Slashdot Mirror

If they can't find a way to reach customers and get them fixes for the rampant insecurity of these machines that are compromised. The silent majority of customers are getting frustrated with this sham of a performance, and while saner heads recognize that Redmond does a lot right and some wrong, the emotional response is going to shove them out of dominance in operating systems. Maybe that's why they're better on spacy Web3.x "cloud" and "distributed OS" technologies instead of what made them big, which was getting things done the hard way consistently.

• Researchers asked subjects to drink one of five types of beverages in the morning: two colas containing different versions of high-fructose corn syrup, sugared cola, diet cola and 1 percent milk.
  
  Then they were invited to all-you-can-eat lunch buffets more than two hours later. People who drank the three sweetened colas in the morning said they felt equally full.
  
  At lunch, they all consumed similar numbers of calories.
  
  A likely explanation is that once inside the body, the different sweeteners are indistinguishable, Monsivais said.

You have to give George one thing, he got a lot of people interested in politics.

The best thing, for those in power, is to have a populace that thinks there is nothing they can do. A people who are so tired dealing with their problems they won't deal with the world's. To condition people to be so self absorbed, that they can't even see the actions of others.

When you have Tony Snow lying on tape and the only person who calls them on it is John Stewart, there's a problem.

When you have Dick putting hundreds of people in every sector of government, and it's only been in the last few that people have finally started to note what he has been doing(i.e. why these people in those places), you have a problem.

We need more people working to make changes and speaking out and fewer just pissed off that other's haven't done enough.

Also, if people don't know what lead up to Cap's death, please, at least read Wikipedia. We just have to hope that more people can get others interested enough to pay attention.

His economic ideas are close to a century out of date, and so are his incredibly regressive social policies. Luckily there's next to no chance of him winning; the only thing he has on his side is an incredibly noisy crew of Internet fanboys who like him think all the answers they need are to be found in ideas from the last century. If you Google him you'll likely find mostly adulatory Ron-Paul-will-save-us-all sites for that reason, but there are exceptions:

http://www.americanchronicle.com/articles/viewArti cle.asp?articleID=30953
http://www.chron.com/content/chronicle/aol-metropo litan/96/05/23/paul.html

You've been drinking the Ron Paul koolaid. None of that is true. He's getting a lot of traction for a racist.

This might help answer that question,...

Read this, wizard - the Courts don't work the way that you dream they do http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/headline/biz/4 894900.html/

It's also being offered in some Texas communities, including Houston.

It's also being offered in some Texas communities, including Houston.

I agree that Ron Paul has the only sensible foreign policy of the Republican candidates, but a presidential candidate must be evaluated on other criteria as well.

Consider his highly questionable comments about blacks.

I believe he's good mainly as a way of injecting sense about foreign policy into the Republican debates.

The employees used YouTube and MySpace

This kid doesn't deserve to be arrested. He doesn't deserve to be thrust into "Alternative Education". He deserves to have someone ask him why he built the school in a video game. Let a psychologist evaluate him, and then either medicate the kid or let him go back to class.

• Article in Houston Chronicle
• They found five swords (not a hammer)

1. He was created a game maps for a first-person shooter game.
2. He was dumb enough to show his work to somebody else, most likely at school.
3. When the police searched his room, they found five swords. There's no indication of whether his parents knew about them, or whether they were part of some hobby (like fencing) where it would be appropriate to have them, or whether they had practice or sharp edges.
4. Even the board is questioning whether they overreacted.
5. The police chose not to arrest him.

School district police investigated the report and questioned the student at school and then visited his home. The student's parents gave police permission to search the 12th-grader's room and computer. Simpson said police determined no criminal charges were warranted but that disciplinary action was. http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/headline/metro /4766843.html Well, that was a dumb move...

School district police investigated the report and questioned the student at school and then visited his home. The student's parents gave police permission to search the 12th-grader's room and computer. Simpson said police determined no criminal charges were warranted but that disciplinary action was.

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/headline/metro /4766843.html The kid is Chinese,which gives the story a bit of a racist [er..I can't type the word].

This article provides some more information on this story: http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/metropolitan/4 766843.html

As the original link is slashdotted, here is a couple more for the same story

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/headline/metro /4766843.html
http://abclocal.go.com/ktrk/story?section=local&id =5263782

I'd scream at the ridiculousness of it all, but, then I'd probably be arrested for practising some sort of arcane terrorist warcry.

The main article is /.ed. Here is a link to a story at the Houston Chronicle, which might be available.

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/nb/fortbend/ne ws/4766843.html

And last week, a lawyer for Fred Anderson, Apple's former CFO, released a prepared statement that his client "did not play any day-to-day role in the granting, reporting, and accounting of stock options and he was not involved in any knowing manipulation of the process."

I don't think this is the best economy, but I have no idea how you got modded up with all of that false info in your post. Stocks are up and oil is down in price. See here for the AP story from today about the increase in stocks and drop in oil price. Dang it I hate you, I hate Bush and you made me go and do something that defends him. Seriously, there is enough true stuff about Bush that you don't have to resort to making stuff up.

Ten years ago this month, a controversial "concealed- carry" law went into effect in the state of Florida. In a sharp break from the conventional wisdom of the time, that law allowed adult citizens to carry concealed firearms in public. Many people feared the law would quickly lead to disaster: blood would literally be running in the streets. Now, 10 years later, it is safe to say that those dire predictions were completely unfounded. Indeed, the debate today over concealed-carry laws centers on the extent to which such laws can actually reduce the crime rate.

Suzanna Gratia Hupp remembers reaching for a butter knife as a madman shot her parents dead at a packed cafeteria one cold October day in 1991.

"I was looking for a weapon, any weapon, because my handgun was 100 feet away, outside in my car. I made an incredibly stupid decision to follow the law, and that cost my family's lives," she says as she reflects on the massacre that ended with 24 people dead inside the Luby's Cafeteria at Killeen, a military town in Central Texas.

The following is the actual patent. http://appft1.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=P TO2&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsearch- bool.html&r=1&f=G&l=50&co1=AND&d=PG01&s1=%22warp+d rive%22.TTL.&OS=TTL/

A comment on the above. http://www.lot49.com/2005/11/patent_issued_for_war p_drive.shtml

The following link is when the patent was denied. Hopefully until someone can actually demonstrate a real working drive. http://blogs.chron.com/sciguy/archives/2006/02/oh_ darn_warp_dr.html

Ninety percent of their business is in the Middle East and Asia.

March 5, 2007, 2:52PM
Stations agree on anti-payola settlement

I saw this at 7:00 a.m. CST.

What is this "Chron dotcom" you link to? What's wrong with the New York Times or LA Times or the Dallas Morning News or Adweek or any of the other 365 articles that Google News lists?

News for nerds... from the witless. Jesus H. Christ, people!

OK, now that the rant against the witless link is over, 12 million? That's only four million for each of the big 4. Chicken feed, chump change, part of their operating expense. It's only a PR ploy. Nothing to see here, move along...

Business as usual. FCC looking like it's doing its job, when IT AIN'T!

More importantly and perhaps less on topic, in a thread a couple of days ago some folks said that the major labels were the ones who sort the wheat from the chaff in music, and that is entirely correct. Correct, but wrong. It's correct because of payola, which is wrong.

The broadcasters themselves should be the ones who bring you the "good stuff". And there should be a hell of a lot more than four of them.

And we need a new slashdot, too.

Public schools are run more by politics than credentials and experience.

That's why Steve Jobs wants unions out of schools, so that local people can hire good teachers by offering high salaries, and fire poorly-performing teachers.

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/tech/news/4560 691.html

How much CO2 is human activity producing?

Google makes possible some rough estimates:

• Annual global coal production: 50,000 million metric tonnes (World Coal Institute)
• Global oil production: 85 million bbl/day, converts to the equivalent of 128 million metric tonnes of coal per year (as reported here and in other stories, with conversion from bbl/day to tonnage/yr here)
• Annual global natural gas production: 2,500,000 million cubic meters, converts to the equivalent of 2 million tonnes of coal per year (UNCTAD estimate of 2000, with conversion factors from above)
• Total annual release of fossil fuels into the global environment: 50,130 million tonnes
• Percentage of carbon in coal (by weight): 90% for anthracite, which is what these numbers are based upon (Encarta)
• Percentage of carbon in CO2 (by weight): 27%
• Annual introduction of CO2 into the biosphere from fossil fuels: 167,100 million metric tonnes
• Estimate of atmospheric CO2: 2,870,000 million metric tonnes (CDIAC)
• This suggests that the use of fossil fuels would have increased atmospheric CO2 by 5% in the last year, disregarding all other factors
• Measurements at Mauna Loa suggest that there is a net increase in atmospheric CO2 of about 1% per year (NOAA Global Monitoring Division).

Evidently something is buffering the increase in atmospheric CO2. While this has been beneficial in the sense that it has limited the impact of burning fossil fuels, it is also very worrisome since homeostatic mechanisms like this one tend to failover very rapidly into alternative stable patterns when the buffering capacity is exceeded. There is no way to determine how close we are to a tipping point. And there is no way to predict the nature of the new stable pattern. For instance, there are mechanisms that could kick in to significantly increase the Earth's albedo and toss us into an ice age, despite the increased greenhouse effect.

This is reintroduction of carbon into the biosphere that had been sequestered away for a hundred million years or more. The last time there was this much carbon in the biosphere was before the age of dinosaurs. It is possible that the last time there was this much carbon in the biosphere was before there was enough free oxygen for chordates.

But Galveston's a run-down dump!

Was a run-down dump. The Houstonian tradition of bulldozing everything old to make room for the new has spread, and now pretty much all of the dump has been bought cheap then knocked down and replaced with almost-beachfront houses and resorts. Not all of the houses are half a million dollars, but in 2006, almost half of the houses on the market sold for that much.

Who in their right mind pays $500K to live in a shabby dump that's also a bullseye target for the next gulf hurricane?

The difference between Katrina and Galveston is that by the time The Big One hits, Galveston will be mostly rich.

Well according to this guy it always has... and your just part of the Zionist conspiricy to cover up the fact.

For extra giggles Warren Chisum recently circulated a letter supporting the site (Page One & Two (He says he sent it out without reading it or following the links )

Well according to this guy it always has... and your just part of the Zionist conspiricy to cover up the fact.

For extra giggles Warren Chisum recently circulated a letter supporting the site (Page One & Two (He says he sent it out without reading it or following the links )

What he said ^. People should be able to decide what substances get injected into them. Texas has a way to "opt out?" Great, but does anyone know about it? http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/nation/4581111 .html Massachusetts might make this vaccine free but not mandatory? Hallelujah! I don't know that I'll approve of the way they implement it, but they're thinking.

And it's kind of funny that so many of the annecdotes tend to involve citizens with a deep seeded opinion that the police are bad.

Anecdote. Which was hot on the heels of another anecdote. I'm sure some of the shoppers (who had receipts) who were arrested have an opinion as to whether or not the police are bad. I'm sure some of the people thrown in jail over faked DNA evidence have an opinion as to whether or not the police are bad.

Is it really that funny to you?

And it's kind of funny that so many of the annecdotes tend to involve citizens with a deep seeded opinion that the police are bad.

Anecdote. Which was hot on the heels of another anecdote. I'm sure some of the shoppers (who had receipts) who were arrested have an opinion as to whether or not the police are bad. I'm sure some of the people thrown in jail over faked DNA evidence have an opinion as to whether or not the police are bad.

Is it really that funny to you?

The screenwriter for the first four, Steve Kloves, decided not to do the fifth book to pursue other work, and to spend time with his family. But after reading the sixth book, he call the producer, David Heyman, and asked if he could do it, who gladly resigned him.

The screenplay for the sixth book has been written and approved, and should start shooting soon, though I don't know exactly when. It was my understanding that the screenplays for the fifth and sixth book were being developed at the same time so that they could be shot close to each other, but since they haven't started shooting the sixth. And it seems that one of the leads, Daniel Radcliffe, is a little busy right now.

I would certainly count on a sixth movie. I believe the principles are all signed except for Daniel Radcliffe. Time will tell.

I am sure there were people who thought the "skeptics" of the world is flat theory were crazy too. There are doubts being raise on global warming (here, here, here). Further, we don't completely understand the science of the climate. Predicting the future climate has uncertainties. Just look at local weather prediction. They don't say the percentages any more, but they use a computer model that gives the percentages like 80% chance of rain, but these predictions are not certain. Some scientists have concerns that global warming has been blown way out of proportion (here).

      I am not saying we shouldn't take some actions, but I am saying that you are ignorant to just rule out everything the skeptics say. Any American plan for energy independence and global warming has to be two fold. Short term plans as a consumer buy more energy effecient appliances and cars; as a company (and government) do that and developer more local resources (like drill for more oil in Alaska, California, the mid-western U.S., and in the Gulf) and update the methods to produce fuels like gas. Refineries are decades old using older technology.

      Now the second part is long term. Start to research feasible, cost efficient, and easy to use alternate energy means for heating, transportation, production, etc. If the technology is not feasible, efficient and easy to use people will not use it. It's that simple. You can should all you want, but people want things that are cheap (& cost effective) and easy to use. The more you need to spend or do to accomplish the task, the less people will use it.

      To dismiss all the doubts of people as the whining and/or ignorant rants of lunatics is not very scientific. All options should be considered. Scientist have had a closed and narrow mind for a long time now. They need to leave the labs a little more and come back to reality. Scientists and people like you are the people who are really arrogant.

I've seen several ad-hoc networks called "Free Public WiFi". I wondered about them and found this blog. It seems there is a "feature" in Windows where after you disconnect from a wireless network, it will continue broadcasting the SSID as an ad-hoc network. Other people then see it, try and connect, and then start broadcasting it themselves...

I've seen this several times before, and the best article I've seen on it is here. That's a lot more level headed, and it refers to the "Free Public WiFi" SSID as a virally spreading phenomena, but most likely not a virus or honeypot.

The problem is that Windows handles Ad Hoc WLAN networks in a rather bizarre way.. once you've connected to the Ad Hoc network, your computer will likely become *part* of the Ad Hoc network and will consequently rebroadcast the SSID, advertising to others. This means that the SSID slowly spreads out just like a biological virus.

Yes - it *could* be used as a man-in-the-middle attack or some sort of botnet, so the advice to steer clear of Ad Hoc networks you don't know about it very sound indeed. My experience of seeing the "Free Public WiFi" SSID definitely fits in with that theory.

This article says Nintendo has sold 1,250,000 Wiis in the Americas. Granted that's not just the US, but that's still a lot more than 50,000.

Try 1.25 million (just in the US in 2006). I'm sure it's more by now...
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/fn/4498866. html

From http://blogs.chron.com/techblog/archives/2006/10/m ay_i_see_your.html/this blog... Let's call it WGA Plus, shall we? The Plus means this software, which is baked into Windows Vista, is even more aggressive about detecting and blocking what it considers software that is running with unauthorized license keys or has been tampered with. And woe be unto you if you get snagged in the WGA - sorry, SPP dragnet while running Vista. If that happens on a premium version of Windows Vista, you'll first lose access to key features, including the Aero interface, ReadyBoost performance enhancements and Windows Defender anti-spyware detection. Eventually, if you don't deal with the problem, the measures get more severe and you're kicked into "reduced functionality mode": Reduced functionality mode in Windows Vista will allow the user to use the browser after the reduced functionality mode has begun. Reduced functionality mode can occur as a result of failed product activation or of that copy being identified as counterfeit or non-genuine. In most cases customers will be able to correct this situation quickly with the options provided. With the tools in place for OEMs, and small to large customers, we expect that most customers should never be affected by having a non-genuine installation. Microsoft denies that this is a "kill switch" for Windows Vista, even giving it a separate question and answer in its mock interview announcing the program. Technically, they're right, I suppose. Switching a PC into a degraded functionality where all you can do is browse the Internet doesn't kill it; but it's arguably a near-death experience. Certainly, Microsoft has the right to protect itself from piracy, but this is the kind of thing that it had better get right, given how dire the consequences would be for its customers if it gets it wrong. Unfortunately, that's not been the history of WGA so far. Doesn't sound too promising to me..honestly.

According to some reports he posted a couple messages on the website for the foundation created by his parents in his name. He used his captor's last name (as Shawn Devlin) and asked "How long are you planing (sic) to look for your son?" It could have been Devlin himself, taunting the parents, but Devlin would have been unlikely to use Shawn's first name.

Other details in the AP article confirm that he was mostly free and had plenty of access to the outside world. Apparently Devlin even taught him how to drive and he was seen driving the truck unsupervised at least once. Stockholm just seems too easy or too simple of an explanation.

"Cheney's Law" is "I am the Law".

I just watched Sen Feinstein (D-CA) telling the (probably empty, except the C-SPAN camera) Senate floor about how Chief Inqusitor^W^WAttorney General Gonzales has been firing US Attorneys in various districts, without any just cause (except "just 'cause I say so"), replacing them with "interim" Attorneys to last the rest of Bush's administration, avoiding the required Senate confirmation, to determine the outcomes of specific cases in their calendars. Like the "recess appointments" of Bush admin hacks like UN bomber^WAmbassador John Bolton and others. A "loophole" designed into the Patriot Act II (With a Vengance) voted in by the Republican Congress in 2006, which threw away the old "120 days maximum" for "interim" Attorney appointments, in favor of... as long as the Attorney General pleases, with whoever he pleases, whenever he pleases. Pleases himself, that is, not people interested in justice or Constitutional rule.

And this morning I read how Republicans want courts martial to try civilians. I expect they'll lock up trying war profiteers like Halliburton, find them "not guilty/liable", and use our Constitution's "no double jeopardy" rules to exclude real courts from trying them and exposing the evidence to shareholders and citizens. Then I won't be surprised when Bush/Cheney/Gonzales find excuses to apply military courts all over the globe. From US occupations like Afghanistan and Iraq, to battlegrounds in other countries like probably Iran and Syria, to anarchies where they're bombing like Somalia. Then widening to other Terror War territories, wherever they can find them. All in defiance of international laws, US treaties, and our Constitution itself, which is universal, yielding only in the face of sovereign foreign jurisdiction.

After all, Cheney/Gonzales/Bush don't even have any use for the required FISA court that bends over backwards to grant warrants, even after the fact, when spying on Americans. Why shouldn't this gang of "Conservatives" use the laws they've passed the past 6 years with their wholly-owned Congressional subsidiary to do whatever they want, regardless of how tyrannical?

After all, there's no law against Cheney lying to us on TV talk shows - as far as Cheney cares, anyway.

I think that you should check your facts on that. I don't own a gun, and won't have one in the house, but the right to carry concealed handguns has had an effect of reducing crime in the states.

Here are a couple of links:
http://www.texasinsider.org/election_watch/Opinion _Jerry_Patterson_1_6_2006_Guns.htm
From the next link:
Both sides cite statistics to bolster their claims.
The author of the only comprehensive study on the issue to date has reached a controversial conclusion that concealed-carry laws translate into less crime.
http://www.chron.com/content/chronicle/nation/guns /part2/gunside1.html
http://www.ncpa.org/ba/ba324/ba324.html

Now, these stories are rather scary in that they say its safer when you don't know who has a gun. Where I live, the biggest crimes now are theft when no one is looking, so an alarm system keeps things pretty safe.

More and more, an armed populace is looking like a good idea to me and I get this view by living amongst concealed handguns rather than looking from the outside in.

because it has incentives to improve.

Just enough for companies to make more money than they lose. Here's a question for you: Say you were producing spinach and you had to spend $x to clean the spinach off to make sure there was no e.coli on it, but you knew that the vast majority of your consumers would cook your spinach (killing the e.coli), the vast majority of the remaining consumers would rinse the
spinach themselves, and the majority of the rest would suffer no ill effects. You hire an actuary, who crunches some numbers, and comes back and tells you that without cleaning the spinach yourself, N people would get sick, M people would die, and if they managed to figure out that it was your spinach that caused this, you'd lose about $y. If $x>$y, why clean the spinach?

I think this guy has the right idea, but the problem is more than slavery or a lack of compassion. If a company can make money by killing you, what in the free market can stop it?

That was an informative post, and I appreciated reading it, except for the potshot at me. You will note that I said the exec. branch had "some control" over the direction of funding. Reading your post, most (but not all) of which I did know, I stand by this characterization. Especially during this Congress, which did not impress me with its independence from the exec. branch. And clearly this Administration has exerted fairly strong control over the agencies, through appointments and direct pressure. See: James Hansen, George Deutsch, and so forth.

And besides, my main point was that the real problem is the perversion of scientific research that we are seeing.

To review: I argue that the politics of funding science is not great but is basically tolerable (with notable exceptions), while the distortion and/or suppression of inconvenient scientific results is not tolerable.

I apologize if my characterization of the funding process of the US government was not of sufficient detail for your liking.

Finally- thank the Flying Spaghetti Monster for the concept of "separation of powers."

Cheers.

--It would certainly go a distance in explaining the actions of some of the supposedly fundamentalist Islamic terrorists in the prelude to the grand 9-11 performance acting in ways most un-Islamic. (Booze and Cocaine and Women [gnn.tv] won't win the devout many points with Allah.) So what's the story here? Were they fundamentalist terrorists, or were they dupe mercenaries who didn't know what they were signing up for, and who were allowed to bring off their clutzy plan while the US secret services conveniently looked the other way [tvnewslies.org], while the secret/shadow government [washingtonpost.com] provided access to the remote controlled [911review.com] jets actually capable of performing the precision flying which badly-trained mercenary goof-balls could not have been asked to manage, and while the Israeli-owned security companies [whatreallyhappened.com] which held contracts at each of the airports involved during 9-11, gave them fast-lane service at the boarding check points?

There is a great antidote to some of that confusion: Debunking 9/11 Myths

Dudes with bombs and box-cutters working independently is still the false reality which needs to be understood here. The myth of terrorists is the preferred tool for building the fascist state. Luckily, this is increasingly well understood. It's the 'How' which seems to be causing some hiccups.

Here are some victories the good guys won against terrorism around the world in the last couple of weeks (this list doesn't include terrorist attacks):

11 suspected Islamic radicals arrested in Spanish African enclave
Spain arrests Chechen rebel suspect wanted in Russia
Turkey Arrests Suspected Regional Al Qaeda Leader
Turkey arrests 10 with suspected links to al-Qaeda
Pakistan arrests 47 suspected Taliban
13 foreign nationals arrested in S. Afghanistan
Police Claim Arresting Taliban Commander in Ghazni
Pakistanis Arrest 90 Afghans at Border
Saudi detains 139 suspected militants
Security forces scrambled to disrupt Asian summit terror plots
Court freezes Islamic group's bank account
Top aide of Qaeda chief in Iraq killed
Morocco jails 14 Islamists
Eight French Islamists Returned To France
4 Dutch Muslims Convicted of Terror Plan
and another trial: Denmark: Muslim terror trial begins
Terrorist plot targeting Illinois mall foiled
Man accused in Taliban arrest ordered held without bail
And reaching back just a little further just to inc

then we leave it to our legal system.

Well, maybe your local authorities have done more to earn your trust. We've barely just finished dealing with the HPD crime lab lying on the stand about around 200 DNA tests. Yet somehow the prosecutors never seem to have time to charge anyone with perjury, even when we have labnotes that directly contradict the testimony some of the HPD members gave on the stand. Total casualty: one lab worker lost her job. For a couple of months. Then the union got her job reinstated. Of course, the prosecutors aren't the only ones in on the circus, one Josiah Sutton was found guilty of being one of two rapists of a woman based on (what turned out to be faulty) DNA evidence and identification by the victim. Retests showed that the woman was indeed raped by two men, but neither of them was Sutton. Sutton was released, but the District Attorney refused to give an "innocence" pardon, despite the DNA evidence (apparently DNA is 100% foolproof when it's on the prosecutors' side, but...).

Of course, that's only one of the recent WTFs, before that was the infamous K-Mart raid where cops showed up to bust some street racing, only there were no street racers, so they arrested every shopper at the K-Mart they were at, then when that didn't make them feel big enough, they moved on to the restaurant next door and arrested everyone eating there as well. The punishment? The guy in charge got a raise from the mayor (who had just hit his term limit and was literally walking out the door. He fled and spent his last week in office in Africa rather than face his fellow Houstonians) and retired the next day on his newly boosted pension. Oh, and the several hundred people who were arrested had to all individually sue the city to have their arrest purged from the record, on my dime to boot.

There's also a well publicized case of a cop tasering a football player for being argumentative at a traffic stop. He was then arrested for resisting arrest. His charge? Resisting arrest. As far as I can tell from any of the media reports, he wasn't actually being arrested for anything except resisting arrest (last I heard you don't arrest people for moving violations, but maybe I'm just not up to date on these things). Funny, that. Incidentally, a judge dismissed the resisting arrest charges. At least our current mayor is actually proposing an investigation, though time will tell if it actually happens or if anything will change if the investigation determines something needs to be done.

The scary thing is that half of the people in this country would seriously agree with you 100%.

I suspect that many people in this country know of at least some of the terrorism convictions on this partial list from the FBI, and recognize that the recent changes in national security laws actually serve a useful purpose while having little or no significant effect on the vast majority of Americans.

I think the truly scary thing is that a large number of people in this country will deny that there is any threat from terrorists whatsoever despite the convictions, fairly regular fresh arrests, and continuing threats. Simply averting your eyes doesn't make the problem better.

"These conditions will apply to all future versions of Windows _ including the upcoming Vista operating system." - http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/fn/4356206. html

Technically this is a racist belief system if you look at it from the view point of an Australian aboriginal, it denies the fact that they have lived in Australia now for over 50,000 years. Then you have simple things like pictures from the hubble telescope showing objects over "12 billion light years away", now lets think now, if something is 12 Billions light years away it took 6,000 years for the light to get here, riiiiight, believe that and I will happily sell you some prime time swamp land.