Slashdot Mirror

• UFOs (34%)
• ghosts (also 34%)
• astrology (29%)
• reincarnation (25%)
• witches (24%)
• miracles (82%)
• heaven (85%) and
• god (92%) (Fox News poll, June 2004)

• 44% believe civil liberties should be restricted for Muslims; and
• 27% favor requiring Muslim Americans to register with the federal government.(Cornell Universdity poll, December 2004)

• 55% (and 67% of Bush voters) beleive God created humans as we currently exist, without any need for evolution; and only
• only 13% do not beleive God was somehow involved in human evolution. (CBS News poll, November 2004)

• 88 percent of U.S. adults believe that Saddam Hussein would have made weapons of mass destruction if he could have (down slightly from 90% in November).
• 76 percent believe that the Iraqis are better off now than they were under Saddam Hussein (same as November).
• 64 percent believe that history will give the U.S. credit for bringing freedom and democracy to Iraq (up slightly from 63% in November).
• 64 percent believe that Saddam Hussein had strong links to Al Qaeda (up slightly from 62% in November).
• 61 percent believe that Iraq, under Saddam Hussein, was a serious threat to U.S. security (down slightly from 63% in November).
  

More surprising perhaps are the large numbers (albeit not majorities) who believe the following claims not made by the president and which virtually no experts believe to be true:

• 47 percent believe that Saddam Hussein helped plan and support the hijackers who attacked the U.S. on September 11, 2001 (up six percentage points from November).
• 44 percent actually believe that several of the hijackers who attacked the U.S. on September 11 were Iraqis (up significantly from 37% in November).
• 36 percent believe that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction when the U.S. invaded (down slightly from 38% in November).

Fortunately for you, most people don't know about Firefox or AdBlock, and M$ most certainly won't support and implementation of it.

I consider myself a good netizen. When I'm visiting a site and see ads of interest, I'll click on ads that are relevant to my interests. However, I'm not going to scratch your back if you dig your nails into mine. I'll click on your ads, but don't make annoying, flashing, popup-embedded-in-flash, ads that take up 75% of the content window, and fly-in ads.

In the end, I guess we all lose for your selfishness.

[FUD snipped]

Today the government reported that an investigation has documented five separate occasions on which the Koran was "mishandled" by US troops at the detention center.

Here's a link even you'lll believe.

I really hate CNN, they are getting as bad as Fox News.

Really? Then you might be interested in actually reading the article on Fox News's website - an Associated Press article that doesn't use the term "swiped" at all, and only uses "theft", "thieves", and "stealing" in the midst of quotes by Dan Glickman and somebody at DoJ.

Really? I can't find any evidence he actually said that.

The only evidence I can find in favor of this story is an identical article posted by FOX News.

The Patriot Act requires libraries to turn over that sort of information to the feds when asked.

LOL.

I was just thinking that it'd be funny if the xenophobic fundies started advocating segregation so as not to interfere with evolution.

Hey, stranger things happen. Have you heard about Neal Horsley, the anti-abortion zealot who fucks animals? No, really. In his own words:

AC: "You had sex with animals?"
NH: "Absolutely. I was a fool. When you grow up on a farm in Georgia, your first girlfriend is a mule."
AC: "I'm not so sure that that is so."
NH: "You didn't grow up on a farm in Georgia, did you?"
AC: "Are you suggesting that everybody who grows up on a farm in Georgia has a mule as a girlfriend?"
NH: It has historically been the case. You people are so far removed from the reality... Welcome to domestic life on the farm..."
Colmes said he thought there were a lot of people in the audience who grew up on farms, are living on farms now, raising kids on farms and "and I don't think they are dating Elsie right now. You know what I'm saying?"
Horsley said, "You experiment with anything that moves when you are growing up sexually. You're naive. You know better than that... If it's warm and it's damp and it vibrates you might in fact have sex with it."

Perhaps it's just the biological imperative. He does it to further our evolution.

For example, see this Fox story about the White House admitting that the Niger claims were based on forged documents.

This New Yorker article discusses it in more detail. For instance, one of the forged documents was signed in 2000 by an official who had been out of office since 1989.

Read a little yourself.

I mean if you consider that recently Jeb Bush legalized the use of firearm in public as long as one feel his live is endangered, the spam capital of the world, a primary entry point for most of the drug in the US...

And it's governor another Bush, what a great american family...

The government should just get out of the information business. The free market is the best way to ensure that we get the most unbiased information.

Do you @ssholes even read the bible anymore?

Okay, I'll bite, mostly cause I actually read the Bible, and appearently you haven't.

Most people refer to Paul's letter to the Romans when talking about homosexuality:

For this reason God gave them over to degrading passions; for their women exchanged the natural function for that which is unnatural, and in the same way also the men abandoned the natural function of the woman and burned in their desire toward one another, men with men committing indecent acts and receiving in their own persons the due penalty of their error.And just as they did not see fit to acknowledge God any longer, God gave them over to a depraved mind, to do those things which are not proper.

Romans 1:26-28 (NASB)

Paul used this as an example of a community that was without God. Paul viewed homosexuality as a controllable sin, something you wouldn't do if you had a relationship with God. When Jesus accepted the adulterous woman, he finished by telling her, "Go, and sin no more." The reasons that we, as Christians, are so against homosexual marriage, is because we're against these signs that we are no longer a country without God. When the framers of the Constitution created the Bill of Rights, separation of Church and state was there to protect the Churches from the Government. Now, as our society has gone towards accepting things like homosexuality, atheists have championed separation of Church and state to protect their beliefs.

I don't support gay marriage and believe that our country shouldn't either. Appearently I'm in the majority, seeing as eleven states actually passed laws against gay marriage during the last election. As a Christian, I realize that we're all sinners, but we were never told that we should support sinful practices. We're told to forgive, not to encourage.

This must be Bill's response to the fact that even a monkey could hack into an unpatched Windows box. ;)

Here are some other news sources with a famously "one-sided view of the US in general". They seem to think that these things happened, too, but that'll probably just be their liberal media bias at work.

The original story that I submitted was from FoxNews.com, but whoever approved the story (Zonk) modified the link to point to gamespot or whatever. Blame the editor. Here's the link to the story that I submitted: Foxnews.com

...for the Russians to approve The Simpson's for kids, saying that it wasn't "morally degenerate".

Ping? ... Pong!

It's still the longest undefended border in the world last I checked, and it's not like we put a big ol' fence up to keep them out or something.

I guess for me I'm thinking 'about time' vs. 'oh my god I'm violated'. I've had the honor of going to Canada twice now and I took my passport with me both times. I would take my passport anytime I leave the country, and Canada is one of those times.

I think of it being the opposite? Not that Canada is any harder/easier to forge papers in but what if Ahab the Arab is in Canada and actually goes through a border checkpoint instead of walking across a frozen river in the winter. Making them have to forge a few more papers shouldn't be that hard.

They've lost some 'favored nation' type status because of our history together, big deal. We make every other country use a passport to get in and that's not stopped the tourists, hell even getting them killed in florida doesn't stop em.

Oh, wait, the U.S. government is thinking of invalidating that, too.

I shouldn't reply to trolls, but what the hell:

CNN
MSNBC
CBS
ABC

And, in the interests of impartiality:

Fox News.

Sorry, what was your point?

Done.
Fox News
The claim is right there in their tag line "Fair & Balanced". Yes, we all know it's bullshit, but they do claim it.
CNet Reviews claims that they offer "unbiased" reviews, read the page title.
The word "unbiased" is all over the place on the internet. Actual unbiased information is harder to come by. About the only, truly, unbiased information you are going to come by are hard facts like 2+2=4. Get beyond that and it all gets subjective.

I have been watching the news lately and is what they have been telling me to believe is wrong with America.

If you watched the news lately you would know that your lack of a right of a feeding tube is the most dangerous thing in America. The President even flew back a week early to sign the bill into law to secure you right, Not to mention Congress having a late session. You need to get your head screwed on straight, and look at the important things in life and stop listening to Science. Science is too busy messing with something called FACTS.

I have been watching the news lately and is what they have been telling me to believe is wrong with America.

If you watched the news lately you would know that your lack of a right of a feeding tube is the most dangerous thing in America. The President even flew back a week early to sign the bill into law to secure you right, Not to mention Congress having a late session. You need to get your head screwed on straight, and look at the important things in life and stop listening to Science. Science is too busy messing with something called FACTS.

I have been watching the news lately and is what they have been telling me to believe is wrong with America.

If you watched the news lately you would know that your lack of a right of a feeding tube is the most dangerous thing in America. The President even flew back a week early to sign the bill into law to secure you right, Not to mention Congress having a late session. You need to get your head screwed on straight, and look at the important things in life and stop listening to Science. Science is too busy messing with something called FACTS.

I have been watching the news lately and is what they have been telling me to believe is wrong with America.

If you watched the news lately you would know that your lack of a right of a feeding tube is the most dangerous thing in America. The President even flew back a week early to sign the bill into law to secure you right, Not to mention Congress having a late session. You need to get your head screwed on straight, and look at the important things in life and stop listening to Science. Science is too busy messing with something called FACTS.

I have been watching the news lately and is what they have been telling me to believe is wrong with America.

If you watched the news lately you would know that your lack of a right of a feeding tube is the most dangerous thing in America. The President even flew back a week early to sign the bill into law to secure you right, Not to mention Congress having a late session. You need to get your head screwed on straight, and look at the important things in life and stop listening to Science. Science is too busy messing with something called FACTS.

Not a study, but some very interesting information. Notice how the wee little scientist changed his tune before swearing an oath.

I admit that I am not a scientist nor perfect, I try to be skeptical. I just won't buy every chicken little story I hear.

Just recently Garrett Graf, who runs the political blog FishbowlDC, was granted access to the White House Press Briefing - the same thing Guckert/Gannon was maligned for attending without any "real" credentials.

Guckert/Gannon was not maligned for receiving a press pass. He was maligned for receiving a press pass using a false name, lying about his journalistic credentials, and lying about his involvement in illegal prostitution. All of this is well documented on blogs and legit news outlets.

(I don't want to step over the bounds into liberal conspiracy theories and bring up rsync with White House/GOPUSA press releases as "news", access to CIA Plume documents, and "go ahead Jeff" access to the press secretary and the President himself. Ooops. I just did.)

Second, I doubt that SCO's outcome will adversely any non-manager employee.

Once you've "in," nothing matters anymore. In extreme cases you might get fired and be forced to retire in luxury.

You've got a point, just because it's "law" doesn't mean that it's going to be followed.

"Come back when the Attorney General of Utah starts instructing state law enforcement agencies to star bringing in the polygamists."

It's a fox news article, so I doubt it'll be taken with any seriousness, but here you go.

I live in Utah. I can honestly say that I can go driving for miles on end and not find a single polygamist family for a very long time. In refrence to that fox news article, when it aired on television, it showed polygamists building massive complexes out in the mountains, not in the cities or anywhere close to that. Realize that polygamists are a severe minority in Utah, polygamists are NOT endorsed in any fashion by the Mormon church, rather they are excommunicated from the church fairly quickly.

Yes, we have a history of polygamy. No, it is in no way offically endorsed by the state of Utah or the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day saints, nor is it legal or common anywhere.

I will agree with you, though, concerning the "splinter groups". But, I doubt that these splinter groups, minorities in the extreme, are indicative of the entire state.

If forced, I'd refuse to comply. Yes, doing so will park you in jail. Blogs are publications and are often widely syndicated; they're often used as sources for major broadcast and dead tree news stories. ThinkSecret is as legitimate as the Talon; well, bad example on the latter.

Trade secrets are not national security. ThinkSecret and the other folks weren't trafficing in them (selling them to competitors) which would be industrial espionage; they were writing news articles about them.

Is The Register a legitimate news service? Is Tomshardware? Is Slashdot? Is Democracy Now? What about al-Jazeera? Fox News? Who gets to decide what constitutes a "legitimate" and an "illegitmate" news agency?

Ok then.

The Iron Fist of Hugo Chavez

First off, from its very title, as well as continuous similar references in the article ("moving toward totalitarian rule", "prepared to do terrible things", "the path to dictatorship", etc), it tries to present him as some sort of brutal, authoritarian dictator, and reads like Pravda with it's extreme one-sidedness.

The concept is laughable. Can you imagine a case where the United States was *overthrown* by a group of conspirators, the US government regained control, and the very *leader* of the conspirator's punishment was merely house arrest in his mansion? He was elected through democracy, was *overthrown by a coup* whose first action was to *dissolve the judiciary*, and came back and gave them little more than a slap on the wrist. Then, in an election supervized by both the OAS and the Carter Center, both of which certified it as clean, *democratically* won 58% of the vote despite the opposition's media monopoly working full time against him and organizing strikes to try and destroy their own country's economy.

The issue of election integrity is bigger than the Kerry Bush race. For the first time in the history of this democracy, we are trusting electronic tabulating machines to count votes in a presidential race. Machines which reknown computer scientists and cryptologists have proven to be insecure and untrustworthy.

In addition to being insecure and untrustworthy these machines left no "paper trail", no way of verifying the machine's count in a recount. When you have no paper trail, the only tool to investigate the integrity of a machine count is that of statistics, as Berkeley researchers were forced to rely upon when they concluded that voting irregularities lead them to believe 260,000 votes were invalidly awarded to Bush. In fact when 4,258 votes were awarded by a Diebold machine to Bush in Franklin County, Ohio we only knew that result had to be wrong because only 638 voters had casted ballots. Unfortunately this wasn't an isolated event as Diebold has stirred a string of such voting irregularities. According to Bob Fitrakis:

Due to computer flaws and vote shifting, there were numerous reports across Ohio of extremely troublesome electronic errors during the voting process and in the counting. In Youngstown, there were more than two-dozen Election Day reports of machines that switched or shifted on-screen displays of a vote for Kerry to a vote for Bush. In Cleveland, there were three precincts in which minor third-party candidates received 86, 92 and 98 percent of the vote respectively, an outcome completely out of synch with the rest of the state (a similar thing occurred during the contested election in Florida, 2000). This class of error points to more than machine malfunction, suggesting instead that votes are being electronically shifted from one candidate to another in the voting and counting stage.

All reported errors favored Bush over Kerry.

Which leads us to question the integrity of the election especially when the exit polls were so clearly in favor of Kerry.

The CEO of Diebold has made no attempt to hide his support for Bush. Ironically, he has publically stated that he is "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year". Later he stated it was a mistake to have said that, he meant it as an American, not as the CEO of a corporation that was contracted to count votes in Ohio. The CEO however isn't the only one to be painted with a big brush of suspicious, as at least five convicted felons secured management positions in his company. One of which served time in a Washington state correctional facility for stealing money and tampering with computer files in a scheme that "involved a high degree of sophistication and planning."

In my response I have analyzed the integrity of the Ohio election through the prisim of electronic voting, others have made other arguments regarding why they think an investigation is warranted as I can assure you the problems with Diebold is not limited to Ohio nor is electronic voting the only "irregularity" in Ohio [1] [2]

Oh sorry, /. is US-centered... Sorry guys, you can go back now to your beer, burgers and your ice-hockey...

---

http://www.museumofhoaxes.com/EE/images/uploads/be llybutton_lg.jpg God bless
America!

Yeah, but now we won't be able to record and present any video evidence of his, or any other congress critter's bad behavior to the poor sods convinced they're listening to the new, improved, Son of God.

Not that they'd listen anyway . . .

See, then you go and claim that all "real news" sources are horrible.

Here's an exercise. This is a Fox News story. Please find the bias in the news content. According to you, all our "real news" sources are "badly defective" and incapable of reporting anything properly. Please point out and correct the errors in this Fox News report, paying particular note to the pro-corporate and anti-liberal bias they are purported to project.

Do we even know what happens when a dirty bomb goes off? Yes, I know it's a normal explosive device laced with nuclear material, but what does that mean in terms of harmfulness?

It depends on the size of the bomb. Really, you have the bomb explosion that causes the damage and the exposure to radiation likely makes the place the bomb exploded uninhabitable or at least undesirable. An explosion like the one in oklahoma city could probably carry the material a few city blocks at least.

Some links:

Fox News
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,76873,00.html



BBC:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/2037769.stm

Overall, the number of casualties might not be that large but the psychological and economic impact could be huge.

If one if these went off in lower Manhattan, it could cost billions between lost business and people not wanting to go back to NYC.

I read the article before it was posted here on Slashdot, and the book Nuclear Terrorism. I have no doubt that terrorists could create a dirty bomb and if they had the resources and the time come up with a conventional nuclear weapon.

After all, if a teenage American boy could make a nuclear reactor in his backyard what makes you think terrorists can't make a nuclear weapon?

So how can any of this be justified?

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,146250,00.html

Yeah, it's almost like the slashdot editors are allowed to voice their own views and not follow a company line set out by the people who own the site. Imagine that, editorial freedom in a news site! What a novel idea!

It's downright unamerican!

Aah! Found it! http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,139614,00.html

Another significant difference is that you can now sometimes buy the MPAA movie soundtrack on DVD -- and get the whole d@mn movie to go with it -- for less than buying the RIAA CD audio movie soundtrack alone. And when it's more, it's seldom more than a couple dollars more. Talk about someone needing to re-evaluate their business model. And the audio people are getting the soundtrack source for essentially free, since all the studio time and such has already been paid for by the movie company.

Things like this are the perfect target for the Centennial Challenges program, a NASA program of prize contests for private endeavours to create or accomplish things related to space exploration. Spacesuit design is an area where a small private company can make appreciable progress with a reasonable amount of investment.

An even more specific goal is a better astronaut glove. Gloves sound like very simple things, but it's been pretty tricky so far to create a glove which can reliably remain intact in a vacuum while also giving the user a good degree of manual dexterity. A space policy analyst said the following in an article:

In fact, the glove is the biggest problem in designing the high-pressure space suits necessary to avoid the bends (the same problem a diver has when she surfaces too quickly) when an astronaut goes out into the vacuum of space. Larger joints like shoulders and knees have special designs that are zero-volume change, but no one has yet miniaturized such a design to finger joints.

Because this is a critical technology, and one that has great leverage in influencing launch system trades, I would propose the following:

Build a vacuum glove box with a task box inside (perhaps an automobile engine that has to be dissassembled and reassembled). Put up a purse of a million dollars to the first person who can achieve the task working through gloves under a pressure differential of half an atmosphere, without a break.

Unlike many space activities, it's a project that can be literally done in someone's garage, and it may spur a great amount of innovation for very low cost. Accordingly, it would make an excellent candidate for the Office of Exploration's new prize fund, and I hope they'll strongly consider it. At very low cost to the taxpayers, one or more successful concepts could lay to rest myths about the intrinsic difficulty of working in space, opening up the options for how we will get to the planets beyond redoing Apollo, perhaps saving billions in dollars, and constituting a major step toward becoming a truly spacefaring nation.

Personally, I prefer buying food, medical care for my kids, going out to eat, going to Disney World, living in a decent house, driving a decent car, owning an iBook, etc. much more than I prefer spending all my time building things for free to give to people I don't know or think about.

If you for some reason think your neighbor has a God-given right to own an operating system yet think he can't afford $100 for XP Home, consider this, originally from: (http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,132956,00.htm l

The following are facts about persons defined as "poor" by the Census Bureau, taken from various government reports:

-- Forty-six percent of all poor households own their own homes. The average home owned by persons classified as poor by the Census Bureau is a three-bedroom house with one-and-a-half baths, a garage, and porch or patio.

-- Seventy-six percent of poor households have air conditioning. By contrast, 30 years ago, only 36 percent of the entire U.S. population enjoyed air conditioning.

-- Only 6 percent of poor households are overcrowded. More than two-thirds have more than two rooms per person.

-- The average poor American has more living space than the average individual living in Paris, London, Vienna, Athens and other European cities. (These comparisons are to the average citizens in foreign countries, not to those classified as poor.)

-- Nearly three-quarters of poor households own a car; 30 percent own two or more cars.

-- Ninety-seven percent of poor households have a color television. Over half own two or more color televisions.

-- Seventy-eight percent have a VCR or DVD player; 62 percent have cable or satellite TV reception.

-- Seventy-three percent own a microwave oven, more than half have a stereo, and a third have an automatic dishwasher.

More conclusive evidence, and still Bush refuses to sign up to Kyoto. Now it's just a matter of which will destroy the planet first ... American wars of conquest or American pollution.

Haven't you read on FOXnews that there's nothing to worry about?
Apparently, the whole global warming-thing is just hyped by the U.N. Because they want to destroy the American economy. Bad guys. We can be glad that GWB doesn't give a shXXX uh, isn't so easily confused by science.

There goes my karma...

The Internet has been my primary new source since then. I watched 9/11. I watched the landings on Mars. Suggested news sites:

• Drudge
• CNN
• FOX News
• SlashDot
• BBC

A common statistic you frequently see thrown around in the popular press is that 300,000 preventable deaths in the US per year are caused by obesity.

You even see this statistic being used in supposedly serious scientific and medical journals. So what's the problem?

The original study from whence this figure come from actually says the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimating that poor diet and lack of physical activity contribute to up to 300,000 preventable deaths per year

Note is says "contribute" - not "cause".

Note it says "poor diet" not being "obese".

Note how "lack of phyisical activity" frequently gets ignored entirely.

By the way, the revised version of the study now says up to 400,000 deaths, comparable to smoking related deaths at 430,000, so expect to see inflated misrepresentation at a media outlet new you some time soon.

I had planned on linking to some references, but unfortunatley all the sites that debunk these figures are blocked from work, where sites that use the 'caused' version are freely accissible. Go figure. Here's a reference on who frequently the figure is bandied around, and here's one on the recently revised figures.

WASHINGTON -- The search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq has quietly concluded without any evidence of the banned weapons that President Bush cited as justification for going to war, the White House said Wednesday.

White House press secretary Scott McClellan said there no longer is an active search for weapons and the administration does not hold out hopes that any weapons will be found.

Chief U.S. weapons hunter Charles Duelfer is to deliver his final report on the search next month. "It's not going to fundamentally alter the findings of his earlier report," McClellan said, referring to preliminary findings from last September. Duelfer reported then that Saddam Hussein not only had no weapons of mass destruction and had not made any since 1991, but that he had no capability of making any either .

I believe that the entire point of Intelligent Design is to dress creationism in a white lab coat

We've got Bush getting re-elected (and nutcases putting up webpages about it), biblical-sized disasters occuring, and now someone made a sensible decision in a case involving the RIAA???

Dunno 'bout you, but I'm going to start stockin' up on canned food and shotgun shells.

A man in NJ has been charged with exactly what's been described here. Indications are that he hand-pointed the laser, occasionally caught the cockpit, and thus illuminated the pilots, who very much noticed.