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Here's your 200 million:

http://www.boston.com/news/world/asia/articles/200 5/01/08/china_plans_to_ban_selective_abortion_over _gender?mode=PF

Now here's a more conservative estimate:
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2002/06/19/chin a-usat.htm (40 million baby girls destroyed)

That's only 3 times worse than the # of Jews killed in Germany.

Now you're haggling with me over the magnitude of how much worse China is than Germany.... not whether or not it is.

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/articles/20 06/08/27/no_win/?page=full

First, terminate actions that are self-evidently counterproductive, above all by extricating ourselves in an orderly way from Iraq.

Second, revive in modified form the Cold War principles of containment and deterrence, incorporating explicit security guarantees for Israel, much as the United States has long guaranteed the security of Europe, Japan, and South Korea.

Third, initiate a new Manhattan Project to develop alternative sources of energy, thereby increasing US freedom of action and reducing the flow of wealth to the Persian Gulf, wealth that ends up subsidizing the Islamist cause.

Fourth, through police action, in collaboration with our allies, redouble efforts to dismantle the organizations comprising the radical Islamist network.

Fifth, patiently nurture liberalizing tendencies within the Islamic world, not by preaching or threats of regime change, but by demonstrating at home and inviting Muslims abroad to witness, the manifest advantages of freedom and democracy.

This alternative strategy will also entail costly exertions over a long period of time. Unlike the current ``war on terror," however, it promises to be affordable and sustainable, while holding out the prospect of delivering success in the long run.

Video news releases (VNRs, often referred to as fake TV news) are video clips that are indistinguishable from traditional news clips and are sometimes screened unedited by television stations without the identification of the original producers or sponsors, who are commonly corporations, government agencies, or non-governmental organizations.

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Video_n ews_releases

~~~~~
Shortly before last year's Super Bowl, local news stations across the country aired a story by Mike Morris describing plans for a new White House ad campaign on the dangers of drug abuse.

What viewers did not know was that Morris is not a journalist and his ''report" was produced by the government, actions which constituted illegal ''covert propaganda," according to an investigation by the Government Accountability Office.

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2005/01 /07/bush_team_scolded_for_disguised_tv_report/

~~~~~
The "real" news show aren't doing a very good job of being informational, either.

http://www.boston.com/business/globe/articles/2006 /06/15/study_us_tech_sector_isnt_recouping_job_los ses?mode=PF

Study: US tech sector isn't recouping job losses

By Bloomberg News | June 15, 2006

Less than a quarter of the US technology jobs lost earlier this decade have been recovered in the past two years, according to a labor union's study.

Technology workers lost 395,600 jobs in the three years ended in March 2004, according to the report released yesterday by the Center for Urban Economic Development at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Through February, 88,600 have been recouped, according to the survey, which was conducted for the Washington Alliance of Technology Workers, or WashTech.

The recovery has been ``jobless," Seattle-based WashTech said in a statement.

Companies kept firing workers or shutting down well past the official November 2001 end of the US recession, the union said. The pace of hiring picked up in the final five months of the survey period, according to the study.

``It is far too soon to celebrate a strong recovery," Nik Theodore, a University of Illinois professor and one of the study's co-authors, said in the statement. ``Moreover the jobs impact of offshoring is considerable."

WashTech, an affiliate of the Communications Workers of America, has been critical of plans by companies such as Hewlett-Packard Co., the world's largest printer maker, and International Business Machines Corp., the biggest provider of computer services, to cut jobs and hire workers overseas.

Professionals in Seattle and San Francisco have fared better than those in Boston, Chicago, Dallas, and San Jose, Calif., which have seen only modest recovery.

Employment in Los Angeles ``continues to fall significantly," the study said.

``Although IT industry employment is finally recovering, the current period is characterized by slow and faltering growth," according to the report.

``For workers in this industry, employment prospects have improved somewhat, though many have been unable to secure jobs that allow them to use the full range of their skills and expertise," it said.

Hiring for computer and data-processing grew at the second-fastest rate of all industries in the United States during the 1990s, adding more than one million jobs, according to the report.

Actually, a good portion of the christian fundamentalists should be considered fascists. Their stated goal is often times to have a christian government (see abortion), like the United States of America. I would argue that this is definately a fascist government. Fascists typically are authoritarian (warrentless wiretaps? torture? signing statements? ), highly nationalistic (us vs. them, with us or against us, axis of evil, immigration), and anti-communist (duh)

"The software can avoid abuse of discretionary power of judges as a result of corruption or insufficient training," the paper quoted Zichuan District Court chief judge, Wang Hongmei, as saying.

http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/art icles/2006/08/26/unusual_sentence_in_racial_attack /

The scion of a prominent North Shore family avoided jail time yesterday for beating two black teenagers with a metal baton in 2002, but a judge imposed unusual consciousness-raising conditions on the young man for what prosecutors had called a racially motivated assault.

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/14378978/

A judge decided two high school athletes can complete the football season this fall before they serve 60-day jail sentences for a car crash caused by a decoy deer placed in a country road. Two teens were injured.

Judges, you don't want to be replaced by golf carts^W^W computers? Then start doing your job.

If you get your news from places in addition to Slashdot, you might have read something a little different:

Panel OK's 2 rival wiretapping bills

There are two bills, almost diametrically opposed, that they sent forward. Isn't the committee there just to screen out bills and send some forward to be further discussed? Sending two opposing bills forward seems like the right thing to do, so the Senate can debate the merits of each and pass one or merge the two together.

--trb

Anyone remember this? http://www.boston.com/business/articles/2005/03/08 /harvard_rejects_119_accused_of_hacking_1110274403 / Seems like the media supported the concept that it was hacking. Given, it required more work than in this case, but it was still a case of freely accessible URL.

...but there wasn't much about it on the news (As usual.)

Ohio Creates 'Pre-Crime' Sex Offender Registry


In a scene right out of Spielberg's vision of Philip K. Dick's classic short story the state of Ohio has established a pre-crime registry for sex offenders--even if they've never been charged with a crime!

"The person's name, address, and photograph would be placed on a new Internet database and the person would be subjected to the same registration and community notification requirements and restrictions on where he could live."

I can't wait to see how this is going to affect the current trend that has divorcing women making false accusations against their husbands during the custody phase of proceedings! Then there's the way this (being that it is a civil matter) can be expanded to encompass so many other things...

Could this new registry be away for the homophobic to reverse the trends towards civil rights homosexuals have achieved in recent years? What about the affect this can have on children engaged in normal sex play for their ages? I'm reminded of Ryan Zylstra, Leah DuBuc, Laura M. Wilcox, Genarlow Wilson and other teenagers and children who have had their lives ruined by this type of hysteria and the lack of due process that comes with it. And who can forget the vigilantes who murder people they find on these lists? People like William Elliott, who was placed on the registry at age nineteen for having sex with his two weeks shy of sixteen year old girlfriend and thanks to the registry murdered.

Now they want a civil registry they can place people on without the benefit of a conviction or a jury trial? Next thing you know they'll be pushing for a pink triangle on your ID! Oh wait... Well just remember that when you give up your rights one by one, you're doing it for the children....

I'm posting the original submission because I believe anyone who follows the links here will see quite clearly how bad this is even beyond the usual Constitutional violations. This is a law that will harm the very same people it purports to protect!

--I*Love*Green*Olives

That's easy. Remember when Nancy Pelosi and Hillary Clinton were talking about a big tent policy in the Democratic Party over abortion?

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2004/12 /19/democrats_eye_softer_image_on_abortion/

That's because there's a massive groundswell of pro-life liberals in the Democratic Party about to break through, politically.

Also see: Robert Casey Jr. and his present handing of Rick Santorum's hiney to him on what may well be a silver platter this election season (unless, that is, Casey Jr gets caught with an intern).

Nuclear is safe. You're touting Chernobyl as an example of how unsafe nuclear power is? Get real. Chernobyl is an example of stuidity of mankind in its most extreme.

2nd nuclear reactor shut down in Sweden

By Katarina Kratovac, Associated Press Writer | August 3, 2006

STOCKHOLM, Sweden --Swedish nuclear authorities held an emergency meeting Thursday after two reactors were shut down at a plant in the southeast of the country.

The plant in Oskarshamn, about 250 kilometers (150 miles) south of the capital, Stockholm, shut down two of its three reactors late Wednesday after the company running the plant reported that "safety there could not be guaranteed."

The decision followed an incident last week at another nuclear plant in Sweden, in Forsmark, where backup generators malfunctioned during a power outage, forcing a shutdown of one of its reactors, said Anders Bredfell, a spokesman for the Swedish nuclear authority, SKI.

Bredfell said the reactors would remain shut until authorities determine whether the plant's backup generators could malfunction in the same way as at Forsmark.

Meanwhile, Greenpeace in Sweden asked the government to consider shutting down all reactors in the country and probe whether there may be a generic fault in their backup battery systems, the group's representative Martina Krueger said.

The Oskarshamn plant supplies about 10 percent of the electricity used in Sweden. The reactors there were commissioned in 1972 and were Sweden's first commercial nuclear power unit.

Anders Osteberg, spokesman for the OKG company running the Oskarshamn plant, said the shutdown was costing it 10 million kroner (US$1.39 million) a day, but that it had to take that setback because its "obligation is to have highest safety measures in place."

Krueger said the incident in Forsmark, 75 kilometers (46 miles) north of Stockholm, was "serious" because it showed that a "meltdown" could easily happen.

"When the generators could not kick in for emergency cooling, authorities realized there might be a problem in the battery system and that it might be generic to all reactors in the country," Krueger said.

Forsmark supplies one sixth of Sweden's electricity.

After the shutdowns at Oskarshamn and Forsmark, five of Sweden's existing 10 nuclear reactors remained open. Another reactor at Forsmark and one at the Ringhals plant had been closed earlier for annual maintenance.

Urban Bergstrom, an analyst for the Swedish Energy Agency, said the country is unlikely to run low on energy because it relies heavily on hydropower during the summer.

But if the shutdowns stretched into winter, that could "cause big problems," he said.

True, but remember this is a phased rollout. The ODF plug-ins should be limited to people with disabilities. In the private sector I really would'nt care, however as a resident of MA, I think differently. You and I both know that VERY few people will switch to OO.org if MS Office is allowed to stay. I want Office removed from the default install of MA government machines. Maybe just give excel, etc to people who REALLY need it. That software is expensive, and the costs for ten or hundreds of thousands of site-licensed machines is enourmous. MA is a cash strapped right now. That money is better spent fixing their collapsing tunnel system.

That's not true; Bush thinks he is above the law. And even if he did really think he was within his rights, he'd still be wrong.

Besides, your statement doesn't contradict what I said anyway, because I was speaking in general terms rather than specifically about the Bush Administration.

On the flip side, Team OS/2's lack of structure meant that it was vulnerable. Various journalists have documented a "dirty tricks" campaign by Microsoft.[citation needed] Online, numerous individuals (nicknamed "Microsoft Munchkins" by John C. Dvorak[citation needed]) used pseudonyms to attack OS/2 and manipulate online discussions. Whittle was the target of a vicious character assassination campaign, and anyone friendly to OS/2 faced numerous vociferous attacks as well.[citation needed] Some journalists who were less than enthusiastic about OS/2 received death threats and other nasty e-mail from numerous sources, always identified in taglines as "Team OS/2".[citation needed] Ultimately, at least some of Microsoft's efforts were exposed on Will Zachmann's Canopus forum on CompuServe, where the owner of one particular account, ostensibly belonging to "Steve Barkto", (who had been attacking OS/2, David Barnes, Whittle, and other OS/2 fans) was discovered to be funded by the credit card of a high-level Microsoft employee / evangelist who had also been active in the forums.[citation needed] James Fallows, a nationally-renowned journalist, even weighed in to state that the stylistic fingerprint found in the Barkto posts were almost certainly a match with the stylistic fingerprints in the Microsoft evangelist's postings.[citation needed] Will Zachmann sent an open letter to Steve Ballmer, futilely demanding a public investigation into the business practices of the publicly traded Microsoft.[citation needed] What is clear is that Microsoft was taking seriously the threat posed by Team OS/2 and their online and real-world activities.

Undertaking precautions when stuff three hundred people into a giant flying metal tube that will hurtle over dense population centers is not "living in fear."

Taking sensible precautions which cause minimal disruption is great. The question is taking extreme precautions, that may or may not even help - having people to sit bored for hours on end; having to put expensive (and possibly uninsurable) items into the risky hold luggage; overloading the airports with security checks so that many people miss their flights, and many flights are cancelled (Heathrow Airport say these checks are unsustainable and are now going to have to cancel 20% of flights until this changes; also this may mean the end of "cheap" airline travel - http://www.boston.com/business/articles/2006/08/14 /terror_spells_trouble_for_cheap_travel/ ).

At this level of "precautions", it's worth weighing the loss caused, against the risk from terrorism.

It's easy to say "anything's worth it to save the risk of one life" - but that's actually not true. If people were willing to give up things in order to avoid the risk, you can do that already by not getting on a plane.

Yes, but Democrats tend to see the entire Republican Party as too close to President Bush, also.

Does that surprise you? Have they done something I'm unaware of which would make that belief incorrect? Like Lieberman, the Republican's have almost entirely abandoned their duties to oversee the executive branch. The congress during Clinton's years spent hundreds of hours investigating Clinton's Christmas card list while they don't spend more than two days worth of effort to investigate the startlingly serious allegations of abuse in Abu Ghraib (source). To put it mildly, those are some seriously fucked up priorities.

A few factoids I can contribute from having followed this in the local press:

The garage has killed two cars :(Boston Globe article) (http://www.boston.com/business/globe/articles/200 6/01/30/robodude_wheres_my_car/). I personally know a couple who had the door torn off their car by it. As far as I know, the robogarage contractor paid for the damages.

The robotic parking folks were fighting with the city from day one, when the garage was still under construction. An (openly biased) account of the city's history with the garage is here: http://mistersnitch.blogspot.com/2005/01/parking-p olitics-in-hoboken.html#5corruption. Can't claim to know enough to say for sure that source is authoritative. However, based on their track record, my inclination is to believe a good percentage of any charges of corruption or malfeasance on the city's part are justified.

At least if he'd stayed in school he would never have met his loser, dropout friends Bill, Larry and Steve, who are CONSTANTLY in trouble with the law.

And the US Attorney's office will never have a problem investigating the wrongdoing. It's not like they could be denied a security clearance by the people they're investigating or anything.

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/artic les/2006/07/19/bush_blocked_probe_ag_testifies/

Somebody mod parent +5 Fucknuckle

Now I know why Venezuela offered cheap oil to Boston - assistance for the mentally challenged. Hugo Chávez has obviously seen downtown Boston, and perhaps even the stop-and-go rotary traps.

All repeat after me:
"Line item Veto"

Repeat after me: McCain's Anti-Torture Amendment.
Repeat after me: Patriot Act Oversight Rules.

Bush already thinks he has a line-item veto in the form of signing statements. Let's not actually give him the power to further neuter Congress and expand executive power in the ways that he's been striving to do by legitimizing his acts with an actual line-item veto power.

No, I used to sort of support the line-item veto, but I'll never support it again. Even if just restricted to budgetary affairs, it's too much power.

All repeat after me:
"Line item Veto"

Repeat after me: McCain's Anti-Torture Amendment.
Repeat after me: Patriot Act Oversight Rules.

Bush already thinks he has a line-item veto in the form of signing statements. Let's not actually give him the power to further neuter Congress and expand executive power in the ways that he's been striving to do by legitimizing his acts with an actual line-item veto power.

No, I used to sort of support the line-item veto, but I'll never support it again. Even if just restricted to budgetary affairs, it's too much power.

Congo American

Well, it's Bechtel on the case, so it's not surprising the project is falling apart. They seem to spend more effort on fighting regulators and oversight than in providing actual solid engineering. Here's an article which details some of their failures; why anyone still hires them is a tribute to their lobbyists and the power of greed.

http://www.boston.com/business/articles/2006/07/24 /probes_may_test_bechtels_clout/

"If that were the case, then you'd be cooling your heels in a cell somewhere, wouldn't you?"

You can have a totalitarian state without arresting every dissenter. The very best totalitarian state will just marginalize and ignore dissent unless it reaches a level that it actually poses a threat to the power that be. We haven't seen any serious dissent even remotely threatening the power structure since about 1969. It is a convenient way to lull people into thinking they are free, if you let them rant, especially when their rants aren't actually changing anything. If dissent actually starts threatening the state that is another matter. I should point out there are thousands of people who HAVE been arrested, held without charge or access to a lawyer, and often spirited away to secret prisons to be tortured, a few are even American citizens. Most are Muslim and not American so we don't care though we don't even really know exactly who has been arrested by our new police state.

"There are things that this country has done in overreaction to 9/11 which will eventually be reverse"

You say that with such certainty..... How do you KNOW the excesses will be reversed, that is an unknowable thing. I can say with certainty that they will either be reversed, hold where they are or get worse. For them to get worse with certainly will take one more 9/11 scale event for example. The Nazi's rode the Reichstag fire a LONG way on their road to totalitarianism and no one even got killed there.

A problem with America is its exceptionalism. Americans operate under this inexplicable certainty that their elections will never be stolen, and their government will never tilt in to totalitarianism. This unfortunately makes it much easier to steal elections and to tilt in to totalitarianism.

American government would be a lot healthier if Americans were to constantly and completely distrust it. It really never has been and certainly is not now trustworthy, it is probably the least trustworthy its been since the last time the Republican were really in power and gave us McCarthyism, Nixon also did his fair share to prove it can't be trusted, Reagan too with his Iran-Contra thing. George W. makes them look like amateurs though. His use and abuse of signing statements and state secret privilege rivals the Enabling Act Adolph Hitler used to cement his totalitarian state. There are two reasons George W. has vetoed one bill in 6 years. First his party completely control power so most bills are dictated to the Republicans in Congress by Dick Cheney. But in every instance where bills don't conform to White House mandate, for example if Congress compromises to get sufficient votes to pass it, the White House signs the bill and then right after the signing ceremony quietly issues a signing statement in which the Executive Branch says it may not implement or could outright defy the law, the will of Congress and the will of the people. The Boston Globe wrote one of the first good exposes on this massive abuse of power. An ABA panel, including some serious conservatives recently issued a http://www.abanet.org/op/signingstatements/aba_fin al_signing_statements_recommendation-report_7-24-0 6.pdf
>scathing report on what a massive abuse of power it is.

For all practical purposes we are already living under the rule of a leader who issues dictates. Our Congress, and our courts, have already largely abdicated their Constitutional powers to the executive. We just need another Supreme Court appointment and its time to turn out the lights. This White House has for all practical purposes declared the few laws Congress has passed and are passing are merely suggestions and the Executive branch can ignore them at will. They are frequently using State Secret Privilege to dismantle legal chal

One of the problems with the Big Dig ceilings is that some of the engineers that designed it have never actually built anything. These guys must not have ever gotten their hands dirty on an actual jobsite. Their the guys in ties, hard hats and a slight look of confusion on an actual site. The book says epoxy has the strength, it must, use it. When the accident occured and it first came out that the bolts were epoxied in place, my first thought was "what kind of idiot makes suspended ceilings out of concrete, then tries to epoxy them in place?" Epoxy is a wonder material, but this is just so obviously not a smart use for it. No, i'm not an engineer.

I've got a running bet with anyone that'll take it that the Big Dig is closed down in less time than it took to build the beast.

My wife is a news designer for the Boston Globe, she made this graphic to explain what happened, it's pretty cool. No complaints about it being in Flash, that's what she uses:

http://www.boston.com/news/traffic/bigdig/articles /2006/07/28/bolt_system_graphic/

Enjoy,
Josh

President Bush has quietly claimed the authority to disobey more than 750 laws enacted since he took office, asserting that he has the power to set aside any statute passed by Congress when it conflicts with his interpretation of the Constitution.

[...]

Legal scholars say the scope and aggression of Bush's assertions that he can bypass laws represent a concerted effort to expand his power at the expense of Congress, upsetting the balance between the branches of government. The Constitution is clear in assigning to Congress the power to write the laws and to the president a duty ''to take care that the laws be faithfully executed." Bush, however, has repeatedly declared that he does not need to ''execute" a law he believes is unconstitutional.

[...]

Bush is the first president in modern history who has never vetoed a bill, giving Congress no chance to override his judgments. Instead, he has signed every bill that reached his desk, often inviting the legislation's sponsors to signing ceremonies at which he lavishes praise upon their work.

Then, after the media and the lawmakers have left the White House, Bush quietly files ''signing statements" -- official documents in which a president lays out his legal interpretation of a bill for the federal bureaucracy to follow when implementing the new law. The statements are recorded in the federal register.

In his signing statements, Bush has repeatedly asserted that the Constitution gives him the right to ignore numerous sections of the bills -- sometimes including provisions that were the subject of negotiations with Congress in order to get lawmakers to pass the bill. He has appended such statements to more than one of every 10 bills he has signed.

The real issue is the method in which the numbers were obtained. They were gathered without warrents or court orders, i.e. they were illegally obtained.

This bad is because 1) the President/gov't is *not* suppose to be above the law, 2) any evidence obtained from this ill gotten booty would not be usable in court, this in turn makes convicting the terrorist that much more difficult and 3) the harm done out weighs the benefits.

Wouldn't the right of free assembly(1st amendment) and the right against unreasonable searches(4th amendment) come into play when tracking calls? It's ok for the gov't to disregard those rights in the pursuit of ______?

The Constitution was written as an attempt to prevent tyranny, by chipping away at the Bill of Rights and increasing the Executive branch's power(back-boor vetos) US citizens continue to lose legal means of protecting themselves from a tyrannical government.

Here is some reading material for you:
Bruce Schenier on NSA & Bush's illegal wiretaps
Bush blocks internal probe into illegal wiretaps
An Imminent Threat (to the Constitution)

There is more involved than just tracking who you are calling. That's just the cover story to distract you while the power grab is going on.

License plate information is already used inappropriately by police officers. This past weekend, 3 Boston Police officers were arrested on a string of charges. One of them includes, "In conversations with his associates, he was proud of his ability to spot easy marks for identity theft: He ran the license plate numbers of expensive cars he encountered in routine traffic stops through police systems to get to the owners' private information. With the help of a worker at a local bank, he picked off those with the best credit ratings." (Article found at http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/art icles/2006/07/22/pulidos_club_offered_sex_drugs_pr osecutors_say/).

I can't see this information becoming more easily accessible the least bit comforting or reassuring.

Stop & Shop here in New England has exactly that. You have to prove that you could successfully use the system, including having your purchases quickly double checked by a human, before you could use the system unsupervised.

You scan as you shop. Checkout consists of placing your scanner into the holster. Relatively painless. I wish more stores had it. My local Hannaford's doesn't.

Also if you happen to have a shopper card for one grocery store it almost always works at a competing grocery store.

It is interesting how some companies work very hard to force an image of different identities on their different divisons. For example, Gillette recently tried to distance themselves from a teen body spray that they were producing. It's good for the bottom line to create (perceived) competition, as we all know.

An official with the Defense Department's Defense Medical Logistics Standard Support program told GCN when certification was granted that OpenSSL could save the program hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Just speculating here, but maybe it is due to 'competition' by a high-priced commercial alternative that was pushed through by lobbyists?
Why save US taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars when you can benefit yourself and rack up huge profits for your corporate friends?


Further reading: http://www.boston.com/news/local/maine/articles/20 06/07/19/audit_finds_ipods_dog_booties_on_homeland _security_credit_cards/
"Audit finds iPods, dog booties on Homeland Security credit cards By Lara Jakes Jordan, Associated Press Writer | July 19, 2006
WASHINGTON --Wielding government-issued credit cards, Homeland Security employees racked up hundreds of thousands of dollars in unjustified expenses last year, including booties for rescue dogs, iPods, designer rain jackets and beer-making equipment, a congressional audit shows."

China and India just opened their border about 10 days ago, now India has learnt something from China, they are really quick.

This administration does not want another Daniel Ellsberg leaking today's equivilant of the Pentagon Papers. Especially after reading this.

No, that's just Harvard.

Um... Alaska is a red state. Stevens is a Republican, and a seriously long time incumbent. Amusingly enough, he not initially voted in to his Senate seat. See the Wikipedia for more details.

The Alaska Republican Party's platform (those parts that they stick to, at least) put a positive spin on the crap that they pull.

Let me see if I get this straight...

1. Man gets property broken into more than once
2. Man installs camera and warning signs on property to thwart future break-ins
3. Cops arrive at man's house on unrelated issue to talk to 15-year old son
4. Man is uncooperative and cops try to get into the house by sticking foot in door
5. After refusing entry, cops promise to return with a warrant
6. Man reminds cops that there is a camera recording them at the doorstep
7. Man reports abusive officers to precinct with videotape in hand to prove it
8. Man is arrested for 'wiretap fraud', a felony in the US of A.

Let's parallel that with another person we all know so well:

1. Holding over 300 prisoners in Guantanamo Bay prison without charging them with a crime for years on end
2. Ok'd the illegal NSA wiretap over 30 times, and would do it again. After 5 years of monitoring every single Internet packet, they are exposed and hide the details under the guise of 'State Secrets'.
3. 5+ years of bank data was secretly funneled and reviewed without a warrant or subponea
4. Signed over 750 Signing Statements, more than double the number of ALL PREVIOUS PRESIDENTS combined
5. Advocated, financed and supported the torture of innocent people in the name of 'national security', and tries to pass a signing statement to legalize torture.
6. Funded an illegal war to depose the leader of Iraq, so we could use Iraq as a base from which to stage a local air strike against Iran and Syria for oil. Doing daddy's work, apparently.
7. Lost $9 BILLION dollars in Iraq, then halts the investigation into it.
8. Openly stated that the Constitution is ...just a goddamn piece of paper, and continues to violate it every day.
9. ...and dozens more.

Tell me why again, this one citizen, who is protecting his property (yes, he's been verbally abusive to the cops before, but verbal abuse is not a felony or a crime, in fact, unless you directly threaten the safety of the officers or someone else) is arrested, and this unqualified, election-rigging, law-breaking "individual" is still allowed to run this country into the ground?

The other ironic point to this madness, is that the current rhetoric is that this country is 'safer now than it has ever been'. However, the truth is that this country is now more unstable, partisan, fractured than it has ever been.

There have only been TWO terrorist attacks on domestic soil by foreign terrorists in the last 40 PRESIDENTS.. and get this:

1. Both attacks occurred were under Bush presidency (Bush Sr. and Bush Jr. 10 years later)
2. Both attacks occurred at the Twin Towers (basement on the first attack, from the air on the second attack)
3. Both attacks resulted in an immediate deployment to Iraq shortly after (Desert Storm, War in Iraq)
4. Both attacks resulted in the goal of removing Saddam Hussein from power (second one deemed successful)
5. Both attacks implicated Iraqis in the scandal (Saudi's attacked TT, not Iraqis)
6. Both ended up in senseless wars where thousands of innocent soldiers died

The end is near for the Bush regime, thanks to 5 states now signing onto the Articles of Impeachment to get this dropout out of office. Now if we cou

The benefits these legislators receive from lobbyists aren't restricted to campaign contributions. Take a look at this (which didn't involve Pacheco). This is the kind of crap that we Massachusetts taxpayers have to put up with. And the worst part of it is that these jerks get all huffy when they talk about their "public service".

Aside from the obvious risk of losing power, there's also the possibility of pedestrians and pets being electrocuted.

In Boston this has been a noticeable problem over the last couple of winters. I don't recall any pedestrians, but several dogs.

Some sort of Zope-based solution is probably what you're looking for. Someone else already mentioned Plone, but there are other options on top of Zope in addition to Plone. Besides canned things like Nuxeo CPS and Silva, the built-in CMF for Zope can be pretty readily customized, and sites ranging from the huge to the moderate use custom-built Zope solutions to manage contributions from multiple sources.

Are you trying to imply that doing your best to make sure the laws are enforced is a bad thing ? No matter how unpopular a law is, it's still law as long as it is on the books. You would not want to live in a world where people can pick and choose what laws they obey.

Right, only certian people should be allowed to pick and choose what laws they obey

My concern is the almost inevitable expansion of this program to things other than cp. The past actions of this government (secret illegal wiretapping, datamining bank records, holding US citizens for years without charging them with a crime, touture, etc) show just how little the current administration cares about the privacy and constitutional rights of Americans and leads me to beleive that (if a system like this is built) iti s only a matter of time before it is used to monitor and archive internet traffic and look for many things other than cp (copyrighted files? normal/legal porn? political dissent?)

This is really great to see progress on the open format front, even if it isn't in the US. The Massachusetts thing is such a farce... first they say they'll do it, then vendors make them question it, then who knows... I saw an article in the Boston Globe about Microsoft donating $30M "worth" of "advanced software-writing and Web-building technology" software to Massachusetts public high schools and colleges. While it's nice to get free stuff, we can easily see that Microsoft is doing that to keep schools from adopting open solutions. Why try GNU/Linux + the GNU dev tools for development, or Nvu for web site creation, when Microsoft gave us Visual Studio and (gulp) Frontpage for free? It's a good argument, too! I don't know who can do it, but someone needs to sit down and realize that accepting $30M of donated software is really allowing M$ to bypass a real evaluation of the best software for the school's needs, and gaining them favor in future business dealings. If the whole school has Visual Studio for free, of course they'll buy upgrades, especially if M$ throws in another discount! And for M$,it's just pure cash.

It's Shrewsbury, actually. Although I doubt there's anyone there anymore to get offended. I don't know what's in Digital's old building, but they're long gone from that area, as are most of the old Boston-based minicomputer companies. (Data General, Prime...so many others.)

I'd love to say you're wrong, but the memory of the Milton Academy sex scandal is still fresh in my mind. Milton Academy Sex Scandal

Nielsen's been working on total measurement for years. Arbitron and VNU (current holders of Nielsen Media research) got together to build Project Apollo. However, because of the trouble Arbitron is having getting its Portable People Meter accredited, Apollo's deploying Nielsen's A/P Meter instead, which I've commented on before.

I work at Nielsen Media at the GTIC facility in Oldsmar FL and I've been hearing about Apollo for many years, but it seems that the rest of the world has only heard about it recently. Project Apollo has been described (internally) as the "holy grail" of measurement, which follows a consumer across every media channel and measures the affect on purchasing habits.

What it looks like Google is doing is a subset of Project Apollo, and even if it could compete on the TV/video side they probably need to license the tech from Nielsen. I'd love to have Google as an ally, but as a competitor I think they'll find Nielsen pretty hard to dislodge.

Virtually every Slashdot story about global warming has a post pointing out Micheal Crichton's "interesting speech."

And every time, I'll link to this thorough debunking of his claims:

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=74

Here is another:

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/articles/20 05/02/06/checking_crichtons_footnotes/

You're preaching to the choir, brother.

Oh and don't kid yourself - smoking pot all day is not healthy. It's like smoking many cigarettes without a filter at the same time and that ain't good for your lungs.

Interestingly, there's some recent research that suggests that marijuana isn't as dangerous as people previously thought, and certainly less dangerous than smoking.

http://www.boston.com/news/packages/sept11/anniver sary/wire_stories/0903_plane_exercise.htm