Slashdot Mirror

I've read about a single case involving less than 100 Democrats' registrations being ripped up. Can you cite references to the thousands? Honest question, I just haven't read about that many.

Would it matter if I did? If you had a strong suspicion that the GOP were actively encouraging vote fraud, I expect that you would avert your gaze or seek to justify it. If there is one thing I have learned about modern conservatives it is that they have wholly abdicated any and all responsiblity and morality.

Nonetheless.

GOP fraud in Oregon, GOP fraud in Arizona, Nevada (another), and so forth and so on. Look for yourself, not that I expect you to actually meaningfully CRITICIZE the GOP.

I can't think of a reason for them not sending the registrations in because our student population is all over the political map.

Note: I live in Arizona
Well, Bush has arrived and Kerry will be here soon. The media circus is ramping up. No one seemed to doubt that "the show" would go on.

I don't plan on watching the debate, though. If Badnarik had been able to participate, I probably would have, because a three-way debate might have offered me a lot more insights into the candidates views. Don't get me wrong, I'm not a libertarian, and most probably won't vote libertarian. But watching Bush and Kerry spout their canned and polished diatribes at each other won't enlighten me any.

Living here in the Sonoran Desert of Arizona where temperatures are 100+ degress for 5-6 months of the year, I can some practical uses for something like this:

- Athletic departments of colleges, high schools, etc; every summer, especially when football programs start up, students are taken to the hospital due to heat exhaustion and heat stroke
- Emergency Medical Response teams
- Anywhere where workers are required to be outdoors during the heat of the day

On average, 29 people a year die of heatstroke in Arizona alone. (That doesn't include the illegal immigration deaths, of which were 172 documented so far in 2004, probably more all told.) Something like this could be very useful, commercially, it just depends on how practical and expensive it would be.

According to this article at azcentral.com:

"To put on the debate, the school raised more than $2 million in donations through private donors. But the complaint says those officials who solicited donations were working for the state, thus violating the law. "

Thing is... who would air the film? I'm sure that advertising revenue will make it attractive but I don't think stations will risk the tax break suicide if Bush does get re-elected.

On death: France surrenders to 104F heat. Almost 15,000 dead. And thats without the tents in the sun.

On the army: When you're in the army, you spend months training in whatever weather conditions happen to be that day. By the end of that, you're up for standing in a tent in Iraq. Thats what training is for.

You seem to think that if the majority of the people there are convicted criminals, thats "good enough". I guess you advocate shooting everyone and letting God sort them out. Maybe you think you live in a world where people who are arrested are arrested because they did something wrong. I live in the real world in a city called Houston, where not many years ago the cops decided to bust some street racers, only they got there and nobody was racing, so they arrested EVERYONE at a nearby K-Mart, and when that abuse of power couldn't get them hard enough, they arrested everyone eating dinner at the Sonic next door. Over 400 arrests, every single one of them was overturned, at the expense of the city as it requires a lawsuit in order to have the arrest record expunged. Just imagine what would have happened if these people had been treated in the ways you're defending.

And here's your cite for the 60 people set free on that prostitution sting.

Of course, if the reason is because then then Wall Street will ignore the stock and no institutions will recommend it, well, maybe that's a great reason not to do this.

I think the Google "Do No Evil" strategy, as mentioned previously on /., could be behind this: They don't want to change how they operate just to get more money. Instead, they are trying to preserve Google as it is. Notice that class B stock has ten times the voting power of class A stock, and most of these shares are held by insiders (it's near the bottom of the article). Thus, they are trying to prevent Google from becoming another public company which has not a care in the world for the morality of their actions as long as they make money for the shareholders, while still being a public company.

Of course, I could be wildly optimistic in this outlook. Just ask China. I certainly hope I'm not, however. But the ultimate conclusion may still be written by the stock price.

Aw, heck. It's not like we have any electrical problems!

I don't know what 2005 will be like. It's a toss up between running out of water, and running out of air. Or maybe running out of smog and ozone. Like I said, it's a toss-up.

Best of all, there's the people that work for him, like the corrupt David Hendershott, a man so fat that he once had to be cut out of a car with the jaws of life- a vehicle that had been impounded by sheriff's office, in fact.

Believe me- Sheriff Joe comes across as a hard-hitting lawman, but he's corrupt, morally bankrupt, and out to make a splash rather than fix the problems in his jails. Unfortunately, more money is spent in litigation and settlements than should be, taking officers off the street.

Just thought I'd bring you up to date: it's now just "the Wachowskis." See this article.

How else is Larry Wachowski gonna pay for that sex change operation?

Information here in case you haven't heard about it.. Larry wants to become Linda.

Yet I bet that their "120,000" number is about as good as my own analysis above- sounds very precise, but not at all accurate... But since those HTQ people are now defined- and who wants to waste data- they're going to show up in the gov't databases. And then their roommates and co-workers are going to get flagged as medium TQ people. And then their roommates get to be medium-low TQ people. And so on and so on... If you're lucky you'll only be a LLML TQ, but no one gets to be 100% free of the taint.

Even though that original 120k number doesn't pass the sniff test. Sure, ".04%" seems like a small number, but that equals one in 2500 people. Is 1/2500 people in the US a terrorist? That'd be 1 terrorist per 10 airplane flights, or several terrorists per major sporting event, or 400 terrorists in Silicon Valley (plus the 30 laid off who've moved back home). Unless they're all fantastically incompetent, the US should have several terror events per day.

[Pause to answer knock on door....]

Oh, never mind, we are crawling with terrorists, like the Peace Fresno anti-war group with their monthly streetside protest. Forgot that civil disobedience is now terrorism. Unless its lawful civil disobedience, of course. I'm just going to go back to my Orrin Hatch CD now.

... but is it good enough to make up for the last Matrix movie? *shudders*

I've sworn off entertainment completely since I heard that blind Neo is teaming up with Chaka Khan to entertain the Merovingian in the next film, Matrix:Chicago (the musical). But I should've guessed this would happen, since the warning signs were all there.

Sigh... anime may be dead to me now, but they can never take away the classics of cinema.

A meteorite hits New Zealand, and at the same time, a 23-acre lake vanishes in Wildwood Missouri. If asked, I'll bet that officials will deny a connection, proving that there's something going on!

All of that stuff we can already get cheaper from Asia. Hardly any of these "American" branded products, except the cars, which you're welcome to, are actually manufactured there now. For instance there isn't a single Levi jeans factory in the US now. If you buy from a multi-national like that they ship it direct from their third world factory. US trade laws are irrelevant.

You should talk to this guy. (There are TV psychics who can help with that.)

Unless by killed you mean alive and well, I think you're a bit mistaken. In fact, here is an article published today about someone reselling the service. Perhaps you are confused by the fact that the originial Iridium went bankrupt. That doesn't mean that their 66 satellites stopped working, though. They were sold to a new group of investors.

The problem with Iridium in this situation is that, AFAIK, rates are on the order of $1/minute. That is probably out of the reach of your average yak farmer. While Wi-Fi has higher initial costs, it is basically free to operate once you have all the equipment.

Precursor of database project gave feds 120,000 terrorist suspects

http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/news/arti cles/0427premium27.html#

Regular gas often fine in modern cars

Bob Golfen
The Arizona Republic
Apr. 27, 2004 12:00 AM

Are you wasting money putting premium gasoline into your car or truck?

Most people are, according to automotive experts.

Only about 5 percent of modern automobiles require premium under their manufacturers' recommendation. For the other 95 percent of the cars and trucks on the road, premium fuel makes no difference in performance or reliability.

And many of the vehicles that manufacturers say need premium run perfectly well on regular without any dire consequences or significant loss of performance.

"If you can't tell the difference, the car can't, either," said Mark Salem, a Tempe veteran auto technician and advice columnist.

"The reduction in performance can only be measured on a dynamometer. Most people, including myself, can't tell the difference."

Try telling that to Kelvin Williams, 35, of Phoenix. Despite the climbing cost of premium gas, he's still using it in his Dodge Ram pickup, he said, because regular gas "actually bogs down the car."

"Yes, I have to (use premium) with my truck, it's a Dodge 1500 Sports Edition Ram," Williams said. "With the V-8, it's better for the engine itself."

Salem said he has owned his 1995 Chevrolet Corvette since it was new, and despite the automaker's advice that premium be used, "I've used regular since Day 1."

With gasoline prices on the rise, the use of premium fuel has dropped off nationally as more motorists try cheaper blends to save money. Typically, premium costs about 20 cents more per gallon than regular.

In 2003, sales of premium represented about 12 percent of pump sales, down from 13.5 percent in 2002 when the cost of gasoline was lower, according to industry data. The highest use of premium was during 1994, when it reached 20.3 percent.

Premium gasoline is not better than regular, just different, said Randy Nowell, a master technician for the American Automobile Association. The difference is in the octane levels, a measurement of the gasoline blend's resistance to engine knock caused by pre-ignition.

"Dealers and sales people will tell you to buy premium because you're buying a premium car," Nowell said. "That's a myth."

Nearly every 2004 General Motors vehicle uses regular gas, said Chuck Harrington, GM's Western regional spokesman.

Ford now has just "a handful" of cars that use premium, spokeswoman Sandra Badgett said. But those cars can use regular with no ill effects, she said.

"We generally recommended certain octane because that's where the engine is tuned to run the best," Badgett said. "If you put regular in a vehicle that wants premium, it's not going to hurt it. It's not going to drop dead on the road."

Using premium in a car or truck that requires regular gives it no benefit in performance, mileage or reliability, she added.

Regular ranges from 85 to 87 octane, midgrades from 88 to 90, and premium 91 or higher.

But only performance engines with high compression ratios or those enhanced with turbochargers or superchargers benefit from the anti-knock protection.

The premium-gas issue has changed over the past two decades. Since 1981, every vehicle includes an electronic device in the ignition system called a knock sensor, which slightly retards the vehicle's ignition timing if it senses pre-ignition. The timing change may result in slightly less performance or fuel mileage, but it won't hurt the engine, Nowell said.

He advises drivers of vehicles requiring premium to try a tankful of midrange, . which is about 10 cents per gallon cheaper than premium and slightly boosts octane at lesser cost.

If midrange works, then run a

Student made hybrid gets 1,600 mpg. Sounds like the car companies better get moving. Story Link

I would personally prefer an all electric car. My commute is 15 miles each way and that's the only drive I make most days. It would be much better to just plug the car in each night. The electricity coming from my house costs less for me, and overall created less pollution.

If some goverment functionary wants to snoop through my ISPs records to see that I spend 80% of my time online surfing for porn let them have at it.

Do you feel this way because you are unaware that the Bush administration has declared war on pornography..?

Or is it because you imagine that the attention of a FBI employee would be necessary to monitor your internet activities? They've already got Carnivore, an automated system to do just that. If the FBI needs no justification or advance approval to use it, do you find it hard to believe they'll watch us all?

Maybe you think your porn habit is too trivial to warrant attention from the FBI. Folks who swap music online probably felt the same way... until the FBI started raiding schools.

This from the label execs, among others. The same labels that never engage in any sort of price fixing. And then I read something like this article, and I, of course, see that the labels are doing the right thing.

No, I don't trust the labels on pricing any more.

Nah. George Bush was working on A more short term plan. Allowing more immigrant workers.

(3) I believe that piracy is driven by "overpriced CDs" even though CDs have dropped in price over the years.

They have? That's news to me. When I got my first CD player in 1985, the average price of a new CD in a record store was $12. In 2004, the average price of a new CD in a record store is $18. Now, granted there are bargain-basement $5.99 CDs these days, as well as sale-priced new releases at the $12 or $13 price point, but as a whole, CDs aren't cheaper today than they were nearly 20 years ago.

Does that excuse "piracy," or "theft" or whatever you want to call it? No, it doesn't, but let's ratchet down the level of nonsense in the rhetoric used here. "Stealing" isn't the right word for making an unauthorized copy of something. The original still exists and can be sold to someone, and "piracy" is a loaded word with completely inappropriate connotations. How about we just call it "unauthorized copying" or "copyright dilution"?

I've always had a problem with software and entertainment industry estimates of losses due to unauthorized copying. First, they assume that every copy illegally-made represents a lost sale, which is nonsense. If a 15-year-old kid has 8,000 songs on his hard drive, there's no chance in hell that he would have bought those 8,000 songs if he hadn't had access to them for free. He might have spent anywhere from a few hundred to a couple of thousand bucks on music, but there's no chance he'd have bought 600 CDs worth of music at $15-$18 a crack ($9,000-$11,000).

And here's another thing: Twenty years ago, my friends and I taped songs off of FM radio and played them in our walkmans. Or we'd dupe our LPs onto tape and trade copies with each other. I easily had access to ten times as much music as I could afford to buy, but in spite of record industry whining, I bought *more* music because of that practice, not less.

One study stated that that kids and adults alike who used the original Napster were more likely to buy music than people who didn't. Numerous studies have shown that there's zero correlation between "piracy" and the decline of sales for the music industry. Is it any surprise to people that the last year of sales increases for the music industry was the last year that the original Napster was in operation?

This is not an apologia for listening to music without paying for any of it. It's simply a realistic look at what's really going on. The record industry has its head up its ass and always has. Suing and prosecuting your customers is bad for business.

Software "piracy" is different, but not *that* different. Much of the software industry used to accept that "piracy" was just another form of marketing. Microsoft has always given lip service to stamping out "piracy," but until they had established a monopoly, they did virtually nothing to prevent it before the fact because they knew it was easier to convert a "pirate" into a paying customer than it was to get a skeptic to buy from you in the first place. Most people these days will automatically use MS products, so now Microsoft puts copy-protection technology in its products to force people to pay up-front.

Is making an unauthorized copy of music or software theft? According to the law, it is. However, there needs to be a middle ground between the "information wants to be free" left and the Ashcroft search-and-seizure right.

Most people would gladly reward artists and programmers for their work. That's how shareware works, and it made Phil Katz a substantial amount of money before his death. So how about we find new ways to reward creators of content, instead of finding new ways to criminalize what people have done for decades?

Don't misunderstand me. There are true criminals out there who are selling counterfeit or other illegally-copied versions of products (such as music and sof

Good point. Now convince me there are more than 176 million pounds of them being thrown out in the U.S. alone.

Sure, let's come up with better recycling & disposal methods for common things like CDs. Let's take the cost of disposal into account. But let's go after the big offenders.

I think the music industry is afraid thier "bundling" days are over!

When this is offensive.

Yeah, maybe we would have less 11 mpg H2s on the road.

Isn't the atmosphere of Mars only a few percent as dense as Earth's atmosphere?

Doesn't seem like the swooshing of the diffuse Martian atmosphere would provide enough force to shove even a highly-engineered tumbleweed around...

The atmosphere of Mars is 96 percent carbon dioxide, about 3 percent nitrogen and 1 percent other stuff, including water vapor and a little bit of oxygen. And it is a very thin atmosphere. The average air pressure there is only about 1 percent of Earth's.

However, it has enough of an atmosphere to have wind. As a matter of fact, because the atmosphere is so thin, the wind reaches very high speeds.
...
In the 1970s, NASA's Viking landers found the top wind speed on Mars was about 60 mph and the average was around 20 mph.

That's enough wind to kick up huge dust storms that can go on for weeks and cover the entire planet.

Do you really trust a spammer to send you the real goods? Counterfeit drugs are rampant, and unless you purchased the drug from a reputable (liscenced) pharmacy, it is unlikely you are getting the real deal

Getting fake viagra might be a bummer but imagine getting fake birth control!

Everybody who hasn't heard about web sites ship fake birth control should read this article and warn their friends.

Do Ethiopians even have their own food or is it all shipped in in bags from UN aid organizations?

I had the same thought until I actually ate at an Ethopian restaurant.

There's a wonderful Ethopian restaurant in Tempe, AZ, that's turned into one of my favorite places to eat. It's called Cafe Lalibela (review). Many of the dishes are a thick stew which you eat with the aid of a large, spongy flat bread. The dishes are wonderfully spiced (but not usually hot). They serve a spice tea that my sweetheart has to have whenever we go there. It's darned good food, the service is friendly, and the prices suit college folk. I'd recommend giving Ethopian food a try.

Quite a while ago I posted a comment to a spam article about trusting to buy from spammers, asking "Who would put in their mouth and swallow something from a spammer."

Well, it's old news (Haven't seen an opportunity to post this since then) but I was more correct in asking this than I had imagined.

Well, it turns out some folks at the Wall Street Journal did a laboratory study of these pills, and "analysis of a composite sample of 10 Performance Marketing pills and turned up significant levels of E. coli, yeast, mold, lead and pesticide residues."

So among other nasties, there is a significant amount of fecal matter in these pills.

I'm actually suprised this isn't bigger news.
Maybe we should all put it in our signature files until the spammers go away: "Penis Pills have Poop in them!"

Maybe some idiot that is stupid enough to buy from a spammer will die of E. coli and get a Darwin Award. Those sure get forwarded around a lot. Even my mom forwarded me the nominations for the 2003 Darwin Awards. (Which suprised me.)

Maybe I should submit it for a Front Page story, but it was originally reported on August 13, 2003.

They will also need fields for multiple relationship codes, such as Wife1/Cousin, or Daughter/Neice.

As opposed to Bush, who ensures his buddies' continued profits by giving tax breaks to people who buy Hummers. Clinton may have raised the temperature in the Oval Office, but Bush is raising the temperature of the entire planet.

5 years ago, someone giled a lawsuit over the pepsi points/harrier jet ad.

A couple weeks ago, a suit was trown out (because it was filed after the statute of limitations) when a boy died after swallowing a pin used to "shotgun" a soda.

No word yet if anyone has been killed trying to drink pepsi one while sky-diving.

Another view.

It could be worse.

..that now even Al-Qaeda does it!!

Yup, Bin Laden is the son of a billionare, he's got an MBA(!) and he runs a multi-million dollar global terror "franchise" that outsources its operations to "local allies" who'll supply services under the "brand name".

Last straw for me! If this isn't proof enough the world is a darn big capitalist shithole, I don't know what is.

American congressman!
$154,700 per year
$166,700 for leaders
$192,600 for speaker

Oh, wait, they just voted to increase their salary to $158,000 next year. Wish I could do that.

Also of note, the president makes $400,000 a year.

I just noticed that this really might happen. Guess it's time to watch soccer. :-)

I can't say I'm surprised to see that "George W. Bush" is listed as the weasliest individual, considering that the vast majority of hollywood and half of the politicians in the country are gunning for him, armed with mountains of faux substance... It's almost as bad as the France thing, except there's plenty of really good reasons to pity the French, and not supporting the Iraq war shouldn't even be on the list. (Say what you want about Bush killing jobs, it doesn't even compare with the French enforcing a 35-hour max workweek.)

The solution to this problem involves the general public and natural selection, so I won't go into it here.

A few points:

We're hemorrhaging 400k jobs a month,
No, not exactly. The most recent month statistics shows a net loss of 93,000 jobs. Check it out yourself here.

consumer confidence is going down
In the link above, you'll notice that one month of stastics shows a decline. The trend was upwards all summer long. Essentially things trended upwards over the summer, and are starting to trend downward. One month or two months or even three months is a very small trend. It is *NOT* considered a big economic indicator to have a month of declined consumer confidence.

we're spending more on social services in Iraq then in the U.S
That's patently absurd. The entire budget for the war, social services, rebuilding and operational expenses for the next 12 months does not exceed the cost of one month of social services in the US. Second, are you somehow suggesting that the social welfare of minorities like the Iraqis and muslims is somewhat less valuable than an unemployed person in the US? Which is worth more? Is one okay to be unemployed and the other not? Why? One the surface your statement belies a latent racism/nationalism that is offensive at best and abhorrent at worse.

top administration officials are leaking the names of covert CIA agents
One agent is in question. It is two "senior officals" in question. The persons status has not been necessarily declared to be covert. Not every analyst in the Operations Directorate is a spy. It is likely the husband of the outed agent tipped Novak off himself. Wilson told Novak that he went to Niger at the suggestion of his wife. Novak called around to confirm the story. Additionally, before Novak broke the story it was common knowledge that Plame worked for the CIA. Read Novak's defense of the situation and you'll probably change your mind on the situation.

we have a humongous deficit and an administration that doesn't give a rats ass
Deficts are a long-term problem, not a short-term problem. What you seem to forget is that the world economy and the US economy specifically are cyclical. Boom-bust-boom-bust etc. Look at over time and you'll see essentially its a 9-10 year cycle. I do not agree with the spending patterns of Bush or even of the last administration (or any in the last 40 years really), however, to suggest that the current administration cares not for deficits is false. To solve current deficits would require drastic short term action that is not justified by the severity of the problem. A deficit of 5% of the budget is not a serious long-term concern.

Next November you're going to be enjoying a democratic president back in the white house
Of course, that is possible. Anything is at this point time. But it is speculation, just FYI.

I know, the freepers and little green footballers and NRO and all you guys will attempt to smear the shit out of anyone who shows up but I don't think it will matter
Thats an odd statement, but I dont quite follow. NRO (I assume you mean the NRA?) is as far as organizations go blisteringly forthright about how it selects to endorse candidates. They rate candidates based on issues determined by the executive board and membership at large. They assign points on a 100-point scale and then give out a grade-letter. Are you suggesting that somehow the NRA doesn't have the right to lobby citizens to vote for candidates they support? Are the 1 Million + memberso the NRA not allowed to express their collective political opinions?

Kiss president fucktard good bye.
Bush may well be voted out of office in favor of a democrat. But the bigger issue here is why yourself and the author of the article puts so much weight on the office of President of the US.

The United States is not a central

Arizona Republic Contact Page

AP contact address

Arizona Republic Contact Page

AP contact address

The Arizona Republic article has a picture of the offender.

Reportedly, the suit has been settled with the girl's mother agreeing to pay $2,000.

"Brianna added: 'I am sorry for what I have done. I love music and don't want to hurt the artists I love.'"

What is this wild speculation garbage? Someone actually gets *paid* to think up this crap? The DVD industry is a huge part of the movie studios' revenue. Even if there were a way to deliver online movies, they would still be raking it in. And they aren't going to change their proven moneymaking business. Look at the record industry, and their unwillingness to change. Hell, they won't even consider change towards a *proven* market for their product. So you think the stakeholders in the DVD market will gladly switch away from their "free" money?

I realize you are a completely gay troll but I do have to concur that this is the state of our country. You can't even say Bush has chicken legs without getting people mad at you. That is, quite frankly, ridiculous.

The bonds would be paid off by the top 180,000 of the utility's large and medium-sized business consumers. Homeowners and smaller businesses would not be burdened with the cost.

Businesses don't locate their plant facilities as a matter of social conscience. Businesses locate their plant facilities to make an after-tax rate of return for their shareholders. And taxes do matter. They matter a lot. California and Arizona both prove that point.