Slashdot Mirror

This may be proof that Bill Gates is a liar...

From interview:

JENNINGS: Everybody I talked to seems to, particularly if they are young, seems to think that open sourcing is important and that among the reasons it is important is that it enables them to run more secure systems. Is that true from your point of view?

GATES: Actually no, but that is the kind of competition that we have. Is that they will innovate in that space, we will innovate in our space. And in fact, we do a lot of work to make sure that these things can inter-operate so that a company can have a mix of Microsoft products, Unix products, Mainframe products, and then each time they do a project they can look and say - is the Microsoft solution best? Is the other solution best? And so there will just be a lot of choices there, no one approach is going to replace the other. (emphasis above added)


Now compare the above with this:

" If you visit the download center with IE you get an activex control, but if you try with Firefox, you'll have to download a little program, that returns a code you have to copy into the download page, to get access to the download you selected. By quickly looking at the program, I noticed it looks for a registry key, this key is... SOFTWARE\Wine\Wine\Config the wine configuration key. the Windows Genuine Advantage program press release says that in the second half of 2005, all users connecting to the Microsoft download center or to windows update will have to validate their copy of windows. Interestingly if you run the validation program on wine, and the version of windows you're emulating is prior to 2000 or is windows server 20003, you get a message saying a validation code couldn't be found, because of technical difficulties or because you're running an unsupported operating system."

Here are two direct links,

One to the HUGE trailer

One to the SMALL trailer.

Quicktime format. See the site for the in-between ones and read the source code on the pop-up.

10 September 2004 - Roger Birnbaum: Co-Chairman and CEO of Spyglass Films
We worked with Douglas for a while in trying to get the script to a place where everyone was satisfied. I remember admiring Douglas' loyalty toward the fans and his total dedication to writing a movie that would live up to their expectations. It was tragic and heartbreaking when Douglas suddenly died. The movie came to an immediate standstill.

It was well over a year after his passing that Douglas' widow, Jane Adams, encouraged us to move forward with the film as Douglas undoubtedly would have wanted. Karey Kirkpatrick, who had written the hugely successful "Chicken Run", was hired to complete the work Douglas had started on a film adaption of the book.

He wrote A screenplay, not this screenplay. He wrote what HE considered the final draft. And then, he died.

You should read the rather funny self-interview conducted by the guy who wrote the final screenplay. It's apparent from that interview--without being explicitly stated--that Adams's final draft was never going to be filmed without further modification. That's just the way the movie business works. Even the "final" approved script gets changed during filming because of (A) inspiration of the director to expand a scene, add a new scene, etc., or (B) the discovery that a scene that reads brilliantly on the page just doesn't work when filmed.

Douglas Adams wrote a lot of great stuff, but he couldn't figure out how to structure it to make it work as brilliantly in movie form as it had in book and radio play form. The eventual screenplay consisted largely of reorganizing Adams's own material into a shootable script. Where changes deviating from Adams's own writings had to be made, they deferred to his intentions as much as possible, by referring to his notes, unfinished musings, half-written scenes, etc.

Is there some stuff in the script that wasn't written by Douglas Adams himself? Definitely. Did they likely cut out stuff Adams would have kept? Probably. Did they put back in stuff that Adams had cut? Definitely.

Unfortunately, due to his untimely death, we'll never know what Douglas Adams himself would have thought of this movie. If you'd asked me five years ago if a movie of HHGG could ever be anything other than horrible, I'd have answered with an unequivocal NO. But Peter Jackson's version of The Lord of the Rings has made me change my mind. I think it can be good. Will it? I don't know, but I'll withhold my judgement until I actually see it.

You can download the trailer from the movie's website. Get the highest resolution quicktime version here .

bzzt. not true. It was modified by Karey Kirkpatrick.

"interview" with the script writer

The endangered species act has been so badly hijacked that it's a nightmare for many, many people. It's now run out of the courts with little or no review or recourse. To make the point, a bipartsan group of elected officials from western states have filed to use the act to protect the Snakehead fish in the Potomac:.

What a great way to make the point!!!!!!

Sept 11, 2002.

Winning lottery numbers were 9-1-1

An event like that has really only convinced me in some hippy sort of way, that our perception of reality is really a two way street, and we can effect it as much as it effects us, if we could focus hard enough.

Now according to this link:

http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/WhosCounting/stor y?id=97845&page=1

It was a one in 500 chance.

Still is only taking into account the chance of those numbers being drawn, not compounding it with the number of drawings and it happening on that day.

For the ARGer's out there:

> creepy

nice summary. of course, it omits both the real reason his campaign failed, namely the endless pushing of the infamous scream by the corporate media and related commentary, and the key bit of truth most of the sheep still don't know, namely that the scream never really happened and was fabricated to discredit dean. click on the link. oh, and be sure to print it out before the brownshirts have it deleted. one of the many reasons anyone who uses the phrase "liberal media" is either a liar or a fool.

include 'std_copyright.inc'

One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered Microsoft community when IDC confirmed that the Microsoft market share has dropped yet again, now down to less than a fraction of 1 percent of all BSD tools. Coming on the heels of a recent Netcraft survey which plainly states that Microsoft has lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. Microsoft is collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by failing dead last year in the recent BSD Admin comprehensive OS test.

You don't need to be a Malone to predict the future of Microsoft. The handwriting is on the wall: Microsoft faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for Microsoft because Microsoft is dying. Things are looking very bad for Microsoft. As many of us are already aware, Microsoft continues to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of blood. A river with no windows.

FreeMicrosoft is the most endangered of them all, having lost 93% of its core developers. The sudden and unpleasant departures of long time Microsoft developers Steve Jobs and Linus Torvalds only serve to underscore the point more clearly. There can no longer be any doubt: Microsoft is dying.

Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.

OpenMicrosoft leader Theo states that there are 7000 users of OpenMicrosoft. How many users of Microsoft.NET are there? Let's see. The number of OpenMicrosoft versus Microsoft.NET posts on Usenet is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 7000/5 = 1400 Microsoft.NET users. Microsoft/OS posts on Usenet are about half of the volume of Microsoft.NET posts. Therefore there are about 700 users of Microsoft/OS. A recent article put FreeMicrosoft at about 80 percent of the *Microsoft market. Therefore there are (7000+1400+700)*4 = 36400 FreeMicrosoft users. This is consistent with the number of FreeMicrosoft Usenet posts.

Due to the troubles of Redmond, abysmal sales and so on, FreeMicrosoft went out of business and was taken over by MicrosoftI who sell another troubled OS. Now MicrosoftI is also dead, its corpse turned over to yet another charnel house.

All major surveys show that *Microsoft has steadily declined in market share. Microsoft is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If Microsoft is to survive at all it will be among OS dilettante dabblers. *Microsoft continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, Microsoft is dead.

Fact: Microsoft is dying

As far as I can tell, "Gloom and Doom" seems to be his usual mode of operation.

Sorry North Korea but you don't seem to be in the Middle East.. NO WAR FOR YOU! Iran however....

CmdrTaco was right on with Firefly. Screw this Enterprise crap!

I think that Firefly got cancelled was the biggest mistake that TV has ever made. Well, almost... http://abc.go.com/primetime/accordingtojim/

Eh, maybe after the movie comes out there'll be more interest.

I read the old "stone soup" story in school when I was a kid. The teacher and rest of the students didn't seem to see the inherent flaw in the story: an entire village ended up with one stinking pot of soup. Fortunately for Linux, there's plenty of "soup" to go around. Our bowl can be indefinitely replenished. It's worked, so far, because greed and the GPL have been motivating factors in furthering software development.

It should also be noted that not all sharing is good.

Prove it. The only proven vote fraud is being done by Democrats (remember "Votes for Cigarettes 2000" for homeless people and tire slashing by Democrat-paid thugs in 2004 in Wisconsin?).

Let's not even talk about Catherine Harris, who outright stole the election by selectively obeying the intent of the law.

Prove it. (And its spelled "Katherine". Try to keep up.)

This is now a one party dictatorship, using the law as window dressing to get anything it wants and destroy whomever it hates.

Prove it.

accepted by the Katie Courics of the news media almost immediately.

You honestly believe that Katie "... they haven't been able to confirm reports [Saddam] was taken to Tikrit, and then Mosul, and then hopefully Syria" Couric is right wing? ROFL!!!!

Snip remainder of Michael Moore-inspired paranoia. That by the way would be the corpulent propagandist Michael Moore:

- Who sends his own daughter to private school .

- Who unsuccessfully pressured the writing staff of his 'TV Nation' not to join the Writer's Guild.

- Whose bodyguard got arrested for carrying an unlicensed firearm at JFK airport. A FIREARM? For the writer/author of "Bowling for Columbine"? No more tinfoil for you - you've obviously ODed on the stuff.

- Whose own hometown high school refuses to induct him into its Hall of Fame.

YOU grow up and stop whining. Bush won, Kerry lost. Get over it.

In the US you can still compare products under the "fair use" doctrine. The problem here is that sometimes it's hard for the end user to distinguish the results, imagine if you typed in "Playboy" and got an unnamed banner ad (actual case), how would you know that that banner ad wasn't "Playboy"'s? So the question gets a little fuzzier when things are clearly marked, but a recent survey http://abcnews.go.com/Business/wireStory?id=437251 found that only 1 in 6 people can distinguish between regular results and the ads. That means people are buying use of your protected trademark and directing users to their own sites.

A survey found that only 1 in 6 people could tell the difference between unbiased search results and bought ads.

Trademark law is all about consumer confusion, if the results end up misleading/confusing the customer then there are problems.

How much of an increase in violent crime do you need to see in the UK or Australia before it dawns on you that:

A) Banning guns is a very, very bad idea

Very bad example. Here's why. The murder rate in the United States is still four times higher than it is in either the UK or Australia, despite a higher overall violent crime rate in those countries. In other words, there is more violent crime in the UK and Australia, but less murder. Why do you think this is?

It's because of cases like this. Cases that would be a simple mugging in other countries pretty frequently turn into murders here with easy access to deadly weapons. This woman - and countless others like her every year - simply would not be dead today if these stupid kids (and the stupid adults supposedly supervising them) did not have access to such weapons. Your position is directly supporting the murder of people like Nicole Dufresne.

B) It's impossible

Bullshit. Go to Japan and try to buy a gun. Seriously. If you think gun control doesn't work, then you just don't have a very well-developed world view. It does work and it has been working in various countries for many years. In fact, I just did a quick Google search on gun murder in Japan and quickly came up with some numbers from 1996: 9,390 gun murders in the US vs. 15 in Japan. Japan's murder rate has not increased appreciably since then - they have around 1,300 total per year (about 1/8 the number of gun murders alone in this country) with a population about half that of the United States.

I would say banning guns would have a far greater effect on reducing the murder rate than banning violent video game sales to minors. But that does not mean I am against such a ban. I don't see why it has to be either/or. There is no reason, for example, that a 12 year old kid should be playing a game like Manhunt. No justifiable reason at all. I would argue that there's no reason for anybody to play that game, but if adults want to play it, that's up to them. Kids, though - I mean adults need to step in and say "no". Yes, it's the parents' responsibility, but a lot of people seem to use that fact as some sort of rationale for abdicating societal responsibility. It is not, for example, legal for 12 year olds to commit murder or even to drive a car simply because it's their parents' responsibility to make sure that they don't. There is still a law saying they cannot do it, as there should be.

Handguns should be illegal. M-rated game sales to minors should be illegal. End of story. This is not a question of "my rights online", it's a question of living in a free and safe society that does not endorse the sale of devices whose sole purpose is to kill other human beings or the sale of adult content to children who do not yet have the mental maturity to properly process it.

I realize Slashdot has more than a bit of a libertarian slant, but there is a difference between being a libertarian and being an anarchist. There are plenty of countries in the world that are freer than we are in the United States but nevertheless have successfully implemented these perfectly reasonable regulations regarding public safety.

I personally, I don't think we should be encouraging childish stellar outbursts by paying attention to them. Ignore them, and if they continue, give them a boot to the corona.

Gladwell responds, though:

"I always thought that the critics of "Moneyball" misinterpreted what Lewis was saying. He wasn't saying that all instinctive scouting judgments are flawed. He was saying that there are some questions -- like predicting hitting ability -- that are better answered statistically, and that the task of a successful GM is to understand the difference between what can and can't be answered that way. That's my argument in Blink as well."

So the question becomes, then, how do we know when we can make an appropriate snap judgement about something? Why is "this statue looks like a fake" reasonable but "this guy looks like an athlete" not?

Gladwell makes the point that too much data can hinder, rather than help, but you end up needing to make a judgement on how much data is too much then. One of the examples Gladwell gives in "Blink" is of doctors making better diagnoses of heart trouble when they have less data- they jump to the heart, rather than investigating everything else chest pain could be. But do you really want your doctor operating on less than complete information- and if so, where do you set the line at? "Sorry, Doc, I'm afraid if I tell you how long I've had this pain, you might misdiagnose me."

I agree largely with Gladwell's ideas that snap judgements can be better than waffling, but he definitely should have done more to point out differences between good snap decisions and bad ones- he points out the "Warren Harding Effect" where someone "appears qualified" for something, but doesn't say enough in my opinion about knowing when your prejudices are boldly leading your gut astray.

However, there IS a legal DVD of Nausicaa with English-language subtitles: The IVL Entertainment's R3 release. That is, if importing it still is legal, and if region-free DVD players are still legal...

They're legal... and I use Xine with DeCSS, so I don't think it matters much anyway. ;)

Although this is interesting... In my google search to try to find "IVL entertainment nausicaa", I found instead that apparently Disney is going to be releasing nausicaa on DVD this month.

Sweet! Especially because my fansub is in VHS format, and I fear for its longevity.

There is no natural moral wrong in copying. One does not destroy the original art work by copying it and hence does no harm to the holder of the original. We've created a moral wrong by setting up this social contract, where as a society we will give the artist certain rights if they create more art.

What we've lost sight of is that this social contract is for the benefit of society as a whole, not the artist. If the artist is not willing to distribute the works (by taking advantage of the copyright) then they are breaking their half the of contract.

Perhaps copyrights need to be modified so that if the art is not distributed any longer, or in a particular region, the copyright holder loses the copyright protection in that region.

The Disney "it's going in the vault" advertising campaign drives me crazy. We gave you a copyright for a reason, and it wasn't to screw us over with availability.

I suppose the beauty part of this is that, I would guess, the same holds true for the adult population.

Far too many adults that I've encountered have no idea as to what these rights mean, or what their implications are. And just so you know I'm not simply spouting anecdotal evidence, I'll cite the following article:

44 Percent Say Restrict Muslims

To sum it up for the lazy, it basically means that around 44 percent of all Americans surveyed have no idea what the Bill of Rights is for, why it's important, or what the repercussions are for tampering with it. (Yes, I know what some portion of that group are informed dissenters with the Bill of Rights, but I would assert that they are a fringe minority.)

If you're an American citizen, and haven't done this already (or recently!), be sure to read the following:

US Constitution
Amendments thereof

Just reading through the first couple on the amendments list should give you a better grasp on what the whole "Bill of Rights" thing is about.

Oh, and you'll learn all sorts of crazy trivia you probably weren't aware of - like the fact that a right to a jury trial for civil cases requires the damages to be worth at least $20 (which has never been adjusted for inflation, and probably shouldn't.)

It was well over a year after his passing that Douglas' widow, Jane Adams, encouraged us to move forward with the film as Douglas undoubtedly would have wanted. Karey Kirkpatrick, who had written the hugely successful "Chicken Run", was hired to complete the work Douglas had started on a film adaption of the book.

I know this is a Mac board, so sue me for being OT. I am playing Half Life 2 with a Radeon 9100 at 1024x768 with most of the eye/ear candy turned on and it runs beautifully. The only reason you need an ATI 850XT Super Duper Platinum Pro Edition is so you can run Doom 3 at 1800x1440 (drawing this would require approximately 16MB of RAM leaving 240MB of overhead for shading, and etc.) on your dual 30" LCD monitors. The vast majority of computer users use nothing more than the onboard, shared memory, Intel chipset that HP or Dell shipped to them.

A 9200 with 32 MB of RAM is more than adequate. I'm getting a Mini for my kids to play games at http://www.sesameworkshop.com/sesamestreet, Disney Interactive games, and listen to CDs. Last time I checked, it didn't take a 256MB, PCI Express graphics card to draw Elmo Flash animations in Firefox.

Marvin is also very ugly. The head is too freaking big. (there's a short intro at the official site.)

The sad part of all of this arguing is that we each think we are right. Ralph Wiley, who recently passed away, once wrote on Nolan Richardson being fired from the University of Arkansas under dubious circumstances. He wrote, "hey, just because you ain't racist doesn't mean Nolan didn't run into bigotry in Arkansas. Don't take it personal. It's not about whether or not your feelings are hurt." I do not consider myself racist, yet I am a fool to think that there are not people in America who look down upon and scorn people of a race unlike their own. There are Republicans who are racist, and there are Democrats who are racist. And, there a probably many people of both parties who are not racist. When someone accuses another person of racism, I should not defend that person just because I have some of the same beliefs as him (or same party affiliation). It is not an attack on me. Racism is a personal belief. Luckily, in America, it is not longer a public policy. Link to article: http://espn.go.com/page2/s/wiley/020306.html

since when has Sony or Nintendo cared that much about baseball?

Never. I'm sure.

"no one could've predicted this"

One such dumbshit is Condoleezza Rice

http://abcnews.go.com/US/story?id=90453&page=1/

Even though saying that they had intelligence that Bin Laden planned to hijack domestic US planes ... "Rice stressed that there was no way anyone could have predicted that terrorists would use hijacked planes as missiles and attack the World Trade Center and the Pentagon."

and yet :

TIME Magazine (Domestic edition), 'NEVER SAFE ENOUGH,' by Hugh Sidey, November 14, 1994 Volume 144, No. 20

During the cold war, when security agents used to play war games involving terrorist threats to the White House, the one unsolvable problem was a commercial airliner loaded with explosives working its way into the landing pattern at Washington National Airport, then veering off for a suicide plunge into the White House. The only answer was to shut down the airport, which Congress refused to consider, since its proximity and reserved parking spaces are prized legislative perks.

Why worry about cops first and not the (always) bad guys?

Because crime isn't actually as bad as you'd think from watching TV.

In reality, most of us live in an age of incredibly low crime rates, even those of us who live in cities in America. I've never even seen a gun, and the one time I was within a mile of an actual violent crime, there were so many cop cars (and bikes and helicopters) after the guy it was like a scene from The Blues Brothers.

Sure, there are exceptions; maybe you live in Gary, Indiana or inner city DC. But for most of us, the chances of being beaten up or having our stuff stolen by law enforcement are much greater than the chances of the same happening because of a violent criminal.

Someone in your apartment block deals drugs? Guess it's time for a drug forfeiture sweep. Doesn't matter if you're found innocent, you can kiss your worldly possessions goodbye.

Selling video signal clarifiers or bootleg arcade game emulators? You could be the next person to be raided by the Department of Homeland Security. (No, I'm not kidding.)

Sharing lots of files? Thanks to Bill Clinton, copyright violation in sufficient quantities is now a felony, and you could find the feds kicking down your door.

Political protester? It's now routine for protesters (whatever the cause) to be illegally mass-arrested in advance to get them off the streets, mistreated in jail, and then freed without charge once the event being protested is over. That's if you're lucky; if you're unlucky, the cops engineer a riot and wade in with the tear gas and batons. If you're really unlucky, they discover that you once sent a pair of boots to a Chechen rebel or contributed to an Islamic charity, and you suddenly disappear to jail indefinitely, or to Guantanamo Bay to be tortured.

I don't lie awake at night worrying that my next-door neighbors might steal my stuff; even if they did, I have insurance, and it's just stuff. I do sometimes worry that I might get arrested or "disappeared" by the US authorities.

Evidently, no they can't.

>Fine but quit whining that stupid hysterical laws like Kyoto keep getting shot down.

Kyoto wasn't shot down. Every country with any leadership whatsoever ratified it. I'm sure it's pure coincidence that a president who is completely in bed with the oil industry would shoot down a treaty that calls for reduced greenhouse gas emissions.

>The idea that man is causing global warming is laughable.

Only by those who refuse to pull their heads out of their asses.

>As is the pathetic insistence that it is real in spite of whatever logic and REAL science is applied to your histrionics.

Pull your head out of there and have a look around sometime.

Don't forget Bonds upted out of the MLBPA licensing a greement, so he won't appear in any MLBPA licended goods, unless they (Take-2) sign him individually, which opens up a whole other can of worms (Non-MLBPA licensed players cannot appear in mechandise w/ MLBAP licensed players according to MLBPA licensing contracts.)

http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/news/story?id=177708 4

<!--WEBSIDESTORY CODE HBX1.0 (Universal)-->
<!--COPYRIGHT 1997-2004 WEBSIDESTORY,INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. U.S.PATENT No. 6,393,479B1. MORE INFO:http://websidestory.com/privacy-->
<script language="javascript">
var _hbEC=0,_hbE=new Array;function _hbEvent(a,b){b=_hbE[_hbEC++]=new Object();b._N=a;b._C=0;return b;}
var hbx=_hbEvent("pv");hbx.vpc="HBX0100u";hbx.gn="ehg- dig.hitbox.com";

//BEGIN EDITABLE SECTION
//CONFIGURATION VARIABLES
hbx.acct="DM5103120MSF93EN3;DM510612FMN S38EN3;DM51030813MR38EN3;DM5103083LCA38EN3";//ACCO UNT NUMBER(S)
hbx.pn="index";//PAGE NAME(S)
hbx.mlc="/Inside+Disney/Corporate/WDIG+Pr ess";//MULTI-LEVEL CONTENT CATEGORY
hbx.pndef="title";//DEFAULT PAGE NAME

//OPTIONAL PAGE VARIABLES
//ACTION SETTINGS
hbx.fv="";//FORM VALIDATION MINIMUM ELEMENTS OR SUBMIT FUNCTION NAME
hbx.lt="auto";//LINK TRACKING

//REQUIRED SECTION. CHANGE "YOURSERVER" TO VALID LOCATION ON YOUR WEB SERVER (HTTPS IF FROM SECURE SERVER)
</script><script language="javascript1.1" defer src="http://hb.disney.go.com/stat/hbx.js"></script >
<!--END WEBSIDESTORY CODE-->

I for one, am completely oblivious. I will be nestled snugly in my movie theatre recliner, my feet firmly glued by the soda to the floor. The lights will dim, and I will be transported safely to another reality....away from Slashdot, away from my darling cat Maggie. If I am lucky I will have a large Icee with me, barring any inter-dimensional time-shifts in the sub-arctic frozen temperatures of the mixing mechanism. http://hitchhikers.movies.go.com/

If anyone is interested in rotisserie baseball, check this article out. Turns out there are some legal snafus about licensing. I play for free on Yahoo, and last year Barry Bonds was called "Outfielder" or "SF Outfielder" or something because of a licensing issue. It looks like some places will potentially lose their rights to use the players names.

http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/sportsbusiness/news /story?id=1970454

"A deal between MLB and Take Two wouldn't change EA's plans in the area, though, as EA doesn't use the MLB branding on its baseball title, MVP Baseball - but smaller rivals in the sector would certainly be squeezed out, such as Sony's MLB range, the latest iteration of which is due out in March."

Maybe it's got something to do with National Treasure movie?

Evidence compels long-time atheist/evolutionist to lose belief in materialist cause of life

At 81, after decades of insisting that belief is a mistake, Antony Flew has concluded that some sort of intelligence or first cause must have created the universe. A super-intelligence is the only good explanation for the origin of life and the complexity of nature, Mr. Flew said in a telephone interview from England.
[...]
Flew told The Associated Press his current ideas have some similarity with American "intelligent design" theorists, who see evidence for a guiding force in the construction of the universe. He accepts Darwinian evolution but doubts it can explain the ultimate origins of life.

Evolution is a fact in that we know it occurs and it has been seen occur[r]ing.

It would be well to point out another development on this front:

"NEW YORK Dec 9, 2004 -- A British philosophy professor who has been a leading champion of atheism for more than a half-century has changed his mind. He now believes in God more or less based on scientific evidence, and says so on a video released Thursday.

"At age 81, after decades of insisting belief is a mistake, Antony Flew has concluded that some sort of intelligence or first cause must have created the universe. A super-intelligence is the only good explanation for the origin of life and the complexity of nature, Flew said in a telephone interview from England."

ABC News: Famous Atheist Now Believes in God

It was funnier before Randy Moss changed my perspective about this phrase...

Don't underestimate the possible consequences of rainwater seeping into mud. Read here about what may happen!

Elephant takes giant poop

Hey, if he happens to be on a Chicago bridge when he does, he may cause some stir!

http://hitchhikers.movies.go.com/ And of all companies- disney is producing it... Will the mouse be taking his towel with him?

Makes me think of this one: "Economic Woes and Dismal Math/Science Scores: Related Deficits?"
To be blunt, it really makes me think that most of America's youth is too stupid to know that X messages @ $0.yy ea = $lots'ocash.

That's one nice joke, but this beeing /. I can nitpick all i want, and might even be moded up for it.
So I have to point out that the "official" address is actually : 122.13013W x 47.64483N
Your coords point to something that looks like an empty field near residential housing a few KM North.
You wouldn't want the Air Force to hit the wrong target.

P.S. I had to lookup the coords using NASA's excellent Open Source WorldWind.
Did you just happen to have the coordinates written on a post-it or something ? :)

Murphy(c)

However, I personally think this is a publicity stunt for the upcomming Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy movie.

"I'm not sure the "big bad Jews" staged multiple terrorist attacks for over 20 years that culminated in 3000 deaths and an economic hit of more than a trillion dollars but I'll google it and see."

You've obviously never heard of Operation Northwood before.

I couldn't find exactly what law he was charged with violating, but suspect it's 49 USC 49504 (search at http://uscode.house.gov/search/criteria.php), which was amended by the Patriot Act.

That section deals with "Interference with flight crew members and attendants," and reads:

An individual on an aircraft in the special aircraft jurisdiction of the United States who, by assaulting or intimidating a flight crew member or flight attendant of the aircraft, interferes with the performance of the duties of the member or attendant or lessens the ability of the member or attendant to perform those duties, or attempts or conspires to do such an act, shall be fined under title 18, imprisoned for not more than 20 years, or both. However, if a dangerous weapon is used in assaulting or intimidating the member or attendant, the individual shall be imprisoned for any term of years or for life.

So, is shining a light, especially one which meets US safety regulations (as all laser pointers must) at someone "assault?" How about a flashlight? Seems to me that is going to be quite hard to prove. Doesn't "assault" also require intent to do harm?

Certainly, a laser light show not deliberately made to point at an aircraft can't be considered "assault."

The FBI seems confused about the law (no surprise). In this (http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory?id=385589) AP article, it states that "According to the FBI, the Patriot Act does not describe helicopters as "mass transportation vehicles." While the statement is technically true, it's also the case that the Patriot Act doesn't describe anything as "mass transportation vehicles," in fact the phrase never appears at all.