Slashdot Mirror

So I went and searched a bit found e.g. this. Take a gem like

"Knowledge-Based Education – We oppose the teaching of Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS) (values clarification), critical thinking skills and similar programs that are simply a relabeling of Outcome-Based Education (OBE) (mastery learning) which focus on behavior modification and have the purpose of challenging the student’s fixed beliefs and undermining parental authority."

Compare and contrast "undermining parental authority" with "Everything is about power. Every situation is to be analyzed in terms of the bad people acting to preserve their power and privilege over the good people." as taught to kids in college, you know, just-out-of-puberty kids in college.

GOP in Texas platforming on "honor thy father and mother" is not surprising. That they come out and "oppose" the teaching of (very DEM) liberal arts stock-"rebelliousness" (which is all about "power" and "privilege") is not surprising either. If anything this is more proof that GOP and DEM are two sides of the same party's challenge coin.

If I wasn't fully aware of the one party with two faces system, and I believed that voting for either would be able to affect real change, this would actually be a reason to vote GOP, because I think that a church of academia (as the liberal arts colleges are most certainly building with their intersectional diversity identity politics) is a really bad idea, so this gets a pass in the least bad of two bad options sort of way. But of course, there's only one party and the rest is smoke and mirrors. Voting won't help you people, and anyway I'm neither a US resident nor a US citizen so I don't get to vote. You'll have to fix this mess all by yourself, kids.

Oh, you want to talk about who is taking over ? Not to mention what they take out.

For decades.

I know you don't want to face it, but the right-wing is the bastion of the thought police.

You should probably just abandon your false conception of the left-right political spectrum, and make your arguments without it. Even if you had a historical point (which you don't), you'd be fighting uphill against reality. Of course, denying reality and living in fantasies is a hallmark of the right, so...you'll keep on keeping on. We will always have been at war with Eastasia, and the chocolate ration will be increased to 30 grams a week.

When Uber and Lyft stomped out of Austin like whiney, spoiled brats, the free market stepped in a started creating alternatives. One of them is a non-profit:

http://www.austinchronicle.com...

I haven't used it yet, but I like the idea of non-profit or B-Corps competing side by side with the for-profit companies.

-Chris

Interesting. A local movie reviewer here didn't like it because, in her words, it wasn't about that.

A small town loses a lot when the big business that was there has left.

Not quite sure why it's worth an article, or why it matters that it was a nuclear power plant though.

Because slashdot is so thoroughly infested with nuke shills that presenting the story this way guarantees income to the site owners. Why do you think Murdoch hired Roger Ailes? Because controversy sells soap.

You can count on slashdot to bait both the nuke shills and the reality-based community whenever possible. The shills will show up because they are paid to do so (or, worse yet, are True Believers) and that will draw in the reality-based community, who understand that allowing the shills to remain unchallenged damages the nation as a whole. If you have no strong moral or ethical values, it's a brilliant strategy.

William Coley, the father of immunology, cured fully metastasized cancers in the early 1900s. Look it up - Dr. William Bradford Coley. We had a cancer cure, and this article is about a similar potential cure. Coley mixed up highly individualized brews of dangerous disease organisms and shot them into cancer tumors, and trained the patient's immune system to recognize cancer cells as something to be destroyed. You want to know why we outlawed Coley's system and are just now rediscovering it?

Because nuke shills. That's why. Nuke shills, like the fission-obsessed irrational numptys who reauthorized Price-Anderson and are unwilling to fund LENR or clean fusion research. Science is no match for politics and propaganda - if it was, we'd have progressed past fossil fuels and corporate nuclear fission decades ago.

Thanks, but I have 3 sources and you have 0. Did you bother looking at the numbers of INCREASING levels of radioactive iodine well after March? You write so matter-of-factly, but where are your facts? And how do you explain the facts I have presented?

Such writing styles are usually reserved for shills. Don't you know there is already a very organized nuke shill process? Why go to the hard work of replying to posts on /.?

This is a good idea. A hardware implementation of a risk analysis algorithm is always faster than software.

While I haven't been able to Google it, I recall one instance where a homeowner shot two police officers who were in his garage. The court ruled in favor of the homeowner.

And while I'm at it, here's a whole list of people killed in no-knock search warrant raids, and you might notice that every time a homeowner has shot or shot at police, even those who didn't identify themselves and were easily mistaken for robbers, the homeowner has ended up either dead or with a conviction for murder and a life sentence in federal prison.

As such, I'd be very interested in hearing about the case you cite, because it looks to me like it almost always goes the other way for the homeowner, even if it means the police have to plant marijuana in the house of an 88 year old woman to justify shooting her in her own home in a mistaken raid.

They could just do what the Austin PD does, get warrants based on energy usage.

http://www.austinchronicle.com/gyrobase/Issue/story?oid=oid%3A561535

Considering that the FBI pumped 77 pounds of a flammable aerosol into the compound, you might want to rethink who was to blame for the fire. But I do agree, it was "pretty harsh".

I don't think anyone would be subject to a search warrant over electrical usage

Unfortunately, it's already happening in many cities in the US. I'm too lazy to look up others, but here is an article about Austin's little known data mining program.

Agreed. Its a strange world when you think killing someone for trying to rob you is acceptable.

The same country that touts due process and a fair legal system believes in offing someone for walking onto the wrong property by accident.

Note the children who've been shot while trick or treating. Or this documentary camera man, who died while leaving the property. Situations like this do not exactly inspire confidence in the kind of logic home defence proponents use.

This is not news. Baboons do this too.

From: http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=482576

The Austin Chronicle
http://www.austinchronicle.com/issues/dispatch/2001-07-27/cols_smartypants.html

"Stone-throwing baboons in Saudi Arabia waited three days on the side
of a mountain road to take revenge on a driver who had killed one of
their group.

Al-Riyadh reported on Saturday that the primates laid in wait and
ambushed the driver on the same mountain road in southwest Saudi
Arabia from Mecca to Taif where the baboon had been run down earlier
in the week.

After spotting the car responsible for the death, one of the apes
screamed out a signal to the rest to attack, provoking the frenzied
stone throwing. Although the driver was able to escape, the apes broke
out the windshield of his car.

At least 350,000 baboons live in the Gulf state."

LUSENET: STONE-THROWING BABOONS TAKE REVENGE ON DRIVER
http://www.greenspun.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg.tcl?msg_id=004CxB

"In Saudi Arabia, a man learned a lesson in baboon gang warfare.
Apparently, earlier in the week the man was driving through a
mountainous road where he ran over a baboon. Thinking nothing of it,
the driver got back in his car and resumed his life... Finally, the
grieving baboons implemented their revenge. They lay hiding on the
side of the exact mountainous road where their beloved pal had been
killed and waited for the driver. When the car was spotted, one of the
baboons screamed out a signal and the others began to bombard the car
with rocks and stones. The driver escaped, sporting newly soiled
underwear and a broken windshield."

Tablet Newspaper: Monkey Love
http://www.tabletnewspaper.com/vol2iss_21/features/monkeylove.htm

"Stone-throwing baboons waited three days for revenge on the side of a
mountain road in Saudi Arabia to take revenge on a motorist who had
killed one of their group. After finally spotting the car responsible
for the death, one of the apes screamed out a signal for the rest to
attack, provoking a frenzied bout of stone throwing. The baboons then
ripped out the windscreen of the car. The driver managed to escape the
attack, which took place on the same stretch of road, between Mecca
and Taif, where the baboon had been run down."

Ananova: Revenge attack by stone-throwing baboons
http://www-2.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs/academic/class/16741-s05/www/baboons09122000.pdf

"Stone-throwing baboons in Saudi Arabia waited three days on the side
of a mountain road to take revenge on a driver who had killed one of
their group. Al-Riyadh reported on Saturday that the primates laid in
wait and ambushed the driver on the same mountain road in southwest
Saudi Arabia from Mecca to Taif where the baboon had been run down
earlier in the week. After spotting the car responsible for the death,
one of the apes screamed out a signal to the rest to attack, provoking
the frenzied stone throwing. Although the driver was able to escape,
the apes broke out the windshield of his car. At least 350,000 baboons
live in the Gulf state. Who says animals have no emotions? If you can
plot revenge, you must be able to feel anger."

The Jekyl Archives
http://www.jekyl.com/jekyl/arc_2000.htm

"Saudi Arabia is particularly baboon prone these days, with tales of
baboons raiding farms, houses, and even schools. But probably the
strangest report was where a troop deliberately wait in ambush.
According to newspaper accounts,

I dunno sounds harmless to me...

1. Dell and HP didn't just submit legislation that Bonnen and Watson modeled their bills after. I suspect, though I don't know, that they were strong backers of the bill. I'll clap and cheer for anything environmentally sound - especially in this state - but let's not forget that businesses will be businesses. You can bet there's an ulterior motive. It probably starts with 'p' and ends with "r-o-f-i-t."
2. Given the rumors swirling around about the pressure Bonnen was under, and given point #1, it's difficult to think seriously that TCE had a fighting chance of getting other appliances attached to the bill. The bill's major corporate sponsors (who surely know that televisions pose a significant risk to the environment) were really only interested in what their competitors were doing. Which, sadly, represents a missed opportunity, since the Lege won't be reconvening until 2009.

Right. Because after World War II, it became illegal to build them... the country went totally bonkers over a dream of car-based sprawl, and nearly everywhere zoning regulations were changed to demand low-density development. So there's a shortage of places like San Francisco, with an urban density that was grandfathered in, and because no-one can build more of them, the prices are getting bid up.

I'm not sure how you get that it's illegal to build pedestrian-friendly areas. I think it's just an economic thing: most people (i.e. potential customers) expect things to be convenient for driving, so developers build things that way. It's not impossible to make things both pedestrian-friendly and car-friendly, but it's not easy, so if they have to choose, developers will choose car-friendly.

For what it's worth, the mayor of the City of Austin (Texas) has declared that it his goal to redevelop downtown to radically increase the residential usage. Presently there are about 5000 people living in downtown Austin and his goal is 25,000 residents over the next decade or so. Apparently as a result of this (maybe through changes to zoning laws, or through some kind of incentives), there are condos going in everywhere. There are so many projects going on at once you can't keep track of them. High-rise, low-rise, whatever -- you name it, and it's going in.

And, there has been a general trend towards mixed-use development in the last several years. It doesn't automatically make things pedestrian-friendly, but it helps. At least you have some chance of having corner shops you can easily walk to.

Unfortunately, there's no such thing as a "good record deal." The numbers are so stacked against the people making the music that, as recent Atlantic Records signee David Garza noted, "It only works for the artist if more than a million copies are sold. Period."

The obvious problem with that, of course, is that of the approximate 30,000 albums released every year, less than one percent go platinum (certified sales of one million), meaning there are very few recording artists for whom the record deal is actually working.

This problem is further compounded by the fact that very few musicians know what their record contract actually says. Which is quite understandable; the average Egyptologist had a better shot at deciphering hieroglyphics before the discovery of the Rosetta Stone than the average musician today has of making heads or tails out of their recording contract. This turns out to be, perhaps, the worst problem of all since those pages upon pages of tediously rigid terminology, obscure even to the legally trained, hold the financial fate of an artist.

Don't be so sure about the 10 year figure... look at the SIP program in Texas. Or the story in Virgina from a couple of years ago (Full story on another site); (Start of the archive story, need to pay for the full version)... And of course, commentary from FORMER MADD members...

The prohibitionist are back... and fighting strong now...

Nephilium

Why on earth aren't people continually drunk? I want ecstasy of the mind all the time. --- Jack Kerouac, beat writer

http://www.austinchronicle.com/gyrobase/Issue/stor y?oid=oid%3A81717

(Happy for India nonetheless.)

"First, almost all major label contracts stipulate that an artist be paid royalties on only 85 percent of the albums sold. This is actually a remnant deduction left over from the earliest days of vinyl. Occasionally said petroleum product would break during shipment. Since retailers couldn't sell broken records, the record companies decided not to pay royalties on them either. As a result, a 10 percent breakage factor became customary. Today, even though CDs generally don't break during shipment, the deduction has not only stayed, it's increased. So, for seemingly no reason other than they can, record companies are not going to pay you for every album you sell." (The Austin Chronicle: The Cold, Hard Truth About Recording Contracts)

The West is hardly on the verge of collapse because of it. Nor have their actions reduced the presence of Western forces in the Middle East. I hardly think that al-Qaeda is particularly heartened by the U.S. governments increased surveillance of its own people, etc, either.

Sorry, I beg to differ..

But if bin Laden predicted that the U.S. would invade Iraq a year and a half after 9/11, costing way more in money and lives than the more predictable invasion of Afghanistan, then I will grant you that he must be a genius.

He's already had a dry-run. Remember when the World Trade Center was attacked back in 1993? Remember who was president then? Yes, George Bush Sr. Remember what happened during that term? Desert Storm in Iraq. What did we try to do? Depose Saddam Hussein.

Who financed, trained and armed Al Queda back a decade or more ago, to help them push Russia out of Afghanistan? That's right, we did.

Osama knew precisely what would happen if he orchestrated an attack on the US again, while a Bush president was in office.

In the last 30-something presidents, we've seen two attacks on domestic soil from foreign terrorists (if you believe that 9/11 involved these foreign terrorists). Both attacks occured at the World Trade Center. Both attacks were under Bush presidencies. Both attacks resulted in an invasion of Iraq, and the attempted deposing of Saddam Hussein (Saddam, I should add, is theologically opposed to what Osama believes in, and would never support his efforts).

Let's not forget the $9 BILLION dollars that was lost after being hand-flown to Iraq, and the resulting investigation that Bush is trying to halt.

Google up the references, its all out there. Its all scary stuff.

As far as I know there still is no effective solution to the amount of NOx smog produced by a diesel engine. A lot of this is due to the high compression ratios used, not necessarily the type of fuel.

If this article is accurate, biodiesel can actually produce more NOx and ozone pollution. It may significantly cut down on the soot, which is considered highly toxic. As I type this, there is another spare-the-air day where I live and all public transit is free. Most of this is due to NOx and ozone.

Diesel-electric is perfect for trains, since they need a huge amount of torque at zero RPM and electric motors solve this nicely, basically eliminating any requirements for a complex transmission.

-Aaron

I hope they tried to cut other things before they started firing.

Because I'm not aware of any cameras on the streets of Austin, Dallas, or Houston.

You're not aware because you're not paying attention.

* Dallas has them
* Austin has them
* The police have allready been caught for selling footage from the (now allegedly not recording, but still present) Deep Ellum cameras.

And the thing is, while UT had to publish the locations, that requirement no longer exists for street CCTV.

They could be installing hundreds of cameras - and wouldn't have to tell you. If you're Texan, then presume you're being watched.

A couple of High School students re-made Raiders of the Lost Ark in its entirety over a period of a few years. /. ran a story on it here is a link to an article about it. More interesting than a musical princess bride....

http://www.austinchronicle.com/issues/dispatch/200 3-05-30/screens_feature4.html

They've already screened "Texas Chainsaw Massacre" at the original house, which was moved from the original site but is still near Austin.

See this story.

I've heard this claim many times before, but I can't find any information to back it up. Maybe you can, since you seem so confident about it's veracity. I think it might just be an urban legend. I'm not saying that you're wrong, I'd just like some proof.

I used to have a somewhat formal breakdown of the typical costs and credits in line-item form, but lost the bookmark to it a while back.

I googled for about 90 seconds and came up with this somewhat specific description of the typical contractual details:

http://www.austinchronicle.com/issues/vol17/issue4 1/music.labels.html

A friend recently told me about this film, an amazing-sounding film made over the span of seven years by three boys, which ultimately was lauded by Spielberg as a true work of art. I've been unable to find any copies of the film itself... anybody have any pointers?

Article's a few years old, but will give you a starting place for searching.
http://www.austinchronicle.com/issues/dispatch/200 0-08-11/xtra_feature2.html

This one's only a year old:
http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2004/01/277711.sh tml

And something that looks like an essay on the subject:
http://www.sexuality.org/l/mscott/ssex01.html

Too bad we can't moderate this with (-1, shameless plagiarism)... see the original.

Yeah, everything's coming up roses. America is #1.

A peaceful world government isn't pie in the sky and it isn't some stupid sign of the end-of-days, it would be a sign of social maturity. But don't worry, with the present levels of xenophobia and distrust of 'furriners' right down to the backbone of the US, it ain't going to happen in our lifetime. And speaking of Left Behind, I gather sales are really good.

Lesssee here. You willingly re-elected a president who has done more damage to the bill of rights than any person in the country's history. A man who has shown a clear preference for the interests of large corporations over the people he is supposed to lead. So the *AA's abusive and heavy handed tactics are surprising... how?

It seems that this is clearly the kind of thing Americans want. If the capacity for outrage doesn't exist for prisoners of war abused in Iraq, if it doesn't exist for voting machine manufacturers pledging money and support for only one party, if it doesn't exist for the zero accountability expected of the Enron, Worldcom, and Haliburton criminals... why should any American give a second thought to the people who will be fscked by the MPAA?

As has been said by people more eloquent than I, it's too late anyway.

http://www.austinchronicle.com/issues/dispatch/200 4-10-22/pols_feature18.html/
Travis County election officials have responded to complaints that voters casting straight-party Democratic ballots are discovering, when performing a final check of their ballots, that their votes for president have been changed from Kerry/Edwards to Bush/Cheney. The officials say that, after trying and failing to replicate the problem on its eSlate voting machines, they have concluded the vote changes are due to voter error rather than mechanical failure.
I did a search for "eSlate voting machine" and found the website of the company that makes it. Apparently the company name is "Hart InterCivic". They have a demo on their website where you can try out the eSlate, though I don't know how true to life it is. I really don't like the interface at all, and would prefer a system with a keypad, where you punch in a number on the keypad that corresponds to a choice of candidate (e.g. "1. Bush/Cheney 2. Kerry/Edwards), and their system seems needlessly complicated, but maybe that's just me. Well, I tried out the demo voting. Attempting to duplicate the problem, I voted for "George Washington", the second presidential choice, instead of the first choice, "Susan B Anthony". I then proceeded to check the box for the other positions. When you have selected a candidate for each office by hitting 'Enter' for each one, it automatically takes you to the finish screen. If you hit "Cast Ballot" at this point, the process is done, and it's all good. However, if you hit Enter again like you have been for all the previous choices, then you go back to your presidential candidate, which it shows as being selected. Hit Enter again, and it takes you back to the finish screen. However, for President it now says "No Selections", which, as a side note, I find ironically appropriate when applied to this election, but that is neither here nor there. Anyway, select 'Cast Ballot' at that point and you didn't vote for anybody for President. So I do see where there could be a problem there, if people weren't paying attention or got confused by the technology. Seeing as how I frequently have to help my coworkers with things like taking screenshots, saving files, finding the files they saved, and so forth, I can definitely see getting confused by the technology as being a problem.
I do have a suggestion, however. Have the voting machine companies prepare a brief, simple, 5-15 minute video tutorial on how to operate the e-voting machine. Set up an area at the polling place to have groups of twenty or so watch it before voting, or having it playing on monitors next to the lines people will be waiting in to vote. This should hopefully minimize or eliminate most of the user error problems with electronic voting, although it doesn't adress issues like corrupt e-voting machine companies (*cough*DIEBOLD*cough*)or electronic manipulation of the vote count or the very real need for a paper trail. When you go to the ATM, you get a receipt. You should DEFINITELY be able to get a receipt for you fricking vote.
eSlate voting machine: http://www.hartintercivic.com/solutions/eslate.htm l/

Travis County election officials have responded to complaints that voters casting straight-party Democratic ballots are discovering, when performing a final check of their ballots, that their votes for president have been changed from Kerry/Edwards to Bush/Cheney. The officials say that, after trying and failing to replicate the problem on its eSlate voting machines, they have concluded the vote changes are due to voter error rather than mechanical failure.

Gail Fisher, manager of the county's Elections Division, theorizes that after selecting their straight party vote, some voters are going to the next page on the electronic ballot and pressing "enter," perhaps thinking they are pressing "cast ballot" or "next page." Since the Bush/Cheney ticket is the first thing on the page, it is highlighted when the page comes up - and thus, pressing "enter" at that moment causes the Kerry/Edwards vote to be changed to Bush/Cheney.

Fisher stressed very strongly that voters should not rush, but carefully and thoroughly examine their ballots on the final review page before pressing "cast ballot."

Fisher said the county has received "less than a dozen" complaints from the more than 70,000 voters that had cast ballots by Friday afternoon. She said the county has also received a complaint from the Travis County Democratic Party. TCDP Executive Director

Elizabeth Yevich said it was not a formal complaint, but that the party had expressed concern and the county had been "receptive and responsive."

Gail Fisher, manager of the county's Elections Division, theorizes that after selecting their straight party vote, some voters are going to the next page on the electronic ballot and pressing "enter," perhaps thinking they are pressing "cast ballot" or "next page." Since the Bush/Cheney ticket is the first thing on the page, it is highlighted when the page comes up - and thus, pressing "enter" at that moment causes the Kerry/Edwards vote to be changed to Bush/Cheney.

I wonder what G. Gordon Liddy thinks of all this. However, chances are that it is the Republicans who tried to make this appear so. They have a past history of doing such things. Afer all, ask Karl Rove.

The sad part for Jerm et al. is that by this point, they're famous enough (at least around Austin) that they really don't need the name, but they're stuck with it now. I think if I was them I'd just change the name, but hey, who am I.

Those guys are really, really funny. I was nervous the first time I went, because the formula has potential to super-suck, but they're nuts. I saw Mac and Me, Dirty Dancing, and the Christmas Show. The Christmas Show is 10 out of 10. The "Itchy" segment alone (Star Wars Xmas Special) is worth the price of admission.

On a related note, for locals, the "original" or "headquarters" Drafthouse location is going to have to move because the leaseholders want to tear that block down and build a highrise. :[

In Austin, at least you're wrong. Austin conducted a large survey where they asked citizens to describe their desired future scenario for growth. The largest group said they wanted a radical shift from the status quo. See: The Austin Chronical

Urbanism is more than just making high density housing development, though. If you'd like to learn more about sububarnism and urbanism, I suggest a book. There's a great one called Suburban Nation. There's also the more academic The Geography of Nowhere.

I highly recommend reading one of these books. Even if you come away thinking that the idea within are crap, it at least makes you think of the built environment in a critical way, instead of just accepting it as a given.

And one last question. Think to yourself of your fondest memory of a town or city. Were you on foot, bike, public transit, or in car? Everyone I have ever asked that to responds that they were walking.

The change of the "work for hire" definition was snuck in via a technical amendment to The Satellite Home Viewer Improvement Act of 1999.

AFAIK, it has not been struck down.

The work-for-hire issue has been a sore point between artists and the recording industry for the past year.

Last year the music labels successfully lobbied to insert into unrelated legislation a clause that prevents copyrights from reverting to their authors. Now, they've agreed with artists to recommend rescinding the change in copyright law.

By adding four words -- "as a sound recording" -- deep within the Satellite Home Viewer Improvement Act of 1999, Congress essentially changed the work-for-hire section of the copyright code.

Artists were enraged by what they considered to be back room dealing between the recording industry and Congress. Led by Sheryl Crow and Don Henley, musicians formed a coalition to begin negotiating with the Recording Industry Association of America and the government to repeal the additions.

In October, President Clinton signed into law a bill that removed those four words.

The Austin Chronicle has a nice story on austin's free hotspots setup by, lessnetworks.com, austinfree
There seems to be a rather large push for free hotspots in Austin, TX. Its quite noticable that starbucks and TMobile have about the only pay hotspot in town. Its popping up in the strangest of places, for instance the dog and duck pub now offers wireless.

(I agree with the WSJ on this, but I couldn't link to a WSJ page because it's a paid subscription. You'll have to read about it in another newspaper. According to the Journal, "Lucky Duckies" are the non- or low-taxpaying class. Some guy who's the head of household making $40K a year doesn't pay much taxes.)

If that involves getting Leslie involved in promoting OO.o I'm jumping ship.

PS - If you don't live in Austin, and/or don't know who Leslie is, you probably don't want to. He's no goatse guy guy in that he seems ok when described online. But trust me, barring great physical injury, nothing kills your buzz faster when stumbling down 6th St. to see him in stilleto heels and a g-string.

When I first heard people say things like: the internet, as it was in the good old days, will be gone, the fixtures(?) of what make the internet what it is, are crumbling. I didn't like it. I didn't like the idea of corporate interests taking over and homogenizing and whitewashing cyberspace.

Take a step back and think about how the internet has changed in the last 5-10 years. Where are those homogenizing influences that everyone was sure were going to sweep over the *entire* net and turn it into the bastard child of AOL? They *are* there and can be found, but the hacker subculture is still alive and strong! I would argue that as long as this is the case it is impossible to kill the net. The hackers ( in the prejoritive and neutral sense) are what started the net and what made it great, the hackers(crackers) that wield destructive energy combined with hackers(intelectual idealists) both created the natural law in cyberspace and shape it.

Again and again, people try to control; the net reacts. Look at what is happening with intellectual property! A cornerstone in the legal system for hundreds of years, intelectual property rights, backed by some of the largest interest groups in the country, billions of dollars and hoards of raving lawyers are being crushed. Even now at this moment, jack valenti's pinhead is being crushed with an imutable fact; information WILL, MUST, flow. Like a river encountering an obstacle in its path, it will find a way and grind the object into dust.

If anyone has not read Bruce Sterling's "Information Wants to Be Worthless" you should give it a shot. The internet is completely out of control. Well maybe not completely but seriously, what does Jack Valenti think about when he goes to sleep at night? Maybe "You know, in a couple years the RIAA and MPAA will have this whole internet thing wrapped up" or "As soon as Microsoft gets that DRM bullshit going we'll be golden!" or maybe "as soon as we sieze control of every Internet backbone and filter all traffic...tell people what they can and cant do...(mumble)". Just think, if all the backbones in the country had their "spigots" turned off, there would still be enough information in manhatten, flowing over thousands of wi-fi node, to keep people downloading brittney porn and browsing endless mp3's. Shit, there's probably 500 years worth of porn sitting on hd's all across NYC.

I am starting to rant here but show me someone who thinks that they can control the internet and I will say that there is a thousand people will to step forward and circumvent that control.

Anonymous Hero

And lo, the top Google results are all about how Bush tried to get around the Public Information Act by passing off his papers as federal property and not state. Gee golly.

This says that "Southwestern Bell charges 33 cents to each customer" and has been for since 1999. So let's see, this says that SBC has "6.9 million wireless customers across the United States" as of 1999. It's been 54 months since January 1, 1999 including this month. 54 * 6,900,000 = 372,600,000 months of total charges. 372,600,000 * $0.33 = $122,958,000.00 which makes a $22,958,000.00 profit(!!!!) on the $100,000,000.00 re-tooling you mention if it were SBC. That's not even counting the growth of the customer base since 1999!

You are deeply misinformed. California's power outages weren't due to genuine insufficient power supply, but instead due to a set of games Enron played with the system there to reduce supply and make the state desperate enough to pay vastly inflated prices for energy. this page gives a short list of the various tricks used, taken directly from Enron memos. To make the various plans ("Death Star", "Fat Boy", and "Richochet") even more profitable, Enron ordered its powerplant owning subsidiaries to take several of their plants offline for wholly unnecessary "maintenance", rendering power in California scarce.

Search on google for "death star" enron for more information on this -- there's a LOT of sources on it. Except in the event of Enron-style malfeasance California had more than enough power plants to provide continual service, and even if they had built more Enron would have taken just enough of them offline to make the state desperate.

IMO it's an absolute travesty how little national attention the Enron "Death Star" plan received, even after Ken Lay and friends channeled all the profits to their private accounts and let the empty shell of Enron fall over. As far as I can tell, the only places it got reported at all were local California and Texas newspapers.

Are the Feds keeping track of how much is collected? Probably not. I suspect nobody is but some wily executives and accountants.

As Jonathan Miller once said,

in the U.S. they have two parties, just as we [in England] have two parties. They have the Republican party, which is like our Conservative party. And they have the Democratic party, which is like our Conservative party.

I'm not sure what to make of your statement that you're concerned more with criminal than civil litigation. This whole thread was a about civil matters (California's laws on implied warranties). As to criminal matters, local judges and juries in the South in the 1960s accurately reflected racist community values and exonerated some awful murderers and terrorists, some of whom took advantage of the Constitutional protection against double jeopardy and sold the stories of their brutal acts to the press.

If you think this is all ancient history, look at what local judge Edward Self did in Tulia Texas. When rogue cop Tom Coleman framed about 15% of the black population of Tulia Texas for selling cocaine in 1999 (one 57 year old hog farmer was sentenced to 99 years), Judge Self refused to admit evidence introduced by defense lawyers that demonstrated a pattern of deceit and shoddy police work by Detective Coleman. Later Judge Self lied about his refusal to admit this evidence and despite being caught lying and forced to recuse himself from appeals of the Tulia cases, Judge Self was re-elected. This spring, the cases were re-opened by higher authorities who don't have to stand for election in Tulia. Detective Coleman has been charged with three counts of aggravated perjury and all the convictions are being vacated. The State of Texas is preparing to pay the victims up to $3000 for each year they wrongfully spent in prison.

Before you get too enamored of direct local democracy, I would recommend re-reading Federalist X on the danger of faction and the tyranny of the majority. This spring, people farther removed from the local level got involved and

I think that's for the 1st mr bush. Article dated 2000 says Henry B.Gonzalez died. Henry B.Gonzalez died.

I agree though, they all scare me and I am just stunned by some of their decisions. And I think -- We're paying them for that?