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"In short, the ABA had worked to prevent law schools from proliferating to the point it's at today"

An especially brilliant example of this trend is Regent University, Pat Robertson's law school. As nearly as I can tell the main requirement for entry and graduation is you need to be a devout Christian and pay the fee. Not only is this place churning out a lot of lawyers but many of them have been fast tracked in to high ranking positions in the Executive branch of the U.S. government, positions far beyond what their capabilities, experience or academic qualifications indicate they are qualified for. Kind of a sad commentary on what happens on a country where you fail to maintain separation of church and state, and let people's religious affiliation become a prominent part of their resume.

http://graphics.boston.com/images/bostondirtdogs//Headline_Archives/irobot-glance.jpg

Ah, I see you also use Microsoft Excel (Microsoft Excel fails math test)

Depends on how you define freedom I guess... Are these examples of free speech? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morse_v._Frederick http://graphic.pepperdine.edu/perspectives/2007/2007-09-27-Leonard.htm http://www.hecklerspray.com/sally-field-bleeped-for-saying-goddamn-at-the-emmys/200610097.php Would a country that truly had freedom of assembly have "free speech zones"? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_speech_zone http://baltimorechronicle.com/052704FreeSpeechZones.shtml http://www.cnn.com/2004/LAW/08/04/hilden.freespeech/ Are these signs of a government respecting the freedom of religion? http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2005/09/15/wiretap_mosques_romney_suggests/ http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/state/20070918-1624-ca-mosquesurveillance.html All of these are a lot milder than being run over by tanks, but in the U.S. things are definately moving in the wrong direction.

What exactly does wires and batteries attached to a T-shirt look like then? My first thought would be "bomb".

It looks like a homemade version of a raver's blinking lights toy.

If your first thought is "bomb", if you're in such a constant state of fear, then the terrorists have won.

- That summary is superb. The editors are douchebags.

Here's a pretty good photo of it:

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/city_region/breaking_news/2007/09/mit_student_arr.html?p1=MEWell_Pos3

That is a star made up out of green LEDs. I see precious little that could look like C4.

Either way, the police had a suspicious device reported and responded. That's good. They told her to freeze and not move, and she complied. That's good. Later on, they determined the device was harmless, and (to me) it appears that she was just dumb, but there was no intent. To have a hoax device, you must intend for it to be a hoax.

The problem I have is when the prosecutor steps in and tries to say there was malicious intent. This ought to be a cakewalk for any decent lawyer; I suspect the charges will be dropped in a month or two (after the city spends thousands of dollars on it, of course).

Waste of time, waste of news, waste of taxpayer money.

How the heck do you mistake this for a bomb?

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/city_region/breaking_news/2007/09/mit_student_arr.html?p1=MEWell_Pos3

It's one thing to make a fake bomb, but this doesn't look anything like a bomb. She didn't even attempt go through security, she just arrived at the airport. What kind of society is afraid of wires?

A bomb?

Really??

http://www.boston.com/sports/baseball/redsox/articles/2004/10/22/postgame_police_projectile_kills_an_emerson_student/

"An Emerson College junior, drawn to Fenway Park to toast the first Red Sox pennant in 18 years, was killed yesterday, shot in the eye by a projectile fired by police..."

They can't build wind farms in populated areas. The constant spray of chopped up bird carcasses is a health hazard.

Probably what should be done is a place like Cape Cod should be declared a 'sacrifice area' and all buildings should be vacated and leveled, and wind farms built on it.

That's the nice thing about virtual companies. There's really no one to "bypass" (except maybe the CEO and there's nothing one can do about that). Plus it's easier to offer services to other, traditional and new.

The reasons behind the recent spate of problems with a technology invented by Sony more than a decade ago are complex and varied,

But Don Sadoway, a professor of Materials Chemistry at MIT who is an expert in advanced battery technologies, worries about off-shoring of a chemistry he asserts "needs to be treated with respect."

"I have 100% confidence in the Japanese battery manufacturers," he says. "And my guess is that they never had the problems they're seeing now when the same batteries were manufactured from start to finish in Japan."

• Here is a famous YouTube video of a Chery subcompact spectacularly failing a crash test in 2005.
  
• And another of the 2007 sedan Brilliance BS6 doing the same.
  
• A China Airlines jet blows up, and company officials paint the logo off of the wreckage.
  

Red Square is located just outside the Kremlin, along it's Eastern wall. In the late 15th Century, people came to this square, called Torg or Market Square, to purchase food, livestock, or other wares. By the late 16th Century, it was renamed Trinity Square, and served as the main entrance to the Kremlin. It got the name Krasnaya Ploschad (Red Square) in 17th Century. In this sense Krasnaya (Red) means beautiful. The Pokrovsky (St. Basil's the Blessed) Cathedral, the Lenin's Mausoleum and the State History Museum are located on Red Square.

Hotel-Rates.com page for Maxima Irbis hotel in Moscow

This sites for a bell foundry in Russia states "Krasny" means "red", and "red" means "beautiful".

Photo tour of Moscow, in which the phrase "Red Square (meaning beautiful square in Russian)" is written.

Another tourist of Moscow reports, "Our first stop is St Basil's Cathedral at the end of Red Square. In Russian, it is Krasne square meaning red or beautiful."

Russian traditional costume seller says, "The word "krasnoye" meaning "red" became identified in the people's minds with "prekrasno-ye" meaning "beautiful". Moscow's most beautiful central square is called "Krasnaya Ploshchad" (Red Square)."

You may notice that Red Square isn't really red...it is paved with black and grey stones. In the Russian language, "Krasny"("red") also meant "beautiful", so "Krasnaya Ploschad" can also be translated as "Beautiful Square". The translation "Red Square" which is now used, was established in the 20th century.

talks about the modern link that still exists between "red" and "beauty"

Eduard Shevardnadze relays to the US State Department Chief of Protocol that krasny can mean "beautiful" as well as "red" -- in 1987.

Russia

Has a conflict of interest in the case with Thomas Barnett involved.

Judge Kollar-Kotelly needs to view any DOJ testimony with skepticism.

The official, Assistant Attorney General Thomas O. Barnett, had until 2004 been a top antitrust partner at Covington & Burlington, the law firm that has represented Microsoft in several antitrust disputes.
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/artic les/2007/06/10/microsoft_finds_defender_in_us_just ice_department/

Enjoy,

Yesterday, some of Bush's defenders pointed out on conservative websites that the Clinton administration had authorized a search of the home of Aldrich Ames, a suspected Soviet spy, without a warrant in 1993.

But legal specialists said the Ames case is irrelevant because it involved a physical search of Ames's home, and the 1978 law did not require warrants for physical searches. The year after the Ames search, 1994, the law was amended to require warrants for physical searches and wiretaps.

And if those corporate executives push faulty designs or pressure bad descisions? Mansluaghter charges are being saught in connection with the Power Fasteners company after it was found they knowingly ignored issues with epoxy based fasteners that later led to a woman's death in the Boston Harbor tunnel. Other companies involved in this and massive cost overruns and poor design descisions (major leakage in tunnel), such as Bechtel and Modern Continental Construction, have seemingly gotten off the hook.

You really don't want to do it this way anyway:
Those are the roofs. Added up, they might add up to Arizona. Not likely though. Now imagine that you wanted to cover up Arizona with big pieces of paper, the whole state. I want you to imagine the scale of a project like that with just paper. Now I want you to reflect on the difficulty inherent with replacing all of that paper with silicon semiconductors that currently require clean rooms for manufacture.

Much better solutions are coming online. Like hydrogen-producing algae beds. Which solves half of the problem - how to produce a basic energy source. It's distributable too - plants are much better at this whole photosynthesis thing than any solar cell we've come up with, and it'd work in some pretty dark and gloomy conditions (Washington state).

The other half of the problem is how to move energy around without it being wasted so much, and how to store it. Electricity is the obvious mechanism for moving it around - we've got the infrastructure there. But how to store it?

Carbon nanotube batteries/ultra capacitors are the way to go here. If the technology comes along as expected, it could mean a revolution in the way we use energy. Forget generators, or gas tanks, or anything like that - just put these puppies everywhere. In cars. In your house. Your car needs filling up? Go to the "gas" station and charge it up right there in seconds. Or have a mechanical arm that just swaps the battery out for a fresh one.

The reason I like this plan?

The algae beds are a great way to produce hydrogen. Which is a great way to fuel fusion reactors or other kinds of engines. You don't need to ship the hydrogen anywhere to use it - you can produce it at the site it's going to be used. You don't need to worry about making vehicles that burn the hydrogen as fuels or the safety concerns related to that - all of your energy gets stored in the carbon nanotube batteries.

If I had a big chunk o' money to bet with, I'd be putting all my money on this right now as being the most likely eventual energy solution.

Or traffic wind generators? That one takes the cake. If someone can't grasp why traffic wind generators are a moronic idea, that person can't handle the real world. Transferring energy from wind to turn generators will slow the air. If the air is slowed, it makes the cars work harder to maintain speed. If the cars are working harder, they burn more fuel. See where this is headed?

Traffic wind generators aren't a bad idea. The vehicles are going to displace air anyway - whether you're taking energy from it or not. If the generators are far enough away from the vehicles, the vehicles are still doing as much work as they were before, but the disturbance they're creating won't just bleed off - it'll be usable.

My hunch would be (I've not done the math, and frankly fluid dynamics gives me the heebie jeebies - damn you, Navier Stokes) that if a lane of traffic is 4m wide, a 16m wide semicircular "capture" zone of fans will grab the wind without affecting the pressure that the vehicle in the middle is working against too much. It'll be like a soliton wave around the car.

An alternative, probably better idea though, is to use something similar to supercavitation on the vehicles to minimize their drag instead of trying to reclaim the energy from it. I can't remember the name used to describe the process in air, but it involves creating vortices at the leading edge of the vehicle to reduce the drag on it. Some experiments on semi trucks and planes were showing great promise at one point, but I can't dig up any references right now.

So says Liberal Harvard Professor: story from Boston Globe : "The downside of diversity"

The greater the diversity in a community, the fewer people vote and the less they volunteer, the less they give to charity and work on community projects

A Crowd Farm in Boston's South Station railway terminal would work like this: A responsive sub-flooring system made up of blocks that depress slightly under the force of human steps

I have a better idea. Why not make a system that generates energy under the force of collapsing Big Dig tunnel sections?

I don't have a problem with our system of government; it's flawed, but nobody has come up with a better system yet....

Thanks for making my point. Why do you say it's flawed? And since when is it somebody else's responsibility to come up with a better system?? Either way, you are a fine display of the cause, seeing as that you have no problem because the problems it does have don't affect you personally. So why should you care, or even notice? As long as you are on the right end of the big stick, everything is hunky-dory, right? I mean, for example, you're not the one who spent 30 years in prison for a murder you didn't commit. So hey, no problem. I thank you for your profound revelation. I shall refer to it often.

Initial tests in Boston indicate positive results in disorienting entire cities.

Maybe this might interest you, maybe not. I know you won't believe that, despite the slap on the wrist here, this is standard operating procedure, but it is. I suppose you're going to try to convince me otherwise, but you can bet there are quite a few thousand people being held under similar circumstances, and only by the luck of the draw would anybody be able to prove it. It took over forty years in this case. Only time will bear me out. But history already has, and you can sit and nitpick over specific transgressions not repeating themselves, but the motivation continues unabated. So, yeah, right, we might not invade Vietnam again, but that didn't stop us from doing the exact same thing to Iraq. Tomorrow Iran, the day after, Mexico. Chile is on our side now, so next it was Nicaragua, or El Salvador, or Grenada. Nope, the government is inherently corrupt simply because nobody will vote the crooks out. It's a display of voter corruption, who is looking for a bigger piece of the action for themselves. The parties of Tea-pot Dome, Railroad scandals, Vietnam, Watergate, Iran/Contra(with Pablo and Manny), the Middle east fiasco(going back 60 years now), Enron, Savings and Loan, 9/11, El Qaida(sp), Saddam, the Shah, Pinochet, Somoza, prohibition(past and present) with all its tidy profits, Afganistan (with its nice opium profits that you will never believe the government is involved in, despite the Iran/Contra thing), etc, etc, etc, still has its iron grip on the power and on your minds. Never weakening for even a micro-second. The government has absolutely no reason to clean up its act. The fact of the matter is that you cannot move this kind of money without attracting all sorts of scavengers and scoundrels. It's like a carcass in the Savanna. They come from all around. It's all good, man. You keep the faith, and believe what they tell you on the TeeVee. Their evidence looks so much more convincing when the pretty little news anchors wiggles her butt in front of all those plots and graphs showing how well off you are. Doesn't matter if it's true, it just has to look true. And big flashy banners definitely look true, so, true it must be, because the government says so. Excuse me if I'm not impressed. Once I get a big fancy studio, I'll be able to produce convincing evidence, just like they do. In the meantime do your own damn research. The evidence is sitting there, waiting for you to notice. Here's a good place to start while still barely scratching the surface. Have fun.

Here's a story: The original classic painting "Spirit of '76", originally created by Willard in the 1860's, is owned by the town of Marblehead. According to this article, the town has recently attempted to control copies of this work (see http://www.boston.com/ae/theater_arts/articles/200 7/04/13/town_holds_on_to_spirit/)

Of course the town can control access to the original, physical work, and even prevent cameras in the building where it is located. But it seems to me that the original image is in the public domain, and therefore any faithful copy may be published without need for permission from anyone.

Someone from Marblehead - feel free to comment.

The game looks quite innovative (surpised that EA has a hand in that) and I really believe that this game will change the way people think about games. After all, Harmonix started as a research group in MIT's Media Lab where they're trying to do stuff like bridge the gap between Second Life and real life. However, I don't think the game will be as successful as it should be.

My prediction is that the game will be released, but it won't be as popular as everyone hopes because of the high entry cost. Sure, I would love to be able to play my favorite music sim with people across the world, but why should I shell out $50-$80 for an electronic drum set or a microphone or a different guitar (because I doubt the SG controller from Guitar Hero will work on this) when I already paid $50 for a Guitar Hero controller that works just fine on Guitar Hero? The casual gamer doesn't want to spend needless amounts of money on peripherals every time you release a new game. Then on top of it, they expect you to pay even more money for extra songs. I don't like this business model and I hope they do something to fix it. Until then, I'll stick to GH3.

I don't see any Pepsi logos on the police cruisers yet, but hey, I wouldn't rule it out as a possibility!

Don't worry - Massachusetts is leading the way on that front.

The DOJ seems to enjoy doing this kind of thing. Another example of trickle-down incompetence.

"Theoretically the U.S. economy has grown quite a bit since then. Where did it go?"

Mostly to people in the top 1%.
http://www.boston.com/business/globe/articles/2007 /03/29/income_inequality_gulf_widens_in_2005/

Massachusetts royally screwed up car insurance too, long ago.
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion /editorials/articles/2006/01/05/real_insurance_ref orm/

Not just California

Is it true that the state of Massachusetts is using large tarps to cover accidents so there would less rubbernecking", hence less accidents?
According to an AP story from February 23, The Massachusetts Highway Department is indeed using "large portable screens" to obstruct drivers' views of accident sites and decrease rubbernecking. The state has nearly 30 of these tarps, seven feet tall and up to 30 feet wide. The screens are assembled in five to 10 minutes, and, according to the Highway Department, have been used in about 15 accidents since their implementation in December of last year. The total cost for the current amount of screening equipment is just under $38,000. "Most of our feedback has shown they've been pretty effective," James Carlyle, a spokesperson for the Highway Department, told The Stamford Advocate. "It's no silver bullet for congestion, but it's been helping."
Last Updated: 25 Apr 2005

February 23, 2005 Here's an article from the Boston Globe
It says they were assembled in house & (then Governer) Mitt Romney brought the idea to their attention. Each set of screens costs $1,300 bucks, which, considering their benefits, seems cheap enough to me.

I'll try not to hyperventilate if you work on your reading comprehension skills. Even the limited facts in the blog that this story links to, steaming pile of tripe that it is, indicate only that the FBI is offering to give information to universities, and is asking for universities to report suspicious behavior.

Or, if it wouldn't offend you to seek out facts that may not flatter your opinions quite as much as the blog does, you might take a look at the original article. But then you might realize that the FBI is only asking that university safeguard their sensitive research, and that the guidelines the blogger found somewhere don't come into this at all. The blogger just pulled the whole 'the FBI is out to get you' angle out of his or her ass, and from what I'm seeing here got exactly the reaction he or she hoped for from people so eager to see evil everywhere that they can't be bothered to think for themselves.

There is a major flaw in your argument. It turns out that conservatives give more of *their own money* to the poor than liberals. It has been shown time and again. The difference is that liberals want to give *other people's money* to the poor so they can buy votes and pretend to be compassionate. If they really cared for the poor, they would give their own personal money, not try to pass laws that redistributes money from everyone else.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/04/11/opinion/ main1489914.shtml
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/articles/20 06/12/10/who_gives/

-David

regardless of "need", it is a profit stream and Dell is handing that off to Canonical for Ubuntu based systems and refuses to sell businesses these systems.

BTW, Dell supports RedHat on certain servers and just added plans for Suse Linux. See link below:
http://www.boston.com/business/technology/articles /2007/05/07/dell_plan_aids_novell_effort_with_micr osoft/

If anything, the Dell sales rep should have pointed the purchaser to their RedHat systems or, as I stated previously in another thread, Dell should sell to anybody as long as they maintain a diag partition on the system for HARDWARE support. They could also only provide hardware support after an RMA number from Canonical which states it's not a software issue or something like that. There were/are solutions if Dell wanted to sell as many of these PCs as they possible can, but, I believe there are restrictions inplace via Microsoft contracts or threats.

FYI, I was quite disbelieving of Dell selling any desktop based PC with any version of Linux installed and the Ubuntu deal had me wondering what was up. Now it's becoming clearer that they are restricting the market to consumers and therefore seriously limiting their sales of these systems. IMO.

LoB

"Higher-than-expected tax receipts and the steadily growing economy have combined to produce an improved picture for the federal budget deficit, congressional analysts said yesterday." - Federal budget deficit expected to shrink 7/8/2005

"The Treasury Department reported Monday that the deficit for the budget year that began Oct. 1 totals $42.2 billion, down 57.2% from the same period a year ago." - Federal deficit shrinks due to record tax collections
2/12/2007

"The Treasury Department said that the deficit through May totaled $148.5 billion, down 34.6 percent from the same period a year ago." - Federal Deficit Continues To Drop 6/12/2007

Of course the fact that the budget deficit is shrinking as revenues go up doesn't fit very well with people's argument that the tax cuts should be rescinded, so they put their fingers in their ears and keep claiming otherwise...

The economy is booming. The Federal government is making more money than it's ever made before. When you let people keep their money, they use it to make more money. If not for them, then for someone else.

Oh, and if that doesn't work, promise to remodel his house for him, half-price. That'll be sure to get him on board. You'd probably have him out there in his Hulk Tie championing it. And if that doesn't do it, make a donation to the Ted Stevens Foundation (a "nonpartisan, nonpolitical foundation" whose sole purpose is to help inform the public about Ted).

> EU Considering Regulating Sale of Violent Games

WTF? They want to regulate games, while at the same time selling weapons willy nilly to anyone with the cash to pay for them (no questions asked)? The US and Russia leads the world arms trade, but runners up have suspiciously European-sounding country names:

http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,2144,2605823,0 0.html

I think this is what we call a Cluster of Clusterbombers:

http://apps.sipri.org/milap/world_aprod_map.html
http://www.sipri.org/contents/milap/milex/aprod/si pridata.html

Some of these sales are self-defense, but a lot of it feeds third-world conflicts:
http://www.boston.com/news/world/articles/2006/11/ 13/us_is_top_purveyor_on_weapons_sales_list/

1. Why would a President concentrate so much power into the position of the President less than a year before he is supposed to leave office? It is clear that there is absolutely no chance of Bush regaining his presidency in a free and fair election and neither is he standing for election. So why Bonus is Bush doing this?
2. Why does he specifically bring in directives which hand over power to the Homeland Security and not to the congress in times of catastrophe? Read this: http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/06/01/america/ NA-GEN-US-Bush-Cheney-Secrecy.php?page=1
3. Why is Bush opting to use "signed statements" as the way to subvert the bills which have been passed? When the president does not approve of a bill, he has the option of vetoing the bill and it will go back to the house for discussions. However, Bush has opted to use a "signed statement" which is just a statement appended to the bill which he signs off on. This statement can be used to completely change the meaning and purpose of the bill - and this does not come up for review. This is not an action of a stupid person - this is the action of someone who clearly understands the process by which bills will be discussed in the house; so he has opted to use a mechanism which can get around this process and allow him the leeway he wants. This is a cunning move and Bush is the *ONLY* person other than Thomas Jefferson to never veto a bill.
   
   http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2006/04 /30/bush_challenges_hundreds_of_laws/
4. Why a private army? and why is Bush unwilling to release details on the number of people deployed from these private armies (Blackwater etc)? Why are private armies being deployed within the continental US when there are specific directives against such a deployment? Why is he preventing even the law enforcement from having any jurisdiction over these private armies? Did you know that during the Katrina relief, Blackwater was allowed to go in huge numbers with assault rifles when ordinary citizens were being disarmed by the administration? Why was Blackwater used during this crisis in the first place since civilian law enforcement and other search and rescue teams were available?
   
   http://www.thenation.com/doc/20070528/scahill
5. MOST IMPORTANTLY: Why are the Democrats not raising this issue? Why do they seem so ineffective? One hint - It is clear that it is not just the Republicans who are privy in this game, but it appears that the Democrats are equally complicit.
   
   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joint_Inquiry_into_In telligence_Community_Activities_before_and_after_t he_Terrorist_Attacks_of_September_11%2C_2001
   
   Senator Bob Graham (Democrat) was one of the primary movers behind the 911 commission. and he and Porter Goss (Republican - who later on headed the CIA) were the people who cleared Bush of any prior knowledge of the 911 event. But these are the same people who sat in for a meeting with the Head of the Pakistani ISI days prior to the 911 attack and who knew that the ISI were funding the perpetrators of the attack.
   
   http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Front_Page/FD08Aa01.h tml
   
   And

Seems like there is an argument that we do not need hyoomans in space for the things we send them into space to do. If this argument is indeed valid, NASA can partner with Branson or some of the other space travel companies for funding and send robots to space. Also if political backing for NASA does actually come from the public's desire to see astronauts sent to space (as the article claims), once space tourists start getting sent regularly (by Branson or others), this charm will wear off since most of the people still engaged in the star wars wouldn;t be able to tell the difference between a NASA mission and GGW in Space...Actually, if you think about it, maybe NASA is pushing Putin and Bush to re-ignite the Cold war to get people to support spending on manned missions...hehehe

$265m (cost of sending Mars rover) is about the same as what MIT or Georgia Tech spend on research every year. If some form of private research spending interest comes along, I am sure NASA can shape up to be a viable commercial alternative, where it starts doing real research so that stuff in space gets discovered and people stop caring if "OMG!WESENT8PEOPLETOSPACESTFUCOMMIEBASTARDS!!"
Cheers!

Rather have my daughter viewing porn and understanding that it's not real and she doesn't have to be treated like that , then have her gearing up to go blow 5 guys in a school locker room after a game.
http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2005/02/ 20/milton_academy_rocked_by_expulsions/

Id rather have my son view porn then go banging every girl he can without a condom and possibly losing his chance at life. Or better yet him going freaking nuts like they did in Colombine.

When my kids ask about sex I tell them the straight up honest truth. You can only protect your kids so much , you have to let them live their lives and hope you tough them well enough to make good decisions through out their lives. You can protect the children only so long , you need to teach them from a young age to think of the consequences of their actions.

Anything other then being a good parent is just plain and utter garbage.

Daughter 12 and Son 10

There's a flipside to the issue of having no unused frequencies. Often, when in city traffic, these signals bleed into nearby cars, covering up the radio station whose frequency they are using. I haven't heard of this explicitly happening with iPod transmitters, but some of XM's satellite receivers are known to do this. http://www.boston.com/business/personaltech/articl es/2006/12/21/getting_howard_stern_off_npr/ I DJ at one of the stations experiencing this problem (http://wmbr.org/, not an NPR-affiliate) and it's disappointing when you get calls from would-be listeners who are getting Howard Stern instead of you.

Story on Bucci and the website

I get too much work from the .NET realm to ever diss Microsoft, because some of their stuff works quite well and saves me quite a bit of time. Some other products... forget it. I think however that when a corporation takes on more than (arbitrary number) say 40 workers, it becomes evil. And now Microsoft has fallen into that evil, and is joining with the empire that emits more greenhouse gasses than the USA, spies on our military, threatens minorities, pollutes recklessly, threatens the US with nuclear weapons, and is building up its military to challenge the US and Europe. Is the new evil empire a Microsoft-China alliance?

Shell chairman Sir Philip Watts risks stirring up a controversy in America today when he calls for global warming sceptics to get off the fence and accept that action needs to be taken "before it is too late". - see http://www.guardian.co.uk/climatechange/story/0,12 374,912530,00.html

In a Stanford University address, BP's chief executive John Browne said the United States together with Britain, China and other heavily industrialized nations need to create an "international climate agency" to reduce pollution linked to global climate change. (Look it up on google, and select the cache, there is registration involved otherwise)

Shell CEO John Hofmeister "It's a waste of time to debate it," he said. "Policymakers have a responsibility to address it. The nation needs a public policy. We'll adjust." - http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14733060/

Bush would outline steps the government will take to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/artic les/2007/01/22/bush_set_to_tackle_global_warming/

Just the typical people you'd expect to be convinced by hippies. Stupid oil executives want us to believe in global warming so that they look good to their hippie friends. And that Bush guy just wants to court support from his hippie constituency.

Cambridge and MIT are already building a FREE public access Wi-Fi system called roofnet.

They started long
http://pdos.csail.mit.edu/roofnet/doku.php

Interestingly harvard has stated plans to join roofnet.
http://www.boston.com/business/technology/articles /2006/02/02/cambridge_mit_plan_citywide_wifi/

The notion that a few weather sensors spead out over a tiny tiny tiny land area the size of cambridge MA somheow represents something significant is pathetic. That someone actually expended the effort and column space to put this in an IT Journal aimed at corporate officer level management, (CIO's) is simply incredible.

" By Ben Ames" Watch this name folks. He's bound to produce more boners in the future.

Coburn put the bill on hold because it contains an exception allowing discrimination based on genetic information from embryos and fetuses, but apparently there's an amendment that is hoped make the bill acceptable to Coburn. [1]

China can't stop an orbital nuclear attack, or even ICBMs or sub-launched nukes.

China has no Navy - not one that can survive a handful of US subs. Our cruisers can take them out from beyond visual range.

** That's why they haven't even invaded little baby Taiwan. **

We know where all their major production factories are and can be done with them with a handful of strike bombers that they can't even see, much less shoot down. Failing that we can hit them from orbit.

What is more likely is that China, if sufficiently provoked, will fsck us up economically. But they'll play that card ONCE. That will bring the offshoring universe crashing down as Americans learn how vulnerable it makes us. We'll not make that mistake twice and China will lose its biggest customer. We'll produce our own stuff from then on and China will choke and asphyxiate and get sick and die in its own industrial filth.

We could move in and take over, although the pollution clean-up and dead body disposal might make that unfeasible for decades. :)

Oh and for those stupid enough to argue with me:
http://www.boston.com/news/world/asia/articles/200 6/06/06/pollution_problems_cost_china_over_200b_a_ year/
http://www.forbes.com/logistics/2006/03/21/america s-most-polluted-cities-cx_rm_0321pollute.html
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/english/doc/2006-01/1 1/content_511271.htm
http://www.dbc.uci.edu/~sustain/suscoasts/krismin. html