Slashdot Mirror

Another great example is Wayne National Forest in Ohio. Southeastern Ohio was completely destroyed by coal mining in the early twentieth century, and when the coal ran out the economy was left just as devastated as the land. FDR made the land a national forest as one of his New Deal plans, and bought the land off any residents who would sell, and hired those who stayed to plant trees. Today, only eighty some years later, the place looks like it been a forest for hundreds of years (and it's been this way for several decades).

It doesn't take long for mother nature to thrive, given a chance. If the Chinese remain committed to turning their environmental situation around, they certainly could. The commitment is the problem. Unfortunately, Wayne has been leased out by the federal government for fracking. Fortunately, Wayne has shown the ability to rebound from worse.

It is the structures that were stunning and their alignment with equinoxes and solstices that make them very special.

Earthworks can definitely be astronomically aligned. And I don't know if you've ever visited any, but they are also quite stunning.

http://www.dispatch.com/conten...

https://advancedtrainingassoci...

5 months after legalization.

A doubling of hospital admittances 1 year after legalization.

Different story, same result. 1 year after legalization.

2 deaths from marijuana use 1 year after legalization.

Third death the following year.

Unreported death due to marijuana.

The last article raises the question, how many more deaths as the result of marijuana use have gone unreported? We know more and more traffic deaths have marijuana as a cause.

But please, let us here more excuses how none of the above is related to marijuana use. Drug users are good at making excuses, especially when presented with facts.

Firefox cut a deal with Yahoo too, not because Yahoo is a better search engine for their users, either because Yahoo gave Firefox money or, well, why else would they do it? http://www.dispatch.com/conten...

What sucks is Yahoo sucks. I didn't even notice the browser change by the logo, but I did notice it when it gave bad search results. Changed back to Google, and results were accurate again.

Yahoo, you are the RealPlayer of the search world. File Chapter 5.

Maybe they just want to receive their emails and know that in the past, DNC servers and systems have been hacked. It's ingenious to say that their private system is automatically less secure than the government servers unless someone is an email security specialist and has knowledge of the two systems -- I'm sure someone on Slashdot will weigh in on this. ;-)

Perhaps with the record of Karl Rove and his operatives activities on Democratic servers -- I can definitely understand the Clinton's reticence to be on these same servers they've plagued. Doing the business of the state pre-supposes that all your communications are looked at by friendlies; not that everything you do is looked at in terms to set you up.

I can imagine a scenario where someone from the political opposition can read that you have a meeting with so and so, and can use that against you in some manner. As benign as changing the time of a meeting to making a fraudulent email and leaking it to the press.

Anything can happen if someone else with ill will controls the mail server.

Better to whether the small storm of criticism later, than be naive and pretend that political operatives won't do again what they've done to you in the past.
http://www.dispatch.com/conten...
Anyone remember Mike Connell? http://www.democracynow.org/20...
Former hackers were hired to create the original Diebold voting machines; http://www.dailykos.com/story/...
>> and Anonymous claimed they stopped the voting machines from being manipulated in the last election -- sounds like a quiet political cyber war is going on.

I'm sure to people not involved in politics, they think these are paranoid ramblings like Ross Perot claiming that the Bush crowd was pulling dirty tricks, tapping his conversations, and altering photos of his daughter; http://www.nytimes.com/1992/10...

Ross Perot is a man who used his own money and put is own neck on the line to retrieve kidnapped employees. Like him or not, he seems a bastion of integrity compared to the average politician.

Oh, and let's not forget that the RNC emails went missing;
http://freepress.org/article/a...
Rove's went missing;
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04...
And Iron Mountain lost emails -- and since their whole business model is storing sensitive data is probably one of the few things they've EVER lost;
http://fcw.com/articles/2014/0...

I'm not saying this to excuse a politician from not being transparent -- but I'd think we need to address the fact that dirty tricks are going on, and we need to make sure there are no man-in-the-middle attacks and manipulations of data.

Several cases of assault by drivers and even a rape in india are documented occurances in the Uber ecosystem that seem to be shrugged off by the company as "isolated incidents."

In fairness, they are pretty isolated. How many Uber rides have you read about where nothing happened? One of my friends here was getting a ride and she asked her driver how her experiences have been . She once got a passenger who had her go out to an isolated area then tried to drag her out of her car and into hell, but she was able to escape (and continued driving, actually). What you're describing, people being violent towards each other, is not something unique to Uber. Believe it or not, but assaults and rapes have actually been occurring since before Uber was a thing. The fact that they still occur doesn't mean that Uber failed, it means that we still have sociopaths among us who are willing to victimize other people. And it's not as if drivers attacking passengers are limited to Uber.

But, in the case of the Uber drivers attacking people, or in the cases where passengers attack the drivers, with Uber at least you know exactly who your attacker was (unless they stole someone's phone or carjacked someones car and decided to turn on Uber) which is going to lead to an arrest, but even without violent crime or the police getting involved the rating system should (in theory) remove the abusers from the system. I don't see any flamebait or troll comments on Slashdot, for example, but that's not because they aren't here. I just have my settings configured so that the system doesn't even show me them.

In Uber, there is no palpable consequence for driving a family of 4 to a corn field instead of Disney land because once hes finished his negative review of you, you're now stranded somewhere without a taxi and locked out of uber.

A single negative review doesn't lock you out of anything. But, even so, let me know when you come across a story of an Uber driver abandoning a family of 4 in a corn field.

If only there was some entity more powerful than Uber we could appeal to... one we had some say in how it was applying its power. Possibly, that entity could come up with some kinda regulations for services that give people rides, to ensure public safety.

The whole situation will likely be used by both political sides for their own petty interests and not focus on the woman's situation.

Called it, didn't I? Honestly, we already have regulation and outright laws against rape, and yet rape still happens. Clearly the issue isn't per se that we lack regulations or laws. It's that companies choose to ignore them, follow them in some literal interpretation that allows them to technically follow them while violating their spirit, or to often be the ones who write the laws and have them written more to keep outsiders out--the whole situation with Uber is like this with extant taxi services.

Meanwhile, the fact that there are rapist taxi drivers that aren't Uber drivers zooms right by. Right, it was the lack of regulation or that it wasn't being followed well enough! It couldn't just be that would be rapists exist that finally rape for which no amount of pre-cognition is going to save you. There was an interesting bit, in fact, recently about how much police are so heavy on preventive crime that they often lose focus on extant cases (because detective work is boring, dirty, gritty stuff and Minority Report stuff is cool--and it sells better to the public) which makes me wonder just how much the current situation with the crime rate being down has to do with the police underreporting stuff or otherwise being unresponsive resulting in a public just not turning to the police at all.

In any case, the major points to bring home are (1) rape happens and spinning it to be an Uber/regulation/whatever thing is bullshit and (2) it's the companies themselves through their owners/leadership that have to change to see companies that focus on doing good (which honestly, is only tangently related to this case at best) and not some belief you can bribe or beat or regulate/deregulate your way towards people doing good things. A carrot and stick are there merely to limit the negative extremes and motivate some positives but even extreme micromanagement--which few people want--would be enough to make Uber or any company a positive-focused company. And that's, more or less, the real overreaching problem that lawsuits, like this, don't address.

No, that's Michael Jackson you are thinking of.

I'm still waiting for them to take Lady Gaga and Justin Beiber back.

http://www.dispatch.com/conten...

http://www.dispatch.com/conten...

I'm not sure Obama can politically afford to get too carried away with bombing ISIS. Whether it is true or not, there is plenty of talk that Obama allowed this to happen by not keeping troops in Iraq longer. He blames the Iraqi government for not updating the SOFA agreements but people have been claiming that Hillary (presumable under Obama's orders) kept increasing demands that couldn't be met by the Iraqi government. He then declared his campaign promise has been realized and ended the war on terror to boot.

So how does he go back and say the war on terror is not over, how does he come back and say we need to go back into Iraq after claiming the people foreseeing this were nutters, how does he do this without giving credibility to all those decrying our exist from the world or who said if we did not lead in Syria, something evil would fill the void. The problem is, he seems to believe that if we mind our own business, the world will not hate us, will not want to kill us, and situations like this will not exist.

Now I will admit that all that may not be 100% true, but it is the perception people are getting and it is the perception he seems to be afraid of when he has to acknowledge his foreign policy was a failure, that his plans for peace didn't work. This is what he is up with, he is either claimed to be wrong on everything and allow it to happen, or he has to admit he was wrong and do something about it that goes against what he seems to believe.

I dropped that comic because it does appear that he is more occupied playing golf than the problems in the world. But to be fair, if you can golf somewhat well, it is a relaxing and peaceful time in which you can actually think things through. This is probably why so much business gets done on the gold course.

I'm sorry but where have you been these last few months?

Iraq has been asking the US to send in the troops for a while now. We have been ignoring them and playing games claiming that the Maliki government caused ISIS to happen and more or less forced him out of office before we would help. Now we are doing limited bombings and offering strategy meetings with about 1000 troops in the area supposedly to protect US personnel. We were going to go in and rescue some people on a mountain but I guess they were either killed or escaped by other means. We did drop food and water I think.

http://www.dispatch.com/conten...

No, you cannot always.

These RLC citations, at least in Ohio (some areas of Ohio that I know of), were issued as a civil penalty or some bullshit like that and there is absolutely no court involved at all and no way to challenge outside of an administration hearing with the company who leases the cameras to the city and a board created by the city. In Ohio, there are several court cases challenging the constitutionality of them because of this and it went in front of the state supreme court. We are waiting on their ruling.

The state legislature is attempting to create a law mandating that a police officer be present when the violation occurs and the camera captures it. They tried to ban them at one time but ran into some constitutional issues with the home rule provisions in the state constitution.

http://www.dispatch.com/conten...

But a tablet will fix everything! Especially those poor children with level two lookalike firearms! (Fingers...) http://www.dispatch.com/conten...

Seriosly, technology is not the problem...

Since you're uninformed, here you go: The Myth of Trickle Down Economics

In Ohio the charter schools are not doing a better job of educating students, but they are doing a dandy job of transferring tax-payer money into the pockets of the "management" firms that run the charter schools. Even the conservative Columbus Dispatch has noticed the lousy job the charter schools are doing: Columbus has 17 charter school failures in one year.

in Ohio results from standardized test have been no better - and often worse - for the Charter schools. Good Charter schools have been the exception, not the rule in Ohio.

All countries have strict controls on import of agricultural goods. It's an absolute necessity in this day and age when import of a couple of insects can wipe out a whole native species.

For example several important species of trees in the US have been lost this way. The Ash are right now being decimated by the emerald borer from China. It's likely that this insect will wipe out the entire genus of Ash trees in North America.

http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/sports/2012/10/21/ashes-continue-road-to-extinction.html

http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/science/2013/08/25/1-decimation-of-ash-trees-provides-valuable-lesson.html

So one guy had his flutes mistaken for agricultural products. Not really that big a deal in the big picture. This is one case when you really want to err on the conservative side because making a mistake in the other direction is a really bad thing.

It isn't a case of human rights, illegal searches or ethnic profiling or anything like that.

As far as I'm concerned this is just another misplaced slashdot article.

All countries have strict controls on import of agricultural goods. It's an absolute necessity in this day and age when import of a couple of insects can wipe out a whole native species.

For example several important species of trees in the US have been lost this way. The Ash are right now being decimated by the emerald borer from China. It's likely that this insect will wipe out the entire genus of Ash trees in North America.

http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/sports/2012/10/21/ashes-continue-road-to-extinction.html

http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/science/2013/08/25/1-decimation-of-ash-trees-provides-valuable-lesson.html

So one guy had his flutes mistaken for agricultural products. Not really that big a deal in the big picture. This is one case when you really want to err on the conservative side because making a mistake in the other direction is a really bad thing.

It isn't a case of human rights, illegal searches or ethnic profiling or anything like that.

As far as I'm concerned this is just another misplaced slashdot article.

Giving me an MFD like this one would go a long way in encouraging me to do you favors :P

This has been going on for a very long time and I saw it as a kid. WAY back when there was rampant Trick or Treating, there were vague reports of "razors in apples" and stuff like that. It's just nonsense. As a child, even I saw it as nonsense, but my mother took it quite seriously every year inspect our haul piece by piece.

We have systems over-run with parasitic lawyers who live on fears which eventually becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy.

And the Vietnam "domino theory"? That war on "communism"? Once again, I have seen this for the farce it was since I was a child. When I learned what communism is, I thought "hey this is a great idea for the future of man's civilization!" And when examining what existed, we saw extreme violence against the people and an elite power structure that benefited themselves while making their people miserable. That's not communism. And THAT image is what got everyone "fighting the war on communism." From that we got the Cold War, the Military Industrial Complex thrived on the fears of a whole nation.

It has been going on far longer than partisan politics in its current form. You realize that "the conservatives" were once the democrats and "the liberals" were the republicans a few decades ago? But that was before the republicans pulled "god on their side" to get the religious vote.

Before people can see past the current partisan politics, people have to be able to see a history that hasn't quite made it into the books.

The predictable result will be schedule slips, increased costs, and more waste. Of course the system is conflicted.

DoD to award contracts throughout shutdown, but won't announce them

Defense Giant Warns Shutdown Could Force 5,000 Layoffs
Jupiter aircraft company furloughs 2,000 employees because of gov't shutdown
Shutdown prompts furloughs for 1,800 in Ohio National Guard

Re: Yeah I hate how much influence the IRS has in Germany these days.
http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/national_world/2013/07/06/Germany-strikes-deal-to-help-U-S-catch-tax-evaders.html
It could be same hold as the IRS has over the Swiss banks?
http://finance.fortune.cnn.com/2013/05/30/swiss-bank-accounts-irs/
http://www.forbes.com/sites/robertwood/2013/07/09/swiss-banks-reveal-americans-u-k-deal-sputters-and-germany-embraces-fatca/

Not just opening a business (be it a pizzeria or a nuclear plant), even driving your own car is not a right, that could only be taken away by Judiciary, but a privilege, that requires an Executive-issued license. Which is all very convenient for the Executive — if they don't like an activity or a particular person/company engaging in it, they can simply withdraw the license without bothering with the pesky courts...

Does the name COINTELPRO mean anything to you? Decades ago the government used illegal surveillance to attempt to quash the civil rights movement. What assurances do we have that they won't do this again? Why should we believe they have good intentions at all when they cannot comply with the 4th amendment?

http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/national_world/2013/07/07/tea-party-only-one-of-irs-targets.html
http://www.hannity.com/article/irs-targets-political-candidates/17710
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/special/politics/irs-targets-conservative-groups/

Seems they already started.

People don't want to change so they deny the credibility of the evidence staring them in the face. Are you really that dense that you cannot see the effects of global climate change around you now? Bleaching of Coral reefs[0], Hurricane frequency[1], Shrinking of one of the largest glaciers on earth[2] not to mention the rate of change in global temps[3] for the past century. Yes it's been warm in the past, but the RATE at which warming occurred has never been seen before. These are the facts and they are happening now. I guess for a lot of people it's more comforting to glue their noses to the manufactured reality of Fox News and the like rather than accept what is happening and that change is needed.

[0] - http://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/coral_bleach.html
[1] - http://www.ucar.edu/news/releases/2007/hurricanefrequency.shtml
[2] - http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/science/2013/04/21/tracking-greenlands-fast-melting-ice-sheets.html
[3] - http://www.npr.org/2013/03/08/173739884/since-end-of-last-ice-age-rates-of-global-warming-amazing-and-atypical
[3] -

I find it interesting that a google search could have turned up whether the article was legit or not. Yet you wanted to dismiss it out of hand because your google finger was broken.

http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/local/2012/11/02/problems-pop-up-as-election-day-draw-nears.html

http://www.denverpost.com/politics/ci_21909715/gop-cites-voting-machine-errors

http://greensboro-nc.com/news/article/more-folks-report-selecting-romney-on-voting-machine-but-choice-displays-obama-wbtw-myrtle-beach-and-florence-sc

Surely you were around when Hurricane Ike hit Ohio (2008)? I don't know what the final tally was, but the Ohio Insurance Institute expected claims to top $1 billion: http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/local/2008/10/08/ikedamage.html

See this guy?
He owns this company.
Which owns this company.
Feeling sick?

As usual you didn't answer the question but rather decided to troll.
You might also look into the case a little more before making bold statements.
1. There was a near riot going on at the platform.
2. Grant was involved in fighting on the train.
3. Oscar Grant was not restrained as the BART officer never had control of his hands (even the family in the wrongful death suit agrees on this point). He had escaped custody at least once before and returned to the train
4. As Grand never surrendered he was never searched and therefore the officers had no way of knowing whether or not he was armed. Any officer will assume someone is armed until they have been cuffed and searched. Grant never got to that point. Even if Grant was unarmed, a struggling man can gain control of an officers gun and use it.
5. The Officer stated he was going to taze Grant and cleared the other officer so as not to taze him too.
6. The Officer grabbed the wrong weapon and shot .
7. Under conditions of stress, adrenaline and split second decision making a tazer and a SIG Sauer P226 can feel very similar in the hand.
8. The officer felt immediate remorse as evidenced by looking frightened, saying "Oh my God" and holding his head in his hands. Everyone on the platform who saw the officer agreed that he looked stunned at what happened. This looks to me like tha actions of someone who made a mistake and knew it.
9. There is a federal civil rights case still open against the officer so it isn't even over yet (this is an exception to the double jeopardy rule)
10. Violent protest had occurred in 2009 over the same issue and there were indications that they would happen again.
11. The "protest" had the wrong target as the Officer was convicted of involuntary manslaughter and sentenced to 2 years in prison. If the sentence seems too light then protest the courts who imposed the sentence and not BART who had nothing to do with it.
12. The protest was designed to take place in an area where people could die if they fell of the platform and onto the third rail or in front of a moving train.
13. Finally and most important, the actions of one officer does not justify the disruption of the lives of thousands of commuters who had nothing to do with the issue. Go ahead and protest but do it safely.

I am in no way saying what the officer did was right but since you were not there and hindsight while sitting safely at you computer does not compare with being in the middle of a riot you must be very careful in passing judgement without knowing all the facts.

I dunno dude, I did a local child molester search online and saw quite a few monsters just around the corner. I figured, naaah... couldn't be THAT many so I checked each name and it took about 20 documented child rapists with detailed descriptions of their acts before I found a single sex crime against an adult.

Have you considered that, perhaps, you just live into one of those few areas where those people are legally allowed to settle, and so there is an abnormally high concentration right near you?

In regards to the previously mentioned Ohio law, it was passed last year in part of a "defense of 'traditional' marriage" legislative package intended to keep homosexuals from wedding.

Ohio passed a constitutional amendment defining marriage being between a man and a woman in 2004 - eight years ago. No statutory law would have greater power to define or limit marriage than the state constitution.

Furthermore, guardians are court appointed and have to make regular reports to the court about the status of the ward and their property. What judge wouldn't consider it a direct conflict of interest for a guardian to marry a ward? Do you think the judge would find the guardian swearing that he really loves his ward and isn't at all doing it to get at the minor's property to be in any way serious or believable and not at all unethical? If teachers can't date students that are technically adults, what makes you think a guardian could date and marry a ward who is a legal minor given the higher duty of a guardian?

GUARDIANSHIPS

The court may appoint, after hearing and investigation, a guardian for a minor or for an adult who is found to be incompetent to take proper care of himself or his property. A guardian, with court supervision, is responsible for making personal and/or financial decisions for the ward. Court supervision is accomplished, in part, through the filing of reports and accountings by the guardian. Both a minor and an adult ward have a number of rights and protections to insure against an unnecessary or ineffective guardianship, including, for the adult ward, the right to be represented by an attorney.

The term 'irony' doesn't even begin to describe the situation there.

I think the term "pure BS" most likely describes what you wrote. Any lie will do to further the cause of "gay marriage", I guess.

And yes, "gay marriage" will have wide spread impact, including school curriculums taught to students about expected behaviors and attitudes, and will bring increasing conflicts between established constitutional rights and those stemming from a newly manufactured right to gay marriage. Think of all the peace and agreement that Roe v. Wade brought to American society, and double it.

Comparing the Lifestyles of Homosexual Couples to Married Couples

Lesbian Divorce Shocker

Lesbian Divorce Shocker: Same-sex marriages between women are considerably more likely to end in divorce than either same-sex male marriages or heterosexual marriages, according to a study of Norway and Sweden:

We found that divorce risks are higher in same-sex partnerships than in opposite-sex marriages, and that unions of lesbians are considerably less stable, or more dynamic, than unions of gay men. In Norway as well as in Sweden, the divorce risk in female partnerships is practically double that of the risk in partnerships of men.

'Poster couple' for gay rights in California is divorcing

The rhetorical and legal machinery that is being used to punch down society's laws and customs will leave a big enough hole that much more mischief will follow. Polygamists are already filing lawsuits using the same legal theories used to support gay marriage, and support for the normalization of pedophilia is entering the stage that homosexuality was in 50 years ago. These battles will only get worse.

Let's rephrase that question : if Obama succeeds in totally destabilizing Iraq, and oversees it's state collapsing into lawlessness or worse (like what democrats did to Iran under Carter) then the most naive amongst the democrats will be in full agreement with the hardened republicans : let's NOT go back.

In case you can't understand why :
1) democrats : we don't care. We want more handouts. We'll just send them 5 bibles and 10 kumbaya tapes, and everything will sort itself out. More weed !
2) republicans : we are NOT going in only to have the next fuckwit from (1) screw it up again

You mean like the deep solar minimum of 2008/2009?

Yeah, kinda like that. 2008 2009 2010

It's seems that ways of countering access to information are on the minds of many.

We certainly heard a few things about the significance of and attempts to control the flow in Egypt. We don't hear so much about Cuba. It got my attention when someone posted that the events in Egypt weren't getting covered there.

http://www.dispatch.com/live/content/national_world/stories/2011/02/07/u-s-attacking-cuba-through-wi-fi-hot-spots.html

(translated text of video)
http://translatingcuba.com/?p=7111#more-7111

(the video, in Spanish)
http://vimeo.com/19402730

Agents and officers with the FBI Cybercrime Task Force, and U.S. Postal Inspectors are credited with the success of the case.

Er, no--credit monitoring software at the company he worked for!:

New monitoring software at Nationwide Insurance spelled the beginning of the end for an employee who had been counterfeiting and selling computer games for five years. The software alerted Nationwide officials to a spreadsheet that Qiang "Michael" Bi had sent from his personal e-mail account to his Nationwide e-mail account. The spreadsheet listed eBay accounts, credit-card numbers and false identity information that Bi used in a lucrative counterfeiting scheme.

The spreadsheet listed more than 50 eBay and PayPal accounts, all with different names. Bi told investigators he used other people's information on the accounts because eBay and PayPal had suspended his accounts and do not allow a new account with the same name and address as a suspended account.

You're the one positing that there's some sort of secrecy attached to the bill.

I posited nothing of the kind. I just pointed out that the bill was WRITTEN behind closed doors and the fact that Nancy Pelosi was quoted as saying "We have to pass the bill to find out what's in it"

What in Obama's stated positions or legislative record makes you think that he ISN'T a centrist?

His expressed desire for a single payer health care system? His apologies for the United States on the global stage? His desire to impose a carbon tax that will increase the price of every consumer good in the United States? The "stimulus" bill that sent hundreds of billions of dollars to his friends in the public sector unions? His extreme hostility towards the 2nd amendment as a state legislator?

His eventual health-care plan is ridiculously tame

Nobody outside of the progressive movement thinks that the HCR legislation was "ridiculously tame". The Federal Government is taking away my ability to determine for myself whether or not I need health insurance and what kind I want to buy. That's stateism, pure and simple.

He's stated that he's willing to compromise heavily over the Bush tax cuts.

No he hasn't. He has defaulted to his campaign position of raising taxes on the "rich" (arbitrarily defined as $250,000) while leaving them the same on everybody else.

Obama is a centrist, a moderate, pro-business Democrat.

Pro-business politicians do not advocate policies that would impose massive cost increases on every business in the country. Pro-business politicians do not threaten to punish and/or try to intimidate private enterprise for refusing to toe the party line.

Stop claiming that he's Ralph bleeping Nader or something

You have a real talent for making up shit that I've never said.

that anything left of Ronald Reagan is unacceptable, because you won't accept a centrist compromise.

I'm not a big fan of Reagan. I'm socially moderate to liberal (depending on the issue) and fiscally conservative. Not much I would have agreed with Reagan on, though it's a moot point since I wasn't old enough to vote (or even understand the issues) when he was in office. Got another box you want to try and pigeonhole me into?

Actually, yes, on purpose. Ten miles from my house, a 4 year old got angry with a babysitter because the babysitter wouldn't let him/her do something. The toddler went to the closet, opened it, grabbed an unloaded SHOTGUN, picked up the shells and LOADED IT, then proceeded to walk over to the babysitter and shoot him to death.

Just curious... Are you referring to this incident that occurred in Jackson, Ohio? In that case, there were no fatalities. Just some minor pellet wounds for the babysitter and a bystander.

As for the child, he definitely showed that he had fairly advanced fine motor skills and was able to display excellent memory recall (either through learning by repetition or by watching adults). However, he wasn't able to distinguish between a real firearm and a toy gun, and probably didn't appreciate the difference (or consequences). He also didn't exhibit much planning ability. The whole thing was pretty spur-of-the-moment.

This is fairly normal development for kids in the four-year old range. It's right at that transitory area between two of Piaget's stages: pre-operational vs. concrete operations. At that age, kids are already physically able to do some fairly complex things, but are only beginning to understand the consequences of negative actions and concepts. I think most people have noticed that this is around the age when kids begin to actively lie, bully, cheat, etc. So, it's hard to say what his motive was, other than to express his disapproval with the babysitter.

(Note: I'm trying not to talk out of my ass. The above was written after consulting my spousal unit; she has an MA in clinical child psychology and works with developmentally-challenged kids.)

By the way, I'm not sure that I believe the incident went down exactly as reported. According to articles that I read on other news sites, there was a fairly large group of kids in the mobile home, ranging from infants up to late-teens. The alternative theory is that the teens were goofing around with the shotgun when it accidentally went off, then laying the blame on the four-year old.

For your example situation that hasn't happened to me in my lifetime, the longest time I've been powerless is during the 2003 north america blackout. I'm more worried about being attacked by ninja's than having regular power outages after 9hour drives such that it'd effect my life.

You have been lucky then. Well, that or you live in an area with a relatively timid climate.

2-5 days at a time is common??? I've been to place up north where bears and moose walk the streets and that would never happen

2-5 days at least once per winter. Generally it's during an ice storm but we have a lot of utility poles that travel through farm land and sometimes access to those lines is difficult. I remember last year, I had two bucket trucks and a bulldozer stuck on my property from where we got a heavy snow (about 5 inches) that turned to freezing rain which snapped the power lines, and then a warm up the very next day with about 40 degree F weather and rain for a week. It took a crane, another dozer and a crap load of steal cable and 02 stone to get them out.

There are probably years it doesn't happen but it's a reality enough to expect it.

Electric cars will likely roll out faster in 1st world conditions. I doubt wherever you live where you need candles and oil lamps.... has the electrical infrastructure to support electric cars. Seriously where do you live? 1920's Alaska?

I live in Central Ohio. But I live in the country about 6 miles to the nearest city. The electric utility is some local coop but when they are having problems the larger ones like AEP is too. Shit just gets messy here fast. Here is a link to an article about the wind storm we had last year. Basically it was the storm system of hurricane Ike that hit the gulf and somehow picked up steam around Ohio and gave us 75mph winds for a day or two.

I know places where there arent roads to and you have to take a helicopter to reach... and they would be insulted if you thought they used oil lamps, though their internet sucks which is almost as bad as not having flashlights yet.

Don't act like it's that bad of a deal. People along the gulf and southeaster seaboard are in the same situation much of the year. Oklahoma and tornado alley have the same problems. This type of infrastructure problem is more common in the US and first world countries then you might know. Here is a list of some of the larger outages as tracked by the government. It's only for 2009 and up to mid june. Here is last year. These aren't all of the power outages, just the larger ones where it was considered an emergency. Quite a bit of the US experiences those for various periods of time.

What does one thing have to do with the other, as if just BAD DRUGS are the source of income for Cartels in general around everywhere. May it be Coffee? yeah there is a cartel there, you don't have to shoot someone to make damage because you can pay farmers a misery for their products (as in the Colombian cartel of coffee) so they will grow dope instead, dope that it's so friking hard to sell there as nobody want that shit.

Someone made a comic strip this year about it

Even if it's something non related, Juan Valdez and Mule SUED the guy And he apologized rather quickly.. srcsm/ I think he was just afraid of the mule /srcsm

So maybe now IT professionals and their high intake of Coffee, and also trendy snobs on starbucks are sponsoring drug production.

BTW theres no Muslim Turrurists (TM) here.. the only terrorist here is the one Bushy boy help to get elected.

and the oblig..

also, fuck you.

Really ? The people who illegaly obtained access to "Joe the plumber"'s records, and went on to check all sorts of things on him are still perfectly gainfully employed by the government :

http://www.dispatch.com/live/content/local_news/stories/2008/10/24/joe.html?sid=101

I guess it all depends what side you're on. Can't have peole being critical of the president, now can we ?

Hey Olame-a - I'm waiting for my $5000. Without tax increase (and I'm paying ZERO taxes). After the election you became very silent on this point ...

The question is, why the hell didn't universites see the RIAA's challenges for what they were(bullshit) and begin to fight against the RIAA for their students much sooner? Last I checked, students pay the tuition, not the *AA's. Here's the top-25 universities which handed out copyright infringement notices during the 2006 - 2007 academic year.Note the geographic locations of the majority of the list. 1. Ohio University - 1,287 2. Purdue University - 1,068 3. University of Nebraska at Lincoln - 1,002 4. University of Tennessee at Knoxville - 959 5. University of South Carolina - 914 6. University of Massachusetts at Amherst - 897 7. Michigan State University - 753 8. Howard University - 572 9. North Carolina State University - 550 10. University of Wisconsin at Madison - 513 11. University of South Florida - 490 12. Syracuse University - 488 13. Northern Illinois University - 487 14. University of Wisconsin at Eau Claire - 473 15. Boston University - 470 16. Northern Michigan University - 457 17. Kent State University - 424 18. University of Michigan at Ann Arbor - 400 19. University of Texas at Austin - 371 20. North Dakota State University - 360 21. Indiana University - 353 22. Western Kentucky University - 353 23. Seton Hall University - 338 24. Arizona State University - 336 25. Marshall University - 331 From the 2008 list we see that the RIAA seem to be bolder, but the trend as before remains the same, for the most part. Texas Christian university? Thou shalt not steal ;)

Go Big 10!

The question is, why the hell didn't universites see the RIAA's challenges for what they were(bullshit) and begin to fight against the RIAA for their students much sooner? Last I checked, students pay the tuition, not the *AA's.

Here's the top-25 universities which handed out copyright infringement notices during the 2006 - 2007 academic year.Note the geographic locations of the majority of the list.

1. Ohio University - 1,287
2. Purdue University - 1,068
3. University of Nebraska at Lincoln - 1,002
4. University of Tennessee at Knoxville - 959
5. University of South Carolina - 914
6. University of Massachusetts at Amherst - 897
7. Michigan State University - 753
8. Howard University - 572
9. North Carolina State University - 550
10. University of Wisconsin at Madison - 513
11. University of South Florida - 490
12. Syracuse University - 488
13. Northern Illinois University - 487
14. University of Wisconsin at Eau Claire - 473
15. Boston University - 470
16. Northern Michigan University - 457
17. Kent State University - 424
18. University of Michigan at Ann Arbor - 400
19. University of Texas at Austin - 371
20. North Dakota State University - 360
21. Indiana University - 353
22. Western Kentucky University - 353
23. Seton Hall University - 338
24. Arizona State University - 336
25. Marshall University - 331

From the 2008 list we see that the RIAA seem to be bolder, but the trend as before remains the same, for the most part. Texas Christian university? Thou shalt not steal ;)

http://dispatch.com/live/content/local_news/stories/2008/10/28/ajudgerule.html?sid=101

Right here in the US:

Government computers used to find information on Joe the Plumber

"State and local officials are investigating if state and law-enforcement computer systems were illegally accessed when they were tapped for personal information about "Joe the Plumber."

Samuel Joseph Wurzelbacher became part of the national political lexicon Oct. 15 when Republican presidential candidate John McCain mentioned him frequently during his final debate with Democrat Barack Obama.

The 34-year-old from the Toledo suburb of Holland is held out by McCain as an example of an American who would be harmed by Obama's tax proposals.

Public records requested by The Dispatch disclose that information on Wurzelbacher's driver's license or his sport-utility vehicle was pulled from the Ohio Bureau of Motor Vehicles database three times shortly after the debate.

Information on Wurzelbacher was accessed by accounts assigned to the office of Ohio Attorney General Nancy H. Rogers, the Cuyahoga County Child Support Enforcement Agency and the Toledo Police Department.

This is thuggish intimidation with the express purpose of suppressing criticism of Barack Obama and his policies of "share the wealth", otherwise known as "Socialism" and/or "Marxism".

And there's a really comforting pattern of misconduct when it comes to Barack Obama:

Chief of firm involved in breach is Obama adviser

The CEO of a company whose employee is accused of improperly looking at the passport files of presidential candidates is a consultant to the Barack Obama campaign, a source said Saturday.

Nice.

Fear for your freedom as well as your wallet.

One wonders how many times the story of this invasion of Joe the Plumber's privacy has been submitted to Slashdot.

Joe the plumber's records accessed illegally.

So we now know how Obama will treat those that question Dear Leader.

And all you leftards screamed about Bush's imaginary violations of the Constitution? Were you just projecting?

Fear for your freedom as well as the your wealth that Obama wants to "spread around".

You appear to be ignorant of the principle of implied consent

It is not "Stealing" nor "Theft of services" nor "Unauthorized use of a computer" nor "Computer trespass" according to New York Law, for one example.

Perhaps you'd like a scholarly article on why we should not make your assumptions (and get indignant about it, I might add) from George Washington University - Law School

In fact, I had already given you examples of use which are not stealing, and you are choosing to ignore them so you can't redundantly say stealing is stealing. On the off chance that you blacked out, the examples were anonymous FTP and a web server sharing files. P2P is another situation where you could be sharing files by mistake, but it's reasonable to assume that it is not by mistake - and downloaders use more of your computer resources than someone sending data through your router.

It takes all of one minute to turn on security. You do *not* have to be a hacker - what a canard that is. I won't claim that there isn't anyone who wouldn't be able to do it, but society cannot always limit itself to what the least of us can do. There is no victim in this scenario, just someone who has shared their network, so deserve has nothing to do with it. I was merely suggesting that being lazy and ignorant usually means you are to blame when you do something you did not intend.

Enough of your feeble attempts to claim I will take other people's physical property if it's not bolted down. You are obviously having trouble recognizing the difference between a car parked in your garage and a service that you are broadcasting onto my property which advertises itself as non-private and explicitly authorizes me to join the network.

Is it possible that reasonable people can reach this conclusion? Or am I the only asocial moron with a toddler's mentality?

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060227-6272.html
http://www.dispatch.com/live/contentbe/dispatch/2006/02/26/20060226-H2-03.html
http://blogs.computerworld.com/why_its_ok_to_steal_wi_fi
http://zovirl.com/2006/07/27/you-cant-steal-wifi/
http://www.volokh.com/posts/1179938755.shtml

You may not agree, but you should not continue to pretend that all people who hold this view think it's OK to steal. Try to learn that much.

The F-22 demo was very impressive since the demo team also showed off its thrust vectoring capability to do several things that even a Harrier can't do (better avionics means that the F-22 doesn't just rely on pilot skill to stay stable when vectoring). Expect to see quite a few pictures since the Sunday "Heritage Flight" had all three demo team jets (F-15, F-16 and F-22) flying in formation with a Mustang which matched the "Heritage Flight" patch for the first time ever.

Cheers,
Dave

...and is the second-largest school in the US.

No kidding, just look what happened to Cheshire

Electronic voting, while a neat idea to speed up the vote counting process, seems to have run into a number of glitches (over 1100 nationwide) this November 2nd. In addition to seemingly random problems in Florida [1, 2], Ohio [1], and North Carolina [1], there are allegations of systematic fraud based on statistical comparison of exit polls to final results in precincts with audit trails and those without. It is also interesting that in Florida, the voting patterns do not match the voter registration patterns as they do nationwide. This has attracted the attention of numerous civil rights groups including the Electronic Frontier Foundation that has filed at least two lawsuits since election day, and BlackboxVoting.org that has filed a Freedom of Information Act request to obtain computer logs and documents from 3000 counties and districts across the US. Equally disturbing is the fact that CNN has (since Nov 2) changed its exit polling results to reflect the actual results. This has attracted the attention of Congressmen John Conyers Jr. of Michigan, Jerrold Nadler of New York and Robert Wexler of Florida who have jointly requested that the GAO immediately investigate the efficacy of e-voting machines.

In case you are thinking that this is just sour grapes from Democrats who lost the election, think again. BlackboxVoting.org has been investigating e-voting fraud for years. Likewise, the CEO of Diebold, one of the e-voting machine manufacturers has been quoted as saying "I am committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president." And if that's not conflict of interest enough for you, Republican Senator Chuck Hagel (now resigned) is an owner of the largest e-voting machine company ES&S.

Other numerous problems have been found with the machines from nearly every company in the past [1, 2, 3]. Avi Rubin, a computer science professor at Johns Hopkins University, has been investigating such machines on his own and has found a number of security issues. Swarthmore students stood up to Diebold in November of 2003 after discovering

It's true, they have the highest prices and they're bankrupt. The poor school district with their distribution center is short a HALF MILLION from them not paying their taxes. They are laying off teachers. BIG BEAR MOVES OUT OF COLUMBUS!!! PEN TRAFFIC!!!!! READ MORE HERE