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> I recently switched to sphinx (http://www.sphinxsearch.com/) its written in C

Minor nit - it's in C++. But yeah, it's totally awesome - fast when indexing, easy to scale horizontally, powerful query language, custom stop word lists, etc, etc. The APIs (I use the Ruby one, Riddle) make it easy to do nifty excerpt formatting (for example, note the highlighting around the word 'battle'), and there are a couple of different ways to integrate it into a Ruby on Rails app.

Speaking of Sphinx and Rails, here's a code snippet for escaping extended mode Sphinx queries. This will probably make its way into Riddle at some point, but, until then, there it is.

As far as I am aware, no, you cannot directly use Visio objects in OpenOffice. However, there are lots of objects available if you don't want to draw them yourself. For example:

http://openoffice.blogs.com/openoffice/2006/10/custom_openoffi.html
http://lautman.net/mark/coo/index.html

Or, you can convert many Visio VSS files into objects that *can* be read by other programs, such as OpenOffice. For example:

http://www.gnome.ru/fileformats/stencils.html

Will hardware vendors release their objects/stencils in something non-proprietary? As you said- not likely for now. But that doesn't mean OpenOffice Draw isn't perfectly capable of creating nice diagrams. In fact, people tend to grossly underestimate what can be done in OpenOffice Draw; mostly because many of the powerful features aren't immediately obvious and/or it is positioned more as a vector drawing program and not a diagramming program.

Hi PtP, Your transition can go fine, you just need to do a lot of planning. In nine years of training and consulting, I've seen successful and unsuccessful transitions. Here's my article on it. Here's the angle for an individual transition. http://www.fanaticattack.com/2008/switching-office-suites-from-microsoft-office-to-openofficeorg.html Here's the angle for a team transition. http://www.k12opentech.org/solveig-haugland/2008/02/24/five-principles-successful-openofficeorg-transition Essentially you need support (read: 100% commitment) from the top, lots of piloting and planning, and accepting that yes, your PowerPoint stuff might not look as good but that's OK. Solveig Haugland http://www.getopenoffice.org/ http://openoffice.blogs.com/

That's easy to do in OO. http://openoffice.blogs.com/openoffice/2006/07/mail_merge_labe.html

This isn`t exactly new technology.

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RE: wasn't there some incident where they gave up Chinese dissidents to the Chinese government?

True, but use Yahoo in your search in place of Google. [By the way they still do not see anything wrong with their role in the prosecution of this case. A few links are provided to jog your memory.]

http://www.monstersandcritics.com/tech/news/article_1373666.php

http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/10/16/yahoo.congress/index.html

http://rconversation.blogs.com/rconversation/2007/07/shi-taos-case-y.html

A while ago I had gone to San Francisco for a conference. While I was there, I had stopped in to The Container Store and made a small purchase with a debit card.

Fast forward roughly a year and a half (and living in another state), I get a notice of a class action lawsuit against The Container Store for violation of some California consumer data protection statute.

I was pretty shocked that they were able to track me down like that. I didn't even have the account for that card anymore.

> One of the biggest aces in the hole was PostgreSQL.
> The cost for us to come in, set up and install everything
> was cheaper than some other well known DB vendor's cost of database software alone.

Right on. Same goes for Sphinx vs any proprietary text indexing setup I've used. And it's fast, and there's good Rails/Ruby support via UltraSphinx and Riddle.

> is Passenger easier to deploy?

It's easier because you can replace a mongrel cluster with mod_passenger which dynamically configures the cluster size. Kind of like you configure an Apache web server - you don't set it to have 10 instances running all the time, instead you set it to never exceed 100 process and let Apache manage how many processes it needs under that maximum threshold.

But you're right - the actual deployment is still done with Capistrano, albeit with some minor tweaks to the deployment tasks.

Some people are celebrating already.
And I think we need more of that. If a few more high profile sites dared to tell Joe Sixpack to shove it and get a real browser that could probably accelerate the demise of IE significantly.

Push harder I say, the giant is tumbling and we, the builders of the web, should continue to show Microsoft where its place is.

Diamond grit, as an abrasive, is currently around $0.07/carat in bulk. It's almost all synthetic, not hard to make, and used for a wide variety of cutting tools. Synthetic diamond production is about 100x mined production. The glamour has gone out of diamond; it's now what sewer workers use on their cutting tools when they need to slice through cement pavement.

CMU has a new process for microwave-annealing diamonds to remove flaws and make colorless synthetic diamonds.

The diamond industry (i.e. DeBeers) painted themselves into a corner, by taking the position that that "flawless" diamonds are the most valuable. That's not where you want to be positioned going up against the industries that make semiconductor wafers.

This all happened to sapphires about sixty years ago. Sapphires used to be rare and valuable. Then Linde Chemical started synthesizing them, and destroyed the market. Now you can buy sapphire bar stock and transparent sapphire plates for supermarket checkout scanners. Since then, it's happened to rubies and emeralds. Now, cheap diamonds.

I heard Rich Kilmer talk about the various Ruby implementations once; his take on them were that each would be used to leverage the underlying platform. In other words, if you want to use Java libraries, you'll use JRuby. If you want to use the Mac libraries (e.g., via Hot Cocoa), you'll use MacRuby. And if you want to use C extensions like RMagick and libxml2, you'll use MRI.

I thought that was an interesting way of looking at the various implementations... each one would be appropriate for a different scenario.

> Denyhosts is fantastic, though.

Indeed it is. Here are the RubyForge DenyHosts settings. The comments on that post have a good suggestion about DENY_THRESHOLD_ROOT; makes sense to have that at 2 vs 1 to avoid blocking someone who accidentally hits the wrong box.

And how big is that fridge? Hotel minibar or hotel kitchen? I have seen fridges that hold 8 cans. I have seen dual door fridges that were much larger. Then there are the walk in fridges and even ones that are actualy a storehouse.

It's called Navigator and it's under Menu/Edit/Navigator. A good description on use and nuances is http://openoffice.blogs.com/openoffice/2008/03/an-equivalent-o.html

Yeah because republicans always get reamed by the media when they say stupid and offensive things. Why don't we stop pretending that Republicans get all the flak while Democrats get off without even a warning?

Do things slip through the cracks with regards to mainstream media reporting things? Of course, nobody is going to argue that. But to pretend one party has been issued a pass while the other is being heckled at every step is just ridiculous. Hell, it wasn't even too long ago that the media couldn't shut up about that Reverend everyone kept hearing so much of, and that supposed tape of Michelle Obama yelling about "whitey".

I have this bumpersticker posted on my office wall: "Building the Legacy Systems of Tomorrow". I'm not sure who created that phrasing - or the bumper sticker - but I like it.

In short: if it runs, it's a legacy system.

Ok, I dabble with some writing, so your question prompted me to do a quick survey.. maybe there is some interesting stuff out there now?...

Here are a couple of options I found:

http://www.celtx.com/features.html
http://extensions.services.openoffice.org/project/scr2
http://extensions.services.openoffice.org/node/909
http://www.write-brain.com/power_structure_main.htm (notes that it works under Wine)
http://www.writerscafe.co.uk/
http://www.spacejock.com/yWriter4.html (under Wine)
http://openoffice.blogs.com/openoffice/2008/03/an-equivalent-o.html (How to get "outline mode" in Open Office)

The other route, that will help if you don't want to keep a second machine around to clutter all that desk real estate, is to install VirtualBox under Ubuntu (easy under 8.04) and then put Windows inside that with FD or MM etc on it.

See here (Torygraph via Guido, with relevant thanks). Essentially the issue is that there aren't many pro-EU establishment blogs (because even an ardent Europhile like myself finds it impossible to justify things like the CAP or the fact that the Eurocracy hasn't had its accounts signed off, via the Adam Smith Institute).

The European Union has already taken corrupt and borderline illegal action to suppress an anti-fraud journalist, Hans-Martin Tillack, working for Der Stern, because he had the audacity to protect whistle blowers on the Eurostat scandal.

Well said. At 44 years old, I expect to work until 70, and I expect to pay higher Social Security taxes along the way. It's not good or bad policy, just reality.

There is only one thing that could help make a difference for most Americans - owning lot's of foreign investments that we could sell off for a while during crunch time. Unfortunately, we've become a debter nation, so that plain went to Hell in a hand basket.

I hear a lot about Ruby performance - specifically, "Ruby/Rails can't scale". The odd thing is that this is in the context of a web app, where the overhead of the interpreter opcode execution is dwarfed by the cost of going over a socket to pull data across a LAN from a database. Scaling a web app isn't about the language; it's about architecture, judicious SQL optimizations, and caching.

Oh, and if you're using rcov to measure your Rails app's code coverage, try this patch to prevent rcov segfaults. It doesn't fix the root problem, but it's a start.

Customer lists can be IP in the form of trade secrets. If the list has economic value and the company takes reasonable measures to protect it, it is likely a trade secret. See http://iplaw.blogs.com/content/2006/06/in_a_may_31_200.html.

A whole festering pile of other interesting, shocking, and amusing ads can be found here...

I saw this just this morning there...

>Sure, there are some non-citizens at Gitmo, but I happen to believe that most, if not all, were actively plotting against this country, or knowingly helping others who were.

Badr Zaman Badr and his brother Abdurrahim Muslim Dost for a satirical newspaper article
Prisoners held after being cleared by military tribunals

>Do either of you have first-hand experience with someone who spoke out against the government and then "heard the fed knocking"?

The time to pull the fire alarm is before the building is engulfed. When it's possible to be charged for filming Katrina refugees or convicted for holding a "No War for Oil" sign it is time to acknowledge a problem.

I think you're misunderstanding copyright here.

Would that be in a similar way to how you confuse intangible goods and tangible goods by claiming first sale in an argument on copyright?

Are you seriously claiming that not moving your car after the meter expires is immoral?

Are you seriously claiming it isn't?
You've abused the trust in the system
You're taking advantage of a service without proper renumeration
Which means you're claiming to be superior to others And you're depriving others of that service

Well, it's like longing for something so expensive that it is beyond your means;

Really? I'd say it's more like you see this hot girl at a party, then she turns around and she has warts and growths all over her, a moustache, terrible, rotting teeth, an annoying nasally voice, and to boot she's a real bitch with an ugly personality. But then you keep trying to claim she's attractive, which I'm sure has nothing to do with the fact that you've already wasted the night trying to get her attention.

Copyright does infringe on free speech, but I don't denounce copyright for doing this

Then why, oh why, did you start this conversation by attacking someone for defending copyright, and start claiming that free speech means you should be able to copy anything you like?

I'm fine with copyright including a reproduction right.

So why are you arguing with me? I support copyright, you support copyright, what exactly is your problem?

What's with the unless? Fair use is an exception to copyright. It's a utilitarian exception, which seems sensible, since copyright is utilitarian anyway

And to think, just moments ago, you were saying that the utilitarian way would be to allow anyone to copy a work.

Getting a copyright should be neither hard nor expensive. Just not automatic.

Here's an idea: If you don't care how easy it is to get one, why don't you just mandate that an artist can protect his works merely by stating publicly that he doesn't want it copied? There's no reason it couldn't work, after all currently we do the exact opposite of that.

Patents require an inventor to apply for a patent on their invention, and to fill out lots of paperwork, pay substantial fees, and renew the patent periodically lest it expire sooner than it otherwise might. And of course, this is all traditional in copyright law. It's not really that foreign to us

Damn right it's not foreign. In fact, your idea of being able to register a copyright seems like a perfect job for the U.S. Copyright Office.
It's funny you mention patents though, since theoretically it's possible to stop others stealing your ideas even without a patent.

No, I mean the copyright law of the United States of America. For copyright law purposes, architectural works include things like houses, but not things like bridges.

Whereas the English language definition includes pretty much any construction, which is what you dislike, hence the English language definition is too broad for your liking. Unless you're claiming that even the US copyright law definition, which (allegedly) only defines architecture as residences, is still too broad.

No, you're wrong there.

Oh, thank goodness I was only wrong there. I was beginning to think you though everything I said was wrong, turns out it was just that one irrelevant paragraph. Luckily though, copyright law specifically protects architecture.

Where are you getting the 'single act' from? I see no reason why you co

SOE employee tells, SOE volunteer about a customer complaining about the SOE volunteer's behavior... SOE Volunteer uses access given to SOE Volunteer to look up Customers personal information and SOE actually Telephones Customer to warn them not to be complaining about them. - http://n3rfed.blogs.com/n3rfed/2005/07/this_update_is_.html

Mailboxes. I find mailboxes sexually attractive.

This new Internet thing has really turned my fetish for delivery boxes into a real old-fashioned perversion. Every day, it becomes harder and harder to put up the flag, if you know what I mean.

I don't think you know what I mean. Nobody does.

Well, except my Facebook friends.

I was just thinking about the relation between Steve Jobs and Bill Gates myself. They've been the bitterest of rivals in the past, patched things up somewhat, been bitter rivals again, etc. At the root of this could be the difference in platforms, or it could just be plain and simple competetiveness.

Bill Gates doesn't have as much of a stake in that competition now. Sure, thanks to Windows his name is a household word, but if that old email that surfaced recently is any indication, he may not be all that pleased with the juggernaut he helped build. He dismissed it as an attempt to improve the product (who wouldn't?), but what if it's not enough, and the culture refuses to change? It could be said that he helped build the cultural æsthetic at Microsoft so well that even he can't steer it any more.

I'm not saying it'd happen, but I would giggle like a madman for several days if/when Bill Gates admits that Apple was what he was trying to build all along.

Second Life Blogs - Blogs about the Second Life virtual world. Usually I list these by avatar name.

• The Lexx's Second Life - Alexzandria Aeon ("Lexx") is my "SL daughter" and a businesswoman.
• Jacek Antonelli - An artist and commentator on various aspects of the world.
• Hamlet Au - New World Notes - The "big dog" in Second Life blogging. Hamlet Au used to work for Linden Lab, and wrote a book, The Making of Second Life.
• life|cubed - One of my friends, "Padre" Triste Bertrand, who is also a minister in RL.
• Cala - Transgender in Second Life - She writes about some interesting topics.
• Evans Avenue Exit - I write this one. :-) I post about current events, scripting, and whatever else suits my fancy.
• Vint Falken - One of the premier European SL bloggers (she's from Belgium).
• Grand Unified Linden Blog - Official news and information from Linden Lab.
• Torley Lives - Everybody in Second Life should know Torley Linden. Torley is unique, helpful, and watermelon-flavored.
• An Engine Fit For My Proceeding - Ordinal Malaprop is SL's own version of Ada Lovelace...a fine Victorian lady and a top-flight scripter.
• Massively (Second Life) - The latest news and information about Second Life. (Massively.com also covers other virtual worlds and MMOs.)
• Second Thoughts - Prokofy Neva is perhaps the most-hated person in SL, and is sort of the "official gadfly." He's well worth reading for an alternate perspective, though.
• Dwell On It - Tateru Nino is one of the smartest people I know. Her writing is part of what got me into SL in the first place.
• MeraTalk - Mera Pixel is insightful, witty, and very purple.
• Second Life Grid Status Reports - When there are problems with SL--an all-too-often occurrence these days, alas--Linden Lab posts here.

Political Blogs - This is stuff with a right-wing bent, and is the section that will probably be most responsible for this post being modded down. :-/

• The Smallest Minority - Kevin Baker is partly a gunblogger, partly an excellent commentator. He's had good posts recently about education.
• La Shawn Barber's Corner - A Christian blogger who only dabbles in politics these days, spending more time writing about music and digital technology.
• Leslie Carbone - A Virginia political blogger who I found via Twitter.
• Personal Effects - Connie du Toit is one of the clearest-minded writers you'll find on many subjects.
• Geopoliticus - Kim du Toit (yes, he and Connie are married) is the L33t Master of Firearms, and an insightfu

Ruby
rails
Ruby on rails
Soap
Ajax
Ajax soap
Python
Perl
Java

Is it any wonder normal people think we're strange? (Ignore the rest of this comment, as it presently has too few characters per line (currently 8.5) but thankfully I can paste slashdot's retarded "error" message in the comment to correct this travesty)

One yoga exercise could get you in LOTS of trouble. To use yoga in remedy of a sore throat, it is suggested that you, "Inhale deeply, as you exhale, let your body move forwards, open your mouth as wide as you can, push your tongue as far out as you can, and make a sound like a lion." http://berylwhiting.blogs.com/yoga4healthyliving/

Better not do that.

I know that you want to pander to the slashdot groupthink

Can you back up your claim that the majority ever wanted [ID cards]?

try and cough up a figure in support of [mass support for 42-day extension] if you can

Forget the whales, build a fusion reactor: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fusor

If a high school kid can do it, so can you!

http://49chevy.blogs.com/fusor/2007/11/from-farmville-.html

Gee... perhaps thats the problem? Check this out: We need a new path to liquidity

I don't know if this was covered, I did not have the time to read through 300+ comments.

I wonder if state municipalities would go after this company.

This is an example of were the cameras work too well. I think the person misses the big point though. These bureaucrats just view this as another revenue stream for them to spend and now when it works they don't know what to do. Dallas traffic cams work too well

If state municipalities(not the police) know that this company is subverting their tax revenue then I would be they would be concerned and sue for some stupid reason

It seems most of the commentators here have not looked at the filings in this case, or read the numerous articles about it on various legal blogs. It is not quite as is being reported here. The two lawyers who are suing him were representing the other side in a case against Cisco. On his blog, he accused them of altering the filing date on some court documents. That's a very serious accusation--if they did it, it would be both a breach of legal ethics and a felony.

In general, it is very very bad for a lawyer to publicly accuse another lawyer of committing a felony unless the accuser has some pretty damned convincing evidence.

And it is a zillion times worse when the accusing lawyer is counsel for the other side in a case the accused lawyer is working on.

Troll Tracker screwed up big time here (heck, commenting AT ALL on a case involving Cisco is a bit shocking), and is probably going to have to cough up a public apology and a wad of cash. It's not about free speech, as some other posters have suggested--it is a plain, old-fashioned "if you accuse someone of a serious crime, you'd better be able to back it up" case.

There's an informative post about the case here. That's a handy blog about activity in the Eastern District of Texas. There was also good coverage in Business Week.

if we get some chinese comments, perhaps people here can translate them

Someone already did:

For those living in the West who didn't realize that there's little sympathy for Tibet independence among ethnic Chinese in the PRC, this blog post on Global Voices will be a shocker. John Kennedy has translated chatter from Chinese blogs and chatrooms that generally runs along the lines of: those ungrateful minorities, we give them modern conveniences and look how they thank us... where have we heard this before? Reuters has a roundup on the Washington Post that begins: "a look at Chinese blogs reveals a vitriolic outpouring of anger and nationalism directed against Tibetans and the West." (...)

"Davesgonechina" at the Tenement Palm blog has been translating the chatter coming from Chinese netizens on Fanfou and Jiwai - Chinese versions of Twitter. Click here, here, and here, specifically. Dave has done more than translate: he points out that this Tibet situation is a real challenge to all people who believe that the Internet can help foster free speech and bring about better global understanding. Here is his challenge to all of us...

The above info, plus a great deal of other material well worth spending the time to read, was aggregated by boingboing's Xeni Jardin, who since this situation has erupted in Tibet has kept a close eye on the whole thing and provided some very good info like the above mentioned post.

Individual rights to privacy have nothing to do with what we have or do not have to hide. Individuals' rights to privacy derive directly and unequivocally from the rights to free speech, association, freedom from undue search and seizure, and freedom from cruel and unusual punishment, which we have already seen to be an accurate description of unjustified wiretaps. Vegans, and all others who refuse to harm the innocent, are indeed a threat to some, but they are a fair-and-square, perfectly legal and non-violent threat to those who have power they don't deserve and lack the intelligence, integrity and discipline to earn. I simply have better things to do with my time than speak to or associate with the busybodies who have nothing better to do with their time than spy on anybody who is not a barbarian. What I have or do not have to hide is not subject to discussion because I refuse to communicate with anybody who thinks of individual rights to privacy in the idiotic context you just espoused. I hope your earlier remark about humor applies to that comment as well, because if you were serious about not worrying about government employees recording my phone conversations without due process, you're an utter waste of skin.

Nice way to keep the mean spirited issue at hand. You piss me off. I'm thinking that anyone whose web site is powered by Joomla http://www.perimeterinstitute.ca/en/Joomla!_License_Guidelines/ might actually take the hint if you kindly... KINDLY... ask them to produce the data in ODF formats.

Some of the people involved with this institution are well read and intelligent individuals. Talking like an asshat about them is not exactly an encouragement after all.

The content was put in a modifiable format, that's half the way there.

In case "Canada's non-profit and independent Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics" is reading their press, here are some suggestions:

Start here http://www.openoffice.org/

ARSTechnica http://arstechnica.com/journals/microsoft.ars/2006/3/21/3278
http://www.osrc.org.pk/content/view/248/96/
http://www.fsfeurope.org/
http://openoffice.blogs.com/openoffice/2007/10/apple-adds-supp.html
http://www.e-cology.ca/canfloss/report/CANfloss_Report.pdf
http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/Major_OpenOffice.org_Deployments

And this search is interesting reading http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%2Bodf+software+training+canada+education&btnG=Search

...if you're doing Rails apps is Advanced Rails by Brad Ediger. It's got a ton of helpful hints on all sorts of things - sessions, memcached, how Rails uses Ruby's dynamic features, how plugins work, how to do complex associations, details on REST, etc etc.

The nice thing is that he doesn't fool around with explaining the simple stuff that you know already if you've done even one Rails app; he gets right down to business. Of course there are always interesting gotchas, but this is a book every Rails developer should have.

a mechanical device is made of matter you can use maths to describe it but then you can't patent the maths only the device.
in a similar way software is only maths, you shouldn't be able to patent the software but maybe you should be able to patent it running on a specific device.

I think it's worth pointing out that, as best I can tell since they haven't actually issued a ruling on the specific subject, that SCOTUS agrees. The Justice states that they've "never held in this Court" that software is, by itself, patentable, but that an electronic device of which software is a part may be patented.

Social Logic will help mitigate obstacles. Technology Logic as infrastructure is a partial solution. Business logic only, will fail.

A community (Social Logic) is always sharing implicit content to sustain the social relationships (work, pay, play, safety ...). In the work environment infrastructure (significant, maybe complete) community implicit content can be collected, grown, and maintain then mined, recovered, and recycled for business logic purposes.

With internal VoIP, email, PIM+, web-browsing history, VTC/Social conferencing, BioPKI tokens/authentication ... data/content bulk collection and Biz and HR essential information ... it should be possible to initially chart the conceptual ideal core-biz processes to core-personnel, then to external B2B/B2C processes and their essential contact information. All along this flow/path the core data/content bulk can be used to convert internal into explicit codified knowledge publications. Then, you must maintain the data/content bulk/audit trail to discover innovative, transitional, and situational variations in new implicit activities for intelligently transition of explicit knowledge publications and future BizTransformation (why, because shit happens and things change, thank god).

Tools to consider as part of the solution:
CMS, Syntax: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XML
CMS, Syntax: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syntax
CMS, Syntax: http://www.w3schools.com/
CMS, Syntax: https://sourceforge.net/search/?type_of_search=soft&type_of_search=soft&words=XML
CMS, Syntax: https://sourceforge.net/search/?type_of_search=soft&type_of_search=soft&words=Content+Management+System
CMS, Syntax: https://sourceforge.net/services/buy/service_providers.php?words=XML+schema+syntax+
KMS, Semantics: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semantic_Web
KMS, Semantics: http://www.w3.org/2002/ws/swsig/
KMS, Semantics: https://sourceforge.net/search/?type_of_search=soft&type_of_search=soft&words=Knowledge+management+system
BPM, Semantics: https://sourceforge.net/search/?type_of_search=soft&type_of_search=soft&words=Bussiness+Process+management
BRM, Synergy: https://sourceforge.net/search/?type_of_search=soft&type_of_search=soft&words=business+relationship+managemnt
RMM, Synergy: https://sourceforge.net/search/?type_of_search=soft&type_of_search=soft&words=relationship+managment+model
RMS, Synergy: http://nwn.blogs.com/
RMS, Synergy: http://secondlife.com/whatis/
TCM, Practical: http://www.sei.cmu.edu/isis/model-problems.htm
TCM, Practical: http://www.sei.cmu.edu/intro/documents/concept/
TCM, Practical:

Heavy users in the UK average 20 SMS per day. Super-heavy users (10% of all) average 100 SMS text messages per day. It gets so bad, according to a survey by Virgin Mobile last year, that 5% of British mobile phone users report repetitive injury pains from heavy texting use.

>> The server crashed after I gave it an image of the impossible triangle.

Actually - that one is really easy to do in 3D: http://autodesk.blogs.com/between_the_lines/2004/08/a_really_cool_3.html

However, are they going to open source Lotus Notes? It seems not.

This leads me to ask when are they going to fix their crappy HTML renderer in their Notes mail client? It must have the most braindead, broken, bizarre HTML renderer in the business. Why, their are whole cottage industries around on how to work on it's crudulousness.

Yeah, actually, I am presenting that. SPEECH doesn't develop at two months either -- what kind of moron are you? Are you suggesting that symptoms of autism should manifest before the capacity to exhibit those symptoms has?

No, I'm simply pointing out that major symptoms of autism frequently develop a bit after the time that children receive their MMR booster, and this is really the only basis for blaming vaccinations for autism. But in fact, autism tends to develop around that time even in kids who don't get the vaccination.

Needless to say, the fact that autism symptoms generally do not become evident after earlier vaccinations cannot be offered in favor of the autism hypothesis.

On the other hand, the brain's development is certainly ongoing at that time, and if mercury in vaccines is interfering with that development [you do know that mercury prevents neural tubulin from maintaining its structure, right?] such that the connections to allow proper sensory integration just don't happen, then the subsequent ability to demonstrate the abilities required of those connections would never manifest.

Yes, mercury is a neurotoxin. But the symptoms of mercury neurotoxicity do not resemble autism. And the experience of multiple countries showing that elimination of mercury from vaccines does not affect the incidence of autism clearly eliminates mercury as a causative factor.

You didn't even read the Rolling Stone article, did you?

Yes, nor was this the first time I've seen it. I thought that it was pretty stupid and dishonest when it was published, but to bring it up now, when the evidence against the mercury hypothesis is much stronger, is amazingly stupid.

No, your links DO NOT refute the article in Rolling Stone.

The do. They link to the full transcript (large pdf) of the conference, which proves that the Rolling Stone article is not merely wrong, but dishonest.

The simple fact is that the CDC had already DETERMINED that there was a link between mercury in vaccines and the rise (RISE -- how many "genetic disorders" ever have a rise in their rates of appearance?) of autism.

This is a lie, as documented here and in the meeting transcript. The CDC has determined no such thing. And in fact, it is unclear whether there is in fact a rise in the rate of autism, as there is evidence that much, perhaps all, of the increase is due to changes in diagnosis, such that many children who would previously be diagnosed as "retarded" are now being diagnosed as autistic. But even if the rise is real, that is not evidence for mercury, or vaccination, being a cause. Genetic disorders can be triggered by an environmental cause; for example, brain damage resulting from the genetic disorder PKU is triggered by a ubiquitous amino acid present in many foods, as well as artificial sweeteners, which is harmless to children without the defect. So even if there is an environmental trigger for autism, it doesn't have to be a neurotoxin--it could be a normal foodstuff, or a virus that is harmless to people without the defect.

Does Mercury cause autism in children? Hmmm... If you wanted to study whether or not something caused cancer, what would you do? Maybe... subject the cells to the substance in question and see whether or not any of them turn cancerous?

I've done lots of cell culture, and I can tell you that this is doubtless the single most unreliable method of determining whether

Autism symptoms don't develop at 2 months, the time when the first vaccine is mandated.

Or, heck, even at birth, now that Hep-B shots before leaving the hospital are all the rage.

With "factual analysis" by morons like you backing them up, it's little wonder crap statistical analyses like "this doesn't cause Autism" is the major focus, when spending the money on finding out what *does* cause it would be real science, but that ain't happenin'.

If you had half a brain cell to rub together, you might also be interested in this article, which has not been refuted by anyone.

Which is pushing through a constitution (oh sorry i meant "treaty") that will put into place a permanent unelected EU president and staff, enable a majority of countries to push through legislation upon countries who do not want it, force a EU foreign minister, make many countries give up their seats on the UN security council and mess with independent states legal systems with the increase of powers for an EU supercourt. All this would be bad enough, but now with the german minister Angela Merkel's memo explaining how they would force it through without referendum by changing its name around a bit and forcing it through.

Say hello to country altering EU laws being passed through behind closed doors folks, its about to get ugly.

Dont get me wrong though, im not Anti-EU, it has some wonderful benefits as far as business, travel and work is concerned, its justs its new power grabbing attitude worrys me.

[/rant]

That's a problem with British people though isn't it? I've never heard of glassing people anywhere other than Britain.

England seems to be entering a wierd sort of state where if you bash someone in the face with a glass, which should be attempted murder and punishable with a life sentence, the pub is somehow at fault for giving you a glass, so everyone is given plastic ones instead. And if someone shoots up a school, everyone loses the right to join a shooting club. If there is any crime with knives, knives are banned. The actual perpetrators of the crimes tend to get a light sentence though compared to most other countries. It's almost like people are expected to be animals and the pub is responsible for their behaviour, a bit like a pet owner is of his pets.

Pretty soon I suspect there will be a Happy Slapping like craze for poking people in the eye with sharp fingernails and blinding them and then everyone in British will need to be declawed like pet cats. If you're still in Britain you'd better hope that the Happy Slappers don't start jackrolling women since the government might decide to castrate everyone like pets too.