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I most certainly like how slashdot provides links in its articles

Why is the electoral college good for democracy?

This article (Discover, Nov 1996 [coral cache]) suggests that the mathematics governing elections favors YOUR vote in an electoral college system.

Whatever your political slant, I am sure you would like YOUR vote to be more favored.

Imagine the electoral college as what happens if you're a "swing" voter in your family, your family contributing all its votes with its internal winner to your town's election, in which it is a "swing" voter in your small town, your town being a swing voter in the county election, your county being an important vote in the state election. In this case you weild extreme power. You are more likely to be in "this case" under the electoral college than in a pure vote.

There's nothing partisan in the way in which this empowers YOUR vote - rather, all that happens is that there is a more causative effect between YOUR political idea and what actually HAPPENS. It's rather like playing both sides against each other, with those who are actually making a decision having a huge return on their investment in making that decision. In other words, your decision about how you are going to vote = larger effect on what happens in the election.

I have not reviewed the mathematics myself, but this is how I understand the situation.

Comments from anyone who has reviewed the issue?

How has Natapoff's work held up over the past few years?

Why is the electoral college good for democracy?

This article (Discover, Nov 1996 [coral cache]) suggests that the mathematics governing elections favors YOUR vote in an electoral college system.

Whatever your political slant, I am sure you would like YOUR vote to be more favored.

Imagine the electoral college as what happens if you're a "swing" voter in your family, your family contributing all its votes with its internal winner to your town's election, in which it is a "swing" voter in your small town, your town being a swing voter in the county election, your county being an important vote in the state election. In this case you weild extreme power. You are more likely to be in "this case" under the electoral college than in a pure vote.

There's nothing partisan in the way in which this empowers YOUR vote - rather, all that happens is that there is a more causative effect between YOUR political idea and what actually HAPPENS. It's rather like playing both sides against each other, with those who are actually making a decision having a huge return on their investment in making that decision. In other words, your decision about how you are going to vote = larger effect on what happens in the election.

I have not reviewed the mathematics myself, but this is how I understand the situation.

Comments from anyone who has reviewed the issue?

How has Natapoff's work held up over the past few years?

There is a case on record of a criminal continuing to advance despite warning shots fired from a full auto!

F*** you and your high powered rifle!

There was a movie biography of Wernher von Braun life produced in the 50's called I Aim for the Stars. I read somewhere that someone wrote on the bottom of a movie poster outside a theatre: I Aim for the Stars ... but sometimes I hit London.

Hear, hear.

There's as much cosmic electronics in a new tractor as there is in a new car.

At my previous job, I wrote software to test this tractor transmission at the end of the assembly line. The TCM communicates with the ECM and other sensors to modify the profile of ramping the pressures of up to 6 clutches at a time during a shift. This ain't yer Grandads Deere. With 18 forward speeds, a feller can dial in just the perfect speed to balance efficiency with soil conditions and emplement type. It adjusts its shifting to compensate for clutch material wear. In fact, one of the design engineers described to me one early "flaw". The transmission would keep shifting perfectly smoothly right up to the point that there was no material left on the clutch plates. Now the tractor lets the farmer know when the transmission needs servicing before it's too late.

I must forgo my mod points for this thread to respond to your post.

disenfranchised because they share the same name as people who were previously convicted of crimes in other US states,

All the people who were purged from the rolls for felony convictions were notified of the fact, well before the election, by a letter to their registered mailing address, which gave the procedure to correct any error and the necessary contact information to make it convenient.

Are you claiming that a disproportionate number of people who have names that might be mistaken for a felon's are Democrats? Or are you REALLY upset because the preponderance of felons who are registered to vote, illegally or otherwise, are registered as Democrats?

I see a number of problems here. Allow me to elucidate:

1. All the people who were purged from the rolls for felony convictions were notified of the fact
   Doubtful. From an article on Salon.com:

   most counties appear to have used the [central voter] file as a resource to purge names from their voter rolls, with some counties making little -- or no -- effort at all to alert the "purged" voters.

   Never mind the rational argument questioning where these "registered addresses" would have come from, and positing the likelihood that they may no longer be correct. Never mind that some of these "felons" were booked in the future, making it extremely unlikely any of the data is correct, let alone true. And never mind that the list was kept secret, requiring a court order to be made public, thus further reducing the probability that those on it would have found out in time to try to fix their status.

2. Are you claiming that a disproportionate number of people who have names that might be mistaken for a felon's are Democrats?
   I didn't coin the phrase, but in some circles it's known as Voting While Black , a disenfranchisable offence in far too many places in the US.

   How could Florida's Republican rulers know how these people would vote? I put the question to David Bositis, America's top expert on voting demographics. Once he stopped laughing, he said the way Florida used the lists from a private firm was, 'an obvious technique to discriminate against black voters'. In a darker mood, Bositis, of Washington's Center for Political and Economic Studies, said the sad truth of American justice is that 46 per cent of those convicted of felony are African-American. In Florida, a record number of black folk, over 80 per cent of those registered to vote, packed the polling booths on November 7. Behind the curtains, nine out of 10 black people voted Gore.

   Mark Mauer of the Sentencing Project, Washington, pointed out that the 'white' half of the purge list would be peopled overwhelmingly by the poor, also solid Democratic voters.

3. Or are you REALLY upset because the preponderance of felons who are registered to vote, illegally or otherwise, are registered as Democrats?
   Felons or not, the facts are that the vast majority of those who simply 'disappeared' from the Florida voting rosters were those who historically have voted for the Democratic candidate. Given that Bush's lead was reportedly only some 570, and that those wrongfully denied the right to vote likely numbered in the thousands (given a total voter purge list of 94,000 names, the size of which only came clear thanks to

To bring the topic somewhat back on topic, there is some debate as to whether celebrities or the invocation thereof are causing the bias in the media towards use of infant stem cells, implying that to oppose infant stem cell research is to oppose the curing of diseases. *shrug* Certainly, the death of Ronald Reagan spurred on a number of proposals to lift the ban on federal funds for infant stem cell research.

Perhaps this is useful as a laptop for a casual user that uses it in a very limited way, or for someone with serious space constraints (e.g. someone touring on a motorcycle, or backpacking), but does anyone really expect laptops this small to actually become mainstream?

Then again, perhaps laptops like these are the Plymouth Prowlers of the laptop industry. A PR and marketing stunt for branding and to get people into shops, without an expectation that one would actually sell a lot of these, but they might help sway people into buying more conventional laptops of the same brand . . .

It depends on how much DIY you are willing to tackle. I had to do a little googling but I located information on a DIY Hybrid that appeared in The Mother Earth News some years ago. Actually in 1979 with a followup in 1993. I purchased the plans and although I didn't get one completely finished, it's still a viable project. Actually applying an additional 10+ years of technology might make it easier &/or better. Try the following links as a starting point. The original article at: http://www.motherearthnews.com/index.php?page=arc& id=2263 and the followup at: http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1279/is _n138/ai_13817084. A google search for ["mother earth news" hybrid electric car] yields about 350 links. Good luck.

Um, he's not exactly a genius with the video idea... it's already being done!

As far as VOIP:
Info from 2002.
Info from today.

No, that's not correct. For example, over 3,000 people died in one week in 1952. The problem is the makeup of most coal. From this link

Coal is one of the most impure of fuels. Its impurities range from trace quantities of many metals, including uranium and thorium, to much larger quantities of aluminum and iron to still larger quantities of impurities such as sulfur. Products of coal combustion include the oxides of carbon, nitrogen, and sulfur; carcinogenic and mutagenic substances; and recoverable minerals of commercial value, including nuclear fuels naturally occurring in coal.

MORE NUCLEAR MATERIALS ARE RELEASED BY COAL BURNING THAN ANY NUCLEAR PLANT HAS EVER RELEASED. That's a VERY important thing to know, because COAL KILLS PEOPLE.

Here you go.

> Games need copy protection so developers can get paid to write them. I'm
> no fan of copy protection, but I am a fan of developers earning enough to
> feed their family while working on the next big release. I hate disc
> protection as much as the next guy, but if it's really such hard work to put
> a disc in your CD drive then maybe you need to lose some weight and take some
> exercise because you are clearly a lazy bastard.

Nobody is opposed to developers feeding their families but according to the table at the end of this article, the game publishers seem to have pretty large families.

How many mouths can you feed for $2 billion?

Heuring and Jordan's clunky-looking contraption, five years in the making and the size of a compact car, wasn't designed to perform complex calculations--its memory is too small. Instead it serves as a "proof-of-principle machine": it proves that a computer can be built that stores its information in the form of light. In the Colorado researchers' machine, pulses of laser light zoom through two and a half miles of coiled fiber-optic cable. Each light pulse represents a one in binary code; darkness represents a zero. A sequence of these numbers traveling through the cable resembles a train whooshing by carrying a cargo of digital infromation, with each 12-foot-long "car" consisting of light or darkness. Traveling at the speed of light, each car completes about 75,000 laps through the coil in a second.

Unlike electric signals, which stop after they're written on a silicon chip, the data trains keep going; the pulses of light never stop, racing continously around and around the cable. A high-speed counter interacts with the computer to keep track of what data are where in this loop. To retrieve a particular bit of data, the computer tells the counter where the bit is at that moment. The counter then calculates when the bit will reach the output port, and at that point the bit can be switched to some other place.

I wonder that ten years hasn't shown more of this research. Perhaps the military has it under wraps.

In short, "marriage" is theological, say theologians. Political, say politicians. Personal, say persons.

In fact, they're all partly right (at least most of the time). The theological nature I've already discussed. The personal nature results from it being a particular nature of relationship between two people; since the state modifies its behavior in the cases of such relationships (such as with tax law), it is also a matter res politica. Unfortunately, they all want custody of the word. And while "civil union" nicely distinguishes a state-marriage from a church-marriage, I can't think of any phrase much better than "permanent shack up" to separate out a personal-marriage. "Conjugal union" maybe? "Common-law marriage"?

Leave it to people what unions warrant "marriage".

And then there's everyone's favorite ex-mayor, Rudolph Giuliani, going on some incredible anti-weasel harangue.

Choice quote:
"This excessive concern with little weasels is a sickness. There are probably very few people who would be as honest with you about that. But you should go consult a psychologist or a psychiatrist, and have him help you with this excessive concern, how you are devoting your life to weasels."

His jailhouse tactics have cost the county millions in legal fees and settlements...

An article in Harper's from April, 2001, says: "So far, the total bill for jury awards and settlements is approximately $15 million."

The article notes:

Arpaio has reduced neither the crime rate nor the rate of recidivism in Phoenix. He has had no discernible effect whatsoever. He serves only to con the public into thinking that something is being done about crime. Phoenix is bucking the national trend: as crime falls nationwide, it increases here. Especially violent crime. In 1992, 136 people were murdered in the city; in 1999, 214. There were more murders, rapes, and car theft in 1999 than in the previous year. Arpaio's defenders can argue that the population is increasing, so the statistics are misleading. But this is disingenuous. Most homicides--which have increased by nearly two thirds since 1992 while the population has grown only by a quarter--are not committed by opportunistic yuppies coming here to work dot-corn jobs. The reality is indisputable: in Phoenix, your chance of getting killed is better since Arpaio took office.

However, Arpaio has a high approval rating, is regularly re-elected and his endorsement is sought by nearly all politicians.

I've decided to just run a cash register and be poor. It was good enough for my grandfather.

Oh, but your grandfather lived in a world with a much smaller human population. Why? Because it used to be a manditory requirement of the survive of the human race to have vast numbers of children since so many of them would die before having their own children. People are genetically programed to overpopulate just to keep in place. What went wrong is that the so-called green revolution meant that most children would live not die. Then the most natural impulses create a population that is dependent on fossil fuels to keep going but fossil fuels won't keep going. Even if they just get so hard to come by that the production levels off the babies keep coming so somethings got to break down.

By now you've all been told how MicroSoft makes all of it's profits on Windows and things like the X-Box are just money losers running as place-holders at the company's expense.

Well oil is to the world economy what Windows is to MicroSoft. Oil is turned into fertilizer so all high-carbohydrate crops and the livestock that feed on them are just an "X-Box" from an economic viewpoint.

All transportation, manufacturing, etc. are also 100% dependent on enegy from fossile fuels. All plastics, nylon, etc are made directly from oil.

When oil prices go up it's like Windows ceasing to be the "money printing press" for MicroSoft. The net effect is that the whole world is made poorer.

This article shows that:

...a recent cluster of five CJD cases in Kentucky, reported in August by neurologist Joseph Berger of the University of Kentucky in Lexington, is providing cause for concern. These five people had a dietary choice in common: they ate squirrel brains.

--jeff++

Best of all, there's the people that work for him, like the corrupt David Hendershott, a man so fat that he once had to be cut out of a car with the jaws of life- a vehicle that had been impounded by sheriff's office, in fact.

Believe me- Sheriff Joe comes across as a hard-hitting lawman, but he's corrupt, morally bankrupt, and out to make a splash rather than fix the problems in his jails. Unfortunately, more money is spent in litigation and settlements than should be, taking officers off the street.

Best of all, there's the people that work for him, like the corrupt David Hendershott, a man so fat that he once had to be cut out of a car with the jaws of life- a vehicle that had been impounded by sheriff's office, in fact.

Believe me- Sheriff Joe comes across as a hard-hitting lawman, but he's corrupt, morally bankrupt, and out to make a splash rather than fix the problems in his jails. Unfortunately, more money is spent in litigation and settlements than should be, taking officers off the street.

Although not a pop, you could hear a hissing sound. There was a /. artical about it quite a while back (that i could not find) but here are a few that talk about hearing a hiss as the meteor is going through the atmosphere. There is also a method using reflected radio signals to hear a meteor, though that requires equipment and not just your ears.

In other words, you can't deny UNIX is a registered trademark of The Open Group, so you have to resort to childish insults. Not really surprising for a Linux zealot, I'm afraid.

As for Interix, it was certified as UNIX years ago, before Microsoft even bought it, and long before Microsoft licensed the UNIX System V code from SCO. Here's a news link about it from 1998.

Incidentally, with a few exceptions like the compiler, the open-source code in SFU is BSD-licensed, not the GPL-licensed.

So in worst case scenario Nextel PTT service would be hit. More grief to local construction crews, some joy for people eating out at local chinese buffet [Prr-BEEP] JOHN GET YOUR $%^$ HERE, MIKE JUST SCREWED UP THE LINING ON THE SECOND FLOOR.
But seriously -- this plan is quite old.
See this article (Motorola drops 800 MHz bomb)

"I do recall the State Department coming to us that week [after September 11]," Clarke testified, saying that the Saudi Embassy felt that in the wake of the terrorist attacks, Arabs in this country, particularly Saudis, might be victims of retribution attacks, and they wanted therefore to take some Saudi students and the Saudi citizens back to their kingdom for safety, and could they be given permission to fly, even though we had grounded all flights. Now, what I recall is that I asked for flight manifests of everyone on board and all of those names need to be directly and individually vetted by the FBI before they were allowed to leave the country. And I also wanted the FBI to sign off even on the concept of Saudis being allowed to leave the country. And as I recall, all of that was done. It is true that members of the bin Laden family were among those who left. We knew that at the time. I can't say much more in open session, but it was a conscious decision with complete review at the highest levels of the State Department and the FBI and the White House. National Review

Recently, with the war and all, I've taken more of an interest in military affairs. Lo and behold, the military publishes a lot of magazines and periodicals internally, and many of them are available free online! I like them because they don't have the macho posturing of rags like Soldier of Fortune and other right-wing civillian magazines, and read like professionals writing for other professionals on how to do their job better. Think Wired vs. Linux Journal.

List of DoD magazines
Soldiers - Official army magazine, with full PDF archive.
Airman - Official air force magazine
Marine - Official USMC magazine
Approach - Navael aviaton safety magazine
Ground Warrior - Marine training safety magazine
Infantry magazine - Army infantry magazine, article archive at findarticles.com
Parameters - The U.S. War College's periodical

Soldiers, Airman, and Marine are sort of PR-related publications, so they aren't as interesting. Approach, Ground Warrior and Infantry are written as advice and information sources for their respective professions, so they have more technical detail. I like how they give a view of day-to-day operations in the military, especially training mishaps and other mistakes you don't hear about often. Parameters is a more scholarly magazine that gives a view into what the high-level officers are thinking and planning right now, plus some military history.

They're your tax dollars at work, may as well read them. Better to be an informed citizen than an entertained consumer, especially with the war in Iraq going on.

Offercrissakes, here we go again:

From the first article I found, though from 2001, things haven't changed _that_ drastically. Yap all you want; we're not in Iraq over oil.

"Good-bye Mideast Oil?

The US imports 56 percent of its oil, but only 13 percent comes from the Persian Gulf. (Persian Gulf oil is more crucial to Europe.) The rest comes from Mexico, Canada, the North Sea, Indonesia, Venezuela, and a few other places. The most likely future sources: the Former Soviet Union nations. Conservation, more coal, and alternative energies could eliminate imports from the Persian Gulf."

This is a point that I am tired of correcting people on. This did not happen as you are lead to believe in the movie. On September 13th commercial flights had already resumed, but private flights were still restricted. Permission came, not from the President, but from Richard Clarke who was a hold-over from the Clinton White House and not a Bush puppet. 22 of the 26 people that were on that flight WERE, in fact, interviewed and cleared by the FBI prior to leaving.

http://articles.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m12 82/is_18_55/ai_109411350

The funniest thing about this, is that everyone who watches the movie leaves with the same wrong impression: that while all other airplanes are stuck on the ground, the bin Ladins are give special permission from the President to be the only plane flying. The fact is, that this is a clear case of spin-doctoring. It is common in politics. This is a way of saying TRUE things, but leading people to specific conclusion that may not be accurate. Moore is a master of this kind of work.

Don't get me wrong, I like Moore's work, but at respect him as an Artist... not as a champion of truth.

Bush may have a relationship with the bin Ladin family, but when you are lead to believe that the bin Ladins were given special treatment because of that relationship, it can piss people off. However, this never happened. It is clear that Bush cannot be blamed for the bin Ladin family and Saudi nationals leaving the country... if you know the facts, it just cannot be substantiated; but Moore, knowing the facts, misleads his film-goers.

I'm not saying don't see the movie. I think everyone should see the movie. Moore has crafted a relevant, entertaining movie. But it IS a commercial movie, and commercial movies are made in order to make money. So, go out an enjoy the film, just don't trust everything you think you hear. Double-check the facts before assuming that your conclusions are correct.

- just my $0.02

You do realize that unless you are professional trader (who has access to data seconds before it goes out to individual investors) you are playing a losing game? Roughly 70% of individual traders lose money, once you figure in taxes and comissions. Think about it: if RANDOMLY pick a basket of stocks, buy and hold for 5-10 years, you will most likely come out AHEAD of a majority of active traders. If you buy and hold an *index fund* and the market goes up, you will outperform traders.

Sure, buy-and-hold doesnt "feel" like you're "doing something", but don't let that fool you.

It's like dieting. The only way to lose weight is to eat fewer calories, everything else builds on that foundation. There are no quick fixes or "secrets" that some people know that others don't.

Now, day-trading can be FUN (I do it occasionally, even options, but never expecting a profit) but you have to realize you are PAYING for that entertainment. It's easier just to do paper trades.

I bet the reason there is so little open-source or free trading software is that a lot of this trading software is developed strictly to sucker YOU out of your money. Back-testing strategies? You can't learn anything about the future by past behavior.

My recommendation is to write your own trading software and get rich. You won't get rich trading, that's for sure.

If his first enemy would be Monkey Man.

More here....

New Delhi residents fear 'Monkey Man'

New India's 'monkey man' branded imaginary

India's Monkey Man and the Politics of Mass Hysteria

Police suspect 'monkey man' is alien or remote-controlled robot

Once one realizes that Blockbuster makes somewhere between 15% and 20% of its revenues from late fees, it's hard to believe that they're going to embrace a business model like this that eliminates those fees.

those annoying late fees -- which account for a full 15 percent of Blockbuster's $4.96 billion in revenues (Industry Standard)

One of the dirty little secrets of the home-video business, writes Lary Gerbrandt, a senior analyst at Paul Kagan Associates, is that their largest profit generator is actually late fees. (Factbook)

late fees, a revenue source that accounts for between 18-20 percent of Blockbuster's overall profits (Earthweb)

This should at least leave enough time for a hot spare to rebuild before another drive goes, which can be a problem for RAID 5 (as noted here).

Is this being used anywhere?

First, you must decide which RAID level meets your needs/wants. To do this, you must educate yourself on the various RAID levels and the pros and cons associated with each so you can make an informed decision. I recommend reading "The Skinny on RAID" if you want to learn the various RAID levels available.

After reading that article, you should learn about hot spares and what they can and cannot do for you. A recent article has been written about setting realistic expectations on what hot spares can do for you. "The Mythical Hot-Spare - Tape/Disk/Optical Storage" will be informative on this subject matter.

Lastly, you should read "Kill SCSI II: NetCell's RAID 0 Performance + RAID 5 Security Equals SyncRAID" to look into a innovative IDE RAID card that can give you kick ass performance and reliability. Be sure to read the benchmarks on the review so you can make an informed decision.

It could take weeks.

Meanwhile, if another drive fails before the new one is built, then everything is lost.

Madsen, a Washington-based writer and columnist, who often writes for Counterpunch, says that people close to the pope claim that amid these concerns, the pontiff wishes he was younger and in better health to confront the possibility that Bush may represent the person prophesized in Revelations."

-FL

Community services, such as Utah's UTOPIA. Unfortunately, the telephone companies are attempting push legislation through to ban it. I encourage Utah /.'ers to write their state representatives and make their opinions known. Further, we should write our Federal Congresscritters and encourage legislation friendly to community broadband.

"Given that early experiences shape brain development I think it's entirely appropriate to err on the side of caution. "

Not only is child sexual activity argued to be *not harmful* but two scientists have argued that it maybe beneficial. Of course their study was denounced in the United States Senate for trying to even suggest such an idea, without even reading it of course, but it seems that any harm that exists with child sexuality occurs in the after math. I give a brief example of what I am talking about, although I personally dislike anecdotes since they are a marginal form of evidence:

"A few years ago (on a talk show) a 16 year old boy said when he was 13 he had an affair with a female school custodian that lasted two years. He later stated that while it lasted it was great--he loved every second.... Well--his parents threw a fit. Boy was sent to a shrink and is told he was abused. A year of conditioning later he sits on this talk show and says what a horrible thing this woman did to him--and still stated that he thought it was great while it lasted--he didn't know he was being abused at the time. Now who the hell I ask you caused the damage here?"

If any damage or harm is seems to be done in the after math by parents, preachers, and therapists who abuse the victims a second time by brainwashing into them that sex and sexuality is evil.

"Please document that Bonobo adults engage in sexual activity with preadolescents and that this behaviour is culturally sanctioned."

http://www.narth.com/docs/debate2.html

Studies show that the bonobo has erotic contact with babies of its own species. And that behavior isn't likely harmful to the babies, Green says, because it's the babies themselves that often initiate the sex play.

"Pedophilia may have no genetic component at all. It could be a learned behaviour, as child molestation often is."

Sexual attraction is learned? That is far fetched. Either one becomes aroused or one does not at different people or objects. If it were learned, people would need to be taught arosal before they could have sex, clearly this is not the case.

Pedophilia seems even more common then homosexuality in the population

"Sorry, I'm going to call you on that one, because that's a hell of a claim to make (unless you broaden pedophilia to include attraction to underage adolescents). "

Yes, pedophilia is being mentioned, it really needed to be defined. In this case I was referring to anyone under the age of 18, but in other cases I use it to refer to exclusive attraction to prepubescent children. I think there is a case to be made to distinguish between those that are exclusively attracted to prepubescent children, and those that have a continum of attraction that spans from adults to children.

As for the number of people who are engage in sexual activity with people under the age of 18, there must millions of them. First because of the figures, here and here, that suggest that 1 in 4 girls and 1 in 6 boys are sexually abused by the age of 18. As well this article indicates, there were 250,000 members on from one country (Britain) on one child porno website. This problem is quite large judging by the population of potential pedophiles (<18), but any attempts at looking at the problem scientifically is met with hostility unless the scientists tow the line. Progress cannot be made in such an environment.

"From 40 per year in the Eighties down to six last year. That's 34 children rescued."

Hmmm how big is Germany in terms of population? The statistics are usually (here, and here) that 1 in 4 girls and 1 in 6 boys are 'sexually abused'.

Out of 20% of all children (below 18), millions of children, only 32 were killed a year in Germany by pedophiles? I'd expect *more* just as a random percent of the population has larger homicide rates.

This pedophilia hysteria is bigger then I thought, anyone have any other murder statistics?

I wonder if this technique ever came to anything?

Here's the article.

how disappointing... i would've hoped for something more like H0T XXX LESBIAN ACTION from hilary rosen...

In fact, the awards screener DVDs are only one source. (A "screener" is a promotional preview videocassette/DVD of a film provided by a film company, or its distributor, to video store owners or movie award voters prior to its general release date. Selling, trading or distributing these "screeners" is frowned upon by the MPAA)

Every point in the production cycle where the movie transitions from print to electronic version is a possible leak.

Screener traces are already in place. And there was a notable incident this year where an Acadamy of Motion Pictures member was caught bootlegging his screeners by the trace technology.

Before you all continue talking about how winamp is great and all, I think you should know that the history is not so nice. Especially when Justin Frankel says "In 1997 I ported AMP (a free mp3 decoder at the time)". AMP code was free for non-commercial use, but...

Check out this and this and this.

What Frankel "forgot" to mention is that Nullsoft made money without even mentioning that they used AMP code, and only after they got sued, Nullsoft "admitted" that they used "a bit of AMP code" which just so happens that it's an important part of the decoder thingie...

So, all is well in corporate world... :|

Umm, no. The HRDC had to pull the plug on a giant database filled with all kinds of information that it shouldn't have/didn't need access to.

Wonder what happened to the back up tapes.

Here and here and here and here.

Especially this one -- states that they finally got a model that doesn't use a fudge factor, but it doesn't predict as much global warming, either.

Google is your friend. The above links all came off the first page of searching for ""climate models" "fudge factor".

Pretty much nothing... check the story of the Radioactive Boyscout, he wasn't after a dirty bomb but he could have made one by accident. As others have pointed out, we are overly scared of radiation. It can be deadly and should be handled with care but so are many other things we deal with on a daily basis (drain cleaner, bleach, ammonia, lead acid batteries, lawn mowers).

I wonder if it will get to 2 Columbus Circle before this beautiful building gets an awful facelift.

In July 1999, the prestigious journal Psychological Bulletin published our review of fifty-nine studies that had examined psychological correlates of child sexual abuse (CSA) (Rind, Tromovitch, and Bauserman 1998). We soon achieved an unexpected honor: our paper was unanimously condemned by Congress. In the aftermath, SKEPTICAL INQUIRER has published two commentaries, one denouncing Congress (Berry and Berry 2000), and the other denouncing our study (Hagen 2001). We would like to offer our own thoughts about this astonishing story of politics, pressure, and social hysteria--the antitheses of critical and skeptical thought.

We conducted our research in the spirit of scientific skepticism, an attitude sadly missing in the CSA panic that arose throughout much of the 1980s and early 1990s. Beginning in 1984, sensational cases of satanic ritual abuse in daycare centers proliferated in the U.S., from McMartin in the West, to Fells Acres in the Northeast, to Little Rascals in the South. Staff workers were accused of such things as assaulting four-year-olds with swords and curling irons, forcing them in ritualistic style to consume feces and drink the blood of sacrificed babies, and molesting them in outer space or on ships at sea surrounded by sharks trained to prevent them from escaping. Meanwhile, by the late 1980s, a billion-dollar recovered memory movement had developed, and diagnoses of multiple personality disorder (MPD) mushroomed. All over the country, women were entering therapy with vague complaints such as feeling unhappy without knowing why, then emerging with "recovered memories" of bizarre childhood victimization--such as being sexually assaulted with hardware tools or vegetables--sometimes for many years, even decades, without "remembering." Often, these women were led to believe that this purported victimization had fragmented their personalities into a dozen, a hundred, or even a thousand alters.

Yet, over time, skeptics emerged-- social scientists, lawyers, and others who questioned the stories coming from daycare cases and therapists' offices. They provided empirical evidence showing how even bizarre memories can be implanted, how children can be manipulated and coerced into telling preposterous stories, how people can be induced to believe they have thousands of "personalities." Daycare cases ceased; convictions were overturned; some of the more egregious practitioners of MPD therapy were successfully sued for malpractice. But few people were willing to critically examine the core assumptions that led to these hysterical epidemics: that child sexual abuse is distinctively horrible (more horrible than any other traumatic experience or than family pathology), inevitably leaving scars that last throughout life (at least, without therapy). It was time to examine those assumptions.

Freud was the first to formalize a relation between CSA and psychological maladjustment. In his "seduction theory," he claimed that all adult neuroses are traceable to premature sex with an older person. He based this notion on a dozen or so patients, whom he pressured to recall seduction episodes using the same discredited techniques that would later be used in modern recovered memory therapy. He soon abandoned his

In July 1999, the prestigious journal Psychological Bulletin published our review of fifty-nine studies that had examined psychological correlates of child sexual abuse (CSA) (Rind, Tromovitch, and Bauserman 1998). We soon achieved an unexpected honor: our paper was unanimously condemned by Congress. In the aftermath, SKEPTICAL INQUIRER has published two commentaries, one denouncing Congress (Berry and Berry 2000), and the other denouncing our study (Hagen 2001). We would like to offer our own thoughts about this astonishing story of politics, pressure, and social hysteria--the antitheses of critical and skeptical thought.

We conducted our research in the spirit of scientific skepticism, an attitude sadly missing in the CSA panic that arose throughout much of the 1980s and early 1990s. Beginning in 1984, sensational cases of satanic ritual abuse in daycare centers proliferated in the U.S., from McMartin in the West, to Fells Acres in the Northeast, to Little Rascals in the South. Staff workers were accused of such things as assaulting four-year-olds with swords and curling irons, forcing them in ritualistic style to consume feces and drink the blood of sacrificed babies, and molesting them in outer space or on ships at sea surrounded by sharks trained to prevent them from escaping. Meanwhile, by the late 1980s, a billion-dollar recovered memory movement had developed, and diagnoses of multiple personality disorder (MPD) mushroomed. All over the country, women were entering therapy with vague complaints such as feeling unhappy without knowing why, then emerging with "recovered memories" of bizarre childhood victimization--such as being sexually assaulted with hardware tools or vegetables--sometimes for many years, even decades, without "remembering." Often, these women were led to believe that this purported victimization had fragmented their personalities into a dozen, a hundred, or even a thousand alters.

Yet, over time, skeptics emerged-- social scientists, lawyers, and others who questioned the stories coming from daycare cases and therapists' offices. They provided empirical evidence showing how even bizarre memories can be implanted, how children can be manipulated and coerced into telling preposterous stories, how people can be induced to believe they have thousands of "personalities." Daycare cases ceased; convictions were overturned; some of the more egregious practitioners of MPD therapy were successfully sued for malpractice. But few people were willing to critically examine the core assumptions that led to these hysterical epidemics: that child sexual abuse is distinctively horrible (more horrible than any other traumatic experience or than family pathology), inevitably leaving scars that last throughout life (at least, without therapy). It was time to examine those assumptions.

Freud was the first to formalize a relation between CSA and psychological maladjustment. In his "seduction theory," he claimed that all adult neuroses are traceable to premature sex with an older person. He based this notion on a dozen or so patients, whom he pressured to recall seduction episodes using the same discredited techniques that would later be used in modern recovered memory therapy. He soon abandoned his