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[ whether things are necessities... ]

Nor is steak(or any meat for that matter)

Hardly. A pure carb diet is very unhealthy, and a great ticket to obesity and diabetes.

I'm highly skeptical of that claim. I've never seen any evidence that avoiding meat causes weight gain. From what I can dig up, apparently being a vegan not only does not cause diabetes, it's actually an effective treatment for diabetes. Oh yeah, and vegetarianism is a treatment for obesity. Read this summary from the American Dietetic Association and see if you can find any evidence in it that abstaining from meat results in weight gain. Also, my sister is the only one in my family who is a vegetarian, and guess what: she's also the only one who isn't overweight. (Yes, I'm overweight. Not by a lot, but I am.) I've seen a few overweight vegetarians, but honestly, being overweight is less common from my experience, and apparently studies agree with that.

Eating meat is simply not necessary to maintain a healthy weight. Eat a reasonable, healthy diet with reasonable portions, and exercise some, and you should be fine. If you have a medical problem, that's different and you may need to spend some cash to pay for a special diet, but for most people with weight problems, the cause is behavioral and not medical. Many forms of exercise are free, and eating reasonable portions instead of overeating would actually save you money.

Also, for what it's worth, there isn't really any reason you can't have a little meat and still eat for very cheap. Buy meat in bulk and go for the cheap cuts of meat, and you can get the prices down under $1.00/lb sometimes. In fact, in general, you can eat pretty healthy for pretty cheap. For example, try pricing skim milk compared to 2% or whole milk sometime. The skim milk is cheaper. The real reason most people spend too much on food is that they're going for convenience foods, which are often double or triple the price.

For approximately the last 15 years, the United States has been engaged in the largest imprisonment program ever attempted by a democratic society.

That was back in the early 90's when the US prison population was around 900,000. In the time since then, the prison population has more than doubled again to nearly 2.2 Million prisoners. To put that into perspective, there is currently only about 1.4 million people on active duty in the US military.

We condemn China for their practices involving prison slave labor, yet we conduct those same practices ourselves... Slavery is back in America, and it's mostly for the poor black people again. Meanwhile, every time we have an article discussing incarceration on Slashdot, we get a bazillion prison bitch jokes that fly in the face of the 8th amendment of the US Constitution. You people KNOW their rights are being violated and you don't care.

"Oh dear they're annoying me with spam. Fuck the 1st Amendment, send them to the salt mines!!" Land of the Free indeed...

First They Came for the Jews

First they came for the Jews
and I did not speak out
because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for the Communists
and I did not speak out
because I was not a Communist.
Then they came for the trade unionists
and I did not speak out
because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for me
and there was no one left
to speak out for me.

Pastor Martin Niemoller

...I wait for Slashdot to report the news again! *ducks*

In all seriousness, it's always a good idea to have this information all in one place so you don't have to look for a million results. One thing I liked about my university's library is that they had a portal where you could search all their article databases from one point: You'd get back Lexis-Nexis results, web searches, etc. If Google can do this and tie together trade and scientific journals (say, the APA and thousands of others), then we'll be on our way. Right now one of the other option I can think of is LookSmart's FindArticles, although it seems small at only 10 million articles.

Chinese media, especially newspapers, are a popular target for retribution. Report on something damaging to a major company or the government and you could find yourself out of a job or worse. It seems you're expected to totally ignore any potentially damaging news and stick to safe topics (ex: what the gov't tells you to report on.)

My guess is that this company figures they have a better chance of exacting revenge on a newspaper in China than on British tabloids.

-Parallax

This is a well done hardware project, but there was no analysis demonstrating that he could generate random numbers using this hardware.

For example, see

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pseudorandom_number_g enerator

http://www.phy.duke.edu/~rgb/General/rand_rate.php

http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3742/i s_200201/ai_n9046353

|Oh, really?

Both Eclipse and Derby are the result of previous shopping sprees by IBM.

Eclipse was developed by the IBM Ottawa Software Lab. This lab started life as OTI, a company which developed Smalltalk technology, that IBM bought in 1996.

Derby is the open-source version of the Cloudscape DB. Cloudscape was a Java DB company which was acquired by Informix in 1999, which was in turn acquired by IBM in 2005.

Well, before you take my word as gospel, I'd suggest you read some of the articles written by actual lawyers and legal scholars about the decision. In an earlier post I made about this same topic, I linked to a few.

In particular for this issue I recommend the article from the Georgetown Law Journal (53 pages long; it helps to read it with adblock, otherwise it's unbearable -- start reading on around p.3 for the subject at hand), which talks about the CleanFlicks issue versus analog splicing and the newer digital EDL-based censoring systems (aka ClearPlay, which is still around).

Yeah, lets talk about hardware standards and Apple. Like how they held Firewire hostage by trying to charge enormous royalties. They only relented when they realized USB 2 could make Firewire obsolete. On every front, Apple is as big a jackass as Microsoft. Its only the brainwashed fanbois who refuse to believe it.

You're absolutely right, but not in quite the way that you think. Remember the Hollywood writer's strike in the late 80's? If you don't, I guarantee you the studios certainly do. That strike thrust Hollywood into major turmoil, and the studios weren't going to let that happen again anytime soon. Why did the television industry latch onto "reality" shows so enthusaiastically? No real scripts and no writers required (not to mention low wage non-SAG "talent" in front of the camera). For more about the writer's strike (and a little insight into the machinery of Hollywood), check out this article.

Your comments would make more sense if cigarette's where illegal vs regulated. Cigarette's are dangerous for your long term health and the degrade your short term health but they are "safe" to use on the short term because of regulation. Similar numbers of people smoke pot and cigarette's. They pose similar long term risks however because pot is illegal we increase the users risk significantly.

Yes, quiting cigarette's is a pain, but plenty of people do so. However, if cigarette's where illegal the risk of short term use would go way up so many people might never get a chance to quit. Not to mention the legal and social ramification of illegal drug use vs Cigarettes.

EX: LSD is vary risky to use but much of that risk stems from contamination and unknown dosage levels instead of long term continuous LSD usage. The term "bad batch" means someone/group was used as a lab rat and found out that the LSD is mixed with some other random harmful substance. Regulated substances don't have these problems.

PS: When somewhere between 1/3 and 2/3 of young people have tried POT it's hard to think making it illegal is doing much good.

"According to an October 2002 Time/CNN poll, nearly half of Americans (47 percent) have smoked pot at least once. Gallup polls indicate that a greater share of people have sampled the drug over the last 30 years or so, but not to the level reflected in the Time/CNN survey. According to Gallup data gathered in 1999, 34 percent of Americans admitted trying marijuana, up from 11 percent in 1972 and 4 percent in 1969. (Perhaps to elicit honest responses, those polled were reminded that all of their answers were confidential.) Furthermore, phrasing the question in the following way, "Have you, yourself, ever happened to try marijuana?" seemed to imply that usage could have been inadvertent or that the smoker was somehow not responsible for his or her action." http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m4021/is _5_25/ai_102102598

Now those statistics might be higher if pot where legal, but it was legal for well over 100 years and apparently few people where having problems.

Just an aside, Brent Hatch appears to be the son of Senator Orrin Hatch. http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4188/i s_20030601/ai_n11398911 would seem to bear that out, unless there is another Utah lawyer named Brent Hatch who isn't Sen Hatch's son.

Not sure if it means anything, but I thought it was interesting.

In your comment about the "cut list" I think you must be referring to the 'cleaned DVDs' topic of a few days ago, and I think you're misunderstanding that ruling.

What was prohibited in that case was the reproduction that Clean Flicks was doing in order to produce the edited versions. They were taking a movie, editing it, and then selling the edited version -- yes, they were selling each edited version packaged along with an unedited version, but they were reproducing the film just the same. That's where they ran into copyright problems.

Other companies who took a different tactic towards the problem, and avoided the reproduction step (by delivering to the customer an EDL that would cause the player to fast forward through various 'offensive' parts) were allowed under the ruling.

There's a pretty good analysis of the verdict on FindLaw, which isn't too long and is worth reading. In particular: "The defendants also argued that they were protected by the so-called "first sale" doctrine ... [they] failed to win on this affirmative defense, because they were not just dealing in the hard copy, but rather making copies of it." (Emphasis mine.)

If you're willing to spend some more time reading things actually written by folks who have law degrees, I recommend this substantial article from the Georgetown Law Journal, which was written in 2004 and examines the viability under copyright law of several video-censoring technologies, including old-school razorblade tape splicing, CleanFlicks-type digital editing, and EDL-based 'skip over' systems.

Although CleanFlicks no longer offers the edited copies of DVDs, another company, ClearPlay, still offers an EDL-based product (which IMO is a much more elegant solution to the problem anyway, since it lets you pick what types of smut you personally dislike), as can be seen on their website.

This type of on-the-fly editing is legal, and was clarifed as such by President Bush's passing of the "Family Movie Act of 2005," which specifically allows you to make changes to an authorized copy of a motion picture, as long as you don't create a fixed copy of the edited version. The best part of the law? It's not limited purely to obscenity edits; according to one Forbes article, it could be used just as easily to protect a fan's removal of the more obnoxious parts of Star Wars Episode 1 as it could the removal of Kate Winslet's nudity from Titanic. (Sadly, apparently the technology can't replace Jar Jar Binks with a naked Kate Winslet. Yet.)

So the next time you think that G.W. hasn't done anything for you, it seems that he may have let some good slip through after all.

I googled it quickly and found this http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0UBT/is _29_18/ai_n6280927. Planes don't carry water??

* Water may be used to extinguish packaging fires if batteries have not ruptured; water is not an effective extinguishing agent for a battery fire.

* For small fires involving the battery [extinguishing] media such as Lith-X or copper powder may be used, but should be applied with a long handled tool. Do not use CO2 or Halon directly on a battery fire as the exposed surface of the contained lithium may react with these materials.

* For larger fires involving lithium batteries, copious amounts of water may be applied, from a safe distance, to control the fire and protect adjacent materials and facilities

aircraft don't carry fire suppression equipment capable of extinguishing lithium fires.

I googled it quickly and found this http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0UBT/is _29_18/ai_n6280927. Planes don't carry water??

That's seems about on a par with worrying about doing business with Cantor Fitzgerald because they had an office located in the World Trade Center.

That's just stupid; nobody does a city like that.

Philadelphia, New Beijing, Taiwan, Seoul, Londinium, Carthos, Constantinople, Phoenix, Chicago, Tampa, Rio De Janeiro, Tokyo/Kyoto, Sydney, Jakarta and Dubai were all carefully planned. All have scaled to the modern world very well, with the exception of dealing with automobiles, something you can't really fault the ancients for not seeing coming. Essentially the entire Roman empire had very careful city planning, and in fact they did well enough that even now, 2500 years later, their water solutions and much of their infrastructure is still in use today.

Cities ARE built in a "agile development" fashion.

Most of them, yes, but certainly not all of them, and those that aren't ad-hoc are having far fewer problems than those which are.

These days, everybody zones. There's a reason for that. The reason cities are moving away from on-the-fly planning is that we're finally waking up to that just because that's how it's always been done in the past doesn't mean that's how it should be done. Several cities, like my hometown of Pittsburgh, are finding out the hard way that that can cause just tremendous problems in infrastructure which can throttle economies. Have a look at a land value map of Pittsburgh some time, and look at where you have good rail coverage. Compare it to another city, like Chicago or Phoenix, which was planned. You'll notice that in unplanned cities like Pittsburgh, the presence of rail has a comparatively enormous impact on land value, because it offloads industrial infrastructure use, keeping the byways open for commercial and residential use. In planned cities like Phoenix and Chicago, the problem isn't nearly as severe. Notice that Phoenix is growing at something like 60x the national average; Phoenix was nowheresville until about five years after the invention of the air conditioner, and now it's one of America's biggest cities.

There's a reason for that. Actually, I've got a pretty good article for you on the topic - it's 45 pages and very, very detailed, but it's a little dry. Still, give it a shot - for someone who feels that city planning is a good parallel to software planning, it may be eye opening to learn why the cities in the US who are doing the best in terms of scaling are the ones who ignore the trends you correctly point out, and who instead go with a strict urban growth plan whose conceptual parallel would arguably be stricter software methodologies.

The thing is, in my admittedly limited experience, most of the people who really stand behind Agile/XP/Scrumm are people who've only ever dealt with Agile/XP/Scrumm or no methodology at all. It is frequently the case then that people see Agile/XP/Scrumm outperforming a complete lack of organization, and quickly begin to believe that to develop without Agile/XP/Scrumm is suicide. There is a reasonable parallel here in your city planning metaphor - most people who look at city planning think it's all ad-hoc, and don't know about the problems going on in city scaling right now. This turns out to be a massive repeating issue to both the Department of Agriculture and to the Department of the Interior. The case can be made that what you are suggesting amounts to Argumentum ad Antiquitatem, and that indeed though this is how it's usually and traditionally been done doesn't mean that it's how things should be done. By extension of your parallel back to software, the way it's always been done might well be described as the waterfall model or the monolithic model, or even by non-planning entirely, and I think we're all to the point of understanding how big of a mistake that would be. (Might as well do some Structured Programming in COBOL, huhuhu.)

Thing is, though, there are methodologies other than Agile. Agile/XP/Scrumm are very good for in-house software in a business environment, because they are well adapted to unpredict

"The problem with windows security is primarily one of legacy support."

Noncense, backward compatibility should not break security. Windows was sold as suitable for secure use in a networked environment. It was even given C2 security certification. The problem is the WinNT memory management unit running under the x86 processor. Something that was first tackled under Linux with Exec Shield. The Windows version called NX can be bypassed as otherwise JIT bytecode won't work.

"inter-processes communication was flawed lacking any authentication method, kernel / userland seperation was virtually nonexistant,"

Wait a minute WinNT was touted as being more secure because of it's use of operating modes. Ring 0 had full access while user apps were restricted to Ring 3, the highest restriction. At least that was the theory.

"these issues persisted right up till XP when microsoft started to take security seriously with SP2."

Er, They still persist. See here, much of this code is included in Windows Server 2003 and will be included in Longhorn

"Microsoft just like the rest of us is new to the whole OS design thing."

When Microsoft hired on the Digital VAX/VMS team they had an oppurtunity to design a secure OS. Most of the defects in the OS can be traced to managment decisions to favor features over security. Embedding Internet Explorer in the OS was one such decision.

"What needs to be done is .. implement a version of windows that incorporates everything we've learned over the last 20 years or so"

If by "We" you mean Microsoft, "We" haven't learned anything since 1988, 18 years ago. Why wait, why not upgrade to SuSE, all the eye candy of Vista without the security vulnerabilities.

I see a lot of this kind of revisionist history on the Internet and in the media. Is there a whole department that does nothing all day but pollute the athmosphere with self serving distortions such as this. How anyone say this with a straight face is beyond me.

'the security kernel of the Windows NT server software was written before the Internet,
and the Windows Server 2003 software was written
before buffer overflows became a frequent target of recent attacks'

David Aucsmith, Security Architect, Microsoft.

(Posting anonymously for obvious reasons. Read on ...)

I can't comment on Carly as a CEO since I never worked at HP. However, I can comment on Mark Hurd's past career.

Mark took the helm at NCR after being groomed by Lars Nyberg, one of the worst CEO's NCR had in its 130+ years. Lars came to power following another (perhaps worse) CEO, Jerre Stead. Jerre was a televangelist type who was all showmanship and nothing else. He tried the motivational angle, and co-authored a book (Flight of the Buffalo) with another corporate consultant (Jim Belasco).

This was when NCR was an AT&T company. Jerre jumped ship when the numbers were really going south, leaving the company for a year in the hands of someone from AT&T who did not care, and fled to the mother ship as soon as the trivestiture (where AT&T spun off Lucent and NCR) was announced.

Lars was a cost cutter in the real sense of the word. He shutdown or sold much of NCR's computer division to focus on ATMs, Point of Sale and Teradata. We froze development on NCR's UNIX SVR4, and stopped making PCs, servers and pretty much anything in generic computing. Teradata has been bought by NCR when AT&T took over, and had really neat technology, albeit a niche market (decision support).

Lars made Mark Hurd head of Teradata, after being in sales for 20+ years. We kept hearing every quarter and year: Teradata is our flagship product, Teradata will pickup, Teradata will change things, Teradata this, Teradata that ... All under Mark's leadship.

The stock value under Lars continued to languish, and while tech companies were making money from the bubble, NCR was stagnating (we did not capitalize on our presence in banks, ...etc.)

A few years ago, Lars was evicated by the board (remained on the board) and Mark replaced him. The word in the company from people who worked under him is that he "decided to be a rock star".

Hurd co-authored a seemingly content-free book with his mentor Lars Nyberg. Here is a brief on the book The Value Factor: How Global Leaders Use Information for Growth and Competitive Advantage, and here is the Amazon link. The Register made fun of it because it had things in it like "information isn't aligned". The book is of course influenced by Teradata being the information store of a corporation, and how it can be analyzed and capitalized on. It must have helped advertise Teradata too.

To his credit, NCR's stock climbed and even split under Hurd, in stark contrast with the Nyberg era. This may be due to his rock star approach and getting more media and analyst attention.

NCR's size is about the size of HP's printer division alone. HP is too big for Mark, around 10X as big.

So, Mark cannot take all the credit. His advent may have boosted morale in HP because Carly was much hated, but her strategies are the ones in effect today (merger with Compaq, ...etc.)

Is it a combination of WinCE and TRON - Oct 2003

Earlier this month, Japan, South Korea and China announced plans to band together to create a Linux-based alternative to Windows - Mary Jo Foley - Sep 2003

'When the Japanese government announced it would install BTRON PC in Japanese schools, the U.S. government objected. It called the Japanese initiative actual and potential market intervention and threatened the move with sanctions.`

"Microsoft's decision to join the T-Engine Forum is not without irony. The company was the main beneficiary of U.S. government actions against the TRON project in 1989."

It's a fluff piece written by an "analyst" for a general-audience tech magazine, so basically it's a press release. If you look at other articles written by this guy, you'll notice that he is particularly fond of writing this type of "regurgitate the marketing" article.

Mitch Bainwol, RIAA USA, lives close by in Fairfax Station, VA at:
8400 Crosslake Dr, Fairfax Station, VA 22039.
Phone is (703) 690-1678.

Thank him and his wife Susan for their campaign donations to George W Bush. Or ask him about his other $29,800 worth of campaign donations.

Maybe you want to talk to him about his three kids: Emily Rose, Brent and Garrett. I hear Emily has a very good voice and does well in sports. She is also on the honor roll, but sadly Brent and Garrett aren't.

You might want to tell him to water that lawn and clean his pool.

Cheers!

All states (and DC) make exemptions. I didn't say there was a federal mandate.

The author of that national review article has called for terrorist attacks on Canada because it would make them more "manly".

I'm not making this up

I'd be very skeptical this program given the history Airbus aircraft have had with their control systems and their general managerial attitudes for safety.

For instance, the crash of Flight 587, an Airbus A300 in November 2001 was caused by a "delamination" of the vertical stabilizer's composite structure - moisture got in between the layers of composite material and caused them to pull apart. Subsequent inspections found other aircraft with signs of vertical stabilizer delamination. The Canadian Transportation Safety Board has recommended detailed checks of Airbus A3000 rudder assemblies because of the issue.

The problem is that manual inspections can't always reveal signs of delamination - it often requires ultrasound inspection - something Airbus has refused to support, and there has even been accusations that Airbus has tried to inappropriately lobby the NTSB against such a recommendation.

Airbus' overreliance on technology and dysfunctional managerial culture continues to put passengers at risk - and this new automated system ensures that the pilot has even less control than he or she did before. Trusting that system to do the right thing in a crisis is always a risky proposition - trusting a manufacturer with such a generally shoddy attitude towards safety makes it even riskier.

Just sue each and every person they can see. I know they can sue me. I have one of these tunes in my head that I can't get rid off it and I know I have not payed for it.

As I apparently am able to store music, I must be sueable under the same rules.

http://www.roke.co.uk/sensors/stealth/celldar.asp
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passive_radar
http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0EKF/is _33_48/ai_90445280

The Conference Board, a respected US business pressure group, estimated this downward adjustment shaves 1.5% off the consumer price index every year and therefore reduces its inflation rate by that amount. But the inflation rate is deducted from the nominal gross domestic product numbers to give the real increase in GDP. If the inflation rate is understated by 1.5% compared with how other countries measure the same data, it follows that America's growth rate is claimed to be 1.5% higher than it is in reality. So its lead over the eurozone in the past four years, 10% growth against 4%, is almost entirely a statistical fiction.

This, if you accept it, provides the clue to the great conundrum of the so-called American recovery since 2000. Despite a huge expansion of its public sector, where 1.1 million jobs were created, employment is still only at the levels of 2000.

In previous post-war recoveries where there has been such a purported growth surge, there have been millions of new jobs. But in this case, America's job creation record is one of the worst in the developed world and worse - no doubt to most readers' astonishment - than that of the eurozone. --- How America fakes its figures, Evening Standard (London), Feb 3, 2005

Hah!

The book actually cited an article named "Don't copy that floppy".

Blalock, "Don't Copy That Floppy,"

Which is apparently this article:
http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1365/is _n3_v26/ai_17464063

Miro's "Portrait of Madame K' sold for $ 12.6 million in 2002. Art in America When the post office releases a commemorative stamp, it does so in cooperation with surviving family members. There is no reason why Google shouldn't be held to the same standard.

It seems wildly inaccurate to call these guys environmentalists...

Don Young in particular is one of the guys trying to get us to drill in ANWR (alaska national wildlife reserve). He receives a lot of money from the oil industry, and in the past suggested that the world trade center attacks might have been carried out by "eco-terrorists"...

http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1594/is _1_13/ai_82352618
>Young told a reporter for the Anchorage Daily News that responsibility could lie with groups other than
>Islamic fundamentalists. "If you watched what happened in Genoa, in Italy, and even in Seattle, there's
>some expertise in that field," said Young. "I'm not sure they're that dedicated, but ecoterrorists ...
>there's a strong possibility that could be one of the groups."

Its surprising how often oil industry figures and others are able to hijack environmentalist sentaments in this country...

There have been tons of news stories about the high number of misses. I remember recently that the FBI or sometplace had tested whether suspicious objects were detected by the TSA and none were. Plus, you've got stories about fake bombs that were missed: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11863165/ and http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0CWU/is _2004_Dec_16/ai_n8577062

From personal experience, 2 weeks ago I flew from PHL to LAS, and on the *return* trip, the screener at LAS noticed my carry-on had a leatherman in it (which I had mistakenly had in the bag the entire trip!). When I got on the plane, I hear the guy in the row in front of me telling the guy sitting next to him about how the same thing had just happened to him!

Very reassuring indeed.

Sure, Genisis has God taking away their legs. All that was lacking was the proof. It's no coincidence the proof is the Sacrum now is it? Dummm, deee dummb dumb!

You can also prove the Sun is smaller than a quarter by holding the quarter up in the sky and blocking your view of the Sun entirely! This trick should be good for the quarter of US citizens who think the Sun revolves around the Earth. Ironically, things are worse in Japan, but the Catholic Church is on the case! The two fifths of US citizens who have no curiosity are probably beyond redemption.

The world is weird but consistent. People are more so because they are not but they do not know it and do not care.

some studies have shown it does more damage to your lungs than smoking a pack of cigarrettes.

• They will have to explain away the effects of radioactive heavy metals and nitrosamines in commercial cigarettes, the former produced from cheap phosphate fertilizer and readily uptaken by the tobacco plant, and the latter produced by open-air curing of the tobacco.
• They will have to explain why tobacco chewers get cancer.
• They will have to explain how PACs in the concentrations and duration present in smoke (both tobacco and marijuana) supposedly cause carcinogenic mutations.
• They will have to explain away the antioxidant and anti-tumor properties of cannabinoids.
• They will have to explain away the apoptosis-suppressing (and thus cancer-friendly) effects of nicotine.
• They will have to explain why they cannot unearth a single case of lung cancer or emphysema in a marijuana-ONLY smoker that has no other risk factors. Where are the bodies?
• Speaking of emphysema, THC is an expectorant which means it aids the lungs in clearing smoke particles from the small airways. Nicotine is a vasoconstrictor, which means it does a good job of keeping smoke particles inside the small airways (and raises blood pressure). Asthmatics have successfully used sufficiently potent cannabis to ward off asthma attacks when no other option was available.
• If you still think tobacco and marijuana smoke are the same, why in the heck does tobacco smoke stick to everything and turn it yellow?

Also, nicotine in tobacco smoke raises the heart rate and blood pressure while at the same time the carbon monoxide starves it for oxygen. Marijuana smoke, while containing CO as well raises heart rate but decreases blood pressure. Even if the same amount of marijuana as tobacco was smoked, and the same amount of CO taken in over the same period of time, the vasodilating effects of THC may mitigate heart damage that would otherwise be caused by the CO. It is a good area for further research (with appropriate controls).

If you think smoking is risky, don't smoke it. Make brownies, or use a vaporizer. But the jury is most definitely still out on this one.

some studies have shown it does more damage to your lungs than smoking a pack of cigarrettes.

• They will have to explain away the effects of radioactive heavy metals and nitrosamines in commercial cigarettes, the former produced from cheap phosphate fertilizer and readily uptaken by the tobacco plant, and the latter produced by open-air curing of the tobacco.
• They will have to explain why tobacco chewers get cancer.
• They will have to explain how PACs in the concentrations and duration present in smoke (both tobacco and marijuana) supposedly cause carcinogenic mutations.
• They will have to explain away the antioxidant and anti-tumor properties of cannabinoids.
• They will have to explain away the apoptosis-suppressing (and thus cancer-friendly) effects of nicotine.
• They will have to explain why they cannot unearth a single case of lung cancer or emphysema in a marijuana-ONLY smoker that has no other risk factors. Where are the bodies?
• Speaking of emphysema, THC is an expectorant which means it aids the lungs in clearing smoke particles from the small airways. Nicotine is a vasoconstrictor, which means it does a good job of keeping smoke particles inside the small airways (and raises blood pressure). Asthmatics have successfully used sufficiently potent cannabis to ward off asthma attacks when no other option was available.
• If you still think tobacco and marijuana smoke are the same, why in the heck does tobacco smoke stick to everything and turn it yellow?

Also, nicotine in tobacco smoke raises the heart rate and blood pressure while at the same time the carbon monoxide starves it for oxygen. Marijuana smoke, while containing CO as well raises heart rate but decreases blood pressure. Even if the same amount of marijuana as tobacco was smoked, and the same amount of CO taken in over the same period of time, the vasodilating effects of THC may mitigate heart damage that would otherwise be caused by the CO. It is a good area for further research (with appropriate controls).

If you think smoking is risky, don't smoke it. Make brownies, or use a vaporizer. But the jury is most definitely still out on this one.

Science advanced in the past from a strong belief in a deity and an investigation of "all creation" as a spiritual act. This is far different from methodoligical naturalism, and is useful to consider and learn from. I am not advocating "teaching the controversy" or a "God did it" version of science ID promoters desire, but a careful understanding of the philosophy both currently and historically that promoted scientific progress. This probably would not even include ID as anything but a footnote in the discussion.

Simply the understanding that science is not set in stone like some religious text would allow for greater rational thought than the way science is currently taught. With some luck it would limit the current metaphysical nonsense that has encroached itself on science in recent times (like in "What the Bleep"). Simply illustrating sound thought in science classes are not enough to keep the general public from having increasing beliefs in superstitions as ridiculous as ghosts and astrology. More needs to be done at the root of the problem.

from my blog
I broadly agree with Paul Graham's essay on Software Patents, but I do think he underestimates the damage from patent trolls, and from what he calls the mafia-like behaviour of some patent holders.
Paul has been lucky in the field he has worked in, but in the Audio and Video area there are many patent thickets. Perhaps it is the history of Farnsworth's victory over RCA that makes video engineers patent hungry.
My first startup, The MultiMedia Corporation, was a spin-out from the BBC in 1990. One of our products was a program called MediaMaker that combined video from tape or videodisc, CD Audio, Pictures, digitised audio and Director animations into picture icons on a timeline for making presentations. It was demoed on stage at Macworld by the CEO of Apple, and we got Macromind to publish it.
Then the patent troll showed up. A company called Montage had made a video editing system that included several video monitors showing edit points from tape. The company had gone out of business but a lawyer had bought up the patents, including one on using a still image to represent a video sequence. The troll was working his way round the video companies, and he caused enough trouble to stop work on the product while we worked on a legal defence instead.
Later, while I was at Apple on QuickTime, there was a steady stream of patent trolls claiming that Apple should pay them royalties; enough to keep several lawyers busy, and a lot of engineers spending time working on prior art evidence demonstrations.
Several potential features were excluded from QuickTime due to patent thickets. The obvious one was the Unisys LZW patent that encumbered GIF, but there were other more subtle pressures that meant adopting open source codecs was discouraged. Working on the patent license agreements for MPEG meant that technology ready to ship was deferred pending legal agreement on more than one occasion.
So I'm much lass sanguine than Paul about this. I think software patents should not be granted, and the European Union's banning of them is the right decision. I hope the Gowers Review in the UK makes this UK law as well.

YEAH, that bastard never helps anyone except himself.

According to Better Homes and Gardens:

  A typical family accumulates books, magazines, videos, and memorabilia faster than a speeding minivan. But you don't have to know the Dewey decimal system to get these materials in order. Borrow ideas from the following cataloged collections. The goods are stowed with efficiency and decoration in mind.

Family photos, journals, scrapbooks, and mementos are stashed neatly behind attractive neutral facades. Corral items of various sizes in corrugated cardboard and cream or beige decorative paper covers, giving the assortment a cohesive look. Choose vessels with similar colors, and stay consistent even if it means covering some containers yourself. A soft chair and small desk nearby makes sorting and labeling a welcome chore.

Bring your cookbooks and recipe cards with you from one food prep area to another on a handy rolling cart. A tall bottom shelf holds any size tome, and a short shelf puts oft-used recipe cards within reach. Wrought-iron braces on the sides and back of the shelves keep items from falling off. Look for a cart with a top surface at convenient waist height to make reading recipes easy. Then add a portable cookbook holder. Keep your recipe cards together and stored in good-looking galvanized tins and lunch boxes. Tucked on the upper shelf, they're a shiny counterpoint to the darkly stained wicker.

Give your bookshelves a makeover to conceal any ratty-cover paperbacks, anti bring beautiful hardcover books front and center. Start by pulling all the books off the shelves and grouping them by color and cover type. Tuck the paperbacks into square baskets and stack some books on the shelves. Then, fill in with hardcover books, sorted by color. Too many dark books will create a black hole on your shelves, so break up the pattern with lighter ones.

http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1041/is _2_79/ai_69964503

We all know that female infanticide doesn't happen in China, especially not in any significant numbers.

China? Female infanticide? What a racist thing to say! That post was almost as ignorant and egregiously false as denying the Holocaust. You tell him, pomo, set that China hating fool straight!

Sounds like the "Everything that can be invented has already been invented" myth.

and I don't want to end up like Theo Van Gogh or Salmun Rushdie but from "THE 2002 ARAB HUMAN DEVELOPMENT" written by Arabs for Arabs:

The figures for translated books are also discouraging. The
      Arab world translates about 330 books annually, one fifth of
      the number that Greece translates. The cumulative total of
      translated books since the Caliph Maa'moun's [sic] time (the
      ninth century) is about 100,000, almost the average that Spain
      translates in one year. (AHDR 2002, p. 78)

Even those are mostly of a theological nature.

http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m2501/is _2_26/ai_n8706604

I find open plan by far the best working environment for concentrating: being part of the environment means that I can let it all pass me by without breaking my concentration. If you hear a thud, you can just glance over, see that one of your colleagues has knocked over the water-cooler, and carry on working without breaking the flow. The buzz of background noise means that no noise really stands out - unlike say a library, where the noise of the person shuffling their papers may lead you to want to kill.

Of course it works the other way as well - if you really needed a break at the point where the water-cooler toppled, what better excuse could you have?

Perhaps you've never worked in a well-planned open-plan environment? I'm used to offices with sufficient space, lots of noise-absorbent material, and laid out so that you never have more than 10-15 people in direct sight.

This article is a bit wanky, but makes some interesting points towards the end about the effectiveness of the environment (BA's headquarters at Waterside, a building I've worked at) being dependent on the motivation of the management team. This article is an interesting review of how office layout can affect your team's effectiveness. Both well worth a read.

Cheers, Mike

You did read the original post, right? We're talking about the context of soldiers serving in a war zone.

So your exceptions for the first are irrelevant. They ARE in uniform and performing official duties.

Second amendment: so you're saying that Joe Private in the Army can bring his collection of hunting rifles or .44 automag to Baghdad? I didn't know that, if that's true.

Third (for the poster below) - ok yes, if your quarters are OFF BASE then yes, it still applies. But for the soldiers in army housing (again, we're talking about the soldiers SERVING in a war zone) it does apply.

Fourth - probably also applies WHILE IN A WAR ZONE.

Fifth through Ninth: I'll say it again, I'M NOT A LAWYER, but I invite you to read carefully the interesting article at http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m6007/is _2002_Wntr/ai_103136519/pg_1 that very clearly lays out the distinct differences in the way a proceeding would occur using a criminal in the State of VA vs the same criminal as subject to the UCMJ.

I don't like to insult people, but you can in this situation be a complete and total idiot. Learn2Read, then post.

In a country where nationalistic pride makes consumers choose Japanese products first, the iPod is dominating. Sony's flash MP3 player share has actually shrunk since it was winning in 2004.

Why is this significant to US competitors? Because this is a wake up call to all of those companies trying to blame their failure to enter the market on Apple's FairPlay DRM scheme. Sorry, but iTunes has nothing to do with your failure either. Your products are way less attractive compared to the iPod, even if they have lower prices. The iPod is dominating because it is exactly what consumers are looking for at the perfect price point(s).

Let's see if they figure it out now.

Preferably spongy, easily-swallowed objects

Or alternatively, sharp, pointy sticks

Whatever you do, don't coddle them into being overgrown kids at age 25.

Don't ask me if the analyses that have been suggested are right, but I must say, M-L has been given a gift in the way that the different aspects of the report have been criticized (and corrected?) by slashdot-ers. If I'm trying to predict the future, I might as well see if I can get a report noticed by slashdot. On the other hand, the reports author, Joe Osha, is fairly well respected in his area of financial analysis, semi-conductor companies. But if you look at his old quotes, he's taken it in the shorts a few times, too, as evidenced by saying "It's very hard to find evidence of a real end to the upturn that began in late 1998" in 2000 (when everyone was saying those sorts of things).

Joke aside, not all prostitutes or prostitution environments are the same. GTA tends to portray the cliche streetwalker/drug addict/forced-into-by-pimp hookers. Brothels, escorts, call-girls, strippers, and porn actresses (including the amateur/web stuff) have different environments from this.

I'm surprised nobody has made the argument that the violence against hookers (the streetwalking/drug addict/pimp kind) in GTA might actually educate youngsters that hooking (SW/DA/pimp kind) can be dangerous and undesirable, as opposed to "Pretty Woman" and similar portrayals which may cause more women to get into prostitution.

Of course for that to happen it would have to be little girls that play GTA, which is the main demographic to play it, right? Guys? Hello? Why are you all looking at me funny?

Its the reverse, if anything.

From a previous post we find that there is a prevalence in specific countries ranging from 22% in the UK to 84% in France. (http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=17712 5&cid=14699496)

And, a bit of googling reveals that Brits attend church a bit more regularly than the French (13 percent of the British, 10 percent of the French).

http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m2843/is _2_28/ai_114090210

I did a little looking into this one, there may be 2 causes:
1) Better agricultural techniques were introduced in the 80's and 90's in an attempt stop slow the stop of the desert and it seems to be working. Areas are being revegitated and reclaimed from the desert.

2) That region of Africa is experiencing an increase in moisture. This apparently is consistent with some climate change models.

Here's one link to get you started
http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0BFU/is _8_88/ai_99848795

Okay, read it again:

The former, and original, usage is now often considered archaic in English-speaking nations but still in use in other areas, in which the Americas is often described as a single continent or supercontinent, and therefore called America (singular).

The original poster was from Argentina, he was referring to America in a way that is apparently common where he is. It is "archaic" in the U.S, but still used elsewhere. It's not on a current map I kind find without more searching, but it doesn't need to be either. It is a fuctional and recognized way to group the American supercontinent, and that is the way he orignally used it. You're grasping at straws here and in fact, not proving a point at all. You're only proving your own ignorant belligerence.

More links with this usage: http://www.humanresources.umicore.com/ourPeople/lo cations/america.htm
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd= Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=14605839&dopt=Abstrac t
http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3793/i s_199707/ai_n8766976

If you google '"American Continent" -north -south' you get 240,000 hits. Stop trolling.