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Btw, your liberal mates at BBC now call terrorists 'terrorists'" http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1439288/p osts

I posted this on my wiki site, but figured I'd put my own $0.02 here since it was appropriate. (Besides, I'm not so sure my server could handle the traffic ;) ).

Whenever I run across people who are against something, I usually ask two important questions:

What exactly are you looking to protect?

And

Do you profit by it?

For example: people who are against abortion would probably tell you that they're doing it to save human life (in this case, unborn children). Now, whether you agree with that statement or not, that's the point: protecting life.

People who are against dumping chemicals in our water are usually trying to protect the environment and our health.

People who are against pornography are usually doing so because they feel, or have studies that show, that pornography can cause other addictive behavior (including increased sexual promiscuity, abuse, etc).

Again - people can argue one side or the other until they are blue in the face, and since I don't feel like looking like a http://www.smurf.com/homepage.html Smuff, I'm not going to debate that here. That's what the "discussion" link up at the top is for. (Go ahead - click it if you need to. I'm not going to stop you.)

But the second question can often be just as important. When Microsoft gives talks about how Free Software Movement is just http://cs.senecac.on.ca/~selmys/quotes.html communism, you know that if Open Source software usage drops, Microsoft's will rise. When a group promoting nuclear energy comes out against the use of oil and coal, you know they're really saying "Nuclear energy is better - buy it!"

Some people protest things for good motives - some are less than pure. And if there's anything that protesters soon learn, it's "use what works", over and over again.

Take the case of Jack Thompson. Not too long ago, there was the "Hot Coffee Scandal". Here's the short version: somebody discovered there was a sex mini-game in "Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas" (GTA: SA), but no way to play it. In other words, Rockstar shipped a game with unplayable content, feeling that nobody would ever figure out how to turn it on.

Stupidly, they forgot that unlike the PS2 and Xbox versions, people are more than willing to modify PC versions of the games. In fact, PC modifications of "Grand Theft Auto III" are very popular, including the mod http://www.mtavc.com/ "Multi Theft Auto", which modifies the PC version to allow multiplayer use.

So, when the PC version of "Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas" hit the shelves, of course people started looking at what they could modify. Next thing you know, the sex game is found, someone releases a mod that turns it on, and to the horror of religious conservatives everywhere, people can watch polygons of a naked woman and a man with no penis having sex.

Trust me. I've seen the video. It's not that hot.

Once the news is out, politicians are going nuts. Senator Hillary Clinton wants senate hearings. The ESRB, under major pressure, changes the game's rating from "M" to "AO for Adults Only". Stores pull the game from the shelves. http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1441534/p osts Dogs and cats are sleeping together - mass hysteria!

Chart out the steps you have to get to this content: First you have to buy the game. Since the game is rated "M for Mature", this means that you should have to be at least 17 or older to even purchase the game. Second, you have to willingly install the game on your computer. Third, go online and find the mod. Fourth, install it.

The number of steps here are very important: it's not like you can just be play

There is a buzz that you've all no doubt heard that she will run for president. This to me seems just like a jumping off point for a campaign. You've got to pick a target and shoot before you're able to profess to the nation "See how much good and improvement I've done for this country so far?". Can you imagine how much more stuff they'll be able to steal from the whitehouse and airforce one this time? And how funny would it be for Bill Clinton to be the first president to be impeached , AND also to become the first "lady"... Err, Uhh, Man, yeah. He would have to learn to be a gracious host and throw cocktail parties for the president and her entourage.
Just some food for thought.

"...unfortunately we can't control the actions of everyone." - Bill Clinton, April 20, 1993

"We can't be so fixated on our desire to preserve the rights of ordinary Americans..." - President Bill Clinton, USA Today, March 11, 1993

"When personal freedom's being abused, you have to move to limit it." - Bill Clinton

[Source for my quotes, which lists original sources]

Here's the context of the last quote: "When we got organized as a country and we wrote a fairly radical Constitution with a radical Bill of Rights, giving a radical amount of individual freedom to Americans ... And so a lot of people say there's too much personal freedom. When personal freedom's being abused, you have to move to limit it. That's what we did in the announcement I made last weekend on the public housing projects, about how we're going to have weapon sweeps and more things like that to try to make people safer in their communities." - 3/22/94, MTV's "Enough is Enough"

Was Clinton using the issue of crime to remove our rights?

More Clinton quotes:

"The purpose of government is to rein in the rights of the people."- during an interview on MTV in 1993

"You know the one thing that's wrong with this country? Everyone gets a chance to have their fair say." - May 29, 1993, The White House

You know, while these guys aren't getting sharpened sticks under their toenails, neither did John McCain. They beat him for a year and a half. But they took him to a hospital after his jet crash. Fed his the same food they ate. Set his broken limbs. So he'd live. For five months recovery. Then they locked him up in a 10x10 room with daily toilet changes and regular baths.

In his own words, "not too bad." It's not the 3 hots and a cot everybody minds, it's the interrogation room. It's not comfortable, whether you're kicked until your ribs break or sleep-deprived and forced to stand. McCain exercised his Geneva right to send and receive mail from home.

Torture can always be more more detestable, more repugnant, more pointless. To make light of his imprisonment just because he still breathes, with four limbs and two eyes, would be retarded. So would be comparing Vietnam to the Holocaust, or Gitmo to either. That some leftist morons have scrounged publicity for drawing insulting BS "parallels" doesn't justify trading dumb for dumb and pretending the quote "widespread abuse" that quote "shocked Congress" is Disneyworld resort. There is no by comparison.

There are two differences. One, the VC didn't do all this psychosexual crap, which is just weird. "Be proud of your daddy; he makes brown men touch each others' dicks." Do you trivialize how dishonorable and sick that is because ignoring it helps you sleep better, or do your religious / moral values actually endorse that behavior, in the name of the US military, for people who haven't been convicted of (or charged with) a crime, and are often released after two years without being found guilty, or useful, at all?

Two, the US military and the US constitution are not some tinpot dictator ruling a country of rice farmers. They represent Americans, and this torture--breaking men to get information--in its most harmless form is still idiotic fraternity hazing acted out by boys, engineered by slimeballs, and antithetical to George Washington, freedom, the bible, or whatever it is you think our country stands for.

Your respectful hospitality could take place on US soil. You're a dishonest coward to suggest the abuse at Gitmo amounts to as much. The mom, church and apple pie pretense of neo-con jackals is almost as disgusting as the menstrual blood and urination events they 'attaboy. They have the audacity to feign horror when the mercs we subcontract the real legwork to are set on fire and hung from a bridge, as if in some backwards moral world genital electrocution shouldn't upset the locals. Especially after America destroyed their country in a war for no goddamn reason, which America lied about, and fought in spite of international law, other than post facto to use their country as a lightning rod for suicide bombers. It doesn't take Sigmund Freud to figure out where the "hearts and minds" campaign went south, or how the Ottoman empire--ahem, Middle East--could be predisposed to less than absolute trust in America's motives.

Sooner or later the insurgents and the terrorists are going to figure out shooting at soldiers doesn't buy them squat, and it'd be more efficient to maintain their own front in Manhattan or LA. Terror cells now have a recruitment campaign money couldn't buy, and despite the two-bit intel the Gitmo depravity squeezes out of the occasional detainee, we don't have any record of finding those. So America's long-term position is to take civillian casualties and domestic instability from shadow networks spanning Iran, Syria, Pakistan, the peninsula, Egypt, Morocco, etc., while maintaining a full troop commitment in Iraq and Afghanistan, or lock down domestic freedom while handing their investors and oil production to China, or just nuke two continents and set off WW3. And for what?

You want

As the PIPA report (pdf) found, FOX makes you stupid.

Geico wouldn't have to pay actors to play Neanderthals, they could just use real ones for free!

• web hosting,
• high-performance computing and
• security(!!!).

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1431564/p osts?q=1&&page=101

Read comment #119, which starts at "This is now officially the Anti-Liberty Court."

Scanned images of the LAT/WP vs Free Republic Settlement docs and Amended Final Judgment.

I think a lesson in world geography (you know, the 200 or so countries outside the US and that the US has not bombed) and political views (outside of the opinions of faux news) would be appropriate

I could have replied to any of the "you're wrong/a bigot/unaware/uneducated" replies that have been posted in reply to my comments, but I've chosen yours... No special reason other than yours was one of the least insulting replies (Gotta love those one-line "You're a XXX" replies that /. breeds)

While I can understand everyone's knee jerk reaction, I think that y'all are the ones in the dark about this kinda stuff. I've included some links for your reading pleasure. If you're really bored, you might try this sparkling new service called "Google", and type in something like "India anti-american". You'll find a lot more than the few that I've provided.

Not that these links are comprehensive of the entire situation, but they should provide you with enough reading material to show you that I'm not labeling all Indian people as anti-American, nor am I saying that everyone in the Middle east is out to get us. I'm simply pointing out that India, and a lot of the countries we outsource to, are not the USA-lovin' countries that you are assuming they are.

If you want to prove me wrong, drape yourself with an "I love America" T-shirt, and go walking down the streets of these countries, and send me some pictures. If you come out unscathed, then you have my apologies.

http://www.cnn.com/video/world/2001/10/22/mr.india .anti.us.cnn.med.html
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1411733/p osts
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article30 10.htm
http://pd.cpim.org/2003/0330/03302003_protests_res t.htm
http://www.getcustoms.com/2004GTC/Articles/ga-2002 -02-13.html
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0519-06.ht m

Academia is just a bunch of Leftist America-hating gay-loving Europe-sympathizing non-Republicans.

Besides the normal morons that go around showing their asses on the internet, I can think of a few people that absolutely hate L.A. Times with a passion that are known to lurk around Slashdot and make a game out of defacing guestbooks, forums, and polls with their own kind of slashdot effect. And they love to do this kind of thing whenever they think something is "biased". I suspect at the editorial being Iraq only added to the temptation. I won't name any names, though.

*cough*

*cough*

*cough*

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...only six threads on the subject.

Besides the normal morons that go around showing their asses on the internet, I can think of a few people that absolutely hate L.A. Times with a passion that are known to lurk around Slashdot and make a game out of defacing guestbooks, forums, and polls with their own kind of slashdot effect. And they love to do this kind of thing whenever they think something is "biased". I suspect at the editorial being Iraq only added to the temptation. I won't name any names, though.

*cough*

*cough*

*cough*

*cough*

*cough*

*cough*
...only six threads on the subject.

Besides the normal morons that go around showing their asses on the internet, I can think of a few people that absolutely hate L.A. Times with a passion that are known to lurk around Slashdot and make a game out of defacing guestbooks, forums, and polls with their own kind of slashdot effect. And they love to do this kind of thing whenever they think something is "biased". I suspect at the editorial being Iraq only added to the temptation. I won't name any names, though.

*cough*

*cough*

*cough*

*cough*

*cough*

*cough*
...only six threads on the subject.

Besides the normal morons that go around showing their asses on the internet, I can think of a few people that absolutely hate L.A. Times with a passion that are known to lurk around Slashdot and make a game out of defacing guestbooks, forums, and polls with their own kind of slashdot effect. And they love to do this kind of thing whenever they think something is "biased". I suspect at the editorial being Iraq only added to the temptation. I won't name any names, though.

*cough*

*cough*

*cough*

*cough*

*cough*

*cough*
...only six threads on the subject.

Besides the normal morons that go around showing their asses on the internet, I can think of a few people that absolutely hate L.A. Times with a passion that are known to lurk around Slashdot and make a game out of defacing guestbooks, forums, and polls with their own kind of slashdot effect. And they love to do this kind of thing whenever they think something is "biased". I suspect at the editorial being Iraq only added to the temptation. I won't name any names, though.

*cough*

*cough*

*cough*

*cough*

*cough*

*cough*
...only six threads on the subject.

Besides the normal morons that go around showing their asses on the internet, I can think of a few people that absolutely hate L.A. Times with a passion that are known to lurk around Slashdot and make a game out of defacing guestbooks, forums, and polls with their own kind of slashdot effect. And they love to do this kind of thing whenever they think something is "biased". I suspect at the editorial being Iraq only added to the temptation. I won't name any names, though.

*cough*

*cough*

*cough*

*cough*

*cough*

*cough*
...only six threads on the subject.

Consider:

'Cheap Made-in-India Products' Strangle China

The world's largest chain store, Wal-Mart in America, is considering to switch from China to India its (main) supply base for textile and clothing, which is a major blow to Chinese business community.

Andrew Tsuei, a Vice President in charge of Global Purchasing at Wal-Mart, said in an interview with Indian media last month, "Subcontractors supplying clothing products to Wal-Mart prefer India as its purchasing base, where cost of raw materials is cheaper (than China), and Wal-Mart welcomes such a move."

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1426550/p osts

On the other hand, the optimist might observe that the West [USA, UK, Japan, Korea, Taiwan], in conjunction with China, and India, is laying the foundation for a 21st century of staggering, unprecedented economic growth, the likes of which the world has never seen.

I have a couple of questions for you, mainly unrelated to this, instead based off of reading your website and some links off of it.

You say:

I believe Saddam Hussein is a very bad man indeed, and that he and his evil sons fully deserved what they got. And I'm proud of the fact that Iraq is now a much better place than it was before we invaded.

You don't provide any evidence for this so called fact and you state the one actual fact in that paragraph as a belief.
Why is that?

Also, you link to free republic who I'm not that familiar with.
When I clicked the link, the main topic was Deep Throat. All of the links there were violently against one of if not the greatest hero in American history who single-handedly saved Democracy (for a few years at least). One of the first links was from Ann Coulter saying, "Felt leaked details of the Watergate investigation to The Washington Post only because he had lost a job promotion -- making him the Richard Clarke of the Watergate era."

So, while you do say that you agree "There are many people there who are mean-spirited, prejudiced, intolerent, and - worst of all! - illiterate", it seems that at least in this limited view of the site that they are promoting the foremost examples of hatred of freedom and a totally Orwellian view of reality.

I guess my point is I'd like to hear some sort of rational defense of these views as they seem diametrically opposed to your stated beliefs of
"people should be allowed as much freedom as possible. The freedom to win, and the freedom to lose. The freedom to try, the freedom to succeed and the freedom to fail."

The people that you seem to support want to remove the freedom to fail from those in power by removing truth and all accountability for their actions. I mean, Ann Coulter?!? Sure, she has the right to spew hate based vitriolic lies and even make money off of the books filled entirely with them, but lending any legitimacy to that anti-freedom rhetoric is contrary to your stated beliefs, and my deeply held ones as far as I can see.

Am I mistaken in this somehow?

Why/How can Firefox, which runs happily on W2K and others, offer better security, while IE cannot do the same on an OS developed by MS itself?

According to Microsoft, IE is integrated into the operating system itself -- it is no longer a standalone application. Ostensibly they did this to allow greater desktop-to-Internet integration, but given the inherent insecurity of ActiveX, the tendency for the forces of evil to use it maliciously, and the inability of users to lock it down, it's not exactly a hot selling point these days.

Firefox, on the other hand, stands to benefit immensely from all this. It offers a free, lightweight, standalone browser whose programming environment makes it easy for developers to extend its functionality without coopting its security (so far). It does this without any hooks into the operating system, and offers a variety of ways to combat malware, popups and generally obnoxious behavior (Flash movies, rampant advertising, etc).

Microsoft might claim that they won't be releasing any further security patches or functional upgrades to Windows 2000 or IE6. But as of September 2004, ~49% of Windows users still use Windows 2000 or lower (98, 95, NT, etc). Trying to scare users into upgrading their OS, so they can take advantage of a marginally improved, questionably more secure Windows, doesn't seem to be working anymore. And I'm by no means a Linux zealot -- I'm an ASP/SQL programmer, have been using Windows since v3.1, and am a huge fan of Microsoft's development tools / languages.

Besides landing my most recent job, discovering Firefox was the best tech-related thing that's come along in recent memory. It's inspired me to start learning more about client-side development again, after seeing what's possible with AJAX (Asynchronous Javascript And XML), standards-compliant CSS and XHTML. Once Dean Edwards' CSS-based IE7 stylesheet matures a bit more, developers will be able to instantly upgrade the set of standards-compliant available to IE 5/6 users. At that point, who will need IE 7? The days of developing wonderful new HTML and CSS tags that are only supported by one browser are in decline...... Firefox's market share has risen to just under 10% in the past year, while Microsoft's market share has dropped to under 90% for the first time since Netscape was still relevant. IE7 won't become ubiquitous for a long, long time, especially if Microsoft doesn't plan on making it available to users of its older operating systems. Why would developers of any web applications besides IE-only Intranets/Extranets create products that utilized features only available to a very small set of the installed user base?

So whatever, Microsoft. Dig your own grave, if you insist upon doing so. I'll continue to use your server-side tools, provided something better and easier-to-use doesn't come along, but at this point, you've lost me as a client-side developer of IE. Not that you should care, of course..... but if you can lose a devoted developer like me, I have to wonder how many others you've push away. It appears it's not all about "Developers, Developers, Developers!", as Steve Ballmer & Co. would have us believe.

As long as Rush Limbaugh hasn't succeeded in brain-washing all the Americans, some of them may still have a chance to find such tidbits here

ICT issues? Not anymore.

Not since Slate (created to take out Salon) has taken over content in that area. But that's not alone, Chairman Bill's foundation dumps many hundreds of thousands of dollars on NPR each year. Probably those 'donations' have strings attached if places like India, Australia show us anything.

What's odd to me is that the last paragraph you quoted wasn't in the article when I read it the first time from the other link supplied above. I must have missed that, too. ;) However, the USAToday data you list isn't the same as the data listed in the MSNBC article I linked to. I didn't miss that discrepency.

And thus we see that the media can't even get facts from a survey the same and so I believe polls aren't worth the paper they're printed on (especially if the paper is made of electrons) when the numbers differ from source to source. That's what makes me so skeptical. In addition, surveys often have an objective and the results are skewed to support that objective.

Take the recent differences between the gay and straight sense of smell highly covered recently. From the article:

Wysocki's team at the Monell Chemical Senses Center studied the response of 82 heterosexual and homosexual men and heterosexual and homosexual women to the odors of underarm sweat collected from 24 donors of varied gender and sexual orientation.

This is why I didn't just accept the numbers the first poster tossed out. Even if he had quoted an article as you two have done I still would have been suspicious, but more inclined to take the numbers seriously.

Anyway, thanks for your post. I appreciate the links and quotes.

Yes they do. This is how they catch missile smugglers and their middlemen in the US and abroad. Google for "undercover sell arms". Here are a few cases:

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1392009/p osts
http://www.cnn.com/US/9706/30/nuclear.bust/
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20030813-120408- 5099r.htm
http://www.militantislammonitor.org/article/id/569
http://earthops.org/rus_mafia_carib.html

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1398583/p osts

If it's the government, you're stuck with it.

I guess you don't vote, do you? If your democracy works, you're not stuck with anything.

If Verizon was your carrier and they were doing it wrong, you could stop supporting them.

Not if they have a monopoly. Well, you can, but it's easier to vote for your gov't to do the same thing. Verizon is supposed to represent its shareholders. Gov't officials are supposed to represent you.

Also, the government should not do it because the government has a tendency to do things wrong.

I don't consider private enterprise to be any better. A lot of them are every bit as crooked as any politician. I find it to be very appropriate for citezens to use its gov't as a weapon against corporate bums as any other kind of bums. It gives us a way of keeping them honest, and gives the corps some honest competition. If we don't use our money to control them, then there's nothing wrong with using our vote. Either way, the choice is ours to make. We have a right to use our gov't any way we wish. If your gov't is doing things wrong, then change your gov't. Most of the world's democracies give you that option. Use it or lose it.

Reblicans trust The Free Republic but distrust The Nation.
Democrates are exactly the opposite. What should TrustRank do about that? I don't see any way to reconcile stuff like that.

Hillary: "We're going to take things away from you on behalf of the common good." (aye Comrade!)

Microsoft: "We're going to take raw sockets away from you on behalf of the common good."

WTF, they're equally detestable...

You think this web site could handle a slashdotting?

you buy an airplane ticket on US Airways. They just outsourced their call-center operations.

If we really cared . . . there wouldn't have been a whole bunch of "Viva Bush" billboards all along the New Mexica and Arizona border crossing regions. Ever really wonder why the number of illegals entering our country has increased since Bush has been in office?

Because, as we all know, passports are never forged. Ever.

I don't see how we are more "protected" than the current system.

I'm sure everyone can agree that N. Korea is a clear-and-present danger.

However, according to the lastest poll in late May, most of Europe does not see Iran as a threat. I'm not sure if this poll was conducted before or after the 30+ reporters got access to underground facilities where they were shown 50,000 (yes, fifty bloody thousand) certrifuge rods to process the fuel into bomb making matrial. Obviously, Iran did not say they would make a bomb...but lets just lay the cards on the table and let facts speak for itself. The answer is rather obvious. And as an American, it scares me to hear members of Iran political parties chant "Death to America".

Sites below.

http://www.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/meast/03/30/iran.pol l

http://www.aljazeera.com/me.asp?service_ID=7768

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1374229/p osts

Anonymous Cowards are more than likely Anus Cowards:
While posting drivel on Slashdot, two trolls today made a life changing discovery. Although they've lived the first 15-20 years of life convinced that they are "normal" human beings, it was revealed to them that they've been mistaking their buttocks for their faces and their anuses for mouths. Professor J.Q. Ass, of Columbia University Medical College reported his findings, "When these two young men came to me earlier this week complaining of incredibly bad breath that offends everyone they know, I was a bit struck by the fact that they weren't facing me but had their backs to me. Not only that, but their anuses were doing the talking! I've never seen anything like it! It's astounding. I asked the one gentleman, 'You do realize you're talking out of your ass'? and he wanted to start a fist fight. I told him, 'no seriously, you are literally speking through your anus. I've never seen anything like this".

The Slashdot Connection:
After showing the two young adults some basic anatomy videos and their own images in the mirror, they were both driven to tears. How many years had they been using their anuses for speech? Too many. According to special biologist Ruth Ann Pudendum, "Cases like this are extremely rare, but it does appear that the incidence rate is quite high among the AC posters of the online community/blog Slashdot. Unfortunately, we've only had a few ACs come forward and acknowledge their disability".

Is there hope?:
Of course, the question that everyone wants answered, "Is there a possibility of a normal life after the discovery of anal speech"? While most disabilities can be treated through the use of various therapies, counselling and medication, it does appear that anal speech is an irreversible condition. The best that sufferers of this illness can hope for is to find a place where they can fit in. Extensive research shows that there are many positions within management, politics and some areas of the IT sector where anal speech does not preclude one from excelling to the top of their field. Some examples of famous anal speakers are, CEO of Microsoft; Steve Ballmer, CEO of Oracle; Larry Ellison, Governor of Ohio; Bob Taft and President of the United States; George W. Bush.

Taking time to smell the roses:
A few ACs who made this same discovery last year, when asked what they did after the discovery, were quoted as saying, "It's all about perspective. I used to have overly high self-esteem because I was convinced that my opinions mattered and that I knew what I was alking about. But when I discovered that I've spent my life, literally, speaking out of my ass... well that was a life changing event. At first I was in shock and then denial. But when I finally accepted it, I was able to put it in perspective. So many things became clear. The difficulty keeping food down. The high frequency of being called an 'ass' or 'asshole'. The incredibly strong case of halitosis. Today, I choose to see the event in a positive light. Once I realized exactly what had been going on, I toned down my loud opinions and stopped using Listerine. Instead, I've discovered that life is better if I take the time to smell the roses. Not to mention it covers the stench. A lot of people may look at me and think that this is a curse, and it can be. But knowing my condition is definitely a blessing from God".

Support Groups:
The most prevalent online support group for those stricken with this disability are:

http://www.slashdot.org/
http://www.littlegreenfootballs.com/
http://www.freerepublic.com/
http://www.whitehouse.gov/

Source: AP Newswire (C) 2005

I'm sure the poster meant that as a tongue-in-cheek. But there really is a plan to make a single Free state. Moreover, it's a plan with actual results, in which thousands have signed up, and over a hundred free-market, free-speech, "free-Everything" activists have already moved there and are making a difference right now.

It's called the Free State Project, and I myself am a member.

Check this newscast from a local TV station.

The one concern I would have is I think he was spearheaded Bush Senior's Space Exploration Initiative(SEI) which was Bush Seniors version of going back to the Moon and Mars, and he presided over a program that dead ended. You have to wonder if Bush Junior is hoping for a different outcome the second time around, or if he doing a bad rerun of SEI meaning the current initiative is doomed.

A few noteworthy Google hits on Mike Griffin below, a hard name to Google because its so common.

I gather he invented Faster, Better, Cheaper while at SDIO, a concept that has some merit if properly done, it has a lot in common with Kelly Johnson and the old Lockheed Skunkworkds that built the U-2 and SR-71, but became much maligned when Dan Goldin tried to implement it at NASA, because NASA is institutionally and structurally incapable of doing faster, better, cheaper and have it end up being actually faster, better and cheaper.

theForce.net

Mike Griffin, a former senior NASA manager and aerospace industry executive, presented the most charitable assessment of NASA's human space flight efforts, ranking it second in priority only to building a new, more reliable heavy lift launcher.Griffin advised following through with space station, which means returning the shuttle to flight, while setting a new course that includes Mars. To accomplish this, Griffin recommends increasing NASA's budget from $15 billion a year to $20 billion.

"NASA costs each American 14 cents a day. A really robust program could be had for about 20 cents a day," Griffin said. "Americans spend more on pizza then they do on space."

Free Republic

The final nail in the coffin of Goldin's "legacy" came when NASA published its damning critique of his vaunted "better, faster, cheaper" approach.
A couple of points on this greatly misunderstood concept..
First, FBC is not Dan Goldin's invention. It came out of the old SDIO ("Star Wars") organization back in the late '80s. At the time, the dominant paradigm in both military and civil space was big, complex, very capable spacecraft, on which any and all instruments and experiments could be accommodated.
This development model led to decade-long, multi-billion dollar missions (e.g., Galileo, Milstar). When these kind of missions screw-up (e.g., Hubble Telescope, Galileo antenna), the public and Congressional ramifications can be devastating.
"FBC" was devised as a way to deal with this problem. I believe it was mostly developed by Mike Griffin, then Director of Technology at SDIO. The concept was simple: cut costs by having a small, compact, "Skunk Works"-type development team. Fly small satellites, each with one or two instruments, more often. As you are launching smaller sats more often, you have more flight opportunities, so if there IS a failure, you can recover from it quickly. In short, the objective is the knowledge gained from space flight, not to design and fly the most capable vehicle.
It's "faster" because you don't have decadal development times as the satellites as smaller and less complex. It's "cheaper" because you're not paying a marching army of highly paid technical staff (where the true costs of space flight really are). It's "better" because for a given amount of expenditure, you get more data, more often.
You can criticize this all you want to, but the simple fact is that FBC "worked" on a lot of the SDI flight projects of the early 90s (e.g., Delta Star, MSTI), culminating with the successful space test of the Brilliant Pebble spacecraft, the Clementine mission in 1994.
Goldin and NASA (specifically, JPL) never really understood this concept. They understood "cheaper" in the sense of reducing engineering development costs, but kept the glacial JPL pace, which ran the manpower costs right back up again. The Mars Pathfinder mission, NASA's FBC "success" story, was successful o

Here is a picture

It's a pretty well-documented issue in Firefox regarding "tab-leakage" or something. Comes when you keep a session open for a while and open and close a lot of tabs. Try the following suggestions:

linky

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1345223/p osts/

I think a small % of the country would agree with you, mostly blue states.

Most of the posters on this Free Republic thread are strongly opposed to this attempt at censorship. On the other hand, I'd bet many Democratic-leaning soccer moms would be in favor of it.

Very easy to make statements like that on slashdot, but try doing it in a forum where a majority of the people you're speaking to are "crippled".

Yeah, it'd be pretty amusing to see a slashdotter on http://www.freerepublic.com/. Sometimes I do enjoy participating in the evolution/creationist debates there, though.

Post # 47 To: Howlin

Howlin, every single one of these memos to file is in a proportionally spaced font, probably Palatino or Times New Roman.

In 1972 people used typewriters for this sort of thing, and typewriters used monospaced fonts.

The use of proportionally spaced fonts did not come into common use for office memos until the introduction of laser printers, word processing software, and personal computers. They were not widespread until the mid to late 90's. Before then, you needed typesetting equipment, and that wasn't used for personal memos to file. Even the Wang systems that were dominant in the mid 80's used monospaced fonts.

I am saying these documents are forgeries, run through a copier for 15 generations to make them look old.

This should be pursued aggressively.

47 posted on 09/08/2004 8:59:43 PM PDT by Buckhead

CBS executives Betsy West, Josh Howard and Howard's deputy Mary Murphy as well as producer Mary Mapes acted as human shields for Rather with their jobs. Memogate was only the most recent attempt by supposedly unbiased "journalists" at CBS to subvert the will of the American voter. And bloggers were the first ones on the scene to expose CBS' treachery.

Of course, Dan Rather has a documented history of bias against Republicans. Rather's refusal to cover Juanita Broderick's rape charges against former President Bill Clinton during Penisgate was another black eye for CBS and its bell cow. Rather's incredible claim that the story was "an intrusion into Clinton's private sex life" was both disgusting and horrific. Rape is a crime even when committed by a sitting President, not a political football. Further, Rather's Jan. 25, 1988 interrogation of then-candidate George Bush trying to link him to Iran-Contra was a harangue so vitriolic that even Mike Wallace said his co-worker had gone too far, and CBS affiliates called the Bush campaign to apologize for Rather.

Along with Michael Moore's nazi-esque propaganda film Fahrenheit 9/11 and the stunning testimony of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth documenting John Kerry's cowardice and misdeeds during the Vietnam War, Dan Rather and Mary Mapes' evil machinations will be remembered by history as one of the primary reasons that George W. Bush won the 2004 election. The American people can smell a skunk in the woodpile, and Rather's shameful curtain call in March when he retires as anchor and managing editor of the CBS Evening News means that they finally, thankfully, have started to pay attention to the rampant liberal bias that infests the American "old media" television networks.

• Plainly this is idiotic. It would be much easier and cheaper to build them in France but politically this would be no good at all because the Airbus is intended to show how European co-operation can work. We do the wings and the engines, the French put everything together, the Germans finish everything off and the Spanish . . . actually, I don't know what the Spanish do, apart from gatecrash the launch party and lisp.
  
• That is presuming you got past the check-in. I guess you have all experienced the ludicrous queues that build up now. Well, imagine how long they are going to be when there are half a dozen A380s scheduled to depart within 15 minutes of one another. With seating for 550 on each one that is 3,300 people to be interrogated, 3,300 suitcases to be loaded, 3,300 pieces of hand luggage to be x-rayed and 3,300 pairs of shoes to be examined.
  
  Do you think that Virgin or Emirates will spend the money that they have saved on fuel by employing more check-in staff? I doubt it. As a result you will need to arrive at the terminal 3,300 hours before take-off. Then there is the flight itself to worry about.
  
• Yes, at the moment, despite much plastic and carbon fibre in its construction, the A380 is four tons overweight, but when the 747 was rolled out in the 1960s that was 50 tons overweight. So let's not get too worried. They could save four tons by simply removing one American passenger.
  
• Airbus made sure that its launch video featured on-board gyms and bars. There were big squidgy double beds and probably a polo lawn or two. But the reality is that airlines will fill the entire fuselage with seats they've nicked from a primary school to wedge the passengers in like veal.
  
  In other words, being on board the A380 will be exactly the same as being on board any other jet liner.
  
  
• This brings me to the final point. You see, the cruising speed of the A380 is Mach 0.85 (647mph), which is pretty good for something with the aerodynamic properties of a wheelie bin and engines that run on mineral water. But the 747 cruises at Mach 0.855 (651mph). This means that the 747 gets you there faster and means that you spend less time with your face wedged in an American's armpit.
  
  On that basis you can marvel at how Airbus has jumped through political hoops and climbed technical mountains to bring the world its shareholder friendly A380. But you are better off going in a Boeing.
  

This may have already been mentioned, but here's a link on tweaking Firefox to make it even faster on a broadband connection. I've applied these settings and notice an immediate performance boost.

One of the last communities without telephone service, Mink, La. finally got hooked up.

It took over 30 years to hook up the phones, when they just could of gone Wifi and VOIP.

At least you admit we've made progress, unlike people like Jesse Jackson who act like black folks are still riding the back of the bus and swinging from poplar trees.

---
from freerepublic.com

In addition to the two tiered Avalon-based user experiences, Longhorn will also support a legacy Classic display mode that will resemble the Windows 2000 UI. This mode will support all the non-UI-related Longhorn technologies, enabling Longhorn applications to run in Classic mode. Microsoft is providing this mode for upgrades that don't meet the minimum requirements for Aero and for corporations that would prefer not to retrain users as they migrate to Longhorn.

---

How can we get our Iranian friends back in the Web?

Hey Dan, Michael, let me give you a little hint: You can't. Or, as Stalin once said of the Pope, "How many divisions does Slashdot have?"

The Islamofascist Mmullahs ruling Iran have made it quite clear they're immune to such chimeras as "international pressure." What are you going to do, impose sanction? Yeah, that worked so well with Saddam.

Given a regime where critics of the regime have to flee for their lives, and where they executed retarded rape victims for the "crime" of having sex, what makes you think any actions short of armed revolution will get their Internet access back? Who are they going to listen to? Kofi Annan? Get real.

There are only two things which might actually allow Iranians to get back their Internet freedoms:

1. A full-scale liberation invasion by U.S./coalition troops, a very difficult and probably quite bloody task, or
2. A "decapitation" strike that takes out the Islamist religious leadership, possibly some high level military assets, and probably as much of their illegal nuclear weapons infrastructure as we can locate.

The chances of either being undertaken right now are slim, and the chances of the majority of Slashdot digirati support such a move are close to zero.

I enjoy some blogs, although I have to admit that the signal-to-noise ratio is pretty bad. Here's a few which I personally find interesting and read regularly. I'm a neuro, space, and robotics geek, so the list is biased as such.

* Reusable Launch Vehicle (RLV) News: The most thorough spaceflight blog around, focusing on reusable systems.
* NASA Watch: A well-known site with regular critiques of NASA.
* Free Republic: Like slashdot, but for ultra-conservatives. I sometimes like to go there to get a better understanding of what goes through the heads of people who think differently from me.
* Alan Boyle's Cosmic Log: "Quantum fluctuations in space, science, and exploration"
* Democratic Underground: The extreme left's version of Free Republic.
* Instapundit: The slashdot-equivalent of political weblogging, with a somewhat libertarian slant. Known for causing "Instalanches" on innocent web servers, analogous to "Slashdottings."
* Daily Kos: Probably the most influential liberal blog.
* Transterrestrial Musings: a libertarian space analyst who helped me understand why it's possible to be intelligent and support the war in Iraq at the same time. He sometimes posts some fantastic satires.
* theferrett's livejournal: sometimes writes some very insightful and well-composed essays
* spacexploration livejournal community: Space-related miscellany and discussion.
* politicsforum livejournal community: Sometimes has some pretty intelligent political discussion.
* robots.net: Robotics news
* Space Politics: "Because sometimes the most important orbit is the Beltway"
* Rocket Man Blog: Rarely updated, but has very insightful and informed analysis of spaceflight and rocketry.
* Howard Lovy's NanoBot: Nanotechnology news and commentary

Some good links from FreeRepublic.

Seems like Dr. Evil and his "laser beam" are finally starting to do their evil deeds!