Slashdot Mirror

Open an IE browser window and do the following:

Tools/internet options/security options/custom level(for all internet zones).

Disable anything mentioning Java(script) and ActiveX. Do the same thing on the advanced tab.

Click 'OK'/'Apply' as needed on the dialogs.

For safety, restart your computer for all the changes to take effect properly.

Viola! IE is secure against Java(script)/ActiveX security breeches. Alas, you may still be vulnerable to this web browser exploit so be careful with your sensative information!

NEVER EVER GIVE OUT SENSITIVE INFORMATION VIA EMAIL! USE A SECURED HTTPS CONNECTION ON A BRAND-NEW WEB BROWSER WINDOW TO DO THIS! BE SURE TO TYPE THE 'TIP-TOP' WEBSITE ADDRESS (E.G. HTTP://WWW.EXAMPLE.COM/) IN THE ADDRESS BAR AND NAVIGATE THE SITE AS NEEDED!

Sorry for yelling, but being 'phished' out of sensitive information could hapen to anyone!

Bryan Taylor
iamcf13@hotpop.com
SpamByte code: 7
(see http://www.cf13.com/game-over-spammers.htm )
http://www.cf13.com/press-release.htm
All email containing unwanted content will be summarily deleted or reported as spam.

Re:I solved the spam problem. Seriously. Intereste (Score:1)
by ShepyNCL (740977) on Monday August 23, @12:33PM (#10046155)
Yo quote your site: How does CF13-POP3(TM) work? 1) It is hostile to spammers and computer crackers. 2) It is simple to use and fast. 3) It is extremely reliable when operating under nominal conditions. Doesnt exactly answer how this works? I am interested in your software, and if its as good as you claim, then count me as a buyer / donator / whatever you classify it as.

Thank you very much for your interest in CF13-POP3(TM), ShepyNCL. Below, I answer your questions about the program. If the information below lives up to your expectations, please by all means spread the word about both programs and give others the URL to this post. I *HATE* email spam and malware and tried to make it 'almost impossible' to spread. My solution is, I belive, the best possible, least complicated, and least expensive solution to the spam/malware problem that I am using it myself to check my own POP3 accounts.

How does CF13-POP3(TM) work?

1) It is hostile to spammers and computer crackers.

This is done by the use of the SpamByte code, by 'neutralizing' unsafe HTML content, and by 'renaming' all incoming file attachments to 'text files'. Allow me to explain these points in further detail:

The SpamByte code is a number from 0 to 255 that is calculated for all messages that are processed. It represents the presence or absence of the eight 'halmarks' of spam. They are, in decreasing order of 'spamminess':

1) File attachments
2) HTML
3) Quoted printable content (usually used with HTML to encode 'unprintable' characters)
4) Percent signs (% - used in commerce and a potentially 'expensive' web browser exploit)
5) Dollar signs ($ - used in commerce and in assembler source code listings)
6) Numbers (0123456789)
7) URLs ( http://www.example.com example.com )
8) Email addresses ( user@example.com )

These attributes are assigned a numeric value like so:

128-attachments wanted 64-html wanted
32-quoted printable wanted 16-percent signs wanted
8-dollar signs wanted 4-numbers wanted
2-URLs wanted 1-email addresses wanted

Therefore, my SpamByte code of 7 indicates I want emails with numbers, URLs and email addresses in them. If you add up the numerical values assigned to these three attributes, you get the sum of 7. The SpamByte scanner 'scores' all email using the above information. The SpamByte of the email is compared with the user-defined SpamByte code using this one simple rule:

All email containing content unwanted by the user is treated as spam.

CF13-POP3(TM) is a command line program. Here is the relavant part of the programs 'startup blurb':

usage: cf13pop3 svr port login pw SpamByte wantspam

svr - server address (e.g. 127.0.0.1 or mail.example.com)
port - server listening port (usually 110)
login - user login (e.g. user@example.com)
pw - user password (e.g. secretpassword)
SpamByte - numeric sum of all email content wanted by user (e.g. 7)
128-attachments wanted 64-html wanted
32-quoted printable wanted 16-percent signs wanted
8-dollar signs wanted 4-numbers wanted
2-URLs wanted 1-email addresses wanted
Some content may be inaccurately identified due
to improper content or formatting.
IMPORTANT: ANY EMAIL CONTAINING ANY UNWANTED CONTENT
WILL BE DELETED IF WANTSPAM=N!
wantspam - Y=User wants spam without attachment extracted.
N=Spam email is deleted.
Use with care as non-spam messages could be deleted.

Sample command line parameters would look like this:

For those who, like me, hadn't heard of this guy, a quick Googling turned this, this book page and this interview up. Also, an author profile.

So is this scientific "proof" that liberals tend to be more compassionate but also more cowardly?

Correct. Note that the study referenced is only preliminary. Most of the article is sheer speculation of the consequences if there turns out to be a correlation between amygdala activity and politial orientation.

I would also point out that this idea is directly contradicted by another study that found a strong corellation between incidence of nightmares and membership in the Republican party. Of course this study was also preliminary (and I haven't seen any updates on it yet).

"Then you wake up at the high school level and find out that the illiteracy level of our children are appalling." --George W. Bush, Washington, D.C., Jan. 23, 2004

"Ulysses is unreadable, illiterate crap".

There, what more need one say about that awful book?

Ulysses is not an easy book to read or to understand... The study of Ulysses is, therefore, a heavy task... It is brilliant and dull, intelligible and obscure by turns. In many places it seems to me to be disgusting...
- United States v. One book called 'Ulysses' , John M. Woolsey, United States District Judge, December 6, 1933

Is nothing new - it's called corundum or as you more probably know it, sapphire (or ruby when it is red).

And hard is only one part of the story. Glass is hard, yet I wouldn't want to make structural elements of an aircraft from large hunks of glass... Aluminum is light and Tough (high energy to break). It is also ductile (deforms before breaking) something that no ceramic is...

So, while this is cool, and will probably be used for super scratch proof layers on spyplane camera transparencies or something like that where they can afford something like this, it isn't what you think it is.

As an aside, translucent alumina is used in something you see everyday - sodium vapor lamps use alumina to encapsulate the sodium metal that they use as their filament.

None of that adds to the real spectacle, IMHO, and none of the games requires expensive equipment or locales.

The article said Coke spent $60M, VISA another $30M, something like $120M from just the major sponsors.

You could have a perfectly excellent Olympics for a tenth or less of that. An acceptable Olympics (to most) for under a million.

Are you kidding?

Contrary to your statement, many Olympic events do require expensive locales. See, there are rules here, and rules are what make sports what they are - without them, a sport is just a couple of guys hitting a ball back and forth. You can't just swim in any swimming pool, you can't play soccer in a baseball stadium, you can't have a rowing competition in the middle of the ocean. These things all have to be regulation size and with regulated conditions, not to mention enough seats to ensure that people who want to can actually watch.

You couldn't build an Olympic-regulation swimming pool for less than $1 million. Even if you only held the Olympics in cities that had held them before (which sort of defeats the purpose of having them), the cost of refurbishing and modernizing old Olympic facilities alone would easily top $1 million. And that's just the first thing you'd have to do.

Hell, it cost more than $1 million just to put a track around the football field at my old high school. And that was in the 1980's!

Billions are being spent this time on security. And don't tell me it's not needed or that it's all paranoia, because you know, it's not like terrorism at the Olympics has never happened before, right? If you can't protect the athletes, then it's not even worth having an Olympics. It's just sports - it's not worth risking your life over. So this is a required expense if you ask me, and it's not really the reason for the high cost of the games anyway - Sydney 2000 cost $5.9 billion.

So your cost analysis is a little off. The Olympics could be done for less than the Athens games depending on the city, sure, but not much less in this day and age. The logistics, the facilities required, the security, hell the simple cost of salaried staff would be in the multiple millions of dollars at least. I don't see how you could do an Olympics in this day and age for less than several billion dollars.

Anyway, I don't have any problem at all with Olympic officials forcing athletes to hide corporate logos. How many sports have we seen where athletes have basically turned into walking advertisements? In some sports they seem to be actively hawking their sponsors during games (cough NBA basketball cough). And I have seen some seriously questionable "viral" marketing at these games... for example, just yesterday at the diving competition, the American divers were repeatedly shown listening to music during rest periods, with the NBC analysts commenting on their playlists. So today, I hit the NBC Olympics web site, and sure enough, there's a link asking "What music does Laura Wilkinson train to?" on the right side of the page, which goes to a page of huge Real Rhapsody ads. That kind of sneaky stuff really pisses me off.

Shrink-wrapped "by breaking this seal" license agreements are the bullshit tactic of the decade. They write all sorts of looney right-waiving illegal garbage into them, like clauses that forbid you from writing negative reviews of their products (McAfee did this). If you think license "agreements" have any moral bearing on the use of the information they proport to "protect," then you're crazy.

The fact that crows can count without having language makes an argument that Sapir-Whorf has nothing to do with this.

The other fact is that the strong version of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is dead. If language influences us, it is in a much more subtle way than what we're seeing in this article.

I'd recommend The Number Sense to anyone who is aware that Sapir-Whorf is gone, gone, gone. Dehaene explains how the lower-level numbers (1, 2, 3) are built into our cognitive systems at a most basic level, whereas anything above that is just "many" (he illustrates cross-species differences with examples such as crows counting to seven). His most convincing example outside of experiments is the expression of numbers in various languages.

In Japanese, the kanji for the first 3 numbers are one stroke, two strokes, and three strokes. only on the forth number does it increase.

In Cuneiform, wedge-shaped strokes are expressed in columns and rows with a maximum value of three.

Roman numerals, I, II, and III... then IV.

In current arabic numerals, supposedly, 1 is a single line, 2 is two lines with a connecting stroke, while 3 is 3 lines with two connecting strokes.

This page illustrates the supposed evolution between a few different number sets (Tamil, Hindi, Brahmi, early Arabic) and if you look at the pictures you'll see they all seems to grow out of counting strokes for 1-3, but 4 is a completely different character.

Trinary, anyone?

I'd thought by now everyone had seen this.

The same people who believe in the right not to be enslaved, not to be forcibly bred

There is another 8-letter A-word, you know. Learn about it.

and believe a woman is more than a cow.

I just came back from the state fair. Don't be dissin' on the cows :-)

Tell them that you want Apple Powerbooks BANNED from using the in-flight laptop power (which will charge batteries) available in many first- and business- class sections of airplanes.

This is a very dangerous and serious situation! The DOT is concerned enough to ban Knitting Needles (maybe someone could knit an Afghan!); why not ban something that poses a REAL DANGER?

Write letters to the editors, call local call-in shows, and do all the "Guy Kawasaki" style virus marketing that Apple loves so much. Let people know that having an Apple Powerbook charging on an airplane is a recipe for disaster!

Tell them that you want Apple Powerbooks BANNED from using the in-flight laptop power (which will charge batteries) available in many first- and business- class sections of airplanes.

Seriously, this is a very dangerous situation!

Write letters to the editors, call local call-in shows, and do all the "Gay Kawasaki" style marketing that Apple loves so much. Let people know that having an Apple Powerbook charging on an airplane is a recipe for disaster!

The potential danger is just too great. It's like letting someone carry a blow torch on board. I recommend you all print out these articles and U.S. Mail a letter like the following to the F.A.A.

Dear FAA:

In light of the recent problems (see attached) with rechargable batteries for Apple PowerBook computers, I urge you to immediatly ban all Apple Powerbooks from being connected to in-flight power systems on commercial aircraft.

I fly several times a month, and am greatly concerned that these defective PowerBooks are like a ticking timebomb, ready to cause an accident.

Please consider the attached technical summaries of the problem and make an appropriate ruling.

Sincerely,

cc: Norm Minetta

Would wireless help?

... i'd rather have a 35mm disposable than a digital the quality will always be so much better.

That's not exactly true

Here in the US we've forgotten our history so we're not as geographically sensitive as other countries are these days (Kashmir, Israel/Palestine, Taiwan, N/SKorea).

We Americans got whupped for trying to extend revolutionary freedom too far to the North in the 18th century, and didn't get our way in the 19th century with that memorable slogan

"Fifty-four forty or fight!"

It was Chevy, not Ford, who released the Nova. It means "does not go" in Spanish.

"Does not work" would have been the Chevy Notrabaja, and "does not move" would have been the Chevy Nomueve.

And, contrary to popular belief, it actually did sell well.

In fact it would seem good sanitation could increase asthma rates

(1) Bush may have speech impediments, but so did Enoch and Moses. If you take the time to listen to Bush's message and see what he things and he feels, you'd be surprised at how absolutely brilliant he is.

Are you out of your mind? "Brilliant"? BRILLIANT? Have you ever actually listened to Bush? Speech "impediment" (if by "impediment" you don't mean it in the traditional sense-- ie, slurring, stuttering, lisping, etc.) aside, the man speaks only in soundbytes-- he says the same pre-cooked phrases over and over. He does not respond directly to challenging questions. He does not provide thoughtful answers. He is smug. There is no clarity of thought and he does not demonstrate any depth or familiarity with issues. He repeats the same surface slogans again and again and again. GENIUS? Are you mad?

According to biblical tradition,

One traditional story tells that when he was a child, sitting on Pharaoh's knee, Moses took the crown off of Pharaoh's head and put it on. The court magicians took this as a bad sign and demanded that he be tested: they put a brazier full of gold and a brazier full of hot coals before him to see which he would take. If Moses took the gold, he would have to be killed. An angel guided Moses's hand to the coal, and he put it into his mouth, leaving him with a life-long speech impediment (Ex. 4:10).

Unlike Moses, Bush wore his gold crown on his head and a silver spoon in his mouth from the day he was born and hasn't yet taken it off. Look at the demeaning way he talks to people. I've literally seen him wipe his hands on other people's clothing. He's a prick.

Instead, you focus on his speech impediment and you can't get into his message.

He's a terrible speaker, we agree. But he also represent shallow self-serving, hypocritical, elitist, and compassionateless ideas.

To criticize Bush's critics for poking fun at his "speech impediment" is a serious underestimation of how and why he's going to lose this election, God willing.

(2) Sure, let Ashcroft speak. Maybe he can teach you a thing or two about real justice, how to end the racial divide and the cultural divide in America, how we can really change the tide of the sickening plague of divorce and marital problems and hopefully encourage people to get and stay married for the right reasons. I believe Ashcroft is one of the great visionaries on the cultural / religious debates. He is redefining what it means to be a religious, yet tolerant and just, public official.

Sometimes it's not worth responding to the insane, but because there's a chance impressionable children are reading, I guess I'll indulge you.

Explain to me-- where's the real justice in arresting and holding American citizens without trial or even representation for years? Where's the end of the cultural divide when innocent, loyal, and patriotic immigrants to this country are arrested and deported without any kind of due process? How has the "plague of divorce" been stemmed when Republican mouthpeice FOX promotes show after show that view exploiting marriage as entertainment, when at the same time Bush wants to amend our sacred Constitution so that two people who have love each other for years can't get married?

Where is the Republican outcry about the sanctity of marriage when Bush supporters get married on a whim in Las Vegas for the hell of it and then get annulled hours later?

You have no idea what the Republican party stands for, because you get all your information second-hand. We stand for racial equality.

Yeah right. While fighting affirmitive action. While fighting a living minimum wage so that people can raise their families. Who do you think you're fooling? If Republicans were concerned about racial

...Scrabble on ESPN.

It's the honor system. Now that you've read the story, you should post your credit card number. Here's mine

It's actually courriel

tablet pc's go back a long ways. hell, all they are really are just touch screen lcd's. and they go back a long ways. the real problem is simply the handwriting recognition, and a powerful enough cpu to do the work.

the tablet pc is an idea that was more consumer driven, and microsoft just responded to it. probably more to enter the market now, and scare any innovation. like they've done numerous times. so, if they bomb, it's chump change. if they take off, then microsoft controls the market. when you are the 8000 lb gorilla, and have a monopoly, you can do these things, you know.

Karmawhores, submit these latebraking news on Slashdot. I'm on lazy mood myself.Russian scientists claim to have discovered the wreck of an alien device at the site of an unexplained explosion near Tugunska river, Siberia. On June 30, 1908, what is widely believed to be a meteorite exploded a few kilometres above the Tunguska river, in a blast that was felt hundreds of kilometres away and devastated over 2000 square kilometres of Siberian forest.

WHAT CAUSED A BLAST OF 2000 x Hiroshima nuclear bomb in 1908?? We have the answer _TODAY_! Russian scientists claim to have discovered the wreck of an alien device at the site of an unexplained explosion near Tugunska river, Siberia. On June 30, 1908, what is widely believed to be a meteorite exploded a few kilometres above the Tunguska river, in a blast that was felt hundreds of kilometres away and devastated over 2000 square kilometres of Siberian forest.

WHAT CAUSED A BLAST THAT WAS 2000 x Hiroshima nuclear bomb in 1908?? We have the answer now!Russian scientists claim to have discovered the wreck of an alien device at the site of an unexplained explosion near Tugunska river, Siberia. On June 30, 1908, what is widely believed to be a meteorite exploded a few kilometres above the Tunguska river, in a blast that was felt hundreds of kilometres away and devastated over 2000 square kilometres of Siberian forest.

I'm on lazy mood, Karmawhores, submit this news on Slashdot!!Russian scientists claim to have discovered the wreck of an alien device at the site of an unexplained explosion near Tugunska river, Siberia. On June 30, 1908, what is widely believed to be a meteorite exploded a few kilometres above the Tunguska river, in a blast that was felt hundreds of kilometres away and devastated over 2000 square kilometres of Siberian forest.

MOD *INTERESTING*!! Russian scientists claim to have discovered the wreck of an alien device at the site of an unexplained explosion near Tugunska river, Siberia. On June 30, 1908, what is widely believed to be a meteorite exploded a few kilometres above the Tunguska river, in a blast that was felt hundreds of kilometres away and devastated over 2000 square kilometres of Siberian forest.

Russian scientists claim to have discovered the wreck of an alien device at the site of an unexplained explosion near Tugunska river, Siberia. On June 30, 1908, what is widely believed to be a meteorite exploded a few kilometres above the Tunguska river, in a blast that was felt hundreds of kilometres away and devastated over 2000 square kilometres of Siberian forest.

Russian scientists claim to have discovered the wreck of an alien device at the site of an unexplained explosion near Tugunska river, Siberia. On June 30, 1908, what is widely believed to be a meteorite exploded a few kilometres above the Tunguska river, in a blast that was felt hundreds of kilometres away and devastated over 2000 square kilometres of Siberian forest.

Just in case his site gets /.'ed, here is his impressive list of links. - Jonah Hex in non-karma whore mode.
Downloads
Linux Wipe Tools: Three shell scripts for securely wiping all data from the swap partition, wiping unused disk space on the root partition, or wiping an entire disk, by Thomas C. Greene.

No Messenger: A batch file that eliminates Windows Messenger and fixes the problem of Outlook Express loading slowly when Messenger is absent, by an anonymous friend of The Register.

FileCheck MD5: A free, simple, lightweight MD5 utility for Windows, courtesy of Brandon Staggs.

Errata: A text file containing my various blunders and ommissions in the book (right-click and "save as," or view as HTML). Last updated 6 June 2004.

Links to Other Goodies
Mozilla: A free, open source Web browser and e-mail client for Linux and Windows, feature rich and far more secure than Internet Explorer and Outlook Express. Recommended for novices.

Firefox: A free, open source, stand-alone Web browser for Linux and Windows. Very light and fast. Recommended for intermediate users.

Thunderbird: A free, open source e-mail and news client for Linux and Windows. Recommended for intermediate users.

GnuPG: Gnu Privacy Guard; a free, open source replacement for PGP, for Windows and Linux.

WinPT: Windows Privacy Tools; a free, open source GUI frontend to GnuPG for Windows.

Anonymizer: Various services for anonymous Web surfing, e-mail, chat, etc.

OpenSSH: A free, open source SSH (Secure Shell) client and server for Windows and Linux.

PuTTY: A free, open source GUI frontend to OpenSSH for Windows.

Ethereal: A free, open source network traffic analyzer for Windows and Linux. Windows users will need to install WinPcap before installing Ethereal.

Ad-Aware: A free, closed source adware/spyware scanner for Windows.

SpyBot Search & Destroy: A free, closed source adware/spyware scanner for Windows.

Sam Spade: CGI gateways to numerous online tools, such as whois, traceroute, etc.

SourceForge: A vast repository of open-source software for Windows and Linux. The site can be overwhelming, but it has a search engine to help users locate packages.

GNU Project: The home base of the open source movement. A repository of open source products, chiefly for UNIX-compatible systems.

Security Information
About Internet/Network Security: An informative and useful site dealing with computer and Internet security, with reviews of security products and books, practical howtos and tips, and links to numerous tools and information resources, geared toward beginners and intermediate users.

SANS Institute: An educational and research organization with a vast archive of security research documents, news, and advisories, geared toward intermediate and advanced users.

CERT/CC: Computer Emergency Response Team Coordination Cente

Hate speech laws are stupid, plain and simple. Anything that's unpopular to the majority or damaging to those in power can be interpreted as hate speech just as easily as speech directed towards minorities. "Hate Speech" does nothing. It's when people act on what they say that is a problem. Does this mean we have to listen to the KKK rant? Yes. But it also means we have to listen to the Nation of Islam, MoveOn.org, ANSWER (My favorite quote: "It's GOOD to hate Bush!"), watch our flag torn and burned, and deal with gay pride parades. Personally I don't really care about any of these things even though I disagree with all of them (I lie, I severely dislike flag burners, but won't move to stop them...) and the idea of passing a law abridging their right to do what they do is not only positively ludicrous it's also COMPLETELY incompatible with the first amendment. The grandparent poster was right, free speech can't just be applied to those who we agree with; it has to be applied to everyone.

Canadians would've been first to the moon too, if they could've decided whether to call the mission "Moonshot One" or "Premier Projectile de Lune"

Seriously, I thought Hubble was joint NASA/EU Space Agency. Sure you're not thinking of the splendidly self deprecating Humble Space Telescope

They need more Astronauts like Story to gain interest. Am I the only one who remembers their kickass EVA on STS-61 ? Of course, adding in a Zero-G sex act would probably increase viewership way more than the intellectual challenge.

Ford never stated he invented the automobile. The patent that the grandparent was referring to was owned by George Selden for the "Road Engine". In retrospect, it was a patent that was broadly applied to all internal combustion automobiles. The patent was administered by an automobile company consortium called the Association of Licensed Automotive Manufacturers.

Ford refused to pay the royalties necessary and the patent was in court for years. In the end, Ford won because they limited the scope of the patent to a particular kind of engine that no manufacturers actually used at the time. From the reading I've done, it was more to allow Ford to keep manufacturing without all of his customers being sued than anything else.

There's more info Here

My employer recently asked me to sign a non-compete. I was doing some research, and this is one of the things I turned up. Maybe it's not the most credible of sources, but it's something:

http://jobsearchtech.about.com/library/weekly/aa04 2202.htm

Consider also the benefits you can receive upon leaving... severance, additional pay, stock, etc. All you have to do is sign.

Borland claims that in the past 30 months, Microsoft has hired 34 of the ailing software developer's key employees by offering "large signing bonuses of several millions of dollars and other incentives," according to the suit.

Back in those days, Borland went after Microsoft, not the little guy.

Is this a differce in the times, or are the specifics of the situations different?

The bigger problem here is that lead is atomic number 82, and gold is atomic number 79 - you need to get the lead to yield up 3 protons - this is going to require an awful large amount of energy.

Some people claim to have pulled it off, however:

There are reports that Glenn Seaborg, 1951 Nobel Laureate in Chemistry, succeeded in transmuting a minute quantity of lead (possibly en route from bismuth, in 1980) into gold. There is an earlier report (1972) in which Soviet physicists at a nuclear research facility near Lake Baikal in Siberia accidentally discovered a reaction for turning lead into gold when they found the lead shielding of an experimental reactor had changed to gold.
-- http://chemistry.about.com/cs/generalchemistry/a/a a050601a.htm

These are not chemical reactions though, which have always been the traditional target of the alchemists.

Note that this quote has not been ever verified as actually being Stalin's.

However, every review of the IBM T-40 and T-42 series laptops confirms the 7+ hour battery life. I routinely get 8 hours on mine.

I hate to tell you this, Mary, but Apple isn't always best in everything. The Dell-Pod, for example, gets 11 hours on a battery. It really does. Of course, it's butt-ugly, but it's a true fact! The battery life is MUCH longer.

The irony in a company named Creative holding a software patent from which they have never created anything is just amazing.

Anyhow, there is precedent for this type of stupidity. Believe it or not the American car manufacturers at one time paid a patent holding company for every car they sold. Ford challenged the patent and the court ordered the holding company to build the car for which they held the patent on. Needless to say the car was a dismal failure and the patent was overturned in 1911.

http://inventors.about.com/library/weekly/aacarsse ldona.htm

burnin

And where there IS agriculture, there is unpicked fruit because there isn't enough cheap labor do to so. Check out any of the fruit stands on Southern, west of I-10, where they sell fruit bagged in Texas and Florida, while unattended orange groves drop fruit on the ground just across the street. Now, thanks to Arcadia, we have "roof rats," which feed on the uneaten citrus that rots on the ground.

Van Allen makes a couple good points. The International Space Station has an unacceptably high cost/benefit ratio, and probably won't produce any significant science. The significant science (so far) has come from automated probes. Analogies between space travel and past explorations on earth may also be weak, but that is because space travel is an entirely different sort of undertaking. Beyond learning anything or exploring new territory, space travel is a conscious evolutionary step.

With all due respect to this legendary scientist, suggesting that human space flight may be obsolete is like the Patent Office suggesting in the 1800s, according to myth, that there was nothing left to invent. There may be no tangible material benefits to space travel in the foreseeable future, ignoring Teflon and the standard list of by-products. The most important benefit will be the long-term survival of the human race. We know that our planet is subject periodically to catastrophic events that can extinguish us. Populating at least one more world will be as significant as climbing out of the primordial ooze.

Incidentally, grounding the remaining space shuttle fleet "to take steps to improve their safety" doesn't conflict with starting "a more costly and far more hazardous" Moon/Mars program. Astronauts, and I think most people in general, are fully aware that no spaceship is "safe" in any normal sense. Safety in the space program is more of a euphemism for "avoiding setbacks."

Tang tastes way better than orange juice. And you can use it to make Tang Pie.

How Base64 Encoding Works - Here's a good document about Base64 encoding itself, and how it works in conjunction with MIME for use in email.

It doesn't mention that MIME has a header field that specifies encoding (Content-Encoding) and that Base64 is one choice in a handful of possible encodings to use. Base64 is probably your best bet for getting an attachment to its destination today, even though it grows the data (byte-wise) by 33% for transport.

Not contagious? Tell that to anyone who started out on a drug because a friend gave it to them. Addiction is just as contagious as any disease - maybe more so since the effects of the particular vice are usually pleasurable, while disease is something painful and to be avoided (apart from the "bug chaser" nutjobs).

To my mind, if the side effects are either extremely rare or non-existent, then let's have the vaccine. If the people don't want administration to be goverment-mandated, it doesn't have to be. But it certainly is an interesting option, especially for people who could be considered "at risk" because of genetics, environment, etc.

For some reason, copying and pasting your URL wasn't working, but this link works:
http://urbanlegends.about.com/library/graphics/Aad 4_sm.jpg
Seeing that there are two people apparently cleaning up around an incredibly large human torso skeleton (one person is standing next to the skull, which by proportion would be about six feet in diameter), I would say that either the photo is fake or the human skeleton is fake (as in not a real skeleton, but manufactured for the photo).

actually birth control kills more people than IEDs could ever do.