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Would you consider book burning to be repressive?

Is running over CDs with a bulldozer analogous? That's what happened at a rally arranged, not by "their own fans", but by Cumulus Media, which controls 262 radio stations nationwide.

Clear Channel stations, not Dixie Chicks fans, banned them from the airwaves. Clear Channel owns 1,225 radio stations. That's almost as effective as government censorship, without the icky court battles. Clear Channel denies any involvement in the anti-Dixie Chicks rallies organized by many of their stations (but nobody else's).

Reference: The Columbia Journalism Review.

Clear Channel vice chairman Tom Hicks is a longstanding very good friend of George W. Bush.

>the Dixie Chicks were not put to death

I take little comfort in the fact that nobody has carried out the death threats.

Don't have to break a law. High crime and misdemeanor, despite the way it sounds, isn't a legal definition. What constitutes a high crime and/or misdemeanor is up to Congress to decide when they start drafting those famed Articles of Impeachment. So, you can be removed from office for bad/reckless/stupid behavior without breaking a law. While in no way authoritive, this is a nice read: http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1282/is _n17_v50/ai_21129268

Not to mention, Bush took an oath to "preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States" and by dipsy-doodling around it anytime he sees fit, he's breaking his oath.

Between cost of living increases, inflation, and the incredible loss in the value of the dollar in the world market, that second decimal place has pretty much lost all meaning anyway.

This is already legal in Michigan.

This bill will not decrease hunting safety, except maybe for the animals who would otherwise go un-killed. I am surprised and somewhat insulted to see this story poo-poohed in the press.

This was considered seriously in the last legislative session after a would-be hunter couldn't get a license due to blindness. Texas keeps its legislative sessions short and it's not unusual for a bill to die because of the calendar.

Expect this bill to pass.

I like the premise, but I think the metaphor is wrong: there is no actual debt, and in now way does being in prison function as repayment. Aside from other philosophical issues around the meaning of justice, individuals that demonstrate that they are a danger to society must be segregated from society at least until (arguably, only until) they are no longer a danger to society. The idea that someone presents such a danger that they need to be tracked suggests they are too dangerous to be "out." The theoretical streaker is unlikely to present any danger to society, whereas an unrepentant serial rapist with multiple prior convictions probably shouldn't be let out again, or at least until there's some plausible developments in psychiatry. But the same holds true for violent criminals, so clearly sex crimes are singled out solely for their prurient interest, by providing an opportunity to gratuitously describe sex in an offensive way that winds up voters but is without any political or legislative merit, which sounds a lot like a sex crime itself to me...

On balance though, we should be grateful for Lawrence & garner v. State of Texas. It would be a great help to pass a constitutional amendment barring laws that dictate the private behavior of consenting adults. Ask your legislators.

As the "Won't somebody please think of the children" subject alludes, the Simpsons have effectively commented on bogeyman politics, in particular with the bear patrol episode. It's just transparent pandering, creating a false fear and exploiting it; and all the better that the subject be indefensible, though simply defenseless will also work when all the good ones are taken. Sex criminals will always be an easy target, but once that bandwagon has left the station (again), it's time to attack immigrants (poor Groundskeeper Willie), or Albania, or homosexuals, or whatever.

The best thing about this sort of moralist pandering and posturing is that politicians are just as morally complex as everyone else and their utter humiliation is a nice reward for the harm they do, so we should all thank Limbaugh, Haggard, Barnes, Bakker, etc for the joy they've given us.

They could. But that would be wrong.

Yes, and so was whatever crime they commited that made them a sex offender. Those that will try to do it again are the ones least likely to comply with the law in full. All this will do is help ostracize the ones trying to do things right from now on.

Ars Technica had an article about this also, here's a quote from it:

While we understand his concern, Ars has received e-mails from sex offenders who feel completely rejected from society by such restrictions, especially when they have been put on the list for statutory reasons (generally, having consensual sex with a minor).

That brings up two of the major problems with all this. 1. Many states have gone nuts with what they consider a sex offender, pretty minor things can land you on one, so the lists aren't useful any longer. Do you really worry that the guy living down the street was a year too old to have sex with his girlfriend and got hit with a statutory rape charge? 2. People who feel completely rejected by society often end up feeling they have nothing to lose. People who feel they have nothing to lose are more likely to commit a crime.

We need some sanity in all this, this proposal simply isn't going to work, it's way too easy to get new E-mail accounts and IM accounts. We also should be worried about the unintended consequences the law may cause. Iowa passed a law not too long ago (I can't find the exact date, but the news articles are from March 2006, article at FindArticles, same article at the NYT) that restricted sex offenders who had committed crimes with children from living within 2000 feet of a school or day-care center. This sounds somewhat reasonable at first doesn't it, they even restricted the class of sex offenders it applied to. Well it backfired, let me just quote this bit from the article:

A new state law barring those convicted of sex crimes involving children from living within 2,000 feet of a school or day-care center has brought unintended and disturbing consequences. It has rendered some offenders homeless and left others sleeping in cars or in the cabs of their trucks.

And the authorities say that many have simply vanished from their sight, with nearly three times as many registered sex offenders considered missing since before the law took effect in September.

"The truth is that we're starting to lose people," said Don Vrotsos, chief deputy for the Dubuque County sheriff's office and the man whose job it is to keep track of that county's 101 sex offenders.

So now they've lost track of many sex offenders they had track of prior to the law going into affect. Even if you think the sex offender registries actually help prevent sex crimes this is bad news.

You have to ask yourself, what unforeseen side-effects will this Virgina law have? Might it make registered sex offenders purposely use multiple accounts and only report one? Might it make them more cautious about what they do and say online, making it harder to catch them before they commit another crime? We don't know, but I don't see how there's any benefits to this law, at best only the ones who are trying to not commit another crime will fully comply.

It is no joke; here are some links; you have to read between the lines a little.
http://www.af.mil/news/story.asp?id=123011448
http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0IBW/is _2_5/ai_n16057511
http://www.afa.org/magazine/July2005/0705expeditio n.asp

and for Navy types:
http://www.strategypage.com/htmw/htmoral/articles/ 20060922.aspx

One of my best friends sons is Air Force, and is doing convoy escort, guarding prisoners, and he didn't volunteer for it; he is a Radar Technician.
The FACT is is that while the combat services are claiming that there is no shortage, it is a very far thing from the truth.

Define "traditionally". Scandinavia (as well as most of northern Europe) was settled by people moving in from the east not too long ago (in an evolutionary scale - 2-4 millenia).

Do you have sources for this? My source says it was 10,000 years ago.

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1511/is_n2_ v15/ai_14990061

"Ten thousand years ago, as the ice sheet covering Scandinavia began to shrink, northern Norway is thought to have been colonized from two directions: from the east, by hunters from the Russian steppes who were pursuing migrating game such as reindeer, and whose rock carvings of reindeer have been found not far from Soroya on the Norwegian mainland; and from the south, by people who made their way up Norway's ice-free west coast. At the moment there is no way of telling which direction the Soroyans came from--or whether it was both south and east."

Also, the complexion thing has to do with vitamin D (produced in the skin if sunlight is present)

Again, there is no association with latitude. The arctic tribes of Siberia are dark-skinned, as are Tierra Del Fuegans on the tip of South America. All ethnic groups in question have eaten plenty of seafood for thousands of years. Tierra Del Fuegans have evolved square fingertips, but this also appears to be just another random artifact of genetic drift, rather than having any particular survival value in arctic climates.

not C (which has nothing to do with sunlight).

My point was that the ability to synthesize vitamin C appears unrelated to climate as well. The tundra has plenty of edible berries, which can be easily dug up even in the winter.

No, but it contains lactose, which can take over the function of vitamin D in calcium resorption.

On the other hand, Scandinavians have traditionally eaten herrings and other small fish including the bones. Lactose-intolerant peoples in other parts of the world have also traditionally obtained calcium this way. Whether lactose's coincidental ability to aid calcium resorption played a role in evolution is unclear.

I remember an old ad which said that the P4 would give you this and that faster Internet among other things... I thought that was the official version but I googled it and all I can find is stuff such as "The chip is designed for broadband Internet technologies. Compared with a PIII 1GHz chip, Intel claims that the Pentium 4 runs Windows Media 59% faster, Macromedia Flash 22% faster, Java 30% faster, XML 25% faster and 3D visualisation 38% faster." from http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0WVI/is _2000_Nov_20/ai_67337593 so I think the faster Internet ad was from a nation wide store chain called SIBA. In any case, magic! :D

Mandatory gun laws have also been used in Kennesaw, GA. Crime plummeted after almost everyone was required to keep a gun in their home.

VoIP was banned for quite a long time, only now govt seems to be taking some action! This article[1] says how VoIP is only permissible within a firm's internal corporate network. Because of this Yahoo Messenger for India[2] comes without VoIP support. Although it seems Yahoo is now acquiring license[3] to offer IP Telephony in India.

1.http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0NEW/ is_2001_Sept_4/ai_77821205
2.http://in.messenger.yahoo.com/
3.http://www.infoworld.com/article/06/11/06/HNyaho otelephonyindia_1.html?VOIP

At most, 'some volunteers who tolerate the heat may experience prolonged redness or even small blisters'

Not a problem, if it is just your arms. Or maybe even your face. But what about your eyes? Emissions from arc welding can cause cataracts or even retinal scarring.

"Electric arcs radiate much more than visible light. Infrared rays, although they cannot be seen, can be felt as heat. They can cause retinal burning and cataracts. At the other end of the radiation spectrum, ultraviolet rays. Its painful effects-swelling, tearing, even temporary blindness-may not show up for hours following exposure."

So, what would the effects of this thing be on a person's eyes? It just seems like a really bad idea to use EM to scorch people. We're actually pretty fragile.

http://www.google.com/search?q=lotus+notes+linux+c lient&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8

But, there doesn't seem to be a Notes native to Linux. Maybe they won't make enough selling tech support and client licenses in an environment where people might try to wring them dry "cuz it's open source..."

I say they should dual license Lotus SmartSuite, but particularly Approach and Word Pro and 1-2-3.

Then, make Approach a runtime executable so simple stand-alone apps can be built for NON-ENTERPRISE users who absolutely will pay for SIMPLICITY that is limited. Unfortunately, SOME of that might get reverse engineered, but as long as the app is not a total quantum leap over the run of the mill O/S IDEs, then Approach probably shouldn't be a threat to Notes, Domino, or even Trolltech and others. As a relational front end, it's great. It just SUCKS having to run Approach in windoze.

What ever happened to Lotus' workflow stuff?

I read SOME of the URL:
http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0REL/is _n9_v92/ai_12834133

but haven't kept track of the stuff since years.

I think there's a LOT of IBM/Lotus stuff that is not being exploited in Open Source. OTOH, a lot of stuff that can mimic or block/stunt/stem entry by IBM IS being done, namely the manufacturing, CRM, PIM and other things. If these smaller pims and CRM tools become entrenched due to steady improvement in quality, scalability, and stability, then not only IBM, but even msoft at some point will lose control and territory to new upcomers. This is probably the BIGGEST reason major patent lawsuits are not yet flying across the wires. Wait and see what innovators do to outflank the big guys like IBM, Salesforce.com, etc, even msoft, then buy them up before a bigger fish does.

But, I think if IBM shared or mentored some of the smaller database companies and let them operate as small subsidiaries or subsidized entities, then when the market gets tight, full of competitors, or the tech is right, then buy the operations but keep the talent pool in synch with customers and only incrementally fold them into the bigger org so the customers are not scared off or upset. At LEAST IBM's tech could be dispensed in a manageable fashion that might help IBM downstream. Then, there is the risk that even msoft would try to do an end-run and buy up something IBM spawned or mentored if precautions are not taken. But, then, how to mentor Open Source without letting msoft get their hands on it? Foundations? Controlling stakes? Plant key officers in key positions? Lots of options, but not enough BANG for the BUCK to please Scald Street...

Heheh... captcha: "munition"

A few years ago, 11 countries of the EU almost all simultaneously changed their coins and bills in a matter of a few weeks.

Yes, and it cost around $100 billion. Not really a great argument in favor.

Also, changing bills and coins regularly makes it easier to counterfeit, not harder. Think about this for two seconds.

Here ya go:
Milgram Experiment
YA article...

> WHERE IS THE 2nd BRAIN?

In your gut.

The enteric nervous system is a bunch of neurons in the lining of your digestive system that are complex enough to be called a brain in their own right.

http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1175/is _3_32/ai_54504396
http://www.aikidoaus.com.au/dojo/docs/2nd_braina.h tm

The current nomenclature is type 1 and type 2. Roman numerals are out of favor to describe the kinds of diabetes. The recommendation from the American Diabetes Association came out in 1997. See here.

Yes, but a useful one.

Police Use of Nondeadly Force to Arrest

RESISTING ARREST

Passive NonCompliance

By far, the greater number of cases involving police use of non-deadly force are those in which it is alleged that the suspect resisted or attempted to evade arrest. This is undoubtedly due to the fact that the suspects are not posing immediate threats to the officers or others necessarily but are simply being noncompliant.

An example is Forrester v. City of San Diego,19 where police officers used "pain compliance" techniques to arrest several anti-abortion demonstrators who had ignored police commands to disperse. Before using any force, the officers warned the demonstrators that they would be subject to pain compliance measures if they did not move. Demonstrators were told that such measures would hurt, but they could reduce the pain by standing up.

When the demonstrators did not comply, the officers used pain compliance techniques to remove them. In their lawsuit, the arrestees complained of injuries to their hands and arms, including bruises, pinched nerves, and one broken wrist. They contended that dragging and carrying them would have been more reasonable.

A jury returned a verdict in favor of the city and the police offi-cers, and that verdict was upheld by the federal appellate court for three reasons. First, the court observed that "the nature and quality of the intrusion upon the arrestees' personal security" was not excessive; rather, "...the force consisted only of physical pressure administered on the demonstrators' limbs in increasing degrees, resulting in pain."20

Second, the city had a legitimate interest in quickly dispersing and removing lawbreakers with the least amount of injury to the police and others, even though many of the crimes were misdemeanors. Third, the court noted that the decision not to drag and carry was based upon the officer's desire to maximize police control over the anticipated large crowds and to avoid back injuries that often are sustained by officers in those situations.

Finally, the court stated: "Police officers...are not required to use the least intrusive degree of force possible....Whether officers hypothetically could have used less painful, less injurious, or more effective force in executing an arrest is simply not the issue."21

Living in a free country doesn't give you license to ignore the law or to refuse arrest, or to refuse to comply with the lawful orders of the police even if you are engaged in civil disobedience, non-violent protest, or passive resistance. The police are legally able to inflict pain in various circumstances to gain compliance with their orders. That includes the use of tasers to counter passive resistance, which seems to be fairly common in police department use of force policies, including at UCLA.

Officers who have received departmental training can use Tasers in the drive-stun mode "to eliminate physical resistance from an arrestee in accomplishing an arrest or physical search ... when a skirmish line is deployed and/or for pain compliance against passive resisters," and "to stop a dangerous animal" according to the policy posted on the UCPD's Web site.

If you listen carefully to the video, it certainly seems that Tabatabainejad is refusing to be taken into custody, resisting arrest, at least through the third taser jolt if not longer. He kee

Well, they are experimenting with this system in a very small part of London at the moment (South Kensington) at the moment. It will be interesting to see how it pans out.

Be aware however, this is much more than reducing traffic signals, it is about removing the street furniture 'clutter' that blights roads. Drivers are overwhelmed by the amount of information and rely on the signs as an alternative to thinking, and this experiment attempts to see what happens if some (not all) markings and signs are removed.

Here's an article on the experiment.

We'll see if Redmond's new gadget doesn't have the checkered history of that old piece of ordnance:
http://www.ordnance.org/mishaps.htm
anyone who's ever seen the flick "Trial by Fire" about the USS Forrestal disaster might not know that now Senator McCain's aircraft was on the receiving end of the zuni that started it all:
http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1282/is _1999_Sept_27/ai_55820860
Naming products can be tricky, no?

It would seem that Mr. Greubel has been given the wherewithall to fight the case by a Vancouver-based music producer who is looking to create a proper test case to challenge the RIAA "John Doe" lawsuits.

The great 10-day MCI/Worldcom Frame Relay outage of 1999, caused by MCI engineers who implemented an upgrade, which the Worldcom engineers (whom they replaced) felt needed further testing.

http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0UKG/is _1999_Sept_20/ai_56028620

The problem with companies like GM (and apparently Microsoft is starting to fall into this trap) is that they are dominated by their marketing departments. Marketing departments don't listen to the technical departments, and many bad decisions are made. For example, the marketing department at GM said everyone in America wanted an SUV (and this demand itself is fueled by non-stop marketing barrage telling people that bigger is better, safer, etc.), so the company cranked them out. Then the price of gas spiked.

Meanwhile, the good engineers see their efforts produce mediocrity, and that companies like Honda and Toyota are beating the pants off them. One reason is that engineering has more of a voice in product development. According to this, Honda uses an integrated team with sales (marketing), engineering, and research and development participating at the highest levels to create a product. Engineers produce better products when they have a voice in the requirements.

On the contrary, check this and this to see how olympics bleed more money than they generate.
And considering that the cost of Olympics mostly falls on one city (predominantly) and the cost of a moon mission is bourne the by entire country, I do not see how much of a "per-citizen" difference, you will manage to get!

Or, even worse, when American brewers got bought by darned furners.

You can have our laptops, but you'll never have our beers!

"Lazy people on social programs", geez, I hope you are being sarcastic and do not honestly believe that "lazy people on social programs" are bogeymen for why we have to pay taxes...at most, Welfare, food stamps, housing assistance take up 8% of the budget, about 80 billion... see here table S-4, under Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education (about half goes to education) and see this which breaks down the 2004 budget in a nice little pie chart...

I tire of hearing this "blame the poor" for taxes, when it is not the poor who are busting the budget... plus, the assumption that all poor people are lazy is absurd and groundless. Social programs help this country... it helps people that need it... granted, there those that probably are lazy, but those are few and far between...

If you want to bitch about taxes and be angry, why not take umbrage at the deductions for mortgages on 2nd homes and boats and cap the mortgage deduction, which cost the taxpayers some 70 billion a year, hell, I am all for eliminating the mortgage deduction all together. If home ownership is really THAT important and compelling as Bush pontificates in his "ownership society" babbling, then there does not need to be a mortgage deduction incentive... also, get rid of deductions for state and local taxes which cost taxpayers 50 Billion a year, which in addition to saving the taxpayers money, I figure this will make the Rep and Senators in high tax states more accountable to their constituents in cutting government spending since those constituents in high tax states will not be able to deduct their state taxes... hell, I would even get rid of the child tax credit...if you want kids, then pay for them yourself and not make the rest of us without kids subsidize those with, or those of us that waited until we were financially secure so that we could afford to take care of our kids before we had them... and for heavans sakes, lets not Jettison the estate tax, since it would cost about 90 billion a year if it was eliminated. As the estate tax stands today, it only affects some 2% of the population

Anyway, the whole point is to look else where when bitching about taxes... don't always blame the poor... there are plenty of more substantive ways to cut taxes than simply projecting one's anger on the poor.

Right. Because there are no small ISPs, no mailing list owners, nobody else that could have a small number of employees, but a large number of email recipients.

Apparently you seem to think that you need an employee for every 10 emails that pass through your system on a regular basis. Perhaps you should go and tell Randy Cassingham that he needs to hire another 12,000 employees to help send to the subscribers on his mailing lists.

The W900 was the monitor I was referring to. Sony had at least two versions of the monitor, and the earliest reference I found in a quick search was 1997. I had one long before 2000.

http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_hb197/is _199706/ai_hibm1G119360432

While HDTV standards existed in 1997, how many HDTV sets were being sold then? Widescreen DVDs were, and are, typically published in the format they were originally produced and no movie format was ever 16:9. 16:9 was a format dreamed up specifically for HDTV and movie producers weren't fond of it. There is nothing magic about 16:9 and no reason why monitor makes need to avoid 16:10.

16:10 has nothing to do with LCD. It was established as the widescreen monitor format before LCDs were made in that format.

But if you rob someone with a pretend gun you can still be charged armed robbery. see http://www.law.ua.edu/colquitt/crimmain/crimcase/g arza.htm Even pointing a fake gun at someone can be a crime, so that part of your plan might not work. see http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4191/i s_20050108/ai_n10043840

Through such visual tricks, campaigns duck the libel laws they would face in print advertising...

Anyone else remember they gave NVidia the same treatment back in the heady day's of '98? This is nothing new for SGI. "Rattle the cage, and try to stave off the end with another lawsuit." How did that last one work for SGI? Not so well....

I definitely agree with you; what I don't understand is what part of U.K. law Sony used to go after Lik-Sang and other importers.

It's pretty clear that grey-market importation is legal in the United States (heck, companies like B&H Photo do it all the time; sometimes you can even choose between the Grey and U.S. version of the same item), so I don't think the same thing could happen here unless Sony really wanted to buy Congress. Not that we didn't get close -- the USSC decision was 5-4 in favor of the gray market's "parallel importation," so it could have been different.

What's very odd to me is that people in the U.K. seem to tolerate their laws being used against them in such a self-defeating fashion. I was stunned when I went to England last, how much everything cost there even compared to Europe. It's bizarre that such a situation is allowed to exist given the ease of moving goods across the Channel. It's only through the tacit approval of a lot of people in the U.K. that this situation remains. If I were a U.K. politician, this seems like it would be a no-brainer issue to jump on. Nobody likes knowing that they're getting screwed by a bunch of foreigners, but yet as a country they're practically bending over and asking for it.

Maybe there's some benefit to the laws that are being (ab)used this way that I'm not seeing, but really it just seems like the U.K.-ers get hosed as a result of their own legal system.

Is there some sort of benefit to the U.K. of the laws prohibiting parallel importation? Or is the government there even more thoroughly bought by the multinational corporations than it is here?

I hate to break it to you, but telemarketing is based upon the solid business case that it does in fact work. Companies would not be engaging in telemarketing if it weren't for the fact that it has a decent ROI when compared to other wide-reaching marketing campaigns. This article, while definitely not the most recent one out there, speaks of the 5-15% success rate.

As annoying as we find SPAM (both the food and the email), telemarketers, and mass mailings, they do show a return on the marketing investment. Yes, some people are turned away from the product or service because of the annoyance, but plenty of others buy into it to keep this machine running.

One of the best ways to hurt their bottom line is to eat up their time, so that they waste valuable time trying to convince you (or your baby daughter, or your drunk dorm buddies, or your shoutboard, or your own hold music) that the sale is worth it. If their returns dropped low enough, they would stop doing it as it became an ineffective business model.

Not that I have the patience to do that more than once a or twice a month.

Or you could use the following:
I present to you the number for your free annual credit report-
1-877-322-8228

The number to stop receiving pre-approved credit card offers and other junk mail-
1-888-567-8688

And the number to stop receiving solicitations telemarketers-
1-888-382-1222

No, I'm not talking about the silly (but classic) Vincent Price movie, parodied later in the Simpsons. This topic reminds me of a Poul Anderson short story published in Omni, Dec 1992 called "In Memoriam". It's a great read, especially if you are into "hard SF", and it covers a lot of the topics mentioned above in TFA and discussions.

It's the goddamn liberals.

They want things fair and tag isn't fair because someone has to be `it`.
Competition is bad as someone has to lose and nobody likes losers. Being a loser will hurt one's self esteem. School is supposed to provide a positive environment to build self esteem.
For the record they'll say it's for insurance reasons if the kid gets hurt. BS.

They also got rid of dodge ball for being a `violent` sport and aren't allowed to pick sides for basketball as it may hurt some children's self esteem.

These games are not only fun but also build character that they will need later in life.
Life is full of adventure and failure is part of the game. It's up to the individual to use their own character to pick themselves up, dust off, and go back at it.

If you're going to be a weenie kid because that's what the public education system has put forth and wear a man purse to your first day of work in a cube farm, you're gonna be laughed at. No better place to get laughed at than the elementary school ground to build that tough hide you're gonna need.
And if you cry because your boss didn't pick you for a project, you deserve to be ho-slapped for being a wuss. You can blame it on your school since they didn't allow basketball teams to pick players and `Athletic Scott` didn't pick you at all. After all, it's never your fault.

Right, my first two examples are bogus. I'm just hallucinating when I go to peapod.com and they're selling six different kinds of "fat free" and/or "no calorie" cooking sprays that all consist almost entirely of fat.

All the dozens of other sources on the web that it's easy to Google up who are also complaining about this problem are also hallucinating with me. And the FDA's been allowing this for years despite consumer complaints. Some big companies like Coke, Pepsi, and Kraft are revising their labels voluntarily because of consumer complaints about the misleading labels resulting from the FDA's guidelines.

Can you be more specific as to how this is bogus? Your linked page indicates that the FDA has serving size guidelines for some products. Admittedly, that is part of the problem. But I would think that, for my claims to be bogus, the products I'd mentioned would not be on the market with their lying labels for years, and currently available, despite complaints.

The FDA only suggests serving size information for some foods, and their suggestions are often misleading- like two oz of pasta being a serving. But they don't recommend serving sizes for many foods, and they don't enforce the sizes for foods for which they have guidelines, and their guidelines lead to plenty of misleading labels on their own. But while the serving size guidelines are wishy-washy, they're perfectly clear on the point that if there's less that .5 grams of fat "per serving" in a product, they can call it fat free, regardless of how much fat is in the container.

Man, I'm cut to the quick by your insult. Oh wait.. I'm not really.
I'm have the company of a lot of morons out there.
They have the same facts- they just don't state the consequences of those facts.

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m4021/is_n2_ v18/ai_17966623
Estimates of the Earth's human carrying capacity (loosely defined as the number of people the planet can support) range from fewer than 1 billion to more than 1 trillion. This enormous spread follows from widely varying concepts, methods, and assumptions. Most frequently, estimates fall between 4 billion and 16 billion. Counting the highest figure when an author gives a range of possibilities, the median estimate is 12 billion. Counting the lowest estimate when an author gives a range, the median estimate is 7.7 billion. The lowest and highest U.N. population projections for 2050 show that within the next century, the world's population could face ***exceedingly difficult choices in trading off human well-being and human numbers***.

http://www.stanford.edu/dept/news/pr/94/940711Arc4 189.html
Optimum human population a third of present, scientists say
STANFORD -- Until cultures change radically, the optimum number of people to exist on the planet at any one time lies in the vicinity of 1.5 billion to 2 billion people, about a third of the present number, three California ecologists estimated in an article published in the journal Population and Environment.
http://darwin.bio.uci.edu/~sustain/bio65/lec16/b65 lec16.htm#HUMAN%20POPULATION%20GROWTH
Several examples of how locally humans will grow until they die.

http://atlas.aaas.org/index.php?part=1&sec=trends
The latest medium projection, produced in 1998, expects world population to reach 8.9 billion in 2050. This is a massive 1.1 billion less than was expected in the projection made in 1990
--Your 11 billion figure is out of date- now it is the "worst case" result of the model. My 9 billion figure is not something I pulled out of my ass. It was the median answer the last time I boned up on this stuff- perhaps it has changed in 7 years but the trend is less - not more.

I could go on. There were only 20,200,000 more hits for the search. Admittedly, probably a lot of them garbage.

I would say it's more "child wage" illegals- they are doing the jobs I used to do as a teenager for under minimum wage. "Slave wage" really couldn't apply to someone who risks death to voluntarily get here and take the job. However, Mexicans- waving *mexican* flags and talking about *retaking* their land is the last thing we need in the US. They are not taking pride in being American. And their core values are so great that they've done a wonderful job with Mexico- right?

Anyway, my view of the future is a world of "mexico cities" where the lucky ones live in a city surrounded by hills covered with paperboard and scrapwood houses. Mexico had a chance. You look at them in movies made in the 50's and they were clean and modern-- they lost it. It's horrible there now- 5 year olds sleeping in piles on the street.

News flash: When you make money, you owe income tax on it. Doesn't matter if the money comes from real-world work, virtual-world work, services, corporate gifts, or even illegal activity. The second you get U.S. dollars for your work, the IRS gets to claim a chunk of them.

Code morphing sound a lot like a software embedded runtime cross compiler that works at the p-Code level. In other words a JIT interpreter that runs on a chip. In other words where's the innovation.

If Intel merely utilized such methods to impliment "Code Morphing" then I don't think Transmeta should have a case. If they actually reverse engineered the Transmeta chip that would be a different matter. It wouldn't be the first time Intel was caught at it, according to experts at the time, the Xeon processor was a "reversed engineered" copy of the AMD64.

"[Take open source.] Open source is not a new technology area. It was a new business model", SB

First RFC April 1969 for the ARPANET. The Open Source Initiative originated in Feb 1998.

"In the last three or four years, we have competed very well by extending our value", SB

"Microsoft has proposed a licencing agreement blatantly tailored to exclude free software from accessing it.", FSF Europe

" RealNetworks .. sued .. Microsoft on antitrust charges .. Our case is based on .. failure to disclose interface information and imposing restrictions on PC makers"

"Open source never goes away as a business model or competitor. We have learned how to compete with open source", SB

"Microsoft is claiming some form of IP rights over .. a total of 130 protocols which Microsoft is offering for license .. Many of the listed protocols are [IETF] RFC to the core TCP/IP v4 and TCP/IP v6 protocol specifications"

"competing with open source will have to be something that's burned bright on the foreheads of our senior people", SB

"OSS projects have been able to gain a foothold in many server applications because of the wide utility of highly commoditized, simple protocols. By extending these protocols and developing new protocols, we can deny OSS projects' entry into the market."

"In the case of open source, we couldn't adopt the business model. We adopted a competitive approach that so far has worked very well", SB

Under NO circumstances lose against Linux"

"Microsoft also indicated there was a lot more money out there and they would clearly rather use Baystar "like" entities to help us get signifigantly more money if we want to grow further or do acquisitions"

"Microsoft and Sun .. announced the antitrust settlement/technology pact between the two on Friday"

"Sun Microsystems (Nasdaq: SUNW) has signed a deal to license SCO Group's Unix intellectual property"

"Microsoft will license the rights to Unix technology from SCO"

"there are cases where software gets monetized through hardware", SB

Like years ago when you bought hardware and the software was included for free.

Here's a lot of reading material. Some more. A little more. And to top things off here's another article.

Are there plenty of people who feel remorse for killing people if it was a crime of passion or one that they didn't truly want to do but felt compelled to anyways? Sure. But it goes both ways, and there are plenty of people who quite honestly are so deranged that they don't feel any remorse for what they've done. A peer-reviewed scientific study showing that most killers aren't wracked with guilt? I doubt anyone has the time or inclination to play Search-Engine-Monkey for you. Go ahead and get evidence your evidence before you start demanding it from other people. There are plenty of cases where the fact of the matter is that these killers are remorseless, you only have to know an inkling about psychology to understand that. In fact, plenty of these murderers feel justified fully in their actions.

Listen to elucido, he's trying to help you understand the situation. Most people who kill do it because they have serious problems.

I can't believe these obituaries for Ray Noorda highlight his supposed business skill, when he rode Novell straight into the ground and singlehandedly destroyed both Digital Research and WordPerfect. Noorda's Novell bought WordPerfect for $855 million in June 1994, when its word processor, formerly the industry standard, was struggling and needed smart management. After Noorda left the company, Novell promptly sold WordPerfect to Corel in January 1996 for 10 million shares of Corel stock and $11 million in cash -- that's right, an $800 million loss in 18 months. Meanwhile, WordPerfect's market share had totally collapsed.

An October 2000 article in Computer Business Review Online, "Why Companies Fail", discusses Noorda's reign:

"[M]anagement monomania is perhaps the most insidious and avoidable trap. The company that has shown damagingly obsessive behaviour has been network operating system company, Novell. CEO and founder Ray Noorda, after failed takeover talks with Microsoft, became obsessed with the fact that Microsoft was trying to destroy his company - a focus that became so intense, ex-Microsoft CTO Nathan Myrvold dubbed him 'Captain Ahab' in 1993.
"Even though Novell had successfully fought off Microsoft in its core network operating system business for five years, Noorda decided that he had to take direct aim at the industry's Moby Dick. He bought 20 companies, including Digital Research (an operating systems company), Unix System Laboratories and office suite developer WordPerfect (subsequently sold to equally mismanaged Corel) over a three-year period. Even after Noorda retired in 1994, and his successor had divested most of his acquisitions, Novell was damaged beyond repair. [...] Novell fatally lost direction under Noorda, let its core products lapse and ceded market dominance. Since then it has suffered a steady decline."

Of course, Noorda also found the Canopy Group, of which the less said the better.

Noorda achieved some great things, but for much of his latter career he was a force for chaos and destruction.

No-one pays less for anything.

Obviously someone is paying less for something, or else no one would bother sending these things overseas. Even if the Nike Corporation managed to eat 100% of the price difference (which would really only be entirely the case if they are facing a perfectly inelastic demand) it would at the very least mean more profit their shareholders - and that means more value in the mutual funds which include Nike stock, and whatever retirement funds include these mutual funds, and...

Costs go down, yet Nikes manufactured in China do not cost less than Nikes made in the US a while ago, no?

So, expect those jobs to come back in 10 years or so. Of course, it may be that by then the US turns into a third-world nation of nurses and burger-flippers, seeing as in the meantime the incentives of getting a higher (technical) education will be extremely low.

Even that "obvious" wisdom is now starting to look dubious. Take a look at actual world population dynamics. First World countries are already below replacement fertility, excepting for immigration. Japan and Russia are going to start losing population rapidly in the next ten years.

Sounds maybe nice, except for the fact that population implodes just as drastically as it explodes -- in both cases exponentially fast. Furthermore, an imploding population is a major threat to social stability, since it means you have way more old and retired people than young and working. Who supports the old folks? When Social Security and Medicare got started, there were maybe 20 workers to support each retiree. By the next century it will be down to 2 to 1, or less. What will be the effects if young people have to fork over 30-40% of their income to support the old folks? Plus, where do new ideas and risky innovations come from when you run out of youth? Where is the segment of the population thinking 40 years ahead because they'll be here to see it?

In addition, since regions and cultures change fertility at different times, you have places and cultures with shrinking populations living next door to places and cultures with growing populations. The result is big immigration issues. For example, something like half the French population under 18 consists of immigrant children from Islamic regions. Notice any difficulties France has been having digesting those cultural differences? Like rioting and burning cars in the banlieues?

It would be reasonable, of course, to have a stable population. And that's where all the folks who raised the alarm about the "Population Bomb" in the 50s and 60s thought we'd end up, if we successfully reduced fertility. But -- unforeseen consequences again -- no one thought fertility would decline so far that populations started plummeting, bringing along a whole crop of new and unforeseen problems.

Not anymore. http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0CWU/is _2002_Jan_14/ai_81765053/

Patriot Act ensures that you now have to watch both what you say and even what you *think* http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/09/25/011 1231/, very very carefully.

First most influential lobby in US is American Association of Retired Persons (AARP)

Those people are lobbying for wasting our money on the research that will make 70 years old people live longer (Alzheimer desease being the most ourtragious example) instead of spending it for the cause of deseases that devaste less fortunate of us. The rich want to live longer too.

It is important to have respect to older people and provide them good care by their kids, but have a sense of balance, people!

This is not philantropy, this is investment.

That's why you do not have them in checked baggage!!!!

Why are people so stupid to think that when they can't see something it is ok?

You want the laptop and the bateries with people on the plane. If it blows, carry it to the nearest toilet and let it burn out. How, hopefully the toilet is not plastic (ie. the actual toilet not the seat :) Out it in checked baggage and you are fucking screwed. Batteries must NEVER be allowed in the hold or someone is freaking stupid.

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0UBT/is_29_ 18/ai_n6280925

oob: Who's doing the raping? Is it the guards, other women prisoners, or other male prisoners? CH: I know guards rape women and manipulate women into having sex with them, due to fear of not getting the privileges or making it harder for them throughout their course of time in sentencing. And little things, like promising the prisoners candy or cigarettes from the outside world [if they have sex with the guards]. Also, other women who are prisoners, as well as male prisoners [are raping incarcerated women].

Up until widespread schooling began in the 17th and 18th centuries, the modern concept of childhoood, as a time of play and learning lasting well into your teens, didn't really exist. "Real" childhood, that period where you are more of a burden than a help to your agrarian family, only lasted until you were old enough to start doing chores around the farm. By the time you were in your teens, you were probably starting to think about starting a family of your own.

While there is some controversy about whether modern childhood was "invented" in the 18th century, it certainly changed quite a lot. The changing standard of childhood is a little better understood in Japan, where the concept of modern childhood was largely introduced by globalization in the 19th century, and was thus studied a little more rigorously than in Europe and America, where it was a more organic process.

What many of us now consider "childhood" (school and play, with hardly any work until late teens) is really a 20th century phenomenon - once the West de-ruralized and mechanized, the amount of work needed to be performed on a daily basis dwindled to the point where child labor, at home or away, wasn't really needed or desired. The Western 1950s-70s were the absolute high-water mark for a childhood of outdoor leisure - not surprisingly, exactly the time when Pullman (and I, and a large chunk of Slashdot) grew up.

As with any nostalgia trip, Pullman (mis)remembers all the highlights of these times, but not the downsides like the often crushing boredom of having absolutely nothing to do on a rainy weekend (unless, like us, your were a geek and read a lot).

Maybe playing Madden 2007 on a rainy day leads to less creative thought than reading "The Mad Scientists Club" for the fifth time, but I don't think Pullman convincingly makes that case.