Slashdot Mirror

Aside from the usual "don't believe a politician", you might as well just ask this guy. They seem to care very little about national sovereignty, and would gladly hand the whole nation over to hostile countries such as China and India.

No thank you, we have enough as it is from environmentalists wanting to batter the Midwest into compliance. Now if he were to ditch Mankiw the Ivy, and put in someone who has an actual idea of re-establishing our national sovereignty (yes, that means pulling hostile country SWF money in line as well) where Reagan killed it in the 1980s.

I don't see any strong reasons to buy this MBA as it is the slowest in the MAC family Sachin

I have long been awaiting for something like this. Having all the server functionality in a small java framework I will definitively give it a try.. http://www.developeronline.blogspot.com/

Gaianist is those who worship Gaia: mother Earth. Since you spout as truth the propaganda of its adherents, you should know more about where the mediated version of it in the Mainstream Media has its origins. You could have Googled it, or Google "Gaia Hypothesis". Also known as "Deep Ecology". Unfortunately, they have hijacked the environmental movement; which started out being about not soiling our own nest, to create a clean and safe environment for people; and turned it into a "four legs good, two legs baad" movement. "Silent Spring" represents that watershed.

Gainaist propaganda, like the DDT scare, kills at least as many people as the corporate kind. If we are to believe its core adherents, it requires a reduction of world population of anywhere from 50%-90%. That's a lot of people that have to die in the name of the religious belief of "sustainability" and "harmony with nature".

DDT losing its effectiveness over time is a non-sequitur in the ban or not ban decision. If it isn't effective, people won't use it. There's ample proof that banning it (sorry, refusing to allow USAID $ to be spent on it, which amounts to the same thing) has led to a massive increase in the incidence of Malaria in poorer countries.

You *can* download books - on the net, using p2p, copy the file from your friend. It is not hard for an average person or author to do this once the book has been scanned/ocr'd.

In addition, you can now get a new version of these. Previously the copy was in rtf, doc or PDF and would be 'sort of okay' to read via computer monitor. Now they have versions that are suitable to print on A4. Download file, print, bind and viola - book (albeit) in A4.

What you now have to ask yourself is: will a lot of people do this?

On this topic, I note that in Australia paperbacks are now over $20 for many titles. From the Wikipedia article on paperback books:
  Paperback editions of books are issued when a company decides to release a book in a low cost format.

Before I found out that the paperback was designed to be the 'cheap' version of books I was horrified at the rising costs of paperbacks. I bought hundreds (literally) of paperbacks for between AU$5 and $14. When the price rose over $15 I just stopped buying. A few years later I found the price to be just under $20 and pretty much rarely bought anything.
The interesting part here is that before when I was buying $10 books I hardly had the money.. and now that I *do* have money I can't easily justify over $20. I'll go out of my way for a Simon Green that's got a 20% store discount mind you :)

I believe that they are working themselves into their own economical mess. I've spoken with the book store staff, publishers, librarians and anyone else who I've come across with an interest in this. They all say the same thing 'it's costing too much to produce and sell paperbacks, less people are buying them'. I've been very blunt with store managers, to the point of saying I would buy 5 to 10 books on the spot, right then, if they were $10 to $15. Oh well.

I've heard about machines that can print a book on demand. Pity they will never bring it here, I've love to go the 'buy 10 and save' option on one of those.

You want to remove Finland from that list because of http://gatesofvienna.blogspot.com/2008/01/muzzled-again-in-finland.html

If USA-193, via Milcom, it's only been up since DEC-06 and may be something other than the ordinary monitoring platform:

USA-193/NROL-21 Launch specifics:
Launch date/time: December 13, 2006 2100 UTC 16:00 EST
Launcher: Delta 2/7920-10
Launch location: Western Test Range, Vandenberg AFB, California
Launch complex/pad: SLC2W
International Designator: 2006-057A
SSC #: 29651
Latest orbital parameters: 376 by 354 km orbit (91.83 minute period), inclined 58.5 degress.

Ted Molczan posted the preliminary orbital elset below on SEESAT-L:

USA 193 0.0 0.0 0.0 4.8 v
1 29651U 06057A 06350.25405986 .00011325 00000-0 10000-3 0 03
2 29651 58.4865 114.2852 0013244 81.7541 278.5044 15.68046894 05
WRMS error = 0.026 deg

Ted noted the following observations in his post:

"The ground track nearly repeats every 2 days (30.92 revs), enabling frequent revisit of observational targets of interest. The first four Lacrosses behaved similarly (28.9 revs in 2 days). Lacrosse 5 makes 43.05 revs in 3 days. Keyholes nearly repeat every 4 days; NOSS every 4 days."

Looking at the early Lacrosse satellite missions, Ted is correct, but, of course, the Lacrosse radar imaging missions are launched into much higher altitude orbits (nearly double the height of NROL-21).

Intl Desig SSC # USA Number Period Inc Apogee Perigee
*1988-106B 19671 USA 034 97.91 56.98 660 657
1991-017A 21147 USA 069 98.00 68.00 667 660
*1997-064A 25017 USA 133 98.22 57.35 674 673 [Replaced Lacrosse 1]
2000-047A 26473 USA 152 98.47 67.99 690 681 [Replaced Lacrosse 2]
*2005-016A 28646 USA 182 99.08 57.01 718 712 [Replaced Lacrosse 3]
* Indicates a 57 degree inclination orbit, just 1.5 degree off the Lacrosse 57 deg inc plane.

As Jonathan McDowell points out in his Jonthan's Space Report Next Issue Draft:
"In contrast to most secret launches, analysts appear to have little clue as to what this payload may be."

My best guess, at this early stage, is that this is probably some sort of mission sensor platform other than a visual photo recon imaging mission. It also could be a new sensor development mission. But that is "only" a best guess!

There is a long history here that needs to be taken into consideration... We are seeing a paradigm shift in our government that is long overdue. It used to be that the government had to protect paper documents, "eyes only", and the biggest threat were photocopiers and miniature cameras... not any more.

I wrote about this transformation last year. Is it any wonder why the NSA is being brought up and groomed to help protect the critical information assets that the United States has?

From my post:

HumInt/SigInt:
Human Intelligence, CIA
Signal Intelligence, NSA

The English have been masters at the spy trade for centuries. In WWII, the United States felt that it should get into the act and turned to the English for guidance.

With their tutelage, the CIA became a formidable tool against the Soviet threat throughout the cold war. We had clearly defined enemies with clearly defined borders. Gathering intelligence became a methodical science... then, once the Soviet Union collapsed, the clearly defined enemies with clearly defined borders went with it.

The growth of the internet created an atmosphere wherein information and 'intelligence' became a commodity. Then the emergence of an enemy that is not only difficult, if not impossible, to clearly define but who also operates entirely without borders. The polar opposite from what the CIA were trained to do.

Not only has this rule-set reset turned the CIA upside-down, it has rendered it all but useless. The UK isn't doing much better either. The problem is that western society itself is at odds with the rules required to make an effective spy agency. Our open government(s), free access to information, laws against spying on citizens and so forth are what both protect our civil liberties as well as create the environment in which our enemies can plot against us.

The CIA knew about al Qaeda operators operating in the USA prior to 9/11, yet did nothing to notify the FBI. This is because of the opposing nature of each agency. The CIA finds a criminal and wants to string them along to see what intelligence they can uncover by monitoring them. When the FBI finds a criminal, they want to string them up. From the CIA perspective, the FBI sure knows how to screw up an investigation and destroy your intelligence network.

The CIA is now dysfunctional to the point of uselessness. In fact, there isn't a single effective spy agency in the western world. The current battle we're fighting and the enemy we face is one that cannot be defeated by military might, it is a war that MUST be fought using intelligence.

So, the administration turned to the only other agency with experience in gathering and monitoring enemies. It also happens that this agency is experts at SigInt, as opposed to the HumInt. The problem is that the NSA is forbidden by law from spying on American Citizens, UNLESS they are monitoring overseas communications. This exception has always been allowed, no warrant necessary. There is no law that states that I have the constitutional right to conspire with enemies overseas.

No other nation even comes close to the SigInt capabilities of the NSA...

BAWHAHAHAHA.... that was HILARIOUS!

Anyway, the Macbook is nice enough to forgo the Air at that price point. We'll see a lot in Hollywood anyway with Final Cut on them under the arms of wannabe producers.

Shameless plug: http://mbhtech.blogspot.com/2008/01/macbook-air-vs-lenovo-x300.html

Even though Lenovo's laptop isn't out yet, anyone for a portable laptop would surely wait after seeing the difference in features.

If you're after an "ultra"-portable, I guess your choice would be Asus's eeePC.

Sort of... although I think thin is the expensive kicker here. The Asus eeePC is cheap and - dare I say it - a lot more portable and feature-laden than the Air (removable battery, 3 USB ports, ethernet).

Meet your miracle machine, or at least a plan for it. Actually, it's even better than what you suggest: it converts electricity to real oil.

Unfortunately, I've done some rough calculations assuming $.1/kWh electricity converted at 40% efficiency, and the energy alone comes to $9/gallon of gasoline.

As robots become more common in society, questions arise about how they will be controlled. One way to regulate robot behavior is to form legal contracts with their owners.

other sources of interest:

Philip Giraldi, a former CIA Officer, and a partner in Cannistraro Associates, an international security consultancy, has written a reasonable, fairly current (news changes daily) summary which will appear in the next issue of Pat Robertson's American Conservative. It can already be read online here

Daniel Ellsberg has an oped at Brad Friedman's Bradsblog. He has called "what Sibel has as more explosive than the Pentagon Papers" do read his oped here The latest is here

Another good source is Steve Clemon's The Washington Note, where i mostly post my $0.02 worth The relevant post is here . And finally lukery's "let sibel speak" blog is here

The point of a broadcast is to be heard, not merely to send EM waves into the stratosphere for fun. There's NO USE for sending EM waves that doesn't require at least one bit of information, not even RADAR.

Many people using it at the same time to transmit information (hint: the whole POINT of a license) interfere with each other. Read up on Shannon's law sometime or information theory, because a channel can only contain so much information. The rivalrousness is inherent, it's not something tacked on by the FCC so they can sell licenses.

Anyhow, you're barking up the wrong tree to begin with. The "all properties are rights, all rights are property" mantra is irrelevant. It's whether or not their RIVALROUS that matters. But you know that and disagree, right?

But you still have the reason for the rights backwards. It is because two people can't wear my pair of glasses that I may exclude anyone else from wearing mine, not the inverse. In other words, you have your theory of property backwards.

The notion of a right was created to address the inherent harm, the right wasn't created to CAUSE some harm to the property holder!

But that's where imaginary property gets it wrong. People imagine it to be property, so they try to attach rights that don't make sense to it and create "harm" that isn't inherent. Then they get frustrated when that doesn't work. This is because it can't work without central control of everyone's computer and a police state.

In other words, the two situations are completely different. The harm is inherent, not created, for the EM spectrum due to physics, while it's quite the opposite for imaginary property. I'd call that an important distinction, but it's clearly not one you've accounted for.

I could also argue the public good, but that's a simple consequence of one being inherent harm and the other not being anything of the sort. And no, you can't construct "inherent" harm from copying. You still have your copy! You may not be able to make lots of money, but that's hardly the point of most copyrighted works, it's only the point for a minority of commercial ones. Oh, right, you didn't realize that either, huh? This post is copyrighted, as are all the others. Thousands of works every day, and nobody getting a dime.

Unless they're paying you for this? Nobody's paying me for this, that's for sure.

But everyone only thinks of big commercial enterprises, as if they're the only copyrighted works in existence. I mean, if you're not making money, you're nobody, right? Who cares about most of the world?

See also this post by the guy who made Gmail on what it means to own a right.

-----

Next you attack the twisting of language. Fair enough. I'll be honest, it's not something I like. But what's the alternative? There's no such thing as "untwisting" language. Sure, you can pedantically correct everyone who ever uses it slightly wrong for the rest of your existence, but hell, what has that ever accomplished? Do people use the words "its" and "it's" correctly now? No? Well, then it doesn't work, does it?

But twisting language sure does, doesn't it? We have "piracy" (from salty brigands to commercial book copiers and finally to 8-year-olds downloading Britney Spears), we have "hacking" (from clever computer users to electronic criminals) and many more. Once I realized that there was no practical difference between twisting and untwisting language, I decided I might as well twist it in my favor.

So now you know why I don't believe in imaginary property.

Math is the Amer.Eng. shortening, attested from 1890; the British preference, maths is attested from 1911.

To me, "maths vs math" isn't a big deal at all. I'm an American, and when I said "math" around my British friend the other day, he blew up, criticizing me for saying it incorrectly and being an idiot. Not cool. I'm surprised at how sensitive people are over the tiniest little things.

You're right. But the poster has as point. The Unichrome support is really bad on Linux. There are about 3 different drivers to try, all with differing results:

- The OpenChrome drivers, open source, some hw-accel support
- Unichrome drivers, open source but taking a purist approach that lacks features
- Via's own drivers, limited binaries for only certain distros, nightmare compile process, but most features supported

Unfortunately for me, I bought a VIA-epia ex1000 mini-ITX. It has some nice TV out connectors (component out!), so needs a driver that knows how to get this going. Having wasted a lot of time trying to build the drivers for FC7, I gave up and ended up using the Via binaries with FC5. The problem then is that other bits of hardware aren't detected under FC5, leaving me to patch PCI tables and rebuild the kernel to get the right southbridge driver (made a big difference to system performance - much smoother) and the SMBUS working.

Looking at forums I'm definitely not alone. This guy ended up with XP: http://cg-note.blogspot.com/2007/09/via-epia-ex1000-installation-adventure.html

Personally I think the problem is with Via. They claim to support open source, but throwing out the odd binary driver and giving mangled sources with not too easy to follow build instructions isn't much more than lip service. If they were serious, they could setup a yum repository for Fedora and make rpm's and debs for each major release of the distros they choose to support. Putting all the download packages on one page of their site would also help, as would openly releasing all their datasheets.

I hope they learn to do better, because I feel their products are held back by the poor Linux support :(

Mike

d00d, what about reading the write-up, which pegged the unlocking percentage at 20%, vice your suggested 33%?
Maybe the real story here is the way Apple's stock has tanked in the face of strong profits.
We can rest assured that there was no insider trading, because people are basically good and wouldn't break the rules and stuff.
http://fakesteve.blogspot.com/2008/01/stock-is-getting-killed-ive-instructed.html

Apple faithful, trust me on this. The phones are not lost. Okay? I just saw them, like, I don't know, last week. Or was it just before Macworld? Tim Cook is trying to find the paperwork because he says he knows we shipped them and he can totally remember seeing the invoices but now he can't remember where he put them but he swears they're around here someplace. Ja'Red is on the job too.

Fake Steve has a write-up on this (of course). If the phones have really been sold to the public, and aren't missing because of inflated numbers or internal sales, then this has really got to be hurting the bottom line. I believe that the phone contract subsidizes the hardware, and if people buy phones without contracts, Apple is losing money on each sale. 1.7 million phones winds up being a lot of money. The amount that each phone is subsidized is unknown, of course.

My guess it's just "nation building".

Most of the people in Eastern Europe and FSU are quite indifferent to national/ethnic issues (except when directly asked "Are you a good [insert official nationality here]") and given a chance would gladly help US re-anglicize the southern states by emigrating there and spicing a little a "melting pot" that lately looks like it's cooking only taco. The only chance the bureaucracies in the little states of the Eastern and Central Europe have to keep their jobs on long term is to raise hell and mobilize their subjects against whatever imaginary enemies they can find. Even Russia is doing it right now by getting mighty righteous about the missile interceptors US talks about putting in Poland, even if those anti-balistic-missile rockets did not work in tests. China gets its own subjects worked up by reminding them of the Nanking Massacre, even if the Chinese warlords did worse things to their own people during the same period. EU bureaucracy is attempting to divert some loyalty from the nation states by playing the Greenie card even if by doing that it's blowing holes into it's own economy.

I would look into what would the local government gain by having Russian Estonians stigmatized: my guess is there is some economic trouble brewing, and it's better to keep the good people of Estonia entertained by lynching "Russians" than asking questions about inflation and jobs.

From some banker's blog:

Estonia's inflation rate rose in December to a nine-year high, led by food and housing costs. But we can already see that producer prices (lead by export producer prices which have been falling since the summer) have started to ease in October and November. This could be read as a first indicator for what is to come, since if there is a hard landing inflation will not be sustained.

GDP growth, which was of course strong, is now slowing, and unemployment, which has been trending steadily downwards, should really start to increase at some point. This will mean, basically, that the days when Estonia urgently needed to import migrant workers to try and avoid the huge spike in wages and prices which we have seen is now largely passed.

Some contributors to this thread mentioned IP addresses belonging to Kremlin being used in the attack against Estonian sites. If KGB is that stupid, then nobody should worry about them.

andy zebrowitz

I think that they just want to blather on as if they understand what is going on here. Trying to ascribe other motives assumes too much of them.

Cyberwarfare has been going on for almost ten years. It does not amount to very much because we are not as dependent on technology as folk imagine. Case in point we lost all power on the North East coast of the US a few years back, civilization did not collapse. Even if these particular attacks are cyberwarfare and not just vandalism they are not going to bring society to its knees.

I don't think this is a particularly viable approach for extortion either. For an extortion racket to work you have to be sure that the target is not going to go to the police which means you have to either target a criminal business or be able to credibly threaten violence.

The real threat is not from the attack itself but the possibility of using a cyber-attack to augment a physical attack. So take out the Internet when you bomb the city so the disaster relief cannot function.

On terrorism the issue is money. AQ is not likely to turn to cyberwarfare. They have already taken out the NYSE and NASDAQ for a week and nobody cared much about that particular issue - it was the 3,000 murders. some AQ leaders have told their followers to learn how to do Internet crime, they can earn more in a day than a Pakistani policeman earns in a week.

I did a recent blog on this responding to the idiotic Giuliani National Security plan.

I kiiinda like Obama and realize the "he's a muslim" chain emails are very dishonest, but I don't really think there's anything wrong with being a Muslim so long as you don't think Jihad=kill those you disagree with. I do not appreciate my truthful comments being lumped in with that sort of obvious smear, and you kinda owe me an apology for suggesting my claims are on that level.

But let's permit Ron Paul to explain his views on Obama, who we all can see is clearly a BLACK PERSON.

"[O]ur country is being destroyed by a group of actual and potential terrorists--and they can be identified by the color of their skin."

"I think we can safely assume that 95% of the black males in that city [Washington, D.C.] are semi-criminal or entirely criminal."

"We are constantly told that it is evil to be afraid of black men, but it is hardly irrational."

Chief, I understand your skepticism. After all, I accused a man of accepting donations from neo-nazis. That's so horrible it's tough to believe. Anyone who would accept support from nazis is totally unfit for anything good. I can't believe I almost forgot a link, since apparently this is first you've heard of it: http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2007/12/19/paul-to-keep-donation-from-white-supremacist/

And I also accuse Ron of writing racist hate-speech, and lying about it. That's pretty damn extreme, as far as accusations go. Anyone who wrote the things I refer to is a monster, and any of Ron's supporters who would actually attempt to hide the truth, as this fucker does: http://revolusion2008.blogspot.com/2008/01/conscience-of-ron-paul-supporter.html, is also a monster. Worse than most Scientologists, possibly. And anyone who knows about Lisa McPhereson knows that Scientologists are monsters too.

I'm a bit surprised that a slashdot reader is unaware of these well-worn, practically old facts. I don't watch TV news often or listen to talk radio, so maybe this stuff isn't as well known out there as it should be. I feel as though a demand to prove what is as obvious about Ron is akin to demanding proof of the moon landing or 9/11 being caused by terrorists. I don't think every assertion that slams a monster like Ron Paul must have citations. I'm just having a conversation, not building an indictment.

http://pajamasmedia.com/2008/01/ron_paul.php this is one expose that was pretty well written. The author was actually a fairly outspoken Ron Paul supporter. Gave him money, helped organize efforts, etc. But unlike some, this supporter stopped supporting Ron Paul when it became obvious Ron Paul is a monster. This is not someone who is biased against Ron Paul, this is someone who was biased in FAVOR of Ron Paul's presidential promises.

Some actually say Ron didn't write that stuff. But Ron's bank account paid for the publishing, and Ron signed the checks. Could a normal sane person pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to print racist stuff signed in the sane person's name? Also, why don't you actually read the newsletter: http://www.littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/pdf/RonPaul-december1990.pdf

The author of the hate literature seems to believe he is married to Ron Paul's wife and grandparent to Ron Paul's grandkids and represents Texas's 14th congressional district (Paul's district). That's not hard to explain, because Ron Paul is the author of this newsletter and all the others that say:

"The riots, burning, looting, and murders are only a continuation of 30 years of racial politics."

"The criminals who terrorize our cities--in riots and on every non-riot day--are not exclusively young black males, but they largely are. As children, they are trained

you'd just argue with them ad infinitum over really silly things

(my emphasis)

But how to decide what's a "really silly thing" and what's the tiny thing - that you discover by being pedantic - which ushers in a revolution in physics? (an example, from the early years of the 20th century: http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2008/01/light-deflection-at-sun.html).

IM(vH)O, getting a working arrangement on how to decide if something is "evidence" or not, on how to analyse ("interpret") it, on how to construct and test hypotheses, and so on is essential for there to be any meaningful dialogue. And you'll see that this is included in my list of To Dos, in an SD comment of mine from earlier today.

You view astrophysical interpretations as if they are statements of facts. Like much of the remainder of your own discipline, you frequently ignore the huge number of assumptions involved within these theories. This is not an effective strategy for getting at the truth.

Pot, meet kettle; kettle, meet pot.

Your comments contain much unintended humour; this is a great example! :clap:

I seem to remember someone writing several SD comments about an interpretation of an "image" from the NACO instrument attached to one of the VLTs. When it was pointed out to this writer that they had misunderstood what the image was - in essence ignoring the huge number of assumptions involved with it - was the writer grateful for the opportunity to learn more about how astronomical images are obtained?

Indeed, ignoring the long chains of logic, inextricably tied to physics theories, that are part and parcel of every modern astronomical observation is "not an effective strategy for getting at the truth".

You could wake up on any particular morning and come to find that a new paradigm-changing observation has been made, and that your paradigm lost out

And do you know what I'll do on that day*? Go out and celebrate!

I would guess that a majority, perhaps a large majority, of astronomers (astrophysicists, cosmologists, planetary scientists, ...) would do the same.

For myself, I don't have to guess, because the future is already in my (personal) past. HINT: I think you've read about high-z SNe, haven't you?

And a reasonably intelligent person can see that you value feeling and sounding right over actually being right, because to prioritize *being* right, a person has to be willing to admit that they can be wrong -- even on the big questions.

No need to read tea leaves; I'll say it straight: APODNereid can be wrong. In fact, I'll go one better, and point you to a comment I made, that you responded to, where I said exactly that: "You know, I could well be wrong about this." (http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=426528&no_d2=1&cid=22145892)^

you can't even explain simple things like the temperature distributions for planets

Why do you think it's a simple thing? How do you determine what's "simple" and what's not?

Again, this goes to how your alternative approach to science differs from that of real scientists (more later, no doubt).

[threats of fire and brimstone, of dismissal and beheading, of shoes and ships and sealing wax, and cabbages and kings]

Oh dear, you've got me quaking in my (low-heeled, today) boots! Oh woe is me!!

Does that mean that you won't indulge me - and readers of this SD comment - in outlining what you'd observe if you were given a million seconds of HST, Chandra, Spitzer, SKA, JWST, VLT, Gemini, MAGIC, AMANDA, LIGO, LOFAR, etc 'telescope' time?**

* well, not that day anyway; more likely a year or two later, once the independent verifications and validations had come in,

I have friends that live in Scandinavia, and they have to pay an assload of taxes. 180% on a new car, up to 63% income tax - that starts at about $70,000, and 25% VAT tax.

In Denmark young people are moving to escape the tax system:
http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/12/05/business/labor.php

Oh if you do go and look you'll see all those people riding backs...not because they want to stay in shape, because they can't afford a car. Would you really want to live in a country where you had to pay 300,000 dollars for a BMW 3 series? I guess you could pay 30,000 grand for a new Kia....

The unemployment rate in Sweden is supposed to be as high as 20%
http://truckandbarter.com/mt/archives/000589.html

Because everything is so heavily taxed - forget the fact that college is free - everything is so expensive students have to take out loans anyway.

Oh then there is the gas tax. They pay 9 - 10 dollars a gallon. Yep 7 dollars a gallon in taxes for gas. Not for any environmental reasons .... just to pay for all the 'free' stuff:
http://americanindk.blogspot.com/2007/08/gas-prices.html

Then there is health care....the wonderful system where you have to wait. Yep you really do. It's not a myth. Oh and you don't get a choice of doctor either. You pretty much get whoever the government decides. Unless of course you one of the few rich people and can afford extra insurance - and then you get better care.

Vets suck there too. My friend has had too dogs killed by vet ineptness. She is lucky because she can go to the police vet sometimes, but most of the time she is stuck with idiots. She can't always go the him though because he travels around the country and to Germany to help people .... because there vets suck too.

Yep its great there. No choice, high taxes, dead pets, everything is really expensive...

Universities should be areas for the open exchange of ideas.

Actually, universities are where people come to get an education and hopefully a bachelors' degree, masters' degree, business degree, or doctorate. They are also where people get together for scientific and philosophical study.

There is a certain structure to this. Classes, by default, are where people to go seek instruction from someone who presumably, by virtue of having already attained a degree, are qualified to impart to them the structure and specifics of a certain topic. In the classroom, for better or worse, the professor is in charge. If the professor chooses to have a class wherein they seek student feedback and ideas, great, but they can also insist on teaching and insist students save the questions for later.

If a 9/11 retard wants to come in on a soapbox and yell at people on the sidewalks on campus, he has (sorry, should have) the right to do so.

If he's on the sidewalk? Sure. Until he physically assaults someone, blocks someone and tries to push flyers into their chest (has happened to me), treatens violence.

Vice versa, if a fundamentalist minister wants to walk onto the stage in the campus center and harangue everyone (which happened at UCSD once or twice a year), telling them they'll all burn in hell, he should have that right, too.

Funny thing: I'm pretty sure he was invited onto campus and sponsored by student groups, no?

Let's see... "open exchange of ideas."

I wonder what threatening a female ex-muslim student with death has to do with "open exchange of ideas."

I wonder what you'd call this? "free speech" or felony assault by those who assaulted the speakers?

I suppose the violence by muslims at Concordia is what you consider "open exchange of ideas"???

Even if EU privacy law says IP addresses are protected personally-identifiable information, there will be instances where citizens are legally justified in processing and recording those addresses.

R.I.P. Heath Ledger

He should definitely let his counsel know about Recording Industry vs The People which is a wonderful source of briefs, documents from related cases, decisions, and other strategies and tactics used by others defending cases against the RIAA and the music labels. Perhaps NewYorkCountryLawyer or his firm can help him out if can scrape together a few bucks to pay their fees.

I hope you're right.

Although there is some sense to what you are suggesting, there is still one problem: Unlimited MEANS unlimited. If you sell users an unlimited plan, it is UNLIMITED. If you sell them that plan then decide that it is only unlimited for certain types of traffic packets, well, that is just not legal. If you buy a car, you have reasonable expectations that it will work on ALL highways. If you buy an unlimited Internet plan, you have reasonable expectations that it will work for all Internet protocol types and traffic.

Unlimited means limited if you are a Concast customer.

Most of my neighborhood signed up years ago when they were advertising "Unlimited use for a flat monthly fee". Then a few of us were booted last year for using the Internet too much.

Quite lame but that's the truth. Many of us have been told we must have been doing something wrong like running a server or downloading illegal content. Guess what. That's not what we were accused of. And yes, there are many services which use IPTV, Internet radio and P2P legally. I tell them to get over it.

We've been blogging about it for nearly a year now. Nearly 75,000 hits! It's important to people. Either it's Unlimited or it's not. And if not, then companies need to grow a spine and disclose what people REALLY paid for. Otherwise it's false advertising (translation... they lied).

BTW, Concast is spamming our mail box for my family to resubscribe with them. We were terminated and told after 12 months we could resubscribe. Think we will? ;-)

Here is our answer to Concast via a video we created. Enjoy :D

This particular individual is Marc Grossman, identified here. Re:'Which party?' The short answer: 'both' Sibel named 18 people 2 weeks ago, some of them Dems

This particular individual is Marc Grossman, identified here. Re:'Which party?' The short answer: 'both' Sibel named 18 people 2 weeks ago, some of them Dems

It is Marc Grossman

http://letsibeledmondsspeak.blogspot.com/

I know Lacerte 2004 and older will not work with IE 7.

Also Quickbooks 2005 and prior also will not work with IE 7.
See also:
http://smalltechnotes.blogspot.com/2006/10/quickbooks-and-internet-explorer-7.html

Zuck would NEVER do this to me! http://fakesteveballmer.blogspot.com/

As robots become more common, society has time-tested legal tools to limit their deceitfulness, destructiveness or snoopiness. Contracts will be one tool for regulating robot bad behavior or unwanted spying.

"See? We learn things from videogames"

Of course we do.

The monster was supposed to be Geddy Lee but was changed because they thought it would be too scary. http://geddyleeisslusho.blogspot.com/

As a mac user who ahs things "just work", I'm reminded of fake steve jobs' post about this... http://fakesteve.blogspot.com/2008/01/news-flash-grown-man-able-to-use-xo.html#links

There is no evidence whatsoever for that. I thought his dad was reasonably OK. But the kid is a disaster. I thought that long before Katrina and before the Main Stream Media media started grumbling. Look at his record. With the exception of Tsunami relief he has done not one single significant thing right. Not One. It's a remarkable record of duplicity, incompetence and stupidity. (To be fair, he did manage to get reasonably honest elections conducted in Iraq, Afghanistan and Palestine, but I don't think he would have done that had he been smart enough to forsee the consequences. Certainly not in Palestine. Probably not the other two either.)

I'm not wild about John McCain, but had he been elected in 2000, he'd probably have been an OK president and the country would be far better off today.

There are many things that Bush says he believes in that I agree with. I thought when he said them that he was lying. The record shows that I was right. When he said them he was in fact lying.

Let's look at the record:

• Tax Cuts for the wealthy that would pay for themselves: They haven't
• No Child Left Behind: Probably well-intended, but unworkable. Destined to be duct taped again and again into just another huge dysfunctional government program like farm supports.
• Iraq: An utter debacle.
• North Korea: Six years to get back to where he was when he started.
• Iran: When he took office, Iran had a moderate government that was trying to reach to the US. Bush has done every conceivable thing to alienate the country, undermine the moderates, and sow the seeds of even more discord in Southwest Asia. In Don Henley's words "Beating plowshares into swords".
• Medicare Prescription drugs: Probably the best of a rum lot. But not funded. Put_It_On_Someone's_Tab economics.
• Economic Policy. You probably aren't fully aware of the situation that is unfolding. Most people aren't. But we have a three headed crisis -- currency, the banking system, commodities. Bush-Greenspan-(Bernanke) are responsible for the first two and could have hedged against the third. This is going to be a lot clearer to you by November. Check http://calculatedrisk.blogspot.com/. I don't think things are as bad as many there would portray them, but they are bad and getting worse.
• Civil Liberties: Worst record of any American leader ruler since George III

These are the works of an intelligent man? You sir, have a really strange idea of intelligence.

Let me sum up the virtues I have observed in George W Bush. He's not a racist. That's the only positive quality I see in the man. Our dog isn't a racist either (she loves everyone even the mailman). She is very likely smarter than Bush. And she'd probably have made a better president.

BTW, I'm actually fairly conservative. But my party -- the Republicans -- has been hijacked by 'f***king crazies'. (the phrase attributed, possibly incorrectly, to Colin Powell)

Please do note that Unless you live in Canada where citizens are shielded from P2P copyright lawsuits, because the pay an extra fee on their CD, DVD purchases to do so, then downloading some P2P files may put you at risk for a civil lawsuit in any other country. These lawsuits usually take the form of class-action suits, filed against groups of users who are logged as blatantly copying and distributing copyrighted materials. Recently, the MPAA and RIAA, along with the governments of England and Australia, took several thousand users to court, demanding that they pay thousands of dollars in copyright infringement penalties. " It is also illegal for DMCA to invade the privacy of Canadians, to harass, obstruct their downloads with fakes torrents. Attention the Federal Minister of Industries, Consumer affairs, Jim Prentice Jan 7, 2007 Reference: MediaDefender MediaDefender , a notorious anti piracy gang working for the MPAA, RIAA and several independent media production companies, who mow had launched even their very own video upload service called "miivi.com". The sole purpose also of the site was to trap people into uploading supposedly copyrighted material, and bust them for doing so. Now the overall the manner in which they did any of this clearly was illegal firstly too in Canada. It has been at least 3 months since the many news media has reported the false invasion of our home computers, invasion of our home privacy, sabatoage of our Internet bittorrent download usage by MediaDefender and so what good have you now personally done about any of in this time now too? About this big culprit who are seriously responsible for our costly related big interent band width waste usage and that you all should firstly should go after MediaDefender , or Overpeer, who now in the last year with their thousands of computers have generated phony torrents. Now did you have them MediaDefender liable for 'Disrupting Normal Services' by uploading fake torrents and rightfully prosecuted, for 'Disrupting Normal Internet Services' in Canada by their now uploading their fake torrents? Downloading torrents is not illegal in Canada for any Canadians now too but sabotaging our right to do so and their invasion of our personal privacy is. RSVPas to what good have you now personally done about any of in this time now too? http://torrentfreak.com/mediadefender-emails-leaked-070915/ PS In Canada Peer to peer P2P Internet usage has become very popular and is a main reasons many person have a high speed Internet.. but a high speed Internet does not necessary insure you get adequate speeds on your torrent downloads. Also insure that when you get an Internet Service Provider do first check their actual speeds delivered to you, should be at least 6 megs for a high speed system . see http://groups.msn.com/CanadaToday5/internetspeedtest.msnw or search engine - "Internet speed test", and insure that you have unlimited download capability preferably, and that they do not cap the downloads in anyway.. A simple tip to insure optimize download capabilities is to cap your bit torrent's program uploads capabilities to about 60 kbs, to avoid it from plugging up, and do restrict to about 8 torrents downloads too? Trial and error here will let you know what is best for you. How to improve your downloads using a bit torrent program http://bittorrent-list.blogspot.com/

after watching the movie I was interested in checking out more info as well on the monster.

I've ran across this site that seems to have some good info on any cloverfield related viral stuff. I gotta say, the viral stuff sure gives the whole affair a little more flavor.

IMO the movie just feels like I've just seen a 90min piece of viral marketing for something more. Bla.

Draw some static graphs of functions of interest using CodeViz http://freshmeat.net/projects/codeviz/

Call graphs are nice, but call graphs of large applications done via static code analysis are so huge and dense that become useless. Call graphs taken from run-time profile data, with all those irrelevant nodes pruned out, are IMO much more useful, as they naturally direct you to the most interesting parts, where the action is.

http://badwebcomics.blogspot.com/2007/06/ctrlaltdel.html

Well, technically it's the Office of Administration which is speaking here.. but agreed.. the sworn testimony which states that it is 'best practice' to recycle tapes containing archival data is quite astounding. There is at least one attempt to probe this, but accountability doesn't appear to be high on this administrations agenda.