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a metaphor, eh?

THE HONORABLE HENRY C. "HANK" JOHNSON JR, D-GA: This is a, ah, island that, at its bridest [sic] level, is what? 12 miles from shore to shore? And at its smallest level, ah, ah, oh, smallest, ah, aaahhhhh, location it's, ah, 7 miles, ah, ah, between one shore and the other. Is zat correct?

ADMIRAL ROBERT WILLARD, USN: I don't have the exact, ah, dimensions, but, ah, to your point, sir, I think Guam is a small island.

JOHNSON JR, D-GA: Very small island, and about 24 miles, if I recall, long. So twenty, twenty-fo' miles long, about 7 miles wide at the least widest [sic], ah, place on the island, and about twinny, about twelf' miles wide, ah, ah, on the widest part of da island. And, ahm, I don' know how many square miles that that is - do you happen to know?

WILLARD, USN: I don't have that, ah, figure with me, sir; I can certainly supply it to you if you'd like.

JOHNSON JR, D-GA: Yeah. Mah, mah fee-yuh is dat, ah, da whole island will, ah, become so overly populated dat it will tip ovah', an', ah, an' capsize.

WILLARD, USN: Ah, we don't anticipate that; the ah, the ah, Guam population I think currently about 175,000, and again with 8,000 Marines and their families it's an addition of about 25,000, ah, more, ah, into the population.

JOHNSON JR, D-GA: And, ah, and also, ah, things like the, ah, environment, ah, the sessitive [sic] areas of, ah, the environment - coral reefs and those kinds of things - and I know dat, you know, lots of people don't like to think about that, but, you know, when you think about global warming either [sic], and, ahhmmmm, now we do have to think about it, and so, ah, I'm concerned from an environmental standpoint, whether or not Guam is the, da', da' best place to do dis relocation, but it's axually [sic] the only place, is that correct?

WILLARD, USN: Ah, this is the best place, this is the farthest west U.S. territory that we own, and, ah, you know, I, this is part of our nation. Ah, and in re-addressing the forward presence and posture importance, ah, to Pacific Command, ah, Guam is, ah, vital to this decision.

Hey "Time", your "Person of the Year" has committed several rapes, started fires and stolen things.

We helped defeat the Nazis, which rescued the Soviets, and begat the Cold War which begat Jihadists etc.

I'm sorry what?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_World_War_II

You need to get your history straight. Soviets didn't need rescuing, you rescued Europe from becoming an extension of CCCP.

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1390229/posts

As for who would be better off with what, who can say...

I see plenty of comments on how reasonable or unreasonable the price is, and they are interesting. I generally agree it doesn't seem that out of whack price wise for a working application supported for some time period.

What I find more interesting is this story is being posted all over the web all of the sudden:

• IT World
• Free Republic
• Human Events
• Business Insider
• Gizmodo
• Big Government
• TPM

And of course here on /.

Hitting that range of sites (and more) with this sort of non-story story trying to push a narrative of the government is wasting your money? Someone behind the scenes is pushing this narrative, I suspect. Not news for nerds, but manufactured political outrage.

having to watch that "inspect and walk away" video must be what it's like to have to interview with Herman Cain for a job...

Read more. I know we are capable of.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2008/dec/27/crime-smuggling-alcohol-tobacco

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/648986/posts

http://www.atf.gov/alcohol-tobacco/

If I may contribute to your post, here's a link to the Third Circuit United States Court of Appeals ruling which explains Mr. Pozsgai's behavior in detail.

There are a few more details from the case I'd like to point out. Mr. Pozsgai himself stated in that the police came to his property in August 1987 and showed him the EPA order to cease and desist dumping landfill on the property. In December 1987 the EPA sent Mr. Pozsgai an umpteenth letter which, aside from yet again informing him his activities were illegal, also informed him that he could remedy the situation and get permission to proceed with his landfill if he merely obtained a Water Quality Certification from the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Resources.

But my favorite part is how on August 26 1988 a Court issued a temporary restraining order explicitly ordering him to cease. And how Mr. Pozsgai flagrantly defied that court order two days later, when he was videoed dumping 25 additional truckloads on the property and personally driving a bulldozer leveling the fill.

But of course only a wildly biased treehugger commie liberal would pay any attention to "facts" from the court record. A true conservative will go by the FreeRepublic account.

-

I just read an article about how environmental issues were resolved before the EPA was created. I am not sure how accurate his portrayal is. However, it is actually a way that could work. So, the Clean Water Act and the Clean Air Act may have actually allowed companies to get away with polluting where they would otherwise been sued to bankruptcy. Additionally, a man was sent to jail for cleaning up an illegal dump because it violated the Clean Water Act.

I'm not sure I see the flaw.

TSA's job is to prevent passengers from bringing weapons onto the airplane. They have some successes and notable failures in doing this. Apple's job is to prevent malicious code from running on our iPhones and iPads and I'm sure they have some successes and failures.

What you're saying is that it's okay that the TSA might fail every now and again because the passengers will spot the malicious person and prevent him from performing his dastardly task. Of course, passengers tend to generate more false positives because they are not trained in security.

But if you want to go with this analogy, Android would be a better secure environment than iOS. Android has various tools that smart people can use to find malicious software So, to carry this into your analogy, using Android is like flying on airplane with a group of passengers who understand security and can spot the evildoer and warn others. iOS is like flying on an airplane where everybody says, "Oh, they made it through the TSA checkpoint. They must be okay."

Oh, by the way. You have NO CLUE what a 'right wing' site looks like.

And they HATE, they HATE Ron Paul. They HATE him with passion that you can NEVER understand or deploy. You are incapable of HATING somebody as much as they HATE Ron Paul.

Because he shows them what they really are.

But what are YOU?

Oh, by the way. You have NO CLUE what a 'right wing' site looks like.

And they HATE, they HATE Ron Paul. They HATE him with passion that you can NEVER understand or deploy. You are incapable of HATING somebody as much as they HATE Ron Paul.

Because he shows them what they really are.

But what are YOU?

Oh, by the way. You have NO CLUE what a 'right wing' site looks like.

And they HATE, they HATE Ron Paul. They HATE him with passion that you can NEVER understand or deploy. You are incapable of HATING somebody as much as they HATE Ron Paul.

Because he shows them what they really are.

But what are YOU?

Oh, by the way. You have NO CLUE what a 'right wing' site looks like.

And they HATE, they HATE Ron Paul. They HATE him with passion that you can NEVER understand or deploy. You are incapable of HATING somebody as much as they HATE Ron Paul.

Because he shows them what they really are.

But what are YOU?

Oh, by the way. You have NO CLUE what a 'right wing' site looks like.

And they HATE, they HATE Ron Paul. They HATE him with passion that you can NEVER understand or deploy. You are incapable of HATING somebody as much as they HATE Ron Paul.

Because he shows them what they really are.

But what are YOU?

Oh, by the way. You have NO CLUE what a 'right wing' site looks like.

And they HATE, they HATE Ron Paul. They HATE him with passion that you can NEVER understand or deploy. You are incapable of HATING somebody as much as they HATE Ron Paul.

Because he shows them what they really are.

But what are YOU?

Oh, by the way. You have NO CLUE what a 'right wing' site looks like.

And they HATE, they HATE Ron Paul. They HATE him with passion that you can NEVER understand or deploy. You are incapable of HATING somebody as much as they HATE Ron Paul.

Because he shows them what they really are.

But what are YOU?

Oh, by the way. You have NO CLUE what a 'right wing' site looks like.

And they HATE, they HATE Ron Paul. They HATE him with passion that you can NEVER understand or deploy. You are incapable of HATING somebody as much as they HATE Ron Paul.

Because he shows them what they really are.

But what are YOU?

Please give the man a rest!

Now it's not good to remember the Stanford speech where he wrongfully took credit for introducing fonts in graphical interfaces:

"I decided to take a calligraphy class (at Reed College)... . . . None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me, and we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts, and since Windows just copied the Mac, it's likely that no personal computer would have them. [1]"

However, Bravo was the 1st WYSIWYG editor that used multiple fonts and it was created in 1974 [2]. It was a Xerox Alto [3] software.

[1] Transcript of Commencement Speech at Stanford given by Steve Jobs http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/chat/1422863/posts

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bravo_(software)

[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xerox_Alto

Um, okay. Let's look at the results:

1) A link to a school policy explaining teachers' responsibilities with respect to student fights.
2) A story about a family criticizing a teacher for NOT breaking up a fight.
3) A teacher being sued by an adult university student for injuring her while breaking up a fight.
4) A dupe of #2.
5) And another.
6) An article about teachers being urged to tolerate swearing (has a comment near the bottom by someone claiming to have been sued for breaking up a fight; no details provided).
7) Information about avoiding being sued while working.
8) Video of a teacher breaking up a fight and some random anonymous commentary in which someone speculates that the teacher will get sued.
9) A teacher does nothing while an impromptu boxing match occurs in the classroom.
10) A teacher suffers a miscarriage from breaking up a fight. Again, some random commenter speculates that she risked getting sued by breaking up the fight.

I'm seeing lots of claims of these lawsuits. Not a whole heck of a lot to back up those claims. The only actual lawsuit involving the breakup of a fight was the one where the student, an adult, was allegedly injured. The teacher/student factor is irrelevant in that case. If an adult injures another adult, a lawsuit is a real possibility.

Chicago Public School, http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/580789/posts
MA Public School, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z7-I9Qp3d4Y
San Diego Public School, http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0712/p01s03-ussc.html

General, http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2007-07-25-muslim-special-treatment-from-schools_N.htm

Your Palin comment, while designed to be funny, isn't. Have you even seen what she thinks of the TSA and all that or you just assuming? In the end, all you've done is proved you're even more shallow than she is.

She believes all of THESE kinds of examples are nothing more than Politically Correct Security. The problem is that the LEFT WING handcuffs how we do things because it might "offend" the terrorists ^H^H^H^H^H^H^H Muslims and incite them to commit acts of terrorism. So we pat down Granny's Diaper, confiscate Insulin, Fondle little kids and least ... smash a toy MP3 player.

http://freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/2630366/posts

If you're going to criticize Palin, make sure it is legitimate. This isn't one of those cases (there are plenty to choose from)

Borders is the store that pulled copies of an issue of Free Inquiry magazine from its shelves because it contained some cartoons of Mohammed. Now we have more room for real bookstores.

China will not limit themselves to economic weapons.

Citation needed.

http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/front/archives/2009/02/15/2003436194

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incorporation_of_Tibet_into_the_People's_Republic_of_China

http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/front/archives/2011/07/14/2003508170

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2731411/posts

http://www.defence.pk/forums/china-defence/93916-vietnam-protests-chinas-military-exercise-south-china-sea.html

Did you see the recent National Geographic story about the fox domestication experiment that's been running in Russia for the last 50 years? Here's that article and another about the program:
http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2011/03/taming-wild-animals/ratliff-text/1
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/807641/posts

In short, with a program that only looks for "tameness" (i.e. does a given animal accept or reject food and petting from a human, measured twice in their life with minimal other human contact), in just 50 years they've bred fully domesticated foxes. The link above points out that some of their domesticated animals have escaped and returned, but that even in this short time they doubt any of them could survive on their own.

The N.G. magazine article included many more photos of some of the foxes. Many of the domesticated group have started being born mottled, with floppy ears, etc., which surprised the researchers because they never included animal appearance in their selection process. From this they conclude that the genetics for some of the traits of domesticated dogs are expressed from the same genes that drive tameness, instead of being complementary features that humans also bred for.

The N.G. article also mentioned that, at the same time, they've been breeding a group of foxes for their lack of tameness (i.e. worst reaction to humans). These are now the most vicious, snarling foxes they've ever seen.

This is the best quote, with my comments in brackets:

As for Mavrik, Luda Mekertycheva [the reporter's translator] was so enthralled by the chestnut-colored fox and another playmate that she decided to adopt them. They arrived at her dacha outside of Moscow a few months later, and not long after, she emailed me an update. "Mavrik and Peter jump on my back when I kneel to give them food, sit when I pet them, and take vitamins from my hand," she wrote. "I love them a lot."

The Columbian drug cartels have been doing this sort of thing for years.

Don't let pesky little things like facts get in the way of a stupid post, though.

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2222236/posts

And you're going to 'block sales' without trespassing or obstructing traffic how exactly?

'cmon. Has everybody forgotten how to protest. If the protesters want to get away with it there are so many ways this can be done. Wait until other customers start to arrive in the store. Go into the store (together with more friends than there are assistants). Pretend to be a customer. Demand attention then ask long and annoying but plausible questions about something expensive best of all if it's something you really do want to buy somewhere else. Act unsure; keep all the assistants busy. Then give up. Walk to a different part of the store. Repeat. Alternatively stand outside and be loud. Most customers won't come. Alternatively come in the same colour as the shop assistants. If asked give misleading advice, especially to go to the store round the corner.

Anyway you probably don't care too much about being charged with trespassing. That's the whole point of civil disobedience.

You know, I hope you people who do these things don't object when right wing wackos boycott Ford for 'promoting' homosexuality or anything..

Of course I object; to the homophobia. I don't care about the fact of the boycott if it wasn't for such a bad reason.

P.S. The best way to boycott Sony is not buying their stuff. Buy a Wii instead. That's what I do. I won't be turning up in a Sony store tomorrow because I haven't cared about Sony for years.

Damn you brainless consumers!! Don't you know that Sony is bad?

So is Ford Motor Company..

Two way street? Goose - gander? Knowwhatimean? Knowwhatimean? Nod nod.. wink wink..

And you're going to 'block sales' without trespassing or obstructing traffic how exactly? You know, I hope you people who do these things don't object when right wing wackos boycott Ford for 'promoting' homosexuality or anything..

Or it could be they just had a good PR campaign...6 month designed operational life, I though I heard it was only 3? What does that even mean from a design standpoint? You can guess, but nobody knows for sure except them and the marketing dept. I say good job there, cause unfortunately in today's world NASA needs good PR.

Bullshit. Everyone paying attention knows.

The original 90 mission time frame was always about exactly one thing: The estimated amount of time before dust buildup on the solar panels would prevent them from receiving enough sunlight to power the rover.

What does that mean from a design standpoint? It means they had to decide whether to try to make some solar-panel-cleaning mechanism and pay the cost in money, weight, and chance of failure, or to just let the rovers die. They went with die.

Everything else on the rover was engineered as robustly as possible because it had to survive on another freaking planet with no possibility of maintenance, and the 90 day mission time frame was never intended to imply otherwise.

NASA was quite up-front about this from the beginning, and also quite up-front when their faulty assumption on dust build up turned out to be wrong and the hypothetical mission time frame was blown (get it? cus it was the Martian wind which cleaned the panels) wide open.

It's only people who don't know about this who assume the rovers were for some reason expected to break, yet survived anyway, who retroactively deduced this was some kind of deliberate marketing scheme to make NASA look good.

Here's a link with more info about the rover's lifespan, panels being cleaned by dust devils, and mechanical problems

Here's a link from before the rovers were launched clearly discussing the significance of the 90 day mission time.

And here's one from cornell from not long after the mission was extended: http://www.news.cornell.edu/releases/rover/Rover.ops.to.html

Schramm Inc. of West Chester, Pennsylvania built the drills and equipment used to reach the trapped miners.

Center Rock Company, also from Pennsylvania, built the drill bits used to reach the miners.

UPS, the US shipping company, delivered the 13-ton drilling equipment from Pennsylvania to Chile in less than 48 hours.

Crews from Layne Christensen Company of Wichita Kansas and its subsidiary Geotec Boyles Bros. worked the drills and machinery to locate and reach the miners and then enlarge the holes to ultimately rescue them.

NASA Engineers designed the "Phoenix" capsule that miners would be brought to the surface in, and provided medical consulting, special diets and spandex suits to maintain miners' blood pressure as they're brought back to the surface.

Those people from the United States of America are unsung heroes... forgotten even by their own President.

You do know that 200 years is nothing really and easily passed to the next generation. The last of the Civil War widows just passed away a few years ago. http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1071061/posts

Rush Limbaugh's Undeniable Truths Of Life. Here are some notable one posted below. The others not listed are either not applicable, or wrong IMHO.

3. Peace does not mean the elimination of nuclear weapons.

4. Peace does not mean the absence of war.

5. War is not obsolete.

6. Ours is a world governed by the aggressive use of force.

~

18. There is no such thing as war atrocities.

19. War itself is an atrocity.

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1140209/posts

The parents quite clearly can't see any problem with their children's behaviour, so presumably this is another case of bad parents making bad children. Which is a shame, but there's no reason why the school should have to put up with it. And Alesjandra is quite the moron, isn't she: she thinks that if she goes to another school she might start to make bad decisions. Has she looked in a mirror recently and considered how her recent decisions have gone?

And by the way, unlike I suspect a lot of slashdotters, I've got 12 year old children. If mine behaved like this, a lot of things would happen. But lawyering up and demanding my child's first amendment rights to call named people rapists wouldn't be one of them (because, aside from anything else, it isn't protected speech, and might indeed constitute fighting words). Oh, and isn't the minimum age for Facebook 13 anyway?

That's ok. The old Communism wasn't much of a threat either. But, like Islam, it's an ideal to rally your people (sorry...our people) against. See: liberal, conservative, white, black, rich, poor, east, west, north, south (for that matter), and French for details.

You are so wrong. The crimes of the Communists dwarf those of the Nazis and Fascists. There are still many who proudly call themselves Communist, and work toward their return to power. Maybe you could try looking into the question of starvation - Ukraine in the 30s, North Korea now, and in China during the "Great Leap Forward". That's before you look into the secret police, gulags, mass executions, subversion in other countries, and on, and on, and on.

Black Book of Communism - Review by Claire Wolfe
Examining the photos and reading their captions in The Black Book of Communism, you might expect the surrounding 700+ pages to contain a wail of outrage. The photos, though few, are as graphic and heart-rending as the worst from Nazi Germany.

But the text is no impassioned partisan cry. It's something more powerful than that; it's the facts. The Black Book has been called a catalog, an indictment, a prosecutorial manual against Communist crimes. It is a simply a dispassionate account - article after article - of the history of Communist power. Beginning with Leninist terror policies and concluding with the starvation produced by Afrocommunism, the historians of The Black Book list the events, tally the numbers, describe the conditions, name the names.

Their conclusion:

USSR: 20 million deaths China: 65 million deaths Vietnam: 1 million deaths North Korea: 2 million deaths Cambodia: 2 million deaths Eastern Europe: 1 million deaths Latin America: 150,000 deaths Africa: 1.7 million deaths Afghanistan: 1.5 million deaths Communist movements or parties not in power: about 10,000 deaths

Nearly 100 million deaths. Not casualties of war, but civilian slaughter. Deaths in gulags and concentration camps. Deaths from a bullet to the head. Most of all, deaths by starvation - the result either of planned famines, meted out as punishment to internal foes (as in Stalin's USSR), or unintended consequences of central policy.

Actually there are McDonalds that have raised the prices of would-be Dollar Menu items just to discourage the homeless.

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2584593/posts

Some cities have done things that effectively make it illegal to be homeless.

http://www.nationalhomeless.org/publications/crimreport/allcities.html

I don't suppose a town with mandatory gun ownership would try that though.

http://www.surplusrifleforum.com/viewtopic.php?f=87&p=779947

MHz WorldView carries a bunch of international news channels. They're on some cable systems, some public tv stations, and on-demand via Roku.
They've gotten a little more exposure lately as one of the few U.S. outlets carrying Aljazeera. RT ("Russia Today") is a channel they carry that looks like blantently anti-U.S. propaganda. Most of the facts check out, but they give plenty of unsupported or poorly supported conclusions and show things out of context. They covered Kennesaw GA, a town and the mandatory gun ownership there, portraying the U.S. as being more gun-crazy than is actually the case. They made no mention of it being done as a response to a town (Morton Grove IL) that had banned guns.

I suspect most people have few clues who they're voting for when it comes to city council members. It is worth going to some city council meetings to find out what's going on, and who the crazy ones are.

The U.S. covers the ancient "give them food and circus and they will not rebel" areas pretty well (plenty of fat tv-numb people around?), but some people unable to afford housing are really hurting.

Fish and Game Officials Hopeful Wolf Attacks Will Soon Stop

Wolves attack joggers' dogs on Fort Rich

Bold Anchorage wolves attack dogs, circle joggers

Woman, dogs attacked by Alaskan wolves

Teacher killed by wolves in Alaska, police say

Awww man, you only asked for one.

I was associated with a venue and got an approval to run an event on September 11th. I advertised it with big posters with the WTC on fire and whatnot.

:-)

There were horribly annoying videos in the Facebook event and a list of acts that was pretty offensive.

... bbbut Facebook wasn't around in 2001 yet...

... a, you mean, you did this for another September 11th, during one of the following years?

Man, this is just tasteles...

... but these guys did it in a much more classy way, just a couple of weeks before the real September 11th :-)

... or these guys (no pics, sorry, they must have pulled them all during the last ten years, but the ad pictured a structure similar to New York City's Empire State building bending out of the path of a low-flying jet. The ad slogan read, "If only all metal were Flexon." The ad appeared on the inside cover of the August 2001 issue of various optician's trade rags). And, talking about bad timing, some people found a flyer of it in their mailboxes on the morning of September 11th...

Isn't it a little early to call something like this "the most extreme and influential crowdsourcing"?

I agree. I have no idea why this is on Slashdot. It's not technology news. It's not even news at all.

Back in 2008, Rush Limbaugh tried something similar he called "Operation Chaos", where he encouraged his listeners to switch parties and vote in the Democratic Primary to get Hillary Clinton to win and later to keep her in to lengthen the Primary. The idea was that whoever eventually won would emerge weaker and would lose to McCain. Also, Republicans believed that there were more registered Democrats because of Operation Chaos, and when the election actually happened, they would be revealed as actually Republicans and McCain would win.

As we all know, it didn't work. Obama beat McCain handily. So if Rush Limbaugh, who has millions of listeners couldn't pull this off, how can an unknown website do this?

Moreover, I think it's misleading to suggest that "Democrats" are doing this. I expected to see a link to Democrats.org or to at least a high traffic Democratic Party website, such as dailykos.com. But no, this site has so little traffic that it doesn't even have an Alexa ranking In fact, searching for sites that link to this domain reveal not even Democratic sources, but Republicans (freerepublic.com is the #2 domain in results), so clearly this isn't catching on with Democrats. Whois is masked, so we don't know who actually owns the domain, but it's just as likely to be a Republican astroturfing organization.

So, how did this end up on Slashdot? Was this some sort of paid placement situation or attempt by the domain owner to drive more traffic to the site? Some lame idea of saying that "both sides 'do it' and engage in these types of silly games? Somebody has compromising photos of CmdrTaco? I guess we'll never know.

Hmmm. I've read down to the bottom and I don't see anything like this:

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2486741/posts
90% of Windows 7 security issues go away if users are not admin and UAC is turned on.

This thread also has discussion about how hard it is to write programs that don't require admin to run. Quickbooks and Quicken are two that come to mind - they are two of the worst examples of how hard it is to get stuff work as non-admin.

The difficulty in getting stuff to work as non-admin is a topic worthy of discussion, but few talk about it as it's not well known by the public. The failure of the OS vendor and application vendor to get their heads together and cooperate on security needs to be highlighted so that there is at least full disclosure.

While I applaud your efforts to attain security for your customers, this part of security needs to be explained to them. I do that for every PC I build for someone else. I let them know that they have a choice. They could either put their butt out in the wind for all to see as admin or, they could set up an admin account for maintenance and run as a limited user for everything else. Heck, with Windows 7, you can even set up automatic update notifications for non-admins so they never really have to login as admin unless they need to install a new program or a printer.

For me, this is the first layer of security and everything else follows.

[ But, in countries like china, other places, your free speech DIRECTLY has an effect. everything hinges on opinions of people -> not the money people has to exercise their freedoms. You can reach anyone, and you can change minds, if you are let speak freely. ]

Good luck voicing your opinion in China....

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704444304575628410670226430.html

The US is better than china, anyone can be free to twitter and tweet and post on facebook etc..., in china you bad mouth the government and you have to go to a "reeducation through hard labor camp".

http://worldjournalism.wordpress.com/2010/11/19/1-tweet-1-year-of-jail-time-in-china/

Here are two sites where people can bad mouth the government in the USA, not shut down yet...nor should they ever be.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/
http://www.freerepublic.com/

As for your Money=Free Speech in America argument, are you talking about Talk Radio and TV?

Do you think anyone should be able to have their own talk radio station who has an opinion? I don't see any private or public talk radio stations in china airing anti-chinese government opinion, do you? Do you think everyone has a "right" to use a government provided photocopier so you can publish anti government flyers everywhere? Who pays for the toner, the paper?

The internet is a new vast and wild frontier where people can post their opinions to be picked up my Millions of citizens, be it either youtube, twitter, facebook or your own website.

Even the poorest individual in the USA can go into a public library and post things that can potentially be read by millions if not billions of internet citizens.

[this is the recent data about situation in usa. 80% of population only get 15% of income. basically, 80% of 300 million, basically 240 million people, are not in a position to exercise their freedoms. had it been possible, there would be at least any kind of different political or social situation due to these people 'becoming rich' and practicing their freedoms. ]

How many people in the above have internet access or easy access to it?

http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/2008/05/14/18-of-us-households-have-no-internet-access

Only 18% of households in the USA don't have internet, most of those are older people who don't care to have it in the first place. And last i heard you cannot be turned away from a public library for being "too poor".

What is the wealth distribution in China? China does have a growing Middle Class, but it is no where nearly as big percentage wise as the US.

nice rant... 'xcept I think the joke was about leaving the kid alone while going shopping ?

Why so critical, he might have left them with a gun to protect themselves.

This article from 2006: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1677696/posts "Arrangements are presently underway to receive technical verification and standardization, through Combustion Resources of Provo, Utah, as well as Idaho National Laboratories, two independent and nationally recognized research firms, which specialize in study and verification of similar technologies. Their initial analysis should be complete within a few weeks. What does it mean to say 'arrangements are presently underway'? It isn't clear if either of these firms actually did anything and no results were ever mentioned after that point.

Bush's Fatherland Security czar, Michael Chertoff, profits from the sale of the nudie-scanners.

http://gawker.com/5437499/why-is-michael-chertoff-so-excited-about-full+body-scanners

http://www.nowpublic.com/world/full-body-scanner-lobby-michael-chertoff-rapiscan-2552674.html

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2627190/posts

http://motherjones.com/mojo/2010/01/airport-scanner-scam

Prior art in Mexico as well - http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1327515/posts Please don't tell me the US Military actually spent MONEY to DEVELOPE this technology.

Sure, but DDT is safe to humans. http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/710158/posts
"And DDT is extraordinarily safe for humans. Prof Kenneth Mellanby lectured on it for more than 40 years, and during each lecture he would eat a pinch."

And DDT does not hurt wildlife either, bird populations were increasing during the years DDT was in the most widespread use.

more info that is middle of the road:
http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2428/was-rachel-carson-a-fraud-and-is-ddt-actually-safe-for-humans

I created an account and was banned almost immediately.

You will have a full and active life even without being exposed daily to a forum that have juicy topics such as:

• HomosexualAgenda
• NaturalBornCitizen
• TeaPartyRebellion

- former freeper. banned for defending science.

I created an account and was banned almost immediately.

You will have a full and active life even without being exposed daily to a forum that have juicy topics such as:

• HomosexualAgenda
• NaturalBornCitizen
• TeaPartyRebellion

- former freeper. banned for defending science.

I created an account and was banned almost immediately.

You will have a full and active life even without being exposed daily to a forum that have juicy topics such as:

• HomosexualAgenda
• NaturalBornCitizen
• TeaPartyRebellion

- former freeper. banned for defending science.

In case anybody might have forgotten, Senator Hatch was a strong supporter of computer built-in self-destruct mechanisms that the music industry could have activated remotely on a whim: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/930731/posts