Slashdot Mirror

According to http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/nationworld/bal-t e.radio26oct26,1,519954.story?ctrack=1&cset=true, below 89MHz is set aside for non-commercial radio. Hence why NPR is located there.

-dave

First: Diebold changed motherboards in Maryland in 2005, and denies any votes were lost.

Gilles W. Burger, chairman of the State Board of Elections, said this week that he and fellow members were initially told that Diebold was performing a "technical refresher" of the voting machines during July and August last year. He later learned that the refresher was really the repair of a flaw discovered by Diebold about three years earlier but not disclosed to him and other board members. The "motherboard" of each unit - the main circuit board that holds all of the machine's critical parts - had a glitch that could cause the machines to freeze.

Second:

"The government should know who owns our voting machines; that is a national security concern," said Representative Carolyn B. Maloney, Democrat of New York, who asked the Bush administration in May to review the Sequoia takeover.

Third, about those "responsible" for decision making re: national security:

The US Constitution established Congress as America's premier arm of government. George Bush, Dick Cheney, and their neoconservative allies used 9/11 to turn Congress into a rubber stamp like the old Supreme Soviet. Look at the embarrassing Republican leaders in Congress, the world's greatest legislature, and the heir to the great Roman Senate:

The shambling Senate leader, Dennis Hastert, was a wrestling coach. The once feared House leader, Tom Delay, was a cockroach exterminator before going to Congress. They were barely worthy of political office in Dogpatch, Texas, never mind Washington.

Both Republicans and Democrats are steeped in Washington's endemic corruption and influence peddling due to the constant need to raise campaign funds by kow-towing to special interests. Members of both parties voted like clapping seals for the Iraq War. But Republicans took the lead in promoting and sustaining that totally unnecessary conflict, now estimated to likely cost upwards of $1 trillion before it is lost.

Q--Now, if fighting supposed terrorism, is so damn important, why the hell even bother w/Chavex?

Q--How do Bush, Cheney and their cronies make their money?

A--OIL

Kagan did the right thing, which was to contact the state elections officials, who in turn contacted the FBI, who went and talked to Kagan.

/Not that we can really trust an AC's claims

... for the state of Maryland is getting bottom spanked. Unfortunately not for security but for using an auxillary untested piece of crap from Diebold that caused voting delays (that's right ... steal my vote but dammit be quick about it). Why anyone even buys diebold is beyond me but especially in a dark-dark-dark-blue state like Maryland.

It does affect everything, agreed. The situation means more than giving up your latte, to answer another reply.

Let's think about school lunch.

"Anne Arundel County public schools pay $2.53 a gallon - about a 40-cent increase over last year. Multiplied by the 10 million miles its drivers cover annually, the difference will mean a $536,000 increase in this year's fuel costs."

That was written last year before gas hit 3.09 and onwards. I think it is safe to assume their increase was actually closer to $1,000,000. They do get their gas subsidized and in bulk so they may not have had to pay over $3.

"Asked in the survey what officials are doing to make ends meet, one administrator responded simply: "praying."

Absent divine intervention, districts are reducing field trips, prohibiting drivers from idling and cutting buses from the fleet. Fairfax County, Va., public schools increased the price of lunch by 20 cents, in part to pay for fuel."

"Several officials said there is little that can be done to grapple with fuel costs. Like other businesses, schools are also paying more for deliveries, yardwork and heating."

Source

In another example:

"Lunch prices in Miami-Dade schools will rise this fall for the first time in 15 years as the district adjusts for rising costs and flat enrollment.

The School Board voted unanimously Wednesday to impose a 50-cent increase on lunch prices, which will cost a typical student an additional $90 per year. The new price -- $1.75 in elementary schools and $2 in middle schools and senior highs -- is still the same as or lower than lunches in Broward, Hillsborough and Orange counties, and slightly higher than Palm Beach, district officials said. Broward raised its prices earlier this year."

Source

In addition to the additional money you pay just to drive to work, you have to shell out additional cash to feed your child. If you were barely scraping by with the lunch cost before, you may now find yourself in an even tigher position but with an income that is still above the threshold for a subsidized lunch, because that income level hasn't been adjusted yet for the gas situation. It's not just the bus transportation adding to these costs, either -- the transportation of milk and fresh produce - which had a bad weather season to boot - also increases. Even a bagged lunch is unaffected.

So, in a worst case situation, your child is hungry, cold, and doesn't even get to go to the planetarium.

Evidently we can add lawyers to that list.

http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/local/bal-md.gent ry20aug20,0,98913.story

:wq

And by the way, your solar panel is nearly useless. You're going to need more stuff if you actually want it to keep the light in your house on at night.

That's for the nuke plant to handle, or utility-run reservior "batteries" (raise the water when you have excess, drive a gravity turbine when you need more), or even some coal. I'm not trying to escape the grid, just trying to turn the solar energy hitting my roof into useful energy and reduce coal usage.

And even with these shortages of polysilicon, 120 watt panels are $600. They don't have to go down that much to become cost-effective, esp. with my local utility planning a 75% rate increase. If average power need of a house is on the order of 1000 Watts, that's 8 of those panels; if they drop to $300, that sounds quite affordable if installation and wiring doesn't vastly increase the cost.

That's a very fair point. Let's also remember that the DoD has a nasty habit of using crypto long after it's lost its strength. Also, are we 100% sure they'll remember to set up their communication protocols to prevent replay attacks, etc?

Using cryptography effectively is hard, and choosing the right encryption method is usually one of the simpler parts of it. I believe that bugs are inevitable, and there's a fair chance of an exploitable mistake in the implementation.

The NSA initiative, code-named ``Pioneer Groundbreaker,'' asked AT&T unit AT&T Solutions to build exclusively for NSA use a network operations center which duplicated AT&T's Bedminster, New Jersey facility, the court papers claimed.

That plan was abandoned in favor of the NSA acquiring the monitoring technology itself, plaintiffs' lawyers Bruce Afran said.
The NSA says on its Web site that in June 2000, the agency was seeking bids for a project to ``modernize and improve its information technology infrastructure.'' The plan, which included the privatization of its ``non-mission related'' systems support, was said to be part of Project Groundbreaker.
Mayer said the Pioneer project is ``a different component'' of that initiative.

The groundbreaker program is well known, in fact its infamous... in being a really really expensive network upgrade. The kind of thing with rewiring offices and buying lots of bandwidth from the likes of AT&T.

And I mean a lot of bandwidth. A lot of the DoD bandwidth contracts currently up for grabs are of course available online for anyone to see. (But shame on the nytimes, shame shame shame!) How did you think intercepted traffic came from all over the world back (But especially big telco sites) to Maryland? Still wonder why companies like AT&T want to do everything to help the NSA?

And of course groundbreaker is over budget and insecure.

So what is this secret new thing that is being claimed? The hints are:

• Its mentioned on the NSA website
• Its "non mission related"
• Its a component of a network upgrade
• And its called a "network operation center"

It makes sense that the NSA would want a new but ordinairy "network operation center" with its new network. You really really need one of those to show politicians around (scroll to "nsa loads nmap" for a good laugh). Especially the ones who know nothing about intelligence except what they have seen on 24. (I would be funny if there werent so many schools planes trains and subways blown up around the world after 9/11)

Guiding them past the movie theater and showing the huge list of languages in which movies are shown isn't glamorous, though it should get the point across of sigint being of no use without humans to read and hear it... It might also show why having computers that can display bidirectional text isn't some fancy feature nobody uses. (Its usefull for such obscure languages as say Arabic, just to name something random of the top of my head.) I guess the lack of lighting the 24 set designers came up with for dramatic effect makes these NOC places a little cheaper to run than hiring qualified analyst though.

Sure it could also be a top secret surveillance program advanced beyond anything ever seen before, possible including extra terrestrial technology and tinfoil hat countermeasures... I mean in theory you could call that a NOC I guess.

This possible hype reminds me of the echelon story. After unspecific press accounts surrounding a big and sloppy EU investigation about "echelon" people assumed the worse and the hype started to build and build.

Now some time has passed historians have been able to figure out exactly what component is codenamed echelon, and it looks a little like this. (Thats an 70`s VAX 11/780, for those who couldn't tell, shame on you)

The NSA initiative, code-named ``Pioneer Groundbreaker,'' asked AT&T unit AT&T Solutions to build exclusively for NSA use a network operations center which duplicated AT&T's Bedminster, New Jersey facility, the court papers claimed.

That plan was abandoned in favor of the NSA acquiring the monitoring technology itself, plaintiffs' lawyers Bruce Afran said.
The NSA says on its Web site that in June 2000, the agency was seeking bids for a project to ``modernize and improve its information technology infrastructure.'' The plan, which included the privatization of its ``non-mission related'' systems support, was said to be part of Project Groundbreaker.
Mayer said the Pioneer project is ``a different component'' of that initiative.

The groundbreaker program is well known, in fact its infamous... in being a really really expensive network upgrade. The kind of thing with rewiring offices and buying lots of bandwidth from the likes of AT&T.

And I mean a lot of bandwidth. A lot of the DoD bandwidth contracts currently up for grabs are of course available online for anyone to see. (But shame on the nytimes, shame shame shame!) How did you think intercepted traffic came from all over the world back (But especially big telco sites) to Maryland? Still wonder why companies like AT&T want to do everything to help the NSA?

And of course groundbreaker is over budget and insecure.

So what is this secret new thing that is being claimed? The hints are:

• Its mentioned on the NSA website
• Its "non mission related"
• Its a component of a network upgrade
• And its called a "network operation center"

It makes sense that the NSA would want a new but ordinairy "network operation center" with its new network. You really really need one of those to show politicians around (scroll to "nsa loads nmap" for a good laugh). Especially the ones who know nothing about intelligence except what they have seen on 24. (I would be funny if there werent so many schools planes trains and subways blown up around the world after 9/11)

Guiding them past the movie theater and showing the huge list of languages in which movies are shown isn't glamorous, though it should get the point across of sigint being of no use without humans to read and hear it... It might also show why having computers that can display bidirectional text isn't some fancy feature nobody uses. (Its usefull for such obscure languages as say Arabic, just to name something random of the top of my head.) I guess the lack of lighting the 24 set designers came up with for dramatic effect makes these NOC places a little cheaper to run than hiring qualified analyst though.

Sure it could also be a top secret surveillance program advanced beyond anything ever seen before, possible including extra terrestrial technology and tinfoil hat countermeasures... I mean in theory you could call that a NOC I guess.

This possible hype reminds me of the echelon story. After unspecific press accounts surrounding a big and sloppy EU investigation about "echelon" people assumed the worse and the hype started to build and build.

Now some time has passed historians have been able to figure out exactly what component is codenamed echelon, and it looks a little like this. (Thats an 70`s VAX 11/780, for those who couldn't tell, shame on you)

Ahh, something like Thinthread. That was an earlier NSA project for massive traffic analysis, with more filtering than what we've got now, and with some privacy protections to boot. After it was tested successfully, General Hayden killed it.

Oops, just realized its the same article with a different headline depending on whether its viewed from http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/nationworld/bal-n sa517,0,5970724.story?page=1&coll=bal-home-headlin es "killed" or http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/nationworld/bal-t e.nsa18may18,0,2392814.story "rejected". My bad.

Oops, just realized its the same article with a different headline depending on whether its viewed from http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/nationworld/bal-n sa517,0,5970724.story?page=1&coll=bal-home-headlin es "killed" or http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/nationworld/bal-t e.nsa18may18,0,2392814.story "rejected". My bad.

In the baltimore sun version of this article at http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/nationworld/bal-t e.nsa18may18,0,2392814.story they mention that Thinthread was rejected in favor of another program called TrailBlazer around 1999 or 2000, quote:

"Despite its success in tests, ThinThread's information-sorting system was viewed by some in the agency as a competitor to Trailblazer, a $1.2 billion program that was being developed with similar goals. The NSA was committed to Trailblazer, which later ran into trouble and has been essentially abandoned."

Well, anyone remember another report that came out around 2000 - interception capabilities 2000, the report to the Director General for Research of the European Parliament on "the development of surveillance technology and risk of abuse of economic information." http://www.cyber-rights.org/interception/stoa/inte rception_capabilities_2000.htm

A very informative report on the state of USA COMINT surveillance capabilities and operations around 2000. It briefly touches on the potential for the unlawful use of this calibre of surveillance information in an economic context to give unfair competitive advantage to US corporate interests.

It also mentions an piece of NSA comint surveillance software called Trailmapper, including screenshots of it and another program... (Actually the report has many pretty pictures...)

I always thought COMINT and the NSA in general were only supposed to direct these surveillance capabilities at communications where at least one of the parties is located internationally. In theory anyway. I could be wrong. If it did exist that limitation does certainly seem to have been removed since this reports publication.

Perhaps Trailblazer and Trailmapper are the same program, and that the name was ever so slightly redacted in one version.

I'd be disappointed if NSA ever resorted to anything so crude.

I hate to burst your bubble, but the NSA already *was* that crude, and IMHO they will be so crude again. And getting traffic data by asking carriers to hook the NSA up to billing records as they do now is crude... but not *that* crude.

You could ask yourself: "does anyone follow the same ingenuity standards when solving a math problem as when preventing people from blowing themselfs up in de subway?". (The same question works for groups that worked to prevent the Soviet union from nuking New York all together... along with the rest of the US.)

I dont think they would want to backdoor windows with a full covert channel though. They would get caught and China doesn`t trust US communication equipment anyway. (Though China must love equipment that comes with plenty of FBI and ETSI mandated "lawfull interception" functionality.) Ofcourse the US would be smart if more people cared even a tiny bit as much about who manufactures and operates their critical communications infrastructure as they do about who owns the companies that own the ports. (Not that I have anything against Israel, but lets say the 8200 branch isn`t as crude as the NSA once was.)

Maybe the NSA will have someone add an intentionally, but denyably, crappy random generator. (Kind of like the flawed stream crypto in the GSM specs.)

Read up on "the crypto wars" to see just how breathtakingly blunt the NSA is when it fights together with the FBI.

If you pick up body of secrets your disapointment might be mixed with exitement over how blunt tricks can be cool just the same. Cant crack soviets codes? sounds like a great reason to research TEMPEST and traffic analyses. Wanna know what soviet sigint people are up to? Parachute on a North Pole ice berg used as eavesdropping base after its abandoned by the Soviets... because the wheather is to dangerous.

On a good day, the NSA does what just works... on a bad day they spend billions trying to build something that just works ;-)

This isn't like the Dept. of Motor Vehicles pouring a billion down the tubes and getting nothing in return.

Nope this is US defence, so we are talking many litteral billions

smart people != smart organisation, especially when billions, politicians and DoD contractors get involved.

A company based in the UAE is currently trying to take over operation of 6 ports in the US, including the port of Baltimore. Needless to say, the local radio talk shows are doubling output of useless banter to "do something" about it.

Where do you live? I don't know of a place in Maryland that used paper ballots in the last election. Not saying you didn't, however I'm very curious if there really was a place that escaped being updated. Sure you really voted? Yea, I live in Maryland, in the sticks. We used the Diebold machines.

Oh, and "Go Ehrlich!" Is that politicaly correct to say here?

Right now it should be. They are about ready to tar and feather 84 year old Bill Shaefer (D - Comptroller) right now over that woman flap. That can be found here

Irrespective of the value of the proposal, voting reform is an excuse to make a dig at the State Elections adminstrator, Linda Lamone, an appointee of Democrat Parris Glendening, whom Ehrlich and his cronies have been trying to oust for years.

Further, it's pandering to voter reform interests to slap at the Democrats who keep overturning his vetoes.

This is base political opportunism.

You wanna see principal? Look at Ehrlich's veto of the law that requires employers of more than 10,000 workers to pay health care for their employees.

Here's the article mentioned in the Snopes story.

http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/local/bal-md.oles ker08mar08,1,76004.column?coll=bal-local-columnist s&ctrack=1&cset=true"

If you don't want to login to NYT, heres my "Top Ten List of New Cool Crap for 2005":

1. Curious Georges new free Wiretap program
2. Birdflu v.2.0
3. Boxing Day sans Tsunami
4. European CIA Jail System
5. Removal of Marti Gras from your travel ideas
6. A (great) Daily Show spinoff
7. The spread of Scientology
8. Marines shooting at and killing escaping hostages
9. Adoption Press Release Kits
10. Stem Cell Magicians

<sarc>
"yes we know we don't have any newspaper anymore, either"
</sarc>

Don't count on it. .. more... more... more...

...here...

...and that Creig & Northrop ad really freaked me out.

Really? What examples do you have exactly?

Let's see. The interstate highway system, the TVA, the Air Traffic Control system, the Federal Reserve, and (assuming, as I mentioned, decent management, which we are unlikely to see anytime soon) the railway system and space research. I could go on. As I mentioned, the above examples perform more or less well proportinally to the intelligence of management.

I believe the interstate can be justified as constitutional for the defense of the country. I might even agree with Air Traffic, (although there are a number of contracted companies running atc towers). I am amused about your example of the federal reserve. That to me is the very WORST of the federal abuse of power, and unconstitutional to boot. Institutionalized inflation (which is what we have) hurts the poor worst of all. The wealthy can invest as a hedge against inflation, while the poor typically "invest" in a bank account if they can manage to save at all. With the current environment they will at best break even with purchasing power by doing so. This is why I believe both the democrats and the republicans clearly do no give a shit about the poor, as the system is currently set up to penalize those that are frugal and try to save.

Amtrak sucks, and has been running in the red for years. Spaceship one showed that private enterprise can reach space cheaply.

I hate to be rude, but I'm afraid that this is the piece of libertarian dogma I find most repugnant. I was born in Russia. I know what a _real_ unaccountable central authority looks like. Please get a clue.

Well, you may get to see one again, right here. Lets check how much of our constitution is still valid :

Artile III, section II

The Trial of all Crimes, except in Cases of Impeachment, shall be by Jury; and such Trial shall be held in the State where the said Crimes shall have been committed

AND

Amendment VI - Right to speedy trial, confrontation of witnesses. Ratified 12/15/1791.

In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defence.

The above is no longer true if the penalty for EACH charge you face carries less than 6 months per charge. So important they put that in there twice. Funny how ALL doesn't mean ALL dont you think?

right to a speedy and public trial,and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor

Yeah tell that to the guys in gitmo (whoever they may be??) for going on 4 years now.

Amendment VIII - Cruel and Unusual punishment. Ratified 12/15/1791.

Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted. Hmmm sounds like that should cover the torture question don't ya think?

Amendment IV - Search and seizure. Ratified 12/15/1791.

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

I say this clearly violates that whole probable cause thing.

Amendment II - Right to bear arms. Ratified 12/15/1791

Of course, now that I look for the exact reference I can't find it...

But, here are a few that give the basics of original construction. The Fort that was later New Orleans was built upon the only non-swamp "high ground" at the time. The city was basically set up to be a scam, if you read the history.

http://techcentralstation.com/090305A.html
http://slate.msn.com/id/2125229/nav/tap2/
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/oped/bal- pe.city04sep04,1,5490304.story?coll=bal-oped-headl ines

The U. of Texas has an EXCELLENT digital map library. The Historical New Orleans are enlightening. Too bad they don't show elevation, though. The one from 1849 shows depth of flooding at the time: 4-6 feet in the western part of the city.

http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/louisiana.html

Finally, page 20 of this PDF would be nice to own -- if I had $850 to spare.

http://www.arkway.com/pdfs/Cat49.pdf

  -Charles

Do you think they'll update the exhibits at Dinosaur Adventure Land?

It's where Dinosaurs and the Bible meet!

The WMDs, which clearly did exist (we even have records he used them) don't need airholes, and are easier to hide harder to find

1) Pro-war hawk, Bush appointee, former devout WMD believer, and head of the WMD search David Kay acknowleges that no such weapons existed at the time of the invasion. The search teams are no longer operating.

2) The inspections teams were on the same track; the IAEA was reportedly close to declaring Iraq nuclear-free, while UNMOVIC was working on verifying chemical weapon destruction quantities based on the amount of residual chemicals in the destruction zones. The residuals were evident, but the quantity of source material was unknown. Both have now stated that they believe, just like Kay, that there were not WMDs in Iraq. In short, every inspection team sent to Iraq has reached that same conclusion.

3) The highest profile Iraqi defector in history, Hussein Kamel (Saddam's son-in-law), in addition to giving a bunch of humiliating information on Iraq that he later got assassinated for (exposing Iraq's biological warfare program and leading them to the information, pointing out that UNSCOM's head's personal translator was a double agent, etc), informed the teams that Iraq *had* destroyed its chemical and biological agents in order to try and get the embargo lifted and limit inspection team knowlege of how much their scientists knew.

Saddam's refusal to cooperate with inspections

The IAEA and UNMOVIC heads themselves described good cooperation from the Iraqi government. Blix - the more harsh of the two organization heads - stated that "Iraq wwas guilty of only small infractions". Most of the Iraqi complaints were of the US spying to gather information for war, which turned out to be true. And lets not forget the peace initiatives.

active promotion of terrorism

The closest thing Iraq did to active promotion of terrorism was giving money to the families of Palestinian suicide bombers to compensate for Israel's policy of destroying the families' homes. Of course, Saudi Arabia did the exact same thing. Beyond that, there was very, very little that could be construed as supporting terrorism (a lot of misinformation went around on this subject: read up on Ansar al-Islam (more), Ramzi Yousef (mirror), Abu Nidal, and Salman Pak).

Now, if you want countries with clear, major ties to funding terrorists, you need to look at Iran and the United States.

Illegal attacks on peacekeepers

Oh, this is just rich. The No-Fly Zones were not UN-accepted; the French, Russians, and Chinese considered the joint US-British "No Fly" enforcement to be both illegal and counterproductive violation of Iraq's airspace. Then, before war began, we began bombing essentially at will to try and goad Iraq into attacking the US. The reason we were able to start the war with a ground assault was that our air assault began long before the war started.

Best Buy cashier harasses customer by asking for payment.

Wasn't Best Buy the place where they had a guy arrested because out of protest, he paid his bill with $2 bills and the cashier thought they were conterfeit?

Here's a link: http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/local/bal-md.oles ker08mar08,1,76004.column?coll=bal-local-columnist s&ctrack=1&cset=true

+5 Snarky !

The two dollar bill incident occured at my local BestBuy, which is right across the street from my bank... I was soooooo tempted (then I remembered about the PATRIOT ACT and decided against it:)

Lets be honest. With the current state of our US economy... Lets all make a bet... Who is going to bet that Movie ticket sales will go up, or down? :) I bet you they go up.

Attendence down 9% over last year, 18 weeks of straight revenue decline

I posted that story twelve hours ago and it was rejected. Maybe because the link was in the Baltimore Sun (only link I found with Google, I read the story in a French webnewspaper) and not in Yahoo News / Washington Post ?..
</rant>

here is a additional link from the Baltimore Sun.

The full original article is in Nature.

Here's a couple updates on that.

Read and learn the MAC OS is a much more secure and roboust OS than Windoze. Anyone to say that windows is more secure than Unix is fooling themselves and is not a tech.

http://www.baltimoresun.com/technology/custom/plug gedin/bal-mac082803%2C0%2C1353478.column

/.'s article here is the first I've heard of this Real ID plan...

Well, aside from the obvious fact that since the neo-con coup the network media hasn't covered anything except talking-dubya-points, the reason you haven't noticed this tidbit of legistlation (which apparently started back in Feburary) is because "liberal media" has painted it as an immagration issue - that is: the only people targeted by this legislation according to the to PTB and their media cheerleaders were illegal aliens - I heard it debated on Faux News as an immagration issue a least a month ago. I would have to say either a) you haven't been paying attention, or b) you are foolish enough to a ctually believe the that the motives these pseudo-news agencies put forward are the actual intent of the neo-con coup. Nothing could be further from the truth, of course...

Here is a list of articles about this legislation (trivially found using Google) from some touchy feely immagration rights outfit that no one will pay any attention to.

[ -- copied & pasted -- ]

The REAL ID Act in the Media

• "Jewish Groups Oppose US's Stricter Controls on Asylum," Jerusalem Post, March 9, 2005
• "Death Sentence?" Christianity Today, March 8, 2005
• "Republican Plan Would Tighten Laws for Asylum Cases," Hearst Newspapers, March 6, 2005
• "Keep the Doors Open," The Jewish Week editorial, February 25, 2005
• "Unwelcome Mat," The Boston Globe, February 25, 2005
• "Religious Asylum Assailed," Family News in Focus, February 22, 2005 (PDF - 51KB)
• "Proyecto de ley torpedea el derecho de asilo," El Nuevo Herald, February 22, 2005
• "Conservative camps split on tightening asylum," The Boston Globe, February 21, 2005
• "Not broke, don't fix," The Washington Times, February 20, 2005
• "National ID Party," The Wall Street Journal editorial, February 17, 2005 (subscription required)
• "On Guard, America," The New York Times editorial, February 15, 2005
• "Refugee Politics," The Baltimore Sun editorial, February 14, 2005
• "Real ID Act deserves defeat in the Senate," San Antonio Express-News editorial, February 18, 2005
• "Playing the terror card," Contra Costa Times, February 14, 2005
• "Ineffectual migrant policy," Milwaukee Journal Sentinel editorial

Where is the fossil record the the "partial wing"--the one that was growing but had yet to produce results?

What do you mean, "had yet to produce results"? Even a partial lift body would help in running and escape. Even a flap of skin between elbow and ribs would help glide.

They have found intermediate stages, and have been finding them for almost 50 years. So there they are. A recent one (with "proto-feathers") was recently found in Utah.

Where is the fossil record for the partial gil (sic)--the gil (sic) that didn't yet breath but was existing in order that some relatives would grow one that did work?

First, it'll be hard to find something like that in the fossil record, since gills are soft tissue. But, even today, there are sea-dwelling animals that have no gills, but instead have blood vessels very close the the surface of the skin. Evolutionarily-speaking, and device that would protect those exposed blood vessels would be an advantage. It's neither imporobable nor hard to imagine the staged evolution of the gill.

Mutations NEVER result in good changes in the near generation, and therefor the extended generation.

I assume you have proof of this?

In any case, there is growing evidence that genotypical drift within a population is not driven primarily by mutations. It appears possible that viruses do a substantial amount of genetic "cross-pollination" between species. Cool, huh?

So evolution remains only a fallible theory.

I'm not sure if you understand science at all (your statements make it doubtful), but all theories are fallible. Nothing in science is certain except our observations. Theories are made or broken by their predictive power (their "testability"), and evolution has stood up to a *lot* of testing.

Just like the whole mutation thing, there is lively debate about many of the processes of evolution. That doesn't make evolution itself incorrect.

Some better scientific explanation may come along some day. But ID is not it-- as the crux of ID is not testable. (How do you prove an "intelligent designer?" Humanity has been trying to prove the existence of God for a lot longer than they've been studying science.)

If you are going to enter into a scientific debate, at least come armed with science, and not rhetoric and dogma.

In recent years, the telescope has helped scientists determine the precise age of the universe (13.7 billion years), discover planets outside our solar system, and chart weather patterns on Mars. By some estimates, Hubble's resume accounts for 33 percent of NASA scientific discoveries.

http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/local/bal-md.oles ker08mar08,1,76004.column?ctrack=1&cset=true

Geez, 10 seconds at the Sun site gave me that. Do some research. There's even two "Michael Bolestra" listings in SuperPages.com for Baltimore, MD. One of them is probably him.

That's my local Best/Worst Buy, and my bank is right across the street @!... oh, and did I mention that I need a CD/RW for my mom's machine this weekend...

Maybe I should have my wife arrange bail now !

Seriously it is right up the street... and also seriously, does BB have any idea what's going to happen now that this is making the broader news (/., CNET Buzz, others) ??? I can just picture cash drawers at BB all over the country filling up with $2 bills (what slot do you put them in)...

Wow. Best Buy gets slammed for what seems to be fraudulous billing practices, poorly trained cashiers, idiotic managesrs, while the overzealous rookies in the BCPD get slammed, the Feds get slammed, and the $2 bill gets the best publicity it's seen since in years... there just SO much to love about this story (Thank you Michael Olesker!) (Obligatory BugMeNot)

Sorry, I forgot I read this on another site a few days ago and assumed this information was included elsewhere.

Here's the other site [baltimoresun.com]

And to the other reply below, yes, paying a $100 bill in $2 bills is still a LOT OF BILLS. Paying a $10 bill in pennies is still a lot of freakin' pennies.

The blog linked to by Slashdot actually links to a Baltimore Sun story (use email "bselig@dodgeit.com" and password "bseli" to log in) dated March 8 (well before April 1). Maybe you should RTFB.

there was more than just the ink smearing. it was that plus the fact that the bills were in sequential order. the police weren't arresting him because they thought $2 bills didn't exist. they thought there was a likelyhood the bills were counterfeit given the fact that the ink smear AND the sequential #s.

of course the poor guy explained he was a tour guide and often got stacks of $2 bills from the bank. even gave them the # of the bank to verify. best buys have horrible customer service. we all know that: http://www.bestbuysux.org/. but it was the police response that was shocking.

i guess in a town like bolesta, cops are in favor of retail stores more than the individuals since they probably pay more of their salary.

here's an article from the local newspaper: A tale of customer service, justice and currency as funny as a $2 bill. might wanna goto bugmenot to get a login to bypass registration.

No actual news articles... just a bunch of blogs carrying the story.

Hmm? What's this?

Original Article

Original story: A tale of customer service, justice and currency as funny as a $2 bill.

I didn't get locked up, but I once had a cashier get their supervisor's approval before she would accept some Susan B. Anthony dollar coins from me.

I also often get $2 bills from the bank. They make great tips for lunch. It's just a little something to stand out.

Contrary to popular belief, $2 bills are still in circulation. You can ask for them at the bank and get as many as you want.

Here's a link (registration required) to the source at the Baltimore Sun.

On the other hand, they may actually want him to develop an operating system. That is one of the things he's done before, and one of the things he's well known for.

Why on earth should Google want to develop a new (or highly modified) operating system? What strengths would Dr Pike bring to that project?

Google have a very large number of servers. They won't reveal how many they have, but admit to more than 10,000 servers, another another estimate suggests between 31 and 158 thousand servers. That's a lot of computing power. Presumably the people at Google are highly interested in getting as much work out of this hardware as they possibly can.

Enter Dr Pike. He's well known for Plan 9 "The Plan 9 system is based on the concept of distributed computing in a networked, client-server environment. The set of resources available to applications is transparently made accessible everywhere in the distributed system, so that it is irrelevant where the applications are actually running."

I have seen passing references that Plan 9 is strong on clustering and load balancing. Unfortunately I can't get google to give me a good citation, so this may be a myth.

Yes, they are new. One can't stock spare tiles since each is tile different. Not only are the tiles not interchangable, the orbiters don't have compatible tile layouts. So they are custom built as needed. Until recently they were manufactured by the original facility in Palmdale, California. This made sense since the shuttles were built there. A couple of decades after they stopped building shuttles, Nasa realised that it would make sense to move the tile manufacturing facility to Florida, right next to the orbiter processing facililties. As soon as they completed this new facility, hurricane Frances swept through Florida and ripped the roof off. So Nasa is currently considering whether to reopen the old Palmdale facility.

Note that "tiles" != "RCC panels". The former are cheap, the latter cost nearly $1m each. Nasa has spares of these (at least they are interchangable between shuttles), but new ones can still be built by Lockeed Martin. Though the staff are starting to look a little old...

Since global warming has already been observed, I'd say the chances are about 1 in 1.

More interesting is whether a methane burp from clathrates will result in a cascade leading to a global extinction event during your lifetime.

porn was a priority before 9/11? It was a priority afterward as well.