Slashdot Mirror

and in some co-ed prisons apparently sex by climbing through the ceiling, see http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/feedarticle/8056440

The point of it is, they cannot control easily what gets in because the punishment for doing so or being caught isn't severe enough to stop it. This trial in Atlanta http://www.ajc.com/metro/content/metro/atlanta/stories/2008/11/17/nichols_trial_atlanta.html shows all the sorts of things even prisoners can set into motion while locked up!

The harsh fact is that prisons are anything but locked down. Too many "rights" give prisoners many opportunities to get around some of the rules. Don't bring up prison rape and such like that, that is not something the government sponsors or supports.

Prison should be annoying and entirely scripted. Every moment of your day should be doing a required activity, from prison work, reading, education, and more. They should have only limited visitation - its prison.

Yeah, never been to one and won't ever either because I am not stupid, thank you.

Not all activists are the same though. If you look at the recent activists arrested before the RNC they were planning some serious shit -

http://www.ajc.com/news/content/news/stories/2008/09/02/anarchists_republican_convention.html

The affidavit paints a picture of a group that recruited participants from 67 cities and was intent on creating havoc.

According to the document:

* The RNC Welcoming Committee held two "pReNC" gatherings, one from Aug. 31 through Sept. 1, 2007, and another on May 3. At the first, 150 to 200 people - including one of the informants - talked about tactics to "shut down the RNC." At the second, St. Paul was divided into seven sectors for various anarchist groups to claim.

* The affidavit also talked about an "action camp" held July 31 to Aug. 3 at Lake Geneva, Minn.

* "An individual by the name of 'Henry' told the action camp group that he was throwing a liquid-filled balloon and that members of the group should stay away from the area ... because it would be very dangerous," the document said.

* Another person talked about using large puppets to conceal and transport Molotov cocktails, bricks, caltrops (devices used to stop buses and other vehicles), shields and lockboxes, the affidavit said. They also planned to throw marbles under the horses of the mounted patrol to trip the horses.

I like this bit

On Tuesday, District Judge Kathleen Gearin denied an emergency motion brought by eight plaintiffs - including at least one of those arrested - to have some of the items seized by police returned to them.

"Who should we return the urine to?" Gearin asked.

In addition to buckets of urine, investigators seized homemade devices used to disable buses and other vehicles, weapons, gas masks, flammable liquids and rags that could be used to make Molotov cocktails, computer storage devices, documents, pamphlets and banners. Some materials, such as banners and signs, were returned Monday for demonstrators to use during the protest marches. Albert Goins Sr., attorney for the plaintiffs, said they are likely to file an emergency appeal to get the rest of it back.

So the evil government did infiltrate the group and seized a bunch of stuff. But they gave back banners and signs. Then the group complained they needed the Molotov cocktails, balloons full of dangerous chemicals, bricks, caltrops, marbles and buckets of urine back!

Who should we return the urine to indeed.

Look at this pictures of 'anarchists' attacking an RNC delegates

http://img70.imageshack.us/my.php?image=photo05qi8.jpg

These people are more like the brownshirts breaking up their opponents meetings than hippies.

For the sake of the country, the people responsible for these raids must be fired (and very possibly sent to prison) for this. This is utterly unacceptable.

Looks like your sweet, innocent protesters were planning some serious criminal shit:

Kidnapping, sabotage was part of anarchists' plan to disrupt convention.

So I'm sure you'll want them to go to prison.

It isn't easy maintaining a beowulf clusters of generators, ya'know.

The CDC in Georgia agrees with you, generator operations is hard.

http://www.ajc.com/metro/content/metro/dekalb/stories/2008/07/12/cdc_power_outage.html

Finally, a Nuke guy who understands what he's talking about. Please understand that I don't think we can go 100% renewable inside of 25 or even 50 years, and please don't mistake me for someone who thinks that nuclear has no redeeming qualities. I pretty much favor anything that gets us off coal ASAP and oil as the next priority. Nuclear can be a big part of that, but I don't think it's necessary to count on nuclear in the >50 year time frame. Distributed infrastructure is a really smart way to go and catastrophic accidents happen, no matter how smart you think you are. If you accept that, and history seems to support it, the nuclear has the worst possible worst case scenarios -- any time you concentrate that much power in one place, the risks are high.

1. They might be 'hard' but France has been operating one for years. I'd argue that we've made more progress with them than we have for economic solar.

Let's talk about the political will to walk into Nevada and clear through the back stock of nuclear waste and create viable fuel. They're hard and tricky, but not impossible. Politically speaking, they're death for anyone who proposes them.

2a. The amount of water needed can be varied. In any case, the 'huge' amounts water used is generally put right back into the source, just maybe downstream less than a mile, and the only difference is that it's slightly warmer. A larger flow allows more cooling, increasing efficiency, while putting the water back at even less of a difference. It becomes a matter of - as long as we have the water, might as well use it.

That's not going to cut it in any area that's going through a drought more than once a decade. With population growing as it is, we need more closed systems, and I don't see it happening; I have no idea why.

2b. Coal power suffers from the same problem, normally using loads of water as well.

You'll get nothing but agreement from me that coal is a terrible solution and causes more problems than any other solution. It's the cigarette of the power industry.

3. No research necessary, the steam techniques for nuclear and coal power are identical - just more expensive than having a convienent river or lake. Even ocean, though the salt presents it's own problems.

If there's no research necessary, then why isn't it done? Why isn't it in place? Why do plants have to shut down in droughts? I'm betting there are solvable problems that nobody has gone to the effort of doing yet.

4. Newer plant designs, possibly prototyped in India or China are much cheaper, and at least the current administration is working on streamlining/reducing the regulatory costs. As for the plebes - well, most don't actively remember Chernobyl, much less TMI. With the environmental concerns, I see resistance to nuclear power weakening. If they get smart and use the nuclear plant in a cogeneration/trigeneration fashion to support some industry(such as ethanol, depolymerization, oil sand/shale processing or hydrogen), you can get your load balancing and increase the efficiency of the plant by a great deal.

All you need are some bored college students with greenpeace bumper stickers to put on a protest and get some time on the evening news to remind people about all the people who died in TMI (omit "0") and about the deadzone around Chernobyl to rile up the populace (omit the blossoming wildlife).

5. I don't see how Wind&Solar can cover our needs economically - and safety wise nuclear power is so safe that I wouldn't be surprise

1. They might be 'hard' but France has been operating one for years. I'd argue that we've made more progress with them than we have for economic solar.
2a. The amount of water needed can be varied. In any case, the 'huge' amounts water used is generally put right back into the source, just maybe downstream less than a mile, and the only difference is that it's slightly warmer. A larger flow allows more cooling, increasing efficiency, while putting the water back at even less of a difference. It becomes a matter of - as long as we have the water, might as well use it.
2b. Coal power suffers from the same problem, normally using loads of water as well.
3. No research necessary, the steam techniques for nuclear and coal power are identical - just more expensive than having a convienent river or lake. Even ocean, though the salt presents it's own problems.
4. Newer plant designs, possibly prototyped in India or China are much cheaper, and at least the current administration is working on streamlining/reducing the regulatory costs. As for the plebes - well, most don't actively remember Chernobyl, much less TMI. With the environmental concerns, I see resistance to nuclear power weakening. If they get smart and use the nuclear plant in a cogeneration/trigeneration fashion to support some industry(such as ethanol, depolymerization, oil sand/shale processing or hydrogen), you can get your load balancing and increase the efficiency of the plant by a great deal.
5. I don't see how Wind&Solar can cover our needs economically - and safety wise nuclear power is so safe that I wouldn't be surprised if the extra miles workers end up driving to perform maintenance leads to enough accidents to make it less safe than nuclear.
6. The price point to beat isn't 20 cents/KWh, it's more like 5 cents/KWh.
7. Variable rate billing already exists, I'm having it installed for this winter. Living in the boonies, I'm currently on propane heat. With oil prices - propane is now more expensive than electric, so I'm switching to an off-peak electrical heating system. If I _really_ need heat during a peak period(or the electric just can't keep up), then the propane furnace will kick on.
8. I'd love to see a battery that stores twice the electricity at half the price, but I haven't seen anything that's convinced me that it's not vapor at this point. We do have high efficiency alternative methods that are cheaper at utility levels, and if electric cars ever become major there's a lot of tricks you could play with them, but I'm not holding my breath.

E) After getting the money the 3rd strike felon shoots you anyways to 'eliminate witnesses'.
F) The Mugger, feeling brave, forces you to take him to his house, where he proceeds to beat, torture, and rape you, your wife, and your kid, etc...

Note, my default action would be to hand over the money - but if I think it's going to go beyond mugging I'm going for the gun.

I DO KNOW when someone takes food off of my family's table, tells me what kind of car I can drive or I have to spend my child's college fund to fill up my car because someone thinks (incorrectly, I might add) that a fuckin' caribou might be badly affected if we do the same thing in ANWR that we do in every state in the union, including about 7 miles away in Prudhoe Bay.

Guess how I'm voting?

Unfortunately there's not a dime's difference between the candidates there. McCain ALSO opposes drilling in ANWR. He even went as far as comparing it to drilling in the Grand Canyon, i.e., a national treasure.

Quite so.

-ccm

Everyone has heard a similar story, or has a friend of a friend that this happened "personally" to. Problem is, it's all complete bullshit. Show me one credible source that documents someone being labelled as a sex offender for having consentual sex with a younger girlfriend

Wasn't this black hole shooting at a galaxy last week? Or was it a different hole?

Yeah, here's the newspaper story.

Mining itself causes zero CO2 to be released, it's the burning that is in question.

But CO2 isn't the only problem with coal. Mining, especially the Mountain Top removal I mentioned earlier, plays havoc with the environment where it's mined. CO2 isn't the only pollution.

If you don't like mountain top removal or other coal mining operations, drink more bottled spring water. This will create an economic incentive to preserving a natural state.

Most bottled water isn't spring water. Some of it is ground water and some comes from the tap. But even with true water, the more the demand increases the greater the pressure on the source of that spring water. As it is now aquifers throughout the world are being drained. Water is being pumped out faster than it can be replenished. Take the Ogallala Aquifer in the central US. It is one of the largest aquifers in the world yet it's being drained too fast in some locations. In India water is being pumped from aquifers to irrigate farms unsustainably. Coca-Cola plant in India shuttered over water use. The same is happening elsewhere.

Or just forget about storing it and accept the fact that it has nothing to do with climate change.

So more than 1000 scientists are wrong? What's your education and training that has you knowing more than those who have their degrees in climatology or related fields?

Second and more importantly, the real reason we don't have much nuclear power in the US is because for decades "environmentalists" have been waging a misguided war against nuclear power.

"Misguided" presumes that "environmentalists" are are actually pro-environment instead of some other motivation which makes all their actions much more consistent -- like oh, regarding human beings as lower than shellfish, for example.

unless global warming kills us all by then of course

The environmentalist movement is a far more immediate and dangerous threat than a phenomenon that has been going on since the planet coalesced out of interstellar debris.

Not to worry about earthlink? I think they're on their way out. (E.g., http://www.ajc.com/business/content/business/stories/2007/09/08/EarthLink_0909.html)

He can't claim ignorance, because he attended dogfights. Attending dogfights, of course, is not a crime

Some of the stress on food prices might be reduced with this kind of plant: http://www.ajc.com/business/content/business/stori es/2007/07/03/0703bizrange.html. Their process works like this: http://www.rangefuels.com/conversion_process.
--
Solar: The fundemental alternative: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-users -selling-solar.html

One way to go directly to ethanol is to gassify and then make the ethanol from the gas. This is the method adopted for a new plant in Georgia that just got approval: http://www.ajc.com/business/content/business/stori es/2007/07/03/0703bizrange.html. Here is a scematic of their process: http://www.rangefuels.com/conversion_process. Their planned production is 100 million gal/year ethanol with methanol and butanol also produced. This is larger than most new larger fermentation plants. Forests don't grow all that fast so their estimate for what Georgia can sustainably produce is 2 billion gal/year, less than recent additions to farm belt fermentation capacity.
--
Cut out the chlorophyll middle man: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-users -selling-solar.html

So some lady has to walk all over town to /get/ her money?

That's literally incredible, right? I thoguht so, too. Here's your link to the story.

What does that have to do with a living wage?

"Living wage" assumes a lifestyle, and a lifestyle is affected by more things than just wage. Hence, it's bogus and needs to die.

Is she is earning enough money to pay her rent, groceries, and keep herself healthy?

Rent in what kind of apartment? 2 bedrooms? 3 bedrooms? Running water yes or no? Automatic dishwasher or not? Dirty city with dirty air or clean city with clean air?

Groceries? What kind of groceries? Rice and beans every day? Maybe just rice every day? Maybe rice just once per day? Maybe just millet once per day?

Healthy? What level of health care? Does she see a doctor on demand or is she added to a waiting list? How long is the waiting list? A year? Five years? Ten years?

Your quesiton is simplistic because the notion of lifestyle is complex. Lifestyle is more than just wage. You assume much because of your very, very privileged background.

No one ever said making a living wage was enjoyable, it is merely enough to keep a person stable in society. No more, no less.

What does "stable" mean? Merely emotionally stable? (People survived the holocaust, after all.) Making enough money to go to one concert every month? Guaranteed foie gras rations? Permanent tenure for everyone regardless of profession or job performance? Don't casually throw around nebulous terms and expect me to mindlessly agree with you.

I not sure why you brought demographics, John Kerry, or http://www.traderjoes.com/ into this conversation either.

I thought the "Ramble, ramble, ramble" comment made that clear, but I'll be explicit for your benefit: I was rambling. I'm guessing you agree with me that Trader Joe's clientele is NOT very diverse. I like Trader Joe's anyway. Do you?

I can't answer that, but I can guarantee you this: In less than five years, there will be at least one sob story in the media about a poor family struggling to get by, which receives some form of welfare, and which happens to own one of these things.

Hell, we already have a story (firstborn) about a family making $48,000/year in rural Georgia with a $327 monthly car payment on a car much newer than mine, qualifying for health care assistance.

http://www.eschoolnews.com/news/showstory.cfm?Arti cleID=5812
August 2, 2005--One of the nation's most ambitious programs to equip teachers and students with laptop computers "is no longer an option," declared Kathie Johnstone, chair of the Cobb County, Ga., school board. A county judge ruled against the laptop program on July 29, and Johnstone's announcement came after the school board met with its attorney for two hours and 15 minutes on Aug. 1.

Granted, this was partly ue to the illegal use of the taxes, but there was plenty of opposition to the concept too,

http://www.ajc.com/metro/content/custom/blogs/educ ation/entries/2005/02/10/cobbs_laptop_extravaganza .html

Yes, some people still live in the middle ages:
http://www.ajc.com/metro/content/metro/legis07/sto ries/2007/02/16/0216metlegevolve.html

Ok, let's get some of the facts straight. First this subdivision is in a rural area not within the city limits of Cartersville. Kennesaw GA is 25+ miles away in a different county and the only bearing that it has on the story is that is where Officer Perrone works (more about the gun laws of Kennesaw http://www.ajc.com/news/content/metro/cobb/stories /2007/02/18/0219kengun.html ).

I drive down this hill every day. It is a very, very steep hill. The speed limit is 25 mph. The momentum of gravity pulling you down the hill means that even riding the brakes all of the way down makes it very difficult to stay under 30 mph until you get to the bottom which then makes a sharp right turn and goes up a short distance before the intersection. The Sipples house is right at the bottom of the hill at the sharp curve. The Sipples have cameras, signs and a motion activated light pointed at the road that comes on in your face when you drive by (which is distracting and irritating to say the least).

I understand and sympathize with the Sipples concern about speeders coming down the hill especially with them having a small child. It seems like a bit much with the cameras, radar gun, signs and motion activated light but it's their property and if that's what they want to do, I don't have a problem with it (except for the motion-activated light that comes on in your face).

But after recording Officer Perrone speeding past their house once and making their point with the officer about the one occurrence, which should have been the end of it between the Sipples and Perrone. Instead they made repeated complaints to the County Sherriff's office and to the Kennesaw Police Department. They made a point of repeatedly emailing and contacting the officer as well as maintaining surveillance of his activities. The Kennesaw Police Department practiced due diligence in investigating this matter. They sent two detectives 25 miles to another county to canvas the neighborhood to find out if there was a problem with the officer habitually driving reckless and causing problems with the neighbors. To the best of my knowledge, the only negative comments were from the Sipples.

I don't personally know any of the parties so I can't comment on any of their personalities other than I would have been upset if I had been repeatedly harassed about one incident.

> I'd think in the future we'll see joy-stick controlled metal-storm/.50 cals
> where the gunner is inside a vehicle with software aided remote targeting

Actually, thats not the future, its been in use for a while.
CROWS nest: Safe, armed

My supervisor at work used one of these when he was deployed and supposedly (I may not be remembering correctly, so assume any error is mine) it can put a grenade in a window at a 1000 yards.

Georgia DA J. Tom Morgan wrote a very good piece about the Georgia law

(Actually, that's a UK figure. But I doubt that the US is hugely different.)

I believe you would be right about that. Former Dekalb County, Georgia DA J. Tom Morgan wrote a very good piece about the Georgia law (not quite as bad as this Ohio law we're talking about, but still bad).

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution had an article (google cache if needed) about georgia's dead zone about two weeks ago,
and claimed that the solution in this case was actually quite obvious:

Verity and other scientists who have researched similar changes worldwide say they can sum up the cause in a single word: people.

As more homes, condominiums, marinas and businesses are built on the coast, pollution increases in tidal creeks and estuaries. Treated sewage discharges and storm water runoff carry fertilizers from lawns, golf courses and farms and oil and other pollutants from pavement and rooftops.

"We need to stop what we're doing now and either mitigate or reduce [the impacts] because we're going downhill in a hurry," Verity said.

---------------
Other bits of the article follow....

For 20 years, a scientist near Savannah has taken weekly water samples from the same dock, giving him a composite snapshot of the estuary's health.
Pieced together, the view goes from good to fair and getting worse. Peter Verity's data tells him the estuary --- where rivers wrestle with the sea --- is in trouble.
Dissolved oxygen, the breath of life for shrimp, blue crabs, oysters and fish, is declining at an alarming rate. Within 10 years, Verity, a professor at the Skidaway Institute of Oceanography, predicts there won't be enough left for the sea life we love to eat. Those creatures will be replaced by jellyfish, which don't need as much dissolved oxygen and feed on the type of organisms that grow in a polluted estuary, he says.

Verity's already witnessed change. Between 1987 and 2000, his sampling showed a 70 percent increase in jellyfish.

Verity and other scientists who have researched similar changes worldwide say they can sum up the cause in a single word: people.

As more homes, condominiums, marinas and businesses are built on the coast, pollution increases in tidal creeks and estuaries. Treated sewage discharges and storm water runoff carry fertilizers from lawns, golf courses and farms and oil and other pollutants from pavement and rooftops.

"We need to stop what we're doing now and either mitigate or reduce [the impacts] because we're going downhill in a hurry," Verity said.

Verity presented his dissolved oxygen research in June at an international conference of his peers and published it this month in an academic journal, Estuaries and Coasts. His bottom line: Georgia's bays and inlets, lined with tidal marshes now teeming with infant and juvenile sea life, is headed toward hypoxia, a dead zone incapable of supporting shellfish and fish.

Hypoxia is already severe at times in the Gulf of Mexico off the Louisiana coast and in the Chesapeake Bay near Washington. An associated problem, harmful algae blooms that release fish-killing toxins, has affected virtually every coastal state, threatening human health and dealing economic blows to seafood industries worldwide.

I saw a documentary on the decision process for the design of the next generation of fighter planes that had numerous of the interviewed people invoke the "looks weird" nature of one of the designs as a reasonable grounds to reject it.

Was that clear enough?

Perfectly clear... I just don't believe that looks had any meaningful influence on the decision, even granting that is what they said.

What you saw in the documentary was a combination of inputs from:

- The producers / director (what they wanted to show or could dig up)
- The editors ( this shot vs that one)
- The Air Force, contractors, and associates (What they were willing to say or show)
- The network (what they left in or cut out)
- You (Your attention and understanding)

I am perfectly willing to believe you saw pretty much what you say you did. I just don't believe that looks played any meaningful role in the decision to select a fighter jet costing $258 million each. The only question in my mind is, who wasn't conveying the real, meaningful decision criterion? The Director? The Editors? The Air Force / contractors? Was the show aimed at the perceived audience who wouldn't be interested in the extensive technical minutia that would be a large part of the decision, but would accept "fast and pretty"? Was the decision reached because the engines were in Congressman X's district and the avionics were in Senator Y's district, and nobody would come out and say that? Was "looks" used as a proxy for, "We don't trust the continuous attitude feedback mechanism when combined with fly by wire for an inherently aerodynamically unstable airframe caused by the angle of attack in the wings", or some such? Was "looks" used as a distraction so that nobody would have to say that the new fight has a "quad damage" power-up button, and can shoot down anything else at a 6:1 ratio?

The only way you would convince me that "looks" had anything to do with it would be if it was in the context of "radar profile", as in "on radar, the F-22 looks to be the size of a humming bird."

If you could strap on wing, missiles, and engines to a toilet and shoot down F15s at a rate of 10:1, I have little doubt that the Air Force will fill the skies with militarized flying toilets as soon as they could. (Some might say that isn't too far off from describing an A-10.)

A recurring theme isn't necessarily an important theme. I think the reference to "looks" was one of: misdirection, bad editing, or targeting at a particular demographic (substitute fighter jet for hot rod car?).

Dude, you're describing the situation as it existed circa 1990, or even 1980. But it's 2005 now [almost 2006 - yikes!], and everything you've foreseen has come to pass.

Compare the story of Mr. Charles "Roscoe" Heaton:

Ex-con. Emory grad. Would you hire him?
Sunday, November 27, 2005

He thought he had paid his debt to society by serving two years in prison. He thought his accomplishments since would open doors to a successful future. But nine years after his release, Roscoe has found he's a marked man. His criminal record may be a life sentence...

http://www.ajc.com/sunday/content/epaper/editions/ sunday/news_34981681f67ca08200e2.html

As quoted here:

Scientific-Atlanta also comes with a bushel of excess cash. The money in its bank vault will go to Cisco, shaving the ultimate price tag for Scientific-Atlanta from $6.9 billion to $5.3 billion.

Or here.

Cisco said that the net cost of the acquisition would be $5.3 billion after subtracting Scientific-Atlanta's existing cash balance. It also plans to assume outstanding Scientific-Atlanta options.

You neglect to mention the minor issue that a judge has halted this program.

http://www.ajc.com/metro/content/metro/cobb/0705/3 0laptop.html

Or that another judge forced Cobb county to remove those inane stickers on the textbooks:

http://www.ajc.com/metro/content/metro/cobb/0105/1 3evolution.html

Now if we could just beat the concept of "scientific theory" into their heads.

You neglect to mention the minor issue that a judge has halted this program.

http://www.ajc.com/metro/content/metro/cobb/0705/3 0laptop.html

Or that another judge forced Cobb county to remove those inane stickers on the textbooks:

http://www.ajc.com/metro/content/metro/cobb/0105/1 3evolution.html

Now if we could just beat the concept of "scientific theory" into their heads.

Like Visa, American Express has also announced that it will stop working with CardSystems.

• forced medical procedures
  Woman who killed baby will be sterilized watchers
• the tips program came from here
  citizencorps

it would be interesting to find a document from the cold war days and go point by point and fill it in.

tin hat aside, i am quite sure the u.s. has passed the tipping point for a fascist state. my opinion is based less on the fact that there is a "evil entity" but more out of the observation the base of the economy is shrinking for and you have more and more displaced people. people say with innovation there are new opportunities. i realize that computational theory is not a hot topic on ./ but i think otherwise forget moore's law look up "church's thesis", hint we are computational processes too. connect the dots and you will see why bill gates is the richest person in the world "he who controls the spice rules the world."

fast forward another 10 years; there are are prob. 100k coders/chip makers who create the digital stuff that runs most of the world ... people 100k in the argi-business feeding most of the world ... run through the top 10 industries you cover pretty much all what we need for civilization ... dunno what you are going to need the other 6 billion for, the mean green fighting machine or maybe just solvent green.

so me thinks : you have to keep people in check somehow; prisons : dept of corrections, tv : csi , dhs : terrorist in your cereal etc.. bravo we have a fascist state. the question now for me is how far will it go.

time to take my pills, lets see the blue on or the red one

guess i can afford both, i forgot i moved to canada 4 years ago ... after 2 years of protesting and people not getting it ... shortly after the coronation of king george ii and people still not getting it ... so long suckas. guess it pays to be a person of conscience or a rabble rouser in fascist speak or a terrorist in new fascist speak ... i forget.

smash the state : [black-n-red]

Voice and video: CEO says No. 1 cable provider will offer new range of phone services.

By ROBERT LUKE

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Published on: 03/18/05

Comcast, aiming to grow at BellSouth's expense, says it plans to be a "quality phone company" with services unlike its competitors.

Philadelphia-based Comcast, the nation's No. 1 cable provider, will roll out its phone service in metro Atlanta this year.

But the service, based on a technology called Voice over Internet Protocol, won't be a copycat of BellSouth's, Brian Roberts, Comcast's chief executive, said in an interview.

"Our main goal is to quickly evolve the product to not just be voice, but to be [an integrated] communications product," said Roberts. He was in Atlanta to speak to Comcast employees and to the board of the Metro Atlanta Chamber of Commerce.

That not only means offering features such as unified messaging -- where all messages, be it voice, e-mail or whatever, go into one in-box -- but video phone service as well.

"I was looking this week in our labs at the video phone product that we are going to offer over the Comcast digital voice platform, over the Comcast high-speed [Internet] platform, all within a year to 18 months," Roberts said.

Comcast, which has 700,000 customers in 12 metro Atlanta counties and Rome, will take its time to roll out the service, initially targeting those who subscribe to its high-speed Internet service.

Phone calls will be routed over Comcast's facilities, not over the public Internet. That will help to ensure quality of service, Roberts said. Emergency 911 service will be included, as well as directory assistance and backup power to enable phones to work in a power outage.

"All of that is needed to really try to take significant market share and to be a quality phone company," Roberts said. "We're going to take our time. We're not in a race. We think this is a good business for the next 50 years."

Roberts reckons that Comcast can achieve a 20 percent market penetration in phone service in five years. Its service will cost $39.95 a month for unlimited local and domestic long-distance calls.

Metro Atlanta is one of Comcast's top four markets, Roberts said. The others are Boston, Chicago and San Francisco.

"This is clearly the fastest-growing large market we have in terms of population and housing growth," Roberts said.

Comcast wants to extend its reach here.

"It's a high priority to grow in this area," said Roberts, without elaborating.

Comcast and Time Warner have bid for Adelphia Communications, which owns clusters of cable systems in some of North Georgia's fastest-growing counties, such as Cherokee and Bartow.

http://www.ajc.com/news/content/business/0305/18bi zcomcast.html

Apparently, some of the choice point executives knew there was going to be quite a bit of fallout over this. This morning's Atlanta Journal/Constitution (reg. required - Google cache anyone?) is reporting that:

Since the sales began in November, ChoicePoint CEO Derek Smith and President Douglas Curling have sold 472,000 ChoicePoint shares worth nearly $21 million, according to the executives' Securities and Exchange Commission filings.

"Since the sales began in November, ChoicePoint CEO Derek Smith and President Douglas Curling have sold 472,000 ChoicePoint shares worth nearly $21 million, according to the executives' Securities and Exchange Commission filings."

"In an interview with Journal-Constitution reporters Thursday, Smith said he first found out about the identity theft problem in late December or January, which would be about two months after the company notified California law enforcement officials.

Smith said his stock sales aren't inappropriate."

"Rule 10b5-1 plans are relatively new. 'The main limitation on the ability to use a Rule 10b5-1 plan is that it must be adopted while the executive does not possess material nonpublic information,' [Jacob S.]Frenkel [Chairman of chairman of the securities enforcement and white-collar practice at the Shulman, Rogers, Gandal, Pordy & Ecker law firm in Rockville, Md.] said. 'If he does, the plan is not valid.'"

"Smith said he did not learn of the breach of confidentiality of consumer information until just before mentioning it in a January meeting of the audit committee of ChoicePoint's board."
"'The mere fact that they make that statement begs this question: If a CEO did not know some significant information about the company, why did he not know?' Frenkel said."

Anyone else smell a rat?

In another story, Georgia's insurance commissioner says ChoicePoint has 90 days to "show us that they have their act together" or be barred from doing business with insurance companies in the state..
"ChoicePoint CEO Derek Smith said his company was a victim of criminals and that critics are being unfair. "

"It hurts," he said. "It's difficult because no one is giving us credit. It's been awful for my family. It's been awful for our employees."

Wah, wah, wa-a-a-ah!

"Since the sales began in November, ChoicePoint CEO Derek Smith and President Douglas Curling have sold 472,000 ChoicePoint shares worth nearly $21 million, according to the executives' Securities and Exchange Commission filings."

"In an interview with Journal-Constitution reporters Thursday, Smith said he first found out about the identity theft problem in late December or January, which would be about two months after the company notified California law enforcement officials.

Smith said his stock sales aren't inappropriate."

"Rule 10b5-1 plans are relatively new. 'The main limitation on the ability to use a Rule 10b5-1 plan is that it must be adopted while the executive does not possess material nonpublic information,' [Jacob S.]Frenkel [Chairman of chairman of the securities enforcement and white-collar practice at the Shulman, Rogers, Gandal, Pordy & Ecker law firm in Rockville, Md.] said. 'If he does, the plan is not valid.'"

"Smith said he did not learn of the breach of confidentiality of consumer information until just before mentioning it in a January meeting of the audit committee of ChoicePoint's board."
"'The mere fact that they make that statement begs this question: If a CEO did not know some significant information about the company, why did he not know?' Frenkel said."

Anyone else smell a rat?

In another story, Georgia's insurance commissioner says ChoicePoint has 90 days to "show us that they have their act together" or be barred from doing business with insurance companies in the state..
"ChoicePoint CEO Derek Smith said his company was a victim of criminals and that critics are being unfair. "

"It hurts," he said. "It's difficult because no one is giving us credit. It's been awful for my family. It's been awful for our employees."

Wah, wah, wa-a-a-ah!

Hey, you forgot Wal-Mart!

After all, they have proven skill in maintaining large databases, and everyone knows that they're trustworthy when it comes to consumer's privacy, not to mention their being an all-around good corporate citizen.

A full newspaper page is pretty darn big -- I just measured the AJC, and it's 12.5" by 22". I think they can actaully fit 10,000 names on a page that big and still have them be legible.

I live outside Atlanta. The Atlanta Paper(Get login from bugmenot.com) has Great information about all of the candidates in the 'Metro' Atlanta area. I'm 2 houses away from that area in Newton County, GA. My cable providor is from an adjacent county, so I haven't been able to see any ads about the ones in my county. The local paper is useless.

RANT

Woodruff had the largest rooms, I believe. Then they built ULC - friggin apartments for mostly the athletes, complete with stoves, fridges, et al. Don't know what happened after the olympics, though I think all of those dorms went to Georgia State /RANT

In addition to ULC, Tech built several additional apartment-style dorms in preparation for the Olympics - 6th St, 8th St, Hemphill, and Center Street dorms - some of which have multiple buildings. While not everyone can get a slot in these dorms, it's far from a privilege for the athletes or elite. A recent AJC article mentioned that these dorms at GT have set a new standard, that other schools visit Tech to see how it's done.

more proof of malfeasance(previous diebold owners running away with elections when behind in polls, etc...)
Politicians
Halfway down, see ctrl-f rigging
convicted fellons working for them!
i don't have an account :(
Backdoor vote rigging?

That is a starter list, I'll post more later, just mod the parent up(this one!)

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution recently asked some "what if"-type questions in response to speculation that Delta might file for a Chapter 11 reorg by the end of the year. I thought it kind of interesting when juxtaposed against their $25M proposal for RFID-bagtag thing.

For what it's worth...the guy himself denies being the richest man on earth :
http://www.ajc.com/business/content/business/ap/ap _story.html/Financial/AP.V3605.AP-Ikea-Founder.htm l

Your zealot dig at Fox News isn't shared by the rest of the US or the world. In a short amount of time, Fox has ripped to pieces Communist News Network.

I thought this cartoon was hilarious... and somewhat appropriate to the parent post.

Sour grapes? From what? I'm a web developer in west london. Why on earth would I be jealous of it? I'm complaining because there's a team with millions of dollars of sponsorship making a half-assed attempt to win the competition by exploiting a loop-hole in the rules. Any normal person would complain about that - it's not right.

I'm not saying they're cheating, or that they haven't put a lot of work into it. I'm saying they've got millions of dollars of sponsorship money and they've only got where they are by their unique interpretation of the rules, that's all...

They're offering a brute-force approach, whereas other teams are using intelligence to solve the problem. Granted, both approaches use intelligence, but one much moreso than the other.

From the Atlanta Journal-Constitution article:

And some fear that, at speeds that might reach 50 mph, the robots also pose a threat to the desert tortoise --- a federally threatened species and the official state reptile of California. Sluggish after a winter of hibernation, the tortoises usually emerge from their burrows this time of year.

Under orders from the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, teams of biologists will sweep the race corridor before the competition, moving any tortoises out of harm's way and fencing their burrows until the robots pass.

The tortoises, which have resided in the Mojave for 60 million years and, as individuals, often live to be 100, probably won't pay much mind.