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There is another thing that without any doubt makes Earth unique and that is our huge moon. The formation of that was a total fluke resulting from the collision of earth with a Mars-sized body billions of years ago.

Maybe not that much of a fluke; something similar seems to have happened to Mars and possibly Venus.

http://www.pound360.net/2008/06/mars-appears-home-to-largest-impact-in.html
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,334108,00.html

Is this "zapper" the same technology used to remove votes from voting machnes?

No. For Diebold machines, they just store it in a Microsoft Access database, and don't keep a running total (except where required by law).

So, you open it up in Access (the machine I got to work on had no password on the db), and change it to whatever you want. No third-party tools required.

Evidence right here:

"ST. PAUL, Minn. -- A protest near the site of the Republican National Convention gave way to violence Monday as demonstrators attacked members of the Connecticut delegation, smashed windows, slashed car tires and threw bottles during an anti-war march, St. Paul police said."

http://elections.foxnews.com/2008/09/01/anti-war-protest-at-gop-convention-turns-violent

This is great. It should be accessible to the public at all times.

That's a nice fantasy. Unfortunately this is the real world, and if you think the government and law enforcement are going to just hand over their leverage against the public than you're very naive. You run the chance of jail time for trying anything of the sort.

it turns out you don't need to look any further for evidence

Oh but I do have to look further. You had to provide a Fox News link but I didn't see anything in it saying the same people were involved. So you provided no evidence they were planning anything illegal. However the last paragraph does say this, which is the only thing in the article about the raids:
"On the weekend, authorities seized weapons and devices from a self-described anarchist group called the RNC Welcoming Committee, which was not among the organizers of the march. The devices were designed to disable buses, the sheriff's office said. Five people from that group were arrested on suspicion of conspiracy to riot, conspiracy to commit civil disorder and conspiracy to damage property, the sheriff's office said."

Cut and paste, isn't it wonderful?

Fox even says those raided weren't among the organizers, I put that in bold. Now I have a question for you, are you willing to admit you were wrong if it was found the police acted wrong?

Falcon

The proof for anything illegal being planned does not need to be made public in order for an arrest to be made, only for a conviction (generally speaking). Oh, and it turns out you don't need to look any further for evidence. I'm sure now that it's clear how wrong you were you will apologize to the police, FBI, the White House, and anyone else you insulted with your wild accusations.

Haha just kidding I'm sure you don't care about actual evidence, you just want an excuse to hate.

A quick Google search suggests last year. But it also suggests that high winds have caused major loss of life in the Netherlands due to dykes being breached.

Free-flowing credit fueled the dot com bubble. The government controls the credit.

But if the Clinton administration is placing all these terrible controls on the market, why would credit be so "free-flowing"? Isn't that counter to the evil socialist aims of the Democratic party? Don't they seek to add additional controls to everything? Why would credit be so free-flowing under tight controls?

Damn, Democrats know how to rewrite history.

Its a good thing that the GOP has such a profound moral high-ground to stand on with this issue. Because of course its not like the conservative has a massive media presence or anything. And they've never wanted us to forget about things they've done or anything.

You have to understand that people do things like that to energize their own groups. In Ohio, some democrats circulated a flier to the same effect except it said republicans vote on Tuesday with democrats voting on the following Wednesday (the third).

Of course the blame was placed on the republicans and the rally cry was "they don't want your voice to be heard". Several months after the election, it was found that a group of democrats operating independent of any official party made the fliers and circulated them around just for that effect and included calls to people in nursing homes claiming that the elderly wasn't able to vote this year and so on. You can find more information here.

The problems are that like you referred to in a later post, is that you much like many others don't have first hand experience with a lot of this but because of the demonization efforts, you assumed it was true. It is a very effective strategy in gaining support for your side if you can pull it off. In Ohio during the 2004 and 2006 elections, we had a number of issues on the ballot that were traditionally democrat stands on policy and motivating the democrats to vote would ensure their passage. Of course the minimum wage increases and a couple of other issues would have probably passed regardless of democrat turn out but they went ahead and made the effort.

Now it should be noted that a lot of groups have attempted to discredit the agency that assembled the report I have linked to. These discrediting attempts go to connections of the group and all. But to date, I'm not aware of any discrediting of the facts presented in the report. All of which were either facts that came from other investigations and compiled into one place or that came from their own investigations and those facts aren't refuted with evidence or other facts, just generalizations about biases and connections to other groups like the republicans.

Seriously, how are you welding it shut? MIG? TIG? TORCH?!?!?! Every one of those is a capsule-smasher in its own right, and every single one of them will ruin what you're trying to do, from the contaminants they squeeze through the closing gap to the heat they generate to the ions they impart to the ozone they inject to the magnetism they could have to the Godzilla eggs they could lay.

Seriously, though, welding a steel container shut is as retarded an idea as can be devised. How do you suggest the container be opened? Moreover, how do you suggest ppl 25 years from know know WHERE to make the incision so as to avoid hurting the contents?

This idea is as shortsighted as the '57 Plymouth you can find easily enough.

THICK polymer, bevel-cut, glued together, wrapped in pre-preg Kevlar will keep out Everything and not hurt the contents.

Although casual users cannot see the previous user's search history, authorities such as the police will be able to access it if necessary.

Kind of makes it seem like it's still stored somewhere, and while I don't know how the data is stored, I can't imagine it will take too long to figure out how to view the history of others.
Also interesting is that people at MS apparently nicknamed it 'Porn Mode'.

Why should anyone believe half the crap that you spew?
Seriously, why are you so gung-ho confident about stuff that can be so easily disproven with 60 seconds of googling? Its like you are repeating something someone else told you and never bothered to question it.

has a home that costs thousands of dollars a month in electricity,

the 60- to 70-year-old house is undergoing renovations to add solar panels to reduce consumption off the power grid, and energy-efficient windows have been installed. The home also uses "compact" fluorescent light bulbs and other energy-saving technology, the Gores drive hybrids and participate in two programs that indirectly reduce carbon emissions.

One is through the local power company -- the massive Tennessee Valley Authority -- which runs the Green Power Switch program that uses some renewable energy like wind and solar power. The second is through a so-called carbon credit program, in which the Gores pay money to invest in a third party to reduce one ton of carbon emissions for every ton of carbon the Gores emit.
--Fox News

, and does very little himself monetarily speaking to help with environmental groups, despite all of the millions he is pulling in from his "documentary"

"My wife Tipper and I are devoting 100% of whatever profits we receive from both the movie and the book to a new organization of The Alliance for Climate Protection that environmental groups in the United States have helped to initiate, but goes beyond environmental groups to include faith groups, labor and business groups and they are planning now a nation-wide persuasion campaign in the United States.

And in fact, Paramount has done something unprecedented in agreeing to contribute 5% of its domestic gross [not just profits] from this movie. They have already committed $5,000 as a minimum."
--Cannes Interview with Gore

You can get the DNC live feed via streaming Flash at http://foxnews.com./

It really depends on which scam you fall victim to.
Take this case of a hapless drug addict who called the cops after she was sold fake cocaine. They arrested her on drug charges despite the lack of any real cocaine.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,293112,00.html

Don't worry, you'll be voting regularly after you've died...

You don't need E-Voting machines for that. We use paper ballots here in Alabama, and every single election, there's always a scandal in some counties because according to the voting rolls, people showed up to vote who've long been dead. The dead seem to particularly love voting by absentee ballot in some of our counties.

Alabama county accused of voter fraud

Officials Investigate 3 Alabama Counties in Voter Fraud Accusations

VOTER FRAUD SPREADING IN ALABAMA, CRADLE OF CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT

At least our officials are finally doing something about it. Of course, this wouldn't be a much of a problem if we made them purge the voter rolls more often. This seems to go on in a lot of states with an electronic database of voters, but with paper balloting for election day. Mississippi purged 100,000 dead voters from their rolls earlier this year to try and eliminate some of this zombie voting.

Just replace Russia with USA and the parallels are very clear.

No — and I tried to forestall this argument, that Putin has put into your head. Unlike Russia, US was not justifying its actions by giving Kosovars citizenship. That's was a difference in method. The goal is different too — unlike Russia, US did not gain — nor planned to gain — any territory. If you are still seeing parallels, you need to remove those glasses, that Russian propaganda gave to you — the "parallels" must be painted on their insides.

the atrocities of the Serbs in crushing that rebellion were much exaggerated by the western media

Serbian forces had a truly nasty record by then...

[...] percentage of South Ossetians killed in just couple of days of Georgian attack.

According to whom? To the Russians? Ha-ha!.. Suuu-re... That's an unbiased source.

but at least they pay a lip service to preservation of territorial integrity (as per international law) in both cases.

No, they don't — not any more:

"The actions of the Georgian powers in South Ossetia are, of course, a crime -- first of all against their own people," Putin said. "The territorial integrity of Georgia has suffered a fatal blow."

Right there you go — an attempt to gain territory of a fellow UN member via military force...

And that's my thought. It's well known that a significant portion of US currency has trace amounts of cocaine on it. While I loathe to link the site, it does provide some evidence: Cocaine Found on Money

So how does this analyzer determine who's an active drug user or just an innocent? Is cocaine on the keyboard enough evidence to require a drug test from an employee? Since the keyboard is company property, is it legal to scan it for trace amount of illegal drugs? Too many questions on this one...

Israeli and palestinians on the borders to the West bank and Gaza are firing home made rockets at each other all the time, and this laser is incapable of shooting them down. I guess the palestinians have discovered a simple way to outsmart it. Israel -> Palestine: http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2008-07/21/content_8741605.htm Palestine -> Israel: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,370701,00.html

Some officers don't just abuse their position, they seem to think they're the law and can do anything they want, including hurting people for no good reason.

NYPD Officer Stripped of Badge After YouTube Video Shows Cyclist Shove: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,392901,00.html

Some officers don't just abuse their position, they seem to think they're the law and can do anything they want, including hurting people for no good reason.

NYPD Officer Stripped of Badge After YouTube Video Shows Cyclist Shove:
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,392901,00.html

The point you missed is that their net worth was that high before they became Senators.

And after they are Senators, they can earn more from giving a single speech then the median American makes in a year. How is that not still an insulting rate of income?

Plenty of nutcases go undiagnosed. Case in point is the astronaut (referred to by several commenters in the aliens story) who was charged with attempted murder.

Maybe he read too many of our "pound me in the a$$" prison jokes and freaked out?

Did we cause his ultimate demise?

Yeah, the NASA psych evaluations are pretty good at weeding out the crackpots

Quite simply it is the wya they choose to work, they assumed no one would really question it (IMHO).

To provide you with a firm quote for a given zip code, they'd have to either allow customer support/sales people access to the real billing engine, or maintain a seperate parallel system that shares the same calculation engine used for production billing. If they were to do that, all they can really answer is what the phone would cost if you were billed *today*, not what it will be in thirty days, when you get your first bill.

At issue is the fact that the carriers pass-thru the taxes and fees our government imposes on them, even when the Gov't tries to force them not to (the carriers don't want to appear greedy when the Gov't raises taxes, they want the Gov't to appear greedy).

I think it would be fair for the carriers to be able to provide sample tax rates for various plans, but with the caveat that an individual's taxes may be more or less, based on their circumstance, location, etc. In that case, what is the real value? Seems to me the original caller could calculate the taxes fairly well by taking his current bill, caling the carrier nad having them explain how each tax is calculated, set fees would remain the same, proportional fees increase as the cost of the service increases.

Is it just me, or are many slashdot postings from a bunch of whiners? Why hound the poor salse person at the kiosk in the mall, if it is important to you, and they can't answer your question move on - you seem to be trying to trick them into an answer when they clearly have none to give.

How Michael Moore of you...

Well, if you're wanting a fair and balanced source of radio, you might like FOX News Radio. In addition to their streaming/downloadable content, it looks as if there's information about how to find conventional radio stations that broadcast their stuff.

If you're into that kind of thing.

"This guy is an amazing loon. Seriously, he makes Jack Thompson look sane."

Coincidentally, he also attempted to sue Take Two over GTA.

Is spontaneous combustion a big problem for trees in you area?

Not exactly, but combustion can still play a large roll in deciding the roll trees should play in carbon sequestration.

I submit Idaho for your consideration.

Hmm... even though the country is lead by an Internet expert.

Underground caverns where newfangled energy producing technology has been introduced might not be the optimum place to own real estate.

Slow down there, Aussie Bob. I don't recall Oz being annexed recently.

How about a link to a real newspaper?

here
here
here
here (oops, my bad ;)
here
here
here
or how about one from a city that is directly impacted by the decision, like here?

Mayor Daley calls Supreme Court's gun-ban reversal 'a very frightening decision'
High court strikes down Washington D.C. law in ruling that could have Chicago implications
An angry Mayor Richard Daley on Thursday called the Supreme Court's overturning of the Washington D.C. gun ban "a very frightening decision" and vowed to fight vigorously any challenges to Chicago's ban.

The mayor, speaking at a Navy Pier event, said he was sure mayors nationwide, who carry the burden of keeping cities safe, will be outraged by the decision.

Chicago's handgun ban, which has lasted for more than a quarter-century, came under threat earlier in the day when the Supreme Court decided that Washington D.C.'s law against handgun ownership is unconstitutional.

In a 5-4 decision, the high court determined that Americans have the right to own guns for self-defense as well as hunting. The decision, which had been expected, is a win for gun-rights advocates and provides a better definition of the rights of Americans to own firearms.

Illinois gun-rights activists have said they expect to mount a quick legal challenge to the Chicago Weapons Ordinance.

Other city officials said they felt confidant that challenge would fail.

I'm disappointed in you, timothy. I'm sure there were a lot more submissions than this one. Since this is Thursday, I hereby nominate you as "Aurthur Dent" (Monday is my Dent Day).

Why do I have to <p> on my paragraphs when I've selected "plain old text"??

I think the parent's point was not that Karl Rove is a major force in the McCain campaign, but that people "the likes of Karl Rove" are.
 
And besides, Karl is doing plenty to contribute.

I'm no constitutional authority, but nowhere in the Constitution of the USA does it give that power to the executive branch. And the Constitution is a limit on what government can do. It doesn't seem like it today but that's how it was written.

OMG are you seriously saying that you don't know what the president's justification was/is? How can you accurately or even intelligently argue anything if you don't understand or at least attempt to know about all sides of the issue. Jesus, you will never get it because you don't have it. For crists sake, why don't you pay attention to the topic that you are going after. Here, read this page and you will find out more about it. Granted it is foxnews and some people see them as biased but it has a good run down of the situation. Pay close attention to the part where it says

"In 2002, that FISA review court upheld the president's warrantless search powers, referencing a 1980 Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals decision. That court held that "the president did have inherent authority to conduct warrantless searches to obtain foreign intelligence information. ... We take for granted that the president does have that authority and, assuming that is so, FISA could not encroach on the president's constitutional power," wrote the court.

This isn't saying you, it isn't say I, it is saying that a court of law found it to be there and that court was the highest court to hear the case so far. That is why congress doesn't want to start an impeachment or legal proceedings. They know full well that they could be losing some of the power it claims to have over a sitting president.

It just as possible any "legal opinions" were written to cover their asses. "See we wrote these to show we believed what we did was legal."

Yes, however it would be unlikely that a court would have supported those opinions if they were fallacious in intent as well as content. In order for it to be a pure CYOA in case they got caught would mean that there was no basis for them and they were attempting to dupe less intelligent people into believing their authority. As it stands, a court sided with the administration over it with the one exception of the district court that was overturned because of improper connections of the judge to one of the plaintiffs in the suits. The FISA court is above Anna Diggs Taylors court anyways so their rulling sets the precedence.

Would you want el Duce, Hilter, or Stalin to have the same power? How about Pol Pot? Idi Amin?

Totally irrelevent What was/is happening happening with the NSA wiretaps is directly connected to an attack on the US, not for some political agenda. Start comparing apples to apples why don't you. BTW, You already confessed that you don't know about the administrations stances on the issue, is it possible that you are just as ignorant about these people?

It's very relevant, not even the NAZIs did everything at once. Instead they slowly whittled away. Hitler wasn't even given all the power he had until after the Reistag fire. And going after the telecoms will show they can be made to pay if they do anything illegal.

This power wasn't given to the president in any open or broad sense. Unlike what your describing with hitler, these encroaches are specifically targeted to specific needs or specific situations.

And going after the telecoms, the law already says that if they were presented with legal documents authorizing the taps that they are immune to lawsuits and prosecution. The problem is that the administration has classified all of that information and won't release it. If the telecoms goto court, and they were free to show the information, you couldn't go after them at all. But as it stands now, they will be breaking the state secrets laws if they defend

Look clearly much of what I've said is opinion, but I wouldn't go so far as to say I presented it as fact, I think I've labeled it as opinion when it was, or when I presented it as fact, pointed out that I had no actual evidence to back it up, so don't criticise me for the ethics of the methodology I use to present my ideas.

You claim I present opinion as fact, but you'll notice that I explain why I believe what I do and I invite you to disagree. So while I may have said "five years ago bush lied to us" if you just read on a bit you'll notice what I mean by this:

Now on to examples of news and "news". I quickly navigated to Fox's homepage and saw this prominently displayed:

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,369885,00.html

If you want to give me examples from other news sources, they're all welcome of course. Fox is just an easy target for me. Here's more of what I would like to see:

http://www.zmag.org/zmag/viewArticle/17795

Of course this is really just an op-ed where the author sides with me, but the point is that serious issues are being addressed in the article. For whatever reason Fox decided to display the link I showed you (significantly). The fact that they would present that at all causes me to raise an eyebrow, but more shocking to me was that it was by far the most prominently displayed article on their homepage, the only article displayed with a picture and text. In a different location on the page they had an article on Iran (titled: U.N. Official: Iran Attack Would Set Mideast Afire). Was it displayed as prominently? No actually. It was a link off on the side mixed among several others. Why is destruction therapy a more important issue than the reprecussions of a US invasion of Iran?

Everything I've said here is pretty obvious to me, I'm not sure why it's not to you. If it's because you've never thought of it this way, you should keep your eyes open over the next few months and see what you think. Otherwise, I don't know what to tell you.

In other news, $162 billion was just approved for the war in Iraq. Oh, and a few more billion for some congress people's pet projects.

<sarcasm>Good to see we have our priorities straight. Also good to see the democrats following through on their promise to stop funding the "war" now that they're the majority. I'd hate to think democrats and republicans were both equally useless.</sarcasm>

It's like McDonald's suddenly trying to get people to buy $12 steaks.

Funny? I was thinking parent post should be moderated "insightful."

Especially after I read that article about McCain criticizing Obama for having a "September 10th" mindset...

I guess you'd have to go to the fair and balanced source. Try this link: http://elections.foxnews.com/2008/06/13/mccain-guantanamo-ruling-one-of-the-worst-decisions-in-history/ You could get the whole article there, but the link says it all.

I guess you'd have to go to the fair and balanced source. Try this link: http://elections.foxnews.com/2008/06/13/mccain-guantanamo-ruling-one-of-the-worst-decisions-in-history/ You could get the whole article there, but the link says it all.

Anyone else see the irony in putting ANY sort of remote control system in airplanes after the series premiere of the Lone Gunmen had terrorists remote controlling an airliner and trying to crash it into the World Trade Center? Security will be no problem at all, because it's not like people have been able to hack into the Pentagon or Congress or anything. Remote controlling airplanes is just a really, really supergreat idea.

The largest headline on the page is Gitmo Bay Detainees Win Round at High Court.

You know, I hear Obama has an entire company dedicated to him too.
"Ticker: Obama lead on McCain growing in polls"
I thought so.

So does Obama. It's called MSNBC and it's downright painful to watch it at times. And I'm a fucking Democrat saying that! I had hoped that we wouldn't go down the road of Bill O'Reilly but it seems that my hope was misplaced.

If I was McCain, I wouldn't worry, Obama may have his "blogs", but McCain has an ENTIRE NETWORK! http://www.foxnews.com/

You ignorant, stupid, godless Canadian. It's no wonder you're a second-rate country. If our children see the godless gays kissing at a ballgame, they'll become godless gays themselves.

I mean, what the fuck are you thinking? "I can't really see why anybody is against gay marriage" That sort of attitude will ruin a country. Look at Rome! Look at Ancient Greece! Both fell due to rampant, unchristian homosexuality. Do you want that for Canadia? We don't want that for the US. We have GOD on our side, and why the hell would we risk that? God GOT us this country, and by god, In God We Trust. You can ruin your country, but when the Rapture comes, you're all toast. And the US will remain, a sterling beacon of truthiness and godliness shining above the blackened lands of the rest of the world.

And THAT'S what's wrong with gay marriage.

No they are all facts.
The US has the worlds 2nd largest stockpile of chemical weapons. We have less than Russia now, because we have been slowly destroying our supplies, but only since 2006 have we dropped into second place.. We still have 15,000 metric tons of nerve agents and mustard gas.
The CIA has been training terrorists since the 1950s. Most of the anti-American sentiment around the world can be traced to CIA operations attempting to influence foreign politics.
In 2006 the US Army patented A rifle-muzzle launched payload delivering projectile ...5. The projectile of claim 4, wherein the aerosol composition is further selected from the group consisting of smoke, crowd control agents, biological agents, chemical agents, obscurants, marking agents, dyes and inks, chaffs and flakes.
The US government ignores the UN whenever it is convenient. The US has used it's military on foreign soil 70 times since 1980.

To prevent future moral failings, we must first as a country acknowledge the failings of the recent past. To hide our heads in the sand and pretend that US hasn't earned the animosity of the terrorists and insurgents we fight is to ensure our failure both in the battles we fight and in our rapidly eroding position as a world leader. Ignorance is unpatriotic.

And what makes it even more interesting is that one of the major ringleaders against Clinton, the House Majority Leader Newt Gingrich, was having an extra-marital affair the whole time he was railing against Clinton!

I remember when that piece of news came out, I guess it was about a year ago, and seeing how he got off virtually scot-free in the popular press. Clinton, alas, got no such luxury, whether he deserved it or not. To me, the hypocrisy is striking

Sure, you don't save every daily incremental, but you need to keep permanent copies of full backups on, say, a monthly basis. Permanent as in: you're not too cheap to overwrite them when you run out of room. Otherwise you're not really backing your stuff up.

Backups are not forever, media fails as does hardware. The best thing to do is to make and keep multiple copies of backups, on different media or hardware. And if you have a lot of data, that may mean a number of external hdds. Then as new technology comes along transferring old backups to new media or hardware. Here's a story about a "Computer Tech Accidentally Erases Info on Alaska's $38 Billion Oil Fund". No problem they thought, they had a backup. The backup, tape, had 9 months of data yet it was unreadable, it linked to a Physorg.com article but articles "expires 15 days after original publication date."

A vote for one wing or the other of a two-party state is worse than useless.

The Onion and Fox news have both mentioned Bob Barr, the Libertarian candidate. Maybe the time will come when a real news outlet will mention third party candidates, instead of just parody outlets like The Onion and Fox?

I can't even find mention of the Green Party's Presidential candidate on their own web site, so in their case I think the mainstream media can be forgiven for ignoring them.

The news today is saying that "John McCain challenged his Democratic rival, Sen. Barack Obama, to a series of 10 joint town hall meetings, starting next week in New York City". I guess he's afraid of Bob Barr?