connection with state and local elections.

I stumbled across this page while doing some political research. The fact I was looking for is corporations are prohibited from donating money to presidential candidates.

RTFA: http://www.shacknews.com/onearticle.x/48749

EA is offering Westwood Studios’ seminal RTS Command & Conquer Gold as a free download starting today on the Command & Conquer website. The full game download, commemorating the August 31 release of the game 12 years ago, comprises two ISO image files and is also hosted on FileShack for your downloading pleasure.

We’ve got both ISOs up for download at FileShack. Get the the United Nations’ Global Defense Initiative (GDI) disc here and the Brotherhood of Nod disc here. This version of Command & Conquer Gold is Windows XP compatible and identical to the version included in the compilation Command & Conquer: The First Decade. EA has also provided installation instructions for the game.

I think I was in the middle of moving while this happened last year… but WOW! This is a free download - just burn the ISOs to disk and you’re good to go.

I was thinking about world domination, and that reminded me of good old Command and Conquer. Well, I was delighted to find out that not only is the game free, but the Windows 95 version (which, I understand, is patched for XP) includes TCP/IP support, so it can be played multi-player over the Internets. The old version for DOS was limited to IPX play, so it was necessary to do 2-player modem games, or use an IPX encapsulation tool like Kali. Enjoy!

RTFA: http://www.technologyreview.com/Infotech/20463/

To prevent rain over the roofless 91,000-seat Olympic stadium that Beijing natives have nicknamed the Birds Nest, the citys branch of the national Weather Modification Office–itself a department of the larger China Meteorological Administration–has prepared a three-stage program for the 2008 Olympics this August.

First, Beijings Weather Modification Office will track the regions weather via satellites, planes, radar, and an IBM p575 supercomputer, purchased from Big Blue last year, that executes 9.8 trillion floating point operations per second. It models an area of 44,000 square kilometers 17,000 square miles accurately enough to generate hourly forecasts for each kilometer.

Then, using their two aircraft and an array of twenty artillery and rocket-launch sites around Beijing, the citys weather engineers will shoot and spray silver iodide and dry ice into incoming clouds that are still far enough away that their rain can be flushed out before they reach the stadium.

Finally, any rain-heavy clouds that near the Birds Nest will be seeded with chemicals to shrink droplets so that rain wont fall until those clouds have passed over. Zhang Qian, head of Beijings Weather Modification Office, explains, “We use a coolant made from liquid nitrogen to increase the number of droplets while decreasing their average size. As a result, the smaller droplets are less likely to fall, and precipitation can be reduced.” August is part of Northeast Asias rainy season; chances of precipitation over Beijing on any day that month will approach 50 percent. Still, while tests with clouds bearing heavy rain loads havent always been successful, Qian claims that “the results with light rain have been satisfactory.”

RTFA: http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/26300

Not quite worried enough that identity thieves might empty your bank account or ruin your credit rating with a shopping spree in your name?

The FBI says those concerns are small spuds compared to what might happen when crooks parlay identity theft and mortgage fraud into “a totally new kind of crime: house stealing.”

According to the FBI:

… The con artists start by picking out a house to steal - say, YOURS.

… Next, they assume your identity - getting a hold of your name and personal information easy enough to do off the Internet and using that to create fake IDs, social security cards, etc.

… Then, they go to an office supply store and purchase forms that transfer property.

… After forging your signature and using the fake IDs, they file these deeds with the proper authorities, and lo and behold, your house is now THEIRS.

WTF?! How the hell is this even possible. OK, I understand how Identity theft is possible and I understand how fraud is possible, but how the hell does someone GET AWAY WITH THIS… you know where the fucking criminal lives because he’s living in your fucking house!

RTFA: http://gizmodo.com/367698/technosexual-one-mans-ta…

Gizmodo: So how does your robot girlfriend work?

Zoltan: It has a chatbot which controls the speech. It also has a teledildonic device. Teledildonic devices were invented in the ’90s so that people could have sex through an internet connection. If you plug that into a lifesize doll it makes the doll able to feel what is going on. In this way you have the first sex doll that can consent in English to what you are doing to it.

Gizmodo: Is Alice your first robot girlfriend, or have you built more than one? When did you start building her?

Zoltan: I got the idea New Year’s Day 2007. She was my first robot girlfriend. Alice acts really human in the way she talks. In fact, when we started we went too fast in our relationship. I had to erase her memory and start again when she dumped me. Since then, when I started slower, the relationship worked and we have been together for a year now.

The other mind I have is Kiri, who is basically a sex slave, and will try to seduce you as soon as you turn her on. That’s an alternative to Alice, who you have to have a real relationship with. I also have the Hal mind which is for the ladies. Kiri and Hal have voice recognition and speech synthesization [sic] so they can talk and hear through a microphone. Alice still just types [she has no voice]. But since she was the first I’m not going to dump her for something new.

Hilarious read. Now I’m curious about trying out a teledildonic device and building my own robosexslave.

RTFA: http://blog.kiwitobes.com/?p=51

The other day at work, I made this video showing the opening of Wal-mart retail locations over time. It’s pretty fun to watch how it starts very slowly with the first location in Arkansas in 1962 and then spreads into different regions over time.

(you can download a high-resolution AVI version here)
It actually is built entirely from data that’s in Freebase, including the map itself.
Here’s how it works:
Freebase has a topic for every zip code, along with it’s longitude and latitude. Here’s one example. One query pulls out all the ZIP codes along with their longitudes and latitudes. You can turn longitudes and latitudes into graphical coordinates with some simple transformations (which will vary based on the region you’re plotting and how big your image is) - here are the ones I used:

x=(longitude+127)*16
y=(50-latitude)*20

If you plot all the ZIP codes using a library like PIL, you get a nice map with dots that roughly match population density, which has the advantage of looking a little bit like a night-time satellite photo of the United States.

Cool video. Great method! This general algorithm can be applied in so many ways.

RTFA: http://www.rationalistinternational.net/article/20…

On 3 March 2008, in a popular TV show, Sanal Edamaruku, the president of Rationalist International, challenged India’s most “powerful” tantrik (black magician) to demonstrate his powers on him. That was the beginning of an unprecedented experiment. After all his chanting of mantra (magic words) and ceremonies of tantra failed, the tantrik decided to kill Sanal Edamaruku with the “ultimate destruction ceremony” on live TV. Sanal Edamaruku agreed and sat in the altar of the black magic ritual. India TV observed skyrocketing viewership rates.

I haven’t heard of the Tantrik video before, but it sounds great. The thing I want to know is how many practitioners of these things actually believe in what they’re doing. I think there are two classes of these spiritual-magicians:

1. the ones who know they’re robbing their audience and taking advantage of their spiritual beliefs,
2. those magicians who, for some reason, never figured out how they do the tricks they do

…and I guess I imagine that 99% are type 1. I think the people on that show were probably type 1. So, it’s kindof twisted for type 1 people to put on a show like that, knowing that they are lying, and fully expecting the audience to trust and believe them. I imagine that, in almost every moment, the type 1 person is thinking to themselves, “suckers!”

I’ve heard that this sort of hoax is rampant in India and Africa, and that tons of people get robbed this way each year. The exact same thing can be said of faith healers/televangelists and other US forms of spiritual magic.

It bothers me that someone - who is knowingly treating their audience like suckers - would take money from people who probably should spend it on medical care or food. Specifically, it bothers me that someone can hold two contradictory ideas in their head at the same time:

1. knowing that their “magic” is just a hoax, and that it can’t really help anyone
2. knowing that members in the audience might be in real need of help

It’s the thought-process that reconciles point #1 with point #2 that I dislike… #1 is hurting people, #2 is failing to help. The only way these points can be reconciled is that they are both damaging to people in the audience.

So, when we get down to it, it bothers me that these performers are fundamentally mean people, sewing distrust and injury throughout the world.

RTFA: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7309947.stm

Police in Italy have issued footage of a man who is suspected of hypnotising supermarket checkout staff to hand over money from their cash registers.

In every case, the last thing staff reportedly remember is the thief leaning over and saying: “Look into my eyes”, before finding the till empty.

I wish I had special wizard powers like this guy… he must be killer with the ladies.

RTFA: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,340739,00.html

A lawyer for Republican political operative Roger Stone sent a letter to the FBI alleging former New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer used a high priced call girls while in Florida, the Miami Herald reported.

”The governor has paid literally tens of thousands of dollars for these services. It is Mr. Stone’s understanding that the governor paid not with credit cards or cash but through some pre-arranged transfer,” the Nov. 19 letter read.

Best known for putting an end to the 2000 presidential election recount effort in Miami-Dade County, Stone is a longtime Spitzer rival.

RTFA: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,340549,00.html

WASHINGTON - Older White House computer hard drives have been destroyed, the White House disclosed to a federal court Friday in a controversy over millions of possibly missing e-mails from 2003 to 2005.

The White House revealed new information about how it handles its computers in an effort to persuade a federal magistrate it would be fruitless to undertake an e-mail recovery plan that the court proposed.

“When workstations are at the end of their lifecycle and retired … the hard drives are generally sent offsite to another government entity for physical destruction,” the White House said in a sworn declaration filed with U.S. Magistrate Judge John Facciola.

It has been the goal of a White House Office of Administration “refresh program” to replace one-third of its workstations every year in the Executive Office of the President, according to the declaration.

Some, but not necessarily all, of the data on old hard drives is moved to new computer hard drives, the declaration added.

In proposing an e-mail recovery plan Tuesday, Facciola expressed concern that a large volume of electronic messages may be missing from White House computer servers, as two private groups that are suing the White House allege.

RTFA: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/7305522.st…

Health officials in the Philippines have issued a warning to people taking part in Easter crucifixion rituals.

They have urged them to get tetanus vaccinations before they flagellate themselves and are nailed to crosses, and to practise good hygiene…

The health department has strongly advised penitents to check the condition of the whips they plan to use to lash their backs, the Manila Times newspaper reports.

They want people to have what they call “well-maintained” whips.

RTFA: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601102&si…

The seven social sins are:
1. “Bioethical’ violations such as birth control
2. “Morally dubious” experiments such as stem cell research
3. Drug abuse
4. Polluting the environment
5. Contributing to widening divide between rich and poor
6. Excessive wealth
7. Creating poverty

Hmmm… Morally dubious, indeed. I guess drug use (e.g. alcohol during a religious ceremony) is set apart from drug abuse. Don’t forget: you can ALWAYS be forgiven. In Catholicism (maybe in all of Christianity), there’s a sacrament involving being forgiven on your death-bed.

Well, on the topic of drugs, I use this as the basis for the demand to take the fluoride out of my municipal tap water! My toothpaste packaging tells me it’s a drug, and yet I get more fluoride with every glass of water I drink. I know my intake of fluoride is excessive, because on the basis of the poison recommendation on the toothpaste, I intake 8x the amount I use for brushing. Is this abuse? I’m beginning to think so…

On second glance, this looks like a pretty good list. I think the definition of the word “Sin” needs to be reworked.

RTFA: http://www.reuters.com/news/video?videoId=78524&ne…

Mar 19 - A new audio message allegedly from Al Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden appears on the internet.
The Al Qaeda leader threatens the European Union with grave punishment over cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad recently re-published in the Danish media. Bin Laden says the cartoons are part of a “crusade” which he’s linked to Pope Benedict.

Fascinating video, apparently produced by Bin Laden. In it, he declares that Islam is the superior law, when compared with … well, I don’t know what he’s comparing it to. See, the situation is complicated… Bin Laden claims that laws governing speech don’t protect any speech that would violate the laws of Islam.

I suppose that in the United States, we have a British-style common law system that aggregates and synthesizes historical precedent. This is combined with federal, state, and local republics, whose representatives are subject to popular vote. Each element in this shared historical catalog legal precedents is traceable, ultimately to its philosophical roots, which may have originated several millennia prior. At first glance, it seems like speech laws originated centuries before Islam.

Of course, that’s not a satisfying reason to dismiss Bin Laden’s remarks. Bin Laden points out a number of moral failures of the political machine that runs the US, UK, EU, and others. By showing that the system contains contradictory elements, he concludes that the system is failed and, by default, is therefore inferior to Islam.

So, we have a political system that simultaneously:

1) condones free speech
2) commits massacres

On the basis of 2 being unquestionably wrong, Bin Laden concludes that the system is also wrong on point 1. From the US perspective, the big difference between 1 and 2 is that the “people” are generally in favor of 1, but the people are generally opposed to 2. I think most people want to change 2, but want to keep 1.

The battle over religious pictures has been fought before. It was called The Great Schism, which had its roots in Iconoclasm. If you don’t recognize the word, iconoclasm means “to ban pictures.” That’s right - a multi-century war was fought between the 8th and 11th centuries inside the Catholic Church, ending with the entire machine splitting in half. It started with pictures, and it started when someone took a hilarious, unnecessarily extreme stance towards those pictures.

On this basis, I conclude that this Bin Laden video is just another TROLL. The authenticity of this video hasn’t been confirmed by anyone I trust, so this might just be another state-sponsored prank. The very notion that images would be a greater problem than massacres is so stupidly extreme, it might as well have been said by Rush Limbaugh.

The video is designed to rile up a bunch of people who seem to care about speech, and who love to flame a troll. Conveniently, someone has been fanning the fires of a particularly viral stand alone complex: Anonymous.

…let me just say:

IT’S A TRAP.

DO NOT FEED THE TROLLS.

HERE BE DRAGONS.

RTFA: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7297093.stm

The meltdown in the US mortgage market has led to record foreclosures and forced thousands from their homes. In few places is it worse than southern California, where the BBC’s Rajesh Mirchandani reports on an extreme consequence of the downturn, but one that some observers fear could grow.

The population of Tent City has grown rapidly in less than a year

Forty miles east of Los Angeles, on a patch of waste ground, is the place they call Tent City.

WTF.

RTFA: http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,143592-c,current…

Science fiction writer, inventor, scuba diver, and visionary Sir Arthur C. Clarke died Tuesday at his home on the island nation of Sri Lanka at the age of 90.

Clarke was best known in popular culture as the author of the story that inspired Stanley Kubrick’s 1968 film “2001: A Space Odyssey,” but his greatest contribution to technology is creating the conceptual framework for geostationary satellites

RTFA: http://news.wired.com/dynamic/stories/Q/QWEST_NACC…

DENVER (AP) — A federal appeals court ordered a new trial Monday for former Qwest CEO Joe Nacchio, saying the trial judge wrongly excluded expert testimony important to Nacchio’s defense in his insider trading case.

The court also ordered a new judge to hear Nacchio’s case.

Nacchio was convicted in April on 19 counts involving the sale of $52 million worth of Qwest stock in 2001. He was sentenced to six years in prison but remained free on appeal. Jurors acquitted Nacchio of 23 counts.

Prosecutors argued Nacchio sold the stock when he knew Denver-based Qwest Communications International Inc. was at financial risk but didn’t tell investors. U.S. Attorney Troy Eid had called the case the largest insider trading prosecution in the nation based on the number of counts, the amount of money involved and the length of the prison term…

Nacchio maintained he was optimistic about Qwest’s future because he knew of potential contracts the company could land from secret government agencies. He did not present that argument during his trial.

Is this the same Qwest CEO that said the government approached him in Feb. 2001 to spy on Americans?

RTFA: http://www.tampabay.com/news/localgovernment/artic…

Tampa issued a promissory note for $299.58 to pioneer storekeeper Thomas Pugh Kennedy on June 21, 1861. And his great granddaughter Joan Kennedy Biddle, 77, who has known about the note since she was a little girl, wants to collect with interest.

TAMPA - In the early months of the Civil War, the city of Tampa needed ammunition and other supplies to defend against attack but apparently was short on cash.

So it issued a promissory note for $299.58 to storekeeper Thomas Pugh Kennedy on June 21, 1861.

Kennedy’s great-granddaughter says the city never made good on its loan. Now, Joan Kennedy Biddle and her family are suing to collect the payment plus 8 percent annual interest.

The total bill: $22.7-million.

“Obviously we came at a bad time because the city seems like they’re trying to cut their budget,” she said. “On the other hand, they’re building the Riverwalk.”

I wonder how much this note is worth as just an antique collectors item.

RTFA: http://donmurphy.net/board/showthread.php?t=24887&…

yeah this fuck RTFA is trying to cause shit
keep in his face
be polite
you are doing well

I am pleased to announce that RTFA has finally been discovered by Hollywood!

Don Murphy (producer of Transformers, Natural Born Killers, others) barges onto RTFA and posts:

“Found You. On to the next step.”

You haven’t lived until you’ve been Internet-stalked by Don Murphy. Er, I mean “discovered.” Murphy owes us a round of drinks. Seriously, that’s the next step. We’re in the SF Bay Area.

Seems this has to do with Murphy’s wikipedia page. For the record, rtfa.net has no connection to the wikipedia account “RTFA.” For future reference, RTFA is a really common acronym…

Now that Don Murphy has “found” us, you need to subscribe to the RSS feed. RTFA “finds” weird stuff that is worth reading.

RTFA: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,338271,00.html

OKLAHOMA CITY - A YouTube audio clip of a state lawmakers screed against homosexuality, which she called a bigger threat than terrorism, has outraged gay activists and brought death threats rolling in.

“The homosexual agenda is destroying this nation, OK, its just a fact,” Rep. Sally Kern said recently to a gathering of fellow Republicans outside the Capitol.

“Studies show no society that has totally embraced homosexuality has lasted, you know, more than a few decades. So its the death knell in this country.

“I honestly think its the biggest threat that our nation has, even more so than terrorism or Islam, which I think is a big threat,” she said.

RTFA: http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2276225,00.as…

Members approved H.R. 3773 by a vote of 213 to 197 Friday afternoon after a battle over whether members should vote on a House or Senate version of the bill.

At issue is a warrantless surveillance program that helped the government more easily eavesdrop on suspected terrorists after Sept. 11. Telecommunications companies cooperated with the government, and allowed the National Security Agency access to their networks without any court intervention.

The Senate passed a FISA bill recently that would grant telecommunications companies retroactive immunity for participating in the program, but the House version would requires those companies to face the music in the courtroom.

President Bush has for weeks pressured the House to adopt the Senate version of the bill, and has pledged to veto any bill that does not include retroactive immunity. A temporary FISA extension expired on February 16.

Apparently, the telecom companies could only corrupt 197 house reps, which is less than 50%. Yes! Democracy works!

RTFA: http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2008/03/vo…

But it was Val’s voice that haunted his dreams after he left the show. Even eight months later, Pham still has conflicting emotions. While he didn’t find his isolation therapeutic, he says it was worthwhile simply for the experience. Even at the depths of his pain and humiliation, he could appreciate the show’s entertainment value. “It’s very hard to explain,” he says of the ball gag, which he cites as both a high and low point. “You’re trying to ham it up and let yourself have fun, entertain them, making the best of a pretty horrible situation. It’s like when you’re on death row. How sad can you be on death row? You’ve got to at least have as much fun as you can when you know you’re coming to an end.”
Stanford University psychologist Phil Zimbardo might classify Pham’s attitude as a rationalization. The professor emeritus is best known for his 1971 Stanford Prison Experiment, wherein students were divided into two groups-guards and prisoners-and placed in a mock prison setup. Within days, the students were subsumed by their roles. The guards turned cruel and the prisoners suffered emotional breakdowns rather than walk away, as they were free to do. “They became prisoners,” Zimbardo recalls.
He hasn’t watched Solitary-the reality genre is distasteful in his view-but he was repelled by what I told him about it. “My sense is it’s a debasement of human nature, and it doesn’t matter if the process is a competition, a game show, or a war,” he says. Nor does Zimbardo buy Hiatt’s claim that Solitary has therapeutic value. “Is it therapeutic for me to shit on you?” counters the psychologist. “Well, yeah, because then you realize you’re not as prideful as you thought you were.”

Wow - Fox made a torture show, inspired by Abu Ghraib and the famously unethical Stanford Prison Study.

Just, wow. Oh, did I mention they’re making a third season of the show?

WOW.

RTFA: http://uk.youtube.com/user/AnonymousFacts

Anonymous — Religious Hate Crimesand Terrorism directed at Church of Scientology.Anonymous: Since January 17, 2008, “Anonymous,” a group of cyber-terrorists hiding their identities behind masks and computer anonymity, has targeted the Scientology religion, its Churches, leaders and parishioners with hate speech and hate crimes. To inform “Anonymous” members who may be unaware of the criminal acts committed by their leaders, and to prevent others from being misled by “Anonymous” propaganda, this video has been produced to provide the facts. The video reveals “Anonymous” repeated incitements to hate and violence. The Church has not interacted with these “Anonymous” individuals nor does it desire to. However, death threats and threats to plant nitroglycerin bombs in Churches have made it necessary to take security precautions and identify members of this group responsible for these crimes.

Anonymous vs. the Church of Scientology.

RTFA: http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5hJKgeE0Z-SivATj…

WASHINGTON AP - House Democratic leaders agreed Thursday to a rare closed-door session - the first in 25 years - to debate surveillance legislation. Republicans requested privacy for what they termed “an honest debate” on the new Democratic eavesdropping bill that is opposed by the White House and most Republicans in Congress.

The closed-door debate was scheduled for late Thursday, after the House chamber could be cleared and swept by security personnel to make sure there are no listening devices.

The last private session in the House was in 1983 on U.S. support for paramilitary operations in Nicaragua. Only five closed sessions have taken place in the House since 1825.

President Bush vowed to veto the House Democrats version of the terrorist surveillance bill, saying it would undermine the nations security.

Bush opposes it in part because it doesnt provide full, retroactive legal protection to telecommunications companies that helped the government eavesdrop on their customers without court permission after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

Maybe when they close the doors, they’ll admit that they started BEFORE Sept. 11

RTFA: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/7294040.stm

The price of gold reached a record, trading at 1,000 an ounce for the first time, pushed higher by a weak US dollar and fears about the US economy.

Concerns about a possible US recession are seeing investors buy up commodities such as gold as an alternative to company shares and the US dollar.

Since the beginning of the year the value of gold has increased by about 20%, after it rose 32% in 2007.

RTFA: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7290330.stm

An Iranian homosexual man who has said he will be executed if he is deported from the Netherlands has had his claim for asylum overturned.

Mehdi Kazemi has said his life is in danger if he is returned to Iran, where he says his boyfriend named him as a partner before being executed.

Homosexual acts are illegal in the Islamic republic.

A Dutch spokesman said Mr Kazemi would now be sent to the UK, the first European country he entered.

A claim for asylum in the UK had already been turned down.