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I always thought Pluto was a bloodhound. ;-)

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has annual revenues heading towards $1B

Oh no! At this rate, by next year they might hit 1/50th of Hollywood's revenue! And from a country with only 1/4th the US's GDP.

and has a massively higher output than Hollywood.

Erhm, General Hospital has more output than Hollywood, but it's not much of a threat either. Last year, Jen Ringley exceeded Hollywood's output. Quantity is irrelevant.

The only comparison that really matters is what percentage of revenue comes from international releases (localized by either sub or dub). For Hollywood, that's more than 40%. Does Bollywood get even 1% of sales from non-Indian audiences? Doubtful.

My mathematician wife, by the way, pictures numbers as colors and can somehow do back-of-the-envelope calculations that way. I'm not entirely sure that's a sign of a healthy mind, but it seems to work for her.

I do. Not really numbers, but letters. It has deteriorated over the years for me. Apparently, it is called synesthesia

There is a danger of making complacent assumptions in this as in many other things. A very quick bit of Googling to back up my hunch revealed some information about "Bollywood", the Indian film industry which, according to this source (and a couple of others), has annual revenues heading towards $1B, and has a massively higher output than Hollywood. Consider the relative GDPs of India ($2.664 trillion) and the USA ($10.45 trillion -- according to the CIA), and it might not really be sensible to think of the USA being so comfortably in the lead in film production.

I know you said that many other countries are catching up with the US in technological innovation, but like the movie industry, it might be worth considering just how close some countries are coming.

How long they send a letter to The Toronto Raptors for selling products with their logo.

Or are the Toronto Raptors supposed to send the letter, since they existed first.

Locate the plant where the waste is being treated, like they do already in Lithuania Germany and Oregon.

You are already moving the sewage around as it is, so that expense is already there. The waste output of the biogas fermener is much safer than the sludge that existing sewage plants produce, and it can be further composted to produce safe, high quality, organic fertilizer.

There are also existing farm waste facilities (as was previously discussed here on /.) and existing technology to tap land fills in the same manner. It's energy that can be easily converted to a usable, transportable form (electricity) that wopuld otherwise go to waste. The gasses that are being converted are greenhouse gasses (mostly methane) that are not readily sinkable, and the waste products from the fuel cell are only (easily sinkable) CO2 and water.

The other implication of this technology that is less spoken about is that it decentralizes the source of energy away from the fossil fuel companies and spreads the profits closer to the community where the energy is being produced, either through lower costs for waste treatment, or through direct profit from the sale of the electricity if the facility is privately owned. This means lower costs for energy and lower trade deficit.

It's a winning situation for those who live in communities that take advantage of this, and the only people who lose out are the energy companies.

Satan is still in Buffalo. Considering it's about 25 F and snowing there, I'll bet he's reaching for his winter parka.

Readers may remember that John insisted, upon flimsy evidence, that his famous father expressed his wishes to be cryogenically presevred upon his death, and his DNA sold on ebay. Speculation is that Ted William's ghost came back from the grave and smothered his ungrateful adopted son.

You may not have enjoyed the contraversy, but there's no denying his contribution to AM radio call-in sports shows. Truly a craven American icon, he won't be missed.

(Can the trolleditors please do a rewrite of this into canonical "%s, found dead at %d" format. I'm too lazy to.)

"Stewart, who became a self-made billionaire by building a homemaking how-to empire, says that the amount of money she saved by selling her ImClone stock "amounted to approximately $40,000, about .006 percent of my net worth."

From ABC News Story

Imagine the seizure inducing capability that Nintendo and Mary Hart would have if they joined forces. They could take over the world! Note that a "Little Mermaid" themed game would accomplish the same purpose.

Dr. Jana Klauer is an expert on obesity, and she says new studies show a link between sleep and weight loss. Sleep deprivation causes a rise in the stress hormone cortisol, which in turn raises insulin levels, preventing fat burn.

Who is actually recording television anymore? With what they consider quality television, I'm surprized more people aren't doing more interesting things like taking a Craftsman cordless drill to the soles of their feet or jamming needles in their armpits.

Can be found here with picture of the thing here. Apparently it plays DivX too.

They must be running their site on one ha ha LOL OMG WTF they are teh suck!!!11
...
OK, now that we've got that out of the way, anyone else got any info on these things? I found a review but it has no pics. :-(

At Disney's shareholders meeting in Philadelphia today (at about 3hrs 10mins through 3hours 15mins into the meeting for those of you who want to listen at Disney Investors) they announced that Kingdom Hearts 2 is coming in 2005 for the PS2 and a version of Kingdom Hearts for Gameboy coming out later this year. No mention of a version for PSP or PS3.

If want bad movies look for Battlefield Earth, or Howard the duck.

Say what you want about HtD, but this guy's (Jeffrey Jones)performance is so good, it's almost worth watching the movie just to see it. Hilarious.

I'm sure it will support the Xshok controller. That should liven up your game.

If they decide to vibrate off the hook they'll be opening themselves up to HAVS lawsuits. Alternatively, they could also just strobe the screen and cause epileptic fits.

I'm starting to think that they should just package drugs with the game.
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I had mod points but I sold them on eBay.

Sophos has Graham Cluley, and that's all that matters. For those who don't know, Graham Cluley has been a long-time antivirus researcher, and was often teased in viruses written by the female virus/worm author Gigabyte, who was arrested last week.

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Rate Naked People at FuckMeter! (Not work-safe, but hey, it's Sunday)

It seems as if TerraLycos is cleaning house and pulling the plug on unprofitable operations. Furthermore, it seems as if the Lycos search engine itself is one of those elements being downplayed.

The current Lycos Home Page still has the search box, but they're talking about the "new Lycos" which is all about the non-search sites that are part of the Lycos Network. It seems as if Lycos has fallen into an also-ran status.

Another classic search engine met the same fate a few years ago. When Infoseek was bought up by Disney, it was supposed to be the anchor of the Go Network. When that didn't work out, the core part of the Go Network shut down, leading to a Go Network homepage that does nothing but link to stories on the surviving Disney-owned sites and provide a Google-powered search box.

When we see Lycos Search powered by Google, we'll know that the layoff spree is complete...

But according to this 2003 article, "Pet owners are expected to lavish $31.5 billion on their animals" - more than twice that total!

Hey, you got to take care of your pets and all that - nobody's arguing that. But people have to have a sense of proportion. We spend less on NASA than we spend on dogfood? Then maybe the cost-benefit ratio makes a little more sense.

The only person this system benefits is the insurance company that doesn't want to pay you because your sensors told you that the roads were unsafe and that you were driving 4 miles over the speed limit and this is why they can not pay you. I am sure there is a "black box" that will rat you out to the insurance company. Worse yet, an accident isn't even your fault but they have it on record that you often exceed the national limit and the driver of the vehicle has a good enough lawyer to get him and his insurance company not to pass you even a dime.

Can it happen? I am sure it already does.

This could have a potentially incredible impact on impaired and disabled people. Imagine if Stephen Hawking would be able to work at the same speed his mind seems to function at? However, what about Mind through Machine over Mind? Put your helmet on, jack in, and remote control that fish - imagine the long-time deep-sea discoveries we could make - maybe even find a live Architeuthis?

Considering the gov in the US started the entire FUD based game on hackers in the mid 80's and steroided it up, what do you see now...? Let me give you an example...

• High Performance Computers and Export Control Policy: Issues for Congress
• A Primer on E-Government: Sectors, Stages, Opportunities, and Challenges of Online Governance
• Computer Attack and Cyber Terrorism: Vulnerabilities and Policy Issues for Congress

So if you think it's about the DMCA only, or MS only, you're really short sighted. It's about anyone willing to kick up some cash for those in office. Hey one hand washes the other. And for those who don't believe or think it's some "tin foil on the head" -what you misconstrue and call - conspiracy, I suggest you look into the words perception management, cognitive dissonance on google. There are studies done daily in hopes of finding a way to make you believe whatever they'd like:

1.4. Perception management in support of Enduring Freedom and Iraqi Freedom

With or without the OSI, the US Defense Department, State Department, and White House conducted large-scale "perception management" or "strategic influence" campaigns in support of Operations Enduring Freedom and Iraqi Freedom as well as in support of the broader war on terrorism.

...

2. Shaping the public discourse on civilian casualties: case studies from the Iraq war

In the remainder of this report, we analyze key aspects of the US public discourse on collateral damage in the Afghan and Iraqi wars, with special attention to those concepts advanced by the US defense establishment to define and explicate the issue.

Looks like someone forgot to grease the palms of big brother with a couple of stock certificates, egold, paypal payments, payola. Silly Ellison, when will you learn to follow others' lead to get what you want.

We can use President Bush's terrorist definition:
1) Is brown
2) Mistakenly refers to God as Allah
3) Hates freedom

Your statements are false. One of the first terrorists to be convicted was white American Muslim, and another one won't be far behind. President Bush has also visited Mosques and condemned violence against Arab Americans since the start of this War. It is likely that most Muslim extremists that are captured or killed will not be white for the simple fact that most Muslims are of Arab, African, or Asian decent. That doesn't make defending ourselves against their attacks racist. That would be nonsense, as is your statement.

As to the so-called "Army of God," why would he mention them? Eric Rudolph and Clayton Waagner, who were behind hundreds of incidents (mainly fake anthrax letters in addition to the bombings) attributed to the "The Army of God," have been captured by law enforcement. They aren't a significant on-going problem that could result in thousands or tens of thousand killed like Al Qaeda is trying to do.

You are either being reckless with the facts or deliberately smearing the President. Either way it is unbecoming.

P.S. I did some googling, and the first two stories I could found that looked somewhat serious are here and here.. Quote from second article: "Men and women differ in their pain tolerance," says psychologist Roger Fillingim of the University of Florida, who has spent years trying to learn why. "There's no debate on that."

I think a discussion about paying to influence the UN would be a little shallow without bringing this up for perspective.

-FL

shows only a 13.5% decline
Yeah, now if someone would have claimed that there was a wide spread conspiracy to not report or under report crime for some reason, like in Atlanta so they could get the Olympics (and get people to come to them) certain /.'ers would have claimed that it was as absurd as us not going on manned missions to the moon and that the claimant should "adjust their foil hat".
Why wouldn't the higher ups say "We need some good numbers to show that the big $45 M that we paid Oracle and Accenture actually did something, so lets make sure that the numbers look good so that we more money in the future." Oh, god, that could never happen...

Foil hat question - If you have a lander rocket engine blowing moon dust all over, why is there no moon dust on the pictures of the lander feet? No dust == no rocket blast. Never heard anyone bring this up.

Plans include firing hypervelocity rods from space to targets on the ground

Fuhk 'em rods! Let's throw the entire ISS down!

Just load up Canadarm with Eric Gagne software and WhAm!

Oh wait. That would consist mostly a Canadian weapon with with an international bullet. An American one if we throw Hubbles first.

A newly discovered planetoid 2004 DW in the Edgeworth-Kuiper belt, where some think objects larger than Pluto exist, may be larger than Quaoar - making it the second largest known trans-Neptunian object and 18th largest object in the solar system.

When I hear "D.W.," I can only think of Darkwing Duck.

I am the terror that flaps in the night,
Waldo Jaquith

Climate swings in the past 11,000 years have been enormous, and we are actually colder now than most of those past years -- all without help from modern civilization there was massive global warming, with a sustained global temperature of over what we now have.

Mars turns out to be experiencing global warming as well! All without help from pesky humans and their SUV's.

What is the common factor between Terra Firma and the Red Planet? Why, the Sun, of course! It's long been recognized that Old Sol is a variable star. Mars, without the enormous heat sinks that Earth has (oceans, thick atmosphere), would naturally experience wilder swings, as pointed out here.

So, can we give it a rest about our puny CO2 emissions causing the warming?

Seems like trying to somehow "juice" someone to keep them alert and undistracted by hunger during periods of inactivity is going to get similar results. Would you rely on checkpoint guards to be as ready for ambush as if they'd eaten their Halliburger? When someone's in combat, maybe, but over five days of varying activity?

(All joking about amphetamines aside, the military does use amphetamines for pilots already. They came up in that friendly fire case where the Canadians were killed in Afghanistan.)

As for the "go pills" -- the speed -- the Air Force says there's no reason for any change in policy, that they are essential for combat pilots now being sent to war over Afghanistan and Iraq. "These men are patriots, these men were sent to fight a war and they're put in a situation where it's either take these pills or you don't fly," Skobel said.

And for those of you who haven't heard what actually happened.

Admittedly, the version recorded by the directional mic is pretty funny, but if you had actually been standing there, you wouldn't have been able to hear the man.

They probably are sitting on more than a few movie scripts that are complete gold, we don't know.

What about The Incredibles?. Still Disney, but we do know about it.

And don't forget Japanese animation films like Spirited away! This movie did after all win the academy award for best animation in 2002...

Though I agree that Disney still is a powerful media conglomerate and as a brand name it sure has appeal to mass from kids to retired, animation from Disney has lost a lot of momentum compared to its heyday. Animated feature is no longer dominated by Disney, as 3D animation is becoming the mainstream in the film biz. This has been proven by success of animated feature from other studios, like Dreamworks and Fox. Meanwhile, in 2D animation world, there are some indication that Disney might have lost touch in animation business. Boxoffice success of Disney animation is no longer guaranteed unlike old days. While Disney is apparently aware of this trend, they are yet to come up with viable alternative to their ex-partner, Pixer.

Is 2D animation dead? I think not, and neither some studios. But from what we have seen in success of Pixer/Dis films, it is undeniable that Pixer has a better ground to compete in animation after this separation.

They are by no means trusted to the level of Disney in a family atmosphere.

Sure, WE trust Disney for its purity. Disney is clean as long as it doesn't engrave their banner on top of crap they make under other brand name they own.

Cheers.

Though I agree that Disney still is a powerful media conglomerate and as a brand name it sure has appeal to mass from kids to retired, animation from Disney has lost a lot of momentum compared to its heyday. Animated feature is no longer dominated by Disney, as 3D animation is becoming the mainstream in the film biz. This has been proven by success of animated feature from other studios, like Dreamworks and Fox. Meanwhile, in 2D animation world, there are some indication that Disney might have lost touch in animation business. Boxoffice success of Disney animation is no longer guaranteed unlike old days. While Disney is apparently aware of this trend, they are yet to come up with viable alternative to their ex-partner, Pixer.

Is 2D animation dead? I think not, and neither some studios. But from what we have seen in success of Pixer/Dis films, it is undeniable that Pixer has a better ground to compete in animation after this separation.

They are by no means trusted to the level of Disney in a family atmosphere.

Sure, WE trust Disney for its purity. Disney is clean as long as it doesn't engrave their banner on top of crap they make under other brand name they own.

Cheers.

Fakezilla was a flop simply because it WASN'T Godzilla. They took TOO many liberties with their Godzilla design. I won't even get into how easy they made it to kill Godzilla or the whole breeding thing they came up with.

Of course Toho, the creator and only true maker of Godzilla films, has made some big mistakes as well(Godzilla 2000 for instance, one of if not the most boring of the Godzilla films)

I've always suspected it would've been recieved better if it'd been billed as the movie it was actually a remake of -- The Beast from 20000 Fathoms.

(Although it still wouldn't have lived up to their remake of War of the Worlds ;)

transport it to the ethanol plant

Hell, I'm pretty sure that most of my dad's cousins still have an "ethanol plant" hidden back behind the barn.

what you'll make your fertilizer from

spent mash, corn waste, hay. Feed it to the "fertilizer plant", get bacon whenever you "upgrade" the factory.

how you'll get your ethanol to your hydrogen plant all without using any fossil fuels...

RTFA. The unit does that for you.

Ethanol can be produced from agricultural by-products as well (such as corn-cobs and stalks, rice and wheat straw, etc.), not just whole grain. Alongside renewable natural gas, this technology could reduce farm waste and agicultural surplus problems, reduce America's dependance on fossil fuels, help balance the trade deficit, and help family owned farms stay in business while reducing the cost of energy for the end user. All good things, IMHO.

A lot of people will be crying at the demise of the oil import giants, but I am certainly not one of them.

To that extent, I will agree with you, because we do use an industrial-ag model of crop production. We don't need to, though.

Unfortunately, the standard method of ethanol production from growing and processing your own corn is illegal in the US: the end product is usually known as Moonshine.

Here are a few references on the subject.

Interestingly, moonshine enjoys a quasi-legal status in New Zealand. Looks like the Kiwis are going to be ahead of us USers again.

I don't agree with this, but is it really flamebait? According to an ABC poll four out of ten Americans think that therapeutic cloning is OK. In order to support cloning you pretty much have to agree with the parent post.

For my 2c, I don't know if an embryo is a person or not. Since we define the death of a human as the end of brain function, my hunch is that life begins at the start of brain function. This is a can of worms too (what constitutes brain function?), but then so is the parent poster's position (what constitutes a personality or a "self"?). It seems wise to err on the side of not killing humans (or things that might be human). We were all once embryos too!

at least one case where the FBI insured that an innocent man was convicted of murder and sent to prison in order to protect their own informant.

What case was that?

Joseph Salvati ABC News

A quick google turns up other probable cases.

And it's not going to change until someone gets the guts to start bringing charges against cops and prosecutors who knowingly use false information, or withhold information.

Yes, India shouldn't get aid, since:

1: India gives developmental assistance (mostly to neighboring countries like Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal, and Bhutan).

2: It's a creditor to the IMF (International Monetary Fund).

3: It's written off loans for some desparately poor countries (mostly in Africa).

4: Foreign Aid is a very small part of India's GDP, at least when compared to Israel and Egypt. It's symbolic for India more than anything else.

5: America _now_ accounts for an insignificant amount of India's foreign aid:

"The United States accounted for 8.6 percent of all of the aid India received from independence through FY 1988, but for only 0.7 percent in FY 1989 and 0.6 percent in FY 1990." source

• Atlantis: Milo's Return
• Cinderella II
• Lady and Tramp 2
• 101 Dalmatians II: Patch's London Adventure
• Lion King 1 & 1/2

at best a warning to shut of indoor air ionizers whose output of ozone can lead to concentrations in excess those present of ambient pollution levels

Heh. Talk about a rock and a hard place.

Either your product doesn't do anything at all or it causes cancer, or maybe just other health risks (hint - read "The Buzz").

Note that the product in question hasn't bothered with getting any independant certification of claims (by, oh say, AHAM) and is currently suing Consumer Reports over alleged improper testing practices. It might be worth noting that Consumer Reports has never lost or settled a lawsuit regarding its testing procedures.

Holy Shit. Crowd-control, anyone?

Well I've seen better ...