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Having policies that makes it less attractive to outsource jobs, is not the same as to throw-out all the achivements of free trade agreements the last decades.

According to them, only 2% of adult American internet users visit "adult websites" on a typical day.

News flash: people lie about sex.

More seriously though, I find it hard to believe that only 54% of adults with internet access use that access on a typical day.

Dialup, which is what most people have, is a pain in the ass. While we're using our DSL lines to post 20 comments a day to Slashdot, most people are in front of a different kind of monitor, watching the latest Fear Factor or Joe Millionaire or biased "news" program.

These are the same people who would remove qualified scientists from an advisory panel because their findings do not support a particular ideology or business model.
Exactly. Some people define "respected scientists" as only those who believe in their ideology (like global warming). All scientists who doesn't agree are labeled "industry stooges".

Some people would like to Outsource our military and subvert our "interests" to a corrupt organization of dictators and mostly corrupt elected officials (the U.N.). They would like to suppress any connection they don't want to find and repeat the same lie repeatedly until they think people will believe them. They also suppressed discovery of proliferation activity for political gain (China-gate).

Which way do you thing the activist hackers who would alter evoting dquipment would go?

"My Coffee was too hot"

"I'm too fat"

"You watch my kids for me..."

These are just three stories, and yes, all extreme cases of what we're talking about here. Finding a scapegoat. It's a disease that is rampant, and further perpetuated by the media's constant abuse of their power of exposure.

I agree with you, it's senseless to look no further than the assumed 'influence' when it comes to cases like this, but unfortunately that is the surface stance that most individuals seem to jump on whenever things like this arise. Our actions somehow are no longer products of our decisions, but of our stated influences?

As far the US having the Christian right in charge, you might want to read this.

...
Seig Heil Bush!!

...
Seig Heil Bush!!

Fox News vs CNN This gives the news networks the appearance of political in-fighting, just like several of the democratic presidential candidates.

No exhaustive analysis to see here! Move along!

The second article quotes CBS pres Andrew Heyward, "Cable thrives on repetition and, let's be kind, exhaustive analysis, which has to constantly be freshened." Saying ANY of the news networks engage in "exhaustive analysis" is indeed charitable. They replay and replay without ever showing much success in giving context to the newsworthy items they cover. Almost any clip can be made to look wonderful or ridiculous if taken out of context.

The value of the Internet as news media is you can get the context you need to make sense of the news clips. Good print media is also useful for that, but it's often frustrating to wait for your weekly delivery of the Economist.

ANY media gains an advantage when the editors can help provide unbiased reporting AND context for the events they cover. The trick is finding editors you can trust.

Anybody who thinks that this next little step is harmless, has a poor grasp of history. True, in and of itself, it may be mostly useless, but it is not in and of itself. It is a tool that augments a larger collection of tools to provide a "data" or "statistical" picture of a person, their habits and their wanderings.

What happens in the future when a person is in the same location as a terrorist, has a friend with a suspect background, and espouses unpopular (but legal) ideas. You can now arrest them. Circumstantial evidence links them to the terrorist (you can not avoid whom you do not know), they are saying "anti-government" ideals (not necessarily separatist or violent), and through enough weeding, the rest of the case will be found.

McCarthy destroyed many people who opposed him by using innuendo, circumstantial evidence and (lying) witnesses. Almost no one was able to beat him at his game because he had such an effective information collection and management system. That is where we are slowly headed, good intentions or not.

Right now, those in power would benefit immensely from this system. It makes it that much easier to stay in power if your potential enemies' weaknesses are that much easier to find. Do not think that this information system will not be abused. The RIAA has just provided us with many beautiful example of how this is abused by prosecuting minors. Children are not able to enter into legal agreements because it is agreed that they are incapable of understanding what the legal consequences are, let alone to be able to distinguish right from wrong (true, to some degree, most children know basic rights and wrongs, but more complicated ones are hard if not impossible for most children to grasp.) Other forms of this are profiling, poorly managed data at credit reporting agencies (Experian, Equifax and Trans Union required The Fair Credit Reporting Act to get them to do some things better) and so on

Oh, and for those of you who point to the police not being able to find criminals because they did not bother to look at the system, human error will always exist. This system allows a much different use of the data than what the typical police system has. Those tend to be much less complete, and the officers themselves often recieve little training and have even less support and experience doing this kind of research. The people to worry about with the systems being made today are in a different world from "on the street" law enforcement. They thrive on this kind of data mining. Most of the informarion McCarthy had on people was never used. He had it there just in case. It was how he controlled votes in the government and kept even his dark secrets out of the light. I am not worried that this will be used to arrest some innocent people nearly as much as I am worried that a smart person with a "bad" bent will learn how to gather and abuse this information to further corrupt the process in their favor. I do not think this is an if thing, but a when thing. Every tool gets abused. The more powerful the tool, the more powerful the abuse and the abuser.

The problems with my arguments are things like this abduction at Fox News. You would have to be a heartless bastard to not want a safer world for our children, our parents and our friends. With crime against innocents and defenseless individuals so rampant, it is very difficult to argue against this type of tool. It is a very similar to what McCarthy had with the Soviets and Cuba when he was in power.

And today's freedom fighters are often tomorrow's terrorist scum.

Just think, if security cameras in cyber-cafes were not required by law, how many cyber-cafes would use that and not have them? They have large volumes of cash on the premises. And once you have security cameras in your establishment of your own volition it's trivial for the government to get access to anything they record. Whether they are required or not is really moot point.

Sean has his own radio show. No Colmes.

More recently, Alan Colmes has gotten his own radio show. The show is even syndicated by that network that the Left likes to attack as a bunch of fire-breathing right-wingers, which kinda gives the lie to their assertions.

What about the 10 seconds every quarter of an hour or so when colmes gets to speak?

The Sean Hannity Show != Hannity & Colmes.

(I might not agree with 95% of what Alan Colmes says, but at least he's more polite than 95% of the other liberals out there. You can disagree without being disagreeable. I'm sure there's a lesson in there somewhere for Howard Dean and his ilk, but I doubt they'll learn it.)

Interesting fact, Sean Hanity's speaking fee is $35,000. colmes gets less than $15,000.

You don't suppose that could be market forces at work, do you?

a report by the California Student Public Interest Research Group entitled "Ripoff 101"... several practices that force students...

"Ripoff 101" could also describe Public Interest Research Groups.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,80925,00.html

Nader Scams College Kids

Thursday, March 13, 2003

By Radley Balko

Each semester, Meremac Community College in St. Louis, Mo., charged Crystal Lewis for a service called "MOPIRG." "I hadn't the slightest idea what it was," she says. The fine print on her bill read: "If you opt not to support MOPIRG, please deduct this amount from your payment." So she did. But she still wasn't sure what she was no longer paying for.

She was paying for a myriad of causes and advocacy efforts sponsored, endorsed and overseen by Ralph Nader. And if you're in college or have kids in college, the odds are pretty good that you're supporting Ralph Nader too. You probably didn't know that, did you? And that's just the way Nader and his nationwide network of Public Interest Research Groups (PIRGS) would like to keep it.

The PIRG idea was born in the late 1960s, but really caught on through the 1970s and 1980s. It has again picked up momentum in the last few years, due mainly to the publicity that accompanied Nader's presidential campaign. The scam varies from campus to campus, but it basically works like this:

Each time a college student registers for classes, he or she is automatically billed somewhere between three and eight dollars, all of which goes directly to the local PIRG chapter. There, it's funneled directly to the state chapter, where it's used to lobby state legislatures on issues like tougher emissions standards, campaign finance reform and a bevy of other environmental and anti-corporate causes. Very little if any of the money actually stays at the campus where it's generated.

It's also used as "seed money" for more fund-raising campaigns. And about 10 percent of the money goes to USPIRG, the national chapter, where it's used to lobby on the federal level.

The standard procedure for start-up campus PIRGs works like this:

First, they attempt to institute mandatory, nonrefundable "contributions" from the student body either through a student referendum, a petition drive or by going through school administrators. The University of Wisconsin requires all of its students to donate to the local PIRG chapter, as does the University of Oregon, and about a third of the state colleges in New York's SUNY system.

If that doesn't work, PIRG chapters attempt to institute a "reverse check" system, where each student automatically donates to PIRG each time he registers for classes, unless he specifically knows to look for an already checked box asking for his support -- and "unchecks" it.

If they can't win support there, PIRG groups will attempt a "refundable fee" system, where each student is automatically billed, but can request a refund by taking the bill to the university registrar or bursar's office, filling out some paperwork, then taking the form to the local PIRG's campus office to get the money back.

Such systems rake in millions for PIRGs because they put the burden on college students to educate themselves about each line item on their tuition bill, or to go to great effort for a comparatively small refund, particularly unlikely when mom and dad or Mr. Perkins and Mr. Stafford are paying for college anyway.

Craig Rucker is executive director for the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow, an organization that's been fighting the PIRG scams for years. Rucker estimates that Nader's causes take in somewhere between $10 and $20 million annually from college students, most all of it unwittingly.

What's remarkable is the blatant, tran

Nothing in the information available to GWB said that there were stockpiles of WMD, yet he repeatedly said that we had proof that there were massive stockpiles and that we knew where they were. That's what's called a lie.

So, which are you, Mr. Powell, or Ms. Rice? You know all the evidence that the president recieved?

And it's presently so safe and peaceful there that no Iraqis are dieing?

What Iraq had before we invaded was not peace. In the same way as Soviet Russia was not at peace during the cold war. Peace is not wondering if you will be abducted from your home or your family killed for being a dissident.

The very nature of your statistics disturbs me. How is it we all know so much about the Iraqi deaths in the years durring which we weren't present (and had demonstratbly bad intelligence) but have only guesses about how many have died while we were there and watching? Dosn't that seem even a little bit odd to you?

Because, after we got there, over threw the former regime, and started sticking shovels into the ground we started discovering these mass graves. Our counts and estimates say 300,000 bodies fill these graves. That is how we know.

Interesting photo site
Washington Times
Fox News
CNN about half way down a reference

By all means, we should do it. Too bad we're broke now, having spent more than we have on that whole arming-to-the-teeth thing.

Explain to me why it is that Iraq had never sent anyone into space? Or perhaps why only three nations in the world have ever sent anyone into space (and China being dubious at best since they built off of Russian tech)? When did the US send people into space? Oh yeah, during the hey-day of space during the col war when we were working on arming ourselves to the teeth, that's right.

Some believe that the function of government is to arm itself to the teeth to protect the life and property of its citizens, not to give health care and schooling and nannying its citizens. Researching space tech falls into the defense of its citizens catagory.

Here in Maryland a woman registered her dog to vote.

Story Here

Story from Fox

The story is there but it is buried on the Politics page which you can get to from the front page. The link appears just over halfway down the page.

The thing is - counterfeiting with inkjets is on the rise. I'm not sure I believe the stats quoted here or here and here but theyre just some of many such stories I've seen in the last 5 years claiming this is a real problem.

Yes, my friend, if you want Fair and Balanced, you're at the wrong place.

/me hopes someone appreciates the double entendre.

myth

I've thought about that before too, and it sounds nice, but it's not going to happen. There is still a little problem of a different copany called Apple, but this one is a record label. To quote FoxNews:

...the Beatles stand to pose a big problem for Apple Computer. That's because the Beatles own a holding company called Apple Corps, Ltd., which controls Apple Records, which released records by the Beatles and other artists...in the mid-1980s, Apple Computer started producing music files and software. It had to pony up $26 million when the Beatles sued, and again promised not to go into any more music.

So far Apple has gotten away with iTMS, but I don't thing that becoming a record label (which is basically what you are suggesting), indi or not, would fly any farther than you can toss a yellow submarine.

They mis-spelled Faux News

The slippery slope argument has already been proven by the FBI's use of the Patriot Act in investiations that have nothing to do with terrorism. Some lawmakers have begun to speak out about the Las Vegas incident, complaining that they were assured that the powers they granted to the administration under the Patriot Act were to fight terrorists, not "garden variety criminals."

"but when real (documented) abuses occur"

Such as an article in a previous post (using the right wing Fox news as a source):

FBI agents investigating two strip club owners in Las Vegas on bribery charges bypassed a grand jury and instead used the Patriot Act to subpoena the financial records of the bar owners as well as several prominent city and county officials.

The story hit earlier, when the FBI started asking for the records of everyone who went to vegas (plane records and hotel records) from Christmas to New Years...

The details are all over the net, but you can start by reading this, this, or this.

"If we banned guns we wouldn't need them to defend."
There are at least two things wrong with this argument.

1)If you outlaw guns only the outlaws will have guns. Look at the government's success at stopping other black markets like drugs and tell me how successful they would be keeping guns out of the country.

2)Even if an attacker doesn't have a gun what chance would an elderly woman have against a man with a knife? With a gun she has a real chance. Check out the examples presented in this article.

I read an article on Foxnews about this, the plan was development to deter the USSR from sending troops to help Muslim State with the war with Isreal.

Fox got the story from AP.

I was pretty sure we banned that stuff too, but apparently the enforcement of that ban has left something to be desired.

Unfortunately, skipping does not mean the end of commercials, just commercials as we know them.

Subtle and not so subtle product placements will ensure that we continue to see advertising every time we watch TV, despite our best efforts.

I suggest listening to public streaming radio (in ogg format no less) as a wonderful alternative to the tripe Madison avenue continues to shove down your throat.

Unless you like tripe. Whatever floats your boat.

Am I the only one wondering how long before there's an O'Reilly book on how to hack this?

I'll bet parts without this feature will be available through the dealership as part of a "police intercept" package. You don't think they'll have the same stuff installed in cruisers do you? Kind of like NJ mandating "smart guns" to protect the police but then exempting them from the mandate.

OTOH, there's always the low-tech way, find a non EFI diesel - no computer, no ignition system, no "tractor beam"

First, the roman thing is a myth. The romans were aware that lead is poisonous and preferred terra cotta pipes.

Second, no causal relationship between ingested DDT and egg thinning was ever found. The collapse of the eagle population was caused by hunting and loss of habitat.

...look something like this? Damn, looks like they took the video down...

Ther are more informative articles at FOX news and CNN. I think it's a good decision since it doesn't allow people to subponae personal information outside a lawsuit, which implies a judges approval, althou IANAL.

It's good to see that Slashdot has completely turned into a full-fledged Bush bashing site. For a while there I was getting concerned that it might just waver on the border between leftist propaganda and actual, informative techie news. My vote for the new slogan is "News for Nerds. Republicans Suck!"

Seriously people, if I want political news and analysis, I'll go somehere else. Don't make Slashdot what it isn't.

Last I saw, /. does not state that it is a news organization. This is a message board. Michael, Taco, Neal, etc. are merely introducing the topic of discussion. They have every right to insert their views into the postings. You have every right to disagree, but not to slam them for stating their views.

If you want "fair and balanced" reporting, I suggest going here.

"Personally neither I nor my brothers saw evidence of American help." -- Osama bin Laden

When he brought his 9,000 Arab fighters to support the Afghans in their conflict against the Soviet occupation army, hacking out the mountain trails with his construction equipment, building hospitals and arms dumps, he became a war hero. ... He and his comrades never saw "evidence of American help" in Afghanistan, he told me, but he must have been aware of the CIA's presence. -- Robert Fisk

And, at risk of alienating those who automatically assume Fox News to lie about everything...

Dispelling the CIA-Bin Laden Myth

• CNN
• Fox News
• MSNBC

Your comment has too few characters per line

Your comment has too few characters per line

Your comment has too few characters per line

However, I think Apple forming an artist-friendly label is MUCH more likely (or at least advantageous) than artists doing it themselves because artists haven't got the money to start it and Apple could split the money gained by muscling out the RIAA (if it somehow could) between themselves and the artists.

greatest technological achievement of humankind

BULLSHIT

Most responsible scientists acknowledge the ISS is a heap of useless space junk designed to fund Congressional district voters and nothing else.

I heard that Iraq didn't have anything to do with 9-11. Perhaps I'm just the victim of a liberal media conspiracy.

The current administration attempted to justify this war with Iraq as an extension of the "War on Terrorism". Iraq had massive WMD stockpiles they said. These could be readied for use within 45 minutes they said.

Last week, The London Telegraph interviewed the Iraqi Colonel responsible for the 45-minute WMD claim. Guess what? He still stands by the claim. In fact, he says that they had weapons ready to fire within 30 minutes of a go-ahead by Saddam, and the only reason they were not used was because of dissention among Iraqi troops.

Iraq had definite links with Al Qaeda they said. All lies. There have been no WMDs found, even the Bush adminstration now admits that such claims were over-exuberant, and no evidence of any links with Al Qaeda has been presented

Terrorism != Al Qaeda

The President declared a war on terrorism, not Al Qaeda. There didn't need to be any ties between Iraq and Al Qaeda (although many have been uncovered, which you choose to ignore). The only justification that we needed was that Iraq (and its WMD) posed a threat to our national security, and nobody has tried to deny that claim.

Iraq: a soveriegn body thrown into a state of anarchy by a sudden, violent overthrow of it's psychotic government.

Yeah ... and like it wasn't violent for the last 30 years or so... even less than it is today, as a matter of fact. Not that you'll ever find the facts because most of the paperwork was burned by Saddam's henchmen. You'll probably find the hundreds of thousands of bodies though. Good luck. Let me know how that works out for ya.

You must be new here. This isn't journalism, this is Slashdot.

If you want "journalism," there are other places to go.

Why does everyone keep repeating this urban legend? Please cite some factual evidence that this is what happened.

A senior White House official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Bush has been briefed regularly about the Microsoft case ... but had not directed the Justice Department to take any action in the case.

The about-face wasn't totally unexpected. At the time of his confirmation hearings, Ashcroft hedged when asked repeatedly by senators about the government's commitment to pursuing the lawsuit against Microsoft.

I could be wrong, but it looks like it doesn't even take a tinfoil hat to see this one, (but I'm sure that Darl could come up with an amusing spin if it suited his ambitions.)

US citizens fighting against the US in foreign countries and subsequently captured as POWs are being held under rules of war, rather than as criminals.

He was never a "enemy combantant"! He is part of the so called "dirty bomb" plot. He was arrested on American soil. As far as I'm concerned, an American arrested on American soil has the full weight of the Constitution behind them. Here is a link to a VERY recent Fox News article on the subject.

BWP

LOL! What? You must be a European!

Only when said government turns against you, do they suddenly become "the enemy".

If they are not your friend, what are they? You do not make any sense. How does the USA fund terrorism? I hear this all the time yet fail to see any evidence?

And how did the USA destroy the governments in the Middle East? What are you talking about?

Iraq never had terrorist links

The last time I checked there was a well known terrorist group in Northern Iraq that the USA uprooted. Ansar Al Islam, or some such nonsense.

Also, If memory serves me correctly, Saddam did send checks to suicide bombers families in Israel congratulating them. checks

Well, Islam doesn't teach that

Huh? Perhaps you should try reading the Koran. Koran. And why are you dragging Christianity into this? The USA does not tell you what religion to follow; you are free to follow any religion you like, including no religion at all. It is your choice.

Was in planning before Sept I'm afraid.

Yeah, I would believe anything a Pakistani Diplomat says, especially since they are the ones who put the Taliban in power! Perhaps you should learn to not believe everything you read.

You need to wake up before people like Bush destroy everything that America is supposed to stand for. We admire that stance, we always have. But now, we are genuinely scared of you.

Well, the USA is scare of arrogant, spineless, spectators, who have a jealousy of America so embedded into their little minds they fail to grasp the realities of the large world. If there was no United States, the world would be a much worse place, care to argue that based on your in depth understanding of world history?

Is the USA perfect, no. But when you are the most powerful nation the world has ever seen, you have a responsibilty to make the world into a better place. No country gives more foreign aid than America. No country so readily commits the lives of their own Armed Forces to aid those oppressed peoples of the world. No country takes in as many immigrants as America does. Don't insult America by taking a moral high ground that you so clearly do not have.

Of course this is Karma suicide as a lot of anti-gun nuts reside on /.

Even though you call me a nut, I'll explain the position:

There are a lot of irresponsible idiots out there.
If guns are freely available, there will be a lot of irresponsible idiots out there with guns.

I therefore think that guns should be regulated in much the same way that we don't allow any idiot to drive around with an 18 wheeler.

There are also a lot of pro-gun nuts on /.
AFAICT, their opinion is: "I want a gun. I hate and fear all authorities, especially if they are called 'government'. I oppose any steps by said government to either make it harder for me to have a gun or to keep track of who has guns."

I strongly disagree with that position because it gets in the way of stopping irresponsible idiots from getting their clumsy hands on devices designed to make holes in people.

Of course, that makes me an "anti gun nut", because when you don't have rational arguments, name calling is the only substitute.
Damn liberal media...

That's it! I'm forming a class-action suit on behalf of all broadcasters against remote control manufacturers under the auspices of the DMCA.

Better yet. Let's sue those evil people who put the channel up/down buttons on TVs at all. There should be only one channel, and if you don't like it, too fucking bad. You go to jail if you don't watch.

Now that I'm on a rampage, here, why don't we outlaw all websites except for one. Which one? This one!

...Bombardier...the privately held, Quebec-based company...

This is frustratingly typical of what passes for journalism in this world. When you consider that the press is critical to the proper functioning of a democracy, it's frightening how really bad they are at their jobs. Between the general incompetence and some people's active efforts to skew the truth, it's a wonder we ever get anything right.

For instance, I'm pretty sure there are journalists who have had enough exposure to George W. Bush to have made an informed decision on this very important question: is he stupid, or is he malicious, or is it a combination of the two? But, we'll never hear the truth from these people, because their continued access to the White House, and hence their jobs, depend on them placidly following the scripts they are handed.

I don't know what can be done about this situation, but it's the kind of thing I had hoped the internet would help with, and so far there doesn't seem to be much improvement.

Oh, and by the way, Bombardier is a publicly-held company. The reason the Forbes writer couldn't find them on the NYSE or NASDAQ is that they have the temerity to list their shares on the Toronto Stock Exchange.

Or are they blocking Estrada because

Who is Miguel Estrada? We all have a right to know before we make him a judge. Yet he's done his best to hide his views on the law from us.

Miguel Estrada has never served as a judge before, so he's never issued a written opinion on a case. Nonetheless he has a reputation as a right-wing ideologue. Paul Bender, a former Deputy Solicitor General who once supervised Estrada's work, said he found him so "ideologically driven that he couldn't be trusted to state the law in a fair, neutral way."**

The Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund, the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund, and the Congressional Hispanic Caucus are among a wide range of civic groups opposing the Estrada nomination.

During hearings held in the last Congress, Estrada refused to answer Senators' legitimate questions about his legal and judicial views. His silence is designed to make it hard for Senators to oppose him.

http://www.moveon.org/news/1011.html

and

Estrada is a member of the law firm that represented Bush in his successful Supreme Court fight for the presidency. He came to the United States from Honduras as a teenager and graduated from Harvard Law School in 1986. He has practiced constitutional law and argued 15 cases before the Supreme Court.

But Senate Democratic leader Tom Daschle of South Dakota accused Estrada of refusing to explain what his judicial philosophy would be if he became a federal judge. The D.C. circuit, which is evenly split between judges appointed by Republican and Democratic presidents, has been a steppingstone to the U.S. Supreme Court.

"Every nominee who comes before the Senate has the obligation to be forthcoming with information about his position, with information about his record," said Daschle. "Until he does, we don't believe that it is in the Senate's best interest to allow this confirmation to go forward."

http://www.cnn.com/2003/ALLPOLITICS/02/12/senate.e strada.ap/

and

At a press conference Wednesday afternoon with various Hispanic organizations, Congressional Democrats, including Daschle, Leahy and Rep. Robert Menendez of New Jersey, said it hasn't been easy for the Hispanic community to oppose a Hispanic nominee to the bench.

The key word is "qualified," Menendez said, adding that Estrada has no judicial experience or a "critical understanding" of Latino issues.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,77667,00.html

Here I thought /. was the source for fair and balanced coverage.

No, that's Fox News. ;)